Faith’s Return: Intellectuals & the Divine

Intellectuals are increasingly embracing faith, contrasting the earlier dominance of scientism. This shift reflects a renewed interest in transcendent qualities and a critique of purely rational approaches.

” Not relying on God was no longer just trendy,” as journalist Peter Savodnik put it. “It was, for those on university, for very popular authors, for those who controlled our most rarefied intellectual spaces, the only rational setting worth having.”

The Rise of Scientism

By the late 19th century, “scientism,” as William James called it, had handled a few of arranged faith’s unattractive attributes, treating intellectuals that tried to check out the superordinary as heretics.

Influencers Embrace Faith

In the fall of 2025, it often feels as if every influencer in excellent standing has obtained faith. David Brooks, Ross Douthat, E.J. Dionne, Peter Thiel, Andrew Sullivan, Arthur Brooks, Jordan Peterson, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Niall Ferguson are just the most popular of pundits who have gone public with advantages to say regarding God, ranging from obscure invocations of an universal force to doctrinal Christianity.

Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens taped a two-hour discussion in 2007 ridiculing religion that got numerous YouTube views and was claimed to have actually triggered an atheist change.

By the time “Human Achievement” was ended up, I had actually concluded that when religion no more supplies a framework for thinking of transcendent top qualities, artists have a tendency to make their job regarding their personal choices, and their individual choices often tended to be banal and egotistical.

Critique of Pure Reason

Youngsters of the Knowledge, we have seen ourselves as even more reasonable than earlier generations and in the process cut ourselves off from mankind’s collected knowledge regarding topics that do not provide themselves to pure reason and empiricism.

When atonal composer Arnold Schoenberg wrote, “Those who compose because they wish to please others, and have audiences in mind, are not real artists,” he was expressing the godlike setting numerous musicians ascribed to themselves in addition to the ridicule they had for their target markets.