《Religion for Atheists》是一本由Alain De Botton著作，Pantheon出版的Hardcover图书，本书定价：USD 26.95，页数：320，特精心从网络上整理的一些读者的读后感，希望对大家能有帮助。

　　《Religion for Atheists》精选点评：

　　●拿这本书做精读的。书本身对我的启发也特别大！

　　●作者底蕴深厚，我等万万不及

　　●无神论者并非等同于对宗教|信仰完全无概念或者生活里没有任何精神支撑力量的人 感觉定位写作对象时将不同群体混为一谈了

　　●很不错的一本书

　　●very thought provoking

　　●站在基督徒老师和同学面前介绍这本书，大家一脸疑惑，难道这是不是基督徒的圣经吗？其实就是作者对不是任何信仰的人怎么欣赏艺术,看到教育之类的解读。

　　●:无

　　●拋開教義和信仰真實性來分析宗教在世俗上帶來的好處，角度真新穎。只是沒有信仰的支撐，我覺得這一切都是不可行的。

　　●This book has answered many questions that I have had for years! Amazing.

　　●随笔写作其实就是文字设计+思想阐述，他是一把扫把都有个人观点的人，中译本梅俊杰翻译的很工整文秀，原曲精致狡黠诙谐妙趣隽永风流蕴藉。

　　《Religion for Atheists》读后感(一)：这是一篇很水很水的评论

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　　这是一篇很水的评论。

　　非常非常，非常，水。

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　　等我正儿八经看完这本书再来写个书评把现在这个删掉。。*1

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　　今天学校书店打折！

　　我这个波顿的脑残粉去晃悠。

　　当然那时我完全没有预料到会使用到这个身份，

　　我当时的身份是吃完午饭不想学习的无聊青年。

　　走到一个柜脚，

　　眼前突然一亮，

　　昨天摆在这个位置的——

　　绝对是另一本不晓得是哪个写的贵到死的书！

　　我下意识地把它捧起来，

　　啊！原来它——

　　就是我觊觎很久了的——

　　拥有迷人秃顶[1]的英伦才子[2]——阿兰·德波顿——的——

　　封面超级漂亮的新书——“Religion for Atheists”！

　　脑袋还未清醒的我，

　　来不及把它翻过来就屁颠屁颠地跑去付钱了！

　　然后才发现居然要240！*2

　　贪婪的书商！

　　好一曲赞歌！

　　但我坚信这银子不会白花，

　　同样这么想的可不止我一个：

　　“Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 62 in Books

　　#1 in Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Philosophy

　　#1 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Other Religions

　　#1 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Philosophy” [3]

　　此时此刻，

　　言语已不能表达我内心的激动。

　　我的心飞到不久的将来——

　　当我缓缓合上这本书的底页，

　　轻声呼唤你的名字——“波顿——波顿——”

　　“这是俺看的你的第八本书了！——

　　上次第七本看完我叫你那么多遍你为什么不出现！”

　　但若是你还是躲着我，

　　那一定是我呼唤你的方法不对。

　　唉——无怨无悔的恋人呵，

　　不要灰心，不要丧气，

　　努力学习科学文化知识，

　　终有一天这一切都会得到回报！

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　　[1]. http://moreintelligentlife.com/files/alain%20de%20botton1.jpg

　　[2]. 好吧，人家是瑞士人，驻扎伦敦而已。。

　　[3]. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Religion-Atheists-non-believers-guide-religion/dp/0241144779

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　　*1. 我知他是矫情的，绝无半点想法将来把这篇书评删掉。

　　*2. 我知他是虚伪的，没有告诉读者有学生证可打八二折。

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　　《Religion for Atheists》读后感(二)：宗教与自然：精神的庇护所

　　友人推荐神学类书籍后，我挑了Alain de Botton的这本料到必定有趣的小书。最为受益的是其关于(religious) kindness的论述：

　　The exhortations we weould need are typically not very complex: forgive others, be slow to anger, dare to imagine things from others' point of view, set your dramas in perspective...

