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Speaker 1: What do you think are some of the biggest stumbling

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blocks today for religious belief in this century? Because I

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think a lot of people would talk before we went

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to break about, you know, politics or faith being the

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handmaid into politics.

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Speaker 2: But what do you think is that stumbling.

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Speaker 1: Block for folks today when they're looking at their own

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approach to religious belief.

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Speaker 3: Well, we were just talking about one, right, the extent

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to which religion and politics seem entangled, and people feel,

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you know, particularly right now, if you're not conservative or

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right wing, people feel like conservative Christianity is coded.

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Speaker 4: As right wing. And there's that issue.

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Speaker 3: Although frankly, I think a lot of issues in the

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Republican coalition right now are also linked to the decline

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of religion right, and that a lot of things that

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liberals and anti Trump people dislike about Trump era conservatism

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are not about religion run amock, but about sort of

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secularization and taking root even in the more religious coalition.

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I mean, the other I think the argument that inevitably

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comes up the most about religion as a stumbling block

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is just the problem of evil, right and the idea

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that it's just really really hard, at least for some

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people to believe in the kind of God that Christianity

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especially preaches, right, which is not just some kind of

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creator of the universe, but a God who is good

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in a way we can understand, right, who's not beyond

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good and evil, but who is good, who cares about us,

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Who is you know, who is involved in our life,

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and that you know, there's a lot of suffering in

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the world. It's a lot of bad things that happen,

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from the extremes of you know, war and famine and

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disaster to the personal, like everyone has tragedies in their

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life that seem too difficult to bear in like things

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that a.

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Speaker 4: Good God would would not permit.

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Speaker 3: You know, people have been arguing about that issue going

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on ten thousand years or so. Right, It's not an

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issue you resolve in a book or on a podcast.

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The things I'd say about that, though, are one that first,

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there's an extent to which that argument is already contained

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within the old religious traditions themselves. Right, if you read

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the Bible, if you read the Old Testament and the

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New Testament both, like from Abraham to Job to Jesus

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in the garden of Gainthtsemane, people are always questioning God's

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purposes and arguing with God and feeling uncertain about what

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God is doing in their life and whether God is

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actually good in the way that we humans want God

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to be good. Right, And I tend to think that

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what religion offers to people who struggle with that problem

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is an invitation to join the wrestling right to say, look,

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there are good reasons to think there's probably a God.

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There are good reasons to question God's purposes in specific ways.

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Our traditions allow you to have both of those things,

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to say, Look, we want to be in relationship to God,

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but we also, like job, want to be able to say, God,

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I don't know why this is happening. I have some

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uncertainties and some doubts, and that you're not giving up

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on that by becoming religious.

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Speaker 4: The other point I would make is that.

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Speaker 3: You know, we live in an incredibly rich and comfortable

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society relative to all of human history. We still suffer,

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we still die, we still have terrible diseases, terrible tragedies

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befall us. But we really have escaped some forms of

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suffering that we're kind of basic to human experience for

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a very long time. And it's almost as if as

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suffering has gone down, We've become more offended by it.

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Speaker 4: Right, It's like people are like, well, you.

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Speaker 3: Know, we have conquered certain forms of disease, we live

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longer lives, we do all these things, and so the

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suffering that remains feels more unbeare It's like, how could

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God permit this?

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Speaker 2: Right?

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Speaker 3: Whereas if you go to societies that have shorter life

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expectancies and more suffering, or even to places within our

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own society I mentioned earlier my experience with chronic illness. Right,

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if you go into the world and people have struggled

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with chronic illnesses, lots and lots of people in those

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societies are not saying I'm suffering so much, therefore I'm

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an atheist. Right, They're saying I'm suffering so much, therefore

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I need God's help even more.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: Again, that's not a proof of God's existence. Maybe it's

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just a crutch. Maybe people are deluding themselves. You can

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think that, but you should have some respect for that reality. Right,

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That great suffering often coexists with greater faith. An absence

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of suffering often coexists with a sense, oh, no one

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could possibly bear suffering.

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Speaker 4: God could never ask people to suffer in this way.

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Speaker 3: But when people actually do suffer, they don't necessarily have

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that reaction. They actually can find their faith and their

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relationship with God's strengthen.

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Speaker 4: So mystery there important.

