Ziporyn, Brook. Experiments in Mystical Atheism: Godless Epiphanies from Daoism to Spinoza and Beyond. University of Chicago Press, 2024, 372 pp.

Brook Ziporyn's goal in Experiments in Mystical Atheism (2024) is to defend an alternative form of mysticism, a mysticism that is atheistic and involves very different experiences than standard theistic mysticism.Furthermore, this atheistic mysticism is superior to theistic mysticism.Ziporyn's central claims are intriguing and fairly complex.Below I summarize Ziporyn's central argument, and present some critical remarks.The atheism in Ziporyn's mystical atheism is rather different than the atheism commonly known in the West.Mystical atheism is not materialistic or physicalist (at least not necessarily so).It needs not even be naturalistic since it can allow for the existence of supernatural beings.Prime examples of mystical atheism are Chinese Daoism and Tiantai Buddhism.Especially adherents of the latter are known for worshiping a host of supernatural beings, like bodhisattvas.Nonetheless, according to Ziporyn, they count as atheistic.Mystical atheism also embraces infinity and an ultimate reality beyond space-time.This ultimate reality is, however, very different than a theistic ultimate reality.According to Ziporyn, many common forms of atheism do not go far enough.They retain certain elements as central to their worldview which are "borrowed", or compensations from theistic worldviews.Especially the instance on an ultimate purpose of reality (e.g., an ultimate ethical purpose) signals that many atheists continue to be under the spell of remnants of theism.Ziporyn argues that a truer form of atheism rejects all this.What is then this truer form of atheism?According to Ziporyn, atheism is the rejection of theism and thus the rejection of the existence of God.This goes beyond rejecting the existence of a supreme supernatural being, or even of a creator, since rejecting God means rejecting that reality is in the end purposeful.In theistic worldviews, all of reality is geared towards a purpose.That purpose may be the enactment of God's will, or a realization of God's intention for the universe.According to Ziporyn all theistic traditions share this commitment to an ultimate goal of everything.This goal subsequently shapes (or should shape) all human endeavors.In the book, Ziporyn also traces the origins of the idea of ultimate purposefulness in the West to the thought of Anaxagoras.Where earlier presocratic philosophers suggest an ultimate reality that is much more indeterminate (e.g., Anaximander's