ASM006 Monogamy, Marijuana, and Masturbation–Oh my!

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this episode of ask science mike offers frank discussions of mature themes listener discretion is advised put the kids to bed it's time for science mike after dark

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science faith monogamy marijuana and masturbation oh my it's the banned questions edition of ask science mike you guys have given me a lot of questions that you obviously aren't comfortable asking at church and discuss in your local communities things about uh modern sexual ethics can christians smoke weed all kind of crazy stuff we're gonna dive in this is the show where we answer tough questions let's get it started [Music] our first question this week uh well it came from a lot of people uh this is an amalgam of uh several dozen questions i got in the last couple of weeks and they basically come down to two categories one what does marijuana do to the brain or what is the neurological impact of weed was one specific wording and then the other sort of category of question was how do you feel about smoking weed as a christian these sorts of hot topic questions are kind of the ones i'm most afraid to answer because uh the science compels me to positions that really aren't necessarily aligned either with their traditional uh christian way of viewing things or you know kind of a modern progressivist way of looking at things science isn't terribly concerned about our preconceived notions and simply gives us data so before i tell you what i think about weed let's talk about what i know about weed okay first point big one important inhaling smoke is bad for you period inhaling smoke is bad for you this is true of all kinds of smoke cigarette smoke everyone knows is really terrible for you but guess what marijuana smoke is also bad for you and before anyone listening who doesn't smoke marijuana or cigarettes gets too uh proud of themselves wood smoke is really bad for you sitting around a fire and uh inhaling a lot of wood smoke is similarly bad for the lungs as these drugs don't inhale smoke it's bad for you uh you know when you inhale smoke you're gonna have damage to your cilia the little hair-like structures that line the throat and the lungs and kind of clean the air and filter the air that you breathe it's going to irritate the lining of your lungs and the actual sacs that help you to pull oxygen out of the air and and release carbon dioxide from your bloodstream and not only that in smoke especially in cigarette marijuana smoke there are carcinogens chemicals which dramatically increase your propensity to have lung cancer so i don't like lung cancer i'm not going to inhale smoke but there are other ways to take marijuana there are many popular edible forms people bake cannabis into products or you can get it as like little gummies there's all kinds of ways to to ingest marijuana without smoking it it's similar today there are ways to ingest tobacco products or nicotine without smoking it so this is important when you are not smoking marijuana or even when you are we don't have as much data about marijuana as cigarettes it hasn't been studied as much we have less to go on scientifically we do know that frequent marijuana use can lower testosterone in men and it can also lower sperm production so it can be linked to decreased libido and decreased fertility for men we also know that marijuana can be really hard on the heart your resting pulse rate can as much as double when you're high and because of that there is an association or correlation between marijuana use and heart attack it's not a healthy form of pulse elevation we also know that when we look at the actual brain that thc which is you know the primary drug component of marijuana is a very potent psychoactive and over the last 30 to 40 years marijuana plants have been cultivated and and have much more punch to them they've gone from three to four percent thc like seven uh that's a it's a pretty big jump now when you look at a brain that it has thc in it uh when someone's ingested marijuana uh it binds to your cannabid receptors uh you know so you have these uh receptors on the ends of your neurons that let chemical information pass from neuron to neuron that's a lot of things in the brain are chemical and not just electrical and marijuana works with those receptors to cause its effects now the ones that most your cannabinoid receptors are like in your hippocampus in your basal ganglia and your cerebellum and so when you get this binding in those receptors it's going to affect your short-term memory it's going to impair it it's going to impair your ability to do basic problem solving you're going to have more difficulty learning during that time you're going to have trouble with basic hand-eye coordination because of the binding and the cerebellum and anyone who has ingested marijuana frequently is probably also aware that you're going to have an increase in appetite because a certain type of neuron in your hypothalamus is going to have a a dopamine surge and it's going to make you think you're hungry and it's going to suppress your ability to feel full so you're going to eat a lot none of those things are show stoppers a lot of people enjoy the feeling they have of of of lightness of levity of increased color perception because of dilated pupils all those sorts of things but that same binding in time can cause paranoia it can cause fear and