Humanist author and speaker, Joe Simonetta, grew up in a Catholic home with good values. He and his brothers “did well,” and he is thankful for the foundation his parents gave him. As a young man, affected by all the suffering in the world, he vowed to be part of the solution. He has lived a fascinating life, holding degrees from multiple universities, traveling extensively and enjoying all kinds of professions. His full bio is available here.
Joe is hopeful about the future and has three basic rules that he believes can change the future for humanity: Be healthy. Be kind. Respect the environment.
“What triggered me was ‘suffering.’ When I observed the suffering in the world, it really disturbed me.”
“All the while I had this in the back of my mind; this concern about the state of humanity…”
“I said to myself, Do I really have to read all these books? [Metaphysics and religion] could not be this complicated.”
“As I studied all the world religions, it just hit me: There’s nothing here…This is old stuff…the products of our infancy of our intelligence.”
“Everything is connected to everything else. We exist, not separately, but in communion with all other living things…Everything’s in relationship. That’s the nature of the universe.”
“What level of thinking are we at? What level of thinking do we need to get to? And how do we get there?”
“These primitive instincts and emotions which are a biological reality and these antiquated and divisive and dysfunctional supernatural religious beliefs…are a lethal combination of behaviors…and they must be overcome.”
“Religion is clearly an obstacle to human progress.”
“The current great extinction is caused by…us! It’s caused by humanity.”
Stay skeptical? This week’s guest is Thom Krystofiak, the author of Tempted to Believe: The Seductive Power of Claims About “The Truth.”
Thom grew up Catholic but as an adult began practicing Transcendental Meditation. He followed gurus and groups for decades but was never quite convinced of the more spectacular claims of TM.
Thom shares about his experiences in the TM movement and what pushed him out. He also discusses important questions people, regardless of their belief or skepticism, could ask themselves: What do I mean by truth? How do I find the truth? And how much does truth really matter?
Quotes
I am, by nature, a skeptical man. My skepticism shows no signs of mellowing, but grows sharper and deeper with time. And yet I have spent my life surrounded by believers.
[Is it] better to be fooled many times than to be a skeptical man[?]
Am I missing something?
“Why is that I’m not susceptible to any of the beliefs the people around me hold…”
“[Flying] wasn’t happening yet for us as individuals, but maybe if we put three thousand people together in one place…maybe that’ll be something!”
“…the rise of fake news and alternative facts and the more bizarre conspiracy theories…all of these things are based on beliefs and they’re based on beliefs that do not have evidence…’”
“Some of our greatest societal challenges…resonate with these same principles: How much does the truth matter, what do you mean by the truth and how do you find the truth?”
“It’s not just a matter of, ‘Do you accept evidence at all as a valid way of finding out what’s true?’…it becomes a much more difficult task of sifting through competing versions of evidence.”
“Some people have given—either themselves or others—the license to make things up…”
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.
David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David. And I'm trying to be the case with our community manager Arlene continues to run the Tuesday evening after the podcast drops hangout. If you want to be a part of that, please join the deconversion anonymous Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/deconversion. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show, my guest today is Thom Krystofiak. Thom has written an amazing book called tempted to believe the seductive power of claims about the truth, quote, unquote. What Thom has done here is really describe what skepticism is, why it's necessary and how to be skeptical without being cynical, and without being a jerk about it. What I think you're going to find interesting is that Thom's religious experience, although he grew up a Catholic is really about his time in the transcendental meditation movement, and more from a new age point of view. So what's interesting is, he's bringing skepticism from that perspective. And he begins the book by asking the question, Am I missing something? And the book is really the answer to that. I loved this book, I this is the book that I wish that I had had when I was going through my own deconversion. I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Thom, and I hope you and to help you go out and get the book. tempted to believe. Here is Thom Krystofiak to tell his story.
Thom Krystofiak, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.
Thom Krystofiak 2:06
Thank you, David. It's a pleasure.
David Ames 2:08
Thom, you've written a book called tempted to believe the seductive power of claims about the truth. And as I just mentioned to you offline, this could not be more timely. I said in previous promotion of this particular interview that if I were going to give it a subtitle, I would say it is skepticism without being an asshole. I might have been a little bit more catchy. Yeah. And that is kind of right in the lane of what we're trying to do here on the gristmill atheist podcasts. So you are incredibly welcome. So glad that you're here.
Thom Krystofiak 2:47
Thank you, thank you so much.
David Ames 2:49
What I'd like to do is begin with, you know, your personal journey and for lack of a better term, your spiritual journey and what that was like, and then we'll jump into the book after that. Okay.
Thom Krystofiak 2:58
Yeah, let me try to boil it down. as briefly as I can, you know, I did not go through a difficult deconversion process in my, in my life, I was raised as a standard Catholic, I went to Catholic schools all the way through high school, including Jesuit High School. But, and I of course, absorbed all that as you do as a child. And you're more or less, I'm more or less assume that was just the way things were. But, you know, my my leaving the church or leaving belief of that kind took place quite naturally. For me, it was just the way my mind started asking questions, even when I was, I suppose around 16. And then, strangely enough, one of the Jesuit priests sort of there were some liberal priests in our, in our school, he thought it was a wise thing and what was called theology class, to assign Sigmund Freud's the future of an illusion, which is, which is all about Freud's idea that religious beliefs were illusory. And here's the psychological reasons why. And that really spoke to me. But in addition to that, my own thinking just about how is it that we can possibly know all this really definite stuff about the nature of the universe, so that'll happen. And so it was, it was, it was graceful. For me. It was graceful both for me, and it was, it was treated gracefully by those in my life. You know, luckily for me, I didn't have a problem with my parents, you know, freaking out that, that I had left the fold that they had invested in, you know, in so many different ways, right? There weren't that kind of they were those kinds of people, so I didn't have that issue. Even my teachers at school they knew by the time of my senior year of high school, they knew where I was but they didn't cause trouble either. So I had a graceful exit, it was easy. Okay. Then what happened to me is when I was in college, I started for whatever reason, beginning to have a sense that perhaps there's something more to this reality than what the day to day that we're all in meshed in. Now, whether recreational drugs had anything to do with that, or whether it was just some sort of natural curiosity, I don't know. But I was interested in the possibility. And so when I heard various people in groups talking about ways to open to greater realities, I was intrigued. And I explored a few of them. But the one that got me was Transcendental Meditation. And the reason it got me ultimately, in the beginning, was because they had embraced scientific approach to verifying the benefits. Right. So I mean, the kinds of benefits let's put it this way, a scientific approach to to verifying some changes that happened into people and people who practiced TM. You know, they certainly couldn't verify the broader claims that they may have been interested in. But they, but they had that scientific attitude, they had done some pioneering research that was published in Science Magazine and Scientific American. And, and I will say that, that hooked me I said, okay, if I'm going to try something, this is the one. So that's what I did. I liked it, I liked the way it work, the effects it had on me. And so I, as, as the years of few years unfolded, I got seriously interested and became a trained teacher of Transcendental Meditation, which, you know, this is, as people may know, this is a, a program or a practice that was brought out to the world by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. In the old days, I mean, some decades ago, a lot of people would recognize that name. These days, not so much, probably. But, you know, he was the guru of the Beatles, etc. That's the way he was always talked about in the press way back then, you know, millions of people learned all around the world, 10s of 1000s of people were teachers, it was a big deal. And as you can imagine, we we'd go, we were in the training was done in Europe, I was in Europe anyway, I was pursuing my own studies, but the trainings were generally in Europe, and they would last, you know, over the course of the entire training might be six months or more. And so you're completely enmeshed in this world of people who are absolutely enthused not just about the practical fruits of meditation, but about these ancillary claims that are more and more extraordinary about, about what the universe was about, and what human life was capable of, and so forth. And being in meshed in math for six months. And having, you know, you naturally have a desire to do well and be part of, you know, to be a good teacher and be part of this whole thing. I naturally was drawn to at least partial acceptance of some really extraordinary things. Now, I don't I don't think I ever became a full on believer in the sense that many people are believers and things about some of these claims. But they certainly enticed me and made me think they were possible. And so I'll just briefly mention a couple of them. So the the biggest thing that happened during the time I was doing that training was an advanced program was cut was brought out, in addition to the regular 20 minutes, twice a day of meditation, which was the whole thing in the beginning, an advanced program was brought out which was basically human levitation, the ability for the human being, to fly, not just some sort of internal thing that felt like you are floating but actually, the claim was, yes, we're talking, floating, flying through the air. And, and I was, you know, some people did it before I decided to try it, because, hey, why not? This is, this would be fantastic. If
David Ames 9:32
it was. Yeah.
Thom Krystofiak 9:36
You know, it's a little weird to say that I would even be willing to try it because it's so outrageous. No, that's such an outrageous claim. It flies in the face of just everything we know about physics and science. And that doesn't mean I don't rule things out is completely impossible if they fly in the face of current scientific knowledge. You know, there are things we can learn that we haven't learned yet, but this is pretty cool. pretty far out there. So, but nevertheless, I was far enough into it to say this is worth a shot. And some people had done it that I knew before I did a little bit before I did. And it came back with some, you know, reports that sounded like they were verifying the thing in some way. Anyway, so I jumped in and did it. And it was extraordinary. It was absolutely one of the most extraordinary things I've ever done in my life. And I think a lot of people might say the same, just the way the body reacted to this, essentially just a mental process. That was that was engaged. And it's, it's something that I think would be a great subject of scientific research exactly what is going on there where the body does some things it's never done before, in response to a mental stimulus. And so it was wild. It was incredible. It was energetic, but it wasn't flying by. It wasn't levitation by any match.
A couple of years later, after I had done this, and then come back, and I was teaching meditation, and here in the US, I, marshy put out the word that he wanted to gather 3000 people, this was in Amherst, Massachusetts, to do this technique of skill of yogic flying together for the first time in human history, you know, and I said, okay, at that point, I was willing to entertain the possibility that, okay, it wasn't happening yet for us as individuals, but if we put 3000 people together in one place, and we're all doing it simultaneously, maybe that will be something and something extraordinary. And, as I said, in the book, when I when when I did that, for the first time in that large group, I was expecting something to happen. You know, exactly what, who knows, but something really different from what had happened ever before. Right? And it did. So, you know, that's not to say there were it's not, it's a rich internal experience. It's something that people get value out of, and a number of ways by doing it. Maybe even some integration of brainwaves, and mind and body and all these things have been explored. But certainly it wasn't what the claim was, it didn't happen. Of course, it hasn't happened since. So that's one thing. And then my wife and I moved to a little town in Iowa called Fairfield, Iowa, which had about 9000 people at the time. And again, Maurice, she made up made the call in 1983, to say, let's get 7000 people into this little town of 9000. And all do this together. And that will really crack the world open. It wasn't so much, oh, we're gonna fly. Isn't that really cool? It was more. His focus was always what can we do as individuals that will affect the collective consciousness is the word he would tend to use the collective consciousness of the whole human race? Is there somewhat, and he certainly believed, apparently that, that, that that should be possible. And originally, the idea was, well, let's just get enough people to practice TM just to meditate, and that will change the world. And then as that wasn't happening fast enough, he said, Well, let's get this advanced group. And let's get them together. And then we'll see what can really happen. And so we said, Great, we quit our jobs, we moved down here along with 7000 people, it was an, again, a really amazing experience. And then, many of those people were encouraged later to stay, to form a permanent community to keep doing this together. And they built two large dome structures where the people would come every day and twice a day and do this. So the idea was, well, we'll keep doing this and then we will finally crack it all up. So this group here in Fairfield, that up maybe about 3000, stayed over time, not the first day, but they managed to arrange their lives so that, you know, they could somehow support themselves. Some entrepreneurs came started some businesses brought businesses, people managed to support themselves and got rolling here, and states, so maybe two to 3000. At the peak, we're here. And there's still probably 2000 here. And this group of people that I was now fully enmeshed in because I never lived in a community of two or 3000 people who believed a lot of very extraordinary things I'll just mention a few in a moment. And so all the people around me that I associated with believed a raft of things and these would be The one I already mentioned, you know, possibility of human levitation. Another one would be the fact that certain practices, they're called the Yagi O's, and in Sanskrit or an Indian lore, but these are basically just practices, performances can influence by performing some ritualized event, chanting some stuff in Sanskrit pouring some materials on some objects, you know, whatever the ritual was, that can eliminate problems change the course of, of a person's life accompany even as a society. And of course, the idea that a large group doing something together like this would like, like these practices would utterly transform human human life on a collective level. And belief in astrology, it's called Jyotish. Again, the Indian version is called Jyotish. But it's essentially just astrology, that it's a perfect predictive science. And on and on, so I'm surrounded by a belief in karma, you know, the fact that everything that's happening to us was because of things in past lives, or parent lives, and it's all highly orchestrated. And reincarnation, you go on and on. And this was the assumed coin of the realm among the people I was living with, including my wife. And I was curious about some of these things, but really not not a believer in any of any of them. Yeah. Especially, you know, as the flying, it became clear that wasn't really happening that one drifted, drifted away, even from my consideration that it's any kind of likely event at all.
