SIO425: Can Science Be Spiritual?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:15 Thomas: Hello and, welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This episode 424 and I'm host Thomas Smith today's episode Oh, this is going to be so relevant to all of you. I imagine so I'm pretty sure I have a mostly atheist audience and I am also pretty sure I have a very science-loving audience, and this is perfect because today's guest someone who is studying spirituality, but with science. So can people get the same sort of reported spiritual feelings and experiences, the important ones, can they get that from science, and how would that work, and what would that mean? It's a really cool study. There's a lot to talk about, and And like I said, it couldn't be more relevant to audience, this exact audience. We'll be joined by Dr. Jesse Prestin. He's got a PhD in social psychology from Harvard University has done a lot of work around this exact area.

0:01:04 Thomas: Before we get to that, I'd just like to remind people, if you'd like to support the show and get the bonus goodies that comes with that. So the full breakdown of Bill Maher, Seth MacFarlane COVID debate. Gosh, that was so much fun. You want to get that full thing, go to patreon.com/seriouspod. And also you can avoid the auto ads, which suck, right? They're terrible. So hop on over to patreon.com/seriouspod and you don't have to hear the one right now. Now, otherwise, after this. Dr. Jesse Preston, how are you doing today?

0:01:36 Jesse: I'm very well, thanks.

0:01:37 Thomas: I'm excited to talk to you. This is a really cool topic, especially for my audience, I think, in particular, because you know, we're a bunch of crazy science-loving people. So if it's science and positive effects on mental health, then this is the audience for you. You.

0:01:52 Jesse: Well, that's great. I'm excited, too.

0:01:55 Thomas: Well, before we get to that, would you mind going into a little your bit of background so people kind of know who they're listening to?

0:02:01 Jesse: Sure. I am an associate professor at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom. My background is I have a PhD in social psychology from Harvard University. And yeah, since then, I've been basically doing research on psychology of belief in many different forms.

0:02:01 Thomas: Oh, Wow. So what led you down that road?

0:02:20 Jesse: I guess it's something that I've always been interested in, something that I have always found fascinating, you know, why people believe the things they do and why it becomes very important to people to believe certain things and why they're defensive about beliefs and all these things always really interested me since I was a kid, really.

0:02:39 Thomas: Oh, well, I couldn't think of a more relevant topic for today's world,

0:02:42 Jesse: Well, yeah, it's one of those things that's been relevant forever and will continue to be, I'm sure.

0:02:45 Thomas: Yeah, that's probably true. Yeah. This looks like focuses around, science like and wellbeing. Are there other areas you look at that? Because obviously the first thing that comes to mind, I feel like the most polarizing things, religion or politics or those kinds of things. Do you look into those areas at all? Or do you tend to specialize in one area of belief or anything?

0:03:02 Jesse: Yeah. Well, I do a lot of research on psychology of religion and its relationship with scientific beliefs. But I do gravitate towards ideas that conflict with each other. So I'm interested in, for example, how political beliefs conflict with one another and attitudes about climate change might conflict, for instance, example. And so science and religion is one subject which, um, I've always been interested in because some people feel they're very compatible and other people see this great, you know, conflict, and it keeps going around and around. And so that is very interesting subject to me personally.

0:03:39 Thomas: Absolutely. Me too. I mean, I so got my start and a lot of the listeners will have also kind of been around from being in the atheism movement, now. And it's more our focus on science and everything, but that is interesting, just this, that alone. Like, I consume a lot of kind of religious debates, those are always interesting to me, and it's funny how different they can be, you know, like whether someone's kind of compatibilist when it comes to science or whether someone has their whole separate, like, Christian Science, or for example, you know, where they've, they've created, like, different, a parallel, parallel version of all of that. It's interesting to think about what goes into that distinction.

0:04:10 Jesse: Yeah. Yeah. For sure, so one of the things I, you know, have been fascinated with is when they do conflict, why, um, and what is it that is motivating that conflict, and when people do feel that they're compatible, then what's motivating that You, so, I've done research looking at that in my past, like, looking at how, um, if you use one as an explanation, then it sort of decreases the intuitive associations with the other as a way of indicating that there's like a conflict between them, for example. So yeah, that is something that I find is particularly interesting.

0:04:25 Thomas: Yeah, Okay, we're have gonna, to look up those, those studies as well. We'll talk about those another time, because that's super interesting. I love that kind of thing. How do you Go about studying something like that? You know, is it? Is it it questioning people? Is it, a lot of exploring just through, you theoretical kind of frameworks about stuff? How do you study this?

0:04:49 Jesse: Yeah, yeah.

0:05:01 Jesse: Well, I study it from a social psychological point of view. And so in my studies, I generally just try to create, response items that people can respond to and give their honest responses on like scale items. For example, I created a scale to measure the extent to which people feel spiritual in relation to science, for example, and look at that in relationship to well-being beliefs and, people's feelings of meaning in their life and satisfaction with life, for for example. So that's one way that I go about approaching it.

