#31 — Evolving Minds
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Summary
Jonathon Haidt joins me to talk about his new book, The Happiness Hypothesis and The Righteous Mind, and how he and I have collided with one another on a number of occasions, and this conversation could have gone either way. It's a high-wire act, a high wire act, but it's a necessary one, and I think you'll agree that it's worth the risk to have a conversation with someone who's been critical of us for a long time. In this episode, we talk about our disagreements, and why we should talk to one another even if we disagree on things we agree on. We also talk about why we need to talk to people who disagree with us, and what we can learn from each other about how we can make better decisions about what we should and shouldn't talk about in public. If you like what we're doing here, please consider becoming a supporter of the podcast by becoming a subscriber. We don't run ads on the podcast and therefore, therefore, it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers, and therefore you'll benefit entirely from the support we're making possible by the support from our listeners. Thanks to our listeners, and we'd like to thank you for all the support you're giving us a chance to make a difference in the making sense of the world. Make sense of it all by listening to the podcast. -Sam Harris Please consider becoming one of us, becoming a patron of Making Sense Podcasts, and/or sharing the podcast on your social media platforms, and helping us spread the word out there to the world, and beyond. Thank you, and thank you, again and again, for helping us make the world a better place to reach more people who can make sense of things they're listening to things they care about things they can do more of the things we can do better, better, and more of a better, more of them, like us all of us making sense, more like us. . -Jonah Jonathan Sam (The Righteous mind? The Happy Hypothetter - The Happiness Theory and The Happy Mind? - The Happiness and The Goodeous Mind? - The Good Thing? The Good Place? -- The Goodness That We Can Talk About It? (Aristotle, The Good Life, The Badger's Good Life? ) and more!
Transcript
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And so here I reached out to Jonathan Haidt, who is a professor of ethical leadership at
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Many of you know his work, and taught at UVA for many years.
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And he's the author of The Happiness Hypothesis and The Righteous Mind.
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He and I have collided with one another on a number of occasions, and this conversation
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I was not surprised that it was as successful as it was.
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But it was a risk, like many of these things are, and this one paid off.
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We come out of a history of strong and even ad hominem criticism of one another, and we
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Well, listen, before we get into topics about which we agree, and there are a lot of them,
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let's start with areas of disagreement, because we've had a few past controversies, which I
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So many of our listeners will know who you are, because you've done extremely influential
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work in psychology and have covered many topics that are really just of enormous importance
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But many might not know the history of our bickering in public.
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So you've been among the prominent critics of the so-called new atheists who have gone
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after Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and Dan Dennett and me for what we've said
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And you spent less time on Hitch because he didn't claim to be representing science.
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So you've criticized me in the past and in ways that I thought were pretty wrongheaded.
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And I push back fairly hard against this in ways that may have bordered on incivility at
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And so the way things were left, I don't think either of us would have tended to see
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So I mean, I find this interesting just as a social phenomenon.
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I find it intellectually quite consequential that people stop talking to one another after
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And more and more, I've been attempting to engage people with whom I've had a strong disagreement
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on important topics just to see if conversation is possible.
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And I should just point out to you and to our listeners who will know that this doesn't
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I had one podcast that I didn't even release because it went so badly.
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And I had one that I released recently and probably shouldn't have because it just seemed
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to do nothing more than increase the sum total of frustration in the universe.
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It was just people found it excruciating to listen to.
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And I've had very mixed success doing this in writing.
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The most memorable failure being that I attempted to engage Noam Chomsky and that project just
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So, you know, we don't need to spend a lot of time rehearsing our past skirmishes, but
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I just want to, and we can just discover what we disagree about now as the topics come up.
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But I just want our listeners to know that this history exists and it was fairly acrimonious.
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And they should just appreciate that you and I are doing a bit of a high wire act just having
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this conversation because most people with our history just actually don't willingly talk to each
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other in these ways. And so, again, my underlying aim is to demonstrate that two people can
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have a fairly inauspicious beginning and then successfully communicate and make intellectual
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And actually, you know, in preparing for this call, I was looking back over our past conflicts
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and, you know, looking at it as a psychologist who studies morality and moral disagreement,
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I actually think it's kind of revealing the way this all worked.
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So, you know, initially, as far as I can tell, the first salvo was when I wrote that essay
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And, you know, I don't think that I was uncivil there, although it was within the bounds of
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I think you and I both agree that intellectual discourse should not be a safe zone.
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Um, and then you, uh, you wrote back and, and from my point of view, um, it was when
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you, you were comparing, you were, uh, saying my ideas would basically, you know, justify
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or lead to Aztec human sacrifice and, and all these other horrible things.
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And okay, you know, that too is within, within the bounds.
