Based Camp - A Secular Person’s Advice on How to Convert Secular People

00:00:00.000 I hope that people are able to use this to convert people more effectively and to hopefully

00:00:04.960 do a better job at evangelizing to your kids.

00:00:07.540 You know, as we say, the first 18 years of a kid's life are your chance to pitch your

00:00:11.600 culture to them.

00:00:12.520 And if you don't do a good job, they're going to leave.

00:00:15.240 Exactly.

00:00:17.060 And then your culture will die. 0.97

00:00:19.040 Your traditions will die.

00:00:20.220 Everything's over. 0.97

00:00:21.020 And your people will die. 1.00

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.

00:00:28.820 Would you like to know more?

00:00:29.660 Hello, Simone. 0.69

00:00:30.820 So this video is going to be an interesting topic, but it's what I've been thinking about

00:00:35.260 when I've been looking at.

00:00:37.180 So people who don't know me, Simone, like my favorite radio stations, and you'll point

00:00:42.380 this out.

00:00:42.760 They are always like Christian talk radio.

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.

00:00:55.320 I really just like listening to them.

00:00:57.200 I find the, the, the, the lessons that they're teaching are often broadly applicable to my

00:01:02.720 life.

00:01:03.400 Totally.

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

00:01:20.580 to call it.

00:01:21.020 That's taking over society right now.

00:01:22.760 And religious traditions act as a very good structural protection against that for many

00:01:28.940 individuals' minds.

00:01:30.360 Now, the second enemy is the religious extremists who want everyone on earth dead except people 0.52

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.

00:01:54.040 Right.

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

00:02:04.120 them dead.

00:02:04.700 They are growing.

00:02:05.920 And when the, the woke castle falls, that that will be the next multiple populations because 1.00

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.

00:03:09.020 100%.

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

00:03:28.920 are a little different.

00:03:29.580 You know, if you look at belief in Gen X right now, people who, who share believing in God

00:03:36.640 without a doubt.

00:03:37.640 So these are people who believe in God without a doubt.

00:03:40.220 Within Gen X, you're looking at like 65%.

00:03:43.840 Within Gen Z, you're looking at like 33%.

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

00:04:10.640 you never find out.

00:04:11.900 And we've seen that a decent amount.

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

00:04:23.120 families you could imagine.

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.

00:04:33.820 And they don't want to hurt their parents.

00:04:35.840 You know, they're just like, look, I have no.

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

00:04:46.380 deconversion in which your kid ends up hating.

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.

00:04:56.840 Yeah, yeah. 0.89

00:04:56.860 Like, I hate my religion.

00:04:58.120 And that was why a lot of people deconverted before.

00:05:00.440 These kids do not hate their religion.

00:05:02.820 They do not hate their traditions.

00:05:04.960 They just weren't convinced by them.

00:05:07.240 Yeah.

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.

00:05:15.740 And so let's talk about evangelism, right?

00:05:18.980 So as people, like when I was younger, I was in, you know, I didn't like the new atheists. 1.00

00:05:24.740 I thought that they were always kind of pussies. 1.00

00:05:26.420 But I would have been considered on the outside of that movement and stuff like the subgenius 0.99

00:05:30.100 movement and stuff like that, right?

00:05:32.500 And you were in, I mean, you were raised like Buddhist slash Mormon, but were always sort 1.00

00:05:38.800 of like atheistic growing up.

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,

00:05:46.280 to be honest with you.

00:05:48.140 Did you actually believe this stuff or was it just like an aesthetic choice?

00:05:51.040 I felt most moved when at Shinto shrines.

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

00:06:03.320 that was at Shinto shrines in Japan.

00:06:05.720 So that's why I told people that.

00:06:07.000 It just felt right to me.

00:06:08.760 And that's it.

00:06:10.140 There was no like thought behind it.

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. 0.68

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 1.00

00:06:26.300 kid who's lost their religion.

00:06:28.320 I'm the perfect example of someone who was raised in soft culture with soft culture and

00:06:33.620 was just broadly spiritual, but not really.

00:06:35.920 Yeah.

00:06:36.920 And I grew up in Texas.