0:05:36 Thomas: Yeah, well, I feel like that's probably a good transition to this study because we saw the, we saw a little bit of the coverage of it and again, seemed right up our alley. So why don't you set it up? What are the questions you were hoping to answer with this one

0:05:49 Jesse: So this study was looking at spirituality of science. And I was interested in this as all of my research up to this point has been studying beliefs. And I'm interested in spirituality and how it's different from religion. And And I'm a scientist, and I'm also an atheist. And so as a social psychologist, I know there's all this research on how religious belief contribute to well-being and happiness in people. And although that research is sound, I think it's good research, it also wasn't consistent with my experience, because I thought, you know, okay, I don't have these beliefs, and yet I find meaning in life and the way that I find meeting in life is through science. So I thought, okay, well, maybe there's something there that can, you, we can, uh, look at spirituality, uh, in relationship to, um, how people might derive it from other forms, other than religion, and science for sure fits that bill. So I wanted to look at it from that point of view.

0:06:16 Thomas: You weren't content just to be an exception

0:06:54 Jesse: Well, every anomaly is a statistic somewhere, right?

0:06:58 Thomas: Oh, that's a good one. I like that.

0:07:02 Jesse: Yeah. So, I wanted look at this that you could find spirituality in science, which is certainly my experience. And for people who aren't religious, I think that there is still feelings of transcendence and meaning and awe that we can experience through other means. And I think that it's important to look at that and to identify alternative ways of feeling spiritual.

0:07:29 Thomas: Yeah, lots to talk about there. I mean, I feel like today, in this day and age, virtually everyone seems spiritual in some way and almost no one seems super religious, at least in just my daily life. And I didn't meet my friends through atheism or anything. This is just like, you I'm sure there's other ways people are sorted. But feels like religiosity is like in a formal way, seems like it's gone probably way down. But what is that remaining spirituality? You know, is it always explicitly supernaturally stuff or is it often something else?

0:07:46 Jesse: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. I think it is for some people and isn't for others. So some people, when they think about, you meaning of life and how the universe is greater than themselves, and there's so much more about the universe that we do not comprehend. Some people attach a deity to that and, you Know, some kind of supernatural agency and also see the universe in a very agentic way, like it's all karma or it's All fitting together in some intentional, purposeful way. So some people certainly do see it like that, but then others don't. So others like resist that urge or like, you know, if they do have those impulses, they know that doesn't make sense and say, no, it's still materialistic. It's still all just, you know, natural processes, but can still feel something greater than themselves, can still feel awe and can still Feel amazement that, you know, that we have this incredible universe, and we get to exist in it and all that stuff.

0:09:04 Jesse: Right. So I think that for some people, that's going to be labeled as God. But for other people, what people describe as God means something a a little bit else that is not necessarily supernatural. Does that make sense?

0:09:19 Thomas: Yeah. Do you think it's you I mentioned there's like the mental health effects, but I always wonder why? I Why do we Need This? Why can't we just go through life and not feel whatever it is you're describing?

0:09:30 Jesse: Well, so that's the question of why do we need purpose, right? Like, why do we feel we need meaning? And I think that there's, so we can have an existential form of meaning, but meaning is really just feeling like, you there's a purpose, that there is something substantial about our life, right, um, that's just a way of staying motivated as a, you know, a being in the world, right, so if you have you know

0:09:49 Thomas: Yeah. Okay. But I was thinking of that as a little bit different than like the spiritual thing. I mean, do they just kind of always go hand in hand, like having a purpose? Is it almost inevitably going to be some larger spiritual thingy? Or can you just be like, my purpose is, I don't know, social justice or something? I'd like,

0:09:53 Jesse: No, I think you can find it in, more concrete ways for sure. I think that impulse the towards meaning can be towards just having a purpose in your life. Like, I'm doing this job, or I fulfill this purpose. This brings me meaning. Or it can extend to something greater. And the extending to something bigger, I think, is an extension of that more primary need to feel like you have purpose immediately in your life.

0:10:37 Jesse: Yeah. We're driven to have, have meaning. Right. And so, I understand as a non-religious person, why a religious person would think that non-religious people don't have meaning because that it's their source of meaning. So of course that, makes you sense to them, But

0:10:37 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah, of course. True of any hobby, you know? You're telling me you don't golf? I don't know how you live. No, I don't know.

0:11:01 Jesse: Yeah, exactly. So to well-being, think this capacity, first of all, to have meaning and to find meaning, to derive meaning from something, including science, Science is going to be what contributes to our sense of well-being in life and feeling being satisfied and happy. Right. So it can come from many sources. And science is definitely and it definitely is for me, you know, a big source of meaning for a lot of people.

0:11:29 Thomas: I'm sure this has obviously been, you figured out over the years, but when you talk about religious people just being happier in general, how do we separate that? The other reasons for that? You know, just a kind of typical regression type thing. I mean, being not religious definitely can feel like you are left out of a lot of things. You know, there's a lot of other, know, things that go with that, that I feel like could contribute be to not being as happy. Oh.

