A Secular Person’s Advice on How to Convert Secular People
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
187.25325
Summary
In this episode, we talk about the importance of evangelizing to your kids, and why it's so important that you evangelize to them in order to keep them in the culture. We also talk about why you should be doing a better job evangelizing your kids.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
I hope that people are able to use this to convert people more effectively and to hopefully
00:00:07.540
You know, as we say, the first 18 years of a kid's life are your chance to pitch your
00:00:12.520
And if you don't do a good job, they're going to leave.
00:00:21.640
Everyone you've ever loved will disappear to history.
00:00:25.060
Everything that every ancestor before you has worked to do will be for nothing.
00:00:30.820
So this video is going to be an interesting topic, but it's what I've been thinking about
00:00:37.180
So people who don't know me, Simone, like my favorite radio stations, and you'll point
00:00:45.960
I really like listening to like long Christian apologetics.
00:00:49.440
I, despite being a secular person, I really culturally identify with these groups.
00:00:57.200
I find the, the, the, the lessons that they're teaching are often broadly applicable to my
00:01:04.080
We, as a society, like if we're talking about like the structures, like the core enemy right
00:01:08.800
now in society, I know there's another enemy that we're going to have to deal with eventually.
00:01:12.400
So we sort of have the two enemies of cronadalism.
00:01:15.520
The core enemy right now is sort of wokeism, the mind virus, the cult, whatever you want
00:01:22.760
And religious traditions act as a very good structural protection against that for many
00:01:30.360
Now, the second enemy is the religious extremists who want everyone on earth dead except people
00:01:36.380
who think like them or converted, which from my perspective, you know, if you, if you completely
00:01:41.840
erase my kid's culture, then, you know, they might as well, not might as well.
00:01:46.180
I mean, I would appreciate them updating the culture on their own based on their ideology
00:01:50.400
rather than just like whole cloth accepting what somebody else is telling them.
00:01:54.640
But anyway, so, so that's the future enemy and, and groups like that, you know, these
00:01:59.520
low technology, extremely aggressive groups that they want everyone who doesn't think like
00:02:05.920
And when the, the woke castle falls, that that will be the next multiple populations because
00:02:13.220
there's many groups like this, you know, they exist across religious traditions.
00:02:16.180
That will be the next group that we're, that we're fighting, but even to fight them, we
00:02:19.820
need to preserve, uh, an alliance and a, a large population of, of, you know, mentally
00:02:27.280
healthy religious individuals who still have traditions, who still have a sense of culture.
00:02:34.760
And one of the ways that we have done this with our family is essentially take the scraps
00:02:39.560
of our ancestral traditions and rebuild a sort of secular religious framework, which we
00:02:44.780
often talk, but that is not what we're going to talk about on this video, because I would
00:02:51.840
also like not just people to do what we're doing, but also succeed in evangelism more.
00:02:59.060
And when I say succeed in evangelism, I think the single most important person that you will
00:03:05.160
evangelize to in your entire life is your children.
00:03:10.220
And, and so when people think about evangelism, they do not often think about their own kids.
00:03:15.480
They think about going out and trying to convert other people.
00:03:17.920
But if you look at statistics, there was a set of statistics that we were sharing in a recent
00:03:21.880
video, the game is just completely different now.
00:03:24.380
And I'm going to put this statistic here again, because it's just so like, it's not like things
00:03:29.580
You know, if you look at belief in Gen X right now, people who, who share believing in God
00:03:37.640
So these are people who believe in God without a doubt.
00:03:47.420
And this is back in 2018, it appears to still be dropping.
00:03:51.400
So you're dealing with something entirely different now.
00:03:53.700
And as I pointed out in previous generations, as we point out in the previous episode on this,
00:03:58.600
you could have just like peer pressured them, right?
00:04:01.000
Or you could have assumed that they wouldn't be getting outside ideas constantly.
00:04:06.300
But now it's possible for your kids to deconvert and not tell you that they've deconverted and
00:04:13.500
And we've seen this persistently with very conservative, wholesome families.
00:04:17.440
Like, like the epitome of wholesomeness, you know, I'd say like the most good old boy type
00:04:24.720
These are the families where I see this happening the most.
00:04:27.180
And it happens the most within these families because these kids are often raised with manners
00:04:30.440
and to care about their parents' feelings and like are emotionally mature.
00:04:37.800
And that's the thing that leads to the most dangerous type of deconversion.
