 Hello my friends and welcome to the 31st episode of Patterson in Pursuit. You know there are a few things that you're not supposed to talk about. Politics is one of them, religion is another one, but one of the most taboo issues, especially for an intellectual, is to talk about religious experience. Maybe we can get away with talking about religious theology, but religious experience man that's gotta be beyond the pale, only those crazies have religious experiences. Well, I've got some news for you. My guest today has had religious experiences, and yours truly has had religious experiences. Now on the pursuit of truth, this is something that I want to try to explain. I have a loose theoretical framework to try to explain my own religious experience, but I want to go around and ask people about the nature of their own experiences and see what I can learn from them. As philosophers, as people who are pursuing the truth, you must acknowledge an essential part of human existence for all of recorded history has been talking about religious experience. And just maybe in the past century or so it has become taboo. So I'm pleased to say to smash the ceilings and to break the taboo, I'm joined by Mr. Isaac Morehouse, who is the CEO of Praxis, the company that is sponsoring this show. We actually recorded this interview last July, it was one of the first interviews that I recorded and I've been kind of keeping it in the bank for the right moment, and I think this week is the right moment. So before we dive into it, I want to tell you about the company Praxis that he is the CEO and co-founder of. Praxis is made for young people who are unsatisfied with their college experience or who want to avoid the unsatisfactory modern college experience, people who crave a taste of reality. What it is is a nine month program, it's three months of professional boot camp that's followed by six months of a paid apprenticeship in the real world. The program is so successful that now they are contractually guaranteeing their participants upon graduation of $40,000 a year job offer. The net cost of the program on top of all of this is $0. So if you are an ambitious young person, check out Praxis, go to discoverpraxis.com, click on the schedule a call button on their homepage and see if it's right for you. Now in addition to being the CEO of Praxis, Isaac's a pretty cool guy. One of the reasons I have a lot of respect for him is he was one of the first people that encouraged me to do what I'm currently doing. Years ago, we met probably in 2011, I was working at a non-profit and Isaac was there, he was one of the speakers for the organization that I was working for and we talked a little bit about philosophy. We talked quite a bit about academia and he was 100% in favor of me pursuing the thing that I had no training in, I had no background in and just a passion for, which is philosophy. So he was one of those people that saw competence in me even without my credentialing and since that time, many years ago, he has formed his own company based on that principle. So I'm very pleased that over a year ago now I got to venture out into the taboo waters of talking about religious experiences, talking about Christianity and all those things that serious intellectuals aren't supposed to talk about. Enjoy. Mr. Isaac Morehouse, thank you for coming out of the podcast. Oh, absolutely. It's a pleasure. So Isaac, you are a very interesting and knowledgeable guy and a whole host of different areas. You're very well read, got a lot of respect for you. And from my perspective, you're a very independent guy, both intellectually and professionally. I don't think you put too much faith in established authority, which I really appreciate. But I want to talk to you today about a topic that you're perhaps not most well known for or maybe even most comfortable with its religious ideas. And of course, you know, they say in order to be polite, you're never supposed to talk about politics or religion. But I think that you've never been accused of being overly polite. No, no, precisely. So I think those are two of the most important topics. So naturally, that's what I want to talk to you about. Before we start, though, I just want to put a disclaimer out there, both for you and for me and for everybody watching or listening that this is not a debate. I don't have any intention of trying to prove your ideas right or wrong or anything like that. This is really just an exercise in learning. I don't have the expectation that you have all religious ideas sorted out. I certainly don't. And people can talk about these things for thousands of years and disagreeing. So I do not have any expectation that you are a religious expert and I am not either. So I'm hoping that maybe I can learn from you and maybe you can learn from me and I just want to kind of explore these ideas with you in real time. Does that sound palatable? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I am not at all a fan of debates in general, because I find them to be like one of the least enlightening forms of trying to understand things. So I love the idea of just an open exploration. OK, so if you could give a like a summary or a few paragraph overview of your own personal religious ideas, how would you do it? Oh, man, that that is probably the hardest question to answer. But I'll try. I'll give it a shot here in a very, very basic sort of abstract sense. So I think I think that the universe is vast. And I think there are entities and things that exist well beyond what we can imagine or see with our senses. I think there is a tremendous amount of, I guess, mystery in the universe and things that we can probably interact with in in ways that go beyond just our ability to reason. So things through, whether it be, you know, contemplation and meditation or various spiritual practices, I think there's something real going on there and something that's maybe hard to put into words. And so I think there's a value to kind of what I would call a religious experience or practice or tradition to the extent to which it helps us access truths that go beyond those which we can access with with reason alone. And I don't think that they contradict