Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam by Michel Onfray
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Book Reviews of Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam
Book Review: Passion and Reason combined
Summary: 4 Stars
A crisply written, passionate expose of the three major monotheistic religions that manages to be engaging, revealing and well researched using the most impeccable of sources - the Koran, the Bible and Talmud and Torah.
The major thesis? These religions are created by men to empower some men and disempower most, especially women and children, and to deny the now of life as it is lived, for a mythical life in the hereafter.
To think that Mein Kampf was never placed on the Catholic Church's index of banned books whilst those of Sartre, De Beauvoir et al were, is enough to enrage the most reasonable of men.
We are reminded too of the Original Sin - to eat of the tree of knowledge. Oh yeah.
Minor thesis? The ignorant and unreasonable will win if we don't continue to search, read, learn, doubt, and struggle to understand.
Book Review: Disappointing and misleading
Summary: 3 Stars
To appreciate or reject Onfray's book it's important to understand what 'Atheist Manifesto' is about. Is it really a declaration of atheism made by a modern philosopher? Or maybe, as the subtitle and bulk of the book's contents would suggest, an indictment of monotheism? Or is it a proposal of a new, strictly secular order that would replace the present one, based on too Christian values?
I'm afraid that in fact it's neither, as a result misleading and disappointing the reader. The book fails as a manifesto for atheists, doesn't deliver a new ground-breaking moral system although it calls for it, and its assault on monotheism, although interesting and valid, misses a larger point.
What seems to concern Onfray most is the threat of growing fundamentalism, both among Muslims and Christians. To fight it he does call for adoption of a 'postchristian' secular order but fails to propose any details except one, namely that religions (or more precisely - believers) shouldn't enjoy equal position to other moral systems or worldviews (atheists). This is simply not satisfactory. Whether it maybe sensible to call for rejection of many values based on religion, he neither specifies which ones nor offers any alternatives. Secondly, dechristanization has been attempted twice, with rather disastrous results. The French Revolution ended in bloodbath, Communism in shambles. A call for inequality of people seems extremely dangerous in general and even more so in such hindsight.
He supports his opinion only indirectly by presenting an impressive, if not totally convincing body of contradictions present in monotheistic religions and evils perpetrated in the name of God. Clearly, self-contradictory and morally objectionable religions cannot be a base of modern ethics. Or can they?
In the second, largest part of his book thus Onfray gives one example after another how God/Allah is at once merciful and vengeful, or how Christian rulers found justification for conquest and genocide in the meek and mild Jesus.
Unintentionally, from his picking at their wrongdoings and faults, emerges a picture of how religions supply a framework more universal and more permanent than nationality or language. They're a means adopted first, to give people a cultural identity and unity; second, to gain and maintain control over minds and nations. Society goes for tools that best serve its survival and monotheism clearly works! It's certainly warped beyond recognition and ossified yet somehow it still works.
In his attempts to deconstruct all three religions, Christianity in particular, and 'demonstrate how they are alike' he somehow doesn't try to compare them to other religions or other ideological systems. Onfray is right to point out religion's deadly sins but they're neither unique nor worse than those committed by other ideologies fighting for their own prosperity, be it Shinto, absolutism, communism or democracy.
Also, he gets so entangled in his own rhetoric that he starts treating religious writings as divine revelations, forgetting about their prosaic origins. Harsh morals can at least partly be justified by even harsher life in the unforgiving desert. Islam's, Judaism's and Christianity's misogyny can be better explained by comparative anthropology than by deconstructing messages from a god that doesn't exist.
Nero's persecution of Christians, Constantine's adoption of Christianity for his empire, no matter how much dressed in the 'name of God' usually have very earthly interests at heart and should be a subject of political history rather than study of religions. It's very difficult to distill a truly religious motive that is not an excuse for other, down-to-earth goals and Onfray doesn't succeed at this task either.
On top of this he slaps a chapter on atheology. Athelogy is an interesting and important step from a simple disbelief in gods toward a whole system of philosophical and moral thought based on atheism. Typically for his writing style, however, Onfray prefers to sell it as 'a countercurrent to theology, a channel to carry us past discourse on God and flow upstream to the source, where we may examine the mechanisms of theology up close' whatever this may mean. The rest of the chapter, unfortunately, is filled with similar twaddle.