00:04:41.540
People think that the type of deconversion that you need to be afraid of is the type of
00:04:49.180
A rebellious teen who's like, mom, I hate you, mom.
00:04:52.220
And like, you know, like actively talks about being atheist and whatnot.
00:04:58.120
And that was why a lot of people deconverted before.
00:05:07.540
And that is infinitely more dangerous because they're not going to tell you.
00:05:11.420
They are not going to notify you that their traditions have dropped.
00:05:18.980
So as people, like when I was younger, I was in, you know, I didn't like the new atheists.
00:05:24.740
I thought that they were always kind of pussies.
00:05:26.420
But I would have been considered on the outside of that movement and stuff like the subgenius
00:05:32.500
And you were in, I mean, you were raised like Buddhist slash Mormon, but were always sort
00:05:40.280
Like what was your faith like in middle school and high school?
00:05:42.440
If someone asked me, I probably would have said it was a mixture of Buddhism and Shinto,
00:05:48.140
Did you actually believe this stuff or was it just like an aesthetic choice?
00:05:53.980
And like that felt the most natural to me from a faith perspective.
00:05:58.800
So in terms of like having moving religious experiences, the most I'd ever experienced
00:06:11.440
And my parents had sent me to Dharma school and sort of tried to raise me Buddhist after
00:06:16.560
at Mormon preschool, I started asking them about Jesus and God and they freaked out.
00:06:21.740
So yeah, I wouldn't say it was organized, but I, so I'm not a good example of like a religious
00:06:28.320
I'm the perfect example of someone who was raised in soft culture with soft culture and
00:06:38.140
So I had a lot of evangelists and apologetics talk with me about this stuff because I was
00:06:44.940
So I've gotten to hear many of the arguments used.
00:06:47.540
And so I think that this provides a unique perspective where I can like totally honestly,
00:06:52.820
as someone who has never been convinced by these arguments, tell you which ones are the
00:06:57.500
most convincing and how to structure your debate around this stuff to be most likely to be
00:07:03.460
effective at converting somebody or keeping somebody within the faith that might otherwise
00:07:10.140
Like, like a young kid who doesn't really believe it anymore.
00:07:12.720
And you basically need to evangelize to them to get them to believe it because the, you know,
00:07:18.260
So the first thing I would say is in terms of how you, well, actually I'd ask you, have
00:07:24.160
you ever had any moments in your life where somebody came up to you with a religious tradition
00:07:28.380
and you were really convinced by their argument around it?
00:07:36.980
Like somebody came up to you and you're like, this is just not working at all.
00:07:42.740
So many Mormon friends like would give me the Book of Mormon, but, and like expose me
00:07:47.700
to like really great experiences, like going to see Christmas carols at the local like ward.
00:07:55.860
But it was, yeah, they never tried to aggressively convert me or tell me about their religion.
00:08:04.660
Well, so that's the first one that I often see.
00:08:07.640
Somebody giving somebody else a Bible or their religious book.
00:08:17.600
Like even it goes to like the tradition of Gideon's Bibles, right?
00:08:20.520
That like there was this concerted effort to put Bibles in drawers of bedstand tables in hotels
00:08:25.700
that like someone's going to, in a moment of desperation, pick it up and have some kind of moment.
00:08:31.500
No, I do think that what is much more convincing, and we do know people who are converted this way,
00:08:38.120
And I see this especially with Mormons, giving friends, neighbors, friends, kids experiences adjacent to the Mormon community.
00:08:46.920
And those kids or those people just loving it, loving the community, loving the lifestyle, loving how wholesome and loving everything is,
00:08:53.580
and being convinced through that exposure to convert.
00:08:56.440
So I think being exposed to a religion's amenities can be very compelling, but I don't think it has anything to do with faith.
00:09:04.680
I do think it has to do with faith, but we'll get to faith arguments that are compelling versus ones that aren't.
00:09:09.120
But the book itself, this is a belief that I think comes from the, well, God will guide them to it.
00:09:15.460
Like God will guide them to it and open their heart.
00:09:17.680
And I think when you're looking at stuff like this, like the way I would structure this,
00:09:24.240
God really wants you to do the work on this, you know, in terms of the people.
00:09:30.440
And so this, this like Bible seeding, I guess I call it, it could conceivably,
00:09:36.880
like the way I could imagine it working is somebody is at like a bottom of the barrel situation
00:09:47.940
And they're like, okay, now I'm open to being converted.
