Why Religion is Right – Book Review

Readers, this is very different from our typical blog as it is much longer and approaches issues we’ve not addressed before – namely by examining a book that posits the truth of certain religious claims. I will aim below to explain the book’s key arguments and also, drawing on decades of hearing these conversations and debates, try to assess its strengths and offer the kinds of possible counterarguments I think it might raise. The book is excellent so, if you’re interested, enjoy. If not, our next blog will return to the regular format. 

Ross Douthat, a conservative Catholic columnist at the New York Times has written a fascinating book called Believe: Why Everyone Should be Religious. I don’t usually read titles like this as the arguments are often predictable but Douthat is a super smart guy and a unique writer – probably no conservative writer has more liberal readers than he does. This stems partly from his intellectual generosity – he can describe both positions he holds and those he doesn’t with fairness and insight. I hope to return the favour. Below, I will try to cover the book’s pivotal opening three chapters and then, try to imagine the responses a skeptic (say a potential naturalist or atheist opponent) might venture. I hope you find this interesting.

Context

Douthat’s target audience is liberals who believe religion has a lot to offer (e.g. community, rituals, social justice efforts) but find they simply cannot believe that it’s true. His argument, put succinctly, is that religion being true is the best rational conclusion. So, this is not “religion is good for you” (though he thinks it is) but rather, religion is more reasonable than disbelief. 

Also, while Douthat is a Catholic (with a Pentecostal upbringing), his book makes a broader claim that religion generally has the stronger argument than non-belief even if you don’t find Catholicism or Christianity compelling. He believes the main religions share enough that even if you think one is truer (as he does), the others still move you closer along the path to truth.

The whole book is interesting, but I’ll focus on just the first three chapters where he gives his three rational cases to believe. At the end, I will briefly turn the tables and add two challenges that I think his work brings to mind.

Design

Douthat opens by challenging that the story we are told of the scientific revolutions wrought by Copernicus and Darwin is wrong. Both thinkers destabilized existing religious beliefs by undermining long-held assumptions. But Douthat contends that, in the long run, the more complicated universe they revealed actually makes the case for an intelligent agent stronger rather than weaker.

Douthat cites a physicist who outlines eleven incredible coincidences that make our lives and universe possible. Two examples have stunning details worth recounting:

1. The cosmological constant, the speed at which the universe expands, “sits in a range that has roughly a 1 in 10 to the 120th power chance of occurring randomly” (27). That is obviously incredibly unlikely and yet, were it stronger or weaker, the universe would either fly apart or collapse in on itself.
2. If the nuclear force that binds protons and neutrons were fractionally stronger or weaker – and “fraction” here means something incredibly small, specifically the equivalent of “moving less than one inch on a ruler the size of the universe itself” (27) – there would either be no hydrogen (and thus no water) or no chemical compounds. Either would preclude human life.

Douthat contends that physicists know these unbelievable odds look crazy. How can that be just random chance? He quotes astrophysicist Fred Hoyle who, despite being an atheist, says that “‘a commonsense interpretation of the facts’” is that a “’superintellect has monkeyed with physics’” (28).

Douthat also argues that the fuller understanding of the universe that science has given us makes us seem uniquely special. That if Copernicus showed us we were wrong to think earth was the centre of the universe, our newer, clearer understanding of the universe makes it even more convincing that we are somehow central to the purpose of the universe since we are the only known intelligent thing in it.

Douthat also wades lightly into quantum physics where there is a prevalent theory (the Copenhagen Theory) that reality cannot exist without an observer. It’s a strange theory that is hard for us non-physicists to grab. In short, it suggests that sub-atomic particles exist in a state of potential and reality only occurs (amongst many potential realities) when these sub-atomic particles are, in some way, observed. Scientists find it a bit spooky but it might suggest that reality needs an observer to exist. For theists, this sure sounds like God.

