PHILOSOPHY: PAUL O'GRADYreviews Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of ReligionBy Alain de Botton Hamish Hamilton, 320pp, £18.99

ALAIN DE BOTTON makes clear at the start of his book that he is an atheist, but nevertheless he believes religions have a lot to offer. They are human creations that contain much wisdom and insight, and direct our attention to what is most important: the care of our souls. Stripped of any supernatural associations, “soul” here refers to our deepest selves; our hopes, aspirations, desires and dreams. Modern consumerist society has abandoned the task of care of the soul, whereas, in the past, religions devoted themselves to it, using art, architecture, ritual, music, ceremony and a panoply of devices that not only appeal to the mind but also reinforce the message deep within us.

De Botton believes we need to prioritise these “soul” issues and, as a society, enlist our educational structures, public art and architecture to support us in dealing with them. We need to deal with aloneness, death, relationship breakdown and illness – but unlike religions, which were designed precisely to deal with these, our museums, art galleries, universities and other cultural institutions have little to offer us in these existential crises. Religions don’t share the modern, optimistic, progressivist, cognitive view of humans, where getting more and better information makes us happier. Rather they know that we are fickle, irrational, forgetful beings who need constant repetition and reinforcement of basic rules to help us live tolerably well.

I was struck here by certain odd similarities between convinced atheists and religious conservatives. Neither is into doubt: de Botton is as little troubled by the possibility of God’s existence as the Vatican is by the possibility that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead. Both are typically clear about what is being accepted or rejected in belief: there’s little room for puzzlement or nuance. Indeed, one of the things de Botton admires about Catholicism in particular is its universalism, its minute micromanagement of the faithful.

Like McDonald’s, he views it as a universal franchise: it commodifies and brands its spiritual wares and leaves no room for personal deviation. Catholics reading this book might be surprised to learn that at 10pm each day they have to scan their conscience, recite a psalm, sing the Nunc Dimittis and a hymn to the Virgin Mary. In this he takes particular forms of religious activity and generalises them into universal prescriptions for all – which seems to be what he is looking for in the secular realm also.

Although de Botton doesn’t believe that religions are in the business of telling truths, by their own self-understanding they are – and a major motivation for most adherents is to believe that they do. Buddhists believe that the Buddha’s analysis of the human condition as suffering and the Noble Eightfold path as a way out of it is a correct analysis of the human condition and worthy of following. Christians, Jews and Muslims believe that there is a creator who sustains the world in being. To cease to believe these things is generally to cease to follow the path. The art, institutions and practices become hollow or meaningless.

Perhaps this process happens several times in a person’s life as the sea of faith ebbs and flows, and it is the reason for conversion, abandonment or reimmersion. To divorce the practices and institutions from their ground in a world view and shared sense of the human condition and destiny is to remove something vital to them. This is not to say that religions don’t change, evolve and borrow from each other, but each seems to form a certain kind of organic unity of belief and practice.

To believe that religious practice or allegiance requires one to drop rationality is a common enough misconception, most noisily presented by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. Sure, some kinds of religiosity are irrational, but most mainstream religions engage in a dialogue with reason. In contrast, de Botton admires some evangelical styles of preaching and recommends call-and-response-type teaching at university to embed important teaching deeply, for life. This seems on a par with relegating the question about truth. I agree that we need to address the noncognitive parts of our make-up in our educational system, but we also need to cultivate a critical spirit, the kind that says, “Wait a minute,” when reading such a suggestion, or the suggestion of insouciant atheism, or indeed evangelical theism. Who decides what’s important teaching? And how? And how is such a teaching connected to truth?

De Botton writes with great clarity, ease and a wide palette of cultural references. His suggestions about curriculum reform in the universities are stimulating, as is his concern for care of the soul. But I fear that his bold proposal, like that of his forebear Auguste Comte, will, in his own words, be “denounced by both atheists and believers, ignored by the general public and mocked by the newspapers”. This would be a pity, because he raises important questions in a clear and acute form.

As our religious institutions crumble, we are left with the problem of what de Botton has called care of the soul – and, scanning other sections of this paper, we don’t seem to be particularly adept at it.

Paul O'Grady teaches philosophy at Trinity College Dublin, of which he is a fellow. He edited The Consolations of Philosophy: Reflections in an Economic Downturn(Columba, 2011)