God--The Evidence by Patrick Glynn,

Prima Publishing Co., PO Box 1260 BK, Rocklin, CA 95677
www.primapublishing.com,
1997, 216 pages, $22.00 hardback.

This book is subtitled The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World. The author has a Ph.D. from Harvard and is the associate director and scholar in residence at the George Washington University Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies. The book is billed as one for intellectuals designed to provide an overview of a positive overture of the relationship between religion and science.

Glynn begins by telling his own story. He starts his story as a child in a Catholic grade school and traces his intellectual evolution to being an atheist at Harvard during the anti-Vietnam War protest days. After building a nihilistic atheistic perspective, he then follows his continued intellectual journey to a believer. Glynn starts with the origin questions and the anthropic principle. He reviews the major people in the scientific community and shows that a master design is necessary to make sense of the universe.

Much of Glynn's treatment is historic, but his style is easy to read and very understandable. The book is strong and requires some knowledge of physics and astronomy to make sense. Some fairly complicated areas are explored and explained. Stephen Hawking's work, parallel universes, and the whole concept of necessary design are handled well.

The second half of the book deals with psychological questions and is titled "Psyche and soul: Postsecularism in Psychology." The problems involved in trying to define man and his psychological makeup while admitting to the existence of the soul are handled well. Glynn also explores the high correlations between religious commitment and medical health.

The most dubious part of Glynn's book is his treatment of out of the body experiences. This reviewer admits some prejudice in this subject. Although I have seen too many cases where simple explanations of claimed out of body experiences exist. Glynn shares some of my concerns about the scholarship of Raymond Moody's book and the work of Elizabeth Kubler Ross. His presentation of Michael Sabom's work at the University of Florida is new to this reader and will require further study. Using out of the body experiences as a verification of the spiritual is not a strongly documented argument at this point.

The last section of the book is a defense of the realm of spirit from a philosophical and theological standpoint with special attention to morality. This is a well written scholarly book that will be most useful to college students and those schooled in philosophy. The average reader will find it helpful, but sometimes very challenging. We recommend it highly.

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