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Taking Religion Seriously
"Millions are like me when it comes to well-educated and successful people for whom religion has been irrelevant,” Charles Murray writes. “For them, I think I have a story worth telling.” Taking Religion Seriously is Murray’s autobiographical account of a decades-long evolution in his stance toward the idea of God in general and Christianity specifically. He argues that religion is something that can be approached as an intellectual exercise. His account moves from the improbable physics of the Big Bang to recent discoveries about the nature of consciousness; from evolutionary psychology to hypotheses about a universal Moral Law. His exploration of Christianity delves into the authorship of the Gospels, the reliability of the texts that survive, and the scholarship surrounding the Resurrection story.
Murray, the author of Coming Apart and coauthor of The Bell Curve, does not write as an expert. “If you are taking religion seriously for the first time, you face the same problem I We are forced to decide what we make of a wide variety of topics that we do not have the option of mastering.” He offers his personal example of how the process works. “Maybe God needs a way to reach over-educated agnostics and that’s what I stumbled into,” he writes. “It’s a more arid process than divine revelation but it has been rewarding. And, if you’re like me, it’s the only game in town.”"
Murray, the author of Coming Apart and coauthor of The Bell Curve, does not write as an expert. “If you are taking religion seriously for the first time, you face the same problem I We are forced to decide what we make of a wide variety of topics that we do not have the option of mastering.” He offers his personal example of how the process works. “Maybe God needs a way to reach over-educated agnostics and that’s what I stumbled into,” he writes. “It’s a more arid process than divine revelation but it has been rewarding. And, if you’re like me, it’s the only game in town.”"
185 pages, Hardcover
First published October 14, 2025
About the author
Charles Murray
85 books587 followersCharles Alan Murray is an American libertarian conservative political scientist, author, and columnist. His book Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950–1980 (1984), which discussed the American welfare system, was widely read and discussed, and influenced subsequent government policy. He became well-known for his controversial book The Bell Curve (1994), written with Richard Herrnstein, in which he argues that intelligence is a better predictor than parental socio-economic status or education level of many individual outcomes including income, job performance, pregnancy out of wedlock, and crime, and that social welfare programs and education efforts to improve social outcomes for the disadvantaged are largely wasted.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
March 19, 2026
4 stars (= very good)
Murray, now 82 and long a member of the American intelligentsia, directs this book to those who feel the idea of God is unnecessary and outdated. Those who, like he once did, agree that “smart people don’t believe that stuff anymore.” He here humbly outlines his intellectual journey of discovery.
A nearly life-long secular materialist, he first began thinking deeply about these issues when he started pondering the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” It also struck him as strange that our universe can be understood using the language of mathematics. Why should this be? The more he read about cosmology and the Anthropic Principle the more he realized how exceedingly improbable our universe is—indeed, it almost seems to be specifically rigged to allow for life.
Murray’s faith in materialism was further shaken by researching the surprisingly well-documented cases of near-death experiences, terminal lucidity, and Psi phenomena. These findings cannot be explained within a materialist understanding of human consciousness.
He remained very resistant to the idea of anthropomorphizing this apparent power underlying the universe, but like many agnostics who examined the claims of Christianity and were initially surprised about its reasonableness and eventually persuaded of its truth, Murray first began to question his own skepticism after encountering CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity. He found Lewis’s argument regarding the Moral Law extremely persuasive. Evolutionary psychology cannot adequately explain why we all deeply believe in right and wrong, and why it’s so universal across cultures and time.
CS Lewis’s famous trilemma—Jesus must be either a lunatic, liar, or Lord—spurred him on to investigate the reliability of the gospel accounts. He was surprised how much modern scholarship in this area departs from what the public seems to believe about the reliability of the New Testament accounts. He explains what he has since learned about their historicity and their remarkable degree of internal consistency, giving examples of undesigned coincidences, and a perfect historical correlation of names of people and geographic features. These are strong evidences that these accounts were written by eyewitnesses and are likely reliable.
Throughout the book Murray repeatedly reminds readers that he is not an expert on these topics. He seems at times to be less interested in converting his fellow smart setters than he is in proving to them that he hasn’t gone soft in the head. He has clearly done a great deal of research, and his conclusions are eminently reasonable. For each subject discussed, he helpfully includes a bibliography of relevant books and encourages readers to do the research for themselves. He basically says, “Hey, don’t take my word for it, I’m no expert here, but read these books by these guys who are experts and decide for yourself. Until then, you don’t even know what you don’t know.”
Murray, now 82 and long a member of the American intelligentsia, directs this book to those who feel the idea of God is unnecessary and outdated. Those who, like he once did, agree that “smart people don’t believe that stuff anymore.” He here humbly outlines his intellectual journey of discovery.
A nearly life-long secular materialist, he first began thinking deeply about these issues when he started pondering the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” It also struck him as strange that our universe can be understood using the language of mathematics. Why should this be? The more he read about cosmology and the Anthropic Principle the more he realized how exceedingly improbable our universe is—indeed, it almost seems to be specifically rigged to allow for life.
Murray’s faith in materialism was further shaken by researching the surprisingly well-documented cases of near-death experiences, terminal lucidity, and Psi phenomena. These findings cannot be explained within a materialist understanding of human consciousness.
He remained very resistant to the idea of anthropomorphizing this apparent power underlying the universe, but like many agnostics who examined the claims of Christianity and were initially surprised about its reasonableness and eventually persuaded of its truth, Murray first began to question his own skepticism after encountering CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity. He found Lewis’s argument regarding the Moral Law extremely persuasive. Evolutionary psychology cannot adequately explain why we all deeply believe in right and wrong, and why it’s so universal across cultures and time.
CS Lewis’s famous trilemma—Jesus must be either a lunatic, liar, or Lord—spurred him on to investigate the reliability of the gospel accounts. He was surprised how much modern scholarship in this area departs from what the public seems to believe about the reliability of the New Testament accounts. He explains what he has since learned about their historicity and their remarkable degree of internal consistency, giving examples of undesigned coincidences, and a perfect historical correlation of names of people and geographic features. These are strong evidences that these accounts were written by eyewitnesses and are likely reliable.
Throughout the book Murray repeatedly reminds readers that he is not an expert on these topics. He seems at times to be less interested in converting his fellow smart setters than he is in proving to them that he hasn’t gone soft in the head. He has clearly done a great deal of research, and his conclusions are eminently reasonable. For each subject discussed, he helpfully includes a bibliography of relevant books and encourages readers to do the research for themselves. He basically says, “Hey, don’t take my word for it, I’m no expert here, but read these books by these guys who are experts and decide for yourself. Until then, you don’t even know what you don’t know.”
January 24, 2026
This little book filled a hole in my life I didn’t know was there. Charles Murray has played an outsized role in the formation of my mind as a conservative with strong libertarian proclivities since I first read “Losing Ground”and “The Bell Curve” in college over 20 years ago. Since then, I’ve read every book Murray has written, each of which has left a deep imprint on my thinking and political convictions, mostly about the inseparable link between the brute facts of human nature and their implications on social policy.
A book on religion from Murray was unexpected, but intriguing.
Like George Will, I knew Murray was at least indifferent to religion, if not a passive materialist (many conservatives are, surprisingly). However, this book documents his slow change of mind over 30 years toward the existence of God and Christianity specifically. It’s personal and intimate, to be sure; but it’s also critically investigative and empirical, which is the only way Charles Murray can be, and which makes the sincerity of Murray’s account of his intellectual conversion to the Christian tradition profoundly endearing and not at all pandering. Nothing of the critical, scholarly, probing intellect that one expects from Charles Murray is lost or missing in this book. Indeed, Murray readily acknowledges that his prior agnostic materialism was uncharacteristically unreflective, intellectually flimsy, and mostly received on the secular faith of his baptism as a graduate of Harvard University in the 60s.
Murray challenges his past unchecked assumptions about religion and takes the reader on a journey through the library of books he’s read over the past 20 years to arrive at his present conclusions about the veracity of God’s existence, the undeniable truth of transcendent Moral Law, and the historical reliability of the Gospels, among other endlessly interesting topics. Murray closes with a “So what?” chapter that betrays the transforming effect taking religion seriously has had on Murray’s life, as well as a humble challenge to his more skeptical readers to embark on the same intellectual journey — while rightfully acknowledging that their conclusions may be very different than his own.
In “Taking Religion Seriously,” Charles Murray becomes a man in full — full of critical wisdom, full of a deeper sense of reality, full of greater love for his neighbors, and full of quiet, solemn hope that the resurrection of Jesus changes everything.
This book touched me in such a way that made me pause and think, after reading the closing page, that this was a book I didn’t know I needed to read right now but I’m enormously grateful I did. The subtle, surprising, delightful operations of grace strike again and I am better for it.
A book on religion from Murray was unexpected, but intriguing.
Like George Will, I knew Murray was at least indifferent to religion, if not a passive materialist (many conservatives are, surprisingly). However, this book documents his slow change of mind over 30 years toward the existence of God and Christianity specifically. It’s personal and intimate, to be sure; but it’s also critically investigative and empirical, which is the only way Charles Murray can be, and which makes the sincerity of Murray’s account of his intellectual conversion to the Christian tradition profoundly endearing and not at all pandering. Nothing of the critical, scholarly, probing intellect that one expects from Charles Murray is lost or missing in this book. Indeed, Murray readily acknowledges that his prior agnostic materialism was uncharacteristically unreflective, intellectually flimsy, and mostly received on the secular faith of his baptism as a graduate of Harvard University in the 60s.
