Speaker 1: Understand the thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
an idea.
Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through the.
Speaker 1: Rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I
tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth, not because.
Speaker 3: I put my hand on a book and made a.
Speaker 1: Wish and working together for a more rational world.
Speaker 2: Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness.
Truth Fusian wisdom will come to you that way.
Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
Speaker 2: Bill O'Reilly was a staple of the Fox News network
in the nineties and into the two thousands had one
of the most popular shows on the channel called The
O'Reilly Factor. And back when I was a Fox News Christian,
I was a right wing conservative, evangelical Christian. I would
nightly tune into Bill O'Reilly. Well, you know, he left
the networker was let go after a big blow up
over sexual harassment and misconduct allegations and a payoff, etc.
And now he is broadcasting his own show on his
own terms. I think it's just called Bill O'Reilly or
the Bill O'Reilly show, and Bill one of his big
things is, you know, the decline of religion or the
belief in God in the United States is a net negative.
It's actually bringing us to not a point of moral chaos,
certainly moral decay. And to talk about that, he invited
on his show a friend of mine who is a sociologist,
Phil Zuckerman, who joins me today. Phil, thanks for coming man.
Speaker 3: Hi Seth, good to see. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: So you are a sociologist. What does that even mean?
What does a sociologist do? And where do you do sociology?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm a well, I'm a professor of sociology
and secular studies at the Claremont Colleges in southern California.
I guess quick ways that we're interested in what's going
on in the social world in the here and now.
So historians tend to look at what happened in the past.
We're trying to figure out what's going on right now
in the present, you know, always mindful of what happened before.
You can't really understand the present without knowing the past.
But we try to actually talk to living human beings,
not just read the letters of dead human beings. We
try to observe, go out, you know, do field work,
do participant observation, do surveys. You know. We try to
ask and observe as much as we can of the
here and now. And we're very mindful of things like
societal health, society well being. How do you measure that?
What kind of data can you generate? So we're trying
to be empirical in our search and we try to
have the best evidence available. So that's my background, and
I feel like the tools of social science help us
understand things like the decline of religion. Is it a
good thing, is it a bad thing? What's causing it?
So that's what I do. I write books. I try
to stay on top of the data every now and then.
I try to generate my own original data by either
doing in depth interviews, a survey, that kind of thing,
person of observation. But that's me and I'm here and yeah,
I was on O'Reilly and it was a trip.
Speaker 2: Before I get into some snippets on my play, some
sound bites from the interview. But you've written, like what
eight books? I was curious about the titles too, Society
without God? What the least religious nations can tell us
about contentment beyond doubt, the secularization of society, what it
means to be moral, why religion is not necessary for
living an ethical life. Do you get into the culture wars,
then a lot of these wedge issues.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to know, it's unavoidable. Those issues like gay marriage,
abortion rights, guns are gonna are gonna definitely come up.
But what I try to do is in my work
is I try to say, like, well, what's what's the
reality on the ground. So I'll give you an example.
People will say, like people like Bill O'Reilly will constantly say,
if people stop worshiping God and people stop going to
church and we stop having religion, then crime will increase. Well,
that's a social scientific assertion, Like we can measure that.
We can measure rates of belief in God, strength of
belief in God, and given populations church attendants, I mean,
those are our independent variables, and then we can look
at outcomes and we can see is there a strong correlation,
a weak correlation, what no correlation at all? What do
we find? And so it's not just speculative. It's not
just like, well, if people don't believe in God, they'll
go out and commit murder. It's like, do they is?
Is this really what happens? And what we find consistently,
what I've tried to write in my work is that
that is not the case. That in fact, society, democracies
that secular do not descend into lawlessness. And you can
run at this a number of ways. You can look
at the most religious societies and see how their violent
crime rates are, or you can look at the most
violent societies and see what their religiosity rates are, so
you can you can mix and matches you like. But
I mean just here in the United States, for example,
the states with the highest levels of belief in God,
the highest rates of church attendants, have the highest violent
crime rates. Now someone could simply say, well, that's not
because of religion, that's some other factor, and it's like, yeah,
that's the point. Some of these other things are far
more important than God or worship of God. That's kind
of the point. So that's the kind of work I
try to do, try to look at, you know, take
these assertions and debunk them by looking at the reality
on the ground.
Speaker 2: I look at other nations of the world that are
more secular. I want to throw Japan out, but some others,
And you know, and I think moral decline, I don't
think Japan. You know, I don't see the decline of
humanity as rooted in a more secular society like that.
Your research goes global like that.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, Japan is a great case study because not only
is Japan one of the more secular societies on the
planet Earth, but it has never had a Christian civilizational foundation.
In other words, sometimes I'll have critics say, oh, yeah,
maybe Europe's doing okay now, but that's because they had
centuries of Christianity and they're living off the fumes of it.
But you take a country like Japan that has never
had established Christianity, was never part of Christendom, never, never
sort of was it part of the life blood of
Japanese culture or civilization. So you can just say this
is a non Christian society that never had it. And
even today, though even if they had other forms of religion,
whether they were Buddhist or Shinto or whatever, those are
quite diluted today. Most people are quite secular Japan. And
what do you find in Japan The lowest murder rates
on planet Earth, the lowest violent crime rates on planet Earth,
the cleanest cities, the cleanest streets, lowest levels, you know,
such any way you want to measure societal health, Japan
stands out. Now. It's not perfect. You know, there's generin
equality in Japan. There are other issues in Japan. I'm
not saying it's an earthly paradise or a utopia, but
Japan is a perfect example. You can do this all
over the I mean Latin America. Like, the least religious
country in Latin America with the least amount of God
worshipers and God believers is Uruguay. Well how are they
faring compare to El salvad or Colombia, Brazil. And what
you'll find is Urguay is a much more peaceful, much
more democratic, and much more sane country. And again I'm
not saying it's just because they're secular, but I am saying,
whatever the reason is, it's not about God, it's not
about religion. There are other factors at play that are
this worldly, and so I'm just trying to always beat
that drum.
