Religion is Declining Faster Than You Think

<p><strong>We discuss statistics showing the rapid decline in belief in God among Gen Z, and how conservative Gen Z splits into different ideological camps. We analyze why historic techniques for passing down traditions intergenerationally are failing, how Gen Z hides changes from parents, and why the parents' generation isn't transmitting culture properly to their kids.</strong></p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> [00:00:00] when we're looking at you know, the extent of the urban monoculture, and we're talking about how much culture has changed recently, people see this as sort of a linear change that is linearly Going from the boomers, you know, up to modern generations, right?</p><p>It is not. It is, it is an asymmetric change. It's logarithmic. It is happening incredibly quickly right now. What has happened in this last 20 years is not comparable to what was happening in our own childhood. Mm hmm. Culturally speaking. these iterations of conservatism I see within Gen Z is really different from their parents generation.</p><p>And it means that the parents are not passing culture intergenerationally with fidelity, even when they believe they have.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah. Well, and also like, I think, you know, like, as you say, a lot of kids are hiding that, which is, Not helpful, I guess, in helping parents course correct, [00:01:00] but also, if the parents knew that their kids had lost their religion, would there be anything they can do?</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> a lot of the techniques. That people have historically used to pass down these traditions intergenerationally are just not working very well.</p><p>Would you like to know more?</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Task item regards to that? I already did. Yeah. And in addition to that, could you um, send yourself a to do item about emailing her the, I already sent her the</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> email. Look at how on top of things they are.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> No, I'm sorry, Simone. I'm sorry. I don't, you are amazing. This is a great way to start so people see how it is.</p><p>When I ask you to do things, you just camera, well, like you were in the</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> middle before that we were rudely interrupted by a call. You were telling me how Chavez, Castro, and Che were doing. With, you know, like AOC and Bernie. Like, are they okay?</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> They looked terrified when I first met them. So, you are chickens after communists.</p><p>And they seemed fine. They seemed fine. They were making they were complaining a lot. They were, and in a separate part of the cage. So they [00:02:00] were talking.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Okay. So they're, they're okay. Were they, were they being attacked by</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> AOC I don't know. They were in a different part,</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> you know. Okay. So they're, they're like, they're, they're, they're clustering together.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Yeah. They're not like dead or anything. Okay. I just, I don't know. Like, I'm,</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> I'm worried. I don't want them to be like stressed out or anything. And like, they're the friendliest ones. So</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> I don't know. You are the sweetest chicken mom which I appreciate because we're getting lots of great eggs which means egg everything these days.</p><p>So, you, right before this, you know, being ever diligent sent me some statistics you thought I would find interesting. Yeah! And they were so shocking, I then did a sanity test on them after you sent them to me, just to be like, come on, this can't be... So first you know, you're going to see the statistics on the screen if you're watching on YouTube.</p><p>What it shows is the share of Americans This is Americans, right? I think so. Who believe in [00:03:00] God without doubt. And if you look at the silent generation, it's around 70 percent slight decline over time. You look at boomers, it's like 65 percent slight decline over time. You look at gen X actually goes up over time from like just under 60 percent to almost around where boomers are now 65 percent then you get to millennials and it's like things drop off a cliff in the early days like 1998 they were only around 55 percent and now like well 2018 where this recording stops they're all the way down to like what Around 45 percent then Gen Z when they start recording, they're, they're dropping even faster.</p><p>They go from like 50 percent to now, you know, I don't know, 33%. It's just plummeting, plummeting, plummeting. And so then I looked and I was like, okay, what are religious people saying about this? Right? Like did, do, do sources that are looking into this religiously. So there was this article over [00:04:00] half of Gen Z.</p><p>teens feel motivated to learn more about Jesus. Now you can tell this was written from a conservative perspective. So this data is not going to be skewed, whatever, right? So they show among US young adults only 17 percent are committed Christians. And 52 percent aren't Christian at all anymore. And this is a US young adults.</p><p>anD so this is really meaningful to me for a number of reasons. The biggest is, I think that there's this general perception that the rise in secularity, when we're looking at you know, the extent of the urban monoculture, and we're talking about how much culture has changed recently, people see this as sort of a linear change that is linearly Going from the boomers, you know, up to modern generations, right?