Ross Douthat: Why You Should Be Religious

His new book addresses the deepest questions. I ask some more.

Ross is a writer and a dear old colleague, back when we were both bloggers at The Atlantic. Since then he’s been a columnist at the New York Times — and, in my mind, he’s the best columnist in the country. The author of many books, including Grand New Party and The Decadent Society, his new one is Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious (which you can pre-order now). So in this podcast, I play — literally — Devil’s advocate. Forgive me for getting stuck on the meaning of the universe in the first 20 minutes or so. It picks up after that.

For two clips of our convo — on the difference between proselytizing and evangelizing, and the “hallucinations of the sane” — see our YouTube page.

Other topics: Creation; the improbable parameters of the Big Bang; the “fine-tuning” argument I cannot understand; extraterrestrial life; Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; Hitch; the atheist/materialist view; the multiverse; quantum physics; consciousness; John von Neumann; Isaac Newton; human evolution; tribal survival; the exponential unity of global knowledge; Stephen Barr’s Modern Physics and Ancient Faith; the substack Bentham’s Bulldog; why humans wonder; miracles; Sebastian Junger and near-death experiences; the scientific method; William James; religious individualists; cults; Vatican II; Pope Francis; the sex-abuse crisis in the Church; suffering and theodicy; Lyme Disease; the AIDS crisis; Jesus and the Resurrection; Peter J Williams’ Can We Trust the Gospels?; and the natural selection of religions.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Jon Rauch on the tribalism of white evangelicals; Evan Wolfson on the history of marriage equality, Yoni Appelbaum on how America stopped building things, Chris Caldwell on the political shifts in Europe, Nick Denton on the evolution of new media, Francis Collins on faith and science, and Mike White of White Lotus fame. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

On last week’s episode with Sebastian Junger on near-death experiences, a listener points to the following video for the part of the pod where we discuss quantum physics and consciousness:

I’m not scientifically qualified to make a point on this. But I have a little more respect for Ross and Sebastian than for Tyson. Here’s another view on near-death experiences:

Sebastian Junger’s claim that NDEs are uncannily alike, especially through history, isn’t accurate. I wrote about this years ago for the L.A. Times. NDEs often vary according to a person’s culture and beliefs. For example, American afterlife visitors typically say God sent them back because “it’s not your time yet,” whereas India’s near-death survivors are told there was a “clerical error.” Also, in centuries past, postmortem voyagers frequently went to purgatory or hell, whereas today’s sojourners ascend to a decidedly nonjudgmental heaven, according to Carol Zaleski’s Otherworld Journeys, a comparison of modern and ancient near-death accounts. NDEs are a fascinating topic, and Junger’s experiences are intriguing, but I don’t think some of what he said holds up.

From a listener who liked that episode and others:

I enjoyed John Gray’s second appearance on your show, as well as Sebastian Junger and your friendly teasing of him. Too bad neither you nor Gray appreciate food or drink. I’m a serious cook and not a glutton, but food is a great pleasure. It’s infinitely superior to marijuana and hallucinogens, which open a door to nowhere. Your buddy Rod Dreher thinks it’s a door opened for Satan’s entrance. Well, I don’t know about that, but I suspect drug insight is not so much false as non-existent.

By the way, I loved your reading of “Aubade” on the Junger episode, and one of my favorite guests on your podcast was Christian Wiman.

Another listener on the John Gray pod:

I enjoyed your conversation with Gray, and now I have to download his book to try and better understand his ideas. One thing struck me throughout the conversation: I would have liked you (and Gray) to define what you mean by the term “liberal” or “liberalism”. As you know, Europeans and Americans often mean very different things when talking about liberalism. Europeans (especially continentals) tend to mean free-market capitalism, as opposed to socialistic or highly regulated economies. The “free” being the operative word, and individual freedom in the social sphere may be understood, but I haven’t noticed it being an essential part of the European usage.

For Americans, liberal means leftist, especially social and culture radicalism. To the extent American liberals are associated with economic issues, they are dirigiste, pro-regulation. It seemed to me that you and Gray were floating between these definitions of liberalism. Am I wrong? Could you please take a moment to clarify what liberalism means to you?

