The Eric Metaxas Show - Ross Douthat: Believe, Why Everyone Should Be Religious

Episode Date: July 22, 2025

Eric sits down with Ross Douthat for a socrates in the city conversation. 

Welcome to the Eric Metaxis show. Did you ever see the movie The Blobs starring Steve McQueen? The blood-curdling threat of The Blob. Well, way back when, Eric had a small part in that film, but they had to cut his scene because The Blob was supposed to eat him. But he kept spitting him out. Oh, the whole thing was just a disaster. Anyway, here's the guy who's not always that easy to digest.

Eric the Texas! Friday, July. 18th, my goodness. And this summer, we're doing Socrates in the city Friday recordings. And today we're playing my conversation. This was a Socrates in the studio event that I did a couple of months ago with Ross Douthit. Now, I've got to tell you about Ross Douthit. Well, actually, before I tell you about Ross Douthat, let me say that,

so today we're playing my conversation with Ross Douthit. But in hour two, in the first part of hour two, before we continue with the rest of the Ross Douthit, we have a segment that we're doing once a week. It's called Everything You Always Want to Know About God, but We're Afraid to Ask. I wrote a book, came out in 2005 called Everything Always Wanted to Know About God, but we're afraid to ask. There are three books. There's that book. Then there's everything else you want to know about God, but we're afraid to ask. And then the third one was everything you want to know about God.

everything you always want to know about God, but we're afraid to ask the Jesus edition. And so we're doing weekly segments where I talk, I answer some of the questions in the book. It's kind of a fun Q&A thing. So we'll be airing that in hour two. So just so you're tracking, in a couple of minutes, we'll start my conversation with Ross Douthit. In hour two, we'll play everything who always wants to know about God, but we're afraid to ask for one segment. And then we continue the second half of my conversation with Ross Dout. Just so you're tracking. Okay, so some of you know, and you can watch these interviews on YouTube, the Socrates

and the city channel has been getting literally millions of hits. I have to say, I'm amazed. There seems to be a real hunger for substantive conversations, not like this program usually airs, you know, substantive. And so we're airing today, Friday, and many Fridays, some of these conversations. But the one today with Ross Douthit, he wrote a book. I don't remember the title now, but you'll hear about it in a moment when we play the conversation. But he wrote a book about faith.

The title might be just faith or something like that. But it's such a fascinating thing. Ross Douthit, he's in his early 40s, and he is a constant. columnist for the New York Times. He's maybe the only columnist for the New York Times whom I could read, because I respect him. We might not agree on everything, but I could read him and I agree with him on and up. One of the things that I agree with him on, and we'll be discussing it today, is Christian faith. We both are men of Christian faith. And Ross has written a book really aimed, I think, at people who are who are hostile to the idea of faith at all. And so it's a fascinating

tact to take and a fascinating audience for whom to write. People that just say, I don't think any kind of faith or religion is a good idea. He takes issue with that and he makes an extraordinary case to people like that in the book. And so that's what we're going to be talking about. but I just have to say Ross doubt that is he's one of the smartest people I've ever met and I kind of was tipped off to how bright he was

when I met him 32 years ago I think he was 12 and I was friends with his mom we were part of a Christian community in New Haven, Connecticut. And so I go over to their house sometimes,

and we were one day, we were watching Jeopardy. I don't know if I've told this story. We were watching Jeopardy. And it was Final Jeopardy. And the question was, you know, in this American novel, one of the titles of this American novel is, sorry, one of the, one of the, one of the chapter titles of this American novel is on citations, C-E-T-A-C-E-A-N-S,

on citations. Okay. So I, at the time, was a Yale English major, so I happened to know the answer. The answer was Moby Dick. And so I blurted it out, and I said, Moby Dick. Ross, who was 12, was very upset that he didn't get the answer before me or that he didn't know the answer. In other words, at age 12, he expected himself to, you know, to be able to go toe to with the, I don't know how old I was at the time, 30 or something like that. And I thought, this is one brainy kid. And his parents are brainy and they're wonderful. And the good news is he's not just brainy. He's a dear soul. And so it really was wonderful to interview him for Socrates in the studio. Okay. All right. All right. So before we get to our guest, I have to tell you,

