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Description edit
A brilliant, elegant argument for spirituality without God Can we do without religion? Can we have ethics without God? Is there such thing as “atheist spirituality”? In this powerful book, the internationally bestselling author André Comte-Sponville presents a philosophical exploration of... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
People edit
- Spinoza: Add a description of this character.
- Lucretius
- Wittgenstein
- Saint Augustine
- Saint Paul
- Emile Durkheim
- Hume
- Simone Weil
- Freud
- Kant
- Thomas Aquinas
- Descartes
- Plato
- Marcus Cicero
- Nicolas Malebranche
- Francois De La Mothe Fenelon
- Gottfried Leibniz
- Voltaire
- Jean-jacques Rousseau
- Michel Hulin
- Marius Favre
Quotes edit
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“The spirit is no one’s private property, nor is freedom.”
Andre Comte-Sponville -
“The existence of God is open to question. The existence of religions is not.”
Andre Comte-Sponville -
“What are “the essentials”? In spiritual matters, it seemed to me that they could be summed up in three questions. Firstly, can we do without religion? Secondly, does God exist? And thirdly, can there be an atheist spirituality?”
Andre Comte-Sponville -
“A religion is a solidary system of beliefs and practices relative to things sacred, that is to say, set apart and taboo—beliefs and practices which bring together those who adhere to them in a moral community known as a church.”
Emile Durkheim -
“some religions had no gods—Jainism, for instance, which is atheistic, and Buddhism, which is “an ethics without God and an atheism without Nature”
Emile Durkheim -
“By religion, we mean any organized set of beliefs and rituals involving the sacred, the supernatural or the transcendent (this is the broad sense of the term) and specifically involving one or several gods (this is the restricted sense), which beliefs and rituals unite those who recognize and practice them into a moral and spiritual community.”
Andre Comte-Sponville -
“Almost everywhere, the need to believe tends to win out over the desire for freedom.”
Andre Comte-Sponville -
“Against this, Epicurus taught that “death is nothing.” It is nothing to the living, since as long as they are alive it does not exist; and nothing to the dead, since they no longer exist. To fear death is thus to fear nothing.”
Epicurus -
“This doesn’t eliminate anxiety (whose very definition, in modern psychiatry, is the fear of a nonexistent object), but it does put it in its place and help us overcome it. What frightens us is our own imagination. What reassures us is our own reason. By definition, there can be nothing to fear in nothingness. To the contrary, what could be more terrifying than the prospect of eternal damnation? True, many of our contemporaries have ceased believing in hell. They see it basically as a metaphor—only heaven, apparently, is to be taken literally. Quite a step forward. Atheists have none of these worries. We accept our mortality as best we can and try to get used to the idea of nothingness. Can this actually be done? We try not to obsess about it. Death will take everything away with it, including the fear it instills in us. Life on earth is more important to us, and quite sufficient.”
Andre Comte-Sponville -
“Gradually, however, the idea of the person one has lost evolves from gaping wound to piercing nostalgia, to moving memory, to gratitude, and almost to happiness…. At first, you thought: “How dreadful that (s)he should no longer be here!””
Andre Comte-Sponville -
“Atheism is neither a duty nor a requirement. The same is true of religion. It remains for us to accept our differences.”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“What binds believers together, as seen by an outside observer, is not God, whose existence is open to doubt; rather, it is their communion within the same faith.”
Andre Comte-Sponville -
“Conversely (and this, to me, is what matters most), whereas societies can definitely do without god(s) and perhaps without religions, no society can dispense for any length of time with communion.”
Andre Comte-Sponville -
“Many linguists believe, as did Cicero, that the word derives not from religare but from relegare, which means “to contemplate” or “to reread.” In this sense, religion is not, or at least not primarily, what binds, but rather what is contemplated or reread (or reread in contemplation)—namely myths, founding texts, teachings (Torah in Hebrew), a body of knowledge (Veda in Sanskrit), one or several books (biblia in Greek), a reading or recitation (Koran in Arabic), a law (dharma in Sanskrit), a set of principles, rules or commandments (the Decalogue in the Old Testament)—in a word, a revelation or tradition that is at once ancient and still relevant, accepted, respected, interiorized, both individually and communally.”
Andre Comte-Sponville -
“There is no such thing as society without education, civilization without transmission, communion without fidelity.”
Andre Comte-Sponville -
“Renouncing a God who has met his social demise (as a Nietzschean sociologist might put it) does not compel us to renounce the moral, cultural and spiritual values that have been formulated in his name.”
Andre Comte-Sponville -
“As several philosophers have demonstrated (Alain in France, Hannah Arendt in the United States), only by transmitting the past to our children can we enable them to invent their future; only by being culturally conservative can we be politically progressive.”
Andre Comte-Sponville -
“Civilizations require culture, imagination, enthusiasm and creativity, and none of these things come without courage, work and effort.”
Andre Comte-Sponville -
““Nothing is true; everything is allowed.””
