The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - Jonathan Rauch:

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

Jonathan Rauch is one of the clearest thinkers writing today about the philosophical and sociological interconnections between democracy and science, as detailed in his last book, The Constitution of Knowledge, about which we had a fascinating podcast discussion a year or two ago. When I heard his newest book was due to appear this month, I was eager to have him back on. This new book, Cross Purposes, Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy was released yesterday. It was a surprising take on the subject. Rauch is an atheist, a Jew, and homosexual, so one might have expected an attack on the failings of Christianity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rauch argues that Christianity offers moral bases that mesh well with Madisonian democracy, and that it is necessary for the Christian community to tap into these if democracy in the US is to be resuscitated. There is a lot to unpack there, and that is precisely what we did. He and I share atheist and Jewish roots, and we agree on many features of both philosophy and religion. But our perspectives on both the actual moral fabric of Christianity, and the extent to which society should give special treatment to religious teaching, and to what extent the positive aspects of Christian religious theology, including the theology of groups like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, means that we should respect that theology, differ. Because I respect Rauch as a writer and a thinker so much, I thought it would be useful to take time to explore these differences, in order to ascertain to what extent his thesis was viable, and also to allow listeners access to a thoughtful and respectful discussion of to what extent Christian religious teachings have a key role to play in the moral framework of a healthy democratic society in the United States.As always, the discussion was educational, and illuminating. It is an important issue at the current time, and I am very happy we could have a deeper dive into it with someone so thoughtful and knowledgeable. I hope you enjoy the discussion, including the animated give and take at times, as much as both Jonathan and I did.As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project YouTube. Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe

Hi, and welcome to the Origins Podcast. I'm your host, Lawrence Krause. In this episode, I had the chance to once again have a conversation with Jonathan Rouch, one of my favorite intellectuals. And I say that interestingly enough, because Jonathan is a journalist, and although he also has a position as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. But he is one of the deeper thinkers about social issues and science. And we had a lovely podcast discussion a while ago when his book, The Constance, of knowledge came out, talking basically about how knowledge is generated and it provided some of the most cogent observations about what science is as a social activity of anything I've ever read. And it was based on sociology and philosophy and science. One of his early books was the Kindly Inquisitors, which was one of the first books to point out the attacks that are happening due to political correctness on science, which at the time he discussed it weren't very big, but now, of course, it's become a big issue. Well, he has a new book out called Cross Purposes, Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy. And it was an interesting

discussion because while we agree, we both come from similar places. We're both atheists and happen to have a Jewish background. And we, what Jonathan basically says is that democracy is broken in many places, especially in the United States, and that Christianity, he argues, is broken as well. And he argues that one needs to fix Christianity to help democracy.

And that's probably a statement I don't disagree with, but where we had differences of opinion was the level at which one basically felt Christianity was an essential part of our moral fabric in the country and whether it needed to be and the extent to which one should respect religious claims and traditions.

It was a wonderful back and forth discussion I felt for me and I think Jonathan agreed and I would not have pressed him so hard if I didn't admire him so much as an intellect. I hope you'll find this conversation as fascinating as I did and Jonathan, the remarkable thinker and cogent speaker that I find him to be.

You can watch this podcast ad-free on our substack site, Critical Mass, and you can do that by subscribing to Critical Mass and the subscription fees go, large part, to supporting the Origins Project Foundation, which produces this podcast. Or you can watch it on our YouTube channel and subscribe to our YouTube channel, or you can listen to it on any standard podcast listening site.

No matter how you watch it or listen to it, I hope you enjoy this podcast with Jonathan Rouch. Well, Jonathan Rouch, I'm so happy to have you back again. It's the second time we've had you on. And I will say that the reason we're having you on, I might as well show it now, is from your new book, Cross Purpurposes, Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy,

which I'm happy to have a discussion about. And it will be quite a discussion. And I want to, before I go on to dispute some comments conclusions, or at least question them. I want to say that, for me, this was an interesting book to read because I couldn't wait for it, because I will say from having listened to you speak and certainly read you, especially in advance of our last podcast, said, I really mean this. I think you are perhaps the deepest and most articulate thinker on issues, social issues,

scientific issues, and philosophic questions of anyone I've ever talked to. I'm amazed by your intellect. Let me just say that at the beginning. That is an incredible compliment. It is, but it's deserved. I will give myself that I am reasonably smart for a journalist, but that's a, I operated the top of my license. Yes, it's a very low bar.

That's all I give myself. Good. Well, I think it's, and I say this because if I didn't respect you so much, I would have had a hard time, reading some of the book because I disagree with numbers of, or at least I have a hard time, well, we'll get to it. We dove into your background last time, so I don't want to, we don't need to do that as much. The Origins, you know, podcast, I try to find out how people got to where they are. And maybe the only origins aspect I would do, which I was going to talk about later, but I'll

throw now, is you begin the book with a little bit of an origin. You have a letter. that you wrote to a friend called the dumbest thing I ever wrote. First, I thought you were, first, when I read the letter, I thought, is that the, is that letter the dumbest thing? Or is it talking about the dumbest thing? So you want to talk about, presumably that motivated, motivated you to write this book. So do you want to talk about that for a second? At least it's an origin story. Yeah, yeah, sure. Well, it frames a whole book. So it might take more than a second. Is that all right? Yeah. Sure. So you and I are roughly the same generation. I was born in 1960, I knew from very early on that I could not believe in God. It seems silly. It made no sense to me.

Even as a child and then as I got older, I tried at one point. I'm Jewish. You can be Jewish and not believe in God if you, you know, if you're not too noisy about it. Most Jews are. I am, yeah, I'm a Jewish background too. So I was raised as a Jew. I identify as a Jew, but I don't believe in God. And I tried at 14 and I just couldn't. It just seemed too far-fetched. and weird and frankly, immature. And I was gay. I didn't recognize that in myself until I was 25, but from my earliest memories,

I felt this strong, intractable attraction to boys and men. And between being Jewish and atheistic and knowing I was different in that profound way, I understood that there was no place for me, in our Christian religious culture, I could not, I literally on a Sunday could not turn on the car radio and spin the AM dial without hearing a preacher talk about how I was ashten God's nostrils or gay people were in any case. So when I arrived in college, I had a really bad attitude toward Christianity. I believe that it was bigoted and cruel and hypocritical. And I was not wrong.

And by the way, I am still not wrong. There are elements of all of those things right now, and I'm confident that we'll get to some of those. Yeah, we will. But as luck would have it, one of my roommates, my first year in college, was Mark McIntosh. And he was my first encounter with a Christian who didn't just talk the talk, but walked the walk. Of course, he was human, so he had a temper and he had a sense of humor and could be weird and dorky. But he had been deeply shaped by his Christianity, by his readings in C.S. Lewis. And I saw in him a depth of belief.

And the way it had shaped him as a person and shaped the way he dealt with others that gave me the first inkling, maybe there's a kind of Christianity that I haven't really been exposed to yet. My life continued, and that began a journey, but not really into Christianity until much later. And in 2003, that's when I wrote what I call the dumbest thing I ever wrote. That takes some doing, because in 2015, I confidently predicted Donald Trump, would never be president. But in 2003, I wrote an article for the Atlantic on what I called apotheism, which, you know, a joke combines apathy and theism.

It's why you define them. Isn't it great? America is secularizing. We're just not that interested in religion anymore. And since religion is a source of divisiveness and dogmatism, we'll all get along better, will be like Scandinavia and will be Enlightenment liberals like me. It wasn't quite that bad, but that was kind of the tenor of it. And that turned out to be the dumbest thing I ever wrote.

So this book is kind of an apology to Mark McIntosh, also for, you know, some of the really annoying things that I said to him back when we were roommates. Well, you know, actually, it's interesting because before this we were talking, I will, as an aside, I will say that's one. of the reasons to go to colleges. Lately, I'm hard-pressed sometimes to think of reasons to tell people to go to college, given the way universities have been evolving. But one of the reasons in principle is to be exposed to people who are really different than yourself, different backgrounds, diversity of opinion, especially. And I think that's really one of the most important things you get at

college is seeing, you know, in high school, if you go to public high school, even not, you tend to be surrounded by people with a similar, very similar background. And, and, and, and, and, and, Hopefully, if you go to university, you'll meet people of very different backgrounds. And that can be perhaps the most important thing that you get out of university is your peers, ultimately. Anyway, having said that, okay, so this book in some sense is written as an apology. And I thought, and it is an apology, although I think you, I think you, my own feelings, you duff protest too much. And throughout the book, I have to say that I kept saying, I understand what you're saying,

but I'm trying to figure out why you're saying it. It took me a while. And I think I did, and I like to go into that. But the basic premise of the book, I think, and we don't have to debate this at great length, we can tell me if you think it's summarized the reason because there's a number of things I think summarized it. It's that Christianity is broken in the U.S.

and it's hurting democracy. And the solution is to, is to, in some sense, for Christians to be more Christian and for the rest of us to integrate Christianity more healthily into political discourse.

Is that kind of a... That's good. That's it. Okay, I get a passing rate, at least, for that. Okay. Not bad. Not bad for a physicist. For a physicist, exactly. There's no math in the book, you know.

Yeah. That's right. That I can read those big words. It's just amazing. But anyway, and so I kept saying, well, okay, great, but why, why, why do we need to accept Christianity or integrate it? Why do we need to be more Christian and why do we care that Christianity's broken? And the chapters are divided into thin Christianity where you talk about the, you know, the dangerous situation that Christianity's in. then sharp Christianity where you say basically one of the reactions, Christianity is the Church of Fear, the Donald Trump version of Christianity, and then thick Christianity, which is the gospel of compassion and compromise.

And that is, that's a fascinating chapter. And I want to, it was really the last chapter that put together for me where I thought you were coming from. So a lot of my questions are going to relate to statements you make there, referring back to other arguments. So just so you know where we're going to go. The other version of the summary of your book that I have is it takes off a statement you made in that chapter, which is, and I'll frame it as a statement rather than a question, but how an atheistic homosexual Jew thinks Christians should practice their faith.

Yes, that's my presumptuous summary. Yeah, okay. And then I would add, because to make it a full summary, that's really only half a summary. The next question is why, and the answer is because it's essential for a healthy democracy in the United States. So we put those things together, an atheist Jew, homosexual Jew, tells Christians how to behave because it's essential for the healthy democracy. So that's my other summary.

And I want to parse both parts because I have deep questions or concerns, although I'm sympathetic and I understand where you're coming from about why all of this is necessary. So I want to go through it in detail. And I wouldn't if I didn't, I'm serious, I wouldn't if I didn't respect you so much. I'm looking forward to it. Could I just, just to clear some brush, could I just ask you flat out, are you an atheist? Oh, boy, Jonathan. Oh, was that not?

