Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion
Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion book cover

Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion

Hardcover – March 6, 2012

by
Price
$23.88
Format
Hardcover
Pages
320
Publisher
Pantheon
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-0307379108
Dimensions
5.5 x 1.11 x 8.32 inches
Weight
1.15 pounds

Description

Q&A with Author Alain De Botton Q: Is it possible to be a good person without religion? A: The problem of the man without religion is that he forgets. We all know in theory what we should do to be good. The problem is that in practice, we forget. And we forget because the modern secular world always thinks that it is enough to tell someone something once (be good, remember the poor etc.) But all religions disagree here: they insist that if anyone is to stand a chance of remembering anything, they need reminders on a daily, perhaps even hourly basis. Q: What do you think of the aggressive atheism we have seen in the past few years? A: I am an atheist, but a gentle one. I don't feel the need to mock anyone who believes. I really disagree with the hard tone of some atheists who approach religion like a silly fairy tale. I am deeply respectful of religion, but I believe none of its supernatural aspects. So my position is perhaps unusual: I am at once very respectful and completely impious. Q: Are you nostalgic for the deeply religious past? A: Like many people, of course I feel nostalgic. How is it possible not to feel nostalgic when you look at 15th frescoes or the rituals of an ancient carnival? However, we have to ask: how should I respond to my nostalgia? My thought is that we can use it creatively, as the basis for a rebirth, for the creation of new things, for the creation of things that later generations will feel nostalgic about... So it frustrates me when people say things like, 'Well, they knew how to build in the 15th century, now it is impossible...' Why! Anything is possible. We should not sigh nostalgically over religion, we should learn from them. We should steal from them. Q: If we were to replace religion with a secular equivalent, who would be our gurus? A: We don't need a central structure. We are beyond the age of gurus and inspirational leaders. We are in the age of the Wiki structure. This means that it is up to all of us to look at religion and see what bits we can steal and place into the modern world. We might all contribute to the construction of new temples, not the government, but the concerned, interested individual. The salvation of the individual soul remains a serious problem--even when we dismiss the idea of God. In the 20th century, capitalism has really solved (in the rich West) the material problems of a significant portion of mankind. But the spiritual needs are still in chaos, with religion ceasing to answer the need. This is why I wrote my book, to show that there remains a new way: a way of filling the modern world with so many important lessons from religion, and yet not needing to return to any kind of occult spirituality. Q: Don't you think that, in order to truly appreciate religious music and art, you have to be a believer--or, at least, don't you think that non-believers miss something important in the experience? A: I am interested in the modern claim that we have now found a way to replace religion: with art. You often hear people say, 'Museums are our new churches'. It's a nice idea, but it's not true, and it's principally not true because of the way that museums are laid out and present art. They prevent anyone from having an emotional relationship with the works on display. They encourage an academic interest, but prevent a more didactic and therapeutic kind of contact. I recommend in my book that even if we don't believe, we learn to use art (even secular art) as a resource for comfort, identification, guidance and edification, very much what religions do with art. Praise for Religion for Atheists “Highly original and thought-provoking book..... de Botton is a lively, engaging writer."— Publishers Weekly starred review “Quirky, often hilarious …Focusing on just three major faiths — Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism — [de Botton] makes a convincing case for their ability to create both a sense of community and education that addresses morality and our emotional life.” – Washington Post “One has to appreciate his pluck as much as his lucid, enjoyable arguments, and this book, like his previous titles, is a serious but intellectually wild ride. If anyone can ‘rescue some of what is beautiful, touching and wise from all that no longer seems true,’ it’s de Botton.” – Miami Herald “[De Botton] demonstrates his usual urbane, intelligent, and witty prose, always entertaining and worth reading…this book will advance amicable discussion among both believers and disbelievers.” —Library Journal “His approach, entertaining and enlightening, provides the thoughtful reader with endless enjoyment and an insight into de Botton's beliefs as well as his generous appraisal of the beliefs of others…brings insight and understanding to how religion may enhance the lives of nonbelievers.” –Shelf Awareness“In earnest and lyrical prose, de Botton illuminates the practical functions of religion in a secular context…compelling.” – Kansas City Star “A new book by Alain de Botton is always a treat…De Botton is literate, articulate, knowledgeable, funny and idiosyncratic.” –Forbes.com “[De Botton] is a master of the well-heeled, chatty and above all reasonable tone… Religion for Atheists is provocative and well-intentioned.” –NPR “A wonderfully dangerous and subversive book.” – San Francisco Chronicle “De Botton writes at his best when he confronts our abiding human frailty…I can't help but wholeheartedly recommend de Botton's new book. It provokes thought…what continuously separates de Botton