The Experience of God

From one of the most revered scholars of religion, an incisive explanation of how the word God functions in the worlds great faiths Hart marshals powerful historical evidence and philosophical argument to suggest that atheistsif they want to attack the oppositions strongest casebadly need to up their game.Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian Despite the recent ferocious public debate about belief, the concept most central to the discussionGodfrequently remains vaguely and obscurely described. Are those engaged in these arguments even talking about the same thing? In a wide-ranging response to this confusion, esteemed scholar David Bentley Hart pursues a clarification of how the word God functions in the worlds great theistic faiths. Ranging broadly across Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Vedantic and Bhaktic Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, Hart explores how these great intellectual traditions treat humanitys knowledge of the divine mysteries. Constructing his argument around three principal metaphysical momentsbeing, consciousness, and blissthe author demonstrates an essential continuity between our fundamental experience of reality and the ultimate reality to which that experience inevitably points. Thoroughly dismissing such blatant misconceptions as the deists' concept of God, as well as the fundamentalist view of the Bible as an objective historical record, Hart provides a welcome antidote to simplistic manifestoes. In doing so, he plumbs the depths of humanitys experience of the world as powerful evidence for the reality of God and captures the beauty and poetry of traditional reflection upon the divine.