So this was the origin of the book for me over the book that I wrote, because in my own internal exploration process, which was, why is it that I am not susceptible to these beliefs that everybody around me is holding to one extent or another in the early days, especially? And it was just a fascinating question. It wasn't just a intellectual academic thing, like, Oh, I wonder why it was also it wasn't like I had tension about it, or felt that I was horribly missing something. But I did wonder if I was missing something. Because a lot of a lot of these people were quite admirable, quite intelligent, etc, accomplished. And they managed to believe these things and found some sort of benefit in their lives from believing these things, apparently. And I wasn't. And so I'm going, what, what am I missing here? And so I just tried to dive into that, and exploration on many, many different fronts and different levels to see. Was I missing something? Or were they just applying criteria about reality that I could not subscribe to, due to lacks a lack of evidence, basically. And that, you know, that's essentially what I what I came to, and feel comfortable with. And that, to me, let me say one more thing that a major demarcation or separation that I make in the book is between something that someone chooses to have in their life because they like the way it feels, they just like, like having in their life, and making a definite claim about something about the universe or the world, or how human life works, a claim. So to me, a claim is something about, about an event that will appear in the material world, I claim that astrology will predict this in my life. Well, I want to see that prediction come true. It's a claim or the claim that you can levitate we want to see we need to see the levitation otherwise, let's not talk about it in that in that term. You know, if doing a certain spiritual practice or ritual is supposed to alleviate a problem, let's see does does that actually play out? And so yeah, my focus was on on claims. I'm happy to have people have whatever they want in their life that makes them feel satisfied as long as they're not bending the reality and making claims factual claims about the nature of human life, that really cannot be not only cannot be established, but all the evidence that we do have, seems to contradict it. And as as the years went on here, I mean, we've been here for 39 years. Yeah, so. So it's a long, it's a lifetime, you know. And during that time, many of the people, at least the people that are my closer friends, have had us not the same degree, necessarily, as I am in this journey, but a movement in that direction. And I'm pleased and happy to report that to some small extent, at least, some of the people who've have read my book have had some of that perspective solidified. And it kind of brought together some of the maybe thoughts they started having, but brought together in a more coherent way. That is, how do we want to look at this world? How do we want to evaluate claims about this world to make sure that they're, they're valid, and that they have substance,
David Ames 21:08
that so many things, I want to respond to their couple things, just just to say that one of the things I've really appreciated about the book is the humility and the kindness with which you describe some of these, in your words, off grid claims. And there's an empathy for the human condition and are and you know, the title of the book, tempted to believe that we are all tempted to believe in things that may or may not have enough evidence for it. Again, very much in line with what we're trying to do here with the podcast that just, you know, we're all human beings, we're all susceptible to these things. And, and yet, we are all after the truth, we're trying to find the truth. So I really appreciated that. One of the things I think, for my listeners is going to be interesting, my listeners tend to be former evangelical Christians, on some part of the spectrum from D convert from deconstruction, you're just doubting to full blown D converted atheists is that this comes at it from an orthogonal an angle, many of those evangelicals, when they were believers would have seen transcendental meditation as evil. And so it's, it kind of sneaks in past some of those defenses. And yet, I was amazed at the parallels, right? This is, again, the human condition. And last thing I'll say is, I also very much appreciated that you acknowledge the difference between the potential positive benefits of the experience and community versus a claim about the way the the universe actually works, and making a really hard bright line between those two. So for example, if you find, you know, performing the ritual of, you know, beneficial to you for your mental health, if you find meditation, or any of these, these kinds of practices, beneficial, more power to that person, not, that's fine. It's when the person begins to claim that this is affecting the world in some way that is beyond the realm of physics, that that's when we start to care about the truth.
Thom Krystofiak 23:09
Right? Well, that's great. And, you know, I appreciate your noticing what you're calling the humility in the book. And that has been an advantage. I just ran into someone at the grocery store yesterday, he goes, Thom, I love your book. And I didn't know she was reading it. And not not a close friend, but someone I an acquaintance. And she mentioned the same thing that compared to what what you often expect in books that are trying to deconstruct for former beliefs. You often have people like Richard Dawkins would be the extreme example of someone who is often described as caustic, and dismissive and so forth. And yeah, I mean, I didn't want to do that. And I don't feel that so. So that's cool. The one thing I didn't say yet that I want to say, and I think it's germane to what you were just speaking about is that, well, let's let's get into it this way, that the whole idea, the difference that you just summarized between doing something that feels beneficial, or that you'd like to have in your life, versus making a claim about how the universe actually works in observable ways. That's a that's a bright line. You know, that's a clear distinction. Some people many people don't care about the second thing. They don't care if it can be proven if there's evidence for it. They just clearly don't. And, and you go, Okay, well, is that all right? Is that is that just another way of being? And to some extent, I want to sort of go in that direction and be again generous to say, well, that's the way that's the way their life is going. And those are their values, but This is the other area that was not the impetus of my book, but sort of got sprinkled in as the time went on, with the rise of the incredible the rise of fake news and alternative facts and, and really bizarre, more bizarre conspiracy theories and so forth, and the divisive pneus. In our political sphere. All of these things are based on beliefs, and they're based on beliefs that do not have evidence. And these things are not a matter of, oh, well, this is someone's internal life, it's their spiritual life, or whatever it is. And, you know, we shouldn't be too concerned about what they're doing inside their own head.
But when it starts to manifest, as it really seriously has, not just in America, but really around the world, when these kinds of alternate realities, not based on facts start being treated as if they were facts, and building entire, you know, political movements on them. We've got problems. And so this is what started to become more apparent to me even though it wasn't part of my original impetus, that the same kinds of questions that we're talking about here about how you evaluate what's true or not, or whether it's important that you evaluate things in a certain way as to being true or false. Whether you apply the rigors of evidence and rational thinking or not. It it's it's become a matter of really deep societal importance outside the realm of religion or New Age beliefs or, or the kinds of things I was talking about in my background, well, outside of that sphere, as important as all those fears are, we have another big thing on our hands. And it's completely related, just as you said, even though my book is not talking about the typical journey that that a lot of your other guests and people have gone on, you found that it was resonant with some of those same same processes. Well, now we're having, to me, some of our greatest societal challenges outside of those realms, also resonate with the same principles, which is, how much does the truth matter? And what do you mean by the truth? And how do you find the truth? And, to me, the greatest challenge that we face, perhaps, is that people totally disagree about that. What's interesting, though, is there are people who go, especially in the spiritual realm go, I don't, I'm totally not interested in objective means of proving any of this. I have my own internal truth that I am totally solid and clear about, you know, that's one thing where you just sort of deny the applicability of any kind of objective truth you go. That's that's not that's not relevant here to me. And that's, that's a, that's a tough issue. But that's, that's mostly on the subjective or spiritual realm. When you get into these other societal realms, where people are arguing about what's true, or what isn't true. A lot of times the people who are saying really outlandish things,
Unknown Speaker 28:43
claim to have proof. They're
Thom Krystofiak 28:46
not saying, oh, proof doesn't matter. This is just the way I feel I have an intimate experience with Jesus Christ or with whatever. Don't talk to me about proving it's irrelevant. They're saying, No, we can prove this. Yeah. So if you, for example, I don't want to offend any particular groups that you have your listeners, but it's an obvious, obvious example, in our society. If, if Donald Trump or some or his fall, so many of his followers are going to say, the election was stolen, they don't say, I have a feeling the election was stolen, or, you know, my, my spiritual guide told me the election was stolen, they say it was stolen, and we have evidence, right, you know, and then they bring it to court. And of course, all the courts so far, have failed to agree that there was any kind of evidence, but nevertheless, the claim is made or a lot of conspiracy theorists will claim that they have evidence certainly the big one is the nine 911 truthers who, you know the idea that it was an inside job and it was totally put up fake thing. They'll put out reams of really impressive looking video discussions with some experts and so forth, proving that there's no way these towers came down in this way from from airplanes. And so this is what gets doubly difficult. Because it's not just a matter of do you accept evidence at all as a valid way of finding out what's true? They'll go, yes, of course we do. And we've got evidence. And then it becomes a much more difficult task of sifting through competing versions, right of evidence, and say, which one of his really holds up. And the problem is that none of us most of us are incapable of doing all of that background, evidential research or checking ourselves. And so we naturally have to ferret out which of the experts or authorities out there in the world are the ones that we have reason to think are reliable. And then we follow those. So this gets really thorny. And that's why the only the only hope I see is in a greater depth of education emphasis, I don't know if this will ever be happening in our educational systems, to the process of doing exactly that. How do you weigh how do you ferret out the the reliability of a piece of evidence of an authority of suppose it expert? You know, how do you weigh these things? You can't just take the one that feels?
David Ames 31:44
Exactly. And I you do talk about that a lot of just, and within the world of disinformation that basically, we just pick the paradigm that makes us feel the best. And that's no way to do this. I want to jump on this just for a second and say, This is why the book is timely for a number of reasons. You know, I think, you know, even beyond the political and the religious, you know, we're under an onslaught of advertising being thrown at us and with social media, and what have you that we are constantly evaluating claims, whether we know it or not, and being conscious of that, and having a standard is just deeply important. And in particular, and in time of disinformation. And in a time where technology is going to only get make the problem worse for the foreseeable future, that we will have more and more claims that we have to evaluate, having a sense of what the standard is for good or sufficient evidence is just absolutely critical.
Thom Krystofiak 32:44
That's right, and it's going as you say, it's going to get more and more intense. Speaking about social media, you know, you get, you get the problem of what are called Deep fakes, which are, there's, the better and better ability is of technology to create a video of you saying something that looks exactly like you're saying it even though you would never say that and never did. And so, it's going to go to a completely different level of difficulty, to tell the difference, and to see how any, any sort of authority is going to try to step in, to prevent some of these clearly wrong attempts to fool people. So it's, it's one thing in the old areas, you had stories, you know, if you go back 1000s of years, you had people telling stories about the origin of life, or some savior or some holy man. We, we basically had stories and that worked incredibly well. You know, you have billions of people subscribing to essentially stories that were created 1000s of years ago, or laid down 1000s of years ago, stories passed on were very potent, and they always will be, although, as we've been seeing, at least in in Western societies, for the for large degree, in more industrialized Western societies, that the grip of some of those religious stories has been greatly weakening, you know, in not true all over the world, but certainly true and like in Europe, and, and so forth. And even in the US among, among young, younger people. So some of these stories are not having the same potency that they had before. But but now we're gonna get a whole as you said, a whole onslaught of things, whether it be in advertising or even more, more dangerously, in those parts and those people who use social media to try to change your, your critical beliefs, about about things that really matter. It's one thing to convince you that this is the best bike to buy, you know, Hi, some advertising, you know, it's another thing to convince someone about the reality of some political claim or some or some factual claim, and to do it in a way that that you're completely incapable of, of yourself telling the difference. That is truly alarming. So, yeah, so it's not just a matter of individuals getting better at being able to tell the difference between some someone who's trying to fool him and someone who's giving them a good solid piece of information. It's, again, as I said, the question is going to be to what extent government or society is going to have to try to put some controls over this rampant growth in MIS misinformation that gets more and more sophisticated.
David Ames 35:50
And again, this is the I don't want to say argument. But the reason why skepticism is necessary. I think skepticism as a word has negative connotations, people think cynicism. And the thing I really related to you, and I think that my listeners will relate to is finding yourself what feels like alone? Why am I the only one who in your words is not susceptible to these these claims like that is the deconstruction deconversion experience, we find ourselves in this hermetically sealed bubble of people saying the same things, reinforcing the same things. We've heard the answers, we understand the answers, but the answers are not satisfying. And the the temptation is to say, maybe there's something wrong with me. And and yet, again, this entire book, and everything you're talking about here is about why skepticism is necessary. And that if the truth matters, you know, we can't we can't make someone value the truth. But if they do value the truth, there has to be some process some way of understanding, again, have good evidence or sufficient evidence, and can therefore be accepted or that need to be discarded.
Thom Krystofiak 37:02
Yeah, absolutely. It's an interesting process that you and your guests and others go through in terms of that, that we could say, a light a light bulb turning on or something, something inside being activated, to start to wonder about these things. And that that really is the essence, you know, it's like, do we wonder about what's true? I mean, obviously, all scientists have always wondered about what's true. That's that, that sense of, and they do it in a way that is, that is not constrained by necessarily what came before. It's not like, Oh, we've always been told that rocks fall, because it's the nature of things to go towards, you know, the center of the earth. You know, with no idea of gravity, just that it's the nature of things. And someone starts to wonder about that. You just have to wonder, how does, how does this really work? And what's really going on here, that, that light bulb coming on, which doesn't come on for some people? Yeah, it just, it just doesn't, they're, they're happy with, with the world that they're living in, and the beliefs and practices and community that they have, it's working, it's working for them? And it's only when a question comes up internally, to wonder about it and to ask certain questions. And I don't know how that exactly happens. But why it happens for some and not for others. Exactly. Yeah. It may just be that some people are temperamentally more open or ready to ask certain questions than others than others are.
I was on a podcast called Buddha at the Gas Pump, which is a fabulous thing. It's actually it's a friend of my longtime friend of mine, is behind it. He's interviewed like, I don't know, six or 700 people, and they tend to be people from the spiritual world, about all kinds of things. But he, he also had me on, and he was very forthright and discussing the kinds of things that we are. And anyway, as part of that, there was a group that he has, I don't know, maybe 15 People who email around on these questions. And it's fascinating because that group kind of bifurcates and some of them are strongly in the camp of I have had this experience which was so strong, and so opening or was clearly a direct perception of truth. But that's the end of it. That is just the end of it. and it has, there is it's not like they they're incapable of asking questions about all kinds of things, but they're not interested in asking questions about that.
David Ames 40:11
Right? Protected.
Thom Krystofiak 40:14
Yeah. And there's a difference between someone who's protected by, by a religious tradition, or the fact that their parents and their schooling and all of the people around them believe it. And it's, it's a whole community thing. And it's just been deeply bred into them. And someone who was absolutely sure, because they had some sort of awakened awakening experience. And, and they don't, and I keep, from now on then trying to get them to think about the idea that it is absolutely true and wonderful that they had this amazing experience. And it had great benefits in their lives, they feel freer, they feel wider, they feel, you know, less anxious, less concern, they feel more connected. These are all great things that anyone would love to have. So there's no question about it happened. You got these fruits. That's wonderful. Yeah. But there's an the tendency to want to claim things about the universe, about the nature of life in general, beyond the experience, and they it's almost always happens, that somewhat someone, even if they have an experiential basis, for some, some wonderful thing, they ended up wanting to make claims about the universe, like everything that consciousness was primary consciousness existed eternally, and it created a matter matter came out of consciousness, sort of like God, sort of like God, God was there eternally. And all this stuff that we see he just created somehow. Similarly with that, so they tend to go in that direction, even though it's that's a claim about things that goes way beyond anything that could ever be established. Right.
