hello everyone and welcome back to conversations with Tyler today I am here live and in person with Ross dait Ross is arguably the best columnist in the world he has many excellent books and he has a new book which I'm a big fan of called believe why everyone should be
religious so perhaps today my soul is on the line I know it's very high stakes this is the highest Stakes conversation we've ever had and if I if I fail my punishment my punishment will be great no I my my yeah there's there's Eternal Stakes I once um I once when I was a
much younger man was droned into debating Christopher Hitchens on a beach in Nantucket I was substituting for Andrew Sullivan who won Hitchens it was an absolute route that's that's too strong it was a route um and he I mean he was the peak of his powers and maybe
I had not yet come into my full Powers I don't know we I can tell myself that uh but afterwards I was convinced that I had you know added a hundred years in purgatory to my allotment for for those failures so we'll see how this goes and your theology does converting me win you
points um it's not really a Catholic view is it it's not no no it's not there's there's no probably no no toaster oven um but you know you don't want to it's not going to lose you it's not going to lose me points let's put it that way yes and it maybe it maybe sort
of indulgence style it might compensate for some failings in other areas people who have you know there's probably people who have been alienated from from you know the truth about existence because they disliked some something I said or did right so every day is a new
chance to make up for those failings I have a basic question about what does it mean to be religious so let's say I believe in the simulation hypothesis which comes from Nick Bostrom Robin Hansen has cited it the notion that if we can make a lot of simulations there's
a pretty good chance we are ourselves living in one how does believing in the simulation argument differ from being religious like outside the sphere of normal life how do we distinguish what we might call a god from what we might call I don't
know whatever whoever created the simulation I mean I think functionally the simulation hypothesis is doing um um some of the work of a kind of polytheistic or Gnostic religion right where whoever is running the simulation the you know the version of advanced
Consciousness that is capable of effectively creating and sustaining our world and presumably you know however many trillions of others they have running inside their simulator um that entity is not the Creator God of classical theism it's not the god of Christianity uh but I think it's
reasonable to describe again this hypothetical simulation Runner as a small G God certainly and you could regard it as you know the way the gnostics regarded the demiurge right the kind of intermediate spiritual power that created this world
and was responsible for you know all its misery and woe right and the gnostics would say therefore you need to get past that Demi urge and escape to the higher level where you know the true God Waits who actually created the whole thing the whole shabang um maybe they would say he
didn't create the whole shabang I don't want to overstate my familiarity with the intricacies of intricacies of gnosticism or you could say or you could be a kind of polytheist um there are forms of polytheism that are arguably compatible with sort of an ultimate
monotheism you could say okay there may be an ABS abolute God beyond the simulators um I would say if you could convince me of the simulation hypothesis I would still say there probably has to be a god beyond the simulators but the simulators themselves are in the
position of gods to us um and I guess where I would say that view crosses over from sort of analysis to religion is the point at which you start trying to figure out what is your relationship to the simulators should you have one I think you probably should right if you
actually believe you're in a simulation you should try and figure out what do the simulators want from you do they have your best interests at heart if you think they do then you should be trying to bring yourself into alignment if you
will with whatever they have in mind if you think they don't then you know I I would I would suggest trying to send up prayers to whatever Powers might be out there that could rescue you from the simulator's hands but e either way I think I think the simulation hypothesis
is in effect an acknowledgement that there's no escape from religious questions and I think the failure of the hypothesizes maybe is not fully taking seriously the implication that we might be you know the play things of secondary Gods but you sound
surprisingly close to the demiurge hypothesis so clearly you believe believe creation is possible and you don't dismiss basy in reasoning how much you give it is an open question so why not think there are multiple layers of God what we think of as God is just part of the chain in
basian terms if a God created us well some thing some being could have created that God why aren't you led to that as a view with pretty high probability I mean I'm led to the view with pretty high probability that there are intermediate powers between us and
whatever you want to call call God right but the more you make the chain complicated you it can stretch in both directions you mean oh in this you mean stretch in well it can stretch in the direction you're saying where we would eventually become the Christian God is a
demi urge there's some higher God who created that and maybe many other gods it seems once you even consider the logic of the simulation hypothesis you become fairly agnostic about the true nature of the ultimate God right I mean I think the weakness of
the simulation hypothesis is that we don't have any actual evidence for it it's incredibly speculative and it assumes um a capacity of what you might call subc creation that is completely speculative and not in not in evidence right so I wouldn't dismiss I wouldn't
dismiss the simulation hypothesis anymore than I would dismiss the various multiversal hypotheses that have ended up substituting in at least some intelligent people's minds for what I think of as the rather more obvious likelihood that sort of the old-fashioned religious worldview is
correct I I don't dismiss them out of hand but I think you are in the position of multiplying um hypotheses multiplying speculations and in the life that we have a certain parsimony is probably wiser we have access to one pretty big complicated interesting varied world
that world appears I would say to have been fashioned for a reason that reason appears to include us there appears from spiritual experiences to be intermediate powers and then probably some sort of higher power I I think working with all of that rather than adding on six levels
of speculation about further change that we can't see is probably the better part of valor but surely it's odd to say not dismiss the not dismiss you know the intermediate elf beings and then invoke ain's razor right you could just be a Muslim there's
one God indivisible that's that well but but your but your aam's razer has to incorporate the phen you know religious phenomena as we experience them right or or I would I would say that it has to right so if any any Theory um I mean first of all I don't I I I do I do think
that sort of the parsimony of um the hardcore deist or Unitarian or anti- supernaturalist Muslim if you you know the kind who don't have any traffic with Jin and and you know things of that nature that kind of parsimony you know is is plausible enough it's certainly
more plausible than hard materialism um you know I I certainly if given if given the option I would choose that over the worldview of Richard Dawkins or Daniel dennet um but I don't think it adequately encompasses sort of the terrain of actual religious and
spiritual experiences that people have that I think is a crucial reason for the Persistence of religion even in an allegedly disenchanted age it's obviously the point of origin for most of the world's religions most of the world's major religions make some kind
of accommodation even even when they are monotheistic to the idea of intermediate Powers um so yeah if if we had no I mean I think it's useful to think about counterfactuals right like if we lived in a world where every religious experience was the kind of religious
