ABC - Big Ideas, March 19 2012: Alain de Botton on Religion for Atheists

Philosopher Alain de Botton gets a huge welcome at The Wheeler Centre talking about 'Religion for Atheists', his latest book. He seems to have a great ability to connect with his audience whether he’s talking about status anxiety, philosophy, travel, happiness or how Proust can change your life.

His critics deride his attempts to make complex ideas more accessible and entertaining to his readers but there was no evidence at this event, that this audience felt patronised in any way.

He declares his atheism from the outside and his firm belief that “there is no god” and goes on to talk about being ‘fully human” and being able to “lead a good life” outside of any formal religious structure. He has strong praise for the many formal aspects of religion and suggests these can be extracted , “picked and mixed” and applied to aspects of art, culture and education.

He sits, he says at the softer end of atheism; he’s no “hard core atheist” like his friend from North Oxford, Richard Dawkins.

For more information on this episode, including information on the guests and various other resources and links, visit the episode webpage

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Type: mp4 file
Size: 197MB
Runtime: 00:55:28
Video: MPEG4 Video (H264) 512x288
Audio: AAC 44100Hz stereo 96Kbps