28. Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 88a; Avodah Zarah 2b.
29. Isaiah Berlin, Liberty, ed. Henry Hardy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 345.
30. Ibid., p. 346.
31. i.e. Richard Dawkins’s famous remark, ‘It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that)’, in a New York Times book review, 1989.
32. Sam Harris, The End of Faith, London, Free Press, 2006, p. 15.
33. See Fraser N. Watts and Kevin Dutton, Why the Science and Religion Dialogue Matters: Voices from the International Society for Science and Religion, Philadelphia, Templeton Foundation, 2006.
14. Why God?
1. Carl Jung, ‘Psychotherapists or the clergy’, Collected Works, vol. 11.
2. Giambattista Vico, New Science: Principles of the New Science Concerning the Common Nature of Nations, trans. David Marsh, London, Penguin Classics, 1999, p. 490.
3. Christopher Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, New York, Doubleday, 1957, p. 224.
4. Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, Book II, 15.
5. James Le Fanu, Why Us?: How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves, London: HarperPress, 2009, p. 141.
6. Dennis Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew and Other Works, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing, 2001, p. 292.
7. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, New York, Random House, 2007.
8. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 2:2.
9. Nikolai Berdyaev, The Meaning of History, New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction, 2006, p. 86.
10. Vico, New Science, p. 489
11. Vaclav Havel, The Art of the Impossible, trans. Paul Wilson, New York, Fromm International, 1998, p. 179.
12. Jürgen Habermas, An Awareness of What Is Missing: Faith and Reason in the Post-Secular Age, Cambridge, UK, Polity, 2010, p. 5.
13. Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2000; Robert Putnam, David E. Campbell and Shaylyn Romney Garrett, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2010.
14. Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, New York, Basic, 2006, p. 88; E. Diener, et al., ‘Subjective well-being: three decades of progress’, Psychological Bulletin, 125, 1999, pp. 276–302; D. G. Myers, ‘The funds, friends, and faith of happy people’, American Psychologist, 55, 2000, pp. 56–67.
15. Robert Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1985, p. 284.
16. Abraham H. Maslow, ‘A Theory of Human Motivation’, Psychological Review, 50:4, 1943, pp. 370–96.
17. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level, London, Penguin, 2010.
18. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, New York, The Modern Library, 1981, vol. I, part II, ch. 9, p. 185.
19. Putnam, et al., American Grace, p. 9.
20. John Micklethwaite and Adrian Wooldridge, God Is Back: How the Global Rise of Faith Is Changing the World, London, Allen Lane, 2009, pp. 1–27.
21. Ibid., p. 16.
22. Eric Kaufmann, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century, London, Profile, 2010.
Epilogue
1. Sir David Brewster, Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, Thomas Constable, Edinburgh, 1855, vol. II, ch. 27, p. 407.
2. Edward O. Wilson, The Creation: An Appeal to Save Live on Earth, New York, W. W. Norton & Co., 2006, p. 5.
3. Richard Dawkins, ‘Is science a religion?’ The Humanist, January/February 1997.
4. Max Planck, Where Is Science Going? With a Preface by Albert Einstein, trans. J. Murphy, London, Allen and Unwin, 1933, p. 217.
5. Albert Einstein, ‘Science, Philosophy and Religion: A Symposium’, Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, New York, Bonanza Books, Crown Publishing Co., 1984, p. 46.
6. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, trans. Walter Kaufmann, New York, Vintage, 1974, Book V, 344, p. 283.
For Further Reading
It would be impossible to provide a full bibliography for the subjects covered in this book. They are vast, and each has generated a huge literature. The following are some of the, mainly contemporary, works I found helpful in reflecting on these issues. I have itemised them by chapter and topic.
Introduction
CRITICS OF RELIGION
Barker, Dan, Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America’s Leading Atheists, Berkeley, CA, Ulysses Press, 2008.
Dawkins, Richard, The Blind Watchmaker, London, Penguin, 1991.
Dawkins, Richard, The God Delusion, London, Bantam, 2006.
Dennett, Daniel, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, London, Penguin, 2006.
Dennett, Daniel, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, London, Penguin, 1996.
Grayling, A. C., Against All Gods: Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness, London, Oberon, 2007.
Harris, Sam, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, London, Free Press, 2005.
Harris, Sam, Letter to a Christian Nation, London, Bantam, 2007.
Hitchens, Christopher, God Is Not Great: The Case Against Religion, London, Atlantic Books, 2007.
Hitchens, Christopher (ed.), The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever, Cambridge, MA, Da Capo, 2007.
Humphrys, John, In God We Doubt: Confessions of a Failed Atheist, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 2008.
Mills, David, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism, Berkeley, CA, Ulysses Press, 2006.
Onfray, Michel, In Defence of Atheism: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism and Islam, New York, Arcade, 2007.
