WEBVTT - Religion and Conspiracy Theories (with Drew McCoy) - Part 1 0:00:00.640 --> 0:00:03.760 I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a 0:00:03.760 --> 0:00:07.120 CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts 0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:08.840 in Europe, Russia, and in Asia. 0:00:08.880 --> 0:00:11.959 And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:16.120 and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:17.120 our adversaries. 0:00:17.360 --> 0:00:21.040 Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy 0:00:21.079 --> 0:00:22.840 theories large and small. 0:00:23.120 --> 0:00:25.599 Could they be true or are we being manipulated? 0:00:26.079 --> 0:00:28.160 This is mission implausible. 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:33.640 So John and Jerry, I'm excited to introduce you to 0:00:33.720 --> 0:00:34.760 my friend Drew McCoy. 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:37.080 Hey, Drew, Hey, thanks for having me guys. 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:42.279 So, Drew has a phenomenal YouTube channel, Genetically Modified Skeptic 0:00:42.320 --> 0:00:44.479 where I think, Drew, it's fair to say you're one 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:47.080 of the most public voices of what's now known as 0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:51.040 the ex evangelical movement, the movement of people who grew 0:00:51.120 --> 0:00:55.040 up evangelical Christian no longer are evangelical Christians. None of 0:00:55.040 --> 0:00:58.600 the three of us are particularly religious, and we're having 0:00:58.640 --> 0:01:01.960 a chat about sure. See like there's a huge overlap 0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:08.200 between conspiracy theories from QAnon to whatever the latest Trump 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:11.760 thing is and evangelical Christians. And we were like, why 0:01:11.880 --> 0:01:12.160 is that. 0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:16.720 Well, hopefully my pain can help elucidate some of the 0:01:16.760 --> 0:01:19.399 factors here, My childhood trauma might be able to help 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:20.640 you guys understand a little bit of this. 0:01:20.760 --> 0:01:21.119 I hope. 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:25.280 Oh great, Yes, we love childhood trauma. John Cipher, Well, 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:28.039 were you religious at all as a kid? Were your parents? 0:01:28.200 --> 0:01:29.040 Did you go to church? 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:29.280 So? 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:31.440 My parents, my dad was a professor and mom was 0:01:31.480 --> 0:01:34.600 a teacher. No, we didn't go to church. We weren't 0:01:34.640 --> 0:01:37.679 really religious. They weren't trying to promote atheism or anything 0:01:37.720 --> 0:01:39.679 like that. And it wasn't until I was out of college. 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:42.320 Once we were some function and somebody asked my father 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:44.320 what he was and he said, I don't. My friend 0:01:44.319 --> 0:01:46.400 told me that they don't think I'm a Christian. Then 0:01:46.400 --> 0:01:48.400 they explained what a Christian is. I guess that's right. 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:50.560 I just never grew up with much religion, and so 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:52.080 I'm intimidated about you guys. 0:01:52.240 --> 0:01:55.120 And Jerry, you grew up well, okay, last Dave's o'sha 0:01:55.360 --> 0:01:59.440 one of ten kids? What do you think all Altra boy? Drew, 0:01:59.520 --> 0:02:01.800 you had the Baptists, we had the Jesuits. They're just 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:05.360 as mind bending for me. And to bring Cia into it, 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:09.160 and conspiracy theories. When I was younger, I fifth sixth grade, 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:13.040 I started to question just logically, like this doesn't make 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:17.080 any sense to me, and I was basically told lovingly 0:02:17.720 --> 0:02:21.400 shut up and accept it. And it's about faith. And 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:25.800 in Cia we dealt with faith a lot, surprisingly so 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:30.120 people had faith in communism, feefle had faith and jihadism, 0:02:30.680 --> 0:02:34.440 people had faith in their own ethnic superiority like in 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:40.760 South Africa, and people did terrible atrocities based on faith 0:02:41.000 --> 0:02:43.639 their faith. And with Drew, I was if I could 0:02:43.720 --> 0:02:45.960 kick it off, I'd like to know what you think 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:51.640 faith is, because in Cia we've seen faith Shia and 0:02:51.760 --> 0:02:55.560 Sunnis in Iraq where they slaughtered each other, and John 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:59.000 was in the killing fields of the former ex Yugoslavia 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:01.720 where people were murdering under each other for things we 0:03:01.720 --> 0:03:05.240 couldn't understand, and it was all based on faith, not 