WEBVTT - Why Smart People Don’t Take Religion Seriously (And Why I Was Wrong) 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:03.640 Life audio. 0:00:05.280 --> 0:00:09.240 What do you even mean by taking religion seriously? 0:00:09.400 --> 0:00:11.960 Because I didn't take it seriously for a long time. 0:00:12.240 --> 0:00:15.040 I was always open to there's a mystery about the 0:00:15.120 --> 0:00:16.720 universe that was always out there. 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:18.840 This is really important for people to hear because it's 0:00:18.880 --> 0:00:23.320 not always this aggressive atheist agnostic professor. It's just kind 0:00:23.320 --> 0:00:26.880 of subtle dismissal of religion that if you want to 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:29.080 fit in, you just don't believe. 0:00:29.360 --> 0:00:33.320 Finally, in the mid nineteen nineties, I was getting moved 0:00:33.360 --> 0:00:36.360 away from my simple lack of attention to religion. 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:41.160 Why would a Harvard and MIT trained policy analyst who 0:00:41.240 --> 0:00:45.120 was thoroughly socialized to be secular write a book describing 0:00:45.159 --> 0:00:49.760 his journey from happy agnostic to Christian. Our guest today 0:00:49.800 --> 0:00:55.680 is Charles Murray, author of the new book Taking Religion Seriously. Charles, 0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:56.800 thanks so much for coming on. 0:00:57.440 --> 0:00:58.240 It's my pleasure. 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:01.760 Well, let's just start right with the title of your book. 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:05.800 What do you even mean by taking religion seriously? 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:09.920 Because I didn't take it seriously for a long time, 0:01:10.319 --> 0:01:14.559 And by taking it seriously, I mean and I'm speaking 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:18.959 to unbelievers. As I say in the introduction, there are 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:23.039 tens of millions of people like me who are well educated, 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:26.679 were professionally successful, and religionist has not been an important 0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:30.120 part of our life, and a lot of us have 0:01:30.319 --> 0:01:32.840 sort of assumed from the time we were in college 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:37.640 that smart people don't believe that stuff anymore. In my case, 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:40.720 I went from Newton, Iowa, where I was raised a Presbyterian. 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:44.720 My family would go to church every week, and I'd 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:48.400 go with them, but I was not deeply committed. And 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:52.240 I get to Harvard and I like to fit in, 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:56.440 and I learned that smart people don't believe that stuff anymore. 0:01:56.520 --> 0:01:58.800 And I bought into that just the same way I 0:01:58.840 --> 0:02:00.920 think an awful lot of other people people did, and 0:02:00.960 --> 0:02:03.760 we've never really given it much thought. And I'm saying 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:06.960 to them, look, I'm not trying to proselytize, not trying 0:02:07.000 --> 0:02:11.200 to get you to do anything in particular except realize, 0:02:11.480 --> 0:02:13.639 you've got to look at this stuff. There's a lot 0:02:13.680 --> 0:02:16.440 of material here you need to confront. 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:20.320 Tell me a little bit more about that socialization process. 0:02:20.400 --> 0:02:22.600 She talked about having a faith it didn't take seriously, 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:25.680 but maybe bleeded in God on some level. Were people 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:27.960 trying to talk you out of your faith? Like, how 0:02:28.000 --> 0:02:30.480 did you come to the point that you were a 0:02:30.520 --> 0:02:32.679 materialist or close to being a materialist. 