At the same time, I find the postmodern move that basically suggests this to be a cheap move. Foremost, it calls not only the credibility of Hitchens world view into question but that of the all world view as well. Secondly, it sounds eerily familiar to Karl Rahner’s notion of the anonoymous Christian. I mean could you imagine walking up to a “good” Buddhist and telling them that they really are a Christian? Likewise, I find it just as disrespectful to tell someone like Hitchens or whoever what it is that they really believe or what the epistemic status of those believes really are. This is too easy. Hitchens can simply pull the reverse which is what he is actually doing. What we need is a more nuanced view here one in which transcends the notion that one is really operating under religious presumptions or non-religious presumptions. Something a bit more tricky.

“I think this form of discourse puts forward a false dichotmous impasse between faith and religion so as to prevent a real understanding of the commonalities between the two.”

Your point is clear enough: driving wedges between what appear to be conflicting accounts of morality, politics, etc. does not do justice to the common genealogy of each – to say nothing of what each contemporary liberal individual might have to say in their defense.

However, Gray’s point has to do with his first sentence; that is, it is a question of who has the power and who has been usurped. And far from this being a postmodern critique a la Foucault, I think Gray is attempting to point out the fallout effect of a “rampant enlightenment”: savage capitalism, militant democracy, science without value, etc. that one side of the spectrum cannot (or chooses not) to see.

Another point Gray is trying to make is that it’s the perceived blindness of someone like Gray (especially Hitchens!) who does not have the intellectual wherewithal to recognize their own mythic moorings. Regardless of your point about “you pegged me,” I do not believe that people like Hitchens et al would like to be in the same camp as so-called religious folk, and herein lies the problem: finding this neverland of “real understanding” of the “commonalities.”