Oh, sorry. I thought that would be a yes or no. Oh, yes, of course. I guess it's nice. It means that you, yeah, I'm kind of one of the, I sort of became known as an atheist. I'm actually an apotheist. I was for a while an antitheist with my friend Christopher Hitchens.

But I've been labeled an atheist and one of the, whatever. Although I never really classify myself as an atheist because I don't classify myself by the things I don't believe. that would be too long. But the only isst I use as a scientist, but I'm well known. I'm definitely an atheist, and I'm a Jewish background. And I now call myself a Jew, although I didn't used to. I do only because there's so much anti-Semitism.

I'm heterosexual, but that's about it. So we're coming from a very similar place. I would also say I'm not a spiritual person. There are people like Sam Harris who talk about spiritualism or spirituality of different kinds. I've never had that kind of experience and I'm not especially interested in having one. Are you similar to me in that respect? I am even more so. I don't have the spiritual bone in my body.

I don't know what it means. When people tell me they're spiritual, I ask. I have no, it's usually in a sort of a subterfuge, even saying spirituality. So yeah, no, I'm not a spiritual person in any sense. I get awe and wonder and that's why I do science. and I get awe and wonder when I look at James Webb Space Telescope photographs of the universe, and that's what causes me to do what I do. And I don't, my attitude towards meditation, I've, you know, spent time with Sam Harris,

who I've argued with on numerous occasions about many things, but meditation is one of them. I'm reminded when I hear him talk about meditation of a Woody Allen joke who said he started meditating, but then he ripened and then he started to rot. Yeah. Well, good. That's helpful to me because it tells me that I am talking to myself a couple of decades ago. And that isn't to say I was wrong then. I see this as a continuation and outgrowth, the superstructure built on the former me.

But this will be interesting. That's, you know what you anticipated me. Because I was about to say, this is where I was originally going to insert your dumbest he ever wrote, and I'm going to say, I'm the dumb you. Okay? That's why I was going to, so that's what I've written down here. That's where we're beginning. I'm the you in either the time of your university education or in 2003.

Although in 2003, I didn't think we, I guess I wasn't as, I didn't think we were as a nation becoming less religious because I've been fighting against people who wanted to remove evolution in the public schools for years and years. And so that part of it was still clear to me. Anyway, okay, so you summarize in your last chapter your book, what I liked about it is you put it in perspective what you're trying to. I should say the first part of the last chapter, and we'll get to it, deals with, gives great respect to the absolutely nuttyest religion in existence except for Scientology, the Church of Latter-day Saints, a religion that's built on not just on presumably, false claims about the universe, but manifestly false claims about it's even even in sacred books. And we can go into that because I spend a lot of time looking into

Mormonism. But it is a kindler, gentle. Even when I was a kid, I grew up in Canada and I'd never heard of Mormonism, but I saw their commercials. And I thought, oh, they're just like, you know, a nice version of Anglicanism. They talk about don't beat your kids and be kind to others. And I thought it was a, you know, that kind of religion until I went to, first time I went to Utah and went to the Mormon tabernacle. And then later on, when many ex-Mormon bishops, when I became known as an atheist, especially in Australia, began to reveal to me lots of things about the Mormon church. But anyway, the first part of that chapter is actually a discussion of how, at least the head of that church is espousing the kind of Christianity that you not only think

it's possible, but think could help cure the ails of Christianity and democracy in our nation. But we'll get to Mormonism later, because I'm not sure it's as important for me to talk about Mormonism, although I'm happy to later. It's the ideas behind it that you express. So then in the second part, you talk about really summarizing where you've been. And I think that summary is so good and allows us to summarize the rest of the book. The first part is that American Christianity's in crisis. You say it's thin, it's secularized, and it's not providing meaning and moral grounding as it once was. And this is an important statement. Secular alternatives like science cannot even in principle fill the void. So you want to elaborate on how, on that part of the book and the

crisis in Christianity, if you will? Yes. There's a lot to cover there. There is, but I want you to cover it. Okay. All right. Well, the first thing I'm going to say is empirical and sociological. And then the second thing I'm going to say, which is where I may run into more trouble with you, but I'll be interested to see, is epistemological and existential. So the first part is empirical and sociological, which is in 2003, when I,

celebrated secularization, I thought that the alternative would be liberal post-enlightenment or enlightenment thinking, and we'd all be like Steve Pinker. Or more like Steve Pinker. Empirically, I was wrong. In 2003, as I wrote that article, the country embarked on a de-churching of a magnitude that this country has never experienced. We used to say America remained a uniquely religious nation, while other nations of Europe had secularized well. It turned that we were just late to the party. But when we got to the party,

boy, did we get to the party. So we have seen 40 million people go from church attenders to never setting foot in a church over 14 years until 2022. We have seen church membership, which was 70% 7-0. right through the 20th century dropped to 47% under half just in the last two decades. We've seen a percentage point drop every year in the percentage of people identifying as Christian, and they're becoming nuns, N-O-N-E-S, people not affiliated with religion. And the empirical effect of that has been they don't seem to be going. in the direction that you and I thought they might go.

They seem to be adopting substitute pseudo-religions of all kinds. There are DIY religions. They're not really religions, but they have some of the structure. Yeah. And you've got the wellness movement and soul cycle, and you've got Wicca and stuff like that. But a lot of it is that they are reifying or deifying religion. They're turning partisan politics into a kind of religion.

So we see wokeness on the left. I think John McWhorter probably had them on the show, talks about woke as a religion. It's not a standard traditional religion, but it has a lot of the same structure. Except for forgiveness, it has all of the same structure. Yeah. And then MAGA and QAnon and the stuff that's going on in the right, Christian nationalism, of course, which is not Christian at all. It's a political ideology. These also have many of the attributes of religion. And just generally, people were turning to politics to get a sense of identity, and then they were bringing religious zeal into politics, and that's making us ungovernable. So it turns out. as flawed as Christianity was, it was still capable of transmitting communal values, giving people a sense of higher purpose in life, a sense of grounding for their morality, a way to socialize with each other, to socialize their kids, into civic life. And these other things are just not

capable of doing that. And this is a global crisis. Okay, that's the sociological and empirical explanation. I will pause for breath. Yeah, pause for breath and pause for me for a mild attack. No, for mild questioning. Certainly it was obvious not, you know, in the U.S. and in England

that the number of people calling themselves Christian was going down, a cause for celebration among much of the atheist community. And there's an interesting survey that was done by the Richard Dawkins Foundation in England around that time, a little bit later, about 2010 or think.

Maybe 11. People ask religious affiliation on the census in England. And for the first time, for the very first time in the history of the census, less than 50% of the people declared they were Christian. And that was a big deal. The Dawkins Foundation then went, I don't know how they did this, but they got people who declared themselves. maybe they just made phone calls and asked, did you declare yourself as Christian?

And they asked the people who declared themselves as Christian, why they declared themselves as Christian? And they said, do you believe in transubstantiation? Do you believe in the virgin birth? Do you believe in this, that? In every case, the answer was no, no, no, no. And then they said, well, why did you call yourself Christian? They said, I like to think of myself as a good person. And therein goes, in my mind, one of the problems of this moral grounding that you talk about. It hadn't really hit me. I'd fought religious extremism when I got it, first started to get involved in becoming relatively high public profile.

But when we produced a movie called The Unbelievers about me and Richard Dawkins, I got letters from people from small towns around the United States saying, I was so amazed because one of the scenes in it is the reason rally where he had 40,000 people in Washington, you know, proclaiming atheism. And he said, wow, I'd never realize. I always felt alone, and I've questioned whether God might exist, and I feel like a bad person for doing that. And I know if I told anyone around me, I would alienate them and be called a bad person. So religion had this monopoly on morality when it's not clear it should. It does provide

moral grounding, but why does one have to, for many people it provides moral grounding? But I don't know whether one should accept that priori that moral grounding is good, or does it? justified. In the first place, if you base it on fairytales, you're probably going to come up with nonsense. But secondly, much of the moral grounding, as you point out, is bad moral grounding. In particular, the sense that questioning God takes you in the wrong direction is the kind of moral grounding that I think is the most insidious and perhaps the most evil aspect of religion, even though it has many other evil aspects. So I throw that out. to you. Well, first of all, the best believers I know are non-dogmatic, Mark McIntosh, was one of those.

He went on to become the Reverend Dr. Professor Mark McIntosh wrote many books, but they will all tell you that doubt is very much a part of their faith. So they reject the kind of dogmatism you mentioned. Second, look, Lawrence, I'm gay, right? The oppression, and I do mean oppression, that was loosed upon people like me for 60 years, ending only really as recently as 2010, 2011, when we were finally allowed to serve in the military and get married, 2015. This was done out of religious bigotry based on a reading of scripture, so believe me, I don't need to be persuaded that the influence of religion can be ignorant and blind and cruel and hypocritical.

Let's just stipulate that. However, as we get into the discussion, something that I now insist on, which I think my younger self missed, is that you can't treat any religion, or certainly you can't treat Christianity just as an empty vessel for sociology or politics or economic status. It has substantive content. There are scriptures, and there are things that Jesus said. and those are moral propositions which can be evaluated on their own terms. And as I argue in the book, those propositions, many of them, core ones to Christianity,

align with things that are true and important in a liberal democracy. So it's not just that I'm saying, be religious, it'll make you a better person. I'm saying, look at the doctrines of Christianity. There's something valuable. Yeah, okay, some of the doctrines. That's the point. And it's what most religious people do. They pick and choose the doctrines.

That's why Christianity and Judaism becomes sort of kindler, gentler, as opposed to Islam, which is 600 years earlier. In Islam, they take all the nonsense of the Koran, literally. Most Christians who read the Old Testament and New Testament, Testament, throw out all the stuff about stoning your children and all that kind of stuff, if they disobey. They pick the doctrines of Jesus, by the way, who at least I learned from my late friend, Christopher Hitchens, talked about hell more than anyone else in the Bible. Pick the kind and gentle Jesus and the kind and gentle aspects of Christianity. And why do they do that? Because it aligns

with, I think, their moral framework, and you talk in the book, and I know we've talked about before, you know, and I will get to it, Kant and Adam Smith and how there's this alignment between certain of the statements you like, in particular by the president of the Church of the Latter-day Saints, and the statements made by Kant and Adam Smith. But those statements are based on reason and logic. And so they're, and they don't necessarily derive from religion. So the fact that I guess my statement is why should, it is true. There's no doubt that Christianity, and I have a number of born-again friends who are lovely people and they're kind and gentle and giving and generous and all the things that your friend was. But I also have

friends who aren't religious who are all of those things. But I don't see. So the fact that some of the moral, the best, the better angels of the moral nature, of the Bible, happens to coincide with the kind of things that a sensible, reasonable, reasonable, rational, altruistic person might come to without religion. The fact that they agree, I say, okay, big deal, that's nice, but why do we have to turn to that? Why can't we just say that it's reason? In fact, again, I'm jumping ahead.

