Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radios Howstuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. In today, Santa Claus is coming to town.
Speaker 1: That's right. This is an episode about Santa Claus. It's
Speaker 1: also an episode about gods and our ideas about God's,
Speaker 1: our god concepts and what that that all means. And
Speaker 1: we are going to get into the question of whether
Speaker 1: Santa is a god or not. I do want to
Speaker 1: just have a couple of quick reminders here as we
Speaker 1: dive into this one. First of all, uh, yes, this
Speaker 1: episode it has to do with Santa, But if you
Speaker 1: are attempted to listen to it outside of the holiday season,
Speaker 1: no worries, because there's gonna be a lot of talk
Speaker 1: that does not directly apply to Santa Claus. Sure, this
Speaker 1: is an episode about the cognitive science of religion. And secondly,
Speaker 1: we will be discussing the magic of Santa Claus in
Speaker 1: this episode, so just keep that in mind, parents, if
Speaker 1: you're listening with your children. Sure, alright, So most of
Speaker 1: us would not say that Santa Claus is a god, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, we we don't necessarily maybe we're not always
Speaker 1: able to define God in a dictionary definition kind of way,
Speaker 1: but you have an intuitive sense of how this word
Speaker 1: is used, and for some reason, Santa Claus doesn't usually
Speaker 1: fit into that definition, right, that intuitive definition. Right, even
Speaker 1: if you are, let's say, a child who is a
Speaker 1: Santa fundamentalist who believes in, you know, very literally in
Speaker 1: Santa Claus, even then I don't think they would necessarily
Speaker 1: confuse the the idea of Santa Claus with the idea
Speaker 1: of say, the Judeo Christian deity. Sure, but on the
Speaker 1: same hand, and then the same hand is, as we're
Speaker 1: going to discuss in this episode, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of similarity. So first of all, I want to just
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about Santa Claus, this magical being
Speaker 1: the factor so heavily into Western holiday traditions as well
Speaker 1: as traditions around the world that have been influenced by
Speaker 1: the notion of the Great Jolly Old Elf. The exact
Speaker 1: mythology is going to vary, of course, but but here
Speaker 1: are just some of the often highlighted aspects of the
Speaker 1: mythos Okay, first of all, Santa is at at the
Speaker 1: very least extremely long lived, if not undying, immortal or eternal.
Speaker 1: I mean he's been doing this thing for a long time,
Speaker 1: that's right. Secondly, uh, Santa is I guess you would
Speaker 1: say pan sofick or all knowing. He knows when you
Speaker 1: were sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if
Speaker 1: you've been bad or good. I'm not sure he's supposed
Speaker 1: to know your inner thoughts, but he is privy to
Speaker 1: an awful lot. I think a lot of conceptions of
Speaker 1: Santa would even give him like inner psychic access. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean if if Santa can, well, Santa can at
Speaker 1: least see what you're doing when other people aren't around
Speaker 1: to see what you're doing, and he sees what you're
Speaker 1: doing in private, right that that seems like that's virgin on.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's got to be like supernatural. They're oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: It's not like he's just getting reports about your behavior, right.
Speaker 1: He definitely has supernatural abilities. It just it comes down
Speaker 1: to whether he can see inside your brain or not,
Speaker 1: if he can see your thoughts at all, if he
Speaker 1: can anticipate your actions based on that information. Also, he
Speaker 1: receives mail from all over the world often through magical means,
Speaker 1: or at least magical variations of the postal system. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know that that includes things like letters can
Speaker 1: find him no matter where you mail them. You can
Speaker 1: mail them at the zoo, you can mail them at home,
Speaker 1: you can mail them through the chimney, things like that.
Speaker 1: You know another thing that's very common about God's is
Speaker 1: they tend to live in inaccessible places, if not in
Speaker 1: a like extra dimensional, completely fundamentally inaccessible place, even when
Speaker 1: they live on Earth, they tend to be at the
Speaker 1: top of a mountain or at the bottom of the
Speaker 1: ocean or something like. Yeah. I think that the mountaintop
Speaker 1: God as as an excellent example because the modern sense,
Speaker 1: what is the top of the world mountain? It is
Speaker 1: the North Pole, of course, which is which is where
Speaker 1: Santa Claus is said to reside, and it is an
Speaker 1: insanely hostile environment um fighting off polar bears, and he
Speaker 1: seems to reside there without any outside support aside from
Speaker 1: the milk and cookies that he collects every year, and
Speaker 1: of course the big ones. Santa can travel around the
Speaker 1: entire world and visit every home in a single evening
Speaker 1: every year. I remember thinking about this as a child
Speaker 1: and thinking like, well, I don't know, that sounds really difficult,
Speaker 1: but it's probably not impossible. Right. It seemed within the
Speaker 1: stretching of plausibility to me, right, Like the magic makes
Speaker 1: sense at first, and then you start thinking about the
Speaker 1: magic and you're like, wow, this is some potent magic.
Speaker 1: And then along the way, you know, you you introduce
Speaker 1: some science fiction concepts, and you introduce some some elaborate
Speaker 1: visions of the nature of time, and then okay, you
Speaker 1: can create some versions of it that makes a little
Speaker 1: bit more sense for hals. But at the very least,
Speaker 1: Santa has amazing abilities to travel in ways that immortal
Speaker 1: human cannot, of course, and there's there's much more than
Speaker 1: that that we might add, based not only on beliefs,
Speaker 1: but on films as well that features Santa Claus. So
Speaker 1: he has been spotted in the presence of inhuman in
Speaker 1: human beast men, as we discussed in our Crampus episode. Okay,
Speaker 1: sometimes appears in the guise of Tim Allen and Goldberg.
Speaker 1: That's true. Uh, also whole cogd and Whole cokean play
Speaker 1: of Santa Claus. Oh I don't remember that. Definitely in
Speaker 1: the movie Santa Sleigh which is you know, you can
Speaker 1: probably guess what it's about. Also, Santa can communicate with
Speaker 1: magical deer that also fly and enable him to fly.
Speaker 1: He can control robots, as he has the power over
Speaker 1: all toys and machines that might be argued to be toys.
Speaker 1: This of course from Santa Claus versus the Martians uh
Speaker 1: and imports in that Santa Claus is also drawn into
Speaker 1: an interplanetary dispute. Santa associates known wizards such as Merlin. Uh.