0:11:43 Jesse: Yeah. Mm hmm. Yes. And those things have been looked at and studied as well. So, like, it includes factors such as community, like a sense of, having you a group that you can connect to and those, interconnections you within the group are definitely important. That kind of social support that comes with being part of a religious community can contribute to the happiness. So it's not, you now, exclusively just the belief system. And it's not necessarily I don't think anyone has particularly argued that the belief system per se, it's contributing to the well-being, but other things that are associated with it.

0:12:25 Thomas: Okay.

0:12:26 Jesse: So social support is one big part of it. But the sense of purpose, that you're doing something that means something, contributes to it as well. And so a lot of research has found that, you with a correlation, for example, people who are higher on religiosity are going to have more satisfaction with life, which implies that people on the lower end of the scale are not going to have it. But then other research suggests it's more of a curve, or like a U-shaped pattern, where people low on the scale might also find a great deal of meaning.

0:12:59 Thomas: That's interesting, so it's the, it's the middling religious people that get, get the shaft in that, like, what? Yeah, interesting.

0:13:06 Jesse: Yeah. Yes. The in-betweens.

0:13:07 Thomas: I OK, that's interesting. I almost would have thought, like, if you're extremely religious, I wouldn't have associated that with happiness, just because, don't know, I feel like those, that folks tend to have a lot of problems with how everyone else is doing everything. But maybe maybe that's just anecdotal. I don't know.

0:13:08 Jesse: Yeah.

0:13:20 Jesse: That probably buffers a lot of other other feelings as well.

0:13:25 Thomas: Yeah. OK, so you want to look into that sense of wonder. Right. And that sense. So how did you go about doing that exactly? How

0:13:30 Jesse: Mm hmm. So we collected a couple of different studies. One study was just looking at, you correlations between this measure of spirituality of science that I created and other measures of well-being and life satisfaction. And in another study I also looked at how people, um, retained information related to science. So I gave them, uh, information about black holes, and, you know, show them pictures of black holes, then, you gave them information about the mysteries of blackholes and, you things that they wouldn't necessarily have been exposed to before. Or I gave them information that was not related to science and quite dull, related to mortgages, and found that people were more likely to retain this information if they were higher on spirituality of science.

0:14:19 Jesse: So if they derived this kind of meaning and awe, um, out of science

0:14:19 Thomas: Well Shoot, I'm starting a religion with this podcast Then, because I feel like that's really a lot of what we do here. Yeah.

0:14:25 Jesse: That's The last thing I want to do, I don't Think we need to start any more religions necessarily Based On Science

0:14:30 Thomas: Okay. Yeah, you're Probably right All Right, but at least I feel like I'm doing some, I'm helping with mental health services I'll just say

0:14:36 Jesse: There You go. So, yeah, it was interesting to find people's emotional responses also to the black hole information, like they felt more engaged and they felt particularly more awe, um, obviously than the mortgage condition, because that's not very exciting stuff, um, but especially If they were, you Know, high On These Yeah, no, it's more like disdain. So they felt more awe and and engagement with the black hole information if they were higher on this dimension of spirituality of science.

0:14:56 Thomas: Not In Today's Economy Yeah, especially, yeah And sorry, how Did you gauge the spiritual, that measure, the spirituality science again first? Don't

0:15:16 Jesse: So Yeah, so I created basically a scale. Idea So was to try and capture of awe and wonder in relation to science, also feelings of transcendence, that it's something bigger than ourselves or connects us to something. So I created a 11 item scale that basically measured all these different concepts.

0:15:37 Thomas: Have any of that available, do you? I'm actually really curious to hear some of those questions.

0:15:41 Jesse: Let's see, I've got to get it up. Right here. So items include, "Science helps to show greater meaning in life," "Is an order to science that transcends human thinking," "I've lost track of time while engaged in science," "Science makes me feel deeply connected to everything." So there's 10 items on this version of a scale, and they all center around these ideas of feeling awe, of feeling fulfillment. And so people are given these items and they basically respond on a one to seven scale. And they converge very nicely together and to a single scale, you well, there's a saying in, you know, sciences that research is research. So I score very high on the scale.

0:16:18 Thomas: Where do you score on it? Reveal your score.

0:16:28 Thomas: Oh, that's a good saying. I don't know if I've ever heard that in all the... You're the only one to admit it. Congratulations. No, I'm just kidding. It probably hasn't come up before. Actually, it is kind of rare that, you know, covering a study that is so relevant to, I don't know, me, I guess. There's always little bits of stuff here and there, but this is like, oh no, directly a lot of things that apply to me. And I'm just, that's why, thanks for going through the items because I was really curious about it.

0:16:29 Jesse: Oh, really?

0:16:46 Jesse: You know, it is really interesting, like having done some interviews about this is that But I can tell that people are like, oh, yes, this is very much my experience in life. Or people are highly suspicious of it and don't, yeah, yes. Yes, that's often the response to this research.

