Blog - Monday, January 23, 2012 21:27 - 3 Comments

Atheism 2.0

“Atheism 2.0” is a 20 minute TED presentation by Alain de Botton in which he proposes a new approach to evangelising atheism. Alain suggests (apparently without evidence) that we have “secularised badly” and we should sift through the rituals, traditions, and behaviours of religion to identify and adopt their efficient mechanisms.

“I have come here because I am in search of morality, guidance, and consolation.”

He says universities (and by extension, science) is not concerned with the search for “morality, guidance, and consolation”. Alain seems to be suggesting science has lost its humanity and become the heartless search of the machine inside the ghost. Religions on the other hand treat us like children in urgent need of assistance. We are broken, miserable sheep who yearn for the return of their shepherd who will tell us where to go, what to do, and how to think.

“A sermon wants to change your life and a lecture wants to give you some information”

Alain tells us religious sermons “advise people how hey could live” (which presumedly result in “morality, guidance, and consolation”), but secularism merely lecturers heartless facts. Religions use repetition and emotions to convince believers the sermons are somehow deep insights revealing the true fabric of reality.

At the heart of Alain’s statements seems to be an assumption; Science has all the answers and we will never need to change our minds again. University lecturers never update or revise the facts they preach, never listen to the counter arguments, never conduct further research. Students are there to learn the holy truths as revealed by Great Science. We can finally cease being skeptical, questioning, and inquiring, and finally resort to pure emotional evangelism and repetitive brainwashing to convince the populous of the Truth(™).

Of course, this throws the baby out with the bath water.

Science is fundamentally different to religion preciously because it does not claim to have the truth. All things in science are provisionally true; they are considered true until evidence it’s wrong comes along. Sometimes this results in almost imperceptible changes in the views of science, and others it causes massive tectonic shifts in our thinking. Science eagerly hunts out where it may be wrong and ruthlessly interrogates itself. It perversely seeks the curious mind to torture its doubts until they are satiated.

Scientific discoveries are not things we can enforce through emotional appeals and repetition. Science is a process; a mind set; a philosophical approach. Without the ability to question, doubt, and argue science fails.

I think this is why Alain’s argument also fails.