ASM015 Fasting, Nontheist Churches, and Dealing with Cynicism

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fasting non-theist churches and dealing with cynicism all that and more on this week's episode of ask sciencemic

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welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life this week i want to let you know i was part of a series called the new copernicans it's a video series exploring changes in faith and culture it's really excellent and i've got it linked on the website at asksciencemike.com i'd encourage you to check it out it's it's really quite good and there's 20 episodes in all but for now let's get it started hi science mike my question is about fasting as someone who grew up in the evangelical church the practice of fasting was always associated with things like spiritual breakthroughs and answered prayer and quotes getting god's attention and i'm aware just on a strictly biological level there can be benefits to things like cleanses and juice fasts but it can also be really bad to deprive yourself of things like food and water so i want to believe that there is something spiritual going on but given the fact that fasting is something practiced across many different faiths is there some underlying psychological or scientific explanation that might explain how it can produce such positive results what is the science of fasting let's start with the confession i'm not much of a faster uh i've never i've never successfully attempted fasting as a spiritual discipline uh i'm just such a natural fat dude it's it's like it's impossible then i also have some some minor blood sugar issues um just ask anyone who's been around me when i'm a couple hours late eating lunch but you know there's some merit to this idea of fasting and potential benefits let's first of all think kind of anthropologically pre-agriculture human beings were hunter-gatherers and we weren't doing a three square meals a day diet in that process and in fact even in the agricultural age not even uh where three squares completely common a lot of that has been dictated by modern agriculture and also the industrial revolution so our sort of like clockwork meal plan is probably not the most ideal thing for most human metabolisms and you know speaking specifically about this idea of intermittent fasting there's been some research that links to possible benefits from fasting related specifically to like cholesterol or reduction of risk and diabetes of course there's also some conflicting studies that indicate that there is no benefit so this is not this is not a place i'm comfortable making a call a definitive call using science i'll lean towards probably some potential health benefits for some people with intermittent fasting now i do want to say since i was in the question cleanses and detoxes our junk science and i'm pleased nobody get upset but your liver and your kidneys and other organs in your body are constantly removing the quote toxins from your body and when you urinate or defecate you're eliminating those toxins of processed toxins from your body especially when you urinate so juice cleanses detox a lot of stuff if you need to be detox there's so many toxins in your system that your kidney and livers can't handle you'll know because you're you're poisoned you need immediate medical intervention but juice diets can work cleanses can work they can help people lose weight potentially kick start a weight loss program although they tend to yo-yo back up but the fact is when you're in a juice diet you're not eating a cheeseburger every day you're not eating french fries and so in that capacity it can help you change behavior specifically fasting or even juice diets and those sort of things can break the cycles of habit and dependence that are associated with fatty foods sweet foods caffeine it can be that break in your routine that helps you hopefully change longer term behavioral patterns but in and of themselves there's nothing too fasting or juicing as a detoxification thing that's just not good science but we're not just talking about the science of fasting we're talking about the science of fasting as it relates to our faith why does fasting seem to work so well for so many people is there any science behind it well there is first of all if you believe something can be beneficial it's more likely to be beneficial it's called the placebo effect you can give people a sugar pill and tell them it's cough medicine and some percentage of people will cough less as a result just because they believe that the medicine works it's more than that there's also power to ritual and routine and ceremony things we repeat things that we play significance by those are psychologically significant those are also neurologically significant that's why when i tell people about prayer and trying to get more out of their prayer life and feeling closer to god that having a set time and place is important that habit that routine that ritual helps us focus and that's also true of fasting if you create a routine about fasting you're essentially self-conditioning or training yourself towards better focus and better outcomes but there's even more than that i like to run and i like to run very slowly for a very long amount of time i even ran a marathon once if you can believe that big old fat me around in a marathon it was hilarious that's for you jeb but there's something that happens when you run a very long time you get past all your worries and your daily concerns and you're able to focus and br be mentally free in a way that you can't or i haven't been able to short of really intense meditation or unbelievable times of healing or grace and that's because when you exercise yourself to exhaustion your body starts to conserve resources including the way it spends energy in the brain and it's easier to kind of get past you know all the fancy human neurological hardware that as many gifts as it has also creates worry and anxiety there's just no animals that are capable of the intense worry we are because we model space-time in our view of