Post-theism is a variant of

nontheism Nontheism or non-theism is a range of both religious and nonreligious attitudes characterized by the absence of espoused belief in the existence of god or gods. Nontheism has generally been used to describe apathy or silence towards the subject o ...

that proposes that the division of

theism Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of a supreme being or deities. In common parlance, or when contrasted with '' deism'', the term often describes the classical conception of God that is found in monotheism (also referr ...

vs.

atheism Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no d ...

is obsolete, that

God In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...

belongs to a stage of human development now past. Within nontheism, post-theism can be contrasted with

antitheism Antitheism, also spelled anti-theism, is the philosophical position that theism should be opposed. The term has had a range of applications. In secular contexts, it typically refers to direct opposition to the belief in any deity. Etymology T ...

. The term appears in

liberal Christianity Liberal Christianity, also known as Liberal Theology and historically as Christian Modernism (see Catholic modernism and Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy), is a movement that interprets Christian teaching by taking into consideration ...

and

post-Christianity Postchristianity is the situation in which Christianity is no longer the dominant civil religion of a society but has gradually assumed values, culture, and worldviews that are not necessarily Christian. Post-Christian tends to refer to the loss ...

Origin

Frank Hugh Foster in a 1918 lecture announced that modern culture had arrived at a "post-theistic stage" in which humanity has taken possession of the powers of agency and creativity that had formerly been projected upon God. Denys Turner argues that

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

did not choose atheism over theism but rejected the binary

Feuerbach Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (; 28 July 1804 – 13 September 1872) was a German anthropologist and philosopher, best known for his book '' The Essence of Christianity'', which provided a critique of Christianity that strongly influenced ge ...

ian choice in '' The Essence of Christianity'' altogether, a position which by being post-theistic is at the same time necessarily post-atheistic. At one point, Marx argued "there should be less trifling with the label 'atheism'", as he insisted "religion in itself is without content, it owes its being not to heaven but to the earth, and with the abolition of distorted reality, of which it is the theory, it will collapse of itself."Karl Marx, ''Letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge In Dresden'' (1842)
/ref> Related ideas include

Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...

's pronouncement that " God is dead" and the transtheism of

Paul Tillich Paul Johannes Tillich (August 20, 1886 – October 22, 1965) was a German-American Christian existentialist philosopher, religious socialist, and Lutheran Protestant theologian who is widely regarded as one of the most influential theolo ...

or Pema Chödrön.

Notable post-theists

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts i ...

Notes and references

Sources

* H. J. Adriannse, "After Theism" in: H. A. Krop, Arie L. Molendijk, Hent de Vries (eds.)
Post-Theism: Reframing the Judeo-Christian Tradition
' (2000), . * Christoph Schwöbel, "After Post-Theism" in: S. Andersen (ed. ) ''Traditional Theism and its Modern Alternatives'' (1994), 161–196. * Vincent Brümmer, "The Enlightenment Project and the Human Image of God" in: Hans-Georg Ziebertz (ed.), ''The Human Image of God'', BRILL, 2001, 55–72.

External links

Post-colonialism and Post-theism
by Christopher Bradley (2007)

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20200704003608/http://www.emory.edu/INTELNET/fi.postatheism.html Post-Atheism: from Apophatic Theology to "Minimal Religion"by Mikhail Epstein In the book: Russian Postmodernism: ''New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture'' (with Alexander Genis and Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover, in the series ''Studies in Slavic Literature, Culture, and Society'', vol. 3). New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1999, 528 pp.345-393. Nontheism Theism Postmodernism Humanism Philosophy of religion {{postmodernism-stub

Origin

Notable post-theists

See also

Notes and references

Sources

External links