　　傲慢、嫉妒、暴怒、懒惰、贪婪、色欲和饕餮这些念头在任何时候都有可能在脑中浮现。所谓不以恶小而为之。

　　此外在宗教的视角下，人类是永远长不大的孩子：需要不断的劝告、需要聆听、需要无条件的支持（这似乎是我第一次意识到原来这是所有人的共同弱点）。宗教（书中以基督教为主要例子）并不认为人类是可以完全掌控自身情绪的理性主体，因而想法设法从不同的渠道、媒介不厌其烦地劝告众生：布道、绘画、音乐、建筑等等。所以宗教施人以无尽的温柔(tenderness)与劝告。

　　While for long stretches of our lives we can believe in our maturity, we never succeed in insulating ourselves from the kind of catastrophic events that sweep away our ability to reason, our courage and our resourcefulness at putting dramas in perspective and throw ourselves back into a state of premordial helplessness...

　　似乎人的内心都渴望能有一个圣母玛利亚般的存在：永远的慈祥和温存、永远的陪伴和聆听。此外，关于(seeing things from universal/eternal) perspective的论述也让人颇有启发。

　　We should not always interpret pain as punishment and that we should recall that we live in a universe riddled with mysteries, of which the vagaries in our fortunes are certainly not the largest or even among the most important.

　　在促使人反思这一方面，科学进步似乎作用最大。恰恰是每一次的科学发现让人意识到自身知识和能力的局限（就像每次看文献都会想：这个问题我居然没有想到过！诶这样都行！）。

　　固然每一瞬间的念头、情绪会控制自己，但是应当有种内观：个体只是宇宙存在的万千份子之一，个体的重要性其实微不足道。有了这种觉悟，许多的执念或许就不复存在了。

　　...(R)ather than try to redress our humiliation by insisting on our wronged importance, we should instead endeavour to apprehend and appreciate our essential nothingness. The signal danger of life in a godless society is that it lacks reminders of the transcendent and therefore leaves us unprepared for disappointment and eventual annihilation.

　　关于sub specie aeternitatis (under the aspect of eternity)的论述，似乎斯宾诺莎是一大代表。

　　inosa thinks that if you see your misfortunes as they are in reality, as part of the concatenation of causes stretching from the beginning of time to the end, you will see that they are misfortunes only to you, not to the universe, to which they are merely passing discords heightening an ultimate harmony.

　　将个体命运置身于宇宙之间，其渺小、短暂、无常几乎是必然的。最近陆川的片子《我们诞生在中国》当中部分片段就是极好的诠释。

　　与高度异化/社会化的人类相比，自然界中的生命身上似乎更能体现宇宙的无常、生命的转瞬即逝。这似乎也是因为野生动物的生命周期更短，从外部的角度更能观察到完整的周期。这与道家的理念似乎又是相通的：“天地无仁，以万物为刍狗。”天地无为，万物皆以自然的内在规律演变。

　　想起纪录片《我们诞生在中国》和电影《毁灭人生（Demolition）》里都强调的片段：家人在严寒中互相取暖、相互扶持～

　　长久以来我似乎都被洗脑了，认定了家庭作为一种社会制度其目的是为了抚育下一代，忽视了家庭成员作为个体的情感、情绪，因而也常常对交际感到厌倦。希望自己能像《毁灭人生》里的男主角一样最终认识到，家人之间的相互帮助并不完全是社会学家声称的“阶级的延续”诸如此类，更多的还是出于温存的呵护。也许这样我也能和自己妥协了。

　　《Religion for Atheists》读后感(三)：在后上帝时代仰望星空

　　最近先后读了乔斯坦 .贾德（ Jostein Gaarder）和阿兰 .德波顿（ Alan De Botton）的新书。两位都是我喜欢的大众哲学传播人，两本新书碰巧撞车，都在宗教信仰上做文章。

