Sonja Luehrmann explores the Soviet atheist effort to build a society without gods or spirits and its afterlife in post-Soviet religious revival. Combining archival research on atheist propaganda of ...the 1960s and 1970s with ethnographic fieldwork in the autonomous republic of Marij El in Russia's Volga region, Luehrmann examines how secularist culture-building reshaped religious practice and interreligious relations. One of the most palpable legacies of atheist propaganda is a widespread didactic orientation among the population and a faith in standardized programs of personal transformation as solutions to wider social problems. This didactic trend has parallels in globalized forms of Protestantism and Islam but differs from older uses of religious knowledge in rural Russia. At a time when the secularist modernization projects of the 20th century are widely perceived to have failed, Secularism Soviet Style emphasizes the affinities and shared histories of religious and atheist mobilizations.
One of the ideas in the debates concerning anti-Islamic activities is that atheists, especially prominent celebrity atheists – commonly known as ‘New Atheists’ – have provided support and ...justification for anti-Islamic attitudes and activities. Given that Sam Harris, one of the so-called New Atheists, stated that he started writing his first book, The End of Faith (2004), immediately after the 9/11 attacks, criticism of Islam is expected to be prevalent among some atheists. The more interesting questions, however, concern what kind of criticism there is, how to make sense of its reasons and motivations, whether it dominates the New Atheist agenda (as some argue), and whether the criticism has been somehow influential in various localities. In examining New Atheist publications and their possible presence at the local level, particularly in Finland, this article suggests that an exceptionally pronounced anti-Islamic approach applies mainly to Harris rather than to New Atheism as a whole. Instead, several other significant aspects come into play, highlighted by other New Atheists, and this is largely true of local atheist activism too. Thus, while a weak link between New Atheists and anti-Islamic activities can be made because of their promotion of strong criticism of religion, New Atheism is not the key to understanding such activities, at least in the Finnish context.
Diagoras of Melos Winiarczyk, Marek
2016, 2016-07-11, Letnik:
350
eBook
The volumes published in the series Beiträge zur Altertumskunde comprise monographs, collective volumes, editions, translations and commentaries on various topics from the fields of Greek and Latin ...Philology, Ancient History, Archeology, Ancient Philosophy as well as Classical Reception Studies. The series thus offers indispensable research tools for a wide range of disciplines related to Ancient Studies.
Abstract
Introduction
The psychology of religion literature indicates that religious engagement is beneficial to physical and mental health. Such effects might be mediated by sleep health, which ...causally affects mood, cognitive, and immune functioning. However, few studies have investigated whether religiosity is associated with better sleep, and no studies have considered the reverse causal direction: better sleep may impact religious behaviors or perceptions.
Methods
We conducted a secondary data analysis of 1,501 participants in Wave 5 of the Baylor Religion Survey (BRS-5). Completed in Spring 2017, the BRS-5 used Address Based Sample methodology to derive a population-based sample. The survey included questions on religious affiliation, behaviors, and perceptions (e.g., certainty of Heaven). Additionally, participants rated their difficulty falling asleep and their average total sleep time. We investigated whether participants were meeting AASM/SRS consensus guidelines of 7–9 hours/night.
Results
Religious affiliation was associated with sleep duration, but not in the predicted direction. Atheists/Agnostics (73%) were significantly more likely to report meeting consensus sleep duration guidelines than religiously-affiliated individuals (65%), p<.05. For example, Atheists/Agnostics reported better sleep duration than Catholics (63%, p<.01) and Baptists (55%, p<.001). Atheists/Agnostics also reported less difficulty falling asleep at night than Catholics (p=.02) and Baptists (p<.001). The effects persisted when controlling for age and were particularly evident in members of African American congregations. Perceptions of getting into Heaven were significantly higher in participants who obtained better sleep duration, p<.05, but interestingly, such beliefs/perceptions were unrelated to difficulty falling asleep at night, suggesting that better sleep may lead to these perceptions rather than vice versa.
Conclusion
In contrast to predictions, religious affiliation was associated with significantly poorer sleep health. Poor sleep health has implications for physical and mental health, and seemingly also religious perceptions/beliefs. Future experimental work is required to disentangle the causal direction of sleep-religiosity associations.
Support
The Baylor Religion Survey was supported by the John Templeton Foundation.
Atheism is an important term used in Islamic texts to refer to those who do not believe in God. The reason for using it in the sense of deviation is that the word is derived from the Arabic word ...lahad which is used for the crack in the grave which separates or deviates from the middle. In Islamic terminology, the word atheist refers to those who deny the existence of God altogether - those who practice atheism are also called atheists, atheists, materialists, or atheists. The number of atheists is one billion atheists and agnostics worldwide, according to sociologist Ariela Keysar's numerous international studies on atheism and a review by Juhem Navarro Rivera. And it makes up 7% of the world's population. China has the largest number of atheists in the world at 400 million. According to atheists, "the world was not created by any god, but came into being by itself, or it already existed and will continue to exist in various forms over time."
PDF
