Why Believe? sees John Cottingham, a philosopher of searing intellectual honesty, examine our society's struggle with the concept of belief.Cottingham's carefully reasoned yet impassioned account shows how the religious outlook connects with our deepest human longings, how it links up with our moral and aesthetic experience, how it is integrally involved in the quest for self understanding, and how it is not after all in conflict with a scientific understanding of the world.

One: Belief and its Benefits 1. How believing affects living 2. How believing works 3. Belief and human sensibilities 4. Belief and integrity Two: Belief, Reason, Goodness 1. Yearnings and their objective correlative 2. From benefits to reasons 3. God as source 4. The best explanation? Three: Belief and the Unknown 1. The unknown God? 2. Hume's critique 3. The problems of transcendence 4. Revelation and the Incarnate Word Four: Obstacles to Belief 1. How difficult can it get? 2. Supernatural intervention 3. Back to fundamentalism? 4. Revelation and cognition Five: Belief and Meaning 1. Truth and concealment 2. Evidence and accessibility 3. Vision and transformation 4. Moral growth and spiritual conversion Six: Learning to Believe 1. The lessons of life 2. Prevailing images of belief: exclusivism 3. Ultimate responsibility 4. Souls and the afterlife Seven: Believing and living 1. Providence and suffering 2. Humility and hope 3. Awe and thanksgiving 4. 'Walk the believer's road!'