0:03:05.280 --> 0:03:07.639 just religious face, but also faith in a great leader 0:03:07.760 --> 0:03:10.720 or an ideology so true. I was wondering if you 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:13.440 could tell us what you think faith is and how 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:15.720 we define it, because it's generally a positive word, but 0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:18.520 I think in Ceeia we don't often tend not to 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:19.280 see it that way. 0:03:19.600 --> 0:03:22.359 It's a good question, and I think that the answer 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:25.320 that's existed in the atheist sphere for quite a while now, 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:28.440 originating with people like Christopher Higgins and Sam Harris, is 0:03:28.480 --> 0:03:31.560 fundamentally flawed. The atheist fear likes to say faith is 0:03:31.639 --> 0:03:34.320 just bad epistemology. It's just believing in things for which 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:38.240 there is no evidence. And that's not completely incorrect in 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:41.400 certain instances, it's just that's not the entirety of the picture. 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:46.800 So I see faith as strong affiliation and identity with something. 0:03:47.080 --> 0:03:50.560 That can be a belief, but just as much it 0:03:50.560 --> 0:03:53.400 can be a group, it can be an identity. It 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:56.880 can be like you said, affiliation with or love of 0:03:56.920 --> 0:04:00.440 some kind of totalitarian leader. I don't think that faith 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:03.520 needs to be looked at just through a philosophical context, 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:06.600 thinking oh, it's just bad epistemology. It also needs to 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:10.960 be seen sociologically. What does faith do? Faith motivates people 0:04:11.000 --> 0:04:14.600 to affiliate with certain groups, to do certain actions, And 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:17.479 that's how I prefer to think about faith. 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:20.960 That lines up with my I didn't grow up particularly religious, 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:24.560 although Jewish, but I did major in history of religion 0:04:24.600 --> 0:04:26.919 in college because I was always fascinated, like, how do 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:30.280 people have faith? And a Christian apologist or any kind 0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:32.880 of religious apologists would say, oh, you have faith in 0:04:32.960 --> 0:04:36.160 Darwinism and the Big Bang and stuff. So putting that 0:04:36.200 --> 0:04:39.120 whole argument to one side, the kind of functional use 0:04:39.160 --> 0:04:42.000 of faith the way you defined it makes a lot 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:44.520 of sense to me and also helps see like, oh, 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:47.719 that is a frame to look at conspiracy theories. We've 0:04:47.720 --> 0:04:50.039 talked about on this show. How you know, if you 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:53.359 suddenly believe in whatever, QAnon, whatever it is, you have 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:56.880 a community, you have a shared frame of reference. One 0:04:56.920 --> 0:04:58.680 way I think about it is like you know what 0:04:58.800 --> 0:05:00.800 to think and feel in the more when you wake up, 0:05:00.880 --> 0:05:03.240 like you have a purpose, you have a goal, you 0:05:03.240 --> 0:05:05.520 have an enemy, you have good guys and bad guys, 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:08.880 and so in that sense, it almost makes me wonder like, 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:11.880 where is the line between you know, sort of traditional 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:15.279 religious faith and believing in conspiracy theories? 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:15.720 Yeah? 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:19.279 Absolutely, And I actually have a little factoid here that 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:20.960 I wanted to make sure and bring up at the 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:23.520 beginning of this just so that hopefully we can all 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:26.760 be on the same page about what an evangelical is. 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:30.960 Per Ryan Burge, who is a political scientist at Eastern 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:34.880 Illinois University, I've had him on my channel. The identity 0:05:34.920 --> 0:05:40.640 of evangelical is not something that is informed solely theologically, 0:05:40.720 --> 0:05:42.840 and I think I would actually argue that it's informed 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:46.480 more by a certain kind of political action and identity. 