Julian Baggini continues his conversation on the topic of religion and non-religion with his latest post You don’t have to be religious to pray … but it helps

'I do think that prayer, like many rituals, is something that the religious get some real benefits from that are just lost to us heathens.' Photograph: Rex Features

This week, Baggini muses on prayer.”I think many religious rituals are like this. They have real benefits, whether you buy into the belief system behind them or not. But if you try to separate them from the beliefs, they lose some of their potency and grip”

He argues that practice is why people believe and perhaps not vice versa and concludes that in ridding “ourselves” of religions, the heathen refuses to sacrifice reason, but may in the process pay the price of losing some of the benefits, in this case prayer, having to make do with less worthy substitutes.

If you are interested in this you can read more about Heathens’s Progress in the Guaridan CIF pages.