Humanism and New Atheism: experiences and proposals of an educational minority
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5944/hme.12.2020.26468Keywords:
Atheism, rationalism, agnosticism, education, school,Abstract
The research intends to trace a profile of two twentieth-century movements — Humanism and New Atheism — which, from an educational point of view, constitute an interesting and original minority. Although both studies and activities of undeniable educational interest have been produced, they have not yet been put at the centre of specific research. They currently represent one of the most innovative aspects of the current debate on the purpose of education both at school and in the family. These are movements that are not only academic or theoretical research, but they represent a varied social sample which in some countries, moreover, is no longer a small minority, but clearly affects public opinion and even parts of the political agenda.
The analysis of the recent history of movements that we can define of an “atheist world” indicates a clear trend line: their positions seem destined to be an integral part of the debates on current educational issues, particularly because the positions they expressed — with their constant anchoring to scientific culture and rational dialogue — seem suitable to face the difficult challenges of globalisation and the tensions that cross pluralistic societies.
Downloads
References
A Humanist Manifesto I, 1933, https://americanhumanist.org/what-is-humanism/manifesto1.
Abbott, Dena M. and Debra Mollen. “Atheism as a concealable stigmatized identity: Outness, anticipated stigma, and well-being.”
The Counseling Psychologist 46, no. 6 (2018): 685-707.
Al-Husseini, Waleed. Blasphémateur! Les prisons d'Allah. Paris: Grasset & Fasquelle, 2015.
Amsterdam Declaration, 1952, Humanists International, World Humanist Congress, 1952, https://humanists.international/policy/amsterdam-declaration-1952.
Amsterdam Declaration, 2002, Humanists International, 50th anniversary World Humanist Congress, https://humanists.international/what-is-humanism/the-amsterdam-declaration.
Andreassen, Bengt-Ove. “Religion education in Norway: Tension or harmony between human rights and Christian cultural heritage?.” Temenos-Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion 49, no. 2 (2013), 137-164.
Arias Gómez, Diego H. “La enseñanza de la historia reciente y la formación moral. Dilemas de un vínculo imprescindible.” Folios 42, no. 2 (2015): 29-41.
Aron, Raymond. L'opium des intellectuel. Paris: éditions Calmann-Lévy. 1995.
Avalos, Hector. Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2005.
Bagata, Tiziana and Roberto, and Raffaella and Roberto Gava (edited by), Il libro delle novene. Conegliano: Editrice Ancilla, 1995.
Barker, Dan. Losing faith in faith. From preacher to atheist. Madison. Wis.: FFRF, 2006.
Bédarida, François. “Le temps présent et l’Historiographie contemporaine.” Vingtième siècle, Revue d’histoire 69 (2001): 153-160.
Bettini, Maurizio. Elogio del politeismo: quello che possiamo imparare oggi dalle religioni antiche. Bologna: Il mulino, 2014.
Campa, Riccardo. La rivincita del paganesimo: Una teoria della modernità. Rome: Deleyva Editore, 2015.
Cliteur, Paul. “A secular critique of religious ethics and politics.” In The Oxford Handbook of Secularism, edited by John R. Shook, Phil Zuckerman, 389-400. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Cliteur, Paul. “Biblical stories and religion as the root cause of terrorism.” In The Root Causes of Terrorism: A Religious Studies Perspective, edited by Mahmoud Masaeli and Rico Sneller, 1-26. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017.
Cliteur, Paul. The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism. Boston: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Collins, Francis. La genetica di Dio. Rome: Lit, 2018.
Coyne, Jerry A. Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible. New York: Viking, 2015.
Dawkins, Richard, Daniel C. Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. The Four Horsemen: The Conversation that Sparked an Atheist Revolution. New York: Random House, 2019.
Dawkins, Richard. A devil's chaplain: reflections on hope, lies, science, and love. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003.
Dawkins, Richard. The God delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
De Botton, Alain. Religion for atheists: a non-believer's guide to the uses of religion. New York: Pantheon Books, 2012.
