Penn Jillette is coming to East Lansing, Michigan on June 6^th to promote the paperback version of his book God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales and CFI-Michigan is sponsoring the event.

If you’d like tickets, get them while you can!

For centuries science and religion have been at war. Both explain, or try to explain, the world around us in their own way. The more we observed, measured, and probed, the less we needed our gods. The gods of biscuits and hairdos soon made way for bakers and hairdressers and the gods of thunder and harvest made way for meteorologists and, well, meteorologists. Monotheism came and gave us one convenient god who made all these wonderful things for us to observe, measure, and probe. But the more we discovered, the less likely it seemed there was such a god.

This paved the way for the religious and atheist apologists. This is not a new phenomenon. People through the ages have been trying to marry their beliefs to what they see around them. Scientists have explained their findings and stretched reality in order to fit in their predetermined beliefs. Religious leaders conveniently forget certain parts of their Scriptures if they no longer fit in today’s society while hammering on others. Intelligent design, though a bad theory, is a good example of the religious trying to marry scientific observation with religious teachings.

On April 24^th, a new book came out about this dichotomy and the problems with religion and religious apologetics in modern society. The book was called God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion by Victor J. Stenger. It is extensive, substantial, all-inclusive, informative, and beautiful in its own right, but I will get to that shortly.

First, I would implore you not to read the book.

Buy it — do buy it — but for the love of all that is, well, known to science, do not read it. And if you insist on reading it, then please, do not read it in one session. Not like you would any other book. God and the Folly of Faith is a textbook and should be used as such.

Stenger is obviously a knowledgeable and well-read individual. He has done a copious amount of reading and research and, as a result, he wants to impart as many facts as possible onto his readers. I don’t know Dr. Stenger personally, but I imagine he is a wise and friendly man, popular among his friends and feared by his enemies. And though he is probably all these things and more, he is not a good writer. Wherever he could use only five words, only two sentences, only one paragraph, he used a multiple of that. The man is as longwinded as you would expect a professor of both physics and philosophy to be.

According to Stenger, the marriage between religion and science is a ridiculous concept. He goes into a lot of background and history of the issue. He picks apart earlier arguments made by religious and atheist apologists (who also believe science and religion are compatible) and explains how a world without religion would have looked very different. He shows how some religions have stymied the development of science and how others have helped it flourish. The content is interesting; the execution, not so much.

Apart form being dry and monotonous, the tone of the book is also very angry. Stenger is obviously fed up with the lovey-dovey, hippie-esque, “Why can’t we all just get along?”-mentality and he lets his readers know this. The work is one angry diatribe against everything from mass prayer to saying “Bless you.” If it has even the lightest whiff of the occult, Stenger is there to tell us how awful it is. Many pages read like the author is screaming at you from the top of his lungs. The book preaches to the choir and the negative tone alienates the very theists who would benefit from it the most. Sure, he outlines how Islam helped science develop, rather than suppressing it, but that is just a tiny speck of positive light in an otherwise long, dark and bitter rage on everyone who has ever tried to marry religion and science at any time in our known history.

Stenger — like many New Atheists — holds that religion is basically fallacious and at the root of all our problems. I consider myself a New Atheist and as such it was hard not to agree with Stenger’s premise. This does not make the book any more readable, though. Reading the book I felt like a jungle explorer, hacking my way through quotes and dates and other peoples’ arguments to get to small nuggets of wisdom, that, like the lost city of gold, were promised before I set off on my journey. Sadly, much like the lost city of gold, the wisdom and answers were too well hidden, which leads me to believe they might not have been there in the first place. Because the book reads as one continuous piece, it is all but impossible to even find a good, succinct, quote to use for this review, let alone pluck out an eloquent and intelligent argument against the marriage of science and religion. Other than “It doesn’t work,” I can’t come up with anything.

At several points in time it has been postulated that man is made up of two parts: the body and the mind, both interacting with the world, and the soul, where the personality and the concept of “I” reside. According to proponents of this theory, this split between body and soul makes it possible for religion and science to coexist in one person. Simply put, they propose that science is far more adept at focusing on the outside world, where religious explanations are known to be primitive and untrue, and religion can provide better answers where the soul is concerned, because science can’t observe and test in this area.

