Summary of Believe by Ross Douthat

In Believe, Ross Douthat lays out reasons why it is rational to believe in the supernatural and in established religions and God in particular. The book is unpersuasive on why you should believe in God or any of the specific religions, but Douthat has several interesting arguments for structure beyond the materialistic world view.

The first is that there are deep regularities in nature as revealed by science, the existence of which should be taken as evidence for something beyond science: the supernatural. Although any given regularity may be explained through science by deeper regularities, the fact that any regularities exist at all cannot be explained by reason. Science is always pulling itself up by its own bootstraps; we need to posit some scientific axioms, regularities that are assumed to exist, and then show that other observed regularities are explained by the axioms. Empirically we see it works, but what explains the ultimate success of this program? Presumably this can't be explained by science alone. This seems to me like a valid point.

Douthat's second argument for the supernatural is the fine-tuning needed for a habitable universe. Of course this is an outstanding scientific question for which I would just say that the jury is still out. However, Douthat brings up an interesting corollary: Why should our intelligence, which evolved to be good at hunting or attracting mates, lead to the phenomenal success in understanding the deepest laws of physics? Not only is the universe (apparently) fine-tuned for our existence, but our consciousness is intelligent enough to discover the need for this fine-tuning.

This point is closely related to Douthat's third argument for the supernatural: that human consciousness seems to have a special role in nature. Humans seem to be the only things around capable of pondering the mysteries of being. While the discovery of the vastness of the Universe was a blow to the special position of humans as the center of the cosmos, Douthat points out that the Fermi paradox should count as evidence that we are special; we do appear to be at the center of the intelligent/self-conscious universe. Here again, I think this is a fair point. Clear evidence of intelligent alien life would make human consciousness seem much less special (and would presumably be a fatal blow to most traditional religions), so lack of alien life should count in the other direction.

David Deutsch in his The Beginning of Infinity agrees with Douthat that humans are special: "Science (the least parochial perspective available to us) implies that people are the most significant entities in the cosmic scheme of things". However for Deutsch, the specialness of human consciousness explains why our intellect is able to discover the deep scientific regularities. Deutsch argues for the unlimited scope of intelligence: anything that is not supernatural must have explanations discoverable by general intelligence, i.e. humans. On this account, Douthat's corollary double counts his other two arguments; if there are regularities and humans are special – being general explainers – then the explanations will ultimately be knowable to us. Although I believe Deutsch is correct, I think there is still something to be explained in Douthat's observation. It's not only odd that we happen to exist at all (fine-tuning), but that we also happen to be the most important thing in the universe; we are doubly incredibly lucky! (Maybe there is an anthropic argument that can be applied here: only universal explainers can pose the question in the first place.)

Douthat's last argument for the supernatural that I find compelling is the inherent inexplicability of consciousness: i.e.: the hard problem. Matter (the brain) giving rise to subjectivity (the mind) sure seems supernatural. Science has made no progress in accounting for our self-consciousness and it's hard to imagine, even in principle, how such an explanation could possibly work. Even if subjectivity is just along for the ride – meaning it doesn't influence the matter it arises from – it's hard to conceive how subjectivity can be anything but a primitive element of reality.

Overall, I liked the general strategy of the book. Although Douthat's pitch for believing in God or any of the major religions is unpersuasive, I do think he makes some strong arguments to believe in structure beyond the domain of science, the supernatural.