Dr. David DeSteno

And then people say, well, sure, but there can be hundreds of millions of other universes, right, that we know in the multiverse.

And so it's not that weird that we have here.

And so I just – I think it's never going to be the case that you're going to have proof.

You know, these arguments, these philosophies can bring you up to a certain point.

But to take that final step of belief or disbelief, it's faith one way or the other.

And again, it's why I think scientists –

need to stay in their lane.

You know, even Richard Dawkins, right, the most famous atheist around, will say he cannot be absolutely sure that God doesn't exist.

Yet he acts like he doesn't.

He urges you to not believe.

And so for me, I think let's not do that.

You know, when we talk about these practices, how they lead to health and well-being, I can't tell you if they are divinely inspired from a creator who cares about its creations and kind of gave them a roadmap or a user's guide to make life better.

or if they're cultural adaptations of people figuring stuff out over millennia but we don't need to answer that to have respect for them and to study how they work and to see what we can learn from them and if we're not willing to do that we're slowing down the science of human flourishing in my view in a similar vein i think um in the position that i found myself in the last few years of doing public health education public science education you know i

I agree with you, but let's talk about that older generation, because you're right, I have many in my family too who, you know, if the doctor doesn't prescribe it, don't take it.

But even during that time period when those folks were younger, the pharmaceutical companies, and I make this argument in my book, the pharmaceutical companies

had technology to make all kinds of drugs, but they didn't know where to look.

And so what did they do?

They sent people to traditional cultures around the world to find substances that, say, the traditional cultures say can help people.

They called it bioprospecting at the time.

And, you know, sure, a lot of those didn't do anything, but some did.