Russell, Bertrand, Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, London: Routledge, 1979.
Smith, George H., Atheism: The Case against God, Buffalo, NY, Prometheus Books, 1989.
Stenger, Victor, God: The Failed Hypothesis, Amherst, MA, Prometheus Books, 2007.
Stenger, Victor, The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason, Amherst, MA, Prometheus Books, 2009.
DEFENDERS OF RELIGION
Andrews, Edgar, Who Made God? Searching for a Theory of Everything, Darlington, UK, EP Books, 2009.
Armstrong, Karen, The Case for God, London, Bodley Head, 2009.
Berlinski, David, The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, New York, Crown Forum, 2008.
Berry, R. J. (ed.), Real Scientists, Real Faith: 17 Leading Scientists Reveal the Harmony between Their Science and Their Faith, Oxford, Monarch Books, 2009.
Collins, Francis S., Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith, New York, HarperOne, 2010.
Collins, Francis S., The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, New York, Free Press, 2006.
Copan, Paul and William Lane Craig, Contending with Christianity’s Critics: Answering New Atheists and Other Objectors, Nashville, TN, B. & H. Academic, 2009.
Cornwell, John, Darwin’s Angel: A Seraphic Response to the God Delusion, London, Profile, 2008.
Cottingham, John, Why Believe? London, Continuum, 2009.
Craig, William Lane, Reasonable Faith, Wheaton, IL, Crossway Books, 2008.
Crean, Thomas, God Is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins, San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2007.
Eagleton, Terry, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2009.
Egan, Joe, The Godless Delusion: Dawkins and the Limits of Human Sight, Bern, Peter Lang, 2009.
Flew, Anthony, and Roy Varghese, There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, New York, HarperOne, 2008.
Ganssle, Gregory, A Reasonable God, Waco, TX, Baylor University Press, 2009.
Gumbel, Nicky, Is God a Delusion?: What Is the Evidence? Oxford, UK, Alpha International, 2008.
Hahn, Scott, Answering the New Atheism, Steubenville, OH, Emmaus Road Publishers, 2008.
Hart, David Bentley, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2010.
Keller, Timothy, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Scepticism, New York, Dutton, 2008.
Leahy, Michael Patrick, Letter to an Atheist, Thompsons Station, TN, Harpeth River Press, 2007.
Markham, Ian S., Against Atheism: Why Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris Are Fundamentally Wrong, Hoboken, NJ, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
McGrath, Alister, The Dawkins Delusion, Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 2007.
McGrath, Alister, Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life, Oxford, Blackwell, 2005.
Novak, Michael, No One Sees God, New York, Doubleday, 2008.
Polkinghorne, John, Belief in God in an Age of Science, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2003.
Polkinghorne, John, Questions of Truth: Fifty-One Responses to Questions About God, Science and Belief, Louisville, KY, Westminster/John Knox Press, 2009.
Polkinghorne, John, and Thomas Oord, The Polkinghorne Reader: Science, Faith and the Search for Meaning, London, SPCK, 2010.
Poole, Michael, The New Atheism: Ten Arguments That Don’t Hold Water, Oxford, UK, Lion Hudson, 2009.
Robertson, David, The Dawkins Letters: Challenging Atheist Myths, Christian Focus Publications, 2007.
Ward, Keith, The Big Questions in Science and Religion, West Conshohocken, PA, Templeton Press, 2008.
Ward, Keith, God, Chance and Necessity, Oxford, Oneworld, 1996.
Ward, Keith, The God Conclusion: God and the Western Philosophical Tradition, London, Darton, Longman & Todd, 2009.
Ward, Keith, God: A Guide for the Perplexed, Oxford, Oneworld, 2002.
Ward, Keith, Pascal’s Fire: Scientific Faith and Religious Understanding, Oxford, Oneworld, 2006.
Ward, Keith, Why There Is Almost Certainly a God: Doubting Dawkins, Oxford, Lion, 2008.
OTHER
Cottingham, John, The Spiritual Dimension, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Cox, Harvey Gallagher, The Future of Faith, New York, HarperOne, 2009.
Fergusson, David, Faith and Its Critics, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009.
Goldstein, Rebecca, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, New York, Pantheon, 2010.
Hecht, Jennifer Michael, Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation, from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson, San Francisco, HarperSanFrancisco, 2003.
Hunter, James Davison, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World, New York, Oxford University Press, 2010.
Kaufmann, Eric, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century, London, Profile, 2010.
Lennox, John C., God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?, Oxford, UK, Lion, 2007.
Micklethwait, John, and Adrian Wooldridge, God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World, New York, Penguin, 2009.
Nagel, Thomas, Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament: Essays 2002–2008, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press, 2010.
Robinson, Marilynne, Absence of Mind, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2010.
Taylor, Charles, A Secular Age, Cambridge, MA, Belknap of Harvard University Press, 2007.
