Taking Religion Seriously

De: Charles Murray

Narrado por: Charles Murray

“Millions are like me when it comes to religion: 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 the decades-long evolution in his stance toward the idea of God in general and Christianity in particular. 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 biblical texts, 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. He acknowledges that those taking religion seriously for the first time, like himself, must grapple with topics and ideas that defy intellectual mastery. In this book, Murray offers his personal example of intellectual struggle toward religion.

“Maybe God needs a way to reach overeducated 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.”

©2025 Cox and Murray, Inc. (P)2025 Blackstone Publishing

An excellent journey.

This was very engaging and I loved it. It has so many parallels to my own experience in life. I am a traditional Catholic with physics, math, and geophysics educational background.

Fills a niche for rationalists interested in religion

This is the only attempt to make Christianity plausible to atheists that seems written for actual atheists rather than Christians. I wrote a couple of papers on Anthropic reasoning in undergrad and the author made no mistakes so obvious that I could spot them. This is the first thing to give me real pause on the idea that Christianity is true.

Fascinating!

I am an Economics PhD student whose research is on American Poverty (Appalachia for now) and grew up a family with many Lutheran teachers and pastors (LCMS).

I am the first in my family to pursue a PhD and the overlap between my PhD life and personal/religious is sparse to say the least. I’ve listened to several of Murray’s books and it was so surreal to hear the same person that wrote Coming Apart suddenly saying the things that are so prevalent in my other world - especially since both were read by Murray himself.

I think some of his theology is off, but he also acknowledges that he is a layman, and he has not seemed to completely settle on all theological points.

I can relate!

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.

Excellent

Would have enjoyed a longer book. Very nicenarrationby the author, he relates his journey AND the data very well.

He is still waiting for the gift of faith

I liked the frankness of Charles and honesty about his logical beliefs, unfortunately he has yet to be born again by the Holy Spirit, but he still hasn’t given up wanting to be.

the connections to diving

A remarkable journey inside and outside...of our existence now and later!
Murray is a talented thinker and writer with humility and grace...