we heard from our friends at Food for the Poor. You know about them. We've had them on the program many, many times. They are doing an emergency relief campaign because of the flooding in central Texas. I don't need to tell you that, I don't know if it was it July 4th or was that weekend that the horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible flooding happened where I don't know, I can't even talk about it. I don't want to talk about it, but so many children were killed horrible. Really, really, just one of those things that just is so challenging for anybody, including people of faith, to understand how something like this could happen. But because of the horror of these deaths, we are forgetting that there's collateral damage on top of that.

So entire communities have been wiped out. out. Flooded homes, closed businesses, many, many, many people have been displaced. They all need our help. So food for the poor comes to us and says, can you help us? We're on the ground there working with a partner. Okay. So that's what I'm doing right now. I'm here to tell you, my radio listeners, that there is a Help Texas banner at our website, Metaxus talk. If you can help, we need your help. Food for the poor doesn't come to us unless this is emergency relief. And they say, please, Eric, go to your audience and help us if you can. So you go to metaxis talk.com. There's a phone number, but the easiest way is go to metaxis talk.

com. You can make a donation to help Food for the Poor Rush emergency relief kits to these folks. These kits contain hygiene items, tarps, women's care kits, liquid IV, diapers, children's activity materials, and other essentials needed to ease the crisis facing these flooded out residents. Food for the Poor is working in coordination with a trusted partner in San Antonio. And again, this is in response to the central Texas flooding. They're delivering shipments of emergency relief supplies to support these folks in these vulnerable communities. the crisis is real, the need is urgent, and we're coming to you, my radio listeners, to ask you to help. The website is metaxis talk.com. I think a lot of folks have felt, gosh, I wish I could do something. This is so terrible. Well, that's one of the reasons I agreed to do this, because I know many of you are just, you know, looking for what can I do?

This is something you can do, right? So Metaxus Talk. dot com at the top of the page you'll see help texas that's the banner you click on there and it'll show you everything you can also pick up your phone and dial 844 864 8663 4673 or you can text my name metaxe 73 or you can text my name metax to 5155.5.5. Again, you can text metaxis to 51555. Metaxus is M-E-T-A-X-A-S, M-E-T-A-X-A-S, to 5-1-5-5-5-5. Folks, just to remind you, the flooding in central Texas has taken over 100 lives. Many people still missing. we on this program are asking you to join us and food for the poor as we rush emergency relief to devastated families.

Please call 844-863-4673 or text Metaxus to 51555 to give right now or you can click on the banner, metaxis talk.com. Thank you. Mike Lindell and my pillow employees want to thank you, my listeners, for all your continued support. Mike has a passion to help everyone get the best sleep of their life. He didn't stop by creating the best pillow. He created the best bed sheets ever. Yes, Mike is offering the best deal on his percale bedsheets. You can get a set now for as low as 2498.

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Order now or call 800-978-3057, 800-9757, 800-9757. And use promo code Eric. Go to MyPillow.com, use promo code Eric, or call 800-9783057. If you go to church on Sunday, you are participating in a ritual experience. intended to put you in a position where you are receptive to God's grace. And can you be receptive to God's grace without participating in an organized religion? Yes, I think you can, but it's a lot harder. You mentioned the demonic, and that's very real,

and I think that that's part of the misunderstanding where people say, well, I'm not religious like you, but I'm spiritual. They somehow assume that whatever's going on spiritually is good. Right. And I think those of us who are, Christians would want to say, listen, it's not. Souls can get lost, and you can see this just in everyday life. Without even getting into, like, possession and exorcism, you can see people who just seem

to get lost. The value of religion itself is having some kind of authority and guidance, spiritual direction, and so on, for someone to say, this path you've taken that you thought was godly, maybe has taken a detour into the wrong place. Welcome to Socrates in the studio, which falls. under the Aegis, and I believe also the rubric, but we're going to check, of Socrates and the city. Socrates in the city usually happens in Manhattan, where I live, and today it's happening in Manhattan. We're here up on 95th Street, on the east side, and it's my privilege

today to someone whom I've known a long time. You may know him as a columnist for the New York Times. He's the author of many books. His name is Ross Douthit. Ross, welcome. Thank you, Eric. It's great to see you. The most wonderful thing is I'm able to pronounce your name. I think most people would be challenged.

