Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

by Alister E. McGrath

In today’s science-driven, rational world, belief is dismissed as an artefact of a bygone era – something absurd at best, harmful at worst. The prevailing narratives paint belief as primitive, weird, even dangerous.

But as life grows ever more confusing and our societies more atomised, contemplating something bigger than ourselves has never been more vital.

Alister McGrath offers a fresh perspective on belief, presenting it not as a weakness of rational thought but as an essential tool for navigating uncertainty.

Genres: Philosophy

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 23, 2025

About the author

Alister Edgar McGrath is a Northern Irish theologian, priest, intellectual historian, scientist, and Christian apologist. He currently holds the Andreas Idreos Professorship in Science and Religion in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford, and is Professor of Divinity at Gresham College. He was previously Professor of Theology, Ministry, and Education at King's College London and Head of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture, Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Oxford, and was principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, until 2005. He is an Anglican priest and is ordained within the Church of England.

Aside from being a faculty member at Oxford, McGrath has also taught at Cambridge University and is a Teaching Fellow at Regent College. McGrath holds three doctorates from the University of Oxford, a DPhil in Molecular Biophysics, a Doctor of Divinity in Theology and a Doctor of Letters in Intellectual History.

McGrath is noted for his work in historical theology, systematic theology, and the relationship between science and religion, as well as his writings on apologetics. He is also known for his opposition to New Atheism and antireligionism and his advocacy of theological critical realism. Among his best-known books are The Twilight of Atheism, The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine, Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life, and A Scientific Theology. He is also the author of a number of popular textbooks on theology.

Reviews

[Alfred van de Weg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read!

Alister McGrath biedt een zinnig en overtuigend perspectief op geloof en presenteert het niet als een zwakte van rationeel denken, maar als een essentieel hulpmiddel om met onzekerheid om te gaan. Ik ken geen ander boek dat zo respectvol andere meningen en overtuigingen weergeeft. Dit boek laat zien hoe geloven betekenis geeft, zelfs in het licht van existentiële wanhoop, hoe het gemeenschap bevordert en troost biedt.

[Maher Razouk · Rating 5 out of 5]

الحكمة
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تشير الدراسات التجريبية الحديثة لطبيعة الحكمة البشرية إلى أن إحدى قدراتها الأساسية تتمثل في القدرة على الجمع بين طرق التفكير المتضاربة المحتملة في توتر إبداعي. في حين أنه لا يوجد تعريف متفق عليه للحكمة ، فمن الواضح أن التعريف المشترك هو أنها قاعدة المعرفة العميقة التي تمكن من العيش الهادف، وخاصة التعامل مع التعقيد والغموض. في حين يرى البعض أن تنوع المعتقدات غير متماسك بطبيعته ومتناقض مع ذاته، فإن الشخص الحكيم يدرك أنه يتعين علينا تعلم كيفية رؤية عالمنا وتأطير تجاربنا من وجهات نظر متعددة، بدلاً من أن ننظر إليها من منظور محدود أو نموذج تحكمي واحد.

إننا في حاجة على أقل تقدير إلى أن نكون قادرين على رسم خريطة للرؤى التي نعتز بها، سواء كان بوسعنا دمجها أم لا. ومن الممكن أن يبدأ خليط من المعتقدات والقيم في تشكيل لبنات بناء الحكمة، حتى ولو ظل السؤال حول كيفية تنسيقها مفتوحاً. وفي رأيي، كان سقراط محقاً في اقتراحه أن الشخص الحكيم يدرك جهله، وبالتالي فهو منفتح على التعلم من الآخرين؛ وهو الذي أدرك أن الواقع معقد، فلا يحاول فرض كل شيء في قالب مسبق التصور؛ وهو يعترف بالقدرة المحدودة للعقل البشري، ولا يقيد الواقع بما يمكننا إثباته عقلانياً.

