Debug Information

Processing Details

• VTT File: mss534_Christian_Smith_2025_08_05.vtt
• Processing Time: September 11, 2025 at 03:27 PM
• Total Chunks: 2
• Transcript Length: 106,512 characters
• Caption Count: 953 captions

Prompts Used

Prompt 1: Context Setup

You are an expert data extractor tasked with analyzing a podcast transcript. 
I will provide you with part 1 of 2 from a podcast transcript. 
I will then ask you to extract different types of information from this content in subsequent messages. Please confirm you have received and understood the transcript content.

Transcript section:
[00:00:03.760 --> 00:00:09.440] You're listening to The Michael Shermer Show.
[00:00:15.840 --> 00:00:20.400] Today's episode is on religion, the decline of religion.
[00:00:20.400 --> 00:00:23.920] In fact, before I introduce my guest, let me give you a little bit of background on this.
[00:00:23.920 --> 00:00:29.520] As you know, I've written several books on this subject, tracked it myself over the decades.
[00:00:29.520 --> 00:00:32.880] It's a super important and interesting subject.
[00:00:32.880 --> 00:00:47.520] Two months ago, I did a debate in Austin for the free press where Adam Carolla and I debated Ian Hersey Alley and Ross Douthett from the New York Times on the subject: does the West need a religious revival?
[00:00:47.520 --> 00:00:49.520] My answer was no, thank you.
[00:00:49.840 --> 00:00:51.680] And that was the end of that for me.
[00:00:51.680 --> 00:01:07.600] But interestingly, Ian Hirsiali made the argument that the West needs religion, particularly Christianity, in order to as a bulwark against Islamism, crazy far-left wokeism, and so on.
[00:01:07.600 --> 00:01:18.720] And Ross Douthett made a similar argument in that the kind of moral foundations of Western civilization, even broader, is the Judeo-Christian worldview.
[00:01:18.720 --> 00:01:26.080] And without that, there's a God-shaped hole, is kind of the argument they made, that will be filled by something else.
[00:01:26.080 --> 00:01:34.960] And that something else could be, again, Islamism or crazy woke, far-left, progressive politics, or New Age spiritualism, or whatever.
[00:01:35.280 --> 00:01:44.480] Here to break this all down for us today, because this is a scientific question, not just an opinion question, is my guest, Christian Smith.
[00:01:44.480 --> 00:01:46.080] He is the William R.
[00:01:46.080 --> 00:01:46.880] Cannon Jr.
[00:01:46.960 --> 00:01:54.240] Professor of Sociology and founding director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame.
[00:01:54.240 --> 00:02:00.840] Smith is well known for his research focused on religion, adolescents, and emerging adults, and social theory.
[00:02:01.160 --> 00:02:20.840] He's written many books, including Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, as well as Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, and Moral Believing Animals, Human Personhood and Culture, for which he was on the show a few years ago to discuss.
[00:02:20.840 --> 00:02:29.000] Here's the new book just came out: Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America.
[00:02:29.000 --> 00:02:30.680] He's got the data.
[00:02:31.000 --> 00:02:32.760] Christian, nice to see you.
[00:02:32.760 --> 00:02:34.040] Thanks for having me on.
[00:02:34.040 --> 00:02:34.520] Yeah.
[00:02:34.520 --> 00:02:37.080] Well, it's an interesting question.
[00:02:37.080 --> 00:02:39.000] So let's break it down into different parts.
[00:02:39.000 --> 00:02:47.160] Is it in fact the case that religion is on the decline, let's say, in America or more broadly in the Western world?
[00:02:47.160 --> 00:02:49.640] Are we very confident of that?
[00:02:50.600 --> 00:02:53.960] Yeah, so we are confident of that.
[00:02:54.200 --> 00:03:17.400] It partly depends on what you mean by decline, but we have accumulated evidence for some decades now that show by multiple, multiple measures, that what I'm calling traditional religion at least is on decline in terms of belief, participation, practice, affiliation, respect for clergy, ethics, and so on.
[00:03:17.400 --> 00:03:21.160] That's a pretty well-established fact by now.
[00:03:21.160 --> 00:03:26.680] Up through the 90s, the United States used to be considered an exceptional case.
[00:03:26.680 --> 00:03:30.120] Europe secularized, but weird, something about us is different.
[00:03:30.120 --> 00:03:35.080] But I think now we have enough data in to see that I don't think the U.S.
[00:03:35.080 --> 00:03:36.520] is just going to be like Europe.
[00:03:37.240 --> 00:03:39.640] Every cultural trajectory is its own thing.
[00:03:39.640 --> 00:03:43.720] But yeah, I don't think anybody is saying, no, we're exceptional.
[00:03:43.720 --> 00:03:44.760] Religion is thriving.
[00:03:44.960 --> 00:03:45.680] Everything's great.
[00:03:46.080 --> 00:03:49.120] People know that big things have changed.
[00:03:49.120 --> 00:03:49.760] Yeah.
[00:03:50.080 --> 00:03:52.880] So but what about pockets?
[00:03:52.880 --> 00:03:58.720] Like in South American countries, I guess Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religion.
[00:03:58.720 --> 00:04:02.720] So maybe some areas it's growing, but not on average.
[00:04:02.720 --> 00:04:08.000] Yeah, so it's impossible to generalize about religion all over the globe.
[00:04:08.560 --> 00:04:15.760] Different regions, different continents, different countries, different sub-regions have their own stories, their own situations.
[00:04:15.760 --> 00:04:22.000] So in some parts of the global south, Pentecostalism, religion is really going great, going strong.
[00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:23.920] What the future holds, we don't know.
[00:04:23.920 --> 00:04:37.920] In places like China that tried to suppress religion on Marxist grounds, you know, is actually seeing a boom in all kinds of traditional and new for them religious practice and affiliation.
[00:04:38.160 --> 00:04:40.240] It's sociologically explicable.
[00:04:40.240 --> 00:04:43.680] So, but yeah, you have to look at the specific context.
[00:04:43.680 --> 00:04:46.480] My book is focused just on the United States.
[00:04:46.480 --> 00:04:46.960] Yeah.
[00:04:47.920 --> 00:04:57.120] And then I think we can break down like religious beliefs versus maybe God beliefs or maybe religious commitments versus God beliefs.
[00:04:57.120 --> 00:05:00.880] Like maybe somebody believes in God, but they don't really go to church.
[00:05:00.880 --> 00:05:05.280] So maybe you have to separate out different categories when we're talking about these issues.
[00:05:05.280 --> 00:05:12.640] Yeah, so sociologists use lots of different types of measures that measure different dimensions of quote-unquote religiousness or religiosity.
[00:05:12.640 --> 00:05:24.960] So there's affiliation, there's belief, there's a practice, they're expected behaviors, you know, all sorts of different dimensions of this.
[00:05:25.360 --> 00:05:29.120] The thing that's declined the most is sort of confidence.
[00:05:29.280 --> 00:05:36.280] The thing that's declined the most is sort of affiliation and investment in the institutions of religion.
[00:05:36.520 --> 00:05:42.440] The decline of belief in God is less...
[00:05:42.440 --> 00:05:53.080] is less stark, and then things like prayer, certain personal practices that we may affiliate with religion have declined even much less.
[00:05:53.080 --> 00:06:01.480] And then certain things like belief in an afterlife may have even had some increase here and there over time.
[00:06:01.480 --> 00:06:05.400] So it really varies depending on the kind of thing we're talking about.
[00:06:05.400 --> 00:06:18.760] I think it's important to distinguish between what I'm calling traditional religion and what we might call new, alternative, esoteric, new age, whatever religions.
[00:06:18.760 --> 00:06:21.720] Those I'm actually arguing become more popular.
[00:06:22.200 --> 00:06:33.720] But in terms of mainline Protestant, Catholic, evangelical, black Protestant, Mormon, et cetera, those are definitely suffering losses of numbers and adherence.
[00:06:33.720 --> 00:06:34.200] Yeah.
[00:06:34.760 --> 00:06:42.920] Okay, as a social scientist, how do you know what people think in their hearts and minds about what they really believe or what they're really doing?
[00:06:42.920 --> 00:06:46.200] How do you know they go to church once a week or once a month?
[00:06:46.200 --> 00:06:48.440] Talk about self-report data and its limitations.
[00:06:48.600 --> 00:06:51.000] You can't really get into people's subjectivities, right?
[00:06:51.000 --> 00:06:57.400] So you have to rely on what they profess.
[00:06:58.440 --> 00:07:08.600] And it gets complicated because if somebody says they believe in God when they really don't, that might indicate that there's still some kind of social expectation that you're supposed to.
[00:07:08.600 --> 00:07:10.520] So there's still some influence there.
[00:07:10.520 --> 00:07:14.200] But behaviors are easier to assess.
[00:07:14.200 --> 00:07:15.000] It's not easy.
[00:07:16.000 --> 00:07:23.840] We know from research that people, that Americans over-report, say, religious service attendance.
[00:07:24.800 --> 00:07:30.800] I think it's, you know, it could be up to 50% people over-report.
[00:07:30.800 --> 00:07:43.440] So there's still some kind of social desirability bias, or people are counting like maybe talking to a friend who's religious on the phone is that's good enough for a Bible study or something.
[00:07:43.440 --> 00:07:46.320] But yeah, people still overreport it.
[00:07:46.320 --> 00:07:48.640] Actual practice is much less.
[00:07:49.520 --> 00:07:51.040] There have been studies on this.
[00:07:51.040 --> 00:07:52.480] Empirically, it's a little tricky.
[00:07:52.480 --> 00:07:57.440] I mean, I've tried to think of my own way where you could identify, say, 200 households.
[00:07:57.440 --> 00:07:59.760] You survey them, you ask if they went to church.
[00:07:59.920 --> 00:08:05.920] Meanwhile, you put a chalk mark on their tires, you know, and see if their car actually went anywhere.
[00:08:05.920 --> 00:08:10.000] But that gets a little sketchy in terms of research ethics.
[00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:16.240] So yeah, it's studying the physical world is a lot easier than studying human beings.
[00:08:16.560 --> 00:08:18.080] Yeah, that's right.
[00:08:18.080 --> 00:08:18.880] Yes.
[00:08:18.880 --> 00:08:21.760] Well, but of course, there's different people doing different surveys.
[00:08:21.760 --> 00:08:30.320] And so you get a kind of cross-correlation between surveys with relatively consistent numbers, a few error bar measurement differences, but not much.
[00:08:30.320 --> 00:08:33.600] So that gives you some confidence that you're measuring something real.
[00:08:33.600 --> 00:08:34.080] Yeah.
[00:08:34.080 --> 00:08:39.520] There's also pretty much a consensus that this is a matter of generational displacement.
[00:08:39.520 --> 00:08:48.400] So most people, you know, I'm sure you and your viewers know, they get their sort of worldviews established early in life, mostly by their families.
[00:08:48.400 --> 00:08:55.120] They may adjust them some, but people are relatively more consistent across life.
[00:08:55.120 --> 00:09:04.680] So when we see a decline in religiousness in the U.S., it's because each subsequent generation is less and less religious than the one before.
[00:08:59.520 --> 00:09:07.320] For whatever reason, that's another question.
[00:09:07.320 --> 00:09:19.160] But, you know, boomers, back in the day, we might have thought, oh, boomers were rebellious, but they're relatively a lot more religious than Gen Xers, who are more religious than millennials who are more religious than Gen Zers.
[00:09:19.320 --> 00:09:40.680] So there's a kind of an inbuilt conveyor belt effect here that over time, as older generations pass on, unless there's some major disruption or revival or whatever, you know, it's just almost inevitably going to be heading toward less religion because most people are religious because of how they were raised by their parents.
[00:09:40.680 --> 00:09:43.960] So if you have fewer religious parents, you're going to have fewer religious children.
[00:09:43.960 --> 00:09:47.400] And then that effect will snowball over the decades.
[00:09:47.400 --> 00:09:48.840] Yeah, it accumulates on.
[00:09:49.320 --> 00:09:49.720] Yeah.
[00:09:50.120 --> 00:10:02.680] Let's reflect for a moment on the secularization hypothesis way back in the day, a century ago now, I guess, that, you know, with the rise of public education and technology and science and so on, that countries would become more secular.
[00:10:02.680 --> 00:10:05.320] That did happen in Europe, but it did not happen in America.
[00:10:05.480 --> 00:10:14.520] As late as, I guess, the late 90s, early 2000s, it was like America is still the outstanding exception, but that appears to finally be changing.
[00:10:14.520 --> 00:10:32.360] Yeah, so the old, the traditional secularization thesis was sort of presupposed a kind of 19th century evolutionary positivist laws of social life, like that we sociologists will discover the laws of social life and they will apply everywhere the same.
[00:10:32.600 --> 00:10:34.120] That was pretty naive.
[00:10:34.120 --> 00:10:37.880] I've never been friendly to secularization theory, despite this book.
[00:10:37.880 --> 00:10:52.320] So, my view is: you know, the world is a complicated place of lots and lots of causal forces that operate, and different situations, different settings, different trends can give different forces more or less power.
[00:10:52.640 --> 00:10:56.880] So, some of the forces at work in the social world are secularizing.
[00:10:56.880 --> 00:10:58.240] There's no question about that.
[00:10:58.240 --> 00:11:02.240] You know, higher education has a certain effect, science can have a certain effect, etc.
[00:11:02.320 --> 00:11:04.560] It's not inevitable, but there are tendencies.
[00:11:04.560 --> 00:11:11.600] But there are also forces at work in the world that encourage people to be religious, that strengthen religion, that promote religion.
[00:11:11.600 --> 00:11:17.200] And there are a lot of forces that are neutral or it's very context-dependent or combinational.
[00:11:17.200 --> 00:11:25.520] So, my basic approach is you have to look at specific contexts to understand what are the main forces driving what.
[00:11:25.520 --> 00:11:28.400] So, what happened in Europe was a very particular situation.
[00:11:28.400 --> 00:11:41.040] They had state churches, there were revolutions, there was the Enlightenment, people rebelled against it, the working classes did not appreciate, you know, the Church of England or the Catholic Church in France, and so you had a certain outcome.
[00:11:41.040 --> 00:11:46.800] Even there, it was different across Ireland, Poland, Italy from, say, France and the Netherlands.
[00:11:46.800 --> 00:12:03.440] So, the United States is a different situation, but I think what's happened is a different set of factors, somewhat overlapping, but a different set of factors, have really made traditional religion, put it in a made it obsolete, is what I'm claiming, culturally obsolete.
[00:12:03.440 --> 00:12:08.720] So, yeah, what happens in South Africa or China or wherever is a whole nother question?
[00:12:08.720 --> 00:12:09.120] Yeah.
[00:12:09.760 --> 00:12:25.200] So, part of the idea is that if one of the roles of religion is to take care of the poor and needy and help people that can't help themselves and so on, if the government's doing that, then you don't really need religion to do that as much.
[00:12:25.200 --> 00:12:27.280] That happened more in Europe than in America.
[00:12:27.280 --> 00:12:28.800] That's one theory, right?
[00:12:28.800 --> 00:12:34.120] Yeah, one of the causal factors that you can think of is economists call it crowding out.
[00:12:34.360 --> 00:12:42.520] You know, if religion serves a certain function, and then if welfare states come along and take over that function, yeah, religion can't compete.
[00:12:42.520 --> 00:12:49.480] It basically gets pushed aside, and it's not that it doesn't serve other functions, maybe, but it can't serve that function.
[00:12:49.480 --> 00:12:50.520] It's been crowded out.
[00:12:50.520 --> 00:13:00.040] So, yeah, welfare states and traditional religion, they can go together, but under many situations, they compete with each other.
[00:13:00.120 --> 00:13:09.880] Very recall, there was something like a free market competition model for America where we don't have state support of religion, so they have to compete in the marketplace of ideas.
[00:13:09.880 --> 00:13:17.080] So, they ramp up the relevance of their religious services and make them more interesting.
[00:13:17.080 --> 00:13:23.720] Yeah, this was a very influential argument in the 1990s in sociology of religion.
[00:13:23.720 --> 00:13:33.560] Rodney Stark, Roger Finke, and other colleagues basically argued what makes America different is this sort of market-free economy approach to religion.
[00:13:33.560 --> 00:13:41.000] And so, you know, bishops and priests and clergy can't sit on their butts and just expect life to happen and be supported by the state.
[00:13:41.000 --> 00:13:47.240] They got to go out there, they got to mobilize, they got to have a product that appeals to people, they have to sell it.
[00:13:47.240 --> 00:13:49.960] And so, that's why American religion is so dynamic.
[00:13:50.280 --> 00:13:56.920] What's ironic to me is that this was the, I mean, we debated that, people fought over that tooth and nail in the 90s.
[00:13:56.920 --> 00:14:04.600] But meanwhile, what we didn't realize is now, in retrospect, we look back and say the 90s was the beginning of the end for traditional religion.
[00:14:04.600 --> 00:14:06.040] Like, stuff was happening.
[00:14:06.040 --> 00:14:14.240] We couldn't put all the pieces together at the time, but there were a lot of people like American religion is vibrant because we're competitive.
[00:14:14.880 --> 00:14:18.320] But other things were happening beyond that framework.
[00:14:13.880 --> 00:14:18.640] Yeah.
[00:14:19.040 --> 00:14:23.760] Remember going to a mega church in the 90s, and man, it was a happening.
[00:14:23.760 --> 00:14:24.800] It was a show.
[00:14:25.280 --> 00:14:28.400] And people were there for the socialization, if nothing else.
[00:14:28.400 --> 00:14:32.320] And, you know, there was free parking and free chicken afterwards.
[00:14:32.800 --> 00:14:34.080] Babysitting for the kids.
[00:14:34.800 --> 00:14:36.480] And your own small group and all that.
[00:14:36.480 --> 00:14:42.320] But again, back then, boomers were younger and sort of the adults of the world.
[00:14:42.320 --> 00:14:46.640] Millennials were just kids or starting to grow up.
[00:14:46.640 --> 00:14:53.920] And so, in my argument, you know, Gen X was sort of the hinge here.
[00:14:53.920 --> 00:15:00.320] They were the ones who made a big, started to make the big transition away from the traditional way of doing things.
[00:15:00.320 --> 00:15:06.880] And then when millennials started getting in their 20s and beyond, they were just like, no, we have a whole other culture.
[00:15:06.880 --> 00:15:09.040] We have a whole nother zeitgeist going on here.
[00:15:09.040 --> 00:15:11.440] So yeah, the timing matters.
[00:15:11.760 --> 00:15:17.520] And on the timing, when does the decline of religion and the rise of the nuns?
[00:15:17.520 --> 00:15:19.600] Where do you start the kind of trend?
[00:15:19.600 --> 00:15:27.680] Yeah, so this is a little, it's a little too specific for a sociologist, but I basically say 1991 was the crucial year.
[00:15:27.680 --> 00:15:37.120] A ton of things happened in 1991, including the beginning of the massive rise of the number of Americans saying they're not religious, none of the above.
[00:15:37.120 --> 00:15:39.600] So we talk about the religious nuns.
[00:15:39.600 --> 00:15:45.520] That had been steady in every social survey at 6%, 7% forever, as long as we'd been.
[00:15:45.760 --> 00:15:49.840] 1991, it started going up, and it's been going up ever since.
[00:15:50.800 --> 00:15:54.240] The end of the other factors that I argue in the book were really crucial.
[00:15:54.240 --> 00:16:09.080] The end of the Cold War, meaning the United States was no longer the God-fearing nation against the atheist communists, you know, sort of struggling for control of the world, but we didn't have that enemy anymore.
[00:16:09.080 --> 00:16:19.480] And so the world shifted into neoliberal capitalism, globalization, and other things that just made religion's place in national identity much more uncertain.
[00:16:19.480 --> 00:16:21.000] Why do we even need this?
[00:16:21.000 --> 00:16:22.440] Yeah, right.
[00:16:22.440 --> 00:16:28.040] And then it just kicks up into the two-digit figures, maybe mid-2000s.
[00:16:28.040 --> 00:16:28.520] Yeah.
[00:16:28.760 --> 00:16:29.400] Yeah.
[00:16:30.280 --> 00:16:38.200] Recently, some Pew data has suggested that maybe the rise of the nuns has hit a plateau, but I think it's too early to say.
[00:16:38.200 --> 00:16:43.160] So for boomers, my generation, it's maybe what 25%.
[00:16:43.480 --> 00:16:47.480] And then I'd have to go back and look at the numbers, but yeah, I mean, it's risen.
[00:16:47.800 --> 00:16:51.080] I even think into like 32%.
[00:16:51.080 --> 00:16:52.520] Well, maybe less for boomers.
[00:16:52.520 --> 00:16:52.920] Yeah.
[00:16:52.920 --> 00:16:53.240] Yeah.
[00:16:53.240 --> 00:16:56.280] I think it was, I'm just trying to remember last year through your book again.
[00:16:56.280 --> 00:17:00.200] But as far as most, very few social trends are that dramatic.
[00:17:00.440 --> 00:17:06.440] I mean, if you compare that to how change happens generally in the social world, it was really big.
[00:17:06.440 --> 00:17:07.000] Yeah.
[00:17:07.320 --> 00:17:10.600] Okay, before we get into the whys, where are they going?
[00:17:11.240 --> 00:17:15.160] Yeah, so some they're going different places.
[00:17:15.160 --> 00:17:18.120] Some are just becoming not religious.
[00:17:18.120 --> 00:17:19.320] They're not secularists.
[00:17:19.320 --> 00:17:20.280] They're not atheists.
[00:17:20.280 --> 00:17:21.480] They just are not connected.
[00:17:21.480 --> 00:17:23.480] They don't want to be part of it anymore.
[00:17:23.480 --> 00:17:34.840] Others have become, although fewer of these, have become sort of more committed secularists, like with a vision or an ideology of a more secular society.
[00:17:34.840 --> 00:17:37.240] Maybe they read some of the new atheists.
[00:17:37.240 --> 00:17:38.760] Maybe they read Skeptic Magazine.
[00:17:38.760 --> 00:17:39.400] I don't know.
[00:17:40.440 --> 00:17:41.320] But they like that.
[00:17:41.320 --> 00:17:46.400] It's more of an intentional change to a secular place.
[00:17:46.960 --> 00:17:56.960] But what I argue in the book is that a lot, probably the largest percentage who have exited traditional religion have gone into what I call re-enchanted culture or a culture.
[00:17:56.960 --> 00:18:04.640] So they're into, you know, well, the biggest category of this is spiritual, and that means a lot of different things.
[00:18:04.640 --> 00:18:07.600] Some spiritual people, that means it's unclear what it means.
[00:18:07.600 --> 00:18:21.520] Other people, they're very serious into spiritual practices, but spirituality, esoteric beliefs, new age, alternative healing, neopaganism.
[00:18:21.840 --> 00:18:38.480] There's just this whole vast culture out there that's emerged that's alternative to traditional religion, and it's alternative to a secular outlook that lots and lots of Americans have gotten into, either somewhat or seriously.
[00:18:39.040 --> 00:18:42.480] So I think that's been the growth industry, actually.
[00:18:42.480 --> 00:18:52.320] And most of my colleagues miss it because you can't view the re-enchanted culture through the old lens of how we study traditional religion.
[00:18:52.560 --> 00:18:53.760] It doesn't show up.
[00:18:54.400 --> 00:18:59.280] You have to look at it on its own terms to appreciate how significant it is.
[00:18:59.280 --> 00:18:59.920] Yeah.
[00:19:00.240 --> 00:19:12.080] Yeah, it was just a couple of weeks ago at the Esalon Institute in Big Sur, which is kind of ground central for the human potential movement, going all the way back to the early 60s.
[00:19:12.400 --> 00:19:19.760] And yeah, how would your surveys or Pete or Gallup or any of those capture what those people are doing and thinking?
[00:19:20.400 --> 00:19:26.480] Yeah, so one thing I try to do in this book is to refocus us on culture.
[00:19:26.800 --> 00:19:34.040] A lot of the measures we have when we talk about decline have to do with organizations and individual professed beliefs.
[00:19:34.360 --> 00:19:40.040] You know, membership numbers and people that say they believe in God or whatever.
[00:19:40.040 --> 00:19:47.800] But I think it's not just a falls here, and for me, that means comfort meals, cozy nights, and tail-gating weekends.
[00:19:47.800 --> 00:19:50.520] And Omaha Steaks makes it all easy.
[00:19:50.520 --> 00:19:55.000] I love having their premium steaks and juicy burgers ready in my freezer.
[00:19:55.000 --> 00:20:01.720] I recently grilled their filet mignon, so tender, flavorful, and better than anything I've had elsewhere.
[00:20:01.720 --> 00:20:10.280] Right now, during their red-hot sale, you get 50% off site-wide, plus get an extra $35 off with code flavor at checkout.
[00:20:10.280 --> 00:20:13.400] Get fired up for fall grilling with Omaha Steaks.
[00:20:13.400 --> 00:20:19.240] Visit Omahasteaks.com for 50% off site-wide during their red-hot sale event.
[00:20:19.240 --> 00:20:23.800] And for an extra $35 off, use promo code flavor at checkout.
[00:20:23.800 --> 00:20:31.000] That's 50% off at omahasteaks.com and an extra $35 off with promo code flavor at checkout.
[00:20:31.000 --> 00:20:32.360] See site for details.
[00:20:32.600 --> 00:20:38.040] Matter of measure, like metrics of organizations that the word decline captures.
[00:20:38.680 --> 00:20:48.200] I think some what I argue is that something in the cultural realm, something about, and I used actually used the term zeitgeist, which very few social scientists will use.
[00:20:48.200 --> 00:20:59.320] Something in the cultural realm, the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, shifted so that religion didn't just like lose some numbers, but traditional religion went obsolete.
[00:20:59.320 --> 00:21:01.400] Like it was superseded by other things.
[00:21:01.400 --> 00:21:03.400] It came to feel old-fashioned.
[00:21:03.400 --> 00:21:05.640] It came to feel not relevant.
[00:21:05.960 --> 00:21:13.000] So that's why I use this language of obsolescence and not just decline because I want to point us to the cultural realm.
[00:21:13.960 --> 00:21:15.000] Yeah, so.
[00:21:14.560 --> 00:21:16.960] So, and then which religion?
[00:21:16.960 --> 00:21:24.400] So you cover Protestantism, Catholicism, televangelism, the religious right, and then Eastern religions and New Age movement beliefs.
[00:21:24.400 --> 00:21:26.160] So they have different trends and numbers.
[00:21:26.480 --> 00:21:26.960] Yeah.