David Ames 42:14
You have some amazing quotes in the book. That's the other thing that I really appreciated about it is like this is well researched. And some of my favorites were from Fineman. The one that I've heard before, but just really struck me was, the first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. I feel like that really expresses this. I think Neil deGrasse Tyson said it this way to relate to religion to what you just mentioned, that experience can trump evidence as we have to actually work fairly hard to overcome that feeling of experience that we've we've gained some insights about truth beyond just the the warm and fuzzies. And you know, the sense of awe. Last thing I'll say on this is just that it's the human experience to experience all and all as a good thing. It's when we start to attribute unverifiable or unfalsifiable claims based on that experience at all. Yeah, that's
Thom Krystofiak 43:12
right. I mean, the quantified men, you know that you're the easiest person to fool. Towards ties directly into the opening, you know, the opening aphorism in my book, you know, whether it's better to be fooled many times, yes, than to be a skeptical man. It's all about the fooling. And whether William James, I get into this a bit as well, William James, who explored spirituality and religion and psychic phenomena, as well as being the founder of American psychology. And philosophy really, is quite an amazing man. But, you know, when he wrote the book, or the essay called the will to believe he started it off with a preface, where he was saying, the person who, let's say, is going to be skeptical about about all these things, is, is is demonstrating that he's, he's afraid to be duped, he doesn't want to be duped. And he's saying he's putting that above some of the fruits that he could get, if you would just let it go. You know, this fear of being duped which is exactly, you know, kind of what, five minutes talking about to you know, the first principle is you must not fool yourself. Why not? Why not? is sort of the interesting question. That's the, the ultimate question, really, why not? And, you know, William James, I think he kind of went off the rails as far as I was concerned, because he was saying things like, Well, if you're always going to be skeptical, you're never going to get married. You're never going to take this new job that might have a risk in it. If you're always doubting everything. You're never going to do anything. In your life, and you go, Yeah, that's true. But that's all very pragmatic stuff. That's Those are choices that you make in your life. You know, whether you doubt whether this investment is going to be rewarding or not, is not the kind of doubt we're talking about. It's not the kind of skepticism we're talking about. We're talking about skepticism about claims about reality and how it actually works, not whether this woman is going to turn out to be the perfect wife for me. Right. So you know, so he ended up being really pragmatic when he was talking about doubt and faith and the will to believe, saying, We have to believe stuff. And of course we do. I believe that it's a good thing that I am, you know, this investment I just got in recently. I believe that's all right. I don't know. But I have a strong feeling that it will be a good idea. I don't hold back and go Well, I just don't know. I just don't know. So we're not talking to some kind of debilitating, absolute skepticism or doubt about everything.
David Ames 46:03
Right. I'm talking about solipsism. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
Thom Krystofiak 46:08
we're only talking about when people make substantive claims about how things are, then make a difference that make a difference to the rest of her life goes. You know, that's where you might want to have some questions. Yeah.
David Ames 46:27
I wanted to circle back really quick to how some people who who make off grade claims say that they have evidence in my world, in my listeners world, that tends to be apologists. And there's a whole field of evidential apologetics that suggests that there is all of this evidence. And it's clear that it's basically, you know, circumstantial, hearsay, and embellished legend with kind of an objective point of view, when you're talking to that person, they are 100% convinced that they have evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, let's say, you know, there are historical record and, and so one of the, again, one of the experiences of, of deconstruction, deconversion, is when you begin to recognize, I no longer find that, that evidence such as this convincing, that isn't sufficient to the magnitude of the claim, I just want to like, talk about a bit more about the challenge of coping with people who are claiming they have evidence, but that evidence isn't sufficient for the claim.
Thom Krystofiak 47:34
Yeah. It's a matter of how much yeah, how much leeway you give this the sources of authority in your life. And how much leeway you give to the stories and, and the types of evidence, you know, generally, people who are believing in these, a lot of religious things and other off off grid claims, will give a great deal of leeway, you know, they will give the kind of spaciousness that they would never give, let's say in a court of law, or in some actual proceeding in their own practical life, where they're trying to nail down what really happened or what really is the truth. You know, I mean, Thomas Paine had that story, you know, that. If, if anybody were to come before a magistrate, with the four gospels accounts, which, about the resurrection, which have completely different details, and to some extent, contradictory details about precisely what happened when and who did what, you know, what is this? I mean, you can't possibly accept it, you go. There's something funny going on here. This isn't this isn't this isn't anything like an objective? evidential account? So? So yeah, it's, it's something some term that I use somewhere in the book was some people have granted either themselves or others the license to make things up. You know, you allow things to be declared and accepted as truth. Because of what they the fruits that they give you. And you give a lot of license to the quality of the evidence. Yeah, I've, I've certainly, I, you know, I always like to look at things like, Oh, someone and apologists trying to present the strongest proofs for God or something or for the resurrection. I always think they're going to come up with something really cool, you know, here that I can sink my teeth into. And I'm always I'm always dissatisfied, but I I have there something in me that wants us to, it's not like I want to believe in that sense. It's not like, Please convince me but, but I would, I love to I would love to be blown away. weigh, but the strength of evidence or the strength of an argument. You know, my wife always jokes with me. I don't happen to believe in UFOs, even though that's not that could be a physical reality. I mean, it could be, but I don't think we've got the evidence. I personally don't think we've got the evidence right now. And, but, but she knows that I would love to have a UFO land on my lawn? I would, I would love it. It's not like, no, no, no, I don't want to believe in that stuff. Right. I'd be happy to believe in it. Yeah, if there was good evidence. And so it's not that some people have a desire for belief or to believe certain things, and others don't. I have. I have I don't know about desire, I kind of have a desire to be to be confronted with a, an alien on a UFO. I mean, why not great, or, or a ghost or something? I mean, I don't believe in any of these things. But how cool would that be? Yeah, if it was really something I could sink my teeth into?
David Ames 51:11
Yeah, a few things about that. Like, I avoid talking to apologists, but when I do I point out that if you really could prove the point you're trying to make you can win a Nobel Prize, right? Like, you know, you discover alien intelligence, you know, you are a million dollar winner. They're like that, you know, all you have to do is have the evidence to back it up. And so I would love to see that kind of evidence for for something that was an amazing claim like that.
Thom Krystofiak 51:37
Yeah, I mean, you know, there's this guy, what's his name? Greer, the Disclosure Project? You know, that's an example of someone who has assembled huge amounts of military guys or intelligence guys are this that the other thing and all kinds of other fairly obscure evidence, but mounds of it, that it's totally convincing to large numbers of people? It's like this is it. This is evidence this is this is it? Yeah. But as you say, the truly convincing evidence is never forthcoming. Yeah. It's just not.
David Ames 52:22
You talk about a number of scientists that have, you know, a sense of wonder about the universe. And the immediate person who comes to mind to me is Carl Sagan. And his candle in the dark book, I think, really touches on this, you know, he tells the story of being a young boy, and just really being fascinated with UFOs and extraterrestrials and but his scientific nature took over and even though he would love to be able to have said, there are in fact, extraterrestrials, you know, he could not find the evidence to do so. And what I appreciated about Carl Sagan and I often say like, I'm a more of a Sega nite, atheist than a Dawkins, I guess, in the sense that I have this wonder at the cosmos, this wonder at the universe, and that, and he expressed that so so well, contrast that a bit with you also have a chapter where you talk about people who become dissatisfied, or with the scientific view of the world, and, and basically make a conscious choice to go from a more scientific view of the world to an off grid view of the world.
Thom Krystofiak 53:34
Yeah, no, that's great. I mean, the example of Sagan who is so great, someone who, as you said, was entranced with with some of these greater possibilities, like aliens and, and so forth, but couldn't go there unless the evidence allowed him you know, he was one of the strong guys involved with SETI, you know, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. And, but if the evidence wasn't there, he couldn't do it. And yeah, I mean, people who get, I mean, one example in the book was, this was a long time ago, but the former president of Columbia, who just came out with this remarkable statement that that where science was going meaning mostly Darwinian theory at that time, was undermining some of his beliefs in the divine origin and so forth of everything. And he just came right out and said that I would, I would rather rest in my satisfying even if they'd be deceitful dreams. Science is is not going to do it for me. And that that's an interesting problem. You know, people will, will wonder whether a view that is based on reason and science Ansan looking for evidence, therefore necessarily putting aside a lot of the things that humanity has taken sustenance for, spiritually for, for millennia, what exactly that's going to do like, some people like Sagan are going to be a brilliant and full of awe and wonder and great people, no matter what other people, if you totally remove these sustaining beliefs that they have, or if somehow they they get weakened, or lost in them. We don't really know what what what that's going, what that's going to do. And so some people do question certainly question whether science, a scientific view, has enough stuff to offer the human psyche. Yeah, those who are enamored by the wonder of the universe and of life and, and evolution and, and at every scale, it's just so remarkable from the, from the farthest reaches of the cosmos down to the tiniest bits of matter, you know, it's all uniformly amazing and wonderful, and those who are susceptible to that kind of joy or or interest are well rewarded by that kind of interest. Some people are not character are not temperamentally or characteristically as susceptible or open to those kinds of joys and those kinds of rewards. And so this is, this is an interesting question that I don't have a solid answer to, you know, those who either tired of science or are not susceptible to the charms of science, whether they just need something else. And so the people I talked about in the book, one was the guy who's known as rom das now, who was Richard Alpert. He was a psychologist at Harvard, with Timothy Leary. And they both did LSD experiments at Harvard, and got thrown out for that reason. And Alpert, when he went to his, his, his dismissal meeting, or his review, or whatever, said, I'm not a scientist anymore. I'm giving up my badge. You know, I'd rather I want to, I'd rather go to India, which he did. Where, where there are these miracles being talked about? And I'd rather believe these miracles, then be a scientist and study, you know, bring out the data anymore. And, you know, there are people with that kind of orientation, that, that they they'd rather have, sort of an extreme example of, of what Barnard Columbia said, where he'd be happy in his deceitful dreams, if they were, if they could sustain him. You know, deceit is as far as being full deceit was not necessarily a problem for some people, if they get the fruits and this is, this is a whole other area of challenge. I mean, I think, I think there's probably, I don't know, what percentage of the people on this planet are, are enthused could be enthused by, and nourished by and by the joys of, of scientific knowledge or true revelation based on evidence about the way this amazing world actually works in our lives and our bodies in the universe. versus those who are, are a little bit cool on that, or cold on that. And once something else, once once some other they want the miracles they want. They want some stories, they want some, some rich, you know, mythology, that's, you know, another person I talked about in the book was Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote, Eat, Pray, Love, that great best seller. And at one point in her life, she says, I'm tired of science, I'm tired of skepticism. I want to feel God in my playing in my bloodstream. And that's exactly what we're talking about here. That especially if she was depressed, your marriage broke, fell apart, whatever she was in a state of pain, and she's going I want the pain to go away. Yeah, I want something that will help get this make the pain go away and replace it with something else. And, you know, science won't necessarily always be able to step in when you have certain kinds of emotional and psychological pain. I mean, forget about pharmaceuticals or whatever. But I mean, in terms of scientific knowledge isn't going to unnecessarily come in and infuse you with all this joy, if you are truly in a needy, needy state emotionally, psychologically, so these are some of the other challenges to this whole.
David Ames 1:00:13
Yeah, for sure. And I agree with you that I think their new atheist perspective of the end of religion is ridiculous, that's never going to happen. I also found it interesting reading philosophical history that this question has been asked over and over again, what happens if we take the gods away? What, you know, what happens to society, you know, and the attempt to create civil religions and that kind of thing, the way that I, we try to approach it here is to say, you know, that, I think my conjecture is that our relationships with other human beings, is the point is the meaning in life, as it were, not that that the universe has meaning, but that, that we create that between us and that trying to provide some level of community for people to have had a soft place to land as they let go of some of these off grid claims. That's kind of what we're trying to accomplish here.
Thom Krystofiak 1:01:03
Absolutely. You know, and something I mentioned that people are probably aware of that. There's an interesting example of Scandinavia, which is the least religious least conventionally religious part of Europe, perhaps the world. They have really stepped away from there. They were, of course, Christian, primarily Christian, Jewish, whatever, but primarily Christian in the earlier times. And that has dropped away in Scandinavia to a degree that hasn't been seen in virtually any other society. And if you look at, there are studies that are done of the happiest cultures on Earth, the happiest countries, the the healthiest countries, meaning not just you know, their physical health, but their overall well being. Scandinavian countries are almost always at the top of those of those of those studies. And so, that to me, is now granted, people will say, Yeah, but you know, they're building on this history of Judeo Christian stuff of values. And, and sure they are, but so are all of us. I mean, we're all in Western societies, we're all in mashed in a society that has a lot of roots that way, and we're familiar with all that. And various stories that still resonate with us, you know, the story of the Good Samaritan, or whatever, that's a universal story that is just incredibly moving on an empathetic level. It's not, it's got nothing to do with, who is the god? Or what kind of God is it? Or what's what sort of deal does he have? It's just, here's a human being, how do you treat them, and, you know, but we're all enmeshed in these moral exemplars, whether it be from religious stories, whether it be from other stories, historical stories, you know, we all have plenty of stories, and plenty of examples, even just movies, books, whatever, where there's good people, and that resonates with us, or we know people, you know, we people in our own lives, who were just so touching that they were so loving, or caring or connected, and that resonates with us. And we resonate to with other people's needs and suffering. And so we have that basis. And so in Scandinavia, sure, you can say, yeah, they had Judeo Christian background, well, sure, we've all got all kinds of backgrounds, but what they've managed to do is take the fruits of those some of those stories or feelings and, and myths or whatever, and they're just in the background, they're part of their ethical life, probably. And they move forward without necessarily subscribing to these more outlandish or extraordinary claims about the universe. Without without the gods really without, so the question of what's going to happen without the gods, we don't know if it would always be like Scandinavia, but but Scandinavia being the premier example in the world. Right now. Is, is encouraging. It's encouraging.
