Based Camp - Religion is Declining Faster Than You Think

00:00:00.000 when we're looking at, you know, the extent of the urban monoculture, and we're talking about

00:00:03.520 how much culture has changed recently, people see this as sort of a linear change that is linearly

00:00:10.160 going from the boomers, you know, up to modern generations, right? It is not. It is an 0.73

00:00:17.280 asymptotic change. It's logarithmic. It is happening incredibly quickly right now. What

00:00:23.180 has happened in this last 20 years is not comparable to what was happening in our own

00:00:30.160 childhood. Culturally speaking, these iterations of conservatism I see within Gen Z is really 0.98

00:00:38.040 different from their parents' generation. And it means that the parents are not passing culture

00:00:44.860 intergenerationally with fidelity, even when they believe they have.

00:00:49.420 Yeah. Well, and also, like, I think, you know, like, as you say, a lot of kids are hiding that,

00:00:55.620 which is not helpful, I guess, in helping parents course correct. But also, if the parents knew that

00:01:02.300 their kids had lost their religion, would there be anything they could do?

00:01:05.340 A lot of the techniques that people have historically used to pass down these traditions

00:01:10.000 intergenerationally are just not working very well. Would you like to know more?

00:01:15.280 In regards to that? I already did. Yeah.

00:01:17.660 And in addition to that, could you send yourself a to-do item about emailing her the-

00:01:24.360 I already sent her the email. Look at how on top of things they are.

00:01:27.720 I'm sorry, Simone. I'm sorry. I don't- You are amazing. This is a great way to start. So people

00:01:32.500 see how it is when I ask you to do things.

00:01:34.740 Well, no, but you were in the middle before that. We were rudely interrupted by a call. You were telling

00:01:39.900 me how Chavez, Castro, and Che were doing with, you know, like AOC and Bernie. Like, are they okay?

00:01:46.140 They looked terrified when I first opened it. So two of our chickens after communists,

00:01:50.040 and they seemed fine. They seemed fine. They were making, they were complaining a lot. They were

00:01:55.880 and in a separate part of the cage. So they were talking.

00:02:00.460 Okay. So they're, they're okay. Were they, were they being attacked by AOC and Bernie?

00:02:06.580 Well, I don't know. They were in a different part, you know?

00:02:09.060 Okay. So they're, they're like, they're, they're, they're clustering together.

00:02:13.020 Yeah. All right.

00:02:13.560 They're not like dead or anything. Okay.

00:02:15.600 Yeah. I just, I don't know. Like, I'm, I'm worried. I don't want them to be like stressed

00:02:18.440 out or anything. And like, they're the friendliest ones. So you are the sweetest chicken mom,

00:02:26.460 which I appreciate because we're getting lots of great eggs, which means egg everything these

00:02:30.820 days. So you right before this, you know, being ever diligent, sent me some statistics you thought

00:02:37.560 I would find interesting. And they were so shocking. I then did a sanity test on them after

00:02:44.840 you sent them to me just to be like, come on, this can't be. So first, you know, you're going

00:02:49.620 to see the statistics on the screen. If you're watching on YouTube, what it shows is the share of

00:02:54.880 Americans. This is Americans, right? I think so. Who believe in God without doubt. And if you look

00:03:01.860 at the silent generation, it's around 70% slight decline over time. You look at boomers, it's like 0.97

00:03:08.780 65% slight decline over time. You look at Gen X actually goes up over time from like just under

00:03:15.820 60% to almost around where boomers are now, 65%. Then you get to millennials and it's like things

00:03:22.880 drop off a cliff. In the early days, like 1998, they were only around 55%. And now like, well,

00:03:32.740 2018, where this recording stops, they're all the way down to like around 45%. Then Gen Z when 0.98

00:03:40.700 they start recording, they're dropping even faster. They go from like 50% to now, you know,

00:03:48.500 I don't know, 33%. It's just plummeting, plummeting, plummeting. And so then I looked and I was like,

