Ep. 282 Ross Douthat - Why Everyone Should Be Religious - Shifting Culture

Episode Transcript
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Ross Douthat (00:00):
The reality is that if you're just telling
people, let's hang out and talkabout ethics, it's just not
doing the same kind of thingthat an institution that's
trying to sort of prepare peoplefor virtuous behavior through
the life cycle with an eyetowards your eventual
destination after death isdoing. Oh, Joshua,

Joshua Johnson (00:32):
hello and welcome to the shifting culture
podcast in which we haveconversations about the culture
we create and the impact we canmake. We long to see the body of
Christ look like Jesus, I'm yourhost, Joshua Johnson, in a world
that often feels fragmented,uncertain and spiritually empty,
what if belief isn't justpossible but essential? Today,
I'm sitting down with RossDouthat, New York Times

(00:54):
columnist and one of our mostnuanced cultural thinkers, to
explore a radical proposition,why everyone should be
religious. In an age of growingskepticism, we're going beyond
the debates of belief versus nonbelief. This conversation dives
into the mysteries at the heartof the human experience, from
quantum physics that suggeststhe universe might be more

(01:15):
intentional than we thought, tomere death experiences that
challenge everything weunderstand about consciousness
doubt that brings a provocative,intellectually rigorous
perspective that defies easycategorization. We'll explore
how ancient spiritual wisdommight hold profound answers for
our hyper individualized,technology driven world. How can

(01:37):
religious thinking help usnavigate complexity, find
meaning and reconnect withsomething larger than ourselves.
Expect surprises. We'll uncoverscientific discoveries that
point toward design, discusssupernatural experiences that
defy materialist explanations,and wrestle with life's deepest
questions, whether you're acommitted believer, a curious
skeptic or someone feelingspiritually lost, this episode

(01:59):
promises to expand yourunderstanding and offer a
message of hope. We're not justtalking about belief. We're
reimagining what it means to behuman in a mysterious universe.
So join us. Here is myconversation with Ross Douthat.
Ross, welcome to shiftingculture. Excited to have you on.
Thank you so much for joining

me. You're very welcome. Thank you so much for
having me.

I'm excited to dive into your book. Believe why
everyone should be religious,and your case for religion. I
would like to know as we start,how did we get here? What is the
state of the world? And I wantto go back pretty, pretty far.
Let's go back to what was theorganizing thought, life belief,

(02:43):
before Copernicus and Darwin,and then what shifted and
changed to move us into, Ithink, a secular type of non
belief world that we currentlysit in.

It's a good question. We'll try and cover,
you know, 500 to 1000 years ofhistory in brisk fashion. I
think the, you know, thesimplest way to look at it,
especially in the context of thearguments I'm making in the
book, is that for most of humanhistory, in most societies and
civilizations, there was adefault to a view that the

(03:21):
universe existed for somereason, that there was some deep
relationship between mind andmatter, where mind in some form,
was primary. This could take theform of a creator god. It could
take the form of a kind ofpantheistic conception, where
mind and the universe are sortof bound together in some way.

(03:43):
But you know, in there was somesense of order and design and
intentionality in the cosmos.
There was some sense of a kindof spiritual hierarchy in which
human beings existed, that alsoincluded a spirit world that you
know might include the localspirits associated with the

(04:04):
tribe. In a primitive society,might include a pantheon of
gods. And a polytheistic societymight include saints and angels
and medieval Christendom. Andthen there was an assumption
that human life continued insome form, maybe a more
fulfilled form, maybe a moreattenuated form, but continued
in some form after death, andthat your conduct in this life,

(04:26):
your relationship to higherpowers in this life, had some
kind of relationship to somekind of eternal destiny. So
that's again, you know, we'reglossing, we're glossing a lot
of a lot of different pictures.
But I also think you could saythen there was also a certain
kind of convergence between themajor religious traditions,

(04:47):
right, that obviously Buddhism,Hinduism, Christianity, Islam,
retained a lot of significantdifferences, but you could still
see similarities, certainly in.
Their ethical codes that, youknow, emerged in the, you know,
the first millennium BC, andthen afterward, with
Christianity and Islam, you haveethical conversion convergence,

(05:09):
what, what CS Lewis calls, inone of his books the Dow, this
sort of, you know, common moralinheritance of the major
religious traditions. You havesome convergence on ideas about
heaven and hell and life afterdeath, even though Eastern
religions believe inreincarnation and Western
religions don't. Both religionsbelieve in some kind of heaven

(05:31):
and some kind of hell afterdeath. And you know, and you
have certain kinds ofphilosophical convergences where
you can find Hindu philosophersand mystics meditating on the
nature of God, who say thingsthat can sound a lot like
Western mystics andphilosophers, again,
notwithstanding real theologicaldifferences. So that's that's a

(05:51):
picture of the religious world.
So then what happens to thatworld? I think it's a, it's a,
it's an interesting andcomplicated question, because
you have a series of in theWestern world, scientific
revolutions that you know dealpose particular challenges to
particular aspects of WesternChristianity, right? You know,

(06:16):
the Copernican Revolutionchanges the basic conception of
how the universe is puttogether, and where earth fits
among the planets. And thenDarwinism poses a specific
challenge, I think, to Christianideas about the fall of man, the
book of Genesis, the origin ofthe human race. So, so there,
there are those scientificchallenges. Then there's

(06:40):
obviously a kind of, you know, asort of political process in the
western world whereby new statesand governments, you know, sort
of compete with one another andare in conflict and tension with
religious authorities in waysthat sort of create Church State
debates the secular versus thesacred. All of these things that