Douthat grants that none of the issues above specifically require the Abrahamic God he affirms. But he thinks scientists who strictly “trust the science” (33) should be deists or pantheists, as these views suggest that some intelligence is ordering the universe but allow scientists to continue disregarding any revelations or miracles that violate science’s rules. 

This chapter is very compelling – the mathematical odds are mind-boggling – and it is probably the strongest chapter in the book. So, is there room here for any sensible counterarguments?

As scientists have been faced with these incredible statistical odds, they have responded to these findings by positing a multiverse where there are potentially an unimaginable number of universes. Essentially, all those flawed universes where we cannot exist (because that universe flies apart or there’s no water, etc.) actually all exist. We just can’t see them so ours seems like a miracle. Create enough universes and eventually the one-in-a-billion miracle is statistically likely to occur.

The problem, however, is that scientists have scant actual evidence for this theory, In fact, they may never have any, as other universes are hard to detect from this one by definition. Some critics claim that the theory of the multiverse isn’t scientific at all as it is not falsifiable. Indeed, it can sound like the kind of metaphysical speculations one finds in religion that scientists often condemn. 

Douthat finds the multiverse explanation desperate. He compares it to how, pre-Copernicus, people who tracked the movement of the stars designed bizarre explanations for why the stars did not seem to move the way they should if earth was the universe’s centre. Suggesting an uncountable number of unreachable universes seems to him far more grasping than the theist answer and also lacking its simplicity. Plus, what creates this super-complex multiverse if you ever find it?

This last point (that ultimately there must be a creator of all this) is an issue that cuts both ways. Whether you’re a theist, a naturalist, or something else, you simply cannot start with nothing. Even an all-powerful deity lacks (oddly) one power – namely to create themselves. That something exists (a deity, a cosmic seed, some pre-universe matter) instead of truly nothing seems to be a case of good fortune, no matter how you spin it.

As for Douthat’s design argument, skeptics will contend that this is an example of the classic God of the gaps argument. Namely, that when we have gaps in our knowledge, humans routinely explain this gap by pointing to a god. If science later finds an explanation, then the next unsolved mystery is what is pointed to as evidence of divinity. But in fairness, the god of the gaps criticism works best when we simply “don’t know.” Applying the critique here against Douthat is less convincing, however, because of the near statistical impossibility that the universe is random. It’s not just that we don’t know – it’s that the math makes a very strong case that the universe cannot be an accident.

A slightly more sophisticated version of this argument goes like this. When humans have encountered unexplainable mysteries in life or the universe, we often create answers that are straightforward and agent-driven. Thus, in earlier times: an earthquake showed the gods were angry; illness was a divine curse, a demonic possession, or a witch’s spell; and the universe originated from a cosmic mating couple or Yahweh speaking. 

Conversely, when scientific answers finally emerge, these answers show a different pattern. Specifically, they tend to be tremendously complex and non-agent-driven. The earthquake stems from enormous tectonic plates moving infinitesimally small amounts (you cannot sense it) over a floating magma core until the plates slip a thousand miles away. Illness is caused by invisible germs infecting invisible cells in your body. And the Big Bang boggles the mind. All agent-less and ridiculously complicated to a pre-scientific-age person.

Given how odd the Big Bang or cell biology would have sounded a thousand years ago, is it possible that a multiverse – or some other seemingly bizarre idea that maybe even our top physicists cannot grasp – might explain those unimaginably long odds? It might. But there’s no doubt that the unlikely statistics Douthat highlights (he describes them as those “excruciatingly carefully chosen values” (28)) really do blow the mind. At least for now, science is left reaching for explanations that lack much evidence to support them.

Above, Douthat made another point, namely that our uniqueness as the only known intelligent life in the universe suggests that we must be central to the universe’s purpose. How you feel about this claim may be a matter of taste. You can understand Douthat’s point, but there are two issues. One is that human life often seems irrelevant to the universe. Prior to modern science, perhaps a quarter of humans did not make their first birthday and about half died by their teen years. While Douthat (and others) point to the universe’s complexity to posit a creator, you could conceivably argue the reverse: namely, that it is too complicated. Why purposely create DNA with its many terrible problems? Perhaps there’s more room to argue that we as a species must matter, but it feels uphill to claim the universe values us as individuals. 

