ASM088 Ask Science Mike LIVE in Atlanta, GA

[transcript automatically generated - please help edit to make it better]

coming to you from dunwoody united methodist church in atlanta georgia it's ask science mike

[Music]

welcome now science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life i'm on tour right now promoting my new book finding god in the waves on october 21st we'll be in chicago october 25th fruitland park florida november 2nd kansas november 6 savannah georgia november 11th costa mesa november 12th glendale november 13th los angeles november 20th portland november 21st coma november 26th thomasville november 30th boston more dates after that so if you'd like to see me on tour go to finding god the waves.com slash four but for now we've got a podcast to do so let's get it started [Applause] [Music] uh hi my name is donnie hey donny i want to start by saying thank you so much for all you do especially your book i've heard you actually apologize to some of your avid fans for talking about your book so much yes because you feel like we already know it all true um and i want to say somebody who's followed your podcast allergist listened consistently and read the book um it still was new and it was still fresh it was still really inspiring and amazing so thank you thank you um i'm a pastor and i want to start my question with an important footnote many people have been genuinely hurt by pastors and church leaders in unthinkable and excusable ways and i in no way mean to minimize those men or women or the feelings that they have had and yet i feel like people expect so much from pastors vulnerable yet untouchable sinless yet authentic experts on money sex the bible relationships and theology and there's often very little grace for me often i have to answer questions with a no or tell people the direction they're going isn't the direction we are going or especially in music because i'm a worship pastor tell them they are not as gifted as they think they might be [Laughter] at whatever that thing is and try to do it in a gracious and careful way and loving way and yet it never works people are consistently offended consistently take their ball and go home consistently tell me however i handled it it was wrong my question then is neurologically speaking or any insight you have how do you tell someone something they don't want to hear especially when it's personal and have them receive it with a gentleness that was intended i think that's my question second part of the question is that you playing bass on the intro it is not me playing bass on the intro always wondered that that is my dog jeff waterford who played every instrument on the theme song i'm going to answer that because i can vamp and think you you curved the question at the last second so i had an answer spooled off based on where i thought the question was going and then you changed it which is kind of cheating it's cool uh this show was not my idea this show people who listen to liturgist podcasts started emailing me and tweeting me and saying hey can you talk about more science on the liturgist podcast and i said no because then it's just a science podcast like so they said we'll start another podcast where you answer science questions like one a week i was like no one would listen and they're like we'll listen and there's like 10 of us it's a fair point so i started the podcast and i said who would be interested in a weekly q a show about science hosted by me and you know like a couple hundred of you retweeted that so i was like oh there's more than a dozen and so i i called jeb and i was like i need a theme song and he he wrote and recorded that theme song like two hours so jeb's awesome uh but i didn't play bass because i'm terrible on your actual question it's tough and it's especially tough for pastors what we understand neurologically is what people believe about god happens in the same parts of the brain where their sense of identity comes from what you believe about god is almost uniquely attached to how you view yourself and how you process the world and then you take a pastor whose job is what it's like god's hype man right so we take these people who are like representative of god and we have them form communities and here's a funny thing about a community that's centered around beliefs about god they have like double extra plus benefits compared to normal communities from what you get from communities you get a stronger sense of identity you get a stronger sense of belonging and when you join a church that you feel like you belong in you get a shift in personal happiness that is similar statistically to going from the bottom quartile of income to the top quartile of income that's crazy that's a lot of emotional benefit and it's beautiful until it goes wrong and when it goes wrong this what used to be like amplified goodness becomes amplified pain and now psychologists are studying a unique form of ptsd that's formed by spiritual experiences it's crazy how much it hurts us when church goes wrong it honestly i've noticed this is not science this is personal anecdote so don't ask me for this study on twitter but i've noticed that the emotional fallout with a pastor church community can be similarly disruptive in people's lives to a divorce and i think both have similar roots we put two high expectations on spouses and on our faith communities now don't get me wrong churches do horrible things truly abusive authoritarian probably should be illegal kind of things my entire career at this point in my life this author podcaster is primarily talking to people who have been hurt so bad by the church they won't go anymore but still have some longing for god so don't hear for a second that i have anything but exquisite empathy but i've also seen in non-authoritarian contexts simple dis disagreements uh blow up into situations where people feel grievously wounded by their church and i know too many pastors who get wrecked by that i don't know if you've looked at the burnout rate on pastors it's there's not a lot of little kids going one day i want to be a pastor right like it's a tough job i mean look at the degree to which people are doing identity formation and ego validation at church which is not a bad thing where else can the average person stand on stage and sing in front of people right where else karaoke that's it that's it karaoke it's okay if you're terrible the entire audience is plastered at church only like a third of the audience is plastered and so the that's great i had people covering their mouth right there that's good that one landed you know there's higher expectation but i'm an author now do you know the first place i was published as a writer the church newsletter the church newsletter is the first time someone ever published my writing and sent it around to other people it was pre-blog so people invulnerability in growth like they want to offer something to the community that also happens to make them feel like they have worth and then it doesn't work like you feel full of the spirit of god and you literally never hit the pitch of any note in the entire song and you have this amazing worship experience and your eyes are closed so you can't see people doing like this right or you feel like like the spirit of god has put a word in you that must be spoken and so you stand up in bible study and just express this incredible truth about how cats are the incarnation of the holy spirit and like you feel so close to god in that moment and everybody goes well that was is it interesting and then there's this fear right and then so what's the work of the church what's the work of the church to offer healing to the broken broken people are actually pretty hard to be around their stuff's all messed up they're rough around the edges they cry too often they're socially awkward they're drunk at church right like all these things like the the church is a gathering of people who are messed up but we're americans right so our churches happen with excellence we get like the best singers who like they sing the nat like like our worship leader sings the national anthem at the local sport thing i'm not into sports i couldn't think of a specific sport right that's that's that's our caliber like our our musicians they're so they're they're in they're going to music school like we just have the best people in our community and everything the focus becomes on what's like the best execution and where does that congregational expectation get placed on the pastor so you have a pastor i'm trying to give everybody empathy here i i hope i've established that people who are doing something badly in your church it's coming from a place of vulnerability and desire to serve are you with me there so now other people say well i don't have that many hours in the week and i definitely don't have that many hours on the weekend i'm not listening to tone deaf people saying pastor so eight people say that and four of them are big tithers and let's be honest church none of