An Athei-Easter Message From Alain de Botton

What’s the Big Idea? 

Are shared human values possible and sustainable without religion? This is the subject of life philosopher Alain de Botton’s new book, Religion for Atheists, in which he turns the tide of “new atheist” discourse by arguing that religion has quite a lot to teach atheists (like himself) about how to live well. 

De Botton’s book mines religious practices like “ritual apology” – a yearly confessional in which members of a community publicly repent everything awful they’ve done to each other over the past year (he uses the example of Yom Kippurfrom Jewish tradition)  – for structures that secular communities can adopt to reinforce their shared values. 

“Shared values?” you may protest, “Poppycock! What Ivalue is my personal freedom from all such dogma!” But de Botton argues that core humanist values like kindness, compassion, justice, and value of children are more universal than you might think. Where we tend to fall short, he says, is in practicing what our hearts preach without some external structures to remind us.