Living Without God:New Directions for Atheis Agnostics, Secularists, and Undecided - BY Ronald Aronson

Books which explicitly and directly critique religion from a secular atheist perspective have been incredibly popular in recent years, but while critique of religion may be a necessary starting point it isn't the ending point — or even very much of the journey. Critique of religion tells us about what isn't reasonable to believe or do, but more is needed to understand what is reasonable to believe or do.

Thus the books critiquing religion have created space that needs to be filled by different sorts books and Ronald Aronson make his contribution with Living Without God: New Directions for Atheists, Agnostics, Secularists, and the Undecided. There is hardly anything here that would qualify as a criticism of religion; instead of describing where religions get things wrong Aronson offers ideas about where secular atheists should go instead to get things right.

There are a lot of positives and negatives in Aronson's effort, depending on how you look at it. Basically, the details are all generally good but they are framed and presented in a way that isn't so good and which takes away from the overall effort. The central problem as I see it is that Aronson seems to want to offer an overall philosophy or set of principles for nonbelievers. His motive is good and he's justifiably concerned with the lack of confidence nonbelievers have, at least relative to believers.

I, however, would deny that any single set of principles or philosophy can or should be adopted by atheists. First, we need to remember that atheism is properly compared to theism, not to a religion like Christianity, which means that this effort is analogous to offering a single set of principles or a single philosophy for all theists and believers. Would that make a lot of sense? Does that sound like it would stand any chance of working? Of course not, so why try with all atheists?

Aronson complains about a "thinness" of modern atheism, by which he means that there isn't much to contemporary atheism beyond a rejection of gods and critiques of religion. But why should we try to invest more than that — or even that much — in atheism alone? Not much is invested in mere theism; for more, we have to look to theistic religions. There are plenty of atheistic philosophies and religions which offer the "more" Aronson seeks, so why not look there instead of complaining that mere atheism isn't a one-stop-shopping point for philosophy or politics?

I'm also concerned with Aronson's apparent nostalgia for atheism in the 19th century. He seems to look back on America's early Freethought movement as an example of when atheists could rally around common principles and ideas, moving with more confidence in the public realm. Confidence is good, of course, but not at the expense of diversity and humility. Today's community of skeptics, freethinkers, humanists, and other nonbelievers is surely more diverse and better off because of it. More unity is good for achieving political goals, but too much unity can suppress dissent and debate necessary for long-term improvement.

Positives

If you set this overall framing of the book's ideas aside, however, and focus instead on Aronson's specific proposals for principles which nonbelievers should adopt, then there is a lot of good to be found in his book. If you read the book as "food for thought" and ideas to seriously consider, then you'll find a lot worth thinking about and probably a few things that you will want to adopt into your own understanding of your place in the world.

What's significant about so many of the good ideas is that they themselves are framed more as questions than has positive declarations. He even introduces them through three fundamental questions posed by Immanuel Kant: What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? These are good questions that everyone should ponder, but they also aren't the sort of questions that you want a political or social movement to offer final, definitive answers on — that would make it little more than another religion.

Fortunately, that isn't what Aronson is trying to do. He isn't trying to replace the dogmas of traditional religions with new, secular dogmas for atheists. The problems noted above are centered around the early impression that this is where he is going, but the positives are centered around the fact that he never actually ends up there. Instead of secular dogmas, he offers interesting philosophical ideas and questions. They are places where you can start your own thinking so you can create your own way of looking at the world.

Ronald Aronson is a widely respected philosopher and an internationally recognized expert on Sartre, so you can expect the ideas and questions here to be well thought out. Perhaps more important, though, is that Aronson is also an experienced and respected political activist, so his book wasn't written in an ivory tower, separated from the everyday concerns of the average person. Instead, it's as practical and pragmatic as it is philosophical; it binds together the life of the mind with the life we must live in a way that is illuminating as well as inspiring.

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