- The case for faith, this week on "Firing Line."

♪ Oh happy day ♪ ♪ Oh happy day ♪ - [Margaret] About 3/4 of Americans identify with a specific religious faith, the vast majority Christian.

♪ My body ♪ - [Margaret] 50 years ago, that number was much higher: 93%.

But there are signs that the decline in the number of Americans who practice religion may be leveling off.

- Every Sunday, getting to church, it's hard.

It's not easy, right?

Like just doing the basics of any kind of religious practice, people are only ultimately gonna do that if they think that something real and deeply true is there.

And happily enough, it is.

- [Margaret] "New York Times" columnist and author Ross Douthat, in his latest book, argues that organized religion is good for you and also good for society.

- We have a lot of people right now who aren't really happy with where the culture is.

Turns out that a less religious society is not a calmer society.

There isn't more trust in science, all of these things.

- [Margaret] A devout Catholic himself, Douthat's book is provocatively titled: "Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious."

He joins me to make his case.

What does Ross Douthat say now?

- [Narrator] "Firing Line" with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by: Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, Cliff and Laurel Asness, The Meadowlark Foundation, The Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation, and by the following.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. - Ross Douthat, welcome to "Firing Line."

- Thanks so much for having me, Margaret.

It's great to be here.

- You've written a new book.

- I have.

- "Believe."

- "Believe," yes.

- "Why Everyone Should Be Religious."

- Everyone.

- Examining the empirical and philosophical arguments for the existence of God and the value of organized religion.

But not just any organized religion.

in particular, the old religion.

- The old one, the big ones.

- Who's the book for?

- The book, so I think we're in a weird religious moment right now, Margaret, where America has gone through this big period of secularization.

Religion has, institutional religion, has been in decline for a long time, but especially in the last 15 or 20 years.

And we have a lot of people right now, especially young people, but not only young people, who have gone through this period, aren't really happy with where the culture is right now.

Turns out that a less religious society is not a calmer society.

There isn't more trust in science, all of these things.

And they...

So there's a kind of openness to religion, but that openness for some people comes with no knowledge whatsoever.

Like, literally people who have had no encounter with Sunday school or the Bible or, you know, even, like, Christmas and Easter churchgoing, who are literally coming to religion as sort of a foreign country that they're interested in visiting.

And then there's another category of people, and I imagine you and I know a lot of people like this because it's very common in the intelligentsia; people who are very smart, very well-educated, who think religion, it would be nice if it were true.

It would be good for society if more people went to church.

But a reasonable person can't really believe fully in this modern world of ours, right?

So the book is especially written for people in those two categories, people who are looking for an introduction, "What is this religion thing anyway?

"Why would someone believe in God, "and what might it mean for my life?

", and people who are attracted to religion but think that, fundamentally, they have to check their reason and belief in science and everything else at the door.

And I'm saying, in fact, you do not.

- Your personal journey and religion was not, as you say, as a cradle Catholic, but also not as an adult convert.

You were born into a Protestant family, Episcopalian.

Explain how your journey informs your argument for the big religions.

- So I had sort of a curious experience where I was, yeah, raised Episcopalian, but then my parents went on a pretty intense spiritual journey while I was a kid, where we were in Pentecostalist and charismatic Christian circles with speaking in tongues and people having, you know, really intense, ecstatic religious experiences all around my 12-year-old self, right?

And then at the end of my adolescence, our journey carried us all the way to Roman Catholicism.

So we sort of did a tour of most of American Christianity.

And I drew a couple things from that experience.

One, obviously, in the end point, becoming Catholic in the end, was an appreciation for the value of sort of old established religions as places... You know, it's not that it's the only place where you can encounter God, but as a place to sort of spend your life, to actually practice a religion, to integrate it into your life.

There is just real value in traditions that have been around for a long time and have evolved in particular ways to be sort of predictable and usable, and not just dependent on the bolt from the blue, the sudden, ecstatic experience of God.

So that's part of my case for the big religions.

At the same time, having that experience also made me very convinced that the ecstatic experience of God is real.

I was sort of an observer.

I was like a, you know... William James wrote this famous book, "The Varieties of Religious Experience."

I was sort of like William James watching my parents and other people have these experiences.

But I was always certain that they were real in the sense of reflecting a profound and important part of human experience that materialism really struggles to explain, and that is part of why religion persists, remains resilient even under disenchanted modern conditions.

People, not just religious believers, still have these kind of experiences.

And they are, yeah, both a source of sort of religion's constant renewal, but also a fact pattern, a set of data that, whose existence more people should, I think, recognize.

And you have a lot of fascinating quirks in this stuff, right, where, you know, under modern conditions, we actually have more evidence for certain kinds of religious experiences, for instance, near-death experiences.

You get a lot more near-death experiences under secular, modern conditions, because we bring a lot more people back from the brink of death.

