Table of Contents
In an age where faith seems increasingly at odds with reason, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat makes a provocative argument: believing in God isn't a leap into irrationality—it's the most reasonable conclusion we can draw from the evidence around us.
Key Takeaways
- Secular liberalism has shifted from hostile atheism to "regretful unbelief" as promised benefits of post-religious society failed to materialize
- Scientific discoveries over the past century actually support rather than challenge religious worldviews through fine-tuning and consciousness studies
- The fine-tuned universe and human consciousness point toward intentional design rather than random chance
- Religious experiences, including near-death encounters, persist across cultures in ways that materialist explanations struggle to address
- "Spiritual but not religious" approaches lack the institutional wisdom and protection that organized religion provides
- The stakes of belief extend beyond personal meaning to civilizational survival in an age of AI and technological disruption
- Believing in God's existence should be easier than practicing religion without belief
- Both Christian nationalism and technological worship pose dangers, but institutional religion offers safeguards against extremism
- Prayer for understanding becomes crucial as humanity faces unprecedented choices about its future
The Great Secular Disappointment
Something's shifted in America's intellectual landscape. Where once the educated elite divided between hostile atheists and believers, a third category has emerged: what Douthat calls the "regretful unbelievers." These are people who appreciate religious art, admire figures like Martin Luther King Jr., and recognize religion's moral contributions—but assume that "unfortunately, regrettably, a rational serious modern person either can't believe or could only come to belief through some kind of leap into unreason."
This shift reflects a growing recognition that the New Atheist promises haven't delivered. We were told that abandoning belief in a "sky daddy" would make politics more rational, increase trust in science, and reduce polarization. Instead, as America became more secular, it became more polarized, superstitious, and paranoid. Democrats and Republicans now regard each other with the kind of mutual incomprehension that once characterized the worst moments of religious warfare.
The trajectory from Protestant America to secular liberalism didn't happen overnight. Starting in the 19th century, America's Protestant elite gradually shed specific Christian doctrines while retaining certain moral frameworks. The social revolutions of the 1960s, particularly the sexual revolution, created tension between traditional religious teaching and how educated Americans thought about their personal lives. Then came a second shock in the early 21st century with the Catholic sex abuse crisis and the rise of internet atheism that youth pastors weren't equipped to handle.
When Science Points Toward God
Here's where Douthat's argument gets interesting. While technological changes like the internet and birth control pill altered behavior in ways that distanced people from religion, actual scientific discoveries over the past 120 years have moved closer to what religious people would expect rather than further away.
Unlike the genuine challenges posed by Galileo's astronomy or Darwin's evolution, 20th-century physics has revealed a universe that seems remarkably calibrated for our existence. The Big Bang theory suggests a definite beginning. Quantum physics hints at mysterious connections between mind and matter. Most strikingly, the physical constants that govern our universe appear fine-tuned to an almost incomprehensible degree—the odds of a universe like ours appearing by chance are roughly one in a quadrillion.
"You find yourself as a human being in a world that presents itself first as an ordered, structured, mathematically precise, predictable universe governed by physical laws that turn out to be incredibly precisely calibrated to yield stars, planets, and life itself," Douthat explains. This leaves us with essentially two working theories: either some kind of consciousness and intentionality organizes the world, or we live in a multiverse where quadrillions of other universes exist that we can never observe.
The Mystery of Consciousness
Then there's the puzzle of human consciousness itself. Nobody can quite explain how subjective experience emerges from matter, or why we needed to be conscious at all to survive and reproduce. Yet our conscious minds prove remarkably capable of understanding the mathematical principles that govern reality—a connection that seems far from inevitable.
Consider this: evolution should have equipped us with what Douthat playfully calls a "panther dodging toolkit"—basic survival skills for avoiding predators and finding food. But somehow this toolkit generalized upward to split atoms, uncover quantum mechanics, and understand cosmological principles. Why would the ability to avoid a saber-tooth tiger necessarily translate into grasping the fundamental laws of physics?
Mathematicians often describe their discipline in mystical terms, wondering why abstract mental forms perfectly predict material reality. The age of AI only deepens this mystery, as we build machines to act intelligently without the perceptual awareness that defines our experience. We have no idea how to give machines consciousness because we don't understand where our own comes from.
These converging lines of evidence—the fine-tuned universe, the mystery of consciousness, and the remarkable capacity of human minds to understand cosmic principles—point toward what the Old Testament describes as humans being made "in the image of God." There's a mind behind the cosmos, and our minds participate in the reality that mind created.
The Persistence of the Supernatural
Beyond cosmic fine-tuning and consciousness lies another category of evidence: the stubborn persistence of religious experience. In every culture, at every time and place, people report encounters with transcendent realities. Near-death experiences have become more common as medical technology improves our ability to resuscitate people, and these experiences consistently involve encounters with beings and realities that map onto religious descriptions of the afterlife.
Douthat acknowledges that materialist explanations for these phenomena exist, but notes their limitations. Why would evolution program us to see dead relatives and bright lights at the moment of death, when historically such experiences provided no survival advantage? The religious person would expect people brought back from death's threshold to report encounters with spiritual realities. The atheist would expect fragmented hallucinations or nothing at all. What we actually observe seems closer to religious predictions.
