Making Sense - Sam Harris - #12 — Leaving the Church

Today I speak with Megan Phelps-Polper, the granddaughter of the former pastor of the infamous Westboro Baptist church, Fred Phelps, about her life growing up in the church and her experience growing up as a child growing up with religious beliefs that were deeply embedded in her family's beliefs. We also discuss the recent Supreme Court ruling that made it legal for gays and lesbians to marry throughout the U.S. in the wake of the Supreme Court's recent decision allowing same-sex marriage in the United States to be legalized throughout the country, and the impact that this decision had on her family s religious beliefs and how they shaped her perception of the world and the world around her as she grew up in a church that held anti-gay protests against gay and lesbian marriage in public parks in the late 1980s and early '90s. You ve seen the signs they hold while picketing the funerals of dead soldiers holding signs that read God Hates Fags or Thank God for Dead Soldiers or "Thank God For Dead Soldiers." This is the story of how a young girl grew up with such beliefs, and how she became a witness to the power of religious belief in her own life and the lives of those around her. I hope you find our conversation as enjoyable as I did, and that you find her a highly intelligent and seemingly very reliable witness to this sort of life experience. Thank you for listening to the Making Sense Podcast, and I hope that you enjoy the making sense podcast! making sense by Sam Harris. Make sure to check out The Making Sense podcast on our newest episode of Making Sense, wherever else you get your listening pleasure, making sense. Please consider becoming a supporter of the podcast, by becoming a patron. It's made possible entirely through the support of our sponsorships, and become a patron of the service, and you'll get a better sense of what we're doing here. We don't run ads on the podcast and therefore, you'll become a supporter, too you'll be made possible by the support you're getting a better chance to access full episodes of making sense, and more of the things you're hearing about what we do in the podcast that makes sense, like the podcast making sense by the podcasting you're listening to making sense? Make sense by becoming one of us, Sam harris . You'll get to hear the first part of this conversation:

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris just a note to say that if you're hearing

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00:00:39.040 today i'll be speaking with megan phelps roper who's the granddaughter of the infamous fred phelps

00:00:51.900 who is the pastor of the infamous westboro baptist church you've seen the signs they hold while 0.97

00:00:57.420 picketing the funerals of dead soldiers signs that read god hates fags or thank god for dead soldiers 1.00

00:01:04.140 or thank god for aids megan grew up in this church as did the rest of her family most of her family 0.77

00:01:11.260 remains in it she has since left and is in a unique position to bear witness to the power of religious

00:01:19.040 belief both in her own life and in the lives of everyone she grew up with i found it a fascinating

00:01:25.420 conversation i found her a highly intelligent and seemingly very reliable witness to this sort of

00:01:32.260 life experience and i hope you find our conversation as enjoyable as i did one thing i should point out is

00:01:37.800 that it will seem highly anachronistic that we don't talk about the recent supreme court ruling that

00:01:42.840 made it legal for gays and lesbians to marry throughout the united states we actually spoke before that

00:01:48.300 ruling came down also i feel the need to apologize for the quality of the audio the more i get into

00:01:54.020 podcasting the more i am horrified by the quality of the audio i've put out previously but i assure you

00:02:00.340 eventually things will be stable on my end unfortunately this was not such an occasion i would fire my audio

00:02:06.920 engineer but then i would have to fire myself and now i give you megan phelps roper 0.96

00:02:12.640 hey megan how you doing i'm really good how are you i'm good i'm good well thank you for doing this

00:02:22.980 it's great to hear your voice and you and i were put in touch by uh graham wood the atlantic writer

00:02:29.120 and uh how did you uh cross paths with him and did he interview you for something previously or

00:02:34.640 yeah so i i was on twitter and his uh his cover story what isis really wants um was in my feed a

00:02:41.360 lot and i read it and as i was reading it i you know was hearing so many themes that were so similar

00:02:47.400 to my own upbringing i mean obviously my family uh westboro baptist church is not isis um but there's

00:02:54.740 so many aspects of the way they believe and um and things that just struck me as i was going through it

00:03:01.620 and um when i got to the end of the article i was just totally blown away and i scrolled back to the

00:03:08.180 top and i saw his name and i immediately recognized it and uh about eight years ago um i was talking to

00:03:15.920 him for i think it was we were talking about soldiers funerals it was when um not that long after the

00:03:21.160 soldiers funerals protest uh had started um at the church and we exchanged emails back then and um