So there's a lot of, I think, underappreciated ways in which the mystical side of belief persists and matters under modern conditions.

And it's not the only thing making a case for religion, but it certainly doesn't make a case against it.

- The question I have is in the subtitle, "Why everyone should be religious."

Why should they?

- They should because we are time-bound, finite creatures, you know, leading a life in a universe that has a set of features that indicate that it was made with us in mind.

And some of these features are there at the highest level or deepest level of existence.

I spend a certain amount of time talking about arguments in physics for fine-tuning and design in the cosmos, where our universe...

It is extremely improbable that a universe would exist that would be life-sustaining in particular ways.

Some of them are at the personal level.

Human consciousness is a resilient mystery that seems to have some deep relationship to the structure of the universe.

We have capacities to unpack and understand these sort of overall structures that, again, you wouldn't just predict of a random species, sort of, you know, sort of appearing arbitrarily on a planet in a, you know, unimportant arm of the Milky Way.

There is some actual connection between human consciousness and the structure of the cosmos.

And then you have all these interesting religious experiences that give you indicators that whatever the higher power is, it's interested in communicating, at least with some of us, maybe not you and I right here, but at least some of us at some times.

And I think all of that suffices to say this is something that you should be interested in.

You've only got, you know, 60 to 100 years on this planet.

You're going to die.

You might, after you die, meet the higher powers responsible for this whole fascinating system.

And, you know, it's something a reasonable person should take an interest in.

- So they should because it is likely to be true?

- Yes.

- And because we'll have to meet our Maker if it is true.

There's a component of fear in your-- - Well, the fear of the Lord is the beginning-- - It's very Catholic and old world.

- I mean, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but I don't think you have to frame it as in terms of fear.

I mean, I think it's important to me that... Look, people make a case for religion all the time, especially on respectable programs like this one, that emphasize its practical benefits in this world, that say, look, you know, it's good for your family, it's good for your health, it's good for your community.

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about how important religion is to American social and political life, right?

And I think all of that is true.

And I will happily make a case for: yes, you should be religious to help your country and your neighbor and your fellow man.

But, one, I think one reason that that is all true, that religion is socially beneficial, is that it is connected to the actual truth about the universe.

And two, you know, I have a number of children.

Every Sunday, getting to church, getting to mass, since I'm Catholic, right, it's hard.

It's not easy, right?

Like just doing the basics of any kind of religious practice, it's not an easy thing.

It's not the hardest thing in the world, but it's not all that easy.

And the idea that lots and lots of people are gonna drag themselves out of bed on Sunday morning and drag their families to church and make religion a part of their life just for the sake of the glorious Tocquevillian benefits to the commonweal, that's naive.

People are only ultimately gonna do that if they think that something real and deeply true is there.

And happily enough, it is.

- You have written in the book and in your columns about a growing interest in UFOs.

- I have.

- The supernatural, the mystical side of technology.

How does that trend fit into this notion of spirituality versus the old religions?

- So I think, yeah, I think there are a number of people in our society who are in the position I just described, taking an interest in religion, not feeling any kind of commitment or attachment to a big old religion.

And maybe they feel like God, like, you know, the OG, right, the Old Testament God, is too implausible, too far out of reach, not someone you can imagine having a relationship with.

So a lot of people, I think, are looking for what you might call intermediate spiritual powers in this landscape, powers that are sort of spiritual in some way, but feel a little bit closer than Jehovah, Yahweh, God Almighty, right?

And I think, you know, there's the vogue for astrology and tarot cards and the occult and so on fits into this category.

I think some of this stuff with psychedelics fits into this category.

People go on an ayahuasca trip and come back and say, "Oh, I met," you know, "it was like an angel," or "I met a spirit guide," right?

I think there's some stuff with AI that is in this category.

It's more sci, you know, it's more sort of science fiction than spiritual, but there is a spiritual component.

Like, we're building a machine God.

And then the UFOs, right?

If you look at, sort of, the people who are really into UFOs right now, sort of UFO culture, it has an intense mystical component.

It's not like just Spock and Worf are coming from Vulcan and Klingon to introduce us to the United Federation of Planets.

It's more-- - That's the old world of UFOs.

- Right, it's more like beings from a higher dimension who we can communicate with telepathically are here, and maybe they're dangerous, but maybe they're here to give us wisdom, or maybe both.

And I think that absolutely fits into a sense that people have of, "I don't like being alone in the cosmos.

"I want some help.

"I don't feel like I can ask the Christian God anymore.

"But I'm looking for someone to talk to."

- And you don't...

It is not your view that stand-ins for the old religions or for sort of the rituals, the sort of loosely used term, spirituality, is sufficient.

- No, I don't think it's sufficient.

