Living without God: A Multicultural Spectrum of Atheism

This book deals with the intricate issue of approaching atheism—methodologically as well as conceptually—from the perspective of cultural pluralism. What does ‘atheism’ mean in different cultural contexts? Can this term be applied appropriately to different religious discourses which conceptualize God/gods/Goddess/goddesses (and also godlessness) in hugely divergent ways? Is my ‘God’ the same as yours? If not, then how can your atheism be the same as mine? In other words, this volume raises the question: Is it not high time that we proposed a comparative study of atheism(s) alongside that of religions, rather than believing that atheism is centered in the ‘Western’ experience? Apart from answering these questions, the book highlights the much-needed focus on the philosophical negotiations between atheism, theism and agnosticism. The fine chapters collected here present pluralist negotiations with the notion of atheism and its ethical, theological, literary and scientific corollaries.

Previously published in Sophia Volume 60, issue 3, September 2021



Chapters “Religious Conversion and Loss of Faith: Cases of Personal Paradigm Shift?” and “On Being an Infidel” are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Dr Sanjit Chakraborty is an Assistant Professor of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at the Vellore Institute of Technology-AP University and Visiting faculty at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata, India. Before that, he has been a member of the teaching faculty at the Indian Institute of Management Indore and the Central University of Hyderabad. He is highly engaged in critical and productive academic endeavors in the discipline of Philosophy, but he also forays into other fields like Philosophy of Science, Artificial Intelligence and Literature. His philosophical venture was nourished under the guidance of Hilary Putnam (Emeritus Professor, Harvard University) from 2008 to 2016.


Chakraborty’s books include Engaging Putnam (2022), The Labyrinth of Mind and World: Beyond Internalism-Externalism (2020), Understanding Meaning and World: A Relook on Semantic Externalism (2016). His forthcoming books Human Minds and Cultures and Language and Morality: Critical Essays are due out in 2022-2023. Chakraborty has published many papers in renowned journals, encyclopedias and edited volumes on a wide range of topics in Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science, Ethics, and Indian philosophy. He has delivered research presentations at top-notch conferences all over the world.

Dr Anway Mukhopadhyay is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Culture Studies, The University of Burdwan, India, and an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. He completed the course on Hinduism: Ritual, Caste and Gender (HS 108, Trinity 2016), offered by Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, University of Oxford, in 2016, and was placed in the First Class. He has authored a number of academic books, a “lyrical epic” and an innovative work of fiction and has co-edited an anthology of essays on fiction studies titled Why Fiction Matters: Reading and Understanding Fiction in Contemporary Times (2017). His recent works include the following monographs: The Authority of Female Speech in Indian Goddess Traditions: Devi and Womansplaining (2020); The Goddess in Hindu-Tantric Traditions: Devi as Corpse (2018); and Literary and Cultural Readings of Goddess Spirituality: The Red Shadow of the Mother (2017). His works have been reviewed and cited in reputed international journals by noted scholars, and two academic entries in the Oxford Bibliographies refer to and present a brief description of his book on Shaktism and Tantra as reference work to be consulted in this field. He has contributed chapters to several edited volumes and his research papers, book reviews and creative writing have been published in reputed journals in India, Australia and the USA. He has presented papers and/or chaired academic sessions in various international conferences in India, Cyprus and Nepal. He has delivered invited lectures in various institutions on diverse occasions. His documentary film on Women’s Sanskritic Education in Varanasi, titled Daughters of Sarasvati, is available on YouTube. Recipient of a number of awards such as the prestigious Indira Gandhi Priyadarshini Award conferred by the International Business Council in 2016, the Bharat Vikas Award conferred by the Institute of Self-Reliance in 2019, the Yuva Rattan Award conferred by the NRI Welfare Society of India in 2020, Dr Mukhopadhyay is also an Associate Faculty at the Center for Advanced Studies in South Asia, Lalitpur, Nepal. Dr Mukhopadhyay has organized, with his colleagues, a number of academic programmes at institutions that he has served as a faculty member, including lectures by reputed scholars from India and abroad, conferences, workshop etc. His forthcoming works include an edited volume on the interface between literature and philosophy and an edited volume on the Goddess in South Asian cinema, as well as a monograph in the field of philosophy of religion. He has played the roles of reviewer, advisor and guest editor for various journals in India and abroad, including Sophia. Besides, he has reviewed book manuscripts for reputed publishers. He is a member of various academic committees in some reputed Indian universities. He was an invited resource person in the online live event “Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation”, the third episode of the Inter/Sections podcast series on inter-religious dialogue, organized by the Institute for Communication and Religion within the College of Communication and the Arts, Seton Hall University, New Jersey, USA on 27th October 2021. He has been interviewed by Dr Raj Balkaran on his books on Indian goddess cultures, and these interviews are available onNew Books Network, the consortium of author-interview podcast channels on academic books (Editor-in-Chief: Marshall Poe and co-editor: Leann Wilson).