The Sean McDowell Show - Why Smart People Don’t Take Religion Seriously (And Why I Was Wrong)

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

Charles Murray is a Harvard and MIT-trained policy analyst and the author of Taking Religion Seriously. He joins me to explore why many educated people never seriously consider God—not because they’ve disproven the supernatural, but because they’ve quietly learned to dismiss it. Charles describes his journey from “happy agnostic” to “Christian,” wrestling with questions like “Why is there something rather than nothing?” and “Why does consciousness seem to reach beyond the brain?” This isn’t the story of an aggressive atheist changing his mind. It’s about the subtle assumptions that shape what we think is reasonable and what we hesitate to question. *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [smdcertdisc] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

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I was always open to, there's a mystery about the universe. That was always out there. This is really important for people to hear because it's not always this aggressive, atheist, agnostic professor. It's just kind of subtle dismissal of religion that if you want to fit in, you just don't believe. Finally, in the mid-1990s, I was getting moved away from. my simple lack of attention to religion. Why would a Harvard and MIT trained policy analyst, who was thoroughly socialized to be secular, write a book describing his journey from happy agnostic to Christian?

Our guest today is Charles Murray, author of the new book, Taking Religion Seriously. Charles, thanks so much for coming on. It's my pleasure. Let's just start right with the title of your book. what do you even mean by taking religion seriously? Because I didn't take it seriously for a long time. And by taking it seriously, I mean, and I'm speaking to unbelievers. As I say in the introduction, there are tens of millions of people like me who are well-educated,

or professionally successful, and religion just has not been an important part of our life. and a lot of us have sort of assumed from the time we were in college that smart people don't believe that stuff anymore. In my case, I went from Newton, Iowa, where I was raised to Presbyterian. My family would go to church every week, and I'd go with them, but I was not deeply committed. And I get to Harvard, and I like to fit in, and I learned that smart people don't believe that stuff anymore. And I bought into that just the same way I think an awful lot of other people did. And we've never really given it much thought. And I'm saying to them, look, I'm not trying to proselytize, not trying to get you to do anything in particular except realize you've got to look at this stuff.

There's a lot of material here you need to confront. Tell me a little bit more about that socialization process. You talked about having a faith. You didn't take seriously, but maybe believed in God on some level. were people trying to talk you out of your faith? Like, how did you come to the point that you were a materialist or close to being a materialist? That's the interesting thing that nobody worked hard to convert me. I took no courses on Thomas Aquinas' mistakes.

Okay. And in fact, basically, the subject of religion just never came up. And if it did, it was usually of dismissively or sometimes the subject of humor. I didn't have any friends who were noticeably religious. It was just in the air, the zeitgeist, and I bought into that. This is really important for people to hear because it's not always this aggressive, atheist, agnostic professor. It's just kind of subtle dismissal of religion that if you want to fit in, you just, don't believe. And so a lot of it arguably way to describe it happened more under the surface than

it did above the surface. So, or go ahead. Were you going to jump in? Well, I just wanted to point out two things also. You go to college like that, and you have a few things that militate against religious belief. One of them, of course, is the argument, look, we are human beings who are more advanced animals and others. We've all reached this through the same process of evolution. And whereas we have consciousness and other animals don't, there's no reason to think that there's anything that goes on after the brain stops functioning.

And another thing is you learn about a universe that has a billion galaxies, not a billion stars, but a billion galaxies, and tens of millions of light years across. And the whole idea of a personal God just says, of course not. that that's not in the realm of possibility. So tell me a little about what you mean by happy agnostic.

And I love this because I just interviewed somebody who describes itself as a little bit more of an aggressive atheist. And it seems to me you're not on some spiritual journey trying to disprove religion. You're just kind of living your life and yet these questions emerge. So talk a little about why you describe yourself as a happy agnostic and what that meant. Well, it was a particular period of my life. I can pinpoint of 1985. July, 1985, my wife and I have been married for two years. She's my soulmate.

I've never been happier. And we just have a new daughter. And I just had a successful book, an unexpectedly successful book, at the opening of my public career. And life was complete. And it was at that point. a couple of months after the birth of our daughter, Anna, that my wife came to me and was talking about the love that she felt for Anna. And she said, I love her far more than evolution requires, which is a great, it's a great line.

It is, yeah. It is several ways. One is, I'm Harvard and MIT. She's Oxford and Yale. Okay. This is the way you put it. Love her more than evolution requires. And what she was saying was that something else was going on, and she felt that she was a conduit for some larger love.

And, you know, an awful lot of people in my position dismiss openly spiritual believers because we say, well, they're kidding themselves. They're deluding themselves. Maybe they aren't that smart. I could say none of those things about my wife. And so I did not have the option of dismissing her experience. And you were quite correct the way you described me. I was never a militant atheist. In fact, I used the word agnostic advisedly because I go along with the proposition

that of all the religious positions, simple atheism is at least plausible. So I was always open to There's something there's a mystery about the universe That was always out there But that was 1985 that my wife She migrated to Quakerism And whereas a lot of Quakers are socially active And not all that spiritual

She's a spiritually active Quaker And I watched her for 10 years Moving along her discoveries The way she put it is that it was like being in a room with a light on a rheostat, and as time went on, the light got brighter and brighter in terms of her own developing thing. And finally, by the mid-1990s, I was getting moved away from my simple lack of attention to religion. So if I'm hearing you correctly, at the birth of your child, child, this just stirs something up in her, this deeper love that she doesn't think can be reduced to this evolutionary kind of survival mode of mothers biologically caring for the child.