you tithe and like there's a mortgage payment there's a mortgage payment to create this space for healing and so no one tithes but these four people tithe and they're like we would really prefer contestants from the voice so now you have a pastor who has to think about the building payment keeping a congregation showing up which is hard today it's kind of counter every statistic in our our society churches don't grow churches shrink and close down and the fact that people are undergoing the messy process of healing and spiritual growth it's impossible what's the right thing for the pastor to do let's look at some scenarios hey four tithers we're about honesty and vulnerability here that's cool there's another church literally across the street who'd be happy to have my money hey singer i love your giftedness but we this is this is just not the place for you to sing right now i've been rejected by the first place i've felt like i belong in my life that's the problem what's the solution think it starts with the congregation can we all make a commitment that the church is a hospital can we make a commitment that we don't have pews we have hospital beds and that terminally ill people smell funny right can we can we understand that that the lame can't dance well the point of this institution formed by this jesus we think is so special is to be the source of healing in this world a unique place of unconditional love so what do i do i tell my pastor how great things are and i celebrate when the music is bad you know why because a bunch of people decide to show up and sing so part of the pastor dilemma starts with the congregation making a decision to support their pastor i don't mean the pastor gets a blank check if the pastor says we're as a church going to do this thing and it's just you just know in your heart it's abusive and authoritarian that's not what i mean it's not what i mean but i mean in the messy details of making a building full of people in america today possible we lower our expectations on the pastor and increase the amount of encouragement and offer affirmation we offer which gives you hopefully the space to have completely different conversations now sometimes something has to be said if if the if the sound person literally it's just 55 minutes of squealing feedback you know what i mean it works you're making the face 55 minutes of that 55 minutes of that there's got to be some conversation right i have a really simple mandate for everything i say to people all the time i communicate honestly without hostility so the only time i wait to say something is if i know i can't say it without hostility that's that's when i have to wait when i haven't done the self-development work to pull out hostility then i've got to wait i'm relatively successful on this just don't follow me on twitter uh but in person i'm much better at it some of you got that in a big way um but you wait till the hostility is gone but difficult conversations don't actually age well they don't age well at all so you're like well i'll just wait and see no don't wait and see uh communicate honestly and with us without hostility as soon as you can and i always start um you know talking to neuroscience validating people and everything i can do um to talk about a problem and look for a solution together like i can't look for i literally can't talk about sound at our church because i'm probably the most talented sound engineer in the church and have zero time to volunteer at church because i travel on the road for a living so if there were sound problems at my church i'm never going to be like you guys really got to do better unless i'm willing to show up at least once a month but but as we as neurologically you're trying to avoid activating people's amygdala a sense of fear or anger and to do that it means you have to enter and maintain a st a state of empathy with that person and you have to is that thunder oh okay i was like wow god doesn't like that part um that's because that's what god does god listens to my podcast and then sends thunder if he doesn't like something he uh so so we're we're embodying a state of empathy with another person and when you when you create trust relationships like that i know friendships are good when a friend says to me that really hurt my feelings like that's the goal where we're trying to get with relationships with everyone is so that we immediately can be honest about our experience with what people say uh i told my wife a few years ago that i didn't believe in god anymore and that it was no big deal and it had only been like two years since i believed in god and that was a really terrible conversation the closest my marriage has ever come to ending because i waited two years and then she feels like who are you right but ever since then since my wife and i have almost divorced over what we believe about god amazing that's a sentence i can say now we just like tell each other stuff kind of in real time hey that just really frustrated me okay tell me about that right and when you create that space for communication what people want most of all i believe and i think i think i can back this up with at least psychological research if not neurological is to be heard is to be known and then sometimes despite your best effort people are still going to be hurt people are still going to get hurt anytime you have more than one person involved in a situation there is the potential for serious misunderstanding and it happens to me that i got a two-star amazon review first one in my life two-story amazon review and the person like goes i loved the first half of this book and i think the second half destroyed my faith and like then she she talked about like like really vulnerably like the hurt she felt reading the second half of my book and they have this thing they tell you when with the publisher don't read your amazon reviews and you definitely never reply to an amazon review ever so i replied to that amazon review and i said this was my biggest fear in writing this book you have just told me my biggest fear that being honest about what it takes for someone to leave christianity and become an atheist is new information for some christians and so i was just your richard dawkins and i want you to know i'm sorry deeply and sincerely and i'm also wrong all the time so if there's anything in the book if you want to email me and tell me things that tripped you up i promise you i can find you five books for each point you make that will convince you i'm totally wrong about whatever i said i i i can do that because what i care about i don't care about being an author if i was drawn to money i would have stayed in advertising i don't know if you know this podcasting is not a real lucrative business but i care about addressing human suffering and human need and in that process with the best possible intentions and incredible self-sacrifice i broke someone's heart so i said i was sorry just as deeply and as sincerely and as personally as i could and she accepted my apology but not everyone does and some of those people i know i see online that my work has hurt them and i'm not able to reach them they are little ghosts that dance around my psyche they're people i think about all the time how do i speak honestly and authentically and carefully i'm still learning and that's ultimately where we have to get as a church maybe as a culture but i think it has to start with the church is understanding that we are all idiots trying to figure out how to get through life without hurting other people [Music] hi thanks my name is chad mike just wanted to thank you for your sincerity um in telling your story over the podcast and you know both science mike and also um the liturgist so my question might be a little bit different than others i'm a unconventional christian that's what this room is don't worry and uh i wondered um question about your future do you think you might ever find a point where you could find a blending of three things first science where god often is seen as a force to philosophy where he's often seen as a unity of values yes and through religion where he's often seen as a spirit of love so the question is will i ever reconcile the different understandings of god between science philosophy and religion no big deal okay it's going to be that kind of night [Laughter] here's an unanswered question the smartest people in the world wrestle with what's your completely uninformed opinion i'd be happy to give it to you uh yeah the god i see in science is like a force it's not like the force right it's like star wars there's no midichlorians um there should have never been midichlorians some of you got that uh god's not like the force like most christians would call einstein an atheist let's be real clear but einstein talked about god and that's the god of science a consistent set of rules and behaviors that make reality possible which is amazing for me uh that was my first understanding of god after my my beach experience and to be able to