ASM228 Compulsions, Gender, and Evolution

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compulsions gender and evolution all that and more on this week's episode of ask science mike [Music] well welcome to another episode of ask science mike this is a weekly podcast where we believe that every sincere question deserves an honest and non-judgmental response i'm your host mike mccarthy the science mike of the podcast title and if you're new welcome to the program uh it's a question and response show where i do my best to offer an evidence-based response to any point of curiosity and we like to explore questions here that we often don't get the opportunity to explore in other spaces so this is a place where we can ask questions that are taboo or go at odds with our community or for other reasons we feel uncomfortable asking and it's a lot of fun we do it every week so thank you for joining us i do have a quick announcement this week and that is this is the final week of my in-home book tour for my new book you're a miracle and a pain in the ass and just a few stops remaining tuesday will be boston and thursday will be orlando and friday will be raleigh and that will end out the tour we've had so much fun in these events you know they aren't like a facebook live where i talk and you can only comment and they aren't like a zoom call where everyone is on camera the way these events work is you can just kind of sit back and lean back and kick back and chat or you can request to join me on camera to talk about something in person and gosh these events have been wonderful i've enjoyed every single one of them and it's really giving me ideas frankly for how i would like to um handle science mic in the future i really like the real-time interaction i've been trying to think of ways that we could do that as part of this podcast as well so stay tuned for that because i really really enjoyed the tour but either way this is the last week if you'd like to join us uh on the tour uh and again this that's as from when this episode came out some of you will hear this podcast after the tour is already over but for those of you who are listening to this episode when it comes out this week is the last week to join me on tour you can learn more about that by going to asksciencemike.com new book and then you'll scroll down there's a button that says join me on tour speaking of ask sciencemike.com don't forget that's where you can go to send in your questions for this program uh this show is created by you by your curiosity and the questions that you can send in so you can send me questions via by typing out an email or sending me a voicemail and that's how we respond to those and of course the people who support this program on patreon are the ones who then pick the final questions for the show i don't pick the questions every part of this show is curated by you you create the questions and you pick the questions it's my favorite part about this program so if you'd like to participate with any of those things either sending in questions or picking them by supporting the show on patreon you can learn more by visiting asksciencemike.com and now without further ado let's get it started [Music] hey science mike this is alan from charlotte my question to you is what do faith and science have to say about escapism are there any research-based or traditional spiritual practices to help relieve us of our compulsion to escape reality as a young primary care physician i help patients try to live their highest potential of health and what i've noticed that is that the majority of lifestyle risk factors for disease can be looked at through this lens of escapism i see things like snack foods flooding our guts enteric nervous system which then floods our central nervous system with dopamine it feels very satisfying and it numbs us similarly tv binge watching mindless social media they can help us escape into another world sure but then they leave our own bodies neglected here in on earth and i just even find the work out workaholics find escape by neglecting their body by to do their work and it's just an epidemic problem feeding pipeline of all the major diseases like heart disease general anxiety and chronic fatigue huge problems um what do you think how can we overcome this compulsive drive to escape what are we trying to numb i totally appreciate your thoughts love your show thank you i don't remember the last time that i was so encouraged by a question i literally don't even remember because you as a physician are asking the right questions and that just makes me hopeful it makes me happy because if there is a systemic challenge well excuse me there are many systemic challenges to healthcare in america but one of the key challenges in healthcare in america is that we don't do enough to consider the intersection of mental health and physical health and your question gives me so much hope that that's going to get better i believe and i believe this after reviewing evidence-based information that most chronic health care problems in america stem from mental health challenges this escapism that you alluded to in your question it is because frankly our family systems and our societal and cultural norms condition people to have a fundamentally dysfunctional relationship with their own feelings this is actually the entire premise of my new book you're a miracle and a pain in the ass that's what the book is about the way that we get conditioned into a dysfunctional relationship with our feelings and then all the things we try to do to medicate that it is a tremendous problem now you might be listening not just uh you who've asked the question but everyone listening to my voice right now might