</p><p>It is not. It is, it is an asymmetric change. It's logarithmic. It is happening incredibly quickly right [00:05:00] now. What has happened in this last 20 years is not comparable to what was happening in our own childhood. Mm hmm. Culturally speaking. Things have exploded at a rate, like, this is why I just so confidently can make a bet.</p><p>I often mention this, my mom, before she passed, she's like, you know, you're really publicly tying yourself to this fertility rate thing. Like, what is this, it's just a fad, what if fertility rates shoot back up in a couple years, you know? You're gonna look really stupid, and I'm like, no, no, no, no. I am confident from what I am seeing in the data that it is going to get infinitely worse in the near future because everything correlated with fertility is collapsing.</p><p>And one of those things is religiosity, right? And That has fundamentally transformed for people of this generation. The next thing that I would note, and this is something that so if, you know, Simone and I, we are hip with the Gen Z conservatives, right?</p><p>[00:06:00] Like that is the, the market that we probably speak to the most in terms of the nature of our message and in terms of who we're interacting with because of our school system, because of who we know, but we also know a lot of really conservative families, and I can't mention, like, who they are because I don't want to give these kids away because these kids feel honest being open with us.</p><p>So, a lot of these Gen Z kids, they still... Identify as very conservative. If they're culturally,</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> what would we say? They, they, they appear to be conservative and religious, like on the surface.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Right. But, many of them, from very religious families, are no longer religious. They just hide it from their parents because they don't want to hurt their parents feelings, and they still, like, broadly believe in religious value systems, because, like, they really don't, I agree, was, like, the woke.</p><p>not jobs, right? But they are just not religious anymore. And I think that this creates a big problem when you look at the [00:07:00] statistics, which is a misperception among older conservative millennials who are having kids right now or younger conservative gen X. Thinks that this next generation is just like them.</p><p>They're like, well, my kids haven't told me they don't believe in God anymore. Well, and</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> they still go to church even, you know, probably after, you know, they go to school and they probably say things, you know, like, you know, God willing or all like, you know, they, they'll, they'll do all the, they'll present religious and so that's also really misleading.</p><p>Like that. I think a lot of secular people, like openly atheist people and openly nihilistic people will go out to dinner with, or hang out with or see people who like, yeah. code religious, but yeah, they don't realize that those people actually</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> just don't believe. Yeah. So I'd say that the, when I talk to Gen Z conservatives, they really seem to fall into three camps in terms of like ideological identity.</p><p>One camp is the aesthetic conservatives. We've talked about them in other videos. Go, [00:08:00] these are the individuals who fall for the aesthetic of conservative more than have an actual like philosophical structure behind their beliefs.</p><p>This is the crowd that Andrew Tate is talking to. It is mostly like a manosphere diaspora. They are primarily motivated. by how unfair society has become to them and how weak they see society becoming. These are the two things they care about. And this is the largest faction, I think, of the, the Gen Z conservatives right now, that like, like the actually like active ones.</p><p>The other faction is like our faction. If you want to get an idea of what they think, just watch this podcast. Like it's, it's, it's really like the type of stuff we talk about is really just indicative of what these guys think. Then, the final faction is, I call them like, religious cosplayers, I guess I'd say.</p><p>Ew. They are not religious in the way that their parents were religious. So by that what I mean is... Their parents are religious because they were upholding the traditions of their ancestors. These individuals are [00:09:00] often upholding religion as a shield against wokeism and a deteriorating society. And they lean more strongly into religious culture than even their parents did.</p><p>So these are</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> the, the, the kids who maybe even were raised in secular households, but then are like, I'm going to raise my kid. Jewish or Muslim or Christian, and we're going to go to church, but at the same time, they don't really believe it. Like my parents, for example, they had this moment where they decided to become born again Buddhists.</p><p>And they were like, okay, we're going to send you to Dharma school. And they like, they meant to do it, but then they never really followed through with it. Cause they actually didn't really believe, I think like they weren't really that into it. Is that what you're</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> talking about? Well, not exactly. I think a lot of these people really do believe it, but for their parents generation, for the gen X religious generation religion was primarily about the belief, the belief guided all other actions tied to the [00:10:00] religion.</p><p>For these individuals, it's 50 percent belief. 50 percent structure and aesthetics. So the classic example of somebody like this is the person who maybe grew up in a conservative Protestant household and then becomes like a trad calf because they think like Catholicism is a more conservative, more structured iteration.