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:38.680 That's the interesting thing that nobody worked hard to convert me. 0:02:39.960 --> 0:02:45.440 I took no courses on Thomas Aquinas's mistakes, okay, And 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:51.280 in fact, basically the subject of religion just never came up, 0:02:51.440 --> 0:02:56.320 and if it did, it was usually of dismissively or 0:02:56.360 --> 0:03:00.000 sometimes the subject of humor. I didn't have any friends 0:02:59.800 --> 0:03:05.040 who were noticeably religious. It was just in the air, 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:09.320 the zeitgeist, and I bought into that this. 0:03:09.360 --> 0:03:11.440 Is really important for people to hear because it's not 0:03:11.480 --> 0:03:16.320 always this aggressive atheist agnostic professor. It's just kind of 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:20.280 subtle dismissal of religion that if you want to fit in, 0:03:20.880 --> 0:03:23.520 you just don't believe. And so a lot of it, 0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:26.560 arguably they describe it happened more under the surface than 0:03:26.600 --> 0:03:30.880 it did above the surface. So or go ahead, were 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:31.480 you going to jump in? 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:33.800 Well, I just wanted to point out two things. Also, 0:03:33.919 --> 0:03:36.840 you go to college like that, and you have a 0:03:36.920 --> 0:03:41.800 few things that militate against religious belief. One of them, 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:46.240 of course, is the argument, look, we are human beings 0:03:46.280 --> 0:03:49.920 who are more advanced animals than others. We've all reached 0:03:49.920 --> 0:03:53.400 this through the same process of evolution, and whereas we 0:03:53.480 --> 0:03:56.520 have consciousness and other animals don't, there's no reason to 0:03:56.560 --> 0:03:59.960 think that there's anything that goes on after the brain 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:04.000 stops functioning. And another thing is you learn about a 0:04:04.120 --> 0:04:09.560 universe that has a billion galaxies, not a billion stars, 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:13.760 but a million galaxies and tens of millions of light 0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:17.080 years across, and the whole idea of a personal god 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:20.320 just says, of course, not that that's not in the 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:21.320 rem of possibility. 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:24.560 So tell me a little about what you mean by 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:28.120 happy agnostic. And I love this because I just interviewed 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:30.599 somebody who describes herself as a little bit more of 0:04:30.640 --> 0:04:34.200 an aggressive atheist, and it seems to me you're not 0:04:34.279 --> 0:04:37.520 on some spiritual journey trying to disprove religion. You're just 0:04:37.600 --> 0:04:40.960 kind of live in your life, and yet these questions emerge. 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:43.680 So talk a little about why you describe yourself as 0:04:43.680 --> 0:04:45.400 a happy agnostic and what that meant. 0:04:46.279 --> 0:04:48.839 Well, it was a particular period of my life. I 0:04:48.880 --> 0:04:54.560 can pinpoint of nineteen eighty five. July nineteen eighty five. 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:57.120 My wife and I have been married for two years. 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:02.159 She's my soulmate. I've never been happy beer and we 0:05:02.360 --> 0:05:05.640 just have a new daughter, and I just had a 0:05:05.680 --> 0:05:09.360 successful book, an unexpectedly successful book, at the opening of 0:05:09.400 --> 0:05:17.880 my public career, and life was complete. And it was 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:20.400 at that point, a couple of months after the birth 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:24.359 of our daughter, Anna, that my wife came to me 0:05:24.520 --> 0:05:27.320 and was talking about the love that she felt for Anna, 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:33.360 and she said, I love her far more than evolution requires, 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:37.120 which is a great it's a great line. It is yeah, 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:42.440 in several ways. One is I'm Harvard and mit, she's 0:05:42.520 --> 0:05:45.279 Oxford and Yale. Okay, this is what this is the 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:48.760 way you put it, love her more than evolution requires. 