Is God Irrelevant - Atheism and Belief

From Bookforum's Omnivore blog comes this interesting assortment of links on all things atheism and faith. One of the highlights is a Julian Baggini review (in The Guardian) of Atheists: The Origin of the Species by Nick Spencer.

Another interesting link is from Steven Douglas Smith (University of San Diego School of Law), Is God Irrelevant?  Here's the abstract:

This essay, written for a symposium on Ronald Dworkin’s recent posthumous book Religion Without God, argues that Dworkin misunderstands the way theists typically think God relates to “morality.” The essay sketches a subjectivist (or “super-subjectivist”) account of morality that arguably better fits the understanding of believers in the biblical tradition than does Dworkin’s more objectivist account.

There are other good links as well.

God irrelevant

Jun 2 2014
9:00AM

• Justin Remes (Oakland): “That Man Behind the Curtain”: Atheism and Belief in The Wizard of Oz. 
• C'Zar Bernstein (FSU): Is God's Existence Possible? 
• David Kyle Johnson (King’s): Why Religious Experience Can't Justify Religious Belief; and Justified Belief in Miracles is Impossible. 
• Steven Douglas Smith (San Diego): Is God Irrelevant? 
• Steven Kettell (Warwick): Faithless: The Politics of New Atheism. 
• Carl Mosk (Victoria): Is There a Religion Trap? Atheism, Agnosticism, and Innovation. 
• Gary Gutting interviews Louise Antony, editor of Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life. 
• Can merit be found in the “defective father hypothesis"? Stephen Padilla on a psychology of atheism. 
• Emma Green on the intellectual snobbery of conspicuous atheism: Beyond the argument that faith in God is irrational — and therefore illegitimate. 
• There are more reasons than ever why God isn't necessary: An excerpt from Mental Biology: The New Science of How the Brain and Mind Relate by W.R. Klemm. 
• From TNR, a failed argument for God: Jerry Coyne reviews The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss by David Bentley Hart; how religious people keep trying to say God and science are compatible — and they keep being wrong; how atheists could learn a lot from religious people about how to win debates; and on the atheists' case for fighting poverty: Religiosity, social dysfunction linked in Pew study. 
• Why do many religious believers want to silence atheists? Greta Christina wants to know. 
• Julian Baggini reviews Atheists: The Origin of the Species by Nick Spencer. 
• God is dead, what next? Alasdair Craig on searching for meaning in the age of atheism.