Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Flightless Bird: Religion

Episode Date: May 17, 2022

This week on Flightless Bird, David sets out to understand religion in America. Joined by Dax and Monica, he tries to figure out why over 200 million Americans are Christians, and how uniquely Americanized this religion has become - with franchises, brands, and celebrity endorsements. David talks to Mike McHargue - a Baptist who became an atheist who then became a Christian again. We discover how someone can love both Christianity and science - and you may be very surprised to learn your brain may well believe in God… even if you’re a stone-cold atheist! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm David Farrier, a New Zealander who ended up accidentally marooned in America, and I want to grasp what makes this country tick. Now I arrived in America last year to start work on a new documentary. That job came and went, and it was time to head back home, but I discovered I had a slight problem. Good afternoon, everyone. We are now a matter of hours away from an unprecedented lockdown of our country. In order to combat an unprecedented virus, that left unchecked would have an unacceptable toll

on New Zealanders. New Zealand had closed its borders to keep COVID out. To get back home, I'd have to secure a place in a managed isolation facility. And that wasn't easy. Every few weeks, there'd be a lottery, where a few thousand slots were made available to get back home. The only trouble is, about 30,000 other Kiwis are trying to get those 2,000 spots. In short, getting back to New Zealand is like the Hunger Games. Welcome, welcome. The time has come in Zealand is like the Hunger Games. Welcome, welcome. The time has come in the 74th annual Hunger Games. I kept losing the battle.

So I've decided to stay here. To make it my home. But that's my problem. Because this isn't my home. I don't have a home. I don't have a social security number. I don't have a driver's license. I don't understand how football works.

This all needs to change. I want to grasp what makes this country tick and what makes it so great. And so terrible. And so wonderful. And mostly so confusing. I have a million things to learn. But I want to start out small. I want to learn about religion here in America.

Because around 70% of Americans call themselves Christian. And from what I can tell, Christianity here has gotten pretty, well, American. Franchised in a hundred different ways and truly embedded in the culture here. So, sit down in that pew, open that Bible, and turn to the bit about David. This is The Religion episode. Flightless, flightless, flightless bird touchdown in America. I'm a flightless bird touchdown in America. So David, I would have picked something a little less explosive as your first. I mean, of all the things to try to navigate, you went right at it.

I just figure if we start with the biggest, potentially most controversial thing we could possibly ever tackle, then the rest of the show will be a walk in the park. First of all, I'm so excited to hear you learn about all these weird things, because I do think in general, many of us here don't really know how a lot of these things work. Like fantasy football. Probably 60% of people don't know what the hell. I don't. Right?

I don't know anything about fantasy football. I feel like when you live in a place and you're just used to everything around you, and if you don't know it, it's embarrassing to bring it up. It's too late. Because everyone's like, you idiot. Like, why do you not know about this thing you're so stupid whereas i get to be completely stupid here because i legitimately don't know much about this country it sort of gives me an excuse to like figure these things out yes you got like a dum-dum pass i got a dum-dum pass i can be a complete dum-dum and i think with religion it's the best way to come into things

because if you come in i think with too much preconceived sort of notions in your brain, it's going to go wrong. Well, right. That's me. You just described me to a T. I could never tackle this because it would be innately offensive to the people I was talking to because they know where I stand, unfortunately. You have a big opinion. I have too big of an opinion. So what's thrilling to me is because you do such great journalistic work in general, I've actually come to believe I'm going to learn something today, which I'm just telling you as an egomaniac, there's a big tip on my hat to you, David. Thank you. I mean, I hope so. And I don't want to be too judgmental with this thing because also, obviously, we all

come with baggage with certain things. And I've got baggage with religion as well. But I like to think that if you have a discussion like this, it can sort of be open and not too closed off to other points of view. Well, I think I even shared with you when we talked about doing this show, I have, I think, often an objective view on us and the ways we could be better. And yet, when it's presented by an outsider, my patriotism flares up. And I don't even think of myself as overly patriotic or what gives you the right to come into my country and start talking about it like that yeah it's popped up here and there where i was like oh wow i guess i yeah like i love john oliver right i think he

does a great job he's walked the line pretty well but i've also seen ones where i was like well then fucking go that's the that's the kind of knee jerk for me if it gets too critical then it's like well then fucking go pal yeah since i've been here by the way everyone thinks i'm british because they're like oh you talk exactly like john oliver and i like to think there's a subtle difference between like him too well like a super hot super tall sexual john oliver i'll take that yeah i mean we've both got glasses we've both got probably slightly annoying voices. Yeah, like if John Oliver was the lord of a sex club. That's David.

Then that's David, yeah. Unless you escape here and go on a trip or something, it's hard to know how religious we are. Like when you go to Europe, you start kind of getting a sense that it's much different. And then even when you hear the other world leaders talk about us, they have to confront the fact that we're deeply, deeply Christian. Absolutely. And I think in America, it's linked to politics in a way that's so, so intense that in New Zealand, it is to a degree, but nothing like here. Yeah, we're kind of unique, right? In this marriage, even though it's separated. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, this idea of the separation of church and state,

it doesn't exist in any kind of real way. The biggest controversy I feel like in New Zealand, I'm born on Christmas Day, right? Which is a funny thing. In Bethlehem, add that. So the biggest controversy we ever had in Bethlehem was when this pizza chain called Hell Pizza opened. And it's the idea like like hell pizza it's like this wacky brand and all their pizzas are called like lucifer and greed and gluttony and stuff but that was a big story in bethlehem because that's like evil has reached bethlehem first of all do you know we have a lucifer's pizza i had no idea and the best part is not only do we have fuck do you think that

was the original starter of hell's pizza down in bethlehem okay because listen here is the outgoing message when you call lucifer's i encourage you to do it either you ring ring ring thank you for calling lucifer's pizza we have two locations maro's and hell house if you're calling for a hell house location press one if you'd like on maro's, press two. Oh, my gosh. So that's Australian or New Zealand. Well, we found, I thought it was Australian. It turned out it was New Zealand. Someone hit us. So hells.

