Derek Thompson

It's interesting to me that there's this category of Americans, and I want to learn more from you about the demographics of this group, that has almost gone into religion as if it's a foreign country and harvested certain souvenirs from that country and then brought it back to the world of secularism.

These are people who...

practice yoga, but have no interest really in understanding the religious origins of the practice.

Or they meditate, but they are not remotely interested in any kind of Buddhist version of Nirvana.

Astrology, as you said, is such an interesting phenomenon to practice or believe in.

if you don't believe in God, because you don't believe there's a God worth praying to, but you believe that he or she left stars that orbit each other and orbit or move around our sky in such a way as to divine our futures, which is obviously a funny juxtaposition.

Tell me a little bit about this group.

Who are they?

Are they growing?

And what do we misunderstand about them?

That answer really sprung a lot of thoughts.

Let me try to organize these as well as I can.

One thing I hear you describing in the distinction between traditional religion and the church without God movements that failed is a difference that some psychologists describe as thick versus thin culture.

Mm-hmm.

That some cultures have a thickness.

There's something keeping it together that isn't just proximity or routine.

Yeah.

There was a philosopher who came on the show, C.T.

Nguyen, who said that games have both a goal and a purpose.

If you play Settlers of Catan, the goal is to win, the purpose is to have fun.