This is how many religious scientists defend their beliefs, and how scientifically-curious religious people defend theirs. Stenger refutes this in his own long-winded fashion by showing how science is now able to test and observe that which the apologists would call the soul. With this he wipes this split-personality-premise off the table. There are many more of these beautiful ways in which Stenger wields reason and historical evidence to refute the idea that science and religion can coexist, but the mind-numbingly boring writing takes the shine off of most of these arguments.

If you find yourself in a discussion with a religious scientist, or a scientific theist, this book does not help. At least not as a work of reference from which you can easily look up the answer to any argument (read: fallacy) they challenge you with so you can then smash them to the ground with your perfectly logical and well-structured retort. The only way to use this book in such a discussion, would be if you had studied it long before and were able to wield it as a whole.

In conclusion, I have to say I’m on the fence.

Buy the book, but only if you’ll admit that you put it on your bookshelf because it looks pretty and it makes you look smarter.

Buy the book to read it, but read it one chapter a month and take breaks reading happier, easier fare such as A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.

Or don’t buy the book, be happy in the knowledge that it exists, and the next time somebody tries to convince you this marriage between science and religion could be the answer, point your opponent to it. Maybe that is the best option. We should inflict this book on people we don’t agree with. Not only do we get the satisfaction that we have annoyed them with a wholly unreadable book, but maybe, just maybe, they will be persuaded a bit. Maybe it will plant the seed of doubt. And maybe we can then finally sign those divorce papers.

Robin Hanson wonders why atheists — lovers of truth, so we say — don’t give up fiction:

A few days ago I asked why not become religious, if it will give you a better life, even if the evidence for religious beliefs is weak? Commenters eagerly declared their love of truth. Today I’ll ask: if you give up the benefits of religion, because you love… truth, why not also give up stories, to gain even more… truth? Alas, I expect that few who claim to give up religion because they love truth will also give up stories for the same reason. Why?

The answer seems obvious: Most of us enjoy fiction because it allows us an opportunity to see ourselves in the characters, to see how they grapple with problems that we face — or will have to face in the future. It’s also fun to use our imagination and explore new worlds through the eyes of a gifted author.

More to the point, though, we enjoy fiction because we know we’re reading stories. People aren’t making the claim that Harry Potter must be real and then basing their lives and creating laws around that. People do that all the time when it comes to Holy Books.

Here’s a related question: Why is it that books described as “Christian fiction” (like the Left Behind series) are so predominant that they get their own shelves in bookstores, but atheist books are overwhelming non-fiction? It’s always about science or arguments against god/religion… I mean, can you even name a fictional book centered around atheism? There have been some, but certainly not many. Is there a reason atheist authors rarely dabble in the fictional world?

***Edit***: Readers point out that there are several other authors of atheist fiction — e.g. Phillip Pullman, Douglas Adams, Gene Roddenberry — so maybe a better question would be why atheist fiction isn’t as popular lately?

This is an article by James Croft. It appears in the May/June 2012 issue of The Humanist. You can read other articles from this issue and subscribe to the magazine by going to their website.

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Let me begin by confessing that I am predisposed to love Religion for Atheists. The project that Swiss popular philosopher Alain de Botton has embarked upon — to salvage practices from religions that might be valuable to the nonreligious — is close to the goals of the Humanist Community Project, where I work. Incidentally, confession is one example of, as de Botton puts it, the “institutional delivery of soul-related needs” that he admires, calling it a “reliable global service industry” dedicated to psychological wellness. He compares the practice of confession favorably to psychotherapy, which he sees as inconsistent and ramshackle against the precision and standardization of the confessional booth.

The example of confession is characteristic of de Botton’s approach in Religion for Atheists: throughout the book he identifies areas where he believes secular society fails to provide community or help people cope with challenges in their lives, and points to religious practices and institutions which nonreligious people might wish to appropriate to fill the gap. Indeed, de Botton’s approach to religion seems fueled by a profound disenchantment with modern secular society, which he views as impoverished by the loss of practices and modes of thought that religion colonized. “The challenge facing atheists,” de Botton claims, “is how to reverse the process of religious colonization: how to separate ideas and rituals from the religious institutions which have laid claim to them but don’t truly own them.” Religion offers “well-structured advice on how to lead our lives,” which de Botton contends the secular world often fails to provide. The challenge for modern atheists is to offer such structure in a non-religious way.

