Soul Boom - Alex O'Connor Explores the Mysteries of God

Episode Date: January 28, 2025

Alex O’Connor ( @CosmicSkeptic ), known for his nuanced critiques of religion and discussions on morality, reflects on why the Bible captivates him as an atheist, the historical resonance of Jesus, and the philosophical limits of materialism. Alex recently participated in a Jubilee debate that went viral, where his fascination with Christianity was put to the test (Jubilee's 1 Atheist vs. 25 Christians). Together he and Rainn explore the mysteries of consciousness, the science behind near-death experiences, and whether love is just neurons firing or something more profound. Alex O’Connor is a prominent atheist thinker, YouTuber, and philosopher known for his channel Cosmic Skeptic, where he explores questions of morality, religion, and consciousness. A graduate of theology and philosophy at Oxford, Alex has engaged millions in thoughtful debates on belief and the human experience. Thank you to our sponsors! Stamps.com: Get a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale at https://www.stamps.com/soulboom. Thanks to Stamps.com for sponsoring the show! Pretty Litter: (20% OFF & free cat toy!): https://www.prettylitter.com/soulboom MERCH OUT NOW! https://soulboomstore.myshopify.com/ God-Shaped Hole Mug: https://bit.ly/GodShapedHoleMug Sign up for our newsletter! https://soulboom.substack.com SUBSCRIBE to Soul Boom!! https://bit.ly/Subscribe2SoulBoom Watch our Clips: https://bit.ly/SoulBoomCLIPS Watch WISDOM DUMP: https://bit.ly/WISDOMDUMP Follow us! Instagram: http://instagram.com/soulboom TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@soulboom Sponsor Soul Boom: [e-mail] Work with Soul Boom: [e-mail] Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: [e-mail] Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Production Supervisor: Mike O'Brien Voicing Change Media Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to soul. What is it that obsesses you about the Bible and the Christian mythology? This Jesus figure transformed the lives and societies of... Billions. Who came after, billions of people and hundreds, maybe thousands of societies. That's a mystery to explain. We don't know anything about his life between his birth and his baptism. Well, we know that Jesus existed. We know that Jesus was crucified.

and we know that not long afterwards, lots of people started to believe that he'd risen from the dead. This is one of the most extraordinary events in human history. Society is disruptive. As a secular historian, how can you not be interested in that? I just find these conversations so interesting.

What is the best argument in your infinite number of debates with online and in person for the existence of God. Hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson, and I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast.

It was very curious to know what the comments would be, having been on your show, the first ever Baha'i. Yeah. It was such an interesting melange of like, oh, what a great conversation. And a lot of people like, Alex let him off so easy and he should have skewered him. Who is your audience? I don't even know if I'm going to use this, by the way. But I'm just curious about your audience.

Yeah. It's actually difficult to know because these days I have a lot of religious listenership. So a lot of Christians listen to my show, for example. Oh, that's the other thing I wanted to say is that there was a lot of like Christian back backlash against me being a Baha'i, like this is against the Gospels. Oh, really? Jesus said he's the way and the truth and the light, and there's no way to the Father except through him.

So this is blasphemy. And then you have a lot of the atheists coming in saying, this is a bunch of like, you know, God, Hocom, clap trap, you know, unprovable bullshit, Ui-gooey, Hollywood celebrity bullshit. And so it was kind of getting it from both sides. Interesting. Yeah, well, you know you're doing something right if you are getting it from both sides. Yes.

Because you're saying something to upset everyone, which means that you're actually thinking independently and saying what you think and not sort of being audience captured. The thing is that I think when a channel gets to a certain size, unavoidably, there are going to be people who are annoyed or upset by basically anything you do. So in my case, I very regularly have people on the show

or make a video myself where I'm maybe soft on Christianity. Or I say, you know what, actually, there are some good, like, evidential cases to make for the resurrection of Jesus. I don't think that they're sufficient enough, but here's some great evidence. and somebody will come in and say, I can't believe we've lost Alex to the hippie-dippy, you know, soft-tunk. And it's like, okay, man, but like the channel is growing.

It's obviously resonating with people. I'm speaking honestly, what more do you want from me? I think in this case, when we did our show, I pulled a couple of clips first, and one of the clips was you talking about how you tried being an atheist, and it didn't work for you. And the video was cool. I tried being an atheist.

It didn't work. And I suspect that a great, many people commented without watching the full video. But even if they did, the problem is that you were talking about your personal experience. You were saying, look, I tried this philosophy. And you even say in the video, I don't mean like philosophically or anything. I just mean like as a person emotionally, like it didn't work. There's nothing to critique in there.

You're just telling a story of what happened to you. So people in the comments, you know, somebody said like, well, I tried religion and it didn't work. and it was, you know, kind of people were like, oh, yeah, and I'm like, well, okay, good for you too, you know, what we're doing is we're sharing our experiences here. Some people say, I tried being a Catholic, it didn't work, I tried being a Buddhist, it didn't work. And if people don't understand that so much of what they believe is actually a result of how integrating those beliefs makes you behave and makes you feel, if people think that they're acting purely rationally, that every single decision they make about their worldview and their opinions about

the world are purely sort of analytical, syllogistic reasoning, then I think they're either telling the truth, in which case they're missing something incredibly important about the human experience, or they don't realize just how much their emotional states are creeping into their rational thought. You are infamously kind of a, began your career on the internet as a new atheist firebrand, kind of the youngest of the lot. And at the same time, you seem to have a almost religious fervor for the Bible and Christianity. What is it that obsesses you about the Bible and the Christian mythology? The Christians will tell you it's the Christian equivalent of what the Muslims call fitter, the sort of inherent desire or drive that a person is born with towards God.

and then I'm being sort of whispered to and then through the scripture. I don't think it's that, partly because I'm so critical of the text. It is the only ancient text with which I have enough familiarity to talk about meaningfully. Some people get obsessed with the Odyssey or Metamorphosis or something. And I think part of the interest is, can we be sure that Homer wrote this? Can we figure out why? Can we figure out how people interpreted the story at the time? Did the Greeks really believe in the existence of their gods?

These are interesting questions. The questions that I don't really have anything to say about because I don't know their stories very well. With the Bible, I spent so long in the new atheist school of thinking that religion is harmful and definitely untrue that I learned a thing or two about the Bible. But even, I would say, more than that, you studied theology. That's true, that's true.

So that's taking a big step other than becoming vaguely familiar with the Gospels. But you know, like there's a level to which when you are in the new atheist sort of by a brand spirit, you think, okay, I'm going to learn about this religion because I want to have better discussions and better debates. And then something shifts and I'm like, look, it's so simplistic to say religion is bad. I think saying religion is bad is like saying politics is bad. Kind of makes sense. And you could make some case.

You could get some grand speech saying politics. It drives families apart. And can you name one war that wasn't caused by politics? It's so terrible. That's kind of true, but it seems trivially true. And it doesn't mean that there isn't a correct political position. And it doesn't mean that you should abstain from doing politics. Or that humanity needs politics to a certain level,

or a certain degree. We have to govern and we have to find discourse and ways to legislate. So I think it's pretty naive. And then I'm left in a position where I no longer think I can make this surface-level simplistic, Fibrand atheist case. also am now just really interested in the Gospels. Because once you've spent so long learning about this kind of stuff, when somebody comes along and says,

hey, have you ever noticed this about the text? It just is interesting to me, because this is something that I've known about for years and here's something new that I'm discovering. So I just fell into this, I don't know. The only way I can describe it is a bit like how people get interested in all kinds of texts. People have their favorite play or something like that.