But you often quote, and I was very impressed with the statements of the president of the Church of Latter-day Saints, but one of the things that struck you. about him is that he's a lawyer as well, right? And I ask myself, when he starts talking about the civic aspect of religion, which is very sensible and we'll get to, I mean, how religion can play a role in the civic world, it sounded to me like he was talking, like the lawyer or a founder, a founding father of, like the people like Jefferson or those people who were who were using those arguments based on what you might call the Enlightenment and not so much Christianity. So I throw that out to you.

Well, there are a couple of directions we can go there. One is to the deeper, more existential reason why I think secularism and Christianity need each other. And I know you'll disagree about that. I may not. Another direction, though, we should go, is that everything you just said is too vague. It's not a question of picking out good stuff and bad stuff and nice stuff and not so nice stuff. It's a question of here are what Christians say are three core tenets of their faith. And it's there in the scripture, and it turns out, I argue, those things map well onto

Madisonian democracy. And yes. I don't care whether John Locke and Emmanuel Conn got that from Christianity or from reading books doesn't matter. The point is that the points of similarity are there and they're deep and they're fundamental, and that gives us something to work with if we think it's important to elevate those parts of Christianity, still the linchpin faith of America, that align with liberal democracy, because right now Christianity and liberal democracy are out of alignment and getting

further out of alignment, and it's tearing us apart. It's making us ungovernable. Okay, so now, do you want the existential stuff? No, let's comment on that. You want the Christian stuff. Yeah, but no, no, I'm not sure what I want. I agree with you. I think from a utilitarian perspective, this country is deeply Christian and they're deeply out of alignment and it's hurting democracy. And so if you're saying, from a utilitarian perspective, if we can make Christianity better, then it's better for the country. I would not disagree with that at all.

It certainly would be true, I think. What I guess, and maybe this leads to the existential question. So we agree on that. Yeah. And you said better. I would say more Christian, more truly Christian, but for our purposes, it's the same thing, yes. Yeah, yeah. And the three things are, have no fear.

Don't be afraid. Imitate Jesus and forgive each other. Yeah, imitate Jesus and forgive each other. Okay, anyway, again, okay, imitate Jesus is an interesting question, but we'll get that. I don't want to turn this into a theological debate. But you do say this is an interesting thing. Look, I also agree with you. I think we talked about this before.

I've had this debate with my friend Martin Rees, who's a non-believing but very non-Atheistic scientist, former president of the Royal Society and a famous astrophysicist. You know, whether, I agree with David Hume that you can't get aught from his, but you can just get so damn close. And without knowing what is, you can't get odd. And that's part of my problem with religion, because I think religion often bypasses what actually is,

whether it's homosexuality or racism or other things, and to get an off that's incorrect. You know, religion will say homosexuality is, you know, unnatural. And then a scientist will say, no, it's totally natural. If you look at lots of species, 10% of them have homosexuals, And so I think you need that is to get the right odd. And I think religion by revelation rather than empiricism often gets the wrong off because it takes things by revelation rather than looking at how the world actually works. But you do say secular alternatives like science cannot, even in principle, fill the void.

And in a sense, I agree because science can't always get you the odds. But I'm not I'm not sure I agree 100% with that. I also should say that I have written maybe more than you over the last five years at least decrying, you know, repeating something you wrote in one of your early books that we talked about in the podcast, that this woke fundamentalism, which is what I call it, fundamentalist wokeism, I think is what I call it, is a secular religion and is dangerous in many ways as dangerous as religious fundamentalism. And that aspect of secularism, which which tries to impose its ideology on everyone, including religious people, is evil.

And it is true that as religion waned, we tend to see more people move in that direction of secular wokeism. But I don't think it's, I don't think I agree with you that science cannot even in principle fill the void. In practice, it hasn't. But why do you think in principle it couldn't is what I want to ask? maybe that's the existential question. I'm thinking about how to approach that.

So, since you don't seem to mind excessively long answers, let me try to give my framework for how I think about this. I ask for the non-question, so why wouldn't I find an excessive long answer? Sorry, go on. Well, I'm a fan and listener of your podcast. I try never to miss one. And part of what I love about it is you are, you and your guests are really willing to dive deep. And that's such a treat.

So I claim in the book that there are four questions, there are other questions, but there are four questions which most people, not all people, but most people, and most societies, in fact, virtually all societies and cultures look for answers for. and that two of those questions are things that really only science can provide in a coherent way. And that's the answer to why do evil and suffering occur. That's not even a problem in science, right?

We deal with that by analyzing disease and why earthquakes and tsunamis happen. and the other is giving a coherent account of the material world. In order to do that, you must exclude miracles and you don't need any lectures on David Hume and miracles and supernaturalism from me. And a religious, a purely religious framework gets tripped up by both of those things. Once you introduce miracles, you're in a world of chaos, explanations aren't even possible, anymore, and you're stuck with the question of why a good God would create evil. One of the great pastors of the 20th century, Tim Keller, the very, very searching and honest

Christian, once told me that he took every argument that he had for why a good God would create evil or allow suffering of the innocent and so forth. And if he put them all in a bucket to explain, to answer that question, he could not get that bucket more than two-thirds or three-quarters of the way full. He just couldn't do it. And I think he's right. No religion has done that. But then there's these two other questions, and this is where maybe you and I part ways. One of those questions is the problem of mortality. Why are we here? Is there a purpose to life? Are we more than just a glob of protoplasm that forms briefly and then evanescently flashes out in the blink of an eye later, leaving no trace behind? Well, I think that's what we are. And strangely, I'm okay

with that. I think I am at least, but most people just aren't. It's just too existentially bleak. And I don't think, this goes to your is odd question. Yeah. I don't think even in principle, scientific materialism, which is basically what I believe in, can tell us if or why there's a larger purpose in life, some reason that we're here. It's not designed to do that. It's not a factual question. So, that's a big shortcoming. The second one is the one you alluded to the question of morality. Difference between right and wrong, good and evil. Is that a big shortcoming? Is rooted, anchored in something larger and more stable than just our preferences? Or do we live in a Nietzschean postmodern world where it's just all what humans think and do? A lot of thinkers

you alluded to them, Kant is the greatest and very, very great. But lots of others, John Rawls in the liberal tradition, John Stuart Mill. Plato himself in a non-liberal tradition have wrestled with this question of, can you get out of non-religion an anchored account, a transcendent account of good and evil? And I think when I take all the best arguments that I have, including Kant, who's, you know, incredibly great in Spinoza and all these people and throw them in a bucket, it's still only two-thirds or three-quarters of the way full. Religions, that's what they do, right?

They give us a sense of transcendent purpose, and they give us what they say are anchored answers to questions about morality. Now, as an atheist, I'm incapable of thinking that their answers are right, and I used to think their answers were just crutches. They just assume the answer. They assume God, and that answers the question. Well, then we're back where we started, because who created God and so forth. You know all the atheistic arguments.

Right. The big change in me, what you're about to hear is not spiritualism. It's something a little different. I began to get to know some people like, for example, prominent example, Francis Collins. Yeah, I know Francis. You know Francis. Francis is one of the greatest living scientists, by most accounts. you're going,

yeah, no, anyway, that doesn't matter. He is a, he is a giant of modern American science, former head of the National Institute of Health and

and help turn into a world. Co-discoverer of the genome, all of that. He's a Christian, and somehow he is capable of living in both of these worlds at once. he can be a believing Christian who actually believes.

I asked him about this, Lawrence. I said, look, can't you believe in the truth of what Christ told us as moral principles without believing that he died? And then three days later, somehow the second law of thermodynamics reversed itself and all the molecules reassembled themselves. Because from my point of view, that can't happen, right? If that happens, everything we know about the world is wrong. And you're out of a job.

Physicists are unnecessary. No, we'd study it. And he said, he said, if I did not believe that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead, I would not be a Christian. I couldn't. It would be a lie. The whole thing would be a lie. And yet, he's capable of going to work every day and being a leading scientist, thinking

as rationally and as systematically as you or I. and I got to know a whole lot of Christians to whom that label applied. So my attitude changed toward thinking that, you know, these folks have the best of both worlds. They're able to partake of these spiritual and religious traditions and satisfy themselves of these big answers to these questions I can't answer while also functioning perfectly well in my scientific materialist universe. And it's like they have full spec from color and I'm colorblind. Because I can only do half of that and I do feel like that's really my loss.

Well, see, it's interesting that you feel it's a loss rather than a gain surprises me. because I think what they have, and I know, friends as well, is people have, people have the ability, not just the ability, the requirement in order to get through life, the ability to believe at least two, maybe 10 inconsistent things at the same time. We have to lie to ourselves and we get up in the morning that we like our job or our spouses or whatever, and we just met these stories and we, and as Alison Wonderland, we believe 10 of possible things at the same time. time. And so scientists and I have a number of friends, some of whom are actually really great scientists who are religious, and they manage to believe to, to, as a famous biologist who was also an atheist, one of the more famous biologists at the 19th century, early 20th century, said, when I go in the laboratory, I become an atheist. I don't think God is turning the dials. And so if I'm an atheist, when I'm in the laboratory, why are an atheist? When I'm

outside the laboratory. I think this because people want to believe like Fox Maldar, and they can find a way to separate those two things effectively. And, and I mean, Francis had, if you've read his book, I don't know if you ever had, his weird conversion to Christianity by seeing a waterfall still amazes me. But anyway, I think the question, you're, the, you can't, it's hard, it's science alone. Well, maybe. science can answer why we have morality, but I think the morality that's provided, there's no evidence that fundamentally it comes from religion. I've often asked audiences, if you didn't believe in God, would you kill your neighbor? No. And only one time did I have someone put up and say yes. Okay. I think there are, and you know, I had a conversation which if you listen to the podcast, you might with someone with Nicholas Christakis, who you may know. And his whole, this whole book we discussed, the book, Blueprint, is that evolutionary psychology has ultimately,

um, via evolution led to societies that are fundamentally good. I mean, led people to be, because in the end it doesn't work, more or less. Basically, we are hardwired to have functioning societies if we can because those function well. And ultimately there are, you know, natural selection reasons why we have developed those rules. And some, people could call that morality. So I think the question of why we believe what we believe may be addressed well by science. Whether that's good or not in an absolute sense, I agree. I don't think so, I mean, that's science can answer. That's the problem right there, yes. But it may not be a problem. You say why. And the why question may just not be a good question.

