0:00

you've been a longtime listener to

0:02

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0:04

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0:06

most important and best things that

0:08

we do are having good faith

0:10

debates about the issues that matter

0:12

most. But we also do them

0:14

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0:16

more exciting. That's why I'm thrilled

0:18

to announce that the Free Press,

0:20

along with FIRE, the nation's leading

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0:26

15th, to be specific, at the

0:28

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0:31

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0:33

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0:35

Will the truth survive artificial intelligence?

0:37

We have a phenomenal lineup of

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0:54

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0:56

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1:00

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1:02

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1:04

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slash debate. We are almost sold

1:13

out, so get your tickets now.

1:15

From the Free Press, this is

1:17

Honestly, and I'm Barry Weiss. You

1:19

may have noticed on this show

1:21

that I'm always asking guests, do

1:23

you believe in God? What's your

1:26

favorite biblical character? Or simply, do

1:28

we need a religious revival? And

1:30

you might be wondering, why do

1:32

I keep knocking on this door?

1:35

Partly it's just because I'm curious

1:37

about people's metaphysical beliefs and how

1:39

that affects the rest of their

1:41

lives. But also it's because I

1:43

am of the view that something

1:45

profound has gotten lost in our

1:47

society as we've lost traditional religion.

1:49

And I'm not alone in thinking

1:51

that. Indeed, I think

1:53

if you look closely, you can

1:55

argue that we're starting to

1:57

see the beginnings of a religious

1:59

revival, or at least people,

2:01

including young people, seriously reconsidering religion.

2:04

Now, even if they don't believe in

2:06

God, and a lot of these people

2:08

don't, they think that the practice of

2:11

religion, of keeping Shabbat, say, or

2:13

going to church every Sunday, has all

2:15

kinds of clear benefits. The benefits of

2:17

community, of offering a good moral code

2:19

to teach their kids. of having a

2:21

good rhythm of life. Religion,

2:23

in other words, it's a good program. But

2:26

my guest today, the brilliant Ross

2:28

Douthit, has a different perspective. Ross

2:30

makes the case that we should

2:32

be more religious not in order to

2:34

cure society's ills, but because

2:36

it is true, because it

2:38

is the best way or the

2:40

most accurate way to understand the world

2:43

around us. Belief in God, he

2:45

says, doesn't require a leap in faith.

2:47

In fact, he says, it's

2:49

entirely rational. Ross

2:51

is a best -selling author, a

2:54

columnist at the New York Times,

2:56

and the host there of

2:58

a new podcast called Interesting Times.

3:00

His latest book, which we

3:02

talk about today, is called Believe,

3:05

Why Everyone Should Be Religious.

3:07

The release is perfectly timed to

3:09

this strange moment of plagues,

3:11

populism, psychedelic encounters, and AI voices

3:13

in the air, as Ross

3:16

writes. Ross argues that

3:18

in our age of loneliness

3:20

and hunger for spirituality and meaning,

3:22

it's not enough to simply

3:24

argue that religion is a good

3:26

and we need to be

3:28

religious to sustain Western civilization. He

3:31

argues that it's time for

3:33

people to actually become religious.

3:35

I press him hard about

3:38

that distinction in this interview.

3:40

And right before Easter, as

3:42

billions of Christians get ready to

3:44

celebrate the miracle, I'm wondering

3:46

if this return that Ross suggests is

3:48

even possible, and if it is, if

3:51

it will fix our many, many problems.

3:53

Today on Honestly, I sit down with

3:55

Ross to understand why he thinks belief

3:57

in God is the most logical way

3:59

to understand our world, how

4:01

he rationalizes his faith, and

4:03

how he thinks listeners, even

4:06

those who don't think of

4:08

themselves as particularly religious, can

4:10

come to be believers. It's

4:12

an amazing conversation. Stay with

4:14

us. This

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episode is brought to you by Lifelock.

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5:18

at Work. Ross Douthat.

5:20

Welcome to Honestly. Barry Weiss, thank you

5:22

so much for having me. I'm

5:24

so excited you're here. Well,

5:26

Ross, you have spent the

5:28

last decade and a half

5:30

writing about religion and conservative

5:32

politics and also sometimes movies.

5:34

We love your movie reviews. For

5:37

the New York Times. New York

5:39

Times audience is overwhelmingly right -wing

5:41

and conservative. No, the New York

5:43

Times audience being overwhelmingly. I've won

5:45

so many converts, Barry, that people

5:48

have stunned at the

5:50

current demographic breakdown. Everyone is an

5:52

Opus Dei member that opens it

5:54

on the Upper West Side now.

5:56

But of course, the audience that

5:58

you're generally writing for is skeptical

6:00

of religion. And you're sort

6:02

of, I don't want to

6:04

call you a token, but you

6:06

have sort of like a

6:08

fish out of water vibe. I'm

6:10

a representative. I represent a

6:12

worldview that not all of my

6:14

readers share. Okay. I

6:16

want you to characterize the worldview

6:18

of your readers, because I think

6:21

the worldview of your readers is

6:23

representative of where the sort of,

6:25

I hate using this word, but

6:27

the elite intellectual leadership class in

6:29

America has been for the entirety

6:32

of my lifetime. And we'll get

6:34

into this conversation about whether or

6:36

not that's changing. But if

6:38

you could characterize for us the

6:40

state, not of your worldview, which

6:42

we'll get to, but of theirs.

6:44

How do they see religion? I

6:47

mean, I think so. I'll

6:49

be talking here about what

6:51

we call secular liberals, right? Obviously,

6:53

The New York Times has

6:55

many religious readers. It has religious

6:58

conservatives, religious liberals, and so

7:00

on. But the secular liberal category

7:02

is what you're talking about.

7:04

And I think that category has

7:06

always been divided into two

7:08

broad groups. One that is intensely

7:10

hostile to religion. In

7:13

a kind of mixture of

7:15

a sort of new atheist Christopher

7:18

Hitchens mode with a sort

7:20

of lapsed religious, I had a

7:22

narrow escape from oppression perspective.

7:24

People who were brought up religious

7:26

left it behind and don't

7:28

remember it fondly. And then alongside

7:30

that hostile group, there is

7:33

a group that is what you

7:35

might call the regretful unbelievers.

7:37

People who... like religion to some

7:39

degree. They like religious art.

7:41

You know, they like the idea

7:43

of a moral perspective on

7:46

the world. They like the I

7:48

have a dream speech. You

7:50

know, they appreciate what religion

7:52

is trying to do in

7:54

the world. But they think

7:57

to themselves that unfortunately, regrettably,

8:00

a rational, serious modern person either

8:03

can't believe or could only

8:05

come to believe through some kind

8:07

of you know, leap into

8:09

unreason where you sort of leave

8:11

all doubts behind, but also

8:14

leave reason itself behind. And what

8:16

I'd say about the change

8:18

is that over the last 15

8:20

years, I would say in

8:22

the first period when I was

8:24

at the Times, the more

8:27

hostile, anti -religious reader was more

8:29

predominant. And in the last five

8:31

years especially, I would say

8:33

the balance has shifted toward regretful

8:36

unbelief, leavened maybe even with

8:38

a little more curiosity than before

8:40

about religion. I think basically

8:42

there's a real sense in the

8:44

kind of secular liberal intelligentsia

8:46

that the promises that the new

8:48

atheists made, right, that, you

8:50

know, oh, if we only get

8:52

rid of belief in a

8:54

sky daddy, a flying spaghetti monster,

8:57

and just, you know, just

8:59

embrace science and reason, then Politics

9:01

will be more serious and

9:03

rational. You know, everyone

9:05

will believe in science and

9:07

trust science, right? That was promised.

9:09

Polarization will go away. You

9:11

won't have, you know, crazy fundamentalist

9:13

or paranoid ideas. And clearly,

9:15

you know, none of that has

9:17

come to pass. A less

9:19

religious America, and we have become

9:21

less religious in certain ways,

9:23

is... If anything, a more polarized,

9:26

more superstitious, more paranoid America

9:28

where people are just generally more

9:30

hostile to one another. That's,

9:32

I think, a really notable fact

9:34

that as America has become

9:36

more secularized or more post -Christian,

9:38

Democrats and Republicans sort of regard

9:40

each other the way Catholics

9:42

and Protestants did at the worst

9:44

moments of the wars of

9:46

religion, right, where you just can't.

9:48

It's not just you don't

9:50

want your child marrying a member

9:52

of the other faith. You

9:54

can't imagine how a decent person

9:56

could possibly believe, you know,

9:59

in Trumpism or in woke progressivism

10:01

and so on. And so

10:03

all of that, I think, has

10:05

prompted, again, this kind of

10:07

limited partial reconsideration of religion. Let's

10:19

go back to sort of just

10:21

like the post -war years, the

10:23

1950s, like this was not the

10:25

baseline state of affairs. I'm

10:27

asking you the impossible, which

10:29

is basically tell the story of

10:31

the past 75 years or

10:33

half century. But broadly, how did

10:35

this become the reality among

10:37

the liberal intelligentsia? How did this

10:39

become the sort of the

10:41

waters that most people are swimming

10:43

in? To

10:47

explain the intelligentsia's trajectory,

10:50

in a way, you go

10:52

back all the way

10:54

back to the 19th century,

10:56

and you say there

10:58

has, for extremely well -educated

11:00

Americans, there has been a

11:02

hundred and... -year trend away

11:04

from specifically Protestant, right,

11:06

because the American upper class

11:08

was very Protestant in

11:10

the 19th century, specifically Protestant

11:13

Christianity, and toward a

11:15

political liberalism that retains elements

11:17

of Protestantism, certain moral

11:19

ideas, you know, the social

11:21

gospel of the 19th

11:23

century obviously lives on in

11:25

contemporary progressive politics. It

11:28

still inhabits the same Protestant

11:30

institutions. They're just not Protestant anymore.

11:32

All the Ivy League schools

11:34

originally were, you know, nice Protestant

11:36

Christian institutions. If you walk

11:38

around Harvard, you can still see

11:40

that the original motto was

11:42

not just Veritas. It was something

11:44

like Veritas Pro Christe et

11:46

Ecclesia for Christ and his church.

11:49

So essentially you had a Protestant

11:51

elite that became by the

11:53

middle of the 20th century a

11:55

liberal Protestant elite. with a

11:57

more attenuated connection to religion. And

11:59

then you have sort of

12:01

two shocks, right? The first shock

12:03

is the social revolutions of

12:05

the 1960s, where, I mean, the

12:08

sexual revolution is the most

12:10

important part. It's not the only

12:12

part, but it creates this

12:14

real tension between sort of how

12:16

normal upper middle class Americans

12:18

think about their everyday lives and

12:20

what traditional religion teaches. So

12:22

prior to the 60s, even if

12:24

you weren't a really intense, Christian,

12:27

you still thought, well, divorce

12:29

is bad. Premarital sex should be

12:31

discouraged. Abortion

12:33

is probably wrong. And those

12:35

attitudes as sort of conventions

12:37

go away in the 60s and

12:39

70s. And suddenly Christian teaching

12:41

on sex becomes much weirder. It's

12:44

seen as patriarchal, misogynist, eventually

12:46

homophobic, oppressive and so on. And

12:49

that joined to other socioeconomic

12:51

forces gives you one step down

12:53

where. The old mainline Protestant

12:56

churches sort of collapse. Liberal Protestantism

12:58

just gives way to liberalism.