David Ames 1:04:23
And just to wrap this up, one of my favorite definitions of religion is from Anthony Penn. And it doesn't require supernatural claims. It is the collective search for meaning. And so a sense of we are a community and we support each other and we care about each other and we are even pushing each other to good works as it were, you know, like it all of that is good. And it's only when we start to make, in your words, you know, claims about how the universe works, where the story becomes literal in some way. That that's the problem.
Thom Krystofiak 1:04:57
Yeah. When things sort of solidify I and solidify that way into discrete doctrinal claims, whatever, obviously one of the side effects of that throughout history has been wars fought over these doctrinal differences. I mean, you know, the idea that you have to take these wonderful aspects of human life and, and, and define them and say you must subscribe, or if you don't subscribe any longer, we're going to shun you, you know, these kinds of prac. This kind of adherence to the specificities of these discrete claims, has obviously been harmful in a whole bunch of ways. And if if it were possible to, to have religion in the sense of you just described it, which I think to some extent is what's going on and a lot of Scandinavia and elsewhere, is it would be, I think it would be a wonderful thing, it would be a win win, yeah.
David Ames 1:06:00
So heading towards wrap up here, you start the book with a couple of questions. Is it better to be fooled many times than to be skeptical? And are you missing something? We'll end with the beginning a bit here. But like how you resolve that for yourself, personally? How do you answer those questions? And again, I appreciate that's the entire book, people will go and buy the book.
Thom Krystofiak 1:06:22
Well, you know, the book is really a journey that's rather than the book being, I ask a question at the beginning, and then I answer it for the next 300 pitches, you know, it's more, let's, let's look into this. And so it's looking at it from this angle, from this angle from this aspect of history and this aspect of philosophy, this aspect of religion, this aspect of science, it's just looking at it from different facets and illuminating different ways of, of exploring the question. So it's in the book is an exploration rather than a declaration of my of my answer, but but in the last chapter, I think I say So after all that, yeah. Is it better to be fooled? And I admit that it is. It is, for me better to be fooled in certain circumstances. And I talk about that a lot. We don't need to get into it much. But I talked about that, that if if if I was in some horrific situation in the morphine had run out, and they could give me a saline solution, which has been proven to work as a placebo after you've gotten some morphine for a while, and then they give you saline for a while, and it works just about as well as the morphine because the body has that incredible response. Please fool me. Yeah, don't tell me. Sorry, Bob, the morphine is gone. Yeah. You know, I mean, fool me. But I go to some lengths to try to explain why that, to me is an acceptable kind of fooling. And the basic reason is that morphine is real. It's a real thing. It's not like an angel that they're telling me about, which I don't believe in, it's morphine. And that's real. And they're saying, this is morphine, they're fooling me about a specific fact, but not about the fact that morphine works, which is what's working in my brain. So there are ways that I'll be happy to be fooled, but they're more like that. They're more like these technicalities. No, I don't, I don't believe for me. And this is where it comes down to something, David, it's like, who are you? Are you a person who cares about the truth? Who cares to really feel grounded? In what am I doing here? In this world? Who What am I? What is all this? If those are questions that matter to you, then then being fooled about those things is completely off the table. It's completely unacceptable if that's, if that's a high priority for you to feel that here I am in these in these small number of decades on this planet? And do I is it important to me that I make my best efforts to really understand what is true, what is going on what this is, what life is, what all of this is how should I live my life, all of these things? If that's a critical priority, which it is for me, then the idea of being fooled about those fundamentals is completely a non starter. It's just and I you know, I understand that some people in my mind might be fooled about those things, or feeling great about it. Yeah, I'm not trying to take that away from them. I'm not pontificate. I don't go after my friends who are believers and just, you know, assault them with my skepticism. But, but, but for me, for anyone who is has that kind of orientation towards towards a grounding in reality, or grounding and truth, the kind that we're talking about, it's just not it's just not a possibility. And the second question, Am I missing Something I'm not missing something that I that I haven't clearly missing something that they have, you know, they've got some stuff that I don't know. But I mean, that's true all of us have people have stuff that you don't have one way or another. But the question is whether you would really want want that. And no, I'm not missing something that at this point in my life, I wish I had, I wish I had faith or I wish I could believe these claims that I can't find evidence for. Because they'll do something for me. I can't put those two together with the desire to be grounded in truth.
David Ames 1:10:38
The book is tempted to believe I want to give you just a second to be able to promote that how can people find the book and any anything else that you'd like to promote?
Thom Krystofiak 1:10:46
Okay, thanks. The book is just simply available on Amazon, both in terms of print, print, book and Kindle. So it's just Amazon, you can just say tempted to believe they will, unfortunately, Amazon always keeps older editions around once they've been published. And I did a preliminary version, mostly because I wanted to have some readers have a book in their hand, as I was finalizing it. Okay, so there was a preliminary version, which is still out there. This is this is the one with the dynamic blue cover with an incredible picture on it. It's not, it's not the one that with text only. And it's the one with, you know, all the reviews and so forth. So it's pretty obvious, tempted to believe on Amazon. And, you know, not necessarily terribly germane to the things we've been discussing here today, but some of my shorter writing over the years on a variety of topics. And other things is in my website, which is simply my last name, which is Krystofiak, which I will spell. It's, it's K, R, Y, S, T O, F, as in Frank, I A K. That's krystofiak.com. And then there's some things there that also talks about the book.
David Ames 1:12:03
Fantastic. And we will have those in the show notes. And I will try not to murder your last name again. Thom, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Oh,
Thom Krystofiak 1:12:12
it's been a great trip. Thank you.
David Ames 1:12:20
Final thoughts on the episode? I love this book. I loved this conversation with Thom, this is so important topic. Skepticism is it's it touches every area of our lives from the onslaught of advertising that we face every day to the misinformation and disinformation that political entities put out to apologetics. And this comes from all corners. It is not just Christian apologetics that I'm talking about. Thom comes from the Transcendental Meditation perspective, and having new age friends who are making in his words off grid claims. And I identified so much with the I feel impervious to these claims. Why is that? What is there something different about me. And so it's Thom's humility that comes through in the book in the conversation that is so profound. When you hear the word skepticism, the first thing that might leap to mind is really argumentative debate style cynics. And it is actually the exact opposite is humility, of recognizing the human condition and our susceptibility to believing things that we want to believe that we want to be true. And believing things that fit within our in group. And skepticism is actually from humility of recognizing I could be wrong. Therefore, I need some evidence to know whether this thing is true or not. The other thing that I think Thom does really well in the book, I'm not sure we completely got to it in the conversation is acknowledging the reality of the experience. These literally all inspiring experiences. Create in us a sense of having touch to the Divine, having touched the transcendent, having gained secret knowledge. When you have the experience, you can't help but make those connections. And part of skepticism is recognizing that it is our ability to fool ourselves as the Fineman quote says that is the problem. And so we are protecting ourselves by looking for objective evidence. But it is the empathy for the human condition that Thom has in the book that really speaks to secular grace, secular grace for our son elves when we believe things that don't have evidence and secular grace for those people, we'd love to believe things without evidence. The book is tempted to believe by Thom Krystofiak is amazing, you need to get this book you need to read it. It is one of those things that I'm telling you, we'll help you through deconstruction and deconversion. We will, of course have links in the show notes, as well as the link to Thom's personal sites. I want to thank Thom for being on the podcast and even more so for the book. I said to him Off mic that This truly was the book that I wish I had had when I was going through my deconversion. So thank you, Thom, for writing such an empathetic, humble and true book. The secular Grace Thought of the Week is about humility, about our own ability to fool ourselves. The Fineman quote is, the first principle is you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. If you really absorb that, if you really feel that viscerally. And for those of us who have gone through deconstruction and deconversion that should feel pretty real and present in our lives, you can begin to recognize when you are fooling yourself in lots of different contexts. I'd love a quote from Alice Gretchen when she was on, she said that she stopped being good at fooling herself. And I feel the same way. And if you are like me, and you find yourself skeptical, and you're like Thom and unable to accept claims without evidence, that is okay. It's actually a good thing. And it will protect you from, as we've already said, advertising, politics, disinformation, as well as religion, or supernatural claims. But it ultimately begins with, I could be wrong. And really knowing that and feeling that. So the skepticism that Thom is talking about, the skepticism that I'm talking about is less about saying where someone else is wrong, and more about recognizing where we have been mistaken. We have lots of great interviews coming up. We have got Julia from Germany, who is a doctor and at one point in time in her life, given up her medical career to participate in a healing ministry. And her deconstruction is just powerful and deep. We have Jessica Moore, who is a part of the deconversion anonymous Facebook group, and is now dealing with purity culture, and surviving the aftermath of purity culture, as well as a number of other interviews that are coming up that are gonna be fantastic. Until then, my name is David, and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful.
Time for the footnotes. The beat is called waves for MCI beats, links will be in the show notes. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can promote it on your social media. You can subscribe to it in your favorite podcast application, and you can rate and review it on pod chaser.com. You can also support the podcast by clicking on the affiliate links or books on Bristol atheists.com. If you have podcast production experience and you would like to participate podcast, please get in touch with me. Have you gone through a faith transition? And do you need to tell your story? Reach out? If you are a creator, or work in the deconstruction deconversion or secular humanism spaces and would like to be on the podcast? Just ask. If you'd like to financially support the podcast there's links in the show notes. To find me you can google graceful atheist. You can google deconversion you can google secular grace, you can send me an email graceful atheist@gmail.com or you can check out the website graceful atheists.com My name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist join me and be graceful human beings
this has been the graceful atheist podcast
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
This week’s guest is Doug. Doug became interested in church when he was in junior high, and when Doug is in, he’s all in.
He was a believer throughout high school, college and into the military. But then books and magazines happened. Doug began reading more “skeptical literature,” and the questions began.
Doug’s faith unraveled while he was “an atheist in a foxhole,” but faith in the supernatural was unnecessary. He needed his own strength, and the strength of the people around him.
He has since been an atheist pastor, finding the human connection he and his wife needed, without changing their beliefs or forsaking their values. As Brene Brown says, “We are hardwired to connect with others,” and Christianity has no longer cornered the marked on community and belonging.
Quotes
“When I was twelve, I decided to get serious about my eternal destiny”
“So I began asking harder questions at church, and I soon encountered a pattern I would see again and again as we visited different churches. Once my questions became too difficult (or too annoying), I was told I just had to have faith.”
“I left God behind, at least the version taught in the Bible. I would now be unapologetically atheistic.”
“I deployed for a year…and that was my ‘atheist in a foxhole’ moment. … we were convinced at least some of us were going to die, and I was thoroughly convinced in my mind at that point that this was my last full day on earth. … At no point did I pray, acknowledge God, feel slightly drawn to God…I was perfectly good with: There is no god, and I might die tomorrow. We’ll just see what happens.”
“People have often asked me why I left the faith, and I tell them, ‘It’s because I studied the Bible.’”
“It was my reading of skeptical magazines and literature that gave me the freedom to look at the Bible in a new light, but it was the actual Bible itself that condemned itself.”
“All I can say is I’ve been extremely happy not having to believe in God, not having to worry about saving other people.”
“Having left behind a church that demanded faith, I found a most unexpected church that reveres rational thought and welcomes atheists. Amazing. Having sworn to never set foot in a church again, I find that the universe loves to throw curveballs. To quote Douglas Adams, “In an infinite universe, anything is possible.””
“When you’re taking care of someone else, you’re not thinking about yourself.”
She grew up in a loving home and didn’t realize she was in a “white Christian bubble.” Her church was almost all-white, her hometown almost completely white, and then after high school, Marla attended an even smaller completely white, conservative Christian college.
“I was all-in. [Faith] was all there was to life. That was the focus, the center. My faith was everything to me.”
Marla’s first inkling that something was missing came when she read the book, The Hole in Our Gospel. She had read the Bible many, many times over the years, and here was a new revelation—2,000+ verses about helping the poor?
four-letter words if you’ve never lived inside / the bubble of evangelical Christianity it / might surprise you to find that l-o-v-e / and p-o-o-r were new and controversial subjects for me / at age 35
Less than a decade later, while she and her family were part of a multiethnic church plant, Marla began to see more “holes” in Christianity, namely racism and white supremacy. Her eyes were slowly beginning to open.
“Once you start to uncover things, it really is a slippery slope or ‘the unraveling’…It’s all connected. You can’t stop.”
Since 2015, Marla has been back and forth to Cambodia, written a book of poetry, started an incredibly popular bookstagram, been through a painful divorce, connected tons of people to one another and is still sharing her knowledge and wisdom with her followers.
“I feel that there are so many Christians who just go along in their happy little lives and nothing really rattles them, and nothing really happens. So they’re not forced to question things or consider things…”
In her search for truth, Marla asks, “Is this loving to my neighbor?” She may not be certain what her beliefs are right now, but she does believe that love is what will change the world.