(07:00):
themselves play some importantrole in weakening religions
hold. And then you have certain,you know, broad social
transformations,industrialization, you know the
end of the agrarian world. Andthen beyond industrialization,
the trans the the revolutionsfor the last 50 or 60 years, the
sexual revolution, the culturalrevolutions associated with it

(07:22):
that sort of alienate modernpeople from a lot of the
traditional, or at least some ofthe traditional moral teachings
of the faith. So you, I think,in talking about how the world
became more secular, you have tosee, yes, there's a scientific
dimension. There's a scientificchallenge to certain religious
ideas. There's a politicaldimension. There's a social and

(07:42):
moral dimension. And thenfinally, there's just, and this
is, and relates to the argumentI'm making in the book, there's
just sort of the fact of modernpluralism, right? Like, you
know, modernity, it's not justliberalism, it's globalization,
it's, you know, whole host humancommunications technology, a
whole host of trends just bringspeople into contact with the

(08:03):
diversity of religioustraditions for the first time
fully, you know, unless you'reMarco Polo in in most of human
history, and that change, Ithink, creates sort of an extra
burden for people in sort ofeither sticking with or Choosing
a particular religion, a sensethat, like particularity seems,
if not, a mistake. You know,it's that it's more unlikely,

(08:27):
right, that any that anyparticular one faith could be
the one true faith in the waythat you know, again, certainly,
various forms of Christianityand Islam would would claim to
be,

that's really helpful.

Unknown (08:40):
Goodness, six, six minutes, 1000 years of history,
yeah, what,

what has been then some of the scientific
discoveries and the way that wehave seen the cosmos and the
order of the universe, what aresome of those discoveries that
have started to point then maybethis isn't just an accident that
has happened. Maybe there issomething a mover at the

(09:05):
beginning. There is a creator.

Yeah, I mean, I think the shift in evidence in
that direction, you could say inpart, it just reflects realities
that were always there and havebeen integral to modern science
from the beginning, if you goback to the first few centuries
of the modern scientific era,most scientists, while they

(09:28):
might have been hereticalChristians, heterodox
Christians, very eccentricChristians, in the case of Sir
Isaac Newton, most, or all ofthem, took for granted the idea
that there was some orderingPower to the universe, and that
they were discovering an orderthat was discoverable precisely
because it was designed rightand science would make less

(09:48):
sense if you assume that theuniverse was accidental and
random. Because why would we beable to discover, you know,
regular, consistent, physicaland mathematical laws that made
sense of it if. It was justrandom and accidental. So that
there was, there was thatsynthesis originally, and
versions of that evidence stillremain right, like the fact
that, you know, science worksand discovers, discovers laws

(10:12):
and predictable realities andbeautiful mathematical
symmetries, that was alwaysthere, even you know, and sort
of you know, the peak of certainforms of materialist and
atheistic science. But thechange, the shifts in the last
70 to 100 years start, startswith the realization that the
universe probably had abeginning, the Big Bang, right?

(10:34):
And, you know, there's debateabout whether that's the only
beginning. Maybe universesemerge and die and emerge and
die. But prior to the Big Bangbeing sort of widely accepted,
it was the concept of the of aneternal universe seemed more
consonant with with atheism thandis a universe that has a
beginning, a moment of creation,much like what's described in,

(10:56):
say, the book of Genesis, andthen, you know, moving from
there, you entered into some ofthe weirder discoveries of
quantum physics, which whoseinterpretation, I think will be,
you know, debated for centuriesyet to come. But one of the
simplest readings of whatquantum physics seemed to reveal
about reality was that there wassome mysterious interplay

(11:17):
between observation and reality,between the conscious scientists
doing measurement and whethersort of reality collapsed from
contingencies and possibilitiesinto a singular reality. So
there seemed to be a sort ofspooky connection between mind
and matter that takes us a bitout of the purely clockwork

(11:38):
universe model. And then, aboveall, you had a series of
discoveries about the ways inwhich the laws and constants of
of this universe were set upthat suggested what people now
call fine tuning, the idea thatthere were, you know, literally,
quadrillions of possibleuniverses in which It was

(11:59):
impossible for anything likehuman life to ever, ever
develop, and then our universewas set in a kind of Goldilocks
jackpot zone. Those are the kindof phrases that people, people
talking about this use, whereyou know one constant is set
exactly here and another is setexactly there, all of which is
necessary to produce basicorder, stars, planets and

(12:23):
eventually life, life itself.
And that has left us in thiscurious position where the
alternative to a designhypothesis, a, you know, some
kind of, you know, prime moverand so on. Coming back into the
picture is theories about amultiverse, right? Where, in
effect, the hardened materialistis left to insist that the

(12:44):
reason we exist as we do is thatthere is a near infinity of
other universes out there, allsomehow invisible to us, that
are necessary to explain the onewe have. You know that's that's
not a dynamic where it's clearthat the materialist paradigm
has, you know, any kind of claimto represent the kind of

(13:07):
parsimonious, hard headedalternative to wild thoughts
about a creating God. In someways, people argue about this,
but in some ways, you know, thethe argument from design seems
like the much more parsimoniousexplanation for why our universe
appears to be ordered with us.
In mind,

that's good the multiverse, the one thing I do
know about the multiverse is ithas made Marvel movies worse and

yes, well, it's an interesting thing. Where it's
been, it has been adopted intopop culture, right? And it's, it
is a case study in how, even youknow, the speculations the most
sort of, you know, absspeculations of physicists and
philosophers eventually findtheir way into Marvel movies.
But it is a it, you know, theysee it as it's like a cheat

