Alain de Botton wants to build an "atheist temple" in London. All I can ask is why? The whole point about atheism is not caring about religion, not wasting your time believing in imaginary gods. But if you don't believe in imaginary gods, why would you want to waste your time not believing in them either? If the idea is irrelevant, a sad delusion resulting from flaws in our neural architecture, then why waste any time on it at all?
Which makes the idea of building a special building where people can congregate and contemplate their mutual lack of faith extremely puzzling. Its caring far too much, being almost... religious about it. Which seems to really be missing the point entirely.