You've been trained in it since I was 12 years old. Literally. And you were 15. Because we're basically the same age. Yeah, we have to start there, but just to say that, yes, I knew you when you were 12. I knew your mom. And there's something purely delightful to watch. someone grow up, even if they don't flourish as you have flourished. Just a joy to see you,

generally speaking, but a joy to see what you've been doing and thinking and writing. Today, of course, we're talking about your brand new book. And the title of the book seems to me, at least for you, to be uncharacteristically provocative. Maybe it's not. Aggressive. Okay. It's aggressive. The title of the book is Believe. You idiot. No, the title of the book is simply believe, but the subtitle is why everyone should be religious. And knowing you, as I do, that does seem, I said it's aggressive, and I don't really mean that in a pejorative sense, but it's interesting.

And whenever one titles a book, because I have so many times, one should be thoughtful about it. What is the posture of the title? What are you suggesting? What do you mean to suggest? So that's really the first thing I wanted to ask you, because it is somewhat provocative, believe you understood, and then the subtitle, why everyone should be religious. Yeah, it's trying to be, if not aggressive, at least a little bit insistent, maybe. And it's a book that tries to speak, I think, to some of the distinctive aspects of our religious moment right now.

in 2025, when I think we've passed through an era of secularization and declining church attendance in America, really going back for the last 15 or 20 years. And now we're in a period not of religious revival, but of kind of reconsideration, where I think a lot of people, a lot of non-religious people, are looking around at the culture and the country we've made as we've become more secular. They're dissatisfied with it. They recognize that when, you know, for instance, the famous new atheists promised that if America became less religious, it would be more reasonable, less polarized, less divided all these things. They were just wrong, right? People, it turns out, can divide themselves up pretty easily without any kind of religious justification. And also there's a lot

of, I think, genuine sort of personal anxiety about the universe, especially among, younger people today, that there wasn't to the same degree a while back. So you have this reconsideration, but then you have a lot of people coming to religion who have, some of them come to it with no religious background whatsoever. Like we're not talking about lapsed Catholics or Christmas and Easter Methodists. We're talking about people who don't know who Canaan Abel are, right? who, you know, who don't sort of haven't read the Bible, don't really know anything about theological categories, let alone, let alone Christianity. So in a way, the book is trying to be sort of an introduction to people in that position, people who say, I might be interested in religion,

but I don't know anything about it. Tell me why I should take it seriously. But then it also tries to go beyond that introduction and to also say, you should take religion seriously, and by the way, it's almost certainly true, and it should change your life. And there's a tiny bit of maybe not lapel shaking, but at least maybe lapel pinching going on, because I think there's a lot of people who get comfortable with the idea that they're interested in religion, and they admire and respect some religious thinkers, and they wish they could believe, but Isn't it just too hard for a serious, rational, modern person to become religious, right? And I'm trying to say, come on, no, it's not, right?

In fact, there are a lot of pretty good arguments for why there probably is a god. The universe probably was designed and ordered with human beings in mind. That God is probably interested in who we are and what we do. And those arguments aren't, you know, I don't expect to convince people 100%, but I would like people to seriously engage with those arguments and not just treat religion as this sort of nice, interesting thing, but that doesn't impose any kind of urgent demands on you. What you just said now about, you know, there are, I don't remember exactly how you phrased,

but you just said something like there were probably some were pretty good arguments, you know, that God exists and that he designed the universe and designed us for this universe and so. And it's interesting because this is where I get back to the idea of tone. You know, you say that pretty gently. I used to be more in that camp, but in the last years I have become more aggressive in saying it because I think it's sort of like if you're discussing whether the earth is flat.

