God? Very Probably: Five Rational Ways to Think About the Question of God

A new case for the rationality of believing in the existence of a monotheistic god, drawing on a range of recent developments in science and theology.

In recent years, a number of works have appeared with important implications for the age-old question of the existence of a god. These writings, many of which are not by theologians, strengthen the rational case for the existence of a god, even as this god may not be exactly the Christian God of history. This book brings together for the first time such recent diverse contributions from fields such as physics, the philosophy of human consciousness, evolutionary biology, mathematics, the history of religion, and theology. Based on such new materials as well as older ones from the twentieth century, it develops five rational arguments that point strongly to the (very probable) existence of a god. They do not make use of the scientific method, which is inapplicable to the question of a god. Rather, they are in an older tradition of rational argument dating back at least to the ancient Greeks. For those who are already believers, the book will offer additional rational reasons that may strengthen their belief. Those who do not believe in the existence of a god at present will encounter new rational arguments that may cause them to reconsider their opinion.

Robert H. Nelson is a professor at the University of Maryland. Originally trained as an economist, he has written widely over the past twenty-five years on the ways in which the 'secular' thinking of contemporary economics and the contemporary environmental movement have an underlying Christian content, with books including Reaching for Heaven on Earth: The Theological Meaning of Economics (1991), Economics as Religion (2001), and The New Holy Wars: Economic Religion versus Environmental Religion in Contemporary America (2010).