Atheism in Five Minutes - Teemu Taira
32. Does Atheism Promote Peace?
Atheism in Five Minutes - Teemu Taira
Stacey Gutkowski [+]
King’s College London
Stacey Gutkowski is a Senior Lecturer in Conflict Studies and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies, King’s College London. Her research interrogates the
various relationships between war, peace, religion and the secular. She is the author of two books, Religion, War and Israel’s Secular Millennials: Being Reasonable?(Manchester University Press, 2020) and Secular War: Myths of Religion, Politics and Violence (I.B. Tauris, 2013), as well as articles and book chapters on the relationships among politics, security, religion and secularism in Jordan, Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Afghanistan, the United States, and the United Kingdom. She is co-editor of the book series Religion and Its Others: Studies in Religion, Nonreligion and Secularity (DeGruyter) and was co-director of the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network (2008-20). Further information about her work can be found at www.staceygutkowski.com.
Description
Since 9/11, academics have researched whether religions promote violence. They have found a mixed picture: sometimes yes but most often no. For comparison, they have examined ‘atheist’ regimes, like the USSR. We cannot come to any sound conclusions about a causal relationship between atheism and peace. But we can begin to ask other interesting questions about the relationship between peace, violence and atheism.