It's, and so, you know, if, if, Lawrence, if the world were made up of people, clones of you and me, I think that might be the case. Even I would, if I could find, what I thought was a fully rational, plausible account that anchored my morality in something greater than myself or some explanation, naturalistic explanation, which explains but doesn't justify, I would grab it. I just don't, I don't think it's possible. But most people need something more than just, well, this was an evolutionary success, so we believe it. Yeah, you're right, but we don't, we try not, but that's just because, but is that not, where we're on question four of 30, so it's interesting, but anyway, is that not just a

statement that we're not doing a good job? Namely, we're not selling it, like religious people sell it. I would claim that if we, if on every Sunday, instead of having to repeat the same fairy tales to convince ourselves are true, which are actually, believe it or not, it was Hugh Downs. Do you remember Hugh Downs? You remember Hugh? Yeah, the game show host? Yeah, but in fact, he wasn't just a pretty face. He was one of the, he was unbelievably intelligent. I met him when I moved to Arizona because he read some of my papers and called me and we had conversations. And I was blown away by intelligent. That man was at age 93. But he was the first one who's told me,

he said, he thought the reason they have church every Sunday is that you need to be reinforced because the stories are so silly that every week you have to go back and see other people buying him in order to reinforce your willingness to believe this stuff. But if we, if we, I think you can sell science as saying, look, science tells us that we're connected to all of the human beings, that we have intimate connection, not just, not just in our evolution, but in our atoms, that we exchange atoms that I have, that I'm breathing in atoms from my deepest enemies every day. And, and we have a kind of common humanity. That also, the fact that the fact that there is, that we are just here for a brief instant should not be, should not dismay you,

but should invigorate you to make the most of the time you're here. I mean, we could, and I, these are the arguments I use, but I think, I think we, one could imagine selling a kind of more, first I would argue more truthful, but secondly, I would argue somewhat satisfyingly view of the world that might inspire people and that science could inspire and and that religion often just as often divides. You said somewhere in the book and again I have it later on but we'll see if we get, we may not get to later on. So that religion provides certainty in a world where secularism is increasingly uncertain in many ways. But the point is the world isn't certain and providing certainty in a world that's uncertain. It is a

is not necessarily, I would think, a good guideline. And it's not obvious to me that once again, I agree with you. We have done a crappy job. Science does not fill a void that religion films. And religion clearly fills a void because every society that's ever existed has some religious basis. It's clearly an evolutionary need at some level. But the question I would least ask in principle is, is it necessary that to fill that need? we have to do it with religion.

And I don't know the answer, but I don't think the answer is obviously no. And you do because you basically say, you know, Christianity is a load-bearing wall and its failure-hurted democracy. Well, that's a property of the United States, I think. But once again, does it have to be? Could you, can you imagine, the United States is a democracy that also is in a country that's heavily Christian, whatever you mean by the word. But do you need it? I mean, Athens was one kind of democracy in a world that wasn't Christian. There are, you know, the Nordic countries like Sweden and others may not be, you know,

or have democracies that are not. So it's not, it's empirically true that the United States relies on Christianity, but once again, is it absolutely necessary? It's sufficient, but is it necessary? That's the question I have. I've lived in Japan and wrote a, my first book was about Japan, and it is an example of a society, which although there's plenty of religion, the whole country is full of beautiful temples.

Yeah. It's not the kind of religion that we think of when we think about Christianity or Judaism. It's not a big all-encompassing theological kind of religion. It has more to do with ancestors. So, yeah, it's possible to have a very well-ordered society without Christianity, per se. I think it's much harder to do that without anything spiritual or transcendent at all. I think some small minority of people, like you and me, are pretty happy living in a world where we just don't have any of that stuff. And we look to explanations, but we don't look to ultimate justifications.

It's the nature of science, as you don't need me to know, that we don't believe in ultimate absolute. certainties. We believe in steadily approaching truth, but we believe the truth is a direction that we said and that any given moment our understanding of that truth, objective reality, will have mistakes. I think most humans, I could be wrong, but I think as an empirical matter, most humans need something more than just, well, I think the Holocaust was bad, but I might be wrong. Well, no, but you say, okay, look, that's, that, that, that, that's, that, that, that's, that, That's that cute way of putting it, but I dispute that, I mean, it's an extreme view that I don't think it proves the rule, namely that the, it is, how can I put this, the, I,

people seem to need, I agree with you, people seem to need these things. The question I have is, once again, is can you fulfill those needs otherwise? And I don't think, and by the way, I never, I try not to use the word believe. And you used it in science, we don't use the word belief. Things are likely or unlikely. And so I think what we can say as scientists is that everything we know about the universe and the world and human being and human history tells us the Holocaust was an abomination. And so I don't think we have to say, but maybe we're wrong.

I mean, it's just like I could say, well, the sun may not rise tomorrow, but it's so unlikely that we basically say it's going to rise tomorrow. And so I think, and part of the problem is, yeah, I didn't really intend this to be a discussion of atheism, but part of the problem is, you know, I'll give you the example that I think illustrates the problem. I first heard from Dawkins, by the way, where he presented a picture of a newspaper. It was a wonderful picture at Christmastime and had a Jewish kid and a Christian kid and a Muslim kid and a Hindu kid together in a little room. getting along together in a statement was how wonderful it is. But he pointed out, how dare we call this three-year-old a Muslim kid or a Jewish kid or a, or, you know, a Hindu kid? These are deep and sophisticated issues of the existence of God.

We impose that on that two or three-year-old. And I would argue that part of the problem most people have dealing with it is that they were forced-fed it when they were young. and it's very hard to overcome that role. And that if we try to satisfy kids and encourage them to think about the wonderful things about the world but didn't feed them those things, maybe there'd be more people who didn't need that. You know, it's a question.

But it's a question that I don't think I have the answer to, but I think it's not unlikely. I suppose, you know, maybe that experiment could be run somehow someday, but we're running that experiment for 20 years in the United States, and it's going very badly. All the social indicators on things like loneliness, mental health, isolation, anger at politics, deinstitutionalization, social trust.

They're all falling off a clue. That's not the experiment we're giving them. We're filling them with ideology, not science. We're not asking for people to ask questions. And also not asking for people to say, I don't know the answer. I don't know. let's work together to find it. We're telling people a different ideology, and we're feeding that,

and I think that's as responsible for all of those. So here's where I revert to that point I made earlier that in my mind is so important. We're not talking about generic feeding ideology. We're talking about some specific principles of a specific religion, which, if elevated within that faith would make our country stronger and better. I want to say those principles, and there is a name for those principles, and that name is Christianity. So I am making a specific argument about Christianity to Christians. There's another argument we can make about whether people who are raised in Taliban society are forced-fed anti-human arguments.

I think the answer is yes. Yeah. But I don't have to have that conversation here. Okay. Before we move on, you keep raising question my mind. So I used to think that the thing I liked about Judaism, I still think the thing I like about Judaism, that at least the part of it that I got, and I grew up in a very secular Jewish household, so my Jewish theology is sorely lacking, I'm sure. But was the questioning from, from Fiddler on the roof on, the idea that you can question God. And to me, that, you know, I keep thinking,

hey, that would be a great, wouldn't that be a great religious basis for society? Forget the, forget Jesus. Just no one's not subject to question. And we can meet together and have good dialogues where we disagree. And, you know, it doesn't have to be on Friday night or whatever. Lawrence, the first thing I learned in my lack, my second rate, but still, I guess, deeply shaping Jewish education. The first thing I learn is Jews question everything. We even question God. We bargain with God. We question God. And to me, that's a foundation of Judaism, which carries over into the Enlightenment.

And it is not a coincidence that so many of the people right now who are pushing, back against the right-wing political absolutism that we're seeing have been Jews. So this book is not about Judaism because Jews are 3% of the population, and we are not responsible for the rise of ungovernability in America. My book is addressed primarily to white evangelical Protestants. But have I sometimes thought the world should be Jewish? Maybe we'd be better off? Yeah, I'll confess to that.

Okay, no, and your point is well taken, and I don't want to lose that thread, that this is a book about the U.S. and it's a book about the world, the U.S. as it is, and what you think could help it, and what you think is now hurting it, which is broken Christianity. And one way we could help the U.S. is to unbreak Christianity. So I keep on to coming back, but I can't help dealing with some of these other deeper questions. but, but yeah. But, you know, the last thing before I, we will move on, your arguments in that are moving on. This is moving on.

Yeah, good. This is awesome. This is great. As long as you don't mind, I don't know what the listeners think, but as long as you don't mind. You never get past item five in your list of 30. That's why we love your podcast. I usually get bad maybe to seven.

Anyway, but, the, the other thing that occurred to me, because I understood you, this is kind of, and I don't want to sound philosophical because I'm not, but kind of you utilitarian view. Hey, look, what can make things better? Maybe not in the absolute reality, what can make an ideal world better, but what can make the real world better? And I understand that, and I applaud that. But it reminded me, your attorney Christianity reminded me a little bit of my friend, I and Hersialli, who you may or may not know, but she was a well-known atheist, and we appeared together at many atheist events and she's still my friend. She recently, as you may or may not know, announced she had converted to Christianity

and my friend Richard Dawkins had a real hard time with that. I wrote her a private letter, not a public letter, arguing why I think I understood it and I accepted it. But partly, I think, you know, because she grew up very, she was brought up in a religious Muslim household. And once again, I think if you lose that later on, you have a spiritual gap in your life that you want to fill. I think that's partly. But the other argument which she gives explicitly is kind of utilitarian.

Islam is an evil for the world, and you can't fight it with secularism. You can only fight it with another religion and the other religion is Christianity. That's basically her argument, is that we, it's almost a crusades argument. It's the argument that we need, we can't fight the most. claimed moral superiority of Islam with secular scientific arguments, we need to appeal to a God that's kind and just and blah, blah, whatever Christianity is. And that's why she became a Christian. And I guess I was kind of thinking that there's some overlap between her argument for becoming Christian and your argument for how to solve a failing democracy. Since we've

since we rely on a God, we might as well make the God we rely on a better one. No, I wouldn't put it that way. The only, but I see where you're going, and it's on the right track. So the only really good reason to believe a religion is because you think it's true, because that's really the only good reason to believe anything, right?

Otherwise, you're insincere. And if someone says, well, I'm a Christian because it's probably good for society for me to think that. But no, I don't really think that Christ died on the cross or was resurrected. You know, okay for them if they want to do that. But there's an element of, you know, that's not something that I would ask or expect anyone to do. And I try not to be hypocritical about this. I don't pretend to be a believer because I'm not. I'm also trying really hard not to be one of those people in this book who says,

well, I'm too smart to believe in God, but I'm glad those other dummies do because it makes society better off. Yeah, no, you don't. I really don't go there. And one reason is I do feel that I'm missing out on something, a part of life. It's like parenthood. I'm not a parent either, but a lot of people are. And they tell me it's a really deepening experience. And when my Christian friends or Jewish friends tell me that, I think that this is a hugely important

part of their life and a deepening part, I accept that. So I think I'm the one missing out. Sorry, go on. I'll finish the thought. We can circle back. But I'm headed toward the point you're making about Ion Hercioli. So I can be a non-Christian, a non-believer, a non-anything, and look at those things. three core principles of Christianity and say, those are true, those are good. You can get them out of Kahn. You can get them out of Rawls. You can get them a lot of ways. And so you don't have to be Christian to believe them, but you can say to Christians, this is your religion. Wouldn't it be great if you acted as if it was true?

