an important book that spans an immense literature in a balanced and very readable form. For anyone interested in why some believe and others do not, this book will inform them of the entire range of literature so they can evaluate the often hidden ideological nature in which answers are proposed
— Ralph W. Hood, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology and LeRoy A. Martin Distinguished
Professor of Religious Studies, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Without criticizing the sciences as a group of disciplines, this insightful work explores the
ideology that insists that the various scientific projects are parts of a sole, monolithic,
singular generator of truth. While the sciences, because each has a different focus, function
in vastly different ways, this ideology insists it provides a unity to the scientific project.
This ideology insists that scientific findings allow no place for personal metaphysical faith.
But both its promulgators and unknowing bystanders assume this ideology is scientific
itself. This book shows why this view and the related ideology is not, in any way, a
scientific finding.
Under such an ideology, only scientific results, whether experimental or observational, can
aspire to truth. Religion, if considered at all, can be scrutinized only objectively and
literally. The ideology treats alleged religious experience as a distracting red herring that
can, at best, only shunt objective investigation down a bottomless road. Personal
encounters with the divine are only petty self-indulgence seeking only to “get happy.”
Joseph Hinman, author of The Trace of God: A Rational Warrant for Belief, addresses these
issues and further topics, such as the historical development of science, the nature of
religious experience, reductionism as a tool of ideology, and the sort of evidence that
rationally warrants belief in God. We are faced with an ideological claim that insists we
choose between science and belief. However, readers will find that the sciences need not
rely upon its practitioner’s atheism, agnosticicsm, or theism for its project to continue effectively.
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