13:00

And what's left is Catholicism, the

13:02

faith of immigrants, and evangelicalism,

13:04

the faith of the South and

13:06

the Bible Belt. And that

13:09

then becomes the basis for the

13:11

Christian right and for the

13:13

culture wars that you and I

13:15

did both grow up with,

13:17

right? And then you get

13:19

a second shock in the early

13:22

21st century where... traditions in different

13:24

ways enter into crisis. Catholicism has

13:26

the sex abuse crisis. And

13:29

I think both face, I

13:31

think the internet plays a

13:33

big role. I think both

13:35

face sort of new versions

13:38

of atheist arguments. The

13:40

atheist arguments have been around a long

13:42

time, but suddenly if you're a

13:44

kid in the first decade of the

13:46

21st century and you're in your

13:48

church group, you're hearing arguments online. that

13:50

your youth pastor is just not

13:52

prepared to handle. not equipped to deal

13:54

with Dawkins. Yeah, well, certainly with

13:56

Hitchens, right? And then add

13:59

into that, there's a general

14:01

deinstitutional, distrust of institutions goes up

14:03

in American life. Religion is

14:05

not the only institution that goes

14:07

into decline. But,

14:09

you know, I could throw in more

14:11

forces, but that's the simplest way to

14:14

see it. There's a shock in the

14:16

60s and 70s, a second shock in

14:18

the early 21st century. And at the

14:20

elite level, It's this gradual transition from

14:22

Protestant to liberal Protestant to just plain

14:24

secular liberal. There seems to be a

14:26

connection between, and tell me if you

14:28

see it differently, if you look at

14:30

those two main moments, right, the advent

14:32

of the pill, incredible technological scientific progress,

14:35

and then the advent of the Internet

14:37

and technology, which is upended. I think

14:39

we're just beginning to see what it's

14:41

upended. It's only just starting. We haven't

14:43

even. lived in this AI age that

14:45

Tyler Cowen is telling me is going

14:47

to be my future in the next

14:49

two years and that my children are

14:51

actually going to be raised by AI

14:53

teddy bears. A lot to look forward

14:56

to. But is there

14:58

a connection, Ross, between technological and

15:00

scientific progress? You know, if

15:02

we go back and think about

15:04

the rise of evolutionary theory

15:06

or the enlightenment or the development

15:08

of neuroscience to explain consciousness,

15:11

like are all of those in

15:13

a way connected to sort

15:15

of the decline of religion or

15:17

a challenge to religion? Are

15:19

those things, do you see those

15:21

two things as being in

15:23

tension? I think that there are

15:26

specific moments when you get

15:28

a set of scientific discoveries or

15:30

claims or arguments that pose

15:32

a really specific challenge to religious

15:34

beliefs, right? And we remember

15:36

the two most famous ones for

15:39

a reason, Copernicus

15:41

and Galileo. revealed

15:43

a view of the cosmos that

15:45

was in tension with the medieval Christian

15:47

view of the cosmos. There was

15:49

a big clash there. You'll

15:51

get some Catholics who will say,

15:53

oh, the Galileo thing was

15:55

overstated and so on. But I'm

15:57

not going to say that.

15:59

There was a very real clash.

16:01

Parts of the church tried

16:03

to suppress the new scientific paradigm.

16:05

They ultimately failed. And necessarily

16:08

that created more skepticism. about religious

16:10

claims and i think you

16:12

can say the same thing about

16:14

about darwinism darwinism poses a

16:16

particular challenge to a particular christian

16:18

i think it's more true

16:20

of christianity than judaism interpretation of

16:22

the book of genesis um

16:24

adam and eve the fall and

16:26

so on there's a challenge

16:29

fitting that into the darwinian picture

16:31

that also undermines religious belief

16:33

i think the story in the

16:35

20th century is a little

16:37

bit different i think When you're

16:39

talking about technological shocks, the

16:41

internet did not actually introduce new

16:43

arguments against Christianity. It may

16:45

have spread them or popularized them,

16:47

but it actually just changed

16:49

the way people related to the

16:52

world in a way that

16:54

pushed people away from going to

16:56

church and away from familial

16:58

traditions and a lot of different

17:00

things. But it wasn't like...

17:02

argument the way Darwinism was a

17:04

novel argument. And the same

17:06

was true of the pill. The

17:08

pill changed how people behaved.

17:10

And as it changed how they

17:12

behaved, they had more reason

17:15

to disagree or reject biblical sexual

17:17

ethics, let's say. But it

17:19

wasn't like a new argument was

17:21

suddenly invented there. And really,

17:23

I think what's interesting about the

17:25

20th century is that the

17:27

story of actual scientific discovery over

17:29

the last 100 to 120

17:31

years has not tended to challenge

17:33

the broad religious picture in

17:35

anything like the way Darwin and

17:38

to some degree Galileo did. If

17:40

anything, you've had a

17:43

series of discoveries and

17:45

revolutions and arguments, starting

17:47

with the Big Bang

17:49

theory, continuing with quantum

17:51

physics, down through What

17:54

physics has suggested about the

17:56

really remarkably calibrated order of the

17:58

universe that we find ourselves

18:00

in that tend to be closer

18:03

to what religious people would

18:05

expect. So if anything, and

18:07

I think this is something I

18:09

think that is underappreciated because most

18:11

scientists remain pretty resolutely secular. Nonetheless,

18:13

I think it's the case that

18:15

if you start the clock at

18:17

1900 or so and roll it

18:19

forward. And

18:22

religion has – the religious

18:24

perspective has been more vindicated than

18:26

challenged by that run of

18:28

modern scientific findings. I want to

18:30

get in a little bit

18:32

to the way that you understand

18:35

sort of the synchronicity or

18:37

the harmony between science and religion.

18:39

Before I get there, I

18:41

want to lay out the broad

18:43

argument of your book and

18:45

also lay out – sort

18:48

of the pretext for it, which

18:50

is why we've become less religious. By

18:52

the end of this conversation, everyone

18:54

who listens to this will have bought

18:56

a copy of Ross's incredible new

18:58

book, Believe. But as they're listening to

19:00

this, they will probably not have

19:02

read it. So I want to just

19:04

lay out a couple like vocabulary

19:06

distinctions that I think are important. You

19:08

referenced this a little bit earlier,

19:10

Ross, but just explain the distinction you

19:12

make. I

19:21

mean, atheism is just a kind

19:23

of hard, confident belief that there

19:25

is no God and perhaps could

19:28

not possibly be one. Secularism

19:30

is more the condition

19:32

of the absence of religious

19:34

commitment. So

19:36

a secular society could be filled

19:38

with atheists or it could

19:40

be filled with. people like the

19:42

ones I described earlier who

19:45

are sort of regretful unbelievers, somewhat

19:47

open to religious arguments, but

19:49

not yet persuaded, right? So

19:51

that would be the distinction. So

19:53

a lot of people, I

19:55

think, that are just not

19:57

thinking about these issues see

19:59

a secular society broadly as

20:01

a mark of human progress.

20:03

But you argue, and I

20:05

think... I think this has

20:07

become increasingly difficult to deny

20:09

that the oldest human problems,

20:11

problems of tribalism, superstition, despair,

20:13

that those are actually the

20:16

results of a world without

20:18

religion. It's exactly the opposite

20:20

of the inheritance we were

20:22

promised by the new atheists.

20:24

Draw that out just a

20:26

little bit more for the

20:28

listener. Where do those,

20:30

you know, there's people that argue

20:32

that. I know

20:34

Jonathan Haidt talks about this in his book,

20:36

The Righteous Minds, that we all have sort

20:38

of a God -shaped hole in us. And

20:41

if that hole isn't filled by God, it

20:43

gets filled by other more terrible things, maybe

20:45

the belief that the Jews did 9 -11 or,

20:47

you know, any number of other conspiracy theories

20:49

that are currently rocketing around on X right

20:51

now. But tell us

20:53

why, when religion declines, these

20:55

bad human impulses or

20:58

these tendencies, why they rise?

21:01

Well, I mean, first, it's important

21:03

to stress that obviously religions

21:06

themselves can be mainstream religions, major

21:08

religions can harbor dark tendencies,

21:10

can be oppressive, tyrannical, all of

21:12

these things. That part of

21:14

the secular narrative is obviously not

21:16

false. And you can tell

21:19

a pretty clear story about the

21:21

rise of liberalism in particular,

21:23

where it's a response to... really

21:25

specifically the inability of Catholics

21:27

and Protestants to agree on anything

21:29

without coming to blows and

21:32

war and persecution, right? So that's

21:34

the first concession that needs

21:36

to be made. Having made that

21:38

concession, though, there's sort

21:40

of two points worth making.

21:42

The first is that it

21:45

is really very difficult to

21:47

imagine the moral structure of

21:49

contemporary secular liberalism, its commitments

21:51

to human equality. and human

21:53

dignity and everything that we

21:55

associate with sort of the

21:58

iconic figures of the civil

22:00

rights era or, you know,

22:02

the founders of American democracy

22:04

and so on emerging in

22:06

anything like its current form

22:09

absent the influence of biblical

22:11

religion generally and then mostly

22:13

Christianity, though obviously Judaism plays

22:15

a role as well. And

22:18

there is in fact a reason

22:20

that sort of the culminating figure in

22:22

the progressive story of American history

22:24

is Martin Luther King, where if you

22:26

sit down and read a letter

22:28

from Birmingham jail, it is

22:30

essentially an intra -Christian argument

22:32

where King is using Christian

22:35

rhetoric and language and history

22:37

and invoking Catholic and Protestant

22:39

figures to talk to convince

22:41

his fellow Christians for religious

22:43

reasons to support racial equality. Similarly,

22:46

it is not a coincidence that

22:48

the UN Declaration on Human Rights,

22:50

a sort of totem of modern

22:52

liberal progress, was heavily influenced and

22:55

created by a Catholic natural law

22:57

thinker named Jacques Maritain, right? And

22:59

you can run through this, and

23:01

you can extend it beyond Christianity,

23:03

beyond Western religion. You encompass a

23:05

figure like Gandhi, who is nobody's

23:07

idea of a secular liberal, ultimately,

23:10

but plays this crucial role in

23:12

the emergence of sort of... you

23:14

know, the post -colonial world, basically.