I'm going to push back a little bit. I find that a little disingenuous that you're saying The reason I'm interested in the Gospels is the thing I'm the most familiar with. I could be familiar with, you know, the work of, you know... In Venice, there aren't like... Zarathustra or, you know, the epic of Gilgamesh or something, but... There aren't world religions that have sprung up that are as relevant to the people I interact with today around something like the...

So there's a certain level of relevance to it as well. Because also, I do philosophy more broadly. I talk about ethics. I talk about a free will. I talk about all of this kind of stuff. And in doing that, people always come to the table with religion. It always comes up. You know, you're talking about the big questions with people.

Around half of them are probably going to be religious. And some of them are going to be Christian. And I just find these conversations so interesting. It's fascinating talking about this with you. Really, I'm truly fascinated. And I love getting a non-Christian's perspective on the gospel, I try and dive in occasionally on my own and understand it. And it's so difficult to separate it from canon.

Yeah, and please take my words with a pinch of salt. Sure. Your listeners should, like, if I've said something that's an egregious error, you know, don't blame rain. I'm just, I'm just a guy, I'm just an atheist. We're having a conversations. What do I know? I'm just a stupid sitcom actor.

But I did want to pick your brain about atheism. And I know right now I would call you kind of a spiritual, A spiritual atheist, is such a thing possible? Can one be a spiritual atheist? How would that work? I'm never quite sure what someone means by spiritual. Do you mean like has a spirit or believes that? An atheist that incorporates kind of transcendent emotions into a larger kind of heart-based compassion. I would say I into their belief structure and way of living. I leave room for it. I don't believe in anything transcendent of the material,

but I haven't, like, ruled it out, you know? I'm not a materialist in the sense of saying there is only the material. Are you now considering yourself an agnostic? Yeah, yeah, I think... Is that a cop-out? A lot of people would say, like, you know, Sebastian Younger came on the show,

and he's like, it's a bullshit cop-out. You're either an atheist or you're a theist. You know, of course, of course there's an agnostic. We can't know anything. We can't know any truth. What do you think? Well, I've heard people say that. And usually it's an atheist of the type of Christopher Hitchens,

who wants to say that agnostics are just atheists without a backbone or something. It's like, okay, man, I still don't know if God exists. Like, that is just true. I don't know. It would be maybe a cop out if I was intentionally, like, calling myself one just for, like, better PR or something. But if anything, it has the opposite effect, because I get a lot of flat for not being too, you know, firm in a position.

As I like to say, I will die on this fence. I think it is the most reasonable position to hold, especially because there are so many levels of agnosticism. It's like, okay, is it that you don't know? Is it that you think that it's unknowable? Because it could be that, like, you know, I'm agnostic about whether it's raining outside. But I believe we could go and find out with a little bit of effort

if it's raining outside. But there's a kind of agnosticism which says you can't know. Right, so I could be an agnostic in the sense, like, you know, some random uncle of mine or something who's never really thought about theology would probably say if I were to ask, like, yeah, I guess I'm an agnostic, I don't know. But that's just because, oh, I haven't looked at the arguments.

If I have a look, I'll figure it out. There are others who have studied all of the arguments, still say they're agnostic, but because they think you won't be able to get to an answer, right? And it's a difference saying, I just don't know and I can't know. But there's also an agnosticism that comes about as not knowing what someone's talking about.

Do you believe in God? I was like, what do you mean by God? You know, what do you mean by God? Really? It's that annoying Petersonian question, but you need to know. The classical, like, Thomist philosophers will say that God is being itself. God is just being. What the hell does it mean to say that being doesn't exist? What does that even mean? It's like a contradiction. But if you think that God is just being, then you could, as an atheist, be like, yeah, okay, well, I believe that stuff exists. And I guess that makes me a pantheist. And it all starts getting muddy and confused. Sure. So it's like, okay. We talked about this before in the limitations of language. Yeah, it's like, ask me, like, define the thing you want to know if I believe in, and ask me if I believe in it, and I will tell you to the best of my ability, whether I can or I can't. But if somebody says that agnosticism is just a cop-out,

well, I think that's a rhetorical cop-out. I think they're just sort of saying something that's a bit sort of spicy and fun and makes you sound like an edgy atheist, but it is actually indicative of either not understanding or purposefully misrepresenting the position of the agnostic. You said before that you don't believe it anything beyond the material, and in our previous conversation, I described kind of my definition of God

as being much more akin to something like beauty or truth or even love. Have you ever been in love? Yeah. You've been in love. You've felt deep love. For a partner, a romantic partner. Yeah.

And have you felt it for a family member? Yeah. I mean, you know, one always wants to say, I think so, because I imagine that, for example, when you have a child for the first time, and yeah, that's the problem, isn't it? Okay. But I can kind of imagine. You think that you have felt love, but you don't know that you've felt it on the kind of a level of, like, having a child or something like.

That's what I mean. It's like, I'm sure that when you have a child, it's a- It changes the paradigm. I had a Christian friend who recently had a child and said that having a child made them suddenly understand, not the sacrifice of Jesus as sacrificing himself, but the sacrifice of the father sacrificing his only son. He was like, I've just unlocked this whole new understanding of what it means to love a son.

I have a new understanding of God and the divine when I had a child. I didn't have it. My wife had it. And my wife and my child almost died in childbirth. It was a horrific story. And it was in the middle of the night in a hallway in the emergency room

and a hospital in Van Nuys, California. it was utter childbirth nightmare that I wouldn't wish on anyone. Everyone survived. It came out great. And I held my son in one of the most profound moments of my life in this hallway at 4 a.m., having him almost die and being brought back from death. And there I was. And I looked him in the eyes.

And I felt a kind of love on a level that I had never experienced before. and it made me understand God in a different way because the idea of a judgmental God, a punishing God, a God that is scowling and looking down on us and keeping little marks of what we've done wrong and that if someone sins or heirs, they're going to be cast out or punished or smited

or sent to hell or something like that becomes preposterous. Yeah. Because when you love this child so much, of course there are consequences to behaviors, you know, when my son did some nefarious activities here and there in his teenage years, there were consequences to it. But the love never wavered and the idea of some kind of like undying punishment from me to this

beautiful little creature that had come into the world was beyond the possibility. And then I'm just an unemployed sitcom. actor with a mediocre podcast. What do I know? Let alone the divine being, father, creator of love itself. How much love, how much intimacy, closeness, and light does this, you know,

this essence hold us all. The idea of like some kind of punishment or smiting then just becomes ludicrous. So it did for me shift my perspective of the divine. Yeah. That makes sense. And there are things which experience gives you that you just can't quite put into words. I mean, William James famously tried to sort of analyze what religious experience is.

And he comes up with these, I think there are like four qualities. And one of the qualities of religious experience is its ineffability. You cannot put it into words. You can't explain it. It's something that you literally just can't explain. It's like taking psychedelics, right? If you take psychedelics and you try to explain what it's like, you can kind of get halfway there. but there is a kind of knowledge that consists in experience.