Her response is to go to a Quaker church and start kind of growing and adapting spiritually. Ten years past, what's happening in your mind? Are you intrigued by this? Are you upset by this? Like, what's happening for this decade in your world? I watched her lovingly and encouragingly. I thought this was a good thing that she was doing. It just didn't, you know, what does it have to do with me?

And the answer was, and here's where we get down to something that I've taken away that I've come to believe I did not believe at the time. And that is that receptivity, perceptual ability when it comes to spiritual things is like any other human trait. It goes from low to high in different human beings. And I like to use the analogy with music. I've had professional musicians who, when they hear music, they're hearing something completely different from what I hear. they are getting an emotional impact from it, an intellectual impact from it,

a spiritual impact from it oftentimes, that I don't get it. I love a Beethoven symphony or a Mozart sonata, but I'm not hearing what they hear. I don't have as much receptive music. And some people are simply tone deaf too. Well, I think with spirituality, I'm deficient.

You know, if you think, suppose we scored spirituality the same way we score IQ. Might be somewhere around 70 or 75. And my wife is way up there. And if that's the case, when you start to take religion seriously, in a way, I don't have the same option she did. I can, you know, for example, she is a very active and contemplative prayer. and I was unable to follow her into that. But at the same time, since I wanted to take it seriously, I'll keep going back to that phrase, I ended up going a more empirical route.

And I was pushed along in that. I did have a sort of road to Damascus moment, but it wasn't spiritual. It was when I read a book called Just Six Numbers, which was by a British astrophysicist. And this was not, had no religious overtones. He was talking about the Big Bang. And he was talking about something that physicists have known since the 1970s, which is that at the moment of the Big Bang,

when the universe emerged out of nothing, a dimensionless point, and not only space, probably time was created, it's as if there were a whole bunch of settings which if they had not all been perfectly aligned would have produced a universe in which life was not possible it would have been a universe that was radiation but no stars and galaxies a universe with black holes and instead we get a universe that creates all the elements

and the elements create planets eventually and stars which eventually enable life. The chances against that are about a trillion to one. And that calculation actually is by another astrophysicist, a Nobel Prize winner. And I read that. I said a trillion to one chance against this happening, I don't believe in trillion to one chances. And I was left with the option of believing in the multiverse, which is the theory, and it's purely theory that there are millions of universes like this. To me, that's just not, that's just, I can't buy into that in any way, shape, or form. And the only plausible alternative is that there is an intention behind the universe.

And simply saying that to myself was a big step. as an apologist hearing somebody have a damascus road experience that involves reading a science and philosophy book actually makes me really happy to hear that on one level before we get to some of the evidence you cite some other historical and scientific evidence that was pivotal along your journey let me take a step back for a minute so you see your wife over this 10 years kind of growing and expanding you're trying to be loving to her you ended up reading this book, so you had some intentionality spiritually, what was your goal and what was your mindset to get to that point? And since you didn't go to a Quaker services that were seemingly more experiential like your wife had, what kind of investigation were you intending to pursue? Well, the first point is that I started attending Quaker meeting regularly with her in the mid-1990s. because by that time we had a second child and both of the children were old enough to go to what Quakers call first day school, Sunday school. And I felt very strongly then that it's a good, children should grow up in a religious tradition.

I was very much in favor of that. I should support that. But here's the, with a Quaker beating, I'm bad at meditation. I try. I try. And I just lose. focus but it is permissible in Quaker meeting not encouraged but permissible to read the Bible so I would take the Bible with me and I would read that maybe half an hour out of the hour of the Quaker service every Sunday well over several years you read a lot of the Bible by okay and and the New Testament I read the New Testament you know repeatedly and different portions of it so I was acquiring that kind of

knowledge. I was persuaded even before I read just six numbers about the Big Bang, you know, the famous question, why is there something rather than nothing? Yeah. That was, that was very much in my mind in the last half of the 90s. The whole point about the simplicity of the relationship between mathematics and the physical world, I kept thinking, why? should it be that something like the E equals MC square, Einstein's famous theory, why should that be mathematically so simple? It's as if the mathematics would not be that simple unless somebody had planned it that way. So it was a series of nudges and two couple of things happened.

in 2005, well, first I wrote a book called Human Accomplishment, long book about the arts and sciences and the great accomplishments in it. And I had a Catholic friend, Michael Novak, who's a famous Catholic. Yeah. Philosopher, not theologian. But anyway, he said to me, when I set out on the book, he said, I think you're going to find as you go into this that Christianity played a huge role in Western civilization, developing the arts and sciences.