00:06:38.140 So I had a lot of evangelists and apologetics talk with me about this stuff because I was

00:06:43.620 always open about it.

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

00:07:09.080 deconvert, right?

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,

00:07:15.880 the default culture around them doesn't.

00:07:18.200 Right.

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?

00:07:31.460 What was that argument?

00:07:32.820 Never, never, never.

00:07:34.440 Have you ever been really unconvinced?

00:07:36.980 Like somebody came up to you and you're like, this is just not working at all.

00:07:40.500 You think this is convincing, but it's not.

00:07:42.740 So many Mormon friends like would give me the Book of Mormon, but, and like expose me 1.00

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.

00:08:02.680 So no, I don't think I was ever.

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.

00:08:11.160 Yeah.

00:08:11.700 Yes.

00:08:12.060 Yeah.

00:08:12.500 Like that's going to work.

00:08:13.260 I've never heard of that working.

00:08:15.680 I've never heard of it working either.

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,

00:08:36.340 is people of a certain religion.

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.

00:09:03.160 Well, hold on.

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,

00:09:21.500 what's the non-offensive way to say 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

00:09:42.220 and they come upon a Bible, right?

00:09:47.940 And they're like, okay, now I'm open to being converted. 0.83

00:09:51.020 Because that is one of the times in somebody's life where they are most likely to be converted

00:09:54.240 is when they are at rock bottom.

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

00:10:16.820 organization in the world.

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

00:10:40.220 quit drinking or moderate their drinking.

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

00:11:02.700 weird cult.

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.

00:11:14.320 Even Scientologists figured this out.

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.

00:11:36.600 Are there not?

00:11:37.360 There have to be.

00:11:38.620 There are.

00:11:39.280 There are.

00:11:39.980 I mean, a lot of cults focus on these, these communities and it's because it's effective. 0.74

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

00:12:00.980 belief.

00:12:01.300 But the, the core aspect of that is, is we don't believe that winning all people to our

00:12:08.660 way of thinking is equally valuable.

00:12:10.560 Right.

00:12:11.160 And the very fact that somebody is at rock bottom means they are of lower utility to us

00:12:16.780 than other individuals.

00:12:17.780 And I would prefer that my kids never hit rock bottom for me to convince them of a cultural

00:12:21.600 practice.

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

00:12:40.400 intellectualist.

00:12:41.040 And what's really cool with the rock bottom people that these faiths do do is they can 1.00

00:12:44.700 build them back up.

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

00:12:55.140 to you.

00:12:55.760 They were taking you to Mormon community events.

00:12:58.460 And I love them.

00:12:59.320 God, I love them.

00:13:00.420 Yeah.

00:13:00.720 They being smart Mormons knew that that's how Mormons, I think today most frequently

00:13:04.780 convert. 0.51

00:13:05.280 Well, it might have converted me if I were the type of person who actually wanted to be

00:13:09.320 around people.

00:13:10.680 Oh yeah.

00:13:11.280 Do you intentionally hate being around people?

00:13:12.860 And yeah, it's horrible.

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

00:13:22.120 is so easy.

00:13:22.820 I just convert.

00:13:24.140 I just joined the LDS church.

00:13:25.860 And this is really interesting to me where we've had another video on this about the genetics

00:13:31.440 of religion.

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, 1.00

00:13:48.420 which is like intensely introverted.

00:13:51.120 I mean, Scrooge is the typical Calvinist, right? 0.80

00:13:53.620 From, from the Scottish.

00:13:55.380 Bah humbug, ladies and gentlemen.

00:13:57.240 What?

00:13:58.120 Bah humbug.

00:13:59.160 Bah humbug, right?

00:14:00.020 Yeah.

00:14:00.160 But, you know, so, so I, I, I see that.

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

00:14:16.240 you.

00:14:17.120 And if another religion has never come close to converting you, then look to see if they 0.65

00:14:23.980 use arguments and apologetics that mirror your arguments and apologetics that you are frequently

00:14:31.760 using.

00:14:32.800 So an example here that I frequently see Christians use is look at all of the things the Bible

00:14:39.360 predicted.