Speaker 1: If he's watched the old Mexican Santa Claus film, we
Speaker 1: of course see him hanging out with Merlin and then
Speaker 1: dealing with demons, engaging in direct conflict with at least
Speaker 1: demons who serve the Christian Devil, if not the Christian
Speaker 1: Devil himself. Oh no, yeah, he's straight up fights demons
Speaker 1: in the movie, Oh that Devil. It's like it's like
Speaker 1: Gandal versus the Bell Rock. It's Santa versus whatever that
Speaker 1: demon's name is. Yes, I mean he gets into some
Speaker 1: serious theological territory in that film. He also may or
Speaker 1: may not play the saxophone when visiting Asian countries, which
Speaker 1: isn't as remarkable, I guess, but it's a it's an
Speaker 1: additional wrinkle in the myth of Santa. Now, we're obviously
Speaker 1: not the first people to raise these parallels between the
Speaker 1: Santa Claus that brings magical delight to children and all
Speaker 1: over the place and uh and you know, basically gods
Speaker 1: that are found throughout history all over the world. In fact,
Speaker 1: I would say it's almost like a cliche joke at
Speaker 1: this point to kind of uh a point out that
Speaker 1: Santa Claus and God are in some sense interchangeable to
Speaker 1: too many children. Yeah, my favorite example of this goes
Speaker 1: back to the year two thousand and one of you know,
Speaker 1: our shared favorite shows, The Simpsons. There's the episode where
Speaker 1: Bart goes in to his bedroom and he kneels by
Speaker 1: his bed, and then he begins to pray, and he says, quote,
Speaker 1: dear Santa, if you bring me lots of good stuff,
Speaker 1: I promised not to do anything bad between now and
Speaker 1: when I wake up. Amen. It's the best kind of
Speaker 1: Simpson's joke, because there's a joke in what he says
Speaker 1: between now and when I wake up. But actually, the
Speaker 1: even funnier part is the very concept of him saying
Speaker 1: it that he's praying to Santa in the first place. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I always loved about it
Speaker 1: is is that it takes me a second to catch it,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's not instantly clear that it's something
Speaker 1: out of the ordinary. I think I vaguely remember almost
Speaker 1: doing this at one point as a child, even uh,
Speaker 1: sort of at least subconsciously getting the idea confused. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, praying to Santa is only a few degrees
Speaker 1: to the left of sending a letter to an entity
Speaker 1: that can observe your every move, And it's not that
Speaker 1: different from the idea of praying to this divine entity
Speaker 1: that you're told about, say it's Sunday school. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: so for the rest of the episode today, we're going
Speaker 1: to be focusing on a paper that actually asks the
Speaker 1: question of, well, in the terms of cognitive science of religion,
Speaker 1: does Santa Claus actually qualify as a god or not?
Speaker 1: Does he match the other things that would be called
Speaker 1: a god within this uh, this sort of like scientific
Speaker 1: academic framework. In particular, we're going to be looking at
Speaker 1: an article by experimental psychologist Justin Barrett published in the
Speaker 1: Journal of Cognition and Culture back in two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight and and Barrett is an interesting character here. He
Speaker 1: wrote a book titled Why Would Anyone Believe in God?
Speaker 1: And he himself is a Christian, but he also sees
Speaker 1: God as a byproduct of our mental architecture, and he
Speaker 1: sees this in a way where these two concepts have
Speaker 1: room to coexist. Yeah, he seems like an interesting figure
Speaker 1: to me, Like, having read a bit about him, I
Speaker 1: think he's in the spirit of those who would believe that, like,
Speaker 1: the existence of God is not in conflict with naturalistic
Speaker 1: explanations for religion. Yeah. Like, for instance, when he was
Speaker 1: asked about about this potential conflict in in a two
Speaker 1: thousand seven New York Times article titled Darwin's God, Uh,
Speaker 1: he said the following quote. Christian theology teaches that people
Speaker 1: were crafted by God to be in a loving relationship
Speaker 1: with him and other people. Why wouldn't God then design
Speaker 1: us in such a way as to find belief in divinity?
Speaker 1: Quite natural? Suppose science produces a convincing account for why
Speaker 1: I think my wife loves me? Should I then stop
Speaker 1: believing that she does? Which I thought was a nice
Speaker 1: answer to that question. Yeah, that's interesting, like that you
Speaker 1: can you can put together all kinds of uh, coherent
Speaker 1: scientific explanations for what the feeling of love is, why
Speaker 1: this is an emotion that's generated by the primate b
Speaker 1: and what kind of relationship it has to you know,
Speaker 1: the evolutionary pressures that created our bodies and our brains.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it doesn't make the love
Speaker 1: not real. And so applying that to religion, you could say, okay, well,
Speaker 1: here's a list of reasons we think that, like evolution,
Speaker 1: natural selection could have shaped our brains to be geared
Speaker 1: toward religion. Uh, unless so you have totally mechanistic, natural
Speaker 1: type explanations for where religion comes from. And yet you
Speaker 1: could still, under this theory potentially believe your religion to
Speaker 1: be true, or multiple religions to be true. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I think that that that goes along with the
Speaker 1: way we tend to approach religious concepts on this show.
Speaker 1: I think that that we can certainly explain where they
Speaker 1: come from. They can we can discuss, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: how they evolve over time and the different influences wound
Speaker 1: up in them. But at the same time we can
Speaker 1: respect that yes, this this story, this myth, this idea,
Speaker 1: this concept can still be very weighty and very important
Speaker 1: to the individuals that value it. Well. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: that also though gets into another layer of complexity, which
Speaker 1: is what it actually means to quote believe in a religion,
Speaker 1: like can you believe in a religion? Does not necessarily
Speaker 1: mean that you accept, say it's story of the creation
Speaker 1: of the world as literally true, or that it suggests
Speaker 1: or that it that it's propositions about metaphysics are literally
Speaker 1: physically real. Yeah. Absolutely, and and and just to to
Speaker 1: drive home a fact here again parental warning, Santa Claus
Speaker 1: is not real in the sense that that Santa Claus
Speaker 1: does not physically exist in the world. He's not actually
Speaker 1: doing these these uh, these great deeds that we attribute
Speaker 1: to him. But on the other hand, he is an
Speaker 1: obviously an important cultural idea. And for my own part,
Speaker 1: like I try and drive home the importance of mythology
Speaker 1: and belief alongside the importance of you know, of a
Speaker 1: fundamental reality I guess and scientific reality when talking about
Speaker 1: these things with with my own son, Uh, you know
Speaker 1: that currently he's really invested in the idea of Santa
Speaker 1: But I am hopefully laying the groundwork that when Santa
Speaker 1: falls from the lofty realm of of presumed magical reality.