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:51.800 And what she was saying was that something else was 0:05:51.839 --> 0:05:54.320 going on, and she felt that she was a conduit 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:59.200 for some larger love. And you know, an awful lot 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:06.200 of people in my position dismiss openly spiritual believers because 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:12.320 we say, well, they're kidding themselves, they're deluding themselves. Maybe 0:06:12.320 --> 0:06:15.279 they aren't that smart. I could say none of those 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:19.440 things about my wife, so I did not have the 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:23.599 option of dismissing her experience. And you were quite correct 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:27.720 the way you described me. I was never a militant atheist. 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:32.720 In fact, I use the word agnostic advisedly because I 0:06:32.800 --> 0:06:40.040 go along with the proposition that of all the religious positions, 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:45.520 simple atheism is at least plausible. So I was always open. 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:51.000 There's something, there's a mystery about the universe that was 0:06:51.000 --> 0:06:55.719 always out there. But that was nineteen eighty five that 0:06:55.760 --> 0:07:01.480 my wife she migrated to Quakerism. And whereas a lot 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:04.280 of Quakers are socially active and not all that spiritual, 0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:08.560 she's a spiritually active Quaker. And I watched her for 0:07:08.600 --> 0:07:14.360 ten years moving along her discoveries. The way she put 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:19.040 it is that it was like being in a room 0:07:19.080 --> 0:07:22.160 with a light on a rheostat, and as time went on, 0:07:22.280 --> 0:07:24.800 the light got brighter and brighter in terms of her 0:07:24.840 --> 0:07:29.240 own developing faith. And finally, by the mid nineteen nineties, 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:36.320 I was getting moved away from my simple, my simple 0:07:36.440 --> 0:07:37.880 lack of attention to religion. 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:43.040 So if I'm hearing correctly, at the birth of your child, 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:47.560 this just stirs something up in her, this deeper love 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:50.680 that she doesn't think can be reduced to this evolutionary 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:55.400 kind of survival mode of mother's biologically caring for the child. 0:07:55.800 --> 0:07:58.520 Her response is to go to a Quaker church and 0:07:58.560 --> 0:08:04.400 start kind of growing and adapting spiritually. Ten years past, 0:08:04.480 --> 0:08:06.920 what's happening in your mind? Are you intrigued by this? 0:08:07.080 --> 0:08:09.360 Are you upset by this? Like what's happening for this 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:10.520 decade in your world? 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:19.200 I watched her lovingly and encouragingly of I thought this 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:22.680 was a good thing that she was doing. It, just 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:25.760 didn't you know, what does it have to do with me? 0:08:26.120 --> 0:08:29.400 And the answer was, and here's where we get down 0:08:29.440 --> 0:08:36.080 to a something that I've taken away that I've come 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:38.959 to believe I did not believe at the time. That 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:44.959 is that receptivity perceptual ability when it comes to spiritual 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:48.280 things is like any other human trait. It goes from 0:08:48.320 --> 0:08:51.960 low to high in different human beings. And I like 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:57.400 to use the analogy with music. I've had professional musicians 0:08:58.240 --> 0:09:02.040 who when they hear music, they're hearing something completely different 0:09:02.040 --> 0:09:06.640 from what I hear. They are getting an emotional impact, 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:10.560 from an intellectual impact, from a spiritual impact from it. 0:09:10.600 --> 0:09:14.600 Oftentimes that I don't get. I loved I love a 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:18.600 Beethoven symphony or a Mozart sonata, but I'm not hearing 0:09:18.640 --> 0:09:21.840 what they