00:03:53.580 okay, what are religious people saying about this? Right? Like did do do sources that are looking

00:03:58.060 into this religiously. So there was this article over half of Gen Z teens feel motivated

00:04:02.700 to learn more about Jesus. Now you can tell this was written from a conservative perspective. So

00:04:07.420 this data is not going to be skewed, whatever. Right? So they show among U.S. young adults,

00:04:14.160 only 17% are committed Christians and 52% aren't Christian at all anymore. And this is of U.S. young

00:04:22.600 adults. Wow. And so this is really meaningful to me for a number of reasons. The biggest is

00:04:32.040 I think that there's this general perception that the rise in secularity, when we're looking at,

00:04:38.700 you know, the extent of the urban monoculture, and we're talking about how much culture has changed

00:04:42.300 recently, people see this as sort of a linear change that is linearly going from the boomers,

00:04:50.120 you know, up to modern generations, right? It is not. It is an asymptotic change. It's logarithmic.

00:04:57.000 It is happening incredibly quickly right now. What has happened in this last 20 years

00:05:03.320 is not comparable to what was happening in our own childhood, culturally speaking. Things have

00:05:11.400 exploded at a rate like, this is why I just so confidently can make a bet. I often mention this,

00:05:17.240 my mom, before she passed, she's like, you know, you're really publicly tying yourself to this

00:05:21.000 fertility rate thing. Like, what if this is just a fad? What if fertility rates shoot back up in a 0.74

00:05:26.480 couple of years? You know, you're going to look really stupid. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. I am 1.00

00:05:30.700 confident from what I am seeing in the data that it is going to get infinitely worse in the near future

00:05:35.180 because everything correlated with fertility is collapsing. And one of those things is religiosity,

00:05:40.360 right? And that has fundamentally transformed for people of this generation.

00:05:46.280 The next thing that I would note, and this is something that, so if you know, Simone and I,

00:05:53.500 we are hip with the Gen Z conservatives, right? Like that is the market that we probably speak to

00:06:03.920 the most in terms of the nature of our message and in terms of who we're interacting with because of our

00:06:09.860 school system, because of who we know. But we also know a lot of really conservative families. And I

00:06:14.380 can't mention like who they are because I don't want to give these kids away because these kids feel

00:06:19.440 honest being open with us. So a lot of these Gen Z kids, they still identify as very conservative.

00:06:28.560 If they're culturally, they, what would we say? They, they, they appear to be conservative and

00:06:34.680 religious, like on the surface.

00:06:36.560 Right. But many of them from very religious families are no longer religious. They just

00:06:43.480 hide it from their parents because they don't want to hurt their parents' feelings. And they still

00:06:47.280 like broadly believe in religious value systems because like, they really don't, I agree was like

00:06:52.340 the woke nut jobs. Right. But they are just not religious anymore. And I think that this creates 0.81

00:06:58.360 a big problem when you look at the statistics, which is a misperception among older conservative

00:07:04.940 millennials who are having kids right now or younger conservative Gen X. And that thinks

00:07:10.540 that this next generation is just like them. They're like, well, my kids haven't told me they

00:07:16.440 don't believe in God anymore.

00:07:18.000 Well, and they still go to church even, you know, probably after, you know, they go to school and

00:07:22.080 they probably say things, you know, like, you know, God willing or I'm like, you know, they'll,

00:07:25.920 they'll do all the, they'll present religious. And so that's also really misleading. Like that. I think a lot

00:07:30.680 of secular people, like openly atheist people and openly nihilistic people will go out to dinner 0.96

00:07:35.860 with or hang out with or see people who like code religious, but yeah, they don't realize that those

00:07:41.880 people actually just don't believe. Yeah. So I'd say that when I talk to Gen Z conservatives,

00:07:48.080 they really seem to fall into three camps in terms of like ideological identity. One camp is the

00:07:55.360 aesthetic conservatives. Yeah. We've talked about them in other videos. Yeah. These are the

00:08:00.420 individuals who fall for the aesthetic of conservative more than have an actual like

00:08:04.580 philosophical structure behind their beliefs. This is the crowd that Andrew Tate is talking to.