And I liked Michael a lot and admired him, but I said to myself, well, you know, the Greeks were kind of there first in terms of Plato and Aristotle and logic and other, but I didn't argue with him. Need a daily spark of hope and direction? Let the Daily Bible app from Salem Media be that spark. This free Android app delivers an uplifting verse each morning, plus reading plans, devotions, and trusted podcasts from leaders like Joyce Meyer and Rick Warren. Prefer to listen instead?

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I was increasingly impressed by the fundamental role that Christianity played, not just in the arts, where Christianity was very obviously the inspiration for an awful lot of the great visual art, a lot of the great music, a lot of the great literature, but also the sciences. So I came to the end of writing human accomplishment

in round 2004. And I was already bothered by the degree to which Christianity had had this powerful impact. And on the last page of the book, I said, you know, you have to realize how many of these great creators of art and literature were devout Christians. They were. And I had a sentence that said, Johan Sebastian Bach, doesn't have to explain himself. He does not have to defend his way of looking at the world. His music does it for him. And so I was opened up by that point. Then I read C.S. Lewis, and I was sort of tipped over the edge into a whole new set of things. Okay, so we're going to come

back to that. That C.S. Lewis moment seems really significant. But I'm just, I'm trying to get in your mindset year. This kind of starts in 1985. And then you're kind of tipped towards. Christianity like two decades later in 2005 and during this time you're writing books on other stuff being a policy analyst is this kind of a hobby for you is it in the back of your mind that's just kind of gnawing you like what was your mindset and intentionality in discovering the truth about these questions during that two decades i had a sense that my wife was acquiring stuff in her life that I envied. And so I had a not very well articulated desire to participate in that.

And also, even before I read the Big Bang material, I would run into things like near-death experiences, which I had done a lot of reading in that. And I've done a lot of reading for a long time, and I took a lot of those accounts seriously. But then it sort of grows inside me that, you know, if these near-death experiences are real, it means consciousness can exist outside the brain. And so that was hovering in the background. It's one of the reasons I wrote the book the way I did was to avoid making it sound systematic.

And I avoid the word journey. I don't think I use the word journey. And the reason is I had no sense of being in any kind of straight line. I had a much more diffuse sense of as time went on, there were new things intruding on my understanding of the world, and I was still trying to fit them together. So there's really no sense of urgency. It was just kind of curiosity and something just kind of gnawing at you a little bit that she knew something, experienced something you were missing out on. Is that a fair way to look at it? That's a fair way to look at it with plus one addition.

And this is something I'm trying to communicate to my readers who are not religious. This stuff is fascinating. I agree. When you get into all sorts of the issues I've just talked about with consciousness and the science. scientific findings, unconsciousness. That's fascinating. And when you get into apologetics, as I did later, into the study of the New Testament and the historicity of it and the dating of the Gospels and all that, it's just plain intellectually really riveting. You don't have to convince me about that. You are preaching to the choir. That is music to my ears. I love it. I'm probably

we're going to clip that one and just use it because that's so true to me. Okay, so one last question. Before we get to you kind of reading into mere Christianity, the nudges an issue you had wrestled with, the first one to describe is mathematics that why can we capture things like laws equal, e equals MC squared in such a simple way and why is order built into the universe? The origin of the universe began to bug you like, Why is there something rather than nothing?

This points towards a cause outside of the universe. And then the fine tuning of the universe also points towards kind of a mind that best explains with intentionality, the order of the universe set for life. And then consciousness seems to bug you that says, wait a minute, I can't reduce human beings down just to matter. There seems to be mind or a soul and with near-death experiences that can at least minimally survived the brain. Does that capture kind of where you were intellectually before mere Christianity? That's very well put. You encapsulate the whole thing. Good. Yeah. Awesome. Just trying to track. That's really good. Okay. So why did you read mere Christianity? Who gave you

that book? What did you have that idea? And then what was the next step that book took you along in your intellectual non-journey? It was Pete Waiter. Pete Waiter also is a policy analyst, but he also writes on religion. He's an evangelical Christian. And he was formerly a speech writer for George W. Bush. So in 2005, he invited me to go to lunch at the White House mess, the little cafe in the White House, which is really cool to go to because you're in the White House. And you've never been there before. Yeah. And I knew he was an evangelical Christian. And I asked him during lunch, I said, how did you come to your faith? And he said, by convincement, mostly.

I was just convinced it was true. And he mentioned C.S. Lewis and mere Christianity as a turning point. And I left the lunch and bought the book and read it over the next few days. And I was really impressed. Remember what earlier I said about deciding when I went to college that, were right and saying smart people don't believe that stuff anymore. You don't read mere Christianity and say smart people don't believe that stuff anymore. Agreed.

If there is a voice that just radiates intelligence at C.S. Lewis, and a lot of people who are watching have read C.S. Lewis themselves, they know this. But if they haven't, when I said he radiates intelligence, he does it with his conversational, casual, informal style that is totally engrossing. And he has the wonderful characteristic of you're reading him and you're sort of mentally arguing with him. And then after you've said, oh, well, this is why I don't agree with him, the next paragraph says, perhaps you're thinking that.