00:03:29.380 so i you know found him on twitter and i was like hey i don't know if you remember me but i just read

00:03:34.740 your article and it was amazing um and then we just started talking yeah what graham thought would be

00:03:40.520 interesting in putting the two of us together is to talk about the the power of religious belief and

00:03:45.260 the role that it plays in inspiring people's behavior and you obviously have a unique perspective

00:03:51.560 on that having having the the background that you have but let's back up and talk about uh your

00:03:58.000 background itself and and what the the westboro baptist church is many people will have seen the

00:04:03.980 visuals online of of you and the rest of the um of your family i guess holding signs that say god hates 0.62

00:04:11.380 fags or i think thank god for dead soldiers is one of them so to tell me about uh westboro and 0.97

00:04:19.180 let's get into what you uh what you actually believed uh growing up right okay so um the protesting started 0.68

00:04:27.980 when i was five um and the church is uh located about half a mile from a a public park um in topeka kansas

00:04:38.260 and it was this park was known as a place where gays could go and meet and have anonymous sex and it

00:04:45.180 was something that was well known in the community and it was even listed in this nationally circulated 0.80

00:04:51.380 address book um of such places you know listings across the country um and you know one day you know a

00:04:59.920 couple years before the picketing started um my grandfather was riding through the park uh with my

00:05:06.740 older brother who was at the time about four or five maybe um they were riding their bikes and

00:05:13.520 you know my grandfather would ride ahead a little way and then circle back um and one of the times

00:05:18.780 when he was circling back he saw two men you know trying to lure my brother into the bushes and uh

00:05:26.220 you know just immediately wanted to do something about it so he started writing letters to the city

00:05:32.940 fathers and um and you know and going to city council meetings trying to get you know the part

00:05:40.440 cleaned up um i mean this was i mean it was really something that was well known there were you know

00:05:44.960 um journalists and and cops they were doing sting operations and so it was an undeniable fact so this

00:05:51.820 this was this was in what year 88 89 and this was your your father or your grandfather who had this

00:05:57.720 experience my grandfather uh yes my grandfather is fred phelps sorry and he's the one who founded

00:06:02.560 i mean who was the first pastor of the west pro baptist church was he a pastor already or he just

00:06:08.120 decided to become one at this point so he he was ordained when he was i think 16 or 17 um in utah and

00:06:17.760 he was kind of a traveling preacher um and then he ended up in topeka and you know he was preaching

00:06:23.720 at a church called the east side baptist church and um they were about to start another church on the

00:06:29.580 other side of town and uh they asked him to stay and and be the pastor so so that's how he ended up

00:06:37.440 in topeka at this church so he had this experience of which would you know spark homophobia in in many

00:06:45.360 uh predisposed to it and so he decided to start this this church what um what was he already

00:06:53.200 someone he had to have already been someone who was quite fundamentalist in his belief anyway right

00:06:59.140 or is this was this a formative moment for him so i'm sorry i should back up a little ways um so

00:07:04.340 the church actually started in 1955 so he had been a preacher for some time before this incident i'm

00:07:11.480 sorry i think i think i misunderstood what you were saying um so yeah so he and his his views over the

00:07:18.960 years had gotten you know further and further away from the mainstream um and so when this happened and

00:07:27.000 you know he spent i think it was about a year maybe more than a year um trying to get the city to do

00:07:33.320 something about it um and when he kept he eventually got thrown out of a city council meeting um for

00:07:40.040 saying that the um that the city council members were sitting around like last year's christmas trees

00:07:45.640 and uh so they threw him out and he said okay well i'm gonna do something about this myself so that's

00:07:50.760 when the picketing actually started and just relatively innocuous signs like you know watch 0.76

00:07:55.960 your kids gays troll this park you know gays are in the restrooms and you know things like that um 0.96

00:08:02.440 and the the response you know from the community other churches uh started coming out to counter 0.98

00:08:08.440 protests saying things like god's love speaks loudest there was a huge contingent of of protesters uh

00:08:15.640 from our counter protesters from you know ku which is about half an hour away from the church um and

00:08:23.480 so yeah and it started you know he there wasn't really wasn't much about god initially but then when

00:08:30.280 you know these when these churches started to counter protest they were like well you know the bible

00:08:34.040 does say things about gays and it's not good and we are a church and we have to it we have to address

00:08:40.040 this issue um so that's that's how it initially got started and then over the years it just got

00:08:47.640 more and more extreme so first you know gays were the target and then it was churches for supporting 0.98