experience where you just had sort of a sense of Oneness and deep connection with a singular being who seemed responsible for existence right people have such experiences if that were the only kind of experience you had then that anyone had or that 99% of religious
experiences fit that pattern then yes parsimony I think would suggest you know whatever might be out there there's not just probably one God but that God is probably the only higher power concerned with us with whom we might be in relationship um in the event though
there's a much wider range of spiritual experiences there does seem to be a realm of uh um Powers you know that again you could classify them with the small G God you could classify them as Christians would usually in Angelic and demonic terms but yeah I think the
variation both the variation and the consistency in religious experience right there's a lot of variation but then there's a certain kind of consistency of the kinds of variations across cultures you want something that I think explains that and the theory
that explains that is that there is some sort of hierarchy we're not just alone with the one true God this gets us to the part of your book where you discuss me and I'm never quite sure how one settles on a particular religious belief so if I go to Sri Lanka the children of Hindus tend
to be Hindu the children of Buddhists tend to be Buddhist Muslims some Christians even that is the way of things and that makes me very suspicious about our particularist intuitions so if you just showed up and said Tyler I will save your soul you should be a deist
we'd have a very different conversation but when someone puts forward a very specific claim I just don't trust their specific intuitions they seem so tied to society conformist pressures family what they learned as a kid I just think we should look at all
of Sri Lanka and figure hey these people ended up where they did because of how they grew up that's fine it's maybe good for social cohesion but then move on to just thinking about it more abstractly why is that wrong well right I mean and this is where you know I've been saying
to to some of my religious friends that this is my most liberal book in a certain way in that I go a certain distance with that argument I do think that the diversity of religious Traditions strongly suggests that you know some form of connection to God is
available in a lot of different places this is sort of you know this is the official teaching of the post Vatican 2 Catholic church it's not some radical controversial opinion but it is on sort of the liberal side of potential theological inter interpretations um and
I don't think it's you know given absent any other indication of what kind of religion you should be what sort of religious perspective you should have a default to the one that works in your culture is I think by no means crazy I guess my my question for you as you as
you know since you read my responses right is what to you makes religion distinct from other forms of you know knowledge belief and belonging right because everything that you just said about religious belief obviously applies to politics the children but much less
much less much less a politics religion seems far more heritable but even if it were the same I would I would sooner conclude we should be more agnostic about many things then conclude we should be less agnostic about religion certainly but you are a professional
arguer you take strong views on all kinds of questions you are a trained Economist who takes all kinds of strongly held views on economics that are hotly contested by you know maybe not equally intelligent but almost as intelligent Rivals who have different
views right and you could say well you know once you reach the you know Heights of of economic theory at that point you're dealing with people who you know no one has inherited keynesianism from their parents and so on right so you know you should be able to trust the
choices that you versus Paul Krugman and so on have made well maybe um but there are all kinds of other ways in your economic views are conditioned they're presumably conditioned by right but it just seems to me that there's a tendency to sort of place religion in this
special category right and say okay you know it's it's inherited it's culturally contingent and therefore it's silly to have arguments about this belief versus that belief but you know people change religions all the time right like new religions come into being because of
conversion people change their minds because of argument it's not like we don't have tons of examples of this and I feel like it should be possible to balance a certain respect for the reality that you know there's religious diversity for a reason there are hard
questions that you're not going to argue your way to a singular answer but also say the argument is worth having and maybe you or I can make progress on some of you know our own views on those questions right but your response saying well everyone else including Tyler Cowan
has these weird inconsistencies while I agree I don't see how that gets you to religious faith it might get you to some kind of basian deism wait which sorry which incons everyone has weird inconsistency well everyone is influenced by the views of
their parents on all kinds of things the soap I use actually is still the same soap my grandmother used when I was a kid that's probably related right it's arguably irrational no doubt it's true but saying that happens everywhere I don't see how it gets you to religious
faith I just think at best it gets you to some kind of probabilistic theism well I I guess the argument in the book is that you can get Beyond probabilistic deism into what I would characterize as you know maybe probabilistic supernaturalism I don't know I don't
know exactly the right term I use the term religion as you said at the outset is obviously a contested term and people argue about what constitutes a religion but I think you can get somewhat probabilistically to The View that you know not just not just that deism is
true but um that you know there is a fundamental order to the cosmos in which human beings have an important or significant role to play there are you know sort of divine or Supernatural impingements on our reality that seem significant in various ways there's that
you probably have a soul that is related to your body but distinct in some way there's probably life after death I I would say and you know people can read the book and agree or disagree but I think I think that there's a preponderance of evidence in favor of most of those
claims now once you get I agree that that even going that far quite a bit past deism doesn't get you to a particular religious decision um and there I mean I make you know I I have um some explanations at the end of the book about why I'm a Christian and why I
think the choice to believe in let's just say the significance of Jesus's life and death and Resurrection seems like a rational sequel to those initially rational ideas but I think there's absolutely a reason why religious Believers talk in terms of
relationship on the one hand you're seeking not just a sort of theory of God but a relationship with him or them if you prefer um but also in terms of divine grace right that you know the relationship runs both ways and to some degree it has to be up to the higher
order of existence you know what your what your relationship to that order might be I but what I'm trying to suggest is I think there's a there's a broader and thicker foundation for seeking that relationship than many intelligent people right now seem to think does it work worry you
that when many people take psychedelics they feel spirituality religion the presence of God the supernatural it's obviously a natural cause why why is it obviously a natural cause well it could be that God is intervening every time someone takes LSD and giving you Visions
but it just seems It's the operation of the drug and that there can be quite naturalistic reasons why people feel religion the presence of God Supernatural and it's not in a way that mysterious or linked to actual Deeds I see I I I don't think that that's true
what is the naturalistic explan I think it's quite clear that taking a psychedelic drug does something to you know the the normal operation of your brain that changes your conscious experience of reality um I don't think we have any kind of sort of demonstrable