00:09:51.020
Because that is one of the times in somebody's life where they are most likely to be converted
00:09:56.820
And that's where you get, you know, Bernigan Christian phenomenon.
00:09:59.480
But you're better off if you're targeting rock bottom people, targeting them through institutions.
00:10:06.280
So like AA is a great evangelistic vehicle, even though it does a ton of harm, you know?
00:10:13.660
And I think we'd argue in another video that it probably kills more people a year than any
00:10:18.240
It hides access to the Sinclair method and naltrexone in the United States, even though
00:10:24.060
it's cures alcohol in 80% of cases, alcoholism.
00:10:28.100
And yeah, it's, it's absolutely insane, but, but they would call those people dry drunks.
00:10:33.140
Specifically dry drunks is a term used by extremists within AI for individuals who found a way to
00:10:42.140
That was not AA because they believe that, well, if you found a way to quit drinking that
00:10:47.000
wasn't AA, then you didn't get all the extra ideology that AA was meant to impart to you.
00:10:51.860
And so you still may as well be a drunk, which I think really reveals their hand, which is
00:10:55.940
what they meant is, um, they weren't able to use your alcoholism to convert you to their
00:11:03.460
We can get into this in a whole other video, but it is a convincing evangelistic tool.
00:11:08.920
And I think that even better tools could be built that focus on those communities.
00:11:16.020
I mean, if you look at one of the things that Scientologists focused on was like addiction
00:11:18.960
centers and alcohol rehabilitation centers, because that is where you could sort of stamp
00:11:24.220
someone into these harder iterations of your cultural tradition.
00:11:27.100
Well, now there must be a bunch of cults out there that use rock bottom to convert people
00:11:34.160
that like host houseway, halfway houses or something.
00:11:39.980
I mean, a lot of cults focus on these, these communities and it's because it's effective.
00:11:43.940
Now it's, it's interesting that it is often groups that you and I, like if we were evangelizing
00:11:49.420
a belief system, we would be less interested in doing.
00:11:52.620
I mean, one of the, one of the things that everybody hates about capital, this is the
00:11:55.880
concept of the elect that, that we have and that we have our current iteration of that
00:12:01.300
But the, the core aspect of that is, is we don't believe that winning all people to our
00:12:11.160
And the very fact that somebody is at rock bottom means they are of lower utility to us
00:12:17.780
And I would prefer that my kids never hit rock bottom for me to convince them of a cultural
00:12:22.580
And I would also prefer, you know, as we bring people in that they're, I hate to say it,
00:12:29.100
but like the amount of utility we get from a person is correlated with their level of,
00:12:37.060
you know, the level to which they have their life together, the level to which they're an
00:12:41.040
And what's really cool with the rock bottom people that these faiths do do is they can
00:12:45.380
But building them back up requires a preexisting sort of cultural set of support networks.
00:12:51.380
Now the Mormon thing is really interesting because that is how your friends were evangelizing
00:12:55.760
They were taking you to Mormon community events.
00:13:00.720
They being smart Mormons knew that that's how Mormons, I think today most frequently
00:13:05.280
Well, it might have converted me if I were the type of person who actually wanted to be
00:13:14.940
But like if, if I'm a normal person and I don't want to feel alone and I don't want
00:13:18.380
to feel isolated and I was exposed to that, I would immediately be like, oh, the solution
00:13:25.860
And this is really interesting to me where we've had another video on this about the genetics
00:13:32.040
And this is how you can get genetic vortexes where if Mormonism is disproportionately converting
00:13:38.360
people who are extroverts, like really out there, they like being around people, then
00:13:44.020
Mormons are going to be more extroverted on average than a cultural group like ours,
00:13:51.120
I mean, Scrooge is the typical Calvinist, right?
00:14:04.140
So let's talk about other arguments that I have found very uncompelling or, or, or first
00:14:08.400
I want to give you a way of framing this question in your head.
00:14:10.940
If you're a religious person, think about other religions that have come close to converting
00:14:17.120
And if another religion has never come close to converting you, then look to see if they
00:14:23.980
use arguments and apologetics that mirror your arguments and apologetics that you are frequently
00:14:32.800
So an example here that I frequently see Christians use is look at all of the things the Bible
00:14:44.740
It must be a divinely inspired book because it was able to predict so many things that were
00:14:51.040
The problem is, is that Muslims say the same thing.
