My book occupies a curious middle ground that is easy to shoot at from two sides. In a recent review of your book, Terry Eagleton wrote: 'What this book does is hijack other people's beliefs and redeploy them in the name of moral order, social consensus and aesthetic pleasure.' What do you make of this view? In your book you write: 'God may be dead, but the urgent issues which impelled us to make him up still stir and demand resolutions which do not go away when we have been nudged to perceive some scientific inaccuracies in the tale of the seven loaves and fishes.' What are those urgent issues? I simply want to draw attention to some of the gaps, some of what may be missing, when we dismiss God too brusquely. Now, it is important to stress that it is quite possible to believe in nothing and remember all these vital lessons (just as one can be a deep believer and a monster). And last, without God there can be a danger (note the tentative can) that the need for empathy and ethical behavior is more easily overlooked-in other words, that evil becomes less incongruous. Third, without God it is easier to lose perspective: to see our own times as everything, to forget the brevity of the present moment, and to cease to appreciate (in a good way) the minuscule nature of our own achievements. Second, there is the danger of technological perfectionism of believing that science and technology can overcome all human problems, that it is just a matter of time before scientists have cured us of the human condition. For a start, there is the danger of individualism: of placing the human being at the center of everything.

At the same time, I want to suggest that if you remove this belief, there are particular dangers that open up-we don't need to fall into these dangers, but they are there and we should be aware of them.

In my book, I argue that believing in God is, for me as for many others, simply not possible. You were brought up as an atheist-could you describe your earlier views on religion and how you came to have a more positive view of religion and religious practices?

Alain de botton atheism 2.0