قبول "وجهات النظر المتباينة، والذي يستلزم فضيلة التعاطف الفكري والاستعداد لاحتضان الآخرين والتعلم منهم، يُذكر الآن باعتباره جانباً رئيسياً من جوانب الحكمة. فكيف يمكن إذن أن يرتبط هذا بالمعتقدات؟ النقطة الأساسية هنا هي أن التعاطف الفكري يمكّننا من اكتساب بصيرة عن مشاعر ومعتقدات الآخرين - لفهم سبب اعتقادهم في أشياء معينة، والفارق الذي يحدثه هذا في حياتهم، وما إذا كان هذا الاعتقاد، عندما نفهمه على النحو الصحيح، شيئاً قد نرغب في الاستحواذ عليه ودمجه في طرق تفكيرنا الخاصة. تتطلب الحكمة التواضع، وإدراك أن وجهة نظرنا ليست هي الوحيدة. ومن خلال الانخراط في وجهات نظر عالمية متنافسة، نصل إلى أحكام حكيمة حول أفضل السبل لفهم هذا العالم والعيش وفقًا لذلك.
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Alister McGrath
Why We Believe
Translated By #Maher_Razouk

[Maelen · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author is a typical example of what might be called the British approach to apologetics. Unlike the bare-knuckles bafflegab of such figures as Gregory Koukl, God's used car salesman, he tries very hard to appear subtle, urbane, and learned. Unfortunately, he tries so hard that he ends up unctuous, evasive, and oleaginous.

Part of this impression comes from his vague and uncertain grasp on terms. He begins by asking "Why believe?" This is weirdly beside the apologetic point; "believe" or even "faith" are very broad words and cannot be waved around like magic wands. It is not "belief" that I and many others are questioning; to move into the future at all, we have to "believe" in many things that we cannot logically prove. When I get out of bed, I "believe" that the floor beside my bed is solid and will support me. This is belief as a working hypothesis, but if it proves false, I have a crisis of architecture, not of faith. He is desperate to conflate this sort of hypothesis with "belief" in the imagined answers to such misty questions as "Why am I here?" Apples and oranges, sir. Apples and oranges.

He also tires us throughout the book with a sort of weary whining about how awful modern times are and how nasty critics of his favourite illusions have become. Richard Dawkins comes in for the usual ritual kickings; I think writers like this would be utterly lost without him. He complains that recently, by such persons, "conventions of thoughtful debate and personal civility were set to one side" (p. 5 Kindle edition). Does he really believe that his audience is that ignorant of how Christianity rose to become a major religion in the West? I don't care how thoughtful and civil my inquisitor might have been, I'd still rather not be burned alive, thank you very much. Religion, and Christianity, do not "spoil everything" as some over-enthusiastic critics have charged, but they have been unsuccessful in civilizing society and now have nearly two thousand years of failures behind them, a road decorated with torture, murder, larceny, and a God who sleeps through it all.

Later in the book, he complains that “many have failed to master the art of learning through disagreement” (p. 157). His examples of this failure do not include Tomás de Torquemada, who certainly had “very little tolerance for people with beliefs that they disagree with.” In fact, he was in the habit of building fires at their feet that would roast their genitals. Instead, he’s worried about young people who argue on the Net. Look on the bright side, professor. There’s very little chance they will burn you alive. (p. 157)

At one point, he remarks “So, what about science? Can it offer us universal and objective accounts of morality, or settle debates about cultural and social norms?” (p. 14) This is flatly dishonest. To begin with, that’s not what most science is designed to do. And I do think we can agree on some things being immoral – I presume the good professor is not going to get into a defence of rape, pedophilia, or slavery. Others require context; many others are simply matters of opinion on which anyone can hold a wide range of beliefs without disrupting society. The windy "ultimate questions" that he frets over are ultimately meaningless, verbal tricks to make something appear where nothing exists. Very few of us live in a Russian novel, wandering around lost muttering “why am I here?”

