← Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
Interesting Times with Ross Douthat
We’re More Secular Than Ever. How’s That Going?
00:43:53
How many times has your soul been saved? Probably not as many times as Michelle Cottle’s. In this episode, Michelle, Carlos and Ross discuss Ross’s new book, “Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious,” and explore the role religion should play in our lives and society.
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- [00:01]
Ross Douthat
Hi, guys.
- [00:01]
Carlos Lozada
I have so many questions for you. Ross.
- [00:04]
Ross Douthat
My children, I'm here. I'm here with answers.
- [00:07]
Michelle Cottle
Oh, Father Ross. From New York Times Opinion. I'm Michelle Cottle.
- [00:13]
Ross Douthat
I'm Ross Douthent.
- [00:14]
Carlos Lozada
I'm Carlos Lozada.
- [00:16]
Michelle Cottle
And this is Matter of Opinion. Our merry moo band is back together. And this week we're. We're talking about religious faith, why it matters, and why we should all have it. Fortunately, blessedly, providentially, Ross wrote a book about all of this. It's called why Everyone should be Religious. Hearty congratulations to Ross, our beloved co host. So Ross's book is coming to us at a very interesting moment. There is a sense that at least here in the US Maybe less religion isn't yielding the most stable results. And maybe religion has a little bit more to offer. So here comes Ross with a guide for the serious, rational and modern to embrace religious faith and recognize the supernatural. So guys, shall we get into it?
- [01:15]
Ross Douthat
Yes.
- [01:16]
Michelle Cottle
You're gonna have to explain the book to the Moobsters.
- [01:19]
Ross Douthat
The Moobsters have, you know, listened to me rant and rave about these things probably in sort of the back ends of episodes for a long. So no one who is a consistent listener of this show, I'm sure, will be surprised that I am pro religion and pro religious faith. But this book, well, it's an attempt to sort of write into what I think is a very interesting religious moment in American life where we have gone through a period of disillusionment with religious institutions, disaffiliation from organized religion, scandal and polarization and politicization. And I'm not sure about this, but there's some evidence that the current wave of secularization has reached a limit. The number of people who have described themselves as having no religious affiliation has stopped rising. And you do have a lot of, I would say, weird supernaturalist interests in American life. There's kind of a 1970s vibe out there. Oh, you know, sweet tarot, astrology, UFOs, of course, everyone's favorite psychedelics. And there is some renewed interest in traditional faith as well. So I've written this book in part as a kind of introduction to religion itself for people. And there are now a lot of people like this in the United States who have been raised really without any kind of encounter with organized religion, traditional religion. And so it's sort of interesting to think about what kind of case for religion might one make to someone sort of starting afresh? So that's part of what I'm doing in the book. But Then the book is also trying to get beyond the debates that people in our profession love to have about the sociological benefits of religion, or lack thereof. You know, is religion good for society? Is it, you know, does it reduce polarization? Does it increase polarization? And so on. And those are all really important debates. But it's also really important to ask, does a religious perspective on reality accurately describe the world? And there's a certain kind of embarrassment, I think, in, you know, the parts of journalism and academia and so on, where we hang out about just sort of straightforwardly saying, yes, it does. There probably is a God. The universe is probably made with you and, you know, with you, Carlos and you, Michelle, and maybe even me in my. Definitely Carlos. So that's part of what the book is doing, too. It's both an introduction to religion for the curious and an attempt to make a case that you don't have to leave your faith in science and progress at the door in order to accept some religious ideas about reality.
- [04:15]
Carlos Lozada
First of all, I have so many questions to ask you about this book. One of the things that is most distinctive about the book is that you're trying to make this rational, empirical, intellectual case for religious belief. You're basically talking to the, you know, in this house, we believe in science types. Right. To think their way among.
- [04:35]
Ross Douthat
Among others, to.
- [04:36]
Carlos Lozada
To God. Right. So I would hazard that for a lot of believers, faith comes. Some experience of faith comes first, and over time, they. They think their way through to it. Right. That was certainly what happened to me. Why. Why did you decide that sort of rational empiricism is the best path to the divine?
