Alain de Botton, the acclaimed author of “The Consolations of Philosophy” has written another book, “Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion”. This one could have easily been called The Consolations of Religion.
The similarity between these two books lies in the common approach used by the author. In the first book he has tried (and has succeeded!) to go across a good deal of philosophy and to extract from it ideas, concepts and role models that could be applied to the everyday life and its problems such as Unpopularity, Not having Enough Money, Frustration, Inadequacy, a broken Heart and Difficulties.
Now he proceeded in the same way with religion – he reads it not as a compendium of cosmological truths or exact depictions of alternative worlds (paradise/hell), but as a powerful source of solutions to the difficulties we encounter in our daily lives: loneliness, quest for community, moral support, role models and inspiration.
Taken this way, argues Botton, religion represents a useful strategy to be used along our secular ways – science, technology – in order to create harmony, mutual understanding and ethical guidance.
Botton’s approach is quite simple: he makes religion (previously philosophy) accessible for the average Joe.
But to be fair, he has also another reader in mind: the militant atheists who dismiss religion entirely, in the name of science, technology, psychiatry or common sense. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and to a lesser extent Bill Maher or George Carlin would qualify for this category.
To be fair, Botton’s way of approaching religion is also biased: he sees in it only the bright sides while putting aside the dark ones. For example, the intense feeling of community that religion provides for its members is almost always accompanied by a feeling of exclusion and sometimes even hatred for the non-members or for the members of other religious groups.
One of the greatest points of the book is to demonstrate how inappropriate for social harmony and community our secular ways of living are.
Universities have long ago abandoned the idea of being not merely transmitters of knowledge and skills, but also educators of citizens and moral persons. More sermon-style lectures, suggests Botton.
Art has also renounced to preach or to teach what a good life is and has made a virtue from being non-engaged. Art should be used as a teacher. Religious art is an example of how to do it.
Public spaces are arranged in a way that helps separate human beings instead of putting them together. Airports or train stations, for example, with their huge crowds of anonymous persons going to or coming from somewhere represent an illustrative example of this tendency: “ they conspire to project a demeaning picture of our identities, which undermines our capacity to hold on to the idea that every person is necessarily the centre of a complex and precious individuality. It can be hard to stay hopeful about human nature after a walk down Oxford Street or a transfer at O’Hare.”
To these Botton opposes the solidarity and fraternity encountered in a church. Recently Botton has gone so far as to argue that we need to erect an atheist temple!
Food, another great unifier, has been transformed into a great divider: “The contemporary world is not, of course, lacking in places where we can dine well in company – cities typically pride themselves on the sheer number and quality of their restaurants – but what is significant is the almost universal lack of venues that help us to transform strangers into friends…The focus is on the food and the décor, never on opportunities for extending and deepening affections.” Ritual and religious food consumption is anything but anonymous, argues Botton. In religion food creates and maintains community.
There is, in the book, an implicit critique of militant atheism, the one that believes people are just blinded by religion and once the “veil of lies” is destroyed religious beliefs will just disappear. As if, the fact that religious cosmology does not fit into Einstein’s relativity theory or its cosmology cannot be integrated with the theory of the Big Bang, is somehow enough to erode faith.
Religion, as Alain de Botton convincingly shows, operates at many levels: on the individual psychological, on the societal, on the communal, on the spatial, on the cosmic, on the ethical and on the ontological levels.
The failure of the Soviet anti-religious propaganda could prove instructive to defend Botton’s point of view. Here are two examples.
In the novel “Sowers of seed” (russ. Сеятели) written by Mikhail Gh. Ciubotaru, a Communist activist is confronted with the fact that the entire village has gone to the cemetery in order to honor their dead. When he tries to help the people put the cemetery in order, the local party boss admonishes him by pointing out that to encourage cemetery-going contradicts the Communist policy of eradicating religion. The activist answers: I thought it is good to take care of the dead. I also believe you cannot just destroy the church and not to replace it with something at least as meaningful.
The second example comes from the Soviet anti-religious movie “Тучи над Борском” (Clouds over Borsk, 1960), where a young pioneer discovers that a colleague of her is a believer. Shocked and in tears, the girl points out to the deficiencies of the militant atheism of the Soviet state: We do not have a spiritual approach to our fellow citizens! (russ. "Нету у нас душевного подхода к человеку.")
As long as secular science is not able to offer role models, ethical systems, guidance in everyday life and a sense of community, the appeal of religion will be still alive, and its various functions still useful.
To sum: Alain de Botton’s book represents a wonderful atheist apology of religion.