Okay. Yes, you can say to that. And I have to agree. 100% I don't yeah there are subtleties of that but I think we we agree with that but I can cure your mental angst here I'm going to perform psychotherapy okay you are not first of all one of things I hate is the claim of loss of faith as if we're losing something I claim that losing faith is actually adding things but but I would argue that I mean there's somewhere in your book that you describe yourself as, you know, the whole core of your being is to, I love that sentence and I have it somewhere later on and I'll probably find it about, you know, fighting, you know, the things that make you who you are and we'll find it later on. But that, that intellectual journey that's made

you a person who cares about inequity, who cares about making the world a better place, who cares about these deep things, the wrestling you have with these philosophical arguments and in a way that I think is more, is deeper and more scholarly than any wrestling I've probably ever done with those things. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's what, that's the deep, that's a deep satisfaction that those people who are deeply religious, not just superficially religious, have. They wrestle with these moral questions.

It leads them in a certain direction. But I would argue that yours is just as real. and deep and fulfilling, if not more so, than theirs. I don't think there's anything you're missing. In fact, I would argue quite the opposite. Anyway, that's my opinion. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe you're right.

I have no way to know. I mean, I've had, are you a parent? Of course. Yeah, I'm a parent. And when many, many parents, hundreds, maybe all of them tell me, you know, this is, they tell me things like, I'm sorry, this sounds like a digression, maybe it is, but they say things like, until you're a parent, you don't know the depth of love that you're capable of or the depth of anger you're capable of. And when I hear them say that again and again, I start to think,

well, that, I never have experienced that kind of depth of love. Have you ever been a nanop? depth of anchor and anger and my life is fine. Maybe I'd rather not experience those things. I feel no need to be religious. I'm perfectly happy the way I am. Really Christians out there. I get letters. They say, God is, you know, battering on the door of your heart. Let him in. Can't you see? No, I'm, I'm perfectly content this way. It's just the way I am. I just think that I don't perceive or live or have as much of these attunements to other aspects. of life that you do. So, bully for you.

Well, I mean, it's, well, I would say one is intellectual. One is purely internal and I think you can have that in many ways. I don't, I don't meditate, but I think when I'm doing physics, it's just the same thing. And so I don't need to go on and

dare my navel. But I would, but it's different. A child is an empirical thing. And I would argue, the thing you haven't learned if you don't have a child is that you immediately realize all your faults in a way that is so explicit, the minute you have a child was born, you realize very quickly all of your faults.

But I think if you, and I have a daughter and who I love deeply, but I also have two dogs. I have a dog that I think I can experience the depth of unconditional love for my dog every much as I can for my human being. I can't communicate as well. Anger, it's not so clear. But I think you can experience the depths of anger by being married as well. So anyway, I'm alienating much of the audience.

So let's go back. Not the dog lovers. Yeah, not the dog levers. I think, yeah, I, if you really, anyway, it doesn't matter. So the next point you make, we're still only reviewing, we get to the final chapter, which I think is really the ultimate point you're trying to make. And you also say, what can we do, which is always, as you say, what author, there's fear and audiences hate or something.

You say that Christianity is in crisis, but you do point out, and this is a useful bit of sociology, I think, which counters the prevailing wisdom, that the crisis is not the fault of the secular cultural aggression that's happening. The crisis in Christianity is not complete the fault of the secular woke, but is driven primarily by tragic choices made by Christians themselves. name the wall of separation between the private and public values has just appeared, something called the Church of Fear. So I'd like you to elaborate on that, because I think it's an important point that does go against

popular wisdom and therefore something I love to talk about on these podcasts. Yeah, so this isn't a huge part of the book, but it's in there because I thought it had to be. You know, I didn't want to spend a whole lot of pages getting involved in the debate over post-liberalism. Yeah, but you do. Okay. So the big word of what we've been talking about is secularization. And secularization is what happens when religions lose their cultural distinctiveness, blend into the background.

And as happened to the mainline churches in the last century, become, you know, consumer choices and lifestyles. And people drift away because they're not really getting anything countercultural or different or profound from religion. There is another form of secularization. And this is the path that white evangelical church has been on for really since the 80s, since Falwell and Robertson, but accelerating in the era of Trump. And that's politicization. And that's bringing politics, partisanship, the culture war, and the fear that goes with it into the church. And saying, we are here as Christians in order to fight to get our country back. And there's many variants of that theme.

And the problem with this is that as Russell Moore has said, he's a editor of Christianity today, wrote a wonderful book called Losing Our Religion, formerly identified as evangelical. I'm not sure he still does. When asked why young people are just abandoning the church in droves, he says, if all we're offering them is a choice between paganization and secularization, we should. shouldn't be surprised if they choose one or the other. So there's this group of people. They're called post-liberals. They tend to be Catholic, though not all of them are. And they claim that you and I are responsible for the decline of religion because our liberal ideology, hyper,

it's individualistic, consumeristic, utterly personal, anarchic, it's a radical doctrine that mows down faith, family, tradition, and country. And so it's our fault. And I have some stuff to say about that. And I think that's, you know, there is some truth to that. It is hard to be a religion, a countercultural religion in a society with social media and big science, for that matter, small science and secular universities and all of those things. Those are real pressures. I would point out to them that Christianity historically has been at its best when it's a minority faith, when it is an exilic faith.

that Jesus was not exactly in control of that society. But I go on to say, okay, I'll grant them that there is a kernel of truth in what they're saying, nonetheless, the collapse of white evangelical Protestantism in this century is primarily due to tragic choices that have been made by the church itself, and that's to go down the road of politics, especially not only, because it predates MAGA, but especially now MAGA politics. Particularly evangelicals.

It's not just politics. It's a winning, it's an us versus them politics, winning and losing, aggressive, you know, because there are lots of crime. Yes, exactly. There's ecumenical politics too, but yeah, it's this. That's super important. I call it the Church of Fear.

Right. This is not about whether people engage in politics. Of course, religious people should. It is not about what positions they wind up. taking on abortion, you're exactly right. This is about how do people approach politics? In what spirit do they deal with others? And you mentioned the wall of separation metaphor that I use, which has to do with, okay, the church is pretty good still, white evangelical churches, at doing what they call discipling people, spiritual formation.

That's making people in the image of Jesus. In their local church, in their family, in their community, when the hurricane strikes, the churches are just many, many places, just still great. But a wall of separation has gone up between how those folks are behaving in their personal and immediate world versus how they're behaving in the civic world. That's the world basically of social media and politics,

where they are embracing cruelty, fear, insult. We see this all the time. I've got examples of it in my book. That's the wall of separation because Christians like Dr. Moore say that Christianity is a unified garment. as David French has put it, you just can't say I may be a bit of an asshole on Twitter, but you should see me in the soup kitchen. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so that wall between civic theology and personal theology, that's got to come down. So what these folks are saying is be Christian in all of your life, including the way you address your fellow citizens on social media and in the political realm. Okay, well, I mean, that's a good segue. So you talk about the Church of Fear. That's a, and you do point out, as I say, you go against the grain and pointing out it's not the fault of entirely of a secularist that the church has made, many churches have made their own bargain with the devil.

And you can choose your devil. And, and, and then, of course, the ultimate, not penultimate, the ultimate part of the book is the thick Christianity, where you basically say, more or less, the summary of it is, is in a sentence I got from that chapter, which was more or less says, because core Christian principles track closely with core liberal principles,

they can be bought into alignment and make democracy better. I added that bit at the end. But, but, so that's basically the thesis. Core Christian principles track closely with core liberal principles. I do want to, I do want to parse

that a little because on the surface, sure, yeah, you know, love your neighbor and all the rest. But but and fear, don't be in fear, you know, et cetera. The three things you claim are core Christian principles. I mean, most people, by the way, would not, most Christians, many Christians would say core Christian principles. They would say exactly what Francis Collins said to you.

His core Christian principle is Jesus was reborn. And another core Christian principle is Mary was a virgin. These are, these are, so that, you know, that the transsubstance, and the virgin birth are probably the two deepest core beliefs without which I don't think you could really call yourself a Christian because those are the reasons you think that Christ had something to do with divinity and yet you haven't mentioned them and I think it's important to realize that those are those are just as core principles and I think those are principles we would both argue have no utility if anything negative utility.

for living in the world. Would you agree with that? Neither here nor there. The principles that concern me and that are defining are the ones that have to do with how we move through the world in relation to others.

Yeah, and again, I'm not going to channel Christopher Hitchens to show how the moral teachings of the Old Testament and to some extent the New Testament are, he would argue, abysmal and he argued pretty that a lot of what Christ said was pretty bad stuff. But I want to, but I don't want to go there because this, you know, we belabored that enough. I think I happen to

agree with Pritians, but, but what I want to ask you is, are those core principles, really core principles of Christianity or core principles of people who use reason to apply it to their Christianity? And the person I'm thinking about is Mr. Oakes or whatever you call him, President Oaks or whatever his official name is, the first presidency of the Church of Latter-day Saints. He espouses beautifully in your book principles, as you point out, that are, that, that, that are Madisonian, as you label them, are completely in accord with the, with the, with the core liberal principles that should govern a liberal democracy. But he are, but I, but I, but I, found his arguments, not often theological, I found his arguments like those of a lawyer. When he

started talking about the civic aspect of the church, rather than the personal aspect of the church, I found it to be someone who was a reason, a person of reason, a lawyer who understands law and society, thinking about how best to apply what he believed for law and society. And I guess I would call that reason and not so much, you know, I think I'm coming back to this argument that people like him who happen to pick the principles from Christianity that are good, that are liberal, that are, that help, and they come at it from really their education as, as their secular education. You want to comment on that? I mean, you know Oakesbett and I do, but the quotes you give from him strike me as eminently reasonable and eminently reasoned from someone who studied,

law? Well, that shouldn't be surprising. President Oakes, his title, I believe, is complicated. He's the number two person in the church. He will probably soon be the number one person in the church. And he is a former University of Chicago law professor, a former justice on the Utah State Supreme Court, a president of Brigham Young University, a man who is deeply steeped in the values and principles of constitutional law. So it should not surprise us that you see those things in his thinking. I think he would be mortified if you did not see those things in his thinking. Where I get off is the locution. He happens to think those things. He is also a profoundly devout Latter-day Saint, deeply steeped in the theology of the religion, and he derives those principles,

as I show in the book, this is an important part of the bookwork that no one has really done before. He derives those principles from stories that you and I would categorize as myths and interpretations of myths about what happened in the Garden of Eden. And, okay, it's... Yeah, Dom Weider jump in, yeah, go on. I mean, he exactly uses the Garden of Eden. And he has brilliant. He argues the fall is not a fall. It's a rise. I'm sorry.

