Holy Watermelon

Satan is THE ultimate rebel. If you want to learn all about Satanic Death cults and how evil they are well... you're going to be disappointed. Satanism is actually pretty normal? Tune in to find out more!

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Preston Meyer  00:12

Hey, Katie. I'm great. How are you?

Katie Dooley  00:15

I'm great. Are you ready for another episode of

Preston Meyer  00:18

holy watermelon podcast? I am. I am excited for today's episode.

Katie Dooley  00:24

I'm excited for you to be a part of today. I mean, you're a part of every episode, but

Preston Meyer  00:33

Right. It's a great thing that we share. So in our previous episode, we talked about how atheists don't worship Satan, which is a ridiculous thing to have other people contradict. But people keep saying that atheists worship Salman,

Katie Dooley  00:50

it's pretty common thing. If you don't worship God, then you must worship the devil.

Preston Meyer  00:56

Right? It's nonsense. And with

Katie Dooley  00:59

that segue, today, we're talking about devil worship.

Preston Meyer  01:03

Yeah, I wanted to start off with the idea of the devil. What is he? Where does he come from? How do we get these ideas?

Katie Dooley  01:13

See what I'm talking about who the devil is or what the devil is?

Preston Meyer  01:16

Yeah, the devil appears, usually four times in English translations of the Hebrew Bible, which is the Old Testament, He naturally shows up a lot more in the New Testament. And the nature of this figure changes a little bit. The word shed refers to evil spirits, in Hebrew, and that word is usually translated as devil. And, interestingly enough, it's spelt the exact same way in Hebrew because of the lack of vows, as the word shad and showed, showed, meaning a spoil like to destroy or to rob, and shed, as in breasts. Wow. Right. And that's an important detail we'll come back to in a minute, okay.

Katie Dooley  02:08

You would think breasts are important.

Preston Meyer  02:10

I mean, at some point in every human's life, they are either important or sought after. Fair. Alright. And the other word that is usually translated as devil in the Hebrew Bible, is Sayur, which is actually a word used to refer to saders, or to go to idols, or even sometimes broadly, just goats. And so, this these two ideas, the the Savior, the Seder, and the breasts, in form a lot of the typical idea of how we display the devil in art, especially the Baphomet statue, which is popular because of some other groups we'll talk about later in this episode. It's usually a Goat Man with breasts.

Katie Dooley  03:11

Ah, I just picking her like the muscular man breasts

Preston Meyer  03:16

with firm manly picks rather than the boobs. Yeah, there are both versions of the Baphomet in art. Yeah, but an awful lot of people prefer boobs.

Katie Dooley  03:29

I think everyone prefer boobs. Like I think statistically, 100% of the planet likes boobs.

Preston Meyer  03:37

I feel like part of our population isn't terribly interested in boobs, at least in their later life. Oh, I'm gonna go out and say gay men wrong. Probably less gay

Katie Dooley  03:48

men like boobs. All of them. I'm

Preston Meyer  03:53

Yes. I am perfectly willing to accept that many gay men appreciate boobs. That's a reality for sure. I don't think that you can say that there are no gay men who like boobs, or who don't like boobs.

Katie Dooley  04:08

Or a gay man who doesn't like boobs.

Preston Meyer  04:15

Let's keep the conversation.

Katie Dooley  04:19

Hitting conversation going. I stand by what I said now 100% The population like carry on.

Preston Meyer  04:27

So the the interesting thing about this, the way we see the devil in Scripture is that it's informed from other traditions outside of Israel. In fact, the the way that we see the devil in the more common Judeo Christian cosmology seems to be informed a lot by Zoroastrianism where there's a more almost equal duality of good versus evil in By the gods of Zarya, Zoroastrianism, which is mostly pretty strongly monotheistic, but isn't so strongly, monotheistic when you dig deeper.

Katie Dooley  05:13

Oh, like all of them. Yeah,

Preston Meyer  05:15

there's all theological models have layers,

Katie Dooley  05:20

like ogres and onion. Exactly.

Preston Meyer  05:24

So the devil as an idea is kind of an interesting one. And it's associated with idol worship in old Israel. And, oddly enough with goats for some reason. Out of all of the idols that exist, the devil is specifically tied to the to the goat.

Katie Dooley  05:46

I did some reading on why the goat per for Baphomet. And I know it's a pagan god. Yes, yeah. Is where that imagery was made popular in the early 1900s. In the context of Satanism, they, I think it was some popular story. And they use this pagan god that was a goat and brought it into devil worshipers in worship.

Preston Meyer  06:15

Especially for Christianity popping up a bit in it. Its base of power, if you will. The idea of Seders is an idea that Christians were super uncomfortable with, because they, as opposed to the Baphomet of boobs, as we've described, saders are all about having an extra huge penis, and they're super sexually aggressive, almost all the time.

Katie Dooley  06:42

And I mean, that comes from Greek and Roman mythology. Yeah, yeah. So it's not a new,

Preston Meyer  06:48

but it's a part of the environment in which Christianity grew up.

Katie Dooley  06:52

Yeah. So it was easy to like, adopt

Preston Meyer  06:55

and villainize. Yeah. It's weird to like individual Staters are pretty often antagonists in the stories of Greek and Roman mythology. But to say that they're the ultimate bad guy of the stories, that's a Christian

Katie Dooley  07:14

twist, are so cute.

Preston Meyer  07:18

They're less cute when they're half man with a huge penis.

Katie Dooley  07:23

Speaker yourself.

Preston Meyer  07:28

Alright, so moving on to ace what looks to me like I actually totally separate idea is Satan. And I just, it's hard to see Satan and the devil as identical things. There's an awful lot of overlap in the values that we have dumped on to these ideas. But the title Satan is using the Hebrew Bible 27 times, it shows up a lot more than that in the Christian New Testament. And broadly, in the New Testament, they are meant to be understood to be the same thing, or at least that's the way as people who look at it, yeah, it's typically understood that they're that meant to be the same figure. In the Hebrew Bible, Satan is a title, not a name, but a title. And it denotes an adversary or an accuser. So the way it's meant to be understood when you read the Hebrew Bible, the the Christian Old Testament, Satan is a member of the Heavenly Court, who stands to accuse each and every man and woman for the ways that they have transgressed the law. That God is the judge in that heaven and that there is why can't I think of the more common poetic term for defense attorney, Prosecutor know the prosecutor is Satan

Katie Dooley  09:03

sane? Different than

Preston Meyer  09:06

the defendant is you and me Hello, it bugs me that I've lost this word and I clearly should have written it down

Katie Dooley  09:15

the barrister

Preston Meyer  09:20

I don't know why this word is blanking me, i It'll come to me when we're done recording. That's the way it goes anyway. But Satan is a member of the court of heaven, who stands to accuse us of breaking the law. It's his job to keep track of that. And that's a little bit different feeling than we get that from the New Testament Satan, where he's the one who encourages us to break the law. And so it's, it's interesting to see that change of flavor. Yeah. And so there's there's an awful lot of theological exploration of this idea that He is doing both jobs, the two halves of that, that biblical split the Hebrew Bible versus the Christian Bible. They have different views. They're not necessarily contradictory.

Katie Dooley  10:13

So that he encourages you to do bad things. And then later he judges you for them.

Preston Meyer  10:17

Well, he's not the judge. He's the prosecutor. Yeah,

Katie Dooley  10:21

later. Yeah, wherever the thing you did that I encourage you to do Yeah. Guilty,

Preston Meyer  10:26

right. I mean, ultimately, we're all we are all responsible for our own actions. We can't say the devil made me do it. Because that's nonsense. We we choose what we do. Though. We are also a product of our environments, the various very different forces that act on us, but we get to make our own choices.

Katie Dooley  10:48

Wow. Oh, pep talk there.

Preston Meyer  10:52

Yeah, don't be a dick. I'm gonna find a way to work that phrase into most of our episodes. Like an Easter egg, right? Maybe we'll put it on a t shirt or a hat.

Katie Dooley  11:04

Yes, it is on my list of merch to make.

Preston Meyer  11:08

And with that note, check out our merch.

Katie Dooley  11:12

We have just launched our Spreadshirt store. So if you want some sweet Holly watermelon merch, check us out. Our link will be on our social media.

Preston Meyer  11:25

Just check out our link tree and get connected to that and our Discord server where we have great conversations

Katie Dooley  11:33

about whether gay men like boobs or not right.

Preston Meyer  11:37

Let us know. Anyway, let's get back on to the train. tracks that we have derailed all train tracks. Yep. Yeah. All right. So Lucifer. Lucifer is a great one. The there's, I feel very certain that somebody out in podcast land is happy to argue with me on this one. And let's just start with if you want to argue with me on this one, you're wrong.

Katie Dooley  12:05

Okay. That's the tolerance we like.

Preston Meyer  12:09

I'm not saying I won't discuss it with you. But what I'm about to share with you is widely agreed upon by the vast majority of scholars in the field. Lucifer is not the name of the depth, it is not Satan's name.

Katie Dooley  12:28

I believe that. Yeah. And he's like hard. Lucifer is hardly mentioned in the Bible, if I'm not mistaken. So

Preston Meyer  12:33

the name doesn't show up very much in the Bible at all. Yeah. And it's, I'm gonna distract myself just a little bit. You There are so many things in popular culture that love to make the name of the devil, Lucifer Morningstar,

Katie Dooley  12:51

is it? The hit show? Lucifer

Preston Meyer  12:55

is one of many cases. There's so many shows that Lucifer and one that's a lazy tautology. But, but second, that's not his name. The one time that we see Lucifer in the average English translation of the Bible, Lucifer is, it doesn't show up in the Hebrew, it doesn't show up in the Greek. It is added by the Latin translation, replacing the Hebrew name, hello, which I said name that's, that's still the wrong word. It's a title. And hello means shining, and refers to a shining one, specifically, in the context we have it. It's meant to refer to the title of the king of Babylon as referring to the Morning Star, that he's this bright God for the king. The one time we have the name Lucifer in the Hebrew Bible. It's not talking about the devil. It's Isaiah, the prophet addressing the king of Babylon. Calling him out for being such a powerful being who has fallen so far from grace by doing such great wickedness against Israel. not taught to Satan,

Katie Dooley  14:25

so it does have reference to to a person who did bad things, though,

Preston Meyer  14:32

was the king of Babylon. Yeah, but, and there are an awful lot of scholars who want to say that for this brief passage where Isaiah is using this title of Lucifer, that he's changed his subject, that he has stopped talking to the king of Babylon. The context doesn't make that statement make any sense by The name Lucifer has stuck in popular culture as the name of the devil.

Katie Dooley  15:05

You don't want to go down the rabbit hole, but I'd be interested to know why I got applied to the name of the devil.

Preston Meyer  15:10

Yeah, so I am also interested in curious to figure that out. And so far I haven't found an answer. Interesting. What's interesting to me is that the title of Morningstar is applied to Jesus several times in the New Testament. And Lucifer being a title that means light bringer, as a refers to the Morningstar that I mean, it's quite a positive title. It is a positive title. And so it makes sense that it applies to Jesus. And so of course, the the rationale behind it being applied to Lucifer is that he was one of the great angels before he rebelled. And so it's one of those names that show us how far he has fallen. But that just

Katie Dooley  15:58

fanfic, though, because there's no stories. Well, it's just Bible fanfic.

Preston Meyer  16:04

It looks an awful lot like fanfic from a biblical perspective,

Katie Dooley  16:07

just like the what is it? The Assumption of Mary? That Bible fanfic, too? Yeah, yeah. We should do an episode on that.

Preston Meyer  16:17

There's an awful lot of biblical fanfic out there. Yeah.

Katie Dooley  16:24

And I forced you to put this one in, I just like wrote the numbers 3666. The Beast?

Preston Meyer  16:33

Yeah, so it's a number that shows up in Revelation 1813, the number of the beast is a human number, and that number is 666. Some translations of the Bible, use slightly better language than that, saying that it's not the human number, as Iron Maiden says, but is the number of a man. A lot of translations prefer that wording. And the man according to almost all scholars on the subject, is Emperor Nero. There was, according to scholarship on the subject, an awful lot of people were really worried about Emperor Nero coming back from the dead, to wreak even greater Havoc than he had previously. And with the style of apocalyptic literature, that is super obvious in the Revelation of John, the story is that Israel will overcome even when Nero comes back. Now whether John was genuinely himself worried that Emperor Nero himself would come back, or somebody much like him, we can't say with any certainty.

Katie Dooley  17:48

So also nothing really to do with Satan or the Devil. We just lump it in there as an evil thing.

Preston Meyer  17:55

Yeah, like it's a connected idea. That's, I mean, all four of these numbers and titles are connected ideas in the way that we've associated them over the centuries, but they are all individual distinct things. What's interesting is that the number is 666. And many Greek manuscripts actually spell it out as 666. There are a few that use the numeral letters. And that's it's not numeral numbers that are numeral letters. anywhere else. Yeah. But smarter than Roman numeral. Okay. So Latin is super dumb that five is a V, and one is an AI. And there's no like you couldn't look at the alphabet and figure out why those letters were chosen to be those numbers. And you have to add them up in a way that makes doing math really hard. Greek and Hebrew and probably other languages did this really sensible thing where the first nine letters are 123456789. The next nine letters are 1020 3040 5060 7080 90. And then the next nine letters 100 200 300. so on, so there are some Greek manuscripts that spell out 666 There are some that use the numerals to this, like, it looks like 666 If you want to translate it accurately into English, but there are not three sixes Yes, seems like June 6 2006. A bunch of people were worried about it for some reason, because it was 666 is dumb, because it wasn't 666, which was the number that we're looking for. What's interesting, though, is there are also manuscripts in Greek for some reason, that instead of being 666, there 616 And the The odd thing about that is that it doesn't contradict the popular scholarly interpretation of it applying to Emperor Nero. It's instead applies one to the Greek spelling of Emperor Nero. And one to the Latin spelling of Emperor. Yeah, it's super weird. So. And it's a matter of adding up the value of the letters that spell up the name to get this number 666. Because John had to write in code, because he was in exile, when he wrote it, he needed this thing to be published. But, you know, anything that he's writing is getting read by his guards before it goes anywhere. Yeah. So that's kind of the idea there.

Katie Dooley  20:45

So he should be just as worried about the number 616 as 666 is not at all

Preston Meyer  20:52

correct. Okay. I'm really glad you finished it off with that last qualifier. Otherwise,

Katie Dooley  20:57

I just make a big deal about 666.

Preston Meyer  21:02

Yeah, people are super stressed out about it. Like if that's the number on your bill, they'll make sure that they change something six, seven.

Katie Dooley  21:08

Yeah, fun fact, I have a car payment is $667.

Preston Meyer  21:14

Nice. And that's how I remember it. That's fazed by the number. Because it's not quite there. Well, I

Katie Dooley  21:21

just know it's new 666 and I can make financial decisions.

Preston Meyer  21:31

Yeah, there's a, there's a lot of people who are really worried about the number. And that association isn't enough to make me feel like that fear is validated. But I mean,

Katie Dooley  21:43

especially once, you know, it's meant for Nero and not some supernatural beastie. Yeah, I mean, I guess they think he's coming back from the dead like a zombie. But

Preston Meyer  21:52

that somebody like Emperor Nero is going to come in the future. That either or it's not mean like having a number on a piece of paper being a danger.

Katie Dooley  22:03

I mean, chances are the people who believe in the 6x X would support someone who looked like an arrow was the way things are going.

Preston Meyer  22:11

There's way too much evidence to support that supposition.

Katie Dooley  22:17

All right. So let's get into the Satanism. Yeah,

Preston Meyer  22:22

there's a couple who talked about Devil's yeah, there's a couple of big groups that are both formed and named to deliberately antagonize Christians that have taken up that mantle of Satanism. Do they antagonize

Katie Dooley  22:37

Christians? Like there's nothing in their official statements that say they exist to,

Preston Meyer  22:45

I'm gonna show a couple of points to you through generally, the statement and the media presence of saying, I worship Satan is to one degree or another, sometimes it's really not an aggressive antagonism. And sometimes it has been, yeah, against Christians or Christianity in general, or sometimes just against the idea that there's a Christian supremacy in the state, which is hard to deny in North America. And depending on where you are in South America, it's actually a problem, too, that's quite visible.

Katie Dooley  23:24

Is there anything you want to share with the class before we start talking about Satanism? Preston,

Preston Meyer  23:29

there was a time when I was a Satanist. And it's, I mean, that's not the life I live now. But it was, it was part of who I was for a little while when I was in junior high and your identity is super flexible and constantly changing.

Katie Dooley  23:47

I mean, it was still valid.

Preston Meyer  23:51

I showed up in all black to my younger brother's Christian baptism. I'm sure that it wasn't that intense. It wasn't like super golf. I just haven't had black pants and a black T shirt. We're not going too crazy here.

Katie Dooley  24:04

You're a pretty vibrant guy.

Preston Meyer  24:08

Right? That's surprised I didn't do the I make up and dyed my hair darker.

Katie Dooley  24:14

Crossing your forehead.

Preston Meyer  24:18

It wasn't really even a long time thing. But it was a few months where I was like, yeah, no, it makes perfect sense that, you know, let's let's follow the first great philosopher. We'll talk a little bit more about that later, that some of the positions of these groups are interesting and worth exploring, which is part of why we're doing an episode. So first, I want to talk about the Church of Satan. This is I don't want to keep saying for each group. This is not the group I belong to because I don't belong to any group at all.

Katie Dooley  24:51

Yeah, so that's, that's where honestly, this episode was hard. It's because like, there's this church to say we're gonna talk about and then there's The Satanic Temple and then you can just actually be like a Satanist. Yeah, just like I mean, I guess you can be a Christian without prescribing to any particular denomination. And debt to death. It's a spectrum. So everything, everything's a spectrum. So the Church of Satan and the Satanic Temple are actually quite different. Oh, yeah. So you can see just from the issue, that if you're involved in any sort of organized Satanism, there's two vastly different groups, and then anything and everything in between, including satanic ritual killing, which we'll get to.

Preston Meyer  25:43

All right, so the Church of Satan was founded in San Francisco in 1966. Not very old. Now. I like that they picked 66 To start with, do you think he just like sat on it for a little bit? Uh, you know what a little piece of me thinks he might have.

Katie Dooley  26:00

not time yet.

Preston Meyer  26:03

Was it June of 66? I don't know. Okay, a little piece of me now hopes it was June 6 66. But I don't know that that's the case file it today and has to be filed today. It was started by a fella named Anton LaVey. He's an interesting, weird duck. Yeah, he is. And we don't really have the time to get into all of his baggage. But he wrote the Satanic Bible. He didn't publish it until after the church had been around for a few years. And it is their official text.

Katie Dooley  26:39

Now, I think I have this in our notes later, but LaVey believed in magic. So we're gonna get into their beliefs a little more. So that's one big difference between the Church of Satan, which we're talking about now in the Satanic Temple, which we're talking about later, is that church of Satan strongly believes in magic in the use of magic, whereas the Satanic Temple is more humanist and doesn't believe in those superstitious things. So, if you're wondering how weird this guy is, he believes in magic.

Preston Meyer  27:11

Yeah, they're, they're into magic. But they do not at all subscribe to the familiar ideas of what the devil is.

Katie Dooley  27:22

And that really such subscribed me that really surprised me. I knew a little bit about Satanism. But the fact that none of these Satanists generally do not believe in Satan.

Preston Meyer  27:38

I don't know if it's fair to say generally, the bigger groups that is the case Yeah, yeah. It's, it's interesting that though they use this title, Satanist, they do not worship Satan,

Katie Dooley  27:51

and they actively discourage the worship of Satan as a deity. So yeah, there it is, in my notes, so the church's lean believes in magic or black magic, but not in a higher power. So it is both supernatural, but atheistic, which is kind of that was kind of weird for a moment for me to wrap my head around as a secular humanist. I was like, how can you believe in both the supernatural? How can you believe in the supernatural and not believe in God?

Preston Meyer  28:21

Well see, we've talked about a few religions where there's this spiritual cosmology, without a deity, any specific theology or deity, yeah, like even Buddhism is pretty fuzzy in the god department.

Katie Dooley  28:39

This is a quote I pulled LaVey taught that his infernal Majesty was a symbol of humanistic values such as self assertion, rebelling against unjust authority, vital existence and undefiled wisdom. So Satan is really just like a figurehead are a metaphor.

Preston Meyer  28:57

Yeah, for the Church of Satan. He's definitely more of a metaphoric symbol than a personal presence. But a positive one, which is feels weird in a pretty Christocentric society.

Katie Dooley  29:16

Yes, and there's going to be a lot of numbers coming up I'm gonna have a whole bunch of numbers that you guys what we like no, I love numbers, but the church of Satan has their own set of numbers and the the Satanic Temple has a different set of numbers. Yeah, so a nice summary of the so churches saying the nine satanic statements, so Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence. Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dream. Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self deceit. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates. I'm excited for you and to unpack all these. Satan represents venture Instead of turning the other cheek, Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all fours, who, because of his divine spiritual and intellectual development has become the most vicious animal of all. Satan represents all the so called sins as they all lead to physical, mental or emotional gratification. And Satan has been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years. So what do you think of all that President?

Preston Meyer  30:37

Well, I mean, that's just nine separate things to unpack. I mean, some of them are deliberately in specifically meant to contradict teachings of the Church teaching straight out of the Bible. Others are less targeted, but still, there, that vein of thought, where it's meant to be in opposition to all of the fairly oppressive teachings of the Church over the centuries.

Katie Dooley  31:07

I mean, I was gonna say, these aren't all necessarily negative. I think we're just so used to these restrictive religions where that you have to make some sort of personal sacrifice to be part of it. And this doesn't have any level of personal sacrifice.

Preston Meyer  31:24

No, none at all. This is all about almost self deification, that you shouldn't be worshipping Lucifer at all according to these thoughts, but that you kind of put yourself up on the pedestal, and if somebody's gonna hurt you, they have wronged God, and you will hurt them.

Katie Dooley  31:42

Yeah, the one that represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek. That one's a little. That's probably the worst 109. But

Preston Meyer  31:55

it's not a great way to be a neighbor.

Katie Dooley  31:58

No. Let's replace that with don't be a dick. And you have a pretty solid nine,

Preston Meyer  32:03

right? But these are just the satanic statements. We also have rules, which feel a little bit like the 10 commandments, but this time, there's 11 of them. I mean, if you want to explore the 10 commandments, even within the Decalogue, there's more than 10. All right, so the 11 Satanic rules of the Earth First, do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked love it. Right. That's actually pretty good. Do not tell your troubles to others, unless you're sure they want to hear them. Also kind of in that yeah, I'm into that. That's nice. When in another's lair, show him respect, or else do not go there. Yeah, my house. The word layer feels weird. But also good rule.

Katie Dooley  32:54

Yes. The sentiment is there. The wording, okay.

Preston Meyer  32:59

Yeah, I, every time I see the word layer in these writings, it's just like, you're deliberately you're affecting a feeling. And it doesn't feel natural. It doesn't slide smoothly, but I get it. You're making this

Katie Dooley  33:17

for a certain type of person?

Preston Meyer  33:19

Absolutely. If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat him cruelly and without mercy, not. Unless I'm bored.

Katie Dooley  33:32

No one makes less sense. I'm pretty sure you can just ask them to leave.

Preston Meyer  33:35

Or hey, don't do that annoying thing. How to this isn't a translation issue. Anton LaVey wrote this in English. If somebody is annoying, you treat them without mercy. Not a great way to be a neighbor.

Katie Dooley  33:49

Pretty bad. That's pretty bad. I would have kicked I would have been really mean to a lot of people if that was

Preston Meyer  34:01

Here's another good one, though. Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.

Katie Dooley  34:08

Love it. How can Christianity doesn't have that

Preston Meyer  34:11

effect? The kind of do but honestly not in such a well worded way. That it's great. That the wording again is a little bit weird. We don't talk about mating signals. I mean, it's not that we don't have them. It's just we don't call them that. But it's a good rule is such a good rule. Do not take that which does not belong to you, unless it is a burden to the other person. And he cries out to be relieved of it. Like so far, like we're halfway through this list. We've only found one that's objectionable. And certainly there's gonna be people arguing with us on how objection no bullet is on that's fine. Just, you know, whatever. But don't take what's not yours.

Katie Dooley  35:09

That's, that's good. I love it and lighten the load if you can lighten the load. Yeah,

Preston Meyer  35:14

it's great. Love it. And I like how it's tied into one statement, even though it's there's a negative and a positive there. Yeah. Next, acknowledge the power of magic, if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic, after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained. So just like in the deck log, the 10 commandments, we have one of the many commandments that actually has a promise attached to it. This is the one that we have, where you must acknowledge the presence of magic. And if you've used it and deny its power, then you will be punished for it. Within a self consistent thing, we're still solid. But magic,

Katie Dooley  36:11

I mean, is weirder than what any other religion asks us to believe,

Preston Meyer  36:17

as its own thing know. If you've successfully use magic, acknowledge that you've successfully use magic? I got it. Cool. All right. Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself.

Katie Dooley  36:32

Yes. Yes, I was just having this conversation the other day. We have a few people in our lives where the like, answer their texts, like this person, I don't want to text them and then they text them. I'm like, you know, you don't have to answer that text. You don't have to text someone

Preston Meyer  36:49

yet. Don't volunteer for suffering and then complain about it. Yeah, that's nonsense. And that's how I understand that amendment. Or, well, I guess it's not a commandment, it's rules of living. The earth is the next one another really good one. And here we have some really strong non contradictions with the teachings of Jesus. The rule is do not harm little children. I know a few strong and solid groups that can use that rule. Right? i Some churches even

Katie Dooley  37:26

that's what that's what I was getting at.

Preston Meyer  37:30

It's it's really hard to naysay some of these, you know, these are good rules.

Katie Dooley  37:37

Why would you want to naysay them? I don't think there's anything wrong with Satanism. Do you

Preston Meyer  37:43

get so far I haven't seen anything that's outright objectionable. Okay. Well, okay, that's not true. There was a couple of things. Mostly, that's a good way to live. Next, do not kill non human animals, unless you are attacked. Or for your food. Make sense? Don't go around stomping on things that don't mean you any harm. Don't go torturing animals for no reason. We've got enough people doing that it's a problem. kill animals for your food or your protection? Makes good sense to me. Yep. When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him.

Katie Dooley  38:31

I went from like, zero to 110 Start escalated incredibly quickly. But the first half is not bad. Right? I like the first half. I mean, we've lived in sketchy enough neighborhoods, to know that you just keep yourself to yourself and keep your head down and don't bother people and you'll be fine. That being said, I think there are times people should intervene. But for the most part, the first part of that is

Preston Meyer  39:05

a good rule. Honestly, the whole thing looks pretty solid if you want to live the biblical life when you're not there yet in your Bible reading. But when Israel leaves Egypt and wanders around in the wilderness for 40 years, and makes their home in the Promised Land, that's exactly the way they made their their home was they wandered in peace, they promised peace to anybody that they came across. And when the people who had already set up their homes there, said, Hey, we don't want you and threatened to kill them. Then Israel fought back and destroyed them. Oh, lovely. So this is the way we see the existence in the Bible.

Katie Dooley  39:49

So Satanists are Christians slash anti Christians.

Preston Meyer  39:56

That's pretty fair. I'd say, well, we didn't actually explore the title of antichrist. I know that right now, but, and depending on who you ask, there are a good handful of different definitions for antichrist. Some people say it doesn't count as the Antichrist who is not the literal physical, embodied spawn of Satan. Which that's a really extreme position to hold to. I don't I don't want to call it a weird position but it's an it's an extreme one to say there's just the one thing that could ever be so where are we have this title showing up? In our oldest literature is right in the New Testament? And an antichrist is literally any person who denies that Jesus rose from the dead. Which we have an Antichrist in this room.

Katie Dooley  40:53

Oh, no. Where it's me.

Preston Meyer  40:58

And so realistically, and fairly and antichrist, depending on who you talk to, you can be anywhere in between those two extremes. Wow.

Katie Dooley  41:07

Everything from the literal spawn of Satan to Katie. Yeah. Wow, I'm gonna make a graphic. I'm gonna be all teary eyed, like thumbs up, and then they'll be like, the little little literal like Baltimore abortion. On the other side. Choose your antichrist. There's a meme in here. I need to

Preston Meyer  41:30

figure it out. Yeah.

Katie Dooley  41:34

Oh, dear.

Preston Meyer  41:35

Yeah. And so those were the rules. Those are the beliefs so

Katie Dooley  41:39

that you're just with a little digression in there. Um, so what does it look like if you're a practicing Church of Satanist?

Preston Meyer  41:49

Well, out on the streets, that most Satanists wouldn't look terribly out of place. Among any other group of professionals, you'd see, I think, but there's Satanist, weddings, funerals, even baptisms. Sometimes you hear the word anti baptism thrown around.

Katie Dooley  42:10

And baptism is popular in temple of Satan. Yes, Satan,

Preston Meyer  42:15

the satanic Satanic Temple.

Katie Dooley  42:18

Whereas you can get at satanist baptism through church of Satan. Yeah. There is a ranking system in the Church of Satan.

Preston Meyer  42:29

Oh, absolutely. It's not just your regular church, like it would be very foreign to say, your average evangelical Christian. And not just because it's Satan. But it's actually modeled after the old mystery schools where you've got sets of degrees that you progress through. And to be fair, the Church of Satan, very few people go up through all the degrees. But you'll have a few people who go up to second or third. It's kind of interesting that way.

Katie Dooley  43:04

Yeah. So it starts as a registered member, anyone can be a registered member, you can go on to churches st.com right now and register, and you'd be a registered member of the Church of Satan. And then to get your first trigger, you become an active member. And that's basically just showing your interest in the community building of the Church of Satan that you want to be involved and not just to have it on paper, that you're a member of the Church of Satan. The secondary agree is which are Warlock third degree is priest or priestess. Fourth Degree is Magister or magistra. And fifth degree is mega or magus, on their website, and I didn't do a ton of digging, it basically said to get in so they don't tell you how to get into the upper your degrees up approach. Yeah,

Preston Meyer  43:49

I did some digging,

Katie Dooley  43:50

I could find what those ranks are. It's on Reddit, for sure.

Preston Meyer  43:56

There's a very real chance having not looked into it at all, specifically myself, that once you've gotten to the point where somebody is comfortable inviting you up to these higher degrees, each individually, of course, you're probably not the kind of person who would decide to reveal those secrets.

Katie Dooley  44:18

I mean, there's always people who leave though. That's where I get my internal Intel

Preston Meyer  44:23

and the cult here your group is for sure you're gonna have people leaving. But based on the things we outlined in our cults episode, as much as Anton LaVey kind of set up a slightly authoritarian system. It's really not setting off my cult alarm bells. Yeah. And

Katie Dooley  44:45

that's the interesting thing about both this and the Satanic Temple is, you know, in the news, you'll hear about satanic cults. And these are not cults at all in in the danger cult zone. Right? You might call them a cult and turn memes of a small upstart religion, but definitely not danger call. These are full fleshed out regular old religions with tax exempt status with tax exempt status. When I guess, I guess controversial point, something if you've seen the exorcist or at all is the black mass. So the Church of Satan performance black mass, as does the Satanic Temple, which is basically this blasphemous version of a Catholic mass. The vestments are all black, hence black mass, and the alters the back of a naked woman, kind of sexy. Is that why teenage precedent was the sameness?

Preston Meyer  45:44

No, not at all, though, it certainly wouldn't have heard, it probably would have encouraged me to stick with it a little longer, maybe.

Katie Dooley  45:53

And then they, you know, they do things with the sacrament and whatever.

Preston Meyer  45:59

For sure. So in contrast with that, we have the Satanic Temple. It's a baby, right? It's pretty new. It's been around for about eight years. It was founded in Salem, Massachusetts, in 2013. The group was co founded by Lucien Greaves and Malcolm Jerry, and kind of like Moses and his brother air, and one of them was the spokesperson, that was Malcolm Jerry. So it's, it is pretty new. And the little parallel is kind of interesting to me. You know, things.

Katie Dooley  46:42

I actually like, I mean, I'm the to, like, if I had to pick, I'd pick the Satanic Temple, it seems like more modern, and there, they appear to be more active than the Church of Satan. And, yeah, they're doing some cool stuff in the community,

Preston Meyer  46:59

the Satanic Temple is really involved in helping secularize the state. That's one of their main drives.

Katie Dooley  47:08

Yeah, and this is where this is why we pick to do Satanism, I think a little bit after our apparently religions is that part of their job is to, you know, if if Christianity is getting certain privileges, that they're making sure that they get certain privileges, those privileges as well as a commentary on religion in the United States. So kind of like the flying spaghetti monster that if you can teach creationism in science class, you can teach spaghetti flying monster ism, Flying Spaghetti Monster ism in class. And one of their beliefs is that all churches should be taxed. And that's something that they advocate for So,

Preston Meyer  47:52

but in the meantime, since churches get to be tax exempt, they're taking full advantage of all of the benefits of being a church.

Katie Dooley  48:00

Absolutely. But I think that's where people go, you know, and we'll get to Satanic Panic in a little bit. But oh, my goodness, the church is saying, how can they be tax exempt? It's well, you know, turn around and look at literally any other group. And they're not actually doing anything bad.

Preston Meyer  48:19

Right? It's important to note that the Satanic Temple also does not claim to worship satan. They do discourage that, though, as we talked about earlier on in our podcast in history, go back to early episodes. When we define what is a God and what is worship. That's pretty nebulous, and it it does kind of look like both of these groups do kind of worship Satan. But it's, it's as true as saying Catholics worship saints.

Katie Dooley  48:55

Were where they avoid that. Yeah, so the Satanic Temple. Satan is a metaphor, a symbol for the eternal rebel. So I see what you're saying, Preston, but I think like

Preston Meyer  49:09

tonic Temple is even less theist. Oh, yeah, they're

Katie Dooley  49:13

like, actually, they believe in extra This is a quote, they believe in exercising reasonable agnosticism, and all things that religion should be divorced from superstition. superstition, I said that weird. I think the reason that they both say that. And junk. This is just an opinion piece to jump in. But there's this idea that I mean, we targeted Satan is evil. But I don't know from the

Preston Meyer  49:46

Christian New Testament

Katie Dooley  49:47

perspective. Yeah. But Satanists aren't evil. But then part of me goes then why did you pick Satan as your rap?

Preston Meyer  49:54

It's to specifically antagonize Christians, whether to a great degree or a minor degree. There's there is that spirit of antagonism there.

Katie Dooley  50:03

You know, I was talking to someone, they're like, oh, this person's a evil. They're a devil worshiper and I'm like, so usually not. Usually not. So that's just like, and chances are they're not a devil worshiper. Right? If you're saying this, you're not actually devil worshiper. So it is it interesting. So they I feel like yeah, they just picked the name to piss off.

Preston Meyer  50:25

Christians. Yeah. And it works.

Katie Dooley  50:31

Are you? Are you grumpy? No,

Preston Meyer  50:33

I think these groups are fascinating. And in particular, the Satanic Temple does great work. We'll look at a few points here later on,

Katie Dooley  50:41

carried carry the seven tenets do it? Yes. So they have seven tenants. So we have the nine and then we have the 11. And now we have seven. So number one, one should strive to act with compassion, empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason I can't complain about that ever to the struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over our laws and institutions?

Preston Meyer  51:06

Absolutely. We've got an awful lot of people who, especially in the last year have been shouting for the rule of law, completely ignoring the need for actual justice.

Katie Dooley  51:20

Yes, law and justice are two different things. And the law doesn't always make sense.

Preston Meyer  51:25

Right? An awful lot of terrible things have been not just legal, but enforced by law, and an awful lot of righteous things have been banned by law. Yeah. So they are different and a lot of people seem to have a lot of trouble with that.

Katie Dooley  51:42

Number three, one's body is inviolable. I don't know. Is that how you say? Yeah, findable inviolable, subject to one's own will alone. So body autonomy? Yeah, perfect. I like it. I just looked up the umbrella of protection, like yesterday. Yeah. And I didn't like it. But I like this. The number four the freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend, to willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forego one's own. Yeah. Is that about what to say? Basically, every episode, don't be a dick. As long as you're not hurting anyone else. Go hard. Number five beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs.

Preston Meyer  52:43

Right. We got way too many people doing that. Oh, many

Katie Dooley  52:47

I love the MIS Satanist.

Preston Meyer  52:50

I don't know are you You tell me. I don't like telling other people a thing that they are when they may not agree

Katie Dooley  52:59

with me, number six people are fallible if one makes a mistake once do one's best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused? Absolutely agree. And stemmer number seven, every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought the spirit of compassion, wisdom and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word. Absolutely. I have no problems with these. These are less weird than love A's.

Preston Meyer  53:29

Right? Destroying. Yeah, our fellows in the Satanic Temple seem to be a lot. I don't want to say less rage motivated, even though that's what was going to come out of my mouth. Cuz there's definitely a perfectly reasonable anger against a very prejudiced system in place.

Katie Dooley  53:50

Yep. No, I like all of those. I have no problems with that sense of beliefs and it makes Satanic Panic even funnier. And actually, when I was researching this episode, I found an article I think it was the CBC and it was like news satanic cult makes its way to Canada. And it was Satanic Temple because it's fairly new. Like I had. I had just met my husband in 2013. Like we were just becoming friends in 2013. So this is a very new religion and it just, it just made me giggle at it was like on the CBC is this scary thing and then you read this and you're like, oh, there's nothing to disagree with. And if you can disagree with it, please leave a note on our Discord because I really want to know what you disagree with. Yeah, because those all seem super reasonable to me.

Preston Meyer  54:45

So far, it's great. So kind of like the Flying Spaghetti Monster. As Katie mentioned, it's important for the Satanic Temple to remind legislators that religious freedoms need to be available to Every one that's no matter what it is you believe that we need to have both freedom of religion and freedom from religion. Yep. Secularism is hugely important, as we talked about in our previous episode.

Katie Dooley  55:16

rituals that they do black mass, as I mentioned, prior, this is straight from their website. It's a celebration of blasphemy, which can be expression of personal liberty and freedom. They have the and baptism which I actually really liked. This is different than the satanic baptism with the Church of Satan. This is where if you were baptized as a child, you can renounce that baptism ceremony, which I think is kind of cool, because I know a lot of people that were baptized as babies, and now they're like, what? Well, and

Preston Meyer  55:49

I really appreciate that it's about going back on a thing that was done to you without your consent.

Katie Dooley  55:58

I mean, I think that goes back to the data of your body is your budget and bodily

Preston Meyer  56:01

autonomy? Absolutely.

Katie Dooley  56:04

They have a destruction ritual where participants destroy an object they own that symbolizes a source of pain in their lives, hopefully, cathartic, I was gonna say also very healthy. And they've a defiance ritual. So a pledge to challenge the status quo in a way that is personally meaningful.

Preston Meyer  56:20

I don't see an issue with that. I mean, I recognize that there is room for problems there. But broadly generically, I betcha that doesn't come up very often.

Katie Dooley  56:32

I mean, if you pair the Defiance ritual with the seven tenants, then you're probably going to pick something that would be

Preston Meyer  56:40

And realistically, you'd be doing this with a group and somebody's going to say, Hey, don't be a

Katie Dooley  56:47

tech, tenant hate.

Preston Meyer  56:51

No, I think that was already there. Just reading our words to you know, there's nothing wrong with restating your thing and rules. Like what's the second rule of fight club?

Katie Dooley  57:01

Don't be a dick.

Preston Meyer  57:04

It's the same rule is rule number one is, I've never seen Fight Club, we might need to fix that.

Katie Dooley  57:10

I think this came up in a previous episode now with John Wick was I feel like people are gonna start realizing how little TV I watch.

Preston Meyer  57:18

So on our Discord, somebody called me out on that, like, are they really that similar? To be fair, he said that he hadn't seen one of the films as well. And my comparison wasn't a strong comparison. But I stand by it that there is some parallels between the two. So one thing that I think is great, and will always be a wonderful highlight for me in the Satanic Temple organization's history is the pink mass of 2013. They were still brand new at this point babies. And it says an example of some deliberate antagonism, not that it's not deserved. In this case, it's very deserved.

Katie Dooley  58:09

It is an act of deliberate antagonists.

Preston Meyer  58:12

So the Westboro Baptist Church, right. We've talked about them in passing a little bit more in private than we have on the podcast. They are a very aggressive evangelical pain in the ass.

Katie Dooley  58:30

Man, like, if you think Satanists are bad, just look at the Westboro Baptist Church. Because Satanists are saints, Satanists, compared to the Westboro Baptist Church. Thank you for laughing at that really?

Preston Meyer  58:47

Great. So anyway, the Westboro Baptist Church had decided that they were going to pick at the funerals of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. I don't know if anyone can defend that choice. I'd like to hear it. I'm not going to love your argument, but I'm willing to hear it.

Katie Dooley  59:11

I really want to get oh my goodness, I forget her first name. The Phelps lady that left really want her on the podcast.

Preston Meyer  59:18

Sure. All right. So the Westboro Baptist Church wanted to pick it, the funerals of the victims of the bombing. Nonsense. So the satanists temple held a meeting over Catherine Johnson's grave. Catherine Johnson is the mother of the Westboro Baptist churches. Mm. Founder. Church has living founder, her mom, his mom is dead. They decided to have a meeting on her grave because of their decision to pick it. The funerals of the bombing victims and the way they decided to have this meeting is just Truly deliberately antagonistic. I love it. There's nothing I like about Westboro Baptist Church famously anti gay, so they made sure to have gay couple kiss on her grave directly over it. No ambiguity here. That's just hey, we're here to piss you off. Next part though, but then the leader of the organization decided to rub his junk on her headstone. But not just that he didn't just rub his junk on her headstone. He rubbed his junk on her headstone and cast a spell to change her sexual orientation post mortem. I love it. Yeah.

Katie Dooley  1:00:44

Especially because they don't believe in magic. Like he was just doing it to troll All right,

Preston Meyer  1:00:51

yeah. Love it. The whole thing is, no, everything's a spectrum. Not all Satanists are seriously constantly antagonistic. This event is a really great example of just how antagonistic they can be sometimes. And in this case, I not only do I find it hugely entertaining, but it's not like it's not deserved. The people that they're antagonizing asked for this kind of publicity and behavior.

Katie Dooley  1:01:22

And I mean, even the, oh, my goodness, my brain just stopped working even, you know, their political work is arguably deliberately antagonistic, but with good reason. Even if they don't ensure religious equality for themselves as a small, kind of weird group, as long as you know, they're working to ensure religious equality for all. So whether that's, you know, Sikhs or Muslims or Jewish people in in American Canada, if they can, you know, work towards for themselves that guarantees that everyone has it, too. And I think that's important.

Preston Meyer  1:02:03

And also, but as we talked about secularism, they want to reduce the anti atheist prejudice that exists all over North America. Yeah. And it's, it's so weird how much anti anti atheist prejudice there is, considering how many atheists there are here.

Katie Dooley  1:02:25

But I think and this was, I mean, this is last episode, but I was really quiet about my atheism for a long time. Because I didn't want people to be like, Oh, or like, have to defend it. So it's just easier to not say anything, and how that people assume what they want to assume. If you're a Christian chances are you assume that that nice white girl is probably a Christian to you, even though I'm not. I remember St. Item came up at work. This is like years ago, when I had a job. One lady was like, I'm Catholic, and other was like, I'm Christian. And I was like, I'm an atheist. And they're like, you would be like, Okay. I don't know what that means. But thank you. And that's when you know, finally I, you know, if it's going to come up, like I don't shove it down anyone's throat, but if it's going to come up, then yeah, I'll say I'm an atheist.

Preston Meyer  1:03:19

Well see, shoving a atheism down somebody's throat is a lot different than shoving fears on down someone's throat. They're both kind of annoying, let's be real. But you can also be a perfectly reasonable atheist. And I thank you.

Katie Dooley  1:03:37

Thank you. But I know, I've been in situations where people are like, Hey, you should check this out. And I'm just like, No, thank you. I'm an atheist.

Preston Meyer  1:03:49

So people are a lot more aggressive in their evangelism. Yeah.

Katie Dooley  1:03:53

But before I used to just like sit there quietly and take it, and now I'm like, if they are so bold to bring it up to me, why am I not so bold to respond with it? Right. So, anyway, that was a little bit of a digression. You added another small one that I just did about this morning, but I'd like to talk about it.

Preston Meyer  1:04:12

I think the Temple of set is a pretty interesting group. They were founded by Michael Aquino in 1975. So the the Church of Satan had been around for less than 10 years before this group decided to splinter off

Katie Dooley  1:04:27

from is a Satanic cult.

Preston Meyer  1:04:30

I'm not gonna apply the word cult now the danger call sect, they have sectored themselves off of the Church of Satan. And this group actually is more satanist than the other two that

Katie Dooley  1:04:49

we've covered in the stereotypical way we think of Satan, the temple of

Preston Meyer  1:04:53

set don't worship Satan, they worship set Okay, there's a but the, the whole idea of this group is that Satan appeared to the founder in a dream and revealed to him that his name is set. Satan, as we talked at the beginning of the episode is a title set is a name. So, most members of the Temple of set actually don't prefer to be called Satanists. They prefer to be setting nests, which is a little harder to say. But they actually don't worship him the same way Christians worship Jesus or the father, because let's admit there's some diversity in Christianity to they revere him as a leader and as a teacher, as the archetypical philosopher, the free thinker that is opposed to cruel and harsh and demeaning laws. But he is a real figure that exists in reality and is a person to be revered, which is different than the other two groups that we've talked about heaven. All right. So their sacred text is the book of Coming Forth by night. I'll admit I haven't read it. The title is intriguing. Yes. And it's going to be on my reading list. At some point,

Katie Dooley  1:06:38

we there should be a few books that we can get this out. But there should be a few books we tackle together and then do an episode on

Preston Meyer  1:06:45

for sure. All right, so the Temple of set like the Church of Satan is into magic. But the Temple of set doesn't have any prescribed ritual magics. It's more of a Yeah, we acknowledge magic, and you can go and use magic. And we can do it as a group sometimes, but we're not going to prescribe rituals to you. Kind of cool a little bit for you. inherence, are encouraged to celebrate their own birthdays. Yeah, there are Christians who are opposed to this. It's kind of interesting to see some contrast there. But there's actually no other holidays that they're required to observe. It's, you should recognize your own birthday, when we talked about worship months back. It's kind of interesting to me that this is the one thing that you were encouraged to observe. And as we look at how birthdays were considered couple 1000 years ago, that the important birthdays were the birthdays of the gods. And so I feel like that's kind of the feeling that's meant to be attached here is that when you are freed by Satan, or set from the overbearing other religions in the world, as they're thought to be in this group, that you become a God unto yourself?

Katie Dooley  1:08:11

Well, I think that's the common thread with all of these satanist groups is that you should be the center of your world. Absolutely. And I mean, as an atheist, I don't disagree. You may as well enjoy this life if you don't know if there's one coming after. Especially some of those really toxic Christianity's that are Calvinist comes to mind. The Hellfire. Yeah, and really depriving yourself for the promises something better. I guess they believe that there is something better, but I'm kinda right. Let's enjoy this road trip while we're on it. And if there's something better awesome, and if there's not, then we had a hell of a time,

Preston Meyer  1:08:55

right? So the Temple of set actually does teach that there is an afterlife, not one for everybody, not a universal afterlife. But if you achieve apotheosis or deification in this life, then you will move on to an afterlife that is yours. Otherwise, there's nothing you got nothing to worry about. There's you cease to exist when you die. So that's, that's not so bad. If you want to hope for an afterlife, you're going to do what it takes to have an afterlife worth having. And if you're terrible, then you got nothing anyway, which isn't very different from the Jehovah's Witness program, where the truly righteous will be resurrected, and others will simply cease to exist. So not terribly alien, though some aspects of it are not exactly mainstream.

