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

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.

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?

Even though I’ve been supportive of gay rights as long as I can remember, I’m not as well-versed in its history. Early in the book, Carpenter sets us up with where the gay rights movement in Texas (specifically, Houston) used to be and what they were up against. Along the way, we’re taken to John Lawrence‘s apartment, where a string of events led to police arriving at his home late one night in 1998. Carpenter documents exactly what happened that night — evidence that contradicts what the police said — and we come to find out there’s a story behind the Supreme Court case Lawrence v Texas that most of the public never knew about.

As I understood it, the case involved police breaking into a gay couples’ home and arresting them for having sex because they were violating Texas’ Anti-Sodomy Law. The case eventually made it to the Supreme Court, where the couple prevailed in a 6-3 decision, overturning sodomy laws across the country.

It turns out the actual story leading to the case was nothing like that. The Supreme Court justices didn’t know that when they decided the case and I didn’t know about it until I read Dahlia Lithwick‘s brilliant article about the book in the New Yorker a couple of months ago.

What if, Carpenter asks, this weren’t a story about love, or even sex? What if, in the end, Lawrence v. Texas was less a whodunnit than a who didn’t? And, if there was no sex, let alone an intimate relationship, in John Lawrence’s apartment that night, how did the case come to be about both?

After reading that article, I had to get the book. It’s always strange to read a book when you already know the ending, but it didn’t stop me. I was captivated for weeks, reading whatever I could during lunch breaks at work, on planes, at red lights (don’t judge me)… hell, the footnotes were just as interesting as the book itself.

When I got to the end, I realized the namesake for the case, John Lawrence, died this past November and I never even heard about it. For as much as I read online, that one completely slipped past me. Lambda Legal attempted to raise money to give him a decent burial, but they barely raised anything… and I thought to myself I’m sure I could’ve donated or raised what they needed to cover those expenses. The whole book made me reconsider how much I’m really doing as an activist and how much more I could be doing. That’s a good sign.

Even more importantly, as you read about the chain of improbable events — all the people who had minor-but-vital roles in the case getting to the Supreme Court, all the things that had to go right for this case to get out of just the local court system in Texas — you realize we all have a part to play if we want to see justice served, not just for LGBT folks but for atheists, too.

Read this book. It’s incredible.

The Illini Secular Student Alliance reminds us of this excerpt from an interview he did with NPR’s Fresh Air in 2003:

“I am not a religious person, nor do I have any regrets. The war took care of that for me. You know, I was brought up strictly kosher, but I — it made no sense to me. It made no sense to me what was happening. So nothing of it means anything to me. Nothing. Except these few little trivial things that are related to being Jewish. … You know who my gods are, who I believe in fervently? Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson — she’s probably the top — Mozart, Shakespeare, Keats. These are wonderful gods who have gotten me through the narrow straits of life.”

It’s sad to see him go, but what a legacy of stories he left behind.

Full disclosure: I blurbed the book. Which sounds much more scandalous than it really is.

Atheist Voices of Minnesota won’t be available until August, but you can pre-order your copy now!

Now, Muto has sold a book proposal about his time there.

The tentative title: An Atheist in the Foxhole.

Which carries the unwelcome implication that atheists aren’t normally in foxholes…

(Unless he means there are actually *lots* of moles at FOX News just like there are lots of atheists in the military… but you know that’s not what he means.)

It’s not lost on me that the title is a bit of wordplay (Foxhole/FOX News), but still.

The suggestion that he’s an anomaly at FOX News may be true. The suggestion that atheists are anomalies in foxholes isn’t.

It’s not too late for his publishers (Dutton) to change the title. I hope they do.

Or maybe Muto is just trying to rile up atheist groups in the hopes that they’ll give his book additional exposure by complaining about it… thus starting a debate on FOX News over whether atheists are *really* in foxholes… which could ironically lead to Muto appearing on a segment where they talk about his book… Yep. I figured it out. Genius.

After working at FOX News, you figure one thing he *must* be good at is creating his own controversy.