Yeah, which makes a lot, makes much more sense to me than this Augustinian version. It's like, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But it's not a Christian version. It's a version of someone who's saying, you know what? I'm an academic and questioning is a good thing and I'll interpret the Bible the way I want to. This is Latter-day Saint doctrine going back to Joseph Smith. You said it's the craziest religion ever. I get off there, too, because I think Christianity and Judaism are just as crazy. I mean, talking bushes, come on. We're going to this after. No, it's based on manifest falsehoods in its scriptures.

The other ones are, you know, they're clearly based on your... Lawrence, they're all based on manifest falsehoods. I know, but these are empirically provable. They're all manifesting. Okay. Let's not go there. Yeah, the book of Abraham and your thing is based on the burial rights of raw. Anyway, go on.

So look, every faith is complex, and every faith has elements of what you and I would call light and what you and I would call darkness. And what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is doing is it has built what I call a civic theology that based on its core principles going back to the really actually kind of surprising pluralism of Joseph Smith in the 1840s, have built a theology about how Jesus would want us to behave in the political realm. And the core ideas are, as President Oakes puts it, patience, negotiation, and mutual accommodation. Now, as you point out, those are very much in keeping with the constitutional values of Madisonian pluralism.

they overlap. That's not entirely surprising because the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints considers the Constitution to be a divinely inspired document, not scriptural, but divinely inspired. But that church is choosing to elevate those aspects of its faith, which align best with our liberal democracy and grounding those in its own theological truth. And I'm not saying that everyone can be a Mormon or should or anything like that. Of course not. I'm not saying Christians should convert and become Latter-day Saints. But I am saying that if Christians look at their scripture, they will have no trouble at all.

Finding in the doctrines as preached by Jesus Christ all the elements for a civic theology which comport very well with what our country needs right now. pluralism, patience, negotiation, mutual accommodation, getting away from the fear-based politics, getting away from the scorched earth politics, I win, you lose, getting away from the absolutism in which compromises a four-letter word. These things are disabling our country. So I'm just saying, hey, how about taking inspiration from this church, which is doing this heavy lift of realigning its values with those of democracy. I mean, of course, that's a nice thing to say,

but you could pick, I mean, you could, I think part of my problem is giving undue respect for that. You could, because religions are vague in many ways, and always the scriptures are subject to interpretation, which is good, I guess, you can always interpret them in ways that you've just proclaimed in which Mr. Oakes and others, some others in the Mormon Church, I'm assuming he's not universal, but interpret to take these good points and say, let's interpret the scriptures to justify

what we already know because we're sensible people is a good thing. But in fact, you're picking and choosing, namely, you know, I think of, and I'm sorry, I've, I've, I've, I've, I know I studied the church a lot, it's theology a lot and tried to write about it in the election when Romney was running for president, but the New York Times wouldn't publish it because they didn't want to cause dissent at the time. They didn't want the same thing to happen.

This happened in 2000. But, you know, a cult, and I think of it as a cult, a cult can have some good ideas. But I don't think that necessarily means you need to give it that undue respect. clearly a man I respect, his thinking, his interpretation of the scriptures. We won't ask him about his interpretation of the ridiculous aspects of the Roman church. But isn't it like saying, and I'm giving, maybe I'm being the devil's advocate, but that's exactly what I like to be.

The isn't like saying, well, okay, let's say we, there are flat earthers. They believe the earth is flat. And their, and their theology is the earth is flat. And we have to work together to make sure no one falls off. So we have to, we have to respect others. We have to hold into others and not and not repel them because otherwise they'll fall off the earth. Well, let's give them respect. I'm sorry, I can't do it. Well, this may just be a point of disagreement about, among us, between us. So we'll see. And you may, you may disagree with my judgment that those three pillars of Christianity that I mentioned, don't be afraid, imitate Jesus and forgive each other, are number one, fundamental to Christianity, and number two, substantively important and aligning with

democracy. So I am not saying that those are flat earth, and I'm also not saying that there are things I cherry picked out of the Bible, and that Jesus' ministry is also full of things that could just as easily turn this into the Third Reich. I'm saying if I'm correct, and if Christians who are interviewed, it doesn't matter what I think of Christianity, but if the many Christians who say that these are their core teachings are correct,

then this is something important about and central to Christianity, which is true. It's way more than flatter. It's like these are principles which can and do inform our liberal government. democracy, align with our liberal democracy, and it's not just some coincidence to something that I happen to rummage through and find, you know, in some Bible.

You didn't happen to. I would argue these people who believe in liberal democracy and who are also defined themselves as Christians have worked hard to find a way to reconcile their Christianity with liberal democracy, and they come up with those aspects of Christianity that do, and there's no doubt. I mean, they are three aspects of Christianity. And they, but, and they are, and they are, and they should be the core pillars of our liberal democracy. And it, and the, and we'll be a better country if those people who define themselves as

Christians apply those aspects of Christianity. to the way they deal with the civic world and the political world. So we're in agreement there. It's a great, if you're your hope that these- That's the whole book right there. I know. What are we disagree? I know.

I mean, so I don't disagree that making Christianity kinder and gentler is not a good thing. It's certainly a good thing. I'd say making a Christian, but yeah. Yeah, well, I know. So what's the problem? The problem is I think you're giving too much credence to what me, Christian is. After all, Mr. Oakes diverges tremendously with 99% of the Christian churches in the world in saying that original sin is not original sin. For many people, original sin is central

because Christ died for our original sins. And so I think, I bet, again, I'm not a theologian and I'm sure I'll be attacked for saying this, but I think you ask most Christians, what did Christ die for? He died because of original sin. The humans had originally sinned, and now he was changing it. Now he was taking up all that sin, and now you could go to heaven just by believing in him, and you weren't tainted by this original sin of your non-existent forbearer Adam, or forebears Adam and Eve.

Now, Oakes is saying, I disagree with that. I don't think the fall. I don't think eating the apple was an original sin. It was a great thing. And I think that causes him to diverge from 99% of Christians around the world. So I think once again, I'll tell you one better, Lawrence. I mean, a lot of Christians think that Latter-day Saints are not Christians. I got in a whole argument with Andrew Sullivan on his podcast about, you know, of course they're

not Christian. And there's arguments about his original sin. Is it foundational or is it something that Augustine brings in? And, you know, I don't get into any of that. And I'm certainly not telling anyone to. adopt latter-day saint theology, I think it's actually easier to get from core traditional Christian principles to liberal democracy than to get from Latter-day Saint principles to democracy. But my point is just simply, it's what you said earlier, there is more than enough to work with

if Christians decide to look into their scripture and say, what elements of this are both core to our religion and core to our democracy? And I think I can say, I'm going to guess you'll go with me on this one because it's not that far out on a limb. I'm going to say that the teachings of Jesus Christ are a great deal closer to the teachings of Madison than they are to Maga. The Christians, I know, don't see a lot of Christianity in be maximally fearful, demand retribution against your enemies.

Donald Trump Jr. gave that famous speech where he said, I understand this business about turn the other cheek. But that hasn't worked. Christians, you know, many of them were, and more of them should be agog at that. you know, that guy died on the cross. That didn't work. What a dummy. Yeah, well, okay, look, I think it's semantic at some point. I think we agree. I would say if Christians just were more reasonable, that would be better. You claim that you replace the word reasonable for adopting certain aspects of Christianity. And I guess I am not willing to give it so easily a

pass. I think that if Christians are more reasonable, and I do think a lot of Christianity is fearing God. I hear it all the time. Fearing God. Yeah. Not fearing Democrats. Yeah, I know, but it's one or the other. I mean, you know, God is the ultimate dictator, you know, and he'll send you to hell if you don't do what he wants. And it won't even, unlike Donald Trump will just throw you, kick you out of the country and take your kids away from you, this God will punish you

for eternity. Forget that, you know, forget that, you know, if you, you know, if you immigrate illegally, you know, into that religion. you get punished for eternity and not just, not just, I'm not so, you know, I'm again, I'm presenting the other view. I think your point is well taken that once again, we don't disagree fundamentally that since this is a Christian country, if Christians behaved, recognized that their religion was not inconsistent with the cores of Masonian democracy, it would be better. And moreover, there are elements of Christianity that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, overlie very well with that viewpoint. And you can take them and discard others, or you can choose

to take others and discard them. And I think you're right, the world is a better place if you would do the former rather than the latter. Yeah. If I could just add something to that, it goes to what you said earlier. This, the benefits of coexisting scientific materialists like me with Christians like Dr. Moore or David French or Pete Wainer or my other Christian friends, the late Tim Keller, the late Mark McIntosh, their mutual benefits. Because of course, the moderating influence of liberalism, you know, this is small ill liberalism, liberalism of the founders, that's pluralism and democracy and toleration and human rights and all of that. That's had a profoundly important and I think positive effect on Christianity. These things need each other. And the problem

is when they get out of alignment, when they're going in opposite directions, when millions of Christians are interpreting their religion as requiring retribution, political maximalism, never compromise, drink liberal tears, when they're doing that, that's going to put a huge strain on the country. These things have got to be closer together. Oh, look, I couldn't agree with you more. I think, you know, I want to point out that we, obviously, we agree in spirit. We agree in many things. I, I guess the concern I have is the undue respect that's being given for Christianity and religion, which I don't think it necessarily deserves. And it's not just, yeah, religion general. I take the point, and it's where I was 20 years

ago, and it's not necessarily wrong. I told you, on the guy. That's the guy. That's the guy. Yeah, well, I'm arguing with myself. The change in me has come from knowing the people that I've mentioned and others, pastors that I've become friends with, non-Christians, rabbis that I've become friends with, have given me more respect than I've started out with and help me to understand that these, the great old religions, the ones that have been around for a long time, you know, if you believe in moral evolution, you might expect that the ideas which survive and thrive over two to three thousand years will be better than the ideas on average that pop up yesterday,

the moral ideas. And I've come to think that that's true. That's a change for me. Yeah, yeah, I think you don't think that. Yeah, I think the more we learn about the world, the better we are to interpret and the ideas that come out. You know, we know a lot more now than we did a hundred years ago, and that's why you can get married to your husband, and I'm happy about that. And I've argued that it's science that's led that way. And rather than stoning of course. Homosexuals that would have happened

in ancient times and so I think... Of course, you're talking to a gay person but in terms of of ethics and morality there's stuff there in those traditions

that is profound and important and that we can draw on and should respect. You know, I was on another podcast who's also where I was 20 years ago and said, isn't in your book

aren't you really just throwing in the towel on the idea of a true secular society that doesn't need any of this mumbo jumbo. And I thought about it and I said, yeah, I guess I am throwing in the towel on that. I guess I'm saying that that's not something that's attainable or even really desirable. Well, I think we're, I hope we're going deeper than that. But I think that, look, the point is that there's lots to choose from. There's beauty in the psalm. there's I mean it's anytime you read people who may or may not have thought

deeply about the world you get something out of it and and so it's not as if the Bible is to be discarded or religious be I mean and you're absolutely right I think the worst the you know the example of how not to think about this was the stupid

stupid stupid proposal that atheists call themselves brights that was made in a you know, around the 2000 to suggest that religious people were the stupids. Yeah. And, and, um, and that's, that's idiotic. And I, I have to say that, you know, having spent 30 or 40 years, maybe less time, but in the public arena talking about this, I've certainly evolved because I think I was patronizing and felt like, oh, yeah, I'm smarter than you. And I've

learned with age, if nothing else to get that many people have wisdom. And, and they get it from different places. And I know many wonderful people who are religious. I know many wonderful people who aren't. And I'm always intrigued about where they get that from. What's the reason I run the podcast is to find the origins of people I admire or whose ideas I think are important. But I don't, but I think it's misplaced to, I think it's, I think I admire the people

and where they get their ideas from more than the religious, the religious dogma, that they may have grown, that may have contributed to their getting it. I think that's my point. I take the point. A place where I disagreed with the late Mr. Hitchens is that I think that people make religion stupid rather than the other way around. Well, yeah. Okay, interesting.

