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15 July 2010

In this week’s New Statesman: Godless Britain

Rowan Williams interview | Raoul Moat: the real shame | Alain de Botton on atheism.

By George Eaton

This week’s New Statesman is a special issue devoted to secularism, atheism and belief. In an exclusive interview, Jonathan Derbyshire and James Macintyre talk to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, about morality, human nature and capitalism. Elsewhere, Bryan Appleyard asks what we would lose if we tried to ditch religion altogether. Also don’t miss our interview with Ann Widdecombe, Mehdi Hasan’s reflections on India and secularism, and Alain de Botton on Auguste Comte, the man who tried to establish a religon for atheists.

In this week’s politics column, Mehdi Hasan says the Labour leadership candidates must move beyond telling us what they are opposed to and tell us what they are for. Elsewhere, Alice Miles says the most interesting thing about Raoul Moat was how unextraordinary he was, and David Blanchflower warns that the latest data suggests the economy is in even more trouble than we thought.

All this, plus Ryan Gilbey on a sad end to the Toy Story series, John Gray on the cult appeal of Ayn Rand, and Dominic Sandbrook on what would have happened if Che Guevara had survived.

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