John Gray's book "Seven Types of Atheism"

[lpetrich]

I've found several reviews of "Seven Types of Atheism":

• Why Are Americans Still Uncomfortable with Atheism? | The New Yorker
• Seven Types of Atheism by John Gray review – is every atheist an inverted believer? | Books | The Guardian
• Seven Types of Atheism by John Gray review – fascinating study of disbelief | Books | The Guardian
• Bad Faith: A Review of John Gray's "Seven Types of Atheism" | The New Republic
• Book review: Seven Types of Atheism | New Humanist
• The Seven Types of Atheist - VICE
• A Field Guide to Atheism—for Believer and Unbeliever Alike

Also its table of contents from Amazon's preview feature:

1. The New Atheism: a Nineteenth-Century Orthodoxy - The Grand Pontiff of Humanity - Why science cannot dispel religion - The true threat to monotheism - New atheism and old illiberalism
2. Secular Humanism, a Sacred Relic - Progress, a Christian myth - Plato for the masses - John Stuart Mill, the saint of rationalism - Bertrand Russell, unwilling sceptic - From Nietzsche to Ayn Rand
3. A Strange Faith in Science - Evolution vs ethics - Racism and anti-Semitism in the Enlightenment - Mesmerism, the first religion of science - Science and the abolition of man - Transhumanism as techno-monotheism
4. Atheism, Gnosticism, and Modern Political Religion - Millenarianism and Gnosticism in the western tradition - Jan Bockelson's Münster: an early modern communist theocracy - Jacobinism, the first modern political religion - Bolshevism: millenarian hopes, Gnostic visions - Bockelson, Hitler, and the Nazis - Evangelical liberalism
5. God-Haters - The Marquis de Sade and the dark divinity of Nature - Ivan Karamazov hands back his ticket - William Empson: God as a Belsen commandant
6. Atheism Without Progress - George Santayana, an atheist who loved religion - Joseph Conrad and the godless sea
7. The Atheism of Silence - The mystical atheism of Arthur Schopenhauer - Two negative theologies: Benedict Spinoza and Lev Shestov

It is very evident that JG dislikes the first five and likes the last two.

 

[Underseer]

As soon as the phrase "god hater" comes up, you know you're not dealing with someone interested in real dialog.

 

[Politesse]

As soon as the phrase "god hater" comes up, you know you're not dealing with someone interested in real dialog.

You clearly never read The Brothers Karamazov.

 

[lpetrich]

John Gray defined an atheist as “anyone with no use for a divine mind that has fashioned the world.” Rather broad, it must be conceded. Buddhism and Taoism would qualify as atheist -- and maybe even Aristotelian deism and Stoic pantheism.

"The Grand Pontiff of Humanity" is from 19th cy. philosopher Auguste Comte's "Religion of Humanity". It was a sort of secular-humanist ripoff of Catholicism. Like having a calendar of saints who are heroes of human progress.

JG had little love for the first sort, those who debunk religious claims as if they are factual ones. He can barely get himself to mention "New Atheists" like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. He claims that religion is essentially a way of life rather than theories about the nature of reality. But a heck of a lot of religious apologetics is based on claims of factual correctness. The more liberal ones also tend to make a lot of rhetorical fog, rather than state anything as clear as "Galileo got it right. The Bible tells us how to go to heaven rather than how the heavens go."


The second sort JG considers a sort of ripoff of Xianity.The notion that social progress is a Xian notion I consider laughable. It is a modern notion, provoked by seeing a lot of progress. He seems to think that dreaming of some utopian future is a ripoff of dreaming of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.


The third sort JG apparently considers tainted by some of the less flattering things that some Enlightenment figures had stated. I must say that it would be interesting to write a history of what may be called "overconfident science" -- things that were accepted with a strength out of proportion to their evidential support. JG may have in mind race pseudoscience, and I'd think of things like Freudianism.

He discusses transhumanism and connects it with monotheism, when it is more like emergent polytheism. That is far outside of mainstream Xianity, though Mormonism features a version of it. If one is a very good Mormon man, one will become a god and get to create one's own planet and populate it with one's spirit children -- just like the Mormon God himself.


The fourth sort he considers versions of Gnosticism, a sect that maintained that the creator of the physical world was a very evil being, but that one could nevertheless get knowledge from outside it -- very good knowledge. JG ends up projecting Gnosticism onto a variety of political ideologies. But by such standards, *any* theory might be interpreted as Gnosticism. The most Gnosticism-like recently-originating belief system is Scientology. It states that our souls had been imprisoned on our planet by a nasty being called Xenu, and Scientology's therapies are about freeing oneself from the effects of that action.


The fifth sort does not seem like atheism at all but misotheism: "I know you exist, Mr. G., and you are a bad, bad, bad, bad being."


The sixth sort has a pessimism that JG evidently likes. George Santayana was a Catholic atheist, an atheist who liked Catholicism a lot. Joseph Conrad depicted in his novels how harsh and indifferent to us the sea is.


The seventh sort is much like apophatic theology, a kind that states that we can only know what God is not. It states that we are as ignorant of the nature of reality as we are of the nature of God. I don't see how Arthur Schopenhauer or Benedict Spinoza fall into that category.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Somebody remind me why we should take anything he has ever said about anything seriously? I read his Men from Mars and Women from Venus book... not impressed. And that was his crowing achievement

I think he's a pop-psychologist of the worst kind. A kind of guy who takes zeitgeist ideas, shoehorns them into a faux-psychological package, makes up new labels for it, and pretends like he's come up with something new.

 

[Keith&Co.]

John Gray defined an atheist as “anyone with no use for a divine mind that has fashioned the world.” Rather broad, it must be conceded. Buddhism and Taoism would qualify as atheist -- and maybe even Aristotelian deism and Stoic pantheism.

