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Episode 24 - An Interview with Daniel Dacombe & Daryl Van Tongeren - Part 2
81 Plays4 days ago
Humanist Canada's Daniel Dacombe sits down for another discussion with Daryl Van Tongeren.
Daniel sits down with Daryl again to talk about his new book "Done: How to Flourish After Leaving Religion", as well as his research on religious disaffiliation and religious residue.
Daryl R. Van Tongeren, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology and Director of the Frost Center for Social Science Research at Hope College. He studies big questions central to being human, including meaning, religion, and virtues. He has published nearly 250 scientific papers and four books on these themes. He has earned several international research awards and been named Fellow of several prestigious professional organizations. He lives in Holland, MI with his wife, Sara, and he enjoys running, biking, reading, and making his own hot sauce.
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Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
And think humility is kind of funny because it's one of those, like, once you think you've got it, you've lost it sort of thing. Yeah. Oh, good. I'm humble. Shit.
Introduction to The Voice of Canadian Humanism
00:00:19
Speaker
Welcome to The Voice of Canadian Humanism, the official podcast of Humanist Canada. Join us as we delve into thought-provoking discussions, explore critical issues, and celebrate the values of reason, compassion, and secularism through the humanist lens.
00:00:35
Speaker
Welcome to the conversation.
Welcoming Dr. Daryl Van Tongeren for Part Two
00:00:39
Speaker
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Voice of Canadian Humanism. My name is Daniel Daikom, and I'm joined again for part two of our interview with Dr. Daryl Van Tongeren. Daryl, thank you for coming back.
00:00:50
Speaker
Thanks so much for having me. I'd say long time no see, but it it really wasn't. We we didn't rest on our laurels too long with this, and I'm really gratified for you coming back so soon.
00:01:02
Speaker
Yeah, so happy to be back.
Exploring 'Done, How to Flourish After Leaving Religion'
00:01:04
Speaker
um For our listeners' benefit, ah the previous interview covered, I think, a lot of really interesting ground in ah in your research and in your book, which is called Done, How to Flourish After Leaving Religion.
00:01:20
Speaker
And we're going to pick up more or less where we left off and go on with some more of those topics that we didn't get to cover. I had a laundry list of questions and ideas and I think, unfortunately, there's there's never enough time and always too much to discuss, which which which is you know a feature, not a bug, I think, of these kinds of conversations.
00:01:44
Speaker
um But I do encourage our listeners to go back and listen to part one before they listen to this part of the conversation, as it really, I think, sets up a lot of the concepts that we're going to dive back
Dr. Daryl's Research on Religion and Transitioning
00:01:55
Speaker
into. For those who did listen, but that was on a you know previous commute or something and needed a bit of a recap,
00:02:02
Speaker
Darrell, would you mind reminding our listeners who you are and what it is that you do? Yeah, my name is Darrell Van Tonger and i'm a professor of psychology at Hope College in Holland, Michigan in the United States.
00:02:15
Speaker
I study big questions, so things like meaning in life, religion and virtues. And really for the past you know eight or so years, my colleagues and I have been studying why people are leaving religion, and so what motivates them to leave religion, what are the psychological consequences of leaving religion, and how to really find a flourishing life and and a set of meaningful beliefs and relationships after religion.
00:02:40
Speaker
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And those things are possible too, which I think ah some people might suggest are not. and I do remember back in for for our listeners benefit, and I'll go a bit more into this shortly, but I, back when I was still a religious person,
00:02:57
Speaker
much of what we heard about people who left religion was, oh, well, once that happens, I mean, meaning is gone. And, you know, then you, ah you know, your assurance of salvation and of the afterlife and all those things are gone. Like, watch out, you know, because that'll but'll get you.
00:03:12
Speaker
And, you I learned since that there it's a lot more complicated than that and there's a lot more ah hope and openness and goodness on on all sides of the equation.
00:03:22
Speaker
But so yeah, flourishing after leaving religion I think is a ah great area of research to start getting into and I hope to to consider some of that myself in the future. So ah where we had been kind of discussing last time near the end of part one of our interview was about navigating some of those relationships. And we we left off a bit talking about the the reverse ABCDs, which to recap were how people ah would respond to someone who has disaffiliated or deconverted or even largely deconstructed their religious beliefs.
Understanding Family Responses to Deconversion
00:04:04
Speaker
ah Darrell, do you mind giving us a quick rundown again of what each of those letters were? Sure. Yeah. So the reverse ABCDs, we start with D. So that would be a deny.
00:04:15
Speaker
So oftentimes we might think of someone's family of origin. And if they share with their family of origin that they've changed their beliefs, deconstructed, or have left their religious faith, the family might deny. And they might say, oh, no, no, you you really haven't you know left, right?
00:04:30
Speaker
but um you know This is... ah This is ah you know an adolescent spiritual experience you're having, right? You're throwing a religious temper tantrum. um and You haven't really left.
00:04:42
Speaker
ah The second is is to convert. um And so if if denial doesn't work, and denial, you know, it's a coping mechanism. It happens anytime we encounter grief and we can think about the fact that families of origin or whomever might be grieving the fact that people might have left or changed their religious belief.
00:04:59
Speaker
So if if denial doesn't work, and it often doesn't, they turn to conversion. And so what they try to do is they try to shift um to persuade you to come back, right? And oftentimes they they they said that they're doing this out of love. And, you know, it's kind of up to each individual to perceive the motivations of someone else. It genuinely could be out of what they think is a loving motive.
00:05:21
Speaker
um right or Or it really could be that they are trying to persuade you to join you know, rejoin their group because the ideological dissimilarity is really kind of threatening to them. um This is often a pretty challenging time for someone who's left. There's a lot of back and forth. There's a lot of them trying to convince you.
00:05:40
Speaker
If that doesn't work, they might shift toward belittling. And so they might kind of put you down. They might say derogatory or denigrating things to you. um They might make it about themselves and kind of,
00:05:54
Speaker
mentioned things passive-aggressively that you know all they really wanted was their children to grow up religious, and this is just such a disappointment. no And again, that that too can be very challenging and hard to to process.