00:08:10.100 It is mostly like manosphere diaspora. They are primarily motivated by how unfair society has become

00:08:17.820 to them and how weak they see society becoming. These are the two things they care about.

00:08:22.520 And this is the largest faction I think of the Gen Z conservatives right now that like,

00:08:27.040 like the actually like active ones. The other faction is like our faction. If you want to get

00:08:32.580 an idea of what they think, just watch this podcast. Like it's, it's, it's really like the type of stuff

00:08:36.780 we talk about is really just indicative of what these guys think. Then the final faction is I call them

00:08:43.080 like religious cosplayers, I guess I'd say. Ew. They are not religious in the way that their parents

00:08:49.420 were religious. So by that, what I mean is their parents are religious because they were upholding

00:08:55.840 the traditions of their ancestors. These individuals are often upholding religion as a shield against

00:09:04.280 wokeism and a deteriorating society. And they lean more strongly into religious culture than even their 0.52

00:09:13.980 parents did. So these are the, the, the, the kids who maybe even were raised in secular households,

00:09:19.640 but then are like, I'm going to raise my kid Jewish or Muslim or Christian, and we're going to go to

00:09:25.440 church. But at the same time, they don't really believe it. Like my parents, for example, they

00:09:30.440 had this moment where they decided to become born again Buddhists. And they were like, okay,

00:09:34.440 we're going to send you to Dharma school. And they like, they meant to do it, but then they never

00:09:38.020 really followed through with it because they actually didn't really believe. I think like they

00:09:41.500 weren't really that into it. Is that what you're talking about? Well, not exactly. I think a lot

00:09:46.820 of these people really do believe it, but for their parents' generation, for the Gen X religious

00:09:52.160 generation, religion was primarily about the belief. The belief guided all other actions tied to the

00:09:59.900 religion. For these individuals, it's 50% belief, 50% structure and aesthetics. So the classic example of

00:10:08.420 somebody like this is the person who maybe grew up in a conservative Protestant household and then

00:10:13.840 becomes like a trad cat because they think like Catholicism is a more conservative, more

00:10:19.100 structured iteration. They're often converting to the more structured iteration of religions.

00:10:24.940 So they're much more likely to become Orthodox Christians. So by that, what I mean, I don't mean

00:10:29.800 general Orthodox. I'm talking like Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, et cetera, or trad cats or traditional

00:10:35.960 Orthodox Jews. Those are the three groups where I see this represented in the most. I haven't seen

00:10:40.740 that many Protestants who stayed Protestants doing this. And I think the reason is, is because the

00:10:47.540 Protestant faith has less ritual and structure to it. And the point that I'm making here is that for 0.99

00:10:53.460 many of these individuals, the ritual and structure is 50% of the point. Whereas for the previous

00:11:00.340 generation, it was God was a hundred percent of the point and everything else was downstream from

00:11:05.600 that. And of course they wouldn't say that it's 50% of the point. But what I mean, when I say this

00:11:11.580 is when I look at the fervency with which they adhere to the ritual and in which they signal the

00:11:17.120 ritual, they seem, if I'm going to word it in a way, almost, they remind me more of goths from my

00:11:24.080 childhood than religious kids from my childhood. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. I see what you're saying.

00:11:29.500 You know, where the religious people didn't need to constantly be signaling that they were

00:11:35.100 religious all the time. They were constantly trying to convert me, whereas the goths needed 1.00

00:11:39.580 to constantly be signaling how gothy they were. Yeah. But they weren't necessarily, yeah. They

00:11:43.600 weren't trying to convert you. And also they were kind of in it to be, just to not be a normie,

00:11:48.260 right? Like I feel like half the people who are goths or whatever new subculture there is of the day, 0.98

00:11:53.740 they're in it to just not be like mainstream society. And that is what I see with one of the

00:11:59.500 Yeah. Yeah. Continue. Sorry. Well, that's what I see with a lot of new converts or people who

00:12:03.680 are going more hardline from a softer religion. Yeah. And so these, these religious institutions

00:12:08.720 are doing well. And I want to point out that I don't mean this disparagingly at all. I actually

00:12:13.440 think that all of the rituals and framing and weird dress codes and everything like that,

00:12:19.440 weird, where weird is defined from differentiating from mainstream society.

