Atheism and the Goddess

Book excerpt: This book seeks to explore the complex modes of interface between religion, atheism, and the Goddess in multicultural contexts. While atheism has often been seen as an interrogation of and a battle against God, the gender dimension of this discourse has not been sufficiently negotiated. Is the fight against God also a fight against the Goddess? Or is there something common between the ideological thrust of the battle against God the “Father” in atheism and the interrogation of the Divine Father in thealogy? Can the Goddess be seen as an entity radically different from the imperious transcendental that the atheists find embodied in God the Father? Or, can the Goddess be seen as “transcendental” as well as immanent, and hence subjected to the same atheist denial of transcendence to which God is subjected in non-theistic or anti-theistic arguments? With this volume, Anway Mukhopadhyay embarks on a difficult project of epistemologically, ideologically and even politically renegotiating and reorienting some of the fundamental issues involved in the discussions of and debates over atheism.