James Arthur Thrower (1936–1999) was an academic and writer on religion. After studying at the

University of Durham Durham University (legally the University of Durham) is a collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university in Durham, England, Durham, England, founded by an Act of Parliament in 1832 and incorporated by royal charte ...

(BA Theology) and

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

(Philosophy), he lectured at the

University of Leicester , mottoeng = So that they may have life , established = , type = public research university , endowment = £20.0 million , budget = £326 million , chancellor = David Willetts , vice_chancellor = Nishan Canagarajah , head_labe ...

University of Ghana The University of Ghana is a public university located in Accra, Ghana. It the oldest and largest of the thirteen Ghanaian national public universities. The university was founded in 1948 as the University College of the Gold Coast in the Br ...

, and University of Durham. He became a lecturer in religion at the

University of Aberdeen The University of Aberdeen ( sco, University o' 'Aiberdeen; abbreviated as ''Aberd.'' in List of post-nominal letters (United Kingdom), post-nominals; gd, Oilthigh Obar Dheathain) is a public university, public research university in Aberdeen, Sc ...

in 1970. His PhD thesis there in 1981 was on ''Marxist-Leninist 'Scientific Atheism' and the Study of Religion and Atheism in the USSR''. He worked as a

visiting lecturer In academia, a visiting scholar, visiting researcher, visiting fellow, visiting lecturer, or visiting professor is a scholar from an institution who visits a host university to teach, lecture, or perform research on a topic for which the visitor ...

at the Universities of

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...

Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

and

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

. He later became Professor of the History of Religions and Director of the Centre for Study of Religions at Aberdeen. His works include ''A Short History of Western Atheism'' (1971), ''The Alternative Tradition'' (1981) and ''Religion: The Classical Theories'' (1999). In 1996 he wrote the foreword for

Steuart Campbell Steuart Campbell (born in ) is a British writer who lives in Edinburgh. Career Campbell trained as an architect and worked as one until the mid-1970s. He then gained a degree in mathematics and science from the Open University ( BA, 1983). ...

's work ''The Rise and Fall of Jesus'', which examines the Jesus myth and the origins of Christianity. It suggests that Jesus wanted to be crucified. He died suddenly on 14 November 1999, and his wife, Judith, died in 2016. They had three children, Penelope, Charlotte and Annabel.

Reza Aslan Reza Aslan ( fa, رضا اصلان, ; born May 3, 1972) is an Iranian-American scholar of sociology of religion, writer, and television host. A convert to evangelical Christianity from Shia Islam as a youth, Aslan eventually reverted to Islam b ...

used Thrower as an example of someone who thought that

atheism Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no d ...

was a belief system in its own right and not just a negation of belief.

References

1936 births 1999 deaths Academics of the University of Aberdeen Alumni of St Chad's College, Durham Atheist philosophers {{UK-academic-bio-stub