say i believe in god like with a little asterix and then einstein's god it didn't matter i could use the phrase i believe in god and for some reason that was an important thing to me and i cared about that and that's comforting but there was this kind of there's this grinding gear that physics doesn't answer prayer i mean like dear protons neutrons and electrons really need a good parking space right now so if you could probabilistically collapse from waveforms into an empty parking space that i can put my car into praise be to stephen hawking right like it just doesn't work and then so i so then you uh then i got kind of into like the philosophy crowd and the theo philosophy like um like the ground of being or god it's being itself yeah that sounds real clever i'm in god's not a being god's being itself checkmate atheists right that's an internet joke man sorry i gotta like switch up to more mainstream humor at some point in my career but like this god's not god's not a being god's being itself which sounds actually to me relatively compatible with like singularity physics einstein stuff so that's good that's good theology god is love huge problem here there the bridge to terabithia is closed so apparently right here everyone gets all the jokes and right there is like what this guy is messed up right so this this idea that god is love um is not scientific it doesn't actually hold it very well in philosophy some of you have heard me say this martin luther king said the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice no there's no evidence in science that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice if you want to have a good scientific claim you could defend you could say the moral arc of the universe bends toward increasing entropy or the moral arc of the universe bends toward chaos so if entropic heat death is your idea of justice then yes the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice so now i want you to imagine this man who's calling out one of the gravest sins in american history and it's so sad we can always say one of because slavery was just one of the awful things we did to create this country there was the whole native genocide thing right so so martin luther king stands in opposition to that and can you imagine if in his speech he said there is hope because the moral arc of the universe bends toward entropic heat death i just want you to picture it right now on televisions across america where people of color especially black families are suffering under a systematic institutional racism of segregation born from the jim crow south how does that give them hope even though it is extraordinarily factually accurate and here's the problem science tells me the bridge from god is love to the ground of being does not get crossed with language science tells me that because people who contemplate an idea that god is love anyone who says that with conviction you put them in a brain scanner and you say think about god imagine god right now and the part of their brain responsible for love gets really active the anterior cingulate cortex the part of the brain responsible for verbal processing the left temporal lobe doesn't and if you ask someone then to not think of god but to describe god you can watch as the left temporal lobe and the prefrontal cortex which is responsible for rational thinking starts up and the part of the brain responsible for love gets dimmer and the process of trying to describe who god is or how god is love actually modifies the brain state associated with god it turns out the brain states most associated with powerful and life-changing religious experiences are relatively incompatible with both language and our rational brain components they're they don't work well it's like it's like trying to run an android app on your iphone it just doesn't boy i thought that one would be great i was real proud of that joke and that analogy and it just flat on its face in this room it's like trying to have the seminals play at the braves stadium is that worse it's the only two sports teams i could think of because i live in tallahassee and this is atlanta and the braves are here yeah this is i learned like two weeks ago that the chicago cubs were a baseball team two weeks ago i'm not kidding so but it just doesn't work it has to be neurologically speaking discovered through a mystery that is experienced i was talking to a friend this weekend and he said i just i'm so jealous of you because i read your book and like you actually love jesus that's a thing like you experience love and affection for jesus and for god and i've gotten to the point i understand what you talk about god as the ground of being but how i can't love that but if god is love then to love god is to love love itself which is absurd it's absurd but to realize that in every moment that love is expressed and felt and given god is present to realize that in christian theology uh we tend to minimize the trinity in modern american christianity but it's i've become such a trinity nerd thank you richard rohr uh the the this idea that there's a christ and the christ is the part of the trinity that is always drawing creation towards reconciliation and peace that's christ which means there's also an antichrist which is anything which pushes away from peace and reconciliation with the ground of being with love itself when i contemplate that it changes my life it means whether or not i'm affected by a given social issue personally if i am a christian who follows christ it is my job at all times to invite all of creation towards peace and reconciliation and healing and that changes my life regardless of the scientific and philosophic connections it's it's the contemplation of christ that makes me a white guy who talks about racism all the time even though frankly most wide audiences get really tired of it they're like hey talk more about brain science and less about systemic racism it's it's that christ in me that whenever i see injustice or suffering it says you must respond so i can scientifically validate that practice through neuroscience but i can't solve the great mystery and if i could it seems like in brain science it would stop working that's the crazy thing in order for god to truly compel us in our brains in some way god must be mysterious what a remarkable finding from the world of neuroscience which by the way it's not they're not like uh seminary appointees right most of these people aren't christians at all they just like to study brains and i've learned to enjoy the mystery when i was a baptist i was a baptist because through my baptist faith i understood everything about the world and everything about god and i had an answer to everything i was really really certain about and then i became an atheist do you know why so southern baptists statistically have the second lowest defection rate of any denomination the only people who have less defections are mormons so southern rabbis are of the mainstream christian nominations have the lowest affection rates but statistically they produce the most atheists because atheists and baptists have this same addiction to be right and to be certain now don't get me wrong i very much think there is a silent majority of atheists who are basically like mainline atheists who like i don't care what you think whatever whatever gets you through today that's great i just don't have a belief about god whatever i'm talking about like the new atheist the evangelical atheist right that's the thing and they have the same zeal science taught me how to be certain about everything and in both of those world views i was just a real jerk i felt even if i wouldn't tell people i was writing they were wrong i felt it and now today as an empiricist non-theist christian mystic blender of labels i don't know anything i could never stand in front of people and be like hey i figured it all out again i've been wrong about literally everything twice not once twice i figured out my absolute base assumptions about reality were incorrect so what's left to wake up every morning and receive a gift of life and awareness and breath and the contemplation of a mystery i don't understand means that i want to devote every breath and every energy of every breath towards being christ in this world and not antichrist [Music] hi um my name is anne murray i want to start by saying thank you from the queer community which i'm a part of um your podcast and your affirmation of like who we are and that it's okay for us to exist in the church is like oh my god thank you um my question um is about globalization and the possible end of the world a mass science um knight um i know that um i have a hunter-gatherer brain um i also know that there are many parts of the contemporary world that our hunter gathering communities like i've studied kung san and namibia the balinese are not hunting gathering but they're being pushed into modernity and it's like destroying you yes and the whole community of globalization seems to be caught in