I just watched a very enjoyable TED talk about an atheist who has a proposal that atheists begin to implement some good practices from religions. You can listen to it here (20 minutes), or read some snippets I took from their transcript:
He starts off by saying:
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. Now 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 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.
A couple things he said that I enjoyed:
On the moon
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.
On Art
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….
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.
Now 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.
On mystery and awe
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 connectionwith 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 peoplewho 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.