so there can be negative feelings associated with being high so scientifically what's my call well i think there's enough health concerns that recreational use of marijuana is probably unwise although medical usage could be different there have been trials that have shown marijuana to be therapeutic in a medical sense so in my own life i'm probably gonna decide on not using marijuana um if i was prescribed by a doctor i would totally use marijuana and i think that's good science now if we talk about the legality uh well prohibition is a pretty terrible way to control human behavior it just it doesn't work when we just prohibit things we kind of fetishize them they become more interesting they become taboo we encourage black market trade around them so i think you know if we're talking about controlling marijuana consumption in society keeping it healthy and helpful education and regulation are probably more powerful tools and i think there's a good data case to make there now what about what about in faith can christians smoke weed well absolutely i know many christians who smoke weed they are christians they believe in jesus they believe in the resurrection and they smoke weed but i also know lots of other christians who are really really really against smoking marijuana what do i think well i think christianity as a list of do's and don'ts isn't really interesting or helpful i don't think the following christ is coming up with a list of things you should do and a list of things you shouldn't do but rather an awareness of your actions and how they affect others and how they affect yourself there's this idea in judaism of shalom of peace that god created the world in shalom and that the fall of man was us disturbing that shalom and so when i look at my actions i ask myself am i contributing to shalom or am i diminishing shalom that means i'm not very likely to judge you if you smoke weed i'm going to offer you a lot of grace if that's something you do and you feel convictions about and you feel good about on the other hand it means i'm probably not going to because i don't feel like it's contributing to greater shalom in my life or the life of those around me and if there's any listeners left on the program after that answer that uh probably no one agrees with let's talk about sex [Music] okay our next question came in via the email inbox there's lots of talk about when you give yourself to someone sexually whether you're committed to them or not you as the typical phrase goes give a piece of yourself away is there any science or brain activity that would speak to that absolutely there's lots of science and brain activity that would speak to that idea let's talk literally for a second you give some of yourself away during sex or you keep a part of the other person traditionally there's an actual exchange of dna in the form of sperm that is uh the template upon which you are made that is the blueprint that led to you and that goes with another person and creates new life i can't think of any more profound way than quote giving yourself away than um having a baby but that's not all you can also give yourself away pathogenically there's 10 non-human cells for every human cell in your body you've got a lot of bacteria bacteriophages viruses there's a rich and diverse ecology in your body and you have an immune system whose job is to keep things out that don't belong and your immune system looks at um all kind of cues and proteins and the coatings of different cells to figure out who belongs and who doesn't and in order for sex to happen some stuff that doesn't belong has to be transferred so there's kind of a truce with the immune system a ceasefire of two different organisms in order for sex to happen and because of that there's a whole category of pathogens that specialize in spreading via sexual contact and you can even give a piece of yourself away in the form of a sexually transmitted disease or infection while wearing a condom hpv for example is more than happy to spread via skin to skin contact in the genitals and even more frightening it can hang out on men's testicles without them ever exhibiting symptoms but in women it can cause cervical cancer and all kinds of difficult things and it's important to know because of that there is no such thing as safe sex only safer sex of course sex with a condom is very much referred to the alternative if you're going to have more than one sexual partner it reduces the risk of all the really serious stuff dramatically but hpv you know that's serious too there are there are vaccines but there's there's plenty of there are plenty of bugs that can transmit even when you're wearing a condom uh and i wanted to kind of include that as a disclaimer not to shame people we're gonna talk a little bit more about pre-marital sex and those topics later in the show but those are important scientific truths now let's talk about our brains and sex when we have sex men's brains and women's brains are pretty similar uh in both your lateral orbital frontal cortex shuts down during an orgasm that's the part of your brain that weighs the consequences of actions that's why you feel so worry free as you climax because the part of your brain that that worries turns off it's a good feeling such a good feeling in fact that uh the brain of someone having an orgasm is very very similar to the brain of someone taking heroin you're talking about that big a high i've never taken heroin but i have had an