Speaker 2: It was interesting when I was watching Bill o'reiley talk
about his faith. When he mentioned Catholicism, I didn't hear
real commitment or conviction.
Speaker 4: So I'm fairly I wouldn't say religious fanatic, but I'm
engaged in Catholicism.
Speaker 2: He's not engaged in Catholicism, but I know he identifies
as a Catholic. Now we know, at least my inference
has been that the Catholic Church doesn't really promote or
encourage heavy scriptural study in its congregants, right, I mean,
isn't it more of an identity. You go to Mass,
you genuflect, you hear the sermon, and then you go off
to your beer and bingo and do let's live a
secular life. I mean, does that unfair fill with the
Catholic culture.
Speaker 3: I think that's a great social You're doing sociology right now,
Like what does Catholicism look like in reality on the ground?
And if you want to understand Catholicism, sure you can
read histories, you can read liturgies, but how are actual
Catholic people living in the here and now? It depends
on the society, depends on the culture, depends on the
state the country. You know, how Catholics live in Vietnam
is not going to be the same way as now
Catholics live in Vermont. But yes, I would say there's
a spectrum. So there are some Catholics that are deeply
studious and deeply committed to the scriptures, and they're a minority.
And yeah, your average Catholic is probably not even going
to Mass all that often as more of a cultural Catholic.
And there's a lot of people in between that. Like
you said, they show up for a Mass, they do
what they have to do, they say what they have
to say, and then they get on with their lives.
So I think that's accurate.
Speaker 2: It's an interesting way to phrase it. You know, I'm
a Catholic, but I don't really engage with Catholicism in that.
I just find, you know, it's an odd positions like
I'm a Christian but not really. It's almost like when
Jordan Peterson was doing the debate with the twenty people
in there, like he's quoting scripture and then they say, well,
you're a Christian and he said, I never said that,
and it's just this odd little spot. He threw some
numbers out. You're a numbers guy, let me just hit
them quickly, Bill O'Reilly. Talking about eleven years ago, sixty
six percent of Americans said that religion was an important
part of their daily lives. Today, forty nine percent almost
eighty percent of Americans ident two find as Christian in
two thousand and seven. Today that numbers dropped to sixty
two percent, and in the United States today, almost one
in three Americans say they are religiously unaffiliated. Would we
call them a religious non and o ne film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that'd probably be best. You know, when you're when
you're talking religion, is it belief behavior belonging, And like
you said, a person could identify as Catholic in a
kind of belonging sense, like that's my tribe, that's my culture,
that's my heritage, but not necessarily believe. Conversely, I know
a lot of Christians here in my town that are
strong believers in Jesus and God, but they say that
they're not religious because religion is an institution and they
have a relationship with Jesus, not an institutional you know, affiliation.
So it's very complex. But if you look at belief
behavior belonging, so do people believe in these supernatural claims?
Do they engage in you know, religious rituals, Church of
His Prayer, Bible City, and how do they identify do
they belong and all three you've mentioned some are going down.
So it depends on the question. So if we ask someone,
you know, what religion are you and they say, I'm
not any religion, yeah, we would call them an none.
It doesn't tell us they might secretly believe in their heart.
Maybe they but they don't want to identify with the religion.
But you can ask directly do you believe in God?
Or how strong do you believe in God? You know,
with absolute curdy, I believe in God every other day,
or I'm not sure, or I'm definitely don't believe. So
you can ask about belief, you can ask about behaviors
like church attendants, or you can ask about belonging. And
it sort of just depends which one. But what I
can tell you is on all three bees, the three bees,
the rates are going down, down, down, in not just
the United States, but in most countries, not all, there
are some exceptions, but in most countries you see the
same trajectory.
Speaker 2: I was going to ask how accurate his numbers were,
I mean, was he close according to the data that
you've seen?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and I feel like he even picked I
think he'd cited Gallup and I forget the other one
he cited, but those were even pretty mild. I mean,
I if I knew, you know, there's other statistics. I'm
just saying in the book Beyond Doubt, my latest book,
we lay at all the numbers out there for not
just the United States, but globally.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be that guy. You know, they're worth
that line. There are lies, damn lies and statistics. So
I'm going to play Devil's advocate and say, oh, yeah,
you can go poll anybody. That's a small sample. How
do you know where were you polled? Et cetera. When
someone comes to you, I mean, how do you correlate?
How do you gather data and then verify the data?
Speaker 3: Great question? Surveys are notoriously unreliable. They're blunt tools. There's
a lot of problems. How do you who are you
going to ask? Is it a convenience sample, is it
a random sample? Who are these people who would be
willing to do the survey? What's your response rate? Meaning
if you ask people to do it, how many people
actually respond? And if your response rates low, then those
people actually are not representative of most people. There something
odd about them. So yeah, there's a lot of problems
with surveys, and all I can say is the gold
standard would be is it a random sample, meaning everybody
in the population had an equal chance of being selected?
And do you have a relatively robust response rate? When
you have both of those things, it's the best we
can do. They're still not perfect, as we know, but
there we have to make use of the limited data
we have, not just lament its deficiencies. So what I
would say is surveys aren't perfect. You triangulate, you know,
if multiple surveys tend to find similar results, that's always
a good sign. So when you have different organizations with
different agendas finding similar patterns, you can also verify survey data,
you know, by doing field work. They kind of go
hand in hand. So for example, I've spent many years
in Scandinavia. The surveys told me that Scandinavians were not
very religious, but that I went and I did my
own on the ground investigating and talk to people and
interviewed and all swats and there seem to be a
strong they seem to up hold each other. I wasn't
finding lots of believers, so there's no if it's not
a convenience. You know, if it's a convenience sample, it's worthless.