proof of why the particular ingredients in iasa yield you know consistent seeming encounters with a particular kind of being like of course I would be shocked Neuroscience didn't figure that out right I don't pretend I would absolutely I mean it seems to me the
Neuroscience needs to have some theory of how normal human consciousness operates before it can have a coherent theory of how abnormal human consciousness operates I mean look if the religious if the religious world picture is correct right um again broadly speaking then whatever the self
is whatever the soul is it obviously exists in some sort of you know dynamic relationship to its body its brain you know it's it's its chemist it's its chemistry its bloodstream all of that right but the fact that you're more likely to have a supernatural experience
when you shake up that material substrate I don't think tells you anything about the actual nature of what you're encountering right if you think of first of all like you know Hermits in the desert right who go out into the desert and mortify their flesh right or
you know Native Americans on a spirit Quest and so on right it's always these are you know traditional religious practices that even absent psychedelic drugs have always taken taken as a given that the default experience of the world is natural and material and if you want
to have a supernatural experience you need to shake up the natural substrate a little bit I don't think that you know ingesting ingesting drugs that shake up how your brain works is necessarily any different and if you take you know again
I I understand that this is not this this this seems like a sort of outlandish conception but I think in the end it is the religious conception right the religious conception is that your your mind's coexistence with your brain effectively sort of reduces your mind's
capacities to enable it to sort of operate normally in physical reality and that you know sort of shaking up the brain there's there's no necessary reason why that wouldn't um yeah sort of open the mind's capacities a little bit monkeys can't do this in your view like
do monkeys have a soul tree shrews I mean I I think I think we should be somewhat agnostic about um but trilobites trites trilobit well I mean but there's some day of transition and that to me seems very weird that you know for a long time everything operates
according to quantum mechanics and Einstein and Newton and then one day there's like a monkey or a tree shrew and that animal eats a Magic Banana and is somehow infused with free will or ass Soul or the ability to contemplate the deity but it's still subject to all the
same physical laws it would be very odd to me it's like decart's interaction problem how one day is different from the next like what does the day look like when the trilobit becomes the god- perceiving human what's the critical event in the middle I know what the
critical event is in the middle I I mean I I don't I don't think we have I don't think we have any kind of access access to that like if someone believed in a fairy world that we can't access you could be skeptical you mean a Multiverse or a simulation hypoth
something like something like that right there's no interaction problem to explain whereas when someone thinks that a Godlike being is interfering all the time with the principles of quantum mechanics not impossible it just seems to me very but don't the principles of
quantum mechanics under one perfectly reasonable interpretation suggest that for physical reality to exist at all some sort of Consciousness has to be constantly you know performing an act of perception to collapse possibilities into reality right I mean it seems to me
it's not how I interpret Quant how do you interpret quantum mechanics we can we can go deep I don't think we understand what measurement means in the theory but it doesn't have to be a subjectively conscious mind we don't all have to be Bishop Barkley that need God
to prevent you know everything from popping out of existence because God is perceiving it all all the time right I but don't you think that's a somewhat common sensical however you know anti-materialist interpretation of what seems to be going on at the deepest
level of reality I don't know what it means the deepest level of reality I don't know well we don't know what the all right at the quantum I won't say the deepest level at the quantum level of reality it seems as far as as far as we can see with our perception right that in order
to go from contingency to reality you need an observer right you need measurement how do you get measurement without Consciousness what does that what does measurement even mean absent Consciousness electrons bump into each other something you don't need
Consciousness but if you had a measuring stick in there that would collapse who who puts the measuring stick in there humans but when they're not watching the wave function still collapses right why but well but it does it the measuring stick says it does but we made the
measuring stick but we're not watching you don't need subjective Consciousness you need some process of resolution I deny that I deny that you can have a measuring stick without a process of Consciousness the measuring stick without a process of Consciousness
is itself just you know a ruler right absent your Consciousness a ruler is a collection of you know atoms and molecules cut out of a tree with some markings on it right in order for the ruler to be a unit an instrument of measurement you cow have to be
perceiving it and be conscious of it I think the r suffices in fact I mean I want I want it I want it just to go no you can't say the ruler suffices look I want to go back to your your your prior question I think is a fundamentally difficult question right we do not know
what constitutes the transition from non-conscious life to conscious life now we also don't know exactly what constitutes the transition from non-life to life we have some difficulties figuring that out as well but and I think that there is you know if if we
were having a conversation about sort of difficulties in the Christian interpretation of the human person I think the interaction between what we know at the moment or understand at the moment about Evolution and human Origins and the traditional Christian account of
the Fall that there are some real points of tension in there that Christianity has not sort of you know figured out a perfectly satisfying res resolution of that would be a different kind of book than than this one but there is an interesting argument there but it's an
interesting argument precisely because it takes place in a larger context where we have good reasons to take the supernaturalism of the human mind very very seriously right like it's not it's a mystery not just because the Christians don't have a full account of
it because the materialists don't have an account of it at all right because there is no satisfying materialist account at the moment of what Consciousness is why we experience it the way we do and so on and nor is there a satisfying account and now I'm going
to circle us back to the measurement problem of why our Consciousness is capable of all this measurement all this successful measurement at all right I mean it's not just the difficulty for the materialist isn't just that you have this you know this sort of fine-tuned
universe that you know in its basic structure seems to have been sort of rigged for our emergence it's not just that problem which we the materialist tries to solve by positing an Infinity of invisible worlds that are supposed to be more compelling than Fairy Land not
sure why um the the further problem it it goes down to us but then it goes back up right because human consciousness has turned out to be really good at not just figuring out how to survive on the African Savannah right but figuring out how to Plum the deepest secrets of the
physical laws of the universe like we've figured out something about quantum mechanics something about this deep structure of the Universe um that is very peculiar in a narrative where it's trilobit brains giving way to monkey brains right like there's if the UN if
it's unlikely put it this way if it's if it in seems incredibly unlikely that the Universe should be fine-tuned in a way that allows for the development of conscious life it seems to me even more unlikely that that conscious life would then work its way back up to
