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Book Review

‘Religion for Atheists’ by Alain de Botton

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

 |  Globe Correspondent  

  March 09, 2012

In “Religion for Atheists,’’ Alain de Botton observes that religion exists only to provide rules for living together in harmony and explanations to help us cope with the vissitudes of life. What to do, then, if belief doesn’t work for you? “[T]he problems of the modern soul can successfully be addressed by solutions put forward by religions,’’ like humility, contemplation, and forgiveness. And it is possible to dislodge these ideas “from the supernatural structure within which they were first conceived.’’

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