Atheism 2.0

What aspects of religion should atheists (respectfully) adopt? Alain de Botton suggests a religion for atheists – call it Atheism 2.0 – that incorporates religious forms and traditions to satisfy our human need for connection, ritual and transcendence.

Alain de Botton doesn’t believe in supernatural beings, but suggests that non-believers should change the way they think about religions and their followers. Through their religions, followers are seeking many of the sorts of things the secularists seek, or should seek.

Many people enjoy Christmas carols, old churches and the ritualistic and community aspects of religions, but don’t believe in any sorts of fairies. Until now, they were forced to live in “a spiritual wasteland” in order to partake of the parts of religion that they enjoy.

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http://www.facebook.com/simon.prevost.14 Simon Prévost
What Mr De Botton is proposing as Athism 2.0 is prefab thinking, and that’s what i find the most armful in religion.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ZMK6YNWJACHQ5CRCJW5TNYFURI KsDevil
I put it to you that most atheists are not as well versed in philosophy as religionists are with the bible.
Religionists can easily and quickly quote from the bible, usually out of context, but atheists are rarely able to likewise quote from any book of philosophy and with a similar conviction.
I suspect that is what this lecture is aiming at.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ES5YFURR5VOTKTGHD4PIVYXPVI John
De Botton really puzzles me. He claims to be an atheist yet he can’t completely manage to “regurgitate that poison he was feed at mothers knee”. I agree we need to find ways to be ethical people and work for an ethical society, but de Botton is just plain ridiculously and bizarrely wrong. There is nothing whatsoever good about religion that wasn’t hijacked and fashioned from general humanity. We already have a universal sense of morality. That’s how humans have survived all these millennia and learned to cooperate. Yes, we have some deviants, and always will have (And need I remind you that many of these deviants are the very products of religion itself?). But the overwhelming majority of people in the world are NOT murderers, NOT rapists, NOT thieves, NOT bullies, and NOT chronic liars — and religion has nothing at all to do with it. And yes, we need to acknowledge and embrace this universal morality, formalize it, write books about it, teach it in schools, etc. And, as well, we don’t need religion to write moving, motivating, calming music — or to teach us about art — we can, have, and continue do that without religion (I agree, we should do it more.). I can’t speak for Britain, but here in the US we are literally at war. You don’t see it on the mainstream news, but the war rages on nonetheless. In this country religion is still powerful and oppressive. Millions of nonbelievers hide in the closet in fear of losing jobs, losing acceptance, being discriminated against, or worse. In the US, even universities tremble before religion — the idea of academic freedom is laughable when it comes to religious studies or religious related history, linguistics, archaeology, etc. Tenure would not save the professor who committed such a horrible crime as to say, “I’ve been studying the history of early Christianity for forty years, and I’ve never found any worthy evidence that Jesus ever actually existed.” You hear a lot of ‘retired’ scholars saying such things, but none who are still drawing a paycheck. De Botton, Christian light is NOT the answer. “We must once and for all, regurgitate that poison we were fed at mothers knee.” – Bertand Russell
Lauriesheri
I think atheists should meet to discuss philosophy. The atheist holidays should be celebrations of the great thinkers in history.
http://twitter.com/Kit_Pierce Kit Pierce
I was listening to him this morning on my local NPR station. His views align so perfectly with mine, so I immediately ordered his book on Amazon.
wald0
Hmm, interesting idea in a way but, I am not sure I fully support it. One of the things I have always disliked about religion are some of the tactics they use to recruit new members, to illicit an emotional response from their congregation, to trick people basically by use of clever psychological tactics that we are all naturally venerable to. It is even reported that during seminary many priest are basically trained to intentionally lead the congregation’s attention away from obvious contradictions and absurdities within their respective religious doctrine or text. X-priests that have attended these seminaries personally have reported this. In fact they also report many priests drop out of seminary at this point in training as they become disillusioned, for obvious reasons. Anyway I hope atheist never stoop to these levels to promote their philosophy. The speaker made the statement that propaganda was fine if it promoted a productive and moral concept. This is exactly the reasoning the despots throughout history have used to justify their propaganda. There is no such thing as evil simply for evil’s sake, everyone has justification for their beliefs and actions- even Hitler. Propaganda is by definition trickery, now would we say trickery was o.k. as long as the end justified the means? I don’t think so.