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Episode 25 - An Interview with Daniel Dacombe and Phil Zuckerman
87 Plays2 days ago
Humanist Canada's Daniel Dacombe sits down with sociologist and author Phil Zuckerman.
Phil Zuckerman is a sociology professor at Pitzer College, where he studied the lives of the nonreligious for years before founding a Department of Secular Studies, the first academic program in the nation dedicated to exclusively studying secular culture and the sociological consequences of America’s fastest-growing “faith.”
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Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
you don't really believe that the enterprise is flying around right now and can be reached. You know, if you telepathically pray to captain Kirk, he's going to hear your test answer.
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:22
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.
00:00:39
Speaker
Welcome to the conversation.
00:00:43
Speaker
Hello, everyone.
Meet the Host: Daniel Dacombe
00:00:44
Speaker
My name is Daniel Dacombe, and I'm one of the hosts of the Voice of Canadian Humanism podcast. On this podcast, we like to feature the voices that are involved in, leading, or important to humanism in Canada and beyond.
Guest Introduction: Dr. Phil Zuckerman
00:00:57
Speaker
I'm very pleased to be joined by today's guest, author, sociologist, and professor, Dr. Phil Zuckerman. Phil Zuckerman is the author of several books, including Beyond Doubt, What It Means to Be Moral, The Non-Religious, Living the Secular Life, and Society Without God. He's also the editor of several volumes, including the Oxford Handbook of Secularism and the Social Theory of W.E.B. Dubois.
00:01:20
Speaker
He's a professor of sociology at Pitzer College and the founding chair of the nation's first secular studies program. He's also the executive director of Humanist Mutual Aid Network. Phil, welcome to our humble podcast.
00:01:32
Speaker
Thank Thank you for having me. Good to see you. Good to see you as well. It's one of my favorite things about getting involved in this has been the ability to ah reach out and shoulder tap some of the people I've been reading for years. And I've been gratified to learn that we're all just really big nerds and love talking about the work that we do.
Upcoming Engagements: Calgary Talk
00:01:55
Speaker
and Speaking of which, I'm going to be in Calgary in May. so Oh, really? Yeah. There's an atheist or secular humanist ah gathering, and I'm speaking. It'll be the first weekend in May. Yeah. Okay, put that on your calendars, everybody. I am several hours to the east of Calgary, but I do make it out there on occasion. Like most people from Manitoba, we get to Calgary pretty fast because we're all driving through Saskatchewan just as fast as possible.
00:02:23
Speaker
So got one of the things we like to do when we start these interviews is to ask our guests a bit about themselves. So namely their cultural and religious environment that they grew up in. So could you tell us a bit about yourself?
00:02:36
Speaker
Yeah, let's see. ah i'm ah I'm ethnically or culturally Jewish. i was so born, you know, like ah my um dad was ah from the Bronx in New York, my mom and then in Los Angeles, but all four of my grandparents were from um Yiddish speaking, or my dad's parents were Yiddish speaking Jews from Poland. My parents were German speaking Jews from Bohemia.
00:03:04
Speaker
And got out, you know, before their communities went up in flames. and But none of them believed. So none of my grandparents believed in God.
00:03:15
Speaker
Neither of my parents believed in God, per se. So I'm like a third generation nonbeliever.
Phil Zuckerman's Secular Upbringing
00:03:20
Speaker
ah so And I grew up in a part of Southern California. i was born in 1969. So I grew up in the 70s and 80s in the Palisades near near Santa Monica and Malibu. And I mean, religion was very, very muted. It was not prominent. There were not a lot of people talking about their faith or their Lord. Unlike some places in the United States, you know, I didn't have...
00:03:44
Speaker
teachers at school telling me about their mission trips to Mexico. knew prayers didn't, you know, open up the baseball games, uh, and things like that. So yeah, grew up a non-believer, ethnically Jewish and, uh, um,
00:04:00
Speaker
went to a very progressive Jewish summer camp, went to a very progressive Episcopalian summer camp. So was exposed you know, that kind of stuff. Um, yeah, that's, I hope that's a good sketch. I don't know. I could get going on if you want to hear more.
00:04:18
Speaker
Well, one of the things I often get, um, get curious about is is how our how our cultures kind of bump into each other. You mentioned growing up as ah in a secular jewish Jewish family and surrounded by kind of nominally you know waspish, I'm sure, Americans. ah And it's it's interesting to me because I've got i've got other i've Jewish family and Jewish friends who are mostly secular ah ah by and large, who grew up in other areas where therere their culture and the more religious Christian culture around them definitely caused a lot more friction. But it sounds like that's not something uniformly ah present across the United States.
00:05:04
Speaker
Yeah, no, definitely. every every Every little Jewish enclave is going to have different experiences. And in some cases, you are a you know distinct minority, despised or alienated to varying degrees. In other contexts, you're one of many ethnic minorities, and it doesn't it's not that big of a deal. so you know I've i've met ah You know, Jews who grew up in certain parts the United States that felt incredibly, you know, alone and spies and ridiculed and mocked. And I've met met people who grew up in Jewish communities, you know, that just everybody they knew was Jewish and they they thought the whole world was Jewish and everything in between. So it just depends. I just, where I grew up, it was just a very secular part of LA, very progressive. No one was really very religious of any stripe. You know, we didn't know people didn't go to church on Sundays and there were a lot of Jews in in that part of town too. So, ah you know, you know, I think, yeah. So, I mean, so that's just this the fact of the Jewish diaspora and different Jewish communities have different experiences. Yeah, absolutely. And and how did, How did you go from your community in l LA to the to the world of sociology, which we've explored a bit with some of our guests. Some of our guests have been sociologists. but what What led you down that path?