orgasm and if heroin is anything like that maybe that's why so many people get hooked on it now those are things that sort of calm down uh other things fire up your amygdala really cranks up during sex that is in charge of your emotions especially fear and anger but pretty much any any very intense emotion is going to have the amygdala active um let's say your pituitary gland is going to be active and that's going to give you endorphins and it's going to decrease your pain levels and it's going to increase your feelings of trust and bonding you're going to get a lot a lot of dopamine release during sex which is going to help you feel satisfied help you feel elated let's see your anterior insula which kind of helps you be aware of your body's state is going to become very active and even interestingly enough your cerebellum is going to get active that controls all your muscle function and sex is not just in the brain it's an intricate interaction between the brain and the body there's multiple nerve groups involved in order for you to experience sexual stimulation um and then the actual sensation of sex is a combination right there's there's actual muscle movements there's valves there's all sorts of things downstairs communicating with upstairs and your hippocampus the part of your brain that manages memories is going to be active you're going to think of sights and sounds and feelings and past sexual experiences and and how you know this person and i think i mentioned that you'll also have an oxytocin surge that's the cuddle hormone it makes you feel close to people and the need to feel physically close and because of that intense activity leading towards orgasm you're going to feel bonded to this person neurons that fire together wire together and a lot of the brain is doing some very intense activity during sex now women's brains have a couple of different things happening than men's brains during sexual activity one curiously the section of the brain typically associated with pain is activated and it's not in men's brains also uh the part of the brain stem that's responsible for uh flight or flight can become active in women um and there's also a decrease in the activity amygdala and the hippocampus over time compared to a relative increase in men which is where we deal with feel and anxiety fear and anxiety which is why many people think that it's so important for women to feel safe in order to enjoy sex so scientifically yeah there's a lot of bonding there's a physical transaction there's an actual part of your dna is left with the other person there's a tremendous exchange of fluids and potentially of infection married couples can even tell you uh even in monogamy you can certainly pass traditional infections like the common cold back and forth of sexual activity so you're leaving a piece of your ecology there but this idea of giving a piece of your soul away which i think is what the religious notion is is coming at um then has some merit because you are deeply bonding with someone you have sex with you are having some of the most intense experiences that human beings are capable of with another human and that's going to leave a mark neurologically good and bad if you have traumatic sexual experiences those are going to be deeply traumatic experiences if you have positive sexual experiences those are going to be more positive than other positive events in your life that's one of the reasons we are so fascinated with and obsessed with sex it's a powerful form of connection and i think both science and faith would say use it with care [Music] okay another question from the email box hey science mike i would love for you to talk about masturbation and monogamy i'm at the time of writing this listening to your you made it weird with pete holmes episode and the thing you said about testicle size concerning chimps and apes stuck with me science seems to say that sex with lots of people is better or what we were designed for and that there's nothing wrong about masturbation keeping in mind that i haven't researched this yet but what the church has told me seems the opposite what do you believe on this subject where science and faith meet okay if you haven't heard i was a guest on pete holmes you made it weird podcast it's a couple of hours long a lot of people enjoyed the episode myself included mainly because pete's a fascinating guy to talk to uh you can find that on the internet i'll probably put up a note in the show notes online if you'd like to hear that episode if you haven't already i'm guessing a lot of you already have though and i did talk about uh we were talking about sex on that show and there's this interesting biological idea that in primates testicle size is linked to promiscuity for example gorillas are very large primates they're apes but they have very small testicles and gorilla sexual relationships are very stable as long as a male is dominant he's going to have his group of females and he doesn't have to compete with anyone in order to fertilize eggs in order to have his babies chimpanzees on the other hand are relatively small primates compared to apes or humans but they have really large testicles because they have a lot of sexual partners rape is a big part of chimp society unfortunately and so you see this correlation consistently across primates between uh promiscuity and testicle size now when you look at human beings we're right about halfway between apes and chimps that means we are neither