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Speaker 1: That's the Job period that you talk about, you know,

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with Job and the story of Job, which you bring

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out to a larger narrative where the central question becomes, well,

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why would any God allow this kind of suffering? Why

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would any God allow man's inhumanity to man? Why would

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any God permit the horrible things that happen to women

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and to gay people, to.

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Speaker 2: Whatever, you know, the areas of diseases.

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Speaker 1: As you know that we've combated all of these other diseases,

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but yet still you still have people who suffer particular

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ailments and illnesses and folks come back. Well, if there's

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a God, why does he permit that? If he loves

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us so much, why does he allow so much pain?

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Speaker 2: How do you deal with that.

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Speaker 4: If the person themselves is suffering.

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Speaker 3: In the Book of Job, God criticizes the friends of

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Job who show up and are like, hey, Job, stop complaining.

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You know God's charge, Everything works out right. God, God,

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you know, rebukes Job too in a way, but also says,

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Job is closer to the truth than his than his

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glib friend.

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Speaker 4: So it's really yeah. So the first thing is you

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are glib.

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Speaker 3: Right, if someone is suffering, you don't say, ah, here's

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my complex theological scheme that explains, you.

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Speaker 4: Know, why this is okay?

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Speaker 2: Why you say? Look?

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Speaker 3: No, the point, you know, the religious person is obliged

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to essentially just.

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Speaker 4: Enter into their neighbors suffering and help them. Right.

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Speaker 3: But that but that then takes you and I will this.

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This is sort of a Christian pitch right in the

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In the New Testament, the New Testament presents an answer

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to the problem of suffering. The answer it presents is

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not a complex proof explaining why God suffers excuse me,

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why God lets us suffer? It's an account of how

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God himself entered into our suffering and shared it in

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a profound, humiliating and brutal way.

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Speaker 4: Right.

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Speaker 3: And again, that's not a proof, that's not you know,

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it's not a sort of here's the five points that

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explain why this particular level of suffering is acceptable, right,

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I mean, that's part of the issue. Like, I think

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a lot of people can accept that God would allow

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some kind of suffering, right, we have free will. You know,

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the world is here to do something for us and

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to us, right, so it makes sense that it would

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not be just like a constant, blissed out experience. People

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accept that. It's more that the level of suffering seems

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like too much. Okay, So the New Testament says, okay,

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you know, maybe you feel that way, but God himself

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has undergone this suffering too. God himself is offering a

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kind of solidarity with all of human suffering on the cross.

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And that may not be completely satisfying, but it is

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a response. I think that's worth reckoning. That the way

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you can tell that God is good is not that

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God has done away with suffering, but that God has

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shared it.

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Speaker 2: How does faith and science reconcile each other?

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Speaker 3: I mean, I think faith justifies science that science and

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you know, if you go back to the dawn of

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the modern scientific project, most of the scientists from you know,

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Galileo and Copernicus to Newton and others, some of them

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are heterodox Christians. They're not all like orthodox and so on,

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but they tended to believe that the reason you could

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be confident that science worked was that there was a

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mind behind the cosmos. The cosmos was not just random,

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It was not just accidental. That human minds were made

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in the image of the divine mind, and that's why

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human minds could understand how the whole thing worked, right,

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And I think you know, that perspective has been vindicated

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by hundreds of years of scientific progress. Again and again

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it's turned out that, hey, guess what the human mind

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is capable of understanding at level after level of complexity

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after complexity, splitting the atom, rewriting our own genetic code,

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doing all of these kinds of things that I don't

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think you would predict necessarily on materialist grounds that like

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some you know, over ambitious, jumped up ape that evolved

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a certain toolkit, this toolkit that was made for survival,

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you know, in the savannah or whatever, also lets you

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understand quantum physics, right, Like, maybe, but it seems more

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likely that that would be the case if the whole

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system had a mind behind it in the first place.

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So I think, again, this is not a dispositive one

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hundred percent proof, but I think the whole modern scientific

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project makes more sense if you ground it in a

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basic religious perspective on the world that there probably is

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that mind is probably mind comes before matter, not the

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other around. And then you know then and that the

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the science, the fact that it all works is a

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testament to the principles of order and intentionality that religion

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takes for granted. Whereas again, a hard materialism and you know,

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not all forms of atheism, I don't take this form,

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but a hard materialism that says, you know, our mind

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is just matter in motion, that consciousness is just sort

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of an illusion, like the sort of along for the ride.