There comes a point where it's difficult to have a serious conversation because you know that it's not flat. And so you try to respect the person who's coming from that. point of view, but at the same time you feel like saying, listen, it's not just that there's evidence, but it's so overwhelming. Like, take a look. Believe me, I'm not, you know. Right. And so there's some of that in the book. You talk about, I mean, I want to talk about everything in the book, but the simple idea, okay, believe why everyone should be religious, why do you say religious? I mean, I'm probably a little more sensitive than most to that.

term because my most recent book is called religionless Christianity, which is a Bonhoffer phrase, but he's using religion in the pejorative sense of Carl Bart that you can have mere religion as opposed to actual faith, that it can just, you can have the trappings of religion and that can be something that is

not valuable or even dramatically negative. So why did you rather than say why everyone should have faith, why do you say why everyone should be religious. Well, I think you have to, you know, read the signs of the Times, right, a little bit.

And so about 15 years ago, I wrote a book that was called Bad Religion, that started with a quote from Bart, actually, as its epigraph, right? Because at that point, I thought that America was still more religious then than it is today. And I was critiquing forms of religion on some of the grounds that you described and saying that they're heretical, they, you know, they don't necessarily lead people to God, they sort of comfort, you know, they comfort the comfortable, right, rather than afflicting the comfortable. And that critique of religion is always there, and it always has a certain kind of power. It's there in the New Testament, right? Jesus has very harsh things to say about the religious authorities of his day. But there is also a way

in which, for most people in most times and places, religion is the solid foundation for the true relationship with God, right? And it's not that religion gets you all the way to that relationship necessarily. And I'm not saying in this argument that I'm going to reason you into a relationship with God. No, that's about, you know, what you do and what God does, right? It's about divine grace. It's about love. It's a relational thing.

Folks, right now in Texas, families are reeling from this historic flooding. Food for the Poor is delivering life-saving relief, but they need our help. I'm Eric Metaxis. Call 844-863-4673 or text Metaxus to 51555 to send emergency supplies or visit Metaxistalk.com. Click on the banner. Metaxistalk.com. Thank you. Folks, just try to imagine losing everything overnight, your home, your car, your loved ones.

that's what's been happening in flood ravage Texas. As you know, we on this program are partnering with Food for the Portis and emergency kits to those who need them desperately. Go to metaxus talk.com. Click on the banner. Metaxistalkis talk.com or call 844-8663-4673, 844-8663-4-6773 or text Metaxus to 51555. Thank you.

The relationship with God. And that is what religion is for as a kind of, you know, to be crude about it, as a kind of social technology, right? If you go to church on Sunday, you are participating in a ritual experience intended to put you in a position where you are receptive to God's grace. And can you be receptive to God's grace without participating in an organized religion? Yes, I think you can. But it's a lot harder. Right? And I say in the book, you know, one thing the book talks a bit about is the very commonplace idea in American culture, among non-Christian, certainly, that, you know, you can be spiritual and not religious. Or you can just sort of pick something from lots of different religions and make your own personalized religion and get closer to God that way. And I'm not going to say that that's impossible. God works through all kinds of people and ways of being and so on. But what I say in the book is, look, you, meaning you, and me and everyone else are probably not a religious genius, right?

Like the odds are that you are not uniquely situated to like pluck a little bit of Hinduism, a little Buddhism, a little Christianity and figure it out. It is much more likely that you, like most people, are going to be better off participating, submitting, joining a tradition larger than yourself. And that is the good side of religion, which, again, leaves plenty of room for the bad side. And if we get a big religious comeback in America and we have powerful, religious institutions again, then I can write a new book saying, okay, here's where those institutions are going wrong. But I think at this moment, in 2025, a little more religion would

be good for our country and our culture. Okay, so then that, I mean, I was intuiting that, but it's good to hear you say it, that you're trying to look at where we are now and what needs to be said, particularly now. And so we're living in a culture that is irreligious or secular or It's interesting because since you're a columnist for the Times, I feel, you know, having lived in Manhattan most of my life, there's a smug secularity. In other words, there's an idea that no one does religion anymore. And that, of course, has become pretty entrenched. And so it is the more shocking for you to say, no. we should look at this seriously.