00:06:06
Speaker
and And sometimes when all of those things don't work and the the person who's changed or left can hold steadfast, sometimes, sadly, the the group or the family of origin just avoids that. And so they may, they kind of might kind of cut you out. They may stop inviting you to family or group events um and and, really just kind of other you in ways that, you know, that don't include you in part of their, their life.
00:06:34
Speaker
and ah Thank you. I think that that is a, That is a really good overview, a really good description of a process that that I've gone through, that a lot of people I know have gone
Daniel's Personal Journey Leaving Religion
00:06:45
Speaker
through.
00:06:45
Speaker
And when we spoke about it last time, and then I followed up with you by email, that was really one of the things that I think sort of tweaked our interest to come back for a part two.
00:06:57
Speaker
um and I think to kind of explain to everybody why I might need to back up a little bit and and share, ah share something from my own experience, which I think is, i think is related.
00:07:10
Speaker
And it's something that is probably pretty close to what some others have experienced. And ah just to get all cards on the table, I'm not using you for free therapy. I know that's not the kind of psychologist you are either. oh Thanks. Yeah.
00:07:24
Speaker
All right, cool. I'm just going to recline all the way back on my couch. Perfect. Yes, that's right. No, I'm kidding. All right. um I'm going to you to do it the classic Sigmund Freud accent as well, if you can manage it. Yes, yes. I'll get some inkblots as well. That's right. Oh, yes. Inkblots.
00:07:38
Speaker
That's right. They always look like you know people having an argument. I don't know why. That's right. Yeah. um So i for ah for your benefit and for the benefit of our listeners, I i was raised in ah in a Christian home. I was raised in a Presbyterian home, um you know all the like all the good English, Scots, Irish folks that made up my family.
00:08:01
Speaker
ah But as an adolescent, I began attending an evangelical church and church. ah became more immersed in that and that world, literally, because I i got baptized again. um When you're in a Presbyterian church, you get baptized as an infant.
00:08:15
Speaker
And then when you join an evangelical church, they tell you, okay, well, you need a second coat, so come on in, and then you get that done. um And I was all in, like a lot of other people my age, and went off to Bible college and then ah started working in ministry and went to seminary before a living ministry and then having a What I've um described as like a long leaving.
00:08:37
Speaker
um It was 10 years from when i left ministry to when I first said the words, all right, i have to you know i have to acknowledge that I'm an atheist here. and um And in the intervening years, somewhere a line was crossed.
00:08:52
Speaker
um Now, I was going to church for almost all of those years, and I was maintaining relationships with Christians, and I was doing all the same things. But ah but where that line actually was would be really, really hard to say. And sometimes ah sometimes I like to actually quote from ah ah quote from Pride and Prejudice, which ah some people think is a little bit weird. But have you ever read Pride and Prejudice or seen the BBC?
00:09:20
Speaker
Yeah, yep, I have. Okay, so if I mention Mr. Darcy, you're going to know who I'm talking about. um So for our listeners, I recommend pausing the episode and going to watch the BBC miniseries, which is ah worth it.
00:09:36
Speaker
ah But there's a quote from Mr. Darcy where he is telling Elizabeth when he fell in love with her. and And he has this great line where he says, i cannot fix on the hour or the spot or the look or the words which lay the foundation.
00:09:53
Speaker
is too long, though. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun. And for me, that describes my experience where i I looked at the ground underneath my feet and realized I was no longer in in any kind of theistic camp.
00:10:09
Speaker
But I couldn't tell you when that had happened. Now, I still continued to attend church and do the usual things, but it was a little different. And I had you know no desire to really admit it out loud.
00:10:21
Speaker
And then when COVID hit and a lot of people started going to church less, it was just a really kind of... natural time to start saying, okay, this is you know, i think the I think the outside the inside need to match here. I i think I need to, for lack of better term, come out.
00:10:38
Speaker
And um You know, a lot of people were not surprised. My wife was not surprised. ah Just sort of, a well, yeah, I know. what do you want for dinner reaction?
00:10:49
Speaker
And of course, we had other conversations after that. And then some of my closest friends had said like, yeah, we you know we could could tell. But there were a lot of people who didn't react like that. Now, thankfully, I ah you have a very ah open and accepting and lovely family.
00:11:03
Speaker
My parents are both with Christians and they're the two best human beings I know. There was never any ah never any harm to that relationship. But there were a lot of ah relationships that either vanished completely or became unusually hostile.
00:11:21
Speaker
And that was ah that was something that I wasn't expecting at the time. Reading your book and going through some of the concepts you brought up about you know the denial, convert, belittle, I recognized some of those patterns.
Intellectual Aspects of Belief and Peer Reactions
00:11:35
Speaker
But one of the things I noticed was that the people who got the most upset were the people who I think I had been having the the most conversations ah with about concepts like apologetics or justification for for belief.
00:11:55
Speaker
Now, I had those conversations for a long time, even when I was you know not necessarily sold on all of the concepts in them. But I had always been more of a, I guess I thought of myself as an intellectual believer.
00:12:09
Speaker
So I was never really someone who felt a lot of ah spiritual experiences or any really or any kind of really strong emotional ah component to to faith. For me, it was very much, you know reading things and reason and, you know, some of those classic books about faith and reason. I remember being a teenager and reading Lee Strobel.
00:12:31
Speaker
you know yeah But then a lot of a lot of those threads started to come unraveled, even when I was in ah young adulthood and pulling those things out. So of course I was gravitating towards different writers and different Christians who were building what I thought were better cases. So Alistair McGrath or David Bentley Hart.
00:12:50
Speaker
And so a lot of the people that I was friends with in the church were people that when we would be having conversations about faith, That was what I felt I could bring to the conversation was that kind of intellectual rigor such that it was for me at the time.
00:13:06
Speaker
And I noticed that the people that i was ah doing that with were the ones who were the most upset and reacted like I'd really kind of betrayed them, betrayed their trust, betrayed their, um maybe betrayed their faith in me. That sounds a little bit hoity-toity, so I don't really know if I'd go that far. But um it just really brought to mind, ah when I was reading your book, those experiences. And I'd had i'd had ah one within a couple of days before your book arrived in the mail, where I'd reached out to an old friend and ah you know to even to offer something that I'd found at my house that I remembered that they'd been interested in.