　　贾德谈宗教，比如神导论，并不算新鲜。风靡全球的《苏菲的世界》里面，小女孩席德的父亲隐入幕后，代理上帝角色，只要信笔一挥，镜像时空中的苏菲和 她的导师艾伯特立刻命盘跌宕，无处遁离。影影绰绰的上帝，无论诉诸人形还是宇宙终极大爆炸，总是游荡于贾德的小说意境，往往和恢弘的世界观并述，像 《在迷蒙的镜子中》、 《橙色女孩》之类，倘若激起读者思绪澎湃，仰止高山，大概再自然不过。你会以为，作者拥有哈勃望远镜一般收纳浩荡星河的视角，然而对万物始源，表态一直暧 昧犹疑，又或者保持着某种意义上虔诚的矛盾。新作《比利牛斯山城堡》（ The Castle in the Pyrenees)再度升级了左右手互博，干脆安排唯物者唯心者电邮辩论，从头吵到尾，从零秒宇宙推及意识本原，可见作者对终极问题、终极信念思虑之深 远。辩论双方三十年前曾是情侣，遭遇了一桩灵异事件，他们给出的不同解释以及坚持招致信仰分歧总爆发，后果竟是分了手。人到中年再相逢，旧爱表白寥寥，至 少稀释进 “你究竟相信什么？ ” “偶然就不是冥冥注定吗？ ”等等尖锐又劳神的智慧问答，分量轻比鸿毛了。贾德似乎颇有点威慑意图：看看，信仰闹危机，恋爱都没法谈。

　　阿兰 .德波顿则风格迥异。他压根儿不纠结于上帝之辩，新作《与无神论者谈宗教》（ Religion for Atheists）一提笔就撇得干干净净， “我们不妨直言，当然没有什么天赐的宗教 ”(...let us bluntly state that of course no religions are true in any God-given sense)，《仁慈》（ Kindness）一章简述宗教起源， “当时人们只好伪称伦理道德从天而降，以避免我们自身的脆弱善变玷污了它 ” （ ...We had to pretend that morality came from the heavens in order to insulate it from our own prevarications and frailties.），到了《悲观主义》（ Pessimism），他谈耶路撒冷哭墙的效用，就更不讳言了， "假如把上帝从这个等式里剔除掉，我们还剩下 什么呢？一群徒劳哭号，无语对苍天的人哪。 ”（ Remove God from this equation and what do we have left？ Bellowing humans calling out in vain to an empty sky.)，还好他补递了一句，最最不济，至少这是一群一起 舔舐伤痛的人，要不然，大实话太令人沮丧了。再来看这本书的装帧， “圣经 ”（ Holy Bible）两个字中心戳了个大窟窿，摆明了忤逆姿态，副标题 “非信徒的宗教使用指南 ”（ A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion), 又 Guide又 Uses，简直双重实用主义。德波顿实际上避开了贾德一路的繁难点（如果不是最难点），专取宗教的功用为讨论边界，这不是没有一点讨巧 的。

　　和德波顿以往那些 “他山之石 ”一脉相承，赎救意味或许更明朗些，这次的宗教书援引各种教派资源闪亮点，力图提升后上帝时代信仰空匮的读者们的心理生活质量。

　　假设你是一个备受压抑、志向难酬的上班族，你看到德波顿从天主教弥撒仪式获得灵感设计了一个爱心餐厅（ Agape Restaurant），打破食客们的社会层级，引导诸位心情交流，疲累了整天的小人物你很可能置之一笑，但终究是有点暖意的。又比如你正好因为芝麻绿豆 点差错被上司狠削一顿，而德波顿却说犯错是人之常情常性，中世纪基督教甚至划拨时间段，一年清规戒律之后，由着教众放纵愚行，所谓愚人之宴（ the　 Feast of Fools），你会不会感动，多么通情达理啊。又假如，你是一个苦读备考的学生，学业漫长枯索，学制不近人情，你好不容易压服虚掷光阴的罪恶感，翻开这本 毫无专业关联的宗教小品，赫然入目这么一番话： “虽然大学已经无比精通于传授文化方面的事实信息，却仍对培养学生把文化活用为智囊漠不关心，而这后者所指 的知识则不单限于求真，还对内心有裨益，当我们遭遇作为存在体的无限挑战，无论是来自专横的雇主还是肝功能致命病变，这种知识都能切实地给予我们安慰 ” （ while universities have achieved unparalleled expertise in imparting factual information about culture, they remain wholly uninterested in training students to use it as a repertoire of wisdom -- this latter term referring to a kind of knowledge concerned with things which are not only true but also inwardly beneficial, a knowledge which can prove of solace to us when confronted by the infinite challenges of existence, from tyrannical employer to a fatal lesion on our liver.），口气有点冲，总结也失之偏颇，可是你还是忍不住心坎一热，好像终于找到知己，对牢了一倾苦闷。

