Devils' Gospels, The

Can we find religious inspiration in great atheist writing? It is a paradoxical challenge but an urgent one. The gap between secular and religious understandings of the world has become impossibly wide. It is damaging Christianity and cutting young people off from the possibility of faith. Yet if God exists, everything we learn about the world should tell us more about God. The Devils Gospels started in a youth discussion group at Oxfords University Church. Each month the author would introduce a different atheist book to the teenagers to see where the discussion would lead. Four of the best are given the status of 'gospels'here:Friedrich Nietzsches Thus Spoke Zarathustra,Jacques Derridas Writing and Difference, Stephen Hawkings A Brief History of Time, and Richard Dawkins The God Delusion. These books each have, in their own way, shaped the world we live in today. The Devils Gospels captures the energy of their ideas in language simple enough for a bright 11-year-old to understand, and uses it to shed greater light on the nature of God. But it is not just written for intelligent teenagers trying to find their way towards belief. It is aimed at two other important groups: Christians who feel that they arent getting the answers that matter from the Church, and non-believers who want to explore the possibility that there may be more to life than physics and biology.