Religion For Atheists

What if religions are neither all true nor all nonsense? The boring debate between fundamentalist believers and non-believers is finally moved on by Alain De Botton’s book Religion For Atheists, which argues that the supernatural claims of religion are of course entirely false – and yet that religions still have some very important things to teach the secular world.

Religion For Atheists suggests that rather than mocking religions, agnostics and atheists should instead steal from them – because they’re packed with good ideas on how we might live and arrange our societies. Blending deep respect with total impiety, Alain De Botton (a non-believer himself) proposes that we should look to religions for insights into, among other concerns, how to:

– build a sense of community
– make our relationships last
– overcome feelings of envy and inadequacy
– escape the twenty-four-hour media
– go travelling
– get more out of art, architecture and music
– and create new businesses designed to address our emotional needs.

For too long non-believers have faced a stark choice between either swallowing lots of peculiar doctrines or doing away with a range of consoling and beautiful rituals and ideas. At last, in Religion for Atheists, Alain has fashioned a far more interesting and truly helpful alternative.