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So, so we're sort of up against the edge there, but that's sort of normal.
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Then if I remember the timing, it was like right after that, that we first met face to
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Um, and there too, um, if I remember there, I think you said like my beliefs would lead
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So again, well, not so, I don't, I don't think I would have ever said that it would lead to,
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but just that you would be hard pressed to say what was wrong with those systems by your
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I mean, so it may be a distinction without a difference in your mind, but it's, it's a
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But the point is just that from, you know, the way it felt to me was no matter what I say,
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you will, you will link me somehow to, uh, you know, North Korea or something like that.
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Um, but the point is that I felt that you had a particular rhetorical style, which was
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You were writing for a popular audience about a very hot topic, but I felt like, Hey, Sam's
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And then when you wrote a book on morality, um, in which again, you were critical of me
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Um, and, but it was like, uh, okay, you had another provocation.
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And then when you came out with the moral landscape challenge and you were saying, if anyone can
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pay me, if anyone can convince me to change my mind, I'll pay him $10,000.
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Um, and so then I wrote that, the essay, why Sam Harris is unlikely to change his mind.
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And for the most part, as I was just reading that over, I think it's, you know, it's a
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perfectly legitimate statement of my research and how my research leads me to believe that
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The thing though, is that clearly was a kind of a jerk move on my part, um, was I think
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throwing, you know, I analyze, so for listeners who don't know this, uh, this story, this debate,
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um, I analyzed Sam's, uh, your books, I analyzed your books and a bunch of other books.
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And I found that according to this program, Luke, that counts words like always and never
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in a category of certainty, uh, that you came out as the most certain person, uh, even more
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so than Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and all those guys.
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Well, but it did give me a chance to respond to that, which I still am to, uh, pat my own
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I still am amused by my response to that, where I used every one of your keywords in a paragraph,
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which was a, on its face, a statement of total intellectual humility and openness to
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But it in fact used all your certainty terms in the same paragraph.
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And so look, Sam, so in fact, that kind of points to a similarity between us, which is that
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That was a, you know, my thing was a very clever thing.
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Your response where you used all those, all those words, you know, was, you know, we were
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Um, and you know, when smart Alex come up against each other, uh, the audience is in for a treat,
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Well, but not to trivialize what we're doing here, because I think these issues are hugely
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And I think our, our disagreements are important.
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And I think our misunderstanding one another is important.
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And just to talk a little bit more about the genesis of this thing, which it occurs to
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me now, I never really thought about this as we were sparring about these issues, but
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And, and, you know, correct me if this seems crazy, but so your field is social psychology,
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where you've said that upwards of 95% of people are liberal and usually strongly liberal.
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So you've been surrounded by people who consider political conservatism to be a form of mental
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And you've pushed back against this in ways that have been extremely important and really
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And you and I are going to agree about many of the points you've raised against liberals.
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We both have really come up against political correctness.
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So you've been, so you've been fighting from that trench for a while.
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And then when you saw the so-called new atheists, which are just a gang of liberal intellectuals,
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initiate this frontal assault on religion and arguing that it's not only false, but dangerous.
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And in my case, hearing me say that science will eventually replace religion on questions
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I think you viewed this as yet another example of left-leaning secularists who are totally out
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of touch with the lived experience of religious people doing what left-leaning academics often
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do to social conservatives, which is dismiss them as morally and intellectually defective.
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So, I mean, so forgive me for psychoanalyzing you, but it's just, it seems to me that this,
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from my point of view, has caused you to be too hostile to our criticism of religion
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and to actually misunderstand it in important ways.
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And it's also made you too soft on religion in ways that can't be scientifically justified.
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And because you believe you're correcting for a harmful bias in the scientific community,
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and you have been with respect to the political divide between liberals and conservatives.
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But I would argue that viewing the new atheist attack on religion through that lens has caused
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And at the very least, I feel like you've misread me.
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Yeah, I don't think that I perceive you guys as a bunch of far-left people.
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So, while there is some truth to what you say, I think it's not so much left-right as
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That really, I think, is the heart, that sort of the scientific nub of the difference between
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us is what do we each believe is the nature of human rationality and the reliability of human
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And you have a much stronger belief that individual reason can lead to reliable conclusions than
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So, would you agree with me that that is a fundamental, factual difference between us?
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But yes, I think that is a difference between us to some degree, although you'll find me taking
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most of your points about what people descriptively do under the aegis of reasoning morally or
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attempting to justify or argue for their moral positions.
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But let's just focus on religion for a second, and we'll get to the foundations of morality
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So, religion, as you've pointed out, is more than just a set of beliefs.
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And you've argued against me as though I have disputed that, which I actually haven't.