23:17

So that's one story, right? To

23:19

say we live in a world

23:21

where even or especially the liberal

23:23

perspective is informed by some basic

23:25

ideas that emerge out of organized

23:27

religion, out of Christianity, and then

23:29

don't actually make full sense without

23:32

a Christian metaphysical perspective on the

23:34

world, right? It's if there is

23:36

no God, if the New Testament

23:38

is just rubbish and nonsense and

23:40

so on. Then certain ideas about

23:42

human dignity and human rights, you

23:45

can still hold them, but they

23:47

seem like more of a kind

23:49

of cultural and aesthetic preference and

23:51

less of a truth grounded in

23:53

the nature of reality. When we

23:55

did the debate recently in Austin

23:58

about whether or not the West

24:00

needs a religious revival, there were

24:02

a lot of great moments. But

24:04

I think one of the more

24:06

interesting moments was Michael Shermer on

24:08

the other side was basically saying,

24:11

you know. humanism, humanistic

24:13

values tell you essentially that murder

24:15

is wrong, that sleeping with your

24:17

sibling is bad. And you sort

24:19

of shot back and was like,

24:21

well, how do you know murder

24:23

is wrong? And there was sort

24:25

of a back and forth that

24:27

I don't entirely remember. But your

24:29

point there, I think, is that

24:32

people who even identify themselves as

24:34

ardently atheist, forget about secular, you

24:36

argue are benefiting from choose

24:38

whatever metaphor you want. The fumes

24:40

of Judaism and Christianity, the retaining

24:42

walls that those things provide, that

24:44

the norms that we sort of

24:47

take for granted in a tolerant,

24:49

inclusive, liberal democratic society, if that

24:51

is indeed still what America is,

24:53

that the basis and the fundamental,

24:55

like the scaffolding for all of

24:57

that is religion, whether or not

24:59

people recognize it or not. And

25:01

by religion, I mean you know,

25:04

Judeo -Christianity. I don't even know

25:06

if you like that phrase. No,

25:08

I think it's, I'm actually sort

25:10

of a defender of that phrase,

25:12

which has a lot of critics,

25:14

but we don't need to go

25:16

down that rabbit hole. I think,

25:18

yeah, I think the best way

25:21

to look at it is that

25:23

liberalism is a structure, but it

25:25

requires a kind of internal moral

25:27

scaffolding to help you actually adjudicate

25:29

the moral disputes that come up

25:31

in a free society. Traditionally

25:34

in the U .S., that scaffolding

25:36

was supplied by Protestant Christianity. By

25:39

the 1950s and 1960s, it was

25:41

provided by a kind of Judeo -Christian

25:43

consensus that encompassed Catholics and Jews

25:45

as well as Protestants. And today

25:47

it's supplied by a kind of,

25:50

well, one, I think it just clearly

25:52

doesn't exist to some degree. To the

25:54

extent that it exists, it's supplied by

25:56

a kind of, you might just say,

25:58

convention, right? Where people are like, well, of

26:00

course murder is wrong. Not in

26:02

the sense that... is written into the

26:04

architecture of the universe and God forbids

26:06

murder, but in the sense that, of

26:08

course, you'd rather live in a world,

26:10

you know, with laws against murder, right?

26:12

Surely you would. And I'm not here

26:15

to say that that convention can't hold. America

26:17

has not yet fallen, and

26:19

God willing won't, into some sort

26:21

of ruinous, you know, civil

26:23

war and so on. But it

26:25

is just a much weaker

26:27

structuring force in that sense. But

26:30

with that said, it's also

26:32

important to stress that this is

26:34

not a good enough argument for

26:37

being religious, right? In the end, you

26:39

know, only an intellectual and not

26:42

even an intellectual really could commit

26:44

themselves to religious practice on the

26:46

grounds that it's really important to

26:48

provide a scaffolding for liberal society,

26:50

right? religious

26:59

writers and thinkers to just

27:01

appeal to secular liberals by saying,

27:04

look, won't you miss Christianity

27:06

when it's gone and it's all

27:08

just, you know, Nietzscheans of

27:10

the left and right fighting endlessly.

27:12

People might agree with that, but it's

27:14

still not enough. In the end,

27:16

you also have to convince them that

27:18

religion is reasonable and quite possibly

27:20

true. I see sort of like three

27:22

arguments going from weakest to strongest.

27:24

The weakest being the one you just

27:26

made. The weakest being, we

27:29

need Christianity, the Judeo -Christian consensus as scaffolding,

27:31

and without it, everything is going to

27:33

go to shit, broadly speaking. Something that

27:35

I believe is true, but is not

27:37

very convincing to get people to upend

27:39

and change their lives and order their

27:41

lives around. Then there's sort of the

27:43

middle argument, and a lot of people

27:45

have been making this lately, which is,

27:47

I know a lot of people who

27:49

feel, I wish I could be religious.

27:52

Unfortunately, I don't believe in God.

27:54

But you know what? Christianity, Judaism. These

27:57

are good programs. They're great ways

27:59

to raise a family. And so

28:01

sort of from a utilitarian perspective,

28:03

from a way to order my

28:05

life around this perspective, for a

28:07

communal perspective in a country, in

28:09

a society where so many of

28:11

those, you know, communal

28:13

institutions have fallen away, I'm going to

28:15

go to church. I'm going to go

28:17

to synagogue. going to be religious. And

28:19

frankly... That's a lot of people I

28:21

know, but you go a step further.

28:23

You're basically like the core free press

28:25

demographic. That's right. Well, actually, a lot

28:28

of free pressers are are profoundly religious.

28:30

And one thing I find very interesting,

28:32

which we can maybe talk about later

28:34

in this conversation, is that I do

28:36

feel that religious versus non -religious is like

28:38

one of the great dividing lines of

28:40

this new politically realigned moment that has

28:42

been. under discussed. And we find that

28:44

a lot in free both both in

28:46

the free press newsroom where I'm sitting

28:48

right now, but also in our audience.

28:51

But you OK, but you go a

28:53

step further. You're like, no, not enough

28:55

for to make the scaffolding for Western

28:58

civilization argument won't work. Also, who cares?

29:00

Not who cares, but not enough. The

29:02

middle position. It's a great program for

29:04

your family. Still not enough. You,

29:06

Ross Douthat, are making the argument that

29:08

people need to go the full way,

29:10

that they need to actually believe. In

29:12

order to be religious. And I want

29:14

you to make the case. You make

29:16

it sound like such a controversial

29:18

claim. No, just saying it's asking a

29:21

lot. I think it's asking a lot

29:23

because to get. So this is what

29:25

is actually. If you wrote a book

29:27

to the middle position, which you could

29:29

have done saying, hey, guys, listen, I

29:31

know you may or may not. like

29:33

me, Ross Douthat, believe not just

29:35

in God but in demons, and we

29:38

will get to demons later in this

29:40

conversation. Sure we will. But it's a

29:42

better life to be religious, and I

29:44

think you could get huge consensus around

29:46

that actually in this moment. Tell

29:48

me why you're making the stronger version

29:50

of the argument. Well, first of all,

29:52

I think that's quite the wrong way

29:55

to look at it, right? Okay. So

29:57

the second thing, the second approach that

29:59

you're suggesting seems to me to be

30:01

actually really, really difficult because It

30:03

is, in fact, difficult to practice

30:05

a religion. Now, you know, every

30:07

religion is different. Some religions are

30:10

more difficult than others, right? But,

30:12

you know, I'm familiar. I have

30:14

many Jewish friends. I am familiar

30:16

with the challenges of practicing Judaism

30:18

seriously. I am, you know, it's

30:20

Lent. in Catholicism. And, you know,

30:22

it seems like a small thing,

30:25

but I got up this morning

30:27

to make my children lunch and

30:29

almost forgot that I couldn't put

30:31

any meat in their lunchboxes. And

30:33

that's the minimal stuff. Like, I

30:35

am, you know, I have this

30:37

reputation as a very conservative Catholic.

30:40

You know, no more conservative person

30:42

has ever, ever appeared, surely, right,

30:44

in the pages of the New

30:46

York Times or something. But I'm

30:48

barely getting my kids to church

30:50

on Sunday. Right. Like just the

30:52

sort of de minimis aspects of

30:55

practicing Roman Catholicism are extremely difficult,

30:57

especially for anyone who, you

30:59

know, to invoke a cliche, lives

31:01

in this fast paced modern world

31:03

of ours. Right. With infinite distractions

31:05

and obligations and so on. So

31:07

if you're undertaking part two or

31:09

version two. Right. You are undertaking

31:11

all of the hard stuff of

31:13

religion and telling yourself that, oh,

31:15

well, this is much easier than.

31:17

actually believing in God. And what

31:19

I am claiming, and obviously this

31:21

is a controversial claim, and, you

31:23

know, I haven't yet persuaded most

31:25

of my secular interlocutors of it,

31:27

but what I am suggesting is

31:29

that believing that God exists, I'm

31:31

not getting all the way to

31:33

specific Christian doctrines or the burning

31:35

bush or, you know, anything like

31:37

that, but just generally believing. There's

31:39

probably a God. The world was

31:41

probably made for a reason. Human

31:43

beings probably have a place in

31:45

some kind of divine plan. You

31:47

probably should be prepared to be

31:49

called to account after you die

31:51

for how you've lived your life.

31:53

I think that belief is actually

31:55

not that hard. It should not

31:57

be that hard to get to

31:59

that specific belief, and it seems

32:01

to me easier to get to

32:03

that belief than it does to

32:06

practice an entire religion, and certainly

32:08

much easier to get to that

32:10

belief than to try and practice

32:12

a religion without it. So

32:14

that's the claim. I think people

32:16

have made it too hot. They

32:18

have built in their mind this

32:20

idea that to believe in God

32:22

is this incredible leap of faith

32:25

that only Kierkegaard and Mother Teresa

32:27

could possibly make. And I think

32:29

that they've made it out to

32:31

be a little bit harder than

32:33

it actually is. But I don't

32:35

know. Okay. There's a lot of

32:37

people who come on this show.

32:39

I'm thinking of Kemi Badenoch, Louise

32:42

Perry, who are sort of like

32:44

broadly sharing of your general political

32:46

worldview, who call themselves cultural Christians,

32:48

who are in kind of the

32:50

second camp. And I think if

32:52

you said to many of those

32:54

people, not those two specifically, but

32:56

many of those people, just believe

32:58

in God, it would sound a

33:01

little bit like just be in

33:03

love with me. Like you're asking

33:05

someone to do something that is

33:07

feels almost. I don't want to

33:09

say impossible, but it's like a

33:11

category. It's different than choosing to

33:13

vote for a party or get

33:15

on a diet. It's like you're

33:18

asking someone to feel a thing.

33:20

How do you make that ask

33:22

of people? Explain that. I'm not

33:24

initially asking people to feel a

33:26

thing. I think the

33:28

point, the argument in my book is

33:30

to try and carry people up

33:32

to the idea that they should want

33:35

to feel a thing. Right?

33:37

Like, it's like I'm trying to convince

33:39

people that romantic love is possible and there

33:41

is, you know, there is almost certainly

33:43

someone out there in the world who you

33:45

could be in love with. And

33:47

here's some advice for going on dates

33:49

and trying to, you know, trying to

33:51

get to know someone who you might

33:54

potentially marry. This is a very crude

33:56

way of putting it. But I think

33:58

that's... You're saying stop hooking up with

34:00

people. Get in a,

34:02

yeah, let's out. I mean, the

34:04

thing is, you know, even hooking

34:06

up with people is some kind

34:08

of act of, at least for

34:10

some people, not the totally promiscuous,

34:13

but it's at least an act

34:15

towards something. And in that sense,

34:17

I am saying, you know, ideally

34:19

you would not just dabble. In

34:21

religious traditions, you would not just

34:23

sort of hook up with one

34:25

religion one week and another the

34:27

next. Yeah, the ultimate goal is

34:30

to settle down. But even there,

34:32

it's better to hook up than

34:34

just sit home and say, oh,

34:36

man, I can't find true love.

34:38

It must not exist and not

34:40

even try, right? And so this

34:42

is the core idea is that

34:44

there is a part of religion

34:47

that is about relationship, feeling. And

34:50

Christians certainly would say about grace that

34:52

you can't do it on your own.

34:54

There's a kind of belief in God

34:56

you can't get to without God giving

34:58

something to you. But at the same

35:00

time, there is a level of confidence

35:02

you should have that there is something

35:05

out there worthy of that feeling. And

35:07

that is something that I do think

35:09

people can reason towards. And this is

35:11

obviously a very conventional idea that has

35:13

been held by many serious people in

35:15

many times and places. It's just not

35:17

held by the intelligentsia today. But it

35:19

was perfectly normal for much of human

35:22

history for people to say, look, there's

35:24

parts of God that can only be

35:26

known through revelation and through faith. But

35:28

the basic idea that there is some

35:30

being called God or some higher power

35:32

that created and ordered the universe, that

35:34

just sort of makes sense because we

35:36

can look around at the universe and

35:39

see lots of forms of evidence pointing

35:41

in that direction. Well, I think one

35:43

of the things that is unique about

35:45

this book is that you are saying

35:47

not take a leap of faith, you

35:49

know, or have a revelatory experience, which

35:51

is, I think, how most people think

35:53

about the impulse. I don't want to

35:56

say the choice to be religious because

35:58

I think for a lot of people,

36:00

it doesn't feel like a choice. And

36:02

you are saying it is logical. You

36:04

are making the empirical case for religion.

