The transcendent kingdom5/9/2023 ![]() ![]() However, the novel shows that both religion and science require faith to keep going. Gifty’s church shunned science, believing that it would destroy the faith of believers in college, her classmates expressed an equally uncritical atheism and rejected religion. Gifty’s research question-essentially, “can we control our thoughts?”-can be read as a religious question about whether it’s possible to live without sin or as a neuroscientific question about the subconscious. ![]() ![]() Both require the faith and loyalty of their followers, and, ultimately, both fail to answer all the questions they raise. Both attempt to answer big, difficult questions, like the meaning of existence and how people make (good) decisions. The religious and scientific communities around Gifty think of themselves as polar opposites but having had one foot in each world allows her to see their true similarities. Following her brother Nana’s untimely death of a heroin overdose, she becomes a scientist who studies the neurological basis of addiction and depression. The narrator and protagonist of Transcendent Kingdom, Gifty, grew up in a Pentecostal church. ![]()
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