And Klingons... Gods created them, then they killed the gods.

 

[PyramidHead]

Somebody remind me why we should take anything he has ever said about anything seriously? I read his Men from Mars and Women from Venus book... not impressed. And that was his crowing achievement

I think he's a pop-psychologist of the worst kind. A kind of guy who takes zeitgeist ideas, shoehorns them into a faux-psychological package, makes up new labels for it, and pretends like he's come up with something new.

I don't have as uncharitable an opinion of him, and you may be right, but I think he is worth listening to for being one of the few negative voices in a climate where unquestioned perpetual progress is taken as beyond doubt as both a goal and a description of history. I like his treatment of atheism because it strikes me that many atheists feel their nonbelief constitutes the end of all philosophy; that is, once you get to this point and no longer believe in god, you've done it, everything is solved, and from here you can just go along with whatever comes naturally. No, faith is not the last delusion, nor is it even the deepest or most dangerous one, and I think we need people like Gray to remind the likes of Pinker, Shermer, Harris, and other such thinkers.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

John Gray defined an atheist as “anyone with no use for a divine mind that has fashioned the world.” Rather broad, it must be conceded. Buddhism and Taoism would qualify as atheist -- and maybe even Aristotelian deism and Stoic pantheism.

And Klingons... Gods created them, then they killed the gods.

Well, if you think that gods used to exist but are now dead, then you're a theist and not an atheist.

 

[DrZoidberg]

John Gray defined an atheist as “anyone with no use for a divine mind that has fashioned the world.” Rather broad, it must be conceded. Buddhism and Taoism would qualify as atheist -- and maybe even Aristotelian deism and Stoic pantheism.

And Klingons... Gods created them, then they killed the gods.

Well, if you think that gods used to exist but are now dead, then you're a theist and not an atheist.

Hmm... really? Isn't that just like saying that since you once believed in God you can't stop doing so? Doesn't follow.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Well, if you think that gods used to exist but are now dead, then you're a theist and not an atheist.

Hmm... really? Isn't that just like saying that since you once believed in God you can't stop doing so? Doesn't follow.

No. It means that you think that gods are real things but they can die. That's a theistic position.

Saying that thinking gods are dead makes you an atheist is like saying we're all adinosaurists because we believe dinosaurs were real things but are now all dead.

 

[Keith&Co.]

John Gray defined an atheist as “anyone with no use for a divine mind that has fashioned the world.” Rather broad, it must be conceded. Buddhism and Taoism would qualify as atheist -- and maybe even Aristotelian deism and Stoic pantheism.

And Klingons... Gods created them, then they killed the gods.

Well, if you think that gods used to exist but are now dead, then you're a theist and not an atheist.

But GRAY's definition of atheist is not 'doesn't believe in' it's 'has no use for.'

So, apatheists would fit.

And John Constantine from Keanu Reeves' movie. He knows god is real, but thinks He is a total dickwad...

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Well, if you think that gods used to exist but are now dead, then you're a theist and not an atheist.

But GRAY's definition of atheist is not 'doesn't believe in' it's 'has no use for.'

So, apatheists would fit.

And John Constantine from Keanu Reeves' movie. He knows god is real, but thinks He is a total dickwad...

But those are both incorrect definitions. They're like saying a Christian is someone who follows the teachings of the Buddha - it's just using words wrong.

An apatheist is a theist, not an atheist. Thinking that something exists but not caring about it may lead to the same end positions as not thinking that thing exists at all, but entirely different paths are used to get there. For instance, I may not give the first shit about any of the Kardashians, but that is entirely distinct from someone who thinks that the Kardashians are fictional characters, even though we both end up being too concerned about what brand of vodka they're endorsing this week (or whatever it is that they actually do - I neither know nor want to bother to find out).

It's the same with antitheists like Constantine. If you think that God exists, but just hate the guy, you're still covered under the definition which uses "God exists" and not the one which uses "God doesn't exist", since ... well, since you think that God exists.

 

[Keith&Co.]

But those are both incorrect definitions.

I wasn't saying Gray's was right, I was agreeing with Ipetrich that using Gray's definitions we would label a great deal of people as atheists.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

But those are both incorrect definitions.

I wasn't saying Gray's was right, I was agreeing with Ipetrich that using Gray's definitions we would label a great deal of people as atheists.

Fair enough. I also agree with him then.

 

[Underseer]

Well, if you think that gods used to exist but are now dead, then you're a theist and not an atheist.

But GRAY's definition of atheist is not 'doesn't believe in' it's 'has no use for.'

So, apatheists would fit.

And John Constantine from Keanu Reeves' movie. He knows god is real, but thinks He is a total dickwad...

But those are both incorrect definitions. They're like saying a Christian is someone who follows the teachings of the Buddha - it's just using words wrong.

An apatheist is a theist, not an atheist. Thinking that something exists but not caring about it may lead to the same end positions as not thinking that thing exists at all, but entirely different paths are used to get there. For instance, I may not give the first shit about any of the Kardashians, but that is entirely distinct from someone who thinks that the Kardashians are fictional characters, even though we both end up being too concerned about what brand of vodka they're endorsing this week (or whatever it is that they actually do - I neither know nor want to bother to find out).

It's the same with antitheists like Constantine. If you think that God exists, but just hate the guy, you're still covered under the definition which uses "God exists" and not the one which uses "God doesn't exist", since ... well, since you think that God exists.

He has to use words wrong because he's defending the indefensible and trying to make it sound like it's reasonable to believe that things are true when he can't prove that they actually are true.

Honestly, if LPetrich's summary is accurate, then it just sounds like they usual pile of sloppy thinking typical of theists and apologetics.