be saying i don't have a dysfunctional relationship with my feelings but i certainly struggle with escapism what do you mean well let me explain it there is a field of psychological research in the emotionally focused therapeutic area of psychology and the trauma-informed area of psychology called accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy this this field was uh first kicked off by the research of diane fosha and has expanded from there to include many more researchers and practitioners and it is a brain-centered psychological theory meaning it's looking at neurobiology and applying those findings in conjunction with rigorous psychological research and it has tremendous power to explain the cycle of escapism that you referenced in your question here's how it works you could imagine that our feelings all have evolutionary origins we have feelings for a reason and our feelings are good and necessary now we're often culturalized that our feelings are not good and that our feelings are deceptive and that is not true our feelings are good and have tremendous wisdom especially when we know how to properly channel that wisdom but effectively the natural state of a human animal is something called core state it's a clear calm curious state where we are open to our environment and ready to learn and then something happens in our environment that signals to our nervous system that there is a problem to be solved and that's what our feelings are for our feelings give us information about what our nervous system is perceiving in our environment so we have these core affects these core emotions that show up to give us information feelings like anger and fear joy and sadness disgust and surprise and sexual arousal every single one of those core affects those core feelings those installed from the factory human emotions tell us important things about our relationship to our environment and all those feelings are good yes anger is good yes sadness is good yes fear is good anger tells us that there is something in our environment that is threatening us or pushing an important boundary sadness tells us that there's something important to notice that is not an immediate threat to our survival fear tells us that there's something so overwhelming it might be wise right now to run away these are good and important signals however the response we have to those signals because of the way we've been conditioned isn't always healthy or adaptive to use a less loaded term what does that mean well boys young boys are often taught that sadness is not acceptable this happens you know in very early ages with non-verbal signals from caregivers but gets exacerbated as boys grow they're told that boys don't cry and stop crying like a girl and be strong be tough be a man and then because we're a social species our brains go oh my i should not be sad women are often taught that they should not be angry that it is not ladylike and because our brains equate social belonging with survival they do something remarkable they cut off that feeling again remember that feeling is essential the feeling is necessary for survival and yet our amazing adaptive brains learn to cut off that feeling using something called an inhibiting affect what are inhibiting effects guilt shame worry and anxiety any time we are experiencing one of those four feelings it is generally because our bodies are trying to block another feeling so something happens to me and my nervous system has learned through socialization that it is not okay for me to be sad i might feel shame instead and if i feel shame i don't cry because i'm not feeling sad but guess what shame is not a pleasant experience neither is anxiety or worry or guilt and so our brains look at a catalog of our experiences and say what have i done that makes me not feel this way what are things that will allow me to escape this unpleasant feeling and we get into defensive affects and defensive behaviors things like cracking a joke things like numbing ourselves with media and things like yeah addictive and compulsive behaviors right that's the cycle because we can't experience the feeling that happened in the first place we feel guilt shame worry and anxiety and those things are unpleasant and so we learn to do things instead that help us escape those unpleasant feelings and guess what as i say that don't feel any shame if that describes your life because those patterns have helped you survive they've helped you survive challenging life experiences and family system dynamics and a very large socio-cultural system that is much bigger than your nervous system i say this model and share it with you not so that you will feel shame by the way what i'm referencing here is something called the change uh triangle by dr h j handel i don't want you to feel shame when you hear about the change triangle i want you to understand the dynamic at play because what happens is our nervous systems are very efficient and so when something happens that would make us feel sad or angry or some fear or some feeling that we don't want to experience that we've been socialized that we can't our brains will just skip by anxiety all together and go straight to defensive behaviors and gosh they're just so readily available right now i can walk to my kitchen anytime i want grab an oreo cookie i can sit down on the couch anytime i want and an unimaginable library of content is available to me on a number of streaming platforms it is so easy to medicate away our feelings today now what is the response well the response is doing the hard work of re-embodying ourselves and re-acquainting ourselves with our feelings when we do that we suffer less from guilt and shame and worry and anxiety