Browsing by Author "Pillay, Patrick Brian Segaren."

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The emergence of atheism in post-colonial South Africa.
(2017) Pillay, Patrick Brian Segaren.; Settler, Federico Guliano.
This study aims to offer an account of the emergence of the phenomenon of atheism in South Africa and in so doing present a case for its admittance as a new and exciting field of research within the academy in the country. The pervasive assumptions of religious normativity on the continent and in South Africa may serve to conceal a rich and vibrant worldview of atheism which, as this study proposes, can in its own right, also attempt meaningful responses to life’s deepest and most complex questions, without the need to declare an affiliation to any religious authority or sect. It is in the lived realities of atheists and in the makings of their social contexts, inclusive of its political history, its media and its laws, that this study finds its mooring and academic purpose. Given the embryonic nature of this project within a field of study which is under-researched in the country, the research design adopted includes a set of empirical components, by way of direct interviews with a set of self-pronounced South African atheists, an analysis of the phenomenon in relation to the country’s legal framework and jurisprudence, and a survey of the online digital media contexts in which atheism also finds representation. This multi-disciplinary approach sought to broadly trace through factors historic and current, as well as issues foreign and domestic, which have either advanced or suppressed the emergence of atheism in South Africa. Locating this study within the historical development of the worldview of atheism from as far back as Greek antiquity up to advances made in recent years in shaping this field of formal academic research, was considered imperative as a potential gateway for new rounds of future research on atheism itself, or other related sub-categories within the broader field of non-religion. Constructs which are distinctly different but which have grown in alliance with atheism in recent years, such as secularity and humanism have also become essential to the construction of atheist self-identities and the emergence of atheism as a social phenomenon in South Africa. The dialogue developed within this study between related literature resources and the responses of interviewees pointed to a new range of perspectives on atheism which were greater than the sum of these parts, in that South African atheists had demonstrably moved beyond the confines of having their lives defined by the absence of a religious belief system or by something that they are not.
A post-structural theological critique of the perspectives of Christopher Hitchens on vicarious redemption.
(2013) Pillay, Patrick Brian Segaren.; Hewitt, Roderick Raphael.
The guarded mind-set with which this study was initially constructed , was influenced by the notion that all that could have been said on the subject of vicarious redemption within the Judeo-Christian belief system, has been produced through scholarly research on the theories, doctrinal positions, and systems of belief, around the constructs of redemption and vicarious redemption within the Judeo-Christian worldview. However this study is premised on the view that there is a noticeable gap in the body of scholarship around the critique of the Christian belief system, and in particular, one of its doctrinal pillars, that of vicarious redemption. This thesis argues that this gap is being confronted by the resurgence of new challenges to the proposition of redemption, as raised from within the New Atheist movement, in which the late British-American author and public figure, Christopher Hitchens became the central and leading figure. A theological critique of the construct and doctrine of vicarious redemption, as undertaken by Christopher Hitchens, forms the core academic focus of this study; which is conducted within a post-structural theoretical framework. The study, whilst examining the archaeology and architecture of the idea of vicarious redemption within the theological superstructure of Christendom and its founding doctrinal formations and theories, does represents an intentional step outside of the conventional trajectory of theological scholarship and analysis. In this latter regard, and alongside conventional literary resources on the subject, this study, has been inspired and informed by the convergence of, online New Media as a rich set of resource platforms for new research on this important subject. Given these new opportunities for research, alongside conventional research methods, this study captures the outright rejection, by Christopher Hitchens, of the doctrine of vicarious redemption; in what could be argued to represent a Kairos moment in biblical interpretation and criticism on the idea of redemption; a crucial and opportune moment in scholarly theological reflection, to which the special insights, hermeneutics and life and work of Christopher Hitchens has made an indelible contribution.