ASM155 Terror Management, EMPs, and Gay Conversion Therapy

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terror management emps and gay conversion therapy all that and more on this week's episode of ask science [Applause] may not mike i'll talk anyway we got problems he won't stop there but he'll talk and talk and talk until he flew in the face science faith welcome to ask science mike that weekly podcast where i answer your questions about well just about anything i can usually involving science i'm your host mike mccard known online as science mike i'm an author podcaster college dropout researcher who tries to help people make sense of the world by not judging them it's a lot of fun what do you say let's get it started [Music] well it wouldn't be ask science mike if i didn't start out with announcements would it uh just one this week on monday june 25th at 4 p.m pacific i'm going to host a webinar what's a webinar that's a talk i give online you'll be able to see me on video and i'll be answering your questions about public work what do i mean by public work i mean people who are trying to communicate with the public they might be teaching or driving people to action or affect change in our culture through things like blogs and podcasts public speaking writing books all that stuff is under the big umbrella of public work and what i've noticed is that there's a lot of people who want to engage in public work but they don't know where to start or there's people who have been doing public work for a while but it's not really going anywhere or there's even people who've built platforms with thousands or tens of thousands of people paying attention who can't figure out how to pay their bills so this is a webinar for you if you're in that box of people it's called making your mark you can register for free by going to mikemcarg.com webinar or just going to ask sciencemike.com and clicking the events button because i know my last name is heart to spell and you can register and you can participate in the webinar you can come in you can ask your questions and i'll answer as many as i can and we will record this webinar so if you're not able to be there you can check it out after the fact just by registering at the same spot okay this will also lead to a group coaching program i'm launching with a friend of mine so the webinar will be free if you need more then semi-regular webinars i will have a group coaching program that is fee based not to pay to be a part of that uh but it'll be personalized attention in a group setting for people who aspire to do public work i did one of these already it was really successful except i didn't record it and i didn't follow up so here we are in summer my event schedule slows down and i've got the time to embark on this project and do a 10-week course for those who are interested if that's you again ask sciencemike.com click on events and look for making your mark a webinar [Music] hey science mike my question for you today is about sex and what the bible says about sex before marriage uh growing up in the evangelical faith tradition i was always taught that sex before marriage was wrong and my views about sex were really unhealthy i associated sex with sin and guilt and shame and in christian culture today i feel like there's so much pressure put on women especially to remain pure and chaste until they get married and i have a problem with that one because it's sexist but two you know why should women wait it can be so difficult for a woman to achieve orgasm after she becomes sexually active and i've heard from other women who waited until their wedding night to have sex who were traumatized because they didn't know what to expect or because it was just painful or because they bled and it was not a positive pleasurable experience now i personally cannot attest to that because i did not wait until my wedding night and i don't regret it at all because my wedding night was really good we had had lots of practice by that point from what i know about the biblical marriage tradition you know it's when two people become one and there's you know lots of other definitions but they're a little bit vague and marriage today is so different you go to the courthouse you get the marriage license you have the ceremony you sign the marriage license and then boom you're married you get to have sex you have the i can band my question is how does the biblical marriage tradition translate to our modern marriage tradition at what point do two people become one at what point is it okay for them to have sex without feeling like they're sinning against god i mean is it when they say i love you is it when they decide they want to get married do two people become one when they get engaged or when they have the ceremony is it when they sign a legal document i would love to know your thoughts on all of this thank you so much for listening to my question i really appreciate all that you do uh i love your podcast and the liturgist podcast that both really changed my life so keep doing what you're doing thanks well first i would point you to a two-part episode of the liturgist podcast called the ethics of f star star star ing where we talked about sexual ethics and how we form sexual ethics uh in like i don't know three hours across two episodes um and so you may find a lot of information there that you find helpful or useful and i know i'm going to catch a lot of flack with how i with this next statement but it's tough to take the kind of reductionist modernist thinking we use to make moral decisions and investigate scientific claims and apply it to the bible since the bible is pre-modern here's what i mean if you keep following that like when do two people come one and trying to set these criteria uh well