reality we think about the future all the time we think about the past all the time and so intense exercise helps us get past that and i suspect this is not as well grounded as many things i say on the program a similar mechanism may be at play when people fast because their body in some way begins to conserve resources and conserve energy that once they get past the complaints just like when you run there's freedom on the other side for a while now a couple of important notes humans can't survive very long without water so if you want to try fasting don't jump into fasting without water and even if you do fast without water do it for very limited periods of time just dangerous for you to not drink water you can go without food significantly longer although just be careful you might want to talk to a physician beforehand if you have issues with blood sugar if you have maybe undiagnosed diabetes or anything radically change your diet can be dangerous and remember that once you start eating again your body will stop complaining about nutrition but it is used to a certain calorie budget and as you modify that budget over time your body will want to correct it will want to make up for lost time and consume all those calories so actually watch out for excessive eating after fasting but sure there's absolutely some scientific merit behind fasting why it works why it's effective uh of course i haven't even touched on potential spiritual implications beyond the science but i'll leave that to uh clergy and folks more qualified than myself but there you have it the science of fasting [Music] our next question comes from the email box and uh it's kind of familiar hi mike you and i have a somewhat similar story in that we both grew up in and were deeply connected with the church and then became atheists i was for about seven months and then came back although my theology nowadays is a lot less defined than what it was before i hear you there a bad church situation was a large part of why i left faith in the first place and my question for you given that circumstance is about getting back into church i grew up a mix of reformed baptist and charismatic but since i've come back to christianity i've received many offers from others to attend church on sunday mornings i attend a small baptist college and am part of a small but loving community who knows my spiritual journey and have offered me much love and grace with my doubts and theological differences all of them attend church regularly and have invited me to go with them most weeks but every time i take them up on the offer i still find myself becoming cynical at the whole thing i'm not able to connect with the music at all and i often find myself disagreeing with a large portion of the sermon after all most of the churches i've visited tend to be southern baptist i've seen such a beautiful example of what church can be in this small community but something seems lost every time i go to an organized sunday morning gathering i know you've mentioned that you switched denominations and are now happily part of a church body but did you encounter any cynicism in returning to church and if so what advice would you have in getting rid of that cynicism and establishing a healthy relationship with church again thank you for all that you do your work has been incredibly helpful in my personal journey and countless others as well and for that i am truly grateful first of all thanks for the kind words this is why i do it um i've been there i know how you feel and yeah absolutely when i first started to try to do the church thing again i was deeply cynical i tried several different churches on my own my family was staying home on sunday mornings at that point and i had a really hard time connecting now part of that is i'd only ever been a member at two churches and i was a member of each of those churches for significantly more than a decade so i was not accustomed to feeling like a visitor or a guest in a church building that was weird so there's that at play but i also found myself constantly analyzing the teaching or the preaching compared to what i understood or what i thought was correct and man i'm a bass player i've played in a lot of a lot of bands and done a lot of worship music in my life and so i can have a bit of a critical ear in a worship service and that did not help my cynicism cynicism is a defense mechanism when we've been burned when our idealistic views of how things could be meet with a world that never measures up cynicism is born and the more trauma and the more disappointment we experience the more cynical we become so there are absolutely ways to move beyond and move through cynicism into a place of grace and healing and frankly to a point where you know the color of the drapes so to speak is a lot less important in the church community you attend first i would i would search the ashes of what was for what remains i'd take some time and actually think about your faith background where you came from before your period of atheism think about the things that were good about that what did you learn that has made you who you are in a good way who was involved in your life that made a difference for you who helped you who showed you something new who offered you grace exactly like you would if your house burned down and you're searching through the the wreckage the remains for anything that may be left go back into your past and look for those good things look for those moments of grace and truth so that's one two as you look through this burnt baked path that helped you become as cynical as you are focus on forgiving who are those people who have wounded you or grieved you who are those people you think about more often than you should because the hurt is there forgive them forgive them accept the burden of whatever happened and wish no ill against them that is forgiveness now it's okay to take more time to heal if you need it if you're enjoying the fellowship of a small community stick with that you don't have to find a sunday morning gig not now not ever i certainly think christian faith is best