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megatsunami's review against another edition
3.0
TLDR: Why white men are usually just as problematic when pushing atheism as when pushing religion. And what other white men think about that. Did I mention white men?
bootman's review against another edition
5.0
I’ve bounced between atheism and agnositicism most of my life, but I’ve never been the least bit interested in reading an entire book about atheism. Sometimes, the atheist crowd gets just as bad as religious groups. Like, you’re really going to read entire books, watch atheist videos on YouTube non-stop and even travel to an atheist convention? That’s bonkers. But I digress.
With the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the public response, I’ve wanted to learn more about how atheism clashes with politics. So, I grabbed this book because John Gray writes some epic books like Feline Philosophy, and I figured this would be just as good. It was. Like the title suggests, Gray breaks down different forms of atheism, and he comes out the gate in the first two chapters going in on some of the modern atheism and how silly it can get. From there, he discusses some historical figures in atheism and ends with the awesome Spinoza.
Fantastic book to learn more about the history of atheism and the nuances of the topic.
With the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the public response, I’ve wanted to learn more about how atheism clashes with politics. So, I grabbed this book because John Gray writes some epic books like Feline Philosophy, and I figured this would be just as good. It was. Like the title suggests, Gray breaks down different forms of atheism, and he comes out the gate in the first two chapters going in on some of the modern atheism and how silly it can get. From there, he discusses some historical figures in atheism and ends with the awesome Spinoza.
Fantastic book to learn more about the history of atheism and the nuances of the topic.
teakayb's review against another edition
4.0
An incredibly interesting commentary of the history of atheism, and some of the colourful characters who have played their part in it. Gray, however, appears to believe everyone to be a bit stupid whether they believe in something divine or not.
yvan_noir's review against another edition
5.0
La capacidad de Gray de pensar críticamente sobre cuestiones dadas por hecho en Occidente es de reconocerse.
gluest_ick's review against another edition
He references historical events without sourcing anything. A lot of his sources are things that he wrote. He discusses "liberal atheism" without elaborating on what he means by "liberal"; I'm left to assume a left-leaning individual in the realm of American politics but may be wrong because that term is loaded and has a wealth of varying definitions. So much for adding nuance, I guess.
davehershey's review against another edition
4.0
John Gray doesn't seem to think much of Christianity. He doesn't seem to think much of most forms of atheism either. This gauntlet is thrown down quite early on as he sneeringly attacks atheists who believe in human progress as merely holding over this idea of progress from Christian theism. Gray asks where such an idea of progress comes from? Why have such faith in humanity, and faith it is? Gray has no time for the so-called "new atheists" who reject belief in God as absurd then going on absurdly living as if there is some objective meaning or morality in life.
That said, the new-atheists are only the first kind of atheist Gray describes. He moves through Secular Humanism and their belief in progress (getting into John Stuart Mill, Nietzsche, and Ayn Rand) to the Positivism of faith in science. Here he uncovers some truly atrocious comments from the heroes of Enlightenment (Kant, Hume) that are incredibly racist. Just as Christians like to sanitize those who have gone before us, emphasizing their triumphs and covering up their errors, so too do atheists, crying that once we become enlightened and get rid of gods, forget the errors of their forebears. Gray's point, again in opposition to faith in progress, is that atheists and rationally enlightened people are just as likely to be racist as anyone else. Or, conversely, there's no connection between "enlightenment" and open-mindedness or kindness or anything like that.
The fourth type of atheism is the political type and in this Gray discusses the political movements that rejected God, from the French Jacobins to the Nazis and Soviets. Fifth is the "God-haters" and here we spend time with Marquis de Sade and Ivan Karamazov. The last two, the two Gray himself resonates most with, are atheism without progress (George Santayana and Joseph Conrad) and atheism as silence (Schopenhauer and Spinoza). These last two are a bit more mystical. I find the quote which he ends the book fascinating:
"If you want to understand atheism and religion, you must forget the popular notion that the are opposites. If you can see what a millennarian theocracy in the early sixteenth-century Munster has in common with Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany, you will have a clearer view of the modern scene. If you can see how theologies that affirm the ineffability of God and some types of atheism are not so far apart, you will learn something about the limits of human understanding.
