A l’instant où les yeux se tournent principalement vers les thèses dites de repli identitaire ou de radicalisation des musulmans, l’abandon de l’islam pousse dans le silence et touche des musulmans de nationalités différentes. En effet, un conseil des ex-musulmans, initialement créé en 2007, en Grande-Bretagne et en Allemagne par deux ex-musulmanes d’origine iranienne, a essaimé dans plusieurs pays. Les Ex-musulmans restent contraints à la discrétion, même dans des sociétés dites séculières censées garantir la liberté de conscience et de croyance par la loi. Cette discrétion résulte d’une tension intestine au sein de l’islam sur la question « d’apostasie », qui reste une problématique non-encore réglée de manière définitive par les savants de l’islam. En droit musulman classique, l’abandon de l’islam est en effet puni de mort. En affichant leur croyance, ces ex-musulmans, notamment en Europe, ne se sentent pas à l’abri d’une application de cette peine par des fondamentalistes, ou du moins, d’un rejet de la part de leur famille et de leur communauté.Et si les agitations actuelles de ce corps islamique, annonçaient en réalité, la naissance d’un nouveau rapport à l’islam ? Dans la thèse que voici, nous étudions ce phénomène dans la société Française. Notre ambition est de placer l’abandon de l’islam entre deux regardsdifférents : celui de l’islam à travers ses textes et ses lois ; et celui de l’ex-musulman lui-même à travers sa trajectoire personnelle. Nous souhaitons comprendre pourquoi ces ex-musulmans quittent-ils l’islam et par quel processus cela se fait-il ? / At the time when all eyes are turned to the theories on identitarian closure or radicalization among Muslim communities, abandoning islam is developing in silence, touching Muslims of different nationalities. Indeed, a council of ex-Muslims, initially created in 2007, in Great Britain and Germany by two ex-Muslims of Iranian origin, spread to several countries. Ex-Muslims are compelled to remain discreet, even in so-called secular societies where freedom of conscience and belief are supposed to be guaranteed by law. This discretion results from the inner tension in the very heart of islam on the question of apostasy, which remains an issue not yet definitively solved by Muslim scholars. In classical islamic law, abandoning islam is punishable by death. By displaying their conviction, the ex-Muslims, including those in Europe, do not feel safe from the application of this punishment by fundamentalists or, at least, from the rejection by their family and community.What if the current unrest of this islamic body was announcing the birth of a new relationship to islam? In this thesis, we study this phenomenon in French society. Our ambition is to place abandoning islam between two different perspectives: that of islam through its texts and laws; and that of the ex-Muslim himself through his personal trajectory. We would like to understand why these ex-Muslims leave islam and through which process this abandoning happens.

Bibliografická citace Otázka přirozené poznatelnosti Boha u Tomáše Akvinského [rukopis] : a její recepce u vybraných současných autorů : diplomová práce / Jiří Řičař ; vedoucí práce: David Bouma. -- Praha, 2016. -- 62 s. Abstract The thesis will be devoted to the possibility of knowing God in philosophical sense. Methodologically disregards the biblical revelation (revelatio) and Christian doctrine. Master student will present appropriate doctrine of Aquinas and tries to find its influences and forms in the works of contemporary philosophers of religion as R. Swinburne, R. Schaeffler and more. The aim of thesis is to express the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas in this area and evaluate its response and changes in the works of certain philosophers. Keywords Thomas Aquinas, Natural Theology, Natural Knowability of God, God's Attributes, Philosophy of Religion, Atheism

No description available.

This qualitative study aims to provide a sociological understanding of people who hold minority beliefs about spirituality and religion and to improve our sociological and social-psychological understanding of a-religious and alternatively religious people. Data were collected through indepth interviews with 10 atheist and 11 naturalist respondents. The study examines the religious histories of the respondents, how they left mainstream religion, how they adopted a minority identity with regard to religion/spirituality, and their personal experiences living in a predominately Christian area. I hypothesized that atheists and naturalists would hold minority identities and feel subordinated or oppressed by the dominant group: Christians. Analyses of interviews provided strong support for the idea that the respondents experienced a minority identity in the sociological sense.

Negative attitudes towards atheists are hardly a new trend in our society. However, given the pervasiveness of the prejudices and the lack of foundation for them, it seems warranted to explore the underlying elements of these attitudes. Identifying these constitutive elements may help pick apart the different contributing factors and perhaps mitigate or at least understand them in the future. The present study was designed to identify which myths or stereotypes about atheists are most influential in these attitudes. A Lexical Decision Task was utilized to identify which words related to popular stereotypes are most related to the label atheists. The labels Atheists, Christians, and Students were compared to positive words, negatives words, words or interests, neutral words, and non-word strings. Analyses revealed no significant differences among the participants' reaction times in these various comparisons, regardless of religion, level of belief in god, level of spirituality, or being acquainted with atheists. Possible explanations for these results are discussed in this thesis.