00:13:48
Speaker
And the response was just suddenly and overtly hostile. And I thought, this is very strange. And then I read your book and I thought, oh, well and now it's making a bit more sense. and Yeah, is it is that something that you've heard from other people, those kinds of reactions and ah related to...
00:14:06
Speaker
what we might call epistemic outsourcing, that idea of like relying on other people to maybe justify some of your beliefs. Yeah, first first of all, thanks for sharing. Thanks to that vulnerability. And really, you know what what you described, I think, is is quite common. And I think part of um part of it is exactly what you explained. So i think there is a ah natural feature in which we surround ourselves with ideologically similar beliefs.
00:14:32
Speaker
or homogeneous people in order to reaffirm our beliefs. So but we never really know if we're right, but if we surround ourselves with people who can provide us that consensual validation, we feel a lot more comfortable and a lot more secure in our beliefs.
00:14:47
Speaker
So when you departed, yeah i think two things were happening. So one was you did undermine that that group validation. You kind of broke the the consensus.
00:14:58
Speaker
And so, you know, that that that creates a little bit of discomfort, a little bit of uncertainty. But I think perhaps another thing that was going on is you represented, your departure rather, represented, I believe, a pretty significant threat to them.
00:15:14
Speaker
And so if you were engaging with them in these intellectually robust conversations, they considered you both equals and you left, I think why it's threatening is because if you, who are thinking the the same types of thoughts, wrestling with the same type of ideas, could leave, what does it mean about them? Could they be vulnerable to leaving?
00:15:32
Speaker
And for so many people for for whom religion is a central part of their identity, even the the intimation that they could potentially leave, that threat is sufficient enough to generate enough anxiety that they would need that oftentimes a common response is aggression or defensiveness or belittling you.
00:15:50
Speaker
And so by no fault of your own, i'm not again, I'm not blaming you, but just right right your departure was in their mind a symbolic representation of a threat that undermined the veracity and vitality vitality by which they could hold their views.
00:16:04
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Group Validation and Belief Systems
00:16:06
Speaker
I think that's ah i think it's a a really interesting spin to take on it, too, to look at the group validation piece. um For a long time after I left ministry, I actually worked as an addictions counselor with teenagers ah for for public health. And I learned a lot in my research as I was kind of learning how to do my role.
00:16:28
Speaker
about group validation. I would sometimes to spend time with groups of young people ah who and we were talking about some of their substance use ah concerns. And often I would have people say me so you say to me, well, i you know I thought I might have a problem, but then I asked all my friends who use and they said I was fine.
00:16:45
Speaker
yeah And i well, yeah, you know, maybe that's maybe consider the source. And again, not to not to shame ah persons who use substances. This is not like that's not what I'm about there. But ah but recognizing that, you know, maybe the people who are in the same insulated group ah might also have a reason or motivation to, you know, to keep you in it.
00:17:08
Speaker
um Yeah, that that kind of came to mind when you were mentioning that. yeah Yeah, I love that piece that you're saying. So basically, we're right we're not we're not objective lawyers, or I'm sorry, we're not objective detectives looking for the truth. right We're socially motivated lawyers who are trying to argue a case that's going to that's going to be compelling and and desirable for us.
00:17:29
Speaker
Mm-hmm. and And to clarify, just so there's no confusion, that's not something that's exclusive to people who are religious or even exclusive to religious belief. That's exactly right. right yeah So our our socially motivated cognition spans a wide range of things from politics, really any type of ideology.
00:17:45
Speaker
we We want to surround ourselves with people that believe. When we get together and chat with people who believe the same thing as us, Something called group polarization happens where be double down on our beliefs to become more extreme.
00:17:57
Speaker
And we get threatened by people who who disagree with us and try to distance those people or get them to leave the group because we love that group consensus. So, right, it's not not unique to religion.
00:18:08
Speaker
Yeah. And another thing that is also not unique to religion, I mentioned earlier, very briefly, epistemic outsourcing, which again is when you rely on someone else's knowledge and their ah their understanding and their the level of how convinced they are about something being true, kind of in place of your own work to determine if that thing is true as well. You know, if this person seems really convinced, it must be true.
00:18:34
Speaker
Also not exclusively a religious thing because we do it all the time with many different things. and and Example from my own life, my father is an engineer. when when And we've like we've built houses together.
00:18:45
Speaker
When he tells me this is how something works with an electrical system or a plumbing system, I believe him. Yeah. No need for you to get shocked. and yeah exactly.
00:18:56
Speaker
Yeah. I don't always understand. you know we and And despite his patience and his best efforts over 40 plus years, um i am I am maintaining ignorance on so many of the things that he's still trying to teach me about.
00:19:12
Speaker
or home repair, car repair, all the things that ah just kind of come much more naturally to him. When he tells me something, i I believe it about that kind of stuff. like So ah you you mean a four-stroke engine works like this?
00:19:26
Speaker
Sounds good. yeah You mean this is how you want me to do this electrical? sign Yeah, okay, I believe you. Let's keep going. um So it's not just exclusive to people who are religious or even to religious belief, we're always outsourcing some of that. um You know, every time you start your car, you're you're doing that a little bit.
00:19:45
Speaker
That's exactly right. Yeah, I talked a little bit about, um you know, that that we all put faith in something. I'm glad that you brought this up because oftentimes Some of the cross-religious divide division, you know, folks can say, oh goodness, you know, the religious – they could. Some could have a stereotype that religious people don't think for themselves, right? they Someone else tells them what to believe.
00:20:08
Speaker
And just as you're identifying, many of us have people who tell us what to believe. Like scientists tell me what to believe because they're the experts. And I say, oh, great. You're you're telling me this is what the evidence is showing. I'm going to trust you because I can't run lab experiments on – You know, glaciers in the Arctic to determine the rates of climate change.
00:20:25
Speaker
So I'm going to listen to you. um So that's right. we We all put faith in something. We all believe certain experts to hold epistemic privilege in certain domains. And so, right, that's that's not unique to religion.
00:20:39
Speaker
Yeah.
