
Religion for Atheists
A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion
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Narrated by:
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Kris Dyer
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By:
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Alain de Botton
About this listen
The boring debate between fundamentalist believers and non-believers is finally moved on by Alain de Botton's inspiring new book, which boldly argues that the supernatural claims of religion are of course entirely false - and yet that religions still have important things to teach the secular world. Rather than mocking religions, agnostics and atheists should instead steal from them - because they're packed with good ideas on how we live and arrange our societies.
Blending deep respect with total impiety, de Botton (a non-believer) proposes that we should look to religions for insights into how to build a sense of community, make our relationships last, get more out of art, overcome feelings of envy and inadequacy, and much more. For too long, non-believers have faced a stark choice between either swallowing peculiar doctrines or doing away with consoling and beautiful rituals and ideas. At last Alain de Botton has fashioned a far more interesting and truly helpful alternative.
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Story
We probably went to school for what felt like a very long time. We probably took care with our homework. Along the way we surely learned intriguing things about equations, the erosion of glaciers, the history of the Middle Ages, and the tenses of foreign languages. But why, despite all the lessons we sat through, were we never taught the really important things that dominate and trouble our lives: who to start a relationship with, how to trust people, how to understand one’s psyche, how to move on from sorrow or betrayal, and how to cope with anxiety and shame?
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Wonderful
- By Anonymous User on 07-18-21
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A Simpler Life
- A Guide to Greater Serenity, Ease and Clarity
- By: The School of Life
- Narrated by: Rachel Lanning
- Length: 3 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The modern world can be a complicated, frenzied, and noisy place, filled with too many options, products, ideas and opinions. That explains why what many of us long for is simplicity: a life that can be more pared down, peaceful, and focused on the essentials. But finding simplicity is not always easy; it isn’t just a case of emptying out our closets or trimming back commitments in our diaries. True simplicity requires that we understand the roots of our distractions – and develop a canny respect for the stubborn reasons why things can grow complex and overwhelming.
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Bite-size practical tips for a better life
- By Tonya Kubo on 02-12-22
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How to Think More About Sex
- The School of Life
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: David Thorpe
- Length: 3 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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We don't think too much about sex; we're merely thinking about it in the wrong way. So asserts Alain de Botton in this rigorous and supremely honest book designed to help us navigate the intimate and exciting—yet often confusing and difficult—experience that is sex. Few of us tend to feel we're entirely normal when it comes to sex, and what we're supposed to be feeling rarely matches up with the reality. This book argues that twenty-first-century sex is ultimately fated to be a balancing act between love and desire, and adventure and commitment.
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How to Think About Sex as Only Sex
- By Richard on 02-26-13
By: Alain de Botton
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The Art of Travel
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Nicholas Bell
- Length: 5 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Aside from love, few actvities seem to promise us as much happiness as going traveling: taking off for somewhere else, somewhere far from home, a place with more interesting weather, customs, and landscapes. But although we are inundated with advice on where to travel, few people seem to talk about why we should go and how we can become more fulfilled by doing so.
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Dull, suggestions for better alternatives
- By J. Natael on 08-07-13
By: Alain de Botton
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How Proust Can Change Your Life
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Nicholas Bell
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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For anyone who ever wondered what Marcel Proust had in mind when he wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of In Search of Lost Time (while bedridden no less), Alain de Botton has the answer. For, in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, de Botton dips deeply into Proust’s life and work - his fiction, letter, and conversations – and distils from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful.
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A nice petite primer on Proust
- By Darwin8u on 02-20-13
By: Alain de Botton
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Status Anxiety
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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This is a book about an almost universal anxiety that is rarely mentioned: an anxiety about what others think of us, about whether we're judged a success or a failure, a winner or a loser. This is a book about status anxiety. Best-selling author Alain de Botton asks, with lucidity and charm, where our worries about status come from and what, if anything, we can do to surmount them.
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False Advertising!
- By Jon on 08-02-07
By: Alain de Botton
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Essays in Love
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: James Wilby
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Essays in Love is a stunningly original love story. Taking in Aristotle, Wittgenstein, history, religion and Groucho Marx, Alain de Botton charts the progress of a love affair from the first kiss to argument and reconciliation, from intimacy and tenderness to the onset of anxiety and heartbreak.
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Every relationship you've ever analyzed
- By Maria L. Lantin on 05-07-12
By: Alain de Botton
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How to Overcome Your Childhood
- How to Raise Contented, Interesting, and Resilient Children
- By: The School of Life
- Narrated by: Sonya Cullingford
- Length: 2 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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When trying to deal with our current troubles and anxieties, it can be deeply irritating to be asked to consider our childhoods. They happened so long ago; we can probably barely remember, let alone relate to, the little person we once were. But one of the most powerful explanations for why we may, as adults, be struggling, is that we were denied the opportunity to fully be ourselves in our earliest years. This book is a guide to better understanding our younger selves in order to shape who we wish to be in the future.
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An essential read.
- By Anonymous User on 12-03-23
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The God Delusion
- By: Richard Dawkins
- Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Lalla Ward
- Length: 13 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Discover magazine recently called Richard Dawkins "Darwin's Rottweiler" for his fierce and effective defense of evolution. Prospect magazine voted him among the top three public intellectuals in the world (along with Umberto Eco and Noam Chomsky). Now Dawkins turns his considerable intellect on religion, denouncing its faulty logic and the suffering it causes.
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Dangerous Religion
- By Rick Just on 12-21-06
By: Richard Dawkins
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The Course of Love
- A Novel
- By: Alain de Botton
- Narrated by: Julian Rhind-Tutt
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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We all know the headiness and excitement of the early days of love. But what comes after? In Edinburgh a couple, Rabih and Kirsten, fall in love. They get married, they have children—but no long-term relationship is as simple as "happily ever after". The Course of Love is a novel that explores what happens after the birth of love, what it takes to maintain love, and what happens to our original ideals under the pressures of an average existence.
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Amazing, much needed retooling of the expectations and realities of Love
- By Lydia on 07-04-16
By: Alain de Botton
Profound Possibility
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A little thin
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Perfect for feeling lost without religion.
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A lot of sarcasm
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Decent read not captivating
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I love this author...
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Adequate reading, by a man whose gentle voice well befits the author’s gentle voice, with the occasionally odd pronunciation, but I will not point out in which cases because received English is not, of course, my native dialect.
Deep thinking
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What made the experience of listening to Religion for Atheists the most enjoyable?
This book is a marvelous resource for believers into the value of their traditions, practices and values to the world in which none-of-the-above is the third largest "religion" in the world. It has helped me reclaim aspects of my faith that have been washed down the drain with the absurd belief systems that are so embarrassing. For the atheist and agnostics, this is freeing, because it allows appreciation of values, beauty, art, music, and community.A valuable resource for believers
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Was an alter boy and gave up church at age 12!
Naturally as I now understand after listening have intuitively set out to become a promoter of humanistic religion.
Brilliant!
Inviting all to check out “ the school of life”
Thank you Alain De Botton.
Must read over and over
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cringey impersonations, but great content
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