Alain de Botton

I recently went to hear Alain de Botton speak about his new book, Religion for Atheists, in downtown Philadelphia. I find Alain de Botton to be a very interesting figure. He writes broadly on a lot of different topics. That is both interesting, because he passes disciplinary boundaries, and difficult to do well. He tweets fascinating little nuggets. I can't quite tell if they're brilliant or just well written and enticing. For instance:

"Definition of a parent: an ordinary human whose significance you can't help but exaggerate: their evil, goodness, guilt etc."

or

"Weakness is particularly charming in the strong."

These strike me as insightful, but I don't know: Francisco calls him a sophist. So we both went to hear him--Francisco to critique; me to adore (okay, okay--that's way too strong). 

Botton's self-described purpose was to pick and choose the high points from various religions and present them as useful to non-religious people. That project itself has problems--it assumes that you can detach certain strengths from the whole tradition and from the set of beliefs that engendered them. It also hints at something that I verified with Botton later via twitter--that he has a Hegelian view of history: that religion used to be suitable for man to engage in (and before that, that art was an appropriate means of self-expression and an appropriate place for absorption), but that now philosophy is the only thing that can express what it means to be human. At one point, he also asserted that religions have so much power now because they bring in so much money--he really does not believe that religious belief is the motivating factor. This is an interesting way to approach religion, and may yield some important insights. But it is also condescending. At one point he said something that I thought was telling (although I might be making too much of it). He said, "For me, God does not exist." He didn't say, "I don't believe that God exists." The emphasis in the latter sentence is on my belief or my lack of belief. His was a qualified ("for me") declaration that God does not exist. The emphasis was on the non-existence, not on the non-belief.

So what does religion have to offer? He praised religion for showing us our brokenness. He praised it for understanding the weakness of human will and so repeating things, which can be seen in Pentacostals' (whom he called Pentecostalists--is that a British thing?) call and response form of sermon. This also indicates religion's grasp of the importance of oratory. He maintained that the Zen tea ceremony shows us that we aren't just brains, but also bodies. He sees religion as a good host, bringing people together and encouraging association.* He said that a secular bath picks up the religious meaning of water (honestly, I think that's too much weight for a regular old bath, but maybe that's just me).

He praised what he characterized as religion's view that art is didactic (esp. Catholicism's). I take issue with Botton here: I don't think that moralism is the point of Catholic art. I don't think that moralism tends to make good art. He also maintained that in Catholicism, ugliness is evil; it seems he has never seen one of those 70s circle churches. 

He also praised Catholicism's understanding of original sin. He said that the belief in original sin is beautiful; someone from the audience repeatedly yelled, "It's insulting."

Asked about his own atheism, he maintained that he sees it as being faithful to the way he was raised--he sees it as something outside of his control. He said that it may one day change, but not consciously--he would just wake up one day with it changed. Now in one sense this makes sense--I think a lot of people overemphasize the role of their own rationality in religious decisions. When I converted, certain things were options for me, and certain things, for various reasons, were not. Atheism wasn't. Buddhism wasn't. Islam wasn't. Etc. On the other hand, I think that Botton's position denied that reason has any role to play in religious conversion. And I disagree.

Another question I had for him is why he focused on Judaism, Buddhism, and Christianity. I pretty sure that he didn't mention any other religions in the course of his talk. I would think that a more obvious trifecta, if you're stuck with three, would be Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. But really, why choose three? Does he think that there's a hierarchy among religions? And, if so, on what grounds would he justify that?

*He said that religion associates you with people with whom you have nothing in common. It's not like a knitting club, where you meet with people who also like to knit (my example not his). This didn't make any sense to me: the thing you have in common with people you meet through religious practice is precisely that religious practice. That is a huge commonality. Now, it is possible for religion to unite people across socio-economic and ethnic and ideological lines, but it's also possible for it not to--religious associations in many some cases reflect those same divisions.