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generalheff's review against another edition
3.0
John Gray categorises and examines seven kinds of atheism in this good but frustrating book. I originally began this review attempting to briefly summarise these seven categories to give a flavour of what the book covered, but the description got so unwieldy, long and confused that I've relegated it to a footnote below.
Going through this process was not all for nothing, however, as it allowed me to distil what are this book's - that I ostensibly liked - failings and how with a little adjustment what is an OK book could have been a valuable piece of philosophical analysis.
First what is good about this book? In short, it offers several valuable challenges to aspects of atheism. To take one of the most incisive: Gray takes aim at some atheists' notion of "progress" and rightly challenges those atheists who have adopted a quasi-monotheistic notion of humanity inexorably improving to some better end. As Gray notes, this is derived from Christian ideas of salvation but without the (at least) self-consistent component of a God giving us an end or purpose to strive for. Ultimately, atheists have adopted a concept of both "humanity" and "progress" without scrutinising these notions themselves - which Gray concludes is specious.
This is where the book is at its best.
So what is my issue with the work: while full of exceptional insight the very structure of the book is confused. The grouping into "seven types of atheism" is clunky and unhelpful. I cannot remotely tell the difference between secular humanism (chapter 3) and atheism that promotes science into a religion (chapter 4) or why similar aspects of both cannot be discussed in parallel. That Trotsky appears in one chapter and Bolshevism in another suggests a splitting of hairs problem.
I feel this book could have been an exceptionally pithy critique of many aspects of atheism by more simply summarising the handful of issues the author has identified: the deification of humankind; progress; the arbitrary construction of ethics that are ascribed deep and universal validity and so on. These could be much more coherently challenged in a series of thematic chapters, rather than intermittently dealt with whilst trying to construct a typology of atheism. Given the author's clear preference for certain thinkers (Santayana for one) he could then finish these chapters covering (say) the issue of progress and improvement of humanity with a look at how atheism can avoid the pitfalls of other thinkers.
This approach, I believe, would be offer a more followable and coherent account. As it is this book is interesting and engaging but also an immensely frustrating read. For that reason, despite thinking there is a huge amount here that offers potent challenge to much atheism today, I couldn't score this book higher than a 3/5.
Footnote: Summary of the seven (supposedly distinct) types of atheism
1. 'New atheism' (think Richard Dawkins): atheism that attacks religion as a bad hypothesis and attempts to dismantle it on scientific terms. 'New atheism' often operates from the vantage of positivism (roughly: the set of views that believe only the 'positive' data of experience have any role to play in knowledge). Gray is extremely scathing of this type of atheism and dismisses it in a series of pithy points - such as how science cannot repudiate religion as it is not a settled "worldview" but a method of inquiry. Perhaps critically, Gray dismisses this brand of atheism as inherently contradictory, relying as it often does on a view of morality that is nowhere to be found in experience.
2. Secular humanism (John Stuart Mill, Nietzsche or Ayn Rand): atheism that has rejected monotheism in favour of a view of humanity's inexorable march of improvement towards some sort of better existence. In the author's rendering: Christianity's ideal of human salvation has been replaced by an equally nebulous salvation through progress. Gray deals many blows to this view, most substantially pointing out that from the starting point of "promoting the cause of humanity" a range of influential atheists have managed to promote liberalism, socialism and fascism. Gray also notes how ancient atheists, notably Lucretius, manage to reject the gods while not conceiving of humanity in some way or requiring it to progress.
3. Atheism that promotes science to a religion (Leon Trotsky, transhumanism): atheism that utilises scientific thinking as a means to bring about radical transformations in the human condition. This chapter - highly apposite in 2020 - covers much unsettling "scientific racism" and reminds the reader of how many vaunted thinkers (such as Hume or Voltaire) have held atrocious (and more worrying for them, totally ungrounded) views. While drawing attention to such grim racist theorising, Gray offers further rebukes of this strain of atheism. He points out, in particular, that people like Trotsky or the transhumanists (who want humans to transcend their bodies, e.g. by being uploaded to cyberspace) must begin with definitions of what ideals new humanity ought to be imbibed with and ultimately crumbles in the arbitrariness and religious-nature of making such judgements.
4. Atheistic modern political religions (Jacobinism, Boleshevism, Nazism): atheism that is an integral part of political movements. The key point of this chapter is not so much to point out the inherent contradictions of embracing a certain strain of atheism but to point out the inherently religious nature of these revolutionary movements that called for mass sacrifice for the cause and promoted progress at all costs.
5. God-hating atheism (Marquis de Sade, characters in Dostoevsky): atheism this is militantly anti-god. This falls down, in Gray's accounting, by still requiring some form of agency or purpose to frame the atheist's existence, such as Sade who imbibed Nature with evil from which he could rebel.
6. Atheism without progress (Santayana, Joesph Conrad): atheism which does not strive for humanity's progress or define such progress as an end-in-itself. Gray focusses on specific examples rather than generalities here, such as the relatively unknown (at least to me) George Santayana who lived what he preached and promoted distancing himself from the world and accepting its contradictions and arbitrariness rather than attempting to push progress onto humanity.
7. Mystical atheism (Schopenhauer, Spinoza): atheism that may have a god but a totally unknowable one. Schopenhauer clashed strongly with Hegel for his extremely teleological view of history, and with Kant for ruining his critique of reason (nature is unknowable) with his practical ethics (there is a universal moral law applicable to all humans that we can, indeed, know). Stepping beyond these issues, Schopenhauer advocated suppressing one's will to exist and accepting nature's (and so God's) unknowability. Schopenhauer's unknowable god can be accessed occasionally through rapturous enjoyment of music. Spinoza presents a pantheistic God that is, simply, everything and determines human existence entirely through necessity. The best humans can do is learn this, understand how the world operates and accept their totally unfree and pre-determined existence via quiet contemplation.