My guest this week is Geoffrey Wallis, author of A Voice From Inside: Notes on Religious Trauma in a Captive Organization. Geoffrey is Physically In but Mentally Out (PIMO) of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. After recognizing the religious trauma and the cognitive dissonance he was experiencing he found help through therapy. He remains within the Watchtower organization because it is a “captive organization” which enforces shunning by family members and friends.
My guest this week is Chris Highland. Chris is an author of over a dozen books, he was a Protestant minister for 14 years and an Interfaith (collaborative, open-minded, inclusive) chaplain for 25 years. Currently a Humanist celebrant, he has a B.A. in Philosophy and Religion from Seattle Pacific University and an M.Div. from San Francisco Theological Seminary.
The more I interact with freethinking humanists and atheists the more great opportunities I see for building connections rather than breaking them down.
My highest compliment to Chris is that he has been doing Secular Grace for most of his life.
A revival of goodness and graciousness!
Chris shares his love of nature and beauty. We discuss humanism, nature and loving believing spouses.
I’ve never felt “called” to be an “atheist evangelist”. I don’t feel the need to convert anyone to my viewpoint or use all the mocking memes out there to prove what a great apologist for atheism I can be.
I don’t see religion going away, so I think it’s much more productive to find ways of working with those faith communities who are open to it, and those seculars who are open to it, than complaining about them top score AAA points or RRR points.
Additional music Dakar Flow – Carmen María and Edu Espinal
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.
David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. As usual, please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on pod chaser.com or the Apple podcast store and subscribe wherever you are listening. I want to thank my newest supporter Andy all the way from Switzerland. Thank you so much, Andy. Andy has inspired me to set up a PayPal account, as I've had a couple of people asked over the years to be able to give to the podcast but not on a recurring basis. If you are interested in doing that. You can send money through PayPal paypal.me/graceful atheist. As always, I'm more interested in people's participation. If there are things you can do for the podcast, I'm interested in that more. But if you want to support financially, I will leverage that to make the podcast better on an ongoing basis. Thank you to all of my supporters over the years it is much appreciated. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's episode. On to today's episode, my guest today is Chris Highland. He is the author of over a dozen books. He was a Protestant minister for 14 years he was a interfaith chaplain for 25 years. He is now a humanist celebrant, he blogs he has been featured on the rational doubt blog that Linda Scola runs, and he is a part of the clergy project as well. He has been very kind to send me two books from faith to free thought a natural journey. And nature is enough essays for free thinkers. I tell the story in our conversation, but I became aware of Chris's work on the rational doubt blog a couple of years ago, and thought to myself, Man, I really need to talk to this guy. And just recently he reached out to me, he had become aware of the podcast. It's just one of those times where here's somebody who has been saying the same things for decades that I've been trying to formulate over the last couple of years. As I say in the episode, Chris is doing secular grace. So I'm very excited to give you my conversation with Chris Highland.
Chris Highland, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.
Chris Highland 2:47
Great to be here. Thank you,
David Ames 2:49
Chris, trying to summarize your bone a few days is quite impossible. I was unaware of the fact that you've written multiple books, 12 books, it sounds like you're a prolific essayist, you've written for rational doubts blog, and the citizen times. You're a speaker and instructor. You're a former minister, chaplain for 25 years and you're currently a humanist celebrant does that almost cover all the things that you do
Chris Highland 3:14
makes me so impressed with myself?
David Ames 3:19
I had become aware of your work a couple of years ago caught one of your articles on a rational doubts blog. And I immediately thought, wow, this is, you know, somebody who I have a lot in common with. And so it's been amazing, you happen to reach out to me just recently with a recent article of yours that was kind of along the same lines of a bit of criticism for the atheist community, and more importantly, how we embrace the believers in our lives, how we actually go about doing good in the world, rather than just debating one another and arguing. My summary for this concept is secular grace is the word that I use. And really, I'm just describing my brand of humanism, but my highest compliment for you is that you've been doing secular grace for most of your life, and I'm trying to just trying to catch up. So we will spend most of our time talking about your work. But I'd like to hear first, you know, you were a minister for a number of years. So clearly a very dedicated Christian. And now you're a humanist celebrant and a part of the clergy project to talk to us about your your faith tradition, and what what led to some doubts, and what was that process like?
Chris Highland 4:31
Well, yeah, thank you. That's a That's a loaded question and so many ways. I have tried to approach that description of the journey in many different ways over time, through writing and speaking and just a lot of thinking about and reflection, but it's it's kind of my own personal Exodus as I think of it, but at least it wasn't 40 years in the wilderness. Maybe it was a little bit actually. But yeah, I grew up in the Presbyterian Church in Seattle. And that was my upbringing and got involved in youth groups, from Baptists to evangelical to Pentecostal through the high school years and ended up going to an evangelical college. And the kind of the saving grace, so to speak. And that experience was that in this particular, evangelical college, there was a pretty good philosophy department, and good world religion teacher. So I took classes and really began to blow my mind expand my mind to way beyond Christian, beyond conservative Christian, realizing that there's a whole spectrum of beliefs out there, and it kind of set me going on a lifetime of, of discovery and investigation and what's out there. And and why should I ever think that my beliefs are any better than anybody else's? We're just a part of, I'm only a particle in the in the big ocean here. Yes. And then at my home church pastor in the Presbyterian Church to his, to his credit. In fact, I just recently reconnected with him. He's in his 80s now. And he encouraged me to go to the Seminary where he graduated from in the San Francisco Bay area. So I went down there, partially because it was Presbyterian, because that was my my roots, but also because of the graduate theological union and Berkeley that had, you know, very wide diverse faculty in different kinds of religious branches. So that was my, my ministry, education, my seminary education for the master's degree, but went on to find that the pastor of a church was just not going to fit me. And I kind of fell into chaplaincy, and that has shaped that shaped my my career, my vocation, whatever, whatever you want to call it for a long, long time. And what what made that really special for me and kind of blew my mind even even more, was that these were, these were interfaith chaplaincy. So even beyond ecumenical wasn't just Christian. It was Buddhist and, and Jewish, and Catholic, and Protestant, and Sufi, and a bunch of different kinds of flavors of faith. I kind of think of that as my, my seminary education after seminary, it was it was really getting in the trenches with with people who were mostly outcast, marginalized by by the church communities by all religious communities. And those were my that was my congregation for a whole long time.
David Ames 8:24
Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the healthiest things that believers and non believers can do is, is have exposure to that interfaith community right to hear cultural diversity, religious diversity, the wisdom of various different traditions, and just just like you say, have the humility to recognize maybe I don't have all the answers,
Chris Highland 8:48
yes. And their wisdom. Wisdom is wisdom. And truth is truth. I mean, it just it doesn't really matter where it comes from. And, you know, even back in that evangelical college, one course I took one of our books that we were our textbooks, I guess, was the title of it was all truth is God's truth. And I thought, huh, that's already kind of breaking the mold a bit. All truth is God's truth. And now I would say, well, all truth is truth.
David Ames 9:24
Yeah, yeah.
Chris Highland 9:26
It really does open the doors and windows and, you know, that's, that's what it's all about to me.
David Ames 9:33
Yeah. I think one other point of similarity is I often say that my I went to a very tiny, very, very conservative evangelical college, but I often say that my professors did too good of job. I wouldn't say they were quite as open as what you were describing, but the they taught me critical thinking and an investigation into the Bible and good exegesis and good hermeneutics and And that laid the seeds that that later I think led me away from Christianity.
Chris Highland 10:05
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, I took up somehow I took a year of Greek in college, you know, mainly to study the, the Christian scriptures. But what we did was we read a lot of classical things. So I was reading Socrates in Greek, before it was reading some of the New Testament in Greek. So, I mean, yeah, that can't help but open the landscape. In a lot of ways, you know, the, the little stream that I grew up with, really became a floodplain with with lots of streams of thought. And when, when one of my pious professors said, well, here, why don't you read Nietzsche? And it's kind of like, Well, okay. That's dangerous. But I did it. And I really enjoyed the, the engagement with, with things that made my mind expand.
David Ames 11:04
So I think you identify with the term free thinker more than some others. Whereabouts in time. Did you start to say, you know, I think I'm a free thinker now and not a Christian any longer?
Chris Highland 11:18
That's a great question. I think that I think it was through Susan Jacoby's book, you know, the free thinkers book that she came out with. So we're going back, you know, 15 years or so. And just reading that history of secularism, particularly in American context, pretty much convinced me Hey, if I'm not in that tradition, I sure want to be and it gave me Yeah, gave me an identity are a way to identify that wasn't based on a negative. So I will say that I, I do. I just feel much more comfortable with with a positive like that. And then saying atheist, you know, I really have in my life that it's been all about trying to build bridges be constructive, creative, open lines of communication, where possible, and to refer to myself as a non theist or non believer all the time. I'm not one of those. I'm not one of those, like going through life and saying, I'm not a Republican, I'm not a Republican. Yeah, it's like, that's not a, you know, it's not an identity to live with. I mean, I like what you're doing, because it's, it's focusing on a really positive aspect, that really, in my estimation, I think you feel the way same way I do. It's very important to, to interpret and reinterpret what, what nonbelief is about. So it's not all non non non all the time.
David Ames 13:00
Yeah, I absolutely felt it was important to have a positive statement. You know, so I personally liked the term humanism or humanist, yes, but I like to summarize it by just saying I believe in people. Yeah. You know, we were talking about wisdom earlier in that, you know, if from a more naturalists perspective, you know, religion is a natural phenomenon. It's a human cultural phenomenon. And so that, that wisdom is human wisdom, and we can borrow from it as much as we want.
Chris Highland 13:29
That's right. That's right. And I I'm attracted to that, too. In fact, a couple of years ago, I became a humanist celebrant. And that was partly to, you know, my identity for so many years was a chaplain, clergy person who could work with people of many different backgrounds. And so I kind of people ask, Well, what do you feel like you missed when you let left? All of that left the church left faith? And part of it is that role of being a professional helper, I guess. And so becoming a humanist celebrant really opened up the opportunity for me to be, you know, to perform weddings legally, and be a part of that. So I was working with an organization over the past couple of years. That was a consortium of of humanist celebrants and performing lots of weddings. And I've just found out Oh, a lot of couples were was just grateful. It could be that someone could work with them wasn't going to impose beliefs and celebrate love with them. mean, I mean, what better thing can you do?
David Ames 14:49
That's a pretty pretty good, pretty good deal. Yeah. For people who are in the clergy project, the personality type is someone who is wants to be a helper to be pastoral. And we don't need to be afraid of that term right to to be alongside someone as they go through their life events, the positive ones like getting married, or the birth of their children and the negative ones of losing losing a loved one. And so do you still feel that pastoral? Like, call if I could use the term?
Chris Highland 15:24
Yeah, yes, I do. I guess, at times, I've called myself a secular chaplain. I've kind of just played with that for a while. I, you know, it's not all about titles, of course, and I, I don't need to be a clergy person any longer. But I'll tell you, even though the word chaplain has deep roots in Christianity, that became such a part of my life, that that I respect that term. And, you know, I respect the person, even, you know, a person who's an evangelical chaplain or any other kind, you know, I have my critiques. And I have my own experience, what I think was the most effective what worked the best for the most people kind of utilitarian approach to chaplaincy. But, you know, we, we were always focused my, with my team, working with the chaplain team working with Chaplain assistants, in various settings, whether it was a county jail system, or on the streets and shelters, other places. It was, you know, we had a guiding principle, and it was presence, it was presence ministry, and it was simply being with people. So that takes away a whole lot of extra stuff that people feel like they've got to, you know, you have to have your own agenda. And you've got to be able to convince people and all that kind of stuff and pass along something. And, as I say, you know, becoming a chaplain was really a way to to begin an education that you cannot get in a classroom. It just can't and, and the people that have something to teach are the ironically, I suppose, or sadly, they're the ones that we're not listening to, because we talk too much, or we have our own agenda.
David Ames 17:47
So one of the things that I think, drew us to one another is that we have some criticisms of atheist culture, and particularly online atheist culture. I want to preface this conversation by saying that I think you know, you have plenty of Skeptic bone a few days. So we're not talking about not having a skeptical outlook. And the way I've said it is, you know, it, it's frustrating to me that immediately as people go through a process of, however you want to describe it, the loss of faith, questioning doubt. deconversion deconstruction, the first sources that they land on are going to be very debate oriented, a very aggressive, dismissive, you know, almost angry. And so you've, you've written a couple of these articles where you're saying, you know, does this actually benefit us having that stance towards other believers? Do you want to expand on that?
Chris Highland 18:49
Yeah, well, it's Yeah, I guess I pick up on these a words like, Well, other than the, you know, aihole. There's also just aggression, aggravation, anger, you know, an anti anti is a big one. Yeah. You know, if your whole your whole outlook is to be anti religion, particularly, in this context, I find that number one, I find that sad. Number two, I think that a person needs to look in the mirror and deal with their own stuff. And unfortunately, some of us who want to hold up on me, none of us like to look in the mirror about some of this
David Ames 19:35
stuff. Uncomfortable. Yeah.