00:14:40.980 Oh, right.

00:14:41.940 Okay.

00:14:42.880 It must be a true book.

00:14:44.740 It must be a divinely inspired book because it was able to predict so many things that were

00:14:49.040 going to happen in the future.

00:14:50.440 Huh.

00:14:51.040 The problem is, is that Muslims say the same thing. 1.00

00:14:53.880 Yeah.

00:14:54.580 I mean, it just, it's one of those like Nostradamus things where like, you can kind of make anything

00:14:59.200 work.

00:14:59.680 Right.

00:15:00.420 Well, I would say that some of the things that people will claim the Bible can be predicted

00:15:06.720 are very compelling, right?

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.

00:15:33.220 Why did you dismiss that?

00:15:35.980 When you looked at that and you just said, no, I dismiss this.

00:15:39.980 Why did you dismiss it?

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. 0.97

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

00:17:30.700 to switch over.

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

00:17:41.540 like, well, I'm not convinced.

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 0.99

00:18:07.480 in your stupid essay. 0.99

00:18:08.460 So then you would just hunt down additional, like, and here's another reason why I was 1.00

00:18:12.300 suddenly convinced to do this thing.

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.

00:18:20.740 Right.

00:18:21.080 So it's not, I really don't think it's a genuinely compelling argument to anyone.

00:18:25.240 You've never had it used on you clearly.

00:18:27.440 No.

00:18:28.040 And you haven't dug into it.

00:18:29.320 I've dug into it.

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

00:18:38.480 are going to dismiss it when you do it.

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

00:18:51.300 you follow our religion.

00:18:52.540 If you don't, there's nothing, right?

00:18:54.760 So even if it's only an infinitesimally small probability, forget the name of this argument.

00:19:00.120 It's Pascal's wager.

00:19:01.400 But an infinitesimally small probability that it's true, that you should believe it.

00:19:07.640 Right.

00:19:08.900 The problem is, is that other religions exist.

00:19:12.620 Right.

00:19:12.920 And so then I'm like, well, so then how am I choosing among the religions that all claim 0.98

00:19:18.660 to offer this to me?

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.

00:19:34.980 Do you know what this reminds me of?

00:19:36.420 You know, that scene in The Mummy?

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.

00:20:10.580 Just like keep switching around.

00:20:12.720 Yeah.

00:20:13.180 Well, no, it is.

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.

00:20:23.100 Yeah.

00:20:23.540 Well, that almost is self-canceling.

00:20:26.080 Yeah.

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.

00:20:48.800 That was the dominating culture.

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?

00:21:01.000 What was the reason for the universe existing?

00:21:04.580 This argument feels very compelling if you're coming at it from a religious standpoint, like

00:21:09.300 if you already believe in God.

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 0.63

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

00:22:05.740 tool for conversion.

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.

00:22:23.660 The same with the cosmological argument.

00:22:25.360 It is incredibly compelling to people who already are within a faith, but incredibly uncompelling to people

00:22:30.640 who are not already within a faith.

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 0.99

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 0.93

00:23:03.700 Protestants.

00:23:04.260 Like, I don't see that from Mormons and stuff like that. 0.84

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, 0.98

00:23:18.780 because when you have looked down on people as, like, stupid for having other belief systems, 0.98

00:23:22.560 you're maybe less likely to deconvert. 0.98

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

00:23:40.500 like that.

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

00:24:12.540 be converted to a religion.

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

00:24:25.460 than, you know, what you are experiencing now.

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

00:24:36.840 in that category.

00:24:38.220 Yeah.

00:24:38.820 They need it to be true.

00:24:39.760 It's not where they're convinced.

00:24:40.740 It's where they are ready.

00:24:43.200 They will happily convince themselves if they have an easy enough template to work with.

00:24:48.740 Yeah.

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.

00:25:13.480 Yeah.

00:25:13.760 That's true.

00:25:14.400 Even today, the Calvinist evangelists are just like completely like logical structure driven.

00:25:20.240 Yeah.

00:25:20.660 Well, it's true.

00:25:21.400 It's just a thing with the tradition.

