Is it Rational to Believe? - A Conversation with Ross Douthat

This week, Zach Davis is joined by New York Times columnist and author Ross Douthat to talk about his new book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious.

Ross has spent his career bridging worlds—explaining faith and conservatism to a largely secular audience while also translating secular ideas back to religious readers. In this conversation, he makes a compelling case for why belief isn’t just a leap into the unknown, but a rational and maybe even necessary response to the world as we actually experience it.

Zach and Ross also explore some of the major barriers that keep modern, intellectually serious people from embracing faith—things like the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions, which many see as having displaced humanity from the center of the universe. But Ross challenges these assumptions, showing how science, rather than disproving faith, could actually deepen the mystery of our existence in a way that makes belief more compelling than ever. And he points out something undeniable–– that even as religious affiliation in the West declines, people across all backgrounds continue to report profound, life-altering encounters with the divine. Ross suggests that these experiences, far from being irrational, may be one of the strongest indicators that something real is at work in the universe.

This conversation was a fascinating mix of theology, philosophy, and cultural analysis, and we think Ross offers an important and thought-provoking perspective—one that invites both skeptics and believers to take faith seriously.

And with that, let’s jump into our conversation with Ross Douthat.