How much did I want to read this on a day-to-day basis? – 4.But De Botton, who since Proust Can Save Your Life and The Architecture of Happiness and various film projects, has become the modern age’s best-selling philosopher, recently stirred up his own controversy by announcing provisional plans to build a temple for atheists in the center of London. How happy am I that I read this book? – 5 Ultimately de Botton, like religion and unlike the current “mainstream” interpretation of art (a critique of de Botton) want to help us lead a good, well-examined life. protestant architecture (if you’ve read The Architecture of Happiness you know who’s going to come out ahead on that one), the flaws of academia and countless other things.

There is other good stuff in there, too, about the effectiveness in which religion creates habits, about us still seeking fulfillment through travel (even if we don’t call it pilgrimage anymore and would sometimes benefit from a few saint’s bones to anchor the purpose of our trip), about the cult around the Virgin Mary (tenderness!), catholic architecture vs. “Since its founding, the religion has maintained a usefully sober vision, of a kind that the secular world has been too sentimental and cowardly to embrace, about our chances of improving on the brute facts of our corrupted nature.” Much in contrast to the modern narrative of constant improvement (mostly through the means of science, technology and commerce). One of the most striking points for me was de Botton’s invoking of the pessimistic picture of human nature that religions paint. It isn’t light fare that we’re being served. De Botton focusses his examinations on Catholicism, Protestantism and Judaism and does a marvelous job at provoking aha moments in this reader. Religion for Atheists reminded me a bit of one of my favorite courses in university, “The Bible as Literature.” The question asked by both being: What day-to-day functions do religions fulfill that we are now missing out on in our secular age. Not to mention that this is my second Alain de Botton book in this short year. I started with The Architecture of Happiness–which I highly recommend as well–and then moved on to Religion for Atheists. While not the lightest of subjects, I was looking forward to returning to it and read it quite quickly. He is also a really good writer, with a large vocabulary, variety in his syntax and a strong sense of structure make him utterly readable. He’s that original.Īlain de Botton is the best kind of teacher: very, very smart, knowledgable on a large number of things, and not afraid to ask big questions.

He is the kind of author you stumble upon and immediately wonder how you have managed without them all these years and why nobody else is doing what he is doing. Alain de Botton has been my favorite literary discovery of the past months (thank you, Michael! :)).

Alain de botton religion for atheist