Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
To me, the question of belief in God, and you're right, it gets in the way of this because people will say, well, if I believe in God, then I can't embrace science.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I think that's wrong.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But let me start at the beginning and say, well, I think the question of does God exist
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
isn't a useful question.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It doesn't mean it's not an important question.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
As you said, people have been debating this for millennia.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But it's not useful because as scientists, we can't prove it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Any scientist who tells you they know for sure God doesn't exist, you shouldn't listen to.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The reason I say that is
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Oftentimes we, you and I as scientists live by the data.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We run experiments and what's behind any experiment is we try to manipulate a variable and we see if it produces a change.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
When you're talking about God,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
you can't do an experiment.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so I'll say the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
People hear that a lot and it sounds like a cop-out.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But in this case, it's not really.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So if I'm testing a new drug,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I can have people take the drug and see if it combats a pathogen.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And if it doesn't combat a pathogen, I can say, oh, all right, well, it doesn't seem to be working in this experiment.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Any one experiment can fail for lots of reasons.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Maybe people didn't take their medication the right way.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Maybe it only works for a certain type of people.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so you can try it again and again in different cases.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And you can kind of build up a sense of, is there evidence here that this drug works or doesn't over time?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And if it doesn't in any case, you might say, eh, maybe there's nothing there.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
With God, you can't even run the experiment.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So I'm a psychologist.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so most of what I do is I bring people into my lab.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I study how emotions change their behavior.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so I'll bring people in and I'll create two groups.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I'll balance gender and ideology and intelligence and all of those things.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And to one of them, we'll change their emotional state and I'll see if it'll do something.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
With God, you can't run an experiment.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You can't manipulate God if God exists, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
People say, oh, Dave, I prayed for X, Y, and Z, and it didn't come true.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So therefore, God must not exist.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I'm like, well...
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Do you know the mind of God?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Maybe God only helps people God likes.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Maybe God only helps people on every third Tuesday.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I don't know.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And if I can't manipulate something about the mind of God, then I can't infer causality of God exists or doesn't exist.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so I think this question of does God exist is one science can't answer.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I mean, I'm happy to say as a scientist, I see no empirical evidence that God exists.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But without being able to run an experiment to prove it, it's beyond the realm of science.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And all it does is polarize us.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It polarizes people into the camps that you're saying.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I think most people, the ones on X, are fundamentalists who are shouting science is bad or hardcore new atheists who are saying religion is bad.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I think most people live in the middle somewhere, and most people accept the view that there could be something there, and they're not in tension.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I think for a lot of history, that was the... I mean, the Catholic Church...
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Funds research.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They have a wonderful observatory to look at astronomical behavior.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The Dalai Lama funds neuroscience, right, to understand how the mind works.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so we had Francis Collins on the show, one of the great geneticists of our time.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And for him, there's no tension.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
He says, God, he's a believer.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
God created us.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
the human mind so that we could learn about the wonders of God's creation and how the world works.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They don't need to be intentions.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So for me, I like to put that question to the side.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
What I'm interested in is the data that we'll talk about that shows engaging with religion makes life better for people.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And why is that?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Well, you know, you're hitting on the point there.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
This is why I say it's not a useful scientific question, because when you can...
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
raise a finding, say evolution, which we know is true, and then say, oh, well, maybe that's the way God works.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
If you keep creating a carve-out to explain something,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
it becomes very difficult to make a strong case, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I mean, scientists live by falsifiability.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Can we falsify something?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But if you say, oh yeah, okay, that falsified, but there's a reason why that falsified because God did a different way.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It becomes just, as you say, an endless debate.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So when I was an undergraduate in college, I was always interested in the questions of, you know, what does it mean to be a good person?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
How do you flourish?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
How do you find happiness?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I was trying to decide between being a history of religions major
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
and a psychologist.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I ultimately decided to be a psychologist because I could get data and not just argue about the things that you're saying.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But what I've realized over time is that the things that we're finding that make life better for people
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
These traditions, they couldn't run randomized control trials, but they had intuited long ago.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so for me, what I tell people is, yeah, religion is about belief, but it's also about what you do.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so, yes, there are lots of people who really don't believe in God.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There are lots of Jews who are atheists yet are deeply engaged in their practices.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And it tends to make life better.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So let me tell you why I think it's rational.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You can make a rational case to believe this.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So the thing you're hinting at comes from something called Pascal's wager, Pascal being one of the greatest mathematicians and philosophers.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And he argued that if God exists and you choose to believe in God, you can have everlasting life, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
This is Pascal was Christian.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So this was the Christian God that we were talking about.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And he said, by nature of being born, you're forced into this bet.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You have to play the game.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Should you be religious or not?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Well, if there's a chance that you could have everlasting life in a pleasurable way, even the smallest chance of that outweighs any joy you'd have on earth.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So if you chose not to believe in God, yeah, you might have a more libertine lifestyle here.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But the joy you would gain from that pales in comparison.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so it makes sense from a decision theory, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The expected value of happiness is larger if happiness is infinite.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so Pascal said you should believe in God.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But people say, well, what if I believe the probability that there's everlasting life is zero?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Or what if I choose the wrong religion?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There are lots of religions out there of the wrong God.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And what Pascal realized at the time was that you could solve this problem if religion also brought benefits in the here and now too.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And what we're seeing is it does exactly that.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So let me give you an example.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Epidemiological data show that people who engage with religion, not just say, I believe in God, but actually engage with faith, over a 15 to 20-year period, it cuts all-cause mortality by 30%, cuts death due to cancer and cardiovascular disease by 25%, reduces anxiety and depression, increases people's sense of meaning and feeling that their life is flourishing.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
This is what brought me to my kind of mission today of trying to find and curate conversations between science and religion.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You can't argue with those data.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Now, for a long time, people would say those studies were done cross-sectionally, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so you would say, you'd look at people who are going to services and people who are not, and you'd find people are healthier when they go to services.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So you could say, oh, religion makes people healthier.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But there was an important alternative, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Maybe the people who were really sick or really depressed can't get out of bed to go to services, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So that was always an issue.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Now there's wonderful work by an epidemiologist, Tyler VanderWiel from Harvard School of Public Health.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
He follows thousands and thousands of people longitudinally because you can't run a randomized control trial.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I can't say, Andrew, tomorrow, if you believe in God, I want you to stop.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Or, you know, Dave, tomorrow you don't believe in God, start going to church.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Ethically, you can't do that.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But what you can do is follow people through time as they become more religious or stop becoming religious, leave the faith, et cetera.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And that's what he finds.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And it's not just community.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You know, another kind of criticism always has been, well, Dave –
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You know, these health benefits, it's just community.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
If they joined a bowling club, right, to use Robert Putnam's analogy of bowling alone, they would get the same health benefits.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
What you see in the data is that the effect size, which is basically the degree, how much bang for the buck you get.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Yeah, being in community, joining clubs, having tighter social networks makes you healthier and happier.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But the effect size is larger.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
for religious community, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They're doing something in those communities.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I think it's the practices they do that matter.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And even among young adults, where we're seeing increasing levels of anxiety and depression, even private practices, things like prayer and meditation are showing up as ways to buffer those and protect against them.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's a good question.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So these aren't my data.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
These are data from Tyler Vanderbilt and other folks.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They haven't examined every religion.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But when they do look across some faiths, it's a pretty stable finding.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Okay.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It depends on your philosophy of science.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
For me, I tend to think about this.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So I'm a psychologist.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So, you know, William James, the father of psychology, had a real interest in religion.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And he phrased this slightly differently.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
He had this notion of something he called an overbelief.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And an overbelief is a belief for which the evidence is lacking.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's not disconfirmed, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But it's lacking.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But which nonetheless...
