Belief: surely it’s a relic from the past, a hangover from a superstitious age that is totally out of sync with today’s rational, science-led culture. The dominant narratives of our age dismiss any form of belief as lying somewhere on a dark spectrum between ‘weird’ and ‘toxic’.

But as our world grows ever more confusing, our societies atomised, contemplating something larger than ourselves could not be more essential.

Elegant and thought-provoking, Why We Believe argues that accepting the unknown is not a failure of rational thought, but an existential necessity. Bestowing community, consolation and the ability to negotiate uncertainty, believing in what we cannot prove is intellectually emboldening and spiritually enriching. As the discriminatory rhetoric regarding people of faith slowly recedes, here is a manifesto for the re-enchantment of the Western mind.