[00:21:27.280 --> 00:21:39.600] Yeah, I put the New Age and most Eastern religions are interesting because they're not traditional American religions, but they're ancient and traditional in other cultures.
[00:21:39.600 --> 00:21:48.000] So, but yeah, mostly what I mean by traditional religions is what most people call organized religion or institutionalized religion.
[00:21:48.000 --> 00:21:54.480] I don't use those phrases because even alternative religions are organized and institutionalized in their own ways.
[00:21:54.480 --> 00:22:00.320] So I think traditional versus sort of alternative and new is a better way to frame it.
[00:22:00.320 --> 00:22:01.120] Yeah.
[00:22:01.440 --> 00:22:10.240] Well, the sense I got from the people that took my workshop, to be sure, there's a selection there because it's science and spirituality was the name of my workshop and they knew who I was.
[00:22:10.240 --> 00:22:24.240] So, but nevertheless, I'd say half the 34 workshop attendees I had really were searching for something supernatural, spiritual, like a guiding force, a union, synchronously to life.
[00:22:24.240 --> 00:22:26.480] Things happen for a reason.
[00:22:26.480 --> 00:22:29.120] You know, that, you know, things don't just happen randomly.
[00:22:29.120 --> 00:22:31.680] So they, there was something about that.
[00:22:31.840 --> 00:22:32.080] Yeah.
[00:22:32.320 --> 00:22:35.840] What's the right New Age movement or the human potential move?
[00:22:35.840 --> 00:22:37.360] How do you capture that?
[00:22:37.360 --> 00:22:45.760] You know, it's still, it's supernaturalism, you know, which is what religion offers, but, you know, which is largely rejected by scientists.
[00:22:45.760 --> 00:22:54.080] And mainstream religions are not too comfortable with like the occult and the paranormal and all that stuff that gets wrapped up in New Age beliefs.
[00:22:54.400 --> 00:23:13.000] Yeah, there's still a widespread desire among Americans, at least, whether or not it's a human nature or not, I will set that question aside, but among Americans for there to be some larger meaning or purpose that they just don't make up for themselves, or it's not just like an existential leap of faith.
[00:23:13.000 --> 00:23:21.080] And well, for me, this is like people want there to be some pattern or significance, or especially people raised in religion.
[00:23:21.080 --> 00:23:36.680] So a lot of people, and this is another argument of the book, a lot of people who are raised Catholic say, like they grew up praying to the dead and believe in, you know, Jesus and his mother are in heaven and like and demons and exorcisms.
[00:23:36.680 --> 00:23:38.840] Like there's a lot of spiritual.
[00:23:38.840 --> 00:23:51.880] It's very hard to just drop all that and become it that can be very painful actually for people to just sort of lose that whole dimension of meaning and significance and purpose and mystery and wonder.
[00:23:51.880 --> 00:24:02.040] And so part of what I think is appealing about a culture for people is they can retain that, only it can be customized for what they're comfortable with.
[00:24:02.040 --> 00:24:05.000] It's not the church dogma to saying you must believe this.
[00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:07.400] It's like, well, this vibes with me.
[00:24:07.400 --> 00:24:09.080] This makes sense with me.
[00:24:09.480 --> 00:24:10.680] I could get into that.
[00:24:11.640 --> 00:24:13.560] So people can customize it.
[00:24:13.560 --> 00:24:18.360] There's no institution shoving it down their throat, as many people see it.
[00:24:18.360 --> 00:24:21.240] And so it's much more amenable.
[00:24:21.720 --> 00:24:28.840] The edge of losing one's religious tradition is taken off by some of this re-enchanted culture.
[00:24:28.840 --> 00:24:30.120] Yeah, enchantment.
[00:24:30.120 --> 00:24:44.360] Yeah, there's something that's a good word to capture that desire to have some outside source as the, I guess, validation of meaning and purpose and, you know, all that stuff that religion provides it.
[00:24:44.160 --> 00:24:45.520] That science says it really provide.
[00:24:45.680 --> 00:24:54.880] I mean, at the end of this three-day workshop, you know, one woman who was definitely not into the science thing, you know, said, well, so what's the answer?
[00:24:55.200 --> 00:24:56.000] What do you mean?
[00:24:56.000 --> 00:25:00.720] Well, it says science and spirituality and the, you know, and that purpose and meaning in life.
[00:25:00.880 --> 00:25:01.440] What is it?
[00:25:01.440 --> 00:25:04.000] That's like, well, the point is that there is none.
[00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:07.120] I mean, you make you create your own purpose.
[00:25:07.120 --> 00:25:07.760] What?
[00:25:07.760 --> 00:25:08.400] Yeah.
[00:25:08.400 --> 00:25:08.960] Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:08.960 --> 00:25:13.280] No, it's really hard for at least Americans to wrap their head around.
[00:25:13.280 --> 00:25:26.800] And I've actually, for the book I'm working on now, the follow-up book on a culture, I have read a number of secular spirituality books, books that are proposing like, hey, you can be secular.
[00:25:26.800 --> 00:25:28.560] You don't have to be supernaturalist.
[00:25:28.560 --> 00:25:29.920] And you can have a meaningful life.
[00:25:29.920 --> 00:25:30.880] There can be purpose.
[00:25:30.880 --> 00:25:32.160] You can have wonder.
[00:25:32.800 --> 00:25:43.280] And whether or not they add up rationally, I think when I get done reading them, I think, you know, for some people, this will work.
[00:25:43.280 --> 00:25:46.880] But for most Americans, this isn't going to sell in Peoria.
[00:25:46.880 --> 00:25:50.320] Like, it's just doesn't, it's not going to resonate.
[00:25:50.320 --> 00:25:52.560] Well, this is Ross Staffet's point in his book.
[00:25:52.560 --> 00:25:54.240] It's called Believe.
[00:25:54.880 --> 00:25:59.520] And he doesn't pick any of the main religions, but he says pick one of those.
[00:25:59.520 --> 00:26:02.160] And that these other made-up new religions, forget that.
[00:26:02.160 --> 00:26:03.200] They don't have the tradition.
[00:26:03.200 --> 00:26:06.080] They don't have the history, you know, and so on.
[00:26:06.080 --> 00:26:11.440] Yeah, I've read his book, and it was funny that his book came out at the same time mine did.
[00:26:11.440 --> 00:26:14.400] And mine was, he was like, religion, come on, that's where we need to go.
[00:26:14.400 --> 00:26:17.120] And mine was like, religion's obsolete, folks.
[00:26:17.120 --> 00:26:17.600] Yeah.
[00:26:18.240 --> 00:26:22.160] But, I mean, it all depends on your cultural context.
[00:26:22.160 --> 00:26:28.320] Pagans will say, wait a minute, we've been around since longer than recorded history.
[00:26:28.320 --> 00:26:32.120] We are the pre-Christian, the pre-Christendom religion of Europe.
[00:26:32.120 --> 00:26:34.760] So don't say that we're not traditional.
[00:26:29.920 --> 00:26:36.760] We're more traditional than Christianity.
[00:26:37.080 --> 00:26:41.880] So it's really just a matter of sort of how one envisions roots and histories.
[00:26:41.880 --> 00:26:42.360] Yeah.
[00:26:42.680 --> 00:26:43.880] Interesting.
[00:26:43.880 --> 00:26:44.360] Yeah.
[00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:50.200] I had just on the generational changes and what's behind it.
[00:26:50.200 --> 00:26:55.080] I had Jean Twangy on the show last year when her book Generations came out.
[00:26:55.080 --> 00:27:12.600] And, you know, we were kind of exploring why it is there these, not just why there are generational differences in music and child rearing and, you know, there's like huge age gap between a boomer, the age of a baby boomer woman's first pregnancy is age 19.
[00:27:12.920 --> 00:27:14.200] Today it's 29.
[00:27:14.200 --> 00:27:16.280] It's a whole decade slower on average.
[00:27:16.280 --> 00:27:16.680] Okay.
[00:27:16.680 --> 00:27:17.560] Why is that?
[00:27:17.560 --> 00:27:18.840] How does that happen?
[00:27:18.840 --> 00:27:23.880] I mean, it's not like somebody sits you down and go, okay, here's the plan for your generation.
[00:27:23.880 --> 00:27:27.560] But she said it's more of a kind of a bottom-up, just the way culture works.
[00:27:27.560 --> 00:27:30.760] You know, you're in high school and all of your friends are going to go to college.
[00:27:30.760 --> 00:27:32.360] Well, I guess that's what I'm going to do.
[00:27:32.360 --> 00:27:36.120] You know, none of them are going to get married until their late 20s or early 30s.
[00:27:36.120 --> 00:27:38.120] They're going to go to get a career and so on.
[00:27:38.120 --> 00:27:40.040] And that's what everybody talks about.
[00:27:40.040 --> 00:27:41.640] So that's what you just inculcate.
[00:27:41.640 --> 00:27:48.200] So I'm just thinking when you were talking, maybe just, you know, the importance of religion, no one's talking about it amongst your friends.
[00:27:48.200 --> 00:27:50.040] So you just don't really think about it.
[00:27:50.040 --> 00:27:50.440] Yeah.
[00:27:50.440 --> 00:27:53.720] I mean, this is, this is, it's not a herd mentality.
[00:27:53.960 --> 00:27:54.680] I wouldn't go there.
[00:27:54.680 --> 00:27:55.800] That's a little demeaning.
[00:27:55.800 --> 00:27:58.920] But the way obsolescence works is like that.
[00:27:58.920 --> 00:28:02.680] If you think about, well, let's think about to our childhoods.
[00:28:02.640 --> 00:28:07.400] Uh, there was a time in my childhood where the wearing bell-bottom jeans was the coolest thing.
[00:28:07.720 --> 00:28:08.360] Oh, God, I know.
[00:28:07.440 --> 00:28:12.680] You know, and then anything you know, like that, you wouldn't be caught dead wearing that.
[00:28:12.680 --> 00:28:16.880] Or, like, let's suppose you're really attached to your vinyl records.
[00:28:14.840 --> 00:28:21.200] Uh, like, they're actually better quality music, as I understand it, than streaming.
[00:28:21.440 --> 00:28:27.360] So, but it's too bad the world around you is changing, and you don't get that kind of support.
[00:28:27.680 --> 00:28:31.600] And you, and if on vinyl, you can no longer get all kinds of new stuff.
[00:28:31.600 --> 00:28:41.120] So, yeah, as a sociologist, of course, I'm tuned into context and how social context shapes people's awareness and interests and so on.
[00:28:41.440 --> 00:28:49.920] So, yeah, generations grow up in different contexts that send their lives on very different trajectories.
[00:28:50.240 --> 00:29:01.120] One thing that's interesting in all this is this is, I think, is that a lot of where millennials went actually has roots in their parents' culture.
[00:29:01.440 --> 00:29:06.240] So, the 60s and early 70s was cultural revolution in very many ways.
[00:29:06.240 --> 00:29:17.680] And, you know, when New Age and Eastern spirituality and all this was a super duper interest among young people, but the era, it was a different era.
[00:29:17.680 --> 00:29:18.800] There wasn't the internet.
[00:29:18.800 --> 00:29:23.760] The internet made a huge difference in people's ability to communicate and learn and so on.
[00:29:24.640 --> 00:29:29.200] And then the 70s hit economic crises.
[00:29:29.200 --> 00:29:33.680] And then the 80s was this decade of like alleged conservatism.
[00:29:33.680 --> 00:29:51.600] And so it put boomers, boomers sort of came of age and went through middle adulthood at a different era, whereas millennials were socialized by their parents in many of the same values: be free, explore your authentic self, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:29:51.600 --> 00:30:05.320] But they grew up in a context where the technology was different, the globalization was different, the communications were different, respect for authority and institutions had declined significantly.
[00:30:05.640 --> 00:30:16.360] And so they can take the same set of values and take it in much further and more extreme or however you want to put it directions than their parents could because of the different context.
[00:30:16.840 --> 00:30:20.360] And I just find that stuff really fascinating sociologically.
[00:30:20.360 --> 00:30:21.960] Incredibly interesting.
[00:30:21.960 --> 00:30:22.360] Yeah.
[00:30:22.680 --> 00:30:23.000] All right.
[00:30:23.000 --> 00:30:25.560] So let's go over to the 90s and the 2000s.
[00:30:25.560 --> 00:30:37.640] You identify a number of factors here: the end of the Cold War, neoliberalism, capitalism, digital revolution, postmodernism, multiculturalism, and intensive parenting.
[00:30:37.640 --> 00:30:38.520] That's interesting.
[00:30:38.520 --> 00:30:40.280] Helicopter parenting.
[00:30:40.280 --> 00:30:41.880] As you know, Jonathan Height's been on.
[00:30:41.960 --> 00:30:43.000] Intensive parenting.
[00:30:43.000 --> 00:30:47.560] Well, yeah, so intensive parenting is a minor factor among many of these factors.
[00:30:47.560 --> 00:30:51.960] They're much bigger, but basically, you know, you may be familiar with this.
[00:30:52.360 --> 00:30:57.880] In the 90s and into the 2000s, the idea was: so, all right, I'll be autobiographical here.
[00:30:57.880 --> 00:31:00.200] When I grew up, I'm a young boomer.
[00:31:00.200 --> 00:31:06.600] When I grew up, you come home from school, you go out and play in the yard or in the woods or anywhere you want to ride your bike to.
[00:31:06.600 --> 00:31:11.960] As long as you're home for dinner, and as long as you're not in danger, you just do whatever.
[00:31:11.960 --> 00:31:14.360] You know, you'll grow up and you'll be a normal person.
[00:31:14.360 --> 00:31:26.840] In the 90s and 2000s, a new ideology came along where parents were somehow figured out or came to believe they needed to manage their kids' lives a lot more.
[00:31:26.840 --> 00:31:33.320] They needed to get them in music lessons and sports from a very early age and schedule up their lives, and so on, and so on.
[00:31:33.400 --> 00:31:38.840] So, what was required of parents, the bar was raised.
[00:31:38.800 --> 00:31:43.320] And so, and so that was another way that religion was crowded out.
[00:31:43.320 --> 00:31:51.520] Like, if I have to take my daughter on traveling soccer every weekend, I guess we're going to miss church, you know, or whatever.
[00:31:51.840 --> 00:32:01.120] So, it wasn't enough to just, you know, keep your kid fed, clothed, go to school, healthy, and go to church.
[00:32:01.120 --> 00:32:03.840] And then, otherwise, we have a lot of free time.
[00:32:03.840 --> 00:32:14.160] It was like everything was the stakes were raised in helping your kid compete against all the other kids to be successful, which relates to other social changes.
[00:32:14.160 --> 00:32:20.560] And it, lo and behold, I argue, you know, institutionalized religion was the loser from that.
[00:32:20.560 --> 00:32:21.040] Yeah.
[00:32:21.280 --> 00:32:22.080] Well, it's much worse.
[00:32:22.480 --> 00:32:23.120] And it was hard.
[00:32:23.120 --> 00:32:27.200] It was especially hard because it wasn't something that religion could critique.
[00:32:27.360 --> 00:32:28.640] What are you going to tell parents?
[00:32:28.720 --> 00:32:30.880] No, you shouldn't be as good a parent as you are.
[00:32:30.880 --> 00:32:32.000] You shouldn't try so hard.
[00:32:32.000 --> 00:32:33.280] Bring them to church instead.
[00:32:33.280 --> 00:32:34.560] I mean, that's not going to work.
[00:32:34.560 --> 00:32:36.880] So it was a challenge, you know.
[00:32:36.880 --> 00:32:37.600] Right.
[00:32:37.920 --> 00:32:38.960] Well, it's much worse now.
[00:32:38.960 --> 00:32:40.560] I raised a daughter in the 90s.
[00:32:40.560 --> 00:32:43.840] He's 33 now, and now I have a nine-year-old son.
[00:32:44.080 --> 00:32:46.640] Setting up a play date now, you should see this.
[00:32:47.280 --> 00:32:48.240] It's like a schedule.
[00:32:48.240 --> 00:32:52.400] Well, let's see, you know, little Johnny's got an opening next Thursday from four to six.
[00:32:52.400 --> 00:32:54.000] Like, really?
[00:32:54.640 --> 00:32:56.000] You got a plan that far out?
[00:32:56.000 --> 00:32:56.640] It's incredible.
[00:32:56.640 --> 00:32:57.680] Yeah, it's a different world.
[00:32:57.680 --> 00:32:58.800] It's a different world.
[00:32:58.800 --> 00:33:06.400] And this, you know, one of the things I argue in the book is that none of this turned on a dime.
[00:33:06.720 --> 00:33:08.400] None of this changed immediately.
[00:33:08.400 --> 00:33:14.320] We're talking about long-term, multiple causes, highly complex.
[00:33:14.640 --> 00:33:18.960] Most of the causes that made our religion obsolete were unrelated to religion.
[00:33:18.960 --> 00:33:24.160] They had to do with technology and the economy and politics and war and all kinds of things.
[00:33:25.280 --> 00:33:27.440] And that most of them were unintended.
[00:33:27.600 --> 00:33:31.800] The original working title for my book was The Unintended Obsolescence of America.
[00:33:31.960 --> 00:33:37.960] So we know, you know, manufacturers can make products planned obsolete, right?
[00:33:37.960 --> 00:33:53.800] So the reason I want to put this in, well, it's because I think it's true, but there's tendencies among some more, let's say, conservative religious groups to say, well, the reason if we're in trouble, it's because our enemies are out to get us.
[00:33:53.800 --> 00:34:04.040] The secular humanists or the woke people or whoever it is are out to like flush us down the toilet, and that's why we're in trouble.
[00:34:04.200 --> 00:34:09.960] What I'm trying to say in this book is, no, no, the people that invented the internet were not trying to hurt religion.
[00:34:10.600 --> 00:34:14.200] It had that effect, but that's not what their intention was.
[00:34:14.200 --> 00:34:19.160] Almost all there were a few forces that were anti-religious, but most of it was unintended.
[00:34:19.160 --> 00:34:21.400] It just so happened to work out that way.
[00:34:21.720 --> 00:34:22.200] Why is that?
[00:34:22.200 --> 00:34:25.960] It's important to understand history and change in that kind of way.
[00:34:25.960 --> 00:34:26.680] But why is that?
[00:34:26.680 --> 00:34:32.280] I mean, did the televangelists of the 80s not make the transition to the internet as effectively?
[00:34:33.160 --> 00:34:34.280] Why did the internet?
[00:34:34.280 --> 00:34:36.840] I mean, the digital revolution.
[00:34:37.160 --> 00:34:39.560] Yeah, I spell out in the book like 10 different ways.
[00:34:39.560 --> 00:34:49.160] I mean, so it's everything from suddenly you can have new friends anywhere in the world and you can control who you're talking with.
[00:34:49.320 --> 00:34:56.920] The internet enabled people to voice doubts and questions that maybe they always had, but they could do it anonymously now.
[00:34:57.480 --> 00:35:06.120] It enabled people to do research on whatever different things they were different than they were raised on.
[00:35:06.120 --> 00:35:13.080] You know, again, when I was little, if you wanted to learn about Buddhism, you know, you had to go to the library, get out books.
[00:35:13.080 --> 00:35:14.120] Like, it took effort.
[00:35:14.120 --> 00:35:18.080] The internet is just boom, boom, boom, and you can get all kinds of information.
[00:35:19.040 --> 00:35:23.920] The internet takes up people's time, so it's another version of crowding out.
[00:35:24.160 --> 00:35:29.200] Religion, and for people who are committed religious, they'll still do that.
[00:35:29.200 --> 00:35:34.880] But for people who are marginally religious, if they're running out of time, they'll say, oh, I just don't have time for that.
[00:35:34.880 --> 00:35:40.320] You know, religion will be something that they will sort of ease out of their lives.
[00:35:41.120 --> 00:35:46.560] And in certain cases, like Mormonism, I have a section in the book about Mormons.
[00:35:49.760 --> 00:35:55.040] There has been a growing community of ex-Mormons who are really anti-Mormon.
[00:35:55.040 --> 00:36:05.920] And like, if you're raised in Mormon and you bail out of it, you have much more likely to be emotionally upset about that because a lot of ex-Mormons are like, I was deceived.
[00:36:05.920 --> 00:36:07.120] This is ridiculous.
[00:36:07.120 --> 00:36:13.600] Our four founders were polygamous, and it was all bullshit, basically, is what they'll say.
[00:36:13.920 --> 00:36:20.240] And they're upset about it, but it also has bigger consequences for their family relationships and so on.
[00:36:20.240 --> 00:36:32.480] So there is a community of ex-Mormons that are like helping people out of Mormonism, helping to convince other people and showing historical documents that this is why this is wrong.
[00:36:32.480 --> 00:36:37.920] And the internet makes that possible in a way pre-internet.
[00:36:37.920 --> 00:36:41.440] If you lived in Salt Lake City, like you couldn't ask these questions.
[00:36:41.440 --> 00:36:43.040] You didn't have this support.
[00:36:43.040 --> 00:36:48.960] So, yeah, I would say the internet is one of the biggest factors in religion's obsolescence.
[00:36:49.200 --> 00:36:49.600] Yeah.
[00:36:49.920 --> 00:36:52.320] Well, they're called ex-Mos or former Mormons.
[00:36:52.800 --> 00:36:53.840] Yeah, exactly.
[00:36:54.160 --> 00:36:55.120] I know a bunch of them.
[00:36:55.440 --> 00:36:56.960] They join the Skeptic Society.
[00:36:56.960 --> 00:36:58.160] They read my magazine and books.
[00:36:58.160 --> 00:36:59.600] They go to our conferences.
[00:36:59.600 --> 00:37:00.200] And yeah.
[00:36:59.840 --> 00:37:05.480] Yeah, there's a little bit of element of like being an ex-smoker or ex-alcoholic.
[00:37:05.880 --> 00:37:12.440] You're always on the alert to other people that you want to bring down the pathway with you.
[00:37:12.680 --> 00:37:16.520] What about postmodernism and multiculturalism and its effects?
[00:37:16.520 --> 00:37:20.280] Yeah, this is another huge influence, I think.
[00:37:22.040 --> 00:37:34.840] So, you know, postmodernism starts off as a high humanist, you know, French literary theory, whatever, in the 60s after sort of the loss of faith in Marxism.
[00:37:34.840 --> 00:37:39.160] And it comes over, it floats over to American academia.
[00:37:39.160 --> 00:37:45.080] And in the 90s, I was an assistant professor at UNC Chapel Hill.
[00:37:45.160 --> 00:37:49.160] In the 90s, postmodernism was just such a strong influence.
[00:37:49.160 --> 00:37:49.800] It was everywhere.
[00:37:49.800 --> 00:37:51.960] Like you had to deal with it.
[00:37:51.960 --> 00:37:57.400] And in my book, in the book, I don't get into like what does real postmodernism say?
[00:37:57.560 --> 00:38:16.360] I focus more on what the average college student would have taken away, what would be in the air, so to speak, and the zeitgeist about postmodernism and what I think the popular influence of postmodernism amounted to things like you can't trust authorities.
[00:38:16.360 --> 00:38:23.400] All knowledge claims are really disguised efforts to get power over you.
[00:38:23.400 --> 00:38:26.920] We have no idea what an author really could have possibly meant.
[00:38:26.920 --> 00:38:29.240] It's just what it means to you.
[00:38:29.960 --> 00:38:35.080] You know, this Foucaultian, you know, everything is power grabs.
[00:38:35.400 --> 00:38:37.880] All of that, this sort of moral relativism.
[00:38:37.880 --> 00:38:42.280] Well, if you believe X, that's just because of your place in history and culture.
[00:38:42.320 --> 00:38:54.560] There's very, it was comple, it had a profoundly sort of relativizing, destabilizing effect on any claims to truth or knowledge, whether scientific or religious.
[00:38:54.560 --> 00:39:03.680] It's just like, well, scientists, they're just, you know, a bunch of white guy, middle-aged white guys who are trying to rule the world or whatever.
[00:39:03.680 --> 00:39:10.960] And I think when it comes to my story about religion, that had a profoundly corrosive effect.
[00:39:10.960 --> 00:39:16.320] This idea like, oh, I thought the Bible taught, I was raised that the Bible taught the truth.
[00:39:16.320 --> 00:39:21.600] But now I've learned in college from really smart people that you can't trust that stuff.
[00:39:21.600 --> 00:39:22.720] Maybe there is no truth.
[00:39:22.720 --> 00:39:24.480] Maybe everything is relative.
[00:39:24.480 --> 00:39:29.920] Maybe probably my pastor is just wanting to get control of us and et cetera, et cetera.
[00:39:29.920 --> 00:39:34.000] So yeah, it was profoundly corrosive.
[00:39:34.000 --> 00:39:44.560] And not in a strictly ideological sense, not that everyone sat down and read Nietzsche and said, oh, it was much more diffuse, much more, even in popular culture.
[00:39:44.960 --> 00:39:51.600] You know, so, you know, Seinfeld, which is a hilarious show, you know, is famously a show about nothing.
[00:39:51.600 --> 00:39:56.240] And that's this is sort of a comedy outworking of postmodernism.
[00:39:56.240 --> 00:40:01.200] It's sort of like, oh, don't get too invested in anything.
[00:40:01.200 --> 00:40:03.840] Just we can be ironic about everything.
[00:40:03.840 --> 00:40:05.600] You know, we don't really know anything.
[00:40:05.600 --> 00:40:08.640] Just do something and whatever's fine.
[00:40:08.640 --> 00:40:11.920] So that's not really particularly good for traditional religion.
[00:40:11.920 --> 00:40:12.240] Yeah.
[00:40:12.240 --> 00:40:14.560] So that made a big contribution to its obsolescence.
[00:40:14.720 --> 00:40:16.400] So interesting because that's what happened to science.
[00:40:16.400 --> 00:40:22.640] You know, the kind of science wars, the first version of it in the 90s, was that postmodernism.
[00:40:22.640 --> 00:40:23.040] Yeah.
[00:40:23.520 --> 00:40:24.160] Yeah.
[00:40:24.160 --> 00:40:28.880] So, and multiculturalism, is this the effects are exposure to other cultures?
[00:40:28.880 --> 00:40:38.520] And then the respect for other cultures we should hold and that there's nothing special about Western religions, that traditional religions should have a seat at the table?
[00:40:38.520 --> 00:40:53.480] Yeah, so multiculturalism, which I'm friendly to, you know, it starts off as, I think, a pretty intelligent effort to educate young people how to live in a pluralistic world in a way that doesn't lead to violence and hatred.
[00:40:53.960 --> 00:41:00.280] But to sort of roll out a multicultural education program at a national level, it takes a lot of effort.