Katie Dooley  1:10:00

So I wrote a couple paragraphs on Satanic Panic this morning. I noticed that yeah, I just thought it was a good way to wrap up all of this because I think a lot of the reasons we got requests, not that I didn't want to ask for it specifically was deeply concerned about Satanists, but I think it comes from truly from the Satanic Panic and link, there are these things to be scared of. So my first point is trigger warning. It's not terrible, but I am going to mention some potentially triggering things. So by potentially, or stay with me, so it is also Satanic Panic is also known as satanic ritual abuse that originated in the 1980s and still continues to some extent today, but it was really popular in the 1980s. I think this is unlike punk and metal were really starting to define themselves find themselves and we're becoming more mainstream and yeah, people were just worried about their kids. So it's basically Satanic Panic is basically that the Satanist groups, ritually abused people, physically and sexually. And then I put a price so do some Chris. I know that I said, but then again, so does the Catholic Church. So this includes everything. And then again, this is just a legend. This is cannibalism, child murder, torture, human sacrifice, etc. And then Katie's commentary so I'm not saying that this doesn't happen, but there's not much evidence for it. There's not much evidence at all for it and I have some notes coming down below. It is not this is not this happens just as much as in Satanism as it does in Christianity. So for every any group

Preston Meyer  1:11:51

that's big enough to have a difference of opinion between people is gonna have some issues. Yeah, child

Katie Dooley  1:11:57

per capita in Satanism in Christianity, I'm sure is about the same that faces some sort of abuse and because Christianity is bigger, probably a lot more kids gonna be that way. Yeah, so don't be locked into Satanists to stir up trouble. There's bigger fish to fry.

Preston Meyer  1:12:20

Yeah, if you've got a community problems, I'm gonna bet against Satanists being the root of that problem.

Katie Dooley  1:12:27

Yeah. And we have to be really careful with Satanic Panic. And this kind of ties into your note that we're gonna get to, but chances are the satanists you know, or have heard of, or have met, don't actually worship Satan. And Satanic Panic is often linked with unfounded conspiracy theory. So we have this Q anon with their pedophile Cabal, this this kind of ties into Satanic Panic, where we think there's this group of evil people doing these things. And

Preston Meyer  1:13:00

what we do know that there's a group of rich people who do terrible things,

Katie Dooley  1:13:03

absolutely. But Satanists, and we like to keep it up to be this. We're looking where they want us to look actually, that we're looking for and that's not the right way to be. Look,

Preston Meyer  1:13:14

it's a bad Cup game and we're losing. Yes. shell game is the word I'm looking for. Most people play with cups anyway, though, so I don't feel like I'm wrong. But I had to use words.

Katie Dooley  1:13:24

We're looking at the wrong cup in the shell game. Sure.

Preston Meyer  1:13:27

There you go.

Katie Dooley  1:13:29

So this is a study I believe it was from 2018, the National Center of on Child Abuse and Neglect conducted a study led by University of California psychologists Gail Goodman. This is a quote from an article, which found that among 12,000, accusations of satanic ritual abuse, there was no evidence for a well organized integrational satanic cult who sexually molested and tortured children. No evidence 12,000 cases of child abuse alleged child abuse. None of them were linked to any organized, satanist group. Although there was convincing evidence of lone perpetrators or couples who say that they involved, that they're involved with saying or use the claim to intimidate victims.

Preston Meyer  1:14:20

I can see them using Satan as an intimidation tool. But

Katie Dooley  1:14:24

I think especially if you're involved with a larger Satanists group, like the Satanic Temple, or the Church of Satan, you're involved in the community and you're not doing weird shit. Like I'm actually thinking of a serial killer case in particular. I don't even know if it's a serial killer case. It was a murder case where some of the stuff happened, but like these are the Jeffrey Dahmer is that killed animals and we're loners as kids. But if you're actively involved in you know, the Satanic Temple is a great example where there's a community and you're doing political activity and community outreach. chillin chances are you're not doing weird shit like this right? reason to not do weird shit like this. Yeah, so that's basically Satanic Panic. I had another note on more on the mysticism of Satan, but I don't know if that's another digression. Go for it. So I just I was thinking about this in my research and on you know how this devil figure comes from Zoroastrianism people are so worried about the Devil and Satan, but there are so many other dark demon deities for both a dark demon deities and other religions that nobody gives a shit about. Right. It's like I said, you know, this person I know all they're a devil worshiper. They're evil only. But what if there isn't Kali? That's evil? Goddess of death and destruction? Yeah. What is there a caller, you don't care if there are Kali worshiper or I'm not going to look up the Zoroastrian guy's name, or a Hades worshiper, or I'm sure there's, I mean, I know there's others. I just can't think of any other names and other religions. But

Preston Meyer  1:16:15

Hades is one that I think is actually really fascinating, and definitely worth bringing up here. Because there's not evil. There's so much Christian baggage thrown on to Greek mythology and cosmology that we've equated Hades with the devil. Yeah, in

Katie Dooley  1:16:35

the Sistine chapel's, that devil is Hades,

Preston Meyer  1:16:39

right? In the Disney movies. Hades is definitely the antagonist in the stories. But if you actually go back and read Greek mythology, these stories, Hades is a victim oftentimes, and not outright evil. He's the guardian of dead spirits, good and evil. That equating him with Lucifer, the devil, Satan of Christianity, makes no sense at all, especially when Zeus goes around raping people all the time. And he's the woman as well in our Disney animated classic. Beloved, Zeus is such a nice guy. And he is meant to resemble what a lot of people like to think of as the God of Christianity. And yet, if you read the stories about him, there's no personality overlap.

Katie Dooley  1:17:41

I think like my point is, if you didn't know about Christianity, you would never worry about devil worshippers. Right? And that's where, you know, we worry about Satanic Panic. Well, it's only because you have the context of Christianity if you're raised atheist or somewhere else in the world where Christianity is not as common. Back to last episode, this is where I, you know, question. religion as a whole is, you know, if you were never exposed to it, then it wouldn't exist. Right? It's like, why are Catholics the only ones who get exorcisms? We're gonna we were just talking about our exorcism episode. We're gonna do it this Halloween. So anyway, we'll talk more about that, then we'll get to us for the long teeth for the future. But I guess October's only a few months away. It's June. But anyway, that was just sort of my my last point after doing all this reading, especially because, you know, I get frustrated when people are like, cool. Satanists are evil, and they're really not. I'm actually super into it. If I had to pick one. Which religion? Yeah, it'd be. I hate you mean, the

Preston Meyer  1:19:02

Satanic Temple. Yeah. I'm okay with that. Thank you. Thank you as a Christian, I'm okay with that for

Katie Dooley  1:19:10

you. We're bridging. We're bridging we're building bridges and bridging gaps with those bridges

Preston Meyer  1:19:20

the concept isn't funny. It's just the way it was.

Katie Dooley  1:19:24

I was going for that. So I guess but then Satan,

Preston Meyer  1:19:28

right. Okay. It's we're gonna pretend this is a two parter from the previous episode to this one. All these people that keep getting accused of being Satan worshippers usually aren't that's that's the thesis I want you to take away from this. That anybody if they if you ever hear somebody say those Satan worshippers bet against them being right.

Katie Dooley  1:19:56

Actually questioned them a little bit and then Oh, for sure, but no one on our Discord calls Oh

Preston Meyer  1:20:02

yeah, we definitely are in this for the learning more about your weird communities that you're running into

Katie Dooley  1:20:09

well and fostering healthy conversations that promote critical thinking.

Preston Meyer  1:20:15

Exactly.

Katie Dooley  1:20:17

Well, where can you find us?

Preston Meyer  1:20:21

Instagram, Facebook? We're on Discord, but you're gonna have to get our links from our link tree which is on disk on Instagram and Facebook. Definitely email us. What's your email address?

Katie Dooley  1:20:33

Holly watermelon [email protected]

Preston Meyer  1:20:36

Perfect. A little bit.

Katie Dooley  1:20:40

And if you're liking our episodes, please think about sharing with a friend or family

Preston Meyer  1:20:43

member. Definitely check out our merch. Oh, yeah,

Katie Dooley  1:20:47

that's launching. Yeah,

Preston Meyer  1:20:49

we're just this month we've launched our

Katie Dooley  1:20:53

Spreadshirt store. And it's 15% off for two weeks guys. So from the launch of this episode to our next episode released 15% off your purchase, so we'd love to see your pictures sporting our merch.

Preston Meyer  1:21:07

Thank you so much for joining us on this wonderful exploration of say Ted

Atheism and agnosticism can sound like scary words. 

These two concepts are often misunderstood as something more nefarious than they actually are. There is a misconception that they worship Satan, or that they hate God. They don’t believe that any god exists at all.

In this episode, we discuss some famous atheists, like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Ricky Gervais. 

We also chat about the discrimination that still exists for atheists and how some religious people feel their faith is under attack. Remember, the burden of proof is on the believer. 

In addition to atheism, we chat about agnosticism (or don’t-know-ism). Perhaps there is a god, but the human brain can’t even comprehend it. Agnostics are often willing to believe in a greater power, but hesitant to believe in specific truth claims that we see in organized religion. 

Secularism and humanism are also closely linked to atheism. Secularism is the removal of religion from decision-making. Religious secularists do exist, however, because Jesus said to love your neighbour!

Humanism is a people-first belief system that affirms human freedom and progress. Humanism dates back to 1500 BCE and it removes the excuse of “god isn’t helping”. Humanists generally do not accept any supernatural beliefs, religious or otherwise.  

Tune in to learn more about these belief (or lack of belief) systems!

Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt

Join the Community on Discord

Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram

****

Katie Dooley  00:09

atheist I'm not real. So clearly this episodes, who told you you're not real people on the internet? There was a meme that went out said that atheists don't believe in God, so we shouldn't believe in them. Right? So this episode is not even real.

Preston Meyer  00:32

Okay, there is a linguistic point of view where I can see that what they say, could make sense, even though it's a faulty perspective, you know, of believing in is trusting if you don't trust God, Why should I trust you kind of thing, though, that's not actually socially constructive.

Katie Dooley  00:53

So if you haven't picked up on it yet, we're talking about atheism today. Yay, me.

Preston Meyer  01:00

Hi, I'm Preston, I. Welcome to the holy watermelon podcast.

Katie Dooley  01:06

I finally get some representation up in here.

Preston Meyer  01:09

Right.

Katie Dooley  01:12

Yeah, so we're talking about atheism, and agnosticism. And we've thrown in some other buzzwords terms, concepts that are often linked with those to

Preston Meyer  01:23

help fill out this. This episode.

Katie Dooley  01:25

I said before we press record, and I'll say it again now that record has been pressed is I don't know if I'm excited, because representation or concern that this is gonna be a really boring episode, because I think I can sum it up in my very first sentence of notes.

Preston Meyer  01:43

Go for it.

Katie Dooley  01:45

atheists don't believe in a higher power. No, not even Satan. And no, we don't hate God either. Finn,

Preston Meyer  01:54

atheism as a slightly stronger position than that though. It's the ISM of there is no God. Yeah, like it's a declaration to say I'm an atheist is to deny God not just I don't think so. I don't believe that there is it's there isn't?

Katie Dooley  02:12

No, no. But so often, the misconceptions, let's just tackle them right now, the misconception is that either we worship Satan,

Preston Meyer  02:23

which doesn't make any sense. We don't believe

Katie Dooley  02:24

in just like God, we do not believe in Satan. If God doesn't exist, or the others that we hate God and see former point.

Preston Meyer  02:35

It's the fan club that's hated.

Katie Dooley  02:39

Thank God, we don't believe God exists. So, yeah, now that it's clear, that's about that's atheism bi.

Preston Meyer  02:50

But there's so much more to it. There's a lot of things that fit into this discussion of nonbelief. It's, it's a, it's a heavy bag.

Katie Dooley  03:04

It is. Where do we want to start?

Preston Meyer  03:10

That's a great question.

Katie Dooley  03:11

I do like the Steven Roberts quote, is, I think it makes atheism somehow more relatable. Sure. So let's start there. So Stephen F. Roberts said, I contend that we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer God than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible Gods you will understand why I dismiss yours. And lots of other famous atheists speak to that point. We collectively believe in about 3000 different gods. So if you follow the Abrahamic religion, you don't believe in 2999. And I don't believe in 3000. And that's the difference. So we're both very similar in that regard.

Preston Meyer  03:55

Right. As somebody who believes in a lot less than 3000 Gods it makes us a pretty easy, common ground to find.

Katie Dooley  04:14

That's it. What else do you want to say?

Preston Meyer  04:16

What other famous atheists do you have on your sleeve?

Katie Dooley  04:19

I mean, my favorite atheist, famous atheist is Richard Dawkins. He wrote a fantastic book called The God Delusion, which I highly recommend if you're sure he's written other books, too, but The God Delusion is sort of his, you know, Pinnacle as well as doing a ton of speaking and He I forget what exactly he did for a living he was like a professor of biology of science and so he always spoke to evolution and and that just turned into him becoming a speaker on I think, probably originally against creationism and then into atheism. So that's how he got

Preston Meyer  04:58

the natural course. of frustration to

Katie Dooley  05:02

write. I love that. Yeah. So he, I highly recommend The God Delusion. If you are an atheist and have trouble articulating, if you're thinking about atheism or if you have someone in your life that's atheist and you think they're slaughtering goats every weekend, probably.

Preston Meyer  05:17

That's the thing for people who believe in God.

Katie Dooley  05:21

We won't do that we're actually really boring people.

Preston Meyer  05:24

You've got a few more of your favorite atheists listed here and what else you got?

Katie Dooley  05:28

Oh, Christopher Hitchens, another one. I haven't read a ton of Christopher Hitchens. But he and Richard Dawkins and speak all the time. I'm less of a fan of Sam Harris, but he's also the only one left alive.

Preston Meyer  05:42

The only other atheist left.

Katie Dooley  05:46

When it speaks so free, and he's written books on it, he wrote a letter to a Christian nation. He got in a big fight with Ben Affleck on Islam. Oh, yeah. Famously. Apparently, he's turned into quite the far right. Extremist, though. So yeah.

Preston Meyer  06:03

A far right extremists that isn't a Christian.

Katie Dooley  06:05

I know. That's what I said to Brian. Because Brian said, you know, he's, like, gone off the deep end. And I was like, Oh, I didn't know that. And I was like, but he's an atheist. Not and we'll get into this, not that there aren't militant or extreme atheists. But anyway, other famous ones. I mean, it's not really their realm, but Ricky Gervais is a very, he's quite open about being an atheist. And is it pen the tall one of the magician's of pen and one that actually Angela? Angela talks a lot as well about atheism. So they're, they're great to, you know, search on YouTube and watch some of their debates and arguments. So I think those are the ones off the top of my head that I gravitate towards.

Preston Meyer  06:54

Yeah. So a pretty good crew.

Katie Dooley  06:59

Unless you think we're all devil worshippers.

Preston Meyer  07:01

Let's see, this just doesn't make sense. That's an entirely

Katie Dooley  07:05

different topic. Yeah. Richard Dawkins, has used the example of a Thor ism. Kind of a parody religion, but it's basically like not believing in Thor. Right to explain the concept of atheism. So do you believe Thor is real? Most people don't I'm sure there are some Neo Norse

Preston Meyer  07:29

well, and you got a handful of people that are willing to accept that Thor may have been historically real person like the historic Jesus. Absolutely. But to be up there in the clouds. That's an entirely different matter

Katie Dooley  07:41

an entirely different matter. So he uses a Thor ism to basically describe atheism. Oh, you don't believe the oars in the clouds with his hammer? Oh, okay. Cool. Neither do we. He's also we talked last last episode about Russell's teapot he says the Russell's teapot example what sense? You can't disprove that there isn't a teapot floating around space. So ergo, there must be a teapot. Yeah, those are some famous atheists.

Preston Meyer  08:18

There's a handful of atheist organizations that have popped up over the years as well for probably not all the same reason, I think there's probably some diversity in the reason there. You've got groups that feel like there's oppression against atheists. If you're familiar with American politics at all, you will definitely have heard that it's not okay to have a non Christian in the White House. Oh, my goodness.

Katie Dooley  08:45

Well, I was gonna save it for you. Go for it, set it up so nicely. So in a God Delusion, and I wasn't gonna dig through the book to find it. But it is in The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. There was a study done, and they pulled people on, who are like how much they would trust someone in a political position. If they were basically anything other than a white man, heterosexual man. So they like, you know, what, how much would you trust someone if they were a black man, and so little less than white man? How much would you trust them if they were Muslim? Okay, well, a little less than that. Then how much would you trust them? If they're a white woman? Well, a little less than that. And it would go and go and go. The lowest, like trust was atheist. So they would trust and I mean, none of these are problems. But when you think of who historically? No, I mean, like, there's nothing wrong with being gay, right? But when you think of how intolerant people can be the fact that you can be a gay Muslim woman, and you're trusted more in power than someone who just doesn't believe in God. Yeah, it was like mind blowing that I didn't realize that it was still such an issue. And again, not that there's anything wrong with being a gay Muslim woman, but, you know, we see it prevalent Islamophobia and homophobia and sexism constantly. So you think people would, you know, statistically have a problem with those more than an atheist when I think, I don't know what stats are for number of atheists in the world, but I think it's quite predominant. That's crazy to me that people just like lose trust, because someone doesn't believe in a deity.

Preston Meyer  10:43

Employers are forbidden from asking you your religion. But there's an awful lot of people who just know in their community, it's a lot better if you put it on your resume, because then you'll get the job over somebody who doesn't. Yeah. And so some of these atheist collective groups that are organized, are actively fighting this discrimination.

Katie Dooley  11:06

Yeah, I think it was The God Delusion as well talked about, or maybe it was just an interview with Richard Dawkins, but that you're talking about how he's like 95% sure that Barack Obama is an atheist, but he had to put on the Christian rent to get elected and like, I mean, the way Donald Trump behaved I don't. Shit if he's a Christian, he's a terrible Christian.

Preston Meyer  11:29

If he was genuinely a Christian, remember when he actually had military and armed forces come in? Tear gas punch people, so you could take a picture in front of a church, or a church in which he had never set foot according to the priests that worked there? If he was a Christian, I think he would have taken a picture in front of the church he attends.

Katie Dooley  11:51

Right? Yeah. So I think that's a problem to pretend to be religious for political gain. Right. I actually have a great example that I'll loop back to that. I mean, honestly, it's the theists who are like, trying to take God out of school, for sure. And

Preston Meyer  12:11

yet people like to blame that on the influx of foreigners in the country. No. Atheists, my

Katie Dooley  12:16

mom did that once. We call her out. She was like, it's these people coming to our country. And I was like, Mom, they all believe in God. It's the atheists. It's me. If we ate this dreaded day, get out. Yes, so there was I never actually watched this documentary on Netflix about a lady who was like at the forefront of taking the Lord's prayer out of schools, just the death threats that she

Preston Meyer  12:44

gets, and people issue death threats over the dumbest things.

Katie Dooley  12:49

But if there isn't gotten schools, Preston will be slaughtering lambs. I don't know what people what do you if you have a problem with atheists? Can you please email me and tell me what you think we do with our free time? I'm just really curious. No, truly, I'm like, I eat potato chips. And

Preston Meyer  13:09

if you're worried about your children, not receiving a religious education in school, remember that as a parent, it's your job to teach your children anything that they're not learning somewhere else.

Katie Dooley  13:22

Great parenting. Yeah, so atheists kind of sort of organized like Preston said, they're groups with a goal, generally. making things more secular and removing religion from them. So they're more accessible to I'd argue all religions. Yeah, right. When you take the Christian Lord's prayer to school, it's more accessible to people of other religions. And atheists and agnostics. Yeah. And then there's, I mean, there's your online atheists and keyboard warriors. I'm not going to pretend like there aren't extreme atheists and I know people have a problem with them. But there's extreme Christians and extreme Muslims and extreme feminists and

Preston Meyer  14:06

whatever. I don't know if there's an idea out there that somebody hasn't taken to the extreme. Like, there are people fighting over which is the best My Little Pony character, the everything, somebody's taken to the extreme.

Katie Dooley  14:26

And but I say, my note is that Katie says what the nurses think that the majority of atheists just kind of chill on their own with no formal organization. We just exist. Okay, so we're kind of boring.

Preston Meyer  14:44

I don't think you're boring. The reason that we're able to do this show together,

Katie Dooley  14:49

you're the best. How about you tell me why you believers are so antagonistic towards us? Just staring into the best thing, but

Preston Meyer  15:06

it's for some Christians, they feel that they are under attack from atheists. I think an awful lot of Christians realize that they're not personally being attacked, but an awful lot do and Richard Dawkins is kind of one of the more aggressive voices out there too. And being a public figure, it's easy to recognize. And it's weird that atheists, especially the non aggressive ones, who are the majority typically just have a simple request. Evidence.

Katie Dooley  15:47

Yes, like we talked about in parody religions, the burden of proof is on the believer,

Preston Meyer  15:51

right. And it's a lack of compelling evidence makes it hard to adopt a new belief. And the vast majority of Christians have gone into this conversation without providing any compelling evidence to their audience, which is super frustrating. And it's more frustrating when the average believer has found enough evidence to satisfy their own demands for evidence. And yet those little pieces of evidence aren't enough for the people they're talking to. That can be very frustrating, until you recognize the nature of your evidence and realize that it's not really usually something that's easy to share in a way that is going to compel anybody else, as we talked about the deal of witnesses and perspective about perception being reality, in our previous episodes, it's you can't force somebody else to believe when your evidence is not meeting the standards of your audience.

Katie Dooley  17:04

Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, we spent a whole episode on this, but and then how people process information. Right, right. So even if you have evidence that would stack up and I mean, we see this now with fake news and, and not fake news that people are either believing things that aren't real or not believing things that are real. So even if evidence does stack up, you still can't force someone to believe because of how, because of their own biases and how they process information.

Preston Meyer  17:36

Exactly. If new information is at odds with something that you refuse to let go of, then you're definitely not going to accept this new information. And that, more commonly a problem among believers and non believers. I really like so Nietzsche is a famous atheist

Katie Dooley  18:03

like the well. He's like the OG atheist, but not really, they credit like atheist philosophy to him.

Preston Meyer  18:10

He's a pretty great voice in the the early discussions of hate No, there is no God. And one of his great quotes that so many people love to just quote the first three words of a much longer, fully excellent, quote, God is dead. God is dead, and people like to stop there. The rest of the quote is solid gold. Okay? And I'm gonna read it for you.

Katie Dooley  18:39

Now the babies in me as well. No, I'm kidding.

Preston Meyer  18:43

God is dead. God remains dead, and we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned, and has bled to death under our knives? Who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement? What sacred game shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become Gods simply to appear worthy of it? This guy was a great writer.

Katie Dooley  19:23

Wow. One Ring to rule them all

Preston Meyer  19:26

right. And so he used this phrase to express his idea that the Enlightenment had eliminated the possibility of the existence of God. How he got there is rather complicated and I don't feel like the enlightenment does eliminate the possibility of the existence of God. But obviously, people disagree with me and that's okay.

Katie Dooley  19:54

That's why we're here.

Preston Meyer  19:57

But what's really interesting is that in this position that he holds the burden then falls on atheists to deal with the mystery of teaching morality in a vast wasteland of subjectivity and relativity. It's a spectrum now. And we have to figure out how we can proceed in this world. Things were a little simpler when I had a god to say what's right and what's wrong. I mean, that the whole of society agreed upon. And now that's not our reality.

Katie Dooley  20:31

Even without atheism, though, that's our reality with the hundreds of 1000s of denominations of Christianity. Right, right. I mean, within Christianity, some denominations say it's fine to be gay, some say it's not fine to be gay. Some say sex before marriage, it's fine. Some say psycho performer and isn't the worst thing you could possibly do. And those are all moral questions. Yeah. So I think this kind of comes back to our, one of our very early episodes on where morality comes from, and what is I think was or what is religion episode? And, you know, I don't think our morals come from modern religions.

Preston Meyer  21:12

And I somewhat disagree. Well, morality isn't one monolithic things. Morality itself is a spectrum. What even the the average Christian would be considered quite immoral to somebody who holds themselves to the old Mosaic Law where eating shrimp is I think you shouldn't do. So it's, it's a spectrum and there's differing standards in different groups.

Katie Dooley  21:47

Right, but then, ergo, it can come from religion alone, maybe that's what all can feed

Preston Meyer  21:57

comes from people. Yeah.

Katie Dooley  21:59

And feelings. For sure.

Preston Meyer  22:03

Because people have feelings.

Katie Dooley  22:04

Yes. We are emotional beings.

Preston Meyer  22:06

Kind of an awful lot.

Katie Dooley  22:10

Anything anything else you want to ask me as I resident atheist like that? We're pretty boring. I think you just don't believe

Preston Meyer  22:18

I mean, it is it's that simple. That's how much further can you dive into a shallow pool?

Katie Dooley  22:24

Wow. What do you say?

Preston Meyer  22:27

There's more to you than but atheism itself is a shallow pool.

Katie Dooley  22:34

Yeah, so I were thinking you were saying worshippers just remember all that the isms monotheism, one polytheism, many pan everything a nothing at all, nothing at all. Satanism is what you're looking for.

Preston Meyer  22:48

And we'll talk about that another day. So adjacent to atheism, we have agnosticism so where atheism literally means no god is agnosticism is don't know ism. Literally,

Katie Dooley  23:07

hi. I wrote that this is kind

Preston Meyer  23:12

of a cop out. But it's a genuine position that a lot of people know. I know. And I find my

Katie Dooley  23:16

agnostic moments to. So basically, agnostic is the idea that we can't know if there's a God or not fair. And Preston made the note didn't What did I make the know? How can we know anything is real or not? Right? It's it's more that if there is a God, we can't comprehend it? And I've made claims that I generally think there isn't. But if there is something so beyond,

Preston Meyer  23:44

it's more complex than the way people present it. Yeah, absolutely. It's not anything that we have. The vast majority of theists tend to agree with you as well. Especially in the Catholic Catholic dogma, it's God is unknowable. We have little snippets here and there, but you're straight. I'm not even supposed to try for most people. Which is also a position that I don't love.

Katie Dooley  24:12

No, because then what's the point? Right, right. And that's kind of where I tend towards atheism, because if it's so profound, we can't comprehend it, then it then goes back to why are we following these rules? Right, because we could be 100% wrong on these rules. If we can't comprehend a higher power, so I digress in that, but

Preston Meyer  24:34

But yeah, basically, the idea is, typically for most agnostics, the human brain can't comprehend God and that we don't know what's going on. Usually agnostics or people who are are willing to believe generally, in some greater creative force, but are hesitant to believe in specific truth claims, especially the more specific you get the more questionable they can be. And thanks to what we've learned in science, you can make some pretty specific claims that can outright be disproven.

Katie Dooley  25:06

Are these the people who say they're spiritual but not religious.

Preston Meyer  25:10

I think some people who say that they're spiritual, but not religious definitely fall into this category. It's the easiest cop out.

Katie Dooley  25:21

I mean, I think this kind of goes, I've said it before. Sorry, everyone. I said before, I don't think you should be moderate in your beliefs. So if you're going well, we can't know either way, like, have you actually thought about it? And I'm not saying you still won't come to the conclusion of agnosticism. But that's always my first question is have you actually sat down and really rumbled with the possibility one way or the other?

Preston Meyer  25:47

One, there's the struggle of you can, through your own meditation, come to accept the idea that, yeah, there's a God and still be bombarded with all of these different voices saying, this is God or this is God or that's God, and not be able to determine where to go from

Katie Dooley  26:06

there. Absolutely. And I think, I mean, most people avoid that. Yeah, most people don't know anything about a religion other than their own. That's true. Because there's a lot and I, I would be curious, what the average whatever, not whatever, just the average believer and not saying any one in particular, what their thoughts would be exploring other religions genuinely. I mean, I know you've done it, but you've always had an interest in it, but like just some random Joe off the street antonym a book on Sikhism, and see what that does for an awakening and enlightenment. Already, because this goes back to Thor ism. If you can read up on Sikhism and go This is weird. Why would anyone believe this now? I think that's something to reflect on. Okay. Well, here's what I think weird,

Preston Meyer  26:56

right? A lot of people have much more difficulty examining their own beliefs than others. Oh, absolutely. Because I believe it because it's true, which is, of course, an argument that gets nobody anywhere at all. Yeah.

27:16

Shall we the teapot,

Preston Meyer  27:18

right? Take a lot of looking because we don't know where it is. It's somewhere between Earth and Mars, I think is where Russell said it was. Yeah, yeah. It's orbiting. So yeah, it's orbiting the Sun somewhere between Earth and Mars. That's an awful lot of space.

Katie Dooley  27:37

We'll find it one day, I believe. Yeah, so that's basically it. Sounds like you're really this is gonna be boring episode.

Preston Meyer  27:50

Like we're making it not boring. And we're definitely informative.

Katie Dooley  27:55

For sure. And now that everyone knows I don't slaughter goats in my free time. I can breathe a sigh of relief. I wanted to throw two other terms. And in particular, so we're going to chat about secularism and humanism, and I'm mentioning both now because often people who are essentially atheist identify themselves as secular humanists. And so we're gonna dive into those terms. And I think part of that is because of all the nasty connotations that come with atheism is to rename yourself something a little, a little nicer,

Preston Meyer  28:34

make it sound like you have an ism that isn't a negative. All right.

Katie Dooley  28:37

But Preston, I were talking about this and I think you need to just own your label, whatever it is, because then it just leaves room for the bad. Sure. Great. We're talking about this. I know someone who calls himself a Christ follower instead of a Christian because of all the the baggage that now comes with Christianity, but I don't think that helps Christianity.

Preston Meyer  28:59

No, it doesn't.

Katie Dooley  29:01

Or we same thing we use the example of this, you know, when we're snacking before the episode of people who say they believe in equality, but aren't feminists Well, that doesn't help the cause of feminism in that it's been historically that women have been at a disadvantage. So to just be like, Oh, equality, this brush is the idea that women have been historically disadvantaged under the rug. So

Preston Meyer  29:26

there's, there's a good reason for both of these people, even if they're not really on board with critical thought.

Katie Dooley  29:39

Get our garbage feminist, but you can't like and there's garbage atheists

Preston Meyer  29:44

and garbage Christians.

Katie Dooley  29:45

Oh, are we going to address Hitler? Let's do it. Cool. So one of everyone's like, favorite argument against atheism is that Hitler was an atheist. Which is like actually debatable.

Preston Meyer  30:02

He was extremely superstitious and believed a lot of things.

Katie Dooley  30:06

Yes. And he was raised Catholic. And I've just bring he was raised Catholic. And one of the arguments, I sort of thought saw where it was like, it doesn't matter if he's an atheist is that he used his Christianity to gain power. This goes back to was Obama actually Christian was Donald Trump actually, Christian. If you're using religion to gain power doesn't matter if you're an atheist, because you're, you're using religion to be a bad person, right? In the case of Hitler. So that's just for everyone who's gonna be like, sending us messages, those messages that says that Hitler was an atheist.

Preston Meyer  30:44

I'm really uncomfortable with the parallels between Trump and Hitler.

Katie Dooley  30:48

Yeah, that's a different episode.

Preston Meyer  30:51

I'm so glad that he's not President. I don't have strong positive feelings for Biden, but they're not the strong negative feelings I had for Trump.

Katie Dooley  31:01

Yeah, so there's the Hitler. Hitler atheist debate that we so frequently hear. Anyway, back to secularism, secularism, we most commonly hear it as the idea of step by step, the separation of church and state. So you live living in a secular country, it means you're removing religion from decision making is sort of more specifically what the term means,

Preston Meyer  31:29

which is intensely difficult to do when you have an awful lot of Christians in your government.

Katie Dooley  31:35

Well, that was one of my points is that? Well, the United States and even Canada says that they're secular countries, because there are so many religious people in power. There's absolutely religious influence in decision making. Most I'd say probably most prominently is abortion laws, is if it were a secular issue, it would be legal. And then if you're religious, and that's against your religion, then you just don't get an abortion,

Preston Meyer  32:03

which it and it should be that simple.

Katie Dooley  32:06

And same with gay marriage, right?

Preston Meyer  32:08

If you don't believe in gay marriage, don't kill gay married

Katie Dooley  32:12

someone of the same gender. So that would be an example of removing religious decision making from we have an awful

Preston Meyer  32:21

lot of public servants all around the world. Not in any one specific country, though, there's, you're guaranteed to find some specific examples. If you look around yourself, that an awful lot of public servants feel that they're not actually meant to serve the public. They're only there to serve their friends. And that's not okay.

Katie Dooley  32:44

Yes. Yes, you are correct. Yeah. I don't know how you fix that. It's just holding your people in public office accountable.

Preston Meyer  32:53

Yeah. But thanks to the fact that say write the laws,

Katie Dooley  32:58

but they always want to get hired again, remember that

Preston Meyer  33:00

they do, which is why they do just enough nice things right before they call an election.

Katie Dooley  33:06

Which is why we need to hold them accountable throughout their term, which Yeah, I mean, you can I'm not great at and I you should be better at. So you can be. I mean, generally, you're not religious, if you're a secular speaker, you can absolutely be religious and be a secularist is again, the idea that you remove religion from decision making, so you can advocate for public decision making. Obviously, if you're religious, you'd probably make your private decisions based off a religion, but you can advocate for secularism in public spaces.

Preston Meyer  33:38

Absolutely. One of the most important teachings of Jesus, according to Jesus himself, is the need to take care of your neighbors, regardless of any reason why you might not want to, you have to take care of your neighbors. That's a pretty good reason to be a secularist recognize that you have neighbors that don't believe the same things you do, and that you still need to take care of their needs. Yes. And

Katie Dooley  34:03

I guess to expand on that, that people wouldn't be all lacking because of their religious beliefs. Same thing, we think of it in public spheres. But, you know, because you're a different religion, you still have access to same health care and education and opportunities that someone maybe the mainstream faith has, it doesn't matter regardless of your religion, you still have the same job opportunities, whatever, you don't need to be fearing for your life, right or livelihood because you are of a particular faith. Yeah. So you're talking about the US and Canada not being as secular as they claim? And I made a note that says to anyone complaining about Sharia law, you better look in the mirror.

Preston Meyer  34:55

For sure. We have religious laws in in pretty much every English speaking country, I can't speak for the others, but I betcha they're there.

Katie Dooley  35:08

Yeah, I mean, I know Russia and China have had like, militant atheist political programs, which are not good.

Preston Meyer  35:16

And yet they both still discriminate against homosexuals, right, which most people like to mostly blame on Christianity.

Katie Dooley  35:26

And I don't know, I know, the Scandinavian countries are predominantly atheists. So I don't know what their political decision making is like to comment particularly. But yeah, you're right. Any, any of these western countries for sure. Western Hemisphere countries, definitely have religious influence in their public decision making

Preston Meyer  35:46

for sure. I think secularism, as an idea is kind of interesting that in, it's a western idea, it's like religion, which the word exists as a western idea, as something that's separate from the mundane. We talked about in Shintoism, how the state of Japan made Buddhism, the state religion, even though everybody was a Shinto list, because they didn't see Shinto as a religion, meaning that there was no secularism, because they didn't distinguish between the two.

Katie Dooley  36:29

Because it was so ingrained, yeah, I wonder if that's because we're younger countries, maybe. Right, because we had our indigenous peoples here. And then we were more diversity of belief. That's what I mean by that, is because we're younger countries were colonized and, you know, basically populate through immigration. Whereas if you look at, you know, I think like Iceland, in particular, where everyone's still blond and blue eyed because they haven't had those levels of immigration, and it's such an ancient country, you wouldn't, you're in Japan to right where you wouldn't necessarily, that's why people in Iceland still believe in ours, because they haven't had the same outside influences, as, again, Canada, United States was, were built entirely on outside influences. Probably unfortunately,

Preston Meyer  37:19

I think it's really nifty that you picked Iceland as your example, that they have changed so little that when they first were colonized, Norse and Icelandic were the same language. And the people of Norway continued to evolve and their language continued to evolve to the point that they're not the same language, but there's some mutual intelligibility there, but the Icelandic language of today is the same as Norris was 1000 and a half years ago. That's why Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Katie Dooley  37:52

Someone a lady from Iceland was telling me about how they name themselves is that you? You take like, so you take your if you're a boy, you take your dad's first name is your last name. And if you're a girl, you take your mom's first name as your last name, so no one has the same last name and a family. But because she grew up in Canada, she has her dad's. Like, it's like her grandpa's first name as her last name. Because we go, we're patriarchal and how we name so she's moved since moved back to Iceland. And everyone's like, Why is this here tonight? That doesn't make any sense because it's son of she her name is son of when it shouldn't be daughter. Anyway,

Preston Meyer  38:38

yeah, that's, that's weird. And that's a easy enough fix. I don't know of any courts, that straight up won't allow you to change your name.

Katie Dooley  38:47

No, but she was born and raised in Canada and intends to come back to Canada. It's just a funny cultural,

Preston Meyer  38:52

it's weird that her parents didn't just stick with the former nomenclature, because you can write whatever you want on the birth certificate, or when a registered kid odd and interesting things. And so the secularists that we have here in the West, are trying to I want to say split, but I want you to understand that I'm not trying to say break. There, there needs to be a division between religious life and secular life, there needs to be a lack of specific religious doctrine in government. When we have such a diverse plurality of people here,

Katie Dooley  39:41

I think part of the problem and this is just off the top of my head is that we also live in such an individualistic society really do us it's even worse than Canada, where we put the individual in ahead of the group. So it's really hard to think of this as maybe where secularism is kind of scary, because we want what's best For us not what's best for everyone when secularism absolutely is best for everyone because it encompasses nothing and therefore, therefore everyone can take part whereas to encompass everything would be very difficult and to encompass one or two is unfair.

Preston Meyer  40:17

It's so weird to me how many people are opposed to the idea of not having dogma forced down their throats? I don't get it.

Katie Dooley  40:33

It's because the people who they would be the ones doing the fourth thing,

Preston Meyer  40:38

and that is the goal that people who seek out power are the people that you don't want to have power.

Katie Dooley  40:48

Right are the people who are like okay without being forced down their throats, because their dogma and they want to force it on someone else come back to my Sharia law comment is like, well, you know, any, you see at any one go on Facebook and told me like, well, we don't want Sharia law. It's like, well, we have pretty, you know, Christian law here. Yeah. So what's wrong with Sharia law? Right? You don't understand Sharia law? B, and B, how is it so different than what we have now? Right? So because it's not their, their version being shoved down the throats, they want their version? So someone else's version instead of having no version, which is secularism. I hope that was a great explanation slash analogy.

Preston Meyer  41:34

So George Holyoke, the guy who coined the word secularism, back in 1851, argued that secularism is not an argument against Christianity. It is one independent of it. It does not question the pretentions of Christianity, it advances others. Secularism does not say there is no light or guidance elsewhere, but maintains that there is light and guidance in secular truth, whose conditions and sanctions exist independently, and act forever. secular knowledge is manifestly that kind of knowledge which is founded in this life, which relates to the conduct of this life conduces to the welfare of this life, and is capable of being tested by the experience of this life. I like that packet of it. I mean, it's a lot of things, but basically, it's to simplify it, it's we worry about the things that we can see in this life to govern this life, that it's not okay to govern somebody else based on something that they don't believe in. And that can also get a little bit complicated if you are trying to convince somebody that murder is bad if they don't believe in bad, but I think most people can understand that there is desirable and undesirable even if there's different standards on that.

Katie Dooley  43:08

Or a spectrum of standards. Absolutely. Take a shot every time we say the word spectrum.

Preston Meyer  43:17

It's a spectrum. So of course, there's, like we said before, there's extremes and everything. You have hard secularists and soft secularists. Oh, right. And so these two categories are actually more similar than they are different. Hard secularism considers religious propositions to be epistemology, epistemologically illegitimate, they seek to deny them as much as possible. Whereas soft secularism is really simple, just all about tolerance and liberalism. Which isn't the big l these are the Liberals lib tard. It's little L liberalism of we should be free to make our choices and take care. Yeah, yeah.

Katie Dooley  44:13

All right. So often, secularism is paired with human it's something like so people identify themselves as secular humanists or you can just be a humanist and I know humanist chaplains exist. So there is some organization under humanism. But again, it's not, I guess, I mean, anything could be a religion, but there's no deity in humanism,

Preston Meyer  44:40

but depends on how you define deity. See our former episodes.

Katie Dooley  44:47

Humanism is a philosophical term that focuses on human agency and intelligence as the best way to progress. So it's a human first philosophy V. Again, religion perhaps?

Preston Meyer  45:03

Yeah, it's, it's been the word humanism has been used in a few different ways by a few different groups over the years. But generally, each of the different movements agree on the importance of affirming human freedom and progress.

Katie Dooley  45:17

Humanism goes, you can do it, no, there's just so much happening. Humanism actually goes as far back as the 1500s. And by 1500s, I mean 1500 BCE

Preston Meyer  45:33

1000s of years old, years old, 100

Katie Dooley  45:36

talking about humanism. And so Confucianism is one that is kind of a humanist philosophy for sure puts Confucius, Confucius, Confucius at the center of it. And then even the Rigveda talks about humans and human agency and things like that. So it's a very old term, but it has become I would definitely say more popular as we try to navigate this atheistic spectrum.

Preston Meyer  46:04

And of course, the because of these ideas, the burden of human improvement falls on us individually and societally so that we can rely on each other and science and not on excuses of Oh, God isn't helping us.

Katie Dooley  46:25

Yeah, I think that's really important. I even see things and I'd be curious, your thoughts on? You know, when people say, well, prayer doesn't work unless you do like so then. If you just do the work, then why do you need prayer? I mean,

Preston Meyer  46:42

there's, do you want an answer to this question?

Katie Dooley  46:47

Is it for this episode, I want to get fits

Preston Meyer  46:49

into this.

Katie Dooley  46:51

That's one thing I you know, seeing where, you know, it's great to pray, but you need to do the work. It's like, well, then stay away.

Preston Meyer  47:00

Absolutely. Well, even even in the Bible, we are told Yeah, go on, pray, and then get up and work.

Katie Dooley  47:09

So then in my world prayer, just like superfluous Sure,

Preston Meyer  47:13

I'm okay with you currently holding that position. Cuz I might have an explanation for you on another day, or next finds utility in prayer, whether or not it actually does the trick.

Katie Dooley  47:29

Interesting. We can do our episode on prayer. Another important note, and I think this is secular humanism, in particular, rejects anything supernatural. So not just religion, but also sort of sciences, anything metaphysical. I have any type of woowoo here. So I could easily identify as a secular humanist. In addition to an atheist. I actually would separate those, I would say I'm an atheist and a secular humanist, personally, but like, some people pick one or the other. But like, like that, it's it's definitely more all encompassing. So you have a note about, oh, yeah, stick humanists.

Preston Meyer  48:17

Yes, there are theistic humanists. There's been plenty of philosophers, especially through the Enlightenment who kind of made the idea popular again, I guess. And there was one fella, and we'll talk more about him later. His name is Thomas Moore. He was sainted by the Catholic Church. He was knighted in England.

Katie Dooley  48:40

See one of these saints you think shouldn't be a saint. i There's no

Preston Meyer  48:44

reason in my mind that he should ever have been sainted. But here we are. Here we are. He was an English fella. And he was a Catholic in a time where it was not so great to be Catholic by the end of his life anyway. He made it his life's mission to prevent the publication of the Bible. He was a Catholic who was sainted. He prevented the publication of the Bible to the point of burning people's lives and livelihoods. But he was also a humanists. Or so his, any of these words, his literature affirms a humanist philosophy. Of course, if you were on the the opposite side of him in literally any battlefield, you were going to have a bad day. Luckily, more modern humanists don't follow his example.

Katie Dooley  49:54

Or otherwise.

Preston Meyer  49:56

Yeah. Right, but he's my Favorite to bring up as a famous theistic humanist? Garbage because he's garbage. The best humanists are definitely secular and typically non theistic or atheistic.

Katie Dooley  50:17

Thank you for the compliment or like the best at being

Preston Meyer  50:20

a human just the best of being human.

Katie Dooley  50:22

Okay? I just thought even like the best people are like, thank you.

Preston Meyer  50:29

And there's also following that line of religious humanists, there are people who treat humanism as their religion, like you mentioned, humanist chaplains, where it's, you have a ministry, this is your life, kind of thing

Katie Dooley  50:44

I mentioned, why I left, why stayed in our epistemology episode, which I think was two or three episodes ago now. And the son that left he became a human humanist chaplain. Because he like the, I guess, like the camaraderie and community that religion gives without having a god to believe in or theology or pretend you are, and just something that could be more open to more people. And I don't think he would have turned away anyone who was religious, it just wasn't focused on a deity or theology, like you said, but more on community and volunteerism. And so,

Preston Meyer  51:24

yeah, there's, there's a bunch of humanist groups. And there's even an international humanist and ethical union that kind of ties a lot of these groups together for larger meetings and conferences and whatnot. And they have an official statement on how humanism is defined. That says, humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values. In the spirit of reason, and free inquiry, through human capabilities, it is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality.

Katie Dooley  52:19

I would say you're probably a theistic humanist, you don't claim to fall into that definition because of your religious beliefs. But I think you're definitely on the let's make a humane world and build ethics that our company can uncover all encompassing to all people. I would call you, a secular Christian humanists. I'm pretty comfortable with that. Nice. High five.

Preston Meyer  52:47

Yeah. Humanism is it's a weird thing to see somebody speak out against? I haven't seen it yet. But I've suspect that as I continue looking through the world, I might I don't

Katie Dooley  53:06

know if anyone would speak out against it. But I definitely think there are people who aren't humanists. Oh, yeah, I don't think I wouldn't be like, I disagree with that. But there's people who think, Well, God, God will provide right and that would be against that would be not a humanist perspective. But I can't see anyone be liking your humanists Do you must be evil. But yeah, there's definitely people who don't prescribe to it because of their faith or

Preston Meyer  53:33

see the reason I expect to hear somebody revile humanism is there's a handful of spots in the Bible where it says, Don't trust in the arm of flesh, only trust in God. And so the people who prefer to quote that over the more helpful parts of the Bible, are more likely to be anti humanist. Yeah,

Katie Dooley  53:54

and I mean, if you're one of those people who also believe that this is the hell, this is the worst and everything after will be better,

Preston Meyer  54:02

they'll probably be pretty opposed to this movement as well. So in theory, again, I haven't actually found anybody to reach out humanism yet, but if you are,

Katie Dooley  54:11

please send me an email. Any final thought fun all this nonbelief

Preston Meyer  54:20

it ties in with our previous episode on epistemology a few? Well, several episodes ago now I guess, that belief is kind of a complex thing. And if you want to hate somebody for not believing in a thing that you fail to provide evidence for. That's on you.

Katie Dooley  54:43

Also add and when you don't believe in, here's the grocery list of religions and deities. Yeah, for so for someone for not believing in yours. That's

Preston Meyer  54:53

also very nice. You have to acknowledge the validity of their position. Right, and there's loads of atheists It's who kind of suck. But there's an awful lot more atheists that are perfectly fine people as good as any Christian or Buddhist or Muslim or Jew.

Katie Dooley  55:10

I also don't think people, especially if they're on the other side, unbeliever, I also don't think, again, just thinking to like my social media world, people don't realize how many atheists are in their world,

Preston Meyer  55:22

right? If an awful lot of people just don't talk about religion, which makes it hard to tell,

Katie Dooley  55:28

and I think people often assume that, again, especially, I hate to say it, but you know, the average Canadian white person, oh, they're probably Christian. Right? So instead of going, well, maybe they don't believe me, they believe in something entirely different. I think people just sort of project their beliefs on people that look look like them specific. Absolutely. And so when I've seen the odd anti theist comment on my Facebook feed, I'm like, do not realize that there's a lot of us. Right, and we're like your friends and neighbors.

Preston Meyer  56:04

I have enough differences with people in my own religious community that, that I certainly can't go around out in public and imagine that everyone thinks the same as I do.

Katie Dooley  56:17

Cool. Well, I just want to reiterate that we don't believe in Satan. And we don't hate God. Because there is no God. Or Satan. Yeah. That's all I got.

Preston Meyer  56:32

Yeah. Oh,

Katie Dooley  56:33

we have we have to ship things. Ship promo.

Preston Meyer  56:39

We definitely have to promote checkout or Facebook or Instagram. Feel free to email us. What's our email address, Katie,

Katie Dooley  56:46

holy watermelon [email protected].

Preston Meyer  56:49

And on our social media, you can find links to our Discord server where we try to have great conversations. And I think that's about it right now.

Katie Dooley  57:02

Yeah, social media. Oh, leave us a review on on Apple podcasts. That'd be really great.

Preston Meyer  57:08

Thank you so much for joining us. Peace be with you.

In this episode, we talk about Parody Religions! These are religions based on pop culture or as a commentary on religion. 

If you've ever been curious about Dudeism, the Invisible Pink Unicorn or the Flying Spaghetti Monster and his noodly appendages, then this is the episode for you.

Religious parody holds an important place in society, whether you are a diehard fan of Star Wars, or want people to think more critically about the role of religion in society.