Contemporary atheism is a continuation of monotheism by other means. Hence, the unending succession of God surrogates, such as humanity and science, technology and the all-too-human visions of transhumanism. But there is no need for panic or despair. Belief and unbelief are poses the mind adopts in the face of an unimaginable reality. A godless world is as mysterious as one suffused with divinity, and the difference between the two may be less than you think."
The atheism Gray prefers echoes apophatic theology. All we might know about God is that we cannot know anything of God. Gray even positively quotes mystic Meister Eckhart. As a Christian, I find this book intriguing for where it ends up. It reminds me of Peter Rollins and some of his writings. I also wish Gray had taken time to add the "Christian atheism" of the 1900s (you can google it) to his list.
All that said, I do wonder what Gray would say to someone, "so, how should I live?" He writes how Spinoza wrote that most humans cannot grasp these ideas and need myths and symbols. Is it just, some people read books like this and think about them but most humans chug along, whether they believe in God or not, just performing the morals and ethics of their culture? Gray's criticism of many atheists faith in progress or science is biting. But don't we need faith to function. We need some objective standard, some hope for the future, to move us to live in the present. I'm not sure how Gray lives on a daily basis, but without some faith (in humanity, God, science or something) I do not know how we function.
Finally, Gray's description of Christianity in the first chapter is weak. He says the Dead Sea Scrolls were a challenge to understanding the New Testament. But the Dead Sea Scrolls are pre-Christian, Jewish writings. They certainly gave scholars more information on the world in Jesus' time. But the way he writes, it sounds like he thinks they were Christian writings. The next page he notes that Augustine and Paul created Christianity. Really? Is he unaware of Eastern Orthodoxy, an entire millennia long tradition that would dispute Augustine's role there. And the setting of Paul against Jesus is just...tired and overdone. I don't want to make assumptions, but it seems like he is rehearsing what he learned about ancient Christianity in university, or from very biased writers, without any further thought on it.
This favoring the one side is apparent when he says the "least plausible" version of Jesus' life is the one favored by the churches. Why is this one the "least plausible"? Should we favor the Gnostic texts which all arose decades after the four gospels in a decidely less Jewish and more Greek milieu? After all, Jesus and his disciples (including that sinister Paul) were Jewish and brought Jewish assumptions to their theology. It is more plausible (at least to me, for what its worth) that when the message went out into the world and those Jewish presuppositions were lost and then replaced by Greek ones.
Also, on page 111 he is discussing Dostoyevsky's The Brother's Karamazov and he writes that Dmitry murders his father! SPOILER ALERT: THIS IS WRONG! Dmitry is tried and convicted, but we learn that his half-brother Smerdyakov committed the crime. I almost find this more implicating against Gray than the errors I see in his description of Christianity. I mean, I assume he read the book and just made a minor mistake. But its the sort of mistake that makes me, as an amateur, wonder how many other mistakes he made in works I have not read?
This does not take away from his critiques of atheism, which are more philosophical than historical. But they are worth noting because...DMITRY WAS INNOCENT!
That said, the new-atheists are only the first kind of atheist Gray describes. He moves through Secular Humanism and their belief in progress (getting into John Stuart Mill, Nietzsche, and Ayn Rand) to the Positivism of faith in science. Here he uncovers some truly atrocious comments from the heroes of Enlightenment (Kant, Hume) that are incredibly racist. Just as Christians like to sanitize those who have gone before us, emphasizing their triumphs and covering up their errors, so too do atheists, crying that once we become enlightened and get rid of gods, forget the errors of their forebears. Gray's point, again in opposition to faith in progress, is that atheists and rationally enlightened people are just as likely to be racist as anyone else. Or, conversely, there's no connection between "enlightenment" and open-mindedness or kindness or anything like that.
The fourth type of atheism is the political type and in this Gray discusses the political movements that rejected God, from the French Jacobins to the Nazis and Soviets. Fifth is the "God-haters" and here we spend time with Marquis de Sade and Ivan Karamazov. The last two, the two Gray himself resonates most with, are atheism without progress (George Santayana and Joseph Conrad) and atheism as silence (Schopenhauer and Spinoza). These last two are a bit more mystical. I find the quote which he ends the book fascinating:
"If you want to understand atheism and religion, you must forget the popular notion that the are opposites. If you can see what a millennarian theocracy in the early sixteenth-century Munster has in common with Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany, you will have a clearer view of the modern scene. If you can see how theologies that affirm the ineffability of God and some types of atheism are not so far apart, you will learn something about the limits of human understanding.