00:12:22.920 So more hard religious, more hard religious.

00:12:24.960 Yeah. I think it's all useful in maintaining their culture and passing their culture down 0.97

00:12:30.420 intergenerationally. I think that these young people recognize something about religion that

00:12:36.560 their parents had forgotten because their parents didn't have as strong an enemy constantly

00:12:41.560 battering at their doors. And so they had forgotten all of the purposes of all of the

00:12:46.480 defensive structures and fortifications that had been built up over the year. They're like,

00:12:50.840 oh yeah, that pile of old guns. We don't need those anymore. That pile, you know, this old wall.

00:12:55.120 Well, I mean, I understand it was a castle wall, but nobody ever attacks this castle anymore. So

00:12:59.000 let's tear it down to put a road there. You know, and now these, this younger generation is like,

00:13:03.020 build it all back up, you know, restore the guns, everything like that. Right. So

00:13:07.240 very interesting, right? Yeah.

00:13:10.060 Why this is interesting to me is every one of these iterations of conservatism I see within Gen Z

00:13:15.020 is really different from their parents' generation. And it means that the parents are not passing

00:13:23.920 culture intergenerationally with fidelity, even when they believe they have.

00:13:29.880 Yeah. Well, and also like, I think, you know, like, as you say, a lot of kids are hiding that,

00:13:34.700 which is not helpful, I guess, in helping parents course correct. But also if the parents knew that

00:13:41.960 their kids had lost their religion, would there be anything they can do? Because I don't think 0.99

00:13:45.320 there is. I just think that they're screwed. No. Well, and this is an interesting thing because 1.00

00:13:50.800 parents can be like, well, why don't the kids tell me when they're rebelling in this way? Right.

00:13:54.920 Right. And a very interesting thing about Gen Z, and it's something that I will constantly say

00:13:58.980 is the woke iteration of Gen Z has just completely lost their minds. They're basically in this big

00:14:05.720 society-wide cult. But when I talk to non-woke Gen Z, like mentally healthy Gen Z, they are 0.88

00:14:13.120 dramatically more emotionally mature and mentally healthy than the mentally healthy, like average

00:14:18.400 person of our generation. Yeah, that's fair. Well, and I would say, I mean, to go back to sort of

00:14:23.760 what I always originally thought woke was all about, like sort of just being, they seem more

00:14:28.760 woke than woke people and that they're like genuinely aware of what's going on with society,

00:14:33.500 how things are playing out, the dynamics at play, how the cards are stacked against them,

00:14:37.680 what their benefits are, et cetera. Like they seem to be extremely, what's the word? Savvy, shrewd.

00:14:44.720 I mean, I admire. That's a good way to put it. Yeah. They're savvy and shrewd and they get a lot less

00:14:49.560 of the pleasure that previous generations did from sticking it to their parents.

00:14:53.960 And also they're not delusional. Yeah. Like they're, I think they're just like, well, that's.

00:14:58.560 They see their parents as people. And this is one of the things that we often advocate for the most,

00:15:02.700 which is really interesting. So among our Gen Z friends or people who were mentoring and stuff

00:15:07.320 like that, we're always like advocating to, I know you're nice to your parents, but seriously,

00:15:12.280 all of these beefs you think you have with them, you really don't have with them. I've heard all of

00:15:16.700 the terrible things you think you suffered in your childhood. They're really not that bad.