He does. And he answers your objection. And so that had a huge effect on. me. And I would, by this time, there were lots of religious books coming into the house because of Catherine. She reads full humanously. But one that I saw independently of her, I guess, was Jesus and the eyewitnesses. Yeah. I'm sure you're familiar with it. Yep. It's, it's Richard Baucom, British theologian. And he starts out the book. well, I know this is a minority view, but this book, the thesis is that the New Testament

Gospels are deliberately trying to convey how much of their material is coming from eyewitnesses and that he is making the case for the traditional interpretation of the Gospels. That, for example, it was tradition that Mark had taken down Peter's reminiscences in effect. And he's saying there's really good evidence that that's exactly what Mark does and so forth. And that did something really important for me because I had already read into the revisionists. I'd read some of Bart Aramon. I'd read some of the other things, which says, oh, the Gospels weren't really written. They accumulated traditions over decades in different parts of the Roman Empire.

It's like the telephone game. And so we really can't even be sure that what Jesus is purported to have said, there's any resemblance that anything he did say. I knew about the Jesus seminar. And I kind of thought that they've won. I'd assume that, you know, that more or less the New Testament had been discredited. And all at once here's Malcolm writing a very erudite book. And it seems to me he's making a lot of sense.

And then I start from there, and I end up reading a variety of other defenses of the tradition, some of which were written before about him. I hadn't known that these existed. And as I did that, I kept saying to myself, I'm more impressed by the empirical evidence by the defenders than I am by the revisionists. So when I teach classes on apologetics, I often walk through like the scientific evidence that points towards a mind that began the universe that's intelligent, timeless, changeless, purposeful. We'll walk through the fine tuning, which I think advances that a little bit further. Talk about things like the origin of life and the information itself, which is not something you go into which is fine.

and talk about consciousness in the way that you do that there's life apart from the body. But the big piece when I talk about mere Christianity is that in the scientific evidence, there's a mind that made us, but we can't ascertain anything moral about this mind. Lewis's argument, even independent from the Bible, is like there's this moral law and we know it and we expect it and we act as if it's real, which moves us along the pendulum from this mind that began the universe to this seemingly personal agent behind this moral law. Do you agree with that thinking? And was that a part of your process or am I kind of reading stuff in post facto that maybe wasn't there? No, no.

That's the first five chapters of your Christianity doesn't say a word about Christianity. It's all about the existence of the moral law. And then at the end of it, he hits you with the bludgeon. He says, well, if you have a God that is trying to communicate with human beings, how can he exhibit himself? and the answer is he can exhibit himself by pushing us toward certain ways of behaving. And at the core of that is a kind of love, agape. And so what we see and what he's been describing with the basis for the moral law is the nature of God,

and the nature of God corresponds very closely. to the Christian nature of God. God is love. And it provides a moral basis for behavior. And for a lot of people, Francis Collins is another example. That's right. For Francis Collins, it's that passage

that sort of brought him up short and was a transforming experience. And it was close to that for me. It was certainly very influential. So the next step, of course, in mere Christianity and in your journey, and I think logically, is if we have this mind that is behind the universe and this mind has put a moral law into the universe and also on our hearts to behave in a moral fashion, has this mind or God revealed himself? Now, on the last page of your book, this is actually one of my favorite inserts from your book. so we're somewhat skipping ahead. But you write this, you said,

during one such wakefulness a few months before writing these words, I was thinking about what it would be like to meet great religious figures from the past such as Gautama, Buddha, Laosie, Moses, and Jesus. It'd be fascinating, of course, to see what they were like in person, and I would naturally treat all of them with the utmost respect. Unbidden, it came to me that I would treat Jesus differently. with reverence. So what motivated you to then say, okay, maybe this God has revealed himself in the person of Jesus? Well, we did skip ahead, which was fine. We did. Which is fine. But what I want to

emphasize to people who are watching is I was surprised by this instinctive feeling of I treat him with reverence. surprised in the sense that I had reached a belief without internally processing the degree to which I had reached that belief. I remember Catherine saying to me one time early on in this whole process, she sort of laughed and said, you know you believe in God, don't you? You do realize that, don't you? And I said, well, but she was, and she was putting out something. Need a daily spark of hope and direction?

Let the Daily Bible app from Salem Media be that spark. This free Android app delivers an uplifting verse each morning, plus reading plans, devotions, and trusted podcasts from leaders like Joyce Meyer and Rick Warren. Prefer to listen instead? The Daily Bible app reads verses, reading plans, and chapters aloud, handy for the headphones moment of your day. Choose from versions like ESV, NIV, NIV, KJV, and more, and bookmark favorites to revisit later.

Share inspiring messages with loved ones right from the app. feel God's presence in every notification. Search for Daily Bible app on Google Play and begin your day with hope, purpose, and peace. She had perceived that I had not fully perceived myself. And that was true a lot of this. And in a way, I think that should be encouraging for unbelievers. Because, you know, if you say to yourself

that you've got to have a born-again moment, a revelation of... I think you're likely to be disappointed. That happens to some people. I think those are authentic experiences for some people. But it's not the only way. It's not the only way that a person can migrate to a new set of beliefs. And it is not all rational and intellectual.

