Challenges to Religious Belief

Throughout history, religious belief has been challenged from philosophical, scientific, psychological, and sociological perspectives. The AQA specification requires you to understand the major challenges to religion, including the New Atheism, classical critiques from Marx, Freud, and Durkheim, and contemporary perspectives from cognitive science. You must also be able to evaluate these challenges and assess their effectiveness.

Key Definition: Atheism — the belief that God does not exist. This is distinct from agnosticism (the view that we cannot know whether God exists) and from secularism (which concerns the role of religion in public life, not the truth of religious beliefs).

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The New Atheism

The term "New Atheism" was coined by the journalist Gary Wolf in 2006 to describe a group of writers who mounted an aggressive, public challenge to religion in the early 21st century. The four most prominent New Atheists are sometimes called the "Four Horsemen":