The De Botton Delusion...

[philosoraptor42]

Alain De Botton has decided that the current state of atheism is no good and has instead proposed what he decides to call "Atheism 2.0". But is Atheism 2.0 really any different from Atheism 1.0? Who does Alain De Botton think he is arguing against? Why promote this now?

I think we need a bit of background first of all....

Why Have An "Atheism 2.0"?


Ever since Richard Dawkins finally decided to stop making anti-religious tirades a tangent within his science books and instead devote an entire book solely to the topic of religion in particular he suddenly seemed to take on the mantle of "head atheist". And not just any head atheist, but the leader of a very specific atheist group known as the "New Atheists". This group came to be defined essentially by any atheist writer whose book entered the bestseller lists. (Blogger P.Z. Myers has come to refer to this group as "Gnu Atheists", not least because the modern atheists who seem to be given the label aren't really saying anything that wasn't said by atheists in the past.)

Since "The God Delusion" was released there have been a number of responses to it. The market has been kind of flooded with them in fact. First of all there was a rather popular response in a review. Terry Eagleton famously began with the sentence:

"Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and
you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology."

A lot of people found themselves amused by this argument, but the problem is that what Eagleton calls a caricature of religion is actually pretty close to what a lot of religious people believe, particularly the fundamentalists who have swarmed around Dawkins ever since he first put himself forward as a public defender of evolution from creationists.

Keith Ward came out pretty quickly (far too quickly to have actually read the book before responding) with a response to the general idea from Richard Dawkins' preceding TV documentary "Root Of All Evil?" (Dawkins didn't choose the title) which claimed essentially that religion has bad effects. His book "Is Religion Dangerous?" is a good example of how flimsy populist books on religion in the average bookshop are. It's not the worst example and I wouldn't say that Dawkins' "The God Delusion" was any better quality, but I feel it rather undermines Eagleton's criticism that Dawkins is too simplistic (and upon releasing the paperback version of "The God Delusion" Dawkins actually included an introduction which dealt specifically with the issue of what kind of populist religion books people would actually want to buy. I actually found this new foreword rather more interesting than the content of the book).

After that, there was Alister McGrath, who thinks of atheism as an article of faith and regularly cranks out at least one book a year. (Including a trilogy of fantasy books rushed off the press in just two years). Much more recently there was Conor Cunningham who decides to randomly label Dawkins and co "Ultra Darwinists". And also quite recently Karen Armstrong shockingly decided to gather together her own collection of drivel and platitudes. (I say shockingly because her "History of God" has actually been quite an inspiration to the religious and atheists alike.)

There are actually an awful lot of other books, many of them littered with straw men, all claiming to be providing a reasoned critique of the Gnu Atheists. It's not surprising. Richard Dawkins words always come across rather harsh so there's a strong wish that he, in particular, be put in his place. Also there are religious believers who are somewhat unnerved by the absence of a decent comeback to this supposed reasoned opposition to the belief in a God. And, as Conor Cunningham has recognised, plenty of Christians find creationism and ID Theory just as stupid as Dawkins does and they are just dying to have both sides of the creationism/atheism debate presented as militant extremes, so that they can place their traditional religious position neatly in the middle as the sane middle ground. (So on one side there's "God built it all by hand", on the other side there's "it's a natural process with no God involved", and finally in the middle the sensible position is suddenly "God did it, I don't know, but heck we don't know everything. Trust in the sacrifice of God in human form experienced today every week in wafers and cheap wine." Sure...)

Now Alain De Botton is dealing with a previously fairly untapped part of the market. Atheists and non-religious people who don't think religion is actually that bad.


Religion For Atheists?



Alain De Botton is a popularist philosophy writer. There was a point where his book "The Consolations of Philosophy" was on shelves everywhere, though he wasn't really so interested in exploring the ins and outs of classical philosophy as giving a massively simplified and trivial version. Still, as was noted before, sometimes you can't show the entire depth of the argument if you want to appeal to the wider market.

His latest ideas in his book "Religion For Atheists" are explored in a lecture viewable here:

He also gives an impassioned speech about the ideas of "Religion For Atheists" in the audio form and you can listen to that here.

He says that the most boring question about religion is whether or not it is "true" and says that the issue has become a matter obsession for "fanatical atheists". I think what he ignores here is that while it might be "boring", the matter of truth is actually rather important. There are number of reasons to say this because there are plenty of cases where the unquestionable truth and authority of doctrine and/or scripture is used to justify what are sometimes quite influential political positions. Proposals for limiting access to abortion, limiting rights of certain groups in society, insisting on old traditional stances on gender roles, promoting abstinence education and, yes, even ID Theory are all often (though admittedly not every single time for every single one of these examples) tied to the believed doctrinal truth and authority of particular religions.