Even though they may seem a bit "out there", parody religions share many similarities with the world's major religions. And who are we to say that they aren't true believers? Should they be taken as seriously as mainstream religions? 

We discuss all this and more on this fan-requested episode of the Holy Watermelon Podcast!

Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt

Join the Community on Discord

Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram

Katie Dooley  00:00

Hi Preston!

Preston Meyer  00:12

Hi, Katie.

Katie Dooley  00:12

How are you?

Preston Meyer  00:13

I'm doing great. How about you?

Katie Dooley  00:15

I'm snazzy. I'm excited for today's episode

Preston Meyer  00:21

of the... 

Both Hosts  00:21

Holy watermelon podcast.

Katie Dooley  00:26

We've been on a spiritual journey pun intended. We've done all the world's religions, major religions. We talked much about belief, and why people believe the things they believe which there was no answer to that question so...

Preston Meyer  00:46

We've examined what a god is, what religion really is, and may or may not be, which of course, is still way too nebulous and tricky.

Katie Dooley  00:56

We got into cults. Last episode. Now, I think we're ready for the real hard-hitting content.

Preston Meyer  01:08

Oh, I'm ready for it. In fact, there's a nifty article that I want to tell you about. Before we get into-the most read article on explorefaith.org in 2005, written by John M. Sweeney, well-respected Catholic author. Would you guess what his article was on?

Katie Dooley  01:33

Probably Catholicism. Was there a pope thing happening then?

Preston Meyer  01:40

You know, I don't remember.

Katie Dooley  01:43

Maybe Benedict in 2005. You know what? That sounds close to right.

Preston Meyer  01:44

I was in high school when Benedict came in. Am I right? Oh, I'd have to google that.

Katie Dooley  01:47

I'm clearly not right.

Preston Meyer  01:55

I feel like Benedict was new in office in 2005. Yeah. So that's a fair guess I like it. No. In fact, Sweeney's most popular article on explorefaith.org in 2005, was on Jedism. The Jedi from Star Wars.

Katie Dooley  02:17

You're not just saying Judaism wrong? That's not how it's said. We've been over this one.

Preston Meyer  02:28

Now I'm just thinking of Spaceballs. She doesn't look Druish.

Katie Dooley  02:37

That's a good sneak peek of our episode. So first, I want to say thank you to our listener, Tim, for inspiring this episode. He specifically wanted us to talk about the Church of the Latter DayzDude, or more commonly known as Dudeism. And we figured we couldn't talk for a whole hour about The Big Lebowski, so we have put together a whole episode of parody religions for you today. Thanks, Tim!

Preston Meyer  03:07

Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Thanks for that suggestion. And we've found some great material to surround this whole topic. And if you remember from our episode, talking is hard for some reason. Right, amateurs. If you remember from our episode about religion, and what is religion, you'll remember it's way too hard to define. So you'll see some parts of these religions that will look an awful lot like their legitimate religions.

Katie Dooley  03:41

And who are we to say they're not legitimate? This is part of the big questions we'll be getting into today. But let's start with religious parody and religious satire at sort of a high level. And then we'll get into some of the fun specific ones like Jedism and Dudeism.

Preston Meyer  04:00

For sure. All right, you did a little bit of research on what most school teachers will tell you not to do. But it looks really good. And it's worded really well what do you got?

Katie Dooley  04:10

I feel accused. He means I went to Wikipedia.

Preston Meyer  04:21

Wikipedia is not a source in itself, but it is an excellent tool for research. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Katie Dooley  04:29

So basically, Wikipedia defines a parody religion or mock religion as something that challenges conventional or mainstream religious belief. It can parody several religions or it can...

Preston Meyer  04:51

Or it can be a little more focused.

Katie Dooley  04:54

I was gonna say or it could not be based off of any particular religion at all.

Preston Meyer  04:58

It could just be the idea of religion in general.

Katie Dooley  05:02

Yeah, I was gonna say commentary on religion. So that is, what a parody religion is, but as Preston mentioned, there are, this is where it's so convoluted there are beliefs and practices that look more conventionally religious, and then how do you separate someone who's perhaps just taking the piss, from someone who legitimately believes? And how can you tell, right? As per our belief episode, you can't tell someone that they're just, if they're telling you that they genuinely believe in Jedism, who are you to say that they're not or that they're wrong, or that it's a joke religion, this becomes convoluted.

Preston Meyer  05:55

It's tricky to say you have a place to tell them that their religion that is obviously new and constructed on popular culture is nonsense, and that they're wrong.

Katie Dooley  06:08

When yours was, but just 2000 years ago. I said it, I said what I said!

Preston Meyer  06:15

You can't tell somebody that they don't get to believe a thing. If their experience tells them that they do.

Katie Dooley  06:25

Well, and we'll get we'll touch on proof of burden today. And touch on proof of burden even more next episode... teaser! Yeah, we'll talk about proof of burden today in because that's a big part of parody religion, I think. And I have some favorites for that very reason. As an atheist, of course, so there's also religious satire, and if you've been on our Discord, I've been calling this episode satirical religions and satire is not quite the right term for it. But religious satire is a, it's a thing. And this feels as good of an episode as I need to bring it up.

Preston Meyer  07:08

For sure. And a little bit, like very similar, but slightly distinct from

Katie Dooley  07:15

Satire/parody let's all go back to high school English class.

Preston Meyer  07:19

A little bit different, but still connected, is the satire, which targets clergy, which doesn't show up a whole lot in parody religions, but you'll definitely see loads of this phenomenon. If you follow a handful of our favorite comedians, maybe.

Katie Dooley  07:41

And even you'll see it in political cartoons.

Preston Meyer  07:44

Yeah and so that that satire, which targets the clergy is definitely more of a political satire than a religious satire because you're targeting a person in a position of authority rather than the beliefs of the group.

Katie Dooley  07:59

So my understanding and jump in please, is that the difference between a parody religion is so a parody religion is I don't want to say entirely new ideas, because we know that's wrong, but it's its own entity, whereas religious satire is critiquing an existing religion in a hilarious way. And I honestly didn't even think about this example until I was reading up on it, but Life of Brian, and even to some extent, Monty Python, the Holy Grail is a great example of religious satire, where they essentially make fun of the life of Jesus.

Preston Meyer  08:36

I'm not the Messiah, He is the Messiah.

Katie Dooley  08:42

And this comes up more with satirical religions and with parody religions, but it's this idea of freedom of speech and how much we're allowed to have a commentary, especially this idea of making fun of a religion, how, what level is appropriate. I think you know, from our podcast, where we stand on that, I don't actually think religious satire is a bad thing.

Preston Meyer  09:12

I think it's healthy to be able to criticize both people for their actions, and the thoughts that they are willing to hurt others to protect. For sure.

Katie Dooley  09:29

And I also think, like, if you're going to be critiquing anything, especially something so serious, and where people can get hurt, why not do it with humor. It just makes it that much more comfortable.

Preston Meyer  09:42

It makes it more palatable too

Katie Dooley  09:44

Right? if you can laugh at yourself or your group or whatever, or even you know, at others, then that's a lot better than fighting each other, I think. That's my thought on religious satire. I think that's probably all we'll touch on it today.

Preston Meyer  10:04

Yeah. All right. So, as I alluded to in episodes past, and the beginning of this episode just a little bit, there's some big questions that I want to keep in mind as we look at these religious parodies and weird pseudo-religions, parareligions. Sure, why not? I like it. So, the real question, the big question with sub questions is, is it fair to call them religions all? Remember, we don't have one solid, everybody agrees on this definition of religion. So things get tricky already.

Katie Dooley  10:49

I, not having dived into the conversation yet.

Preston Meyer  10:58

Your verb usage.... awful.

Katie Dooley  11:02

Not having gotten into the meat of the conversation, my guess is that it's a spectrum. Spectrum. I think I said that too quietly spectrum, spectrum!

Preston Meyer  11:14

So some ideas that can help us with this question. Again, pretty subjective and tricky, but we're gonna go ahead anyway. Number one, are they real systems of deeply held beliefs. Some people genuinely deeply hold that Jesus is their Savior, or that Muhammad is the last prophet that there ever can be. And there's some similar tiered values we're going to see in some of these groups. There's also the question of belief that is hugely important to those people who like to undermine the claims of some of these groups, that they can only be joke religions, and should never be taken seriously. But does religion bear the prerequisite of full dogmatic belief in each of its doctrines? What about those people who belong to various churches that happen to doubt one or many of their doctrines, or are straight up skeptical of the whole thing, but still belong to the community? So maybe you don't have a connection to the Force, but you still identify as a Jedi? Who gets to tell you you're not a Jedi?

Katie Dooley  12:39

Nobody, Preston, nobody. I almost want to answer one of your questions now. I don't know if I, if I'm jumping the gun.

Preston Meyer  12:52

Go for it, are you going broadly? Are you thinking of a specific religion?

Katie Dooley  12:55

I can speak quite broadly. Preston has mentioned like how deeply do some people believe and of course, I've already said it, take a shot. It's a spectrum. So I'm sure for each of these parody religions that we're about to talk about. There are people who hold this deeply as a belief. 7 billion people, of course, there's someone who really, really really truly believes in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, for example. But that being said, and Pastafarians are one of them, that they're parody religions as a critique of religion. So there's I'll point them out when we get to them, that there are these set of parody religions, we're going to talk about where the whole idea is that believing in a higher power can't be proven. So I would say in that group, which like I said, I'll point out, those beliefs are less deeply held because it's just a critique of.

Preston Meyer  13:57

Yes, some of the groups we're going to look at are definitely just exercises looking at Russell's Teapot, and others are actual committed philosophies.

Katie Dooley  14:09

Let's do the Russell's Teapot at the end, we'll do actual philosophy. I didn't separate them that way in the notes, but now I'm like, that would probably be a good way to do it. We're gonna... we're improvising, guys.

Preston Meyer  14:20

All right now according to the request that launched this whole idea, we're going to start with the Church of the Latter Day Dude

Katie Dooley  14:27

I love that name. Church the Latter Day Dude. Or Dudeism.

Preston Meyer  14:33

Right. So it's mostly inspired by the film The Big Lebowski.

Katie Dooley  14:38

Where he is called The Dude.

Preston Meyer  14:43

Good ol' Jeff Bridges, super chill most of the time.

Katie Dooley  14:48

And he's not a Dudeist himself, but he thinks it's pretty rad that dudeism exists.

Preston Meyer  14:54

Wouldn't you? If you did a movie and everyone is like we're starting a religion based off of your portrayal of this character in this movie, you'd be flattered too.

Katie Dooley  15:04

You know what? I didn't like The Big Lebowski.

Preston Meyer  15:09

Oh the movies not that good.

Katie Dooley  15:11

I feel like that's a really... I watched it with your wife, probably 10 years ago. 

Preston Meyer  15:15

She hates it.

Katie Dooley  15:16

We both hated it. So, I don't want to digress too much, but

Preston Meyer  15:21

I had to watch it without her.

Katie Dooley  15:24

So Preston's wife and I went to school together. And we had a school project that was themed on The Big Lebowski, and so that, it sounds cool. But the teacher made us watch The Big Lebowski in class. And this is University, right, like two free classes of University for a movie, like that's elementary school stuff. And we just, we couldn't stand it. Sorry, probably to Tim. I assume you like The Big Lebowski if you're into Dudeism, and anyone else who's listening, but we're gonna cover it for you. 

Preston Meyer  16:02

I got a side thought. I just realized this. So I'm sharing this with everybody all at the same time, through this wonderful medium of the podcast where none of this is actually contemporaneous. So I just realized just now, The Big Lebowski is basically the same thing as John Wick just replaced the dog with the carpet. And John Wick got several sequels.

Katie Dooley  16:40

I don't know what he's talking about.

Preston Meyer  16:44

Somebody out there in radio land knows what John Wick is.

Katie Dooley  16:47

No I know, somebody's gonna like hop on our Discord and be like, Katie, why don't you know what this is? Here's a link, but I don't know what you're talking about. But I'm sure it's a great analogy I'm really proud of you.

Preston Meyer  16:56

For those who know, they'll be like, oh, yeah, or maybe they'll disagree with me. And we can chat it up on our Discord server

Katie Dooley  17:03

Which we're clearly plugging. All right. Church of the Latter Day Dude is based off The Big Lebowski, as you said. It's also has some tenants of Taoism in it, which we didn't spend an episode on Taoism, but it's similar to Shintoism. A little bit like Buddhism, it's very...

Preston Meyer  17:23

It's more complicated than Shintoism. But similar in a lot of ways.

Katie Dooley  17:29

It's very reflective,  and very meditative. So yeah, some, maybe we'll do an episode on Taoism one day, but it's very similar to Buddhism or Shintoism. In that you are trying to elevate yourself and remove yourself from the everyday cares and sufferings of the world.

Preston Meyer  17:56

It's kind of interesting that even though this is a new religion based on a pop culture phenomenon, the practitioners of Dudeism tend to take it pretty seriously.

Katie Dooley  18:07

This is one of those ones where, yeah, people take it very seriously. There's lots of books on it and lots of like doctrinal readings. They're all like, I mean, they're all very modern. In comparison, The Big Lebowski is fairly new compared to you know, the Bible.

Preston Meyer  18:27

For sure. That comparison, yeah.

Katie Dooley  18:33

So Dudeists have a doctrine that will actually look quite similar to the Buddhist doctrine. I actually saw a comparison side by side on life is suffering, you can overcome suffering. And what's the third point I'm missing?

Preston Meyer  18:54

Wasn't the third point, the escape is nirvana. Yeah and so there's those three same questions are asked relative to Dudeism, and what are those answers?

Katie Dooley  19:09

Dudeism is trying to liberate us from thinking that's too uptight. Life is suffering. Dudeism is trying to bring us to the state of just taking it easy, man. And how do we get to this state is by abiding. The Dude abides. So there's the mirror that's in Buddhism,

Preston Meyer  19:35

Right? It's nice and simple. Just relax. Let it be. It's very zen. That's pretty great. There's there's a lot of philosophies that have been picked through to pick out the most easy going bits to make this philosophy.

Katie Dooley  19:58

Yeah, their High Holy Day is March 6 is the Day of the Dude. It celebrates the release of The Big Lebowski in theatres.

Preston Meyer  20:14

If you're gonna pick any day, why not that?

Katie Dooley  20:16

I mean, how would you pick that?

Preston Meyer  20:20

All right. And even you can be ordained as a Dudeist Priest. There's about 600,000 in the world. 

Katie Dooley  20:30

That's a very high number

Preston Meyer  20:32

Right? Like, that's, that's alarming. That's more than half a million.

Katie Dooley  20:37

Yes. 600,000 is more than 500,000. Very good.

Preston Meyer  20:41

But I just like, when the word million is useful. It helps to actually use it to understand scale. 600,000, just like this, that's a number you stop paying attention how big it is? More than half a million.

Katie Dooley  20:54

Yes. So because you can be an ordained do this. I think it's more common in the States. Canada has stricter laws on who can perform marriages than the States, but you can perform marriages as a Dudeist Priest.

Preston Meyer  21:13

Yeah, I think in Canada, it's just left up to the province, the provincial governments and where we are, those restrictions are quite tight.

Katie Dooley  21:23

Yeah. So I don't remember if it was Dudeism or Pastafarianism, where there have been some serious debates on like, who can perform like, is it alright, to ordain a Dudeist to perform a marriage? Like, is it actually a religious thing?

Preston Meyer  21:40

That's a great question that I think was related to the Spaghetti Monster. I think I actually have that in our notes. 

Katie Dooley  21:50

Maybe that's what I'm thinking. Yeah. Cool. That's Dudeism. The dude abides.

Preston Meyer  21:55

The Dude abides. Nice and simple.

Katie Dooley  21:59

The Church of SubGenius. I don't think that's a Russell's Teapot is it? 

Preston Meyer  22:04

I don't think it is. 

Katie Dooley  22:05

It's pretty out there to be...

Preston Meyer  22:08

Yeah. The Church of the SubGenius is a really odd group. I couldn't really find lots of information that would be useful or interesting for this, but I did find a little bit.

Katie Dooley  22:24

It's a very like sci-fi based religion, not quite the it's obviously not like a Scientology. I don't think it has any cult tendencies. But it does have this weird scientific basis that I'll let Preston get into.

Preston Meyer  22:41

So the Church of the SubGenius was founded in the 1970s. Around this fictional character, I need to emphasize this person never existed

Katie Dooley  22:53

When I looked it up, I thought he existed. So yes, emphasize this.

Preston Meyer  22:58

So J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, Bob is always written with quotation marks around it. No exceptions, J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, is a fictional salesman back in the 50s. It is claimed that while messing around with the TV, he received a vision from JHVH-1 that spelled J-H-V-H dash, the numeral one. Which sounds suspicious already, but that's not enough grounds to dismiss a thing. And the story within this Church of the SubGenius is that Bob's started the church back in 1953. Remember, the church was actually founded in the 70s.

Katie Dooley  23:56

I mean, I like that, a different origin story,

Preston Meyer  23:59

Right? It's totally fine to lie about your history. I mean, if you look at a lot of scholarly works, looking at Christianity, loads of people say that Jesus was a collective invention of his apostles, which is tricky and unpopular, but it's a position that a lot of people hold to. And so the number one founder of this group, there's there's a few names that are important to this group, but the fella named Drummond which is an assumed name, not his name from birth. Yeah, nobody's using the real names. Drummond was contacted by this "Bob" salesman, J.R. "Bob" Dobbs telepathically in 1972. And then a year later, Drummond reached out to a few more people. And over the course of a few years they actually collected. I want to say a couple of 100 people who are committed followers. We don't know how commited they were.

Katie Dooley  25:13

I was gonna ask how big this. I don't think it's very big.

Preston Meyer  25:16

It's not a huge group. But as far as I can tell, it's still around. Which is pretty impressive for this weird religion that popped up 50 years ago.

Katie Dooley  25:29

That's impressive. Yeah.

Preston Meyer  25:31

I mean, we've we've mentioned the Flying Spaghetti Monster a few times. I really doubt the Flying Spaghetti Monster is going anywhere. I think it's here to stay. At least for a while.

Katie Dooley  25:41

Physially going because he's flying... That was a bad joke.

Preston Meyer  25:49

A little bit, but I liked it. So one of the biggest, most important ideas of the Church of the SubGenius is that all conspiracies, all of them every single one is just a lesser conspiracy to the great conspiracy. And... 

Katie Dooley  26:16

Party of me wants to comment on what the great conspiracy is, but that's not our place.

Preston Meyer  26:21

It's far too complicated for any one person to be able to nail down exactly what it is. Which sounds like a real problem.

Katie Dooley  26:30

II feel this make it cut out... But Bryant says that if you follow any conspiracy theory long and like far enough it all ends up in anti-semitism. It was all the Jews. That's the great conspiracy. It wasn't. Don't misquote me on that. But yeah, if you follow any chemtrails or lizardmen far enough it was the Jews! It wasn't. But that's what it is. That's the first thing I think of when you say the great conspiracy is anti-semitism.

Preston Meyer  26:43

It reminds me of Arrested Development. Some old guy wants to blame the dinosaurs as something that the Jews put there to confuse the Christians.

Katie Dooley  27:14

Great prank. I love that. Good!

Preston Meyer  27:19

It's actually kind of nifty. There was a pamphlet published by the Church of the SubGenius, in 1979, that criticized all popular concepts of God, but also all New Age spirituality, as part of this conspiracy thing to control people. And also, it's more especially New Age spirituality, of this idea of consumerism, that the two are inseparable. And they really wanted to basically jam up consumerism. I have to admit, I didn't look very hard. But I didn't find any testimonials for the Church of the SubGenius.

Katie Dooley  28:06

So we don't believe in it.

Preston Meyer  28:08

I mean, I don't. I think that there might be somebody that does.

Katie Dooley  28:17

Now, this next one, I feel like you're very excited for

Preston Meyer  28:21

I think it's pretty cool. I did all kinds of research on this.

Katie Dooley  28:26

Judaism, oh, Jedism!

Preston Meyer  28:30

It's only a couple of letters off, but they're important letter.

Katie Dooley  28:36

It's the whole Yahweh/Jehovah thing again.

Preston Meyer  28:40

I mean, there's a lot of books out there that draw parallels between the Christian or the Judeo-Christian faith, and Jediism and the force in general.

Katie Dooley  28:52

We had this conversation in our religion as pop culture episode, Jesus of the Silver Screen, I think it was episode four. It's been a minute, where we talk about how narratives are written. And the Bible and Star Wars follow the same narrative story or narrative structures. So yeah, of course, there are parallels

Preston Meyer  29:16

Well, the the monomyth, as described by several scholars, including Joseph Campbell, definitely looked at the big religions to construct what really is the layout of the monomyth and George Lucas deliberately sculpted his Star Wars story using Joseph Campbell's hero of 1000 faces. Yeah it's a story structure that's worked for 2000 plus years. Yeah. And so this religion that has popped up is basically just people saying 

Katie Dooley  29:50

Something something.. dark side...

Preston Meyer  29:53

Don't join the dark side. Be a good person. Follow these handful of morals that we see associated with the Jedi. And that's it's pretty simple. Minimize your time dwelling on negative emotions. Don't become a Sith Lord.

Katie Dooley  30:13

Don't kill your wife with your negative emotions.

Preston Meyer  30:18

Rright? My wife and I just watched Revenge of the SItht like... no it wasn't Thursday, it must have been a Wednesday or Tuesday. It was this week.

Katie Dooley  30:32

I haven't seen that in years now I kind of want to watch it.

Preston Meyer  30:35

I mean, it's not that good. But we're doing a run through

Katie Dooley  30:38

It's better than Attack of the Clones

Preston Meyer  30:40

Yes.

Katie Dooley  30:41

So Jedism is incredibly popular.

Preston Meyer  30:45

Yes. I mean, Star Wars fans all around the world are huge in number. 

Katie Dooley  30:50

There's difference between being a Star Wars fan and being a Jedi.

Preston Meyer  30:55

It's absolutely true. And so in 2001, we saw the scope of this issue. There was a worldwide phenomenon. Loads of countries had their census in 2001. 

Katie Dooley  31:07

All this was right after Episode One came out. 2001 I was like wondering why the numbers were...

Preston Meyer  31:14

People were very excited about the newest Star Wars movie looking forward to the next one, hoping Jar Jar Binks had a smaller role in the next one. Luckily, he did. And in 2001, huge numbers of people reported on this census that they belong to the Jedi Order, or that they were Jedi, or that they were Jedi Knights variations using the word Jedi, is the important detail here. In 2001, Australia reported more than 70,000 Jedi on their census. Canada reported more about 21,000. New Zealand reported 53,000 Jedi in 2001. Scotland reported more than 14,000 Jedi, and England and Wales together reported more than 390,000 Jedi. It's the fourth largest religion in that census.

Katie Dooley  32:15

That's wild!

Preston Meyer  32:19

There are more Jedi in England and Wales at this time, according to the census than there were Sikhs, more than there were Buddhists. There are more Jedis than Jews in England and Wales at this time.

Katie Dooley  32:34

There's a lot of Jedis in the world.

Preston Meyer  32:37

And so the biggest numbers were recorded in England and Wales, which is pretty cool. What's really interesting to me is that there were more than 2000 people in Scotland said that Jedism is the religion they were raised with. Additionally, Scotland also reported 14 People in the census saying that they were Siths.

Katie Dooley  33:07

Not to be confused with Sikhs. How many people just like check the wrong box? There's no Sith box on the Census I hope!

Preston Meyer  33:17

They weren't checkboxes they were just write in your religion. And that's, like 600,000 people, as many Dudist priests, as there are today. There were that many people telling the world and their various national census reports that they were Jedis 20 years ago.

Katie Dooley  33:42

Well, and this is where we get back to that spectrum we were talking about of how many of these people believe truly and I imagine somewhere in that 2000 people they probably due if you're raised with it, and then I'm sure there's a huge portion that are just like, "Oh, it would be funny to put Jedi on the census"

Preston Meyer  34:03

I mean, there's definitely a bunch of people who just thought it'd be funny. Yeah, almost every one of these people, though, not all of them, but probably almost all of them probably identify as agnostic or atheist, realistically, but I bet you an awful lot of them genuinely believe in ghosts, or the possibility of ghosts, maybe that might be more correct to say.

Katie Dooley  34:26

Even just like the universal energy. Arguably, that's the force.

Preston Meyer  34:33

And this idea that you just shouldn't be a good person and not give in to negative emotions. I mean, that's a pretty easy thing to say, yeah, I believe that. That's good. So it's an interesting religion to look at.

Katie Dooley  34:48

I love the story you put about the founder of The Church of Jedism.

Preston Meyer  34:55

Oh, yes. Yes, in 2005. There was the temple of the Jedi Order that was registered in Texas. They were granted IRS tax exemption 10 years later, just 2015. And in 2006, just the year after the temple was set up in Texas, two Jedi delivered a protest letter to UN officials in recognition of International day of Tolerance. In their letter, they decided that it should be called the Interstellar Day of Tolerance, and cited the 2001 census showing 390,000 Jedi in England and Wales as a good reason to expand this title. 

Katie Dooley  35:42

It didn't get changed did it?

Preston Meyer  35:44

Oh, of course not. But they tried real hard.

Katie Dooley  35:47

Fight for what you believe in and arguably they're true Jedi, as in they truly... Yeah if you're going to take that time out of your day to write a letter to the UN.

Preston Meyer  35:59

Right? The next year 2007 is a story that I love and I shared with your husband earlier. I just I crack up every time I think about it. Daniel Jones founded the church of Jedism with his brother, Barney just gone crazy as I try and read. They believe that the 2001 UK census recognized Jedism as a religion, and that there was more Jedi than Scientologists in Britain. 

Katie Dooley  36:35

He's not wrong. 

Preston Meyer  36:36

Right? That's pretty solid. In 2009, just couple years later, the fan band Jedi is are very welcome to shop in our stores. Although we would ask them to remove their hoods. Obi Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Luke Skywalker, all appeared hoodless, without ever going over to the dark side. And we are only aware of the emperor as the one who never removed his hood.

Katie Dooley  37:05

Calling out the founders evil.

Preston Meyer  37:08

He's definitely pointing out some issues that may be Jones might have some more allegiance to the Sith and the Jedi. Even though we definitely see the Sith without their hoods to that he makes a strong argument as far as the movies go. And I think it's great.

Katie Dooley  37:31

Another movie religion. You should pair this episode with our Jesus of the Silver Screen episode just saying, if you haven't listened to that one. Listen to it after because it's that good one. And it relates to this lot is Matrixism. That's really hard to say Matrixism.

Preston Meyer  37:53

Yeah, the mouth doesn't like forming those sounds that close together.

Katie Dooley  37:57

Which is based off of..

Both Hosts  37:59

The matrix

Katie Dooley  38:00

Which is another... Neo is a Christ figure. So just like Luke Skywalker, so we're not... it's not a far stretch to see how this can be made into a religion. It was created in 2004, which I presume is when a bunch of the Matrix movies came out

Preston Meyer  38:23

Close. The first one came out in '99. And then two sequels came out almost back to back in 2003.

Katie Dooley  38:31

Okay, they were good movies. I remember those better than the most recent Star Wars.

Preston Meyer  38:36

Fair enough. The sequels were decent. My complaint is probably the same as most other people's that they really dumbed down the philosophical elements for the sequels.

Katie Dooley  38:49

It has the four tenants of Matrixism. 

Preston Meyer  38:53

Are you saying tenant or tenet? 

Katie Dooley  38:55

Tenants, tennant tenets, tenants? Tenants

Preston Meyer  38:59

Tenet, there's only one n in a principle. 

Katie Dooley  39:02

Not David Tennant 

Preston Meyer  39:03

Right, a tenant is somebody who lives and rents.

Katie Dooley  39:06

Or if your David Tennant the best doctor of the entire show. He's hands down my favorite. Anyway. That's different episode. The four tenets of Matrixism. Number one, they believe in a messianic prophecy, Neo is a Christ figure.  Check. Number two, the use of psychedelic drugs is sacrament.

Preston Meyer  39:33

See, this makes a lot of people get a little uncomfortable. But is it that weird? I think it's actually pretty common for a lot of the really old primal religions.

Katie Dooley  39:43

I was going to say using drugs in religions not uncommon. Or is even... I'm sure there's instances in Christianity where it's been done.

Preston Meyer  39:54

Oh, probably. Rastafarianism is like relies heavily on cannabis. Which is pretty light compared to the harder psychedelics, but it's a perception altering...

Katie Dooley  40:10

Which honestly, in the context of the Matrix makes sense. I can see how that maybe won't make Matrixism for everyone, but I can see... I understand why it works in their belief system. Number three, a perception of reality as multi-layered and semi-subjective.

Preston Meyer  40:33

It's complicated and tricky. We've talked a lot about some of these ideas in our belief episode that what is subjective is a hard thing to argue against somebody who sees them differently.

Katie Dooley  40:52

Yeah, so basically, everything is subjective. 

Preston Meyer  40:55

Pretty much. Reality is perception. It's a problem.

Katie Dooley  41:03

Absolutely. So I don't even think this is that weird, because we should probably just look at life in general as multi-layered and semi-subjective.

Preston Meyer  41:11

Yeah.

Katie Dooley  41:14

All religions should stick that one in actually.

Preston Meyer  41:17

That might help.

Katie Dooley  41:19

And then number four is the adherence to the principles of at least one of the world's major religions. That's interesting.

Preston Meyer  41:30

Yep. To be a true Matrixist... you have to believe in the principles of a religion.

Katie Dooley  41:45

I don't I don't know how to feel about that. 

Preston Meyer  41:48

I'm curious how they outline what counts as acceptable principles.

Katie Dooley  41:52

Or religion. 

Preston Meyer  41:53

Yeah, your question is as good as mine is.

Katie Dooley  41:57

Part of me is like well I don't like that because I don't want to adhere to anything but then I you know, I can... Can I pick and choose? There's like a handful, like, the dude abides!

Preston Meyer  42:07

Yeah, if you don't want to adhere to anything. Do you even want to adhere to Matrixism

Katie Dooley  42:11

I guess so guess? If I liked the first three then...

Preston Meyer  42:18

You like the the real movies but not the Animatrix.

Katie Dooley  42:24

This one hurts my head. I guess that's not surprising.

Preston Meyer  42:30

So there is a holy day for Matrixism, April 19, known as Bicycle Day. Which just That's a weird name for the day, considering that it marks the anniversary of Albert Hoffman's 1943 experiment with LSD. So the symbol, lots of these religions have symbols. And the Matrixist symbol is kind of obvious on the surface, but also has some baggage to it, I guess. It's the Japanese symbol, the kanji for red, which is reference to the red pill that one takes to be extracted from the Matrix. You get woke when you get red. And there's of course, the internet phenomenon of the red pill, which has some serious baggage on its own.

Katie Dooley  43:36

Yeah, different connotations now than when Matrixism started. So yeah, we'll just gloss over that. So with those three covered, four? So those pop culture we'll cover, we're going to go to the ones that are based off of Russell's Teapot, and we'll start with Russell's Teapot. So if you haven't heard the theory, we'll start there. So Russell's Teapot is this idea that there is a teapot orbiting the planets between Earth and Mars or the Moon and Mars.

Preston Meyer  44:20

Close it's not orbiting a planet. It's just chilling out between Earth and Mars. 

Katie Dooley  44:25

I thought it was moving.

Preston Meyer  44:28

I'm sure it moves both Earth and Mars move.

Katie Dooley  44:30

And this is the start of the commentary on religion and burden of proof. It's used a lot in I mean, I guess arguments for atheism and agnosticism is that you can't disprove that there isn't a teapot between Earth and Mars.

Preston Meyer  44:52

Right. And I don't have to prove that there is.

Katie Dooley  44:56

Right? So this is where when we talk about burden of proof for falls on the note I found says it falls on the believer, not in this case of the atheist to prove that there's a teapot, right? You can't just say, well byou can't disprove that there's no teapot, right? You have to prove that there's a teapot. 

Preston Meyer  45:15

That's the exact way that our legal system works out. If you want to accuse somebody of something, it's not up to them to prove that they didn't do it. It's up to you to prove they did. And so that same principle applies here that it's not up to the atheists and agnostics to find any evidence that there's no God. It's up to everybody who believes that He exists to prove it if they want to have this argument,

Katie Dooley  45:38

Or whatever you believe. So yeah, let's start. So that's the Russell's teapot theory. The most famous example I think, is the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Pastafarianism. You're a Pastafarian if you prescribe to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. So the Flying Spaghetti Monster started as a, I guess, like a counterpoint to intelligent design, or creationism being taught in school.

Preston Meyer  46:13

Yeah, shut up in 2005, in an open letter addressed to the Kansas State Board of Education, after they decided to permit teaching intelligent design in science class, which, if you know anything about science, you know that intelligent design doesn't fit in there.

Katie Dooley  46:32

And so the argument that was made is that if you can teach creationism, then you can teach Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.

Preston Meyer  46:45

They should be given equal position, since they have equal scientific evidence.

Katie Dooley  46:49

Scientific backing. And one thing I've read, we don't have it in our notes, but that I've read in the past about Flying Spaghetti Monster as well, is that, from the commentary standpoint, is that you can use the Flying Spaghetti Monster as a filter for your beliefs. So if a Flying Spaghetti Monster told you to do it, does it make sense? Or is it still okay? Right. So if a Flying Spaghetti Monster tells you love your neighbor, okay, yeah, I can get behind that. That's not a terrible thing. It's the Flying Spaghetti Monster says you have to stay in your house when you're on the rag and saucy like me. You're like, that's kind of weird. I'm the only one that can have red sauce. I assume that's what he'd say he'd be jealous of your menstruation then it's a little like that's kind of weird Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Preston Meyer  47:54

That's great.

Katie Dooley  47:55

So that's and Pastafarians are also well known for religious garb, that... the big thing is that they wear colanders on their heads, in situations where you know, where people are, you know, arguing that they want to wear their religious garb. And just, you know, again, pointing it out. So you can get your driver's license with a colander on your head if you cite religious reasons for itl.

Preston Meyer  47:58

And it works in some places and not others. There are a loads of places where they have approved for your legal ID in various forms, whether it's your your gun license, your driver's license, whatever. There are loads of places that have said yes, it's okay for you to have your colander on your head because it's a religious garment. And basically as many others saying, no, that's nonsense.

Katie Dooley  48:58

Just like Dudism and Jedism, you can be ordained. You can perform weddings as a Pastafarian. I think you're a Pastafarian minister.

Preston Meyer  49:11

Yeah, it's actually one of the...

Katie Dooley  49:13

But as clergy of the Pastafarians you can perform weddings.

Preston Meyer  49:18

It's one of most the one of the loudest complaints against Pastafarianism is actually that the ordination mill, and there's a huge fight going on about who gets to say that this religion is a legitimate religion and this religion is just an ordination mill. Who gets to decide what criteria are valid criteria to do is to decide who gets to perform a marriage? 

Katie Dooley  49:48

Well, and then we get into this, which this will be a whole different episode, but the idea of what the sanctity of marriage is and you know, this whole idea of like, it matters who performed your wedding. I get it. So where we are in Canada, it's quite strict because people make their livings marrying people. And that's why they're pretty strict about who's allowed to marry so that the people who do it for a living can make a living. And so that I get but other than that, it's like, 

Preston Meyer  50:23

The province employs a dozen people, basically part time to do this. As far as job creation. It's not a strong action.

Katie Dooley  50:33

No, it's not. But

Preston Meyer  50:37

It's a move of authority. That's it. Just look at me swing around my dick. That's basically what the government's doing.

Katie Dooley  50:47

Yeah, so this is like, this is just, I think, the most popular example of commentary on religion. I'm into it. I like seeing the Flying Spaghetti Monsters on the backs of cars.

Preston Meyer  50:59

Right? There are holidays for Pastafarians too 

Katie Dooley  51:04

I love these. I want to be a Pastafarian.

Preston Meyer  51:05

The best two, in my opinion, is Pastover and Ramandan.

Katie Dooley  51:14

I want to celebrate Ramandan,

Preston Meyer  51:17

Pastover, kind of obvious, eat pasta. Ramandan gets a little bit more specific. You gotta eat ramen, Gotta have those instant noodles.

Katie Dooley  51:32

Now I really want ramen... we have pho broth in our house too that I don't know what to do with. Hmm.

Preston Meyer  51:39

So the biggest highlight for Pastafarians that is pretty easy to get behind, I think, is the absolute rejection of dogma and formalism. That even the, the writings and the more well-published things that we know about Pastafarianism. They're all just suggestions anyway.

Katie Dooley  52:05

Well, and I think that comes back to it's basically an atheist religion.

Preston Meyer  52:08

Basically, it's deliberately a parody.

Katie Dooley  52:11

I understand that's an oxymoron. But yeah, it is meant to question religion. I love this one, too. The is that the Church of... It is the Invisible Pink Unicorn. So good. It's an internet meme, basically. Basically. And it's one of those things you can't prove it doesn't exist. It is both pink and invisible. At the same time, the quote from who I assume is the creator,

Preston Meyer  52:48

Not the creator, Sara.

Katie Dooley  52:50

Sara Eley she says Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. I believe that we know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith, we have faith that they are pink, we logically know that they are invisible because we can't see them.

Preston Meyer  53:14

It's pretty solid.

Katie Dooley  53:15

I mean, let's look at that. Let's take that lens and look at literally every religion we've talked about.

Preston Meyer  53:23

Right? And the adherence of the invisible pink unicorn had been around for decades. The Invisible Pink Unicorn first showed up in Usenet forums.

Katie Dooley  53:34

It's an internet meme. It's the first internet meme.

Preston Meyer  53:37

Yeah, this is so far back. This was 1990.

Katie Dooley  53:41

There was like three people on the internet in 1990.

Preston Meyer  53:44

I mean, at the time, the Internet was pretty much just for nerds. And the really creepy creepy people. The dangerous people and people running really big businesses who wanted to get on early enough to get their domain name before we got expensive. 

Katie Dooley  54:03

That's really smart, actually. 

Preston Meyer  54:04

Yeah. But those are nerds too.

Katie Dooley  54:08

www.holywatermelon.com. We bought it so don't try. I know someone's like furiously Googling, as I said that. No, we've bought it, we just don't have a website yet. 

Preston Meyer  54:19

We're working on it. And yeah, it's paradoxical by being obvious that you can't prove that this unicorn does or doesn't exist, because and it's paradoxical in that, yeah, it's invisible and pink. It's loads of fun. It's a cool thought experiment. And there's a community built up around this paradox.

Katie Dooley  54:42

Well, I mean, this is basically Russell's teapot just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there. Or insert anything. I just think that's a cute one. And the last one parody... Yeah, this is This one's interesting. We've talked about it before, on on the Jesus of the Silver Screen episode, Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption, which is the John Oliver religion that he creates. I would actually call this more of a satire.

Preston Meyer  55:16

Oh, absolutely. The whole thing was an exercise in satire

Katie Dooley  55:19

As opposed to a parody on Christianity,

Preston Meyer  55:24

Especially those dirtbags that want to preach on TV and steal your money and collect your seed money for the prosperity 

Katie Dooley  55:34

Yeah, we're gonna do a whole episode on prosperity gospel and seed faith. Yeah, so his is absolutely a commentary on. Sorry, I just read the quote. So it's called seed faith, which this idea is that you will plant a monetary seed and then God will reward you with your money. So John Oliver does this whole sketch I highly recommend about 40 minutes long, but because it's called seed faith. At the very end of the episode, he says, when someone sends you jizz through the mail, it's time to stop whatever you're doing. So someone literally sent him jizz.

Preston Meyer  56:13

He you got so many gifts and donations.  So this church existed for about a month from August to September of 2015. And, yeah, it was just satire nonsense.

Katie Dooley  56:27

Oh, sorry. I'm just gonna, it was also a commentary on. So obviously, it was a satire of Christianity and seed faith, but also a commentary on what is a religion, and then how the IRS deals with religious institutions and how convoluted that all is. Sorry.

Preston Meyer  56:44

Yeah, it was it was a complicated, multifaceted, wonderful piece of satire that lasted a month. And he got all kinds of donations. He got giant penis statues, he got bags of seeds in reference to seed faith. He got jars of semen in reference to seed faith. He also raised $70,000, for Doctors Without Borders. Because, yeah, because because of his church status, he raised $70,000. He gave it all to Doctors Without Borders, which is awesome, I think. But yeah, that quote is a an excellent way to finish your one month long religious excursion.

Katie Dooley  57:28

And it's a good rule to live by. Whenever you receive jizz in the mail, stop doing whatever you're doing, reevaluate your life.

Preston Meyer  57:37

I love it. John Oliver, very clever guy,

Katie Dooley  57:42

To wrap up this episode, I want to revisit those questions. So we've talked about parody religions that are based in mostly pop culture, and we've talked about parody religions that are based in atheism. So...

Preston Meyer  58:00

Are they real religions?

Katie Dooley  58:01

Are they real religions?

Preston Meyer  58:05

Yeah, I think that it's, it's a lot easier to say yes than no.

Katie Dooley  58:11

Yeah and I think honestly, I think this goes back more to our belief episode, and you can't you can't tell someone what they believe it. You also can't can't even police it right? We can only do what we're doing now and having conversations around it. And I mean, I'll always go back to my point, as long as you're not hurting anyone who the fuck cares.

Preston Meyer  58:33

Right? And the question of belief, how important is that to religion? It doesn't matter if people really believe that somebody out there can wield the force for anybody to say that they belong to the Church of the Jedi.

Katie Dooley  58:52

I guess it depends on why you've gotten into religion. Yeah, which is a topic we actually haven't addressed. But yeah, if you're getting into it for community then it doesn't matter if you believe as long as you like the people you're with. If you're hoping to find a higher power, maybe these aren't the right ones for you.

Preston Meyer  59:10

Feel free to shop around. 

Katie Dooley  59:12

Yeah, and some of them might be maybe the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the higher power. I don't know. I mean, I guess it depends on what you're looking for maybe the forces is the higher power. i=If you're looking for answers to where we go when we die. I don't actually think any of these address that particularly well, but

Preston Meyer  59:30

Not really as far as I'm aware.

Katie Dooley  59:32

But I also think that's a really poor reason to get into religion if it just because you're scared to die. But yeah, so these ones probably aren't for you if that's that's your current concern. I hope it's not your current concern. Yeah, so that would be my answer of how important belief is and of course, there's I'm sure there's diehard Pink Unicorns out there. If you're a diehard member of the Church of the invisible pink unicorn can you please email us at [email protected]? Because I would really like to speak with you.

Preston Meyer  1:00:11

Feel free to look us up on Facebook or Instagram 

Katie Dooley  1:00:14

I love how we're getting on this and our Discord is also up on on those social media sites if you need our Discord link to join our server. We are having a ton of great conversations. And you can always request episodes like our good friend Tim did so thank you again Tim for this fantastic episode. I hope you enjoyed it.

Preston Meyer  1:00:35

And thank all of you for listening. 

Both Hosts  1:00:39

Peace be with you.

TW: Cults are pretty icky and we talk about abuse in this episode in addition to Katie's potty mouth. 

What is a cult? Like religion, it’s very hard to define what a cult is. In this episode, we go over definitions we like and don’t like. A cult can be a group that is led by someone who doesn’t believe what he teaches but teaches to get gain or a group that you’re scared to leave.

Did you know all religions start as cults? All* religions start as cults. Judaism is historically known as the cult of Yahweh or the cult of Israel. Fervent or zealous believers rallying around a charismatic leader – Christianity, anyone?

Cults take ideas that may have been outside of the previous faith and incorporate them which alienates them from the original group. 

Getting involved in a cult usually starts with being told things you already believe. They tell you things that don’t sound crazy or reiterate things you already believe. Slowly new doctrines are added that are adjacent to your beliefs and over time you are far away from where you started. 

People who join cults are typically pretty normal people. Cults target people who are mentally healthy at a vulnerable part in their life, or at a crossroads. This brings long-term stability to the cult as opposed to members with chronic mental health issues. 

How do we determine if a cult is dangerous, or just an off-shoot of a major religion? 

We discuss the BITE Model of Authoritarian Control. BITE stands for behaviour control, information control, thought control and emotional control. 

If you want to learn more about cults, how they work and how to identify them, check out this episode!

Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt

Join the Community on Discord

Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram

Both Hosts  00:00
One of us, one of us, one of us!

Katie Dooley  00:18
I've been planning that opening.

Preston Meyer  00:20
I like it.

Katie Dooley  00:24
Because today, we're talking about dun dun dun..

Preston Meyer  00:28
Cults! The danger religions.

Katie Dooley  00:32
Ooo I like that.

Preston Meyer  00:35
From talking to people, that seems to be like the big difference between cults and religions. Of course, scholarly discussion has no use for that definition, but...

Katie Dooley  00:47
We'll get into that in just a minute. We thought this would be a good topic today, because we spent last episode talking about belief and how people believe things more than why people believe things how belief is a...

Preston Meyer  01:03
Super complicated thing

Katie Dooley  01:05
Psychological function so like a philosophical debate

Preston Meyer  01:11
It's so complicated. 

Katie Dooley  01:12
It's complicated

Preston Meyer  01:13
But I love it. 

Katie Dooley  01:14
So we thought we'd make it more complicated by discussing why po-people believe weird things. There's a lot of weird stuff out there. Do we want to start about start with talking about why people get involved in cults to begin with? Or do we want to start with time, but what a cult actually is.

Preston Meyer  01:37
Well see, like religions, or the idea of religion, it's very hard to define in a way where you aren't cutting out things that do belong, and/or including things that don't belong and cults has that exact same problem. The word cult is too nebulous. It's, it's too tricky. I've got a couple of ideas that are helpful for that discussion, for defining the word. But I don't think that they're solid definitions on their own either.

Katie Dooley  02:15
I found some definitions that I pointed out to you that I actually didn't like, because you're right. There's so many exceptions to the rule that yeah, maybe let's start with those three. And I can tell you why I don't like them. If you want to debunk any if you have any rebuttals, I'd love to hear them. The definitions I found break down the difference between a church, a sect and a cult. And again, I don't like any of these. So number one, a church is a conventional religious organization, please go see episode two.

Preston Meyer  02:51

What counts is conventional?

Katie Dooley  02:53

Right? Even big, recognized religions have some really weird belief. So you're... what's the definition of conventional then?

Preston Meyer  03:05

Yeah, like half of the words in this definition are no good. Conventional is entirely subjective. Religious, we've talked about this. We don't have a solid definition on that and organization.

Katie Dooley  03:19

Sure, I'll let organization pass.

Preston Meyer  03:22

There's a general consensus on what that word means. But when it's applied to religious organizations, there's a wide variety on how organized...

Katie Dooley  03:31

We just talked about Shinto, there really isn't any organization in Shinto. So, anyway, so that one was already...

Preston Meyer  03:40

Definition no good 

Katie Dooley  03:41

Just me crumpling up paper but mouth noise. A sect is a deviant religious organization with traditional beliefs and practices. So again, every word in this is like...

Preston Meyer  03:43

There's problems. Most people that start sects think that the group from which they have separated themselves has deviated, and that they're realigning themselves with the correct path. That's usually the argument.

Katie Dooley  04:10

Even if we look at something as vast as Christianity and I think it's going to get picked on quite a bit this episode... When we look at something like Christianity, arguably has hundreds of sects that have broken off from the original, you know, religion that Peter founded in, you know, the first century. So does that mean that the Anabaptists are a sect? Does that mean that Lutherans are a sect? Does that mean? The Orthodox Church is a sect like, no, we wouldn't look at these and think they're deviant organizations, we call them denominations. Oh, when I mean, even if you're a Lutheran, you think anything that came after that would be a sect. Yeah. But you know, I don't think your average North American looks at the Pentecostals and go that's a deviant Christian sect you just "Oh, you're a Pentecostal, okay." And now cults and I even have a problem with this cult is a deviant religious organization with novel beliefs and practices. Which again,

Preston Meyer  04:47

Now, if you're a Catholic, as opposed to a religious scholar. Absolutely, every single one of these groups counts as a sect. What's novel?

Katie Dooley  05:32

We had this conversation in a previous episode, I don't even remember which, but all religions, even developed religions, sprout from existing religions. So there's no religion out there today with novel beliefs and practices. I shouldn't say no, I'm sure there's one or two kicking around. But anything that gets any sort of traction is not novel. And if we look at some of the big dangerous, scary cults, and we'll talk in more detail a little bit today, and then we'll do full episodes later on. But the Branch Davidians they're part of the Seventh Day Adventists. Jim Jones, I don't know he was a Christian preacher. I don't know what denomination of Christianity he was. The Rajneeshees, which we'll get into, but they are a branch of Hinduism it's not novel.

