Book review: The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality

As mentioned in the previous post, I've been reading The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality by André Comte-Sponville, translated from the original French by Nancy Huston. Here's the review I promised.

It seems like a harmless enough book. At slightly over 200 pages, you'd think you would be able to breeze through reading it. Well, you'd be wrong. It's somewhat of a dense read. I don't necessarily mean that as a criticism, but I wanted to call attention to this. Don't let the size fool you.

The book has 3 chapters, plus the usual introduction and conclusion. The titles of the chapters are "Can We Do Without Religion?," "Does God Exist?," and "Can There Be an Atheist Spirituality?," respectively. Guess what they're about.

In the first chapter, Comte-Sponville discusses what is appealing about religion. Not surprisingly, he touts the communal benefits, especially support in times of adversity. He also talks a lot about fidelity, which he defines as a set of core values. He seems to think this fidelity can be achieved through a sort of cultural Christianity. You could certainly argue that this has actually become the de facto religion of much of Europe--showing up in church for weddings, funerals, and the occasional baptism, Easter, or Christmas service.

However, I think this is harder to pull off in the US for two reasons. First, there are way too many American Christians who not only take Biblical ideas very seriously, but they also insist that everyone else do the same in order to be a good Christian, or even to feel welcome in that church. Second, my experience with people who have left Christianity is that they have typically had some sort of significant negative experience that would prompt them to avoid anything remotely Christian (of course, the first reason partially plays into this one!). So, while I like the idea of shared values, I think even cultural Christianity might have too much baggage for a lot of people. I'm not opposed to the idea; I just don't know if it would catch on here. I'll probably elaborate on this in a future post.

I'm not going to get into the second chapter very deeply, because it mostly contains material that can easily found elsewhere. I'll briefly mention one of the arguments against God's existence that I hadn't seen before in detail: basically a "too good to be true" argument:

I would definitely prefer for such a thing to exist, but this is no reason to believe it does. [. . .] I would also prefer for war, poverty, injustice, and hatred to disappear completely. But if someone came up to me tomorrow and told me they had, I would say he was a dreamer, a victim of wishful thinking. . .

This ties in with Freud's stance on religion, but I'd never really heard it fleshed out like this before.

The third chapter is, to me, the heart of the book. I've already discussed whether there can be an atheist spirituality, so here I'd like to focus on what that might entail. Comte-Sponville proposes a variety of options. Throughout the book, he frequently refers to Spinoza and seems to consider pantheism a reasonable choice. Various Eastern thinkers come up as well, and Comte-Sponville's idea of the All or the Absolute could be a way of looking at the Tao or Brahman.

This is probably where hardline materialists and empiricists start to freak out. We have now entered the realm of the unprovable. It's very difficult to talk about something that is universal and intensely personal at the same time. Comte-Sponville talks about what Romain Rolland called the "oceanic feeling." It's worth noting that Rolland was strongly influenced by the writings of Swami Vivekananda.

Obviously, I can't speak for everyone, but it seems most people have experienced a feeling of unity at some point in their lives. I can definitely think of instances where I've felt like I disappeared into whatever I was doing. But everyone who's had such an experience probably reached it in slightly different ways than I did. They might describe their experiences a bit differently, too.

Getting back to the book, there is one major difference between Comte-Sponville and most Eastern religious beliefs, aside from possible supernatural beliefs. Many strains of Hinduism and Buddhism teach that the world is something to be renounced for spiritual gain. Comte-Sponville disagrees, saying that the highest good is actually to engage with the world as it is and do the best you can.

Whew! See how much we went through in my little review of this little book? If you're hungry for more, check it out. If I lost you three paragraphs ago, this may not be the book for you!

Confessions of a Christmas hater

When Bill O'Reilly first started foaming at the mouth a few years ago about the so-called "war on Christmas," my first thought was, "Sweet! Where can I enlist?" I envisioned Jon Stewart and me wearing t-shirts that said "Soldier in the War on Christmas." One of the nice things about my Jewish phase is that I had a ready-made excuse not to go too crazy with the whole Christmas thing.

Christmas has almost always been tied up with disappointment for me. Not because I didn't get the toys I wanted as a kid, but because I could sense that my relatives, other than parents and siblings, were disappointed in me. And I think they still are, even though I served my country in the military for 8 years and will probably be the first person in my family to finish a graduate degree. They'll probably remain disappointed in me for as long as they live, even if I become a professor at a prestigious school or help with some research breakthrough in industry. Why? Because they have this very clear idea of what a woman should be and do, and I don't fit it. If you're wondering who would, Victoria Osteen would probably be a decent reference point (I was going to say Sarah Palin, but she's clearly more accomplished than her husband, and some of my relatives might consider that to be upstaging).

As a kid, it was clear that my behavior wasn't feminine enough for them. I was told I'd never catch a man the way I was, which, truth be told, was just fine with me. The idea of marriage or even long-term commitment seemed to be a kind of slavery (my stance on this has mellowed with age, at least in theory). But to them, my not catching a man was a terrible outcome. In fact, until I got married, some relatives asked my sister if I was a lesbian (I don't know if this idea has resurfaced since my divorce).

Fortunately, as an adult, I don't exactly lose sleep over this disfavor. In fact, I see who does have their favor, and I certainly don't wish to trade places with any of those people! But spending every holiday season in my formative years being confronted with my own perceived inadequacies is enough to make me annually consider booking a vacation over the holidays in a country that doesn't celebrate Christmas. If said country has a relatively clean beach, so much the better. ;-)

Disaster narrowly averted

I think I've mentioned before how religious my extended family is. Over the weekend, my grandmother was in the hospital awaiting surgery (it went well, and she's doing much better!). A bunch of us went to visit her, so it was almost like a family gathering. Normally at family gatherings, I just tune out the conversation and pretend to be fascinated by something on my phone, so despite the gulf between our opinions on things, we don't get into a lot of entanglements. But a hospital room provides much closer quarters, so I had to engage in more active lip-biting than I typically do.

During the afternoon, one of my aunts started singing the praises of Joel Osteen. Fine. Normally, this is where I start to tune out and find another conversation, but no such luck this time. Apparently, he had recently preached this sermon about how you should shout praises to God when you're feeling worried. Again, fine. I could see how that might have some psychological benefit. But what bothered me is how she kept talking about "the Christians" in Old Testament events like the battle of Jericho (Hint: there were no Christians in the Old Testament). It took all my self-restraint not to say, "Don't you mean the Jews?"

Later on, my stepmom wondered aloud why we have certain organs, even though we can live without them. This was relevant to the issue at hand, as Granny was having her gallbladder removed. Without even thinking about the implications of my statements, I rattled off the standard Biology 101 answer: "Well, these things were probably more useful at a previous stage in our development. I mean, look at the tailbone..."

We've never discussed the issue, but the look on my stepmom's face indicated I'd hit a nerve. Granny chimed in, "Well, nobody really knows about that stuff." I took that as my cue to bow out. It's things like this that make me think that even if it were a worthwhile goal to rid the world of religion (I'm not saying it is, or that it isn't), it would be impossible to achieve. We've still got flat-earthers, for dog's sake.

I did at least get in one positive point. We were discussing contentment and how important it was, and I said, "Every major religion teaches that in some form." That seemed to please everyone. Those who know me personally know how conflicted my relationship is with my extended family. Like all people, I'd prefer to get along with them. But it seems that to get along, I have to pretend to be someone I'm not.