[00:41:00.280 --> 00:41:04.120] It takes a lot of careful training and so on.
[00:41:04.120 --> 00:41:28.200] And I think, again, by the time it gets down from the official ideas down to four-year-olds and eighth graders in the classroom, what they end up taking away, I'm not blaming it on teachers, I'm not blaming it on multiculture, but I'm just saying, I think what a lot of students, a lot of millennials ended up taking away in the 90s, this was really rolled out in the 90s, was some basic ideas.
[00:41:28.200 --> 00:41:33.560] You can never judge anybody, not even on any grounds about anything.
[00:41:33.560 --> 00:41:35.640] Like everyone is okay with the way they are.
[00:41:35.880 --> 00:41:39.400] At least don't publicly critic, you can't criticize anything.
[00:41:39.400 --> 00:41:40.680] Everything is relative.
[00:41:40.680 --> 00:41:43.800] Every culture is legitimate on its own terms.
[00:41:43.800 --> 00:41:48.920] And just pragmatically get along with other people is the most important thing.
[00:41:48.920 --> 00:41:52.680] Okay, so that might have some positive social effects.
[00:41:52.680 --> 00:41:59.800] Not that that's where we are now as a society, but it may have been well-intentioned and have some good effects.
[00:41:59.800 --> 00:42:08.200] But if you're traditional religion making truth claims, it basically cuts the legs out from under you.
[00:42:08.200 --> 00:42:10.360] Like, if other people are different, that's fine.
[00:42:10.360 --> 00:42:15.680] So basically, it turns your own religious faith into sort of a personal identity accessory.
[00:42:16.000 --> 00:42:19.760] Like, do I want to be a tennis player at the club or don't I?
[00:42:19.760 --> 00:42:22.320] Do I want to be a Presbyterian or don't I?
[00:42:22.320 --> 00:42:23.840] They're equivalent questions.
[00:42:24.480 --> 00:42:31.840] And that, you know, that really undercuts the meaning and authority of what religion has traditionally claimed for itself.
[00:42:31.840 --> 00:42:34.560] The cafeteria of beliefs that you can pick from.
[00:42:34.800 --> 00:42:35.520] Cafeteria.
[00:42:35.520 --> 00:42:37.520] You know the phrase, cafeteria Catholics.
[00:42:37.520 --> 00:42:38.320] That's kind of a.
[00:42:38.560 --> 00:42:39.120] Yeah.
[00:42:39.120 --> 00:42:48.080] Well, I mean, if you take like the last thousand years, I mean, you go from having just one or two choices to, you know, a whole menu of them.
[00:42:48.560 --> 00:42:56.880] Yeah, I was just thinking of, you know, about how people think of religious truth claims.
[00:42:58.160 --> 00:43:01.200] There was a book called Religion is Make Believe.
[00:43:01.520 --> 00:43:02.400] The author's name now.
[00:43:02.400 --> 00:43:03.440] Darn, he was on the show.
[00:43:03.440 --> 00:43:04.000] Sorry.
[00:43:04.160 --> 00:43:13.760] But he made the point that, like, if the preacher says there's a parking lot behind the church, park your car there, you know, you go and check.
[00:43:13.760 --> 00:43:15.520] Yeah, yeah, that's true or false.
[00:43:15.520 --> 00:43:21.920] But if the preacher says, you know, God is three and one and one and three, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, how are you going to check that, right?
[00:43:21.920 --> 00:43:27.200] Because there's a lot of kind of assumptions that go on that, you know, most people really don't give it much thought.
[00:43:27.200 --> 00:43:30.560] So maybe part of your point here is that people started giving that some thought.
[00:43:30.560 --> 00:43:32.720] Like, yeah, how do we know that it's one and three?
[00:43:32.720 --> 00:43:33.040] Yeah.
[00:43:34.240 --> 00:43:39.120] Yeah, I think most Americans are not religious because of doctrine.
[00:43:39.200 --> 00:43:50.560] I mean, I hate to say this to religions, but I don't think sociologically, most Americans are not religious because they have convictions about doctrines or they're certain about a metaphysics or something.
[00:43:50.560 --> 00:43:54.800] I think it's because, you know, they think it's a good idea.
[00:43:54.800 --> 00:43:56.720] It's good to raise children in this.
[00:43:56.960 --> 00:43:59.280] It helps society be more stable.
[00:43:59.280 --> 00:44:03.560] It makes helps people make good decisions, it's good for the community, et cetera.
[00:44:03.720 --> 00:44:20.920] And so, one of the things I argue in the book is: I don't have an historical account of when this happened, but by the 90s at least, a lot of Americans had come to value religion for very this worldly imminent goods they thought it would deliver.
[00:44:20.920 --> 00:44:23.640] It helps you be moral, it helps you make good decisions.
[00:44:25.080 --> 00:44:32.120] It's good to have leaders, clergy as leaders in your community, it's good for sort of national cohesion.
[00:44:32.120 --> 00:44:37.160] And part of what I argue is, this is kind of a Durkheimian functionalist argument.
[00:44:37.160 --> 00:44:56.440] Part of what I argue is in the 90s and 2000s, those functions were increasingly compromised so that with the clergy abuse scandals, for example, or the televangelist scandals, you know, these people getting caught having sex with prostitutes and whatever else.
[00:44:57.080 --> 00:45:02.760] That severely compromises the idea of religion helps people be good.
[00:45:02.920 --> 00:45:05.400] Religious people are better than not religious people.
[00:45:05.400 --> 00:45:06.920] That's just one example.
[00:45:07.240 --> 00:45:09.240] Again, back to the end of the Cold War.
[00:45:09.240 --> 00:45:22.040] If you view religion as good for sort of national identity and solidarity, and you're not fighting that godless atheist communists anymore, then there's less need for that, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:45:22.040 --> 00:45:29.160] So a lot of the reasons why Americans came to value, had valued religion kind of became irrelevant.
[00:45:29.160 --> 00:45:31.480] Like functionally, they weren't working anymore.
[00:45:31.480 --> 00:45:35.720] And so there was really less reason to be bonded to religion.
[00:45:35.720 --> 00:45:36.200] Yeah.
[00:45:36.520 --> 00:45:39.720] Well, that's that social capital argument, I think.
[00:45:39.720 --> 00:45:45.840] I noticed this when I was doing a lot of God debates and then evolution and creationism or intelligent design debates.
[00:45:46.720 --> 00:45:56.320] I would take to asking the audience, you know, if at the end of the evening you were convinced by my arguments more than the other guy, would you abandon your religion?
[00:45:56.480 --> 00:45:57.760] Like, hell no.
[00:45:58.720 --> 00:46:03.040] And the reason seems to be that's not why I'm here in the first place.
[00:46:03.040 --> 00:46:06.160] I mean, it's fun and interesting to hear my guy make clever arguments.
[00:46:06.160 --> 00:46:10.320] Here's the Colomb cosmological argument, and here's the fine-tuning argument.
[00:46:10.400 --> 00:46:10.800] So on.
[00:46:10.800 --> 00:46:11.680] That's all great.
[00:46:11.680 --> 00:46:16.640] If you already believe, it's like, oh, yeah, that's a really good reason, another reason why I believe.
[00:46:16.640 --> 00:46:20.400] But if you take that away, it's like, well, but that wasn't really foundational anyway.
[00:46:20.400 --> 00:46:21.360] Yeah, exactly.
[00:46:21.360 --> 00:46:28.800] I mean, people like to have intellectuals have reasons that buttress what they already do or want to believe.
[00:46:28.800 --> 00:46:33.920] I mean, I think this is just humans in general do this, but certainly religious people.
[00:46:33.920 --> 00:46:43.760] And so if they discover not only that there wasn't a historic Adam and Eve, but now it's not just one species of human.
[00:46:43.760 --> 00:46:52.880] There were like all kinds of different humans that came up or say, or you know, our type who came up and then died out.
[00:46:52.880 --> 00:46:56.880] I guess I'm going to bother them directly.
[00:46:57.120 --> 00:47:15.200] People are much more shaped by, again, I'm a sociologist, but their sort of social context, what the people around them say and do, what seems to vibe or make sense in the world, especially millennials, is this sort of like, does this, do I feel this or do I not feel this?
[00:47:15.680 --> 00:47:18.320] Is this the right vibe or is it not the right vibe?
[00:47:18.320 --> 00:47:27.760] And when it doesn't, it may be as subtle as, you know, millennials are the most racially, ethnically diverse generation so far.
[00:47:27.760 --> 00:47:35.560] And if they, if they go to a religious service and everyone there is one race, this is not going to vibe with them.
[00:47:35.560 --> 00:47:39.560] They may not even be able to express it in words, but it's just not going to sit right.
[00:47:39.800 --> 00:47:41.320] And they're not going to be interested.
[00:47:41.320 --> 00:47:52.600] So many more influences go into why people stick with or abandon their faith of their childhood or from marriage or whatever.
[00:47:53.480 --> 00:47:58.520] It's really usually not much about the cogency of ideas.
[00:47:58.520 --> 00:47:59.160] Yeah.
[00:47:59.160 --> 00:47:59.960] Oh, for sure.
[00:47:59.960 --> 00:48:13.320] It reminds me of the research by a political psychologist who study the psychology of political beliefs that people mostly choose the parties that they most identify with kind of personally, emotionally.
[00:48:13.320 --> 00:48:14.760] You know, these are my people.
[00:48:14.760 --> 00:48:17.640] I really like their attitudes and beliefs.
[00:48:17.640 --> 00:48:23.240] And then after the fact, they'll, you know, compile a series of arguments, you know, gun control and abortion.
[00:48:23.240 --> 00:48:26.680] And they'll have their reasons why they're a Republican or a Democrat.
[00:48:26.680 --> 00:48:34.280] But really, it's more like they first choose the party based on their temperament and what they kind of, the kind of worldview that they prefer.
[00:48:34.280 --> 00:48:38.600] I want a hierarchical, structured, predictable, stable worldview.
[00:48:38.840 --> 00:48:41.640] That's what I'm most comfortable in as a person.
[00:48:41.640 --> 00:48:43.240] And those are my people.
[00:48:43.480 --> 00:48:43.960] What are they?
[00:48:43.960 --> 00:48:45.000] Oh, they're Republicans.
[00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:45.480] Okay.
[00:48:46.120 --> 00:48:47.000] Or vice versa.
[00:48:47.080 --> 00:48:56.920] So that makes it makes the world more alienating to people, to intellectuals who really like to think through ideas and cogency of arguments and evidence and so on.
[00:48:56.920 --> 00:49:00.520] It's a hard world to live in because most people are not operating that way.
[00:49:01.240 --> 00:49:05.080] I would say, yeah, I would say it's not just religious.
[00:49:05.080 --> 00:49:10.440] Well, first of all, there's an analog here to help religious conversion theory.
[00:49:10.440 --> 00:49:18.960] Like, most people convert to religions, cults, or religions, or whatever, not because they get the ideas first and then they act on them.
[00:49:19.120 --> 00:49:22.880] It's because they have developed relationships with people.
[00:49:23.440 --> 00:49:26.720] They build some emotional bonds with communities.
[00:49:26.720 --> 00:49:30.880] And then later on, they sort of take on board the ideas.
[00:49:30.880 --> 00:49:32.400] Like, oh, you believe that?
[00:49:32.400 --> 00:49:32.960] Okay.
[00:49:33.600 --> 00:49:39.680] So, yeah, humans are much less rational, much more pragmatic, emotional.
[00:49:39.680 --> 00:49:44.880] And we see that playing out all the time in our culture and society, especially in politics lately.
[00:49:45.680 --> 00:49:46.560] Evidence.
[00:49:47.600 --> 00:49:53.280] Sometimes I just despair over whether evidence and arguments even matter.
[00:49:53.280 --> 00:49:54.000] But yeah.
[00:49:54.000 --> 00:49:56.960] Well, I like to think that they do because that's the business I'm in.
[00:49:56.960 --> 00:50:07.520] But the research does show that people that say support climate change, they don't know anything more about the science than the people that deny it.
[00:50:08.320 --> 00:50:11.280] It's just, this is what my team believes or doesn't believe.
[00:50:11.440 --> 00:50:12.480] It's the team thing.
[00:50:12.480 --> 00:50:12.960] Yeah.
[00:50:12.960 --> 00:50:13.520] Yeah.
[00:50:14.080 --> 00:50:16.720] And I mean, it's not just religious people.
[00:50:16.720 --> 00:50:22.880] I mean, I think some of the post or ex-religious people we interviewed for this study, it's similar.
[00:50:22.880 --> 00:50:33.280] You know, they left because it was boring or they got pissed off at their priest or whatever personal, whatever reason, where somebody told them the Crusades were the most horrible thing.
[00:50:33.280 --> 00:50:33.840] Okay.
[00:50:33.840 --> 00:50:35.040] So then they leave for that.
[00:50:35.040 --> 00:50:44.080] And then later they sort of latch on to ideas that post-hoc justify what they've already done.
[00:50:44.080 --> 00:50:53.600] How do you tease out the effects of the priestley pedophile scandal from other effects that you've been studying of long-term trends?
[00:50:53.600 --> 00:50:58.400] How do we know how much, how many members the Catholic Church lost from that?
[00:50:58.400 --> 00:51:00.680] Yeah, it's really hard.
[00:50:59.600 --> 00:51:13.320] My general approach, I mean, it's possible to try to estimate that, but my general strategy in my book is to say these are not independent effects like a multiple regression where you get these.
[00:51:13.560 --> 00:51:22.040] These are all sort of concatenating, ramifying, combinational effects that affect different people and communities differently in different amounts.
[00:51:22.040 --> 00:51:31.400] No one of them probably would have made religion obsolete, but all together, I actually use the image of converging perfect storms.
[00:51:31.960 --> 00:51:35.960] A perfect storm is like multiple storms hitting at the same place at the same time.
[00:51:35.960 --> 00:51:40.280] What happened in the 90s and 2000s was multiple perfect storms hitting in the same place.
[00:51:40.280 --> 00:51:43.400] So it was almost over-determined, really, in my mind.
[00:51:44.120 --> 00:51:48.760] When I got done writing the book, I thought, it's amazing to me, anyone still is religious.
[00:51:48.760 --> 00:51:51.480] But I guess that goes back to what you were saying about why.
[00:51:51.800 --> 00:51:54.360] So, yeah, so I can't tease out the effect.
[00:51:54.920 --> 00:52:01.400] There was a time in writing the book when I was thinking, I'm going to make a table of the most to the least important factor.
[00:52:01.720 --> 00:52:05.320] And after thinking about it for a while, I realized that that's going to be impossible.
[00:52:05.320 --> 00:52:07.320] Like, it's just not possible.
[00:52:07.320 --> 00:52:14.760] And so there are also different effects of the priest abuse scandals.
[00:52:15.000 --> 00:52:16.920] And I'll focus on the Catholic Church.
[00:52:18.680 --> 00:52:26.600] There were a set of Catholics who were like, wait, if this is what happened and this and the organization tried to cover it up, then I'm out of here.
[00:52:26.600 --> 00:52:28.360] So that's one kind of effect.
[00:52:28.360 --> 00:52:34.560] Another effect is, though, is as it gets diffused through news and media out into popular culture.
[00:52:34.560 --> 00:52:40.600] People that may not know any details, any facts about it, they've just heard about it.
[00:52:40.600 --> 00:52:41.960] It just adds weight.
[00:52:41.960 --> 00:52:51.920] It's just another thing put on the camel's back that solidifies their antagonism to or apathy toward religion.
[00:52:52.480 --> 00:52:56.480] And if you interview them, they'll say, Oh, yeah, priest-abuse scandal, da-da-da-da-da.
[00:52:56.560 --> 00:53:11.920] But it's not clear they really know that it's not, it's really hard to tell how much of that was a motivating causal factor and how much of that was post-hoc justification.
[00:53:11.920 --> 00:53:12.400] Yeah.
[00:53:12.400 --> 00:53:14.880] Well, we know from cognitive psychologists that people do that.
[00:53:15.280 --> 00:53:20.080] They'll do, they'll make a decision for some reason, and then after the fact, they'll say, Well, here are the reasons.
[00:53:20.880 --> 00:53:22.720] They may themselves not know why they did it.
[00:53:22.720 --> 00:53:25.440] Yeah, they may not know themselves, may not be fully aware.
[00:53:25.440 --> 00:53:37.920] But I'm convinced, having sort of studied this for years, that it was a significant to have in the news for year after year, and it wasn't just, oh, this happened, it was terrible, we've moved on.
[00:53:37.920 --> 00:53:43.440] It was like continually, and even today, it's almost like clockwork.
[00:53:43.680 --> 00:53:45.840] You can expect a next scandal to come out.
[00:53:45.840 --> 00:54:03.760] And so I think what that did is at a cultural level, it eroded this sense, it shifted it away from, well, there are a few bad apples in every barrel to there's something systematically wrong with the power and that's involved in religious organization.
[00:54:03.760 --> 00:54:09.520] And once America, if Americans can forgive a lot, if they say it's a few bad apples, there's bad people everywhere.
[00:54:09.520 --> 00:54:20.960] But if it gets to an institution is corrupt, especially if it's an institution that puts itself on a pedestal as sort of a defender of righteousness, they are not going to, they're not going to tolerate that.
[00:54:21.600 --> 00:54:22.160] Yeah.
[00:54:23.120 --> 00:54:26.560] Well, the 2000s started off with a bang, 9-11.
[00:54:26.520 --> 00:54:28.720] Yeah, what are the effects of that?
[00:54:29.040 --> 00:54:30.440] Yeah, so it was interesting.
[00:54:31.080 --> 00:54:54.280] My argument is that even though 9-11 was perpetrated by a very small minority of radical Islamists, it had the effect over time between 9-11 and the writing of the new atheists, Hitchens and all these guys, Dawkins, it had the effect of polluting religion.
[00:54:54.280 --> 00:54:56.040] So people have this category of religion.
[00:54:56.200 --> 00:54:58.600] There's no such thing as religion, right?
[00:54:58.600 --> 00:54:59.960] They're religions.
[00:54:59.960 --> 00:55:05.000] But we have this cultural category of religion and/established religion.
[00:55:05.000 --> 00:55:18.120] And I think 9-11 and the new atheists together helped to shift, not for everybody, but for some people, shift an idea that, well, maybe religion isn't always a force for good.
[00:55:18.120 --> 00:55:22.120] Maybe religion is associated with violence and extremism.
[00:55:22.120 --> 00:55:42.200] And then, of course, the more you have sort of Native American, not Native American, I mean, traditional religions in America have parts of evangelicalism and so on, doing extreme things like, you know, going to funerals of gay people and saying they're going to hell or whatever.
[00:55:42.200 --> 00:55:43.960] That stuff gets a lot of press.
[00:55:43.960 --> 00:55:54.200] And I think a lot of Americans came away from all that saying, you know, religion isn't such a great thing after all.
[00:55:54.520 --> 00:55:55.960] Maybe it's just.
[00:55:56.680 --> 00:56:04.520] And some people definitely bought into this, the line that the more extreme line, that religion is the source of all evil in the world.
[00:56:06.120 --> 00:56:19.440] And once you get, again, on the same theme we've been saying about social psychology, once people get that into their head, it's hard to sort of dislodge it with a more nuanced, complicated account of history.
[00:56:19.440 --> 00:56:19.840] Yeah.
[00:56:20.480 --> 00:56:28.000] On the new atheism, do you see that as an effect or a cause or an interactive process?
[00:56:29.680 --> 00:56:39.760] It was a definite causal force helping to drive people, some set of people, away from religion.
[00:56:39.760 --> 00:56:41.920] Not a huge force, in and of itself.
[00:56:42.720 --> 00:56:46.320] Aside from September 11, I don't think it would have had much effect at all.
[00:56:46.320 --> 00:56:48.960] There have been atheists making arguments for a long time.
[00:56:49.200 --> 00:56:57.360] The shift after 9-11 was not, the old atheism was like, hey, it's intellectually respectable to be an atheist.
[00:56:57.600 --> 00:56:58.720] You should tolerate us.
[00:56:58.720 --> 00:57:00.320] We should all get along fine.
[00:57:00.320 --> 00:57:01.680] Let's have debates.
[00:57:02.320 --> 00:57:05.760] But the new atheism was like, religion should be extinguished.
[00:57:05.760 --> 00:57:06.800] This should go away.
[00:57:06.800 --> 00:57:08.320] Like, this is pernicious.
[00:57:08.320 --> 00:57:14.320] So that sort of turned the dial up to 11, so to speak, on anti-religion.
[00:57:14.320 --> 00:57:18.080] Some people, I think, were shocked and convinced by it.
[00:57:18.080 --> 00:57:25.680] I think other people who were growingly uncertain about religion were just sort of moved more this way.
[00:57:25.680 --> 00:57:33.760] In and of itself, it wasn't enough to make religion go obsolete, but it definitely had an effect in conjunction with 9-11.
[00:57:34.560 --> 00:57:48.800] The other thing, though, is we learned from doing a lot of interviews with people is that there was a kind of a lot of people that were at first quite persuaded by the new atheists then later started to reconsider maybe that was too extreme.
[00:57:49.120 --> 00:58:00.920] So because I think they didn't like the new atheist style, it was not so much the argument, it's that the new atheists people stepped back and said, wait a minute, they're pretty zealous too.
[00:58:00.920 --> 00:58:05.000] I mean, they're kind of absolutely convinced of the truth in their own way.
[00:58:05.000 --> 00:58:07.480] And isn't that what I don't like about religion?
[00:58:07.480 --> 00:58:14.440] So again, that made people become more like, just we accept everything, anything's fine, don't bother me too much.
[00:58:14.760 --> 00:58:18.600] Just be moderate in whatever you do, and maybe I'm spiritual.
[00:58:18.600 --> 00:58:24.520] So, in other words, I think there was a bit of a backlash against the new atheists after their initial influence.
[00:58:24.520 --> 00:58:33.560] So, what I mean by effects that in the late 90s, Richard Dawkins had been shopping around this idea of the God delusion.
[00:58:33.560 --> 00:58:43.000] I don't think he called it that, but at the time, and he and I have the same literary agent, John Brockman, who later told me, you know, the time wasn't right for that book in the late 90s.
[00:58:43.640 --> 00:58:48.040] When it hit in 2006, that was the cultural zeitgeist was ready for that.
[00:58:48.040 --> 00:58:50.200] It wouldn't have done nearly as well.
[00:58:50.200 --> 00:58:56.360] Yeah, so the time, the timing of these things is really, really important, you know, and sometimes falls here.
[00:58:56.360 --> 00:59:00.920] And for me, that means comfort meals, cozy nights, and tail-gating weekends.
[00:59:00.920 --> 00:59:03.640] And Omaha Steaks makes it all easy.
[00:59:03.640 --> 00:59:08.120] I love having their premium steaks and juicy burgers ready in my freezer.
[00:59:08.120 --> 00:59:14.840] I recently grilled their filet mignon, so tender, flavorful, and better than anything I've had elsewhere.
[00:59:14.840 --> 00:59:23.400] Right now, during their red-hot sale, you get 50% off site-wide, plus get an extra $35 off with code flavor at checkout.
[00:59:23.400 --> 00:59:26.520] Get fired up for fall grilling with Omaha Steaks.
[00:59:26.520 --> 00:59:32.360] Visit Omahasteaks.com for 50% off site-wide during their red-hot sale event.
[00:59:32.360 --> 00:59:36.920] And for an extra $35 off, use promo code Flavor at checkout.
[00:59:36.920 --> 00:59:44.120] That's 50% off at Omahasteaks.com and an extra $35 off with promo code Flavor at checkout.
[00:59:44.120 --> 00:59:45.280] See, site for details.
[00:59:44.920 --> 00:59:51.920] People can time things, but mostly the timing just falls out the way it falls out, and the effects are whatever they are.
[00:59:52.160 --> 00:59:53.280] So, yeah.
[00:59:53.280 --> 00:59:58.800] Again, you can't engineer a perfect storm or a convergence of them, but when they happen, they're powerful.
[00:59:59.200 --> 01:00:00.480] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:00:00.480 --> 01:00:09.840] Well, of course, I went through all that with Skeptic Magazine because I, you know, I was enthusiastic about the new atheism, but on the other hand, Skeptic is a science magazine.
[01:00:09.840 --> 01:00:12.800] I didn't, I never wanted us to be an atheism magazine.
[01:00:12.800 --> 01:00:13.120] Yeah.
[01:00:13.360 --> 01:00:21.600] And I never liked to define myself as an atheist because then, well, there's all the baggage that goes with it, but also all it means is you don't believe in God.
[01:00:21.600 --> 01:00:24.160] It doesn't say anything about what you actually do believe in.
[01:00:24.160 --> 01:00:28.320] Civil rights and human rights and dignity and all this stuff.
[01:00:28.320 --> 01:00:29.520] Rationality.
[01:00:29.920 --> 01:00:33.680] Well, that's secular humanism, but then that got lumped in with atheism.
[01:00:33.680 --> 01:00:35.120] And yeah, it's a big mess.
[01:00:35.120 --> 01:00:42.640] And then there was a division maybe in 2008 or so of what you mentioned, the kind of zealousness.
[01:00:43.040 --> 01:00:46.000] How militant are you of an atheist?
[01:00:46.000 --> 01:00:50.000] And people like me, I'm much nicer about it than, say, Hitch was.
[01:00:51.200 --> 01:00:53.200] And that, you know, you need to be more like Hitchens.
[01:00:53.200 --> 01:00:55.440] Like, but that's not my style.
[01:00:55.920 --> 01:00:56.480] We have him.
[01:00:56.480 --> 01:00:57.840] He's doing it better than anybody else.
[01:00:57.840 --> 01:00:59.600] So I'm just going to let him do it and I'll do my thing.
[01:01:00.320 --> 01:01:03.520] But, you know, like denounced for not being militant enough.
[01:01:03.520 --> 01:01:10.160] And then there was another split around 2010, 2011 of the atheist plus, the plus being social justice.
[01:01:10.160 --> 01:01:12.160] And then it became politicized.
[01:01:13.600 --> 01:01:14.160] Yeah.
[01:01:14.480 --> 01:01:19.040] I mean, I've always taken you to be much more broad than that agenda.
[01:01:19.040 --> 01:01:30.920] And so, again, it's sociologically, it's really fascinating how things have positive, have influences 

Prompt 2: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 3: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 4: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Prompt 5: Context Setup

You are an expert data extractor tasked with analyzing a podcast transcript. 
