I walked into Commons early yesterday morning and saw blue-gray smears dotting the foreheads of a handful of my classmates. I'm embarrassed to admit that I was strangely surprised. Of course, I knew that it was Ash Wednesday. I knew that the beads and colored drinks from last night's Feb Club party were to celebrate Mardi Gras -- the last great celebration before the temperance of the Lenten season. But it still felt odd to see my classmates wear their religion so prominently on their foreheads. It was hard not to feel self-conscious on their behalf.
But I can't say that I didn't feel a little bit jealous, either. I've been an atheist since I was old enough to drive, and I don't find the stories in the Bible any more believable now than I did when I was 16. But atheists still miss out on a comfort provided by religion -- not necessarily in the beliefs per se, but in the ritual of it all.
I love Christmas far more than I have any right to, and I'd guess that I love it for the exact same reasons most Christians love it: there's something really special about spending time with family, giving thoughtfully to those in need and those we care about and listening to nostalgic music while drinking hot cocoa by the fire with your cats (or dogs, or grandparents). I don't see why Christianity is necessary to enjoy any of that, and I refuse to let the faithful have all the fun.
So it bothers me when other atheists are too quick to do away with the beauty religion cultivates, as if it were necessary to toss the beauty out right along with the cosmology. I think we make a mistake when we fail to distinguish the form from the content of religion. Doing away with both is like smashing a glass because we don't like the drink inside it.
Depending on context, the exact same techniques can serve propaganda when used by fascists or public service announcements when used by our government. The form is all the same, of course. Good advertising is good advertising. But what matters is what the advertisements are about. Goebbels was an evil man, but he could sure sell a point. If we can use his talents for good, why not?
I see the practices of religion a lot like how I see advertising. If there's one thing religions have gotten down since the Agricultural Revolution, it's enriching the human experience through ritual. So why not borrow some of that, even if the content that currently fills it leaves something to be desired? Not that I'm comparing Christians to fascists.
Something along these lines is the premise of the writer and philosopher Alain de Botton's upcoming book, Religion for Atheists. And while his ideas have been violently opposed by atheist bloggers (about as charming a group as you might expect), I actually find them pretty compelling.
So I was sitting in Commons yesterday looking around at all my classmates, and I began to think about Lent. Not about Jesus wandering through the desert for 40 days and 40 nights while being tempted by the devil, but about my Catholic friends' yearly test of willpower, sacrifice and self-improvement. I realized that was something worth doing on its own.
I decided then that I'd take part in Lent. I've been mostly a vegetarian for the last two years. But the reasons I object to eating beef and chicken apply equally to drinking milk and eating eggs: I don't necessarily object to consuming flesh per se, but rather how we treat livestock and how factory farming impacts the environment. So while I've been finding the transition from a vegetarian diet to a vegan diet particularly daunting, the Catholic Church provides me a perfect and relatively low-pressure avenue for a brief period of self-improvement. I don't see any reason not to try it out.
Is picking and choosing religious rituals and practices a bit irreverent and patronizing? Probably a little. Is it a potentially great way to enrich secular life? Definitely. That's as good a reason to practice Lent as I can think of.
This piece originally appeared in the Yale Daily News.
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Maybe a 3 or 4 on Dawkins' 7 point scale. You haven't understood the nature of the beast if you still seek comfort in that lair.
I primarily meant to say that religious rituals have been particularly well-crafted at achieving a lot of secular benefits, that can exist entirely independent of the religious content associated with the (why I drew the analogy to Christmas). I felt that a 40-day trial period of a sort of kind would be a low-pressure kick-start to something really daunting I've been meaning to do.
New Year's could entirely serve the same purpose. It didn't for me. But I wouldn't say that's a reason not to try Lent, or that everyone should try Lent. Just simply that I don't think we should have qualms about doing things like borrowing Lent, if that makes sense.
Why not borrow the idea of lent? In our self-centered, materialistic ethos, it seems a good project to try. Of course, for an atheist, it would be detached from the other doctrines and context surrounding the lent season.
There are beautiful things in religious traditions (forgiveness, compassion) and quite bad things (original sin). It's good to recognize both sides.
Cheers.
It makes watching them wallow in their secular lives almost enjoyable
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_atheists_in_science_and_technology
So you like rituals and belonging. Your an atheist so you dislike how many of these rituals are religiously toned. Get over it.
Theists just because your ritual is enjoyable does not mean it is enjoyable because it is religious. Or even started out that way. Religion over it's long history has succumbed many activities and tried to rebrand them as religious. Also many rituals have lost their religious value completely. Get over it.
Or alternatively it would be good if everyone could come together and start a few new rituals that everyone could enjoy.
Why would religion steal so many rituals with no religious value and make them parts of religion? Need a history lesson?
So you can believe they're transcendent and meaningless without god. But they can still be enjoyable. So do what intolerant theist do best, announce the guy who doesn't believe what you do is going to hell and move on. Quickly. Before the logic permeates.
I don't "feel a little bit jealous" when I see people walking around with smudged foreheads. And I don't feel like I "miss out on a comfort" of any kind, by not following antiquated rituals.
Even when I was a theist, I didn't care much for the rituals. I wouldn't have admitted it then, but "holy communion" kind of creeped me out even then. I went along with the rituals because I thought I was supposed to. I certainly don't miss them.
Fascinating because, if you follow standard atheist logic which maintains that if the metaphysical assumptions are false, then the ritualism intended to express those assumptions should be doubly false.
It is not for me to attempt to dissect what either sustains or justifies Mr. Chituc's inner world of disbelief, but the prospect of salvaging ritualism as what is presumeably the one worthwhile thing left over once you've dumped doctrine and dogma is not a particularly satisfying one.
Ritualism? Then, for the sake of what, shall the atheists let himself be guided by ritual? Why would submit to something he otherwise denigrates?
Crass commercialism?
The consumerist fantasies which feed our drearily materialist existence?
The nauseating feel-goodism of our political collectivism?
Or simply that enduring and self-endearing American appetite for doing something strictly for myself (which quickly empties ritualism of what makes it distinctively ritualistic: participation with other people).
But, if all of this is too demanding to consider, one can always invoke our currently most sacred effect and justification for any type of behavior or opinion--enrichment--and, having done so, walk away feeling like wisdom is in one's backpocket.
First, there's the precious sight of a professed atheist looking from afar at something religious people do and then experiencing a sense of regretful loss over something that his brain has forbidden.
Second, he makes allowance, on the one hand, for religious ritualism and all of what makes it specifically RELIGIOUS, and then, on the other hand, there are the countless other ways in which we indulge ritual behaviors in areas of life that we would not judge to be religious--and the latter run the gamut from all the mythologizing ritual that makes up our patterns of consumption to entertainment to our sometimes highly structured patterns of social interaction and finally to what we can generically term the 'political'.
And finally, Mr. Chituc makes a few forays in these directions, but the results are meager given that our secular ritualisms fall short of anything which might suggest finality, and his final note is one of nostalgic loss. In fact, his is the determined but forlorn attitude of a person who would like to claim that he's still entitled to appropriate a bit of something he's renounced....and that none of us should stand in the way of his personal effort to 'enrich' himself.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
examples please
Followed by a sermon and a collection plate for sectarian missionary work? not so great - IF supported by public moneys. If under the auspices of the church? that's fine.
and it's 'embroidered' fyi.