0:17:07 Thomas: Oh, really? In what way? Suspicious of what?

0:17:14 Jesse: Well, that they don't like my idea that spirituality is not related to religion, basically.

0:17:21 Thomas: Oh, like it's somehow a threat to their worldview. I see.

0:17:24 Jesse: Yeah, so It's You know, there's people are very protective or particular about their ideas about spirituality, I guess, and so I feel like there's some defensiveness about trying to apply this in a completely secular way, so people are comfortable with the idea that spirituality and religion aren't the same thing, but you what I'm really saying is that spirituality could be potentially separate from religion in some some ways, right? Which, some people think that's, you not the definition of spirituality, or would argue that it isn't.

0:17:29 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah.

0:17:57 Jesse: Yeah.

0:17:54 Thomas: Yeah, there's no spirit involved, I guess.

0:17:57 Jesse: But I think it is. I still think it is.

0:17:59 Thomas: Oh, is it? I guess I meant like in a Ghostbusters sense, you know?

0:18:03 Jesse: Yes. Not in the Ghostbuster sense. You're right.

0:18:05 Thomas: Okay, Slimer's not involved. Okay.

0:18:08 Jesse: Yeah, I guess it's your own personal spirit rather than than

0:18:11 Thomas: Okay, I didn't think of it that way. I was thinking, you got the Holy Spirit, just being raised in kind of generic Christianity Christianity that I was, I just always would have associated with that. But, but also, I mean, obviously words evolve and, take on different meanings, but yeah, I suppose spirituality, is that something that you as an atheist, like have no problem kind of personally grabbing onto and being like, yeah, I'm spiritual about science. Or is it the kind of thing where you're like, ah, I wish we had a different word for this.

0:18:14 Jesse: Yeah Yeah You Know This is an interesting question because it is raised a lot as the people question whether it should be just, you know, something that should have just a different word and I kind of feel like this is the other side of it is like people who are not so religious feeling like you Know, I don't want to get the spirituality on me, like this. It's like icky, right?

0:18:58 Thomas: Yeah. I know those people. I know those people, too. Yeah.

0:19:04 Jesse: And so I don't know. I have to question both sides is that, You know, first of all, if spirituality is not the same as religion, then there has to be some component which is separate from religion. And what is that? And also, if you can have these feelings, these aspects in your attitude towards science, if you don't call that spirituality, then what do you call it, right, why would would we have to invent a new word for something that we already are experiencing in other domains, um, So to me it is spirituality and like you know you can call it your mama If you want to, like, it doesn't matter what you call it, see nothing but connections between the experience that I see scientists have have and describe in relation to, um, their scientific discoveries, the amazing theories and science that I see direct parallels, uh, between the feelings of, uh, awe and worship that people feel in relationship to the divine, uh, when they're experiencing religious awe, so I feel like there's a direct connection there.

0:19:07 Thomas: Mm hmm. Sure. Yeah, interesting.

0:20:07 Thomas: Help I me understand this. Is it different than like a hobby? You know, what's the distinction between, because I, I'm sure if, we if took it that far and it's like, well, we're just talking about stuff you enjoy. So like video games. So that's also spiritual. It'd be like, wow. Okay. Maybe that's not quite it. You know? It seems like it's getting at something a little different, but I'm just trying to think it through for myself. Myself, I'm wondering if I'm not quite spiritual in the science way that that that you might be. I feel like I love science and I love learning about it and I find it really fascinating but there's that for for me and maybe I'm just, uh, you know, maybe as I understand the study more it'll help, but there's that missing component of like, it doesn't, I wouldn't say it gives me meaning per se.

0:20:49 Jesse: Yeah, yeah.

0:20:50 Thomas: I think my kids give me meaning more than anything. I think, I think it's like, like honestly, just human relationships really does it for me. And that's that additional like meaning part in a, in what I would, I wouldn't call it spiritual, I guess, because only one of my kids is a spirit. So it's, no, I'm just kidding. None of, I I wouldn'T think of it as that way, but that's just me probably being too literal. So what do you think? What's the extra component to where it's not like, oh yeah, it's just something you're really into, like, say, you know, a hobby and not even like a, you for lack of a better word, a dumb hobby. It's something that does give you meaning and is fulfilling, but it's not you. I don't think people usually call it spiritual. Maybe they should.

0:20:57 Jesse: Yeah.

0:21:22 Jesse: I Think one of the major factors is the sense of coherence and if it is an organizing, you know, factor in your life and, you know, as a worldview, right, like, maybe you can dip in and out of, like, you're looking at scientific studies and go, oh, wow, that's super cool, um, and, and you know, enjoy it for the time that you have with it, and that you think, you know, wow, that's really amazing, but go back to other things which you find more meaningful.

