Atheist vs Christian vs Spiritual Thinker: Is Not Believing In God Causing More Harm Than Good?!

Nine in 10 young people in the UK believe that their life is lacking purpose and a lot of people are turning

back to religion. There is something going on. This is about the most important thing that anyone could ever find out about

their life and God has made us for a purpose and the purpose flows from that meaning. I kind of reject that cuz this is a

perfect example of a solution being provided without explaining exactly why it provides a solution and that's what

people are doing in religious traditions. I hard disagree. For me, finding meaning and purpose is like a

very practical thing. And that's what I want to talk about today. We are joined by an atheist, Christian, and spiritual thinker

to find an answer to the purpose crisis millions are facing today. One of the reasons that I'm a Christian

is because it's the best explanation for the way things are. But if Christianity were true, we would not expect the kind of suffering that is

present in the world. So, I'm very curious. What if I died from cancer at 1 years old? So, someone violated God's commands and

that had an impact on the world. So children get cancer because a few million years ago someone ate a fruit. If you want religion to provide

existential comfort for people who are suffering, you have to do more in the face of children dying of cancer than

some reference to mythical human beings. But if your worldview does not have a way of making sense or moral intuitions

about suffering, it's not an adequate worldview. What I would say a science and spirituality can really add is it's

effective in terms of reducing suicidality, improving resilience, giving them a reason to wake up in the

morning. And we'll get into that. And Alex, if someone's listening now and they feel lost in their life, is there any advice that you could give them?

So, as an atheist, I'm offering a psychological explanation. So, I would recommend that they

You're spot on, Alex. So, the first thing to understand is it is an internal feeling. And we found in our study that

if you your sense of purpose increases by 68%.

[Music] Ole, Greg,

Alex. The reason I wanted to speak to all three of you today is to discuss meaning and purpose. And there's some stats that

I wanted to share that kind of frame the discussion. Three in five young Americans believe that their life lacks

purpose. Nine in 10 young people in the UK believe that their life is lacking purpose. And when I look across other

stats as it relates to things like mental health, 59% of Brits said they lived a meaningful life compared to just

25% who said they did not. In an October 21 survey, 34% of men in the UK said

life had no meaning compared to 18% of women and 50% of the same group who said

that their lives lack purpose and meaning said that their poor mental health was linked to not knowing what to

do with their life. Mhm. And to give some further stats which I found really interesting around the rise of religiosity, in the UK, a belief in

God amongst 18 to 24 year olds has risen from 18% in 2021 to 37% in 2025

according to Yuggov. And in the UK, monthly church attendance has risen from 4% up to 15% in 2025.

There is something going on and that's what I want to talk about today. But before we do that, I'd love

to understand the perspective that all of you bring to this conversation. So if I start with yourself, Alec,

you know, it's it's interesting you mentioned a lot about mental health. I'm a psychiatrist. So for me, finding

meaning and purpose is like a very practical thing. So literally, a patient will come into my office. They'll say,

"I have no reason to live. There's there's no nothing worth it in life. I am suicidal. I want to kill myself." So

I have a job as a clinician to like fix that problem in a very like practical way. So, I've got, you know, a couple of

weeks, hopefully 15, 20 weeks to teach them how to find purpose. And so,

usually the way that I approach that is there's there's a lot of sort of evidence-based scientific approaches to

finding purpose. I think those tend to work really well, but I'm I'm sure, as my philosopher colleagues will will

point out and tear me apart, you know, science has a lot of shortcomings. And so then what I I tend to find works

incredibly well is adding a certain degree of spiritual practice to that. And usually when we put those two things

together, things work. And the the real proof point for me was when I started

streaming, 10,000 people reached out to me in one month asking, hey, like do you have room in your private practice? And

so I started to think about, okay, if this is a methodology, then can it be taught? So, I started this coaching

program and what we found in our pilot study of,453 people is that if you stick with the

program for about 20 weeks, your sense of purpose increases by 68%. I'd love to

hear from my colleagues, but I I think, you know, if someone asks me, "What is the meaning of life?" I I don't know,

but if someone says, "I have no meaning. Can you help me with that?" The answer is absolutely yes.

And I want to attempt to just define two terms that you said there. One is purpose. And it doesn't have to be a

perfect definition but roughly what you mean by that. And then you said you introduced spiritual practice. What did you mean by that?

So what I think about is purpose is using something called factor analysis. So if you ask someone do you have

direction in life? Do you have purpose in life? Is there meaning in life? All

three of those things cluster together to some. Even being in control correlates with

that. So if you were in control of your life, your sense of purpose will increase. So there are a lot of these like words that we use but all of these

words tie back to some internal sense of what is happening in your life. So

that's how I would uh describe purpose in terms of spiritual practices. What my

experience is is that if you look at human beings who say they have purpose and human beings who don't have purpose,

their lived experiences in life are different. So when I work with survivors

of trauma, they have certain experiences like literally we can scientifically sort of measure this. You have a

particular experience which destroys your sense of meaning in the world. I had a patient once who was attacked in a

bathroom for about 5 minutes. And in 5 minutes this person had a sense of what

they were doing in life, was dating, was doing well in college, had loving parents, and in five minutes their

compass for navigating the world was shattered. So if we sort of think about experience

can lead to a loss of purpose, experience can also lead to a gain in

purpose. Now the spiritual tradition that I come from is all about particular

practices that evoke certain subjective experiences and as

people have those experiences their sense of purpose increases and

this is where I think there's a major shortcoming of science. So science can tell you what you should do, but it

doesn't create experiences in and of itself, right? So we can scientifically understand that the highest risk factor

for pornography addiction is having no meaning in life. But even if we know that, that doesn't help us like fix the

problem. Then there's always a question of how like so we can discover something with science, but then there's a question of how do we actually like move

from point A to point B? And that's where I find spiritual practice is incredibly helpful. Mhm.

Would you classify yourself as religious or or Yes, I think so. Greg,

y what is the perspective you bring to this conversation and what's the the lived experience, the academia that um

lends itself to that perspective? Yeah, there's a whole bunch of that fitting in and I relate to a lot what you're saying uh Alo about people's

challenges. Now what's interesting to me about this whole discussion since I'm a Christian uh and I understand the world

from a theistic perspective because I think it's the best explanation for the way things are just to give a definition to that um

theistic what does that mean a personal god a god there is a personal god who is involved

with the world he made the world and he still maintains activity as opposed to theistic which just wound up the clock

and let it go okay so my view is god is still involved olved in fact so involved that he actually came to earth in the

person of Jesus of Nazareth to create a rescue plan. Now, what's interesting to me about this broader question, we can

get into more details too, is that it's not if there is a God who made the world for a purpose with meaning, people can

participate in that meaning and purpose even if they don't know God. They're not they won't be experiencing what they

were made for, which is to be in friendship with him with the plan that he's made for their flourishing, but

they still can flourish in some measure in so far as they touch on these objective features. But in so far as we

are able even without belief in God to kind of get in that groove the things

that God made us for the purposes that he intends in light of being made like

him in some way in his image there's going to be a measure of satisfaction but what they'll be missing is is the

ultimate and that is that friendship with God and being restored in that. Alex.

Yes sir. Same question for you about your what you bring to this uh conversation in terms of your perspective, your

experience and maybe some of your sort of personal journey. Well, for for my

own part, I was quite swept up in the new atheism movement, uh, which was a

mid2000s publishing phenomenon with the likes of the Dawkins and the Hitchens of the world, saying that religion is evil

and terrible. And I think promising an alternative, a kind of secular humanist utopia, that if you'll only throw off

these oppressive religious systems, you will regain your spiritual autonomy and be able to assert yourself and the

intrinsic meaning that you have within yourself. People tried that and it didn't seem to work. And I think that's

because the new atheist movement was quite philosophically shallow. It didn't seriously engage with the existential

component of religious belief and why it exists in the first place. And I think

that is why it exists. I think humans are in a strange predicament due to the mystery of consciousness. We find

ourselves possibly uniquely amongst other animals in the position of being

mortal, being physically embodied, being in a world, but also knowing those

things. It's one thing to experience the world. It's one thing to be it's another thing to be aware that you're experiencing it. Uh Josh Rasmusen once

said there's a difference between noticing a tree and noticing that you've noticed a tree. We have this sort of

second order abstraction that we can do. So, we know that death is coming, for example, and death makes a mockery of

everything that we do. Seems to just obliterate any sense of purpose or meaning because anything that we're building will ultimately, as far as

we're concerned, be gone. And that may well be unique to human beings. And so I'm not the first to suggest that the

principal motivating factor behind meaning infused activities that humans

do is an engagement in death denial or some kind of immortality project. People

literally for fear of as a result of the knowledge that this

will all come to an end engage in what we might call immortality projects. They engage in things which will outlast

themselves which give them a sense of escaping this death. The most obvious example is in religious traditions which

literally promise immortality for your own soul. But if you look just practically at where people subjectively

report finding meaning, they find it in their children. They might find it in their job, but they're unlikely to find

it in their job if they're doing something they don't really care about. They'll find it in their job. Maybe they're a maybe they're like a barrista

and they find a lot of meaning in bringing justice into the world because they're participating in a system which they believe will outlast them and is

bigger than them. So when people talk about meaning, we talk about transcendence, you know, something being above and beyond their own sort of

material uh situation. And I think religion is the is is the the archetypal

example of this and I think it's why it evolves in the first place. There is this idea that we are living in a

meaning crisis that has cropped up maybe in the past 100 years or so or maybe in the last few hundred years or so as a

response to the enlightenment and the decline of religion. I think that's far too easy. I think that's way too easy. I

think that if there is such thing as a meaning crisis, it is literally the human condition and the reason why these projects were invented in the first

place. I think literally speaking what people are doing in religious traditions is

realizing the finitude of their existence and therefore trying to commune with something. Can I add a

less finite of course we have this hunger and I I have no reason to believe that any naturalistic

explanation can explain the consciousness's hunger for meaning and significant

because that's all propositional. It's not molecules in motion. What's naturalistic mean? Naturalistic

just means nature and that's all there is basically. So you have uh molecules

in motion largely governed by natural law. There is no outside transcendent

anything. There's no immaterial anything certainly not an immaterial god that has

started the process and sustains the process and gives life meaning. There either is meaning

objectively or not. Okay? If not then it's up to us. For example, a moment ago

you said that if there is a creator God who brings us into existence, then you

are designed and you are given purpose by God. And I think we need to

investigate this a bit further. Mhm. Because for example, a quite sort of boring and overdone debate at the moment

is the extent to which we are engaged in the production of potentially artificially conscious agents with

artificial intelligence technologies. And there's all this discussion about whether or not these things can be conscious like you know whatever. Let's

just suppose for a moment that they were. Let's suppose that I created an artificially intelligent machine and I gave it a purpose and that purpose was

to produce paper clips. And because of the development of artificial intelligence technology, it became

conscious in a recognizable sense. It had an interior sense of self. It sort

of had say feelings or emotions about the world. But it is just an AI robot whose entire purpose in life is to make

paper clips. Now I could say that because that AI was designed by a creator with a purpose

that was explicitly given to it that that life is meaningful. But I think it would seem to most people that a life

whose meaning consists in creating paper clips is not sufficient is not enough to

address what people really want. It's not just some kind of purpose. It's not just even some kind of purpose which is

given to you by an authoritative creative source. It's something which is further than that. Yeah. But if I can

just relate this to the question, the problem that arises is that you have to answer the question of why God

infuses life with the meaning that he gives it. Mhm. It's either something which he has sort of arbitrarily plucked up and and

chosen to create in which case we have this problem of arbitrariness or no or in fact there is some reason why God had

to give us a particular kind of meaning that's endemic to the human condition that he had no choice but for that meaning that more

important kind of meaning to be given to human life but if he was beholden to that if he had to give us a particular

kind of meaning it seems like there's a standard of meaning which exists outside of God. So I'm not sure in other words

the mechanism by which being created by someone who says this is your purpose

would be fulfilling in the way that people want it to be. The reason the paperclip illustration doesn't match is

because it seems to me that you're subtly taking the thing that's conscious

that makes paper clips and comparing it to a human being. And for human beings who seem to have a different purpose, I

would argue be consigned to make paper clips, well that's dehumanizing to them. But if you have, just to follow your

illustration, if you have a creator that makes something for a reason that the

creator has in mind, then it's fulfilling its purpose perfectly. You know, for a human being, that's not

going to be satisfying making paper clips. And a lot of people who are making paper clips are not satisfied with it. Okay? I don't think it's

arbitrary if God is making something for a purpose. If God decides that he wants

to make creatures to be in friendship with him because this reflects his

loving character and that purpose is to be in friendship with him. I don't see

how that is somehow negligible or arbitrary at all. I guess you could have said that God could have done otherwise,

but his love and desire for communion is seem to me an adequate explanation for

that. This is fascinating. Um, so my first question is what's the point of

this conversation? Yeah. So I think that the ultimate

answer that we're looking for is it appears that the numbers around purpose and meaning are fluctuating at this

moment in time. a lot of people are turning back to religion as as Alex is we were just chatting about a second ago

and I guess there's two questions which is one understanding why that's happening why there's this fluctuation

why we're seeing a mental health crisis around purpose and meaning and the second is to try and figure out if

there's a truth one can arrive at if there's an objective truth that exists.

