A recent Pew Research study found something that is at least more welcome than some imaginable alternatives: “After many years of steady decline, the share of Americans who identify as Christians shows signs of leveling off — at least temporarily — at slightly above six-in-ten.” The study could potentially have found that the number of American Christians had continue to fall off, but it did not. That’s good news.

Meanwhile, we are seeing, at least from anecdotal evidence, the rise of another and somewhat idiosyncratic demographic group: not Christians as such but “cultural Christians.” Those are people who while unable to affirm the distinctive principles of Christian faith, nevertheless cherish the Christian contribution to Western civilization and wish to see that contribution defended and even extended. 

The ranks of self-described cultural Christians include Elon Musk, Richard Dawkins, and Jordan Peterson. In fact, though not a Christian but an Orthodox Jew, I wouldn’t reject the description “cultural Christian” for myself.

Writing for The Free Press, Peter Savodnik describes a related cohort: intellectuals who have rejected the old time “New Atheism” in favor of a renewed respect and even passion for Christianity. All of these seem to have embraced faith for cultural, personal, communal, experiential, or psychological reasons. 

“Put There by Evolution”

At least from Savodnik’s description, none of his subjects joined a church, or (like Jordan Peterson) danced a careful dance around one, because they had sifted the evidence, thought through the objective claims of faith, and embraced them the way a person of intellectual disposition, if the context were anything else, would normally do. In fact, in Savodnik’s thoughtful essay, the only crisp, solid-sounding defense of faith is not a Christian but an evolutionary one. He quotes psychologist Jonathan Haidt: “There is a God-shaped hole in every human heart, and I believe it was put there by evolution.”

If someone told you he had embraced a particular view in economics, medicine, philosophy, or any other learned disciple, not from the application of reason but for private, cultural, or psychological reasons, or because evolution made him do it, you would give that person an arched eyebrow. 

Open to Doubt

If you want to see our civilization saved from ruin, the adequacy of cultural Christianity, as currently constituted, seems open to doubt. Writing for Salvo Magazine, Denyse O’Leary puts the point well:

What Musk, Dawkins, and Peterson all want is the outcome of Christian practice without the input of Christian belief. But that works out no better for the works of the Spirit than for any other works. Those who do not believe the Creed cannot really preserve, let alone add to, the civilization it created. 

That’s a hard thing to hear for a non-Christian. After all, Jews and others, including cultural Christians, have certainly added to civilization. But O’Leary is right that the bulk of labor to preserve the West from further decay will need to be done by Christians, and by that I mean believing, not just cultural, ones. 

And the effort seems unsustainable if believers do not know why they believe — if they cannot articulate their own reasons. Two of the new “intellectual” believers noted by Savodnik are Niall Ferguson, the historian, and his wife, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former New Atheist and author of the book Infidel. They describe their new life of faith and church in sincere terms. But Ms. Ali, in a recent public forum with Richard Dawkins, had to be reminded by the atheist evolutionary biologist, of all people, that theism is a scientific proposition — though, in his view, a mistaken one. She could herself offer only “subjective” reasons for her Christian faith.

Dawkins is right. If true, belief in a creator is a valid scientific question and it should be able to offer a solid rationale for itself, not mere feelings. At best, Christian commitment without a reasonable basis is only shifting sand under believers’ feet. At worst, it invites disdain.

Resources from Science

Get ready. We are likely to see quite a bit of disdain next month with the hundredth anniversary of the so-called Scopes “monkey” trial, decided in Dayton, Tennessee, on July 21, 1925. The mainstream media will be full of cartoon stereotypes of Christians as science-rejecting buffoons.

But the truth is that in the past century many resources for reasoned faith have emerged from science itself: The universe had a beginning, the Big Bang, in the very distant but still finite past. Life’s history defies Darwinian expectations and biology brims with intelligent design — molecular machines and ingenious coding. However, the material medium for genetic information, DNA, contains only a shadow of what even the simplest organism requires for development. An immaterial genome must exist. Neuroscience, like genetic science, also points to an immaterial existence: the mind, distinct from the brain.

Many details of these developments can be found in books by Stephen Meyer (Return of the God Hypothesis), myself (Plato’s Revenge: The New Science of the Immaterial Genome), and Michael Egnor and Denyse O’Leary (The Immortal Mind).

All this strongly supports, if not a particular religion, then at least a generalized theism. None of it was known in 1925. It is known now, and Christians and their friends need to be in command of it, not only for personal reasons but because civilization depends on them.