Murray challenges his past unchecked assumptions about religion and takes the reader on a journey through the library of books he’s read over the past 20 years to arrive at his present conclusions about the veracity of God’s existence, the undeniable truth of transcendent Moral Law, and the historical reliability of the Gospels, among other endlessly interesting topics. Murray closes with a “So what?” chapter that betrays the transforming effect taking religion seriously has had on Murray’s life, as well as a humble challenge to his more skeptical readers to embark on the same intellectual journey — while rightfully acknowledging that their conclusions may be very different than his own.
In “Taking Religion Seriously,” Charles Murray becomes a man in full — full of critical wisdom, full of a deeper sense of reality, full of greater love for his neighbors, and full of quiet, solemn hope that the resurrection of Jesus changes everything.
This book touched me in such a way that made me pause and think, after reading the closing page, that this was a book I didn’t know I needed to read right now but I’m enormously grateful I did. The subtle, surprising, delightful operations of grace strike again and I am better for it.
December 28, 2025
I urge upon you that religion is something that should be taken seriously by nonbelievers and that can be taken seriously in the same way that Chinese history or plate tectonics can be taken seriously.
Inquiries of a mature agnostic into religion in general and Christianity in particular. Murray writes simply and explores both how he adopted the prevailing anti-religion worldview and what released him from it. Addresses much modern “received knowledge” of religion as inconsistent with current science and scholarship.
Any God worthy of the name is at least as incomprehensible to a human being as I am to my dog. My dog is smart enough to perceive a few things about me … but these understandings represent only a few trivial aspects of who I am. I am not invisible to my dog, just as God is not invisible to me, but I am nonetheless unknowable to my dog in any meaningful sense. God is just as unknowable to me.
What initially seems like a detour into trivia (the Shroud of Turin controversy) exemplifies where bad science fed the accepted knowledge (that, for example, the shroud was a medieval hoax) which isn’t even close to current scholarship on the subject.
But accepting that we live in an intentional universe is tantamount to acknowledging the existence of a God for whom the concept of intention applies.
More relevant is Murray’s investigation of the trustworthiness and age of the Biblical accounts of Jesus’ ministry and resurrection. He debunks not only what “everybody knows” but also pseudo-scholarly sources like the Jesus Seminar. Sidebars provide annotated bibliographies of sources for deeper study.
Our impulses to “do the right thing” are God’s way of revealing himself to us, and what God has revealed is the pervasive role of agape in living a good human life.
Like C S Lewis, Murray writes as a layman for agnostics and atheists. Therefore, not surprisingly, refers to few Christian authorities or sources after the first or second century (except Lewis). The Christian apologetics industry tends toward Christians writing for Christians. Murray admits his journey is not finished, comparable to Lewis’s having attained belief in God but still struggling over the nature of Jesus. Readers disinclined to accept his conclusions will nonetheless be challenged to consider for themselves whether they should take religion more seriously.
My haphazard pilgrimage has already led me to believe that I live in a universe made meaningful by love and grace. That’s a lot.
Inquiries of a mature agnostic into religion in general and Christianity in particular. Murray writes simply and explores both how he adopted the prevailing anti-religion worldview and what released him from it. Addresses much modern “received knowledge” of religion as inconsistent with current science and scholarship.
Any God worthy of the name is at least as incomprehensible to a human being as I am to my dog. My dog is smart enough to perceive a few things about me … but these understandings represent only a few trivial aspects of who I am. I am not invisible to my dog, just as God is not invisible to me, but I am nonetheless unknowable to my dog in any meaningful sense. God is just as unknowable to me.
What initially seems like a detour into trivia (the Shroud of Turin controversy) exemplifies where bad science fed the accepted knowledge (that, for example, the shroud was a medieval hoax) which isn’t even close to current scholarship on the subject.
But accepting that we live in an intentional universe is tantamount to acknowledging the existence of a God for whom the concept of intention applies.
More relevant is Murray’s investigation of the trustworthiness and age of the Biblical accounts of Jesus’ ministry and resurrection. He debunks not only what “everybody knows” but also pseudo-scholarly sources like the Jesus Seminar. Sidebars provide annotated bibliographies of sources for deeper study.
Our impulses to “do the right thing” are God’s way of revealing himself to us, and what God has revealed is the pervasive role of agape in living a good human life.
Like C S Lewis, Murray writes as a layman for agnostics and atheists. Therefore, not surprisingly, refers to few Christian authorities or sources after the first or second century (except Lewis). The Christian apologetics industry tends toward Christians writing for Christians. Murray admits his journey is not finished, comparable to Lewis’s having attained belief in God but still struggling over the nature of Jesus. Readers disinclined to accept his conclusions will nonetheless be challenged to consider for themselves whether they should take religion more seriously.
My haphazard pilgrimage has already led me to believe that I live in a universe made meaningful by love and grace. That’s a lot.
November 10, 2025
Wow, this was a surprise. I had read two of Charles Murray's books and found them to be meticulously data-driven and thoughtfully crafted. I have heard several interviews and this gave me the impression that he is a very measured, self-aware person with a very scientific mode of thinking. Alas, this books proves that Charles Murray can make some of the most fundamental, elementary mistakes in simple logic. The idea that "I can't fathom this" becomes "there must be a God" is so old that it doesn't need repeating why this is such a shallow, thoughtless, and lazy way of thinking. I am appalled and sorely disappointed, since I was hoping for something persuasive. This book is not the least bit persuasive, and unfortunately serves to undermine the reputation of an intellectual that already has major headwinds with reputation for reasons having to do with motivated reasoning on the part of his critics. I would have advised Murray to keep this book off the commercial market and just share it with his family and friends.
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October 20, 2025This is an admittedly strange evidentialist apologetics book / memoir
I knew that Charles Murray had made some kind of progress on this front, but was stuck since he wasn't really being swayed by what he had around him.
At times it feels like he's burying the lede, which I think is a consequence of the chronological organization. There was a long run-up in his life to the transition that he's still in the process of making, so that could explain that lopsidedness. You can see the incompleteness of his conversion when he says things that would imply Origenism (pre-existence of souls). He also might have an issue with the concept of kenosis in Christology. The Seeds of Truth bit at the end also comes across as perennialist. Work in progress.
While he chose his battles well, aside from ESP, this is bound to get the response all evidentialist works get from unsympathetic audiences. Hans Eysenck said that watching two different paradigms debate was like "watching a man chasing a squirrel around a pole". Both sides either have ways of interpreting the same evidence, or will hold out for future ways to accommodate it within their views. no scientist ever catches the underdetermination of data squirrel.
This is one of the reasons that once I understood presuppositional apologetics, I got intellectually convinced. But, philosophy isn't Charles Murray's job. His approach makes sense given who he is. The major win from his evidentialist presentation is that: so much of what we've been convinced of today is just lies. This was important for me, as well. I learned that nobody who convinced me to deny religion is anyone who I'd ever trust again. many even had group interests in lying to me, in particular.
if you've been reading Charles Murray for years, I'd give this a chance. he's taken on gigantic risks to break people away from lies, and we owe him.
I knew that Charles Murray had made some kind of progress on this front, but was stuck since he wasn't really being swayed by what he had around him.
At times it feels like he's burying the lede, which I think is a consequence of the chronological organization. There was a long run-up in his life to the transition that he's still in the process of making, so that could explain that lopsidedness. You can see the incompleteness of his conversion when he says things that would imply Origenism (pre-existence of souls). He also might have an issue with the concept of kenosis in Christology. The Seeds of Truth bit at the end also comes across as perennialist. Work in progress.
While he chose his battles well, aside from ESP, this is bound to get the response all evidentialist works get from unsympathetic audiences. Hans Eysenck said that watching two different paradigms debate was like "watching a man chasing a squirrel around a pole". Both sides either have ways of interpreting the same evidence, or will hold out for future ways to accommodate it within their views. no scientist ever catches the underdetermination of data squirrel.
This is one of the reasons that once I understood presuppositional apologetics, I got intellectually convinced. But, philosophy isn't Charles Murray's job. His approach makes sense given who he is. The major win from his evidentialist presentation is that: so much of what we've been convinced of today is just lies. This was important for me, as well. I learned that nobody who convinced me to deny religion is anyone who I'd ever trust again. many even had group interests in lying to me, in particular.
if you've been reading Charles Murray for years, I'd give this a chance. he's taken on gigantic risks to break people away from lies, and we owe him.
October 27, 2025
Listened to this on audio book and enjoyed it. I am not an academic nor am I a science or research orientated person. I was also raised in a devout family and never really fully disconnected from my faith (although my theological approach is radically different than it was when I was younger but that is another story as they say). So I am not really approaching these issues from the same perspective as Murray but I am aware of the issues and can relate to them in many ways.