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So, I just wanted to track through a few of the things you say in your book and then talk
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So, you say in your book, The Righteous Mind, that trying to, this is a quote, trying to
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understand the persistence and passion of religion by studying beliefs about God is
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like trying to understand the persistence and passion of college football by studying the
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So, now, I think that analogy isn't quite right, but I actually agree with your general
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Religion is obviously more than what people believe.
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And yet, I think it's totally coherent and, in fact, necessary to worry about the specific
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And so, let me just reform your analogy a little bit and get you to react to it.
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So, because I think it's somewhat, to stick with your analogy, it's a little bit more like
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asking the question, why are people on each team always tending to run in one direction?
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I mean, so, if you see them running sideways or even backwards for a few moments, it's always
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with the purpose to get the ball to the other end of the field.
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So, what is so special about the ends of the field that everyone wants to get there?
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And to explain that, you have to understand the rules of the game.
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In particular, you have to understand what a touchdown is.
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But once you know that, more or less everything these people are doing is easy to understand.
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And again, there's more to, I mean, there's all the people out, you know, having tailgate
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But to understand what the most energized participants are doing in this situation, all you really need
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to know is what they want and what they believe will get them what they want.
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And so, I would argue that this is true for the most destructive behavior and moral attitudes
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So, when you ask yourself, you know, why is ISIS throwing gay people off of rooftops?
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Now, in this case, the specific injunctions in the Hadith is not in the Quran, but it's part
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And, I mean, you can say anything you want about religion being more than just beliefs and
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doctrines, and you can talk about doing and belonging, which you do, in addition to belief
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And you can talk about the power of ritual and strong communities and the importance
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of transcendence, which is something that interests me.
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And I agree about all these things being interesting.
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But if you want to explain the behavior of ISIS, all you really have to know are the rules
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And if their rulebook changed slightly, let's say their rulebook on this point said, don't
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Simply force them to recite the Quran for 12 hours a day and actually create a special
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cast of priests that there's homosexuals who just chant from the Quran and who are otherwise
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I think we can be absolutely sure that this is what they would be doing.
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In fact, there are analogous behaviors in other religions in human history.
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So this is why I think specific doctrines matter.
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And that no one, I mean, so you're going to talk about the intuitive roots of many of these
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things, but no one has an intuition that they should throw gays off of rooftops specifically,
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or eat a cracker every Sunday and call it the body of Jesus, or oppose embryonic stem cell
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And in fact, ISIS wouldn't even oppose embryonic stem cell research, and the Catholic Church
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And this is why the specific doctrines matter so much.
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Okay, so I will certainly grant that specific doctrines matter, and that I think your thought
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If there was a specific verse, and especially if it appeared in multiple places, that said,
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here's how you treat homosexuals, you know, then they would treat them differently.
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But first, to understand your analogy, you tell me, what is the end zone?
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What is the thing they're all striving for to get when you use this end zone analogy?
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Well, if you're talking about the real players, the real believers who are devoting their lives
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fully to this, the end zone is paradise and avoiding hell.
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It's living by the, playing by this rule book, playing this game, advancing the ball down the
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field is ensuring that after death, you will spend eternity in paradise and escape hell.
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Okay, so I think this is one of the differences between us, is that I am opposed to the pursuit
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I think that the social science, human nature and the social science are so complex, and
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especially if you look at morality or religion.
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So anytime someone says, the goal of religion ultimately is to attain paradise, or the goal
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of religion ultimately is to have a sense of meaning, or even closer to what I say, if
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you were to say the goal of religion is ultimately social bonding and connection, well, those are
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I was talking about the, what we would call the extreme committed, you know, death cult
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Now there's analogous cults in, in other traditions, but I'm not saying that all religious people
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in every denomination of every level of commitment, that their main goal is paradise.
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Some, you know, some, you know, Unitarians don't necessarily even believe in heaven, right?
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Okay, yeah, so I can certainly grant your point that beliefs do matter, and I hope I
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never said that they don't, but I think I would still claim that your analysis here
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And so, and this was, you know, my main criticism, my main concern about your writings on religion
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was I felt like, sometimes felt like you were writing, you know, your two religion books.
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I felt like you were writing those mostly with the Bible and the Quran and the New York Times
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And you were sort of saying, okay, well, look at this verse, or look at this event that
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happened, and then just trying to make sense of it yourself.
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And I was thinking of it much more both from a kind of a Durkheimian point of view, or a,
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But I don't believe you could understand them by just by reading the Quran and saying,
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oh, the Quran says this, that this is why ISIS is doing it.
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The motives of humiliation, geopolitical, I mean, I don't know what's going on, but
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But this is, I mean, the issue is that this is how they understand themselves.