if we really want to be rigorous about that the answer is never never ever do two people become a single person biologically psychologically that's not a thing right so you're taking this kind of holistic idea to become one i would dare even say a poetic idea and then tearing it apart using modernist empirical inquiry or at least socratic inquiry and it to me it comes apart now i know a lot of you disagree with me i think it's great you disagree with me i can only answer from my perspective on this podcast and in my perspective following the rabbit hole or the rabbit trail whatever that colloquialism is this idea of to become one in specific diagnostic criteria isn't helpful and in general not the most helpful way to read the bible um when i am letting the bible or when i ask the bible to inform something in my life today that's a complex process if i look at biblical marriage so-called biblical marriage there really is no single thing that's biblical marriage you can make a really easy case that marriage evolved and changed dramatically over the arc of the bible there's places in the old testament where it's perfectly okay and in fact ordained by god to kill an enemy combatant and then marry his wife which sounds barbaric to us but was better than enslaving his wife you can marry more than one woman in parts of the old testament you can rape an unmarried woman pay a fine and then marry her in the old testament those would all be ideas which are about marriage in the bible and therefore biblical marriage but today do we think it's moral or good or just to rape an unmarried woman pay a fine and then take her as your bride of course not why because our understanding of marriage has changed now you do see a significant shift in the new testament especially with paul and perspectives on marriage and language around marriage but that's largely in contrast to the dominant greco-roman traditions which are different than marriage today we can't look at paul and think about paul writing to americans paul was not paul was writing to an early church in a roman empire that was heavily hellenized it was highly influenced by greek thought and philosophy we got to remember the bible is not one book and the bible does not have one author we cannot read the bible like modernists and expect it to make any sense not a single word letter or piece of punctuation in the bible was written in english not a single bit was written to americans today we are removed from these writings by millennia by language by cultural norms and we need to be cognizant of that when we read the bible and so i actually don't think the bible directly informs marriage and romantic relationships today at all there we go i've just opened myself up to so many emails i don't care now i don't say that the bible doesn't inform marriage today or relationships today it does not directly inform them there's this indirect informant happening this indirect relationship between the biblical narratives about marriage and modern marriage like there are with so many issues we do see that the bible attempts to be progressive on marriage that it tends to offer women dignity in the culture they didn't have in contemporary circumstances for example we noticed that the bible seems to have a focus on fidelity and commitment and those things i think are still important we see in the bible an attempt to establish marriage as something that allows mutual flourishing and stability in a cultural context here's the thing i'll lay my cards on the table i think hookup culture can be really damaging i think some people have a casual enough relationship to sexual partnerships that causes them physical or psychological harm not everyone i'm not saying hook up culture is immoral or you're broken or damaged if you've had multiple sexual partners biologically speaking virginity is not a thing it's not a thing i'm worried about i don't have some great concern over my daughter's purity i actually find that notion kind of silly in old-fashioned what i do care about with my daughters and myself and my wife is do we engage in relationships and sexuality in a way that honors everyone participating that is good for our physical and mental health that is mutually beneficial so while hookup culture can absolutely be damaging so can traditional marriage there's an awful lot of divorces out there there's an awful lot of affairs our relationship to commitment seems to be primarily one of obligation and that's not sustainable i am not married to my wife i'm not in a monogamous arrangement out of a sense of obligation if i were i would ask for a divorce and move on i'll be honest i wish i would have had fewer sexual partners in my life many fewer many many fewer i did not approach sex in a healthy manner because i was expressing a pressing physical need and medicating psychological woundedness using sex in a way that left me feeling empty and sad and depressed that does not sound like two becoming one to me i would basically using charm and charisma ask women to be the salve on my feelings of insecurity and fear and loneliness that came from being a bullied child and after i did so i would experience crippling guilt as a person who believed that i just betrayed my best friend jesus that's a messed up approach to sex and sexuality that is not to becoming one so i have found that i'm most satisfied most healthy and most able to be a person who gives back in a relationship in the context of long-term committed monogamy that's probably not for everybody but that is for me and i think if you're wondering when did two become one you know when two become one because you felt it to become one when you have an investment an emotional investment in the other person's well-being and flourishing when their feelings