If the response rate is very low, it's ruthless. But
we tend to try and stick to the best that
we have out there. A lot of new surveys are
using panels as well, where they're getting randomly so good
individuals that agree. So I'm actually not at the highest
level of that. I tend to rely on my colleagues
for that, but that's the best I can do. Is
it a convenience sample, is it a national sample? Is
it a random sample? Those are the kinds of questions
I ask, but we always take them with a grain
of salt. I'll give you a perfect example. We know
that people often over report church attendants. How do we
know this? Well, some sociologists in a particular city in
the Midwest. What they did was they started asking people,
you know, how often do do you tend church weekly?
And they got a rough sense of how many people
said they were going weekly. Then they went to every
church in the county consistently and counted in the parking lot,
and they said, is this possible. We know the population
of this town, we know you know how many people,
Perhaps we will have the census data on who lives
where and their ages and whatnot, and we're going to
count cars. Is it possible that this many people? And
what they found was like, no, it's just impossible. They're
not walking and if they're driving. So we know that
people are over reporting how often they go to church
because it's socially desirable in that part of the world
to say yes, yes, I'm a church attender. It's associated
with being moral. So there's different techniques we can use.
I can give you another one. I don't want to
go on and on our methods. Go request Well, okay,
so you're a colleague of Professor Gervais who's a social
psychologist on the God belief question, right, how do you
get people to honestly answer if they believe in God
or not? Because there's a stigma for saying you don't.
So they've devised these ways where you and see if
I can say this simply you get some people, preferably
a random sample of people willing to do this, and
you give them ten statements and you say, please say
how many of these would you say yes? And these
are ten rand of students like I am a vegetarian,
I believe in God. I'm asturbate, I'm a Republican, I
like football, whatever it is. And you ask them just
say how many of these would you say yes to?
But you don't have to say yes to specific ones.
You just say, like, of these ten, I'm going to
say yes to four of them, and the researcher won't know.
That increases validity because someone might be willing to be like,
I actually don't believe in God, but I'm not being
asked to specifically answer that. Another way you can do
it is you can ask the same questions and in
one case insert the God question and then the other
one not have it in there. And then you ask
the same people the same battery, and if the response
rate of like how many yes is shifts and the
only one you change was the God question, then you
know if they're being honest about their belief in God
or not. So these are some of the tools we have.
Like I said, it's a soft science. We can't isolate
isotopes in little beakers and add flame and watch what
they do. But we do the best.
Speaker 2: This is how my brain works. Phil. You know, it's
like someone who goes and wants to buy condoms at
the store, but they don't want to just buy condoms,
so they throw in like, you know, paper plates and
bananas and shit like that. You know, then they might
hide the contraceptive purchase. This is just how this is
just how the machine of my brain works. Okay, I've
got more sound bites and more questions about those soundbites
from the Bill O'Reilly interview with Bill Zuckerman. We continue
in just second. I so appreciate your support on Patreon
makes a big difference. If you want the show early
and commercial free, become a patron at patreon dot com.
Slash Seth Andrews continuing now my conversation with sosiologist and
author Phil Zuckerman. Bill O'Reilly quite alarmed about the decline
of religion, and he asked you a specific question about
how and why it's happening.
Speaker 4: If there's one thing you had to point two doctor
that has made religion on the decline in this country,
what would it be.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting because the producer spoke to me beforehand
and said, how would you answer this? And I wrote
out like eight explanations, and I said, these are the
ones I would cite, like at least eight of these explanations,
but Bill, when he had me on the air, said one,
and I suddenly had to be like, uh, oh, what's
the cool one I can talk about? I talked about
the influence of the Internet. I'm not necessarily sure that
would be number one for me, but I knew it
would make for good TV or good back and forth conversation.
So I can unpack that one and talk about the
others too, should I?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we can talk about whatever. You have
all the bandwidth here that you want. But I didn't
notice when he was you were talking about the connection
factor of people who had doubts and questions who before
or would have had to drive to the library. Who's
going to do that? But now they can go and
google something that the pastor has claimed and see what
the research says. And Bills seem to distill let that
down to, oh, if you're an atheist, now you can
go online and find other atheists. Therefore there are more
atheists number.
Speaker 4: So it's easier to be an atheist because you have
other atheist pals on social media.
Speaker 3: So we'll start there. You know, we deal with averages
and correlations in the social sciences. It's rarely, if ever,
never absolute. But we see that there's this correlation that
populations that spend the more members of a population that
have access to the internet, and the more time they
spend online, those we also see a decrease in religiosity.
Now it could be spurious, it could be like they're
all both being caused by people eating more bananas or something.
But when we see these kinds of robust correlations, we
try to understand what's going on, and it seems to
work in various levels, but the one so on number one,
The fact of the matter is social. You know, there
was a famous sociologist named Peter Berger, and he talked
about plausibility structures, and that was simply a fancy way
of saying, what kind of beliefs do we believe because
they just feel plausible, and what makes them feel plausible
everybody else believes them. We haven't tested it ourselves. But
if everybody kind of has this belief, it has a
taken for granted quality to it. Religion tends to have
that in many parts of the world, Like if everybody
believes it, your parents, your uncles, your teachers, you know,
you sort of take it for granted, like of course
there has to be a God. I mean, we're saying,
I budgetbly you do you know? One nation under God
every day? And so if you start to doubt and
you're the only one, it's a very hard talk about
social psychology. They do experiments, perhaps you've seen these, where
they get a bunch of people in a room and
they showed like three lines, and they say, like, which
is the biggest line, And most of the people, all
the people except one are part of the study, and
they'll say, oh, I think it's line B. And you
see the person who's not, you know, who's not one
of the actors, and you'll be like, he sees that
it's the other line that's clearly longer. But everybod what
he's saying B. They start to panic. They're like, do
I go along with the crowd? Like I do I
believe my own eyes? And what you'll find is people
will often go with the herd. So this is the
same clay. We see the same pattern with secularity and
secularism in the old When I was a teenager, if
I was in a speaking in tongues community in some
part of the Pentecostal neighborhood and everybody expected you to
speak in tongues and it was a sign that the
Holy Spirit was inside of you. You went and you
either faked it or you convinced yourself it was true.
