Hmm …

… The Atheist Illusion - Los Angeles Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Thankfully, Gray spends little time on the New Atheists, getting them out of the way in the perfunctory first chapter, while acknowledging that their contributions to disbelief, while the most recent and the most visible among the wider public, they’re also historically the least interesting. Rather, he spends most of his time giving a fuller taxonomy of the ways to not believe in God that go beyond the middle-class affectations of a Hitchens or Dawkins. Seven Types of Atheism categorizes its subject in the same number of broad tenets, with Gray including alongside the suburban New Atheists more provocative tribes of non-sectarians such as those who’ve made a religion of science, those who’ve made a religion of radical politics, those who’ve embraced a misotheistic hatred of God, and finally two categories for whom Gray has an obvious affection: the disbeliever who still sees the utility of religious ritual and the apophatic visionary for whom, paradoxically, “some of the most radical forms of atheism may in the end be not so different from some mystical varieties of religion.”

I know a bit about "some mystical varieties of religion."  The via negativa figures prominently in the Thomism I was instructed in. Simon says he has been trying throughout his career to discover what the word God means exactly. Well, I don't know what his parameters of exactness are, but for me God is the principle of intelligence and personality inherent in being. That is what I think Heraclitus was getting at with his notion of the Logos and what Lao-tse was trying to get across with the notion of the Tao. As for Jesus, the Chinese translation of the prologue to John's Gospel works for me: "In the beginning was the Tao and the Tao was with God and the Tao was God." I do not think that God can be defined much beyond that. But I do think God can be experienced, which is why an authentic prayer life, with its doubts and darknesses, is essential. As Karl Rahner said, "In the days ahead, you will either be a mystic (one who has experienced God for real) or nothing at all."