reason. I don't think that the two are in conflict. But I think that there's sort of an additional set of tools that humans can use or experiences to access some form of truth. And I think there's something objective, right? I think that an objective truth exists. I think that there is some sense of, let's say, immorality, right and wrong or just causal relationships in the universe. I mean, take logic itself, you know, two plus two equals four. I think that exists in some objective way beyond what can be measured. And I think that there's some sense in which this objective truth, this series of you could call it the laws of the universe, you could call it God or infinite intelligence. There's something there that attempting to align our lives with and not and be in alignment with, which maybe different religious traditions would call like the process of being saved or finding, you know, achieving enlightenment, I think there's something to that. So I guess that's in the in the least specific and the most big sense but the sense that I'm probably most comfortable with. That's kind of my religious beliefs in a nutshell. OK, there's a lot there. It's abstract, but there's a lot there. So I want to start kind of with, we'll take a very basic religious question. In your conception of this higher power, is this, let's just for lack of a better term, let's call it God, it's a loaded term. But I think that's what a lot of religious people throughout history would have called it. Yeah. Do you conceptualize that as an actual being? Like like a person or is it kind of is it more abstract principles or is it like a is it like the a force that's in in the universe? Yes, I would say that I mean, the idea of and I'm very comfortable using the word God, even though, you know, it means totally different things to different people. So it depends, I guess, on who I'm talking with. But yeah, to to define some kind of universal principle, infinite intelligence, something like that is God. Is that personal or impersonal? It's kind of a weird question to me, right? So if I asked you, is logic personal or is love personal or wisdom? It's kind of like, well, I experience it in a very personal way at times, but it's not a person necessarily. It's not certainly it's not embodied or even some sort of, you know, even even when we think of disembodied spirits or whatever, we think we imagine them with bodies that are just right. And I think that's because we have to use metaphor whether we want to or not sometimes. And when talking about things that are not sort of physical, tangible in nature or even things that, you know, that we're familiar with that we can't see, but we can feel like, you know, whatever the wind or gases or radiation or something like that. We are forced to use these metaphors like, you know, there's all sorts of metaphors through the ages of wisdom or justice as being a woman, a female sort of entity or, you know, the muses speaking to you. I think that language is helpful and useful at times. But I also think it's very limiting. Like I don't think that God or objective truth is some being that's located at some particular place, even even in some other dimension at any given time. I think it's just sort of the fabric of reality, if you will. But even saying fabric, it feels very, very tangible. So I guess to me, I don't know if it matters what attributes. And the minute I try to give attributes to this concept of God, I almost think it's a little bit limiting in some ways. Those can be useful here and there as tools, but I don't cling on to any one of them. Now, that sounds like a more eastern flavor perspective on religion. That which is which is great, which which is great. Like, I know a little enough to know that that definitely has some eastern roots. But I like know almost nothing about most eastern traditions. This is just sort of I've just sort of ended up here. Well, I'm glad you said that I will I will participate and add this. That recently I've been doing a lot of research on eastern religions and eastern ideas and I find them fascinating. And I think I think the popular western conception of eastern ideas is very crude and imprecise. I think when you really dive into what they're talking about, very, very profound, very subtle. I think in some ways inaccurate, but serious, absolutely. Even even something radical, like eastern mysticism, that all is one. I don't think it's accurate. But I think it has a profoundly careful argument behind it. Yeah, you know, there's this weird tendency. So I grew up in the evangelical tradition, obviously in the West, in the Midwest of the United States. But there's this tendency to to sort of use these terms eastern and western in this really like absurd blanket way. And and there's these trends, right? Where I remember, you know, probably in my teen, several friends and stuff. There's this trends of like, you know, every book and every whether it's philosophy or religion that, you know, anything western is like old and stodgy and repressive and like anything eastern is like more enlightened and better. And like it's just because it's weird and it's different. And this almost obsession with like the eastern tradition and then vice versa. And it's it's kind of a I think it's kind of silly and bizarre sometimes. But to the extent that there's some substantial differences when it comes to philosophy, Western sort of analytic philosophy to me is is phenomenal. But when it comes to religious sort of experience, I am so drawn to so many of the eastern practices without with when I'm not asked when I when there's no demand to explain something logically, I tend to be very drawn to the things like practices and and metaphors and mythology of the East because there's something really beautiful in it that helps me kind of, I don't know, explore myself and the universe in a way that I find very, you know, I don't know, very fulfilling, I guess. You say you're drawn to the kind of experiential side of human existence and not just the purely cerebral. Have you had any just experiences that you could try to crudely put into words that would reinforce the idea that there is more than just the sterile logic sign of human human