Speaker 1: He's not going to plumb it into the hellish depths
Speaker 1: of lies and inaccuracies. He will instead fall into this
Speaker 1: realm of mythological u and this this realm of magical
Speaker 1: concepts that are valued by human culture. If that makes sense, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: Santa Claus is not physically real, but the magic of
Speaker 1: Santa Claus is absolutely real. Like it's one of the
Speaker 1: most powerful mind states that I can recall from my
Speaker 1: entire life is the anticipation magic of the Christmas season
Speaker 1: when I was young. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And I also
Speaker 1: remember sort of going through the struggle of then realizing, Okay,
Speaker 1: Santa Claus is not objectively real, but then gradually then
Speaker 1: growing to to realize that, okay, the idea of laws
Speaker 1: can still be very important and can still be very
Speaker 1: real in that sense, in the way the same way
Speaker 1: that you know, one grows to learn that that fictional
Speaker 1: characters and uh and uh and other stories can be
Speaker 1: extremely important to us in a way that where there
Speaker 1: is sometimes even more important than than flesh and blood
Speaker 1: individuals and in very real events in the world. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I want to get back to Barrett's work again. He's
Speaker 1: he's working in the realm of cognitive science of religion, exploring,
Speaker 1: in his words, quote why religious thoughts and actions only
Speaker 1: occupy a small area in the vast landscape of possible
Speaker 1: belief systems. And that's actually, I think a fascinating question, right,
Speaker 1: Like religious beliefs could in theory be anything. Anything could
Speaker 1: be a religious belief. Example, my friend Julian believes that
Speaker 1: a breakfast crunch Rap Supreme that he got from Taco
Speaker 1: bell in t is the creator of the universe and
Speaker 1: only by its zesty cell ovation can he be saved
Speaker 1: from annihilation. Why is it obvious this is a joke? Seriously, Like,
Speaker 1: how come as soon as I said that, you knew
Speaker 1: that I was kidding. You don't need to go like
Speaker 1: look that up on Google and see if there really
Speaker 1: is a sincere crunch Rap Supreme cult. You just immediately
Speaker 1: know that people don't believe that sort of thing as
Speaker 1: a sincere religion. And yet people believe in all kinds
Speaker 1: of strange things, things that would of course seem strange
Speaker 1: to those who don't share their religious beliefs. So why
Speaker 1: is it that religious beliefs can and do involve all
Speaker 1: kinds of strange things and narratives and propositions, and yet
Speaker 1: there's actually a pretty constrained set of things even within
Speaker 1: that fantastical landscape that would truly seem acceptable as a
Speaker 1: god or a religious narrative. Like for some reason, thumbs
Speaker 1: up to the immortal, all powerful person who reads your
Speaker 1: thoughts as God, but thumbs down to the fast food
Speaker 1: item as creator God. Right, So, like religious beliefs are
Speaker 1: not usually constrained by things like the normal functioning of
Speaker 1: physics or biology, but they are clearly constrained by something.
Speaker 1: If they weren't constrained by something, it wouldn't be obvious
Speaker 1: that the crunch rap Supreme God was a joke. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it is. It is fascinating that, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: world religion involves so many wonderful concepts and so many
Speaker 1: things that when you first introduced to them, they seem
Speaker 1: strange and new and and and and and you know,
Speaker 1: perplexing at times, and and we celebrate that on on
Speaker 1: this show. And yet at the same time you know
Speaker 1: that there's not a tremendous amount of difference between you know,
Speaker 1: the details of this religion and the next religion. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there is this funny tension where in one sense there's
Speaker 1: incredible diversity and difference, but on the other hand, that's
Speaker 1: all constrained within some kind of lane that we sort
Speaker 1: of have a sense. For you, you might not be
Speaker 1: able to define exactly what all the parameters are, though
Speaker 1: Barrett's going to try to do that in a minute.
Speaker 1: But you've got a sense that, like, for some reason,
Speaker 1: the crunch rap doesn't work. That's just not a thing
Speaker 1: people would believe in as God. You just know it automatically.
Speaker 1: So what do people's actual beliefs in God's seem to
Speaker 1: have in common? Barrett argues that the cognitive science of
Speaker 1: religion has actually been pretty successful in identifying the most
Speaker 1: common features of human religious beliefs, including what kinds of
Speaker 1: concepts people most often find intuitive as God's uh, And
Speaker 1: I guess we'll get into those in just a minute,
Speaker 1: but first we should talk about some of his like
Speaker 1: basic criteria for for what even constitutes the category. Right,
Speaker 1: So the first one, and this is a big one,
Speaker 1: is that multiple individuals must share a given idea for
Speaker 1: it to be a genuine culture or religious concept. And
Speaker 1: this is this is kind of a no brainer, but
Speaker 1: it's important to note he gives it. This example, if
Speaker 1: one person believes their lamp can grant wishes and control
Speaker 1: the weather, that's not a god. That's just one person
Speaker 1: who has a crazy idea about their lamp. But if
Speaker 1: a bunch of people share this idea about a given lamp,
Speaker 1: it might just be a god concept. Sure uh, And
Speaker 1: I agree that religion has a very strong and possibly
Speaker 1: necessary social component, And yet I do think there are
Speaker 1: some interesting counter examples that we might want to think about,
Speaker 1: like hermetic mystics who live in isolation. They cut themselves
Speaker 1: off from the world to develop private, personal, almost secretive
Speaker 1: relationships with and understandings of God or of the gods.
Speaker 1: And yet I think Barrett is still correct because we
Speaker 1: don't usually grant these idiosyncratic, private mystical practices the status
Speaker 1: of a religion unless they're supported by a wider structure
Speaker 1: of belief shared by larger numbers of people. Like the
Speaker 1: mystical traditions often tend to be a kind of monastic
Speaker 1: offshoot or branch of larger religions with regular social adherents,
Speaker 1: right right, like So, yes, while we may celebrate the
Speaker 1: the ideas of say someone like a William Blake, you know,
Speaker 1: who you know, certainly had his his own sort of
Speaker 1: spin on what to on on what God was and
Speaker 1: what the you know, the cosmology of of of the
Speaker 1: universe happened to be. But we're probably not going to
Speaker 1: buy into every detail of it. We're willing to sort
Speaker 1: of stand a foot back and say like, Okay, he
Speaker 1: has his own take on this, but I'm I'm still
Speaker 1: keeping to the canon. You know, this is the extended
Speaker 1: universe star Wars, And I'm more of a you know,
Speaker 1: the Star Wars films, right, And and we accept Blake's
Speaker 1: idiosyncratic ideas as religious because I think they grow out
Speaker 1: of a larger existing religion. You know, they're they're like,
Speaker 1: they're this kind of extended universe, the expanded universe of Christianity.