hear. I don't have as much RECEPTIVI music, 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:25.440 and some people are simply tone deaf too well. I 0:09:25.480 --> 0:09:32.400 think with spirituality, I'm deficient. If you know, if you 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:36.440 think suppose that we suppose we score spirituality the same 0:09:36.440 --> 0:09:40.040 way we score IQ, I'd be somewhere around seventy or 0:09:40.080 --> 0:09:46.079 seventy five, and my wife is way up there. And 0:09:46.960 --> 0:09:50.640 if that's the case, when you start to take religion 0:09:50.720 --> 0:09:54.240 seriously in a way, I don't have the same option 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:57.640 she did. I can you know, for example, she is 0:09:58.240 --> 0:10:04.120 very active and contemporary, and I was unable to follow 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:10.600 into that. But at the same time, since I wanted 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:13.240 to take it seriously, I'll keep going back to that phrase. 0:10:13.760 --> 0:10:18.920 I ended up going a more empirical route, and I 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:22.439 was pushed along in that. I did have a sort 0:10:22.480 --> 0:10:26.480 of road to Damascus moment, but it wasn't spiritual. It 0:10:26.559 --> 0:10:29.960 was when I read a book called Just Six Numbers, 0:10:30.320 --> 0:10:35.080 which was by a British astrophysicist, and this was not 0:10:35.400 --> 0:10:38.679 had no religious overtones. He was talking about the Big Bang, 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:43.960 and he was talking about something that physicists have known 0:10:44.040 --> 0:10:47.240 since the nineteen seventies, which is that at the moment 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:50.120 of the Big Bang, when the universe emerged out of nothing, 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:55.320 a dimensionless point and not only space where probably time 0:10:55.440 --> 0:11:00.120 was created, it's as if there were a whole bunch 0:10:59.960 --> 0:11:04.960 of settings which, if they had not all been perfectly aligned, 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:08.440 would have produced a universe in which life was not possible. 0:11:09.280 --> 0:11:12.720 It would have been a universe that was radiation but 0:11:12.840 --> 0:11:16.839 no stars and galaxies, a universe with black holes. And 0:11:17.000 --> 0:11:20.000 instead we get a universe that creates all the elements, 0:11:20.720 --> 0:11:26.040 and the elements create planets eventually and stars, which eventually 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:30.040 enable life. The chances against that are about a trillion 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:35.720 to one, and that calculation actually is by another astrophysicist, 0:11:36.240 --> 0:11:41.360 a Nobel Prize winner, and I read that, I said 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:46.200 a trillion to one chance against this happening. I don't 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:49.960 believe in trillion to one chances, and I was left 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:54.480 with the option of believing in the multiverse, which is 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:57.720 the theory, and it's purely theory that there are millions 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:02.120 of universes like this. To me just not that's just 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:05.840 I can't buy into that in any way, shape or form. 0:12:06.280 --> 0:12:10.400 And the only plausible opportunity is that there is an 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:15.120 intention behind the universe. And simply saying that to myself 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:16.320 was a big step. 0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:21.839 As an apologist. Hearing somebody have a Damascus Road experience 0:12:21.880 --> 0:12:26.160 that involves reading a science and philosophy. Book actually makes 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:29.680 me really happy to hear that. On one level, Before 0:12:29.679 --> 0:12:31.760 we get to some of the evidence, you cite some 0:12:31.840 --> 0:12:35.920 other historical and scientific evidence that was pivotal along your journey. 0:12:36.520 --> 0:12:37.959 Let me take a step back for a minute. So 0:12:38.000 --> 0:12:40.600 you see your wife over this ten years kind of 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:43.480 growing and expanding. You're trying to be loving to her. 