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
feels right, and leads to positive outcomes.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And for him, if those two criteria were true, then it is rational to embrace that belief.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And that's how he basically came to embrace religion.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so I think, again, where we are is either of those philosophies can be valid.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You have to make a choice.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
One is not more valid than the other.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's based on your philosophy of science.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And for me, the question is always going to be one of faith.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You know, there are a lot of people who are trying to—
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
make a case, I'm thinking of Ross Douthat's book Believe, they're trying to make a case for if that is rational to believe in religion because, oh, it's called the fine-tuning argument.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Look at all the parameters in the world for gravity and other physical coefficients.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
If they weren't tuned just exactly right, life could never have evolved here.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And the probability against them being tuned just exactly right is low.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And then people say, well, sure, but there can be hundreds of millions of other universes, right, that we know in the multiverse.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so it's not that weird that we have here.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so I just – I think it's never going to be the case that you're going to have proof.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You know, these arguments, these philosophies can bring you up to a certain point.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But to take that final step of belief or disbelief, it's faith one way or the other.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And again, it's why I think scientists –
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
need to stay in their lane.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You know, even Richard Dawkins, right, the most famous atheist around, will say he cannot be absolutely sure that God doesn't exist.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Yet he acts like he doesn't.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
He urges you to not believe.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so for me, I think let's not do that.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You know, when we talk about these practices, how they lead to health and well-being, I can't tell you if they are divinely inspired from a creator who cares about its creations and kind of gave them a roadmap or a user's guide to make life better.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
or if they're cultural adaptations of people figuring stuff out over millennia but we don't need to answer that to have respect for them and to study how they work and to see what we can learn from them and if we're not willing to do that we're slowing down the science of human flourishing in my view in a similar vein i think um in the position that i found myself in the last few years of doing public health education public science education you know i
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I agree with you, but let's talk about that older generation, because you're right, I have many in my family too who, you know, if the doctor doesn't prescribe it, don't take it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But even during that time period when those folks were younger, the pharmaceutical companies, and I make this argument in my book, the pharmaceutical companies
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
had technology to make all kinds of drugs, but they didn't know where to look.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so what did they do?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They sent people to traditional cultures around the world to find substances that, say, the traditional cultures say can help people.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They called it bioprospecting at the time.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And, you know, sure, a lot of those didn't do anything, but some did.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And from those, we've found wonderful chemotherapy drugs, drugs that reduce pain, etc.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And we wouldn't have done that if we didn't
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
let go of our arrogance that some of this traditional wisdom might not be valid.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so what I argue for is a terrible word, but instead of bioprospecting, I call it religio-prospecting, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We should go back to these traditions, find these practices, do exactly what you're saying, study them in terms of the scientific method, which I fully support and believe in as a scientist, and see what they do.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And we're finding they can do a lot.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Okay, let me give you two examples.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I'll start with one that actually really started me.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
down this road.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I had a student named Paul Condon, who's now a professor in Oregon, and he was very interested in meditation.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And even if you read the New York Times or the Atlantic, it'll tell you, oh, meditation will lower your blood pressure.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It'll increase your standardized test scores.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It'll increase your executive control.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Does all those things, and that's great.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But if you talk to the monks, they'll say that's not why it was created, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's probably apocryphal, but the saying goes that the Buddha said, I teach one thing and one thing only, which is the end of suffering.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And meditation was a tool that the Buddha believed would help people do this.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so when we looked around, I'm a social psychologist, so I study behavior.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There was no evidence of this.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so we decided we're going to put this to the test.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so we recruited people who had never meditated before.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And they were either put on a wait list or they came for eight weeks to a sacred space on campus where they were led in meditation at the feet of a Buddhist lama.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And she created, you know, practices for them in MP3 so they can go home and practice.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
After eight weeks, we invited each of them individually back to the lab.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And we told them, we're gonna measure your memory.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We're gonna measure your executive control.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's basically your ability to override your own impulses.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
That wasn't the experiment.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The experiment actually happened in the waiting room to the lab.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So when you come into the lab, there's a room with three chairs.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And people were sitting in two of them.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And these were actors that we hired.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
People coming into the study thought they were just other people waiting in the room.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so there was one chair left.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so the person would take the last chair.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
About two or three minutes later, a person would come down the hallway, also an actor who worked for us.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
who was on crutches and wearing one of those, you know, boots you put on your foot when it's broken.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It wasn't really broken.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Looking like she was in a good amount of pain.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
She came into the room.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
All the three chairs were taken.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
At that point, she would kind of lean back against the wall.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
let out a little whimper of pain.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And what we wanted to look at is would somebody help her?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Now, the two actors in the chairs, we told, do what you do when you're on the subway, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You don't want to give up your seat.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Don't look at the person, thumb your phone, ignore them, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So we're creating a situation where people aren't helping.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And our question was, would the person who was in the study in the third chair actually help this person?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
In the control condition, people who weren't meditating, about 15% of them
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
got up and said, oh, do you want my chair?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Can I help you?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Can I hold something for you?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
In the meditation condition, it was close to 50% of people who did this, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We tripled the rate at which somebody felt compassion for somebody else in pain and was willing
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
That's a pretty big effect in terms of behavioral science.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So that was a small study.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So we've replicated it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We've also done it in a situation where someone is provoking you.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So in this situation, people who had been meditating or not came to the lab.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And there's a paradigm that's designed to evoke anger.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And the way it works is you create a...
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You'd spend five minutes to write a story about your life's goals.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You have to then present this to the other subject, who they didn't know was an actor for us.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
He listens to this and he says, really?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
That's your plan?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
That doesn't make any sense, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And this was a paradigm developed by an anger researcher named Tom Denson.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And we know it creates, you know, the HPA axis anger response.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so it's really well validated.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And people either meditated or in this case, the control was an active control.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They had done lumosity brain training for a while.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And what we found is that those who, they were then given the chance to cause punishment to this person.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I won't go into it all, but they thought there was a way for them to cause this person pain.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The people who didn't meditate were willing to cause this guy a good amount of pain.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Now, it didn't actually happen, of course, but they thought it would.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Those who had meditated refused to cause him any pain.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They still said what he did was wrong, and they'd want to talk to him and tell him what he did was wrong.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But they thought that creating more pain
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Pain and suffering was not the way to go about it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so for us, you know, right here was evidence that these practices make you kinder, make you more compassionate.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The other way, what does it save you from in terms of stress?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
This isn't my work, but there's a lot of work on prayer.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so when people pray, especially if you're reciting formal prayers, not so much if you're just having a conversation with God, but if you're saying the rosary or you're reciting, you know, Hindu sutras or any formulaic prayer, what it typically does is it reduces your respiration rate.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Not only does it reduce your respiration rate, but it also tends to increase the duration of the exhalations.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And this is for meditation as well.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
What does that do?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I mean, you talk about breathwork a lot on your show, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
What it does is it increases vagal tone, reduces heart rate.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It puts the body in a state where it is...