Secular Humanism and Shared Values
00:20:40
Speaker
And I think what ah what sometimes makes people a bit more, and i think in your book, you call it reactive to to religion. What makes some people who have left religion behind is that ah feeling of, well, it it has to be different. It has to be like ah like a completely wrong way of thinking. And you see religion,
00:20:59
Speaker
you know I'll reference Facebook groups again, that hotbed of reality we're all living in these days is social media. ah People will have visceral and vicious conversations, and ah and it's going both ways.
00:21:12
Speaker
And people will say things like, well, if you're religious, like you said, you're just not thinking, you're not ah intelligent. And it really doesn't seem to have that much to do with it. I think the...
00:21:23
Speaker
you know the The strongest argument I've heard in that direction might be someone saying, well, if you ah deleted every science textbook from the world, in a few hundred years, they'd all be written again and say more or less the same things. If you deleted all the religious texts in the world, ah none of them would ever exist again. You'd have all new things in a couple hundred years. And I thought that was a really interesting...
00:21:43
Speaker
And, you know, ah interesting in a couple different ways, comment, because not only does it ah indicate that these are, you know, these are concepts people came up with, but also that people are always looking for meaning in some ways. And so we would probably still come up with different things to believe. And and that's that's partly what secular humanism is, I think, too. Not that it's um not trying to be based in reason, because certainly i think that's one of the tenets, but also deciding that, OK, we're all going to try to do something to make the world a better place.
00:22:15
Speaker
And ah we're going to try to do it together and we're try to do it based on these values that we ah can sort of co-agree on. Well, that is in that in in some ways a bit of ah a bit of a system that you could ah if not call a religion, at least call a belief system or a a worldview that um does require some maintaining and does require us to you know listen to experts and in some cases and do some of that epistemic outsourcing of our own.
Adopting New Beliefs Post-Religion
00:22:42
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. i love yeah I love thinking about it as a meaning system, right? Religion's a meaning system, science, secular humanism, all of these are meaning systems. you know And I think you brought up really good point about how you know people react once they've left religion.
00:22:55
Speaker
And many times, you know there's research in this, like you said, from other areas. So for example, after people quit smoking, they They just really hold this disdain for smoking. My dad was a smoker for most of his life, then he quit smoking, couldn't stand smoking.
00:23:09
Speaker
you know Back in the day when they still had smoking sections in restaurants, he was like, oh, I can't believe people were smoking in restaurants. Who could be this person? And we were like, dad, you, you were this person like two years ago.
00:23:20
Speaker
Yeah. um and And that's kind of the thing we see a little sometimes when people leave religion. It's like, oh, who who could believe these things? Well, it's like, well, you know, just if you're little self-aware and self-compassionate, you, you could have believed those things years ago.
00:23:33
Speaker
And so sometimes that that just kind of self-awareness. Mm-hmm. allows just ah just a hint more of compassion. Like, oh, you know what? That that is true. This this was me. And like you said, sometimes people might be motivated to try to want to help other people when they've found benefits from changing their beliefs.
00:23:51
Speaker
And that's why they might feel rather passionate about it. Yeah. and you know ah And fair enough for those who do feel ah passionate about it. I think there's a lot to be said about many modern belief systems that ah might not be the greatest for the world around us. um You know, a belief system that says climate change isn't real, might not ah be one that we want.
00:24:16
Speaker
People who are in power over environmental organizations to hold, for instance, and we're not going to point any fingers or name any names. so um But there are, you know, there are some who I think they spend more of their time ah kind of looking back and looking back at religion, maybe even you know and And to their credit, ah holding down the barbed wire so people can leave more fundamentalist groups and and more harmful groups. And I think that there's you know definitely something um honorable in that.
00:24:46
Speaker
But you you do also make the comment in your book ah that people who who leave it behind might also want to be aware of the potential for a additional fundamentalist commitments that they kind of get sucked into. Right.
00:25:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly right. And so, you know, William James has this great quote that a great many people think they're thinking when they're merely rearranging their prejudices. um And so it's this idea that, you know, when when people leave kind of fundamentalist religious conservative groups,
00:25:17
Speaker
um when they when they shift and they get out, oftentimes that fundamentalist style of belief is hard to shake. And so they might land in another group and and hold those commitments, although the content is different, with a similar type of fundamental fundamentalist fervor.
00:25:36
Speaker
And so we we have a ah paper under review right now, and the data suggests that after people leave religion, they become far more politically liberal. but and So for some people, that you know very, very far left political liberalism in some ways carries some of the same familiarities of religious fundamentalism. So there's some ideological purity.
00:25:56
Speaker
There's you know distancing from people who disagree. There's very strong commitments to particular belief systems. There's kind of a public signaling of one's virtue or or ideological commitments.
00:26:10
Speaker
um and so you know and And all I ask folks to do is I say, I'm not saying don't get involved politically. I'm not even saying that there's a certain political persuasion that's that's that you should or shouldn't go into.
00:26:24
Speaker
Instead, I think it's just really valuable to make sure you're making value aligned decisions. So what are your values and create an identity that's authentic to those values so you can live as a person of integrity, not as in reactance to, we're still holding over some of the lingering residue from your religious past.
00:26:43
Speaker
Yeah.
Challenges in New Beliefs and Charismatic Leaders
00:26:44
Speaker
And I think you mentioned also ah how people, if they're, if they're used to being in a system where there's always someone telling them what to believe, yes then being in a,
00:26:55
Speaker
you know Being in a place where there is nobody telling you what you need to believe is very ah three distressful on an existential level. And so if you can just quickly quickly switch to the other side and then you know Richard Dawkins, but whatever he says goes. Now that that's the new thing as long as, oh, thank goodness I found Richard Dawkins and i know that everything he says is going to be true.
00:27:18
Speaker
and I can relax, I don't need to worry about figuring any this out for myself, or living in this very uncomfortable place of not actually knowing what to do or think. That's exactly right. so So if you're very used to certainty, security, surety, knowing what to believe, you're gonna want that strong, clear leader exactly on the other side.