apart is his genuine attempt to alleviate loneliness and sadness in a harsh world. If only all writers wrote with such unabashedly kind intentions.” – Huffington Post “Much of the book is common-sensical and insightful, as de Botton rescues ‘what is beautiful, touching and wise from all that seems no longer true’…the wealth of knowledge and felicity of phrasing that de Botton brings to his task make for a stimulating read…Written with de Botton's customary humor, grace and melancholy, Religion for Atheists may not always convince. But it always engages.” – Seattle Times “Provocative and thoughtful …Particularly noteworthy are de Botton's insights on what education and the arts can borrow from the formats and paradigms of religious delivery.” – Atlantic “Compelling…beautifully and wittily illustrated.” – Los Angeles Times Praise for The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work “Exquisitely written . . . A perceptive philosophical meditation on work, with its extraordinary claim to provide, along with love, the principal source of meaning in our lives.” —The Boston Globe “The workplace as subject matter brings out the best in de Botton’s writing . . . His wit and his powers of ironic observation are on display throughout [this] stylish and original book.” —The Sunday Times (London)xa0“Like a combination of Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace and pop philosopher Thomas Moore, de Botton’s dense, pensive prose expresses a palpable preoccupation with finding better ways of living in our bewilderingly estranged age.” —Salon Praise for The Architecture of Happiness “A perceptive, thoughtful, original and richly illustrated exercise in the dramatic personification of buildings of all sorts.” —The New York Review of Books “With originality, verve and wit, de Botton explains how we find reflections of our own values in the edifices we make . . . Altogether satisfying.” —San Francisco Chronicle Alain de Botton is the author of essays on themes ranging from love and travel to architecture and philosophy. His best-selling books include How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Art of Travel and The Architecture of Happiness. He lives in London, where he is the founder and chairman of The School of Life (www.theschooloflife.com) and the creative director of Living Architecture (www.living-architecture.co.uk). Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. from Part One: Wisdom without Doctrine 1. The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true – in terms of being handed down from heaven to the sound of trumpets and supernaturally governed by prophets and celestial beings. xa0To save time, and at the risk of losing readers painfully early on in this project, let us bluntly state that of course no religions are true in any God-given sense. This is a book for people who are unable to believe in miracles, spirits or tales of burning shrubbery, and have no deep interest in the exploits of unusual men and women like the thirteenth-century saint Agnes of Montepulciano, who was said to be able to levitate two feet off the ground while praying and to bring children back from the dead – and who, at the end of her life (supposedly), ascended to heaven from southern Tuscany on the back of an angel. 2 .Attempting to prove the non-existence of God can be an entertaining activity for atheists. Tough-minded critics of religion have found much pleasure in laying bare the idiocy of believers in remorseless detail, finishing only when they felt they had shown up their enemies as thorough-going simpletons or maniacs. xa0Though this exercise has its satisfactions, the real issue is not whether God exists or not, but where to take the argument once one decides that he evidently doesn’t. The premise of this book is that it must be possible to remain a committed atheist and nevertheless find religions sporadically useful, interesting and consoling – and be curious as to the possibilities of importing certain of their ideas and practices into the secular realm. xa0One can be left cold by the doctrines of the Christian Trinity and the Buddhist Eightfold Path and yet at the same time be interested in the ways in which religions deliver sermons, promote morality, engender a spirit of community, make use of art and architecture, inspire travels, train minds and encourage gratitude at the beauty of spring. In a world beset by fundamentalists of both believing and secular varieties, it must be possible to balance a rejection of religious faith with a selective reverence for religious rituals and concepts. xa0It is when we stop believing that religions have been handed down from above or else that they are entirely daft that matters become more interesting. We can then recognize that we invented religions to serve two central needs which continue to this day and which secular society has not been able to solve with any particular skill: first, the need to live together in communities in harmony, despite our deeply rooted selfish and violent impulses. And second, the need to cope with terrifying degrees of pain which arise from our vulnerability to professional failure, to troubled relationships, to the death of loved ones and to our decay and demise. God may be dead, but the urgent issues which impelled us to make him up still stir and demand resolutions which do not go away when we have been nudged to perceive some scientific inaccuracies in the tale of the seven loaves and fishes. xa0The error of modern atheism has been to overlook how many aspects of the faiths remain relevant even after their central tenets have been dismissed. Once we cease to feel that we must either prostrate ourselves before them or denigrate them, we are free to discover religions as repositories of a myriad ingenious concepts with which we can try to assuage a few of the most persistent and unattended ills of secular life. Read more