Going through this process was not all for nothing, however, as it allowed me to distil what are this book's - that I ostensibly liked - failings and how with a little adjustment what is an OK book could have been a valuable piece of philosophical analysis.
First what is good about this book? In short, it offers several valuable challenges to aspects of atheism. To take one of the most incisive: Gray takes aim at some atheists' notion of "progress" and rightly challenges those atheists who have adopted a quasi-monotheistic notion of humanity inexorably improving to some better end. As Gray notes, this is derived from Christian ideas of salvation but without the (at least) self-consistent component of a God giving us an end or purpose to strive for. Ultimately, atheists have adopted a concept of both "humanity" and "progress" without scrutinising these notions themselves - which Gray concludes is specious.
This is where the book is at its best.
So what is my issue with the work: while full of exceptional insight the very structure of the book is confused. The grouping into "seven types of atheism" is clunky and unhelpful. I cannot remotely tell the difference between secular humanism (chapter 3) and atheism that promotes science into a religion (chapter 4) or why similar aspects of both cannot be discussed in parallel. That Trotsky appears in one chapter and Bolshevism in another suggests a splitting of hairs problem.
I feel this book could have been an exceptionally pithy critique of many aspects of atheism by more simply summarising the handful of issues the author has identified: the deification of humankind; progress; the arbitrary construction of ethics that are ascribed deep and universal validity and so on. These could be much more coherently challenged in a series of thematic chapters, rather than intermittently dealt with whilst trying to construct a typology of atheism. Given the author's clear preference for certain thinkers (Santayana for one) he could then finish these chapters covering (say) the issue of progress and improvement of humanity with a look at how atheism can avoid the pitfalls of other thinkers.
This approach, I believe, would be offer a more followable and coherent account. As it is this book is interesting and engaging but also an immensely frustrating read. For that reason, despite thinking there is a huge amount here that offers potent challenge to much atheism today, I couldn't score this book higher than a 3/5.
Footnote: Summary of the seven (supposedly distinct) types of atheism
1. 'New atheism' (think Richard Dawkins): atheism that attacks religion as a bad hypothesis and attempts to dismantle it on scientific terms. 'New atheism' often operates from the vantage of positivism (roughly: the set of views that believe only the 'positive' data of experience have any role to play in knowledge). Gray is extremely scathing of this type of atheism and dismisses it in a series of pithy points - such as how science cannot repudiate religion as it is not a settled "worldview" but a method of inquiry. Perhaps critically, Gray dismisses this brand of atheism as inherently contradictory, relying as it often does on a view of morality that is nowhere to be found in experience.
2. Secular humanism (John Stuart Mill, Nietzsche or Ayn Rand): atheism that has rejected monotheism in favour of a view of humanity's inexorable march of improvement towards some sort of better existence. In the author's rendering: Christianity's ideal of human salvation has been replaced by an equally nebulous salvation through progress. Gray deals many blows to this view, most substantially pointing out that from the starting point of "promoting the cause of humanity" a range of influential atheists have managed to promote liberalism, socialism and fascism. Gray also notes how ancient atheists, notably Lucretius, manage to reject the gods while not conceiving of humanity in some way or requiring it to progress.
3. Atheism that promotes science to a religion (Leon Trotsky, transhumanism): atheism that utilises scientific thinking as a means to bring about radical transformations in the human condition. This chapter - highly apposite in 2020 - covers much unsettling "scientific racism" and reminds the reader of how many vaunted thinkers (such as Hume or Voltaire) have held atrocious (and more worrying for them, totally ungrounded) views. While drawing attention to such grim racist theorising, Gray offers further rebukes of this strain of atheism. He points out, in particular, that people like Trotsky or the transhumanists (who want humans to transcend their bodies, e.g. by being uploaded to cyberspace) must begin with definitions of what ideals new humanity ought to be imbibed with and ultimately crumbles in the arbitrariness and religious-nature of making such judgements.
4. Atheistic modern political religions (Jacobinism, Boleshevism, Nazism): atheism that is an integral part of political movements. The key point of this chapter is not so much to point out the inherent contradictions of embracing a certain strain of atheism but to point out the inherently religious nature of these revolutionary movements that called for mass sacrifice for the cause and promoted progress at all costs.
5. God-hating atheism (Marquis de Sade, characters in Dostoevsky): atheism this is militantly anti-god. This falls down, in Gray's accounting, by still requiring some form of agency or purpose to frame the atheist's existence, such as Sade who imbibed Nature with evil from which he could rebel.
6. Atheism without progress (Santayana, Joesph Conrad): atheism which does not strive for humanity's progress or define such progress as an end-in-itself. Gray focusses on specific examples rather than generalities here, such as the relatively unknown (at least to me) George Santayana who lived what he preached and promoted distancing himself from the world and accepting its contradictions and arbitrariness rather than attempting to push progress onto humanity.
7. Mystical atheism (Schopenhauer, Spinoza): atheism that may have a god but a totally unknowable one. Schopenhauer clashed strongly with Hegel for his extremely teleological view of history, and with Kant for ruining his critique of reason (nature is unknowable) with his practical ethics (there is a universal moral law applicable to all humans that we can, indeed, know). Stepping beyond these issues, Schopenhauer advocated suppressing one's will to exist and accepting nature's (and so God's) unknowability. Schopenhauer's unknowable god can be accessed occasionally through rapturous enjoyment of music. Spinoza presents a pantheistic God that is, simply, everything and determines human existence entirely through necessity. The best humans can do is learn this, understand how the world operates and accept their totally unfree and pre-determined existence via quiet contemplation.
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!