Contemporary atheism is a continuation of monotheism by other means. Hence, the unending succession of God surrogates, such as humanity and science, technology and the all-too-human visions of transhumanism. But there is no need for panic or despair. Belief and unbelief are poses the mind adopts in the face of an unimaginable reality. A godless world is as mysterious as one suffused with divinity, and the difference between the two may be less than you think."
The atheism Gray prefers echoes apophatic theology. All we might know about God is that we cannot know anything of God. Gray even positively quotes mystic Meister Eckhart. As a Christian, I find this book intriguing for where it ends up. It reminds me of Peter Rollins and some of his writings. I also wish Gray had taken time to add the "Christian atheism" of the 1900s (you can google it) to his list.
All that said, I do wonder what Gray would say to someone, "so, how should I live?" He writes how Spinoza wrote that most humans cannot grasp these ideas and need myths and symbols. Is it just, some people read books like this and think about them but most humans chug along, whether they believe in God or not, just performing the morals and ethics of their culture? Gray's criticism of many atheists faith in progress or science is biting. But don't we need faith to function. We need some objective standard, some hope for the future, to move us to live in the present. I'm not sure how Gray lives on a daily basis, but without some faith (in humanity, God, science or something) I do not know how we function.
Finally, Gray's description of Christianity in the first chapter is weak. He says the Dead Sea Scrolls were a challenge to understanding the New Testament. But the Dead Sea Scrolls are pre-Christian, Jewish writings. They certainly gave scholars more information on the world in Jesus' time. But the way he writes, it sounds like he thinks they were Christian writings. The next page he notes that Augustine and Paul created Christianity. Really? Is he unaware of Eastern Orthodoxy, an entire millennia long tradition that would dispute Augustine's role there. And the setting of Paul against Jesus is just...tired and overdone. I don't want to make assumptions, but it seems like he is rehearsing what he learned about ancient Christianity in university, or from very biased writers, without any further thought on it.
This favoring the one side is apparent when he says the "least plausible" version of Jesus' life is the one favored by the churches. Why is this one the "least plausible"? Should we favor the Gnostic texts which all arose decades after the four gospels in a decidely less Jewish and more Greek milieu? After all, Jesus and his disciples (including that sinister Paul) were Jewish and brought Jewish assumptions to their theology. It is more plausible (at least to me, for what its worth) that when the message went out into the world and those Jewish presuppositions were lost and then replaced by Greek ones.
Also, on page 111 he is discussing Dostoyevsky's The Brother's Karamazov and he writes that Dmitry murders his father! SPOILER ALERT: THIS IS WRONG! Dmitry is tried and convicted, but we learn that his half-brother Smerdyakov committed the crime. I almost find this more implicating against Gray than the errors I see in his description of Christianity. I mean, I assume he read the book and just made a minor mistake. But its the sort of mistake that makes me, as an amateur, wonder how many other mistakes he made in works I have not read?
This does not take away from his critiques of atheism, which are more philosophical than historical. But they are worth noting because...DMITRY WAS INNOCENT!
jrrrck's review against another edition
4.0
(received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)
Atheism has bad PR. The "New Atheist," such as they are have taken up some much space in conversations about religion and atheism within recent years, unfortunately obscuring other perspectives. As someone really interested in the study of religion, this book appealed to me both in its topic and its organizational structure. Gray explores and teases out distinctions and understandings of atheism and introduced a lot of threads I've since sought to follow up on. In a way, the book left me wanting for more, but overall I was really pleased and appreciated Gray's insight. Definitely recommended.
Atheism has bad PR. The "New Atheist," such as they are have taken up some much space in conversations about religion and atheism within recent years, unfortunately obscuring other perspectives. As someone really interested in the study of religion, this book appealed to me both in its topic and its organizational structure. Gray explores and teases out distinctions and understandings of atheism and introduced a lot of threads I've since sought to follow up on. In a way, the book left me wanting for more, but overall I was really pleased and appreciated Gray's insight. Definitely recommended.