I will provide you with part 2 of 2 from a podcast transcript. 
I will then ask you to extract different types of information from this content in subsequent messages. Please confirm you have received and understood the transcript content.

Transcript section:
 atheism, but on the other hand, Skeptic is a science magazine.
[01:00:09.840 --> 01:00:12.800] I didn't, I never wanted us to be an atheism magazine.
[01:00:12.800 --> 01:00:13.120] Yeah.
[01:00:13.360 --> 01:00:21.600] And I never liked to define myself as an atheist because then, well, there's all the baggage that goes with it, but also all it means is you don't believe in God.
[01:00:21.600 --> 01:00:24.160] It doesn't say anything about what you actually do believe in.
[01:00:24.160 --> 01:00:28.320] Civil rights and human rights and dignity and all this stuff.
[01:00:28.320 --> 01:00:29.520] Rationality.
[01:00:29.920 --> 01:00:33.680] Well, that's secular humanism, but then that got lumped in with atheism.
[01:00:33.680 --> 01:00:35.120] And yeah, it's a big mess.
[01:00:35.120 --> 01:00:42.640] And then there was a division maybe in 2008 or so of what you mentioned, the kind of zealousness.
[01:00:43.040 --> 01:00:46.000] How militant are you of an atheist?
[01:00:46.000 --> 01:00:50.000] And people like me, I'm much nicer about it than, say, Hitch was.
[01:00:51.200 --> 01:00:53.200] And that, you know, you need to be more like Hitchens.
[01:00:53.200 --> 01:00:55.440] Like, but that's not my style.
[01:00:55.920 --> 01:00:56.480] We have him.
[01:00:56.480 --> 01:00:57.840] He's doing it better than anybody else.
[01:00:57.840 --> 01:00:59.600] So I'm just going to let him do it and I'll do my thing.
[01:01:00.320 --> 01:01:03.520] But, you know, like denounced for not being militant enough.
[01:01:03.520 --> 01:01:10.160] And then there was another split around 2010, 2011 of the atheist plus, the plus being social justice.
[01:01:10.160 --> 01:01:12.160] And then it became politicized.
[01:01:13.600 --> 01:01:14.160] Yeah.
[01:01:14.480 --> 01:01:19.040] I mean, I've always taken you to be much more broad than that agenda.
[01:01:19.040 --> 01:01:30.920] And so, again, it's sociologically, it's really fascinating how things have positive, have influences that shape people, and then people back off, and then everything is in flux and developing.
[01:01:29.840 --> 01:01:36.920] And then it's all media, and much of it is mediated through the media and hearsay and memes and whatever.
[01:01:37.240 --> 01:01:49.000] And by the time it gets, you know, so what I, what I, in this book, really tried to focus on was by the time it gets down to ordinary people, how do they understand it, and how does it shape them?
[01:01:49.480 --> 01:02:01.560] Talk about the influence of women on families deciding to be religious or not, and then women more common in the workplace, having more economic empowerment and freedom and more choice and so on.
[01:02:01.560 --> 01:02:03.400] How has that affected religion?
[01:02:03.400 --> 01:02:05.480] Yeah, so gender matters in religion.
[01:02:05.720 --> 01:02:09.720] In almost all religions, women are more religious than men.
[01:02:09.960 --> 01:02:13.640] Not in Israel and maybe a few other places, but generally.
[01:02:13.960 --> 01:02:18.040] So, and that's for a lot of reasons as sociologists argue about.
[01:02:18.040 --> 01:02:37.880] But yeah, so when going way back to the 60s and 70s, when women increasingly entered the paid workforce, you know, in large numbers, again, that wasn't intending to like, let's hurt religion, but it had the effect of removing a lot of unpaid.
[01:02:37.880 --> 01:02:48.600] I mean, women did a lot of the ordinary work keeping religious congregations going, volunteering basically for Sunday school and kitchen duty and whatever else.
[01:02:48.920 --> 01:02:57.800] And when women are, you know, suddenly, the majority are working 40 hours a week and then have a second shift at home trying to take care of their families and so on.
[01:02:58.120 --> 01:03:05.960] There's just less energy and time to devote to the local parish or church or synagogue or whatever.
[01:03:05.960 --> 01:03:13.800] And so that had an unintended consequence of providing having less free labor around.
[01:03:15.040 --> 01:03:23.040] Another thing, more recently, I talk about in that, there's a whole chapter on how religion sort of self-destructed, did things to its own demise.
[01:03:23.040 --> 01:03:32.080] And in evangelicalism in the 2000s, there was this sexual purity movement that tried to get people to commit to virginity pledges and so on and so on.
[01:03:32.080 --> 01:03:33.200] And it was very popular.
[01:03:33.360 --> 01:03:36.960] The federal government, I was actually involved in funding that some under the W.
[01:03:36.960 --> 01:03:39.200] Bush administration.
[01:03:39.200 --> 01:03:48.240] And there was a backlash against that among these more conservative evangelical women who, when they got older, they realized this totally screwed up my head.
[01:03:48.240 --> 01:03:58.800] Like it totally very many said this really wrecked my sense of my body, myself, my sexuality, my relationships, and were very unhappy about it.
[01:03:58.800 --> 01:04:00.800] So there was a big backlash against that.
[01:04:00.800 --> 01:04:19.440] And so the point of that with regard to this gender point is that if you're going to alienate anybody in the world against religion, the last ones you want to alienate are women or young women who are at least going to be your strongest tie and advocates for staying in religion.
[01:04:19.440 --> 01:04:22.000] Well, that had the exact opposite effect.
[01:04:22.000 --> 01:04:28.000] And so it was not only damaging, but I argue extra damaging to have that kind of backlash.
[01:04:28.000 --> 01:04:28.480] Yeah.
[01:04:29.680 --> 01:04:38.560] That reminds me of Dorothy Parker's funny line: why she doesn't go to church on Sunday mornings, because I'm too fucking busy and vice versa.
[01:04:42.080 --> 01:04:43.520] Yeah, something like that.
[01:04:43.520 --> 01:04:45.200] Something like that, yes.
[01:04:46.160 --> 01:04:49.920] Well, so is this what you mean by the third sexual revolution?
[01:04:49.920 --> 01:04:55.600] Yeah, so, you know, I mean, I think most of your listeners will have lived through this and will recognize it.
[01:04:55.600 --> 01:05:00.000] But, you know, the second, the first sexual revolution was in the 20s, the second was in the 60s.
[01:05:00.440 --> 01:05:21.400] But I think something happened that went beyond what the 60s represented, and largely because of the digital revolution and digital photos and the internet, where sex became just much more democratized, sort of anti-demonized.
[01:05:21.640 --> 01:05:36.280] There were lots of, you know, well, people sending photos of their new bodies all over the place and it being normal and the normalization of friends with benefits and ethical non-monogamy.
[01:05:36.520 --> 01:05:40.040] I argue in the book, it just took it to a whole new level.
[01:05:40.360 --> 01:06:09.880] That, the sexual revolution, it's distinct from the distinct from the mainstreaming of LGBTQ people and issues, but they sort of went together in the sense that by the time millennials had sort of adopted or absorbed the new sexual ethos and including like gay people are okay, like we don't need to persecute them.
[01:06:10.200 --> 01:06:17.160] They've realized or they came to believe like that's fundamentally in contradiction with what most traditional religions teach.
[01:06:17.160 --> 01:06:25.720] So if I want to be a faithfully religious, traditionally religious, I'm going to have to reject all that or go against the tide.
[01:06:26.040 --> 01:06:30.840] It was not, but again, it was not so much this sort of intellectual working it out.
[01:06:30.840 --> 01:06:39.800] I think it was more just sort of a zeitgeisty spirit of like walking away saying religion is just way behind the times.
[01:06:39.800 --> 01:06:40.760] It's out of touch.
[01:06:40.760 --> 01:06:42.120] It doesn't know what's going on.
[01:06:42.120 --> 01:06:43.480] It's irrelevant.
[01:06:43.480 --> 01:06:46.000] It's just, and there's no way I'm going to live like that.
[01:06:46.000 --> 01:06:47.120] So forget it.
[01:06:47.120 --> 01:06:47.600] Yeah.
[01:06:44.920 --> 01:06:52.080] Well, you know, the same-sex marriage debate happened so rapidly.
[01:06:52.320 --> 01:06:58.400] Remember, as late as 2011, both Hillary and Obama were outspokenly against it.
[01:06:58.400 --> 01:07:04.080] And then 2015, the Supreme Court decision, and then bam, you know, it's over.
[01:07:04.080 --> 01:07:08.560] And public opinion on the matter changed really quickly.
[01:07:08.800 --> 01:07:13.040] It seemed like religious people just stopped talking about it.
[01:07:14.000 --> 01:07:14.480] Yeah.
[01:07:15.680 --> 01:07:16.400] Is that true?
[01:07:16.880 --> 01:07:22.560] That in and of itself is a fascinating setup, would be a fascinating study, and that is it.
[01:07:22.560 --> 01:07:28.080] It seems to me as a sociologist that, I mean, again, it's not just religious people.
[01:07:28.080 --> 01:07:41.280] I think pretty much all groups do this, but let's just focus on religious groups will object, will make a policy issue a big deal and say, you know, Western civilization hinges on what we're going to do with this or something to that effect.
[01:07:41.920 --> 01:07:51.520] And then if it loses, if their side loses, if the laws change, it's just sort of dropped.
[01:07:51.520 --> 01:07:57.840] And until time comes around to maybe deal with it again.
[01:07:57.840 --> 01:08:02.160] So, yeah, in a way, it makes sense.
[01:08:02.160 --> 01:08:10.320] Like, that seems a politically reasonable thing to do, not keep beating on a beating up a horse or not keep fighting battles, you're going to lose.
[01:08:10.320 --> 01:08:20.560] But at another level, it suggests a kind of an opportunism, or at least a curious, like, where was the conviction there?
[01:08:20.600 --> 01:08:23.440] If it's if that was true then, why isn't it true now?
[01:08:25.280 --> 01:08:36.520] I think part of that is explained by the fact that American religion tends to be because of our particular history and the free market nature of the religious ecology.
[01:08:37.160 --> 01:08:38.920] It's pretty populist.
[01:08:38.920 --> 01:08:49.080] It's pretty, it's American religion is pretty, especially evangelicalism, I would say, is very friendly.
[01:08:49.080 --> 01:08:50.120] I would put it that way.
[01:08:50.120 --> 01:08:57.640] I mean, it's not like there was a new revelation from God that somebody got that, you know, that same-sex marriage is now okay, right?
[01:08:57.640 --> 01:09:00.680] They just stopped talking about it because, well, whatever.
[01:09:00.680 --> 01:09:01.640] It's a lost cause.
[01:09:02.440 --> 01:09:03.640] You know, these things change too.
[01:09:03.640 --> 01:09:06.440] I mean, with abortion, when Roe v.
[01:09:06.440 --> 01:09:12.520] Wade first came out, evangelical, the first couple of years, evangelicals are like, oh, huh, okay, maybe.
[01:09:12.840 --> 01:09:19.720] But then it was sort of seized on as, I'm not, I don't mean this cynically, but I do think this is the history.
[01:09:19.720 --> 01:09:26.600] It was seized on as like, wait a minute, no, we can't, you know, we have to be pro-life.
[01:09:26.760 --> 01:09:29.480] We have to be anti-abortion.
[01:09:29.480 --> 01:09:39.000] And so even the sort of the positions, the conviction positions of the same religion can morph over time, you know.
[01:09:39.000 --> 01:09:39.720] Yeah.
[01:09:40.360 --> 01:09:41.320] Well, people rarely.
[01:09:43.320 --> 01:09:57.080] In the mid-19th century, mainline, you know, Protestants can, evangelical Protestants can have, well, there weren't what we would now look back and call evangelical Protestants had a whole variety of positions on Darwin and evolution.
[01:09:57.080 --> 01:09:59.000] I mean, it was, it was not as big a deal.
[01:09:59.000 --> 01:10:09.960] But then by the time the modernist fundamentalist debates come around and taking peeking in the 1920s, you know, creationism was like the touchstone issue.
[01:10:10.360 --> 01:10:12.760] Fundamentally, you live or die on it.
[01:10:12.760 --> 01:10:15.440] So, yeah, these things evolve over time.
[01:10:14.680 --> 01:10:15.680] Right.
[01:10:15.840 --> 01:10:23.840] Well, it wasn't Pope Paul, John Paul II announced, I think it was like in the mid-90s, that the theory of evolution is fine.
[01:10:23.840 --> 01:10:25.360] We don't have to deal with that anymore.
[01:10:25.440 --> 01:10:27.840] We get the soul, they get the body.
[01:10:28.800 --> 01:10:39.680] Yeah, the Catholic Church has been much more sort of open to those possibilities than, which is ironic and interesting in a way, but then evangelicals.
[01:10:40.160 --> 01:10:40.800] Yeah.
[01:10:40.800 --> 01:10:42.000] Well, I should correct myself.
[01:10:42.400 --> 01:10:44.480] The Mormons have gotten new revelations.
[01:10:44.720 --> 01:10:47.680] Joseph Smith famously got the revelation about polygamy.
[01:10:47.680 --> 01:10:55.520] And then in the 1890s, when Utah wanted to be a state union, they got a new revelation from God saying the polygamy thing was a bad idea.
[01:10:55.520 --> 01:10:57.280] We've got to go back to monogamy.
[01:10:57.280 --> 01:10:57.760] Yeah.
[01:10:57.760 --> 01:11:02.080] Well, Mormonism has an official doctrine explaining how they can have new revelations.
[01:11:02.080 --> 01:11:05.520] Most of evangelicalism is stuck with what the Bible says.
[01:11:06.400 --> 01:11:10.080] Like the revelations were closed when the last apostle died.
[01:11:10.080 --> 01:11:17.120] And so it's a little more boxed in as to, but then, of course, they can still interpret the Bible in lots of different ways.
[01:11:17.600 --> 01:11:18.720] Yes, of course.
[01:11:18.720 --> 01:11:20.880] Well, I think that's still what's going on here.
[01:11:20.880 --> 01:11:29.120] All right, let's get us up into the current events: culture wars, LGBTQ trends, Black Lives Matter, all that stuff.
[01:11:29.120 --> 01:11:31.360] What are the effects of all that on religion now?
[01:11:31.360 --> 01:11:33.200] We're undergoing it.
[01:11:33.200 --> 01:11:42.160] Yeah, so my story is that by the end of the 2000s, the sort of the millennial zeitgeist was put in place and things haven't changed dramatically.
[01:11:42.160 --> 01:11:43.760] Of course, the world has changed.
[01:11:43.760 --> 01:12:13.160] So I would say my book doesn't focus on this era, but I would say that the more polarization we've had, the more it exacerbates the stuff I've written about, the more political conflict, the more sort of dissent into an abandonment of truth or an accountability to truth, at least, with regard to evidence, arguments.
[01:12:13.400 --> 01:12:25.320] You know, the current president just lies a million times a day, and that has a larger effect on culture and different followers' sensibilities of what matters in the world.
[01:12:25.320 --> 01:12:32.120] So I think that religion has continued to move in an obsolete direction.
[01:12:32.520 --> 01:12:35.480] There will always be, I don't think it's ever going to go extinct.
[01:12:35.480 --> 01:12:46.040] I think there will always be a minority of people, Americans, who remain religious, and there will be some not religious people who become religious for various reasons.
[01:12:47.080 --> 01:12:54.840] But one question I've gotten a lot about my book is: wait a minute, if religion is obsolete, how do you explain Christian nationalism?
[01:12:54.840 --> 01:12:56.520] It seems incredibly powerful.
[01:12:56.840 --> 01:13:17.240] My answer is: I mean, I think time will tell, but in my mind, Christian nationalism of the sort that stormed the Capitol and supports Donald Trump is really a symptom of obsolescence, not evidence to counter the fact of religious obsolescence.
[01:13:17.240 --> 01:13:34.280] In this sense, for much of the history of the Christian right, the message was: we need godly people to be elected to positions of power to restore this nation, to sound God-honoring laws, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:13:34.280 --> 01:13:36.040] Well, that's been totally abandoned.
[01:13:36.040 --> 01:13:46.720] The idea that Trump is now the Christian nationalist personality cult leader, and he's anything but godly.
[01:13:46.720 --> 01:14:00.800] So the idea that we need godly people in power and the tactics, the rhetoric, the willingness to flirt with or even deploy violence to me expresses a kind of or reflects a kind of desperation.
[01:14:01.600 --> 01:14:10.480] I think in the Jerry Falwell era, the Christian coalition era, there was a kind of deep worry about we're heading toward a secular society.
[01:14:10.480 --> 01:14:21.040] I think now that there's a kind of a desperation, not about where is all America going, but are evangelicals going to be, is Christianity going to be sort of squashed out by the liberals?
[01:14:21.040 --> 01:14:33.920] So I think Christian nationalism, I don't like to use the language of the dying, you know, the last thrashing death rose of a dying dragon.
[01:14:33.920 --> 01:14:49.760] But I think it's something like a great, a more desperate position that is getting more extreme and that in and of itself will only promote religious obsolescence among the most of the population.
[01:14:50.080 --> 01:14:55.920] They will just continue to say what they've said for decades now about the Christian right, which is if that's what religion is, I don't want to be part of it.
[01:14:55.920 --> 01:14:56.320] Yeah.
[01:14:56.320 --> 01:15:07.200] Except for a small group, except for a more sectarian, increasingly sectarian group of believers who find shelter in that and they will and that'll intensify their commitment.
[01:15:07.760 --> 01:15:20.240] Well, there seems to be a branch of more militant or masculine or muscular Christianity, and they like a strong man like Trump who's going to stand up there and fight for us.
[01:15:20.240 --> 01:15:26.320] I mean, this is, you know, I do a lot of church debates and stuff, so I always ask them, you know, how can you vote for Trump?
[01:15:26.800 --> 01:15:29.680] The answer seems to be, well, you know, the Bible is filled with flawed characters.
[01:15:29.680 --> 01:15:31.000] He's like one of those guys.
[01:15:29.760 --> 01:15:36.760] I forget which characters they named, but and he's going to get us the judges we want.
[01:15:36.760 --> 01:15:37.560] And he did.
[01:15:37.880 --> 01:15:39.640] And, you know, okay, all right.
[01:15:39.640 --> 01:15:50.440] So I'm debating in my own head whether it's just pure politics and Machiavellian power struggle.
[01:15:50.440 --> 01:15:53.240] And it really has not much to do with religion.
[01:15:53.240 --> 01:15:59.160] It's just politics and team play, or if they've actually shifted on their beliefs and morals.
[01:15:59.480 --> 01:16:06.360] Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's pure politics using religion as a sort of a mask or a veil.
[01:16:06.360 --> 01:16:28.360] I do, again, I don't want everything to be like referring back to and validating the argument in my book, but I do think that I do think if my story is true that religion went obsolete in the 90s and 2000s, religious people have got to feel that in their bones, even if they can't express it, articulate it, fully recognize it.
[01:16:28.360 --> 01:16:45.000] And when people feel our way of life, our worldview is not just under threat, but like been sidelined, we're not even in the game really anymore, that can push them to get, again, more desperate.
[01:16:45.000 --> 01:16:55.400] And as we've said repeatedly already here, people can come up with rationalizations and justifications for, so we no longer need godly men in power.
[01:16:55.400 --> 01:17:05.720] We need to have, you know, a totally unrighteous man is going to be good enough for now.
[01:17:05.720 --> 01:17:18.720] So it'll be really, really, really interesting where things go now in, you know, whether the Trump administration and agenda succeeds, like where politics goes should have a significant effect on religion too.
[01:17:19.040 --> 01:17:27.120] But in general, the way things have been going is not going to help much of traditional religion in the U.S.
[01:17:27.200 --> 01:17:29.840] at all, as far as most Americans are concerned.
[01:17:30.400 --> 01:17:37.680] I wanted to ask you about an older debate amongst Christians about what's our goal, what should we be doing.
[01:17:37.680 --> 01:17:46.560] You have the one branch that wants to help the poor, be more like Jesus, you know, and man the soup kitchens and be humble and modest and don't pursue riches and so on.
[01:17:46.640 --> 01:17:53.360] Then you have the prosperity gospel people that are now morphed into more militant and muscular Christianity.
[01:17:53.680 --> 01:17:57.280] Is that still kind of a split amongst Christian churches?
[01:17:57.840 --> 01:18:00.240] I forget what the terms are to describe those two.
[01:18:00.240 --> 01:18:07.520] In some ways, the prosperity gospel people just seem to want to transcend it, like just be happy, enjoy life.
[01:18:11.120 --> 01:18:19.440] To be totally honest, all of this is so depressing to me that I've, to some degree, stopped looking at it because really I was focused on this former era.
[01:18:20.160 --> 01:18:29.040] To give my, I mean, I think that, I think, to go back to what you said about, well, even if Trump is not godly, it's okay.
[01:18:29.040 --> 01:18:39.440] I mean, it seems to me purely sociologically that religions always evolve and morph over time into different things.
[01:18:39.440 --> 01:18:50.320] They have different, and that means they develop different relationships or different expressions of their sacred scriptures or their founders or whatever.
[01:18:50.320 --> 01:19:04.920] So I think the question now is: like, what evangelicalism long claimed that it had the truest sort of connection to original Christianity, biblical, the early church, whatever.
[01:19:05.240 --> 01:19:16.120] But it's increasingly not clear whatsoever what the militant evangelicalism has anything to do with Jesus in this in the gospels.
[01:19:16.360 --> 01:19:19.000] I mean, I just can't see any connection whatsoever.
[01:19:19.000 --> 01:19:27.880] And so it just feels to me like cultural mutations that are just going to the extreme.
[01:19:28.040 --> 01:19:43.880] I don't want to say pathological or whatever, but just sociologically, it just feels like it's mutating so far away from the original or what most people would construe as the original vision of the founder and the founding documents.
[01:19:43.880 --> 01:19:50.760] You know, it's the exact opposite of love your enemies and turn the other cheek and all that.
[01:19:50.760 --> 01:19:51.000] Right.
[01:19:51.240 --> 01:19:54.280] Give away, like it's literally the exact opposite.
[01:19:54.280 --> 01:19:58.920] And it's hard for me to understand how people work that out in their heads.
[01:19:58.920 --> 01:20:03.880] They must still read the Bible, but yeah, people having amazing capacities.
[01:20:03.880 --> 01:20:17.480] So again, sociologically, I say there's a lot bigger social-political forces at work here that are driving people into corners that seem to me to be kind of crazy.
[01:20:17.800 --> 01:20:20.600] Sociologically, I can at least say it's fascinating.
[01:20:20.600 --> 01:20:24.920] Let's study this, but personally, it's just weird.
[01:20:25.240 --> 01:20:29.240] Yeah, I'm fond of asking, when did Jesus become a capitalist?
[01:20:29.240 --> 01:20:29.800] Yeah.
[01:20:30.760 --> 01:20:34.920] The other thing to recognize is there are plenty of evangelicals who don't like Trump at all.
[01:20:34.920 --> 01:20:36.600] They really oppose him.
[01:20:36.840 --> 01:20:42.440] And they've either been beaten into submission or quiet, like a lot of people in the Republican Party.
[01:20:42.440 --> 01:20:42.840] Yeah.
[01:20:43.160 --> 01:20:51.680] Or they're just holding out their, but they've just been overwhelmed, as far as I can tell.
[01:20:52.240 --> 01:20:53.920] All right, Christian, last question.
[01:20:53.920 --> 01:20:55.200] We're about to colonize bars.
[01:20:55.200 --> 01:20:57.200] We're going to have a new civilization on there.
[01:20:57.200 --> 01:21:01.200] And 500 years from now, do you think there'll be religion there?
[01:21:02.800 --> 01:21:06.880] My own view, I've given a lot of thought to this.
[01:21:06.880 --> 01:21:13.040] My own view is that there's something in humanity that wants there to be something more.
[01:21:16.400 --> 01:21:21.120] Humans absolutely always, here I'm again, I'm Amiel Durkheim here.
[01:21:21.120 --> 01:21:25.440] Humans always create distinctions between the sacred and the profane.
[01:21:25.440 --> 01:21:34.160] The sacred doesn't have to be religious, it doesn't have to be supernatural, but there's always sort of things that are set aside as holy or special or venerated.
[01:21:34.160 --> 01:21:47.280] So I think that there will always be tendencies toward or desires, existential longings for larger, for something beyond history to make sense of history.
[01:21:47.760 --> 01:21:50.720] Something bigger than my life to make sense of my life.
[01:21:50.720 --> 01:21:56.080] Whether that looks like tradition, religion the way we're used to talking about it, it may not.
[01:21:56.080 --> 01:22:09.920] It could take very different forms, but I think it will always involve sacreds, mythological stories, and I mean that broadly in an anthropological sense, rituals, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:22:10.240 --> 01:22:15.040] And humans always have to work with what they've received from the past.
[01:22:15.040 --> 01:22:23.280] So it may end up being the most interesting conglomeration of all kinds of different things and scriptures and beliefs.
[01:22:23.280 --> 01:22:33.880] But I don't ever foresee human society universally becoming straightforwardly secular in the way that you and I would understand it.
[01:22:29.840 --> 01:22:35.960] I think you're right, and I agree with you.
[01:22:36.280 --> 01:22:46.440] And they'll probably also end up with something like political parties and some kind of a blend of democracy and capitalism or trade because that, you know, a lot of that's just based on human nature.
[01:22:46.440 --> 01:22:46.920] Yeah.
[01:22:47.240 --> 01:22:55.160] The question is whether if we ever get to Mars, are we going to destroy the planet with the global warming and every other environmental problem?
[01:22:55.480 --> 01:22:56.040] Well, I don't know.
[01:22:56.040 --> 01:22:57.000] I'm not going to Mars.
[01:22:57.000 --> 01:22:59.320] I'm happily ensconced in Santa Barbara.
[01:22:59.320 --> 01:23:02.360] So I'll leave that to Elon and his buddies.
[01:23:02.360 --> 01:23:03.000] Yeah.
[01:23:03.320 --> 01:23:03.960] All right, Christian.
[01:23:03.960 --> 01:23:04.520] Thank you so much.
[01:23:04.520 --> 01:23:05.000] Here it is.
[01:23:05.000 --> 01:23:07.000] Why Religion Went Obsolete.
[01:23:07.000 --> 01:23:09.880] This is the most definitive, up-to-date, packed with data.
[01:23:09.960 --> 01:23:10.440] Book.
[01:23:10.440 --> 01:23:11.160] Great read.
[01:23:11.160 --> 01:23:12.040] Really important work.
