He sums up by saying that people simply have to be reminded that "the most mature and reasonable parts of us" (p. 80) want us to live this way. He suggests that religious ethics grew out of pragmatic needs, and that, because they were key to our survival, it became important to protect them by pretending that they were divinely inspired. De Botton contrasts this with religions, which he describes as having ambitious ideals about how people should treat each other.
It argues that freedom has become vital in Western political thinking, and discusses suspicion of the idea that the state should talk about how we should behave to each other. The chapter on "Kindness" discusses the tensions between libertarianism and paternalism. In an interview with New Scientist, de Botton stated his aim for atheists reading the book: "I want to make sure atheists are deriving some of the benefits of religion." The book is divided into ten chapters: Wisdom without Doctrine, Community, Kindness, Education, Tenderness, Pessimism, Perspective, Art, Architecture and Institutions. Religion for Atheists asserts that religions know that people are fundamentally children, in need of comforting and repeated guidance on how to live. Religion for Atheists particularly pays attention to the way religions draw people's minds to ideas through annual ceremonies and rituals such as Christmas or the Day of Atonement. Religion for Atheists draws on the work of the 19th century philosophers Auguste Comte, Matthew Arnold and John Stuart Mill. Religion for Atheists has a general format in which de Botton describes a problem in society, discusses how religions (particularly Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism) have attempted to solve this problem, and proposes secular alternatives.
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