practiced in community you have a community you may find like me you're a sunday morning person that there is some essential rhythm to your faith that happens on sunday morning this idea of the lord's day and starting in that way and if you're like me great look for churches again but if everyone you go to just makes you feel more cynical and jaded again well don't do that right uh doc it hurts if i if i do this well don't do that i think that's good advice here and lastly try other church traditions i have many good baptist friends but the southern baptist convention is not the most friendly to faith transformations to doubt uh to spiritual recovery they're just there's not their belief system it has tremendous advantages in a lot of ways two baptist credits they have among the lowest defection rates of any american faith system so don't hear this as a baptist slam but baptist churches in general tend to have more conservative evangelical theology and have less room for tension for exploration so i would encourage you to try some other faith traditions and if that causes trouble for you and your schooling i don't really know what to tell you that's why i dropped out of college i'm not really good at being told you can't do that that's kind of how i'm wired but basically working on cynicism to me comes down to four things searching the ashes for what remains focus on forgiving take the time you need to heal and explore the broader stream of christianity there are many many denominations and they all represent the story of christ in different and beautiful ways so don't be afraid to shake it up a little bit i bet there's a methodist church in town and a presbyterian church a lutheran church a catholic church you know if you really want to have a day where you don't feel cynical at all and mainly feel confused try greek orthodox church one of my favorites but yeah the big thing is is just cut yourself some slack there's no rush to find the new thing our faith is all about a journey with god if you can see jesus somewhere ahead of you then you are on the right path [Music] hey mike um this is will from kentucky i just discovered your work a few weeks ago and have been absolutely devouring it it's fantastic so thanks so much for that my question is i'm a decidedly sort of non-theistic person but i'm still inspired by and sort of emotionally connected to certain aspects of the christian tradition i was raised in that tradition but i'm a sort of fully naturalist at this point philosophically and i've noticed in a lot of the conversations um there's a lot of talk about questioning and talk about doubt in the church these days um but do you think there will be or do you think there should be room for sort of non-confrontational negation or denial so i don't know of a christian community where it's sort of safe to say i feel i'm i feel like i believe that there's not a sort of supernatural or personal god and also i'm not really wrestling with it actively um so my question is are there should be communities like that and if there are um what are those called or where are those located so anyway that's my question again thanks so much for the fantastic conversations and the and the continuing podcast thanks a lot see you i don't think i've ever talked about this but i had this funny habit when i was an atheist sometimes i would pray out of habit and i couldn't um take myself seriously because uh you know it seemed like i was sitting on santa's lap and 25 years old so when i wanted to pray i would say to the imaginary god and then pray like i used to and you know that seems like a a very strange thing to most people be they uh spiritual or or not but i think you probably get it to the imaginary god there is something alluring about this tradition isn't there i'm in a season right now where i'll be honest i don't i don't wrestle with doubt very much but part of that i'm such a mystic right like what is there to doubt that i don't know anything so it's kind of a fun place to be intellectually but i find great meaning in the practice of christian faith and through that practice my mysticism takes some shape that i hold loosely so i understand god as a and really a mystical non-theistic capacity intellectually but you know emotionally i experience god in the personal way that most christians do and i'm just really comfortable with that you are not wrestling without either because you've decided um that there you know there's there's just not a god it's not anything to worry about i respect that a bit of a naturalist myself so i also understand that um but the first thing i would say and this is really vital you may not always believe what you believe today human beings are not static you have already experienced changes in faith and you know there's this really interesting conversation we're having about what it means to be religious or whether there's merit to religion and how there's lots of people who were religious who become non-religious or spiritual and not religious uh and that there's this great movement away from faith in our country that's certainly true on some levels i i don't deny it but it's also true that people who are not religious or not spiritual about 41 of them also undergo some faith transition so right now more people are becoming less religious than becoming more religious but that's also because that's a much larger group to draw from over time if the statistics remain consistent we're going to hit kind of an equilibrium point because modern americans are about as likely to become more religious as they are less religious on an individual basis so what you believe now you may not believe tomorrow i certainly don't expect that five years from now i'll have the same beliefs about reality and god that i have today hopefully i won't have as much movement as i've had in the previous five years that would be startling but i fully expect to continue to grow and change as i walk through life when you're looking for communities that will be open to the way you view god first of all unitarian universalism absolutely people in those churches are