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And now here, I'm not just speaking about ISIS, I'm just speaking about religious fundamentalists
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When you ask them how they understand what they're doing, if you ask them why homosexuality is an
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anathema, for instance, they have a scriptural justification for it.
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And it does explain the belief and subsequent behavior, and where in certain cases, nothing
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I mean, so we might, it might be relatively easy to come up with other non-scriptural reasons
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to be uncomfortable around the phenomenon of homosexuality.
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I mean, it gets into your kind of moral intuitions, the moral foundations theory.
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But for many of these things, the only way this idea could ever get into someone's head
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is based on the tradition and the explicit teaching on a specific point.
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And so let's make a distinction that I think will be very helpful here, which is between
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So if we're talking about fundamentalist movements, then you and I are going to agree much more,
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And so if we live in a diverse society, if we live in a society, or if we value progress
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and open debate of ideas and challenging each other and the things we need for the sciences,
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then fundamentalism is incompatible with all of those things.
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Christian fundamentalism, Islamic fundamentalism, I would say politically correct fundamentalism
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I think you and I both personally dislike fundamentalists, the fundamentalist mindset,
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I mean, the fundamentalist mindset is opposed to values that you and I both hold as individuals
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So there, I think there's not as much disagreement between us.
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But then if you say, what about non-fundamentalist?
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That's where I think you're much more negative than I am about people who are religious but not
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Well, yeah, I'm more negative in the sense that I feel like they make, one, honest talk
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about the problem of fundamentalism much more difficult because they don't want anything
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too critical said about their holy books or about a tradition of venerating the concept
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I think we're, I think revelation is a problem here.
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The idea that one of our books was not the product of the human mind but the product of
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omniscience, that already just deranges our intellectual and moral discourse really beyond
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saving and we have to get out of that part of the religion business.
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And so that insofar as moderates and liberals do, well, then my only real concern is that,
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One is they tend to not be intellectually honest about the process whereby they have become
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So they pretend that there's something in the tradition, in the books, that has been
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But no, when you go back to the books, they're every bit as theocratic as they always were.
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What's happened is that they have collided with a wider set of values, secular values and
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scientific insights and progress, and they have found being doctrinaire and dogmatic is
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They can no longer justify it, but they're not really honest about just how that winnowing
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And they tend to give credit to the resources of the tradition, whereas really it's the resources
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of a much larger conversation that human beings have had.
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Sure. So if you want to say that people are adopting positions and then searching for a
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justification and looking for some sort of textual justification of what they've decided
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That's the core of my research is that that's what a lot of our moral argument and justification
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And so you do one, I just want to go back to your book briefly. You do one thing in your
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book, which I, it's pretty clearly an area where we disagree. I don't think we need to
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go into it any real depth because it may be a little too hard to parse here in a podcast,
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but I think we should just flag it because it is one, I think it's also one reason why
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you think I and Richard Dawkins and others have been too hard on religion. And it's this notion
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that religion has provided an evolutionary benefit to us.
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Is it an adaptation or a byproduct? You're right. That is the other core factual or scientific
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Right. So I just want to introduce this, this concept of group selection to those who don't
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know anything about it, and then we can table it probably. But so you defend this notion of,
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of group selection and specifically the idea that, that religion has helped certain groups
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survive and perhaps a lack of religion has caused others to fail. And you think that this mechanism
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hasn't just been cultural, but that it's also been biological. And so this, this idea of group
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selection, which obviously relates to much more than just religion, this is very controversial in
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biology. And, and, you know, its main champion who you do side with here is someone named David Sloan
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Wilson, who interestingly, he's also attacked the new atheists with a level of energy that I never
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quite understood. So I should just point out that there are many biologists, and I would think
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still most, as far as I can take the temperature on the whole field, disagree with, with this idea
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of group selection. And so if our listeners are interested in it, I think the best summary of
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the reasons to doubt that group selection occurs was written by, by our mutual friend, Steven Pinker,
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and the title is The False Allure of Group Selection. And that can be found on edge.org.
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So yeah, so that is what the debate comes down to, is if, you know, is religion a product of
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evolution? Is it an adaptation? In which case, that doesn't mean it's still adaptive today,
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but it would mean that it conferred some benefit. The really exciting idea that so captivated me when
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I first read Dawkins in college was, wow, what if it's like a virus? What if there, it's just,
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it's taken advantage of the hardware up there and it's exploiting it for its purposes. And of course,
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Dawkins and Dennett are, you know, are really explicit about that. It's a really cool idea.