this tension of like like we're all trying to be hunter-gatherers and survive and like like love each other um but like we can't like i feel subverted at like most every turn and it feels like that structure can't and won't hold like even this presidential election it just feels like like everything's gonna fall apart like tomorrow um so i'm wondering um is there like how to exist within that and then like like are those structures going to collapse are we going to be able to evolve is is there kind of like hope for this this thing that's just kind of it doesn't seem to be working does that make sense makes a lot of sense unfortunately i understand the question yeah um so tell you a story a man who works in advertising who feels already unqualified to do that because he's like a computer programmer who start working on advertising starts a podcast and every question is welcome the expectation is mainly former evangelicals who are learning about science for the first time will ask really easy science questions he can just knock across the plate and instead a bunch of people smarter than the host of the podcast start sending in questions like that then i go uh who's smarter than me i could call we are certainly at a crossroads our brains developed to exist in societies of about 150 people that's what our brains are set up for 150 individuals by the way you never really have more than 150 friends right you really only have like five close friends at a time and your brain constantly like decides like who's in that circle and then like keeps a really detailed map of them and other people fall like into the next layer which is 15 right and the next layer which is 45 the next layer which is 100 and then like the very fringe is 150 and you might be able to remember 1500 faces and your brand's constantly doing housekeeping who do i see how often who do i not see very much but want to impress so i remember more about them not consciously you just do that and the way we were able to jump past 150 people is we created language which let us build cultures of intersecting rings of 150 person networks by the way understanding this makes social dynamics fascinating and make more sense why is it in the church there's always like this click of five people because they have brains right and they're like in a really big church like there's kind of like this group of 150 and this group 150 and they have an overlap of like 10 people right in corporations any organization of individuals and we've done some amazing things it's been a good run like like i go on airplanes i sit in a tube of metal and like hurtle through the air at 500 miles an hour that's a neat trick you know what i mean like i have a slate of glass in my pocket that like magically through the air has the entire sum of human knowledge that i can just ask it by saying hey siri so that's incredible but we can also split the atom and that's pretty scary so let's go one thing we have hunter-gatherer brains no problem well if we all just become hunter-gatherers again cool the carrying capacity for this planet of hunter-gatherers might be three million people so it could be a slightly rough transition period where we convince like 7 billion and change people to not exist anymore um well okay so no big deal we just agreed and not bomb each other that's going well it's going real well i mean like i think like literally right now russia has a nuclear sub off the coast of poland like right now like posturing um but let's suppose we like convince ourselves not to use nuclear weapons um which by the way most people are good at math say that in any one year we've got a pretty low chance of nuclear war but low chances over and over become high chances so like a lot of the experts think like you probably can't go more than 150 years without a nuclear altercation because another thing we know about homo sapiens is they're the most violent species of primate on the planet much more likely to go to war than chimpanzees who are the second place in that rather terrible olympic game of violence but let's say somehow we figure out how to not use nukes we've got 400 parts per million of co2 in the atmosphere right now it's already done it's already done there's already 400 parts per million thanks to a global industrial economy who's like what we should do is take plankton that that died and fossilized millions of years ago just burn them because free energy they got energy from the sun so we just get all that energy right at once and uh all we'll do is make the atmosphere like it was a few million years ago before there were people and which means there'll be there'll be no ice on the planet which sounds awesome i hate cold like i live in florida for a reason to me atlanta's the frozen north it's too cold here so that sounds awesome except all that water's going to go somewhere so sorry miami right we don't need miami uh so you know maybe eventually tallahassee would be a coastal city again maybe eventually tallahassee will be under water again we're at a real junction point we're too smart for our own good primates that make iphones i mean just you know like and people like well i don't think humans are primates turn on the news watch literally any panel of two screaming heads at each other and tell me humans aren't primates i've actually done this i've taken i don't care fox news msnbc cnn i don't care any of them pick your bias and then play and then play like jane goodall video of chimp confrontations at the same time on your computer it's incredible it's small government right uh internet people and slap my chest like a monkey so what do we do with primates that split the atom primates that burn old plankton primates who through their cognitive processes think about their own needs the need of their tribe of about 150 people it's where you make your decisions of your 150 people that your brain thinks are important undue importance is given to your children and your grandchildren if you have them what's best for my kids trumps everything trump's ha i won't do that again promise so like that's the most important thing what's good for my kids and my grandkids good school zones right like a 401k like you know eight percent of us do that well it's very limited things so what's good for our children and our grandchildren turns out often to be terrible for our great-great-grandchildren but we don't have the ability to think in a timeline that goes past a generation we might see face to face one day and that's worked really well for the entire time homo sapiens have been on the planet until we figured out how to burn fossil fuels and split the atom i have this crazy hope that globalization will place a strong enough selection pressure on the species to reward organisms that think more than two generations out that's my hope my hope is that it won't happen with our 150 but maybe in those 1500 faces maybe we can recognize some will be people that live on other continents that we know through the internet so that we'll understand exactly what our decision to eat a whopper out of a styrofoam container means to the lived experience of someone in south america or africa right my hope is that this virtual world that we live in an increasing globalized society that the friend you talk to at a weird time on a conference call because they're on a continent makes it into your 15 and their lived experiences become real to you one of the greatest things that happened to me was managing a development team in manila in the philippines because they got into my circle of thought i started to think it's one thing to think like academically and like like a good open-minded wealthy american about international need it's another thing to literally see on a spreadsheet what we pay those employees and why we work with them right because we can we have like 12 of those people for one american programmer right this is this is how big systems work they anonymize everything so if there's a hope it's that globalism starts putting faces on things again i don't think it's a shoo-in which is by the way why i think the church really needs to matter right now the church really needs to matter right now and the church doesn't need to matter in like uh trying to like win offices or moralize about social issues the church needs to put a face back on humanity so the species doesn't go extinct that's that's the terms i'm talking about like uh sorry if you've heard this because i think someone asked a very similar question real recently so don't listen to the last two episodes of science mike but like if you talk to the nerds like what should matter politically whole different set of priorities priority number one for the species co2 in the atmosphere number one easy number two why co2 in the atmosphere because no other justice issues matter if we don't have fresh water and food for anyone right so co2 in the atmosphere number two methane in the atmosphere the atmosphere gets one and two because we only have one atmosphere in the entire universe