Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion by Alain de Botton
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Literature For Religionists

Like de Botton, I am an admirer of religion and a despiser of religious organisations. For me, religion is a primary motivator and source of ontological poetry, that is, language which seeks to relativise language by pointing out that language does not capture what is not-language. Religious poetry in all its forms - speech, liturgy, architecture, music, and literature - makes a consistent point regardless of sect, culture, or epoch: Reality, whatever it is, is not contained in words. There are things beyond what can be talked about; and what can be talked isn’t easily connected to anything else.

Therein lies the paradox of religion: religion contradicts itself as soon as it is expressed in words, musical notes, or bricks and mortar. What lies beyond expression, which is actually all experience, eludes any attempt to bring it into language of any sort. This contradiction in no way reduces the beauty of the words, notes or buildings but it does reveal these for what they are, the apparently universal aspiration of human beings to transcend our own limitations. The artefacts we produce in our transcendental quest are, like all poetry, literally useless.

Religious organisation arises from the attempt to establish that religion is useful, that it is somehow necessary for spiritual survival, for moral living, for ultimate salvation. This attempt at justification then typically ramifies into education, physical health care, and other practical social goods. Religious organisation thus seems not just beneficial but also necessary to society. It, of course, is not as demonstrated by the progressive and very successful secularisation of these institutions.

And this is where I part company with de Botton’s appreciation of religion. He believes religion is and should be useful. Religion, he says, creates necessary social bonds; it gives comfort to those in pain; it makes sense of an otherwise confusing and chaotic existence; it changes people for the better. Whether or not these claims for religion are true, they are effects not of religion but of religious organisation in its pursuit of usefulness.

Literature has many of the same effects for many people through its own, generally non-religious, organisation. In literary organisation, however, such activity is known for what it is: commercialisation, that is, the selling of a commodity on the basis of its usefulness, or at least a claim to its usefulness. Literary organisation, like its religious counterparts, absorbs the talents of individuals and directs those talents to promote organisational advantage. Aesthetics are treated as a branch of economics.*

Implicitly de Botton approves of this subservience of beauty to profit. Beauty has no uses. And like real religion, it emerges from its organisational matrix largely by chance and only through struggle. Most literature, like most religious expression, is idolatrous, that is, it inhibits the impulse to go beyond language in the search for reality. They confirm the familiar and the conventional.

Real religion, as real literature, is iconic rather than idolatrous. It points elsewhere, past whatever uses, purposes, and intentions we have adopted. It disconcerts, discomforts, and undermines our certainties, particularly our certainties about language. To paraphrase some of the most important Christian theologians: ‘Whatever we think about God, He is not that.’ Substituting the concept of Reality for God, one can say the equivalent about literature.

I am reminded of Adam Levin’s observation in his novel Instructions: “ ..it is good to do justice because God will kill you and your family whether you do justice or not." So, Alain, neither God nor Reality have any use whatsoever... except perhaps in shaping what usefulness means at all.

*What is actually being sold is often the aesthetic criterion which is then ‘incidentally’ met by the commodity. For example “Buy DAZ because it makes clothes whiter” is an attempt to establish whiteness as the criterion of choice for washing powders, largely because DAZ is very good at that. It may also be terrible for the fabrics, fade colours, and pollute the environment. So the commercial imperative is to dominate the choice of criterion; sales will then follow inevitably. So books are sold variously on the basis of pace, innovation, celebrity recommendation, etc. And religious organisation is ‘sold’ on the various goods it provides to society, ranging from ‘truth’ to ‘mental health.’ Real religion, however, according to Karl Barth, the most important theologian of the 20th century, is its own criterion and has no other uses than itself. According to Barth the sale of religion based on its usefulness is idolatry. De Botton may know something about books. He may also be familiar with religious organisation. But he knows very little about religion.

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