inherently monogamous nor inherently wildly promiscuous so a little bit i think got lost in translation there in your question science does not say that sex with lots of people is better only that this one way of looking at human sexual propensity indicates that we're probably neither naturally completely monogamous nor naturally wildly promiscuous and of course you're talking about a species level individuals within the species will have different propensities i think monogamy is a great strategy i'm in a married relationship with a woman who i love we are exclusive sexual partners and we love it i wouldn't have it any other way but a societal trends people are getting married later and people are cohabitating very frequently they're having a committed relationship where it's not a traditional marriage but they're sexually active in fact a lot of kids today are born by parents who live together but are not married i don't really have a a deep passionate perspective on that topic i think if you look at biblical marriage that was a different thing than marriage today our marriages today are based on this romantic notion of mutual attraction and marriage in biblical times was largely a business transaction it was to protect property i don't know that a lot of those sexual norms in scripture frankly are symptomatic of our times however i think some ideas in scripture are more important than ever the importance of commitment of fidelity of honoring your partner those things are important so you know we talked about shalom in the last answer the shalom i see in relationships commitment matters it's easier you know if you're gonna have kids that's certainly easier to do together and for all the concern people have about divorce divorce rates are actually dropping uh they really surged in the 60s a bit in the 70s but have been dropping ever since as people have adapted to a more egalitarian society our children are growing up environments where they're ready to both work potentially or to make their own decisions about who has what roles in the home so i don't think more people is better scientifically i understand a lot of people have many sexual partners i don't judge them for that but i think in my life i am closer to creating shalom by honoring a monogamous sexual relationship now masturbation i have no problem with i'm suspecting i got all these masturbation questions from both men and women by the way in the email box and i suspect a lot of those are from younger listeners you're in your 20s or teens or whatever there's a pretty fantastic thing as you age where your libido is not quite as tyrannical as it used to be and uh it's easier than obsessed about sex we'll talk a bit more about that in the next question but yeah no i think we make too big a deal about masturbation in the church and even if you look at it biblically the sin of onan was not that he masturbated the sin of onan was that he spilled his seed and didn't fulfill a covenant obligation the bible doesn't actually come down very hard on masturbation or even discuss it in great detail i think that's dangerous a bit the way the church approaches masturbation because we create such a shame culture around it that we train boys that sex is dirty and needs you know they need to masturbate quickly before anyone realizes what's happening and uh they're training themselves for poor sexual performance later and we're also shaming girls to the point that women are much less able to achieve orgasm in america than men and that is largely a function of a shame culture around sexuality i believe deeply that sex and sexuality are gifts from god and nothing to be ashamed of [Music] hey mike i'm gonna try to keep this as brief and vague as possible i've given you a little backstory and emails and things like that so this isn't exactly something i want to tell every detail of on the podcast but this is a question i'd really love to hear have answered and i think a lot of people could probably benefit from it but i grew up in a very uh conservative fundamentalist christian home in a very fundamentalist church in a community that was very you know anti-evolution anti-gay that sort of thing you don't drink you don't curse all that stuff and i've been put more and more at odds i think in with the people around me the more that in the back of my mind as i grow older and as i read more uh that a lot of these things just i just can't buy into them anymore and i'm so involved in the ministry here my parents are pastors at my home church you know i lead worship at my church and i work at the church i just can't imagine uh the kind of fallout there could be if i was truthful about all of the beliefs that i have instead of just staying silent you know at a lot of uh at a lot of meetings and in a lot of services i've had to just bite my tongue and just disagree in silence well as you know gay marriage just recently became legal in alabama and what's so funny is i know deep down that that makes me very happy but when my friend first told me about it i didn't really react with any positivity because i wasn't sure how he was gonna react and the next thing i know this song comes on spotify i guess on shuffle in the car and i felt like tears swelling up in my eyes and i just felt this joy this song was playing and it just hit so close to home like finally these people are able to experience marriage and i was very emotional and ever since then i've been thinking how can i be dishonest