Religion for Atheists

Starred review from February 13, 2012
In this highly original and thought-provoking book, philosopher and atheist de Botton (How Proust Can Change Your Life) turns his critical eye to what religion does well and how nonbelievers might borrow from it to improve their own lives, institutions, and practices—without believing in God. For example, de Botton praises religion for satisfying the universal needs for community, comfort, and kindness and for its recognition that all people are imperfect and in need of help and healing. Some of what he suggests seems unattainable: de Botton calls for colleges and universities to shift from preparing students for careers to training them in “the art of living,” something he says religion does well. But other suggestions are more exciting for their plausibility—would not a Day of Atonement, drawn from Judaism, benefit all relationships? De Botton will no doubt annoy militant atheists who believe religion not only has no use but is essentially evil, but his well-reasoned arguments should appeal to the more open-minded nonbeliever. And de Botton is a lively, engaging writer. Agent: Nicole Aragi.

December 1, 2011
De Botton (A Week at the Airport, 2010, etc.) suggests ways a secular society can provide the benefits and comfort its citizens once derived from faith. The author's central argument is credible: Religions "serve two central needs…which secular society has not been able to solve with any particular skill"--the need for community and the need for consolation in the face of life's ills and evils. The devil is in the details, as de Botton cherry-picks isolated rituals from Catholicism, Judaism and Buddhism and proposes some not-very-persuasive modern equivalents (e.g., an Agape Restaurant designed to be "a secular descendant of the Eucharist" and a museum that offers spiritual guidance by organizing its artworks into subsets such as the Gallery of Self-knowledge and the Gallery of Compassion). Yes, the Jewish Day of Atonement provides an orderly format for acknowledging that we all injure others and all must learn to forgive. The idea that we can replace this timeworn practice with a billboard ad promoting Forgiveness in lieu of a sneaker brand is insulting to believers and atheists alike. When the author tosses off such comments as, "[o]ur artistic scene might benefit from greater collaborations between thinkers and makers of images, a marriage of best ideas with their highest expression," he seems to have forgotten about the horrors wrought in service to that principle by Stalin and Hitler, to name only two political leaders who fancied they knew best what artists should say. The author displays a similar historical insouciance when he implies there has been no transcendent, spiritually nourishing architecture since the cathedrals, ignoring several centuries of train stations, libraries and government buildings expressing a monumental faith in civic culture that may languish today but was once a real force in public life. Unlike The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work and The Architecture of Happiness, this installment in the author's oeuvre is shallow and glib.

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October 1, 2011

The author of The Consolations of Philosophy interrupts the argument between God-is-all believers and religion-is-dangerous nonbelievers to propose the following: so God doesn't exist, but religion was still dreamed up for reasons that remain germane (consider the comforting rituals and ethical focus). To make it work for us, we simply need to separate cant from helpful content. Perhaps easier said than done, but in a time of tragedy it worked for me. With a five-city tour.

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