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:48.040 You ended up reading this book, so you had some 0:12:48.520 --> 0:12:52.800 intentionality spiritually. What was your goal and what was your 0:12:52.960 --> 0:12:56.280 mindset to get to that point? And since you didn't 0:12:56.280 --> 0:13:01.560 go to a Quaker services that were seen more experiential 0:13:01.640 --> 0:13:05.200 like your wife had, what kind of investigation were you 0:13:05.240 --> 0:13:06.400 intending to pursue. 0:13:07.440 --> 0:13:10.959 Well, the first point is that I started attending Quaker 0:13:11.000 --> 0:13:14.360 meeting regularly with her in the mid nineteen nineties because 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:17.640 by that time we had a second child and both 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:20.400 of the children were old enough to go to what 0:13:20.480 --> 0:13:25.839 Quakers call first day school Sunday School. And I felt 0:13:25.920 --> 0:13:31.200 very strongly then that it's a good children should grow 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:33.440 up in a religious tradition. I was very much in 0:13:33.480 --> 0:13:38.360 favor that I should support that. But here's the it. 0:13:38.400 --> 0:13:42.000 With a Quaker meeting, I'm bad at meditation. I try, 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:45.080 I try, and I just lose my focus. But it 0:13:45.160 --> 0:13:49.200 is permissible a Quaker meeting, not encouraged, but permissible to 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:53.920 read the Bible. So I would take the Bible with 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:58.080 me and I would read that maybe half an hour 0:13:58.160 --> 0:14:00.920 out of the hour of the Quaker service Sunday. Well, 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:04.360 over several years you read a lot of the Bible 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:08.400 that way, and the New Testament. I read the New Testament, 0:14:08.480 --> 0:14:12.320 you know, repeatedly, and different portions of it. So I 0:14:12.400 --> 0:14:19.440 was acquiring that kind of knowledge. I was persuaded even 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:22.960 before I read just six numbers about the Big Bang, 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:27.440 you know, the famous question why is there something rather 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:32.640 than nothing? That was that was very much in my 0:14:32.760 --> 0:14:35.880 mind in the last half of the nineties, the whole 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:40.520 point about the simplicity of the relationship between mathematics and 0:14:40.880 --> 0:14:44.280 the physical world. I kept thinking, why should it be 0:14:46.080 --> 0:14:52.400 that something like the eee equals mc square of Einstein's 0:14:52.440 --> 0:14:57.720 famous theory, Why should that be mathematically so simple. It's 0:14:57.880 --> 0:15:02.600 as if the mathematics would not be that simple unless 0:15:03.280 --> 0:15:07.080 assembly had planned it that way. So there was a 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:13.280 series of nudges, and of a couple of things happened 0:15:14.640 --> 0:15:18.400 in two thousand and five. Well, first I wrote a 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:22.960 book called Human Accomplishment, long book about the arts and 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:28.120 sciences and the great accomplishments in it. And I had 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:35.920 a Catholic friend, Michael Novak, who's a famous Catholic philosopher, 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:38.880 not theologian, but anyway, he said to me when I 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:41.960 set out on the book, he said, I think you're 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:45.080 going to find as you go into this that Christianity 0:15:45.160 --> 0:15:48.520 played a huge role in Western civilization, developing the arts 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:53.440 and sciences. And I liked Michael a Latin, and admired him, 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:55.960 but I said to myself, well, you know, the Greeks 0:15:55.960 --> 0:15:58.360 were kind of their first in terms of Plato and 0:15:58.400 --> 0:16:04.680 Aristotle and logic. But I didn't argue with him. And 0:16:04.800 --> 0:16:09.240 then as I worked in the book, I was increasingly 0:16:09.320 --> 0:16:14.360 impressed by the fundamental role that Christianity played, not just 0:16:14.400 --> 0:16:19.160 in the arts, where Christianity was very obviously the inspiration 0:16:19.320 --> 0:16:21.400 for an awful lot of the great visual art, a 0:16:21.440 --> 0:16:24.000 lot of the great music, a lot of the great literature, 0:16:24.440 --> 0:16:27.120 but also the sciences. So I came to the end 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:31.080 of writing Human Accomplishment in a Round two thousand and four, 0:16:32.560 --> 0:16:38.480 and I was already bothered by the degree to which 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:43.160 Christianity had had this powerful impact and on the last 0:16:43.200 --> 0:16:48.880 page of the book, I said, you know, you have 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:52.440 to realize how many of these great creators of art 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:58.320 and literature were devout Christians. And I had a sentence 0:16:58.320 --> 0:17:02.440 that said, Johan's Austin Bach doesn't have to explain himself. 0:17:02.800 --> 0:17:04.960 He does not have to defend his way of looking 0:17:05.000 --> 0:17:08.640 at the world. His music does it for him. And 0:17:09.040 --> 0:17:12.800 so I was opened up by that point. Then I 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:16.080 read Cus, then I read C. S. Lewis, and I 0:17:16.359 --> 0:17:18.280 was sort of tipped over the edge into a whole 0:17:18.280 --> 0:17:19.480 new set of things. 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:21.239 Okay, so we're going to come back to that. That 0:17:21.280 --> 0:17:24.720 CS Lewis moment seems really significant. But I'm trying to 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:27.480 get in your mindset year. This kind of starts in 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:31.719 nineteen eighty five, and then you're kind of tipped towards Christianity, 0:17:31.840 --> 0:17:35.879 like two decades later in two thousand and five. And 0:17:36.000 --> 0:17:38.840 during this time you're writing books on other stuff, being 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:42.120 a policy analyst. Is this kind of a hobby for you? 0:17:42.280 --> 0:17:44.119 Is it in the back of your mind that's just 0:17:44.240 --> 0:17:47.440 kind of gnawing you, Like, what was your mindset and 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:52.399 intentionality in discovering the truth about these questions during that 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:53.240 two decades. 0:17:54.800 --> 0:18:00.240 I had a sense that my wife was acquiring stuff 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:05.520 in her life that I envied, and so I had 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:10.080 a not very well articulated desire to participate in that. 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:19.200 And also, even before I read the Big Bang material, 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:24.879 I would run into things like near death experiences, which 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:28.560 I had done a lot of reading in that, and 0:18:29.119 --> 0:18:30.920 I'd done a lot of reading for a long time, 0:18:31.000 --> 0:18:34.520 and I took a lot of those accounts seriously. But 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:39.000 then it sort of grows inside me that, you know, 0:18:40.040 --> 0:18:43.200 if these near death experiences are real, it means consciousness 0:18:43.240 --> 0:18:47.600 can exist outside the brain. And so that was hovering 0:18:47.640 --> 0:18:54.199 in the background. One of the reasons I've wrote the 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:57.119 book the way I did was to avoid making it 0:18:57.160 --> 0:19:02.960 sound systematic. And I avoid the word journey. I don't 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:05.159 use I don't think I use the word journey. And 0:19:05.200 --> 0:19:09.040 the reason is I had no sense of being in 0:19:09.080 --> 0:19:13.440 any kind of straight line. I had a much more 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:17.000 diffuse sense of As time went on, there were new 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:20.520 things intruding on my understanding of the world, and I 0:19:20.560 --> 0:19:22.040 was still trying to fit them together. 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:25.560 So there's really no sense of urgency. It was just 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:28.800 kind of curiosity and something just kind of gnawing at 0:19:28.840 --> 0:19:31.720 you a little bit that she knew, something experienced, something 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:34.440 you were missing out on. Is that a fair way 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:35.000 to look at it. 