I heard it in an interview that you did, and I was listening to a clip of it, and you were talking about, like, imagine someone trying to write an essay about the color blue. Yeah, yeah. You could know a little bit. It could give you some clues into the color blue, but if you'd never seen color before

and you grew up in a gray room or you were colorblind or whatever, and all of a sudden you had access to color, seeing the color blue is a very different experience than reading about the color blue. Yeah, this is a thought experiment called Mary's Room. So you imagine Mary in this room. But you can make it even worse because you can say,

imagine that Mary in this black and white room that she's born in has access to everything that ever even could be written or uncovered or understood about the color blue. All the science that we yet to discover, all the color theory, everything

that could even be known. She has it all written down. She studies it all. And then she steps outside and she sees something blue. The question is, does she learn something? It seems like the answer is yes.

And if that's the case, then there is a kind of knowledge that consists and experience. And that is best. And love is like that. And that points us to love because I think that love is the greatest kind of analogy to God. And you said, I don't believe in anything kind of transcendent beyond the material. Do you believe that love is merely kind of neurons and endorphins in the brain,

united with some kind of DNA kind of like impetus towards propagation of the species? That's a genuine mystery because I think that's tied up to the question of consciousness. broadly. I don't have any problem saying that the experience of love is something like a feeling. It's something that you very strongly feel. And so if you're going to be a materialist about consciousness in general, you can say that love is just one of those feelings that is neurons in the brain. But not specific to love, just specific to feeling anything. I find it very strange to say that not that the feeling of love or the seeing of blue is correlated with brain activity, but that that is the brain activity.

that love is the same thing as the neurons firing in my brain when I feel love. I'm not interested in what the brain's doing. I'm interested in the experience that correlates with that brain activity. If the experience of seeing blue is just neurons firing in my brain, if that's what blue is, I should be able to cut open your brain and find blue in there somewhere, but you can't. There's something called blue, this experience that you have,

which goes alongside the brain activity, but is not the same thing as it. That is the greatest mystery for materialists to explain, which is why I'm agnostic. So I say I leave room for this. I don't say I'm a materialist. The biggest challenge for that is consciousness. Well, one of the biggest disservices that atheists, I feel, do to themselves and to their cause, because atheists can be extremely evangelical, is this idea that consciousness is an illusion.

It's the Daniel Dennett kind of thing, like we're getting all of these inputs, and our brain makes them become a totality of experience, but it's all illusory, including emotion. And that free will is also an illusion, but that, you know, between our DNA and between our neurons firing and our background and our BF Skinner kind of behavioralist way that we've grown up in our culture, you know, any choice that we're seeming to make has actually been pre-wired into our cognition, but if atheists hold to, consciousness is an illusion, and there's no such thing as free will, you're not going to gain a lot of converts. Because if you go to a random house over here in Thousand Oaks, California, have you heard the bad news? Like, hey, by the way, guys, you're,

you know your experience of being a human being, you know memories and growing up and falling in love and breaking your leg and losing your uncle and seeing the Mona Lisa for the first time. By the way, that's all an illusion. And in fact, you didn't even really experience that. And you didn't even choose to go to Italy and go see the Mona Lisa. That was all chosen for you in a variety of different ways. You're not really doing yourselves any favor by gaining people over to the Asian bandwagon. The few issues I'd have to raise to that, though, are firstly that truth doesn't have to be palatable.

If it is actually the case, you might not have many converts to it, but if it is the case, then it just is the case. Also, some people will say that you could. Christians would say the same thing. That's true, but that's the thing. Burning in hell may not be palatable. It doesn't convert people, but it's true. And so I think, you know, the kind of atheist materialist you're talking about would say the same thing.

Technically speaking, you don't have to be a materialist to be an atheist because atheism is being without odd. You could believe that there's an immaterial existence. You could believe in mind-body dualism, but not believe that there's a god, for example. That's another important thing to spell out. but yeah I mean the idea that consciousness is a is an illusion I think is pretty confused having said that I haven't thought about this as much as Daniel Dennett has so you know I have to temper my words but I really think that that's almost a contradiction in terms there's also another sort of element

that's missing from this picture you know we talk about that only being the material or there being the material but also this like mind stuff this immaterial thing there's also a position that there's only the mind stuff and that the material doesn't exist Oh, that's good. I know my friend Stephen Phelps is out there watching, and he's all in favor of that. You lit up like a Christmas tree. He's so happy right now.

So they call it idealism, at least in one of its forms. Okay, I hadn't heard of that in terms of... It's kind of mysterious how materialists account for consciousness, but they say, like, in some way, the conscious experience is just emergent of material properties. And the idealist says that the material world is emergent of a mind. So George Barclay is sort of the classic philosopher to think about here, he starts by sort of asking the reader to be like,

it's impossible to separate the thing from your idea of the thing. Like if you try to imagine a tree that's just on its own somewhere in a forest, you've got the concept in your mind. The thing that's in your mind is the concept of the tree. You don't have a material tree in your mind. It's the concept. And like your sense's experience, you're only seeing a representation of what's in front of you.

Is that kind of like Plato's forms, like the ideal form? Plato is sort of abstracting from objects. to understand why this is a cup and that's also a cup. What is it they have in common? They're far apart from each other. They're different colors, they're different shapes. What is it they have in common? Well, they both share in this abstract thing called a form.

That's a whole other thing, which I also think kind of maybe points to consciousness, but that's really interesting. But no, Barclay is talking about you can't think of a thing without thinking of the thing, nothing exists except insofar as it's being thought about. Now, I think there are so many holes spoken in this, but this is Barclay's position. So he's like, you know, when you see a table, you're just seeing your mind's representation of the table.

You don't see the table directly. Same thing like Kant points out. You know, you don't have direct access to the table is through your experience. Okay, well, the same thing with anything. And the critic says, well, I can conceive of a cup just existing on its own. And it's Barkley's like, yeah, but you're conceiving of it.

And so what you're imagining is a thought. So here comes the objection to this position. Aha, okay, well, Mr. Barkley, if I have a candle and I like the candle and I look at it, and then I leave the room and I don't think about it, no one's thinking about the candle. And yet I come back, and the candle has melted. there must have been a time in between where the candle existed,

but no one was thinking about it. So existed separate from thought. And Barclay says, I still think that things only exist in so far as they're being thought about. But what you've just proven is that there is always some kind of mind thinking about everything all at once. And that's what God is for George Barclay. So Barclay thinks that God exists and the entire material universe is like a thought of God,

which is kind of interesting. The player's form thing is interesting because there is this great mystery. Why is this a cup? Why is this a cup? Why is this a table and this not a table? It's actually a really difficult question to answer. Because there are better and worse tables. What makes a table better or worse than another one?

It seems to imply that you have some idea of what a perfect table is and something's either closer or further away from that. Okay, so will that suffice for our answer? Well, maybe, but I could say that that pencil is further away from the ideal form of a table than this table is. So does that make that pencil a bad table? It's like, well, you're just thinking into things into existence. So this is a wonderful position that I believe in called myriological nihilism,

which is the idea that essentially there are no distinction. You're making up all these words. That's crazy. Myriology is the study of parts. It's nihilism about parts. So I'll put it this way. Do you think this table began to exist at some point? Yes.

Okay. So probably roughly the time when whoever put it together, like, Yeah, put the legs on. Sure. But the thing is, nothing actually began to exist, right? All that happened was a bunch of pre-existing material was, like, rearranged. So somebody puts the legs on the table and suddenly something new exists? What's changed?