Demetrio, Duccio. La religiosità della terra: una fede civile per la cura del mondo. Milano: Raffaello Cortina, 2013.
Dennett, Daniel C. Breaking the spell: religion as a natural phenomenon. New York: Viking, 2006.
Dennett, Daniel C. Intuition pumps and other tools for thinking. New York: W.W. Norton, 2013.
Dennett, Daniel C. and Alvin Plantinga. Science and religion: are they compatible?. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Depaepe, Marc. “Philosophy and History of Education: Time to bridge the gap?.” Educational Philosophy and Theory 39, no. 1 (2007): 28-43.
Dewey, John. A Common Faith. Yale: Yale University Press, 1934.
Dewey, Melvil. Dewey decimal classification and relative index, Ed. 23, edited by Joan S. Mitchell. Dublin, Ohio: OCLC Online, 2011.
Díez de Velasco, Francisco. “La enseñanza de las religiones en la escuela en España: avatares del modelo de aula segregada.” Historia y Memoria de la Educación 4 (2016): 277-306.
Díez de Velasco, Francisco. Las religiones en un mundo global: retos y perspectivas: lección inaugural del curso académico 2000-2001 de la Universidad de La Laguna pronunciada el 29 de septiembre de 2000. University of La Laguna: Servicio de Publicaciones, 2000.
Encyclical letter Lumen Fidei of the Supreme Pontiff Francis - Jorge Mario Bergoglio to the bishop priest and deacons consecrated persons and the lay faithful on faith, 9 June, 2013, paragraph n. 54, http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20130629_enciclica-lumen-fidei.html).
Epstein, Greg M. Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe. New York: Harper, 2009.
Franco, Marina, and Florencia Levín. Historia reciente. Perspectivas y desafíos para un campo en construcción. Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2007.
Freathy, Rob, and Stephen G. Parker. “Secularists, Humanists and religious education: religious crisis and curriculum change in England, 1963–1975.” History of Education 42, no. 2 (2013): 222-256.
Ginzburg, Carlo. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980 (1976 1st edition).
Goodman, Kathleen M., and John A. Mueller. “Invisible, marginalized, and stigmatized: Understanding and addressing the needs of atheist students.” New Directions for Student Services, 125 (2009): 55-63.
Gould, Stephen J. “Nonoverlapping Magisteria.” Natural History 106, March (1997): 16–22.
Harris, Sam. Letter to a Christian Nation. New York: Knopf, 2006.
Harris, Sam. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of
Reason. New York: W.W. Norton, 2004.
Harris, Sam. The Moral Landscape. New York: Free Press, 2010.
Hitchens, Christopher (ed.). The portable atheist: essential readings for the nonbeliever. Philadelphia, PA: Da Capo, 2007.
Hitchens, Christopher, and Douglas Wilson. Is Christianity good for the world?. Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2008.
Hitchens, Christopher. “Foreword.” In Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft, edited by SusandT. Joshi. New York, NY: Sporting Gentlemen, 2010.
Hitchens, Christopher. God is not great: how religion poisons everything. New York: Twelve, 2007.
Holloway, Richard. Godless morality: keeping religion out of ethics. Edinburgh: Canongate, 1999.
Holloway, Richard. Leaving Alexandria: a memoir of faith and doubt. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2012.
Humanist Manifesto II, 1973, https://americanhumanist.org/what-is-humanism/manifesto2.
Jullien, François. Ressources du christianisme: mais sans y entrer par la foi. Paris: L'Herne, 2018.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto, with an Introduction and Notes by G. S. Jones. London: Penguin Books, 2002.
Kenny, Anthony. A Path form Rome: An Autobiography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Kenny, Anthony. Un affettuoso addio alla Chiesa. Roma: Carocci. 2016.
Liddell, Elizabeth RA. and Christopher D. Stedman. “Nontheistic students on campus: Understanding and accommodating atheists, agnostics, humanists and others.” Journal of College and Character 12, no. 3 (2011): 1-8.