00:06:30
Speaker
Yeah, good one. um In a nutshell, let's see. When I was ah really little, I think I wanted to be an obstetrician because I thought, wow, delivering babies all day. What an awesome, you know, great grandfather had been an obstetrician back in Bohemia and sort of was the town OBGYN. And so deliver, you know, i' just thought, oh, life. So go figure. Of course, I have no aptitude for math or science. So that and then at some point, I think I wanted to be a judge. I thought, oh, that'd be cool. You get to sit up and be a judge and tell someone explained to me, well,
00:07:07
Speaker
you're not, you don't get, i my one of my cousins who was an attorney was like, you don't get to play in the game. You're like an umpire. And I like to play the game. He's like, I like, you know, that's interesting. I still kind of think I would have been a good lawyer, but then wanted to be an actor, a song a singer and a dancer. I was very involved in drama and theater and, uh, and growing up in LA, that was certainly ah an option if you were good enough and had, you know, because that that's where a lot of stuff was going on. So I did a lot of you know, I did some TV. I was in a movie. I did a bunch of commercials, all that kind of stuff. But okay but I wasn't you know, I wasn't good enough. And I also just it's just a cutthroat business and did OK and had a lot of fun. And but I always.
00:07:50
Speaker
m even though I wasn't a star student growing up, I loved discussing and debating and arguing about the world. So I i loved discussing and arguing about religion, politics, race, class.
00:08:04
Speaker
Like I just it it was engaged in that. I always like to read. And um my folks said to me um when I graduated from high school, they're like, well, you If you want to be an actor, that's fine, but you can't live at home unless you're a full-time student. So if you you know if you want to go out and wait tables, um go do that. But if you want to live at home, and I was like, well, I'm going to try and be an actor, and I'm going to live at home for a couple of years. So I enrolled in junior college and you know community college nearby in Santa Monica.
00:08:32
Speaker
And I took a sociology class with Mrs. Vance, you know, gray haired lady. And it was just everything I was interested in social movements, inequality, power dynamics, you know, good old, I don't know, social justice stuff. Yeah.
00:08:46
Speaker
And so I took the next sociology class and then I transferred after two years. I was like, I I'm done with this acting thing. I want to pursue academia and get out of L.A. So I moved up to Oregon and I was.
00:09:00
Speaker
So happy up there. i loved it And Eugene for a long time. And I just felt like I'm home, even though who'd have thought and ah just took more classes. And, and then, and I just got really compelled by,
00:09:13
Speaker
a lot of what sociology had to argue, you know, the notion that we're shaped a lot by our social context and social environment resonated, you know, less now, but when I was young, it really resonated. Now I'm, I'm a lot into like evolutionary psychology and shit like that. But back then I was like, yeah, we're shaped by these social forces. And I was interested in social justice and making the world a better place. So that seemed to be the the major to be in. And I loved it.
00:09:38
Speaker
And I, so I majored in it and then I got my graduate degrees in it. And, And the rest is history. Yeah, I'm not as into sociology anymore. to to be Sorry to make my sociology colleagues sad. Like I still sociology and I still, but I'm not, I i don't go to sociology conferences. i don't I don't really even see myself primarily sociologist anymore. I see myself more as a professor of secular studies and that's sort of my passion. Well, it's similar to, I think there's some um there's some ah departments opening up that are kind of more interdisciplinary.
00:10:12
Speaker
around the world. I remember having we had ah Dr. Will Gervais on here last year, and he's working in England, and they have an interdisciplinary department over there looking at cultural evolution, which I think is really, really fascinating. yeah um It's interesting when you talk about kind of your your landing in sociology and the way it kind of opened up your you know, over to the way you were looking at the world and was just kind of ticking all the boxes for all the things you were interested in. One of my, my first sociology class, which was in Bible college, by the way, um what the the professor was saying, trying to explain what sociology was. And he pointed at my roommate and said, well, your roommate's from British Columbia where all the mountains are, but I bet you he doesn't notice the mountains when he's there.
00:10:59
Speaker
Here in this class, we're going to teach you to notice the mountains that are right in front of your face. good That's a good one It was a good, it was a really good one. I've repeated it a few times, just thinking about how there's there's things around us
From Actor Aspirations to Sociology
00:11:09
Speaker
that we just don't notice. what's What are the normal things, you know, the quote unquote normal things that we don't notice because we're just doing them all the time. But you go to ah go to another country, or another culture, well, you notice those things. Exactly. exactly Yeah, indeed.
00:11:21
Speaker
it's ex excellenting So from sociology, you you mentioned now you see yourself more as like a a researcher in secular studies. What drew you to study secularism and non-religion to begin with? Was there a particular moment or experience that kind of sparked that for you?
00:11:39
Speaker
Oh, man, I wish I could say, you know, I was watching The Exorcist. No. Right. And the scales fell from your eyes, right? That's how it goes. So. The only way I can answer that one is a couple ways.
