An Unbeliever’s Prayer

Most important, we discover that Comte-Sponville is not a cranky, cantankerous atheist. He was born into Christendom, and raised there; and though he eventually defected, he was never disinfected of its moral graces. He calls himself a “non-dogmatic atheist,” a “faithful atheist,” even a “Christian atheist.” Comte-Sponville might not believe in God, but he admires Him. An atheist he is; a heathen he is not.

In the first of three chapters–“Can We Do Without Atheism?”–he writes: “My intention is not to convert people to atheism. It is merely to explain my position and the arguments in its favor.” The explanations are invariably launched with “To my way of thinking” or “I personally” or “For my part” and end up in Salzburg or Strasbourg, where their author once traded pleasantries with a priest. The personal narrative, charming beyond its candid arrogance, empowers the authorial voice. But it can also compromise the message. Consider Comte-Sponville’s rendition of a speech a born-again atheist might recite at the dinner table:

The exclamatory silliness is enough to raise the eyebrows of the book’s American audience, but to the resilient reader, it does convey an interesting idea: religious values without religiosity. The philosophy seems best captured in the biblical character of the Good Samaritan, the compassionate gentile who, more than any priest, warmed Jesus. Writes Comte-Sponville: “It is possible to do without religion, but not without communion, fidelity, or love.”

The second chapter–“Does God Exist?”–withdraws even further from the book’s premise, to say nothing yet of its argument. Here Comte-Sponville opens the doors to Kant, Epicurus, Lucretius, Alain, Montaigne, Pascal, Freud, and every other vagrant thinker who happens to be passing by. He unleashes through them his six choicest arguments against God’s existence.

It is no compliment to Comte-Sponville that these immediately recall the arguments I recently compiled in contesting a speeding ticket in California. In a written trial by declaration, I argued that: My car’s speedometer wasn’t working; if it were, then the cop’s radar surely wasn’t; but in any case, I was driving at the average pace of traffic; I certainly wasn’t speeding; but if I were, I do sincerely apologize; you can understand, I was rushing to a funeral.

I had learned, much to my delight, that state law did not require the various points of my defense to be consistent with one another. My leaking logic apparently seeped past California’s courts; Comte-Sponville’s does not elude ours. He claims that human mediocrity cannot suggest a perfect God and, on the other hand, that human glories suffice for a first-rate spirituality. He claims that God must be evil as he allows evil, and that God is actually “too good to be true,” that “I am an atheist and happy to be one” and that “I desperately wish that God existed.”

If six assassins found the audacity to target the ruler of the universe, we might hope that they wouldn’t end up shooting each other. We do not expect a hobgoblin’s consistency here, but we do require a theory that can survive on its own terms. These terms we find increasingly dubious, as we see that their intelligent designer is focused on proving why God can’t exist more than why He doesn’t.

As we enter the final chapter–“Can There Be an Atheist Spirituality?”–we realize that godlessness, for Comte-Sponville, isn’t a mere view of reality, a true-or-false understanding of the universe, but a luscious, personal, and value-laden philosophy. We realize also that his designs of an atheist spirituality are not effected by atheism at all but by a movement of which atheism is itself an effect. Comte-Sponville is an Enlightenment man. And within Enlightenment’s framework, he carves out his own spirituality, a fresh spirituality that has nothing to do with the union of self and soul and everything to do with the surrender of the self to the universe. The achievement of this oneness is called plenitude, “moments when nothing is missing, when there is nothing to either wish for or regret and when the question of possession is irrelevant.”

The author experienced plenitude once in a forest. I’m afraid that I have not; my own atheist spirituality is less refined. But it has always been active. I have been known to cast a ballot for a candidate whose victory (or defeat) I knew would not be determined by it; I have cheered for my basketball team to an indifferent radio in an earless room.

I do not deny Comte-Sponville his atheist spirituality, and he is probably too tolerant to deny me mine. But they are different. They are inevitably different because a-theism–an absence of belief–contains, demands, and predicts nothing. It has subscribers in every demographic, constituency, party, and clique. Indeed, most atheists don’t bother with God for the same reason that they don’t bother with unicorns. Atheists, in their atheism, are indifferent.

For Comte-Sponville and me, this is a tragedy; we see in God a splendor beyond the trivial truth of his existence or nonexistence. We believe that humans run not on gyrating atoms or a selfish calculus but on something of a soul. We believe in human intrigues. But Comte-Sponville’s book of atheist spirituality is different from mine because, unfortunately, there is no such thing as an atheist spirituality or philosophy or creed. In fact, there is no use at all for the adjective atheist. For atheism describes not a force, but a lack of force; not substance, but vacancy. Atheism is a hole. Atheism, like death, is nothing.

Garin Hovannisian is a student at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.