This book starts well with the introduction giving us a clear roadmap for the journey that Theo wants to take us on - he is going to show "Whether one likes it or not, the strength of the word [faith], its ability to mean really determined optimism, is due to its religious history."
He moves on with an opening chapter 'Against Faith' on the critics of faith - militant atheists - who have made a renewed and forceful attack on the place of faith in society over the last few years, and he is able to show some of the flaws within their own arguments.
However in the rest of the book he seem to fail to make a compelling case for faith. This is in part because while critics of faith can make a general attack on faith for the advocate the general condition of faith does not exist. The faith you have is particular to a religion, and Theo while exclusively talking about Christian faith he tries to maintain that he is giving a general account and this contradiction is his undoing.
The general defence faith as a positive contributor to society has to ignore the major point that a religious faith is for the believer faith in something that is true. We struggle in a multi-faith society - where there is general recognition that all faith communities are good are providing support and stability - to deal with the issue that faith in the truth of one religion is at some level an absence in faith in the truth of another religion.
What we are left with, as this book shows, is the assertation that it doesn't matter what you believe because the aspect of faith that is good for you and for society is not the content of your beliefs but the warm and fussy feeling that believing in something - anything - gives. And for me that is a disappointment.
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