Spiritual Rebirth And Return To Faith

GOD: THE EVIDENCE THE RECONCILIATION OF FAITH AND REASON IN A POSTSECULAR WORLD

By Patrick Glynn

Prima

216 pp., $22

Conservative political writer Patrick Glynn was raised Roman Catholic but drifted into atheism in the 1970s, during college. Glynn blames his period of joyless unbelief on the rise in the study of the natural sciences among educated people. "It was simply assumed that religious belief had become impossible for rational human beings in the modern era."

"Over the past twenty years," however, "a significant body of evidence has emerged, shattering the foundations of the long-dominant modern secular world view," he writes. Thanks to this new evidence and his wife's quiet spirituality, Glynn is now back in a religious mode, if not a denominational one. "What happened to me - the rediscovery of the spiritual - is happening to others and is on the verge of happening to our culture as a whole," he writes. The book is a feisty rebuttal to the secularizing influence of the natural sciences, "God: The Evidence. The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World."

Glynn believes that there is enough unexplainable order in the universe to prove that "Someone" made it for human beings. Glynn also suggests we are designed to be healthier when we pray. He has reliable data to show that religious belief and practice are correlated with low rates of suicide, substance abuse, and other unhealthy behaviors.

* David K. Nartonis is doing research on the evolving concept of science in 19th-century New England.