Ryan Burge

You know, like how to just go and be social.

I speak to secular groups all the time.

And the question they asked me, which is sort of awkward, it goes, do you think that our way of living is defective or like inferior to yours?

I go, I don't want to speak about philosophical theological things.

because I have my own theology and you have yours.

I'm not going to convince you that I'm right and vice versa.

What I can tell you is unless and until you create the social organizations that religion has provided for American society for the last 250 years, I'm going to think the way that you're living is not as good as what, and by the way, not just Christianity, but Judaism or Islam or Latter-day Saints or whatever it is, the community of people meeting together on

a regular basis to share their lives with each other, to create a mutual aid society for each other, and also to serve people in the community is an objectively good thing.

And I think this is something I think people think that religion is all about belief.

And it certainly is for lots of people about belief to some level, but lots and lots of people go to a house of worship on a weekly basis and believe half of it or a third of it or none of it because they like the social connections they get for being part of that.

It works on two levels.

Right.

I think religion always has a vertical component.

You and God, your understanding of God and higher things.

But it has a very strong horizontal component to like you just hanging out with other people.

It's, you know, Ronnie Stark talked about during the Black Plague, you know, people were dying by a third of Europe died during the Black Plague.

Right.

But the rate of death among Christian communities was lower.

And a lot of Christians read that and think, oh, it's because God was protecting Christians from the Black Plague.

No, the answer is that Christians did not leave other Christians behind when they got sick with the Black Plague.