and their pleasure and their life experiences matter to you as much as your own that doesn't mean you ignore the self to become one doesn't mean you erase your identity or your needs or you allow patterns of exploitation or abuse that's a parasite not mutualism to become one is a symbiotic relationship it can be romantic it can be sexual but to my asexual and aromantic listeners who find themselves in fulfilling relationships i don't think to become one requires sex whatsoever to become one is when we enter into stable committed loving relationships so my wife is not my property as you see an old testament marriage and i don't rule over her like you would see described in new testament marriage but i very firmly believe and experience that two become one between me and my wife what about you what about anyone else i don't have a simple pat answer from the bible or anything else i can share with you a few guidelines that i use and if they're helpful we'll carry them along with you honor yourself and don't suppress or deny your needs be careful with the biology and emotional attachment involved in relationships do the work to know yourself that can involve therapy that can involve shadow work and when you are committed honor that commitment with fidelity that's all i've got to say on the subject the older i get the less comfortable i feel telling other people they should live their lives as i have lived mine the less comfortable i feel telling other people to read the bible as i do this life is a journey and a great adventure and part of that adventure i believe is falling down and skinning your knee maybe even breaking your leg and walking with a limp but still walking into that great adventure what you're looking for in relationships is someone who can enjoy that adventure with you not telling you which way to go not following you blindly but embarking together on the great journey of life [Music] our next question came from email and it reads hey mike i'm curious about the science of emps that's electromagnetic pulses everyone i've heard that it is fairly likely that at some point in the next 50 years or so we will be hit with a solar emp large enough to do catastrophic damage to the world's electrical systems what causes these events and what all would be affected is it all electronic devices or are some devices less prone to failure can we just reboot things like computers or are they destroyed would a big one wipe out the whole earth electrical grid or just the side facing the sun at the moment it hits is there anything humanity can do to prepare for one thanks for all you do this is a great question what i am a little cautious about there's some people who go pretty nuts about emp in the prepper community that's people are preparing for the end of human civilization but emps solar emps especially are a genuine concern they do happen and in fact some experts believe that a carefully targeted nuclear device that was detonated near the ionosphere could create an emp that impacted most of the american grid with a single nuclear explosion and of course solar emps are electromagnetic pulses these are basically supercharged particles uh and energetic electrons moving through space have happened 1859 a solar flare overloaded the telegraph system and set paper messages on fire that were in the system and in july of 2012 a solar emp coming from solar flare missed the earth by only about a week's orbit around the sun and that one would have been really bad now to your question with a solar emp yes the side of the earth facing the flare when it arrives is going to be much more impacted than the other side of the globe however uh the energy from an emp could travel along the grid and that's the first point the main risk from an electromagnetic pulse nuclear or solar in origin is to our electrical grid we don't have definitive answers about electronics because there's too many variables involved in electromagnetic pulse it's amplitude it's frequency it's distribution we can't make definitive answers about what would be affected and how much we know in almost any significant emp event the power grid is the most impacted some tests have shown that even many or most modern cars would be fine cars have a lot of shielding the electronics and cars are more shielded than the electronics in your phone for example because they deal with really harsh conditions every day anything that's plugged into the grid would potentially be damaged by power surges so even if your phone would have been fine because it was indoors or even fine outside if it's plugged in at the time of an emp it could be destroyed by a power surge and anything that's damaged in such a manner is probably the circuits in there would have to be replaced and in the case of most portable electronic devices it's cheaper to replace the whole thing so this is you know we don't know we don't know how bad electronics would be impacted many experts believe that battery operate electronics would probably not be meaningfully impacted if they were indoors and not plugged into the grid the grid would be in real trouble now we can prepare for that and should be at the governmental level preparing for solar flares and emp using techniques like faraday cages faraday cages are metal structures which do a very effective job at blocking radiation there's other techniques as well that we can use there's nothing you as an average citizen can do other than communicating with policy makers that you think this is a real concern and that you think that we should spend money on it uh you'll get the most impact talking to local legislators about your local grid and then you can follow up at the federal level about funding perhaps uh because it absolutely could happen that we get hit with