Alain de Botton's "Athiesm 2.0"

"You know the kind of thing I'm talking about - people who are attracted to the ritualistic side, the moralistic, communal side of religion, but can't bear the doctrine.

"Until now these people have faced rather an unpleasant choice. It's almost as if either you accept the doctrine - and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you're living in a sort of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.

"So, that's a sort of tough choice. I don't think we have to make that choice. I think there is an alternative. I think there are ways - and I'm being both respectful and completely impious - of stealing from religion. If you don't believe in a religion there's nothing wrong with picking and mixing - with taking out the best sides of religion."

"We have secularised badly, I would argue."


In the late 19th century church attendance dropped, Alain reports. People panicked: how are people going to find guidance, morality, and consolation? Influential voices pointed to culture: replacing scripture with culture.

"It's an idea that we have forgotten. If you went to a top university - let's say you went to Harvard, or Oxford or Cambridge - and you said, I've come here because I'm in search of morality, guidance and consolation - I want to know how to live! They would show you the way to the insane asylum. This is simply not what our grandest and best institutes of higher learning are in the business of. Why? They don't think we need it. They don't think we are in urgent need of assistance. They see us as rational adults: what we need is information, we need data, we don't need help.

"Now, religions start from a very different place indeed. All major religions at various points call us 'children.' And, like children, they believe that we are in severe need of assistance - we're only just holding it together - perhaps it's just me, maybe you - and we need help! Of course we need help! We need guidance and we need didactic learning."

"Religions are cultures of repetition. They circle the great truths again and again and again."

"The other things that religions do is to arrange time. All the major religions give us calendars. What is a calendar? A calendar is a way of making sure that across the year you will bump into very important ideas." (E.g. Catholocism and generosity)

"Religions set up rituals around important feelings." (E.g. buddhism and the moon)

"The other thing religions know is that we are not just brains, we are also bodies and when they teach us a lesson, they do it via the body." (eg Jewish forgiveness and mikvah)

"The people in the modern world, the secular world, who are interested in matters of the spirit, in matters of the mind, the higher, soul-like concerns, tend to be isolated individuals. They're poets, they're philosophers, they're photographers they're film makers, and they tend to be on their own. They are cottage industries. They are vulnerable single people. And they get depressed, they get sad on their own. And they don't really change much. What do organised religions do? They group together, they form institutions. That has all sorts of advantages.

"First of all scale. The Catholic church pulled in $97bn last year according to the Wall St Journal."

"They're collaborative, they're branded, they're multinational, and they're highly disciplined. These are all very good qualities, we recognise them in relation to Corporations - and corporations are very like religions in many ways, except they're right down at the bottom of the pyramid of needs, they're selling us shoes and cars - and the people who are selling us the higher stuff - the poets, the therapists - are on their own and they have no power, they have no might.

"Books written by lone individuals are not going to change anything. We have to group together."