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

Michael Novak (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 5, 2008

Surveying the contemporary religious landscape, the division between atheist and believer seems stark. However, having long struggled to understand the purpose of life and the meaning of suffering, Michael Novak finds the reality of spiritual life far different from the rhetorical war presented by bestselling atheists and the defenders of the faith who oppose them.

In No One Sees God, Novak brilliantly recasts the tired debate pitting faith against reason. Both the atheist and the believer experience the same “dark night” in which God’s presence seems absent, he argues, and the conflict between faith and doubt stems not from objective differences, but from divergent attitudes toward the unknown. Drawing from his lifelong passion for philosophy and his personal struggles with belief, he shows that, far from being irrational, the spiritual perspective actually provides the most satisfying answers to the eternal questions of meaning. Faith is a challenge at times, but it nonetheless offers the only fully coherent response to the human experience.

Ultimately, No One Sees God offers believers and unbelievers the opportunity to find common ground by acknowledging the complicated reality of the human struggle with doubt. Novak provides a stirring defense of the Christian worldview, while sidestepping the shrill tone that so often characterizes the discussion of faith, and given the challenges faced in the present age, all who value liberty will find hope in his new way of conversing.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for No One Sees God

“This book is one of the most lyrical and moving reflections on God I have encountered. It is also remarkably generous, both to believers and nonbelievers. Most helpfully it is about how to pray, and how to suffer through the dark night in which answers, and communication, seem absent. A remarkable book by a remarkable man.” 
--Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal columnist, author of John Paul the Great

"Over the years, Michael Novak has explored with great insight the relationship between religion, society, and the individual. Here he engages with the recent intellectual challenges to religion and provides the perspective of a profound believer who knows what it is like to wrestle with doubt."
--Walter Isaacson, CEO of the Aspen Institute, author of Einstein: His Life and Universe

“Intensely personal and yet intellectually wide-ranging, this book shows Michael Novak at his best. No One Sees God conveys a depth, erudition, generosity of spirit, and wisdom that simply transcend anything that the new atheists have to offer.”
--Dinesh D'Souza, author of What's So Great About Christianity

“This new book by Michael Novak is one of the most fascinating reflections on the God known through reason that I have ever encountered, the God whom we trust in shadow and in light, in defeat as well as in victory. Many, many readers will recognize in these pages elements of their own experience.”
--Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House, author of Rediscovering God in America

“Michael Novak's new book counts as both significant and moving. He deploys logic and love, emotion and erudition, to address the most enduring questions of our existence.”
--Michael Medved, nationally syndicated talk-radio host, author of Right Turns

"The word 'dialogical' might have been invented to describe Michael Novak. With great patience and lucidity he engages believers, unbelievers, and those who don't know what they believe in a conversation about the things that matter most."
 — Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Editor in Chief of First Things

About the Author

MICHAEL NOVAK received the 1994 Templeton Prize, an award that has also gone to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Mother Teresa, and Charles Taylor. He has taught at Harvard and Stanford and has held academic chairs at Syracuse University and Notre Dame, and now holds the Jewett Chair in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday Religion; First Edition edition (August 5, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385526105
• ISBN-13: 978-0385526104
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 1.3 x 8.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #762,525 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

110 of 116 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Author puts in two cents, September 1, 2008

By 

Michael Novak (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers (Hardcover)

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.

40 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting addition, September 2, 2008

By 

M. Fragoso - See all my reviews
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This review is from: No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers (Hardcover)

Novak's latest work is divided into four parts. In part one, Novak gives a close reading to the works of the most prominent new atheists: Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett.

Part two engages nonbelievers in a Socratic dialogue. Interestingly, Novak spends much of this time addressing an actual Alcibiades in the person of Manhattan Institute's Heather MacDonald. Their exchange sheds light on the problem of evil and the causes of human suffering. Its format as an actual conversation between believer and non-believer makes for a particularly fruitful exchange, usually lacking in hypothetical dialogue or the usual faceless polemic that has marked this genre.

Novak goes on to describe the phenomenology of human life in general--for believers and non-believers. It is an interesting attempt to find common ground between the two camps based on mutual experience.

He concludes by pointing out the flaws in secularism and foretelling the fall of the current Secularist Age.

All in all it's a fascinating addition to the interminable back-and-forth between believers and non-believers. Its even-handedness and charity are to be commended (especially in the face of bile artists like Dawkins and Hitchens). It's well written, if at times tending toward the baroque. Certainly a worthwhile read.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great insights about Judaism and Christianity, December 21, 2008

By 

Markku Ojanen (Lempäälä Finland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers (Hardcover)

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.