understand its own to understand the secrets of the universe in full I think I'm closer to the Colin mcin view that we're just not smart enough to understand Consciousness it's a puzzle it should make us more agnostic about many things but it's not an excuse to go
multiply all these other entities but the entity that you're the The Entity involved is no one is no one is multip L lying entities when it comes to explaining Consciousness they are simply describing the entity that is Tyler Cowan and that is Ross doit that you
have immediate access to more immediate access than to anything else in the world I think most of my decisions are made without my awareness and what I feel is my Consciousness is some kind of blip or epiphenomenon skating on the surface of that a lot of evidence I mean
I this is where um I I don't really believe you I don't think that that's I think certainly that like if you're driving through Arling Virginia there is you know a set of unconscious things that your body does out of habit as you drive around that
you are not self-consciously doing certainly there's lots of things you are a mind in some kind of dynamic relationship to a brain and body there's plenty of things going on that your Consciousness is not responsible for but you write books do you not you host
podcast party does do you not but most of it happens beneath the surface and I'm not aware of the decisions I'm making but you there's an exposed reconstruction of it that makes me feel like I'm in control but I don't think I am very much if at all don't don't you
think you've maybe just sort of embi a bit too much of the sort of materialist Spirit of the age I don't I think you I want to give you credit I think you write your own books I think Tyler Cowan you know with some assistance obviously from um you know angels on one shoulder
demons on the other maybe some fairies thrown in I think I think you I want to give you credit for actual for actual existence um and I don't think it is I I don't think you know that this the sort of theory of the Mind as as aggregation actually does Justice to the direct
experience of being a human being but if there are many alien beings on other planets as I would say now seems likely whether or not they've ever come here does that make Jesus Christ less important why does it seem likely we keep on discovering more planets yes
that appear possibly habitable we don't know what's on them but it's certainly more likely than if we were not discovering any such planets so we should be raising our probability it's a big place out there I mean I would be shocked if there was not other meaningful life in the
universe I I would also be somewhat surprised um I do think that you know the the fair question still seems to hold even given lots of sort of life um life friendly or seemingly life-friendly planets right it it seems the Silence of the cosmos seems quite odd if at the
very least there are lots of starfaring species out there capable of sending messages into the deep I I think the and you know you you might think that you know we are among the first in which case we seem fairly special or you might think that there are just very very few
in which case I think we seem fairly special again it's unlikely would be my guess they destroyed themselves and left no you know signals tracing their way through space the speed of light is a tough one maybe we're somewhat early I agree it's a puzzle I don't find it ins
superable I mean I so but just to just to go go back to your question I mean I I think that the I think that the question for the Christian given the existence of other beings with our kind of Consciousness in the Galaxy would be you know what is what is their what is
their apparent relationship to um to God and um yeah just just to God right because I mean this is where the Christian doctrine of the Fall is sort of useful right the presumption would have to be that either they had some kind of you know that there was some
role for Jesus in their existence and maybe we're the vehicle for that you know there are fun science fiction novels where the Jesuits send missionaries to other planets I think you could imagine a scenario where the Catholic Church would very quickly try
and recruit some missionaries to evangelize an alien species or you could have the scenario that you get in sort of Christian Science Fiction novelists um you get a little bit of it mine langle you get it in CS Lewis's the space Trilogy right where there are
other species in the universe that are made in the image of God maybe and they have not fallen and we have we are alienated from God in some profound way that other species might not be so those I think would be the two the two reasonable moves that a Christian might
make confronted with some form of extraterrestrial life I do think though again that the the the silence that we are faced with suggests that something more is going on than just life is commonplace it's all over and we haven't run into it yet I think it either has to
be quite rare or you know to be I mean in in both the Lewis and the langle novels there's a kind of Supernatural blockade on planet Earth because we fell right like I mean I mean this is obviously what people people who believe people who believe that um I guess uaps
right as we're now supposed to call them the UFOs people who believe um that those are actual visitors from other worlds they have to believe in a kind of you know non-s Supernatural version of that right they have to believe that there's some sort of like management of
Earth's knowledge of the Galaxy going on to explain why there are all these crafts zipping around but we've never heard a radio signal from deep space um so you could imagine a kind of more supernaturalist version of that hypothesis I suppose and if you're
weighing those probabilities that uaps are Alien Drone probes oh boy versus Angels and Demons just what what do you bring to bear on trying to figure that out because even I I would say this uaps have increased my probability that there's a God because there are not many
explanations for them there's China there's Russia there's craft of our own there's alien drone probes and there's what you could call broadly Supernatural yeah so there's like five explanations yep and that's one of the five well there's so it's up my PE I mean the move
that people the move that people make is to say that they're interdimensional right that they could be that this is sort of the I don't know what that means I I but I I also don't know what that I don't know how you distinguish that from from sort of essentially supernaturalist
explanations I mean so my my basic if you had asked me you know 5 to 10 years ago uh my basic view about UFOs I didn't have strong views about them but I would have said that most of what I'd read in the literature about sort of personal encounters with supposed
extraterrestrials seem to line up reasonably well with sort of pre-modern accounts of encounters with angels demons and maybe especially sort of fairies right that like they this is an argument that the ufologist uh jacqu valet made sort of early in the UFO um sort of you know
many decades ago right that you know if you compare an account of an alien abduction to an irishman's tale of being abducted by you know the unse court right there's there's a lot of interesting similarities and so you know there are sort of two conclusions you
could draw from that you could say well there's this kind of yion unconscious that human beings have that grants us these you know weird dreamlike experiences and in modern times we attribute them to aliens and we used to attribute them to fairies or you could
be more of a supernaturalist and say there are beings out there who like to you know pardon my language with us right and they do it in different ways in different times and places that that seems to me to be the straightforward reading of the data on on individual
encounters right abductions encounters that stuff I honestly don't know what to make of the craft zipping around stuff and that's part of why it's interesting I I have difficulty fitting it into a um sort of non-s supernaturalist Paradigm um I think you can't you can right you
can say the best argument would be these are you know extraterrestrial drones sent from deep space or from some you know observation base deep under the oceans right if we're going to get really really kooky um and this is what you'd expect from an advanced