Like, why is it that the table exists now, but five seconds ago it didn't, when all the material is still there? There's nothing new in existence. All that's happened is it's been rearranged. See what I'm saying? So what makes this a table? It seems to just be like its arrangement. But arrangement isn't like an intrinsic property of the universe. It's something that your mind does.

Your mind determines what arrangements are and what they mean. So if I've got a bunch of like atoms and I take all of those atoms and I merge some of them into the shape of a shoe and I merge some of them into the shape of a cup, then suddenly a shoe exists and a cup exists. But all that's actually happened is I've taken a bunch of material that already exists and just arranged it and given it a label. And isn't stuff ultimately just energy?

Isn't that what Einstein was pointing at anyway? are like interchangeable. So, yeah. So you just have energy in the shape of a shoe and energy in the shape of a cup. Exactly, but the only thing that can determine

the distinctness of those objects that that is a shoe and that is a cup is that your mind puts a label on it. Your mind puts that organizational label on it. So you can imagine the... There have been some very low evenings

in my life where I have drunk out of a shoe. And you're like, this is a bad cup. Yeah, this is a really stinky, foul cup. You are more right than you know. More right than you know.

But imagine the first person to perceive anything. You know, no experience of the universe, no knowledge of anything. They open their eyes, you know, Adam of Adam and Eve. And they see this table in front of us. There's a cup here and there's a microphone. Would they think that like there are all these distinct objects? Would they perceive one really weirdly shaped object? Would they know that this green cable is not part of the table?

Yeah. But that this like slab here is part of the same thing as this slab. There's all these lines, all these aberrations, all these bumps. How would they determine what's the table and what's the paper? It requires some kind of like mental distinction. So people are going to listen to this like I've lost my mind. But I promise you, it's a very defensible position. But the reason I bring it up is because there's an argument from a guy called Peter Van Ingwagon

or the immateriality of the mind, which says this. Premise 1. There is no real distinction between material objects. The only distinction between material objects is like arrangement and what the mind gives labels to. There's no real distinction, actual distinction, between material objects. Premise two.

Minds are really distinct. My mind is distinct from your mind. It's a lot smarter. I don't know about that. To start with. If there's no distinction between material objects, no real distinction between material objects. But there is a real distinction between minds.

That means mind are not material objects. Because they're distinct and material objects are not. really distinct. It's a bit of a thinker, but I think it's got a lot going for it. But I find fascinating this idea that objects kind of don't exist. What is the best argument you've ever heard in your infinite number of debates, both online and in person, for the existence of God? There are so many. I think there's even an argument for the existence of God that can be made just from the number of arguments of the existence of God. The fact that there's an argument from beauty,

an argument from contingency, from ontology, from maths, from like, any way you look, there's an argument for God. So you can always make an argument for God's existence from the sheer number of arguments for God's existence. I haven't heard that before. That's great. Depends what you mean. My favorite for a while has been the so-called ontological argument where you sort of think God into existence. I think it's quite fun. You can just do it from an armchair. It doesn't require any observation. I mean, that's quite fun. I mean, it goes back to St. Anselm, who is praying, he's writing down this prayer. And he sort of challenges you in a way. He says, can you conceive of the greatest conceivable being? Just think of the greatest conceivable

being. So whatever qualities it has, power, goodness, all this kind of stuff, just turn it up to the maximal conceivable amount, right? And you've got it in your head, you're picturing, you're thinking of just the greatest conceivable being? Okay. Does that being exist in reality? Here's the problem. If you say no, then you're not doing what I asked you to. Because you can conceive But isn't that the limitation of the mind? I mean, we talked about this in terms of the Baha'i faith, about God being the unknowable essence and that men have created a God in their minds

that they falsely worship, right? But we're not talking about God. We're just talking about the greatest conceivable being. Okay. Which by definition, you can conceive it. You just go to the ends of your conceivable. Okay. Okay. And sounds like you can conceive of that being existing

just in your mind or existing in your mind and also in reality. So if the thing you're picturing is something, like a really powerful, really loving, really, you know, great being, it kind of approximates what people call God. You can imagine that, either just existing in your mind as you're thinking about it, or maybe it exists in your mind, but it also exists in reality. But if it exists in reality and the mind, then it's greater. It's got more existence, right? And so when you're just asked to conceive of the greatest conceivable being, if you're not automatically thinking

of a being that exists in reality, then you're not thinking of the greatest conceivable being. but because you can think of the greatest conceivable being by definition you're automatically thinking of a being that exists in reality therefore this god must exist in reality it's my favorite because it sounds a bit stupid even said you're not buying it he said what about the greatest conceivable unicorn this is the greatest objection to anselm's people say oh well you're just thinking god into existence

because what about the greatest conceivable unicorn like okay um but what you've just done is limited your scope because I asked you to imagine the one on the book. This is the greatest conceivable unicorn right here. I was like, okay, imagine the greatest conceivable thing, right? And I'm like, that thing must exist in reality. Okay, well, the greatest conceivable unicorn has limited our scope.

Right, there could be a unicorn that you're imagining that's greater than another unicorn you're imagining, right? Okay, we can make that unicorn a better unicorn, like giving it a sharper horn and a more beautiful mane or whatever. But like, even if we imagine the greatest conceivable, conceivable unicorn, we can make that unicorn a greater conceivable thing by giving it even more qualities. Well, let's make that unicorn all-powerful. Telepathic. Yeah. It doesn't make it a better unicorn, but it makes it a better thing.

Right. And so, like, the question is, does the unicorn existing in reality make it a better unicorn than just existing in the mind? And it seems like kind of not really, because the things that make a unicorn great are things like a nice mane, a pointy horn and stuff. And the one in your head has all of those things. It has all of the things that are the great making properties of a unicorn. It's all in the one that you're thinking of.

And if it existed in reality, I don't know if that is a better great making property of a unicorn, right? Whereas if you're asking about the greatest conceivable thing, then you're maximizing all the properties, not just the unicorn-making properties, but all properties a thing can have, including levels of existence. It's a bit much. I sort of hesitate to bring it up because it is my favorite. But it's a bit difficult to...

But let's continue on that, because what comes to my mind, and we discussed this when I was on your pod, is I tried to be an atheist. Yeah. And I really spent a good couple years, at least, just really trying to exist in a world that inherently didn't have any meaning to it or didn't have any kind of transcendent power

beyond what could be kind of determined through scientific diagnosis. And it just didn't add up to me. It didn't make sense to me. It didn't work for me. It just didn't add up. I mean, I guess what's the famous watch on the beach analogy of God? Yeah, the teleological argument. Yes, that you, if you're walking along a beach and you see a perfectly functioning Swiss watch, you're not going to go, oh, wow, all of these elements just fell together here on this beach and created this beautiful, perfect watch. that's incredibly, you'd be like there's someone made the watch. Yeah.

When I deeply imagine a three-dimensional universe made of, you know, energy, but, you know, matter and atoms and dark matter and there was a big bang and there's, there's galaxies, and that it just happened. It just existed. It just sprang into existence and that there are, you know, physical laws. And then somehow out of that chemistry became biosecern. biology and creatures were created and there was paramecium and then there was, you know, little amoebas and whatnot. And then they evolved into creatures and somehow we have a creature and we have a large

consciousness and we're having this conversation of this podcast. When I think of the totality of that without any kind of greater power or energy, it doesn't make sense to me, not just on a cognitive level. It just doesn't make sense in my heart. It doesn't make sense in my life experience. when I picture all of that with some kind of greater unknowable energy beyond time and space coursing through it, it makes total sense to me. So does that go hand in hand with what you're talking about, about a conception of God? Because you can say, try and conceive of a universe without anything other than stuff and the properties that govern that stuff.

