Dr. David DeSteno
speaker
1,091 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2025
last heard Aug 2025
Dr. David DeSteno’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I mean, the thing I'd like to say is
When you look at religious practices, a way to think about them is as spiritual technologies, right?
They're technologies, mind-body practices that can move hearts and minds.
They can move them for good.
They can move them for ill, right?
It depends upon the motives of the people who are using them.
So people always say, Dave, religions are the source of all war.
Most wars aren't fought about religion.
There are some that are like, hey, I disagree with your interpretation of the scripture.
Most of them are about land and resources, but religion gets pulled in.
And what we know is that when you are feeling threatened, so the Bible, as you said, is a book of many voices.
There are beautiful passages in there about mercy and kindness.
There are other passages in there about dashing the heads of your enemies' babies against rocks, right, to punish them.
And so what we know is that when people feel more threatened
Their conception of God, or this work by the psychologist Kirk Gray and Joshua Jackson, their conceptions of God become more aggressive and punitive.
They believe that God values vengeance more.
And if you ask them to recall verses from the Bible, they're going to recall the ones that are about smashing the baby's heads as opposed to being kind and merciful.
And so this is why you can see things like Christian nationalism form.
And you can see if you go to some of these events, you'll see pictures of Jesus holding an AK-47, right?
Because our mind...
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