- [04:57]
Ross Douthat
Well, I. First of all, I don't think it's the only path to the divine. And I agree for lots of people who are religious or who are sort of drawn to religion, some kind of particular experience or encounter, it might be mystical, it might be personal, it might be a relationship that comes first. Right. Obviously. But nevertheless, I think there are a lot of people in the world for whom the idea of even sort of taking a step in that direction comes freighted with a certain kind of baggage about the idea that you are leaving something behind, something about sort of reason and modernity and so on, and that. That faith is this thing that is completely distinct from reason, that these things operate in completely different categories and never the twain shall meet. So I think there are people for whom a path to faith can be made easier if they can be persuaded, which is obviously no easy thing. Right. That there are good reasons to be interested in religion. And that being interested in religion is the kind of thing that a serious person thinking about their place in the world should do. But then it's also written for people in the category you just described who have an attachment to religion based on what they inherited from their family, their personal experience, their sense of the divine, but might feel like there isn't necessarily a foundation of reason underneath. And definitely one thing that you see in our culture, especially in the last 10 or 15 years, in a period of kind of anxiety and crisis for religion, is you'll see people who do what the evangelicals call deconstruct. They will be raised in a particular tradition and feel like there's something wrong with that tradition. It seems, you know, politicized or corrupt or maybe it gets. They think that's wrong about some point of doctrine and they'll start to sort of essentially take it apart. And what my book is trying to do is kind of put a floor on that process to say, okay, deconstruction doesn't go all the way down to atheism. If you're deconstructing, you should go back down to a point where you say, okay, the religious path I was on may have been the wrong one, but there's still good reasons to look for a new path.
- [07:27]
Michelle Cottle
You don't want them to throw the baby out with the baptismal water.
- [07:30]
Ross Douthat
I mean, you know, the baptismal water, if it's blessed. Michelle, you shouldn't throw that out either. Right?
- [07:36]
Michelle Cottle
Sprinkle. Although I'm from an immersion, you know, denomination, so you gotta. You gotta dunk. You gotta dunk. Ross, continue.
- [07:44]
Carlos Lozada
One thing, Ross, I want to ask you about your trajectory not as a person of faith, but as an author. Some years ago, you wrote a book called Bad Religion.
- [07:54]
Ross Douthat
Yes.
- [07:54]
Carlos Lozada
And the basic argument there, if I may be so bold as to summarize the work in front of the author, is that Christianity in America was too many Christians were sort of focusing on prosperity or just their self esteem. And the problem wasn't like too much religion or too religion, but just kind of like bad versions of it. Yes, Christianity was basically going to hell, colloquially speaking. So with, with this book now, however, I get the sense that you're maybe more open to people finding some path to faith, kind of whatever path to faith. So to what extent is Believe the new book in conversation with an extension of In Conflict with Bad Religion, your earlier book?
- [08:37]
Ross Douthat
Yeah, that's a really good question, especially for completists of my, you know, all my work. So, yeah, I think Bad religion was Written as a kind of critique of a culture that still seemed to some degree essentially Christian, but in which all kinds of forms of what in the subtitle I called heresy seemed to be crowding out rigorous, internally consistent, less easily politicized forms of faith. So it was a critique of everything from the sort of prosperity theology that was a little bit more on the political right to the kind of health and wellness and self help Christianity that was a little more on the political left. I think the world that I was writing in then was meaningfully different from the world that I'm writing in now, Even though only 15 years or so have passed. I think that in that world, the United States was sort of less post Christian than it is today. Institutional religion was embattled and declining, but stronger in 2010 than it is in 2025. And that means that it makes sense to make a different kind of argument to some extent in that space. Right. If you're in a context where not just Christianity but any kind of religious belief is just much less assumed by everyone, then it feels like you, yeah, you have to sort of start afresh a little bit and not have arguments about orthodoxy versus heresy, but just have more basic arguments about belief versus non belief. And in a landscape of post Christianity, maybe you want to be more understanding of tendencies that I was critiquing 15 years ago. But I would also say that, like, the critique still stands. Right? Like, there's nothing in believe that is meant to say that when a pastor stands up and says God wants you to be rich, that that's totally fine and cool. Right. It's just that as the culture shifts, the aspects and issues that the religious writer focuses on have to shift as well to some degree. But this is, you know, I'm telling people this is in certain ways it's a very liberal book by my standards. Right. It is very much like, you know, try things out. Right? Try things out and see what happens.