There are two things to say here. One is that, like, can we? understand how things like emergent conscious experience just appear in this universe if there's no god but also can we understand how there's like complexity without some kind of creator on the first point i saw a video the other day of a of like a of like a CPU and a computer this tiny little microchip zoomed in on a microscope and it's incredible i mean they are so tiny and just packed with little electronic functions. And I genuinely just don't understand how computers work.

I do not understand how people get a bunch of metal and copper and stuff like this. Yeah. Arrange it in a particular way. And you're able to sort of produce like... You're able to watch this video on the YouTube channel. Like, like, beamed over... Like all of this is just because people have put atoms in the right order, doing things that now people can, like, hear the words that we're saying.

Instead of a table or a shoe, it's a computer. And I'm like, that is an unfathomable mystery to me. Like, am I, like, if I saw a computer for the first time and it was, I was playing chess with it, and it was talking back to me, and it was connected to the internet, and it allowed me to speak to my mother halfway across the globe or something, right? I said, what on earth is this? Like, if you showed it to someone 200 years ago, what is this magic? What is this, what is this sorcery?

And you said, oh, it's just, it's just made out of, like, you know, metal and zeros and ones. They would literally just not believe you. They would like that, I'm sorry. That doesn't make sense. It just doesn't make sense. But the computer is in fact reducible for those metal objects just clanging into each other and producing this.

Or does a magnitude more confusing and amazing thing? But there weren't a bunch of molecules in a shoebox and you shook them up. And then it's like monkeys writing Shakespeare and then you pull it out and there's a laptop. By the way, they've actually done that research. Somebody put some monkeys in a room with a typewriter. It turns out that they don't type randomly.

They had like a fondness for the letter F or something. So you probably wouldn't get Shakespeare even with them for no amount of time. But... That's cute. Like, yeah, so the other problem, so firstly, like, can this all be reducible to the material? I struggle with that. I think that would be incredible if it would the case.

But I think it's incredible to imagine the computers can do that, but we know that they do. The other question then is where does that complexity come from? No matter whether you can create these incredible emergent things, why is there that complexity? Who put it that way? And of course, the problem with the watch analogy is that we don't believe that complexity, like biological complexity just came about, which popped into existence. We believe that it evolved through natural selection. And so it would be as if you saw this watch that was incredibly complex.

And then you discovered billions of years, billions of years of watches, which somehow were able to reproduce themselves. And every time they reproduced, they had slight differences. Sometimes they ran a little faster, sometimes a little slower. And for some reason, whichever ones were closer to accurately recording the time. we're more likely to keep reproducing. Yes, but if there's also a lot... That would sort of do away with the mystery of it.

But if there's also the law of second law of thermodynamics that says that everything is going to be falling apart, why is there an impetus towards life and ever increasing complexity? Because that applies in a closed system. And of course, we're constantly getting extra energy from outside of the earth. We get it from the sun.

So eventually, this will all have to come to an end and we'll all sort of die in a heat death. but for now, like entropy can, entropy can go in the wrong direction in isolated pockets. And that's something like what's happening on this podcast. But it can't go on forever is probably, probably the point. But I don't want to just dismiss it because it is a powerful consideration. Why is there something rather than nothing?

How do we explain this complexity? We can explain the complexity of biological organisms, but we can't explain the complexity of the fine-tuning of the universe, those constants. That's something that's outside of our purview, you know, and that's still a mystery. But I would just remind people to keep in mind that there can be things which are inconceivable and yet are the case. Like the reducibility of computers for the person 500 years ago, they literally just wouldn't be able to comprehend what you're talking about. Because even to be able to organize like metallic objects on that microscopic level, for any reason, would have been impossible to them,

let alone doing it in such a way that brings about a perfect representation of somebody across the globe who can then talk back to you. They just would not believe you. They would not believe you. And yet it can be done. There are greater things in heaven and earth than I dreamt of in your philosophy, you know. Which would always consistently point me toward the divine. But what would it take for you to become a theist?

would it take increased understanding, would it be an argument, would it be some kind of scientific proof, you know, on some kind of, you know, molecular level, or some kind of string theory or unified theory or something like that, you know, being proved that kind of has a light bulb go off for you, or would it be some kind of lived experience, some kind of transcendent experience that you had

with either psychedelics or falling in love or through tragedy or a vision? Or would it take some combination of all of those? Or could it ever, ever possibly happen to you or someone like you? I think it would be the second. I think it would be an experience for a few reasons. The first is that I think that the most plausible

of traditional religions is probably a form of Christianity because I think it has the best historical evidence especially if you don't need to swallow the idea that Jesus is God. He's just like all this kind of stuff. I think that's kind of plausible. And within Christianity, it's quite clear that the way that people come to God is through experience. Why Christianity over Islam? I think it has better historical case for the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus,

both of which Islam denies. So you would need a miracle, like a resurrection, to kind of prove to you the divine truth of Christianity? No, I think that if the resurrection of Jesus happened as it was recorded, that would be a pretty good indication that there's something really special about this Jesus guy and we should be taking what he says very seriously. Like, Muslims will say the same thing

that Jesus is a very serious guy who needs to be taken seriously, but they don't believe he was crucified. So if we knew that he was crucified and resurrected, we'd know we'd need to pay attention to him and in a way that Muslims have misunderstood because they don't believe in that. Of course, I don't believe that Jesus did rise from the dead.

I think that there's better evidence for that as a historical case for this, like, worldly religion than there is for other world religions. I might be wrong about that. But I do think personal experience is the way to bring it about. Even in the Christian tradition, people come to belief through experience.

The disciples see the miracles. Jesus himself, arguably, is a visionary. When he's sort of, at his baptism, he sees the voice of God. The dove. And interestingly, the only place, if it's not just a vision,

I think the only place where the Trinity is all physically present. You have the voice of God. The voice of God, the father, vibrating the air. So the voice, you've got the dove as the Holy Spirit and you have the sun there as well.

They're all physically present in this space. Paul's vision of Jesus is a bright light and Paul also elsewhere talks about going up into the seventh heaven and having these visions. It seems like there's something about experiencing the living Jesus that brings people to faith.

The other problem is that if God does exist and is the kind of God that wants you to know he exists, it'd be a very weird place for him to hide his existence like in some in like premise 48 of one of Ed Faiser's 200 premise argument for the existence of God. If I'm going to turn a page and turn it and go like, ah, there, there he is, I found God. Firstly, it tells me that, like, am I supposed to think that people who are like me,

who are convinced by the same kinds of things as me, but don't have the time or the education to read an argument like that because they're too busy being a single mother, bringing up a family somewhere, and they haven't got time to just sit around reading books that they're not going to meet God because, you know, they have to sit down and read this 200 premise syllogism. That would seem totally unfair and like academically elitist, which doesn't seem in keeping with the character of God. I would expect that the thing that convinces you of God's existence would be a religious

experience of some kind, but that if you do want to do the syllogisms and the arguments, God's there too, of course, because God's everywhere. And if you're interested, then, yeah, you'll find him there. But that's not what it takes to believe in God. you know what I mean? But then it's also true that maybe God just meets you where you're at. Like if you are an analytical person who likes argument and debate, then that's where God will place himself for your discovery. But if you're not, if you just care about having a nice time with your friends and your family and loving each other,

then that's where God will place himself to be discovered too. So it's possible that I would discover him in argument. But if I did, I don't think that would be a universal course that everybody should take to. Well, and in my case, and in so many people's cases, God comes out of anguish. So your only hope left is to be on your knees and throw out a lifeline. And you then have an experience of God because you feel like you're going to die if you don't have it. I haven't had a vision of the divine, but I've had an experience of the divine in terms of it.