civilization many light years away they can't travel to every planet that has life on it so they you know have some drones keeping an eye on things I guess you could make that argument then if you make that argument then you sort of have to separate that from all the kind of
paranormal UFO Abduction stuff and say well these are just separate things one belongs to the realm of religious Supernatural yian experience and one is literal aliens visit us I find that unsatisfying I feel like they're probably you know if if they aren't
Chinese drones right if they aren't sort of native Earth Tech um my my I don't know if it's probabilistic reasoning or not but my mind sort of wants there to be a connection between you know weird abduction stories and navy pilot sightings um but I I don't I guess it's
a case where I sort of I'm I find the subject quite interesting but I don't want to make any kind of commitment because I think we lack you know we just conspicuously lack evidence I mean there is I think there's a a sort of you know a contingent of Christian
and religious interpreters of this stuff who say you know look it's probably demonic it's um you know it's it's basically how the old gods of P ISM who are really demons get back in they pretend to be instead of pretending to be angels of light they pretend to be
ETS of light and so on um you know if you had my friend rodri on who you know writes a lot about mystical issues and has lately started writing about uaps he's very interested in that argument I think were that the case it you know it would be quite striking and
strange that there would be actual craft of some kind involved um certainly kind of departure from what we know about you know um Supernatural re Supernatural interventions otherwise kind of an escalation that would be kind of strange um
and yeah I mean it doesn't and also like if you know if I were a let's say ayrian you know Demi demon trying to get worshippers back right after all these thousands of years um I feel like the strategy might be I I don't understand the end game I guess of sending a bunch
of crafts zipping around to freak out Navy Pilots I don't know how that like what's what's the plan there um so yeah I'm I'm trying to be uh you know but I think resolutely open-minded in general you wait personal testimony higher than I do and let me see if you can talk me
into it a bit so something is recorded in data sensors and confirmed across multiple sensors maybe I don't know what it is but I believe there's something there but if people say X Y and Z there's all sorts of religions neither you nor I would sign on to and plenty of
humans who will assert insist that there's direct evidence for that that particular religion so the story of Joseph Smith the plates from LDS would be one example but there's plenty of religions that don't even exist anymore where there's very
particular stories that people have attested to Y and we really do dismiss them in the numbers of the the tens of millions or maybe even billions so if we're willing to dismiss all those stories I mean isn't David Hume right and we should not dismiss the stories
but they're not gonna budge us out of a more common sensical worldview well I I I guess that yeah I mean I I don't dismiss all of those stories I guess that's part of my um part of part of my strong departure from humean assumptions right that I I think that
you know certainly there are fakes and frauds and charlatans in religion and there are people who are just sort of sincerely mistaken who think that they you know had a religious experience when you know really they have you know a diagnosis they they should get you know
a diagnosis of some form of mental illness or Insanity right um at the same time I I think that there I think that the wide range of attested spiritual just frankly bizarre experiences that human beings have of which UFO encounters are a subset that again has familiar antecedents going
back Millennia I think we should take those seriously and have a a theory of what they are that is more complex than fraud meets Insanity meets delusion right and part of this is just you know knowing people who've had those kind of experiences reading a lot about those
kind of experiences not just in my own tradition but in other religious Traditions um I think that they Corr respond to Something Real even if the interpretation that people give to them is wrong or deluded or misguided so I don't you know I don't think that Joseph
Smith was in fact chosen by God to restore the Lost truths about you know Jesus Christ polygamy and um you know the ancient civilizations of the new world I don't think that's true um do I think that Joseph Smith didn't have some kind of weird Supernatural counter I'm
I'm less I'm less confident about saying that and you know the same would go you know I don't think that Muhammad is the Seal of the prophets do I think that Muhammad you know either hallucinated or made it all up I'm again I'm I'm less certainly much less confident than you
would be in saying that and I do not it's almost an Islamic Doctrine you're holding right there are these various teers of prophets and they're imperfectly right but they're getting at the Divine yes I I think any coherent theory of Supernatural experience given you
know what you can encounter just by you know reading William James right has to say either there's you know sort of infinite Realms of deception out there right like this is something that some you know some religious Believers would say there's one subset of totally
authentic trustworthy religious experiences and then there's a vast realm where it's all demonic ception or you have to say that there's just a range of ways in which people encounter God and the supernatural that do get filtered through sort of cultural
assumptions and through imperfect I want to say imperfect profits let's just say imperfect human beings and that helps yield the diversity of religions in the world today but you can also see patterns in those things like you know near-death experiences right the range
there is cross-cultural variation in near-death experiences if you you know have a near-death experience as a Tibetan Buddhist you are more likely to see the Buddha and if you have a near-death experience as a as a Catholic you're more likely to you know maybe see
an archangel or a Catholic saint or something right but at the same time there are some pretty clear commonalities to suggest that people in Tibet and people in Indiana are having the same kind of experience when they die and are resuscitated and Report you
know the lights the tunnel all the strange things associated with those experiences and so yeah I think I mean there's a challenge here obviously for any kind of dogmatic religion right you do have to figure out like okay why is there this consistency but also this
variation but there's also a challenge for the humans to say well are we we're just writing off this fairly consistent cross-cultural Realm Of Human Experience because you know it's it's all supposed to be myth and and um sort of hallucination I mean one the people who
have these experiences are not generally the kinds of people who you know you would describe as prone to hallucination and Insanity there are of course cases but it's that's not that's not sort of the norm and the other thing sorry I'm just going going on a bit right the the
the other point here well no now I've now I've forgotten what the other point is so oh right so on the on the the humean point right like if you go back and read Hume he doesn't exactly say this but you you really have the strong impression that Hume thinks that once you get rid
of established religious authorities and sort of the universal teachings of antique stories from the Bible that a big swath of Supernatural stuff will just sort of go away now he says you know humans that's wrong right humans still have this propensity to The
Marvelous I think that's the phrase he uses I mean I I don't think he'd be surprised by some persistence but I I think the original humean theory is most people believe in the Supernatural because someone has taught them about it at church and there are these Legends
handed down from Misty Antiquity and that's I think we just know that that's not true that's not what's going on and that's I think one of the multiple places where atheist Skeptics and materialists have some sort of Prior update to do about what we've learned