Preston Meyer  06:25

Right. They take ideas that may have been outside of their previously existing religious faith tradition, and incorporate them. And that usually alienates them from another group. So where they need to become a new, separate group. Yeah, that's not a novel thing, maybe novel to that tradition, but it's not a new idea,

Katie Dooley  06:51

Or they put different focus on different aspects of... Right? So even Seventh Day Adventists, as I want to call them a sect of Christianity, they focus on the seventh day. More than other groups might.

Preston Meyer  07:06

Right and they're just a subset of the Adventist movement that may not focus on the seventh day, but having Christ come back on the eighth day

Katie Dooley  07:17

Jehovah Witnesses and the 200,000 people, which is based off of... Or the 144,000 people based off the 12 tribes of Israel, right? They just have a particular focus on this little piece of their book.

Preston Meyer  07:33

Yep. Specifically, excluding those from the tribe of Dan. The revelation is an interesting book and the things that people like to highlight in it are really a fun way to explore how people have dangerous prejudices.

Katie Dooley  07:58

One thing I want to point out this episode, is that all* Because I actually did find someone that argued this point, all religions start as cults.

Preston Meyer  08:09

Pretty much, I mean, from the scholarly point of view of what a cult is, like even Judaism, i's known historically as the cult of Yahweh or the cult of Israel, that that was their unifying faith. And the word cult is used a lot differently in scholarly discourse than it is in common language.

Katie Dooley  08:34

One of the definitions I see pop up is a group of fervent or zealous believers rallying around the charismatic leader. So Jesus?

Preston Meyer  08:46

Jesus was pretty charismatic.

Katie Dooley  08:48

Muhammad? 

Preston Meyer  08:49

Oh, for sure. And they rallied around them. So that fit.

Katie Dooley  08:54

Martin Luther. Henry the Eighth. L Ron Hubbard. So I think we have to be careful how we toss around the term cult, both from I mean, a scholarly perspective, we have to be clear when we're talking about under scholarly terms, like when we said Christianity started as a cult. And also when we're talking about it in the more common connotation of a dangerous group. We have to be clear, I think, sometimes cult is tossed around too loosely and we'll get into an example later on. When it's not actually dangerous. It's just maybe a new or different belief group, and then we label it a cult and maybe it shouldn't be labeled cult

Preston Meyer  09:49

The most useful and how useful it is is still tricky definition that applies to the common use of the word cult, as opposed to the scholarly use of the word would be a group that is led by somebody who doesn't believe what he teaches, but teaches to get gain. The trick is, as we talked about belief, it's hard enough to nail down what you actually know, as an individual, it is impossible to say with any certainty what somebody else truly believes, apart from measuring their actions against what they say. It's very complicated.

Katie Dooley  10:41

But last week, we're talking about the CES Letter. I was definitely reading it part of me was like, how many of the elders in the church really believe and how many of there are in for gain? Or like at what point or maybe they believe to a point and now they have all the information because they have access to it all. And do they still believe? Or do they not believe but they're in a position of power? So they stay? And I wonder that for the Catholic Church, too, it was just, you know, CES Letter was top of mind last week.

Preston Meyer  11:13

I think it's a perfectly valid question, a question that you're not likely to get a solid? ,

Katie Dooley  11:17

No, of course not. Because they would never. they would, they would never, I wouldn't say they never be truthful. But if they were there just for power, they would, they wouldn't be truthful, right? If they truly believed that everyone's gonna tell you they believe. So you can't weed that out. 

Preston Meyer  11:33

The only thing you have to go on is measuring their actions against their words.

Katie Dooley  11:37

One definition I saw of a cult is a group that you're scared to leave. And I actually liked that definition.

Preston Meyer  11:44

It's pretty strong. I like it.

Katie Dooley  11:46

Because some cults aren't religious based. I would say when you get to the act of sort of this fervent level of belief, obviously it is. It has become religion religious, but they don't start that way. The most contemporary and still very newsworthy example is NXIVM, which is, it was a self help, premise. Nothing religious about it. They do do have a charismatic leader, but people weren't joining to get some divine revelation. They were joining for improvement and self growth and then it got really weird.

Preston Meyer  12:23

Absolutely. A friend of ours. I was talking to him earlier this week. And we were ribbing him a little bit that a self help group that he belongs to sounds a little bit culty. It's not Amway. It's not a marketing thing, though. Multilevel marketing can get very culty. Yeah. The one who wants to sound like it's only up and up to me, not that I'm jumping to join it. But he assured us that, yeah, they'd love to have you stay, but nobody is really pressured to stay. And it helps that there is no nothing outside themselves that they need to believe in, which I think is actually really nice. But that people are free to keep taking more and more courses or leave at any time. And that's definitely like you said, the fear of leaving, is how you can pretty reliably put that line of where is it a cult? How do people get involved in cults? Usually through friends.

Katie Dooley  13:36

I meant more from an epistemological sense, but sure, our friends are dicks. Don't listen to your friends. From a thought belief place. Especially, you know, Jim Jones literally had hundreds of people kill themselves. Or I mean, more accurately, I mean, yes, they drank it was murder. Murdered hundreds of people. How do we go from this as a nice church to go to, to drinking poison Flavor-Aid?

Preston Meyer  14:09

Well, either at the beginning of it, somebody's keeping secret, their nefarious plot, or they go crazy partway through this path. And so the trick is, how did you get to be part of this group that went insane? Usually it starts with being told things that you already believe. And that's I would say people are a lot more familiar with the idea of political cults today. Like, say the three percenters, the 3% Militia that's down in the States. Things like that, where they'll tell you things that don't sound crazy. They sound like things that you already believe or are immediately adjacent to something you believe so they're totally digestible and acceptable. And you usually stew in that pot for a little while, with new things being added every now and then that are adjacent to what you already believe. So they're acceptable and digestible. And over time, eventually, you've come to a place where you are believing something that you weren't believing before at all, and is probably at variance with that with what you used to believe. And if you had the opportunity to see yourself from without, you would definitely notice that you have joined a cult.

Katie Dooley  15:43

A couple of things that are common, that's not the word I want to look for are the same... common for people who end up in cults, and if you watch any sort of documentaries, YouTube videos, read any books on people who join cults. They're pretty normal people, they are doctors and teachers and lawyers and regular people in the community. Cults often target people when they're vulnerable. And cults actually prefer mentally healthy people in a vulnerable moment of their lives, as opposed to people who are mentally unhealthy, because people are mentally unhealthy are unstable. Whereas if you get someone who's typically mentally healthy, and is going through some sort of crisis, maybe they've lost their job or their girlfriend broke up with them, or, you know, this blip on the radar, that's the perfect point to have someone join a cult.

Preston Meyer  16:51

Most religions that are evangelical will also play along those lines as well. If you're looking for people to join at a point where they're at a crossroads is the time to do it. It's not just the danger religion.

Katie Dooley  17:06

I know, I want to say something that you might also want off the record. But you know how we got our Book of Mormon? There is all, so as Preston was saying, they don't give you all the details when you join, they make it sound awesome and light and fluffy. And you're at a point in your life where you want to be in a community or I think it's a desire for everyone to want to be part of something bigger than themselves. That's why I like theater so much not that I do anything with theater, but that's why I like going to the theater.

Preston Meyer  17:38

We have a drive in ourselves naturally that we need to belong to a group and the antisocial among us that thinks that they're the exception, typically just flocked to a different way of organizing. And very few people actually are truly happy and flourish when they're alone. 

Katie Dooley  18:02

Yep. As we know, from this pandemic.bAnother tactic is love bombing. It is an abusive relationship tactic if you are being loved bombed.

Preston Meyer  18:16

How do you know if you're being loved bombed? 

Katie Dooley  18:19

I think it probably be really hard to know if you're being loved bombed to be completely honest, because it's you at a vulnerable state. And it is the act of showing excessive amounts of affection and attention in a way to influence or manipulate behavior. So I think, I mean, that's not helpful if you're listening. But just knowing love bombing is a practice. If you're unsure, talk to someone you trust, or a therapist, because it is abuse to shower someone with love with the plans to manipulate them. But that's, again, you're find someone at a vulnerable state you love on them hard and they're more likely to do what you want them to do.

Preston Meyer  19:13

It's, like I mentioned before, it's almost impossible to know what it is somebody else's head. But sometimes you can catch little clues on when somebody is deliberately showering you with love, and then deliberately withholding it and usually love bombing is doing both of those. It's cyclical doing both of those things. And it's a good way.... Good is the wrong word. It's a reliable and proven method of gaining people, gaining control of people.

Katie Dooley  19:51

I have two other points for reasons people join/stay in cults. I guess I'll start with the this one is at some point after you're kind of in, there is the mob mentality hive mind social pressure piece. And I think that's how you can add pieces that, like you're talking about these adjacent pieces that maybe you didn't believe it, but now it's being introduced to you. And I think the social pressure makes it easier to accept or at least you less likely to speak out. I kind of liken it to your first drink at a high school party. Right? Everyone else is drinking, they're fine. They're saying, come on, do it. You kind of go, okay. What's it? Even if you're uncomfortable, you know, chances are...

Preston Meyer  20:43

Peer pressure is the weirdest thing. That outside of the moment, most people seem to believe that. I would recognize peer pressure. And I'll say no, when I want to say no. And then when you're in the moment, it's a lot more of a "oh, I wasn't prepared for this." Usually, it's usually a self protection thing I will protect myself from what will be emotional harm by just doing what everyone expects.

Katie Dooley  21:15

It's interesting that being ostracized by a group is it's probably like wired into our brains. It's totally wired into our brains is more painful to us than actually putting ourselves in harm's way.

Preston Meyer  21:28

Yeah, even if you're not fully committed to the group, even if you already see problems with the group. Being ostracized from that group still hurts. It's such a weird thing.

Katie Dooley  21:40

Yeah, it takes a long time to not give a fuck. I've done it a few times in my life, but it's never fun. And last, but not least, I think this one isn't actually talked about a lot. I didn't actually find any notes on it. But I was thinking about it while I was making the notes, is the sunk cost fallacy. This is actually an economic

Preston Meyer  22:01

Gambling kind of thing. The Slot Machine has to pay out because I've been dumping quarters into it for days, 

Katie Dooley  22:07

You learned about it in economics 101, you know, a sunk cost is like, I don't know, I paid for some advertising and didn't work. Well, It's a sunk cost. Now you you move on, or you cut your losses and move on instead of try to make your advertising work. You go okay, it didn't work and move on. The problem with the sunk cost fallacy is, again, I think we're kind of wired to believe that

Preston Meyer  22:35

somebody's going to notice how much effort I've put into this work.

Katie Dooley  22:38

Yeah, it's like, at some point, it has to work, right? Because so maybe just a little bit more money or a little bit more time or whatever, and I'll get my returns.

Preston Meyer  22:48

Come on podcast, please work out.

Katie Dooley  22:49

Right? Maybe just one more episode, one more episode. And we'll make it big. And you'll leave a five star review on Apple. But that's exactly it. And it's hard for people to cut those ties and go, Okay, well, this didn't work and I've sunk in 10s of 1000s of dollars without getting a return. So that's an important thing to keep in mind, as well. Is it a sunk cost, evaluate that lots of things in life could be a sunk cost. So if you're concerned about leaving anything, because of the time you put in, if it's not working for you get rid of it.

Preston Meyer  23:37

Yeah, never evaluate your efforts looking backwards. When trying to decide whether or not you need to move forward.

Katie Dooley  23:52

This is I mean, this whole

Preston Meyer  23:55

You need to look at the rewards, not your efforts.

Katie Dooley  23:57

Yes and I think a really good example, this is kind of off topic, but a good example is marriage, right? People go well, I've been with him for 20 years. Well, you're unhappy. So what is what is 20 years matter?

Preston Meyer  24:10

Right? 

Katie Dooley  24:11

You still got 20 years left easily? Or more probably. I'm like doing the math on how old you have to be if you're married. Yeah, if you're married at 25, you'd be 45. You got forty years left. So like, don't, don't be miserable. Because you sunk 20 years into it. Or if jobs are another big one. So that's a good fair, trying to wrap your head around sunk cost. Those are two good examples. So that's why people join and stay in cults.

Preston Meyer  24:45

It's kind of a bummer to have to think about all these negatives. There's not a whole lot of positivity in this episode. We'll try and keep it light but we're going to be dealing with some serious issues here.

Katie Dooley  24:58

Yeah, cults are in the case that we're mostly talking about today as in the negative, dangerous cults.

Preston Meyer  25:06

So yeah, cults are, obviously a problem. Anything that hurts you is a problem. And that's the big thing that is visible about cults is that they hurt people. The trick is finding out that they're cults before they hurt people.

Katie Dooley  25:26

Which is hard because the members aren't going to talk to outsiders. I think it's just regular cult education like this. On knowing when you're vulnerable, and some of these red flags we're later in the episode, getting into red flags, if you think someone you love is in a cult. But it's really as individuals being educated. Because you're right, nobody can know what's going on in your head. You might not share that you're feeling vulnerable. And you might not share that you've joined this new group of friends that

Preston Meyer  25:59

It's weird how many people...

Katie Dooley  26:01

Slaughter goats every Thursday night.

Preston Meyer  26:04

There's not a whole lot of bloodshed, sacrifice cult around, but there's still some, but not a lot. It's weird how many people keep a secret that they've joined a new group of friends. It's like some people do recognize that there's something weird about this group, but they're willing to bite the bullet and keep moving forward with it.

Katie Dooley  26:33

I don't know. I don't talk about like, I don't talk about my friends to my other friends. You know, I have like chunks of friends. And I don't talk about either my other groups of friends.

Preston Meyer  26:46

But when something big happens in your life, we talk about it and a change in your religious life. I mean, I understand, like, why a lot of people don't share their changes in their religious life with everybody they know. But friends, if they're close will usually mention this sort of thing. But I guess, I guess follow through this idea. If people are typically recruiting for cults from people who are in really hard positions in their life, maybe more preyed upon people, or those who wouldn't have others to tell? That might be part of it. 

Katie Dooley  27:34

Okay, look at us in our self discovery. I have a note in the notes, there's a bullet point in the notes of cults that aren't harmful. As I mentioned, all religions start as cults, all offshoots of major religions, all major religions start as cults every denomination of Christianity started as a cult. And we don't look at Church of England as a cult of Henry the Eighth anymore, we just look at it as another denomination. And I think that's because it was, it was allowed to establish itself, they didn't have...

Preston Meyer  28:26

Allowed to establish itself. It was founded by the king. Not that it's the worst example. It's just, you have a very powerful charismatic leader.

Katie Dooley  28:36

That's true. I mean, we can pick on Hutterites or something like that, but or Anabaptist and Quakers. They were allowed to establish themselves. And I mean, Church of England is a good example, because their beliefs weren't too too crazy minus divorce, which is really, we all know, that was the only reason Church of England was eveloped and where am I going with this? So we look at something like Christianity, which was a cult of Judaism and obviously, in the first century, they were persecuted, but eventually they took root and now a very acceptable religion.

Preston Meyer  29:13

It's the standard of North.... well, all of America not just North. South America is very Catholic.

Katie Dooley  29:21

So I just wonder if sometimes in the in the world we live in with media and social media have we created dangerous cults when there was no dangerous cult to begin with? It was just an offshoot.

Preston Meyer  29:38

Oh, for sure. There's, as we'll talk about later, there's a really strong us versus them thing that's really thrust upon you in most cults. It's not absent from most Western religions.

Katie Dooley  29:53

So, I'm going to touch on this. All of my I'm gonna... Disclaimer: All of my research is literally from the Netflix documentary. I did a little bit of supplementary reading for this episode and will, I'm sure we'll do a full episode but the Rajneesheemovement is a group of sannyasins which is a group of Hindus. And they originated in India, with their founder

Preston Meyer  30:25

Rajneesh

Katie Dooley  30:26

Rajneesh. I was gonna find his first name, but I didn't write it down. Bhagwan Rajneesh, Bhagwan is the title, just like Christ as a title.

Preston Meyer  30:38

It's interesting to me that this sannyasin group is the same group that Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha came from.

Katie Dooley  30:45

Absolutely, yeah. And they had a big sect in India. And they wanted to start communal living, and they had people from all over the world coming to India for these for this group. And so they bought acres of land in Oregon, in the United States, outside of a small town called Antelope. Now, for literally, I think it's like a six episode documentary, literally the first four episodes and I'm like, "they're not doing anything wrong." There. It's the people in Antelope who are going to make this worse.

Preston Meyer  31:19

White people suck.  So the Rajneeshees, they were all red and orange, they're very like, then, obviously, they had like, South Asian people, but also white people, but very distinct looking, just because they all wore the same thing. And they were, like I said, trying to build a self sustaining commune outside of this small town, and like, I mean, small town, like, less than 100 people, small town, and they didn't like it. And the Rajneeshee started buying homes in the town so that they could get an electoral vote to lessen some of the pressures on them from the community. And they interviewed these people. And they're like, oh, they started buying the houses and like "you were selling the houses!!" Why are you mad at them? Someone has to sell a house for someone to be able to buy a house. And when you're selling a house, you have the option to not sell it to somebody who's offering to buy. That's true of all sales, pretty much. So I mean, digital age, there's a lot less of opportunity to see who is buying, but you still have the option.

Katie Dooley  32:31

Yeah, so it's just really like, it's the first four episodes, it really feels like these people are just scared of other and making it really hard on them. And I honestly think that if they had just left well enough alone, it wouldn't have escalated the way it did. I'm sure it would have ended at some point just because people get disillusioned. You're living in a commune in the 90s in Oregon, I'm sure when smartphones hit people would have you know, left.

Preston Meyer  33:02

Maybe it depends on how much they value what they have in their community. If everything you think you need is there, I mean, do you even need a smartphone?

Katie Dooley  33:12

Yes to listen to this podcast.

Preston Meyer  33:14

This podcast through your browser on your laptop can't you? See you don't need a smartphone.

Katie Dooley  33:27

Anyway, long story short. Both the townspeople and the Rajneeshee in the commune started arming themselves. And it was there was a political race to get votes and it escalated into the largest poisoning in American history. So it absolutely did become a violent, scary cult, but we think of but I encourage you to go watch the first few episodes and really look at it. Is this a scary group of people? Or is this just someone trying to start a new way of life for themselves?

Preston Meyer  34:00

What's the name of the show? 

Katie Dooley  34:01

Wild Wild country. Thank you. I haven't said it yet. Wild Wild country I don't actually know if it's still on Netflix, but it was really good. Highly recommend it. 

Preston Meyer  34:10

It's probably still on Netflix. Netflix does a lot of their own documentary thing.

Katie Dooley  34:14

Yes, it's a Netflix documentary. Also the organization around the Rajneeshee and this is, again from the 90s in Oregon, Osho International is still in existence today. Osho O-S-H-O.com So you can still like I said they're still around today not the commune obviously because that ended badly but the ideal ideologies of the Bhagwan are alive and well. 

Preston Meyer  34:41

Yeah, they're still popular in the United States and Australia and all over Europe. Yeah. Kinda kind of weird. That what used to be labeled very publicly as this cult that makes people uncomfortable is now another I want to say world religion. But I mean, we've discussed this I don't like the label to begin with, but it is all over the world. So it's not huge. It's, it's around.

Katie Dooley  35:11

I was at a Tony Robbins conference and I'm pretty sure was like the only one in the entire room that was like, but he mentioned doing like meeting with Bhagwan and I was like !!!

Preston Meyer  35:26

Tony Robbins, super charismatic guy, but as far as I can tell, people aren't afraid to leave him. There's a sunk costs thing that also gets in people's head too.

Katie Dooley  35:39

I think. You know Tony Robbins is a good guy because he could have a cult like that, and he hasn't done it yet. So respect, right. 'Cause he could, like tomorrow, he could be like, we're flying to Guyana and I got a drink for you.

Preston Meyer  35:55

He's only a stone's throw away from NXIVM. But he doesn't throw that stone. 

Katie Dooley  36:01

No, he has not branded anyone yet or sold anyone into sex trafficking. So good guy, Tony Robbins. Yeah. I feel like I'm gonna have to post a good guy Tony Robbins meme in the disclaimer. I'll probably make it but it's fine. Preston, I'm gonna hand it over to you for a little bit with, of course, my charming interjections about the BITE model. I love the BITE model. I'm so excited. It's kind of dumb that I'm excited about it. But the BITE model is basically how you tell if something's a cult. And Preston's gonna break it down for us. Wicca wicca

Preston Meyer  36:36

Yeah, it's it's actually a really well thought out way to evaluate religions or even non-religious groups, like even Bhawans cult group. He kind of sold it as a religious, less religion. Which I mean, that's such a nonsense phrase, that yeah, it was a parareligious group basically born out of that sannyasin tradition that was really digestible in a way that did appeal to people that were outside of the Hindu tradition, which is kind of nifty. But yeah, back into this BITE model. It's, and so B-I-T -E stands for behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control. So we're going to look at these different items and look at how they affect people. I guess 

Katie Dooley  37:35

I will say if you're interested, that is quite extensive. we've summarized it.

Preston Meyer  37:41

Yeah, I've managed to crunch this down into small enough bites that

Katie Dooley  37:47

Haha bites, I get it, you did it. 

Preston Meyer  37:51

Alright, so the first is behavior control. The big summary of this whole idea is that cults discourage individualism with rigid rules. So they regulate associations, they tell you, who you can hang out with, and sometimes force you to be isolated. They also regulate your clothing, your hairstyles, your diet, up into things like perpetual hunger or long term fasting, it's a little bit more intense than just saying, don't eat pork. It's like straight up, you don't get to eat for a while, which is a huge problem. They'll also regulate your sleep, they'll make you sleep weird hours, sometimes sometimes they'll straight up deprive you from sleep, just to regulate your behavior, which is torture.

Katie Dooley  38:43

Well, and also why regulating sleep in particular, makes you more suggestible to things. For sure or so tired that you actually can't think straight, right? We've all been that tired, unfortunately. So yeah, regulating sleep is a huge red flag

Preston Meyer  39:02

Big power move. They'll also, typically restrict your leisure and entertainment. Which sounds not too crazy, like most churches don't want you going to strip clubs or watching pornography, right? Or even sometimes the like, don't watch PG 13 movies. Definitely don't watch rated-R movies.

Katie Dooley  39:24

Don't read Harry Potter. It's the devil.

Preston Meyer  39:27

Yeah. So they'll go typically beyond that to the point where they actually control what you have opportunities to receive as entertainment material, and they will restrict your leisure time. Which that kind of control is where it gets a little bit scary, I think.

Katie Dooley  39:47

Yes and I... This is big in groups that either are communal, where you're supposed to work for the group or request a lot of volunteer hours from you. And it's kind of the same thing as the sleep thing where you're too busy to just stop and think about what's going on.

Preston Meyer  40:07

Yeah, there's a lot of that, in fact, the too busy to think about what's going on kind of shows up in all four of these themes,

Katie Dooley  40:16

And also an important one because it goes beyond religious cults, right? Something like NXIVM or the big one I can. I can't think of any others right now. 

Preston Meyer  40:27

It's a pretty good example of a recent not quite religious cult, though. Yeah. So it's pretty fine that it keeps coming to mind.

Katie Dooley  40:33

Okay, I'll just keep going with NXIVM then. Again, we're you're just too busy to be like, Oh, I was branded with my iron this week. Ouch!

Preston Meyer  40:42

Maybe I should run away. Oh, man,

Katie Dooley  40:43

No, I got this shit to do.

Preston Meyer  40:47

Alright, another part of behavioral control that you'll see in a lot of cults is financial exploitation, where people will ask you for literally all of the money you have, usually incrementally, but they will make you poor, to make the group or the leader of the group exclusively, very wealthy. But there's also more than just financial exploitation, there's also building financial dependence, which is why they don't just recruit the rich, they'll also recruit anybody who they can force into a position where they rely on the group for their financial needs, which of course is a problem.

Katie Dooley  41:30

I think they would actually have a harder time. And I don't know what statistics are, but actually getting very wealthy people in to a cult, because very wealthy people tend to have financial planners. And at some point, your financial planner would go. Mine would, holla, Ron!

Preston Meyer  41:50

But see a lot of these people who would have financial planners, if they're halfway into a cult, and they're pretty committed already. There, a lot of the time, they're happier to leave their financial planner behind then leave the group. So a financial planner can be very helpful, but only if you actually value their advice, which is true in literally every scenario. And just generally, cults will typically manipulate you financially, one way or the other, they're gonna manipulate you,

Katie Dooley  42:33

Can I have five bucks,

Preston Meyer  42:34

If I had five bucks,

Katie Dooley  42:37

You would?

Preston Meyer  42:39

I would be willing to give you five bucks. Though I suspect that since you are more regularly employed than that you don't need the five bucks that I don't have as bad as I do. 

Katie Dooley  42:53

I'll look after you if you give me five bucks. 

Preston Meyer  42:56

You know what, at this point in my life, you got a deal

Katie Dooley  43:00

Oh it's starting guys, I'm so proud.

Preston Meyer  43:07

We'll see where this goes. Also, something that is almost universally used in the danger cult. As far as behavior control, is the idea of rewards and punishments to modify behavior. The carrot versus the stick. Both get used an awful lot. It's never just the carrot, but it's never just the stick. There's an awful lot of torture, you can be beaten, you can be burned, branded, or tattooed. Cutting is not outside the realm of what is common, and sometimes rape. Weirdly enough, there's enough cults that have been around where people have been forced to rape other people. Which is the kind of thing where you should know at this point that you need to leave this group. And an awful lot of people will stay with the group beyond that point. Not cool. You are also compelled to torture other people in other ways as well. And sometimes as we have seen in other handful of documentaries about say Scientology, you can be compelled to murder somebody

Katie Dooley  44:29

Whose been murdered in Scientology?

Preston Meyer  44:32

Oh, there's a long list.

Katie Dooley  44:33

Oh actually do know when I can't remember her name. But I do know one case in particular that you're talking about. You know, were what's that term for us now? For people who are enemies of Scientology?

Preston Meyer  44:49

I don't remember but we're them now. Yeah, we are. We have spoken out against Scientology.

Katie Dooley  44:57

I gonna spend the rest of the episode thinking about it.

Preston Meyer  45:00

There's yeah, there's a word oh well. 

Katie Dooley  45:03

Move onto I and I'll Google it. 

Preston Meyer  45:05

All right. Another big control move in cults is information control. Moving on to that second letter of our BITE. So information control is about discouraging criticism, typically with misinformation, and also preventing other important information from reaching the adherents. Did you find your word? 

Katie Dooley  45:30

I did. We're suppressive persons now.

Preston Meyer  45:33

I'm okay with that. So information control, usually, oh, I'm not gonna say usually, pretty much always, I'm not aware of a situation where one of these dangerous cults doesn't use deception, where information is deliberately withheld or distorted, to render the collective group more acceptable to the individual. This will include systematic lying, and use of non-cult sources out of context, or outright misquoting people to make the group seem better than they really are. Usually, that will limit your access to outside information. Like don't use the internet, it's full of lies.

Katie Dooley  46:22

Scientologists aren't allowed to Google Scientology.

Preston Meyer  46:26

That doesn't surprise me at all. So you need to limit people's access to information that would make them at all question the group or their place in it. You need to keep members too busy to think or access information as well. So like I said, that theme is going to carry through there it is. Also, there's a strong tendency to encourage spying and have people report on each other when they see deviant behavior, or even questions that seem a little too invasive. 

Katie Dooley  47:02

It's very effective. Because once you know, there's this tattletale system in place like if you're told to tattle on someone, you know that someone could tattle on you. So, like, you might never actually tell on someone but it...

Preston Meyer  47:16

You know, somebody will if you 

Katie Dooley  47:17

Yeah, so just like, there's like a word I'm trying to think it just like automatically keeps people in line without actually necessarily having to do anything. Just to know that it's a possibility, keeps people in line.

Preston Meyer  47:31

Fear is the number one tool of cult leaders. And this is where it's pretty visible, I think. Because of course, people want to avoid torture, which is a perfectly

Katie Dooley  47:45

Unless you're a what is sadist? masochist? I get them backwards all the time.

Preston Meyer  47:53

Also, part of this whole reporting on each other, there's also the unethical use of confession. Like if you go to confess to your pastor or priest or whatever, that could be problematic, but usually isn't the in the bigger churches that typically are led by believers as opposed to how I said most cults are led by people who don't actually believe what they're teaching in a lot of cases. So these cases of unethical use of confession, will typically disrupt or outright dissolve your identity boundaries, which can be terrifying to somebody who is able to see what's going on. There's also commonly used tools of memory manipulation, which is gas lightning. I mean, yeah, that's a connected thing for sure. Making somebody question what they think they know is sometimes problematic. If what they think

Katie Dooley  49:02

I think it's questioning people's experiences, right. That's the problem. You know, saying, having a healthy debate about religion or politics, I don't think is a problem but saying no, that wasn't your experience is a huge problem.

Preston Meyer  49:14

Absolutely. And the last point I have here for unethical use of confession is withholding forgiveness. For those in the Christian tradition, it's typically understood that confession is connected to forgiveness that you can receive forgiveness through confession. There may or may not be extra steps involved, depending on what you've done. But outright withholding forgiveness after confession is a problem. Moving on to the third part of our bite model, T, go for it. What do you got?

Katie Dooley  49:55

I just want to say T like a cheerleader. People can't see me but making a T like a cheerleader.

Preston Meyer  50:02

Well done.

Katie Dooley  50:05

You did all the research you really I'll just chime in with my thoughts.

Preston Meyer  50:08

Honestly, I wasn't even aware of the BITE model until you brought it up to me. 

Katie Dooley  50:11

I know but you still did all the research. 

Preston Meyer  50:14

I did dig deeply into it to understand it. I don't know why that was so hard to say.

Katie Dooley  50:21

You almost said, I did dick deeply. And I was a little concerned.

Preston Meyer  50:25

Yeah, that's not your business. All right. The third thing is thought control. So you can ensure continued obedience by eliminating the individual, you do this by messing with their power to think. And so this is usually seen when cults require members to adopt doctrine as truth, which, realistically, almost every group, political, religious, or theatrical, there's things that you should believe to be an effective part of the community. 

Katie Dooley  51:04

Yeah, even any mainstream Christian group is not down if you don't accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Right. Like that's, that's cost of entry.

Preston Meyer  51:14

Yeah. But if you are required to believe that everything that is said must be true. With the fear of punishment, if you don't, you got serious problems. And usually, these include a really strict us versus them good, good versus evil, everything is black or white, that cults don't typically, like playing around with allowing you to believe that there's a gray zone, you're either with the group or you're against the group, which I mean, is pretty much true of the dangerous groups anyway

Katie Dooley  51:53

Cults or otherwise, yes. And as we know, it's a spectrum. Everything like... Did I make a clear point?

Preston Meyer  52:04

I think you did. Everything is a spectrum, there is gray, it's okay. 

Katie Dooley  52:08

I was like, Did you think I was referring to like cults on a spectrum or belief, I was talking about belief on a spectrum.

Preston Meyer  52:14

All the things exist on a spectrum.

Katie Dooley  52:18

I've just made this weird.

Preston Meyer  52:25

Very often, cults will require their members to take on a new name and identity. I knew a lady when I was living in New Jersey. Her name was Marjorie, she was an awesome lady, she fed us all the time. Super funny, jolly lady had a lot of fun hanging out with her. And when she was hanging out with Malcolm X, she lost her last name, she became Marjorie Number X, because the first person in the group gets to be X. And the second person with that same first name would be 2x. And then 3X. It's kind of weird. And I learned that from her because she was an interesting lady who was willing to share her experiences. Not that Malcolm X would be classified as a dangerous cult leader, by all standards, but by some absolutely was and he definitely employed this method of giving people new names and adjusting their identities. Another common factor is hypnosis, to help you alter your mental states, or also undermine critical thought, kind of a huge problem there. Even worse, is the idea of causing age regression deliberately. That's a really effective way to make people rely on you if you put them in the state of mind of a six year old, they have to look up to you as the provider. Huge problem. 

Katie Dooley  54:01

Yeah, that's terrifying.

Preston Meyer  54:03

Yeah, it's, it's very scary. And also, very often, they'll will use hypnosis to alter your memories or create entirely new ones.

Katie Dooley  54:15

I also I don't know if you have this on here. But drugs use as well.

Preston Meyer  54:21

Don't have that on the list. But drugs are very useful tools in this hypnosis program. Because usually, drugs on their own, won't do the things but if you combine it with hypnosis, you're gonna get a lot of work done.

Katie Dooley  54:39

Yeah. If you could put people in states of paranoia or whatever, with drugs. Yeah.

Preston Meyer  54:43

Oh, yeah. Especially if you think if you can get people to think that everyone is out to get them outside of the group, and really make them feel safe in the group. You've got a believer for life, probably. Another thing that is commonly used to control thought, is helping people to control their own thoughts, with techniques that help them to rationalize where they're at, and stop all intrusive thoughts from coming at them before they really can take root. This will usually include chanting, or repetitive prayers. Meditating can be effective, but it's... if you've ever tried to sit down for five minutes and not think at all it's really hard to do today. And that does actually allow intrusive thoughts to come unless you've gotten really good at meditating in a way that you are able to let those intrusive thoughts go, rather than hold on to them when they come.

Katie Dooley  55:54

I think if you're that mindful, you wouldn't be in a cult. But I don't know. You're out there. And you're that mindful and you're in a cult, can you email me?

Preston Meyer  56:04

Tell us how that worked out. Yeah, meditating is a weird thing to be on this list. But it is on the list that the practice of forcing thoughts out of your mind, which most people think of when they think of meditation is the kind of meditation that is espoused by these cults.

Katie Dooley  56:23

I think some of it is like, probably run through this idea that God can hear your thoughts. So if you have any doubts better get out. Because I mean, obviously, in the context of religious cults are, that the leader can hear your thoughts or whatever. And if they can hear that you have doubts, and you can be the next one getting beaten.

Preston Meyer  56:45

Yeah, so you have to suppress those thoughts. Another thing that comes up a lot is speaking in tongues, which is a thing that you'll see an awful lot in, especially evangelical and Pentecostal churches, that... they serve a different purpose. They typically are outward signs, and you see them in churches. But in cults, it's more of a business of putting nonsense in your head and making you spout nonsense. Because when your mouth is engaged, typically your brain isn't engaged in something different. So kind of helpful, I wouldn't classify it as one of the more powerful tools, but it is a tool that is used because it is effective. And of course, singing, humming a nice way to keep the group unified, and thinking about what their mouth is engaged in. Next on the list, we have the idea that you just have to reject critical thinking, which, basically, outright, I have to implore everybody to never do.

Katie Dooley  57:58

Always think critically!

Preston Meyer  58:02

Just... you can avoid a lot of problems by thinking critically. This includes actually analyzing things rationally, absolutely prevented as much as possible by these groups. And they will outright forbid criticism, you don't get to criticize the leader, it's not your place. And you should stop thinking about things like that, or you're gonna get yourself in trouble. 

Katie Dooley  58:31

I wouldn't do well in a cult.

Preston Meyer  58:33

That's a good thing.

Katie Dooley  58:35

Unless I was the leader of one!

Preston Meyer  58:38

We'll see how that works. But yeah, the number one thing I need to stop clapping my hands. The number one thing is that you have to label all thought that is outside of what is acceptable as unacceptable. That's a that's an annoying tautology. Let's try that again. Every other thought, not expressly given to you by the collective or the leader is unacceptable.

Katie Dooley  59:16

Unacceptable. I was trying to say at the same time because I knew what you were gonna say

Preston Meyer  59:25

Very nice. And the fourth letter and this BITE.

Katie Dooley  59:29

E!

Preston Meyer  59:31

Emotion control, that you can establish dependence by manipulating emotions. So the idea that somebody can mess with your emotions, a little bit scary. And people do it on the regular.

Katie Dooley  59:46

I think you have to be incredibly self aware to not have people mess with your emotions, even just as a regular human being. But yeah, so I think this one's probably a very effective tool.

Preston Meyer  59:58

Absolutely. Usually you'll see the idea that this group has a family. And they'll play that up really hard. Because when you think of family, hopefully you're thinking of positive emotions, and that you can establish long lasting positive connections with people. And that's exactly what they want to have happen in these cults.

Katie Dooley  1:00:23

Also important if you didn't come from a good family, because we all have that idea of family drilled into us. Right? So it works both ways. Like if you had a great family, then this is just another family. If you didn't have a good family, then this is the one for you!

Preston Meyer  1:00:35

Yeah, it's it's a messed up way to play around with people. But it works. It's probably the strongest tool in their belt, is the idea that you can depend on them like a family. And so part of this emotional control that you'll see is that some emotions are outright banned as evil or selfish, and that people's emotions should be blocked, especially homesickness and doubt. The idea that your emotions can be evil, and selfish and need to be suppressed, by all means, is something that I think is really not cool. I'm really uncomfortable with.

Katie Dooley  1:00:37

It's really unhealthy. There's no such thing as bad emotion.

Preston Meyer  1:01:33

Like even rage. Anger has its place. There's, obviously appropriate uses of your emotions, and inappropriate uses, conversely, but to say, an emotion is outright evil or selfish, is hugely problematic.

Katie Dooley  1:01:57

I think a lot of mental health problems happen because we don't let ourselves feel the full spectrum of emotion. 

Preston Meyer  1:02:02

I think you're probably right. 

Katie Dooley  1:02:02

So this is really bad advice.

Preston Meyer  1:02:Right? Often, though, these cults will make members feel like problems are their own fault, rather than the fault of the leader or the group, even if they are, in fact, completely constructed problems outside of your own control. And that's a really awful way to try and control somebody. They'll also typically promote feelings of shame, or guilt or unworthiness, and especially fear, to make you feel bad. So that when they make you feel good, there's a lot more weight on that. Especially the fear that they would give you of independent thought, fear of the world, fear of enemies, fear of damnation is fairly common. And fear of group disapproval. Yeah, you want to be accepted by the group that you're trying to belong to. And since a person in a cult doesn't recognize the dangers of belonging to that group, that disapproval is hugely problematic. And so that fear is a great controlling tool. They will also often I mentioned that there's the the misuse of confession, public confession of sins is pretty much never appropriate, I think. But it's often used by cults to control people, that if you do something bad, you'll have to say in front of everybody, don't do it.

Katie Dooley  1:03:52
I don't like that.

Preston Meyer  1:03:53
Right? So emotional manipulation can also be those orchestrated highs and lows, that love bombing that you had mentioned earlier, contrasted with harsh condemnation. But also shunning friends who leave, controlling the way you feel about people that you were told where your family once they've left the group, you can never talk to them again. They're awful, they're the enemy. That's not, that's not okay.

Katie Dooley  1:04:22
No, you can't tell me who to love.

Preston Meyer  1:04:29
There's also the idea that you can generate fear of what life would be outside the group. Now that you've been here. How could you ever survive outside again?

Katie Dooley  1:04:42
Well, that actually is a real problem. There's people who help people transition out of cults so yeah, that actually, of the threats they make that one is actually very real threat.

Preston Meyer  1:04:53
For sure. And it's deliberately constructed, which is a problem. They do deliberately make you fear that which probably makes the transition harder. And the idea that you have to be afraid of all outsiders because they're either weak and will drag you down, or they're outright evil and will tear you up. That's a really harmful way to see the world. And this will also include threats of harm to ex-members, that they will be physically punished, just because they've left. That fear of leaving is, like I said, one of the big problems. Yeah, and that's, that's the BITE model.

Katie Dooley  1:05:49
Cool. I have some follow up questions/ thoughts that I wanted to discuss. I think I don't know how to word this. I think that, especially when you look at the full, BITE model, which I encourage you to do.

Preston Meyer  1:06:08
So the BITE Model is constructed by Steven Hassan. And it's his BITE Model of Authoritarian Control is actually what it is. But authoritarian control is how you lead a cult. So we've made that application here. And you can find it in greater detail on freedomofmind.com.

Katie Dooley  1:06:30
Cool, thanks, Preston. I just I'm trying to think of the best way word this so basically, like I said, especially when you look at the full BITE model. There are points on the bite model that apply to major religions.

Preston Meyer  1:06:42
Oh, for sure. We've got things on here that I would call orange buttons and red buttons. 

Katie Dooley  1:06:50
And I think there's a quantity of buttons. 

Preston Meyer  1:06:52
Yes, absolutely. If you check off 90% of these boxes, you're in a bad spot. But if you only check off two of these things, and they're the things that I would label is low risk, as opposed to the higher risk things that 

Katie Dooley  1:07:08
I guess this is part of the critical thinking is that if you're a member of any religious organization, or charismatic group, with a leader to evaluate the BITE model for yourself, can something check the boxes and not be dangerous? Or I guess, what's the tipping point for a cult you know what I mean? Like, if I am personally getting something out of it does it matter that it ticks or when does it matter that it takes the boxes?

Preston Meyer  1:07:39
Well see if you're getting something out of it. And you are able to recognize that it takes off 90% of what I'll call the red button boxes. What is your position in his group? 

Katie Dooley  1:07:51
Well, we're having this conversation the other day, when we're writing these notes, it's like Tom Cruise and Scientology. Either he hasn't looked at it critically, which is a possibility. Or he has looked at it critically, but either one of two things. One, they have so much on him, which is a very real possibility and then it's dangerous for him. Or two, he has so much power, he doesn't care that it ticks all these boxes.

Preston Meyer  1:08:18
Right? It's a little scary.

Katie Dooley  1:08:23
Or and I think of other main-er stream religions that have huge numbers of congregants, followers, believers, that ticks a lot of these boxes.

Preston Meyer  1:08:38
And you'll have groups that the larger group might not tick some of these boxes, but your subgroup does. And like it could be your family that puts these pressures on you that the church doesn't at all. Got all kinds of tiered spectrum wise, probably.

Katie Dooley  1:08:58
I don't know how much you want to name names or name churches. I mean, we have no problem being contentious but like, okay, the one I'm thinking of is Jehovah Witness, right where they have millions of members worldwide, but they tick a lot of these boxes. 

Preston Meyer  1:09:15
They really do. 

Katie Dooley  1:09:17
And I think if you asked the average person on the street, they might go well, I don't want a Jehovah Witness at my door. But it they probably wouldn't identify it as a cult. Just kind of weird group of Christians. So like, I guess my question is, is that a problem? Is it not a problem? When does it become a problem? Areyou picking up what I'm laying down? You just can't answer.

Preston Meyer  1:09:44
There's no singular answer. I think it's tricky. Critical thought is hugely important and evaluating things on a case by case basis is necessary I think.

Katie Dooley  1:10:00
I also think part of it is why we do this podcast, which I also talked about last week is being able to question those in power and make change in your own organization, religious or otherwise. You know, I guess in the case of Jehovah Witnesses in particular, just because I don't mean to pick on them, but they're an easy example right now is with such a large membership, if they could create a large enough movement to create change within the church to uncheck some of the boxes. It would just, you know, it needs education and critical thinking to even know that the boxes are checked, I guess, is where the problem comes in. And, you know, in the case of Tom Cruise and Scientology, he might not even know what boxes are checked, right? Because he's so powerful, he probably doesn't even hear half the horror stories from Scientology.

Preston Meyer  1:11:05
Unless he's in an actual position of authority within the church, it's perfectly reasonable that he could be unaware of a lot of these problems 

Katie Dooley  1:11:12
He's like number two, to like David Miscavige, only because he's so famous. And he's brought a lot of people in because it's Tom Cruise being a Scientologist, but I don't.

Preston Meyer  1:11:25
But is he a revered figure? Or is he actually an authoritative figure? 

Katie Dooley  1:11:29
I don't know if he has any... power

Preston Meyer  1:11:30
Like, he might not have administrative authority at all.

Katie Dooley  1:11:33
He's like Thetan level eight or something or 10? He's like the highest you can go. He's clear.

Preston Meyer  1:11:38
Well, yeah, he can definitely afford all those classes

Katie Dooley  1:11:42
Um, yeah, so that was a really big question that we didn't really answer, but important for people to think about in there... in whatever organization it is, even if your local Lions Club, you know, to evaluate what the community is doing in your world.

Preston Meyer  1:12:05
For sure. So what are some glaring red flags for cults outside of what we've already discussed.

Katie Dooley  1:12:13
The BITE model, I didn't add a ton because the BITE model is a very good overview. Again, it's hard as you will never know what someone else is thinking or believing or fully going through. So I want to give a few red flags for people for loved ones. Again, it's hard because you might not know the full extent of either their beliefs or what the organization is doing precedent, but this one on the list is guns because we're talking about the Branch Davidians.

Preston Meyer  1:12:45
There's so much discussion on whether or not the law enforcement was legitimately called to start this siege in the compound outside Waco, Texas years and years ago. And the idea of a religious group, stockpiling guns.

Katie Dooley  1:13:07
Which they did legally, but still they...

Preston Meyer  1:13:10
Yeah, they didn't break the law in collecting these guns as far as I have been informed. But the idea of a religious society, collecting a huge number of firearms, red flag, big red flag.

Katie Dooley  1:13:25
Another one I found is sharing theories and beliefs that are out of character.

Preston Meyer  1:13:30
Now, what do you mean by that? 

Katie Dooley  1:13:31
Well, I mean, Preston, as an atheist who has studied a lot of religion, if I came to you one day and started telling you very excitedly about my new religious beliefs, that probably be a red flag.

Preston Meyer  1:13:45
Yes, it would, I would definitely have questions for you, that's for sure.

Katie Dooley  1:13:50
And then if I started talking about the great and sexy leader of this group, and how much I just love him so much, and he's just inspired me to change my life. Another red flag.

Preston Meyer  1:14:05
And it doesn't mean that people can't make useful and productive big changes of heart. But think critically.

Katie Dooley  1:14:13
Well, I for a while there, I was worm-holing rabbit-holing going down the rabbit hole on YouTube for Muslim conversion stories. And none of them are like, I woke up and decided to be Muslim. They're all like, I thought about this for a really long time. And I read the Quran and I talked all my friends who are Muslim, and I talked to family about what they would think if I converted to Islam and yeah, so rapid change would be really weird. And I mean, of the handful of videos I've watched on it on YouTube it's typically Caucasian people. and a lot of them talk about how they're concerned about telling their family and friends so if someone's just like rip roaring ready to go. I'm a fill in the blank now. And it's something you haven't heard of... That's that's a red flag, again, any sort of exploitation this came up in the bite model and also might be hard for you as a loved one to know about financial or sexual exploitation. We might hear about financial exploitation more than sexual exploitation but..

Preston Meyer  1:15:28
But they both happen

Katie Dooley  1:15:29
Oh, totally, but I think someone might be like "Kay I'm broke I can't afford that" more than they say that they've been trafficked.  And then again, that scared to leave.

Preston Meyer  1:15:39
You can't really emphasize that one enough. 

Katie Dooley  1:15:41
No. If people are scared to leave the group, it's not a good group.

Preston Meyer  1:15:46
Yeah, if they're scared to leave, you need to help them leave.

Katie Dooley  1:15:51
We'll get you a new passport.

Preston Meyer  1:15:53
It's a tricky thing to do. Changing names, I mean, it's cheap enough to do it's I don't think it's terribly quick, but it's cheap. 200 bucks here anyway. 

Katie Dooley  1:16:06
All right. Well, good to know. I don't know why you know that. Yeah, those are the red flags I could find for you helping a loved one and again, falling back on that BITE model, as well as a really good guide for both yourself if you're evaluating a group or if you have a loved one you're concerned about.

Preston Meyer  1:16:30
Yeah. The International Cultic Studies Association has a definition for destructive cults.

Katie Dooley  1:16:39
Danger cult! As Preton's been calling it.

Preston Meyer  1:16:42
Yeah, I like to call them danger cults, they're slightly more. It's a little broader bracket than destructive cults. Destructive cults is defined by the International Cultic Studies Association as a highly manipulative group, which exploits and sometimes physically and/or psychologically damages members and recruits.

Katie Dooley  1:17:07
I like it.

Preston Meyer  1:17:11
It's pretty solid. I like it. My phone's been, alerting me to potentially more discussion on what definitions might show up.

Katie Dooley  1:17:22
Oh, right. Preston put out an APB for scholarly definitions of cults because, as we said, there's the cult in the sense of a baby religion in the cult in the sense of NXIVM.