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

00:25:32.360 modern science and stuff like that.

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

00:25:52.040 that had these belief systems.

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

00:25:58.080 so weak in this one way?

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.

00:26:06.100 They were fighting against it.

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.

00:26:13.120 And that's a very rare thing.

00:26:15.620 And it's something that I hope to preserve.

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.

00:26:28.360 It's really, and unfundable by many VCs.

00:26:32.300 Yeah, no kidding.

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.

00:26:49.700 It's saying...

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

00:27:15.620 the Republicans in office right now.

00:27:17.780 Here's what they've done.

00:27:18.660 Simple, no images or anything, just like, just that text.

00:27:22.960 And that was enough to convince people.

00:27:24.400 So to your point, just saying like, hey, here's what's happening with the counterfactual.

00:27:29.120 Like, here's our default.

00:27:30.700 Are you going to do something about it?

00:27:31.600 Here's the suicide rate right now.

00:27:32.560 Here's the mental health rate in the progressive community.

00:27:35.260 Yeah.

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

00:28:06.500 free sex. 0.69

00:28:07.880 I bet they're really unhappy about that. 0.79

00:28:10.400 But people are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, where was this 0.93

00:28:13.120 where you said I could get all this easy sex? 0.96

00:28:15.120 Yeah.

00:28:15.660 Now, you know, 10, 20 years on, you're like, look at all these people whose lives have been

00:28:20.400 actually destroyed.

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

00:28:41.820 to a productive and happy life.

00:28:43.460 And it's like, well, clearly, we now have the data when that group is the dominant cultural

00:28:47.720 group in society.

00:28:48.440 And we can see it's demonstrably worse at just about everything in regards to mental

00:28:53.580 health.

00:28:54.940 So that can be really compelling.

00:28:57.640 And then you're like, yeah, but then they don't really believe the religious stuff,

00:29:01.840 right?

00:29:02.380 Like, I haven't really convinced them.

00:29:04.080 I've convinced them to follow traditions.

00:29:05.720 But I think you'd be surprised how easy it is to sort of fall in with the belief system

00:29:10.460 once you're following the traditions.

00:29:12.580 You look at the religious system that Simone and I sort of built for our family, and we 100%

00:29:18.760 believe it now, right?

00:29:19.680 Like, we are sold into the idea of, like, the inevitable God, the Omnissian, the future

00:29:26.960 police, all this stuff.

00:29:28.200 Like, we are bought into it, however, whatever word you want to use for it.

00:29:32.500 And we love it.

00:29:33.900 Like, it works really well.

00:29:35.300 But it was completely constructed by us.

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

00:29:51.320 actually believing it.

00:29:52.980 Like, that's just how the human mind works.

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

00:30:02.120 deity.

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

00:30:10.880 to see the truth.

00:30:12.860 But it works on us.

00:30:15.700 But really, what converted us was all of the rituals, was the way that we related to

00:30:23.220 daily events through this religious lens.

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?

00:30:35.720 Right?

00:30:35.860 Like, how do I end up?

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

00:30:45.800 totally new like you guys did?

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

00:30:54.840 like how religion and genetics co-evolve.

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.

00:32:05.500 I don't think it's anything else.

00:32:07.740 Well, dating markets.

00:32:09.020 Yeah, dating markets.

00:32:09.980 That's what, yeah.

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 0.98

00:32:21.320 tradition do need to be, building a functional and healthy dating market can be an incredible

00:32:28.700 conversion tool.

00:32:29.840 Yeah.

00:32:30.500 But you need to focus on it.

00:32:32.160 You need to really put in the infrastructure for that and then evangelize how well it works

00:32:38.420 because people will come for that.

00:32:40.320 I also think a really important thing to note is that up until extremely recently, religion

00:32:48.640 was not something you could choose.

00:32:50.660 It was something that you had to live with.

00:32:52.580 And it was part of the framework of your reality, your community, and your life.

00:32:56.160 So there was no other alternative.

00:32:58.220 Now that we live in a world in which there are so many alternatives, again, that's why I'm

00:33:01.800 so obsessed with amenities.

00:33:02.780 It's about the amenities.