- [11:08]
Carlos Lozada
Whatever works for you, dude.
- [11:10]
Michelle Cottle
Well, in making your case, you do take a big step back to the fundamentals of non belief. You anticipate some of the stumbling blocks that keep people from believing. And actually you even lay out three that you think are the big ones. Why does God allow so many wicked things to happen?
- [11:31]
Ross Douthat
That's a big one.
- [11:32]
Michelle Cottle
Yes. Why do religious institutions do so many wicked things? And then my favorite, for the purposes of this show, why are traditional religions so hung up on sex?
- [11:44]
Ross Douthat
Yes.
- [11:44]
Michelle Cottle
Which one of these are you thinking is the biggest stumbling block? And just kind of walk us through, you know, Your argument on a couple of these.
- [11:54]
Ross Douthat
Yeah, I, I think it just actually it completely varies by the individual. And one of the things that's been interesting about doing some conversations to promote the book is, you know, people clearly have totally different objections to religion depending on where they're coming from, and also totally different forms of attraction to it. And I think it's the same way with the stumbling blocks, right. Like you'll have people for whom it really just is the problem of evil all the way. And what's interesting about the problem of evil is it, it isn't really an argument against the existence of God, it's an argument about the nature of God. It's saying, effectively, if there is a God, he can't be as good as the Jews and Christians and, you know, as the monotheists want us to believe. Right. And that's actually one of the points that I make in the book, right. Is that if you're interested in religion and a particular conception of God seems unpersuasive to you, that shouldn't actually end your engagement with religion. Right. So with that kind of issue, I'm trying in part to get people to not reject the primary idea that there's probably a God because of a particular issue with a particular conception of God. The sex stuff is a little different. That's, I think, much more about the sociology of modern America. If you go back to the America of 1945 or 1955, it's not that, you know, nobody was having sex before marriage and nobody was committing adultery and these kind of things, but there was this sense that Christian morality and like normal middle class behavior sort of fit together reasonably well. Right. It's like, okay, the New Testament's a little extreme, but the basic idea that you should try to only have sex with one person and heterosexual marriage is the norm and so on, that was a really strong sort of non religious cultural idea. And with the sexual revolution that just went away for various reasons. And so we're in a world where there just is this deep tension between how like normal people live and what not just Christianity, all really the big old religious traditions say about how and when and with whom you're supposed to have sex. And that's not really an argument about like the nature of God or anything like that. It really is just a sense that the traditional religious rules just don't fit with the way we live.
- [14:28]
Michelle Cottle
Now I want to jump in here and kind of push back a little bit. Not at your book, which as you note, is being very, you know, Small L liberal in its approach to this. But I would venture that, as noted, we've got a nation that has soured on organized religion. And so there's a huge space between what you're talking about in terms of starting people down a path toward an organized religion and a lot of where these religions end up, which is with a very, very strict our way or the highway to hell approach to this. Like, there is the only path to God is through his son, Jesus Christ. So I think where we run into a lot of trouble with people is getting turned off in the space between, oh, let's go explore. And once you've explored, pick a religion which is going to lock you down. So I'm just saying, like, yes, I love where you're going with the seeker approach. But then later in the book, you talk about needing to join one of these fates. And a lot of these faiths are very unforgiving, so to speak, about the wiggle room on who gets to go to heaven. And I think you wind up with a lot of alienation at that point, if people even make it that far.
