EPISODE · Apr 13, 2026 · 28 MIN
How living with religion helps live with doubt
from Afternoons
Christopher Beha didn't lose his faith because a prayer went unanswered. He lost the Catholic faith he practiced his whole life because a prayer was answered. After his twin brother survived a devastating traffic accident, Beha found himself shaken not into belief, but out of it. The former Harper's magazine editor expected atheism to bring clarity, but instead it left him facing the same brutal questions, why suffering exists, what meaning looks like, but now without God. Beha traces his return to Catholicism not as a comforting certainty, but as a way of living with doubt, mystery, and moral responsibility in his new book, Why I Am Not an Atheist: The Confessions of a Skeptical Believer.
What this episode covers
Christopher Beha didn't lose his faith because a prayer went unanswered. He lost the Catholic faith he practiced his whole life because a prayer was answered. After his twin brother survived a devastating traffic accident, Beha found himself shaken not into belief, but out of it. The former Harper's magazine editor expected atheism to bring clarity, but instead it left him facing the same brutal questions, why suffering exists, what meaning looks like, but now without God. Beha traces his return to Catholicism not as a comforting certainty, but as a way of living with doubt, mystery, and moral responsibility in his new book, Why I Am Not an Atheist: The Confessions of a Skeptical Believer.
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How living with religion helps live with doubt
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