No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers

This is a fascinating book. It adopts a charitable, friendly tone in addressing the views and experiences of atheists from within the Judeo-Christian tradition. Novak sees a kind of common ground with atheists in the experience of nothingness (the dark night of the soul) experienced by Catholic mystics and articulated by those in the Carmelite tradition like St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Therese of Lisieux. This is a wise and thoughtful book, open and reflective in tone. It is a kind of summing up of the life experience and reflections of a lifetime--the author more than once mentions his age as of writing--74 years. What it is not: If you are looking for a polemic that takes on the knock-down arguments and jibes of popular atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens in a similar vein of knock-about debate, this is not your book, though it does discuss and dispute them. For that, the reader should go Dinesh D'Souza's What's So Great About Christianity? or one of several books that take these authors to task for their arrogance and ignorance, like Terry Eagleton's Reason, Faith, and Revolution or David Bentley Hart's Atheist Delusions. This book reminds me more of the 1981 film, My Dinner with Andre. Instead of dinner, though, Novak imagines a genial but spirited conversation (or series of conversations) over several brandies. (And I myself spent a few hours with this author, brandy in hand.) The real and imagined atheists who serve as his Alcibiades tend to be blunt, to the point, and commonsensical, like Wallace Shawn in the movie. Novak's replies are long and subtle, like Andre Gregory's in the film, but with less of the pretentious and more of sharp philosophical acuity. As Novak says and shows, it is much easier for a believer to put himself in the shoes of an atheist than the other way round. I recommend the book highly to atheists interested in an understanding of Jewish and Christian belief that goes beyond the usual objections and who are open to the possibility that those objections have been considered and responded to at a very high level of sophistication over centuries or millennia. But the book is also deeply enriching for believers who seek to understand their atheist friends and family members in way that respects them and is both civil and non-defensive. The book requires and rewards effort from both kinds of reader. For the closed-minded, whether atheist or believer, who are content to stay that way, this book is probably not for you.

I could pick many original ideas, but I refer on pages 43-48 as an example. On those pages Michel Novak gives "four arresting reflections" of Christianity. They are: 1. A theology of the absurd 2. The burden of sin 3. The bright golden thread of human history 4. The point of the cosmos is friendship These should arouse your curiosity for the book. I have never looked upon Christianity along those principles. This is one of the best books I have read lately. Novak points out that it is very easy for a Christian to understand atheism, but opposite seems to be true of many atheists. At least the books of the major proponents of atheism (Dawkins & Hitchens etc.) give this view. The major aim of the book is to improve the mutual understanding of people having different worldviews.

A fascinating book; a remarkable meditation on the "dark night" of those who would believe in God, and those who do not. It's main theme is of finding common ground and rejecting the attitude of the "new atheists" who seem to see their own views as beyond reproach. I am still digesting a lot of the philosophy presented in the book, and its many discussions of authors, both atheist and believer, have lengthened my "to read" list. I do not pretend to have many astonishing insights to share in my review, I just wish to encourage others who read this book description and are intrigued by its subject matter to go ahead and purchase this book. It is profound, a meditation on belief unlike anything I've read. Thank you, Mr. Novak. I only wish I were more articulate so I could leave a worthier review.

Michael Novak's entry into the ongoing intellectual debate between Christians and the "New Athiests" is notable both for its content and approach. If Novak had merely brought his impressive intellectual acumen to the debate, that alone would have been a wonderful contribution. Happily he does the debate a second service by remaining civil while pursuing it, and in doing so, he kills his opponents with kindness. The New Athiests, it should be remembered, rely on outrageous and outlandish language (as well as downright insulting discourse) to get their message out. Novak responds to their vitriol but refuses stooping to their level. By doing so, he comes across not only confident in his position, but also reveals the New Athiests to be the very cultural barbarians they accuse Christians of resembling. Novak's victory over the New Athiests even on their own terms is evidenced in the very title of his book: while the New Athiests claim that someone is crazy or foolhardy for claiming to see God, Novak responds that in actuality "No One Sees God" (at least not in the anthropomorphic or cheesy way imagined by the New Athiests). Furthermore, Novak displays a basic rhetorical trait seemingly lacking in his interlocutors, namely, he understands their positions from the inside, while they apparently only possess a caricature of Christian belief. This is an embarrassing situation for the New Athiests to find themselves in because their dismissal of religion is premised upon the claim that they have understood it. I have only so far spoken about Novak's approach. His CONTENT is detailed, philosophically-rigorous and, most notably, intensely personal. It poses a formidable challenge to the New Athiests on each of these different levels. After all, they claim that atheism is not only a better way to think, but also a better way to live privately and civically. Therefore if atheism is actually any of these things, its proponents must engage Novak's points, and they must simultaneously show to the rest of us watching the debate that they can do so humanely and rationally. After all, isn't a more humane and rational society their purported goal?

It does need to be noted that I was NOT in this book presenting the whole of the Christian gospel or making a case for Christianity and Judaism. My aim was much more modest. I was trying to re-create what used to be called "natural theology," the study of all those things we can learn about God based solely on reason alone and our experience of ourselves and the world around us. This is not the kind of knowledge that brings salvation, or opens the way to eternal life. But it is a form of knowing shared by huge numbers of people around the world, in the ancient and medieval worlds, at the time of the American founding, and today. Belief in God as the abiding presence of light (intelligence, even mathematics) in all things, and as the source of the (to us) inscrutable order, power, and majesty of nature has been the default postion of the human race. Almost all human beings in history have shared in it. In America today, the Pew poll found fewer than ten percent of all Americans identifying themselves as atheists or agnostics. About half of all agnostics and one-fifth of atheists confessed to believing in God as just described -- but not in the Jewish/Christian God. Our country desperately needs a respectful dialogue between believers and unbelievers. I have tried, perhaps unsuccessfully, to mark out one way by which that dialogue might get underway, for the sake of brotherly comity, civility and increasing respect for one another.