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It falls into self contradiction pretty easily. And again this

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is not a novel point, right, but it's like, how

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how how can how can you fully trust your reason

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and capacities about the world if you think that reason

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is kind of just an illusion stapled out chemical reactions?

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Speaker 4: Right, I think.

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Speaker 3: You you end up having more confidence in in science

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if you think there's some kind of God then if

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you don't.

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Speaker 2: So last point for o Lechischout.

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Speaker 1: Your faith journey that led you to convert to Catholicism

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was influenced by C. S.

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Speaker 2: Lewis Chesterston Tolkien.

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Speaker 1: What advice would you give to someone starting that spiritual

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journey today for themselves?

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Speaker 2: We can throw in your book now.

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Speaker 3: Ordered believe why everyone should be religious the only book

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you need. I mean again, I think it. As I

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said at the beginning, I think in part it depends

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on temperament, Like who you are, right, there are some

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people for whom any kind of faith journey is going

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to be primarily experiential. It's going to be about finding

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a place or community where you feel like you are

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in touch in some way with ultimate reality. And then

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there are other people who kind of people I'm writing for,

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who I think want religion to make logical sense.

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Speaker 4: Don't want it to just.

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Speaker 3: Be about like you know, experience and being beyond reason.

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Speaker 4: They want it to make They want to make sense.

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I think that's a reasonable request for those people.

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Speaker 3: I think a good starting place would be to read

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two authors who I cite in the book. One is

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a philosopher who's not a religious believer named Thomas Nagel,

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who has a book called Mine and Cosmos that again

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is a non believer's critique of the sort of hard.

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Speaker 4: Atheist materialist conception.

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Speaker 3: Right. Nagel isn't sure that there's a God, but he thinks,

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clearly mind our minds are not explained by just by

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just you know, sort of material science alone, and then

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I would read that in tandem with an Eastern Orthodox

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thinker and writer named David Bentley Hart who has a

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number of books. But I think the simplest place to

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start is a book called The Experience of God. I

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think if you read Nagel and Heart together and you

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know they're kind of they can be hard going, but

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they're not super long books. I think you get a

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pretty clear sense of what is the critique of atheism,

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what is the critique of materialism, and why you should

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think that that mind is actually a supernatural phenomenon, not

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just a natural one. And I think for at least

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some people getting over that hurdle excepting that actually, you

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know the self, the mind is not just You're not

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just your brain and your body, or you are partially

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your brain and your body, but you're something more. I

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think that's a useful and important first step towards a

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religious perspective on the world. I would also recommend those

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books are more about like consciousness at the level of

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sort of physics and the evidence for design in the

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architecture of the universe. There's a book by a physicist

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named Stephen Barr who came out about fifteen or twenty

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years ago, but I think it's still the best straightforward introduction.

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It's called something like Ancient Physics and Modern Faith. And

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if you're interested in questions of the structure of the universe,

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why it seems fine tuned, what the different theories for

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why that might be are, how the religious theory stacks

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up against alternatives.

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Speaker 4: I think that's a good place to start.

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Speaker 3: My book is intended to be a kind of gateway

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into some of these more sophisticated arguments, So certainly you

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should start with Believe Why Everyone Should Be Religious? Available

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on Amazon dot Com and other final but I think

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the footnotes of the book, if you're interested in the

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intellectual arguments, can take you a bit further than just

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my newspaper columnist arguments alone.

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Speaker 1: Now, but it's more than that, folks, trust me, And

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I want to leave you all with a passage from

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the book because I thought it was in some ways

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really kind of reflective as the way people come at

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the faith journey trying to figure out, you know, Muhammad

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versus Jesus versus Buddha versus. You know, you don't need

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to engage with every single person who has ever claimed

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Divinity or read every single putatively holy text. Instead, you

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can assume that the wisdom of the human past and

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the workings of Providence have elevated a smaller set of

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figures and texts for a reason, and try to encounter

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several of them seriously as a reader and a student

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of history and a person open to direct experience of

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the Divine. That's it right, Open yourself up and the

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Divine will speak to you, and you will come to

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understand exactly what that is for you. And I appreciate

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that about believe why everyone should be religious.