existence? Yeah. And I know it's not. I I don't usually like to talk about them in terms like bringing them up. But I will always answer if someone asks me that the reason is I just I always feel like for one there's a million ways you could define and describe any kind of, you know, mystical experience. And I don't even know that any of them are more or less valid. If someone were to say everything you think you've experienced can be explained purely by some, you know, biological chemical reaction. But I don't know, they could be right. But like from my subjective experience, it fell to a certain way. And that was meaningful to me. And I don't really need anyone to believe anything about it. And so I usually just basically keep it to myself. But I have had a number of, I don't know, probably a dozen or fewer in my life experiences that I just describe them as like profound experiences on a level that goes beyond. You know, I've had plenty of intellectual light bulb moments that are truly exhilarating. You know, the first time reading Bastiat and understanding economics, you get that that sense of like, oh, my gosh, boom, I get it. It makes sense. But but that's on an intellectual level on a different level. I have certainly had some some experiences like that. And I mean, I would say, OK, I'll give you I'll give you one example. OK. When I was probably I think I was 19. Um, I was I was sitting outside my house. I was I was I must I must have been 20. I was newly married. I got married two weeks before I turned 20. So I was a young young husband as well. And and I think I was sitting outside smoking a cigar. It was that night and looking up the stars. And and I was just sort of, you know, having one of those like what is my life all about sort of, you know, moments and contemplating and I had this just like really bizarre sensation of it's it's very, very hard to explain what like what sort of what went on. But I basically had a conversation. Now, I would call it a conversation with God, but but I don't even care if it's with my own subconscious or because, yes, like I was in control of this sort of back and forth in some way. But it was it's like if you've ever had this where you sit down to write and people talk about the muses and like something is flowing through you. You're tapping into something that's not just what you're like very consciously constructing in the front of your mind. There's something coming from somewhere else. So I was having this sort of back and forth where I was asking questions like what am I what what is my life all about? And I was getting these responses and I and I sort of wrote the whole thing out in sort of poetic form. But the basic gist of the conversation was every time I would ask a question, I would get this response, make people free. And I kept asking about how can I do that? I don't even know how to be free. And it was like essentially like very little deviation from that. And it was really weird because I almost don't like when I wrote it out in sort of poetic form and then I and I go back to it. I mean, I revisit this all the time. This is essentially become like my guiding purpose in life is to make people free. And what's so weird about it, Steve, is that I would never choose that phrase, make people free, because it feels very uncomfortable to me. It has the word make in it, which seems like the opposite of freedom, right? Like like help people become free, unchain people, something like that. That's something that I would use, right? Make people free. I don't like it, but I can't deny like this is this back and forth experience. I had it was it was truly it was truly inspiring and very profound. And I remember I went inside, I told my wife all about it. I wrote it all out and it was like it was putting into words something that I'd been searching for for a number of years. And that like to this day, everything I do is essentially guided by that. I know I exist to make people free. Wow. And I have to continue to figure out what that means. It might mean free from guilt or shame or obligations that are not from within. It might be free in the political sense from external oppression. It could mean a lot of things. And I'm always trying to sort of explore that. But I always sort of know like I have this packed with with God, with the universe like this is what I'm here for. And to the extent that I'm doing that, I'm fulfilled. And when I'm when I'm deviating from that, I'm less fulfilled. So that's probably one of the most profound such experiences I've had. That is that's extraordinary. And I also have had several experiences that I would say have that kind of communicative quality. And for me, it wasn't about a career. For me, it was the moment that I realized for the first time that I loved my wife. It was even thinking about it will will bring tears to my eyes. It was the most profound moment I have ever experienced. And instantly converted me from a something like a deist to a for lack of a better term, horrible term, a Christian, which growing up, it is a rough term. It is growing up. I grew up in Christian community. And it's not it's not that kind of Christianity. It's it's my purpose for existence. And in fact, I think perhaps human existence in general is to love. And this is very correlated with what a lot of other people have written throughout the years, but the actual the qualia of this of this awareness and of this dynamic was there's there is literally no words that can express how overwhelming it was, especially from my perspective, which I was pretty confident that there was no personal God in this way. They're like, like for me is very personal in sense that I actually had the positive experience of feeling that I was given knowledge by something that was greater than myself, which from a skeptical perspective, which is kind of my default perspective was flabbergasting, life changing on the spot. And what I really find interesting is I've had a few conversations like this with people just throughout the years because I'm I'm curious. And a lot of people have had these kind of experiences. They've had they're sitting out there looking at the stars or looking in a piece of art, and there's