36:06

You are saying it is more reasonable

36:08

to believe than to not believe. Explain

36:10

that to people a little bit more.

36:14

Well, so you find yourself as a

36:16

human being in a world, right?

36:18

And, you know, you and I don't

36:20

have perfect access to each other's

36:22

consciousness, but generally speaking, I think it's

36:24

safe to say we find ourselves

36:27

in the same world. And

36:29

this world presents

36:31

itself first as

36:33

a ordered, structured,

36:35

mathematically precise, predictable universe governed

36:37

by physical laws. that turned out,

36:39

again, this is based on

36:41

the best of modern science, to

36:43

be incredibly precisely calibrated to

36:46

yield stars, planets, and life itself.

36:48

The odds of a universe

36:50

like ours appearing by chance out

36:52

of all the possible universes

36:54

are extremely slim, and by extremely

36:56

slim, I mean, you know,

36:58

one in a quadrillion or something

37:00

much larger than that, right?

37:02

So that's sort of... reality number

37:04

one. Now, I think that

37:07

right now that sort of yields

37:09

two potential options for understanding

37:11

where this universe comes from. There

37:13

are sort of two working

37:15

theories. One theory is that, you

37:17

know, mind in some way

37:19

precedes matter. that there is some

37:21

kind of intentionality and consciousness

37:23

that is behind the world and

37:25

organizes the world and has

37:28

ordered it. The other alternative is

37:30

basically the multiverse hypothesis familiar

37:32

from Marvel Cinema and many other

37:34

works that says, well, the

37:36

answer must be that all of

37:38

those other quadrillion universes also

37:40

exist, and we just can't see

37:42

them, and we happen to

37:44

be in this one because there

37:46

are no observers in any

37:49

of the others, so of course...

37:51

We see this one because

37:53

it's the only one that could

37:55

ever have an observer, et

37:57

cetera, right? And I don't think

37:59

you have to choose absolutely

38:01

between those. But I think if

38:03

you posit it like that,

38:05

at the very least, the religious

38:07

perspective that says there is

38:10

some kind of consciousness and intentionality

38:12

is not obviously losing that

38:14

argument. And the multiverse hypothesis is

38:16

not the equivalent of like

38:18

Darwinian evolution, where it's some sort

38:20

of testable hypothesis about the

38:22

material world that we see. It

38:24

is a much more skeptic.

38:26

speculative metaphysical picture, right? Okay,

38:29

step one. Step two, you and

38:31

I, as beings in this world,

38:33

have a thing called consciousness that

38:35

is quite mysterious. Nobody knows exactly

38:37

where it comes from. No one

38:39

can quite tell how it emerges

38:42

from material matter. No one can

38:44

quite tell if it is absolutely

38:46

necessary. to sort of the

38:48

ordinary things we do. It seems

38:50

like maybe we could exist as some

38:52

kind of zombies doing all the

38:54

things we do without consciousness and will.

38:56

Certainly, this is what some people

38:58

think AI is going to turn out

39:00

to be. Others think it will

39:02

develop consciousness. But either way, we have

39:04

this consciousness. This consciousness is capable

39:06

of understanding the universe we find ourselves

39:08

in. It's capable of reasoning about

39:10

it. It's capable of... astonishing

39:13

scientific discoveries, wild mathematical speculations that

39:15

turn out to map amazingly onto

39:17

the universe itself. Well, what does

39:19

that look like? Well, again, if

39:21

you combine it with the first

39:23

argument, if you say there might

39:25

be a mind behind the whole

39:28

cosmos, our minds seem to be

39:30

impressively capable of penetrating and understanding

39:32

the cosmos, I think right there

39:34

you've reached something like the Old

39:36

Testament line that human beings are

39:38

made in the image of God.

39:40

There's a mind above all things.

39:42

Our minds participate in the reality

39:45

that mind has created. And that

39:47

is a religious picture of the

39:49

world. And then add in, you

39:51

know, this is weirder and more

39:53

speculative and so on. But one

39:55

of the striking things about quantum

39:57

physics, right, is that it strongly

39:59

suggests that mind and matter are

40:01

entangled in some strange way, where

40:04

our minds participate in collapsing

40:07

potentialities into actualities. In other words,

40:09

without some sort of mind, the

40:11

universe would always be potential and

40:13

never actual, which is a pretty

40:15

interesting thing. Again, seems pretty consonant

40:17

with a religious perspective. And then

40:19

finally, add in, and again, you

40:22

mentioned the demons, right? So we're

40:24

getting in that direction. Add in

40:26

the resilience and persistence of religious

40:28

experience. in secular and disenchanted conditions,

40:30

right? Like, it's not just that

40:32

the world seems shaped and ordered.

40:35

It's not just that we seem

40:37

to understand and participate and even

40:39

create that order. It's also that

40:41

in every culture and every time

40:43

and place, people are constantly having

40:45

weird intimations of transcendence, higher powers,

40:48

near -death experiences, and yes, occasionally

40:50

dark, what the people who

40:52

use psychedelics call negative entities.

40:56

And what you, Ross, call demons.

40:58

What I call, you know, what

41:00

I, yeah, what I call the devil and his

41:03

minions, right? But so, again, so

41:05

this is obviously a really truncated

41:07

version of the argument, but I've also

41:09

been talking for too long. So I'll

41:11

just stop there and say, generally,

41:13

it's not that I'm saying this

41:15

picture should leave you 100 %

41:17

convinced that there is a god.

41:19

But it is a set of

41:21

converging lines, converging lines, converging parts

41:23

of reality that I think tell

41:25

a fairly consistent story that should

41:27

at least take someone past like

41:29

a Pascal's wager thing where you're

41:31

like, well, there's a one in

41:33

a hundred chance there's a God.

41:35

And if there is, maybe I'll

41:37

get to go to heaven. So

41:39

I better take a bet. No,

41:41

I think it takes you much

41:43

more towards there is probably something

41:45

like. I

41:49

think that some

41:51

people will hear the

41:53

connection that you're

41:56

making between the similarities

41:58

of human consciousness,

42:00

the order of our

42:02

minds, and the

42:05

order of the cosmos.

42:15

I don't want to sound too galaxy

42:18

brain, but like we're so of the

42:20

we're so of the earth because we

42:22

evolved to be that way. Right.

42:25

Well, this is no this and

42:27

this is actually on the particular

42:29

question of consciousness and its understanding

42:31

of reality. This is actually a

42:33

key and useful debate. Right. Where,

42:35

yes, the argument goes, well, of

42:37

course, you would expect us to

42:39

be able to understand the heights

42:41

and depths of reality because it

42:43

is evolutionarily. adaptive to have this

42:45

kind of understanding. That

42:48

doesn't answer the question of

42:50

why we are conscious to

42:52

begin with, why we have

42:54

something called understanding, why we

42:56

perceive the world the way

42:58

we do, but it does

43:00

provide a potential explanation. The

43:02

question is, does that explanation

43:04

make sense? And the explanation

43:06

takes for granted the idea

43:08

that an early hominid, let's

43:10

say, You're evolving to

43:12

deal with life in the savanna,

43:14

you know, wherever early hominids evolved, right?

43:16

You need to deal with saber -toothed

43:18

tigers or, you know, elephants or

43:21

whatever you need to deal with. You

43:23

need some kind of toolkit, and

43:25

that toolkit needs to be predictive, and

43:27

it needs to let you make

43:29

decisions, and it needs to let you

43:32

reason in some simplified way. Okay,

43:34

fair enough. That's that's the

43:36

toolkit we have. We have a under

43:38

evolutionary hypotheses. We have it. Let's

43:40

call it a panther dodging toolkit. Does

43:43

it stand to reason

43:46

that that toolkit would

43:48

generalize upward towards the

43:50

basic principles of mathematics

43:52

towards. the capacity

43:54

to split the atom, towards the

43:56

understanding of how the physical

43:59

laws of the cosmos work. And

44:01

I think we take it

44:03

for granted that it does

44:05

because it obviously does, right? We

44:07

are very, very successful, right?

44:09

But I think it's really, really

44:12

easy to imagine toolkits and

44:14

versions of the cosmos where the

44:16

language of mathematics, let's say,

44:18

is just completely distinct from...

44:20

know, your ability to anticipate when

44:22

a panther is going to

44:25

leap at you or something like

44:27

that, right? And this is,

44:29

you hear this, I think, like

44:31

if you talk to serious

44:33

mathematicians, even if they aren't conventionally

44:36

religious, they do tend to

44:38

have a kind of mystical

44:40

understanding of their own discipline. Like

44:42

why do these forms that

44:44

we hold in our minds actually

44:47

end up having these perfectly

44:49

predictive roles in figuring out

44:51

material reality. And I just

44:53

don't think that is to

44:55

necessarily be expected from just

44:57

sort of the evolution of

44:59

survival capacities. I

45:02

think it is, you know, again,

45:04

it is strongly suggestive of

45:06

a more profound connection between what

45:08

our mind does and what

45:10

it's made for in the order

45:12

of the universe itself. And

45:14

again, Just to repeat myself,

45:16

that theory doesn't explain why

45:18

we have this sort of this

45:20

perceptual existence to begin with.

45:23

And the age of AI is

45:25

sort of throwing this into

45:27

relief because we are building machines.

45:29

We aren't building machines to

45:31

have the kind of perceptual awareness

45:33

that we have because we

45:35

have no idea how to give

45:37

it to them. We're building

45:40

machines to act intelligently without perceptual

45:42

awareness, which creates a stronger

45:44

mystery. about where this sense of

45:46

self and selfhood comes from.

45:48

Ross, you write in the book

45:50

that people should demand a

45:52

foundation of basic reasonability from religion.

45:54

I think that idea will

45:57

seem strange to a lot of

45:59

people listening because they will

46:01

think of religion as a belief

46:03

in the unbelievable, a belief

46:05

in the miraculous, and a belief

46:07

in the things that defy

46:09

logic. You know, we're almost at

46:11

Easter. The holiday

46:13

that celebrates. It's a very special

46:16

episode. The resurrection of a human

46:18

being rising from the dead. You

46:20

know, we might debate about whether

46:22

or not he's a human being.

46:24

And you're telling me, and I'm

46:26

speaking now for the We spent

46:28

a few hundred years on that

46:30

one. But you're saying that is

46:33

the most reasonable perspective on reality?

46:35

Like that seems, asking someone to

46:37

believe in a person literally rising

46:39

from the dead seems. profoundly,

46:41

I don't want to say unreasonable, that

46:43

might not be a word, but to

46:45

believe in the unbelievable, to believe in

46:47

the miraculous. Contend with that for me.

46:50

Yeah, I mean, I don't

46:52

think there's anything unreasonable about

46:54

believing in the possibility of

46:56

miracles. I think, you know,

46:58

if you envision the universe

47:01

as a system created by

47:03

a conscious mind, which I

47:05

have been trying to argue.