- [15:46]
Ross Douthat
Yeah, well, I think there's a couple things, right? One is that I think the landscape of American religion has changed profoundly, even relative to when we were kids. And obviously, I didn't grow up in the Bible Belt, right? I had a very distinctive sort of northeastern religious experience where we were in a secular milieu but doing a bunch of strange religious things. But, you know, even there, like being in evangelical and Pentecostalist worlds in the 1980s, obviously you got a certain kind of flavor of what you're describing. You know, I had. We used to go to a charismatic healing service, and there was, you know, I was reading a fantasy novel, and there was this bushy, bearded guy who had probably been in a motorcycle gang and then found Jesus. And he came over to me and took the book away from me because it had like, had like magic on the COVID or something and was like, this is demonic. And my parents had to have some big showdown with him to get the book back. So that kind of stuff is there. I do think America in 2025 is a culture generally where many, many religions that people are likely to join have in different ways transformed themselves to become very seeker sensitive and sometimes to a fault, right to the point where they're emptying out core doctrines and beliefs in the hopes of sort of coaxing people through the door. And this gets to the real challenge here. And it is a challenge. And I don't have a per. Solution for it. Right? The challenge is that ultimately, in order to attract people seriously, to persuade people to commit themselves to a faith, any religion needs to take its own truth claims seriously. Right? You can't just be seeker sensitive all the way down. At some point you have to say, look, we think these things are right and these things are wrong. We think these are the things that you should do if you want to go to heaven. Right? This is the path to salvation. Religions that lose track of that tend to eventually just dissolve. At the same time, we live in a pluralist society where everyone can see, right, that lots of people of goodwill end up in different places spiritually. Like, people you know and like and take seriously are gonna end up on a different spiritual path in this society from your own. Not everyone, you know, much as it disappoints me, is likely to start going to, you know, going to confession and joining the highly superior Catholic mod. Right? So I think it's a big challenge for religions to figure out how they can simultaneously not just exist as kind of bunkered down redoubts fortified against modernity, telling everyone inside that hellfire awaits outside. Right? But also not sort of shed and dissolve the core teachings that actually hold people in those faiths. It is a really tricky and difficult place that religions need to be in a society like ours, in a pluralist society. It's very challenging.
- [19:02]
Michelle Cottle
We have to pause here, but when we come back, I want us to stay on the personal, and I hope we can explore the role religion has played in our lives and how it continues to influence us.
- [19:37]
Carlos Lozada
Ross, I want to stay on your. On your stumbling blocks for a sec. You mentioned the problem of evil, and you just completely reminded me that when I was in college, I took a whole semester course on the problem of evil. The professor was Alvin Planigai. I had no idea he was like a big deal in this. He was just the guy teaching the class. You know, like, when I'm 19 or 20, I have no clue. Spoiler alert. We did not solve the problem of evil. But the class was the first place that I read Milton. And that was actually very cool. I think that that stumbling block, like, why would a sort of all powerful, benevolent God allow all these bad things to happen is sort of a systemic obstacle to religious belief. I think the second and third stumbling blocks you identify like, you know, why do institutions of religion do so many bad things? Why are traditional religions hung up on sex? I think those are stumbling blocks to the institutions through which a lot of people of faith live their Lives. Right. As opposed to kind of a big, broad, systemic stumbling block to believing overall as far as which matters most. I agree with you that it's absolutely a case for individual believers. For me, it was the second one. Why religious institutions do bad things. Because the revelations of the Catholic Church abuse scandal came at a time when I was already sort of struggling in my faith. I've had a lot of ups and downs over the course of my life. Now, if I'm doing the timing right, like you were actually living in the Boston area at the time that the Boston Globe published its big investigation of the Boston Archdiocese. I was curious that in Believe in your book, that episode gets like, one passing line. Did it shake you at the time? Right. This is your second stumbling block. Right. And you were facing it right there, you know, like in. In your community.
- [21:28]
Ross Douthat
So. Well, it didn't just happen. It's more than that. So I became a Catholic at age 17. So I'm in the unusual. Neither a cradle Catholic nor a true adult convert camp. Right. So I'm 17.
- [21:41]
Carlos Lozada
Did you do RCIA?
- [21:42]
Ross Douthat
I actually didn't. My mother had done RCIA. And then the priest in our parish just had some meetings with me and explained why the Protestants were wrong. And I was like, sounds good, Father. And I was signed up for the heathens among us.
- [21:57]
Carlos Lozada
It's Rite of Christian Initiation for adults.