Chris Highland 19:39
And so I think that's where some of the pushback is come toward my writing. But, you know, I'm, I'm married to a minister, my my wife is still in ministry. She's very progressive and and she's a teacher and a counselor. And we've been together a long Time. So she's seen me through this whole process and supports me. And that's an unusual story. I understand. That's an unusual story. But But I think what I like to point out to people, and sometimes it's a, I do it in a pointed way, holding up that mirror and say, look in the mirror. It's when people attack religion in general, or religious people in general, oh, they're all deluded. Oh, they're all just, you know, in a fantasy world, they're all really basically stupid idiots. And whenever I pick up on that, I say, well, Where's that coming from? Obviously, they've had a bad experience. And that's what they've learned about religion, that's, that's their experience of religion? Well, you know, I was once in a, in a little splinter of, of Christianity of one religion in the world, I was distant, a little tiny branch. Right. And that, as I've already said, it took a period of time to learn that there was a whole lot more. So I like to encourage, let's just put it this way, I like to encourage people to look in the mirror that and see that, okay, I am angry, I may be very justified to be angry toward my little group, right? Or a big group of it's the Catholic Church, or, you know, some bigger the Southern Baptists or something, I understand I get it, you had a bad experience, okay. So you can get all angry, you want to add that tradition. But, but when you start pointing the finger to make blanket statements, then you're talking about Quakers. And you're talking about progressives of a lot of different religion, you're talking about, you know, Catholic nuns who are doing running soup kitchens, and all of that, you know, a lot of good things going on, out there, in the name of religion, I'm not saying, you know, I'm not going to be a defender of, of everything to do with religion. You know, and I, and I have my own critiques. And I expressed those in a pointed way too. But I, I've done enough self criticism and self critique and self analysis, to know that, you know, it's kind of like calling myself a free thinker. Once again, it's focusing on what can we do to heal ourselves? What can we do to bring people together to deal with what really matters? Does theology matters so much to people that they got to argue about it all the time? You know, and, I mean, one of my neighbors, and I'm kind of exaggerating, it's down the road a bit from us is Franklin Graham. Wow, Billy Graham's empire, you know, is down the road from us here, where we live in North Carolina. And, you know, I could spend my time attacking him and say, See, that's what those Christians are doing? Well, that's not that's, that's only a small part of Christianity. And it's, it's not a healthy part of Christianity. And I've written letters to the paper about him, and I've written blog posts on their, some of their deception when it comes to the Samaritans person and all that. But, you know, I'm not going to waste my time, just attacking one branch of Christianity, one small branch of religion, or religion in general. I mean, what's the purpose?
David Ames 23:47
Yeah, man, several things that I want to respond to you there, I think, one of one of my observations of, of just friends of mine, so friends in the secular community, who, who's still very actively engaged with people online, and you know, in a in a fairly debate oriented style, so people that I care about friends of mine, that still do this, and I think it's part of the, you know, someone is wrong on the internet phenomenon. Right? It's just, you see something that you have a strong reaction to, and that actually should be your indication to slow down and think more. Before I throw anybody under the bus. This I do this too, right. I think that Twitter brings the worst out of me, I take a potshot at a apologist every once in a while, and I immediately think, why did I do that? You know, and there's trollish behavior by Christians and there's trollish behavior by atheists is one of the things that I like about your work and I'm gonna try to give a quote here. The more I interact with free thinking humanists and atheists that the more I see the great opportunities of for building connections, rather than breaking them down, and it's that change in focus right from correcting someone's mistaken belief, from your perspective, to seeing their full humanity and finding out which ways can we work together? One more. One more way of describing this is, you know, I think apologists often critique humanism to say, Well, you can't justify being good or doing good or goodness. And I think, why do you care? If we can do good together, and you have your justification, and I have my justification? Isn't that better for everyone?
Chris Highland 25:40
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, it does have to come back. I mean, humanism is great, because it's, it's about humans. And I'm a real nature guy. And I know you are too and a lot of this, we are common ground literally is, is the natural world. And we have to find ways of connecting. More people with that. That's one reason why I'm, I'm wearing my Yellowstone shirt today, to remind myself that, you know, the, the national park system, as I see it, in this country, is is made up of secular sanctuaries. I mean, this is the the secular answer to, to the church to sanctuaries is, and that's how John Muir and some of my, you know, my heroes might call them secular saints, sometimes, you know, people who have something to say about the natural world and want to draw people out kind of evangelists for nature. So, so how to do that in a way that that's inviting to everyone. And I love to, I love to say that I think this is responding to your question, let me know if it's not, but I can remember a time when I was in Yellowstone National Park, and I was observing a scene with a probably 100 other people. And it was a scene in a valley and there was a grizzly eating an elk. And there were bald eagles waiting to get their part of the snack. And then there was a moose that came running out of the woods chased by a wolf. And we all got to see that in one scene right in front of us in the wild in the wild. And he's kind of just I would just want to freeze that scene and say, okay, is that is that a Baptist over there? You know, is that a Catholic? Is that an atheist watching this scene? And it didn't matter? It's that sense of, it's that sense of awe and wonder and wildness, that I think, is really the core of our humanity. And why not? Keep urging, nudging us all toward that, instead of suddenly wanting to divide everybody up? Which is what religion tends to do? Why should atheism do that? Right? Why should atheism do the same thing that religion does breaking into this group and that group and getting and arguing and all that kind of stuff? There's a place for that, I honor a certain amount of what I hear from some of the more famous atheists the face of atheism out there. But I am concerned as you read in, in my one of my latest articles, I am concerned about what is the face of, of atheism? Partly because I want to, I wonder what is the face of free thought? What is the face of secularism? And if you ask people out there, you know, what do you think of or what do you think of if they only come up with these debaters and the agitators and the militants, and all those folks that are so anti religious, I want to say wait a minute, there's a whole bunch of us who aren't like that, right.
David Ames 29:20
One of the things I've observed is the nature of social media is such that provocative tweets or posts get a lot of attention. So if you say something about, hey, we ought to be kinder to one another and love one another. It's, you know, crickets. Nobody responds, but if you say this group is stupid, you know, retweets and likes and so I've been very cognizant of restraint of restraining my desire to, to score points. And again, sometimes sometimes I don't live up to that but that but I'm aware of that as as a phenomena and so much of what we see, both in books and YouTube and social media is that the scoring of points is raised above actually trying to connect with one another.
Chris Highland 30:15
Exactly, exactly. I've never been really a debater, I know I can, I can certainly I have a voice and I speak up and I write most of it, have my have had my shares of share of arguments and with people, but you know, a lot of this, I think David comes back to semantics. You know, I think I think choosing our words a little more carefully. Instead of speaking of religion, as I said, and some great broad brushstroke to say some religion, some religious people, some Christians, or as I said earlier, if you come out of some tradition that's been, you know, you feel like you've been abused, it's been at least a particular church you came from or whatever was, caused some trauma in your life and cause you agitation in your own life, then, then I understand you deal with that. But, you know, I like to bring up the possibility that someone could say, well, some in that church, now, I could probably spend a lot of time we could talk for an hour or more just about the Presbyterian Church, because that's what I grew up with. That's what I've known the best. That's what I was ordained in. I know that church probably better than any others. And I have a lot of criticisms. And here's the thing. I have a lot of friends, close friends and family who are members of the Presbyterian church now. Right, right. And so if I'm just going to say, well, Presbyterian, you know, the Presbyterian churches like this, well, someone's going to point out right away, and say, Well, Chris, don't you remember that other Presbyterian Church and what they were like, and don't you remember when they came out with this social justice statement? And they have these programs that are doing good in the community? So Oh, yeah, you're right. I forgot your right. So I forgot that I need to add a qualifier that says some Presbyterians. Yeah. You know, and so you do the same with with Christianity itself. You say, Well, yeah, there's a segment of Christianity that I have a real problem with, and I'm pushing on all the time, which is Christian nationalism, and some of that a member of the Americans United. And I, you know, I really believe strongly, we need to push, push back on all of that. But then I know a whole lot of other Christians who are anti that too. I don't want Christian nationalism either, right.
David Ames 33:26
So you mentioned that your wife is a minister, and my wife is very much a believer, and we are navigating that together. And, you know, as I've often tried to tell her is that I love her for who she is, which includes her beliefs, right, that makes her part of who it's part of who she is. And I think of my my in laws are some of the most generous, loving, caring giving people I've ever met in my life. And they are both theologically and politically conservative. Right. So I mean, we have some disagreements. But so to point out that there are very, very good people who are believers is just a statement of fact, and we don't need to feel like we need to tear them down in order to work with them.
Chris Highland 34:14
Right. Yeah. And I have a chapter in one of my more recent books on difficult conversations, and it relates a conversation with one of my family members. And, you know, she and I have some some very divergent thoughts. So these things, and we have some, some heated discussions, but we don't yell and scream, and we end by saying love you talk to you soon. Right. You know, and, you know, what's the problem with that? I mean, that really bothers some, some of the atheist circles that, that just think, well, you've just got to argue and argue and argue, and until you convince them well, that what is the difference between between being an atheist evangelist, and being a Christian evangelist, if you're just there to like you said to win, you gotta win, there's gonna be a winner and a loser. And then you can walk away saying, Great, I, I convinced them well, what did you convince them up that you're unable? Good for you.
David Ames 35:25
One more quote of yours. I think this is from your more recent article, let me see if I've got this prepped here. I don't see religion going away. So I think it's much more productive to find ways of working with those faith communities who are open to it, and those seculars who are open to it, and then rather than complaining about them to score points, the point I want to jump off on is I think in some ways, there is a unstated or implicit and sometimes overt implication that secularism will just overrun religion entirely. And I think I agree with you, you more, I think religion is a human phenomena. And so I think it's not going away anytime soon. And so, if secular, as secularists believed that their role is to eradicate religion, I think that's a fool's errand. Yes. So I'm curious, you know, in what ways do you see that, that we could be more interfaith as secular humanists or a secular person and interact with people of faith in a positive way?
Chris Highland 36:33
Yeah. Well, that's the That's the million dollar question, I think is what are we what are we going to do? What are we going to do now and into the future, when, you know, there are a lot of forces that want to fracture, fracture us and divide us? And really, David, I think it comes back to relationships. And, you know, I guess I get, some people probably get tired of hearing me say it, but I, you know, if someone has critiques of religion, but they've never talked to a Buddhist, or a Quaker, or even somebody in their own tradition, that that maybe wasn't in a small town in the Midwest or something, I don't know. Right? It comes back to relationships. I, I published a book a couple of years ago called Broken bridges. And it was, you know, really a collection of my, my essays that I write the columns are right for the Asheville citizen times. And the focus of that book, it wasn't a lot of, there weren't a lot of essays in there. But the focus was, you know, let's look at what's broken. And then let's make some decisions. Some bridges should just crumble and fall, let them go right now. Other ones might, maybe there's a way to repair those, but we're not going to be able to do it. One group of one faction of our of our culture or society is not going to be able to do it by themselves. So we have to find a way cooperate, and then then becomes that that real, free thinking moment when we say, well, maybe maybe a bridge over there would work better. Maybe we need to try something different. And what if that difference is, well, can we put aside our theological problems, our belief divisions, those broken bridges? Can we put those aside to finish this project, this program, work with these people deal with this issue, this this critical problem in our community, where it doesn't matter what you believe, or don't believe, right? That's, that's what intrigues me. And I will say that, you know, for 25 years of my life in those chaplaincies, I was working shoulder to shoulder with people that theologically No, I'm not there. I'm not going there. Right. But we didn't have the time. We didn't have the time to argue those things, or sometimes to even discuss them. It was it was okay, there's, there's that person over there who's dying on the street, what are we going to do for them? And then everybody adds their solutions to the to that issue, which might come down to that one person. And that's what that's what gets me charged up. That's what energizes me is not always focusing on the Broken bridges, but where where we can either repair or build a new one.
David Ames 40:00
Yeah, I, I love everything about what you what you said, let's get about the business of, of doing good in the world together collectively. And if we're just focusing on the parts that we disagree about, we aren't effectively doing good in the world. And if we can just accept one another as in the fullness of each other's human humanity, we can work together and have a positive effect on on the world.
Chris Highland 40:27
Yes, and I just want to add real quick here that I can already hear the criticisms because people say, Well, yeah, but you can't, I'm not going to work with those people are I can't, those people aren't going to want to work with me, maybe, you know, maybe that's true, that that's those, that's the broken bridges that maybe just need to crumble. But it might also be that, that you or I might not be able to, to make a connection, and build a relationship with that particular person, or that particular group or organization. But somebody else who has some, some, you know, relationships or connections that are already there, have some other way has some other way to make that connection. Let them do it. Right them do it if you if you can't stand Baptists anymore, because you came out of a tradition, where you just kind of you just can't stand it anymore. I'm not gonna deal with those people. Good, don't do it. But but others who, who are okay with that, and are open to that, and, and maybe have the time and the energy and the patience to try to try to build those bridges, let them do it. Right.
David Ames 41:40
I think sometimes we need to step back and be more explicit about what our goals are. And I think you've touched on briefly here already, but one of our goals ought to be more secularism, more pluralism, meaning in the non scary version of that, right. So we're not saying more people who are non believers, but rather, freedom of religion and freedom from religion, right, that's ability to truly allow people there to follow their conscience and, and still give all rights and privileges and citizenship to everyone. And one of the things I think that the problem is, is that we we approach it as a zero sum game, sometimes like we, like we have to win, atheism has to win in some way, instead of what I think our goal ought to be is acceptance of everyone. And then that is truly a marketplace of ideas so that the best solutions can fall out of that. Why do you think it is? Maybe like, just give you a an impossible question, why do you think it is that we as human beings, we want to put people in a box and add categorize them? And and say, this is the other and this isn't? That person's not on my team?