The second issue in arguing that we are central to the universe’s purpose is that the math here reverses itself. Many of you have heard the time-scale analogy that if the universe was 24 hours long, we appear with only four seconds left (and most of that is prehistoric hunter-gatherers). And if you calculate how much space we occupy in the universe, you get mind-blowing math similar to what we saw above. In short, if we are central to the universe’s purpose, why have we only shown up in the last 0.00005% of the time the universe has been around? And why create such unimaginably vast space if our remote planet is the point? Douthat might counter that time and space are irrelevant to a transcendent mind but there’s no avoiding that whereas the story in Genesis centres us (we’re made on day six and the whole Bible focuses on us), the story of astrophysics is how tiny, recent and irrelevant we are to the universe. 

Douthat’s argument regarding design is very strong, but the second part about our significance seems to offer more opportunities for rebuttal.

 

The Mind

Turning to the mind, Douthat highlights two big issues. 

THE HARD PROBLEM

Philosopher David Chalmers, thirty years ago, famously described consciousness as a “hard problem.” For those studying the brain, the easy problems were tracking how certain chemicals impact our mood or watching parts of the brain light up on MRIs while we engage in some task. But none of this remotely explains how these inputs create an experience. Put differently, Chalmers said someone who knew everything there is to know about how the brain perceives colour would still have no grasp of “red” until they saw it. 

Douthat conveys well how weird consciousness is. It seems to violate, almost spectacularly, all the laws of physics and chemistry. How can you get thought from proteins and electrons firing? To bring this point home, Douthat (48) quotes a neuroscientist who told him that a “cruel parlor trick” is to ask a neuroscientist to describe how the brain works. Once they finish, ask them to do it again but without describing locations (i.e. the frontal cortex does X or the amygdala does Y). The point was that once the expert has to move beyond mapping what region does what, they have virtually nothing to say about how any of it happens. How does a neuron firing cause you to think of how much you care for your grandma? Consciousness is an “unexplained anomaly,” that Douthat says seems simply “super-physical” (53) or, to use a more familiar term, supernatural. 

As for AI, Douthat contends that while it looks like thought it isn’t. It does not experience belonging nor ponder and hold a thought unexpressed. 

Douthat notes that scientists often suggest consciousness is an example of “emergence.” Emergence is the scientific observation that when things are combined in nature, new qualities sometimes “emerge” that you would not expect based on the inputs. Douthat uses a car example to illustrate emergence, but a better example might be water. No analysis of water’s constituent parts (hydrogen and oxygen) would lead you to anticipate that their combination can create a liquid at room temperature which, by the way, is a universal solvent, and also has the quality of surface tension. The combination yields new qualities that seem unrelated to the constituent parts.

Douthat thinks using emergence to explain consciousness is grasping at straws. The water example still has a physical and chemical thing doing physical and chemical things. With consciousness however, he finds the explanation akin to “some kind of ghostly summoning.” Science is still stuck saying that suddenly, poof, there is consciousness and Douthat asks how this differs from positing a soul. Philosopher Thomas Nagel claims that consciousness “still seems like magic” (56, italics in original). For Douthat, the obvious conclusion is that something beyond physics and chemistry is responsible for consciousness. The logical conclusion, he suggests, is that a super consciousness is at work.

THE KEY FITS THE LOCK

The apparent miracle that consciousness comes from just chemicals is only part one of Douthat’s claim that our minds point to a higher being. The second piece of evidence is how our consciousness seems so well suited to understand our world. Evolution, he contends, should naturally create a mind good at hunting and avoiding predators. But what evolutionary pressure yielded a mind that could do mathematics and one day explore chemistry, physics, and consciousness itself? As Douthat summarizes:

It isn’t merely that the universe appears improbably fine-tuned to enable our existence. It’s that our own consciousness seems improbably capable when it comes to discovering that fine-tuning, like a key fitted to a lock (61, bolding added).

