The Skeptical Believer: Telling Stories to Your Inner Atheist

by Daniel Taylor

When it comes to God, there are believers and there are skeptics. But there are also Skeptical Believers, a particular kind of believer who lives with an Inner Atheist that is constantly raising objections. The Skeptical Believer is a book about making peace with your Inner Atheist, and about working out practical responses to questions that have no definitive answers. It steers a middle course between the modernist conviction that faith is agreement with a set of true propositions about God and the postmodernist assertion that religious faith is just one story among many, no more or less true than any other. The Skeptical Believer proposes that one can live a rich and meaningful life of faith without proof (and despite the weaknesses of the church) by seeing oneself as a character within an ancient story. As believers, skeptical or otherwise, always have.

Genres: Faith, Christian, Nonfiction, Theology, Philosophy, Christianity, Spirituality

448 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 7, 2013

About the author

Daniel Taylor (Ph.D., Emory University) is the author of eighteen books, including The Myth of Certainty, Letters to My Children, Tell Me A Story: The Life-Shaping Power of Our Stories, Creating a Spiritual Legacy, The Skeptical Believer: Telling Stories to Your Inner Atheist, Believing Again: Stories of Leaving and Returning to Faith, and a four novel mystery series, beginning with Death Comes for the Decontructionist and ending with The Mystery of Iniquity. His most recent novel, The Prodigal of Leningrad, is set in that city during the Nazi siege of World War II. He has also worked on a number of Bible translations. He speaks frequently at conferences, colleges, retreats, and churches on a variety of topics. Dr. Taylor is also co-founder of The Legacy Center, an organization devoted to helping individuals and organizations identify and preserve the values and stories that have shaped their lives. He was a contributing editor for Books and Culture. Dr. Taylor is married and the father of four adult children. Website: www.WordTaylor.com

Reviews

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gave this book five stars even though I found the tone annoying at times and I agree with other reviewers that it could have benefited from more editing because this book in many ways pulled me from the depths of an existential crisis. I needed to hear Taylor's arguments about there being a place for doubters in the story of faith and I needed to hear a committed Christian author verbalize doubts and questions that I wrestle with constantly. I also am willing to bear with the meandering writing style because I think it works with his argument that you cannot rationalize your way to a clear understanding of God; instead, He can be glimpsed through art, story, meditation, worship, etc.

I found this book to be reassuring, inspirational, and just the right amount of convicting. I appreciate his conception of God and Jesus as both known and unknown, near and far, personal and mysterious. His worldview resonates with mine more so than any other religious author I have read. I also liked that he was constantly referencing other kindred spirits, both literary (Graham Greene, Flannery O'Connor, Marilynne Robinson) and philosophical (CS Lewis, Soren Kierkegaard) because it directed me towards further reading. I also found his suggestion to think of faith as story and his reliance on literary examples to be persuasive, though that is not surprising since Taylor and I share a graduate education in literature.

I would recommend this book to anyone who was raised in the church and felt distanced from it for any of the following reasons: you did not agree with the politics being espoused by the church, you were turned off by the racist/homophobic/sexist views of church members, you simply did not "feel" the presence of God that so many of your fellow church goers claimed to feel, or you struggled with not being able to rationally understand the nature of God, death, the afterlife, hell, or eternity. I don't think this book would be as helpful for those who have never had any sort of faith and are not interested in it, but I highly recommend it to anyone who had faith once and has since fell away from it or those who are reconciling their adulthood selves with their childhood faith and trying to decide what to keep and what to throw out.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thought provoking book that gives validity (and Challenge) to those in the Christian walk who sometimes struggle with faith. The "inner Athiest voice" throughout the book seems more gimmick than anything and it's longer than it needs to be. That said, the ideas are important, genuine, and generally well thought out. Reccomended.

[Moses · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life-changing.

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Skeptical Believer makes the case that it makes sense to live a life of (Christian) belief even if you are skeptical of religious doctrines. This is not an apologetic work. Dan Taylor is not trying to give you arguments about why Christianity is true or other belief systems must be false. Instead, The Skeptical Believer re-casts the question of religious belief as a question of commitment to a story that can make sense of life. More than make sense, he asserts that the Christian story can make life meaningful and rich and ethically challenging.