[01:23:12.040 --> 01:23:12.840] Thank you, Christian.
[01:23:12.840 --> 01:23:13.720] Thank you for your work.
[01:23:13.720 --> 01:23:15.400] Thanks for coming on to talk to me.
[01:23:15.640 --> 01:23:16.200] You're welcome.
[01:23:16.200 --> 01:23:17.000] Thanks for having me.
[01:23:17.000 --> 01:23:19.080] I enjoyed the conversation.
[01:23:25.480 --> 01:23:30.600] If you want to feel more connected to humanity and a little less alone, listen to Beautiful Anonymous.
[01:23:30.600 --> 01:23:34.840] Each week, I take a phone call from one random anonymous human being.
[01:23:34.840 --> 01:23:37.400] There's over 400 episodes in our back catalog.
[01:23:37.480 --> 01:23:41.720] You get to feel connected to all these different people all over the world.
[01:23:41.720 --> 01:23:46.280] Recent episodes include one where a lady survived a murder attempt by her own son.
[01:23:46.280 --> 01:23:48.840] But then the week before that, we just talked about Star Trek.
[01:23:48.840 --> 01:23:49.560] It can be anything.
[01:23:49.560 --> 01:23:50.680] It's unpredictable.
[01:23:50.680 --> 01:23:51.400] It's raw.
[01:23:51.400 --> 01:23:52.200] It's real.
[01:23:52.200 --> 01:23:55.320] Get Beautiful Anonymous wherever you listen to podcasts.

Prompt 6: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 7: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 8: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Full Transcript

[00:00:03.760 --> 00:00:09.440] You're listening to The Michael Shermer Show.
[00:00:15.840 --> 00:00:20.400] Today's episode is on religion, the decline of religion.
[00:00:20.400 --> 00:00:23.920] In fact, before I introduce my guest, let me give you a little bit of background on this.
[00:00:23.920 --> 00:00:29.520] As you know, I've written several books on this subject, tracked it myself over the decades.
[00:00:29.520 --> 00:00:32.880] It's a super important and interesting subject.
[00:00:32.880 --> 00:00:47.520] Two months ago, I did a debate in Austin for the free press where Adam Carolla and I debated Ian Hersey Alley and Ross Douthett from the New York Times on the subject: does the West need a religious revival?
[00:00:47.520 --> 00:00:49.520] My answer was no, thank you.
[00:00:49.840 --> 00:00:51.680] And that was the end of that for me.
[00:00:51.680 --> 00:01:07.600] But interestingly, Ian Hirsiali made the argument that the West needs religion, particularly Christianity, in order to as a bulwark against Islamism, crazy far-left wokeism, and so on.
[00:01:07.600 --> 00:01:18.720] And Ross Douthett made a similar argument in that the kind of moral foundations of Western civilization, even broader, is the Judeo-Christian worldview.
[00:01:18.720 --> 00:01:26.080] And without that, there's a God-shaped hole, is kind of the argument they made, that will be filled by something else.
[00:01:26.080 --> 00:01:34.960] And that something else could be, again, Islamism or crazy woke, far-left, progressive politics, or New Age spiritualism, or whatever.
[00:01:35.280 --> 00:01:44.480] Here to break this all down for us today, because this is a scientific question, not just an opinion question, is my guest, Christian Smith.
[00:01:44.480 --> 00:01:46.080] He is the William R.
[00:01:46.080 --> 00:01:46.880] Cannon Jr.
[00:01:46.960 --> 00:01:54.240] Professor of Sociology and founding director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame.
[00:01:54.240 --> 00:02:00.840] Smith is well known for his research focused on religion, adolescents, and emerging adults, and social theory.
[00:02:01.160 --> 00:02:20.840] He's written many books, including Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, as well as Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, and Moral Believing Animals, Human Personhood and Culture, for which he was on the show a few years ago to discuss.
[00:02:20.840 --> 00:02:29.000] Here's the new book just came out: Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America.
[00:02:29.000 --> 00:02:30.680] He's got the data.
[00:02:31.000 --> 00:02:32.760] Christian, nice to see you.
[00:02:32.760 --> 00:02:34.040] Thanks for having me on.
[00:02:34.040 --> 00:02:34.520] Yeah.
[00:02:34.520 --> 00:02:37.080] Well, it's an interesting question.
[00:02:37.080 --> 00:02:39.000] So let's break it down into different parts.
[00:02:39.000 --> 00:02:47.160] Is it in fact the case that religion is on the decline, let's say, in America or more broadly in the Western world?
[00:02:47.160 --> 00:02:49.640] Are we very confident of that?
[00:02:50.600 --> 00:02:53.960] Yeah, so we are confident of that.
[00:02:54.200 --> 00:03:17.400] It partly depends on what you mean by decline, but we have accumulated evidence for some decades now that show by multiple, multiple measures, that what I'm calling traditional religion at least is on decline in terms of belief, participation, practice, affiliation, respect for clergy, ethics, and so on.
[00:03:17.400 --> 00:03:21.160] That's a pretty well-established fact by now.
[00:03:21.160 --> 00:03:26.680] Up through the 90s, the United States used to be considered an exceptional case.
[00:03:26.680 --> 00:03:30.120] Europe secularized, but weird, something about us is different.
[00:03:30.120 --> 00:03:35.080] But I think now we have enough data in to see that I don't think the U.S.
[00:03:35.080 --> 00:03:36.520] is just going to be like Europe.
[00:03:37.240 --> 00:03:39.640] Every cultural trajectory is its own thing.
[00:03:39.640 --> 00:03:43.720] But yeah, I don't think anybody is saying, no, we're exceptional.
[00:03:43.720 --> 00:03:44.760] Religion is thriving.
[00:03:44.960 --> 00:03:45.680] Everything's great.
[00:03:46.080 --> 00:03:49.120] People know that big things have changed.
[00:03:49.120 --> 00:03:49.760] Yeah.
[00:03:50.080 --> 00:03:52.880] So but what about pockets?
[00:03:52.880 --> 00:03:58.720] Like in South American countries, I guess Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religion.
[00:03:58.720 --> 00:04:02.720] So maybe some areas it's growing, but not on average.
[00:04:02.720 --> 00:04:08.000] Yeah, so it's impossible to generalize about religion all over the globe.
[00:04:08.560 --> 00:04:15.760] Different regions, different continents, different countries, different sub-regions have their own stories, their own situations.
[00:04:15.760 --> 00:04:22.000] So in some parts of the global south, Pentecostalism, religion is really going great, going strong.
[00:04:22.000 --> 00:04:23.920] What the future holds, we don't know.
[00:04:23.920 --> 00:04:37.920] In places like China that tried to suppress religion on Marxist grounds, you know, is actually seeing a boom in all kinds of traditional and new for them religious practice and affiliation.
[00:04:38.160 --> 00:04:40.240] It's sociologically explicable.
[00:04:40.240 --> 00:04:43.680] So, but yeah, you have to look at the specific context.
[00:04:43.680 --> 00:04:46.480] My book is focused just on the United States.
[00:04:46.480 --> 00:04:46.960] Yeah.
[00:04:47.920 --> 00:04:57.120] And then I think we can break down like religious beliefs versus maybe God beliefs or maybe religious commitments versus God beliefs.
[00:04:57.120 --> 00:05:00.880] Like maybe somebody believes in God, but they don't really go to church.
[00:05:00.880 --> 00:05:05.280] So maybe you have to separate out different categories when we're talking about these issues.
[00:05:05.280 --> 00:05:12.640] Yeah, so sociologists use lots of different types of measures that measure different dimensions of quote-unquote religiousness or religiosity.
[00:05:12.640 --> 00:05:24.960] So there's affiliation, there's belief, there's a practice, they're expected behaviors, you know, all sorts of different dimensions of this.
[00:05:25.360 --> 00:05:29.120] The thing that's declined the most is sort of confidence.
[00:05:29.280 --> 00:05:36.280] The thing that's declined the most is sort of affiliation and investment in the institutions of religion.
[00:05:36.520 --> 00:05:42.440] The decline of belief in God is less...
[00:05:42.440 --> 00:05:53.080] is less stark, and then things like prayer, certain personal practices that we may affiliate with religion have declined even much less.
[00:05:53.080 --> 00:06:01.480] And then certain things like belief in an afterlife may have even had some increase here and there over time.
[00:06:01.480 --> 00:06:05.400] So it really varies depending on the kind of thing we're talking about.
[00:06:05.400 --> 00:06:18.760] I think it's important to distinguish between what I'm calling traditional religion and what we might call new, alternative, esoteric, new age, whatever religions.
[00:06:18.760 --> 00:06:21.720] Those I'm actually arguing become more popular.
[00:06:22.200 --> 00:06:33.720] But in terms of mainline Protestant, Catholic, evangelical, black Protestant, Mormon, et cetera, those are definitely suffering losses of numbers and adherence.
[00:06:33.720 --> 00:06:34.200] Yeah.
[00:06:34.760 --> 00:06:42.920] Okay, as a social scientist, how do you know what people think in their hearts and minds about what they really believe or what they're really doing?
[00:06:42.920 --> 00:06:46.200] How do you know they go to church once a week or once a month?
[00:06:46.200 --> 00:06:48.440] Talk about self-report data and its limitations.
[00:06:48.600 --> 00:06:51.000] You can't really get into people's subjectivities, right?
[00:06:51.000 --> 00:06:57.400] So you have to rely on what they profess.
[00:06:58.440 --> 00:07:08.600] And it gets complicated because if somebody says they believe in God when they really don't, that might indicate that there's still some kind of social expectation that you're supposed to.
[00:07:08.600 --> 00:07:10.520] So there's still some influence there.
[00:07:10.520 --> 00:07:14.200] But behaviors are easier to assess.
[00:07:14.200 --> 00:07:15.000] It's not easy.
[00:07:16.000 --> 00:07:23.840] We know from research that people, that Americans over-report, say, religious service attendance.
[00:07:24.800 --> 00:07:30.800] I think it's, you know, it could be up to 50% people over-report.
[00:07:30.800 --> 00:07:43.440] So there's still some kind of social desirability bias, or people are counting like maybe talking to a friend who's religious on the phone is that's good enough for a Bible study or something.
[00:07:43.440 --> 00:07:46.320] But yeah, people still overreport it.
[00:07:46.320 --> 00:07:48.640] Actual practice is much less.
[00:07:49.520 --> 00:07:51.040] There have been studies on this.
[00:07:51.040 --> 00:07:52.480] Empirically, it's a little tricky.
[00:07:52.480 --> 00:07:57.440] I mean, I've tried to think of my own way where you could identify, say, 200 households.
[00:07:57.440 --> 00:07:59.760] You survey them, you ask if they went to church.
[00:07:59.920 --> 00:08:05.920] Meanwhile, you put a chalk mark on their tires, you know, and see if their car actually went anywhere.
[00:08:05.920 --> 00:08:10.000] But that gets a little sketchy in terms of research ethics.
[00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:16.240] So yeah, it's studying the physical world is a lot easier than studying human beings.
[00:08:16.560 --> 00:08:18.080] Yeah, that's right.
[00:08:18.080 --> 00:08:18.880] Yes.
[00:08:18.880 --> 00:08:21.760] Well, but of course, there's different people doing different surveys.
[00:08:21.760 --> 00:08:30.320] And so you get a kind of cross-correlation between surveys with relatively consistent numbers, a few error bar measurement differences, but not much.
[00:08:30.320 --> 00:08:33.600] So that gives you some confidence that you're measuring something real.
[00:08:33.600 --> 00:08:34.080] Yeah.
[00:08:34.080 --> 00:08:39.520] There's also pretty much a consensus that this is a matter of generational displacement.
[00:08:39.520 --> 00:08:48.400] So most people, you know, I'm sure you and your viewers know, they get their sort of worldviews established early in life, mostly by their families.
[00:08:48.400 --> 00:08:55.120] They may adjust them some, but people are relatively more consistent across life.
[00:08:55.120 --> 00:09:04.680] So when we see a decline in religiousness in the U.S., it's because each subsequent generation is less and less religious than the one before.
[00:08:59.520 --> 00:09:07.320] For whatever reason, that's another question.
[00:09:07.320 --> 00:09:19.160] But, you know, boomers, back in the day, we might have thought, oh, boomers were rebellious, but they're relatively a lot more religious than Gen Xers, who are more religious than millennials who are more religious than Gen Zers.
[00:09:19.320 --> 00:09:40.680] So there's a kind of an inbuilt conveyor belt effect here that over time, as older generations pass on, unless there's some major disruption or revival or whatever, you know, it's just almost inevitably going to be heading toward less religion because most people are religious because of how they were raised by their parents.
[00:09:40.680 --> 00:09:43.960] So if you have fewer religious parents, you're going to have fewer religious children.
[00:09:43.960 --> 00:09:47.400] And then that effect will snowball over the decades.
[00:09:47.400 --> 00:09:48.840] Yeah, it accumulates on.
[00:09:49.320 --> 00:09:49.720] Yeah.
[00:09:50.120 --> 00:10:02.680] Let's reflect for a moment on the secularization hypothesis way back in the day, a century ago now, I guess, that, you know, with the rise of public education and technology and science and so on, that countries would become more secular.
[00:10:02.680 --> 00:10:05.320] That did happen in Europe, but it did not happen in America.
[00:10:05.480 --> 00:10:14.520] As late as, I guess, the late 90s, early 2000s, it was like America is still the outstanding exception, but that appears to finally be changing.
[00:10:14.520 --> 00:10:32.360] Yeah, so the old, the traditional secularization thesis was sort of presupposed a kind of 19th century evolutionary positivist laws of social life, like that we sociologists will discover the laws of social life and they will apply everywhere the same.
[00:10:32.600 --> 00:10:34.120] That was pretty naive.
[00:10:34.120 --> 00:10:37.880] I've never been friendly to secularization theory, despite this book.
[00:10:37.880 --> 00:10:52.320] So, my view is: you know, the world is a complicated place of lots and lots of causal forces that operate, and different situations, different settings, different trends can give different forces more or less power.
[00:10:52.640 --> 00:10:56.880] So, some of the forces at work in the social world are secularizing.
[00:10:56.880 --> 00:10:58.240] There's no question about that.
[00:10:58.240 --> 00:11:02.240] You know, higher education has a certain effect, science can have a certain effect, etc.
[00:11:02.320 --> 00:11:04.560] It's not inevitable, but there are tendencies.
[00:11:04.560 --> 00:11:11.600] But there are also forces at work in the world that encourage people to be religious, that strengthen religion, that promote religion.
[00:11:11.600 --> 00:11:17.200] And there are a lot of forces that are neutral or it's very context-dependent or combinational.
[00:11:17.200 --> 00:11:25.520] So, my basic approach is you have to look at specific contexts to understand what are the main forces driving what.
[00:11:25.520 --> 00:11:28.400] So, what happened in Europe was a very particular situation.
[00:11:28.400 --> 00:11:41.040] They had state churches, there were revolutions, there was the Enlightenment, people rebelled against it, the working classes did not appreciate, you know, the Church of England or the Catholic Church in France, and so you had a certain outcome.
[00:11:41.040 --> 00:11:46.800] Even there, it was different across Ireland, Poland, Italy from, say, France and the Netherlands.
[00:11:46.800 --> 00:12:03.440] So, the United States is a different situation, but I think what's happened is a different set of factors, somewhat overlapping, but a different set of factors, have really made traditional religion, put it in a made it obsolete, is what I'm claiming, culturally obsolete.
[00:12:03.440 --> 00:12:08.720] So, yeah, what happens in South Africa or China or wherever is a whole nother question?
[00:12:08.720 --> 00:12:09.120] Yeah.
[00:12:09.760 --> 00:12:25.200] So, part of the idea is that if one of the roles of religion is to take care of the poor and needy and help people that can't help themselves and so on, if the government's doing that, then you don't really need religion to do that as much.
[00:12:25.200 --> 00:12:27.280] That happened more in Europe than in America.
[00:12:27.280 --> 00:12:28.800] That's one theory, right?
[00:12:28.800 --> 00:12:34.120] Yeah, one of the causal factors that you can think of is economists call it crowding out.
[00:12:34.360 --> 00:12:42.520] You know, if religion serves a certain function, and then if welfare states come along and take over that function, yeah, religion can't compete.
[00:12:42.520 --> 00:12:49.480] It basically gets pushed aside, and it's not that it doesn't serve other functions, maybe, but it can't serve that function.
[00:12:49.480 --> 00:12:50.520] It's been crowded out.
[00:12:50.520 --> 00:13:00.040] So, yeah, welfare states and traditional religion, they can go together, but under many situations, they compete with each other.
[00:13:00.120 --> 00:13:09.880] Very recall, there was something like a free market competition model for America where we don't have state support of religion, so they have to compete in the marketplace of ideas.
[00:13:09.880 --> 00:13:17.080] So, they ramp up the relevance of their religious services and make them more interesting.
[00:13:17.080 --> 00:13:23.720] Yeah, this was a very influential argument in the 1990s in sociology of religion.
[00:13:23.720 --> 00:13:33.560] Rodney Stark, Roger Finke, and other colleagues basically argued what makes America different is this sort of market-free economy approach to religion.
[00:13:33.560 --> 00:13:41.000] And so, you know, bishops and priests and clergy can't sit on their butts and just expect life to happen and be supported by the state.
[00:13:41.000 --> 00:13:47.240] They got to go out there, they got to mobilize, they got to have a product that appeals to people, they have to sell it.
[00:13:47.240 --> 00:13:49.960] And so, that's why American religion is so dynamic.
[00:13:50.280 --> 00:13:56.920] What's ironic to me is that this was the, I mean, we debated that, people fought over that tooth and nail in the 90s.
[00:13:56.920 --> 00:14:04.600] But meanwhile, what we didn't realize is now, in retrospect, we look back and say the 90s was the beginning of the end for traditional religion.
[00:14:04.600 --> 00:14:06.040] Like, stuff was happening.
[00:14:06.040 --> 00:14:14.240] We couldn't put all the pieces together at the time, but there were a lot of people like American religion is vibrant because we're competitive.
[00:14:14.880 --> 00:14:18.320] But other things were happening beyond that framework.
[00:14:13.880 --> 00:14:18.640] Yeah.
[00:14:19.040 --> 00:14:23.760] Remember going to a mega church in the 90s, and man, it was a happening.
[00:14:23.760 --> 00:14:24.800] It was a show.
[00:14:25.280 --> 00:14:28.400] And people were there for the socialization, if nothing else.
[00:14:28.400 --> 00:14:32.320] And, you know, there was free parking and free chicken afterwards.
[00:14:32.800 --> 00:14:34.080] Babysitting for the kids.
[00:14:34.800 --> 00:14:36.480] And your own small group and all that.
[00:14:36.480 --> 00:14:42.320] But again, back then, boomers were younger and sort of the adults of the world.
[00:14:42.320 --> 00:14:46.640] Millennials were just kids or starting to grow up.
[00:14:46.640 --> 00:14:53.920] And so, in my argument, you know, Gen X was sort of the hinge here.
[00:14:53.920 --> 00:15:00.320] They were the ones who made a big, started to make the big transition away from the traditional way of doing things.
[00:15:00.320 --> 00:15:06.880] And then when millennials started getting in their 20s and beyond, they were just like, no, we have a whole other culture.
[00:15:06.880 --> 00:15:09.040] We have a whole nother zeitgeist going on here.
[00:15:09.040 --> 00:15:11.440] So yeah, the timing matters.
[00:15:11.760 --> 00:15:17.520] And on the timing, when does the decline of religion and the rise of the nuns?
[00:15:17.520 --> 00:15:19.600] Where do you start the kind of trend?
[00:15:19.600 --> 00:15:27.680] Yeah, so this is a little, it's a little too specific for a sociologist, but I basically say 1991 was the crucial year.
[00:15:27.680 --> 00:15:37.120] A ton of things happened in 1991, including the beginning of the massive rise of the number of Americans saying they're not religious, none of the above.
[00:15:37.120 --> 00:15:39.600] So we talk about the religious nuns.
[00:15:39.600 --> 00:15:45.520] That had been steady in every social survey at 6%, 7% forever, as long as we'd been.
[00:15:45.760 --> 00:15:49.840] 1991, it started going up, and it's been going up ever since.
[00:15:50.800 --> 00:15:54.240] The end of the other factors that I argue in the book were really crucial.
[00:15:54.240 --> 00:16:09.080] The end of the Cold War, meaning the United States was no longer the God-fearing nation against the atheist communists, you know, sort of struggling for control of the world, but we didn't have that enemy anymore.
[00:16:09.080 --> 00:16:19.480] And so the world shifted into neoliberal capitalism, globalization, and other things that just made religion's place in national identity much more uncertain.
[00:16:19.480 --> 00:16:21.000] Why do we even need this?
[00:16:21.000 --> 00:16:22.440] Yeah, right.
[00:16:22.440 --> 00:16:28.040] And then it just kicks up into the two-digit figures, maybe mid-2000s.
[00:16:28.040 --> 00:16:28.520] Yeah.
[00:16:28.760 --> 00:16:29.400] Yeah.
[00:16:30.280 --> 00:16:38.200] Recently, some Pew data has suggested that maybe the rise of the nuns has hit a plateau, but I think it's too early to say.
[00:16:38.200 --> 00:16:43.160] So for boomers, my generation, it's maybe what 25%.
[00:16:43.480 --> 00:16:47.480] And then I'd have to go back and look at the numbers, but yeah, I mean, it's risen.
[00:16:47.800 --> 00:16:51.080] I even think into like 32%.
[00:16:51.080 --> 00:16:52.520] Well, maybe less for boomers.
[00:16:52.520 --> 00:16:52.920] Yeah.
[00:16:52.920 --> 00:16:53.240] Yeah.
[00:16:53.240 --> 00:16:56.280] I think it was, I'm just trying to remember last year through your book again.
[00:16:56.280 --> 00:17:00.200] But as far as most, very few social trends are that dramatic.
[00:17:00.440 --> 00:17:06.440] I mean, if you compare that to how change happens generally in the social world, it was really big.
[00:17:06.440 --> 00:17:07.000] Yeah.
[00:17:07.320 --> 00:17:10.600] Okay, before we get into the whys, where are they going?
[00:17:11.240 --> 00:17:15.160] Yeah, so some they're going different places.
[00:17:15.160 --> 00:17:18.120] Some are just becoming not religious.
[00:17:18.120 --> 00:17:19.320] They're not secularists.
[00:17:19.320 --> 00:17:20.280] They're not atheists.
[00:17:20.280 --> 00:17:21.480] They just are not connected.
[00:17:21.480 --> 00:17:23.480] They don't want to be part of it anymore.
[00:17:23.480 --> 00:17:34.840] Others have become, although fewer of these, have become sort of more committed secularists, like with a vision or an ideology of a more secular society.
[00:17:34.840 --> 00:17:37.240] Maybe they read some of the new atheists.
[00:17:37.240 --> 00:17:38.760] Maybe they read Skeptic Magazine.
[00:17:38.760 --> 00:17:39.400] I don't know.
[00:17:40.440 --> 00:17:41.320] But they like that.
[00:17:41.320 --> 00:17:46.400] It's more of an intentional change to a secular place.
[00:17:46.960 --> 00:17:56.960] But what I argue in the book is that a lot, probably the largest percentage who have exited traditional religion have gone into what I call re-enchanted culture or a culture.
[00:17:56.960 --> 00:18:04.640] So they're into, you know, well, the biggest category of this is spiritual, and that means a lot of different things.
[00:18:04.640 --> 00:18:07.600] Some spiritual people, that means it's unclear what it means.
[00:18:07.600 --> 00:18:21.520] Other people, they're very serious into spiritual practices, but spirituality, esoteric beliefs, new age, alternative healing, neopaganism.
[00:18:21.840 --> 00:18:38.480] There's just this whole vast culture out there that's emerged that's alternative to traditional religion, and it's alternative to a secular outlook that lots and lots of Americans have gotten into, either somewhat or seriously.
[00:18:39.040 --> 00:18:42.480] So I think that's been the growth industry, actually.
[00:18:42.480 --> 00:18:52.320] And most of my colleagues miss it because you can't view the re-enchanted culture through the old lens of how we study traditional religion.
[00:18:52.560 --> 00:18:53.760] It doesn't show up.
[00:18:54.400 --> 00:18:59.280] You have to look at it on its own terms to appreciate how significant it is.
[00:18:59.280 --> 00:18:59.920] Yeah.
[00:19:00.240 --> 00:19:12.080] Yeah, it was just a couple of weeks ago at the Esalon Institute in Big Sur, which is kind of ground central for the human potential movement, going all the way back to the early 60s.
[00:19:12.400 --> 00:19:19.760] And yeah, how would your surveys or Pete or Gallup or any of those capture what those people are doing and thinking?
[00:19:20.400 --> 00:19:26.480] Yeah, so one thing I try to do in this book is to refocus us on culture.
[00:19:26.800 --> 00:19:34.040] A lot of the measures we have when we talk about decline have to do with organizations and individual professed beliefs.
[00:19:34.360 --> 00:19:40.040] You know, membership numbers and people that say they believe in God or whatever.
[00:19:40.040 --> 00:19:47.800] But I think it's not just a falls here, and for me, that means comfort meals, cozy nights, and tail-gating weekends.
[00:19:47.800 --> 00:19:50.520] And Omaha Steaks makes it all easy.
[00:19:50.520 --> 00:19:55.000] I love having their premium steaks and juicy burgers ready in my freezer.
[00:19:55.000 --> 00:20:01.720] I recently grilled their filet mignon, so tender, flavorful, and better than anything I've had elsewhere.
[00:20:01.720 --> 00:20:10.280] Right now, during their red-hot sale, you get 50% off site-wide, plus get an extra $35 off with code flavor at checkout.
[00:20:10.280 --> 00:20:13.400] Get fired up for fall grilling with Omaha Steaks.
[00:20:13.400 --> 00:20:19.240] Visit Omahasteaks.com for 50% off site-wide during their red-hot sale event.
[00:20:19.240 --> 00:20:23.800] And for an extra $35 off, use promo code flavor at checkout.
[00:20:23.800 --> 00:20:31.000] That's 50% off at omahasteaks.com and an extra $35 off with promo code flavor at checkout.
[00:20:31.000 --> 00:20:32.360] See site for details.
[00:20:32.600 --> 00:20:38.040] Matter of measure, like metrics of organizations that the word decline captures.
[00:20:38.680 --> 00:20:48.200] I think some what I argue is that something in the cultural realm, something about, and I used actually used the term zeitgeist, which very few social scientists will use.