Lo Giacco, Maria Luisa. “Educazione religiosa e tutela del minore nella famiglia.” Stato, Chiese e pluralismo confessionale (rivista telematica), febbraio 2007.
Mancuso, Vito. Il dolore innocente. L'handicap, la natura e Dio. Milan: Mondadori, 2002.
McClure, Amy I. “Becoming a Parent Changes Everything: How Nonbeliever and Pagan Parents Manage Stigma in the US Bible Belt.” Qualitative Sociology 40, no. 3 (2017): 331-352.
McCullogh, Gary. The struggle for the history of education. Abingdon: Routledge, 2011.
McGowan, Dale (ed.). Parenting beyond belief: on raising ethical, caring kids without religion. New York: American Management Association, 2007.
McGowan, Dale (ed.). Voices of unbelief: documents from atheists and agnostics. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood, 2012.
McGowan, Dale et al. Raising freethinkers: A practical guide for parenting beyond belief. New York: American Management Association, 2009.
McGrath, Alister, and Joanna Collicutt McGrath. The Dawkins Delusion? Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2007.
Meslier, Jean. Mémoire contre la religion. Établissement du texte par JeanPierre Jackson et Alain Toupin. Paris: Éditions Coda, 2007.
Noddings, Nel. Educating for intelligent belief or unbelief. New York: Teachers College Press, 1993.
Noddings, Nel. Educating moral people: A caring alternative to character education. New York: Teachers College Press, 2002.
Obadia, Lyon. “When Virtuality Shapes Social Reality. Fake Cults and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.” Online-Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet 8 (2015).
Onfray, Michel. La puissance d'exister: manifeste hédoniste. Paris: Grasset, 2006.
Onfray, Michel. L'ordre libertaire: la vie philosophique d'Albert Camus. Paris: le Grand livre du mois, 2011.
Onfray, Michel. The souci des plaisirs: construction d'une érotique solaire. Paris: le Grand livre du mois, 2008.
Onfray, Michel. Traité d'athéologie: physique de la métaphysique. Paris: Grasset, 2005.
Pellicani, Luciano. Le radici pagane dell'Europa. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2007.
Pépin, Luce. Teaching about religions in European school systems: policy issues and trends. London: Alliance Publishing Trust, 2009.
Pievani, Telmo. “Il non senso dell’evoluzione umana.” MicroMega Almanacco della Scienza 1 (2012).
Pievani, Telmo. La vita inaspettata. Il fascino di un'evoluzione che non ci aveva previsto. Milan: Cortina, 2011.
Pigliucci, Massimo. How to be a stoic. Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life. New York: Basic Books, 2017.
Russell, Bertrand. “Is There a God? [1952].” In The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 11: Last Philosophical Testament, 1943–68, edited by John G. Slater with the assistance of Peter Köllner, 542–548. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.
Smith, Jesse M. “Creating a godless community: The collective identity work of contemporary American atheists.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 52, no. 1 (2013): 80-99.
Sweeney, Julia. God said, “Ha!.” New York: Bantam Books, 1997.
Sweeney, Julia. Letting Go of God. DVD, 130 minutes. Los Angeles, California: Five Sisters Productions, 2008.
Veronesi, Umberto. Il mestiere di uomo. Turin: Einaudi, 2014.
Wine, Sherwin. Judaism beyond God: A radical new way to be Jewish. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Society for Humanistic Judaism, 1985.
Zanghi, Giuseppe Maria. “Una chiave di lettura dell’ateismo occidentale.” In Il problema ateismo. Per una comprensione del fenomeno, edited by V. Araújo et al, 202-225. Rome: Città Nuova Editrice, 1986.
Zuckerman, Phil. “Atheism: Contemporary rates and pattern.” In The Cambridge companion to atheism, edited by M. Martin, 47-67. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Zuckerman, Phil. Society without God: What the least religious nations can tell us about contentment. New York: NYU Press, 2008.