The presence of atheists within the Muslim world has begun to receive global attention after a number of cases in which atheist bloggers and writers in majority Muslim countries were killed for criticising Islam. The rise in number of Arab atheist Facebook groups has sparked conversation about the rise in number of atheists across the Arab world, and to what extent the use of social media platforms has facilitated this. This study examines 2 such Facebook groups and aims to explore the way in which social media platforms can be used to bring a geographically diverse group of people together to form a collective group identity, and to provoke societal change. The research was conducted using qualitative data, gathered using open ended interview and survey questions, alongside quantitative data which was gathered from closed survey questions and raw survey data in an attempt to understand how communication technology is used by these groups to form a collective identity among their members and to achieve shared objectives. The study lies within the frame of new social movement theory, with particular focus on the ever evolving role which online communications can play in developing aspects of a given society.The results showed that social media had given members from both groups the ability to share experiences, develop a collective identity, and utilise their new found visibility to provide the voices of atheists in the Arab world with an authority which they had been lacking. The study found that the freedom for atheists to unite online in large number was exposing closeted atheists as well as practising Muslims to opinions which would not have been as vocalised in the real world. The freedom for both parties to involve themselves in the group has reflected some of the difficulties faced in the real world, but has importantly opened up a dialogue and is working toward the acceptance of atheism within majority Muslim societies.

Geoffrey Hill’s The Orchards of Syon (2002) occupies a contradictory position in twenty-first century poetry in being a major religious work in a post-religious age. Contemporary secular and atheistic insistence on the fundamentally crafted and flawed nature of religious faith has led Hill not to the abandoning of religious vision, but to a theologically disciplined approach to syntax, grammar and etymology. This dissertation examines Hill’s claim to a poetics of agnostic faith that mediate his alienation from a cynical and debased Anglophone contemporaneity. The oxymoronic nature of a faith co-existent with existential loss is the primary focus. The semantic distinction between paradox and poetic oxymoron is examined, and the agonistic and aporetic dimensions of the oxymoron are considered as affording theological significance. Poetic oxymoron as site of both foolish babbling and Pentecostal exuberance is made explicit, as is Hill’s relation to the oxymoronic nature of beatitudinous expression and the Kenotic Hymn. Hill’s reading of and relation to other theologically engaged poets is outlined. Thomas Hardy’s tragic-comic vision, Gerard Manley Hopkins’ restrained rapture in ‘The Windhover’, and T. S. Eliot’s expression of kenotic dissolution in ‘Marina’ are read as precursors to Hill’s revisionary God-language. William Empson’s significant difficulties with aspects of Hopkins’ and Eliot’s poetics is appraised as evidence of an oxymoronic and theological dimension within poetic ambiguity. Hill’s imperative to embody and enact theological vision and responsibility is tested in a reading of The Orchards of Syon. Paul Ricoeur’s perception of the religious significance of atheism is provocation for my own creative practice, as is the performative theology implicit in both Graham Shaw’s hermeneutic approach, and Hill’s visionary philology. Creative process draws on Simone Weil’s notion of decreation, the kenotic paradigm as exemplified in the life and writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the continuing secular vitality of the apostrophic lyric mode.

No description available.

“Race in a Godless World” examines the racial thought of atheists in Britain and the United States from about 1850 to 1914. While there have been no comprehensive studies of atheists' views on race, there is a trend in the historiography on racial thought, which I have described as the “Race-Secularization Thesis,” that suggests a link between the secularization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and an increase in nineteenth-century racialism – that is, racial essentialism and determinism – as well as resulting racial prejudice and discrimination. Through a study of both leading and lesser-known atheists and freethinkers, I argue that the “Race-Secularization Thesis” needs to be reconsidered. A simple link between secularization and racialism is misleading. This is not to suggest that the “Race-Secularization Thesis” contains no truth, only that secularization did not inevitably lead to racialism. This dissertation helps to tell a more complex and nuanced story about the relationship between atheism and racial thought. While in some cases, nineteenth-century atheists and freethinkers were among the leading exponents of racialist views, there is an alternative story in which the atheist worldview – through its emphasis on rationality and skepticism – provided the tools with which to critique ideas of racial prejudice, racial superiority, and even the concept of race itself.

[pt] O processo de secularização do mundo ocidental trouxe, em sua esteira, diversas implicações teológico-pastorais para o cristianismo. Diante desta realidade, as Igrejas cristãs e cristãos necessitam de articulação para apresentar à seus contemporâneos a mensagem de Jesus de Nazaré de forma contextualizada. Com o objetivo de encontrar um caminho lúcido para responder às interpelações da sociedade secularizada, esta pesquisa recorreu às reflexões do teólogo Hans Kung, que permitiu responder as implicações e firmar a convicção à fé cristã e, sua relevância na atualidade e futuro. / [en] The process of secularization in the Western World brought, in its wake, several pastoral theological implications for Christianity. Faced by this reality, the Christian churches need to be articulated to be able to show the message of Jesus Christ from Nazareth in a coherent, mature and contextualized manner to their contemporaries. In order to find a lucid path to answer the questioning of a secularized society, this research made use of contributions by Hans Kung the theologian, allowing to clear up the Christian faith nowadays. Following this will be possible to find a good reflection about the secularization and current religious effervescence allowing the extreme conviction of a necessary and relevant Christian message in the modern world. Closing this exposure with pastoral theological proposals to the present time and a very soon explanation about the future of Christianity.