47:07

is a reasonable supposition based

47:09

on what we know scientifically

47:11

and to some degree philosophically

47:13

about the nature of the

47:15

universe and the nature of

47:17

our minds, then there is

47:19

no necessary reason to assume

47:21

that the conscious mind that

47:24

created this universe could not

47:26

intervene in the working of

47:28

its physical laws in certain

47:30

crucial ways to steer the

47:32

history of a species that

47:34

it happens to care about

47:36

in... particular directions. I

47:39

think the confusion comes

47:41

in because it is perfectly

47:43

sensible for science and

47:45

scientists, who are indeed the

47:47

most reasonable of professions,

47:50

potentially, at least, not always,

47:52

right? To, you know,

47:54

to sort of never presume a

47:56

miracle, right? Like, you are a

47:58

foe of science, yes, if you

48:00

say, this apparent And discontinuity in

48:03

the laws of the universe can

48:05

be explained by an angel stepping

48:07

in every day to, you know,

48:09

carry a planet through this mysterious

48:11

part of its orbit or something,

48:13

right? Science is the search for

48:16

the regular laws, the consistent laws,

48:18

the fundamental laws that predict and

48:20

explain the system of the world.

48:22

And as such, it isn't necessarily

48:24

in the business of studying miracles,

48:26

and it should have a bias

48:29

against them. But that

48:31

doesn't mean it's unreasonable to think

48:33

they happen. And you can put this,

48:35

I think, for at least some

48:37

listeners or viewers, the kind who maybe

48:39

hang out around Silicon Valley or

48:41

something. A bunch of people in Silicon

48:44

Valley have decided that the universe

48:46

is probably a simulation. We're living in

48:48

a simulation. And they've decided this

48:50

because they believe in the multiverse. They're

48:52

like, okay, we're in the multiverse.

48:54

There's an infinite number of universes. And

48:56

each universe eventually would have people

48:58

in it capable of simulating another. infinite

49:00

set of universes, and so most

49:03

universes will be simulated universes, and so

49:05

we're probably in one. Now, I

49:07

have a lot of disagreements with that

49:09

perspective on the world, but it

49:11

does offer a somewhat useful way of

49:13

thinking about the miraculous, because if

49:15

you are inside a simulation, then in

49:17

fact, there's nothing unreasonable about the

49:20

assumption that whoever is running the simulation

49:22

would... intervene in it from time

49:24

to time in ways that disturb the

49:26

formal regularities of the system. And

49:28

that is what religious people are claiming

49:30

is true about the cosmos that

49:32

we inhabit, that it is a regular

49:34

system that is occasionally sort of

49:37

intervened in. by its architect to, I

49:39

think Christians would say, to establish

49:41

a pattern of signs and revelations and

49:43

indicators that are helpful to ordinary

49:45

mortals like you and me trying to

49:47

figure out what God wants of

49:49

us and how to live their life.

49:51

And the Christian perspective, obviously, is

49:54

that the biggest and most important of

49:56

these is the resurrection of Jesus

49:58

Christ. The Jewish perspective is the biggest

50:00

and most important is probably, you

50:02

know, God's revelation on Mount Sinai, right?

50:06

This is what religions are claiming,

50:08

basically. Not that the universe is,

50:10

you know, is sort of irrational

50:12

and inherently unpredictable, but that the

50:14

universe is law -bound and predictable and

50:16

miracles are the exceptions to the

50:19

rule that are perfectly rational if

50:21

you understand that there's someone running

50:23

the whole system. And then with

50:25

the key point, right, that in

50:27

fact, things that appear miraculous do

50:29

happen a great deal. Have you

50:32

had a miracle in your own

50:34

life? Have

50:36

you experienced the miraculous? I

50:38

would say that I

50:40

have observed more than experienced.

50:42

So I spent part

50:45

of my childhood hanging around

50:47

Pentecostalist and charismatic circles

50:49

for reasons that had to

50:51

do with my parents' religious

50:54

journey. And I would say

50:56

at the very least, I have

50:58

a lot of exposure to

51:00

religious experiences now. our religious experience

51:02

is miraculous in the way

51:04

that the resurrection is miraculous. No,

51:06

not exactly. They're more in

51:09

there, but they, but they do

51:11

present themselves as external interventions

51:13

into human beings by outside powers

51:15

and forces that are not

51:17

just sort of generated by the

51:19

psyche or the self. Right.

51:21

And so, you know, If you

51:23

read William James's Varieties of

51:25

Religious Experience, the famous attempt to

51:27

sort of catalog and analyze

51:29

these experiences, I saw things like

51:32

that happen to my parents

51:34

and people I know. And my

51:36

perspective on those events was

51:38

that they really did strongly appear

51:40

to be outside interventions into

51:42

human beings who I knew and

51:44

respected and trusted, who were

51:46

not insane, were not schizophrenic, were

51:48

not epileptic. Those

51:51

experiences require some kind of

51:53

explanation. Now, can you come up

51:56

with a materialist explanation, a

51:58

purely psychological explanation? Certainly

52:00

such explanations are on offer, but they

52:02

are a persistent feature of the world,

52:04

as one would expect if the religious

52:06

perspective on the world is correct. Then

52:08

one can go a bit further and

52:11

say, okay, near

52:13

-death experiences are a bit stranger.

52:15

They, you know, people die, they're

52:17

resuscitated, they're brought back to life,

52:19

or they come close to death.

52:21

I don't want to stipulate that

52:23

they're completely brain dead, just they

52:25

come close to the threshold of

52:27

death, and they come back often

52:30

with really powerful stories of encounters

52:32

with beings and realities that, again, map

52:34

pretty, in a general way,

52:37

onto what a lot of

52:39

religions describe about the afterlife.

52:42

These experiences are much more available

52:44

to us in the 21st century

52:46

than they ever were before in

52:48

all of human history because we

52:50

bring so many people back from

52:53

the brink of death. And in

52:55

fact, it was a great surprise

52:57

to people studying these experiences in

52:59

the 1960s and 1970s when this

53:01

sort of takes off just how

53:03

commonplace they are. Not that everyone

53:05

has them, but they're a persistent

53:07

feature of near -death, near -death, near -death

53:09

moments. Could

53:11

this all be in people's heads? Sure.

53:13

It's a little hard to devise an

53:15

evolutionary explanation of this phenomena that in

53:17

most of human history would have only

53:19

happened to people who just went on

53:21

to die, right? Like, what's the evolutionary

53:23

advantage if you see your dead relatives

53:26

in the bright light, but then you

53:28

can never tell anyone about it? Unclear,

53:30

but maybe there is some. But at

53:32

the very least, what I'm asking the

53:34

secular person to concede is this. Go

53:37

back 100, 150 years, right? And sit

53:39

a religious person and a secular person

53:41

down and tell them both, guess what?

53:43

In the next 100, 150 years, we're

53:45

going to bring a lot more people

53:47

back from the brink of death. What

53:49

do you expect that they'll say? And

53:51

I think that the good atheist would

53:53

say, probably you'll get a mixture of...

53:55

People seeing nothing at all because there's

53:57

nothing after death. And like weird hallucinations,

53:59

fragmentary experiences, dreamlike situations, the brain on

54:01

the brink of death misfiring and so

54:03

on. And the religious person would say,

54:05

well, probably some of them will see

54:07

heaven and maybe some of them will

54:09

see hell. And, you

54:11

know, the No one seems to

54:13

see hell with these near -death experiences.

54:16

No, this is actually, again, with

54:18

the demons, people do have some

54:20

dark near -death experiences. They just...

54:22

are less – substantially less likely

54:24

to write books about them and

54:26

to report them. But there is

54:28

– not that I recommend this

54:30

exactly, but there's an interesting reading

54:32

on this. But my point is

54:34

just that what has actually happened

54:36

is what the religious person would

54:38

expect. Where can someone find those?

54:40

Because every near -death experience I've ever

54:42

read is the bright light. You

54:44

see your ancestors, maybe people who

54:46

have gone. It sounds like people

54:48

are almost – you have to

54:50

fight to resist. going

54:53

toward it because that's how wonderful

54:55

it is. I've literally never read

54:57

about a near -death experience with

54:59

something approximating hell. If I wanted

55:01

to find that, do I have

55:03

to like go to some weird

55:05

Reddit board? Where do I find

55:07

it? No. Well, I mean, if

55:09

you honestly, if you Google hellish

55:11

near -death experiences, you will find it.

55:13

But you will find examples. I

55:16

generally would say I recommend a

55:18

book called by

55:20

a doctor named Bruce Grayson, which

55:22

is, there have been a lot

55:24

of surveys of the literature on

55:26

this going back. Raymond Moody in

55:28

the 1960s is the guy who

55:30

first starts writing about this. I

55:32

think Grayson's book is the best

55:34

sort of overall guide to what,

55:36

from his perspective, the data seems

55:38

to show and why you should

55:40

take it at least somewhat seriously.

55:42

I believe that he talks about

55:44

negative near -death experiences. If he doesn't,

55:46

I apologize. But I would do,

55:48

I... the first book

55:50

that I sometimes direct

55:53

people towards. Okay.

55:55

I have encountered so many

55:57

people who don't believe in God

55:59

but wish they were. The

56:01

producer of this show said, I

56:03

wished I believed in God,

56:05

but I just can't turn it

56:07

on like a light switch.

56:09

What is your advice to that

56:11

person? Well, here, I

56:13

mean, here there is obviously

56:15

some truth to the advice.

56:18

that again the people sort of

56:20

in your second group are sort

56:22

of taking right the idea that

56:24

you know sometimes you you feel

56:27

like you can't believe but maybe

56:29

you practice maybe you participate maybe

56:31

you pray you act as though

56:33

you are religious and maybe that

56:35

that connection is is opened and

56:37

belief becomes possible right and so

56:39

i mean what one fun thing

56:41

about writing a book like this

56:43

and doing a lot of interviews

56:45

with people who are sort of in

56:48

the camp of friendly to religion

56:50

but not convinced, is you realize that,

56:52

you know, everybody's different, right? And

56:54

everyone who's not religious but interested has

56:56

some different stumbling block. So you'll

56:58

talk to one person for whom the

57:00

arguments that I've made about physics

57:02

and fine -tuning are totally convincing, but

57:04

when you get to near -death experiences,

57:06

they're like, come on, I'm just not

57:08

going to go there with you,

57:10

Ross. And then, well, I mean, he

57:12

is actually religious, but I did...

57:14

podcast with our mutual friend, Andrew Sullivan.

57:16

And, you know, Andrew is just

57:18

having none of the arguments from design.

57:20

He's like, come on, the universe

57:23

is too big and cold. You know,

57:25

it just doesn't seem right. But

57:27

Andrew is an experiencer. He's had mystical

57:29

experiences. He believes in God for

57:31

mystical reasons. So in terms of giving

57:33

advice, I'm not saying that, you

57:35

know. For everyone, it makes

57:37

sense to try and reason your

57:39

way to God before you start

57:41

practicing religion. For some people, it's

57:44

going to work the other way

57:46

around. You're going to practice, and

57:48

some kind of experience is going

57:50

to come, and reason is going

57:52

to trail afterward. With that said,

57:54

I do think that the idea

57:57

of belief as this intense feeling

57:59

of the presence of God, it's

58:01

okay. not to

58:03

have that yet and still say

58:05

there probably is a God because

58:07

it kind of makes sense of

58:09

things. I agree. This may be

58:12

my own psychological impediment, but I

58:14

don't think that should be so hard

58:16

to say. But this is where

58:18

I think that middle position we were

58:20

talking about before is so compelling.

