I have always appreciated Ross Douthat’s writing. For many years, he has written columns as both a committed Catholic and a conservative in the New York Times. He is an astute observer of culture who manages to write with great depth without being condescending or “hackish.” In other words, his voice is one that I have come to trust in a media landscape without many of those voices. One of Douthat’s previous books, The Decadent Society, continues to guide some of my own thinking about contemporary American life.
Because of this, I was excited when I heard that Douthat was publishing a book on the reasonableness of religious belief. It seems many other people were excited, too. Douthat has been making the podcast circuit, including appearances with columnists Bari Weiss and Derek Thompson and Christian apologist, Gavin Ortlund.
This book comes at a time when there is a fresh interest in religious belief in parts of society that were, up until recently, dismissive of the role of religion in modern life. Famous atheists like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Larry Sanger are converting to Christianity. Other public unbelievers like Douglas Murray, Jonathan Haidt, and Tom Holland are speaking affirmatively about the value of religion—particularly Christianity—both in individual and civil life. So-called “New Atheism” has been completely defanged to such an extent that even Richard Dawkins is calling himself culturally Christian while Christian apologists like Wesley Huff and Stephen Meyer are given a platform to talk about Jesus on one of the world’s most popular podcasts.
The Purpose of Believe
Douthat has a modest goal with this book. I’m sure that the intended audience that Douthat had in mind was the type of person who would read one of his pieces in the New York Times—someone who is educated, cosmopolitan, and who thinks of himself as too sophisticated for religious belief.
Douthat wants these readers to consider taking the first steps toward religious belief but not merely because religious belief is “psychologically helpful.” There are plenty of articles and books that claim it doesn’t matter if religious belief is true because it is useful. Douthat rejects that utilitarian argument (although one chapter comes close to making this argument).
Instead, he claims that unbelievers should consider religious belief because it has a real “intellectual advantage.” Religious belief, in other words, is the best explanation of reality. It is nonbelief, not religious belief, that requires us to deny what our reason tells us.
“It is nonbelief, not religious belief, that requires us to deny what our reason tells us.”
Overview of Believe
The first three chapters of the book provide the core of Douthat’s argument for the intellectual advantage of belief.
His approach reminded me a bit of David Bentley Hart’s strategy in his book The Experience of God, which he even quotes at one point. The Experience of God is a phenomenal book, but Hart writes it in a characteristically dense style which can become annoying. Hart makes a compelling argument for the existence of God based on the existence of being, consciousness, and bliss. There is simply no explanation for the existence of the universe, the existence of the mind, and the existence of beauty without the existence of God. Yet Douthat’s three arguments are different from Hart’s, and his style is much more readable.
Design
In the first chapter, Douthat points not just to the existence of the universe but to the way that the universe exists. He makes what some other books might refer to as a design argument or a fine-tuning argument. The unbeliever has no satisfactory explanation for the way the universe exists. Douthat compares their efforts at one point to watching a person investigate the origins of a house, “and upon discovering finely wrought schematics, exclaiming that now they have no need to assume the existence of an architect—when in fact they’re looking at her work!” (p. 34).
This argument is standard in most apologetic texts, but I was glad to see him start with this point because it is still the most compelling and commonsensical argument for God’s existence.
“The unbeliever has no satisfactory explanation for the way the universe exists.”
Consciousness
In the second chapter, Douthat points at the existence of consciousness as evidence for religious belief. This has become one of my personal favorite arguments for God’s existence, and it has significantly increased in popularity among more recent books on apologetics.
It is the case generally that our wonder increases with every scientific discovery. Far from crowding God out of reality, scientific advancements make the existence of God more reasonable. This is true about the discoveries in virtually every sub-discipline of the hard sciences: astrophysics, microbiology, genetics, and even neuroscience. We have learned so much about how the brain works, but the mind remains a profound mystery without a materialistic explanation. Even renowned atheist thinkers like Thomas Nagel have acknowledged this fact. The best explanation is that God created us as beings with minds.
Mystical Experiences
I was delighted by the argument in the third chapter. This, his longest chapter, is devoted to mystical experiences. Too many apologetics books make arguments from science, philosophy, or history but hesitate to mention phenomena like supernatural encounters, miracles, or near-death experiences. I think this comes, in part, from a certain fear that we lose credibility when we make these arguments because the average skeptic won’t take them seriously.
To Douthat, however, these experiences are legitimate pointers to the truth of religious belief. He observes that “when intellectuals stopped taking mystical experiences seriously, actual human beings kept on having the experiences” (p. 69).
There is wisdom in being cautious about endorsing every miraculous or supernatural claim, but what we call caution is often just cynicism. Even as religious believers, many of us can be overly dismissive of these claims. This attitude is not biblical, and it also ignores the fact that these experiences continue to be documented. They deserve to be taken seriously as a part of our apologetic. (If you are looking for a thorough study of miracles, I strongly recommend Craig Keener’s work on the subject in his book Miracles Today.)
“Too many apologetics books make arguments from science, philosophy, or history but hesitate to mention phenomena like supernatural encounters, miracles, or near-death experiences.”
Believing in What?
Readers may be concerned that Douthat leaves the door open to a generic and relativistic sort of belief where the content of belief matters less than the mere act of believing. I shared that concern as I read the last half of the book where Douthat seems to encourage the type of religious commitment that fits the believer rather than the type of commitment that fits the truth. He even says at one point, “It is not true that religious claims are all simply exclusive of one another, or that to believe in one revelation, one conception of the divine, requires believing that every other religion is made up” (p. 126).
David Bentley Hart eventually wrote a full-length book endorsing Christian universalism, so I was glad to see Douthat unambiguously reject Christian universalism in this book. The most charitable reading of Douthat’s point is that there are certain truths to be found in every religion—especially the older, more established religions—and taking the first steps of belief are better than remaining an unmoved religious skeptic. You can agree or disagree with this position, but the last chapter removes any question about whether Douthat is a relativist.
A Case for the Christian Faith
In the last chapter, Douthat makes his case for the Christian faith. It is part testimony and part apologetic. “When I say the Nicene Creed, I mean it” (p. 192). He doesn’t believe in Jesus because it is convenient or because that is how he was raised. He believes in Jesus because the story of Jesus has all the hallmarks of being a true story.
Douthat is not aggressive in his evangelism, but neither is he weak. He closes the book by imploring his readers to wake up. “Life is short and death is certain, and what account will you give of yourself if the believers turn out to have been right all along?” (p. 205).
“He believes in Jesus because the story of Jesus has all the hallmarks of being a true story.”
Conclusion
I enjoyed this book, but it did not quite live up to my heightened expectations. In Believe, Douthat delivers an articulate and accessible plea for religious belief, but it fails to distinguish itself as a Christian apologetic. His section dedicated to commending the truth of the gospel was especially lacking. We have been blessed with so many excellent books written on this topic. I would still recommend Gavin Ortlund’s book, Why God Makes Sense in a World that Doesn’t, or Timothy Keller’s classic, The Reason for God, to earnest seekers in my life.