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
not expecting threat or challenge in the environment where it wants to engage and be more open to socialization.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It reduces cortisol responses.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so what it's basically doing there is, yes, you're saying the words,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
but it's reducing the stress in your body.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And even if you're praying about things that are bothering you, things that you're sad or anxious about, by saying those prayers over and over again, stuff travels up the vagus, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so by increasing exhalations, by slowing the respiration rate, it's telling your mind you're safe, things are okay, and thereby it's reducing the stress.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so when you look at that data from Tyler Vanderbilt that I mentioned on young adults who pray, why does it reduce stress?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's basically a way of increasing vagal tone in that moment.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And it helps you sit with the ideas of the things that are bothering you while physiologically your body's telling you you're safe.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Yeah, I mean, the way I like to think about these rituals, as you're mentioning, is they're really sophisticated mind-body practices.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Like, you know, we're a culture that wants the life hack.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Give me the life hack so that I can study more.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Give me the life hack so that I can save money or lose weight.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Rituals are like sophisticated packages of life hacks.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Where a life hack is like playing a single note on a piano, a ritual is like a symphony.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So let me give you an example that kind of picks up on what you're saying.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So one of the things that cuts across everybody's lives, unfortunately, is that we have to, we will grieve at some point.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We will lose somebody and we will have the pain.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so I was interested in looking at mourning rituals, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And what is one thing that almost all religions do when somebody passes?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You eulogize this person and it seems normal.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But when you think about it, it's kind of strange because if I just lost a job that I loved or if my wife just decided she was going to leave me.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I wouldn't want to think about daily how wonderful this person was or this job was because it would increase the pain.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But with...
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
someone passing, it does the opposite.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So George Bonanno, who's one of the nation's leading bereavement researchers at Columbia, he says one of the biggest predictors of who can move through grief successfully, and by that I mean it doesn't get too intense or it doesn't go on too long that it becomes paralyzing, is who can consolidate positive memories of the deceased person.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The better you are able at doing that,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
the more you'll move through grief successfully.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And then you're talking about superstitions.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You know, if you look at the Jewish morning ritual of Shiva, and I won't say this is a superstition, but there are elements to it that some people think are strange.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Like when someone passes, you cover your mirror.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Why would you cover your mirror?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Well, there's lots of research in psychology that shows when you look into a mirror, whatever emotion you were feeling becomes intensified.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So if you're happy and you look into a mirror, you'll feel more happy.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
If you're sad, you'll feel more sad.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Those are solid data?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Those are solid data from like the 1970s or 80s.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Interesting.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so they would give people emotional inductions.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They'd have a group who would look into the mirrors and groups who didn't.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They would then measure their emotions after.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Always goes up.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Selfies.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so by simply covering mirrors at a time when you are feeling intense sadness and grief, it reduces that.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They also, enduring shiver, you're supposed to reduce self-focus.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So you're not supposed to shave.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You're not supposed to wear your best clothes.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There's work coming out showing that reductions in self-focus and focusing on you and your needs actually reduces grief.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's also the case that
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Every day during the seven days of Shiva, your community has to come to your house.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And prayers are said in what's called a minyan, which is a minimum of 10 people.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So people come and they will say prayers together.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And while they're saying prayers, they're kind of swaying in unison, saying the same words in unison.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
That's something in psychology we call motor synchrony.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
What is motor synchrony?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's simply moving your body in synchrony with someone else.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So in my lab, we've shown that if we bring people in and we have them engage in motor synchrony, so let's say you and I, Andrew, don't know each other, we sit down, you put on earphones, I put on earphones or headphones, and in front of us is a little sensor.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's really not a sensor, but it looks like a little pad.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And we play you tones, and you're supposed to tap that sensor every time you hear the tone.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And in some conditions, we have these people who have never met.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Here, it's simultaneous tone, so they're tapping in unison.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
In other cases, they're completely random, and so they're not synchronized at all.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Through a whole set of shenanigans that I won't go into, what then happens is one of the persons is put in a situation where they need help to complete a task, or they're going to be stuck there for a long time and not get credit for this study.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
If we had tapped in unison, people report feeling more connection to this person.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They report feeling more compassion for their plight.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And by 30% more, they're willing to go help that person, spend their time taking on some of that person's burden.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Now, if you ask them, why do they do this?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They'll say, you know, I...
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I feel like I must know this person.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Like maybe he was in my class last semester or maybe it was a party I was at.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But that action of synchrony, right, is a cue to the mind that these two are joined.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We kind of see this if you see flocks of birds or you see schools of fish, you kind of see a greater whole even out of individuals because they're moving together.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so it's an ancient marker to the mind that we are joined.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
People don't have insight to that, but yet they feel that connection and they can't explain it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So they create a story for it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
What happens at Shiva when you say these prayers?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You're surrounded by at least 10 people who are doing them in synchrony with you.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
What is that going to do?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's going to increase the empathy and the compassion you feel.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It also happens just in religious community in general.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Like I talked earlier about why are the effects for religious community better?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
What are you normally doing?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You're singing together, you're praying together, you're sitting and kneeling together.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
That's a subtle signal to the mind that you are more connected and it will increase your empathy for each other.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I did, yeah.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So, you know, it's funny.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Friends of mine who are Jewish will always say, yeah, we do death well.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I think it's true.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
As I look at it, the practice of Shiva to me has all the right pieces.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And for me,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So like eulogizing happens in all faiths.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And what I like to say is there are convergences in these, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
If you're a cultural anthropologist, you're seeing convergent evolution in terms of the cultural things that we can do to put our bodies in the right way.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Or if you're a person of faith, you can say, well, you know, God cares about God's creations.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so we're all embodied in the same way.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so the same practices are going to matter.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But some groups may have figured things out more than another.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I think, I mean, eulogizing is the big one.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
At Irish wakes, at some Irish wakes, they do cover mirrors.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They have a completely different theological story for why they do it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Yeah, what do they say?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I think it's something about keeping evil spirits away.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I don't know.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But in Hindu ceremonies, they do it as well, in certain Hindu ceremonies.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so I think it is always about...
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
coming together.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
In Chinese grieving rituals, there is this focus on ancestor worship.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so when someone dies, yes,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They go to a different domain like heaven.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But there what they do is they keep the relationship going.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So there's something called, they call it, I don't know what the word in Chinese is, but it's called ghost money.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so what you can do if you want to honor an ancestor and be in connection with them is you can go to the store and it's this paper money that looks like real money, but it's not real money.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's a paper currency.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And you burn that.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And as the smoke rises, it goes to them where they are, and they can use it to buy stuff.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You can buy cell phones that are kind of origami-shaped as paper, burn that in, and it goes to them.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And that might sound strange, but what it really does, it's a way of keeping that relationship there, of not totally losing that person, of having that positive memory.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
still feeling like you have them in your life.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Because one of the biggest difficulties of humans, you know, we're social creatures.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
When we experience loneliness, when we lose someone, it is painful psychologically.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's also bad for us physiologically if it goes on.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Well, anything that we can do to feel like that relationship is still maintained, as opposed to just loss, helps us avoid the stress and loneliness that comes with it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so that's another kind of grieving ritual I've seen.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
No, there are parts of prayer that are just deep listening and sitting in silence.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There have been studies, as I've said, that look at prayer in general for formalized prayer.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I mean, there is a sense that... So two questions.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Let me deal with the first one first, which is, is there a difference between God and religion?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So because the U.S.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
is a Christian country, I think most of us, when we think of religion, tend to think of it in terms of Christianity, where belief, where the creed is really important.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
In most of the world...
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Religion is more about what you do than what you believe, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's what are the rituals?