- [21:59]
Ross Douthat
Yes. It's the sort of bureaucratic mode of Catholic conversion that the church set up after the 1960s that I think probably is in need of some streamlining. So, yeah, I was in Boston or in college, and then connected to Boston various ways. And it was like four or five years after becoming Catholic. And then it was also sort of a rolling thing across the course of the first decade of the 21st century, where you had the Boston revelations, you had broader revelations around the country, and then five years later, you would get another wave of revelations. So actually, just after I started at the Times, you start at the Times, and I'm tired. And here I am, the nice conservative Catholic on the opinion page. I'm here to explain the Catholic Church to people on the outside. And the first thing I have to explain is another wave of sex abuse revelations. And I would say that that substantially changed my relationship to and confidence in the Catholic Church as an institution. Absolutely. It changed that in pretty important ways. And I think the story of Catholicism right now is that first liberal Catholics lost confidence in the institution because they disagreed with the church about a bunch of issues after the 1960s. And then conservative Catholics lost confidence in the institution, for reasons that started with the sex abuse crisis and then continued with Pope Francis, who was fairly hostile to conservative Catholics. Right. So the church has managed.
- [23:32]
Carlos Lozada
That's another Ross book.
- [23:33]
Ross Douthat
That's another Ross book. Well, that's part of the reason I didn't go too deep into the Catholic stuff in this one. But I guess, though, it always felt to me like it was possible to have a changed relationship to a religious institution, that did not change your fundamental confidence in that God exists and that Christianity is true and that Catholicism, for all its sins and faults, is carrying forward the message of Jesus Christ. And, I mean, just to personalize it a little more, I came into Catholicism from a world of very sort of personalized Christianity where it was, you know, mystical experience, people speaking in tongues, people putting their hands on your shoulder and telling you to testify to how Jesus changed your life and so on. And I was a, you know, awkward teenager. I know that's hard for listeners to imagine since I'm so suave and sophisticated now, but things were different at age 16. And I was really happy to come into Catholicism, a church that was sort of. To me, it emphasized the idea that, look, you know, the church is promising you that God is present in the sacraments. He's promising you that God is present in the Mass. Even if you aren't having a dramatic experience of God at that moment, God is still there. Right. But that kind of depersonalized aspect probably made it easier for me to then deal with the sex abuse crisis. It was like, all right, what am I here for? Well, I'm here for the Mass and the sacraments. Right. I'm not here because I think that the Pope and the bishops are holy saints of God and are sort of prophets chosen in some particular way in the way that some people in charismatic Christianity present themselves. Right. So that background and that sort of sense of what I was joining the church for was probably helpful. But still, there was a view that a lot of conservative Catholics had when I became a Catholic, which was basically that there had been a bunch of debates in the church in the 1960s, and then Pope John Paul II had settled those debates. Right. That was a very powerful idea that I would have endorsed. Right. At age 23 or whatever. And I think the sex abuse crisis, again, leading into the Pope Francis era, just unsettled that confidence. And I think generally my sense of, like, where I stand in terms of internal Catholic debates is more unsettled than it was when I was 23.
- [26:13]
Michelle Cottle
I want to keep with the personal line here. Carlos, you are a different path to Catholicism. You did not have, at least to my knowledge, the early snake handling, speaking.
- [26:23]
Ross Douthat
In tongues experiences never handled a snake.
- [26:26]
Michelle Cottle
Oh, come on, Ross.
- [26:26]
Ross Douthat
For the record, I think you are.
- [26:28]
Michelle Cottle
In the wrong state to have done any snake handling. I'm just gonna go out on a limb.
- [26:32]
Ross Douthat
I'm sure Connecticut. Connecticut got to have some laws against snake handling. Anyway, go ahead.
- [26:36]
Michelle Cottle
Carlos. Carlos. Carlos.
- [26:37]
Carlos Lozada
Oh, no. So I'm all for just continuing to listen to Ross, but. So what was that movie? Everything Everywhere all at once. All at once, yeah. That was Catholicism for me, sort of at the beginning. Right. I was baptized, you know, five days after I was born.
- [26:54]
Ross Douthat
Smart.
- [26:55]
Carlos Lozada
My great uncle, Alcide Mendoza, was the youngest bishop at the second Vatican Council. What? When?
- [27:03]
Michelle Cottle
Seriously?
- [27:03]
Carlos Lozada
Yeah. He later became the archbishop of Cusco in Peru.
- [27:07]
Ross Douthat
Did you know this, Ross? I did not know this. This is amazing.