00:11:53
Speaker
I did notice growing up that. All of my secular peers didn't give two shits about religion, whereas I I it. it I found myself very much provoked by it. So what I mean by that, if if we were in Westwood on a Friday night and there was a preacher on the corner trying to convert souls, most all my friends really treated that person like the mountains in British Columbia. Where are we going to get tacos? where are movie reasons
00:12:24
Speaker
And I was like, wait, I want to argue with this guy. yeah i want I want to hear what he has to say and I want to challenge him. And they were just like always having to put me, come on, Phil, come on, Phil. When I to Speaker's Corner in ah you know in Hyde Park in London, same deal. I was just, i spent all day with these religious people. So there was something that provoked me. And the reason I say provoke is because I felt i felt a little bit like, how can people believe this stuff? I just couldn't, I couldn't, um you know, and and I even remember when i my first serious girlfriend,
00:12:55
Speaker
was the daughter of ah a bapt don't honestly but a non-denominational evangelical fundamentalist minister. They moved from Kansas or Oklahoma or something like that ah to l LA and he planted a church and she was very, i you know you would I didn't know she was a believer by the way she lived her life. right But one time I finally went to church. They said, would you want to come see my dad's church? And I'd actually never been to church.
00:13:20
Speaker
um Yeah, let's go. And again, I was just like, what is happening? Like, yeah I didn't, it wasn't like, I was just like, oh, well, different strokes for different folks. I was just like, you know, they brought up this couple and they were crying because their newborn baby was born with a de defective heart and everybody was praying for this. And I'm just like,
00:13:39
Speaker
what the how horrible, you know, that this baby has a defective heart. How wonderful that there's a community here giving them love and support. But what the fuck are you talking about? What do you mean? Like, you if you pray hard enough, God's going to fix the baby's heart? Well, what kind of a God is that? Like, like and doesn't God already know that the heart's defective and isn't it part of God's plan? Like, what are you talking? Like, what is happening, people? So, and I feel like it's a little bit cuckoo of me. Like, my brother thinks, like, you know, why are you so obsessed with religion? Like, he my brother kind of thinks, like... I think on some level you're a believer or something because you just can't disengage from it. So there's just so I have to just own that. like ah
00:14:18
Speaker
So growing up, I was always curious. I wanted to learn about religion. i wanted to understand how people could believe it. That was that was really my big – think I was a little bit scared of it too. It used to freak me out. you know Even though there's most religious people are wonderful, benign, good people, and most religious – I would say religion does a lot of good in the world. i was always afraid of the – the bad it just kind of creeped me out like i'm like you believe this stuff and i you know maybe there was i don't know what it was but it just it it it was something that i thought it what unnerved me it was like wait if if normal human decent rational people believe this stuff it made me feel bit unsettled in the world and it made me feel a little scared like what the heck even though you know i try to temper that as i get older and realize that you can you know anyway
00:15:03
Speaker
When I got to ah University of Oregon, ah there was a class called Sociology of Religion. Never heard of Didn't know it was a thing. You know, I thought sociology was basically race, class, gender stuff. So I took the class.
00:15:18
Speaker
And the first week it was taught by this wonderful man, Ben Johnson. He started by having us read an essay by Robert Ingersoll. Like, you know, I don't know why he did that, but I think he wanted to sort of like to say, like, let's just get this out of the way. Like, you know, there is no God. Like, we're all agnostic as to the big mysteries of life. And, you know, I'd never heard of Robert Ingallsall. I was so blown away. And then the notion the class helped me make, you know, psychology helps me understand religion and philosophy helps me understand, I mean, why people are religious, but here was this sociologist saying like, you know, a lot of people are religious because because they were raised in it and they were socialized in it. It provides community. it It's often often related to these other social um um identifiers. you know, he's just like all this stuff. Like, yes, this makes sense. This makes sense, you know? And so that became my focus, sociology of religion. Like, you know, I had wanted to fight the good fight, but, you know, when I'd go to the library in the old days, like that's where I would end up. I didn't want to read the books about Marxist class struggle as much as I i didn't want. I mean, I read those, too, but it was like, first gosh, a book about, you know, religion and Mormons and Catholics and all is Muslims. I was just fascinated. So I got into that. And then sociology of religion became my thing because that's all there was.
00:16:32
Speaker
I got my first job, which is still my current job at this small liberal arts college in Southern California at the Claremont Colleges. And I was teaching sociology of religion. And then what ended up happening was I wish I could say when the light went on. But at a certain point, I just realized that there are hundreds of millions of people who live their lives without religion. They're not some tiny, tiny, tiny marginalized outlier. In some places, cases, they're the norm. And like my own, you know, like, wait a minute. My own family, my own neighborhood I grew up in in the Palisades, like everybody was secular. They were sort of invisibly secular. They weren't wearing their secularity on their sleeve and marching with signs saying we're all secular, but they were living effectively secular lives. god you know And so somehow me and others started having the same realization at the same time. And then that's for me how Secular Studies was born. It was like, wait a minute.
00:17:25
Speaker
Is there a history of irreligion? There is. Why don't we know about this? Why don't we know who Jean Merslier is? Why don't we know about these ancient, ancient voices of doubt and skepticism and irreligion? And what about secularism and paul like suddenly just became? And remember we had up a weekend retreat and I invited Barry Cosman. i don't know if Ryan was there, but a bunch of us. And we sort of said, like, what does it mean to study? What does the secular mean? How do we define it? What are its different branches?
The Rise of Secular Studies
00:17:51
Speaker
Can we? And it was like, wait, this constitutes its own academic um focus and there's no home for us. We don't have conferences. We don't have journals. So what ends up happening is people like me and Ryan, we would go to the religious studies conferences and then we would present our little research on something secular, atheists, agnostics, humanists, nuns, duns, whatever it is. Yeah.