(14:00):
code, right? It's like, okay, wegot bored with this storyline.
We can just reset it. It'sactually much better for drama
and this, you can drawtheological conclusions or not
from this to have just onetimeline that can't just be
reset every time everyone getsbored. And

I mean, this is the the story of who we are, I
think we it makes sense andmeaning of our lives. So if we
have a story of apurposelessness, we have a story
that there is just randomnesseverywhere. It seems to me that
there has been, there'sdefinitely been a rise in
anxiety depression. There's beena rise in malaise of not knowing

(14:38):
if there's anything here. Ithink some people have thought
that, hey, once we get rid ofreligion, we could organize into
other groups, and we could stillfind some meaning in the world,
and we'll we'll be okay, andmaybe we'll be even better than
the institutions that we haveleft behind. So why has that not

(14:58):
really panned out? Well. Well,and why do you think religion is
a better answer? A couplereasons,

right. One reason is just the sort of you know,
the practical reality that theclaims that religion makes are
more likely to inspire the kindof pro social behaviors that
even some secular people misswhen religion declines, right?
So there have been endlessattempts to set up communities,

(15:27):
congregational communities,organized around, let's say, the
ethics of Christianity withoutthe supernaturalism, right?
Some, some of these have a kindof quasi religious component,
right? And but many of them donot. You know the ethical
culture societies, which stillexists, by the way, you know the
sort of various atheistsocieties and humanist societies

(15:49):
and so on. Who tried, tried todo these things. And the reality
is that if you're just tellingpeople, let's hang out and talk
about ethics, it's just notdoing the same kind of thing
that an institution that'strying to sort of prepare people
for virtuous behavior throughthe life cycle with an eye
towards your eventualdestination after death, is

(16:10):
doing right? Like, what does afuneral look like at the ethical
culture society, right? Whatdoes a bar a bar mitzvah or bat
mitzvah look like in these kindof secular religions? I think
it's obvious that you can dothings like that, do rites of
passage and initiation and soon, but they just aren't going
to have the same power and drawpeople in in the same way. And
so those institutions areweaker, and therefore don't do

(16:32):
the things, the sort of Alexisde Tocqueville and, you know,
social society building thingsthat religious institutions do,
the other thing, and this, youcan see this, I think, play out
just in the last 15 years,right? Is that secular
alternatives to religion aremore appealing, naturally more
appealing if they can promisedefinitively some kind of better

(16:55):
world, maybe not paradise, butat least a better world in the
here and now. Right? The ideathat you don't need religion
because we have progress, right?
You don't need heaven becausewe're, we're getting toward
heaven on earth, right? And thiswas obviously the tremendous
appeal of Marxism for so long,right? The Marxism said you
don't need religion because,good news, the iron laws of

(17:16):
history, the science, you know,the science of socialist
materialism tells you that ifyou do these things, if you work
for the revolution, you will geta better world, a transformed
world, if not a heavenly world.
The next best thing, right? Ifyou don't have that kind of
confidence, then it's harder tosustain, to sustain a kind of

(17:41):
secular form of faith and justjust in American life, right?
Like it's easy. It was easier tobe a secular, liberal
progressive in the time whenBarack Obama was elected
president, and it seemed likethere was a permanent Democratic
majority and that the futurebelonged to liberalism than it
is has been in the age ofpopulism and Donald Trump and

(18:03):
various defeats for liberalism,things not going liberalism's
way right. And it's not asurprise that secular
progressivism would become morepessimistic and despairing when
it's losing politically, becausepolitics is all in the end that
secular progressivism has as aplace to vest, to vest your

(18:23):
hope. So in microcosm, what'shappened in the last 15 or 20
years is the larger problem withsecular utopianisms. They're
great when maybe not great, butthey're okay when things are
getting better or seem to begetting better, but if you have
setbacks, then you're thrownback on the depressing reality
that it's a meaninglessuniverse, and you know, What?

(18:44):
What? What? What's your what'syour sucker and what's your
help? Exactly,

I think, you know, my friend talks about the
the old ways, the ancientreligions as ancient wells. And
my question then is, why, when alot of people think about
progress and moving forward,going into the future. Why do
you think religion is somethingthat has been around for for
centuries and centuries, andthey are ancient wells of wisdom

(19:13):
and understanding for our world?
Why do we reach back as we aremoving and propelling forward
into the future.

I mean, I think that part of the assumption is
that basic questions about humanlife are persistent and
permanent across different eras,right? You can't, you can't just
sort of, you know the just totake the basic question, like,
you know, what happens to peopleafter they die? Right? Like,
presumably, if that question hasan answer, it's not radically

(19:45):
altered by the IndustrialRevolution, the rise of the
iPhone or anything like that,right? Questions of morality,
maybe you could say are a littledifferent. You know, moral
landscape looks different in apre industrial society than it
does in a post industrial.
Society. But I don't thinkanyone thinks it looks that
different, right? The questionsof what it means to live a good
life, you know, there's a reasonthat people still read, you

(20:08):
know, there's a reason thatBuddhism, you know, Buddhist
styles of meditation, can seemdeeply relevant to the most
harried modern person, eventhough they developed in a
completely different cultural,political and social context,
right? So there is just sort ofa permanent set of issues, of
human issues that don't go awayand that require, in a sense,

(20:33):
some form of reaching back andrediscovery when we sort of go
through a period where we thinkthat we've sort of transcended
the need for them. Now, I wouldsay two other things, though.
One is that, you know that thatreaching back and rediscovery is
never just sort of a pure, youknow, a pure, sort of return to