Speaker 1: I guess one can also say that it helps in
Speaker 1: these cases of other people do not start flocking to
Speaker 1: your your extended universe concept of religion, because then you
Speaker 1: stand the risk of being a heresy and or creating
Speaker 1: a new, different religion. Right, Yeah, And that's another thought entirely.
Speaker 1: It seems to me also that only widely distribute did
Speaker 1: beliefs are likely to have stable contents. Because one member
Speaker 1: of the religion tends to mediate any potential like deviation
Speaker 1: from the orthodoxy by another member of the religion. But
Speaker 1: private religious beliefs, they seem to be radically unstable. You know,
Speaker 1: they're liable to change constantly. It's like asking how many
Speaker 1: editors have access to a given UH wiki page, you know,
Speaker 1: and if it's a if it's a Wikipedia page and
Speaker 1: it's one that is UH that gets a lot of
Speaker 1: traffic and has a lot of eyes on it, you know,
Speaker 1: by and large you can assume that the information there
Speaker 1: is probably going to be on the level or if
Speaker 1: it's or if anything crazy is at it, it's going
Speaker 1: to be taken out pretty quickly. You know, the the
Speaker 1: the inquisition is going to move in on those heretics. Now,
Speaker 1: if it is an off brand wiki and it has
Speaker 1: like two editors or one editor, UH, then it's up
Speaker 1: for grabs, right, right, Yeah, maybe one day somebody gets
Speaker 1: a wild hair they're like, I'm gonna go in make
Speaker 1: some major changes. Those changes probably stick, right, nobody comes
Speaker 1: in to change it back. I mean, there's there's no
Speaker 1: controlling influence, right, and then if it does change, you know,
Speaker 1: when it does change over time, I think the idea
Speaker 1: of a you know again, a high profile wiki, Wikipedia page,
Speaker 1: or a a widely accepted god. Like, the changes are
Speaker 1: gonna occur gradually and they're going to emerge from the
Speaker 1: culture at large. Yes, yeah, having more adherents makes an
Speaker 1: orthodoxy more generally stable, though of course they do still
Speaker 1: change over time. It's just, uh, there's just less potential
Speaker 1: for sudden radical change, I think, right, unless certain individuals
Speaker 1: have a tremendous amount of power over it. And then
Speaker 1: in that case, you know, you have like the ancient
Speaker 1: adyption model where suddenly a ruler decides actually it's just
Speaker 1: the sun disc and that's what we're doing now exactly.
Speaker 1: But that was one guy and it didn't stick, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think ultimately I agree with Barrett that
Speaker 1: if we're going with normal usage what people usually mean
Speaker 1: when they talk about a religious belief, it needs to
Speaker 1: be a distributed if it's held by a decent number
Speaker 1: of people. I'm not sure exactly what the number is,
Speaker 1: but like private beliefs of a single person or a
Speaker 1: handful of people, I probably don't count as religions yet.
Speaker 1: All right. Number two, Religious concepts and god concepts can
Speaker 1: spread due to quote features of human minds that transcend
Speaker 1: cultural environmental variations unquote. And I'm assuming that's something like
Speaker 1: the fear of death and the desire to avoid pain
Speaker 1: might be such features as an example. Yeah, you're you're
Speaker 1: correct about that. I mean, what he means is just
Speaker 1: that it's obvious that influences on religion can be cultural
Speaker 1: or social. Right, they can come from, you know, just
Speaker 1: contingent facts about history and what else is going on
Speaker 1: in the culture and politics and all that. But there
Speaker 1: can be these What he's arguing is that there are
Speaker 1: these internal factors as well. And this is what the
Speaker 1: cognitive science of religion is about. It's about brains, right.
Speaker 1: There are some religious beliefs that will be better adapted
Speaker 1: to survive in the environment of the human primate brain
Speaker 1: than other beliefs will be, regardless of cultural factors. Like,
Speaker 1: some beliefs just fit like a puzzle piece with our instincts,
Speaker 1: emotional tendencies, cognitive capacities, and others don't fit quite so well.
Speaker 1: I was trying to think of a few simple, obvious examples.
Speaker 1: Here's a clerkey in kind of one. You probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: find a popular religious belief where you had to remember
Speaker 1: a name for God. That was eighteen million silvers long, right,
Speaker 1: because the cognitive constraints of memory put limits on what
Speaker 1: types of God beliefs there are. You wouldn't expect a
Speaker 1: concept of God to be successful if it just couldn't
Speaker 1: be remembered. Here's another one. Due to uh, natural features
Speaker 1: of of emotion and motivation and human brains, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: expect to find beliefs in a God that you are
Speaker 1: required to love and obey and who rewards you for
Speaker 1: your love and obedience with eternal torture in the hell
Speaker 1: of coconut crabs. You know that this just goes counter
Speaker 1: natural instincts about motivation. Your your brain doesn't work that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it has to be offering you something that that that
Speaker 1: fits the mold for your your your biological life in
Speaker 1: the mind that governs your behavior in that biological life. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so I think that that's a pretty standard
Speaker 1: thing of cognitive science of religion. There of course going
Speaker 1: to be extremely powerful cultural factors determining what kind of
Speaker 1: religious beliefs proliferate, but there are also some probably biological
Speaker 1: neuroscientific factors that contribute as well. And speaking of biology,
Speaker 1: the third UH requirement that Barrett lays out is that
Speaker 1: some features of the human mind are products of human
Speaker 1: biology as it interacts with the natural world, apart from
Speaker 1: cultural environmental variations. So maybe the pain example from above
Speaker 1: fits here, but there may be better examples. Oh sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the pain thing works great. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is just saying like, our brains are shaped by our revolution.