The book is basically an explanation of how Murray found himself wrestling with faith and religious belief and how he worked out the issues ranging from belief in God to materialism and ultimately the basic claims of Christianity. If you approach these issues with a focus on evidence, data, logic, etc. Murray lays out a case for belief. He does not claim to prove anything per se but rather argues that there is a great deal more compelling evidence on the side of religion than many think if they are soaked in the materialist and agnostic worldview of intellectualism and academia.
Even if you don't agree with his conclusions it is any interesting exercise to read or listen to an intelligent and curious lay person walk through what he found and the conclusions he draws. The anthropomorphic principle is probably something most people are aware of but near death experiences and terminal lucidity are less well know and thus more interesting; at least to me. The case for earlier dating of the gospels, his discussion of the resurrection, and of Jesus in general are also fascinating. Again, just to hear short, accessible and honest discussion of these issues from an intelligent and evidenced focused but non-expert.
Murray claims to lack to the needed sensitivity to religious connection, the "God gene" so this is not emotional connection or spiritual revelation but intellectual exploration of the evidence and its ramifications. If you have an interest in these questions I think you will find this book enjoyable and thought provoking.
Murray reads the audiobook and this makes it something like a conversation with a smart friend. No dogmatism or preaching just an exploration of the questions and the arguments of those who have studied these questions. Murray offers further reading for anyone who wants to review the sources and decided for themselves.
The book is basically an explanation of how Murray found himself wrestling with faith and religious belief and how he worked out the issues ranging from belief in God to materialism and ultimately the basic claims of Christianity. If you approach these issues with a focus on evidence, data, logic, etc. Murray lays out a case for belief. He does not claim to prove anything per se but rather argues that there is a great deal more compelling evidence on the side of religion than many think if they are soaked in the materialist and agnostic worldview of intellectualism and academia.
Even if you don't agree with his conclusions it is any interesting exercise to read or listen to an intelligent and curious lay person walk through what he found and the conclusions he draws. The anthropomorphic principle is probably something most people are aware of but near death experiences and terminal lucidity are less well know and thus more interesting; at least to me. The case for earlier dating of the gospels, his discussion of the resurrection, and of Jesus in general are also fascinating. Again, just to hear short, accessible and honest discussion of these issues from an intelligent and evidenced focused but non-expert.
Murray claims to lack to the needed sensitivity to religious connection, the "God gene" so this is not emotional connection or spiritual revelation but intellectual exploration of the evidence and its ramifications. If you have an interest in these questions I think you will find this book enjoyable and thought provoking.
Murray reads the audiobook and this makes it something like a conversation with a smart friend. No dogmatism or preaching just an exploration of the questions and the arguments of those who have studied these questions. Murray offers further reading for anyone who wants to review the sources and decided for themselves.
October 17, 2025
My mind acts similarly to his so I related with this a lot. I think a lot of people are coming to the same conclusions, that religion should be taken seriously and not just thrown out as an anachronism. For me, Jordan Peterson had a lot of influence on my change of mind on that matter. This book goes over his thinking on the matter and how it changed over time and why. And gets into the arguments that influenced him. It is not a deep theological study of biblical text, but a broad consideration of the evidence for the supernatural, the argument for Christianity and why he has grown to favor it even though he’s not sure on the finer theological points.
January 7, 2026
As an agnostic I was hoping to find some compelling arguments for the existence of God and the validity of the Christian faith. I'm always open to new points of view on the matter. For the most part the author's points are the same ones I've been hearing all my life. I just don't come to the same conclusions that people of faith do when I hear the facts that apparently convince them. The book did have some information that was new to me. For instance I didn't know that there is some evidence that the gospel according to Mark was written by a disciple of Peter. According to this theory Mark never met Jesus but he was documenting the experiences and memories of the Apostle Peter. The book is well written and interesting to read but, in the end, unconvincing to me.
January 10, 2026
When Charles Murray first collaborated on the BELL CURVE, the book generated a lot of controversy - it argued that the measurement of intelligence (in broad categories) varied among races. Note, when geneticists argue that the presence of other genetic factors such as fast twitch muscle fibers, that is not sensitive. But because this offered some hypotheses about intelligence - the book brought out a firestorm. Similarly when he wrote in COMMON GROUND, which argued that welfare policy had not been successful opponents on the left criticized the conclusions. For almost four decades I have read each new Murray book with a) a critical eye (the clarity of a definition on race is not as once clear as it had been in the past) and interest.
SO when I found that Murray had published a short book on why we should take religion seriously, I looked forward to reading it. Murray attempts to answer a series of questions - 1) Is the biblical version of the creation of the world as explanatory as the big bang theory? 2) Is the story of Jesus' birth plausible? 3) Is there some reason to believe in an after life? 4) is there a separate entity that is separate from our physical manifestation (do human's have souls)? 5) Are the major religions (he does not mention Islam - but he mentions all of the other Abrahamic religions make a contribution to the quality of life? I was interested in reading more. The simple response on this book is that it makes a compelling positive response to all five questions. This book makes a real contribution to each area in a compelling manner.
One of the qualities which I admire in Murray's writing is that he clearly demarcates when his conclusions are tentative and when they are not. A second is he is quite open about his sources.
I found his arguments compelling. Why are they? For me there are a couple of reasons - first is Pascal's wager - where he argued that the potential benefits of belief (eternal happiness) outweigh the finite losses incurred by living a religious life if God does not exist. Essentially, if you believe and God exists, you gain everything; if you don't believe and God exists, you risk losing everything. Second, the benefits of believing help organize the rest of your life in quite useful ways.
The book is short but you may want to spend some time thinking about each of his arguments.
SO when I found that Murray had published a short book on why we should take religion seriously, I looked forward to reading it. Murray attempts to answer a series of questions - 1) Is the biblical version of the creation of the world as explanatory as the big bang theory? 2) Is the story of Jesus' birth plausible? 3) Is there some reason to believe in an after life? 4) is there a separate entity that is separate from our physical manifestation (do human's have souls)? 5) Are the major religions (he does not mention Islam - but he mentions all of the other Abrahamic religions make a contribution to the quality of life? I was interested in reading more. The simple response on this book is that it makes a compelling positive response to all five questions. This book makes a real contribution to each area in a compelling manner.
One of the qualities which I admire in Murray's writing is that he clearly demarcates when his conclusions are tentative and when they are not. A second is he is quite open about his sources.
I found his arguments compelling. Why are they? For me there are a couple of reasons - first is Pascal's wager - where he argued that the potential benefits of belief (eternal happiness) outweigh the finite losses incurred by living a religious life if God does not exist. Essentially, if you believe and God exists, you gain everything; if you don't believe and God exists, you risk losing everything. Second, the benefits of believing help organize the rest of your life in quite useful ways.
The book is short but you may want to spend some time thinking about each of his arguments.
March 6, 2026
Like many, Charles Murray was under the impression that educated people were not supposed to take religion seriously. Consequently he never honestly examined it. Late in life he changed his mind and this book reveals his thought process. Murray has not become a Christian convert so this book will not lead the reader to conversion but, like Murray, it may open the door to further contemplation.
I was particularly struck by his observation about the relationship of science to religion. Initially, during the enlightenment, science tore down much of religion, but recently it has created new questions that religion may possess the answers to. I am speaking primarily about quantum physics and how it calls into question everything we accepted as fact about the universe and Newtonian physics.
Heady stuff but Murray presents his thinking in a straightforward, accessible manner. A valuable book for secular folk interested in religion but in need of a guide.
I was particularly struck by his observation about the relationship of science to religion. Initially, during the enlightenment, science tore down much of religion, but recently it has created new questions that religion may possess the answers to. I am speaking primarily about quantum physics and how it calls into question everything we accepted as fact about the universe and Newtonian physics.
Heady stuff but Murray presents his thinking in a straightforward, accessible manner. A valuable book for secular folk interested in religion but in need of a guide.
November 28, 2025
another intimate share
Charles once again discusses the sensitive topics with revealing venerability. Perhaps stats on how many return to their original religion as time moves closer.
Charles once again discusses the sensitive topics with revealing venerability. Perhaps stats on how many return to their original religion as time moves closer.
January 4, 2026
Tremendously insightful and a quick read, to boot. Murray is one of the most intelligent and influential living American public intellectuals.
October 21, 2025
Seldom do the dispassionate faithless hear apologetics in a language they can understand. This is one of those rare opportunities to hear a compelling case for faith made in language candid and dispassionate enough to slip past our faith-tone-deaf ears. I'm grateful Murray decided to tackle something like this, he can speak to an audience that is difficult for most others to reach. Thank you for shaking my faithlessness.
February 7, 2026
Part apologia, part map for the curious. It would be wrong of me to criticise this book, as there are many ways people find their way to God, and Charles Murray takes us patiently and, it seems, honestly through his own experience of doing so. That it is a way that I personally find unpersuasive means that it is not a map that I (an oft-stumbling Christian for over 50 years) could follow. For others it may open doors. One should rejoice for Murray.
February 12, 2026
If you are agnostic in the sense that you think there must be something out there (more than mere physics) running the universe then this might be a good book for you. It is nothing definitive, but it at least gives the reader a lot of ideas of what to look at next. The author provides recommendations for further reading right in the text of the book. I appreciated that.
FYI, the author does take a look at physics and what I know of physics (which is on the level of Scientific American magazine) he looks in the correct areas and he found the same questions that I did.
I'd love to read this book again.