Essentially De Botton takes the old line that while you might not believe in religions you should still respect them. The question arises once again: What is it about religions which makes them worthy of respect? I don't think De Botton actually has an answer to this though (or at least not a convincing one).

De Botton claims that religion serves two central needs "which continue to this day and which secular society has not been able to solve with any particular skill":
1) "The need to live together in communities in hamony, despite our deeply rooted, selfish, violent impulses."
2) "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 own decay and demise."

Or to put it another way:
1) Secularism heralds the breakdown of society.
2) There are no atheists in foxholes.

To be quite frank, the need for secularism would appear to me to arise precisely from the fact that, when people all belong to different faiths, religion doesn't help to promote harmony. Religion is often divisive and sectarian. As such, the idea that setting up non-religious communities must involve learning from the actions of the religious seems like nonsense. Far more often than not, the lessons are more likely to be cautionary tales; examples of what NOT to do when trying to foster a spirit of unity in diversity. Yes, there have already been figures like Martin Luther King and Haille Selassie who have been religious and attacked social injustices in ways that might be inspiring to the non-religious, but these figures can often be seen to be actively subverting the religious ideas they were brought up with. Dr. King, for example, takes the example of "the promised land" but does not imagine it as a contested strip of land or as some kind of post-apocalyptic paradise, but rather as the hope of a united humanity.

On the second point, I'll firstly note that atheists are found in all walks of life and don't appear to see their disbelief in God as a disadvantage. However, I think it's also worth asking, if atheistic modes of tackling these issues are so unskilful, why are there religious groups pretending to offer therapy without the professional background in the subject? Surely if religious methods were superior to secular ones on this front, Churches and places of worship would already be pioneers in the field, with absolutely no need to use fraudulent behaviour like this in order to promote themselves?

Rallying Points For The Failings Of Secularism...


Alain De Botton makes a number of points at this stage on the failings of secularism. But these points about modern society are either patently the result of good common sense or quite clearly false:


"We've grown frightened of the word 'morality'."

I find myself reminded of the scene in "This Is England" where the National Front are telling the skinheads that "England" is a word no one is allowed to use anymore. Afterwards, the character Pukey asks "You didn't believe all that sh** did you?"

A quick glance through the daily papers makes it quite clear that no one is frightened of morality. We moralise quite liberally and don't seem to need any additional religious influences in order to do so. Utter bollocks.

"We bridle at the thought of hearing a sermon."

There's a good reason for this. A sermon is where a particular conclusion is insisted upon. Sermons aren't known for being followed up with question and answer sessions. During the lecture Alain De Botton gave on this he actually waxes lyrical about propaganda as if he's completely forgotten why it has its poor reputation. Sermons are viewed as problematic for similar reasons.

"We flee from the idea that art should be uplifting or have an ethical mission."

The idea that art should be a certain way is yet another sensible thing to flee from. We are very keen on artistic freedom. Art is quite often uplifting and art quite often pushes an ethical stance, but we certainly don't insist on it. Of course we don't.

"We don't go on pilgrimages."

This is utter nonsense. There are any number of non-religious (or at least not related to religions which are still active with a high membership) monuments to which people flock. Places like Pompeii or Mt. Kilimanjiro attract huge numbers of visitors who experience strong personal feelings from their journeys. And couldn't something similar be said about events like Glastonbury or Comic-Con? Yeah sure we don't call these pilgrimages, but why should we see them as of any less value? The Catholic Church insists that Lourdes is only supposed to provide "spiritual" healing to the vast majority of visitors and isn't that all your average visitor to the Peak District is hoping for? The descriptions by Muslim pilgrims of their reactions to their journey to Makkah often sounds very much like you would expect to hear from music fans at a rock festival.

Of course we go on pilgrimages.

"We can't build temples."

Oddly enough, building a large structure tends to also rely on having some specific plans for how to use that structure. We have plenty of buildings which we construct with positive aims, but I'll admit that constructing a secular building solely for a combination of artistic beauty and personal contemplation is rather less common. (Though I'll bet there's an obvious example of this that has passed me by.) That said, religious buildings are most often used for rather more than that too. There's very often a political side to religious groups and large showy buildings can play a large part in conveying that power and authority I mentioned earlier. It's all part of the propaganda that De Botton has decided is so great.

"We have no mechanisms for expressing gratitude."

Oh come on, do I even need to respond to this? People express gratitude ALL THE TIME without any reference to religion involved.

"Strangers rarely sing together"

Well here we have a case where Dawkins would actually agree with De Botton. So much for Atheism 2.0. Dawkins made a public point of noting that he had no problem with Christmas carols and was actually quite a fan. The main problem with singing together is that often it involves a certain degree of nationalism. The singing of "Jerusalem" at The Proms is often seen as a bit dodgy because the song is perceived as having a somewhat nationalist sentiment (though the lyrics are actually a tirade against the harms caused by industrialisation).