Preston Meyer  1:17:38
Yeah, I've asked a handful of people specifically have them not look up a definition but to define it from what they're able to observe in what they think are cults. So I've got one fella saying, I would say a small to large group of individuals controlled by a charismatic individual or board of individuals in a situation wherein the group has a slavish and unquestioning dedication to that individual, or that board of individuals. It's pretty solid.

Katie Dooley  1:18:11
I like the term "slavish" because that basically encapsulates the BITE model.

Preston Meyer  1:18:15
It does. It's a nice short way to cover up everything we talked about.

Katie Dooley  1:18:22
We literally could have just read that sentence for this episode and been done.

Preston Meyer  1:18:26
For some people, a cult is a group of persons that have a common interest or belief in a common unusual thing, or person or religion. The only problem I have with that is what constitutes unusual.

Katie Dooley  1:18:41
I agree, because like I said, they all just branch off of other bigger things.

Preston Meyer  1:18:48
Usually, there's not a whole lot of new novel religious though.

Katie Dooley  1:18:52
No, there's some. And I don't I mean, I guess you would call them cults in the sense of small groups, around charismatic leaders, not necessarily dangerous ones, you know, likening it to early Christianity is you probably get some Neo-Paganism or Neo Wiccan. But even that is based in I don't actually know if a brand new idea would catch. We'll kind of talk about this in our next episode.

Preston Meyer  1:19:23
I mean, the Flying Spaghetti Monster was pretty new.

Katie Dooley  1:19:27
I was gonna say we're talking about the next but that was based off of existing ideas. If the Flying Spaghetti Monster came up with entirely new doctrine, I don't think it would catch, and Flying Spaghetti Monster hasn't caught for the same reasons as other religions, either. Next week, two weeks from now rather satirical religions. We're gonna jump off of cults and go into a weird realm of satire religions.

Preston Meyer  1:19:59
Yeah. it'll be a great discussion and a lot of fun, I think.

Katie Dooley  1:20:04
Any final thoughts on cults? 

Preston Meyer  1:20:07
Don't join cults. 

Both Hosts  1:20:08
One of us, one of us, one of us 

Katie Dooley  1:20:13
Those are my final thoughts.

Preston Meyer  1:20:17
Generally, just avoid any group that would subvert your individual free will, I think is ultimately the takeaway from this discussion.

Katie Dooley  1:20:29
Thanks Preston. Are we pimping ourselves now? 

Preston Meyer  1:20:37
Yeah, let's do it. 

Katie Dooley  1:20:38
Cool. Facebook, Instagram @HolyWatermelonPod, email [email protected]. Discord find it on our social media sites and leave five stars on Apple.

Preston Meyer  1:20:53
I think that's all. Thanks for joining us.

Both Hosts  1:20:57
Peace be with you.

Is belief a choice or are our beliefs inherent to us? How do we decide whether something is true or not? With 7 billion people on the planet, there are about 10,000 different types of religious beliefs. How do we come to our conclusions? 
 

Epistemology is a complex area of philosophy that deals with how we process information and decide if something is fact or fiction.

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Preston Meyer  00:14

Hi, I'm Preston.

Katie Dooley  00:15

And I'm Katie.

Preston Meyer  00:17

Welcome to the 

Both Hosts  00:17

Holy Watermelon podcast.

Katie Dooley  00:21

We're changing gears.

Preston Meyer  00:22

Yeah, we've spent, what is it? Seven episodes, seven episodes on our mini series looking at specific different religious traditions. And now we want to get back into that frame that we were in before where we actually talk about things with more of a personal interpretation and academic leaning, rather than just historical, sociological stuff.

Katie Dooley  00:47

But we'll see right away with my opening point why we did what we did, because now we're going to be talking in comparisons to religions, and you guys at least know what we're talking about. So that's cool. And we'll know what we're talking about, too, because some of that was a big refresher. For both of us, I think.

Preston Meyer  01:06

A lot of these things I haven't studied in years. So it's nice to get back into it and keep it fresh for sure.

Katie Dooley  01:12

Today, we are talking about the concept of belief. And I've been excited about this episode. From our planning days of the podcast.

Preston Meyer  01:22

It's so big and nebulous.

Katie Dooley  01:24

It is and my belief on belief has actually changed. And my belief is kinda nebulous personally...

Preston Meyer  01:35

Wait a minute, you change your opinions based on new information?

Katie Dooley  01:38

I did. 

Preston Meyer  01:38

Oh, no! 

Katie Dooley  01:39

We're gonna talk about that. So strap yourselves in because this is another episode without any real answer. We're just gonna talk about the topic of belief for an hour. And I would love to hear your thoughts on belief if you want to drop us a line on social media or on our Discord. Because yeah, this is one area that I'm still really unsure of.

Preston Meyer  02:10

It's tricky. And I don't think it'll ever stop being tricky.

Katie Dooley  02:15

I wanted to start off with the question of: what do you think of these religions? Now that we've talked about them all. I will answer it the way I am thinking to help guide your answer.

Preston Meyer  02:33

That would be helpful. 

Katie Dooley  02:36

And this happened to me when I was taking religious studies in school, is when we're all done the year, I kind of sat back and said, they're all the same. They're all the same.

Preston Meyer  02:48

There's a lot of similarities.

Katie Dooley  02:50

I looked at all these religions, and went they're very much different methods to the same purpose. And when I say different methods, there's a ton of overlap. It was really kind of like pick and I have an ice cream analogy. Maybe the ice cream analogy will come up today. It's pick whatever flavor of ice cream you like, at the end of the day, it's still an ice cream dessert. At first glance, we look at Hinduism and Christianity as two very opposite religions. But you know, Hinduism, polytheistic, or pantheistic, whatever. Pick your poison. And Christianity is monotheistic, and when Hinduism has reincarnation, and Christianity has this concept of heaven, but all of a sudden, when you do some digging, there's these parallels in Hinduism, everything is Brahman, is that not monotheism and then in Christianity, we have two very convoluted Trinity, is that not polytheism? In Hinduism, we have Moksha is that not heaven? Doesn't God promises rebirth in heaven? Is that not reincarnation? All of a sudden, these things don't look so different. Once you have a - not even a very deep understanding, just a basic understanding of the beliefs and and history. So what do you think? A big question. That's my answer that big vague question.

Preston Meyer  04:18

Surface level there have a lot more similarities than differences for sure. And then there's the nitty gritty differences, like the difference between resurrection and reincarnation, for example. Surface level, they're basically the same thing. Resurrection is being made to stand again is literally the formation of the word and that is to be put into a body again. That's exactly what reincarnation is to be covered in flesh again. So, minor linguistic differences that carry less theological difference. Then literal semantic semantic difference. And yet the baggage that they carry is different.

Katie Dooley  05:12

Connotation, right? Yeah.

Preston Meyer  05:15

But ultimately, the idea that when you die, you will continue on is almost universal for all of the religions that I'm aware of not just limiting it to the ones that we've already discussed. And then there's, of course, this idea that if you're a good neighbor, your life after this one is going to be better than the alternative. The biggest difference between all of the religions on a day-to-day, how you live your life kind of perspective, is definitely what does that mean? What are the rules to being a good neighbor, to being a good part of the community, to being part of the holy community? What does that mean? And that's where you have a lot of differences.

Katie Dooley  06:08

I mean, I would even argue that there aren't a ton of differences.

Preston Meyer  06:10

I mean, mostly, don't stab, don't rape your daughter's wife or his daughter...

Katie Dooley  06:15

It comes down to... don't be a dick.

Preston Meyer  06:21

I think I've said that phrase in almost every episode. You know what that might be a t-shirt thing we have to do at some point. It's just don't be a dick. But there's also, of course, extra rules like don't eat cows, don't eat pigs.

Katie Dooley  06:44

It's the minutiae that changes. And as an atheist, right, as an outsider to all of these, I kind of look at those as the things to eliminate, right? Like, if everyone is telling you don't be a dick, then that's probably pretty important. If one is telling you not to eat a pig, and one's telling you not to have sex before paper is signed. And when it's telling you to cover your head, I would say that these are the little differences so that you have some sort of community identity.

Preston Meyer  07:21

Absolutely. In the Hebrew scripture, it said in a few different places, that some of the rules are given to Israel, just to make them different from their neighbors. So

Katie Dooley  07:34

Is that.. the wieners?

Preston Meyer  07:38

That is, that's actually part of it. That is part of that umbrella group of rules.

Katie Dooley  07:45

I think that at the end of the day of, I mean, this is the atheist in me, at the end of the day I kind of go, it's all the same, then none of it matters, which is terrible, right? As long as you follow the don't be a dick, then. And whatever comfort you need to pass from this life is kind of up to you.

Preston Meyer  08:06

What's interesting, though, is that even though all of these religions say, be good neighbors, don't be dicks. Almost every one of these religions has a huge population that uses their different from their neighbors as reasons to be dicks.

Katie Dooley  08:24

I mean, that's just people. Right? At the end day you'll never get any perfect population group, whether that's race, religion, nationality. There's always gonna be a dick. And well, you know, I am not so blind to think that all atheists are perfect. There's a lot of terrible people who are atheists. Well, you know, when we do our atheist/agnostic episode, we'll talk about that. But yeah, I think it's just people. Anything to the extreme is bad. And I mean, even how do you, you know, sometimes it's just societal prejudices, that we identify someone by their race or religion with the bad thing they did.

Preston Meyer  09:14

Which is nonsense. 

Katie Dooley  09:15

Yeah. Right. Well identify someone as whatever. I don't want to, like...

Preston Meyer  09:21

It's like people being mad at the Jews because they killed Jesus.

Katie Dooley  09:27

Not all the Jews killed Jesus. 

Preston Meyer  09:28

Well, first most important point. According to Christian literature, he died voluntarily on a cross upon which he was put by Romans. So we got a problem there already.

Katie Dooley  09:49

And again, obviously, not all Romans, not all Jews not. But we've attached that to, in this case. Christ's crucifixion

Preston Meyer  10:01

People like to find a reason, however spurious or nonsensical, to be hateful.

Katie Dooley  10:08

We see this in our news all the time, they'll say so immigrant, I'm just gonna say generic immigrant because I don't obviously don't want to single anyone out specifically, they'll say immigrant committed a crime. It's like, it doesn't matter if there's Canadians that are bad people. It doesn't matter. Do you.. this is going to be fairly conversational episode, but I did want to touch on the definition of faith. Because it's a nebulous definition, and it will play... I mean, did you read my exam? 

Preston Meyer  10:45

I did. 

Katie Dooley  10:45

Okay. And it will. I mean, I'll play a role in how we talk about belief. Do you want to tackle that. I see you added some stuff. 

Preston Meyer  10:52

Yeah. So I want you to start with what you wrote. And then I'll take care of what I wrote. 

Katie Dooley  10:55

Do you want my conversation? I wrote out this example of a conversation? 

Preston Meyer  11:01

Sure, why not?

Katie Dooley  11:03

So the reason I wanted to define faith is because I was listening to an atheist call-in show, and the atheist, and the person calling in who was some Christian pastor, Priest, clergy person, obviously had different definitions of faith. So the atheists hosting the show, said, "Because you believe the Bible is 100% true. you don't have faith in God", faith being, in this case, believing something that there's no proof of, and the religious person came back and said, "No, I have faith because I know the Bible is true." And they basically went back and forth on this until one of them hung up. But if you know is true, then you don't need faith. So I while there are several definitions of faith, I just want to make sure we and our audience listeners are on the same page for the purposes of this episode.

Preston Meyer  12:07

All right, yeah, I like that. So there's some dictionary definitions that I think are pretty helpful.

Katie Dooley  12:15

All right, so I pulled up two ones from Britannica and ones from Wikipedia Britannica said faith is inner attitude, conviction or trust relating human beings to a supreme god or ultimate salvation. And Wikipedia has faith. derived from latin, is confidence or trust in a person, thing or concept in the context of religion, one can define faith as belief in a god or in the doctrines of teaching of religion. And then it actually clarifies religious people often think of faith as competence based on perceived degree of warrant, while others who are more skeptical, like myself, of religion tend to think its faith as simply believing without evidence, as I mentioned, in my example.

Preston Meyer  13:02

Yeah, faith is kind of a tricky thing. A job I had years ago was working as a translator. Translating ancient Greek to English, and specifically to modern English, not to weird 300 years ago, English.

Katie Dooley  13:22

Fleek was Jesus on fleek?

Preston Meyer  13:26

That that phrase simply wouldn't have come up in the New Testament, unfortunately. I definitely didn't have a formal training in language, I learned it on the job, which was a really fun way to learn the language. I've since studied the language properly in a university setting. And that's actually helped out a little bit. But the word that we always translate to as faith and why faith is its own word in the English language, is a deliberate attempt to replace the word Trust, because of the new context of religious writings, but the word that's always been translated as faith in the Bibles that we're familiar with it would be more truthful, to use the word "trust." And so when I talk to people, even in church environments, I will avoid using the word faith as much as possible. So that people don't misunderstand me when I speak because I do know that like we've already shown out some people define the word differently than others, which is frustrating.

Katie Dooley  14:43

Can I ask what you would say? 

Preston Meyer  14:45

Almost always I say, trust that I use the word trust instead of faith as much as possible. And I believe that if you're if you can't replace the word faith with trust in your sentence, you're using the word wrong, I can't think of an example where that wouldn't be the case.

Katie Dooley  15:08

In a religious context...

Preston Meyer  15:11

In any context.

Katie Dooley  15:13

I have faith this bungee cord will hold.  Yeah, you trust that it will hold. But it's also it has other effects on the way that I talk to people about faith as well. Like if you say that, I believe in God. Nobody ever says, Well, okay, not nobody. Very few people, when they say I believe in God, mean that they believe there is a God, I believe in God means I trust God, which already has the prerequisite of believing he exists. And you've got other people who believe that there is a God and don't trust him. There are absolute, there are countless 1000s of people who believe in the existence of gods in whom they place no trust. I think a really easy to grasp example, would be those people who follow the faith of Odin and recognize Loki as a god. But because he's a trickster, trusting him is nonsense. That's an example that comes to mind. You've also got a handful of people who believe in the God of Abraham, of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. They believe he exists, but don't trust him. For a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's because they believe there's a creator of the world but hate that there's disease or hate that people have free will to do things and not be smitten immediately. It's a weird triangle of words believe, trust and faith, because I, I wouldn't fault someone for saying they had faith in Loki or God and then not trust them.

Preston Meyer  16:59

It seems tricky.

Katie Dooley  17:01

It's like very like it's... We're getting into semantics here. Yeah, it's a weird triad words that get people into a lot of trouble. So um, how do we want to define it for this episode? Or do we just gonna avoid the word faith altogether?

Preston Meyer  17:22

I don't think it's super helpful to avoid the word when we're deliberately approaching the word in an academic way. But I don't know how to fix it beyond the definition of a simple trust.

Katie Dooley  17:45

I mean, yeah, so if you have faith, you believe God exists.

Preston Meyer  17:50

And most people who have these faiths in the gods of whatever their religion is, there's another trust that has taken its position first. For example, most people receive their religious education from a parent, which requires trust, and a faith in that parent, that they're not going to lead you astray. And that trust is built on previous experience with them. And then they are willing to accept what they're teaching. And then usually, if you stick to that faith, you have come to trust that this faith hasn't led you into danger or something along those lines. 

Katie Dooley  18:40

As per my example of, if you believe it to be 100% true, then you don't need faith, or faith without proof. Someone with faith would have their proof whatever that is, so even if I'll consider it proof and we're going to get into epistemology in a minute, they would have their proof to trust that God exists.

Preston Meyer  19:01

So another problem I've already come up against is the word proof.  You can have all kinds of evidence, evidence can take all kinds of forms. And evidence is like a witness something that offers testimony. I have a hard time thinking of proof as a real obtainable thing in any field other than mathematics. Like you can always prove that two plus two is four. Sometimes you can prove the two plus two is not. It takes some ridiculous mathematical gymnastics. But it's easy to prove reliably consistently. Two plus two is four. And there are also logical formulas that look an awful lot like math, that can give you what we call proofs. And anybody who's done enough logical computations can also see that there can be flaws in logical computations, to give false proofs. PEDMAS is actually, it's only problematic because not everybody agrees to do it. Let's be real.

Katie Dooley  20:22

I mean, I, when I was learning PEDMAS, I was like, "This is dumb. Why would anyone forget this" and now at 30 I see equations and I'm like, what's PEDMAS? So, I get it.

Preston Meyer  20:35

Math is tricky. And it's its own thing. And as far as I can stretch my mind right now, based on things that are coming to mind, that's the only field in which I accept the existence of actual proof 

Katie Dooley  20:53

What's the problem with science?

Preston Meyer  20:56

Most of the sciences are either evidence based or math based. I do have to distinguish between those two things.

Katie Dooley  21:10

This is a good segue into epistemology.

Preston Meyer  21:14

Which is a really...

Katie Dooley  21:17

It's not really for us.

Preston Meyer  21:19

It's super tricky. I took a class on epistemology in the university. And I enjoyed it, though, it was frustrating. It was... it's a question is still doesn't have much of an answer. 

Katie Dooley  21:32

I thought it was gonna be really easy. When I wrote my stuff on epistemology, it is not. But basically, like, really basically, because I can barely understand it. It's how we, it's a part of philosophy. And we're not philosophers. Maybe one day we'll find a philosopher to help us with epistemology.

Preston Meyer  21:54

I might be a philosopher, depends who you ask, actually. I keep interrupting. There's a philosophical position that I've heard, that dictates that if you have an opinion on philosophy, you are a philosopher. So according to those who adhere to that principle, you're a philosopher.

Katie Dooley  22:20

Cool, because I'm about having an opinion on this. Put really simply, epistemology is how do we consider something a piece of knowledge? Or how do we know if we're knowledgeable about something? So it's deals with knowledge, and how we absorb information. And it's one of those things that I don't think people realize, other people think differently. There are a few memes that have like gone around, where apparently, a portion of the population thinks in pictures and a portion of the population thinks in words, and we don't realize the other exists. And it's just like, mind blowing. So it things like that or even if you're like an auditory or visual or kinesthetic learner like these little things on how we absorb information. I need to know are you a picture or word brain person?

Preston Meyer  23:19

I don't think I'm just one or the other. 

Katie Dooley  23:22

Interesting. Wow, that's because I know exactly what I am.

Preston Meyer  23:29

Yeah. Are you a word person? 

Katie Dooley  23:31

I'm 100% word person. I constantly have, like, a monologue in my head of words. I mean, I can like picture things. I mean, for my job, but like..

Preston Meyer  23:42

One would hope.

Katie Dooley  23:44

When I start everything with a word map, like I sent you for the podcast. Everything starts with words. I think through conversations, like everything in my brain is words.

Preston Meyer  23:57

That makes sense. For me. It's it's a little frustrating that I feel like I'm both that I think in pictures, I wouldn't say a majority of the time, but often enough, and it's tricky sometimes to convert those into words that I can relay to another person and have them understand what that image is supposed to be. And it'd be a lot easier if I could draw properly. I used to draw a lot when I was a kid a lot. And then I kind of stopped when I was in junior high, I think? But that probably was a big part of it. Actually, that drawing was very appealing to the girls when I was in elementary school. And then it didn't get me any attention at all in junior high and I think that helps shift my medium of communication and and whether or not that's affected the way I think is a question for people with greater education than mine in that field.

Katie Dooley  25:09

As I was saying, epistemology is how we take these pieces of information, process it and stick it into our brain file. The big question is how do we justify knowledge and belief. So epistemology deals with memory, perception, reason, and testimony. And this is how we decide if something is valid. I wrote down an example that made sense in my brain, but the example I wrote is how do you know if someone is good at their job using those four things. So the memory, maybe you remember them doing something similar before, and ergo you can extrapolate and think they'll be good at this as well. Number two, for perception, lots of people say perception is reality. And I don't disagree with that. So maybe they appear to be successful, maybe they're well dressed or wealthy. So ergo, if they look successful, they're probably successful at their job. Not necessarily true, but people make that assumption all the time. Reason, I would say they put this under concrete evidence. So they might have good sales numbers, good conversion, numbers, ROI, all these business terms that, you know, actual tangible numbers, that we can reason to believe that they are good at their job. And number four testimony, someone has told you that they're good at their job. And that's why as a business owner, and podcast host testimonials, and reviews are important. It's huge, so that people know that we're doing a job before they listen.

Preston Meyer  26:48

And testimony is super tricky. Because that kind of loops back on actually they all do. But testimony in a more obvious way than the others relies on trust.

Katie Dooley  26:59

Yeah, I... doing this research. I think the two biggest ones and I might have even made notes on this. The two biggest ones I think religion leans on his testimony and perception. And this is going to be an unpopular opinion, I'm sure but but that's because you can warp perception.

Preston Meyer  27:17

You can, you absolutely can warp perception.

Katie Dooley  27:21

And I have a note, I was reading a fantastic book. It's a long, it's a bit of a slog. But it's a good book called When God Talks Back by Tonya Lehrman. And it's about evangelicalism in America. And this is sort of the perception piece that she talks about that if evangelical Christians train their brains, to see God in everything. And this is through prayer and community and all the pieces of that. And believing that God, you have a personal relationship with God. And therefore they can make it more real than someone like me. Who I'm not looking for God and everything so I don't see God and anything I don't believe in God. Do you have anything to add to that?

Preston Meyer  28:19

I had a bit of a thing, and then I lost it. So epistemology asks questions like, what is knowledge? We looked at some categories on how we can kind of explain that. How is knowledge acquired? is super tricky. That if you look at a thing, like I look at red socks, I know those socks are red. But that doesn't translate well to more complex ideas. You know?

Katie Dooley  28:54

No, and I was having this conversation with a friend. And we'll get into whether belief is a choice or not. She said, you can choose to believe something else. And I said, I can look at the sky and choose to believe it's green. I can pretend. And so when you say red socks, and you I know they're red, but you could arguably choose to believe that they're not red.

Preston Meyer  29:15

Well, you could theoretically convinced yourself that something is wrong with your eyes, that you perceive colors in the color wheel inverse from reality.

Katie Dooley  29:26

Or that it's a different red is the wrong name for that color, or, yeah, this is a slippery slope.

Preston Meyer  29:35

It's tricky. It is and unfortunately so is this entire topic. And the ultimate question of epistemology is can we have knowledge? Can you really know anything?

Katie Dooley  29:54

That really hurt my head.

Preston Meyer  29:55

There's loads of people that say of course I can know things. I know those socks are red. I know this carpet is softer than concrete. But, I mean, ultimately that comes down to perception. And for the vast majority of philosophers, including you and me, perception is reality. But what if it's not?

Katie Dooley  30:22

Then we're in the matrix. And things are gonna get weird. That's a hard question to answer, I think it's a difficult question because things change so fast.

Preston Meyer  30:37

Well, and you can be 100% sure of a thing, and then find out that's not the case. In fact, one example that I had in my epistemology class, was the idea of you're driving down the road one morning, and you look at the hill that's rising up on the south side of the road, and in the distance, you see sheep, and you say out loud, I see sheep. And the kid in the seat next to you is like, are those sheep? And kind of your default answer is, yeah, I know those are sheep, because I can see them. The road winds a little bit, and you get closer. And uh oh, you found out that they're actually llamas just kind of curled up. And then all of a sudden, your knowledge that you were so sure of before is no longer justified. And but you were so sure that you saw sheep on that hill, and the road winds a little bit more, and you get a little closer and behind for some statistically improbable reason behind each of these llamas is a sheep and so you were correct that there are sheep on the hill, but did you actually ever know that there were sheep on the hill? And can you predict in the future that you're not going to find more contrary evidence?

Katie Dooley  32:03

Inside the sheep? Is a llama. They're all llamas in sheep costumes.

Preston Meyer  32:13

Can you know anything?

Katie Dooley  32:14

No, I don't know. I don't I don't know. I think we can know some things, but probably a lot less than we think we know.

Preston Meyer  32:27

It gets tricky. The real question and for every little piece of knowledge that you think you have is do I actually know this? And for an awful lot of people with religious experience, and I'm going to categorize this nice and broadly. Every single person has the majority of the world population opposing the justification for their belief.

Katie Dooley  32:55

Yes, absolutely. It doesn't matter what group you're in. 

Preston Meyer  32:58

Yeah, there's, there is no group that has a majority population on this planet. So everybody has more than half the world saying no, your belief is not justified for their religious beliefs. There's obviously most of the world does believe the sky is blue. Even if they didn't have a word for it until 400 years ago, or 1000 years ago or whatever. Everybody knows the sky's blue most days.

Katie Dooley  33:30

One note I made a little further up. That seems like a good point to bring up now. This is just being a good neighbor--don't be a dick--is I think it's important to remember that everyone thinks they're right.

Preston Meyer  33:45

Absolutely. It's like you wouldn't hold on to a belief if you thought it was wrong. 

Katie Dooley  33:50

But I think people forget that. You know, everyone thinks they're right, in whatever, particularly in religious beliefs. I think there's other topics. People are a little more, I'm willing to learn. But when it comes to religious beliefs, and where we go when we die, everyone thinks they're right.

Preston Meyer  34:09

The most are willing to admit ignorance to some degree. They never say I think my beliefs are wrong, because then they cease to be your beliefs.

Katie Dooley  34:20

So I just, you know, if you're, if you meet someone who's different than you just have that compassion for them because

Preston Meyer  34:28

You can't hit somebody into believing what you believe. It doesn't work. People have tried. God people have tried so much. But it doesn't work.

Katie Dooley  34:38

Remember all those Guru's that were murdered in Sikhism? A month ago?

Preston Meyer  34:44

Right? It's what? There's countless records of Christian martyrs that are reasonably familiar to our audience, and countless martyrs of every faith.

Katie Dooley  34:59

Is Schrödingers Cat like epistemology where you don't know if it's alive or dead?

Preston Meyer  35:07

It fits into epistemology but it's, it's not why the thought experiment exists, I think, but it fits into epistemology really well,.

Katie Dooley  35:19

Yeah. When you were talking about sheep or llamas was I was like alive or dead sheeps and llamas are a little more wholesome though.

Preston Meyer  35:27

Well, versus a potentially dead cat in a box?

Katie Dooley  35:32

I think I might ahve to create a llama in a sheep costume graphic.

Preston Meyer  35:36

Now we need one. There's a few more questions that are important to epistemology as well, that I do want to hit. So in, in following that theme of what is knowledge? How is knowledge acquired? And can we actually really have knowledge? There's some interesting follow up questions of what do people know? Like you're going to run into people who are 100% convinced of things, they have strong convictions, and that you have to wonder, what do they know? What evidence do they have? What experiences have they had that bring them to where they are? It's kind of fascinating. That's how I like to apply that question anyway. There's also the question, what are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? That's a long really wordy question, but it's how can you say you know anything?

Katie Dooley  36:41

That's different for everyone. It has to be. I mean, especially in the context of religion and right, like, in my world, I've seen no proof of God. But obviously, most of the world disagrees with me.

Preston Meyer  37:02

even though they also disagree with each other.

Katie Dooley  37:04

Absolutely. Yeah, so is that I don't want to make people sound dumb. But is that bar lower is I think it's just different bar altogether.

Preston Meyer  37:16

It's a different bar altogether. It's their experiences, bring them there. And I think part of that is the religiously, what is the question of testimony, which I think is really fascinating that in the Hebrew Bible, one of the big rules is do not bear false testimony. And there's loads of people who will testify of their beliefs, testify to the truthfulness of their beliefs. But really, a lot of the time, all they have to go on is they trust somebody who said it.

Katie Dooley  38:00

I mean, especially in early religious days, I think. Another piece is, it's actually and I'm no neuroscientist by any means. But it's actually just how your brain processes information. And I think that's where we see people leaving religion or deconstructing or converting, or people who I mean, I know people who grew up not religious that became religious later in life. And I think it comes down to how we process information, because we all get the same information.

Preston Meyer  38:37

Mostly, kind of. Mostly kind of, because perception is a thing, right? And perception relies a lot more on the filter than the object. I think. Going back a little bit to what you said, the idea of people changing the way they live because of this idea of reevaluating knowledge. For example, you've got loads of people leaving the Catholic Church in waves, and it's a lot less to do with, oh, I don't believe in God anymore. And a lot more to do with I don't trust this source of information anymore. Specifically with the way things are happening with the Catholic Church, that a lot of them are moving to other churches, many are giving up on theology altogether for sure. But one of the biggest drives on that is definitely losing trust in the people who bring you that message, losing trust in the witnesses. All right, I'm

Katie Dooley  39:55

just thinking. My perspective is I'm thinking of two friends that I had In university that became Christians later in life, they were not raised religious. And when I say people get the same information, well, it's not like I haven't been to church or heard about Jesus. But something about that stuck with them, that didn't stick with me. And we basically, I won't say basically, family situations are different. But, you know, we both had all three of us had non religious upbringings. So with the same, especially entry level information to get you into church, it's not like they drop the whole Bible on you and say, do you want in, right, they just give you bits and pieces, and then you learn more as you join. Or as you stay. So that's where I'm coming from with people process the same information differently, because it's not like I had less knowledge than them. I've just taken that knowledge and done something different with it. Started a podcast.

Preston Meyer  41:02

I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that they perceived something you didn't. And it's entirely possible that that's not just a filter issue, that they've probably also had other experiences to which you are not privy that have affected that decision.

Katie Dooley  41:23

My head hurts.

Preston Meyer  41:24

sSo complicated to think about, what is knowledge.

Katie Dooley  41:29

You have one more question. Do you want to tackle it?

Preston Meyer  41:33

Yeah. The last question on my list of questions of the basics of epistemology is what makes justified beliefs justified? And this is kind of tricky.

Katie Dooley  41:46

Isn't that an album by Justin Timberlake? Or Justin Bieber? Who did the Justified album?

Preston Meyer  41:55

I've listened to a lot more Timberlake than I have Bieber. But honestly, that's neither one of them is high up on my list of listening

Katie Dooley  42:03

I haven't listened to either enough to know. One of them put out a Justified album.

Preston Meyer  42:09

I don't even want to guess. So justified beliefs do get a little trickier. What constitutes your, your evaluation of beliefs? Are you strictly limited to laboratory quality testing? Because that doesn't work... 

Katie Dooley  42:31

For a lot of situations. Yes.

Preston Meyer  42:35

You've got the the idea of witnesses that most people in their lives will bear true testimony to most of the things that they are sharing. But have also got a history of lying at some point. That complicates things a lot, right there. Reason is important to most people to be able to use logic and think through things and understand that A follows through to B in these scenarios.

Katie Dooley  43:16

But even that doesn't work in everything.

Preston Meyer  43:18

It's not, it's not foolproof.

Katie Dooley  43:20

Literally. I was gonna be like, did you enjoy dinner tonight? 

Preston Meyer  43:24

And I can say I did

Katie Dooley  43:25

But you can't justify that with reason, because it's not you cannot statistically prove dinner was good.

Preston Meyer  43:31

Right. It doesn't work. But you enjoyed it. So that makes it easier to believe me when I say that I also enjoyed it. 

Katie Dooley  43:39

That is which one? Testimony. That's testimony

Preston Meyer  43:43

That's testimony and reason. Perception is a huge... Honestly, the quality of food is mostly perception. But you are also relying on me being a true witness of my perception. It's so complicated, Katie. 

Katie Dooley  44:04

And then there's someone who wouldn't like that dinner at all. 

Preston Meyer  44:07

Yeah. If I hated bell peppers and onions, I probably would have not liked it. But it also didn't strongly taste of bell peppers and onions.

Katie Dooley  44:17

So yeah. So do we know your dinner was good or not?

Preston Meyer  44:23

I liked it. And I hope you believe me when I say I liked it. And that's basically all we've got.

Katie Dooley  44:29

Yeah. And I think because two people liked dinner, if we made it again, others would be willing to try.

Preston Meyer  44:36

I would hope so. 

Katie Dooley  44:37

But that doesn't make it true. Which is crazy.

Preston Meyer  44:42

It's improbable that you and I are the only people on the planet that would enjoy this meal. But one has to admit that statistically speaking, there is still the possibility and reason barely factors into this but it still kind of does. Epistemology is hard, guys.

Katie Dooley  45:06

We didn't want to go too deep, but we have gone quite deep. We're not philosophers. Well, we are philosophers apparently. But we're not very good philosophers.

Preston Meyer  45:17

Philosophy as a thing is definitely not monolithic, and is huge and complicated. And I love the idea that having an opinion on philosophy makes you it makes you a philosopher.

Katie Dooley  45:34

You left some notes here. I don't know who Stephen Talbot is.

Preston Meyer  45:40

Yeah, so I went I what I actually Googled was epistemological exercises, hoping to come up with something really good. And didn't find what I was looking for, at all. Apart from something that somebody would use in a theology class that I thought might work as an exercise between you and me, but in reality, I don't actually think it would right now. So we're skipping that. So Stephen Talbot had four really interesting points on epistemology that I cut out some content, so it's easier to follow. Because really long sentences may often be the thing that looks like the heart of philosophy is just having long sentences. But you're, you can't communicate so well with long sentences. So I've broken this down into easier bites without rewording him very much, which I think deserves a little bit of credit. Thanks. So point, number one, the qualities of our experience, and the qualities we find in this world are the same. Which is broadly true, though, we have to admit that insanity, and, you know, those folks who have completely lost their mind will perceive the world completely different from the rest of us, at least in many cases, and so

Katie Dooley  47:24

True, but within themselves, their experiences would be equal to how they see the world.

Preston Meyer  47:31

Yes. So again, things get complicated with epistemology. But, yeah, our experiences are basically the qualities you find in the world. Absolutely. And we'll see them differently, for sure. So that's point number one. Point number two, is, amid all the appearances we discover each other, and the reliable presentation of things, by these appearances, we can coordinate our activities and make our livelihoods. That we live in a shared universe. That we have to perceive most things in the same way. A bookshelf is a bookshelf. If it's got something other than books on it, maybe it's being used improperly, maybe it's got another use. It's easy to identify that it is a shelf for its purpose. The floor is the floor, the roof is the roof unless your house is turned then you got problems. And everybody should recognize that you got problems in that scenario. And in the shared universe, we can be productive interact with each other in reasonable ways and make our livelihood. It's complicated, but it's not crazy, complicated. Point number three. It makes no sense to say that the place where the appearances appear, is inside our skulls. things appear right where they are. Now, that's a weird, weird turn of phrase. That is to say that the world that you are perceiving that you are acting in the bench that this laptop is sitting on is not in my head. That doesn't make sense, because I'm touching it with my hand which is stretched away from my head. We have to recognize that there are people who have really complicated mental illnesses where they can perceive solid physical objects that are not there. And though that complicates this point, it's also a have an interesting piece of evidence in favor of the point.

Katie Dooley  50:07

I mean this. Perception is reality, if you think it's there, it's there.

Preston Meyer  50:13

For you.

Katie Dooley  50:15

Oh yeah not for everyone,

Preston Meyer  50:16

That's the really tricky bit is that there is one reality that is 100%, the reality, the real state of things. But there's no person on this planet, that you're going to be able to convince that their perception of reality differs from your own. Which is complicated and frustrating. Like, I could not convince you that I believe that there's no carpet on this floor. And if I didn't manage to convince you that that is my belief, you would have somebody take me away, you would ask that I not drive home.

Katie Dooley  51:07

Isn't that the Emperor's New Clothes?

Preston Meyer  51:10

Yes, that's exactly the deal, that he managed to find himself in a position where he was convinced that he was wearing clothes when he was not

Katie Dooley  51:20

And he convinced everyone around him to go along with it.

Preston Meyer  51:24

But they were just going along with it. None of them believed that he was clothed. They thought that this whole deal was embarrassing, and it's a lot easier to just go along. Sanity is a tricky thing. There's a reason it's not a medically approved term. But it is a way that the casual person evaluates other people. The fourth tip, or fourth point, from Stephen Talbot, that I've written down, is the familiar world is brought to appearance only by the grace of thinking that Paige's perception of the world, not terribly important to you and me. We want we both want her to think that the world is a hospitable place. But whether she thinks the walls are green is of no importance to us. But

Katie Dooley  52:29

She can't see color. She's a dog. She thinks the walls are grey.

Preston Meyer  52:35

See, I've always wondered on this and I think this falls is really neatly into epistemology is how do we know dogs are colorblind

Katie Dooley  52:43

Bbecause they are missing... I forget which one rods or cones? I think it's cones that see color, process color. I forget which ones see color.

Preston Meyer  52:51

I realized that there is a biological component. However, what if the structures that are present in dog's eyes operate slightly differently from apparently similar structures in our own eyes?

Katie Dooley  53:09

Preston, please.

Preston Meyer  53:12

I've never looked into the science on why we think most animals appear to be colorblind. I'm just kind of spitballing ideas right here. I could be exactly that's how we know. And it's also probably been heavily tested. But you and I, we perceive through a filter of thought that we have to assume that everything that reacts to its environment is also doing the same thing. To some degree or another. Obviously, you and I think a lot more about what's going on around us than butterflies do. They're just like flower, go. You I mean, not so much. It's tricky. And I really like that Stephen Talbot has boiled it down to these four interesting points.

Katie Dooley  54:06

Basically, it's really hard guys and we're doing our best.

Preston Meyer  54:11

People believe things because they perceive a reason to believe them. 

Katie Dooley  54:17

Oh, that's a perfect segue into my next point. And my opinion has changed vastly on this and I to the point where I don't have an opinion, which is I don't know if that's a great place to be but is belief a choice.

Preston Meyer  54:36

I have opinions but I want you to keep going with what you got.

Katie Dooley  54:43

I don't know anymore. I used to think that it absolutely was a choice. And there are examples that I think it is just a choice and, obviously our personal beliefs are coming up a lot in this episode, but as an atheist, I go well look at the science, there's no evidence. Why would you ignore evidence or even lack of evidence? Like I

Preston Meyer  55:15

Like the lack of God all over plane windshields?

Katie Dooley  55:18

Or, you know, Richard Dawkins always talks about the teacup floating between the Moon and Mars or whatever, you can't prove that it's not there. So how do you know it's not?

Preston Meyer  55:28

It's wildly improbable. Like, how, why would there be a teacup of all things? 

Katie Dooley  55:34

Why would ther be a white bearded man in the sky?

Preston Meyer  55:37

Who says he's white? Who says he's got a beard?

Katie Dooley  55:39

I mean, all the pictures show that 

Preston Meyer  55:42

It's true. The vast majority of pictures have a beard and the vast majority have him white, at least around here anyway.

Katie Dooley  55:50

And a great example, I talked about this in one of our very first episodes is the Ken Ham Bill Nye debate, where they're debating evolution. And I've talked about this very moment. At the very I think it's one of the very last questions, moderator asked what would change your mind, and Bill Nye says evidence. So presumably, if we've dug up an ark that was 10,000 years old, and go, Okay, I believe that this happened. And Ken Ham says nothing. So even though we have dinosaurs that have been carbon dated for millions of years, and all the rock layers, he doesn't believe that the earth is more than 10,000 years old. And I think he's at that point choosing to be ignorant. And that's where my original belief, and still this is where my confusion in my mind comes from, is, I think he's absolutely choosing to ignore facts. My belief was changed when I read a very good book and we posted this on our social media as well called Why I Left, Why I Stayed by Bart Campolo and his dad, Tony Campolo. So Tony is an evangelical pastor, and his son, and Bart was and then became a humanist chaplain. So he left the church, why I left, why I stayed it's in the title. And they go chapter by chapter alternating, and they talk about their journeys. And in one chapter, Bart talks about how it's not a choice, because if it were a choice, he would have chosen to stay. Because he lost his job, because he was a pastor. He lost his family, because they were all religious. And now he wasn't anymore. He lost all his friends and his community, because all of a sudden, he's not going to church anymore. He said, If it was a choice, he would have chosen to stay because it would have been easier. He lost everything and had I mean, I don't know what kind of education goes into theology, but I imagine it's not particularly transferable.

Preston Meyer  57:57

Not so much.

Katie Dooley  58:00

And that really changed my mind on whether it's a choice or not, because I get that, right, I can understand while that I'm not a Christian, all of a sudden, you lose this entire community. Why if you could, right, he couldn't even fake it. Right? So it's I find in that regard. I'm like, Okay, I guess that's not a choice. And just like, I couldn't choose tomorrow to be a Christian. I was like, okay, that really changed my perspective on it. And so yeah, now I don't know. Talking around topics.

Preston Meyer  58:36

Right? There are things that a person can choose to believe and choose not to believe. If somebody bears witness to a thing that is within the realm of what you've already established to be possibility. It's a lot easier to say, Yep, I believe that and just make that choice. You can choose not to believe somebody based on just a lack of previous experience with that person, or choose to believe them. It's a lot easier to make a choice in that sort of situation. But to choose to believe the sky is orange right now when it's blue. That's not a thing people are doing. It doesn't make sense to do that. You can't use reason or justification for that. It's tricky. And if somebody were to try and convince you that the sky is orange, even if you trusted them. You had a strong pre-existing trust, that trust would dwindle rather than your mind change. I believe to complicate your absence of a an answer to the question that there are things that you can choose to believe. And there are other things that you have perceived sufficient evidence to hold on to that belief, or to acquire that belief. The water boiler is leaking. You can't deny that. First you hear the noise of water dripping, you walk down to the basement, your socks get wet, you've perceived water. You realize there's a problem, you're going to have to evaluate what you see when you try to track down the source of this water. And when you see that, oh, all the water is coming out of the boiler. You can't choose not to believe the water is coming out of the boiler and still be sane.

Katie Dooley  1:00:57

But I want to establish something you can choose to believe. Like, that's almost harder for me.

Preston Meyer  1:01:04

Fair enough. I think that often enough, that is the case with religious belief. 

Katie Dooley  1:01:11

I haven't found that with any belief and choose to think my dog was cute. It just happened.

Preston Meyer  1:01:20

Saw the dog and go yep, that's cute. You had some sort of pre-exists... or not pre existing, you had experienced leading up to this point that led you to have a favorable perception of this appearance.

Katie Dooley  1:01:37

And that's why I mean, that's why I struggle with is it a choice? Because I can't just choose to think she's not cute. And that's like, that's not even existential right. I am literally holding her right now. As opposed to like, does God exist? Like this big concept that we can't see. But I can't turn off my feelings for my dog. Right? And like, I didn't choose to not be your Well, I guess I would be a lie, though. Like, I could be like, we're not speaking anymore, but it wouldn't be an honest decision. Right? So it's really hard for me to, again, unless you're like Ken Ham, where it's like, here's all this evidence and go Nah, it's fine. But that goes back to the sky is orange. So I don't... I don't know. Well, again, where I don't think Ken Ham is a trustworthy person before I go, Oh, yeah, the planets 10,000 years.

Preston Meyer  1:02:37

Right. But even if you did go into this interview on his side of the argument, the idea that he can just discount evidence as totally unimportant, and that nothing could ever change his mind. You know that that's not a healthy perspective. And even if you went in trusting him, a reasonable person would have to come out of that questioning that trust.

Katie Dooley  1:03:05

So what's your answer, Preston?

Preston Meyer  1:03:07

Some things you can choose to believe and other things, belief is hoisted upon you. It's It's a frustrating subject. And it's a frustrating reality. And I think that's why a lot of people are bad neighbors, because they're so incredibly frustrated with why people perceive the world differently than they do.

Katie Dooley  1:03:32

Yes, that paired with lack of just like general knowledge and understanding,

Preston Meyer  1:03:37

And typically also a lack of empathy.

Katie Dooley  1:03:39

Yes. Because I mean, it always drives me crazy. When people like the Muslim God, I'm like, you're a Christian. It's the same God, right? There's a lack of understanding and empathy. Even before, though, why did they believe that? And why do you believe it's the same thing?

Preston Meyer  1:03:55

Well, and, unfortunately, so many people say, when you ask them, Why do you believe this? Because it's true. What evidence do you have for it being true? You have testimony, and you have experience, and unfortunately, your experience of religious nature, whatever that experience is, is almost always super ambiguous on to what it is justifying.

Katie Dooley  1:04:27

I was going to say I think testimony, in a religious context works almost only in the religious community to reinforce. You know what I mean?

Preston Meyer  1:04:38

Kind of, it exists in the scientific community, too, but it's different.

Katie Dooley  1:04:42

I know but in the context of religion, I think testimony, you know, on how to, you know, determine if something is a piece of knowledge or not, I think it only works within the community. Because I mean, obviously you have a testimony, you're Christian but that doesn't encourage me to believe, and I think that's where we run into problems with religion and people understanding each other is because I haven't had the same religious experiences. And then your testimony doesn't affect me.

Preston Meyer  1:05:15

As opposed to scientific journals where you'll have some guy who's working on his postdoctoral project, or maybe even a professional application of a thing. And he'll say, I did this thing, and it worked. And you're not going to have everybody say, Yeah, okay and, and then just go about doing it all the time. You're gonna have peer review, you're gonna have people trying to duplicate it. First before it's done on mass.

Katie Dooley  1:05:47

Yeah. And I even mean, like, you know, testimony of is this restaurant good? Or was dinner good tonight? We're more likely to listen to that testimony from anyone? Whereas like I said, I think religious testimony really only works within the religious community to reinforce belief.

Preston Meyer  1:06:05

Well, if you have a Muslim, say, I've read the Quran, and I've gone after and experienced, and I've actually had an experience with an angel. And he goes to another religious community. Like, say, a Christian church, for example. And the Muslim guy says to his Christian audience, I've had an experience with Jabril, who is also a figure that shows up in the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible. Christians be like, we don't trust you because of your identity.

Katie Dooley  1:06:46

Or they would  turn it into he's a Christian or like they'd say it was a Christian experience, as opposed to a Muslim experience

Preston Meyer  1:06:54

Which complicates that even more.

Katie Dooley  1:06:58

So I think that's just something that makes it so much more complicated, but to be aware of as well, right? That just because you have a testimony or perception, it's not shared. And that doesn't mean it will change someone's mind. Because clearly, Ken Ham has his perception of the world and his testimony of God and nothing's changing that. With that point on Ken Ham, I just wanted to throw in this fun fact about or fun fact, I thought it was a really good definition of fundamentalism. And you can be a fundamentalist in any religion. This isn't throwing shade, we just see, obviously Christian fundamentalism a lot in North America. But the definition was that if you believe something in your religious texts, that is scientifically disproven, then you are a fundamentalist.

Preston Meyer  1:07:51

Sounds pretty solid to me. For centuries, people talked about God and the angels literally living among the clouds, like within our atmosphere, but at least 20,000 feet up. And then we got airplanes and we noticed we're not wiping angel feathers off of our windshields, but you know, it's a seagull. And if you want to question it, you can test it. The fact that we haven't run into physical structures in the clouds, does defy previous traditions. There's loads of individual things about loads of religions that are disproven on an individual basis. But we haven't found a way to scientifically prove the absence of God. But we have pretty solidly disproven a lot of beliefs about him. And we've got an awful lot of people that deny these evidences.

Katie Dooley  1:09:01

I was having this conversation with a friend the other day. I've said atheist about 1000 times episode, take a drink every time go play it again.

Preston Meyer  1:09:16

But I think you're overestimating how much you said atheist.

Katie Dooley  1:09:19

Okay, take a shot. Obviously, I'm an atheist. So I don't believe in the Abrahamic God or any of the Hindu gods or Buddha or whatever. If there's anything, it's far bigger and vaster than anything our brains can come up with. And it doesn't care about papers before marriage. It doesn't care about you eating pork and it doesn't care about honestly, I doubt it even care about you murdering another person. Truly, I think it's if there's anything it's so big and vast we can't even comprehend it. That would be mostly this thing to religious statements.

Preston Meyer  1:10:07

I mostly agree with those points, that the idea that you can't have sex before you sign a piece of paper with another person that as far as I can understand it, that's not really the deal with any religion, that and really every religion that I've put any real thought into and study and you guys have witnessed me do it with seven, specifically on a rather in-depth basis. God is interested in who you are. And it also stands to reason that if there's any sort of community life after this mortal fleshy life on earth, then there is going to be requirements on how to participate in a community. And being honest and truthful and not looking to wreck somebody else's house is a part of your character. Your individual actions, as we talked about, in our Hinduism episode, individual actions, cosmically have no impact at all. But habitual actions affect who you are. And habitual actions are definitely driven by how you perceive the world, and what you believe. And we've talked about the No True Scotsman fallacy a few times, but I'm gonna pick specifically on the Christian faith, you've got an awful because as a Christian, I get to for sure that there is this huge, very visible collection of people who claim to believe in God and a heaven and a community. And yet, it's very obvious by the way they behave, that their belief does not translate into their character, which makes you wonder how much they believe. And therefore, how much do they belong in that community? It's super tricky. And the weird thing about religion, and all religions that I've been able to take a look at very much is that gatekeeping is 100% the biggest thing.