And so on a scale, like the one I developed, you'd probably be somewhere in the middle, right? You wouldn't be super high, um, which doesn't mean you don't appreciate science, but, you know, and maybe it's not the source of of meaning in your life, um, And so if it's providing a sense of coherence and and that, like, everything is connected, right? Okay, this is meaningful, um, Like in my earliest research I was looking at how explanations themselves, like, the the process of explaining, that that is itself a source of meaning in the way of feeling meaning when you find explanations, right, because It's A way of making connections between things and you're like, those things are connected. I didn't see that before. Now I see that they're connected. And the more you do that, the more it feels more coherent and things are more associated with each other. And so that is, you know, a process of creating meaning. So, if you're, for example, a scientist and you're doing this for a living all day long, you're going to be feeling those connections a lot more often.

Especially if you are working in an area that has a theory which helps to explain a bunch of things, like in astrophysics, for example, if you're trying to look for the theory of everything, for instance, and trying to understand all physics, you see all these different connections between things. So that becomes a way that science in particular can have that something extra.

0:22:04 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. Well,

0:23:18 Jesse: But the reason I make this a personality difference is that I don't think everyone's going to feel that in the same way or to the same degree, and that's the same component I think that religion really can give people, that sense of coherence that everything is connected and makes sense in a bigger way, but you know, I don't see video games and hobbies like that as providing as that so much, and

0:23:44 Thomas: First of all, how dare you? Secondly, no, I'm kidding.

0:23:45 Jesse: You Know, you're right, I'm not a gamer, so maybe it it does, right? Like, I shouldn't be so biased. But I don't know, maybe it does. Right? You tell me it does can video games have that sense of fairness?

0:23:50 Thomas: I'm not a huge gamer myself. Yeah.

0:23:59 Jesse: Yeah, I guess what I just mean is that some things are going to be able to provide extreme positive emotions. But That's itself is not the same thing as spirituality and the experience of awe and connection, so it's this combination of things, feeling awe, like something is greater than you and this amazement, but also feeling like things are interconnected with each other, that that coherence, and then purpose, like it means something. So those are elements that are important in spirituality, um, and so people feel that with their relationships, right, your kids, um, that their connection between you and the future and the past and you know, it's amazing, I, the, I did a study when I asked people to recall a spiritual experience, the most common thing that people reported was the birth of a child. You Know, so it was not about religious experiences or things in nature, is the birth of a child, and of course that's the kind of thing that elicits these kinds of feelings.

0:24:07 Thomas: Yeah.

0:25:04 Thomas: That's the good stuff for me. That is the... Yeah. I get it.

0:25:05 Jesse: Yeah. But Maybe science can be like number two or number three for you.

0:25:12 Thomas: I don't know. Yeah, actually, I am genuinely not sure how I think about it. I love science. And, and in fact, I love, you just talking about science and explaining things to my kids. It's really, really nice. And I just, I guess, sorry to personalize it too much. It was hard to resist, but, um, I also, you know, spent most of my life not being happy. So there's, I might just be on the other end of the, the whole graph or something. And the, and I think, uh, maybe that's what it it is. Because I've never found, like, if someone would ask me most years of my life, the meaning of life even is, I would have said, well, there's not really a meaning. It's just kind of whatever you're doing.

0:25:38 Jesse: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

0:25:49 Thomas: And then I guess having kids, you know, it certainly makes it feel a little bit more, for me anyway, that like, oh, no, there, that's it. They're the meaning. So I don't know. That's just interesting to think about. But I also love science so much. I don't but science is also such chaos. Like, I think you can describe it in a way that's like, here are these things that go together and are cool. And indeed, have I astrophysicist Dr.

0:26:00 Jesse: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hm.

0:26:14 Thomas: Bryan Gillis recording on Friday. I love astrophysics. I loved thinking about that kind of thing. But in some ways, we can get romantic about it, but in some way, it's also deeply unsatisfying because you're just like, well, what the hell? You know, we break it down as much as we can, And then it's like, well, we got to this quantum level and that, you know, I guess I understand it, but do I? I don't know. I kind of run out of feeling like, wow, there's a great meaning and rhyme to it. And more like, Well, first off, you got to learn a bunch of math, if you want to understand anything, you've got to use a lot of variables. And I don't know, I feel like maybe, if anything, getting even more expert in science, I wonder if it makes it a little bit less magical. Like everything, you know, whatever your job is, it's like, all right, yeah, no, I work at Disneyland, but I'm kind of bored of it.

0:26:44 Jesse: Yeah. Yeah.

0:26:58 Jesse: There Is also the Effect where if you, uh, reduce something, right? If you reduce Something to its mechanics, that can does take the pleasure out of it. But, but, you know, I think only if you focus on the mechanics and not the explanations outward, on the bigger impact and what it all means, right.

0:27:07 Thomas: Yeah. Interesting. That's good point, yeah. I just make a bunch of electron models, like from seventh or eighth grade, where it's, like, the marshmallows and whatever. I don't know. Just really focus in on those components. No, I see what you mean. Yeah, that makes sense.