00:15:20.460 It seems like they were just trying to do what was best for you. And many of them since have like

00:15:24.480 reached back out to us and they're like, I'm really glad you encouraged me to try to patch

00:15:28.620 things up with my parents because I, I, now that I've like left the house and typically they're only

00:15:32.800 able to patch things up after they leave the house. Like I have a great relationship with them

00:15:36.180 and I recognize that they actually were trying to do what was best for me. But anyway, so all of this

00:15:41.200 is really interesting because a lot of the techniques that people have historically used to pass down

00:15:46.060 these traditions intergenerationally are just not working very well. And you as an individual

00:15:52.500 don't have the same mechanisms that you would have had historically to know if they're working very

00:15:58.540 well. So what do I mean by that? Right? So if you're looking at like transference of, let's say,

00:16:04.200 Christian values intergenerationally, I know some conservatives, I tell them this and they're like,

00:16:08.600 oh, my kids know not to, to, you know, do that or they'll be, you know, punished in some way. Right?

00:16:15.240 And it's like, well, what you're telling me is if they didn't still believe they wouldn't tell you.

00:16:21.180 Right? Because you just told me you, you were going to punish them. And, and that's a very difficult way

00:16:27.040 in this world today. Historically that worked. You could punish people into following a faith when

00:16:31.760 they had nowhere else to turn. The problem is, is that in our current society, it's very easy to leave

00:16:37.560 your parents or leave your parents' tradition once you're of age. And this, I am going to force them

00:16:42.160 with punishment. This is what happened, I think, with Ayla, for example, right? Her father, Calvinist

00:16:48.160 tradition, you know, similar to ours, tried to get her to follow the tradition with punishment. And that 1.00

00:16:53.920 just backfired spectacularly, like an atomic bomb in his face. And I think it's a very, very bad strategy

00:17:02.520 in today's environment. Yeah. Second strategy I hear people saying is, or that we would have seen

00:17:10.520 historically, is you would have had the community sort of monitor to know when they were falling from

00:17:16.560 their faith. Right? So a really important thing about intergenerational faith transfer in a historic

00:17:22.740 context is that you as a parent would get feedback if your kid didn't believe your faith. Right? Like

00:17:29.120 even me, I mean, I was clear from a young age that I did not believe in the traditional Christian

00:17:36.100 religion. And my parents, no, I do consider myself a Christian, but like a weird Christian. And most of 0.89

00:17:41.800 that has been built up since then. When I was in middle school and high school, I was one of those

00:17:46.760 hard atheist type people, you know, caught up in like the new atheist movement and stuff. The new way I

00:17:51.700 thought they were kind of, you know, pussy-ish. I didn't like them. But with the atheist movement 1.00

00:17:59.020 more generally, right? And the various offshoots, like the subgenius and stuff like that. Those are

00:18:03.160 the ones who I thought were cool. But it was known. Like this was something that was reported

00:18:08.600 to my parents. Now, my parents were not Christian either. You know, they had left the Christian faith

00:18:13.740 a long time ago. But it got all the way back to my grandparents, who were still of the Christian

00:18:19.360 group within my family, right? Like, so if you're in Texas or something like this, in middle school,

00:18:25.220 this is stuff that would have been reported to your family. That is not happening anymore.

00:18:29.600 No.

00:18:30.700 And well, because there's not these networks of people trying to ensure cultural fidelity, which

00:18:36.520 exists naturally. I mean, actually, they do exist now. They're just on the woke side.

00:18:41.520 Right. Yeah. I was going to say, if anything, teachers are helping it along these days, not

00:18:45.160 reporting it.

00:18:46.200 Well, they, I mean, they would report to the family of some, the kid said something non-woke.

