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The God issue: Religion for atheists
The god issue
Religion without god Atheists need to reclaim the useful bits of religion that have been annexed by the godly, Alain de Botton tells Graham Lawton
No, because I think most of us don’t make up our minds in a rational way. You don’t say “I’m an atheist because I’ve looked at all the evidence and this is what I think.” Similarly you don’t say “I’m religious because I’ve surveyed all the evidence.” So you don’t agree with the “tough-minded critics” who characterise religious people as simpletons and maniacs?
No, not at all. I think that’s very much the Dawkins view that essentially religion is a species of stupidity, and this seems to be very narrow-minded. The central idea of the book is that religion supplies lots of useful and supportive structures that atheists have rejected along with the supernatural. Can you expand on that?
I think the origins of religion are essentially to do with the challenges of living in a community and the challenges of bad stuff happening to us, of which the ultimate is death. Religions are rooted in these needs. They are an attempt to control ourselves, heal ourselves and console ourselves. Some of these manoeuvres are accessible to nonbelievers and some are not. Belief in the afterlife is simply not there for a non-believer. However, the communal rituals might be utterly accessible to non-believers, and rely in no part on anything supernatural. There are some that can be incorporated into secular life without too much difficulty. What kind of rituals do you mean?
I suggest various fanciful and not so fanciful interventions. How do you bind a community? It’s very simple – you need a host. You need 48 | NewScientist | 17 March 2012
someone who introduces people to each other. The modern world is full of gatherings, but they’re not hosted so they remain anonymous. You go to a concert but don’t interact with anyone. You go to the pub, but you don’t talk to anyone apart from the mates that you walked in with. I also look at morality and the need that religions feel to remind people to be good and kind. This is seen as a bit suspicious by secular society. But we are weak-willed. We have aspirations to goodness but just don’t manage it. So it seems important to have reminders of these aspirations.
Profile Alain de Botton is a writer and television presenter based in London. His new book is Religion for Atheists (Hamish Hamilton)
Why have atheists let themselves throw these things away?
I think it’s because of a great intellectual honesty: I cannot scientifically appreciate God so I’m going to have to leave all that behind. I’m going to have to give up all those benefits because something doesn’t make sense. That’s a very honest and very brave, lonely decision. And yet you say that we have secularised badly. What do you mean?
All sorts of things have become impossible because they seem too religious. There are any number of moments in secular life when atheists say “oh, that’s getting a bit religious isn’t it”. I think we need to relax about approaching some of these areas – they don’t belong to religion, religion happened to sit on them. They’re for everybody. Aren’t you just reinventing movements that already exist, such as humanism?
Yes, there have been attempts. Part of what has gone wrong is that people have wanted to start new religions, or rival institutions. The point isn’t so much to start replacement movements as to integrate practices, attitudes and states of mind into secular life.
john Reynolds
Your opening gambit in your new book, Religion for Atheists, is to say, of course religions are not true, and you leave it at that. Does the question not interest you?
Not all atheists have reacted well to your suggestions…
I said that atheists should have temples. Immediately 8 million people on Twitter and Facebook decided to let me know what a terrible idea that was. But the core of their objection was not the idea of putting up a building, but the idea that it would be a replacement for a church. Some atheists argue that we ought to be able to find enough meaning in the grandeur of the natural world. Do you agree?
That’s precisely what I think, but I think we need to structure the encounter with that grandeur a little bit better. Essentially, religions are choreographers of spiritual
“I want to make sure atheists are deriving some of the benefits of religion”
moments, or psychological moments, and on the whole atheists have not been choreographers at all. I think the genius of religions is that they structure the inner life. You have this rather wonderful idea of projecting images from the Hubble space telescope in Piccadilly Circus…
Again, it’s about structure. We can go to the NASA website, but how often do you go? In the chapter on religious pessimism – its emphasis on the darker side of existence – you critique the optimism engendered by science and technology. Why is that a bad thing?
The direction of science is towards progress, and so it gives us a feeling that science is about
to solve everything. My sense is it will solve a lot of things but the timescale is going to be vast. It could be 400 years, it could be 900 years. The scientific world view doesn’t necessarily prepare you for all those things that science is not going to solve in time for you – ultimately, of course, life and death. Whatever the awe-inspiring progress, for the moment at least, we’re in just as much trouble as our medieval ancestors. Religious pessimism is attractive because one of the things that makes life difficult is the assumption that everybody else’s life is OK. Pessimism lays out how it is at its worst. No one lives in that bit all the time, but we probably all have to travel there. So it’s quite useful to have that as a resource.
You see this book as the start of something. Where do you go next?