And so, yeah, I'm getting the idea that that's your intent. Yeah, I think it's not, I don't think it's a smug moment right now. I think that smugness is there, certainly, and it's been there for, no, and it's still there. Look, America is a big, complicated country, and if you want to find a smug secular atheist, you can find one. Go on the internet, you know, go into the comment threads. You can find, you can find that person. But in terms of, like, what is the dominant mode in our culture?

right now. I don't think it's Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens declaring that religion is rubbish and poisons everything. I think it's much more people saying, I'm not religious, I struggle to see how you could believe in God. I'm talking about like more elite culture now, like Manhattan, right, not the country as a whole, but, you know, the culture of the mass media and academia. I think there's a lot of people saying I'm interested in religion, I don't really think I can fully believe in it, but, you know, I think it might be good, good for society. I talk to a lot of people who will say, oh, I have a lot of friends who are, you know,

going back to church or going to their synagogue, and they don't really believe, but they feel like they missed religion and then they want it back, right? So I think that's more where a lot of people are in 2025. And again, especially younger people, right? Like the cohort that was most influenced by a smug atheism is people my age, like late generation X and early millennials, people who were there when the internet first hit, and suddenly it was like, you know, you were getting exposed to, you know, critiques of religion that no youth pastor was equipped to deal with, right?

Like that was that reality. This is a different reality right now. Gen Z just, you know, again, they haven't had, they haven't had as much experience with the bad side of religion that you described, so they're more open to the good side. I just think it's more unsettled and more open than it was, even when I started at the time. So I've been there, you know, 15 years now.

It's, I mean, it is interesting to think generationally because I grew up in the 70s because I'm older than you. And I, but you remember it was in the culture, people who were older than I, you know, would be talking about their terrible experiences in the 50s and the 60s growing up in Catholic school and the nuns. And, you know, there was this kind of reaction to a culture that had been monolithically religious. Yep. Where pretty much everyone went to church someplace. And so there was a reaction to that. And of course, the 60s and the 70s were the sexual revolution, to some extent, a reaction to that world, which had existed for the longest period of time.

But as you say, we're really in a new day. And I think the older you get, the more you forget that, oh, everybody doesn't think the way I do. They've had, you know, decades, recent decades have created a different kind of. Well, this is probably the last point in which I will be able to say anything with authority about the younger generation, right? And in 15 or 20 years, I'll just be sort of sputtering and confused. But yes, I think you can see that right now. Folks, as you know, this is a real crisis. Over 129 are confirmed dead. Dozens still missing in Texas. Eric Metaxis here urging you to help us get emergency supplies to flood victims, partner

with us and Food for the Poor, call 844-863-4673-4673, or text Metaxus to 51555, or click on the banner at metaxis talk.com. Metaxistalkis talk.com. Thank you. Folks, floodwaters in Texas have devastated entire communities, but we can help. I'm Eric Mataxis. Please join us and our partner at Food for the Poor to send relief kits to families who have lost. everything. You can call 844-863-4673 or text Metaxus to 51555 or click on the banner at metaxis talk.com. Metaxistalksotalk.com. Thank you. Hey, get rhythm when you get the blues. Come on, get rhythm. When you get the blues.

I mean, there are places where. it's clearer than in America. I think if you look at Western Europe right now at places where secularization went the furthest, right? Like France and England, right, are much more secular than America ever became. And those are the places that have had actually the clearest rebound,

not just a kind of plateau, but an actual rebound, seemingly, of religious commitment and belief. There's data out of the United Kingdom, for instance, that shows that genuinely, Generation Z is more religious than Generation X in the UK, which is, I mean, and again, you're starting from a low threshold, right? Right, right.