00:18:50.400 They'd say, don't you know that little Jimmy is not of the dominant cultural group? He said

00:18:54.000 something non-woke. He should be punished for this. I hope he's punished at home and not 0.80

00:18:57.360 just at school. He said, blah, blah, blah. And this is not an approved fact. So, you know,

00:19:03.240 you are really working with a completely different, not an incrementally different, not a linearly

00:19:08.380 different world than, than existed when you were growing up. It is completely structurally

00:19:14.720 different. And if you try to go into it with, you know, slightly more padding around you

00:19:23.220 or something like that, you are going to be, or slightly more padding around the next generation, 0.99

00:19:28.280 they're going to be fucked. You know, this requires really intentional structuring and 0.96

00:19:36.280 rebuilding. And there's different ways you can do that. I mean, this is why we wrote the

00:19:39.280 pragmatist guide to crafting religion. This is why we've recorded the audio book for it,

00:19:42.520 everything like that. We did all of this and just, you know, if anybody wants it, if we sell

00:19:46.240 it for like 99 cents or $2 or something, like all of the money goes to charity, like, and the charity

00:19:51.920 goes to trying to create a school system to compete with a public school system, which I think most of

00:19:55.820 the people who would want the book would find compelling. But anyway, we wrote the book to try to

00:20:00.760 give you the scaffolding to augment these historic traditions, to be more resistant, to, to, you know,

00:20:10.360 go out there with your cyborg instead of your, you know, slightly beefy guy to fight this, this 0.99

00:20:16.160 horde of, of Xeno scum that's coming to erase us. But yeah. Um, what else was I going to say on this 0.99

00:20:27.060 topic of the other strategy is the one that we use. And this is something that, you know, people

00:20:32.300 ask, why do you have such a weird structure? Like, why don't you just go back to the historic

00:20:37.900 traditions of your family? Right. And we're like, those historic traditions couldn't even hold for

00:20:43.060 our parents' generation. You know, we come from the Calvinist cultural line, which is basically

00:20:48.080 extinct in the United States today. If we're going back to our ancestors, I can say it didn't work.

00:20:54.400 It didn't work. It like, just did like, like objectively it didn't work. And then they say,

00:20:59.080 well, why don't you convert to one of the other Christian traditions that you see as broadly

00:21:04.500 aligned with yours? And the answer is, is I, the ones that are most broadly aligned with ours

00:21:11.860 are the ones that have collapsed the most. Uh, so, you know, you're looking at stuff like

00:21:18.440 evangelical Protestants and stuff like that. Right. The Calvary church is, is, is my favorite.

00:21:22.860 Like if I went back, that's the iteration of, of Protestantism that I really like, but, uh, yeah,

00:21:29.280 it's, it's, it's not doing well. It's not healthy, you know, demographically if we're saying, and so

00:21:34.920 no, I'm not going to go back to a beast that I see as sick. If I can try to do something different

00:21:41.960 for my kids. And so that's why we are trying to restructure things in the spirit of our ancestral

00:21:48.880 traditions. But in the context of modernity. Yeah. Well, and in a way that it cannot be with,

00:21:55.900 with any sort of modern science be disproved, like the idea that a God is something that will

00:22:00.680 come to exist in the future, like a hundred thousand years from now, a million years from

00:22:04.600 now, our descendants, as they're still alive, would they be more like humans or more like

00:22:07.500 gods? This is what we tell our kids. And we say, who's to say they're going to relate to time the

00:22:11.040 same way you do. And they're more likely to, they might be rewarding you and watching over you for when

00:22:16.940 you do things that increase a prosperous future for humanity. We've done many other videos on this.

00:22:22.080 The one on demons that we've released recently is the one I'd suggest because we were trying to

00:22:25.460 create demons for our kids, which I really like, you got to do that. But that's why we take that path.

00:22:30.940 And that's why, and people were like, yeah, but that path is likely to fail. And again, you look at

00:22:36.580 Puritan spotting, you look at the Calvinist tradition. Yeah, but constantly reinventing our traditions is

00:22:40.940 something that Calvinists were known for historically doing. So it's just a nature of our

00:22:46.640 branch of the hardest Calvinist historically, like hardest cultural Calvinist were the ones who

00:22:53.780 constantly tried to reinvent their tradition, because that was the most Calvinist thing to do.

00:22:58.260 The ones who practice the culture in different ways were the ones who spun out the fastest.

