Pun Salad

I've been a Charles Murray fan for quite awhile. He's well-known for his takes on controversial issues, like IQ, race, welfare, etc. He presses a lot of hot buttons. I really liked his In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government, a succinct description of the "proper" role of the state. Specifically, limited and laissez-faire, enabling people to chart their own courses in life, bearing responsibility for their own choices, good and bad.

This book is somewhat of a surprise topic, and very personal. Murray details his spiritual odyssey over the past years, how he became interested in, and finally persuaded by, evidence that we are more than just bags of molecules interacting according to the dictates of physics and biochemistry. And how he came around to a more-or-less Christian belief in God, Jesus, and miracles, including the resurrection.

So, yeah, that's a lot for a relatively short book. But Murray's argument is well-presented, not didactic at all. He lays out his research, all the while inviting his readers to make up their own minds. His initial discussion is very similar to that of Ross Douthat in his recent book Believe: the "fine-tuning" of a universe that makes stars, planets, life, and (most unlikely of all) human intelligence possible. Murray makes the additional point about trying to "understand" God: we are likely in the same relationship between my dog and calculus. We not only don't understand, we don't even understand what there is to understand.

Murray is impressed, as Douthat was, with the uniformity of "near death experiences", where people who have been brought back from the brink report uncannily similar observations of what it's like. Murray adds in the phenomenon of "terminal lucidity", where dying people thought to be irretrievably comatose have recovered briefly, but inexplicably, to communicate with people at their bedside. This, after their brains have stopped working!

In the book's second part, Murray looks specifically at Christianity, with an appreciation of the arguments made by C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity. He notes the effort made over the years to debunk the history depicted in the New Testament; he counters with his own scholars and their arguments. (If you are refuting a debunker are you ‥ a bunker?)

Bottom line: Murray makes good arguments. I'm not planning to become a churchgoer (again), though. That's on me, not him.

If you're interested. Murray's book has generated some pushback from people I also like. Jerry Coyne, bless his heart, seems to take any religiosity as a personal insult, and argued against his views here and here.

Steven Pinker, peace be unto him, also dislikes Murray's "terminal lucidity" explanation, and wrote a letter to the WSJ about it. Murray responded here. (I think those are both free links.)