0:27:33 Jesse: Yeah, because, you know, you've seen those, you know, those videos they have on YouTube or whatever, where it looks like, where they show stars that get bigger and bigger and bigger in size, right, it's always much more fun to watch it go bigger than watch it go smaller, right And it's the same thing with explanation. So once you start reducing and reducing, it's like, oh, this is nothing.

0:27:41 Thomas: Oh, yeah, yeah. Crazy. Hmm. Yeah. So That's interesting. And promise I, I'm not just trying to be a troublemaker, but that always leaves me with like, the more we get on that image comparison chart, the more I feel like, well, holy shit, we're meaningless here. Like what in the world we've got It's crazy, the biggest star is not fathomable, it's just not, and yeah

0:28:06 Jesse: You Yeah. Yeah. It's not bad. When you shrink it down to what the size of what you thought was the big star and you're like, oh, my gosh, yes.

0:28:15 Thomas: And that's and that all of that is such a tiny fraction of empty, all the just empty space you know and it's like it's

0:28:22 Jesse: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And most of it's nothing.

0:28:25 Thomas: It's absolutely crazy, I I, I don't know, I feel like that always bummed me out, then I got on the right brain medication and don't think about it as much, and now I'm happy, and I have kids

0:28:26 Jesse: Yeah. That's interesting. Because but you're right there is this chaos in science, and I think that's like kind of the the wave you gotta ride, and you just have to like, um, because it's a, you ride that, you know, that razor's edge between like, oh my God, it's so unfathomable and huge, uh, toward, you know, on one side of it, and it's such a big, and on the other side it's just, we just sliding down the wave, you know what I mean, like it's just so amazingly big and mind-bogglingly big that you just have to enjoy the ride

0:28:37 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah yeah I know and then I get sad, we don't ever get to go out and see any of that crap, you know, why, why isn't Star Trek real, why didn't we, you know, it's too bad oh

0:29:09 Jesse: I had a friend who's, uh, also uh, he, he was an atheist, and um, he said that he thought the saddest thing about, um, dying was that he wouldn't be able to see what happens afterwards, um

0:29:27 Thomas: 100, 100, I've always said, I hope, I don't, maybe the technology will exist, I don't get, I don't want to live as a brain in the vat, I don't think, but like if it could be like, all right, we can wake you up every hundred years and you can just read a newspaper or something, like see what's going on, that would be I would love that, that'd cool, yeah yeah probably be pretty traumatic though, now that I think about it, be like everyone's dead you ever knew, yes, wow, okay, but what's today's news, I don't know what's going on, what's the latest PlayStation, what one are you on, you know, 10 to 11

0:29:42 Jesse: Exactly yeah just a flash forward of the future yeah yeah yeah exactly and every new version of Pepsi tastes worse and worse and worse forever, none

0:30:05 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, um, you know, in my less charitable times, I do wonder how much if, of your questionnaire was about, um, fake quotes by Neil deGrasse Tyson, because that's, I feel like that's where a lot of, of our scientific spirituality honestly I see people share that goddamn Facebook page that's not real, anyway there's a Neil deGrasse Tyson Facebook, that's like, it's I think it might be originally something to do with his page, but the way Facebook is now, like it just shows like his name, and then it'll be like something that I'm like, that is not, first of all it's wrong, and secondly, it'll be some bullshit, you know, that I'm like, someone just, this is a fan account or something, and it's an incorrect factoid about science, and, but that's, but it has millions of followers.

0:30:18 Jesse: None of them, I do oh which one do you mean I I hope I didn't, yeah yeah yes yeah that stuff drives me crazy and the one that drives me crazy the most is a quote that's falsely attributed to Einstein which is, um oh no, the one that drives me crazy is the, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting different results, which he never said, like nothing even close to this, and also is a terrible attitude in general, I think yeah

0:30:54 Thomas: Yeah. There's like a thousand of those, but yeah. Oh, God. Yeah. Don't, who made that up? That has bothered me. I'm not, I'm, I don't to lie. Look, it sounds like we might have a lot in common. I think I did a whole like complain about that like 10 years ago on a podcast, I hate that stupid quote literally that quote yeah yeah, it's like everything we do is that, like, our day is pretty much doing the same thing over, there's so many times we do the same, literally practice anything, hit a golf ball yeah

0:31:25 Jesse: Oh really oh yeah, that one that one really bothers me, yeah yeah Yeah. Yeah. It is part of science also, actually, to try and do the same thing over and over again and see if it turns out differently.

0:31:47 Thomas: Yeah it always gets quoted it in some dumb movie or something, that's like someone tried to write to sound smart, and you're just like, that's not, sorry, that is nothing, okay. I'm so glad.

0:31:53 Jesse: Yeah. So what was the Neil deGrasse Tyson quote then?

0:32:00 Thomas: Oh, no, that was a generic example, but literally I do every, like almost every day because the algorithm knows me. I see Neil deGrasse Tyson, like some sort of Facebook fan page. And sometimes it's like a science story, but I can just tell in the way it's presented that it's, like, okay, this is, you know, it's a fan science account that isn't really science. It'll be like, well, a real scientist would never put it in those terms. I guess I'm not technically a scientist, but I do spend an awful lot of time around it. And I don't know, I feel like I can just tell like, all right, that's not, a scientist didn't write this. don'T know.

