When atheists think the understand religion...

I occasionally read an article out loud for my wife while she is busy with our daughter.  It lets us read together and gives my daughter some time listening to words.   I chose 'Religion for Everyone' to read to them, and the result was pure comedy.

I don't want to make fun at this article because I am sure the author was sincere.  But it is obvious he has no idea what 'religion' really is.  He is a convinced atheist, but he longs for the Old-Time Religion that he supposes brought us together as a community.  So his solution is to 'learn from religion' and create secular copies of the pieces that built the communities of the past.  In the article, he mostly uses the 'genius' of the Catholic Mass as his starting point.  It appears he has only read about the Mass, however, and never really stepped inside a church during the liturgy.

For instance, his understanding of the Eucharist is foreign to any mass-going catholic.  He supposes that we come to mass (physically) hungry, making us primed for lessons about life (the homily), so that when we greet our neighbors (Sign of Peace), we do not judge them.  We then partake in a meal (the Eucharist) and in our satiated state give our fellow parishioners a pat on the back and grow together.  Then drawing on a fairly spurious history of the early mass, he supposes the secular version is an "Agape Restaurant', where a community groups comes together to share a meal without prejudice.  This lofty goal is achieved by splitting up families and friends at the tables and asking neighbors questions like, "What are your fears?", which are from a script lying on the table.  No, I'm not making this up.

Beyond the question of "who would ever want to do this?", he missing something else completely.  He supposes that the success of a religion is built upon liturgies and rituals and not the stuffy doctrines.  But it is entirely the opposite.  The liturgies only make sense if they are proper reflections of the doctrines.  The mass is pointless unless Jesus was the son of God who gave his body and blood in sacrifice.  Baptism is pointless unless its action removes the stain of Original Sin and brings us into the community of the church.  The evidence for this misunderstanding is clear when the author makes statements like, "Religions know a lot about our loneliness."  No, it is God who knows a lot about our loneliness, and when we turn to Him as a community in the liturgy, only then is there a chance that we can properly align ourselves.

I honestly wish the author luck.  I hope he has a chance to establish his restaurants and build his temples, because when they are empty, it will hasten the end of this post-modern notion that religion is just a set of empty liturgies.