(20:53):
the past, right? All eras ofreligious revival or religious
ferment, are eras in whichthings from the past are sort of
brought back, but they're alsoreshaped and remade and made
new, right? And this is eventrue of sort of forms of
religion that appear, you know,steeped in ancient tradition,

(21:14):
right? Like just in my ownCatholic Church, a lot of what
you know, Latin Mass,traditionalism in the Catholic
Church has found a number ofearly 21st century converts and
in part, Latin Mass, Catholicismreally does connect to the
medieval church and the ancientchurch. It really does go deep

(21:35):
into the past. There people arenot wrong about that, but it
also includes elements that arevery much, very much belong to
the 1800s and to sort of very,or the 19, early 1900s these
sort of very self consciousattempts to restore and renew
Catholic tradition in the faceof industrial modernity, right?
But so both things are there andthe same. So the same would be

(21:59):
true if you had a, you know, asuccessful 21st century
religious revival would producea successful form of religious
faith that was inevitably partold and part new or part
reinvented at the same time.
Then the final, the final pointis just on this question. There
is, of course, right now, as analternative to religion, or

(22:22):
maybe a form of religion, theidea of transhumanism, right
that is very powerful in SiliconValley right now. It takes sort
of, you know, genetic andbiological forms. Right now,
it's more focused on AI and sortof ideas of digital life and
digital intelligence. But thereis clearly an idea in human life
that maybe you could transcendhuman nature, right, and get to

(22:46):
a point where, in that case,maybe the religious questions
would be different, or somethinglike that. I don't think that is
likely, but it is worthdescribing as a you know, as
part of the conversation rightnow, right? That like there's
renewed interest in religion,but there is also transhumanism
as an intellectual force in theconversation, especially in

(23:08):
elite in elite circles and themost sort of future and forward
oriented circles,

yes, and it feels to me, a new form of
religion. It looks like all ofthe Silicon Valley executives
are dressing alike. They're allgoing to the to the gym, working
out. They're all into, you know,health and well being. They're
organizing around something,right? And their their belief
that we can actually transcendsome of this human experience

(23:36):
and maybe live for, you know,centuries on my own, like I'm
trying to do this on my own. Alot of these scientific
discoveries after pernicus andDarwin made us into a lot of
materialists and thinking thatmaybe if we got rid of the
institutions, our mysticalexperiences, singing angels and

(23:57):
demons and the supernatural willgo away. But we've been
discovering that thesupernatural is encroaching on
our world because it's alwaysthere, but it is encroaching on
our world in ways where wehaven't actually seen for a
while, even though it's probablyalways been happening. So what
is happening when you're lookingas a journalist, what have you

(24:20):
started to discover with neardeath experiences and others as
they're they're seeing the andinteracting with the
supernatural?

Yeah. I mean, so 111, point to make, right is
that there's an idea that theworld was disenchanted by
modernity. And this is a verypowerful idea, and it's held by
secular people and religiouspeople, and I think it's an
incomplete way of looking atthings. I think that what was
disenchanted was what we mightcall official knowledge, right?
Which is to say, you know, ifyou are a student in a law

(24:52):
school and you're writing up,you know, a paper on the history
of some legal debate, you wouldnot put in, you know. And then.
So and So cast a spell on so andso, right? And you know, you
would not be taken seriously ifyou included or similarly, like,
if you read Wikipedia pages,right? Wikipedia is sort of the
official knowledge of theinternet. Wikipedia editors are

(25:12):
extremely hostile to anythingrelated to the supernatural,
right? So there's a kind ofofficial knowledge production
that sees itself as necessarilyexcluding those possibilities,
but in terms of experiences,terms of the experiences that
people had and the shapingeffects they have on individual
lives and religious conversionsand culture and so on, there's

(25:35):
no real evidence at all thatreligious experience, mystical
experience, apparent miracles,healings and so on, visions,
psychic experiences, that any ofthis became less common under
modern conditions. And if youread some of the 18th century
rationalists and skeptics, Iquote David Hume in the book,
there are others. You know,their their assumption was, yes,

(25:59):
people are credulous. You know,there'll be belief in the
supernatural. But once we getrid of established religions and
stop teaching people, you know,about the miracles of Jesus and
so on, a lot of this stuff willjust sort of fade. And it hasn't
faded. In fact, you know, if youlook at like pentecostalist
Christianity, you know, a lot ofthe emergent forms of
Christianity have been moresupernaturalist than a stayed

(26:21):
kind of Presbyterianism orsomething would have been right.
That's sort of the baseline.
Then you have specific things,and you mentioned near death
experiences, and that is sort ofthe prime example specific kinds
of mystical experience that havebecome easier to study and
observe under modern conditionsbecause we bring more people
back from the threshold ofdeath, right? So we now know

(26:43):
more about the kind ofexperiences that people have on
that threshold, and we know thatthere are sort of consistent
seeming experiences acrosscultures that are not just, you
know, sort of garbledhallucinations or whatever you
would expect a dying brain toproduce, but that map in a very
general and not theologicallyspecific way. I want to stress

(27:05):
onto broad expectations about,you know, God, angels, meeting
your dead ancestors,experiencing some kind of
judgment. There are hellish andpurgatorial near death
experiences as well, and this isjust a feature of human
existence that we know moreabout than we did a couple 100
years ago. Does it prove thatthere's life after death? No,

(27:28):
but it makes it more plausiblethan it would have been had we
started bringing people backfrom the dead, and these
experiences didn't exist, right?
So there's there's changes likethat then and last and here, I'm
a little less certain wherewe're actually going. But there
is, in this particular moment,in the last 10 or 15 years, just