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And I used to believe it. And that was the prevailing wisdom. You know, Dawkins' book,
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The Selfish Gene, was an incredibly powerful book and a testament to the power of good writing,
00:23:34.160
to be persuasive. So the state of the art in the 70s and 80s was, as you say, that most biologists
00:23:39.220
doubted it. In fact, almost all did. Group selection was dismissed because there wasn't
00:23:43.940
any way to solve the free rider problem. If groups were to cooperate for the benefit of the
00:23:48.040
group, any free rider within the group would get extra benefit and the genes for free riding would
00:23:52.600
spread. And so the topic was put aside and David Sloan Wilson was seen as alone crazy. But a lot has
00:23:58.480
changed since then. So right around that time, the whole idea of major transitions in evolution was
00:24:03.440
being formulated. And there are many other examples of agents that were functioning at an individual
00:24:10.520
level, competing with each other, coming together to be more effective as a group. And even the cells
00:24:16.280
in our body are an example of that. The mitochondria have their own DNA because it was an example of a
00:24:21.140
major transition where multiple entities got together to act as a group. Let's see, what else was there?
00:24:27.220
I go through in my book, I go through as though there were four new exhibits, four reasons to
00:24:33.380
re-examine the case since the 1970s, gene culture co-evolution, things like that. And while it is
00:24:40.140
still true that their biologists mostly seem to side against this, this is actually because I think
00:24:47.300
E.O. Wilson made a big mistake in writing a paper. I love him. I think he's mostly right about things.
00:24:52.720
But I think he made a big mistake in writing a paper saying that kin selection doesn't matter.
00:24:58.780
And I don't understand. I don't think that makes any sense. Kin selection is really powerful.
00:25:02.460
So he took a lot of flack and people are conflating his rejection of kin selection with his endorsement
00:25:08.700
of groups or I should say multi-level selection. So just the final point on this is the whole debate
00:25:14.420
since the 60s with Williams and then Dawkins was always looking at altruism. Can we explain
00:25:20.060
altruism as a product of group selection? We are nice to each other because the benefits then to
00:25:27.120
the group outweigh the cost to me as an individual. And so my response to Steve Pinker was, well, if you
00:25:34.580
just focus on being nice or altruistic, well then, yeah, it's kind of hard to argue that this is from
00:25:39.980
group selection. But if you look at the tribalism, that's what really got me. That's why I'm on this
00:25:44.880
side of the debate. If you look at tribalism, how similar it is, how initiation rights all over the
00:25:50.340
world are actually mimicked in fraternity brothers' initiations. I don't think it's because they
00:25:55.340
studied anthropology. It's because there's something in the human mind that makes people, especially
00:26:00.900
young men, want to do things that involve painting their faces or changing their appearance, exposing
00:26:06.860
each other to extreme risk, doing all sorts of things that bond them together as a group, make them
00:26:11.660
quite dangerous, quite able to be predators of other groups. So I think you and I agree on those
00:26:16.460
external costs. So anyway, that's why I'm saying that if you focus on tribalism, you try to understand
00:26:20.640
that. I don't see how you can explain that from individual selection. And this is why I think that
00:26:26.760
the arguments for limited group selection were overwhelmed. That's why I say we're 90% chimp.
00:26:31.400
We're overwhelmingly evolved by individual level selection in the way that Dawkins describes it.
00:26:35.940
But we have this interesting tribal overlay. And I think that's essential for understanding not just
00:26:40.740
morality and religion, but politics, as we're going to talk about very soon.
00:26:45.040
Right, right. Well, I'd be remiss if I didn't say just a couple of words about why group selection
00:26:49.620
seems spooky from a more traditional evolutionary point of view. And then I'll just get off it because
00:26:55.660
I don't think we'll resolve it here. But I just think, you know, from the point of the criticism,
00:27:00.160
it seems to be a metaphor that gets taken too literally and that blurs the lines between genes
00:27:05.920
and individuals and groups as units of selection. So, you know, as you said, group selection is
00:27:13.400
Right. But, you know, as Steve and others have pointed out, there are many problems with saying
00:27:18.280
that selection acts on groups in the same way that it acts on individuals to maximize their
00:27:23.500
inclusive fitness, or that it acts on them in the same way that it acts on genes, increasing
00:27:27.580
numbers of copies that appear in the next generation. So if there's a...these things are operating
00:27:33.040
differently, and I just...again, I'm dogged by the fact that I feel like this is a little
00:27:38.480
too hard to parse in a podcast for people to listen, so...
00:27:41.560
Right. We can skip it. We can just point people. Actually, I think, you know what, chapter nine
00:27:45.800
of my book...so let's do this. I have made chapter nine of The Righteous Mind available for free
00:27:51.780
on my webpage. So if people go to righteousmind.com, they can find my argument for group selection.