So this is crazy to me. So a New Zealander runs Lucifer's. I wonder if that is linked to hell. I mean, this is going to be an episode, obviously, that I hadn't planned. Or maybe of Armchair and Dangerous, because this is a conspiracy theory if I ever heard one. Is it good pizza? Fuck yes, it is. The other thing that I want to be a bit sensitive in the show is that I don't want to come in here and just sample over America with my New Zealand point of view.

So I think every episode we do, I want to just go out and talk to people that I meet, wherever I am, and sort of get their take on things. I think it feels like an important thing to do. So this is people's takes on religion. I know nothing about religion in America, and I was wondering if you could tell me your thoughts on religion in the United States. For me personally, it means a faith in something bigger than myself, an example of a life that could lead to joy and hope. I think when I read exactly what Jesus' words are, it's simple and makes sense and produces goodness in people's lives.

It's definitely a hot topic. I would say, personally, I'm a humanistic Jew. I haven't really found a congregation in New York City, even though I've been here for 15 years. I think people should find their own way of things to believe in, you know, what works for you. I don't think that the Jesus or this should be forced on you. I created my own religion. Tell me about your religion. What is your religion? My religion is the Holy Church of St. Lupus Dei

Christ, the Hound of God. Sounds incredible. If you don't want to believe there's a God in heaven or a devil in hell, which I really don't, because if the devil was really existing, he would be ruling already. Like if I was the devil, as an example, I would have people building pyramids bigger than the ones in Egypt for me made out of gold or statues. I would be ruling the world. I'd be on the throne. You know, I have a statue sticking out of the atmosphere with my arms crossed.

So if there are aliens, they would come and see who rules the planet. It's a really good point. The main thing I feel being in America is that religion and politics are tied together in a way that doesn't exist somewhere like New Zealand. That's what I find so fascinating. I mean, definitely. And while it should be a division of church and state, it's certainly not. I have a girlfriend who read the Bible in her state high school, so it doesn't really make much sense. Politics shouldn't be

involved in religion at all. I think that everybody has the right to have their own beliefs and no one should be judged for it. I'm religious. I believe in God, but some of my friends don't and that's fine. What is the biggest religion in America? Do you know? Honestly, I don't know, but if I had to take a guess, I would say Christianity. And he was right. Christianity is the biggest one here. But yeah, I really like that guy that had his own religion. I'd never thought about making my own, but it's always an option. Well, you are David from Bethlehem after all. It's all laid out for me, right? Yeah, exactly. I don't want to be critical of that guy because he's the best person you talk to by far. He was great.

But a little hint of irony that he thinks religion should stay out of politics. And yet, when he's Satan, or I think that's who he was playing in that role play, he will build a statue so tall that the aliens will see who rules the earth. That's kind of innately political. Slightly political statement that he's the ruler of this world come see me yeah it's like putting lenin or stalin all over every building he did it without even realizing that he was doing it which is yeah the big issue i guess with that people have with so many big religions once you get a big structure in place you've got some people that are going to be up higher some people down lower and then it gets tricky well yeah i do think that religion has great intentions all of them do and it's to help people and lead people and give you a lane

and and hope and hope exactly and it can be beautiful but it can also really get out of control yeah i'd even go so far as to say that none of the religions in themselves are flawed, but generally the men who execute the premise of the organization, they seem to obscure everything in a dark way. Yeah, that's incredibly fair, I think. There are pieces, though. There are problematic pieces in these texts. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, in the text.

But if you just look at kind of the horrific history of it, you know, putting Galileo in prison, all these kind of crimes against science, crimes against marginalized people, crimes against, you know, driving us into single family homes, which is a bizarre thing we all live in and maybe not the best for us. All these things. Those were human decisions. Yes. That really took some liberties with the text, applied them in interesting ways. People who we know who are very religious and have used it only for positive growth, believe that. Like they believe that humans have bastardized kind of this holy way of living.

Yeah. You said earlier, Dax, it's like literally the biggest thing I could have possibly picked. I wanted to narrow it down slightly. And so I sort of chosen to focus on Christianity because it is the biggest faith here in the United States. Yeah. And so, yeah, as always, in every episode, I want to present a little documentary and we can sort of chat about it afterwards. But this one is my documentary about religion. Well, you got to go Christianity. It's like if you come to America and talk about cars, you're going to talk about Chevrolet. You're going to talk about General Motors or Ford. You know, if you're going to get into the world of MMA, you go talk to Conor McGregor. Yeah, you can't go niche.

Who's pants I stole today. Yeah. Oh, Conor. Yeah. I'm wearing Conor McGregor's pants today for people who don't know and can't see. Would you like to describe them, Monica? Yes, they are a plaid dress pant. They're skin tight.

