John Gray

[IllegalArgument]

Just wondering if anyone here is familiar with John Gray, no not that Mars-Venus idiot, the British political philosopher. He has written, Straw Dogs, among a number of other books.

Wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_N._Gray

In short he is a critic of the Enlightenment for not recognizing the Christian ideas embedded in it's philosophy. Ideas of human perfectibility which led to pursuit of utopias, ending up in much human misery. I just started reading Black Mass, so I can't really present his arguments in their full force.

Gray, who is an atheist, came onto my radar for two reason, first his criticism of the new atheists, like
Dawkins and Harris. Second, for correctly predicting the return of torture before 9/11.

On the new atheists:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/mar/15/society

On torture, this is reprint, the article was written in 1996:
http://www.newstatesman.com/node/144806

Any one familiar with his writing? Good criticisms?

 

[Manopolus]

Just wondering if anyone here is familiar with John Gray, no not that Mars-Venus idiot, the British political philosopher. He has written, Straw Dogs, among a number of other books.

Wiki page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_N._Gray

In short he is a critic of the Enlightenment for not recognizing the Christian ideas embedded in it's philosophy. Ideas of human perfectibility which led to pursuit of utopias, ending up in much human misery. I just started reading Black Mass, so I can't really present his arguments in their full force.

Gray, who is an atheist, came onto my radar for two reason, first his criticism of the new atheists, like
Dawkins and Harris. Second, for correctly predicting the return of torture before 9/11.

On the new atheists:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/mar/15/society

On torture, this is reprint, the article was written in 1996:
http://www.newstatesman.com/node/144806

Any one familiar with his writing? Good criticisms?

I've heard the name, but haven't actually read any of his works. After reading the Wiki article I might do just that, but can give you no real opinion yet without first reading some of his work.

 

[A'isha]

I've heard the name, but haven't actually read any of his works. After reading the Wiki article I might do just that, but can give you no real opinion yet without first reading some of his work.

Same here. I'm intrigued, but can't really say anything until I actually read what he's written.

I did really like that essay about the "New Atheists", though.

 

[IllegalArgument]

He has clarified some misgiving I had about the new atheists, I think he is mostly right about the
Christian undertones of the Enlightenment. Communism was an outgrowth of the Enlightenment,
it has all the same notes, a long struggle by the workers against the forces of evil, then victory which results in a once size fits all utopia. It fits the Christian narrative to the letter, when you look at in
detail like Gray.
Replace, workers with free market, socialism; evil with government, religion, Jews, or their favorite scapegoat and you begin to see the pattern. Usually, the end result of one of these schemes is a failed utopia built on pile of bones. I'm overgeneralizing here, please read for yourself.

 

[bobwtfomg]

I read "Al quieda and what it means to be modern" a couple of years ago and have to say I was totally unimpressed, IIRC the only times he ever tried to subststantiate his opinionated assertions was by quoting works of fiction.

I won't bother reading anything else by him.

 

[tsig]

Same here. I'm intrigued, but can't really say anything until I actually read what he's written.

I did really like that essay about the "New Atheists", though.

The part where he compared atheists to Hitler?

He used Christian antisemitic demonology in his persecution of Jews, and the churches collaborated with him to a horrifying degree. But it was the Nazi belief in race as a scientific category that opened the way to a crime without parallel in history. Hitler's world-view was that of many semi-literate people in interwar Europe, a hotchpotch of counterfeit science and animus towards religion. There can be no reasonable doubt that this was a type of atheism, or that it helped make Nazi crimes possible.


So even though Hitler was a Catholic, he was really an atheist.

 

[A'isha]

The part where he compared atheists to Hitler?

No, that would be the part where he responds to Dawkins' "simple-minded reasoning", pointing out the Nazi genocide was was at least as fueled by non-religious racial pseudoscience as it was by religious anti-Semitism, showing that simply removing religion from the equation does not produce enlightened progressive liberal societies (and, indeed, sometimes results in just the opposite).

Which is the entire point of Gray's essay as a whole.

 

[Dinwar]

I haven't read much of his work, but I've liked what little I've read. His article on New Atheism certainly hits on several points that I've mentioned being problematic in the past.

I will say that in the article he seems to be going a tad far, however. New Atheism includes scientists, who are trained to argue for particular conclusions. That's what we DO, it's fundamentally what science IS. To complain that Dawkins, who seems to annoy him most, does that with religion seems a bit odd; that's what Dawkins does in all his writings. I'll grant that many New Atheists take things to an absurd extreme (PZ differs in degree, not in kind), but accusing them of evangelizing isn't exactly an accurate view of what's going on. By that definition, ANY attempt to convince a population of some conclusion is evangelism.

IIRC the only times he ever tried to subststantiate his opinionated assertions was by quoting works of fiction.

In other words, he's not substantially different from 99% of all comentators on religious issues, and far superior to most on this forum. And at least he doesn't assert that he doesn't NEED to understand the other side.

 

[A'isha]

I'll grant that many New Atheists take things to an absurd extreme (PZ differs in degree, not in kind), but accusing them of evangelizing isn't exactly an accurate view of what's going on. By that definition, ANY attempt to convince a population of some conclusion is evangelism.

Well, technically it is. But Gray is specifically accusing them of having the same missionary zeal for spreading the "good news" of atheism and wanting to convert the populace and transform society to conform with that "good news", in a direct mirror image of the religious evangelicals who have a missionary zeal to spread the "good news" of Christianity and want to convert the populace and transform society to conform with that "good news":

Zealous atheism renews some of the worst features of Christianity and Islam. Just as much as these religions, it is a project of universal conversion. Evangelical atheists never doubt that human life can be transformed if everyone accepts their view of things, and they are certain that one way of living - their own, suitably embellished - is right for everybody. To be sure, atheism need not be a missionary creed of this kind. It is entirely reasonable to have no religious beliefs, and yet be friendly to religion. It is a funny sort of humanism that condemns an impulse that is peculiarly human. Yet that is what evangelical atheists do when they demonise religion.

