Religious Case Against Belief

Book Review: "The Religious Case Against Belief" (by James P. Carse). Review written by Pico Iyer.

It is not answers that pull many people into the religious life, it is questions.

The Religious Case Against Belief is, obviously, a timely book as religions of every kind come under special siege, both from science, which keeps uncovering new, and incontrovertible, facts about the universe and its constituents and, even more, as regular people find themselves appalled by all that is being done in the name of one religion or another. In the Age of Faith II, as Carse calls it, we are witnessing a desperate ferment of faith; but with it we are seeing holy wars, crusades, and less a “clash of civilizations” than a clash of incompatible belief systems, often within the same “civilization” (Sunni turns on Shia, Catholic battles Protestant).