They're very tight, white and dark gray plaid, but like a thin plaid. Gorgeous. Paper thin, paper thin. You can tell my religion, ding, ding, ding, if you look close enough at my crotch. You know what else Conor loves besides MMA? Tell me. Religion. It actually took me a while to decide on the best person to educate me about how Christianity works in America.

I mean, who's best to talk to? Do I find an old scholarly theologian from Yale? Or do I look for a total outsider, an atheist? No, they'd be too biased against Christianity. Maybe I could go for the middle ground, a lazy agnostic who can't make up their mind. Or I could talk to a Christian. There are over 200 million of them here in America.

But which one to pick? In the name of Jesus! Oh thank you Jesus! Standing in the office of the prophet of God, I execute judgment on you COVID-19! Oh Ramos! I execute judgment on you Satan! You destroyer! You killer! You get out! You break your power! Kenneth Copeland was a step too far. So I rang Megaturch leader Joel Osteen's publicist to request an interview.

And we talked for ages, and they said they'd get back to me, but they never did. Joel was probably still busy paying back his $4 million loan to the government. But then I stumbled on the perfect person to quiz about all this. I called him up immediately and explained what I was doing. Hey, Mike, how are you? Good, David, how are you? I'm really good. Hey, thanks so much. Embarking on this quest to learn every possible thing about America.

Now that's a project. And Mike McHarg was up for the challenge. Up for the challenge of getting me up to speed on American Christianity. I think I'm into religion the way some people are into Harry Potter or Star Wars or Hunger Games or whatever. I just, I'm like a fan of religion. Yeah, you're a religion nerd. You're a religion fanboy.

Yes. As well as being a Christian, Mike is also a science advisor and story consultant working with studios like Marvel Films. See, Mike is into Christianity and science. He grew up as a Baptist, just like I did, but then he left that behind and became a hardcore atheist. I'm just your average, ordinary, Southern Baptist turned atheist turned mystic. I grew up in some of the really conservative fundamentalist wings of American white evangelical Christianity. I didn't know that. I just thought it was

Christian and that that was the right way to be. Yeah, totally normal. Totally normal. I actually liked my faith because I appreciated the clarity of moral guidance and an understanding of what it meant to be a good person. And I probably would still be an evangelical today, except life happens. My dad, who was a minister in our church, ended up having an affair, which is like not that big a deal. But when he was like the minister at the church and I was an adult deacon, that really caused a real crisis of confidence for me. And so as I wanted to help exhort my dad back into a right relationship with God, I went on a really intense period of Bible study. And I'm autistic. And so I read very quickly. And I retain what I read. And so

sitting down with the Bible for the first time, it was not a text that held together terribly well in terms of narrative cohesion. Let's just say it that way. And I also love science. And so, you know, when I read in Genesis, like a very clear claim that trees were made before stars in the order of creation. That did not really fit with how I understand the periodic table. As in, there's stardust in trees, but how did that get there if the Bible tells us the stars were created after the trees? So, Mike became an atheist. For him, it was a big, life-changing moment. His whole worldview collapsed. His entire belief system came undone.

I just realized God's not a thing. I was a kid who didn't have any friends. You're a classic nerd. So the personal evangelical Jesus thing was really important to me because it meant I had a friend. And so there was a lot of grief. I got through it and I was pretty happy. And I started

talking to my family about my lack of belief and what came next for us. And to make a very long story short, I wrote a book about it even. I had a mystical experience. I felt like I was in the direct presence of the divine. Okay, so this gets a bit weird mike told me he heard voices and saw a light a light right in front of him that drifted towards him and took up his whole frame of sight he wasn't on lsd he wasn't on dope he wasn't high so if you're like me you're thinking that maybe mike lost the plot had an episode of some kind. But here's the thing, Mike thought that too. I thought the most likely cause for this mystical experience was probably like a tumor somewhere in my brain. So I went to see a neurologist and I said, look, I think I have

brain cancer. And the neurologist was like, why do you think you have brain cancer? I said, well, I'm seeing flashing lights. I'm hearing voices that aren't there. And I'm having feelings of profound transcendence. And the neurologist said, okay, that's worth a look. So I got a CAT scan and an MRI, no tumor, no lesion. And so I was left with two things. One, a world that made more sense without God in it, and this feeling of profound love. And so I started trying to get to the root of that. And that led me not only to study world history in a way I had not before, but also a really deep dive into the neurology and physiology of religious experiences to try to figure out what happened to me and what was useful

that could be integrated into my life. Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Flightless Bird is supported by Helix Sleep. I got my Helix mattress about a month ago and I am loving it. I've had a terrible mattress for a very long time and I have a bad back. So being able to sleep on a mattress that actually has me waking up feeling great is kind of a revelation. This thing just arrived on my doorstep. It was quick. It was easy. If you don't like it, you can just package it up and they'll pick it up and take it away. But that's not going to happen because this mattress is fantastic. I also love it because it really is customized.

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That's BetterHelp.com slash bird. H-E-L-P dot com slash bird. You are so perfect for me to be talking to. I'm kind of stuck in America at the moment because I can't get back to New Zealand. And I look around at all the churches and I certainly look at some of the mega churches, which is what I as a New Zealander kind of associate American Christianity with, these giant buildings. It's a big question, but how do you see religion, specifically Christianity, in America? Is this

a good place to be a Christian? On the balance, no. America's strange mass proliferation of faith traditions and cults and all that kind of stuff is the only possible conclusion from the way this country architected itself. There are lots of nations, especially European nations on Earth, that have truly ancient Christian traditions within them, but they've always had an affiliation with the state. So there's a state church in most European nations. And then you get to the United States and they got some pretty wild ideas. And basically it's like everybody gets to choose for themselves what faith they're going to be a part of. And the state doesn't favor one.

