He seems to agree with the view of some writers, that there are five subsets of atheism: dogmatic, sceptical, critical, philosophical and speculative. I would rather see a spectrum, ranging from mere absence of belief in God or gods, to either a denial of their existence, or the view that since there is neither evidence nor logical argument in favour, and rather good reasons against, a negative result is the only tenable conclusion. There is a chapter on “What is wrong with religion?” – essentially, that it relies on faith – although Harding points out that some religions have no gods. His history of atheism is clear if necessarily very condensed. There is a spirited defence of atheism against the usual silly attacks, e.g. it is just another faith, lots of bad people like Hitler have been atheists (he wasn’t, and in any case it is irrelevant), atheists cannot be moral, if we lose religion we lose all our finer qualities, love, art, music, etc., we all “really” believe in God but atheists won’t admit it, and so on.