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
How do they infuse your daily life?
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And that's why, you know, as I said, there are many Jews who are atheists.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There are many Hindus I know who are atheists, yet they engage in the practices and they get the benefits from them.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So I think those two are separable.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There are also people who believe in God yet don't go to any services and don't practice at all.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They say, oh, yeah, I believe in God, but I don't engage in this.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And when you look at the health benefits for those people, they're not there.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You have to be actively engaged in the practices.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So I think those two can be separated.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
In terms of...
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So remember I was telling you about the motor synchrony stuff.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There is, and how it makes you feel more compassion toward other people.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There is work that shows that when you do motor synchrony on its own versus motor synchrony in prayer.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so these are studies where people were just listening to music and dancing together or moving together versus where they were chanting together or
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
chants that are meaningful to them and their faith and that set forth principles of the faith.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
What you find is an increase, a greater magnitude of the effect of the motor synchrony when those
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
meaningful parts of prayer are included.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Why is that?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
As I said before, it's a mind-body practice.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So the moving in time, the motor synchrony, is putting your body in a state where it's more receptive to messages about community or coming together, as opposed to feeling tense, where your body is saying, no, no, no, there's a threat here, but your mind is saying, no, Dave, be good and reach out to these people.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so in that sense...
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
combining the creedal elements, the belief elements with the practice leads to a greater effect than the practice on its own.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You see the same thing with meditation, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Meditation, we're all sitting at home with our apps, right, by ourselves.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Meditation is supposed to be done.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Traditionally, it was done in a sangha, in a community.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And as you said before, why is that important?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Because as we're breathing together, our respirations are entraining upon one another.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And it's creating that sense of synchrony to build community.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So I think adding...
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
the message elements of what religions value to the mind-body practice puts you in a situation where you get a synergism.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And this is what worries me when we try to extract certain elements.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So psychedelics is one great example.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Psychedelics traditionally, whether it was ayahuasca or psilocybin, were taken in the context of a ceremony where you had a shaman
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
who through chanting or drum beats or whatever it might be, created a situation where the body was very relaxed and felt safe.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And then at that point you would take the psychedelic.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And we had Michael Pollan on my show.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And then when he said, he told me, he said, Dave, the one thing that's really important when you take psilocybin is you have to feel supremely safe.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Because when that moment of self dissolution comes or ego death comes, it can be beautiful or it can be terrifying.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And if you don't feel safe,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
it can go the wrong way.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And you know, the data show about 25% of trips are bad, about 8% are so bad that they necessitate some type of mental health intervention.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so you have the shaman with you.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You have the experience of ego death.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You see whatever you're going to see.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And that person helps you reintegrate that and make sense of it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So, you know, at Hopkins where they're doing great work, they don't have a
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
religious shaman, but they have a guide, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The guide is with you.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You form a relationship with this person during your trip.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The person is there with you.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They'll put their hand on your hand.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They're there to help make sense and keep you feeling safe.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They're doing the same role as a shaman.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But if you're in Brooklyn, you know, dropping psilocybin with your local Brooklyn hipsters without the container around to keep you safe,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There's a good chance you may have a bad outcome.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so for me, you know, long answered your question about prayer.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I think we have these containers of the rituals and the ideals of the religions that work together synergistically.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And when you extract those, the question is, will they work as well?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Or if not, is there actually even in some cases a danger?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
No, that's true.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I think you may know this better than me being a neuroscientist.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I think some of the most recent work on psychedelics suggests
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
to use a poor metaphor, what it's basically doing is loosening the mind, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It reopens up periods of critical learning.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so things that have become kind of rigid and reified in your brain, suddenly there's flexibility again.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
the messages that you're getting at that time can have much more influence and situational influences than they would at any other time.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And if you don't have that safe container for the religion, yeah, it can take you in really problematic ways.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But what I find interesting about it, you know, is people often talk about that moment of when it's good, of ego death as kind of being this transcendent experience where you feel this sense of connection to everything and great love.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And if you look at mystical traditions where they're all designed to kind of get you to this point, there are what are traditionally called right-handed roots and left-handed roots.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Right-handed roots are the ones that are kind of deeply embedded in religions that we normally don't see as much because they're for people who are kind of
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
living a contemplative lifestyle.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So Christian traditions have the goodest tradition we're more familiar with, etc.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so you can, by virtue of engaging in long practices of meditation, building your skill over many years, get your mind to that point where you can have this sense of ego death.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Left-handed traditions, they're the quick and easy way, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So rather than learn the practice, you can take the drug and get there as well.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so what's interesting to me is that they're both roots and religions themselves, even outside of the chemicals, have a way for those who want to follow it to gain this transcendent experience.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But they're always a little more worried about the left-hand routes for the reasons you're saying because they don't have the practice and the guidance long-term and they can go badly for people and lead you to problematics.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I can see people interpreting as demonic influences.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There's a lot there.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So first, the question of why do I think religions think about it as outside of us?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So one of the things I teach is moral psychology.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Why do people do good or bad?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And what the data has shown us over the past few decades is that people's moral behavior is a lot more variable than anyone would ever predict.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And because of that, because most people like to think of ourselves as good people, when we do something wrong that's objectifiably wrong, we feel like something came over us, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so it's easy to say there is an evil force outside that was guiding me.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
What we're learning now is that a lot of moral processing within the brain happens kind of below your conscious awareness.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I'll give you an example of that in a minute.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So it feels like it's coming over us.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So therefore, maybe it's some other force.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But the point you raise is a good one, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We did not evolve to be saints.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We did not evolve to be sinners.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We evolved to be adaptive, right?