I think that it's insufficient in sort of obvious practical ways where, again, like, the discipline of going to church every week, having certain prayers that you say, having certain, you know, arguments that you can enter into that a traditional religion supplies, it's just really hard to find that in purely individualized religions, right?

It's hard to imagine.

It's like, you know, can you become good at sports without ever joining a team, just playing in your backyard?

Maybe, but it's probably not the right way to go.

But then there's also issues of, honestly, safety and danger involved here, right?

And you know, you mentioned the fear of the Lord.

I, as a Catholic, I do think that intermediate powers in this world exist.

I do think that there are supernatural forces in the world other than the God of the, you know, Jewish and Christian Bible.

And I think it's quite dangerous, in fact, for people to just sort of wander around constantly opening themselves to spiritual influence.

And I think this is not just a Catholic position.

It's something that a serious Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist would say, as well, that the old evolved religions are there to channel your spiritual energy in the correct direction and also to protect you from, you know, forces that might not have the good of the human person completely in mind.

- You have suggested that you see actual religion making a comeback in the years ahead, referencing this notion that we ebb and flow as a culture, that we have sort of, you know, zeniths of atheism and sort of lack of believing, and then we sort of flow back towards spiritual renewals.

This has happened through American history repeatedly.

- Yeah.

- Why are you persuaded that we are coming on to an age of believing?

- I mean, I wouldn't say I'm completely persuaded.

I think the way to look at it right at this moment-- - Do you believe that there is a correction from the previous trend of atheism?

- I think there is a correction.

I think I'm uncertain how far it goes.

I think you can already see in the data the rise of, you know, secular Americans, Americans with no religious affiliation, has leveled off in the last few years.

I think COVID kind of accelerated and brought to a completion a period of decline.

And I think you can see in the culture a lot of forms of novel interest in religion.

Again, some of them the weirder stuff we were just talking about, and some of them more traditional forms of conversion.

I don't know how far that goes, right?

I think you can imagine a world where, yeah, there's sort of a correction, but it's not that sweeping.

And then in 10 years, as the baby boomers pass away and more secular generations rise, the number of churchgoers starts declining again.

However, I think over the long run, we are living in an era where digital culture, the experience of the internet, all of these things are creating profound pressures on human societies that are manifest most of all in collapsing marriage rates, collapsing birth rates.

And I think there are ways over a 50 to 100-year time horizon where I absolutely expect religious communities to be a kind of bulwark against, really, a sense of human obsolescence, right?

Like, especially in the age of AI.

We're gonna be living in a world where it feels like we have virtual substitutes for human beings all over the place.

And I think it's really hard to imagine cultures getting through that and flourishing without some kind of religious attachment or connection.

And then more specifically, 21st century is gonna be great for the Amish, the Mennonites.

I'm not not kidding at all.

Like, sort of particular intensive religious communities that are good at managing their relationship with technology, bet on them long term.

- You tackle several stumbling blocks to religion in your book, and one of them is that, you know, if religion's such a good thing, why has it been harnessed for so much bad in many examples throughout human history?

And so you say, it's hard to imagine civilizations getting through these difficult times.

But it's also, as we see, looking back on history, very clear that religion has been harnessed to wreak great havoc on human civilization: wars, devastation, etc.

Tackle this stumbling block that is one of the three stumbling blocks you identify to people becoming believers.

- Yeah.

I mean, I think that it's a mistake to treat religion as some particular category of evil in human history.

I think you see with religion the same thing you see with politics, with family, with business, with, you know, any particular area of human life.

You see people using forms that are important to human flourishing for evil, right?

Like, how much evil is concentrated in dysfunctional family relationships?

How much evil is perpetuated by rulers who just want to conquer their neighbor and so on, right?

And I don't think religion isn't different from those categories.

And because it isn't different, I don't think it makes sense to say, you know, because people have used religion for evil, we should just give up on religion.

It's like saying people have used politics for evil and therefore we should all be anarchists and, you know, live separately from one another and have no common politics because of Napoleon and Hitler.

And in fact, you know, if you go back to the late 18th century and read sort of Enlightenment philosophers or you read Thomas Paine or Voltaire or these kind of people, many of them were very confident that religion had this particular role to play in tyranny and war and so on, and that once society secularized, you know, we wouldn't have wars anymore, right?

We wouldn't have these, or at least, I'm exaggerating, but we wouldn't have these kind of problems.

And this is, you know, 15 years before Napoleon, not a religious figure at all, comes on the scene and sweeps Europe up into two decades of war in the name of the French Revolution's principles.

It's 100 years before the worst wars in human history get fought for secular nationalism and ideology and so on.

So I think the record of the last 200 years suggests pretty strongly that there is no particular causal relationship between religion and human wickedness and folly.

There's a causal relationship between being human and wickedness and folly that we all have to struggle against, especially the religious, but not only them.

- Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist and atheist who found God after World War II.

He helped bring the world's attention to Mother Teresa, and he visited with Buckley on the original "Firing Line."

Take a look at this 1980 interview between Buckley and Malcolm Muggeridge.

- This has been, for me, the unfolding of an enlightenment which is full of doubt, as well as certainty.

I rather believe in doubting.

It's sometimes thought that it's the antithesis of faith, but I think it's connected with faith, something that actually St. Augustine said, like, you know, reinforced concrete.

You have those strips of metal in the concrete which make it stronger.

- Well, is doubt the dialectical partner of faith?

- I would say so.

- That it forces continuous reexamination, which is why it is assumed that all the saints, or is it doubted?

- If it's not assumed, it's certainly true that they did; and I would agree absolutely with that.

The only people I've met in this world who never doubt are materialists and atheists.

- How do you reflect on Buckley and Muggeridge's reaction to doubt?

- One argues with Malcolm Muggeridge and William Buckley at one's peril, especially on this show.

But I do think that there are different kinds of religious doubt.

There are kinds of religious doubt that, I agree with them, are just part of the nature of faith.

And those have to do with who God is, what is God up to, why is there so much suffering in the world, right?

Why, you know, why are there, you know, more religions rather than one religion and so on?

All of that kind of doubt absolutely is natural to, it's a natural part of belief.

It is, you know, in there in the concrete, as Muggeridge said.

I don't think, though, that one should have really strong doubts that something important is going on in the universe.

I think that the evidence and arguments, and, you know, readers of my book can read and disagree, but that, you know, the universe exists for a reason and human beings were made for a reason, and we should be interested in finding that reason out.

That initial impulse, I don't really have strong doubts about that.

If you ask me, you know, a particular aspect of Catholic doctrine, do I ever doubt it?

Of course, absolutely.

But do I think that, you know, the world was made with us in mind?

I don't really doubt that at all.

And I think it should be possible to put a certain kind of foundation on human life, where you don't fall into the most profound form of skepticism.

You can become skeptical of institutions and particular beliefs, but you should have some kind of fundamental confidence that we're here for a reason.

- In 2021, you wrote about your struggles with chronic Lyme disease in the book "Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery."

You noted that you and other Lyme patients' difficulty was with their doctors in the medical establishment in finding a diagnosis and then getting the right treatment.

And I wonder if you can speak to how your experience shaped your understanding of the anti-establishment backlash against traditional medicine that has elevated figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr to be Health and Human Services secretary in the new Trump administration.

- Yeah, I mean, it gave me, definitely, a much deeper understanding for why people embrace outsiders, skeptics of medical authority and even cranks, right?

I think until you have had a failed encounter with the medical system, until you sort of come up against a place where, you know, there's a medical consensus and it just doesn't describe a set of experiences that people have, you can't fully understand why so many people would listen to an anti-vaccine activist, right?

I think the problem with a lot of figures in the, sort of, anti-establishment, alternative medicine world is that they have a particular experience where the medical consensus is wrong or fails them, and they generalize from that to the idea that the medical establishment must be wrong about everything.

And I tried to be very careful when I was talking about my experience with Lyme disease to say, you know, you don't want to go from, "the establishment gets a certain number of things wrong" to, "the establishment gets everything wrong."

Because almost certainly the establishment is getting a lot of things right at any given time.

But it's really important to have a way, and I don't think we do this successfully as a culture, to strike a balance between not just writing off critiques of established wisdom, because quite often there is some core insight there, but also not turning those critiques into a reason to just throw out, you know, throw out all vaccination, or throw out, you know, whatever sort of extreme but sometimes popular version of the anti-establishment position you take.

- Do you have confidence in RFK's ability to lead HHS?

- No, I mean, I think my concern about RFK is that he seems to have had maybe not as direct experience as I did, but a similar experience where you have a, you see a few cases where the establishment has gotten things wrong.

Obviously, he thinks the establishment got things wrong about the assassination of his father.

But he is too quick, or at least my sense is he's much too quick to generalize from that to saying, "And therefore, you know, everything is up for grabs.

"Everything needs to be re-litigated from the start.

"We can't trust anything that, "sort of, medical authorities or pharmaceutical companies "and so on are doing."

And the reality is no, you have to have a balance.

More open mindedness than the establishment currently has, but not so much open mindedness that you are, sort of, throwing out all expertise.

- Ross Douthat, thank you for joining me on "Firing Line."

- Thank you, Margaret, for having me.

It was a great pleasure.

- [Narrator] "Firing Line" with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by: Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, Peter and Mary Kalikow, Cliff and Laurel Asness, The Meadowlark Foundation, The Beth and Ravenel Curry Foundation, and by the following.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. (bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (soft music) (gentle music) - [Announcer] You're watching PBS.