The Monotheism of John Gray
Genealogical projects are origin stories even if they seek to deconstruct that origin. Sometimes genealogies reveal that we are haunted by an origin we cannot quite escape. John Gray’s Seven Types of Atheism is such a project. For Gray, monotheism, particularly Christianity, is the origin we cannot escape. Once monotheism took over the intellectual and religious mind of Western civilization, it became inexorable, as it constantly metastasized into differing forms of monotheisms. The struggle of atheists to escape is merely a continuation of monotheism under different guises.
Gray’s approach is typological, detailing atheism in seven forms: New Atheism, secular humanism, modern political religions, the atheism of God-haters, atheism without an ideal of humanity, and mystical atheism (for a different typology see my writing elsewhere). One might expect some diversity in these seven types, but they turn out to be variations on a theme. If you listen carefully, though, the tune is the same for each. This is not a glitch in the text. Gray’s genealogy seeks to show how a bad idea, monotheism, mutated into a variety of counter-ideas that suffer from perpetual mimicry. His basic sense of intellectual history is that “bad ideas rarely evolve into better ones. Instead they mutate and reproduce themselves in new guises.” In this book, Gray depicts a singularly bad idea—monotheism—as it keeps mutating into different modes, each of which is a disguise for the original bad idea.
While Gray has interesting claims about the genealogies of atheisms, his book is marked by inaccurate readings of various texts and traditions. For instance, Gray claims that Augustine made the first attempt to bring together Greek and Christian thought, which ignores figures from Justin Martyr to Ambrose (Augustine’s teacher). He also claims that Augustine and other Christians attempted to forge an account of theogony, a philosophical idea Augustine actively opposed. More troubling is Gray’s consistent claims that other thinkers provide no arguments for their views. Often Gray’s own claims have no argument and depend on ignoring what those he critiques wrote. For example, he claims that Spinoza “assumed an order that is reflected in the human mind” and that this assumption is “an article of faith.” But Spinoza does not assume this and instead argues for it as an article of reason. Gray cavalierly declares this as an article of faith, and we are apparently to take him on faith.
Nonetheless, it is still worth looking at the book’s key genealogical claims. Gray detects a lingering monotheism in each of his first five atheisms. For Gray, “Contemporary atheism is a continuation of monotheism by other means. Hence, the unending succession of God-surrogates.” He states that he is repelled by the first five atheisms. He is repelled because, in each, he diagnoses monotheism and religion in disguise. The theme arises again and again. A few examples:
“The belief that humans are gradually improving is the central article of faith of modern humanism. When wrenched from monotheistic religion, however, it is not so much false as meaningless.”
“An implacable enemy of Christianity, Nietzsche was also an incurable Christian.”
“Partisans of revolution . . . think they have left religion behind, when all they have done is renew it in shapes they fail to recognize.”
“That the Marquis de Sade describes this [the idea of God] as unforgiveable shows the depth of his hatred of religion. It also shows that he never ceases to be religious.”
“Empson’s targets were those he described as ‘neo-Christians’. . . . He failed to recognize how much he himself was a neo-Christian.”
Gray thinks he is the great unmasker revealing that all these other atheists fail at being atheists. Surprisingly enough, for Gray even some of his preferred thinkers still suffer from the idea of redemption, which they inherit from Christianity. For instance, Schopenhauer “held fast to the belief that the world needed redemption” but should have realized we do not need “deliverance from the world’s insubstantial splendour.” Spinoza wanted thinkers to “immolate themselves on the altar built from metaphysical speculation.” But why immolate oneself on an altar to anything at all?
While some of these claims have merit, each is premised on a kind of rhetorical trick. Imagine if someone tells you that you always disagree with them. You are trapped. If you disagree, you merely provide evidence for your interlocutor’s claim. Likewise, people who disagree with Christianity are shown to in fact be monotheists by the very action of disagreeing with Christianity. In particular, they are monotheists if they utilize values that Gray declares to be inherited from Christianity, such as tolerance, intolerance, human compassion, liberalism, humanitarian projects, and science. For Gray, monotheism is the trap of Western intellectual history. It exerts an inexorable pull on those who live in its wake. With this trap, the more you struggle against it, the more it traps you. Gray writes, “Contemporary atheism is a flight from a godless world. . . . Struggling to escape this vision, atheists have looked for surrogates of the God they have cast aside.” The key then is to give up the struggle to escape.
