Currently reporting from a tiny, hip hotel at an undisclosed location on the West Coast. Of the various ways in which this establishment brands itself as edgy and unconventional, there is no standard-issue Gideon Bible tucked in a drawer somewhere in each room. Instead, one is presented with a small laminated Spiritual Menu — a list of texts that can be fetched up to your room by a quick call to the front desk. Options include:
- Bhagavad Gita: A New Translation
- Book of Mormon
- Buddhist Bible
- KJV Gift and Award Bible: Revised Edition, King James Version
- The Koran
- New American Bible
- Tao Te Ching
- The Torah: The Five Books of Moses, Standard Edition
- Book on Scientology
Probably, like me, you are wondering why there aren’t any options available for atheists. (Tedious explanatory note, since this is the internet: I am not really serious. Therefore, please to not respond with a lecture on why, when faced with a “Spiritual Menu,” the proper response for an atheist is simply to fast.) I mean, there have to be more of us than Scientologists, right? Although perhaps not among people who matter.
On the other hand, it’s not clear what would constitute an appropriate choice, as atheists have never been very big on sacred texts. I can think of a few possibilities. Something like The God Delusion wouldn’t be right, regardless of its various warts and charms, as it’s essentially reactive in nature — talking about why one shouldn’t believe in God, rather than celebrating or elaborating how to live as a cheerful materialist. Something like On the Origin of Species or Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems would be interesting choices, although they are too specialized to really fit the bill. You could make a very good case for a modern post-Enlightenment book like Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, as a serious (if not especially systematic) attempt to figure out how we should deal with a contingent world free of any guidance from outside.
But I would probably vote for Lucretius‘s De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things). As good empiricists, we should recognize that a classic text doesn’t have to get everything right, as our understanding continues to be revised and improved. So why not go for a true classic? Writing in the first century BCE, Lucretius (a Roman admirer of the Greek philosopher Epicurus) took materialism seriously, and thought deeply about the place of human beings in a world governed by the laws of nature. He advocated skepticism, dismissed the idea that life continued after death in any form, preached personal responsibility, and thought hard about science, especially the role of atoms and statistical mechanics. (Slightly ahead of his time.) And the book itself comes in the form of an occasionally-inscrutable poem, originally in Latin. Which adds a certain gravitas, if you know what I mean.
And, verily, those tortures said to be
In Acheron, the deep, they all are ours
Here in this life. No Tantalus, benumbed
With baseless terror, as the fables tell,
Fears the huge boulder hanging in the air:
But, rather, in life an empty dread of Gods
Urges mortality, and each one fears
Such fall of fortune as may chance to him.
It’s far from a perfect book — when it comes to sexuality, in particular, Lucretius stumbles a bit. But I’ll take it over any of the Spiritual Menu offerings, any day.
Shall we take up a collection to leave copies of Lucretius in hotel rooms around the world?
Secular Wholeness: A Skeptic’s Paths To A Richer Life by David Cortesi is an attempt to explain the primary benefits of religion (community, meditation, moral focus, etc) and how to obtain them without the religion itself. It would be perfect for filling this role.
I think atheists should choose whatever they want to read themselves and should not be satisfied with a convenient choice offered by the hotel.
What is “Buddhist Bible” anyway?
scientology ? does the hotel get a kick-back on every pay-per-view tom cruise movie that they show
Perhaps the phone book is atheist’s spiritual tome. Or the room service menu. Both lead to enlightenment. And pizza.
My vote is for the Particle Data Book.
I reckon they should provide the Rubber Bible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godel_escher_bach
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ancestor%27s_Tale
or, as ever, from PZ Myers,
AN ATHEIST’S CREED
I believe in time,
matter, and energy,
which make up the whole of the world.
I believe in reason, evidence and the human mind,
the only tools we have;
they are the product of natural forces
in a majestic but impersonal universe,
grander and richer than we can imagine,
a source of endless opportunities for discovery.
I believe in the power of doubt;
I do not seek out reassurances,
but embrace the question,
and strive to challenge my own beliefs.
I accept human mortality.
We have but one life,
brief and full of struggle,
leavened with love and community,
learning and exploration,
beauty and the creation of
new life, new art, and new ideas.
I rejoice in this life that I have,
and in the grandeur of a world that preceded me,
and an earth that will abide without me.
No, but we could ask for a “Non-Spiritual” menu for some balance. 🙂
Determining the items on this menu would of course require thoughtful selection.
