Religious Ragings - michaeliainbutters asked: Hello Steve, if you don't mind me calling you that. I watched a TED talk by Alain de Botton called atheism 2.0 earlier and I'm pretty sure he is a smart, nice guy that I would agree with and get on with but that talk really riled me and I disagreed with most of it. I was wondering if you had the time you could give me your opinion on it?

michaeliainbutters asked: Hello Steve, if you don’t mind me calling you that. I watched a TED talk by Alain de Botton called atheism 2.0 earlier and I’m pretty sure he is a smart, nice guy that I would agree with and get on with but that talk really riled me and I disagreed with most of it. I was wondering if you had the time you could give me your opinion on it?

religiousragings:

Alain de Botton: Atheism 2.0 on YouTube

I got through 12 minutes of this and I gave up on it. I disagree with a good portion of it, too.

I see WHAT he’s trying to say, and I might be able to agree with some of the basic principles, but I’m not convinced. I’m not sure that I could easily sum up why I find so much of it wrong, however.

I can say that getting agreement among atheists as to how we should use culture to teach values would be next to impossible, however. I can also say that throwing all this stuff under the label of atheism is not appropriate. Atheism is lack of belief in a god. Nothing more. Call it Secular Humanism. Call it skeptical ethics. But I don’t like the label “atheist” being used for this purpose.

While it’s true that atheists seem to share a lot of values, I don’t think that this is the way to go.

What do you guys think?