Our good friend Fr. Edward Oakes, S.J., with the editor and me a member of Evangelicals and Catholics Together, has written a very good review of David Hart’s The Experience of God . “One would be hard put,” he says, “to find a more thorough and a more devastating refutation of naturalism,” a point he goes on to explain, with several illustrative quotes from the book.
For example: “The atheist who proudly and persistently strives to convince others that there is no God,” Hart writes,
does so out of a devotion to the absolute, to the highest of values, to the divine. It is an old maxim — one that infuriates many unbelievers, but that happens to be true nonetheless — that one cannot meaningfully reject belief in the God of classical theism. If one refuses to believe in God out of one’s love of the truth, one affirms the reality of God in that very act of rejection.
Read the review, and then read the book. You will not be disappointed. There are few books of which I would say that with confidence (with the qualification that if you are disappointed with The Experience of God , it’s your own fault).
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