00:27:36
Speaker
and so I'm particularly aware of the vulnerabilities that people might experience when they leave religion, and they're feeling a little disoriented, or they're feeling a little anxious from these changing beliefs. so and their natural gravitation towards stronger or charismatic leaders who might seek to fill those gaps. now and And I think some of the some leaders and and some and you know kind of people who are more publicly known for their thought have have good intentions and and there's nothing wrong with trying to align and better understand what they're saying and deciphering for yourself those features of those beliefs or ideologies that you would like to maintain and those you'd like to to change or revise or discard.
00:28:16
Speaker
Where I get a little attuned are people who have more nefarious motivations or who might want to capitalize on particularly vulnerable states that people might be when they're leaving religion and they might swoop in And for if for the right price and the right amount of your time and attention kind of fill the gap of that authoritarian or um complete dictatorial leader. Yeah. And I think that's... um you know We're always going to gravitate towards strong personalities. that's ah That's a feature of the way our groups work too, which is unfortunate.
00:28:52
Speaker
and I'm not sure picked the best example with Dawkins these days either, as he's not precisely on the left either. ah But that gets more political and confusing. sure I'm not sure how to track a lot of people.
00:29:02
Speaker
I think it's interesting you said how the you things like purity ideology and other things show up on the on the very far left when people swing in that direction. I'd be curious to know um if some of the same moral foundations are are popping up ah on that extreme as are on the far right extreme. Jonathan Haidt did a fair bit of work around ah moral foundations. He has a book called The Righteous Mind, which you've probably read or seen or taught on. I'm not actually sure since I didn't reach a course catalog before this.
Moral Foundations and Religious Residue
00:29:37
Speaker
ah But where in some of his research, they identified like different moral foundations that um yeah that that people tend to base their moral or ethical decisions on. And the the decisions are um sort of at a gut level or an instinctual level, and then we justify based on those ah foundations that we hold to.
00:29:56
Speaker
And some of the research that came up when I was looking into Haidt's work was how people on the far right tend to be more concerned with purity and like authority as foundations for morality to the point where they were less likely to purchase vegetables in the, you know, old or deformed vegetables bin at their supermarket, which I thought was fascinating because I always buy those peppers.
00:30:21
Speaker
ah They're looking a little weird. They're going to go great on nachos. ah But then on the other side, in the left, you see a bit more... tendency towards the moral foundations of things like fairness and reducing harm.
00:30:34
Speaker
so I'm wondering if the further away from center you go, even to the left, if there might even be a return to a sort of a purity foundation. um this isn't I'm not if this is a question, like if you're aware of any research on that, or if that's something that you're exploring, or what, but it's just it is kind of interesting to think about.
00:30:53
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's fascinating. So about four years ago, we we published a paper where we we looked at people after having left religious religion and we compared them on those five moral foundations because we we, too, kind of shared your same curiosity. Like, well, what would be the morality or kind of where people are deriving their moral judgments from after they leave religion?
00:31:12
Speaker
And what we found is actually some evidence of religious residue wherein after people leave religion, it's some of those conservative values that they have a hard time shaking. So even some of that purity, a hierarchy, um you know loyalty, dimensions, kind of those more binding features stuck around.
00:31:31
Speaker
But what we also found um in a you know in a follow-up study in the same paper was in this longitudinal study of adolescence, using the National Study for Youth and Religion, that over time, that more that that religious residue does decay.
00:31:46
Speaker
And so the further people get away and the longer they've de-identified, the less their moral foundations look as conservative and binding as when they were religious.
00:31:57
Speaker
And so some residue sticks around and some conservative residue sticks around. But the but the longer people have been away, the weaker that residue is. So ah so there is some work on on those moral foundations with folks leaving religion. i'm Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up.
00:32:12
Speaker
Mm um I think it's important, too, to mention that the the moral decay ah you brought up doesn't mean like a decay of morality in general. It's just going away entirely.
00:32:24
Speaker
um i I didn't mention this to you earlier, but actually the first paper of yours I ever read was the moral decay one as it was shared on a Facebook group. um I think it might have been an article about your paper was shared as someone saying like, see, when you become an atheist, then your morals decay.
00:32:42
Speaker
And I was like, what? Not at all. No, no. It's more that you're the the longer you move away from religion, the more your morals look like people who are more left of center than right of center, which which just makes but just makes a lot of intuitive sense.
00:32:56
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. yeah And it's always nice when the data actually backs up that intuitive sense, because then we don't have to change our minds. Yeah, that's right. But it's also important to be open to changing minds as well. I think that's one of the reasons, and I've been accused at times um by a couple of people ah who will remain nameless, although I am married to one of them, ah that I got a little bit evangelical about the humanism thing as well.
00:33:21
Speaker
um And um You know, that when I started ah started being more open about not believing in God anymore, i was just i was a little bit kind of upset and I had a lot of upset feelings. But then when I started gravitating more towards the humanism ah stuff and seeing more of a positive ah way to identify instead of a negative way to identify, I think you bring it up in your book as well. like You don't just need to identify yourself as not something.
00:33:47
Speaker
So I didn't believe in God anymore. I wasn't a Christian anymore. Okay, well, what am I? Well, I like Star Trek, so i don't really know where to go from there. But as it turns out, liking Star Trek and being a humanist are hand in hand, very similar.
00:33:59
Speaker
And um when it was pointed out to me, hey, you're really talking about humanism a lot with people. Are you trying to convert people to humanism? I had to do some thinking about that. Am I actually carrying some residue here with humanism?
00:34:12
Speaker
this as well. ah The conclusion I came to was probably partly, but also I do see a lot of people who've left religion who get stuck in that anger, they get stuck in that reactance, they get stuck in in an ongoing fundamentalist way of thinking, identifying as what they aren't instead of what they are.
00:34:37
Speaker
and just really struggling with finding any source of meaning at all. And when you were talking about in in your book, the process people go through, ah there were two things that really stuck out to me ah as being things I think people people really struggle with a lot.
00:34:56
Speaker
And the first is that is tolerating existential distress. ah And the second was the concepts of security versus growth. So was wondering if we if you wouldn't mind ah unpacking those a little bit, because I think those might be really valuable. Not to put all of your book into these two podcasts, because then nobody needs to buy it anymore.
