SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE CATHOLIC HERALD BOOK AWARD FOR RELIGION AND THEOLOGYA NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019Wonderful ... one of the few books that I started to reread a couple of minutes after Id finished it. Melvyn Bragg A meditation on the importance of atheism in the modern world and its inadequacies and contradictions by one of Britains leading philosophersWhen you explore older atheisms you will find 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 narrow derision of religion in the name of an often very vaguely understood science. John Grays stimulating and extremely enjoyable new book describes the rich complex world of the atheist tradition a tradition which he sees as in many ways as rich as that of religion itself as well as being deeply intertwined with what is so often crudely viewed as its opposite. The result is a book that sheds an extraordinary and varied light on what it is to be human and on the thinkers who have at different times and places battled to understand this issue.