</p><p>They're often converting to the more structured iteration of religions. So they're much more likely to become. Orthodox Christians. So by that what I mean, I don't mean general Orthodox. I'm talking like Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, et cetera, or trad castes or traditional Orthodox Jews. Yeah. Those are the three groups where I see this represented in the most.</p><p>I haven't seen that many Protestants who stayed Protestants doing this. And I think the reason is, is because the Protestant faith has less. Ritual and structure to it. And the point that I'm making here is that for many of these individuals, the ritual in structure is 50 percent of the point. Whereas for [00:11:00] the previous generation, it was God was a hundred percent of the point and everything else was downstream from that.</p><p>That makes sense. And of course they wouldn't say that it's 50 percent of the point, but what I mean when I say this is when I look at the fervency with which they adhere to the ritual and in which they signal the ritual, they seem, if I'm going to word it in a way, almost they remind me more of goths from my childhood than religious kids from my childhood.</p><p>Oh wow.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah. Yeah. I see what you're saying.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> You know, where. The religious people didn't need to constantly be signaling that they were religious all the time. They were constantly trying to convert me. Whereas the goths needed to constantly be signaling how gothy they</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> were. Yeah, but they weren't necessarily, yeah, they weren't trying to convert you.</p><p>And also they were kind of in it to be... Just to not be a normie. Right. Like I feel like half people, yeah. Half the people who are goths or whatever new subculture there is of the day, they're in it to just not be like mainstream society. And that is what but every one</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> of these Yeah, [00:12:00] yeah, yeah. Continue, sorry.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Well, that's what I see with a lot of new converts or people who are going more hard line from a softer religion.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Yeah. And so these, these religious institutions are doing well and I wanna. point out that I don't mean this disparagingly at all. I actually think that all of the rituals and framing and weird dress codes and everything like that, weird, where weird is defined from differentiating from mainstream society.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> So more hard religious, more hard religious.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Yeah. I think it's all useful in maintaining their culture and passing their culture down intergenerationally. I think that these young people recognize something about religion. That their parents had forgotten because their parents didn't have as strong an enemy constantly battering at their doors.</p><p>And so they had forgotten all of the purposes of all of the defensive structures and fortifications that had been built up over the year. They're like, Oh yeah, that pile of old guns, we don't need those anymore. That pile, you know, this old wall. Well, I mean, I understand it was a castle wall, but nobody ever attacks this castle anymore.</p><p>So let's tear it down to put a [00:13:00] road there. You know, and now these, this younger generation is like, build it all back up, you know, restore the guns, everything like that. Right. So, Very interesting, right? Yeah. Why this is interesting to me is every one of these iterations of conservatism I see within Gen Z is really different from their parents generation.</p><p>And it means that the parents are not passing culture intergenerationally with fidelity, even when they believe they have.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah. Well, and also like, I think, you know, like, as you say, a lot of kids are hiding that, which is, Not helpful, I guess, in helping parents course correct, but also, if the parents knew that their kids had lost their religion, would there be anything they can do?</p><p>Because I don't think there is. I just think that they're screwed.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> No, and this is an interesting thing, because parents can be like, well, why don't the kids tell me when they're rebelling in this way, right? Right. And a very interesting thing about Gen Z, and it's something that I will constantly say, [00:14:00] is the woke iteration of Gen Z.</p><p>has just completely lost their minds. They're basically in this big society wide cult. But when I talk to non woke Gen Z, like, like mentally healthy Gen Z, they are dramatically more emotionally mature and mentally healthy than the mentally healthy, like, average person of our generation.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Yeah, that's fair.</p><p>Well, and I would say, I mean, to go back to sort of What I always originally thought woke was all about like sort of just being they seem more woke than woke people and that they're like genuinely aware of what's going on with society, how things are playing out the dynamics at play, how the cards are stacked against them, what their benefits are, etc.</p><p>Like, they seem to be extremely. What's the word? Savvy. Shrewd. I, I mean, I admire</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> it. That's a good way to put it. Yeah. They're savvy and shrewd and they, and they get a lot less of the pleasure that previous generations did from sticking it to their parents. And</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> also they're not delusional. Yeah. Like they're, I think they're just like, well,</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> that's, they see their parents as [00:15:00] people.