FYI, the author does take a look at physics and what I know of physics (which is on the level of Scientific American magazine) he looks in the correct areas and he found the same questions that I did.
I'd love to read this book again.
December 24, 2025
Taking "Taking Religion Seriously" seriously, I have to conclude that Charles Murray has been right a couple times before, but has now revealed himself to be a broken clock of an intellectual. The craziest passage in here takes his infamous bell curve (which I'm actually much more charitable to than average) and uses it to basically argue that six-sigma healers are scientifically plausible -- i.e., Jesus.
February 19, 2026
I should preface this review with a bit of biography; some who have been reading me for a while are already familiar with it, and others have gotten bits of it, because I’ve grown more comfortable sharing over the years. I grew up in an extremely religious Pentecostal sect; left it somewhere between age 20 & 21; was a zealous secular humanist for 3-4 years, became obsessed with meaning and living a ‘good life’, and by age 27 was a practicing Christian within the Episcopal tradition. I have remained there since, though in practice and belief I am now much closer to a traditional Catholic than your average Episcopalian, pope aside. Given this, I am sure a reader might understand why I might find a man writing about his conversion from practical agnosticism to Christianity somewhat interesting.
Taking Religion Seriously is a chronicle of Murray’s journey from effective agnosticism to a tacit embrace of Christianity — tacit because he believes in it, but not in a ‘set the world on fire’ kind of way. His is an intellectual, reading journey: he shares the books he’s read that have shaped this thinking, and cautions readers that he is no authority. He simply asks that readers consider his history of thought, look at the books he’s read, and draw their own conclusions. (He believes he has found ‘evidence that demands a verdict’, you might say.) His early story is like many: he was raised in belief and came from it in college, thinking that intelligent people simply didn’t take religious claims seriously. From here, the story is a little more complex: Murray writes that it’s very easy for us to impose a tidy narrative after the fact, when changes in beliefs as lived are in fact much more messy. Having changed worldviews at least twice in my several decades on this Earth, I can readily agree with that — because I have tried first to explain my departure from Pentecostalism to secularism to family and friends, and then to explain my departure from secularism to belief to myself.
Murray opens with scientific concerns, particularly the peculiar fitness that our universe has for life, and the improbability of physical laws not only allowing for a stable universe, but one stable enough to engender life. He is also skeptical of strict materialism, arguing that studies into psychic abilities, near-death experiences, and ‘terminal lucidity'( a new term for me, I will admit) indicate that there is more to a human being — to any one given person — than simply brain activity. He then begins transitioning into other arguments, like Lewis’ argument from moral law, and interesting textual studies of the Gospels that argue for their being attempts to capture historical fact, not simply tell an enchanting story. He shares arguments he’s read that the synoptic Gospels were written earlier than 20th century scholarship has admitted, and introduces a new-to-me concept called “undesigned coincidences” in which minor details from one account support details from another account — like Jesus giving disciples nicknames in one Gospel that seem random until details from another Gospel are taken into account. In concluding, he recaps what he’s written and tries to anticipate some criticism like ‘God of the gaps’ being applied to his first chapter.
I found this a very interesting book, but I have to admit that reading it as a believer was an odd experience. It felt like Murray had put the cart before the horse, that Jesus didn’t matter so much as textual studies and the limits of scientific enterprise. This may owe to the way I came round to accepting Christianity, which was highly personal and admittedly subjective, but just as real to me as the wet and crashing waves of the ocean that have mesmerized me in the past. My reading of this makes me believe that Murray takes seriously the existence of souls, and of a transcendent moral order that nearly all human cultures have perceived and created religions around. I can even believe he believes in the Gospel accounts, miracles included — but at the same time, his approach to Jesus feels like approaching a museum exhibit or something. There’s reverence, but no connection and no presence.
This was an interesting work, one honestly written, I think. It’s not a conversion story per se, but a straightforward account of a man whose reading journey led him to live up to the title — to take religion seriously. He does not say if he has incorporated things like religious praxis in his life, though his wife is a devout Quaker and watching her spiritual growth over the decades they’ve been together was one motivation for him in investigating religion’s claims more seriously. He was seeing something in her he could not dismiss, even if his own faith remains — as he says ‘arid’. It’s his honesty that gives this book a unique appeal, I think. I imagine its ideal audience is Christians who are uneasy about factual claims of the faith, or perhaps people who are spiritual seekers and are curious. As much as I appreciated Murray’s views on the historicity of the Gospels, some of which were new approaches to me, I couldn’t escape the sense that all this was just air without having had a serious religious encounter. Perhaps it’s appropriate that Murray uses the absurd and flaccid “BCE/CE” convention for his dates: he has not had a road-to-Damascus moment that divides his life into two parts — before Christ and in the year of our Lord.
Taking Religion Seriously is a chronicle of Murray’s journey from effective agnosticism to a tacit embrace of Christianity — tacit because he believes in it, but not in a ‘set the world on fire’ kind of way. His is an intellectual, reading journey: he shares the books he’s read that have shaped this thinking, and cautions readers that he is no authority. He simply asks that readers consider his history of thought, look at the books he’s read, and draw their own conclusions. (He believes he has found ‘evidence that demands a verdict’, you might say.) His early story is like many: he was raised in belief and came from it in college, thinking that intelligent people simply didn’t take religious claims seriously. From here, the story is a little more complex: Murray writes that it’s very easy for us to impose a tidy narrative after the fact, when changes in beliefs as lived are in fact much more messy. Having changed worldviews at least twice in my several decades on this Earth, I can readily agree with that — because I have tried first to explain my departure from Pentecostalism to secularism to family and friends, and then to explain my departure from secularism to belief to myself.
Murray opens with scientific concerns, particularly the peculiar fitness that our universe has for life, and the improbability of physical laws not only allowing for a stable universe, but one stable enough to engender life. He is also skeptical of strict materialism, arguing that studies into psychic abilities, near-death experiences, and ‘terminal lucidity'( a new term for me, I will admit) indicate that there is more to a human being — to any one given person — than simply brain activity. He then begins transitioning into other arguments, like Lewis’ argument from moral law, and interesting textual studies of the Gospels that argue for their being attempts to capture historical fact, not simply tell an enchanting story. He shares arguments he’s read that the synoptic Gospels were written earlier than 20th century scholarship has admitted, and introduces a new-to-me concept called “undesigned coincidences” in which minor details from one account support details from another account — like Jesus giving disciples nicknames in one Gospel that seem random until details from another Gospel are taken into account. In concluding, he recaps what he’s written and tries to anticipate some criticism like ‘God of the gaps’ being applied to his first chapter.
I found this a very interesting book, but I have to admit that reading it as a believer was an odd experience. It felt like Murray had put the cart before the horse, that Jesus didn’t matter so much as textual studies and the limits of scientific enterprise. This may owe to the way I came round to accepting Christianity, which was highly personal and admittedly subjective, but just as real to me as the wet and crashing waves of the ocean that have mesmerized me in the past. My reading of this makes me believe that Murray takes seriously the existence of souls, and of a transcendent moral order that nearly all human cultures have perceived and created religions around. I can even believe he believes in the Gospel accounts, miracles included — but at the same time, his approach to Jesus feels like approaching a museum exhibit or something. There’s reverence, but no connection and no presence.
This was an interesting work, one honestly written, I think. It’s not a conversion story per se, but a straightforward account of a man whose reading journey led him to live up to the title — to take religion seriously. He does not say if he has incorporated things like religious praxis in his life, though his wife is a devout Quaker and watching her spiritual growth over the decades they’ve been together was one motivation for him in investigating religion’s claims more seriously. He was seeing something in her he could not dismiss, even if his own faith remains — as he says ‘arid’. It’s his honesty that gives this book a unique appeal, I think. I imagine its ideal audience is Christians who are uneasy about factual claims of the faith, or perhaps people who are spiritual seekers and are curious. As much as I appreciated Murray’s views on the historicity of the Gospels, some of which were new approaches to me, I couldn’t escape the sense that all this was just air without having had a serious religious encounter. Perhaps it’s appropriate that Murray uses the absurd and flaccid “BCE/CE” convention for his dates: he has not had a road-to-Damascus moment that divides his life into two parts — before Christ and in the year of our Lord.
April 26, 2026
This is part of an agnostic's journey to faith and belief in God, an intentional universe, and Jesus Christ. Here are some quotes I liked:
"I would have said I was an agnostic, but I didn't spend much time thinking about religion because I couldn't see the point. If God exists, he could not be the kind of God who has anything to do with this flyspeck world, let alone with the lives of the individual human beings clinging to its surface. I've changed my mind about God... and about Christianity... but I don't proselytize. Rather, I urge upon you that religion is something that should be taken seriously... by reading a lot, thinking about what you've read, and bouncing your reactions off people who know more than you do (p. 2)."
"Maybe God also needs a way to reach over-educated agnostics, and that's what I stumbled into (p. 3)."
"It was Catherine who had the epiphany that set things in motion... Catherine discovered that her love for her daughter surpassed anything she had ever known... That greater love, she decided, pointed vaguely toward God (p. 7)."
"Catherine has also become angry at the hypocrisy of organized Christianity (p. 8)."
