Problem of HellThe problem of Hell is an ethical problem in the Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism, in which the existence of Hell (aka Jahannam or Sheol) for the punishment of souls in the Afterlife is regarded as inconsistent with the notion of a just, moral, and omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient supreme being.
IrreligionIrreligion is the neglect or active rejection of religion and, depending on the definition, a simple absence of religion. Irreligion takes many forms, ranging from the casual and unaware to full-fledged philosophies such as atheism and agnosticism, secular humanism and antitheism. Social scientists tend to define irreligion as a purely naturalist worldview that excludes a belief in anything supernatural. The broadest and loosest definition, serving as an upper limit, is the lack of religious identification, though many non-identifiers express metaphysical and even religious beliefs.
Baruch SpinozaBaruch (de) Spinoza (24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, born in Amsterdam, the Dutch Republic, and mostly known under the Latinized pen name Benedictus de Spinoza. One of the foremost and seminal thinkers of the Enlightenment, modern biblical criticism, and 17th-century Rationalism, including modern conceptions of the self and the universe, he came to be considered "one of the most important philosophers—and certainly the most radical—of the early modern period".
Problem of evilThe problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God. There are currently differing definitions of these concepts. The best known presentation of the problem is attributed to the Greek philosopher Epicurus. It was popularized by David Hume. Besides the philosophy of religion, the problem of evil is also important to the fields of theology and ethics.
Secular humanismSecular humanism is a philosophy, belief system or life stance that embraces human reason, secular ethics, and philosophical naturalism while specifically rejecting religious dogma, supernaturalism, and superstition as the basis of morality and decision making. Secular humanism posits that human beings are capable of being ethical and moral without religion or belief in a deity. It does not, however, assume that humans are either inherently good or evil, nor does it present humans as being superior to nature.
MisotheismMisotheism is the "hatred of God" or "hatred of the gods" (from the Greek adjective (μισόθεος) "hating the gods" or "God-hating" – a compound of, μῖσος, "hatred" and, θεός, "god"). A related concept is dystheism (δύσ θεος, "bad god"), the belief that a god is not wholly good, and is evil. Trickster gods found in polytheistic belief systems often have a dystheistic nature. One example is Eshu, a trickster god from Yoruba religion who deliberately fostered violence between groups of people for his own deeds, saying that "causing ire is my greatest happiness.
Richard DawkinsRichard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. His 1976 book The Selfish Gene popularised the gene-centred view of evolution, as well as coining the term meme. Dawkins has won several academic and writing awards. Dawkins is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design as well as for being a vocal atheist.
Christopher HitchensChristopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English-American author and journalist who is widely regarded as one of the most influential atheists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Author of 18 books on faith, culture, politics, and literature, he was born and educated in Britain, graduating in the 1970s from Oxford. In the early 1980s, he emigrated to the United States and wrote for The Nation and Vanity Fair. Known as one of the four horsemen of New Atheism, he gained prominence as a columnist and speaker.
Conceptions of GodConceptions of God in monotheist, pantheist, and panentheist religions – or of the supreme deity in henotheistic religions – can extend to various levels of abstraction: as a powerful, personal, supernatural being, or as the deification of an esoteric, mystical or philosophical entity or category; as the "Ultimate", the summum bonum, the "Absolute Infinite", the "Transcendent", or Existence or Being itself; as the ground of being, the monistic substrate, that which we cannot understand; and so on.
Process theologyProcess theology is a type of theology developed from Alfred North Whitehead's (1861–1947) process philosophy, but most notably by Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000), John B. Cobb (b. 1925), and Eugene H. Peters (1929-1983). Process theology and process philosophy are collectively referred to as "process thought". For both Whitehead and Hartshorne, it is an essential attribute of God to affect and be affected by temporal processes, contrary to the forms of theism that hold God to be in all respects non-temporal (eternal), unchanging (immutable), and unaffected by the world (impassible).
