Christopher R. Cotter

Without God yet Not Without Nuance: A Qualitative Study of Atheism and Non-religion Among Scottish University Students

This chapter proposes an analytic typology for the study of atheism, based on questionnaire and interview data from Scottish subjects, which allows for more a more nuanced understanding of non-religion than the prevalent model of characterising atheists simply as those who are not theists. The chapter was motivated by a concern to show “variety in the category ‘non-religious’, whilst demonstrating the inadequacy of attempts to do this in terms of dimensions of ‘religiosity’.” In other words, the author explores the use of ideal types that are grounded in the narratives and self-descriptions of non-religious individuals, and which are not limited to a simple negation of religion. The significance of this is to avoid considering religiosity to be the normative base from which non-religiosity is always compared, and to further the in-depth and qualitative understanding of non-religious people in their own right.

A Discursive Approach to ‘Religious Indifference’: Critical Reflections from Edinburgh’s Southside

This chapter takes as its starting point the sustained and rigorous critique to which the category of ‘religion’ has been subjected in recent decades, in combination with contributions from contemporary studies of ‘non-religion’ and ‘secularity’. Whether understood at an individual, institutional or societal level, constituencies that have remarkably little investment in the concept of ‘religion’, or who explicitly articulate stances of ‘indifference’, clearly have much to say to the theorisation and critique of both ‘religion’ and ‘non-religion’. In this chapter I discuss prevalent academic understandings of ‘indifference’, and outline my reservations surrounding conceptualising it in an ideal-typical manner, and as a form of ‘non-religion’. I then introduce a discursive approach as a possible alternative before providing empirical examples from my ongoing research examining discourses on religion in the Southside of Edinburgh, which both address my critique and conceptualise instances of ‘indifference’ as contextually meaningful discursive acts.

New Atheism, Open-Mindedness, and Critical Thinking

A common theme throughout the writings of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens is the importance of ‘critical thinking’. Not only do these authors believe that they themselves are critical thinkers, they also advocate critical thinking as a key element in their idealized atheistic future. This chapter has been written to assess the veracity of their claims to critical thinking in their engagements with ‘religion’, via an engagement with related literature on ‘open-mindedness,’ particularly the work of William Hare and Harvey Siegel. An analysis of this nature is not merely of academic interest, but is of great importance given the popularity of their books both within and outside the atheistic milieu, the near-canonical status that they have achieved, and the effects of their rhetoric upon the beliefs and practices of individuals in the ‘real’ world. The argument in this chapter flows sequentially through delineations of the concepts of ‘open-mindedness’ and ‘critical thinking’, and a demonstration of the New Atheists’ valorization of critical thinking, before discussing open-mindedness as a constituent part of critical thinking, and then building a three stage argument to demonstrate that the New Atheists are not open-minded, and that therefore they are not critical thinkers (in the context of their most popular considerations of ‘religion’).