a solar flare driven emp like i said july 2012 was was a very it was very nearly a bad time for us meaningless species now my advice to you as an individual you should be prepared for solar flare but you shouldn't do anything special for solar flare you should be prepared for natural disasters in general in the event of significant natural disasters you may have a week or more where any and all government services including fresh water being piped into your house are unavailable so guidelines recommend at least one week's food and water per family member including pets should be present at your home at all times that will protect you from the fallout of an emp from a hurricane from a tornado from flooding you see what i mean like just there's lots of situations earthquakes no matter where you're in the country there's some kind of possible natural disaster and having supplies ready not only protects your family it actually protects everyone because it gives government resources and response organizations less mouths to feed immediately so the more people are prepared the more we minimize a crisis and this i'm not talking about stockpiling guns and the crazy things i see in the prepper community i'm talking about a week or two of food and water in your home that's it and that's probably the best and most reasonable precaution you can take as an individual to prepare yourself not only for a solar flare that creates an emp but natural disasters in general [Music] hello mike my name is will like your biggest fan um my question for you is about the terror management theory the tariff management theory suggests that our need for religion and god is based off of our fear of death um i would love to hear more about that and what you have to say about that thank you for all you do i think terror management theory is really interesting much like string theory it's really interesting and much like string theory terror management theory isn't widely accepted as fact among scientists in its area of description it's using the capital t here but don't let you see that capital t is thinking terror management theory or string theory are on par with the theory of evolution via natural selection in terms of widespread experimental and observational support and widespread acceptance among scientists and i think it's important to note that terror management theory describes a huge number of human behaviors uh and ascribes them to fear of death not just religion national identity all sorts of rituals all sorts of core beliefs in this psychological model come down to us dealing with existential dread being a species who is aware we can die and again i think it's really interesting unlike string theory terror management theory actually does make some predictions that have experimental support there's a fascinating relationship between self-esteem for example and moral responses in terror management theory and they are supported so you know i think that's interesting uh and when oxford studied beliefs about god in a very large research project they basically ascribed three cognitive factors as being essential in how we form beliefs about god and one of those factors was that humans have an inability to contemplate the cessation of their own consciousness they don't call that a fear they call it a basic inability we can't imagine not being conscious one day and that helps create beliefs about the afterlife even among secularized societies where more than half of people believe in some form of conscious experience that persists after death an idea that seems to be remarkably at odd with those people's professed materialism so that's psychology being psychology so if you add a fear component to that sure i could totally see terror management theory being a genuine part of our human psychological makeup and response so if this was myth busters i'd call this one plausible but i wouldn't necessarily call it confirmed um if you'd like to read more about terror management theory i'd encourage you to check out fear death and politics what your mortality has to do with the upcoming election which is a piece in scientific american which i'll leave in the show notes on ask sciencemic.com [Music] all right our last question is an email question and i'll read it now hey science mike love everything you do and your genuine care for people my question is about stance on homosexuality my old doctrine is just sort of hanging by a thread on traditional marriage stuff but i can't seem to cut this thread i'm currently in an environment where many people have been healed from their same-sex attractions or they've expressed that they're free from those desires one in particular was an advocate for lgbtq christians at a university when she met a man who began sharing his views that maybe it's not god's best for her he wasn't preaching to her but generally shared what he felt that god told him after a while she prayed that god would show her the truth and eventually she became attracted to this man and left her previous lesbian relationship to be with him she felt this was an eye-opening experience to the truth of sexuality and her relationship with god another experience was a guy that was attracted to other men for most of his life and only after seeking god on identity in hopes to find the truth god himself and his sexuality not the stereotypical praying that gay away he felt his attraction change to be for women and is now happily married these are just two examples of the many i've heard from this environment at bethel church in reading california that really goes after identity and seeks god's supernatural power to walk in the truth of who they are my question is if it's holy and good and beautiful for two people of the same sex to be together why would