that supports human life right after co2 nukes we have to do something about nuclear weapons why because nuclear weapons send one mat one message to the world and it's hashtag no lives matter because it's the end of the species the next issue for the nerds poverty surprise poverty scientifically speaking seems to be the root of most social ills right how do we fix terrorism get rid of hungry and thirsty people how do we fix you know justice issues poverty poverty poverty poverty poverty stop fearing each other and start feeding each other start building systems where every person has education and economic empowerment because the nerds realize this is the most violent species of primate on the planet and if you look at our closest relatives chimpanzees and bonobos they're almost identical to each other they've split very recently in the evolutionary history of the species what is the difference between chimps and bonobos chimps developed in an environment where resources are scarce and bonobos developed in an environment where resources are plentiful our nearest cousins so us the solution to conflict and humanity don't make scarcity an issue for humans ever the smartest thing you can do to protect yourself is make sure your neighbor is not hungry that's it that's it open and shut so one day when a phd scientist runs for president on that platform and everyone laughs at them they're they're talking about really well understood science and if we don't get the resolve to think that way instead of like like bathrooms or whatever like these are just not existential for the species problems we know what the existential issues are and they're so scary we don't want to talk about them so i think the church needs to become the voice that says let's bring the kingdom of heaven near right and what's the what's the metaphor of christ used over and over and over and over and over and over and over for the kingdom of heaven a table at which the poor were fed hi my name is daniel and i was a missionary overseas for several years in a city where it was 100 muslim and in that place i really discovered a love for jesus because traditionalism the church christian infrastructure all of that was stripped away and the only thing i had was jesus and with that i was desperate to share about jesus with the fellow muslims that were around me but a lot of trauma happened very intense trauma and i had to come back to america and i expected to feel safe in the church but the church was the hardest place to come back to yeah and i i went to all the churches around the metro atlanta area and just was not safe for me and then i discovered your podcast so thank you and gave me so much hope and restoration and healing so with that i was just thinking and i i mean no disrespect to this church of course do you have is there a whisper or any movement to start a denomination of your own uh that's a no yeah i mean running from the stage full trot huge no um that's why is people get asking if me and michael are going to start a denomination holy a movement okay how does a dropout science guy son of a baptist and a podcaster sorry hamilton i got to do there um no there are no plans to start a denomination uh because i love denominations loved and i used to hate denominations as a baptist because there was one true domination the southern baptist church and a bunch of heretics and then i came back to faith and denominations were this sign that there's this terrible disunity in a church that was holy and unified and i read scholarship about the early church there's never been a unified church the the church the mother church is called the mother church of verse did you know that the mother church was in jerusalem it was burned to the ground in 1872 and the main person at that church was james the brother of jesus and james had such respect from the jewish leaders because he upheld every letter of the law so even though they had this weird jesus as the messiah thing he still upheld the jewish faith and uh peter and john worked closely with james in that church now along comes this guy named paul formerly saul of tarsus who literally tortured christians for their turning back on the true faith of judaism and he was not around when jesus was around never met jesus and then he's walking on the road to damascus and he sees a blinding light that causes him to abandon the faith of his childhood judaism and start to fight against an empire in which he was a citizen well rome you know this they put him in prison the romans but there was such tension that paul would go and start churches mainly for gentiles so the church in jerusalem was like yeah go for that gentile paul yeah i could bring gentiles to the church whatever as long as we have to do it fine so paul goes and starts these gentile churches that also included a diaspora jews who uh couldn't speak hebrew so they couldn't read the torah directly and he says all these things about jesus and then leaves and then word about what he's teaching instead of these churches gets back to the mother church in jerusalem so they would send a missionary after paul to correct paul's bad teaching this history and so then paul would hear about the mother church basically being like listen he's paul's got a good heart bless his heart but it's logos like that's greek jesus wasn't greek right so so so then paul would write these letters to my church my friends how quickly you have turned away from the gospel and james is like what are you kidding me i knew jesus paul he's my brother i know what jesus was about i talked to him paul's like oh yeah he appeared to me in light so how many books did james get in the new testament anybody know how many books are attributed to paul in the new testament a lot like at least 14 and why because the mother church in jerusalem got burned to the ground in 1872 and suddenly paul i'm sure he i'm sure he was grieved but suddenly paul's writings are the only writings left from that time period in any significant number because they weren't kept in that church so the first person to contribute most of the bible was like a rebel outcast to the mother church in jerusalem jesus had been gone like five minutes like five minutes and all right the church is under this fundamental divide between is the gospel primarily centered in the story of judaism or is the bible primarily centered in the hellenized culture of the diaspora throughout the empire of rome because i don't know if you know this jerusalem just burned to the ground and jews are despised by the roman empire and i had this thing if you follow me i used to say with me and paul it was complicated love jesus paul's an idiot and and then i realized i literally think i saw jesus in a bright light and i stopped i wasn't a baptist anymore and i started saying these things at my baptist church they were like are you kidding me mike are you kidding me there's never been a one story of the gospel maybe maybe when jesus was here but according to the gospels none of us got it while that happens right like the disciples we have these stories of them in the presence of jesus and like jesus is amazing the kingdom of heaven is near can i sit at your right hand what what do you mean like when like when you throw the romans out of jerusalem can i sit at your right hand and jesus will be like well i mean the kingdom of heaven is like a little yeast that's put into dough like is that a yes jesus well the kingdom of heaven is just like it's like a mustard seed it's very small but it'll grow into a tree where i'll find shade like does that shade involve me at your right hand when we defeat rome not starting a domination i that wasn't a joke but my timing made it seem like it was but i am in the spirit of paul telling people the church considers gentiles that they are welcome because the history of this movement is everyone is welcome everyone is welcome who's welcome the remnant is welcome who's welcome the slave is welcome those who sit under the oppression of an empire but here is the true and scandalous nature of the gospel the roman soldier was welcome as a straight white male in america the fact that the roman soldier is welcome in this movement means a lot to me that's who i am right i walk a gilded path through society no one follows me around if i'm in a department store thinking i'm gonna shoplift no one tells me i don't belong anywhere but when when roman soldier spoke to jesus he had a weird posture with him why why are you interested why are you interested in this story not the same what happened with the wealthy it's easier for a camel to pass through and i have a needle than for you to do this why what do i have to do sell all your possessions and give them to the poor what do you have to do you have to die to yourself every day what do you have to do you have to pick up your cross and carry it what a subversive story to be to be a roman in the gospel is to set down your sword and to pick up a cross to suffer with the afflicted here's my hope here's the secret you