...Gray’s new book, Seven Types of Atheism (FSG, Oct.), takes that argument a step further by maintaining that many strands of atheism replace traditional religion with a worship of the human being. Though godless, much of what is called "atheist" is actually religious, says Gray. He asserts that the only difference between traditional atheism and religion is that instead of the worship of a monotheistic God, atheists find faith in humanity and its ability to improve as a species, and uses uprisings of the working class and technology as examples. But first, Gray establishes the different schools of thought among atheists in the book.
...The author says the seven types of atheism can sometimes meld into each other—but he contends that only two are true forms of an absence of belief in the existence of deities.
“Truer forms of atheism are ones that shed monotheistic thinking, not just monotheistic beliefs,” said Gray. “Modern atheists are constantly trying to find surrogates for the god they reject—science for example, political surrogates, belief in human progress, or whatever. I think to be a true atheist, you would dispense with those, and live in a world that was truly godless.”
Instead, Grays said, the true types of atheism are “an atheism without any belief in the human progress of civilization, and an atheism of silence,” which he compares to religious traditions that talk about God as being indefinable. It is these last two types of atheism that he embraces....