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Conversations with Tyler / episode intelligence

Ross Douthat on Why Religion Makes More Sense Than You Think

5 Feb 2025 34 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Tyler CowenRoss Douthat

Claim mix

belief 19preference 4uncertainty 4evaluation 4commitment 1observation 1prediction 1

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Claim ledger

The useful parts, with receipts.

34 published records

02 / commitment

I won’t say the deepest level. At the quantum level of reality, it seems, as far as we can see with our perception, that in order to go from contingency to reality, you need an observer.

“I won’t say the deepest level. At the quantum level of reality, it seems, as far as we can see with our perception, that in order to go from contingency to reality, you need an observer.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

04 / 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

05 / 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

13 / uncertainty

We don’t know what’s on them, but it’s certainly more likely than if we were not discovering any such planets, so we should be raising our probability.

“We don’t know what’s on them, but it’s certainly more likely than if we were not discovering any such planets, so we should be raising our probability.”
Speaker
Tyler Cowen
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

14 / 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

18 / 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

22 / 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

23 / 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

24 / 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

29 / evaluation

I think, functionally, the simulation hypothesis is doing some of the work of a polytheistic or Gnostic religion, where whoever is running the simulation, the version of advanced consciousness that is capable of effectively creating and sustaining our world and presumably however many trillions of others they have running inside their simulator — that entity is not the creator god of classical theism.

“I think, functionally, the simulation hypothesis is doing some of the work of a polytheistic or Gnostic religion, where whoever is running the simulation, the version of advanced consciousness that is capable of effectively creating and sustaining our world and presumably however many trillions of others they have running inside their simulator — that entity is not the creator god of classical theism.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

30 / evaluation

I think the interaction between what we know at the moment or understand at the moment about evolution in human origins and the traditional Christian account of the fall, that there are some real points of tension in there that Christianity has not figured out a perfectly satisfying resolution of.

“I think the interaction between what we know at the moment or understand at the moment about evolution in human origins and the traditional Christian account of the fall, that there are some real points of tension in there that Christianity has not figured out a perfectly satisfying resolution of.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

31 / uncertainty

I guess it’s a case where I find the subject quite interesting, but I don’t want to make any kind of commitment because I think we just conspicuously lack evidence.

“I guess it’s a case where I find the subject quite interesting, but I don’t want to make any kind of commitment because I think we just conspicuously lack evidence.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

32 / evaluation

I don’t think he’d be surprised by some persistence, but I think the original Humean theory is, most people believe in the supernatural because someone has taught them about it at church.

“I don’t think he’d be surprised by some persistence, but I think the original Humean theory is, most people believe in the supernatural because someone has taught them about it at church.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

33 / preference

Absent any other indication of what kind of religion you should be, what sort of religious perspective you should have, a default to the one that works in your culture is, I think, by no means, crazy.

“Absent any other indication of what kind of religion you should be, what sort of religious perspective you should have, a default to the one that works in your culture is, I think, by no means, crazy.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

34 / prediction

People argue about what constitutes a religion, but I think you can get somewhat probabilistically to the view that not just that deism is true but that there is a fundamental order to the cosmos in which human beings have an important or significant role to play.

“People argue about what constitutes a religion, but I think you can get somewhat probabilistically to the view that not just that deism is true but that there is a fundamental order to the cosmos in which human beings have an important or significant role to play.”
Speaker
Ross Douthat
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler
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