　　这样的小营养元素随处拾，全书除了开篇比较慢热，结语平无起色，余者用料劲足。加之德波顿笔调雅健，措辞工巧，很有点他开过玩笑的王尔德那么非美勿 视的挑剔口味，看得出连附图都颇下了番细功，于是整体阅读体验是很舒服的，和他形容的宁谧的茶道相似。乔斯坦 .贾德曾说 “一切宗教都含蕴着丰富的人类经 验 ”（ all religions contain a cornucopia of human experience)，对这些经验的引介和延展，恰恰是读阿兰宗教书的乐趣所在。好比犹太教的赎罪日、深水浴，佛教冥想，天主教圣母七苦及耶稣受难之十 四处苦路，再到应答纷纭诉求的宗教偶像们，到普遍意义上的原罪；一经他的思绪打磨，便是最约律俗定的仪式、浅白平易的典故好像也面目焕然，任重道远了。

　　《谈宗教》的脉络很清晰，亦即认可宗教对人的基本设定：他不过是个孩子，会闯祸，调皮捣蛋，易受伤也能伤及无辜，心灵脆弱，渴望爱护，自是甚高，有 顽固惰性，记性不佳，他需要引导，而且是持之以恒，不断重复的引导。这在德波顿讲 “愚人之宴 ”那种张弛有度的平衡法则就初现端倪，然后引进管束小朋友、赏 罚分明的星状图（ Star Charts），《教育》一章猛烈抨击自由派教育机构、政治家乃至社会体系，取以代之各种宗教的身体力行，接着继续树立正面榜样，应援形形色色心理隐疾和 外伤。

　　从不完美的人性外延到不完美的人生，德波顿偏爱的塞内加式悲观主义哲学再次在宗教，尤其基督教的运用上挑大梁。他提到贵为万王之王的耶稣也难逃一生 坎坷，代代艺术家记录下，他死亡过程之痛几近人间之最。和最伟大的精神导师经受的苦痛对比，我们日常的患得患失又算得了什么呢。在《展望》 （ Perspective）篇中，他讲了《圣经 .约伯记》（ Book of Job）故事，约伯一夕之间从安康富庶坠入家破人亡，他愤意难平，信仰动摇，最后耶和华亲自出马，发聋振聩告诫他，人对身外万类、上帝之道一无所知，又怎 能叫价支配命运筹码呢？他评帕斯卡的《沉思录》（ Pensées）之所以令人愉悦，正因为它揭示了人作为存在概莫能外的伤痛烦恼，令读者感同身受，心有戚 戚，倘使天降大运，那便要多几倍幸福与感激。在这点上，阿兰 .德波顿类似乔斯坦 .贾德，都使用宏大和渺小的强对比，引发读者乐天知命，珍惜当下的感戴心。 然而德波顿点到此处就撤退了，贾德笔下的气象学家则更进一步，他认为某些宗教导师鼓吹 “破罐破摔 ”我们不完美的世界和人生，以期加速末日之后耶稣的回归， 天堂的降临，于是悲观激励从珍存演变至破坏，这是很危险的。德波顿推荐宗教药疗，应该知晓是药三分毒，完全无妨添一笔 “谨勿过量 ”，很可能使他的方剂更完 善。

　　此外，他的单面孔也表现在避让历史已然、现实行进的宗教纷争、迫害，乃至极端行为。这远比塞一张新教徒损毁天主堂前偶像雕塑的照片严肃得多，也远高 于美丑之别，换言之，其背后人性偏执，人与人的不宽容，是很值得挖掘的潜台词。德波顿强调了后上帝时代的俗世混乱，却不愿点破宗教智慧的理想界，同样百孔千疮，对巨大灾难的事后诸葛亮不输甚至超过自由派老佛爷一般的司法体制。而继续探讨人类最成熟理智的部分总结传承的生存经验仍然不足以阻止野小子们去善趋恶，实在比头疼医头脚痛医脚，更有借鉴之益吧。

　　比较不过瘾的还有一处，德波顿两次点名巴赫，可惜权充背景音，一笔带过。看来他比较重视觉艺术，不同话题不同小交集，描摹逼真生动，又富于启迪，如果这等捕捉力转投音乐疗法，时不时闲叙几位名家，相信会是阅读养分很高的一本。

