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Books and Arts; Comfort, joy and disagreement
文藝；撫慰，歡樂與不合；
Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion. By Alain de Botton.
給無神論者的宗教：無神論者使用宗教的指南。Alain de Botton著；
The Face of God: The Gifford Lectures. By Roger Scruton. Continuum;
上帝的面孔：在Gifford的講座。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.
很難想象Alain de Botton和Roger Scruton會在聚會上遇見后成為朋友。這兩位哲學家在一起很快就會討論起上帝。對于de Botton先生來說，宗教信仰總有那么一點神神叨叨，而對于Scruton先生，無神論卻帶有深深的悲劇色彩。
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先生出版過關于各類話題的暢銷書。與其說他是一位原創的思考者，不如把他稱為是一個思想的融合者。他擅長把復雜的想法轉變為簡單的文字，這給了他的讀者們一種輕松讀懂深奧事物的感覺。他的新書《給無神論者的宗教》，希望在宗教和無神論各自的死忠追隨者之間找到一條道路。引起寫作的是這樣一個想法：讓宗教信仰者們獨享宗教所包含的巨大價值實在是太可惜了。他說，“肯定有可能在‘拒絕宗教信仰'和‘有選擇的尊重某些宗教儀式'之間取得一個平衡。”實際操作中，這意味著把這些儀式的內涵都統統拋棄，然后再把它們用作世俗的目的，類似于精神層面上的“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”.
雖然de Botton先生是一個聰明人，但是他時常把一個好的想法延伸出適當的范圍之外。宗教是“這個星球歷史上最成功的教育和智識運動”，他說，因為它告訴人們該去想什么，而且還確保大家都真的理解了。大學里的那些急于說服學生的講師們真應該效仿圣靈降臨教傳教士的那一套說教技巧。“你聽見我說的了嗎？”他大叫，“我說，你聽見我說的了嗎？”在對宗教形象進行了分析后，他推薦在公告板上宣傳“寬恕”。他主張說，每天數次對無邊的銀河進行沉思可以提供“對抗狂妄自大，自暴自棄和焦慮的方法”。
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先生的書《上帝的面孔》是寫來直接回應de Botton先生的命題的，那將是最有力的回擊了。作為一個哲學教授，小說家和作曲家，Scruton先生是一個充滿爭議的人物，他對于獵狐運動和斜紋軟呢衣服的喜愛，以及他在古典建筑，音樂和美學方面所持的頑固的精英主義態度都被人諷刺過。這本關于自然神學的書里的短文先是用在了他在St Andrew's大學的講座中，它們都頗有一絲布道的味道。無神論者們無法理解圣禮和拜神行為，他說，其實那些神圣的和超越感官的東西是“真實存在”的，它們使不同的群體團結了起來。
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.
根本的問題是科學家們貶低了意義，他宣稱，我們最深刻的感情不僅僅是“（人類對環境所做出的）適應”，然后“先天決定于”人類的基因中。如果你把人簡單地歸結為一大團細胞，你就一同抹掉了意愿，責任，自由和感情。與此相反，存在的真正意義在于一個人與其他人，地球還有上帝的關系中。他認為面孔是意義，關系和認同等概念的范例。他說，面孔是每一個人的外在形式和內在內容的形象，人類通過注視面孔把對方看成是一個意志的主體而不是一個物件。
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”.
誠然，Scruton先生在書中輕易地斷言上帝的存在是有問題的，而且他的文字厚重而時常難于閱讀。但是它至少是嚴肅且深思熟慮的。相比之下，de Botton先生則看起來每翻一頁都變愚鈍了一點。他認為宗教可以把人聯結起來以抵御寂寞和孤獨，然后總結道，彌撒（這個儀式）應該用來作為他的混合版本的“友愛餐廳”的范例，在這樣的彌撒中，不僅有其自身的禮儀，還包括一年一度的縱欲狂歡（書里面甚至還有一幅軟色情圖片來向讀者說明它將會是怎樣）。Scruton先生一直擔心人們對美和淫穢之間的區別漠不關心，他認為，就是因為人們弄混了agape和eros（古希臘表示深沉之愛和欲望之愛的兩個詞）才導致他們互相疏離物化，然后在無休止地變得無情無義中貶低著愛情。
Of the two, Mr de Botton will probably sell more books. But it is Mr Scruton who gives readers much more to think about.
兩者之中，de Botton先生應該會賣出更多的書。但Scruton先生將會帶給讀者更多的思考。
