confused about what the [ __ ] is going on
here. So, I just like you can do that.
Like I see people make that move here
and I know people are going to want want
to write that email to me. But even if
you're right, like even if one of those
emails actually did figure it out, they
figured out the mysteries of the
universe, they they put together the
right combin combination of biblical
passages in order to really say, "I
think we've got it." Even if that were
true, I'm going to give it to you that
you're right and that's true. I wouldn't
worship a god that created a system
where billions of people are so confused
and so superstitious and and suffering
for reasons that they don't understand
just so you could figure it out. That's
unethical. Like that sucks. Like I can't
I can't possibly believe that. And so
the more that's the problem with with
apologetics getting more and more
complex is the more that you do that the
more it's a shitty god. And so even even
apologetics starts to kind of like be a
snake that eats its own tail because the
more work you have to do to try to make
sense of this and to try to make sense
of faith um the more unethical it is
that God created the world the way the
way that he you know claims to have made
in these religions. So, that's just like
some preventative measures for the
emails that I'm going to get where
someone and it's usually a man like I'm
just going to say it like it it it uh
99.9% of the time is is a man who emails
me telling telling me that they've
figured out the the mysteries of the
universe. And I just I've I've gone that
direction and I've been tempted to
study, you know, as as many of these as
they can. I read so many books of of
people who have claimed to put it all
together and it just falls apart when
you when you start to look at it because
it just makes this situation for
everybody else so incredibly unethical.
And you can't get out of this by just
saying free will. Like if I drop my
child off in Skid Row and tell them like
don't eat this apple and I write some
graffiti on the wall that they're
supposed to find and believe but also
ignore all the other graffiti on all the
other walls. um and that child ends up
in a bad situation, we don't say, well,
you know, that child had free will. We
say that's a shitty parent. Like that
parent shouldn't have brought that child
in the world to suffer with so little
tools and so little presence. And so
that's when you start to really see
religion for what it is, something that
we co-evolved with. And then like you
start reading like Yuval Harrari and
Sapiens and that once humans get over
150 people. Um religion is the most
powerful tool we've ever created because
now we can have shared stories and we
can grow to have communities that are
over 150 people and that was huge. So
once you and I kind of believe the same
sacred myth suddenly we could cooperate
more deeply. We'd trust each other more.
We could build bigger tribes. We could
bury our dead. We could have rituals. We
could have rights of passage. we could
create kingdoms and empires. And so
myths, whether it's myths about gods or
nations, are allowed are what allowed us
to go from like these scattered foragers
to rulers of the planet. And religion is
the original mythmaking machine and
engine behind that. And then Daniel
Dennit focuses on the mechanics and he
calls religion a kind of evolutionary
parasite that hijacked these useful
cognitive functions. And so at the base
of religion, what we see is um is our
ability to detect agency outside of us.
So if the grass rustles, it's um better
to assume that it's a lion than just the
wind. We have this agent detection
system that keeps us alive. But the
byproduct of keeping us alive is that we
are the descendants of the most
superstitious people because the ones
who thought there might be a lion there
and ran away are the ones who survived.
And so now we don't just anticipate a
lion in the grass. We also see in our
mind's eye things like gods and skies
and spirits and ghosts and aliens. And
then we add to that our ability to tell
stories and you know our human fears and
boom like religion. And so Dennett
points out that once these religious
stories become useful for bonding
communities and enforcing rules and
promising justice after death now we
start selecting for it culturally. And
the religions that spread were the ones
that helped societ society survive
better by giving the society things that
society needs to survive as a group but
also individually what helps us like we
don't have death anxiety if you have
some story where you cheat death. So
over time we co-evolved our brains got
better at believing and religions got
better at sticking and providing more
and more things. And so basically we've
evolved to be these meaning makers and
religion evolved to be a meaning
supplier and we co-evolved with it in
the same way that bees co-evolved with
flowers. And so the more complex we
became socially and emotionally, the
more elaborate religion became in in
response to that. And so this didn't
happen because religion is true in any
empirical sense. In fact, as far as
religion being good for you and studies
that show that religion is good for you,
it doesn't actually matter what the
religion is. Uh what matters is how is
it useful psychologically, socially,
politically and religion gave us the
glue for cooperation.
