A little while ago in a review in the NY Times called "Without Gods: Alain de Botton's Religion for Atheists", David Brooks discusses some of the various suggestions that de Botton has for trying to incorporate some of the religious practices that are so effective at giving people as sense of community and helping them to make sense of their lives. De Botton's recognition that much of what has traditionally been important (and compelling to people) about religion are its practices, its social and communal character, and the sense of meaning, order and purpose that people derive from it is an important one. This recognition allows de Botton to position himself against other high-profile contemporary atheists (the "Gnu atheists" as PZ Myers would say) like Richard Dawkins who tend to see nothing of value in religion whatsoever and call for its wholesale elimination.
Given my Hegelian background, wherein talk of religion and God is seen as mis-descriptions of the nature of human sociality and communal life, I find the basics of this kind of position quite attractive. This is not to say that I think that what Dawkins et al. say about religion is false, because I do agree with them. As propositions expected to reflect empirically verifiable claims about the world and about some being called God, religion really doesn't have much of a leg to stand on. This includes, I think, cosmological arguments about the origin of matter, the big bang, and whatnot, which merely "fill in the gaps" with unbridled speculation, and certainly don't justify any talk of a deity that would recognizable from any religious tradition I know of; after all, why must the ability to create all things also entail any kind of moral goodness? You could just as easily get a Chthulu or Yog-Sothoth as a Kronos as a Jehovah...
So, I am not disagreeing with the deconstruction and debunking of many of the crazy and obviously untrue claims that Dawkins carries out; I do think it is important to make explicit some of the crazy things that are actually implicated in what people claim to believe. However, and this is where Brooks and de Botton's ideas come in, sometimes the important thing about religion is not the specific content of someone's beliefs, especially not as they can be rendered as propositions or claims, but rather it is about lived experiences and the overall sense of meaning and community that they provide. A religion is not just a set of beliefs, it is a particular kind of institution, and like all institutions it serves to mediate between other people, ideas, institutions, etc. Belief is not absent here, religions can only do this work of mediation properly when we participate in them and believe in them, but (and this is what I think Dawkins does not pay enough attention to) the belief involved is not purely intellectual and is often resistant to intellectual suasion.
This is one thing that de Botton seems to get right in his recognition of why "Religion for Atheists" might be something to consider, namely that we do need to maintain and further develop the institutions that give human life a common and stabilizing ground (Hegelian sittlichkeit). Furthermore, if we are to criticize religion then we do need to be aware of this institutional level and to address it as well as the more intellectual propositional level of the debate, or else risk missing the point altogether.
But, as Brooks acknowledges, there is also something profoundly disingenuous about the idea of "religion for atheists" that is signaled in the contradiction in the very title. De Botton's suggestions about self-consciously inventing new rituals to take the place of religion seem as though they are destined to mostly fall afoul of the corrosive effects of self-consciousness. After all, as I mentioned, one of the important things about the institutions like religion is that they require our belief in them in order to truly function: if we don't genuinely believe in the institution then our ability to fully participate in it and benefit from it will be limited. This is particularly so in terms of deriving any sense of self, purpose, or meaning to one's life. The kind of self-identification and belief necessary to make such rituals effective seems destined to conflict with the critical self-consciousness that atheists tend to bring to the issue of religion. It seems like any "religion for atheists" would end up having to sacrifice one of those terms, and either be too ironic or self-conscious to be religious or too dogmatic to be atheistic.
Given my Hegelian background, wherein talk of religion and God is seen as mis-descriptions of the nature of human sociality and communal life, I find the basics of this kind of position quite attractive. This is not to say that I think that what Dawkins et al. say about religion is false, because I do agree with them. As propositions expected to reflect empirically verifiable claims about the world and about some being called God, religion really doesn't have much of a leg to stand on. This includes, I think, cosmological arguments about the origin of matter, the big bang, and whatnot, which merely "fill in the gaps" with unbridled speculation, and certainly don't justify any talk of a deity that would recognizable from any religious tradition I know of; after all, why must the ability to create all things also entail any kind of moral goodness? You could just as easily get a Chthulu or Yog-Sothoth as a Kronos as a Jehovah...
So, I am not disagreeing with the deconstruction and debunking of many of the crazy and obviously untrue claims that Dawkins carries out; I do think it is important to make explicit some of the crazy things that are actually implicated in what people claim to believe. However, and this is where Brooks and de Botton's ideas come in, sometimes the important thing about religion is not the specific content of someone's beliefs, especially not as they can be rendered as propositions or claims, but rather it is about lived experiences and the overall sense of meaning and community that they provide. A religion is not just a set of beliefs, it is a particular kind of institution, and like all institutions it serves to mediate between other people, ideas, institutions, etc. Belief is not absent here, religions can only do this work of mediation properly when we participate in them and believe in them, but (and this is what I think Dawkins does not pay enough attention to) the belief involved is not purely intellectual and is often resistant to intellectual suasion.
This is one thing that de Botton seems to get right in his recognition of why "Religion for Atheists" might be something to consider, namely that we do need to maintain and further develop the institutions that give human life a common and stabilizing ground (Hegelian sittlichkeit). Furthermore, if we are to criticize religion then we do need to be aware of this institutional level and to address it as well as the more intellectual propositional level of the debate, or else risk missing the point altogether.
But, as Brooks acknowledges, there is also something profoundly disingenuous about the idea of "religion for atheists" that is signaled in the contradiction in the very title. De Botton's suggestions about self-consciously inventing new rituals to take the place of religion seem as though they are destined to mostly fall afoul of the corrosive effects of self-consciousness. After all, as I mentioned, one of the important things about the institutions like religion is that they require our belief in them in order to truly function: if we don't genuinely believe in the institution then our ability to fully participate in it and benefit from it will be limited. This is particularly so in terms of deriving any sense of self, purpose, or meaning to one's life. The kind of self-identification and belief necessary to make such rituals effective seems destined to conflict with the critical self-consciousness that atheists tend to bring to the issue of religion. It seems like any "religion for atheists" would end up having to sacrifice one of those terms, and either be too ironic or self-conscious to be religious or too dogmatic to be atheistic.
This problem is a thoroughly modern one, and is intrinsically connected to the rise of individualism, which made the critique of religion possible, but in so doing also disrupted much of the relation between the individual and any social institutions. Brooks comments on the difference that this individualism makes by comparing the writings of some founding figures of religion like Augustine to de Botton:
These writers don’t coolly shop for personal growth experiences like someone at the spiritual mall. They find themselves enmeshed in paradoxes of a richness unimaginable before they became entangled in them — that understanding comes after love, that one achieves fullness by surrendering self, that as you approach wisdom you are swept by a sensation that you have been suppressing all along, and all you need do is release....There’s something at stake in these accounts, a person’s whole destiny and soul. The process de Botton is recommending is more like going on one of those self-improving vacations. If all his advice were faithfully followed, we’d be a collection of autonomous individuals seeking a string of vaguely uplifting experiences that might perhaps leave a sediment of some sort of spiritual improvement.
Despite recognizing the important matters at stake in this issue of religious institutions, de Botton's "solutions" fail because he misconceives of the relation between individual and institutions. de Botton treats individuals in a typically modern fashion as if they originally exist outside of institutions and have to find some way to get into them, which in turn automatically estranges the two and cuts off any potential for a real relation between them.
