Cancelled for Facts—Saved by Faith

He unearthed something the "smart crowd" insists isn't there.

Throughout much of his professional life, Charles Murray has borne an odd kind of infamy. He didn't seek it out, and he's never warmed to it, yet it stuck to him relentlessly. He became known as the fellow who highlighted variations in intelligence between populations, backed by heaps of evidence, only to be branded a villain just for observing them.

It's invigorating to see someone of his standing dismantle the illusions of today's atheism.

For the chattering classes of the powerful, admitting awkward realities poses a bigger threat than brushing them aside. Murray grasped that truth through painful experience. The tag of "racist" trailed him merely for viewing the world on its own terms, rather than bending to what trendy thinkers demand it should be.

In his latest work, Taking Religion Seriously, he pulls off a follow-up transgression, one that might strike even deeper. He treats God with genuine respect. And in this era of bold scepticism, where Richard Dawkins keeps insisting that physical stuff accounts for it all and Sam Harris chats about inner peace while rejecting the divine force behind it, this stands as the fiercest act of defiance.

Murray has stepped into a surprising wave of intellectuals who've ditched religion in the past but now feel tugged back towards it. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a stalwart of the New Atheists back then, stunned her former allies in 2023 by announcing her conversion to Christianity.

Murray's shift feels more subdued, more deliberate, and totally in his style. Still, he's treading the identical trail.


Faith That Transcends Logic


The volume makes for an easy skim, yet its resonance lingers long after.

Murray doesn't write like some firebrand cleric. Instead, he shares insights from decades spent probing how people act at their best and worst. He's seen first-hand the fallout when belief fades away. He charted those effects in "Coming Apart" well ahead of when faith journalists caught on. As worship services dwindle, households crumble, local areas decline, and isolation creeps in like a fine grit blanketing whole communities.


Murray spent years pushing for a "cultural Great Awakening", urging folks to revive common routines and principles even if they skipped the spiritual bit. Back then, it seemed hopeless, akin to igniting a fire in the void of outer space. At last, though, he's ready to own up to what's plain.


This latest book marks Murray's effort to grasp that elusive element. It traces an unbeliever's gradual drift into something greater than himself.


His spouse Catherine grew curious about matters of faith. Murray trailed her inquiries, and soon his own bubbled up. He tackled timeless proofs for the divine not as shiny prizes to flaunt, but as riddles begging exploration. Think of the uncaused cause. The precise calibration of the universe. That odd, widespread pull of right and wrong. He dives into C.S. Lewis's writings with the attentiveness of someone aware he might be off base but dead set on getting it straight.


Such modesty lends the pages a sharp, unclouded feel. Murray skips the drama of a sudden divine zap. He quips that he's still waiting on those "joys of faith", likening his spot to a kid peering through a glowing pane at a party he's aching to enter. It's among the tenderest and truest bits in the whole thing.


Give him points for tackling the dread that grips non-believers who worry about looking daft.


When he nods to the "tribe of smart people", it comes off not as boasting but as owning how he got moulded by an old mindset where brains swapped in for heartfelt commitment. And he's spot on about their ways. Moments of sudden clarity near the end? Brushes with the beyond at death's door? The would-be gurus of pure physicalism wave them off without a glance, lest anyone poke too close. They wear their doubt like a medal.


Murray won't join the charade. If the clues lead past the material realm, he urges, chase them down. No matter the eye-rolls from the brainy set, and precisely because of them.


It's a breath of fresh air to behold a figure like him skewering the vanities of contemporary doubt, not with bitterness or mockery, but through calm resolve and openness to what so many sidestep, wishing we'd all look away.


Reality Outshines Figures


To followers of Christ, the book's most stirring revelation is Murray's grasp that faith isn't detachable from our core selves. You can't sustain a culture on borrowed goodness. It has to spring from active devotion, not just distant nods of approval.


What Murray once held as a vast, godless structure underpinning everything now feels ridiculous to him. Recent times have driven home a lesson plenty of believers hold dear. Trying to forge bonds on the vapours of bygone convictions is pointless. The base crumbles to powder even as you reach for the initial stone.


These days, Murray affirms God's reality. He trusts the Bible's steadfastness. He buys into Jesus's assertions. And maybe the sharpest sign of change is his newfound ease with mortality. A guy who'd once mulled ending it all in old age now rests in quiet assurance.


That's a quiet wonder all on its own.


Taking Religion Seriously doesn't serve as a summons to the front. It's a rarer gem. The chronicle of a thinker honed to lean on numbers now embracing deeper certainties. Murray proves that a sincere quest for purpose inevitably pushes past cold facts, past self-importance, past the fences erected by folks who pat themselves on the back for being refined yet grasp little of the spirit within.