Ross Douthat on Why Religion Makes More Sense Than You Think | Conversations with Tyler

For Ross Douthat, phenomena like UFO sightings and the simulation hypothesis don't challenge religious belief-they demonstrate how difficult it is to escape religious questions entirely. His new book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious makes the case for religious faith in an age of apparent disenchantment.
In his third appearance on Conversations with Tyler, Ross joined Tyler to discuss what getting routed by Christopher Hitchens taught him about religious debate, why the simulation hypothesis resembles ancient Gnostic religion, what Mexican folk Catholicism reveals about spiritual intermediaries, his evolving views on papal authority in the Francis era, what UFO sightings might tell us about supernatural reality, why he's less apocalyptic than Peter Thiel about the Antichrist, and why he's publishing a fantasy novel on Substack before AI potentially transforms creative writing.
Recorded January 16th, 2025
Transcript and links: conversationsw...
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Photo Credit: Abigail Douthat ©

[@argybarg]

This marvelous conversation mostly reduces to Ross Douthat invoking the God of the Gaps, over and over again.

[@declup]

The argument has no weight on my way of thinking; I find it unimaginative and unprincipled. But, in Douthat's defense, there *are* a whole lot of gaps for a god to fill. The universe is a big place. Who knows what tentacled spaghetti monster might be lurking behind the next nebula over?

[@josephclark1431]

To an extent, but he also evinces how strict materialism leaves some rather gaping gaps itself.

[@argybarg]

@@josephclark1431 Only the usual gaps of science not knowing everything about profoundly complex phenomena. That’s not an indictment of materialism.

[@josephclark1431]

​@@argybargScience can't justify itself. It presupppses a whole body of logic beforehand & and has to assume the intrinsic intelligibility of things. That prior scaffolding of the human mind radically alters our epistemic frame.

[@petebrown2845]

@@argybarg but what is an indictment of materialism is the truth of the claim "materialism is true" is itself immaterial.

[@lonecandle5786]

The theory that explains religious experiences across cultures is that we are all human beings and human beings tend to psychologically want there to be more to life than just living and dying. Psychological explanations are much more straight forward than inventing some sort of god that we can't see, hear, or test its existence in the first place.

[@unservant]

Much more “down and dirty” than the normal conversations. Like to see the sharp elbows as people wrestle with difficult questions. Very fun.

[@seanmellows1348]

A wonderful discussion, thanks.

[@declup]

I'm reminded of Fox Mulder's poster: "I Want To Believe".

[@declup]

Truman Burbank occupies a world like the one Ross describes. The world of Truman is entirely tailored to Truman. Before Truman, there are no doctors, bus drivers, or wives. They don't exist. But, then, at Truman's advance and the Director's cue, actors abruptly appear and Truman's reality is created.

[@declup]

Obligatory reference to "fine-tuning" (27:25).

[@declup]

I understand Christians' fondness for 'The Chronicles of Narnia'. The reason is evident. But what connection to Christian orthodoxy does Tolkien's trilogy have? Or maybe it isn't Tolkien's stories about hobbits that interest Christians but 'The Silmarillion' instead, since it's like a simulacrum genesis narrative?

[@JameBlack]

Fantasy in general is the most religious genre.

[@petebrown2845]

It's the sense of a world that is enchanted...where the things in the world all have meaning that can't be reduced to a purely materialistic account of what they are. I'm just a collection of carbon atoms typing symbols on a computer that transmits them to a faraway server that you can connect to and see and interpret....true but inadequate. ANd boring

[@CommunityServiceBand]

I completely understand that a man of faith and religion is unsettled by the increasing secularisation in the Western world. And I would agree that religion can foster a sense of community and an embrace of the transcendental. Which I’m all for. But can we please stop pretending any of that nonsense is true? Why does it have to be true in order to still be meaningful?

[@schorndorf]

Yes, that's my view as well. Religion might be useful (sometimes) for governing excesses in human behavior (though it can do the reverse!), but it's clearly not a useful method for understanding the universe.

[@JameBlack]

​@@schorndorfBecause America has lost technological competition to China and soon will start its descend into economic and political irrelevance. Civil War and religious conflicts is what awaits us, so better be prepared for theological disputes.

[@omarw3314]

Believing that the universe was created by an agent beyond space & time is not nonsense. It makes better sense than believing it came from nowhere.

[@schorndorf]

What is better about it? Where did the agent come from? And what does it mean to be "beyond space and time"?

[@omarw3314]

@@schorndorfthings don’t come from absolultly nowhere in our life, it is a good assumption to have that universes don’t come from nothing. Btw physicist claims that some particles or even the universe can appear out of quantum fluctuation assume that quantum fluctuation is nothing. This is clearly bullshit.

[@ai._m]

Not a good use of time and viewer attention