And it also gave us a lot of things
individually individually that we need.
Which brings us to Karl Marx who's often
misqued for just saying that religion is
the opium um of the people like it's
just this cheap drug for stupid people.
And that's not what he meant. The full
quote is much deeper. Religion is the
sigh of the oppressed creature, the
heart of a heartless world, the soul of
soulless conditions. It is the opium of
the people. So it's not he's not saying
it's a drug for stupid people. He's
saying this is a pretty rough world and
religion is what we've created to try to
make it a little bit better and try to
create communities and try to make
stories that make it not so damn scary
and hard to be a human. So Markx wasn't
saying that religion is just illusion.
He's saying it's a response to
suffering. It's a it's a response to the
reality that we find ourselves in
injustice and poverty and death and
meaninglessness. And we don't know why
we're here. And so if you're living
under brutal conditions with no power
and no hope, religion gives you comfort
and purpose and justice, even if it is
after death. And you pull it all
together and you really see that
religion isn't invented in this top-
down way. It grew alongside of us and
for us because we created it to be what
we needed it to be. It helped us survive
and organize and cope. And in that way,
it's not just that religion, we made
religion. Religion also made us. And so,
like any evolutionary adaptation, it
also means that it may not fit the
modern world anymore. We have an
evolutionary urge to eat all the sugar
when we get a taste of sugar because our
old brains are like, "Wow, this fruit is
only going to be ripe for a little bit
and then winter is coming so we need to
eat all this fruit and it hasn't
adjusted to the reality that I don't
need any more sugar in my life. I have
sugar all around me all the time." And
so now we're stuck like we're we're
evolutionarily stuck because we just
don't um evolve fast enough for the
modern world. We're stuck in this place
where theology school teaches
complexity. People want out of religion
safety, comfort, and simplicity. And in
America especially, they want political
validation for their political identity.
Which means now there's this huge
disconnect between pastors and their
congregations. And anyone in the
business knows this. But the
congregation doesn't know how much their
theology is being filtered and watered
down. How much the pastor has changed or
even lost their faith. How much their
pastor doesn't even really believe
literal interpretations of the Bible or
how differently they talk to each other
than they do to you. And so for some,
they come out of that experience in
theology school with like a super
nuanced mystical interfaith version of
religion that is like science friendly
and all of that. And I spent some time
there too. And that's like a natural
that's a natural first place to start
because it's the brain trying to hold on
to the religious benefits by making it
more and more complex and nuanced so you
can hold on to it. But for me and a lot
of others in theology school, you start
to see humans more and more behind this
project until you kind of like it's like
the God box gets smaller and smaller
until you like open the box one day and
there's no God in it at all. In the same
way that you can study the brain long
enough to say, "Wow, this really seems
to all we can explain all this at the
level of the brain. I don't even know
where a soul would fit into this." And
so your belief of the soul goes away
when you study the brain. And when you
study psychology, you become more and
more sure that this is schizophrenia,
not demons. And you just keep going
until there are better human and
scientific, naturalistic, psychological,
sociological, anthropological reasons
for what we're doing with religion. And
the god of the gats just becomes so
small that it disappears one day until
you get to the point that even if we
were created by some god like deism, not
theism, some higher power, some source,
then that god is either evil or not
powerful in us enough for us to care
about it. Because even if that were
true, we're alone when it comes to
actually trying to make the place the
world a place that we want to live. And
so at some point the question stops
being is it true? because the answer is
really no. And it becomes why do I need
it to be true? And once you ask that,
theology school doesn't just deconstruct
your beliefs. It starts to deconstruct
your reasons for believing, your fear,
your longing, your tribalism, your need
for justice in an unjust world. And then
you start to realize that you, just like
ancient peoples you've been studying,
created the God that you needed all
along, too. And if you can get better
resources for whatever that thing that
you need is that you created God for,
then your brain stops making gods at
all. It's mental work that my brain no
longer does because I have tools and
resources for all the reasons that we
create gods. And so, am I afraid of
God's wrath in my, you know, falling
apart here when it comes to theology?
