Systematic Atheology

Atheology is the intellectual effort to understand atheism, defend the reasonableness of unbelief, and support nonbelievers in their encounters with religion. This book presents a historical overview of the development of atheology from ancient thought to the present day. It offers in-depth examinations of four distinctive schools of atheological thought: rationalist atheology, scientific atheology, moral atheology, and civic atheology. John R. Shook shows how a familiarity with atheology’s complex histories, forms, and strategies illuminates the contentious features of today’s atheist and secularist movements, which are just as capable of contesting each other as opposing religion. The result is a book that provides a disciplined and philosophically rigorous examination of atheism’s intellectual strategies for reasoning with theology. Systematic Atheology is an important contribution to the philosophy of religion, religious studies, secular studies, and the sociology and psychology of nonreligion.

John R. Shook is a Research Associate in Philosophy, University at Buffalo, NY, and also Lecturer in Philosophy at Bowie State University, MD. He co-edits the journal Contemporary Pragmatism. Authored or edited books include The God Debates (2010), Neuroscience, Neurophilosophy, and Pragmatism (2014), Dewey’s Social Philosophy (2014), and the Oxford Handbook of Secularism (2017).