2022-01

Episode 98
This episode was originally recorded in early November and was set to be released at the end of December, but here we are at the end of January instead because time is a funny thing, isn't it? The moment you think you have a firm grasp on "now", it slips through your fingers. That's true both in terms of scheduling podcasts during the holidays and also understanding time from a relativistic perspective. Time might feel like it is moving at the same rate for everyone, but Einstein's theories (and later experimentation) prove otherwise. So without a universally agreed upon "now", how can we say anything true about a God who interacts within time? What good is repentance when the past and future are equally real? What about prophecy? Jesus' birth? Are we all destined for deism? Well, let's take some time to understand how relativity works first, and then we'll get to those (and many more) questions. 
Spoiler alert, we're going to talk about this one again in a special episode next time too because it's too much fun! 
 
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produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Transcript 
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.
Zack Jackson 00:05
You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion. This week our hosts are
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 00:14
Kendra Holt-Moore, assistant professor of religion at Bethany college. And the thing I'm looking forward to in the next year is not being a first time first year Professor anymore, because the first year of teaching is really hard.
 
Rachael Jackson 00:34
Rachael Jackson, Rabbi at Agoudas, Israel congregation Hendersonville, North Carolina. And the thing I am looking forward to in this coming year, is first a nine week sabbatical and the ability to travel because of vaccines.
 
Ian Binns 00:56
Ian Binns Associate Professor of elementary science education at UNC Charlotte, the first thing that popped my mind when thinking about what I'm looking forward to is going to see Rob Bell speak in Dallas, with my good buddy mark. February in February,
 
Zack Jackson 01:14
Zack Jackson UCC pastor in Redding, Pennsylvania, and I am super excited for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, which I don't want to, I don't want to say that it's going to happen in a couple of days, because this episode is supposed to launch like three days before it's supposed to launch. Because I don't know, it was originally supposed to launch in 2007. So it's had a couple of delays. But it's going to make the Hubble look like a like a pair of binoculars, it is going to be able to show all kinds of super exciting things from the very beginning of the universe. And I cannot wait to see that. So I mentioned James Webb as well, because I think satellites are super cool, in general. And so I want to I want to start today with a story about a satellite, a very famous satellite, you may have heard of it. Its name was Sputnik. It was the very first human satellite we ever put up there. And back way back in 1957, the Soviets kind of surprised everyone and was like, hey, look, we've got the technology. And we did it. And everyone in the world kind of freaked out because they weren't sure if there was going to be nukes or anything like that, and alien technology or whatever. And because they it had never been done before. They had to prove to people that it actually was happening. And not that they were just making the whole thing up. And so they equipped Sputnik with a radio pulse. So it would go around the earth and be like me, beep, beep, beep, beep, so anyone on Earth could listen in and be like, Oh, look at that. It is up there. It's beeping at me. That's really neat. And so at the at Johns Hopkins, couple days later, October 7 1957, a couple of junior physicists were sitting around at lunch talking. And these two guys, these buddies, William Guyer, and George weissenbach, they were just talking with their friends. And we're really surprised to learn that no one at Johns Hopkins had bothered to listen for it, using their radio technology. Like, honestly, that seems like something that divino fancy scientists people should do. So wife and Bach was working on microwave radiation for his Ph. D. Program at the time. And so he had a decent radio in his office. And so the two of them went upstairs and just start messing around with it, waiting for Sputnik to crossover. And there was Beep, beep, beep, beep. And they had the clarity of mind to be like, hey, this seems like it might be a historical event, we should grab a cassette tape. And we should take this thing, just, you know, so we can show our kids, this is what Sputnik sounded like. And so they did, and they recorded it. And then the next day, they were like, I wonder if we can we can get this a little clearer. And so they they messed with the frequencies and got it so they could hear it really clearly. And one of the things that they noticed was that just like, you know, when you're when you're standing on the side of the street and a car is coming, and it goes and it kind of like the sound goes up and then it goes down. That's called the Doppler effect. That has to do with things that are emitting sound or light that is also moving in relationship to you. And so like if it's moving towards you, the sound waves or the the waves of light, they get compressed, because it's moving towards you. If it's moving away from you, they get spread out. So the sound would sound higher or lower as it's going. Same is true with like radio waves. So the sound coming from the radio waves, if you looked at it from like, the, the wave perspective was kind of doing b, b be, though wouldn't made that sound. And so they were like, Oh, this is really interesting, hey, Johns Hopkins, can we use your supercomputer for a minute, which I say supercomputer, it probably has had the computing power of like a ti 83. Now, it was one of the very first digital computers in the world. And so they used it to do some really complicated math. And were able to calculate Sputnik's orbit, and their look at its location, and where it was going. And were able to predict when and where it would come back, using just the what we call the Doppler shift of the the width of the radio waves. And that was kind of a novel thing to do. When they released their information. The Russians were like, what, come on, guys, we have this one thing, and you had to go and top US that was so rude. I think that's what the Soviet said, I don't speak Russian. So that was fun. And then Sputnik burned out. And that was no more. But then the next May, their boss came to them, and called called them into his office, which is always a good thing and said, Hey, remember that thing you did was Sputnik? Do you think it's possible to do that backwards? Could you do that in reverse? Like, if we had satellites, where we knew where they were, at the time in orbit, sending a pulse down to earth? Would you be able to calculate where the receiver is, if we knew where the satellites were? And they were like, well, I guess the math is kind of the same, it's just backwards. And thus, the transit system was born, the very first satellite navigation system, because the Navy had this problem where they had these nuclear submarines that had the nuke nuclear missiles on them in the Arctic, which is waiting to blow up Russia. But the, they were supposed to be secret. And so they couldn't use the traditional means of navigation because they didn't want to give away their location. And so they kind of were getting lost up there in the Arctic. And so the, the Air Force sent up an array of five satellites orbiting the Arctic, and every couple of hours, it would pass overhead. And then they could get a ping on their location. And they could correct their maps, and they would know where they were. And that was great. And that was wonderful. And then we thought, I wonder what else we can use this technology for? And so the global positioning satellite system started to get dreamed up together, like, what if we took that, and we made a whole array of satellites, up in orbit, all sending pings down to earth, and we could triangulate, given the pings and the locations of a couple of them, and be able to tell where all kinds of things are airplanes. And, and, and, and like troops. And this is the military, they're always thinking about war stuff. And so what they would need to have a real time local navigation system was that the clocks on Earth would need to be synced with the clocks in the satellite. That would be real important if we're going to do real time navigation. So they have these really, really accurate atomic clocks, that one is in on Earth, and one is in orbit. And that was great. Except for one problem. There was this guy, you may have heard of him. He's kind of a big deal name is Albert Einstein. And about 60 years beforehand, he had proposed this crazy thing called general relativity, after his theory of special relativity, which suggested that Isaac Newton's laws, which had worked very well, by the way for the past, like 300 years, which were the laws, which helped them to get the satellites in orbit in the first place, it didn't work so well, when you were talking about the effects of gravity. So in a larger level, Newton's Laws kind of stop working, in particular, his theory of time, and the way that time moves, see a part of relativity stated that one's relationship to gravity affected the passage of time, which was a very counterintuitive thing, and at the time in 70s When this was getting put up, there were still testing. It seemed like it was passing all the tests general relativity was, was passing all of these tests. But they still weren't entirely convinced. And some of the scientists on this GPS project thought that we were going to disprove Einstein. And so we should just put the clocks up there, up there in the satellites, and the other scientists were like, no, if we put the clocks up there as they are, and not adjust them in any way for relativity, then they're going to be out of sync. And so they couldn't agree internally. And these satellites are very expensive. And back in the 70s, it was very, very expensive to send the satellite into space, it's still very expensive, but it was much more back then. And so they had, they kind of did this interesting trick. A sort of cheat, if you will, to appease both sides, and to be able to tell once and for all, if time actually does move differently, the further you get from Earth, in that they sent it up with just normal atomic clock. But they also had a sort of switch, where they could flip that switch, and then there was a little computer inside that would then adjust the time on the clock to then send back the corrected time to Earth. So they sent it up. And they let it be up there for about 20 days going around and discovered that yeah, it shifted the time in orbit past differently than the time on Earth. Seven microseconds per day, which I don't know, a microsecond doesn't seem like a whole lot of time. So seven microseconds per day of drift. But in terms of GPS, that's a drift of 10 kilometers per day, if not corrected. So one day of the satellites being up there, and they're useless. Because time travels, passes differently in orbit than it does on Earth. Yeah,
 
Rachael Jackson 12:14
so incredible. Like, yeah, that's subjective,
 
Zack Jackson 12:17
like you said, not just a fun theory,
 
Ian Binns 12:20
the seven microseconds thing, when you first say that, I'm just gonna like, oh, wow, what did he do? But the ramifications for those of us on the ground? That's just wow, like, I did not know that. That's crazy.
 
Zack Jackson 12:36
Yeah, the, the closer you are, so that, it's because there's less gravity less of Earth's gravity, the farther you get from the center of Earth. And so time, time will pass faster. On in orbit, the closer you get to the gravitational well, the slower time will pass. But because these things are relative to where they're being observed, I always get that backwards as to if you were on the earth, looking at the satellite, versus if you were on the satellite looking at the Earth, actually, relative to the Earth's age, you know, a couple billion years old, Earth's core is actually two and a half years younger than its surface. For what it's worth, you go. So now every single satellite that's in orbit, every single computer every single time, a piece that is up in orbit, and every all of the robots on Mars and the satellites flying out into deep space, all of that has to compensate for the fact that gravity affects time. That time passes differently for different people, for different observers in different places in different gravity wells. Depending on one's mass on one's gravity on one's velocity, time will pass differently. So GPS only works because time is weird. So in a manner of speaking, Albert Einstein is the father of Pokemon GO and so for that we give thanks
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 14:27
what a storyteller you are Zack to be able to craft to craft a narrative that leads to a conclusion.
 
Ian Binns 14:35
And to me, I love it, you know, so that we all roads
 
Zack Jackson 14:38
lead to Pokemon, right? That's but that's a lot to take in. And there's a lot of moving pieces to that and there's a lot of confusing counter intuitive things about how relativity bends space and time and what are the implications of the fact that there is not a solid steady passage of time. Which means there is no preferred present moment that the past and the future in the present are all on a spectrum instead of one, instead of us always being in the present and the past in the future being always somewhere else, the implications of that, and even understanding how that happens and why that happens. And all of that is a lot to unpack. So let's take a 15 second break, and take a breath. And be thankful that we can time 15 seconds unless you're on a spaceship, going half the speed of light, and then this could take a lot more than 50. All right, I want to tell you a quick thought experiment, that I'm adapting from one of Einstein's thought experiments, because I find any time we talk about things happening on trains, and lasers and things like that, in thought experiments to be hard to, to wrap my mind around. So I want to imagine for a second that we have a basketball robot. And basketball bot is an awesome robot, and he's predictable. And the things he does happen very predictably, he's got a hand that reaches out, it's one meter above the ground, it can bounce a basketball in one second. And it's steady and repeatable. You know, bum, bum, bum, bum, he's basketball bot, he's a robot, it's, it's easy to do. So you're watching basketball bot, as he's bouncing the ball in the airport. And, you know, one second, one second, one second, one meter, one meter, one meter, one meter, one meter, one meter, and then you and a basketball bot, because you're going to baggage claim, you walk on to the, to the moving sidewalk. And so you're standing there next to basketball bot, who is still bouncing the basketball because he's programmed to bounce the basketball. And he's still going one meter down, one meter up, one meter down one meter up in one second. And that hasn't changed for you. But the person standing on the side watching this strange basketball bot, bounce a basketball in the airport, on the people walk thing is not seeing the basketball goes straight down and straight up. Because we've added a velocity in another direction. So if that is moving sufficiently fast, while he's bouncing straight up and down, with a person on the side is seeing is really it bouncing in an angle, and then bouncing up in an angle, because of the way that they're seeing. And so in classic physics, that's not a problem, the old heads of physics, they were talking about the same thing, that just means you have now added velocity in a separate direction. And so now there's more speed to be had. Right? Speed is just distance divided by time. So you know, we're just adding a bit more distance if you're moving sideways, as well. So it's speeding up. According to the person on the outside, which is fine. Basketball can go faster, because it can write, there's no limit to the speed of basketballs. So basketball bot is not a problem. He's a great guy, now, laser basketball man, robot guy who is doing the same thing, except instead of bouncing a basketball, he is bouncing a photon, up and down, up and down, one meter up and down, up and down. You're standing next to him, that photon is moving at the speed of light, because that's what they do, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, bouncing off a mirror coming back up to his hand. And that's fine. So then he goes on the people walk, moving sidewalk thing, and a person on the outside now sees if it's moving sufficiently fast, it not going straight up and down, but following the same vector that bounces sideways and up, which means that it would have to have accelerated in one direction. But we know that the speed of light is a constant, and you can't go faster than the speed of light. So how is it then that to the person on the outside, it appears that it has moved faster than the speed of light, magic. Speed is just distance divided by time. And the speed has to be constant. That means that time then has to change. If all the mathematics are going to work out, fine. Then if distance changes, so does time. And so when we're talking about things that obey the speed of light, like a photon that can't go faster than time then starts to get wibbly wobbly. So that's the that's the insight that comes from special relativity is that Newtonian physics works really well, from the perspective of your everyday life. Right? Bouncing a basketball, Newtonian physics works great. But when you break it down to things that either are massive, like planets, or that move incredibly fast, like light, then it starts to break down and relativity takes over. And so we start to extrapolate outward from that, and finding out that time doesn't move the same for everyone, time is dependent on your frame of reference on your velocity on your mass on your, on your gravitational pull. And so for most of us, that's not going to matter. Most of us are going to live our whole lives in roughly the same gravity, well, at roughly the same velocity, we're not going to be traveling near the speed of light, we're not going to have to worry about this. Right? So why even talk about it?
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 21:10
Why even talk about it?
 
Ian Binns 21:13
Because it's really fun. I mean, there's more reasons than that, obviously, but I've always found this stuff just quite fascinating. Blows my brain just
 
Zack Jackson 21:23
gonna end the episode right there. Just no reason to talk about it's not gonna affect us show.
 
Rachael Jackson 21:32
Let's move on with our day.
 
Zack Jackson 21:34
But it does kind of bust the whole way we think about past present future, doesn't it that, that there is this constant flow of time from past to future, that past is gone. It's just a memory. The present is where we live, and the future is what's coming, hasn't happened yet. And like, that way of thinking, permeates all of our religious tradition, the way we think about God, the way we think about God's interaction with humanity is all based in this there was the past, it calls the present. And now the present will influence the future, especially in Christianity, because we are an eschatological religion, which is fancy theological ways of saying we are a religion of the end, we have people who are looking forward to the end to the redemption of all to the sort of an end goal of things being made, right? That only works if there is a progression of time. How do you save something if the end and the beginning and the middle are all the same? How does God interact in time? Do we believe that God is time less? And if God is outside of the flow of time, as we experience it, then which one is God's preferred time God's preferred now? Like there's some beautiful theologies like process theology, which believes with which teaches that God and creation are intrinsically intertwined, and that God is growing and changing and moving with creation. And I love that, and that God doesn't know the future, and God is moving along with us. But it doesn't work. When you realize that there is no preferred present moment, and everything breaks down on the macro level. You don't for example, if you and your friend were in in twin spaceships, and you were hanging out near a black hole, and your buddy got a little bit too close, and then got sucked into the event horizon, from your perspective, you could stay there for the rest of your life and watch them slowly fall into the black hole. They would just be falling and falling and falling forever. But from their perspective, in an instant, they would be instantly spaghettified which is the actual technical term for when you get sucked into a black hole and get pulled down atom by atom into single strand of be of existence spaghettified we get a five spaghettified you can quote me on that. That's, that's the science word. Well, so
 
Ian Binns 24:26
I've always felt like in, you know, when you come to the notion of God, that just seemed limiting to me that we could only think of God as a being that is limited to our notion of time, to the human notion of time, right. Like, I would like to think that there is a God that God is more powerful than that, right? There's not there's not a limiting factor there. If that makes any sense. Yeah. No, like one man literally interpret, you know, the story of great the creation story, or stories and, and Genesis, when they see that, you know, on the first day this happened second day Ebola seventh day God rested. And people like See, look, it happened in one week. I'm kinda like you, like really like you can't you struggle with the notion that it's bigger than that like that God is limited to our personal understanding our own individual understanding of what a week is, and what a day is like that just to me that that kind of puts God into a into a bubble. Right? That's like, the only way I can understand God is by God is in a life like mine. And I would like to think that if God does exist, that God is outside of that mentality, that there's God's not limited in that situation. That's just how I view it.
 
Zack Jackson 26:01
So then how would a being outside of the flow of time interact within the flow of time?
 
Ian Binns 26:07
I don't know. You know, when I die, and if there is a God, and I get a chance to meet God, that may be one of my questions. How do you do that? Can you teach me that trick? I mean, I know. But I just I don't know. Yeah, I feel like that's another good thought experiment.
 
Rachael Jackson 26:28
Man, please. Yeah. One of the ways that we've sort of wrestled with this idea, I shouldn't say we, that I have wrestled with this idea of time, and God. I've heard the idea that is, God is all good, all knowing, all powerful, and all time. That doesn't work for my theology, when I look at the world around me. So it's like, Okay, which of these variables Am I comfortable eliminating? And I was not comfortable with eliminating that God is all good. That that that feels really terrible to think that God is not good. So and I'll spare you all the details of going through that that journey, where I end up for this conversation is that if God is all time, perhaps God is the present, as we know it, that it's, it is in our time, that God is of all times, but we experience time in a linear fashion. And so that's where God exists with us is in our times. And so God has the ability to move through time space continuum. Great. I don't and so I can experience God in this time. And I employ that in one of the prayers that I say where we, we ask for healing. And at the end, I always say, made those in need find healing in a time near to us. I don't if we're praying to God, I want God to know that I don't want this on a god time scale. I would like this on our time scale. So I, I agree with you and that there it seems confining to have God exists in a singular time frame. But I myself do exist in that time frame going back to Zach's point of like, no Newtonian physics, pretty much my life not gonna break out in Newtonian physics, I don't really need to think too much on this. So from a theological standpoint, I say, Okay, God experiences or relativity in a way that I don't. So it's my question then have to wrestle with myself of how do I then have God in my timeline? In my time, so I don't know if that makes any sense. But that's, that's sort of how I answer that question.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 29:02
So the way that I think about alternative, like, forms of guard, like the kinds of theologies that I think are really compatible with this, you know, revolution in the understanding of time, it I think that mystical theologies become so much more kind of intriguing, and it you know, it's like, it does. Accepting, like, Einsteinian mechanics of time and you know, mystical theologies. It requires an acceptance of, well, I think most of the time it requires an acceptance of a non theistic version of God, or like a non anthropomorphic version of God. And so what I mean when I say those things is, you know, A version of God that that's not like, made in the image of like human beings are human ish versions of God, you know the God with arms and legs and a face. And that's really hard I think for a lot of people to kind of let go of, especially if, if we're talking about like the monotheism 's of like Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I mean, and really like the most of the major world religions that talk about God, there is something that tends to become very like humanoid about God, but that's never like there's always mystical strains of theology in, in religions. And so the, the ones that kind of come to mind that I think are are like some of the first ones that I thought of, and I know if Adam was here, this is probably something that he would bring up too is like Paul Tilex. Image of God as the ground of being. And Tillich kind of uses this phrase ground of being to, to be the stand in for God. And it kind of replaces this very anthropomorphic version of God with a vision of God that is, like a more like a foundation. And it's more like this stable, like, stable yet creative. floor at the bottom of all, all that is. And you know, there's, there's a lot in Tillich in theology and talking just about the ground of being if Adam listens to this and is like, Well, Adam, should have been here
 
Zack Jackson 32:01
wasn't the Paul Tillich society? At one point?
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 32:05
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's true. But you know, that's like, that's your kind of letting go. It's a very, it's a more like, abstract kind of way of thinking about, like, what God is, but I actually, I think my personal favorite, like mystical kind of vision of God actually comes from a mystic named Nicholas of Cusa. And whenever I was, in my master's degree, I took a class called Nicolas of Cuza about this, like mystic theologian, and I remember Reading some of his primary works. And there was a chapter that was all about his, his, like, you know, his, kind of like systematic theology. And but there was a few pages in this one chapter that just had like math in it was like, what is happening? What, why I like circled all the math and wrote in the margins of my textbook, like, Excuse me, like, No, I think I even like wrote out a very dramatic like, no, with multiple exploits, XSplit exclamation, and was just like, This is not what I want to be, like thinking about when I'm trying to like foster a spiritual experience. And, and I have a, you know, a couple years later, after that class, I took a class called science literacy with my doctoral advisor. And in that class, it was like, one of the most fascinating and also difficult classes that I've taken, because it's like a crash course in physics. And like, you know, we talk about special theory of relativity, general theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, like all of that, and what are the philosophical and like theological implications of those things. And it was during that class that I had to kind of go back to the theology of Nicholas of Cusa. And look at my margins, in the notes on the pages where there is mass and the universe and God, and then I just like, it made sense to me. I was like, I still, I'm just like, not someone who naturally thinks in a very mathy way, and so I always find that challenging. But there's also like, the only times that I have been able to have been able to, like have an experience of all thinking about math is when I'm thinking about the implication of, like, math on like, I don't know, like, like metaphysics or like the structure of the universe. And so, the point being that Nicolas of Cusa talks about the enfolding and unfolding of, of God or of of the universe, there's, there's this breath metaphor Almost of this enfolding everything kind of collapsing into one unit, one like period, one point. And in that enfolding every, like you and I, and all that is, we are one, it's like a oneness. And then the unfolding is this like, you know, it's the, the exhale or like the other side of the breath it unfolds. And again, we all kind of diverge into particularities and we have our, you know, our specific to kind of tie it back to our conversation wells of gravity, where we exist. But we also keep in folding and unfolding. So there's like this dual experience of like, oneness, and specificity and like divergence. That is just like, I think such a beautiful image of like wholeness, and like, it's like both the duality and oneness that I just think is like such a perfect, like, non theistic kind of theological representation of these like time dynamics that force us to think beyond, you know, Newtonian mechanics. So that's kind of what comes to mind for me.
 
Zack Jackson 36:42
Well, if you're into sacred mathematics, and mysticism, you would love by Sagaris. They were all about that life, almost worshipping numbers and mathematics, thinking of it as this ticket in small doses. You also if you're a pipe factory, and you can't eat beans, that was that was against their religion to
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 37:03
work for me. Yeah.
 
Zack Jackson 37:05
I think he thought that the beans in humans came from the same source. And so it was a bit of cannibalism. Who knows you're that part about
 
Ian Binns 37:16
Sagaris when I was studying that, but
 
Zack Jackson 37:18
you mostly just hear about the whole triangle thing, right? You don't hear about the toggery worship numbers.
 
Ian Binns 37:23
It's been a long time since I took that really cool history science class.
 
Zack Jackson 37:27
So yeah, it's been a couple 1000 years since the Python, Koreans. But we're at
 
Ian Binns 37:34
that times all relative, right?
 
Zack Jackson 37:36
Well, yeah. I mean, how do we think of time typically, we think of it like, like those moving sidewalks at the airport, right? That we're all standing on it. And we're all moving at the same rate, or like a flow of a river, that we're all moving together along the same rate. But we found out that you can kind of move on that river, you can paddle one way or the other, and you can slow down or speed up your position in time in that river. And so it time kind of then acts more like a frozen river with kids ice skating all over it, rather than a group of people on a lazy river in their tubes, all moving at the same speed. So it does, I think this has been my problem to Kandra is that I'm fine with almost all of these weird things in about relativity and time. But it hurts my conception of a real time theistic God like the God that is in the moment with me right now. It makes that harder to stomach harder to conceptualize. You know, if if, if God doesn't have a preferred present moment, then like, Oh, okay. Then.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 39:03
Yeah, yeah, implications of that are really like they are really far reaching for for Christianity and, and Judaism in Islam, I think in particular. And it's, you know, I think there are also people who maybe, and I don't know if this like kind of resonates with your experience, maybe not Zack, but people who kind of like if you kind of asked them or forced them to explain their theology, they might they might actually say something that sounds more non theistic. But in their day to day lives, they kind of like re impose a theistic like face on there, like non theistic theology, like it's, it's, it's, you know, again, that's not that's, it's almost like Like, I don't know that this is like the appropriate way to frame it but like a second naivete
 
Zack Jackson 40:06
almost of like, yes. What we're doing physics
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 40:09
come to Yeah, like if you're if your theology if it's important to you for the theology and the physics to kind of fit together then maybe that's like what you do. But for like, you know, religious and spiritual community and talking day to day, you still use language that has like familiarity and like personhood, and I don't like this is something that people will argue about, because some people think that's like a disingenuous, and I get that. But I also, I think it's just important for the way that people relate to each other and to other things in the world and to relationships. So I actually find that completely, like understandable and normal.
 
Zack Jackson 40:57
It's like my day to day theology is Newtonian. But my, if I'm thinking about it, my actual theology is Einsteinian. Right? That right? It makes sense in the day to day to have an eminent theistic God. But it makes sense in the quiet moments where I'm thinking, to think about a, a more universal presence than a theistic imminent God. And I think we do that all the time. With our theologies, we've got, we've got different types of theologies that apply to different situations, the theology that you have when you're suffering is different than the theology you have when you're not. And we just, we all do, and that's fine. Like I don't at like funerals and stuff, people always talk about how that person has gone on. And now they're watching over me and blah, blah, blah. But like, there's no part in the New Testament that talks about that, there that the New Testament teaches that you die, you die, and you go on the ground, and your soul, your spirit, all of that is over. And it's done, until the Second Coming, and the resurrection of the dead. And then everyone comes back together, there is no, like waiting up in heaven, and playing a harp and watching you as you live your life. There is none of that in the New Testament, but we all just pretend like it's there. Because it is comforting to us in the moment, even if we don't really believe that so and so was watching us from afar, we like to believe that it's true. You know, I think we do that practically. And it's okay to admit that as a way of contextualizing our theology in the moment.
 
Rachael Jackson 42:27
And it's and it can be used as a coping mechanism. Yeah, theology has coping.
 
Zack Jackson 42:33
So when this episode airs, it's going to be like, I don't know, two weeks from Christmas or so. Which is, I don't know, sort of one of the important parts of of the Christian year. It's like, this moment in Christian theology where just a little, a little bit, a little bit. It's this moment in Christian theology, where it's like, God has been working through people for eons, and moving through the cycles of time, and nations and empires and kings and prophets and priests and individuals. And then, at some point, God says, Alright, kids, you sit down, I'm gonna take care of this for a minute, and comes in and breaks through, and there's this. Countless theologies that have tried to explain how God becomes human. How do we break this barrier between the infinite in the finite this, this this, we call it kenosis, this emptying of divinity in order to become humanity. I mean, there's none of them actually make a whole lot of sense. Logically, there are, which you sort of have to have to get all mystical and non dualistic before anything makes any sense? If you really think about it for too long, in terms of the Incarnation. But it's this breaking through a moment that we celebrate, in which something that is entirely other breaks into time and into history, that which is universal becomes particular, that God has to become a single person in a single time with a single genetic makeup who lives a single life. And there's some, I mean, that's helpful to some extent, to imagine that in our day to day lives, I also wonder then, if we were to draw that outward, if we were to say that time and space are connected, are one in the same. And just like, I believe that San Diego still exists, even though I'm not there. I also believe that three BC exists, even though I'm not there. And so in that way of thinking about time, that the past is not something that is gone, but it's just something that I'm not experienced. In saying that the incarnation the breaking in of God into the world is something that is happening in an infinite present moment in what we would consider 1000s of years ago. And so in all of these places in which God is breaking into time, those are places that are infinitely being broken into time. And you can think then of the final redemption of the world less as something to look forward to, and something that as opposed to something that we're living into something that we're experiencing the ripples of redemption, the way that you would experience gravitational waves of a black hole collisions. But these just musings of ways that I like to try to think about things that I have no real theological grounding, and I'm trying to be careful not to draw those conclusions too far as just rereading a paper I wrote in seminary, I posted it to y'all, it's fine. No one reads, that's 20 pages. And the the, the final conclusion I made was just drawn way too broadly outward, because I got excited about the implications of a God that breaks into time infinitely. And the ripples of redemption that can get flow through time through single redemptive acts, which I don't know if I would draw those points anymore, but they were fun to dwell on back then. So I should say, to wrap things up, we don't actually know why we experienced the flow of time. All of these revelations that come out of relativity are counterintuitive. It doesn't feel like the past and the future are real, it feels like they are ideas. And the present is the only moment we've ever experienced, that's our lived reality. That's the way our brains have formed. And for some reason, the way that we experience the dimension of time, whether that's just a way that our consciousness adapted to be able to function well, or if there is some divine reason that we experience a single moment instead of an entirety of moments. Nobody really has a good explanation. So a lot of this sort of thinking is theoretical, and a lot of it is hard to wrap your head around. And I think it's probably okay to have a an eminent theology that works on the Newtonian level of day to day life, as well as having a sort of what if kind of theology in which you are imagining the implications of something that has implications but are hard to fathom in our everyday life? If that makes sense. Do you think that's okay? Or is that disingenuous? No, I think that's good. If Adam were here, he would argue with me that it would be disingenuous, but again, Adam is not here to defend himself
 
Ian Binns 48:23
that since so vault.
 
Zack Jackson 48:27
So I would just like to end this segment by saying that I am right and Adam is wrong, and there is nothing that he can do or say, to correct me. And if he would like to correct me, he will have to do so in a future episode when he leads. So there
 
Rachael Jackson 48:51
so today's today's day down the wormhole, minute story from the Talmud. This comes from the Babylonian Talmud in Tractate to a neat around page 23. That's in case anyone wants to check my citation or read the entire story. There's a character a person however, you want to understand the people in these texts, whose name is Honi. And there's quite a few stories about him. And so one of the stories that I want to tell you about is the day that Honi slept. And as a tired parent, it just sounds amazing. Story. One day, Connie, the circle maker was traveling along a road and he saw an old man planting a care of tree when he stops and asks him, how long will it take for this Tree to fully bear fruit. And the man replies 70 years. Astonished Honi asks, Do you think you will live another 70 years? There, the man replies calmly. I found care of trees growing when I was born, because my forefathers planted them for me, so I to plant them for my children. Thereupon, Connie sat down to have a meal, and sleep overcame him. As he slept, a rock formation grew around him hiding him from sight, and he slept and he slept. And he slept. He continued to sleep for 70 years. When he woke up, he saw what it look like to be this same man gathering beautiful fruit fully bloomed a fully mature fruit from a Carib tree. Astonished Honi then asks, Are You the man who planted this tree? No. The man replies, I am his grandson. That's when Connie realizes that he has slept for 70 years. Connie goes home and finds that his son has died, but his grandson was still alive. And so he says to the members of his household, I am Honi the circle maker, but they didn't believe him, because it had been 70 years since when he had passed and vise been seen. Since then he left the house and he went to the Beit Midrash the study hall, and he announces, I am Honi the circle maker, but no one believed him and they didn't give him any respect. So Honee an utter despairs, praise for Divine Mercy. And he dies. To this Raava another person of the time says, For this reason people say give me companionship, or give me death. And it is for this reason that we gravitate towards others. That though time might pass we experience it in a linear fashion that it is the people with whom we have connections with it is a way of thinking about the past providing for the future but really living in these moments that make it worthwhile. That is what Honi the circle maker can teach us from his sleep of 70 years.
 
Zack Jackson 52:52
May we all sleep for 70 years.

Episode 97
Today we are joined by psychologist, pastor, professor, podcaster, and the most interesting person you will meet today, the Rev. Dr. Vikki Gaskin-Butler. We talk about how womanism and what the psychology of religion has to offer at the intersection of class, race, and gender. Does religion actually make us better or should we spend our weekends at the gym instead? How do we raise emotionally children? How do we become emotionally healthy adults? Let's talk about it! 
 
The Healing the Human Spirit Podcast
https://anchor.fm/vikki-gaskin-butler
 
Rev. Dr. Vikki Gaskin-Butler is a licensed psychologist (clinical and health psychology) and ordained clergy person. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Spelman College and her Master of Science and Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Florida. She also received a Master of Divinity degree from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.
Today’s guest has served as a psychologist in university counseling centers, clinic director in an interfaith-based counseling center, and as director of a university psychology clinic. She has supervised numerous students in pursuit of psychology, mental health counseling, and social work degrees. She has led clergy consultation groups and served as a consultant with church/church-affiliated and secular organizations. In addition, she has served as a minister of education and an associate pastor in local churches.
Our guest draws on her knowledge of human potential from her experience as a psychologist and ordained clergy person to support the psychological, spiritual, and physical well-being of all people. Through her first-hand knowledge of life as a wife, mother, musician, professor, clinician, and minister, she has the insight to support the needs of adults, including performing artists, clergy, and health professionals.
In her words:  "My passion is to constantly move toward my own divine potential. Throughout this journey, I have experienced struggle, doubt, grief, joy, peace, and all of the emotions that make us human. These emotions and the experiences connected with them have made me more whole as I followed the thread of healing to freedom. These emotional experiences have also created within me a deep well of compassion for others as they journey on their paths to health and wholeness."
 
Support this podcast on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/DowntheWormholepodcast
 
More information at https://www.downthewormhole.com/
 
produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis 
 
Transcript 
This transcript was automatically generated by www.otter.ai, and as such contains errors (especially when multiple people are talking). As the AI learns our voices, the transcripts will improve. We hope it is helpful even with the errors.
 
Zack Jackson 00:04
You are listening to the down the wormhole podcast exploring the strange and fascinating relationship between science and religion.
 
Ian Binns 00:12
Our guest today is a licensed psychologist, both clinical and health psychology and ordained clergy person. She received her bachelor's degree in psychology from Spelman College and her Master of Science and PhD in Psychology from the University of Florida. She also received a master of divinity degree degree from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. Today's guests who served as a psychologist in University Counseling Centers clinical director and interfaith based Counseling Center, and as director of a university psychology clinic. In addition, she has served as a minister of education and associate pastor in local churches. Our guests are all in her knowledge of human potential from her experience as a psychologist, an ordained clergy person to support the psychological, spiritual and physical well being of all people through her firsthand knowledge of life as a wife, mother, musician, Professor, clinician and minister. She has the insight to support the needs of adults, including performing artists, clergy and health professionals. We're very excited to welcome to the show Dr. Vicki T. Gaskin, Butler.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 01:15
Thank you. I'm so excited about being here. Welcome.
 
Ian Binns 01:18
Welcome. Welcome. Okay, so I've done my part. You guys. Go ahead. What? Zack, you have to edit that out.
 
Zack Jackson 01:28
Oh, yeah. Mike drop. He hands down. He's gonna go home now. Oh, you are home?
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 01:35
Yes. Oh, yeah. It's nice to have you at this Vicki. Um, do you and he in one or both of you want to share a little bit about like your connection? How did you meet? And how did we get, you know, how, how did we get to this moment where we get to have you on to talk to you and ask you about, you know, the work that you do.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 02:02
Okay, so I can tell you my said, and I think Ian should tell you his side as well.
 
Ian Binns 02:09
Sounds good.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 02:10
My husband introduced me to Ian via email. But before that, he told me about Ian. And he said, She's really cool. And he's doing some really cool stuff. And I know you'll be interested in it. And so he told me about your podcast, and you told me about the fellowship you had. And so then I started being nosy and looking around and try to find out who Ian was. And my husband said, Yeah, I told him about you. And y'all should get in touch. And I think you'll he'll, he'll be a good guest on your podcast, which I thought was great, because now I want all of you to be guest on my podcast, just just so you know. And
 
Zack Jackson 03:04
on your podcast. You want to plug your podcast,
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 03:09
I just started it's called Healing the human spirit. And it covers any topic, literally any topic that's salient for human beings. Because I I've said this a million times, but for me, as a psychologist and a clergy person. I use my dad's phrase that I heard him say when I was like in high school and middle school, inextricably intertwined. Psychology and religion for me, and spirituality are inextricably intertwined. And so the podcast is really about all kinds of things that affect our human spirit and how we can use any occurrences in our lives to help us heal. Whether those things are quote unquote, labeled as good things, bad things or in between.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 04:06
When When could people expect the first episode?
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 04:11
Actually, the first episode happened a month ago because I launched before I was ready. And my husband was my first guest and he we talked about gosh, we talked about the Coronavirus, science, the Coronavirus and religion. So we talked about those three topics because he is a science educator and undergraduate degree in physics. So, we have lots of interesting conversations around,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 04:42
I bet. And it's so fun to talk to people who cast those wide nets, which sounds like that's exactly what you're doing in your work and what the podcast is like, everything that matters for human beings and human flourishing, let's just tackle it all. So that's great.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 05:06
My topic though, is science and religion. So I'm gonna try not to be too heavy on that. science, religion and spirituality, oh,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 05:16
we invite that.
 
Zack Jackson 05:18
I mean, heavy. I'm gonna jump right into that. That is literally what this podcast is about.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 05:25
So, I want to I do want to cover lots of other things, but that, as you can see, I'm here today with you. It's my favorite.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 05:35
No, I'm excited to hear more about that. Um, and was there anything that you wanted to share about your meeting?
 
Ian Binns 05:43
Yeah, so, um, Vicki's husband, Malcolm and I have known each other for several years, since we're both science educators. And we got to know each other in one of our professional conferences, and just would stay in touch. And every time we see each other, we'd sit down and hang out and just talk and catch up and stuff. And then he became or was one of the finalists for the Dean position for my college, college education, and ended up getting the job. And when he came on the interview, I was actually we were going to be recording an episode while he was there. And he was really interested in the podcast again, because he knew about it. And then that's when he told me about Vicki and said, I think y'all need to meet because you guys have similar interests. And so when Vicki and I met, and we've only met like this one time, and, you know, I remember after I hung up, my wife was another room, and she knew that I was meeting Vicki, and she's like, Wow, you guys hit it off beautifully. I was like, Yeah, that was a lot of fun. So, um, so I knew we had to get her on. And yeah, as I said, Before, we were recording I think Vicki and I, once they move up here in a couple months are going to become good friends, because she just has a lot to
 
Zack Jackson 06:59
offer. Yeah, Ian texted all of us almost immediately. And like, like he had just met the president or something. And he's like, yeah, oh, my gosh, you have to meet this person. She's a wonderful.
 
Ian Binns 07:11
Now, so I was sharing some of the things you mentioned. And everyone was like, Oh, well, amen. We got to do this. And so. So yeah, and it was just neat. It was fun for me, you know, with Malcolm getting hired. And, you know, as my next Dean, to have a science educator, as the dean, but then to realize, you know, and I know that Malcolm is a person of faith as well. But then when he introduced me to Vicki, and your areas of interest and expertise, I just knew right away, we would get along. Well, so.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 07:43
Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, vier, it's exciting. Yeah. So So Vicki, I guess the first the first thing that I want to ask about your work is maybe more of a general question, just so you can say a bit and like, let everybody know, you know, what it is that you do? Generally? So do you just want to tell us, like, what it means to, to do this work as a clinician, like the kind of intersection of your various roles as a clinical psychologist, and, you know, your work in religion and spirituality? Like, what? What does that look like for you? What are your research interests? And yeah, anything that you want to share about that to get us started?
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 08:24
So when I was talking with Ian, I told him I call myself a womanist, psychologist of religion. And why is because I did my PhD in Psychology before I went to seminary, because I hadn't never had any intention of going to seminary. And if any of you know about some clergy people, it's like, never doing that. And for me, it was, I even know I grew up. I grew up in a religious family. In terms of, there are so many people who are clergy in my family that I would start giving you a list and there will be too many of them to name but I'm including my dad. And as a result of that, I figured there were enough clergy people in my family, so they didn't need me to be clergy. Nobody needed me to be clergy because they had a cover. So I wanted to become a psychologist, and I did and actually is partially from witnessing my dad doing his work. And, and I'll tell you, just a quick, quick story. I let's see, when I was in elementary school, I would go to work with my mom. As my mom walked next door to our house, literally, they built our house, behind the nursing home, the nursing home was our family on nursing home. And so when school was out, I go over there sometimes, but we were there every day, literally just about every day, except for weekends, and then sometimes on weekends at the nursing home. So anytime I could not go to the nursing home, I would go to work with my dad. My dad was the director of a, let's see, I think it was a day program. I think that's what they called it, it was the 70 day program for youth who had some kind of criminal background, they might have gotten in trouble be in it. And it may have been related to drugs as well. But it was a drug treatment program. But they also may have had some other offenses, right. And so I would go to work with him. And witnessing his work with those. They were all teenagers, they seem much older to me because I was in elementary school, but witnessing his work with them, made me want to become a psychologist. But I didn't have the language to know that that's what I wanted to be I didn't know it was a what's called a psychologist at that point. And because of that experience, and there's so much that goes into that, and if you want to hear it, I'll tell you later, but because of that experience, I watched my dad work with them, I watched them, and the way they communicate with each other and how my dad and other people who worked in the center facilitated that communication. And so even communication that would seem negative, or hostile, or whatever you call it, that wasn't good for an elementary school person. Then I also noticed that they were just very honest with each other. And they will walk away from those interactions, more connected with each other, not angry, not upset, not hostile, they were just more connected in. And I said, I want to do that when I grow up, I want to work with people to help them have those kinds of honest relationships where you can communicate freely, and not run away when there's some kind of difficult interaction. And so that's why I wanted to become a psychologist. Still didn't have the language for it at that point. And then I have to say that in my life, I the church was always such a part of life, just going to different things. But the church was more like a community center to me. And that our church was a Community Church that helped so many. They build apartments for low income housing, they had a credit union, there were all kinds of things that that church did, and I just noticed those things growing up and I thought this is really cool. This is what the church is supposed to be to help people. And for me I just had a good experience growing up learning all those Bible stories that some kids didn't care about, but I love them. And I really wanted to be like Solomon wise like Solomon and I was I still remember learning about the story of Solomon and the two women who were fighting over a baby and Solomon said Okay, cut the baby in half and I was like, Oh my gosh, you know, kids do this you know the suspense and then of course he did not the woman whose baby it was said no, don't do it. And the other woman say yeah, cut it in half. And Selma said, Okay, now I know whose baby it is. And I thought, oh, man, I want to be like that when I grew up. I just want it to be wise. What
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 14:27
follow up question. Have you ever had to threaten to cut in half?
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 14:32
No, I have not thank goodness. Thank goodness. And just for the record, I would not use that tactic. Find another way to figure it out.
 
Zack Jackson 14:47
That's kind of go in the nuclear option right away.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 14:54
But I was just impressed with that. So I thought okay, I want to be wise and those like those critical things just stuck with me throughout my life in training, and then fast forward all the way to becoming a psychologist. And I was in practice for about four, three, actually three years out of graduate school. And I was in this church and working with a group of women. And we had this group we all wanted to meet, we were all the same age, it was really funny. We were literally the same age, we were all like 30 to 32. And dealing with life and having children and all that stuff, and, and we had this group get together, and I ended up becoming the leader of the group, and bringing together resources that we would study together and all that stuff. And I've ended up being like the pastor of the group. And from that experience, that's when I decided to accept my call to ministry because I thought, okay, it's not going to be me just donating, quote, unquote, my idea was to donate my services to the church as a psychologist, but I also realized I could do the other stuff, too. And so I accepted my call, went to seminary, and then seminary, I learned that I was a psychologist. Can I say that because my friends are terrible. They're really terrible. If they're listening, y'all should know y'all are terrible, because I really terrible, they're my friends. But I had this aha moment in one of my classes as we were getting near the end of the process in seminary and getting closer to graduation. And I said, Oh, my God, I'm a psychologist. I'm a psychologist. And they were like, Yeah, we know, we've been getting free therapy this whole three years. But what I mean was, I, I've always known that I could do all the local church stuff, because I learned it growing up, it was a part of my life. And in my daily life, especially from, I don't know, almost birth, but a part of my life. So I knew I could do local church, I could run a church, I could do all those things. I could do parish ministry. But in seminary, what I learned is, I really I just would say the world is my pulpit. Because I, I look at the intersection of psychology and theology for me, and it helps me to really relate better to everyone, anyone and everyone I encounter. Even the people that might be difficult. And I mean, I was challenged in so many ways like the I think it was the Timothy McVeigh. All remember Timothy McVeigh that Oklahoma City. Okay, so I was in a class and we were talking about Timothy McVeigh and and we were wrestling with how does God feel about Timothy McVeigh? And he came away with it, like, Oh, God probably loves Timothy McVeigh. Even though he may seem unlovable to all of us, he did something very awful, awful, write something that was so harmful and caused so much pain. And we were like, okay, so if God loves Timothy McVeigh, God loves everyone. And then we went to lots of other historical figures that were pretty awful, and awful in my mind. But those are the kinds of challenging discussions we had in seminary, and those are the kinds of things that helped me to become a better psychologist and being non judgmental and more understanding, and more loving and more kind, kinder, just to help me figure out okay, often when people come in my office, they're in a difficult spot and they've had some really difficult experiences, and it's my job to help them to see themselves even though I don't necessarily say it this way, but to help them see themselves as God sees them, in my estimation. And so that's the work I do, I really try to help people see themselves for who they really are not by all the labels that are placed on them. So anyway, that was a really long answer.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 20:25
Great answer. And I guess a follow up question that I have, immediately, you know, when, when you identify yourself as a woman, a psychologist of religion, like you've talked about the pieces of like, where the psychology comes in where the religion comes in for you. But can you talk a little bit about what it means to do that from a womanist? Angle? And just, you know, considering that there's probably many people who will hear that and not necessarily know what that means? Like, what is it to be womanist versus feminist? And how, like, how has your journey with that identity kind of unfolded?
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 21:04
Okay, so, also in seminary, I realized I was a womanist. And it was basically because of how I was reared by my mother, other aunts, uncles, you know, extended family, grandparents, all of that. And so, Alice Walker coined the phrase womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender. And so, I was taught by a lot of womanist scholars, and, and I can't say a lot of them, I read a lot of their work, but I was taught by a couple of them. And so theologians, African American women theologians, took on the label of womanism, or womanist, because they read the stuff which is interested in the stuff my dad read, and seminary was Black Theology, by James Cohn and others, he kind of was the founder of Black Theology. And so those women were Reading it. And they were saying, well, we don't see ourselves in this literature. And so they started to read and write and interpret scriptures, and life experiences from their own perspective and not trying to read themselves into what was being written in Black Theology and, and feminist theology. And so, I say, for me, I live in the intersection every day of race, class, and gender, which is what woman is do. And so for me, and woman, as we say, those three things help us race, class and gender help us to relate to many different people, who have many different experiences and our role, our job, if you will, is to use those experiences to help others. So living in let's see, living with both privilege and oppression, at the same time, puts me in a different space than some other people who don't necessarily have both privilege and oppression, they're really living with oppression. And so, as a womanist, my goal, my role is to help elevate others, whomever they are not excluding anyone. And so, how I do that, or how I've done that is, in psychology, one of the two of the ways in particular, because of the things I like to do on learn about, I was able to pull psychology of religion into my work with others, and multicultural psychology into my work with others. And a special piece of multicultural psychology actually, is religion and spirituality. And not I shouldn't say not too many, but some psychologists aren't that comfortable dealing with those two topics. So I really helped my students explore those things and are, you know, allow and in a enable my clients or patients to do the same. So Oh, no,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 24:55
did I answer Yeah, no, I know. And I think it's, it's just helpful for people to hear because like the My first encounter with, like womanist scholarship was in grad school, and it's not, you know, I think that that's something for, for the person who's kind of on the outside of grad school in general, or, you know, just Reading, like totally different genres of stuff it, it just is, there's not a context, often I think, for people to know what that means, I think it's helpful. The way you frame that as being, you know, about, like, caring for people at the intersection of race and gender in particular, and classes you added. And, and I think that that's, that's interesting, too, like the, the intersection of identity as like a woman, a psychologist of religion, I want to ask you just about that a little bit more. Because a lot of my a lot of my own research is in psychology of religion. And so there's, there's a pattern in Psych of religion, just to kind of share for people on the outside. And I think we may have like, brought this up a couple times before, but a lot of the demographics of people who are studied in psychology research, I think, in general, but it also extends to like religion is it's the weird problem. It's that all a lot of the people the pattern is for them to be Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. And so I'm, I'm wondering, like you, Vicki, are sort of situated in a way where, like, the stuff that you do, and I also, I tried to do a little bit of stalking of you on the internet and found your CV and, you know, the work that you do, and is really like resisting that pattern of weirdness the acronym of the weird in psychology research. And I just, it's really, it's really cool to see that it's like filling a gap in a lot of the pattern of like, who gets studied and who gets brought into work and research on psychology. And so I'm just wondering, like, can you speak to that a little bit? Like, how does that? What are the kinds of things that you notice in your own work that seems to like resist, maybe, like, wider patterns that you see in publications in psychology on, you know, on stuff that you do? Or like, you know, how is that how does that feel different? I guess.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 27:44
So. Excuse me, one thing I wanted to say, I just thought of it. So I'm going to answer your question. But yeah. It just occurred to me again, that when I told you, I did that group with the women in the church, and that led to my call. The funny thing was, the first book we use was written by a womanist. theologian, in which she translated the she's an Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible scholar. And so she translated these different passages in the Hebrew Bible, interpreted them and then wrote a book to get other people to think about that. And so they're that womanism, and
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 28:28
I'm more shadowing you becoming a woman.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 28:35
But anyway, so. So let me talk a little bit about training, because I spent many years doing training of students. And so where I find this intersectionality is when we look at who becomes psychologist, right. So now worked in a training program in clinical psychology. Most recently, I worked in a training program for mental health counselors, school counselors, a mental health and school counselors. And then, prior to that, have worked with students who were in clinical programs as well, or pursuing a social work degree or counseling psychology degree. So those are the so this is the frame of reference I'm thinking about. And what I found is for me as a womanist. It's It's my calling, if you will, to make sure that students are learning about how to work with all people. Not that we'll be experts at working with all people, but we do really need to pay it tension to the people who come into our offices, whether it's a zoom office, or whether it's in reality, you know, face to face, we need to be able to look at all of the cultural issues that surface, right. And what I know from my own training is I didn't learn that I taught it to myself, honestly. And that's how I became this person who does multicultural work, I taught it to myself, in graduate school, and as a result of that, then I did the work while I was in graduate school, I was hired to do that work, working with multicultural populations in graduate school, and then it just kind of follow me until today. And so I was engaged in the work before I knew it was called womanist work. And so that's a key thing for me in training that I really work hard at helping students understand as much as they can about the different factors that affect people that aren't necessarily taught in the textbooks, the the traditional psychology textbooks, and I'll say traditional, because in traditional texts, there's not a lot of cultural diversity that's discussed in the traditional texts. But then there's always the separate multicultural,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 31:29
aka, white.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 31:34
Boy, and so many college students or, you know, middle class, you know, you just say that we're, and so. So that's one of the things I've done, and I, in terms of my teaching, that's one of the things I've enjoyed the most and also has been the most difficult at the same time. Because it's challenging when I'm the first person to bring all these things up, and somebody goes what, you me race does have an impact on health. Yeah, does a class has an impact on health? Yeah, it does. Physical health, yes, you know, those kinds of things. And so covering those kinds of things in my courses, that's been really fun for me, I'm really difficult, but I wouldn't have it any other way. And then the other side in terms of research, if you looked at one of the last things I did, before leaving USF St. Petersburg was working with a group, well, one of my colleagues, Jamie McHale, who is a zero to three experts, zero to three age expert, developmental clinical psychologist, but early childhood development, and do yoga, Bella, say he roped me into doing that work with because I was reluctant. I was like, I'm not an expert in zero to three. I'm not an expert, a zero to three. And he said, but you're the person I need to do this work because he was trying to develop co parenting intervention for first time parents of African American children. And first time parents together. And so again, that's woman his work, because most of the people involved in the study were low income, African American parents, and we work together to develop a curriculum and an intervention program to help them learn how to better co parent, their children. And I say children because often, they might have been having their first child together, but they had other children. And so one of the byproducts of the research was that not only did they do better with co parenting the first child together, but it also helped them with co parenting issues with other parents, you know, that they have been connected with previously. So it just pops up all the time. I don't really think about it. I just, I just live it.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 34:18
Yeah. Yeah. No, that that makes sense. And it's, it makes a lot of sense to to hear you talk about how a lot of the methods that you, you know, draw on to do the work that you do. It ends up being self taught for a lot of people. And that's, that's interesting, and like, of course challenging because it's like, you have to kind of be the one to pave the way for that to be more of the standard. I'm curious about how, you know, I I noticed that it looked like this might have been I can't remember when this was but you you've done some, like research and presentation on like religious coping, is that right? And so it, you know, it doesn't have to be like, religious coping specifically, but like, what is your experience of religious identity with things like race and gender? And how to how do those things come together in your work, especially since you have this interesting background where you did do an MDiv. And that's, you know, that gives you a lot of valuable experience and exposure to literature and care for people. But you know, it's like a different way of applying that kind of training in in research. So just yeah, what could you tell us about that?
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 35:52
So, my work with religious coping, that was a long time ago. But I did teach psychology of religion for many years. And I have to say, my students want to ask, one student in particular asked me, How did I teach the course because I was a person of faith, and she knew it. Everybody knew it. But I taught it in a way that it taught it as a psychologist, really, I wanted people to understand that there are many different ways of looking at religion and spirituality. And it's not all helpful in terms of how it's applied, how religion and how spiritual things are applied, and people's lives. And so as psychologists, our job is really to help people utilize religion and spirituality in a way that's healthy for them. That's, that's our job. Our job is not to change people's religious beliefs, or any of that, to get them to believe or not believe any of that. It's really to help them understand the role of religion in their lives and figure out how it can be used to help them. And so. So my dissertation, oh, my gosh, I just laugh every time I think about what were my findings. So, in this when I was doing the research, I was in the space of oh my gosh, it's got to be this internal experience of the Divine that makes people you know, better people or makes them cope with life's difficulties. And then I laugh because what I found is what psychologists already knew, is that is not that not really bad internal thing. For the group that I study. It's not really that internal relationship with the divinity or with God, that matters most. It's really, these, it was called extrinsic social, religious coping. And what that means is, people go to mosques, people go to temples, people go to religious services of different kinds, or participate in religious bodies, not because of that, divinity. internal to the, you know, up, up relationship, it's the gathering around, it's the connection with other people that matters most. And with psychology, we call that social support. And that's one thing we know that work, social support helps people. So I did a dissertation to help us find out what
 
Zack Jackson 39:02
is there anything special then about, like, people who reach out to their religious organizations for that sort of support? Or do you see the same kind of coping being from book clubs and Zumba and CrossFit or whatever people are into?
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 39:20
Honestly, with the dissertation? Yeah, it's, it's the same. It's just that there when people are gathered around something, whatever that something is, so it could be the religious thing. It could be zoom, but it could be the book club. What matters is the connection with the other people. That's the that's, that's the biggest thing. And now for because okay, how do I say this delicately, because sometimes when people gather with religious groups or people, the last thing they talk about Religion, sometimes they do, you know, if it's if it's a Bible study, or you know, a religious themed gathering, but what we found is these, these people will connect with each other beyond that, and the religion, religion was the thing that brought them together to connect. But it's not necessarily the thing that keeps them connected. It can be those other things like the same people might be in book clubs and other things like that, too. But social support really matters. Now, I'm not saying that religion doesn't matter, because that's the thing that brought them together in the first place.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 40:45
We're all watching the clergy person's facial expressions right now, like Zach.
 
Ian Binns 40:51
I just religion still matters by wish
 
Zack Jackson 40:54
that that wasn't. I wish that wasn't borne out in my experience so keenly, and the sort of thing that all US clergy people talk about all the time, where they're like, why are they even coming? When they don't care about this? They're here for the cookies. I'm like, Alright, so nobody comes to the Bible study. But 100 People come to the chicken barbecue. All right, then. Okay, this is we should just open a chicken shop.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 41:26
So you do like some organizations you have the chicken barbecue and Bible study together? Oh, there
 
Zack Jackson 41:33
you go. In the door, you have to quote a Bible verse in order to get your chicken that's that's how we do it. It's got to be Jesus. Oh, what is it Ecclesiastes 1019. Is that what it is? The food was made for laughter and whining gladdens the heart and money answers everything. My life first
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 42:07
answer your question Kim Jong
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 42:09
Yeah, no, I just Yeah, I and my question might have also been a little bit rambley. Because there's just so like, I love listening to people talk about like psych of religion stuff. And, and so yeah, like, just like anything that you want to share. I am curious about the class that you taught, or that you you taught or you do teach this still sometimes
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 42:32
I haven't taught it. I haven't taught it in five years now. I think Oh, yeah. How many years I'm trying to remember how many years it's been since I left, USA, three years, three years,
 
Zack Jackson 42:43
it's been at least five years, the past year.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 42:50
So psychology of religion, I approached it as. So we, we did a couple things. I'll use two different textbooks. One was on psychology and religion. And I can't remember the name of it. And I'm looking over here and I forget that's not my bookshelf and my other. But it's a very interesting empirical study of psychology and religion, right? You know, the empirical study. So I use that text. And I also used another text that was a psychology of religion and spirituality that, no, it wasn't empirical. It was really talking about a lot of Eastern religions, and how helping students understand the meanings of those religions, symbols and those religions, that kind of thing and how people utilize those religions in their day to day lives, right. But I also did something interesting where I threw in William James psychologist who wrote the varieties of religious experience and that the students, what is this rambling on and on and on? What is he doing? I used it because I wanted them first to see a psychologist who emphasize religion in a way that they perhaps weren't used to. And so and he had just had a lot of interesting life experiences moving all over the place moving back and forth from Europe to the United States and doing all this stuff. And then he was of course prolific in terms of writing and research and all that stuff. So anyway, I use that and I threw and stuff like that. Have you seen the video religious realist by Bill Maher? Yeah, I've
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 44:55
heard of it, but I haven't seen it.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 44:57
Okay, so I threw that a long time. I go, Yeah, it's old. But very good. I threw that in, I threw on stuff like What the Bleep doing? No, I threw in. See you. And if I was teaching it now I'd have them listen to your podcast too. But I put in a lot of different things to give them lots of different perspectives about religion, to help them understand that, whatever their way, is, is not the only way. Because inevitably, I'd have two camps in my class, every single class, the division, the people who are psychology, is it? What is this, the religion is the opiate of the people like this is ridiculous. And then I had the very religious students. And so I would try to get them to come toward center a little bit, just to move a little bit to understand the other side, I would, we would do debates on specific topics. And I would talk to them about the idea that what we're doing in this class is not to get you to change anybody else's mind. It's just to understand, try to understand others perspectives. And inevitably, they would do that many of them not all of them, because some of them would dig their heels in and say, You know what, that can damage your Gascon bowler, this religious stuff is just gone too far. I cannot, you know, this is awful. And I should also want call Jesus Camp heavy.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 46:38
But I'm gonna have to write down all these things. You're saying? I'm teaching this class in the spring?
 
Zack Jackson 46:43
Yeah, I live that. Jesus Camp both in in the documentary and also living through stuff like that. Yes.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 46:52
Yeah, it might hit too close to home for me to watch that. Yeah.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 46:57
So I will show all of those things. And we will have really rich discussions and relate it to the material we were covering in psychology of religion, especially on the empirical stuff, and then just looking at so what is it that? What is it about all of these things that helpful to the people involved? What's harmful? If you see it that way? Do they see it as harmful? Psychologically speaking, are they okay? I mean, and so we had lots of rich discussions about that. That was my absolute favorite class to teach.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 47:35
Yeah, that's so fun. What did you what what? What was the topic that people that? What was the topic that students got most worked up about? Or what was like, the favorite topic of the class?
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 47:50
It wasn't a topic, but it was. It was the whole course. And I'll say it this way. Students were really upset with me that I could not say, the research definitively says this, oh, about anything, anything. Because I said, this is what we have, because psychology of religion is, it's still growing, right? But we don't have millions and millions of people studying this, right. But what we can say is, this is what we know, based on this research, and we went, I mean, we covered so many different topics, from clergy health, to religious attributions, and social psychology and all these different things. And, and they were just frustrated, because I wasn't giving them definitive answers. I said, this is the research we have. And you have to look at this research, and then look at the people you're with whom you're going to work, and figure out whether this research bears out or not. And it might not. And if it doesn't, at least you have a foundation to use to approach the people. And so that was the biggest issue. And on both sides, because students who were really religious, it didn't matter what their religious background was, because I had some diversity there. They really wanted me to just come down and say religion is great, it helps everyone and you know, because I'm a believer and this you know, particular faith tradition. And then the other who wanted me to just say, religion is awful, and doesn't help anybody else. Like Yeah, can't do that. So that was a big deal in Dallas. They were frustrated Oh,
 
Zack Jackson 49:51
we can approach our our like our theology or religion with that kind of mindset where you're like, here's what the here's what are this? Here's what scripture suggests, and here's how it bears out. And does that work in this context or not? And if not, like, what, where can we? How can we adapt? What can we do? Like, wow, what if that just that worldview that you just put forward, like apply that to our Faith Journeys? And I feel like we would all be so much more mature,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 50:18
knows that we need absolutely
 
50:22
no ambiguity, no room for a gray. ambiguity is hard to preach? I'll tell you.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 50:30
Yes, it is. Yes, it is.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 50:34
I think that's really I imagine that there were days that that felt especially challenging to you, as the faculty member, like teaching that class, but there's something so satisfying about those moments in class to where students, they know, they're not going to get a clear cut answer from you. And they're forced to sit in the ambiguity, and you can just see the frustration. But it's like a constructive kind of frustration of like, you get the point. If you can see why this is complicated. And that is like a job well done, I think to like, have a roomful of students frustrated.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 51:15
The one of the last time that I taught of course, then students would leave class and follow each other down the hall and then go find a place to sit and talk and talk about what we talked about in class and then come back the next week and say, you know, we talked about this and
 
51:34
I love that that's awesome.
 
Ian Binns 51:42
Yeah, I don't know how many professors could actually claim that right that they would see their students especially in that type of class walking now and then continuing the conversation. That's, that's really cool. So
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 51:55
that was always they didn't know it. They didn't know that was my goal.
 
Ian Binns 52:03
No, I have to be honest, and you can delete this. It is fun for me to sit here and watch you. Kendra asked these questions, especially as a So Vicki, I don't know if you picked up on this. This is Kendra's first post as an assistant professor, as faculty. This semester, yeah. This semester, this is her very first semester as faculty, so
 
Zack Jackson 52:26
she's planning your syllabi right now. Talking to you. Yeah. Yeah,
 
Ian Binns 52:30
it's really fun to watch her do this.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 52:32
Yeah, like maybe I should email Vicki later, get some more tips.
 
Ian Binns 52:38
I will make sure you have her email. So
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 52:41
yeah. Um, yeah, no, I'm sorry, Carrie. I'm really excited though. Like I, I'm teaching psychology of religion in in the spring at, you know, 830 in the morning, so everyone who's registered for that class, like, wants to be there, I think because it's at 830 in the morning, and, and so I'm really excited, I think it'll be really fun. And it's fun to hear someone else who's taught this class, you know, reflect on that experience. Um, I, I'm wondering to just, you know, like, in talking about religion, and again, just considering like your, your roles and your experience in on the more like, spiritual, you know, MDiv side of that versus your experience with religion. As a psychologist. What do you notice, when, when, when people read, research or conduct research about religion, religion becomes a variable in a way that sometimes like you have to kind of, you know, we as researchers, we make decisions about how to simplify religion to fit as a variable that you can like, create, you know, find correlations with it with various other, you know, demographic factors or whatever. What are some of the challenges that you've noticed in, like simplifying religion in that way? And what what's something that you wish people knew about studying religion as a research variable, if that makes sense?
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 54:20
So what I noticed in especially in teaching psychology and religion is looking at the, the way religion was operationalize as you said, it's, it's, it's very difficult to operationalize that was actually one of the exercises we did in class. We looked at words like faith, what does that mean belief? What does that mean and those kinds of things. And what I would say is psychologists of religion should be clear about what it is they want to No. And so, if I want to know how religion affects no cardiac health, then that's too big. All right? What aspect of religion? Are you concerned about? Is it something's simple, like church attendance? Is it something like, I walk in a group with people from my church? We have a walking group or you know, that kind of thing?
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 55:36
I think it is a God.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 55:39
Yes. Right. Believing us What? What does it mean? And I think, and I also think that's just so hard to do, right? Because we're narrowing down something that's so big. But if you really want to answer some questions, I think it is important to operationalize, get it down to the, the more, the most specific thing you can think of that you really want to know about. Because that's what I noticed, makes the that's part of what leads to frustration with ambiguity. Because we could have 10 studies on how religion affects cardiac health, and they all operationalize religion differently. And so what do we really know, when we're looking at these 10 Different studies? Well, we know it, it's for the walking group, people, they walk with their, you know, friends from the synagogue, and they're good, right there, their health is really great. But then we also know, they probably eat more fruits and vegetables, like, external variables. Something else is going on there, too. So, um, so anyway, I think that's, that's one of the bigger things, and I that's a conversation that will I mean, in terms of research that's gonna go on forever and ever, I think, because we really have to, to keep working at it. And, yeah, just trying to understand what we really want to know. And that that's difficult, but I think it's, it does help in the study of religion when we get to those specific things. So does that answer your
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 57:28
question? Yeah. No, that's, that's a great answer. And I think, you know, like, what you're suggesting, too, about being very specific and narrow? I think part of that is also it's like the responsibility of researchers, I think, to to be transparent about that in their publications about like, what are we actually talking about? Because then, you know, we end up like, generalizing about religion, based on this, like, very specific oper operationalization of it. And so yeah, like, what you're saying it at all, that all makes perfect sense. Oh, God,
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 58:06
I just thought of, um, one of the things that I'm interested in and just read some about not a whole whole lot is just anecdotally, prayer can be a helpful thing, right? It can be. And so one of my colleagues said, he just looked at me with a frown. He was like, have you read this stuff? For it doesn't work. So I added that to the course. There was another study where prayer wasn't helpful. So anyway, but there, there's lots of books about how prayer is helpful. But it helps to define what's happening with prayer. Because sometimes people are praying in a way that increases their anxiety, and then it's not helpful. And then there are other times where they're praying in a way that makes them calmer and makes them less depressed, and you know, that kind of thing. And so, that I think, illustrates what I'm talking about, if we're gonna say we want to understand prayer, and its impact on people, what kind of prayer, you know, really be specific about that and, and try to understand how it can be helpful to to folks,
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 59:27
yeah, I think that's a great example. The, the research on prayer like that, that really does, like hit on that point. Well, I have a question that I think could be a good final question. And unless Zach wants to add something else, but I was gonna say, Vicki, as we wrap up, like what do you want to share? Or maybe like, or maybe we kind of did this in the beginning, so I don't know if this is gonna work. But Vicki, what is it that you want to share with us as wrapped up about, like, work that you're doing right now, anything that, you know, you're excited about that you want people to know about. Let this be a shameless moment of self promotion of what you do.
 
Ian Binns 1:00:14
Can I can I actually, maybe make that question a little more specific? So, you know, as I said at the beginning, you and Malcolm will be coming to Charlotte. So what is it? Building on Kendra's question? What do you hope to do? Once you move? What are your goals when you come to Charlotte? Yeah, that's a good one and start a new.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 1:00:43
So excuse me. I actually started working in private practice here, virtual private practice here in Florida, just a couple months ago. And so I plan to get licensed in North Carolina, and started private practice there. But the funny thing is, I only want private practice to be a part of what I do, I don't want that to be my daily, like everyday, all day, kind of work. I really like working with groups of people. So here, you will see how that pastoral kind of influence comes out of me. Because I like working, and doing things like workshops and retreats that focus on spiritual, psychological and physical well being. And so those are some of the things that I want to do. And it'll be under the guise of my private practice. I also have this other project that I'm working on, I won't give you the name of it yet. But it's, it's a news network, I want to develop an online news network. And the site itself has already been developed, we're just needing to populate it with stories and stuff like that. So I had to put it on the back burner for a little bit while I got my private practice stuff up and running. But I want to do that as well. Because I just, I think that there are many ways to reach people. And I want to try to reach as many people as I can, in positive ways. And so my, my new site will do that, as well as my website. So, um, one more thing, I'm also working, I won't start start start, I've actually started writing, but I'm gonna work on my first book, started working with the editor in January. Because we're doing something small, like moving right.
 
Zack Jackson 1:03:00
Here at some point, you're asleep, right?
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 1:03:03
Yes, exactly. So I have a lot of things going on. But this is the thing I always said, I am a person that I chose to become a psychologist because I get bored easily. So I need to be doing different things. Have my hands in different parts, I guess. And so my career I've done a lot of different things. But I feel like now, this is my time where I'm going to do all of the things that I believe I'm called to do at this point in my life, which is writing and doing retreats and workshops and consulting and that network thing on either side.
 
Zack Jackson 1:03:55
podcast
 
1:03:56
that's pretty Yeah,
 
Ian Binns 1:03:57
yeah. And podcasts. Don't forget your podcast.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 1:03:59
Yes. And the podcast. The blog and the podcast are on my on my it's got to be Dr. Vicki website is almost done. I just have to add a couple podcast episodes and then we'll make it live.
 
Zack Jackson 1:04:14
But in the meantime, it cool when people are done listening to this episode, they should search in their preferred podcast provider for the healing the human spirit podcast with and they should definitely subscribe to that and listen to the one episode that's up so far. Yeah. Exciting. Or maybe multiple guests.
 
Ian Binns 1:04:37
What would you say? Yeah, I said, I hear I hear he's a good guest. Your first guest he's alright now you said decent the first time. I did say decent, right?
 
Zack Jackson 1:04:46
This is your future boss here.
 
Ian Binns 1:04:48
You can keep that in because Malcolm will hear him like get that. Laugh he'll just laugh. I expect nothing less.
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 1:04:58
Well, it's exciting to hear everything You're doing Vicki. And we're really happy that you decided to talk to us today. So thank you for being with us.
 
Zack Jackson 1:05:08
Thanks so much. Yeah. Thank you.
 
Vikki Gaskin-Butler 1:05:12
Thank you. I'm so excited. I was really looking forward to this. And I have to say I was a little nervous. Oh God, what are they going to ask me? Will I be ready? Will I be ready? And what Ian, what did Malcolm my husband say to me, right before this, he says, Go have fun. And
 
Kendra Holt-Moore 1:05:36
absolutely, yeah, well, thank you. Thank you.