Alain de Botton, the British pop philosopher whose new book Religion for Atheists has made him the friendly face of modern godlessness….said if you walked into a modern university and asked to study the humanities in order to find meaning in life, “the people in charge would immediately dial the number of the insane asylum, and you would be taken away.”
He said the message of the secular world is that life is simple, and the only people who need help are stupid people who read self-help books.
He set his own views against the “virulent strain” of atheism that sees religion as “not just false but wrong, ridiculous, malign and corrupt,” epitomized by Christopher Hitchens’ claim that “religion poisons everything.”
I fail to see how the music and art will have meaning when all you do is pick and mix the bits you want. What gives that “soul-food” potential?
He is quite strange!