with these people that really do love me so much how can i lie to them day in and day out and pretend i believe these things that i don't and like i said i'm still a christian i'm still very much you know in love with jesus and all that but i just can't buy into a literal genesis and i can't buy into the idea of gay people for some reason being these evil beings and i guess my question is uh you being someone who's who's walked through some of those things being at odds with with people you love and respect and maybe them not taking your belief so well i wanted to know if there was any advice you could give me on that topic and also uh what do you think the healthiest way to leave a faith community is without you know severing ties with people you're close with and i i just kind of have been running over those details in my head and i thought maybe you could help thanks mike it's interesting to me that the litmus test of our church today is marriage equality it's become the most divisive issue of all and it's forcing decisions and conversations and changes in local churches that have been brewing for a long time the first thing i want to tell you is you are not alone there are a lot of people who go to church every sunday and they say things like i can't buy into the things that i once believed and i'm afraid of what would happen if i was honest and i can't pretend anymore and i know people say that because they email me and they call me and they do that because i've been through it i left my church and it's because as i rediscovered god after atheism my approach to faith changed and the first thing the first shot the first earthquake in my congregation was when i wrote a blog post about gay marriage it was called it's not about chicken and it was uh on chick-fil-a day when everyone was going out to show their support for chick-fil-a and that grieved me because i had so many gay friends who i loved and i had been puzzling through the scriptures on this topic and uh i wrote a blog about it and in that blog i said i was no longer sure it was a sin to be gay and that caused quite an uproar from a southern baptist deacon and i felt so much freedom after i wrote it and so much pain because i knew how much pressure and stress i was putting on the people that i loved and then i started to write about science and genesis and that caused more controversy in my church than the marriage equality article it wasn't even close and suddenly i was like the constant point of discussion in my community people would literally stop talking as i walked by i know what you're talking about so do i have advice on how to live when you're at odds with your community absolutely do not live at odds with your community you cannot remain in a spiritual community where you believe opposite things about justice or ethics or sin that doesn't mean your church is wrong or bad it just means god is leading you somewhere else and that's o.k i stayed at my church too long and because i did that i hurt people i stayed at my church too long and it hurt people here's the thing i'm not the great enlightened one [Laughter] at all i'm no better than anyone who goes to that church i'm still friends with a lot of them but even though i'm now open and affirming and i accept the right of gay americans to marry a person they're choosing and even though i don't believe it's a sin to be gay whatsoever i'm still growing and changing and learning in this very podcast i answered questions about sex and sexuality and every example i used was about boys and girls because the way i understand sex is through a heterosexual lens which means i often speak in a way that is heteronormative so even though i love my gay brothers and sisters some of the things i say makes them feel different because i didn't say anything about how boys are attracted to boys or girls are attracted to girls because i don't know what that's like we never arrive it means in the church it's essential to treat people with grace and hopefully they will offer us the same courtesy hopefully my gay listeners of which i have many understand my heart for them even when i miss speak and you have to do that to the people at your church you have to offer them grace it's not your mission to change them it's not your mission to lead them to where you are so the first thing is cut your expenses and start putting money in the savings account because it's time to find a new job your paycheck can't come from an enterprise whose basic understandings about central issues of the christian faith are different than your own you are a time bomb right now because at some point you won't be able to pretend anymore and you'll speak honestly and there will be massive collateral damage and fallout in your church it's time to move on it's time to find a faith community that believes as you believe that follows christ as you follow christ and it's time to do so without condemning the people you're with now when that happens you're going to lose relationships some people cannot agree to disagree and those relationships can become abusive for all the wonderful things that are happening in my life and there are many wonderful things happening in my life there's a lot of pain because there are some people who are dear to me that i can't talk to anymore because the only thing we can have a conversation about is the way my beliefs have changed that's all they want to discuss and so without holding anything against those people i move on i