00:14:54.580
I mean, it just, it's one of those like Nostradamus things where like, you can kind of make anything
00:15:00.420
Well, I would say that some of the things that people will claim the Bible can be predicted
00:15:08.040
You can look up videos on it, look at the debates on this, but I would say that they are
00:15:12.700
not more compelling than the things that the Quran predicted.
00:15:18.080
And that's the problem is you need to look to see if the other side is using a similar
00:15:26.300
argument and then ask yourself when you look and you say people saying, well, the Quran
00:15:30.500
is accurate because it predicted all these things in the future.
00:15:35.980
When you looked at that and you just said, no, I dismiss this.
00:15:41.320
Did you dismiss it because you just were not going to be convinced by that type of argument?
00:15:46.240
Then what that means is secular people won't be convinced by that type of argument.
00:15:50.060
Or did you dismiss it because they did a bad job arguing for it and then find out exactly
00:15:56.360
how they did a bad job arguing for it so you don't make those same mistakes in your own evangeletics.
00:16:04.460
Another example of how this method can be used is if a tool in your evangelism is personal
00:16:11.320
experiences of the divine, for example, you prayed to God and he revealed himself to you
00:16:17.260
or you had some experience with God, then look at people who use personal experiences of the
00:16:24.080
divine to justify other faiths, go through different iterations of that for the experiences
00:16:31.760
that you find most compelling and that are most likely to convince you to switch face because
00:16:37.180
those will be the experiences of the divine within your own faith that will be most likely
00:16:42.060
to get those from outside your face to switch face.
00:16:44.920
What I will say is I have never heard this model of evangelization working on somebody.
00:16:51.660
The my book is true because it predicted things in the future.
00:16:54.080
Seems to only work within it is like an intercommunity circle jerk.
00:16:57.820
It doesn't seem to work or strengthening the face of people within the community.
00:17:02.540
It doesn't seem to be very effective on people outside of the community.
00:17:06.020
Well, it seems to me like it's one of those things that wouldn't be a good conversion mechanism
00:17:10.900
because if that level of just like, oh my gosh, data could change someone's mind, then
00:17:16.920
they would be too capricious to stick to any religion.
00:17:19.760
It wouldn't be a high retention tactic because then all you have to do is find some other
00:17:26.220
weird data set from some other belief system and it would theoretically convince this person
00:17:31.700
We also have to look at groups like the flat earthers who pretend to be very data driven,
00:17:37.320
but then when presented with pretty compelling data, even from their own experiments, they're
00:17:42.860
So, well, I do think it can be compelling for inter-family retention.
00:17:49.640
No, I think it's just one of those things that you like.
00:17:53.160
Do you remember when you had to write essays in college or high school before chat GPT did
00:17:59.760
this for everyone and you had just sort of, you had your thesis already and then you just
00:18:03.660
had to hunt down additional supporting arguments because you were supposed to have three or something
00:18:08.460
So then you would just hunt down additional, like, and here's another reason why I was
00:18:14.240
And so it wasn't that you actually believed it.
00:18:16.580
You just needed additional things that seemed like kind of sufficiently plausible.
00:18:21.080
So it's not, I really don't think it's a genuinely compelling argument to anyone.
00:18:30.200
I can see how it could be compelling if you already believe the religious structure,
00:18:33.700
but for the same reason that you are dismissing it when Muslims do it, that's why secular people
00:18:41.080
An argument that has always actually been pretty compelling to me, that was one of the most
00:18:45.840
compelling when I was younger, which is the, well, you know, you get an eternal reward if
00:18:54.760
So even if it's only an infinitesimally small probability, forget the name of this argument.
00:19:01.400
But an infinitesimally small probability that it's true, that you should believe it.
00:19:12.920
And so then I'm like, well, so then how am I choosing among the religions that all claim
00:19:19.800
The other problem with this argument is that it assumes that the opposite of religious
00:19:26.160
inspired, like reason to exist is a nihilistic reason to exist.
00:19:30.680
Whereas I would say I never had a nihilistic perspective on reality.
00:19:37.480
There's a good lord protecting Baccio over me as a shepherd Baccio over his flock.
00:19:43.600
I feel like that's kind of what you're describing here.
00:20:14.960
Well, and I think it's probably not a compelling reason from a, like, if you look at how religion
00:20:19.620
is structured, if you're like, well, I got into this religion so I could get into heaven.
00:20:26.300
And honestly, when I think back to what religion used to be in the past, you know, why people
00:20:30.660
were part of it, it was because of the community cohesion and amenities.
