I just watched Alain de Botton’s presentation of what he calls Atheism 2.0. You can find the video here (http://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_atheism_2_0.html?awesm=on.ted.com_deBotton). Alain suggests that atheists should not only tolerate religion, but even adopt certain aspects of it, in order to satisfy their needs for connection, ritual and transcendence.
His vision is that of harmoniously disagreeing with the doctrine of religion, but not so much with what religion is trying to achieve. Quote: “One could have so called ‘spiritual moments’ without belief in spirit.”
This reminded me of another TED video, one I saw a few years ago, of Richard Dawkins arguing for a Militant stance towards Atheism. You can find that video here (http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_dawkins_on_militant_atheism.html). His presentation is much funnier that Alain’s, the jokes being mostly disrespectful of relegion, e.g. “We’re all atheists about most of the gods humanity has ever believed in, some of us just go one god further”. With Militant Atheism Richard basically encourages atheists to stop being polite and come out and say so.
I see arguments for both approaches. I love the idea of learning from religion, and using its methods, without supporting the doctrine. At the same time, I also think atheists should not always politely disagree, but when appropriate confront the religious dogma.
Either way, the lesson from these two great presentations is I think for religion to open up [to criticism], and atheism to lighten up [with criticism].
What do you think?
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