because our feelings are actually meant to lead us to a point of resolution when we experience them fully when i actually allow myself to grieve that repressed grief stops creating anxiety in my life that is one example and this is major major work so much so that i wrote an entire book about it other books that you might want to check out to go deeper in this topic and the work to unlearn escapist behaviors are living life like you mean it by dr ron frederick and uh there's another book called it's not always depression and i can't remember who wrote it off the top of my head so i'm looking it up on quick oh of course it's hillary jacobs handle who created the change triangle uh so that is it that is a tremendous book that would also give you an overview of aedp and the process by which we reacquaint ourselves with our bodies feelings and as we do so live in ways that require less patterns of escapism and again there's no shame here if you engage in defensive behaviors i do friends i engage in so many defensive and escapist behaviors and i am a wonderful kind person [Laughter] i just i think i'm extraordinary so there's no shame in this answer we offer the change triangle and the insights of psychology not to make you feel even worse about who you are but to help start equipping you you and me with the tools we need to have a more adaptive relationship with our own feelings [Music] covid19 is causing a mental health crisis of a scale we may not have seen before not in living memory we're all safer at home we're starting to reopen and anxious about it it's so overwhelming i'll be honest it's been hard in my home many of the mental health challenges that i and my family face have been wildly exacerbated by this pandemic and so i tell you today about a long-standing sponsor of ask science mike which is my friends at betterhelp not just because they sponsor the program but because me and my wife jenny are both better help subscribers because guess what right now we can't drive across town to see a therapist right now we're staying safer at home and better help facilitates that process so well you can go to betterhelp.com science mic where they will start you today uh by matching you with one of 9 000 licensed therapists it's amazing you can text back and forth with your therapist anytime you can connect with your therapist over a phone call or a video chat it is an amazing way to get the support that we need right now and best of all betterhelp offers their services on a sliding scale based on income limitations listen friends i make my living selling tickets and that's not a thing anymore and so as my income collapsed betterhelp worked with me without knowing frankly the people who were talking to me didn't know they sponsored my podcast and they worked with me on a new fee structure that fit within my budget so that i could continue to get the support that i need while still being financially responsible i am just wild about this company so as a listener of ask science mike you can get started with better help today and they're going to give you 10 off your first month's service to learn more and to sign up today by filling out a questionnaire where they will connect you with a counselor simply visit betterhelp.com sciencemike once again that is betterhelp.com sciencemike i recommend them with the highest possible recommendation they are a wonderful company full of good people our next question came in via email and it reads hi science mike you've said that you hope this show can be a place where people can feel safe asking their questions and getting genuine answers it seems like the only place i can ask this question i recently asked google and only got very far right websites who were asking the same thing that did not make me feel comfortable so here goes do the labels in modern gender studies such as transgender gender fluid and non-binary enforce stereotypical understandings of masculinity and femininity for example i have seen gender depicted as a spectrum from masculine to feminine what do these words even mean without a stereotypical understanding of male and female like men like sports and women like manicures in the news recently a transgender person who recently transitioned from male to female said she likes manicures because i am transgender a family member of mine is trans and in their coming out letter states that they never felt like a boy as a kid because they didn't like to do all the things they saw boys doing playing with trucks and getting dirty also in recent years i have noticed more people who don't fit the stereotypes of feminine what we would have called being a bit of a tomboy in the past coming out as being non-binary this bothers me it seems to say that those of us who aren't non-binary are still in those binary stereotypes how can we just let those stereotypes go i think every person should feel safe to be exactly who they are i just really don't feel comfortable with all these labels and how they perpetuate the boxes even jamming them on others i hope this makes sense i really appreciate you taking the time to look into this for me thanks m well m i just want to thank you for asking a hard question right up front and this is a this is a delicate area because here i am a cisgender man and i'm about to answer a question about non-cis gender issues and this i want to be really important really really cautious really careful and really clear here i think it's of critical importance that people who are marginalized by our society and culture are the ones who get to speak into matters resolving their life and identities i think that's important and essential and i also think that the work of educating the the non-marginalized people