Katie Dooley  1:12:55

And see I think, whatever if there is anything, let's call it Universal Intelligence. I like I said, I don't even think they care for murdering each other, not that we should. Morals are still a thing, but I go, there's 7 billion people on this planet. And if you go at night, and you look at every single star in the sky, you can't tell me that there's not another planet like Earth.

Preston Meyer  1:13:19

I 100% believe that we're not alone in the universe. 

Katie Dooley  1:13:22

And let's say there's 7 billion people on those planets. Like, at some point, you can't give a shit anymore. Like truly. We become very, very tiny specks in a much bigger picture, where, and that's where I just can't fathom that. Someone cared that I signed the paper before I

Preston Meyer  1:13:42

And I don't believe that, that God cares if you've signed a paper. Yeah, in fact, even the murder thing.  I have a tricky relationship with this one. Okay. Because it's, it's not a simple thing. That to murder somebody as a one time incident, maybe that doesn't define your character. And maybe it doesn't have any influence cosmically, but it probably does. Having murdered somebody can change a lot about who you are. And almost always in a negative way. I would say probably more than half the time. It's also the product of a defective character.

Katie Dooley  1:14:35

Yes. Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying it's good. I'm just saying. Like that out of the billions of stars with the trillions of planets with the quadrillions of people.

Preston Meyer  1:14:48

It affects what kind of communities you'd be welcomed into, if there is another life to go into

Katie Dooley  1:14:52

If there's another life to go into which is different. I do want to touch on the last point for belief, I think it's kind of important.

Preston Meyer  1:15:06

Go for it.

Katie Dooley  1:15:09

The point he says, I don't kno how to say it. The point says religion falls along geographical lines.

Preston Meyer  1:15:16

I mean, kind of.

Katie Dooley  1:15:18

I mean, as we globalize less so, but historically, absolutely. And I yeah, that's also important to keep in mind just from a don't be a dick perspective of why you think someone might be wrong. It's probably because they grew up in a different part of the world with a different tradition. 

Preston Meyer  1:15:40

Often that's the case.

Katie Dooley  1:15:42

Don't be all high and mighty that you know, right, just because you're born in a different part of the world.

Preston Meyer  1:15:48

For us, a lot of human history, religions were carried from place to place by conquerors. And the real evaluation of whether or not you've properly conquered people, is if you have won their minds, and their faith, really their religious faith, that when tribes would conquer one another, there was I'm not gonna say universally, but really broadly, it's observable, that rather than just replacing the local gods with the new gods of the conquerors, which is also frequently seen in reality, there's this pattern for people who are comfortable with polytheism, and henotheism, which is pretty common in the old world. That is, a conquerors would place themselves in a position of, it's okay to worship the gods you had before, but know that our gods are superior, very often that would take the form of our God is the Father of your God. We see that a lot, the Greek and Roman gods, this is definitely the reality that happened, that people were allowed to keep their minor gods. And they were to be seen as children, or sometimes a couple of generations down from Zeus, who was head of the conquering nation. Or Jupiter in the Roman sense, but slightly different, but similar. And so geographical lines absolutely reinforced this division of faiths, of religious traditions. And that's definitely how you see this, these lines showing up. But there's, yeah, with globalization, that's less and less of a problem, but it's more of a people choosing to be in neighborhoods of people who they feel comfortable around, which can have similar effects on your perception of the world.

Katie Dooley  1:18:10

My base point with this is that

Preston Meyer  1:18:13

Don't be a dick.

Katie Dooley  1:18:15

Well, how can someone believe that? Well, you will believe it, too. If you were,

Preston Meyer  1:18:18

if you had the same experiences, that's what you would have believed.

Katie Dooley  1:18:20

If you were born on other side of the world, you would probably believe it do. YAnd absolutely, I'm curious to see what the next 50 years looks like for people in religion, because, I mean, from what I see on the internet, we're, I mean, things are mixing vastly. And I think it'll be it'll fall less along national or, or racial lines, but

Preston Meyer  1:18:47

We've already seen that. 

Katie Dooley  1:18:50

Yeah, they'll get more and more so. Yeah. But yeah, just if you're ever wondering why someone believes something. Ask yourself why you believe something? Because that's probably the same reasons, just a different belief.

Preston Meyer  1:19:05

Yeah. Don't believe in God, because a lack of evidence makes perfect sense. But for other people like myself. I've seen sufficient evidence to believe what I believe. And my beliefs have changed over the years.

Katie Dooley  1:19:21

Preston is so interesting. We'll do a whole episode on him.

Preston Meyer  1:19:25

Okay, I accept.

Katie Dooley  1:19:31

Any final thoughts on this big topic? I was like this'll be an easy episode. And I'm tired.

Preston Meyer  1:19:37

It's a tricky mind heavy topic.

Katie Dooley  1:19:42

We did some mental gymnastics.

Preston Meyer  1:19:45

A little bit. Yeah.

Katie Dooley  1:19:50

I did. Maybe you didn't do any But I did. I thought critically.

Preston Meyer  1:19:56

I sure did. Yeah, it's it's heavy. And I would recommend that if you're interested in philosophy and enjoyed this episode, you should definitely dive into the worm holw. No into the rabbit hole. Wormhole is a completely different than dive into the rabbit hole of epistemology. Even just the reading the Wikipedia article on it is a great start.

Katie Dooley  1:20:21

And I, I've talked about this before, but I think it's really important to be moderate in belief. I don't think extremism is good. But I also don't think it's good to be lazy in your beliefs and not really understand why you believe what you believe or have any conviction in it. And I think this is a good episode to, you know, if you're listening to sit back and and evaluate what you believe and why you believe it, and maybe what some of the people around you believe and if you're comfortable with those people have some of these conversations because I mean, like I said, my mind has changed.

Preston Meyer  1:21:03

I think that's a healthy position. Your mind should change. Maybe not on all things. 

Katie Dooley  1:21:08

No, but not super frequently. 

Preston Meyer  1:21:10

Right? That sounds dangerous.

Katie Dooley  1:21:14

Yeah, read some good books and talk to some good people and have that challenge. And I think that's been important for me in my beliefs is I never wanted to be a casual atheist. I never wanted to be someone who was called out for not knowing about religion, and that's how I got into this I never wanted to be called out for not knowing about religion and being an atheist. Oh, you're an atheist? Because you just don't know. No, I know. I promise you I know.

Preston Meyer  1:21:41

Do you know or have you simply been informed?

Katie Dooley  1:21:46

And with that you can follow we are wrapping it up.

Preston Meyer  1:21:56

Epistemology is hard. There's not one solid answer, which I think is part of the charm of the pithiness of the question.

Katie Dooley  1:22:05

You can follow us um, nothing else.

Preston Meyer  1:22:09

No, I think we're good. Follow us on 

Katie Dooley  1:22:12

You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook @holywatermelonpod

Preston Meyer  1:22:16

You can email us at [email protected] or

Katie Dooley  1:22:20

you can join our Discord and the conversation there.

Preston Meyer  1:22:25

Find our links on our social media. Since you can't find us through discord yet

Katie Dooley  1:22:30

Yesm, bring 7000 friends

Preston Meyer  1:22:35

I'm trying! 

Both Hosts  1:22:39

Pease be with you.

In this episode, we discuss Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan. It doesn't have one central figure or doctrine that is based on, but rather the worship of spirits or kami. Our first records of Shinto as a religion date back to 4CE, but because it is so integral to the formation of the nation of Japan, we believe that these beliefs developed even earlier. 

Kami can be almost anything including ancestors, or natural elements like rivers and mountains, which means Shinto is rooted in nature worship. 

Shinto is not an exclusionary religion. Like Buddhism, you can be a Shintoist and something else. Many people who practice Shinto are also practicing Buddhists and Confucianists. On the Japanese census, 70% of the population said they were Buddhist and 60% said they were Shinto!

The emperor was considered a great Kami until after WWII when the Allied forces forced Japan to separate religion and state. 

A big concept in Shintoism is cleanliness and pollution. Cleanliness is godliness and physical purity relates directly to spiritual purity. 

There are about 80,000 shrines in Japan. People leave flowers, food and monetary donations to the Kami at their shrines. Big public Shinto shrines are run by priests, these shrines are very welcoming to the public. They will show you how to make an offering to the Kami!

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Katie Dooley  00:12

Hello. 

Preston Meyer  00:14

Welcome 

Both Hosts  00:15

to the Holy Watermelon Podcast. 

Preston Meyer  00:20

Man, that was terrible.

Katie Dooley  00:21

That was that was one of our worst last week. I was like, Oh, we're getting so much better. But not all weeks can be winners. I'm Katie.

Preston Meyer  00:29

I'm Preston.

Katie Dooley  00:30

And we're your hosts. And today we are wrapping up, I guess a mini series on the largest organized religions around the globe.

Preston Meyer  00:44

So you say organized, Hinduism is not very well organized. And the same can be said of, well, okay, the same can be said less reliably, of Shintoism.

Katie Dooley  00:57

Which is our topic today, what would you call these, then the ones with the stamp of approval, major religions?

Preston Meyer  01:04

People like to call them the world religions, because they're huge in population and have spread over pretty much the entirety of the earth. And Shintoism, as didn't used to have a centralized authority until this idea of state Shintoism showed up. 

Katie Dooley  01:23

Which we'll get into. Yeah, jumping ahead a bit. 

Preston Meyer  01:26

Yeah. But it's better if we start a little closer to the beginning on this one.

Katie Dooley  01:31

That's my rewind noise. That's not a very good one. But I always like to start with the numbers for these religions. So I'm just looking at the notes. Shintoism started in the fourth century. So it's quite old. You're giving me a look.

Preston Meyer  01:49

I mean, the way that Shintoism is visible today, it seems to have started around that time, yeah.

Katie Dooley  01:57

But being an indigenous religion to Japan, and a nature worship religion, it's probably fair to say it started even before then.

Preston Meyer  02:07

Absolutely. In fact, we've talked a lot about labels in the past. And Shintoism is so vast that one label, while it might seem really good in the moment that we'll use it, there is going to be part of this whole ball of wax, where that label just doesn't stick.

Katie Dooley  02:34

Well, we don't like labels in religion, because exactly, they don't always fit. And I think that's fair for Shintoism because I had trouble wrapping my head around it, I got there. But it was a lot of digging and research, whereas something like Buddhism, where it's all numbered, it was way easier to figure out their beliefs and practices.

Preston Meyer  02:56

Yeah, so when you say it's a nature, religion, that's true in a lot of ways. But also, you do have Shintoists who don't really worry about the river god, or the mountain god or the sky god of their area, and only really pray to their ancestors. And then you have some that will do the occasional prayer to their ancestors. And we'll be a lot more worried about their own agricultural profitability, let's say, and they'll pray to the god of rice, or the god of the rain, and spectrum.

Katie Dooley  03:32

Spectrum! The basis I guess, of Shintoism is the worship of the kami and the closest English translation we have for kami is spirits. And as Preston was saying, spirits can live in the rivers and the mountains. They can also live in manmade objects or as people, and that's where we'll get into state Shintoism. But the emperor was considered a great Kami not to be confused with the communist as I was saying it, I was like, that sounds really bad.

Preston Meyer  04:05

Yeah, the emperor was a great kami.

Katie Dooley  04:08

That's what clued my mind, there are about 100 million Shintoists in the world, because it's a religion of Japanese origin, their predominantly in Japan or of Japanese descent.

Preston Meyer  04:23

So you'll find a lot more on the east coast of Canada and United States. No that's not true, west. It's not even that hard. They're on the west coast of Asia and the east coast of North America. And also a lot of Japanese people. 

Katie Dooley  04:38

You literally said that backwards today. Yeah, it's the east coast of Asia. Yeah. And the west coast of Canada. I can't even

Preston Meyer  04:47

Words aren't even that hard, but here we are. 

Katie Dooley  04:51

Some words are hard.

Preston Meyer  04:52

And there's also a huge Japanese population in Brazil, which is not on the west coast of South Africa. 

Katie Dooley  05:00

It's on the East Coast, yeah. Geography lesson for you today as well.

Preston Meyer  05:05

I'll get there.

Katie Dooley  05:06

So Shinto. Shintoism is not an exclusatory religion, you can be Shinto and something else. I think it's almost borderline encouraged.

Preston Meyer  05:16

Yeah, we talked about a couple episodes ago, in our discussion of Buddhism, that an awful lot, probably even most Shintoists are also Buddhists and Confucianists, which is kind of cool. This amalgamation of ideas. And as we get into Shintoism, a little bit more, you'll see how that's actually really easy to come across.

Katie Dooley  05:43

I think it's a good way to be too because you can really utilize the different beliefs and practices for certain points in your life. And there's a very specific reason that most people die Buddhist. But to be able to actually use religion to find guidance and comfort and shift that religion as necessary in your life, I think is probably a healthy thing.

Preston Meyer  06:12

Yeah, I think so. 

Katie Dooley  06:14

Do you want to go more into Shinto and Buddhism being best friends?

Preston Meyer  06:18

Yeah, for sure. So in the early seventh century, Buddhism had spread all the way across from the top of the Indian subcontinent, all the way east, through China, up into Japanese borders. And it became so popular, that Prince Sku, but we spell it S-K-U I, 

Katie Dooley  06:46

Oh, like the barcode. 

Preston Meyer  06:49

It is spelt like that in the way we typically transliterated. I assume that my pronunciation is acceptable, if it's not correct, Prince Sku or Sku, I don't know, he sponsored Buddhism as the state religion of Japan, which sounds really weird when Shintoism was already wildly popular as the native indigenous religion. And I think this illustrates how Shintoism wasn't seen as a religion, in the same way that they saw Buddhism, or Christianity as a religion, that Shintoism was just a fact of life, that it was a thing that you did, you would pray to your ancestors, you would pray for things. And it wasn't... saying prayer makes it feel like it would have been a religious action. But they would simply... you go to a place where you can communicate with the spirits. And that's it. That's all it was. Or that's the way it was seen anyway. So there was no real conflict in making Buddhism a state religion. And so over the next 150 years, it became more popular and more kind of forced by the government as it being the state religion, this Buddhism. And so Buddhist monasteries and temples can be found in every province by about the middle of the eighth century. So they kind of, well, they didn't kind of they did coexist. And Confucianism, about the same time arrived in Japan, and became very popular as a good way of guiding people to be good neighbors, which was kind of addressed in Buddhism, pretty well, and not actually explicitly laid out in any rigorous religious form in Shintoism. And so it kind of became part of that triune religion of the state, which is kind of nifty. This Confucianism was brought into Japan, basically attached to Taoism, which of course is the Chinese understanding of spirits and because that's what Taoism basically is they it was never really adopted by the Japanese people because Shintoism already filled that role. And so they've, those three, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Shintoism have coexisted and have been tightly attached to each other firmly for more than 1000 years in Japan.

Katie Dooley  09:31

I saw a stat in my research, and it was, I guess, was the Japanese census and I was saying that 70% of the population is Buddhist, and 60% of the population is Shinto. And if anyone here is good at numbers, you know that is grossly over 100%.

Preston Meyer  09:49

It sure is. And that's because people are comfortable being both of those things. And it's I don't think you're allowed to check off more than one religion box in the Canadian census.

Katie Dooley  10:05

It's been a long time since I've done a census. But what if you're a multi-religious household? You must be allowed to.

Preston Meyer  10:13

Honestly, it's been a long time since I've looked at the census. I don't remember if they asked about the household or individual members for that. I could be wrong. You totally probably could check off multiple boxes in the Canadian census.

Katie Dooley  10:26

I'm curious.

Preston Meyer  10:27

Rght? I mean, we've got a census coming around soon. Yeah, I've applied for that job. So hopefully, they don't listen to this episode of our podcast and write me off as somebody who does not care enough. We'll see

Katie Dooley  10:42

You're going to be the person I avoid when "ah census worker I'll just do it online."

Preston Meyer  10:46

Right. Everybody should be doing it online.

Katie Dooley  10:51

I want to make an inappropriate joke about how you're probably used to that, though

Preston Meyer  10:55

Right? I've spent years of my life trying to bug people don't want to

Katie Dooley  11:02

Not that guy again.

Preston Meyer  11:04

Right? So it's kind of nifty that these religions coexist. And things did get kind of complicated. More recently, in history, the imperial power has always been tied tightly to Shinto theology, the Emperor being the highest ranking priest, and also the newest of the gods, which is also, as we discussed what a god is, in one of our earlier episodes. It's, I think it's perfectly fair to say that anything that is worshipped is a God. And all of the Kamis seem to have worship directed to them. So even though the word is pretty faithfully translated to the word spirit, they're also gods.

Katie Dooley  11:54

Yep. Fair. Yeah. I think when we, in my mind, jump in if I'm wrong, when we use the term spirit, I feel like that's the manifestation of the god. Am I making sense?

Preston Meyer  12:08

Yeah, I follow you. I think that's pretty fair.

Katie Dooley  12:12

That we have a different idea of how other gods show up or don't show up. And I think in Shinto, they show up as spirits in things.

Preston Meyer  12:26

Yeah. So even the mountain being a powerful figure in that theology of this divine created land, having a mountain show up to you, doesn't work, but having the spirit of the mountain showed up to you, that is a lot more reasonable. In whatever form that might take, it's probably not going to be a billion tonne rock.

Katie Dooley  12:59

Do you... and this is off topic. Do you think that the idea of spirits and Kami in the sense that they speak to their ancestor spirits... Do you think that influences Western cultures idea of like ghosts, and this idea of an afterlife, or an after that your spirit can hang out on the ground? And haunt things?

Preston Meyer  13:24

It might. I think it does for some people? 

Katie Dooley  13:27

Or was there enough in like... did we have that idea in the West? Before we had Japanese influence?

Preston Meyer  13:33

We've definitely had the idea of ghosts in our cultural mind before we had strong connections with the Far East. So yeah, more recent history of Shintoism. Things got a little hairy, we mentioned right at the very beginning. We mentioned at the very beginning, this idea of state Shintoism. That, well, what year was that? Did I write it down? 

Katie Dooley  14:03

1945? So the year, late 18th century. 

Preston Meyer  14:06

Now, that's the end of that problem, or, yeah, more or less the end of that problem? So in the late 19th century, there was this nationalist effort to separate Buddhism from Shinto Kami worship, a lot of people just trying to get rid of outside influences and really shore up what was the Japanese identity. Christianity also lost a little bit of popularity there too. So they tried to push out Buddhist influence, which I don't think was a great move. As a personal opinion, seeing what Buddhism brought to the table. I just I don't agree with that move and it seems like a lot of people agreed at the time. There was a lot of public shrines that came under government control, and people were encouraged to worship the Emperor. Encouraged, often by force. Things got really very... nearly 80,000 shrines shut down with the persecution of traditional religious Shintoism, which is, I mean, also a hard enough thing to define. But anything that incorporated anything that wasn't strictly approved by the State became a big problem for people's lives. And that lasted for not really a long time, because the middle of the 20th century came around. And Japan joined the Second World War, and lost the Second World War. And the peace treaty that really cut them out of the war, forced them to separate religion from the state. And this, of course, included a clause that required the Emperor to no longer claim a divine status, which seems perfectly reasonable to any secularist, was a huge problem for Japan. 

Katie Dooley  16:13

Yeah, and right, we talked about the separation of church and state and the Emperor giving up his divinity, but we still think Queen Elizabeth is divine has the divine right to the throne. So that's doesn't sound you know, we, this isn't so backwards, I guess. Right. So thinking that you're a leader is somehow divine, because we still in Western culture, think that.

Preston Meyer  16:38

Yeah, the Allies forced Japan to build a line between church and state to the point where they couldn't have a state religion anymore. England still has a state religion. The queen is head of the Church of England. Yeah. So it's kind of funky. There's actually a lot of religions that enjoy a special state status on this planet.

Katie Dooley  17:01

I mean, even the US though it's off the books. We've had this conversation before, you cannot get elected President of the United States and not be a Christian. It'll be a long time before we see that happen.

Preston Meyer  17:13

Yeah, even though America is officially a state with no state religion. There's a de facto status for Christianity that everybody seems to agree. At least well, I can't say everybody because there's an awful lot of far more reasonable voices that say no, there's no state religion. An awful lot of Christians say this is a Christian country. And the fact is that even though it's not that way on paper it is.

Katie Dooley  17:47

What does the $1 bill say? One Nation under God. I thought it said and God We Trust 

Preston Meyer  17:52

Oh, isn't there another one though?

Katie Dooley  17:58

But there's like

Preston Meyer  18:00

There's Pledge of Allegiance includes the phrase one nation under God

Katie Dooley  18:05

I was like why is that in my head but you're right In God We Trust is on the dollar bill. So clearly, there's not much separation there either

Preston Meyer  18:13

Well and see even that was the product of the fight against the communists.

Katie Dooley  18:21

Not the Kamis. The commies. Oh, hilarious today. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Preston Meyer  18:32

It was thrown on to American money. Because money is the thing that people see every day, because the wonderful pleasures of capitalism is that you will be spending money. And so the fight against communism was fought on the money itself, by pointing out that we are better than those godless communists because we have God on our money. And I think we talked about this a few episodes ago and in our discussion of what Gods are, that in America, money is God.

Katie Dooley  19:09

Let's dive into what Shintoists is actually believe. And I have written down their creation myth. There's two books, neither of these are considered divine. There's no divine, one divine being or godlike because it's all around Kamis. And these books, the Kojiki and the Nihon-gi are from the late 18th century and they explain the origin story of Japan. So their creation myth is how Japan came into being.

Preston Meyer  19:47

I think it's interesting that they don't agree exactly. They tell more or less the same stories, but there are some details that are different. And also, I mean, you can go ahead and buy these books and read them but they don't actually really figure into the religious life of most Shintoists.

Katie Dooley  20:08

Yeah, what this origin story is not like a day to day thing like you'd hear the Garden of Eden or what have you.

Preston Meyer  20:16

I mean, it's weird how much evangelical Christians put so much emphasis on Genesis, especially just the first three chapters. It's like, That's how far they got in their book before they got bored.

Katie Dooley  20:35

Oh, that was bad. Katie, the probably. So yeah, like Preston said, this doesn't really play into day to day life, but it is the how Wolverine became Wolverine. How Japan showed up, right. The first couple Izanagi and Izanami descended from heaven to the island of Japan. And they produced the sun goddess or Kami, Amaterasu.

Preston Meyer  21:06

I'm not going to correct your pronunciation. I just, I don't think I can do better than that looks pretty good. 

Katie Dooley  21:13

I think that's a compliment. And that's about it. You know, there are a few more Kami more came from that.

Preston Meyer  21:25

Well, they're not the first Kami. But they're the first with a personal attachment to the whole land of Japan. Yeah, it's their cosmology is kind of vast. And it's, there's a lot of dealing with creators, but there's no real prophecy to it at all. It's just this is where we come from.

Katie Dooley  21:50

And that's why I can't really expand on it. Because basically, all I could find is that this is where the country of Japan comes from. And yeah, that's about it. And they were, I don't wanna say we're ruled by spirits. But that spirits play a part of our world.

Preston Meyer  22:17

And there are spirits everywhere. The rivers, the trees, the forests, the mountains, you've also got your ancestors. If you've gotten into genealogy very much, you'll find that a lot of families in Japan have got decently far back records of their families. So they can track their genealogy is the word I've said and then lost. They can track their genealogy and see how they're connected to the Kamis that they have shrines for in their ancestral homes, which is pretty nifty. Of course, there's a lot of those that have been lost over time as well. And, of course, the greatest of those human Kamis are your your conquerors and your emperors, your big people who did so much in their life that you could expect that they can help you in your own life. And, of course, you've got you've got Kamis that find their origin in idealogical myths, like the God of the thunder. He explains the story around him explains why there is thunder, lightning, rains, rice, all kinds of things.

Katie Dooley  23:34

Did you know there's a Kami in Mount Fuji?

Preston Meyer  23:38

I fully expected that there was my brief survey couldn't actually find his name as I was just going through random lists of things. I didn't actually specifically search for what is the Kami of Mount Fuji, though that thought actually had entered my mind what is his name? Or her name? Is it a he or a she?

Katie Dooley  23:56

The Kamiah Fuji is a princess named Konohanasakuya.

Preston Meyer  24:07

The longer the name the harder it is to pronounce

Katie Dooley  24:10

Vecause you gotta like string it all together. Konohanasakuya. Konohanasakuya. Use that one.

Preston Meyer  24:17

I like it. I won't try and say it but I like it. So Mount Fuji is a girl

Katie Dooley  24:25

Mount Fuji's a girl. A girl mountain. It kind of makes sense.

Preston Meyer  24:30

Sure. I mean, that's just one as opposed to what your miming. It's a huge mountain. I mean, it looks that way, anyway.

Katie Dooley  24:41

I think it's quite a big deal.

Preston Meyer  24:43

I have no idea how it compares to the other mountains of the world.

Katie Dooley  24:49

And the symbol of this princess is a cherry blossom.

Preston Meyer  24:59

There's a shrine set up at the base of it specifically to ward off eruptions.

Katie Dooley  25:05

Gotta keep her happy, right?

Preston Meyer  25:06

Right? Last thing is that Princess having a freakout.

Katie Dooley  25:11

So bad.

Preston Meyer  25:13

But true. Right?

Katie Dooley  25:16

I mean, yeah, I wouldn't want Mount Fuji to erupt just because she's angry, right?

Preston Meyer  25:21

Which is definitely the the narrative that goes along with interruption is the mountains are angry everywhere in the world. That's the way it goes.

Katie Dooley  25:30

Yeah, so I would say she's definitely probably one of the bigger Kamis along with the sun goddess. And I think you have a few more in mind to talk about?

Preston Meyer  25:40

None whose names I can pronounce.

Katie Dooley  25:42

That's fine Tell me about some.

Preston Meyer  25:45

There's almost triune set of creators who are responsible for the creation of the world as a whole, rather than just Japan that separated the earth from the heavens. Their names are long and complicated, and I just can't pronounce them. And they're kind of cool. And then there's another, well, before I get on to the next two these three, just kind of came into existence. There's, there is a time before them, but they are not the product of procreation. And they don't seem to procreate, either. But they just create. And then there's two more Gods whose names are also that I can't pronounce them that are more specifically associated with the heaven and the earth as a whole, the whole of the skies the whole of the Earth, one being a lot bigger than the other, I guess.

Katie Dooley  26:50

Yeah, well, one had his work cut out for him.

Preston Meyer  26:53

And then after that, there's a series of male/female pairs. And the two that you had mentioned as being the creators of Japan, are one of those male/female pairs.

Katie Dooley  27:09

They just kept going, because there's a ton of them.

Preston Meyer  27:11

And then then each of those created all of the features of the land that have kami associated with them. Or they created the Kamis, who created those features of the land. It's all about the storytelling on how the world came to be the way it is.

Katie Dooley  27:35

I'm really excited about this next part, Preston, go for it. Oscar winning film, Spirited Away, is all Shintoism. All of it. It's so exciting to my brain. Spirited Away. It's right in the name. There's tons of spirits if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. And we have the radish spirit. And there you take all these different forms. And this is the idea that kamis can, you know, be nature, inanimate objects or people.

Preston Meyer  28:09

And where does the story take place? 

Katie Dooley  28:11

Japan 

Preston Meyer  28:12

No but like, where in Japan? What... what is?

Katie Dooley  28:14

Oh, in a bath house! Is that what you mean? Yeah, I was gonna get to that. When I posted in our Discord, which you should hop on to that I was researching Shintoism I sent the GIF of no face stuffing his face. That's my personal spirit..

Preston Meyer  28:34

It's a little off putting but adorable the same time No Face is hard to digest.

Katie Dooley  28:42

Sometimes when I'm hungry, I'll text Bryant that gift just gorging himself. Spirited Away takes place in a bath house because cleanliness and pollution are big themes in Shintoism. So there's no moral code like we see in the Abrahamic religions where you don't eat certain food or you have to dress a certain way or...

Preston Meyer  29:10

Your regular behaviors have no real effect on Shintoism at all.

Katie Dooley  29:16

Except for this concept of clean and dirty and polluted so there's a lot of themes in Spirited Away. Well, it's literally in a bath house. And then there's the river spirit that comes in it's filthy and Shen like helps clean them up and Haku, her little friend is a river spirit that sorry, spoiler alert. He's trapped because his river was paved over. So the director Hayao Miyazaki is like big on the environment, but this is also like, hugely important in Shintoism as well, and in my research, Hayao Miyazaki, Shintoism is important to him personally. So we say in North America that cleanliness is next to godliness in Shintoism, it is literally godliness. To the point where physical pure purity correlates directly with spiritual purity. The this is part of the reason Japan is like a super clean country. I mean, there's other reasons in their cultural values.

Preston Meyer  30:28

Cultural superiority. They're just better than us because we're trash. 

Katie Dooley  30:33

Wow, Preston, 

Preston Meyer  30:34

You walk out on our streets right now and see how much garbage that our people throw on the streets.

Katie Dooley  30:40

Oh, yeah. But I don't. I don't think they go day to day being like those North American pigs.

Preston Meyer  30:46

I mean, you don't need to say it when it's so easy to see.

Katie Dooley  30:50

I know honor is a big value in Japan. and I think that plays into... I'm digressing from the topic of religion but the term kegare means unclean or defilement. And there's a couple that makes sense and then a couple I was personally offended by. So death, disease, and rape are all kegare. They're all unclean defilements. Death, I'm like, and we'll get into death more as like, eh you don't really have a choice, but it's considered unclean. Also, childbirth adminstration are kegare. They're impure, dirty, pretty things. 

Preston Meyer  31:33

That's pretty standard, well in fact, this whole list is pretty standard for what we're familiar with in the Abrahamic faiths. That if you're going to go to the place of worship, typically the temple rather than the synagogue, there is a need to be physically clean. And our hygiene standards have evolved a lot since then. If you were menstruating 3000 years ago, you were going to be physically dirty.

Katie Dooley  32:05

That's true and you'd be locked up from basically everyone.

Preston Meyer  32:08

Yeah, so I understand where it's coming from. But as our hygiene practices have evolved, so should our outlook.

Katie Dooley  32:20

Being in the state of kegare is, I mean, the way that it is bad for you, but it also pollutes the community around you, so it's important that you remedy that by purification rituals. And that is sort of the big piece of Shinto worship is this idea of purifying your space. I didn't make any notes on it, because I couldn't find can find a ton of stuff on it. But even when you're moving into a home, you purify it, so that the Kami that from your home or your ancestral economy that are coming with you in their little shrines feel comfortable in your new home.

Preston Meyer  33:00

Makes sense. I like to be comfortable in my home,

Katie Dooley  33:02

Right? I cleaned my new home when I moved in so I can see why my dead grandma would feel the same.

Preston Meyer  33:11

Seems perfectly natural and reasonable to me.

Katie Dooley  33:14

So on, the topic of kegare death, like I said, death is kegare and so Shintoists don't deal with it. Because it'sthe state of impurity, which is where...

Preston Meyer  33:30

It's fair to say Shintoism doesn't deal with it.

Katie Dooley  33:34

Shintoism doesn't deal with it. So this is where Buddhism just like swaggers in and they say that you're married Shinto and you die, Buddhists. And I, it really bothered me I couldn't I googled it and couldn't find it. But I remember in religious studies class, they said, there's a reason people marry Shinto. And I think it's like some economical reason. Like, I think there's some gifting there's some benefit to being married Shinto, and then you die Buddhists, because worst case scenario, you get reincarnated, best case scenario, you reach Nirvana instead of being in kegare instead of being dirty.

Preston Meyer  34:13

It's interesting that for Shintoism, there is the sense of heaven, and, and the netherworld, on either side of the mortal realm. But the heaven of Shintoism is just the plane where the kami live, and it's not an expected destination for the departed dead. And the netherworld when it shows up in Shinto myth is the place for unclean kami, and occasionally the unclean dead. When a kami dies, that's part of the story is they go to this netherworld, but it's not promised thing that when you die, you're gonna go to either place. They don't address that at all and so Buddhism absolutely fills in that blank space in the story.

Katie Dooley  35:13

And so because of that Shinto cemeteries basically don't exist. They're all Buddhist cemeteries.

Preston Meyer  35:27

You're gonna hold on to this vessel, and the guy that was in it, is gonna go make another one. It's an interesting way to see the world that you're able to kind of fence off the two different ideas and still adopt both. I don't know, it's not something you see a whole lot among people who grew up in a Christian tradition.

Katie Dooley  35:56

No, I think this is. I don't want to say it's the only example but it's the best example of two religions coexisting? In a symbiotic way.

Preston Meyer  36:10

Yeah, it's weird that it's not like one really absorbed the other. There's not a whole lot of obvious syncretism, where one just changes and adopts values to the other. It's being both 

Katie Dooley  36:24

Yeah, no, they're two very different and separate things. That just happen to live together. Like you and me! Awe we just had a moment. Day to day, what does it look like to be Shinto?

Preston Meyer  36:48

The weird thing about day to day Shintoism, is that there's things that are, what you would expect from anybody, that the way that it got away with being almost secular, is really interesting. And so somebody who's just a Shintoist, who maybe doesn't adopt Buddhism, for the sake of this example, wouldn't look really any different from an atheist, apart from the occasional visit to a shrine, which could happen once a year, once every decade, once a month, once a week. Who knows?

Katie Dooley  37:36

My, in my research and my understanding is that most people... so the note I have is that you know, we talk about Buddhism is this way of life is i a religion? We had this conversation. I would actually say Shinto is more of a air quotes "way of life". Because most people in Japan don't even consider themselves religious. And I think that's because being Shinto is so interesting. In...

Preston Meyer  38:07

Intrinsically?

Katie Dooley  38:09

I wanted to say intricately and then my brain... Intricately connected to being Japanese, you don't even like I don't even think they see the line between religion and being Japanese. 

Preston Meyer  38:23

It's just a thing you do.

Katie Dooley  38:24

Like, liking poutine as a Canadian, you can separate that as a food, eh? It's just part of the culture.

Preston Meyer  38:30

But you know that it's food?

Katie Dooley  38:32

No, it's my heart and soul, eh.

Preston Meyer  38:36

You live in breathes poutine.

Katie Dooley  38:38

I live and breathe poutine. I don't think you understand. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's just when you ask, apparently, when you ask a Japanese person, if they think they're religious the answer is no. 

Preston Meyer  38:54

Even if they're actively pressed into on a regular basis. It's, it's interesting. It's... religion is complicated. We've said this before, I'll say it again, that's just our reality./

Katie Dooley  39:08

That's why we have content to the rest of our lives.

Preston Meyer  39:13

It's interesting that just like there's no singular way to be Shintoist. There's no monolithic historical founder. That's not a thing we've, the ancient history of Shintoism is lost. It's, we understand that these things are worshipped. We know they've been worshipped for as long as history records and that's it. In fact, I tried looking up the etymology of the names of a lot of kami and found nothing at all their names are so old that we don't even mean anymore. Some of them we do, or some of them we have guesses, but for a lot of them, we just don't know what they mean anymore. There's no solid scripture that is the canon by which worship is measured or anything like that. There's, like you mentioned those two books and that's kind of it, you've got a handful of family stories, and different families will tell the same story different ways. But there's no set of Scripture that unifies them at all.

Katie Dooley  40:19

Yeah, it's just like this inherent belief that you know, kami exist. Yeah. And that you need to keep them happy.

Preston Meyer  40:25

Yeah. In fact, there's a lot of argument on how to define Shintoism. And the most popular scholarly definition for Shintoism. is the belief in kami.

Katie Dooley  40:43

Yeah, and this makes me feel better about my struggle to wrap my head around Shintoism this week.

Preston Meyer  40:51

Yeah, it's we're trying really hard to make it a thing that is an approachable discussion topic. Because it's a very complex thing.

Katie Dooley  40:59

I might argue that this might be one of the most complex maybe next to Christianity.

Preston Meyer  41:05

It's weird that it feels more complicated than Hinduism.

Katie Dooley  41:11

But Hinduism has its like set of beliefs, and then a ton of Gods. That you can pick and choose, whereas this doesn't have a set of beliefs, and then a ton of Gods.

Preston Meyer  41:20

Right. And with Hinduism there was a foundational scripture that came in with this religion as it moved into the Indus Valley. We don't have that for Shintoism. It's just the idea that there are kami.

Katie Dooley  41:35

Part of kami worship is, of course shrines. And this is, like I said, you can even see in Spirited Away when they're driving to their new home, there's little spirit shrines on the road that they point out. And shrines can be like a tiny home shrine, or a tiny side of the road shrie or they can be massive community shrines, there's about 80,000 shrines in Japan. And this is where it comes to worship takes place. There is a... kami hang out in a shin tae. So this is the specific object within the shrine where they're residing. And this can be basically anything and they can they're often manmade as well. So you have your shrine, this little house, and then there's something in the shrine where the kamis like, "Hi, here I am!"

Preston Meyer  42:31

So is there any sort of preparation that person has to undertake before they visit one of these shrine?

Katie Dooley  42:35

Tthank you for the lead in Preston. So back to the cleanliness and the purity/impurity, you have to wash your mouth and wash your hands, which feels very common that happens in Islam as well, for sure.

Preston Meyer  42:50

Realistically if you're going to visit anywhere, it's polite to not be dirty.

Katie Dooley  42:55

But ritual cleansing is a little different than just not being dirty. And spiritual cleansing. So people pray at shrine, they make monetary donations, they leave food, they leave, I think they leave flowers as well. Yeah, you're just leaving small tokens of your appreciation for the kami.

Preston Meyer  43:17

Sounds pretty all right.

Katie Dooley  43:19

Oh, this one, in fact, was fun. And I made a note because like, literally as I was researching, so you can tell the difference between a Shinto shrine and a Buddhist shrine by the torii gate. So these are, there can be really simple Torii gates that are like two posts and a beam. But there's definitely like a look, 

Preston Meyer  43:39

There's a stereotypical look that you'll recognize them. 

Katie Dooley  43:41

And as I was studying this, I saw someone with a torii gate in their yard. And I was like, do you know what that is? Do you know what that is?

Preston Meyer  43:51

It's hard to say if you don't know the person 

Katie Dooley  43:53

No and I didn't, but I was like hmmmm.

Preston Meyer  43:56

You could have just a dude who's way into Japanese tradition and you know, hang a set of swords on his wall, and we'll never get married. Then on the opposite end of the spectrum, you'll have somebody who's really into their religion.

Katie Dooley  44:13

Yeah. Or it could just be somebody thought it was a nice yarn? I want to say yard and lawn ornament. So I'm curious who lives there but right.

Preston Meyer  44:26

It could be a family that genuinely opens their home to anybody who wants to worship the kami.

Katie Dooley  44:31

Maybe I'd be curious what kami lives there. The largest and most important shine, Google it, guys. It's really cool. It's called the Ise Grand, which is dedicated to that first sun goddess Amaterasu. And my note says, and I'm going to read it, it's really fucking old. It was originally built in the fourth century, which is where we start having this record that Shinto is a thing but it's obviously it's been rebuilt several times since. But it's pretty remarkable that there's been a shrine there for 16... 1700 years. And it's massive. And you can go as a tourist, Shintoists are very welcoming. And they'll teach you how to, like, say a prayer and leave a thing for our a kami. And because they're, you know, open to other religions coming like you can just go in and check one out. So, if you're in Japan, check out the Ise Grand.

Preston Meyer  45:30

On that point, I think it's really interesting that Shintoists follow the model that we're familiar with in Western Asian henotheism, where when you go to a city that has a shrine to the local god of the city or the city state, that you're expected to give a sacrifice in those situations. And you're absolutely welcome to do the same at a Shinto shrine that anybody can is pretty cool. That's how you show that you are respectful of the community.

Katie Dooley  46:06

I will definitely visit Ise Grand when I go to Japan, I don't know when not going to Japan, but I will visit when I go. One story I remember from my religious studies class is apparently there's a Shinto shrine in the Toyota factory. Makes sense. And my religious studies teacher came from a very devoutly Christian family. And he like told his in laws that there was a Shinto shrine in the Toyota effect, and they sold their Toyota. They couldn't handle that there was another god mucking around with their car.

Preston Meyer  46:43

See, I understand from a Western perspective, the idea of having even a Christian shrine in the workplace is problematic for a lot of people. I mean, it would be annoying for most atheists, I think, but we've actually made it so much part of our culture that you must be separating your work from your religious life, that maybe that's part of the feelings there.

Katie Dooley  47:16

I mean, I don't know. Because I, and I don't know if we want to say it's more maybe it's just a it's probably just ignorance. Can you hear me thinking while I'm talking? It's probably just ignorance, because I remember we went for Vietnamese pickup not that long ago. And they had Old Buddha on the counter, and there was coins and things on it. Like obviously they...

Preston Meyer  47:38

if you go to East Asian restaurant, doesn't have to be Chinese could be Laotian or whatever. Not seeing a shrine would be actually kind of weird.

Katie Dooley  47:49

Well, yeah, but this is where I'm saying like, I mean, I don't know if incredibly devout Christians wouldn't eat at a Vietnamese place, because Buddhist. But I think we ignore that. And then you hear a story about Toyota, and you're like "ah my pearls!"

Preston Meyer  48:06

Right? Some of my family, who are pretty Christian, but not like, real hardcore Christian, go for Chinese food on Christmas, because they're the only one's that are open and they like to eat out. And it's funny that... and I think an awful lot of Jews eat out Chinese food in the winter season as well. I've observed it more in the winter than the summer, but I doubt there's actually much difference timewise, to be honest. And both Christians and Jews and Muslims have this idea that you have to stay away from idols of other gods. And yet, we all love Chinese food, and almost all of them have these shrines.

Katie Dooley  48:54

Well, and that's what I mean, where I think it just comes back to ignorance.

Preston Meyer  48:57

They just don't know that it's a shrine.

Katie Dooley  48:59

They just right or you wouldn't even clue in to, you know, especially in again, this is more with Buddha, because it's a we have a physical manifestation of what Buddha looks like, or Buddai.

Preston Meyer  49:17

You notice very few places have both apart from retailers.

Katie Dooley  49:20

I was gonna say with retailers. We've commercialized this idea of Buddha, and Zen Buddhism and so much that I honestly don't think people claiming that it's a religious. Oh, even before we hopped on, and when we're like, yoga is not just a sport. It's like a thing, but we've commercialized it so much in the West that we don't realize how spiritual and religious it actually is. 

Preston Meyer  49:44

Yoga is incredibly religiously charged.

Katie Dooley  49:47

Yeah, so it's funny. I read the Bhagavad Gita after our Hinduism episode, which, not great for timing, but yeah, it's mentioned a whole bunch in the Bhagavad Gita. Anyway, we went on a bit of a tangent, but I hope you learned something in that tangent. The last piece, I don't have a ton of notes on it. But Shinto shrines are run by priests and the priests Oh, yeah, big public, obviously a home train or a small roadside train wouldn't but the big public shrines. The term is Kannushi, not to be confused with Tanuki. Like Mario, I'm kidding. And they'll conduct rituals. They're a little bit of a customer service piece they'll talk the guests through who are not Shinto practitioners through the ringing of the bells, and the prayers and the monetary or whatever sacrifices, and they can communicate with the Kami. You can be a man or a woman priest. There's no restriction on that, like there is in the West, certain Western practices, and you can marry as well as a Shinto priests. They're pretty chill.

Preston Meyer  51:01

Yeah, it's it's not so hard to be a Shintoist as it is to be, say, a Catholic priest, which is not the life for me.

Katie Dooley  51:13

Not the life for a lot of people. They're leaving in droves.

Preston Meyer  51:16

It's true. All right. So I found a a couple of nifty ideas. I have them attached to the name Hawaii.

Katie Dooley  51:26

I'm gonna let you talk about this because I saw this

Preston Meyer  51:29

And decided not..

Katie Dooley  51:31

Not to go down that route.

Preston Meyer  51:34

So I feel like an awful lot of people when they hear the word kami, there is the instinctive response to add another portion to that word. In the English language, especially, say seventy years ago, kami was always attached to the word kaze. Kamikaze means the spirit wind. And it's attached to the Bushido principle of honor until death, which, as we've seen in many religions, occasionally means violence. And so when you have airplanes flying into aircraft carriers, kamikaze is the motivation for that action and came to be the name of that portion of the air force that has made that word become popular. What's interesting is that Shintoism actually had a presence in Hawaii long before the Second World War. And there's a really cool place called the Daijingu temple in Honolulu. It houses shrines to Amaterasu

Katie Dooley  52:50

Oh, you did and you did it  better than I did both times.

Preston Meyer  52:54

I can't say it's better, but I did it smoothly.

Katie Dooley  52:59

Fair. I'll give you that Amaterasu. Fuck you!

Preston Meyer  53:04

Nice and smooth. I like it. So there's there's shrines to Amaterasu, there's shrines to other traditional economy, as well as shrines to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, they are worshipped as kami because of their status as the founder of the Union and the repairer of the Union, which is pretty cool. I think. There's also other Shrines to other heroes, and also one to all who have died in war, which I think is a part of the reason why it's still a popular shrine to visit. It's moved around a few times, as the American government has seized their lands for one reason or another during the Second World War. But they're in Honolulu, and it's a pretty hot tourist spot. So that's the cool notes I have for Hawaii and Shintoism. But Shintoism is pretty much anywhere where you have a large population of Japanese migrants.

Katie Dooley  54:08

I didn't do any research on it. And now I'm curious, are there non-Japanese Shintoists?

Preston Meyer  54:15

I fully expect that there are but I don't think there's any real big, scholarly work done on them. I think if you were to look through a census, you'd probably find a handful of people who identified as non-Japanese and Shinto, but I don't think there's lots.

Katie Dooley  54:37

It's definitely not an evangelical religion. And then with that, it's really hard to explain. Even if you did get into a position where you could.

Preston Meyer  54:47

Realistically it's easy enough to say, you know what, I'm going to become a Shinto. All you have to do is clean myself and pray to whichever God I select in In a manner that matches what I Google, and then I could say to my own satisfaction (maybe not everyone else's) yeah, I'm a Shinto now. But there's there's nobody asking anybody to do that, which is interesting.

Katie Dooley  55:16

Yeah. Any final thoughts as we wrap up the last episode in this world religions mini-series?

Preston Meyer  55:24

I've pointed out a couple of similarities, I guess. And also contrasting points with Hinduism. That Hinduism was a name that I don't love for the religion because it's a name thrown on them by white people. And the name Shinto has a similar trickiness to it. It's from what I've been reading, it seems like Shintoism isn't a word that's used a lot by practitioners of Shintoism. We've talked about how it's like a lot of Shinto us don't see themselves as religious. That's part of the reason. But also, the word Shinto, which when you look it up, it was it said that it means the way of the kami. The Japanese way to say the way of the kami is kaminomici or something close to that. Very smooth, I try. And the name Shinto is hardly a Japanese word. It's derived from the Chinese words, Shen Tao, which does mean the way of the spirit or the spirit way. And Tao being also visible in the word Taoism, which we've mentioned briefly earlier as the Chinese religion around the spirits. So Shinto comes from that Chinese Shen Tao, which got transliterated into Japanese as Jindo initially, which basically denoted non Buddhist deities, and popular belief. So Shinto is another problematic title that we've just accepted as this is the title that gets used for this thing all the time.

Katie Dooley  57:26

Yep. All right.

Preston Meyer  57:30

Naming things is important. Before you can really study them, you have to be able to identify what you're talking about. But sometimes the way we name things is just nonsense.

Katie Dooley  57:41

No, this is, I mean, definitely an instance of imperialism. Even if it's Chinese imperialism.  And it's we, you know, in the example you give is Germany, right? We just call them Germany. And they're like, No, it's Deutschland. Like, no, it's Germany. So, Germany, 

Preston Meyer  58:00

Oh those dirty Romans. Imperialism does terrible things for Anthropology.

Katie Dooley  58:10

Yeah, that privilege. So I hope that made some sense. Shinto.

Preston Meyer  58:21

If you followed along, as well, as we were able to present what we know. You've learned a lot, I hope. I know I did.

Katie Dooley  58:32

Do we want to give a little preview about what we can expect next, since we're shifting gears again.

Preston Meyer  58:38

Yeah, now that we're done this mini series on religion, we're gonna get back into the, the tougher conversations. So what do we have first on our list?