Our mind, he argues, seems designed specifically to contemplate and figure out this universe. He combines this with the multiverse argument above to say we now need to believe in two unlikely things: first in a multiverse and second, that in just one of these countless universes, an ape evolved, by random chance, that could understand that said multiverses might exist. He finds these coincidences a bit too much to be just coincidences.

Thus, he maintains that the conclusions we have been told to draw from science are backward. Rather than making religion seem ridiculous, science actually points to the idea that a Mind is orienting things just so.

Douthat’s two arguments on mind are intriguing and suggestive at several points. However, compared to the design argument above, his arguments on our minds may open more lines of questioning.

First, when Douthat highlights things we cannot grasp (like how does consciousness happen) he quickly suggests this indicates something beyond the physical and, hence, God. But when he highlights things we understand well (say, cell biology) he says our understanding shows how finely tuned our mind is to comprehend the universe – which indicates our intelligence has been designed by someone, thus also pointing to God. In short, whether the key of our mind fits the lock of the universe well (we understand) or poorly (we don’t), in both instances he concludes this is evidence for divinity.

Second, the god-of-the-gaps accusation finds more solid footing here (without those incredible odds we had above). It is a significant leap to say that since we don’t understand consciousness, this points to divinity. History provides innumerable examples where humans, confronted with the incomprehensible, figured the only possible answer was a spirit. 

Douthat counters that the gap between physical matter and experiential consciousness is different in kind than those other earlier problems, say regarding volcanoes or eclipses. But wouldn’t an eclipse at one point (that unparalleled event in the heavens itself!) have seemed different in kind? Or if someone showed Isaac Newton that light could bend and time could speed up or slow down, would he not have found that so beyond nature’s laws that it definitively showed God’s intervention? That a patent clerk named Einstein would, centuries later, show that gravity bends light and tremendous speed warps time was just unimaginable nonsense in Newton’s time. 

Part of what Douthat attempts here is to separate consciousness (to a degree) from the physical. Of course, he recognizes that our thinking depends on our brains, but the physical, he contends, cannot fully account for it (it’s super-physical). But elsewhere, when he acknowledges that physical substances like LSD and caffeine can impact cognition, he breezes past this rather quickly. Thus, Douthat: i) finds it miraculous that physical things can cause consciousness but then ii) seems to find it mundane that other physical things can so dramatically alter consciousness. Questions arise here. What do we make of the “super-physical” nature of consciousness when we watch Alzheimer’s? This devastating disease is just a mundane buildup of proteins and yet it can turn a loving grandma into an angry, foul-mouthed person who does not recognize her own children. This speaks to how profoundly physical thinking is. And if one’s consciousness is one day freed of its physical constraints (which Douthat anticipates), will it still benefit from the stability granted by bi-polar medication or will it return to what it was like before such physical interventions? This separation that he is attempting is tricky.

Scientist and science-writer Nick Lane contends in his book Life Ascending. that much scholarship on our minds claims that emotions are the real key to consciousness (hence computers can master language, logic, mathematics and memory but not be conscious) (236-244). Emotions, however, are not merely cognitive but stem profoundly from the body. You physically feel stress, excitement, and calm and your brain registers all those physical sensations, both consciously and subconsciously. These bodily maps of feeling, the argument goes, are central to consciousness. If true, this makes consciousness not oddly physical but intrinsically and necessarily physical. What is fear without a quickening pulse and a throat tightening? How would a disembodied consciousness even work?

Lane contributes an additional intriguing insight. The brain is odd because it is comprised of nerves but it does not feel itself. It has no pain receptors which is why you can remain comfortably awake during your brain surgery. As a result, while you feel your stomach churning, your lungs gasping, your heart racing, and your muscles moving…you cannot feel your brain working at all. This makes our thoughts feel uniquely disembodied, like they have appeared from nowhere. He speculates this sensation – that our thoughts are not connected to anything physical that we can feel in our bodies – might be the basis of spirituality (255-6).