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:37.760 That's a fair way to look at it with plus 0:19:37.800 --> 0:19:41.440 one edition. And this is something I'm trying to communicate 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:44.639 to my readers who are not religious. This stuff is 0:19:44.680 --> 0:19:51.399 fascinating you. When you get into all sorts of the 0:19:51.480 --> 0:19:55.280 issues I've just talked about with consciousness and the scientific 0:19:55.320 --> 0:20:01.000 findings unconsciousness, that's fascinating. And when you get into apologetics, 0:20:01.080 --> 0:20:04.239 as I did later, into the study of the New 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:07.000 Testament and the historicity of it and the dating of 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:12.320 the Gospels and all that, it's just plain, intellectually really riveting. 0:20:13.880 --> 0:20:15.960 You don't have to convince me about that. You are 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:19.359 preaching to the choir. That is music to my ears. 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:22.080 I love it. I'm probably gonna clip that one and 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:26.119 just use it because that's so true to me. Okay, 0:20:26.160 --> 0:20:29.160 So one last question before we get to you kind 0:20:29.160 --> 0:20:33.439 of reading into mere Christianity. The nudges an issue you 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:36.480 had wrestled with the first one you describe as mathematics, 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:41.880 that why can we capture things like laws E equals 0:20:42.000 --> 0:20:45.399 mc squared in such a simple way? And why is 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:49.560 order built into the universe? The origin of the universe 0:20:49.680 --> 0:20:52.000 began to bug you, like, why is there something rather 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:55.680 than nothing? This points towards a cause outside of the universe. 0:20:56.359 --> 0:20:59.920 And then the fine tuning of the universe also points 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:04.719 towards kind of a mind that best explains with intentionality 0:21:04.880 --> 0:21:08.200 the order of the universe set for life. And then 0:21:08.359 --> 0:21:10.840 consciousness seems to bug you. This is wait a minute, 0:21:10.880 --> 0:21:14.640 I can't reduce human beings down just to matter. There 0:21:14.640 --> 0:21:17.240 seems to be mind or a soul and with near 0:21:17.320 --> 0:21:21.600 death experiences that can at least minimally survive the brain. 0:21:21.640 --> 0:21:24.200 Does that capture kind of where you were intellectually before 0:21:24.320 --> 0:21:25.119 Mere Christianity? 0:21:25.800 --> 0:21:28.760 That's very well put you encapsulate the whole thing. 0:21:28.840 --> 0:21:33.320 Good, Yeah, awesome, just trying to track. That's really good. Okay, 0:21:33.400 --> 0:21:36.720 So why did you read Mere Christianity? Who gave you 0:21:36.760 --> 0:21:38.679 that book? What do you have that idea? And then 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:41.320 what was the next step that book took you along 0:21:41.440 --> 0:21:44.120 in your intellectual non journey? 0:21:44.960 --> 0:21:48.239 It was Pete Pete Water. Pete Waiter also is a 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:52.760 policy atalyst, but he also writes religion. He's a evangelical 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:57.520 Christian and he was formerly a speech writer for George W. 0:21:57.680 --> 0:21:58.120 Bush. 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:03.000 So he invited me to go to lunch at the 0:22:03.040 --> 0:22:07.280 White House mess the little cafe in the White House, 0:22:07.320 --> 0:22:09.919 which is really cool to go to because you're in 0:22:09.920 --> 0:22:12.680 the White House and you've never been there before. And 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:18.320 I knew he was an evangelical Christian, and I asked 0:22:18.400 --> 0:22:20.359 him during lunch. I said, how did you come to 0:22:20.400 --> 0:22:24.960 your faith? And he said by convincement mostly, I was 0:22:25.000 --> 0:22:28.399 just convinced it was true. And he mentioned to see S. 0:22:28.480 --> 0:22:33.280 Lewis and Mere Christianity as a turning point. And I 0:22:33.400 --> 0:22:36.399 left the lunch and bought the book and read it 0:22:36.440 --> 0:22:42.760 over the next few days, and I was really impressed. 