My review of Alex Rosenberg’s new book The Atheist’s Guide to Reality appears in the November issue of First Things. (Unfortunately, the review is behind a pay wall, or I’d link to it.) If you want a sense of what the book is like, first consider all the ludicrous implications that I argue follow from scientism in chapters 5 and 6 of The Last Superstition; and then consider someone taking (at least some of) those implications, not as a reductio ad absurdum of scientism, but as a set of surprising consequences that every atheist should happily embrace. Whatever else one could say about him, Rosenberg is more consistent than other naturalists. For that reason the book deserves a wide readership. Those beholden to scientism should know that they are committing themselves to a position that is absolutely bizarre, and indeed utterly incoherent.
We have had reason to discuss Rosenberg’s ideas before (here, here, and here), when considering an essay of his that first sketched out the themes he now develops at greater length in the book. We will have reason to consider them further, for I intend in a series of future posts to analyze the book in greater detail than I had space for in the review. Stay tuned.