All right. So there's no Pope, for instance. There's no big boss. There's no central religious authority whatsoever, which creates two things. Number one, almost an exchange market of religious traditions trying to sell themselves to adherence to become viable. So there's like a competitive mindset. And then for me, as someone who thinks

natural selection is such a great way to understand many natural phenomena involving living things, you create selection pressures on religions to adapt and be the fittest for the current social context. And so that creates, number one, a lot of religious experimentation. And number two, people shop around for whatever tradition they like the most. And there are a lot to shop for. Anglicanism, Calvinism, Methodism, Pentecostalism, Baptists, Disciples

of Christ, Presbyterians, the United Church of Christ, the list goes on and on and on. American religion mutates and adapts rapidly compared to many world faiths. There's actually a tremendous instability about it, which actually makes it spread really fast, both in our country and then because we're America, we love to export our way of thinking, in which critics I agree with would call colonizing, to the whole world. And so you see American-style denominations and megachurches kind of propagating across the planet in a way that is almost terrifying. It's true. We do have megachurches in New Zealand, and they're a lot like American

megachurches, complete with charismatic pastors in snappy suits, slick back hair, glowing skin, gold watches, and nice shoes. These pastors are usually wealthy, their congregation less so. And that's always felt strange to me. I don't understand how does the money come into it? You've got these incredibly wealthy people, you're literally giving them your money, you know, 10% and above. What makes that a good idea? Because the affluence of it and the money is so strange to me, as is the political alignment. American Christians, to me, seem to idolize in politics the people that are least Christian in their behavior and what they do. It's like I literally don't understand the huge dissonance there. Can you please explain those very simple things to me?

Let's start with the money, then go to the power. You know, America is a brilliant marketing machine. If I start to talk about America, some people are going to bristle because they're going to read me as unpatriotic. But I throw darts at this country because I love it, and I think it could be better. I don't say things about America because I hate it. And the brilliant propaganda of America is that it's the land of opportunity and it has receipts. Right? So you can point to people who grew up in poverty and are now millionaires. There are those success stories.

And the propaganda that comes out of that is if you work hard, anyone can achieve huge levels of economic success in the United States, which is factually incorrect. Some small percentage of people who work very hard will achieve something in the system. But we know statistically the vast majority of hardworking people in the United States are born poor and stay poor. So now you have American religion doing what? Trying to thrive in a religious marketplace through adaptation. And so when you theologize that notion, you get things like the prosperity gospel, where God wants you to be rich. You live in the richest country in the world, this land of opportunity, and God wants you to be successful.

Only it's not just hard work that makes you successful. It's faithfulness to the scriptures. And of course, the scriptures include tithing. And tithing is a good hook. I used to tithe when I went to church as a teenager in New Zealand. And part of what made it appealing is that every time there was a natural disaster, the church would spend a whole Sunday talking about what they'd done with our tithe dollars. We were the first responders with food and first aid, before the slow government or the Red Cross got there, because we had already raised money in advance. And from the perspective of a Christian, not only are they helping people, they're also helping

people's souls, because whatever disaster is being attended to, chances are they'll offer it with a side dish of Christian preaching. And that feels really good. You feel like, so I've been giving a huge percentage of my earnings to a church, and then that church is giving a huge percentage of its earnings to this other organization that is now really doing what we say we're about, and that's helping people. So that between those two things, number one, the kind of America success propaganda, and number two, religious organizations really are often the first to a disaster scene, but they attach it to other messaging.

So that's why Christians happily tithe. And if you're into the prosperity breed of evangelical Christianity, then you believe the more money you're into the prosperity breed of evangelical Christianity, then you believe the more money you put into the church, the more money God will give you, both on earth and up in heaven, which is a big bonus. Next minute, you've got ministers with private jets and 10 houses. Then there's the other question I had. Why are evangelical Christians so tied up in politics? In New Zealand, we're proud of the separation between church and state. But in America, they talk about a separation, but to me, it's not very separate. Religion and politics is like a big pot of sickly soup, all mixed in

together. This is one of the greatest men. And before we start out, we'd like to pray over him. And President Trump, these are some of their greatest faith leaders because we know that prayer makes a difference. Americans are famously ahistoric in their awareness, right? Like there's today and there's tomorrow. Yesterday is not a thing. But if you go back and you look at how evangelicalism emerged back to the late 1800s and early 1900s, theological liberalism was carrying the day. I mean, we talk about people right now

as having liberal ideas about God, but you got to this very distant, abstract, impersonal, cosmic God in almost all American churches. People were very civic-minded. There was a focus on contemplative practice, not electrifying stuff until one evangelical put on a suit and started bringing tent revivals to cities, and that was the Reverend Billy Graham. You say, Billy, do you believe in demons? I surely do.

And Jesus confronted demons time after time, and he could cast them out. And people that were insane under the powers of demons would regain their sanity. Billy Graham was such a good communicator and was so sophisticated that when he described to a bunch of mainline Protestants, a God that knew them personally and loved them personally, wow, that really lit people up. And so when Billy Graham's doing these crusades, thousands of mainline Protestants would come down and get saved.

