One of the major strengths of this two-volume compilation is the international appeal of the scholarship, which goes well beyond the traditional narrative that traces the development of Western atheism in the modern world. In addition, the chapters that have been assembled herein will appeal to advanced students and seasoned scholars who are interested in discovering how atheism emerges as a viable intellectual worldview in different cultural contexts around the globe. One major takeaway from The Cambridge History of Atheism is that soft and hard expressions of atheism must be considered a universal phenomenon that emerge and flourish within and alongside Western and Eastern religious cultures. In other words, atheism does not always originate as an overreaction to ecclesiastical abuses and lopsided Christian theologies in the modern West.
There are plenty of other chapters that specifically elaborate upon the ways in which atheism is sensed within the realm of ordinary human experience. The following topics are covered with respect to atheism, experience, and popular culture: practical ethics, classical works of literature, different musical genres and songs, race and gender studies, sexual practices, liberation movements, and various facets of popular culture, including the internet, social media, and the visual arts. Although many diverse themes related to practical experience are comprehensively described and assessed in these first-rate essays, Stephen Bullivant and Michael Ruse also highlight many excellent chapters that display chronological developments pertaining to atheism and unbelief that span the course of hundreds of years in different geographical regions. In particular, the contents of these chapters are put in dialogue with the surrounding cultures in which unbelief gained recognition and practicality. The contributions within these chapters are equally illuminating and therefore most welcome to the newer addition of scholarship that updates comprehensive histories of the rise of atheism and unbelief.
For example, although contemporary studies of atheism are usually laden with elaborate presentations and defenses of arguments for and against the existence of a theistic God, including other facets within the philosophy of religion as it relates to the defense of theism and atheism, Michael Ruse and Stephen Bullivant break new ground in assembling contributions which demonstrate that atheism is far more than an intellectual position that can be debated with the tools of philosophical reasoning and the findings of empirical science; it can also be detected and advanced in subtle ways within popular culture and other established institutions around the world.
Beginning with the ancient world and culminating with the New Atheist movement (e.g., see the recent writings of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Same Harris, and Daniel Dennett), this nearly exhaustive history and survey of unbelief covers an enormous amount of terrain. Although the contributors discuss and explain their subjects of expertise in different ways, there are other chapters that describe and narrow in on detailed movements within freethinking communities, including ancient, modern, and contemporary accounts of unbelief. Still other chapters capitalize and update the thought of select atheists and how they were situated within the cultures that enabled them to advance their visions of a world without God and other supernatural entities.
Peppered throughout The Cambridge History of Atheism are essays that are dedicated to discussing traditional themes that are related to contemporary studies of secularism and atheism. Most of the traditional thinkers and movements can be easily found. For example, it is well known that the revolutionary impacts of the scientific revolution seemed to weather the metaphysical claims of Christianity. Michael Ruse himself covers this topic (258–77). When it comes to the defense of biblical truth, Catholic scholar Jeffrey Morrow handles the older quests for the historical Jesus and how they seemed to erode the traditional evidence for the defense of Christian theism (308–26). Other masters of suspicion are discussed, including the famous existentialists Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Bertrand Russell, Robert Ingersoll, and Ayn Rand. Through it all, attentive readers will come away with a renewed and mature understanding of whatever topics and figures they choose to investigate within these excellent volumes.
