Little Book of Atheist Spiritualty

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	• The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality Andre Comte-Sponville Viking Adult, 2007 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Christian Pastor Gives Thumbs Up

The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality by Andre Comte-Sponville

A Review by TCDavis

In Yann Martel's provocative novel, The Life of Pi, , a young East Indian boy tells the rabbi, imam, and pastor of his small home town that he is a Jew, a Muslim, and a Christian--all three at once! They are nonplussed, and cannot abide this most peculiar faith; but their rejection of Pi's universalism does not dissuade him from maintaining in his heart and mind a grandly spacious place, large enough for even agnostics and atheists. This reader has striven for a long time to construct such a welcoming place in his own mind. His heart has dwelt there for as long as he can remember, but his mind is still struggling to make the move. Is it not so with many people? Their hearts are readier to extend welcome than their minds. Minds hold back until communion with strangers, or even enemies, makes some kind of sense. Pity that reluctant minds refuse to permit wise hearts to dwell where they know best.

Imagine this reader's delight, therefore, upon discovering Nancy Huston's translation of Andre Comte-Sponville's L'Esprit de l'atheisme, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality. The word, spirituality, caught my eye, for atheists don't usually speak of it. However, Comte-Sponville's book is not the usual rationalist diatribe against believers' metaphysical misadventures. Rather, it is an attempt to make metaphysics once again respectable in western philosophy, and to give atheism at least as much respect as the world's great theistic traditions. Comte-Sponville, unlike some current militant atheists, is not out to debunk others' faith. Once a Catholic, he sympathetically comprehends and respects believers' positions, and adds that he has often yearned to experience the presence of God himself. He does not refuse to believe, but simply argues he cannot, with intellectual integrity.

Comte-Sponville is a professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne. He wants his little book to be accessible to average readers. This reader judges he has fallen short, not because of his writing style, which the translator keeps nicely colloquial, but rather because of the nuanced thought of philosophers to whom he often refers, and with whom an average reader will not likely be familiar; and also because he sometimes resorts to labyrinthine argument to drive home a point. Comte-Sponville succeeds best in making atheism spiritually respectable where he writes of his own experience. This reader, who eventually became a Christian pastor following a peak spiritual experience in Vietnam at age twenty-five, found Comte-Sponville's peak spiritual experience remarkably similar to his own. Comte-Sponville describes his experience this way:

"I must have been twenty-five or twenty-six. I had just been hired to teach high school philosophy in a town on the edge of a canal, up in the fields near the Belgian border. That particular evening, some friends and I had gone out for a walk in the forest we liked so much. Night had fallen. We were walking. Gradually our laughter faded, and the conversation died down. Nothing remained but our friendship, our mutual trust and shared presence, the mildness of the night air and of everything around us. . .My mind empty of thought, I was simply registering the world around me--the darkness of the underbrush, the incredible luminosity of the sky, the faint sounds of the forest (branches snapping, an occasional animal call, our own muffled steps) only making the silence more palpable. And then, all of a sudden. . . What? Nothing: everything! No words, no meanings, no questions, only--a surprise. Only--this. A seemingly infinite happiness. A seemingly eternal sense of peace. Above me, the starry sky was immense, luminous and unfathomable, and within me there was nothing but the sky, of which I was a part, and the silence, and the light, like a warm hum, and a sense of joy with neither subject nor object (no object other than everything, no subject other than itself). Yes, in the darkness of that night, I contained only the dazzling presence of the All. Peace. Infinite peace! Simplicity, serenity, delight."

My heart says to this atheistic professor of philosophy: "We are kin, you and I! For we have experienced the same thing. It matters not that we have come to the peak by different ways. Our experience was the same. We tasted, albeit briefly, ultimate reality. You call it "the All." I call it God. Words fail to do it justice, whichever ones we choose. The experience, though, indisputably changed our lives, forever. Thank you, Andre Comte-Sponville. Your little book has helped my mind grasp a bit more firmly what my heart has known as long as I can remember: that there's plenty of room in the All for believers and atheists alike.