</p><p>And this is one of the things that we often advocate for the most, which is really interesting. So among our Gen Z friends or, or people who were mentoring and stuff like that, we're always like, Advocating to, I know you're nice to your parents, but seriously, all of these beefs you think you have with them, you really don't have with them.</p><p>I've heard all of the terrible things you think you suffered in your childhood, they're really not that bad. It seems like they were just trying to do what was best for you. And many of them since have reached back out to us, and they're like, I'm really glad you encouraged me to try to... Patch things up with my parents because I, I now that I've like left the house, typically they're only able to patch things up after they leave the house.</p><p>Like I have a great relationship with them and I recognize that they actually were trying to do what was best for me. But anyway, so all of this is really interesting because a lot of the techniques. That people have historically used to pass down these traditions intergenerationally are just not working very well.</p><p>And you as an individual don't have the same mechanisms that you would have had historically to know if they're working very well. So what do I [00:16:00] mean by that? Right? So</p><p>if you're looking at like transference of, let's say, Christian values intergenerationally I know some conservatives, I tell them this and they're like, Oh, my kids know not to. To, you know, do that or they'll be, you know, punished in some way, right? Mm hmm. And it's like, well, what you're telling me is if they didn't still believe, they wouldn't tell you, right?</p><p>Because you just told me you were going to punish them. And, and that's a very difficult way in this world today. Historically, that worked. You could punish people into following a faith when they had nowhere else to turn. The problem is, is that in our current society, it's very easy to leave your parents.</p><p>Or leave your parents tradition once you're of age. And this, I am going to force them with punishment. This is what happened, I think, with Ayla, for example, right? Her father, Calvinist tradition, you know, similar to ours tried to get her to follow the tradition with punishment. And that just backfired.</p><p>spectacularly like an atomic bomb in his face. And I think [00:17:00] it's a very, very bad strategy in today's environment. Yeah. Second strategy I hear people saying is or, or that we would have seen historically is you would have had the community sort of monitor to know when they were falling from their faith.</p><p>Right. So a really important thing about intergenerational faith transfer in a historic context is that you as a parent would get feedback if your kid didn't believe your faith, right? Like, even me I mean, I was clear from a young age that I did not believe in the traditional Christian religion and my parents no, I, I do consider myself a Christian, but like a weird Christian.</p><p>And most of that has been built up since then. When I was in middle school and high school, I was one of those hard Atheist type people you know, caught up in like the new Atheist movement. It's the new way. I always thought they were kind of, You know, pussy ish. I didn't like them. But, uh, I, with the atheist movement more generally, [00:18:00] right?</p><p>And then the various offshoots, like the sub genius and stuff like that. Those are the ones who I thought were cool. But, it was known like this was something that was reported. to my parents. Now, my parents were not Christian either. You know, they had left the Christian faith a long time ago, but it got all the way back to my grandparents who were still of the, the, the Christian group within my family.</p><p>Right. Like, so if you're in Texas or something like this in middle school, this is stuff that would have been reported to your family. That is not happening anymore. No. And well, because there's not these networks of people trying to ensure cultural fidelity, which exists naturally. I mean, actually, they do exist now.</p><p>They're just on the woke side.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Right, yeah, I was gonna say, if anything, teachers are helping it along these days, not...</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Well, they, I mean, they would report to the family of some of the kids said something non woke. They'd say, don't you know that little Jimmy is not of the dominant cultural group. He said something non woke.</p><p>He should be punished for this. I hope he's punished at home and not just at school. He said, blah, blah, blah. And this [00:19:00] is not an approved fact. So, You know, you are really working with a completely different, not an incrementally different, not a linearly different world than, than existed when you were growing up.</p><p>It is completely, structurally different. And if you try to go into it with you know, slightly more padding around you or something like that, you are going to be, or slightly more padding around the next generation, they're gonna be fucked. You know, this requires really intentional structuring and rebuilding, and there's different ways you can do that.</p><p>I mean, this is why we wrote the Pragmatist's Guide to Crafting Religion, this is why we recorded the audiobook for it, everything like that. We did all of this, and just, you know, if anybody wants it, we sell it for like 99 cents or 2 dollars or something, like, all of the money goes to charity. Like, and the charity goes to trying to create a school system to compete with a public school system, which I think most of the people who would want the book would find compelling.