I thought I did. I usually do. Here’s my post, “Removing the Bedrock of Liberalism,” which lays it out clearly. Another listener asks about a philosopher I discussed at length with John Gray:

I have only read Oakeshott sporadically, largely by bouncing around Rationalism in politics and other essays. If I wanted to do a dive into his work, should I start with On Human Conduct, or just commit fully to Rationalism in politics and other essays, or should I start somewhere else?

I’m especially interested if Oakeshott has commentary on Burke’s notion of a social contract with the future. Coming off of a fresh read of Reflections on the Revolution in France, it struck me that Burke’s writing is actually quite convoluted. If anything, the idea that people are bound by a “fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place” reads to me as a duty and not a contract. (These readings are part of a larger project I’m pursuing to reframe “what we owe the future” in terms of a duty, rather than in pure utilitarianism.)

Oakeshott was not that interested in Burke. My own idiosyncratic take is that the last chapter in On Human Conduct is a good place to get a flavor of the man.

Another listener has a blast from the past:

As an aside, I would be surprised if you recognize me, but during your episode with Anderson Cooper, I discovered that we were all members of the same YMCA when I was living in DC in the ‘90s. (I also occasionally attended Mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral.) I don’t know whether I should be embarrassed or proud to admit that I still have my old gym ID, which I found among expired passports and driver licenses:

Ha! It’s gone now. Here’s a rec for a return guest, Fareed Zakaria:

One of the best books I’ve read in the past 20 years is Zakaria’s 2008 book The Post-American World. I think it was misunderstood, as many thought it was an anti-American book, but it really focused on how the rest of the world was rising and the US had less influence and economic impact than it did in the post-WWII era.

I’ve thought of this book often during the first few chaotic weeks of the Trump administration. During his first term, I heard Zakaria on an interview speaking about how Trump was accelerating trends he had written about in his book. As Trump flexes his muscles with Canada, Mexico, and countries in South and Central America, it feels like whatever gains Trump is making in the short term will cause countries to further distance themselves from us in the long term. (There’s an new article in the NYT about this: “One Response to Trump’s Tariffs: Trade That Excludes the U.S.”) I’m curious to hear Zakaria’s thoughts on these trends and how Trump is impacting the decades to come, in what feels like a new era.

Fareed has been very vocal so far. Next up, a reader dissents over the latest Dish:

I’ve just read the dissents you chose to publish and your frankly flippant responses. I want to note one more thing for you: Trump’s executive orders don’t just threaten DEI, but DEIA, which includes accessibility. Accessibility has several meanings, but one of them is the procurement and design of technology that is accessible to Americans with disabilities, such as blind people like myself who use screen reader technology to read digital content, including your blog.

I was hopeful that Trump did not plan to attack this aspect, but his attacks on the disability hiring policies of the FAA indicate that people like me are to be marginalized by his administration. He asserted, falsely, that people with very severe disabilities were being hired as air traffic controllers, and then generally attacked disabled people. (He was every inch the man whom Fred Trump III alleges told him to allow his disabled son to die.) This is unacceptable, regardless of what you or anyone else thinks of DEI — which has nothing to do with the bipartisan Americans with Disabilities Act passed over 30 years ago.

Which is why the ADA is still in force — and that is obviously separate from DEI. But I can see why broad references to DEIA in Trump’s executive orders could be alarming. Here is the National Association for the Deaf’s response to this. The WaPo reports that S. Jordan Wright, director of communications for the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, is confused, as he may well be: “Things are up in the air right now. We don’t know exactly what’s going on.” I’d only note that the ADA remains the law of the land.

DEIA is also personal for this reader:

I am in the disabled category, having been born profoundly deaf.

Thanks to DEIA programs, I received special education in my teens, an education at Gallaudet University and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, have three degrees, and have worked as a lab technician, teacher, guidance counselor, and finally as an electronic publishing coordinator through my working life. I raised three children, one of whom is also deaf and received the same education. He is now an aerospace technician building military aircraft. (His deaf infant son will also soon need special education to become independent.) We are fully self-sufficient and employed, raising our kids, driving cars, supporting the economy through paying our bills, and paying taxes.