0:32:02 Jesse: Just a generic.

0:32:22 Jesse: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Facebook is weird, man. It's getting to be just algorithms talking to each other And then fighting with each other.

0:32:35 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But at the same time, that is immensely popular. So a non, an unironic way, I do wonder if a lot lot of people who have this feeling of wonder and science and maybe even spirituality, if it's a little bit pop science-y, you know, like if it is a little bit like, yeah, you now, did you know all, if you fill up all the something with something, then it all, just that kind of stuff, I do not know.

0:32:55 Jesse: Yeah. It can be a little bit soft sometimes a like the, the soft news story that they put at the end of the news programs a littlebit, right. Make you make it go go down a little bit easier. But that's not bad.

0:33:09 Thomas: Yeah. No, no, nothing wrong with it. So we have talked a lot about the, it is really fascinating, the spirituality part. At some point, I am sure you you had to get into the mental health component, you want talk about, is that the next thing to talk about here in the study?

0:33:23 Jesse: Yeah, so this was in the study. Measured basically measures of well-being and stress with life. Subjective happiness, life satisfaction, stress, search for meaning, presence of meaning, and compared it with belief in science. So this was also something that was important and interesting, that we wanted to make sure that it wasn't just, you feeling generally positive towards science. We have also a measure of how much people believe that science is a good way of knowing about things, and that doesn't seem to correlate with any positive well-being at all. So it doesn't correlate with feelings of meaning or life Satisfaction or subjective happiness.

So science itself, and whether you think science is basically a good thing, isn't predicting this. But it's the spirituality of science, which is, again, all these measures like, science helps to show greater meaning in life. There's an order to science that transcends human thinking there's this greater meaning and connection and feelings of all through science. Those are predicting basically how happy are people. In this study in particular, we focused on atheists and agnostics because we wanted to look at specifically whether it could be a source of meaning for people who weren't religious.

0:34:03 Thomas: Ah, there you go.

0:34:44 Thomas: Okay, I love it. I actually wasn't sure. I guess I missed that there's specifically them because I would be curious how much it affects everybody, you know, because people are so, often nominally as I kind of started out with, people are very spiritual in general, but not specifically religious. And I wonder does taking out that self-identifying marker do anything? Like, would you, do you think you would still, I was probably topic for another time, but do you Think you would Still get some correlations, even if you took out the atheist and agnostic kind of thing?

0:35:15 Jesse: So yes, and I think that, and this is like an important study that I want to do next, is to include a sample that has people who are religious, people who are not religious, and include a measure of how they get spirituality of science, but also a measure of religious spirituality and correlate these things with the well-being measures and the happiness and life satisfaction, right? And so what I think is going to happen is that for people who aren't religious, the extent that they're going to have the spirituality of science is going predict these well- being measures, which would replicate the effect that I already already found. But religious spirituality will obviously do nothing for them because they've already defined themselves as not religious, right? So why would it predict these things at all? For religious people, though,

0:35:21 Thomas: Perfect.

0:36:06 Jesse: The religious spirituality is going to have a stronger effect than spirituality of science. But I think there might be still some effect of spirituality of science

0:36:15 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, I can't wait for you to do that study. We'll get you back on.

0:36:15 Jesse: Um, Yeah, so, I think, yeah, I think it's an interesting question, um, I think what would happen is that sources of spirituality would contribute to well-being, but for religious people, religious spirituality is going to be more dominant, it's just going to be more important to them because that's how they define themselves, right? Um, so that's going to just have a stronger effect, but we'll see too. Be continued.

0:36:40 Thomas: Okay. Pin in that. Yeah. Okay. So for now we got the atheists and agnostics.

0:36:42 Jesse: Yes. Exactly, the reason I wanted to focus on them is because I felt they'd been neglected in these other studies looking at religiosity so much. And so with them we find that the, uh, more, spirituality of science they have, that they score better on all of these well-being measures basically, but Oh, not stress.

0:37:01 Thomas: Even stress? Okay.

0:37:03 Jesse: Stress is the only one that didn't come out, actually.

0:37:03 Thomas: Okay, okay. I was gonna, that's funny. I was gonna ask that, like, because I, you know, I got a lot of stress in my life right now. None of it is connected to black holes that I know of, I don't think.

0:37:07 Jesse: Yeah. Yeah, but neither is life satisfaction, right? So, you know.