00:20:34.260
And also you, like, weren't allowed to not be a part of that religion.
00:20:37.160
I don't think it was necessarily like, oh, I know I'm going to go.
00:20:39.640
I mean, definitely eternal punishment played a role in people's adherence to religion.
00:20:44.860
But the reason they were part of those religions was that was the community.
00:20:50.420
It wasn't this vague threat because they had a ton of other options.
00:20:54.140
Another similar logical argument is the cosmological argument.
00:20:57.800
This is the argument where you say, well, then what created the universe?
00:21:04.580
This argument feels very compelling if you're coming at it from a religious standpoint, like
00:21:11.140
However, if you don't believe in God, your immediate and reflexive response to this argument
00:21:16.120
is, well, you can't just say, okay, what created the universe and God created the universe
00:21:21.020
because then you have to ask, well, then what created God?
00:21:22.740
Now, this doesn't feel to a person who already believes in God like a good response to the
00:21:29.460
argument because they see God as being something wholly different than the way the universe operates.
00:21:35.280
However, it is immediately what's going to come to mind in a secular person's brain, so
00:21:40.440
much so that I have never heard of anyone converting to Christianity or any religion because of the
00:21:45.740
cosmological argument, and I have never seen it being discussed as a particularly compelling
00:21:51.580
argument within secular circles, so I totally forgot about it while I was creating this video.
00:21:58.500
And so it's just, regardless of its internal consistency or logical strength, it is not a good
00:22:07.120
It's almost like reading Bible passages to someone to try to convert them.
00:22:13.040
Of course, from your perspective, if you are already within a faith, those are a very compelling source of
00:22:18.080
evidence, but to somebody outside of the faith, they're just random words, basically.
00:22:25.360
It is incredibly compelling to people who already are within a faith, but incredibly uncompelling to people
00:22:33.040
Well, another thing that really drives people away from religion is when people are like,
00:22:37.400
oh, well, you know, I'll be laughing when you're burning in hell or whatever, right?
00:22:41.020
Like, which you actually see with a lot of these communities, they think that they can, like,
00:22:45.380
I don't know, be spite-driven to get someone to convert, and this just only makes you look like a
00:22:49.840
crazy person and, like, completely sociopathic and does not, like, portray well the religious system.
00:22:57.160
Now, what's interesting is that this argument is one that I mostly hear from just evangelical
00:23:04.260
Like, I don't see that from Mormons and stuff like that.
00:23:06.240
Like, there isn't the, I will take pleasure in you being punished when you're wrong about this,
00:23:12.480
but I suspect it's a mechanism that is mostly used to keep people in this thing inter-family,
00:23:18.780
because when you have looked down on people as, like, stupid for having other belief systems,
00:23:24.100
But the problem is, is it may have worked historically, but if you look at the rates
00:23:27.540
that people are leaving the church now, it's clearly not working right now.
00:23:30.900
Now, a system that works really good for conversion, where I've seen bringing people
00:23:34.460
into a faith or back into a faith, is after a loss, like the loss of a loved one or something
00:23:41.440
And this seems to be tied to, like, the rock bottom moment thing.
00:23:45.520
And keep in mind that we already have a lot of ceremonies that are adjacent to this.
00:23:50.880
So most people, when they're having their funeral, it's at a religious institution, right?
00:23:56.960
When they're having their, like, this is an opportunity to pass on these ideals to somebody.
00:24:03.980
And so I've seen that be pretty good at converting people.
00:24:07.320
I guess, you know, another way to put this is when you need something to be true, you can
00:24:13.720
Like, when you really need to believe that your lost loved one has gone to heaven and
00:24:20.100
you'll be reunited, or you really need to believe that there's something more to life
00:24:27.960
I think that's when you're uniquely likely to convert.
00:24:32.060
And people who've just had a loved one die or have hit rock bottom are more likely to be
00:24:43.200
They will happily convince themselves if they have an easy enough template to work with.
00:24:49.140
And so cultural arguments work really good, whereas logical arguments, like emotional and
00:24:55.220
cultural arguments are high tier at converting, whereas very low tier are logical or threatening.
00:25:03.380
So is this why real Calvinists, as we would define them, have just ceased to really exist?
00:25:08.020
Yeah, because they were almost completely utilized logic to try to convert people.
00:25:14.400
Even today, the Calvinist evangelists are just like completely like logical structure driven.