Speaker 1: Of course they are, uh, and they're filled with contents
Speaker 1: from culture, but they still have some innate kind of
Speaker 1: tendencies that are just like part of your body. That's
Speaker 1: just how brains usually work. One of them is that
Speaker 1: we're motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like it's really hard to get around that standard
Speaker 1: way that brains work. Alright. So a big concept in
Speaker 1: God's of course, is that a god doesn't just need
Speaker 1: to exist within a you know, within the minds of
Speaker 1: a particular set of people. That God needs to be
Speaker 1: able to travel, It needs to be accepted by new people, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, across space and time. Yeah, needs memetics, survival advantages,
Speaker 1: it needs to be able to spread and take root
Speaker 1: in new environments. So we're going to take a quick break,
Speaker 1: but when we come back We're going to get into
Speaker 1: uh Barrett's ideas regarding the five features that a god
Speaker 1: must have to successfully travel and this according to the
Speaker 1: cognitive science of religion, and then we'll eventually get into
Speaker 1: questions regarding Santa Claus himself. Thank alright, we're back, alright.
Speaker 1: We're discussing how this paper about whether or not Santa
Speaker 1: Claus actually counts as a god as usually defined by
Speaker 1: the criteria of the cognitive science of religion. And this
Speaker 1: psychologist Justin barretta has in this article, he lays out
Speaker 1: five normal criteria that gods really have to have to
Speaker 1: be successful and be thought of as God's. Alright, this
Speaker 1: first one is gonna sound familiar, and that is that
Speaker 1: God's must be counterintuitive, or more specifically, they have to
Speaker 1: be minimally counterintuitive. And if this sounds familiar, it's because
Speaker 1: we did a whole episode on it totally. It originally
Speaker 1: aired in August. It was called the Gods Must Be Counterintuitive,
Speaker 1: and we talked about myths and folk tales, including religious
Speaker 1: characters and narratives with an eye towards the question of
Speaker 1: what makes one successful and another unsuccessful in secular narratives
Speaker 1: like why does everybody know the story of Cinderella, but
Speaker 1: there is no Walt Disney's The Donkey Cabbage. Uh. We
Speaker 1: talked about the Donkey Cabbages in this episode. It's a
Speaker 1: fairytale that it just doesn't seem to work as well
Speaker 1: as Cinderella because it's just crammed with count or intuitive stuff.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, you could think of tons of mundane,
Speaker 1: boring stories that don't proliferate as well as Cinderella. But
Speaker 1: in a in a religious context, or especially in ancient
Speaker 1: religious context, why does one religion spread far and wide
Speaker 1: and another one just never take off? Again? We should
Speaker 1: acknowledge they're going to be hugely important other you know,
Speaker 1: non brain based factors influencing this, like political and social contingencies.
Speaker 1: You know, the religion of a powerful, successful empire tends
Speaker 1: to spread, right, So there's no sense ignoring those factors.
Speaker 1: Those are obviously very important, but are their factors just
Speaker 1: in the human animal in the brain as well, And
Speaker 1: cognitive science of religion tends to think, yeah, there are
Speaker 1: probably a few factors in our brains about our brains
Speaker 1: that make some religions more successful than others. And in
Speaker 1: this episode from we discussed a line of research positing
Speaker 1: that a major factor in the success of a narrative
Speaker 1: or a religion, at least in the pre modern context,
Speaker 1: was mnemonic resilience. That means how easily a story is remembered,
Speaker 1: how easily a story survives in the memory. Most religion,
Speaker 1: for most of history, of course, has been spread not
Speaker 1: by holy texts or anything, but by word of mouth. Right,
Speaker 1: You've got to spread a religion by telling people about it,
Speaker 1: because most people in history have been illiterate. And so
Speaker 1: what kinds of things are easier to remember when when
Speaker 1: you're trying to spread them around the world. Well, psychologists
Speaker 1: had already found evidence that people remember lists of items
Speaker 1: better when that list contains one or two strange items
Speaker 1: that don't seem to fit with the other items on
Speaker 1: the list. Isn't that interesting? Yeah? Yeah, Like, if you're
Speaker 1: at at a grocery store and you're you're spying on
Speaker 1: what the person in front of you is buying, you're
Speaker 1: gonna remember it if there's something that is completely out
Speaker 1: of keeping with the rest out it that that doesn't
Speaker 1: assemble in your head into a like a an easily
Speaker 1: define herble meal. Yeah, yeah, I think that's true. Like
Speaker 1: it would seem to suggest by this principle that if
Speaker 1: your looking at what somebody has in their cart, you'd
Speaker 1: remember every item they have in their cart better if
Speaker 1: it's like mostly normal groceries with a couple of really
Speaker 1: weird things in there. Like if someone were buying pie crust,
Speaker 1: whip cream, frozen strawberries, you think, oh, they make a
Speaker 1: strawberry pie, and then you'd forget about it. But if
Speaker 1: they're buying whip cream, pie crust, um, and then something
Speaker 1: else like whole fish, whole fish exactly, you would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: my god, they're making a fish pie with whip cream
Speaker 1: on top and a Graham cracker crust. That is crazy,
Speaker 1: and then you would be telling everyone you knew about it. So,
Speaker 1: at least as far as lists go, lists of things,
Speaker 1: it seems that it's easier to remember something that's like
Speaker 1: mostly normal with a couple of weird elements than it
Speaker 1: is to remember something that's totally bonkers or totally mundane um.
Speaker 1: And so one of the papers we looked at in
Speaker 1: this episode also applied this principle to the intuitive nous
Speaker 1: of elements in a story like a like a folk
Speaker 1: tale or a religious narrative. This was by Norn, zion, Atran, Faulkner,
Speaker 1: and Shaler in Cognitive Science in two thousands six, called
Speaker 1: Memory and Mystery the cultural selection of minimally counterintuitive narratives,
Speaker 1: and so basically the short story is this paper found
Speaker 1: some evidence to support the hypothesis that the kinds of
Speaker 1: stories people remember best are minimally counterintuitive narratives. Not stories
Speaker 1: that are straightforward and mundane, not stories that are crammed
Speaker 1: with weird, outlandish stuff, but stories in the middle, sort
Speaker 1: of toward one end, like stories that are mostly straightforward
Speaker 1: with a small number of strange or fantastical counterintuitive elements. So,
Speaker 1: for instance, a humanoid elephant is a great concept, an
Speaker 1: old man who lives in the sky is a great concept.
Speaker 1: In these concepts travel reasonably well. Yes, uh. And just
Speaker 1: as a tie into this older episode, I remember one
Speaker 1: thing we talked about in there. We talked about a
Speaker 1: number of papers that Justin Barrett was a co author of.
