A journey to faith

From another review of Charles Murray's Taking Religion Seriously:

At the heart of Murray’s argument are two points that I find particularly compelling. Like Cardinal Newman and C.S. Lewis (from whom Murray draws abundantly), Murray believes that there is a nonarbitrary “Moral Law” manifest in human conscience that reveals the nature of good and evil and encourages us to “do the right thing.” With Lewis’s help, Murray sees through facile moral and cultural relativism. Even in the midst of genuine diversity of mores and practices, what Lewis called “the Tao” can still be seen. Where on earth have an entire people or culture esteemed in principle faithlessness over loyalty, murder over the obligation not to kill, falsehood over truth, cowardice over courage, rank selfishness over the common good? No, all human cultures at their core see themselves as morally bound and morally guided. ....

Murray has therefore arrived at a position that is not merely theistic but genuinely Christian. With due modesty, he has come to believe that we live in an “intentional universe” and have access to a binding “moral bedrock” amid the chaos of “tumultuous changes in the secular received wisdom about what is right and wrong, good and evil.” He has also come to believe in the reality of sin, as well as in the life-transforming “forgiveness of sins” through the offices of a just and merciful God as proclaimed and made manifest by Jesus Christ. Given Murray’s personal starting point and scientific credentials, the witness of his journey to faith is all the more winsome. One could see him as the antitype and antidote to those, like Richard Dawkins, who speak of a “universe of ‘no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.’” (more)

Daniel J. Mahoney, "Charles Murray, in Good Faith," National Review, Dec. 18, 2025.