I read Joe Kirby’s excellent blog regularly and find myself nodding happily in agreement with many of the points that he makes. However, his recent post Secular Pantheon: what can schools learn from religions? (following suggestions made by Alain de Botton) made me spit out my muesli in frustration. Richie Gale has also written a thoughtful response to Joe’s post, but was in broad agreement with its theme that schools could learn some useful lessons from religion.
I am not.
My main problem is with the claims made by Alain de Botton:
Probably the most boring question you can ask about religion is whether or not the whole thing is ‘true’. Unfortunately, recent public discussions on religion have focused obsessively on precisely this issue, with a hardcore group of fanatical believers pitting themselves against an equally small band of fanatical atheists. [ HuffPo 3/2/12]
While de Botton pats himself on the back for being so much more nuanced and accommodating than the “fanatical atheists” he decries, he is actually neither. I believe Jason Rosenhouse puts it nicely:
When someone says the truth or falsity of religions are their least interesting aspects, you can be sure you are reading the work of someone who thinks they are false. If there were a strong argument to be made on behalf of the truth claims of Christianity or Islam, say, that would not be boring at all. That would actually be a momentous contribution to humanity’s understanding of the world. [EvolutionBlog 8/3/12]
To me, de Botton’s world weary pose is comparable to that of an adult pressured by her children into presiding over a funeral service for a hamster.
I think it is more actually more respectful of religion to take their truth claims seriously enough to debate rather than sideline them with a twinkly eyed “Well, really, whether they’re true or not isn’t the point, is it?”
Joe approvingly highlights this sentence from de Botton:
We need institutions to foster and protect those emotions to which we are sincerely inclined but which, without a supporting structure and a system of active reminders, we will be too undisciplined to make time for.
Well, on the plus side, here de Botton at least talks about emotions rather than the empirically unverifiable spirit or soul. Emotions are undoubtedly important, and I’ll even accept the concepts of soul and spirit when used metaphorically.
But I would argue that emotional lives are far healthier when they are based on truth rather than falsehood. It may well be emotionally satisfying to conclude that you have not succeeded because the world is against you and always has been, but it is far healthier to have an emotional reaction based on the most accurate and honest assessment of the state of the world that you are able to produce, rather than retreat into any form of fantasy.
The plea for a “supporting structure and system” to address our chronic indiscipline is a simply a plea to return to the world of the child, to have someone or something in authority over oneself. Being an adult is hard work. Taking responsibility for oneself is hard. I am sure that shaking off that burden is an attractive thought for all of us, on occasion.
Perhaps de Botton is right, and most religious believers retreat into the comfort of their religious structure and system without worrying too much about its truth or falsity. However, I think that the majority of religious believers follow their religion because they genuinely (for good or bad reasons) believe it to be true.
They are not organizing their lives and defining their identities around religion because they find the rituals quaint and enjoy socializing at the receptions after services. They are doing it because they believe what their religion tells them about the world. [EvolutionBlog 8/3/12. Emphasis added.]
And therein, I think, lies the problem.
e=mc2andallthat 
Why the flip-flocking-France is this not about cats? I mean you led me in with a cat!
Like that religious fanfic who pretended to show me a map under the guise of asking for directions before she started preaching at me and pointing to what was decidedly not a map.
Need I belch at you too?
You can belch at me any time, my lovely!
Hmm, interesting. Good to see a post that reaches beyond the confines of so much educational debate. De Botton normally writes thoughtful prose in my experience, including ‘Religion for Atheists’ but I don’t recall coming across this before.
It is indeed worrying where people retreat into religion as a way of coping with things they can’t otherwise deal with. Do we in effect do this in the education debate?
I would agree with you about the logical weakness of emotions – but by definition they do not pay much regard to rationality or logic. While learning how to be honest with oneself is both desirable and difficult, many of life’s richest experiences are purely emotional and do not benefit from deconstruction. I’m not sure that ignoring the emotional side of life is such a good idea either – as always, it’s a matter of reconciling opposites.
I have to say that I disagree with the idea that emotions are the opposite of rational thought. I think emotions are like the colour palette of our thoughts. Emotions influence rational thought and vice versa. For example, if I am upset with you because you didn’t send me a birthday card, but then find out that your card was delayed because there was a postal strike, then my emotional response would change. I think healthy emotional responses take some account of rationality.
Maybe that’s why you’re a scientist and I’m not! 😉 Seriously, I wouldn’t quarrel with most of what you say there, but I would consider your example to be the later application of rational thought/knowledge to the situation – which yes, then modifies the initial emotion as well. That’s essential for any mature mind to realise (and something we should work on with children), as it holds the possibility of reserving judgement, but is not in itself an emotion.
I don’t need to rationalise a piece of music, or poetry or a beautiful landscape in order to have a perfectly valid response to it. Neither would the knowledge that there may be perfectly good reasons for the missing birthday card necessarily prevent my initial disappointment.
Two different parts of the brain in use here.
I cannot really disagree with any of that – in particular, the lack of evidence behind many beliefs about what good teaching is causes an uncomfortable parallel with religious faith…. as you suggest, truth matters in things that matter.