But if you were like, I'm just I did it,
but I didn't really feel the Holy Spirit. I just
did it. You could you lived alone with that? You couldn't.
You didn't necessary. Maybe you found a friend at the
cafeteria that shared it with you. Maybe not. But when
you go online, you can immediately connect with people who
also doubt the speaking of tongues, who also faked it
till they made it. And suddenly you were talking to ten, fifteen,
fifty people and you start sharing your experiences, your ideas,
and that creates plausibility, and it actually creates it's not
just social support, but it's actually worldview support. And there's
just no question that the Internet has enabled people with
minority viewpoints on this issue, minority being agnostic, humanist, atheists,
to find each other, connect with each other, meet with
each other, and that has increased their numbers. It's just
made people feel more comfortable. The other point about the
Internet that I was trying to make was there's been
studies on clergy that have lost their faith. Linda Lascala
has pioneered this as well as others Alex Zamozinski. And
what they did was they talked to pastors who lost
their faith, like clergy members, rabbis, priests, preachers, and almost
to a tee, they said how decisive the internet was.
That they started looking stuff up because they wanted to
prepare another sermon and they wanted to look at something up.
And in their research they started seeing skeptical viewpoints, how
the Gospels are plagiarized, forgeries, how there's no evidence for this,
how there's no and they found themselves learning to doubt
by doing actual research that they were finding easily online
on the Internet. And then the third thing I think
the Internet does is it just it makes religion a
little bit quaint. I mean, when you're on the social
media and you're on all the I'm not on social media,
so I'm not going to list all the different social medias.
I'm sure you know what they all are. And you're
looking at and you're shopping constantly, and you're being entertained constantly,
and you're looking at porn all the time, Like all
this stuff has bombarding you. Religion I think is having
a hard time competing with all that that the Internet offers.
So those are some of the factors I talked about
on the Bill o'reiley Show. There are other factors as well,
such as as populations become more educated, they tend to
be less religious. As more women go into the paid
labor force, religion tends to go down in the family
for various reasons. An unpack There's been a strong reaction
against the religious right and the success of the religious right.
People moderate Christians who are middle of the road don't
want to associate with Christianity anymore because they're so era
acting against the viciousness of the religious right and Christian nationalism.
The Catholic Church's pedophile priest scandal turned a lot of
Catholics off and they disaffiliated. We have the numbers, We
have the data in places like Boston, Rhode Island, in
those areas that are heavily Catholic, we saw what happened
in the wake of the discovery of the Catholic pedophile priests.
The gay marriage issue has divided younger Americans from older Americans.
Younger Americans don't have a problem with gay marriage and
the only institutional hostility to gay marriage comes from religions.
So a lot of younger Americans are just like, that's ridiculous.
I don't have anything against gay people, and your religions
fucked up. So those are some of the factors going
on that have affected religiosity in this kintry.
Speaker 2: It was me, you know, on the internet. I stumble
across a debate and I heard about this ex evangelist
in Canada, Charles Templeton. He wrote a book called Farewell
to God. Oh what's that? So I the book and
start reading the book, and you know, an ex pastor
dismantles his former faith. My mind is blown. I start
to feel validated in my doubts. And before you know,
and I'm spinning through the web looking at all kinds
of debates and speeches, and that leads me to other
books and texts, and it was just crazy. And then
of course you talked about these ministers. The Clergy Project
is a remarkable experiment. It started back in I think
twenty eleven ish, so it's an entire network of pastors, ministers,
religious professionals, many of whom are totally under the radar,
like they might even be there anonymously. Oh my god,
if anybody found out my career's gone, how am I
going to pay the bills? My wife will leave me
or my husband will leave me. I'll lose custody of
the kids. Holy shit, what's going to happen. But it's
this whole weird underground network of people who were, like,
I'm doubting they wouldn't have had a resource had they
not had an online place to go. Right, you nailed it.
Speaker 3: Some is spawn on what you just described. We hear
over and over and over again in the interviews we do,
in the survey data we do, absolutely And it's like,
I think of like I remember, I know Dan Barker
wrote a book called like I think, Losing Faith in
Faith a long time ago, I want to say, early
eighties maybe, And it's like, if you happen to get
how would you even get that book? I think it
was Prometheus Press. You had to already sort of be
in the atheist freethought community to even know about Dan
and his book. But today, like you said, there's this woman,
an ex Mormon. Right now she shows up in my
on YouTube. My god, she's got hundreds of thousands, if
not millions of people tuning in and just her talking
about her experiences as an ex Mormon is catching the
attention of a lot of current Mormons who are gonna
be ex Mormons. It's just and like you said, with
the Clergy project, So not only do those clergy have
the Internet as a as a wind, as a as
an avenue into their loss of faith, but then they
connect with each other, which just strengthens their community, strengthens outreach.
They can share material, they can share resources. Now the
interesting thing though is that obviously this could work for
religious people too, Like a religious person could reach out
to other religious people and you you know, the Internet's
just a tool that can be used for both. But
what we're finding is it's not helping religion maintain its
numbers or increase its numbers. It even worked, it's but
it is increasing and helping secularism. It's even if you
don't want to debunk something. What I have interviewed people
who were religious and then they just started learning about
other religions online. So you know, they were some you know, Protestant, Christian, Evangelical,
and they were like, what is it that those Mormons believer?
What is Hinduism just by learning about other religions, which
is so easy now, you know, with just some tapping
on your keyboard, can cause people to go, wait a minute.
They believe this is true, and they're totally fervent. Why
And I believe mine's true. So, like you said, it
causes doubt, It exposes people to debate. There's just no
question about. It's a corrosive influence on religious.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's true. I heard that one line.
If you teach a child one religion, you indoctrinate them.
If you teach them about all religions, you inoculate them.