Speaker 1: You know, he does a lot in the cognitive science
Speaker 1: of religion, including one it I still remember. I thought
Speaker 1: it was very interesting. It was about anthropomorphization in the
Speaker 1: psychology of religion. And this paper was published in the
Speaker 1: journal Cognitive Psychology in nine and essentially it was by
Speaker 1: Barrett and Kyle, and it found that people quote spontaneously
Speaker 1: anthropomorphize God in their reasoning, even if doing so contradicts
Speaker 1: their stated theological beliefs. So like when they don't remember
Speaker 1: to avoid doing so, if you're not, they're reminding them
Speaker 1: what they're previously stated theological beliefs are. People tend to
Speaker 1: start thinking of God as like a normal human agent
Speaker 1: with just like big supernatural powers but basically with a
Speaker 1: human brain. Yeah, Like, I can definitely relate to this
Speaker 1: because I I tend to think when I, when I,
Speaker 1: you know, think about concepts of of a monotheistic deity,
Speaker 1: I think of, uh, you know, something more surreal or psychedelic.
Speaker 1: I think of, you know, like some sort of like
Speaker 1: triangular non physical entity. Or I think of you know,
Speaker 1: something that is uh, you know, something where the you know,
Speaker 1: the God is singular, but also all these other gods.
Speaker 1: You know. I throw a lot of concepts at it,
Speaker 1: but like like the ground of being, you know, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing and stuff like that. But if I'm
Speaker 1: not thinking too hard about it, if I'm saying, just
Speaker 1: like listening to somebody at church talk, or I'm reflecting
Speaker 1: on some you know, just on the nature of God,
Speaker 1: I'll fall back into the sky daddy, um, where it's
Speaker 1: like an old bearded man in the sky reaching out
Speaker 1: his finger to touch the living that sort of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I'll have to be like, oh wait, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's not what I've been filling my head with. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's a you know, space triangles. Yeah. And so Barrett
Speaker 1: and Kyle find that this tendency is very common. They say,
Speaker 1: you know, even if you think of God is like
Speaker 1: the ground of being or the force or even you know,
Speaker 1: to get into a specific religion, like in in specific monotheisms,
Speaker 1: you might find people very carefully calibrated theologians type points
Speaker 1: of view, you know, where they they actually have meticulously
Speaker 1: formed beliefs about like what God can and can't know,
Speaker 1: and what how the mind of God works and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. But like if you just kind
Speaker 1: of get them thinking without reminding them that that's what
Speaker 1: their stated beliefs are, they just sort of start thinking
Speaker 1: about God like a person with a human brain. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this can also be like super irritating if you're
Speaker 1: you're trying to cultivate an idea of the Almighty as
Speaker 1: being say, gender neutral or even being feminine as opposed
Speaker 1: to masculine, and then when you're not thinking about it,
Speaker 1: you fall right back into to it being a you know,
Speaker 1: traditional masculine, uh, you know, patriarchal being. Oh yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess there's that tendency to probably pushing on like
Speaker 1: specific personality attributes and stuff, and not just like the anthropomorphization,
Speaker 1: though they do say the authors here say that constantly
Speaker 1: reminding people about their own state of theological beliefs can
Speaker 1: help attenuate the anthropomorphization impulse. Right, you know, if you
Speaker 1: you're like, hey, remember what you said, you said you
Speaker 1: believe God was like this, Like that'll that'll obviously will
Speaker 1: help some cut down on it. But they suggest here
Speaker 1: that this may indicate a strong tendency to anthropomorphize all agents,
Speaker 1: no matter what kind of being they are. Dogs become humans,
Speaker 1: computers become humans, the world spirit becomes a human. Everything
Speaker 1: that appears to have any kind of independent action or
Speaker 1: is believed to have any kind of independent action basically
Speaker 1: just becomes a human. Well that's that's the theory of mind, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's there so we can understand primarily what our
Speaker 1: fellow humans are doing. But then it it can act,
Speaker 1: you know, it can actually be very helpful and trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what non human animals are are wanting
Speaker 1: to do. I was reading a little bit about this
Speaker 1: in terms of veterinary science, and you know, like there's
Speaker 1: the older tradition of saying like, don't or those beyond
Speaker 1: veterinary science and science in general, just the study of animals,
Speaker 1: and say, like, there's the idea of like, you know,
Speaker 1: don't think of it as as a person, don't anti
Speaker 1: anthropomorphize it at all, don't you know, don't think about
Speaker 1: its feelings. And then there's someone say, well, actually, you know,
Speaker 1: we should, we should use theory of mind to do
Speaker 1: a say a certain degree to a safe degree, uh,
Speaker 1: to figure out what is going on in the minds
Speaker 1: of of of an animal. But then if you're anthropomorre
Speaker 1: vising everything, if you are, in the words of creative
Speaker 1: writing a teacher I once had, if you anthropomorphize like
Speaker 1: a mad god, then that's where we get into problems
Speaker 1: or and also that's where we end up creating some
Speaker 1: of the more uh, you know, inspired concepts in human
Speaker 1: culture as well. Yeah, totally uh, I guess, so to
Speaker 1: bring it back. Yes, as Barrett says, according to the
Speaker 1: cognitive science of religion, it seems true that God's must
Speaker 1: be in some way counterintuitive, ideally minimally counterintuitive, you know,
Speaker 1: having some unusual aspects like maybe say, being invisible and
Speaker 1: all powerful, but then I have to be all powerful.
Speaker 1: There are also minor gods that still qualify as God's right,
Speaker 1: invisible and having some kind of non normal powers or attributes, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, basically I like to play the game of like,
Speaker 1: just keep adding counterintuitive aspects to a particular deity and
Speaker 1: decide at which point it's silly and no longer intimidating,
Speaker 1: like a like a a strange tall man comes out
Speaker 1: of the shadows and gives me commandments. So that's great,
Speaker 1: all right, Let's add that he has the head of
Speaker 1: a dog. Okay, even better. Hybrids are a huge part
Speaker 1: of religious concepts. Now he's got crab claws. Then he
Speaker 1: has crab claws, right, and then okay, it's one's a
Speaker 1: crab claw and one is a hand puppet. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so for like, every time you add something else to
Speaker 1: it becomes a little bit more ridiculous and a little
Speaker 1: harder to to take um and that that seems to
Speaker 1: be part of the whole. Minimally counterintuitive. Yes, but they've
Speaker 1: got to at least be counterintuitive, because if you say, like,
Speaker 1: this is my buddy Jeff, he's god. He doesn't have
Speaker 1: anything unusual about him, like there are no he doesn't
Speaker 1: have any powers. He's not invisible, he can't fly, he's
Speaker 1: not omniscient, omnipotent, nothing like that. He's just Jeff. That's
Speaker 1: not that nobody thinks that's a god. Now, Jeff would
Speaker 1: probably at least pass the next one. This is number
Speaker 1: two on Barrett's list. God's must be intentional agents. Barrett
Speaker 1: uses the example of two minimally counterintuitive concepts, an invisible
Speaker 1: potato versus a talking potato. Okay, both minimally counter intuitive,
Speaker 1: but one works better as a god than another. Yeah,
Speaker 1: only the latter is viable candidate for godhood because it
Speaker 1: implies agency. A god must have agency and work as
Speaker 1: an intentional agent. Now, this concept does make me think
Speaker 1: about ideas of say, slumbering gods, dead gods, and mindless gods,
Speaker 1: at least in fiction such as you know, Lovecrafts as
Speaker 1: is off comes to mind. Oh you you got me
Speaker 1: on as a off recently, but I looked it up.
