An Unbeliever's Prayer
HOVANNISIAN, GARIN
An Unbeliever’s Prayer You don’t need God to be satisfactorily spiritual. BY GARIN HOVANNISIAN This Little Book of Atheist Spirituality would have been considerably littler if it had begun on...
...I’m counting on you to go on respecting them...
...But it can also compromise the message...
...He claims that human mediocrity cannot suggest a perfect God and, on the other hand, that human glories sufGarin Hovannisian is a student at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism...
...And within Enlightenment’s framework, he carves out his own spirituality, a fresh spirituality that has nothing to do with the union of self and soul and everything to do with the surrender of the self to the universe...
...Here Comte-Sponville opens the doors to Kant, Epicurus, Lucretius, Alain, Montaigne, Pascal, Freud, and every other vagrant thinker who happens to be passing by...
...The philosophy seems best captured in the biblical character of the Good Samaritan, the compassionate gentile who, more than any priest, warmed Jesus...
...But Comte-Sponville’s book of atheist spirituality is different from mine because, unfortunately, there is no such thing as an atheist spirituality or philosophy or creed...
...my own atheist spirituality is less refi ned...
...The explanations are invariably launched with “To my way of thinking” or “I personally” or “For my part” and end up in Salzburg or Strasbourg, where their author once traded pleasantries with a priest...
...An atheist he is...
...I have been known to cast a ballot for a candidate whose victory (or defeat) I knew would not be determined by it...
...In fact, there is no use at all for the adjective atheist...
...In a written trial by declaration, I argued that: My car’s speedometer wasn’t working...
...I do not deny Comte-Sponville his atheist spirituality, and he is probably too tolerant to deny me mine...
...The personal narrative, charming beyond its candid arrogance, empowers the authorial voice...
...if it were, then the cop’s radar surely wasn’t...
...The author experienced plenitude once in a forest...
...not substance, but vacancy...
...They are inevitably different because a-theism—an absence of belief—contains, demands, and predicts nothing...
...He claims that God must be evil as he allows evil, and that God is actually “too good to be true,” that “I am an atheist and happy to be one” and that “I desperately wish that God existed...
...but in any case, I was driving at the average pace of traffi c; I certainly wasn’t speeding...
...For atheism describes not a force, but a lack of force...
...It is no compliment to Comte-Sponville that these immediately recall the arguments I recently compiled in contesting a speeding ticket in California...
...The exclamatory silliness is enough to raise the eyebrows of the book’s American audience, but to the resilient reader, it does convey an interesting idea: religious values without religiosity...
...Atheists, in their atheism, are indifferent...
...We believe that humans run not on gyrating atoms or a selfi sh calculus but on something of a soul...
...a heathen he is not...
...He was born into Christendom, and raised there...
...The achievement of this oneness is called plenitude, “moments when nothing is missing, when there is nothing to either wish for or regret and when the question of possession is irrelevant...
...but if I were, I do sincerely apologize...
...I had learned, much to my delight, that state law did not require the various points of my defense to be consistent with one another...
...we see in God a splendor beyond the trivial truth of his existence or nonexistence...
...Atheism, like death, is nothing...
...Comte-Sponville might not believe in God, but he admires Him...
...But it has always been active...
...We do not expect a hobgoblin’s consistency here, but we do require a theory that can survive on its own terms...
...But we tend to forgive Andr...
...withdraws even further from the book’s premise, to say nothing yet of its argument...
...In the fi rst of three chapters—“Can We Do Without Atheism...
...Indeed, most atheists don’t bother with God for the same reason that they don’t bother with unicorns...
...and though he eventually defected, he was never disinfected of its moral graces...
...He unleashes through them his six choicest arguments against God’s existence...
...I’m afraid that I have not...
...It is merely to explain my position and the arguments in its favor...
...Atheism is a hole...
...And besides, we enjoy the journey through his detours, paved as they are with charm, charisma, and lovely Parisian sentimentality...
...I have cheered for my basketball team to an indifferent radio in an earless room...
...BY GARIN HOVANNISIAN This Little Book of Atheist Spirituality would have been considerably littler if it had begun on page 134, where its creator fi rst suggests that atheist spirituality is even possible...
...My leaking logic apparently seeped past California’s courts...
...you can understand, I was rushing to a funeral...
...He calls himself a “non-dogmatic atheist,” a “faithful atheist,” even a “Christian atheist...
...But they are different...
...We realize also that his designs of an atheist spirituality are not effected by atheism at all but by a movement of which atheism is itself an effect...
...It has subscribers in every demographic, constituency, party, and clique...
...we realize that godlessness, for ComteSponville, isn’t a mere view of reality, a true-or-false understanding of the universe, but a luscious, personal, and value-laden philosophy...
...Comte-Sponville is an Enlightenment man...
...Comte-Sponville...
...Of course, this doesn’t in the least affect the values I’ve always tried to inculcate into you...
...Comte-Sponville’s does not elude ours...
...Writes Comte-Sponville: “It is possible to do without religion, but not without communion, fi delity, or love...
...If six assassins found the audacity to target the ruler of the universe, we might hope that they wouldn’t end up shooting each other...
...he writes: “My intention is not to convert people to atheism...
...The second chapter—“Does God Exist...
...Most important, we discover that Comte-Sponville is not a cranky, cantankerous atheist...
...fi ce for a fi rst-rate spirituality...
...These terms we fi nd increasingly dubious, as we see that their intelligent designer is focused on proving why God can’t exist more than why He doesn’t...
...I no longer believe in God...
...Consider Comte-Sponville’s rendition of a speech a born-again atheist might recite at the dinner table: Children, I have something important to tell you: I’ve lost my faith...
...We believe in human intrigues...
...As we enter the fi nal chapter—“Can There Be an Atheist Spirituality...
...It is understandable that the eminent French philosopher should begin by unloading his own thoughts about love, death, and the universe...
...For Comte-Sponville and me, this is a tragedy...
Vol. 13 • March 2008 • No. 26