00:35:17
Speaker
But i I thought that those would be two areas that, ah well, one probably flows into the other, doesn't it? Tolerating distress and security and growth. Yeah, happy to. So, you know, we we can tend to think about religion as an existential meaning system, right? Or it's a cultural worldview that perfectly addresses existential concerns, like what happens to me after I die? What's the meaning of life?
00:35:41
Speaker
You know, how how do how do i and does anyone know me? What's my identity? What decisions should I make? And so when religion checks all of those boxes, we it it manages our existential anxiety fairly well.
00:35:55
Speaker
Now, when we shift away from religion, all of a sudden we have to reconfront these existential concerns, but without the out the sure, coherent, and comprehensive worldview of religion.
00:36:06
Speaker
And so people get re-exposed to these existential concerns, which have the tendency to raise our anxiety. And so it can be rather existentially distressing. or anxiety provoking to wrestle with with deconstruction, to change one's beliefs.
00:36:21
Speaker
And so oftentimes, because of that anxiety, because of that existential distress, people will kind of gravitate very quickly toward, like we've been talking about, new, sure, certain belief systems.
00:36:35
Speaker
And so They also deal with this existential anxiety by acting defensively, by becoming intolerant towards other people who disagree with them.
00:36:46
Speaker
um Any host of kind of, i would like to call inauthentic and more defensive reactionary responses. And so... You know, instead of trying to create the perfect worldview, because I don't think that one exists, and actually, ah and also as being a scholar and advocate ah advocate of intellectual humility, right, which admits that we don't know everything, we should be curious, we should admit when we're wrong.
00:37:13
Speaker
Instead, I think a better strategy is to start building an existential distress tolerance. So start building a tolerance toward admitting that these existential realities are actually just facts.
00:37:28
Speaker
They're not things to be feared. They're truths. They're not threats to who you are as a human. And so becoming more comfortable with the fact if someone says, you're going to die and your anxiety increases, you say, yep, there's that anxiety and I can withstand that anxiety. Now, as a culture, we're not very good at distress tolerance generally. And we have nice little devices in our pocket that allow us to escape at any moment. and kind of always be engaged or distracted.
00:37:57
Speaker
But most things in life that are worthwhile, you if you if you stick with them long enough, you will encounter some distress, right? They require persistence. They're not always pleasurable. But good getting through and overcoming that distress leads to positive benefits. So the first idea is just becoming comfortable.
00:38:17
Speaker
with the anxiety that comes with wrestling with these existential concerns and the distress that it brings up. And time and again, the more you expose yourself to it, the more you'll be able to deal with it in more proactive and thoughtful ways rather than reactive, defensive, or aggressive. So that's that's that's kind of what I mean by existential distress tolerance.
00:38:37
Speaker
now Yeah. we We kind of understand this by realizing that we humans have and i mean at least kind of two existential motives.
Human Motives: Security and Growth
00:38:49
Speaker
So one of our motives is for security.
00:38:52
Speaker
And by this, we want we want certainty. We want surety. We want to know that at least something we're believing is kind of right. But on the other end of the poll, we also have a desire for growth.
00:39:04
Speaker
for self-expansion, for curiosity, for wonder and amazement for something for something more. now When you're operating out of security motives, there are benefits for yourself that feels really good, but there are consequences or trade-offs in that you're probably a little bit less tolerant towards other people with whom you disagree, right? Because if you know you're right, then other people are definitely wrong, and if the two of you have to get into ah an argument about it, one of you has to be wrong, and it certainly can't be you.
00:39:36
Speaker
It has to be them. Now, on the other hand, growth-oriented motives, if you're operating out of those motives, you you're more open-minded, you're more tolerant, you're more curious, you realize you could be wrong, you're more expansive, but that comes at an intrapersonal cost to the self.
00:39:54
Speaker
You're more anxious, you're more concerned about... these existential concerns, life feels like it has a little bit less meaning. And so there's these trade-offs between how much do I prioritize myself and making sure I feel psychologically good with also being interpersonally tolerant, open-minded, and curious.
00:40:13
Speaker
And so building an existential distress tolerance will help you move toward growth without having to react defensively when you feel small threats or losses to security. Mm-hmm.
00:40:26
Speaker
I think I remember reading about the ah security and growth kind of tension a while ago. And as I started reading about it, I was thinking, oh yeah, security, that's the that's the correct answer, right?
00:40:40
Speaker
That's the one we're supposed to do? Then I got to the end of the article, I ah, nuts. I think I've identified some of the sources of my own anxiety here. ah Just in a broad general sense in life.
00:40:53
Speaker
um But yeah, I think it's and one of the things that comes up as you're kind of describing the raising your existential distress tolerance um is exactly right. How bad we are.
00:41:06
Speaker
at distress violence distress tolerance in general yeah in our society. You mentioned our phones, which know about you, right now my phone is not really a great source of not distress. for right who yeah these days But ah but there are like there's constant distractions. You can always buy a new thing, eat a new thing, wear a new thing. It's just going to you know to keep you ah keep you from thinking about something real.
00:41:30
Speaker
yeah and um And when you talk about exposure therapy, exposing yourself and actually just sitting with that pain, sitting with that fear, ah it puts me in mind of Irvin Yalom, who I think we may have talked about in our first episode. he's He's a huge influence intellectually for me.
00:41:49
Speaker
so Oh, really? Yeah, that's fantastic. I've got ah Staring at the Sun. ah right over there. but Sorry, i'm I'm pointing. This is a podcast. yes, I love it. Yeah. I've got it right over there, staring at the sun.
00:42:00
Speaker
And I had a couple of his other books that I've actually got out on loaned people right now, which, ah and speaking of existential distress, is not worrying who you loaned books to.
00:42:12
Speaker
That's right. Yeah, ah Yalom does this great um great treatment of death, I think, in Staring at the Sun, where it's it's ah not about, you know, here's how you fix your fear about death.
00:42:26
Speaker
It's more ah saying, here's how you live with your fear about death, because you're probably going to have it until you die. yeah And I loved that, ah reading it when I read it. um and And for me, the...
00:42:40
Speaker
um I mentioned earlier in my in my story or before my story that what I'd heard a lot was if you become an atheist, if you lose your faith, then you're goingnna you going to lose all this fundamental stuff about yourself and your life is going to become without meaning and and ah kind of you know tossed on the wind kind of ah an attitude.