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:49.720 So the evidence of this is that when surveyed in 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:53.240 twenty twenty two, twenty three percent of people who are 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:57.920 Orthodox Christians identified as evangelical. Orthodox Christians come from places 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:01.280 like Russia and Georgia. They're very much not in line 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:05.680 theologically with evangelical Christians in the US. Now, to go 0:06:05.720 --> 0:06:10.400 in a more extreme direction, thirty nine percent of Republican 0:06:10.560 --> 0:06:16.960 voting Muslims in the United States identify as evangelicals. Traditionally 0:06:17.000 --> 0:06:19.440 the enemy of the religious right in the US right, 0:06:19.480 --> 0:06:22.159 but now they are identifying with the religious rights so 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:25.320 long as they vote Republican. Now, among Buddhists, twenty five 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:28.320 percent of Republican Buddhists in the United States identify as 0:06:28.320 --> 0:06:32.040 born again or evangelical. For Hindus it's thirty seven percent. 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:36.919 We're most definitely not seeing evangelicalism act as a solely 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:41.560 religious category. It's a political category and identity maybe more 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:42.359 than anything else. 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:44.440 Can I ask you why is that? 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:44.640 Now? 0:06:44.680 --> 0:06:47.320 I know when I look back at my history, there 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:50.760 is a tie between what became evangelical religion and anti 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:53.839 intellectualism in this country. Right, the early Puritans are rigorous 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:56.880 scholars and revered learning, and they built Harvard University all 0:06:56.880 --> 0:06:59.280 those kind of things, and then the Awakening the mid 0:06:59.400 --> 0:07:02.159 eighteenth century, true was intellectually be subordinate to the soul. 0:07:02.839 --> 0:07:05.839 More about spontaneity, a focus on the spirit, personal Bible, 0:07:05.880 --> 0:07:08.400 people can find their own relationship with God and those 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:10.920 type of things, and it was often tied with moving 0:07:10.920 --> 0:07:13.680 away from that focus on For the Puritans, it was 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:18.000 a scholarly clergy. But why did it become political? Whim 0:07:18.120 --> 0:07:21.480 evangelicals now tied to politics in our minds. 0:07:21.720 --> 0:07:24.400 I'm glad that you brought up the Puritans and how 0:07:24.800 --> 0:07:29.320 much they valued education within theology and authority as well. 0:07:29.520 --> 0:07:32.400 The Puritans, the Congregational Church was one of the established 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:37.120 churches in the colonies before independence. And the thing that 0:07:37.200 --> 0:07:40.160 kind of drove the advent of evangelicalism in the United 0:07:40.200 --> 0:07:44.480 States we might recognize it today was the abolishment or 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:48.440 the abolition of state churches and the adoption of a 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:52.840 free market economy within the realm of religion. So I 0:07:52.880 --> 0:07:56.640 think that points to a pretty clear overlap between just 0:07:56.760 --> 0:08:01.520 an idea that free market values, free market approaches to culture, 0:08:01.640 --> 0:08:05.640 to economics need to be valued, and this form of 0:08:06.160 --> 0:08:11.720 Protestantism that we see today, evangelicalism is basically extreme libertarian, 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:17.760 free market Christianity, where the most inflammatory positions, where the 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:22.280 most eye catching rhetoric is going to be prized and 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:25.480 made into doctrine that gets repeated and spread. 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:29.360 I enjoy disagreeing with John, so let me just take 0:08:29.400 --> 0:08:32.360 my pet pee for a walk. So I think it's 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:36.120 within the Pilgrim ideology that the first religious forces that 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:39.200 came to the US from Europe. I think conspiracy theories 0:08:39.480 --> 0:08:42.840 are embedded in that. Within two generations, there's the sale 0:08:42.880 --> 0:08:46.400 in witchcraft trials, right, and in the sixteen nineties and 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:51.280 at one point ten percent of the entire population was 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:55.440 being accused of witchcraft. From a very small population, thirty 0:08:55.440 --> 0:08:58.640 five people were brutally murdered, and scholars look back now 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:01.920 and say, well, actually, yeah, it was religious hysteria arc 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:04.360 but it was also politics, it was also class and 0:09:04.400 --> 0:09:08.280 it was also arguably a conspiracy theory that got out 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:11.840 of hand. And I think there's a straight line between 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:16.000 the Salem witchcraft trials which were biblically based. There's the 0:09:16.000 --> 0:09:18.920 thing in the Bible about suffer not which is to 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:21.360 live right, so that riches must be alive and you 0:09:21.440 --> 0:09:25.400 must execute them to QAnon today and I'm throwing open 0:09:25.400 --> 0:09:28.600 to the groups, what's the sense of politics, conspiracy theories 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:31.560 religion and what we have in the US. 