(27:50):
more supernatural interest inthe culture, more people, you
know, taking psychedelic drugs,doing Ayahuasca retreats with
shamans and saying, I'm, I'mtrying. I'm not just, I don't
think this is just in my brain.
I'm trying to get in touch withthe supernatural people doing
the same things in the contextof, like, UFOs, not, not
imagining them to be aliens fromVulcan or Klingon, but like, you

(28:15):
know, interdimensional God,like, beings, these, these kind
of things, right? And so at thevery least, it's a kind of 1970s
style moment where there's justa lot of bubbling supernatural
interest. I how far this goes.
Maybe it's just, you know, it'sa cycle, right? And maybe it

(28:35):
goes away. You know, it ispossible to imagine things
happening that were observed orwitnessed, right? That could
change how the culture'sofficial knowledge regards the
supernatural. I wouldn't excludethat as a possibility. I think,
I think the next, you know, 20or 30 years will be quite
interesting in that regard.
People are, people are openingdoors, sometimes in cautiously

(28:57):
and unwisely, in my view, and itwill be interesting to see what
passes through, if anything,

yes. And so I have a belief that there are
forces of evil and there areheavenly forces of goods as
well, and we could actuallyaccess forces of evil that will
really do harm to us and ourcommunities as well. That

that is the traditional teaching. And I
think that you know, you cancertainly see evidence in the
realms of spiritualexperimentation, where people
are operating outside of anykind of formal Christian or
otherwise paradigm. Plenty ofcase studies that seem to
confirm, at the very least, thatthere are spiritual entities out

(29:49):
there that don't have our goodin mind. And you see, you know,
kind of there, it's amusing,maybe not amusing, right? You
know, you'll read literature.
For instance, people. People whoare interested in psychedelics
or doing psychedelics, andpeople will say, ah, you know,
we keep having encounters withwhat we call negative entities.
What do we do when we encountera negative entity? And

(30:11):
obviously, Christianity has somespecific views on that, but
that's, you know, but peopleare, yeah, people are sort of
going out and having encounters.
This is true in the mysticalexperience writ large, right?
That, like in a secularizedsociety, what you don't get.
It's not that mysticalexperience goes away, it's that

(30:31):
people lose a common language todescribe what it is, right?
People will be like, Wow, I, youknow, I had this experience, and
it was seems sort of ultimateand absolute. But, you know, is
it really, God, can I use thosekind of archaic terms to
describe this experience?
There's, there's a lot of ofthat, I think, in the culture
right now.

I just randomly picked up Sebastian younger in
my time, a great example. Yeah,and, you know, as he
experienced, has this near deathexperience, he sees his father
in a vision and sees otherthings. He then tries to figure
out what in the world is thisand what happens? Yep, and the
end to me, it feels like, well,I don't know, and we can't

(31:15):
really explain it, I'll just beloved by my family, and I'll
love my family. And so how doesthis then move us into a place?
Why do you think religionactually then organizing into a
religion to to help us encountermystery, wonder, the
unexplainable in community? Whatdo you think that is important

(31:37):
for us to move into instead ofjust going, hey, there are
unexplainable things. Let's justlive our life and love our
family. Yeah?

I mean, I found, yeah. I found the end, I mean,
of, you know, of the youngerbook, disappointing in that
sense, but also characteristicof the phenomenon, yeah, that I
was, that I was just describing,right, where people have these
kind of encounters. BarbaraAaron Reich, a you know,
political journalist, woman ofthe left, wrote and wrote a book
not about near deathexperiences, but about, you

(32:09):
know, mystical experiencescalled Living with a wild God
that had the same kind of flavoras younger as book. Like these
things happen, these, you know,mystical encounters. They sort
of lead her beyond materialism,but she resists the idea that
they should ever lead you intoorganized religion. And I think
that's a mistake. I think thebest way to describe the

(32:32):
mistake, right, is to say, youknow, look, these, these things
are not actually random, right?
Like, if you read Aaron Reich'sin kind of encounters, or you
read Jungers encounters.
Obviously, they're sort ofpersonal distinctives, but they
they tend to fit reasonably wellinto the broader mystical
traditions. Again, as I saidearlier, that sort of show up in

(32:54):
multiple world religions, notjust in one, right? So like
there is some, they suggest thatthere's some primal reality that
different people get in touchwith in different ways, but you
are more likely to get in touchwith when you're about to die,
right? And when you combine thatwith like, the case for religion

(33:15):
that I try and make in the bookis a case about converging lines
of evidence, right? So it's notit's not okay, it's not mystical
experience alone. Mysticalexperience is really interesting
and telling, and sort of pushesyou in a particular direction,
but you want to combine thatwith the evidence for cosmic
design, right? It's like, okay,the universe appears to be
organized and ordered, notaccidentally, maybe with us in

(33:37):
mind, oh, and our minds, ourconsciousness, turn out to be
able to perceive and understandand penetrate the mysteries of
this universe in ways wewouldn't have expected. And oh,
by the way, lots of people havethese mystical experiences that
seem to bring them in touch withsome absolute form of being and
some kind of life after death. Ithink when you put all those

(33:58):
things together, that's a lot ofevidence that there's a story
going on here. We're part of astory. We don't know all of the
story. We don't know everythingthat's going on, but whatever
the story is, on the evidence ofJungers experience and others,
it seems like it may beconsummated at the end of our
life, or at least there's somekind of transition. It seems

(34:19):
like some higher agent has putus here for a reason, and oh, by
the way, there are a bunch ofdistinct but with some
convergences traditions aroundthe world that have spent 1000s
of years thinking and arguingand talking about what all of
this means and what one mightdo, collectively, with support

