Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe

This is a rigorous attempt to argue for meaningful life, values and virtues in a Godless universe. It is not a perspective that many readers of this Review are likely to share but it is one worth considering carefully when argued with such panache. The author makes a basic distinction at the beginning of the book between those who experience 'luck' as more than coincidence (Group One) and those who see a happy coincidence as pure luck (Group Two). He sets the scene in his introduction, quoting both Plantinga and Hume, then C.S. Lewis to the effect that our philosophical predispositions will fundamentally influence the way in which we interpret evidence (quite right). This applies especially to miracles, or, in a more modern idiom, parapsychology. The individual chapters deal with God and meaning, morality, divine justice and ethical character, ending with a discussion of naturalism as a creed to live by. Sometimes the most useful books are the least philosophically congenial since they oblige readers to work out a detailed articulation of their own, different, views. This is such a book.