As the animosity towards religion in general, and, in the West, Christianity in particular, has become increasingly blatant, a number of voices have been raised in concern about what is being lost; and what we are in danger of loosing is, it seems, the cultural heartbeat of Britain, and the human need for ritual. Even among atheists some concern is evident:
We invented religions to serve two central needs which continue to this day: the need to live together in communities in harmony, despite our deeply rooted selfish and violent impulses; and the need to cope with terrifying degrees of pain which arise from our vulnerability to failure, to troubled relationships, to the death of loved ones and to our decay and demise. God may be dead, but the urgent issues that impelled us to make him up still stir…”
These are the words of a new kind of atheist, Alain de Botton. Alain is “a committed atheist” who “nevertheless find(s) occasions such as Christmas useful, interesting and consoling”. He is not anti religion – he is not even anti God. For him it is more straightforward – God simply doesn’t exist, we made him up, and we need religion; and, as the religion of these islands is Christianity, this religion is something which, “throughout the liturgical year, deserves to be selectively reabsorbed.” Perhaps we might describe it as a baptism in the bath water of Christianity, now that we no longer have any need of the baby.
Alain does not think us mad or bad; he does not pity us and he is not angry with us – the reality of God is not his battle ground: “The real issue is not whether God exists, but where one takes the argument to once one decides he evidently doesn’t.”
What Alain understands is this: man cannot live by science alone,
Those of us who hold no religious or supernatural beliefs still require regular, ritualised encounters with concepts such as friendship, community, gratitude and transcendence. We need institutions that can mine, harvest and mould precious ideas for us, remind us that we need them and present them to us in beautiful wrappings – thus ensuring the nourishment of the most forgetful sides of ourselves.”
And he thinks that we have these without God. Please note what is said; it isn’t that he thinks we can have these without faith in God (the most faith-full Christians thinks that). He thinks we have these without God – that your believing and mine is no different to his not believing. It is a new kind of objection, a hypnotic one – if belief in the communal story is beneficial, that belief is rational and intelligent, even if the story is not true. He can deny his Eucharist, and still eat it.
“How do you handle Christmas,” he asks, “if the nativity to you is nothing more than a fairytale?” His answer: “In the same way as those for whom it is more than a fairytale.”
What I think he misses, however, is this – if it is true that humankind still requires ritualised encounters, if it is true that “we need institutions that can mine, harvest and mould precious ideas for us…” we must also explain what makes these values, not only precious, but real. If we cannot then these, by his own definition, are fairy-tales too.
But if objective values are fairy-tales, why do we desire to make them flesh? Why do we need the celebration and ritual? Why do we need to make friendship, community or gratitude incarnate in our own lives? If we do not understand this, can we even know what these terms mean?
Alain may call the nativity story a fairy-tale if he wishes, but he cannot escape that we are flesh, that our stories tell us something about ourselves and that even atheists seek to be incarnations of their own story. Alain must decide if the story he believes about himself is true, if the values he seeks are real, or if he is a fairytale too.