Five years ago, who would have thought that political scientist Charles Murray, famous for social analysis books like Coming Apart (2012), would write Taking Religion Seriously (2025)? He now examines traditional religious approaches to the meaning of life on the assumption that they might actually be correct. A far cry from the usual effort to explain them away or patronize those who accept them. For example, Murray writes about terminal lucidity — the sudden clarity that many people gain just before dying: In the only systematic study with a large sample, described in Alexander Batthyány’s Threshold, about 20 percent of the cases involved nonverbal communication (e.g., gestures, gaze) or verbal communication that was semi-coherent. In the other 80 percent, people who had been unable to communicate anything were suddenly Read More ›
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