The Good Atheist

A few weeks ago, Penguin publishing sent me an email asking if I wanted a free copy of Andre Comte-Sponville’s “The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality”. Not being one to turn down anything that’s free (I’m poor, what can I say?), I gladly accepted. When It was finally delivered, I was anxious to see if this book would provide any new insights on the subject of atheism.

I’ve read all of the works of the four horsemen of the atheist apocalypse: Harris, Dennett, Dawkins and Hitchens. Their respective book all dealt with atheism in different ways. Harris attacked the supposed virtues of faith while Dawkins undermined the concept of God itself. Dennett book, on the other hand, was an analysis of religion as a natural phenomenon (good or bad), and Hitchens was a pure an unadulterated critic of religion itself. Each author has something unique to say, and I was pleased to find that Comte-Sponville was no exception.

The book itself is not an attack on religion. Indeed, the author does not claim that religion is bad or good; merely that has played an important role in the history of mankind (something I will not argue away either). Comte-Sponville is less interested in attacking religion than he is in defending his own stance on the question of the existence of God. The author is not an agnostic, and much of the book is devoted to explaining why his denial of God is a philosophically satisfying argument.

The author describes himself as a secular-Christian. He does not deny the influence Judeo-Christian values have played in the cultural evolution of the West. Like secular Jews, Comte-Sponville believes that there is something valuable in keeping some of the traditions of Christianity that are deeply engrained even in our modern society.

The book is compelling and unique in its approach, and although it isn’t an easy read (there are many philosophical arguments that will require the reader to put the book down momentarily to truly absorb his premise), the reader will feel that something worthwhile has been said. My only complaint with the book is, ironically, his interpretation of spirituality. In the last chapters, he embarks on an ambitious attempt to describe his vision of what spirituality entails. In general, I would say it’s a failure, only because I don’t believe that others share his interpretation. There in lies the conundrum; atheists do not generally share similar views on spirituality, nor do they need to. But by attempting to describe his own views, he encourages the reader to realize just how specialized and unique their own vision might be. In that sense, the simple act of starting a dialog on the issue may be enough to inspire others to seek to understand what the concepts of beauty, love, and truth really mean. Perhaps it is the act itself that creates the very spirituality Comte-Sponville had in mind.