Living Without God: New Directions for Atheists, Agnostics, Secularists, and the Undecided

Something unprecedented happened in American publishing in the last four years. Books explicitly advocating atheism became bestsellers. It happened despite (or because of) the theocratic drift in our politics. In 2005, Wayne State University professor Ronald Aronson called the authors of such books "New Atheists," and the label stuck. Most notable among them have been Sam Harris (who had previously been an obscure neurology grad student), evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, philosopher Daniel Dennett, and political journalist Christopher Hitchens. Aronson included some other writers -- Michel Onfray, Julian Baggini, Erik Wielenberg, and Daniel Harbour -- whose books have sold less well. Aronson now in his own book, Living Without God, welcomes the emergence of the New Atheists. He values their accomplishment, but emphasizes that more work needs to be done. They have succeeded in "breaking the spell" (to use a phrase applied very aptly in this context by Dennett) which in the USA had hindered skeptical discussion of religion for the past generation. But according to Aronson (p.16), "even after reading Harris, Dennett, Dawkins or Hitchens, secularists often have difficulty discussing what it is we [do] believe in, if not God." He points out that this task is even more difficult for secularists nowadays than for their 19th- and early-20th-century predecessors. The earlier secularists could wave the Enlightenment banner of Progress; but meanwhile the world wars, genocides, and gulags have, for many of us, shredded that banner to tatters. Aronson describes as follows our spiritual predicament today (p.18): Religion is not really the issue, but rather the incompleteness or tentativeness, the thinness or emptiness, of today's atheism, agnosticism, and secularism. Living without God means turning toward something. To flourish we need coherent secular popular philosophies that effectively answer life's vital questions. He says (p.41) that if humanists and secularists are to present a positive alternative to theism, they must try to answer Kant's three questions: "What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope?" He sees these questions as translating out into a number of issues that 21st-century secularists should address. One of the most striking and distinctive of these issues is that of gratitude and rendering thanks: how to feel and convey gratitude for our human existence without envisaging a divine personality who is responsible for it and who can bestow meaning on our lives. That is an issue that earlier secular thinkers have struggled with, too. For years I have been bemused by John Dewey's proposal, in a book entitled "A Common Faith", to retain the word "God" while rejecting the traditional, supernaturalist understanding of it: One reason why personally I think it fitting to use the word 'God' to denote that uniting of the ideal and actual which has been spoken of, lies in the fact that aggressive atheism se

I almost seriously misjudged this book. From the title I expected a rather different book; and when I realized that the author was planning to tell us about his ideas of how to live without god but included seemingly no awareness of previous work (for example that of Paul Kurtz, who's not mentioned anywhere), I found myself significantly discouraged. Then, too, the author's style of presenting a set of observations and then seemingly to refute them with another set, along with his tendency to want to "see all aspects" of an issue, can create some confusion and at times become quite tedious. Fortunately for me, I persisted, and gradually I began to appreciate Aronson's dedication to investigating issues and questions that deepen and widen one's understandings, especially of how a life of meaning can be created via greater awareness of appropriate gratitude for the struggles and achievements of forebears of all kinds (including major philosophers) and the responsibilities (if we chose to accept them) toward those forebears (and their current-day offspring) in being a part of the continuing work of making possible advancement for all human life--without expecting god to do it for us. If that is a part of why you might buy this book, it's an excellent purchase.

As the editorial reviews above point out, this book takes the next step beyond Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris. Instead of focusing on why there is no reason to believe in God, this book is a thought-provoking exploration of what it means to live without God or religion. One interesting item that caught me on an internal inconsistency was the page 140 discussion on destiny. There is a tendency to abdicate self-responsibility in favor of some vague sense of destiny.

I only found a few sections that made me sit up and pay attention where the author seems to be truly focusing on issues specific to those that the title tries to attract. The personal sections about his despair over Detroit and what he's trying to do to help the community seemed a bit too pretentious. In that same vein, I found many sections that were so personal that they didn't generalize well for readers in other circumstances. Overall, I nice presentation of humanist liberal attitudes about how one ought to live, but only tangentially relevant to those he targets with the title and sub-title. Might be most helpful for a person who, until recently, was wholly entrenched in church life and is seeking a new direction.

I just finished reading this book, and it's terrific. It goes beyond the debunking of religion books to discuss how we go about understanding the world and society, and our place in both without the use of religious references, explanations and thought processes. It presents a very positive and liberating view of a truly secular worldview - a better world. I highly recommend it to those who liked the debunking books, and also to those with religious beliefs who recognize the need for and benefits of a humanistic/secular society.