So for y'all I'm curious when y'all show up here like what is the purpose for y'all showing up? literally trying to

discover like it's the stated purpose, right? It's literally just artificially given purpose by being designed in a

particular way. We're going to get together and we're going to have a conversation and see if we can figure out this this meaning stuff, right? And

by the way, like we're not going to solve that problem. I think it's worth pointing out that like these

conversations have to be exploratory and subjective. If anybody thinks that the four of us sat at this table are going

to solve the meaning crisis and give people a five-step guide to finding meaning in their life and that will be the sort of case closed, then they're

delusional. I I don't know if I I agree that we can't find an answer, but we'll talk about

Well, this is what I wanted to speak to. It it um obviously we're talking about this broader issue of meaning and purpose.

All right? And as I mentioned earlier, there either is an objective one or it's only subjective. Okay? If it is an

objective one, this is about the most important thing that anyone could ever find out about their life if they were created for a reason. In my view, the

reason I'm here is because I'm convinced that that's the case and I'm willing to give reasons why. Okay? But I don't

think I I'm sympathetic to the concern that you can't sit around a table and in two or three hours solve the problem for

any individual because people going through the process of trying to figure these things out. It takes a long time

as they put the pieces together. But I think there's a lot of people in the world that think they have put it together and they've come to conclusions

about ultimate meaning and purpose and they don't come to my own conclusions. But many have. So what I would hate to

do is to leave people with the feeling like we can all search and the glory is in the search but if you think you found

the answer then you haven't. Of course this to me is a nealistic enterprise. Then I think it's possible to come to

conclusions. Yes, I think so too to be clear. But I think what I'm what I'm trying to say is this will be something that one will

experience for themselves and will discover for themselves in their own life. It's not going to be something that you know there's that old um is it

Lynchi the the the sort of the Buddhist Coan that says if you meet the Buddha kill him. The idea being that you know

if you think that the kind of enlightenment which is necessary to spiritual fulfillment can be found

through some kind of guru um you're missing the mark. It's something that you need to do for yourself. But isn't

that statement itself meant to be a truth about spirituality that you can actually count on or can I jump in?

I just want to make sure I understand y'all's point. So, so you're saying that the search for purpose first of all is

never going to go away like is a human condition, right? Yes. Like like so as

humanity humanity will never find its purpose. I can tell you why if you like. No. No. I I don't even know why yet.

I think I think individuals can but humanity that's yeah I'm just making sure I understand. Right. So an individual can

find their purpose but as humanity it's never going to be solved. And then you said something about purpose being tied

to opposing to death in some way. So transcending death that human beings

basically look for purpose because death is inevitable and if we can find purpose

then we can give our life meaning. But if death if we die and I don't leave something behind. Can you talk a little

bit about that? This is essentially a version of Ernest Becker's denial of death hypothesis which famously suggests

that the motivation for a great deal of human behavior is at least human behavior outside of immediate sensory

concerns like eating and stuff like that. Anything that humans engage in on a societal level, on an abstract level

is ultimately motivated by an apprehension of death. I think that's probably too simple, but it's definitely

a contributing factor. I I think that for example, put it this way, right? Here's an example that comes from I

think his name is Sheffller and he has this interesting thought experiment. Suppose I don't know maybe you're engaged in in writing a book. Suppose

you discovered and this probably won't be the case for you because you believe in an afterlife, but suppose that you're an atheist for a moment. Suppose it were

the case that you discovered that after you die, a meteor is going to come and

wipe out all life on Earth. Everybody's going to die almost instantly after you do, but you'll be dead. So, you will live your entire life as it was anyway.

Okay. And suppose the rest of the world doesn't even know this is going to happen, but you're told this is going to be the case. Would that motivate you to

write your book more or less? Most people say that it would seem a bit pointless now. I What's the point now in

writing this book? What's the point in in having children if they're going to die 30 days after I'm after I'm gone? What what's the point in in doing any of

these things? What will they still do? They'll still do the sensory stuff. They'll still eat. They'll still have sex. They'll still sleep. This kind of

stuff. But the the typically meaning uh laden activities of life they would certainly be demotivated to do. And it's

an interesting thought experiment to give us some insight as to the fact that well maybe this means that at least in

part the motivation for these actions in the first place is that they will extend beyond our death. I agree with so much of what I'll say

and I also like hard disagree with some of the fundamentals. So let's say you

have this example of like I'm write a book and then the world is going to end 30 days later and and so you say because

a lot of what you're talking about is like what people say right so you'll say like okay so like people would say that

this is a waste of time and I'm not going to do it if the world ends in 30 days and you're also saying people

is a is an everlasting thing are struggling with purpose right you're saying both of these things

so here's my question to you if you tell someone, you know, you're writing this book. Let's say you you you write it and

then you die cuz we'll simplify the example. And then 30 days later, the world ends. Let's take two people. One

who says, "I'm a write it anyway." And one who says, "There's no point." Which one of those two people do you

think has a greater sense of purpose? Probably the former. Absolutely. So, this is the key thing.

Purpose is absolutely because I I love that you're asking about mechanisms and I think maybe that's what I can provide.

I I think that's that's actually the answer, right? So, it's not that people believe and I think you're right that

the reason that this is a perennial problem is because most people do not live a life where they understand how

purpose works. Mhm. And and what I think is really fascinating about sort of like this scientific clinical approach, like if

you ask me, can I help people find meaning and purpose? I don't know. But

if you ask me, can I help a person? The answer is absolutely. And we have like particular scientific things and this is

where it's it's really counterintuitive. So a big part of like finding purpose is doing particular things and if you do

those things the likelihood that you will increase your sense of purpose in life which is another thing that's very

counterintuitive to people. Purpose is not binary. It's quantifiable. It's like a scale. So if I were to ask the three

of y'all right maybe let's like let's do this not thought experiment but this practical experiment. Do you know your

purpose in life? Like how confident are you that you're doing what you're supposed to be doing in life? How confident am I about the God part or

that I'm doing the things that are appropriate? That how confident are you that you're doing what God wants you to do?

Well, in that general sense, extremely confident or else I wouldn't be doing it. Perfect. Right. So, Stephen, what about

you, bro? About five out of 10. I knew it. Okay. Right. So, Alex,

I don't want to be difficult, but I kind of reject the grammar of the question. Awesome. Reject away, bro. I think it's what a logician would call an exponable

statement, something which needs to be broken down. You asked, "Do I know my own purpose?" That assumes that there is

a purpose to know. It it's a bit like the comparison I would give is if I asked you the question, the classic

example in logic is is uh is the king of France bold? Yes or no? I can I can rephrase my question if you

have problems with my question. So, do you have a lived experience of

something called purpose? Oh, well, look, I think purpose is having some kind of reason to act or be. Yeah. And I

certainly subjectively am motivated to do things. I think everybody is. Otherwise, you literally wouldn't be able to do anything. Um, but it's a bit

foggy to me what psychologically speaking, on a personal level that fundamental motivation actually is. Wouldn't purpose be more the the goal

rather than the reason to act, what you're trying to accomplish? It's a semantic thing, but that's why it

depends what you mean by the word. I'm I'm with you. I'm I'm with you. So, so, so and I I don't know what I mean with the word purpose, which is part of

this challenge, but okay. So, so like I'm just wondering, so like when you So, a lot of people are motivated to act.

Everyone is motivated to act every day, right? I get out of bed, I need to take a dump. Like, but my guess

is that if we were to administer a scientifically validated instrument that

measures your subjective sense of purpose, direction in life that that would be north of five out of

10. Okay. Do you think that's fair or is is that something that you don't maybe? Yeah. I don't know what

like do you do you when you wake up, do you feel like you're know you know what you want to do and what's going on and you're like doing good work? Like I'm

asking about the subjective not on a grand sense. I'm quite agnostic. I mean I'm sort of I'm not talking about it. Okay. Maybe

it depend. I I really don't know what you mean. No. Perfect. Okay. So so so not on a grand sense but on some other sense.

Sure. Okay. Great. So I think that this is like this is I I think this is beautiful because I think

what we have here is like not on a grand sense. So I think on a grand sense you're there, right? But you're

absolutely motivated by particular things. So I think this is the first thing about purpose. Can I a

clarification real quickly? Yeah. On a grand sense, yes. But there are distinctions that you were referring to a few moments ago, right? There are a

lot of things that are dissatisfying my life. But in terms of being on the right course, that's part of what life is.

Being on the right course, lots of crazy stuff that's happening in between. Cool. So like like the first thing that

I've kind of noticed in my work is that I don't know whether a grander purpose

exists or not. I I think that's a lovely discussion that I want to continue to have with you, but I I I'm sort of here's where I'm sort of coming from in

this discussion. Stephen started this out with some really scary statistics that we're seeing, right? There's a mental health

crisis. I think a lot of what we're seeing is is while it may be perennial, I think it's like seems more acute right

now. Maybe that's because of the atheist materialism, whatever. I'm I'm not quite sure, but this is a problem. So, just

sharing where I'm coming from. My hope is that someone who is watching this will have moved forward some vague

percentage points. I'm shooting for about 20% in their personal quest for purpose.

And I think a big part of what I'm going to try to contribute here today is my understanding of like how to do that.

That this is a quantifiable thing that we can sort of see at this table. People are sort of like at different

places. And so the first thing that I kind of want to point out is I don't know

whether there's purpose or not, but as a human condition,

there is something that each of us feel or experience that gives us an answer,

right? So you're like at 10, but what that means is that you something is going on in your mind, something is

going on in your heart, something is going on in your body where you wake up and you feel like you have purpose.

Steven wakes up and he's like at a five out of 10. So, he's getting some signals in that area. Some signals are not in

that area. You have some signals in that direction, too. You know why you're showing up at this podcast. You you've

got a book that you're working on. Awesome. Can't wait to read it. And but on a grander sense, you're like, I don't know about this like objective

stuff or whatever. So, this is sort of like this quantifiable thing. And you um I'm going to let you all guess.

Where would you put me out? I don't like to psychize people. It's okay if you don't like to, will

you? I mean, I don't I just met you. I don't I don't know. I have no idea what what sense of meaning you you have in your

life. Mhm. Okay. I mean, for me, I I'm just motivated to try and find out.

So, I think I think the audience can guess, too. Yeah. I would say you're pretty high. That's why you're here. That's why

you're articulating your ideas. Probably probably closer to 10 than five. Mhm.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, so it's like it's okay if you don't want to do that because I'm guessing that there are certain things

in your intellect that tell you. So, do you have a subjective instinct? No, I just don't know you that well. I I

I mean, I don't know. Okay. And also, it depends what you mean, right? Because you'll say that you have a if you say that you're a 10, like we you have this

this there's this you use the phrase earlier sense a sense of meaning in life. because you're talking about this from an empirical standpoint of whether

people report having a sense of meaning. Whereas I think that Greg is probably talking about literally speaking whether

there is actually in fact a real meaning whether or not people sense it or not. You could say that you have a 10 out of

10 and Greg could say well that's it's great that you feel that way but it's misguided because the purpose that you

have identified in your life is the wrong one. And so to me the important question is not so much whether you

subjectively report feeling like you have purpose in life but whether that purpose is grounded in something real

and true. Yeah. So I think that your answer right now is the reason why you think some of

these questions are unanswerable. Mhm. So I think if you adopt that frame you'll never know. But

I don't think they're unanswerable. Okay. Let let me let me just finish. Okay. So my first uh experience of this

right is that first of all there is a subjective barometer like how do we know whether we have purpose maybe we listen

to other people but there is some sort of internal sense of this and this is where the science becomes really

important because if you look at people who have like a history of trauma or something what you tend to find is that there are certain like neurobiological

things that can happen to you that will literally affect the parts of your brain

that are able to detect purpose. So this is sort of like a subjective experience and I think the way that and

I I love your emphasis on mechanism and I think this is what in my opinion science and spirituality can really add

is they add the how right they they add like why is it that one person has purpose and another person doesn't have

purpose. So first thing is that in my experience in the way that I operate, I'm not saying it's correct. It's just

it's effective in terms of helping people move the needle on reducing

suicidality, uh improving resilience, giving them a reason to wake up in the morning. Like it tends to work. Um and it's not just

me, it's that there's a bunch of, you know, methodologies that we have in psychotherapy and stuff like that that accomplish these kinds of things that

there's some internal sense of purpose. Now what I think uh surprises a lot of people is that there are two ways that

you increase that sense of purpose. The first is a bucket of things that are kind of counter counterintuitive. And

this is where we also have to understand that purpose correlates with certain other things in

life. So if I feel like I am in control of my life

then my sense of purpose will increase. Those two things are correlated. It's not clear whether it's one thing that

manifests in two ways or it's probably two discreet things because there's some subtlety there. But just as a very

simple example, if you take someone who feels out of control in life and you help them get control of their life, and

there's a really great example of this, which is something called passive challenges versus active challenges. So, there's a fascinating research on

anxiety that shows that if you're someone in life whose life is happening to you, like you wake up one day and

then like your your boss wants you to come in for work and you have to pay rent at the end of the month and like you're you're logging on to Tinder and

people aren't responding to you. Life is controlling the direction that you move.

And people feel overwhelmed by this and they want freedom. They want control. What they end up doing is they they they

wish that they didn't have these things. So they run away from these problems. So passive challenges are challenges that

life imposes upon you that you didn't sign up for.

Then there's something really fascinating which is your sense of control in life does not correlate just

with the passive challenges. It correlates with the ratio of passive challenges to active challenges. Active

challenges are things that you choose to do that are difficult. So this is really fascinating. But if if you're getting

bodied by life in three different directions, the solution to that is not run away from those problems. It's

actually to wake up and start to push yourself in a particular direction. I

want to do this instead. If you want to learn how to like read uh, you know, learn philosophy, you know, start studying philosophical texts, you know,

like is you start to take on more, which is very counterintuitive because when most people feel feel overwhelmed, they

don't feel like they can do more. The exact solution is to take on more active challenges. then you have some sense of

control in life. And once your ratio of active challenges to passive challenges is more evened out, this does something

really cool. It gives you a sense that I'm no longer out of control. Mhm. Once you feel like you're no longer out

of control, this is the really cool thing. Then your capacity to deal with

the stuff that life throws at you actually improves. Mhm. So there's this, this is just one

example of like one scientific neurobiological principle that has some psychology associated with where you can

do particular things to give yourself a sense of direction in life.

Now some of the stuff around worship and spiritual practice that can do it too. Um but I think that usually what I tend

to see is that you know if someone is lost in life you can sort of answer it

by these big questions. you can sort of think about this sort of transcendental purpose which I'm I'm happy to talk

about. But I think there's a lot of like little stuff that you can do. Yeah. And as you implement these things, the

sense of purpose in your life, your internal lived experience of feeling out of out of control will change.

Let let me offer a few thoughts if I could. One I want to speak to something that you've said, Alex, um that I just

want to offer a caution about. When we talk about motivation, the motivation for something, we sometimes confuse that

with justification. So someone might say to me as an atheist, for example, well, you're a Christian because you were born

in America. If you were born in Saudi Arabia, you wouldn't be a Christian. You'd be a Muslim. Of course, that's

irrelevant to the question whether Islam or Christianity or some other religion is true. It doesn't speak to that. It speaks to psychology. Okay? And the fact

is, if the atheist was born in Saudi Arabia, he wouldn't be an atheist either. likely the key question isn't

what motivates people for example to think about purpose death maybe a fear of death that might be a motivation the

question is whether the place they land in answering the question has any objective truth to it or not it could be

that there is a god and that there is an afterlife and facing death does give comfort to that uh I should say when

facing death you have comfort because there is a god and there's something that you're going to it's closer

communion with him Okay, just because you're motivated by death doesn't mean that your belief about the afterlife is

somehow an error. I just wanted to just to add something in here. So, I I think part of the

reason I've also convened um you guys to have this conversation today is because

I've got several people in my life that are I can I can literally lay out the personas, but I've got one particular

friend who's 35 between 35 and 40 years old, living in Dubai, living in a a

glass box um freelancer. So he wakes up in the morning, his bed is there, he then works there, then goes back to bed.

He's single, no kids in his life at the moment, he said to me that he can't get out of bed anymore, he feels stuck. And

then about 6 months after, out of the blue, it turns out, without telling any of us, and we're his best friends, he's

flown to America. He's been baptized. He's a Christian. Suddenly, his life has purpose and meaning again. He's a completely different person. And this

individual, never, ever, he would be the last person that you'd think would be religious. got another friend, female,

just over 30 years old, doesn't have kids, freelance, works at home. Um, when I asked her what her meaning and purpose

in life, she said to me she wants to get to having 200 plants, plants she can water. She names all of them.

She then told me a week after she's in therapy because she feels lost and stuck in life. And so much of the central

point why I've been motivated to have this conversation is it appears to me and I haven't nailed this hypothesis yet

that freedom, independence, be your own boss. The decline in people having

children, the glamorization of um as you said at the very beginning like you know

do it yourself, do it your way is failing people in some way and that actually the push for

independence was in some way some kind of light. I actually also went through the same new atheist

baptism that you went through and I read all those books at 18 years old and two years I was I was debating dog walkers

on the street about God. I was so such a staunch atheist but I now find myself in a position where

I'm almost back to being curious again because it feels like independence wasn't the answer.

Just wanted to refrain curious I think. Yeah. I mean I think people need tasks. I think that purpose is intimately tied

up with the idea of of task to fulfill. It's why people tend to find meaning in projects which are not completed yet. In

fact, Pascal writes quite compellingly about this when he writes about boredom and he imagines a a gambler, someone who

who enjoys gambling and says, well, why is this person gambling? Because they're doing this thing with the with the

chance of winning some money. Okay, so why don't you just give them the money? just take the gambler and give him all

the money that he could possibly receive without playing the game and he won't be very fulfilled even though he's getting

ostensibly what he was trying to get. No, no, that wouldn't be fulfilling because he enjoys the the gambling.

Okay, says Pascal. Then let him play the game, but make it such that he'll never

actually win the money, but he he gets to keep playing the game and he's not going to be very fulfilled by that either. That's also going to be

completely pointless. And so Pascal noticed that what you kind of need to avoid boredom and I suppose to to imbue

your life with with purpose at least in this analogy is some kind of task to fulfill

that you haven't fulfilled yet that you don't know if you're going to fulfill that you believe will bring you fulfillment when you get it but you

haven't got it yet. It's why I think religion does it really well because it's the definition of something which you don't have now which you can strive

for which when you get you believe will be uh will be fulfilling.

So so so I I love these examples because actually we know exactly what's going on

in that thought experiment. Right? So now there have been there's so many advances in neuroscience that we

understand why people gamble. Right? So, we understand that giving someone money

will satisfy a gambler in one of two cases. And I've seen this. I've worked with people who are professional poker

players. Some people there, what we describe motivation is actually like a dozen different things going on in your

brain. So, if you were a professional poker player and poker and I've literally worked with professional poker

players who had no meaning in life. It's so funny. I'm thinking about a particular person and then you know achieved a certain financial goal.

That's why they play poker. So if your motivation is that I'm playing poker because I'm I have a skill that I'm

using to get money. Yeah. If that is your internal motivation, that is going to come from certain

circuits in your brain. It's going to come from places like your frontal lobe. Now, as Pascal pointed out, if you give

the average person who gamles money, what are they going to do with it? They're going to gamble more, right? So

that means that the their motivation is coming from something more closer to the nucleus incumbent, a random

reinforcement schedule. Maybe they're trying to suppress amydala emotions. So we actually can like look at that

example and we can understand why each of those things happens. And then the

most beautiful thing is that there is absolutely a scenario where someone can gamble and

never win and they can absolutely have purpose. So this is where I know that sounds insane but if you look at some of

these things from the Zen tradition, right? So these are practices that have no purpose to act with no meaning

whatsoever. And the beautiful thing about that is as you explore that sort of angle and there's sort of a neuroscience

perspective to this as well is that if you really think about it you're saying okay so people invest in this purpose or

in this purpose-seeking thing like religion with the idea that I'll find payoff at the end. Is that what you were

saying earlier? I'm saying something a bit different. I what I was going to go on to say is to is to point out that and bear in mind

this comes from a part of of Pascal's pon which is titled man without god. You know he goes on to discuss man with god.

Um but I look at the development of the human species and our particular

proclivities. Lewis makes this argument from desire that you mentioned. Why do we have a desire for food? Well because

there is actually food to have. The evolutionary biologist says the reason that we develop hunger is because those

who didn't died. And if you don't have some sense of hunger, you're not going to seek out food and you will die. And

so it just so happens that those who develop this feeling of hunger will be more likely to survive. And therefore

hunger is a part of our human condition. Well, such is meaning. If you have two isolated communities, one of whom says,

"I just don't care. Whatever, man. No interest in having children, no interested in building societies, legal

systems, constitutions, whatever the case. Moral systems, none of they just don't care. nihilists, they're not even

gonna have children. That society will die out. Another society which just so happens to perhaps delusion like in a in

an exercise of delusion just develop this inexplicable feeling. And of course, this evolves over time

and starts with essentially the kind of random mutation of ideas that works on the genetic level in evolution. They

call it mmetics when it's ideas rather than genes. the society which just ends up developing this idea that actually I

can't quite explain why but I I just have this drive towards building a society and engaging in legal justice

and moral systems and kind of they're just more likely to survive. So we end up with this with this sense this this

drive within us that we can't explain and yet we have. So imagine for the majority of our evolutionary history

what it was like every single day you woke up and you did not know if you were going to have a roof over your head. You

didn't know if you were going to have food to eat. You had to go out and you had to hunt it. You had to go and find it. Every single day the game reset. And

so I would imagine that those lives were probably quite meaningful. At least in the sense that I don't think there would

have been many existential crisises on a dayto-day because the purpose was quite clear. And like Pascal's gambler, they

had a task that they think will fulfill them when they get it and they don't know whether it's going to be fulfilled. So what's happened today?

Well, now we've been given the money without the game. We've got houses, we've got food, we can go next door and

get some water, get some food from all over the all over the planet, you know, like that's that's it that you've got the money without the game. So what do

people do in the modern situation when they find that their life is a bit meaningless? They start intentionally

doing things which are difficult. They start doing ice baths. They start exercising. They start going into a room

just to physically exert themselves in order to sort of build muscle and whatnot like on purpose for its own

sake. Why? Because today we've got the money without the game. So people are

going out and seeking the game without the money. They're going and doing the ice baths in the gym. Whereas the truly meaningful life is one in which you are

playing the game in the service of getting the goal. That is why I think that you know literally just seeking out

those things I think that there's a reason why they have a psychological impact. It's not as simple as just like oh well if you go to the gym you know it

it releases endorphins and and makes you feel good. It's like let's think a bit deeper than that. what's actually going on. People are seeking out the game

without without the money. Crucially, I've talked about this as as a

deathdenying pursuit, right? The idea that the things that you engage in here, at least in terms of grand projects like

religion and society, are even if just subconsciously an exercise in the denial of death. What would that mean? It means

that if you encounter other communities, if you encounter other traditions who

just just by their mere existence threatens the truth of your claims,

those traditions subconsciously represent death. They represent nihilism. So what happens in a society

that develops the kind of telecommunication technology whereby every single day you open your phone and

you are addicted to a process of scrolling through every seven seconds a new person with new ideas with different

beliefs from all over the world. Do you think that might have something to do with the meaning crisis that we find

ourselves in? We're told that what's happened is that people stop believing in God and now they're all depressed and upset and nihilistic. That's far too

simple. You don't think it might have something to do with the fundamentally revolutionary

change to our society that has been brought about specifically by telecommunication by the ability to

oftenimes unintentionally and non-consensually be confronted with traditions and people from halfway

across the world that just remind you every single day zing zing zing every

single day that your truth is not the only truth. that the transcendence that you've placed your trust in is

completely subjective and personal and that someone over there believes something totally different and seems to be living just the same kind of

happy life. That I think is why people are struggling so much. It's not just

because they're atheists. Now I have a lot to say about this. I'll try to keep it compact. By the way, just

we're aware of all kinds of different options for us spiritually. Yes. um that

doesn't necessarily suggest that none of the options are actually accurate or that are okay. So making an implication

there and this is what creates kind of the angst because all we have is our own personal subjective point of view.

I think that's why people experience that. Now of course as a matter of truth you could say for example yourself you

could say yes I'm constantly confronted by different religious traditions but I believe that Christianity is true. who I think has the best evidence.

This is even true in even in the scientific realm. You're all kinds of different ideas, but no one wants to say

just because there are so many different ideas to explain things that nobody can be correct which is why what I'm saying is is

insensitive to the truth or falsity of any of the traditions. What I'm saying is okay that's good because I want to go to

that next as an explanation as for the the psychological phenomenon the the the literal feeling

that people have because likewise you would say that there is a meaning crisis maybe you would say that lots of people

the statistics we just heard you would say lots of people you know don't feel meaning in their life and you'd want to offer an explanation for why that's the

case you think their lives are meaningful right you think that all of those people who say my life has no meaning they're wrong their lives

actually do have meaning is that what you think well this was the subject objective response. They feel like they don't have

meaning, but they were made for a purpose. If they're not in in touch with that meaning and purpose, then they're going

to feel bereft. They believe there really is a purpose for their life, but subjectively they haven't either found it or they don't

feel it. What I'm doing is I'm offering a psychological explanation for why they don't feel it, which is completely

insensitive to whether or not there's a truth of the matter. I'm so glad you put it that way. Uh

because this is exactly my point. I don't want anybody to miss it. We're really offering two different pictures

of reality here. Okay. People have to ask themselves two questions, I think. One is they reflect on their own

personal awareness of the need for meaning and significance.

Does it seem to them that this is just a psychological thing that people can satisfy in all kinds of different ways

depending on the individual or does it seem to them I'm asking these questions because I suspect there is a truth about

life that might be discovered. Okay, that's the first question. And that and

I think most people's awareness of this is that there's something transcendent,

something bigger than them. Okay, and any kind of naturalistic explanation is not going to ultimately satisfy that.

The other thing is is there any reason to believe that there is a transcendent reality that God exists that souls exist

that that there is an objective morality that guides our life and if we're living

virtuously that's going to be satisfying even if we don't believe in God or not.

Those are the two things at stake here, you know. And now this description, the story of reality I just described that I

hold to it seems to me completely coherent. Maybe not true, but it certainly is coherent that if there is a

God who made us for himself and places eternity in our hearts, that we're going to yearn for that and made the way for

us to live and then we're going to find good ways to live as opposed to unsatisfying ways to live. That makes sense. Doesn't make any sense to me at

all to say that my molecules are moving in a certain way to create in my conscious mind, which Darwinism would

cannot offer an explanation for. It hasn't. That's why Daniel Dennett said consciousness is an illusion, you know,

because he couldn't do anything with it. Thomas Nagel wrote his book Mind the Cosmos. You're familiar with this, I'm sure. You know, why the Neodyarian

materialistic view of the world is almost certainly false. And he's an atheist for goodness sake, because he

can't explain consciousness, not in a Darwinian way. So how is it that this mystery of consciousness which contains

propositional thoughts, ideas and purposes, if consciousness can't be explained at

Darwinian way, how can some characterization of molecules in motion

accomplish that same end? That's my concern. This is why I'm not convinced about at all about the naturalist one

and this one seems so much more plausible. What you're raising is the is the problem of consciousness which is I

think a new question but an important one. I wanted to point out earlier that that when I gave an explanation as to

why people feel a lack of meaning and you said that has no bearing on truth. I

think that's you admitted that too at the end there. I appreciate that. I don't admit it. I I assert it. Of course that's the case. In

affirmed you weren't making the case in the same way that if somebody says that like if you're a Christian and you

say the reason everyone's so depressed is because society has become atheistic. Somebody could say well yeah I mean that

might be the case but that doesn't mean atheism is false. It might be that it is true and just depressing. Right? Of course, like the the question if we're

discussing there are alternate explanations. If you want to know why somebody feels a particular way psychologically, you can

offer an explanation which has absolutely nothing to do with the truth or falsity of a worldview. You can then separately discuss the truth or falsity

of a worldview which you've then gone on to do with specific reference to the problem of consciousness. It thinks it has absolutely nothing or

it can be experienced apart from the issue of worldview. I'm saying that if you're if you're literally just trying I

mean if the question I'm asked is why do people perceive a lack of meaning in their life that's just a question about

their psychological constitution that's just that's literally a question about why they feel a particular way so if a person was a total nealist

didn't believe in anything uh was important and then they were depressed and even suicidal would you say there

wasn't a link between that worldview and their feelings yes there is but what I'm saying is that the link between that worldview and

their feeling has nothing to do with the truth of the Okay, you see what I'm saying? It doesn't nihilism can be true. Nihilism can be false. Nihilism can be

an in unintelligible concept. It can still be the case that that person's conviction is making them depressed.

Right? In the same way that somebody could be be a Christian and that makes them really happy. That doesn't mean Christianity is true. Someone can become

a Christian and become really depressed. That doesn't mean that Christianity is false. What I'm trying to point out is it is just trivially true.

So So I I still want to try to understand a little bit about what you're saying. Okay.

Because I don't fully follow. Fine. Um, and I think that the reason I'm I feel way more confident in what

you're saying is because Christ is pulling at your 100%. Yeah.

So, so I think Christ we both talk to Christ. So, like we're good on that. Like I I know where he's coming from.

So, couple of things that I'm I talk to Christ too, you know. Awesome. Does he talk back? He does not talk back. And

yeah, that's that's tricky. We can talk about how how to get you there. One person said just read the gospels aloud.

So So I've done that a few times. So, a couple of things that I'm I'm curious about. One is so I'm noticing that you're I'm

trying to understand where so I I love the way you're sallying forth

to grapple with this problem of purpose. You do a beautiful job of sort of talking about like okay what's the truth

and then there's this psychological perspective and I I want to just try to understand this. So, are you of the mind

that from a psychological perspective, you can wake up one day and feel like you have purpose, but that doesn't

necessarily talk about purpose transcendentally. Capital P. I'm saying that doesn't talk about the

truth of your belief. The Okay. So, for example, you could you could you could believe that your children are

about to die and that suddenly your life feels really meaningless and and really purposeless.

It could be completely false. You could have been like misled. Someone could lie to you. But like what I'm saying is is the psychological explanation for why

you feel a particular way has nothing to do with the truth of the thing that you believe that's making you feel that way.

Gotcha. Okay. So what I'm curious about is when you are exploring purpose

are you exploring it from are you trying to find the answer at the top like what

is the truth of purpose or are you focused on the subjective

experience of purpose? Depends on the context. If you're asking I mean we were talking literally about a

psychological explanation for why people feel a particular way you know is it due to a decline in religion that kind of

stuff in that case it's subjective it's individuals yeah yeah so so

do you think that the top one can be answered what the top one is in like there being

they're being purpose right so that's not subjective at all so what does that mean there being purpose because for me that looks like

some kind of reason to act or to be that is not contingent on some other fact.

Just to be clear, to make it clear for the listener, I think you hear what I'm saying. But like suppose you woke up and

you were a Christian and that brought you meaning. What I'm saying is that subjective sense of meaning that you get from Christianity has no bearing on the

truth or falsity of Christianity. Gotcha. Right. Right. So, so what I'm curious about is in your opinion, and if

you don't have one, that's totally fine. um you know do you think that so sure

there's a subjective experience which doesn't speak to truth right it's just a subjective experience do you think that

there is some way to grapple with that truth well the truth of Christianity or something

the truth the truth of of purpose but we're shifting here right because what I'm saying is

let let me shift then I don't want to do that so then I'm gonna go back this is why I maybe I'm not understanding your question what all I

am saying yeah is that if you feel if you feel a subjective sense of purpose from proposition P

like the fact that you feel purpose from that does not have any proposition P and

then you just ask but but is there a way to discuss whether P is true well yeah like so if proposition P is

Christianity then yeah we can talk about the historical argument for the resurrection of Jesus or something gotcha gotcha okay I'm not I'm not

trying to reach into some yeah mystical capital P purpose realm gotcha so right so and I I think that's

so helpful thank you so Okay. Okay. So,

that's really helpful for me because then you I want to go back to something you said earlier about, you know, cell phones and we're scrolling on cell

phones and things like that and we have this like like this worldview and then if we encounter a worldview that is

different from ours that could put us into some form of crisis or difficulty and we're getting bombarded by all of

these things. And so what that means is that the individual when they wake up in the morning and they scroll through their

phone, right? We're not talking about whether the proposition P is true or not. Their subjective experiences like I

have no meaning and I have no purpose in life, right? And and so you posited one mechanism which I think is a completely

valid mechanism is a philosophical mechanism, but we have a lot of neuroscience mechanisms that support

what you're saying. So just and this is where I I I think that we kind of I'm going to sort of restate that what my

experience of this stuff has been because I'm I'm not a philosopher is I I don't really know too well how to

contend with whether proposition P is true or not. That's why I was asking and and it's not that you weren't being

clear, it's that I'm just ignorant of how philosophy works. Um and so that's why I was kind of

asking like you know can you do that? Mh. So that's where also where like I'm kind of coming from is that we have this

crisis that has high suicidality, high addiction rates. People left the church

in big ways. And then we're sort of left with like, okay, how do we navigate this? And that's where I think if we

look at a lot of this, the influences on society, we see that there's profound

neurological influences. And what I sort of found is when I was working especially with like patients with trauma that there is a set of things

that is happening in the world around them that induce certain changes to

their how they experience the world. So a really good example of this is if you

want to find your purpose in life you should reduce your level of alexathyia. So alexathyia is the inability to tell

what you you're emotionally feeling. Mhm. And if we look at the influence of things like cell phones, what they're

doing is they're suppressing the parts of our brain that have that experience negative emotions. Sometimes they

provoke negative emotions, sometimes they suppress negative emotions. And so if you start to

be able to feel more, right? So the this is literally shutting down the parts of

our brain that h that give us an internal sense of what we feel. And so

as you shut down your ability to detect what you are feeling on the inside that

correlates with your not having a detection of purpose on the inside. So I

think that you know this is you you asked the question why is this happening? I think we're disabling and I

was working with people with trauma and and sort of sort of figured out a sequence of things that is based on the

literature that involves things like reducing your alexathyia. Another big part is managing your ego. So I think

this relationship with God thing is a really really really great example of like if you ask what is the mechanism of

a relationship with God. So we as human beings tend to be like I'm here but then

as you relate to other people around you your sense of identity changes and when

you relate to something that is transcendent I know that that's a scary word and I don't know exactly what that

word means but as you relate to something that is really big up here that has noticeable effects on your

default mode network your sense of self. And as your default mode network longer

becomes hyperactive, the more hyperactive your default mode network is, the more likely I think you are to be like nihilistic, to have a

pessimistic worldview, as we start to make those changes, then people start to

feel a sense of purpose. They start to feel a sense of connection. And then the last kind of really interesting data

which we can go into is psychedelics which is really really fascinating because this allows us to test

subjective experience and the effect of subject subjective experience on a person. Is this an opportunity please?

I'm just concerned that you might have overstated something maybe reflecting back something you thought I was saying

and I was making the case about the genetic fallacy and just because a person has a motivation to believe something doesn't necessarily mean that

that thing is true or have a subjective experience. I think it goes a little further than that though. Uh if you went

to the doctor and you weren't feeling well and the doctor gave you a pill and then you went home and you took the pill then you felt better. I think it would

be appropriate for you to say, "Well, that pill, taking that pill, going to that doctor had something to do with my

experience that I'm having right now." Oh yeah. I think this is why I think it might have intent unintentionally been

an overstatement on your part because I think just like your friend Stephen who in

Dubai all of a sudden became a Christian and everything changed. Okay. Um,

well, the you you I guess you could say the change of life isn't maybe knockdown, dragged down proof that what

he believes now is actually true. Big P, big T. That like Jesus rose from the dead. It seems to be, pardon me,

that like Jesus rose from the dead. It's got no bearing on whether that's true or not. Well, I'm speaking of a different thing

right now. I'm thinking about the experience now with God that he's having. If you if he's having this changed life,

this this is evidential. This is this lends credibility to the belief system

that he's now adopted because it created this particular significant change in his life. It may not be proof and that

word is really an oozy goosey word how to pin down but

nevertheless it still seems to be evidential. It is it it speaks to the

legitimacy and accuracy and truthfulness of the belief system that produced this change life. That's what I'm saying.

It's only evidence that belief in that thing makes someone feel more fulfilled. That's the only thing it's evidence of.

Okay. So, this is where we differ. Just like I'm with him on this one. Okay. Just because uh just because a

certain you're saying just because they believe it, this makes them better. It doesn't mean that the belief is actually

sound. Greg, I've got a good way of coming at this then. So, this is where we differ. That's right. If I had five friends and they all

picked five different religions and they all felt the same thing that my friend did in Dubai where they all felt better

for it. Does is that evidential that all five religions are true? Well, see, I don't actually think it

works that way. You can speculate and say and offer that illustration. Um, but I don't think it actually works that

way. I I think that universally the experience of Christians is very very

uh quantifiable in terms of transformed lives and this is one of the reasons that these

transformed lives lend credibility to the belief system itself. So in that scenario where one of my

friends turns to Islam, one of my friends turns to Christianity etc etc.

The only experience that's evidential of truth is the Christians. Well, I think

you have to look at every individual thing. All right? And um here's my suspicion, and I haven't

quantified this across the board. All right? Different people have different experiences by engaging different religious uh belief traditions,

whatever. But in so far as anybody's life is significantly altered by that

thing, this to me is evidence that something is going on here than merely

the belief. If it's just the belief, you're back to uh to marks again and the opiate of the people, you know, that

would be Carl, not Groucho, although that's not anybody knows who those two people are anymore. It sounds as though,

you know, if if I if I lied to somebody in a cruel prank and I told them that

say say they're really struggling with money, they're really really suffering for it and they feel and they have these psychological effects of feeling that

life is meaningless. They want to kill themselves, whatever it is, cuz they just they cannot keep living and I tell

them, "Good news. Um, you've won the lottery. You've won a million pounds." And suddenly the weight is lifted. The

joy is brought. Of course, money isn't sufficient for bringing about meaning in life, but this person is

But I've lied to them. Like the the fact that they feel this immense sense of

meaning from a belief that they've adopted has it bears absolutely no evidence. No, in that case whether it's true that

they've won a million pounds. I'm just saying that to divorce all results from belief systems is a

mistake. There can be a there can be a connection there. Just because you can mislead somebody by telling them a lie

and they can experience something emotionally doesn't mean that the other person who's experiencing something

transcendent in their emotions. And by the way for Christians it's not just a high because Christianity is not a

continuous high. Even people who are suffering terribly as Christians in

persecution read Fox's books of martyrs book of martyrs still have this strong

sense of value, purpose and security. Even so, I'm just saying there's an evidential relationship between those.

It's not enough to just simply dismiss it because you can tell a lie and someone could have the same kind of feeling.

I'm even happy to say that like I don't know if this is true, but suppose it were just the case that only Christianity brought about this positive

effect. Suppose we just discovered that everybody who claimed to feel meaning, it would just didn't compare. That's not what I'm saying.

But suppose that were the case. Even if there was something really special about Christianity that gave some evidential

credence to something specific about Christianity that's true about Christianity that it particularly infuses life with meaning. I still think

it just has nothing to do with the truth of Christianity as a worldview. I mean, Christianity hinges on the

historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus. Right. Correct. And so the best way of explaining this is to say that if if your friend from Dubai starts going

to church and they start feeling really like meaning like start experiencing a lot of meaning in their life that has

absolutely no evidential bearing on whether Jesus rose from the dead. And if Christianity as a proposition

essentially is the resurrection of Jesus and this feeling that your friend had has no evidential bearing on the resurrection of Jesus then the feeling

that your friend had had no evidential bearing on Christianity. Well, it turns out that Christianity has multiple factors of of uh support and evidence.

Crucial obviously the crux one might say is the resurrection of Christ, the death and resurrection because of the

theological significance of that is in the whole system. All right? But there are lots of other things too that have

bearing and actually I think there are people who have become who have become Christians without having a robust

understanding even of the resurrection or that. So um it's even though theologically that is the crux I agree

um it doesn't mean that for subjectively every person who enters in a relationship with Christ has all of that

in place immediately. I'm really interested to understand for my friend in Dubai Yeah. If he came to you and he was your friend

in Dubai and he said my life is lacking meaning I can't get out of bed anymore.

What would you prescribe him? What would you recommend? What would you suggest as he's your friend?

It's hard to know without knowing that friend, but if it seemed to me like going to church or reading the gospels

might provide that for him, then I'd probably recommend that he did that. But I think that literally the subjective

feeling of meaning is is usually tied up in the identification of something that

transcends your individual self. Yeah. Why would you? I think any whatever is the most plausible course of

action for that person to engage in something like that would be what I would recommend for them. If they're

maybe that maybe they're not particularly interested in religion, I'd recommend that they read some philosophy of mind and try to understand the nature

of consciousness. And they might start I might recommend depending on who they are that they take a psychedelic drug

and try to experience something which cannot be put into words because a lot of the time when you experience something like an ego death and you

might realize that the the individuated self is an illusion and that these cliches that keep cropping up when

someone does psychedelics and I actually think that the problem of consciousness is absolutely crucial to this. uh if if

I mean I think the most plausible account of consciousness implies that

consciousness is something which is sort of received by the biological organism

rather than produced by it. Because I agree with you that you can't just put a bunch of molecules together and get consciousness. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. But it's interesting

that some of our best scientific evidence is is suggesting the fact not that the brain produces consciousness,

but that the brain inhibits and focuses and organizes consciousness. it does not produce it.

Yeah. So I I I I love your answer. So you you were saying, you know, depending on the person, you can do different things. You can read philosophy of

I would recommend them to do that. In other words, you know, look at that depending on who they are. You know, read the gospels. So I I think

what's what's interesting is that when you you know, when when Steven gives the concrete example of like if my friend

comes to you who's had this religious awakening or prior to religious awakening, what would you recommend to them? And I think what's really

interesting is basically all of the answers that you said I think

can map on to mechanism and I just love to talk about that for a second. So the first thing is you know you asked me at

the beginning am I religious? I I think here's my understanding of and we were talking a little bit about

you know people can have the subjective feeling of religion. What is the relationship to to that thing being true? So here's what I've sort of

observed. I don't know if y'all have ever been to like a really great cathedral. Oh yeah. But like you know uh if you go

to a great cathedral you don't have to be Christian to be awe inspired by what you see.

Sure. So when I look at the project of religion which is a little bit different from spirituality I I one of the things

that I've observed is that religion is a series of structures to evoke a personal

experience. So the whole point of reading the gospels is fingers crossed and we'll get to how to optimize that.

Fingers crossed if you read the gospels enough or you go to church enough or you pray enough, if you keep on talking to

Christ, one day he'll start talking back. But I think the really interesting thing is if you struggle with purpose,

you can read the gospels. If you go into religion and I think what's changed now is that we have so much science to

understand the mechanism through which religious practices evoke subjective

experience. So I can go to church until for my whole life but until I have that relationship with God that is a

subjective experience that is evoked by the sort of structure of the religious

practice. So that is absolutely one thing you can do. I think the cool thing is that the

problem with reading the gospels as as I can clearly see that you've done and and you know I I see the striving for

religion in you like you're like you you want to have that right like you want to know like what are these people actually

kind of talking about. I could be wrong there but I I see this beautiful striving that you're like you're trying

really hard to figure this stuff out which is just awesome to see. I think though that if we we kind of look at it

and you mentioned kind of psychedelics as well and I think psychedelics is is really interesting because

we know that so if you take someone who has treatment refractory depression or someone who has PTSD and you give them a

psychedelic the psychedelic is not healing what is healing is specifically whether they have an ego death

experience so if I see colors and things like that that doesn't solve things but the ego

death experience is what correlates with clinical improvement soy Psychedelics

are a good way to evoke um a subjective experience, right? So we

we know that there are a couple of pieces and when I worked with people so

one of the things that we know is that when you experience trauma, it shatters your meaning of life.

Yes. And so what so working a lot with people with trauma and and this is something that I kind of laid out uh in terms of

like making a guide about it. But what I realized is that there's a set of things that you can do relatively sequentially

to get your meaning back. And so I think the cool thing about like you know reading the gospels or psychedelics or

things like that is those each have some fingers crossed change in you.

But the cool thing is like if you start with something called alexathyia. So as long as you are like using a bunch of

substances um as long as you are not able to detect what is going on inside

you that is a fundamental prerequisite of the subjective experience of meaning.

The second step to that is to go through some stuff around ego. So this is like

the other like big thing that we try to focus on is like when your default mode network is hyperactive. This is the part

of your brain that gives you a sense of who you are. Hyperactive default mode networks lead to depression. Hyperactive

default mode networks also lead to some degree of like existential depression.

And this is where so many of my patients get tripped up when they start reading philosophy. And this isn't against

philosophy, but remember this is happening in a subjective mind. If you're not careful, what we know is that

philosophy can turn into intellectualizing. that there is a psychological defense where you start

looking at theoretical stuff and it sort of shapes the way that your mind functions and it starts to become

maladaptive. What does that mean in simple terms? So people if you have a problem in life,

you can think about it a lot. You can read about it a lot. There are a lot of people that I've worked with that just

go on watching podcasts like chain watching podcasts and reading books and things like that, right? But their life

never changes. Yes. So this is where so there's a certain amount of like you know learning how to

ground yourself in your experience which involves reducing alexia which involves

dis dissolving your ego and this is another really really important thing that I think we find in people who have

purpose because if we go back to the earlier example of the person who 30 days after they die the world ends

that person if they decide to still write the book I think that there is a

certain ego involved in that, right? I'm doing it for the sake of the work. It's not for the benefit of humanity. It's

not for some transcendent purpose. It's not for something that goes beyond my death. Actually, it's the opposite. I am

do this doing this thing here and now just for its own sake. Mhm.

And so, preparing for this podcast, I actually texted and called a couple of my former patients. These are people

that I haven't seen in 3 to 5 years. And I just asked them. I was like, "Hey, bro. Do you have purpose? Tell me what

it is." And I was stunned by how their answers are not about what happens after

they die. They're very like, I'm just here for the the flow of it, right? My purpose in life is to experience what life has to

offer. Mhm. That's it. It's not about something beyond you. And I think this is where

you're spot on, Alex, that a lot of people deal with the fear of death by

wanting to live past it. But that is actually that's the default mechanism that we use. But that is actually

ego-driven, right? I want to exist. Yes. Beyond when I die. And so that gives

people some sense of purpose. But I think the deepest sense of purpose actually comes without that comes from

being able to make paper clips every day and being content with that exercise.

You you're describing Seisphus being happy is what you're doing. Yeah. So Seisphus can be happy.

Yeah. I mean that that and and that's explains Cisphus for those that don't know about the guy pushing the rock up

the hill. Kimu who is an existentialist even though he doesn't call himself an existentialist. Um he founds this school

known as absurdism. Um which is a word I used earlier too. And he he tries to describe the

absurdest condition of one in which you have all of these desires about the world but the world literally just can't

fulfill them. You're looking for meaning. it's not there. It literally that your your desire and the real world

are in conflict. And he calls this the realization of this absurdity. And he writes this this short treaty called the

myth of Seisphus, which is based on an actual ancient myth of Seisphus who is

condemned by the gods as punishment to roll a boulder up a hill. And when it gets to the top, it rolls back down

again. And he goes back down and he pushes the boulder up to the top of the hill. And he does that over and over

again for eternity. The real torture of this is not so much the suffering of the pushing of the boulder. There's that,

but the suffering in the knowledge that it's meaningless. And that that describes the absurdest condition. Um,

and Alberu tries to respond to this by imagining Sophus being happy and

essentially as an act of rebellion against this condition, just getting on with it anyway and being okay with it.

I've never been fulfilled by this. I I've I've sort of always thought that this may literally and I I understand that there are people who could do that.

There are people who could write the book and I I thought of Cisphus when you said the person who writes the book

anyway because it almost feels like an act of rebellion because it's not you didn't just say they still write the book. You said they write the book

anyway. They do it despite they do it almost in protest of this condition. Some people can do that but I think that

that that is probably a sort of psychological cope. Um no it's it's not it's not a cope.

It's a mechanism. Well, I'm saying I think it's a cope. I think that I think that that it's not grounded in in anything rational.

I don't know if it's grounded in anything rational. It's absolutely grounded in something empirical. Sure. But like again, you can

empirically like explain exactly why somebody's brain is doing what it's doing, but that doesn't mean that that

there's any rationality or truth in the thing that their brain believes. Sure. Right. But but I think this goes

back to the issue of whether there's capital P. But I I think that you can you can observe the world

and you can make observations and you can I don't know what your relation to

scientific observations and truth is whether those things are connected or not. But I I think that we know actually

there there there are multiple psychological mechanisms some of which are copes and some of which are not copes.

I suppose I mean like a philosophical dope. I mean like it's it's not I think it's untrue. I think that the person who

um is content in such a condition is almost by definition delusory.

What does delusury mean? Uh like under the influence of a delusion. I think that it it is not a

happiness inducing condition to be sisphus rolling his boulder up the mountain.

Yeah. So so this is where I I I think the data is actually against that. So what the data shows is that it is your

attitude towards the circumstances of your life that determines your happiness

or your lack of happiness. Well, someone can be in a happy delusion. In fact, that's why most people suffer from delusions because it

makes them happy. That's not why most people suffer from delusions. So do but you understand what I'm saying

that like like Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I just I just think that it's you can't empirically show that

something is not a delusion because it makes people happy. Yeah. So, so you can absolutely

differentiate between a psychological cope and an attitude towards life that is not

a cope. And the reason you can differentiate that is because of what is underneath. And people can be

delusional, but they're not necessarily delusional to make themselves happy. In

fact, quite the opposite. So, we have diagnosis like schizophrenia of which

one of them is having delusions. And those delusions, generally speaking, the more schizophrenic and the stronger your

delusions are, the more that inversely correlates with your happiness. To be clear, I'm talking about like a

philosophical delusion. The question I want to get an answer to is this idea of the person who writes the book or pushes the boulder up the

hill and can that person be have a purposeful life? Absolutely. So, so this is where this is

what's so confusing for people is that people think so what Alex is saying I think is a really really common

representation of what people think about purpose. My purpose is to make something that is greater from than me.

My purpose is to have some meaning or impact in the world around me. What we know is there's a a a great example of

this called self-determination theory which is that if you ask people if you look at people who have purpose what you

find is it's not about anything transcendent have purpose or have a sense of purpose. have a sense of purpose.

Okay, we're asking them subjectively, right? So if you if we're like like you know and that's what I think

and these people are less likely to be addicted to things, are more resilient, tend to be subjectively happier as well.

So we're talking about subjective, right? What you find is that they have three things. The first is that they have some

degree of self-direction. So this is like I choose to do something. They're not just taking it

from life. They are making choices. And this is where people also get confused because they think like which choice is

right. That kind of thinking is actually irrelevant. There isn't a right choice or a wrong choice. What correlates with

your sense of direction is whether you make it or not. So you actually need to get away from the concept of right and

wrong. The second thing is that they need a stretching of their competence. So if you just take a bunch of people

who are not being pushed and finding themselves grow then their sense of

direction or purpose will decrease. And the third thing is a sense of relatedness. So there is something where

I have to know who I am and have other people see that part of me. And if you

cultivate these three variables, then your purpose will empirically

and by empirical what I mean is that we can measurably we can literally measure

people's subjective experience in an objective way. And so like these kinds

of things I think can end up improving your purpose. What are you measuring when when you're looking for

Alex just I just would love to get your answer to this idea. Can you do you think the person who is pushing the boulder up the hill or is writing the

book even though the world's about to end can still genuinely live a subjectively and by subjective I mean in

their in their opinion um purposefully purposeful life. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. I think Seisphus

can be happy but I think that's not the attitude that I would have and I don't

for myself find it satisfying any analogy which is sufficiently similar to

the sysphus condition that is and the attempted solution is well just imagine sisphus happy um that's how he literally

ends the myth of sophus one must imagine sisphus happy and I can imagine him and say you know good for him um but

do you think you would be happier if you believed in Greg's views of the world

almost certainly. Um, but not because of Greg's views, but because of the the confidence and satisfaction that they

bring. I think I'd feel just as much meaning in my life if I was a convicted Muslim or were I uh a Jane or something

like that, I think I would find that fulfillment. So, the content of the theology has no bearing in your mind on the way a person

experiences their life. Of course it does. Can you explain specific terms content of the theology?

Well, the content well you talk about different religions and there's these different religions are in they they

cannot all be true as Alex has pointed out. They have different content. They say different things about human human

beings. For example, um the the u

the view that human beings are just uh an illusion. The reality is illusion maya that kind of thing. Well, that

seems to me to convey a certain understanding to human beings. about themselves and about the world. If you

have a view that human beings are significant individuals, this is going to convey a whole different experience

that they have. So, in other words, the theology that they believe is true is

going to affect their feelings and their experience. This is what I was getting back at uh a little bit ago when I

talked about the person whose life has been changed by becoming a Christian. And uh these aren't just what you

explained to your friend. These are not things that just happen here and there, but there seems to be a very very broad experience of this. Um, and a change

that doesn't depend on circumstances, okay? It's because they adopt a

understanding of the the world that I think is an accurate understanding. And this is why their emotions and their

experience follows along because they're choosing an accurate understanding of the world. When you look at Jesus in the

Gospels, I I think it's so interesting to me that people read the Gospels to be uplifted by the reading of it. It seems

that misses the point that Jesus is talking about the way the world is. He's teaching about the nature of reality. He

was a Torah observant Jew. He wasn't a Hindu. He wasn't a Buddhist. He was a Jew. And he spoke in the context of

that. Okay. So, just to simply read the Gospels as if we're going to read the uh

some nice things that people said to make me feel better is missing Jesus' point when he's trying to describe the

nature of reality. I don't think that's how the gospel should be read. But I do think I mean I I have a question for you on that. This a personal question more

than anything. So I find myself in the same position as Alex where I think I'd be happier all things considered if I

had an anchoring in a religion. I think that's like a subjectively true that I'd

be happier. Mhm. Um probably just because it would close a gap of some sort. It would it would

anchor me in some way. Answer a question. It would answer a question and then with it would give me more of a structure to my decision

making and you know it would mean that when I have moments of suffering I'd have a solution

to that moment of suffering. So if my parents end up dying someday which I'm sure they will I will believe that they are still alive

and they are somewhere and they're fine which will ease my suffering. So I agree with Alex in that regard. The

problem I have is in order to adopt that view I need some kind of I need to believe it. It's true. like people can't

aren't very good at lying to themselves and also when you talk about my friend in Dubai has had

this experience he now feels better he could have well felt better I believe if he had you know believed that Islam was

true and become a Muslim so so it's the feeling itself people can

get in a lot of ways I know people that actually would tell you that they they feel better now that they're out of the cult and they're agnostic

and the cult the cult made them feel terrible now they're agnostic they feel better does that mean agnosticism

is truth so the the presumption that you made is a presumption we have to keep that in mind I mean the the people that I have

talked to who were former Muslims and are now Christians very devout Muslims they did not have the experience of

satisfaction and fullness and connection with God with in Islam that they do in Christianity okay we want to be careful

that we know there are people who do yeah there's people that would have gone the other way and they'll be in the comment section right now saying, "Well,

I went from Christianity to Islam." Okay. Well, sure. I'm just telling you what I what I know of those people.

Okay? And uh it I think it's a mistake to say, "Well, everybody has their own

religion. They have their so experience with their religion." Because I don't think that's the case. I'm not saying there aren't satisfied Muslims. That's

not what I'm saying. Or Buddhists or Hindus or whatever. I'm But what I'm saying is the the there is an evidential

element to the changed life. Okay? And it may not be decisive. There may be other things that are involved. Okay. Um

I do think that for many Christians, I think you've made this point in the past too. It's the experience with God that

makes the difference. But it's not that the other evidences for the existence of God, maybe philosophical type of

evidence haven't made a difference because I've talked to lots of people where they have made the difference moving them in that direction.

The point there that it's evidential, that's a presumption. What I mean by evidential is that there

is uh information that can be brought to bear that seems to be evidence

um indicating that the belief system is true. It's not is that a presumption?

I don't know why you would call it a presumption as in the the evidence that evidence that Christianity is true from the

increased sense of purpose that people get from becoming a Christian. I think that's one of the evidence. It's

a subjective evidence. Yeah. So it's evidence of the truth of Christianity. Well, I wouldn't build the whole thing,

but it's evidence. It's contributing evidence to the actual truth of think the story of reality is simply

that God made us to be with him and then we find the way that God

intends for us to connect with him principally through forgiveness and be restored to our relationship with the

father. And then that gives us when we do that a deep sense of satisfaction. I

do think that's evidential. You know, in Alex Field, he could explain that through neuroscience,

right? Serotonin, dopamine, endorphins. Yeah. So, can I go back to something real quick? So, you know, I was thinking

about the sisphus example. Yes. And I was just thinking to myself, you know, so many people go to the gym

to do futile physical activity, but not on its own for eternity with no

sense in which it's improving their life, right? Imagine going to the gym and not only is it not making you

healthier, it's actually just making you fatter and you have to do it forever for the rest of eternity for no reason with

no end. And then somebody says, "Well, all you've got to do is imagine that person being happy." Yeah. So, that's kind of interesting

because then that presumes that the attitude through which you approach the

action is what determines it. Determines what? Determines whether you're happy or not.

Right? So every time you eat, y you buy yourself a trip to the toilet. This is something you can never escape.

Sure. It is true for all time. And yet, how do you feel about going to the toilet?

I'm maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're getting. So So So I I I think it's it's interesting, right? Because you're the

problem of Seisphus is in the way that he views it. And this is exactly why I think the paperclip example is like

actually such a good one because I think what we find when we look at some of these things like radical acceptance,

dialectical behavioral therapy, sort of the ways in which people become happy

despite the fact that there are painful things in life. It is an attitudinal shift. Totally. I I think I think one of the

reasons why it might seem like we keep talking across purposes is because I think you're you are offering an

explanation for why people feel a particular way. And I'm trying to see whether those those feelings are, shall

we say, philosophically validated, whether they are those those feelings are are sensitive to truth. If the way

you feel about the world is accurate. So I can I can perfectly understand that

it's possible for Sephus to be happy. What I'm saying is that I think that the philosophical underpinning that would be

required for him to be content in that condition is

unsatisfying, at least to me. So as a as a what what so what is a what is a philosophical truth?

It doesn't have to I mean maybe I shouldn't say philosophical truth but I mean to say I mean to separate it from what you might describe as like a

neurological truth which is to say it could be true that your brain believes

this or believes that based on this or that condition. I'm saying that totally. But what I'm interested in is the thing

that it believes. Is it true or false? You know it could be in the same way that you know believing in Christianity

can make you happy. It can make you sad and you can you can scan someone's brain. You can put them in an MRI

scanner and scan their brain when they at the moment they convert to Christianity and see that it starts going haywire.

But the brain MRI is not going to show any beliefs. It's just nothing to do with the truth. Neurological activity beliefs aren't but

beliefs aren't in the brain. Yeah, we we're we're going to get to that in I kind of I kind of agree. So, Alex, I think this is what I I I thank you so

much for pointing out how we're kind of talking across each other because I I think this is the really weird thing and

I'm going to say something and then as we talk about consciousness and what we just talked about, I'm going to torpedo it.

But I I think what we sort of find is that from a practical sense and this could be where like philosophy I I don't

know what the how the word practical ties together with philosophy because I

tend to think of philosophy as sort of practical. We can go into that in a second. But I I think from the

perspective of finding purpose. Mhm. Now, I'm not talking about purpose as a

capital P truth, right? A capital T truth. Finding purpose.

What it may not be philosophically satisfying to you, but what we sort of know from

empirical evidence of people who are purposeless and people who are purposeful is that the the subjective

feeling of purpose is comes out of a number of different things like like I mentioned like kind of autonomy being

able to detect your emotions also a sense of like narrative identity. So having a purpose in life requires a you.

And one of the reasons that no one feels like they are going somewhere in life is because they don't really have a clear

sense of who they are. And so I think that it's a great kind of catch

that we're sort of talking across purposes because I I don't know the thing that you find philosophic not philosophically true maybe

neurologically true but isn't philosophically true. I don't know how to approach that. I

mean, I think I sort of do because if we talk about consciousness and subjective experience and how your friend was

transformed and by the way, he may not be transformed. So there's speaking of coping, there's a chance that when someone, you know, drastically joins a

religion and like this is great. That is like the mother of all copes, right? So sometimes they find they adopt they it's

not identity formation, it's actually identification where like I'm going to join this team and now I'm on this team and now that I have this team, now I

know who I am. Now I have a purpose. Like everything kind of gets laid out. But oftentimes, this is also why religion is not like 100% at giving

people happiness and and things like that because there is an internal subjective experience of a relationship

with God or something like that, which I think we can segue to consciousness. That's ultimately what determines whether you you feel really good about

it. And then the other really interesting thing is through some of those subjective experiences,

I think we the people who have these subjective experiences believe that it

gives them access to truth with a higher like the Gnostics and and and folks like that.

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Express. That's adobe. slashsteeen. Let me just bring it back down to um

some of the popular questions we had from our audience. One of the most popular questions we had is, "Do we each have a specific per purpose or is it

self-chosen?" Greg. Well, in my view, if God has made us for

a reason and he wants us to be in relationship with us, each individual person has different capabilities and

fulfilling those capabilities that God has given him, general ones and specific

ones. Like I have my own particular peculiar capabilities. Doing that is going to make me satisfied. Okay.

So, did God give me a purpose? Yes. And is it different from Alex's purpose? I would say in in the the in the kind of

the minutia, yes, you're a different individual than he is. And can I ask you a question that then springs to mind? Yeah. Again, I'm very

curious. If Steven Bartlett had gotten cancer at one years old and I died, I see. Yeah. Well, then you wouldn't be

fulfilling the particulars that God had intended for you. But that kind of thing

happens because we live in a broken world. It isn't the perfect world. It is not the good. It's it's not the totally good

moral that God made. Something happened that broke the world. Human rebellion.

Human rebellion. At what point in history? Well, early on with our first parents.

Okay. So, the first humans, the first humans, that's why all humans since then have the same proclivity

towards evil. It's pretty much quantifiable. Does that include other species of human homony?

Well, I know that's a question that a lot of people are discussing right now. Okay. Okay. And where exactly do you draw that line? And I'm not

that isn't an area that I go deep in. But I do think that there was a an original progenitor to the human race as

we understand it right now. Sure. That has the image of God in man

and violated God's commands, rebelled against God, and that had an impact on

the world. Okay. And that is why so therefore you're going to have some people aren't going to be,

you know, fulfilling all of their the ultimate purposes that God has for them in this world. Just to be clear,

children get cancer. Sure. Because say 2 million years ago roughly

the start of the human species. I'm not going to set a date on it. Somebody rebelled against God's

commands and that is the explanation for this is a fair question and you know some of these details I haven't worked

out. What about earthquakes and tsunamis and all those kinds of things? Okay. Um clearly there is an impact of human

rebellion upon the earth. Okay. what the extent of that impact is, I'm not entirely sure. But this is why I use the

word broken because it's a rather broad term rather than trying to identify every instance of things that seem

anomalous to a good world, not the way it should be, so to speak. Okay. I think that's an explanation for these things

even though we can't necessarily itemize each individual particular instance and

how it falls short. Alex, I want to put the same question to you, which is do you think that you were born with a

purpose that was endowed for your life? No, not not in the literal sense. I think that there are that I was born

with literal like proclivities built into my my consciousness and my DNA. Um

almost want to do tendencies. Yeah, tendency is a great word. Yeah. For example, my tendency to to eat food. I I

I don't think I learned that. I think I was born with it. But it's like I would use the language of when you say if you

said do you think that you were you know you were given hunger from birth I'd be like no in a poetic sense maybe but what

I mean say is I was born with this thing called hunger which I didn't learn which was just a part of my makeup. I think the same thing is true for many

motivations of life such as the sort of meaning that you that you might report feeling. I think it's there from from

child birth. Same question for you Alec. Do you think that we each have a specific purpose or is it self-chosen?

I think it's both. So I'm going to introduce two concepts that we haven't talked about yet. Dharma and karma. And

um I think these are concepts that are sometimes hard to understand. I'm going to do my best to kind of speedrun

them. So dharma is the Sanskrit word that kind of gets translated as duty. Uh

the way that I would describe dharma, the reason I think it's so important is right now if we look at the world,

people are like not having a good time. And often times what they do is they're

stuck between this choice of doing what they want and doing what they should. So doing what they want is maybe

dopamineergic is maybe fun in some way. Doing what they should is like painful

in some way. So for me what I think dharma is dharma is like sort of duty.

But I think the key thing that helps people once they find their dharma is it's what allows you to choose the

negative thing. It it's what allows you to choose the hard thing. So if someone points a gun at me and I look at that

gun, that gun means pain, suffering, death, you know, my life will will will end and then I will have nothing to

leave behind me. So my purpose will end. So I I try to move away from that thing.

But if someone points the gun at my child because I have this overwhelming sense of of love and joy or whatever, I

step into the path of that thing. So I think once we understand what our duty is, that gives us a sense of tethering.

It gives us a sense of direction. Um I think what confuses a lot of people is that they think duty is like some

transcendental that's like a big thing like duty with a capital D like I was born on this earth to do these like

particular big tasks like I need to say cure cancer or something like that. Oftentimes dharma is really small. So

the way duty is not transcendent and it's not tied to some moral transcendent thing. I I think I don't know about moral. So

this is where I think like I you said should. So that's usually a moral term, right?

In the west, right? So I think there's a whole different set of axioms. I'm using dharma and that's what people will like

put morality onto dharma where I I don't think that that's actually fair. So so I going back to I have a duty just

to give another example. Um and y'all can decide whether this is moral or not, but when I'm sort of working in the

emergency room and you know a patient walks in, I have a duty to that patient. So what a lot of people don't understand

about dharma is that it is very environmentally determined. So your dharma will depend somewhat on you know

the the family that you have the responsibilities that you have. If you have children you have a dharma to those people. So I think that's one part of

what we would call purpose. I think the other part of purpose and I think this gets really closer to the more western

conception is karma. So going back to your your question about you know if a

child with with cancer uh dies at the age of one is their purpose fulfilled

arguably yes because that could have been their purpose in this life right so their purpose could have been so there's

a really interesting story about you know many years ago there was a there were a group of angels this I'm just

going to use the western terminology devas who disturbed Shiva in his meditation and so he cursed them and he

said I'm going to the curse that you guys are going to do is y'all are going to be born on the earth for one lifetime

of a human. And then the day of us were like, "Oh my god, like this is terrible. Like we're going to be cursed to be born

on the earth and the earth is full of suffering and cisphus and there's no meaning with a capital M." So then they

go to Shiva's daughter and they ask her, "Hey, can you help us out?" Like, "Can you please go talk to your dad? Can you

please get him to change his sentence?" And she says that Shiva is never going to change his sentence. That's impossible to do. He's also kind of this

embodiment of karma and things like that. But so he says, "But I can help y'all out. What I can do is I'm going to

be born with y'all." And then there's this other story in the Mahabharat where basically she has seven children and

then she drowns them the day after they're born. And so she says, "The technical situation is you're going to

be born for one lifetime. I can make a lifetime happen in a moment." Now, I

don't know if that's true. I don't know if that's moral. I don't know if it's mythology but a potential explanation for why children get cancer.

It's a potential explanation for why children get cancer. Now I think the the karma thing is when you said is your

purpose in life predetermined. So I think that you inherit a certain amount of circumstances

and that part of your purpose will be in relation to the circumstances

that you inherit. But the other thing about karma which I think a lot of people misunderstand is they think that

it means destiny. I think all it means is Newton's third law which is every action has an equal and opposite

reaction. That while you may inherit a set of circumstances

the way that you act is sewing seeds for your future life.

So this is where like you know I I know I'm introducing a bunch of concepts and it's interesting. I you know we we

started a a membership program here at Healthy Gamer and part of the reason we did that is because a lot of these

concepts if you turn them into like 50-minute YouTube videos people just end up with more questions than answers. So

we go into a lot of depth and I think it requires some depth because I'm sure everybody who's listening has a ton of

questions. But in order to succinctly answer your question, I would say that yeah, you were born for I don't know

about a specific reason, but there's a set of different things which only you

can do like you are a unique set of genetics. You are a unique set of experiences. You are a unique set of

psychology. And this process it in psychiatry is something that we call meaning making helps a lot when people

have trauma. Right? So to help someone understand why did this terrible thing happen to you and once you make meaning

from it that helps you adaptively but I think that it's also not like predestined necessarily. You can

procrastinate on fulfilling your karmmas and then they'll just keep coming back. So Dr. K, I still have a question about

this. You you talk about duty and I'd asked about morality there and you you kind of begged off on that. Well, not

really. But then you use the word obligation in the emergency room. And it sounds to me when you talk about those

things, you are actually invoking moral categories. Things you ought to do. You have an obligation to do. You have a

duty to do. Maybe the right thing. You didn't use this phrase, but it sounds like you're saying this is the right thing to do, the virtuous thing to do as

opposed to the wrong thing to do. So, how how am I to understand those phrases if they are not really invoking genuine

moral categories? So when you say moral categories, are

you referring to a transcendental right and wrong? I'm talking about ethical principles,

ethical rights and wrong if you want. They are transcendent because they're not simply in the molecules as it were.

They're above us transcend. So yes, in that sense. Okay. Yeah. And uh has and there are

consequences to our behaviors one way or another. And the consequences it's not just you know utilitarian. It's not

just, well, I if I put toast in too long, it'll burn the toast, but you're you ought to do the things that you just

described. You ought to help that person. Okay. I think it's a fairly common sensible word, a moral category,

virtue, vice kind of thing. I I think whether it's common sensical depends on

what's common, right? So, I I think that this is where these concepts I don't think are onetoone. So I think doing

your dharma is basically the way I would describe your dharma is when I throw a

ball in the air, it comes down. Okay. Right. So dharma is kind of doing what

is the second part of what you've kind of signed up for. So when you say you ought to help the person in the emergency room, all you mean is you're

not morally compelled to do that in in terms of a virtue, but there is a a

consequence for you to do that as opposed to doing the opposite. Yes. And I think there is a layer of

morality, but that is not within dharma. So for example, there are yamas and nyamas, which are things like

truthfulness, a himsa, which means non-violence. So there's a set of different things that we would generally

speaking call morality. And doing those things is usually in accordance with dharma. But you know the mahabharat is a

great case of someone saying I don't want to kill my cousins and I don't want to kill my teacher and Krishna saying

you absolutely should because it is in accordance with dharma. So I think dharma often times gets like translated

over to morality but I think you lose something in translation. Greg, can I ask you do you think you have you can have a fulfilling life

without having a transcendent purpose in some measure? in some measure. What I

described earlier is if God made us for a purpose and made the world for human flourishing and I think we get a basic

description of that in the beginning of our story for example then people who don't even believe in God or even about

even anything religious at all if they if they fall within the pattern of the

things that God has created for flourishing they're going to flourish in some significant measure. You mentioned a few moments ago about having children

and this is somewhat of a universal experience. Now you made a kind of a naturalistic characterization of why we

feel that way. Um my sense is that God made us for that purpose. Be fruitful, multiply, subdue. And subdue doesn't

mean rape the earth. It means to work productively what God has given us to serve. Now somebody can get married and

stay married and have children and fulfill that purpose there and be very

satisfied in doing it as opposed to all kinds of other var variations that it's just going to mess up their life. and

they're going to experience satisfaction and fulfillment in it. But that's because they're in a certain sense

they're doing the things that God has made human beings to do so that they would flourish. It's just like you can

think of it in very mechanistic terms. You have a vehicle that meant to operate a certain way and if you do the things

properly for that vehicle, it's going to run well and do so. So, I can have a I can have a grand feeling of purpose if I do many of the

the things that are considered virtuous within scripture without needing to

believe. Yeah, you could still be virtuous. Certainly, you can do those things. My

argument, and this is what I was getting at a little earlier, uh Dr. Kay, is that if if there is no God establishing a

right and wrong, then there is no right and wrong because there is no law that we're we're we're conforming ourselves

to. We are just doing stuff. All right. Now, if you believe the sort of evolutionary perspective on this

taken as a whole, I don't not the way that uh Alex has taken. It's a grand explanation of pretty much everything.

It's not an explanation of everything. It's an explanation of the variance of life on Earth because evolution does I was thinking

about my dog. I was thinking about Pablo and I was thinking, why does he have sex with other dogs? Why does he why does he

protect his puppies? Yeah. You know, why does he do these things that somewhat in uh Dr. K's example

there, he he takes care of things. takes care of me when I'm not in the house. If someone comes in and my girlfriend's there, he takes care of my girlfriend.

He barks only when she's she's at home alone. So, he seems to be expressing some form of morality. He seems to

understand his own sort of idea of right and wrong. But I has that well, I wouldn't characterize it that

that way as if he's thinking I ought to do this and if I don't do that, then I'm doing something wrong. I think animals

have instincts that they're in imbued with that can be influenced by natural factors to some degree, I guess. Um, but

they are made for purposes. And this is the reason that many of the creatures act the way they do is because of these

very sophisticated instincts that allow them to get along in life and do well and survive and reproduce.

But I don't I don't have any reason to think that they're Yeah. survive and reproduce. Of course, but I don't have any reason to think

that they're thinking I'm doing the moral thing. And if they didn't do the thing that we

would be uh it would be appropriate to accuse them of doing something immoral, this or whatever. History's almost shown

that even in times where where we look back and go that was not the moral thing like you know Nazis in in World War II.

Yeah. Um they acted in a way that was helped them survive in the context they're in. So the Nazi that you know would go to

the concentration camp then come home and be really nice to his family. He thought he was doing the right thing. This is why one of the reasons I think

this is the evolutionary explanation is inadequate. Okay. because it seems that there are lots of things that people do

that seem to be good for them or for their tribe that characteristically we'll look at and we'll assess it and

the assessment would is that that is wrong it's evil it's wicked and I think that our assessments are reliable in

that regard okay that we have moral intuitions that allow us to see things that are real about that and these

things are relatively universal I mean it doesn't matter where you live or when you live people are asking the question about the problem of evil in the world

okay and I think it's because of of what evil was seems to change over time because me I mean I wouldn't be sat at

this table many a couple hundred years ago because I'm black and everybody at the time thought that that was the right

thing they didn't think that was an evil thing at the time well everybody at the time didn't think that you know there are going to be

social mores and have that and that are going to change over time and do people do respond in different ways but just

because you have variations in the way people believe about morality doesn't mean that there's there isn't a morality

that's a sound morality And Lewis's CS Lewis has done a study of this looked at the kinds of things that seem to

transcend culture in terms of assessments, moral assessments that seem to be true about every culture. A lot of

times the differences are not differences in moral facts, but they are

uh like the morality is actually changed, but a difference in perception. Okay. So what uh what counts as uh

heroism in some cases would not count as heroism in other cases even though heroism is considered a noble kind of

thing. I've been waiting for an opportunity to rewind to the fact that we just brushed over

two of what I think are the best available at least first that came to mind explanations as to why children get

cancer. And I just wondered as as a as a question whether you consider whether

whether your explanation sounds to you as your explanation sounds to you as I think both of them sound to me and I

don't know how they sound to you Stephen but the idea that the thing that we are most fundamentally

confronted with I think on an existential level is suffering

and there's our own suffering and then there's the suffering of others and the seemingly meaningless suffering of a child who's undergoing cancer and does

not survive And I'm told that in the face of such

existential tragedy, turn to religion to give us a sort of

sense of fulfillment and a sense of explanation. But when asked about the mechanism of how, I'm told it's because

at some undisclosed number of years ago, somebody commit a sin against God and that's why your child has now died of

cancer. There are millions of people who listen to this show. there will be people listening to this whose children have died of cancer. I wonder if that

brings them any kind of consolation. Similarly, the idea that, you know, maybe it's some disgruntled angels who

didn't want to come down to earth for too long and so if anything, you're actually doing them a favor by killing them of cancer. I don't know if that's

bringing the kind of they're looking for. What's your answer to that? I don't think I have one, but I don't like people professing that they do have

an answer, but when it comes down to it, actually saying something which I think will provide the opposite effect, which

and I don't mean this personally. I mean as as a point of religious explanation. The idea that this is going to bring

everyone's going to get a chance to respond to this. So the idea that this even approximates an

explanation as to why this happens. I would ask you to consider what you find more likely if we assume that we are

essentially existing here as accidental accidental organisms just competing in a

struggle for survival with no endowed meaning or supervision. What might we expect to find? And I would ask what you

would expect to find if we were created with purpose by a loving God who wants us all to come into communion with him. But for some reason thinks it's

necessary that we exist in this veil of tears in this material world first. What would you expect to find?

I don't think and then look at what you do find. Look at what you do find in the natural world. Even if you just take into

consideration nonhuman animal suffering just an unfathomable amount of negative

experience, right? There's seemingly no reason. Not to mention the fact that children are getting cancer as you say and as you've

already alluded to there are evils that humans commit like the Holocaust. But there are evils which they don't like earthquakes and tsunamis and the like.

I don't think we would expect to see any of this if we assume that hypothesis. But if we assume that we are just accidentally existing organisms in a in

a struggle for survival, not only do we explain this, but we also come to expect it. So I think it provides a much better

explanation. That is not to say justification. The idea we were talking about evolution. You said that the

problem that you have with the Darwinian worldview is that it seems to say that it seems to favor survival of the

fittest. And yet there are things which evolution seems to point to that we would morally condemn. Well, of course,

because evolution by natural selection is an explanation for how things got the way they were. It's in no way a

justification for behaviors. It it doesn't even function that way. No scientific theory of why things happen

are any kind of justification any more than Newton's laws of gravity are a justification a moral justification for

the motion of the planets. That's of course it's not the case. It's just an explanation. But but I just really want

to drive home this point. Mhm. That it has to do more. If you want religious traditions to do what you

claim that they do, which is provide existential comfort for people who are suffering, you have to do more in the face of children dying of cancer than

some reference to mythical human beings who existed or Well, in in a way that's completely

unintelligible. There's a lot there. Okay. I don't expect it's could be comfort to anybody

to say who's suffering from whatever to say that there was a fall. Okay. The fall is just the explanation for what

went wrong and why there is wrong in the world. Like I said earlier, doesn't matter where you live or when you live,

everybody knows something's wrong. And the way they express that concern about something wrong is in moral terms. The

world is not the way it ought to be. should be different there and then when you give examples of it sometimes

there's natural evil but generally it's examples of moral evil what we would call moral evil okay things that people

shouldn't do okay that's why I particularly avoided those

no right you didn't include any examples and but you the implication is and this

is where you know Richard Dawkins's famous statement that this is exactly the kind of world we'd expect

if there was at the basis you know no design no justice, no evil, no good,

nothing but blind, pitless, indifferent. So you Well, I actually think this isn't the world that we find, the one he just

described. Yes, it's a world filled with suffering, and there's a way of explaining that which you just did.