Douthat’s second argument regarding our minds was that our minds seem perfectly designed as if to understand the universe. The key fits the lock so well that it does not seem like chance that we have such amazing comprehension. His argument is well done but arguably an equally strong case can be made in reverse. Douthat sees a key that fits very snugly but a different temperament might ponder (or lament) how often the key seems to fit so poorly. In 2025, our comprehension of the universe truly is incredible but we must guard against presentism. Our ancestors often understood very little. How terrible it was for so many to be killed by germs that you cannot see (the key not fitting the lock), to have most of your community erased by an unpredictable volcanic eruption (which again, your mind has no way to predict), or to birth a severely handicapped child. Life can be hard but not knowing why is a separate kind of terror for those confronting tragedy. 

Unfortunately, not knowing is so terrible that reasons were often invented that made the harm worse. Thus the child’s deformity must reflect a divine curse for the mother’s sins; a human sacrifice will appease the volcano spirit to spare the community; and the Black Death must be Jewish sorcery and so, the Jews must pay. Until recently, the history of medicine is a farce of incomprehension where, even a few centuries, ago, European “doctors” bled patients with leeches. As for someone living 30,000 years ago, they existed in layers of unknowing. A “key fits the lock” account will likely need to grapple more with how much uncountable suffering would have been prevented if only our mental key fit the lock of the physical universe a bit better. 

 

The Myth of Disenchantment

Douthat’s third argument opens with a compelling story. In the early 2010’s, a German woman moves to America to marry her fiancé. She brings a broken 1978 radio that belonged to her deceased grandfather whom she loved and who acted as her surrogate dad. The fiancé tries everything to fix the radio but fails. On their wedding day, music is heard from the back of the house. Shockingly, the radio, in a drawer, has turned on. It started during the actual ceremony and it plays romantic music and classical music all night. By morning, it is dead and never works again. If you’re rolling your eyes, there is a kicker: the fiancé who tells the story is Michael Shermer, a famous atheist and editor of Skeptical Inquirer. 

Douthat uses this example as but one entry to demonstrate the “resilience of the supernatural.” He shares that scientific minds of previous centuries thought supernatural accounts would die away as science advanced. However, this has not happened as any Pentecostal healing service or the surging sales of crystals will show you. Across cultures and time, religious experiences are “a constant in human affairs” (71).

Douthat delineates different types of mystical or supernatural experiences. Some are a general unifying mysticism, a sense of oneness and peace that scientists can comfortably accommodate (atheist Sam Harris recommends meditation partly because it fosters these positive experiences). Others, however, bring an overpowering presence which can be positive or negative (Douthat believes in the demonic as well as God). Most troubling for the skeptic is the miraculous such as Shermer’s radio story or the story told by Dr. Tanya Luhrmann. Luhrmann, an accomplished anthropologist, was immersing herself in a Neopagan community as part of her PhD work and reading a dense philosophical New Age text on the train when, suddenly, she felt a surge of power, a tremendous sense of clarity, and a euphoria she had not experienced before. She then saw smoke in her backpack and found one of her bicycle lights was melting. (I should acknowledge I have interviewed Luhrmann though not about the bike light).

Douthat anticipates and addresses some common counterarguments. For example, some have challenged that mystical experiences must be manmade because they fit our cultural preconceptions. Indians see Krishna while the Portuguese see the Virgin Mary. Douthat simply interprets this as the divine speaking in a language the person would grasp. He also maintains that despite cultural variation, there is also a surprising degree of consistency across cultures. Near-death experiences (NDEs), he claims, often involve a very prevalent light and out-of-body experiences. Given cross-cultural similarities of NDEs, Douthat suggests the similarities suggest a cause beyond the variability of human culture. 

