Contesting the atheist understanding of belief - Prof. Tim Crane, London

Organisers: SPES LECTURE CONWAY HALL 11am 11th Dec

Tim Crane contests the generally accepted atheist understanding of belief

Many recent atheist writers (especially the self-styled ‘New Atheists’ Dawkins, Hitchens, Grayling, Harris and to some extent Dennett) have taken an attitude to religion that is intellectually and practically combative. Their writings are dominated by two assumptions: (1) that religion is largely constituted by certain cosmological beliefs; and (2) that the proper atheistic attitude to religion should be to use scientific and philosophical arguments to remove these beliefs, and with them, the phenomenon of religion itself. Tim Crane argues that both these assumptions are mistaken and will sketch an alternative Humanist account of religious belief.

Tim Crane is Knightsbridge Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University and general editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. His personal website is http://www.timcrane.com/ .