Tippett, Krista, Einstein’s God: Conversations about Science and the Human Spirit, New York, Penguin, 2010.
Wilson, Edward O., The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, New York, W. W. Norton & Co., 2006.
Wolpert, L., Six Impossible Things before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief, London, Faber & Faber, 2006.
Wright, Robert, The Evolution of God, London, Little, Brown, 2009.
1. The Meaning-Seeking Animal
Baumeister, Roy F., The Cultural Animal: Human Nature, Meaning, and Social Life, Oxford/New York, Oxford University Press, 2005.
Baumeister, Roy F., Meanings of Life, New York, Guilford Press, 1991.
Bell, Derrick A., Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth, London, Bloomsbury, 2002.
Bortolotti, Lisa, Philosophy and Happiness, New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2009.
Britton, Karl, Philosophy and the Meaning of Life, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1969.
Cottingham, John, On the Meaning of Life, London/New York, Routledge, 2003.
Durant, Will (ed.), On the Meaning of Life, London, Williams and Norgate, 1933.
Eagleton, Terry, The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008.
Ferry, Luc, Man Made God: The Meaning of Life, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Flanagan, Owen J., Self Expressions: Mind, Morals, and the Meaning of Life, New York, Oxford University Press, 1996.
Frankl, Viktor E., The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy, trans. Richard and Clara Winston, New York, Vintage Books, 1986.
Frankl, Viktor E., Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy, trans. Ilse Lasch, Boston, Beacon Press, 1992.
Frankl, Viktor E., The Unheard Cry for Meaning: Psychotherapy and Humanism, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1978.
Greive, Bradley Trevor, The Meaning of Life, Kansas City, MO, Andrews McMeel Publishers, 2002.
Klemke, E. D. (ed.), The Meaning of life, New York, Oxford University Press, 1981.
Thagard, Paul, The Brain and the Meaning of Life, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2010.
Young, Julian, The Death of God and the Meaning of Life, London, Routledge, 2003.
2. In Two Minds
RIGHT BRAIN, LEFT BRAIN
Damasio, Antonio R., Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, New York, Putnam, 1994.
Damasio, Antonio R., Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, New York, Pantheon, 2010.
Decety, Jean, and William John Ickes, The Social Neuroscience of Empathy, Cambridge, MA, MIT, 2009.
Doidge, Norman, The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science, New York, Viking, 2007.
Jaynes, Julian, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1976.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2009.
Ornstein, Robert E., The Right Mind: Making Sense of the Hemispheres, New York, Harcourt Brace, 1997.
Pink, Daniel H., A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, New York, Riverhead, 2006.
Schiffer, Fredric, Of Two Minds: The Revolutionary Science of Dual-Brain Psychology, New York, Free Press, 1998.
Shlain, Leonard, The Alphabet versus the Goddess: Male Words and Female Images, London, Penguin, 2000.
Taylor, Jill Bolte, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey, New York, Viking, 2008.
OTHER TEXTS REFERRED TO
Baron-Cohen, Simon, The Essential Difference: The Truth about the Male and Female Brain, New York, Basic, 2003.
Bruner, Jerome S., Acts of Meaning, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1994.
Bruner, Jerome, Actual Minds: Possible Worlds, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1986.
Bruner, Jerome S., Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.
Gilligan, Carol, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1993.
Nisbett, Richard E., The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently – and Why, New York, Free Press, 2003.
Nussbaum, Martha Craven, Poetic Just
ice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life, Boston, Beacon, 1995.
Pinker, Steven, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, New York, Viking, 2002.
3. Diverging Paths
Barr, James, Biblical Faith and Natural Theology: The Gifford Lectures for 1991, Oxford, Clarendon, 1993.
Boman, Thorleif, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, Philadelphia, Westminster, 1960.
Funkenstein, Amos, Theology and the Scientific Imagination: From the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1986.
Harrison, Peter, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Harrison, Peter, The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Hooykaas, R., Religion and the Rise of Modern Science, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans, 1972.
Stark, Rodney, For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-hunts, and the End of Slavery, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2003.
Stark, Rodney, One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2001.
Stark, Rodney, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, New York, Random House, 2005.
Toulmin, Stephen Edelston, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1994.
6. Human Dignity
Fukuyama, Francis, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.
Habermas, Jürgen, The Future of Human Nature, Cambridge, Polity, 2006.
Human Cloning and Human Dignity: an Ethical Inquiry, Washington, DC, President’s Council on Bioethics, 2002.
Kass, Leon (ed.), Being Human: Core Readings in the Humanities, New York, W. W. Norton & Co., 2004.
Kass, Leon, Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics, San Francisco, Encounter, 2002.
Kass, Leon, Toward a More Natural Science: Biology and Human Affairs, New York, Free Press, 1985.
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