Like, no. I'm not afraid of God's wrath
because a God worthy of worship would
know that I went to theology school to
try to get closer to God. would know
that I didn't choose to lose my belief,
would know that even now I'm trying to
help people by helping them rebuild some
kind of meaningful moral, spiritual,
communal, happy life when they've lost
their religious faith. And a God worthy
of worship, I think, would would
understand that. So, no, I'm not afraid
of God's wrath. And that's the thing
about Christianity and and why it breeds
atheism is it it it teaches you that
truth is good and worth pursuing and
that morality matters. And then when you
develop those skills, it ends up turning
on Christianity itself. And so that's
like the poetic tragedy of it. That
Christianity teaches you to value truth,
that truth will set you free, that
honesty and integrity matters, that
knocking and seeking will lead to
finding. It teaches you that that um the
good is worth sacrificing for. And
Christianity instills these values deep
in your bones to pursue truth. To live
ethically, don't settle for li to for
lies. Be brave, be courageous, don't
look away from injustice. And so you do,
you read, you study, you ask the hard
questions, you go to seminary, you take
um the Bible at its word. And then you
actually internalize those values and
you come face to face with the parts of
Christianity that can't withstand them.
And you eventually, it's like
Christianity trains you how to leave it.
And so the doubters in theology school
make the final move, which is to take
all of that truth seeeking and moral
courage that you've been practicing
within Christianity and now take that
scary step to step outside of it. Not
because it's cool, not because you
wanted to, not because you get to sin,
you know, whatever that is. Um, but
because it's not true. It's not and
often it's not good. And perhaps that's
the most Christian move to do of all to
ha to learn in Christianity moral
courage and fidelity to truth. And these
stories that talk about leaving behind
your possessions and your job and your
family and your identity for what's true
and what's right. And maybe in some
final irony, the ones who go to theology
school and then end up leaving
Christianity, maybe that is actually the
most Christian move you can make of all.
So that's how I follow Jesus. Now, uh,
when people ask me what Jesus is to me,
how I follow Jesus is I want to flip the
same tables that Jesus flipped. I want
to be the good Samaritan where the
Samaritan didn't have correct beliefs,
but he had the most loving actions and
he sat and mourned with those that
mourned and helped people who were
hurting. And so, that's how I follow
Jesus. Now, I don't have any faith that
Jesus is divine or all of the stories
that we wrote later trying to make this
mystic, homeless, radical man into a
god. Uh but there are beautiful things
about those parables about about love
and about ego and about um character
that matters and about um integrity and
about truth and about flipping tables of
of the bureaucracy and the institution
and and when we turn the sacred into
money and into businesses.
And so there's still something in Jesus
that I'm still drawn to that I feel
still feel is beautiful even though I
don't have any faith that he was any
more than a man. And he's like so many
other mystic teachers that we've had
like Roomie and Rabia and and Buddha and
and he's in that camp of of homeless
people who saw something more in the law
than how people were using it at the
time. that there was there was some
beauty underneath that some some mystic branch
branch
uh underneath that. I'm just blabbing on
here that is still that is still
beautiful and worth holding on to and
worth even seeking. Even if all of our
religions were wrong, even if there's no
God at all, even if this is just a human
project, there's still a baby in that
bathwater that's worth pursuing. Even if
all of this is just a human project. So,
I'll see you next week and let me know
what you thought about today's episode,
which was all about how Theology School
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