We do well, then, to return to a future foreclosed by Christianity; we must return to the moment before the trap was sprung. By so doing, we show that the trap itself is contingent. It didn’t have to happen and so we do not have to be trapped. We don’t have to struggle to escape this necessity, because it was never a necessity. All these typologies are continuations of a genealogy that didn’t have to begin. Rather than struggle, we ought to relax and we will then find we slip out of the trap. Nietzsche and Sade fought too hard.
In part, this genealogical relaxation means returning to the ataraxia of the pre-Christian Epicureans. This entails releasing ourselves from the conviction that existence has any meaning and that humanity is something important, or rather, something at all. For Gray, most atheists cannot face this. Christianity had filled existence with meaning; its absence leads atheists to re-fill that meaning and so to fall back into monotheism else “they face panic and despair.” Gray’s advice to these hard-working atheists so concerned with humanity and meaning is the following: “there is no need for panic or despair. Belief and unbelief are poses the mind adopts in the face of unimaginable reality.” Just relax yourself into the reality that life is meaningless, and that humans are just, well, humans.
Gray disapproves of the way modern atheism struggles to escape the meaninglessness of life. For instance, Gray’s chapter on secular humanism is a critique of those who work for the promotion of humanity. They are motivated by a phantasm of humanity and the unsubstantiated idea that people should want to be moral. After critiquing these repellant humanists, Gray contrasts them with the Epicureans: “Ancient atheists were more dispassionate.” Free-thinking atheists should adopt the mood of Lucretius who “beautifully presented” the “attitude they [the Epicureans] cultivated of serene indifference to humankind.” As Gray approvingly describes, such an attitude is that of people on shore, calmly watching as people drown at sea. Serenely observing this, such “Epicureans were content in the tranquil retreat of their secluded gardens.” Free-thinking atheists, like Gray, are content, in contrast to the religious: “Religion is an attempt to find meaning in events.” Events, for Gray, don’t have meaning, morality bears no rational force, and humanity isn’t a reality. We can thus calmly watch others drown because drowning is a meaningless event, because the ethical imperative to be concerned is without rational force, and because humanity is a fantasy. The Epicureans provide a beautiful contrast because they point to a way to relax into ataraxia. They give us a way to surpass our faith in humanity, morality, and meaning, which are just masks for God. This is how we can slip out of the trap of religion.
For Gray, Epicureans or free-thinking atheists can “step out” of monotheism if they only accept the world as they find it. Notably, Gray provides no argument that the world is as he claims it is. For him, humanity is just a construct, universal ethics are always faith-based, life is just about birth, dying, and copulation, and a correct way of life cannot be found by reason. Most of us suffer illusions that keep us from seeing the world as Gray does. We are to take his word on it; we are to take it on faith. If we do, we will be saved from the trap of monotheism and liberated for the subtle but real pleasures of life. However, Gray’s escape ends up “proving” his point. He is repelled by atheists who fall into faith, repelled by atheists who see a need for salvation, repelled by atheists who think we need to know the truth of the human situation, repelled by atheists who think there is a truth to morality. And yet, Gray falls into the same situation with a book replete with a faith, a soteriology, and an ethic. His Way of Epicurean relaxation turns out to be another iteration of the monotheism that he sees as the genesis of these other atheisms.
At the end of Gray’s typologies of atheism, we find we are still trapped. Unless there is another option that the seven atheisms, plus Gray’s, have missed. Perhaps, the persistence of the bad idea of monotheism—the trap we keep falling into—is evidence that it is not a bad idea nor the genesis of bad ideas. Perhaps it is not a trap at all. Perhaps it is the Truth that will set us free.
Triptych of the Religion of Atheism di Marc Vinciguerra