Features & Highlights

  • What if religions are neither all true nor all nonsense?
  • The long-running and often boring debate between fundamentalist believers and non-believers is finally moved forward by Alain de Botton’s inspiring new book, which boldly argues that the supernatural claims of religion are entirely false—but that it still has some very important things to teach the secular world.
  • Religion for Atheists
  • suggests that rather than mocking religion, agnostics and atheists should instead steal from it—because the world’s religions are packed with good ideas on how we might live and arrange our societies. Blending deep respect with total impiety, de Botton (a non-believer himself) proposes that we look to religion for insights into how to, among other concerns, build a sense of community, make our relationships last, overcome feelings of envy and inadequacy, inspire travel and reconnect with the natural world. For too long non-believers have faced a stark choice between either swallowing some peculiar doctrines or doing away with a range of consoling and beautiful rituals and ideas. At last, in
  • Religion for Atheists,
  • Alain de Botton has fashioned a far more interesting and truly helpful alternative.

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Most Helpful Reviews

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Wise, Humane ... and Futile

This books stands markedly outside the norm established by the last wave of books about religion written by atheists (the leading authors including Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, inter alia) as it dares to propose that religious belief is not merely a matter of cowed ignorant masses held in awe by superstition, hierarchy, and fear of what may be in the afterlife. Rather, the book argues that religion's long and deep appeal to so many has been because it addresses legitimate and longstanding human needs that science and strict rationality cannot begin to fathom. Alain de Botton argues even further that atheists need to develop practices and institutions - in dining, in education, in art, in architecture, and elsewhere - that speak to these human needs that stand outside of pure reason and science.

So it is not surprising that the book has received something of an adverse reaction from some militant atheists who cannot abide to hear anything favorable said about religious faith and practice. In many ways, I cannot blame that set, as many of them (as have I) have either observed or experienced the tyranny and abuse dished out by fundamentalism and strict orthodoxy. One print review I read, which led me to purchase and read this book, said that the author has actually received death threats (among lesser harsh criticism) over publishing this book. That's so sad, because there is much in this book that I find wise and humane.

The great strength of this book is that it recognizes that religious institutions and belief are far more complex than acknowledged by the normal run of atheistic writers. De Botton, a thorough humanist and philosopher, understands and presents well why religious art, ritual, and architecture meet the needs of human souls at places that science and pure rationality cannot touch: our needs for community, for meaning, for connection, for beauty, and for what Otto Rank calls "the numinous" (de Botton does not invoke this term, but it haunts the entire book, I think). While Hitchens argues that religion spoils everything, and while Dawkins dismisses it as a great delusion, de Botton reminds us that, despite its ills (listed ad nauseum by the militant atheists - the Inquisition, the Crusades, the witch trials, et cetera), there have been many positive ways in which religion has improved and sustained culture. De Botton then suggests that atheists adopt practices like a form of the agape feast in restaurants, a change in museum design to meet the needs of the soul, and a change in educational practices to recognize that the need for self-actualization cannot be sustained by the current semester and syllabus system (to which I say, amen, if that is allowable amongst atheists). Of great interest in this regard is his capstone chapter on "Institutions," which explores how institutions (like the Roman Catholic Church) have a power to spread and enforce faith and doctrine that no individual writer has, no matter how sharp his thinking (Nietzsche, for instance, or Richard Dawkins).