Take away all DEI(A) programs, and we will be back in the dark ages: dependent on family members for minor things like phone calls, on the kindness of strangers for any information to maintain our lives, and severely restricted in any education.

From what they are saying, this does not look like the end of all the programs helping the deaf you refer to, but of course I understand that vigilance is vital.

Another dissenter looks to Israel:

In your column last week, you refer to some people as “Gaza-obsessed” — and there is plenty in Gaza to get obsessed about. We know that at least 40,000 people have died there from bombs made in America, and conservative estimates are that a minimum of 25,000 were women and children. When 9/11 killed 3,000 Americans, we hunted down Osama Bin Laden, but we did not kill his family or others living in his compound. Israel — which was attacked and 1,200 were killed and 300 taken hostage — hunts down Hamas members and bombs everyone: the alleged Hamas member, his family, his neighbors, and anyone else in the area. This is a hideous massacre and the source of a lot of people’s “obsession”.

When people complain about this situation, they are labeled “antisemitic,” which is profoundly unfair. I very much supported Yitzhak Rabin, but I think it is obvious that Netanyahu is a butcher who wants to take all of the Palestinians and their neighbors land to expand Israel and is happy to kill as many as possible, whether they be combatants or children.

This morning I learned that the Trump administration issued an order that any foreign student or teacher who criticizes Israel will be immediately have their visa revoked and be deported. I think anyone would support this if they were physically harming Jewish students, but banning speech on a college campus is something a lot of people cannot support. We do have a First Amendment!

Even Biden, who swears by Human Rights, ignored this slaughter and did little to stop it. Do we believe in Human Rights only for certain humans or for all humans? This is where the obsession you speak of comes from.

As my reader may know, I have not taken the slaughter in Gaza lightly, and regard the relentless move toward ethnic cleansing in Greater Israel to be abhorrent. I also find attempts to ban anti-semitic speech on campus — and to ban support for boycotts — to be lamentable. Expressing bigotry is a First Amendment right. My point was simply to say that, to win elections, the Dems need to focus not on student activists but on regular Americans.

Another reader addresses the Dem reckoning:

It gives me no joy whatsoever to admit that I grow ever more estranged from my political party — the Democrats. I basically seem to now be an independent — in spirit if not in official registration. And this quote from your column is a good example of why I feel that way: “And a host at the DNC forum, Jonathan Capehart, is blaming racism and misogyny for Kamala’s loss — and everyone on stage agrees.”

Trump just won 77 million votes in the 2024 election. So maybe asserting, or even implying, that those tens of millions of voters are racists is not the best way to win back their support?

Another thing, of course, is that projecting faults onto others for problems that we need to address in ourselves (or in our organizations) prevents us from engaging in self-correcting measures. And Dem leaders obviously need a course correction. Their social justice extremism is alienating not just to Trump voters but even to ostensible Democrats like me.

And yet the likes of Capehart — a Washington Post columnist and MSNBC host — assert that the Democrats are not in fact in any trouble. He asserted as much recently on the PBS News Hour:

Jonathan Capehart: The party has a direction … What I took away from that — from the forum last night — is that they are more concerned about misinformation, disinformation, getting the message out and how do they catch up with the incredible infrastructure that is there on the right.

And so one thing I noticed is that, as each candidate was talking about what they wanted to do or what they thought or the direction of the party, you saw heads nodding all over the stage. And so while there are eight people, maybe half of them are — actually stand a chance. Maybe half of the half stand a chance. We will see.

But the Democrats — trust me, the Democrats aren’t in trouble.

David Brooks: Democrats are in big trouble.

Listen, their whole worldview has been blown apart. They thought of themselves as the party of the marginalized. They’re now the party of the college-educated on the coast. They thought they could spend a lot of money, but it turns out that’s kind of inflationary.

They didn’t think a lot of Black and brown voters were going to vote for Donald Trump. Like, they should take a year off, my Democratic colleagues, take — do some serious thinking, because a lot of your mental categories have to be reinvented and reimagined.