Katie Dooley  58:48

Oh, next, I guess two weeks from now. We are covering belief, the concept of belief. And I'm really excited about that one. That was a big topic. It's a big topic 

Preston Meyer  59:00

It's huge and complicated. We cover epistemology, we cover the nature of knowledge. For those of you who don't know it, epistemology is... We cover. 

Katie Dooley  59:13

Yeah, it's definitely not recorded already.

Preston Meyer  59:18

I don't think I use the past tense. I think I use the... 

Katie Dooley  59:21

No, you said we covered. 

Preston Meyer  59:23

I thought I just said we cover 

Katie Dooley  59:24

Okay, well carry on.

Preston Meyer  59:25

Oh, well, okay. What I said doesn't matter what

Katie Dooley  59:28

I said when I said!

Preston Meyer  59:31

And then we're going to talk a little bit about the weird

Katie Dooley  59:36

The C word. Cults.

Preston Meyer  59:41

And that'll be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to that too.

Katie Dooley  59:44

I started the research on it and we're gonna have a conversation when I stoprecording.

Preston Meyer  59:49

Absolutely. And then after cults, we're going to talk a little bit about a satirical religion 

Katie Dooley  59:55

This is a fan request. So please know that we do check our social media and our Discord if there's something you want to hear the satirical religions episode is brought to us by Mr. Tim. Thanks, Tim.

Preston Meyer  1:00:08

And then we're going to look into what it means to be an atheist or an agnostic, both of them 

Katie Dooley  1:00:13

The lack of religion. I kind of well read it when we get to the episode, but I love my notes for this.

Preston Meyer  1:00:23

Yeah, it'll be good. And then you'll see where we go after that. 

Katie Dooley  1:00:26

Well, yeah, we will all see. where we go after that If you like what you're hearing if you can drop us a review on Apple podcasts. Please follow us on Facebook and Instagram and we do have a Discord available for you to join and check out. The link is on our social media. If you have any requests, concerns or hate mail, please email us at [email protected]

Preston Meyer  1:00:57

Peace be with you. 

Katie Dooley  1:00:59

I was like, Are you gonna say something else? 

Both Hosts  1:01:04

Peace be with you.

Sikhism is one of the newest "World Religions," only about 800 years old. Sikhism was developed in the context of Islam and Hinduism. It is a monotheistic religion based on the teachings of 10 gurus.

In this episode, we cover the history of the 10 gurus and the creation of the religion. From human gurus to book gurus we talk about the creation of the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy book. Did you know that the Guru Granth Sahib is considered to be a fully living and present guru?

Sikhism is a panentheistic religion that takes elements of Hinduism and mixes it with elements of Islam.

Sikhs worship in Gurdwaras and their gatherings are filled with hymn singing followed by a free vegetarian meal so that they can support all members of the community, not just their religious one. 

We also cover the 5 Ks of the Khalsa, a group within Sikhism of devout followers that hold themselves to a higher standard of beliefs and practices. 

Finally, Sikhism is becoming more popular amongst non-Indian groups and we chat about the future of this religion.

Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt

Join the Community on Discord

Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram

Katie Dooley  00:12
Hi Preston 

Preston Meyer  00:13
Hi, Katie. Are you ready for the Holy Watermelon podcast?

Katie Dooley  00:17
You mean...

Both Hosts  00:18
The Holy Watermelon podcast! 

Katie Dooley  00:22
Yeah, I am. We have to say that same time. Actually, I was re-listening to our first episode, and we don't actually say and at the same time. 

Preston Meyer  00:29
Yeah? Oh, well.

Katie Dooley  00:31
We've really grown at podcasting.

Preston Meyer  00:35
I think that's a good thing.

Katie Dooley  00:36
I mean, I hope so after...

Preston Meyer  00:38
After the experience we've had over the last several months, we should definitely be improving.

Katie Dooley  00:43
This is episode 12, so we're 12 hours of audio.

Preston Meyer  00:49
12 hours of finished audio.

Katie Dooley  00:50
If you cut out all the noise we make. There's got to be another 12 hours out there.

Preston Meyer  01:01
And not counting the lost audio, a couple of episodes we've lost.

Katie Dooley  01:05
We don't talk about the lost audio. So I didn't know anything about our topic today.

Preston Meyer  01:14
Yeah, my knowledge is pretty limited too.

Katie Dooley  01:16
Not anymore. 

Preston Meyer  01:17
Not anymore. But going into preparing this. I was mostly uninformed, definitely under-informed.

Katie Dooley  01:27
Today we are talking about Sikhism. And as if you're a longtime listener, you know, I took religious studies in university and this was one religion we didn't cover which I'm very surprised by because there are a whole lot of Sikhs in the world. 25 million Sikhs around the world. And we didn't cover it. We covered Shinto, which would mean we'll do Shintoism next week, we covered Shintoism before we covered Sikhism, and that blows my mind.

Preston Meyer  01:54
Yeah, if I remember correctly in my intro, 102 course had Sikhism on the syllabus and I think we hit everything on the syllabus except Sikhism. Because you know, sometimes you overdo one thing, 'cause you think it's worth spending an extra day

Katie Dooley  02:13
Or everyone's dumb... The teachers like to "I got to get this figured out" 

Preston Meyer  02:16
There's loads of reasons you never stick to the syllabus and if I remember correctly, Sikhism was the thing that suffered because of that.

Katie Dooley  02:25
Well, let's fill those gaps for ourselves and for everyone else today, shall we?

Preston Meyer  02:30
Alright, so where do you want to start?

Katie Dooley  02:33
Well, I was very surprised by how new of a religion it is.

Preston Meyer  02:39
It's only like 500 years old. 

Katie Dooley  02:40
Only 500 years old, which is of the big religions, that would be the newest. I mean, there's iterations of religions that are newer, but like a big, brand new idea. Which I mean, we'll get into the how it's not quite brand new, but brand new ideas. Yeah, it's it's a little baby religion.

Preston Meyer  03:04
Right? Like most religions, as you said, it's not really new in every sense. It is born of other religions. But this one's not a break off of one religion, which is kind of cool.

Katie Dooley  03:20
It's, as I was saying, it's a little baby religion. It is the baby of Hinduism and Islam.

Preston Meyer  03:26
It's weird to see two things come together and make a baby.

Katie Dooley  03:29
Especially religions that are so vastly different. It's when you see Judaism turn into Christianity turn into Islam, or even now that we've covered Hinduism and Buddhism, you know, there are a lot of parallels in in the reincarnation and the lifecycle piece of Buddhism and Hinduism, but this is like totally new. But based off of both of them. I kind of dig that. I didn't know this Sikhism is monotheistic.

Preston Meyer  03:58
I mean, mostly. So I guess we remember we talked about those different models of theology, and the simple surface level monotheism is pretty correct.

Katie Dooley  04:11
Just like monotheism is pretty correct for Christianity.

Preston Meyer  04:16
It's more true for Sikhism than it is for Christianity, or for at least most parts of Christianity. Remember how we were talking about how Hinduism is very pluralistic, it's got a wide pantheon of gods that ends up focusing on three gods that ends up focusing on one god that ends up being pantheistic, instead of polytheistic when you dive in real deep. For Sikhism, it's got a similar... it's got a similar effect. Sikhism is pretty monotheistic on the surface, but it seems like All of the big thinkers of Sikhism as they dive into it show that it's a model of theology that we actually haven't addressed. Even when we spent a whole bunch of time looking all the different models of theology. Sikhism shows itself to be panentheistic ,which it's like pantheism. But panentheism adds an extra two letters and convolutes it and makes it more complicated. Instead of the idea of pantheism, like in Hinduism, where everything is God, eventually, when you break it down, since every living thing is a shard of that, Brahman, in Sikhism, panentheism is the idea that everything belongs to God in a, not just in an ownership way, but as like a physical manifestation kind of way. But that God is also greater than the sum of everything in existence, that everything is in God.

Katie Dooley  06:08
And God is in everything. 

Preston Meyer  06:12
I mean, it's not wrong, but it's not quite right. Theological models get super nuanced as you want to subdivide and subdivide further and so that's where we sit now with a slightly complicated panentheism in a relatively new religion.

Katie Dooley  06:33
Before we jump into the gurus, and how Sikhism started, I just while we're talking sort of number stuff, I just thought it was a really fun fact. So there's 25 million Sikhs around the world. Because it originated in the... 

Preston Meyer  06:51
One of the most densely populated nations on the planet.

Katie Dooley  06:54
India/Pakistan. They have the highest density of Sikhs in the world. But we're in Canada, and Canada has the second number, highest second highest amount of Sikhs per capita. Now, there's like a big asterisk on this because we don't really have a huge per capita. So the Indian stat I saw was about 2% of the population is Sikh. And when you have a population of a billion people, the people, Canada's it's about 1.5 Sikhs, as our population, we only have 30 million people.

Preston Meyer  07:28
And Sikhs makes up about half a million of us.

Katie Dooley  07:30
Yeah, no, and that's a huge number. But relatively speaking, it's still not a lot of people compared to the number, the volume of people in India, but I thought that was cool that Canada has the second largest per capita in the world. The neighborhood that I live in, actually has quite a dense Sikh population. Sikhism was founded by Guru Nanak in 1469, 

Preston Meyer  07:57
Guru being his title, not his first name, 

Katie Dooley  08:00
And he is the first of 10 successive gurus. And I made some notes on the most prominent of the 10. I'm not going to get into all 10 just the ones that really moved Sikhism forward.

Preston Meyer  08:11
Because not all gurus are created equal. 

Katie Dooley  08:13
No, it's true. So Nanak had a he was born in Lahore, Pakistan, and he disappeared and with some ascetics, and had his first mystical experience, and God told him as God frequently does, is that everyone's doing it wrong and I'm gonna tell you the right way to do it.

Preston Meyer  08:34
He had grown up a Hindu, and his best friend was a Muslim. They spent all their time together, it seemed, according to reports, and they were out together when Nanak disappeared into the river. 

Katie Dooley  08:50
The Indus River 

Preston Meyer  08:51
Yes, I think that's right.

Katie Dooley  08:53
I mean, you're up in the Indus region. 

Preston Meyer  08:55
Oh, yeah. That's likely and he was gone for days, and his best friend, and his family were super stressed out about it and then he showed up after having been he must have been pulled out of the water by somebody.

Katie Dooley  09:11
If I disappeared in a river for days. Would you be worried about me? 

Preston Meyer  09:15
We go actually several days without texting each other, so I might not know soon enough. But yeah, I'd be worried to know that you disappeared in a river.

Katie Dooley  09:23
Bryant just texts you and says she's in a river. All right, I'm sorry. They're worried but he comes back.

Preston Meyer  09:31
He does come back. And like you said with some big news,

Katie Dooley  09:35
Big news, he was given a mantra from God and this mantra is still included in Sikh morning devotions. And the manatra is, "There is one supreme being, the eternal reality, he is the creator without fear and devoid of enmity. He is a mortal never incarnated, self existent, known by grace through the Guru, the Eternal One from the beginning through all time present now the everlasting reality", that's what he was told by God, and that there is no Hindu and no Muslim. Surprise, it's this third one Sikhism.

Preston Meyer  10:09
So basically, he want everybody to know that both of these models of theology and the actions that come from them, were not divinely accepted or approved or helpful.

Katie Dooley  10:24
My note literally says, exactly, how every other religions starts.

Preston Meyer  10:29
I mean, that's, that is the memo that pretty much every religious founder comes out with. Y'all are doing it wrong.

Katie Dooley  10:36
Jesus got it. Muhammad got it. Nanak got it. Buddha got it. You're doing it wrong. Here's the right way.

Preston Meyer  10:45
So, we actually have kind of a start date for Sikhism. That Nanak formally organized a commune in 1526, so less than 500 years ago.

Katie Dooley  11:02
We should have an anniversary party.

Preston Meyer  11:04
I don't think we'd be the only ones doing so. I think that's a great idea. Because it's kind of a big deal. And so this commune he started so that people could come to him, and he would teach them. And so he was the guru. And his disciples were called Sikhs, which of course is the Punjabi word for disciple or student.

Katie Dooley  11:26
I'll just mention here that this we already start to see, like I said, the baby between Hinduism and Islam, where we use a term like guru, which is used in Hinduism, but it's monotheistic, like Islam, so already had already at the very start of it, it's this little marriage of the two.

Preston Meyer  11:44
Well, when you live in India/Pakistan region, the subcontinent has many languages. And most of actually, not most, about half of them are closely related. So you're going to have a lot of overlap in labels. In your common religious language, you're going to use some of the same words.

Katie Dooley  12:06
I've noted down four other gurus. So the second, fourth, ninth, and tenth Guru, I listed as noteworthy not that the others didn't do anything, but like 

Preston Meyer  12:16
These ones are special 

Katie Dooley  12:17
These ones are extra special! So the second guru was Guru Angad. And he is known for standardizing the hymns and starting Sikh scripture and this book that he started gets super important later on.

Preston Meyer  12:34
And his job was not an easy one. As I was looking into this, he did exactly what you said he was gathering and and sharing the hymns. And he didn't actually start a standardization process, until he found out that somebody else who claimed that he ought to be the guru was also spreading hymns. And so the Guru, the proper recognized guru, actually put a lot of work in to gather from all these other people who had reliably sourced hymns from the Nanak and compiled them into one solid text. And he found a great deal of frustration in that process, but he put a lot of work into it. And he did do some editing. But the book is what it is.

Katie Dooley  13:28
I was just going to ask if the book is considered divine, but I'm about to answer my own question. Nevermind, I forgot. Guru number four was Guru Arjan. He is the first martyred Sikh so he was put to death by the Mughal emperor Jigga Jahangir? Who was intolerant of this newer, newer religion. Arjan supervise the compilation of the Sikh holy texts, the Adi Granth, which will eventually I kind of love this eventually be known as the Guru Granth Sahib, which I can't wait to talk about that fun fact.  Is there anything you want to add about number four?

Preston Meyer  14:18
No, I got nothing.

Katie Dooley  14:21
Number nine, we're skipping a whole bunch. So there's 10 total, we're going from four to nine. Number nine was Guru Tegh Bahadur, and he was also martyred by the person who built the Taj Mahal. So that was Shah Jahan, and he was he was martyred for refusing to convert to Islam.

Preston Meyer  14:42
There's a little bit of that in history.

Katie Dooley  14:44
I mean, I didn't dig into it too much, but I'm pretty sure Sikh and Muslims.

Preston Meyer  14:50
There's a lot of direct conflict between the two.

Katie Dooley  14:53
Maybe we'll do another episode just on that. Number 10 is Guru Gobind Singh, and he was the last human guru. And he was also murdered, he was assassinated, and instead of declaring a new guru, which was the traditions, when one dies, they pick a new one. To stop the, I think it was to stop the bloodshed to be honest, he declared the book, the next guru.

Preston Meyer  15:26
It's really hard to kill a book, especially when at this point, it's been published and distributed.

Katie Dooley  15:33
And from my understanding, it's like Transubstantiation in Christianity where the Eucharist is literally the body and blood of Christ. Like this is literally a living breathing guru, but it's..

Preston Meyer  15:46
And doesn't breathe.

Katie Dooley  15:49
It's a living, breathing guru. So the Adi Granth becomes Guru Granth Sahib

Preston Meyer  16:00
I think it's interesting that from a anthropological point of view, the Guru's absolutely fill the role of prophets that we see in other religions. But internally, there's actually a deliberate differentiation. The gurus are teachers, and though they can receive revelations, and they certainly offer them, they are not called prophets.

Katie Dooley  16:25
Guru means teacher, so is it more of a distilling and disseminating of information?

Preston Meyer  16:32
I think that's the primary difference.

Katie Dooley  16:36
I mean, it's very nuanced at this point when you're dealing with God, but it's almost like an interpretation, instead of just speaking the revelation in my... me trying to reconcile it in my own brain. Yeah, that fair?

Preston Meyer  16:50
I think that's what the difference is. And so, as we mentioned before, it exists in a world where it's competing with Hinduism and Islam, and specifically denouncing both of them outright, kind of like how the Church of England outright denounces the Church of Rome as being awful and wrong.

Katie Dooley  17:14
Literally made up so Henry needs to divorce his wife, Catholics are wrong.

Preston Meyer  17:19
Well, it's a lot easier to validate your position as a rebellious church, when you say that the people I'm rebelling against were wrong, before I started this fight. That's literally how all rebellions go is we're tired of this thing that we don't agree with.

Katie Dooley  17:36
We didn't start the fire. I don't know.  I don't know how to segue out of this. Well, Preston, you did a lot of research on their actual beliefs. So I'll let you

Preston Meyer  17:52
I did a little bit, you did a bunch, too. 

Katie Dooley  17:54
I really didn't flesh it out, well soo.. that was your job. 'Cause I'm bad at this part.

Preston Meyer  18:02
So the idea of God in Sikhism is full of similarities to both the God of Abraham as recognized in the Islamic faith, and the Brahman of the Hindu faith that God, neither begat nor is he begotten, but also is fully in corporal, but exists in all things, which, of course, gets complicated. And there's more and more Christians who have adopted this idea, as we've talked about, in our Hinduism episode of God being greater than the sum of the universe, which is super complicated. And the word that you'll want to look up is panentheism.  Yes, Pan, P-A-N-E-N-theism.

Katie Dooley  19:03
I thought you're talking about the Hunger Games Panem. I'm kidding.

Preston Meyer  19:09
So it's basically All-in-God-ism. And it's a specific, not totally unique, but not widespread, universally agreed upon sub set of pantheism, I think, would be a way to classify that. And it's a way to motivate a respect for literally every living thing, which is not a bad thing. There's a good handful of titles for God as most religions have. Sikhs will use titles like Ik Onkar, which means one God, you have words like Waheguru, the wondrous Lord or wonderous leader or master, wonderous teacher, so, guru being part of that title is what makes it kind of a tricky word. But very often it's translated as wondrous Lord. Even though I mentioned before that there's a respect for all living things being centered in India, you can't really ignore the caste system. And so, most Sikhs aren't terribly concerned with it as far as I've observed. I have a Sikh friend and though he's, he has mentioned it, it's not really a big deal for most Sikhs, by the looks of it.

Katie Dooley  20:35
Yeah, one thing that I was reading about Sikhism is that they're actually really big on the quality of men and women. I didn't say anything on the caste system specifically but but that in their system...

Preston Meyer  20:46
It's a lot less important to Sikhs than it is to Hindus, that's for sure. 

Katie Dooley  20:49
You know what, I don't know why I didn't do this before I knew it was an episode I read the Bhagavad Gita. It's like a two hour audiobook highly recommend and there's one point that's like, you would hate to come back as a woman like, excuse me?

Preston Meyer  21:08
That's wonderful. What a great thing to say out loud.

Katie Dooley  21:11
Yeah, so anyway, we'll get to. We'll get to the Khalsa later, but you can be a female member of that group. They don't. They don't care.

Preston Meyer  21:29
Khalsa? Khalsa, I'm pretty sure that's an L.

Katie Dooley  21:35
We'll get to the Khalsa later but you can be a female member of the Khalsa.

Preston Meyer  21:40
Oh, karma is still a thing.

Katie Dooley  21:41
Still a thing? That's interesting to me. I'm curious how they reconcile that with monotheism because it feels like a very polytheistic idea.

Preston Meyer  21:52
I don't think... Well, so the way we talked about karma before a couple episodes ago and our Hinduism discussion. So Karma is a word that basically means action and so your actions, they may be motivated by the number of gods in your life. This is not... that your actions are still your actions, and there are consequences for your actions. So karma is still a thing and so this is an element that definitely came over from that Hinduism idea. Or, at the very least, by living in India, this became part of the discussion. Reincarnation is part of the deal, which is easy enough to follow from our previous discussions. And the goal, of course, is still to escape. But they use a different word, probably, honestly, just a dialectical issue. The word is mukti instead of moksha. It sounds an awful lot like the same word in a different dialect.

Katie Dooley  23:03
They just changed a little bit. For copyright reasons. I'm trying to think of, like Cheetos versus Cheezies Make it a Z instead of a -To and they won't come after you.

Preston Meyer  23:22
And the interesting thing that I don't remember seeing so much in the Hinduism discussion, but definitely come up in our Buddhist discussion that life is suffering, life is hell. For Sikhs, hell is life on Earth, you want to escape that. So the goal of course, is to eventually achieve mukti and escape the cycle of suffering.

Katie Dooley  23:56
Well, let's talk about Maya and the Five Thieves. Maya is a term that appears in Sikh scripture and it's mean, like infatuation or desire for things that you shouldn't have, like worldly things. That's what Maya is. There's similar concepts. I mean, it I guess, would be like sin, you know, wanting things that you shouldn't want, essentially.

Preston Meyer  24:25
Okay. And so what are these thieves

Katie Dooley  24:27
The five thieves... very similar. Lust, anger, greed, attachment, and pride.

Preston Meyer  24:37
All right, so it's kind of like the seven deadly sins, but there's fewer of them.

Katie Dooley  24:41
Yeah, you can be lazy and you can eat a lot. I think that's the only two sloth and gluttony.

Preston Meyer  24:47
Yeah, sloth and gluttony are gone. Attachments, not one of the seven so there's another one that's missing to be replaced here by attachment. Do I need to pull up a list what the seven deadly sins are because I can't remember all of them right now.

Katie Dooley  25:01
I mean, I don't sin so...

Preston Meyer  25:04
Seven Deadly Sins, Google power! All right, so the seven deadly sins are pride, greed. Lust is on there. Envy, envy is the one we're missing. 

Katie Dooley  25:23
I think attachment sort of almost touches on that, right? 

Preston Meyer  25:27
It's definitely an a, an associated principle.

Katie Dooley  25:31
Think of what you're envious of people for it's because you have an attachment, you want something that they have, there's an attachment piece to worldly objects there.

Preston Meyer  25:39
So now I'm thinking of the Jedi. The Jedi eschew attachment.

Katie Dooley  25:43
Yeah. Are Sikhs just Jedi? 

Preston Meyer  25:46
You know what as we look through the list of how things go from this point forward, we'll see a few more parallels.

Katie Dooley  25:55
I actually really like the Sikh practices, which we'll get into in a minute. But yes, so these five things lust, anger, greed, attachment, pride, not to be confused with the seven deadly sins, although very similar, will stop you from reaching this Mukti reincarnation.

Preston Meyer  26:12
Or if you want to have a unapproved approach to Sikh practice, you can continually indulge in these things to ensure another resurrection, or reincarnation. If you don't want to leave this earth, if you don't want to achieve Mukti, if that's the way you want to live... So there's another handy...

Katie Dooley  26:46
I love numbers in your beliefs!  Make it easy for me. 

Preston Meyer  26:52
So what are the three pillars?  Pretty standard principle common among most religious practices and easy to accept in a neighbor, I think.

Katie Dooley  26:53
Three Pillars not to be confused with the Five pillars of Islam. He looked at Christianity Seven Deadly sins and the Five Pillars of Islam. He's like, we can shorten this. There are three pillars to Sikhism Naam Japo, which is meditation, the chanting of God's name and reflecting on God. Just God time prayer would be a... Yep, the next one is Kirat Karni. It's kind of like Dharma, kind of like Hindu Dharma, but not quite Hindu Dharma. It's about doing honest work and making a living, contributing to society. There's nothing in there, like in Hindu Dharma, where it's like accepting your circumstances. It's just contributing kind of being a good neighbour,

Preston Meyer  27:51
Being a good member of your community. That's a really great way of saying don't be a dick because you're taking the positive language of be a not-dick.

Katie Dooley  28:00
Be a not dick. I like that. New t-shirt idea. And the third pillar like how many are we on is Vand Chakna. And this is donation, giving back to that community that you're a part of, in the form of food or money, monetary donations, and I, in my research, I might have to say the Sikhs might be the best at this. And I know part of that is the cultural makeup of where we live, and proportions of people but I'm gonna have a story to share later, when we started talking about the Gurdwara. I think Sikhs do this very well in the sense that they give to the greater community whereas a lot of religious groups just give to their religious community.

Preston Meyer  28:53
If you don't come to our church, we won't feed you. 

Katie Dooley  28:55
Yeah, you get all these gift gifting perks, giving perks if you're in the community but if you're outside the community might not so yeah, anyway, that's those are the three pillars. Let's come back to turbans. This I actually was the part I had a lot of fun researching was like the day to day practices of Sikhs this is where I will usually leave the historical stuff for Preston because I like the nitty gritty what does it look like if you're a Sikh human? So Sikhs pray three times a day again looked at Islam and was like that's too much.

Preston Meyer  29:33
Five times is hard, even hour is too many just do three, man.

Katie Dooley  29:38
So morning when they wake up sunset, and before they go to bed. Now, as a Canadian who lives pretty far north. I feel like that can be hard because sometimes you go to bed before sunset.

Preston Meyer  29:51
That's only in the summer, and honestyl me, almost never.

Katie Dooley  29:55
If you're Katie frequently. 

Preston Meyer  29:57
I very seldom go to bed before sunset. Especially not in winter when the sun goes down at 3:30.

Katie Dooley  30:06
But when it goes down to 11:30 yeah I go to bed before

Preston Meyer  30:09
In the summertime up until midnight almost every night anyway.

Katie Dooley  30:14
And hymns are a large part of the prayer process, getting back on track. Hymns are a big part of the prayer tradition for Sikhs.

Preston Meyer  30:26
So instead of a regular church service, like you're used to seeing and I don't know, like mass or your evangelical stand up and scream at each other thing.

Katie Dooley  30:34
And Imams write sermons are equivalent of I don't know if they call them sermons but...

Preston Meyer  30:40
I imagine in mostly English communities, that would be the word that they learn for English for what's going on there. Sikhs have Gurdwaras that are open pretty much all the time, right?

Katie Dooley  30:53
Yes. So there's no. So from my understanding and searching local gurdwaras is... it doesn't matter what day it is. It's not like in Christian where it is Sunday, because that was the day he rose. They'll just like pick it and stick with it. But there's no significant meaning. I think I'm imagining like, probably not COVID times and even denser Sikh populations, they'd be open all the time. I think they the one I looked at was Thursday, and that's probably just for routine in people's lives. But yes.

Preston Meyer  31:27
Yeah, there's plenty of Christians who in Dubai are willing to meet on Friday, because that's when everyone else is doing their Masjid meetings. So it's like, yeah, this is what makes sense. Instead of Sunday, so it's kind of cool.

Katie Dooley  31:42
The service is called a Kirtan and it's communal singing so like I said, hymns, song is very important. In Sikhism you're gonna sing.

Preston Meyer  31:56
So not terribly alien to the popular traditions around here.

Katie Dooley  32:00
No, but I think there isn't. I don't I mean, I have a band and we should go. But I don't think there's a speaking portion. I think it's all this communal I think it's cool. Unless I'm the one saying, don't come back. Go to the kitchen. Run away.

Preston Meyer  32:18
We have something else we'd rather you do. That's fine, though. We've mentioned Khalsa earlier.

Katie Dooley  32:27
No you forgot a part that's really important and exciting to me the food part! I gotta mention, becausde it's important to me apparently. After a Sikh service, there is a communal meal served in a kitchen or a Langer is the term for it. And I love it. So anyone can go after service and you can eat for free. And they purposely make the meal vegetarian, not because they're vegetarians, but because then any other religious group can come and eat. So if you're a Jewish person, and you're hungry, you can go to a Gurdwarea nd eat. If you're a Muslim, and you're starving, you can go and eat there. So anyone. And that's the point too. It's like this idea of a soup kitchen that if you're hungry, you can come and eat here and not have to worry about it, which I thought was super cool.

Preston Meyer  33:26
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense to coming from the intersection of Hindu and Islamic traditions. You've got a lot of dietary restrictions. And they're not... they don't overlap much at all, really?

Katie Dooley  33:41
No. Beef, pork, dairy, any of any of it.

Preston Meyer  33:45
I mean, most Hindus don't eat a lot of meat, or much at all, but some do. And Muslims have very strict rules on a lot of the food that they can eat

Katie Dooley  33:59
And Jewish people with pork and dairy mixing, or meat and dairy mixing and then not eating pork at all.

Preston Meyer  34:05
Just keeping a vegetarian is the simple answer. 

Katie Dooley  34:09
And this is where the story I alluded to, are you on Nextdoor?

Preston Meyer  34:14
I mean, barely, but yeah.

Katie Dooley  34:17
If you don't know what Nextdoor is, it is a social networking app that is sorted by your geographical region. So I could post that I need my sidewalk shoveled and everyone in my neighborhood would be notified and then people nearby could contact me as an example. And I saw a post and I don't want to shame anyone. But it was basically like, he hard financial times and he was like, I need food, cigarettes and weed. And basically everyone who commented on it was like cigarettes and weed like you're kinda pushing it... but again, I'm not here to judge anyway, and it was a gentleman with a South Asian name. And he commented and said "Yep, I'm not going to do the cigarettes or weed but I will bring you food" and like a kept reading the thread and sounds like he followed through and delivered him food and, and he this gentleman commented like "Yep, he actually he was in dire straits", he needed food so you know, stop giving him a hard time about the weed and cigarettes. And then the guy who receivedm commented was very grateful "Thank you so much. I want to learn more about you and your culture and your community". And the guy commented, he said, "Yep, Sikhs are all about, you know, giving to our community and helping people when they need them". So it was nice to see that after doing all this research on the Gurdwara, and being able to, you know, come and grab a free meal, and that they actually, like you said, like, some random-ass stranger being like, I need weed and food. And he was like, "Yep, I'm not gonna judge you for" when literally, including myself, everyone was like, "Really, you're asking for cigarettes and weed with your food?" He's like, "No, I'm not gonna judge. I'm not going to help you with that part. But I will come and bring you food". And he did. And I was like, you know, little, little hope in the world. So that's my happy Sikh story of the week.

Preston Meyer  36:07
I like it. All right. So, there is a subset of Sikhism. These are people who are initiated into a deeper part of the tradition. And the word for this extra-committed group within the larger group is the Khalsa. And they're actually super cool. I did some deep, deep digging into what goes on, and I think it's really pretty nifty. These people are a lot more likely to look like your stereotypical Sikhs.

Katie Dooley  36:46
I think that's where this comes from as the kalsa. But you don't need to so we'll get more into it. But like Turbans are worn by the Khalsa, but you don't need to be in the Khalsa to wear a turban, but everyone in the Khalsa will wear a turban.

Preston Meyer  37:00
Almost without exception, but it's actually not a strict requirement. I mean, it's generally expected for sure, but it's not a strict requirement. Depending on who you talk to, I guess I'm sure if your parents are like, really into it, they'd get mad at you for not wearing a turban to cover your long hair. But when it's a little bit more orthodox, you've got an extra set of rules, and there's some prerequisites for the initiation ceremony. You are specifically forbidden from wearing any jewelry or mark associated with any other faith or God. Like, if you're walking in with a crucifix, you're gonna be turned away. If you got a rosary tattoo on your foot, you will be turned away

Katie Dooley  37:50
Even if you've converted to Sikhism?

Preston Meyer  37:52
Yeah, according to what I read, yes, if you have any tattoo, that is a permanent mark of any other faith, you won't be admitted to the Khalsa initiation ceremony. Conversion obviously is a thing that is enjoyed by every faith that if you want to join my faith, that's cool. That's a celebrated thing. But there's rules for the Khalsa and apparently that's one of them. And you also can't go through the ceremony if you have piercings of any kind. So like, nah, I'm just gonna stop I don't need to.. Y'all know what I'm saying? Piercings of any kind, no good. I don't know why I felt the need to explain for you. Extra graphic or something? I don't know what I was thinking there. I don't need to explain what a piercing is. 

Katie Dooley  38:50
No. If you do not know what a piercing is it please drop us a line on our Discord.

Preston Meyer  38:56
Or you know, feel free to Google it. We would love to have you and everybody join us on Discord and we can have productive, healthy conversations about religion and have a lot of fun. And sure and the nature of piercings. We also share some great memes. I know that everybody loves memes. If you don't appreciate memes you are an alien to me. I don't know. Anyway, but the most visible things we want to get into for how to identify the Khalsa. You've got the five Ks.

Katie Dooley  39:34
Don't you think Katie should go through the five K's?

Preston Meyer  39:36
I think so. I don't want to monopolize all this time. But you know what? Remember how we cut down all these lists. Instead of seven deadly sins. We had the five things that I don't know why I can't remember the word right now. And then we took the five pillars kind of down the three pillars. I'm really glad it's five K's

Katie Dooley  39:59
Alright. So, K number one is the Kesh. This is uncut hair and beard, forming the lion's mane and we'll get into the significance of the lion later. Do want jump into that now? And this is why the last name Singh is so popular because all men in the Khalsa were encouraged to take the last name Singh. And then when those 25 million how many million? 25 million Sikhs around the world

Preston Meyer  40:15
I want to jump into it right now. I think it's really cool. The fella who started the Khalsa was the 10th Guru Gobind Singh. His name was Singh, and so Singh means lion. And so for all the men who become part of this group of Khalsa they're meant to grow out their hair and never ever cut it ever again. And same goes with their beard, causing this huge frame of hair that is meant to resemble in their tradition, the lion. It becomes a becomes a very... 

Katie Dooley  41:21
Common last name. So that's number one. And I don't I I'm gonna jump in here and women were encouraged to take the last name Kaur K-A-U-R, Kaur which means Princess, that would be for Khalsa women as well. I'm diverting from the five Ks. I just wanted to make sure I pointed out that for the women as well. Number two is the Kangha which is the wooden comb worn in this hair that doesn't get cut that reminds you to be clean and tidy and should be used twice a day. Number three is the Kirpan, which is a steel sword or dagger. And it is your oath to immediately defend all those in danger. So I think present day Khalsa definitely do carry a small knife all the time, but it's definitely not like a big old Broadsword.

Preston Meyer  42:14
Yeah, you see a lot fewer swords today. But typically these people are armed. Yeah, they will carry a knife, and I'm sure loads of people are threatened by the idea of a muscular brown man being armed at all times. But you see a 300 pound white dude with cowboy boots and a gun in his pocket. I'm intimidated by that more.

Katie Dooley  42:42
Even some of my guy friends like, I've had, I've like needed stuff done. And they'll just like whip out this massive knife and like "I'm just carrying it"

Preston Meyer  42:51
There was years where I would always have a pocket knife with me. But I also used it on a regular basis. It hasn't been the case for a while, so I don't carry a knife with me anymore.

Katie Dooley  43:03
This friend, I think he was a contractor. But like, I forget what I had him over for and just like without this massive knife, and I was like, Okay, I mean, you're obviously but like, my point is that if you're worried about a Sikh being armed, all of your friends are armed with a knife probably.

Preston Meyer  43:19
Probably, I've really liked that it's more about being prepared than it is about being threatening. And we'll get into that a little bit more as we look at some further points.

Katie Dooley  43:34
The number in the fourth K is the Kara or a steel ring or bracelet worn on the right wrist. It is the link in the community chain and it is a reminder to be mindful of what they are doing with their hands. Oh my.

Preston Meyer  43:51
Yeah. It's that simple.

Katie Dooley  43:54
Is it really as simple as my 12 year old boy brain?

Preston Meyer  43:58
Maybe? I mean, that's part of it.

Katie Dooley  44:01
Okay. All right. Number five is the Kach. K-A-C-H-H, Shorts with a drawstring belts. This is to remind one to avoid lust one of the five thieves and always be prepared to fight against attackers. Yeah, want to explain that one to me.

Preston Meyer  44:24
So just like the Kirpan, the Sikhs, at least earlier in their history, a little bit more visible than where we are in the world in history. There's the need to be vigilant and to be ready to stand up and defend somebody and need at all times. And so the Kachh the shorts are worn all the time. A lot of men will bathe in them and then put on dry ones after the bath. Changing them off one leg at a time. Like un-leg one. Put on new shorts on that leg. And then then take the wet ones off the second leg and then pull them back up.

Katie Dooley  45:02
That seems more hindering if you had to run in a fight right away.

Preston Meyer  45:06
It does. Logistically, it's tricky. But it's

Katie Dooley  45:13
I understand the concept of always wearing them.

Preston Meyer  45:15
Yeah, it's a commitment to the article of clothing rather than the principle it embodies the way I see it.

Katie Dooley  45:21
Because I totally get the you don't want to be caught naked in a bath and then have to fight for someone's life. But having two pairs of pants on the same time is worse than being naked. To fight off for someone's life.

Preston Meyer  45:34
I think you're right

Katie Dooley  45:34
Actually just two pairs of pants on at the same time period.

Preston Meyer  45:41
No, just imagine a dude walking around with two pairs of jeans but not overlapping.

Katie Dooley  45:46
I'm gonna go try this later today. When you leave. I have two pairs of leggings just like the ones I'm wearing. And I'm gonna take one off

Preston Meyer  45:56
Would be a fun way to surprise Bryant

Katie Dooley  45:58
Oh, just two legs wibbling between two pant legs with wibbling between my legs.

Preston Meyer  46:07
So, though I appreciate the Kachh 100% That particular practice does seem a little tricky.

Katie Dooley  46:16
Hopefully you're not having to fight so often that it becomes an actual logistical problem.

Preston Meyer  46:22
Right. And that that's one of the advantages, I guess is that usually that's not a real life problem. So those are the five Ks and they may be listed in different orders depending on who you ask. But there's also bonus points.

Katie Dooley  46:36
You have so many bonus points. I can't wait to hear them all.

Preston Meyer  46:40
I love them, actually. So there are additional articles of clothing for the Khalsa panj kapare or panj kapre or panj kapare. I'm going to admit I have no idea how to say that for sure.

Katie Dooley  46:51
Again, as scholars, we've only read the words

Preston Meyer  46:56
Yeah, so that there is more clothing that is associated with Sikhs who are ready to go out into battle. So, dastar is the word for turban. Even though I think turban is an Arabic word or derived from an Arabic word. The Indian dastar is basically the it is the same thing. And then there's the Sikh chola, which is specifically military garments, which are actually kind of cool to look at. Worth googling. You gotta be careful though, when you look for chola include the word seek otherwise, you're just gonna get a bunch of pictures of Spanish girls.

Katie Dooley  47:38
I will I'll pop a picture of Sikh chola in our Discord.

Preston Meyer  47:41
Do it. Alright. There's also a hazooria. Looking at the description of the hazooria did not help me at all the entire time, I was imagining a little grasping claw like you can buy Dollarama. But the description that I found was not nearly as helpful as I would have liked. I had to Google image search hazooria, and found out that it's basically a fancy napkin, its function is to keep your hands clean. And also to keep you humble, though, you'll find a lot of people that's mutually exclusive, at least among white folks, that's a problem we have. But it's a thing that if you want to pick a thing up off the ground, you don't want to get your hands dirty. When you do this. You would have this hazooria napkin type thing that you pick it up with and keep your fingers clean. Yes. Not even crazy. In fact, yeah... Yeah, you're wording there was not great. I understand what you're saying. It's perfectly reasonable. In fact, most of what we see in Sikhism and most religions, most things are completely reasonable. I think objectively speaking, there's usually something in most faiths that is far outside reasonable. But most of the things need to be acceptable to the everyday person.

Katie Dooley  49:13
Or they don't last very long.

Preston Meyer  49:15
No, I think the most reasonable things. 

Katie Dooley  49:17

That's what I mean is they're not reasonable...

Preston Meyer  49:19
Yes, alright, and then there's more of these bonus points for the Khalsa. There is the kamar kasa, which is a belt to hold weapons, because some people may be offended by this idea. But the fully committed Khalsas typically have more than just the kirpan. There was a time where there was a list of five things that a truly prepared Khalsa would be armed with. You've got the Chakram which if you've played say, Mortal Kombat, you might know what a Chakram is it's a round blade, like a Frisbee round, but it's hollow in the middle, so that you can wear it around your turban. It serves to protect your head and your hair and your turban from sword strikes. So it's fully steel, strong, but it's also sharp, probably not all the way around so that you've got something to grip with. If you wanted to hit somebody with it, like in Mortal Kombat, or SoulCalibur. When you see a Chakram, there's usually a handle. 'Course in a lot of popular media in the last 15-20 years, you'll see Chakrams with handles in the middle or their half circles with a handle through them. These are completely useless to wear on your head. Or you tied your turban in a way that accommodates this weird shaped Chakram. But for the most part, they were round things with a sharp blade on the outside, they would protect your head and could be used as handheld weapons, in theory. Though, probably not on the regular, because you would want to keep that on your head for combat. There was also the katar which is a small push dagger a lot smaller than your kirpan. And it's not so slashy slashy, It's thrusting weapon 

Katie Dooley  50:36
Pokey-poke. 

Preston Meyer  51:25
There was also the peshkars, which is a narrow knife, usually pretty long, but narrow. So you can force it

Katie Dooley  51:34
Like a hairpin sort of. There's a name for a pointy stick. 

Preston Meyer  51:41
Yeah, that's, that's, I guess that's not unfair. It's designed to be able to pop through chainmail. Which, I mean, these people are prepared for all of the combat of the world 500 years ago. And then my favorite, there was a new addition to the list, which made it a list of five a little while ago that has since been outright banned by the Indian government for for reasons that may become clear when I tell you what this fifth item is, 

Katie Dooley  52:13
What is oh my god, tell me

Preston Meyer  52:14
It's a pistol. The fifth weapon in this panshastar is usually a match lock pistol or a six shooter. We're talking back in the good old days. If you're carrying a nine millimeter with you sure, fine. But I feel like most people today feel pretty similar to the way the Indian government did when they said hey, maybe don't. And when they made this ban, it would have been really easy to accept the rule, but also would have been easy to rebel against it. It did look a lot like a specific anti-religious movement law. But there was enough people who are like, yeah, we need to follow the laws of the land. So they were willing to cut the firearm from their list of weapons 

Katie Dooley  52:14
To have a whole bunch of knives. 

Preston Meyer  52:23
I mean, so many, so many blades, which makes a guy look badass.

Katie Dooley  53:23
I would be curious what percentage of Sikhs are part of the Khalsa. I don't look into anything on that. But I'm sure a portion of the Canadian population of Sikhs are part of the Khalsa, but I've never seen anyone with a chakram. I feel like that one is also...

Preston Meyer  53:42
It's not one of the five K's. These are just bonus points. I did preface that whole list of bonus points with that 

Katie Dooley  53:51
So not every Khalsa will be fully arm right. 

Preston Meyer  53:55
In fact, for day to day, I think very few Khalsa are. So the turban is one of those bonus points, that if you're going to keep your hair clean, it's a lot easier if it's covered. And so I even though it's a bonus point, almost everybody who goes with their hair on cut is wearing a turban.  And again, you just because you go with uncut hair does not make you part of the kalsa. So there is some you know, I don't want to say "regular Sikh" sounds so bad. Some will be clean shaven and some will not cut their hair. And again, that can be men, men or women. So sometimes you'll see female Sikhs with turbans and I have a friend. I miss seeing him he's spending a whole lot of time outside the city. And then pandemic makes it hard to socialize on a face to face basis. But super cool guy and he does where the shorts, but doesn't wear a turban. He keeps his hair short. So, the five K's aren't exclusive to the Khalsa, but they're obviously expected by the Khalsa

Katie Dooley  55:16
So they become a part of the Khalsa ,there is an initiation ceremony it's kind of similar to a baptism like we would see in Christianity and new members drink amrit which is a sweetened water.

Preston Meyer  55:30
It's got nectar in it 

Katie Dooley  55:32
And the take on additional rules in terms of doctrine and personal conduct that the average Sikh doesn't need to follow you know, the five Ks being part of that.

Preston Meyer  55:44
For sure. We already talked about how Gobind Singh made requests of people to use new last names Singh meaning lion, Kaur meaning princess.

Katie Dooley  55:58
Just lower down in our notes. I'm gonna throw it out because it's a good word. So the term keshdhari referring to kesh the uncut hair. Keshdhari means hair bearing. You can be a keshdhari and not part of the Khalsa. But that's just a cool term to play in Scrabble. You sit at Christmas with your family be like do you know what a keshdhari? Like no, tell us. And then this is really great podcasts that I listened to you should listen to it too

Preston Meyer  56:29
Right? It's great way to work our podcast into your holiday time with your family. All right. So in North America, there is a growing number of Sikhs. In fact, there's a growing movement of non-Indian Sikhs. The Sikh Dharma International is a group that was founded about 50 years ago down in the southern states, not the crazy south which is a population where Sikhs would not feel welcome. But in California and New Mexico, there's actually a growing population of people of multinational descent, and a very diverse place where most religions are accepted. I think that's why Scientology is headquartered there. More or less ish. Okay. They're not headquartered there. They just have a lot of power there. That makes sense. Scientology is a different day. But anyway, the Sikh, Dharma International is based in Los Angeles and California and New Mexico, just said them, and they escaped my mind, but I brought them back. They also typically wear white robes. And so they're called White Sikhs by a lot of folks, not just because they've got white skin, but they augment this by having white robes. But yeah, they are mostly white. So there's that growing movement here in North America, and men and women wear turbans, which is, I don't think standard I think the turban is mostly for men and women will cover their hair, but not in a turban. As far as I've seen outside of the white Sikh group.

Katie Dooley  58:14
I've never seen...

Preston Meyer  58:17
A woman with a turban? 

Katie Dooley  58:18

No, I've seen a woman with a turban. I've never seen a female Sikh cover her hair in a way not a turban. Because they don't wear scarves don't wear hijabs. I either see them just own their long hair or wear a turban.

Preston Meyer  58:33
Okay. I guess we're seeing different things. And that's okay, because we don't live in the same part of town. Anyway, that's kind of cool. I like that. All right. And a downside to being a Sikh in North America, is that for the last 20 years, maybe longer, but it's become more of a problem in the last 20 years is there's a lot of anti-Islamic. I wrote different words in my notes, but anti-Islamic people.

Katie Dooley  59:05
You wrote psychos! 

Preston Meyer  59:08
I did. 

Katie Dooley  59:09
And I don't disagree

Preston Meyer  59:10
Now that it's been recorded. Yeah. These people are extremely Islamophobic and they've decided to start attacking Sikhs, because they can't tell the difference. Even though there's not a lot of Muslims wearing turbans around here. 

Katie Dooley  59:28
No, there's no reason for them to wear a turban. And I mean, first of all, it shouldn't matter. Let's just clear that up is that it shouldn't matter. 

Preston Meyer  59:37
Well, one of the big number one offense that inspires all of this is the Twin Tower attacks on September 11, 2001. I mean, these people came from a different part of the world. They look different from each other. And the people who did the attacks are dead. Attacking people who happen to share some philosophical on religious traditions, makes no sense at all. It's not okay. I let alone associating completely separate people. 

Katie Dooley  1:00:09
I this is not a political podcast, but in Canada, our New Democratic Party are quite left wing party leader Jagmeet Singh. He is a Sikh. And he he put it really well once, which is why I bring it up not to get political. But he had received some anti-Muslim, anti-Islamic phobic comments. And somebody asked him, you know, why didn't you crack them and say that you're a Sikh, he said, because it shouldn't matter. It shouldn't matter which I really liked. Like, you shouldn't, doesn't matter if you're wrong, you shouldn't be attacking. It's not about saying, oh, sorry, you're the wrong person. I'm not Muslim, go attack Muslims. He's like, it doesn't matter. They're wrong. Regardless, so I

Preston Meyer  1:00:52
It doesn't matter why you're wrong. Stop being a dick. 

Katie Dooley  1:00:54
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So I thought he put I think Preston and Jagmeet Singh put it more eloquently than I could. But yeah, basically, don't be a dick. And I think it, you know, again, don't attack anyone anyway. But that's part of the reason we're doing this podcast, like,

Preston Meyer  1:01:12
To help you be informed. 

Katie Dooley  1:01:13
Like, yeah, I mean, I'm not condoning Islamophobia, but like, gonna be Islamophobic, or at least be Islamophobic. 

Preston Meyer  1:01:21
At least do it right 

Katie Dooley  1:01:24
I don't want to condone it. But like,

Preston Meyer  1:01:27
If we do it, if we can change your mind on whether or not you should do a thing, at least figure out how to do it properly.

Katie Dooley  1:01:38
I mean, it just goes to show how ignorant they are in their Islamophobia, because they don't even know what they're scared of. And that's why I'm here today. And that goes for any religion, right? If you're, I feel like I need to step up on the soapbox. And I'm trying not to because

Preston Meyer  1:01:58
It's so easy to be reminded that people suck an awful lot of the time. But we can all be better.