Friedrich Nietzche -
“Today, for atheists in particular, it is crucial to build a double rampart against this double temptation, opposing sophistry with rationalism on the one hand and nihilism with humanism on the other.”
Andre Comte-Sponville -
“Our primary duty, the one from which all the others follow, is that of living and behaving humanly.”
Andre Comte-Sponville -
“You can hope only for what you do not have. Thus, to hope for happiness is to lack it. When you have it, on the other hand, what remains to be hoped for? For it to last? That would mean fearing its cessation, and as soon as you do that, you start feeling it dissolve into anxiety. Such is the trap of hope, with or without God—the hope for tomorrow’s happiness prevents you from experiencing today’s.”
Andre Comte-Sponville -
“If we want only what we do not have, we can never have what we want. We are cut off from happiness by the very hope that impels us to pursue it; cut off from the present (which is all) by the future (which is nothing).”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“So it is that, instead of living, we hope to live........”
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“Wise people wish only for what is or for what depends on them. What good would hope do them?”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“There is no hope without fear and no fear without hope.”
Baruch Spinoza -
“To wish only for what depends on us (to want) is to give ourselves the means of making it happen. To wish for what does not depend on us (to hope) is to condemn ourselves to powerlessness and resentment.”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“The wise act; the foolish hope and tremble. The wise live in the present, wishing only for what is (acceptance, love) or what they can bring about (will). Such, indeed, is the spirit of Stoicism and of Spinoza. Such is the spirit of all wisdom, no matter what the doctrine. It is not hope that spurs us to action (how many people hope for justice but do nothing in its favor?); it is will. It is not hope that sets us free; it is truth. It is not hope that helps us live; it is love.”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“They cannot forgive life, or the world, or humanity, for not fulfilling the hopes they had conceived for them. But whose fault is it if their hopes were illusory?”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“When you have learned not to hope, I shall teach you how to want”
Seneca -
“Still, for the faithful atheist I try to be, this passage does give a particular significance—and a powerful one—to a famous book called The Imitation of Our Lord Jesus Christ. If Jesus himself, as even Saint Thomas acknowledged, was inhabited by neither faith nor hope, then being faithful to Jesus (and attempting, with the means at our disposal, to follow his example) would not entail imitating either his faith or his hope; it might entail imitating his vision and comprehension (as Christians do through faith and hope and as Spinoza does through philosophy); it would definitely entail imitating his love (such is the ethics of the Gospel—or, again, Spinoza’s ethics).”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“I feel separated from you by only three days—those which, according to tradition, separate Good Friday from Easter Sunday.”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“It is possible to do without religion but not without communion, fidelity or love. In these matters, what we share is more important than what separates us. Peace to all, believers and unbelievers alike. Life is more precious than religion; this is where inquisitors and torturers are wrong. Communion is more precious than churches; this is where sectarians are wrong. Finally—and this is where fine people are right, whether they believe in God or not—love is more precious than hope or despair. There is no need to wait until we are saved to be human.”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“Where God is concerned, two questions need to be raised: that of his definition and that of his existence.”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“Do you believe in God, professor?” Thus interrogated by a journalist, Einstein answered simply, “First tell me what you mean by God, and then I’ll tell you if I believe in him.””
Albert Einstein -
“Do you believe in God, professor?” Thus interrogated by a journalist, Einstein answered simply, “First tell me what you mean by God, and then I’ll tell you if I believe in him.””
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“So many deaths—all in the name of the same Book! So many massacres—all in the name of the same God!”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“People who believe they have the truth, should know they believe it, rather than believe they know it.”
Jules Lequier -
“Finally and most important, in human beings the idea of the infinite is a finite idea, just as the idea of perfection is an imperfect one”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“Man is a finite being who opens onto infinity, an imperfect being who dreams of perfection.”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“God is not a theorem. He is not something one can prove or demonstrate; he is something one can believe in—or not.”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“The lack of proof of God’s existence is an argument against any and all theistic religions. While this may not yet be a sufficient reason to be an atheist, it is at least a reason not to be a believer.”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“One of my main reasons for not believing in God is that I have seen no evidence of his existence.”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“Indeed, I find the idea of a stubbornly hiding God very surprising.”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“Thus, it is unthinkable that God should keep us in the dark about his existence to preserve our freedom. Only knowledge, not ignorance, can set us free.”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“What sort of Father would go on hiding as his children suffered through Auschwitz, the Gulag or Rwanda, as they were deported, humiliated, starved, tortured and murdered? The idea of a God who prefers to conceal himself is incompatible with the idea of God as Father. Indeed, it makes the very notion of God an oxymoron—any God who would do that would not be God.”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“From a theoretical point of view, believing in God always amounts to trying to explain something we do not understand (the universe, life, human consciousness) by something we understand even less (God). How can such an attitude satisfy us intellectually?”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“Either God wanted to eliminate evil and could not; or he could and did not want to; or he neither could nor wanted to; or he could and wanted to. If he wanted to and could not, he is impotent, which cannot be the case for God; if he could and did not want to, he is evil, which is foreign to God’s nature. If he neither could nor wanted to, he is both impotent and evil, in which case he is not God. If he both wanted to and could—the only hypothesis that corresponds to God—where does evil come from, or why did God not eliminate it?”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“Life is too difficult, humanity too weak, labor too exhausting, pleasures too frivolous or rare, pain too frequent or atrocious, chance too unfair and haphazard for us to be able to believe that so imperfect a world is of divine origin!”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“To be an atheist is not necessarily to be against God. Why would I be against what does not exist?”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“Justice does not exist, which is why we need to create it.”