Indeed, the book got me thinking about how some practices of studying sacred texts - like the Benedictine Lectio Divina and the recursive nature of the lectionary - can assist my own work teaching literature and philosophy. As I think of my own experience of a canonical work like Hamlet, I've found that slow, reflective reading, repeated regularly over the years (as well as seeing various performances) has led me gradually into the depths and heights of Shakespeare's masterpiece in a way that my grad school instructors, many of whom were obsessed with literary theory, could never offer me.

But in the end I think De Botton has written this book in vain. The current atheist movement is so hostile to religion and so enamored of the natural sciences as a way of understanding humanity and its place in the cosmos (see, inter alia, Michael Shermer's The Believing Brain, an interesting book to juxtapose with this one) that I cannot see a unified atheist movement even admitting that humanity has the soul-needs to which de Botton points. De Botton all but admits this in his conclusion when he concedes, "a book cannot achieve very much on its own." Times being what they are, that is all too true of this text. When I read about his ideas for an agape restaurant or a layout for an art museum that rejects the historical development of painting and sculpture, I could only think how futile these ideas are, except as thought experiments (which have their value). I'm quite sure none of his ideas will ever see anything beyond micro-scale manifestation.

Yet the author wisely concludes, "Religions are intermittently too useful, effective and intelligent to be abandoned to the religious alone." That, as Hamlet said, would be scanned.

I must end by remarking how well written this book is. Written by a philosopher, it is refreshingly free of cant, pedantry, and pretense - and for a book written by an atheist, it is remarkably tolerant of religious practice and free from the prevailing dogmatism. I found each sentence drawing me on to the next, and to the next, and all was accessible to the educated general reader due to the writer's knack for offering necessary context without laboring it. And I cannot ignore the very sensible and generous provision of illustrations and photographs that enrich the presentation. The entire performance left me with the impression of an author who was tolerant, wise, and humane - and who is worth further exploration.
21 people found this helpful
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great expectations never delivers

I went to see Alain speak in Brisbane and bought his book at the same time despite being suitably underwhelmed by his talk. I thought he was weak and his unsubstantiated words amounted to little more than anecdote in support of his views.
Steering away from the militant atheists such Dawkins, Hitchens et al he is bored with the fundamental questions about the existence or non-existence of a god.
His book was weak and dreadful and never delivered, Mr de Botton suggest taking some lessons from religion to improve our lives such as community dining or relying on religious figures to counsel in the community and provide guidance on matters such as divorce life etc. Last time I looked a theology degree does not qualify you to counsel others. Community dining does not seem to work in prisons either in the pursuit of a utopian vision or society. Maybe the modern food court is a vision he aspires too.
There is very little spread in the religions focussing mainly on christianity
A dreadful book with little good advice, waxing lyrical about nothing in particular
I did have more to write but honestly the book does not deserve the effort

Wolfy
14 people found this helpful
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a pragmatic approach to living life well by borrowing heavily from religious "best practices"

Alaine de Botton's latest book could have been titled Learning from Religion: How Atheists and Agnostics Can Incorporate the Best Practices of Religion in a Secular Society. Rather than suggesting that non-religious people become religious, de Botton proposes that such persons adopt a pragmatic approach to living life well that includes incorporating enriching components that have typically been restricted to the religious. To ensure the wisdom is well suited for secular living, he strips away the supernatural and removes the overtly religious.

de Botton attempts to "read the faiths, primarily Christianity and to a lesser extent Judaism and Buddhism, in the hope of gleaning insights that might be of use within secular life" in support of his "underlying thesis" that while secularism is the ideal path "we have too often secularized badly" (p.17). He provides chapter length explorations of nine areas for consideration: community, kindness, education, tenderness, pessimism, perspective, art, architecture, and institutions. While the development of the topics is uneven (education receives the greatest attention) and the proposals for implementation are idealistic, the work succeeds in providing a better way forward for the non-religious and insight for religious about what one non-religious person finds valuable within the religious domain.

