John Gray

Seven Types of Atheism (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
'A highly readable, fascinating book that jerks the debate on religion versus atheism right out of its crusted rut into the light of serious intellectual scrutiny' Observer

A meditation on the importance of atheism in the modern world - and its inadequacies and contradictions - by one of Britain's leading philosophers

'When you explore older atheisms, you will find some of your firmest convictions - secular or religious - are highly questionable. If this prospect disturbs you, what you are looking for may be freedom from thought.'

For a generation now, public debate has been corroded by a shrill, narrow derision of religion in the name of an often very vaguely understood 'science'. John Gray's stimulating and extremely enjoyable new book describes the rich, complex world of the atheist tradition, a tradition which he sees as in many ways as rich as that of religion itself, as well as being deeply intertwined with what is so often crudely viewed as its 'opposite'.

The result is a book that sheds an extraordinary and varied light on what it is to be human and on the thinkers who have, at different times and places, battled to understand this issue.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Penguin Books Ltd
• Erscheinungstermin: 26. April 2018
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780241199428
• Artikelnr.: 49584429

Autorenporträt

John Gray's major books include Straw Dogs, Black Mass and The Silence of Animals. A second edition of his essays, Gray's Anatomy, was published in 2016. He now principally writes for the New Statesman.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction: How to be an Atheist
What religion is not
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
Conclusion
Living without belief or unbelief