I’m aiming for practical interventions. This is not just theory. People are looking all the time for things that are missing in the modern world that they might invent some piece of technology to solve. But in the area of how societies are arranged, there is tremendous conservatism. I’m simply trying to get the conversation going in that area. If there’s one thing to take away from the book, it’s that even if you give up on the sky daddy, there are still lots of things on the menu that are available to you. I want to make sure atheists are deriving some of the benefits of religion. That’s really my ambition. n 17 March 2012 | NewScientist | 49
Religion without god Atheists need to reclaim the useful bits of religion that have been annexed by the godly, Alain de Botton tells Graham Lawton
No, because I think most of us don’t make up our minds in a rational way. You don’t say “I’m an atheist because I’ve looked at all the evidence and this is what I think.” Similarly you don’t say “I’m religious because I’ve surveyed all the evidence.” So you don’t agree with the “tough-minded critics” who characterise religious people as simpletons and maniacs?
No, not at all. I think that’s very much the Dawkins view that essentially religion is a species of stupidity, and this seems to be very narrow-minded. The central idea of the book is that religion supplies lots of useful and supportive structures that atheists have rejected along with the supernatural. Can you expand on that?
I think the origins of religion are essentially to do with the challenges of living in a community and the challenges of bad stuff happening to us, of which the ultimate is death. Religions are rooted in these needs. They are an attempt to control ourselves, heal ourselves and console ourselves. Some of these manoeuvres are accessible to nonbelievers and some are not. Belief in the afterlife is simply not there for a non-believer. However, the communal rituals might be utterly accessible to non-believers, and rely in no part on anything supernatural. There are some that can be incorporated into secular life without too much difficulty. What kind of rituals do you mean?
I suggest various fanciful and not so fanciful interventions. How do you bind a community? It’s very simple – you need a host. You need 48 | NewScientist | 17 March 2012
someone who introduces people to each other. The modern world is full of gatherings, but they’re not hosted so they remain anonymous. You go to a concert but don’t interact with anyone. You go to the pub, but you don’t talk to anyone apart from the mates that you walked in with. I also look at morality and the need that religions feel to remind people to be good and kind. This is seen as a bit suspicious by secular society. But we are weak-willed. We have aspirations to goodness but just don’t manage it. So it seems important to have reminders of these aspirations.
Profile Alain de Botton is a writer and television presenter based in London. His new book is Religion for Atheists (Hamish Hamilton)
Why have atheists let themselves throw these things away?
I think it’s because of a great intellectual honesty: I cannot scientifically appreciate God so I’m going to have to leave all that behind. I’m going to have to give up all those benefits because something doesn’t make sense. That’s a very honest and very brave, lonely decision. And yet you say that we have secularised badly. What do you mean?
All sorts of things have become impossible because they seem too religious. There are any number of moments in secular life when atheists say “oh, that’s getting a bit religious isn’t it”. I think we need to relax about approaching some of these areas – they don’t belong to religion, religion happened to sit on them. They’re for everybody. Aren’t you just reinventing movements that already exist, such as humanism?
Yes, there have been attempts. Part of what has gone wrong is that people have wanted to start new religions, or rival institutions. The point isn’t so much to start replacement movements as to integrate practices, attitudes and states of mind into secular life.
john Reynolds
Your opening gambit in your new book, Religion for Atheists, is to say, of course religions are not true, and you leave it at that. Does the question not interest you?
Not all atheists have reacted well to your suggestions…
I said that atheists should have temples. Immediately 8 million people on Twitter and Facebook decided to let me know what a terrible idea that was. But the core of their objection was not the idea of putting up a building, but the idea that it would be a replacement for a church. Some atheists argue that we ought to be able to find enough meaning in the grandeur of the natural world. Do you agree?
That’s precisely what I think, but I think we need to structure the encounter with that grandeur a little bit better. Essentially, religions are choreographers of spiritual
“I want to make sure atheists are deriving some of the benefits of religion”
moments, or psychological moments, and on the whole atheists have not been choreographers at all. I think the genius of religions is that they structure the inner life. You have this rather wonderful idea of projecting images from the Hubble space telescope in Piccadilly Circus…
Again, it’s about structure. We can go to the NASA website, but how often do you go? In the chapter on religious pessimism – its emphasis on the darker side of existence – you critique the optimism engendered by science and technology. Why is that a bad thing?
The direction of science is towards progress, and so it gives us a feeling that science is about
to solve everything. My sense is it will solve a lot of things but the timescale is going to be vast. It could be 400 years, it could be 900 years. The scientific world view doesn’t necessarily prepare you for all those things that science is not going to solve in time for you – ultimately, of course, life and death. Whatever the awe-inspiring progress, for the moment at least, we’re in just as much trouble as our medieval ancestors. Religious pessimism is attractive because one of the things that makes life difficult is the assumption that everybody else’s life is OK. Pessimism lays out how it is at its worst. No one lives in that bit all the time, but we probably all have to travel there. So it’s quite useful to have that as a resource.
You see this book as the start of something. Where do you go next?
I’m aiming for practical interventions. This is not just theory. People are looking all the time for things that are missing in the modern world that they might invent some piece of technology to solve. But in the area of how societies are arranged, there is tremendous conservatism. I’m simply trying to get the conversation going in that area. If there’s one thing to take away from the book, it’s that even if you give up on the sky daddy, there are still lots of things on the menu that are available to you. I want to make sure atheists are deriving some of the benefits of religion. That’s really my ambition. n 17 March 2012 | NewScientist | 49