I did not say to myself, well, I think the odds are now 89.4%. But such and such is the case. And so I'm going to believe. It was a combination. of rational appraisal of a lot of empirical information, along with a harder to describe gradual spiritual process, but they did not feel spiritual at the time in an emotional way. So in the book, one of the things you talk about the famously C.S. Lewis kind of Lord, liar, lunatic,

is that one of the arguments? Because you had been reading the gospel for a while going to the Quaker services. So you're familiar with the stories and who Jesus claimed to be. Is that one of the pieces at this time in your life where you're like, oh, my goodness, I have to draw some conclusion about who Jesus is personally? Yeah, because my reaction to the trilemma, liar lunatic or lord, was saying, well, those aren't the only options. And I was thinking of the revisionists at this point.

No, it was that what we're getting in the New Testament bears no relationship to anything that actually happened historically. Well, if I'm going to say that, then it's kind of incumbent on me to investigate the historicity of all this. And I had at the same time a curiosity about these traditions so that I would read that there was an early tradition about Mark recording Peter's reminiscences. There is an early tradition of this, an early tradition of that. But the people never actually said where the tradition came from.

And so one of the things that as I started reading that I found the most fascinating and also the most impressive were the very early patristic writings of, Papias and of, if I'm pronouncing that right, and Clement and Arranias and others, and there were a couple of books I read which had extended quotations from them. And I read those, I think especially of Clement, writing about how it is that you only had two gospels written by apostles. And the way he describes that just sounds like, a historian describing something that was well known at that time

and that he's relating it to us and it sounded plausible and I also assumed that Clement had access to a lot of written material that we don't have access to anymore because it's been lost and this sounded like a serious

recounting of this is why John wrote John. This is why Mark is how Mark took down the reminiscence of Peter, it was persuasive. And then I also came to the question of dating the Gospels. It never particularly bothered me that they were dated at 70 to 90 AD

because I figured they could still be quite accurate that long after the crucifixion. But shorter is better. And I think the evidence that Acts was finished by the early 60s is persuasive. And if Acts was written by the early 60s, that pushes everything else back. And so you're looking at the Gospels certainly in the 50s and maybe in the 40s.

And you put that alongside the Pauline letters. And so as I explored this, I came to believe that Lewis's Trilemma was better than I had to do. initially realized. Oh. That it was not the case that Jesus as having a special relationship with God, Son of God, that was not a late invention.

That was, I came to say, the revisionists are wrong about that. I'm not a biblical scholar, but that was my conclusion on the basis of my reading. And he did claim that. And so now we have to say, can we reconcile him both, being a great moral teacher and also being a lunatic when it comes to talking about his relationship with God. And that's hard to do too. Now, I think this is post-2005 for you. So two-part question, when are you kind of reading Baccombe and mere Christianity? And are you reading it like hoping it's true or just interested or like I hope it's not true? What was kind of your mindset and when

did you read those kind of works? You're asking it questions that I've never had to answer. before. So this is interesting. Good. Yeah. You know, I think the best way to say it is that one of my virtues is I'm really curious. And I've written lots of books on lots of different

subjects and I haven't really repeated myself much. I've headed off all the time into brand new areas. And the reason I do that is because I really love getting into new topics. And so as I was doing, this, I had a feeling of, oh, here's this whole literature out here that I didn't know existed. And it's really interesting, and I'm going to keep reading it. And was I aware that something

important was, this was a really important topic? Yes, I was. But my basic process was the same as I used for writing human accomplishment or the bell curve or coming apart. It was an intellectual curiosity that yielded truth. That makes total sense. I guess partly I'm curious because when we start getting to the person, Jesus, it gets a little more personal. It's not just an academic issue, but he demands belief. He says eternal life rests on what you do with me, and I'm the only way to the father. So is there a point where he started to realize, oh, my goodness, I'm not just writing a book on

human accomplishment or the bell curve, this really matters for my soul. And I've got to land this plane with more at stake than anything else I've written on. Well, here's where I, let's have full disclosure. I am not an Orthodox Christian. Okay. So, and by the way, I don't consider that my sequence of steps is all, is over yet. I am. hoping and expecting that there will be further development as time goes on. But I am not an evangelical Christian, and so if it comes to, well, salvation only is through me. I still back off from that. And I don't have good theological reasons for saying that it just, okay, more backdrop here.

I assume that any God worth the name is as unknowable to me as I am to my dog. Okay. And I use that analogy because I have a border collie dog and that dog is really smart, okay? Border collies. That border collie knows who I am

and knows a lot about me, knows what I want him to do more or less, which usually he doesn't do. but the dog has no idea what I'm doing when I sit in front of my computer. He has no idea of the inner me. And I believe that it's wrong to anthropomorphize God. So I start out with that as a very strong belief that I still have. If that's the case, then it is going to be very hard for human beings to accurately convey certain things.