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
To basically be able to reproduce and pass on our genetic material.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Because we're a social species—
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We need to cooperate with each other.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And therefore, most of the time, when people can see what we're doing, we're gonna try and be good because we don't want a reputation for being a bad person.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
No one's gonna cooperate with us.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But if you're in a situation where you can have your cake and eat it too,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
That's adaptive.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You're going to take it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so as an example, we do studies on cheating in my lab.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And we have the situation where people come to the lab and we say, okay, look, there's two tasks that need to be done.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
One is short and fun, takes about 10 minutes.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
One is long and onerous, takes about 45.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You are in the role of decider.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You can pick which one of these you want to do.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Most people think the fairest way to do it is to flip a coin because whichever one you don't do, the person behind you is going to get stuck doing.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And everybody says, yeah, that makes sense.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so we give them a little device that's a computerized coin flipper so they can hit the button and it comes up heads or tails.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The reason we do that is so we can control which side comes up.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Heads, you get the fun task.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Tails, you get the bad task.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
100% of people, when you ask them and you say, if you lied about this, because you're going to be in the room by yourself, if you say you got heads when you didn't, is that morally wrong?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Only time in my life I get unanimous data.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
100% of people say, yeah, that's morally wrong.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Well, yeah, wait.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so then we put them in the room and we say, you know, they know they can decide how they want.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They know most people say you should use the coin.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They say you should use the coin.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Guess what percentage of them?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So we know they, why?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Because they come out and they basically say, oh, I got the easy task and we let them go do that.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We know the coin came up tails because we rigged it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
What percent of people do you think lie to us?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I don't know.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Depending on the study, it's usually like 85%.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
85%.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Yeah.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Now, there are situations where we tell them you can't decide.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You must do what the coin tells you.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And there, still about a third of people cheat.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Oh, my goodness.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Seriously?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Yeah.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And we've done it with money.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You can get more money on the coin flip, higher or lower.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But what's interesting is when you ask people later, why did they cheat?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They will create a story because no one likes to think of themselves as bad.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So they'll say things like, well, yeah, normally I wouldn't do that.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But, you know, I had an appointment later and I just wanted to make sure I wasn't late and I thought that that longer task might be a problem.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Or my favorite one was because the bad task was like logic problems they had to solve, one person said.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
well, you know, the guy who was sitting next to me in the waiting room, and I know would get the one that I didn't choose, he was an engineer.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So I thought he would like the logic problems that took a lot longer to do, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so people are creating these stories.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so the point of this is that
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
If it was public, no one would ever cheat.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Like, you know, when I go on TV, people will say, can we do one of your cheating experiments?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I'm like, no, no one's going to cheat when they're like, you know, have the TV cameras on them.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Right.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But when you can get away with it, your brain changes the computations of what's valuable.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You will cheat because it's adaptive to not exert extra energy.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You don't have to if there's no reputational cost.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so people do.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Where does religion fit in this?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Well, there's wonderful work.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
This is by Demetrius Psycholatus, who's a professor at UConn, where he has people in different cultures do a similar thing.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And he has them play a game where they can cheat somebody else out of money.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And they either do it in a restaurant kitchen or in a temple.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The rate of cheating drops dramatically if you're doing it in the temple.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Why?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Because suddenly you're reminded, oh my goodness,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
God cares about this, and there's going to be a price for me to pay if I do this.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so that's top down.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But it also works from the bottom up.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We know that the brain's computations of what we value is often done below our conscious awareness.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It is influenced by lots of things, including feeling states.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So one thing we study in my lab is gratitude.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
bring people into the lab.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We have all different ways of making them feel grateful, but the easiest way is count your blessings.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Take five minutes and count your blessings.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We then give them tasks where they can cheat in this way.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Those who have counted their blessings, cheating is almost non-existent.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
85% to zero.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Well, in that study, they were told they had to do what the coin said.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So what the coin flipper said, so the average cheating rate was like 25 or 30%.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It went down to 2%.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Still a market change.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Still a market change.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I'm sure in the other one it would drop.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
If we did it the other way, it would drop dramatically too.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We find that when we give people the opportunity to help someone else who is asking for help, a stranger they don't know, if they feel grateful, they're much more likely to do it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And we can do it in such a way that we can titrate the level of gratitude they're feeling to the amount of help they're giving.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so what's happening here is...
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Religions cultivate, they curate our emotional lives.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
What do people do when they pray?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
A lot of prayer, the most common prayer is a prayer of gratitude.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
If you are experiencing gratitude more frequently in your day,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
it puts you in a position where you are being nudged from the bottom up to be more willing to be honest, patient, generous, and helpful to other people.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so what's going on?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The gratitude that you're feeling is putting your body in a state where the brain wants to be more pro-social.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The same time you're praying, you're getting the message, hey, you should be more pro-social.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so again, it's a synergistic effect to push us in that way.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I mean, so the data show that people who engage with religion report much less loneliness.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And it's probably both, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It is usually they're engaged in a religious community that causes deeper social bonds.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But I think you're right.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It does—believing you have a relationship with God—
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
allows you to feel like someone is always there.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And, you know, there, there's an important difference, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Being alone is not the same as being lonely, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You can be surrounded by a lot of people, but not feel a connection to them.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Um, with God, from what we can tell, there is this sense of having a relationship with someone who has your back, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
A friend that in essence you can count on.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Um,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's interesting, in a lot of evangelical traditions, there's a lot of emphasis placed on having conversations with God.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So I'm not sure how you were raised, but for me being Catholic, it was more like you would pray and you know God was there.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But in a lot of these evangelical traditions,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
there are trainings that people go to to be able to listen for God.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I'm not as familiar with the steps of those, but there really is this sense to kind of train yourself to be able to hear God or sense God by you.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And it's not for me to say whether this is true or not.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I don't know.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Remember, I'm a scientist.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so when I talk about these things, I'm not trying to reduce them anyway.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I'm saying, look,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We're embodied creatures.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We have a brain.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
If I see God or hear God, my occipital cortex is going to light up.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Doesn't mean it's reducible to the neurons in there.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Just means that's what it is.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so it's not for me to say whether they're actually hearing God or not.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But this emphasis on forming a relationship with God that is kind of two ways is a big part of the faith.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And those people report feeling a lot less loneliness.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I think it's a way of solving the problem that we're sensing right now in this society, which is growing loneliness, a growing sense that no one values you, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
No one has your back.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I was
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Talking to Robert Waldinger, who was the head of the Harvard study on adult development, and I'm sure you've heard him say one of the biggest predictors for health is good personal relationships, but it's also having what he calls that 3 a.m.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
friend.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's that friend that you know you can count on.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
That's not going to be like, Andrew, I can't help you move today.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Sorry, I got something better to do.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And with God, even though God's not going to basically show up and help you move, he's
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
If you believe and have faith in God and you feel you can connect and converse with God, God's that 3 a.m.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
friend.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
He's there when you need it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so I can clearly see that helping people.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But in terms of the data, we don't know.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We know religious people are less lonely.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We don't know how much of it is the sense of God or how much of it comes from community.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's probably a combo.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Yeah, but it is related.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I mean this is kind of the fine-tuning argument again as opposed to kind of physical constants we're talking about, the evolution of the eye or of the body.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Let me say –
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
To me, the scientific method was the greatest, one of the greatest discoveries ever.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I'm grateful for being a scientist.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I do not believe in intelligent design.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But we're in one of those situations again where people can interpret it different ways.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You know, there is every reason to believe the eye could have evolved in the way it did.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And there were probably lots of different mutations that didn't benefit things.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And then by probability, those all went away.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And the ones that did kind of went forward on and on.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I think for some people, what it really is, is this sense of awe, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
When you see something that is so spectacularly complex like the eye, you're kind of awed by it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
How did it evolve in just this way?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so that emotion itself, the experience of awe itself,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