let them serve christ the way that they understand his best i hold nothing ill against them and i say nothing ill about them but i understand that it is not possible for us to have the relationship we once had and it's rough i'm not gonna lie it's rough but the healthy way to live is with your community not against it and if that's not possible it's time to knock the dust from your sandals and move on [Music] our last question i got a lot of variations on [Music] and it kind of saddened me a little and i think you'll understand as i read the question hey mike i am a newly engaged man who is struggling with pornography addiction and lust i have been realizing that the way i think has a lot to do with what happens in my life my question is this if i fight and fight against lust in my mind will it affect my sex drive when i get married i'm not really sure what i'm asking or if i'm asking correctly but i'm just really confused about this the way people talk to me makes me think christianity is just a self-help program i know this sounds silly but it's a struggle i'm having a lot lately i appreciate your content and willingness to speak boldly and i'm sorry about the confusing way i worded this i'm learning a lot from you and michael gunger if you're listening michael apparently we need to talk about sex more okay let's talk about that if you fight against lust will it affects your sex drive absolutely you're fetishizing sex you're training yourself that sex is this irresistible powerful force of evil and it's not your body has been shaped by millions of years of evolution and adaptation to crave sex all of your dna wants to make copies of itself it's one of your most primal drives you want to survive which means you want to breathe and you want water to drink and you want food to eat and you want to stay warm why do you want to do those things so you can have sex and have babies that's where that comes from you are a finely tuned sexual machine and because of that evaluating potential mates is always on your mind especially in your teens and twenties and that's why women's bodies appeal to you so much and that's why men's bodies appeal so much to women side note we have this tendency in the church to believe that men have these incredibly powerful sex drives and women you know have to do their duty or whatever science tells us that's a bunch of bunk men and women both have incredibly powerful sex drives and there's some studies that indicate that women may have more powerful sex drives than men and may even respond more powerfully to visual stimulus than men and that goes to show you how much social conditioning affects the way that we process our bodies impulses drives and desires so if we're thinking about lust we're thinking about our sex drive stop fighting it fighting or wrestling your sex drive repressing it or trying to pretend it's not there does not work it fuels fetishes it fuels addictions it fuels shame pornography consumption is much higher in religious areas than non-religious areas and that is linked to shame there's a frightening correlation in some studies between religiosity and sexual addiction so the first thing you need to do is learn that there's nothing wrong with sex or sexuality sex is not dirty noticing that women are beautiful is not a problem ladies noticing that men are attractive is not a problem the problem is when we obsess over women or obsess over men and objectify them in our minds one of the things that grieves me about the modern sexual ethic it creates equality between men and women by also objectifying men not by working against the objectification of women men and women are not sexual objects for us to enjoy people are individuals and when you approach another human being as that something like you with thoughts and feelings and an inner monologue it's easier to not quote lust unquote don't taboo eyes don't create a taboo of the opposite sex there's nothing special about a woman's belly button in other cultures belly buttons are exposed and no one gets excited right these are cultural norms and if you're aware of that you can train yourself to not be so worked up about it the problem when we approach sex in an unhealthy way in an exploitive way or an addictive way is we take a good thing and we make it dark sex is a problem when we make it unhealthy exploitive or addictive so a few ideas for you to try one do cut back on porn it's kind of the sex version of a candy bar it's an empty quick thrill it's gonna over stimulate you it's going to like drive your brain crazy and it's going to also give you unrealistic expectations about what you and an actual partner can perform okay i don't think pornography is a great thing for people to consume frequently forgetting the potential ethical implications of how it's produced i'm not going to get into the empowerment versus disempowerment argument we might do that in another show but the problem with trying to watch porn less frequently is that it's everywhere and it's really accessible anytime you're using the internet porn's a click away it's a google search away and i bet a lot of guys and girls listening have urls memorized so they don't even need google so the first thing you gotta know about cutting back on porn is gonna take time it's not a quick fix uh don't get in some like guilt cycle of you know if you if you relapse today that you're you're failing forever you're a weirdo or definitely don't try to wrestle with the devil or wrestle