So borrowing forms from religion, de Botton thinks, will allow atheists to nurture the areas of experience they’ve ignored without having to buy into religious mythology. His argument is that in “letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society… we have allowed religion to claim as its exclusive dominion areas of experience which should rightly belong to all mankind – and which we should feel unembarrassed about reappropriating for the secular realm” (p.15).

In a way, this book is also somewhat of a corrective to the New Atheists, who are regularly (and sometimes unfairly) charged with making the kind of baby-with-bathwater mistake de Botton is criticizing here. One of the pleasures of reading the book is to learn exactly what de Botton thinks the worthwhile aspects of religion are. The nature of these questions and the existence of the book itself should be enough for the reader to infer that de Botton does think religion has something to offer secularists: “The error of modern atheism has been to overlook how many aspects of the faiths remain relevant even after their central tenets have been dismissed” as he says on p.12. Religion for Atheists opens with “The most boring and unproductive question one can ask of any religion is whether or not it is true.” Instead, making his starting point the assumption that God is a human creation, de Botton asks the more interesting and productive questions, How might we best live in this world? and Does religion nevertheless offer any benefits that secular life still lacks? Rather, he brackets such familiar philosophical debates off to the side. De Botton himself doesn’t bother to debunk the ontological, teleological or other arguments for the existence of a deity. This is not a book for readers who are curious about the nature of metaphysics or the merits of faith: this is a book for atheists.

Parker meditates on Alain de Botton’s idea of religion without God. SUBSCRIBE NOW Books Religion for Atheists by Alain de Botton Scott F.

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