- [27:10]
Carlos Lozada
Oh, my God. When John Paul II came to Peru in the early 1980s, I was there at youth day services, right? I went to Catholic grade school, high school, college. The church was everywhere. And so it wasn't like a thing that informed my worldview. It was just my world. And like Ross, I came to really love the kind of peculiarities of Catholicism, right? The intercession of the saints, the sacraments, the rituals, the trinitarian God. Right. It wasn't just a belief. It was a belief system. And that suited me. The. The music became really important to me when I was in college at Notre Dame in the early 90s. I sang with the liturgical choir. We did the 10am Sunday Mass. We did vespers on Sunday night. Holy Week was like our super bowl, right? Those. Those pieces of music still in my head. But all of that. That kind of pervasiveness of it, like graduate school was the first time I was in an environment that was not, like, fully, like, Catholic immersive. And it was after college, right. Like entering adulthood, that I experienced kind of a letdown in it, because it's easy when it's everywhere. It's easy when you're immersed in it, and suddenly you have to work at it. And I've had a lot of ups and downs in my sort of practice of the faith since then, Right. Like, a friend of mine. A friend of mine from college used to joke that, you know, people would say, like, oh, I'm Catholic, but I'm not practicing. And he would always respond, saying, like, well, maybe if you practiced, you'd be good at it. Right? And. But the. The church, I think if I would look at it in kind of a strictly secular sense. I think it's made me an institutionalist. The places that I've worked in my life have always tended to be big institutions. It's an environment I'm comfortable with, but I think it's also made me kind of a small C. Catholic. Right. There's so much variety in the Catholic Church. I know to non Catholics, that may sound weird, but like I have friends who are like Dorothy Day Catholic Worker house type Catholics. Right. Friends who are Opus DEI Catholics or Knights of Columbus Catholics, cradle Catholics, RCIA Catholics, a lot of not practicing Catholics. Right. There's a great variety within faith communities and I think Catholicism has helped me appreciate those differences. Like no one possesses the full truth, even we're all sort of sharing in it. So there's a humility that goes with that, even with all the kind of Pharisee righteousness that can go with it too.
- [29:41]
Ross Douthat
I do think, I think, Carlos, that point about having a religious tradition that has different corners in it, it's very important. Not just because it gives you sort of exposure to the diversity of experience and ideas. It's also just helpful across one's own life cycle. Right. It's a good thing to be in a religion where you can feel like my ideas have changed somewhat, but there's still sort of places and ways to connect with this faith. And some of what I think Michelle is describing, the sense of claustrophobia that you get in some religious traditions is a big problem just for sort of the individual living their life and going through the different phases of life.
- [30:31]
Carlos Lozada
Michelle, you had me bare my soul, so to speak, a moment ago. What's been your experience of faith, or maybe I should say of religion? Those are not the same things.
- [30:42]
Michelle Cottle
Look, I'm a big fan of faith and generally, it might surprise Ross of organized religion. I do think people have this innate longing for a sense of purpose and order to the universe. And if you're not believing in a divine power, you tend to gravitate toward less savory options like political messiahs, whack job conspiracy theories. But look, I grew up Southern Baptist, which had a pretty strong our way or the highway attitude. Now, as a child prone to questions and skepticism, this is basically a recipe for total trauma. I cannot tell you the number of hours, self recriminatory prayer and general terror that I would wind up damned forever because of my just like failure to believe sufficiently about some of the patently BS stuff being fed to me. Few groups can rival the Southern Baptist when it comes to hair raising visions of Hell, or what happens to you if you don't get to go with the rapture. So as I got older, I shifted to the Methodist church. But broadly speaking, evangelicalism's call to belief started to feel a lot to me, like smugly non disprovable. Anything that seems slightly off could be waved away as an imperfect understanding by creatures who are by design imperfect. At which point the whole enterprise starts to feel a little slippery and unserious and self justifying. Now, all that said, I still again, big believer in organized religion, big fan of faiths. But have I hitched my wagon back to something? No, I'm still seeking, so to speak, I guess. Carlos, you look completely traumatized.