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Little Book of Atheist Spiritualty

This is one of the best books I've ever read in my life. It is philososphically comprehensive in its overview, has humor within a very serious subject, does not discredit or downgrade anyone or any religion, but just gives one much to contemplate, and is very easy to read. It is, indeed, a "small" book.
A dear friend recommended I read it, but I would never otherwise have chosen a book with this title to read on my own. I am forever grateful. It is truly an inspirational book, honors everyone, discredits none, but gives a wonderful argument in favor of his belief system, which is an atheist. I just kept scratching my head, questioning my own belief systems, and then would have to smile....because I was left with no answers, just more questions, but less judgements.

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A must read for serious thinkers

One way I rate a book is how many bookmarks I make in it. This little book inspired many on my part. Comte-Sponville arguments for no god are as readable as any I have read. The section on Spirituality however does require rereading to get its meaning. It is a very readable book for such tough subjects and a more comfortable rendering than that of Richard Dawkins and others.

Wisdom, not polemic

Although saddled with a horribly mistranslated title by its English publisher, Andre Comte-Sponville's L'esprit de l'atheisme is one of the best books on atheism of our day. Unlike the current wave of militant "New Atheists," Comte-Sponville refuses to embrace a take-no-prisoners aggressiveness in his defense of disbelief in God. Instead, he's perfectly content to follow the argument where it takes him, exploring it with compassion, tolerance, and sensitivity. This is wisdom, not polemic, and it's a welcome change from the acrimonious tone brought to the conversation by militant atheists and fundamentalists alike.

C-S's general thesis is that there is no rational reason to believe in the existence of God, and in the middle section of his book he offers six different arguments in support of that claim. Some of his points are stronger than others; the argument from evil carries more weight than the argument from mediocrity; the objection to the argument from contingency is almost nonexistent, whereas the objection based on the sheer weirdness of a hidden God is exceptionally good. C-S insists (rightfully, in my judgment) that his six arguments don't constitute a "proof of God's nonexistence" (p. 131), but they do present a reasonable case. And for C-S, that's good enough.

But arguing for disbelief in God is only part of what C-S's up to here. In the opening and closing chapters, he argues that lack or loss of belief in God (specifically the Judaeo-Christian God, since it's within that religious context that he locates himself) doesn't entail either sophistry or nihilism (both postmodern corruptions which, accordinig to C-S, deny truth on the one hand and value on the other). Fidelity to a long tradition of values associated with western Christianity--love, compassion, gratitude, awe--remains legitimate. The one standard virtue that needs to be rethought, he argues, is "hope," because it deflects from an appreciation of the present. Moreover, spirituality--an expression of the need to acknowledge and embrace the awe and gratitude prompted by the mystery of being that originally fueled religious belief and which obviously don't evaporate when religion fades--is possible for an atheist. In the concluding chapter, C-S explores the contours of this spirituality of immanence, which he calls "immanensity."

What C-S offers in this treatise, then, is nothing less than the broad outline of an atheist worldview. Although deeply loyal to the Enlightenment tradition of rationality, C-S's approach is different--less tightly argued but more expansive--than typical Anglo-American defenses of atheism. As such, his treatment is a nice complement to them.

Highly recommended.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

A brilliant, elegant argument for spirituality without God

Can we do without religion? Can we have ethics without God? Is there such thing as ?atheist spirituality?? In this powerful book, the internationally bestselling author André Comte-Sponville presents a philosophical exploration of atheism?and comes to some startling conclusions. According to Comte-Sponville, we have allowed the concept of spirituality to become intertwined with religion, and thus have lost touch with the nature of a true spiritual existence. In order to change this, however, we need not reject the ancient traditions and values that are part of our heritage; rather, we must rethink our relationship to these values and ask ourselves whether their significance comes from the existence of a higher power or simply the human need to connect to one another and the universe. Comte-Sponville offers rigorous, reasoned arguments that take both Eastern and Western philosophical traditions into account, and through his clear, concise, and often humorous prose, he offers a convincing treatise on a new form of spiritual life.

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