Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
Politics and Religion
From the library: Believe, by Ross Douthat

From the library: Believe, by Ross Douthat

Last updated on: November 28, 2025 at 10:19 pm by Jane the Actuary

0 Comments

From the library: Believe, by Ross Douthat 2025-11-28T22:19:46-06:00 Jane the Actuary

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

By Raysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

With the subtitle, Why Everyone Should be Religious.

Is it a perfect book? No. If I were Douthat’s editor, I would have marked up a bunch of passages and asked for him to clarify his statements, particular for subject matter that the general reader wouldn’t necessarily know. But it seems to me that this book, by the New York Times religion columnist, is this generation’s The Case for Christianity, and I want to try to write out a little bit of a summary before it goes back to the library.

Part 1: reasons to believe in God

Chapter 1 makes the case that the more we understand about the universe, the more unbelievable it is that the world somehow came to be without a creator. Douthat goes beyond the usual, “if there’s a Big Bang, who set it into motion?” to point to certain properties of physics or the universe, which are seemingly random but must be as they are for the universe to exist — the rate at which the universe expands, the nuclear force (the force that binds protons and neutrons inside atoms), and others. He observes that, in order to “do” science, scientists have to presuppose the lack of a divine force, but says that, in the end, to get hypotheses to work without God, requires illogical contortions of logic.

Chapter 2 turns inward, to the fact that science has been unable to explain the “soul” or how it is that we think and have consciousness, that neurologists have mapped the regions of the brain but that this mapping is not really an explanation for anything. It’s common for AI “experts” to make the claim that what it will take for an AI model to become sentient is just to be trained on enough data:

it’s hoping to actually do magic – by building a system that exceeds our understanding and then assuming that self-awareness will develop naturally from the consciousness-generating aspect of complex systems that we don’t ourselves yet grasp (p 45).

In the same way, (some) neurologists seem to think that consciousness is somehow just the result of enough neurons connecting, and that that is a “good enough” explanation.

Chapter 3 moves further to the ways in which people experience supernatural events, whether they are miracles or mystical-type experiences. He titles the chapter “The Myth of Disenchantment” because the conventional wisdom was that, with the advent of science, belief in the miraculous or the supernatural would disappear — but it hasn’t, whether it’s near-death experiences, or spiritual experiences sought out by participants (e.g., charismatics), or unexpected visions, or, in fact, miraculous experiences.

Part 2: What to do next?

Having accepted Douthat’s arguments and deciding, on the basis of logic, to believe in God, what should one do next? That’s what Douthat tries to pitch next.

First, he says, you need to make a commitment, and, in the same way as you shouldn’t make random guesses about how to get to your destination but use a map, so too should you accept that some existing religion offers a better path than going it on your own. What’s more, picking a religion provides a community of believers which is also important.

But what religion to pick? Douthat starts with “The Case for the Big Religions” – that “the more popular, enduring, and successful world religions are more likely than others to be true” (p. 130). Among these, he identifies some key differentiators:

Moral guidance vs divine experience: how important is “experiential” religion to you vs just moral guidance?
What about mono- vs polytheism?
“the eternal stakes of a human life?” — that is, what happens when you die? What about heaven and hell vs reincarnation?
How does God appear in history? that is, whether God has acted in human history or sits above it.

But all that being said, Douthat tries to make the case that, all else being equal, the best choice is to choose the dominant religion in your part of the world. He uses the parable of the talents, in which three servants are given unequal amounts of money to invest in the master’s absence, and the man with only one talent buries it in the ground out of fear. The one who struggles to figure out which religion is true, rather than having spiritual insights, is equivalent to those who are given only one or two talents, and the moral of the story is to make the most of what you have (and choose to believe in the most “available” religion), and be rewarded like the two-talent servant rather than refuse to take any actions towards religious belief and observance, like the one-talent servant who buried the talent in the ground.

But Douthat recognizes that that rule of thumb doesn’t always work — he cites the case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who left Islam for atheism, then chose Christianity for a seemingly “inauthentic” reason that Christianity was the religion of the West that had offered refuge from the abuse of the Islamic world. And here he encourages readers to be willing to consider a religion for a multitude of reasons, even if they are seemingly not very spiritual or religious at all, such as choosing the religion of your spouse or your friends, or a simple cultural affinity with the religion. It reminds me of when Gregorian chant was popular, and I presume Douthat would say, “it’s perfectly fine to be Catholic because you like Gregorian chant.”

With all that being said, Douthat does then finally explain why he is a Catholic Christian, not as a Cradle-Catholic but with a family background of charismatic Christianity, though he himself never had the spiritual experiences his parents did. He describes the ways Catholicism “fit [his] personality” – such as the diversity of experience that’s a part of Catholicism, from the “weirdness” of mysticism to the mechanical aspects of the sacraments, and the logic of its explanations. Finally, Douthat gets to the bottom line: even though he has tried to build a case thus far based on likelihood and pragmatism, in the end he believes that the claims of Christianity are in fact real, and backs this up with the credibility of the Gospels. I won’t try to reproduce this here and I’m sure this particular part of his case exists in similar books and essays.

In any case, my summary ends here: the book is short, barely over 200 pages, and with a few exceptions, very readable.

Uncategorized

"from the library"

Previous Post

November 28, 2025

Bonus pre-Advent commentary on The Visitation

Next Post

December 31, 2025 "Heritage Americans"? No, WEIRD people.

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"Yup, Pretty sure that trans athletes are a major issue that needs to be decided ..."

E Brown

In which I comment on the ..."

"Do you pray to the golden calf, too? You seem like the type."

Rick

Is there a fix for gerrymandering?

"This includes our President, who according to all accounts doesn't read unless it's 1) small ..."

captcrisis

Are 28% of Americans truly functionally ..."

"For the test being digital vs paper, people do tend to do better with hard-copy, ..."

Bemused

Are 28% of Americans truly functionally ..."

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Actuarial/Retirement Issues Politics Uncategorized

Select a Month September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 December 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 August 2021 June 2021 April 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

How did God protect Daniel in the lion’s den?

Select your answer to see how you score.

He made the lions fall asleep He blinded the guards He sent an angel to shut the lions’ mouths He made Daniel invisible