While he defends skepticism as useful and (for a certain set of people) unavoidable, he argues that committing to Christianity is more like deciding to marry someone than figuring out a calculus problem. Certainty is not possible; too much skepticism and questioning can kill the relationship. Standing back and refusing to participate in a story is itself a choice of a story, a choice that separates you from an essential part of life.

Dan Taylor fleshes out this point with story and metaphor, more than rigorous logical argument. Indeed, the book is at its weakest when it strays into traditional logical reasoning. However, when it is comparing truth to stew or expanding on a Flannery O'Connor quote, it brings a new and helpful context to old questions. (Let me just mention here that this book has fantastic chapter epigraphs.)

The book could easily feel preachy if Dan Taylor did not convincingly identify himself as an incurable skeptic as well as a faithful believer. It does not feel preachy though for Dan Taylor does so identify.

There is a lot more that I could talk about here. There are the sometimes annoying, sometimes hilarious, always sarcastic insertions by Taylor's "Inner Atheist." There is the argument that logic can never get us very far in questions of faith. There is intriguing comparison of uncertainty in life to suspense in a novel. There is the acknowledgement that Taylor's whole approach could be used to argue for just about any religious commitment. But I'm just going to mention it. If you really want to know, ask me. Or read the book yourself.

The Skeptical Believer will not appeal to the confirmed believer or the confirmed atheist. This book speaks to those who find themselves perpetually on the fringes of belief. It offers comfort and affirmation, but also a challenge. I can't think of what else you would want it to do.

[John Martindale · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book! Taylor has a refreshing perspective and a good sense of humor. It was affirming and encouraging to come across another Christian who has similar reasons for remaining in the faith despite of a skeptical disposition and being inundated by a plethora of uncertainties and doubts. For us it all ultimately comes down to Story. Both me and Taylor feel the Christian story is the best one out there--both of us are familiar with the myth of certainty--both of us know we need to commit and become part of the story rather than sitting on the fence. Both of us see no convincing reason to reject the Christian story unless there is a better story out there to embrace and as of yet, we can't find any and its not because we've not looked.

The alternatives to the Christian story are just as speculative and filled with problems as our own story. With Pascal we feel that if we're wrong, well, when we die, we won't exist, so who the hell cares. If we're right, we got eternal bliss with the most Amazing Being, who just happened to speak the universe into existence. If we put our faith in the grand myth of the materialist (so popular among the academics of our age), we have no true basis for morality, hope,truth or for goodness. instead we thrown into the existential angst where we must seek to create our own meaning (while knowing its meaningless) in a cruel and indifference world, all this while knowing that in end it will not matter a wit what we believe.

This Christian story on which we've placed out bet, is an Epic Story; as well as a a Quest, a Pilgrimage and a love story filled with wonderful characters. It's a rich, complex, comprehensive and full of mystery. If embraced, we be can believe that at the bottom of everything is love and grace, instead of pointlessness, chaos and death. Also, we have a firm foundation for hope, virtue, meaning and purpose. Yeah, even if I am deluded, thank goodness for it! But heck, the materialist of our day might be deluded too, heck maybe both of us are wrong and we are all brains in vats on Zoyamironova.

I read the book on my kindle and I underlined an absurd amount of this long book. I wanted to put down here some of my favorite quotes, but it would be quite the job looking for them. Maybe I'll add'em later.
But yeah, for all the skeptical believers out there, read the book, I think it will enjoy it.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

If it hadn't been for the author's irreverent "inner atheist" who kept interrupting his thoughtful discourse with sarcastic remarks, I would have given this book five stars. (It was the sarcasm that annoyed me, not the atheism. My inner atheist is more polite.) It was a very enjoyable read nevertheless. I was gratified to see healthy skepticism (not cynicism) presented in a positive light. No thinking person can honestly claim to be 100% certain about matters of faith. For certainty obviates any need for faith. But neither is it a prerequisite for commitment. Taylor shows how one can "live a rich and meaningful life of faith without proof (and despite the weaknesses of the church) by seeing oneself as a character within an ancient story." While the chapters are short and the style light and witty, the ruminations presented are profound and could perhaps even be life-changing for anyone trapped in a meaningless life of inaction for fear of commitment to a story that might not be true.

[Richard Heyduck · Rating 5 out of 5]

As one who is a firmly committed follower of Christ yet with a high doubt tolerance, I have found Taylor's work congenial. His short, pithy chapters confront the nature of believing (and non-believing) skepticism.