There's not a word the about the increasing body of knowledge - science, history, comparative anthropology etc. that keeps pulling the rug from under God's feet. Even though the wealth of historical facts is easily the book's strongest point, history of atheism for Onfray seems to start with a 17th century French priest, Jean Meslier and continue mainly with other French philosophers. All previous freethinkers, ancient Greeks and their successors are either dismissed as deists, pantheists, or agnostics. Where is a mention of Diagoras who openly declared that there was no God at all? Where is Theodorus aptly nicknamed 'the Atheist'? Atheist schools of thought in ancient India are not mentioned at all. This bias towards all things French, by the way, is present throughout the book throwing Onfray's believability as an objective philosopher into doubt.
So, apart from highly controversial claims about monotheistic religions, accusing them of 'death instinct', fascism, and hatred, the book is also back to front. The chapter on atheology goes first, his bulky critique of monotheism second, and his proposal last, in about two pages, since the rest of the chapter 'Toward a post-Christian Secular Order' for incomprehensible reasons concentrates mainly on Islam. Perhaps it makes sense to Onfray, but doesn't help confused readers.
It would be naive to expect any warm word toward religion from a book of such title, yet this is where Onfray ultimately loses his credibility despite all his hard work. We simply can't trust a man whose agenda doesn't allow him to see any good in religion. He's most probably right when he repeats after Descartes that we remain citizens of Christland to the degree that even atheists largely uphold the Judeo-Christian worldview, but it's still impossible to imagine our civilization without religion or reject it as thoroughly and painlessly as the author would like to, if only he had something to replace it with.
For all these reasons I can't recommend this book with a clear conscience. It contains many valuable insights into religion but needs a major rewrite before can be presented to the readers again.
Book Review: Worth the reading
Summary: 4 Stars
As an atheist, I was interested and learned a lot supporting my long distaste for the three monotheistic religions. I think Onfray missed something by not addressing the question of the "God" gene, the thought that humans have evolved to need and accept the idea of gods.
The last part of the book, which I was looking forward to as guidance for going about helping the world "get over religion" left me flat. It seems to me that human evolution has dictated ways we interact that we're not going to be able to shake, no matter what. There's not enough biology in Onfray's psychology or philosophy. The next step should be to clearly define what we are - evolved animals, not God's creations, and use our intelligence to pin down sensible societal mores and interactions based on the realities.
Book Review: so so
Summary: 3 Stars
Has some good stuff about Pauls hysteria and how the cult of jesus got started and how it became an official religion.THE GOD DELUSION was much better.I may go back and re read some parts of the atheist manifesto but over all Its only worth one read.Book Review: More heat than light
Summary: 2 Stars
A manifesto, unlike a treatise, is allowed to proclaim rather than argue. This may be why the English publishers of Onfrey's Traite d'atheologie changed the title for this translation. The book is an admirable manifesto--fiery, angry, apocalyptic--but it's hardly a treatise that presents arguments in defense of its claims. Readers who are used to the analytic defenses of atheism characteristic of the Anglo-American philosophical tradition may find themselves perplexed by Onfray's more aphoristic, impressionistic approach.
After a few preliminary remarks on the need to take the Enlightenment ideals of reason seriously, Onfrey proceeds in his Manifesto to focus almost exclusively on dissecting the world's three monotheisms: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. His remarks will be familiar to readers who know their Nietzche, Feuerbach, and Freud. What may be surprising are the rather bizarre non sequitors with which Onfray sprinkles his narrative: for example, Hitler was a Catholic and justified racial genocide by appealing to Jesus's cleansing of the Temple (pp. 166-67); monotheistic religions require mutilation of the genitalia because monotheistic deities hate sexuality (pp. 107-109); monotheisms are aggressively anti-intellectual (pp. 51-55). Such claims fly in the face of empirical evidence: Hitler's disdainful repudiation of Christianity, the fact that medical circumcision does nothing to lessen sexual pleasure, and Islamic medieval astronomy, medicine, and mathematics.
The tone of anger escalates as the book proceeds. Onfray seems convinced that the world is headed toward a final showdown between religion and secularism, and he ends on an ominously apocalyptic note. In his final condemnation of monotheistic "discourse of neurosis, hysteria, and mysticism," he insists that "we can no more tolerate neutrality and benevolence toward every conceivable form of discourse, including that of magical thinking, than we can lump together executioner and victim...Must we remain neutral? Can we afford to? I do not think so" (p. 219).
There are excellent recent defenses of atheism available from both the Continental tradition (Andre Comte-Sponville's The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality)and the analytic one (Michael Martin's The Cambridge Companion to Atheism). Readers interested in exploring atheism in a rigorous way might want to consult them instead of Onfray. There is much heat in his Manifesto, but relatively little light.