His example of marriage is a good one: when a couple wed their friends and family are there, investing in their relationship. Secularism, he says, has shorn us of ways to reflect on our places in the universe. Alain de Botton flips this on its head, arguing that religious rituals are important in helping us to be live better lives but insisting that God is a fiction. Many people say they believe in some sort of higher being or essence but reject organised religion. Two stars because the sound quality & production was superb, but that's all. I managed to make it all the way through the book, but it wasn't great. And that's what atheism is all about, right? Although I can't praise this book highly enough, I wish I could have reached through my headphones and slapped the narrator. I'm still a committed atheist, of course - but now I'm a smarter atheist. There are lots of aspects that I now have a much clearer understanding of, and I understand that I was unfairly denigrating the practices of religious people, because I didn't understand the reason those practices were created. Existence of a deity notwithstanding, I have a new respect for religion and religious rituals. After dispensing with the "is God real or not" argument in the first paragraph of the book, de Botton spends the rest of the book explaining why so many religious rituals are valuable ANYWAY. I HEREBY DECLARE: This book is a "Must Read" for any atheist, particularly those who have read anything by Dawkins.
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