And Billy Graham not only converts literally millions of people to evangelical Christianity, he also spends time with every American president. Whereas the mainline Protestants had this pretty important and entrenched notion of a separation between church and state, Billy Graham starts saying, through his actions, we've got to be involved in spiritually inspiring our political leaders. Once that seed is planted, increasingly ambitious actors over time get more and more involved in politics. And so Christianity and politics became intertwined in American culture. I mean, if you talk to an evangelical Christian

in the 50s about abortion, they probably wouldn't even care. They'd say, throw that question over to the Catholics. But that's all changed now. The showdown over abortion across this country, in fact, protesters outside the homes of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh. And tonight with the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell in the Senate is now saying about the possibility of a federal abortion ban if Roe v. Wade is overturned. I'm going to choose a religion, why would I choose Christianity? Because the bad seems quite bad to me. Sure. The bad is quite bad. That's why I don't really do a lot of public work around Christianity anymore.

But personally, no, I absolutely still identify as a Christian. I want to be really clear. I think whatever happens when we die happens to everybody. And I want to be really clear that whatever created all that we experience created everybody, and that nobody has special or privileged access to what came before or what comes after. So I'm a Christian for a couple of reasons. Number one, gosh, how many hours have I invested in understanding English versions of Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament? I'm incredibly conversant in Christian theologies and Christian language. And a lot of people,

they leave Christianity behind and they like kind of ape, like really unsophisticated interpretations of Eastern religious traditions. And I'm just not interested in colonizing somebody else's religion. I'm a terrible person to ask if you like convince me why Christianity. I can't, I won't. I'm just not interested in that. But when I pray, based on neurological conditioning, when I invoke the name of Jesus, something happens in me. And because for me, faith is such a truly personal pursuit, I just lean into that. Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Flightless Bird is supported by Article. Article has launched their new line of outdoor products for summer 2022.

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visit article.com slash bird and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. That's article.com slash bird to get $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. At this point, I started wondering, is Mike's brain just more wired for Christianity than mine is? Are his neurons connected in a way that sees him leaning into Christianity while I lean away from it? How much does your brain chemistry have to do with whether you're a religious person or not? I think a lot. And there's science behind this. And some of the clues are found in one of the craziest stories I've ever heard. In the 50s and 60s, to try to treat very severe forms of epilepsy,urosurgeons would sever the corpus callosum, the channel of nerves that connect the two hemispheres of the brain together,

and they were shocked to find that when you sever the corpus callosum and someone wakes up, they seem completely unaffected. It seemed to do nothing. What actually happens, though, is we have two hemispheres of our brain. They talk alongside it, but both of our hemispheres of our brain are pretty self-sufficient. And so they can kind of go on through life. And it created a phenomenon for those patients called alien hand syndrome, where they would find that their non-dominant hand often was no longer under their control. So someone might take a shirt off of a

hanger, and then their other hand grabs it and hangs it back up. So they wanted to figure out what's going on and they started devising experiments to isolate the two halves of the brain so that you can use a mirror setup with a monitor to display messages on only one side of the field of vision so that you can talk to each side of the brain. The problem is only the left brain and most people can speak. The right brain cannot speak. So in order to let the right hemisphere communicate, they train people to basically use scrabble tiles to talk. So if you ask a question on the left brain, the left brain speaks out loud. If you ask a question on the right brain, the alien hand will answer with scrabble tiles. They asked one patient in particular if he was a Christian, and he said

yes. And no longer using Scrabble tiles, but now a pointing device, his right brain said no. One half of the brain was a believer believer and the other half was not. And I actually think what that person became was the first honest religious person in the world. Because our consciousness, the way we perceive ourselves as a single observer, watching the world and reacting to it is not accurate in terms of how our brains work. The different structures in our brain compete and get into conflict every moment of our lives about what we're going to do and, yeah, what we're going to believe. And so, at the time I read that study, I was so happy because I was trying to figure out, like, am I a Christian? Am I an atheist? And in that

moment, I went, parts of my brain are Christian and parts of my brain are atheistic. And maybe I just need to stop trying to browbeat one part of my brain in submission and just let them do what they do and be honest about the fact that I'm not a rational machine. I'm an evolved biological organism who has competing impulses designed to help me survive. Probably in the old school tradition of Christianity, I was raised with like one half of you is going to heaven and one half is like down into the fiery pits of hell, right? Same.

I really liked talking to Mike. And maybe that's because I had something in common with him. I grew up as a Baptist, just like Mike did. I grew up believing that if I believed in Jesus, I'd go to heaven. Like a literal heaven, white heaven, with gold columns and singing angels. Bliss for all eternity. But that meant I also grew up believing that if I strayed from Christianity, if I gave it up, I'd spend an eternity in the lower depths of hell and being poked and prodded by a devil like in that Lil Nas X video, but less sexy.

So I know this is weird, but I find it a bit scary and unsettling talking to Mike. this is weird, but I find it a bit scary and unsettling talking to Mike. Because if he's right and Christianity has got something going for it, what if all that hell stuff is actually true as well? I know it's really stupid to believe that. I'm 38. I don't believe in Santa. Why would I believe in hell? But there's a bit of me, a tiny little bit that still worries about it. So my last question to Mike was about that. Is that normal? Being an adult non-religious person who's a teeny bit scared of hell. What you're talking about is inevitable and unavoidable because of how brains work. When we learn something new that happens on the outer layers of our brain in the neocortex, that's when we have a very cognitive understanding.

