2013年经济学人 抚慰,欢乐与不合 Comfort, joy and disagreement（在线收听）

Books and Arts; Comfort, joy and disagreement

文艺；抚慰，欢乐与不合；

Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion. By Alain de Botton.

给无神论者的宗教：无神论者使用宗教的指南。Alain de Botton著；

The Face of God: The Gifford Lectures. By Roger Scruton. Continuum;

上帝的面孔：在Gifford的讲座。Roger Scruton著，Continuum；

Alain de Botton

It is difficult to imagine Alain de Botton and Roger Scruton becoming friends if they met at a party. All too soon the two philosophers would start talking about God. For Mr de Botton there is something slightly demented about religious belief, whereas for Mr Scruton there is something deeply tragic about atheism.

很难想象Alain de Botton和Roger Scruton会在聚会上遇见后成为朋友。这两位哲学家在一起很快就会讨论起上帝。对于de Botton先生来说，宗教信仰总有那么一点神神叨叨，而对于Scruton先生，无神论却带有深深的悲剧色彩。

Mr de Botton has published bestselling books on a wide range of subjects. He is an aggregator of ideas rather than an original thinker, but his skill is to write simply about complex ideas and he gives his fans the sensation of reading something profound with little effort. The premise of his new book, “Religion for Atheists”, which seeks to steer a course between religious fundamentalists and atheist fundamentalists, is that there is too much of value in religion to leave it to the religious alone. It must be possible to balance “a rejection of religious faith with a selective reverence for religious rituals,” he says. In practice, this means emptying out such rituals of their meaning and using them for secular ends, a kind of spiritual pick ‘n' mix.

de Botton先生出版过关于各类话题的畅销书。与其说他是一位原创的思考者，不如把他称为是一个思想的融合者。他擅长把复杂的想法转变为简单的文字，这给了他的读者们一种轻松读懂深奥事物的感觉。他的新书《给无神论者的宗教》，希望在宗教和无神论各自的死忠追随者之间找到一条道路。引起写作的是这样一个想法：让宗教信仰者们独享宗教所包含的巨大价值实在是太可惜了。他说，“肯定有可能在‘拒绝宗教信仰'和‘有选择的尊重某些宗教仪式'之间取得一个平衡。”实际操作中，这意味着把这些仪式的内涵都统统抛弃，然后再把它们用作世俗的目的，类似于精神层面上的“混合糖果”。

Although Mr de Botton is a clever man, he often stretches a good idea beyond its elastic limit. Religions are “the most successful educational and intellectual movements the planet has ever witnessed,” he states, because they tell people what to think and hammer it home. University lecturers anxious to persuade should copy the didactic tricks of a Pentecostal preacher. “Do you hear me?” he hollers. “I say do you hear me?” An analysis of religious imagery leads him to recommend advertising “forgiveness” on billboards. Daily bouts of meditation on the immensity of the galaxies, he argues, will offer “solutions to our megalomania, self-pity and anxiety”.

虽然de Botton先生是一个聪明人，但是他时常把一个好的想法延伸出适当的范围之外。宗教是“这个星球历史上最成功的教育和智识运动”，他说，因为它告诉人们该去想什么，而且还确保大家都真的理解了。大学里的那些急于说服学生的讲师们真应该效仿圣灵降临教传教士的那一套说教技巧。“你听见我说的了吗？”他大叫，“我说，你听见我说的了吗？”在对宗教形象进行了分析后，他推荐在公告板上宣传“宽恕”。他主张说，每天数次对无边的银河进行沉思可以提供“对抗狂妄自大，自暴自弃和焦虑的方法”。

Had it been written as a direct response, Mr Scruton's book, “The Face of God” could hardly be a stronger refutation of Mr de Botton's project. A philosophy professor, novelist and composer, Mr Scruton is a controversial figure, lampooned for his love of foxhunting and tweeds and uncompromisingly elitist in his opinions about classical architecture, music and aesthetics. The essays in this work of natural theology were first delivered as lectures at St Andrew's University, and they have a whiff of the sermon about them. Atheists do not understand sacraments and acts of worship, he says. The sacred and the transcendental are “real presences” which bind communities together.

如果Scruton先生的书《上帝的面孔》是写来直接回应de Botton先生的命题的，那将是最有力的回击了。作为一个哲学教授，小说家和作曲家，Scruton先生是一个充满争议的人物，他对于猎狐运动和斜纹软呢衣服的喜爱，以及他在古典建筑，音乐和美学方面所持的顽固的精英主义态度都被人讽刺过。这本关于自然神学的书里的短文先是用在了他在St Andrew's大学的讲座中，它们都颇有一丝布道的味道。无神论者们无法理解圣礼和拜神行为，他说，其实那些神圣的和超越感官的东西是“真实存在”的，它们使不同的群体团结了起来。

The underlying problem is that scientists have cheapened meaning, he claims. Our deepest emotions are not mere “adaptations”, “hard wired” in the human cortex; if you reduce people to balls of cells, you wipe away intention, responsibility, freedom and emotion. Instead, the real meaning of existence is located in people's relationships with each other, the earth and God. The face is his paradigm of meaning, relationship and identity. It is through contemplating the face, the outward form and image of what is inside, that humans see each other as subjects, rather than objects, he says.

根本的问题是科学家们贬低了意义，他宣称，我们最深刻的感情不仅仅是“（人类对环境所做出的）适应”，然后“先天决定于”人类的基因中。如果你把人简单地归结为一大团细胞，你就一同抹掉了意愿，责任，自由和感情。与此相反，存在的真正意义在于一个人与其他人，地球还有上帝的关系中。他认为面孔是意义，关系和认同等概念的范例。他说，面孔是每一个人的外在形式和内在内容的形象，人类通过注视面孔把对方看成是一个意志的主体而不是一个物件。

That Mr Scruton simply asserts the existence of God may be regarded as a fault here, and his prose is dense and often hard going. But he is at least serious and thoughtful. By contrast, Mr de Botton seems to get dafter with each turn of the page. Arguing that religion can bind people together to help guard against loneliness, he concludes that the Mass should be used as a model for his pastiche “Agape Restaurant”, with its own liturgy and an annual orgy (there is even a soft-porn picture to show readers what this would be like). Mr Scruton, who frets that people have become indifferent to beauty and smut, argues that it is because they confuse agape and eros (the ancient Greek words for deep affection and erotic attraction) that they objectify each other and devalue love in a cycle of “ever-expanding heartlessness”.

诚然，Scruton先生在书中轻易地断言上帝的存在是有问题的，而且他的文字厚重而时常难于阅读。但是它至少是严肃且深思熟虑的。相比之下，de Botton先生则看起来每翻一页都变愚钝了一点。他认为宗教可以把人联结起来以抵御寂寞和孤独，然后总结道，弥撒（这个仪式）应该用来作为他的混合版本的“友爱餐厅”的范例，在这样的弥撒中，不仅有其自身的礼仪，还包括一年一度的纵欲狂欢（书里面甚至还有一幅软色情图片来向读者说明它将会是怎样）。Scruton先生一直担心人们对美和淫秽之间的区别漠不关心，他认为，就是因为人们弄混了agape和eros（古希腊表示深沉之爱和欲望之爱的两个词）才导致他们互相疏离物化，然后在无休止地变得无情无义中贬低着爱情。

Of the two, Mr de Botton will probably sell more books. But it is Mr Scruton who gives readers much more to think about.

两者之中，de Botton先生应该会卖出更多的书。但Scruton先生将会带给读者更多的思考。