I don't know if you're familiar with John Polkinghorn. Does that name? Yeah. Yeah, okay. He's a British theologian. He was a theoretical physicist at Oxford or Cambridge for several years before he became ordained in the Anglican Church. And he has a very good book where he goes through the Nicene Creed one phrase at a time. and he has kind of an exegesis on that phrase as he sees it from his perspective.

And when he comes to the question of Jesus is the son of God, and he considers himself a full-fledged Christian in every way, but he talks about this difficulty of using language. And he says, well, it's, uses the word heuristics, which I'm never quite sure what that means, but the degree to which we are allowed a certain latitude in trying to use language to understand things. And I think with Jesus is the Son of God, that's a classic case.

And I report the analogy that I did not learn during my adult exploration, but I learned when I was taking confirmation classes in the Presbyterian Church when I was 12 years old. and the Reverend Lowell McConnell of the Presbyterian Church in Newton, Iowa, was talking to us about this, and he said, well, suppose you go to the ocean and you fill up a jar with seawater. Is that the ocean? And we all say no, and he says no,

but it's as much of the ocean as you can get in a jar. and I know this is not, I've had some good Christians who have been very upset with me with making this comparison. They say, no, Jesus was more than as much God as you can get into the human jar. But for me, that is a good way of expressing a mystery. Because I think any conception of Jesus as a son of God is essentially extremely, hard for human beings to grasp. Thank you for your disclosure about where you stand and not identifying as an Orthodox Christian. I was not totally sure reading this because you use the term Christian.

You talk about forgiveness being a part of this. So I wasn't exactly sure where you landed and that you're still on the journey of this. You got me thinking with the illustration of the dog that's in here. I thought about asking my son, who's 13. I like to ask him provocative questions. and I'll say things, I might ask him this. Are we closer to a dog in our ability to think and reason or closer to God? And of course, initially I want to say far closer to a dog than God who's infinite and dogs

and I are both finite. But of course, we're made in God's image with a capacity to reason and think and reflect upon things that dogs don't. So we have that in common with God, so to speak. at the root of the Christian faith, of course, is like, yeah, we cannot get to God on our own, but that, like John 1-1, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, and the word was God, takes on human flesh to kind of bridge that gap, so to speak, so we can at least understand God insofar as it goes and relate to him personally.

So that kind of came to my mind when you were making that point. If I can ask, what would be the barrier holding you back as far as you're comfortable sharing of not saying, I'm not quite an Orthodox Christian? Is it that what you just said about the language not describing God? What are those big boulders that are keeping you back? Confidence in my ability to comprehend certain things. pretty much I'm repeating what I said a minute ago. Okay.

And confidence in the ability of the people who experience that, the disciples, to convey to us. I'm treading on all sorts of uncertainties. Okay. And if you talk about the big, barriers. One of them is a central claim of Christianity, which is, of course, one of the most problematic for a lot of people, which is the physical resurrection. And so part of me wants to fudge that one, too. And this one in Polkighorn has a phrase that that he is, that the evidence from the first Easter says that there was some extremely profound experience that the disciples had.

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But you have to come to grips with the shroud of Turin, which is pretty mysterious piece of cloth. and I say to myself, the only thing holding me back there is a little bit more confidence in the dating. So they have a method of dating which has put it at 2,000 years old. And of course there was the notorious carbon dating which was badly screwed up.

And I'm saying, you know, if they can reinforce that dating at 2,000 years old, I just have no more excuses left not believing in the physical resurrection and I'm of two minds about that one is that I think I would be logically forced to that conclusion and the other one is I can still still feel myself resisting it

because of probably personality characteristics over which I have little control I give the example in the book of that kind of resistance when one time in the 90s I was at meeting and something had been bothering me a lot and so I decided I was going to pray and I was going to do my

I'd never tried to pray before and I was going to and I did I did my level best to pray and a couple of days later I realized that whatever it was that bothering me and I can't remember what it was had gone away and it scared me to death the reason it scared me to death was not because prayer failed but because it worked

and so in the one hand you say maybe I ought to be doing this all the time and at the other hand there is there are things holding me back but here I think you just have to say look human beings are strange creatures and my wife wife would be the first to confirm that I'm strange too. I use the, I think I do use the phrase, I'm an eccentric Christian at some point during the book. And I guess that where I am right now is that I have limitations in terms of faith, that I have not been able to overcome, and God will understand. That's sort of, I do believe, of all the things that I, I think I have taken on board most deeply, the concept of God is love is one of the most important. I think that's one of the

most meaningful statements you can, that is full of implications if you have a universe that, a God which is love. So I see myself as believing in some really big things associated with Christianity, finding myself in difficulty making further leaps, and not too troubled by it. Because of the sense that I'm trying hard, I'm trying sincerely, and as I said before,

the God that I am comfortable with right now is a very, forgiving God, plus being all wise. I really appreciate your candor on this. As far as the first way you frame it up, some of my thinking is you're right in the level of like, I can't get to the depths of God through my own reasoning. But if the God exists that's described in the Bible, that broadly speaking we both believe in, revealed himself in the person of Jesus commissioned the disciples. as the scriptures say, to write in a way that we can understand this God and his desire for our life,

there's a level of a leap that's there, but it seems reasonable and seems in fitting with the character of that God and what we know about them from general revelation, but also within the scriptures. Does that ring true to you? Or you like, I don't know that I can quite get there. You've described a framework within which I'm still working. And so I think that as if you're trying to put it all together, that it's like a canvas that I have partly filled in, that I'm trying to continue to fill in, that's not there yet,