0:37:17 Thomas: Mm-hmm. No, I was being, I was being facetious. But yeah, no, but like, stress for me, I don't know, this might just be a general psychology thingy, but is stress something, you that seems to me more like something that comes and goes and wouldn't necessarily be correlated with like overall life satisfaction stuff, or is it like, are there the kinds of people who just get stressed more, or how, you know, how permanent is that and

0:37:42 Jesse: Yeah, I Mean, to the extent that, you know, with people, there are people that get stressed more that are more anxious, that's going to show up in all these measures. So there is some correlation between uh all these different measures of well-being, um, so that the more stressed people are, the less, uh, satisfied they are with life and stuff like that. But yeah, it's the only one that showed basically a null effect, the spirituality of science. So they all the other ones, presence of meaning, belief, uh, the search for meaning, life satisfaction, and subjective happiness are all related to spirituality science. But stress, yeah, it's things that would come from your life. But some people are going to react more strongly to it.

0:38:24 Thomas: And or maybe some people are privileged enough to not have giant stressors in their life, I guess it's hard to compare across across different people and different lives. Yeah, but that's kind of what I was being like, it is hard to compare across because it's like, how, what's, is it all relative, you know, is it like max stress for you is still going to feel like max stress for anyone or not?

0:38:33 Jesse: Yeah, But I think stress is one of the things that you adapt to your own status quo. So So yeah, yeah,

0:38:49 Thomas: I don't know.

0:38:49 Jesse: Yeah, exactly. Stress is subjective, right? So it's how much stress you feel, not necessarily how much stress you are objectively subjected to at any given point. So I think we're all pretty good at adapting to our life situations. And so we get used to a certain amount of things and then how stressed we are is how much that is exceeding our usual capacities. Yeah. And, you know, this is why, of course, stress contributes to happiness and life satisfaction as well.

0:38:52 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, negatively. Or is the lesson, go get stressed, everyone.

0:39:23 Jesse: Yes, exactly. Yeah, no, stress is mostly a negative contributor.

0:39:31 Thomas: Okay, so you found these correlations through the bulk of the study, or are there more components to kind of making these connections?

0:39:38 Jesse: That's the bulk of that study. Yes

0:39:39 Thomas: Do you, what are you take from it? I mean, we've talked about a lot of it, but do you think people ought to go, you make up a fake Neil deGrasse Tyson quote or what should people do?

0:39:43 Jesse: Hmm. Yeah, so I think that for me what I get out of this is first of all that you can derive spirituality from sources that aren't religion, um, and that that has positive, uh, benefits that, um, it has implications for our well-being and our ability to experience meaning, um, and so it has, you know, this implication. So it doesn't have a recommendation. I don't think people should necessarily take up science if they're not, uh, motivated to, um, but it is a way of recognizing that there is this source of spirituality, um, that is important to people.

0:40:20 Thomas: Yeah, I do want to ask you on that point, though. Is it the kind of that you said, take up science? You know? Is it the thing where that's at all part of this study? I mean, how was that Part of the questionnaire? Or is it, is it, or is it just some sort of fandom of science that it's

0:40:25 Jesse: Hmm. Hmm. No. It's not it's not a part of the, the questionnaire, um, but I do think it's important for communication about, about science to often promote these ideas about science that are more spiritual, as a way of showing the public that it's not all reductionist, that there are these, more important implications and sources of meaning that are derived out of science as away of showing the public that is a pursuit that's not just, just about, you know, gathering information and facts and data, but something that is more important and meaningful. So that can change public attitudes about science. So there's implications there that I'm exploring with some collaborators in terms of how people trust scientists in relation to how spiritual they think the scientists are.

0:40:35 Thomas: Yeah hmm oh That's interesting, but I guess just to clarify, to make sure it, it's not as though you need to, like, be a scientist to get the spirituality, uh, happiness, whatever effect, right?

0:41:34 Jesse: No, not at all. You know, the more that you engage with science, then it's going to have a bigger presence in your life. But I think you can experience spirituality through science, some of the time and have that be a meaningful, you experience and contribute to your sense of spirituality in general, for sure. So you don't have to be a professional scientist at all.

0:41:56 Thomas: Okay okay. But, but I should get a lab coat to just wear around.

0:42:01 Jesse: Well, at least, you know, for Halloween or, you know, whatnot.

0:42:04 Thomas: Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Well, this has been fascinating and a lot of fun. Is there anything else that you want to make sure people get from this? Is there anything people are misunderstanding? I know that often happens in any sort of press coverage. Is there anything people are misunderstanding? Anything else you want to add to the audience?

0:42:24 Jesse: I don't think so. I've had a really fun time. Interesting talk. I hope that you found it interesting, too. Yeah. So yeah, thanks a lot for having me. It's been really interesting.

0:42:29 Thomas: Absolutely. Thanks so much for taking the time. I also always give everyone an opportunity if you want. Do you have anything you want a plug? Any place you want send people? Social media, website, anything?

0:42:42 Jesse: No. They can Google me on their own. And they can find me.

0:42:44 Thomas: Okay. Go to the cosmos and take in a nice, awe-inspiring black hole.

0:42:50 Jesse: Yes. There you go. Yes.

0:42:53 Thomas: Well, thank you so much. Dr. Jesse Preston. It's been a pleasure. It's All

0:42:56 Jesse: All right. Thank you.

0:43:14 Jesse: I don't want to get the spirituality on me like