Uses of Religion for Non-Believers

New Writing South returns to Brighton Festival for their annual lecture, this year delivered by popular philosopher and author, Alain de Botton.

With militant atheists facing off against religious diehards, contemporary debates about religion all-too-often become sterile and predictable. In this lecture popular philosopher and writer Alain de Botton (Status Anxiety; The Architecture of Happiness) argues that even for non-believers, religion has much to teach us, particularly regarding rituals, rites of passage, pilgrimages, morality, art and architecture. His is an argument sure to attract notice, because it maintains that atheists can be deeply fascinated by religion and learn much from it, without the need to believe. Once again the philosopher of everyday life challenges our ideas and shows how we might make our society and our own lives more caring and more meaningful.