But there's similar data in France, adult baptisms and conversions are going up. So I do think, you know, first of all, as Christians, we think God is always there, right? And you're never going to achieve total secularization, right? But what that means is you do, you get pendulum swings, you get eras where people get tired of sort of the potential oppressive side of organized religion and experienced it secularization as a relief. And then you have eras like ours where people look around at a secular landscape and say, well, what is the purpose of life again? Where are we going as human beings?

And suddenly religion becomes relevant again. Part of how I have diagnosed this, I guess, in my lifetime, is that the, I don't know if it was Pete, I think it was Peter Berger who said that, you know, we're a nation of, of Indians ruled by Swedes. In other words, that America largely is very religious, but that the elites are dramatically secular. And I think that has held for a very long time. And so I think of, obviously, publications like The Times,

they assume secularity. They seem to live in a world where there is no other option. And so I feel that most Americans taking in whatever media they're taking in. They don't hear about, I just think of my own experience when I was 25, I had this dramatic conversion experience. And suddenly I'm inundated with amazing books and speakers. And I thought, where have they existed? I grew up in a world where none of this existed.

And I feel that that's part of it. I think that if you're looking for clues in the culture, the elites in the culture tend to be so secular that you would, you would get the impression that nobody's having any religious experiences. And I'm thinking in your book you reference your mother, whom I know, having in the 80s a very dramatic, I don't know what you call it, mystical experience, I guess we would say with the Holy Spirit, but it's so dramatic. It seems impossible to think that she's making it up or whatever.

If you've been around that, it's just impossible. to dismiss it. I mean, you can make of it what you will, but it's impossible to say that stuff doesn't exist. Yeah, I mean, and this is part of why, I mean, I have not had really intense, religious and mystical experiences in my own life. I've had some, you know, experiences that sort of are on the edges of that category, but nothing that would fit naturally into like William James's varieties of religious experience or something. But I have been around people, including my mother, but other people as well, who have had those experiences. I have watched people have those experiences. And that is in part why the book spends a certain amount of time

talking about religious experience as important evidence, important reason to take religion seriously. So it's not just about the fine-tuning of the physical laws of the cosmos. It's not just about the mystery of consciousness. It's also just the persistent reality that it sure seems like some kind of higher power is knocking on people's doors. And that, to your point about elites, in the book I use the term official knowledge. Right. It's not that the 21st century or the 20th century were actually disenchanted. People use that term a lot, right? That implies that religious experiences stopped happening. And they did not, right? By some measures, you know, you get, Pentecostalism is an entirely 20th century phenomenon. Near-death experiences only become

culturally important when we start bringing lots of people back from the brink of death. So there's all these ways in which the mystical is still there or reemerges. But you do have this layer of like, you know, if you are at Yale Law School, if you are, you know, in academia, if you are editing a Wikipedia entry, right, you're going to have a strong anti-supernaturalist bias. I don't know if that will last forever, though. I think the burger line totally applies to America in 1974. In 2025, a couple of things have changed.

One is that working class America has become less religious. People are still pretty likely to say they believe in God, but churchgoing has fallen way off in blue collar, Rust Belt, America, right? And then there's actually more churchgoing among college-educated Americans. And there's a lot of places where religion is kind of an indicator of, you know, having things together, like people who sort of have it together and have kids and so on, are going to church. And I think that that may change the dynamic he describes. I also think

that just the world is getting weirder generally in an important way. Like maybe, and there's some 1970s elements about it, like people are interested in UFOs again. All the stuff with AI has weird, slightly supernaturalist overtones. And I just think younger elites, like whoever they are, but like, you know, Harvard, Yale, whatever group you want, I think they're going to have maybe not a Christian view on the world, probably not necessarily, but certainly a weirder and more open-minded view of what's happening in reality than people did 30 years ago. So the strict materialism of the past you think is waning? I mean, look, everybody's biased by who they talk to, right? So anyone who has me on their podcast to talk about this book

