Rob Haskell was working as a religious teacher, held firmly in the bosom of evangelicalism, when one day he realized that he didn’t believe what he was teaching. The problem for Haskell was not so much whether the truth claims of Christianity were credible, but the uncomfortable realization that these claims and beliefs were the result of cognitive distortions and obvious psychological pitfalls. Haskell shows this insight at work in his own brain, in evangelical religious culture, and even in the pages of the Bible.
He argues that evangelicals are driven by a mismatch between their glorious idea of God and his work in their lives, and the more prosaic reality of day to day living here on planet earth, where God does not seem to show up—at least not very often. In order to cope with that shortfall, evangelicals deploy a host of questionable thought patterns which lead to an inauthentic life of the mind.
God of the Mind is a personal exploration of the intellectual incoherencies of evangelical Christianity, the psychological pressures that keep the faithful in the fold, and the price that honest seekers must pay in order to maintain its tenets.