should fall on fellow non-marginalized people that is the work of allyship and so i'm going to do my best to offer you some insights that i have learned in relationship and conversation with genderqueer trans and non-binary people as well as reading a considerable amount of scholarship regarding gender studies and i just want everyone to realize here i am not an expert on gender studies i'm not an expert on anything but especially not on gender studies and what i'm doing here is is pushing a line that we need to be very careful about em i want to answer your question because your question would put an emotional burden on someone who is trans or genderqueer to answer because it's about questioning their life experience and that's why i decided to to respond to this question today because i believe your question is sincere and i reached out to several trans scholars and advocates who are friends of mine today to get their advice and counsel on if it was okay for me to answer this question and they agreed in the context of my work and the way that my work is structured that this could be good allyship today and if i get criticized for answering this question what you're going to hear me do is apologize immediately and thoroughly because let's also be clear before we even get the question trans advocates may not agree about whether it's okay or helpful for me to answer a question like this in the first place and the last thing i want to do is center myself as a cis man in conversations about trans and genderqueer issues and emma hope me i'm not shaming you in any way i think your question is delightful and i hope that my disclaimers there aren't too wordy at the very top of a question but i think it's important i think it's very important that we honor the lives and experiences of trans non-binary and genderqueer people now when we look at the science behind all of these terms i'd like to start with something completely unrelated and that is the color blue we have pretty good anthropological research that tells us that many ancient colors did not have a word for the color blue and their ancient literature we would see very strange descriptions like the sea being the color of wine for example it appears that blue was invented or discovered at some point in culture and before we had a word for blue people didn't experience blue and we have some modern research that backs this up there are some tribes tribal cultures on earth today that also don't have words for blue and when you do a study where you allow these cultures to look at a screen that has green squares on it and one blue square the members of these tribal cultures have difficulty picking out the blue square from the green square their nervous system can't conceive of blue and therefore can't discern it and yet these cultures often also have many many many more words for green than western cultures and when we reverse the experiment and we ask westerners to pick out one slightly different shade of green from other shades of green we have difficulty doing so and yet these tribal cultures do so with great ease because language fundamentally shapes our experiences as people and that brings me back to gender binaries the fact is we have a tremendous amount of linguistic and cultural heritage where gender and sex are conflated and gender and sex exist in a binary now it changes over time for example pink and blue are relatively recent additions to the pantheon of binary gender and sex but fundamentally the idea that men are men and women or women is deeply entrenched in our culture and simply dropping labels immediately erases the experiences of people for whom the conflating of sex and gender are not helpful now i might be a little bit ahead of myself some of you might be going what sex and gender are not the same thing indeed they are not when we talk about sex we are talking about biology and genitals right male and female but already we oversimplify the scenario there are many other sex categories across the animal kingdom and the kingdoms of life than male and female there's asexual reproduction there are androgynous organisms there are organisms that contain male and female reproductive organisms and guess what that can include humans there are intersex people there are people with uh varying chromosomal arrangements that don't match or create you know typical male female uh primary and secondary sex characteristic alignment and those people are real and their experiences are valid and there's nothing wrong with them although often our medical systems will treat their existence as a problem to be solved why because of gender and sex binaries so already we see at the biology layer that there's more than two sexes and there can be an amazing array of presentations of primary and secondary sexual characteristics it doesn't matter that for most people the labels male and female are sufficient when we when we force our language to honor those two big categories we marginalize erase and oppress the people for whom those labels are not accurate and again medical science is very clear here there is more in our world than male and female that's sex right we see that all over the animal kingdom gender however we do not see all over the animal kingdom male gorillas female gorillas male dogs female dogs those animals don't have genders gender is the sociological representation of sexual identity it's a very important distinction man is a gender and woman is a gender so already we know those two labels don't describe the diversity of biological reality underneath especially as we learn more and more about brain science and so some people these two boxes man and woman well gosh they just don't fit their life experience