There may be some truth to that film. But you know,
Bill O'Reilly is alarmed. He says the world is on decline,
and he believes that it has reduced our ability, our fortitude,
our discipline to fight evil.
Speaker 4: You know, I wrote a book called Confronting Evil, and
America's motivation to deal with real evil has dropped, along
with the belief in God or the practice of religion.
And I think it's because we are an undisciplined, selfish society.
Speaker 2: Generally speaking, I'm guessing he's using evil with a capital
E in this case. I guess, how would you define evil?
Speaker 3: To me, evil is the wilful or intentional causing of
unwanted suffering of sentient being.
Speaker 2: Did you get divibed that he was going spiritual when
he talked about evil?
Speaker 3: No, No, it was such a bizarre part of the interview.
I really wasn't prepared for it. He had just spent
the first ten minutes of his show railing about how
we need to attack Iran and kill more Iranians and
he's never going to set foot in Spain again because
they won't let us, they won't help us kill Iranians.
I mean talk about evil, and yet so I felt
like for him, evil is sort of like anything that
opposes Trump, or anything that opposes white capitalists, Christian global dominance.
I mean, it was odd to me and I didn't
quite know how to say it. But again, this is
one of those things where you want to say, well,
what do you mean by evil? And I did try
to say that in the show. I'm like, well, evil
is different to different people. Bill. You know, somebody might
think gave me marriage is evil. Another person might think
it's just and good, and denying gay marriage is evil.
So it's very subjective. And what I can tell you
is those society many I'm happy to talk about all
the ways in which a decline in religion negatively affects
our society and our culture, but on this one, I
don't see it that way because.
Speaker 4: I'm not coming at it from that point of view.
I don't really It doesn't matter to me what the
theology or religious tenant that you embrace. That doesn't matter.
It's the overall belief in a higher power and a
right or a wrong.
Speaker 3: And again what you'll find is actually secular humanists do
a lot better in terms of alleviating unwanted suffering than
strongly religious people do. And I tried to give an
example from Israel on that kind of derailed things, but
you can take examples from throughout history or different societies
where it is the strongly religious who are the most
gung ho about war, the most supportive of the death penalty,
the most supportive of torture, the most hostile to human
rights and civil rights. And you'll find that secular humanist
people the world over tend to be the least tribalistic,
the least militaristic, the most supportive of women's rights, human
rights children's rights, et cetera, et cetera, animal rights. So
for me, my understanding of evil is like, you know,
let's decrease suffering. That's pretty much where I go. But
for Bill, it seemed to sort of be like whatever
enemy of the United States, they must be evil. And
sometimes that's true and sometimes it's not true.
Speaker 2: You know, he didn't say the word Zionist, but I
did get a Zionist vibe off of him, like Israel,
let all costs doing the chosen people, doing battle against Thomas.
And it's sticky because he brought up the very real
problem of bigotry against Jewish people, anti Semitism, which is
epidemic and it's a cancer and it's horrible. But I
think he believes that any criticism of Israel or Yahu's
tactics against Tamas, Gaza, etc. Is somehow an attack on
the Jews. I don't know, I'm and maybe just inferring that,
but it's the vibe I got film.
Speaker 3: So it's totally bizarre. I just saw yesterday statistics on
how you know, different religious groups supporting Israel or not,
and Evangelical Christians are far more supportive of Netagnahu specifically
and Israel's policies than American Jews are. So yes, it's
it's a really weird time to be a Jew right now.
As I'm experiencing it's I'm I feel like, on the right,
you have some people that are supportive of Jews, but
in a weird posturing sense. It's like because it's furthering
their anti Dei agenda or something. But there's also a
lot of right wingers who are you know, can of
someone's talking about the Synagogue of Satan and it's the
old Henry Ford. You know, Jews are running everything. And
you get that on the right, and then on the
left you get people who are just like Jews aren't
really persecuted people. They're actually the ultimate colonizers and they're evil,
and Zionisms the ultimate evil. I try to find a
middle path where it's like, let's not hate on Jews,
be critical of Israel's violation of human rights and occupation
of occupied Palestine. But I find it blurs and it's
just so bizarre. So I find right wingers who are
supportive of Israel and Jews but for odd reasons, and
I find right wingers who are hostile to Jews, like
you know, and hostile to Israel for the wrong reasons.
And I find it on the left as well. It's
a really strange time to be Jewish and it's not
very fun, but so it goes.
Speaker 2: I mean, the common sections are crazy. I mean we
see a lot of that, you know, the Illuminati, the Coobal,
the you know, the deep state of the Jews who've
come and taken over all of our institutions, and they're
like a shadow organization. I don't know if that's a
riff on Marjorie Taylor Green and the Jewish space laser
setting fires for the liberal agenda. I mean, it's crazy, phil.
Speaker 3: Right, it's scary, and it's you know, jew hatred is
a light sleeper, and so I always thought growing up,
you know, okay, after the Holocaust, well that's it. Everybody
saw that this is not cool. But it seems to
be perkly up again and Israel. Some days I'm glad
there's you know, sometimes I'm like, thank goodness, there's a
place on this planet Earth where Jews have an army
and can defend themselves, and I'm happy and proud that
there's a Jewish state. And other times I'm like, oh, man,
this country is fucking up. It's destroying the Palestinian people,
it's acting immorally, it's creating chaos. I just wish people
could separate individual Jewish actors from all the Jews. And
I wish people could separate. You know, criticisms of Israel
are not necessarily criticism of the Jewish people. Sometimes they
are and sometimes they're not. You have to be it's nuanced.
But what I can tell you is that secular people
are the least of my worries. In other words, it's
the strongly religious that scare me on the anti Semitism issue,
or the or the Israel wrong or right issue, where
it's secular humanists that I think take a more reasonable approach.
They believe in a two state solution. Let Israelis and
Jews have a homeland, Let Palestinians have a homeland. Let's
work together, and that's where we have to put our hope,
and that's where I put my home.