I was lost and now I'm found. I was blind and now I can see. I'd want something that is an experience that I can identify is an experience of God. or divinity, let's say, that is distinguishable from what I would expect to feel if I were like a confused ape subject to hallucinations. Because like when I meet people who've had religious experiences and they say like, I met, I spoke someone just the other day who said that she met Jesus, she gave him a hug. And I'm like, I can imagine somehow your brain tricking you into that experience or something. Maybe, I don't know. But if I met Jesus physically embodied, gave him a.

hug and afterwards was convinced that that's what actually happened. Even if my brain was just going, hey, wire, there's just no way that I'm going to just dismiss that. I'm going to believe in Jesus, right? And so if that happens, then it happens. So it needs to be an experience, but it also needs to make. Was it a metaphorical hug or actual tangible hug? As far as I know, she, she, like, actually, like, people report.

And what was he wearing? Was he wearing contemporary clothing or like an Aramaic robe? That's the thing. It was annoying. I didn't get the chance to ask. Because I'm always fascinating. Like, what do you mean? Like, did he knock on the door?

Did he appear? How tall was he? Because wasn't the historical Jesus, probably like 5-1? We don't know, but there is an interesting point. You know, Zakias has to climb up a tree to see Jesus because he's short? That Jesus is short or Zachias is short? Well, that's the question. It's ambiguous in the Greek.

I mean, it's quite clear, like, it's probably implying that Zechia's is short. But just interestingly, it could be the case. You know, the Greek sort of... Well, the average height back then. Yeah, but even for average, because it says that, like Jesus is preaching, and it says that Zechias had to climb up a tree because he couldn't see Jesus because he was short. And the implication is that Zechias is the short, but it could mean...

It could be that Jesus was short as well. Yeah. That's quite fun. We don't know, of course. Which is another reason why the Pharisees didn't buy Jesus as the Messiah. Yeah. Well, it would be in keeping with the idea of Jesus being born into a sort of life of poverty and being, you know, ascetic and all this kind of stuff because maybe he's a short king,

short king of the Jews. Short king of the Jews. Recently we had on the show, Sebastian Younger, who died in the wool atheist, who had a near-death experience. Did you get to read his book? It's a fabulous. It's called him My Time of Dying. No, I haven't. But I was just about to ask you about NDAs.

And that's what I wanted to ask you was, here is a Died in the Wool atheist who had an NDE, had a vision where he saw his father next to him in the hospital room when he was essentially dead. and he had this vision of a large black space opening him up, opening up and pulling him in. And his father kind of imparted to him like, I'm here for you. I'm going to be your guide and I will show you around. It wasn't a typical like angel of light and tunnel and, you know, loving family gathered around.

And, you know, it was a little bit scary and off-putting. And his father was an atheist too. So he was kind of having this vision of his father going like, You're an atheist and you're here? What the hell is going on? It's like Virgil showing Dante around the Inferno. Right, a little bit. I'll be your tour guide.

But one of the things that I found so interesting in Sebastian's book is he drills down into the science of near-death experiences. And he has a lot of explanations about how people could have them under anesthesia and how certain dopamine releases happen. Ketamine releases happen when the brain is shut off. and there may be manufactured visions, you know, you perceive time in a different way, et cetera, et cetera. But he said, but the one thing, when you explore NDE's and you explore them in every culture of the world

and every time period of the world, is this idea of ancestors and family appearing, reaching out their hand and saying, come with me, I've got you, and they're being a sense of great love. And that kind of defies science. is that in every culture in the world? If you go to the pygmies, you know, if you go to the Mongolians, why is there this, this consistent, persistent vision of loved ones showing you around?

And I was just wondering for you, and in your thinking, because going back to that question, what would it take for you to become a believer? Do you have thoughts on NDEs? Have you, have you spoken to anyone about those kind of visions? I've never met someone who's had an NDE. I quite like to because I have a lot of time for this, like a lot of, a lot of atheists, skeptic types, just sort of, even if they don't really know exactly why, they're just like, I just, and they're not well accounted enough.

They're not replicable in a scientific study. So I have a lot of time for this because I think it's fascinating, the fact that so many people are at least convinced that this happened, especially in the case of veridical experiences. You know, the famous one with a shoe on top of the building. Right. And somebody, somebody just, they just rose above their body.

And they saw a shoe on ring. That you could conduct scientific experiments on near death experiences very easily. they've had little, what you're referring to, they've had little stabs at it, but you could have a hospital center. And you could, on the roof, unbeknownst to anyone, above, you know, surgery or ER or whatever,

you could set up different patterns or shapes or something like that and don't let anyone know, you know, week in, week out. And then if people have near-death experiences, they can say there was a red triangle on the roof and like, no, there was a blue circle on the roof. You could literally, prove the existence of NDEs.

I suspect that if that happened, then the immediate response would be, people would suspect that they had somehow hurt that there was this thing on the ceiling, that the doctors thought they were in a coma, and so they were talking about it. Oh, I wonder if you'll see the red triangle on the roof. Even if that's not actually what happens,

I just imagine there's so much room for suspicion there that it wouldn't be enough to convince people. I think when people talk about science, the key thing is like replicability. So you would need to have the same result shown over and over again, which could potentially happen if you had someone changing the roof, but the methodological constraints would be big.

You need to make sure that nobody knew what was on the roof. Maybe you could like randomize it. You could have like a screen which randomly switches between images. And you can look in retrospect of which one is a big LED screen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you could have it in 20 different hospitals at 20 different locations around the globe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I think there are ways that you could do that. But it would take a long time before there was enough. And also, you never know when an ND is going to happen. There's any billionaires watching right now that want to fund this study the next. It wouldn't be expensive, would it? You just put something on the roof, you know? We could just go and do it, like, if we, you know, get a ladder or something, you just pop up stuff.

But more thoughts on NDEs. But, like, they are an incredible mystery, especially in the case. I mean, people who sort of say, I saw my family members, I saw this kind of thing, especially if somebody was kind of already confronting the idea that they might be about to die and thinking about, especially if they're predisposed being religious, this guy is not, which is what makes it a little more interesting. But, you know, the idea that you might see your family, it's like, well, what would you expect your mind to start inventing?

probably something like that, which is why I think it's really cool and interesting, but I'm much more troubled by the veridical experiences. I saw this thing that I shouldn't have seen, that I could only have seen if I floated above the room. The problem is that those don't have, I think there are accounts, but they're a little bit patchy. Like, I'm pretty sure the shoe on the roof thing or whatever. No, there's thousands of accounts like that. I heard this conversation or I knew this person and saw someone in the hallway doing X, Y, and Z. And also no to the question of...