00:25:23.340
And it's why the tradition was always so prone.
00:25:25.700
You know, again, you look at the Calvinists during the colonial time, they were doing the
00:25:28.280
things like crossing out in their books, all of the parts that they thought disagreed with
00:25:33.680
It was incredibly, it makes it incredibly susceptible to changing secular patterns, but it makes
00:25:42.300
it also incredibly unsusceptible to immoral action, where I think historically, if you look
00:25:47.340
at the groups that were generally the most morally upstanding, they're typically the groups
00:25:55.000
But so there are like a good side, like people would be like, why do you follow it if it's
00:25:59.280
And it's like, well, because like, I know when, you know, for example, when slavery was
00:26:03.240
going on in the South, like my family was standing up for that.
00:26:07.120
They were putting themselves at risk every day.
00:26:09.040
They were the ones who immediately left the cities and set up guerrilla operations.
00:26:17.380
It's something that I think to an extent we are doing right now as people with, you know,
00:26:21.440
high level degrees and stuff like that and making ourselves essentially unemployable
00:26:25.120
by being publicly conservative outside of anything we do for ourselves.
00:26:33.980
But the most compelling argument I have seen work, and we've mentioned this in the other
00:26:40.180
video, but I think it's really important that people note this, is just going to them and
00:26:43.940
pointing out what's happening in the secular world, which is the ultimate cultural argument.
00:26:50.420
This is interesting because this is also associated with one of the most compelling and effective
00:26:56.900
political campaigns that took place in terms of converting voters for a particular candidate
00:27:02.200
that was tested in a peer-reviewed way was a message that did not say anything bad about
00:27:07.500
the opponents or anything good about the candidate of choice, but rather just say, here are basically
00:27:18.660
Simple, no images or anything, just like, just that text.
00:27:24.400
So to your point, just saying like, hey, here's what's happening with the counterfactual.
00:27:32.560
Here's the mental health rate in the progressive community.
00:27:35.360
You just cite it all and it is really compelling that whatever they're doing isn't working.
00:27:44.000
And as I said, within Gen Z, I have seen this to be an incredibly compelling argument.
00:27:48.720
But it is interesting because it's not the argument that many evangelists were taught
00:27:54.420
to use because it historically was not a usable argument.
00:27:58.120
It's only really been a feasible argument for like the past 15 years or so.
00:28:01.640
So you previously, they could say things like, look at that secular world, having all that
00:28:10.400
But people are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, where was this
00:28:15.660
Now, you know, 10, 20 years on, you're like, look at all these people whose lives have been
00:28:21.780
Like, this seems to not work in the way that everyone said it would work, where they're like,
00:28:27.200
well, if you just do whatever you want, whenever you want, so long as it doesn't hurt
00:28:31.200
other people, and you devote your life to reducing suffering in the world population, and you
00:28:37.980
will be affirmed for being whoever you want to be, that these things are going to lead
00:28:43.460
And it's like, well, clearly, we now have the data when that group is the dominant cultural
00:28:48.440
And we can see it's demonstrably worse at just about everything in regards to mental
00:28:57.640
And then you're like, yeah, but then they don't really believe the religious stuff,
00:29:05.720
But I think you'd be surprised how easy it is to sort of fall in with the belief system
00:29:12.580
You look at the religious system that Simone and I sort of built for our family, and we 100%
00:29:19.680
Like, we are sold into the idea of, like, the inevitable God, the Omnissian, the future
00:29:28.200
Like, we are bought into it, however, whatever word you want to use for it.
00:29:37.280
And that shows how just by following even a set of, like, rules and structures that we
00:29:42.400
built for ourselves, and we know we built for ourselves, and we know that we invented,
00:29:46.780
just thinking, okay, what's the most compelling way we can structure this, that we end up
00:29:54.900
Now, people could say, well, if you know you invented it, why?
00:29:57.400
Because our belief system says that we would have been inspired to create it by the actual
00:30:02.920
So it was a divine revelation, even if we think that we were just being creative and trying
00:30:07.740
to come up with the most creative way, because that's the way it would have convinced us
00:30:15.700
But really, what converted us was all of the rituals, was the way that we related to
00:30:26.700
And that was convinced by a cultural argument that came to us ourselves.
00:30:30.100
So you could say, okay, well, how do I end up with somebody not ending up like you guys?
00:30:36.980
I could go to them and say, look, whatever the secular world is doing isn't working.