Speaker 2: I've got to go back to my own days when
I was a rush Limbaugh listener. I mean, Phil, this
is a confession. I mean I was that guy, you know,
and I would start the drive home feeling pretty balanced
and by the time the twenty minute monologue was over,
I was like, this country's going to hell in a handbasket,
and blah blah blah, and a lot of what rush
who For those who were listening who may not be aware,
he was a huge right wing radio talk show host
who had the most popular show in the country. It
was a phenomenon, spawned a bunch of imitators, and he
was a brand, and he used to just wail about
them secular humanists, and he would say it that way,
those secular humanist it was a pejortor it was an insult.
They've come to dilute us. And so when you're out
there talking about secular humanism, that's the vibe I got
from Bill O'Reilly. It's you know, secular humanism is now
deluding us. Can you define what a secular humanist even is?
Speaker 3: To me, a secular humanist is someone who tries to
make the world a better place in the here and
now using natural means and not relying on anything supernatural.
So you're secular because you don't rely on or believe
in anything supernatural, be it gods or fairies. And you're
a humanist because you're trying to alleviate suffering and make
the world a better place. And this is again one
of those examples where like democracy, it's not in any religion.
It's not no profit talked about government by the consent
of the government. It's a strictly secular humanist belief, ideal
and institution democracy, they're a foundation of this country and
all healthy saying countries where people can govern themselves. That's
pure secular humanism. It doesn't trace, it doesn't go to
the Bible, the Koran, the uponishads that you cannot build
the case for democracy. It doesn't even exist. All the
prophets just assume that kings and emperors are the natural
state of being. And so there's an example where people
like Bill O'Reilly who like those countries going to Hell
in a handbasket. It's like, what do you think created
all the rights we enjoy, you know, freedom of speed.
That's a secular humanist value. It's not in any religious
scriptures or prophets, never talked about it. Right to it,
you know, you haven't a right to an attorney, and
if you don't can't afford it, the state will provide
one for you. I mean, every ideal we live by
practically is enlightenment values, secular humanist values, and that had
to be implemented up and against the opposition of the religious.
So that's what's just so weird to me.
Speaker 2: That brings me to a specific thing. You tied me
up perfectly. Bill O'Reilly says an odd thing, and I
still can't connect the dots in my brain. But he
makes the assertion that the Muslims who are less muslim,
who are less religious, more secular, those Muslims are the
most ji hottiest Muslims.
Speaker 4: Okay, the more secular these Muslims are, the more intent
they are in wiping Jews and Americans off the planet.
Speaker 3: So that was an absolutely incorrect, unsupportable assertion. There is
no data supporting it. And that was one of those
things where like I had to decide, like do I jump,
you know, I didn't want to interrupt him and be
like that's actually wrong. I just let him say his thing,
and I figure out people can Google look it up
if they want. It's absolutely incorrect. The more secular Muslims
in the Muslim world are far and away the more reasonable,
humane and peace loving and democracy loving. Whether we're talking
about the secularists and Iran, the secularists in Algeria, the
secularists in Sudan. Wherever Islam exists, the more religious they are,
the more fanatical anti democratic, anti human rights they are,
and the more secular they are, the more humane, kind
democratic they are. It was the weirdest assertion he made,
and I have to say, with all due respect to
good old Bill, I saw some racism there. I just
felt like, or xenophobia, whatever you want to call it, Islamophobia.
I mean, I just felt like he had image of like,
that's the frothing mouthed Muslim. I mean, it's like it
was such a strange assertion and it's simply not true.
Across the board, the more religious of every religion, it's
the most religious Jews in Israel that are the most fanatical,
don't see the humanity in the Palestinians want to just
liquidate them. It's the most religious in the Muslim world,
the most religious in the Hindu world, the most across
the board. The only exception that I can think of
is Janes, where the more religious they are, the more
they don't want to harm life. Yeah, other than Jan's,
it's like fanatics is a militarism, violence. These are all
strongly correlated with strong religiosity. Now, it's also true some
secularists can go crazy too. Your your communist stalinists who
were also atheists were not humanists. They were despots and
demagogues and fanatics who cause a lot of pain and
suffering too. So I if Bill had said that, if
he's like, well, sometimes the communists, I would say, okay,
have a case there. But when he said secular Muslims
are the worst, he was completely right.
Speaker 2: I mean, the enemy is extremism in so many cases, right, absolutely,
And I think it ignores the fact I'm in a
place where you say Muslim and somebody just pictures a
brown person with dynamite strapped to their chest. It's pathetic, right,
And it ignores the reality that the vast, fast, fast
majority of the people who are under the boot of
radical Islam are themselves Muslim. And that takes me to Iran. Right.
We see people who are protesting, they want a revolution.
You see women who want to get rid of the hijab,
and they're having acid thrown in their faces and their
families are in prison. So often these are Muslims who
want peace and they want equality and goodness. And I
think to say that Iran is a monolith and they're
all this and that this is extreme tells me you
know nothing about the Middle East.
Speaker 3: Not only that, but I've seen data that suggests Iran
is actually the most secular nation in these Islamic world,
meaning that prior to the Iotola takeover and the Fanatic
revolution of nineteen seventy nine, you had a huge chunk
of Iran that was extremely secular, pro democracy, modern and
they and in fact, the initial the biggest fight against
the dictator Shaw came from Marxists, but it was the
Islamic fundamentalists that hijacked that movement and ended up taking over.
So it's a great irony that people like Bill O'Reilly
are like, oh, Iran is this horrible? The regime is horrible,
and it's most horrible to its own people. And in fact,
in Iran you have millions and millions of secular humanists
who don't want to live in a theocracy, who don't
even believe in Islam, but they are under its boot
more than they suffer, like you said, more than any
of us. So for Trump to say, like I'm going
to annihilate Iran. Basically, he's saying he's gonna he would
kill all these people that are our allies, our philosophical
and political allies.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go and a lot of the victims.
Is just something I never thought I would see an
American leader of any stripe say. This conversation is far
from over. Billed Zuckerman and I continue our chat next.
