“[Tom] Crane’s is a crystal-clear, nuanced, and perceptive book,” declares Argumenta—it’s the Journal of Analytic Philosophy—“that atheists and believers alike can read without being misrepresented or misjudged.” It’s as Metapsychology Online Reviews has it, Crane reckons that “religious belief is here to stay.” So it is that he “provides an account of religious belief from a neutral standpoint…and provides a positive account of how we ought to understand and react to religious beliefs of those we disagree with”: do so “from a place of tolerance.”
Best known as a leading philosopher of mind, Crane is professor of philosophy at Central European University, Budapest. He is himself an atheist, as The New York Times has observed: “[H]e has come to believe that nothing exists beyond the world of everyday experience and scientific explanation—nothing transcendent.” Still, as that newspaper’s critic added, “Given the ineluctable enigma of existence, he believes religion can be rational, ‘intelligible human reaction to the mystery of the world.’”
Publishers Weekly has it that “Crane’s precise arguments, lucid writing, and astutely selected examples make this book enjoyable, as well as clarifying.” It is a “valuable and compact contribution to the dialogue between atheists and believers.”
The Meaning of Belief: Religion from an Atheist’s Point of View
By Tom Crane
Harvard University Press, 2017