Interesting irony about “materialism” – as modal realists explain, we have no way to logically specify what it means to “really exist” in a material sense versus just being a “model world” with logical specifications but no “substance.” It is ironically “ineffable” like defining consciousness, and maybe time. OK, maybe our world really isn’t just like a model world but that itself becomes a sort of ineffable way to be different, so getting beyond pure logic has to come in somewhere.
A good book talking about all this and the concept of God/First Cause etc. in modern scientific and philosophical terms would be The Mind of God by Paul Davies. I also suggest Seven Mysteries of Life by Guy Murchie, which I think is hard to come by.
I suggest Mark Twain, Douglas Adams, or Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. They offer so much deep insight into the true nature of humans, the Universe and everything, along with a sober assessment of religion (‘Letters From the Earth’ is brilliant). Also, there is much consolation in their writing – both through a good laugh, and through the companionship they offer every time they share the grievances of their day which, as it turns out, have not changed a bit.
Three things are certain in this world: death, taxes, and Neil B saying something about modal realists or modal realism (and that goes for all of Neil B.’s counterparts in other worlds).
As for the thread topic, I distinctly remember an article about a hotel which had taken out the Gideon bibles and replaced them with safe-sex kits. So, that would be my choice since I don’t like reading in hotel rooms anyway, but if Sean is going to pass a hat, then I’ll throw in a couple of bucks for Lucretius.
This begets a great idea.
Hotels already have pay-per-view movies right?
Are there Hotels with pay per rent libraries?
Can everyday libraries start opening home-delivery accounts for hard-copy books?
(with centralised real-time databases and everything)
My top choice would be Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
A version of the bible with better SNR might be useful as well. I’d imagine that to be the “wisdom” books of the old testament
“If Madame would prefer a menu d
Simon Critchley’s Very Little, Almost Nothing – a beautiful exploration of mortality from a completely irreligious point of view.
Includes a chapter on ‘Atheist Transcendence’ which manages to make that a serious possibility, rather than a contradiction in terms…
As an atheist, I’d prefer a Calvin and Hobbes book to be placed on the menu.
I think that spirituality becomes a topic where reasonable people can find common ground when it’s looked at from a non-doctrinal standpoint. Oftentimes, “New Age” stuff substitutes “alternative belief systems” for traditional ones, but I see no more hope for consensus around them than for accepting the Lord Jesus Christ as one’s personal Savior. Religious beliefs are not logically or empirically demonstrable.
Heh, Sad: I’m actually a bit disappointed that google for “neil b” + “modal realism” only gets eleven hits. BTW google for “quantum measurement paradox” and a post of mine is at number three and number four! That’s doing damn good for a subject google, baby, and it matters to me more than “modal realism.” About the latter, try the site http://www.modalrealism.com/. Isn’t that cool?
PS: I’d like to think that *some* other versions of me don’t care about modal realism, but it is so cool an idea that maybe they wouldn’t really be “Neil B’s” unless they got off on thinking about stuff like that. But I hope you aren’t disappointed that I don’t actually believe in modal realism, since I think our world is *not* just a mathematical structure!
Neil B.; extraordinary something or other …
I would refer you to Penn Jillette’s “There Is No God”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5015557
“I believe that there is no God. I’m beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God”
Yes! I was reading this book (De Rerun Natura) when I was working on my thesis and was just looking for a few ‘cool sounding lines’, for a quote…but the whole book is just extremely good and ended up reading the whole thing. Of course, it doesn’t read like a ‘regular’ book, as the style is ancient and poetic.
Let’s not conflate “scientific” and “atheistic”.
Hmm. Galileo… not an atheist.
In fact, many of the well-regarded scientists you might name weren’t atheists, because science and atheism do not necessarily go together. There are plenty of scientific atheists, scientific theists, nonscientific atheists, and nonscientific theists. The theist/atheist spectrum is independent of the scientific one, because theism/atheism are not amenable to scientific evidence.
It might actually help many atheists to separate their scientism from their atheism, at least for the purpose of helping theists understand that their morality can be independent of their theism.
Atheists don’t have a bible. That would be counter-productive.
If you click on my name, you can find my favorite bits from Lucretius, as well as a few other snippets of Latin poetry.
Isn’t part of the point of atheism that no one book, no matter how brilliant or historically relevant it may be, be looked at with undue reverence? If nothing is divinely inspired, everything is, ultimately, just a book. Adding atheism to the book list implies that it is a way of thinking akin to religion, which it most certainly is not.