ROSS DOUTHAT: Why you should be religious.

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In 2012, New York Times columnist published Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, a book about how mainstream American religion was devolving into the prosperity gospel, superstitious cults and other forms of heterodox faith. Thirteen years later, the American religious landscape has changed, and Ross wrote a new book tackling a much more basic question: why should you be religious at all. He joins and to discuss that book, titled Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious.

This new book, Douthat says, “assumes a highly individualist culture” as its audience. This individualist culture is one where each person thinks of the choice of whether to believe in a god as a highly person one — the culture itself cannot support one’s faith fully any more. But the biggest individual challenge to Douthat’s thesis in this episode comes from Damir, who says: “I feel most religious people try to get through … happiness and/or meaning. I am not thirsting for those. I am not hungry for them. I feel I’m ok.”

Douthat responds by posing a hypothetical: “Suppose you die and youre summoned before the judgment throne of God and God says, ‘Seems like were friendly for arguments for being religious, you weren’t 100 percent convinced, but still: why didnt you go to church?” Douthat argues that, while he himself is believing Catholic, there are nevertheless many “commonalities of religious experience. They are not all saying the same thing, but they are real and suggest something.” This makes common ground with Shadi who, as a Muslim, disagrees with Douthat about the divinity of Christ, but who, as a believer, agrees that we should all be religious.

In our bonus section for paid subscribers, Damir, Shadi and Ross talk about theory of mind; whether AI will ever be conscious; what consciousness is for; whether Daniel Dennett is in hell; and why being lukewarm is a bad idea.