Religion for atheists is like alcohol-free lager
Alain de Botton’s suggestion of a “temple to atheism” has received quite a bit of press coverage.
It is just one of many suggestions that stem from his new book, Religion for Atheists, which looks at the question that has been asked on many a Sunday morning: why can't atheists take all the good bits of religion without the unfashionable sexual morality, the strict rules, the occasional intolerance and, most of all, the actual core beliefs?
De Botton looks at the many advantages that religion brings: the sense of community, the generosity, the architecture, the optimism and, least commented upon, the structure; and asks whether atheists can mimic all of this without mentioning the G-word.
It is indeed strange that, with all the banker-bashing going on, it is rarely asked why today’s City plutocrats are not as generous as their 19th century forebears. And yet as Ian Hislop's excellent BBC documentary When Bankers Were Good recently showed, they were overwhelming motivated by faith, whether Quaker, Anglican or Jewish, and this generosity was rarely confined to their own communities (it’s a little known fact that City of London Jews gave huge amounts to relieve the Irish potato famine).
And taking aside the instinctively generous, who would probably give even if they expected to face only a worm’s digestive system when they died, religious social pressure certainly nudges the not-so-kind-hearted into behaving correctly. At the very least religion meant that once a week a City banker had to attend a church where they had to mingle with the ordinaries. Today's super-rich do not.
The community–enhancing power of churches is well documented. When David Blunkett said he would like to “bottle” whatever religious schools had that drove their success, he was partly talking about what sociologists call social capital – a sense of community, trust, connections and networks. Popular Catholic and Anglican schools demand that prospective parents attend church every Sunday and, taking aside whether one agrees with the truth of what is said there, having a group of parents together once a week listening to exhortations to peace, love and forgiveness is surely going to help the school their children attend.
Atheists can never mimic this; indeed they have tried before. In the late 19th century the Ethical Cultural Movement held its own services but it soon died out. After all, who wants to spend their Sunday morning listening to some sanctimonious so-and-so repeat what he's read in The Guardian? Thanks to Radio 4, I can do that from the comfort of my bed.
(Some individuals in the ethical movement wished to transform the Church of England into an Ethical Church, keeping its basic moral values but without its religious elements – and in a sense that it what has happened.)
Then there is the structure, which de Botton feels has left a huge hole. Religion originally developed as a way for people to understand the climate and seasons and the powers controlling them, whose mercy they were at. Pagan religions provided the feasts and fasts, the equinoxes and solstices, by which a community and its people organised their life. Christianity took on many of these and added many more, so that medieval Europeans had well-structured lives, laid down by the Church and guided by the seasons. These told them when to remember their dead or celebrate rebirth, and often acted as social safety valves; a certain amount of sexual release was allowed on St John’s Day on June 24, midsummer, for instance, where maids might dance and drink with men.
Certain aspects of religious structure have long been secularised; the First World War helpfully ended quite close to the old Day of the Dead, allowing Remembrance Day to seamlessly replace an ancient festival. Today people often fast seasonally, so that January is dry for many, and Lent is still observed by many atheists.
De Botton is of course right in this, and it’s welcome that someone is taking the argument beyond the believers v New Atheists arguments of the 2000s (“you guys killed more”/”no you guys killed more”).
But it’s unlikely that atheism can ever really mimic religion’s strength. “Temples of Reason” have been tried before but the ideology that was to replace Christianity in France soon burned out. Even from an architectural point of view I’m sceptical that an atheist society is capable of producing something as beautiful and divine as Chartres Cathedral. So far post-God Europe’s record in that department has not been fantastic.
Strangely, de Botton touches on religious ideas of child-rearing, but does not mention atheism’s most crushing weakness – its effect on fertility rates, which are well documented. (In Austria, the only country which measures fertility levels by religious observance, atheists have a total fertility rate of 0.86 child per woman.) Back to its earliest roots, religion was seen as a way of linking a community with its past and therefore its future; and fertility rates are the ultimate expression of long-term planning. What atheism is most missing is optimism and hope.
For that reason, religion for atheists will always be something of an alcohol-free lager; sure, it doesn’t have the bad and mad side effects, but it just isn’t the same.
The real problem is that religion is always replaced by something else. The rise of fads such as homoeopathy is well documented, but more commonly people’s religious desires for certainty, morality and community are transferred to their politics; that is why there is this sense that those outside the communion of correct beliefs today are morally unclean, and new sins such as "racist" and "sexist" replace “heretic” and “sinner”. That is the real “religion for atheists”.
Conservatives – depressing everyone since 500BC
May 16th, 2013 16:22
Why are taxpayers supporting pro-immigration charities?
May 10th, 2013 13:50
Ukip is a reaction to Britain's new class system
May 2nd, 2013 14:04
What's the point of having a Tory party if it refuses to challenge the liberal consensus?
April 30th, 2013 10:59
I'm a Catholic, and I have a confession: I love Richard Dawkins
April 25th, 2013 12:17