some there's some experience that they have where they have this kind of immediate awareness. And and it's like if if the concepts in their head, you know, we're like a zipper. It's like the thing goes up the zipper and everything kind of clicks together all at once. Is this something that that I mean, yeah. And there's there's nothing like those experiences that like, you know, it's real and and so profound when any fear or anxiety about anything, any of the typical terrestrial stuff, it's just put in this perspective where like you just don't care. You just see things differently. You know, one of the things that so as I said, I grew up in the you know, even evangelical Christian tradition and the churches that I grew up and I was very, very involved in doing a lot of different groups and and in the sort of on the worship team where all the churches were very contemporary, basically rock style worship stuff. And even to this day, I don't really like anything else about a church service. But that experience, even though a lot of the music is pretty cheesy, it's really basic court. You know, it's like the most basic chord progressions you can come up with because they want it to be easy for people to play. Sometimes the lyrics are just like reused and not all that profound in terms of just like analyzing it. But that experience to me and music in general, but especially worship music for whatever reason, I can just enter in like immediately. I'll find myself weeping sometimes. I'll find myself just sort of like transported to another place. Like I just enter into an experience that I feel like I'm accessing things. Sometimes I have kind of I hate to use the word visions because it's not like I'm seeing like I know that it's in my mind's eye. But it but it comes from somewhere other than like my conscious thought, you know, as I'm sort of entering into that to that kind of worshipful state. So yeah, I have certainly had experiences like that, quite a number of them. And but I also know, you know, growing up, my brother, very close friends with me and still is very, very similar in terms of our beliefs, but he never really had that kind of experience. And like, I always feel kind of bad for him. You know, like like he never seemed to be like overcome with, you know, emotion or not even just emotion to have that kind of, I don't know, transcendental experience. So I know I don't think it's something that like you're you're a bad person. If you're not or you have to and I don't even know what it means. I just know for me, it's been truly profound. And the number of people I found, even people who are maybe even atheists or not at all religious who have had those experiences as well, but just keep them very personal and close to themselves. It's very common. I've been very surprised. It's so funny you say that. I think when I hear specifically contemporary contemporary worship music, I I furrow my brow. I just throw up a little bit. Oh, my gosh, my wife's kind of like that. And like, I get it. Like, I know how cheesy it's like when you hear a cheesy 80s love ballad. I know how terrible it is, but I have to sing. It's I think for me, I think I honestly feel like I'm missing out a little bit because I think part of my distaste for it is that growing up, I was what I would unpleasantly say was indoctrinated by a community, by my parents, who had the best of intentions. And the way that it was put on me and hindsight had a very strong distaste in my mouth. So now when I hear it, I think of all the really the the negative experiences that I had with really the people and the explicitly anti intellectualism of a lot of people in and religious communities. Yeah, no, no. Well, let me ask you this. Do you play music? I do. OK. Have you ever played like in a band? No. OK, so this is this is interesting. So I've almost always been involved in singing or playing on, you know, when all my time when I was in church and we don't go to church anymore for a variety of reasons. But when I just attend, let's say, a church service and there's, you know, worship music, I can get into it, but it's never quite as profound when I'm when I'm playing. There's something that happens and this happens with any kind of music if you're playing in a band, I think, where you enter into this state where you're you're co-creating not only by yourself, but with this other group. But I think the difference and this can happen with non-worship music, but I think it's a lot more rare. The difference with worship music is all the people there, their main intention is not the music. Their main intention is to try to create there. They're all sort of seeking this like experience of this concept called God, that they all have a fairly similar conception of. And the music is sort of what they're using to do it. And so in a sense, everyone's doing this at the same time, but they're not doing the music first and having some sort of by-product to be this experience, they're sort of seeking this experience first. And the music becomes this this sort of catalyst. And I don't know, I think I'm guessing even if it weren't Christian worship music, that kind of experience is probably common among musicians who are in that groove. Yes, that sounds a lot like the experience of jazz. I have not played jazz in a band or anything, but I know I've talked to plenty of musicians who have. And that's kind of jazz is supposed to be about the experience, whether or not it's the the same degree of profundity that we're talking about, experiencing, you know, something divine or just some unique quality of the experience. I think that is I think that's a big part of it. I want to kind of revisit and explore something you said earlier, which I personally, I think, disagree with. And I want to know I want to pick your brain a bit. You said at the beginning of this, you said. You are comfortable disassociating your logical and rational beliefs from the quality of these experiences. And from my perspective, here's what I would say and tell me if you disagree with this. OK, there's no experience that can't even crudely be evaluated rationally. So there's no experience, which is somehow a logical contradiction or there's nothing which kind of escapes the purview of reason and analysis. So even if it's the case that there's something, you know, let's just say something wild is true, that there is some personal being that's out there that can, you know, talk to you and has spoken to religious leaders throughout the years. Let's just say that's all true. Even though it sounds kind of wild, it still would be something that's articulatable and analyzable. And the propositions are still kind of true and false. Do you shy away from that or have I misinterpreted what you've said? No, I think I would agree with everything you said. I would I would probably define it maybe this way. I would say that philosophy, good philosophy, is the pursuit of truth confined to the use of reason. While religion or mystical experience is the pursuit of truth. It may or may not include reason and it doesn't contradict reason, but it's the pursuit of truth with the use of experience, practice, ritual, tradition and mystery. And I guess I would say that the the difference. It's not that those experiences cannot be analyzed or understood through logic. I think I think they can. I think the the I guess the claim that I would make is even if we can't yet understand it or define it, it doesn't mean that there's no validity to it. So so I wouldn't I wouldn't say I'm not allowed to experience anything until I can logically explain it, right? I taste ice cream for the first time, and it's this wonderful, beautiful sensory experience. And to say, you know, you ask a kid, well, what what happened? What do you think? How do you explain that experience of this taste and this rush? And if they're like, I don't know, but I know it was real. I'm not going to look down on them. I'm going to say, OK, that's OK. Now, as they grow up, they'll find that like it is able to be analyzed and explained through reason. But just because you can't or can't yet, I guess I sort of pursue these parallel tracks. I want to experience that I want to consume so much truth and and and pursue so much of this beautiful universe that I don't want to confine my exploration to only logic or only experience, which I think some people do. I want to be doing both in parallel tracks and I want to experience things that I can't yet explain and I want to have the ability to logically explain things that I can't yet experience. Does that make sense? I think that is very well articulated. And I've talked to some of my family members about this about because this this experience that I had was so overwhelmingly profound. And the reasonable, rational, logical conclusion is entirely unsatisfactory. And it doesn't completely explain everything. So I can say with logical and rational precision that this experience had this flavor to it. It was so profound. It upended all of my values and I believe in such and such because of it. And all of the all of the implications of the metaphysical implications are perhaps such and such and they're all logically consistent. But that's a completely ineffective argument when it comes down to it. The only reason that anybody should have any of these beliefs is by virtue of experiencing it. If somebody were to believe, somebody were to say to me, you know, oh, I heard what you said about love. And yeah, I believe in that too, just because of the argument. I think that's a mistake. Several years ago when I was at Alfred University, I went to a like it was like a church gathering on campus. There I forget what their interdisciplinary studies or something like that. And they were putting on a lecture about I think it was like sexual immorality or something like that. And I attended occasional stuff like that just because I, you know, wanted to get their opinions and thinking about these things. And afterwards there were two pastors that were there whom I'd never met. And I spoke with them at length about God and all these things. And one of them I was wholly unimpressed by, to be frank. He was trying to make just the purely logical reasonable arguments. And he was doing a bad job at it. But there was another guy who was saying, yeah, I see what you're saying, Steve. I see what you're saying. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And he said, you're not going to like this. He said, but it comes down to at some point, you're going to have an experience, which is going to all of these things are going to click into place. And then you're going to understand. He said, there's no way that you can understand even rationally without the experience. And at the time it was prior to the experience, I thought, what a crack of crap. This is nonsense. That's not a good argument. And then said, it is an incomplete argument. Why would I believe what you're saying? And then sure enough, probably about, I don't know, two years later, something like that, you know, I had this experience of love. And it's, yeah, go ahead. No, no, I was just going to say this is where this is where I think it is meaningful to talk about sort of the difference between Western thinking and Eastern thinking. I mean, even even just within the Christian tradition, if you look at like the Eastern Orthodox, it's very different. But growing up in basically, you know, a typical Protestant, you know, religious experience in the West, there's this focus on. OK, all this stuff. And I guess maybe this comes from Aquinas. I'm not sure where it originates. But all this stuff that's part of this religious experience, it's not enough to go through it and to sort of try to try to experience God or in Christian speak to have a personal relationship or whatever. We also have to do this thing called apologetics. We have to win the argument. We have to win the logical argument. And that's not bad to analyze things logically and to do that stuff. But I used to be really, really into that. And the typical sermon, right, at a Protestant church is like, here's this piece of the Bible. Here's this chapter. And then here are the ten clear, tangible things you need to do right now to implement it. Or, you know, here are the three laws or the four rules, right? Whereas like in the East, it's like, here's a mystery, contemplate it, be overwhelmed, you know, and this idea that like in like apologetics. So I started out really interested in in my early teens. I think most people who grew up in the church at some point when they experienced the world, they they feel this need to like this they're on the they feel like they're on the defensive. Like people think this beliefs are crazy. So I got to like, you know, you go out for with all the wrong motivations, right, truth, truth seeking as in, give me some arguments that prove what I want to believe already precisely. And so you go out and you start doing all this research and apologetics, whatever. And you find several things. I mean, one, you find that actually some of the best philosophers are theists and there's some phenomenal just in raw philosophy. There are phenomenal arguments and debates about theism, about the immortality of the soul, all this stuff that are that are truly profound in and of themselves. And when you're only looking for it as a way to win an argument, you sort of like miss out. I just I just remember I started diving into apologetics and theology and philosophy of religion. And I suddenly didn't care about winning the arguments anymore because I just found the debates themselves. So fascinating. Right. But this need to explain everything and to like, you know, prove the historical existence of the miracles in the Old Testament and all this. It's so limiting to me. It's so sad. I think that I think that accepting certain tenets of a religion without necessarily having to provide logical proof for all of them is actually better. It's more respectful of that religion than attempting to get the answer that can win the argument for everything. Because at the end of the day, like it doesn't matter to me whether or not some story in the Old Testament actually happened. There's a truth contained within it that's actually pretty profound, whether or not it's historically true. And I don't want to miss out on the profoundness of that truth that may be transformative in my life because I'm so busy trying to prove or disprove that this actually happened. I mean, if I was if I just spent all my time trying to disprove that Lord of the Rings was a real story, I wouldn't I wouldn't get much out of it. Right. So would you say then that it is kind of a misunderstanding of religious texts and religious ideas to treat them for lack of a better term in the Christian context, like with biblical literalism, treating the Bible as as a historical text, as a scientific document that you draw literal truths from? Do you think that kind of misses the whole point? I do. I do. I mean, the Bible is a fascinating document in and of itself because it's not a document, right? I mean, it's just this huge collection of different things. Like there are histories in the Bible and genealogies. There's poetry. There's, you know, some kind of lucid or drug tripping dreaming states. There's a lot of stuff in there. So, you know, there are parts of it that are historic. Like if I was just a historian trying to understand some time in history or archaeologists, like I'm sure I would use some parts of the Bible to, you know, look at what would happen in history. But I think to see it as this unified, literal truth as in, you know, everything that's spoken is literal. It's only all you're going to do is spend all your time trying to, like, split hairs over. OK, OK, was this a metaphor or was this literal? Or was it? And what's the whole point of this thing? Isn't the whole point of religion to be transformative, to help you become something, to experience something? So, yeah, I think that's a I think that's a huge, a huge loss, I guess. I guess you're leaving a lot on the table. A lot of the best stuff. And from my own experience and the conversations that I've had with lots of people who grew up in the same community, not only is it kind of missing the boat, but it pushes tons and tons of people away from the ideas, because if somebody's understanding of Christianity is the literalist understanding that thinks, you know, there is literally a serpent in the Garden of Eden that literally, you know, somehow had vocal cords and literally its mouth moved and it talked and it spoke to these two people. I mean, maybe that happened. It's a logical possibility. But I think it's more likely to push people away. And I think that that's kind of a misapplication of the use of reason, which part of my own, I suppose it's still as anger after these years is precisely that. It's there are, like you said, there are fantastic arguments for theism and for religious ideas and for the historicity of lots of events in people in the Bible. That's great. And in different religious texts. But to philosophically not understand that the whole text cannot be read that way. I think is a grave error. But it's a wonderful segue. You know, well, let me quickly throw one thing in, because I know this is something you're really interested in, in sort of the sciences more broadly, this obsession with data and so-called like, oh, I only judge things by the data. These are the sort of empiricism that is never really true. Everyone's always using theory. And I think there's a similar phenomena with these sort of biblical examples. If I said to you, okay, I can prove that the serpent in the garden was an actual serpent, does that change the value of the Bible to you if you're already a Christian? Or if I can prove to you that it was not, like does everything that Christianity meant to you suddenly dissolve? Like is your belief system really totally anchored on this one data point and like the factual accuracy of that data is gonna make or break it? And I think that's such a fundamentally wrong way to view things. I mean, even in a field we both love economics, if your entire case for why wage floors are detrimental to an economy can be destroyed, if I show you one data point where there was a wage floor and people still made a lot of money, then there's something wrong with your theory to begin with. Right, and it's so counterproductive too because in my perspective, the sad reality is that a lot of people do hinge their entire understanding of religion on this all or nothing, it's 100% of the Bible or zero of it or it's 100% of