No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Novak
Publisher: Doubleday
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
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Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 25943
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 0385526105
Dewey Decimal Number: 261.21
EAN: 9780385526104
ASIN: 0385526105
Publication Date: August 5, 2008
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Great insights about Judaism and Christianity December 21, 2008
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.
 Lofty words with little to say December 17, 2008
Author Novak presents as impressive a resume as one can ask for. Yet this reviewer, while sharing with him a theist view, finds his argumentation in that regard to be among the weakest. His argument for the existence of God is premised on his title and subtitle, "No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers", a "nothingness" that seems to elicit but gloom in place of hope, however elaborate his efforts to turn the negative into the positive.
His way of substantiating his point of view may be seen in a discussion by him (p.236) of agnosticism based "on the grounds that no one can prove, one way or the other, the existence of God". He writes: "Sometimes...agnostics are quite opposed to atheism and would like to believe in God. They simply have not experienced that insight, that gift, that privileged way of seeing". This typifies the evidence he brings for God, more being expected of philosophers like himself. He continues, with some characteristic name-dropping: "More than once well-known scholars have asked me--in the first case, Sidney Hook, and in another, Milton Friedman--how to think about belief. Both said they sometimes wanted to believe, but just couldn't find the evidence they sought. I said that all the evidence they need is within them, and they may be looking in the wrong places."
But the places are not specified. "No one sees God". Let me suggest a "seeing" indicated by a sentential fragment (p.189) in the book: "...powers, often invisible except in their effects". In fact, all powers are only visible in their effects. Now, if we think of God as constituting certain powers, as implied by appellations like "Almighty", we may well see God by the manifestation of those powers in the world, similarly to seeing the minds of others in their manifestation in their bodies. This should be all for me to say now, with more said elsewhere.
No One Sees God by M. Novak October 31, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I have admired Michael Novak's philosophical insights since the original publication of "The Experience of Nothingness" almost 40 years ago. His latest work, "No One Sees God" excels all of his previous works. "N.O.S.G" is so well structured and logical in its reasoning that the atheist authors Novak confronts should either elevate their future writing to Novak's level or keep silent from now on. Gonzalo Palacios, Ph.D.
A brilliant book October 29, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Hitchens is a great writer and Dawkins is a brilliant biologist, but neither are well-schooled in philosophy of religion. In this piece, Michael Novak extends his hand to the neo-secularists and at the same time he dismantled their arguments.
Interesting but flawed October 20, 2008
10 out of 13 found this review helpful
"No One Sees God" is a thoughtful and daring defense of Christianity, but it has some annoying flaws, and even its best arguments will probably sway few nonbelievers.
For my money, the most interesting part of the book is Novak's answer to the perennial "problem of evil": how can there be an omnipotent, loving God when so many innocents suffer? Novak's answer is to assert that yes, everything that happens is God's will, but in the grand scheme of things, even the apparent evils are blessings, if well disguised. Novak explicitly reiterates God's response to Job: men are not equipped to judge God.
Novak's argument did not hit home with me, although I respect the view that God's will for you and me may not be pleasant in the short run (along with Job, witness Jeremiah, Jonah, Stephen, Paul, and, of course, Jesus). The logical problem with Novak's argument is that if God's ways are beyond the comprehension of man, then belief that God is working out things for the best is strictly an article of faith. It's great if you have this faith, but not a compelling argument if you don't.
The most annoying aspect of the book is Novak's repeated assertions to the effect that without God, there is no basis for ethical behavior. He hauls in Dostoevsky's quote, "without God... anything goes". This seems to be a contention made more often by theists, such as Dostoevsky, rather than atheists, and in fact is just not so. In philosophy, there is not much study of systems of ethics are based on divine revelation. As for cultures, Confucianism is an ethical system that has guided billions of people, with no reference to God or religion. For that matter, the Christian existentialist Kierkegaard, who coined the expression "leap of faith", argued in "Fear and Trembling" that at times obedience to God's will could be contrary to any objective system of ethics, as, for example, when Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Isaac. I am sure that most Christians disagree with Kierkegaard on this, but the point is that ethics and moral behavior can exist outside of the framework of religion.
Despite the above criticisms, it is a pleasure and something of a relief to read a reasoned discussion of religious issues.
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