I mean, think about trying to learn to ride a bike. At first, you have to think like, I got a pedal and I got a steer. You're thinking, thinking, thinking, and it's exhausting. It literally makes you tired. But as you learn to ride a bike, that moves from this kind of outer neocortex into deeper structures in the brain where it gets encoded. And it becomes very neurologically efficient if i go 10 years without getting on a bicycle and then get on one after

about three seconds my body goes oh yeah i know how to do this well your childhood religious beliefs are at that same level of encoding as riding a bicycle and so even though you might have changed your thoughts out here in the neocortex, your amygdala still affiliates because of childhood conditioning, unright belief with eternal damnation. It is probably not possible to completely eliminate that reflex in many people who grew up in deeply religious fundamentalist households. Yeah, fuck. But what we can do instead is trust what scientists and mental health experts have to tell us.

And that is that the things from our childhood that helped us survive aren't bad, but they're there. So when things stop working for us, old survival strategies, that's when we have to wire up new survival strategies, that's when we have to wire up new survival strategies. So for me, my strategy, when I would have the like, oh my gosh, I'm a heretic apostate, I'm going to hell, I would stop and I would say to that part of my brain, thank you for trying to keep me safe. And then kind of give myself just a little hug, because that's just me trying

to take care of me. And when you change that little hack, that posture of gratitude, that literally changes your neurochemistry in a few seconds. And it tends to cause feelings of fear and anxiety to subside. And then because neurons that fire together wire together today, when I have a, oh my gosh, I'm going to hell reaction, I'm not even aware of it because my brain so quickly shifts into that gratitude posture. I've conditioned myself out of that response. And listen, that only took like 10 years of really intensive therapeutic work.

So this is day one for me. So thank you. I appreciate it. So fascinating. Oh, so much there. What a ride. He's a trip. So what part, Monica, jumps out as the most fascinating?

Okay. I mean, the brain portion, the test. The corpus callosum. Yes. It's obviously most fascinating. Okay. I mean, the brain portion, the test. The corpus callosum. Yes. It's obviously incredibly fascinating. I also want to say the bravery that it takes for someone who has grown up

believing a thing to look inward and be like, I don't know if this makes sense anymore is extreme. Yeah. And I think people go through that at different stages. I went through it quite late, which is quite weird. Yeah. I feel and I think people go through that at different stages. I went through it quite late, which is quite weird.

I feel like I'm already an adult. I was in my 20s. So that was like a very strange process to go through. Well, when you hear him explain it in the way he did with the bicycle analogy, which I think is perfect, it makes total sense. I love that analogy because if you force me to unlearn to ride a bike, it couldn't happen. You're never going to put me on a bicycle and be like, oh, fuck, how does it work?

I'm like, I did. I know. Congratulations. So you could probably unlearn anything. You better make sure you don't unlearn how to breathe. Oh, God. Watch out, Monica. It's going to be a terrible trait you've got.

Yeah, the brain thing was fucking awesome. I wanted to see if, A, different ethnicities are more or less right or left brain dominant. It'd be really curious to me to find out if you mapped the globe, you saw spikes or valleys. I want to know all those things, all of those things. And they kind of, when the experiments that he was talking about, they did some quite funny ones. Like there was a patient and they said, like, do you have a crush on the nurse he thought he was answering no i don't but his little scrabble hand was being like yeah i'm in love with him what if he didn't know and then he saw the tiles and was like mortified just went bright red i mean i just i love that so much. Across the board, take it out of religion, it just literally proves scientifically that you can hold two opposing opinions at the same time.

Emotions, opinions, thoughts. Yes, and we are always fighting that. We want it to be black and white. We want to think this and this only, and we can't. Yeah, totally. It's such a strong urge to know exactly what you believe and to be able to define it so clearly. And that's just not the way we function at all. Falling away from Christianity for me was such a weird thing because for ages I tried to hold on to it,. Metal music, the lyrics are quite satanic, you know, a bit naughty. That's what it's all about. I wanted to listen to this music, but I'd go through my albums and I'd like say, can't listen to track three

because that one is like too anti-religious. And so I ended up with this record collection that was like curated so I could function as a Christian. It's a version of just the tip you were playing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And so it's such a funny thing and like you do that with enough aspects of your life and suddenly you're like why am i holding on to this

thing yeah yeah i guess you take baby steps in or out yeah totally again it's brave though it's brave to get to the point where you're like what am i doing yeah and i would also say like i would think about these thoughts and maybe criticisms or just explanations of the American version of Christianity as like, this isn't even actually an attack on Christianity in any way, in my mind. We have a very unique version of it. The etymology of it is very fascinating. I didn't know until I heard this, David, how we got to this point where we have 83,000 different versions of it. If you were English, in fact, I just had a friend tell me that their father, when they joined the RAF,

the Royal Air Force, the box was to check Church of England or non-religious. All right. Those are the two. And that was only in the whatever, 40s or 50s. There wasn't other options that if you're Christian, you're Church of England. So I do think about it as like, imagine Ray Kroc started McDonald's and then the franchisees got to do whatever worked best in their town. Well, we got to have some barbecue options. Well, we got to have some egg rolls in this town.