[00:20:48.200 --> 00:20:59.320] Something in the cultural realm, the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, shifted so that religion didn't just like lose some numbers, but traditional religion went obsolete.
[00:20:59.320 --> 00:21:01.400] Like it was superseded by other things.
[00:21:01.400 --> 00:21:03.400] It came to feel old-fashioned.
[00:21:03.400 --> 00:21:05.640] It came to feel not relevant.
[00:21:05.960 --> 00:21:13.000] So that's why I use this language of obsolescence and not just decline because I want to point us to the cultural realm.
[00:21:13.960 --> 00:21:15.000] Yeah, so.
[00:21:14.560 --> 00:21:16.960] So, and then which religion?
[00:21:16.960 --> 00:21:24.400] So you cover Protestantism, Catholicism, televangelism, the religious right, and then Eastern religions and New Age movement beliefs.
[00:21:24.400 --> 00:21:26.160] So they have different trends and numbers.
[00:21:26.480 --> 00:21:26.960] Yeah.
[00:21:27.280 --> 00:21:39.600] Yeah, I put the New Age and most Eastern religions are interesting because they're not traditional American religions, but they're ancient and traditional in other cultures.
[00:21:39.600 --> 00:21:48.000] So, but yeah, mostly what I mean by traditional religions is what most people call organized religion or institutionalized religion.
[00:21:48.000 --> 00:21:54.480] I don't use those phrases because even alternative religions are organized and institutionalized in their own ways.
[00:21:54.480 --> 00:22:00.320] So I think traditional versus sort of alternative and new is a better way to frame it.
[00:22:00.320 --> 00:22:01.120] Yeah.
[00:22:01.440 --> 00:22:10.240] Well, the sense I got from the people that took my workshop, to be sure, there's a selection there because it's science and spirituality was the name of my workshop and they knew who I was.
[00:22:10.240 --> 00:22:24.240] So, but nevertheless, I'd say half the 34 workshop attendees I had really were searching for something supernatural, spiritual, like a guiding force, a union, synchronously to life.
[00:22:24.240 --> 00:22:26.480] Things happen for a reason.
[00:22:26.480 --> 00:22:29.120] You know, that, you know, things don't just happen randomly.
[00:22:29.120 --> 00:22:31.680] So they, there was something about that.
[00:22:31.840 --> 00:22:32.080] Yeah.
[00:22:32.320 --> 00:22:35.840] What's the right New Age movement or the human potential move?
[00:22:35.840 --> 00:22:37.360] How do you capture that?
[00:22:37.360 --> 00:22:45.760] You know, it's still, it's supernaturalism, you know, which is what religion offers, but, you know, which is largely rejected by scientists.
[00:22:45.760 --> 00:22:54.080] And mainstream religions are not too comfortable with like the occult and the paranormal and all that stuff that gets wrapped up in New Age beliefs.
[00:22:54.400 --> 00:23:13.000] Yeah, there's still a widespread desire among Americans, at least, whether or not it's a human nature or not, I will set that question aside, but among Americans for there to be some larger meaning or purpose that they just don't make up for themselves, or it's not just like an existential leap of faith.
[00:23:13.000 --> 00:23:21.080] And well, for me, this is like people want there to be some pattern or significance, or especially people raised in religion.
[00:23:21.080 --> 00:23:36.680] So a lot of people, and this is another argument of the book, a lot of people who are raised Catholic say, like they grew up praying to the dead and believe in, you know, Jesus and his mother are in heaven and like and demons and exorcisms.
[00:23:36.680 --> 00:23:38.840] Like there's a lot of spiritual.
[00:23:38.840 --> 00:23:51.880] It's very hard to just drop all that and become it that can be very painful actually for people to just sort of lose that whole dimension of meaning and significance and purpose and mystery and wonder.
[00:23:51.880 --> 00:24:02.040] And so part of what I think is appealing about a culture for people is they can retain that, only it can be customized for what they're comfortable with.
[00:24:02.040 --> 00:24:05.000] It's not the church dogma to saying you must believe this.
[00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:07.400] It's like, well, this vibes with me.
[00:24:07.400 --> 00:24:09.080] This makes sense with me.
[00:24:09.480 --> 00:24:10.680] I could get into that.
[00:24:11.640 --> 00:24:13.560] So people can customize it.
[00:24:13.560 --> 00:24:18.360] There's no institution shoving it down their throat, as many people see it.
[00:24:18.360 --> 00:24:21.240] And so it's much more amenable.
[00:24:21.720 --> 00:24:28.840] The edge of losing one's religious tradition is taken off by some of this re-enchanted culture.
[00:24:28.840 --> 00:24:30.120] Yeah, enchantment.
[00:24:30.120 --> 00:24:44.360] Yeah, there's something that's a good word to capture that desire to have some outside source as the, I guess, validation of meaning and purpose and, you know, all that stuff that religion provides it.
[00:24:44.160 --> 00:24:45.520] That science says it really provide.
[00:24:45.680 --> 00:24:54.880] I mean, at the end of this three-day workshop, you know, one woman who was definitely not into the science thing, you know, said, well, so what's the answer?
[00:24:55.200 --> 00:24:56.000] What do you mean?
[00:24:56.000 --> 00:25:00.720] Well, it says science and spirituality and the, you know, and that purpose and meaning in life.
[00:25:00.880 --> 00:25:01.440] What is it?
[00:25:01.440 --> 00:25:04.000] That's like, well, the point is that there is none.
[00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:07.120] I mean, you make you create your own purpose.
[00:25:07.120 --> 00:25:07.760] What?
[00:25:07.760 --> 00:25:08.400] Yeah.
[00:25:08.400 --> 00:25:08.960] Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:08.960 --> 00:25:13.280] No, it's really hard for at least Americans to wrap their head around.
[00:25:13.280 --> 00:25:26.800] And I've actually, for the book I'm working on now, the follow-up book on a culture, I have read a number of secular spirituality books, books that are proposing like, hey, you can be secular.
[00:25:26.800 --> 00:25:28.560] You don't have to be supernaturalist.
[00:25:28.560 --> 00:25:29.920] And you can have a meaningful life.
[00:25:29.920 --> 00:25:30.880] There can be purpose.
[00:25:30.880 --> 00:25:32.160] You can have wonder.
[00:25:32.800 --> 00:25:43.280] And whether or not they add up rationally, I think when I get done reading them, I think, you know, for some people, this will work.
[00:25:43.280 --> 00:25:46.880] But for most Americans, this isn't going to sell in Peoria.
[00:25:46.880 --> 00:25:50.320] Like, it's just doesn't, it's not going to resonate.
[00:25:50.320 --> 00:25:52.560] Well, this is Ross Staffet's point in his book.
[00:25:52.560 --> 00:25:54.240] It's called Believe.
[00:25:54.880 --> 00:25:59.520] And he doesn't pick any of the main religions, but he says pick one of those.
[00:25:59.520 --> 00:26:02.160] And that these other made-up new religions, forget that.
[00:26:02.160 --> 00:26:03.200] They don't have the tradition.
[00:26:03.200 --> 00:26:06.080] They don't have the history, you know, and so on.
[00:26:06.080 --> 00:26:11.440] Yeah, I've read his book, and it was funny that his book came out at the same time mine did.
[00:26:11.440 --> 00:26:14.400] And mine was, he was like, religion, come on, that's where we need to go.
[00:26:14.400 --> 00:26:17.120] And mine was like, religion's obsolete, folks.
[00:26:17.120 --> 00:26:17.600] Yeah.
[00:26:18.240 --> 00:26:22.160] But, I mean, it all depends on your cultural context.
[00:26:22.160 --> 00:26:28.320] Pagans will say, wait a minute, we've been around since longer than recorded history.
[00:26:28.320 --> 00:26:32.120] We are the pre-Christian, the pre-Christendom religion of Europe.
[00:26:32.120 --> 00:26:34.760] So don't say that we're not traditional.
[00:26:29.920 --> 00:26:36.760] We're more traditional than Christianity.
[00:26:37.080 --> 00:26:41.880] So it's really just a matter of sort of how one envisions roots and histories.
[00:26:41.880 --> 00:26:42.360] Yeah.
[00:26:42.680 --> 00:26:43.880] Interesting.
[00:26:43.880 --> 00:26:44.360] Yeah.
[00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:50.200] I had just on the generational changes and what's behind it.
[00:26:50.200 --> 00:26:55.080] I had Jean Twangy on the show last year when her book Generations came out.
[00:26:55.080 --> 00:27:12.600] And, you know, we were kind of exploring why it is there these, not just why there are generational differences in music and child rearing and, you know, there's like huge age gap between a boomer, the age of a baby boomer woman's first pregnancy is age 19.
[00:27:12.920 --> 00:27:14.200] Today it's 29.
[00:27:14.200 --> 00:27:16.280] It's a whole decade slower on average.
[00:27:16.280 --> 00:27:16.680] Okay.
[00:27:16.680 --> 00:27:17.560] Why is that?
[00:27:17.560 --> 00:27:18.840] How does that happen?
[00:27:18.840 --> 00:27:23.880] I mean, it's not like somebody sits you down and go, okay, here's the plan for your generation.
[00:27:23.880 --> 00:27:27.560] But she said it's more of a kind of a bottom-up, just the way culture works.
[00:27:27.560 --> 00:27:30.760] You know, you're in high school and all of your friends are going to go to college.
[00:27:30.760 --> 00:27:32.360] Well, I guess that's what I'm going to do.
[00:27:32.360 --> 00:27:36.120] You know, none of them are going to get married until their late 20s or early 30s.
[00:27:36.120 --> 00:27:38.120] They're going to go to get a career and so on.
[00:27:38.120 --> 00:27:40.040] And that's what everybody talks about.
[00:27:40.040 --> 00:27:41.640] So that's what you just inculcate.
[00:27:41.640 --> 00:27:48.200] So I'm just thinking when you were talking, maybe just, you know, the importance of religion, no one's talking about it amongst your friends.
[00:27:48.200 --> 00:27:50.040] So you just don't really think about it.
[00:27:50.040 --> 00:27:50.440] Yeah.
[00:27:50.440 --> 00:27:53.720] I mean, this is, this is, it's not a herd mentality.
[00:27:53.960 --> 00:27:54.680] I wouldn't go there.
[00:27:54.680 --> 00:27:55.800] That's a little demeaning.
[00:27:55.800 --> 00:27:58.920] But the way obsolescence works is like that.
[00:27:58.920 --> 00:28:02.680] If you think about, well, let's think about to our childhoods.
[00:28:02.640 --> 00:28:07.400] Uh, there was a time in my childhood where the wearing bell-bottom jeans was the coolest thing.
[00:28:07.720 --> 00:28:08.360] Oh, God, I know.
[00:28:07.440 --> 00:28:12.680] You know, and then anything you know, like that, you wouldn't be caught dead wearing that.
[00:28:12.680 --> 00:28:16.880] Or, like, let's suppose you're really attached to your vinyl records.
[00:28:14.840 --> 00:28:21.200] Uh, like, they're actually better quality music, as I understand it, than streaming.
[00:28:21.440 --> 00:28:27.360] So, but it's too bad the world around you is changing, and you don't get that kind of support.
[00:28:27.680 --> 00:28:31.600] And you, and if on vinyl, you can no longer get all kinds of new stuff.
[00:28:31.600 --> 00:28:41.120] So, yeah, as a sociologist, of course, I'm tuned into context and how social context shapes people's awareness and interests and so on.
[00:28:41.440 --> 00:28:49.920] So, yeah, generations grow up in different contexts that send their lives on very different trajectories.
[00:28:50.240 --> 00:29:01.120] One thing that's interesting in all this is this is, I think, is that a lot of where millennials went actually has roots in their parents' culture.
[00:29:01.440 --> 00:29:06.240] So, the 60s and early 70s was cultural revolution in very many ways.
[00:29:06.240 --> 00:29:17.680] And, you know, when New Age and Eastern spirituality and all this was a super duper interest among young people, but the era, it was a different era.
[00:29:17.680 --> 00:29:18.800] There wasn't the internet.
[00:29:18.800 --> 00:29:23.760] The internet made a huge difference in people's ability to communicate and learn and so on.
[00:29:24.640 --> 00:29:29.200] And then the 70s hit economic crises.
[00:29:29.200 --> 00:29:33.680] And then the 80s was this decade of like alleged conservatism.
[00:29:33.680 --> 00:29:51.600] And so it put boomers, boomers sort of came of age and went through middle adulthood at a different era, whereas millennials were socialized by their parents in many of the same values: be free, explore your authentic self, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:29:51.600 --> 00:30:05.320] But they grew up in a context where the technology was different, the globalization was different, the communications were different, respect for authority and institutions had declined significantly.
[00:30:05.640 --> 00:30:16.360] And so they can take the same set of values and take it in much further and more extreme or however you want to put it directions than their parents could because of the different context.
[00:30:16.840 --> 00:30:20.360] And I just find that stuff really fascinating sociologically.
[00:30:20.360 --> 00:30:21.960] Incredibly interesting.
[00:30:21.960 --> 00:30:22.360] Yeah.
[00:30:22.680 --> 00:30:23.000] All right.
[00:30:23.000 --> 00:30:25.560] So let's go over to the 90s and the 2000s.
[00:30:25.560 --> 00:30:37.640] You identify a number of factors here: the end of the Cold War, neoliberalism, capitalism, digital revolution, postmodernism, multiculturalism, and intensive parenting.
[00:30:37.640 --> 00:30:38.520] That's interesting.
[00:30:38.520 --> 00:30:40.280] Helicopter parenting.
[00:30:40.280 --> 00:30:41.880] As you know, Jonathan Height's been on.
[00:30:41.960 --> 00:30:43.000] Intensive parenting.
[00:30:43.000 --> 00:30:47.560] Well, yeah, so intensive parenting is a minor factor among many of these factors.
[00:30:47.560 --> 00:30:51.960] They're much bigger, but basically, you know, you may be familiar with this.
[00:30:52.360 --> 00:30:57.880] In the 90s and into the 2000s, the idea was: so, all right, I'll be autobiographical here.
[00:30:57.880 --> 00:31:00.200] When I grew up, I'm a young boomer.
[00:31:00.200 --> 00:31:06.600] When I grew up, you come home from school, you go out and play in the yard or in the woods or anywhere you want to ride your bike to.
[00:31:06.600 --> 00:31:11.960] As long as you're home for dinner, and as long as you're not in danger, you just do whatever.
[00:31:11.960 --> 00:31:14.360] You know, you'll grow up and you'll be a normal person.
[00:31:14.360 --> 00:31:26.840] In the 90s and 2000s, a new ideology came along where parents were somehow figured out or came to believe they needed to manage their kids' lives a lot more.
[00:31:26.840 --> 00:31:33.320] They needed to get them in music lessons and sports from a very early age and schedule up their lives, and so on, and so on.
[00:31:33.400 --> 00:31:38.840] So, what was required of parents, the bar was raised.
[00:31:38.800 --> 00:31:43.320] And so, and so that was another way that religion was crowded out.
[00:31:43.320 --> 00:31:51.520] Like, if I have to take my daughter on traveling soccer every weekend, I guess we're going to miss church, you know, or whatever.
[00:31:51.840 --> 00:32:01.120] So, it wasn't enough to just, you know, keep your kid fed, clothed, go to school, healthy, and go to church.
[00:32:01.120 --> 00:32:03.840] And then, otherwise, we have a lot of free time.
[00:32:03.840 --> 00:32:14.160] It was like everything was the stakes were raised in helping your kid compete against all the other kids to be successful, which relates to other social changes.
[00:32:14.160 --> 00:32:20.560] And it, lo and behold, I argue, you know, institutionalized religion was the loser from that.
[00:32:20.560 --> 00:32:21.040] Yeah.
[00:32:21.280 --> 00:32:22.080] Well, it's much worse.
[00:32:22.480 --> 00:32:23.120] And it was hard.
[00:32:23.120 --> 00:32:27.200] It was especially hard because it wasn't something that religion could critique.
[00:32:27.360 --> 00:32:28.640] What are you going to tell parents?
[00:32:28.720 --> 00:32:30.880] No, you shouldn't be as good a parent as you are.
[00:32:30.880 --> 00:32:32.000] You shouldn't try so hard.
[00:32:32.000 --> 00:32:33.280] Bring them to church instead.
[00:32:33.280 --> 00:32:34.560] I mean, that's not going to work.
[00:32:34.560 --> 00:32:36.880] So it was a challenge, you know.
[00:32:36.880 --> 00:32:37.600] Right.
[00:32:37.920 --> 00:32:38.960] Well, it's much worse now.
[00:32:38.960 --> 00:32:40.560] I raised a daughter in the 90s.
[00:32:40.560 --> 00:32:43.840] He's 33 now, and now I have a nine-year-old son.
[00:32:44.080 --> 00:32:46.640] Setting up a play date now, you should see this.
[00:32:47.280 --> 00:32:48.240] It's like a schedule.
[00:32:48.240 --> 00:32:52.400] Well, let's see, you know, little Johnny's got an opening next Thursday from four to six.
[00:32:52.400 --> 00:32:54.000] Like, really?
[00:32:54.640 --> 00:32:56.000] You got a plan that far out?
[00:32:56.000 --> 00:32:56.640] It's incredible.
[00:32:56.640 --> 00:32:57.680] Yeah, it's a different world.
[00:32:57.680 --> 00:32:58.800] It's a different world.
[00:32:58.800 --> 00:33:06.400] And this, you know, one of the things I argue in the book is that none of this turned on a dime.
[00:33:06.720 --> 00:33:08.400] None of this changed immediately.
[00:33:08.400 --> 00:33:14.320] We're talking about long-term, multiple causes, highly complex.
[00:33:14.640 --> 00:33:18.960] Most of the causes that made our religion obsolete were unrelated to religion.
[00:33:18.960 --> 00:33:24.160] They had to do with technology and the economy and politics and war and all kinds of things.
[00:33:25.280 --> 00:33:27.440] And that most of them were unintended.
[00:33:27.600 --> 00:33:31.800] The original working title for my book was The Unintended Obsolescence of America.
[00:33:31.960 --> 00:33:37.960] So we know, you know, manufacturers can make products planned obsolete, right?
[00:33:37.960 --> 00:33:53.800] So the reason I want to put this in, well, it's because I think it's true, but there's tendencies among some more, let's say, conservative religious groups to say, well, the reason if we're in trouble, it's because our enemies are out to get us.
[00:33:53.800 --> 00:34:04.040] The secular humanists or the woke people or whoever it is are out to like flush us down the toilet, and that's why we're in trouble.
[00:34:04.200 --> 00:34:09.960] What I'm trying to say in this book is, no, no, the people that invented the internet were not trying to hurt religion.
[00:34:10.600 --> 00:34:14.200] It had that effect, but that's not what their intention was.
[00:34:14.200 --> 00:34:19.160] Almost all there were a few forces that were anti-religious, but most of it was unintended.
[00:34:19.160 --> 00:34:21.400] It just so happened to work out that way.
[00:34:21.720 --> 00:34:22.200] Why is that?
[00:34:22.200 --> 00:34:25.960] It's important to understand history and change in that kind of way.
[00:34:25.960 --> 00:34:26.680] But why is that?
[00:34:26.680 --> 00:34:32.280] I mean, did the televangelists of the 80s not make the transition to the internet as effectively?
[00:34:33.160 --> 00:34:34.280] Why did the internet?
[00:34:34.280 --> 00:34:36.840] I mean, the digital revolution.
[00:34:37.160 --> 00:34:39.560] Yeah, I spell out in the book like 10 different ways.
[00:34:39.560 --> 00:34:49.160] I mean, so it's everything from suddenly you can have new friends anywhere in the world and you can control who you're talking with.
[00:34:49.320 --> 00:34:56.920] The internet enabled people to voice doubts and questions that maybe they always had, but they could do it anonymously now.
[00:34:57.480 --> 00:35:06.120] It enabled people to do research on whatever different things they were different than they were raised on.
[00:35:06.120 --> 00:35:13.080] You know, again, when I was little, if you wanted to learn about Buddhism, you know, you had to go to the library, get out books.
[00:35:13.080 --> 00:35:14.120] Like, it took effort.
[00:35:14.120 --> 00:35:18.080] The internet is just boom, boom, boom, and you can get all kinds of information.
[00:35:19.040 --> 00:35:23.920] The internet takes up people's time, so it's another version of crowding out.
[00:35:24.160 --> 00:35:29.200] Religion, and for people who are committed religious, they'll still do that.
[00:35:29.200 --> 00:35:34.880] But for people who are marginally religious, if they're running out of time, they'll say, oh, I just don't have time for that.
[00:35:34.880 --> 00:35:40.320] You know, religion will be something that they will sort of ease out of their lives.
[00:35:41.120 --> 00:35:46.560] And in certain cases, like Mormonism, I have a section in the book about Mormons.
[00:35:49.760 --> 00:35:55.040] There has been a growing community of ex-Mormons who are really anti-Mormon.
[00:35:55.040 --> 00:36:05.920] And like, if you're raised in Mormon and you bail out of it, you have much more likely to be emotionally upset about that because a lot of ex-Mormons are like, I was deceived.
[00:36:05.920 --> 00:36:07.120] This is ridiculous.
[00:36:07.120 --> 00:36:13.600] Our four founders were polygamous, and it was all bullshit, basically, is what they'll say.
[00:36:13.920 --> 00:36:20.240] And they're upset about it, but it also has bigger consequences for their family relationships and so on.
[00:36:20.240 --> 00:36:32.480] So there is a community of ex-Mormons that are like helping people out of Mormonism, helping to convince other people and showing historical documents that this is why this is wrong.
[00:36:32.480 --> 00:36:37.920] And the internet makes that possible in a way pre-internet.
[00:36:37.920 --> 00:36:41.440] If you lived in Salt Lake City, like you couldn't ask these questions.
[00:36:41.440 --> 00:36:43.040] You didn't have this support.
[00:36:43.040 --> 00:36:48.960] So, yeah, I would say the internet is one of the biggest factors in religion's obsolescence.
[00:36:49.200 --> 00:36:49.600] Yeah.
[00:36:49.920 --> 00:36:52.320] Well, they're called ex-Mos or former Mormons.
[00:36:52.800 --> 00:36:53.840] Yeah, exactly.
[00:36:54.160 --> 00:36:55.120] I know a bunch of them.
[00:36:55.440 --> 00:36:56.960] They join the Skeptic Society.
[00:36:56.960 --> 00:36:58.160] They read my magazine and books.
[00:36:58.160 --> 00:36:59.600] They go to our conferences.
[00:36:59.600 --> 00:37:00.200] And yeah.
[00:36:59.840 --> 00:37:05.480] Yeah, there's a little bit of element of like being an ex-smoker or ex-alcoholic.
[00:37:05.880 --> 00:37:12.440] You're always on the alert to other people that you want to bring down the pathway with you.
[00:37:12.680 --> 00:37:16.520] What about postmodernism and multiculturalism and its effects?
[00:37:16.520 --> 00:37:20.280] Yeah, this is another huge influence, I think.
[00:37:22.040 --> 00:37:34.840] So, you know, postmodernism starts off as a high humanist, you know, French literary theory, whatever, in the 60s after sort of the loss of faith in Marxism.
[00:37:34.840 --> 00:37:39.160] And it comes over, it floats over to American academia.
[00:37:39.160 --> 00:37:45.080] And in the 90s, I was an assistant professor at UNC Chapel Hill.
[00:37:45.160 --> 00:37:49.160] In the 90s, postmodernism was just such a strong influence.
[00:37:49.160 --> 00:37:49.800] It was everywhere.
[00:37:49.800 --> 00:37:51.960] Like you had to deal with it.
[00:37:51.960 --> 00:37:57.400] And in my book, in the book, I don't get into like what does real postmodernism say?
[00:37:57.560 --> 00:38:16.360] I focus more on what the average college student would have taken away, what would be in the air, so to speak, and the zeitgeist about postmodernism and what I think the popular influence of postmodernism amounted to things like you can't trust authorities.
[00:38:16.360 --> 00:38:23.400] All knowledge claims are really disguised efforts to get power over you.
[00:38:23.400 --> 00:38:26.920] We have no idea what an author really could have possibly meant.
[00:38:26.920 --> 00:38:29.240] It's just what it means to you.
[00:38:29.960 --> 00:38:35.080] You know, this Foucaultian, you know, everything is power grabs.
[00:38:35.400 --> 00:38:37.880] All of that, this sort of moral relativism.
[00:38:37.880 --> 00:38:42.280] Well, if you believe X, that's just because of your place in history and culture.
[00:38:42.320 --> 00:38:54.560] There's very, it was comple, it had a profoundly sort of relativizing, destabilizing effect on any claims to truth or knowledge, whether scientific or religious.
[00:38:54.560 --> 00:39:03.680] It's just like, well, scientists, they're just, you know, a bunch of white guy, middle-aged white guys who are trying to rule the world or whatever.
[00:39:03.680 --> 00:39:10.960] And I think when it comes to my story about religion, that had a profoundly corrosive effect.
[00:39:10.960 --> 00:39:16.320] This idea like, oh, I thought the Bible taught, I was raised that the Bible taught the truth.
[00:39:16.320 --> 00:39:21.600] But now I've learned in college from really smart people that you can't trust that stuff.
[00:39:21.600 --> 00:39:22.720] Maybe there is no truth.
[00:39:22.720 --> 00:39:24.480] Maybe everything is relative.
[00:39:24.480 --> 00:39:29.920] Maybe probably my pastor is just wanting to get control of us and et cetera, et cetera.
[00:39:29.920 --> 00:39:34.000] So yeah, it was profoundly corrosive.
[00:39:34.000 --> 00:39:44.560] And not in a strictly ideological sense, not that everyone sat down and read Nietzsche and said, oh, it was much more diffuse, much more, even in popular culture.
[00:39:44.960 --> 00:39:51.600] You know, so, you know, Seinfeld, which is a hilarious show, you know, is famously a show about nothing.
[00:39:51.600 --> 00:39:56.240] And that's this is sort of a comedy outworking of postmodernism.
[00:39:56.240 --> 00:40:01.200] It's sort of like, oh, don't get too invested in anything.
[00:40:01.200 --> 00:40:03.840] Just we can be ironic about everything.
[00:40:03.840 --> 00:40:05.600] You know, we don't really know anything.
[00:40:05.600 --> 00:40:08.640] Just do something and whatever's fine.
[00:40:08.640 --> 00:40:11.920] So that's not really particularly good for traditional religion.
[00:40:11.920 --> 00:40:12.240] Yeah.