But it is a little bit hearsay. I mean, it's... Yeah, but that's the problem. But then if you're going to rule out sort of hearsay or like in your investigation into anything, then you basically just put this off the table for investigation. You can't say it doesn't happen. You just say that it's not something we can scientifically investigate.

But that's why I say, like, I'm perhaps unique amongst atheist skeptics and that I have a lot of time for it, I think it's fascinating. I really want to know. And to answer your question about me becoming atheist, if I had an experience like that, if I, like, nearly died and I came back and I was like, like, dude, I don't know what to tell you.

I was just above the scene. I saw like three different firefighters trying to cut me out of this car. I was just up there. And somebody would say, ah, but that was probably this. I'm like, okay, like, whatever, man, I know what I saw. And that would be enough to do it for me. I'm absolutely certain. One really interesting thing to me is what happens to the mind in relation to brain activity.

My favorite example of what I'm talking about here is psychedelics. You can put someone in an MRI scanner. This has been done. and see what happens to their brain activity when they do something like psychedelics. So you can measure if someone's brain activity is going up whether someone's brain activity is going down. So somebody's in an MRI scanner

and their brain activity is going off. Then they take a psychedelic drug and they're having this crazy mental experience that they're put in the MRI scanner and their brain activity has gone down. Down. Brain activity has gone down when the mental activity has gone up.

Aldous Huxley in The Doors of Perception, which I have not read, talks about his experience on psychedelic drug long before the science. And he says that when he takes a psychedelic drug, his mind was opened. And he thinks, well, hold on. What does it mean if my mind was opened? That means that normally there's something closing my mind.

What's closing my mind? My brain. So he said that the brain is a tool for focusing the mind. In the philosophy of like the interaction problem, how does the immaterial mind interact with the material brain, there's this one helpful analogy of like a satellite dish. brain is like the satellite dish for the mind. It's a real physical object that you need in order to get the projection, but it's not the signal itself, right? I think that's a really useful way of thinking about it. But the thing is, if, as your brain activity goes down, your

mind can sort of go up, it's almost like your mind is escaping the constraints of the material brain. The inevitable question is what happens when that brain activity goes down to zero. But of course, there are countercases because, like, you know, when you take anesthesia and your brain activity, it's what so does your experience. It's just gone, right? So it's, so it's, All I'm saying is there's a lot of mystery. But so many NDEs happen when people have almost no brain activity. Exactly. And so it seems to be at least in keeping with this stuff about psychedelics,

because the kind of experience that you're, because also that's why I want to talk to someone who's had this experience, because is it something like, I'd like to speak someone who's done psychedelics and then has an NDE and be like, is the experience you had more like a sort of normal everyday experience? Or was it something like, because on psychedelics, like you can look down at this table and you can see a chameleon, But you don't see a chameleon like pop into existence and start running around.

You kind of just see it in the table in a way that, you know, I forget the word for it, but you know like the hyperactive agent detector where you see faces and things. If you see like two dots and a line underneath them, your brain sees a face in it. Yeah. And if you try to explain to someone who didn't have that, what do you mean you see a face? Well, I don't literally see a face. But like I just sort of see a face in it in a weird way. And I think a lot of psychedelic visions are a bit like that.

It's like, yeah, no, the tree turned into a squirrel, but not like in the literal cartoonish sense that you might be imagining right now. Is the NDE experience more like that kind of vision? Or is it more like, no, I literally was just like looking at this table and there was a there was a shoe on the table. You know what I mean? Like if you have a dream in the dream like where you're at Walmart with your uncle and then you wake up and you suddenly realize that, well, I was in Walmart, but everything was pink. and like I had a tale but in the dream you kind of didn't notice it because it's just like a weird visionary experience

I'm like, is the end of year a bit like that? Who knows? I don't know because I haven't spoken to these people but at the very least this thing about psychedelics which fascinate me brain activity go down, mind goes up that makes me much more sort of credulous to the position that on a near-death experience

the mind sort of is going off somewhere but the mystery for me there then is if what we're supposed to take from this is that the mind is separate from the material body, then why is it that these NDE tend to have material locations? I was floating in the room. I didn't like go into this realm and then come back. Some people say that.

Some people say that. That is also common. But the ones of like hovering above the ceiling and looking down at the shoe, it's like if this was your mind escaping materiality, then why was it materially located above the hospital? You know what I mean? But there's a lot of people that have an experience of like I'm being pulled in a tunnel, but then I hear a voice, it's not time, and I come back, or I'm going into the light.

And then I... That seems to be much more like a dream. The more it establishes the idea that you're escaping the material world, the less veridical it is. The more like, oh, that could have just been a dream or an invention. Because, oh, you went off into some realm and you saw a light, your brain could have just made that up. And the more it gets like, no, your brain couldn't have made that up

because you were like over in the corner and you heard a conversation that you shouldn't be able to hear. Well, now you seem to be telling me that, that, like, it's not the mind being immaterial, but rather it's somehow materially located somewhere else in the room, which is kind of weird. and out of step with how a lot of people want to think about the mind. See what I mean?

There's just a lot of mystery here. But to just sort of say... It all boils down to the mystery of consciousness. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Isn't it? And that's... Yeah. Because it may be...

I mean, it could be that, you know, the mind needs to, like, escape the material body, and it floats above the room, and then it keeps floating, and it goes up into the sky, which is a little bit weird. I mean, why would you... Why up?

Ascend, you know? Yeah, where are you going into the atmosphere or something? Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. I don't know. It's the same question. I was talking to this Mormon the other day. And I literally had never thought of this. He was like, when he speaks to normal Christians,

it's like, where's Jesus's body? Oh, Jesus ascended into heaven. Yeah, okay. So where did the body go? Either Jesus is still embodied. Some people believe that afterlife is an embodied place. Or he's become this spiritual being. And where did the body go?

Did he just like disappear? Did it fall back down to earth? Or did the bones somewhere? I literally never thought about this. Like the way that the mind interacts with the body, I mean, a lot of Christians look forward to like the establishment of the New Jerusalem, the general resurrection of the dead, that there'll be an actual final judgment and there'll be people physically resurrected

with physical resurrection bodies. So it's not just like your mind pops off somewhere. Yeah. It's not an image or a metaphor. Yeah. Like there will be an actual resurrection of the dead. And a lot of people don't put this together because it's like, if you believe that one day Jesus will come back, raise the dead and judge them,

then when you die now, where do you go? Where's this mental place that you've gone to? If the afterlife is a physical place of resurrected bodies, and when you're still dead in the ground for the next thousand years before Jesus soon comes, like what's this afterlife that you say you've already gone to now? Like there's so much that just doesn't fit together. So I don't know.

But I would love to find out through experience. I would absolutely love to have some crazy vision. You heard it here, folks. Alex is looking for a near-death experience. So if you can help him out, that's a dangerous thing to request these days. One of my dear friends from Portland, Oregon, Stephen is in town and you got to meet him,

and he's your ultimate fanboy, loves all of your podcasts and interviews, and I invited him to watch the conversation today. And I'm giving him the benefit of one question. Come over here, Stephen. You can use my microphone. Come on, come on. You got your chance.

Here's your chance. This is your 15 minutes of fame. Squat down. I need you to get on this level. Come in a little bit. All right. Here we go. So Stephen Phelps, you guys, Matt.