00:43:00
Speaker
and And that actually was a fear for me. before. ah I remember feeling very afraid that if I so stop believing in God, then then I'm really going to be afraid of death.
00:43:14
Speaker
like then the Then the fear of death is actually going to come for me. I'm actually going to have to live with this fear. But as long as I still believe in God, I don't have to be afraid of it. And i was surprised by how that didn't happen.
00:43:28
Speaker
ah Like, to the point where I noticed long afterwards that it hadn't happened. And I thought, hang on a second, I thought this was going to happen for me. And it didn't. um It was part of ah ah the same kind of a process that I went through um when I was doing the initial leaving, which was little bits of it, I think, kind of fell away on the road until it was, you know, until it was behind me somewhere and I didn't recognize it.
00:43:56
Speaker
um ah To kind of give another brief story, if it's all right, I'm a big science fiction fan. I mentioned Star Trek before.
00:44:07
Speaker
um You and I briefly talked about Lord the Rings at one point, so i kind of feel like you have a general ah understanding. There's a show called Firefly. Did you ever watch it? I haven't, no.
00:44:18
Speaker
All right, well, I won't spoil the whole show for you, but there's an episode in Firefly where it's it's out in space and there's people on a spaceship and there's this you know grizzled captain of a spaceship who's a war veteran and he's you he's very grim, lots of existential angst.
00:44:34
Speaker
Great guy. ah But he has to ease he has to kind of go down with his ship at one point and others are escaping while he's remaining on the ship. And one of the people says,
00:44:45
Speaker
hey, you don't have to do this. you You don't have to do this. You don't have to die alone. And he says, well, everybody dies alone. And i watched that when I was ah religious.
00:44:57
Speaker
And i remember the the fear that settled into me like, oh, that's what it's going to be like if you ever dare leave, if you ever lose the faith that have, that's how it's going to feel. um And I had that fear with me for ah a long time afterwards.
00:45:12
Speaker
Now, there's another show called The Expanse. Have you seen The Expanse? I haven't. All right. So you've got two new shows. yeah so that's right I'm going to start a new podcast. Just science fiction. Yeah, that's right.
00:45:24
Speaker
ah You'll be the first guest again. That's right. But ah and The Expanse is a you know a near future series. It takes place in our solar system. Again, spaceships.
00:45:35
Speaker
What can I say? i have a type. But um there's a scene where two people are... without again giving spoilers, so they're about to crash in a spaceship or something like a spaceship and ah the outcome is uncertain.
00:45:50
Speaker
There's, you know, without spoilers, there's other stuff involved. there's There's maybe aliens, maybe something mysterious. We don't really understand it, but the outcome is uncertain. And one person says to the other, what's gonna happen to us?
00:46:04
Speaker
And the second person says, i don't know, we die maybe. If we don't, that'll be interesting too. But whatever happens, happens to both of us. And I watched that after having left and left religion and having kind of recognized I don't really feel that fear about death as much as I thought I might, what I wonder why that is.
00:46:27
Speaker
And then I watched that and I realized, oh, it's because we're we're all in this together. It's because whatever happens, happens to both of us. It happens to all of us. And I just didn't feel afraid.
00:46:39
Speaker
yeah And that was ah that was kind of how my tolerance, I guess, how it came out for me. It came out because of science fiction and it came out because of story and meaning making that we did for ourselves.
00:46:53
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's lovely. I mean, that's yeah, that's so powerful. And how those, the juxtaposition of those two. Mm-hmm. you know and it And it reminds me a little bit about some research on what's called the scarcity value heuristic. So basically, if something is scarce, it's more valuable, right? So like diamonds, there's not like diamonds everywhere. So that's why they're valuable.
00:47:14
Speaker
So the idea here is if if this life is all you've got, Well, by golly, it's it's got to be pretty valuable. And in fact, yeah one might argue it's perhaps even more meaningful because there's not another continuation afterwards, right? And so you realize this is the shot you've got.
00:47:33
Speaker
You can't forestall, you can't push it off, which suggests could be one reason why Some religious people who believe in a life hereafter are less concerned about taking care of this planet and this life because they think, well, that doesn't matter as much because there's another. Whereas those who are saying, this is all we've got, it matters more. It's more meaningful.
00:47:58
Speaker
So the the fact that it ends, in fact, is what gives life this meaning.
00:48:04
Speaker
Yeah, I completely agree. And and there's I think there there is where some of the more reactive kind of elements in the no longer religious group, where I think it makes the most sense when they're saying, no, no, like, guys, we've got to patch the holes in the lifeboat here.
00:48:20
Speaker
Like, we we are all in this together. That's right Whatever happens, happens to all of us. We've got to figure this out. Yeah, that's exactly right. If that means we have a few more wind farms, or we figure out solar panel, or we...
00:48:33
Speaker
I don't know. we We figure out how to make sure basic human needs are met all over the planet. I feel like there's there's there's good reason to do that. And that's you know one of the benefits of not just identifying as not something, but deciding you're going to actually take care of the lifeboat together.
00:48:50
Speaker
but Yes, that's exactly right. ah So one of the things that also comes up in your book, um kind of, i think it's i think it's after the pieces about existential anxiety and about security and growth, is about crafting new identities.
00:49:07
Speaker
Now,
Forming New Identities Post-Religion
00:49:08
Speaker
I've talked a bit about how I crafted mine through um you know overindulging in science fiction and humanism literature. it worked for me. doesn't always work for everybody else. Also grad school, which, again, same thing, not for everybody.
00:49:22
Speaker
But ah when crafting new identities, when... ah you know went when figuring out who we are without the significant portion of our cognitive schema being taken up by a religious system.
00:49:37
Speaker
ah What are some of the important ah important milestones or important ah components that people might want to think about as they're working to craft that new identity? Yeah, that's that's a great question. So, you know, one thing they can they can kind of think about is if they've significantly re-revised or have left a particular worldview, think about what their new ideological commitments or their new explanatory framework for the world is going to be, right? So if it was religion, right, we've talked a lot about humanism to today. Is it going to be humanism? Is it scientific worldview?