[00:40:12.240 --> 00:40:14.560] So that made a big contribution to its obsolescence.
[00:40:14.720 --> 00:40:16.400] So interesting because that's what happened to science.
[00:40:16.400 --> 00:40:22.640] You know, the kind of science wars, the first version of it in the 90s, was that postmodernism.
[00:40:22.640 --> 00:40:23.040] Yeah.
[00:40:23.520 --> 00:40:24.160] Yeah.
[00:40:24.160 --> 00:40:28.880] So, and multiculturalism, is this the effects are exposure to other cultures?
[00:40:28.880 --> 00:40:38.520] And then the respect for other cultures we should hold and that there's nothing special about Western religions, that traditional religions should have a seat at the table?
[00:40:38.520 --> 00:40:53.480] Yeah, so multiculturalism, which I'm friendly to, you know, it starts off as, I think, a pretty intelligent effort to educate young people how to live in a pluralistic world in a way that doesn't lead to violence and hatred.
[00:40:53.960 --> 00:41:00.280] But to sort of roll out a multicultural education program at a national level, it takes a lot of effort.
[00:41:00.280 --> 00:41:04.120] It takes a lot of careful training and so on.
[00:41:04.120 --> 00:41:28.200] And I think, again, by the time it gets down from the official ideas down to four-year-olds and eighth graders in the classroom, what they end up taking away, I'm not blaming it on teachers, I'm not blaming it on multiculture, but I'm just saying, I think what a lot of students, a lot of millennials ended up taking away in the 90s, this was really rolled out in the 90s, was some basic ideas.
[00:41:28.200 --> 00:41:33.560] You can never judge anybody, not even on any grounds about anything.
[00:41:33.560 --> 00:41:35.640] Like everyone is okay with the way they are.
[00:41:35.880 --> 00:41:39.400] At least don't publicly critic, you can't criticize anything.
[00:41:39.400 --> 00:41:40.680] Everything is relative.
[00:41:40.680 --> 00:41:43.800] Every culture is legitimate on its own terms.
[00:41:43.800 --> 00:41:48.920] And just pragmatically get along with other people is the most important thing.
[00:41:48.920 --> 00:41:52.680] Okay, so that might have some positive social effects.
[00:41:52.680 --> 00:41:59.800] Not that that's where we are now as a society, but it may have been well-intentioned and have some good effects.
[00:41:59.800 --> 00:42:08.200] But if you're traditional religion making truth claims, it basically cuts the legs out from under you.
[00:42:08.200 --> 00:42:10.360] Like, if other people are different, that's fine.
[00:42:10.360 --> 00:42:15.680] So basically, it turns your own religious faith into sort of a personal identity accessory.
[00:42:16.000 --> 00:42:19.760] Like, do I want to be a tennis player at the club or don't I?
[00:42:19.760 --> 00:42:22.320] Do I want to be a Presbyterian or don't I?
[00:42:22.320 --> 00:42:23.840] They're equivalent questions.
[00:42:24.480 --> 00:42:31.840] And that, you know, that really undercuts the meaning and authority of what religion has traditionally claimed for itself.
[00:42:31.840 --> 00:42:34.560] The cafeteria of beliefs that you can pick from.
[00:42:34.800 --> 00:42:35.520] Cafeteria.
[00:42:35.520 --> 00:42:37.520] You know the phrase, cafeteria Catholics.
[00:42:37.520 --> 00:42:38.320] That's kind of a.
[00:42:38.560 --> 00:42:39.120] Yeah.
[00:42:39.120 --> 00:42:48.080] Well, I mean, if you take like the last thousand years, I mean, you go from having just one or two choices to, you know, a whole menu of them.
[00:42:48.560 --> 00:42:56.880] Yeah, I was just thinking of, you know, about how people think of religious truth claims.
[00:42:58.160 --> 00:43:01.200] There was a book called Religion is Make Believe.
[00:43:01.520 --> 00:43:02.400] The author's name now.
[00:43:02.400 --> 00:43:03.440] Darn, he was on the show.
[00:43:03.440 --> 00:43:04.000] Sorry.
[00:43:04.160 --> 00:43:13.760] But he made the point that, like, if the preacher says there's a parking lot behind the church, park your car there, you know, you go and check.
[00:43:13.760 --> 00:43:15.520] Yeah, yeah, that's true or false.
[00:43:15.520 --> 00:43:21.920] But if the preacher says, you know, God is three and one and one and three, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, how are you going to check that, right?
[00:43:21.920 --> 00:43:27.200] Because there's a lot of kind of assumptions that go on that, you know, most people really don't give it much thought.
[00:43:27.200 --> 00:43:30.560] So maybe part of your point here is that people started giving that some thought.
[00:43:30.560 --> 00:43:32.720] Like, yeah, how do we know that it's one and three?
[00:43:32.720 --> 00:43:33.040] Yeah.
[00:43:34.240 --> 00:43:39.120] Yeah, I think most Americans are not religious because of doctrine.
[00:43:39.200 --> 00:43:50.560] I mean, I hate to say this to religions, but I don't think sociologically, most Americans are not religious because they have convictions about doctrines or they're certain about a metaphysics or something.
[00:43:50.560 --> 00:43:54.800] I think it's because, you know, they think it's a good idea.
[00:43:54.800 --> 00:43:56.720] It's good to raise children in this.
[00:43:56.960 --> 00:43:59.280] It helps society be more stable.
[00:43:59.280 --> 00:44:03.560] It makes helps people make good decisions, it's good for the community, et cetera.
[00:44:03.720 --> 00:44:20.920] And so, one of the things I argue in the book is: I don't have an historical account of when this happened, but by the 90s at least, a lot of Americans had come to value religion for very this worldly imminent goods they thought it would deliver.
[00:44:20.920 --> 00:44:23.640] It helps you be moral, it helps you make good decisions.
[00:44:25.080 --> 00:44:32.120] It's good to have leaders, clergy as leaders in your community, it's good for sort of national cohesion.
[00:44:32.120 --> 00:44:37.160] And part of what I argue is, this is kind of a Durkheimian functionalist argument.
[00:44:37.160 --> 00:44:56.440] Part of what I argue is in the 90s and 2000s, those functions were increasingly compromised so that with the clergy abuse scandals, for example, or the televangelist scandals, you know, these people getting caught having sex with prostitutes and whatever else.
[00:44:57.080 --> 00:45:02.760] That severely compromises the idea of religion helps people be good.
[00:45:02.920 --> 00:45:05.400] Religious people are better than not religious people.
[00:45:05.400 --> 00:45:06.920] That's just one example.
[00:45:07.240 --> 00:45:09.240] Again, back to the end of the Cold War.
[00:45:09.240 --> 00:45:22.040] If you view religion as good for sort of national identity and solidarity, and you're not fighting that godless atheist communists anymore, then there's less need for that, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:45:22.040 --> 00:45:29.160] So a lot of the reasons why Americans came to value, had valued religion kind of became irrelevant.
[00:45:29.160 --> 00:45:31.480] Like functionally, they weren't working anymore.
[00:45:31.480 --> 00:45:35.720] And so there was really less reason to be bonded to religion.
[00:45:35.720 --> 00:45:36.200] Yeah.
[00:45:36.520 --> 00:45:39.720] Well, that's that social capital argument, I think.
[00:45:39.720 --> 00:45:45.840] I noticed this when I was doing a lot of God debates and then evolution and creationism or intelligent design debates.
[00:45:46.720 --> 00:45:56.320] I would take to asking the audience, you know, if at the end of the evening you were convinced by my arguments more than the other guy, would you abandon your religion?
[00:45:56.480 --> 00:45:57.760] Like, hell no.
[00:45:58.720 --> 00:46:03.040] And the reason seems to be that's not why I'm here in the first place.
[00:46:03.040 --> 00:46:06.160] I mean, it's fun and interesting to hear my guy make clever arguments.
[00:46:06.160 --> 00:46:10.320] Here's the Colomb cosmological argument, and here's the fine-tuning argument.
[00:46:10.400 --> 00:46:10.800] So on.
[00:46:10.800 --> 00:46:11.680] That's all great.
[00:46:11.680 --> 00:46:16.640] If you already believe, it's like, oh, yeah, that's a really good reason, another reason why I believe.
[00:46:16.640 --> 00:46:20.400] But if you take that away, it's like, well, but that wasn't really foundational anyway.
[00:46:20.400 --> 00:46:21.360] Yeah, exactly.
[00:46:21.360 --> 00:46:28.800] I mean, people like to have intellectuals have reasons that buttress what they already do or want to believe.
[00:46:28.800 --> 00:46:33.920] I mean, I think this is just humans in general do this, but certainly religious people.
[00:46:33.920 --> 00:46:43.760] And so if they discover not only that there wasn't a historic Adam and Eve, but now it's not just one species of human.
[00:46:43.760 --> 00:46:52.880] There were like all kinds of different humans that came up or say, or you know, our type who came up and then died out.
[00:46:52.880 --> 00:46:56.880] I guess I'm going to bother them directly.
[00:46:57.120 --> 00:47:15.200] People are much more shaped by, again, I'm a sociologist, but their sort of social context, what the people around them say and do, what seems to vibe or make sense in the world, especially millennials, is this sort of like, does this, do I feel this or do I not feel this?
[00:47:15.680 --> 00:47:18.320] Is this the right vibe or is it not the right vibe?
[00:47:18.320 --> 00:47:27.760] And when it doesn't, it may be as subtle as, you know, millennials are the most racially, ethnically diverse generation so far.
[00:47:27.760 --> 00:47:35.560] And if they, if they go to a religious service and everyone there is one race, this is not going to vibe with them.
[00:47:35.560 --> 00:47:39.560] They may not even be able to express it in words, but it's just not going to sit right.
[00:47:39.800 --> 00:47:41.320] And they're not going to be interested.
[00:47:41.320 --> 00:47:52.600] So many more influences go into why people stick with or abandon their faith of their childhood or from marriage or whatever.
[00:47:53.480 --> 00:47:58.520] It's really usually not much about the cogency of ideas.
[00:47:58.520 --> 00:47:59.160] Yeah.
[00:47:59.160 --> 00:47:59.960] Oh, for sure.
[00:47:59.960 --> 00:48:13.320] It reminds me of the research by a political psychologist who study the psychology of political beliefs that people mostly choose the parties that they most identify with kind of personally, emotionally.
[00:48:13.320 --> 00:48:14.760] You know, these are my people.
[00:48:14.760 --> 00:48:17.640] I really like their attitudes and beliefs.
[00:48:17.640 --> 00:48:23.240] And then after the fact, they'll, you know, compile a series of arguments, you know, gun control and abortion.
[00:48:23.240 --> 00:48:26.680] And they'll have their reasons why they're a Republican or a Democrat.
[00:48:26.680 --> 00:48:34.280] But really, it's more like they first choose the party based on their temperament and what they kind of, the kind of worldview that they prefer.
[00:48:34.280 --> 00:48:38.600] I want a hierarchical, structured, predictable, stable worldview.
[00:48:38.840 --> 00:48:41.640] That's what I'm most comfortable in as a person.
[00:48:41.640 --> 00:48:43.240] And those are my people.
[00:48:43.480 --> 00:48:43.960] What are they?
[00:48:43.960 --> 00:48:45.000] Oh, they're Republicans.
[00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:45.480] Okay.
[00:48:46.120 --> 00:48:47.000] Or vice versa.
[00:48:47.080 --> 00:48:56.920] So that makes it makes the world more alienating to people, to intellectuals who really like to think through ideas and cogency of arguments and evidence and so on.
[00:48:56.920 --> 00:49:00.520] It's a hard world to live in because most people are not operating that way.
[00:49:01.240 --> 00:49:05.080] I would say, yeah, I would say it's not just religious.
[00:49:05.080 --> 00:49:10.440] Well, first of all, there's an analog here to help religious conversion theory.
[00:49:10.440 --> 00:49:18.960] Like, most people convert to religions, cults, or religions, or whatever, not because they get the ideas first and then they act on them.
[00:49:19.120 --> 00:49:22.880] It's because they have developed relationships with people.
[00:49:23.440 --> 00:49:26.720] They build some emotional bonds with communities.
[00:49:26.720 --> 00:49:30.880] And then later on, they sort of take on board the ideas.
[00:49:30.880 --> 00:49:32.400] Like, oh, you believe that?
[00:49:32.400 --> 00:49:32.960] Okay.
[00:49:33.600 --> 00:49:39.680] So, yeah, humans are much less rational, much more pragmatic, emotional.
[00:49:39.680 --> 00:49:44.880] And we see that playing out all the time in our culture and society, especially in politics lately.
[00:49:45.680 --> 00:49:46.560] Evidence.
[00:49:47.600 --> 00:49:53.280] Sometimes I just despair over whether evidence and arguments even matter.
[00:49:53.280 --> 00:49:54.000] But yeah.
[00:49:54.000 --> 00:49:56.960] Well, I like to think that they do because that's the business I'm in.
[00:49:56.960 --> 00:50:07.520] But the research does show that people that say support climate change, they don't know anything more about the science than the people that deny it.
[00:50:08.320 --> 00:50:11.280] It's just, this is what my team believes or doesn't believe.
[00:50:11.440 --> 00:50:12.480] It's the team thing.
[00:50:12.480 --> 00:50:12.960] Yeah.
[00:50:12.960 --> 00:50:13.520] Yeah.
[00:50:14.080 --> 00:50:16.720] And I mean, it's not just religious people.
[00:50:16.720 --> 00:50:22.880] I mean, I think some of the post or ex-religious people we interviewed for this study, it's similar.
[00:50:22.880 --> 00:50:33.280] You know, they left because it was boring or they got pissed off at their priest or whatever personal, whatever reason, where somebody told them the Crusades were the most horrible thing.
[00:50:33.280 --> 00:50:33.840] Okay.
[00:50:33.840 --> 00:50:35.040] So then they leave for that.
[00:50:35.040 --> 00:50:44.080] And then later they sort of latch on to ideas that post-hoc justify what they've already done.
[00:50:44.080 --> 00:50:53.600] How do you tease out the effects of the priestley pedophile scandal from other effects that you've been studying of long-term trends?
[00:50:53.600 --> 00:50:58.400] How do we know how much, how many members the Catholic Church lost from that?
[00:50:58.400 --> 00:51:00.680] Yeah, it's really hard.
[00:50:59.600 --> 00:51:13.320] My general approach, I mean, it's possible to try to estimate that, but my general strategy in my book is to say these are not independent effects like a multiple regression where you get these.
[00:51:13.560 --> 00:51:22.040] These are all sort of concatenating, ramifying, combinational effects that affect different people and communities differently in different amounts.
[00:51:22.040 --> 00:51:31.400] No one of them probably would have made religion obsolete, but all together, I actually use the image of converging perfect storms.
[00:51:31.960 --> 00:51:35.960] A perfect storm is like multiple storms hitting at the same place at the same time.
[00:51:35.960 --> 00:51:40.280] What happened in the 90s and 2000s was multiple perfect storms hitting in the same place.
[00:51:40.280 --> 00:51:43.400] So it was almost over-determined, really, in my mind.
[00:51:44.120 --> 00:51:48.760] When I got done writing the book, I thought, it's amazing to me, anyone still is religious.
[00:51:48.760 --> 00:51:51.480] But I guess that goes back to what you were saying about why.
[00:51:51.800 --> 00:51:54.360] So, yeah, so I can't tease out the effect.
[00:51:54.920 --> 00:52:01.400] There was a time in writing the book when I was thinking, I'm going to make a table of the most to the least important factor.
[00:52:01.720 --> 00:52:05.320] And after thinking about it for a while, I realized that that's going to be impossible.
[00:52:05.320 --> 00:52:07.320] Like, it's just not possible.
[00:52:07.320 --> 00:52:14.760] And so there are also different effects of the priest abuse scandals.
[00:52:15.000 --> 00:52:16.920] And I'll focus on the Catholic Church.
[00:52:18.680 --> 00:52:26.600] There were a set of Catholics who were like, wait, if this is what happened and this and the organization tried to cover it up, then I'm out of here.
[00:52:26.600 --> 00:52:28.360] So that's one kind of effect.
[00:52:28.360 --> 00:52:34.560] Another effect is, though, is as it gets diffused through news and media out into popular culture.
[00:52:34.560 --> 00:52:40.600] People that may not know any details, any facts about it, they've just heard about it.
[00:52:40.600 --> 00:52:41.960] It just adds weight.
[00:52:41.960 --> 00:52:51.920] It's just another thing put on the camel's back that solidifies their antagonism to or apathy toward religion.
[00:52:52.480 --> 00:52:56.480] And if you interview them, they'll say, Oh, yeah, priest-abuse scandal, da-da-da-da-da.
[00:52:56.560 --> 00:53:11.920] But it's not clear they really know that it's not, it's really hard to tell how much of that was a motivating causal factor and how much of that was post-hoc justification.
[00:53:11.920 --> 00:53:12.400] Yeah.
[00:53:12.400 --> 00:53:14.880] Well, we know from cognitive psychologists that people do that.
[00:53:15.280 --> 00:53:20.080] They'll do, they'll make a decision for some reason, and then after the fact, they'll say, Well, here are the reasons.
[00:53:20.880 --> 00:53:22.720] They may themselves not know why they did it.
[00:53:22.720 --> 00:53:25.440] Yeah, they may not know themselves, may not be fully aware.
[00:53:25.440 --> 00:53:37.920] But I'm convinced, having sort of studied this for years, that it was a significant to have in the news for year after year, and it wasn't just, oh, this happened, it was terrible, we've moved on.
[00:53:37.920 --> 00:53:43.440] It was like continually, and even today, it's almost like clockwork.
[00:53:43.680 --> 00:53:45.840] You can expect a next scandal to come out.
[00:53:45.840 --> 00:54:03.760] And so I think what that did is at a cultural level, it eroded this sense, it shifted it away from, well, there are a few bad apples in every barrel to there's something systematically wrong with the power and that's involved in religious organization.
[00:54:03.760 --> 00:54:09.520] And once America, if Americans can forgive a lot, if they say it's a few bad apples, there's bad people everywhere.
[00:54:09.520 --> 00:54:20.960] But if it gets to an institution is corrupt, especially if it's an institution that puts itself on a pedestal as sort of a defender of righteousness, they are not going to, they're not going to tolerate that.
[00:54:21.600 --> 00:54:22.160] Yeah.
[00:54:23.120 --> 00:54:26.560] Well, the 2000s started off with a bang, 9-11.
[00:54:26.520 --> 00:54:28.720] Yeah, what are the effects of that?
[00:54:29.040 --> 00:54:30.440] Yeah, so it was interesting.
[00:54:31.080 --> 00:54:54.280] My argument is that even though 9-11 was perpetrated by a very small minority of radical Islamists, it had the effect over time between 9-11 and the writing of the new atheists, Hitchens and all these guys, Dawkins, it had the effect of polluting religion.
[00:54:54.280 --> 00:54:56.040] So people have this category of religion.
[00:54:56.200 --> 00:54:58.600] There's no such thing as religion, right?
[00:54:58.600 --> 00:54:59.960] They're religions.
[00:54:59.960 --> 00:55:05.000] But we have this cultural category of religion and/established religion.
[00:55:05.000 --> 00:55:18.120] And I think 9-11 and the new atheists together helped to shift, not for everybody, but for some people, shift an idea that, well, maybe religion isn't always a force for good.
[00:55:18.120 --> 00:55:22.120] Maybe religion is associated with violence and extremism.
[00:55:22.120 --> 00:55:42.200] And then, of course, the more you have sort of Native American, not Native American, I mean, traditional religions in America have parts of evangelicalism and so on, doing extreme things like, you know, going to funerals of gay people and saying they're going to hell or whatever.
[00:55:42.200 --> 00:55:43.960] That stuff gets a lot of press.
[00:55:43.960 --> 00:55:54.200] And I think a lot of Americans came away from all that saying, you know, religion isn't such a great thing after all.
[00:55:54.520 --> 00:55:55.960] Maybe it's just.
[00:55:56.680 --> 00:56:04.520] And some people definitely bought into this, the line that the more extreme line, that religion is the source of all evil in the world.
[00:56:06.120 --> 00:56:19.440] And once you get, again, on the same theme we've been saying about social psychology, once people get that into their head, it's hard to sort of dislodge it with a more nuanced, complicated account of history.
[00:56:19.440 --> 00:56:19.840] Yeah.
[00:56:20.480 --> 00:56:28.000] On the new atheism, do you see that as an effect or a cause or an interactive process?
[00:56:29.680 --> 00:56:39.760] It was a definite causal force helping to drive people, some set of people, away from religion.
[00:56:39.760 --> 00:56:41.920] Not a huge force, in and of itself.
[00:56:42.720 --> 00:56:46.320] Aside from September 11, I don't think it would have had much effect at all.
[00:56:46.320 --> 00:56:48.960] There have been atheists making arguments for a long time.
[00:56:49.200 --> 00:56:57.360] The shift after 9-11 was not, the old atheism was like, hey, it's intellectually respectable to be an atheist.
[00:56:57.600 --> 00:56:58.720] You should tolerate us.
[00:56:58.720 --> 00:57:00.320] We should all get along fine.
[00:57:00.320 --> 00:57:01.680] Let's have debates.
[00:57:02.320 --> 00:57:05.760] But the new atheism was like, religion should be extinguished.
[00:57:05.760 --> 00:57:06.800] This should go away.
[00:57:06.800 --> 00:57:08.320] Like, this is pernicious.
[00:57:08.320 --> 00:57:14.320] So that sort of turned the dial up to 11, so to speak, on anti-religion.
[00:57:14.320 --> 00:57:18.080] Some people, I think, were shocked and convinced by it.
[00:57:18.080 --> 00:57:25.680] I think other people who were growingly uncertain about religion were just sort of moved more this way.
[00:57:25.680 --> 00:57:33.760] In and of itself, it wasn't enough to make religion go obsolete, but it definitely had an effect in conjunction with 9-11.
[00:57:34.560 --> 00:57:48.800] The other thing, though, is we learned from doing a lot of interviews with people is that there was a kind of a lot of people that were at first quite persuaded by the new atheists then later started to reconsider maybe that was too extreme.
[00:57:49.120 --> 00:58:00.920] So because I think they didn't like the new atheist style, it was not so much the argument, it's that the new atheists people stepped back and said, wait a minute, they're pretty zealous too.
[00:58:00.920 --> 00:58:05.000] I mean, they're kind of absolutely convinced of the truth in their own way.
[00:58:05.000 --> 00:58:07.480] And isn't that what I don't like about religion?
[00:58:07.480 --> 00:58:14.440] So again, that made people become more like, just we accept everything, anything's fine, don't bother me too much.
[00:58:14.760 --> 00:58:18.600] Just be moderate in whatever you do, and maybe I'm spiritual.
[00:58:18.600 --> 00:58:24.520] So, in other words, I think there was a bit of a backlash against the new atheists after their initial influence.
[00:58:24.520 --> 00:58:33.560] So, what I mean by effects that in the late 90s, Richard Dawkins had been shopping around this idea of the God delusion.
[00:58:33.560 --> 00:58:43.000] I don't think he called it that, but at the time, and he and I have the same literary agent, John Brockman, who later told me, you know, the time wasn't right for that book in the late 90s.
[00:58:43.640 --> 00:58:48.040] When it hit in 2006, that was the cultural zeitgeist was ready for that.
[00:58:48.040 --> 00:58:50.200] It wouldn't have done nearly as well.
[00:58:50.200 --> 00:58:56.360] Yeah, so the time, the timing of these things is really, really important, you know, and sometimes falls here.
[00:58:56.360 --> 00:59:00.920] And for me, that means comfort meals, cozy nights, and tail-gating weekends.
[00:59:00.920 --> 00:59:03.640] And Omaha Steaks makes it all easy.
[00:59:03.640 --> 00:59:08.120] I love having their premium steaks and juicy burgers ready in my freezer.
[00:59:08.120 --> 00:59:14.840] I recently grilled their filet mignon, so tender, flavorful, and better than anything I've had elsewhere.
[00:59:14.840 --> 00:59:23.400] Right now, during their red-hot sale, you get 50% off site-wide, plus get an extra $35 off with code flavor at checkout.
[00:59:23.400 --> 00:59:26.520] Get fired up for fall grilling with Omaha Steaks.
[00:59:26.520 --> 00:59:32.360] Visit Omahasteaks.com for 50% off site-wide during their red-hot sale event.
[00:59:32.360 --> 00:59:36.920] And for an extra $35 off, use promo code Flavor at checkout.
[00:59:36.920 --> 00:59:44.120] That's 50% off at Omahasteaks.com and an extra $35 off with promo code Flavor at checkout.
[00:59:44.120 --> 00:59:45.280] See, site for details.
[00:59:44.920 --> 00:59:51.920] People can time things, but mostly the timing just falls out the way it falls out, and the effects are whatever they are.
[00:59:52.160 --> 00:59:53.280] So, yeah.
[00:59:53.280 --> 00:59:58.800] Again, you can't engineer a perfect storm or a convergence of them, but when they happen, they're powerful.
[00:59:59.200 --> 01:00:00.480] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:00:00.480 --> 01:00:09.840] Well, of course, I went through all that with Skeptic Magazine because I, you know, I was enthusiastic about the new atheism, but on the other hand, Skeptic is a science magazine.
[01:00:09.840 --> 01:00:12.800] I didn't, I never wanted us to be an atheism magazine.
[01:00:12.800 --> 01:00:13.120] Yeah.
[01:00:13.360 --> 01:00:21.600] And I never liked to define myself as an atheist because then, well, there's all the baggage that goes with it, but also all it means is you don't believe in God.
[01:00:21.600 --> 01:00:24.160] It doesn't say anything about what you actually do believe in.
[01:00:24.160 --> 01:00:28.320] Civil rights and human rights and dignity and all this stuff.
[01:00:28.320 --> 01:00:29.520] Rationality.
[01:00:29.920 --> 01:00:33.680] Well, that's secular humanism, but then that got lumped in with atheism.
[01:00:33.680 --> 01:00:35.120] And yeah, it's a big mess.
[01:00:35.120 --> 01:00:42.640] And then there was a division maybe in 2008 or so of what you mentioned, the kind of zealousness.
[01:00:43.040 --> 01:00:46.000] How militant are you of an atheist?
[01:00:46.000 --> 01:00:50.000] And people like me, I'm much nicer about it than, say, Hitch was.
[01:00:51.200 --> 01:00:53.200] And that, you know, you need to be more like Hitchens.
[01:00:53.200 --> 01:00:55.440] Like, but that's not my style.
