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Ross Douthat

Published podcast speaker

Claims
67
Episodes
3
Shows
1
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0

Claim ledger

What Ross said.

36 transcript-backed records

02 / belief

I’d say when the pope defines a dogma of the church infallibly, like the dogma of the Immaculate Conception or something like that, I think that has a useful clarity.

“I’d say when the pope defines a dogma of the church infallibly, like the dogma of the Immaculate Conception or something like that, I think that has a useful clarity.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

03 / belief

At the same time, I think that the wide range of attested spiritual, just frankly bizarre experiences that human beings have — of which, UFO encounters are a subset — that, again, has familiar antecedents going back millennia — I think we should take those seriously and have a theory of what they are that is more complex than fraud meets insanity meets delusion.

“At the same time, I think that the wide range of attested spiritual, just frankly bizarre experiences that human beings have — of which, UFO encounters are a subset — that, again, has familiar antecedents going back millennia — I think we should take those seriously and have a theory of what they are that is more complex than fraud meets insanity meets delusion.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

08 / belief

If that were the only kind of experience you had, that anyone had, or that 99 percent of religious experiences fit that pattern, then yes, parsimony, I think, would suggest whatever might be out there, there’s not just probably one God, but that God is probably the only higher power concerned with us with whom we might be in relationship.

“If that were the only kind of experience you had, that anyone had, or that 99 percent of religious experiences fit that pattern, then yes, parsimony, I think, would suggest whatever might be out there, there’s not just probably one God, but that God is probably the only higher power concerned with us with whom we might be in relationship.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

10 / belief

I wouldn’t dismiss the simulation hypothesis any more than I would dismiss the various multiversal hypotheses that have ended up substituting in at least some intelligent people’s minds for what I think of as the rather more obvious likelihood that the old-fashioned religious worldview is correct.

“I wouldn’t dismiss the simulation hypothesis any more than I would dismiss the various multiversal hypotheses that have ended up substituting in at least some intelligent people’s minds for what I think of as the rather more obvious likelihood that the old-fashioned religious worldview is correct.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

13 / belief

I want to say that I think generalizing from that to a universal point that you could never have video evidence may be a little bit of a leap, and we should give it a few more decades, and see what surfaces.

“I want to say that I think generalizing from that to a universal point that you could never have video evidence may be a little bit of a leap, and we should give it a few more decades, and see what surfaces.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

14 / belief

You might think that we are among the first, in which case, we seem fairly special, or you might think that there are just very, very few, in which case, I think, we seem fairly special again.

“You might think that we are among the first, in which case, we seem fairly special, or you might think that there are just very, very few, in which case, I think, we seem fairly special again.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

15 / belief

I think, certainly, that if you’re driving through Arlington, Virginia, there is a set of unconscious things that your body does out of habit as you drive around that you are not self-consciously doing.

“I think, certainly, that if you’re driving through Arlington, Virginia, there is a set of unconscious things that your body does out of habit as you drive around that you are not self-consciously doing.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

17 / belief

The pundit’s mistake is sometimes to try and think 14 steps ahead, and the partisan mind may have a certain advantage, where it just says, “No, we have to win this election and let the future take care of itself.” That still hasn’t brought me around to supporting Trump, but I think my arguments against supporting him are weaker than they were, again, pending the outcome of whatever happens with the coronavirus.

“The pundit’s mistake is sometimes to try and think 14 steps ahead, and the partisan mind may have a certain advantage, where it just says, “No, we have to win this election and let the future take care of itself.” That still hasn’t brought me around to supporting Trump, but I think my arguments against supporting him are weaker than they were, again, pending the outcome of whatever happens with the coronavirus.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

18 / belief

I know that there are areas where that line gets blurry, but I think, yes, over a long enough life-expectancy horizon, human beings would need to create a culture of refusing and withdrawing care.

“I know that there are areas where that line gets blurry, but I think, yes, over a long enough life-expectancy horizon, human beings would need to create a culture of refusing and withdrawing care.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

20 / belief

I think I would assign a slightly higher probability to the weird-advanced-military-technology explanation for those, that they seem a little different from the UFO abduction stories.

“I think I would assign a slightly higher probability to the weird-advanced-military-technology explanation for those, that they seem a little different from the UFO abduction stories.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

21 / belief

Whereas I think that — and I say this: I’m not a professional architecture critic, so take this with a grain of salt — but the last 25 years of public architecture has been less spectacularly ugly and more just mediocre imitations of more striking modernist forms.

“Whereas I think that — and I say this: I’m not a professional architecture critic, so take this with a grain of salt — but the last 25 years of public architecture has been less spectacularly ugly and more just mediocre imitations of more striking modernist forms.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

22 / belief

In that scenario — now we’re into totally speculative terrain — I think that you would expect popes to be elected later, and I think a 50-year pontificate is generally an unwise thing for the Catholic Church in the same way that a 50-year span of governance by any really powerful figure often ends up in bad places in the end.

“In that scenario — now we’re into totally speculative terrain — I think that you would expect popes to be elected later, and I think a 50-year pontificate is generally an unwise thing for the Catholic Church in the same way that a 50-year span of governance by any really powerful figure often ends up in bad places in the end.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

23 / belief

Now politically — we’re recording this in the midst of the interregnum between Israeli elections, of which we’re on track to have 17 in the next year or so — I think that you can see elements of the same political decadence on display in other countries on display in Israel too.

“Now politically — we’re recording this in the midst of the interregnum between Israeli elections, of which we’re on track to have 17 in the next year or so — I think that you can see elements of the same political decadence on display in other countries on display in Israel too.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

24 / belief

I would put it this way: I think France is, in certain ways, very advanced in decadence, but it’s also a place where a lot of forces of post-decadence — whatever that may be — are sort of in play in really interesting ways.

“I would put it this way: I think France is, in certain ways, very advanced in decadence, but it’s also a place where a lot of forces of post-decadence — whatever that may be — are sort of in play in really interesting ways.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

25 / belief

Now, I think what we’ve seen over the last 30 years — and it’s been thrown into sharp relief by the sex abuse crisis — is that the modern world may not allow that model to exist; that if you have this global institution that has a celebrity figure at the center of it, who is the focus of endless media attention, you can’t, in effect, get away with saying, “Well, the pope is the pope, but sex abuse is an American problem.

“Now, I think what we’ve seen over the last 30 years — and it’s been thrown into sharp relief by the sex abuse crisis — is that the modern world may not allow that model to exist; that if you have this global institution that has a celebrity figure at the center of it, who is the focus of endless media attention, you can’t, in effect, get away with saying, “Well, the pope is the pope, but sex abuse is an American problem.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

26 / belief

The issue there, though, is just that the orthodox Christian believes that at a certain point the revelation is actually final, that God essentially doesn’t play tricks on you. And this is I think an important idea — that too much Hegelianism leads you to the point where you’re saying, “Well, what God is saying in one era just doesn’t hold true in another.

“The issue there, though, is just that the orthodox Christian believes that at a certain point the revelation is actually final, that God essentially doesn’t play tricks on you. And this is I think an important idea — that too much Hegelianism leads you to the point where you’re saying, “Well, what God is saying in one era just doesn’t hold true in another.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

27 / belief

I think the Hegelian insight can be true in the development of political forms and responses to problems that social changes create, problems that basic technological changes create, and you can hold that view while also holding the view that the Hegelian dialectic can’t be usefully applied to certain ideas and certain truths, and you can take extreme examples and say there isn’t a synthesis to be had with — to violate Godwin’s law early in our conversation — there isn’t a synthesis to be had with Nazi Germany.

“I think the Hegelian insight can be true in the development of political forms and responses to problems that social changes create, problems that basic technological changes create, and you can hold that view while also holding the view that the Hegelian dialectic can’t be usefully applied to certain ideas and certain truths, and you can take extreme examples and say there isn’t a synthesis to be had with — to violate Godwin’s law early in our conversation — there isn’t a synthesis to be had with Nazi Germany.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

28 / belief

All of which is to say I don’t have a brilliant answer for your question, but I think there would be a lot of very strange and different cross currents that the people most inclined to make the pro-life argument right now would be disinclined to immediately run with whatever political possibilities had presented, but also that the nature of the technology, its level of invasiveness and what making it work would mean, would in turn determine where liberalism went, and so on.

“All of which is to say I don’t have a brilliant answer for your question, but I think there would be a lot of very strange and different cross currents that the people most inclined to make the pro-life argument right now would be disinclined to immediately run with whatever political possibilities had presented, but also that the nature of the technology, its level of invasiveness and what making it work would mean, would in turn determine where liberalism went, and so on.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

29 / belief

In that way and various others that I could go on listing, I think the tensions between Mormonism and the dominant American culture still leaves it quintessentially American, just as .

“In that way and various others that I could go on listing, I think the tensions between Mormonism and the dominant American culture still leaves it quintessentially American, just as .”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

31 / belief

I think that we’re going to wake up in 20 or 30 years and be — well, we may not wake up, but I would like to think that we’ll wake up in 20 or 30 years and say — “Why were we putting all of our children in front of these screens for so much of their childhood and shouldn’t this be something that we had exerted actual control over instead of just leaving it to some combination of experiment and market forces and governments wanting to be hip and cool and buying a lot of Chromebooks that Microsoft wanted to unload,” and so on.

“I think that we’re going to wake up in 20 or 30 years and be — well, we may not wake up, but I would like to think that we’ll wake up in 20 or 30 years and say — “Why were we putting all of our children in front of these screens for so much of their childhood and shouldn’t this be something that we had exerted actual control over instead of just leaving it to some combination of experiment and market forces and governments wanting to be hip and cool and buying a lot of Chromebooks that Microsoft wanted to unload,” and so on.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

32 / belief

I think that there is a very natural story to tell about Western civilization, in which particular Christian ideas about the individual, the individual’s relationship to God, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” and so on — that these sort of embedded ideas eventually develop into the constituent forms of modern liberal democracy.

“I think that there is a very natural story to tell about Western civilization, in which particular Christian ideas about the individual, the individual’s relationship to God, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” and so on — that these sort of embedded ideas eventually develop into the constituent forms of modern liberal democracy.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

33 / belief

I think conservatism in America at its best is trying to preserve a kind of American exceptionalism that doesn’t sort of have applications really when you’re thinking about what a German conservatism would be, or a Russian conservatism, and so on.

“I think conservatism in America at its best is trying to preserve a kind of American exceptionalism that doesn’t sort of have applications really when you’re thinking about what a German conservatism would be, or a Russian conservatism, and so on.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

34 / belief

I think a therapeutic shift on divorce would have negative practical effects on the everyday lives of Catholics. But the reason the issue is particularly important to me, and the reason I’ve written about it so much, is that I think the church is risking betraying its connection to Jesus.

“I think a therapeutic shift on divorce would have negative practical effects on the everyday lives of Catholics. But the reason the issue is particularly important to me, and the reason I’ve written about it so much, is that I think the church is risking betraying its connection to Jesus.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

35 / belief

I don’t want to, having done my Butlerian Jihad rant, I don’t want to oversell the horrors of social media, because I think if you look at a lot of the polarization in American life, it’s being driven by an older technology: cable television.

“I don’t want to, having done my Butlerian Jihad rant, I don’t want to oversell the horrors of social media, because I think if you look at a lot of the polarization in American life, it’s being driven by an older technology: cable television.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

36 / belief

I think if I were playing the optimist, I would say that there is a Euro-African future for the church where African forces, African migration, African ideas, African leaders help renew and enrich and return European Catholics to their faith.

“I think if I were playing the optimist, I would say that there is a Euro-African future for the church where African forces, African migration, African ideas, African leaders help renew and enrich and return European Catholics to their faith.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler
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