Recent polls (e.g., Edgell, Gerteis & Hartmann, 2006) have consistently found that atheists are the least liked group in America today, a type of prejudice that has barely been researched. This anti-atheist prejudice is surprising because atheists do not constitute a cohesive, recognizable, or powerful group. To the degree that people feel that religion provides a unique and necessary source of morality, they may dislike atheists primarily because of moral distrust towards them. This suggests a distinct origin for anti-atheist prejudice that sets it apart from ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice. We explored this broad hypothesis in a series of three experiments. First, we find that on an implicit level anti-atheist prejudice is driven by distrust rather than a feeling of generalized unpleasantness towards atheists. Second, we find that discrimination against atheists is limited to contexts requiring a high degree of trust. Finally, we find that anti-atheist prejudice is malleable. These findings are discussed in terms of prominent evolutionary theories of religion.

Th. : Lett. : Nice : 1976.

Thesis (M.A.)--Denver Seminary, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [97-100]).

Thesis (M.A.)--Denver Seminary, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [97-100]).

Recent polls (e.g., Edgell, Gerteis & Hartmann, 2006) have consistently found that atheists are the least liked group in America today, a type of prejudice that has barely been researched. This anti-atheist prejudice is surprising because atheists do not constitute a cohesive, recognizable, or powerful group. To the degree that people feel that religion provides a unique and necessary source of morality, they may dislike atheists primarily because of moral distrust towards them. This suggests a distinct origin for anti-atheist prejudice that sets it apart from ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice. We explored this broad hypothesis in a series of three experiments. First, we find that on an implicit level anti-atheist prejudice is driven by distrust rather than a feeling of generalized unpleasantness towards atheists. Second, we find that discrimination against atheists is limited to contexts requiring a high degree of trust. Finally, we find that anti-atheist prejudice is malleable. These findings are discussed in terms of prominent evolutionary theories of religion. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

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Existing literature reveals that atheists are among the least accepted groups in America. This study examined the process atheists go through when disclosing their atheism to their religious family members. It is hoped that the information gained may benefit therapists who work with this population as they go through this potentially difficult time and adds to the currently insufficient body of research on atheism and atheists. Using the guided frameworks of grounded theory and social exchange and choice theory, a focus group was conducted with seven atheists and coded for themes. The data revealed the disclosure process as happening in three main stages which cover how the atheists arrived at the belief system, how it was disclosed and its reception, and how relationships have been impacted since the disclosure. The clinical implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are also discussed. / Master of Science

The preface gives the background of the postmodern religious context within which a “view of God to consider” has become problematic. The preface also gives the methodology as well as the rationale for the study. The article examines the anatheistic concept of God of the well-known philosopher of religion, Richard Kearney, in order to answer the question whether Kearney’s concept of God is to be regarded in our postmetaphysical age and why. Two books of Kearney are selected to analyse, namely The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion (2001) and Anatheism: Returning to God after God (2011). The article indicates that the anatheistic God is not easy to identify and that it mostly involves a risk or wager of hospitality to recognize this God who is amongst other, “weak, functionalist, the other, the stranger and the incarnated kingdom of peace and love”. It is argued that although this non-metaphysical anatheistic God has some positive aspects (creativities, plurality, not militant or dogmatic), it remains difficult to mull over (and accept) this view of God for various reasons (weakness, functionality, unrecognizability). Kearney helps one however through his anatheistic concept of God to think new about the possibilities to “return to God after God” in our post-metaphysical age. / MPhil , North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

The preface gives the background of the postmodern religious context within which a “view of God to consider” has become problematic. The preface also gives the methodology as well as the rationale for the study. The article examines the anatheistic concept of God of the well-known philosopher of religion, Richard Kearney, in order to answer the question whether Kearney’s concept of God is to be regarded in our postmetaphysical age and why. Two books of Kearney are selected to analyse, namely The God Who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion (2001) and Anatheism: Returning to God after God (2011). The article indicates that the anatheistic God is not easy to identify and that it mostly involves a risk or wager of hospitality to recognize this God who is amongst other, “weak, functionalist, the other, the stranger and the incarnated kingdom of peace and love”. It is argued that although this non-metaphysical anatheistic God has some positive aspects (creativities, plurality, not militant or dogmatic), it remains difficult to mull over (and accept) this view of God for various reasons (weakness, functionality, unrecognizability). Kearney helps one however through his anatheistic concept of God to think new about the possibilities to “return to God after God” in our post-metaphysical age. / MPhil , North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

This dissertation aims to fill in the lacuna left by previous research of empirical and systematic examination of atheism vis-à-vis religion in China. Moreover, I intend to reckon with the puzzling discrepancy between high proportion of self-identified atheists and high percentage of religious believers and practitioners among mainland Chinese. Through quantitative content analysis of the representation of atheism and religion in the official newspaper, the <i>People’s Daily</i>, and the commercialized newspaper, <i>Southern Weekend</i>, and comparing and contrasting the representation of two particular religions, namely, Buddhism and Christianity in the <i>People’s Daily</i>, I demonstrate that as the tonal uses, interplay of secularization and desecularization trends over time, and framing of religions effectuate the configuration and reconfiguration of the relative meanings and locations of atheism and religion in the symbolic realm of media representation in reform-era China, the transfiguration reveals to the audience the discursive instability and fluidity underlying the concepts of “atheism” and “religion.” I argue that the Chinese party-state’s pragmatism and commercialized media’s commitment to modern journalism are among the major enabling factors for the discursive practices of the news media that we see. As atheism and religion are both embraced and contested, albeit differentially, in symbolic representation by the news media, it facilitates the Chinese’s self-identification as an atheist and simultaneously believing/behaving as a religionist, in spite of the apparent logical incongruity in the double-identity.