John Gray's Seven Types of Atheism

A Book Discussion

I enjoy when atheists offer critiques of other atheists’ atheisms. As such, I am a big fan of philosopher John Gray’s 2018 book Seven Types of Atheism, and, being only 158 pages, I often recommend it to friends.¹ Gray argues that five influential types of atheism – which the author himself is “[r]epelled by” (p. 7) – are thoroughly dependant on Christian monotheism and make no sense without it. He then presents a further two varieties of atheism to which he is drawn, though he claims he has “no interest in converting anyone” (p. 7).

The famous ‘New Atheism’ of scholars like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris claims that the advancement of scientific knowledge and the discovery of the laws of nature leaves no place for the primitive beliefs of religions. “But”, writes Gray, “unless you believe the human mind mirrors a rational cosmos … science can only be a tool the human animal has invented to deal with a world it cannot fully understand” (p. 13).

Secular Humanism claims that humans are gradually improving, both morally and otherwise, or, at least, aims to see humanity realise their full potential. But “[u]nless you believe the species to be an instrument of some higher power, ‘humanity’ cannot do anything” (p. 31). And, “unless you posit a divinely ordained end-state there is no reason to think history has any overarching logic or goal” (p. 33). Further, if progress includes moral progress, then secular humanists must contend with the different moral codes that exist in the world, but “[u]nless you think one of them has been mandated by God, you must accept the variety of moralities as a part of what it means to be human” (p. 45).

Not dissimilarly, Evolutionary Humanism – including various forms of social Darwinism and transhumanism – seeks to create a more advanced form of humanity, expediting what might be seen as the inevitable course of evolution towards perfection that the universe takes. But, “unless some presiding Deity is imagined, the universe has no point of view” (p. 68) – natural selection “contains no idea of progress or perfection” (p. 55), and, if a ‘more advanced’ version of humanity is what is desired, then “how do we know what is more or less advanced?” (p. 65).

Various modern political movements (often of a revolutionary character) that Gray terms ‘Modern Political Religions’ are seen by the author as continuations of the “Gnostic belief in the salvific power of knowledge” (p. 72) and “medieval millenarianism” that claimed that “the human world can be remade in a cataclysmic upheaval” by God (p. 73). The indebtedness to such ideas is perhaps fairly obvious in the case of Bolshevism and Nazism (both discussed in the book), but Gray sees it too in modern liberalism, or, as he describes it, ‘Evangelical Liberalism’. Modern liberals have sought to establish a universal moral law without reference to a god, and they “persist in imagining that only ignorance prevents their gospel from being accepted by all humankind” (p.93). Such a vision is, however, “inherited from Christianity” (p. 93), and, Gray reminds us, “you will think of morality in terms of universal laws only if you believe there is a divine law-giver” (p. 90).

The final form of atheism that Gray critiques is that of various ‘God-haters’, who have rejected religious belief on the grounds of the Christian God’s perceived cruelty and evil. This God tortured his son to death after tricking Adam and Eve into the condition of sinfulness from which he would redeem them, only to ordain eternal torment for those who did not believe in him, and reward his followers with complicity in this torment. Christianity, and the God Christians worship, is for such ‘God-haters’ repugnantly cruel, and therefore intrinsically, or ‘metaphysically’ evil. But, Gray asks, “[i]n a godless universes, how can anything be ‘metaphysically evil’?” (p. 120). While cruelty may seem intrinsically evil, Gray asks, “what if the idea that cruelty is the supreme evil is itself an inheritance from Christianity?” (p. 121). Gray even goes on to show how Christianity not only lays the foundation for posing the problem of evil, but also provides for its adherents a solution to it:

“Christianity created a suffering God; a cruel vision. But by picturing God as suffering, Christianity may also have made cruelty sinful.

If the Christian universe is a vast torture-chamber, it is also a universe in which human suffering has moral significance. In the ancient world of the Greeks and Romans, suffering might be the work of the gods; but the gods were arbitrary and capricious. Christianity answered a need ancient polytheism could not satisfy: it gave misery meaning and value. By taking suffering out of the realm of blind chance, Christianity imposed a responsibility on those who inflicted it.” (p. 123)

Christianity both poses and resolves the problem of evil, but, for atheists “who truly leave monotheism behind, there is no problem of evil” in the first place (p. 103).

