Just recently I watched one of the most ridiculous talks I've ever seen on TED Talks. Most of the talks I've seen there are well done. Even when I strongly disagree with the speaker I am generally impressed with the presentation. Alain de Botton's "Atheism 2.0" was pathetic in every possible way. It not only was premised on old myths, misconceptions, and falsehoods it was not even presented well. de Botton actually negated most of the points he tried to make in the course of his talk within the first few minutes of the Q&A portion.
There was a brief moment at the beginning where I felt as if he might have something interesting to contribute. Opening with the statement that he had a "new way of being an atheist" certainly got my attention. Within a few minutes he set a quite different and disappointing tone. He implied, rather strongly, that in order to have a sense of morals and community and to appreciate art and literature people need religion. Utter nonsense. If this were even partially true how could atheist artists exist? And what about the fact that even though I have always been an atheist I have always had both a strong sense of personal ethics and a deep love for the arts. One of my all time favorite artists happens to be Albrecht Durer. I can't think of a single piece of Durer's that does not have religious themes and/or elements. I also have always been interested in social issues and have participated in a wide variety of community activities. No religion required.
Simply perpetuating such foolish ideas would have been bad enough but de Botton took it even further by setting up a false dichotomy.
"...seems as though you either accept the doctrines and then you can have all the nice stuff or you reject the doctrine and you are living in a spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Wal-Mart."
Seriously?! He thinks the choice is that cut and dry. He does use terms like "seems" but throughout the talk this comes across as more of quirk of his speech pattern than a qualifier. By this point I started to notice that he always references religion. Not once does he use the word God. I started to wonder if de Botton, who is trying to tell me and everyone else about being an atheist, is himself an atheist. He apparently does not believe in organized religion but that is far from being an outright atheist. It also began to stick out that he likes the term spiritual. It seems more likely that he's one of those individuals that is uncomfortable with organized religion and with the more scriptural personal conception of God.
de Botton finally got to a point I could agree with him on, sort of, when he started speaking about how we could replace scripture with culture. He insisted that this is a good idea but an idea we have somehow forgotten. He had me till the "forgotten" part. Who is the "we" the has forgotten this would be a good thing. I am by no means alone in pointing out that any given Shakespearean play contains more ethical and cultural value than the entire Bible, old and new testament. Maybe religious people have forgotten or never accepted it in the first place but the various non-religious communities certainly have not. It also does not seem to occur to him that the forces that have hampered humanism and the humanities are not the people who want to see scripture replaced by culture but by those who want religion to be a dominant force in all our lives.
He then throws in another false dichotomy when he insists, "The other thing religion knows is that we are not just brains, we are bodies..." Just brains? The brain is a pretty complex and amazing organ. Last time I checked the brain is an organ of the body so religion doesn't "know" any such thing. This is just a rehash of the foolish dualistic mind/body argument. The mind is not separate from the brain. It is a product of the brain. It is literally impossible to experience anything or to exist at all without a functioning brain. The nonsense de Botton throws around is staggering.
Then after that whopper he sets about redefining and in the most narrow terms possible what art is. I can think of any of the art majors I lived with in college who would get pissed off if they were told each of their pieces of artwork not only had to have a set message but that he also had to leave no room for any alternate interpretations. De Bottton actually comes out and states definitively that all art "should be didactic." What happened to his praising the humanities? I don't recall the humanist tradition ever favor a one-size-fits-all approach to anything let alone something as personal and subjective as art.
Earlier I mentioned that he contradicts himself in the Q&A part of the talk. He does this by saying that there is not a definitive connection between religion and art, community, and morality. What? The whole talk was about what atheists can learn, borrow, or "steal" from religion. If he concedes that as atheists we already have these things why do we need to get them from religion? In hi own mind what was the talk about? I already knew I could appreciate and learn form art and literature. I already have a strong sense of morals and community. What was I suppose to take away from his stereotype laced ramblings? Perhaps the answer lies in another one of his foolish statements where he says we, "can have spiritual moments without belief in spirit."
Did you catch that? Spiritual without Spirit. No you can't! By definition that is not possible. Notice the word "spirit" makes up not only the word but the meaning of "spiritual." Basically, I think it comes down to de Botton not knowing what he's really talking about. I think he wants to be religious but only on his own terms. he doesn't seem to get that he already is. That's both the amazing and dangerous thing about belief, you can make it into whatever you want. His need to have those around him accept it as some sort of universal thing is unnecessary and rather annoying.
Note: As I started thinking about what to pick from this smorgasbord of idiocy I noticed other were already starting to blog on it. I particularly like what PZ Meyers picked out to ridicule. His observations on de Botton's claim that religion gets education right is great. There are other points and statements made by de Botton I could have focussed on but I prefer to keep these posts short.
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