00:18:12
Speaker
in the margins and we're like, why are we, you know, this is fine. That always happens at conferences, you know, like the people doing stuff on Mormons, they do their little thing and the people doing stuff on Jews do their thing. But so we were like another little group doing stuff on irreligiosity, but it just felt like this is bigger than one little panel. um We can have an entire conference of our own looking at secularity and politics, secular like psychology the psychology of secularity, the anthropology of secularism. I mean, it's just a whole shebang. And it just kind of grew from there. And a lot of scholars were having similar thoughts at the same time all over the country, all over the planet. And we started connecting with each other. We started emailing each other. People started creating networks. And now there are journals and conferences and grants and the whole academic um machinery has been built. And it's really nice to have an academic home with that focus.
00:19:04
Speaker
Yeah, having read some of those things you guys have been putting out and been a fly on the wall and some of the webinars and things, i've found it fascinating to to listen to and to learn from. I think it's also a very interesting mental image of you guys presenting at these religious conferences, the sociology of religious conferences. And um I've been to academic conferences a time or two, especially through my my day job. And I know even when they're with academics or eastern medical doctors who agree with each other on things and disagree on one minor point, it can get a little tense. If you've never seen two medical doctors invite each other out to the parking lot for a casual fist fight, it's a sight. But
00:19:45
Speaker
I'm wondering, were there any moments where as you guys were presenting, you were getting a lot of pushback or you had to find a back exit to leave out of or did ever get antagonistic or was it very much like, ah oh yeah, that's neat. You guys are doing that, but we've got the, you know, we're focusing on Mormonism. We're here today or something.
00:20:02
Speaker
I think it's definitely much more the latter. i think people either didn't care or they welcomed it I think there are some people that maybe were like, well, that's I remember this this guy, Peter Berger. I don't know if you're familiar with Peter Berger, but he was a giant of America. He's actually Viennese born giant of of American sociology. He wrote like.
00:20:25
Speaker
you know the sacred canopy in the 60s invitation to sociology like he had a bunch of big books in the 60s and 70s um uh social construction of reality with thomas lookman like he's just a huge huge name he's ah mostly a social theorist he never did an answer research himself but he He um also was interested in religion and read a lot about religion. And I remember, and he had a institute, he was at Boston, a college or university in Boston, I can't remember which one. And he founded like the Institute for the Study of Religion and Society or something like that. yeah And I remember when Pitzer College, where I work, we we we formed a secular studies department and it was the first one in the nation. So it got some publicity, it was in the New York Times and you know the big papers in London and blah, blah, blah. And he emailed me.
00:21:11
Speaker
And he said, hmm, I see that you've started this, you know, this secular studies program. I hope you're not just going to use it as a, you know, platform to promote your your political secular agenda or your secular, you know, anti-religious agenda or something. And I was like, I was like,
00:21:29
Speaker
when he founded his, you know, center for religion and policy, know, and society, did did anybody email me like, well, I hope you're not just going to use this to preach your religion because he's a believer himself. You know, it was like, and so there's, ah there was a little bit of that. It was sort of like, no one sees people who study religion as like trying to make the world more religious, even though many of them are like Christian Smith. um And yet somehow people saw us as,
00:21:53
Speaker
it it being in bad faith, like, oh, you're just, it's an academic discipline just to, you know, slam religion or promote secularism. That may be true, just like it's true for any discipline. Like, I'm sure a lot of people go into environmental studies because they want to, you know, fight global warming. Absolutely.
00:22:10
Speaker
you know I'm sure a lot of people become, you know study childhood psychology because they have very strong feelings about how children should be raised. i mean But the notion that you couldn't have just an academic ri academically rigorous discipline studying the secular and secular in past and present and culture and society and thought. and you know So that's what we have striven to do. So there there was a little bit of that, but nothing, no no no parking lot brawls and no nobody ever like railed against us. I think it was more just...
00:22:40
Speaker
Okay, go for it. Well, that's good to hear. I have had some of those double standard experiences myself where ah since being a bit more out as a non-religious individual after a you know significant portion of my life being religious, had some people say, hey, you're you know you're talking about this a little bit more, and really it feels like you're pushing it on people. And I would say, well, you talk about your faith constantly to everyone.
00:23:07
Speaker
I sort of feel like there's room for both of us to exist here. I'm glad you've mostly had that experience. Yeah. um I know that since you founded that department, you've you've published a lot of research, ah you've given a lot of talks. I know you've done some done some debates um and you've had these conversations with fellow academics in in the social sciences and with ah fellow academics.
00:23:35
Speaker
secular theorists, if I can call them that. But also sometimes I know with Christian or religious writers, theologians, and and so on, have any of those conversations that you've had surprised you in some way, either good or bad, when about your research?
00:23:49
Speaker
hey You're talking about like the more public-facing debates? Public-facing or private. I'm sure you've had lots of, you know, quiet chats after after conferences or or after lectures. But yeah, have any of the Either or, have any really surprised you?
00:24:07
Speaker
um
00:24:10
Speaker
I mean, for me, i would say
00:24:15
Speaker
the biggest the biggest thing for me is when I meet people that who's who I respect intellectually and and what I mean by that is like I would never call someone smart I don't know what's smart wouldn't even call myself smart like smart what do you mean like can I survive in Manitoba through the winter i do you know like what is smart like can I do geometry can I you know make them video on on YouTube. I mean, to me, it's, it's ah you know, I would need to know the context of what I mean by smart.