Skeptics will also claim that disbelievers don’t have these experiences but Douthat says this is false – that researchers who catalogue such experiences find many who did not believe in such experiences until it happened to them. It happens far more to those open to it but Douthat suggests this is unsurprising as openness to anything (say romantic love) makes us more likely to find it. He also believes clinical studies that attempt to prove or disprove these experiences will fail partly because there is an agent on the other side (a spirit, dead ancestor, etc.) who might not accede to being measured and, additionally, because, like calculating who you will fall in love with, science has limits. 

What challenges might these claims raise? First, everyone, including Douthat, accepts that people can imagine these things and maybe are even prone to do so. This certainly does not prove that every case is false, but that many are and that we are susceptible to them undermines our confidence somewhat.

A second issue is what to do with the fact that these experiences can be manufactured by drugs like LSD, through holotropic breathing, and, unfortunately, via mental illness. Douthat contends that it is consistent with a supernatural worldview that drugs or techniques might open us to these realities (95). It’s a fair point and one shared by many traditional societies. For some though, this will risk sounding more trippy than Truth.

This chapter is provocative in what it says about the mind, regardless of your personal conclusions. Luhrmann fascinates me (hence why I interviewed her) as in another story while immersed in those Neopagan practices, she woke up one morning to find Druids at her window. You might wonder if she’s just unmoored but she reflected and studied quite deeply on what was going on with her (and others also who were doing these practices as they considered joining the community and who similarly had unusual experiences). She used this to launch an impressive academic career studying our minds and years later, managed in one month to create anomalous experiences with more than a quarter of her student subjects (who had no such prior experiences) using just a 30 minute daily listening exercise. It doesn’t work with everyone – there is a kind of talent for it that you can test for –and training matters (she compares it to any skill in that it combines talent and training). But does the training manifest real spirits or Druids, or are you imagining them?

Equally strange is the case of Derren Brown. An illusionist and atheist, Brown uses his grasp of psychology and the power of suggestion to do shocking things. In his Netflix show Miracle he tells people up front he is fooling them while seemingly helping one audience member to be able to read without her glasses and to heal another from pain. How does someone experience a pain disappearing when they are being told they are being tricked? In a separate event, he poses as a Christian preacher (this time hiding his real identity which raises ethical issues) and recruits a small room of people who disbelieve in God. He then manages to convince perhaps half the room that God is real in a single evening by slaying them in the spirit. Most puzzlingly, one man responds to Brown’s gestures even when Brown is behind him and the man cannot see what Brown is doing. This is not to imply the events Douthat relates are tricks but rather that our minds are mysterious. 

None of this addresses Michael Shermer’s radio or Luhrmann’s bicycle light. What to make of that? Skeptics typically respond with the law of large numbers. In short, we evolved to understand small numbers like five apples or a hundred bison. Big numbers escape our grasp. But in seventy years of living, you will experience about 2 billion seconds (or instants). That is a lot. If a billion mundane moments pass by (with nothing miraculous), you don’t really notice. But if one day, a one-in-a-billion event occurs – you thought of someone you’ve not considered in decades, only to later find out they died that day – you are likely to believe it’s a miracle. In addition, we share these events over and over granting you access to other people’s 2 billion moments (do you know Michael Shermer?) meaning you might hear of an event that’s one in 200 billion. Do you find this convincing? It may rest on your own inclinations.

 

Flipping the Script

Douthat assembles a persuasive account to challenge the naturalist worldview. With Douthat directing the conversation, the materialist perspective naturally only plays defense in the book. But in reading it, a couple significant issues kept coming up and so, below, I will outline them both. One is common, though I hope to add some novel nuances, but the other seems rarely raised despite being quite relevant.  

