Recently I read and listened to a book by a New York Times columnist named Ross Douthat called "Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious." This is a book at a fairly high reading level and I struggled to pay attention initially, especially with the hard copy--sitting down with any book lately tends to have a soporific effect on me. I got an audio version and the latter half of the book was easier for me to listen to as I gardened. I enjoyed the book but I want to listen to it again.
Douthat is an observant Catholic. He says that more and more of his readers are unhappy with their unbelief. He describes how he hears from many who wish they could believe and miss the community of Christianity done well. Helping those people understand that belief in God is not only intellectually viable but also the more rational choice is how he spends the first half of the book. He argues that it is the religious perspective "that grounds both intellectual rigor and moral idealism. And most important, it is the religious perspective that has the better case by far for being true." (p.11)
He starts with the argument for a designed universe. He says that the unbeliever has no satisfactory explanation for the way the universe exists. He compares their efforts 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) He goes on to talk about how our knowledge base of the universe consistently shows a system that is precisely ordered to generate our specific kind of life. If certain constants in the universe were slightly different, life could not exist.
In the second chapter, he discusses how we cannot truly understand where human consciousness comes from. It has proved impossible for people to create souls using machines. We have learned a lot about brains but consciousness remains a mystery. God remains the best explanation. Even renowned atheistic thinkers have acknowledged this.
The third chapter discusses the mystical experiences which the modern world is too quick to dismiss. Douthat said, "when intellectuals stopped taking mystical experiences seriously, actual human beings kept on having the experiences." These include experiences like miracles or near-death experiences, many of which are well-documented. I recently read a book called "After" by Bruce Greyson that discusses near-death experiences of many different people and recommend that book.
The rest of the book is spent talking about finding a religion that you can believe in. He takes a general overview of all the world religions and what to look for before. His attitude is that taking the first steps towards some kind of belief is better than remaining a religious skeptic and not doing anything at all. He ends by talking specifically about his own religion. He says he believes in Jesus because the story of Jesus has all the hallmarks of being a true story. Douthat 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)
Comments
Post a Comment