</p><p>But anyway we wrote the [00:20:00] book to try to give you the scaffolding to augment these historic traditions to be more resistant to, to, you know, go out there with your cyborg instead of your, you know, slightly beefy guy to fight this, this horde of, of Xeno scum. That's coming to erase us we have, um, what else is I going to say on this topic of the other strategy is the one that we use.</p><p>And this is something that you know, people ask, why do you have such a weird structure? Like, why don't you just go back to the historic traditions of your family? Right? And we're like, those historic traditions couldn't even hold for our parents generation. You know, we come from the Calvinist cultural line, which is basically extinct in the United States today.</p><p>If we're going back to our ancestors, I can say, it didn't work. It didn't work. It, like, just didn't, like, like, objectively didn't work. And then they say, well, why don't you convert [00:21:00] to one of the other Christian traditions that you see as broadly aligned with yours? And the answer is, is... I, the ones that are most broadly aligned with ours are the ones that have collapsed the most.</p><p>You know, you're looking at stuff like evangelical Protestants and stuff like that, right? The Calvary church is, is, is my favorite. Like if I went back, that's the iteration of, of Protestantism that I really like. But, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's not doing well. It's not healthy, you know, demographically if, if we're saying.</p><p>And so, no, I'm not going to go back to a beast that I see as sick. If I can try to do something different for my kids. And so that's why we are trying to restructure things in the spirit of our ancestral traditions.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> But in the context of modernity.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> Yeah. Well, and in a way that it cannot be with any sort of modern science be disproved.</p><p>Like the idea that a god is [00:22:00] something that will come to exist in the future, like a hundred thousand years from now, a million years from now. Our descendants, if they're still alive, would they be more like humans or more like gods? This is what we tell our kids and we say</p><p>who's to say they're going to relate to time the same way you do and they're more likely to they might be rewarding you and watching over you for when you do things that increase a prosperous future for humanity. We've done many other videos on this.</p><p>The one on demons that we've released recently is the one I'd suggest because we were trying to create demons for our kids, which I really like. You got to do that. But that's why we take that path. And that's why, and people are like, yeah, but that path is likely to fail. And again, you look at Puritan spotting, you look at the Calvinist tradition.</p><p>Yeah, but constantly reinventing our traditions is something that Calvinists were known for historically doing. So it's just a, a nature of our branch of the, the, the hardest Calvinist historically, like hardest cultural Calvinists were the ones who constantly tried to reinvent their tradition because that was the most Calvinist thing to do.</p><p>The ones who practiced the [00:23:00] culture in different ways. were the ones who spun out the fastest whereas the ones who went into it was like this weird sciency, like going through their Bible and crossing out everything that they didn't think aligned was modern scientific data. You know, we've been doing that since the founding of the country.</p><p>Right. But so I want to hear your thoughts.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> Well, one question I actually wanted to ask you, because I'm not sure how important this is, but I think it, it could be, how much do you think actual belief in God matters here? Like, if someone has a really strong culture, but they were going to answer this survey saying, no, I don't believe in God, but they also happen to have a really long, strong culture, would they be mentally resilient, likely to inherit the future holding an intergenerationally durable culture, or do you believe that to be intergenerationally durable and strong and to impart a competitive advantage, you actually have to have some kind of metaphysical faith that, that nihilists [00:24:00] and atheists theoretically don't have.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> I think the rituals alone can achieve this.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> So even if, if zero belief in God or a higher power or anything like that, cause we like, despite being like technically secular or we say we're secular, we have a metaphysical reality. We have gods, we have, we, we practice descendant worship. Like we fall in the God category.</p><p>And I think it does play a role. in our faith.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> So, so here's what I'd say because we have friends who fall into this category and you know the people I'm talking about. The ones who we know who fall into this category are what we call secular ultra Orthodox Jews. And by that what I mean is they are ultra Orthodox Jews in the way they dress, in the things that they practice, in the number of kids they're having.</p><p>But they do not believe in God. And we're like, why, why all of this other stuff if you don't believe in God? And what's really funny is that the way I put it is. They believe in religion, they don't believe in God. They [00:25:00] believe that all of these religious things help their mental health, their kids, their family.</p><p>They believe in an intergenerationally family culture and tradition. They just don't believe in God. They're just like, well, I don't believe the metaphysical part, but I believe in all of the structure. And you can say, well, does this work? Well, they have tons of kids, uh, all the ones we know who are doing this.