   1.  COMMUNICATION AND CONCEALMENT

As Douthat lays out the evidence for religion being true, he states repeatedly that you should believe that the intelligence that designed the universe is not out to fool you. This raises some interesting questions around communication. Why do we debate religion so much? The simple yet profound answer is that the communication from deities seems to lack clarity. There may be good answers on this topic but let me outline the issue’s several facets:

• First is reach. Christianity has the greatest reach of any religion yet was unknown to everyone in the Americas prior to Columbus, almost all Chinese prior to 1900, and everyone in prehistory. Islam says Allah sent messengers to all peoples but, if true, that message seemed forgotten and unknown to those alive when Islam reached them. It’s a significant issue. Note that in responding to this issue, it is important again to guard against presentism (meaning centering of those of us alive today). You sometimes hear arguments along the lines of “we” as a species were not ready but now “we” have grown up. Such phrasing flatters us – the grownups who get enlightened – but it belittles our ancestors. They were not children and did not become us. A potential answer should treat all with dignity.
• Second is method. If Douthat is correct, a superintelligence created DNA and black holes but, in communicating the most critical message in history, sends solitary messengers who pass their truth to us via word of mouth. Sadly, these messengers rarely write things down. Newton and Einstein knew to write down their great truths as did Aristotle, but the Buddha, regrettably, did not. Douthat in his final chapter makes the case for Christianity, saying the gospels are reliable once you accept the normal errors of oral accounts that were written down sometime later. But Douthat acknowledges that many leave Christianity because they find the discrepancies in those accounts disqualifying. That a transcendent mind would choose this method of communication with something so critical seems strange. I suspect many Christians (and many non-Christians) would love to read Jesus as they can Paul.
• Douthat suggests that the supernatural also connects with us through powerful supernatural experiences. He makes a good case that such experiences permeate human history and are worthy of attention. But if this is the supernatural speaking to us, the medium again seems puzzling. Is there a credible account that explains the transcendent being’s reliance on experiences that are so fundamentally subjective, so inherently fraught, prone to misunderstanding, and vulnerable to even modest doubt?
• Finally, there is a vital passage in the Christian gospels when the apostle Thomas doubts Jesus’ resurrection. His doubts dissolve only when the risen Jesus appears to him and thereby provides proof. Then this powerful line: “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). Here is a pivotal moment in religiosity – that it is good, perhaps even moral to believe without compelling evidence. The claim is shared by multiple religions and much hangs on it – this kind of call helped spread some of our largest religions and its success or failure might possibly affect the eternal fate of billions. But why should one believe? This is not a judgement on any who believe but a curiosity – why does the cosmic mind want you to erase doubts when the scripture itself seems to grant there might be cause for them? Believing with partial evidence is not really a moral category (nor immoral) so why reward or punish something unrelated to virtue? 

These questions may seem silly and, as the Book of Job tells us, who are we to question God? Surely you can’t expect the cosmic mind to communicate like some effective manager who writes goals down and ensures everyone gets them? Yet, it is difficult to dismiss the questions too quickly for one poignant reason. The lack of clarity has engendered immense suffering. It continues to this day to hurtfully divide families, and to foster wars and genocides. What would Jewish history be if no one persecuted them for believing incorrectly? Can we imagine a world where the only question is whether to follow the divine message and not which message, if any, is right?

   2.  MORALITY

The second question that naturally occurs in reading the book is the age-old question of morality (why does God allow such suffering). Douthat anticipates the question and responds. 

He makes a three-fold case. He devotes the most energy to saying that God is simply greater and wiser than us and what looks terrible here may make sense “in the light of eternity” (156). In short, are we really equipped to judge the moral picture from the perspective of eternity? Second, he says if you do not buy this, you could ascent to a God who is not omnipotent as posited by what is called process theology. In process theology, the divine is all good but bad happens because this being does not have total power. Finally, Douthat says it is ironic that people who live the most destitute lives, folks far more familiar with suffering than educated Westerners, are typically the most religious. If actual suffering disproves God, why is that those who experience it the most tend to have the strongest belief?

With respect to his last point, sociologists have shown fairly convincingly using large international data, that this stems from “existential insecurity.” Simply put, people with lots of insecurity in their formative years turn to religion much more than those raised in relative safety (here and here). Religion genuinely provides comfort in cruel, frightening circumstances by offering hope both here (especially when there are few practical reasons for hope) and in the hereafter. This speaks well to religion’s usefulness but perhaps not as convincingly to its truth.