- [32:44]
Carlos Lozada
No, no, no, not at all, not at all. Like, I just. You know how you have friends in your life, longtime friends, who if you like, if you met them now as an adult for the first time, you might not really click. You might not feel that friendship, that intimacy, but they've been in your life so long you can't do anything about it. Like, they are your friends, they are part of your life and you can't imagine your life without them. And I think in some ways faith religion has been that. For me, there's moments in my life when I just, I'm not entirely sold on them, but it's something I'm never going to shed. It's something that is, that is always going to be part of me, in part because I was baptized five days after I was born. And this has always been something that I, that I'm going to carry with me. I don't know if that's just kind of like, like a low grade fever of religion that you kind of have for a long time, but it's sustained through these, you know, low five decades.
- [33:48]
Michelle Cottle
And look, I am envious of that because religion was a huge comfort to me at times as a child, even as it also provoked this kind of trauma. And without that, there is a hole. And so, you know, my, my joke is always that having been raised that way, I, I now have questions about the existence of God. But I still firmly believe in hell and the devil.
- [34:12]
Ross Douthat
Well, that's, I mean, that's just. No, no, that's just empiricism though, Michelle. I mean, come on, like everyone, I mean the, you know, I'm not completely joking, but I would say it's interesting because again, like, and this is sort of liberal Ross talking for a minute, right?
- [34:31]
Carlos Lozada
Like, I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with that person. Who's your.
- [34:34]
Ross Douthat
Well, here he is right. Like, it really just is the case that when you look at people, you know, people you read, people you're friends with and look at, like, what happens to them over the life cycle and how they relate to religion and react to it, it just clearly is the case that if there is a God, he operates through very different mechanisms for different people. Right. And so, like I described, you know, something not at all like, Michel's primal trauma, but. But a feeling of relief of coming out of charismatic Pentecostalist Christianity into the, you know, sort of memorize the prayers and go to mass model of Catholicism. Right. But there are, you know, there are many people for whom the intense zeal of evangelicalism is like the greatest thing they've ever found. It's like they're like, they'll say, you know, I just felt nothing. I felt no zeal for God, no impulse toward God in my Catholic upbringing. And I had to go into an evangelical church to really find it. The idea of, like, the relationship with God just wasn't there in Catholicism. But then, like, clearly, you know, there are people who just experience evangelicalism in a totally toxic way, and the only path to God has to go somewhere else. Right.
- [35:58]
Michelle Cottle
All right, we're going to wrap this up here. But before I go, I just want to throw in your face that I have been saved more times than any of you because I had a minister who would sometimes on Sunday be like, he'd get so caught up in his own message. He is like, we are not going home till somebody comes down this aisle. That altar call would go on and on and on. And I am like, I just want us all to go home. So I went down that aisle. I probably got saved or, you know, rededicated my life at various services and revivals and things like that probably half a dozen times.
- [36:30]
Ross Douthat
So as a Catholic, I'm gonna say it'll stand you well in purgatory when the time comes, when we're all there podcasting together, you'll slip out that.
- [36:39]
Carlos Lozada
Now, actually, a non stop podcast is my definition of hell. But, Ross, Purgatory. You know what? This book that's trying to sort of bring people along by their minds, persuade them intellectually and rationally reminded me of a Bible verse which I'm going to let you complete for me. Gospel of John.
- [36:59]
Ross Douthat
No, I'm. I'm a Catholic. We don't read the Bible, Carlos.
- [37:01]
Carlos Lozada
Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.
- [37:06]
Ross Douthat
But one of the reasons that I wrote a book about rational arguments for religion is that in the end, I really relate to Thomas, you know, the guy who's like, hey, it's cool that Jesus rose from the dead, but I wouldn't show like to see those wounds. And I do think it is important for people dealing with these questions to have some confidence. Not that, like, God's plan is all immediately available to them, but in fact, God is not as hidden, I think, as it sometimes may seem, perhaps especially to readers of the New York Times.
- [37:50]
Michelle Cottle
All right, we're gonna pause here. I know we still have a lot to say, but we're gonna pause here, and when we come back, we're gonna get hot and cold.
- [37:59]
Carlos Lozada
You know, hot cold makes me think of, you know, hot. Now I'm worried about the flames of Hades.
- [38:26]
Michelle Cottle
All right, guys, it's hot cold time, and Ross has got it for us this week.
