Faith No More: Why People Reject Religion - Rilegato

Zuckerman, Phil

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0199740011 ISBN 13: 9780199740017

Casa editrice: OUP USA, 2011

Riassunto

During his 2009 inaugural speech, President Obama described the United States as a nation of "Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus―and nonbelievers." It was the first time an American president had acknowledged the existence of this rapidly growing segment of the population in such a public forum. And yet the reasons why more and more people are turning away from religion are still poorly understood.

In Faith No More, Phil Zuckerman draws on in-depth interviews with people who have left religion to find out what's really behind the process of losing one's faith. According to a 2008 study, so many Americans claim no religion (15%, up from 8% in 1990) that this category now outranks every other religious group except Catholics and Baptists. Exploring the deeper stories within such survey data, Zuckerman shows that leaving one's faith is a highly personal, complex, and drawn-out process. And he finds that, rather than the cliché of the angry, nihilistic atheist, apostates are life-affirming, courageous, highly intelligent and inquisitive, and deeply moral. Zuckerman predicts that this trend toward nonbelief will likely continue and argues that the sooner we recognize that religion is frequently and freely rejected by all sorts of men and women, the sooner our understanding of the human condition will improve.

The first book of its kind, Faith No More will appeal to anyone interested in the "New Atheism" and indeed to anyone wishing to more fully understand our changing relationship to religious faith.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

Zuckerman introduces us to many of his interviewees whose accounts of their change of heart ... make moving and challenging reading and who appear to be happier and healthier human beings for having abandoned their faith. ... useful to those who want seriously to consider why some people reject some religion. (Jonathan Hustler, Theology)

L'autore:

Phil Zuckerman is Professor of Sociology at Pitzer College. He is the author of Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment, Atheism and Secularity, and Invitation to the Sociology of Religion.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: OUP USA
• Data di pubblicazione: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0199740011
• ISBN 13: 9780199740017
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 240