{"id":683,"date":"2012-09-06T19:50:24","date_gmt":"2012-09-07T03:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=683"},"modified":"2012-09-06T19:50:24","modified_gmt":"2012-09-07T03:50:24","slug":"religion-for-atheists-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=683","title":{"rendered":"Religion for Atheists (Book Review)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The sub-title of this book is \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.alaindebotton.com\/Religion.asp\">a non-believer\u2019s guide to the uses of religion<\/a>,\u201d and the author is Alain de Botton (UK) (2011, New York: Pantheon). For a while it seemed to atheists that religion would disappear because it failed to be compelling at the level of of the critical intellect. The author notes that this hasn\u2019t happened and it won\u2019t happen because religion serves too many non-rational functions, and in this book these various functions are well described and discussed. I find the book charming and intriguing also because there is a growing movement called \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.blatner.com\/adam\/interfaith\/interspir6.html\">inter-spirituality<\/a>\u201d that recognizes the spiritual dynamic, the appeal to the \u201cmore\u201d that people experience when the feel intuitively into the mysteries of their own deep consciousness and the wonders of the cosmos. The more scientists reveal, the more they make it harder to so \u201cjust\u201d or \u201conly\u201d about the sheer complexity of it all&#8212;and the depth of consciousness is an important part of that \u201call-ness.\u201d Every mystery opens the door to far greater mysteries.<\/p>\n<p>Comparative religion studies, the study also of consciousness-expansion, psychedelic drugs, the study of the Asian religions and various spiritual teachings and leaders\u2014all have expanded in the last half-century. What is revealed is a wealth of truly thoughtful people who by no means accept the major spiritual texts literally, but neither can they deny that there is a \u201cmore\u201d which compels further investigation.<\/p>\n<p>I see this book as a good contemplation of the psycho-socio-cultural <strong><em>functions<\/em><\/strong> of religion in general. In many particulars, the religions differ; but what is contemplated in the book are the deeper attractions of the main monotheistic traditions. (Another book could be written about the attractions or functions of other religions such as Buddhism or the many types of Hinduism, along with their more refined mystical practices and \u201cyogas.\u201d Still, I think this book is a step in the right direction towards an emergence of a postmodern spirituality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The sub-title of this book is \u201ca non-believer\u2019s guide to the uses of religion,\u201d and the author is Alain de Botton (UK) (2011, New York: Pantheon). For a while it seemed to atheists that religion would disappear because it failed to be compelling at the level of of the critical intellect. The author notes that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-spirituality-and-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=683"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":684,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683\/revisions\/684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}