00:08:54.440 gays and otherwise you know not following what the what my grandfather and the church members believed 0.77

00:09:00.840 um they weren't following what the bible said not just about gays but about you know premarital sex

00:09:06.360 and divorce and remarriage and adultery and you know so um and then pretty quickly

00:09:14.920 um the funeral protesting started um i think it was 93 so this this was all in um 91 is actually when

00:09:21.720 the protesting started so i think 93 they were protesting um uh funerals of uh gay people who had died of

00:09:31.160 AIDS um and it was um partly an attention getting mechanism but it was never it was never just to

00:09:40.360 get attention uh i remember and this is something that a lot of people you know have charged the

00:09:45.160 church with yes they're not really christian they don't really they don't really follow the bible

00:09:49.080 here look they ignore this verse and this verse and but uh there was i remember listening to my

00:09:55.720 grandfather uh in an interview a few years ago and the reporter said some people say that you're just 0.98

00:10:02.360 doing these things to get attention and he kind of looked at her like she was crazy or stupid and said 0.91

00:10:09.480 well of course i'm doing it to get attention how can i preach to these people if i don't have their 0.98

00:10:14.920 attention um so there was always a reason and a purpose for the protests themselves um but to get

00:10:23.560 attention for them and to get attention for the message um was always the primary goal the charge

00:10:29.960 that things are done just to get attention usually carries with it the the insinuation that people

00:10:36.360 don't really believe what they say they believe that these these expressions of of hatred are just

00:10:43.320 meant to be inflammatory but aren't necessarily an honest statement of one's outlook was there any

00:10:50.680 distance between what you and the rest of the family believed and what you were saying publicly

00:10:56.200 or is it were you just simply giving voice to to your actual worldview no we were just giving voice

00:11:01.960 to our actual worldview i mean my family uh didn't come to the table with hatred for lgbt people

00:11:09.480 uh and then and then look to the bible to justify that hatred which is a common charge

00:11:14.840 um they read if a man also lie with mankind as he lieth with a woman both of them have

00:11:20.280 committed abomination they shall surely be put to death their blood shall be upon them 0.99

00:11:24.200 and walked away from that with and you know not just that verse but lots of other ones 1.00

00:11:29.240 they walked away from that with god hates fags and supporting the death penalty for gays and to 1.00

00:11:35.160 categorically deny a connection between those words from leviticus and our beliefs to say that we read 0.99

00:11:41.800 into the text what we wanted to see is is i think to be blind to the nearly all-encompassing power of that

00:11:49.720 sort of blinding faith and it's it's that's why it was such almost a relief um to read in graham

00:11:59.080 wood's article um to say that isis is islamic very islamic you know it's it's not a matter of isis

00:12:08.280 being representative of you know muslims as a whole it's a matter of them drawing inspiration from the text

00:12:16.760 yeah yeah and the church and your grandfather sometimes mentioned in this connection so so

00:12:23.480 what i find uh as someone who criticizes the link between religious belief in this case

00:12:29.400 muslim jihadist ideas and a phenomenon like isis i find that that people who don't like that connection

00:12:38.200 very much will say well we have our extremists we have the westboro baptist church now

00:12:42.840 uh it's always a frustrating thing to hear as though what your family has done is in any way

00:12:49.720 analogous to what is happening throughout much of the muslim world and in particular in syria and iraq

00:12:55.800 right now but you are your family's church is often held out as the most extreme variant of christianity

00:13:06.040 in in in the west and in particular in the u.s i'm wondering if that's true i actually don't i'd like

00:13:12.280 to just find out precisely what you believed on other topics but it's it's clear that that this

00:13:20.280 attention-getting mechanism of standing out there with signs is uh has convinced many people that

00:13:26.680 you're extreme but are are you part of the reconstructionist or dominionist movement that wants

00:13:32.680 all of the old laws in in leviticus and deuteronomy practiced i mean do you do you think that homosexuals 0.97

00:13:39.880 should be killed or adulterers should be killed because there are christians in the u.s who claim 0.94

00:13:44.920 to believe that and and is your grandfather among them uh yes um not they're not trying to re-institute 0.99

00:13:51.960 all of the levitical code the mosaic code um they think that they um there's two categories according to

00:13:59.160 the church um there's the ceremonial law which is things like the dietary code and uh and then

00:14:05.160 there's the the moral law which is things like uh you know laws against murder and against homosexuality

