Being good without faith: review of The Young Atheist's Handbook

This review appeared on Goodreads in July 2012 while this blog was in limbo, but I had always intended to review it here, so here you are - with some additional content:



In his foreword to Alom Shaha's Young Atheist's Handbook, A.C. Grayling talks about the importance of developing a questioning mind. Shaha quotes Ani DiFranco when she asks, 'What if God is just an idea/Someone put in your head?' In The Young Atheist's Handbook, Alom Shaha asks – and answers for himself – the question, 'What if God is just an outmoded concept we no longer require now that we have generated more data about our universe than any one of us can ever hope to successfully process?' And, by implication, he is also asking, 'What will it take for us as a species to accept that no life will be filled with unalloyed joy and good luck, and how can we learn to cope with misfortune without the crutch of religion while remaining good people?' His handbook is an attempt to answer that question on a supremely personal level, although, as he admits freely, it is not precisely a handbook.

Alom takes us on his journey of loss, inconsolable grief, defiance, and ultimately the acceptance of his lack – rather than his loss – of faith. Part of that journey includes an examination of the familial and socio-cultural pressures put on children to accept and observe a faith they are not permitted to question.   Islam may be the most difficult of the world's major religions in this sense, as the form in which it is exported throughout the world often amounts to the prophet's words being repeated and  obeyed without translation, study or debate. (I should hasten to add that I am not an expert on Islam – or on any other religion, although my own defiant and questioning attitude made me, shall we say, an unsuitable candidate for Sunday School).