00:23:03.380 Whereas the ones who went into it was like this weird sciency, like going through their Bible and

00:23:07.680 crossing out everything that they didn't think aligned was modern scientific data. You know,

00:23:12.300 we've been doing that since the founding of the country, right? But so I want to hear your thoughts.

00:23:17.560 Well, one question I actually wanted to ask you, because I'm not sure how important this is, but I

00:23:22.960 think it could be. How much do you think actual belief in God matters here? Like, if someone has a

00:23:31.440 really strong culture, but they were to answer this survey saying, no, I don't believe in God, but they

00:23:37.000 also happen to have a really long, strong culture, would they be mentally resilient, likely to inherit

00:23:42.760 their future, holding an intergenerationally durable culture? Or do you believe that to be

00:23:48.200 intergenerationally durable and strong and to impart a competitive advantage, you actually have to have

00:23:53.560 some kind of metaphysical faith that, that nihilists and atheists theoretically don't have?

00:24:02.760 I think the rituals alone can achieve this. So even if, if zero belief in God or a higher power or

00:24:10.260 anything like that, cause we like, despite being like technically secular, we say we're secular,

00:24:16.660 we have a metaphysical reality. We have gods. We have, we, we practice descendant worship. Like

00:24:22.260 we fall in the God category and I think it does play a role in our faith. So, so here's what I'd say,

00:24:29.640 because we have friends who fall into this category and you know, the people I'm talking

00:24:32.980 about, the ones who we know who fall into this category are what we call secular ultra Orthodox

00:24:37.580 Jews. And by that, what I mean is they are ultra Orthodox Jews in the way they dress, in the things 0.98

00:24:44.300 that they practice, in the number of kids they're having, but they do not believe in God. And we're

00:24:49.120 like, why, why all of this other stuff if you don't believe in God? And what's really funny is that the

00:24:54.920 way I'd put it is they believe in religion. They don't believe in God. They believe that all of

00:25:01.460 these religious things help their, their mental health, their kids, their family. They believe

00:25:06.940 in an intergenerationally family culture and tradition. They just don't believe in God.

00:25:11.540 They're just like, well, I don't believe the metaphysical part, but I believe in all of the

00:25:15.700 structure. And you can say, well, does this work? Well, they have tons of kids, all the ones we know

00:25:22.440 who are doing this. In fact, they have more kids than most of the actual ultra Orthodox Jews I know.

00:25:29.760 Fair. Yeah.

00:25:31.160 And I think it's because they're being so intentional about it all.

00:25:34.320 So you think, yeah, it's the intentionality, it's the structure, and it's the discipline. It's not so

00:25:38.380 much whether or not there is faith. So faith is not the core of this. The discipline and dedication

00:25:44.460 is. Well, it's another thing. It's pride in who you are and what you are passing down to your

00:25:50.740 children. So we take a lot of pride and they take a lot of pride. The reason they stay with their

00:25:56.520 traditions instead of shedding them, even though they have lost the core belief, is that they believe

00:26:03.500 and have pride that those traditions matter, that they're good for the world, that they, that they're

00:26:07.560 glad to have them. And that alone, I think does a lot to pass things on to a kid. When I am telling

00:26:15.320 my kid, and this is why I think this new iteration of Christian that I talked about earlier here is

00:26:20.820 going to do so well in the future. If I'm telling my kid, well, you need to follow all of these rules

00:26:26.340 because it's what God said to do, right? That's, that's not, that's, that apparently didn't work.

00:26:33.840 Like that's the kids who are falling out of the tradition, right?

00:26:36.240 Yeah.

00:26:36.880 Once we're staying in the tradition are the ones who, who are being told by, I don't know,

00:26:40.300 their, their communities or who have come to the conclusion themselves or by their parents.