going to be comfortable with your affinity for christian practice as well as your hesitance to embrace any christian theology now if that's too ambiguous you're looking for more distinctly christian group i would look for progressive mainline churches and there's so much variance even within those denominations i can't tell you which one will be best i'd ask friends in town honestly look for any church that may have groups related to radical theology or death of god theology those are the terms you're looking for for people who are more comfortable with those ideas you'd certainly be welcome at uh our church in tallahassee if you ever want to visit us a good samaritan united methodist church we'd love to see you we've got lots of people who have very different ideas about god the big thing i want to say though is grace offer others the grace you're looking for there is some implicit challenge to you saying you can't accept the idea of god to people who do in the same way that they are implicitly challenging you you guys have a fundamentally different view on something very fundamental and the only way it's going to work is with mutual respect and mutual grace some churches can pull that off but i do i do think it's a minority of churches a minority of people it's difficult for human beings to hold their core ideas loose enough to be comfortable with someone who holds an honesty the opposite position so it's a challenge for you and a challenge for them to find mutual grace and respect but unitarians that's it's gonna be an easy sell that's what they do every sunday and but absolutely i bet there are some christian denominations that will do it as well it's gonna be a lot easier if you are in a major metro uh or if you're in the northeast uh or especially anywhere on the west coast you're gonna have a lot better experience with that so i wish you well may you find the community you need to follow god as you understand or as you don't our last question came in via the email inbox and it reads i have been married for 13 years i got married when i was 19. at the time i got married i was involved heavily in the church and was taught that my sexual urges were bad and even sinful i was told to seek out a wife and that that was the only way i could even begin to think about sex i met my wife and we spent a lot of time together she's a great person and a friend so i asked her to marry me we struggled through a lot of our marriage because we got married so young and because of the way we were brought up i love my wife she's an amazing person but she was brought up in the same type of christian setting and as a result has a hard time with sexuality because she was taught that it was wrong we both began to deconstruct our faith over the last few years and are now at a point where ideas of christianity and god have changed but the damage was done she is very uninterested in sex and has admitted that it is because of our upbringing and self-image issues we talk about it but that doesn't seem to help and goes nowhere i am very discouraged by our sexual relationship and that carries over into a lot of the areas of our relationship i've even contemplated stepping out of our marriage for sexual fulfillment and have thought about divorce but i love her and my two kids too much to go through with those thoughts we have been to counselors in the past and my wife is a psychologist but the answers given by counselors always seem to be that i need to change the way i do things happy wife happy life but no matter how hard i try nothing works and i continually feel less and less happy with our relationship as a whole what am i supposed to do i have supported her through school and continually support her in her dreams and desires for life in general i do the best i can to listen and be there for her i hate myself for my thoughts of divorce because that was never an option in my mind i can't see myself ever finding someone i love the way i love her and i can't imagine what i was splitting up would do to my amazing children but i am unhappy and feel trapped and even angry at times with the whole situation and myself i'm so sorry to hear about the trouble you're having in your marriage there's no more significant relationship in your life there's nothing that will affect you more than your marriage it's why healthy marriages are so important there's maybe no greater potential for fulfillment and grace in this life other than a good strong marriage you've got a lot to unpack here your situation is why uh i do have some reservations about some of the traditional ideas about sex and marriage in christianity the shame culture the wickedness associated with even simple sexual desire treating our bodies as an enemy treating women's bodies as dangerous and let's talk about that for a moment your wife has issues with her body and how could she not by her faith upbringing she's been taught that her body is a source of sin and evil that simply by wearing clothes that are too tight or too revealing she can cause others to go into an uncontrollable state of sin at the same time popular culture has told her if she doesn't have a very narrow waist define abdominals and flawless skin then she's hideous can you imagine what it's like to be a woman in america that comes from a faith background and sees cosmo on the shelf at checkout can you imagine how that feels and why your wife may have issues with sex even in evangelical circles men still masturbate and masturbate frequently it's just statistical fact most men masturbate and many women don't because of the increased level of shame and cultural conditioning associated with female sexuality so a couple of thoughts one i was reading don miller's book scary close recently and um it's a great book i i'd encourage you to check it out it talks about some of the factors to getting closer and more intimate in relationships and intimacy is a prerequisite to healthy sex so i might grab that book and see what you can learn from it but one of the things don talks about is that healthy relationships require healthy people you can't have a healthy