over the last 200 years about what life is like under allegedly disenchanted conditions but doesn't it worry you that for all of these instances of the supernatural there's never enough evidence accumulated to convince actual scientists no one's captured an elf
right that as far as I know and you could switch the topic to some other instance of the supernatural but there's plenty of testimony of elves yeah I mean I guess I would I worry though a little about I mean the Assumption the the Assumption of Supernatural
experience I would say is that there's let's say let's say there's sort of two two ways in which it could manifest itself just to massively simplify it you could say it manifests itself through some kind of reaching in where um you know a higher power God angel demon whatever is sort of
operating in you know in in human reality um or you could say it relates to some sort of native gift right the idea that some people have psychic powers right and so on um in the first case you are pretty clearly dealing with um you know sort of wills and intentions
and intentionality and choices that are not um you know that are essentially the equivalent of human will and intentionality and choices and so on right and so saying like well we should be able to you know consistently predict when someone will be you know possessed
by a demon or something and under the right laboratory conditions it's like saying well we should consistently predict when two people are going to fall in love under the right laboratory conditions I don't I don't think that's I mean again you know the hard the
hardest core materialist might say eventually we should right we should be able to you know get you know see what's happening in their brains and like these two people are going to fall in love but in in Practical terms right science hits a limit when he certain kinds of human
agency enter the picture and I don't see why it wouldn't hit a similar limit I don't see why you would imagine that you could devise a laboratory system for reliably Conjuring the Supernatural on the second case you don't have to conjure it but there's no way to measure
it reliably what do you mean by I mean just whatever it would take the editors of science and nature whoever they may be I suspect they don't believe in what you believe in uh whatever it would take to convince them so we have no tools that will bring them along it's sort of at
some odd margin of being quite non- legible it's that way on purpose to test us or it just turned out that way or it seems like a weird I mean I think it has to be I think it has to be that way on purpose in order for the sort of basic coherence of physical existence to
obtain right like I think actually the sort of scientist's Point originally that you can't do science if an angel is always you know if you can always assert that an angel is just responsible for moving a planet around I think that is a decent enough explanation of why you
know you wouldn't you know you you wouldn't sort of expect sort of constant predictable operation of um Supernatural forces in the world I am also though I mean I I think that there are there are also reasons to think that you know I mean there there are a
lot of for instance with psychic phenomena right like this has been subject to thanks in part to like the cia's interest in it right this has been subject to a lot of Quasi scientific scrutiny over long periods of time and you know you you do and you do have you
know you can find people who have done you know studies that technically stand up to the rigors of scientific expectations that seem to prove the existence of some kind of sigh some kind of right um paranormal ability um but then you enter into the
replication crisis right and you have you have you know competing studies and Recreations of those studies um but I I don't want to say that it's I I don't want to rule out in fact the possibility that if you you know if sort of more scientists set aside their materialist
presumptions that you wouldn't be able to get better data about but but I think it would have to be data about it would have to be data about characteristics of human beings right rather than characteristics of angels and demons I think the latter is sort of
inherently inaccessible to the tools that we use for modern science whereas I do think it's reasonable to say if you know if people are psychic maybe we should be able to design a you know design a set of experiments that that offers clearer indications in that
direction I am though also you know when you read when you read but when you read like um you know I quote Freeman Freeman Dyson I think uh in in the book right it's a sort of you know Maverick polymath scientific genius right and he he was a believer in psychic phenomena
um and you know his argument was basically that if you read about the cases where you know people have sort of these these kind of experiences they're similar to like cases of sort of bursts of artistic creativity or you know sort of things again that it's very hard to
sort of predict and measure scientifically they happen under you know periods of great great physical or personal duress you know they they happen around the deaths of a loved one they happen in sort of you know sort of inherently eccentric circumstances seem
to again if these capacities existed be the things that generated those capacities which again create some some problems for um laboratory measurement I would say this this gets back to my interaction set of worries so people report seeing and hearing Angels and
Demons right M but there's not an MP3 file or a photo where you would oh here here we go and that's very odd to me it's not logically possible it just seems highly unlikely well I mean there are I mean there there I mean what I I guess what kind of none of
them would convince you well I mean you know I mean Catholics always go for this one so I can hear Winston Churchill on YouTube right there's right well you can you know you can there I mean there's um the you know Miracle of the Sun at Fatima in the early part of the 20th
century did happen in front of a large number of witnesses there are you know powerful newspaper accounts I think including in the New York Times I mean there's a reason that this it's been hotly debated ever since but it was whatever it was it was something that
clearly had there been video cameras there something would have been perceived right um you know there's AA a similar case in uh Egypt involving an apparition of the Virgin Mary where there's you know footage and so on but um but what what would be what would be
I guess convincing to you right you want if I if I presented you if I presented you tomorrow with a video of the Archangel Michael right walking through the halls of Georgia Mason wielding a sword you would assume that it was AI generated right at this point well I
would bring it to someone and I could find out well at some but at some point soon you won't be able to find out right if you're right if you're right about the progress if you're right about the progress of AI but that there's not one to date makes me much more skeptical
right but there right I mean you want you want God to Tony but in reproducible form that can be verified it just seems odd that it never turns out that way yeah I mean did you read Carlos A's book they flew no okay um it's worth reading I would say it's a
book about levitation in uh you know the 1500s and 1600s sort of reformation and Counter Reformation era levitation um by by various Saints and yeah i' I'd be curious what you think about that book um you know there were no cameras obviously in the early 1600s A's
argument is that by any normal eviden evidentiary standard in terms of sort of collective Witnesses and consistencies of witnesses and so on these stories of levitation would seem to pass muster so you have to be operating there know in the realm not just of like
personal personal delusion but a kind of you know mass mass delusion right um now you know in the in in the Contemporary world yeah there isn't there there hasn't been a claim of levitation since in the Catholic church since I believe um a nun who was involved with the
French Resistance in the 1930s and 40s and there was photography then so it's fair to say you know shouldn't we have a photograph however if I presented you with a photograph from the 1940s of a levitating none I don't think you'd be convinced of it right well I would have