58:22

And I don't want to say is

58:24

Jewish or not Jewish, but to

58:26

me feels Jewish. There's an idea when

58:28

there's a... biblical idea of the

58:30

Jews receiving the Torah, I don't want

58:32

to go into it too much

58:34

because it's not important, but the relevant

58:36

thing is a phrase It's all

58:38

important. Of course it's important, but for

58:40

the sake of this conversation, the

58:42

thing that is said that comes up

58:44

a lot in Jewish life is

58:46

nasav v 'nishma. And the translation of

58:48

this is we will do and then

58:50

we will understand. In other words,

58:52

what are all these crazy laws and

58:54

kosher and Shabbat and all these

58:56

things? It's like they seem crazy, but

58:58

if you do it. What will

59:00

lead from it is something like, I

59:02

think, what you're describing. And to

59:04

me, that is where the way you're

59:06

calling belief, I might describe as

59:08

practice. And if you do the practice

59:10

enough, I think the belief can

59:12

often follow from that. And for me,

59:14

that is a much more doable

59:16

prescription for people than believe in God,

59:19

guys. Just do it. I don't

59:21

think that that is. a reasonable ask

59:23

for people because the bar like

59:25

it's like so what so so so

59:27

why i mean i i obviously

59:29

this is true of many people but

59:31

i'm i'm curious like suppose you

59:33

were partially convinced by the run of

59:35

arguments that i just made maybe

59:37

you're not but suppose someone is partially

59:39

convinced you're like hmm yeah universe

59:41

seems structured and orderly human consciousness seems

59:43

to have some relationship to that

59:45

order hmm there are still a lot

59:47

of weird religious experiences out there

59:49

why Why would it not

59:51

follow from that to say, again,

59:53

not I'm 100 % sure there's a

59:55

God, but hey, there might well be

59:57

a God. Why does that seem

59:59

like such a leap? I

1:00:01

just think for many people who

1:00:03

were raised in the secular liberal waters

1:00:06

that we were talking about in

1:00:08

the beginning of this conversation, belief in

1:00:10

God feels like the highest level

1:00:12

to get to. And a much lower

1:00:14

rung on the ladder toward that

1:00:16

is... This is a great way to

1:00:18

order your life. This is a

1:00:20

great way to order your family's life.

1:00:22

This will give you meaning, structure.

1:00:24

And by the way, going back to

1:00:26

the Pascal's Wager thing, if it

1:00:28

ends up being that in the end

1:00:31

of the day, the flying spaghetti

1:00:33

monster, whatever you called it, you know,

1:00:35

the God in the sky that

1:00:37

Ross and so many other people believe

1:00:39

in is true, all the

1:00:41

better. He's not technically, I mean,

1:00:43

sometimes he's in the sky, but.

1:00:45

You know, you get what

1:00:47

I technically he's outside of time and space. But

1:00:50

right. But but this is in

1:00:52

a sense, I guess, from from my

1:00:54

perspective. And again, there there are

1:00:56

ways in which, you know, human beings

1:00:58

just don't quite get each other

1:01:00

right sometimes. And there is there is

1:01:02

something about that view that I

1:01:04

don't quite get. And because from my

1:01:06

perspective, from a Christian and also

1:01:08

a Jewish perspective, right, there

1:01:10

are sort of two levels. There is

1:01:13

a level of. understanding

1:01:15

of God, certainly, that can

1:01:17

only be attained through some

1:01:19

combination of practice, grace, and

1:01:21

revelation, right? Yes, you can't

1:01:23

understand the purpose of all the

1:01:25

two billion Jewish commandments, I know

1:01:27

it's slightly fewer than that, until

1:01:29

you've actually— 613, Ross, I

1:01:31

can never remember the exact number, so

1:01:33

I play—right, so, you know, until you've

1:01:36

kept kosher and, you know, done everything,

1:01:38

you can't understand— you know, the doctrine

1:01:40

of the Trinity, right, to take a

1:01:42

particularly strange Christian tradition that is, if

1:01:44

not contrary to reason, I would not

1:01:46

tell you the doctrine of the Trinity

1:01:48

is perfectly reasonable in a kind of

1:01:50

normal scientific way, right? There's all kinds

1:01:52

of stuff in religion that you can

1:01:54

only get to in the way you

1:01:57

describe. But both, if you had, you

1:01:59

know, both Thomas Aquinas and Maimonides here,

1:02:01

right, with us, a Jew, you know,

1:02:03

the greatest Jew and the greatest Christian

1:02:05

when it comes to these things, they

1:02:07

would both say, Sure, the

1:02:09

fullness of Judaism and Catholicism is only

1:02:11

accessible through all these practices and

1:02:13

rituals and so on and revelation and

1:02:15

grace, whatever. But

1:02:17

like the idea that the universe

1:02:20

was probably made by some kind

1:02:22

of creator, like that's basic. That

1:02:24

should just not be that hard

1:02:26

to get to. That's reasonable, right?

1:02:28

And I guess part of my

1:02:30

perspective on this is, you know,

1:02:32

I obviously am not going to

1:02:35

successfully convince everyone of this, but

1:02:37

I do think that you can't.

1:02:39

ultimately have a sort of full

1:02:41

religious revival a really a real

1:02:43

recreation of this you know whatever

1:02:45

the religious scaffolding we're talking about

1:02:47

is until more people sort of

1:02:49

i i feel like they're sort

1:02:52

of set aside what i think

1:02:54

is a kind of instilled prejudice

1:02:56

that like Belief in God is

1:02:58

this impossibly high thing that you

1:03:00

can only get to after spending

1:03:02

27 years on a, you know,

1:03:04

on a pillar contemplating it. And

1:03:07

return instead to, you know, the

1:03:09

wisdom of the ancients that says

1:03:11

belief in God. That's the easy

1:03:13

part. What's the hard

1:03:15

part? The hard part is being

1:03:17

a good Christian, being a good

1:03:19

Jew, right? The hard part is

1:03:21

living in harmony with whatever God

1:03:23

wants for your life. The hard

1:03:25

part is also wrestling with... you

1:03:27

know, the entirely legitimate questions, right,

1:03:30

that people have about God. You

1:03:32

know, I spend a little bit

1:03:34

of time Not enough in

1:03:36

the book talking about the problem of

1:03:38

evil, right? And the questions of

1:03:40

why there are suffering in the world,

1:03:42

right? And if you look into

1:03:44

the Old Testament and the New Testament,

1:03:46

you will find that religious believers

1:03:48

are not setting those questions aside. It's

1:03:50

not like when you become religious,

1:03:52

oh, well, we've taken care of that.

1:03:54

Now we know why bad things

1:03:56

happen to good people. No, they're constantly...

1:03:58

arguing about it, complaining to God.

1:04:00

Abraham is like lawyering with God, right?

1:04:02

Jesus is, God himself, from a

1:04:04

Christian perspective, is weeping in the Garden

1:04:06

of Gethsemane because he has to

1:04:08

go die on the cross. Basically,

1:04:11

all the hard stuff is

1:04:13

there in religion, but from a

1:04:15

religious perspective, You know, it's

1:04:17

a good reason to be uncertain,

1:04:19

doubtful, like, what does God

1:04:21

want of me? I have all

1:04:23

kinds of doubts about those

1:04:25

kinds of things. Is

1:04:28

it a good reason to

1:04:30

think that the universe is an

1:04:32

accident, that human consciousness is

1:04:34

an illusion? That

1:04:36

we don't have free will.

1:04:39

That we don't have free will,

1:04:41

that we as beings don't

1:04:43

really exist. We're just sort of

1:04:45

some sort of illusion stapled

1:04:47

onto our existence. Oh, and by

1:04:49

the way, this is all

1:04:52

explained because there are 100 trillion

1:04:54

other universes that we will

1:04:56

never taste and see. Is that

1:04:58

the more reasonable perspective? Again,

1:05:00

I don't think it is. After

1:05:05

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1:05:07

Vatican II, and much more. Stay

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been saying over the past decade or so,

1:07:55

kind of, in my view, hungering for, a

1:07:57

religious life or hungering to

1:07:59

fill that longing inside of

1:08:01

them, that they're spiritual but not

1:08:04

religious. And they do everything.

1:08:06

They do yoga, meditation, astrology,

1:08:08

crystals, tarot, like you name it,

1:08:10

they do it. Why is that

1:08:12

not the right solution? Why is that

1:08:14

not sufficient? I

1:08:17

mean, again, I don't want to

1:08:19

say it's not the right thing

1:08:21

initially, right? Like if

1:08:23

you became suddenly convinced by my

1:08:25

really, really persuasive arguments that

1:08:27

God probably exists. And then you look out

1:08:29

at the world and you're like, wow, there's a

1:08:31

lot of religious traditions. It's hard to figure

1:08:34

out which one is true. Entering

1:08:36

a kind of experimental mode

1:08:38

for some period of time,

1:08:40

I think, is reasonable and

1:08:42

is rational, right? But there's

1:08:44

a few issues there, right?

1:08:46

Over a longer time horizon,

1:08:48

what are you actually trying

1:08:50

to do, right? How are

1:08:52

you going to actually make...

1:08:55

progress as someone who thinks there might

1:08:57

be higher powers in the world. And,

1:08:59

you know, it's first of all,

1:09:02

individualism in most human endeavors tends

1:09:04

to be insufficient. There are exceptions,

1:09:06

right? But in general, you want

1:09:08

to become good at a sport.

1:09:10

You want to become, you know,

1:09:12

good at a discipline. You want

1:09:14

to become involved in politics and

1:09:16

so on. At some point, you

1:09:18

have to join. Right. You

1:09:20

have to participate. You have to

1:09:22

have communal support and solidarity. You have

1:09:24

to have someone testing your own

1:09:27

wildest ideas. You come home and you're

1:09:29

like, you know, I had this

1:09:31

brilliant, you know, brilliant idea for, you

1:09:33

know, a new pitch in baseball.

1:09:35

And the person's like, well, you know,

1:09:37

someone already invented that pitch and

1:09:39

it blew out everybody's arms when they

1:09:41

tried to throw it. Right. Like,

1:09:43

you know, there there there is there

1:09:45

is a sort of organizations and

1:09:47

institutions. exist to channel human

1:09:50

activity for a reason. This is true

1:09:52

in secular pursuits. It's also true

1:09:54

in religion. So just from the point

1:09:56

of view of like, are you

1:09:58

disciplining yourself? Are you advancing? Are you

1:10:00

making progress? Are you in conversation

1:10:02

with a serious tradition larger than yourself?

1:10:05

Unless you really think you are

1:10:07

the greatest religious genius of the age,

1:10:09

there's always a case for some

1:10:11

kind of joining, some kind of communal

1:10:13

participation, right? And

1:10:15

then there's also the reality that, like, you know,

1:10:17

you want to have a certain degree of

1:10:19

humility and say, okay, even if I'm a total

1:10:22

religious relativist, I think all of these religions,

1:10:24

they're all maps to the same destination. Even then,

1:10:26

does it make sense to say, I'm going

1:10:28

to take a piece of this map and a

1:10:30

piece of that map and tape them together

1:10:32

and assume that that map will be great? I

1:10:34

think there's a certain kind of... unwarranted

1:10:36

presumption there. And then hanging over

1:10:38

this, and again, we just keep circling

1:10:41

back to the demons, Barry, is

1:10:43

the reality that if the

1:10:45

supernatural exists, like your spiritual

1:10:47

but not religious friends, presume

1:10:49

that a spiritual landscape exists.