***Update***: Just about all the commenters have said I’m misinterpreting the title and it’s not offensive. I’m still having a hard time understanding how this isn’t implying that there are usually no atheists in foxholes, but I’ll step away from it for a bit and look at it again soon. Maybe that’ll help. Right now, I feel like Kanye West and fishsticks…

When asked to review Candidate Without a Prayer, I was at first concerned that it would be a three hundred page advert for the Coalition. It wasn’t.

This book doesn’t take off quickly; in fact, the first three chapters have a very slow pace. These pages, though, are packed with information that is vital to explaining the role Silverman’s home-life played in his development. Incrementally, the book progresses into an insightful look at the life of a passionate and wise gentleman.

We’re all shaped by our families. Herb Silverman’s thoughtful introversion was carved in childhood by a family shaped by the Great Depression and the Holocaust. While his mother appears a caricature, her controlling personality leads to several humorous tales.

I hadn’t realized how unusual my helplessness was. I partly blame my mother for not encouraging me to learn the rudiments of taking care of myself. However, I mostly blame myself for not being assertive or interested enough. I began trying as best I could to do things for myself. I followed Bill’s lead the first time we went to the Laundromat. I thought I was doing quite well until Bill said, “Don’t you think
you should put your clothes in the washer before putting them in the dryer?”

From an early age, Silverman questioned authoritarian leadership, and was actually “dishonorably discharged” from the Cub Scouts for such “rebellious” behaviour.  Sometimes, it’s a simple question that can lead a person to begin questioning their faith; this was very true for Silverman.  His telling of such experiences, throughout the book, is consistently concise; and it is the accumulation of these tales that gradually reveals the core of the whole man.

One of my best teachers asked, “Why does the Torah say ‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,’ instead of the more concise ‘God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’?” His Talmudic explanation was that each had a different god, and we must search for and find our own god. I took his statement very seriously and applied Talmudic reasoning to draw my own conclusion, rather than rely on the wisdom of ancient scholars. My search beginning at age twelve eventually led me to a god who wasn’t there. I was thrilled and a little bit frightened. I didn’t believe there was a god and I didn’t know if anyone else thought as I did.

Outside of activism, Silverman had an education and career based in theoretical mathematics.  Scattered in a few places of this autobiography, his background reveals itself in dry language, but quickly recovers with rich tales of personal development.  While I enjoyed learning more about the work that Silverman has championed throughout his life, the chapter I was most enthralled by was one about the global travels that he and his wife ventured on. From Israel to India, the pair experienced a broad range of cultures, and religious mandates; Silverman acknowledges these differences, and he retells each memory with precision and wit. This was one of the few autobiographies that I would pick up again; there is much to be learned from those, like Silverman, that have been actively and positively changing the world around them for so many years.

If a finite man created infinity, perhaps a finite man created God and gave him infinite attributes. Infinity is a useful concept to help solve math problems. Was God merely a useful concept to help solve human problems?

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Image Source: Leslie A. Zukor

An interview with the author:

You say that you’re more interested in “converting” people from apathy to activism, rather than from theism to atheism.  What, have you found, is the best way to inspire people to action?

I can identify with apathetic atheists, having been one most of my life. What inspired me was finding out that I was ineligible for public office in South Carolina simply because I was an atheist, and working to do something about it. Many atheists have been active in civil rights for African-Americans, women, gays, and other minorities. Atheists are now the minority that people in this country seem to feel most comfortable openly denigrating. That has to stop, and we need reasonable people to make it more of an activist priority.

What advice can you give to inspire and encourage potential and beginning atheist activists?

It’s been said many times, but the most important thing an atheist activist can do is to come out of the closet. It worked for the GLBT movement, and it can work for us. Negative attitudes will change when people learn that their friends, colleagues, neighbors, and even family members are atheists. Aside from that, follow your passion. You are more likely to join and stay active in the movement if you are having fun and meeting other activists with whom you can have fun.