there be these changes in people seeking their identities in god why would god heal them if it was good in his eyes for them to find a partner of the same sex also this might be overused but it's still a threat that's holding me back from changing my mind our physical bodies just seem to be made for male and female sex also no procreation can happen without sex this isn't as much a problem to me in the argument because of the presence of intersex people but it still holds some weight i hope this doesn't seem ignorant but i'm truly trying to learn and to be open to the holy spirit on this thanks so much uh well the first thing i'd like to say is thank you for asking a question that is honest and sincere and i also thank you for showing a sensitivity and an understanding that this type of question can be hurtful and harmful to members of the lgbtqia community but that's what this podcast is for i want there to be a space for people to ask honest questions about things like sexuality in a space that hopefully we minimize the harm of doing our work and understanding to people who actually are members of the lgbtq community obviously i'm more comfortable addressing this question as an ally of those people then i would be were i a gay man or a bisexual man and so we can have a conversation with each other as straight people and as christians and i'm not judging you for where you are because i used to be in the same place the first thing i would say honestly is i've known people who struggle with their sexuality specifically at bethel church and who have gone through tremendous heartbreak trauma and social ostracization from that community as they attempted to work through their identity in a way that did not help them feel closer to god but in fact nearly destroyed them psychologically i don't doubt that many people at bethel or many people in non-affirming communities all over america and across the world genuinely have good intentions and genuinely believe that they are honoring god but the outcome of that is people who have been so deeply hurt and so deeply rejected that they wish to take their own lives and how is that of god how is that god's truth how is god's truth gay men out of a feeling of religious identity marrying women suffering sexual dysfunction having children and eventually having families break apart because that marriage should have never existed in the first place to me that is a counter to the stories that you've just told because for every one story where someone their religious experience changed their sexual identity there are 10 stories of failed relationships and broken families because the data tells us that changing your orientation doesn't work sexual orientation is complex and it's a psychological phenomenon not a biological phenomenon i i can't find much good science that supports the idea that gay people or straight people even exist in the first place biologically i mean it's just not there have we considered the possibility that when we have these seemingly successful outcomes of people changing their orientation in response to religious convictions that were talking about people who were bisexual in the first place of course bisexual people often experience waves in their attraction based on people's gender sometimes they're more attracted to women or can be men sometimes more attracted to women and i'm not speaking universally for people who are bisexual some people truly uh only respond based on the person but i i know many bi people who have told me they go through seasons where they're more attracted to men or more attracted to women and that's not a gay person that's not a lesbian becoming a straight person that's a bisexual person exploring part of their natural psychosocial orientation we have to consider that possibility that most of many or most of the quote successful unquote conversions in orientation and religious context are simply people who should have identified as bisexual in the first place and this idea that our bodies are made for male female sex exclusively someone should really notify the rest of the animal kingdom where same-sex interactions are common across the animal kingdom from invertebrates all the way up to primates same sex interactions sexual interactions are incredibly common if our bodies are made for male female sex why do so many women experience pain during penetrative sex if our bodies are made for male female sex why do many people have difficulty engaging in sexual intercourse if our bodies are made only for procreation why do people have sex after menopause why do people have sex who are physically unable to have children because sex is an act of intimacy and bonding and not simply a matter of reproduction procreation happens without sex all the time just not with humans or mammals but across the animal kingdom plenty of procreation happens without sex i hope that as you contemplate this issue you would investigate the science of sexuality and the cultural context the scriptures were written in but no matter where you land on a christian acceptance of same-sex marriage i hope you could at least see the genuine harm that has been done to lesbian gay bisexual trans intersex and asexual people as well-meaning christians have tried to help people turn away from the ways in which they experience love and intimacy because i don't think that's of god and i don't think that's holy i think it just ends lives and causes suffering [Music] that's another ask science mike thanks for listening um i want to thank andrew golucky for pre-production greg nordine for production my patrons on patreon for funding the show and for picking the questions jeb bodaford thanks for writing the theme song thanks for listening everyone and i'll talk to you next week [Music]