relationship with one or two unhealthy people in it so it sounds to me like both you and your wife have some healing to do to become healthy you might need to go to counseling alone she might need to go to counseling alone to work on your own issues before you try to work on your marital issues you see what i mean as long as you're dealing with the shame of your own past and wrestling with what it means to be a sexual being uh and and she is dealing with their own issues how can you possibly build something beautiful together now there is hope here you love your wife you love your kids you care about them so let's focus on some basics here how about a night out for dinner where you don't even talk about or expect sex and you just have conversation hold hands go watch a sunset just really really simple like things that people date do over time can really change a relationship just once a day verbally affirm to your wife that you love her and you care for her and in a non-sexual way comment on her appearance what is beautiful about your wife in your eyes the more you make that known to her the more she will begin to look at her own body the way that you do now another one of my friends rob bell and his wife kristen wrote a book called the zimzim of love and i'd check that one out as well i'm giving you two book recommendations and one question but they're both they're both perfect for you and in that book they talk about something called the scorecard and the scorecard is when people in a relationship begin to keep track of who's done what and in your message i see some scorecarding going on about you love her you but you carried her through school and now she's not unlike what you've done from her and she's done for you from your relationship it's irrelevant the only way a marriage works is extending grace by freely offering love you have to create a safe emotional environment for intimacy to flourish and to do that you've got to kill the scorecard now if you do those things it's possible the sex will start to take care of itself if you make her feel loved and valued and honored you may see the way she approaches sex and sexuality to change but if she's got severe body image issues this could be a long time so if you care about the marriage don't step out good for you for not doing that so far to avoid being frustrated relieve yourself no big deal if you listen to my after black episodes my gosh does that question come up a lot it would be far better it's not bad at all but even if you think it's wrong to masturbate he's a heck of a lot better to masturbate than to step out on your life okay the consequences of what goes on are much smaller so get healthy find healing let go of the scorecard and then practice just moments of intimacy moments of compassion go on dates court your wife it's better to court a wife than a girlfriend anyway but more than anything communicate keep talking don't get tired of talking delight in conversation there are a lot of people who sit alone at night and wish they had someone to share their day with so focus on the blessing that that is where you turn your attention really affects how you feel about your life in your relationships so focus on those things that are positive and i'll have links to both of those books and the show notes on asksciencemike.com i'd encourage you to check those out in fact if you'll uh email me again i'll send you those for free so i think i've got your email address so i'll just go ahead and do that thanks for your question and may your marriage flourish as you love your wife with grace [Music] okay another week another episode of ask science mike thank you all for listening and participating the program i'm really excited about a couple of things one just a week ago i asked if you'd like to have these kind of conversations in person consider you know bringing me to an event and i got just a ton of requests for to come as a speaker this week so thank you i really appreciate that i also want to let you know that as i mentioned at the beginning of the program i've been working with the wind writer forum and the john templeton foundation to make a series of videos about how faith and culture are changing we recorded these or filmed them at the sundance film festival which was pretty awesome and the first one just came out so you can view it at asksciencemike.com in the show notes for this episode or if you just go to my website mikemcarg.com that'll be there if that's too complicated just go to youtube and search for new copernicans but it's it's a really fascinating series it's incredibly well done i'll be hosting a lot of them but there's a lot of stories will be told in this 20 part series and they're only a couple of minutes each boy i'm really thrilled with how those came out so i'd encourage you to check those out uh keep your questions coming i'm really really happy with the quality of questions we're getting you can use ask sciencemic on twitter soundcloud or youtube of course the easiest way is to go to asksciencemike.com where you can record a voice question or drop a text question including an anonymous question that way of course ask science mike is listener supported i need your help to create those conversations every single dollar helps and lots of you are doing that new donors every week i appreciate it remember i understand money can be tight so you can change or cancel a pledge at any time there's absolutely no obligation if money is tight or even if it's not one of the best things you can do to help the program is head to itunes and rate the show that puts us in the charts in a big way and helps people discover the program of course if you tweet or post on facebook about your favorite episodes that helps find listeners too at science mike is produced by my good friend greg nordin man he does a fantastic job and our theme song is by jed bodafort if you're looking for theme music for your own podcast that's original and interesting jeb is your guy links to both greg and jeb are on ask sciencemike.com as well as resources for every question every week thanks so much everybody [Music]