</p><p>In fact, they have more kids than most of the actual ultra Orthodox Jews I know. Fair. Yeah. And I think it's because they're being so intentional about it all. So you think, yeah,</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> it's the intentionality, it's the structure and it's the discipline. It's not so much whether or not there is. Faith. So faith is not the core of this.</p><p>The discipline and dedication</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> is. Well, another thing, it's pride in who you are and what you are passing down to your children. So we take a lot of pride and they take a lot of pride. The reason they stay with their traditions instead of shedding them, even though they have [00:26:00] lost the core belief is that they believe and have pride that those traditions matter, that they're good for the world, that they, that they're glad to have them.</p><p>And that alone, I think does a lot to pass things onto a kid. When I am telling my kid, And this is why I think this new iteration of Christian that I talked about earlier here is going to do so well in the future. If I'm telling my kid, well, you need to follow all of these rules because it's what God said to do.</p><p>Right? That's, that's not, that's, that apparently didn't work. Like, that's the kids who are falling out of the tradition, right? Yeah. The ones who are staying in the tradition are the ones who, who are being told by, I don't know, their, their communities or have come to the conclusion themselves or by their parents, well, you need to follow these traditions because your life will be better if you follow these traditions.</p><p>These traditions are part of who you are and they make you a better person. You know, take something like Lent, right? Like you can do Lent to try to, you know, glorify [00:27:00] God, or you can say, actually, fasting is an important thing to do for my mental health and my emotional and mental fortitude, and I will be a better person for doing it.</p><p>And, and that creates a logical reason to not abandon these traditions. And it is an easy argument. You know, it's like the larger thing is when I'm talking to Gen Z, if, if I go to them and I'm like, you should believe in God because of traditional religious argument. These arguments are incredibly ineffective on this generation.</p><p>If you, we should do another video on converting people because I think that would be a great video. Like, how, like, what arguments actually work well on me as a secular person and what arguments don't work well on me as a secular person. bUt or when I was more secular, I suppose, right? Like, like, But when you go to Gen Z and instead of saying, you know, you should believe in God for these like biblical arguments, right?</p><p>Like in the historic age of a [00:28:00] Christian apologetics, that was the way you would convert people. Now you go up to them and you show them statistics on mental health issues, aggressivism. You show them rising rates of suicide. You show them the crazy s**t that's happening in pop culture right now. And you're like, doesn't seem to be working, does it?</p><p>And this argument is actually very compelling to Gen Z. Which is really interesting to me, or at least the Gen Z that's open to this sort of stuff. Like, this is the key. And it's why it's important to, if you come from a cultural tradition that has left most of your traditions, like, like, like actual rituals and traditions and stuff like that, it can make sense to rebuild them for your family, whether that's creating new holidays or reviving old holidays.</p><p>That bring that cultural pride and continuity into future generations.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> That's, that's interesting. So you start out with a stat about belief in God, but in the end you're like, nah. It doesn't matter. Different kind of thing. [00:29:00] Well,</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> I mean, I think that is capturing how much things have changed. It does. Yeah, it</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> does capture it.</p><p>Because right now, like that, I guess that's one of the reasons why you wrote The Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion is you wanted to say that you can have a strong religion without faith in God. But. Presently, quite frankly, it's not a thing. There aren't strong religions without some kind of belief in God.</p><p>So you're trying to say it's possible. You don't think it really matters, but yeah, now it is sort of the thing that correlates.</p><p><strong>Malcolm Collins:</strong> So that makes sense. Well, I love you, Simone. I found another little, like, endangered bunny out there in the world. You know, that's, that was, well, I'm from an endangered cultural group.</p><p>It's very rare that I met someone like you. Well, I mean, it's, it's, it's a rare to have a cultural group that is both intellectualist and rural specialist and anti authority is a pretty rare combination in the world today. So it's not like it's easy for me to just piece somebody with this value set together.</p><p>Out from the environment, right? [00:30:00] And technophilic, right? Which, which, yeah, I'm just so glad to have met you. I, it was, it was a one in a million chance and we made it work by continuing to roll the dice, as we said somewhere in, in one of the other recent videos we did on, on persistence is intelligence is like having higher stats on a dice roll, like getting to add a number to a dice roll after a dice roll.</p><p>Whereas persistence. Is rolling with advantage. It's getting to roll over and over and over again. And, and I appreciate that you did that and that, that I took the time to do that because you are an amazing person.</p><p><strong>Simone Collins:</strong> I'm just glad you exist. Even, even if you hadn't chosen to spend your life with me, I'm just glad you were out there.</p><p>So thank you. Hmm.</p> <br /><br />This is a public episode. 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