 

[IllegalArgument]

I must make a correction. Gray's modest proposal was made post 9/11, before the Iraq war and any hint of the relaxation of torture restrictions.

 

[Mister Agenda]

I hadn't heard the idea that a society losing relgion automatically makes it more liberal, the usual claim is that it would leave us with one less thing to fight about.

 

[A'isha]

I hadn't heard the idea that a society losing relgion automatically makes it more liberal, the usual claim is that it would leave us with one less thing to fight about.

We'd just pick something else to fight with each other about.

 

[Mister Agenda]

Allen's Law: the number of things to fight about is conserved.

 

[TheDoLittle]

We'd just pick something else to fight with each other about.

Thank god it won't be feminism arguments.

 

[angrysoba]

I've read Black Mass, some time ago. I think he does a fairly good job of explaining what neo-conservatism is as opposed to the strawman characterization of it. But the book is a classic example of how it is easier to write critiques that are unrelentingly pessimistic rather than offer alternatives. In fact, Gray seems to dismiss any possibility of things ever getting better. Things are always bad and attempts to make things better make things worse. He used to be in favour of various different political ideologies and then he wrote critiques of them all dismissing everything.

The article called Modest Proposal didn't predict "the return of torture", it was a satire on Dershowitz's idea that the security services should be able to apply for torture licenses.

 

[Dog Breakfast]

I can't figure out what he believes, not that I've read much at all except what you immediately made available. He railed against the current high-profile sort of atheism so much, but what does he think should be the case?

angrysoba, you mentioned that Black Mass is heavy on dismissal.

Rather than asking John Gray what he dismisses, I would ask him what he doesn't! And again, I'm assuming this question is not difficult to answer since I've read basically nothing but one article he wrote five years ago.

 

[angrysoba]

John Gray is famous for changing his mind on things so what he dismisses one day he may adopt the next.

One of the arguments he makes in Black Mass is to do with eschatology. He points out that the major religions are obviously eschatological in essence and I seem to remember that he said the same about the Enlightenment and Marxism too. And Fukuyama's brand of neo-conservatism was explicitly eschatological.

Except John Gray prefers the term apocalyptic because, he argues, it has the same roots as eschatology and therefore the term apocalyptic is a better way to describe modern political ideology that seeks to make the world better, as though there is some final endpoint that these ideologies see as the end goal of mankind.

On Islamic terrorism, he says it has European intellectual roots, as far as I remember and, I think, he goes some way to agreeing with Niall Ferguson about calling it Islamo-bolshevism (or Islamo-leninism) rather than Islamo-fascism. I think.

I am, admittedly, saying this from memory.

 

[angrysoba]

By the way, I think a John Gray thread is incomplete without the Daily Telegraph's sober review of Black Mass:

The human project to create a perfect society - which grew out of Christian fantasies of the Millennium and produced the deadly fruit of Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot - has died in the sands of Iraq. The attempt to export democracy to the Gulf was so crazy that its failure has killed off not just neoconservative ideology but also utopia itself.

That is the central thesis of John Gray's new book, and it really is a load of bollocks.

...Perhaps aware that he is running short of neocons to man his conspiracy, Gray presses Tony Blair into service. The former Prime Minister was not only a classic neocon, we learn, but one whose mendacity bore the stamp of Soviet disinformation: an American poodle and a red under the bed. Bush, though, is not so much a slippery neocon as an old-style fundamentalist Christian whose policies are designed to hasten global warming (sound of box being ticked) and therefore the end of the world. The CIA, meanwhile, has been taken over by shape-shifting lizards telepathically controlled by the ghost of Milton Friedman.

OK, so perhaps that last sentence misrepresents Gray's argument; but Black Mass could hardly be more bonkers if it really was crawling with lizards.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3666292/From-Uncle-Joe-to-the-boy-George.html

My own copy of the book uses the quotes "A load of old bollocks...could hardly be more bonkers if it was crawling with lizards."

 

[theprestige]

Interesting.

I've always interpreted Christianity as holding that humanity is not perfectible by its own efforts, but only by the grace of God; and that humanity is not perfectible in this life, but in the next. Thus the lesson of Christianity is to be obedient, to be faithful, and to endure until the next life (leaving aside some few extremists who believe in a precipitational rapture).

Contrast with, say, Communism, which typically holds that god does not exist, that humanity is perfectible by its own efforts, and that it is perfectible in this life. This is Leninism in a nutshell, and explains the horrific excesses of the USSR and the PRC. For once you have concluded that humanity can perfect itself, it's hard to justify holding back from any act that will lead to that perfection--including the ruthless pruning of willfully or incorrigibly imperfect humans.

In communism, imperfect humanity is a treatable condition. In Christianity, it's a state that must be endured until the next world comes.

That's my analysis, anyway. I think Gray's analysis is superficial and reaches overmuch in attempting to find the congruency he claims.

 

[godless dave]

No, that would be the part where he responds to Dawkins' "simple-minded reasoning", pointing out the Nazi genocide was was at least as fueled by non-religious racial pseudoscience as it was by religious anti-Semitism, showing that simply removing religion from the equation does not produce enlightened progressive liberal societies.

When has Dawkins or anyone else claimed that?