00:30:40.140
But, you know, how do I convince my kids not to go out on their own and try to create something
00:30:47.000
And I actually think that the probability of this happening is incredibly low.
00:30:50.420
It's low because like we're doing this because we are from a very specific in our thing on
00:30:57.800
We're from a very specific genetic vortex, which is a very weird one that has historically done
00:31:03.440
this, read the Puritan spotting thing by Star Slate Codex, where he's like, one of the ways
00:31:07.740
you know one of these people is they're constantly trying to create new religious traditions.
00:31:11.900
So, yeah, no, it's just a normal thing that our cultural group does.
00:31:16.240
But if I came from a cultural group that was more aligned with like a Catholic worldview
00:31:19.600
or an Orthodox worldview or a Jewish worldview, it would be, I think, tremendously easy to convert
00:31:25.540
me into those worldviews using those cultural arguments.
00:31:29.060
It's just that there is no religious tradition that is really common in the world today that
00:31:34.640
aligns with my personal predilections and world perspectives.
00:31:41.280
So I was wondering if you had any final thoughts.
00:31:45.220
No, but I do think that amenities is what I think is most convincing by a long shot.
00:31:52.960
And by amenities, I mean like the community, the lifestyle, the experience, what you get.
00:31:59.540
Be it a spouse or friends or company or a sense of meaning and belonging.
00:32:10.420
We know people who've converted to Mormonism just because they couldn't find a husband.
00:32:13.700
And they're like, okay, this seems to be the best way to find a husband today.
00:32:16.680
And I think that this is going to become increasingly common, which means that you as a religious
00:32:21.320
tradition do need to be, building a functional and healthy dating market can be an incredible
00:32:32.160
You need to really put in the infrastructure for that and then evangelize how well it works
00:32:40.320
I also think a really important thing to note is that up until extremely recently, religion
00:32:52.580
And it was part of the framework of your reality, your community, and your life.
00:32:58.220
Now that we live in a world in which there are so many alternatives, again, that's why I'm
00:33:04.020
If people can choose, they're going to choose the one that leads to the best life and the best
00:33:10.280
So if they're going to choose a hard religion, they're going to choose the one with the best
00:33:14.680
That or they're just going to go so soft and let go of all the religion altogether and
00:33:22.380
Well, and this is why we take sort of the elitist like approach where we're not, you
00:33:28.800
If you are primarily targeting, you know, people at rock bottom situations and stuff like that,
00:33:33.280
it will create the wider stream cultural perception that people don't want to be a part of that
00:33:40.920
Whereas if you make it difficult to convert, difficult to claim to be a part of the group
00:33:47.280
and you target like really high tier, whether they're earners or intellectuals or anything
00:33:52.680
like that, you will have that veneer of impenetrability as well as, and status, as well as a value
00:34:02.180
to your kids of like, why would I leave this cultural tradition if it's so hard to convert
00:34:06.420
This is something Jews have done really well historically.
00:34:09.180
You know, the turning away a person three times when they try to convert and stuff like that.
00:34:17.100
I would just say the only other thing that really matters is your original point that I want to
00:34:21.120
hammer home, which is, this is about really converting your kids and that there doesn't
00:34:26.080
seem to be from the evidence you looked at, at least when doing, when writing the Pragmatist
00:34:29.720
Guide to Crafting Religion, that suggests that growth through evangelism works.
00:34:35.760
Growth through providing cultural amenities does, which is why groups that, for example,
00:34:40.220
ran orphanages or schools had fresh converts, even if they didn't have children like through
00:34:45.200
their family structures because they didn't believe in sex or something.
00:34:48.200
With this, you know, conversion is not really a meaningful way to grow.
00:34:51.120
Even when you look at some of the most evangelistic religions, like the Mormon religion, where
00:34:55.240
we have people going on, on missions, they're not durably converting that many people ultimately
00:35:03.400
Now they are through like, I would say cultural ambassadorship, but that is a very different
00:35:08.660
So I would just say that that's the other thing is that if you are interested in conversion
00:35:13.060
because you think that is the only way that your religion is going to grow, then you need
00:35:16.720
to just start providing some incredibly needed amenity to a group that is otherwise being
00:35:21.860
abandoned by society, because that seems to be the only way that conversion has worked
00:35:27.000
at scale for groups that are not growing primarily through reproduction, right?
00:35:33.560
Well, I think show them with your better life, you know?