0:22:43.800 --> 0:22:47.600 Remember what I earlier I said about deciding when I 0:22:47.640 --> 0:22:50.320 went to college that people were right and saying smart 0:22:50.320 --> 0:22:54.080 people don't believe that stuff anymore. You don't read Mere 0:22:54.160 --> 0:22:57.440 Christianity and say smart people don't beleave that stuff anymore. 0:22:57.480 --> 0:23:05.199 Because if there's a voice that just radiates intelligence, it's C. S. Lewis. 0:23:05.760 --> 0:23:08.719 And a lot of people who are who are watching 0:23:08.840 --> 0:23:11.399 have have read C. S. Lewis themselves. They know this, 0:23:11.600 --> 0:23:15.359 but if they haven't, when I said he radiates intelligence, 0:23:15.400 --> 0:23:20.199 he does it with his conversational, casual, informal style that 0:23:20.480 --> 0:23:27.480 is totally engrossing, and he has the wonderful characteristic of 0:23:27.800 --> 0:23:31.280 your reading him, and you're sort of mentally arguing with him. 0:23:31.960 --> 0:23:35.120 And then after you've said, oh, well, this is why 0:23:35.160 --> 0:23:38.320 I don't agree with them, the next paragraph says, perhaps 0:23:38.359 --> 0:23:43.840 you're thinking that he does, and he answers your objection. 0:23:45.000 --> 0:23:49.320 And so that had a huge effect on me, and 0:23:49.440 --> 0:23:53.480 I was by this time there were lots of redigious 0:23:53.480 --> 0:23:56.200 books coming into the house because of Catherine, she reads 0:23:56.240 --> 0:24:02.320 full humorously. But one that I saw independently of her, 0:24:02.359 --> 0:24:08.240 I guess was Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. I'm sure you're 0:24:08.280 --> 0:24:16.120 familiar with it. It's Richard Baucom, British theologian, and he 0:24:16.160 --> 0:24:19.199 starts out the book saying, well, I know this is 0:24:19.200 --> 0:24:22.560 a minority view, but this book the thesis is that 0:24:22.600 --> 0:24:28.480 the New Testament Gospels are deliberately trying to convey how 0:24:28.560 --> 0:24:33.360 much of their material is coming from eyewitnesses, and that 0:24:33.440 --> 0:24:37.560 he is making the case for the traditional interpretation of 0:24:37.680 --> 0:24:42.680 the Gospels that, for example, it was tradition that Mark 0:24:42.760 --> 0:24:48.080 had taken down Peter's reminiscences in effect, and he's saying, 0:24:48.119 --> 0:24:50.960 there's really good evidence that that's exactly what Mark does, 0:24:51.040 --> 0:24:57.840 and so forth, and that did something really important for me, 0:24:58.200 --> 0:25:02.760 because I had already read into the revisionists. I'd read 0:25:02.800 --> 0:25:06.000 some of bart Eraman, I'd read some of the other things, 0:25:06.040 --> 0:25:10.160 which says, oh, the Gospels weren't really written. They accumulated 0:25:10.200 --> 0:25:13.600 traditions over decades in different parts of the Roman Empire. 0:25:13.760 --> 0:25:18.120 It's like the telephone game, and so we really can't 0:25:18.160 --> 0:25:22.919 even be sure that what Jesus is purported to have 0:25:22.960 --> 0:25:26.040 said there's any resemblance to anything he did say. I 0:25:26.080 --> 0:25:29.480 knew about the Jesus Seminar, and I kind of thought 0:25:29.480 --> 0:25:35.000 that they've won. I'd assume that, yeah, you know that 0:25:35.440 --> 0:25:39.080 more or less the New Testament had been discredited, and 0:25:39.800 --> 0:25:43.639 all at once, here's Malcolm writing a very error type book, 0:25:44.440 --> 0:25:46.359 and it seems to me he's making a lot of sense. 0:25:47.040 --> 0:25:49.199 And then I start from there and I end up 0:25:49.200 --> 0:25:54.600 reading a variety of other defenses of the tradition, and 0:25:55.000 --> 0:25:57.800 some of which were written before Malcolm. I hadn't known 0:25:57.840 --> 0:26:03.520 that these existed. And is I did that? I kept 0:26:03.520 --> 0:26:07.160 saying to myself, I'm more impressed by the empirical evidence 0:26:08.600 --> 0:26:12.000 by the defenders than I am by the revisionists. 0:26:14.560 --> 0:26:18.640 So when I teach classes, on apologetics, I often walk through, 0:26:18.720 --> 0:26:22.720 like the scientific evidence that points towards a mind that 0:26:22.840 --> 0:26:28.480 began the universe that's intelligent, timeless, changeless, purposeful. Will walk 0:26:28.560 --> 0:26:31.200 through the fine tuning, which I think advances that a 0:26:31.240 --> 0:26:34.280 little bit further, talk about things like the origin of 0:26:34.400 --> 0:26:37.040 life and the information to sell which is not something 0:26:37.200 --> 0:26:39.840 you go into, which is fine, talk about consciousness in 0:26:39.880 --> 0:26:41.920