McDonald's would mean virtually nothing other than the name. Uh-huh, completely. The system works. In addition to it becoming so fractured and fragmented here and so many different options, the same thing happened that happened in the marketplace, which is if you're a car guy, you'll go, I'm a Ford guy. I've drive Ford trucks. It's a religion. I'm a Mopar guy. I'm a Chevy guy. It defines you. I'm an Apple guy. I'm a Coca-Cola. But that's American marketing. I know, but no one was going to say in England,

I'm a Church of England guy. because you're like yeah everyone is there's nothing to separate you so there becomes an identity when you have so many different factions you couldn't have made christian your primary identity in england because it didn't say anything about you you everyone didn't have teams you didn't have no you're catholic yeah the fuck we live in italy we're all catholic But here, your neighbors would be Baptist. Oh, I'm Evangelical. Oh, I'm Protestant. Oh, I'm Lutheran. Oh, I'm Minowit.

Wow. Yeah, which is a shorthand as well to telling people what you believe and what is important to you. What club you're in. It is so American because it is built on, in my opinion, a very strong, wonderful ideal, which is that there should be a separation between what the government or the state or one person, one group tells you. We should have control over our individual actions. I mean, it's a liberty concept essentially, but then it comes with all of this other stuff. It turns into a marketplace. Yes. Flashiest best idea wins. Completely was. The thing that i find so funny about mega churches

is when they started getting cafes and like fancier fancier things inside and things to draw you in because they are trying to all out compete each other to get your attention with very human things like i want to have a yummy coffee when i go to my sunday service well as you should i want everywhere i go to have a Starbucks in the bathroom. So I hop in there, take a squirt. And we should have mentioned Mormons in there a little bit too, because originally there was just Catholicism. And then Martin Luther King comes along. He's got Protestantism.

Yes. And basically his unique concept is you don't need an intermediary. You don't need a priest. You have a relationship with God and you need to read the book. And then he embarked on this mass literacy program, which was very successful. And then that's what arrives here is basically that. So then Joseph Smith took it a step further and was like, you're not just going to chat with God, but you'll receive revelations as well and prophecies. It's like a great bonus to have, right? Yeah. So again, upped your involvement. And by the way, it's one-on-one. It's's like if you want great employees, give them some ownership.

Make them feel like they're a part of it. If you let people in on the ownership side, everyone's going to like it more. Yeah, I'd never thought about Mormonism in that way before. And we don't really have many Mormons in New Zealand. It's just not something I've given a great deal of thought to. Yeah, I was just talking to Huey down south, and he's not Mormon. He's Baptist, I believe. He's like, yeah, you just can't do better than having all Mormon neighbors.

And I was like, absolutely. I've never met someone that didn't live all among Mormons where they weren't delighted. Super industrious, very family oriented, clean, clean cities. You know, it would be unfair to say it's one thing or the other. It just comes with all this interesting stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I go ahead. No, it's one thing or the other it just comes with all this interesting stuff yeah yeah

no it's just let it rip for me mormonism is in its own compartment because we know when it was created like we know that timeline and scientology is a similar thing where it's like you know the beginning you know the people and so it makes it for me much easier to disregard it's like you know the beginning you know the people and so it makes it for me much easier to disregard it's like okay because that was in the timeline of our you know existence not ours but you know you can play psychology on it much better than the christianity or judaism totally i think there's still like a lot of murkiness about people don't know who wrote the bible or how that was even constructed, that document. There's like a dreamy quality to it, I think.

I didn't realize Billy Graham had that big of a role. No, neither did I. Four million folks he converted. Just his big tent revivals, which still happen. That's the other thing that blew my mind. I didn't understand here in America that those big tent revivals are still going on. Yeah. Like it's a good way to get people on board.

How rocking was Bethlehem? Because where I grew up, it was pretty fucking boring. And we would have this Paul Bunyan fair and the rides were shit. They were fucking garbage and the popcorn booths suck. But man, we counted down the days to that fucking fair. Church was pretty boring for me growing up. I went to a lot of Baptist churches. Where they get you though was like youth group. So like your friend would be like, I'll come and watch this movie. Like we're watching this thing or we're going bowling or we're doing something 100 that's how i got you in with the fun activities outside of church i did it did you yes and i felt so uncomfortable

because i wasn't christian but i was kind of pretending to be like even when friends would ask like what religion are you i'd be like i, I don't know. Like, I like didn't want to say, yeah, look at that. I did not want to say I was very embarrassed. Yeah. But you went to some youth group kind of things. Yeah. Like, yeah. My friend was going to like fun youth group. She's like, do you want to come? I'd say yes. And then the whole time I'd just be like, what's happening? I too went. I had a good buddy, Nick, in junior high who I loved, and he was very active in it. And he kept inviting me.

And then I eventually felt guilty enough to go. And I went to a few things. And his youth pastor got up, and the speech he gave us was, he used to be a devil worshiper. Oh. And he hung with many devil worshipers. And one of them was so powerful that when they would drive around in the car, he could activate all the lights green. Oh, that's very devilish. All the kids were really like, that now explains it all.