(34:42):
from other people, not just onyour own, to one, live in some,
try and live in some kind ofrelationship to ultimate
reality, not, you know, youdon't have to become a monk or,
you know, go live on a pillar inthe desert. Maybe some people,
maybe should. But no, this is,you know, you're going to church
on Sunday, right? You're doing,you know, you're you. Doing
certain disciplinary thingsintegrated with your normal life

(35:03):
that try and keep you connectedto the ultimate as well as the
everyday. And you're trying to,you know, be a good person and
prepare, but in a context wherethat is oriented towards
whatever happens after death andultimate reality, rather than
just towards the secular and thematerial. And I just think it's
really hard to come up with abetter system on your own for

(35:27):
organizing your life as aresponse to those realities than
what is offered in in organizedreligion. And it's certainly
better, like it's one thing tosay, I've had these experiences,
and now I'm going to, you know,go off on my own spirit quest
and figure things out. I thinkthat has problems, including the

(35:48):
problem of demons that we werejust discussing, but at least
that has ambition, right? Atleast that is a response I
really don't understand. I mean,I do. It's very human in a way,
but I struggle with the kind ofshrugging reaction, like, Whoa.
That was crazy, man, you know,but I guess I just got to live

(36:08):
my life. It's like, No, you needto, in some way change your life
if you think these things arepossibly real and possibly
possibly serious.

A lot of this guide, the spirit guide. We're
on a quest to figure out what ishappening. We're seekers, trying
to figure out what's going on inthis world. But we in the in the
West, particularly in America,we live in a hyper
individualized culture. It'sit's really about us and our
well being and who we are, andwe're going to get ahead. Why?

(36:44):
Why do you think organizedreligion as a construct for
community and being in a morecommunal type area is better for
us and more helpful for us longrun, then just saying, we're
going to then start to organizeourselves in a more communal
type culture, without religion,but we're going to try to be a

(37:06):
little bit more interdependentthan we were in the past.
Because I think hyperindividualization kind of is a
problem in our world, and weneed something to help us. I

mean, towards a different direction. To be
clear, I don't think nonreligious forms of community
building are bad in any way,right? And if we're just having
a conversation about what ailsAmerican society, right, I'm
happy to place religion. I thinkit has a big role, but it
belongs in a category with otherforms of community building,

(37:41):
solidarity building as well,right? So there's, there's
nothing wrong with saying aresponse to alienation and
isolation and enemy in themodern world is to, you know,
Join your local kickball League,right? Whatever the equivalent
of the bowling leagues of yearsgone by. There's nothing wrong
with saying we need torevitalize the local Elks club.

(38:02):
There's nothing wrong withtreating political engagement as
a method, as long as you'reactually joining a community and
not just posting online, right?
Like a big, a big part of ourproblem as a society is that in
all things, including religiousthings, I'm guilty of this,
right? People substitute postingfor actual, you know, actual
engagement, but, but if you'regetting your hands dirty in the

(38:23):
world, then you can findbenefits from, you know, your
your community garden and yourbook club and your sewing
circle, as well as from going tochurch on Sunday, right? The the
case for actually going tochurch is, first, the point I
made earlier, right? That thethe things that religion is

(38:45):
connected to life death. Youknow, morality, transitions
between stages of life are justa more powerful glue, often for
community and solidarity, thanother things, right? So you get,
you get a little, you get alittle more solidarity out of
religion than other things. Butthen two, the idea that, in
fact, the things religion isconcerned with are important in

(39:08):
ways that go beyond theirsociological benefits. So I'm,
I'm very intent on saying youcan't just make a kind of
utilitarian case for religion.
There is one, absolutely. But inthe end, you have to be willing
to say, and the religious worldpicture is broadly correct,

(39:29):
probably broadly Correct. Youhave good reasons for doing
this, and potentially eternalconsequences if you don't. And
it's not just about, you know,the rate of, the rate of, you
know, social participation inAmerican society in 2025

Yeah, that's good. I think one of the
stumbling blocks that you writein your book, you have a few of
them, but one, I think, is apretty big one, is the problem
of evil in the world. So let'sdive into theodicy, just very
briefly.

Five. If minutes or less, why do bad things
happen to good people?

Why is there evil in the world? And is that a
deterrent for us to actuallyhave belief in God?

I think it obviously is a deterrent for
people, right? Like there's areason that this argument comes
up again and again acrosshistory, including in the sacred
books of Judaism andChristianity themselves, right?
The fact that theodicy is woveninto the Old Testament and the
New Testament in different ways,tells you that it is a
substantial issue that religionhas to take seriously. My

(40:36):
argument in the in the bookwhich I which I stand by, is
that doubting, you know,doubting, having doubts about
what God is up to, having, youknow, sort of feeling like you
know he How can he possibly beomniscient and or omnipotent and
all good if he allows you know,Ex tragedy or ex genocide to

(40:59):
happen, those are issues thatshould shape your conception of
God, right and should shouldshape your theology in certain
ways. They're bad reasons forbeing an atheist, because even
if you say, I can't get to theomnipotence and Omni benevolence
combination, you're still leftwith all of this basic evidence

(41:23):
for design and order in theuniverse religious experience,
like you know, the person havingthe near death experience,
right? If that's real, it'sreal, whether or not it all you
know, the moral logic of God'sgoodness and the problem of evil
adds up in your head. So whatare, what are, then the
plausible responses. Oneplausible response is to say, I