　　德波顿把他的悲观哲学贯彻到底，说书籍（包括他自己的书）收效绵薄，要转化为行动，突破个体智识单打独斗， “哲学家变成国王，国王变成哲学家，这世道方才扭转 ”（ ...the world would not be set right until philosophers became kings, or kings philosophers.)。话是没错，却也不足以劝诫读者如我接纳教廷佛堂的 “组织 ”和 “行动 ”。后上帝时代，我们或许不会敬重恪守仰望星空的月见仪式，无非三五分钟，勉强惊叹，过目两忘。对待贾德们、德波顿们的书稿也差不多同此低频，一样反应，这些行动的矮子倒是重复、坚持、书写着，所以透过零碎串起的阅读时间，我们也或多或少组建着属于我们的读库星座图，当我们脆弱悲伤的时候，给我们慰藉，供我们仰望。

　　《Religion for Atheists》读后感(四)：德波顿在TED为新书做的节目Alain de Botton: Atheism 2.0

　　http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/alain_de_botton_atheism_2_0.html

　　One of the most common ways of dividing the world is into those who believe and those who don't -- into the religious and the atheists. And for the last decade or so, it's been quite clear what being an atheist means. There have been some very vocal atheists who've pointed out, not just that religion is wrong, but that it's ridiculous. These people, many of whom have lived in North Oxford, have argued -- they've argued that believing in God is akin to believing in fairies and essentially that the whole thing is a childish game.

　　ow I think it's too easy. I think it's too easy to dismiss the whole of religion that way. And it's as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. And what I'd like to inaugurate today is a new way of being an atheist -- if you like, a new version of atheism we could call Atheism 2.0. Now what is Atheism 2.0？ Well it starts from a very basic premise: of course, there's no God. Of course, there are no deities or supernatural spirits or angels, etc. Now let's move on; that's not the end of the story, that's the very, very beginning.

　　I'm interested in the kind of constituency that thinks something along these lines: that thinks, "I can't believe in any of this stuff. I can't believe in the doctrines. I don't think these doctrines are right. But," a very important but, "I love Christmas carols. I really like the art of Mantegna. I really like looking at old churches. I really like turning the pages of the Old Testament." Whatever it may be, you know the kind of thing I'm talking about -- people who are attracted to the ritualistic side, the moralistic, communal side of religion, but can't bear the doctrine. Until now, these people have faced a rather unpleasant choice. It's almost as though either you accept the doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you're living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.

　　o that's a sort of tough choice. I don't think we have to make that choice. I think there is an alternative. I think there are ways -- and I'm being both very respectful and completely impious -- of stealing from religions. If you don't believe in a religion, there's nothing wrong with picking and mixing, with taking out the best sides of religion. And for me, atheism 2.0 is about both, as I say, a respectful and an impious way of going through religions and saying, "What here could we use？" The secular world is full of holes. We have secularized badly, I would argue. And a thorough study of religion could give us all sorts of insights into areas of life that are not going too well. And I'd like to run through a few of these today.

　　I'd like to kick off by looking at education. Now education is a field the secular world really believes in. When we think about how we're going to make the world a better place, we think education; that's where we put a lot of money. Education is going to give us, not only commercial skills, industrial skills, it's also going to make us better people. You know the kind of thing a commencement address is, and graduation ceremonies, those lyrical claims that education, the process of education -- particularly higher education -- will make us into nobler and better human beings. That's a lovely idea. Interesting where it came from.

　　In the early 19th century, church attendance in Western Europe started sliding down very, very sharply, and people panicked. They asked themselves the following question. They said, where are people going to find the morality, where are they going to find guidance, and where are they going to find sources of consolation？ And influential voices came up with one answer. They said culture. It's to culture that we should look for guidance, for consolation, for morality. Let's look to the plays of Shakespeare, the dialogues of Plato, the novels of Jane Austen. In there, we'll find a lot of the truths that we might previously have found in the Gospel of Saint John. Now I think that's a very beautiful idea and a very true idea. They wanted to replace ｓｃｒｉｐｔure with culture. And that's a very plausible idea. It's also an idea that we have forgotten.