Bertrand Russell’s Why I’m Not a Christian was an inspiration to you in your youth, what books have inspired you in your adult years?

I don’t think any book can inspire me like Bertrand Russell’s did, because you only lose your virginity once. Russell showed me I wasn’t alone. He had as many “nots” as I did, and described ways in which godlessness could free people to be ethical and moral. Fortunately, atheism isn’t in the closet as much as it once was, and there are many fine and inspirational books by Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and many others. I try to read as many as I can, and find inspiration from each I read.

Was there a time as a child that you believed the rhetoric told to you? If yes, what were the events and thoughts that changed you? If no, why do you think you were so resistant to indoctrination?

I don’t think I ever believed the God rhetoric, but there was a time I would reflexively say I was a believer without knowing what that meant. I once went along with the family belief that Jews should stick to their own kind because all Gentiles were anti-Semitic. When I began to think about and question such views, it didn’t take long for me to break free from such indoctrination.

Relationships often play a large role in shaping our personalities and life experiences; it was clear that this has been true in your life, too. What advice can you offer about forming positive and beneficial bonds, even with those who oppose your activism?

Look for things you have in common with others, not just what sets you apart from them. There may be important issues on which people can work together even though they have very different theological views. We should respect the right of people to believe whatever makes sense to them, though we need not respect the belief itself.

What does it feel like to have put all of your history down?

Great! It felt good to come out of the closet as an atheist. I’ve now taken one further step and come out of the closet with my life. If I ever run for office again, my opponent will not have to do any opposition research. He or she will only need to read my book.

In the book, you take the position that atheists “should come out softly,” as religious people accuse us of arrogance.  What are your thoughts about more aggressive forms of activism? Do you think that varied styles can co-exist in the ‘movement’?

Not only can varied styles co-exist in the “movement,” the movement will fail if we try to restrict it to a “one size fits all” approach. That had been the problem for too long. Secularists would spend an inordinate amount of time arguing about minor differences (like whether to call yourself an atheist, agnostic, humanist, etc.) and too little time cooperating on what we have in common and working on issues that would benefit all secular Americans. That’s why I helped form the Secular Coalition for America, which now has eleven cooperative national organizations that cover the full spectrum of nontheism.

Have you ever considered editing your own “Jefferson Bible”?

I think everyone who takes the Bible seriously and recognizes it as an important part of American culture should do some biblical editing. Jefferson called what remained in his edited version, “Diamonds in a Dunghill.” I’ve taken a slightly different approach. I have a section in my book about treating the fables in the Bible as we do Aesop’s fables. Both theists and nontheists can discuss what moral lessons they get out of the different fables. I do this with ten biblical fables from Genesis, with the hope of inspiring someone to write a complete book of such biblical fables.

What dangers do you foresee for the United States if we cannot maintain a separation of church and state?

To answer the question, look at any country where religion is mixed up with government and ask yourself if that’s the kind of country you would want ours to become. Look also at the first Pilgrims and Puritans who settled here and established Christian colonies, where those of the “wrong” religion were excluded from government participation and persecuted. Such church-state unions led to the Salem witch trials. The framers of our U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights wanted no part of the religious intolerance and bloodshed they saw in Europe or in our own early theocratic colonies, which is why they wisely established the first government in history to separate church and state.

Would you encourage other atheists to run for office, if only to challenge existing laws. (If so, what would your advice be to them?)

I would encourage other atheists to run for office, but not only to challenge existing laws. The more atheists that run, the more our issues will be discussed and the more stereotypes of atheists will be eliminated. I’m hoping for a day when political candidates are judged by their character and their positions on issues, rather than on their professed religious beliefs. Atheists running for office can help bring this about.

Lastly, after participating in numerous debates, what rookie mistake do you regret most and would advise others to avoid?

