Believe: Why Everyone Should be Religious

Ross Douthat has produced one of the most generous and encouraging books I’ve read on religion. He has written for everyone: the atheist, the agnostic, the spiritual and all religious practitioners. He believes that we are missing something deeply profound in our lives when we don’t pursue a religious life, and validates the lives of those of us who have taken that journey.

And I believe him.

Let me speak to the tone or attitude that Douthat applies to his writing. He is a compassionate soul, anticipating the resistance, challenges, rejections and annoyance that his writing may encounter. And he doesn’t argue with those reactions. He simply speaks with reason and empathy, understanding that no matter where people are on the religious and spiritual spectrum, their positions shouldn’t stop them from pursuing a religious practice.

Early in the book he talks about the scientific resistance to religion, which runs from ambivalence to outright rejection. He talks about the limitations of Darwinism; the difficulties of trying to tie everything to material existence; and then points out the missing explanations for how we function:

There seems to be no conceivable causal model, of the sort credible to modern scientific method, that could seamlessly, intelligibly explain to us how the electrochemistry of the brain, which is mechanically uniform and physically causal, could generate the unique, varied, and incommunicable experience of a particular person’s inner phenomenal world.

Philosophers like David Hume assure us that our spiritual experiences are bogus:

In his famous case for presumptively disbelieving in all miracles, the Scottish philosopher David Hume argued that with any supposed witness to the supernatural, however credible they might otherwise appear, it’s always more likely that they are either credulous or lying than that a supernatural event has actually occurred.

David Hume speaks for many philosophers and intellectuals today. The irony, Douthat points out is the following:

Once you concede that the universe might be a bit more than just a collision of atoms doing meaningless expansions and contractions, you are not standing alone next to an enigmatic aurochs, staring with bafflement into its inhuman eyes. No, you are standing in the same place that generations of human beings have found themselves before: at the beginning of a journey, a quest, a pilgrim’s progress, that you have good reason to believe is going somewhere quite important, somewhere of ultimate significance.

I couldn’t help but believe that Douthat was inviting us to join an irresistible expedition where others have gone and discovered a resource deeply valuable to their lives.

To digress for a moment, if you know me, you might wonder why I was attracted to this book. At this time, I have found my home in Judaism; I am not an orthodox practitioner, but I have found so many rewards by participating in this faith. Just like Douthat who began his religious journey as a Protestant, I started in a less-than-orthodox Judaism. But I discovered Buddhism and even practiced Buddhism for 20 years. I realized, however, that my true home was in Judaism, that the Jewish religion filled my spirit and deepened my life; Douthat found his way to Catholicism and is fully grounded in it, although he has questions that he explores. I got the impression that his exploration did not limit his practice but expanded upon it.

He also encouraged people to continue to investigate, even if they had not found their spiritual home, or it didn’t answer all their questions:

My argument in the preceding chapters, and throughout this book, is that the basic justifications for a religious worldview are readily accessible to a reasonable human being—that the universe isn’t really hiding the ball from us when it comes to cosmic order and human exceptionalism and even supernatural happenings, and that modern nonbelief often amounts to an attempt to hide the ball from ourselves.

He also provides a practical and encouraging perspective on the diversity of faiths:

Similarly, today’s seeker, looking out across a diverse religious landscape, doesn’t need to assume that there exists one lonely truth, potentially so tucked away and hidden that most searchers are doomed to wander perpetually in realms of utter falsehood. Rather the seeker should assume that there exist less true and more-true schools of thought, and that they’re looking for the truest religious school within a continuum where many options have some validity, some connection to the ultimate reality being sought.

So many points touched me in Douthat’s appeal to those who are uncertain about their spiritual journeys. His explanations for the resistance of science; his sympathy for those who have had a difficult history with religion; his down-to-earth description of the mystical experience (and how he has not had huge openings in his own life, but trusts in the experiences of others).

He makes the point that just getting started is definitely worthwhile:

But the starting place is what we’re interested in here—finding the most natural doorway into a serious religion, and discovering where the path leads next. . .

Your choice might be the wrong one ultimately but the right one for you in that moment, or the wrong one but with enough that’s right in it to make an important difference in your life.

One belief that I share with Douthat is that religion provides a path in life that is rewarding and fulfilling in a way that no other endeavor can. It will test our intellect, satisfy our spirit, build our relationships, and allow us to make a connection to the One who has created us all.

Thanks, Ross Douthat, for a sincere, thoughtful and inspiring invitation.