A few centuries ago, physical evidence for an all-powerful God seemed everywhere in the Western world. After all, how else could one explain the existence of our bounti­ful Earth at the center of an awe-inspiring cosmos, with planets and stars circling Earth in perfect God-like circles? . . Then came modern science and over the last 400 years essentially all of the “proofs” for God’s existence turned out either to be false or to have quite natural explana­tions. All of the relevant scientific evi­dence—from astro­physics, to our evolu­tion, to the biochem­istry of life, strongly sup­ported the thesis that there never were any gods in the first place, . .