To the glory of God

The most boring question you can ask of any religion is whether it is true.

So says Alain de Botton, philosopher, writer, and founder of an organization called the School of Life, a kind of church for atheists. He started the school out of a conviction that religions have a few useful traditions, rituals, and practices that are worth borrowing and adapting in the ongoing project of becoming kind and fulfilled and generally decent human beings. The truth of the matter doesn’t really matter. What does matter is whether there might be some useful things to salvage from these historical traditions as we continue the steady march of secular progress.

De Botton is something like the un-Richard Dawkins. Rather than excoriating religions as the source of all that is ignorant and contemptible in the world and delighting in his own luminous rationality, de Botton is sympathetic to religions, if in an anthropological and pragmatic sort of way. Look at all that religions have contributed to the world, he says. Look at the magnificent art, the majestic cathedrals, the frescoes, the spine-tingling music, and the penetrating literature that human beings have created to the glory of God!