"She was conscious of being a cliche--a secular Baby Boomer reaching middle age seeking a spiritual life--but she was welcomed by Friends whose Quaker forebears had been sitting on the same benches for generations (p. 11)."
"It was time for me to participate in this important part of my wife and children's life (p. 13)."
"I cannot remember his exact words, but the gist was that attending church reminded him of ways he could be a better person and fulfill his responsibilities to others... I took my resolve to be an observant Quaker without much optimism that it would do me any good... I don't have much talent for spiritual contemplation (p. 14)."
"Buddhism simply said that if you quiet your mind and become able to perceive reality... You don't need to take anything on faith (p. 15)."
"I had come to accept that I was the one with a problem (p. 16)."
"Her sense of need for belief was greater (p. 17)."
"I've lived my life without ever reaching the depths of despair. I'm grateful for my luck. But I have also not felt the God-sized hole in my life that the depths of despair often reveal (p. 18)."
"'The concept of a personal God is at odds with everything that science has taught us over the last five centuries... The great religious traditions are human inventions, natural products of the fear of death' (p. 21)."
"Even at my elementary level, it just seemed extremely odd that so many basic phenomena were so mathematically simple (p. 23)."
"The first unmistakable nudge involved the question, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' (p. 23)"
"When I had thought about the existence of the universe at all, I had taken it as a given (p. 23)."
"Surely things do not exist without having been created (p. 24)."
"Even if your answer is 'God,' you must ask how God came to be (p. 24)."
"Saying that God created the universe does not tie me into any theological position (p. 25)."
"The size of the universe increased unimaginably quickly (p. 34)."
"Gravity has caused matter to coalesce into clumps that will eventually become galaxies (p. 35)."
"Gravity is a feeble force. The electrical force that holds atoms together is vastly stronger than gravity (p. 37)."
"The density of the universe divided by the critical density... is approximately one--in mathematics, unity (p. 37)."
"The universe we inhabit constitutes a low-entropy, highly ordered arrangement of matter (p. 40)."
"The universe we inhabit could be just one of many (p. 41)."
"That leaves the third alternative: I live in a universe that was intentionally designed to permit the development of life (p. 44)."
"For me, the inescapable conclusion is that a God created a universe that would enable life to exist. Taking that step opened all sorts of other possibilities (p. 44)."
"'If one believes, as many of my scientific colleagues believe, that the scope of science is unlimited, then science can ultimately explain everything in the universe (p. 48)."
"If I am not just a brain in a body, what am I? I had to acknowledge the possibility that I have a soul (p. 59)."
"Drawing conclusions about God's relationship to humans based on texts written two thousand years ago may strike you as foolish... you may want to give it a try anyway (p. 63)."
"Ancient Greeks did not see Aristotelian happiness as something that everyone could enjoy. Only a small minority had the character and intelligence to strive for it. Christianity was different. Like Judaism, it taught that individual human beings are invited into a personal relationship with God that is accessible to everyone regardless of their earthly station (p. 65)."
"'The reason we didn't know the truth concerning these matters is that the claim of an inevitable and bitter warfare between religion and science has, for more than three centuries, been the primary polemical device used in the atheist attack on faith' (p. 68)."
"I asked him how he had come to his faith. He replied that it was mostly because C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity had convinced him of Christianity's truth. Within a few days I had bought a copy, read it, and been so impressed that I bought four more and gave them to my children--something I hadn't done with any other book (p. 73)."
"For me, C.S. Lewis was the perfect example of a 'smart person who still believed that stuff' (p. 74)."
"What did I think of Lewis's assertion that you do not have the option of saying that Jesus was a great moral teacher--that instead you are required to decide whether he was a lunatic, a liar, or the Son of God? (p. 75)"
"It's a big leap from accepting that the universe was designed to permit life to believe that God has anything to do with the lives of individual humans (p. 77)."
"If moral codes are man-made, what is the authority for believing that a given act is wrong? (p. 78)"
"I am driven to accept not only that God has a relationship with humans, but that God is ultimate Goodness (p. 84)."
"Catherine's return to Christianity began with an epiphany: Her love for her daughter was partly a conduit for a larger and transcendent love that pointed to God. Then and thereafter, the specifics of Christian theology have not been of much concern to her. Questions about the historicity of the New Testament are mildly interesting but beside the point (p. 85)."
"You need to do your own homework... and decide what you think (p. 92)."
"Unlike Matthew, who never says that he was an eyewitness, John appears to be explicit (p. 99)."
"John's Gospel came about at the behest of friends who urged John to add material that the other three Gospels has omitted (p. 100)."
"Many disciples who were eyewitnesses to Jesus's ministry and death could still have been alive when Matthew, Mark, and Luke were being written, which means they could have been used as sources (p. 102)."
"Whoever the authors of the Gospels were, they or their sources were intimately familiar with the Old Testament and Jewish traditions (p. 105)."
"All four Gospels display specific knowledge about the geography of the region (p. 114)."
"The simplest explanation is that we are reading separate bits of information that fit together only because the witnesses were artlessly giving their independent recollections of events (p. 119)."
"I have to either believe miraculous events reported by a single observer who had a personal interest in them, which is hard to do, or conclude that someone... decided that such a great man as Jesus must have had a glorious birth, and that by the time Luke was gathering his source materials in the 50s, the stories had been elaborated (p. 123)."
"If I am not prepared to accept the miracles, I must explain how he did it (p. 124)."
"Let's strip the resurrection story down to statements that are historically secure, independently of specific details in the Gospel accounts:
* Jesus of Nazareth was a historical figure who was crucified in Jerusalem in 30 or 33 CE.
* Jesus's apostles were unsophisticated Palestinian Jews.
* Death by crucifixion was not just a gruesome and painful death for Jesus but a humiliation for everyone associated with him...
* Within a few decades, Christianity had become a full-blown religion and had spread throughout the Middle East and reached Greece and Rome (p. 126)."
"The Pauline letters indicate that Jesus was already being portrayed as the resurrected Son of God in the earliest years of the church (p. 128)."
"The resurrection was not a repackaged version of anything that had come before (p. 131)."
"By the end of the nineteenth century, science had delivered more body blows to the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible... Science also made God less important as a resource for coping with the challenges of life (p. 142)."
"In a universe run via quantum mechanics, the God hypothesis did not seem so outlandish (p. 144)."
"I have been surprised by belief (p. 152)."
"I live day by day believing that I am part of an intentional universe (p. 152)."
"I would have said I was an agnostic, but I didn't spend much time thinking about religion because I couldn't see the point. If God exists, he could not be the kind of God who has anything to do with this flyspeck world, let alone with the lives of the individual human beings clinging to its surface. I've changed my mind about God... and about Christianity... but I don't proselytize. Rather, I urge upon you that religion is something that should be taken seriously... by reading a lot, thinking about what you've read, and bouncing your reactions off people who know more than you do (p. 2)."
"Maybe God also needs a way to reach over-educated agnostics, and that's what I stumbled into (p. 3)."
"It was Catherine who had the epiphany that set things in motion... Catherine discovered that her love for her daughter surpassed anything she had ever known... That greater love, she decided, pointed vaguely toward God (p. 7)."
"Catherine has also become angry at the hypocrisy of organized Christianity (p. 8)."
"She was conscious of being a cliche--a secular Baby Boomer reaching middle age seeking a spiritual life--but she was welcomed by Friends whose Quaker forebears had been sitting on the same benches for generations (p. 11)."
"It was time for me to participate in this important part of my wife and children's life (p. 13)."
"I cannot remember his exact words, but the gist was that attending church reminded him of ways he could be a better person and fulfill his responsibilities to others... I took my resolve to be an observant Quaker without much optimism that it would do me any good... I don't have much talent for spiritual contemplation (p. 14)."
"Buddhism simply said that if you quiet your mind and become able to perceive reality... You don't need to take anything on faith (p. 15)."
"I had come to accept that I was the one with a problem (p. 16)."
"Her sense of need for belief was greater (p. 17)."
"I've lived my life without ever reaching the depths of despair. I'm grateful for my luck. But I have also not felt the God-sized hole in my life that the depths of despair often reveal (p. 18)."
"'The concept of a personal God is at odds with everything that science has taught us over the last five centuries... The great religious traditions are human inventions, natural products of the fear of death' (p. 21)."
"Even at my elementary level, it just seemed extremely odd that so many basic phenomena were so mathematically simple (p. 23)."
"The first unmistakable nudge involved the question, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' (p. 23)"
"When I had thought about the existence of the universe at all, I had taken it as a given (p. 23)."
"Surely things do not exist without having been created (p. 24)."
"Even if your answer is 'God,' you must ask how God came to be (p. 24)."
"Saying that God created the universe does not tie me into any theological position (p. 25)."
"The size of the universe increased unimaginably quickly (p. 34)."
"Gravity has caused matter to coalesce into clumps that will eventually become galaxies (p. 35)."
"Gravity is a feeble force. The electrical force that holds atoms together is vastly stronger than gravity (p. 37)."
"The density of the universe divided by the critical density... is approximately one--in mathematics, unity (p. 37)."
"The universe we inhabit constitutes a low-entropy, highly ordered arrangement of matter (p. 40)."
"The universe we inhabit could be just one of many (p. 41)."
"That leaves the third alternative: I live in a universe that was intentionally designed to permit the development of life (p. 44)."