00:24:45
Speaker
And so for me, some, I respect someone's intellect when I feel that they understand the world in a certain way, meaning they understand historical forces, social forces, psychological forces, you know, and how they all work together. They sort of, and they can draw on that when explaining things and they understand, context and they they're self-reflective and they understand um their own biases and they understand um ah philosophical reasoning like there's just and they' they're good communicators and they're good writers and they're deep that's kind of you know if I meet someone like that I don't say hey you're really intelligent but I think to myself that's a really intelligent person
00:25:23
Speaker
and um And they seem to be able to express themselves well and understand arguments well. So i i i have ah I've met a colleague who just always blows me away by how um how much how similar he thinks about the world you know in this in these ways. Maybe I was going say the way I do. So maybe we maybe we think people are intelligent if they're if they're we think we're they're like us. but right But he seems to get everything that I get. He seems to, or I get everything, whatever you want to call it. And he is a strong, strong believer in um in the Mormon church.
00:25:58
Speaker
And, you know, and and is I want to add also is just a very wonderful human being. So it's not even that I respect what's going like their intellect, but I just also respect how they exist in the world and how they treat me and other people. And that's always been hard for me because I'm just like, what?
00:26:16
Speaker
This person and gets they understand what I mean. yeah something They understand how things get socially constructed. They understand how we have psychological needs. They understand how history affects and you know they they get all this and they can articulate it better than me. And yet they still believe. And I mean, we've had many conversations and I'm just like, what is happening? So I don't know if that's a surprise, but that's that's always something that that um really sticks in my in my jam my cereal. That's the fly in my cereal. Because for most believers, I think i I can tell myself a story that helps me understand why they believe. And it's not that much of a mystery. I may be wrong, but at least I can go to sleep at night. I can convince myself, well, I think what's going on here is X, Y, and Z. And that's why they believe this. But with with with this individual and a few others like that, i I can't tell those stories. They don't add up. And that's always been interesting to me. And I think also
00:27:13
Speaker
What what um always surprises me about some of the people that I debate, like I just debated this guy, Ross Duthat from The New York Times. He wrote a book called Believe and I was invited. i I never initiate debates. I'm asked and invited. I go. And, you know, if you pay me all the better. But um but he you know, it's just always odd to me when they try to use.
00:27:36
Speaker
logic and reason, you know, i'm like, ah you know, if someone stands up and says, I believe this on faith, I don't really have any. Well, OK, you know, don't know what to say to that. Good for you. Like, but when they try to use reason and logic, I'm ah like and the the the the lot with Ross, you know, he was like, you know, when they do this thing with like the odds, like what are the odds that life on Earth would be, you know, it's one in a billion gajillion that this planet would be, you know, first of all, I never really even understand the argument of that. And I right think
00:28:07
Speaker
ah But I want to turn to be like, okay, so you're saying the odds are so infinitesimal that that we live in a universe that creates life. Well, what are the odds that there's a magical deity out there?
00:28:17
Speaker
Like, well, can you, can have you ever calculated those odds? Like, it's like, i that that always just kind of gets me. And again, most people, most normal, rational people will just shrug their shoulders and go get a pizza. But I get obsessed with these kinds arguments. Mm-hmm.
00:28:34
Speaker
um Having been on both sides of that conversation now, um I feel like there's some there's some insights to be gained from understanding that we we you know just people can engage in motivated reasoning. you know They're trying to like make sure they can go to sleep at night with their own ah structures intact. that We could go through things like terror management theory, which I've talked about before on this show and ah other things. But what those conversations do for me now what Now that i'm the I'm the secular humanist having them with my religious friends or family, what they do for me now is make me stop and say, what are what am I still blind to? What am I still having a bias about?
00:29:14
Speaker
that's it you know I've already unpacked so much of my my life and and cut and excised it out in my own long process of deconversion. What am I still missing? and Maybe it's something relatively positive. you know Like you said, most religious people are doing a lot of good in the world. yeah i I delude myself by telling myself that maybe a feature like Star Trek is still possible. And that gets me up in the morning some days. So ah really, am I any less delusional? I don't think I am.
00:29:44
Speaker
Well, I think that you are because you're less because... you don't really believe that the enterprise is flying around right now and can be reached.
00:29:54
Speaker
You know, if you telepathically pray to Captain Kirk, he's gonna answer. So to me, what you just described is more of like ah a hope. a fan We all have hopes and fantasies and dreams and and wishes, but we recognize them as such. That's very different from, you know, I'm gonna pray instead of take my kid to the doctor. You know what i mean?
00:30:16
Speaker
I will say no comment about the Captain Kirk prayers, but um so I think this is, I love these conversations because they really do, I think help people to see that fields like sociology or secular studies, um they aren't just like dry kind of textbook sort of subject matter. um i I've read ah i' read a few of your books and a few your papers, um even the ones that are more on the academic end of things. And um I think that they're all very engaging. and I recently had Ryan Cragen on this show. And I think of things that you and he both have in common is the ability to write about academic concepts in engaging and interesting ways for non-academics. Now, I need to stress for anybody listening to this, that's not normal for academics who a lot of them still write for every audience like they live in the dusty halls of Oxford 200 years ago Like it's very esoteric and challenging to kind of get through some of those ah some of those texts. But you and Ryan, I was like, you are really very good at communicating these complex concepts in ways that are really accessible and understandable to people. And some of them are even not...
