Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious

Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious

Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious

Author	Ross Douthat
Illustrator
Country	USA
Subject	Religion
Publisher	Zondervan Press
Publication date	2025
Pages	216

Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious is a book on religion by Ross Douthat.

Background

Douthat often writes about spiritual topics for a secular audience. In Believe, he argues that having religious faith is more rational than the alternative. An excerpt appeared in modified form in The New York Times in February 2025.

Content

1 The Fashioned Universe describes the argument from fine-tuning. He cites Stephen Barr, in Modern Physics and Ancient Faith: “The cosmological constant, which governs the speed at which our universe expands, sits in a range that has roughly a 1 in 10 to the 120th power chance of occurring randomly. That range is essential to prevent both a flying apart and a swift collapse, both of which would have doomed the development of anything like life.” The strong nuclear force also appears to be finely tuned: were it “just fractionally stronger—a ‘fraction’ that can be represented by the equivalent of moving less than one inch on a ruler the size of the universe itself—it would have eliminated all of the hydrogen atoms in the very earliest phase of the universe; no hydrogen, no water, no us. A similarly fractionally weaker nuclear force wouldn’t hold together the particles in atomic nuclei in the way that yields chemical compounds necessary for life. The relationship between gravitational force and electromagnetic force occupies an extremely narrow range that allows or the formation of the kinds of stars whose eventual explosions yield chemicals required to support biological life, as well as the kinds of stars that form planets like ours.”

2 The Mind and the Cosmos describes the hard problem of consciousness. Douthat argues that our cognitive faculties, which evolved for survival on the Savannah, can plumb the mysteries of the universe. Douthat writes “the long arc of science, which initially seems to bend away from religion by undermining certain specific scriptural or dogmatic claims, ultimately bends back by confirming humanity’s unique position in a universe strangely suited to both our bodies and our minds.” After Thomas Nagel (from whose book the chapter takes its title), he argues that consciousness is irreducible.

He quotes David Bentley Hart, that in doing science “we assume that the human mind can be a true mirror of objective reality because we assume that objective reality is already a mirror of mind.”

3 The Myth of Disenchantment describes seemingly supernatural experiences in the modern age. The philosopher David Hume argued that, as science progressed, people would stop reporting supernatural experiences. Douthat argues that this has not happened, and some, like near death experiences, have actually increased. The skeptic Michael Shermer tried to fix a broken radio belonging to his fiancée’s grandfather, which mysteriously started working before their wedding. The anthropologist T. M. Luhrmann was studying modern day magicians when “I began to feel power in my veins—to really feel it, not to imagine it. I grew hot. I became completely alert, more awake than I usually am, and I felt so alive It seemed that power coursed through me like water through a chute. I wanted to sing. And then wisps of smoke came out of my backpack, in which I had tossed my bicycle lights. One of them was melting.”

4 The Case For Commitment

Douthat argues for committing to a religion, preferably one of the major ones.

5 Big Faiths and Big Divisions

Douthat examines the major religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism) and argues that they have things in common.

6 Three Stumbling Blocks

Douthat examines roadblocks to religion: the problem of evil, evil committed by religious institutions, and religious attitudes to sex.

7 The End of Exploring

Douthat describes how people might start in one religious tradition and end up in another, citing Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s conversion from Islam to atheism to Christianity.

8 A Case Study: Why I Am a Christian

Douthat describes his own religious experience, and how he found his home in the Roman Catholic Church. He argues that the strangeness of the Christian story makes it more credible. He discusses the historicity of Jesus. He writes that the Gospels “display a consistent pattern of what Lydia McGraw dubs ‘undesigned coincidences,’ in which passing references and stray details in one gospel will it neatly into holes left or questions raised in another gospel’s narrative, and read together their narratives often help make sense of one another—not only the three synoptic gospels, with their clear overlap, but the gospel of John as well. Strip away the supernatural claims, or the secular bias against accounts that include such claims, and the Gospels would be treated as remarkably credible historical sources.” He cites Tom Holland on the audacity “of finding in a twisted and defeated corpse the glory of the creator of the universe” and “the sheer strangeness of Christianity, ad of the civilization to which it gave birth.”

Reception

Joshua Rothman writes "the version of me that exists today found Douthat’s case for faith unpersuasive. But I still enjoyed Believe, and found myself challenged by it. Douthat is right to call attention to the 'brute fact' of religious experience, which apparently remains pervasive in a supposedly secular age."

Ed Simon writes "The columnist is correct that modernity’s disenchantment has been grossly overstated, that religion remains among the most potent of forces for all of humanity, and that it often manifests itself among ostensibly secular domains, from liberal humanism to the new cults of techno-utopianism. Not unimportantly, Douthat is an engaging writer who crafts readable columns; indeed, he must be to keep up with the grueling prolificacy demanded by his day job. So, in Believe, he’s often excellent on subjects like supernaturalism, miracles, and especially consciousness.

Despite my criticisms, if a reader doesn’t become a Nicene Christian by the conclusion of Believe (which Douthat unconvincingly claims isn’t his goal), then at the very least an honest appraisal must admit that he does a good job of tackling stubborn and arrogant materialism."

Mattheww Shultz writes "According to David Bentley Hart, a theologist whom Douthat quotes and whose wonderful book The Experience of God was clearly an inspiration for Believe, this transcendent ground of reality is what we mean when we talk about God.

These mysteries have been dismissed and ignored by what Douthat calls 'official knowledge.' Perhaps also they have been dismissed and ignored by official Judaism. But once you begin to really consider them, there is a feeling of thrilling disorientation, like being on a roller coaster. This is radical amazement.

For many of us, this sense of awe is distinctly lacking from our religious lives. Reading Douthat’s book is a suitable first step towards recovering it."

References

This article "Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

---