"For me, the inescapable conclusion is that a God created a universe that would enable life to exist. Taking that step opened all sorts of other possibilities (p. 44)."
"'If one believes, as many of my scientific colleagues believe, that the scope of science is unlimited, then science can ultimately explain everything in the universe (p. 48)."
"If I am not just a brain in a body, what am I? I had to acknowledge the possibility that I have a soul (p. 59)."
"Drawing conclusions about God's relationship to humans based on texts written two thousand years ago may strike you as foolish... you may want to give it a try anyway (p. 63)."
"Ancient Greeks did not see Aristotelian happiness as something that everyone could enjoy. Only a small minority had the character and intelligence to strive for it. Christianity was different. Like Judaism, it taught that individual human beings are invited into a personal relationship with God that is accessible to everyone regardless of their earthly station (p. 65)."
"'The reason we didn't know the truth concerning these matters is that the claim of an inevitable and bitter warfare between religion and science has, for more than three centuries, been the primary polemical device used in the atheist attack on faith' (p. 68)."
"I asked him how he had come to his faith. He replied that it was mostly because C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity had convinced him of Christianity's truth. Within a few days I had bought a copy, read it, and been so impressed that I bought four more and gave them to my children--something I hadn't done with any other book (p. 73)."
"For me, C.S. Lewis was the perfect example of a 'smart person who still believed that stuff' (p. 74)."
"What did I think of Lewis's assertion that you do not have the option of saying that Jesus was a great moral teacher--that instead you are required to decide whether he was a lunatic, a liar, or the Son of God? (p. 75)"
"It's a big leap from accepting that the universe was designed to permit life to believe that God has anything to do with the lives of individual humans (p. 77)."
"If moral codes are man-made, what is the authority for believing that a given act is wrong? (p. 78)"
"I am driven to accept not only that God has a relationship with humans, but that God is ultimate Goodness (p. 84)."
"Catherine's return to Christianity began with an epiphany: Her love for her daughter was partly a conduit for a larger and transcendent love that pointed to God. Then and thereafter, the specifics of Christian theology have not been of much concern to her. Questions about the historicity of the New Testament are mildly interesting but beside the point (p. 85)."
"You need to do your own homework... and decide what you think (p. 92)."
"Unlike Matthew, who never says that he was an eyewitness, John appears to be explicit (p. 99)."
"John's Gospel came about at the behest of friends who urged John to add material that the other three Gospels has omitted (p. 100)."
"Many disciples who were eyewitnesses to Jesus's ministry and death could still have been alive when Matthew, Mark, and Luke were being written, which means they could have been used as sources (p. 102)."
"Whoever the authors of the Gospels were, they or their sources were intimately familiar with the Old Testament and Jewish traditions (p. 105)."
"All four Gospels display specific knowledge about the geography of the region (p. 114)."
"The simplest explanation is that we are reading separate bits of information that fit together only because the witnesses were artlessly giving their independent recollections of events (p. 119)."
"I have to either believe miraculous events reported by a single observer who had a personal interest in them, which is hard to do, or conclude that someone... decided that such a great man as Jesus must have had a glorious birth, and that by the time Luke was gathering his source materials in the 50s, the stories had been elaborated (p. 123)."
"If I am not prepared to accept the miracles, I must explain how he did it (p. 124)."
"Let's strip the resurrection story down to statements that are historically secure, independently of specific details in the Gospel accounts:
* Jesus of Nazareth was a historical figure who was crucified in Jerusalem in 30 or 33 CE.
* Jesus's apostles were unsophisticated Palestinian Jews.
* Death by crucifixion was not just a gruesome and painful death for Jesus but a humiliation for everyone associated with him...
* Within a few decades, Christianity had become a full-blown religion and had spread throughout the Middle East and reached Greece and Rome (p. 126)."
"The Pauline letters indicate that Jesus was already being portrayed as the resurrected Son of God in the earliest years of the church (p. 128)."
"The resurrection was not a repackaged version of anything that had come before (p. 131)."
"By the end of the nineteenth century, science had delivered more body blows to the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible... Science also made God less important as a resource for coping with the challenges of life (p. 142)."
"In a universe run via quantum mechanics, the God hypothesis did not seem so outlandish (p. 144)."
"I have been surprised by belief (p. 152)."
"I live day by day believing that I am part of an intentional universe (p. 152)."
November 1, 2025
I've been a Charles Murray fan for quite awhile. He's well-known for his takes on controversial issues, like IQ, race, welfare, etc. He presses a lot of hot buttons. I really liked his In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government, a succinct description of the "proper" role of the state. Specifically, limited and laissez-faire, enabling people to chart their own courses in life, bearing responsibility for their own choices, good and bad.
This book is somewhat of a surprise topic, and very personal. Murray details his spiritual odyssey over the past years, how he became interested in, and finally persuaded by, evidence that we are more than just bags of molecules interacting according to the dictates of physics and biochemistry. And how he came around to a more-or-less Christian belief in God, Jesus, and miracles, including the resurrection.
So, yeah, that's a lot for a relatively short book. But Murray's argument is well-presented, not didactic at all. He lays out his research, all the while inviting his readers to make up their own minds. His initial discussion is very similar to that of Ross Douthat in his recent book Believe: the "fine-tuning" of a universe that makes stars, planets, life, and (most unlikely of all) human intelligence possible. Murray makes the additional point about trying to "understand" God: we are likely in the same relationship between my dog and calculus. We not only don't understand, we don't even understand what there is to understand.
Murray is impressed, as Douthat was, with the uniformity of "near death experiences", where people who have been brought back from the brink report uncannily similar observations of what it's like. Murray adds in the phenomenon of "terminal lucidity", where dying people thought to be irretrievably comatose have recovered briefly, but inexplicably, to communicate with people at their bedside. This, after their brains have stopped working!
In the book's second part, Murray looks specifically at Christianity, with an appreciation of the arguments made by C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity. He notes the effort made over the years to debunk the history depicted in the New Testament; he counters with his own scholars and their arguments. (If you are refuting a debunker are you ‥ a bunker?)
Bottom line: Murray makes good arguments. I'm not planning to become a churchgoer (again), though. That's on me, not him.
If you're interested. Murray's book has generated some pushback from people I also like. Jerry Coyne, bless his heart, seems to take any religiosity as a personal insult, and argued against his views here and here.
Steven Pinker, peace be unto him, also dislikes Murray's "terminal lucidity" explanation, and wrote a letter to the WSJ about it. Murray responded here. (I think those are both free links.)
October 30, 2025
i'm giving this a 5 because it was such a relief & really a joy to read murray's book after getting through the slog that was ross douthat's. i like douthat. seems like a perfectly lovely guy. but criminy i found that book to be a chore.
murray has many gifts, annoyingly, and the one i can appreciate the most is that he is a terrific writer. even when he's taking on serious, weighty stuff in coming apart or his mincome book, he's almost always comprehensible & understandable for the midweight iq type.
& this one is no different. i inhaled it, i understood it, when i was reading it i was happy to be in the world of the book, didn't want to put it down. great.
unfortunately i think he's making bad arguments here. he's stated that this isn't an intelligent design or 'god of the gaps' book, but that's pretty much how most of it read to me.
& while ndes & terminal lucidity cases are interesting & fun to read about & speculate over, i think we are a long long way from them being usable as evidence of minds separate from the brain. there are explanations, some of them that have been presented on twitter in the past few days, that seem to offer pretty plausible explanations for the tl cases.
i think the nde & tl cases are much like ufo talk: most of them are explainable by real world things. some of them are truly mysterious, but the fact that they're mysterious doesn't mean we should accept that they are evidence for aliens or a separate consciousness. you need real evidence for that.
i wish he'd written a book about the cultural need for religion. that feels like it could have been a natural successor to coming apart.
ultimately i think this is a good, fun, readable book about a bad topic. mostly. i do think i got some things out of it. the notion of people having religious sensitivity similar to iq is something i've thought about but never put into concrete detail the way murray does here. i'm glad i read it. but i can't see ever coming back to it the way i have re-read coming apart & facing reality.
murray has many gifts, annoyingly, and the one i can appreciate the most is that he is a terrific writer. even when he's taking on serious, weighty stuff in coming apart or his mincome book, he's almost always comprehensible & understandable for the midweight iq type.
& this one is no different. i inhaled it, i understood it, when i was reading it i was happy to be in the world of the book, didn't want to put it down. great.
unfortunately i think he's making bad arguments here. he's stated that this isn't an intelligent design or 'god of the gaps' book, but that's pretty much how most of it read to me.
& while ndes & terminal lucidity cases are interesting & fun to read about & speculate over, i think we are a long long way from them being usable as evidence of minds separate from the brain. there are explanations, some of them that have been presented on twitter in the past few days, that seem to offer pretty plausible explanations for the tl cases.
i think the nde & tl cases are much like ufo talk: most of them are explainable by real world things. some of them are truly mysterious, but the fact that they're mysterious doesn't mean we should accept that they are evidence for aliens or a separate consciousness. you need real evidence for that.
i wish he'd written a book about the cultural need for religion. that feels like it could have been a natural successor to coming apart.
ultimately i think this is a good, fun, readable book about a bad topic. mostly. i do think i got some things out of it. the notion of people having religious sensitivity similar to iq is something i've thought about but never put into concrete detail the way murray does here. i'm glad i read it. but i can't see ever coming back to it the way i have re-read coming apart & facing reality.
