By Selwyn Duke

“Sometimes smart people have a hard time believing stuff that everybody else knows.” So said the condemned (and possessed) convict in the “religious” film Nefarious (2023) to his self-assured atheist psychiatrist. Charles Murray, the famed political scientist and successful author, can certainly relate to this. Quoting his wife on religion, he stated last year, “We learned that smart people don’t believe that stuff anymore.”

While this was never actually true, the perception that it is may finally be changing. It certainly has for Murray. Late last year he published his new book, Taking Religion Seriously, in which he discusses his journey toward theism. He says, too, that modern science may be pointing man back toward God.

On The Elizabeth Farah Show recently, Murray mentioned that spiritual pursuit is for him very much an affair of the head. Faith certainly is not in his heart (at least not yet), as he freely admits. He says that in his view “spiritual perception is a trait,” and it’s weak in him. But he is adept at assembling empirical evidence, he states, and this is what he has done with his book. It is a work that he says targets people such as himself: “cold, logical” atheists.

Seeking Theism

Murray explains that he was never hostile toward religion and its adherents, and he recognized its cultural utility. He just didn’t think he needed it in his life. This began changing, however, when his wife, Katherine, birthed their daughter.

Now, Murray emphasizes that his wife is highly educated and “brilliant,” not someone ignorant of scientific principles. And she said about their new child, “I love her more than evolution requires.”

Seeking meaning beyond the material, Katherine then started attending Quaker meetings. Charles joined her because they had two young children, and he believed that some faith facilitated good character development. But then something happened: Murray wanted to go beyond mere utilitarianism.

He wanted to discover Truth. Thus did his quest begin.

Science Pointing Toward the Divine

In numerous recent interviews, Murray has explained how scientific realities have pushed him toward theism. He cites the physics of the Big Bang as his personal “Road to Damascus” moment. As he stated in a December Merion West interview:

There is a consensus among physicists that the Big Bang was fine-tuned to create a universe of stars and galaxies that, in turn, could lead to the creation of life, whereas the much more probable outcomes were a universe of massive black holes or a universe of radiation and no mass at all.

That is, our universe depends on extraordinarily precise constants, such as the ratio of electromagnetic to gravitational forces. Slight deviations would make galaxies, stars, or life impossible. Nobel laureate physicist Roger Penrose calculated the odds of a life-permitting universe arising by chance at far less than one in trillions. For Murray, the most rational conclusion is intentionality — an “unmoved mover” behind the scenes.

He adds that cosmology always requires an initial miracle. How do you explain all matter originating from an infinitesimally small singularity? “Something from nothing” remains inexplicable under purely naturalistic accounts, whereas divine action provides a coherent explanation.

Murray also highlights evidence that consciousness doesn’t reside exclusively in the brain. Thousands of verified near-death experiences (clinical death — no detectable heartbeat or brain activity) include accurate details of events that occurred while the person was “gone.” Examples are a surgeon “flapping wings” with his elbows or the exact location of a patient’s dentures.

Similarly, cases of terminal lucidity show advanced dementia patients suddenly regaining recognition, speech, and personality shortly before death. (This is despite their neural networks having been destroyed.)

In this vein, Murray points to rigorous quantitative studies on parapsychological phenomena (ESP, clairvoyance, psychokinesis) as further evidence. Collectively, these create a growing conflict between strict scientific materialism and unexplained phenomena. They put materialism “in trouble” on its own empirical grounds.

Do note, however, that Murray presents all this with humility. It’s to him an evidence-based exploration for fellow skeptics, not dogma or the stuff of full spiritual conversion. He does, though, now describe himself as “pretty much a Christian.”

More Science

Note, too, that Murray has discussed more than can be covered here. A list:

• Shroud of Turin as empirical evidence for Christianity.
• His personal prayer experience (his request was granted).
• The rapid, dramatic change in Jesus’s followers post-crucifixion.
• A C.S. Lewis-style moral argument (universal moral law).
• All great religious traditions (Buddhism, Daoism, etc.) are groping toward the same “elephant.” But Christianity has distinctive strengths.

Before concluding, I’ll go beyond Murray and mention a fascinating scientific argument for theism most notably associated with brilliant philosopher of science Stephen C. Meyer. Here’s a (edited) Grok artificial-intelligence summary of it:

In his 2009 book Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (a New York Times bestseller), Meyer argues that:

• Living cells contain digital information in DNA that functions like software or computer code.
• DNA uses a four-character chemical alphabet (A, C, G, T) arranged in precise sequences, much like binary code (0s and 1s) in software.
• This code directs the construction of proteins and molecular machines via highly sophisticated information-processing systems (including nested coding, error-correction, and operating-system-like functions).
• The origin of this complex, specified information cannot be adequately explained by undirected chemical processes or neo-Darwinian mechanisms alone — it points to an intelligent cause (a “programmer”).

He frequently cites analogies from computer scientists and biologists:

• Bill Gates: “DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.”
• Craig Venter and others who describe DNA in software terms.

As is often emphasized, too, of course, a design implies a designer. And that “programmer” would be God.

This said, good theology holds that faith is “an act of the will informed by reason.” As a wonderful clergyman put it to me once, “If you know, you don’t have faith — you know!”

So a note to Murray and everyone else: To have faith, you needn’t know every answer. That’s a good thing, too, because you never will — at least not in this world.

For those interested, an excerpt from a fairly recent Murray interview is below.

And what follows is Stephen Meyer discussing “living-cell software.”

This article was originally published at The New American.