1:10:51

They have spiritual experiences. They

1:10:53

have experiences, in some cases

1:10:55

at least, of beings and

1:10:57

spirits that seem external to

1:10:59

themselves. People have these experiences

1:11:01

taking ayahuasca. They have these

1:11:03

experiences, you know, practicing witchcraft.

1:11:06

They have these experiences meditating

1:11:08

and so on. It's

1:11:10

maybe an unwarranted assumption that

1:11:12

all of those experiences and beings

1:11:14

just totally have your good

1:11:16

in mind, right? And, you know,

1:11:18

the traditional religions, the big

1:11:20

religions disagree on things like the

1:11:22

permanence of hell, right? Like

1:11:25

Hindus and Buddhists believe in hell.

1:11:27

So do Christians. Christians say,

1:11:29

once you're there, you're stuck. Hindus

1:11:31

and Buddhists say, no, maybe

1:11:33

you can get out and cycle

1:11:35

into a new life. But

1:11:37

one thing every religion has in

1:11:39

common is a belief that

1:11:41

your soul can get into really,

1:11:44

really deep shit, really serious

1:11:46

trouble. And one of the advantages

1:11:48

of institutional religion is that

1:11:50

it has a certain amount of

1:11:52

experience, certain kinds of spiritual

1:11:54

technologies, shall we say, that are

1:11:56

supposed to... protect you from

1:11:58

those things. And this is a

1:12:01

larger point about the future,

1:12:03

right? The future of American religion

1:12:05

right now is pretty open. I

1:12:08

do think we've come to the end

1:12:10

of a period of secularization, but it

1:12:12

doesn't mean that Christianity is going to

1:12:14

make some huge comeback, right? And a

1:12:16

lot of people are just going to

1:12:18

be out there experimenting. In

1:12:21

a way, parts of my

1:12:23

argument, I think, affirm a

1:12:25

spirit of experiment, right? I

1:12:27

don't expect everyone who is

1:12:29

persuaded that God might exist

1:12:31

to immediately join Opus Dei

1:12:34

or any other, you know?

1:12:36

I'm not in Opus Dei,

1:12:38

for the record. But yeah,

1:12:40

so I don't want to

1:12:42

discourage experimentation, but I do

1:12:44

want to suggest that people

1:12:46

should be careful. And how

1:12:48

American religious culture evolves may

1:12:50

depend on how careful or

1:12:52

not careful people end up

1:12:54

being. Okay. The entire

1:12:56

length of this conversation so

1:12:58

far, we have been talking

1:13:00

about two religions, Judaism and

1:13:02

Christianity. Unmentioned so far has

1:13:04

been the religion that you

1:13:06

know, and I'm saying this

1:13:08

in a nonjudgmental way, I

1:13:10

think you can argue is

1:13:12

one of the most charismatic,

1:13:14

let's say, in our current

1:13:16

moment, and that is Islam.

1:13:21

Would you be content in

1:13:23

a world where Islam

1:13:25

is the religion that people

1:13:27

choose to become more

1:13:29

religious inside of? No,

1:13:32

I wouldn't be content in

1:13:34

such a world because I am

1:13:36

a Christian. And in spite

1:13:38

of my, you know, attempts to

1:13:40

be open and tolerant to

1:13:42

religious experimentation, I do believe in

1:13:44

the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

1:13:46

I do believe that the New

1:13:48

Testament is the controlling revelation

1:13:50

and that therefore Muhammad or his

1:13:53

followers got some really important

1:13:55

things wrong. So content is not

1:13:57

the right word. This

1:14:00

came up at our great

1:14:02

debate, right? Because, of course, I

1:14:04

was partnered with Ayaan Hirsi

1:14:06

Ali, who has become a Christian

1:14:08

after a really devastating and

1:14:10

horrific experience with fundamentalist Islam growing

1:14:12

up that pushed her all

1:14:14

the way to atheism and hostility

1:14:16

to religion. So from her

1:14:18

perspective, I think completely understandably, the

1:14:20

idea of making this kind

1:14:22

of generic case for religion. Doesn't

1:14:24

make sense because what if

1:14:26

you end up with fundamentalist Islam,

1:14:28

right? I certainly do not

1:14:30

want to end up with fundamentalist

1:14:32

Islam. But

1:14:35

if you said to me, you

1:14:37

know, would I rather live

1:14:39

in a world where more people

1:14:41

practiced, you know, what I

1:14:43

see from my, you know, Muslim

1:14:45

friends in the United States,

1:14:48

kind of Americanized form of Islam

1:14:50

that is not, from my

1:14:52

perspective, fundamentalist is. you know, stands

1:14:54

in some very complex relationship

1:14:56

with modernity. And again, I don't

1:14:59

think, I think Islam's evolution

1:15:01

is a very complicated thing that

1:15:03

I'm not fully qualified to

1:15:05

comment on. But, like, would I

1:15:07

rather live in a world,

1:15:10

well, we'll just take an example,

1:15:12

because the last podcast I

1:15:14

did before yours was one with

1:15:16

Shadi Hamid, right? Shadi Hamid

1:15:18

is a Muslim writer and thinker,

1:15:21

right? co -hosts

1:15:23

podcast, Wisdom of Crowds. Really smart

1:15:25

guy. Would I rather live

1:15:27

in a world populated by shardies

1:15:29

than a world populated by

1:15:31

atheists and agnostics? I think the

1:15:33

answer is easy. I would

1:15:35

rather live in a world populated

1:15:37

by shardies. So there certainly

1:15:39

is some form of Islam that

1:15:41

I consider closer to the

1:15:43

truth about reality than hard atheism.

1:15:45

Again, you know, if someday

1:15:47

there is a jihadist suicide bomber,

1:15:49

And people, you know, examine his

1:15:52

body and find in his

1:15:54

backpack a copy of Believe by

1:15:56

Ross Douthat, right? You know,

1:15:58

I mean, this will raise some

1:16:00

questions about the impact of

1:16:02

my arguments. But I

1:16:04

don't think, no, I

1:16:07

don't think Islam is

1:16:09

exempt from the broad

1:16:11

generalizations that I make

1:16:13

about the advantages of

1:16:15

religion over non -belief, even

1:16:17

if Islam has... some

1:16:20

particularly toxic and dangerous

1:16:22

forms, especially in

1:16:24

the last 75 years. Okay.

1:16:27

I think that when people who

1:16:29

are skeptical of religion think about

1:16:31

this conversation and this topic, they

1:16:33

will think about, number one, the

1:16:35

rise of Islamism, and they will

1:16:37

look at Europe, they will look

1:16:39

at what's happening in parts of

1:16:41

the Middle East, and they will

1:16:43

say, uh -uh. That is proof

1:16:46

to me that religion is not

1:16:48

a great thing. The thing they

1:16:50

will look at closer to home,

1:16:52

and this is more recent, certainly

1:16:54

more recently on my radar, probably

1:16:56

for much longer on yours since

1:16:58

you're more inside this world, is

1:17:00

the rise of, I don't even

1:17:02

know what to call it, Christian

1:17:04

nationalism. The rise

1:17:06

of a kind of

1:17:08

Christianity that many

1:17:10

see as authoritarian

1:17:12

that I think would maybe describe

1:17:14

itself that way, that is

1:17:17

certainly anti -Semitic, that is trying

1:17:19

to upend things that I would

1:17:21

say are, at least I

1:17:23

would argue, are foundational American values.

1:17:25

I'm being like as broad

1:17:27

as I can right now. Are

1:17:29

you worried about the rise

1:17:31

of that? And more importantly, I

1:17:33

would love for you to

1:17:36

explain why you think it is

1:17:38

ascendant. At this moment, maybe

1:17:40

ascendant in a way that it

1:17:42

hasn't been for a while.

1:17:44

I honestly don't think it's ascendant.

1:17:48

I think that it is a

1:17:50

and I would separate this

1:17:52

from fundamentalist Islam, which has actually

1:17:54

been politically ascendant in lots

1:17:56

of places in the late 20th

1:17:58

and early 21st century. I

1:18:00

am not at all trying to

1:18:02

collapse. no, no, no. I

1:18:04

think I think there are certainly

1:18:06

forms of Christianity that could

1:18:08

theoretically establish, you know. established societies

1:18:10

that I would not wish

1:18:12

to live in and would not

1:18:14

wish anyone else to live

1:18:16

in. And I'm not going to

1:18:18

say that sort of very

1:18:20

online anti -Semitic Christianity couldn't develop

1:18:22

in that direction. I

1:18:24

think that its evolution right

1:18:26

now in America is

1:18:29

mostly a reflection of general

1:18:31

Christian What

1:18:34

do you mean by that, Christian weakness?

1:18:36

Well, just that, I mean, number one,

1:18:38

Christianity has really been in decline, right?

1:18:40

Christianity used to be the dominant religious

1:18:42

institution in our society in different ways.

1:18:44

We talked about this earlier. It's been

1:18:47

in decline. And

1:18:49

people want a story, right?

1:18:51

Why has it declined, right?

1:18:53

And one of the available stories

1:18:55

is that it got, you

1:18:57

know, way too soft and weak.

1:18:59

And unserious. And I mean,

1:19:02

I honestly, as a conservative Christian,

1:19:04

I believe some version of

1:19:06

that argument. I do think that

1:19:08

there are forms of Christianity

1:19:10

that answer to that description. But

1:19:12

obviously there's that weakness leads

1:19:14

critics of Christian decline to sometimes

1:19:16

go further, much further, right?

1:19:19

And say, well, the problem was.

1:19:21

We reconciled with the Jews, you

1:19:23

know, shouldn't have done that.

1:19:25

The problem is we— The problem

1:19:28

with Vatican II, the problem—yeah,

1:19:30

it depends how— Well, no, but

1:19:32

see, I have some skepticism

1:19:34

about Vatican II, right? So there's

1:19:36

a— Okay, we need a

1:19:38

whole—we need two additional episodes, political

1:19:40

Islam and Vatican II. Right,

1:19:42

not about the document on reconciliation

1:19:44

with the Jews, but I

1:19:46

think there is an open debate,

1:19:49

basically, about why— Christianity declined

1:19:51

the way it did. And inevitably,

1:19:53

some of the participants in

1:19:55

that debate stake out very extreme

1:19:57

and toxic positions. I don't

1:19:59

see a lot of evidence that

1:20:01

they are gaining profound influence

1:20:03

outside of the online realm, which

1:20:05

doesn't make them undangerous, but

1:20:08

it means that I don't expect

1:20:10

sort of Christianity as it's

1:20:12

practiced by most Christians in America

1:20:14

in the next 30 or

1:20:16

40 years to be heavily... influenced

1:20:18

by those voices. The form of

1:20:21

Christianity that's most resilient in America is

1:20:23

non -denominational Protestantism, which is like if

1:20:25

you go into the suburbs and

1:20:27

you see a Christian church that looks

1:20:29

like a community center that has

1:20:31

a name like Elevate, right?

1:20:37

Demographically, that's the form of Christianity. That

1:20:39

has been most resilient, more

1:20:41

than my own Catholicism. And

1:20:43

so that's one thing. The

1:20:45

other thing is that these

1:20:47

people are also in a

1:20:49

kind of competition with post

1:20:52

-Christian paganism, right? With like

1:20:54

Bronze Age pervert style, Nietzschean

1:20:56

sort of, you know, strength,

1:20:59

vitality, vitalism, all these

1:21:01

things that are actually important

1:21:03

forces in the very

1:21:05

online right. There,

1:21:08

I worry, I do worry

1:21:10

about that. I have, you know,

1:21:12

strong doubts and arguments and

1:21:14

disagreements with people in that realm.

