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

Greater relationship between religion and science

intellectual and scholarly approach to Jesus, religion and the relationship between all religions and people.

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.

Honesty!

This guy is a heretic! Just like Jesus was… Well worth a trading! At age 78, I’m ready to meet my maker!

I enjoyed the first part of the book regarding the intentionality of the universe and near death experiences.

I appreciated hearing his own story. I was surprised that in his synopsis of the teachings of the world‘s great religions that he did not even mention Islam. It is a short and interesting book and a wonderful source for future reading suggestions.

A wonderful survey of one coming to faith.

this is a wonderful survey of one who is coming to Faith. I especially appreciate his acknowledgment of his limitations, skeptical nature, and the handicaps that being a high-brained academic can bring to something like the topic and substance of Faith. as he mentioned in his forward, if you get nothing else, you will get an incredible reading list. I also appreciate the fact that he didn't try to explain everything... But rather point to the reader to where they could explore for themselves and dig deeper. overall, I thought this was a fair treatment, even if the conclusion seemed to become more Unitarian than Christian. a very good work that I would commend for anyone, but especially those in academia and who hold themselves. too smart to believe in God or Jesus. God's blessings to you all.

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.

Humble and Helpful

Here is clear thinking and a measured presentation. The books referenced for and against the arguments of the author are especially encouraging.

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.

An intellectual giant almost finds faith?

Wow. Murray has always been an intellectual giant in my mind. I too have for 30 plus years researched the whole god issue as I was raised southern Baptist but left my faith after obtaining an education in science and medicine but always had doubts and questions even before that. I would love for bart Ehrman to review this book especially what Murray says regarding the early church fathers and the dating of the gospels as I lean heavily toward barts works and conclusions as do many highly educated former believers in god. I listened to the book now I’ll have to buy it to go line by line. He mentioned 4 of ehrmans books but I wished he’d have gone into deeper discussion of barts works and views as they are much different than what Murray comes up with. I too have read cs Lewis but received zero revelation or the insights that Murray apparently did. I agree with the “lunatic” choice of the 3 choices cs Lewis gives about Jesus as he was an apocalyptic prophet that said gods kingdom was soon to come as did Paul and it clearly did not happen. I’ll post another review after I read and explore the book further I suspect. It did make me think deeper but it’ll take a lot more to make me believe any kind of god is doing anything for anyone on our tiny planet.

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.