Having dismissed these five types of atheism as those that have “looked for surrogates of the God they have cast aside” (p. 1), Gray turns to his two preferred atheisms, which he calls ‘Atheism without Progress’, and ‘The Atheism of Silence’.

Two figures – George Santayana and Joseph Conrad – characterise the ‘Atheism without Progress’. Santayana, while a committed materialist, was not opposed to religion, but saw it as being as natural for humans as art, science, ethics, and politics. In Gray’s words:

“To be sure, religion has brought much suffering. So has love and the pursuit of knowledge. Like them, religion is part of being human. But no one religion suits everyone. Any claim to prescribe a universal way of life is misguided.” (p. 128)

Indeed, not only could there not be a universal way of life, but, consistent with his materialism, Santayana accepted that ‘Value’ is not objective but relative – “a dignity which anything may acquire in view of the benefit or satisfaction which it brings to some living thing.”² Thus, any attempt to establish the ‘progress’ of humanity, via religion or otherwise, is misguided, as it assumes some universal ‘good’ and represses human variety. Instead of expecting salvation through progress, or freedom through “[a]n ideal realm modelled on human values” (p. 132), Santayana valued the contemplative life, as it “enabled a lucid vision of the only world that exists – the world of matter” (p. 130).

For Conrad, contemplation, or ‘Thinking’ is “the great enemy of perfection”, and “reflection” the “most pernicious of all the habits formed by the civilised man.”³ There is no God, and therefore the world is not rational and humans are but parts of nature. Unlike the rest of nature, however, humans have, by tragic accident, become conscious of the pain, strife, and chaos of the world in which they live. Thinking and reflecting upon the human condition can only awaken oneself to the reality that “thou art nothing, less than a shadow, more insignificant than a drop of water in the ocean, more fleeting than the illusion of a dream.”⁴ Instead, facing a godless, indifferent universe, Conrad favoured a disposition that was able to “assert oneself, without much thought, in situations that cannot be remedied” (p. 141).

Gray turns finally to a group of philosophies he terms the ‘Atheism of Silence’. He begins with the mystical atheism of Arthur Schopenhauer, inspired by Indian philosophy, that views the concepts of selfhood, self-will, and even the whole world as illusions that must be shattered and silenced in order to see reality more clearly. Upon realising that “human life – like everything that exists – is purposeless striving” (p. 147), there are two logical options available. The first, Schopenhauer (along with Gray, it would seem) rejects: suicide, the quickest path to liberation from the illusion. As Gray puts it (p. 147), “if life is nothing but pain, death resolves everything for the suffering individual – however illusory he or she may be.” The second, Gray seems more attracted to: “pure play” (p. 147). If the world is only an illusory “nothingness”, then (p. 147):

“Seeking no deliverance from the world’s insubstantial splendour, a liberated mind might find fulfilment by playing its part in the universal illusion.”

Gray then explores the philosophies of Benedict Spinoza and Lev Shestov. Neither of these two were atheists in the obvious sense, but their ‘negative theologies’ were far removed from traditional monotheistic conceptions of God. For Spinoza, the world “is a universal system in which everything is as it must be” (p. 148). This system is itself, ‘God’. As everything is as it is, free-will (and the human progress that might come through it) is an illusion, but despite this, one can gain inner freedom by accepting that “everything in the world is as it must be” (p. 152). Shestov, however, rejected Spinoza’s idea that “freedom is submission to necessity” (p. 152). God is not a “system of necessary truths” but “a realm of infinite possibility lying beyond all laws, whether of logic or ethics” that can only be reached by “breaking the bounds of reason” (p. 152).

In concluding his exploration of these various forms of atheism, Gray writes (p. 157):

“The God of monotheism did not die, it only left the scene for a while in order to reappear as humanity – the human species dressed up as a collective agent, pursuing its self-realization in history. But, like the God of monotheism, humanity is a work of the imagination. The only observable reality is the multitudinous human animal, with its conflicting goals, values, and ways of life.”