00:50:10
Speaker
um and And that's really helpful. um just to kind of help give you an orienting lens through which you can see the world. you know and A second thing that's powerful is narratives. So narratives really help us answer the question of who am i And where where religion kind of gets these things right is if you've been in certain religions, they have what's called like a conversion testimony, right? It's like I was this one person and now I'm this person and everyone kind of celebrates and you're like you're part of the religious family and you've kind of renounced your you know non-religious ways.
00:50:45
Speaker
there's There's not as much, at least officially, like at a deconversion or a de-identification narrative. I've seen some. I've seen some people kind of have those, but it's not as common that you would publicly say, here's who I am. I was religious. I went through all these things. Now I'm solidly non-religious. so For folks who can kind of write their their de-identification or deconversion story, sometimes that can kind of help them fit it into the broader narrative of their life and kind of see like, well, how does this kind of contribute to who I am?
00:51:15
Speaker
um i mean, a goal is really to identify your values now that you've undergone this change and then start living according to those values with with authenticity.
00:51:28
Speaker
And so... When you figure out your values, one of the things that I want to caution folks against is what I call the creep of moral sacralization. So if you're thinking like, okay, what are my non-negotiables? Things that I absolutely know are right and wrong.
00:51:44
Speaker
And what happens is those those are good. It's good to have a handful of non-negotiables where you're like, I know that I'm right about this. the The problem though is when everything takes the same moral status as being a non-negotiable because then slowly you start becoming more closed-minded. So here's where I kind of borrow on some of the work I've done on humility and intellectual humility and I recommend – we should we should hold our beliefs tentatively, we should believe something until there's sufficiently strong enough evidence to believe something else, and then go ahead and change your mind, right?
00:52:19
Speaker
The key is to figure out what does sufficiently strong evidence look like, and you know then you would change your mind, and then are there some things about which you'd probably never change your mind, and those things, those should probably be few. You shouldn't have a ton of those things, you shouldn't have an overwhelmingly high number of those non-negotiables.
00:52:39
Speaker
um Because if you do, then you're kind of holding everything as as the same type of high and mighty moral status. Surprisingly, people will find, though, when they go through this process of identifying their commitments,
00:52:53
Speaker
um you know, kind of writing their narrative and their story, seeing how fits in their narrative, identifying their values and then trying to live a according to their values, it can feel freeing, right? so So for folks who are feeling either trapped or feeling like their whole identity is is defined against religion, that process can bring a significant amount of freedom. And and you might be surprised at the amount of of openness and curiosity and wonder and awe with which you see the world that you had never experienced before. Mm-hmm.
00:53:23
Speaker
ah i I love the way you put that. I love that you started by talking about values. One of the things that my wife and I often say to each other, or or were saying for a while at least, was that our common values are more important than our common beliefs.
00:53:39
Speaker
That's right. And ah and i i extend that to... everybody that I'm around, because I do think that we have more common values you know in common than we do differently. and And our beliefs might not line up on on specifics.
00:53:57
Speaker
ah But really, ah most of the people I know, and I live in a relatively religious area, are very compassionate people, very ah you know very committed people to looking after family and and friends. And we've got a lot more values in common, if we could kind of focus on that.
00:54:16
Speaker
And I ah really like as well how you circled around humility as being very necessary for having those conversations. And we've touched a bit on like, you know there's the news, there's social media, there's a lot of stuff going on right now. And um as we're kind of, I see we're coming to our time and as we're wrapping up a little bit, I think humility might actually be a really great place ah to land that that intellectual, ah moral, ethical humility.
Intellectual Humility in Polarized Times
00:54:50
Speaker
And think humility is kind of funny because it's one of those like, once you think you've got it, you've lost it sort of thing. Yeah. Oh, good. I'm humble. shit you know yeah the fact ah But ah at the end of the previous interview, I i gave a bit of an overview for people of why I thought they ought to to read your book.
00:55:10
Speaker
ah and And all it's still true. I think it it is worthwhile to pick out and to and to read, whether you've left religion recently or a long time ago.
00:55:21
Speaker
ah it like and like I said, it was a healing experience for me, even years after having left the church. But I think that even for people who have already kind of processed that de-identification, even for people who maybe they're no longer stuck in that reactance, maybe they've sorted out all the ah existential distress they could have, maybe they're no longer experiencing yeah rejection or anything from people.
00:55:46
Speaker
ah Even then, I actually think it would really be a beneficial book to read, partly because of exactly what you brought up now, ah intellectual moral ethical humility um we're in a time when political and ethical polarization is don't know if I can say more apparent than ever.
00:56:06
Speaker
i mean, it's definitely not happening more than ever, but it's more in our faces than ever, perhaps, ah thanks to the the rectangles in our pockets. and But right now might not actually be the best time to start ah drawing lines in the sand and and excluding people from ah from our groups when we have a lot of those values in common.
00:56:30
Speaker
um I think now might be the time to look for those values, ah to look for what we've got in common, to look for what we share and build bridges based on those things as opposed to building walls. And it's going to take humility to do that, ah which is a valuable lesson that we can gain ah from books like yours, from conversations like this, I hope, ah and from the the kind of work that you're doing. So, um yeah, so thank you for that.
00:56:56
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you for those kind of words. and So I think that's as good a place as any to wrap up ah part two of our interview. And will there be a part three someday?
00:57:08
Speaker
It is to be determined. But Daryl, I can't thank you enough for coming on the podcast. It's been great to to meet someone whose work I've been reading for a while.
00:57:19
Speaker
And also great, I think, to put your work in front of people who maybe will benefit from it. Again, the name of the book is Done, How to Flourish After Leaving Religion, and I hope you'll all check it out.
00:57:30
Speaker
Thanks again, Daryl. Thanks so much, Dan. It was certainly a pleasure.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:57:36
Speaker
Thank you for listening to The Voice of Canadian Humanism. We would like to especially thank our members and donors who make our work possible. If you feel that this is the type of programming that belongs in the public conversation, please visit us at humanistcanada.ca and become a member and or donate.
00:57:55
Speaker
You can also like and subscribe to us on social media at Humanist Canada. We'll see you next time.