(41:45):
don't agree with classicaltheism, this sort of
philosophical concept of who Godis. I think you know, something
else must be going on. And thereare other theological schools
that have, you know, differentaccounts of who God is that make
the problem of evil at leastseem less like an inherent
contradiction or tension, right?
So, you know, pantheism, whereGod and the universe are one,

(42:08):
offers a somewhat different set,set of issues. You know, you can
be, you can be a Gnostic. Youcan be, I mean, there's, there's
a long list which, as aChristian I'm not actually, I
would prefer that people becamean Orthodox Christian. But I
would also say it's better tohave a heterodox concept of God
than to become an atheist,because the heterodoxy has a

(42:29):
better argument for it than thanthe atheism. But then I also
think that you know that most ofmy own tradition seems to signal
very strongly that God exists,and the problem of evil is one
that he expects us to wrestlewith, and he doesn't mind it.
If, you know, we if, if we dothe wrestling in ways where

(42:52):
sometimes we feel alienated fromhim, and sometimes we feel angry
with him, and you know, all theway up to Jesus himself weeping
in the Garden of Gethsemane andcrying out in desolation on the
cross, right? And I do think, asa Christian, that the New
Testament, the Gospels, thepassion especially, are pretty
clearly an answer to the problemof theodicy. They're not an

(43:15):
answer in the form of logicalproof, right? You're not saying
here at all. It's allmathematically resolved, but
they are an answer where youknow the claim is that God
Himself has come down and sharedour suffering in a very profound
and extreme kind of way. And Icompletely understand why some
people confronting the problemof evil are not fully satisfied
with that kind of narrativeanswer. But it is there, I

(43:38):
think, and is an important partof what Christianity
specifically is offering. Butthe whole monotheistic
tradition, I think, is itbasically says, Yeah, we can't
fully resolve this problem. Comeon in and wrestle with it with
us. Because whether or not itfully makes sense, there still
probably is a god.

Yeah, that's good. As you mentioned, Jesus
and God, becoming flesh, livingamong us, suffered with us and
entered into our suffering, tookon all of our suffering himself.
What really attracts you toJesus? Why Jesus for you? Why

(44:20):
Christianity and you could gointo Catholicism. And why Roman
Catholic for you, but why Jesus?
Jesus specifically? Well,

I mean, what I just said is part of it, and
maybe a really important part ofit, because, and this connects
to my Catholicism in the sensethat I think one of the one of
the strongest things thatCatholicism does as a liturgical
religion is to place, is to sortof put the passion front and
center in this way that I didn'texperience in the same way when

(44:52):
I was a Protestant, right? Thatlike you would, you would the
protestantisms that I was partof were very focused on here.
Faster and less focused on GoodFriday and the Catholic
tradition. Just, you know, thewhole build up through Lent Palm
Sunday, through passion week andso on. Think just does a really
good job of making the divineresponse to human evil and human

(45:15):
suffering really powerful andpotent before you reach the joy,
the joy of the resurrection, thestory of Jesus is a answer to
certain questions that hang overmonotheism as a tradition, and
that is important to me. Butthen beyond that, I think that,
you know, I've been sayingthroughout this conversation,

(45:37):
right, that I think there's goodreasons to think that God is
present in multiple religioustraditions, that there are these
convergences and overlaps wherepeople seem to be talking about
the same reality, even ifthey're using different language
at the same time. The reason I'ma Christian, and not just a kind
of like perennialist or someonewho says they're all basically
equal, is that I think that thestory in the Gospel stands out

(46:00):
in a really radical and starkand unusual way among the
different stories of religiousfoundings, prophets and holy
people, right? That, you know,there is a basic historical
credibility to the Gospels, thatis, I think, underestimated
currently, by whatever thesecular historical consensus is,

(46:20):
I think that, you know, and Idon't think that consensus is
destined to long survive, to theextent that it still survives.
But I think the Gospels presentthemselves as, you know,
overlapping credible eyewitnesstestimony, personal memoir that
doesn't seem constructed longafter the fact is not sort of a
pious fake, is a real account ofsomething that happened to real

(46:42):
people in the full light ofrecorded history that they did
not expect at all, right, thatbaffled them, and that
bafflement is itself apparent inthe Gospels. It's not all
smoothed away into perfecttheological formulations.
There's a lot of riddles anduncertainty, and it's like
you're reading people workingthrough an experience, right?

(47:03):
And that experience was extreme.
It was not just, you know, ahealing miracle or a sort of one
off sign or signifier of whichthere are plenty in history. It
was a whole drama, a whole storythat, you know, that that
essentially reshaped the morallandscape of the ancient world
in profound ways. You know,recommend a book like Tom

(47:25):
Holland's book, Dominion aboutthe Christian revolution, that
focuses on that component,right? Just how completely the
crucifixion and resurrectionsort of inverted a lot of the
moral categories that people hadinherited, but, and, then, but
then it's just sort of, youknow, it's this wild and crazy
ending, right where Jesus comesback from the dead, and in ways

(47:47):
that, you know, again, if you,if you don't exclude the
miraculous presumppresumptively, are pretty
compelling, pretty historicallycompelling. And I don't think
there's anything else quite likeit, again. Not that other
religious foundings, otherreligious experiences, aren't
themselves or, you know, I don'tthink they're all fake. I think

(48:08):
God is there in a lot of places,but I think God seems to be
there in a really singular way,in the New Testament, and in a
way that, for me, makes itreasonable to say, Okay, think
there's a lot of divine stuffout there, but this is the
controlling revelation. This isthe place where God wants you to
start. God wants you to readother religious material through

(48:29):
this story and this and thisperson.

