Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief was published by HarperSanFrancisco in 2001, and it represents Smith’s most direct confrontation with scientific materialism — the worldview that treats the physical world as all there is and reduces consciousness, meaning, and value to byproducts of material processes.
Smith’s argument is not anti-scientific. He acknowledges science’s extraordinary achievements within its proper domain (the study of the physical world). His claim is that science has exceeded its domain by making metaphysical claims — about the nature of reality, the meaning of human life, the existence or non-existence of God — that its methods cannot support. When a physicist says “the universe is nothing but matter and energy,” he is not reporting a scientific finding but making a philosophical assertion that science cannot verify.
The book diagnoses three “tunnels” that modern thought has dug itself into: the tunnel of scientism (the belief that science can answer all questions), the tunnel of higher education (which teaches analysis but not wisdom), and the tunnel of the media (which reduces reality to what can be photographed or measured). Together, these tunnels have created a civilization that is materially prosperous but spiritually impoverished — a civilization that has forgotten what human beings most fundamentally need.
Collecting Why Religion Matters
First edition (HarperSanFrancisco, New York, 2001): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $10–$30
- Without jacket: $3–$10