It comes into what defines by religion, but there's no doubt that people, that, you know, that, yeah, people make religion stupid, people make secularism stupid, too. I was about to say, we're good at importing stupidity into a lot of the things that we do. And the great thing about science, which you talk about so beautifully in your books, by the way, and we've talked about before, is that it's not that scientists aren't stupid because they are. It's that the science has a mechanism to overcome the scientists. That's why science is better than religion, because it has the mechanism to overcome the nonsense. Religion, unfortunately, doesn't.

You need people like you to say, hey, smarten up. But science doesn't have to say that because, you know, the process eventually leads us to the right or at least better answers, even though the scientists themselves may not be there. I want to go into two or three things more. And then, you know, we're on number 10, by the way, of 30. but I've skipped a few, of course.

But I keep, look, maybe because, you know, the only intelligent thing ever heard Kissinger say was something he stole from someone else, which was the reason academic disputes are so vicious is because the stakes are so low. And he didn't invent that, but it's true. And maybe that's the reason I'm picking. We agree so much that I'm picking at our differences.

But I think it allows us to have some interesting conversations But, and I, and it's that religion, it's that difference of sort of giving an innate respect to religion, which I, I guess I can't get to. I can give innate respect to religious people, but I can't give innate respect to religion. But, but you talk a lot about the respect for marriage act, which of course is obviously something that comes that is near and dear to you for personal reasons as well as intellectual ones. And you talk about how it was an act of compromise, how the latter-day Samanian. supported it as a compromise. They didn't buy homosexuality as moral, but they realized as a civic compromise,

allowing for the belief that people should be able to choose how they behave is central to their view of their Christianity. And therefore, that was central to, you know, the respect for America Jack is really a respect for people to choose how they behave and whether they're damned or not. And ultimately. But they say, you quoted a sentence which really graded on me. You know, that the traditional and religious views of marriage, which have to be accepted.

So you can't force a cake maker, you know, who's deeply Christian for one reason, and believes homosexuality is an abomination. You shouldn't have to be able to force that person to, to, make a cake to celebrate your marriage, John, Jonathan. But the statement is that the traditional religious views of marriage are, quote, based on decent and honorable religious and philosophical premises. It's assumed that religious premises are decent and honorable. Those same preferences were used to justify racism. Those same decent and honorable religious views argued that certain people were inferior. I mean, the question of what is decent and honorable, I would argue, is not to be

decided within the religion, but within the domain of reason and civic discourse. So I think automatically saying decent and honorable religious views, for example, what if I had a, what if I created a new religion and got rich doing it based on racism? Would that be decent? and honorable? If I said, you know, I've had a revelation that, you know, whatever, you pick your favorite group I want to pick on, doesn't have to be blacks, make it Jews, I don't care, that they are evil and not human. And ultimately, if that religion took off and had enough people adhering to it, that would be tax exempt, I think you and I would argue that that's never decent and honorable. And just, and to give it, to treat it that way because it's religion is,

is to unfair to religions and is unfair to people. Well, I could get in trouble here by forgetting what I wrote in my own book, and you may have it in front of you, but I think I was making a narrower point there, which is that their views specifically about marriage, not everything in the religion. Of course, everything in these religions isn't decent and honorable. Let me who would defend that proposition, but I think I was saying. But I guess you were saying that, but my point is a little different. It's that it's reasonable. It's honorable not because it's religious, but it's honorable because it's sensible, because those same religions say many things of a marriage, which you would find

not honorable, like a woman is supposed to obey a man. And so I don't, once again, I try to ask, how does one know what's honorable and decent in religions? Well, the way you know it is by applying reason and logic and comments. So I think that the religious objections to same-sex marriage were not, in fact, in the same category as their objections to, for example, interracial marriage, that the latter had no basis in theology and no basis in virtue or morality and were simply imported racism into the religion. What about women as, what about the Catholic view of women as priests?

I'm against it, it's their religion, but I want to get to marriage. Because I think, well, you know, as fundamental as the belief of marriage? So the marriage is, let me first talk about marriage, because that's the subject I know. Okay.

So what I think I'm doing there is making a narrower point that there are deep reasons in theology and in the view of human sexuality that pertains in all religions going back 3,000 years, which made same-sex marriage seem illogical, impossible, or worse for them. And I think in some cases, probably many cases, people who objected to same-sex marriage, were acting out of animus against homosexual people. But I also think that in those religious traditions, there are deep teachings that go back way before modern science about homosexuality and marriage and sexual orientation and all that about, you know, God created men and women. and complementarity of the sexes and the purpose of sex and all of those things. And what I'm saying is that those were not invented as an excuse to hate on gay people and that it was possible for people to believe those things and to be against same-sex marriage on that basis. And that I met many of those people, as you know, the big crusade of my life campaign, I should

say, was same-sex marriage, a cause that I never thought, we would win, but that preoccupied me for 20 years. And in the course of that, I met more than my share of people who had dishonorable motives, but I also met Christians who said things like, how about civil unions? I can't get all the way to marriage because the Bible says this and that and so forth. But how about just calling it something else? And those were people really working hard to try to make room in society for people like me and my husband. I said, no, that's not good enough, and I gave the reasons. But the point I'm making there is we should not assume that everyone who opposes

this on a policy is acting on the basis of animus or that the religion itself is necessarily framed as animus. So that's the only point I'm making. And as to whether women should be priests and Catholicism, I don't know. I mean, if I wrote Catholicism, it would be, but, you know, I guess my point is it's not, and not to suggest malice on the part of people who are against game six marriage, quite the contrary. I'm arguing that the religious tenets themselves, which are based, which I think you've argued

very clearly, counter to a point you made earlier, that ancient wisdom isn't so wise. Because ancient wisdom was made by, you know, stone age peasants who didn't know, the earth went around the sun, and they certainly didn't know about human sexuality. Oh, yeah, well, of course. The wisdom of 3,000 years is no, the fact that it survived 3,000 years doesn't make it good. It just makes it based on. Yeah, of course. Of course.

I mean, yeah, so, no, but I mean, I think you argued earlier that somehow survive 3,000 years that are necessarily deep. Sometimes they're just wrong, and they survive because we keep promoting that. People can believe things that turn out to be wrong for reasons that are decent and honorable. Exactly. Yes. And that's right. And if they can give reasons for why they're wrong, which I can argue with and which may be empirical, maybe empirically wrong, but which are grounded in their own best efforts to figure out what's true, I'm not going to condemn them. I'll say, I think you're wrong and I'll explain why. Oh, yeah, yeah. I guess, I guess, yeah, I'm not. Decent and honorable doesn't mean factually true. No, of course not. And I'm not suggesting people believe them aren't decent and honorable. I'm suggesting. the ideas are not inherently not decent honorable, and you and I can argue why. They, you know, their ideas, the decent honorable people adapt. Yeah, okay, I'll accept that.

I'll accept that. I think that's right. And I said all the time, you know, to good people, good Christian people, for that matter, non-Christian people who oppose same-sex marriage, that I had respect for them, but that I thought that their belief was wrong and cruel. and I said all those things. Yeah. And eventually they heard.

Okay. So I think not all of them. Okay. My big problem is that we just too often our society assume because it's something from an organized religion that it has to be decent and honorable. And it doesn't. And as I say, decent and honorable people believe it. And you know, and Steve Weinberg, a Nobel Prize winning physicist, and I've misquoted

many times he's died now. But he said, gave a quote, which I thought. love the most. He said, you know, they're good people and they're bad people. Good people do good things. Bad people do bad things. When good people do bad things, it's religion. And in any case, okay, we agree. I have three questions that are much more specific as we head to the end here. One is a quote from you where you said, I've heard sermons that have left me feeling far closer to truth or something like that. Could you elaborate in that? What did what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, you hear that that didn't come from your deep philosophy, and I know from having talked to you,

your deep philosophical ruminations about the world. So is it, can you give me an example? Yeah, there's a pastor I know. His name's Chris Davis. He's a pastor at Groveton Baptist Church in Alexandria. And he is a deeply educated man in the ways of the Bible and a very cultivated man. and he gives a mean sermon. And now it's two, several years ago, so I won't remember the details. But he was able to take a passage in the Bible, which I hadn't particularly thought about, which didn't seem especially interesting, and begin to unpack implications of it

and put it in context of other things in and outside the Bible. And doing the work of exegesis, which he was able in the course of his sermon, which was, I don't know, half an hour or whatever, to turn two or three or four corners so that I left the room thinking, wow, that's something I never thought about. That's an insight, whether it's about the meaning of that portion of the Bible or an insight into how to live. And that's not because he's Christian. It's just because he's a good thinker. Hey, I could have said that. That's exactly. my point is that is that you don't is that the good thinking is the important part and it's nice if

they're Christian and it doesn't matter but it doesn't matter to me one way or another it's good thinking that matters and I think the I guess maybe we maybe where we disagree is on or at least have a different emphasis is on the extent to which there is good and valuable stuff in these scriptures these texts on which to disagree or if we should just treat them as a pile of words that are kind of superstitious. No, no, no. I think the point is, like I told you, any deep, you know, in such a book, there are going to be nuggets of wisdom and deep thinkers will take those nuggets and discard the others. And that's what I think you're asking the Christians to do, ultimately, in my opinion. I guess I'm asking secular people for a bit more, and this is where we

fight each other a little bit, which is I'm enough of a Berkian and a believer in moral evolution to think that if something's been around a very long time and respected by huge numbers of people, many of whom are smarter than I am, that it deserves a kind of deference, which would not be the case for something that popped up yesterday. Oh, see, okay, I think because I'm a scientist. You don't go there, yeah.

Well, because I'm a scientist, I've learned that, you know, Aristotle, with a long time, but, you know, you just needed Galileo and, boof, it's over. And all these, I love the fact that ideas that humans have carried with them for thousands of years are shown in an instant to be wrong. That's what makes science so good. So I guess, I guess...