Speaker 1: It's as a thought, as a thought, sorry to correct
Speaker 1: that that would make yeah, it would have the Egyptian
Speaker 1: thought aspect to it. Yeah, yeah, well as as a
Speaker 1: thought or as his off. He doesn't care because he
Speaker 1: has he's mindless. He doesn't even know his own name.
Speaker 1: He's just swirling chaos in the middle of the universe,
Speaker 1: nawing on himself while uh, you know, blind monsters play flutes.
Speaker 1: But like this would be an example of First of all,
Speaker 1: it's a god that nobody actually worships. It is a
Speaker 1: fictional deity, but is at least it is at least
Speaker 1: the concept of a deity that is mindless. Yes, now,
Speaker 1: I think this is another reason that, like the crunch Rap,
Speaker 1: Supreme Aim could not be a viable god, because it's
Speaker 1: essentially as a thought of them the mindless of being
Speaker 1: at the center of the chaotic universe. Exactly. It's an
Speaker 1: inanimate object that symbolizes primordial chaos, can't talk, has no intentions,
Speaker 1: isn't going to do much right, all right, we're gonna
Speaker 1: jump in here and take a quick break, but we'll
Speaker 1: be right back. Thank And we're back. All right, So
Speaker 1: let's move on to the third requirement. God's must possess
Speaker 1: strategic information. So, in other words, the gods or God
Speaker 1: must have some ideas, some advice, or some secret knowledge
Speaker 1: that can improve your life here on earth. Perhaps it's
Speaker 1: a set of laws, a revelation that there are no laws,
Speaker 1: or knowledge about the coming end times. Or the God
Speaker 1: must have privilege knowledge he knows what you've done, or
Speaker 1: the nature of your inner thoughts, or what will happen
Speaker 1: to you in the future. Yes, now, I think it's
Speaker 1: very important to note that this does not mean the
Speaker 1: same thing as like omniscient, which would be an omniscience
Speaker 1: all knowing. No, would be a form of strategic information,
Speaker 1: to be like the ultimate form of strategic information. But
Speaker 1: the omniscience is a property only some God's possess. Right.
Speaker 1: The strategic information idea here just requires that a god
Speaker 1: knows something valuable or relevant. For example, the version of
Speaker 1: God depicted in the Garden of Eden's story does not
Speaker 1: appear to be all knowing. Like he walks in the garden,
Speaker 1: he has limited perspective. It is possible to at least
Speaker 1: temporarily hide from him, and yet he clearly has access
Speaker 1: to important information that Adam and Eve do not have,
Speaker 1: right though, I also always wondered if he was just
Speaker 1: kind of like a you know, sky daddy, playing dumb,
Speaker 1: but sort of trying to see what his creations are
Speaker 1: gonna say. You know, like when you walk in and
Speaker 1: you're like, all right, who smeared their food on this window?
Speaker 1: You know who smeared the food on the window. But
Speaker 1: you're you're asking the question because you want to have
Speaker 1: a civilized discussion about it, and and and and you know,
Speaker 1: and in doing so, uh, you know, prevent more or
Speaker 1: food sparriage from happening. Sure, well, I think that's a
Speaker 1: valid interpretation too. I think the other one is more straightforward,
Speaker 1: but it could be the one. Um uh So. Barrett
Speaker 1: points out that it's important that this information is relevant
Speaker 1: to humans in particular. Right quote, Suppose a certain minimally
Speaker 1: counterintuitive agent only knows about Himalayan micro invertebrates, such a
Speaker 1: being is unlikely to gain traction as a noteworthy entity
Speaker 1: and rise to the status of God. You know. And
Speaker 1: that's specifically because this entity does not have any information
Speaker 1: that is useful in any way relevant to humans like
Speaker 1: they and and they don't have to be helpful, right,
Speaker 1: God's can be mean, Gods can be bad. Beings with
Speaker 1: strategic information could be helpful allies or dangerous enemies, as
Speaker 1: say some of the Greek gods often are like Poseidon.
Speaker 1: You know he wants to wreck your ship and get
Speaker 1: revenge on you. He's still God, al right, Next we
Speaker 1: have number four. This is a big one. God's must
Speaker 1: be able to act in the human world in detectable ways.
Speaker 1: Barrett says, quote an all saying all knowing statue that
Speaker 1: does nothing but season knows is not worth transmitting. Gods
Speaker 1: have to do stuff and be known by that stuff,
Speaker 1: or at least to have done something. Otherwise, it's just
Speaker 1: not a concept that's going to travel sure or to
Speaker 1: be likely to potentially do something in the future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a god that has no interaction whatsoever with the world
Speaker 1: usually isn't going to form a religion. People aren't have
Speaker 1: beliefs about that core like, for instance, think about UFO religions, right.
Speaker 1: They tend to involve ideas of say, well, okay, the
Speaker 1: the aliens came in an ancient time, or the Aliens
Speaker 1: are speaking to us now, or the aliens will come
Speaker 1: and save our our you know, dying culture. But if
Speaker 1: your your UFO religion says the aliens are out there,
Speaker 1: they've never come. Uh, they've never communicated with us and
Speaker 1: they never will come, but we worship them as a god.