people look into it for me right yeah right but I mean that's you know it would be grainy and and so on right I mean you want you want you want video the best want the best you want the best video yeah I mean I I I don't think that's I don't think for the more
extreme forms of supernaturalism that's a completely unfair request but you know we'll see what we get over the next 50 to 100 years right you don't you know I mean you've already had you've already updated your priors about UFOs based on video evidence right so okay yeah yeah
all right well we'll and my prior on God for so right so we we'll come back we'll come back to I think I think we should you know we can revisit the video evidence question we only have you know a rather short number of Decades of widely available video technology so I
think just generaliz which also has happened to be a period of sort of you know Peak Aid secularism so I I think I want to say that I think generalizing from that to a universal point that you could never have video evidence is maybe a little bit of a leap and we should
give it a few more decades and see what surfaces what do you think of Peter Teal's fascination with the Antichrist um I think I think Peter is more apocalyptic than than you are than I am not enough intermediaries in his story so all the
stakes are on the table at once so speak I I think it's I think it's more that the threat of the anti like let's I mean he you know I think he's going to maybe elaborate his theories of the Antichrist at some at some point in the future on video mostely on video most likely yes
and I think that the you know the what what we've seen so far I would say in the 21st century I mean take the Antichrist to be some sort of comprehensive Global rule by a singular power dedicated to sort of a false view of reality I don't know if that's how
he'd Define it but let's say I I would that might be how i' Define it I think we've tended to see sort of brief flares of forces and powers that sort of resemble that that then quickly collapse under pressure from competing forces other forces and so on right so you know in 2008 Barack Obama
was for 6 months the most popular man in the world not just in the US he could have been elected president of the world right and so you could say you know well in that moment you could see how one person one you know incredibly charismatic individual could dominate
the world in a mass media age okay but you know six months into his presidency Obama was back to being a normal politician with normal enemies totally unpopular in various ways and so on um or again to take a you know an example that I'm sure you know I know that
Peter's been very concerned about like you know the the alignment of big tech companies with control over the Internet with you know sort of woke ideology and its hostility to free speech and it's you know sort of ideological fantasies right you you could say okay that's not
an individual but it's a system and a sort of a system of you know interlocking directorate a cathedral right the the the yarvin phrase right that from which from which we can't escape but you know it kind of seems like we can escape from that right now
right like the rule of the the true rule of the woke Cathedral where no descent was brooked you know what did what did it last for you know six years yeah I I mean and and Donald Trump was President for a couple of those years right so I I
think that to be I think to be a kind of an antichrist fearer you need to fear some power not yet fully in evidence and that power if you know you want to be non-s Supernatural could be whatever you know the the machine God view of AI right I think you know if you take a
kind of maximalist Doomer view of of strong AI then that's a effectively a theory of the Antichrist or you could go back to our early discussion about you know the Sumerian gods returning and using the guys of aliens or something that that to you know sort of th us all
that could be a theory of the Antichrist but those are theories of things not in evidence to me in the year of Our Lord 2025 so I worry less about the Antichrist today than I did at various points recently should Peter just be an opae Catholic um I mean he's right leaning
Peter Peter he doesn't quite Peter Peter Peter should be a Catholic I don't know if he should join Opus day um I think it's okay I mean I'm not in Opus day I'm not I think it's okay to be a normal Catholic right I think you know I I'm are normal Catholics I don't even well
one one of the well one of the I may have said this to you before but one of the curious things about being a conservative Catholic who writes for the New York Times right is that you know people have an idea that you know that you are the most you know intense
intense Catholic who ever lived or something like that right um which of course you know ultimately you should be we should all you know be seeking to be Saints and so on um but in practice I mean you know I try and go to mass on Sundays I try to go to confession right
I I try and you know sort of try and lead a serious Catholic life but I'm not you know I'm not I I I think it's possible to have that be your destination rather than saying okay you know you you need you know this more intense order this you know this more
intense subculture or anything anything like that right so I I think it's sufficient to say yeah you know Peter should convert to Catholicism and attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation and uh you know go to confession I think that's enough
Catholicism in Mexico is pretty friendly to this idea of intermediaries but in the United States it's pretty suspicious does that make you uncomfortable being an American Catholic there's other ways you could be a Catholic but you strike me actually as not that much of an
American Catholic I don't doubt your sincerity in your state ofs seem not to fit well the thing is like I'm interested in the intermediaries as a I guess you could say would be analyst of like what is actually going on in reality like I'm I'm interested in what is going on in
reality I think these intermediary spiritual experiences are part of reality and they're interesting and they have a place in any argument for why one should be religious um in my everyday life I'm not like you know I'm not out there performing exorcisms right I don't
take iasa I think I think there's a puant interest in intermediary spiritual powers that is forbidden to Christians certainly to Catholics you're not supposed to be trying to contact the spirits of the dead or doing divination or or these kind of things um and so I I
feel like I'm comfortable enough I mean I I think you could say that maybe well one I think you know Mexican Catholicism kind of is part of American Catholicism now to some degree right but I think it's okay to say Mexican Catholicism maybe captures the totality
of existence more completely than Suburban you know Suburban um American American Catholicism without necessarily you know wanting to spend all of your time in um in that zone and especially because that zone the Mexican example is actually a good example of where you
would say that Temptations come in right because Mexico has a whole zone of Quasi Catholic parac Catholic folk religion right where you're attending Mass but you're also you know making deals with Santa Muerte right and you know you'll talk to priests who um you know work in
that territory who will say that they feel like they parishioners are sort of you know you know yeah go going to mass one moment and making deals with minor demons the next and that's not what you're supposed to do at all does the ex Cathedral Doctrine make sense to you
concerning the Pope I would say I have more questions about the nature and limits of papal Authority today than I did 10 or 15 years ago for the age of Pope Francis I think it makes sense that um you know if if there is a God and uh if the second person of the
Trinity came to Earth to suffer and die for your sins and mine um that and if you know if there was a church established that was supposed to carry the you know carry that Revelation and forward throughout history that that institution would would be protected in
some way from the most serious forms of error so in that sense yes some version of infallibility makes sense to me I think the parameters of what could and couldn't be considered infallible are a little bit shaky at so maybe the pope shouldn't get to decide when he's