Taylor's major premise is that the truth of faith is best encountered and understood in the form of story, not propositions abstracted from that story. As those who have read my book know, I am very much in line with such a view.

If you are a "skeptical believer" or interact with people who are, this would be well worth your consideration.

[Aleah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this. Would have been 5 star, but went a bit long. With the right editor I think this could be streamlined into a best seller.

[David Gregg · Rating 4 out of 5]

What follows is a preview of the chapter "Learning to Live With Your Inner Atheist", which the author has posted publicly on his website (http://www.wordtaylor.com/writer/book...

“Disbelief is wasted on atheists.”
Richard Rodriguez

The first time I can remember doubting God was when I first heard about sex. I was seven and it sounded so disgusting that I shouted to the kid who told me as he walked away, “God would never let that happen!” But inside a little voice wondered if God had, in fact, let that happen, and, if so, it said he couldn’t be as good as I had been led to believe.

I’ve been hearing that little voice ever since, and probably before. It is the voice of what Richard Rodriquez calls my “inner atheist.”

Atheists come in two varieties—external and internal. External atheists are a dime a dozen. I want to speak respectfully of them—they are trying to figure all this stuff out, just like the rest of us–but it is difficult. The one’s in print and on cable television often sound too much like their fundamentalist alter-egos. Lots of braying, bluster, and bravado. Like most culture warriors, they speak much too confidently on things they know much too little about.

I read the books and hear the talks of professional atheists and respond, “Me thinks thou protests too much.” These people claim not to believe in God, but in truth they are obsessed with God. Few religious people I know have as much God-hunger as public atheists. They feed that hunger by talking about God endlessly, but it only makes them more ravenous. Strangely, they organize their lives around something they don’t believe exists. It’s like spending your life guarding the world against a Martian invasion and believing you are being successful. If there’s no God, then relax fellows, and find something to make yourself useful.

But the real reason I feel public atheists are mostly wasting both their time and mine is that they are redundant. I have an in-house atheist all my own. No external voice of disbelief holds a candle to the disbelief I carry in my own head. Disbelief is the background noise of my belief. It is that static on a radio station with a weak signal. It is the irritating base thumping through the walls from my neighbor’s stereo.

This inner atheist knows me well because he is me. He is only a part of me, to be sure, but he is not a part that can be isolated from the rest of me and surgically cut out. He is fully integrated, a member of the family, often annoying but undeniably a blood relation.

My inner atheist is always with me. I am tempted to compare him to an inoperable brain tumor or a cancer cell, but I can’t bring myself to do it. That’s so unfriendly. He isn’t really an invader, something alien. He’s me. He’s me when I’m tired, when I’m a bit discouraged, feeling cynical, or maybe when I’ve been feeling a little too smart and educated for my own good.

Yes, my inner atheist is me, but for a long time I wanted to kill him. I am capable of murder. There, I’ve confessed it.

As I said earlier in the book, there was a time in my life that I was a proofmonger. I bought into the idea that if God were real we should be able to prove it, or at the very least offer a case that was much stronger than any case for any other way of understanding the world. I repeated the mantra, hoping to believe it, that faith could not be simply subjective. It had to be based on facts, on careful reasoning, on proofs or near-proofs. Subjectivity was for the emotionally and intellectually weak. Worse yet, the next step down the slippery slope from subjectivity was—gasp—relativism!

But somewhere along the way it occurred to me that I was, for better or worse, a subject. I certainly wasn’t an object, so if subject and object were my only two choices, then I was and am a subject. And anything I believe, know, think, feel, intuit, imagine, suffer, enjoy, laugh or wonder about is going to be as a subject and will, therefore, be, dare I say it, subjective.

Does that mean everything is merely subjective (merely being the all-purpose put down word in these contexts)? No. All these things I know, feel, and so on can be genuine responses to things that have genuine objective existence—are true, if you will. (I subjectively feel pain in my toe, and, yes, there objectively is a rock that I stubbed it against.) But my experience of them can never be anything but a subjective experience, because I am a finite, limited, fallen, time-bound, culturally-conditioned hunk of subjectivity.

And my inner atheist will never let me forget that.

