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Alain de Botton: Atheism 2.0

Alain de Botton

TEDtalksDirector

Posted: Jan 23, 2012

Swiss philosopher and founder of “The School of Life” presents his ideas for a modernized atheism.

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COMMENTS

Lincoln Cannon • Orem UT USA • Jan 23, 2012

I enjoyed this presentation. Although I disagree with his atheism, I share his concerns with superstition and I agree with his advocacy of investigating religion for its practical benefits.

Jason Stone • Oklahoma City, OK USA • Jan 23, 2012

I've started calling myself a "Personal Agnostic". I realize that most spiritual people across time and space seem to have similar features to their experiences and they seem genuinely committed to truth. This leads me to suspect that the probability that so many truth focused people are simply lying is very low. I've accepted that at the minimum there is something like an altered state that humans can enter into in which they may experience things similar to the "spiritual" phenomena that many religious people talk about.

Just because I have not experienced something that would convince me that spiritual experiences are real does not mean that I logically have the ability to conclude that no one else has had experiences that would convince me if I had personally experienced that same thing. That's why I call my position "personal agnosticism" to distinguish it from stronger statements such as "no human could possibly know if spirituality or god is real in principle". The stronger statement isn't properly supported and it implies that many otherwise good people throughout time and space are basically lying about their experiences, which I find a little hard to swallow.

All that being said, if one were to have a spiritual experience that convinced them that paranormal or spiritual phenomena are real, that would not immediately imply that any one religion is the "true" religion, that god exists, or that spirituality doesn't ultimately reduce to something like science and technology. It would, however, demonstrate to the individual that the world's spiritual traditions are not completely concocted and that there are in fact difficult truths that we should respect when making bold prescriptions to ourselves and others.

I think this humble approach is healthier and more logical than general atheism which seems to imply that one has fully accounted for all human experience and concluded some nasty things about human intellect and integrity.

Maybe they should have a name for people who don't LIKE the god or spiritual hypothesis as opposed to those claiming to KNOW that they are false. How about using "anti-theism"?

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