00:14:10.760 and against adultery um so if they're they're only trying to uphold the moral the moral law um

00:14:19.160 and but that this was actually one of the one of the things that um i've you know that eventually

00:14:26.520 helped me to see outside of our paradigm because my grandfather would say things like um that the

00:14:34.360 only way for the united states to show that they have truly repented of the sin of homosexuality 0.99

00:14:40.920 is uh for them to institute the death penalty for homosexuality make it a capital crime and we had a 0.99

00:14:48.440 we had a sign that said death penalty for fags yeah so the comparison to isis is somewhat more 0.99

00:14:54.920 reasonable than i first thought it's not that obviously you've been running around killing 0.98

00:14:59.400 people or your your church has it's but you're advocating a true commitment to sort of taliban style

00:15:09.080 theocracy uh or isis style theocracy so what what are what are other killing offenses what would you

00:15:14.760 what else would you pull out of or what else would your grandfather pull out of leviticus as as

00:15:19.880 actionable i might say adultery but we never this was one again this was one of the things that that

00:15:25.320 um that let me let me back up one second um so i had um okay for one they're not actually trying

00:15:34.680 to institute a theocracy they don't believe that that the united states they believe that the world is

00:15:40.520 going to end and that only a tiny remnant of of um humanity which is to say the church itself and but

00:15:50.520 only the the true uh the elect of god um so they're not trying to actually change the laws they're not

00:15:59.400 actually trying to make anything happen with the government they don't believe it's possible and so

00:16:04.520 it's not something that they pursue right um uh but um but that that question about death penalty for

00:16:13.880 bags this was that was the very first point um the very first real question that i had about our

00:16:20.520 theology when i say question i mean doubt the first thing i realized that we were wrong about um and it

00:16:26.520 came from a conversation with a jewish guy on twitter um it was really um i mean i'm advocating for the

00:16:33.480 death penalty for gays and he you know and i'm quoting these verses from leviticus and you know and he 0.98

00:16:40.040 says um well what about this member of your church who had a child out of wedlock and and i said you 0.91

00:16:48.120 know what about her she repented so she doesn't deserve that punishment um and he said says yeah but 0.97

00:16:55.160 that that's also a sin worthy of death and you know if um and also didn't jesus say let he who is without

00:17:02.040 sin cast the first stone um and so this is the first time you know stepping back from that and

00:17:09.160 realizing you know if she had been killed you know just as if you kill someone as soon as they sin you

00:17:16.360 completely cut off the opportunity to repent and be forgiven which is a major foundation of christian

00:17:21.880 theology this is this is what we were preaching repent or perish you have you have to repent and follow

00:17:27.720 god's laws and live as we live and that's the only way to heaven and then for him to say that you know

00:17:33.960 quoting jesus let he who is without sin cast the first stone i i realized because we would always

00:17:40.360 answer that that quote because people would throw that in our face all the time we would answer that

00:17:45.160 by saying yeah but we're not we're not casting stones we're preaching words all we have are words we

00:17:51.720 put words on signs and we stand on public sidewalks we're not hurting anybody

00:17:54.840 uh but we were advocating for the government to kill people and what was jesus talking about that

00:18:00.840 you know about there if not um if not the death penalty so you know i take that to you know my

00:18:08.760 mom and a few other people in the church and was just immediately shut down it's like no leviticus

00:18:14.360 calls for the death penalty if that penalty was good enough for god then it's good enough for us 0.97

00:18:18.680 romans 1 says that gays are worthy of death and so are their enablers no so what did your mom 0.99

00:18:24.920 say about the analogy to the other member of your family who had had a child out of wedlock 0.99

00:18:29.240 it just that it that i was getting wrapped around an axle like oh this is just it's just not this

00:18:34.200 an important piece of theology or or that that the point is they're not going to do it that's what she

00:18:40.040 said and and i remember thinking like well yeah but if we're going to use this as a litmus test

00:18:47.000 the fact that you know instituting death penalty since jesus said let he who is without sin cast the

00:18:52.840 first stone shouldn't the litmus test be the other direction shouldn't the fact that we don't do that

00:18:57.960 be you know showing that we're obedient to god and and such so one thing that i think we should flag

00:19:04.360 here is that it's often believed on the the atheist secularist rationalist side of the conversation that

00:19:13.400 you just can't reason people out of their heartfelt religious convictions because there's this this

00:19:19.720 meme that has gone around uh often attributed to to someone like mark twain i don't know actually i