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:37.040 The peak of witch trials in all of religious history, 0:09:37.080 --> 0:09:39.120 as far as I can tell, or at least in 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:41.040 Christian history as far as I can tell, is actually 0:09:41.360 --> 0:09:44.920 happening in early modern Europe as a result of Protestants 0:09:44.920 --> 0:09:47.800 and Catholics fighting for the first time, because Protestants actually 0:09:47.840 --> 0:09:51.520 came onto the scene printing press and Protestantism had really 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:55.520 a hand in hand relationship. And what I see Protestantism 0:09:55.520 --> 0:09:59.480 as is a move toward a free market approach to 0:09:59.800 --> 0:10:02.680 create Ristianity rather than this kind of high church liturgical 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:05.720 approach to Christianity with everything is just based in authority, 0:10:06.440 --> 0:10:09.560 and for better or worse, it seems like free market 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:14.160 approaches to religion breed ideas that can be very much 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:19.480 steeped in fear, in moral panic, and inflammatory rhetoric, simply 0:10:19.480 --> 0:10:23.520 because this is the type of human communication that cashes 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:29.120 human attention. The most Martin Luther really stoked moral panic 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:31.400 in accusing the Catholic Church of a bunch of things 0:10:31.400 --> 0:10:35.760 which were of course maybe necessary to call out, but 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:38.800 and effective. This is that people get really scared, really 0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:41.880 riled up. They start looking for enemies everywhere, and they 0:10:41.920 --> 0:10:46.120 eventually start accusing what today we would just consider to 0:10:46.160 --> 0:10:52.040 be maybe more masculine women, religious minorities, gay people of witchcraft, 0:10:52.080 --> 0:10:55.520 and then unlike with the Salem witch trials, killing a 0:10:55.600 --> 0:10:58.800 lot of them, not just accusing a few hundred and 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:02.520 killing something like night eineteen, but killing hundreds of them. 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:04.520 While I do. 0:11:04.920 --> 0:11:07.280 With my Protestant roots, tend to think that a free 0:11:07.280 --> 0:11:10.440 market approach to things is good, I think when it 0:11:10.440 --> 0:11:14.040 comes to religion, I can't deny that there's a serious 0:11:14.040 --> 0:11:17.680 connection between a free market religious economy and moral panic. 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:19.600 And that means conspiracy theories. 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:20.160 Yeah. 0:11:20.160 --> 0:11:23.280 I mean we see in countries today that have established 0:11:23.360 --> 0:11:26.880 religions parts of Europe, the United Kingdom, Christian religious practice 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:30.360 is much less right and self identified. I mean, we 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:33.720 are now catching up with Europe in our the percentage 0:11:33.760 --> 0:11:36.839 of Americans who don't have a religious belief, but we're 0:11:36.840 --> 0:11:39.319 still as I understand it, way higher than a lot 0:11:39.360 --> 0:11:43.160 of European countries where they have. In fact, I believe 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:45.559 there's strong evidence that separation of church and state was 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:48.520 as much for the church as it was for the state, 0:11:48.640 --> 0:11:52.080 that there was an understanding that having one state religion 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:54.440 would actually hurt religious practice. 0:11:54.520 --> 0:11:55.120 Absolutely. 0:11:55.240 --> 0:11:56.880 All right, we're going to get right back into that, 0:11:56.960 --> 0:11:58.320 but first let's hear this. 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:09.120 Evangelicals. Now, I tend to think about them in the 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:11.200 political sphere, and they tend to be very focused on 0:12:11.280 --> 0:12:15.160 right wing politics, and as such, oftentimes I think that 0:12:15.520 --> 0:12:19.240 they look down on people like me who aren't believers. 