Useful and Effective?


Alain De Botton finishes by saying that religions are, intermittently, "too useful, effective and intelligent to be abandoned to the religious alone". But what does he mean by useful and effective? (I won't worry about intelligent right now.)

In his lecture (see in the video posted above), De Botton makes the points in rather more detail.

He notes that we don't expect universities to tell us how to live and actually suggests that sermons could be more effective than lectures. However, it seems obvious that if you go to university they aren't going to say "here's how you should live" for simple reason that such an approach wouldn't educational. If you want to study ethics you can do so. There is ethical philosophy and ethics will also play a big part in certain courses on politics and sociology. What's more ethics will no doubt encroach on a variety of other subjects in some shape or form and there will be cross-disciplinary studies sharing ideas across departments. What they won't do is dogmatically assert what you should do and yes, they will presume you have a base-line understanding of morality and ethics because people generally do - and if they don't, waiting til university to understand those things is probably rather late (and in any case, you would most likely need to have some of these ideas in order to successfully cooperate with enough people in society to reach university in the first place).

De Botton seems to think that lectures lose out to sermons because they aren't passionate enough. However, lectures will quite often have a message they are pushing. What we also have in universities though, is seminars. We also have written work where ideas explored are assessed for understanding. Ideas are not simply lectured to us in a university setting. Those ideas are explored, analysed and evaluated. And if you have a really good lecturer, then it may be pretty damn passionate. What's more, a good seminar can (in theory) involve some pretty heated debate.

De Botton also argues the importance of ritual, giving the example of buddhists expected to go out and look at the moon. He seems to focus on this as a way to learn things, noting the effectiveness of repetition for learning. Yet ordinary people look at the moon all the time and forcing them to do so on a schedule is hardly my idea of an ideal set-up. Repetition is a good way to learn things, if they are basic enough. We already do it for things like multiplication tables or spellings. But when it comes to things like storytelling, repetition needs to be a little more varied. We need to keep trying new things and we need personal creativity in order to develop the storytelling skill. Repeating it directly is not going to work.

Is De Botton right to say that we aren't told what art means often enough? Actually art pieces will regularly tell us what they are trying to say, but it will depend on the artist. The "death of the author" means that some artists may not believe that their own explanations of their art matter, but rather it is individual interpretations that matter. Of course, the point he is saying here is that we need to be force-fed with propaganda and that propaganda is great. Sorry, but our initial instinctual reaction to the term "propaganda" is absolutely right. Just look at the Catholic Church and the sex abuse scandal. There's plenty of propagandist work going on there. (Like I said, religion provides more cautionary tales than positive lessons...)

Yet in the aftermath of the lecture, De Botton's whole message seems to be drastically toned down. I seem to agree with a lot of what De Botton says in the Q&A at the end. They just don't seem at all relevant to the pro-propaganda, "let's learn by rote", "being timetabled to stare at the moon is great", "let's have sermons in universities" nonsense that came beforehand.

However, one of the final points is the typical "atheists aren't polite enough" position. Y'know what? I'm no fan of Dawkins, but the main criticisms of him aren't about his lack of politeness. The main criticisms are that he has the audacity to publish his personal thoughts unabashedly in a bestselling book. He is criticised because he doesn't have the decency not to sell his books in such large numbers.

The best response to the Catholic sex abuse scandal is not politeness. Anne Widdecombe was in a debate about whether the Roman Catholic Church was a force for good and she made the most bizarre use of the Tone Argument when she said "oh they WOULD bring up child abuse, AIDs, homophobia, the all-male priesthood and condoms" as if these things weren't worthy of being mentioned and it was somehow impolite to mention them. Yes, there are impolite atheists out there, but not all of that impoliteness is uncalled for.


Yeah sure we can learn a few things from studying religion, but that doesn't mean religion deserves respect or politeness automatically. Religion used to be a much more central part of society than it is today and inevitably a great deal of what is good in society today will be based on the more religion-centered form that came before. But most often, the better way to tackle these kinds of issues is to cut out the religion. In fact even some religions are retreating from the term "religion", themselves recognising that certain religious ideas are simply no good. Some of these figures will want to retreat to some more primordial and "pure" version of their religion, insisting that their shift away from religion makes their ideas even more traditional, while others will be more progressive noting that old religious ideas have also been tied to old political and cultural ideas (noting, for example, that a morality based on honour and shame is clearly present in the Bible, but is rightly alien to our modern sensibility). Even the religious can tell that religion isn't all great and it would be extremely stupid of us not to share the fruits of this important lesson.