Charles Murray holds the F.A. Hayek chair emeritus in cultural studies at the American Enterprise Institute and is the author, most recently, of “Taking Religion Seriously.”
One of the good things about social media — I’m active on X — is that you get feedback from many people quickly. In my case, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from people who are appalled that I recently published a book about my slow evolution from agnosticism to an eccentric Christianity.
Charles Murray holds the F.A. Hayek chair emeritus in cultural studies at the American Enterprise Institute and is the author, most recently, of “Taking Religion Seriously.”
One of the good things about social media — I’m active on X — is that you get feedback from many people quickly. In my case, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from people who are appalled that I recently published a book about my slow evolution from agnosticism to an eccentric Christianity.
Many of the reactions are incredulous. Don’t I know that smart people don’t believe that stuff anymore? How could I betray a life’s work grounded in empiricism and logical argument? Others speculate that I’m getting old and am afraid of dying — “he’s cramming for the final,” as one wit put it. Others suspect early Alzheimer’s.
Common to many of these reactions is the assumption that people who hold deep religious beliefs are deluding themselves. I shared that position from my late teens through my 40s. But since my 40s, I’ve had an advantage: I have been married to a woman who has an extraordinary intellect and is thoroughly self-aware, not deluding herself about anything, who moved from agnosticism to spiritual insights that I could not doubt were genuine.
Until my 40s, I had no exposure to such people. None of my work colleagues were openly religious. I didn’t attend church, so I had none of the social interactions that are part of being a member of a congregation. Among my circles of friends, the subject of religion rarely came up. When it did, it was treated dismissively or pejoratively.
If, like me, you have an advanced degree, attended an elite university, work in academia or the public policy world, or, unlike me, are politically progressive, how closely does my experience resemble yours? How much exposure have you had to people with deep religious beliefs?
Here’s my first proposition: It is impossible to be around many such people and still think there’s nothing to it. They exhibit too much evidence of spiritual nourishment. If I wanted the same nourishment, I had no choice but to take religion seriously. If you can broaden your exposure to spiritually engaged people, I submit that you are likely to come to the same conclusion.
But you may share another of my characteristics: a perceptual deficit when it comes to things spiritual, which prompts my second proposition. Spiritual perceptiveness is a human trait like the ability to appreciate music. It varies from low to high. At the extremes, some people are tone deaf. But even short of that, some people listen to great music without being able to appreciate its true power and emotion no matter how hard they try. The same is true of spirituality. I am unable take the route my wife took.
That presents a problem if you become convinced there’s something important you’re missing out on. Without consciously planning it, I stumbled into a work-around by deploying the skill sets that I do possess. I applied empiricism to religion.
Many developments in science over the past century, from cosmology to studies of consciousness, bear on religious issues and can be examined by evaluating the strength of the evidence. I’m not claiming that empiricism can prove the existence of God, but rather that exploring these topics can enrich the way you think about the universe and your place in it, independently of any specific religion. I also found that much in Christianity lends itself to close theological and historical examination. The more I read, the more impressed I was by the evidence, leading eventually to my self-identification as a Christian, albeit unorthodox.
Focusing on empirical questions and historicity is a more arid approach to religion than the spiritually perceptive can employ. It produces second-best results. As I watch my wife and her friends, I still feel left out of the party. But for me, second-best has nonetheless been rewarding. That’s why, after more than a quarter-century of my haphazard journey, I decided that I had a story worth telling to my companions on the left-hand side of the spirituality bell curve.
The post I’m an academic who found religion. The responses have been interesting.
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