This book is truly the best modern book I have read on the subject of God vs. No God—since, that is, Hans Küng's "Does God Exist" published in 1978, which I read some 35 years ago. Thanks to Gray, I just pulled Küng off my bookshelf and put it in my "read again" pile.Gray's book is thought provoking, illuminating and appropriately challenging to me, a believing Christian. (Thank you, Jesus! Oh yes--also, thank you, Pascal, Boethius, Aquinas and Küng). Gray, a self-professed atheist, attempts to describe various flavors of atheism that have been offered up by intellectuals especially during the last 300 years. Gray places atheists into 7 pigeonholes out of respect for William Empson, whom he places in pigeonhole no. 5, the "God-haters." Gray's taxonomy of the 7 species of atheism wasn't totally convincing, (why 7, as opposed to 5, 10 or 12?) although it did provide structure to the work. And in any event, Gray's taxonomy is a whole lot more useful than the meat axe approach of the "New Atheists," Dennett, Dawkins et all, whom Gray dismisses as a "media phenomenon...best appreciated as a form of entertainment." He's right--these charlatans aren't worthy to fasten Nietzsche's sandal.Best of all, Gray has introduced me to several philosophers with whom I was unfamiliar, pointing me in the direction of new researches. After I re-read Küng, I will do exactly that.Now, as Paul Harvey used to say, "the rest of the story."While one reviewer here has criticized Gray for being "intellectually dishonest," I think that, to the contrary, Gray pretty much bared his soul [oops, sorry; as an atheist, he doesn't know he has one] with unflinching honesty in this book. Far from dishonesty, Gray's main deficiency here is being "intellectually incorrect" in places.For example, Gray says on page 28, "It is only with the invention of Christianity that a history of humankind began to be told. Before that point, there was no universal history." This is simply incorrect. We know that the Romans had a number of universal histories—but they are now lost. Also, Herodotus came close to writing a universal history of the known world prior to the Persian wars. Gray says on page 118, "Within Christianity, the problem of evil is insoluble." Gray obviously misunderstood Boethius, Augustine and Aquinas. Or maybe he understands with them but doesn't agree with these philosophers' solutions, or thinks the solutions are unconvincing. However, it is simply incorrect to suggest that no solution has been offered.On occasion, Gray offers up some strange opinions as fact. For example, comparing the millions killed by Lenin and Stalin in the camps with the millions killed by Hitler, while ignoring the millions starved to death in the Ukraine by Stalin, Gray says (p. 89): "The Nazi Holocaust remains an incomparable crime." Really? On page 38, he says that "not having the benefit of later textual discoveries, [John Stuart] Mill could not know in fact which if any of the recorded sayings of Jesus was authentic." This statement suggests that subsequent textual analysis has settled the issue—but it simply has not. See, e.g., the Wikipedia article on the Jesus Seminar. And Gray exaggerates, in my opinion, the impact of some marginal figures in the history of religion, e.g., John Scotus Erigena [p. 30].That said, all in all, this book stands head and shoulders above the tiresome arguments of the New Atheists, repeated ad nauseum on a hundred Youtube videos and in a thousand Internet chatrooms. Believers and nonbelievers alike will profit from reading this book (and then, of course, Küng).