00:31:30
Speaker
maybe they're a little bit more adjacent to the to the sociology stuff because they're touching on some really timely discussions in our society. And one of the books that i that stuck out the most to me, that that I appreciate the most that you wrote ah was called What It Means to be Moral, Why Religion is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life.
Morality Without Religion
00:31:48
Speaker
And um this book it is actually special to me because it it came out around the same time that I did as as an atheist. to most the people in my life after many years as a member of the evangelical church. And one of the reasons I was so reticent to kind of tell people, even during the long deconstruction, deconversion process about what I was going through is because the argument that most frequently came back to me was ah the moral argument for the existence of God, which for our listeners basically states, if God doesn't exist, then objective moral values don't exist.
00:32:25
Speaker
But we all know that objective moral values exist. Therefore, God exists. And that's like the really short William Lane Craig version of it. um And that just kind of lived rent free in the back of my head as I was deconstructing and deconverting and thinking, well, eventually to have to figure this part out. But i'm not quite sure what the what the answer is. So your your book kind of landed at a really opportune time. I think I probably was one of the first people to buy it. uh really opportune time in my life and i was wondering you might tell us a bit about the book and and why you decided to write it man that's really a treat to hear because you know that's that is one of my favorites i'm glad like that that that's that that was worth the price of admission for me right there like thank you for sharing that that feels really great um
00:33:12
Speaker
So yes, I too found, you know, when you study religion, and you study secularity, and you study atheism and humanism, all these things, and you're out talking about it. So, you know, no one ever came up to me and said, like, well, Zuckerman, you know, where do rainbows come from? Like, like, like, you know that That, you know, what about earthquakes? Got you there. You know, it's almost like those arguments that worked, you know, what animates us? I mean, why are we um all those kind of all the stuff that science has been able to explain? Like that's off God's resume now. Like he's not. No one's like, well, there wouldn't be rainbows if it were not for God. So what like you said, the the one thing that seemed to.
00:33:55
Speaker
the last arrow in the quiver seemed to be the moral issue. Like, and, and, and moral morality is complex. So they, you know, if you don't think about it a lot you don't study it a lot and someone comes up to you and just says, well, how can you be moral if you don't believe in God? Or how can there be morality if there is no God? You're like, uh, uh, uh, you know, it's not easy. And i was that person going, uh, uh, this doesn't, what you're saying doesn't seem right to me. I'm not a trained philosopher. I'm not a meta ethicist, but yeah,
00:34:21
Speaker
i' This is what I'm having to talk about at parties or conferences or gatherings or what or debates. So after a while, I just said, like, I need to read a bit more about this. So I started reading some philosophy, some moral. I started reading ethical theory. Some of it was impossible for me to wade through. Some of it was crystal clear as a glass of water. And I just read and read and read. i would And I would say I just went...
00:34:45
Speaker
book for book, you know, for maybe three years, like, and, oh, okay, there's this school of, oh, this makes sense to me. This doesn't make sense to me. Call up a friend. What the hell does this mean? You know, and I was doing ah a lot of that, getting to a point where I was like, okay, I think I could teach a class on this. And I'm going to call it the social, I believe things are socially constructed or many things are structured. not the sun, but I think most things, you know, so I was like, I think this is a social construction. um and And I started teaching a class called the social construction of morality, which allowed me to explore these arguments. because You know, you never learn something as well as when you have to teach it, you know, ris but and then I was like, you know, the class was fun for me and I was learning more and I was getting challenged. And finally I was like, you know, I just want to write this out a for myself, but B
00:35:31
Speaker
I just wish, because what would happen is when someone would say to me, how can you be moral without God? I would want to give him like 18 books. You know, I'd be like, well, you know, there's Franz DeWall from this primatologist perspective. And then there's all this work on child psychology from Bloom. And then there's, you know, then there's these ethical theories from Kai Nielsen or whoever, you know, Hume or whatever it was. And, you know, no one's going to do that. so I was like, well, I don't know if I have anything new to say, but I think I i can get put a pack a lot of arguments into one book. And I think I can do it in a way that's accessible. So then the person who can't take my class, I can say, well, here to read this book. So my goal was to write a single book that tried to walk through. Now, again, it's not it's not I don't think your ethical theorist from Princeton or Harvard thinks has even heard of it. But I have had so many people say to me it has helped them articulate these these questions and these issues. So um that's why I wrote it. And I'm going up to some evangelical.
00:36:29
Speaker
Dr. David Morgan- College north of Sacramento next week to debate morality and it's the same thing you know it's the exact same thing there, there is objective morality and all that, so I I get my feet wet I went to the beach this morning with a fellow philosopher and. David Morgan- We talked about objective morality and subject morality and meta ethics and emotivism and blah blah blah so I i'm a little bit of a dilettante in that area. But I do find it important and compelling. And I feel like there's a very strong case to be made against the religious, the theistic view on that point. So that's the story behind that book. And thrilled it got published.
00:37:06
Speaker
but I was thrilled as well to to find it. um I noticed that in your ah in your kind of construction of the book and how you kind of walk people from start to finish, ah you you brought in a lot of those philosophical perspectives that they may not have heard before, but you you married them very well, I think, with the the social sciences, that the the know the data and the information, the things we've learned about human nature and about how we evolved as ah as a species.