Okay, my belief is subjective. So what? Everyone’s belief about everything is subjective. There is no fact in the world, however brute, that does not require interpretation. That does not have to be cleaned off, inspected, spruced up, taught its manners, dressed up and introduced politely at the grand ball of whatever system of thought of which it is to be a part. (Does electrical activity in a certain part of the brain increase when one has strong emotions, including spiritual ones? All right, that looks like a fact. But when you try fitting that fact into an explanation, especially one about human nature or the human experience, you have become subjective.)

This kind of talk drives rationalists—including rationalistic apologists for faith—crazy. How can we be certain about something if it is merely (there’s that word again) subjective? (We can’t.) That opens the door to every looney idea and ideology imaginable! (Including the notion, looney to some, that there is a God.) It is irrational to believe something without evidence! (It is also irrational to think that reason alone can decide what counts as evidence.)

Somewhere around the time I made peace with subjectivity, I also made peace with my inner atheist. I started by cutting back on his rations. I learned from experience that he got fat off hostility and oppression. My attempts to kill him with definitive answers were his meat and potatoes. “You want to play the questions and answers game? “ he says. “I invented the questions and answers game. My questions have questions. I thought of my tenth question while you were still fumbling with your first answer. I have more questions than the ocean has grains of sand. I am the e=mc2 of questions. I waited an eternity for you to be born so I could start asking questions. When you have given your last answer with you last dying breath, the last words you will hear from me as the lights go out will be another question. (And none of your answers, in case you’re wondering, will satisfy me in the least. Not one.)”

See how mean-spirited this guy can be if you feed him?

But if you don’t feed him, he’s not so bad. If I decide to hear him out rather than drown him out, he kind of deflates down to a manageable size. He’s a bit of a Wizard of Oz figure: “I am Skepticism, the Great and Powerful!” But in fact, he’s just a little man behind a curtain playing with knobs. Having looked behind his curtain, I sort of like him. My inner atheist still talks trash now and again, but once you see through him, he’s almost entertaining.

I’ve also noticed that he gets quiet during stories. I think, in fact, that my resident atheist may like stories. He doesn’t complain nearly so much during story telling as when I feed him propositions and facts. He tends to sit in the corner and listen, not affirming but not protesting much either. Sometimes he’ll say, “That’s just a story,” hoping the word “just” will [frighten or irritate me] and diminish the story a bit. Or he’ll grouse, “Well other people have their stories, too,” as though stories cancel each other out. But he really doesn’t know what to do with stories and so he mostly shuts up.

So, here’s the deal we’ve struck. I let my inner atheist have his say. I let him ask his question, express his doubts, roll his eyes, vent his spleen, pass a little cynical gas–whatever he feels the need to do. I even compliment him occasionally when he makes a good point. (He hates that.)

Then I go on believing. I go on trying to live my part in the story.

I’ve thought about this a lot. I don’t think this is stubborn belief despite the facts or glorying in irrationality (what some would call fideism). I think it actually quite a rational response to the limitations of reason and the rewards of belief. The upside of believing, of being part of the story, is enormous. The only downside is the possibility of being wrong. I can live with that—maybe forever.

[Paul Dubuc · Rating 5 out of 5]

My name is Paul ... and I am a Skeptical Believer.

I've been savoring this book. Its short chapters and conversational style make that a good way to read it. This isn't a book about apologetics, except maybe where one's own faith is concerned. It's more about epistemology--how we know what we know--where it comes to the really important matters upon which our most important commitments rest. The author's musings are interrupted occasionally by the snarky, sarcastic comments of his "Inner Atheist." I've heard them all before and found them more annoying than anything else. My inner atheist is a bit more subtle.

I had been an intentional Christian for about 13 years when, in 1987, I read Daniel Taylor's book, The Myth of Certainty: The Reflective Christian and Risk of Commitment. I felt like the author had somehow gotten inside my head and knew very well the questions and doubts about my faith with which I had been wrestling for some time. I was rather awestruck by this. What I read in that book greatly helped make my faith intellectually and reflectively sustainable and growing through many years of wrestling and inquiry.