00:33:04.020 If people can choose, they're going to choose the one that leads to the best life and the best

00:33:07.160 outcomes.

00:33:08.180 That's it.

00:33:09.060 And well, okay, either.

00:33:10.280 So if they're going to choose a hard religion, they're going to choose the one with the best

00:33:12.840 life and outcomes.

00:33:14.680 That or they're just going to go so soft and let go of all the religion altogether and 0.98

00:33:19.520 just sort of die off.

00:33:21.280 So yeah.

00:33:22.380 Well, and this is why we take sort of the elitist like approach where we're not, you

00:33:26.360 know, we're not going after the soft people.

00:33:28.420 Yeah.

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

00:33:38.580 group, right?

00:33:39.140 Like, oh, that's a low status group.

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

00:34:05.860 into it?

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.

00:34:13.020 Yeah.

00:34:13.700 Yeah.

00:34:14.940 Well, any other thoughts?

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 0.97

00:34:55.240 we have people going on, on missions, they're not durably converting that many people ultimately

00:35:01.940 through their missions.

00:35:03.400 Now they are through like, I would say cultural ambassadorship, but that is a very different

00:35:07.840 thing.

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?

00:35:33.100 Yeah.

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 0.99

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 0.61

00:35:47.540 soccer field, right?

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

00:35:55.280 church?

00:35:55.500 And the number, they're just incredibly low.

00:35:57.020 In fact, I would argue that more people deconvert because of their mission trip than are converted

00:36:02.740 because of a mission trip.

00:36:03.840 I think that's safe to say.

00:36:05.580 Yeah.

00:36:05.700 The biggest flaw in the Mormon faith right now is actually the mission structure, and 0.98

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

00:36:25.260 even let their children dance, right?

00:36:26.540 Like, it had a very bad image in terms of cultural amenities.

00:36:32.080 They were just seen as rich and stoogy, right?

00:36:34.940 No fun.

00:36:36.020 Yeah, they wouldn't even enjoy their money.

00:36:37.860 What was the point?

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

00:36:49.980 when he's like from Scotland.

00:36:51.620 Very clearly, he's not.

00:36:53.820 But yeah, so, and he doesn't fit any of the other Jewish stereotypes, but he fits almost 1.00

00:36:57.340 every Calvinist stereotype, who were much more common during the period when the book

00:37:01.580 was written.

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

00:37:21.860 name Ebenezer.

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

00:37:33.720 to convert people using cultural arguments.

00:37:35.920 But so is evangelical Christianity.

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

00:38:03.440 we would fall into.

00:38:05.020 Now, there was a final thing I wanted to say here because I thought it was really interesting

00:38:08.120 in what you were touching on.

00:38:11.120 It was Mormons, I want to say.

00:38:12.720 Yeah.

00:38:12.960 Well, I was going to say the other thing I've noticed within Mormons, and this could be a 1.00

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

00:38:43.200 like social media status gains.

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

00:39:00.120 tradition in the world.

00:39:01.500 And that's why it went from being one of the stronger cultural traditions to one of the weaker

00:39:05.480 cultural traditions.

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.

00:39:29.340 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

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.

00:39:49.360 So it would stay small for now.

00:39:52.320 For a while.

00:39:53.360 Yeah.

00:39:54.960 Anyway, love you to death, Simone.

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

00:40:08.820 culture to them.

00:40:09.880 And if you don't do a good job, they're going to leave.

00:40:12.440 Exactly.

00:40:14.280 And then your culture will die. 0.97

00:40:16.240 Your traditions will die.

00:40:17.440 Everything's over. 0.97

00:40:18.220 And your people will die. 1.00

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.

00:40:27.280 Okay, bye.

00:40:27.940 Bye.

00:40:29.140 Bye.

00:40:29.440 Bye.

00:40:29.780 Bye.

00:40:29.800 Bye.

00:40:29.860 Bye.

00:40:29.880 Bye.

00:40:29.920 Bye.

00:40:29.940 Bye.

00:40:30.000 Bye.

Based Camp - December 07, 2023

A Secular Person’s Advice on How to Convert Secular People

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