00:19:25.800 don't know who actually said it but the idea is that if you can't reason somebody out of something

00:19:30.360 they didn't reason themselves into and but it's clearly not true and and anyone who's actually been

00:19:36.520 in in dialogue with with many people like yourself over the years knows it's not true is your effort

00:19:43.880 to make your beliefs self-consistent and this person on twitter pointing out a contra a logical

00:19:49.960 contradiction in your beliefs was an entering wedge for you which ultimately separated you from

00:19:58.520 from these ideas that had been drummed into you so i want to get into what you what you now believe in

00:20:03.480 a minute but i want to linger for a moment on on just what the church doctrine is in a church like

00:20:09.960 westboro how do you resist the move that many many christian denominations make which is to disavow

00:20:19.080 more or less everything in the old testament because it no longer applies you don't have to fulfill the

00:20:23.800 law that jesus gave a doctrine of grace and and none of that old barbarism applies what why why

00:20:30.680 wasn't that move open to you and your family because we believed that the i mean there are a

00:20:36.440 lot of verses in the new testament a lot of passages and and writers in the new testament who reference

00:20:41.160 the old testament um as you know a basis and foundation for their doctrines um and sort of

00:20:48.360 reinforcing them and you know jesus himself said um that not one heaven and earth will pass away but not

00:20:55.320 one jot or tittle of my word will pass away until all is fulfilled so yeah there is that yeah we

00:21:02.200 definitely didn't disavow um the old testament and the only reason that distinction i was explaining a

00:21:07.560 minute ago about the difference the distinction between the ceremonial law and the moral law the

00:21:12.040 reason they don't you know keep kosher or something is because of a new testament passage that specifically

00:21:18.360 sort of revises um it's in um acts 10 and 11 talks about uh you know peter is having a vision and you

00:21:27.400 know god sends this sheet down with all these animals that are were unclean under the mosaic code

00:21:32.760 and god says rise peter kill and eat and peter says not so lord for no unclean thing is past my lips

00:21:40.120 and this happens three times and god finally says don't you call unclean what i've cleansed so it's

00:21:48.200 like okay this is now now this um it's it's not no longer required to to keep kosher or to follow

00:21:56.440 these and and there are several other passages in the new testament that that specify which of the laws

00:22:01.560 you have to you have to follow but so we definitely took a lot of our a lot of our doctrine and a lot of

00:22:08.680 our um a lot of our beliefs from the old testament it doesn't help that paul also endorses the

00:22:15.640 the at least the morality of killing homosexuals i think it's in ephesians although i think he also

00:22:23.320 says that it doesn't have to be carried out isn't that isn't that how things shake down with paul i

00:22:28.600 don't know i'm not sure about that passage you're referring to in ephesians um but i do know that i mean

00:22:33.640 we memorized romans we memorized a lot of a lot of the bible but we memorized romans one one summer um

00:22:39.720 and the end of romans one um you know it's basically starting from verse 18 towards the end um you know

00:22:47.560 it's it's talking about gay people um and then uh at the end it says that um don't you know that they

00:22:55.640 which commit such things are worthy of death not only those which do the same but have pleasure in them 0.94

00:23:00.920 that do them that that really is always the issue that the a more literalist hewing to the text has a

00:23:10.360 kind of self-consistency and power even when even when the text is as the bible is rather amazingly

00:23:18.120 inconsistent it the effort to connect the dots the effort to make it as consistent as possible

00:23:23.800 keeps you as wedded as possible to a first century or a thousand year bc uh moral code depending on

00:23:34.920 on what you're emphasizing uh so it's yeah it really is always the issue i'm walking into here where the

00:23:41.160 the theology is really on the side of the literalist when it when it comes down to an argument about what the

00:23:48.920 books actually say and because any effort to make them seem merely metaphorical or more elastic than

00:23:57.640 than any plain reading of the text would suggest that effort itself is clearly being driven not from

00:24:03.320 some imperative that that the reader is finding in the in the text but an imperative that's coming

00:24:08.360 from outside the text from the world of that's filled with libertines who want other things out of

00:24:13.800 life they would they that you have a different set of priorities that have come from from a modern

00:24:19.400 secular scientific cosmopolitan commitment and then you go back to the text trying to make sense of

00:24:26.760 of its uh sacredness and you and the the deck is is stacked against you if you're a moderate or a liberal

00:24:34.520 right i mean i think the difference in the and and graham talks about this a little bit i think um

