Ross Douthat, author of "Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious" and a prominent political and cultural commentator, dives into thought-provoking discussions about the intersections of religion, UFOs, and modern belief systems. He argues.
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question_answer ANECDOTE
Douthat vs. Hitchens
Ross Douthat recounts a debate with Christopher Hitchens where he felt thoroughly defeated.
He jokingly attributes this loss to adding 100 years in purgatory to his sentence.
insights INSIGHT
Simulation as Religion
The simulation hypothesis, with its powerful creators, resembles Gnostic or polytheistic religions.
If true, it raises crucial questions about our relationship to these 'simulators', suggesting no escape from religious inquiry.
insights INSIGHT
Inherited Beliefs
Religious beliefs often align with upbringing, potentially influenced by societal and familial pressures.
This challenges particularist intuitions, suggesting agnosticism.
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This book delves into the history of impossible events such as levitation and bilocation, focusing on the early modern period. It explores cases involving saints, frauds, demoniacs, and witches, and how these phenomena were perceived and interpreted by different groups, including Catholics and Protestants. The author, Carlos Eire, structures the book around questioning these claims and their implications on the understanding of the supernatural and the miraculous during that era.
For Ross Douthat, phenomena like UFO sightings and the simulation hypothesis don't challenge religious belief—they demonstrate how difficult it is to escape religious questions entirely. His new book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious makes the case for religious faith in an age of apparent disenchantment.
In his third appearance on Conversations with Tyler, Ross joined Tyler to discuss what getting routed by Christopher Hitchens taught him about religious debate, why the simulation hypothesis resembles ancient Gnostic religion, what Mexican folk Catholicism reveals about spiritual intermediaries, his evolving views on papal authority in the Francis era, what UFO sightings might tell us about supernatural reality, why he's less apocalyptic than Peter Thiel about the Antichrist, and why he's publishing a fantasy novel on Substack before AI potentially transforms creative writing.
Conversations with Tyler 