and actually who cleanly fits in the socially prescribed labels of man and woman i think very few people do i am not genderqueer i am not non-binary but many of the traits traditionally ascribed to masculinity well gosh they don't represent me at all i hate getting dirty i can't stand sports but that doesn't mean i'm not a man i still comfortably identify as a man my primary and sexual secondary sexual characteristics fit within the box of masculinity as described and the the label man doesn't feel restricting to me it feels in some fundamental way to match my life experience there are toxic parts of masculinity that i divest of and fight but man works for me i think about my dear friend kevin garcia kevin in many ways has a physically masculine presentation but his life experience gosh not at all and so kevin goes into a more genderqueer space kevin is often they them sometimes she occasionally he and that represents something a fundamental way in which the box man just doesn't work for kevin neither does the box woman kevin puts on fabulous lipstick and has a luscious beard i don't feel that kevin's existence reinforces gender binary out of necessity of course being genderqueer kevin must define his identity in contrast to those normative sociological boxes and linguistic labels there is simply no choice in the same way that we don't understand different shades of green we don't understand different shades of gender and the work that non-binary people and trans people and genderqueer people are doing is to begin to increase our linguistic imagination and in doing so creating a future where more people can flourish i think of dr robin henderson espinoza who is increasingly masculine in gender presentation and yet very much still genderqueer i think ultimately a world without gender labels would be an incredible place to live i really do i agree with you so deeply there em but we just aren't there yet in order to get to a place where people can simply be who they are will require a tremendous amount of queering for those of you who are uncomfortable with the word queer or don't understand it in lgbtq communities queer scholarship and queer leadership is the way in which oppressive normative structures around sexual orientation and gender are torn down queer people have been leading the way into sexual liberation and equality for generations this is not new many of the topics most of us who fit more comfortably into cis and straight categories of identity we're just becoming aware of discussions that have been going on in queer communities for decades so we mustn't from our perspective sitting here and the relative comfort of more socially accepted and validated gender categories critique the essential work of those people who are creating freedom and liberation and i think that's very very important you have noticed people don't fit stereotypes of feminine or masculine and that is good those people are able to do that because other people before them told coming out stories and as they did so they subverted the linguistic expectations around gender and that is such such vital vital work i'm going to include two links in the show notes on ask sciencemike.com that can be a little taste and a starter for people trying to explore the differences between sex and gender from a clinical and medical context that's important work and i just hope em that you hear my sincerity here that i understand your frustration but we should never question when people share their experiences with us when someone has faced the fear to say something out loud like i'm non-binary that is not something that someone says lightly that is not something that simply comes down to being a tomboy i believe that ultimately that feeling of something being off or wrong in a gender label cannot be fully articulated with the language we have today any more than the ancients had a word for the color blue and so you'll see that as people come out yes they will use metaphor they will use small anecdotes to speak to some larger and more fundamental truth and m may you and i work together to do our best to support people who undergo that challenging personal work because the work they do for themselves and for their own liberation leads to liberation for us all [Music] if it weren't for my friends at kiwi co this episode of ask science mic would have never happened kiwi co is an amazing california based company that makes learning products believe it or not and i say believe it or not because i just can't believe how much fun kiwico products are if you're not familiar with kiwico they make things called crates which are you know art and education products that you get mailed every month and they are for children they you know they have crates for uh panda crates for children there's zero to 24 months koala crates ages two to four the atlas crate which is around geography and culture for ages six to eleven the classic kiwi crate ages 5 to 8 for science art and more moving up they have the tinker crate which is science and engineering focused for ages 9 to 16 the doodle crate which is arts and crafts for ages 9 to 16. and then they have the new eureka crate for ages 14 to 104 for engineering and design and the maker crate ages 14 to 104 for art and design and we get four crates every month at my house we get a doodle a tinker a maker and a eureka and then we set them on the kitchen table and my family all barters for who gets which um crate that month so uh i just absolutely love it it is a great way for people of any age to go deeper in their understanding of science technology engineering art and math and you can get started today by going to kiwico.com ask sciencemike where you can get 60 off your first