00:27:57.640
And if they Google...well, I guess you can direct them to...but if they basically just Google
00:28:01.180
edge, pinker, what, false allure of group selection?
00:28:05.840
They can find that. So that's Steve's...Steve makes a strong argument against it. So I think
00:28:10.440
Yeah. I mean, so just to crib Steve briefly, the issue is that there's a lot of causality
00:28:16.760
in the world that you don't need natural selection to explain. And so merely having one tribe outcompete
00:28:23.660
another doesn't require natural selection. So like, for instance, if the Nazis had won the war,
00:28:29.900
right, and we were now living in the first century of the thousand-year Reich, this wouldn't be an
00:28:34.460
example of group selection. I mean, and the difference that would make a difference here
00:28:38.340
is almost certainly cultural and not genetic. So if the Germans had won the war, sequencing
00:28:43.360
Hitler's genome wouldn't tell us why. And yet we would still be living in a world where everyone
00:28:48.940
would now be a Nazi and the Nazis have succeeded. But here again, so when in talking about success,
00:28:55.140
the success of a group, in this case, the Nazis, we're using a metaphor here, because this is not
00:28:59.740
analogous to the success we talk about when we talk about genes spreading in a population. Because
00:29:04.600
in here, in this case, the success itself applies to the group, the Nazi party, enduring for
00:29:11.100
centuries, not to some entity at the end of generations of replicators that have been copying
00:29:16.500
themselves with some rate of mutation and then out-competing all others. So Steve argues,
00:29:21.100
I think, very strongly that it's a confusion over a metaphor. The interesting thing for me,
00:29:25.520
though, is with group selection, I think it's actually a red herring for me, because I'm happy
00:29:33.220
to assume it's true for the sake of argument, right? And it won't actually change any of the
00:29:37.060
things you and I disagree about in this space. Because it seems to me that you draw normative
00:29:41.560
claims from the fact that group selection is a fact.
00:29:47.760
You seem to be saying that even if the tenets of religion are false,
00:29:51.480
right, group selection proves that religion has still been a kind of necessary social glue.
00:29:57.720
Well, hold on. Wait, wait, let me reword that. So I think, look, you and I are both atheists.
00:30:01.560
We're both naturalists. We both believe that religion is out there in the world. It's part of
00:30:08.100
human nature in some way, shape, or form, and that evolution has to do with the explanation for why
00:30:12.120
it's out there. So we're both naturalists. The question at hand is whether it does something
00:30:17.000
or confers some benefit, such that if we could rip it out, we would lose nothing or something.
00:30:22.620
And on Dawkins' view, and I think your view, if we could just get rid of it entirely,
00:30:27.180
we'd be better off. And that might be true. I don't know. But if religion is an adaptation,
00:30:33.520
as I believe it is, then it could still be true that it was necessary for getting us to where we are.
00:30:38.820
And I do believe that religion and the psychology of religion helps explain how we and only we made
00:30:44.580
the transition to living in large-scale societies of non-kin. It could still be the case that it was
00:30:50.660
useful back in tribal days, and now we've supplanted it with law and other things. So I would never say
00:30:55.780
that religion being an adaptation or the truth of multilevel selection would prove anything about how we
00:31:00.980
ought to live today. But what I do draw from it is that seeing it as an adaptation for group
00:31:07.160
solidarity and group coherence makes it easier to see some of the psychological benefits and
00:31:12.720
socio-structural benefits that might be there that are hard to see if you're a secular person on the
00:31:19.400
left. Because that is what I see, is it's really hard to understand what's good about the other side
00:31:24.940
once you're in an argument or debate with them. And from reading scholarship on religion, from reading
00:31:30.920
books, especially the book James Ault has this wonderful book, Spirit and Flesh, that really helps you
00:31:36.240
see the sociology of a small evangelical community. So that's my only point. I wouldn't say I draw
00:31:41.800
normative implications directly, but I do draw implications for what kinds of lives are happy
00:31:47.860
and satisfying, what kinds of social patterns and structures make people less selfish and more
00:31:53.520
inclined to think about others. And there, I think you just have to think twice if you're going to say
00:31:59.180
religion's just bad and it makes people do bad things, get rid of it.
00:32:01.900
Yeah. Well, so obviously I share your concern for human flourishing and us getting in a position
00:32:08.340
to tune all the dials to maximize it. I guess I was detecting in you some version of the naturalistic
00:32:15.760
fallacy, some version of saying that because this thing is natural to us and in fact selected for and
00:32:21.260
did our ancestors good, that is some argument, some weight on the balance to argue that it is in fact
00:32:27.560
good morally speaking. Oh, no, no. I'm only making the argument actually in a way that very much the
00:32:32.480
way you make in the moral landscape. If we're going to talk about human flourishing, we need a full
00:32:37.540
picture of human psychology just straight descriptively. So I think you and I differ a
00:32:42.340
little in our descriptive picture of human psychology. But beyond that, it's pretty much a
00:32:46.600
straight flourishing happiness explanation. So I see what you're saying, but I'm pretty sure I'm not
00:32:52.120
making the naturalistic fallacy by saying if it's evolved, therefore it's right or good. I'm not saying that.