I would originally focus only on making the best logical and rational argument to “defeat” my opponent. I now understand that a debate is about the audience, not about the opponent. Your opponent is likely an experienced debater who will not change his mind, no matter how good the evidence you present. You want to give open-minded audience members something to think about that they have never thought about before. They may have only heard the atheist side presented from their fundamentalist minister. So show a sense of humor, and smile a lot. Audience members will be more receptive to you if they find you a likeable person. This was hard for me to understand, since smiling is important in debates but meaningless in my career of solving math problems.

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Candidate Without A Prayer: An Autobiography of a Jewish Atheist in the Bible Belt is available online now and in bookstores soon.

This is an excerpt from the bad people stole my god by Doug Philips. Philips was a devout Catholic for 40 years before becoming a “full blown non-believer.” The Kindle version of the book is currently available for free. ***Edit***: The free trial has expired, but the book is still relatively cheap

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Easily the most unexpected and ironic twists to my irreligious epiphany has been the barrage of a particular criticism that continues to land on me like wayward pigeon droppings. “You shouldn’t impose your beliefs (or your adult beliefs) on the children!”

The sometimes direct and sometimes overt implication from these criticisms is that by choosing not to teach my children unverifiable, supernatural mythologies, I’m somehow exposing them to something (reality) that they are not mature enough to handle. Far better for me to teach them that believers in the correct god(s) go to heaven and non-believers in the correct god(s) go to hell, but don’t worry my adoring child, our god is the RIGHT god — all those nice children around the world that are being taught about the WRONG god are going to hell; sleep tight.

Before I expound on what I consider to be a painfully obvious irony, let me first itemize what I do and do not impose on my children.

BELIEFS THAT I DO IMPOSE ON MY CHILDREN:

• When they ask me if I believe in god I impose on them that I don’t but I used to, and even though I don’t think that I’m wrong, I very well might be completely mistaken on the subject. I ALWAYS explain that their lives are their own and that they are always free to believe whatever they care to (except for Scientology because it’s just too expense of a nonsense indulgence). I explain that I’ll always be honest with them and I will always do the best that I can to explain not only why I believe the things that I believe but what other people believe and the reasons that I think that they most likely believe what they believe. And as I do on most subjects, I explain to them that despite my relative brilliance, I am an expert resource on absolutely nothing and that far better information can be obtained from far smarter people than dear old dad.
• I impose on them that most people DO believe in a god or a number of gods, and that it’s a very important matter to many, many people. I insist that they be respectful of other people’s beliefs and when they are old enough to understand I’ll explain why certain beliefs do not deserve respect (for — an exaggerated — example: a belief that human sacrifice can help bring a bountiful harvest; science clearly demonstrates that human sacrifice adds no statically significant bounty to harvests unless the corpses are used as fertilizer).
• When they ask me if I will go to heaven when I die, I tell them very lightheartedly that another life after this life would be great, but I don’t happen to think that such a thing happens; all I know for sure is that I’ll always be in their hearts and that’s all that matters to me.
• I impose on them that love, happiness and treating people with kindness are good things to focus on and that it’s a far better use of their time focusing on making their lives great than worrying about what happens to people when they die.
• I impose on them to the best of my ability that human beings evolved over millions of years just like all the mountains of empirical, testable and falsify-able scientific evidence suggest. If future discoveries disprove evolution or any other scientific knowledge, then all the better for whatever it is that humans have learned about the world in which we live.
• I impose on them that there are no such things and ghosts, monsters, fairies, witches, devils or gremlins. And I would tell them that Santa was bullshit if not for the backlash I’d likely receive from my wife and other parents. Seriously, how nonsensical are we thinking that Christmas morning would somehow be less exiting to a child if he knew that Santa was make-believe? There’s a reason that so many kids are afraid to sit on Santa’s lap in the mall. I’ve never understood why we feel compelled to treat children like morons. On a side note, is there anything more apropos than the fact that the two most seminal traditions in Christianity are most popularly associated with some of the most inane, nonsensical, secular traditions with which we indulge. A fat magic toymaker that, like god, perpetually oversees your behavior even when you sleep, and leaves presents under fresh cut forest trees that we prop up in our homes as we celebrate the arbitrary birthday (which is simply a rip-off of pagan solstice celebrations) of the CHILD of the being that created the universe. And an egg loving rabbit that sneaks into our homes leaving plastic eggs and candy on the day the that we celebrate the resurrection from the dead of said CHILD of the being that created the universe. We even incorporate these two moronic fictional characters into our religious celebrations to entertain the kids during our overcrowded, protracted religious services on the special days. The only thing more idiotic is how rarely an eyebrow rises at our ubiquitous infatuation with make-believe when we contemplate our religious convictions.
• That being said, I love imagination and make-believe (when it’s understood to be make-believe) and I also impose on my children that one of humanities greatest talents is creativity; I constantly urge them to stretch their minds in every direction. But I also impose on them that make-believe is make-believe and that reality is reality. Radical, I know.
• I impose on my children that earthquakes are caused be shifting tectonic plates. That hurricanes, tornados, lightening, hail, sun-showers and rainbows are naturally occurring and scientifically explainable events and not the whimsical play-toys of a maniacal sky-daddy.
• And I impose on my children that not knowing the answer is all right, but not seeking the answer is lazy.