With this book, Daniel Taylor has done it to me again, discussing in much greater detail how faith and the doubts of a skeptical nature can reinforce and balance each other in crucial ways. Taylor understands the importance of doctrinal belief and propositional truth but sets them in the context of relational truths that are what support anyone's most important beliefs; whether he or she be a "religious" person or not. We are all characters living out a life story. Reflection on the nature of that story and the meaning it gives to one's life is a frequent concern for many people; even some Christians who may fit the Taylor's description of himself as a "skeptical believer." For most of my life, I've had a part in the most compelling story I know. Daniel Taylor has articulated the thinking behind the living of such a life for someone like me better than any one that I know of. It's been quite a journey. I look forward to where it all leads.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really appreciated a number of Taylor's observations, and his framing of faith as choosing to live within a particular story as opposed to accepting a set of intellectual propositions is helpful. I could relate to much of his experience as a skeptical believer, and I appreciated his encouragement to commit to the story of Jesus even in the midst of doubt.

That said, this book could have benefited from some tighter editing. It was longer than it needed to be, and got to be somewhat repetitive. The voice of his inner atheist was amusing and novel at first, but got to be a touch overdone.

Still, a helpful read, especially for anyone like me who has their own vocal inner atheist.

[Harley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good content, but I just found it too long.

[Clayton Keenon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little repetitive, but chock full of good nuggets and turns of phrase. Also, it resonated with this skeptical believer's experience.

[Ed Wojniak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book! Written with humor, insight, compassion and balance. Highly recommended, even if you have less an atheist and more a skeptic as your alter-ego.

[Taylor Ruckle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Taylor's conclusions are highly useful, insightful, and personally resonant. His style is. Tedious.

[Greg Isaacs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thick with meaning . . . in lots of small bites. Relies heavily on “story” and “shalom”. Could honestly be the subject of a college level course.

[Nich Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of reflections on how to maintain faith despite doubts (and self doubt). What it lacks in cohesiveness it makes up for with pieces of wisdom and a clear thesis on the importance of story.

[Stinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a book I bought years ago, but hadn't read until recently - seemingly in God's perfect timing.

[Luke Paulsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a tricky book to review. It isn't really a work of apologetics-- thus the "Believer" part of the title. But it isn't really a work of devotion either, because devotion assumes the truths of faith, and there's that "Skeptical" in the title. It isn't making a well-defined argument, per se, because one central thesis of The Skeptical Believer-- so far as it can even be said to have one-- seems to be that arguments are less relevant to day-to-day belief than stories are. But it doesn't seem to be a unified story either-- it's broken up into a series of short and more or less independent reflections. Reflections on what? Taylor never says exactly, but I would roughly state the topic as "the life of faith as story rather than argument".

This can all be a bit frustrating at times, especially for the book's intended audience-- Christian believers (including Taylor and myself) who like to be rational / skeptical / argumentative and are bothered by having an "Inner Atheist" who likes to attack faith from that perspective. Taylor's answer-- though it's a little misleading to even call it an answer-- asks us to give up this focus on rationality. Not in the sense of ceasing to be skeptical, or in the sense of ceasing to believe that Christianity is logically true, but simply in the sense of not making it the basis for one's spiritual life. In the place of argument, Taylor proposes story as a foundation. This is annoyingly (perhaps intentionally) vague, but it seems to entail a shift from "conclusion" to "choice" as the mover of faith, and from understanding to imagination or empathy as its dominant mode of thought.

This is asking a lot of a Skeptical Believer, and what really makes the book work is how Taylor shows-- not describes-- how it works from his own perspective. This book really clicked when I stopped trying to read it as a series of claims and started thinking of it more like a face-to-face conversation with the author. He's an older guy who has seen a lot of life and faith, and his writing style is wonderfully conversational (if a tiny bit stilted and awkward in spots). One striking feature of the book is the peppering of parenthetical interjections from Taylor's "Inner Atheist", which Taylor-- in a good demonstration of his approach-- usually opts to move past rather than refute.

I read this book in small doses over a long period of time, which seems like how it's meant to be read. Those looking for striking insights or bold claims should look elsewhere; it's more like the book is teaching a particular way of thinking about (and, eventually, living) one's faith. I also wouldn't recommend it to anyone besides the intended audience: Christians, including "former"/"maybe"/"sort-of" Christians, who feel left out by all this talk of faith and who see skepticism as an obstacle to their spiritual life. But for those who fit that description, this book is capable of seriously changing the way you think about belief.

[Autumn Kotsiuba · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw the title and something in me went, "Oh, so that's what I am." And I've always hated it. I'm skeptical about everything. I question...well, all the time. I wrestle with my beliefs and with contradictions. It sort of sucks, especially when some (well-meaning) people consider this "weak faith."