00:24:40.760 um and there there's a difference there's there's different kinds of belief there's belief like my

00:24:45.880 family and i that i believe um at least you know some percentage of isis is um in similar groups um

00:24:55.160 and those are people who who read the text and you know like you said the plain meaning of the text so

00:25:02.520 and whatever whatever they take away from that plain reading like that is what it says and there is no

00:25:09.000 interpretation and that that that um idea about there not being any interpretation that's another

00:25:14.680 thing that um was so similar i don't know if you read the um in the new yorker there was a story

00:25:19.720 recently called journey to jihad and again with this you know all these similarities um and that that one

00:25:26.040 was one of the first ones says um the leader of one of these you know groups it was called sharia for

00:25:32.440 belgium um asked this perspective recruit if he was prepared to learn the quran without any distortion

00:25:40.040 or editing or interpretation it's like okay you just read the text and it it means what it means and

00:25:45.160 and you have to go along with it no matter what your moral impulses would say otherwise um

00:25:52.600 and and then there are people who who read it and who aren't there's a willingness when they read it

00:25:58.360 to to you know include their own thoughts of you know ex like you said things outside the text their

00:26:06.360 own beliefs and understanding of the world you know that obviously influences the way that they read it

00:26:12.360 um or that they're trying to you know read it in light of beliefs that they already have and my family

00:26:19.560 saw that as as explicitly evil like you are substituting your judgment for god's judgment when clearly

00:26:26.840 the book says this and we would we would quote the bible we met like i said we we would sit around

00:26:33.480 we read the bible every single day we talked about world events and the church's interpretation um

00:26:40.840 in the light of the church's interpretation of the bible and we would memorize big parts of it and we

00:26:46.040 would be standing out on the picket line you know talking with people and just quoting verse after verse

00:26:51.960 and so many people and i'm not saying everyone is like this but so many of the people we

00:26:56.680 were talking to had no idea that the bible said these things right i mean and so it's it's it's a

00:27:04.280 very um and again this is one of those things i mean i was reading um resa aslan um said something like

00:27:12.120 if i were to um he was talking about you and bill maher and he says like they believe that people derive

00:27:19.000 their values from their religion that as every scholar of religion in the world will tell you is

00:27:24.760 false people don't derive their values from their religion they bring their values to their religion

00:27:29.720 and i can just say flat out that's exactly the reverse of of what happened to my family

00:27:36.360 my family if without these you know these texts they would be doing amazing incredible things that

00:27:44.520 would change the world for the better i mean my family is full of lawyers there and you know

00:27:49.880 professionals and they work hard and they're incredibly intelligent they have advanced degrees

00:27:54.520 and and incredibly it can be incredibly kind and generous and that's one of the things you know

00:28:00.760 when you're there when you're part of it that shows you the goodness of like see so much of this

00:28:07.560 stuff comes directly from the scriptures and it's so good and so wonderful and it's such a an amazing

00:28:12.680 thing to be a part of um and yet because they have to set aside again their own moral impulses uh and

00:28:23.400 accept this you know this reading of the text as they understand it because they believe it's the word of

00:28:28.600 god they are left with you know picketing funerals and you know causing all sorts of causing all sorts of

00:28:36.280 trouble and and heartache for people yeah uh well none of that is a surprise to me of course and um i i think

00:28:44.280 the same is true even amid um all the the the grotesque violence you see in isis uh you know you

00:28:54.040 see these guys these are these are not depressed suicidal psychopaths who just want to destroy their

00:29:00.600 lives and go out with a bang these are people who are deriving incredible experiences of meaning and

00:29:08.600 highly energized uh passionate experiences of bonding with with their their brothers in arms and

00:29:16.520 they just have no doubt that what they're doing is morally right and that that the creator of the

00:29:21.880 universe is going to reward them for doing it and so it's not to to hear that you that your family

00:29:27.320 uh was experiencing and and probably still is experiencing a a rich life in the context of

00:29:34.760 these beliefs doesn't surprise me at all what is it about explain the the picketing of funerals

00:29:41.400 in particular the funerals of soldiers what what is that about and and what is the um the sign thank

00:29:47.640 god for dead soldiers mean soldiers funerals the picketing started in uh june of 2005 um so it was a

00:29:55.800 couple years into the war uh and they were seen if you'd like to continue listening to this

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00:30:26.440 um

00:30:43.720 uh

00:30:44.200 you

Making Sense - Sam Harris - July 03, 2015

#12 — Leaving the Church

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