An Intelligent Person's Guide to Religion - Softcover

Haldane, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1585677221 ISBN 13: 9781585677221

Publisher: Overlook Books, 2005

Synopsis

We live, allegedly, in a postmodern age in which we have cast aside the narrative fantasies of the pre-modern era. If postmodernism represents the final abandonment of all grand theories, where does religion stand? If religion is a particularly unbelievable form of explanation, why does it power still affect social and political change? Here, like the skeptics of our age, the author asks, What has theology ever had to say that was of the slightest use to anyone? He argues that religion without God is like a car without an engine, and draws on many aspects of human culture to offer a defense of religion that is not only credible but necessary in an age when postmodernism itself has been exposed as a cruel illusion.

About this title

About the Author

John Haldane is Professor of Philosophy, Head of the School of Philosophical and Anthropological Studies at the University of St. Andrews, and Fellow of the royal Society of Arts. He is an editor of the International Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Routledge).

Review

"It is a great treat.... As one of the world's preeminent philosophers, John Haldane brings a careful and rigorous intelligence to bear on the question of whether religious faith is reasonable. The reader will find the objections to religious faith succinctly, and clearly presented and considered. Haldane's witty and precise analysis leads inexorably to the understanding that religious faith is the preeminently reasonable position for the modern person to take."

Edition details

• Publisher: Overlook Books
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1585677221
• ISBN 13: 9781585677221
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224