Shaha says that while he understands religious people might be offended by having their beliefs challenged, it is unhelpful that many atheists think they have to ''correct'' theists by being condescending or aggressive. Recently, Shaha - a science teacher, writer and filmmaker - spoke at a Catholic girls' school in London for the Three Faiths Forum, an organisation that promotes understanding among people of all faiths, but between Muslims, Christians and Jews in particular. At the end of his talk, Shaha was told by a student that she had always judged atheists negatively; now she saw where they were coming from. ''That is the achievement we should be striving for,'' Shaha says. ''That is a huge step forward - I don't want to go around shouting at people, 'You're wrong, you're wrong'. People respond to narratives and personal stories.'' That is why there was such enthusiasm among almost 2000 people at Melbourne Town Hall last month who heard de Botton explain that the starting point for his own new book, Religion for Atheists, was neither religion nor atheism: it was with ''the individual who lives and suffers and dies''. ''What I am interested in,'' he said, ''is the possible resources that an ordinary, suffering, loving, hoping human can have out there in the world.''

Shaha, like de Botton, wants to get beyond the existence-of-a-god debate. Growing up on a council estate of mainly Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants in south London, Shaha gradually found that his biggest problem with most religious people is that they are born into it - faith is ingrained from birth, so ''believers'' are in effect denied a choice. ''If we truly encouraged young people to think about what they believe and why they believe it then, ultimately, a lot more people would come to the conclusion they are not a Christian or a Muslim or a Hindu or a Jew,'' he says. When his mother died, he realised he did not believe that she was going to a better place or afterlife. Despite her suffering greatly in life (she had ill health, schizophrenia and a philandering, dominating husband) there was no paradise awaiting her, her son thought: death was the end. Thus began his move towards rejecting the Islamic faith. Suspicions about dogma and indoctrination, though, were not the main impetus for his atheism. At heart, he says, he simply never felt there was a god and that morality was not the exclusive territory of theists. ''Belief by its very nature is a very personal thing,'' he says. ''We all have our own mental worlds. To acknowledge that this matter of belief or otherwise in a god is not a purely intellectual thing - it is an emotional thing, a sense or feeling that people have - is probably very wishy-washy for [someone like] Dawkins.'' But being open-minded and attentive to one's feelings, especially through reading books, is about discovering deep truths about human nature. Those books include the Bible, which, he says, can transport one to ''other worlds'' of deep truth in the same way that all fiction can. ''What I would term 'sophisticated' believers do read the Bible or other holy texts in a metaphorical way,'' he says.

Equally, he thinks atheism's biggest problem is its branding as a scientific, intellectual, rational discourse that ignores emotion, metaphor and the power of personal storytelling. ''I am a signed-up humanist and I guess what that means is that I believe in the capacity of humans to be good to each other,'' he says. ''The most meaningful occurrences in my life are those in which I am engaging with my fellow human beings and, ultimately, the best of that is with the people I love. A life without religion and a life without a god can be perfectly satisfactory and in my case I think it is wonderful. But a life without love is something to truly fear.'' As he writes in his book, he would like to see religions reinvent themselves as philosophies better able to encompass scientific knowledge about humankind and the universe, as well as morality. ''If that was the message, if the rules and cultural practices were secondary to the notion that your fellow human is important and to be loved, then we wouldn't have the problems we see caused by religion,'' he says. ''But that's not what religions prioritise - they prioritise adherence to dogma to belief in particular tenets.'' He says it would be revolutionary if the main message of the big religions was to love and value fellow human beings. ''There is every reason to hope that, with wider education, with greater sharing of culture as the world gets smaller, even the major religions of today will be forced to evolve. Whatever it is they do evolve into, I hope they might be better for humanity.''

■The Young Atheist's Handbook is published by Scribe at $27.95.