March 9, 2026
One of America's great thinkers takes us on his journey to belief in God and then, what difference it has made in his life. Murray is a well educated successful person for whom religion had been irrelevant in his life. Through the influence of those he respected, he began his journey into researching the mystery of God. For those who wish to follow along, Murray includes ample references to the books that had significant impact on his journey to discovery.
Why does this highly improbable universe of ours exist?
Our world had a beginning. The Big Bang theory is a mathematical explanation that kicked off space, gravity, nuclear force, electromagnetic force, hydrogen, helium et al into a universe that allows life to exist. Is the biblical creation story a poetic version of the beginning of time, space, et al?
He outlines evidence that human consciousness source is not limited to just our brain, which may then lead to a conclusion that we do have a soul.
What makes humans care for other people, to love, to help one another, to do things for the betterment of the community, to pursue truth, beauty and the greater good?
Knowledge of God is limited to our human understanding, but that does not make God unknowable.
He discusses natural law and a broad universal moral code that seems to transcend time and civilizations.
Are the four biblical gospels true? His extensive research satisfies his intellectual curiosity.
He concludes his journey with the questions: So what? What difference does a belief in God make to our lives? He gives nice answers to those questions and opens up about how belief has changed him personally.
I greatly enjoyed accompanying Charles Murray on his journey to faith. Jesus asks us to seek, ask, knock. Charles has done extensive seeking, asking and knocking and has found answers. Fortunately for the reader, he shares the preponderance of materials that influenced him, that will allow each one of us to take deeper dives into why we should believe.
Why does this highly improbable universe of ours exist?
Our world had a beginning. The Big Bang theory is a mathematical explanation that kicked off space, gravity, nuclear force, electromagnetic force, hydrogen, helium et al into a universe that allows life to exist. Is the biblical creation story a poetic version of the beginning of time, space, et al?
He outlines evidence that human consciousness source is not limited to just our brain, which may then lead to a conclusion that we do have a soul.
What makes humans care for other people, to love, to help one another, to do things for the betterment of the community, to pursue truth, beauty and the greater good?
Knowledge of God is limited to our human understanding, but that does not make God unknowable.
He discusses natural law and a broad universal moral code that seems to transcend time and civilizations.
Are the four biblical gospels true? His extensive research satisfies his intellectual curiosity.
He concludes his journey with the questions: So what? What difference does a belief in God make to our lives? He gives nice answers to those questions and opens up about how belief has changed him personally.
I greatly enjoyed accompanying Charles Murray on his journey to faith. Jesus asks us to seek, ask, knock. Charles has done extensive seeking, asking and knocking and has found answers. Fortunately for the reader, he shares the preponderance of materials that influenced him, that will allow each one of us to take deeper dives into why we should believe.
November 17, 2025
Charles Murray, while raised in a Presbyterian church in Newton Iowa back in the 1940s and '50s, lost whatever faith he had while in college, becoming an agnostic. Later in life, after marrying his wife Catherine, who found a Quaker meeting that she started attending, and he went with her, while remaining agnostic. This book is his story of how he has come to faith. The first part of the book deals with the advances of science in recent years - quantum physics, the implications of the "Big Bang" theory, the experiences of "near death experiences" (NDE) and "Terminal Lucidity" (where people who have been suffering dementia just before they die become briefly lucid) etc. and why they do not favor a materialistic philosophy. And a lot more.
The second part of the book deals with more specifically Christian perspectives. He discusses C.S. Lewis' concept of the moral law and why it is important. He discusses the origins of the gospels and why he accepts the arguments that they were all written before 70 CE (i.e. before the fall of Jerusalem and the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple), and so they were basically eyewitness accounts of Jesus' life and teachings. Also of his resurrection, which he discusses. And why those scholars who have in the past argued that the gospels and other New Testament writings were heavily edited, with lots of fabrications added, are just wrong.
Throughout, he includes sidebars listing more books for reading on the subjects he is discussing.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who has questions about religion, whether you are or aren't a believer. There is a lot here to think about.
The second part of the book deals with more specifically Christian perspectives. He discusses C.S. Lewis' concept of the moral law and why it is important. He discusses the origins of the gospels and why he accepts the arguments that they were all written before 70 CE (i.e. before the fall of Jerusalem and the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple), and so they were basically eyewitness accounts of Jesus' life and teachings. Also of his resurrection, which he discusses. And why those scholars who have in the past argued that the gospels and other New Testament writings were heavily edited, with lots of fabrications added, are just wrong.
Throughout, he includes sidebars listing more books for reading on the subjects he is discussing.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who has questions about religion, whether you are or aren't a believer. There is a lot here to think about.
March 11, 2026
Case for Christ Without the Heart and Humor
A solid survey for those new to examining the evidences for Jesus and the New Testament accounts. But it's very much an intellectual's approach to the subject. Detached and even clinical, Murray's book failed to engage me like Lee Strobel's 1998 book The Case for Christ, which struck a balance between mind and heart. I never detected Murray's heart in these pages.
And perhaps that was by design if Murray is targeting his fellow think tank intellectuals and those toughest of atheist nuts to crack, Objectivist Libertarians. Same goes for his using "BCE" and "CE," which Christian books typically eschew.
I did appreciate Murray's engaging with the work of the Jesus Seminar and today's preeminent atheist Bart Ehrman (reading four of his books). That brought the discussion up to date, even if C.S. Lewis, who died the same day as JFK, was omnipresent. (On that note, I winced each time Murray cited Lewis' trilemma and awkwardly broke from the alliteration of "liar, lunatic, or Lord" to write "liar, lunatic or Son of God," which struck such a discordant note.)
The book is short with big type and numerous blank pages and lots of pullout boxes recommending relevant reading. It does start slow, but it picks up about a quarter of the way through. But yeah, I kept thinking as I read how Lee Strobel did this already and did it so much better. If you read only one apologetic memoir by an atheist who found faith, The Case for Christ is the way to go. But if you read two... Murray's isn't half-bad.
A solid survey for those new to examining the evidences for Jesus and the New Testament accounts. But it's very much an intellectual's approach to the subject. Detached and even clinical, Murray's book failed to engage me like Lee Strobel's 1998 book The Case for Christ, which struck a balance between mind and heart. I never detected Murray's heart in these pages.
And perhaps that was by design if Murray is targeting his fellow think tank intellectuals and those toughest of atheist nuts to crack, Objectivist Libertarians. Same goes for his using "BCE" and "CE," which Christian books typically eschew.
I did appreciate Murray's engaging with the work of the Jesus Seminar and today's preeminent atheist Bart Ehrman (reading four of his books). That brought the discussion up to date, even if C.S. Lewis, who died the same day as JFK, was omnipresent. (On that note, I winced each time Murray cited Lewis' trilemma and awkwardly broke from the alliteration of "liar, lunatic, or Lord" to write "liar, lunatic or Son of God," which struck such a discordant note.)
The book is short with big type and numerous blank pages and lots of pullout boxes recommending relevant reading. It does start slow, but it picks up about a quarter of the way through. But yeah, I kept thinking as I read how Lee Strobel did this already and did it so much better. If you read only one apologetic memoir by an atheist who found faith, The Case for Christ is the way to go. But if you read two... Murray's isn't half-bad.
March 3, 2026
Murray is doing something genuinely interesting here — treating religious practice as a variable in human flourishing rather than a rounding error in secular progress narratives. The instinct is correct and the sociological framing is more honest than most.
The problem is the math, which he essentially admits. When your central quantitative claims are self-acknowledged as imprecise, the structural argument loses load-bearing capacity at exactly the moment it needs it most. You can’t build a policy-adjacent case on a foundation you’ve flagged as unstable.
What survives is the qualitative argument, which is actually strong: that secular institutions have not successfully replicated the community cohesion and meaning-scaffolding functions that religious participation provided, and that the absence of viable substitutes is a real civilizational problem rather than a solved one.
The limiting factor is that Murray gestures at the mechanism without being able to quantify it rigorously. For readers comfortable sitting with that gap, the book is worth the time. For readers who need the math to hold, the admission that it doesn’t will end the argument before it lands.
Worth reading alongside Putnam’s Bowling Alone, which handles the empirical foundation more carefully.
The problem is the math, which he essentially admits. When your central quantitative claims are self-acknowledged as imprecise, the structural argument loses load-bearing capacity at exactly the moment it needs it most. You can’t build a policy-adjacent case on a foundation you’ve flagged as unstable.
What survives is the qualitative argument, which is actually strong: that secular institutions have not successfully replicated the community cohesion and meaning-scaffolding functions that religious participation provided, and that the absence of viable substitutes is a real civilizational problem rather than a solved one.
The limiting factor is that Murray gestures at the mechanism without being able to quantify it rigorously. For readers comfortable sitting with that gap, the book is worth the time. For readers who need the math to hold, the admission that it doesn’t will end the argument before it lands.
Worth reading alongside Putnam’s Bowling Alone, which handles the empirical foundation more carefully.