actually makes people more open to supernatural experiences.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So this is wonderful work done by a student of mine, now a professor at St.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Olaf, Carlo Valdisolo.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And what he showed is that when you allow people to feel awe by showing them natural beauty, like pictures of the Grand Canyon or wonderful sunsets or however you go when you induce it architecturally, people suddenly give more probability
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
to the idea that there is something beyond them.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Right.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so here again, you're seeing the combo.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You're seeing, well, this how could this ever formed?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I'm in awe of it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Oh, I'm feeling that emotion that makes me more open to the idea that there is, in fact, something beyond.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And it seems to feel right.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And let's face it, most people, if you're not trained scientifically, you don't really understand how to think probably logically.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I'm not saying that's a problem with people.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's just part of our business.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Right.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We have to learn how to think that way.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so it just seems like so completely impossible that this one out of a trillion thing could happen.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But if you think about how many other steps were taken, how many other different ways the lines could have gone in the genetics, it probably did.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And they probably didn't work.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so they're left behind.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's kind of like the argument –
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I never wore a seatbelt and I'm alive.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Well, you are, but a lot of other people who didn't aren't, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so you can't prove it that way.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So for me, I think, again, it brings me back to this issue of why I just don't think it's a relevant scientific question, because you can't prove it one way or the other.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so it's always going to come down to faith.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so even people who make intelligent design arguments, ultimately I find them not persuasive because, as you said, we can work our way to it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And then how do you prove there's two routes to get there?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
How do you prove which one it was?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's an article of faith.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Well, this is the other problem, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
People say, well, I know what God is and what God did.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
If there is a God and the way God created the universe and did things, none of us have any conception of that.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's probably beyond our brain's ability to understand what that is.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so for me, like you, I don't see any tension.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The tension comes when you become very tied to actual texts, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And positions of people interpreting what they think God did or what they think God said.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And that's where you run into problems.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
No, and that's in some ways what awe is.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You're hitting on it exactly right.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's a sense of not being able to fully comprehend, feeling small in the presence of it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But I think the point that you're making that I want to make sure isn't lost is when you can understand it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
still doesn't mean it's not miraculous.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Or that God, if you're a person of faith, didn't set that process in motion.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And this is, again, is what I think is really important.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's like, when we learn to explain something, we get an insight into the power of creation.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
By creation, I mean following evolution, not God created the world in six days creation.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But as a lot of scientists who are people of faith will say,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
That to me is awesome.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I appreciate the awe of creation that it happened this way.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It doesn't negate my belief in God because I can explain it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
God put us here with a brain to learn and to understand how God's creation works.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so I think your point about overwhelm is right, but I want to make sure people realize that it doesn't mean that when you can explain it,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's reducible.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So what we know, right, is that if you look at anxiety around death, it's kind of an upside down you, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So people who really believe in an afterlife, they have the least anxiety about death because they feel like I'm going someplace good.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
People who firmly reject any form of afterlife.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They're a little more anxious than the believers, but they're less anxious than one other group, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Because they're like, oh, I'm going to end up in the ground, okay, don't like it, fine.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The group that is the most anxious about death are the people who don't know.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Because they're like, holy, is there an afterlife?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And if there is, did I do what I need to get into that afterlife?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so those folks are the ones because they're struggling with the belief.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Like certainty, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We know the brain likes certainty one way or the other.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And certainty that things are going to be good is better than certainty that there's just an end and there's no suffering.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's just an end.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There's no hell you're going to.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But the people who don't know, they're the ones who are the most anxious.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so I think for – I think the reason a lot of religions talk about this – well, there are multiple reasons.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
One is because it's just inherently strange to think that you're a conscious being and one day that consciousness is going to end.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So that's scary.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But it often gets tied into a way to shape people's behavior, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Religions use that fear as a way to guide people, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You better –
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
a good person or your karma is going to be bad and your next life is going to be in a worse position or you're going to go to hell and have pain for some period of time or perhaps everlasting and so it takes on this moral tone and that fear is very motivating right we know from the psychological literature if you want to get somebody to do something fear is a great way to motivate them the problem with that is is if you're constantly afraid of it all the time
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Your body is in the state of anxiety, and that's not healthy for you.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so I think a lot of faiths try to kind of reinterpret fear of death in a different way.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Death isn't always bad.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So one thing you'll find in a lot of faiths is they ask you to contemplate your death.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So in Buddhism, there are meditations that are focused on thinking about yourself dying.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There's even these intense forms of meditation.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I forget the actual...
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
word in the original language but they're basically called corpse meditations where people the monks will meditate in front of a decaying corpse over days as a way to study that you can actually see and experience what will happen to you
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
In Christianity, right, there's this sense of contemplate your death on Ash Wednesday, which is the start of the season before Easter.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
In many traditions, the priest will put ashes on your head, or the minister will put ashes on your head and say, from dust you came, to dust you will go.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's a reminder that you're gonna die.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
In Judaism, it's interesting, even on their New Year's, which is Rosh Hashanah, that's a celebratory day, there's this prayer they say in temple called the Unatan Tokef.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And part of that is, who's not going to be here next year?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Look around.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Some will die by flood, some by famine, some by illness, some by fire.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And again, it's a reminder that life is ephemeral.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so the trick with this is,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
if you can think about your death and not in a morbid way, not in a way that you dwell on it, it's actually quite useful.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So the one thing we know in psychological science is that as people age, their values change, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
When you're young, you want the new iPhone, you wanna go on a great vacation, you wanna get ahead, all of these kind of bucket list things for that you think will make you happy.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
As you begin to age and you can see the end on the horizon, people's values change.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Suddenly they value time with loved ones, service to others, kind of things that build a legacy, right?
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Interestingly, if you look at the literature, those are the things that really bring happiness at any age.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Those are the things that experiences of people you love, service to others, make you happy.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so as we age, we come to realize that.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Work by the psychologist Laura Karstensen at Stanford shows that if you have people contemplate their death when they're young, temporarily it reorients their values toward the things that truly bring hope.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Suddenly they'll start caring about that stuff.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so the idea of contemplating death that is a part of almost every religious tradition, if you do it for a short period of time and not in a morbid way but daily, actually points you toward the things in life that make you more happy.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so...
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
If you then become a person of faith, you also believe that the end is going to be good for you as well.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so you don't have that anxiety.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so I think religion and death is a complicated thing.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There is fear of death, but there's also a way to use the idea that life is ephemeral to help us find happiness sooner than we typically do.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I have a friend who's a rabbi and not being Jewish, one day I said to her, so, you know,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
why do you still pray in Hebrew?
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You know, in Catholicism, we don't pray in Latin anymore.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Like we pray in English.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Yeah, good point.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Right.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And what she said was, I mean, part of it is to keep the culture.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But part of it is too, she says, it is sometimes an amazing experience when I stop to think that the words I am saying now have been said by Jews for thousands of years going back.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And those same words will be said, hopefully, thousands of years going forward.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And what it does is it situates me in this sequence of time.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I know that the challenges that I'm facing have been faced by people before and will be faced by people afterward.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And in that experience, I feel part of something greater.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I think, you know, one thing we're seeing now, you keep hearing on the news how people are leaving traditional faith, and they are.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But there's a subset of people who are actually going back to more orthodox faiths, traditional Catholicism, orthodox Judaism.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And what they'll often say is there's an appreciation in these forms where it's still the Latin mass or other types of things for things that have felt true and universal through time.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And when I worship that way, I feel that connection to humanity and this sense that we're all in this together.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And they find and feel a sense of deeper purpose.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Like things just aren't relative and changing here and there depending upon people's norms and mores at the moment.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so there's no work that I can think of that points to this, but I think the phenomenon you're describing is one that is very...
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
felt by a lot of people, especially if they engage in practices that have a longer tradition going back.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
anymore it just seems like it's like right there i mean things that we you know 30 years ago if someone told you the way quantum mechanics work you would have thought they were insane and so um i think we have to have some intellectual humility that there are forces in this world as you're saying that we don't have access to yet in terms of our conscious awareness but nonetheless they can act on us your point though i think about um
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The 12-step program is an interesting one because they do work for a lot of people.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And what the data show about kind of giving over some control, believing in a higher power, is it actually is useful for avoiding addiction.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So people who are engaged with religious practice have some protection against addiction.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The rates are lower.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But when you...
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
surrender to a higher power.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
A lot of people resist this and they think the idea is problematic because they interpret it as meaning you're like an automaton.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You're just going to give over everything to God and not be a thoughtful person.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
That's not what it means for the people who actually do this, right?