Katie Dooley  1:02:06
I feel like we should really quickly just record a bonus that we should wrap up Sikhism, but a bonus episode of the genocide in China, which we need to wrap up Sikhism but now I'm getting on the soapbox, because there's this Muslim genocide in China. And I was on Facebook, which was my first mistake. And CBC made a post about and everyone's like, Oh, Trudeau is bringing such a pussy, he needs to call out this genocide, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, this is literally the same group of people that two weeks ago on a post about Muslims and Canada, were like, go back to your country. We don't want Sharia law. And it's like, so you're fine to call it a genocide when you don't have to look at it, but you're happy to promote violence against Muslims here. 

Preston Meyer  1:02:46
People suck. 

Katie Dooley  1:02:47
I was like, ready to flip my table. I just got off Facebook.

Preston Meyer  1:02:52
So I have the idea. The, the what looks to me like the prevailing principle of Sikhism and I really like it, that Sikhism is not about hearing voices from God, as we see a lot in religious traditions. It's about changing the nature of the human mind. Anybody can have personal direct experiences with Divine and they can achieve spiritual perfection at any time, which is more ethereal. And also it doesn't require you to be any place to be able to communicate with the divine because the Divine is everything and everything is in the Divine.

Katie Dooley  1:03:40
I really liked learning about Sikhism and I am excited to go to a Gurdwara. When this pandemic is over with you 

Preston Meyer  1:03:49
Right, it'd be a lot of fun 

Katie Dooley  1:03:50
And learn some more and eat some food.

Preston Meyer  1:03:53
Right? Anytime I can get free food, it's it's a delight, but also being able to break well, I assume there's bread. Being able to break bread 

Katie Dooley  1:04:03
It would definitely be like, naan or roti or something. But yeah, 

Preston Meyer  1:04:06
That's a-okay by me. That's a good experience.

Katie Dooley  1:04:10
I think so and I, South Asian cultures in general are very open to teaching and feeding. I think it'd be a good experience for us when we can go do that. And we'll come back and record an episode on it when we get that chance, hopefully in the fall, but we'll see.

Preston Meyer  1:04:29
Well, that's basically for the notes that we have on Sikhism and thanks for joining us. Be sure to follow us on Instagram and Facebook 

Katie Dooley  1:04:38
@holywatermelonpod 

Preston Meyer  1:04:39
Feel free to email us your questions 

Katie Dooley  1:04:42
[email protected] 

Preston Meyer  1:04:43
But even better. Join us on 

Katie Dooley  1:04:46
Discord?

Preston Meyer  1:04:46
That's the one I'm looking for.

Katie Dooley  1:04:49
Joining us on our Discord we will be posting links on our social media, Instagram and Facebook. Let us know we'd love to have you part of the conversation, make suggestions ask questions. We do address questions in our episode, so send them on over and 

Both Hosts  1:05:07
Peace be with you!

Is Buddhism a way of life or a religion? Is Buddha divine or is he just a smart guy?

Because Buddhism is such an open religion (you can be a Buddhist and belong to another religious group) many people view it as a way of life instead of as a religion. However, Buddhism directly addresses what happens to your soul after death, which is a pretty religious thing to do. 

In this episode, we tell the story of Siddhartha Gautama. While you might think he’s the first Buddha, he’s actually the 28th Buddha we’ve had on earth, and there are more to come. Siddhartha was born in a royal household and given every creature comfort. It wasn’t until he was an adult that he saw people get sick, live in poverty, grow old, and die. When he had this experience he realized that life is suffering and left his home forever. 

Siddhartha went to the other end of the spectrum and lived with ascetics, depriving himself of sleep and food while he meditated under the famous Bodhi tree, where he eventually received enlightenment after 49 days. This enlightenment brought us the Middle Path – something between indulgence and deprivation. 

Buddhism started in BCE as an oral tradition, by the first century CE we started having records written down. 

Some of the most notable beliefs in Buddhism are the 4 Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. 

4 Noble Truths

1. Duhkkha – Life is suffering
2. Sumadaya  - Suffering is caused by craving
3. Nirodha – You can escape the cycle of suffering
4. Magga – the pathway to escape suffering

Eightfold path

1. Insight/Wisdom
   1. Right view – seeing the world as it really is. Actions have consequences
   2. Right intention – our motives must be compassionate
2. Morals/Virtues
   1. Right speech – don’t lie or use abusive/vulgar language
   2. Right conduct – don’t hurt people or don’t satisfy unnecessary appetites
   3. Right livelihood – only do and possess what you must
3. Meditation
   1. Right effort – do not strain yourself unnecessarily
   2. Right mindfulness – do not be absent-minded, live in the moment
   3. Right meditation – must control your focus to gain insight

Join us for a broad overview of the Buddhist religion, beliefs, practices, and more!

Support us at Patreon and Spreadshirt

Join the Community on Discord

Learn more great religion facts on Facebook and Instagram

Preston Meyer  00:00
I’m Preston

Katie Dooley  00:13
and I’m Katie, and

Both Hosts  00:15
Welcome to the Holy Watermelon podcast!

Katie Dooley  00:23
Did you know that nirvana is not only a cool 90s band but a state of enlightenment?

Preston Meyer  00:29
No way! Totally radical,

Katie Dooley  00:33
Nirvana does mean cool though. right? So

Preston Meyer  00:37
That’s pretty awesome.

Katie Dooley  00:37
Smells like teams te- teen spirit teen spirit.

Preston Meyer  00:43
We’ll get there. we’ll get

Katie Dooley  00:46
Kurt Cobain’s just rolling in his grave right now.

Preston Meyer  00:50
Nah, he’s zeen with it all now

Katie Dooley  00:51
guess So Buddhism, it’s uhh...

Preston Meyer  00:59
Kinda a big complicated thing.

Katie Dooley  01:01
It’s, I mean, they all are. Also, preview, I think three episodes from now four episodes for now we’re gonna have a topic that has no answer again. So that’s fun.

Preston Meyer  01:14
Right? I’m looking forward to doing those again.

Katie Dooley  01:18
But some people don’t even think Buddhism is a religion, Preston. And what do you say to those people?

Preston Meyer  01:25
I say you haven’t thought hard enough about it.

Katie Dooley  01:29
I would have said something saltier, but.

Preston Meyer  01:32
I think that’s exactly the level of salty that matches my feelings on that point.

Katie Dooley  01:39
I just take salty to the extreme. Maybe we should talk about why some people think it’s not a religion.

Preston Meyer  01:44
Absolutely. It’s... when we compare it to say Christianity, which is a very exclusionary religion. Like there’s, there’s one God and there is no God, but God, and there’s this set of canon scripture and nothing else really matters. You compare that to Buddhism, which is very diverse, but also very broad,and open and accepting of other ideas. In Japan, most Buddhists are also Confucianists and Shintoists. We’ll talk a little bit more about Shintoism later. And in China, most Buddhists are also Confucianists and Taoists. So it’s easy to look at it as a school of philosophy. But when you also remember that there’s a lot of doctrine about the soul, and life after this life, and beyond that even, if you’re talking about the soul, as separate from your current life, that looks pretty religious to me.

Katie Dooley  02:57
It does, and it’s on a spectrum. But some people think Buddha is divine. And then some people think he was just a guy that had a shit together. So yeah, I mean, if you think he’s any level of divine, then that falls under religion. And I would also argue that, you know, people say Buddhism is a way of life or a philosophy of life, how are other religions... not those things either?

Preston Meyer  03:21
If your religion isn’t your way of life, what are you doing?

Katie Dooley  03:26
Showing up on Sunday to put in some face time?

Preston Meyer  03:29
I mean, a lot of people do exactly that. It’s true.

Katie Dooley  03:32
But even that you could argue is a way of life to show up and put in face time and get something from the community in return

Preston Meyer  03:38
For sure. So to me, Buddhism is a religion.

Katie Dooley  03:42
We’re gonna lump it in with the rest of them in this series. It also has, I have the number somewhere, I think, but has a lot of participants. I can’t find the number in my thing, but it is,

Preston Meyer  03:55
I remember seeing it in your notes near the top it was just around half a billion.

Katie Dooley  03:56
Oh, there it is. I didn’t put it in numbers. Words. I can’t find half a billion people. So obviously people are getting something out of this.

Preston Meyer  04:09
Yeah, absolutely.

Katie Dooley  04:11
How did it started, Preston? How?

Preston Meyer  04:15
Well we’ve got this fella named Siddhartha Gautama. Buddha is a title rather than a proper name. Exactly. And it means enlightened or awoke or just woke. And Siddhartha Gautama was a pretty special kid before he became the Buddha. He was born into a royal household in India/Nepal area and there was this prophecy that was given shortly after or shortly before, that he would become a great nation leader if he stayed in the home or a great spiritual leader. If he left the home, and his parents wanting to preserve their dynasty, said, “well, we’re just keeping keep them in the house.” And that worked out great for a while.

Katie Dooley  05:10
The OG helicopter parents.

Preston Meyer  05:12
Oh, yeah, for sure, totally. And that will become incredibly obvious as we go into further details. Like he never saw anybody gets sick. He’d never saw anybody die. He never saw poor people out the window.

Katie Dooley  05:26
He had whatever he wanted, like food, and he they married him off young to someone, I presume, was quite beautiful. And just like every wish was his command.

Preston Meyer  05:37
Yeah, it was pretty great that... if I could live like that, I would feel pretty good about it. In the moment,

Katie Dooley  05:43
I think you need more Buddhism in your life.

Preston Meyer  05:49
But things changed for our guy. Siddhartha Gautama eventually did go for a wander and he saw all kinds of things that he did not like at all.

Katie Dooley  06:02
Like sick, dead, poor.

Preston Meyer  06:06
Yeah, exactly. There’s a fourth one on that list and now I have to go through which ones you did.

Katie Dooley  06:13
Poor, homeless?

Preston Meyer  06:15
And old. And he realized, life is suffering. I’ve been living a lie. And so he walked away from this wonderful life he had at home.

Katie Dooley  06:32
Oh, no,

Preston Meyer  06:33
Permanently.

Katie Dooley  06:33
Oh, no. Not what his parents wanted for him.

Preston Meyer  06:36
Not at all.

Katie Dooley  06:37
Are any of us doing what our parents want?

Preston Meyer  06:39
Very few of us, I think. I know I’m not

Katie Dooley  06:44
we’re writing We’re writing... We’re producing a podcast on religion.

Preston Meyer  06:49
Definitely not what my mom and dad wanted for me. But here we are anyway. And we are spreading light and knowledge on things that may or may not affect your day to day life.

Katie Dooley  07:04
I think it should affect your day to day life.

Preston Meyer  07:06
I think so. But everybody’s different. Right?

Katie Dooley  07:10
So we went on the spiritual quest, he lived with the ascetics. Poor, meditating. What happened?

Preston Meyer  07:18
Well, now I’m just thinking of vinegar. I’ve never heard anybody say acetic before. I know how it said. I’ve always heard it ascetic. But I can’t say for sure that everyone else I’ve talked to said it right, either.

Katie Dooley  07:29
Literally every episode, it comes down to like, are we pronouncing this right? We’ve only read it in books.

Preston Meyer  07:36
Yeah, that has happened kind of a bit.

Katie Dooley  07:38
We haven’t even started talking about the Tipitaka yet, so that’ll be another... We’ll get to that and everyone can listen to us butcher words. Really good. Tell us what happened when he

Preston Meyer  07:50
So being inspired by a random homeless person, he decided... he went on a spiritual quest. He wanted to escape suffering. And knowing that life is suffering, he went about trying to figure out how that is and why that’s the case. And he became woke. He was awakened under the famous Bodhi fig tree, which it’s not super clear, but I’m fairly confident that Bodhi fig tree was named after the Bodhisattva. The Buddha

Katie Dooley  08:35
And that’s still in India today.

Preston Meyer  08:38
The same tree isn’t still there.

Katie Dooley  08:40
But there is a giant ass...

Preston Meyer  08:42
There is a huge Bohdi fig tree

Katie Dooley  08:47
That’s gotta be old but probably not 2500 years old.

Preston Meyer  08:53
It’s about almost 2300 years old, almost.

Katie Dooley  08:57
Okay, then. I mean, that would put it close to Buddha’s time.

Preston Meyer  09:02
Pretty close, relatively speaking. It’s closer to his time than ours. So that’s point. And so there’s a lot of pilgrimage to this newish tree every year.

Katie Dooley  09:16
And he meditated there for 49 days.

Preston Meyer  09:19
Yeah. Which is more than a week longer than Jesus’ 40-day fast. And Jesus spent his time walking around, but the Buddha just chilled out and meditated. So really, who was using more energy during their fast

Katie Dooley  09:35
I mean we had this conversation... Did Jesus get to sleep? He just didn’t get eat.

Preston Meyer  09:42
He just didn’t get to eat or drink

Katie Dooley  09:43
Okay, so I mean, I feel worse for the Buddha then.

Preston Meyer  09:48
I think that he got himself some new robes after that 49 days. I think you would need to. I mean, if you didn’t eat or drink during this meditation, he wouldn’t produce anything new to sit in after his third day, right? But he’d still be sitting in it for that whole time unless he meditated completely in the nude, which some people do but I don’t think that’s part of this story.

Katie Dooley  10:13
I don’t know... he must’ve taken breaks, he must have had a pee break. But then is that how you reach enlightenment? I don’t know. Anyway, I don’t recommend to you to meditate for 49 days straight.

Preston Meyer  10:28
We have people on record, having tried it in the last few years. And not one of them has achieved anything other than severe, severe, disgusting deaths.

Katie Dooley  10:44
Buddha Siddhartha, on the other hand, discovered the middle path. That was after 49 days, he came up with this idea, the middle path, which is somewhere between indulgence and deprivation. He was...

Preston Meyer  10:57
Avoid the extremes. 49 days of meditation sounds extreme.

Katie Dooley  11:01
I know. But Moses also spent forty years in a desert that takes six days so... Time management is clearly a prerequisite to being some sort of divine Prophet, poor time management, I should say. Yeah, so he’s like this indulgent life I lived as a kid was way too much. And this way of ascetics, is this also too much in a different way. So just live your life in...

Preston Meyer  11:27
The middle path

Katie Dooley  11:28
In moderation. Now, the Buddhist tradition was mostly oral, it started in about 500 BCE, I have a couple of dates down here. Clearly, we don’t know for sure.

Preston Meyer  11:44
Right. And like a lot of our religious traditions we’ve looked at before, they are along the lines of being founded by a reformer kind of thing.

Katie Dooley  11:54
Yeah. So started about 500 BCE, as an oral tradition and then in the first century CE they started writing it down. So we see this all the time. You had an influential person, nobody thinks to write it down at the time. So 100 years later,

Preston Meyer  12:10
I think it’s more a question of capacity. There’s being able to write back in this stage or history is not a common skill. We just need to send time travelers further back, teach them better writing skills. Typewriters might help, or I mean, since they’d going to break I’ll teach them how to use a pencil.

Katie Dooley  12:37
So in the first century CE, we started to write it down the book, I guess, the text is called the Tipitaka. There are three sections, and they are generally not considered divine unlike we see, unlike that was a bad sentence. Unlike in the Abrahamic or Vedic traditions, which are considered divine, there is the Vinaya Pitaka are the code for monks, there is this Sutta Pitaka, the teachings of the Buddha and the Abhidhamma Pitaka supplementary teachings.

Preston Meyer  13:12
And so this Tipitaka is just basically wisdom literature, to help people understand what the universe has in store and also a little bit of commanding ritual, like how to meditate, how to take care of things, how to be good neighbors, there’s a little bit of that

Katie Dooley  13:29
All the, the, I guess the philosophies and ways of life that we were talking about earlier, and there’s 84,000 teachings of the Buddha. He talked a lot if it was an oral tradition,

Preston Meyer  13:41
Right? Be nice to have that many episodes out of our podcast. But I think it’s

Katie Dooley  13:48
84,000 bi weekly.

Preston Meyer  13:51
We couldn’t do it. I know that but I think we could generate that many words.

Katie Dooley  13:57
We can’t do it... It would take us 3200 years.

Preston Meyer  14:02
Yeah, if we have that many words, though, between so many of our episodes, maybe

Katie Dooley  14:07
I’m sure we do, probably, we talk a lot. So Siddhartha was not the first Buddha, what?!, Explain.

Preston Meyer  14:19
So the role of the Buddha is to come and restore the Buddha’s teachings and understanding of Buddhist cosmology to the earth. Siddhartha Gautama is the 28th Buddha on Earth. Theoretically, there’s other lines of Buddhas on other planets too, if you want to get into those lines of Buddhism. And so there’s, there’s always somebody new. And we’ve actually also received promise that there will be another Buddha after Siddhartha Gautama. We don’t have his his name prophesied of what he’ll be called when he’s born, but the title that is given to him by Siddhartha Gautama is Maitreya Booyah. Let me try that again. Maitreya Buddha.

Katie Dooley  15:11
Yeah, there’s Ds in there.

Preston Meyer  15:14
And he’s also called the Budai in Chan Buddhism, or Zen Buddhism, as it’s often called as well. This Budai is the laughing fat Buddha that everybody’s reasonably familiar with seeing as opposed to the skinny Buddha, that we also frequently see that is Siddhartha Gautama.

Katie Dooley  15:35
The chubby Buddha is yet to come. I don’t know how to segue in. What doess Buddhism teach?

Preston Meyer  15:44
Well, having come from, kind of as an offshoot of Hinduism, there’s this idea that there’s a cycle of lives the samsara

Katie Dooley  15:55
I thought you were gonna see cycle of lies.

Preston Meyer  16:00
I mean, for some people, maybe. Anyway, if you get to keep living, and you’re a liar, and you’re a liar, and you’re a liar, then cycle of lies, there you go. But that’s not the ideal. And I don’t think that actually comes into play and the teachings of the Buddha so much. And so there’s this idea that, wherever your station of life may be, you can hope to ascend to enlightenment, which will require learning in this life, and then achieve nirvana, escaping samsara. That’s not a universal goal, the Mahayana Buddhists are more frequently inclined to stay rather than escape, which is kind of cool. We’ll talk a little bit more about that later. And vocabulary shifts a little bit between Hinduism and Buddhism, like the idea of Dharma has slightly different meaning. In Hinduism, it’s it’s pretty straight up. This is your duty, your duty as your dharma in Buddhism, dharma is more used as just talking about the teachings of the Buddha. And the interpretations of it.

Katie Dooley  17:17
You know, the best part about Buddhism is?

Preston Meyer  17:20
What’s the best part of Buddhism?

Katie Dooley  17:22
Everything, all the teachings are numbered! I love that. It just makes it easy for people to understand.

Preston Meyer  17:29
Like we have the Four Noble Truths.

Katie Dooley  17:32
Shall I start?

Preston Meyer  17:33
Go for it.

Katie Dooley  17:33
Okay, Truth number one: Dukkha. I hope I’m saying that right?

Preston Meyer  17:38
It’s either Dukkha Dukka. If the transliterates knew what they were doing, it’s gonna be one of those.

Katie Dooley  17:43
Okay. Dukkha: Life is suffering. Everyone gets old and sick and dies.

Preston Meyer  17:52
Man, what a bummer. Good thing that’s where we start.

Katie Dooley  17:54
Yeah, it does get better. It gets better. Just like A Christmas Carol.

Preston Meyer  18:00
It does get better.

Katie Dooley  18:02
Also numbered.

Preston Meyer  18:05
All right. The second Noble Truth is Samudaya. That suffering is caused by craving. So figure out what you’re craving, and maybe you can mitigate that suffering a little bit. So it’s up to you to change what you want.

Katie Dooley  18:22
Number three: Nirodha. You can escape the cycle of suffering.

Preston Meyer  18:27
That’s good news.

Katie Dooley  18:28
Yeah, we’re turning turning around here.

Preston Meyer  18:31
That is ultimately the gospel message of all of Buddhism is that there is an escape to suffering. And I like

Katie Dooley  18:37
That’s almost all gospel messages, period.

Preston Meyer  18:42
Usually. The fourth is Magga. Yay, get your red caps on.

Katie Dooley  18:51
There’s two G’s...

Preston Meyer  18:52
Yes, M A, G, G, A. And if you capitalize the whole word, I don’t know what you’re doing. But Magga is the pathway to accomplish this escape from suffering. And there’s an elaboration on this Magga is the eightfold path. So what is the first part of this eightfold path which we should know it is represented by that wagon wheel or the eight spokes wheel. Ship steering wheel. Yeah. We’re like pumping our fist. Yay, visual media.

Katie Dooley  19:34
The full path is also broken into three parts. So the first one is insight or wisdom and the first point of that is the right view. So see the world as it really is, and then our actions have consequences.

Preston Meyer  19:47
Super important. I mean, actually, all all eight of these plants are super important. That’s why they are here where they are. Alright, so the second part of that insight on the Eightfold Path is right intention. It’s important that our motives must be compassionate, that we can’t go around being selfish all the time. It’s not going to get us anywhere. It’s certainly not going to bring us enlightenment,

Katie Dooley  20:18
This one actually says, don’t be a dick. Weird. The second section is moral virtue. And the first one in that section is right speech. So don’t lie and don’t use abusive or vulgar language. So I’m not a very good Buddhist. I mean, I don’t lie generally, but I do

Preston Meyer  20:44
Use abusive language

Katie Dooley  20:45
I curse more than I should, where I’m literally the reason we have an explicit podcast so.... fuck.

Preston Meyer  20:58
I swore once on this podcast real good but I was quoting somebody else. Alright, the fourth part of this eightfold path is right conduct. So basically, don’t go around hurting people certainly don’t go around killing people. Basically, if you’re going to cause harm, you’re not using right conduct. And it’s also part of this that you should not be going around satisfying, unnecessary appetites. So like having lots and lots of sex all day every day, definitely frowned upon. Not that that’s many people’s real life. But that is some people’s proper intents

Katie Dooley  21:43
David Duchovny was a sex addict probably still is.

Preston Meyer  21:47
Who knows? I know we did that Californication show?

Katie Dooley  21:50
No, I think he’s like an actual...

Preston Meyer  21:52
I mean, probably who knows? When you’re rich and handsome, you can get away with a lot of things.

Katie Dooley  21:58
Number five, the rightfold path or rightfold path?? I’m reading the line. Number five of the Eightfold Path is Right Livelihood only do and possess what you must. So that is just like being a minimalist, which is, you know,

Preston Meyer  22:14
It’s weird that attached to that idea is the idea that you shouldn’t go out and work.

Katie Dooley  22:20
I think that’s more for the monks but uhh

Preston Meyer  22:24
Probably instead should just beg for food. Yeah not money but food.

Katie Dooley  22:35
I think that’s, I mean, like extrapolating, especially for the average Buddhist, that’s probably, you know, where we talk about being worldly. Right? If you’re working so much that, like, why are you working so hard? Right? Why? Especially where we are in Canada, why do people work so hard? Because we try to keep up with the Joneses. And I think that’s what this point is trying to say. Is like,

Preston Meyer  22:57
Don’t work harder than you should be.

Katie Dooley  22:58
Yeah, there’s what like, yeah, honestly, like, what for?

Preston Meyer  23:03
Right? All right, point number six, beginning into the third bracket of this eightfold path, which is meditation. Point number six is right effort. Do not strain yourself unnecessarily.

Katie Dooley  23:17
What was I just saying?

Preston Meyer  23:19
Right? It’s, it’s similar to the last point, but it’s different because it’s targeted towards meditation, that you need to be able to just kind of do it. Just sit down, chill out, be in the moment, be mindful. And now I’m leading into the next point, I’m just going to let you take

Katie Dooley  23:45
I’ll just take over right now. Thank you, just passing the baton. Number seven is right, mindfulness. Do not be absent minded and live in the moment. Meditation is big on like calming the monkey brain that humans have, and probably more so now than ever, with all the electronics and distractions that we have. So just be in the moment and focus on what’s at hand and clear your mind of everything.

Preston Meyer  24:14
And when other thoughts come into your mind,

Katie Dooley  24:17
Squash them!

Preston Meyer  24:18
No, that’s not right at all... That’s the opposite of Zen. You’re... the way I was taught to meditate when I was in university was that when thoughts come into your mind, you can acknowledge them but don’t grab on to them. Just let them float on by.

Katie Dooley  24:41
I feel like I’m being really dramatic today.

Preston Meyer  24:43
A little bit, but that’s okay.

Katie Dooley  24:44
I just miss humans.

Preston Meyer  24:46
Right? This pandemic sucks. And the eighth spoke on this wheel of the Eightfold Path is right meditation called Samadhi which is that you must control your focus to gain insight, so when distracting thoughts come to your mind, you have to be able to let them go. There is a, an aspect of control to it, but you don’t need to mute every thought that comes into your mind. But you need to be able to clear your mind.

Katie Dooley  25:17
Acknowledge, release.

Preston Meyer  25:18
Acknowledge, release, acknowledge, release, and eventually your mind will be clear enough that you can gain insight. That’s the goal, anyway.

Katie Dooley  25:25
It took, I mean, it took Buddha 49 days, so don’t stress out guys.

Preston Meyer  25:28
Right, and he’s the guy. Well, and that’s to gain enlightenment. Insight is like one step on that ladder.

Katie Dooley  25:39
Yeah, baby step. Don’t worry about it.

Preston Meyer  25:45
There’s more numbers. So there’s a series of reasonably common prayers in Buddhism, the jewels, the prayers of the three refuges. What are they, Katie?

Katie Dooley  26:00
I take refuge in my Buddha. I take refuge in my dharma. And I take refuge (I’m sure there’s a better word for this) in my religious community.

Preston Meyer  26:13
Yeah, that’s pretty much the deal.

Katie Dooley  26:15
I was gonna say namaste, but that is not Buddhist at all.

Preston Meyer  26:18
I mean, it’s not anti-Buddhist, but it’s not a strictly Buddhist sentiment.

Katie Dooley  26:26
So that’s basically what they believe.

Preston Meyer  26:30
Right. And those sentiments are fairly common through most religious traditions, really. Thanks for the prophet or God. Thanks for the teachings I’ve got. Sometimes thanks for the book. And then thanks for my religious community where I take refuge.

Katie Dooley  26:50
I mean, yeah. Pretty sweet.

Preston Meyer  26:52
Not terribly foreign.

Katie Dooley  26:54
Preston!

Preston Meyer  26:55
Katie!

Katie Dooley  26:56
Guess what? We have a Discord!

Preston Meyer  26:59
Yeah, we do. We even got a question from one of our friends on Discord.

Katie Dooley  27:04
I’m gonna plug the Discord real quick. Join us on Discord. We have... we have channels for all the different religious religions that you can have constructive debates and conversations on. We have announcements, we have suggestions, and you can post memes and questions, all sorts of great stuff. We will be posting the links on our social media because it isn’t on the discoverable server yet.

Preston Meyer  27:37
Well, it’s brand new, and we need 7000 members to join.

Katie Dooley  27:41
But it’s a great place to ask questions for upcoming episodes, just like this next one, which was what is the difference between Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism, Preston?

Preston Meyer  27:52
All right. It’s, it’s not a simple answer.

Katie Dooley  27:59
But we’re gonna simplify it.

Preston Meyer  28:00
We’re gonna do our best. There’s so much to it. And I know that some of you will probably just look us up on or not look us up, look this up on Wikipedia, and you’ll get a far more thorough and detailed set of answers. But basically, Theravada Buddhism is the school of the elders. It’s the oldest, continuing like still present tradition of Buddhism and it’s more orthodox, it’s more strictly organized, I guess. They believe the Buddha was human and it’s very meditation focused. A lot of the tradition is it shows a clear connection to the Hinduism that Buddhism was born out of, that the goal is pretty universally that you should escape this cycle of lives. In contrast to that, Mahayana Buddhism is also incredibly diverse. More diverse than Theravada Buddhism is, there’s loads of subdivisions in there. But by and large, it is under an umbrella, I guess that is called the great vehicle, meaning the great vehicle that will take you to awakening. However, there’s a very strong tradition present in Mahayana Buddhism, of not escaping the cycle of samsara, that it is a lot more acceptable to intend to come back for more lives when you could have escaped, so that you can show compassion to those who are stuck here who can’t escape yet. And I’m sure there’s other motivations but it’s kind of the number one motivation that’s taught for that practice. It’s a great goal but for Mahayana Buddhists, it’s a lot more common to put that off for a little while to help out the people who are still here. Until theoretically, there’s enough other people who can take over your job. And then you can go ahead and disappear. Which I mentioned before, I’m going to talk about it more later. I’m still going to talk about it more later.

Katie Dooley  30:26
Keeping us on the edge of our seat! What are you going to talk about?

Preston Meyer  30:30
You’ll see when I bring it up again later.

Katie Dooley  30:32
So I did a whole bunch of research on Buddhist monks.

Preston Meyer  30:38
All right, what do you learn

Katie Dooley  30:39
Lots! Which they are... I mean, they’re the visible Buddhists. Your average Buddhist is probably your neighbor, that’s a Buddhist, you probably have no no idea. But we all have this image of the... we all have this image of like the orange or red, I want to say cloak, that’s robes, and shaved head. You know what a Buddhist is. So the term is actually bhikkhu, which means beggar or one who lives by alms. So if you’re a Buddhist monk, you spend most of your time begging and studying. You can be a male or female Buddhist monk, Buddhism is far more egalitarian than Hinduism. There’s no caste system, and men and women are viewed completely equally in Buddhism. So you can be a female Buddhist monk as well. And you can start really young, some parts of Buddhism will ordain you as early as six years old, as a monk, which is kind of cool. Some of them you have to be like, in your you have to be an adult, like 18 or 20. But you can be a six year old Buddhist monk. That’s pretty cool.  Yeah, I mean, depending on where you are in the world, you may see Buddhist monks begging. I know in Vancouver, Canada, this is more common they have a higher Asian population than almost anywhere in Canada. So you can definitely see Buddhist monks begging in Vancouver, and I’m sure there’s places in the States as well. And obviously, if you go to predominantly Buddhist countries, you will see this, they are not begging for money, do not give them money, they will literally have to dump it on the ground, it is a waste of your money. They are begging for food, please go buy them a sandwich.

Preston Meyer  32:39
It’s not a complete waste of your money. But you do need to know that your money is not what you think it is.

Katie Dooley  32:45
They’re dropping it on the ground and someone else is picking it up. Yeah, maybe someone who needs it maybe someone who doesn’t. They are not allowed to ask for anything. So they won’t tell you that they can’t take your money and that they would really rather have

Preston Meyer  32:59
A sandwich,

Katie Dooley  33:01
or burger or whatever. So just if you ever see one and you’re like compelled to give, instead of donating that money to them Go to the nearest subway and buy them a sandwich.

Preston Meyer  33:11
So you say burger. But you and I both know that an awful lot of Buddhists are vegetarian.

Katie Dooley  33:16
That is true. But if you’re begging for beggars can’t be choosers... I don’t know how that works. If you have the means to get them a vegetarian dish, then...

Preston Meyer  33:26
They would appreciate that.

Katie Dooley  33:29
They have a lot of rules to live by. I believe I wrote down the number 149. That number isn’t in my brain, but I don’t see it in my notes. But they have a whole bunch of rules to live by. Which I’m not going to get into because there are a lot of them. But there are five rules more numbers that are common throughout Buddhism not just for Bhikku. Number one refrain from harming living beings. This goes back to our vegetarian comment. Number two, refrain from taking which is not freely given. So again, we can’t ask for something. Number three, refrain from sexual misconduct,

Preston Meyer  34:10
Don’t be a rapists, good advice.

Katie Dooley  34:13
Number four, refrain from wrong speech such as lying, idle chatter, malicious gossip or harsh speech again, Katie is not the best Buddhist and number five is refrain from intoxicating drink and drugs which leads to carelessness. So, the other distinguishing feature of Buddhist monks that I spoke of when I started talking about this was, bald. And I learned a new vocabulary word the practice tonsure or the shaving of the head for religious reasons, reasons. Reasons. Play that in Scrabble.

Preston Meyer  34:49
So is tonsure shavedness, or the act of shaving?

Katie Dooley  34:55
I think it is the state of being shaved not just the act of shaping. I think Buddhist monks are basically the only people who do it now. But this was also common in medieval Christian monks, Friar Tuck.

Preston Meyer  35:11
Friar Tuck is famously bald on the crown of his head.

Katie Dooley  35:15
That is another example tonsure

Preston Meyer  35:16
I always think that’s so funny that so many Christian monastic orders require baldness when the Bible that they spend all of their time studying, because I mean, you don’t have a whole lot of time for other things in these monasteries, tells you not to do that.

Katie Dooley  35:33
I mean, Jesus was a hippie.

Preston Meyer  35:35
I mean, he would have looked like one for sure.

Katie Dooley  35:39
And that’s, that’s your Buddhist monk, who’s the most famous Buddhist monk?

Preston Meyer  35:44
All right. So I got two that come to mind. Thich Nhat Hanh is actually super popular. He’s on Oprah occasionally.

Katie Dooley  35:51
And you know who else was on Oprah?

Preston Meyer  35:53
The Dalai Lama!

Katie Dooley  35:54
What!

Preston Meyer  35:56
Was he? I assume so. I don’t know I haven’t googled that. But the Dalai Lama. He’s a fella that I’ve alluded to a couple of times.

Katie Dooley  36:06
This is what he’s bbeen building up to the climax of the episode. I hope it lives up, too.

Preston Meyer  36:11
So the Dalai Lama is hugely popular. He’s revered outside of his religion. He’s made a huge effort to be recognized outside of Tibetan Buddhism, which is a subset kind of, of Mahayana Buddhism. So he’s basically the leader of Tibet, which of course, is a nation that no other country honors as being its own nation. Because everybody’s like, yeah, I just don’t want China to be pissed at me. So every now and then you’ll see a Free Tibet protest, but no country is willing to say, “Yeah, Free Tibet”, on an official statement.

Katie Dooley  36:51
Like Israel/Palestine, right?

Preston Meyer  36:53
Except not as complicated. It’s straight up China said Tibet, It’s ours now. And we’re not letting it go. And it’s not going to change. Israel/Palestine is a much broad-- bigger conversation that we will have later. So the Dalai Lama is a title. It means big master. And he is, like I said, the head of state of Tibet. The current Dalai Lama is titled the 14th Dalai Lama. He’s been continually going through this samsara cycle, since, well, forever. He’s had 74 incarnations since the time of Siddhartha Gautama, only the last 14, has he actually born the title Dalai Lama, this office was created in 1391 CE as the head of state of Tibet. And so he’s been wearing this mantle forever, he’s taken it beyond its older scope, to be more ecumenical. He is seen as a leader of people who don’t necessarily subscribe to Tibetan Buddhism in particular, or Buddhism at all, broadly. He’s just respected as a wise religious leader. It’s like Protestants who think it’s perfectly reasonable to listen to the Pope, you’ve got people who aren’t Christian, who aren’t Buddhist at all, listening to the Dalai Lama, because he’s got wisdom to share. And he is an incredibly compassionate person, which is pretty awesome. And I think that’s really a big part of what makes them so popular.

Katie Dooley  38:47
People like nice people.

Preston Meyer  38:48
Right? It’s he’s easy to like, unfortunately, the Chinese government is, you know, not super friendly to Tibet, and its attempt to be freed from Chinese rule. And so it’s become very obvious that they will interfere in the selection of the next Dalai Lama, which is a thing that happens whenever the current Dalai Lama dies, they go out looking for him again, usually takes a little while you have to wait for the appropriate amount of time to say yes, he has been born. And then a further amount of appropriate time to say that he has grown enough that we could recognize him when we go looking. So the Chinese government, it’s public knowledge, they’re going to interfere in this process. So the Dalai Lama is currently on the fence. At least when he speaks publicly. He is presenting it as though he’s on the fence on whether or not he will come back. So the Dalai Lama said a few years ago on an interview that he was going to make a decision with others in counsel when he’s 90, so we’ve got until 2025 to wait. And I mean, presumably this guy could live to be 100. He’s incredibly healthy,

Katie Dooley  40:13
Because he doesn’t eat meat or say me things about people.

Preston Meyer  40:16
But he is also an enemy of the state of China. So he’s managed to avoid what I can imagine are probably a few assassination attempts, but I haven’t looked it up. But if you’re an enemy of such a powerful government, there’s probably been attempts. But he, he’s still alive, which is impressive. But after more than 70 incarnations since the time of Siddhartha Gautama he is finally considering calling it quits, and not coming back anymore, and going and enjoying nirvana.

Katie Dooley  40:57
What would that mean for Buddhists worldwide? Hypothesize.

Preston Meyer  41:01
Well, worldwide, he’s not really a religious leader to most Buddhists. He’s just a revered wise dude.

Katie Dooley  41:10
Just like me me. I’m kidding.

Preston Meyer  41:14
He has no ecclesiastical authority over most Buddhists. So broadly, it would have no real impact. But for Tibet, that would require a reorganization of their government structure.

Katie Dooley  41:28
Like it woud be like the if Pope was like, I don’t want to be pope anymore.

Preston Meyer  41:31
Like we had happen.

Katie Dooley  41:32
Well, not even that but like, there shouldn’t be a Pope and yeah, I’d be bigger.

Preston Meyer  41:36
Yeah, having the Pope say no more Popes I mean, that would be along the lines of everybody’s reaction in the theater when Luke said no more Jedi. Everyone’s like, what the hell Disney Stop it.

Katie Dooley  41:51
Seagulls stop it now.

Preston Meyer  41:53
I love that ridiculous, ridiculous project.

Katie Dooley  41:59
So yeah they, I yeah, I guess Tibet’s gonna have to figure something.

Preston Meyer  42:04
Yeah. And they’ll figure it out. And it’s all up to them. And I’m sure it’ll be fine. I don’t think it’ll mean a whole lot religiously for Tibetan Buddhists. But it might mean something for them as their own organization statewise. But honestly, not enough that would impact the rest of the world either. But the whole world loves the Dalai Lama. So I mean, his passing just as its own thing would be a huge worldwide recognized event.

Katie Dooley  42:40
So our last points are just a nice summary of what Buddhism looks like in North America.

Preston Meyer  42:47
So in Canada, and as far as I can tell, the United States isn’t really a whole lot different from Canada in this respect. Buddhism was brought here by immigrants mostly. But during that counterculture movement of the 60s and 70s, an awful lot of white Christians, who were tired of their parents, tired of the religious flavor of the government, and tired of their overbearing pastors and priests and whatnot, decided, I can do this my own way. Which of course, if you ever watch a teenager rebel always means look at the next thing, and not actually do it your own way.

Katie Dooley  43:30
Well, I’m gonna jump in here. Like I, I love the numbers, and that the points are really easy. And all eight points, the eightfold path makes sense when not all 10 of the 10 commandments make sense, just sayin’

Preston Meyer  43:44
it’s pretty solid. It’s a very agreeable, chosen religion. And so this counterculture movement happened. We talked about it with Hinduism, that white folks adopted a lot of Hinduist practices and ideas, and then ended up carrying them into their Christianity. There’s a lot less of that in Buddhism, but it’s it is also happening,

Katie Dooley  44:05
I think it’s probably because Buddhism is a nice complement. You know, what it means? It can live complimentary to whatever, you’re exactly where it’s that doesn’t happen quite as much. Hinduism will absorb your religious practice, whereas Buddhism will lie next to it nicely.

Preston Meyer  44:22
Yeah. That’s a pretty good way of looking at it. And so, with all of these, both immigrants, and I’m... multigenerational, at this point, Buddhists and these counter culturalist white people who have adopted Buddhism, and also others who have just looked at it, not in a rebellious way, but just says, “Yeah, this is good, I want it”. There’s a lot of people who are Buddhists without belonging to any particular group, a lot that are happy to visit monasteries and temples without ever associating with them on any permanent basis.

Katie Dooley  45:01
Yeah this is where that like way of life argument comes in. And people go, Well, I just, you know, I don’t eat meat and I am nice to everyone so therefore I’m a Buddhist. A way of life as opposed to some sort of worshipfulness, but I still agree with our original assessment.

Preston Meyer  45:18
Yeah, I think I suspect that an influence on the statement that Buddhism isn’t a religion is those people who say, I’m spiritual, but not religious. I do the Buddhist thing. I think that’s definitely a part of that evaluation. And so there’s, like I mentioned before, it’s it’s not absolutist, it’s there is no, us versus them that’s part of the deepest Buddhist feelings like there is in Christianity. Christianity, and Islam and Judaism. And less Judaism than Christianity and Islam. See the world in this constant conflict of good versus evil. And Buddhism is just like, yeah, life sucks. The world is a big ball of suffering, try and get off.

Katie Dooley  46:10
Get me off this rock

Preston Meyer  46:12
Right? And that’s from an outsider perspective, that is a very appealing perspective.

Katie Dooley  46:21
Any final thoughts? Summary, that we missed, points to be made?

Preston Meyer  46:29
I think that, like we’ve we’ve talked about how religion is a spectrum that within Christianity within Judaism, within Islam, you’ve got this spectrum. And like any person can fall anywhere in that spectrum. That’s more true of Buddhism.

Katie Dooley  46:47
The spectrum feels more natural and Buddhism it does. Whereas we’re gonna talk about this in more detail in the next episode, but especially in the Abrahamic traditions, you get this No True Scotsman fallacy. Whereas in Buddhism, it just like feels natural that you fall, where ever you want to fall, and nobody’s gonna go, “Well, you’re not a Buddhist”.

Preston Meyer  47:08
Yeah. In Buddhist, it’s, yeah, you’re a Buddhist, you just happen to be walking a different path than me,

Katie Dooley  47:13
Your middle path. And I guess that’s where the middle path is a nice, and I think, a refreshing belief, if that’s the word I want. Doctrine? Is because your middle path can look different to someone else’s middle path.

Preston Meyer  47:27
Well, it’s not a narrow path. No, it’s a rather broad path, you have a lot of latitude in your practice in Buddhism, more so than you would see in the other religions that we’ve talked about, except Hinduism, I guess, is also pretty broad allowance for your path as well. But not quite so much as Buddhism, like it’s, there’s the idea that you should stay close to the middle. But it’s a wide path and as long as you’re not jumping off either side, you’re gonna be fine.

Katie Dooley  48:00
I think. Yeah, no, I am reminded of us house shopping, actually. And that, I mean, we live in a single family home, it’s three bedroom, two bath, and it’s just me and my husband. So some might argue that it’s too much. And maybe it is, but we actually reduced our budget halfway through the shopping because we realize what we’re looking for was too much. And that was us, you know, bringing it from this idea of excess to something more moderate and so yeah, that might look different from someone else’s house shopping. But I think that’s a good example of the middle path. I don’t know. Maybe that’s maybe that’s dumb maybe making it about me.

Preston Meyer  48:42
As weird as it sounds, religion is always about you.

Katie Dooley  48:48
Oh, I just now I’m excited for episode What will it be? This is 11episode 14.

Preston Meyer  48:54
I mean, to be honest, I never even think about numbers about these anymore.

Katie Dooley  48:58
I do because I’m the one has to number them.

Preston Meyer  49:01
When I go through to listen to our episode thing, I just look for the biggest number and then I listened to that and make sure everything’s okay

Katie Dooley  49:14
Cool, well, I hope you learned something about Buddhism. It was always one of my favorites in school because it was just so moderate.

Preston Meyer  49:20
There’s so much to learn. Yeah, it’s fascinating.

Katie Dooley  49:23
And you can take you in whatever direction you want to take it you can be super Orthodox and and religious with it. Or you can just not eat meat and be a little hippie dippie with it.

Preston Meyer  49:32
Yeah. Or you can look at the whole thing from the outside is just a religious sociologist or anthropologist. Which is, I’ve actually started writing that on my resume. Now, instead of saying I took religious studies, no, I took religious sociology or religious anthropology because when I say religious studies, people like, what good is theology going to do you? I mean, yes, I also studied theology, but that’s not what this is.

Katie Dooley  49:58
Whatever I say I have an interest in or Religious Studies people like I didn’t know you were religious. I’m like “I’m not” you don’t need to be religious to study religious studies

Preston Meyer  50:05
Yes. So that’s why I say sociology or anthropology instead of studies

Katie Dooley  50:10
Well, everyone you can find us on Discord now. Join us join the conversation, have conversations with other listeners. We are on Facebook and Instagram at Holy watermelon pod. I forgot what our handle was.

Preston Meyer  50:28
That’s terrible. You’re created it.

Katie Dooley  50:31
So Instagram, Facebook, @holywatermelonpod. [email protected] Or please come check out our Discord and let’s continue this conversation. Until next time...

Both Hosts  50:45
Peace be with you!

In this episode, we are covering Hinduism. The oldest continuous religion in the world with maybe the largest pantheon of gods. We dig into a handful of their hundreds of Gods and explain their beliefs of karma, reincarnation, moksha, and more.

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Katie Dooley 00:12

Welcome back, everyone. My name is Katie.
 

Preston Meyer 00:14

I'm Preston

Katie Dooley 00:15

And you're listening to...
 

Both Hosts 00:17

The Holy Watermelon podcast.

Preston Meyer 00:20

Alright, so we've enjoyed a nice little run through the Abrahamic faiths that some people like to call the Western traditions. And now we're going to deal into a little bit of the- the river folk and the Aryans. We're gonna look at the the Vedic religion, also known as Hinduism.

Katie Dooley 00:42

So do you want to explain the name a little bit better? 'Cause I think you shocked our listeners.
 

Preston Meyer 00:50

What? Shock? No,
 

Katie Dooley 00:53

No, never.
 

Preston Meyer 00:56

All right. So Hinduism is, in my opinion, an incredibly lazy name for a religion. As far as I can tell, it is a name imposed on a culture from outsiders, almost in the same way that Christian was a name used to persecute Christian Jews in the early first century of the Christian era.
 

Katie Dooley 01:21

And then they took their power back!

Preston Meyer 01:23

Yeah, they adopted the name themselves and made it their own. Hinduism is kind of like that. That European anthropologists are like, those people are Hindus, based on where they lived, which was called by Europeans, India, named for the Indus River, which like the Mississippi River, is a tautology. It's basically a big river river. Tautology meaning a thing that is a name repeated.

Katie Dooley 01:57

Oh, like, chai tea.

Preston Meyer 02:00

Like chai tea, or the Gobi desert or, or the Sahara Desert
 

Katie Dooley 02:04

Or Jugo juice. It's actually pronounced what you go in Spanish and it's juice juice. Yeah.

Preston Meyer 02:10

You say Jugo juice.

Katie Dooley 02:11

Well, I think most Canadians say Jugo juice because we don't speak Spanish.
 

Preston Meyer 02:15

I always thought it was Jugo juice for English-speaking. Okay. But yes.
 

Katie Dooley 02:20

But yeah, that's how you say Spanish or English apparently but it means juice juice.

Preston Meyer 02:25

Yeah. So these people in the area of the Indus River who have this name forced upon them of Indians. That's basically just calling them river folk. Which is kind of nifty that rivers are actually hugely important in that in their religious culture, and especially the Ganges River. So calling them river folk, though, is odd, isn't wildly inappropriate.
 

Katie Dooley 03:00

Okay.
 

Preston Meyer 03:02

Of course, India to Indians is called Bharat, not India, kind of like Germany. If you talk to a German, they know their country is not called Germany. It's just other people are like no, you're Germany. That was a Roman thing.
 

Katie Dooley 03:21

Well, thank you for explaining why you titled this episode the way you titled it.
 

Preston Meyer 03:28

So what about the Aryans?

Katie Dooley 03:30

Okay, tell me about the Aryans, the white folk.
 

Preston Meyer 03:33

So, another big problem I have with the whole east/west divide that we talked about a few episodes. Hinduism, if there's any truth to their own story that the Vedic religion was brought to the Indian region by the Aryans, these are lighter skinned folk from north and west of India. So European or at the very least, Mediterranean, Middle East, but the paler folk, not the dark folk native to the Indian subcontinent.
 

Katie Dooley 04:12

Okay.
 

Preston Meyer 04:13

So, of course, these-this name Aryan has brought with it some baggage, thanks to the people who brought you the Second World War. But that was the name that we have for that ancient people.

Katie Dooley 04:31

All right. Well, thanks for clearing that up.
 

Preston Meyer 04:34

So let's take a look at what Hinduism actually is.
 

Katie Dooley 04:38

Do we want to go over some fast facts?

Preston Meyer 04:41

Yeah, let's do it. What do you got?

Katie Dooley 04:42

Well, it's the largest of the air quotes, Eastern religions. It has over 1 billion practitioners, subscribers, followers, and it's the world's oldest, I would say World's Oldest Active religion,