know the secret science mike plan keep doing events like this and a lot of people show up and churches not just welcoming churches like dunwoody who is genuinely thrilled to have you all here but other churches who listen on the internet scandalously wondering what the literatures are about and they go how do we reach people why won't they come anymore you love them and you don't judge them you do exactly what jesus did and paul later did is you say everyone everyone everyone is welcome here do the high numbers of podcasts matter to me yeah because it represents real people do the sold out events matter to me yeah because it represents something that literally millions of americans literally millions of americans long for god and are interested in jesus and don't feel welcome at literally any church in their city but like punk rock bands don't start corporations their job is is to create a temporary community and their job is to create art but why i like working with michael so much is art leads culture and i don't want to tear the church down i want to wake it up hey um i'm james and this is my first time i've heard a lot about you but it's my first time actually here and um you actually speak but it's terrible i'm sorry i apologize if this is like something you've already answered before if it's easy i'll be so happy all right so i'm a school teacher and also just um the more i get to hear about my friends lives and kind of create some vulnerability i'm hearing so much of seeing kids struggling with dyslexia being on the spectrum having friends share that they're bipolar have dealing with depression and um all these issues right and from my opinion it seems like we live in such a society that values um production as the number one value um and which in turn views all these other people that are dealing with these kinds of things as damaged goods and really there isn't it's becoming a a decreasing role for them in our society so i guess my question is i'm talking about what does the church do to to stand up and say actually there is a place but on a practical level of just not oh you're welcome in our service on sundays you know but really like no we value um all people and and even though american culture says yeah this production and and progress is the number one value but the church stands up and says actually it's not um what does that look like practically though i'm actually a fan of capitalism for all i critique it uh only because the other economic models seem worse it's not that capitalism is good you know what i mean it's like a stone square wheel but your other option is like tar you know well this will like hold an axle um but the problem with capitalism is that emphasis on productivity especially we're almost like not even capitalist anymore in america we're like hyper capitalists like what is the mandate for a corporation to return value to its shareholders you can do some really messed up stuff and fulfill that mandate don't worry though google figured out like and don't be evil one of the most powerful moments i've ever experienced in any church was watching a young person with autism stand on stage on a sunday morning and sing and i've seen some seriously amazing people make spiritual music i've heard the most talented communicators in the world not just at church but in larger is not just one of those powerful experiences i've had in church it's most powerful experiences i've had in my life and we all learned something that day you don't applaud and cheer for someone who has autism it's overwhelming it's terrifying they've done this thing that is so alienating i'll be honest i'm an extrovert so i walk out and i see all these people looking at me and i go wow i'm amazing right um but right after i had a motorcycle accident and a double brain bleed and i stretched my vertical vestibular system while wearing a helmet i had anxiety attacks and crowds i was like this is bad i just quit my job to talk on stage for a living and i'm so happy that happened because first time in my life i kind of got like why applause is terrifying to someone right so we all had this moment we did the most natural thing for normal neurotypical able-bodied people and the person tried to protect themselves in all vulnerable areas and ran off the stage i get accolades all the time from people in the queer community from people of color for showing up it breaks my heart every time i've done the most basic thing i've acknowledged your basic dignity as a human being i i have a friend who i think is one of the most talented people i've ever met she writes and i said i just i'm sorry if it's creepy i just your work is so moving to me and she said you're the first and only white man who's ever said that to me i shouldn't because it's you know it's like i'm getting a gold medal for like not throwing a tomato at someone it's a weird dynamic and in that moment on that stage we created a space and we were all moved and we still didn't get it so we screwed it up we got to start listening to different stories closely and carefully and graciously we've got to learn that with only the best intent no one does this stuff on purpose that some of the things that we do that are the most sincere and most beautiful harm others something as simple as applause and cheering so we have to create new social norms we have to know when to do this instead we have to know when to do this instead right and we made all this stuff up applause isn't like biologically driven it's social conditioning we have to create new social structures that create space for everyone it's the mandate of the gospel and what does that look like i'm really consistent on this point all the time pastors call me and they say how do i make my church more diverse you make your platform more diverse you make your leadership more diverse the speakers you pay to come to your church need to be more diverse what kind of diversity every kind you can imagine and the stuff you can't imagine that other people tell you about and that includes different ability levels because here's the funny thing that happens the church is uniquely situated to not think about returning value to shareholders do you realize that that's a gift this this painful stuff we think about trustees and tithes and all the money stuff we hate is actually a gift we don't have to think about profit structures and we can create beautiful spaces on the literature's podcast we did an episode about marriage equality we were so proud of it so proud of it and we released it and it actually did shape the conversation meaningfully in the church among white people you know why because there were only white people on it we didn't even occur to us it didn't even occur to us and so i have this this incredible fear as i release that episode of all the blowback i'll get from conservative evangelicals who don't want to have a conversation about people's human dignity and the first thing i get instead was people of color saying why is this podcast so white and my instinct immediately was to get defensive and i'm trying to do this thing for justice here how dare you and i remembered mike you always tell people to commute okay honestly without hostility so i hit delete delete delete delete delete delete delete delete delete delete delete delete you're right tweet you can't just say you're right we honestly didn't think of it i said it was honest and i got raked over the coals and i should have gotten ranked over the colts i should have got wrecked over the goals and uh and we made a decision on literature's podcast that we wouldn't include diverse voices speaking on issues of diversity we'd include diverse voices speaking on issues of anything in every episode you know what happened the podcast got a lot better the podcast got so much better and the audience got bigger and the audience got more diverse and the even people that come to events got more diverse and what we've been talking about lately is every person who's ever been on literature's podcast able-bodied able mind right our our our podcast embodies ableism in the same way that it embodied whiteness in the first season so what do we want to do truly embody diversity right and every church and every community can do that it's really simple it's really simple now here this honestly happens this is a real thing a pastor told me i don't think i know any black people well enough to invite them to come lead in our church okay that's a great thing you've realized this is good i celebrate the fact that you realize that and now you you have to intentionally change your social network because how can you expect your church to embody diversity if your life doesn't right it's all choices we make it's all stuff we made up and so for accommodating people on different mental health spectrums different ability spectrums is to embody diversity not in the pew but on the platform not in belief exclusively but also in practice and to engineer social norms that accommodate people and when you do and i when i've