No One Sees God
The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Surveying the contemporary religious landscape, the division between atheist and believer seems stark. However, having long struggled to understand the purpose of life and the meaning of suffering, Michael Novak finds the reality of spiritual life far different from the rhetorical war presented by bestselling atheists and the defenders of the faith who oppose them.
In No One Sees God, Novak brilliantly recasts the tired debate pitting faith against reason. Both the atheist and the believer experience the same “dark night” in which God’s presence seems absent, he argues, and the conflict between faith and doubt stems not from objective differences, but from divergent attitudes toward the unknown. Drawing from his lifelong passion for philosophy and his personal struggles with belief, he shows that, far from being irrational, the spiritual perspective actually provides the most satisfying answers to the eternal questions of meaning. Faith is a challenge at times, but it nonetheless offers the only fully coherent response to the human experience.
Ultimately, No One Sees God offers believers and unbelievers the opportunity to find common ground by acknowledging the complicated reality of the human struggle with doubt. Novak provides a stirring defense of the Christian worldview, while sidestepping the shrill tone that so often characterizes the discussion of faith, and given the challenges faced in the present age, all who value liberty will find hope in his new way of conversing.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Waving a flag of truce in the ongoing literary battle between ardent atheists and their theist opponents, Novak chooses to make love, not war or at least to inquire why humans are capable of loving. Currently a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, Novak displays an impressive command of classical and contemporary philosophy and theology in this eloquent, candid and multifaceted attempt to encourage dialogue between the two camps. "Neither the atheist nor the believer sees God. Both must live in darkness," he argues. Making the most abstruse ideas accessible to the unschooled reader, he grapples with such perennial questions as the role of reason, the existence of evil and God's nature. Although the writer, a Catholic conservative, generally treats notable atheists like Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris with respect, he doesn't mind taking a friendly swipe at them now and then. In fact, he suggests, it is past time for believers and nonbelievers to acknowledge the questions they share in an age of doubt, and learn with mutual sensitivity from each other.