Speaker 1: That doesn't make any sense. Why am I? What am
Speaker 1: I getting out of this relationship? Yeah? Now again, this
Speaker 1: is one where I would say that none of these
Speaker 1: rules are things where you can of no possible exceptions, because,
Speaker 1: like I can think about I guess, like in the
Speaker 1: Gnostic religions, there are some types of God that are
Speaker 1: like very very removed. You could still say that their
Speaker 1: actions have some like downstream effects or like very important
Speaker 1: downstream effects on the world. But there are like some
Speaker 1: types of gods or godlike type concepts that are at
Speaker 1: least a very distant remove from the goings on of
Speaker 1: the world. But often in those cases they're like sort
Speaker 1: of layers below them who do interact more directly. Right,
Speaker 1: Or in some cases, they're more esoteric variations of a
Speaker 1: god that is worshiped more popularly in a slightly different
Speaker 1: form Alright, let's move on to five. Gods must be
Speaker 1: capable of motivating behaviors that reinforce belief. Yes, behaviors such
Speaker 1: as ritual and prayer, and they need to be reinforcing behaviors.
Speaker 1: For for instance, Barrett makes the example that the ritual
Speaker 1: can't promise to produce eight foot children because there will
Speaker 1: be no eight foot children around them to reinforce this. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: rituals that promise happiness, um contentment, even financial gain, these
Speaker 1: at least you can make and argue that, Look, here's
Speaker 1: the proof of the ritual working, right, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't have to be clear proof. I mean,
Speaker 1: as long as there could be some kind of ambiguous
Speaker 1: way of interpreting that the rituals are having an effect. Uh,
Speaker 1: then I think that's still okay. But yeah, he's saying that,
Speaker 1: like the ritual can't guarantee results that it won't actually deliver.
Speaker 1: Right if you say, if you tithe at to my
Speaker 1: new religion, you will live forever, Like that's that's gonna
Speaker 1: bite you in the butt eventually, and then your religion
Speaker 1: is gonna fall apart. But it is funny how far
Speaker 1: out on the limb you can kind of get with this,
Speaker 1: Like as long as there's some kind of ambiguity where
Speaker 1: you're not really sure or maybe you don't see it
Speaker 1: not working for other people or something like there, you know,
Speaker 1: they're the prosperity gospel is incredibly pop piller, But I
Speaker 1: think that there's enough ambiguity that you don't necessarily know
Speaker 1: what's going on with everybody else who's trying it. There's
Speaker 1: enough wiggle room to say, like, you're not quite doing
Speaker 1: it right. Right. It inspires a certain level of dishonesty
Speaker 1: among the people that are practicing it. And then at
Speaker 1: the center of it, you generally have an individual that's
Speaker 1: perpetrating a con job like it is about the appearance
Speaker 1: of wealth. And then of course they're they're you know,
Speaker 1: in most of these cases, they are they're they're leaching
Speaker 1: money right there, they are financially benefiting from the scenario.
Speaker 1: And then you it's not like you have to carry
Speaker 1: this out forever. You know, it's a con games have
Speaker 1: a beginning in an end usually right. Yeah, But then
Speaker 1: of course there are again, even if you're only understanding
Speaker 1: religion in a totally naturalistic way, there are all kinds
Speaker 1: of benefits that religious rituals can deliver. They can deliver
Speaker 1: like maybe you know, strong tightly bonded communities with people
Speaker 1: who help each other they can deliver a sense of
Speaker 1: happiness and contentment. All all kinds of like psychological and
Speaker 1: social benefits could be perfectly naturalistic outcomes of religious beliefs
Speaker 1: and practices. Right So even if you know, say, you know,
Speaker 1: Prosperity Gospel Church, which is is you know, vilified to
Speaker 1: a large extent and for in many cases for a
Speaker 1: good reason, you could still have that kind of a
Speaker 1: church community that would have a lot of benefits to
Speaker 1: the members of that community. Likewise, you could have, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, something positive and beneficial sort of emerge out
Speaker 1: of a more restrictive totalitarian belief system, Like maybe there's
Speaker 1: some concept within that religion that resonates and works and
Speaker 1: then the the individuals practicing it run off and you know,
Speaker 1: start something new with that that concept that actually works
Speaker 1: for them. Arguably an example of this I've I've heard is,
Speaker 1: you know, in Scientology there are members of Scientology or
Speaker 1: former members of Scientology who have claimed that, you know,
Speaker 1: they don't care for the organization or some of the
Speaker 1: culture there, perhaps, but they like the rich wells, they
Speaker 1: like some of the the technological um ideas, and some
Speaker 1: of the practices that are utilized. They see value in them,
Speaker 1: and they attempt to spend them off into something separate
Speaker 1: from them. The central Church of scientology. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean ESPEC. The lower levels of scientology are are almost
Speaker 1: in some ways indistinguishable from like a self help program
Speaker 1: that's basically designed to like give you confidence and motivation
Speaker 1: to take steps to achieve your goals and that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. And you know, with stuff like that, you
Speaker 1: can certainly see how just having a program that's supportive
Speaker 1: and telling you to move confidently towards the things you
Speaker 1: want could be perceived as very helpful, could actually be
Speaker 1: very helpful in producing motivation for that kind of behavior,
Speaker 1: even if it also implies things about you know, like
Speaker 1: bombs from space and aliens in you and ghosts and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, as long
Speaker 1: as all that stuff is minimally counterintuitive. I mean, because
Speaker 1: that's the thing does seem maximally counterintuitive. But I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I sometimes, at least I I see
Speaker 1: people criticize. You see this the thing with with any religion,
Speaker 1: someone is liable in one religion, they're liable to criticize
Speaker 1: the other by saying that's crazy, that's wonky. How can
Speaker 1: you believe in that and uh, without actually looking at
Speaker 1: the details of their own belief system, and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's just that's just part of it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's what you've come to accept as normal. And this
Speaker 1: is the thing actually about that's come up in in
Speaker 1: the theory about being counterintuitive, you know, religions needing counterintuitive elements.
Speaker 1: Is that, uh like, as you get used to a religion,
Speaker 1: the elements that used to be counterintuitive become less counter
Speaker 1: they're becoming and then you need the next spin on it, right,
Speaker 1: you need the mash up. Yeah, all right, everybody, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to go ahead and break right here. This
Speaker 1: one went long. Yeah, this one went a bit a
Speaker 1: little bit long, So we're gonna have to bust into
Speaker 1: two episodes. Uh, certainly there's gonna be more Santa in
Speaker 1: the second half than in the first half. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind and go to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com and that'll send you where you
Speaker 1: need to go. You can find us anywhere you get
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Speaker 1: out huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer
Speaker 1: Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in
Speaker 1: touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
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