00:35:36.780
And so what she's mentioning is we ran the numbers with Mormons because the Mormons will
00:35:41.140
say, well, we converted this many people a year.
00:35:42.500
But that includes people who like, you know, said, oh, I converted so they can use the Mormon
00:35:48.520
So then we tried to look at people who are actually still tithing after a certain period
00:35:52.240
of time, because we were trying to see like, okay, do these people actually stay in the
00:35:57.020
In fact, I would argue that more people deconvert because of their mission trip than are converted
00:36:05.700
The biggest flaw in the Mormon faith right now is actually the mission structure, and
00:36:11.820
that if they focused more on this wholesome community building, they would do better.
00:36:15.440
This is one of the problems that the evangelical Christians and the Calvinists also had, is
00:36:19.140
that they created very, I mean, Footloose is basically about like, the people who don't
00:36:26.540
Like, it had a very bad image in terms of cultural amenities.
00:36:39.020
Yeah, Ebenezer Scrooge being the typical stereotype within this community, which we talk a lot
00:36:45.200
about in the book, and we provide a lot of evidence for.
00:36:46.880
A lot of people who aren't familiar with cultural stereotypes think he's supposed to be Jewish
00:36:53.820
But yeah, so, and he doesn't fit any of the other Jewish stereotypes, but he fits almost
00:36:57.340
every Calvinist stereotype, who were much more common during the period when the book
00:37:01.880
I should also point this out because people not familiar with Calvinist stereotypes may
00:37:05.640
not know this, but Ebenezer is the classical Calvinist name if you're talking about Calvinist
00:37:11.700
stereotypes, to the extent where in the Puritan spotting checklist I mentioned earlier that
00:37:16.080
Scott Alexander did, one of the points is how many male relatives somebody has with the
00:37:23.660
It would be like naming a character Levi Goldstein.
00:37:27.540
But, so that did really bad, like Calvinism as a tradition is almost perfectly poorly structured
00:37:37.880
Like they did a pretty bad job outside of their big events and stuff like that, which is why
00:37:42.340
the iterations of it that are growing most right now are the megachurches and stuff, which
00:37:45.760
provide this totally unique experience, which I think appeals to, you know, a specific desire
00:37:51.760
was in people that is very different than the desire that was fed by historic, austere, the
00:37:58.180
type of people who were grossed out by opulence and big displays of really anything, which I think
00:38:05.020
Now, there was a final thing I wanted to say here because I thought it was really interesting
00:38:12.960
Well, I was going to say the other thing I've noticed within Mormons, and this could be a
00:38:17.160
whole different video, is I've noticed that one of the reasons their culture is collapsing
00:38:21.000
so quickly right now, because they are falling really quickly in terms of fertility rates,
00:38:25.220
in terms of deconversions, is this extroversion that the community was selecting for, that we
00:38:31.340
mentioned for earlier in this, created sort of a, I'd say probably even a genetic predilection
00:38:36.820
due to the people who they were disproportionately converting to be really susceptible to things that
00:38:44.980
It created a community that as soon as social media penetrated that community, as soon as
00:38:50.480
the, especially the wives within this community began to be able to play these social media
00:38:54.100
status games, it was incredibly unresistant to this, less so than literally any cultural
00:39:01.500
And that's why it went from being one of the stronger cultural traditions to one of the weaker
00:39:06.300
I don't think it had anything to do with the culture itself.
00:39:08.720
I just think it had been selecting intergenerationally for extroversion and community
00:39:14.900
status games in a way that was much more aggressive than other cultural groups.
00:39:20.060
And then when people were able to masturbate these instincts in really unhealthy ways through
00:39:26.160
social media, it hit that community really hard.
00:39:31.720
Which is interesting because our community would be one of the most resistant to social media,
00:39:35.660
which may provide an avenue for us growing again, specifically because of that.
00:39:41.620
But I mean, there's not many of the people with, I guess, the genetic predilection to even like
00:39:45.980
the type of theological structure that we're pitching.
00:39:56.540
And I do hope that people are able to use this to convert people more effectively and to
00:40:01.700
hopefully do a better job at evangelizing to your kids.
00:40:04.760
You know, as we say, the first 18 years of a kid's life are your chance to pitch your
00:40:09.880
And if you don't do a good job, they're going to leave.
00:40:19.080
Everyone you've ever loved will disappear to history.
00:40:22.260
Everything that every ancestor before you has worked to do will be for nothing.