50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Now More Important than Ever – Voices of Reason 1
Russell Blackford and Udo Schüklenk

Unbelievable! 5
Russell Blackford

My “Bye Bull” Story 10
Margaret Downey

How Benevolent Is God? – An Argument from Suffering to Atheism 16
Nicholas Everitt

A Deal-Breaker 23
Ophelia Benson

Why Am I a Nonbeliever? – I Wonder . . . 28
J. L. Schellenberg

Wicked or Dead? Reflections on the Moral Character and Existential Status of God 33
John Harris

Religious Belief and Self-Deception 41
Adèle Mercier

The Coming of Disbelief 48
J. J. C. Smart

What I Believe 50
Graham Oppy

Too Good to Be True, Too Obscure to Explain: The Cognitive Shortcomings of Belief in God 57
Thomas W. Clark

How to Think About God: Theism, Atheism, and Science 65
Michael Shermer

A Magician Looks at Religion 78
James Randi

Confessions of a Kindergarten Leper 82
Emma Tom

Beyond Disbelief 86
Philip Kitcher

An Ambivalent Nonbelief 97
Taner Edis

Why Not? 105
Sean M. Carroll

Godless Cosmology 112
Victor J. Stenger

Unanswered Prayers 118
Christine Overall

Beyond Faith and Opinion 123
Damien Broderick

Could It Be Pretty Obvious There’s No God? 129
Stephen Law

Atheist, Obviously 139
Julian Baggini

Why I am Not a Believer 145
A. C. Grayling

Evil and Me 157
Gregory Benford

Who’s Unhappy? 161
Lori Lipman Brown

Reasons to be Faithless 165
Sheila A. M. McLean

Three Stages of Disbelief 168
Julian Savulescu

Born Again, Briefly 172
Greg Egan

Cold Comfort 177
Ross Upshur

The Accidental Exorcist 182
Austin Dacey

Atheist Out of the Foxhole 187
Joe Haldeman

The Unconditional Love of Reality 191
Dale McGowan

Antinomies 197
Jack Dann

Giving Up Ghosts and Gods 200
Susan Blackmore

Some Thoughts on Why I Am an Atheist 204
Tamas Pataki

No Gods, Please! 211
Laura Purdy

Welcome Me Back to the World of the Thinking 220
Kelly O’Connor

Kicking Religion Goodbye . . . 226
Peter Adegoke

On Credenda 230
Miguel Kottow

“Not Even Start to Ignore Those Questions!” A Voice of Disbelief in a Different Key 236
Frieder Otto Wolf

Imagine No Religion 252
Edgar Dahl

Humanism as Religion: An Indian Alternative 259
Sumitra Padmanabhan

Why I Am NOT a Theist 263
Prabir Ghosh

When the Hezbollah Came to My School 270
Maryam Namazie

Evolutionary Noise, not Signal from Above 274
Athena Andreadis

Gods Inside 279
Michael R. Rose and John P. Phelan

Why Morality Doesn’t Need Religion 288
Peter Singer and Marc Hauser

Doctor Who and the Legacy of Rationalism 294
Sean Williams

My Nonreligious Life: A Journey From Superstition to Rationalism 300
Peter Tatchell

Helping People to Think Critically About Their Religious Beliefs 310
Michael Tooley

Human Self-Determination, Biomedical Progress, and God 323
Udo Schüklenk

About the Contributors 332

Index 338