But the process is enormously rewarding, another message I'm trying to give to non-believers, and that I am at peace with that. And I'll just tack on to that another case of where I realized without knowing what was the process that was going on. I realized that I have a much different feeling about forgiveness of sins than I had 25 years ago, 30 years ago. I remember one time feeling very guilty about something I shouldn't have done that I did do in my 20s and saying to myself, I don't want to be forgiven for this. I shouldn't be forgiven. I should feel bad about it. I should always feel bad about it.

And I didn't murder anybody. It was, but it was a case of recently, or maybe several years ago, of suddenly realizing that that had been a very silly way to look at it, and also very ecocentric. I mean, who am I to decide whether I should be forgiven for something I've done? My job is to be repentant, to be truly repentant, not making it up, not faking it, but truly repentant. And it's up to God whether I'm forgiven.

And I had a sense of believing in God's grace, which is a more traditional language for saying, God will understand. So that's another piece of the painting that's filled in that wasn't filled in maybe 10 years ago but got filled in sometime in the in the intervening time now i'm 802 so i don't have forever but but but it's continuing to go on you know as you mentioned a born again experience earlier i was thinking of john chapter 3 where jesus says to nicodemus you must be born again and nicotemus doesn't understand what

he's talking about like what do you mean born by water born by spirit Jesus tries the second time to explain from him. And then finally at the end, he's like, you know what? You just need to believe in me as the son of God for forgiveness of your sins, those who believe are saved, those who don't are condemned. It's like he says this born again experience, the best way to put it is believing in Jesus for forgiveness of your sins. And of course, I'm collapsing that down. that would probably be an orthodox way of understanding what the gospel is. I couldn't tell at the end of your book when you talk about forgiveness and sins.

I'm like, is he there with that kind of grace? Or is that still a part of the narrative? You're like, I'm working out if I need that forgiveness from God and his grace in my life in that fashion. You have accurately understood the ambiguity that still persists. Okay. You know, I'm reminded of another conversation I had with Michael Novak, the Catholic. And I was talking to him once about religion. This is a long time ago.

And I said, you know, I'm very impressed by a lot of things about Catholicism and so forth. But why do you persist in having his dogma transubstentiation? Because I said that's just simply an unbelievable. doctrine. And Michael said to me, because I think probably if you put Michael into a lie detector, that he probably would have had a very powerful and eloquent theological description of how he still accepts transubstantiation. But I don't think he does literally. But here's what he said to me. He said, God needs a church that can speak to everyone. And what I interpret him as saying there is that the doctrine of transubstantiation for a lot of people is something which helps them to get to the larger truths of Catholicism.

And in a similar kind of way, I think that there are aspects of Christianity where they serve a function of leading people to the underlying truths, but in different ways. And if you want to think of it this way, transubstantiation may be a powerful way for God to speak to some very simple people who come from cultures where are not sophisticated. Well, you know what? It's conceivable that C.S. Lewis and Richard Balkin are God's way of speaking to overeducated agnostics like me, which is that he puts stuff out there whereby no transistiation isn't going to get me there. But if I put somebody really smart, putting some material out there that can appeal to this overeducated guy, maybe I can get to him. And I am being a little

bit prestigious here, but not very, but not very, because there are too many times in my life that I've had the eerie sense of things worked out in ways that seem mysterious, and it's almost as if God willed it, and I say, no, that can't really be, can it? But that's the more pieces of the puzzle. So I guess where we're ending up is there is truth in packaging on this book, which is that what I titled it, taking religion seriously, there is sort of an implication there

of delving into very serious topics that are very difficult with no promises that at the end you'll come out and say, oh, I got it. And I think I deliver on that ambiguity. Very fair. Now, we're bumping up against the time you committed to. So, okay, if I ask you two more questions at the end, is that all right? Okay. So this, I actually was hoping to ask this question anyways. I didn't know we were going to land up in this conversation where we do, which is fine. I think viewers are going to find it fascinating, really appreciate your candor. At the very end, this is on page 147. So we're within about, I don't know, 10 pages from the end of the book, maybe 15 pages. And you described, two, what are kind of like psychological reasons, if I'm understanding it, that hold you back from some of the beliefs, from embracing them more quickly.

So you said, you're talking about confronting the straightforward implication of the evidence that you have a soul is intimidating. So this isn't an intellectual barrier, and I totally understand it. It's like intimidating because what this means for life after death, what it means to be human, my accountability creator, et cetera. Then the next line, you say, another and more prosaic explanation of my resistance is the fear of what the other members of my tribe will think.

I super appreciate your candor on that one. As we get to where you're at now, you said it at 82. You're like, I don't have endless time left. If you're going to say moving forward, how much is intellectual versus how much are just kind of these psychological, personal reasons that might hold you back from embracing Orthodox Christianity, or is it really hard to just kind of pull that apart and make sense of it?