Here is one example from the chapter on community

Secular Problem: In modern cities "we tend to be imprisoned within tribal ghettos based on education, class and profession and may come to view the rest of humanity as an enemy rather than as a sympathetic collection we would aspire to join" (p.23).

Religious Norm: Religions, especially in their worship gatherings, bring together a variety of demographic groups and encourage inter-group socialization.

Secular Possibility: Establish secular Agape Restaurants based on the ideas of the ancient Christian agape feasts. Diners would be seated with those they would otherwise not encounter directly in daily life and be provided a guidebook to assist in directing their conversation.
4 people found this helpful
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An interesting approach

Religion for athiests is an attempt to make religious principles more attractive to athiests without athiests having to believe in the supernatural aspects.

The author talks of art, and the many religious principles that are useful for governing community and relationships and society as a whole. The book talks about "consoling and beautiful rituals" to help the person get through life. The author does not zoom in on any one particular religion, but suggests athiests "steal" the good concepts from the various religions.

Many people see religion as an either or proposition. Embrace the whole thing or not at all. This book offers an alternative of appreciating the inspiring and useful aspects of religion and not having to accept the varioius gods of the different religions. It would be interesting to do a survey of athiests and see how they react to the ideas in this book. I found it interesting reading. -- Valerie Lull, Author, Ten Healthy Teas
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A Jewish Wonton Critique is Needed!

According to David Brooks' tired old Burkean reflections on this book, in the Times today, the author suggests a practical solution in the idea of people sitting at communal tables more, perhaps as an imitation of the Passover Seder. But how can we take an author like this seriously when he says he was brought-up in a secular Jewish household, and everybody knows Jews love Chinese food. Yet if you have ever been to a chinese restaurant with big communal tables you know that almost no one will pick the communal tables, if they are offered a two-top or a four-top. And even if you do take a communal table because you don't want to wait for a private table, people almost never talk to each other and look vaguely annoyed that they have to share the space, and have to make small talk like "Oh the eggplant is realy good here, and it is a different color from regular eggplant." Thus, his suggestion is a non-starter from the get-go. Just another example of how stupid philosophers can be in practical matters! Also, as usual David Brooks is clueless about such things and is just trying to sound like he can somehow finesse Burkean thought for any situation. The simple criticism of this book comes from the realm of shrimp wontons, not religious or social philosophy.
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Very thought provoking

While I don't agree with all the things Alain de Botton says, he has a lot of interesting ideas, and the book as a whole is very thought provoking.

I love the idea that atheists shouldn't just reject religion out of hand, but should instead examine it as a collection of cultural ideas, some of which should be rejected, and some of which contribute real value.
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Not Just Another Religion-Bashing Exercise

If you are getting a bit weary of the approach used in books by militant atheists, such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, then this book should be like a breath of fresh air. Rather than attempting to 'destroy' religion, de Botton's proposal assumes that the reader is already an atheist, and thus his focus is on finding ways to enrich our lives, rather than preaching to the converted. Despite what some people may come to believe, the idea of this book is not to create some kind of cult, of which de Botton will incidentally be the leader.

On the contrary, he emphasises that creating a new religion under the guise of atheism would be a grave mistake, making reference to August Comte who tried to create a "Religion of Humanity", which failed for the most part. He also identifies some of the things that religion has got right (yes, there are a few) and demonstrates how secular society can put these ideas in to practice, and by doing so, can enrich their lives without having to believe in any supernatural deities.

I felt that de Botton made strong cases about each area of possible change. In regard to education, I could strongly relate to the idea about how boring lectures at universities are - even on interesting topics - as compared to sermons in church, in which the audience is shouting back 'hallelujah!'. Similarly, art in museums is currently arranged in a seemingly orderly way - by eras rather than the emotions that they relate to - and thus deprives the visitors of what might otherwise have been a spiritual experience. de Botton provides equally compelling examples for architecture, science (e.g., astronomy), restaurants, and even travel.

