Eric Reitan

author of Is God a Delusion?: A Reply to Religion's Cultured Despisers

November 4, 2015

Eric Reitan, an Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at OSU, specializes in ethics (especially nonviolence theory) and the philosophy of religion. He is the author of dozens of professional articles as well as his recent book, Is God a Delusion?: A Reply to Religion's Cultured Despisers. His short fiction has garnered several awards, including the 2008 Creme de la Creme Award of the Oklahoma Writers' Federation, Inc.

Responding to such recent atheist bestsellers as Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great, Eric Reitan argues that, while often neither, religion can be both intellectually respectable and morally benign.

In a study that introduces readers to core themes in the philosophy of religion, Reitan defends a species of progressive religion whose essence is found, not in blind allegiance to inflexible doctrines or "infallible" holy books, but in a distinctive type of consciousness--one which gives those who experience it a reason to hope that reality is fundamentally on the side of goodness.

URL: https://library.okstate.edu/news/celebratingbooks/2009-honorees/eric-reitan

Last Updated: 13 March 2023