THE FOLLOWING ARE BELIEFS THAT I DO NOT IMPOSE ON MY CHILDREN.

• If you choose the wrong god you will burn in hell.
• Gay people will burn in hell.
• Jews will burn in hell.
• Muslims will burn in hell.
• Hindus, Buddhists, and people that never heard of Jesus will burn in hell.
• Parents should kill disobedient children.
• Townspeople should stone blasphemers.
• People should be killed for collecting sticks on the wrong day of the week.
• If humans destroy the world facilitating the return of a certain someone; it’s a good thing.
• God made the first man from dirt and the first women from one of the man’s ribs, or at the same time as the first man, depending on which version you prefer.
• A talking snake tricked a naive couple to disobey God.
• All babies are born defected and need to be saved — thanks to the talking snake and the naive couple.
• A 500-year-old man collected millions and millions of animals and insects from all seven continents and somehow housed them on a boat for almost a year because God decided to drown every mommy, daddy, child, baby, grandma, grandpa, pregnant woman, sick person, elderly person, mentally challenged person, blind person, person that takes care of sick people, and every animal that didn’t get to go on the boat including puppies, kittens, bunnies, and froggies, because every single person I just mentioned was BAD except for the 500 year-old-man and his family.
• God DIRECTLY ORDERED many, many people to kill many other people, usually over real estate disputes, exactly as we read in the Bible.
• People live to be close to 1,000 years old.
• People can live INSIDE OF A FISH for three days and be jettisoned out smelly, but perfectly ALIVE.
• Jesus is God because God made Jesus’s mother pregnant without having sex, just the same way that many other gods were created before Jesus was even a glint in his mother’s eye.
• Jesus is God because he died and came back to life — just like many other gods did before Jesus and just like many other people did in the Bible.
• Many, many zombies wandered the streets after Jesus was killed and interacted with many people.
• If certain men (whether they molested children or not) say magic words, crackers turn into Jesus’s actual body and wine turns into Jesus’ actual blood and then people eat and drink Jesus.
• You can only be a good person if you believe what’s written in the Bible — even though almost no one has actually read the Bible, and even though if they carried out Biblical edicts they’d be arrested and/or be considered insane.
• People of a particular town tried to rape angels. A father, a man that God liked very much, offered his daughters to be raped instead. After God saved the father and his daughters and proceeded to kill everyone else in the town, the daughters each got their father drunk and raped him so that they could have babies.

REVIEW

Now I ask with a straight face; am I really the one that’s imposing beliefs on children? As ridiculous as this list is, these are real, undeniable tenets of Christianity and/or accurate summaries of real Bible verse. I didn’t make any of it up and this isn’t cherry picking; the list could literally go on for page, after page, after page, after page. Don’t believe me? Read the Bible and find out for yourself. I dare you.

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What would you add to the two lists?

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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.