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Informationen zum Autor John Gray Klappentext From the provocative author of Straw Dogs comes an incisive, surprising intervention in the political and scientific debate over religion and atheism When you explore older atheisms, you will find that 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 vaguely understood "science." John Gray's stimulating and enjoyable new book, Seven Types of Atheism , describes the complex, dynamic world of older atheisms, a tradition that is, he writes, in many ways intertwined with and as rich as religion itself. Along a spectrum that ranges from the convictions of "God-haters" like the Marquis de Sade to the mysticism of Arthur Schopenhauer, from Bertrand Russell's search for truth in mathematics to secular political religions like Jacobinism and Nazism, Gray explores the various ways great minds have attempted to understand the questions of salvation, purpose, progress, and evil. The result is a book that sheds an extraordinary light on what it is to be human. Inhaltsverzeichnis 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 ...
