Believe Quotes

“But what Darwin’s big idea emphatically did not do, despite the confident claims so often made on its behalf, was explain away what ancient Hinduism called rta, the fundamental ordering principle of the world. It did not explain the law-bound material substructure required for evolution to take place, or the equations governing the cosmic superstructure, or the enduring evidence for mind as matter’s ultimate foundation.”
― Ross Douthat, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious

“If the mantra “trust the science” means anything, surely it’s that we should trust the discoveries made with the scientific method, the things that scientists have figured out, and base our provisional understanding of our situation and the world on those actual findings, rather than letting the framework of scientific inquiry—the lines within which the guild does its work—constrain us from ever stepping back and discussing what the inquiry reveals.”
― Ross Douthat, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious

“Modern Physics and Ancient Faith,”
― Ross Douthat, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious

“The point is that there’s an array of flashing lights, not just a one-off illumination inside the shadows of the Bada Bing. If mind might well precede matter, and the laws of the universe indicate that some intelligence created and sustains existence, and human reason seems to have a privileged ability to unlock existence’s mysterious underlying order, and the seemingly supernatural intrudes upon the natural as often in the modern world as in the past—well, then, you, as a man or a woman trying to chart the best course through a finite lifespan, with difficult moral choices at every turn and death awaiting sooner rather than later, have every reason to take a pretty strong interest in the story you’ve found yourself inside, what part you might be asked to play in it, and how, for you and everyone, it might ultimately end.”
― Ross Douthat, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious