"A religious attitude toward the Universe is obviously appropriate"

An unlocked highlight from the extended cut of our conversation with Ross Douthat.

In a recent episode of the podcast, Shadi probes guest

Ross Douthat

of The New York Times on the difficulties of having a religious (re-)awakening in already secularized societies and the possibility of embracing religious ideas without personal religious belief. Ross emphasizes the need for a mix of past and as original concepts for societal renewal, making the case for the appropriateness of adopting a religious attitude.

Shadi goes on to challenge Ross Douthat's assertion that a religious attitude towards the world is "obviously appropriate." Ross argues that the complexity of the universe, along with our capacity for deep understanding, point to a designed existence. But Shadi questions the likelihood of secular elites embracing religion sincerely, given what he sees as the liberal societies’ discouragement of religion. Sam chimes in to emphasize the connection between societal stability and recognizing life's fragility. He argues for open discussions on existential matters, as opposed to relying on arguments to convince institutions dominated by secular elites media and academia, as necessary as that may be. A partial transcript is also available below, for those of you who love reading.

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The following transcript excerpt has been lightly edited for clarity.

SHADI HAMID: Ross, what you just said is fascinating. I just want to push you on that for a second. You said a religious attitude towards the world is “obviously appropriate”. I just want to interrogate what you mean by obviously here because clearly it's not obvious. If it was we wouldn't be having this conversation. What do you mean it's obviously an appropriate way of looking at the world?

ROSS DOUTHAT: I mean, to simplify it, that the universe presents itself to us as a complex construction and creation that gives obvious evidence of being designed and fine-tuned to make some kind of existence like ours possible. Our consciousness in its relation to the cosmos presents itself as a key does to a lock. It is not merely that the universe appears made but that we have the capacity to understand its mysteries to extraordinary depths that you would not predict if you just said our consciousness has evolved to enable survival on the savannah…

Something else is going on. The persistence of religious and mystical experience intensely throughout a disenchanted age gives constant evidence and avenues and opportunities for people to step a little bit beyond the purely material. If you actually are sincere in wishing to have a religious experience, those experiences not in every single case but in many, many cases are available to you. It is true that God in an ultimate sense, whatever he or she or it may be, is hidden from us but the divine is available for encounter. Even to people in our society that it’s obvious that God does not exist have not really pushed that in their own lives adequately to make that kind of statement as confidently as they do. How's that?

SHADI HAMID: That's great. Second follow-up is you said that at some point, elites in our secular societies will come to this realization and they'll see the power and appropriateness of religion. But if you think that actual belief is necessary and it shouldn't just be instrumental, are you also saying that you think... secular elites will believe in the depths of their heart, that seems to me, quite a bit more unlikely short of an act of God. And now that's certainly possible for those of us who believe in God, we do believe that he can change things through his will. But let's say he doesn't take that kind of action. Is it enough for elites just to — like, it's very hard to change people's hearts. And there is something about liberal society and there is something about secular society, which deadens the heart, which does make it hard to be spiritually in touch. I mean, I struggle with this. This is something that I think about a lot. I live in a society that doesn't encourage me to be closer to God and to try to become closer to God is an uphill battle with obstacles thrown across the way everywhere you go. And if this is inherent to the kind of society that we live in, I just don't see how we get a critical mass of influential elites to have their hearts changed.

SAMUEL KIMBRIEL: So let me chime in on this one actually. So I actually think one thing that's interesting about this conversation and is kind of unique in sort of the fields that we're in, all three of us are religious and fairly devout in certain ways. I think that's, that is interesting. I guess the way that I would put it is that, Shadi to what you were just describing, I think that the issue is that that gives a little bit too much confidence that society will stay stable in the way that the kind of class that you're talking about assumes. So I think part of the issue with the, I mean, also my arguments about ambition — but certainly these questions about religion — is that those are things that only come up when you accept or confront the fragility of life. Life does for many people in the societies that we live in have an incredible fragility to it and a real sense that it can get pulled away. It's not an accident that you still see significantly higher levels of religious practice among people in those kinds of categories. I don't think that the questions that we're discussing are the sorts of things that are going to be resolved by making a bunch of arguments that convince people who work in media or academia that there are deeper features of reality. I think being able to develop some kind of discussion that allows, like as I'm saying, just like large questions to be on the table, I think is significant. I think my skepticism about the Fukuyama framework is that I think it just wildly overstates how much we have been able to achieve social structures that will be stable forever and ever and will broadly spread that kind of stability to everyone.

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