Human Altruism and Morality
00:37:35
Speaker
um I keep thinking about ah you know all the things that we've learned about early humans and how good they were at taking care of people, how good they were at taking care of each other. We're just were a naturally altruistic species. And um having you know when I read your book and started having more of these conversations and people would say, where's morality come from? And I started saying, you know I actually think it comes from us.
00:38:00
Speaker
I think it i think comes from us. I think i think we made it. and And I actually got really excited by that. that's That sounds kind of beautiful when you put it like that. Obviously, there's still lots of terrible things in the world, but ah but isn't it neat that we ah that we managed to to take care of each other so well that we codified it in so many different ways? Yeah, yeah, exactly. i agree.
00:38:26
Speaker
You also had, i think, the best explanation of the euthyphro dilemma. i think I'm saying that correctly. Euthyphro dilemma that I'd ever read. And ironically, it was the one piece of Greek philosophy that didn't come up when I was at seminary.
00:38:41
Speaker
for some reason. We read a lot of Socrates, you know, read a lot of Plato, read a lot of different things, but they were like, you know, excerpts. this The euthyphro dilemma didn't didn't come up. And if if you wouldn't mind, could you just take people through what the euthyphro dilemma is in in a very kind of short short way? Because I know it's a long one.
00:39:01
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot to the story and it's a lot of fun, but it's is these two horns that ah come up and basically in modern parlance, you know, because I changed a lot of the verbiage, but basically, you know, someone asks this, you know, person who seems to know what is wrong and right. They say, well, what is, what is right? Or what is moral or what is pious? different words And the person says, well, whatever God commands, that's what's moral. That's what's pious. That's what's right. And then the, then the Socratic, you know, Plato has Socrates say, well,
00:39:34
Speaker
Does God command these things because they are moral in and of themselves? Or do they become moral because they are commanded by God? And, you know, and and the other guy's like well, what's the difference? And it's like well, there's a big difference because if you said, and both of those horns, I think challenge a theistic based morality, because if you say, well, God just knows what is moral. He recognized he's so smart and on mission. He knows what's moral. Thus, um he sort of proclaims it, well, that means morality exists outside of God and he's just telling us what it is, but he's recognizing it or seeing it, but but we could come to it. We don't necessarily need him to figure it out. ah Or it's redundant that he tells us it's just there. Or you could say, no, it becomes moral.
00:40:19
Speaker
by fiat, by him commanding it, which then makes, you know, morality just, well, whatever God commands is moral. And that, that seems kind of odd because then God could command the opposite commandments and we'd all have to accept them as moral. And at the end of the day, if whatever God commands is moral, then moral itself as a, as a qualifier, as an adjective really doesn't, let's just say God commanded something. What what is calling it moral? if That's redundant as well. So exactly.
00:40:43
Speaker
Explore. And then it isn't really objective in that second case, is it? and I've had a couple of conversations with people where they said, well, but if God commands us to to do these things, it's objective morality. i said, I'd be willing to bet that I'm more objectively moral than you are, because yeah you know you look at the book of Numbers where God commands the Israelites to slaughter this whole city, but you keep the underage girls for yourselves as as for obvious reasons. like I'm willing to say that's wrong, even if God tells me to do it.
00:41:14
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. You know, and that always makes people kind of ah maybe you didn't understand the context of the verse. Like, I bet I understood it pretty darn well. And I think the um the writers of those stories understood it, too, because the first test is asking Abraham to do something that's manifestly immoral, like kill your own kid. Mm hmm.
00:41:37
Speaker
If I command it, will you do it? That's the ultimate test. And of course, Abraham passes with flying colors in in in their mind. In my mind, he failed. i would have said, sorry, God, I'm not going to kill my kid, but I'm God. I made the mountains. I made ferrets. I made, you know, fleas.
00:41:54
Speaker
Very impressive. God might doesn't make right. I'm not going to do it. Yeah. But I know, you know. Yeah. I know a number of people who grew up in very evangelical homes who,
00:42:05
Speaker
had long years of anxiety because of that story, thinking like, my parents are going to kill me if God tells them to. And it doesn't make for a very safe feeling home environment when that's, you know, that's going on. And I love how that kind of ties right back into the into that you're mentioning earlier is God necessary for morality that that God ah it's like a moral God of the gaps right like all those other things are off of God's resume but we you know we can't explain where morality came from so that one's gotta be God but when we have mundane explanations for rainbows and for
00:42:41
Speaker
Oh, I can't remember what else you said, to the rain and like other earthquakes and things. We don't need a supernatural explanation. We might as well be saying that fairies give us objective morality at that point.
00:42:53
Speaker
And as it turns out, we don't need fairies or God. but We just need each other. And that was a comforting thought. Thank you. um that was ah That was the book that i that kind of inspired this this interview request.
Secularism and Human Flourishing
00:43:10
Speaker
It's the book that I'm recommending our our listeners pick up. But I also wanted to ask, are there any other projects you're working on right now that are going to be coming out? Other other books or for those of us who have access to them, peer reviewed papers and and things, any projects you're currently ah getting up to that you're excited about?
00:43:30
Speaker
Yeah, um well, I am working on a new book, but I think it's a really good idea. So I don't want to broadcast it. OK. I could be wrong, but I think I've stumbled onto something that will be a real contribution. I could be be wrong. And in six months from now, going to be like, oh, what was I thinking? But but on this particular date of October 27th, I don't want to say too much about it. But other than it's about secularism and its role in human society and its role in human flourishing. um I interviewed um i I decided I wanted to I wanted to interview some people who are like who I considered sociologically the least religious people on Earth. And I i realized that meant they had to have three criteria for me. They didn't believe in God.
