Shades Of Atheism

New Atheism, in Gray's view, is a cruder version of 19th-century Positivism, the philosophical position holding that the only real knowledge is knowledge acquired through the senses. It's hard materialism, in other words, one that regards metaphysical discussion as simply a matter of subjective preference. In the 19th century, intellectuals generally believed that religion was a phenomenon emerging out of primitive ignorance, a way of knowing that should be discarded in light of science and rationality. This is the basic position of Dawkins et alia, according to Gray.