Kitcher’s book has the rare merit of advancing a short, readable but ambitious and insightful investigation into the challenges facing contemporary “secular humanism”. Kitcher aims to show that while most forms of orthodox religious belief may well be found “incredible”, there is still reason to resist “the now dominant atheist idea that religion is noxious rubbish”.

This book may be read alongside Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2007 – which was published just outside the period that we are now considering). Taylor’s study, which is both (very) long and demanding, presents an erudite study of the rise of secularism and its implications for the future of religious life. There is a rather interesting contrast with respect to both the methods and conclusions of these two works, although they also converge on several important points.