As is the case with de Botton's other books, Religion for Atheists is merely a guide rather than a comprehensive instruction booklet on how to implement some kind of rigid plan. That said, it provides plenty of food for thought; by the end of the book, I felt that regardless of my current and future roles in society, I will be able to play a part in bringing about a greater awareness to the masses of the importance of art, architecture, science, and education in improving our quality of life.
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Looking Over Your Shoulder

It is impossible to stay ahead of Alain de Botton. When I ordered the book, I expected a rather dry and somewhat jaded book. What I found in my first reading (a Kindle book) left me no choice about ordering a hard copy so I could re-examine dozens of analytical images drawn by the author. I continue to be amazed with his insight into the world's major religions, especially Christianity--the only one with which I am familiar. Perhaps the most utililitarian lesson in the book is the subliminal way in which liturgy influences loyalty to a broader spectrum of worship
practices.

By the way, my daughter, Julie Wieringa, is now employed by Amazon.
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Salve for modernity's neglected soul?

Alain de Botton gives us a charming picture book of essays in which he bewails and derides the soulless nature of modernity in education, art, architecture, and human society. He proposes to borrow from religion in its understanding of how to meet the needs of modernity's neglected soul.

He doesn't trace how the question of whether there is a separate soul developed from the scepticism of David Hume et al to contemporary physicalism, an important intellectual history brilliantly set out in Roy Porter's `Flesh in the Age of Reason'. He correctly critiques academic philosophy for avoiding the great issues of how to live well, but fails to show that this is due to Anglo/American analytical philosophy focussing (largely unsuccessfully) on arid trivia of epistemology and methodology, whilst continental European philosophy does indeed address the great human issues. He therefore misses the seminal contribution of André Comte-Sponville's `Short Treatise on the Great Virtues', which sold some 15 million copies in French, or of his compatriot's Luc Ferry's `Learning to Live'. He also fails to mention the doctrine of `supervenience' in philosophy, that the physical hosts the metaphysical : the brain, a book, or a computer disc, hosts an idea : the body generates and hosts the soul, so that an endogenous spirituality is not ruled out by atheism. There is indeed a burgeoning literature on atheist spirituality.

Strangely, de Botton relies on institution rather than content where he proposes to borrow from religion to correct soulless modernity. His last chapter on `Institutions' explains why : he is convinced that content without institutional power is pissing in the wind. He may sadly be right. So instead of content, he therefore suggests a variety of eccentric quasi-religious institutional practices to nurture the neglected soul. He starts with communal meals in `Agape' restaurants (p43-50), where de Botton would `force them to eat supper together' (p43) and `direct diners to speak to one another for prescribed lengths of time on predefined topics (p46)! His fraternité and egalité somehow dispense with liberté! Then quarterly Days of Atonement would be prescribed (p57), as well as a medieval Feast of Fools which sounds more libertarian fun (p65), until being contradictorily constrained by `adult star charts' and moral strictures proposed in a chapter surprisingly titled `Kindness'. Advertising should promote forgiveness rather than Pepsi Cola (p89). Education should eschew academic information, and focus on questions of how to live, establishing Departments for Relationships (p123), and should communicate through inspiring oratory and religious chant, rather than dry lectures (p131). We should teach wisdom (p159). There would be new retreat centres for holistic spiritual exercise (p158). Museums should be organised to offer therapy to the soul, rather than information to the mind. We need large artistically flamboyant shrines to remind us of our perspectives in life (p273-5). Apparently, we should totally pragmatically harness religion's successful branding strategies to advance this new society of the soul.

De Botton's diagnostic is correct. By definition, physicalism has no account of existential metaphysicals, including truth/error, right/wrong, intellectual ideas, emotional feelings etc. A conclusion that there is no separate soul has wrongly been extended to conclude that there is no soul at all. However, his institutional proposals for a more holistic human practice describe an amazing new world, but a worrying one, since institutions may start life to serve humanity, but they inevitably distort to control. Christ's saying that `the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath' is too often overturned by institutions which humans create. We need to borrow content more than institution from religion. My own proposal is that religion interpreted as myth rather than doctrine does offer meaning for open social meta-narratives.