[01:00:55.920 --> 01:00:56.480] We have him.
[01:00:56.480 --> 01:00:57.840] He's doing it better than anybody else.
[01:00:57.840 --> 01:00:59.600] So I'm just going to let him do it and I'll do my thing.
[01:01:00.320 --> 01:01:03.520] But, you know, like denounced for not being militant enough.
[01:01:03.520 --> 01:01:10.160] And then there was another split around 2010, 2011 of the atheist plus, the plus being social justice.
[01:01:10.160 --> 01:01:12.160] And then it became politicized.
[01:01:13.600 --> 01:01:14.160] Yeah.
[01:01:14.480 --> 01:01:19.040] I mean, I've always taken you to be much more broad than that agenda.
[01:01:19.040 --> 01:01:30.920] And so, again, it's sociologically, it's really fascinating how things have positive, have influences that shape people, and then people back off, and then everything is in flux and developing.
[01:01:29.840 --> 01:01:36.920] And then it's all media, and much of it is mediated through the media and hearsay and memes and whatever.
[01:01:37.240 --> 01:01:49.000] And by the time it gets, you know, so what I, what I, in this book, really tried to focus on was by the time it gets down to ordinary people, how do they understand it, and how does it shape them?
[01:01:49.480 --> 01:02:01.560] Talk about the influence of women on families deciding to be religious or not, and then women more common in the workplace, having more economic empowerment and freedom and more choice and so on.
[01:02:01.560 --> 01:02:03.400] How has that affected religion?
[01:02:03.400 --> 01:02:05.480] Yeah, so gender matters in religion.
[01:02:05.720 --> 01:02:09.720] In almost all religions, women are more religious than men.
[01:02:09.960 --> 01:02:13.640] Not in Israel and maybe a few other places, but generally.
[01:02:13.960 --> 01:02:18.040] So, and that's for a lot of reasons as sociologists argue about.
[01:02:18.040 --> 01:02:37.880] But yeah, so when going way back to the 60s and 70s, when women increasingly entered the paid workforce, you know, in large numbers, again, that wasn't intending to like, let's hurt religion, but it had the effect of removing a lot of unpaid.
[01:02:37.880 --> 01:02:48.600] I mean, women did a lot of the ordinary work keeping religious congregations going, volunteering basically for Sunday school and kitchen duty and whatever else.
[01:02:48.920 --> 01:02:57.800] And when women are, you know, suddenly, the majority are working 40 hours a week and then have a second shift at home trying to take care of their families and so on.
[01:02:58.120 --> 01:03:05.960] There's just less energy and time to devote to the local parish or church or synagogue or whatever.
[01:03:05.960 --> 01:03:13.800] And so that had an unintended consequence of providing having less free labor around.
[01:03:15.040 --> 01:03:23.040] Another thing, more recently, I talk about in that, there's a whole chapter on how religion sort of self-destructed, did things to its own demise.
[01:03:23.040 --> 01:03:32.080] And in evangelicalism in the 2000s, there was this sexual purity movement that tried to get people to commit to virginity pledges and so on and so on.
[01:03:32.080 --> 01:03:33.200] And it was very popular.
[01:03:33.360 --> 01:03:36.960] The federal government, I was actually involved in funding that some under the W.
[01:03:36.960 --> 01:03:39.200] Bush administration.
[01:03:39.200 --> 01:03:48.240] And there was a backlash against that among these more conservative evangelical women who, when they got older, they realized this totally screwed up my head.
[01:03:48.240 --> 01:03:58.800] Like it totally very many said this really wrecked my sense of my body, myself, my sexuality, my relationships, and were very unhappy about it.
[01:03:58.800 --> 01:04:00.800] So there was a big backlash against that.
[01:04:00.800 --> 01:04:19.440] And so the point of that with regard to this gender point is that if you're going to alienate anybody in the world against religion, the last ones you want to alienate are women or young women who are at least going to be your strongest tie and advocates for staying in religion.
[01:04:19.440 --> 01:04:22.000] Well, that had the exact opposite effect.
[01:04:22.000 --> 01:04:28.000] And so it was not only damaging, but I argue extra damaging to have that kind of backlash.
[01:04:28.000 --> 01:04:28.480] Yeah.
[01:04:29.680 --> 01:04:38.560] That reminds me of Dorothy Parker's funny line: why she doesn't go to church on Sunday mornings, because I'm too fucking busy and vice versa.
[01:04:42.080 --> 01:04:43.520] Yeah, something like that.
[01:04:43.520 --> 01:04:45.200] Something like that, yes.
[01:04:46.160 --> 01:04:49.920] Well, so is this what you mean by the third sexual revolution?
[01:04:49.920 --> 01:04:55.600] Yeah, so, you know, I mean, I think most of your listeners will have lived through this and will recognize it.
[01:04:55.600 --> 01:05:00.000] But, you know, the second, the first sexual revolution was in the 20s, the second was in the 60s.
[01:05:00.440 --> 01:05:21.400] But I think something happened that went beyond what the 60s represented, and largely because of the digital revolution and digital photos and the internet, where sex became just much more democratized, sort of anti-demonized.
[01:05:21.640 --> 01:05:36.280] There were lots of, you know, well, people sending photos of their new bodies all over the place and it being normal and the normalization of friends with benefits and ethical non-monogamy.
[01:05:36.520 --> 01:05:40.040] I argue in the book, it just took it to a whole new level.
[01:05:40.360 --> 01:06:09.880] That, the sexual revolution, it's distinct from the distinct from the mainstreaming of LGBTQ people and issues, but they sort of went together in the sense that by the time millennials had sort of adopted or absorbed the new sexual ethos and including like gay people are okay, like we don't need to persecute them.
[01:06:10.200 --> 01:06:17.160] They've realized or they came to believe like that's fundamentally in contradiction with what most traditional religions teach.
[01:06:17.160 --> 01:06:25.720] So if I want to be a faithfully religious, traditionally religious, I'm going to have to reject all that or go against the tide.
[01:06:26.040 --> 01:06:30.840] It was not, but again, it was not so much this sort of intellectual working it out.
[01:06:30.840 --> 01:06:39.800] I think it was more just sort of a zeitgeisty spirit of like walking away saying religion is just way behind the times.
[01:06:39.800 --> 01:06:40.760] It's out of touch.
[01:06:40.760 --> 01:06:42.120] It doesn't know what's going on.
[01:06:42.120 --> 01:06:43.480] It's irrelevant.
[01:06:43.480 --> 01:06:46.000] It's just, and there's no way I'm going to live like that.
[01:06:46.000 --> 01:06:47.120] So forget it.
[01:06:47.120 --> 01:06:47.600] Yeah.
[01:06:44.920 --> 01:06:52.080] Well, you know, the same-sex marriage debate happened so rapidly.
[01:06:52.320 --> 01:06:58.400] Remember, as late as 2011, both Hillary and Obama were outspokenly against it.
[01:06:58.400 --> 01:07:04.080] And then 2015, the Supreme Court decision, and then bam, you know, it's over.
[01:07:04.080 --> 01:07:08.560] And public opinion on the matter changed really quickly.
[01:07:08.800 --> 01:07:13.040] It seemed like religious people just stopped talking about it.
[01:07:14.000 --> 01:07:14.480] Yeah.
[01:07:15.680 --> 01:07:16.400] Is that true?
[01:07:16.880 --> 01:07:22.560] That in and of itself is a fascinating setup, would be a fascinating study, and that is it.
[01:07:22.560 --> 01:07:28.080] It seems to me as a sociologist that, I mean, again, it's not just religious people.
[01:07:28.080 --> 01:07:41.280] I think pretty much all groups do this, but let's just focus on religious groups will object, will make a policy issue a big deal and say, you know, Western civilization hinges on what we're going to do with this or something to that effect.
[01:07:41.920 --> 01:07:51.520] And then if it loses, if their side loses, if the laws change, it's just sort of dropped.
[01:07:51.520 --> 01:07:57.840] And until time comes around to maybe deal with it again.
[01:07:57.840 --> 01:08:02.160] So, yeah, in a way, it makes sense.
[01:08:02.160 --> 01:08:10.320] Like, that seems a politically reasonable thing to do, not keep beating on a beating up a horse or not keep fighting battles, you're going to lose.
[01:08:10.320 --> 01:08:20.560] But at another level, it suggests a kind of an opportunism, or at least a curious, like, where was the conviction there?
[01:08:20.600 --> 01:08:23.440] If it's if that was true then, why isn't it true now?
[01:08:25.280 --> 01:08:36.520] I think part of that is explained by the fact that American religion tends to be because of our particular history and the free market nature of the religious ecology.
[01:08:37.160 --> 01:08:38.920] It's pretty populist.
[01:08:38.920 --> 01:08:49.080] It's pretty, it's American religion is pretty, especially evangelicalism, I would say, is very friendly.
[01:08:49.080 --> 01:08:50.120] I would put it that way.
[01:08:50.120 --> 01:08:57.640] I mean, it's not like there was a new revelation from God that somebody got that, you know, that same-sex marriage is now okay, right?
[01:08:57.640 --> 01:09:00.680] They just stopped talking about it because, well, whatever.
[01:09:00.680 --> 01:09:01.640] It's a lost cause.
[01:09:02.440 --> 01:09:03.640] You know, these things change too.
[01:09:03.640 --> 01:09:06.440] I mean, with abortion, when Roe v.
[01:09:06.440 --> 01:09:12.520] Wade first came out, evangelical, the first couple of years, evangelicals are like, oh, huh, okay, maybe.
[01:09:12.840 --> 01:09:19.720] But then it was sort of seized on as, I'm not, I don't mean this cynically, but I do think this is the history.
[01:09:19.720 --> 01:09:26.600] It was seized on as like, wait a minute, no, we can't, you know, we have to be pro-life.
[01:09:26.760 --> 01:09:29.480] We have to be anti-abortion.
[01:09:29.480 --> 01:09:39.000] And so even the sort of the positions, the conviction positions of the same religion can morph over time, you know.
[01:09:39.000 --> 01:09:39.720] Yeah.
[01:09:40.360 --> 01:09:41.320] Well, people rarely.
[01:09:43.320 --> 01:09:57.080] In the mid-19th century, mainline, you know, Protestants can, evangelical Protestants can have, well, there weren't what we would now look back and call evangelical Protestants had a whole variety of positions on Darwin and evolution.
[01:09:57.080 --> 01:09:59.000] I mean, it was, it was not as big a deal.
[01:09:59.000 --> 01:10:09.960] But then by the time the modernist fundamentalist debates come around and taking peeking in the 1920s, you know, creationism was like the touchstone issue.
[01:10:10.360 --> 01:10:12.760] Fundamentally, you live or die on it.
[01:10:12.760 --> 01:10:15.440] So, yeah, these things evolve over time.
[01:10:14.680 --> 01:10:15.680] Right.
[01:10:15.840 --> 01:10:23.840] Well, it wasn't Pope Paul, John Paul II announced, I think it was like in the mid-90s, that the theory of evolution is fine.
[01:10:23.840 --> 01:10:25.360] We don't have to deal with that anymore.
[01:10:25.440 --> 01:10:27.840] We get the soul, they get the body.
[01:10:28.800 --> 01:10:39.680] Yeah, the Catholic Church has been much more sort of open to those possibilities than, which is ironic and interesting in a way, but then evangelicals.
[01:10:40.160 --> 01:10:40.800] Yeah.
[01:10:40.800 --> 01:10:42.000] Well, I should correct myself.
[01:10:42.400 --> 01:10:44.480] The Mormons have gotten new revelations.
[01:10:44.720 --> 01:10:47.680] Joseph Smith famously got the revelation about polygamy.
[01:10:47.680 --> 01:10:55.520] And then in the 1890s, when Utah wanted to be a state union, they got a new revelation from God saying the polygamy thing was a bad idea.
[01:10:55.520 --> 01:10:57.280] We've got to go back to monogamy.
[01:10:57.280 --> 01:10:57.760] Yeah.
[01:10:57.760 --> 01:11:02.080] Well, Mormonism has an official doctrine explaining how they can have new revelations.
[01:11:02.080 --> 01:11:05.520] Most of evangelicalism is stuck with what the Bible says.
[01:11:06.400 --> 01:11:10.080] Like the revelations were closed when the last apostle died.
[01:11:10.080 --> 01:11:17.120] And so it's a little more boxed in as to, but then, of course, they can still interpret the Bible in lots of different ways.
[01:11:17.600 --> 01:11:18.720] Yes, of course.
[01:11:18.720 --> 01:11:20.880] Well, I think that's still what's going on here.
[01:11:20.880 --> 01:11:29.120] All right, let's get us up into the current events: culture wars, LGBTQ trends, Black Lives Matter, all that stuff.
[01:11:29.120 --> 01:11:31.360] What are the effects of all that on religion now?
[01:11:31.360 --> 01:11:33.200] We're undergoing it.
[01:11:33.200 --> 01:11:42.160] Yeah, so my story is that by the end of the 2000s, the sort of the millennial zeitgeist was put in place and things haven't changed dramatically.
[01:11:42.160 --> 01:11:43.760] Of course, the world has changed.
[01:11:43.760 --> 01:12:13.160] So I would say my book doesn't focus on this era, but I would say that the more polarization we've had, the more it exacerbates the stuff I've written about, the more political conflict, the more sort of dissent into an abandonment of truth or an accountability to truth, at least, with regard to evidence, arguments.
[01:12:13.400 --> 01:12:25.320] You know, the current president just lies a million times a day, and that has a larger effect on culture and different followers' sensibilities of what matters in the world.
[01:12:25.320 --> 01:12:32.120] So I think that religion has continued to move in an obsolete direction.
[01:12:32.520 --> 01:12:35.480] There will always be, I don't think it's ever going to go extinct.
[01:12:35.480 --> 01:12:46.040] I think there will always be a minority of people, Americans, who remain religious, and there will be some not religious people who become religious for various reasons.
[01:12:47.080 --> 01:12:54.840] But one question I've gotten a lot about my book is: wait a minute, if religion is obsolete, how do you explain Christian nationalism?
[01:12:54.840 --> 01:12:56.520] It seems incredibly powerful.
[01:12:56.840 --> 01:13:17.240] My answer is: I mean, I think time will tell, but in my mind, Christian nationalism of the sort that stormed the Capitol and supports Donald Trump is really a symptom of obsolescence, not evidence to counter the fact of religious obsolescence.
[01:13:17.240 --> 01:13:34.280] In this sense, for much of the history of the Christian right, the message was: we need godly people to be elected to positions of power to restore this nation, to sound God-honoring laws, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:13:34.280 --> 01:13:36.040] Well, that's been totally abandoned.
[01:13:36.040 --> 01:13:46.720] The idea that Trump is now the Christian nationalist personality cult leader, and he's anything but godly.
[01:13:46.720 --> 01:14:00.800] So the idea that we need godly people in power and the tactics, the rhetoric, the willingness to flirt with or even deploy violence to me expresses a kind of or reflects a kind of desperation.
[01:14:01.600 --> 01:14:10.480] I think in the Jerry Falwell era, the Christian coalition era, there was a kind of deep worry about we're heading toward a secular society.
[01:14:10.480 --> 01:14:21.040] I think now that there's a kind of a desperation, not about where is all America going, but are evangelicals going to be, is Christianity going to be sort of squashed out by the liberals?
[01:14:21.040 --> 01:14:33.920] So I think Christian nationalism, I don't like to use the language of the dying, you know, the last thrashing death rose of a dying dragon.
[01:14:33.920 --> 01:14:49.760] But I think it's something like a great, a more desperate position that is getting more extreme and that in and of itself will only promote religious obsolescence among the most of the population.
[01:14:50.080 --> 01:14:55.920] They will just continue to say what they've said for decades now about the Christian right, which is if that's what religion is, I don't want to be part of it.
[01:14:55.920 --> 01:14:56.320] Yeah.
[01:14:56.320 --> 01:15:07.200] Except for a small group, except for a more sectarian, increasingly sectarian group of believers who find shelter in that and they will and that'll intensify their commitment.
[01:15:07.760 --> 01:15:20.240] Well, there seems to be a branch of more militant or masculine or muscular Christianity, and they like a strong man like Trump who's going to stand up there and fight for us.
[01:15:20.240 --> 01:15:26.320] I mean, this is, you know, I do a lot of church debates and stuff, so I always ask them, you know, how can you vote for Trump?
[01:15:26.800 --> 01:15:29.680] The answer seems to be, well, you know, the Bible is filled with flawed characters.
[01:15:29.680 --> 01:15:31.000] He's like one of those guys.
[01:15:29.760 --> 01:15:36.760] I forget which characters they named, but and he's going to get us the judges we want.
[01:15:36.760 --> 01:15:37.560] And he did.
[01:15:37.880 --> 01:15:39.640] And, you know, okay, all right.
[01:15:39.640 --> 01:15:50.440] So I'm debating in my own head whether it's just pure politics and Machiavellian power struggle.
[01:15:50.440 --> 01:15:53.240] And it really has not much to do with religion.
[01:15:53.240 --> 01:15:59.160] It's just politics and team play, or if they've actually shifted on their beliefs and morals.
[01:15:59.480 --> 01:16:06.360] Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's pure politics using religion as a sort of a mask or a veil.
[01:16:06.360 --> 01:16:28.360] I do, again, I don't want everything to be like referring back to and validating the argument in my book, but I do think that I do think if my story is true that religion went obsolete in the 90s and 2000s, religious people have got to feel that in their bones, even if they can't express it, articulate it, fully recognize it.
[01:16:28.360 --> 01:16:45.000] And when people feel our way of life, our worldview is not just under threat, but like been sidelined, we're not even in the game really anymore, that can push them to get, again, more desperate.
[01:16:45.000 --> 01:16:55.400] And as we've said repeatedly already here, people can come up with rationalizations and justifications for, so we no longer need godly men in power.
[01:16:55.400 --> 01:17:05.720] We need to have, you know, a totally unrighteous man is going to be good enough for now.
[01:17:05.720 --> 01:17:18.720] So it'll be really, really, really interesting where things go now in, you know, whether the Trump administration and agenda succeeds, like where politics goes should have a significant effect on religion too.
[01:17:19.040 --> 01:17:27.120] But in general, the way things have been going is not going to help much of traditional religion in the U.S.
[01:17:27.200 --> 01:17:29.840] at all, as far as most Americans are concerned.
[01:17:30.400 --> 01:17:37.680] I wanted to ask you about an older debate amongst Christians about what's our goal, what should we be doing.
[01:17:37.680 --> 01:17:46.560] You have the one branch that wants to help the poor, be more like Jesus, you know, and man the soup kitchens and be humble and modest and don't pursue riches and so on.
[01:17:46.640 --> 01:17:53.360] Then you have the prosperity gospel people that are now morphed into more militant and muscular Christianity.
[01:17:53.680 --> 01:17:57.280] Is that still kind of a split amongst Christian churches?
[01:17:57.840 --> 01:18:00.240] I forget what the terms are to describe those two.
[01:18:00.240 --> 01:18:07.520] In some ways, the prosperity gospel people just seem to want to transcend it, like just be happy, enjoy life.
[01:18:11.120 --> 01:18:19.440] To be totally honest, all of this is so depressing to me that I've, to some degree, stopped looking at it because really I was focused on this former era.
[01:18:20.160 --> 01:18:29.040] To give my, I mean, I think that, I think, to go back to what you said about, well, even if Trump is not godly, it's okay.
[01:18:29.040 --> 01:18:39.440] I mean, it seems to me purely sociologically that religions always evolve and morph over time into different things.
[01:18:39.440 --> 01:18:50.320] They have different, and that means they develop different relationships or different expressions of their sacred scriptures or their founders or whatever.
[01:18:50.320 --> 01:19:04.920] So I think the question now is: like, what evangelicalism long claimed that it had the truest sort of connection to original Christianity, biblical, the early church, whatever.
[01:19:05.240 --> 01:19:16.120] But it's increasingly not clear whatsoever what the militant evangelicalism has anything to do with Jesus in this in the gospels.
[01:19:16.360 --> 01:19:19.000] I mean, I just can't see any connection whatsoever.
[01:19:19.000 --> 01:19:27.880] And so it just feels to me like cultural mutations that are just going to the extreme.
[01:19:28.040 --> 01:19:43.880] I don't want to say pathological or whatever, but just sociologically, it just feels like it's mutating so far away from the original or what most people would construe as the original vision of the founder and the founding documents.
[01:19:43.880 --> 01:19:50.760] You know, it's the exact opposite of love your enemies and turn the other cheek and all that.
[01:19:50.760 --> 01:19:51.000] Right.
[01:19:51.240 --> 01:19:54.280] Give away, like it's literally the exact opposite.
[01:19:54.280 --> 01:19:58.920] And it's hard for me to understand how people work that out in their heads.
[01:19:58.920 --> 01:20:03.880] They must still read the Bible, but yeah, people having amazing capacities.
[01:20:03.880 --> 01:20:17.480] So again, sociologically, I say there's a lot bigger social-political forces at work here that are driving people into corners that seem to me to be kind of crazy.
[01:20:17.800 --> 01:20:20.600] Sociologically, I can at least say it's fascinating.
[01:20:20.600 --> 01:20:24.920] Let's study this, but personally, it's just weird.
[01:20:25.240 --> 01:20:29.240] Yeah, I'm fond of asking, when did Jesus become a capitalist?
[01:20:29.240 --> 01:20:29.800] Yeah.
[01:20:30.760 --> 01:20:34.920] The other thing to recognize is there are plenty of evangelicals who don't like Trump at all.
[01:20:34.920 --> 01:20:36.600] They really oppose him.
[01:20:36.840 --> 01:20:42.440] And they've either been beaten into submission or quiet, like a lot of people in the Republican Party.
[01:20:42.440 --> 01:20:42.840] Yeah.
[01:20:43.160 --> 01:20:51.680] Or they're just holding out their, but they've just been overwhelmed, as far as I can tell.
[01:20:52.240 --> 01:20:53.920] All right, Christian, last question.
[01:20:53.920 --> 01:20:55.200] We're about to colonize bars.
[01:20:55.200 --> 01:20:57.200] We're going to have a new civilization on there.
[01:20:57.200 --> 01:21:01.200] And 500 years from now, do you think there'll be religion there?
[01:21:02.800 --> 01:21:06.880] My own view, I've given a lot of thought to this.
[01:21:06.880 --> 01:21:13.040] My own view is that there's something in humanity that wants there to be something more.
[01:21:16.400 --> 01:21:21.120] Humans absolutely always, here I'm again, I'm Amiel Durkheim here.
[01:21:21.120 --> 01:21:25.440] Humans always create distinctions between the sacred and the profane.
[01:21:25.440 --> 01:21:34.160] The sacred doesn't have to be religious, it doesn't have to be supernatural, but there's always sort of things that are set aside as holy or special or venerated.
[01:21:34.160 --> 01:21:47.280] So I think that there will always be tendencies toward or desires, existential longings for larger, for something beyond history to make sense of history.
[01:21:47.760 --> 01:21:50.720] Something bigger than my life to make sense of my life.
[01:21:50.720 --> 01:21:56.080] Whether that looks like tradition, religion the way we're used to talking about it, it may not.
[01:21:56.080 --> 01:22:09.920] It could take very different forms, but I think it will always involve sacreds, mythological stories, and I mean that broadly in an anthropological sense, rituals, et cetera, et cetera.
[01:22:10.240 --> 01:22:15.040] And humans always have to work with what they've received from the past.
[01:22:15.040 --> 01:22:23.280] So it may end up being the most interesting conglomeration of all kinds of different things and scriptures and beliefs.
[01:22:23.280 --> 01:22:33.880] But I don't ever foresee human society universally becoming straightforwardly secular in the way that you and I would understand it.
[01:22:29.840 --> 01:22:35.960] I think you're right, and I agree with you.
[01:22:36.280 --> 01:22:46.440] And they'll probably also end up with something like political parties and some kind of a blend of democracy and capitalism or trade because that, you know, a lot of that's just based on human nature.
[01:22:46.440 --> 01:22:46.920] Yeah.
[01:22:47.240 --> 01:22:55.160] The question is whether if we ever get to Mars, are we going to destroy the planet with the global warming and every other environmental problem?
[01:22:55.480 --> 01:22:56.040] Well, I don't know.
[01:22:56.040 --> 01:22:57.000] I'm not going to Mars.
[01:22:57.000 --> 01:22:59.320] I'm happily ensconced in Santa Barbara.
[01:22:59.320 --> 01:23:02.360] So I'll leave that to Elon and his buddies.
[01:23:02.360 --> 01:23:03.000] Yeah.
[01:23:03.320 --> 01:23:03.960] All right, Christian.
[01:23:03.960 --> 01:23:04.520] Thank you so much.
[01:23:04.520 --> 01:23:05.000] Here it is.
[01:23:05.000 --> 01:23:07.000] Why Religion Went Obsolete.
[01:23:07.000 --> 01:23:09.880] This is the most definitive, up-to-date, packed with data.
[01:23:09.960 --> 01:23:10.440] Book.
[01:23:10.440 --> 01:23:11.160] Great read.
[01:23:11.160 --> 01:23:12.040] Really important work.
[01:23:12.040 --> 01:23:12.840] Thank you, Christian.
[01:23:12.840 --> 01:23:13.720] Thank you for your work.
[01:23:13.720 --> 01:23:15.400] Thanks for coming on to talk to me.
[01:23:15.640 --> 01:23:16.200] You're welcome.
[01:23:16.200 --> 01:23:17.000] Thanks for having me.
[01:23:17.000 --> 01:23:19.080] I enjoyed the conversation.
[01:23:25.480 --> 01:23:30.600] If you want to feel more connected to humanity and a little less alone, listen to Beautiful Anonymous.
[01:23:30.600 --> 01:23:34.840] Each week, I take a phone call from one random anonymous human being.
[01:23:34.840 --> 01:23:37.400] There's over 400 episodes in our back catalog.
[01:23:37.480 --> 01:23:41.720] You get to feel connected to all these different people all over the world.
[01:23:41.720 --> 01:23:46.280] Recent episodes include one where a lady survived a murder attempt by her own son.
[01:23:46.280 --> 01:23:48.840] But then the week before that, we just talked about Star Trek.
[01:23:48.840 --> 01:23:49.560] It can be anything.
[01:23:49.560 --> 01:23:50.680] It's unpredictable.
[01:23:50.680 --> 01:23:51.400] It's raw.
[01:23:51.400 --> 01:23:52.200] It's real.
[01:23:52.200 --> 01:23:55.320] Get Beautiful Anonymous wherever you listen to podcasts.