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
For the people who surrender to God, what it means is I'm going to try to
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
and do the best I can, make the best decision I can, live the best way I can.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But I realize that I can't control everything, including my own behavior all the time.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So I'm going to do the best I can, and then I'm just going to give it over and hope that God, trust that God will help me.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And that does two things.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
One is, again, it provides the sense that you have a friend.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There's someone else who cares about you.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You're kind of like a junior partner with this person working toward the goal.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And that – I'm not exactly sure why.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I don't know if any of us know exactly why it works.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But that reduces stress and anxiety a lot.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Because, you know, we like to think in this world that we're optimizers, right?
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I'm always like I want to buy this car.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Well, let me research everything about this car so I can make sure I get the exact right car.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Or if I'm trying to make a decision about my health.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I'm going to research everything I can.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But at a certain point, the tyranny of choice, too much information can drive us nuts.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so if you do the best you can, but then trust in something else, it reduces that stress.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I think ultimately then makes it easier for you to achieve that goal down the line, because you also feel like someone else is counting on you.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I mean-
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I don't go to the gym.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I should go to the gym.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You know, the one time in my life when I went to the gym, when I had a workout partner who I know if I didn't go, I was going to be like, Dave, you have to come.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I'm counting on you.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so, you know, there's that added element too.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so I think the idea of surrender doesn't mean you're not thinking intelligently.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It doesn't mean you're giving over control of your life.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It means you're accepting a partnership with someone else who's going to try and help you.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And again, not for me to say if that's true or not, but I think that's how it works for people.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's a good question.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
In fact, for one episode of my show, we were interested in this because I didn't know the statistics.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so we invited on a scholar who studies this.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And she kind of shocked me because she said that every year there's between 100 and 200 new religions that form.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Now, the definition there is a little loose, right?
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Some of those religions we would call cults.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Some of those religions are, you know, there's a person in Canada who put a Kleenex box on her head and says she's, you know, getting messages from some alien race.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Did that happen?
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Something like that happened.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I may not have the details exactly right, but yes.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But most of them, the reason you don't hear about them is because they're flashes in the pan.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
For religion to stick, there's two ways.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
One is somebody in power.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You can think about in the old days, the emperor said, this is my faith.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You all will now be this faith.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But in the modern world, that's less.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It tends to be the case when they speak to some need.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And that is their practices and their ideology address someone in a new way.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The people who are leaving faith, they're not becoming atheists.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They're looking for new ways to be spiritual because let's face it.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Most religious institutions, they're human-based institutions.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They have moral failures, right?
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And we know that there has been abuse and discrimination and misogyny and all these things attached to faiths.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And hopefully we can talk about that because I don't want people to think that I'm saying religion is always good, although on average I think it is.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It has to speak to you.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And those are few and far between.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Right now, what astounded me is where people are having profound spiritual experiences is a Burning Man.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So most people think of Burning Man as this kind of debaucherous party in the desert, which for some people it is.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It is.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But this is work by the neuroscientist Molly Crockett at Princeton.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
She went to Burning Man.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
She was a burner herself.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's coming up soon.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Are you going?
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Yeah, no.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
God, no.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I hate the heat.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It doesn't surprise me.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Are you going to go?
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
What she showed is that there's a segment of people there.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
that report having profound spiritual experiences.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Now, if you think of Burning Man, right, it's one of these what we would call a liminal space, right?
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It is everything that's normal in life doesn't happen there.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
People go to take different names.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They wear different clothes.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You are exposed to an environment that is relatively harsh in the desert.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And people who have gone tell me the only way that you can really survive is you have to depend on other people.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And they have this thing there called the
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The culture of giving or gifting, I forget the actual name, but there's no money at Burning Man.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Everything is basically through the kindness of others in exchange.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so people are in this environment where their normal life, their normal clothes, their normal identity is stripped away.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They're experiencing the harshness of the elements of the heat on the playa.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And they experience that they can exist there because of the kindness of others.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And people who interpret it this way, Molly finds, report not only feeling this profound kind of self-transcendent experience, but when they come back, it stays.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And they actually tend to be more pro-social.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so some religions have realized this now.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So I have a friend of mine named Alex Leach, who's an Episcopal minister, runs a camp.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Because at Burning Man, there are all these camps.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And his camp is called Religious AF.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I don't know if I can say that word on there.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Oh, yeah.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Oh, yeah.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Far worse has been that.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Right, right, right.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Religious as fuck.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And what they are there is he's there.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And he told me the reason he found this is because when he first started going, he said, I never felt God as palpably, the presence of God as palpably as I could feel it there.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
because they were just people ministering to each other and welcoming each other and being kind to each other in a way without expectation.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so he runs this camp, and there are a lot of people who used to be Christian
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
who are experiencing this and coming to the camp and refinding their faith.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Because in that moment, they're having those transcendent experiences that you normally don't get when you're just sitting in church sometimes.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There's another group, I forget the... I think it's called Milk and Honey, I don't remember.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But they have a thousand-person Shabbat for Jews there.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And it's this...
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
incredible experience people report and so i think for a lot of people they're looking for those spiritual experiences and things like burning man are a way to do it and then they have what do they call them little burns or remote burns right throughout the year they'll come together at different times and do this and so i think what you're seeing is a desire of people
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
to kind of feel that God-shaped hole in their heart, to feel that.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And for a lot of them, kind of the staid religious rituals that we're kind of getting now aren't doing that.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so I could see something evolving out of that, but who knows where we're going.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I think so.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But, I mean, let me talk about the issue of cult versus religion.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I think you're absolutely right first.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Cults primarily have the idea of this charismatic leader, which is why you often kind of hear this notion it's a cult of personality.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's usually somebody who thinks they're special.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You have to worship that leader.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And when somebody thinks they're that special –
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
things often go wrong with where they're going to lead people.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Regular religions though can have the same problems.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I mean, the thing I'd like to say is
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
When you look at religious practices, a way to think about them is as spiritual technologies, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They're technologies, mind-body practices that can move hearts and minds.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They can move them for good.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They can move them for ill, right?
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It depends upon the motives of the people who are using them.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So people always say, Dave, religions are the source of all war.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Most wars aren't fought about religion.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There are some that are like, hey, I disagree with your interpretation of the scripture.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Most of them are about land and resources, but religion gets pulled in.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And what we know is that when you are feeling threatened, so the Bible, as you said, is a book of many voices.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There are beautiful passages in there about mercy and kindness.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There are other passages in there about dashing the heads of your enemies' babies against rocks, right, to punish them.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so what we know is that when people feel more threatened
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Their conception of God, or this work by the psychologist Kirk Gray and Joshua Jackson, their conceptions of God become more aggressive and punitive.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They believe that God values vengeance more.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And if you ask them to recall verses from the Bible, they're going to recall the ones that are about smashing the baby's heads as opposed to being kind and merciful.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so this is why you can see things like Christian nationalism form.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And you can see if you go to some of these events, you'll see pictures of Jesus holding an AK-47, right?
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Because our mind...
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
to be adaptive as if we're not evolved to be saints or sinners.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
When we feel we're threatened, we want to fight against that.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
We will use religion to justify it.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so the point that I want to make sure all your listeners know is I'm not saying religion is good.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's a technology that can be used for evil.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I mean, even Richard Dawkins will say the same thing about science, right?
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You want to find a way to cure people of maladies?
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Science is your friend.
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Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You want to find the best way to annihilate a bunch of people most efficiently?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Science is your friend.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so for me, the reason I spend this time talking about religions, I know it can be used for bad, but if you look at the data on average in people's lives,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Yes, certain institutions have caused people to be abused, discriminated against, et cetera, and we should combat those.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But on average, whether it's a gift from God or a cultural adaptation, it helps us live better.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
For the most part, I agree with you.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
That is, there's a lot of convergence in the practices of the faith because in some ways we're all the same body and brain and it helps us solve those.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And...