But. I'm lucky enough to have good friends who 1) share my "ailment," as well as 2) those who don't, but put up with me anyways. I found (some) answers to my questions in books and personal study. Which is good. But I don't think I've been necessarily looking for answers alone, so much as justification for asking the questions in the first place.

This book was exhilarating and humbling at the same time. The former because I needed to know that the way I'm wired isn't wrong, and the latter because it showed that those who don't doubt the way I do aren't necessarily "following blindly," they're just different. I mean, I get it. Some of my friends can endure existential crises with me for hours; others lose interest by the first question..

I could go on about this for a long time, but let it suffice to say that this is great for anyone who's ever felt like an outsider within their own faith. The author's premise boils down to the belief that, while "truth" in the abstract certainly exists, it honestly doesn't matter until it's in the context of reality. Philosophy vs. life, you know?

Anyways, enough from me. I just want to save some of my favorite quotes:


"All arguments, all attempts to make meaning out of the human experience, leak." - author

"They cannot scare me with their empty spaces / Between stars--on stars where no human race is. / I have it in me so much nearer home / To scare myself with my own desert places." - R. Frost

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd." - Voltaire

"The existence of twilight is not an argument against the distinction between night and day." - Samuel Johnson

"Why do I believe in God?...the answer is never the same." - author

"Not everything has a name." - Alex Solzhenitsyn

"Perhaps the first danger of the theologian is being able to write without being astonished." - Belden Lane

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Life is tough, faith is difficult, the world does not pat you on the head. Get over it!...
It requires a bit of fortitude to be a thinking, reflective, engaged, honest, committed believer in the twenty-first century. When has it not? Life is not and never has been, conducive to any faith that requires you to be different than you would instinctively be anyway. There will always be a gap between what you wish you knew and what you do know, between how you would like things to be and how they are, how you would like yourself to be and how you are. That gap is where doubt and skepticism-and your inner athiest make their home. You can narrow the gap with, among other things, careful thinking and committed living, but you can never eliminate it entirely.

So wahat are you now going to do about it? Are you going to let that gapkeep you from the faith that, when healthy, offers you sustenance and meaning and life? Are you going to let "I'm not sure" trump "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief"? Are you going to trade in the possibility for eternal life for the cold comfort of "no one is going to fool me"?" ~ Charles Taylor


The only knock on this book seems to be its length and repetitiveness. I didn't find either detractive from book's substance. Charles Taylor is a very communicator and his storied insights have helped me win a few battles with my own inner athiest.

[Cornell · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are those days when you judge a book by its cover, pick it up, pay for it, only to read it and discover that it is better than the cover.

This has been my experience reading through Daniel Taylor's Skeptical Believer. Artistically, he is a great writer, and the fact that he is a literary tutor shows. Plus I have a special place for writers who value the importance of stories in our lives.

But I also found myself disturbingly identifying with the author. It is like he was reading my mind and putting my thoughts onto the page. Additionally, by reading someone who has a Christian experience so similar to mine, I felt a certain relief. It is like I had been given permission to be my life.

My story was valid, even if it turns out to be the wrong story. I was comforted by that realization that someone else in the universe has walked through my valley of doubts and lived to tell about it.

So it is difficult to give an impersonal (objective?) review of this book. But come to think about it, there has never really been an objective book review. We all write as we are. I am sure Daniel would agree.

[Lee Bertsch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a tad too long. During the last quarter of the book I felt like some points had been made already. I am still rating it a five star however, because I simply delighted in reading this book. In his own review of another book, Taylor wrote: "I underlined the sentence, not sure whether it was quite right, but knowing he was on to something." I underlined a lot in his book, some of them in the way of which he refers. There were so many times I felt like he took assorted thoughts and unresolved musings that have been roaming around in my own head for years and put them into words on a page, allowing me to look them over and make better sense of them.

[Mar · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 and a somewhat subjective rating; I appreciate what he is trying to do, but mostly the book moved too slowly for me and didn't resonate. I did like the emphasis on "buying into a story" and then living daily to be faithful to the story, while recognising there will never be enough concrete, rational, scientific evidence that it is true. The leap of faith must be made and then lived out.

[Melissa]

abandoned. could have been half the length.