Botton Alain de. Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion

New York: Pantheon Books, 2012. — 434 p. — ISBN: 978-0-307-90710-3.What if religions are neither all true or all nonsense? The boring debate between fundamentalist believers and non-believers is finally moved on by Alain’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
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 (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.Wisdom without Doctrine
Community
Kidness
Education
Tenderness
Pessimism
Perspective
Art
Architecture
Institutions