month of any of all of kiwico's lines of crates you're going to love them i get so many pictures sent to me of families enjoying their kiwi crates after hearing about them on the show and by the way i love those pictures keep sending them when you tag me on instagram i do see it so once again get started today kiwico dot com slash ask science mike [Music] hi mike my name's jamie like so many people say i just want to thank you for your show and what you're doing i really enjoy listening and learning and i know that my husband also really enjoys it so my question is about testicles and why evolution hasn't taken care of what seems to me to be a problem with descended testes and then being exterior to the body i don't know much about other mammals and other species and i assume that some of them have internal testes and i understand that part of their location the reason for it is because of sperm production and being the appropriate temperature for that to take place i'm just wondering why evolution hasn't taken care of the vulnerability and the weakness of testicles being outside the body i don't think many people especially those with testicles would disagree that that's a vulnerability and a weakness and it seems to me that evolution wouldn't want them prone to injury or damage so i'm just wondering what's going on there evolutionarily speaking is it because we're a newer species um just wondering why that hasn't changed so i'd love to hear your thoughts on that thanks well here's a quick peek behind the curtain on how ask science mike gets made okay you ready for this when i first hear a question almost every time almost every question i already know my answer and so i write out some bullet points that i'm going to cover as i as i work through a topic and then and this is an important step i fact check myself i check my assumptions i check i make sure that what i what i'm recalling actually matches literature and so i wrote out some answers to this question about how text testicles are outside of the body for cooling that's the main reason testicles are out the outside the body is so they can be cooler a few degrees than the rest of the body and then i went to fact check myself and fell down a rabbit hole where i spent several hours reading about mammalian testicles and here's i'll cut to the chase why testicles are outside of the body in some mammals is not currently known to science there is not a definitive answer there are a number of hypotheses here's what we know we know that not once but twice in the animal kingdom uh in separate branches of the me of mammals testicles moved outside the body twice but there's a lot of mammals who have testicles inside the body they'll typically have a specialized area of tissue on their bodies uh where uh sperm can go to be cool to develop because there is that temperature difference that is important but yeah there's mammals with internal testicles birds have internal testicles there's all kinds of animals that are warm-blooded that have internal testicles uh you know there's a theory that um an evolution uh called the handicap theory a frankly a bit ableist term if i may where in things like bright plumage on birds male birds or extremely large antlers on um you know some species of mammal these things indicate that a male is so fit for survival that they can survive with an incredible disadvantage and you might look at the testicles of some animals as being prominent displays of like look i can be fertile even with my gonads exposed that doesn't really hold up because some animals mammals with testicles have tiny testicles that are not easily visible which is why there is no definitive answer to this question there's several different hypotheses and no definitive answer which brings us to a fundamental thing in our understanding of evolution evolution does not design things and evolution does not have goals and evolution does not produce perfect organisms and even trained evolutionary biologists even me often will talk about evolution's design or evolution's purpose or evolution's agency and those things just don't exist evolution is a process which creates pressure on organisms and penalizes adaptations that don't allow an organism to successfully survive and reproduce at a high enough rate to replace a given population distributions loss via death that's what evolution does and so evolution does all sorts of strange things architecturally because evolution doesn't think natural selection there's there's not an engineer somewhere making these decisions um for us bipeds us humans our knees are really structurally weak our uh cardiovascular system is not ideally suited to the increased pressure that comes from upright posture giving us a a risk for cardiovascular disease that is much higher than quadrupedal mammals right that's a big deal it's not big enough a deal to prevent us from surviving and so what we're seeing is there may not be a definitive why in terms of testicle distribution and placement there are simply multiple viable strategies that natural selection has on the table at the same time and you'll often see life hedge its best that way that's why after major ecological disasters mass extinction events as we call them life persists because somebody who is just kind of on the edge of surviving in the old way of the environment suddenly their adaptation becomes very suitable following economic or excuse me not economic um ecological catastrophe and changes in climate and sudden uh available niches that were filled before there was a massive collapse in population and evolution is not doing that on purpose it is a side effect of the power of natural selection what a fascinating question thank you for