Chris Highland 42:58
Well, yeah, yeah, you're right, I'm not going to answer that. It's, it's, um, it does seem to be I mean, I guess we're tribal. And, you know, we want to identify somehow and with with one particular group of people, that gives us some, some way to make sense of our lives and give our lives meaning. And it's always the other, we don't understand them. We call them them. We don't want to deal with that group. Those people. And you know, what, what really changed me or let's just say, helped me evolve a more inclusive viewpoint is working with those folks who are marginalized the outsiders and, you know, working in a county jail for 10 years. You know, I was conducting seven gatherings a week, for 10 years in county jails, women, men, people and maximum security people and minimum security. And I had to go through some real change and you know, those people who are those people who are in jail, and I found out that there are some great people who end up in jail and some very hurt people who end up in jail and some very guilty people are in jail and some very innocent people who are in jail so I mean, just all across the board like that. And then the same on the streets working with people in the we do we all we always call them something that they don't have we say their home less home last. And, you know, we just we got to know people as people, right? Maybe they don't have a house. They don't have a permanent dwelling, but they're people. So it's I guess I'm gonna say it again. It's that relationship thing. It's like, it's like, Do you know any of them? Right? Know when when a family member told me a few years ago, they started complaining about, about gay people and all the gay marriage and gay, this and all. And I ended up saying, Well, what are your What are your gay friends telling you? That's a classic question. Yes. You know, and in applies in all these different areas people complain about all those people on the street. Have you ever talked to one of them? You know, do you know any of the names of those folks? And it does change things. So, you know, one of the things I'll say, to address your question, I think, David, is that the mentality we come to the world with? In other words, our worldview makes such a huge difference. If we see it as a battlefield. Right, where we're all you know, it's let's go out there and fight. We're the defenders, we're the defenders of reason and critical thinking and truth and all these things, you know, then I don't there's not going to be any hope for for people to ever work things out or find just find ways of working together. And you mentioned about, you know, should we be working on pluralism? Well, part of it for me is kind of flipping the question around saying, Well, where is the pluralism? Where is the cooperation already going on? And how can we participate in that. And I've seen it the most in interfaith communities. And I don't really like the word interfaith either. But it's a huge step forward from ecumenical which is just Christians working together, to people of different faiths working together. And then when when my wife was the director of a large Interfaith Council in the Bay Area, people like me were part of that, and and Wiccans. And some of the some of the, the Muslim members had a hard time with the Wiccans. And some of the, you know, hardcore, people of one faith didn't necessarily like the fact that I was there. And I would call myself a secular person. So so how do we, how do we look at a person and see a person instead of slap a label on them and say, well, let's go to the battlefield?
David Ames 47:58
So I've got a question about humanism. But I guess I first need to find out is, is humanism, something that you identify as, is that a thing you care about? Or is that not a term that you use?
Chris Highland 48:10
Yeah, well, as I mentioned earlier, you know, I am a humanist celebrant. So I guess I have to have some affinity. Well, I'm just gonna say that it's just it's just to me, it's just based on people being human together, practicing ethics. And, you know, whether people call it a religion or not, it doesn't really matter to me, because you as you brought up earlier, you know, I don't see religion disappearing, I see morphing, evolving, as it always has done. And if we're just talking about institutions, well, institutions come and go and leadership changes and dogma and creeds and everything, change over time. But the kind of religion I think we're talking about is is more what I get from people from some of the naturalists and scientists. You know, I love what Carl Sagan says about us. He, he used the word spiritual in spirit, and he didn't. He didn't throw that out. He didn't throw that the spirit words out with the bit with the Christian bathwater. And he went back to itself that I learned way back in college in Greek and looking at original languages that these some of these words came from very earthy, naturalistic things. It's a breath, it's the breath is the wind. Like you can't get more natural than that.
David Ames 49:39
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Chris Highland 49:40
So that's human.
David Ames 49:42
Carl Sagan man, I can't say enough good things about him in that, you know, he so eloquently expresses hard science, and awe and wonder, and that's a that's a beautiful combination that is relatively rare.
Chris Highland 50:01
Oh yeah, I get to be with Neil deGrasse Tyson this evening and a Gathering Online gathering by the Center for Inquiry. Okay. Neil deGrasse Tyson will be speaking for an hour and live and so it'd be kind of, that'd be cool. Like, a mini Carl Sagan.
David Ames 50:22
That's right, he is carrying on the torch with cosmos. Yeah. Sorry, that was a bit of a digression on humanism, I often ask people who are active humanists. Why do you think humanism is, is so rare? Or people or the identification with humanism is so rare? Or another way of asking that is, why is humanism fail so badly?
Chris Highland 50:48
Alright, well, I was suspicious of it for quite a long time myself. Partially because I'm such a nature person. So when you talk about the focus is on human humans. Right? I thought, well, that's not enough, you know, I. And so I guess I defined myself one time as a natural humanist or something like that. I think once again, it comes back to how comfortable we are with certain labels. And then we I think we need to be able to define those labels in a way. That's why I keep coming back to will, how am I going to define better do a better job of defining free thought, and free thinking? So my wife and I have a couple of years ago, we went on the freethought trail up in up in New York, and went to Elizabeth Cady Stanton's home, and Robert Greene. Ingersoll is home. And you know, just kind of all over the map, literally, to see, well, where did these folks come from? What were they thinking? And why are they why were they free thinkers? How were they free thinkers, and what did they focus on? And it was always a humanistic endeavor. It was something to do with with freeing with literally freeing slaves, freeing women to be fully members of the, of our society, freeing our minds from, you know, any kind of restriction, whether it's political or religious, or whatever. So, you know, to me, it just it's a constant self reflection, again, to say, Well, what do I mean by this word? And so I don't, I don't always feel comfortable saying, Oh, yes, I'm a humanist. In fact, I'm gonna be teaching your class, I teach courses over here at the university, on free thought, and I always pick one of the one of these folks, you know, these voices like Ingersoll, and yeah, and others to Frederick Douglass and, and some of these last names like Francis right, and Lucretia Mott, and I love these people, because you dig back into those, those people and they end those lives and what they were talking about. And it they always have something for us today, to help us define and redefine what we mean by terms like humanism, right? And being humanistic. What does that mean? Does that exclude the natural world? Well, I certainly hope not. Because we're, we're a part of it. We are part of nature.
David Ames 53:33
Yeah, I I recently talked to a fellow podcaster named Sam Davis. And I mentioned that I feel like I came to humanism, late, I think we're already talking about sentient ism, you know, or, you know, the, you know, to broaden this to all levels of consciousness as it were, and, you know, to respect that. And so I definitely am very much open to that. And I think we've been talking about the nature part of naturalism. And that, you know, it's just important to recognize that we are, quite literally in a scientific, hard, naturalistic sense, interconnected with the entire ecology and that what we do to the environment, what we do to animals affects us so in a selfish way, we need to be concerned with that. So I never use humanism in the sense of excluding nature. But I think the thing that is important to me is people over ideology, right like that. I feel like we we focus so much on ideologies and those can be political, economic, religious, what have you. But when an ideology begins to hurt people is when it needs to be criticized and broken down. In my concern is we don't do a very good job of caring for one another. I talk about the homeless, you know, something so simple. My wife works with At the school district in a way that tries to help families that they are struggling with housing and that simple thing, having a place for a kid to go home to has a profound impact on that child's education. And you can make arguments all day long whether or not the parents are abusing the system. But that kid deserves the best opportunities possible. It's just something so simple as providing housing makes a huge impact. Yes.
Chris Highland 55:40
I do appreciate when they're more secular voices coming out, and kind of taking this word secular and turning it around and upside down, and shaking it and trying to say, Well, what what is this, you know, how to be humans, you know, living together on this planet, and not getting to, you know, adding my own thing to it, I would say just, we don't we shouldn't get too hung up in our philosophical, theological, political issues and, and identities and debates, in my opinion, because it just, it just takes away from I mean, that's what I was gonna say earlier, is it you know, it's fine to focus on humans, and the best part of humans in terms of humanism. But then, as you were just saying, it's, it can't be anthropocentric or anthropomorphic. And if we fall back into that, then we haven't made much progress.
David Ames 56:51
Right? When I went through my deconversion process, which was about 2015, and I started to think after the fact, you know, I think I want to speak into this world, I want to feel like I have something to say, I was very cognizant of trying to remember what it was like, as a believer. And I think, in our email discussion I mentioned, you know, I'm positive that it's not about intelligence, because I'm the same person, I was as a believer as I am now. So that, that helps ground you know, remove some vitriol remove some hostility towards believers. And then secondly, and this is where I want to get to with you. Because my wife is a believer, and much of my family and and friend group, are believers, that also helps ground me to remember that I love these people. And I, I respect them. And I think they are bright, intelligent, giving wonderful people. And you can stop me if this is too personal. But I wonder if you would talk just a little bit about what that was, like, where you went through a change of mind? How have you and your wife navigated that?
Chris Highland 58:01
Yeah. Well, as part of what I've been writing about recently, that kind of got some people agitated. You know, because I was really talking about education matters, education matters. And if somebody is bringing up a topic about something, and I just didn't study that, or that it wasn't covered in my education, I would just say, you know, I, I don't really know what you're talking about, or I'm ignorant in that area. Yeah. And I think we just need to be honest about that. So, you know, that is to preface the fact that my wife and I both went to very liberal seminaries that had a lot of interfaith connection, she went to Union Seminary in New York City, and I went to San Francisco seminary, so on opposite coasts, okay. But we both got steeped in liberation thought liberation theology, okay. And which made a huge amount of difference because it gets you kind of away from a Bible focus, to to an action focus to a social justice, focus. And both of us came out of that. So that was a parallel, right to begin with. So Carol is my wife and I like to tell the story, we both get very amused telling the story that my wife and I met carrying the cross and it was a good Friday service at a Presbyterian Church. She had heard of me, I'd heard of her. She was doing advocacy work with immigrants, and I was working on the streets as a chaplain. So we'd heard of each other. We're both Presbyterian ministers. We show up for this, this Good Friday service, and someone had created this Big I guess it was. I don't think it was Styrofoam, but I think it was some kind of pressboard cross or something. And about four or five of us carry that up the aisle into this Good Friday service. So we kind of, you know, that's how we we met. But it was, you know, that event, in a sense, meant something different to us than maybe even some of the other people who were carrying that cross. And people who came to that service focused on Well, this is Good Friday, it's all about Jesus. It's all about Christians. It's all about being in church, without looking around to see, well, who's not here, who's not attracted to this kind of thing. And how divisive is that cross? For so many people? Well, she and I understood that from the very beginning. So I think, you know, that gives you have kind of a long background, but it's really, it started with us doing liberation kinds of work, which meant being out with a people presents ministry, inclusive, working and a diverse environment with diverse agencies and nonprofits. And so she she started this interfaith group, I was already doing interfaith chaplaincy. So it was, it was a natural, in some ways for us. So I, you know, all along the way. It really was. It made us love each other, for what we were doing and, you know, what we will be might see in the future for us doing together, which was kind of starts with marriage. So we just decided that we get along pretty well together and think a lot of like, when it comes to these matters, and she has a lot of criticisms of the church, her own church, the denomination, religion in general. She is a member of Americans United as I am, she's she's gets really upset about Christian nationalism, and a lot of that real. Yeah, boy, I mean, there's so many ways to say, you know, what I mean, all the crap out there that comes from various religious groups. But once again, we both have a background, we both have, actually, friendships, with colleagues, and others from a, from a lot of different faiths. And so, and now she's gotten to know some of my connections in the, in the secular community as well. And so we, we've decided to make a life of it. And it works pretty well. We certainly have disagreements, but yeah, like everything else. We've been saying, you know, it's really a matter of, you know, do I want this relationship does she want this relationship? How do we make that work? I don't go to church with her. But I actually know the pastors of the church where she goes, and her mother goes there to the family church for years. And I liked those folks and a lot and get get this a lot of the people that go to that particular church read my columns every week, and they really liked them. So that tells you something right there. Yeah,
David Ames 1:03:38
yeah, definitely. One last thought here. I think that people like ourselves who have had a, a relatively long lifetime of faith and then subsequently find we no longer can believe I think we have a lot to offer to church groups, right like that, that they can learn something especially if we aren't being trying to be critical or trying to just tear them down.
Chris Highland 1:04:04
Yes, and that's that's the purpose of my my writing almost all of my writing, you know, my columns as well as the books in my in my blog posts and other things. I'm always writing about these things and I I often come back to what one reason I really enjoy John Muir so much living in California for years and I've been to his boyhood home in Scotland and you know, he's just a I would highly recommend him to people of faith to people without faith doesn't matter. And I one of his his most succinct statements is in his journals where he says, the best synonym for God is beauty. The best synonym for God is beauty. So if we just would all take that and live with it. What does that mean? Does that mean to deny that there isn't beauty, that there's a lot of ugliness, a lot of death and disease and terrible things going on in the world. It's not denying any of that. It's just saying, if you're going to talk about a creative force in the universe, or within ourselves, bring it back, bring it back to nature, natural beauty, and work with that somehow. So now, maybe that's better, better than free, thought free thinker, and humanist and all that stuff. You know, I'm a follower of beauty.
David Ames 1:05:37
That's amazing. I could not have thought of a better way to end up here. Chris, this has been an amazing conversation, can you let people know how they can get in touch with you. And then a topic we didn't touch on, but just maybe a plug for the clergy project? If we happen to have listeners that are working in the church in one way or another? I'm having doubts.
Chris Highland 1:05:55
Yeah. So yeah, both of those. Yeah, I can be, you can read my writing and connect with me through C highland.com, which I also call friendly, free thinker. So friendly, free thinkers, sea island.com. All my books are listed on there, all my writings, and the clergy project. That's the, you know, clergy project.org. And if anybody is an in any kind of pastoral work, or clergy person, who's kind of making the transition out, and you either out with that, or still have to kind of stay in the closet, clergy project is a great place to get support and connect and network with other people. So and that's, you know, you can you can be as, as hidden as you want to be on the clergy project now, a little over 1000 people, I think now members of it. Yeah, I've been there maybe, I think 10 years I've been a member.
David Ames 1:06:57
Okay. Wow, that's fantastic. Yeah,
Chris Highland 1:06:59
that's a good organization.
David Ames 1:07:01
Chris, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Chris Highland 1:07:03
Thank you appreciate it very much.