If you accept the premise (more on this later), Religion for Atheists mostly rises to this challenge. De Botton examines ten areas in which valuable insights may be derived from religious practices, and gives numerous creative suggestions as to how the secular world might reclaim them. Noting how religions use food to bring strangers together in a structured way, he offers the “Agape Restaurant,” in which diners will be encouraged to meet new people and share aspects of their inner lives. He offers the idea that art and architecture might be used more consciously to express and foster certain values or to help us navigate life’s troubles (an idea that, while not new, is still valuable). He notices that religious values and even consumer products, harnessing the arts and music, are branded and promoted far more passionately and effectively than secular values, which raises powerful questions regarding how well humanists are spreading their ideas. He proposes that university lecturers might be trained to present their ideas as passionately and dramatically as Pentecostal preachers — a proposal that this graduate student (and veteran of countless dreary lectures) finds delightfully provocative (if somewhat absurd).

But what of the premise? Is secular society as lacking as de Botton claims, and are religions the best place to look for remedies? Probably not. The primary flaw of Religion for Atheists is a lack of balance: he praises religion’s benefits while overlooking many of its flaws, while under-valuing the potential of human beings and the achievements of secular society. For instance, much of de Botton’s argument rests on an excessively dim view of humankind in which adults are really just like children, moments away from indulging our worst selves. He emphasizes that because “we are all in the end rather infantile, incomplete, unfinished, easily tempted and sinful,” we therefore require institutions and rituals to keep us in line. This view of human nature sits uneasily with the humanist emphasis on the goodness, dignity, and capability of human beings, both individually and in groups, and undercuts somewhat his arguments about the value of culture as a corrective. After all, it is the very same “infantile” people who create the culture that de Botton hopes will save us.

Further, de Botton displays an equally pessimistic attitude toward the achievements of secular society. If psychotherapy is inconsistent and ramshackle, it is at least responsive to individual needs and respectful of the peculiar circumstances of life. The very uniformity and standardization de Botton praises in the confessional booth do promise a standard level of “spiritual service,” but also rely on dogmatically defined notions of sin that fail to reflect individual experience. Secular responses to human suffering may, therefore, be better than de Botton contends.

At the same time, religion’s penchant for offering “guidance” might be much worse than he allows. Decrying what he sees as a “libertarian obsession with freedom” that infects secular society, de Botton argues in favor of the guiding hand that religions tend to offer, without giving any consideration to the fact that, too often, that same guiding hand has become a ruling fist. Indeed, the book suffers from a failure to recognize any dangers at all that might accrue if secular society were to consciously attempt to draw on religious practices. An appreciation of the potential pitfalls of his attempt to reclaim and repurpose religious practices would have gone a long way toward forestalling some of the criticism the work has received from other atheists.

Though many of de Botton’s suggestions for secular appropriation of religious practices are charming, some are merely odd. A “Temple to Perspective” — in which seekers would marvel at the scale of the universe — is probably not the best way to spend millions of dollars. (Incidentally, de Botton, who is Swiss-born but was educated in the UK and still resides there, is an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.) Equally curious is his criticism of universities for failing to teach us “how to live.” The primary purpose of universities is to generate new knowledge and develop scholarly expertise, not to instruct young people on how to navigate life.

The strangest omission from the book, however, is the complete absence of any mention of humanism. Although he closes with a brief consideration of the secular Religion of Humanity developed by the positivist Auguste Comte, de Botton nowhere recognizes that there is a proud history of humanist attempts to build community, encourage kindness, and provide education (the Ethical Culture Society being perhaps the prime example). An analysis of these prior attempts to reclaim religious practices for humankind as a whole would have provided valuable historical perspective and a test case for the sort of communities he imagines might be possible.

These criticisms, however, do not prevent this beautifully written book from provoking a much-needed discussion of the tasks that lie beyond the rejection of God’s existence. We may not share de Botton’s vision of a more structured, guided nonreligious future, and we may reject his overly negative view of secular society, but we can appreciate that he is posing the question — the deeply humanist question — “What do community, education, kindness, and the structure of human life look like, after God?”

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James Croft is a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who works alongside the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard. His website, TempleoftheFuture.net, promotes a passionate, activist, radical humanist vision for the twenty-first century.