1:21:16

But the Christian part of

1:21:18

that realm seems to be pretty

1:21:21

clearly the junior partner. It's

1:21:23

like the Christian, you know, some

1:21:25

Christian trad bros or whatever

1:21:27

are trying to play catch up

1:21:29

and pick up some of

1:21:31

the appeal of an Andrew Tate

1:21:33

or a Bronze Age pervert

1:21:35

or someone like that. I

1:21:38

think that's bad, right? But the

1:21:40

primary energy there is more pagan

1:21:42

than Christian. I agree with you

1:21:44

that they are the junior partners.

1:21:46

But then I also need to

1:21:48

check myself when I try and

1:21:50

be sanguine about it and say,

1:21:52

hold on, isn't the whole story

1:21:55

of the way? came

1:21:57

to conquer so much of the American

1:21:59

left that it began in some

1:22:01

weird Tumblr chats, and then all of

1:22:03

a sudden people were putting pronouns

1:22:05

in their bios. And already, you know,

1:22:07

just this week, and I know

1:22:09

this is, you know, this is coming

1:22:11

out in Easter, who knows who

1:22:13

will have been on since then, but

1:22:15

Tucker Carlson has this guy on,

1:22:17

Andrew Isker, who is, you know, an

1:22:19

avowed Christian nationalist. Tucker has 20

1:22:21

million followers across social media. Frankly, that's...

1:22:23

larger than the number of all

1:22:25

Jewish people on the planet. And this

1:22:27

guy is saying things like, you

1:22:30

know, only Christians should enjoy the blessings

1:22:32

and benefits of our country and

1:22:34

a lot of other truly detestable things

1:22:36

that I'm not even going to

1:22:38

bother getting into. I mean, to me,

1:22:40

that is a significant development. Yeah,

1:22:42

I mean, I'm not

1:22:44

going to tell you that

1:22:47

you... should not be

1:22:49

concerned about. I think Isker

1:22:51

is the Boniface option,

1:22:53

right? So Rod, it's different

1:22:55

from the Benedict option.

1:22:57

Instead of sort of rebuilding

1:22:59

Christian culture, it is

1:23:01

essentially, you know, punch, right?

1:23:03

It's punch. And yeah,

1:23:05

I'm not going to try

1:23:07

and persuade you that you

1:23:09

shouldn't be concerned about that.

1:23:12

I just would say, I

1:23:14

would say yes, but I'm

1:23:16

again, I'm primarily concerned about

1:23:18

it in the context of

1:23:20

what it means for individual

1:23:22

Christian or Christian adjacent souls,

1:23:24

like more than I am

1:23:26

that I think this is

1:23:28

about to become ascendant as

1:23:30

a powerful political force. Again,

1:23:32

just because I think in

1:23:34

terms of our macro level

1:23:36

politics, pending an actual Christian

1:23:39

revival, we're still a society

1:23:41

that. is hyper -individualized, de -churched,

1:23:43

and it's just not a

1:23:45

society. If you look at

1:23:47

the Trump administration right now,

1:23:49

Trump administration is doing a

1:23:51

lot of pretty wild things,

1:23:53

right? We're taping this episode

1:23:55

right around the time of

1:23:57

the great tariff revolution. Who

1:23:59

knows what will come next,

1:24:01

right? Trump administration is acting

1:24:03

in dramatic ways all over

1:24:06

the place. It's not... dramatically

1:24:08

in the service, so far

1:24:10

it may change, in the

1:24:12

service of religious conservative causes,

1:24:14

even the sort of mainstream

1:24:16

ones like the pro -life

1:24:18

movement, to say nothing of

1:24:20

the Boniface option or anything

1:24:22

like that. And again, I

1:24:24

think that reflects the reality

1:24:26

that Christianity is weak as

1:24:28

a political force, even if

1:24:30

it still has real cultural

1:24:33

power. That weakness is generating

1:24:35

extremism, as weakness often does.

1:24:37

There may be a future

1:24:39

where that extremism becomes politically

1:24:41

dangerous, but right now it's

1:24:43

more dangerous in terms of

1:24:45

like, you know, you don't

1:24:47

want your Christian son to

1:24:49

become enamored of an anti

1:24:51

-Semitic Christian figure. And

1:24:53

I think this goes generally

1:24:55

to a point about the

1:24:57

larger nature of our moment,

1:24:59

right? Which is that in

1:25:01

certain ways... Like, there's

1:25:03

just a lot more weird, like,

1:25:05

weirdness everywhere right now that, you

1:25:07

know, anyone who wants to find,

1:25:10

you know, if you're on, you

1:25:12

know, if you're on the right

1:25:14

and you want to be freaked

1:25:16

out about, like, radicalized Bernie bros

1:25:18

or something, you go and find

1:25:21

the Luigi Mangione stans, right? And,

1:25:23

like, and this reflects

1:25:25

this, you know, this kind

1:25:27

of fragmentation that, you know,

1:25:29

again, to start where, end

1:25:31

where we started that. The

1:25:33

breaking of the scaffolding that

1:25:35

holds up a normal liberal

1:25:38

society, it's bad. But it

1:25:40

is – you shouldn't necessarily

1:25:42

leap from that to saying,

1:25:44

oh, God, the people who

1:25:46

love Luigi Mangione are about

1:25:48

to organize into a mass

1:25:50

movement that's going to install

1:25:52

a Soviet dictatorship, right? And

1:25:54

I think the same applies

1:25:56

to some of the hardest

1:25:59

core. Christian

1:26:01

nationalist, anti -Semitic, what have

1:26:03

you. They're dangerous

1:26:05

in their place, but

1:26:07

they aren't yet a political

1:26:09

force to be reckoned

1:26:11

with. The other

1:26:13

thing I've been thinking about

1:26:16

ahead of this conversation, and

1:26:18

I don't know if you'd

1:26:20

call these people pagans or

1:26:22

something else, but there is

1:26:24

a sort of ideological movement

1:26:27

afoot. And I

1:26:29

think it's connected certainly to the

1:26:31

rise of technology, AI, all

1:26:33

of it. A lot of these

1:26:35

people are broadly, I would

1:26:37

say, technologists, techno -optimist types who

1:26:40

worship, I don't want to put

1:26:42

it too bluntly, but feel

1:26:44

like they're worshiping intelligence and worship

1:26:46

IQ instead of worshiping God. And

1:26:49

it's a different, if

1:26:51

Andrew Tate or, you know,

1:26:53

Bronze Age pervert worship.

1:26:55

strength and the sun and

1:26:57

things that we recognize

1:26:59

as reliably pagan. There's another

1:27:01

group of people that

1:27:03

seems to believe that intelligence

1:27:05

makes people worthy of

1:27:07

respect. I hope I'm phrasing

1:27:09

this correctly. Again, I

1:27:12

mean there, so there you're

1:27:14

getting towards a group

1:27:16

that I am actually concerned

1:27:18

about, right? But it's

1:27:20

there too. It's not, I

1:27:22

think there is a

1:27:24

vision. intelligence that is

1:27:26

sort of religious -ish in nature and

1:27:28

potentially incredibly important to our future.

1:27:30

But it's less the race and

1:27:32

IQ bros than it is the

1:27:35

people who think that they are

1:27:37

building the machine god in Silicon

1:27:39

Valley. And there's some overlap, right?

1:27:41

Obviously, there are people who are

1:27:43

building AI who are you know,

1:27:45

really interested in sort of eugenic

1:27:47

ideas and so on. And there,

1:27:50

you know, there's overlap. There's overlap

1:27:52

there. But I do think if

1:27:54

you're saying which which weird idea,

1:27:56

like we were just saying, there's

1:27:58

a lot of weird ideas keeping

1:28:00

you up at night. The weird

1:28:03

idea that's keeping me up at

1:28:05

night is the idea that the

1:28:07

future of human of humanity is

1:28:09

to. Well, what did

1:28:11

Elon Musk say just the other day?

1:28:13

Become like a biological bootstrap for a

1:28:15

machine intelligence. This is not a direct

1:28:17

quote, right? But I found that quote

1:28:19

disturbing because I had actually thought of

1:28:22

Musk as one of the people in

1:28:24

Silicon Valley who, in all his weirdness,

1:28:26

still seemed to like human beings, right?

1:28:28

He certainly seems to like to have

1:28:30

human babies. But

1:28:33

he's not, you know, he was sort

1:28:35

of notable for... you know the idea

1:28:37

that like it's going to be human

1:28:39

beings who go to mars not just

1:28:41

you know silicon silicon creations and so

1:28:43

on but like i don't know how

1:28:46

to assess the actual

1:28:48

prospects of artificial intelligence. I do

1:28:50

think in the world of artificial

1:28:52

intelligence, there is a kind of

1:28:54

potential overvaluation of what intelligence can

1:28:56

do, where it's like if we

1:28:58

just crank up the superintelligence, suddenly

1:29:00

it will be able to persuade

1:29:02

people to do anything or to

1:29:04

predict the future in all these

1:29:06

ways. And I'm not sure intelligence

1:29:08

of any kind can get that

1:29:10

far unless it becomes truly divine,

1:29:12

right? But it is really

1:29:14

notable that Some of the richest

1:29:17

and most powerful people in our

1:29:19

country responsible for technologies at the

1:29:21

cutting edge of progress that a

1:29:23

lot of people think are going

1:29:25

to revolutionize our economy in the

1:29:27

next 10 years do seem to

1:29:29

believe that human beings are going

1:29:32

to be obsolete pretty soon. And

1:29:34

the best case scenario is we're

1:29:36

going to merge with hyperintelligent machines.

1:29:38

It's worth going and reading a

1:29:40

blog post that Sam Altman of

1:29:42

OpenAI. Not at

1:29:44

all an unimportant person in

1:29:46

American life wrote, I think in

1:29:48

2017, I think it's called

1:29:51

The Merge, right? This is before

1:29:53

it became super famous. But

1:29:55

it's about like, you know, how

1:29:57

do we relate to the

1:29:59

successors, right? Our digital AI successors,

1:30:01

right? And whether he's right

1:30:03

or wrong, it's a vision of,

1:30:05

it's notable that he holds

1:30:07

his vision. It's a vision of

1:30:09

the future. That I'm

1:30:12

concerned about and would like to

1:30:14

understand better. And I do

1:30:16

think it's much more important

1:30:18

to worry about than either the

1:30:20

Boniface option or the Luigi

1:30:22

Mangione people or anyone in

1:30:24

those categories. If

1:30:41

your argument doesn't win, if we

1:30:43

don't follow the advice of the wise

1:30:45

Ross Douthat, what happens? Well,

1:30:47

I'll just go big on that one,

1:30:49

right? So obviously one answer is,

1:30:51

you know, there are stakes for every

1:30:53

human soul. As I said, whether

1:30:55

you believe in an eternal hell or

1:30:57

not, I think the collective religious

1:30:59

wisdom of mankind is that souls can

1:31:01

get lost. They're more likely to

1:31:03

get lost if they aren't in some

1:31:05

relationship with God. The more I

1:31:07

lose the argument, the more souls potentially

1:31:09

get lost. That's step one. Step

1:31:11

two is civilizational. Human beings, the book

1:31:13

of Genesis begins with an admonition.

1:31:15

Fill the earth and subdue it. We've

1:31:17

done that. We have reached a

1:31:19

really interesting point in history from a

1:31:22

religious point of view. And there's

1:31:24

a really open question, I think, where

1:31:26