[]
Why I am Not an Atheist
Play sample
  • Published: 19 February 2026
  • ISBN: 9781529991963
  • Imprint: Ebury Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $65.00
Categories:

Why I am Not an Atheist

The Confessions of a Sceptical Believer

Formats & editions
Hardback
24 Mar 2026
EBook
19 Feb 2026
Audiobook
19 Feb 2026
Buy from…
Apple Books Audible Google Play Kobo Libro.fm Spotify

Celebrated author Christopher Beha recounts his struggle with the most urgent questions and makes an earnest appeal for readers to seek out answers of their own

What can I know? What must I do? What may I hope?

Twenty-five years ago, celebrated author Christopher Beha gave up on God. After reading Bertrand Russell’s classic text Why I Am Not a Christian, he became a committed atheist, certain that his days of belief were behind him. A youthful brush with mortality soon set Beha on a decades-long quest for meaning in a godless world.

Why I Am Not an Atheist tells the story of this search for secular answers and along the way, Beha traces the development of what he understands to be the two major atheist worldviews: scientific materialism and romantic idealism. Beha’s passage leads him to the surprising conclusion that faith preserves the best of both traditions while offering a complete and coherent picture of reality.

This deeply personal yet universal investigation delves into suffering, mortality and ultimate meaning, calling readers to take up these questions for themselves.
  • Published: 19 February 2026
  • ISBN: 9781529991963
  • Imprint: Ebury Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $65.00
Categories:

About the author

Christopher Beha

Christopher Beha is the former editor of Harper’s Magazine and the author of four previous books, including The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, which was nominated for the 2020 National Book Award.
CB

Praise for Why I am Not an Atheist

The book doesn?t just offer us a brilliant portrait of sophisticated faith in the modern age but also gives us a genuinely moving narrative of spiritual longing and love.

Phil Klay, author of Uncertain Ground

In tracing the intellectual genealogy of our superficial metaphysics, Beha clears the way for us to hear the quiet, clear call of . . . well, of something very large that addresses us.

Matthew B. Crawford, New York Times bestselling author of Shop Class as Soulcraft

Christopher Beha?s brilliant memoir takes to heart Saint Augustine?s injunction to ?read your life.? A profound and honest book that proves intelligent belief is not an oxymoron, that both faith and doubt can nurture the soul.

Alice McDermott, author of Absolution