If there is no God, there is no order, no hope of understanding the universe, no possibility of human progress, no such thing as universal morality, nothing that is inherently evil. Such a universe is apparently, for Gray, “as mysterious as one suffused with divinity” (p. 158).

It seems, however, that even Gray has been unable to escape the shadow of monotheism that the atheists he critiques still sit under. In his criticism of the secular humanist notion that humanity is progressing, Gray asks (p. 38):

“In what sense is a Nazi, a communist or an Islamist an improvement on an ancient Epicurean, Stoic or Taoist? How are the murderous political creeds of modern times better than the traditional faiths of the past?”

The point of the questions lands well. Humanity certainly has not progressed. But the questions assume the moral depravity of Nazis, or Islamists, or of ‘murderous political creeds’ to make its point. Similarly, in his criticism of modern ‘Evangelical Liberalism’, Gray repeats his contention that human progress is an illusion, yet, he writes of these liberals (p. 92):

“This has not prevented liberals from attempting to install their values throughout the world in a succession of evangelical wars. Possessed by chimerical visions of universal human rights, western governments have toppled despotic regimes … in order to promote a liberal way of life in societies that have never known it. In doing so they destroyed the states through which the despots ruled, and left nothing durable in their place. The result has been anarchy, followed by the rise of new and often worse kinds of tyranny.”

Again, the point is well made. In attempting to ‘save’ the world and bring order, modern liberals have often made things worse. But against what yardstick is Gray able to describe one kind of tyranny as ‘worse’ than another?

At their root, these criticisms are moral criticisms. They assume anarchy is bad, that tyranny is wrong, that imposing one’s views on another group is immoral. Indeed, Gray seems to have some idea of what progress might look like, only he disagrees with humanists and liberals that progress has occurred.

Though nowhere explicitly stated, it seems Gray has a vision of ‘progress’ for the world – the world that could be if only “free-thinking atheism” that abandoned “faith in humanity” reigned (quotations from p. 157). If everyone saw the world as it really is – a world of no objective value, in which there is no one correct way of life – then everyone could live in peace, do their own thing, and play, with no tyrannical idealists imposing their views on others. At its heart, the atheism that Gray finds compelling is shot through with the same Christian assumptions he criticises. He has an implicit understanding of what (to him) progress and freedom would look like. He is repelled by the cruelty he sees in humans (and, arguably, intuitively sees it as ‘intrinsically evil’). He assumes that certain moral values should be universal, most crucially, that of respecting others’ autonomy.⁵

The one major difference between Gray and the atheists he criticises is the impossibility of humanity’s moral progress that he assumes. However, in believing that moral progress is impossible, that humanity “cannot do anything” (p. 31), Gray is no less indebted to Christianity. Indeed, such an assumption runs throughout the Bible. The utter inability of humans to save themselves is the central thread of the biblical storyline, which ends with God stepping into the world to do what Man could not. Not only did Christianity give “misery meaning and value” (p. 123), but it also promised to end it once and for all; not through the imposition of a human regime, but through the coming of a kingdom that is not of this world,⁶ entry into which requires giving up the illusion of human sovereignty.

If even Gray is unable to think in a manner consistent with his atheism, then I wonder, how certain can he be that the God presumed by his intuitions does not exist?

1. All references and page numbers, unless otherwise stated, are to the paperback edition: John Gray, Seven Types of Atheism, London, Penguin Books, 2019.

2. George Santayana, Platonism and the Spiritual Life, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1927, 3. Cited on p. 130.

3. Joseph Conrad, Victory: an island tale, with an introduction by John Gray and notes and appendix by Robert Hampson, London, Penguin Books, 2015, 408. Cited on pp. 136-137.

4. Cited in Cedric Watts, A Preface to Conrad, 2^nd edn, London and New York, Longman, 1993, 76-7. Cited on p. 140.

5. Hence the soft-handed approach to his own evangelism within the book.

6. ‘Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.’ John 18:36 (ESV).