Ross, I think people need to go pick up your
book. Believe why everyoneshould be religious. It's
fantastic read. You're afantastic writer, and you're
you're writing in The New YorkTimes elsewhere has been
fantastic as well, so theyshould check that out too. What
hope would you have for yourreaders if they they pick this
up and pick up belief

it depends on the reader, for the sort of curious,
secular reader who's interestedin religion but feels like it
requires too much of a sacrificeof your reason and your
confidence in science and yourplace as a modern person. I'm
trying to help that reader getover, get over that sense and

(49:19):
realize that no, actually it ismore reasonable than not to
become religious. And then forthe religious Reader, I'm either
trying to instill a version ofthat same confidence, right, a
sense that, like the religiousbeliever, doesn't have to be
back on their heels anddefensive all the time. Of
course, there are issues inreligion and scandals and

(49:39):
unresolved controversies, allthat's real, but the basic
attitude towards the world hasmore to recommend it than the
alternative. But then also forthe religious reader, who is you
know people, people go throughdifficult times in their faith
life, and people you know, inevangelical terms, a lot of
people end up deconstructingright at some point. Or in their

(50:00):
life in some way, somethingthey've inherited or believed
they suddenly struggle with. AndI'm kind of trying to put a
floor under that, right? I'msaying, yes, you may change your
mind about a particular idea orparticular doctrine, but at
bottom, you should hit a levelwhere you say, okay, but I still
should be religious. I'm stilldoing the right thing. Maybe I
need to do it in a differentplace or with a different set of

(50:21):
ideas, but the basic thing isstill worth doing, even if
you've had a period of struggleand transformation. That's

so good. A couple real quick questions at
the end. One, if you go back toyour 21 year old self, what
advice would you give?

I mean, that's a tricky question, right? It get
it touches on questions ofdivine providence. I mean, the
worst, the worst thing that hashappened to me as an adult has
been that I, we my family, and Imoved to a farmhouse in rural
Connecticut, fulfilling a sortof fantasy of rural, rural life,
and immediately I got Lymedisease and was desperately sick
with it for many years, and I'mmuch better now. But so the

(51:00):
easiest, the simplest thing isto say, oh, you know, go back
and tell your 21 year old self,don't walk in the fields of the
house that you just boughtwithout checking for ticks. But,
but this is like a question ofsuffering thing, right? It's
like, okay, but at this point,at 45 you know, would I want to
lose the person that I've becomeover the last 10 years, like

(51:22):
we've had, you know, twochildren. My wife was pregnant
when I got sick, so two and ahalf children, let's say, since
I got sick, like I don't know. Idon't I think there are ways in
which you, you almost you don'twant to say anything to the 21
year old self. If you have acertain confidence that you know
that Providence has a hand in inyour life, even the even the

(51:45):
toughest parts. That's

really good and helpful for us as we look back
on our life and figure out whowe are and where we're going.
And that's helpful anythingyou've been reading or watching
lately, you could recommend

the TV show that I've been watching is the Apple
TV show severance, which justcame back for its second season.
And it's a show about people whobasically have a procedure where
they go to work during the dayand don't remember the self that
works, that's at work. So theyhave a literal home self and

(52:17):
work self. And these havedifferent experiences. And of
course, there's, you know, asinister Corporation, and it's,
it's sort of probably a littlebit like lost in that way, like
various signifiers and so on. Sofar, it's a good show. It'll
probably disappoint me in theend, but it does touch on, you
know, it connects to some of thethings we've been talking about,
you know, the soul, the self,the possibility of a plan, all

(52:40):
of these things, religiousissues are never completely
absent, even from pop culture.
Yeah, the last episode reallydon't, don't say, No, I have not
gotten out. I'm not okay. I'mtwo episodes into season two. So
there's

an interesting religious conversation in that.
That's all I want to say, isthat.

So there were, I did notice a lot of churches in
season one, sort of in thebackground, so we'll see what I
think. Don't spoil

it. I won't spoil it, but I'm just saying
it's interesting that there isreligious conversation going on
and figuring out, right, what'sgoing on here. Good. Ross, this
is fantastic. Is there any placeyou would like to point people
to for to connect with you, oranywhere specifically you would
like people to go out and getyour book, no

wherever, you know. I mean, both support your
local bookstore, but also it hasa very low price on Amazon. So
if the price point is an issue,that's that's the place to buy
it. I write for the New YorkTimes, that's right, and do
podcasting for them. That's theprimary place they can find me.
I'm on Twitter, X, whateverintermittently it's, you know,

(53:44):
it's a bad habit. Oh, and Iknow, and I should say that for
readers who who like that sortof thing, I am also serializing
a fantasy novel on sub stackcalled the Falcons children. So
if you want to read a differentkind of book about the
supernatural, I have that one tooffer as well.

Awesome. That sounds great. Fantastic. I'll
check that out since we get offnow. All right, the Falcons,
children, falcons, children onsub stack, awesome. Well, Ross,
thank you for this conversation.
I really loved going deep intosome of these, the reasons why
people don't believe and thethings that we have started to
observe in the cosmos of thingsthat says, hey, maybe there is a

(54:24):
Creator. Maybe there is a Godthat actually organizing in
religion with God at the centerin communal life is a good way
to live like we should actuallymove towards that place. So
thank you for this conversation.
It was a pleasure to talk toyou. I truly enjoyed it. I

(54:47):
really appreciate

it as well. Thanks for the opportunity. You.

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Ep. 282 Ross Douthat - Why Everyone Should Be Religious

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 282 Ross Douthat - Why Everyone Should Be Religious