Aku sedang membaca Spiritualitas Tanpa Tuhan (L’esprit de l’athéisme, The Book of Atheist Spirituality) karya Mr. André Comte-Sponville (Alvabet, 2007) saat ini: buku karya seorang filsuf kontemporer Prancis yang membuatku tertawa, berpikir mendalam, mengawang-awang, tersenyum, dan membebaskan. Mr. Comte-Sponville memiliki sejumlah ide dasar yang sama denganku—walaupun, tentu saja, aku tak secerdas dan sehebat ia!
Aku tidak akan, dalam blog pribadiku ini, mengulas buku tersebut. Aku hanya menulis secara serampangan saja. Nah, karenanya, aku malah tergoda mengutip secara panjang, mohon maaf jika aku tak menerjemahkannya ke bahasa Indonesia, tulisan Mr. Alex C. Telander mengenai review atas buku Tuan Comte-Sponville ini dalam sebuah blog (https://bookbanter.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/the-little-book-of-atheist-spirituality-by-andre-compte-sponville-translated-by-nancy-huston-viking-2007/). Begini kata Mr. Alex:
We are living in a time when Atheism is becoming an increasingly popular belief system for many people around the world. While the likes of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris are looking to expose religions for their apparent hypocrisy and cause of violence and many of the world’s problems; the renowned French philosopher, André Comte-Sponville, author of A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues, seeks to educate people about a less antagonistic form of Atheism which he refers to as an Atheist spirituality.
André Comte-Sponville has very little in common with Dawkins, Hitchens or Harris, for he is not out to challenge people’s beliefs and make them convert to reality and science. He respects everyone’s religion and/or beliefs, for they are always entitled to them. He just believes, like many of us, that all the religions of today are simply not true. However, the ideas of being a good person in a lot of the world’s religions are to be admired and used.
The book is split into three parts, and in the first, “Can We Do Without Religion?,” he dispels the idea that religious people are often a proponent of the idea that morality cannot exist without religion; Comte-Sponville takes his time in explaining that this is simply not true. While it is possible to be without religion, there are three key elements that exist in religion, and that we as human beings also have instilled within us: communion, fidelity, and love.
Comte-Sponville says that “it is possible to commune with something other than the divine and the sacred” and that “no society can dispense for any length of time without communion.” As people in this world, we simply need to be around and with other people, it is what makes us human, and what makes our civilization exist, but also run relatively smoothly. No religion is necessary here, but the communion with other people is key, to exist in this world.
With regards to fidelity, Comte-Sponville says, “Fidelity is what remains when faith has been lost.” This is where our “moral, cultural, and spiritual” values come from as people of this world. The automatic and common sense understanding of what is good or bad, right or wrong; to feel bad when causing someone (be it another person or another animal) pain and discomfort makes one feel bad also. While these important values of society are often part of the foundation of religions and have so been instilled in us, the religion is not required.
I don’t believe in God or anything akin to a supernatural deity, but I know that stealing and causing pain to others is wrong, and would make me feel bad whether I want it to or not.
“Love is more precious than hope or despair,” Comte-Sponville says, as he discusses how most religions seem to have a driving hope for the future, for something to happen, for one to eventually die and ascend to heaven, or whatever the afterlife beliefs may be, and this is often coupled with a requirement to do certain things in this life to a creed written in a book long ago. But then why is the saying “you only live once” also so true and often used? We are people, we are alive now, and this our life, existing right now. It’s not about what happened before, or what is going to happen; these cannot be changed and affected; the now is all we can control. The love is for humanity as a whole, to love each other coupled with communion and fidelity, to marvel at how far we’ve come and what we’ve accomplished.
[…]
Atheist spirituality, for Comte-Sponville, is a love, respect, and appreciation for the world and the universe in its completeness, infinity, and entirety. He best illustrates this in a specific moment in his life when he was out camping with some friends and while walking a trail at night, he stopped momentarily, looked up, and studied the many millions of stars in the infinite black universe; coupled with this was the communing with nature in the forest, and for a moment he experienced a sense of euphoria and complete happiness; an ecstatic joy that he had never felt before.
***
Usia yang masih terlalu muda, akan menjadi dua puluh tahun pada 1 Desember nanti, membuatku tak mau tergesa-gesa menyimpulkan pemahamanku perihal hal-hal yang agung: agama, Tuhan, peradaban…
Aku sedang mencari makna eksistensiku saat ini. (Maklum saja, di usiaku saat ini aku tergolong lambat mempelajari pemikiran-pemikiran para jenius peradaban.) Aku belum mau terlibat dalam pertempuran ide-ide yang besar. Aku sadar aku masih terlalu bodoh untuk hal itu. Jadi, aku saat ini membatasi diriku hanya pada apa-apa yang mengusik nuraniku. (Ya! Aku patut disalahkan perihal hal ini, tapi, tentu saja, aku pun boleh mengajukan pendirian-pendirian yang menopang argumentasiku tersebut…)
Aku berkenalan dengan banyak orang hebat di negeri ini: mereka para pemikir yang tangguh, terlepas dari posisi mereka dalam peta pertempuran ide. Aku menghargai mereka sebagaimana mereka juga menghargaiku sebagai manusia pada umumnya—bukan sebagai anak ingusan yang serampangan. Mereka membuatku sedikit memahami apa arti pemikiran, cinta, kehidupan, persahabatan, toleransi, dlsb. Ini mengajakku berpikir lebih jauh soal diriku: bahwa aku harus menemukan diriku!
Maafkan aku, kawan-kawanku… Aku masih kehilangan diriku saat ini!
N.B. Jatinangor yang panas pada siang hari menjadi dingin semenjak hujan turun di temaram senja
Konsep Pemikiran 