00:26:44.160 Well, you need to follow these traditions because your life will be better if you follow these

00:26:48.160 traditions. These traditions are part of who you are and they make you a better person. You know,

00:26:54.040 take something like Lent, right? Like you can do Lent to try to, you know, glorify God,

00:27:00.280 or you can say, actually fasting is an important thing to do for my mental health and my emotional

00:27:07.260 and mental fortitude. And I will be a better person for doing it. Um, and, and that creates

00:27:14.920 a logical reason to not abandon these traditions. And it is an easy argument. You know, it's like the

00:27:19.460 larger thing is when I'm talking to Gen Z, if, if I go to them and I'm like, you should believe in God 0.99

00:27:25.840 because of traditional religious argument. These arguments are incredibly ineffective on this

00:27:31.720 generation. They have you, well, we should do another video on converting people because I think

00:27:36.920 that would be a great video. Like how, like what arguments actually work well on me as a secular

00:27:41.940 person and what arguments don't work well on me as a secular person, but, or when I was more secular,

00:27:48.460 I suppose, right? Like, like, uh, but when you go to Gen Z and instead of saying, you know,

00:27:53.280 you should believe in God for these like biblical arguments, right? Like in the historic age of,

00:27:59.580 uh, Christian apologetics, that was the way you would convert people. Now you go up to them and 0.82

00:28:03.180 you show them statistics on mental health issues, progressivism, you show them rising rates of

00:28:07.940 suicide. You show them the crazy shit that's happening in pop culture right now. And you're like, 1.00

00:28:13.660 doesn't seem to be working, does it? And this argument is actually very compelling to Gen Z.

00:28:20.000 Um, which is really interesting to me, or at least the Gen Z that's open to this sort of stuff. Like

00:28:25.240 this is the key path into that generation. And it's why it's important to, if you come from a

00:28:32.680 cultural tradition that has left most of your traditions, like, like, like actual rituals and

00:28:38.460 traditions and stuff like that, it can make sense to rebuild them for your family, whether that's

00:28:42.020 creating new holidays or reviving old holidays that bring that cultural pride and continuity into

00:28:49.580 future generations. That's, that's interesting. So you start out with a stat about belief in God,

00:28:56.540 but in the end, you're like, nah, it doesn't matter. Different kind of thing.

00:29:00.180 Well, I mean, I think that is capturing how much things have changed.

00:29:03.480 It does. Yeah. It does capture it because right now, like that, I guess that's one of the reasons

00:29:08.060 why you wrote the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion is you wanted to say that you can have a

00:29:12.780 strong religion without faith in God, but presently, quite frankly, it's not a thing. There aren't

00:29:18.940 strong religions without some kind of belief in God. So you're trying to say it's possible. You 1.00

00:29:23.600 don't think it really matters, but yeah, now it is sort of the thing that correlates. So that makes

00:29:28.280 sense. Well, I love you, Simone. I found another little, like endangered bunny out there in the

00:29:32.680 world. You know, that's, that was, well, I'm from an endangered cultural group. It's very rare

00:29:37.600 that I met someone like, you know, well, I mean, it's, it's, it's a rare to have a cultural group

00:29:44.040 that is both intellectualist and rural specialist and anti-authority is a pretty rare combination in

00:29:51.080 the world today. So it's not like it's easy for me to just piece somebody with this value set together

00:29:56.940 out from the environment. Right. And technophilic, right. Which, which, yeah, I'm just so glad to have

00:30:03.640 met you. I, it was, it was a one in a million chance and we made it work by continuing to roll

00:30:09.800 the dice. As we said somewhere in, in one of the other recent videos we did on, on persistence

00:30:15.120 is intelligence is like having higher stats on a dice roll, like getting to add a number to a dice

00:30:21.220 roll after a dice roll, whereas persistence is rolling with advantage. It's getting to roll over and

00:30:25.740 over and over again. And I appreciate that you did that and that, that I took the time to do that

00:30:30.380 because you are an amazing person. I'm just glad you exist. Even, even if you hadn't chosen to spend

00:30:36.560 your life with me, I'm just glad you were out there. So thank you.

Based Camp - December 01, 2023

Religion is Declining Faster Than You Think

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