And I just, again, I'm just such a cynic or a skeptic. I was like, first of all, you have devil qualities. Is that what you're going to do? Turn the lights green? Let's fucking have some bank doors fall open or something, you know? Yeah. But Christianity, it is. The trend is slowly moving down and

increasingly in america more people are agnostic or atheist or some sort of like non-god belief system going on there's also a fascinating thing where it's like and this has happened in the past with music what's like we export it and then it gets re-imported back so like some people in my extended family love a mega church preacher from the philippines right so it's like it left here went to the philippines there's a super charismatic filipino preacher that now has got a big following here that's a very amusing cycle we kind of export our culture and then it comes back like the automobile now all of a sudden these other places make a cooler automobile you know that's very i can't wait to one of our new zealand mega church preachers becomes like a big hit over here in the united states that would be amazing and

isn't bieber a disciple or a follower was or is hillsong that was his big thing for a while hillsong church was there an australian mega church originally cool they're an example of it actually i guess they copied america started in australia and have now got big churches here you got an american living canadian following an australian mega church based originally globalism oh wow just this big circle jerk cross-pollination a mega religion but it does go to show how big and powerful that group is in america that we haven't had a non-Christian president ever. And part of that is because you need that group. So even though it's 60% or whatever, they're a strong 60. No, they're passionate because it's everything. It's like heaven and

hell. It's like a huge thing. They don't hold it lightly. So of course they're going to vote for that Christian president. And as my fellow atheists will point out that the thing you will never see is an atheist president. You'll see a black president, you'll see a female president. We had a Catholic president. You're not going to see a president that says, I don't believe in God. Well, it'll be the last is what I'm saying. Yeah. And it is what you were saying about earlier. I find it almost as irritating when you have someone who is such a strong atheist as someone who is so incredibly religious that they won't stop talking about it and telling you how bad or stupid you are. I just don't like the notion of anyone trying to convert everyone to how they think. That could be an atheist, a Christian, a Catholic, you name it.

They're the same, ultimately. They're on opposite ends of the spectrum, but they're doing the exact same thing, proselytizing. I used to get very annoyed when Christian friends would try and sort of convert me back to Christianity. But then also what made me less annoyed about that is that in their minds, they are literally, they're trying to save you from an eternity in hell. So I always remind myself it would be insulting if they weren't trying to save me back. I try and remind myself of that occasionally. I couldn't agree more. We have family members that are concerned that we haven't baptized our children. It's like a nice thing.

We're not religious. And I go, I get it, man. If I believed I was going to heaven and my children weren't going to join me, it's all I would think about. It would be a huge, huge panic. I totally get it. I do want to advocate for people watching the Tammy Faye show. It's so good.

And I was watching with our good friend, Perfect 10 Charlie. I've seen it too. Oh, did you like it? Yeah, it's really fun. It's great. It's just a great And I was watching with our good friend, Perfect 10 Charlie. I've seen it too. Yeah. Oh, did you like it? Yeah, it's really fun. It's just a great insight into how those brains work. Charlie was like, I think I'm going to memorize the Bible. Like, I'm going to dedicate the time because what was fascinating is like everything exists in the Bible. Like anyone who's trying to make a single narrative out of it, it's preposterous. There's a scene where the religious educator is trying to shame one of the other people that they shouldn't be sexual.

And then he hits them with some other scripture. And then he hits them with another verse. All the verses of every angle virtually exist. Absolutely. Literally, you can just pick. It's the perfect cherry picking book. It is. It's all there.

Every side of every argument virtually is in there. Yeah. I think what also is interesting about Eyes of Tammy F faye that's the name of the movie when they're even in their private bedroom tammy and jim jim is swindling everyone he's saying god's putting a lot of pressure on me justifying what he's doing we all think they scammed everyone which they did but he really still believes that it's not like he in his own private bedroom is like okay so this is what we're going to do and this is how we're going to do it and it's so complicated because it is a scheme but he has convinced himself that it's what god wants yeah absolutely else the guilt would be too much for him i suppose because that's the thing with all of these is this a grift or is this a

personal belief or is it a combination of both the most heartbreaking thing for me is that if the movie's correct she didn't finish fucking gary she had not been fucked in forever and then she's finally getting fucked and she's telling him how big he is she's loving it and the water breaks so that's all charlie and i talked about for the next two hours i'm like i pray that they just showed us one of the times. They please say they fucked. Please say she got hammered good once because she had to go on TV and fucking take it on the chin. I hope she came.

I hope they fucked a bunch of times. If that's really what happened, midway through this great fuck, her water broke and they had to go to the hospital. That is, I can't recover from that. That's incredible. It wasn't my takeaway, but it is tragic. Religion, look, it's a powerful force, isn't it? I still am amazed that we're literally counting the years since Jesus was born. That's how big it is.

The way we look at time is all linked back to how many years ago Jesus was born. It's crazy. And God we trust. It's on our money. You really love Christianity here in the States. That's my takeaway it's made me very aware because in new zealand i'll go to dinner parties or friends houses and i'll be dismissive of christianity sometimes i get a bit ricky gervais on it i'm a bit arrogant about it whereas here i won't do that now because after a few times i've like put myself in it

because i realize i'm surrounded by a bunch of people who are Christians and I'm like, oh, okay, that's right. I'm grateful. I think I used to be the other version of an atheist that I said before, before having all these Christian friends that came into my life through Kristen. I don't want to take away the wonderful thing that it adds to certain people's lives that I know. You don't want to be rude. I love it for them. Yeah, and I don't want to shit on their thing. Yeah, that's not what friends do. That's not what friends are for. I promise that future episodes will be not all as deep and as dense as religion. Some will be.

Oh, I hope they get deeper and denser. I learned so much. Good. I learned a lot. I'm going to cut my corpus callosum. No. This doctor is going to cut his corpus callosum. We'll get out those scribble tiles.

Love you, David. I am so excited to watch you learn all about America. And in doing so, educate us because I didn't know that shit. I want to be a good American. You're a goodest American.