March 29, 2026
I've admired Murray tremendously for his intellectual rigor as presented in his other books. This book is an enormous disappointment. He's basically saying "my wife has found meaning in religion and spirituality, so I'm going to believe in the same unsubstantiated unproven unfalsifiable faith for the sake of harmony". I'm flabbergasted that a man if his stature would be convinced on such flimsy ground as expressed in the book. I'll give you one example: on the shroud of turin he talks extensively about proof that it's from the same era and place of the historical Jesus based on examination and dating of the fibers etc. But he's not asking the essential point which is how do you prove that Jesus was the one actually wrapped in it? How do you prove that someone clinically dead was wrapped in it before miraculously reviving? Indeed he has maybe one brief sentence on even attempting to prove that the body wrapped in it did not eventually decay therein. The biggest challenge to the problem of resurrection --namely that it's unscientific/ miraculous and no miracle has ever been observed by anyone-- is left unaddressed. His other topics and arguments have this same glaring flaw. Very disappointing.
January 23, 2026
A thoughtful book, but too neutral in conclusion.
Murray surprised me when he used the Shroud of Turin as a type of evidence for believing in Jesus’ resurrection. The shroud is not foundational evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ and seems like a weak topic to include, although it is curious.
The eyewitnesses who saw Jesus after his resurrection are the most compelling reasons and while he lightly covers this, there is much more to consider for those who have questions. I suggest Craig Parton, The Defense Never Rests, and Paul Maier - Jesus: Legend or Lord have stronger evidence and conclusions.
I believe that Jesus Christ, true God begotten of the Father from all eternity, and also true Man born of the Virgin Mary is my Lord who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, that I may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as He lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true.
Murray surprised me when he used the Shroud of Turin as a type of evidence for believing in Jesus’ resurrection. The shroud is not foundational evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ and seems like a weak topic to include, although it is curious.
The eyewitnesses who saw Jesus after his resurrection are the most compelling reasons and while he lightly covers this, there is much more to consider for those who have questions. I suggest Craig Parton, The Defense Never Rests, and Paul Maier - Jesus: Legend or Lord have stronger evidence and conclusions.
I believe that Jesus Christ, true God begotten of the Father from all eternity, and also true Man born of the Virgin Mary is my Lord who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, that I may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as He lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true.
May 16, 2026
I read a lot of books about religion and historical religion; I have also read books making factual arguments for the existence of God like this one and have gone through 13 years of Catholic school and multiple college courses on religious studies. I did not realize the background of the author until he mentioned his prior Academic work. I will say, in terms of books by renowned conservatives making factual arguments for God, this is not the best one I have read. The tone is rather dry, and the arguments are not particularly compelling outside of what you might find through searching online or reading other books. His personal stories and anecdotes were probably the most interesting thing. But that was not a focus of the book. I did really relate to him, saying that he lacked a certain need or sensibility that naturally pushed him towards religion and had to arrive at it through intellectual means, but the struggle to articulate the unique value proposition for this book other than that, it probably is a personal passion of his and since he has a profile it seems likea good book to write.
December 22, 2025
It's a pretty good introduction to quite an array of perpectives on God and later in the book, Christianity. The strength of the book is in the fact that it comes from a perspective of a scientific modernistic man that finds himself challenged by ideas and perspectives that he has long dismissed but importantly never critically evaluated until now late in his life. Critical thinking it turns out does not apply to just Materialist thinking but all arguments can be explored and judged on their merits. This is a objectively good and laudable thing the author is doing and he takes the time to point out perspectives that mirror his consensus as well as those that challenge it.
By being taken 'seriously' the author finds in these ideas more substance and salience than his previous admitted surface level of understanding would have otherwise allowed. This book is especially insightful for those who do not have high affinity for spiritual or symbolic/psychological ideas but have a strong affinity for scientific/mathmatical thinking.
It has a few nuggets for those who are more spiritually attuned than the author as well. For instance one of the books mentioned is called Just Six Numbers which was not a book I was familiar with but was very interesting to be introduced to. I like that the author goes some pretty unexpected places when he talks about NDEs and ESP. I didn't find his arguments for them too persuasive but I really do respect his open-mindedness in even daring to till in that kind of field. The strength of the book is that it does in fact "Take Religion Seriously"
The weakness of the book is that there is very little analysis or engagement from the author with these ideas therein.
I feel like in someways the book is more derivative of others works than the author putting forward any new ground in these areas. I don't mean to say that the entire book is "hey check out what this other book I read is saying" but in essence this is in fact mainly what it is.
I would have liked to see more dialogue with these ideas instead of simply restating what the books are about. The author explains his bonafides in the academic and professional world, and he apparently has authored all of these controversial studies, yet here he scurries into the wheat fields like a timid mouse and says he's no expert and he's just a layman. Therefore the ultimate effect is that the author does a good job of showing why one should take religion seriously but a poor job of explaining why one should take him seriously.
This book could be a good 'signpost' for others to read these other works he references but the literary value is superficial for the above reasons.
Update: I'll revise up a star after reading the final portion of the book where the author does actually put together an argument in regards to the Historicity of the Gospels. He definitely chooses his spots but I will say he does actually finally present his own argument at the end.
By being taken 'seriously' the author finds in these ideas more substance and salience than his previous admitted surface level of understanding would have otherwise allowed. This book is especially insightful for those who do not have high affinity for spiritual or symbolic/psychological ideas but have a strong affinity for scientific/mathmatical thinking.
It has a few nuggets for those who are more spiritually attuned than the author as well. For instance one of the books mentioned is called Just Six Numbers which was not a book I was familiar with but was very interesting to be introduced to. I like that the author goes some pretty unexpected places when he talks about NDEs and ESP. I didn't find his arguments for them too persuasive but I really do respect his open-mindedness in even daring to till in that kind of field. The strength of the book is that it does in fact "Take Religion Seriously"
The weakness of the book is that there is very little analysis or engagement from the author with these ideas therein.
I feel like in someways the book is more derivative of others works than the author putting forward any new ground in these areas. I don't mean to say that the entire book is "hey check out what this other book I read is saying" but in essence this is in fact mainly what it is.
I would have liked to see more dialogue with these ideas instead of simply restating what the books are about. The author explains his bonafides in the academic and professional world, and he apparently has authored all of these controversial studies, yet here he scurries into the wheat fields like a timid mouse and says he's no expert and he's just a layman. Therefore the ultimate effect is that the author does a good job of showing why one should take religion seriously but a poor job of explaining why one should take him seriously.
This book could be a good 'signpost' for others to read these other works he references but the literary value is superficial for the above reasons.
Update: I'll revise up a star after reading the final portion of the book where the author does actually put together an argument in regards to the Historicity of the Gospels. He definitely chooses his spots but I will say he does actually finally present his own argument at the end.
January 17, 2026
Charles Murray is a very smart guy, and it's clear he's done a lot of work exploring important questions about Christianity. He sees that this universe must have been designed, and he sees the historical validity of the Four Gospels. And of course lots of points between those two seemingly unrelated conclusions.
But he's still got a ways to go. He likes C. S. Lewis' famous trilemma, and yet Murray's current answer is nothing but heresy (Jesus was a great man with a lot of God in him). He is likely done a disservice by his current denominational affiliation, which is Quaker. The SofF might not even be Christian these days; Murray's writing has left me pessimistic.
I'm trying to be optimistic, though. The Lord has brought Murray a long way, and I suspect/hope that he's not done. This book will get people asking the right questions, and help them along to the right answers. But it doesn't provide them.
But he's still got a ways to go. He likes C. S. Lewis' famous trilemma, and yet Murray's current answer is nothing but heresy (Jesus was a great man with a lot of God in him). He is likely done a disservice by his current denominational affiliation, which is Quaker. The SofF might not even be Christian these days; Murray's writing has left me pessimistic.
I'm trying to be optimistic, though. The Lord has brought Murray a long way, and I suspect/hope that he's not done. This book will get people asking the right questions, and help them along to the right answers. But it doesn't provide them.
March 16, 2026
Charles A. Murray’s Taking Religion Seriously is an engaging sociological reflection on the role religion has historically played in shaping moral norms, community life, and shared meaning in American society. Murray approaches the topic with clear intellectual curiosity, and I appreciated the seriousness of his research and the questions he raises about what may be lost as religious life declines.
At times, however, the tone leans somewhat academic—religion is examined carefully, almost from a distance. For me, the most essential dimension of faith lies beyond analysis: the lived experience of God’s presence and unconditional love. That encounter is what ultimately makes religion not merely socially useful, but profoundly real.
Still, the book succeeds in prompting reflection. It’s a thoughtful exploration of why religion matters—even if, in the end, faith itself is something that must be experienced, not just studied.
An interesting intellectual case for religion—but the heart of faith, in my experience, can’t quite be footnoted.
At times, however, the tone leans somewhat academic—religion is examined carefully, almost from a distance. For me, the most essential dimension of faith lies beyond analysis: the lived experience of God’s presence and unconditional love. That encounter is what ultimately makes religion not merely socially useful, but profoundly real.
Still, the book succeeds in prompting reflection. It’s a thoughtful exploration of why religion matters—even if, in the end, faith itself is something that must be experienced, not just studied.
An interesting intellectual case for religion—but the heart of faith, in my experience, can’t quite be footnoted.
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