　　If you went to a top university -- let's say you went to Harvard or Oxford or Cambridge -- and you said, "I've come here because I'm in search of morality, guidance and consolation; I want to know how to live," they would show you the way to the insane asylum. This is simply not what our grandest and best institutes of higher learning are in the business of. Why？ They don't think we need it. They don't think we are in an urgent need of assistance. They see us as adults, rational adults. What we need is information. We need data, we don't need help.

　　ow religions start from a very different place indeed. All religions, all major religions, at various points call us children. And like children, they believe that we are in severe need of assistance. We're only just holding it together. Perhaps this is just me, maybe you. But anyway, we're only just holding it together. And we need help. Of course, we need help. And so we need guidance and we need didactic learning.

　　You know, in the 18th century in the U.K., the greatest preacher, greatest religious preacher, was a man called John Wesley, who went up and down this country delivering sermons, advising people how they could live. He delivered sermons on the duties of parents to their children and children to their parents, the duties of the rich to the poor and the poor to the rich. He was trying to tell people how they should live through the medium of sermons, the classic medium of delivery of religions.

　　ow we've given up with the idea of sermons. If you said to a modern liberal individualist, "Hey, how about a sermon？" they'd go, "No, no. I don't need one of those. I'm an independent, individual person." What's the difference between a sermon and our modern, secular mode of delivery, the lecture？ Well a sermon wants to change your life and a lecture wants to give you a bit of information. And I think we need to get back to that sermon tradition. The tradition of sermonizing is hugely valuable, because we are in need of guidance, morality and consolation -- and religions know that.

　　Another point about education: we tend to believe in the modern secular world that if you tell someone something once, they'll remember it. Sit them in a classroom, tell them about Plato at the age of 20, send them out for a career in management consultancy for 40 years, and that lesson will stick with them. Religions go, "Nonsense. You need to keep repeating the lesson 10 times a day. So get on your knees and repeat it." That's what all religions tell us: "Get on you knees and repeat it 10 or 20 or 15 times a day." Otherwise our minds are like sieves.

　　o religions are cultures of repetition. They circle the great truths again and again and again. We associate repetition with boredom. "Give us the new," we're always saying. "The new is better than the old." If I said to you, "Okay, we're not going to have new TED. We're just going to run through all the old ones and watch them five times because they're so true. We're going to watch Elizabeth Gilbert five times because what she says is so clever," you'd feel cheated. Not so if you're adopting a religious mindset.

　　The other things that religions do is to arrange time. All the major religions give us calendars. What is a calendar？ A calendar is a way of making sure that across the year you will bump into certain very important ideas. In the Catholic chronology, Catholic calendar, at the end of March you will think about St. Jerome and his qualities of humility and goodness and his generosity to the poor. You won't do that by accident; you will do that because you are guided to do that. Now we don't think that way. In the secular world we think, "If an idea is important, I'll bump into it. I'll just come across it." Nonsense, says the religious world view. Religious view says we need calendars, we need to structure time, we need to synchronize encounters. This comes across also in the way in which religions set up rituals around important feelings.

　　Take the Moon. It's really important to look at the Moon. You know, when you look at the Moon, you think, "I'm really small. What are my problems？" It sets things into perspective, etc., etc. We should all look at the Moon a bit more often. We don't. Why don't we？ Well there's nothing to tell us, "Look at the Moon." But if you're a Zen Buddhist in the middle of September, you will be ordered out of your home, made to stand on a canonical platform and made to celebrate the festival of Tsukimi, where you will be given poems to read in honor of the Moon and the passage of time and the frailty of life that it should remind us of. You'll be handed rice cakes. And the Moon and the reflection on the Moon will have a secure place in your heart. That's very good.

　　The other thing that religions are really aware of is: speak well -- I'm not doing a very good job of this here -- but oratory, oratory is absolutely key to religions. In the secular world, you can come through the university system and be a lousy speaker and still have a great career. But the religious world doesn't think that way. What you're saying needs to be backed up by a really convincing way of saying it.

　　o if you go to an African American Pentecostalist church in the American South and you listen to how they talk, my goodness, they talk well. After every convincing point, people will go, "Amen, amen, amen." At the end of a really rousing paragraph, they'll all stand up, and they'll go, "Thank you Jesus, thank you Christ, thank you Savior." If we were doing it like they do it -- let's not do it, but if we were to do it -- I would tell you something like, "Culture should replace ｓｃｒｉｐｔure." And you would go, "Amen, amen, amen." And at the end of my talk, you would all stand up and you would go, "Thank you Plato, thank you Shakespeare, thank you Jane Austen." And we'd know that we had a real rhythm going. All right, all right. We're getting there. We're getting there.