been in those spaces they are the most christ-like spaces you can imagine jesus such an old metaphor but i love it like jesus just indwells in that space the the presence of god is so known because jesus was not just for jerusalem and jesus was not just for rome [Music] hi mike hi thanks a lot for what you do it's really meant a lot to my uh my faith you've talked quite a bit about your coming back to faith and how you have a construct that you can view god through now you haven't talked quite as much about the devil and he's really been left out of your work a lot and um just to be honest i think for a lot of christians at least that i've met the devil actually plays a large part in their lives yeah literally so i'd be interested to hear you talk a bit about from a neurological standpoint if there's been any studies of what that does in people's brains when they think about the devil also secondarily if you could talk to just how your reconstruction went when you kind of tried to put him or leave him it out of it when you did your reconstruction and also why you didn't think to make an axiom around the devil man bringing it wow uh for those not caught up with the inside crowd when i came back to faith i had to create a series of axioms that justified any storm of belief and like formalized god the bible prayer jesus in scientific terms no big deal um they fall woefully short of christian orthodoxy but that wasn't the point the point was for my inner skeptic to not make the rest of me feel like an idiot every time i prayed or every time i tried to go to church that's all they were for i made them for me and not for the world and one person i had just met in vulnerability told me he didn't believe in god anymore i told him my axioms his name was michael gunger and then he blogged about them and and he called me science mike in his blog post and then everybody started calling me science mike and um and then those axioms yada yada yada have been read like 600 000 times on my website and i don't have an axiom for the devil the closest i have is an axiom for sin it's in the book um and on my website and the reason i didn't have an axiom for the devil is i didn't think the devil was a thing at all and when i thought about the devil or demons they raised too many philosophical objections to my idea of god and they just made me feel a lot of doubt and it is weird weird conversational dynamic because i do this thing one of my favorite things in the world to do is drink two glasses of wine and then talk politics and theology with my mom and my pastor true story totally a hundred percent as soon as i get home to tallahassee i'm like so when are we going to betsy's house uh because i'm getting true glasses of wine talk about politics and theology uh because my mom and my pastor arguably the two most significant uh spiritual forces in my life are both real big on the devil thing and really big on like demons are like beings and i'm like but wait wait wait do you not see all the philosophical problems this raises with god the god is all good all powerful in in your model not mine god is all good and all powerful but it just like allows these beings to exist and wage war upon humanity it'd be like like i'm not all good or all-powerful but it's like my children need to understand the value of suffering so i'm just going to release beg bugs into the house and not get rid of them even though i could i actually said that to my mom and my pastor but that was a three glass night and that doesn't usually happen and uh i like mom how do you know the devil's real because i know you can't say that mom like i need like a rational justification for why i should accept the idea of fallen spiritual beings who have in some way been empowered to because i've met the devil just as much as i've met god appeal to experience logically messy but hard to refute i still don't have an accent for the devil i still tend to use that sort of language hesitantly here's the thing you gotta remember about me there's a reason i start every event every event saying i don't have a college degree and i'm not an ordained pastor because my work is actually about living the messy progress of rebuilding my life in public so that other people who don't feel like they have it all together realize they're not alone and you just i i make it look really nice because i'm a good communicator and i make it just look like uh like this beautiful city but a lot of the buildings are hollow and you just walked into an empty building uh oh thank you so you walked so i don't know i don't know here's what i do know uh let's talk about how long have i been really into the trinity again when did i talk to richard on the podcast like this spring it's like just before that uh rob introduced me to richard rohr and we talked about um artificial intelligence and the trinity i want to talk about the trinity and i was like this trinity just blew my mind and so the idea of christ introduced the idea of antichrist to me and so i could imagine that in the same way that jesus represented an incarnation of christ and the church would say the only full incarnation of christ but that when we model our lives after jesus we all become more limited incarnations of christ that sometimes people can also become incarnation of antichrist i think sometimes we call those people demon possessed i think sometimes we say those people are motivated by the devil or satan i mean let's be honest the biblical language for this being is quite diverse at some point in church history they talk about it's like if you took if you took harry potter and made all the death eaters voldemort it's like the same kind of literary idea it's like it's all it's all voldemort is that not true oh i just thought it was really good anyway sorry apparently i took the harry potter analogy too far but literally speaking they took these different names from different times and cultures um and they just kind of called them all one one being which i'm actually okay with because we're talking about like what would a unique incarnation of antichrist look for look like i think we see it all the time by the way i think we're in an age where antichrist is so often embodied in like i don't really care about carbon in the atmosphere i really like this big giant suv i don't really care about what kind of labor is involved in the production of my clothes i don't really think about that but sometimes like we actually get a gleeful excitement about hurting other people like if we disagree with them a lot if we just like have you been on facebook as we approach november like it's not just about talking about who's most qualified or who's criminally unqualified it's also like forget you like i actually make you suffer because of who you support i want to make you suffer for who you support i just don't i don't want to just convince you what might be what might be best for culture or society i want you to hurt my mom says that's the devil who am i to disagree that's not the first time someone's asked me to write a satan axiom i worry if i did so i would alienate more people than i help so you know it's just my theology is rough and unfinished but i also know you spoke to something very true there for many people their lived experience embodies spiritual warfare more than mine does and some things make more sense with that metaphor so i'm very reticent to to take them from it but i was the kind of kid who other than being really bullied to grow up incredibly privileged so when i got really into prayer like when i was like 9 or 10 i prayed for the devil every day i wanted the devil to get saved true story i asked jesus every day to save the devil because if jesus could save the devil and the devil stop tempting people then lots more people go to heaven that's a true story i've never told that publicly greg delete that no i just i think it's too far from my lived experience i mean that's the thing maybe you should write a devil axiom no if you do i'll post it that's my deal thank you all right so this one is a a little bit less practical in real life a little bit more theoretical science and uh philosophy it's long it's easy oh probably not so i was content being an open theist before i started listening to your work uh okay it was my inner defense against calvinism or just determinism in general we were going hard in the theology terms okay okay so i started thinking about physics after i started listening to you i've always liked physics a little bit but i started thinking about classical theology says that god is you know omnipresent he's everywhere and i started thinking okay well if god is everywhere then he exists in all if he's a spatially infinite being yeah and exists in some sort of relativistic now for him couldn't he theoretically from any one point of creation observe any other point of creation instantaneously wouldn't that mean the by his very nature of being physically spatially infinite yes be able to observe all points in time whether or not he had