There's also another way of explaining it that has a solution. Okay. Um, what is that explanation?

Pardon me, that God is in the process of solving the problem of evil over time. I mean, the explanation for why the

evil's there in the first place. You said the fool, and I I don't mean to interrupt, but you said it. You've referenced the fool twice now and the

last time I tried this you it seemed like you sort of said that you don't really know but if the fool is I wasn't I wasn't giving particular

details about the ancestry of human evolution historically what is the fool the fall is when our first parents

characteristically known as Adam and Eve in the story and the account of reality um rebelled against God and when they

rebelled against God they disobeyed him is what's important uh he had given them a restriction they disobeyed that and

when they disob obeyed that they broke their relationship with God through rebellion. They broke their relationship

with each other. They broke their relationship with the environment. All of that had these kind of cosmic

effects. There's a solution though. That's just the first threeand finish the thought. Okay. The the

principal issue is rebellion or disobedience. Okay. There are different ways it's characterized, but that's the

point in my view. The disobedience. Okay. Of of what though? Pardon me. Disobedience of of what? Like what was

it? God told them not to do one thing. Don't eat from the the tree of the knowledge

of good and evil and they disobeyed. Do you interpret that literally? Pardon? Like an actual tree and an actual fruit.

I do take that as a straightforward account, but that's not the important part. I don't want to get So children get cancer because somebody

ate So children get cancer because a few million years ago someone ate a fruit. Let me just back up and give you the entire account. This would be this would

be I think more helpful. I'm not trying to be difficult by the way. I just really I don't want to just brush over these points when we

reference. I mean people listening might be like I've never heard of Adam and Eve and they they'll need to know what the point I'm making is that there was a

disobedience by human beings that had an impact on their relationship with God which they were created for and had an

impact on the rest of the world and since then pro that problem of evil

broadly grit since then the world's been broken and God has a plan for bringing

that back together not only for making the world whole again but also for bringing human beings back in proper

relationship with him when they're in rebellion with him. And this is where Jesus comes in. Now, I I I've written a

piece called the story of reality, a book that's meant to characterize that in fairly clear terms in more general

terms. It isn't meant to answer all of these questions because some of them frankly are imponderables, but the

larger picture can be understood and is in the story. It's in the account of reality in the scriptures, the Hebrew

scriptures and in the Christian scriptures. They form a unit. Okay? And these are the things that Jesus spoke to

and Jesus took these things seriously based on what he had to say about these particular things. Okay. So because we

broadly speaking now because we live in a broken world there is an answer that we have to that we have a poss possible

answer. You know it was uh Bertrren Russell who famously said how are you going to talk about God when you're kneeling at the bed of a dying child

which I think is very emotionally compelling. But I listened to philosopher William Craig who you also

know I think who said what is Bert and Russell the atheist going to say when he's kneeling at the bed of a dying child.

Tough luck too bad. That's just the way it goes. There is no answer that he has. Dr. K, can you come in with your

response as well? Sure. First of all, Alex, I want to thank you for

bringing up and being a bit bulldogish. I mean that in a good way. You grabbed

something. and you were like, "This is not okay." Well, we forget that people are listening to this whose children have died of cancer. I I I totally get that.

I think we just need to keep it in mind, you know, 100%. So, so I'm really glad you said that because I realize that I offered a

terrible example. And I say this as someone I can remember the day I was a third-year medical student on my first

pediatric rotation. I was working in the ICU overnight and there was a nine-year-old child who had I think

lymphoma and I watched and was with their parents as that child moved towards death. I

have worked in offices where people will come into my my uh office and they'll say, you know,

they'll they'll ask me about karma and they'll be like, I was 9 years old when I was sexually assaulted. Are you

telling me that this is like part of purpose or whatever? I also remember when I was in India, one of my best

friends, the first time I went to India, I spent about seven years studying to become a monk. I discovered a lot of

really cool stuff like meditation, had some transcendental experiences, altered my worldview. And one of my best friends

who is also a very accomplished meditator, I we kind of got to talking about religion and I was like, you know,

what do you think about like Hinduism and some of these concepts? And he said, I can't accept any religion that says

if you were raped, it's your fault. Yes. So that stuck with me. And so for a long

time, at the very beginning, Stephen asked me a question. Am I Hindu? I mean, am I religious? And I I guess I would say yes. So that thought really stuck

with me. I think for a long time I was an atheist. I think I'm still an atheist. I think there are a couple of

other things that are a little bit unusual. So like people think like in the west we think that atheism, polytheism and monotheism are

contradictions. We don't really think that in Hinduism like those things can coexist. Mhm.

So, and what I'm really grateful for you for is because I think when I'm so glad

you said that because I think when I offered the example that I offered,

it's so interesting because I was thinking about why I mentioned that we have a membership. And the reason I

mentioned it is because this is this is one of those things that I have lectured about for four to six hours. And if you

listen to that lecture, then you will understand the context that I'm coming from. But without that context and if

you sort of assume there's so many axioms about morality and deserving that that that example without the

appropriate context sounds awful. It's like your kid died at the age of one. Oh, there's some greater purpose. You

just don't know what it is. you. Yeah. Right. That is not comforting at all. So here's

where I am now. I I really think this is I think Garma is good in the sense that it it helps people. I I also think it's

true. But here's kind of where I am now. So that was sort of my journey. I realized it was out of order.

Transcendental experience. Garma seems awful. There's this concept of deserving. Then many years later through

practice with people who have been sexually assaulted and and watching children die in the pediatric ICU

grappling with these problems. Not just like there are people out there. It's like you're in the room with these people when their child is dying. What

do you say to them? And even more so now as a psychiatrist with end of life care and things like that. So I think the first thing to

understand or first question that I have for you is when I say the word karma, what does that mean

to you? I don't know. Okay. I don't know what you mean you mean by that. So So I I think the first thing to

understand about garma is it's just the principle of cause and effect. Yeah. So when a child dies of cancer, what would you say is the cause of their

death? Well, I I I don't know about the science of cancer very much, but I would suppose

it's the cancer. Perfect. Right. So that is in accordance with the law of Gharma. Now, what is the reason they got cancer?

I don't know. Okay. I mean, what pick any reason you like. There could be a genetic mutation,

random chance, things like that. So what I think that all karma is is

action and reaction. That's it. So if you understand the doctrine of karma, what it helps you do is see the

way that causes and effects link to each other. It does not have anything to do

with deserving more so than if I have a genetic mutation and I wind up with

cancer. That is an action that has an effect. Th this is why I was reluctant

to engage with moralities because I think there are certain assumptions that I think come from this kind of Abrahamic

or Judeo-Christian worldview that get injected into these concepts like karma and

dharma which is why I hate translating them because anytime I translate something it's going to be filled in. So

you really have to understand karma. But I would say all karma is devoid it of remove it denote it of all morality

remove it of all deserve beyond simple Newtonian mechanics and that actions

have consequences. Now the reason that this is helpful okay now I'm realize I'm making a functional

claim here not a claim about philosophical truth because I don't know what else to call it. I do think it's philosophically true but

that's not what I'm talking about right here. um is that when you're sitting with a human being because your your

your primary concern is when a child with cancer dies or is

dying, how do you deal? How do you There are people who are suffering. If we're

not careful, we're going to hurt them. Right. That's what you're saying. Um that's one thing I'm saying. Yeah.

Right. So, so I I think what I sort of there's how it makes people feel, but there's also the literal explanation for

why they suffer. You know, it's it's one thing to say that, you know, this this religious uh narrative will bring you

some comfort, but it's another thing as well. I think that's something you need to keep in mind. But you're saying more than that as a religious person, you're

not just saying that this narrative will bring you comfort. You're saying this is why it's happening. This is why your child has cancer. So, so what I would say, so here's my

kind of uh response to that. So the first is I think that when I sit with people who

were sexually used at the age of nine, didn't do anything to deserve it, you know, people will say like, oh, like you

have to be careful what you wear and stuff like that. I mean, I you know, I have patients that were in onesies and overalls and all kinds of stuff.

Nine. Huh. At the age of nine. Yeah. People will say all kinds of stuff. So um and and what I find with

working with them and there's plenty of data to back this up is that there's a certain amount of meaning making

that is necessary to comfort those people to heal from that thing. And the

meaning making if we're talking about empirically making meaning out of things that are

bad is one of the ways that you alleviate suffering. Mhm. So one of the things that I find is

helpful as an option for that meaning making is understanding the doctrine of

dharma. And when I share it with people doesn't work for everybody. So from a clinical standpoint I'm not saying you

should believe in the doctrine of karma. I'm just and I I'm not saying you should believe in Christianity or anything like that. The important thing is this is

what the science shows is you should make a concerted effort to make meaning.

And because of my background, because of my expertise, helping people understand things from a

karmic perspective, I would say is helpful about 80 to 90% of the time.

But there's a very important caveat there from a data standpoint is that there is a huge selection bias to who

comes into my office. There's a good chance that these people are already open to that concept and are interested

in learning more. So I make no claims about that concept being superior to

anything else. Mhm. But I think what we know from psychiatry is that it's not so clear which one is

the best, but that you just have some way of like making sense of what happens to you. Mhm.

And that's just one thing that I think is an option. And I happen to believe in

the principle of cause and effect, which is all karma is. There's no morality tied to it. It sounds like you're saying that it's

just something that it just happens. What do you mean it just happens? It just happens. No, absolutely not. I'm

saying the exact opposite. So, it just happens does not imply a cause.

No, it I mean it it just happens as the result of some series of causes. Like, why do children get cancer? It's just

the result of a series of causes. Yes, that's it. Yes. There's no redemption. There's no

meaning. There's no intention. It's just it just happens. And that's fine because I I I believe

that's the case. I think that's true. No. No. I I mean I I think that we have overwhelming evidence

overwhelming that if you have a BA negative mutation on both sides that you

have a 98 to 99% chance of getting breast cancer that having this mutation here warrants a prophylactic double

mastctomy which means removing both breasts before the cancer even shows up. But I think the reason why maybe I'm

wrong about this but I think the reason you brought this up Stephen was not because you were interested when you said like I don't think you worded it

like this but you know why does a child get cancer? Why would young Steven have gotten cancer? I don't think you mean in a scientific sense. I don't think you

mean literally explain to me the process by which cancer develops in my brain gives me leukemia. I think you mean why

does this happen if being supervised? I mean, you asked it to to Greg in the context of religious supervision of the

universe. And I think the irony is that we're in a

context of a discussion where usually the boots on the other foot and I'm sort of being told that as a as a

non-religious person, as an atheist agnostic, I don't have a satisfying explanation.

You know, what am I going to say at the at the foottool of of somebody who's who's dying of cancer? But it sounds to me at least today like we don't have a

very plausible alternative in Christianity. For example, I did have a few questions which maybe I'll be

permitted the time to to ask and I don't I don't want to bang on about this, but it's important because this is

ultimately you're here to represent your view and a worldview more broadly and this is to me the question is the

question of suffering and you've explained your your your views about the the fool and I wanted to let you put

them in full before I asked a few questions. But the first question that jumps out at me is the question of

prehuman suffering. We're not the first species to inhabit this planet. And before we existed,

billions of years, I don't know if you believe that the earth is 4 and a half billion years old, but but

billions of years, hundreds of millions of years at least of animal suffering. Yeah.

Like, and that is experienced. They they like if and and you could say that it somehow is less like relevant or doesn't

matter as much, but if if you saw me right now step on a dog's tail and watch it squeal, you'd tell me to stop because

you know that absent just the effect that that has on our human situation, that's bad for the dog.

That kind of stuff was going on for hundreds of million years before humans were around. That means before the fool. That's true. The second question, the second question

I have, let's do one at a time. Uh and I don't entirely know how to answer that. Um part of the problem

comes when you create a world in a certain way that has um certain cause

and effect kind of things. So pain is there for a reason. Pain is there so that you can avoid something that's

harmful to the body. When you start feeling pain, you withdraw from it. Okay? In a very simplistic sense. It

also has a downside and the downside is that pain is painful and sometimes dying

is very painful too. So there's a trade-off there. Now I haven't worked all those details out. Okay. Uh but what

I look at is a larger picture because I can't refine all of those things for my own thinking. The larger picture is we

both we all live in the same world that is filled with pain and suffering. So

then the question is who has the best explanation at large about how that

works? No explanation. Well, maybe some are are going to go very granular and

get the here's why your baby is suffering in this moment for this thing. We're not going to be able to do that.

But we can understand why the world is broken. Now, if you if you don't hold that the world was made for something