As its title suggests, this is a book about God. More precisely, it tries to answer two highly topical questions about God. One, to which I have devoted the most space, is whether the arguments in the contemporary literature for believing in an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving Creator of the universe are good ones. The question isn't of merely theoretical interest: there is a widespread preoccupation that morality cannot survive a loss of religious faith, with many echoing Ivan Karamazov's famous claim in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov that without God everything is permitted. So the other question is: was – is – Ivan Karamazov right? Despite an understandable reluctance to give anyone an excuse for not reading further, I will compromise and reveal now that my answers to these two questions will be ‘no’ to both, but leave it to the rest of the book to explain why. If you want to find out more, start at Chapter 1 and keep going.

At the end of each chapter there is a little section marked ‘Exercise’ (not compulsory!). This consists of a quotation from an actual person of a certain standing, either academic or theological, among them one the latchet of whose shoes I, like John the Baptist, am not worthy to stoop down and unloose. Each quotation consists of a claim or argument to which the material in the chapter is relevant, and the reader is invited to consider how they would respond to it.