these literalist ideas or it's all wrong. You and I both grew up in the Christian tradition. What I wanna know is more about your conception and this is something I'm really trying to work through because I really don't have an answer for it. What is your conception of Jesus Christ? Is number one, do you think that this is an actual person, not necessarily that that's a critical part of the theory, do you think that he is a, like in the evangelical sense, that he's man and God at the same time? Or do you think this is kind of where I'm leaning but I'm not quite sure that he was a man who was in extraordinary alignment with the principles that you were talking about earlier? Yeah, okay, like I said in a previous question, yes. So I think there's no denying that something profound and pretty world changing in pretty amazing ways happened at the beginning of the modern age, I guess, or the beginning of AD. And I think as for the historical accuracy of Jesus, I mean, I haven't ever really seen much compelling evidence. I haven't dug that much that like Jesus literally didn't exist at all and there wasn't anyone who these Christians followed and this tradition just sprung up with no actual person. So I think there's something there historically, again, I haven't looked into that a lot, but in terms of like what actually, what was Jesus or what is Jesus, I think right now what is the most compelling to me and offers the most kind of explanatory power and is the most consistent with my own current experiences and level of knowledge is that Jesus was an archetype. You know, there's a lot of scriptures about Jesus being like the second Adam, right? So this in the whole Christian mythology or in the, you know, the, I mean, this even connects to other religions as well when you add the Old Testament. But the idea that humans, you know, from their origin, there's this potential that they have to be God-like, to be like these entities that are, you know, maybe pre-exist us, et cetera. And they, there's something keeping them from that but really like it's within them, right? The kingdom of God is within you. It's within them to ascend in a way, to access something greater, to become greater. They have an ability to do more than maybe the other creatures on earth, for example. And there's something there that they can maybe activate or access. And so this theme of man like trying to achieve that state, but that state being possible, and, you know, Adam theoretically having begun from that state. And then Jesus being the second Adam is like this archetype is in the Eastern tradition, they call the process of salvation theosis, literally the process of becoming God. And Jesus said, you know, even said things like, have I not said that ye are gods or you will do things that I have done and even more? There was nothing about his message that said, look, you're never gonna be the same as me. It was more like, here, here's the pattern. Here's what a human being living up to his full potential looks like. Here's someone who is in alignment more than maybe anyone else has been. This is the example, this is the archetype of humans at their full potential, fully sort of accessing that side of them, that spiritual side of them, as well as the logical side. And I think that's how I see Jesus. And in that sense, the question of like the historical truth or whatever else really becomes uninteresting to me because it's the power of what that represents, what that archetype represents, that I find so compelling. Like once you understand, it's like Neo in the matrix, like once he can see it, once you understand what's actually going on in the universe, you will be able to do things to live in such a way that's far beyond what you can now. And so that's kind of how I see Jesus. And that's a very powerful narrative to me that is, I don't know, I guess useful and profound in my own journey. I think that's very plausible. In fact, I think just on a surface, I think I agree with all that. That sounds most intellectually compelling to me, but I wonder if you have any thoughts on this just because they've popped my head. When you say, Jesus is this archetype, why do you think it's the case that this person had this ability to live in accordance with these principles? Is it that like the Christians would say, God sent him, that this was like an act, that this was supposed to happen when it did, and there was something unique that allowed him to act in this way? Or do you think that, for example, at a young age he had a religious, mystical experience, and then became enlightened, if you will, and then lived the rest of his life in accordance with those principles? Yeah, that's probably the thing that, so sort of just give you a broader context. So growing up in the church, and then just essentially going on this long intellectual journey, and then kind of additionally this sort of experiential journey of exploring what I believe in. And like I said, basically losing all interest in apologetics and things like that for a long time, kind of arriving at these general ideas that I laid out at the beginning of the show about sort of God and religion in general. And then only recently in the last few years have I kind of returned to the question of Jesus. Okay, so we're just Jesus fit in all this stuff. And I'm sort of newly working it out, trying to understand it, trying to explore different options. So I'm very, like I don't have, I would say, an answer. But I think the options that you gave are pretty much the only ones that we can look at. It is either the case that it is either the case that Jesus had the same basically material starting point that any of us do and was somehow able through some experience or through his own whatever self-discipline and rigorous pursuit able to achieve a higher level of connection with truth than most of us are able to, or that Jesus was a kind of reset in a way or a kind of, there was something truly unique about the origin of Jesus, that the story of the virgin birth talks about this, that whatever it is that has caused humanity and for however long it's been the case to not be in alignment with truth, even with our own truth. I mean, and we know this in our