Are Liberal Principles Just Godless Versions of Christian Myths?
John Gray’s cheap shot at liberal atheism
John Gray is my kind of old school, existential atheist. His book Straw Dogs delves into some dark, illiberal implications of atheism, those that Nietzsche emphasized and that the “new atheists” downplayed.
For Nietzsche, God’s “death” is a catastrophe, and Gray explores the outer reaches of a nondelusional, naturalistic worldview that’s consistent with atheism. I do the same in my writings.
But one of Gray’s arguments bugs me because of its weakness and cheapness. In Black Mass and especially in Seven Types of Atheism, Gray condemns liberal secular humanism for being a mere incoherent imitation of Christianity or of monotheism. Gray relates some history about how the liberal ideas of progress emerged from sanctimonious Christian theology that the atheist is supposed to have rejected.
Thus, Gray’s heroic atheists are the darker truth-tellers: George Santayana, Joseph Conrad, Arthur Schopenhauer, Baruch Spinoza, and Lev Shestov. These are atheists who don’t subscribe to the liberal’s myth of progress, and whose naturalistic mysticism keeps them humble rather than dogmatic and arrogant.
I, too, have questioned the secular concept of progress, and I agree with Gray…
