Download PDF Seven Types of Atheism edition by John Gray Politics Social Sciences eBooks

Product details File Size 995 KB Print Length 171 pages Page Numbers Source ISBN 0374261091 Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux (October 2, 2018) Publication Date October 2, 2018 Sold by  Digital Services LLC Language English ASIN B0796XP7PC

Seven Types of Atheism edition by John Gray Politics Social Sciences eBooks Reviews

• The most glaring irritating thing I found in this book, which points to intellectual dishonesty, was that Gray defines atheism on page 2, then forgets his own definition on the following pages.
  
  Here's the early-on definition.
  
  “A provisional definition of atheism might still be useful, if only to indicate the drift of the book that follows. So I suggest that an atheist is anyone with no use for the idea of a divine mind that has fashioned the world. In this sense atheism does not amount to very much. It is simply the absence of the idea of a creator god.”
  
  OK, as an atheist I generally agree with this. There could be other types of gods than a creator god, but the major world religions -- Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism -- all teach that the world was created by a divine mind, or being.
  
  So I figured that in the rest of his book, Gray would view atheism as how he defined it the absence of the idea of a creator god. This fits with how I view my atheism. It also fits with how every atheist I know views atheism. Again, as the absence of a belief in god.
  
  But in many places in Seven Types of Atheism, Gray speaks of a "religion of humanity," a "self-deifying humanity," "secular religion," and such. How could this be if atheism is the absence of the idea of a creator god? Wouldn't religion then be the presence of the idea of a creator god?
  
  No, not according to Gray's twisted logic. 
  
  Because on page 3 of his book, Gray offers up a decidedly strange definition of religion. It isn't a belief in god, creator-variety or otherwise. Nor is it an attempt to understand reality in terms of supernatural or divine phenomena. Rather, Gray says
  
  “A provisional definition of religion may also be useful... Religion is an attempt to find meaning in events, not a theory that tries to explain the universe.”
  
  Wow. What a weird definition of religion. Thus what Gray does at the beginning of his book is intellectually dishonest. He defines atheism as the absence of the idea of a creator god. But he doesn't define religion as the presence of the idea of a creator god. Rather, Gray defines religion extremely broadly as "an attempt to find meaning in events.”
  
  The day I got married was deeply meaningful to me. So apparently I make a religion out of marriage. The results of last Tuesday's midterm elections were deeply meaningful to me. So apparently I make a religion out of politics. 
  
  But obviously every attempt by us humans to find meaning in events isn't religious in nature. But this obviousness isn't apparent to John Gray, because the bulk of his book is an attempt to paint atheism with the brush of religion, because atheists find meaning in events, history, humanity, and other non-godly entities.
  
  Wait! Aren't atheists defined by Gray as lacking a belief in a creator god? Yes, but Gray says atheists are religious because they find meaning in events. Thus every person on Earth who finds meaning in events is religious by Gray's absurd logic.
   
  Here's some passages from Seven Types of Atheism that reflect this absurdity.
  
  “But it was Saint-Simon who first presented the religion of humanity in systematic form. In future, scientists would replace priests as the spiritual leaders of society. Government would be an easy matter of 'the administration of things.' Religion would become the self-worship of humankind.”
  
  …"Having renounced the idea of any divine power outside the human world, human beings could not avoid claiming divine powers for themselves.”

  
  …"A free-thinking atheist would begin by questioning the prevailing faith in humanity. But there is little prospect of contemporary atheists giving up their reverence for this phantom.”
  
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..”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.”
  
  Gray doesn't believe that "humanity" exists. Only individual humans do.
  
  Fine, he's entitled to that belief. I don't agree with him, because our species, Homo sapiens, does have common characteristics, and the modern world has erased many of the borders that used to separate humans by geography, culture, and such. 
  
  John Gray doesn't believe that our species advances. This is highly debatable. Witness how slavery, the subjugation of women, and world wars have faded away (though still existent, or possible) in the past several hundred years. 
  
  But since Gray holds that belief, and he wanted to bash atheism in his book, he needed to define religion in such a way that anyone who finds meaning in human events or history is "religious." Hence, humanists are religious, and any atheist who finds meaning in a hope that humanity is progressing is also “religious."
  
  I'm an atheist. I'm a progressive. I'm not religious. I don't believe in a creator god.
  
  So Gray ignored the reality that the vast majority of atheists simply don't believe in god. But this fact doesn't fit with Gray's desire to make atheism into a secular "religion," so he ignored it.
• This is an engaging piece of work, in which Gray draws on a wide range of material to offer a lively encounter with a wide variety of figures and follies. Not untypically for Gray, his treatment ranges from dogmatic ex cathedra pronouncements of his own, through brief but serious intellectual engagements, to snippets of gossip which render him close to being the John Aubrey of the intellectual world. All told, the book is informative, provocative, annoying and an enjoyable read.
  His first chapter, on Christianity and the New Atheism, seemed to me much the worst. Gray is much too quick with material which deserves more serious treatment, and offers characterizations (e.g. of religion as consisting of practises, which don’t depend on some view of the world being correct to make them cogent) which seem to me open to telling criticism. He was also, later, much too generous to Nietzsche. Nietzsche has, indeed, been very influential; but his work is almost an argument-free zone.
  Gray makes a useful argument that avowed opponents of religion seem all too often to adopt some of its worst features – particularly, an expectation that there can be a dramatic transformation of things, if only believers in this are sufficiently dedicated. At the same time, he displays once again his attachment to Norman Cohn’s in my view grossly over-rated The Pursuit of the Millennium, which champions this same kind of thesis, but in a hopelessly naïve and uncritical form. It is also worth noting that there are many people who hold versions of views of which Gray is critical, but in much more nuanced and less vulnerable forms. Karl Popper’s combination of views close to liberalism with a complete repudiation of historical teleology is a case in point.
  The biggest problem about the book seemed to me Gray’s own position. It is fine to be scathing about the follies of others. It is important that we learn that we are fallible, too, and that there is apt to be something problematic about all of our most cherished ideals. Gray – as in other work – displays considerable sympathy for Santayana, and also Schopenhauer. But at the same time, Gray’s own criticisms seem to be conducted from a position which is broadly humanitarian in its character (and, while he may not like this, is in some sense liberal), but the character of this is not spelled out, or its cogency defended. Just what are his own values, and what status does he take them to enjoy? And does his own view make sense? (Gray, it might be said, readily takes others to task for inconsistencies in their views.) It is also striking that Gray refers, with sympathy, to C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, but does not stop to note the background played, in Lewis’s argument, by a version of natural law theory. This is surely not needed to make the points Gray wishes to endorse; but it is difficult to spell out a case here for the status of one’s own perspective that looks less vulnerable than is that of many of those of whom Gray is critical.