daily experience, whether you call it sin or not, like we're not living up to our best selves most of the time and we know this, that there was something about the origin of Jesus that was different, some outside for some, God himself intervened to say, we're gonna sort of have this one be set apart to kind of interject it to show what's possible and then people will be able to follow that and map onto that. And I don't know, I honestly don't know sort of which of those is the case. I don't either. And I think either way is extraordinarily profound. If it's true that there was nothing essentially unique at the beginning of Jesus' life, that's a very radical example of what is possible for all humans, the exact same starting point. And if it's not the case, if that he was like a divine child, if you will, what does that imply? That on earth, you know, on planet earth, there's this uniqueness that like the creator of the universe said, I'm gonna make a baby and it's gonna be the example like that. Either way you spin it, I think that's profound. So only very recently, and I still have a lot more that I'm interested in digging into this, have I discovered the work of this philosopher, Rene Girard. And he's a Christian, but I only read one of his books, but it was so interesting. It was called The Scapegoat. And he essentially tells the story of all, it's basically a sociological interpretation of what Christ was and what that means for the world. Of through all of human history, every society has had this pattern that basically what maybe Christians would call like sin or something, there's this pattern of he calls it memetic desire. It's kind of like envy. Basically we want things, not because we actually want them, but because we see that other people want them. So we all just want the same things. This causes conflict over scarce resources. And every so often this conflict builds up and humans as a way to sort of release valve for the pressure, they pick a scapegoat, they do violence against that scapegoat as a way to kind of maintain social law. I mean, this is where child sacrifice came from. He goes through all these literary texts and myths and basically shows every one of these is a case of somebody being persecuted. And it's told from the perspective of the persecutors so it makes it look as if they're the ones doing good. Like the witch hunts or crops are dying. There must be, they all focus their anger on one person or one scapegoat. One ethnic minority, they exile them or kill them and then like peace restores. And there's this cycle of violence based on this memetic desire. And in his interpretation, what Jesus is life and in particular the death meant was this was the first time in history that the victim of this collective violence was indisputably innocent and claimed to be innocent. And in most cases, even the victims will like believe the myth themselves. Like, I guess I do need to be thrown overboard or whatever. And after all of this happened, it revealed this whole thing for what it was, this horrible sham. And for the first time, opened up the possibility for humans to not rely on this cycle of scapegoating in violence because they can address the memetic desire that's at the heart of it in the first place. And he actually like kind of leaves that book off with like basically you can see for the last 2000 years, it's been a constant cycle of this kind of violence reducing things that were normal for most of history, like child sacrifice, rituals where you sacrificed a person or an animal to the gods. Those are appalling to us now. And it's all because of this Christ's death, the martyrdom of Christ, the concept of an innocent martyr itself was basically invented and it sort of shocked the world. I got a lot more to look into on that, but it's fascinating. I think too, there's a principle there that applies as far as I can tell across the board of human experience, which is that when we don't have a contrast to our actions, we limit ourselves in terms of what we think is possible. So without the, maybe the example of Jesus Christ, it wasn't even on the table that you could live in this sort of way. And I think you see that all across the board and people, even in their intellectual development, even in my intellectual development, I didn't realize the profound accuracy and persuasive power of ideas that I was never exposed to, you know? But we'll have to leave it there. I don't want to take any more of your time. Thank you so much for talking to me, Isaac. This has been a scintillating conversation. Hey, thank you, Steve. As I said, I don't normally like talking about religion because I think most people don't actually want to talk about religion. They want to make you an enemy or an ally and advance some cause. And you had nothing. You just wanted to explore, so this is a lot of fun. Yeah, and I'll say too, I think I've concluded, given you're in my upbringing in Christian evangelicalism, I think we're both heretics. Probably. All right, thanks, Isaac. You bet. All right, that was my interview with Mr. Isaac Morehouse. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I certainly did. It's always great to be able to talk about things that you're not supposed to. If you value this content, if you think that you'd like to hear more voices like this, then please check out patreon.com slash stevepatterson. You can support the show for as little as a dollar or two whenever a new episode is released. And if you also want to help out the show, you can leave a rating and a review on iTunes. Just recently I noticed. I got a couple of little jerks from YouTube, some undergrad student that thinks he knows what he's talking about, who feels, who's taken it upon himself to think, you know, I want to protect the world of ideas from these crankish Steve Patterson ideas. So he went in, left a one-star review, got his friend to leave another one-star review in iTunes to try to reduce my rankings on iTunes to prevent people from hearing these heretical ideas. So if you want to stick it in his eye and please leave a rating and a review, I would certainly appreciate it. All right, that's it for me. I hope you guys have a wonderful and heretical day.