with sin because porn is exploiting one of your body's most powerful drives so you're going to need to train yourself over time to be less focused on pornography think about training a dog hitting the dog in the newspaper doesn't work really well positive reinforcement and redirection work really well so offer yourself grace when you mess up encourage yourself when you succeed and when you feel the need to engage in pornography do something else get up and leave the computer turn the phone on airplane mode whatever you got to do to over time train yourself to not be so hooked on pornography two it's totally okay to masturbate i know that's a hot button in the church and people frown on it but it is actually good for you it is physiologically beneficial it helps control your libido by channeling your sex drive in a way that is not destructive so don't get guilty about masturbation all the shame is far more toxic than anything in the actual act of masturbation obviously uh you can become addicted to masturbation like we talked about earlier an orgasm is neurologically somewhat similar to a hit on heroin so you don't want to obsess about them you don't want to use a box of kleenex a day don't hear me wrong but it's okay to masturbate it's okay to talk about masturbation it's there's no big deal about masturbation um and if people really think people shouldn't have sex outside of marriage i think encouraging masturbation would go a lot farther uh to achieving that goal than discouraging it i also want to offer you a little bit of hope this does get easier as you age i'm in my mid uh to late 30s now and in addition to looking at women differently than i used to i don't have the same intense hormonal drive i don't feel the constant need to see pornography every time i have a web browser open it gets better and the last thing is learn to delight in your wife your current fiancee take all this sexual energy you have and focus it on her learn to savor her body and when you two become sexually active spend a lot of time in foreplay women are aroused by foreplay and i think you'll find that a happy wife makes for a more frequent more exciting sex life that pornography can't compare with anyway the biggest thing i want to say to you and if you take anything from this message is let go of the shame it won't help correct your behavior understand that sex and sexuality are gifts from god one of the reasons you feel so driven by quote lust unquote is because you've been told that men are driven by lust that's a false bill of goods you can control your actions your thoughts and your feelings and as a fellow christian i believe god can help you to do just that [Music] okay this has been the longest episode of ask science mike we've ever had sorry about that but you know the reason i started this show was so that people could have a forum to know that someone is listening that someone else has the questions that they have in my own story my life would be different if i would have known other people had the same questions that i have but you know in an episode like this where we're talking about marijuana and sex and christianity i have a lot of fear myself um it's been amazing to me how fast this this podcast has become popular we had more than 10 000 downloads in one day recently and we've been consistently beating 6 500 downloads a day and with an audience that large i'm not sure how many people know me know what i stand for how many people are brand new and honestly i'm afraid i'm going to put an episode out like this and uh everyone's gonna go away they could stop listening because you know they heard me on relevant and they think i'm you know a traditional christian apologist or something i do want you to know the reason i do this show is because i love god and it concerns me that people feel like they have to choose between science and following christ and i don't believe that so i know this episode is sort of dove into topics that many people are afraid to discuss but i think the church will get healthier when we are less afraid of discussion and so i leaned into my own fear and tried to hold myself to a promise that i made to you guys you are in charge of this show and i will take it where you lead with your questions i hope you understand that's the way this episode came to be and that's the spirit with which it was formed i actually called several friends today and had a gut check of whether i should even do this episode because we have a ton of great questions that are more kind of just science faith more my normal groove and i mean great ones guys next week there's fantastic questions in the pipeline if you'd like to contribute a question ask science mike you can do that on twitter youtube or soundcloud simply use the asksciencemike if you can't figure that out that's okay you can also record a message and send me a dropbox link or a soundcloud link on ask sciencemike.com there's an ask science mic button and a form you can fill out you can also use that to fill out questions that you would like to submit anonymously that you don't want people hearing your voice and knowing who you are i get that your secret is safe with me ask science mike is produced by the wonderful greg nordin and our theme song is by jeff botifor if you've got a podcast that needs music jeff bodaford's your guy i'm telling you people love the ass nights my theme song but nobody more than i do keep your questions coming and i'll see you guys next week