Alain de Botton believes that recent debates about religion have become increasingly sterile, with militant atheists like Dawkins facing off against equally convinced religious types.

But de Botton proposes that atheists have been going down a dead end, by merely attacking the doctrines of religion. “Religions are intermittently too effective and intelligent to be abandoned to the religious alone.”

Alain de Botton was brought up in a resolutely secular and atheist Jewish household. He is the author of Essays in Love, How Proust Can Change Your Life,The Consolations of Philosophy, The Art of Travel, Status Anxiety, The Architecture of Happiness, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, A Week at the Airport and is co-founder of the School of Life.

He argues that even if one believes nothing (and he doesn't), religion has much to teach us, especially as concerns rituals, rites of passage, pilgrimages, morality, art, architecture and institutionalisation of the needs of the soul. So here is an argument that is sure to attract notice, because it maintains that atheists can be deeply fascinated by religion and learn much from it, without needing to believe in any of it.

Looking at Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism, Alain de Botton does for religion what he had done for literature, philosophy, travel, architecture or work: once again the philosopher of everyday life challenges our ideas and shows how we could make our society wiser and more caring and our lives more meaningful.

Read our interview with Alain here. This is only one of a series of talks Alain is giving about his new book- you can see the other dates and venues here.