speaking ex Cathedral well the pope yeah I mean it's not well this is the thing right there again sort of the Francis era has raised all these debates like just as you know Protestants run into difficulty arguing about you know what what you know what the authority of
scripture actually delivers Catholics run into difficulty arguing about where the specific lines are um of when and when not the pope is is speaking infallibly I think I'm I'd say you know when the pope when the pope defines a dogma of the church infallibly like the
dogma of the immaculate concep or something like that um I think that has a useful Clarity I think on questions of morality um you know it it yeah the historical record gets a little murkier what have been The Inspirations behind your fantasy novel online and
free right the Falcons children um yes online serialized on substack um free for now though it you know once I get through two-thirds of it I I think I need to need to pay wall and um and see see how many people are actually interested in that's right hold the throngs back
what I mean it's a combination of things first I you know I was a sort of tolking and subt talking nerd in high school the you know one of the lines is that people either become a conservative by reading Atlas Shrug first or by reading Lord of the Rings first and I was I was Lord of
the Rings um so I always liked fantasy as a genre just as a reader and something to play around in um and so I've always I wrote a you know very bad fantasy novel in high school and then I started another one in my 20s and abandoned it and then when I was Ill
with Lyme disease for for a while uh over well now I guess it was four or five years ago when I did this I sort of went back to that novel um one of the things about at least the kind of illness I had was that you know it was a very physicalized illness in which my
Consciousness to you know my Consciousness felt sort of you know somewhat imprisoned in my body and I was sort of looking for things that my Consciousness could do while feeling imprisoned and sort of trying to do writing fiction again seemed like one of
them so I sort of went I went back to it and took the stuff I had from from my 20s and worked through it again um and then I have various sort of high-flown theories about why fantasy is an interesting genre that connect to many of the things we've been talking about
uh here that you know fantasy sort of occupies it's very interested in the transition from an enchanted world to a disenchanted world right from premodernity into modernity and this is true this is as true of George R Martin's novels as it is of of tolken
right this is sort of a recurring the recurring question that fantasy is navigating is you know has magic disappeared is Magic coming back is it about to disappear these these kind of things so I think that sort of that aspect of fantasy is timely for our you
know psychedelic and UFO haunted moment um then finally you know in terms of actually publishing it um obviously I you know my intention was to write it and you know sell the rids to HBO and re from newspaper column writing and you know provide for all of my many children
that way that has not happened um but I decided to put it out there in part you know you have this it's you right you have the line about you know you should be writing for the AI of course right for the you know you want your you know if if so much of the
future is going to be maybe this isn't how you'd put it but so much of the future is going to be you know AI reading the internet and doing things with the internet you want to put your work out there um when you say things like that I think to myself you know that that might be
true of my columns maybe I'm writing my columns for the AI um but I have sort of a different view with fiction and creativity which is that I was like well I you know I don't fully believe that AI is going to be capable of human level creative writing um but on the off
chance that it is I'd like to get my own writing out there before before that moment right sort of St well it's capable of some shorter lengths at least shorter well right but but you know is is AI capable of right of you know finishing
finishing A Song of Ice and Fire to the satisfaction of George ARA Martin's fans not yet right um uh if it will be and then at some Future Point the world will be absolutely flooded with uh you know works of art that have no actual human consciousness behind them and I think
works of art that have a human consciousness behind them are inherently better no matter what you know our descendants might think about the subject so I thought since I have this you know I have this novel written I should I should put it into the world so
you know without without an HBO uh serialization deal that is what I'm doing my readers wanted me to ask you how's your health going I mean it's much much much better than how it was uh when I was at my worst um you know one you reach a certain point with recovery from
a chronic illness where you're always telling people you're 90% or 92% right without sort of you know it's sort of asymptotic to recovery you're always sort of approaching 100% and never quite getting there but I I feel like I am still making progress towards full
health and in practice what tends to happen is that I feel about 97% well until I get some other illness and then some of my old symptoms come back um and I slip back and unfortunately you know we have a lot of illnesses that run through our house because we have a lot
of kids so I get I slip back a fair amount but which is to say there's still there's still something in my system that my body has mostly suppressed but that recurs um but generally I'm yeah I'm in a a obviously a much better place than I was at my worst and also a better
place than I was when I finished uh the book about having Lyme disease last two questions first your father wrote a poem about you it's called the hold it's about you as a kid do you like it I love all of my father's poetry my father has a new book of poetry um coming out in
fact in just a few months before the last question just to again reiterate the new rossit book believe why everyone should be religious excellent great wonderful book I very much enjoyed reading it and once I could I read it right away last question what
will you do next uh in part it probably depends on um you know sort of internal questions at the times and playing around with different different day job possibilities I think one interesting question raised by the age of the internet is not just whether we're
transitioning to a future where uh you know AI you know we're just writing for the AIS but also the shift from the written word back to oral culture in different ways so we have a podcast at the times I'm you know I prefer the written word to oral culture I prefer reading greatly to
listening to podcasts I read transcripts of your podcasts so do I rather than listening to them but I I'm trying to accept the reality that ours is going to be a more oral culture um I'm doing you know my substack of the fantasy novel I'm reading the chapters I'm not just
publishing them so um I'm trying to think about about that that zone if I acquired a really large number of readers for the fantasy novel I would just go ahead and straightforwardly write the squel um I think that there's also a it might not be a book but a
project to be written that's a bit different from the sort of teelan antichrist view of our future and that's a bit more optimistic but that treats the current moment as a kind of kind of bottleneck in a way um as you know as you know I'm somewhat obsessed with
demographic Decline and collapsing birth rates and so on um but I think it's interesting to think about you know 21st century culture internet culture in particular as a culture that's going to kill off a lot of you know not just if long long-standing institutions Maybe
entire country May simply disappear but other forms and other forces are going to come through the bottleneck and create whatever World exists on the far side so that's yeah that's an interesting question too um but I'm also sort of looking forward to having you
know in the wake of this book some more straightforward arguments about um you know why uh know why why my why my friends should practice a religion thank you very much thank you Tyler it was a pleasure as always and I'll work on the you know video evidence