helping me learn something this week i will never just go around confidently saying that testicles are external in order to uh as a cooling mechanism the cooling hypothesis it turns out is not accepted as a definitive answer for testicle placement on mammals so thank you our next question came in via email and it reads hi science mike i am a former ultra-conservative evangelical and a current questioner of all things i'm exploring evolutionary theory with an open mind for the first time much of it makes sense to me and appears valid from a scientific viewpoint however i am having trouble reconciling my understanding of god with the implications of evolution if humans evolved over millions of years from a single ancestral organism at what point were we fully human and beyond that when we were given us when were we given a soul i am able to look at the evolution of planets animals and plants with an objective interest but when it comes to humanity i just feel confused can evolution be true and yet my my intelligent design in the image of my creator also be true how are the two reconciled thanks for providing a place where question questioners like myself can seek answers charlotte well charlotte thank you for sending in your question and i would start by admitting that you and i are in different places theologically this is a question that i wrestled with for many years and i've just my theology has changed so much that this isn't a question that um bothers me anymore and i don't say that to say like i'm in some enlightened or better theological place than you are i am not i simply say that um my theology is not terribly sophisticated it's not robust it is not complex and there are many substantive questions like the one you have here that my stripped down approach to faith means i just don't have to lean into anymore so um i'm gonna start by telling you people who might be able to give you answers that are more helpful than i can give you if that's okay um there is a an organization called biologos you can find their website at biologos.org and i will include a link to their website in the show notes this week this is episode 228 of ask science mike and if you go to my website and look at episode 228 show notes or just swipe up right in the podcast feed you're listening to you'll see that link to biologos right next to your question and biologos is a theologically conservative organization that is supports evidence-based science and an understanding of the theory of evolution biologos and i have wildly different understandings of the christian faith but we both accept that the diversity of life that appears on earth is the result of evolution via natural selection and so if you're coming from a place they are not hyper conservative but they they hold probably a view of the bible that is relatively similar to a view that you've held in the past and are currently evaluating and i just encourage you to go to the website they have lots and lots of resources there and they will they will have their answers to the questions that you have placed and i just think that might be a helpful place for you to start because if you go like if i answer my way which i will in a moment because that's part of a sincere response my answers might be just too weird for you and not defined enough right um because where i am today with my faith and my understanding of god is i don't see people as different from the rest of life at all i see all life is in some way bearing the image of the creator but humanity's image of the creator is our capacity to create with intention to create a world that involves love and peace or not most other animals as far as we can tell don't have that same opportunity you know when were we given a soul i don't know what a soul is and so i can't decide when we were given a soul i also don't worry about what a soul is do you see what i mean my my theology is so stripped down that i just wonder how useful it could be for you charlotte so i'd start with biologos and then if you are like really curious about kind of where i am um you my first book finding god in the waves goes into great detail about these ideas of souls and evolution and uh our relationship to the creator i did a whole book on it and uh that might be a place for you to look at as well if you're looking for a more contemplative response uh to how god relates to evolution than what you find at biologos but i suspect actually you'll read some stuff in biologos and that will be a great comfort to you i really appreciate biologos and the work that they do um and i also i really like by the way that i'm like this theological weirdo and uh and yet biologos and i you know we've done work together and um i support what they do and they support what i do because maybe it's not just about being right all the time maybe it's about giving the tool people the tools they need to navigate their world each day and biologos does that really well for a lot of people so i hope that is useful and helpful for you charlotte [Music] well thanks for listening to the program this week it means so much to me that we get to spend this time together i'd like to thank a few folks for helping make this show possible caitlyn hermstad is the executive producer of ask science mike victory palmisano produces everything that i do print cradle provides management services greg nordin does production and sound design acting as the producer of ask science mike the supporters of ask science mike on patreon make the entire show possible and handle the editorial decisions for the program and of course our theme song was written and recorded by jed botiford thanks for listening everybody and i can't wait to talk with you again next week