00:32:56.260
Right. So it's just, if it's evolved, you would suggest that it could be harder to get rid of,
00:33:02.180
if bad, because we've all evolved to think in these ways. But one distinction I still think in
00:33:07.720
this area that divides us, at least it changes the way we tend to talk about this, is there is a
00:33:12.300
distinction in thinking about how science can touch this subject and the distinction between how we got
00:33:18.300
here, the evolutionary story of just how we came to have the brains and mental capacities we have,
00:33:24.300
and then there's a question of just what is possible given what we are. And that's, for me,
00:33:30.080
that is a, those are two distinct and totally interesting and justifiable projects, but they're
00:33:35.940
distinct and science has a very different role to play in each. And so if you're just going to do
00:33:41.340
descriptive science and talk about how we got here, yes, that has no necessary normative implications.
00:33:46.840
And many people stop there and say, well, so science can't tell you how to live. Science can just tell
00:33:50.760
you why it is you find certain things disgusting, why we've, you know, evolved to have very strong
00:33:55.800
in-group, out-group thinking. But, you know, we did not evolve to successfully build a global civil
00:34:01.700
society that's committed to human rights and the free exchange of ideas and racial and gender equality,
00:34:06.680
right? So the question is, can we accomplish this? And, you know, I think we can. But the further
00:34:11.520
question is, you know, would it be moral to accomplish it? And would it be a bad thing if we failed?
00:34:16.180
And I think, yes, we can answer yes on both of those questions. And the crucial point, though,
00:34:21.680
is that success on this front will entail overcoming a fair amount of what we've evolved to care about.
00:34:27.800
So you cite a bunch of work, I remember Putnam and Campbell being some of it, that seems to show
00:34:33.520
that religion is good for people. So in this case, it makes them more generous.
00:34:37.440
Yes. In the United States, that's right. It doesn't say globally, but yes, in the United States,
00:34:41.380
there's a lot of evidence that religion makes people happier and better citizens, according to Putnam
00:34:46.520
and Campbell. That's right. And this is the result of their belongingness to a religious community,
00:34:51.800
not their beliefs and doctrines. That's exactly right. And this increased generosity isn't just
00:34:57.460
lavished on their in-group, it actually extends to the rest of society, which would surprise many
00:35:02.240
atheists. Now, I don't actually know whether or not this is true. Let's just assume it is all true.
00:35:07.240
It seems to me that even if we accept that as true, it obviously isn't the whole story. I mean,
00:35:12.920
I think we could design a dozen invidious experiments where we show that religious people
00:35:16.960
are more homophobic, say, or sexist than secular people on average, or have a lesser understanding
00:35:22.900
of science or less respect for science. And this would help complete the picture. But I think
00:35:28.700
the problem I have with this line of thinking is that there seems to be a tacit assumption that if we
00:35:34.960
can show that religion is doing something good for people, there is no better way to get those goods
00:35:41.800
that's compatible with a truly rational worldview. That's a fine point. I agree with that. I agree
00:35:46.260
with that. But let's see. I think you raised a question that I think would be great for us to
00:35:51.300
try to work out here. I think we might come to different views. So you said, I think we both agree
00:35:56.400
that our evolved human nature did not prepare us to live in a giant, global, peaceful, egalitarian
00:36:02.560
society under rule of law, whereas in a sense, we're living above our design constraints. And
00:36:07.200
clearly, to some extent, it's possible because despite the imperfections, we're sort of doing
00:36:11.200
it nowadays. So our evolutionary past, while it makes it puts on some constraints, they're kind
00:36:16.780
of loose constraints, and we can live in all kinds of ways that we weren't designed for. But here's
00:36:20.480
where here's where I think our different views of religion would lead to different prescriptions for
00:36:25.260
how to do that. So I take part in a lot of discussions, I'm invited to all sorts of,
00:36:29.900
of sort of, you know, lefty meetings about a global society. And, and, you know, the left
00:36:36.300
usually wants, they want a global, that global governance, they want more power vest in the UN,
00:36:43.400
they, I hear a lot of talk on the left about how countries or national borders are bad things,
00:36:49.100
they're arbitrary. So the left tends to want more of a universal, I'm just think about the John
00:36:54.280
Lenin song, this is, you know, what I always go back to, just think about imagine, imagine,
00:36:57.580
there's no religion, no countries, no private property, nothing to kill or die for, then it
00:37:02.300
would all be peace and harmony. So that is a sort of a far leftist view of what the end state of human