0:12:19.520 --> 0:12:21.960 And maybe that's wrong, but it seems that they think 0:12:22.000 --> 0:12:24.920 that non believers sort of pretentious, are pompous intellectuals and 0:12:24.960 --> 0:12:27.200 what have you. But is there an arrogance to being 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:28.800 a believer? It seems to me that it's the height 0:12:28.840 --> 0:12:30.559 of arrogance to claim that you know there is one 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:33.040 truth and you have a relationship with God and someone 0:12:33.040 --> 0:12:33.720 else doesn't. 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:37.199 Now, there are a lot of religious traditions that do 0:12:37.679 --> 0:12:40.800 stress kind of the death of the ego, thinking about 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:45.440 something like Sufi mysticism, even mysticism within the Orthodox Church. 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:48.520 To a certain degree, things like this things in New Age, 0:12:48.679 --> 0:12:53.040 they very much lessen the esteem of the individual or 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:55.319 sense of identity of the individual and try to integrate 0:12:55.320 --> 0:12:59.440 this self into a larger whole. But speaking specifically about 0:12:59.480 --> 0:13:05.160 Evangelic Christianity, there absolutely is a strong identitarian attitude. The 0:13:05.200 --> 0:13:09.280 way that I mean identitarian attitudes are strong ideas that 0:13:09.600 --> 0:13:13.400 you and your group or a specific identity group culture 0:13:13.720 --> 0:13:18.600 should control everything, should have at least far more power 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:23.560 than anyone else. Within the Evangelical Christian Church, within Protestant 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:27.239 churches generally, but especially when you start going very conservative, 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:31.880 there is a strong identitarian idea. When Jesus said to 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:34.600 go to the highways in the hedges, he was not 0:13:34.880 --> 0:13:37.480 saying go to the highways and the hedges to make 0:13:37.520 --> 0:13:40.320 sure that everybody goes to heaven. He was saying that, 0:13:40.400 --> 0:13:42.520 but he was also saying, go to the highways and 0:13:42.559 --> 0:13:45.040 the hedges and tell them that they need to basically 0:13:45.200 --> 0:13:50.920 bow down before you and your control over politics, over culture, 0:13:51.360 --> 0:13:55.560 over arguably economics, and so yes, I definitely think that 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:58.559 there is a form of arrogance and even narcissism within 0:13:59.040 --> 0:14:03.400 a specific the type of Christian theology that is encapsulated 0:14:03.400 --> 0:14:04.880 in evangelicalism right now. 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:08.400 And I'd expand that beyond just Christianity. So I spent 0:14:08.480 --> 0:14:11.520 a lot of time as his Adam in the Middle East, 0:14:12.000 --> 0:14:15.120 and John has spent time in South Asia and dealing 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:18.400 with Muslims, right And it's not anti William, but this 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:21.760 is they have the same sort of thing. When I've 0:14:21.800 --> 0:14:25.440 talked to al Qaeda people, we've captured al Qaeda fighters, 0:14:26.040 --> 0:14:30.640 they have this religious not only just faith, but fervor 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:34.000 that they are not terrorists. We're the terrorists, but they 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:38.840 are actually the warriors of God. They are divinely ordained 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:42.560 to kill us. And as a CIAF are trying to 0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:47.760 explain this to the US political establishment. It's not you're 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:50.400 not going to defeat them in Afghanistan. You're not going 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:53.720 to defeat them with bombs and bullets. What you're struggling 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:57.080 with here is faith and however you want to define it. 0:14:57.160 --> 0:15:01.440 And I recall one particular instance when I was in 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:04.840 a rock just after Moses had fallen, and if you remember, 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:10.040 it was like three thousand Isis guys defeated fifty thousand 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:15.000 Iraqi troops and Washington is like, how could this possibly be? 0:15:15.880 --> 0:15:20.240 It's because one side believes they actually believe they're from God, 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:23.280 and Washington just couldn't get it, like, no, no, they 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:25.240 can't be true. It's got to be they got more money, 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:29.000 They've got this. It's like, you can't pay these guys 0:15:29.160 --> 0:15:31.760 like an extra three hundred dollars to blow themselves up. 0:15:31.880 --> 0:15:34.160 And that's again, that's something we struggle within the national 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:39.200 security space is understanding the fervency of this outside of the. 0:15:39.160 --> 0:15:43.320 Beltleigh, Yeah, I think that I've witnessed this idea within 0:15:43.640 --> 0:15:47.000 the atheist