Reasons to Believe

Reasons to Believe by Adrian Lickorish Published by CTS

This is a very useful and timely booklet. The dominant narrative of our time seems to be that science and reason have supplanted God, that we no longer need God in order to understand reality, and that to cling to the idea of God is somehow anti-intellectual and anti-scientific.

That's all bosh, of course, and real scientists, who are trained to think critically, do not tend to see things that way. But the popularisers of science, and the popular media more broadly, take that narrative for granted, and so it seeps into the cultural zeitgeist and becomes the unspoken assumption of many, without any serious examination.

Adrian Lickorish is a retired lawyer, and brings an analytical mind to the task. He presents, after a brief introduction, twelve reasons to believe. As he notes, 'Different reasons will speak more strongly to different readers, and a different times in their lives;' so for me to say that I found some of his explanations more compelling than others may simply be a reflection of that truth.

He builds on the classical proofs of God, presenting them, and some additional approaches, in a clear, contemporary and intellectually robust way. He also breaks each explanation down into brief paragraphs, outlining the structure of his argument, which makes the whole book easy both to read and to understand.

His twelve reasons are as follows:

Reasons 1 & 2: First and Independent Causes
Reasons 3, 4, and 5: Design
Reasons 6 & 7: Desire and Purpose
Reason 8: Objective Morality
Reasons 9 & 10: Belief and Experience
Reason 11: Life after Death
Reason 12: The New Testament.

He also has a section on the end, addressing some of the problems that people express when struggling to believe: Evil, Hell, Difficulty in Knowing and the Role of Science.

This is a valuable booklet for anyone wishing to understand their own Faith better, and particularly for anyone who ever finds his or her Faith challenged by others as being unreasonable, irrational, or 'medieval.'  I would also strongly recommend it for any teenager heading off to University...