No, actually I can. Being worried about what members of my tribe will think is less important to me than it was. And it's partly that's the case because I have a strong sense that the Enlightenment went too far. I'm a child of the Enlightenment in the sense that academia are all children of the Enlightenment, and reason and logic and science are the only way to assemble evidence that we can evaluate, and anything that smacks the supernatural is out of bounds. And that is just as dogmatic a belief among children of the Enlightenment as any religious belief. And so I have been increasingly irritated at members of my tribe for placing too much hubris in the power of human reason and logic.

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it today. ...reactions from members of my tribe, which have been very dismissive. and they had been dismissive, not because they took the material I wrote and said, here's points A, B, and C about why Murray is empirically wrong. They didn't do that at all. They just sort of basically said, oh, smart people don't believe that stuff anymore. That's essentially what they were doing. So I don't worry about them so much.

But your other point about thinking that you have a soul is intimidating, that's the way I put it it's also exhilarating and so it's like a too good to be true kind of thing but there is pretty good evidence that it is true

and it's taken me time and will continue to take me time to fully embrace that but I think probably probably I will. Well, I have in one important respect, which is I'm not afraid of dying. And I haven't been for many years now. And it is, I used to, I had moments before, of 25 years ago when I would feel existential dread at the fact of oblivion and gone no longer

exists. And that went away. And so at some level, I have accepted the possibility I have a soul. Fully embracing that is to open up a rich, a richer way of thinking about your future than non-believers can possibly enjoy. And so I should have said it's intimidating. Ultimately, I think it's going to be accelerating. Very, very fair.

My last question is, you describe yourself as going from happy agnostic to Christian, and I think more specifically, not Orthodox Christian, but say eccentric Christian. Now that you're more in this camp, looking back on the things that you've written on such a diverse range of topics, are there certain things that you rethink

and now view differently because of your Christian faith? I have thought about that question. and I'm pretty satisfied that I haven't advocated anything in any of my other books which contradict anything I have said now that are not in the same spirit as that. On the contrary, I don't want to be self-congratulatory here, but I made that statement about Johann Sebastian Bach does not need to justify his way of looking at the world.

He, of course, was extremely devout as a Christian that his music does it for him. So I was respectful long before I associated myself as a believer. And part of being respectful comes out of the enormous respect I had for Christian teachings, just as teachings, and the way people ought to behave. By the same token, I mean, we're coming to the end, and I don't want to introduce new stuff, but it's also important, and part of C.S. Lewis's point, that the great systems of ethics,

and this is true of Confucian, it's true of Taoism, true of Buddhism, they haven't all been exactly the same, but somebody who behaved virtuously in each of those traditions is going to behave quite similarly. And I think Christianity is perhaps the best exposition of a code of ethics. But because I have a long time believed in those concepts of virtue, I was kind of helped to keep me from going astray in the way I thought about policy. May I just say, since we are coming to the end, that, your whole way of asking me questions and talking about this, knowing that I am someone who has quite different Christianity than you have,

I've really enjoyed. You have been wholly sympathetic without pretending that we agree with each other on these things. And I will say you have drawn me out in a way that very few people, people have done in the best, and I have more or less enjoyed it. Occasionally I've gotten a little antsy about whether I was saying things right, but it's been quite an experience. Oh, thank you for saying that. I'm really touched and honored.

You would say that. Thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. I'm not sure where I expected it to go, but this is not where I expected it to go and really appreciate you entertaining just some of my questions and a little bit of pushback here and there. And I would say, before I forget, off the record, none of this stuff, if you want to just continue the conversation in any way on Zoom or I don't know where you live, you don't have to say it out loud. I would do that in a heartbeat. These conversations are what I enjoy as much as anything. So that opportunity is out there anytime.

I would carve it out and enjoy it. And I do want to commend your book. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Obviously, as an evangelist and apologist, I would end it a little differently and invite people to repent and believe. in Jesus. But that's just where we differ at this stage. But it's easy to read. It's clear. Your premise of taking religion seriously, that's what you say you're arguing for, and you argue for it in a way that I think respects the reader and invites them to reflect in a non-preachy way. I think it's an excellent book. I'm glad you wrote it. And if you write anything

else in this lane, definitely send it to me. I'd love to continue that conversation as well. And for people watching before you click away, make sure you hit subscribe. And by the way, a ton of you who watch these videos are not subscribed. So subscribe, hit that notification button. And if you want to study apologetics, which is really what we talked about today

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below. So make sure you check that out. Charles Murray, thanks for your time and for a wonderful conversation. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you. Hey friends, if you enjoyed this show, please hit that follow button on your podcast app. Most of you tuning in haven't done this yet. And it makes a huge difference in helping us reach and equip more people and build community. And please consider leaving a podcast review. Every review helps. Thanks for listening to the Sean McDowell Show, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biobo. University, where we have on campus and online programs in apologetic, spiritual information, marriage and family, Bible, and so much more. We would love to train you to more effectively

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