That's right. Say hi. Hello, yeah. Good to see it. What's your question for Alex? Well, it was more of a comment on what you guys were talking about, that commonality between the near-death experience of, like, having experiences with loved ones.

and the experience on psychedelics could both be a natural biological experience of the brain shutting down. It would be consistent with that. That as the brain shuts down, you're accessing core memories. It just strikes me that both the psychedelic drug argument and the NDE argument, at least, you know, not the shoe on the... Yeah, that's a bit different. That's a bit different.

But the idea of seeing a family member or something like that. That's consistent to me with the idea of, well, your brain is just in the process of shutting down. There's another really interesting thing. But why, why would a pygmy and a Mongolian have that same vision? Because our brains are constructed similarly. But why? What is the reason to picture family members when brain shut down? As the brain shuts down, it's the core memories, which are the last ones that you experience.

I'd be interested to know if somebody who didn't have a good relationship with their family, members still sees their family members or if they're more likely to see friends and how sociological it is. But the question of if it is to do with like the makeup of the brain, asking why, you know, like somewhere halfway across the world, why a pygmy has this same experience as I do, might be a bit like asking why do they have fingernails and we have fingernails because we share a common evolutionary source. And whatever caused our brains to evolve to do it here, the evolution happened early enough that it was before that split. Maybe like our sort of African ancestors a few hundred thousand years ago, we're all having

these experiences before they died as well. And then we split off and had our cultural impacts and that sort of adapted divisions that we have. But also, have you heard of the DMT elves? You heard of these, right? So people who take DMT, I haven't. Like routinely report that when they have a serious DMT...

Are they like the Keebler elves? I don't know what that is. It's a brand of cookies. There's elves that make cookies. Oh, is that like an American thing? I don't know. No, people report, taking DMT, they report meeting these.

elves. And I'm talking cross-culturally, independently. People take, like, DMT, they have some crazy trip. You know what I'm talking about, right? And they meet these elves. And they come back and they're like, I met these elves and I spoke to these elves, right? And that happens cross-culturally. And it's this huge mystery. So the mystics say that there are these elves that exist in some ether realm that you're meeting. Some others say there is just something mysterious about our brain chemistry that means that when it interacts with DMT in this way, you have this identifiable experience of meeting an elf. But in the same way that you have, you have a same way that you to explain why people have a religious experience and see their family and friends.

I think you also have to explain why people taking DMT meet these elves. They could be a religious explanation. Maybe these are like little demons that people are meeting and they describe them as elves because they're sort of unlike anything they've ever seen. I've never taken DMT. That's one thing that I haven't done. I'd like to do it, but I'm shit scared to do it because it sounds absolutely like terrifying, especially if you get to meet these elves.

What would make it convincing is if the elves convey information that you otherwise couldn't have had. Exactly. That would be a good test. I wish I'd have known this would come up because I would have looked into it because if that's the case, and I said, if I found some examples of people saying, like these elves told me this thing that I couldn't have otherwise known, or maybe two different people heard the same thing from the elves, right?

Then I think that you would look at that and you would go, that's fascinating and bizarre and crazy, but you probably wouldn't start believing in the existence of elves. And that's kind of how I would look at NDEs as applied to religious experience. Like, it's fascinating and crazy, and I want to know what's going on there, But it's not enough on the surface to make me go like, oh, well, that must be because they're actually experiencing the immaterial, religious, divine realm.

There could be something to do with our brain chemistry. But if it is to do with our brain chemistry, that's a mystery that borders on the religious itself. Thanks for stopping by, Stephen. Thanks, Ryan. Thanks, Alex. Cheers, Stephen. One of the things we're starting to do with guests on the show

is talk about this word soul. It's a crazy word, right? A Christian is going to have a certain idea. of a soul. A Hindu is gonna have a different idea. Maybe a jazz or blues musician is gonna have a different idea of what soul is. It's a nutty word.

To me, it is evocative of some kind of transcendent human state beyond the material. But how would you define soul? I guess you'd have to define it from atheist agnostic terms. from what you've learned delving into the magical world of theism? It's the part of the self that is not material. That's what it is.

And that's a great agnostic definition, because you can believe in that or you cannot, right? When you said it's something like, you just said something, which I didn't quite agree with. It's not a state. I don't think it's like a state. I think it's just a thing that you either are or have always. So if it actually exists,

then you would imagine that you're sort of a physically embodied soul. And people famously say, I don't have a soul, I am a soul, I have a body, that kind of thing. What they're getting at is like, is like, I don't think C.S. Lewis said that. And interestingly, C.S. Lewis is one of the people that most often gets falsely attributed quotes to him. Same thing with Winston Churchill. They call it the Churchillian drift. All like all these quotes. Right. Any kind of a Christian mystical quote gets attributed to C.S. Lewis. Yeah, but interestingly, my friend John Nelson has a wonderful point about this, as applied to Jesus. Because I was asking him, like, to bring it back again. I promise he'll do this whole thing.

Well, the Buddha is the same way. You can go into any yoga studio and see a quote by the Buddha, and the Buddha had never said that. I said to my friend John, like, how do we know we've got the actual words of Jesus? You know, like, it's written in Greek, he's speaking in Aramaic, they've had different accounts that written decades after. And he was like, even if they were all apocryphal quotes, and he never actually said them, and he brings up the fact that so many quotes attributed to C.S. Lewis that he never actually said. But if the only information, you had about C.S. Lewis was a book full of apocryphal quotes that people said that he said, but he didn't actually. You'd still actually know quite a lot about who C.S. Lewis was.

You'd know a lot about his thoughts and the position that he held and what he, sort of, the way he spoke and stuff. So even if it's all apocryphal, the fact that people attribute them to him tells us something about the man. So apocryphal quotes are still useful for that reason. And if all we have is apocryphal quotes of Jesus, we can still know a thing or two about who Jesus was and what he taught. Anyway, side note. Soul is the immaterial part of the self, because people individually have souls, so it has to be something to do with the individual ego, the self. But soul implies something more than the material. So if you believe that there's some mysterious element of human experience, well, where is that blue? Where is that love? Where is

that? Well, that's what the soul is. It's that part of yourself that gives home to that. And in fact, You know that famous quote from the Gospels? What does it matter if you gain the world but forfeit your soul? As far as I know, don't quote me on this, don't even paraphrase me on this. It might be due to the Greek being translated, being translatable as this as well, or possibly that some of our early manuscripts say something different. But it can also be translated as what does it matter if you gain the world but forfeit your life? I can't remember if that's because the word used could be translated to soul or life.

If that's the case, and that's really cool. It might just be because of some like manuscript discrepancy. But the idea that, like, your life in the poetic sense, not literally your physical life, but the part of your life that matters, you gain the world, the material world. But what does that matter if you forfeit your life? You know, what is your life if it's just the material world? What does it matter?

What does it matter if you gain the world but forfeit your soul? is to say that there's something about yourself which is not material, which matters more, and which you automatically prioritize without even having to be told. That's beautiful. Alex, it's always a pleasure speaking with you.

One of the most fascinating minds I've ever encountered. I've learned so much in this conversation. Keep doing what you're doing. I'm not a mind. I'm a brain, and I have a mind. There you go. Thanks for coming on. Soul, boom. And I hope you have a mystical experience soon.

And I hope we continue the conversation sometime soon. Thanks. Awesome. Cool. The Soul Boom podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts.