I very rarely look in this kind of proximity
when I’m not sexting.
If you want to know how to be a good leader
watch Donald Trump and don’t’ do that.
Don’t do any of that.
I realized recently that I do something very
close to prayer.
And I don’t want to show any disrespect
to people by using the word prayer because
I know from my friends who are religious that
prayer has a supernatural element, that people
are actually connecting to a higher power.
And I don’t want to show disrespect to that.
But I also want to make a little bit of an
argument.
Sam Harris makes his argument for atheist
meditation.
I want to make a little bit of an argument
for atheist prayer.
I do something before I go to sleep at night
called Penn’s guild roundup.
And Penn’s guild roundup is I go through
conversations that I’ve had like tonight
before I go to bed I’ll think should I really
have made that sexting joke when I was at
the Big Think.
Should I really have done that?
Did that make people uncomfortable.
Is that a line.
And I’ll run through how I could have done
that better.
I say that with no joke.
I’ll actually do that.
And I run through conversations I’ve had
and things I’ve done.
One that comes up every night was, you know,
should I treat Teller better?
And the answer is always no.
But I do reflect about it.
I do think about it.
I also try to think of what I want and how
I can get there.
Now I’m very fortunate because when I go
to my desires they’re not very often material
desires because my family is well cared for.
I’ve been very lucky and I’ve done well.
But I think about – I used to think about
my weight and one of the things I used to
– and I’m very hesitant to use the word
because I don’t want to show disrespect
for those who think it really is supernatural.
But I would pray to be able to control the
watts of my diet.
Wouldn’t that be great?
And I try to run through how to do that and
I do believe with God there’s a lot of throwing
the baby out with the bathwater.
I’m not referring to baptism there.
I’m referring to the fact that so much of
the social and personal elements of religion
are really good.
I would say maybe more than good, maybe very
close to necessary.
Try to find ways for people to get together
and help each other and be in celebration
and all over this country now.
When I first started talking openly about
atheism the country was set at about .8 percent
for atheism - .8.
Less than one percent.
And now some polls are giving you over 20
percent.
I don’t think that people are being created
as atheists.
I think they’re just simply coming out of
the closet and we have to show a great deal
of gratitude to the religious people in the
U.S. for being more tolerant of atheists so
they do dare to come out.
But I’m watching now a lot of my friends
struggle with how to get that community in
their life.
And every community in this country whether
it’s the FOMO’s, you know, the former
Mormons in Salt Lake City.
They call themselves FOMO’s.
Or whether it’s the community thinkers in
the churches that don’t have God that are
in Vegas.
Or the DC chapters that are doing this stuff.
I hear about all of them.
They try to get together and do music and
do that kind of stuff.
We’re going to find what that is.
You know, maybe that already is a rock concert
or something.
I don’t know what it is.
Or maybe this is, you know, EDM music or EBM.
Maybe it is that and I’m just not hip to
it.
But things are happening in that.
But also personally.
We have to be very careful when we throw out
talking to God we don’t throw out self-reflection.
And I also don’t think and I think there’s
some religious atheists who would disagree
with me on this strongly.
But I think it’s okay to talk to an imaginary
power if you’re sure that power is imaginary.
There’s this nutty thing it’s like a Zen
cone to me.
Placebos work even when we know they’re
placebos.
That’s one hand clapping.
That’s harder than one hand clapping.
Placebos work when you know they’re placebos.
To do my weight loss one of the things I did
with Ray Cronise, Cray Ray, was to put myself
in a cult.
I used a lot of the techniques of a cult in
order to get my weight off.
I pretended that Cray Ray had answers to all
my questions.
Any question I asked Cray Ray would answer.
Now we knew in advance that he could be making
up stuff.
But I needed that.
I needed someone to give me the answers.
He also cut me off from my friends by saying
don’t talk about your diet to them ever
until you’ve lost your weight.
Don’t ever talk about it.
The first rule of Cray Ray, don’t talk about
Cray Ray.
Do this on your own.
We knew we were doing that kind of stuff.
We knew we were cheating.
And it worked.
It worked, you know.
You can pretend.
I think sports people do this all the time.
They pretend that winning a game is a life
and death situation.
They know it’s not but they believe it when
they’re playing whatever games they play.
Why I used a sports analogy when I don’t
know the rules to one single sport is beyond
me.
Bad rhetoric.
That’s why I did it.
But I also think there’s a lot from prayer
in just self-reflection.
You sit with yourself.
I like to do it right before I go to sleep.
Lying in bed going over how could today have
been better.
How can tomorrow be better.
How could I make my own life, my family’s
life and the world just a little better.
And I’m not talking about working hard and
busting your ass.
You don’t have to be a hero.
Just how much better.
Could I have been more polite to my barista?
Those are the kind of things I ask myself
at the end of the day.
I think that we’re going to find in 20 years
that we have pulled, just sucked out of religion
all the good, the community, the self-reflection,
the compassion, the love and thrown away the
bad, the God, the hate, the superstition.
Let that go away.
Let the reflection of the community come back
in.
And I pray you’ve understood me.