Well, not all that often, though. Science is conservative, right? No, it's very conservative. Of course, I'm not saying everyone's Galileo, but the fact that respect, I think, I didn't say it. I don't know whether it was Bernalski or someone else, but somehow that science basically led us away

from the wisdom of ancient books to the wisdom, you know, of experiment. And I think, and I really, and that's, and I love ancient books. So don't get me wrong. I love, I love, but, but I think that's, that drives me as much as anything else. I think taking us away from the wisdom of ancient books is a huge progress for humanity. And science does it because if you're a scientist, if you're Richard Feynman, you don't, or Newton, Newton was deeply religious, so he isn't a good example. But, but if you're Richard Feynman, you can just derive it all your,

and you don't need the ancient books. You don't even need the physics books. And that's wonderful. Anyway, so I... It's not quite consistent with the conservatism of science, which in principle does give a lot of deference to ideas that have survived decades or in the case of evolution over a century of tests. We don't start from scratch in science every day. We couldn't. No, no, we give deference to the ideas which has survived the test of experiment. That's a lot of the test. That's it. I think an evolution has survived a test of experiment for 200 years, and that's why we give a difference. Similarly, Newton's laws that have survived the test of experiment. If they didn't, we would throw, even if they were Newton's, and tomorrow we discovered they were wrong, we would

throw them out like yesterday's newspaper, and we should be prepared to do that, even if we have revered them for centuries. As Charles Sanders' purse says, we should be willing to throw out whole wagon loads if they're proved wrong. That's from your earlier book. Yeah. I, I, I, I don't defer to anybody's Bible on the material universe. I don't think it's true that there was a no Achaean flood and the entire world was covered with water and that's why we have dinosaur fossils on the top of mountains.

Where I make a distinction is in moral propositions. Yeah, you defer to the Bible in moral propositions and I don't. I mean, I don't defer unquestionably. I hope that's clear. Look, I'm gay and I'm married, right? Yeah. But I do say, yes, it's like the famous line about if you buy a property and you find a fence on it, don't tear it down until you know why it's there. I do give it that kind of deference. Okay. And I would agree with that. I guess my point is that I don't, yeah, I don't defer to them on morals. I ask the questions. And if they're more, if the morality. And as good Jews, a rabbis would say, damn right you asked the questions

every generation should yeah okay and I so I differ on you what I think is fundamental the question but you say a bunch of other things two other I want to pick some quotes that really hit me and then I want to ask you one last question and again you realize I would not be

doing this if I didn't admire your thinking so much you said how Mike I'm going to quote read it because I wrote it's a quote that was too long for me to write in little book here. How might the country, I mean, I was blown away with this. How, oh yeah, how might the country be different? I wonder if more students from secular backgrounds were exposed

to comparative religion courses, which respectfully examined the Bible and its sources alongside other religious traditions. Well, I can't argue with that. The reason I can't argue with it is that it's history. and I think when you learn history, you always, you know, gain wisdom. I love history. I guess I might say, however, that's nice to say, but wouldn't, isn't the opposite even better? Wouldn't it, how, if I were to put it, how might the country be different if more students of religious, religion were respectfully, were taught about science? I think that would be so much better. How many?

Do I have to choose? Can I add how much better the country would be if all students were taught civics? Yeah, I mean, I guess, you can't teach everything in that passage I make. I guess because you're talking to religion here, you pick it out. But I think if I had to pick, look, I think comparative religion courses are fine. But if I had to pick, if I had to choose, it's fine. I like to people learn everything. I wanted to learn everything.

It's just always, you know, I still want to learn everything. But, again, giving special respect to religious traditions, I think, is being unduly kind. Okay, let me let, let, let, let, let, but there's one statement you made which really hit me. How much better informed, how much better informed my news coverage and other media products be, if religious perspectives were reliably sought out and knowledgeingly, knowledgeably covered? I found that to be, of all the statements, more of an affront because the religion is why, news is how. And I guess, I mean, I wish that, I wish, again, once again, that of news more routinely included, you know, where, I forget where it is now. scientific perspectives, it would be great. But I just don't see that why, how could the news be

more informed? And if religious perspective, how much better informed might news coverage be? Why do you pick religious cover? I mean, if the perspectives of religious people who were committing acts might be explored, that's one thing. But in the news, I think the religion should, shouldn't play any role at all. And I'm surprised you say it. I'm surprised. You're surprised. So American newsrooms are very secular, have undercovered religion for many years or relegated it to what used to be called the religion page back when newspapers were still, you know, a thing. And I think that led to a blind spot. And for example, covering the rise of MAGA, Donald Trump, all of that. People looked around one day and said,

what the heck just happened here? And part of that is that I think a lot of religious people pick up a newspaper and don't see themselves in it, don't see their world in it. So I just, I mean, it's just journalism 101. It's saying this is a very important subject to a lot of people in this country. And our coverage has been lazy and second rate. We just need to do more of it. It's important. So, you know, it's a statement about journalism. Well, I mean, journalism on the whole, unfortunately, my mind has largely become, I hate to say, it's lazy and second rate. And I don't think it's done the job it should have.

And I'm sad to say, and I like, I've interacted with a lot of journalists and have respected numbers, but I think maybe the 24-Roy. Are they lazy in second rate? No, not the ones that are lazy. No, the ones that aren't lazy in second rate, I just think the 24-hour news coverage that's turned journalism into lazy and second rate. when, you know, it didn't get people the show on the crisis in journalism. Yeah, yeah. It keeps me on every night.

Yeah, it does. I think the crisis in journalism is as responsible as almost anything else for many. Because I respect and need the media and journalism to preserve a healthy democracy. And I get so disappointed at the shortfalls. But, yeah, I see your point taken. I guess, you know, I've seen endless stories about religious right and MAGA, but they're probably all superficial in the same. way that they superficially cover other things, too, perhaps. But, okay, I guess I understand your

point there then. If they sought out why, you know, it's like trying to, although I don't, I didn't like J.D. Vance's book and I was one of the few people didn't, I didn't like him when I read it. I thought it was self-aggrandizing. But, but I think the point was, if we understood more of the people from, you know, Appalachia, then we would understand Trump more. And the same is probably true for understanding where MAGA comes from. let me let's end we you know we're gone two hours and I'm and I want to I want to just end on two more things I love I love talking to you in case it wasn't obvious I don't know if the public's it's it's mutual okay um this book was notably written before

Donald Trump was re-elected and I found it was and I found it missing tremendously yes it is and and and and you know because it talked about you know, the Trump of 2020 and not the Trump of 2024. And the fact that he won, he really did win that election with not necessarily a mandate and not with a majority, but close, but certainly much more so than before. And I wanted to ask you to comment on how you might change or how it might add to anything you said reflecting on what's happened in the last week or two even since he's taken office. Well, that's probably a very different conversation

because I don't know when this podcast will air, but as I say these words, we're about, I guess, about two weeks in and we're already into what looks like it might be the beginning of a kind of post-constitutional era. It's in many ways a worst-case scenario, but we're not here to talk about that, right? So how would the book have been different?

I did not so much what he's done, but the fact that he was elected, I mean, you talk about the evolution of MAGA and 2020 as if it was a thing. And I think in the book, I'm coming to seeing hope that he wouldn't win when I... So the most important thing in the election happened actually before the book was completely closed. So I did know about it. And that's not the general election outcome, which... is what it is. But there were two things. There's one very important thing that we knew in probably April, May of 2024, and that's that he would get the Republican nomination with the overwhelming support

of white evangelicals. And he would get that despite the presence in the race of other candidates, notably Rick DeSantis, who were... How can I say this? People of better character and people who are, if anything, even more reliable on the issues that conservative white evangelicals care about. And what we discovered is what we always knew, which is they're not voting for Trump despite his flaws reluctantly wishing that someone who was a little bit more. more in keeping with their values would be elected, they vote for Trump because they love his message. When he talks about retribution, when he talks about fear, when he says, as he often did, if you vote for me, you will have power. These profoundly unchristian, or at least unchristlike messages,

they love it. In 2024, we knew this would happen. They voted 80 plus percent for him as they had in previous elections. So we already knew that they were affirmatively choosing this particular type of politics and politician, even in the face of alternatives. I think, I don't think we quite knew this then, but we know it now, that he would basically become a kind of pro-choicer, that he would take the position on abortion that Democrats like Mario Cuomo took, which is Let the states decide. We had been told by those conservatives and anti-abortion pro-lifers that abortions murder. If you really believe abortions murder, you probably want a federal law outlawing it.

You probably don't want to say, well, some states will have murder and other states won't have murder. And Trump says, okay, I'm against a federal statute. We're going to let the states murder babies. That's a position that prior to Trump, I think, would have been firmly rejected. But because it came out of Trump's mouth, it wasn't rejected. So, Lawrence, what I take away from all that is what was in the book, but even more so. There has been a real joining, a real coupling of white evangelical Protestantism and the Magamou. in ways that have become, how can we say this?

Problematic. And your goal is... Maybe not the best word, but... Yeah, and your goal is to try and improve that. And I think that's the whole point, that this book is basically saying it doesn't have to be that way. And if you can make it happen, if your words, which I, you know, may disagree with in principle, but if your words, some of your words, I agree with most of them, but if your words

can make it happen by saying, hey, to be Christian, you know, to be Christian, you know, you know, doesn't mean you have to be MAGA, then you're, as my good, my late friend, Steve Weinberg would say, you're doing God's work. He's also an atheist. But let me end with two quotes from you, because I think it, one, I finally found the quote. It's on the second last page before you do your last letter. You say injustice is only visible from society's margin, and doing what I can to contend against it has been my life's greatest privilege. And it is, and, and that's what you're doing now. And we're all luckier and more thankful that you have been doing it. It's a privilege for us that your life's privilege has been to try and fight injustice by logic and reason, which I

ultimately think is the best way and not God. But you also say, I do believe there's faith and I do believe there's hope. And without a hope, there's nothing. There's a rapid decline. We can choose to have hope to make faith work. That's clearly what guides you, and I'm glad that you have hope, and I hope that your hope wins out. It has been a true honor and pleasure to be able to talk to you about the book. Lawrence, the honor and pleasure are mine. Well, thank you again for being back here again, and it is a, as you can tell from my

reading of it and my notes, it's a thought-provoking book for anyone. as not surprising. And as I say, the goal that, that, you know, we need to fix our democracy and to the extent that Christianity is a problem, we need to fix that is something that I don't think anyone could argue with. And let's hope from your mouth to God's ears. Thank you again.

Hi, it's Lawrence again. As the Origins podcast continues to reach millions of people around the world, I just wanted to say thank you. It's because of your support, whether you listen or watch, that we're able to help enrich the perspective of listeners by providing access to the people and ideas that are changing our understanding of ourselves and our world and driving the future of our society in the 21st century.

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