Geoff Crocker, Author `An Enlightened Philosophy - Can an Atheist Believe Anything?'.
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Religion Envy

The following review is from the magazine, Modern Reformation.

"When I learned that Alain de Botton had written a book with the title, Religion for Atheists: A Nonbeliever's Guide to the Uses of Religion I thought, why of course he has.

I was introduced to de Botton through, The Architecture of Happiness--a book that really is about how architecture can make us happy. Since then I've read all his books. And even though he never wears his atheism on his sleeve, one of those books-- The Consolations of Philosophy (nod towards Boethius)--did tip his hand. When four out of six of the philosophers you highlight are: Epicurus, Montaigne, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche you have declared yourself.

The New Atheists declaim with much spittle that religion is a very bad thing. Even some Evangelicals wring their hands and insist that Christianity is not actually a religion at all. We are informed that what looks like a religion is really nothing more than being on good terms with Jesus.

De Botton thinks this is all sadly misguided. Religion is not all that bad--it has just taken up some bad ideas. And when it comes to the "Christianity is not a religion" thing, de Botton would gladly take our religion off our hands if we could truly get Christ out of it.

De Botton's book begins with the surprising concession (replete with examples) that contemporary atheism wants for wisdom. Its art is ugly, its commerce degrading, its educational methodology too cerebral, its politics too libertarian, its psychology too sunny, its politics too optimistic. Religion, on the other hand, may be encumbered with a lot of superstitious nonsense, but when it comes to the stuff of life it is clear-eyed and realistic about human nature.

Recognizing the need to reassure his fellow travelers before beginning de Botton starts with a pillory of religion in a chapter entitled, Wisdom without Doctrine. Mercifully, further sermons to the choir are few and far between. Unfortunately, after the obligatory harangue, the book manages to mix much secular silliness in with the religious wisdom. The silliness comes in the form of de Botton's advice. Since he cannot abide the lesson that should be taken from the sorry state of secular culture--namely that it is the true fruit of atheism--he proffers naïve and superficial prescriptions gleaned from religious practices. At times these are downright hilarious, as for example when he proposes that public readings of Montaigne could be conducted in the mode of the call and response of Black Pentecostal preaching. Like many irreligious people de Botton has almost no understanding of how religious communities actually form and operate. A reading of his manuscript by a Rabbi or a Priest prior to publication could have ferreted out some of the nonsense.

De Botton has another disadvantage when it comes to his project. While he acknowledges the historical basis of religious practices--the Exodus or the Resurrection come to mind--there is no corollary for atheists. Atheism must live on the thin gruel of a negation. But that is what de Botton wants to get away from. But whence does the binding force come from? If atheism is right in saying both history and material reality are essentially meaningless everything must devolve into the subjective. We are left with personal histories and the autonomy of, Our Bodies, Ourselves.

Yet, between sermons to the choir and some silly advice, there is some excellent analysis. Although religion is reduced to morality and consolation we must concede it does have plenty of those. There are gems of insight throughout that justify the cost of the book.

The greatest challenge the book presents to the Reformed though is de Botton's contempt for what we may call Reformed aesthetics--or the lack thereof. Like his patron saint Montaigne de Botton is a generalist, but his first love is the visual arts and he is an excellent critic. He has weighed us in his balances and found us wanting. He wants an atheism that appeals to the senses. And when it comes to the senses the panoply of Rome is hard to beat. Doctrine has always been our beat. And as his opening chapter indicates, he believes he has no need of what we specialize in. Still, it ought to give us pause--how do we respond to his accusation that where Reformed Protestantism flourishes visual ugliness follows? Do we really believe words the only vehicles of meaning as he claims?

I think not. But we do not need yet another book to make the point. What we need to do is make some beautiful things and let them speak for us. If we can manage to do that we may find atheists like Alain de Botton are willing to reconsider our doctrine."

--
C. R. Wiley is the pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Manchester in Manchester, CT. He writes young adult fiction under his pen name, Mortimus Clay. His short stories have appeared in Silverblade Magazine and The Mythic Circle. His nonfiction has appeared in Touchstone Magazine, Modern Reformation, and Relevant Magazine Online.
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