Thank you so much for listening. I am in the
middle of a conversation here with a sociologist, a professor,
and the author of eight books, a guy who talks
a lot about secular living in the United States and
all around the world. Phil Zuckerman. Let me come back
to this quickly. What do you say to the claim
that religion and religious people are more charitable statistically they
give more to charity. Is that true?
Speaker 3: It depends where are you talking in Malawi or are
you talking in the United States, So it's going to
be different from different societies in the United States. I
would say, on average, yes, it is true, but not
as significantly as people think. And it's true for various reasons. So,
for example, what we know is that people who are
embedded in religious communities tend to be more charitable with
money and time than people who are not embedded in
religious communities. So it's the communal aspect that does it,
not the belief. So a believer in God who stays
at home and never goes to church is not as charitable. Conversely,
an atheist who is a member of some kind of
maybe they go with their wife to church, they are
going to be more charitable. It's the institutional aspect of
religion in the United States today that does increase charitable
and that's because there's more opportunities if you go to
church every week and there's always someone saying, hey, we're
doing a food drive. Hey there's going to be a
blood drive. I mean, it's just structured into the weekly
and so you're more likely to say, okay, there's just
no question about that. On the other hand, it's not
as strong of a court. Oh and people secular humanists
that are part of secular humans committees, they're more charitable
as well. They equal or even outperform the religious. So
it's the communal aspect that tends to increase giving, donating
of time and energy. So there is some truth to that.
I think that being religiously embedded has a lot of
advantages that being one of them. On the other hand,
I always point out the more secular you are, the
more likely you are to want to pay your taxes
to do that work instead of relying on individuals to
reach into their pocket and donate to them. You'd rather
solve homelessness at the structural institutional level than just rely
on the goodwill of people donating here and there on Sundays.
So secular humanists are much more interested in solving problems
at a societal level rather than relying on personal individual charity,
and the results are better. So we see that those
democratic nations that have instituted better social policies have lower
rates of homelessness, hunger, and all those things. They do
a better job of addressing those societ idle ills. That
society is like ours, which more heavily rely on the
donations of good, good willed people.
Speaker 2: What's that line I want to say It was Madeline
Mary O'Hare said two hands working are more valuable than
a thousand hands. Class in prayer, I mean, if you
don't believe that God's going to mop up or that
we're going to a better place, then this is our
only place. We got to fix it ourselves kind of deal.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 2: When I first came out of the faith, it was
during the time of the New Atheists, and I was
guilty of this, But we used to talk about religion
as a thing like capital our religion. Religion is the
biggest cause of suffering in the world. Religion, religion, religion.
And of course, once I settled down, I thought, well,
how do you define religion? Like? Is it a Fundi religion?
Is it a progressive religion? Is it a spiritual? I mean,
is it a Fundi Baptist? Or is it a Janist
or a Hindu or a Buddhist. So when somebody goes
like talks about religion, how do you approach that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Seth, You're spot on. There's so many ways to
define religion. There's so many aspects to religion. It's such
a diverse phenomenon.
Speaker 2: I'm going to jump in if I can, I guess
I have to throw this out. I'm going to make
you answer or beg you to answer the question. Is
there a context where religion is a net benefit to people?
Is religion a good thing in Nonfundi incarnations?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, There's plenty of evidence that people that are religious,
and there's particularly people that are religiously involved in a
religious community experience all kinds of benefits, from better health
to better marriages, their children do better in school. There's
all what we call social capital, like the ability to
rely on others when you need help, so you don't
just rely on your own bank account. But like when
shit happens, are there people there who step up and
deliver a lasagnas to you when you can't cook, who
take your kids to school if you can't walk. I mean,
so there's no question that in the United States, Again,
it depends on what society you're talking about in these
days and times, being religious has many, many, many, many benefits,
even psychological benefits, just helping with addiction, helping with calming
oneself with anxiety. I mean, there's so many ways it
does help people's lives and could be seen as a
net positive for sure.
Speaker 2: But if I'm going to be bill O'Reilly now, I'm thinking, okay, well,
you do need religion and God to improve your life.
Speaker 3: So that's the keyword. There is need. The keyword there
is need. So what I'm willing to say, for many people,
in many circumstances, faith in God helps them, But do
they need it? Maybe some do, but maybe many don't
need it. And there are many other ways to get
those things outside of faith in a supernatural deity. So
education has many payoffs. Every time you spent praying, if
you spent studying or working towards a degree, or working
towards some kind of certification. I mean, you could say
the same thing about education. You could say the same
thing about strong families. You could say the same thing
about meditating. You could say the same thing about walking.
I mean, in other words, there's many ways. There's many
things we can do, many activities and beliefs that have
net positives. So yes, religion may be one of those.
But the point is that people find these things through
other avenues. And so the notion that we need religion
or else we're doomed is simply not sustainable. How do
we know because we see so many societies today where
more and more people are not religious, Yet they still
find those things ways of coping with suffering, how to
alleviate poverty, how to reduce crime, in natural disworldly ways
in fact, and they do a better job. So I
would say, yeah, if you live in a country that
doesn't have good health care, doesn't have good housing, you know,
is very corrupt. Maybe religion's the best thing you can
find to give you comfort and solace in the dark
of the night, but you don't need it. There's other
things that can provide that. It just takes the effort
to address in other ways.
Speaker 2: So we could pull God out of the equation. Human
beings are doing all work anyway.
Speaker 3: But exactly exactly that's what the data shows. Now again
on a case by case basis. If you show me
an individuals who's suffering and they find solace in God,
if I take that away, they're probably going to suffer
even more. But what I'm saying is there this world
be natural ways to address that suffering that are actually
going to be more effective. But if they don't have those,
then yes, by all means, you know, clutch your deity,
I mean, if that's all you've got. But I think
there are many ways we can address the suffering in
more practical ways than just relying on God or prayer.