probably is maybe more open-minded than average about religion. But what I have found in talking with people who are journalists, intellectuals, who are non-believers, is I get very few people making the really hard materialist pitch and saying, come on, Ross, we know the universe is just whirling atoms and it's all an accident. Hey there, folks. Food for the Poor is Boots on the Ground in Texas right now, getting emergency support. applies into the hands of families who have been devastated by the deadly flooding. Join me, Eric Metaxus and our partner in supporting this urgent effort. Please call 844-863-4673 or text Metaxus to 51555 or click on the banner at metaxus talk.com.

Metaxistalk.com. Please help. Thank you. I get a lot more people who are willing to say, hey, you know, I think, yeah, I think you're probably right. There is something more complex and weirder going on. Maybe there is some kind of higher purpose. I'm not going to call it God. I don't, you know, I can't get, or I can't get there on like literal miracles, like healing miracles. No, I can't get there. But I think, yeah, I think a lot of, even elites are, you know, they're willing to say that kind of the reductive materialist portrait of reality is missing.

something big, which I think it obviously is. So there are two kinds of evidence, I would say. One is this visceral experiences with God that you just said have not waned, even though the culture pretends that, you know, religion is ebbing and we're more sophisticated. Nonetheless, you keep hearing stories. I wrote a book on miracles, I don't know, 10 or so years ago, and I would ask people, have you ever experienced a miracle? They were kind of like, look around.

Yep. And then they would tell me this insane miracle story that was obviously a miracle. It's not like sort of, like amazing. But they were given the message, you know, we don't talk about that, you know. And I thought, why it's so amazing. And so there is, I mean, it's why I wrote a book about it. I said, people need to know how normative this is, how many kinds of miraculous experiences. are, and then you say, I'm not telling you what to think, but what do you make of it?

You know, are these people lying? Are they crazy? Are they? And I think a fair-minded person would say, no, there seems to be something here. So there's that, and I've experienced tons of that. You've been around it your whole life. The other evidence that you cite earlier in the book, which I've also written about, is like the fine-tuned universe. I mean, the evidence that all of this,

couldn't just be here, that at least science can now show us what it maybe couldn't have 50 or 80 years ago that the level of design is so overwhelming that it's heart-stopping, at least for me. Yeah, it's a matter of probabilities. A universe like this

capable of having stars and planets and complex life and us is just staggeringly improbable out of the range of possible universes. And there was a period when the scientific assumption was that they were going to figure out something that made the universe necessary, right? Where it was like, oh, it had to be this way.

But right now, all of the evidence suggests it didn't have to be this way. You could have an infinite number of possible other universes, and almost all of them would be dead and lifeless are collapsing in on themselves, and somehow we ended up with this one. And this has thrown the materialists into a very weird position,

where the refuge of the materialist from that argument is to posit that all of those other universes actually exist, right? This is the multiverse hypothesis, and it is a breathtaking claim. Now, something can be breathtaking and true, right? But the nature of that claim is not a scientific claim in the way we understood what Copernicus or even Darwin was doing when they challenged religious ideas. Nobody's saying, oh, there's a multiverse out there. and here, here's a telescope, you can look at it. Or there's a multiverse out there here, we can dissect it and, you know, predict how it evolves.

No, they're saying, well, in order to avoid one invisible designer, one sort of, in order to avoid the idea, the simplest way to put it is that there's a lot of reason to think that mind precedes matter. You don't even have to call it God at first. You can just say, mind meaning intentionality and consciousness, seems to be, you know, constitutive of the universe, not reducible to the material, and seems to play some crucial role in bringing the universe into being. And to say, to sort of wipe away that evidence and insist, no, matter has to come first, matter has to come first, you are left with a wild metaphysical speculation about, you know, about an infinity of non-available universes, right?

And at the very least, I don't think you, I don't think the choice there necessarily favors the eighties.