- [38:30]
Ross Douthat
So I was trying to do something. Something that was sort of pop culture y appropriate to hot cold, but also had a religious dimension. So I've been watching the Apple TV show Severance, which is in its second season and is sort of developing some buzz, I think, which is why I was encouraged to go back to it. I had tried it once and didn't get into it, but now I've tried it again. I'm almost done with season one. I'm well into it. I'm enjoying it. I recommend it. It is a show in the kind of puzzle box lost kind of mode, right? Where, you know, there's sort of a weird environment that the characters are plunged into. The premise is people sort of separate their work selves from their home selves. They are severed. And so there are people who work in the basement of this mysterious corporation who don't remember their lives outside until the workday ends. And then they go back and lead lives outside where they don't remember their working lives. But the, you know, the engine of the show is figuring out what this mysterious corporation is up to and what it's doing with these people. So I recommend the show, but it does have a religious element in it, which is that you guys mentioned earlier, right? The ways in which when people cease to be religious, they believe in other things. But one other thing that happens in an age of sort of religious disillusionment is people can believe in a kind of gnostic cosmology. Where the world was made, there is a God, but the God is bad or, you know, is out to get you or you were sort of trapped in this system. And certainly, I think some of these TV shows where, like, there's Some overarching, malign, seeming authority. People are sort of living in a world created by that authority and trying to figure out how to break out of it into reality. Does have this very kind of religious ish element, but it is a kind of pessimistic, anxious form of religion that makes for interesting tv is not how I would recommend actually approaching cosmic questions. But anyway, that was what I was thinking about while coming up with a recommendation.
- [40:41]
Michelle Cottle
Have you watched it, Carlos? Because I've seen the whole first season. I don't want to do any spoilers.
- [40:44]
Carlos Lozada
I didn't have and don't have Apple tv. And so I watched. I watched, like, the first three episodes that were like, just like freebies. And I was very intrigued by it.
- [40:57]
Michelle Cottle
It's creepy, I find. It's got a vibe that I don't. That I find creepy.
- [41:01]
Carlos Lozada
Well, Ross, what you just. I mean, the way you described it, some of the best shticks for shows or novels or stories is when you take something that is very real and take it to its logical extreme. Right? And like, separating your work life and your home life is a very real thing that people do every day without working for this, you know, mysterious corporation that, like, that, like, screws with your head. Right. And so that part of it is something that I. That I really appreciated because even though I haven't had the experience that they have on severance, in some ways I have.
- [41:39]
Ross Douthat
I mean, I'm recording this podcast literally from my, you know, oldest daughter's attic bedroom. So I struggle a little bit right now to relate to the concept. But you would like to be severed.
- [41:52]
Carlos Lozada
Is what you're saying?
- [41:52]
Ross Douthat
Well, no, I mean, that's part of the show is like, why are people interested in doing this? Right? And, you know, so. But I'm not. Just for the record, I haven't started.
- [42:02]
Michelle Cottle
The second season yet, but I hear it gets even better. So it's on my list. I've got. I've got a list, but that's it, guys. Whether you are a practicing Catholic or.
- [42:13]
Ross Douthat
A future practicing Catholic. That's right. Whichever you may be.
- [42:17]
Michelle Cottle
Michelle, for now, I'm just gonna. I'm gonna wish you guys have a fantastic weekend.
- [42:23]
Ross Douthat
Absolutely.
- [42:24]
Carlos Lozada
Ross. Congrats on the book.
- [42:25]
Michelle Cottle
Congrats, Ross.
- [42:26]
Ross Douthat
God be with you both and all our listeners and also with you and with your spirit.
- [42:40]
Michelle Cottle
Thanks for joining our conversation. Give Matter of Opinion a follow on your favorite podcast app and leave us a nice review while you're there to let other people know why they should listen. Do you have question for us based on something we talked about today. We want to hear it. Share it with us in a voicemail by calling 212-556-7440 and we just might respond to it in an upcoming episode. You can also email us@matterofopinionytimes.com this episode was produced by Andrea Batanzos, Alisa Gutierrez and Sofia Alvarez Boyd. It's edited by Jordana Hochman. Our fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Original music by Isaac Jones, Carol Sabaro, Sonia Herrero, Amin Sahota and Pat McCusker. Mixing by Carol Zabarow and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie Rose Strasser.