Atheism2.0 Checklist

Just a list of headings from Alain de Botton’s TED talk.

• Religious vs atheist – some confusion of gods and religions?
• “There is no god” is just the start of the story.
• Ritual, moral, communal aspects – cherry-picking “the good bits”
• Shakespeare, Plato, Austen (etc) – cultural sources of morality tales.
• Universities have forgotten to teach “how should we live” – as if we don’t need help, we don’t want to be treated “like children” – whereas most of us are barely holding it together.
• Repetition of old truths (nothing new, etc.) rather than valuing novelty for its own sake.
• Religious calender to ensure ideas cross our paths regularly.
• Looking at the moon – a ritual
• Oratory – rhetorical skills for communication. Praise be to Shakespeare. Plato, Austen
• Associating the physical with the moral lessons – to cement / anchor.
• Art – no such thing as art for art’s sake, always a message / lesson / reason for art. (Explanatory labelling in art galleries.)
• Love, fear, hate and death in religious art. Reinforcing (propagandising) old truths. Art organized according to their didactic message.
• Branding of massive common institutions. Not just individual books by individuals – they can’t change the world, without scale and repetition.
• Travel as pilgrimage.
• You may not agree with the ideas, but you have to admire the processes.
• Politeness is a much overlooked virtue.