community, especially which very strongly exists with an 0:15:47.040 --> 0:15:51.760 evangelical community of basically religious essentialism. There is some kind 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:59.160 of discernible fundamental essence of true religion that must exist 0:15:59.240 --> 0:16:03.320 in order for something to be true religion. Religion in 0:16:03.360 --> 0:16:06.160 its true form and its pure form, cannot be influenced 0:16:06.160 --> 0:16:10.080 by outside factors. It just is as it is. And 0:16:10.120 --> 0:16:13.200 so that means that people like Sam Harris have been 0:16:13.280 --> 0:16:17.000 driven to say that what's fundamentally wrong with Islam is 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:20.800 the fundamentals of Islam. He does not factor in any 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:24.320 kind of outside influence into what he believes is true 0:16:24.360 --> 0:16:29.240 Islam or true Christianity. These things are defined entirely through 0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:31.000 a theological Lens. 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:33.160 I want to just jump in to say, the people 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:36.440 we were using to fight isis were other Muslims, right, 0:16:36.480 --> 0:16:39.520 So it's not like in Islam thing, it's what version 0:16:39.600 --> 0:16:42.680 thereof or how you define faith and how it's exploited. 0:16:42.720 --> 0:16:47.640 Perhaps, Yeah, definitely. Now, religious scholars and sociologists in general 0:16:47.680 --> 0:16:49.880 over the last ten years I think have been really 0:16:50.600 --> 0:16:53.560 they've always stressed this, but strongly stressing as a response 0:16:53.600 --> 0:16:58.880 to public ideas about religion, that religion is fundamentally malleable, 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:04.040 and these ideas of fundamentalism that are really popular in 0:17:04.080 --> 0:17:07.920 atheist and Christian circles alike today are a reductionist. They're 0:17:08.040 --> 0:17:12.200 essentialist the kind of Islam that you are describing here. 0:17:12.600 --> 0:17:17.200 While maybe they can make theologically salient arguments for why 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:20.239 these things are linked to the Qoran, we like to 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:25.240 reduce the development of ideas like this to being oh, 0:17:25.280 --> 0:17:28.200 they read the Koran and then they acted on it. 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:32.600 Whereas when we look in different contexts we see Islam 0:17:32.680 --> 0:17:35.639 in somewhere like Indonesia, in places where people are a 0:17:35.720 --> 0:17:39.719 bit wealthier, where it's very multicultural, where it's multi lingual, 0:17:39.960 --> 0:17:43.080 we just don't see the same kind of radicalism and 0:17:43.119 --> 0:17:46.400 fundamentalism popping up. To me, this means that there's got 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:48.560 to be some kind of other factor. There's got to 0:17:48.600 --> 0:17:51.440 be economic factors, there's got to be social and cultural 0:17:51.480 --> 0:17:54.040 factors going on. Maybe it's a bad idea for me 0:17:54.080 --> 0:17:56.480 to pick a fight about foreign policy here with you 0:17:56.520 --> 0:17:59.960 guys at all. That's not my expertise. You're a popular 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:03.879 American project has been to say that American foreign policy 0:18:03.920 --> 0:18:07.640 does not have anything to do with the rise of Wahabism, 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:11.400 this kind of ultra fundamentalist and violent form of Islam. 0:18:11.760 --> 0:18:15.680 While I wouldn't defend the idea that America created fundamentalist 0:18:15.760 --> 0:18:18.520 is Lam, I think that's reductive too. I think that 0:18:18.560 --> 0:18:22.000 we do need to look at social, economic, cultural political 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:26.040 factors when we're explaining why basically these fifteen year old 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:31.040 boys would go out and start murdering their fellow citizens 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:34.160 in the name of the same religion. Essentially. 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:37.200 I did a story in two thousand and two for 0:18:37.280 --> 0:18:40.440 The New York Times. I interviewed a group of guys 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:44.520 who wanted to be suicide bombers, and I interviewed three, 0:18:44.880 --> 0:18:47.640 and two of them disappeared. I don't know what happened, yes, 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:51.960 but we can guess. And this was in Jordan in 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:54.600 two thousand and two. It was clear there was probably 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:56.159 going to be a war with Iraq. So there was 0:18:56.200 --> 0:18:58.800 a handful of options and they were very aware of them. 0:18:58.840 --> 0:19:01.679 There was Israel, which was their first choice, but the 0:19:01.720 --> 0:19:05.800 hardest to access. There was Iraq coming up. They were 0:19:05.840 --> 0:19:10.879 excited about that. The easiest, they said, was Chechhnia, which 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:13.760 at the time you just raised your hand