जॉन ग्रे यांची सात प्रकारची नास्तिकता आणि म वा धोंड....Faiths of Tukaram, M V Dhond and John Grey

 "... मी नास्तिक आहे- संदेहवाद्यांसारखा अर्धवट नास्तिक नव्हे, तर संपूर्ण- तरीही मी अश्रद्ध नाही. माझी विठ्ठलावर आणि वारकरी संतांवर अपार श्रद्धा आहे... तुकाराममहाराजही माझ्यासारखेच नास्तिक होते..." 

(पृष्ठ १००, 'ऐसा विटेवर देव कोठें!', २००१)

हे संपूर्ण वाक्य गोंधळात टाकणारे आहे. 

नास्तिक पण विठ्ठलावर श्रद्धा , मग नास्तिक कसे? आणि तुकाराममहाराजांना ह्या गोंधळात ते का ओढत आहेत: माझ्यासारखेच नास्तिक होते" म्हणत?   

हा सगळा पुरोगामी डोक्यांमधला गोंधळ आहे.

ते पाहून मी ठरवले हे जरा जॉन ग्रे ह्यांच्या गाजलेल्या "Seven Types of Atheism", 2018 ह्या पुस्तकात तपासून पाहू. 

ग्रे त्यांच्या ७ प्रकारच्या नास्तिकता खालील शब्दात वर्णन करतात :

"... The first of them – the so-called ‘new atheism’ – contains little that is novel or interesting. After the first chapter, I will not refer to it again. The second type is secular humanism, a hollowed-out version of the Christian belief in salvation in history. Third, there is the kind of atheism that makes a religion from science, a category that includes evolutionary humanism, Mesmerism, dialectical materialism and contemporary transhumanism. Fourth, there are modern political religions, from Jacobinism through communism and Nazism to contemporary evangelical liberalism. Fifth, there is the atheism of God-haters such as the Marquis de Sade, Dostoevsky’s fictional character Ivan Karamazov and William Empson himself. Sixth, I will consider the atheisms of George Santayana and Joseph Conrad, which reject the idea of a creator-god without having any piety towards ‘humanity’. Seventh and last, there are the mystical atheism of Arthur Schopenhauer and the negative theologies of Benedict Spinoza and the early twentieth-century Russian-Jewish fideist Leo Shestov, all of which in different ways point to a God that transcends any human conception...."

आता सहावी आणि सातवी नास्तिकता पहा. भारतातले आपण जवळजवळ सर्वच जण त्यातील एकातरी प्रकारात बसतो. "reject the idea of a creator-god without having any piety towards ‘humanity’.किंवा 'all of which in different ways point to a God that transcends any human conception'. 

 पण सध्या भारतातील 'पुरोगाम्यां'मधेएक ते पाच ह्या प्रकारातील नास्तिकता पसरली आहे. कळत, न कळत ती नास्तिकता म्हणजे खरी नास्तिकता असा प्रचार केला जातो. 

भारतात त्याचा प्रसार एकोणिसाव्या शतकात जॉन स्टुअर्ट मिल यांच्या पुस्तकांपासून सुरु झाला. 

"... Generations of atheists have lived in expectation of the arrival of a truly human species: the communal workers of Marx, Mill’s autonomous individuals and Nietzsche’s absurd Übermensch, among many others. None of these fantastical creatures has been seen by human eyes. A truly human species remains as elusive as any Deity. Humanity is the deus absconditus of modern atheism.

A free-thinking atheism would begin by questioning the prevailing faith in humanity. But there is little prospect of contemporary atheists giving up their reverence for this phantom. Without the faith that they stand at the head of an advancing species they could hardly go on. Only by immersing themselves in such nonsense can they make sense of their lives. Without it, they face panic and despair.

According to the grandiose theories today’s atheists have inherited from Positivism, religion will wither away as science continues its advance. But while science is advancing more quickly than it has ever done, religion is thriving – at times violently. Secular believers say this is a blip – eventually, religion will decline and die away. But their angry bafflement at the re-emergence of traditional faiths shows they do not believe in their theories themselves. For them religion is as inexplicable as original sin. Atheists who demonize religion face a problem of evil as insoluble as that which faces Christianity.

If you want to understand atheism and religion, you must forget the popular notion that they are opposites....

... Contemporary atheism is a continuation of monotheism by other means. Hence the unending succession of God-surrogates, such as humanity and science, technology and the all-too-human visions of transhumanism. But there is no need for panic or despair. Belief and unbelief are poses the mind adopts in the face of an unimaginable reality. A godless world is as mysterious as one suffused with divinity, and the difference between the two may be less than you think."

कृतज्ञता : दोन्ही पुस्तकांचे मुखपृष्ठकार आणि प्रकाशक आणि लेखक किंवा त्यांचे कॉपीराईट होल्डर्स