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Something to Challenge Atheists and Religionists Alike
Alain de Botton will make uncomfortable the most pious religionists and unyielding atheists in his endeavor to bring them into harmony with each other — they need one another. Just as religion needs to be redeemed from the religious, humanism must be salvaged from bombastic atheists like Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens.
In his book, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believers Guide to the Uses of Religion (2013), Botton admits that his is not the “first attempt to reconcile an antipathy towards the supernatural side of religion with an admiration for certain of its ideas and practices; nor is it the first to be interested in a practical rather than a merely theoretical effect.” He builds upon the tradition of Auguste Comte, who recognized as many of his contemporaries then and atheists today do not, that “a secular society devoted solely to the accumulation of wealth, scientific discovery, popular entertainment and romantic love — a society lacking in any sources of ethical instruction, consolation, transcendent awe or solidarity — would fall prey to untenable social maladies.”
He echoes William James’ focus on fruits not roots, in pointing us toward the pragmatic nature of truth. He discourages us from getting hung up on abstractions or the tenuous claims about the supernatural. Alain de Botton finds kinship with the thought of…