　　(Applause)

　　The other thing that religions know is we're not just brains, we are also bodies. And when they teach us a lesson, they do it via the body. So for example, take the Jewish idea of forgiveness. Jews are very interested in forgiveness and how we should start anew and start afresh. They don't just deliver us sermons on this. They don't just give us books or words about this. They tell us to have a bath. So in Orthodox Jewish communities, every Friday you go to a Mikveh. You immerse yourself in the water, and a physical action backs up a philosophical idea. We don't tend to do that. Our ideas are in one area and our behavior with our bodies is in another. Religions are fascinating in the way they try and combine the two.

　　Let's look at art now. Now art is something that in the secular world, we think very highly of. We think art is really, really important. A lot of our surplus wealth goes to museums, etc. We sometimes hear it said that museums are our new cathedrals, or our new churches. You've heard that saying. Now I think that the potential is there, but we've completely let ourselves down. And the reason we've let ourselves down is that we're not properly studying how religions handle art.

　　The two really bad ideas that are hovering in the modern world that inhibit our capacity to draw strength from art: The first idea is that art should be for art's sake -- a ridiculous idea -- an idea that art should live in a hermetic bubble and should not try to do anything with this troubled world. I couldn't disagree more. The other thing that we believe is that art shouldn't explain itself, that artists shouldn't say what they're up to, because if they said it, it might destroy the spell and we might find it too easy. That's why a very common feeling when you're in a museum -- let's admit it -- is, "I don't know what this is about." But if we're serious people, we don't admit to that. But that feeling of puzzlement is structural to contemporary art.

　　ow religions have a much saner attitude to art. They have no trouble telling us what art is about. Art is about two things in all the major faiths. Firstly, it's trying to remind you of what there is to love. And secondly, it's trying to remind you of what there is to fear and to hate. And that's what art is. Art is a visceral encounter with the most important ideas of your faith. So as you walk around a church, or a mosque or a cathedral, what you're trying to imbibe, what you're imbibing is, through your eyes, through your senses, truths that have otherwise come to you through your mind.

　　Essentially it's propaganda. Rembrandt is a propagandist in the Christian view. Now the word "propaganda" sets off alarm bells. We think of Hitler, we think of Stalin. Don't, necessarily. Propaganda is a manner of being didactic in honor of something. And if that thing is good, there's no problem with it at all.

　　My view is that museums should take a leaf out of the book of religions. And they should make sure that when you walk into a museum -- if I was a museum curator, I would make a room for love, a room for generosity. All works of art are talking to us about things. And if we were able to arrange spaces where we could come across works where we would be told, use these works of art to cement these ideas in your mind, we would get a lot more out of art. Art would pick up the duty that it used to have and that we've neglected because of certain mis-founded ideas. Art should be one of the tools by which we improve our society. Art should be didactic.

　　Let's think of something else. The people in the modern world, in the secular world, who are interested in matters of the spirit, in matters of the mind, in higher soul-like concerns, tend to be isolated individuals. They're poets, they're philosophers, they're photographers, they're filmmakers. And they tend to be on their own. They're our cottage industries. They are vulnerable, single people. And they get depressed and they get sad on their own. And they don't really change much.

　　ow think about religions, think about organized religions. What do organized religions do？ They group together, they form institutions. And that has all sorts of advantages. First of all, scale, might. The Catholic Church pulled in 97 billion dollars last year according to the Wall Street Journal. These are massive machines. They're collaborative, they're branded, they're multinational, and they're highly disciplined.

　　These are all very good qualities. We recognize them in relation to corporations. And corporations are very like religions in many ways, except they're right down at the bottom of the pyramid of needs. They're selling us shoes and cars. Whereas the people who are selling us the higher stuff -- the therapists, the poets -- are on their own and they have no power, they have no might. So religions are the foremost example of an institution that is fighting for the things of the mind. Now we may not agree with what religions are trying to teach us, but we can admire the institutional way in which they're doing it.

　　ooks alone, books written by lone individuals, are not going to change anything. We need to group together. If you want to change the world, you have to group together, you have to be collaborative. And that's what religions do. They are multinational, as I say, they are branded, they have a clear identity, so they don't get lost in a busy world. That's something we can learn from.

