Review: Religion for Atheists

Religion for Atheists (like Alain de Botton's other books) is fluently and entertainingly written. The arguments are cogent and well made. I didn't agree with everything in the book, but it certainly put out some interesting ideas.

One thing that surprised me was that, unlike some of his other books (such as The Consolations of Philosophy), it did not reference many other writers or efforts in this field, although it generously acknowledged the efforts of Auguste Comte to invent a universal religion in the 19th century. The acknowledgements at the end did mention Richard Holloway, Daniel Dennett, Mark Vernon and so on. I was a bit surprised there was no mention of Karen Armstrong, since she has done much to move the debate on from whether religions are literally true to whether they are of value.

Perhaps a supplementary work could survey the history of religion for atheists, liberal religion, creedless religion, the development of humanism, pantheism, naturalism and so on.

The basic premise of the book is that many of the areas of endeavour for religions - encouraging us to be more compassionate, build communities, connect with nature, and spend time reflecting and meditating - have been badly secularised, and in some cases not secularised at all.

Where, asks de Botton, are the temples of values such as compassion, community and love? Where are the secular places where we can be reminded that we are not alone in our suffering, and thereby be cathartically relieved of it?

The book also points out the techniques by which religions inculcate values into their practitioners: by having special days and special rituals to enshrine these values in our hearts, and by repeating these festivals on a regular basis, and allowing us to share our responses to suffering, beauty and love in a communal setting.

Actually, many of these techniques have been continued in liberal religions which welcome atheists without trying to change their mind about being atheists, such as Buddhism, Paganism, and Unitarianism. But Western practitioners of these religions - which may have thrown the baby out with the bath water in some aspects of their religious life - would do well to read Religion for Atheists to see what we have omitted. One obvious thing is the use of images, which many Unitarian chapels do not have.

The bit I was not sure I agreed with was the idea that institutions are a good thing. In many ways they are, and it would be great if lone thinkers like Nietzsche could have been accommodated somewhere where they could get on with thinking and writing, and not have to worry where the next meal was coming from - but perhaps Nietzsche's thought would have been very different if he had been a tenured professor. Institutions can be stultifying, produce conformity and complacency, and persecute minorities.

I do agree that the most boring question you can ask of a religion is whether it is true. Taking the story literally, whether you decide that it’s true or false, kills the multiple meanings that can be teased out of the story. It also ignores the many other great stories which follow the same mythological pattern: Isis and Osiris, Orpheus and Eurydice, Inanna and Dumuzi. The endless arguments about whether miracles can really happen, whether the earth was created, and whether God was really a man in Palestine, are boring to people who want to move on from the question of whether the story is literally true, to whether it will help us to live well.

The section on Auguste Comte's universal religion was very interesting. I suspect that his religion failed for several reasons; the fact that it was the idea of one person; but also the fact that it did not grow and emerge organically. Religions are like languages - they evolve and grow in their particular cultural and historical context. Esperanto failed as a universal language because it was not wedded to a culture and did not grow organically. Latin succeeded in remaining the lingua franca in Europe for several centuries after it ceased to be the language of Rome because people wanted to buy into the values of Romanitas and perpetuate the order and culture of the Roman Empire. The religions that will emerge from the wreckage of traditional religious belief in the West will be ones that builds on the traditions of the past, not a newly-invented one. Alain de Botton may well be hailed as a prophet in this newly emergent religion, but I doubt that he will be regarded as its founder - and I'm sure he wouldn't want to be.

As Richard Holloway pointed out in his review, I suspect the people who will like this book will be atheists and agnostics who are already involved in liberal religious organisations like the Sea of Faith, Unitarianism, pantheism, Paganism, Buddhism and so on. I certainly recommend it, and hope that it will start a more thoughtful conversation about where religion comes from, where it is now, and where it is going.

What is the source of morality?

Recently, when the US state of Georgia decided to execute Troy Davis, and the state of Texas decided to execute Lawrence Brewer, many bloggers wrote some heartfelt and moving articles arguing against the death penalty. I wrote one myself outlining what I think are the reasons for abolishing the death penalty.

Many of the Christian blog posts on the subject focussed on the commandments of God and/or Jesus as a basis for the ethical argument for abolishing the death penalty. The trouble is, there will be many Christians who think the opposite, and will probably find some Biblical text or other to justify their position.

I think you probably can make quite a good case that Jesus was against the death penalty, as in the story where he saves the woman taken in adultery from being stoned to death by saying "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone". On the other hand, he is also recorded as saying "I come not to bring peace, but a sword" and "if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off"; so in order to work out what Jesus' ethical stance was on anything in particular, we have to select the texts that support our argument. So wouldn't it be easier to work out whether something is right or wrong without reference to Jesus' views, or indeed God's commandments, which are similarly ambivalent ("Thou shalt not kill" as part of the Ten Commandments, but lots of injunctions to stone people to death for various infringements of the Law).

The death penalty is not wrong because Jesus was against it, or because it's against God's commands as handed down in the Bible. It's wrong for far more basic reasons than that; because you can never know to what extent the person was responsible for what they were doing when they committed murder, or to what extent they might change. They may well be innocent, as evidence is not 100% reliable. Killing is wrong because it cuts short someone's life and does them extreme harm.

The Golden Rule (attested to by every religion) says that we should do unto others as we would have them to do unto us - and being killed is pretty high on the list of things we would not like to have done to us. (The fact that a version of this rule has been worked out by every major religion suggests that it transcends cultural context and is based on universal human experience). God's commands (and Jesus' ethical stance) can be interpreted one way by one group of people, and another by a different group of people; so the Bible is not a reliable guide to ethics. It's got some rattling good stories in it, which when pondered can produce some interesting insights, but I would not use it as a guide to ethics.

So what is the source of morality? According to Richard Holloway, author of the excellent book Godless morality, morality is based on weighing two conflicting good things. So, in deciding whether abortion is ethical, one weighs the good of the life of the foetus against the good of the mother who may or may not bring it to term. In the case of the death penalty, it cannot benefit the victim of the crime to have the perpetrator killed. Society should be protected from the possibility that the perpetrator might repeat their crime, but the life of the perpetrator outweighs the cost of maintaining them in prison as opposed to killing them. There is also the very valid point that carrying out the sentence places a burden of distress on the people who carry it out.

The source of moraliy is not some absolute command handed down from on high (the very absolutism of which can often cause more distress than it alleviates) but the pragmatic considerations of the context in which the ethical decisions must be made: who benefits? who suffers? and to what extent?