07.01.08
Atheist Spirituality
Amazon.com really has me pegged! You know how when you buy one book from them a message always pops up saying “people who bought that book also bought this other one!” Well, now they have taken to sending me an E-mail every so often saying they are sure I would be interested in such and such a book, based upon what I have bought in the past. Usually I try to ignore their suggestions. I give them more than enough business as it is!
But just before I left for Alaska one of those E-mails came in that I simply could not ignore. It was suggesting a book called ”The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality.”* What? … Huh? Ok, I fell for it - just couldnt’ resist.
So on the “interminable” plane ride I started reading this book. Very interesting. Originally written in French, this author Andre Comte-Sponville insists he is an atheist. He starts out early in the book describing the feelings he had around age eighteen when he “lost” his religion. Summing up an experience very similar to that of a lot of our”Rationals” Monsieur Comte-Sponville says “…it felt like a liberation - everything seemed simpler, lighter, stronger and more open. It was as if I had left childhood behind me, with its fantasies and fears….and entered the real world at long last - the adult world, the world of action, the world of truth, unhampered by forgiveness and Providence. Such freedom! Such joy! Yes, I am convinced that my life has been better - more lucid, freer and more intense - since I became an atheist.” (pp 5,6)
After this Monsieur Comte-Sponville makes an interesting distinction between “faith” and what he calls “fidelity.” Comte-Sponville says “Fidelity is what remains when faith has been lost.” What he means here is that even though he no longer believes in the God he was brought up with, the “fidélité” he still holds keeps him “faithful” to the moral, cultural and spiritual values he learned through the religion of his youth. While I agree with the translator’s choice of our word “fidelity” in translating from the French word “fidélité,“ I believe the word has a slightly different connotation in French than it does in English. I think in French the word approaches closer to the idea of ‘loyalty’ than to what we think of as ‘fidelity’ - awhich makes one think of ”marital fidelity” for example. So Monsieur Comte-Sponville is still a French ‘christian’ person culturally. He is loyal (has fidelity) to the values and morality of his upbringing - but lacks belief in that God.
This is all very well and good. Many subsequent pages are devoted to very philosophical discussion about the (non) existence of God. (or I should say the unprovable existence of God.) The author makes a point of calling himself a “non dogmatic” atheist. (He does not know for sure that God does not exist. But he does not believe he exists)
All through the discussion every so often a hint surfaces letting the reader know this is a different breed of atheist from what we generally think of. He quotes scripture and Saint Augustine - even if only to point out the more humanistic or loving among their possible interpretations. Where Augustine said “the three virtues of faith, hope and charity are all necessary in this life, but after this life, charity alone will suffice,” Compte-Sponville says he was shocked (but I think also impressed) when he came across this quote by Thomas Aquinas: “In Christ, there was perfect charity, but there was neither faith nor hope.” Compte-Sponville uses this as a way to say that the most faithful way to imitate Christ is to imitate his love (of other humans.) Faith in God and hope for salvation being no longer necessary. See what I mean by his not being your typical type of atheist?
He speaks often of communion - meaning something more like our idea of community. The more he goes on about his atheism, the more he sounds like one of our mystics. I am not going to begin to recount the complexity with which Monsieur Comte-Sponville describes his view of spirituality. (You’ll have to read the book for that.) But finally, on page 197 (out of 206) a line that tells us whatever he calls himself, this man is very much a Mystic by our definition. He says: “…the goal is not to save the self, but to be free of it…” Later: “the entire world is there for us to know, understand and love. Humanity is a part of it, and it is there for us to serve, respect and perpetuate. Wise people need no more than this; modestly they are content with the all.” His is a spirituality of what he calls immanence or the here and now. Yet a Mystic by any other name…..
Actually, this book pretty well proves a point I have been hoping to be able to make: the god the atheists reject is the literal God of the Faithful. This does not mean that any Rational level person, whether atheist or not, cannot accept the looser god of the broader definition - the god of the Mystic, the god who (or which) is more a Concept than a Being, the one for whom the literal God is supposed to be a metaphor. I don’t think he would ever admit it, but I think Comte-Sponville is one of them.
* Comte-Sponville, Andre. The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, trans. Nancy Huston. Viking. The
Penguin Group. New York, 2006.
Alex said,
August 17, 2008 at 9:45 am
Your blog is interesting!
Keep up the good work!
MPJ said,
August 17, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Thank you!