Further Reading and References
Introduction
An earlier version of the dialogue between Stephen Hawking and his
father was published on the Guardian’s Cif Belief website (www.
guardian.co.uk/belief). The idea comes from a discussion of Herbert
McCabe, in his book God Matters published by Continuum (1987).
There are fragments of a few other Cif Belief articles I’ve written in
other places too.
Bonaventure’s examination of light is found in his Commentary on the
Sentences of Peter Lombard, Book II, Distinction 13.
Friedrich Schleiermacher discusses his religious sensibility in On Religion:
Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. Paul Tillich presents his ontology in
Volume I, Part II of his Systematic Theology. Accessible sermons are also
available in collections.
Nietzsche’s announcement of the death of God comes in The Gay
Science, Book 3, 125, translated by Walter Kaufman and published by
Vintage Books (1974).
Karen Armstrong discusses the birth of American fundamentalism
and fi gures like A.C. Dixon in The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in
Judaism, Christianity and Islam, published by Harper Collins (2000),
see pages 178–9.
T.H. Huxley’s essay ‘Agnosticism’ can be found in the misleadingly enti-
tled Atheism: a Reader, edited by S.T. Joshi, published by Prometheus
Books (2000), see page 33 for the quote.
God’s Funeral, by A.N. Wilson, published by Abacus (1999), sets Victorian
agnosticism in a wider historical context.
Scholarly studies on Victorian agnosticism include: The Unbelievers:
English Agnostic Thought, by A.O.J. Cockshutt (Collins: 1964) –
a good survey of players. The Origins of Agnosticism: Victorian
Unbelief and the Limits of Knowledge, by Bernard Lightman (Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1987) – good on agnosticism’s relation-
ship to the philosophy of Kant and why Victorian agnosticism as a
movement died.