Book Ends

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It’s the end of another year of reading. Since Goodreads keeps track of my booklist, I see by their accounting I finished 95 books in 2014. The final day of the year seems an appropriate time to reflect on those that made the greatest impact on me. Starting at the beginning, Jacques Berlinerblau’s The Secular Bible immediately struck me as a book of high importance. In an era when religion is constantly considered irrelevant, Berlinerblau gives this trite brushoff the lie. Likewise Jeff Kripal and Sudhir Kakar’s Seriously Strange opens questions that must be addressed if we ever hope to find the truth. Frans de Waal’s The Bonobo and the Atheist and Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá’s Sex at Dawn both raise, in fundamental ways, the question of what it means to be human. Benjamin Ginsberg’s The Fall of the Faculty is essential to understanding the current crisis in higher education. Edward Ingebretsen’s Maps of Heaven, Maps of Hell is a roadmap through the genre of horror and its importance to society. The Miracle Detective by Randall Sullivan again highlights the question of what counts as reality. Nonbeliever Nation by David Niose shows the importance of separating politics from religion. Dean Radin’s The Conscious Universe brings science to bear on unanswered questions.

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Books specifically concerning religion also deserve some highlighting. Karen McCarthy Brown’s Moma Lola is crucial for comprehending, in a sympathetic way, voudun in a major city. Patricia Tull’s Inhabiting Eden makes a clarion call for religions to pay attention to the needs of the environment. Going Clear by Lawrence Wright is a good introduction to Scientology, while Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven serves a similar function in regards to Mormonism. Sam Harris’s Waking Up shows the need even atheists have for spirituality, complicating the sharp divide we are offered most of the time. Religion for Atheists, by Alain de Botton, also demonstrates the continuing usefulness of religion in a secular age. Vincent Bugliosi’s Divinity of Doubt calls both theists and atheists to task. Spirit Unleashed by Anne Benvenuti allows animals to have souls.

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Fiction always makes a part of each year’s reading as well. This year found me reading several ponderous tomes, but I very much enjoyed the lighter fare by Ransom Riggs, in Hollow City. James P. Blaylock’s Homunculus and K. W. Jeter’s Infernal Devices slaked my steampunk thirst temporarily. John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita were both difficult to read as a father, but important literature nevertheless. All of these books and more have individual posts dedicated to them on this blog. I always feel compelled to make clear that I find the books I read, whether highlighted here or not, one of the most rewarding aspects of my year. The long daily commute I normally endure would be torture without my books. Each year, each day I’m thankful for those who write them, and I look forward to an equally stimulating 2015 spent with my face buried in books.

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Daydream Believer

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ReligionForAtheistsI have finally found a book that will sit next to my copy of Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. In this disjointed age of angry Fundamentalists and even angrier atheists, where people bowl alone and don’t sleep well, Alain de Botton has shined a ray of hope. Well, pessimistic hope, but still, I felt more invigorated by Religion for Atheists than I have by a book for a long time (search my category “books” and you’ll see what I mean). Raised as an atheist, de Botton doesn’t share the rabid fury that converted atheists often exhibit. More importantly, he recognizes that, despite its supernatural teachings, religion got a lot of things right. Basic issues such as kindness and compassion have little place in a society that is built around acquiring as much for yourself as you can. Even his chapter on pessimism rang true.

Subtitled A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion, some might consider the book opportunistic, but de Botton approaches religion from a purely practical and openminded angle: it often works. Religion supports (or supported) education. Numerically most of our colleges and universities in the United States have (or had) religious beginnings or affiliations. Religions also supported beauty in art, architecture, and liturgy. The religious culture provided places to meet others who thought like you, and where you felt safe. It was not afraid to be blunt about values. Many would dispute these positives, tending instead to focus on suicide bombers and child abusers. No doubt these evils also exist, and probably draw their inspiration from skewed religious views. Still, as a sincere outsider can see, religion offers much that society has no backups in mind to replace in this secular age.

In a pointed discussion of influence, de Botton mentions the power of institutions. Secular society has demonstrated repeatedly that it lacks the will to finance higher education. Secularists are terrible at organizing themselves. Reading de Botton’s suggestions for secular institutions, I almost rose from my bus seat and applauded. If Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos would put up the money for an institution on de Botton’s model, I’d be first in line to apply for a place in the Non-Religion Department. (A disclaimer here—although I met Jeff Bazos once, I can’t pretend to know his or Bill Gates’s religious outlooks; I only recognize success when I see it.) In any case, until we learn that one voice alone—no matter how many books s/he sells—cannot change anything substantial, we will be mired in impotence. To influence social change you need the combined resources of an institution. And, choose to like it or not, history tells us that in the long run the most successful institutions have been formed by religions. Alain de Botton has, I believe, given us something to believe.