and they 0:19:13.760 --> 0:19:15.800 were in. At least that's what these kids told me. 0:19:15.920 --> 0:19:18.280 You could be in Chech fairly quickly. They knew how 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:21.040 to get you in there. Kashmir, I was surprised to 0:19:21.080 --> 0:19:24.880 hear was also a favorite spot they actually I witnessed 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:28.600 an interesting argument between them where two of them said 0:19:28.600 --> 0:19:32.800 they might just stay in Jordan and kill Americans in Jordan, 0:19:33.280 --> 0:19:37.240 and the other one saying, no, you can't in Jordan 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:40.719 because the Quran says, and I don't know the Korah, 0:19:40.880 --> 0:19:42.840 I don't know if this is true, but says something 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:46.000 like you can kill an invading army, but not an 0:19:46.040 --> 0:19:48.800 invited army. And since the King of Jordan had invited 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:51.159 the Americans, you couldn't kill them in Jordan. But the 0:19:51.160 --> 0:19:55.880 second they cross into Iraq, it was fair game, and 0:19:55.920 --> 0:19:58.880 that by this logic also anyone in Israel, it's fair 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:01.960 game because they see that the entire Israel as an invasion. 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:04.960 But one of these guys, who was by far the smartest, 0:20:05.040 --> 0:20:07.360 and I will let you know, I'm still friends with him, 0:20:07.560 --> 0:20:10.320 he actually gave up that way, and he lives in Texas. 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:13.080 Now he's a lovely guy, honestly, no joke, Drew, I 0:20:13.080 --> 0:20:16.280 should introduce you sometime. But he's still a devout Muslim, 0:20:16.280 --> 0:20:20.480 but not he rejects violence. Now that's good, Yes, that's good. 0:20:20.680 --> 0:20:24.520 But he was explicit. He just walked me through. He's like, 0:20:24.720 --> 0:20:28.880 I am a poor Palestinian kid from a bad family 0:20:29.240 --> 0:20:32.159 in Jordan. Like not a bad family, just a poor, 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:36.480 unconnected family. I'm a really good computer programmer, but I 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:39.240 can't get ahead because everywhere I go to get a job, 0:20:39.720 --> 0:20:42.160 like the nephew of the owner who's an idiot, gets 0:20:42.160 --> 0:20:46.080 promoted above me. And I want to be proud, and 0:20:46.440 --> 0:20:49.080 if I could get a job at Microsoft, I'd much 0:20:49.119 --> 0:20:52.000 prefer that to being a suicide bomber. But I don't 0:20:52.040 --> 0:20:56.119 know any other way to be proud. And he was explicit. 0:20:56.160 --> 0:20:58.520 He said, if I get a good programming job. I'm 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:00.560 not going to do it. If I don't, I will. 0:21:01.040 --> 0:21:02.840 He did, by the way, get a good programming job, 0:21:02.880 --> 0:21:04.920 and that's what he does in Texas. I spent time 0:21:04.920 --> 0:21:07.639 in Haiti where I mean, obviously, Haiti's a religious country, 0:21:07.680 --> 0:21:10.560 but it's not a religious lent. The violence isn't religiously tinged. 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:12.840 And John and Jerry, you both have spent time in 0:21:13.080 --> 0:21:18.399 countries where there is no gredible promise of an improved 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:22.240 life over time, and when you feel a fairly high 0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:26.199 likelihood that the existing system, the existing real world, the 0:21:26.240 --> 0:21:30.280 existing economic order, political order, is just going to continue 0:21:30.320 --> 0:21:33.560 to suck. You start to understand how the vast majority 0:21:33.560 --> 0:21:35.800 of people in those conditions don't become suicie pommers or 0:21:35.880 --> 0:21:38.959 terrorists and don't turn to violence. But you can understand 0:21:39.640 --> 0:21:43.440 how religious faith that it transports you out of those conditions, 0:21:43.440 --> 0:21:46.560 that allows you to imagine other planes or other worlds 0:21:46.600 --> 0:21:50.280 where there's an alternate, happier life, either happening now or 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:52.440 could happen in the future. It just feels obvious. 0:21:52.800 --> 0:21:54.480 Let's take a break, we'll be right back. 0:21:58.000 --> 0:21:59.960 All right, back to mission implausible. 0:22:00.240 --> 0:22:01.840 I really want to jump in and say that, So 0:22:01.880 --> 0:22:05.920 there's the doc Trinle, Right, so there's everybody's got everybody. 0:22:05.920 --> 0:22:11.720 All cultures have a religion, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism. What happens, though, 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:14.440 is there's a narrative that goes with it can be interpreted, 0:22:14.560 --> 0:22:17.080 and I'd call it a conspiracy theory. Right. So within 0:22:17.280 --> 0:22:19.520 Islam there are people who are interpreting certain ways for 0:22:19.840 --> 0:22:23.919 their own political power achieve a sense of aggrievement. John's 0:22:23.920 --> 0:22:26.960 an expert on Yugoslavia, but they all got along fairly 0:22:27.040 --> 0:22:31.720 well during the Yugoslav days. And yet when these conspiracy theories, 0:22:31.760 --> 0:22:35.520