A typical assumption the religious make is that the absence of God deprives life of essence and meaning – that the cold eye of reason is arrogant and robs life of its soul and mystique. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor has colourfully described this as “spiritual homelessness”. He opined that: “Many people have a sense of being in a sort of exile from faith-guided experience.”

This sense of alienation cuts across theological lines. “It’s difficult to have a spiritual life in a modern society,” believes Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss-born reformist Islamic scholar.

As a non-believer, I do not feel like a spiritual refugee slumming it out in some frontier camp for exiled souls. You do not need God or religion to experience the sublime and poetic.

Khaled Diab: Contemplating God-free zones | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

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