　　I want to conclude. Really what I want to say is for many of you who are operating in a range of different fields, there is something to learn from the example of religion -- even if you don't believe any of it. If you're involved in anything that's communal, that involves lots of people getting together, there are things for you in religion. If you're involved, say, in a travel industry in any way, look at pilgrimage. Look very closely at pilgrimage. We haven't begun to scratch the surface of what travel could be because we haven't looked at what religions do with travel. If you're in the art world, look at the example of what religions are doing with art. And if you're an educator in any way, again, look at how religions are spreading ideas. You may not agree with the ideas, but my goodness, they're highly effective mechanisms for doing so.

　　o really my concluding point is you may not agree with religion, but at the end of the day, religions are so subtle, so complicated, so intelligent in many ways that they're not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone; they're for all of us.

　　Thank you very much.

　　(Applause)

　　Chris Anderson: Now this is actually a courageous talk, because you're kind of setting up yourself in some ways to be ridiculed in some quarters.

　　AB: You can get shot by both sides. You can get shot by the hard-headed atheists, and you can get shot by those who fully believe.

　　CA: Incoming missiles from North Oxford at any moment.

　　AB: Indeed.

　　CA: But you left out one aspect of religion that a lot of people might say your agenda could borrow from, which is this sense -- that's actually probably the most important thing to anyone who's religious -- of spiritual experience, of some kind of connection with something that's bigger than you are. Is there any room for that experience in Atheism 2.0？

　　AB: Absolutely. I, like many of you, meet people who say things like, "But isn't there something bigger than us, something else？" And I say, "Of course." And they say, "So aren't you sort of religious？" And I go, "No." Why does that sense of mystery, that sense of the dizzying scale of the universe, need to be accompanied by a mystical feeling？ Science and just observation gives us that feeling without it, so I don't feel the need. The universe is large and we are tiny, without the need for further religious superstructure. So one can have so-called spiritual moments without belief in the spirit.

　　CA: Actually, let me just ask a question. How many people here would say that religion is important to them？ Is there an equivalent process by which there's a sort of bridge between what you're talking about and what you would say to them？

　　AB: I would say that there are many, many gaps in secular life and these can be plugged. It's not as though, as I try to suggest, it's not as though either you have religion and then you have to accept all sorts of things, or you don't have religion and then you're cut off from all these very good things. It's so sad that we constantly say, "I don't believe so I can't have community, so I'm cut off from morality, so I can't go on a pilgrimage." One wants to say, "Nonsense. Why not？" And that's really the spirit of my talk. There's so much we can absorb. Atheism shouldn't cut itself off from the rich sources of religion.

　　CA: It seems to me that there's plenty of people in the TED community who are atheists. But probably most people in the community certainly don't think that religion is going away any time soon and want to find the language to have a constructive dialogue and to feel like we can actually talk to each other and at least share some things in common. Are we foolish to be optimistic about the possibility of a world where, instead of religion being the great rallying cry of divide and war, that there could be bridging？

　　AB: No, we need to be polite about differences. Politeness is a much-overlooked virtue. It's seen as hypocrisy. But we need to get to a stage when you're an atheist and someone says, "Well you know, I did pray the other day," you politely ignore it. You move on. Because you've agreed on 90 percent of things, because you have a shared view on so many things, and you politely differ. And I think that's what the religious wars of late have ignored. They've ignored the possibility of harmonious disagreement.

　　CA: And finally, does this new thing that you're proposing that's not a religion but something else, does it need a leader, and are you volunteering to be the pope？

　　(Laughter)

　　AB: Well, one thing that we're all very suspicious of is individual leaders. It doesn't need it. What I've tried to lay out is a framework and I'm hoping that people can just fill it in. I've sketched a sort of broad framework. But wherever you are, as I say, if you're in the travel industry, do that travel bit. If you're in the communal industry, look at religion and do the communal bit. So it's a wiki project.

　　(Laughter)

　　CA: Alain, thank you for sparking many conversations later.

　　(Applause)