Now, I agreed with Dr. Barber's argument for most of my life. I was raised by intellectual parents who had little use for religion. I mostly avoided church as a young adult, pursued a career in journalism, a skeptic-friendly field if there ever was one, and married a lapsed Catholic who was as disinterested as I. And then one day, our 3-year-old son came home from pre-school talking about God. All of a sudden, I began to wonder whether that this societal force called faith was something I could continue to ignore. This led to several years of researching family history, reporting on religious trends and research, and deliving into my own beliefs. I chronicle all of this in my book, Between a Church and Hard Place: One Faith-Free Dad's Struggle to Understand What It Means to Be Religious (Or Not), which was published by Penguin/Avery in March.

Psychology Today has given me the opportunity to continue this intellectual and emotional journey, and I couldn't be more excited. In this blog, I'll be writing about the allure of religion for people like my brother, who was raised the same way I was and yet chose to become a Christian at the age of 17. I'll be writing about the millions of Americans who say they have no religion, most of whom don't classify themselves as atheists and many of whom ultimately end up back in church. I'll be writing about how religion influences parenting, one of the life events that brings the unchurched to church, some for the first time. And I'll be writing about the role of faith in American society and the free market that is constantly enlivening organized religion even as it is withering away elsewhere.

Dr. Barber is right that, statistically speaking, a decline in religious activity has coincided with modernity in many societies, including this one. And yet he is not the first, nor will he be the last, to conclude based on such data that religion's days are numbered. My fear is that this assumption will lead to ignore the reality of how important religion remains today, in America and around the world. I worry that it will cause people to caricature those for whom it still is relevant as less intelligent, less modern, less important. I don't believe that, and I definitely don't want my children to believe that. If they are going to understand the world, they need to understand religious belief, and that requires engagement with and empathy for people who have it. It also requires, dare I say, an openness to the fact that science doesn't yet satisfy every one of our needs.

In my lifetime, I've seen a polarization of our country -- and my family -- along religious lines. I'd like to see those lines start to blur and for people on both sides to start looking for common ground. That won't settle the question of whether humanity will ultimately be guided by faith or by reason. But it might make life a little more tolerable while my kids and I are here.