Umberto Eco on God

There’s an interesting article in the Sunday Telegraph today written by Umberto Eco: God Isn’t Big Enough for Some People. In it, he weighs the religious celebration of Christmas against the purely commercial one. Not surprisingly, he finds the latter wanting. But where I think he and I part company is that he seems to be comparing apples with oranges here. He is partially right when he says that "Religions are systems of belief that enable human beings to justify their existence and which reconcile us to death". I say partially, because I think that religions also give rise to institutions that bring about a whole other set of reasons for religious belief – more akin to powering the institution rather than the individual human. Be that as it may, he seems to be suggesting that, beyond the aspects of Christmas celebrations that have triggered this piece of writing, the only alternative view of the world is the commercial, materialist view.

 

I was reminded of a rather silly piece of writing a couple of weeks ago in The Guardian by Nicholas Buxton on why religion has the edge over secularism. According to him: "The alternative is nihilism. If we truly believed that life was meaningless, we would have no reason to get up in the morning – ultimately, the most rational thing to do would be to jump over the edge of a cliff". As Ophelia Benson retorted in ButterfliesAndWheels: "Oh, please. Why would that be rational? ‘Hey ho, life is meaningless. Whaddya know. Well, here I am, I’ve just finished writing this book, I’m going to Italy tomorrow, next year I’m going to China, I’m learning to play the cello, a friend is coming over for dinner tonight and afterwards we’re going to the theatre, this afternoon I’m going to go for a walk in the mountains, I have a bowl of fresh peaches for breakfast, the coffee smells good, the Trout Quintet is playing on the radio, it’s a gorgeous day, oh look, there goes a bald eagle – but life is meaningless, so obviously the most rational thing to do is go jump over the edge of a cliff’".

 

I think Eco is being like Buxton: making false comparisons. The alternative to religion is not nihilism; the alternative to a religious celebration of Christmas is not a commercial one either.