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They're all pretty large and have their followings and they're attached to the culture you're raised in.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But I think that times of flux, times of change, and I kind of sense we're getting in one of these now.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I don't mean like end times, but I mean things with technology, things with norms, the way that we have been living, our economic practices are changing really rapidly right now.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And people are becoming at the same time more disillusioned with some of the traditional faith.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so for me right now, this seems like a period where there could be a reorientation.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And the ones that are going to happen, that are going to come, are the ones that speak to people.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You mentioned AI.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There have been churches, they haven't stuck yet, but I could see this happening, where they're built around an AI.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The idea is AI will become so knowledgeable that it will almost basically be
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
and omniscient superintelligence.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Omniscient because it can know everything about you through what you do online, and superintelligence because it can solve problems better than humans can.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so there are people who are thinking about churches around AI.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Will it stick or not?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I don't know.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But to the extent that a new faith can let people feel that presence of God, can solve some of their problems by helping them
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
feel connected to each other, reduce anxiety, reduce stress.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It wouldn't surprise me if something else comes now in this kind of moment of flux we're in.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
No, but you're seeing it similar in Silicon Valley right now.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Like I think Peter Thiel is embracing Christianity.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Really?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Yeah, I'm pretty sure.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Oh, okay.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Even Elon Musk, who's, I don't think he says he believes in God, but he says Christianity is a force for good in the world.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so I think you're seeing this among a lot of tech sophisticates.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I don't have the good answer to why.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But it is – your point is well taken.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
That is intelligence –
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
How religious you are does not correlate with intelligence, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There are really brilliant people who embrace the idea that there is a God and there is a creator, and there are some that aren't.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I think it's because those people realize, like I was saying before,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
If you're a person who is really rational and is really intelligent, when you look at the data, there's nothing to refute it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so, again, no one sees evidence of God in the world scientifically, but we also realize we can't rule it out.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And when they have whatever their own inner life is, if they feel they have that connection, why reject it?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so I think it's important to realize that it's not a marker of poor intelligence.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
He had the crazy eyes.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Yeah.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I mean, if you're not familiar with a religion, same as if you're not familiar with a product, what's going to drive you is the stereotype of the brand.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I think the more you look, you realize that those are problematic for good or for ill.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So, you know, you raised the point about the Dalai Lama and my original reaction when I first saw it was exactly the same as yours.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But, you know, even Buddhism, a religion that is built on the idea of loving kindness and ending suffering.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You know, in Sri Lanka right now is being used to justify kind of a genocide against certain groups and the monks themselves are taking up arms.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Right.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And people are shocked when they hear that because any religion can do that.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So the danger in religion is always that.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
By increasing community for those who are part of your religion, you can be increasing the distance against those who aren't part of your religion.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Which is why, at heart, the true message of religion is not to make it us versus them.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's to increase the moral circle of concern such that it includes everybody.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You know, the Bible talks about you should honor your father and your mother and be good to your family.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But more than that, if you're counting the number of times it says who to be good to, it says be good to the stranger.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Be good to the stranger in your land.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so it's expanding that moral circle.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But my point is that people now say, oh, look at the Christian nationalists.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I would never want to be any part of that.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
If you're a person on the left, it's all people who are conservative and looking to control people's lives.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so the branding is a big problem.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
but it, I think, obscures the complexities that are going on in different phases.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But you're right, that's gonna be the thing that's gonna draw you or repulse you, even if it's not accurate.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I don't know either, because you could think about it as,
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
They're making themselves more accessible to the public and to the masses.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But again, there was something also sometimes when they held themselves as separate, as more holy, more knowledgeable, more someone not like me who knows more than I do who I can trust.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So it's a good point.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I'm not sure which way it's going to go.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Yeah, I mean, there still are ongoing debates.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And what will happen now is you'll have people who are coming up for higher positions within the church and look back and show where they, even though they didn't do anything, they were covering things up.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So the echoes of that go on.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But, you know, the point you raise is a good one.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I think it's going to hit certain religions more than others.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So there are certain religions where it's really important to have an intermediary, like in Catholicism, right, for you to get certain sacraments.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
The priest is the mediator, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Who does the priest?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Does this transubstantiation allows the bread and wine to be turned into the body and blood of Christ that you then receive?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
In many other religions, the role of the minister or priest or reverend isn't as important, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
There's direct experience.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I can experience God directly in my prayers or through my practices.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so I think a lot will depend on
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
whether you need that mediator or not.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I think there is this push among some people to want that direct experience, to not be hindered or have the baggage of the institution upon them.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I'm one of those people who prays at times...
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
where I'm feeling the stress.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So prayer is not a practice of mine.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I always feel like when I say this, I'm like the doctor who smokes cigarettes, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's like, Dave, you tell people prayer is good.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I'm still kind of working out my belief system.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You know, the show I do, How God Works, is really as much of a journey for me as it is for everybody else.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so I...
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I believe in the data.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I believe this stuff is good.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I was raised Catholic.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I was an altar boy.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I left the church.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Where I am now, I'm trying to figure it out.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But what I try to do is embrace practices that I think matter.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So I embrace this practice of gratitude, right?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Rather than praying every day to get it, I find ways to cultivate it daily and see how it changes me.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I try to meditate.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Am I good at it?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
No.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Do I think it's beneficial to me?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Yes.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so I'm trying to figure out which spiritual community, if any, I fit in.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I like to say I'm an agnostic.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
You know, 20 years ago, I would have been an atheist.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Now I realize I'm humble enough to say I'm
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
i don't know i've seen or felt things that i can't explain does that tell me anything i don't know but i'm on this journey to to find out and i hope you know i take my listeners with me on that journey do you believe in miracles
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Hence how you define miracles.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I believe that there are things that happen that we cannot explain.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And being agnostic, I'm willing to say that those could be due to some unseen force.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I just don't know.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But I believe there are things that happen beyond our understanding and beyond our ability to predict.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
So let me take off my scientist hat for one moment and just talk to you as me and what I believe.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
If there is a God, I believe that it's a God who would care for all of God's creatures, that there wouldn't be one religion that is right.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And what I've seen in enough different faiths, the ones that have lasted a while and meet people's needs, is that they provide ways to live better lives.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so I would say, try on different ones.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
See what resonates with you.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I mean, people convert, people leave.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And I think really there are multiple routes to God if God exists.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And there are multiple ways to use this wisdom to improve your life if God doesn't exist.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And it's okay to sample.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's okay to try.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
It's okay to ask your questions.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But what I want to urge them to do is please don't just assume that there's no rational reason to think about religion.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And the best piece of advice I can give you is advice that a wise rabbi once told me.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And the Hebrew, I'm not going to pronounce it correctly, but the Hebrew saying is naesh v'nishmaa.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And that basically means we will do and then we will understand.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And this comes from when Moses in the book of Exodus was coming down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And he was teaching the Israelites about it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And they're like, what?
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
I don't quite understand this.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
But okay, I'm going to do it.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And sometimes it's in the doing of the practice that the understanding comes later of why it's important or how it can help you.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
If you have to work out all of the logic first, it can be an impediment.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
And so try.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Don't do it before tenure.
Huberman Lab
Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno
Well, thank you for having me on.