This extends to other forms of spiritual experience, from mystical encounters to what people using psychedelics sometimes call "negative entities"—experiences that traditional religions would recognize as demonic. The supernatural landscape, if it exists, may not be uniformly benevolent.
The Limits of Spiritual Shopping
This brings us to the inadequacy of the "spiritual but not religious" approach that's become popular, especially among women seeking meaning outside traditional institutions. While Douthat doesn't discourage initial experimentation, he sees several problems with indefinite spiritual freelancing.
First, progress in most human endeavors requires joining something larger than yourself. You need community, institutional support, and people to test your wildest ideas. Just as you wouldn't expect to excel at sports or politics purely through individual effort, spiritual development benefits from communal wisdom and discipline.
Second, there's an unwarranted presumption in assuming you can take pieces from different religious traditions and tape them together into a superior map. Even from a relativist perspective that sees all religions as paths to the same destination, does it make sense to assume your personal synthesis will be more reliable than traditions refined over millennia?
Finally, if the supernatural exists, it's naive to assume all spiritual experiences have your best interests at heart. Major religions disagree about many things, but they universally recognize that souls can get into serious trouble. Institutional religion provides what Douthat calls "spiritual technologies" designed to protect practitioners from dangerous spiritual forces.
The Stakes of Civilizational Choice
Douthat sees our moment as uniquely pivotal. Humanity has fulfilled the Genesis mandate to "fill the earth and subdue it." Now we face fundamental questions about what comes next: Do we collapse? Expand to the stars? Merge with machines? Become transhuman?
The rise of what he calls technological worship—particularly among Silicon Valley leaders who seem to view artificial intelligence as humanity's successor—represents a genuine threat. When Elon Musk describes humans as potentially becoming "a biological bootstrap for machine intelligence," or Sam Altman writes about "the merge" between humans and AI successors, they're articulating visions of obsolescence for human beings as we understand ourselves.
These aren't fringe figures but some of the most powerful people shaping our technological future. Their beliefs about human worth and purpose matter enormously for civilization's trajectory. If God exists and has intentions for humanity, this high-stakes moment demands serious consideration of those intentions.
The Practical Path to Belief
For people who wish they could believe but feel unable to simply flip a switch, Douthat offers both sympathy and practical advice. He distinguishes between the full experience of religious faith—which may require grace, revelation, and deep spiritual practice—and basic belief that the universe was probably created by some kind of God who cares about human moral choices.
The latter, he argues, shouldn't be nearly as difficult as people make it. The idea that belief in God requires an impossible leap of faith represents a kind of "instilled prejudice" rather than rational assessment. Throughout most of human history, basic theism was considered the easy part of religion. The hard part was figuring out how to live according to God's will and wrestling with questions about suffering and evil.
Some people will reason their way toward belief first, then begin practicing. Others will start with practice—keeping kosher, attending church, observing religious rhythms—and find that belief follows. The Jewish concept of "we will do and then we will understand" captures this second approach. Either path can work, but Douthat maintains that practicing religion without any belief in God is actually harder than developing basic theistic belief.
Navigating Religious Dangers
Douthat doesn't ignore religion's potential for generating dangerous extremism. He acknowledges concerns about both Islamist terrorism and the rise of Christian nationalism in America. However, he sees these movements primarily as products of religious weakness rather than strength.
When Christianity was culturally dominant, it didn't need to explain its decline through conspiracy theories or anti-Semitic scapegoating. Current extremist movements reflect the frustration of believers who see their faith marginalized and seek someone to blame. While these tendencies deserve serious concern, Douthat argues they remain politically weak and represent the junior partner to more secular forms of online extremism.
The most resilient form of American Christianity remains non-denominational Protestantism—the suburban churches that look like community centers with names like "Elevate." This pragmatic, therapeutic approach to faith may lack theological sophistication, but it's proven more durable than either liberal mainline Protestantism or traditional Catholicism.
A Prayer for Understanding
As we approach Easter, Douthat finds himself praying for understanding in an age of unprecedented uncertainty. The future feels more open than it has in decades. Are UFOs important? Will AI truly revolutionize everything? Does Donald Trump's presidency represent a fundamental political realignment? How should we navigate supernatural experiences that seem increasingly common?
These aren't merely intellectual questions but existential ones that may determine humanity's trajectory. The stakes extend beyond individual souls to civilizational survival. If God exists, then our relationship with divine intentions matters enormously as we make choices that will echo across generations.
For those still wrestling with doubt, Douthat's Easter message offers both challenge and comfort. The challenge: seriously consider that belief in God might be more reasonable than the alternatives. The comfort: even in times of trouble and uncertainty, there may be "some kind of angel in the whirlwind who can help us through the storm."
The question isn't whether we need religious practice to build better communities or provide moral structure for liberal democracy, though those benefits are real. The question is whether God actually exists and what that means for how we should live. As the evidence mounts from cosmology, consciousness studies, and persistent spiritual experience, the answer seems increasingly clear: it's more logical to believe than not.