Alain -
“Not believing in God does not prevent me from having a spirit, nor does it exempt me from having to use it.”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“Meditation is the silence of thought.”
Krishnamurti -
“Albert Camus’s The Stranger. We are in the mind of a man who has been condemned to death, on the eve of his execution: “The exquisite peace of this sleepy summer flowed into me like a tide…. Emptied of hope, as I stood there staring at the night sky filled with signs and stars, I opened myself up to the tender indifference of the universe for the first time. Feeling it so like myself, so fraternal at long last, I realized that I had been happy, and still was.”
Albert Camus -
“We sense and experience that we are eternal”
Baruch Spinoza -
“I came to understand that if great mystics are usually childless, it is because children—through an excess of love, passion, anxiety, worry—attach us to reality and thus separate us from the absolute, or at least prevent us from inhabiting it simply.”
Andre Compte-Sponville -
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein -
“There is no hope without fear, and no fear without hope”
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“We can hope only for what we do not have, what we are not or what we lack. With rare exceptions, we can hope only for the future, whereas we can live only in the present.”
Andre Compte-Sponville
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To wish only for what depends on us (to want) is to give ourselves the means of making it happen. To wish for what does not depend on us (to hope) is to condemn ourselves to powerlessness and resentment.
Highlighted by 22 Kindle customers -
Almost everywhere, the need to believe tends to win out over the desire for freedom.
Highlighted by 20 Kindle customers -
Against this, Epicurus taught that “death is nothing.” It is nothing to the living, since as long as they are alive it does not exist; and nothing to the dead, since they no longer exist. To fear death is thus to fear nothing.
Highlighted by 20 Kindle customers -
By religion, we mean any organized set of beliefs and rituals involving the sacred, the supernatural or the transcendent (this is the broad sense of the term) and specifically involving one or several gods (this is the restricted sense), which beliefs and rituals unite those who recognize and practice them into a moral and spiritual community.
Highlighted by 19 Kindle customers -
“People who believe they have the truth,” as Jules Lequier put it, “should know they believe it, rather than believe they know it.”
Highlighted by 16 Kindle customers -
Renouncing a God who has met his social demise (as a Nietzschean sociologist might put it) does not compel us to renounce the moral, cultural and spiritual values that have been formulated in his name.
Highlighted by 15 Kindle customers -
You can hope only for what you do not have. Thus, to hope for happiness is to lack it. When you have it, on the other hand, what remains to be hoped for? For it to last? That would mean fearing its cessation, and as soon as you do that, you start feeling it dissolve into anxiety. Such is the trap of hope, with or without God—the hope for tomorrow’s happiness prevents you from experiencing today’s.
Highlighted by 15 Kindle customers -
Faith is a belief; fidelity, in the sense I give the word, is more like an attachment, a commitment, a gratitude. Faith involves one or several gods; fidelity involves values, a history, a community. The former calls on imagination or grace; the latter on memory and will.
Highlighted by 14 Kindle customers -
The wise act; the foolish hope and tremble. The wise live in the present, wishing only for what is (acceptance, love) or what they can bring about (will). Such, indeed, is the spirit of Stoicism and of Spinoza. Such is the spirit of all wisdom, no matter what the doctrine. It is not hope that spurs us to action (how many people hope for justice but do nothing in its favor?); it is will. It is not hope that sets us free; it is truth. It is not hope that helps us live; it is love.
Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers -
In a word, Pascal, Kant and Kierkegaard were right: There is no way for a lucid atheist to avoid despair.
Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers
Table of Contents edit
Introduction
I. Can We Do Without Religion?
II. Does God Exist?
III: Can There Be an Atheist Spirituality?
Conclusion: Love and Truth
Acknowledgements
Suggested Reading
Authors & Contributors edit
- Andre Comte-Sponville (Author)
Other Contributors:
- Nancy Huston (Translator)
First Edition edit
Original Language: French
Publisher: Penguin Group
Country: UK
Publication Date: 2007
ISBN: 1-4295-7986-2
Page Count: Add the page count.
Publisher: Penguin Group
Country: UK
Publication Date: 2007
ISBN: 1-4295-7986-2
Page Count: Add the page count.
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 211.8
Subjects edit
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