Speaker 2: I'm reminded of the conversation about if someone is if
they've lost a child and a car accident and they
are praying God, leaning on the God belief, and they
have a belief that maybe they'll be reunited. I think
the humanistic thing to do, the compassionate thing to do,
is not to walk into their living room and say, well,
there is no heaven and there is no God, there's no evidence.
You know, the humanist in me has to approach that
in a much different way.
Speaker 3: Right, absolutely, absolutely. I'll give you an example of what
I'm trying to say. You know, when my wife had
a terrible stroke six years ago, I was in the
hospital a lot with people who had brain injuries, and
I remember seeing this boy who had been in a
swimming pool and had been deprived of oxygen and basically
almost died but didn't, so they pulled him out. But
his brain, much of his brain, had died, so he
couldn't talk, he couldn't understand, he couldn't walk, he couldn't eat,
he couldn't move. He was just basically what we call
a vegetable, but was alive, like his heart was beating,
there was some activity in his body, so he had
to be fed through a feeding tube. And I would
see his mom sitting with him every day, fourteen year
old kid just sitting like this, No hope whatsoever. She
definitely lead on her face. She thanked God he was alive.
I mean, she expressed this all the time to me
like so in that case, I'm so glad she has
God in Jesus or a belief in it to help
her through this horrible, worst suffering you could ever imagine
of your child. At the same time, everything going on
in that hospital, all the occupational therapy, the physical therapy,
the emotional therapy, all the new technologies to help people
recover strokes, that all comes from humans, right, even the
hospital was built by humans. I mean, so when I
look around, I want to say, look this particular woman, Yes,
by all means, lean on your faith to get through
this horrible experience. But if you look at everything that's
happening around us, all the trainings, all the nurses, all
the speech pathologists, all the neurologists, it's all coming from
human effort, human ingenuity. And that's where I also am
going to place my hope. So I'm going to say,
this secular humanist institution is also alleviating suffering. But in
the immediacy of this woman's emotional needs, obviously God is
going to help her. I wouldn't disabuse her of that.
Speaker 2: So you support like the Sunday oasis, you know, the
Sunday Assembly, the secular church model. You like that.
Speaker 3: That's those are two questions. Do I suppose it?
Speaker 2: And for those who don't know what it is? Essentially
for those who are seeking community, they follow winnings really
almost a church agenda. I mean, I will say that
religions have had thousands of years to hone community and
the format of what they do. And so Sunday Assembly
and oasis you go in and there's like music and
announcements and more music, special music, speaker food, and it
feels very much like Sunday morning at church. And a
lot of people have found that's that kind of scratches
the itch. So you take that where you want.
Speaker 3: Phil, Yeah, I think it's a great idea. I get it,
the need for community. So I have been. I enjoyed
it when I went. But at the same time, I'm
not much of a congregator. It's odd for me to
hang out with a bunch of strangers and sort of
affiliate on our lack of being religious. It's hard to
create community out of thin air. It really is. Just
try it. It's difficult to create heritage out of nowhere.
So I'm actually even more comfortable going to Buddhist meditation
because I like the music and I like the chance,
or even going to Jewish synagogue, even though I don't
believe the liturgy. I just have a lot in common
culturally with the people there. I'm more inclined to go
to a music concert because we all love the English
beat or whatever. So I support Sunday Assembly existing. It's
just not necessarily for me. I'd rather play soccer or
go to the beach.
Speaker 2: But yeah, my yoga instructor, Natalie, and I do Sunday
yoga and I get the vibe. She's a non believer.
She's very diplomatic, but she's like, this is my church
and it's like a totally secular yoga there's no mahachi
or you know, energy and meridians. But I just want
to like to ask her sday, what do you mean?
But I'm just going to be cool about it. Phil Zacherman,
you've been very, very generous with your time. How do
people find you and your work and what you do?
Speaker 3: I guess you just got to google my name and
you can see my books are available for sale. I
have some stuff on YouTube, but I on Twitter. I'm
not on TikTok, I'm not on Instagram.
Speaker 2: What's that about. Sorry, I just said, screw it's it's
too much white noise or.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was creating too much agro for me, too much,
I was. It's just it's just didn't make me feel good.
Every time I got off Twitter, I felt crappy. But
every time I go for a walk in the mountains,
I feel great. Every Time I tried to look at
how many followers I had, I felt anxiety. But every
time I went boogie boarding, I felt great. And I
just realized, like, I'm not big on screen time, and
I just don't building up followers. I mean, I know
it's really important because I know I'm missing out, like
I see what's happening. Like, if you want to be relevant,
you have to be online. But I just had to
bow out of that race.
Speaker 2: What's crut you know, to be well informed, right, I'm
supposed to be in the well informed business to have conversations.
The problem is is that I'm well informed, and then
I just want to go run into the middle of
the highway and just say please, you know, end it all.
Right now, you and I are are going to be
taking the stage together and at the Weekend Reason event
in Calgary that's coming to first weekend of May. What
are we talking? Are you going to get into Christian nationalism?
We're talking about Trump cult.
Speaker 3: I'm going to try to talk about actually how secular
people secular societies do better than non religious and not
just in kind of physical or material ways, but in
moral and ethical ways as well. And I'm going to
try and say, then, well, then why is there Why
do people like Bill O'Reilly say like, oh, if we
stop believing God, everything will fall apart. I have a
theory as to why they do it, and you'll have
to go to Calgary hear that. It's a secret, secret mystery.
Speaker 2: It's going to be awesome. Phil on stage is just amazing.
He's just everybody's on the end of their chair and
he's a great communicator, as you have seen on this broadcast.
And it's just an honor to know you, man. So
I'll see you in a few weeks on the road.
I will link to some of your work, your books
and the Weekend Reason events in the show notes of
this broadcast, and let's talk again. Phil Zuckerman. Appreciate you, brother,
Thank you.
Speaker 3: I appreciate you too. I'm so glad you're out there
and I'll see you soon.
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