Alain de Botton: Religion for Atheists

Alain de Botton’s e book, Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion argues that faith is unfaithful, but helpful. Non secular perception could also be nonsense, nevertheless it’s helpful nonsense. 

He begins by claiming that faith was not handed down from on excessive, miracles are fantasy, and the gods are illusory. He doesn’t consider that his educated readers may presumably consider in ghosts within the sky. But should you count on de Botton to imitate conventional critics of faith—Nietzsche, Freud, Feuerbach—or trendy ones—Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens— you can be upset. As an alternative, he finds some worth in spiritual rituals, pedagogy, and traditions, which assist folks construct group, be ethical, and endure ache. Secularists can be smart to make use of these parts of non secular traditions to construct a secular faith.

We proceed to wish exhortations to be sympathetic and simply, even when we don’t consider that there’s a God who has a hand in wishing to make us so. We now not must be introduced into line by the specter of hell or the promise of paradise; we merely must be reminded that it’s we ourselves … who wish to lead the kind of life which we as soon as imagined supernatural beings demanded of us.

Particular proposals vary from eating places the place strangers would share emotions, to museums organized by themes to help us in considering the profound, to college lecturers adopting the model of Pentecostal preachers. Universities, like so many secular establishments, disseminate data however don’t impart knowledge. (In response, De Botton based the “School of Life.“)

De Botton is true when he says that faith is fake. His declare that it’s helpful could also be partially true, however it’s unclear whether or not this can be a good factor. Positive, many individuals get their morality, group, and luxury from spiritual practices, however Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan get theirs from group practices too. Lest one bristle on the comparability, religions have a lot blood on their fingers. The purpose is that helpful just isn’t the identical as useful—alcohol is beneficial to alcoholics as are weapons to psychopaths.

In equity to de Botton, he believes that just some spiritual practices are useful. Nonetheless, the identical may be mentioned of virtually any apply—beating one’s spouse could generally be useful, maybe she’ll reply to her beating by saying “thanks I wanted that.” The query is whether or not a apply is usually useful, whether or not it causes extra hurt than good. For sure, many thinkers have discovered the declare that spiritual practices trigger extra hurt than good to be true. Depend me amongst them.

There may be additionally the query of whether or not the rituals and traditions may be adopted by secularists, or whether or not they are going to retain their energy when stripped of non secular superstitions. Now if a non secular apply passes the check of scientific respectability, meditation as an illustration, then by all means make use of it. But when gathering in giant teams promotes group however bigotry and hatred as effectively, then I’m not so certain. Making use of such assessments, the one remnants of non secular traditions left would be the few which are scientifically respectable. In that case, one of the simplest ways to proceed within the seek for which means can be continued investigations into the sphere of constructive psychology, happiness research, and different scientific research of how folks can reside happier and extra significant lives. That de Botton doesn’t focus on that is an oversight.

In my opinion, William James provided the very best protection of faith along with his pragmatic argument in “The Will to Believe.” So long as spiritual beliefs and practices work for us, why not consider and apply them? Concepts, as he mentioned, are to be judged by their “money worth.” The issue is that this permits us to consider and apply no matter we would like. The historical past of non secular struggle, cruelty, and torture testify to the issues with doing so. Ultimately, scientific research of human nature are the important thing to understanding what is helpful to society, and all of us, spiritual and non-religious alike, can be finest served to heed their recommendation.