{"id":10516,"date":"2012-03-03T18:34:47","date_gmt":"2012-03-03T07:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/?p=10516"},"modified":"2012-03-04T08:46:17","modified_gmt":"2012-03-03T21:46:17","slug":"defanging-religion-for-atheists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/2012\/03\/03\/defanging-religion-for-atheists\/","title":{"rendered":"Defanging ‘Religion for Atheists’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Popularising philosophy runs the inherent danger of reducing\u00a0depths of meaning to\u00a0shallow pools of banality. Shallowness brings its irritations in\u00a0‘Religion for Atheists’<\/em> <\/a>by populariser\u00a0Alain de Botton.<\/p>\n

These irritations\u00a0are well expressed by Miriam Cosic in her review. Thus,<\/p>\n

(de Botton) wrings religion of its historical and metaphysical significance, and bleaches it of its dramatic intensity. He also patronises atheists, his fellow-travellers, by suggesting they learn from the leached-out leavings he displays.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

De Botton’s trivialising of Holy Communion to a meal at an “agape restaurant<\/em>” where strangers and friends can engage in therapeutic conversation of forgiveness and compassion is an example of the weakness of his approach. He reduces\u00a0Jewish and Christian understanding of atonement in God’s “passing over” in mercy due to blood sacrifice\u00a0and\u00a0at the same time\u00a0pulls the sting on an atheist’s ridicule of transubstantiation as cannibalism.<\/p>\n

Hence Cosic’s\u00a0insightful critique of the book; it\u00a0fails to do\u00a0justice\u00a0to\u00a0either\u00a0religion or atheists,<\/p>\n

What de Botton has done is to defang religion: to neutralise its formidable weapons against humanity’s traditional foes, such as evil and anarchy, and contemporary foes such as anomie and nihilism.<\/p>\n

He seems not to see that a middle way exists between the religiosity of the Middle Ages, when belief saturated existence and alternative explanations were literally inconceivable, and the aggressive materialism of the noisy New Atheists.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u00a0am reminded of C S Lewis’ words in his essay\u00a0‘Fern-seed and Elephants<\/em>‘ speaking of ‘liberal priests’ who miss the plain mark of orthodox Christian understanding,<\/p>\n

These men ask me to \u00a0believe they can read between the lines of the old texts; the evidence is their obvious inability to read (in any sense worth discussing) the lines themselves. They claim to see fern-seed and can’t see an elephant ten yards away in broad daylight.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Miriam Cosic’s review, No cannibals in this defanging of religion<\/a>\u00a0 also\u00a0 Atheist Alain de Botton Insists Society Needs Guidance From Religion<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Popularising philosophy runs the inherent danger of reducing\u00a0depths of meaning to\u00a0shallow pools of banality. Shallowness brings its irritations in\u00a0‘Religion for Atheists’ by populariser\u00a0Alain de Botton. These irritations\u00a0are well expressed by Miriam Cosic in her review. Thus, (de Botton) wrings religion … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10516"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10516"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10537,"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10516\/revisions\/10537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/imaginarydiocese.org\/bishopjohn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}