00:37:08.040
evolution, the social evolution could be. Now, is that, is that possible? Or is it, is it consistent
00:37:14.620
with our evolved nature? Now, here's the other side. The other side, the conservative view,
00:37:19.060
is that we are fundamentally groupish, more parochial creatures, and to have global governance,
00:37:27.380
and a, a bit, one giant country, or one giant community of the, of all earth, would be a nightmare,
00:37:34.100
it would be chaos, it just wouldn't work. Far better to have authority at the lowest level possible
00:37:40.960
at all times, and, and build up with nested structures. So a country ends up, for conservatives,
00:37:47.940
a country ends up being a very reasonable, basic building block, and they would not want as much
00:37:53.960
of a global society. They certainly would want international law, they would want treaties,
00:37:58.160
they'd want all sorts of things. So I think this is a case where, if you, if you have a kind of a blank
00:38:02.780
slate view, or a very positive view that our basic nature is love and cooperation, and it's only
00:38:08.280
capitalism that screwed it up, you're going to want a kind of a John Lennon vision of the future,
00:38:13.340
and I don't think that that could really work. Whereas, if you start with Edmund Burke,
00:38:18.620
who talks about the little platoons of society, we start, we, we develop in the family. So
00:38:23.900
conservatives are really, really focused on the family and lower level institutions. And if you
00:38:28.200
focus on making those strong, and then you think about some sort of a legal and social architecture
00:38:33.360
that allows multiple families and communities and states and countries to work together with
00:38:39.960
a minimum of friction, I think that's much more workable. So getting a getting a correct view of
00:38:45.760
our evolutionary heritage and the psychology that resulted from it, I think is very helpful. It
00:38:51.320
doesn't tell us what's right or wrong, but I think it does tell us which way is more likely to work.
00:38:55.440
And if you see us as products of multi-level selection, with a deep, deep tribalism, that
00:39:03.360
suggests that you're probably better off going for more the Burke way, and having groups that are
00:39:09.180
composed of groups and finding ways for them to work together, rather than the John Lennon way,
00:39:13.300
which is let's erase all group boundaries. Let's erase divisions of nation and everything else and
00:39:19.920
just have one giant planet. You know, I just don't think that's likely to work. I think that is,
00:39:26.360
like as with the communist societies, it's making assumptions about human nature that end up, you
00:39:31.780
know, people just refuse to live that way, and it's a disaster. One thing about what you said that
00:39:35.760
I want to pull back to the focus on religion is just that you're essentially exposing some of the
00:39:41.280
holes in secular thinking. And I agree those holes are there. In fact, I've written two books that
00:39:46.460
attempt to shore up some of the weaknesses I see in secularism. And what you just said relates to
00:39:52.860
this very topical example of the recent migrant crisis in Europe, where you have, you know, secular
00:39:58.620
liberals for the most part, and, you know, atheists who really can't find a rationale, morally speaking,
00:40:06.320
for anything less than an open borders policy. And in fact, so there's two reasons here, there's two
00:40:11.880
connections here, because there's this low birth rate in Europe, and many people attribute that to
00:40:17.360
secularism. The loss of religion is really leading to a loss of babies. And that becomes a justification
00:40:25.000
for bringing in immigrants, because they need people to work in these societies. So one could argue
00:40:31.340
that for two reasons, both economically and morally, secularists are now in a position, you know,
00:40:38.360
someone like Angela Merkel, where they're unable to find a reason to keep the borders closed. And
00:40:44.180
let's just say that this happens where you have millions upon millions of Muslims who on balance
00:40:48.960
are deeply religious and disposed to have large families, they flood into Europe over the next few
00:40:53.640
decades. And in 100 years, Europe is predominantly Muslim and deeply religious, right? This is a possible
00:40:59.320
counterfactual or actual history. So what lesson should we draw from this? Many people would conclude
00:41:05.380
that what Europeans needed in the year 2016 is more Christianity, right? That only a belief in Jesus
00:41:13.400
and the associated behavior and belongingness that that confers, and the fertility rates that get
00:41:19.280
associated with a taboo around contraception, that only that could have protected them from the sweeping
00:41:25.480
changes in their society. And I would just argue is that there must be a truly rational way for secular
00:41:31.780
people just to figure out what sort of world they want to live in and simply build it.
00:41:36.560
Yep, I totally agree, Sam. And I think this is a nice example for us to talk about because I think
00:41:43.780
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