foreknowledge or not yes so what does that do for determinism wow okay uh this is kind of wrecking my faith a little bit let's wreck your faith okay we'll fix that part um i'm going to assume not everyone knows the terms calvinism determinism and open theism is that a safe assumption yeah okay calvin john calvin a theologian uh what played a big part in the reformation uh the reformation is how we got protestantism right and he he came after luther martin luther but he came and he had this reformed view of protestant theology and the center of the gravity the american church is reformed and reformed theology has a number of points to it or calvinism one of them is that everything is predestined by god uh which means people who are saved because calvinism includes eternal conscious torment for people who aren't the people that are saved are elected by god so if you're elected by god then congratulations eternity in heaven if you're not elected i'm sorry our consolation prize is pretty bad i don't mean to make light but it's such a heavy issue i have to make a joke or cry and so that's calvinism like the worst exploration calvinism ever um and and predestination determinism is a different idea in physics and that's that everything happens due to consistent physical laws everything is determined by physical laws and it's like a physics predestination uh basically and then open theism is an attempt to rescue theism theism by the way it doesn't mean you believe in god you can believe in god without being a theist buddhists do it all the time um a theist asserts that not only does god exist but god is a being with like specific will and agency and a plan right theism holds all those things i see some theology nurse thinking they're shaking their heads in the f affirmatives that's good open theism is attempts to wreck you rescue theism especially among people who were calvinists to say that god is you know omniscient i'm gonna present all those things but that god doesn't have complete knowledge of the future that the the universe is indeterministic in some way and god leaves open out of god's goodness the opportunity for creation to be co-created with god on an ongoing basis so god doesn't know the precise final score of everything but god's powerful enough to to steer that process i hope i'm not murdering open theism okay because greg boyd's a friend and he would be upset um and then you have me who uh i'm a materialist the universe is made of of matter and forces and and energy and it's predictable so yeah john calvin was right thank you and i thought that one would kill as many nerds are in here um no so so then i wrecked your faith by talking about relativity so here's the funny thing about einstein if you've never heard this i'm sorry because you won't sleep well tonight there's no such thing as now in relativity because time advances at different rates based on what gravitation and velocity it means based on your local gravity and local velocity the rate of passage of time can change so in between any two points now can shift backwards and forward relative to each other in practical terms if you take two points and you put them 10 billion light years apart that's a long way admittedly and you change their relative velocity by like 800 miles an hour from from away back you can shift the now-ness that they share by more than the span of human history i don't believe that well it makes gps satellites work relativity is not fringe science and so it implies that all points of space-time always exist so the past isn't gone the future is not yet to be formed all coordinates of space-time a single substance of four dimensions three spatial one timbrel at least three spatial um that exists so like in theory you're still getting here tonight you're still being born and your great-grandchildren are already there they just happen to be at a different coordinate than you're experiencing right now eek who so then but wait wait like sex mike if that's true then there is no free will probably i mean you make a good argument that way i'm a compatibilist uh and so compatibilists man we're getting real nerdy compatibilists believe that free will is actually compatible with physical determinism that physical determinism is the mechanism of action of free will oh uh and a lot of scientists say we're idiots um but there are like legit philosophers and neuroscientists who aren't compatibilist i'm not like totally alone there what does this tell us about god this is actually my favorite part of physics we make god like us so we can understand god we ascribe to god knowledge and consciousness and will and agency by the way all of those things are based on this moment happens then this moment happens then this moment happens then this moment happens but any god that's compatible with big bang cosmology or einstein's theory of relativity is weird any being that can simultaneously embody all possible points of space time any be by the way if you run the clock backwards long enough on physics you get a singularity we don't think singularity has time it turns out this idea of an eternal and unchanging god makes a lot of sense in physics it just makes all the sense in the world but how do we relate to an eternal and unchanging god by being a christian seriously that's the whole point of jesus is to put god in a face to have god tell parables to have god not just suffer not just experience joy but to have a temporal consciousness so when i have these these these moments of a god i can't understand an infinite mystery a father creator of a trinity i i contemplate that god through jesus christ jesus of nazareth the incarnation of the christ of the trinity and in that god i find a god i can relate to and understand now there's this incredible beauty and mystery that i find in a god of relativity and in physics but it confuses the heck out of me and it makes me feel small and it makes me feel unknown it makes me feel like god couldn't possibly know me and that that is actually to me the beauty of trinitarian theology to put a god in three a god in three now i've talked a lot about the creator and the christ but the most amazing thing about trinitarian theology is you take the infinite mystery that once dwelled in a temple in jerusalem and from that point emanated holiness out to all the earth and you make the temple people and now the infinite mystery dwells within you it actually to me sounds like neil degrasse tyson saying that we're the universe thinking of itself like we literally are we come from god we come from god this this idea of being indwelled with god is is what it is to be a created being and i think that's beautiful it's really not well stated scientifically but i found most of the time will end on this what i have found over and over and over and over and over and over as our faith falls down when we try to master it that's when it falls down when we try to get to the boss battle in the video game and get a high score i figured out god that's like saying i finished the internet you don't finish the internet and you don't figure out god that that god is not a million or billion or trillion or septillion or auxilian peace puzzle god is a companion on the journey through the path of life who gave us the gift of the journey and is also the path god is part of everything that we do and everything we understand and everything that we don't and i use this image in the book but the traditional approach in the west to knowledge is to wrestle with reality like a coal miner or a diamond miner and to pull this gem out of the earth this truth that i've discovered through the power of my intellect and to guard it with a closed fist and i don't do that anymore it's a bad game in trust and gratitude i hold my hand out like this and sometimes these butterflies land these bits of truth these bits of beauty grace and love and i appreciate them but i never try to hold them because it would crush them they're delicate they're fragile and when god gives us gifts they may not be forever how many of you have a story where what you once thought about god doesn't work for you anymore and yet you still keep talking about god the butterfly flew away but but we're happy in faith when we learn to be grateful for what god gave us and look forward with anticipation with what gift we'll receive next don't try to win the video game enjoy the gift so you've done it you've listened to ask science mike another week sorry about that uh man stop bringing such hard questions people on the internet now i see in person i requested all future tour stops easy questions about simple well-understood ideas in science or theology none of this tough stuff uh if you'd like to see me on tour go to findinggodontheways.comtor i'd love to see you i want to thank greg nordine for editing the show andrew golucky for his work in pre-production and all of my good friends the patrons on patreon who make this show possible thanks for listening everybody and i'll talk to you next week [Music] [Applause] [Music]