As for Douthat’s second response, a non-omnipotent god does address the question of evil well. It may, however, sit uncomfortably with the idea of a deity or mind who makes the universe. Does the deity make tectonic plates but cannot stop earthquakes and volcanoes? Similar questions arise about DNA and genetic illnesses. This isn’t impossible to square but there are tensions here.

Douthat’s major argument is the first one, a play on the Book of Job, that suggests we cannot likely grasp the larger moral play of the universe. Who are we after all? His claim has a certain logic and it is a time-honoured answer. But the persistence of this question, even among the devout, suggests the answer at best only partly works. 

When people raise the question of suffering in these debates, the evils cited are fairly common – childhood cancer or a natural disaster. However, there are darker, more insidious things that get less attention. One is psychopathy. It is disturbing because it is highly genetic, there is little that can be done about it given its biological foundation, and the condition makes one lack empathy, which is the very basis for morality. Why an omnipotent creator makes someone who is essentially incapable of empathy is a difficult question. Addiction is another issue where, again, there is a genetic predisposition for it. Addiction terribly robs the addict of their free will (free will is often given as an answer to why there is evil). And if you’ll permit a few sentences of something very dark, child sexual abuse. The perpetrators of such acts are responsible for their actions…but not for their appetites. By a low estimate, perhaps 100 million men on earth, upon hitting puberty, discovered this desire, unchosen by them. Some, mercifully, resist their desires their entire life but obviously millions do not. When a young child is violated early, it can for some cause a deep pit in them that they cannot address until, sadly, they finally find release in a drink or a drug. By age 15, they can be in such a hole that they will never recover. 

Douthat counters the question of earthly suffering by saying that it is hubris to think we can be ultimate judges. However, he also claims that morality has no foundation absent divinity, argued both in the book (155) and in a recent debate. These claims show a certain logic but sit somewhat uncomfortably side-by-side. First, Douthat argues that to escape moral relativism, we need religion. But then, is he not promoting a kind of relativism in suggesting that the horrific scenario described above will all make sense one day in a wider worldview? If it will one day make sense, does that mitigate how wrong it is? Is the suffering defensible as a kind of test, a larger plan, and if so, what are the ethics of that test?

In Sonali Derniyagala’s memoir, Wave: A Memoir of Life After the Tsunami, she recounts the devastation of losing her husband, both sons, and her parents in the 2004 tragedy that killed over 200,000. Sadly, she is not alone in burying a child or children. Throughout history, many have done this. Some (not all) religions posit that in the most fundamental way, Derniyagala’s children are safe and perhaps even happy. Yet, puzzlingly, she cannot see them to know this is true. Some receive a sense one day, maybe while washing the dishes, that their loved ones might be well but others, desperately, never do. 

I close with this because it connects the two questions of concealment and morality. Douthat insists the divine will not mislead us but death, if not final, could seem quite deceptive. It is powerfully persuasive, involving so many senses – we feel the body go cold, see the decay, and soon cannot bear the smell. You watch everything die from plants to pets to your papa. We adapt to some deaths but others leave survivors devastated. For many, it might help to have a persuasive account that explains why the concealment and why this is morally just.

In fairness to Douthat, the morality question is possibly the hardest. It has endured for centuries and likely will for many more.

 

Conclusion

I highly recommend Douthat’s book. Whether you are new to these questions or familiar with them, I suspect you will find his work thought-provoking. His most compelling case is that the universe looks designed by some kind of intelligence. His further claims that the universe is made for us, that consciousness is super-physical, and the moral arguments all invite more critique but Douthat makes his case well on all fronts and invites more thoughtful counterarguments. 

I hope you found this summary interesting. Religion is an enormously rich topic that gets at fundamental questions about ultimate reality, about the good, and our purpose here. It’s tricky to discuss it well but doing so, I think, helps all of us ponder life’s big questions and can even help us live better and understand one another more fully.

If you have thoughts on the above, feel free to share them below.