00:44:13
Speaker
They weren't raised by people who believe in God or they were raised by people who don't believe in God. And they live in a society where the majority of people don't believe in God. To me, that was like, because like you could be an atheist, but you could be raised by God believers. And thus that that still influenced your worldview. You know, like maybe you you rejected it at 19, but for the first, you know, formative years of your life, you were you were exposed to theism and shaped by it.
00:44:36
Speaker
But if your parents or your grandparents didn't, that's another. And then... Even if your family wasn't religious, you could be living in a society where are God believers. So again, you're going to be influenced by that. So what are there any people out there today who like don't never believed in God at all? Were raised by people who never believed in God and live in a society where that's normative? And yes, there are. And the one I picked was ah contemporary Estonia. I could have picked. others But Estonia seemed to fit the bill with the most highest number of God, non non-believers in God. And so I did some in-depth interviews, thanks to Zoom, with a bunch of ah Estonians and just asked them about morality, their beliefs, their values. It was not a random sample, so it wasn't representative, so nothing statistical. But it was just really fun to have those conversations. um And I published that in ah my latest article. it's called Altruistic Atheists. um that you can it's free online but um yeah so those are the two things i'm working on uh that i can think of off the top i'm also at sorry i'm editing the oxford handbook of apostasy and deconversion and that should be out we're almost done with that so that should be out next year well i'm very excited to see what comes out in the in the handbook i'm doing ah my own
00:45:53
Speaker
PhD dissertation on religious deconversion. So I'm very excited about anything in that area, unless it's about my exact topic, in which case I'm not excited about it anymore. I'm distressed. but no So I do understand you're not wanting to let the cat out of the bag about your new book, which is totally fine. um We'll link to that altruistic atheism article in the show notes for people so they can they can track it down. um So Estonia, you said, i'm I'm guessing since it is so secular, ah then it must be filled with crime and all kinds of other moral problems.
Estonia: A Secular Society's Success
00:46:27
Speaker
The wretched hide of scum and villainy and all that stuff? Exactly, no. In fact, one of the guys I interviewed, he's like, well, I'm looking out my window right now and I'm not seeing any pillaging and slaughter. Yeah, no, like like most...
00:46:40
Speaker
um Western advanced democratic societies ah that have highly secularized and have highly educated populations and whatnot. um Estonia is doing quite well, relatively. not Not that the birds don't shit there, but yeah, no, compared to other societies, it's a very safe and ah and that you know that's not just because of its high secularity. There's whole bunch of reasons for that, but all those reasons are this worldly. They're not yeah otherworldly.
00:47:06
Speaker
Right. Well, probably one of those things where they have similar causes, like really robust secular institutions and secular safety nets are like a predictor of increased secularism. So that's probably, you know, when when there's less poverty, there's less crime.
00:47:19
Speaker
Absolutely. So. Yeah. And less need for faith. Yeah. So I think that makes a great deal of sense. um I know that we're getting up to our time here as we wrap this up. I wanted to thank you not only for your time on this interview, ah but for your ongoing work in ah wherever you can kind of shining the light of reason into some of the darker corners of our understanding. and The world is certainly an uncertain and some scary place these days. i mean, it always was, but maybe a bit more so for for some of us. ah than usual. And I think for for non-religious people, some of the current events might make them feel a bit more so scared or uncertain about being open about their secular identities. I think that research like yours really normalizes being non-religious. It's a part of our species that's natural, which can be immensely valuable. um Your books were very comforting to me. And I think that, and especially what it means to be moral. And I think that it would be comforting to others as well. So I can't recommend it
00:48:22
Speaker
highly enough. ah Thank you for doing what you do. And I look forward to the next book. Oh, thank you so much, Jan. Thank you for doing what you're doing. Really, really a pleasure to talk with you. Same here. And now just to close out, like we've been doing with everybody this year, i want to ask you one book and one band that you'd recommend for our listeners.
00:48:40
Speaker
Well, the band is easy. It's my favorite band. It's a band called Love, L-O-V-E. They were one of the first rock acts signed by Electra Records back in the 60s.
00:48:51
Speaker
And their third album, Forever Changes, is my favorite piece of art of any kind. um and so I always recommend Love. um It's sort of folk psychedelia, rock Great stuff. um Forever Changes is just my favorite. ah In terms of a book, I would say um i just read a novel called Only Son by Kevin Moffat, which I found just to be completely... ah ah powerful and moving and a page turner. And it's one of those books. My favorite kind of books are the books where like nothing really happens and that you can't put it down.
00:49:31
Speaker
You read like now scarreds my, my struggle or whatever, but, or even like, you know, think about catcher in the ride, like what really happens in that book? Right. Not much. And yet it's this compelling book. And so only son is right in that vein where it's like nothing happens and yet everything happens. So.
00:49:49
Speaker
Okay, well, I'm going to add it to my list quite selfishly. I'm using this podcast as a way to get good book recommendations and good music recommendations. So now that I've ah let my master plan out of the bag, I think we'll call it. ah Phil, thank you again for your time. And I so appreciate it.
00:50:05
Speaker
Yeah, take care. You too. Bye-bye.
00:50:11
Speaker
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00:50:30
Speaker
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