But his argument is really more offensive than that. He believes that “Moral viewpoints lie beyond proof and verification.” (p. 18) Then they cannot be saved by something as amorphous as “belief” or “faith.” He doesn't even believe that a logical case can be made against torture, despite all that we know about the corrupting and distorting effects of torture on both the tortured and the torturer, and its complete unreliability as a method of obtaining information, among other issues. It is a conclusion released on the basis of a multitude of observations which are considered reliable. It is appropriate, within English usage, to call something which has very many bad effects and no good ones “wrong” even if we take the moral dimension out of it entirely. Torture is in no sense a correct action, although many Christians in the past felt that it was both moral and just, creating a fatal belief in the impossible crime of witchcraft. (p. 21) The author's defence of “blind faith” is fatuous, since it was this very kind of faith that impelled Christians to torment and murder multitudes to prove that witchcraft and the pact with the devil was true. We do not need to go beyond what reason can prove in the quest for human flourishing. (p. 22) That way madness lies.

The author’s slipperiest, and most dangerous suggestion is that we just “try on” worldviews, since he is insistent that we cannot judge them unless we have lived them and seen things the way they see them. In other words, become a committed Christian and then judge whether it’s a good idea (pp. 102-104). But he also admits that taking on a worldview in this way will shape the reality we believe to be true. It boils down to a paradox: you cannot judge the truth of something unless you sincerely believe it to be true. That’s ridiculous and exposes his entire agenda: come to church, and check your brains at the door. “Conversion is about stepping into this new way of seeing reality, adopting a transforming paradigm through which things can be seen and interpreted afresh.” (p. 110) And with Christianity, it’s about accepting a deal that you can never prove, since you’ll be too dead to realize if you were cheated. I am beginning to see Christians as far more morally corrupt than Communists; Communists at least make their promises in a place that they can be checked. Christians ensure that you will never discover their fraud because by the time it becomes clear it is a fraud, you do not exist. (p. 110)

Like many apologists, he is very upset by science’s “Methodological Exclusion of the Transcendent,” which is absolutely necessary, not merely for scientific thought, but for all coherent thinking. For how do you gatekeep what is to be called truly transcendent and what is to be excluded? The three thousand and more gods that people have worshipped all demand a seat at the table. Good luck disentangling what came from Isis and what from the Jade Emperor! (p. 116) This is not a “premature closure of a potentially important conversation.” Unless you already have your preferred candidates for that “transcendent,” of course…. and are willing to overlook the fact that you can’t prove that anything was “transcended” at all. (p. 117)

Another point where he joins hands with other apologists is in a shallow exaltation of suffering: “…we seem to think that a meaningful life is about the evasion of pain. We feel we are entitled to avoid suffering and see its existence as an intellectual scandal.” (p. 144) It is very difficult here to avoid making the uncharitable observation that any just God who heard a statement like this would send the author a useful present, like a case of pancreatic cancer, so that he could try it on for himself. Isn’t that what he thinks is needed for a true appreciation of a situation?

And he quotes Jordan Peterson. Enough said. Scraping the bottom of the barrel is one thing, but here, he’s gone right into the dirt floor beneath it.

Late in the book, he attacks “Bolshevism,” and then cites Bertrand Russell’s judgment that it “is to be reckoned as a religion, not as an ordinary political movement.” (p. 170) With the innocence of the true believer, he doesn’t realize that he’s just shot himself in the foot. The Bolshies went after the Christian god because of the competition. This brings up a fatal flaw in his liking for Christianity: How can you have a cosmos-structure that is ruled by an absolute tyrant who can do anything he pleases, and then be surprised if lesser humans try to emulate that structure? God doesn’t have to run for the position. He can’t be voted out. He is the ultimate dictator and the ultimate model for dictators. And if God says he’s good and just and so on and so forth – well, don’t all dictators say that?

And this tired purveyor of platitudes is a professor at Oxford University.

Again, enough said. I rest my case.

[Bethan Edge · Rating 2 out of 5]

Way over my head. If you like academic writing, then this one’s for you. Not what I had expected at all, but can appreciate why others would love it.