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University of California Press

God in Proof

The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet

by Nathan Schneider (Author)
Price: $29.95
Publication Date: Jul 2015
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: Incl. US and Territ, Canada, Philippines
Pages: 272
ISBN: 9780520287464
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Illustrations: 30 line illustrations, 5 tables

About the Book

In this tour of the history of arguments for and against the existence of God, Nathan Schneider embarks on a remarkable intellectual, historical, and theological journey through the centuries of believers and unbelievers—from ancient Greeks, to medieval Arabs, to today’s most eminent philosophers and the New Atheists. Framed by an account of Schneider’s own unique journey, God in Proof illuminates the great minds who wrestled with one of history’s biggest questions together with their arguments, bringing them to life in their time, and our own. Schneider’s sure-handed portrayal of the characters and ideas involved in the search for proof challenges how we normally think about doubt and faith while showing that, in their quest for certainty and the proofs to declare it, thinkers on either side of the God divide are often closer to one another than they would like to think.

About the Author

Nathan Schneider’s writing about religion and reason has appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Commonweal, and Religion Dispatches, among other publications. He is an editor of Killing the Buddha, an online magazine about religion and culture.

Table of Contents

Sketches of Babel

1 First Causes: Ancient times and reasonable measures
2 The Island: Muslims and Jews make proof safe for revelation
3 Grammars of Assent: A monk and a friar restore proofs to Christendom
4 On Certainty: Early modernity turns a familiar proof inside out and upside down
5 Coming of Age: Enlightenment, from the all-destroyer to an Absolute Idea
6 Grandeur in This View of Life: A couple of rocky centuries for the argument from design
7 The Deaths of God: Human progress and God’s absence in the twentieth century’s ruins
8 Not Dead Yet: Theism makes a comeback in philosophy
9 God, Hypothesis: Proof sneaks into the latest science
10 The Proof Industry: Old proofs turn into viral movements

God, Alone

Acknowledgments
Notes
Timeline of Provers
Table of Proofs

Reviews

"As journalist Nathan Schneider aptly observes in 'God in Proof,' proofs about God can be a very preachy genre. . . . Schneider explores them as cultural artifacts, with value regardless of how one evaluates their truth value."
Washington Post
"A book that starts attractively and gets more enjoyable by the page." STARRED REVIEW
Booklist
"As a popularization of recondite argument, God in Proof mingles accessible explanations with a reporter’s fresh outlook."
New York Journal of Books
"A philosophically engaging and challenging work, accessible enough for the nonacademic reader as well as specialists."
Library Journal
"Compulsively readable."
Full Stop
"Philosophy is the centerpiece of God in Proof, but at heart the book is a despairing/joyous/troubling/awe-inspiring/universally understood story of an individual struggling with the idea of God. In the world of philosophy, the question of God is entirely divorced from matters of the heart. But what inspires the inquiry and rises from its aftermath is entirely a matter of love—for reason, for people, and for God. God in Proof is a straightforward, unpretentious, and deeply affecting reminder of that."
Yes!
"Though the book is informed by considerable scholarship . . . Schneider’s audience includes anyone with an interest in intellectual history and faith. Tracing the philosophical dialectic in a manner both responsible to the issues and accessible to the ordinary reader, Schneider weaves together intellectual history with his own quest for faith."
America
"For a non-specialist, Schneider, in a compact, book provides background on, synopses of, and observations about a wide spectrum of efforts to prove and disprove God’s existence. . . . I recommend Proof to those whose taste in reading runs to philosophical theology and to all those for whom the intellectual side of the religious quest is an interest."
America
"Entertaining, well written, and historically comprehensive . . . Schneider has given us a means of clearly seeing the intimate relationship between a religious way of being in the world and the expression of this life in the rational language of proofs."
Los Angeles Review of Books
"By adding dollops of memoir and first-person reportage to a history of attempts to prove that God exists, Schneider makes an often dry subject both companionable and insightful.  Top 10 Religion and Spirituality Books: 2013
Booklist
"Relayed in non-technical language, God in Proof challanges the casual and the experienced philospher alike to engage with historical arguments as they make their own quest for truth."
First Things
"A fascinating book."
Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith
"Schneider brings the vaulted ceilings of the topic of the proof of God down to a more understandable, cozier level."
The Aquinian
"What to call this odd, fascinating, and absolutely compelling book? History? Treatise? Manifesto? Travelogue? Confession? It’s all of the above, plus drawings that are as full of wit as the delightful prose. The combination is deceptively casual, for as Schneider’s excursions into philosophy and theology knit together into a story, we see the shape of subtly powerful argument for proofs as a genre more akin to visions than logic. That makes them no less true or false; only (like this remarkable book) revelatory."—Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family

"A heartfelt exploration of a matter typically assumed to be about the head alone, full of faith yet faithful to reason and gloriously free of the cliches of 'true believers' and 'new atheists' alike."—Stephen Prothero, God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World

"If Walter Kaufmann and Annie Dillard had a love child, it would be Nathan Schneider. Part philosophy junkie, part spiritual seeker, all journalist, Schneider takes us on a tour of proofs for the existence of God. Rather than trying to advance a single theistic idea, he reveals that the question of God's existence remains as urgent as ever—not in a final proof, but as an irrepressible confrontation between the self and the world. This is a very special book, written by a gifted observer of the human condition."—Kathryn Lofton, Yale University

God in Proof is a tour de force. I mean this, first of all, in the dictionary sense--the book is an exceptional achievement, unequaled by anyone else; it is a feat of extraordinary writing and ingenuity. But I also mean it metaphorically--Nathan Schneider takes the reader on an exciting historical tour of attempts to reinforce religious belief by way of proof. Though I'm a philosopher by profession and Schneider is not, I couldn't put the book down--philosophical insights veritably popped from the pages. I enthusiastically recommend the book to anyone, professional philosopher or not, interested in philosophical argument, in general, and proofs of God's existence, in particular."—Kelly James Clark, Return to Reason

Media

Watch an interview with God in Proof author Nathan Schneider on the video series, You Make Art Dumb: Conversations on Creative Failure. 
Watch an interview with Nathan Schneider, author of God in Proof and Thank You, Anarchy, on the program, On Being.

Interview with the author.