I now live in Bizarro World: the idea that reality has a liberal bias is discredited by these exchanges where the liberal (Capehart) has no grasp of reality but the conservative (Brooks) firmly asserts it.

Capehart is a propagandist and Democratic hack. He actually said to those who all ascribed Harris’ loss to “misogynoir”: “You passed.” It is, precisely, a woke litmus test imposed by a Democratic Party enforcer posing as a journalist. Since he’s at the WaPo, of course, one assumes he’s just an extension of the DNC.

Another continues the reader debate from last week:

I am glad you are sticking to your stance despite the strong dissents. I want to ask the reader who is dismayed by the immigration arrests or deportations how they would handle this issue. Not addressing the issue isn’t a choice, because that was the central plank of Trump’s manifesto. Given his track record and the acolytes around him, I am surprised they are sticking to deporting those with criminal records. The uncertainty this creates should work as a disincentive to future illegal immigrants.

If it sounds harsh, then let me tell you that as an immigrant myself, I came to the West to escape the lawlessness in Asia. I don’t want it replicated here in exchange for diversity or culture, thank you.

It’s striking to me how so many legal immigrants see what many non-immigrants don’t: that lawlessness is not good for anyone. Another reader:

I understand your point about gender versus sex. So yes, let the birth certificate state what the person was born as (a female, in the case of my trans step-grandson). But can you imagine how it will be for him — presenting very much as male, having undergone the full transition (and SO much happier, I have to tell you) — to present his passport to the authorities stating that he is female? Wouldn’t this, if anything, cause confusion in some cases — or, more worryingly, derision by those who choose to regard trans people as freaks?

That’s why trans people could also have a separate gender category. And another:

Thanks for the January 24th column, especially your comments about trans supremacism. I was also around for the earlier battles, having co-founded the first gay student group at Cornell in 1968, and I agree with your analysis completely. I am grateful for having been born in 1948 instead of 1998, when I might have been a target for the gender “transition” industry instead of being allowed to grow up into a happy lesbian adult.

As a former competitive fencer, I am also outraged at the demolition of women’s sports. Amazing how many of these “compassionate” liberals do not even understand that structural differences in the skulls of males vs females automatically put women athletes at risk in any kind of sport where there might be head-to-head contact. Also I don’t want to deal with chicks with dicks in my gym dressing room. I particularly resent the disdain for and devaluing of classically gay and lesbian cultures, styles, and manners in favor of whatever is being pushed by tedious scolds.

It remains a fact, in my mind, that the current LGBTQIA+ movement is deeply hostile to homosexuality, science, and liberal values. That’s why I have come to see them as a major threat to gay men and lesbians — in a very sinister disguise.

This next reader adds more context to an odd item from last week:

I took your quoting RFK Jr. on Lyme Disease being a government bioweapon as an attempt to frame him as a crank. Well, the likely next NIH director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, believes that same premise is “possible (and perhaps likely).” The full quote:

The mid-20th century US biomedical research establishment was psychopathic, whole-heartedly embracing reckless, deadly investigations in the name of developing vaccines and bioweapons. It is possible (& perhaps likely, though not proven) that the emergence and spread of Lyme disease may have been caused by this research program, which included large open-air testing of intentionally infected ticks on US soil.

Yep, that is indeed possible. RFK Jr is not wrong about everything. But I really don’t want measles or polio to return, do you?

Lastly, over in Substack Notes, Steve Schmidt — an antagonist of mine during the Sarah Palin days (though he later saw my point) — takes my side on a crucial issue:

I would like to change the name CVS and replace it with WALGREENS. Awful, incompetent and maddening do not begin to describe the kafkaesque theater of the absurd each interaction brings. It is astonishing and because of Andrew Sullivan’s vent I know I am not alone or crazy. This week, I jumped off of the Chain Pharmacy madness for an independent pharmacy that may be a day slower, but answers the phone and can provide basic customer service.

I’m with Amazon now. I hope CVS dies a terrible death.

Thanks as always for the dissents and other emails, and you can join the conversation via dish@andrewsullivan.com.

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