David Ames 1:07:18
As you can hear, nature is very important to Chris his book, nature is enough. He is talking about searching for the ordinary wonders in our extraordinary natural world. This is a 15 second clip of the bird calls that I heard on a recent kayaking trip. The audio is terrible. But I was out there, I was listening. I was seeing nature and I was thinking about Chris, this is my gift to Chris.
Final thoughts on the episode. One of the very, very exciting things about doing this podcast is all of the frustration that I described about people who are going through a deconversion deconstruction process, finding the angry or louder, more argumentative, more debate oriented voices is becoming less true. Because I'm finding people like Chris Highland. I'm finding people like Troy more heart. I'm finding people like Bart Campolo and Leah Helbling. I'm finding people like Sasha Sagan, I am finding people like Reverend bones is harder to find us maybe. But we are out there. That is incredibly meaningful and exciting to me to find another voice out there who is doing secular grace. And even though that is not a term that Chris would have used prior to this conversation, that is what he's been doing. He was doing secular grace as an interfaith chaplain. And he is doing secular grace as a humanist celebrant. In his writing, what attracted me to his work is that he is expressing secular grace and several of those ideas are really important. One is obviously just about relationships, as he describes it is about our connection with other people. And that's what matters and winning points or arguments is not the point. We also I think, agree that if the end goal of the secular movement is more pluralism, and more acceptance and freedom of religion and freedom from religion. attacking people of faith is the wrong way to accomplish that goal. At one point, Chris says he is looking for a real Bible of goodness and graciousness, that is secular grace. I also appreciate Chris's relationship with his wife who is a minister. And the more voices we can have on that are people who are making an unequally yoked relationship work in a loving and kind, generous and humble way, the better we all are. So I think Chris and his wife are a great example of that. I want to thank Chris for being on the podcast for sharing all of his lived wisdom for sharing his secular grace. And I want to make sure that you are where you can find his website at sea highlands.com. Of course, I'll have links in the show notes. He has written a number of books, those are all available on his website. Many of his essays have been published in a few different media, including the rational doubt blog that Linda Scola runs Lindell Escola and Dan Dennett are a part of the clergy project that we discussed as well, I want to give a huge shout out to the clergy project. If you happen to be paid by the church in some way or another, and you are going through doubt clergy project is the place to reach out, they know what you're going through, they've been there. And as Chris mentioned, you can have the level of anonymity that you want. For the secular Grace Thought of the Week, I want to just emphasize Chris's focus on nature itself. He talked a lot about John mirror and beautiful places in California, like Yosemite, or the Grand Canyon in Arizona, places where you can go where you experience or at just the grandeur of nature itself. And one of the things that we mentioned is to be cognizant of our connection to nature, that evolution works in such a way that there is a web of interconnectedness amongst us and I mean, this in the most naturalistic, non woo way possible. We literally are connected to the ecology and we are connected to one another by interdependence, by relationships. And all of that is critically important, selfishly, for the human race to succeed, we need to take care of the environment, we need to take care of nature. I really appreciate Chris's focus on bringing out the wonder and beauty of nature itself. As always, we have some amazing episodes coming up next week is going to be Vanessa. And she describes her story as opposed to dramatic church syndrome. She's incredibly funny and humorous, and has beautiful laugh and a wonderful life story to tell. We're going to then take a break over the Fourth of July weekend. There'll be two weeks there one week without a podcast. And then when we come back, I'm going to have Thomas, who is actually a relative of a previous guest, Jimmy that we had on a number of months ago. So we get to hear a different side of that family story. And then after that, we'll also hear from Daniel, who is the co host of that when belief dies podcast, he was a part of the interview team that interviewed me for my recent episode, and he has been actively participating in that podcast, so look forward to that as well. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human beings.
Time for the footnotes. The beat is called waves for MCI beats, links will be in the shownotes. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can promote it on your social media. You can subscribe to it in your favorite podcast application, and you can rate and review it on pod chaser.com. You can also support the podcast by clicking on the affiliate links for books on Bristol atheists.com. If you have podcast production experience and you would like to participate, podcast, please get in touch. Have you gone through a faith transition? And do you need to tell your story? Reach out? If you are a creator, or work in the deconstruction deconversion or secular humanism spaces and like to be on the podcast? Just ask. If you'd like to financially support the podcast there's links in the show notes. To find me you can google graceful atheist. You can google deconversion you can google secular race. You can send me an email graceful atheist@gmail.com or you can check out the website graceful atheists.com My name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist join me and be graceful human beings
this has been the graceful atheist Podcast
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Michael tells us his deconversion story that he no longer sees as deconversion. He describes his rediscovery of a rational spirituality.
I feel simultaneously connected and alone and that is part of being human.
Michael and I hit a broad range of conversation topics including having conversations that matter, models vs reality, A.I., Death Cafes, vision quests, blind spots and podcasting.
Reality Knows the Truth: The Art and Artifice of Being Human About Rational Spirituality–a way of looking at the world with a balance between ancient wisdom and modern reason. https://michael.ck.page/d36a3d2338
I am a Scientist, Skeptic, and Professor at Bryant University and the IBNS, Brown University. My goal is to make technical subject matters widely accessible and to use my analytical and computational skills to assist anyone with their science-related problems.
In this episode, I take the restraints off myself and express the reasons why I think apologetics is faulty. Brian is the perfect guest for this. We bounce ideas off one another to articulate good epistemology. We discuss how mathematics and Bayes can be abused by injecting unstated information which changes the probabilities and ultimately the conclusions one comes to.
We also discuss how beliefs have consequences. The current rash of conspiracy theories have had real-world effects. Brian explains how decision theory can be used to make difficult choices.
My returning guest this week is Alice Greczyn. Alice has written a new memoir called Wayward: Spiritual Warfare & Sexual Purity. In it, Alice tells the harrowing story of growing up in an Evangelical family that attempted to live by faith. They moved from place to place believing the “Lord would provide.” Alice describes it as being “homeless.”
Alice came of age under the oppressive sexual and purity mores of the “Kiss Dating Goodbye” era. She tells the story of being shamed while on a YWAM mission trip to India for being “flirty.”
And that’s I think the greatest mind f*** of Christianity as a whole: these awful feelings are called love. They’re done in the name of love. My wires of love and shame and fear and guilt and self hatred were so crossed and it took me years to even see that wiring.
As an adult in her 20s, in a desperate but final act of faith, Alice tests God. God fails. And Alice begins the difficult process of letting go of faith. This is a dark time of panic attacks, depression and self-harm.
When we’re told God is love, and love feels like this horrible, self-hating guilt complex, what is love, how can we recognize good love?
With the help of secular therapy and the discovery of the term, Religious Trauma Syndrome, Alice began her recovery process. She studied the science of faith, neurotheology, and began to understand herself and those around her who still believed. In this new freedom, she rebuilt her life reclaiming her autonomy and discovering what real love feels like.
And again it [understanding neurotheology] alleviated the pressure. God wasn’t ignoring me. There was nothing wrong with me. I wasn’t broken. I wasn’t this chronic sinner who was just born defective and unable to feel the love of God because I didn’t have enough faith. It’s simply to be a matter of science and that’s how most things are to me.
On top of being an author, Alice is an advocate for those questioning their faith. Her organization, Dare to Doubt, is a resource for those who are no longer satisfied with their faith tradition’s explanations and demands.
Yet this demographic [millennial “Nones”] is also resilient. We are as brave as the martyrs we were raised to be. We are battling the spiritual war we were trained to fight. We’re just not on the side of religion, and believe us—no one is more surprised by this than ourselves. We are condemned, prayed for, and loathed as much as we are feared. But persecution was once our fuel. Our skin is thick with the courage to fight for truth as we see it, and where we once saw through dogma-colored glasses, we now see through the lenses of relativity, reason, and the validity of our own experiences. It is easy to dismiss us as bitter. It is understandable to write off our deconversions as desperate attempts at individuation and rebellion. It is compassionate to ask us why we left, instead of praying for us to rejoin.
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.
David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast. Welcome welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David, and I'm trying to be the graceful atheist. I want to thank my latest reviewer on the Apple podcast store. Irish heretic. Thank you so much for rating and reviewing the podcast. Please consider subscribing to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's episode. One of my favorite aspects of the podcast is when people write in to me and tell me their stories. The last week and a half or so I've received three just incredibly poignant emails from people who are in the middle of or long past a deconversion process and finding the podcast lets them know that they are not alone. That is, ultimately the entire point of what we are doing here is to say that many have gone before you, you are not alone. This is normal. This is human. Let's remind each other that we are not alone. I wanted to mention here that on the blog, gracefully atheist.wordpress.com. I now have a number of book recommendations and the links for those books are using the Amazon affiliate program. So if you happen to be interested in any of these books, and you buy them after clicking on the link on my website, I'll get a little bit back from Amazon, which will go to the production of the podcast. On today's show. My guest today is Alice Greczyn. Alice has written a new memoir called wayward it's a harrowing tale of growing up in an evangelical family that was attempting to live by faith being led by the Lord, which in Alice's words ultimately meant they were homeless for much of her growing up years. Alice grew up in the 90s under the influence of the book, kiss dating goodbye. There was a tremendous amount of sexual repression and idealistic views on courtship, dating, sexuality. And in her memoir, she goes through with just heart wrenching honesty, telling her story of growing up in that environment. As you're about to hear, Alice is an incredibly inquisitive intelligent person. She has since done a lot of research in neuro theology. And it's fun to be reading the book and she's telling a particular story, and her current self breaks in to point out the science of the situation. It ends with a lot of triumph, and ultimately, Alice's dare to doubt organization that helps people going through faith transitions. I highly recommend the book wayward it is an amazing book that is gripping. My understanding is that Alice has a limited number of signed copies available. If you are interested in a signed copy, you can go to alicegreczyn.com/wayward-ltd-signed-copy. Of course, I will have the link in the show notes. attentive listeners may recognize Alice's name. She was on the podcast way back in July of 2019. So if you enjoy this episode, you should go and look that one up as well. I'm very proud and excited to give you my conversation with Alice Greczyn.
Alice Greczyn, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.
Alice Greczyn 3:59
Thank you. It's such a pleasure.
David Ames 4:01
So you have the dubious honor of being the first repeat guest. So you're back to the Oh, yay. Yay. Yeah, that
Alice Greczyn 4:11
is awesome. What an honor.
David Ames 4:12
Yeah. And you've written a book called wayward and it is absolutely amazing. You know, again, I get asked often to read books, and some of them are good, some of them are bad. But this was ripping. It made me blush. It made me want to scream out loud. I recognized myself. I felt paternalistic, like protection for you. Just just a range of emotions, but that is all down to your writing ability. So my first question to you, Alice is, is there anything you cannot do?
Alice Greczyn 4:47
Thank you very much. I can't I can't sing or play music at all. I feel like I feel like I do a lot of things and I feel pretty confident that I can teach myself almost anything But I don't know if you if I put a little bit of power into it. But But music No. But thank you, I really appreciate your your kind words. I mean
David Ames 5:10
a lot. So you are human,
Alice Greczyn 5:11
after all, Oh, yes, very sorely human.
David Ames 5:15
Just in case anybody doesn't know. So Alice has had a successful modeling career successful acting career, she started the dare to doubt organization that helps people transitioning through faith transitions, with lots of resources there that's dare to doubt.org. So you've just done an amazing number of things in your life. And now you are an author? No, I
Alice Greczyn 5:36
am an author. And I have to tell you, as soon as I got my first shipment of hardcopy books, which just came in the mail a couple of days ago, my my boyfriend was asking, what's the part that I was looking to the most about actually getting to hold a physical copy of my book in my hands, and I thought about it and I said, being able to speak about this in past tense, because for so long, I've been writing a book or working on a book or in the middle of publishing a book. And now I get to say, I wrote a book, I'm an author. So it's a pretty fun feeling.
David Ames 6:09
So I'm gonna start with the the title wayward is such an evocative, single word. Tell me what that means to you and why you chose it as a title.
Alice Greczyn 6:18
Thank you. So wayward. For those who grew up reading the Bible. They may remember the wayward woman frequently mentioned in the book of Proverbs. And she's mentioned as in painted and very much the light of a harlot as a scandalous, scantily clad woman who stirs lust in men. In some verses, she's made out to be like she's married, and she's cheating on her husband and seducing men. In in the churches that I grew up in, though, I mainly just heard the wayward woman talked about as symbolic of everything that I was not supposed to be everything that women were not supposed to be, you are not to be sensual, you are not to be beautiful, you are not to be free. You are to be submissive, subservient, and chaste, and duty bound. And so for me, when I was thinking of titles for my book, wayward was a working title for a long time. And I always assumed that a publisher would change it, because I'm reading writing blogs, they're like, don't get attached to your title, you know, but, but my publisher loved it. And then I also came up with the subtitle, which is a memoir of spiritual warfare and sexual purity, and wayward, you know, in a secular sense waver, it also has connotations of being willful, of being rebellious of being, like a wayward child like a who just won't listen won't do what's expected of them. And so I liked that people who grew up with in religion would recognize it, possibly from the biblical references to the wayward woman. But I also liked it because it, it still says something to a completely secular reader of like, oh, it's, it's I like that it's a singular word. That hasn't been overused in the book market, because I did a bunch of research. And yeah, that's, that's how I came up with it. And that's what it that's what it means to me.
David Ames 8:08
Awesome. You start off the book, talking about just the nature of a memoir and human memories. So you kind of acknowledged that this is your story, or your telling of the story, which includes a lot of your family. So yes, it's talking about that, like what what is it like to start to write a memoir and acknowledging that, you know, memories can be valuable?
Alice Greczyn 8:29
I'm really glad you asked that actually, because as someone who reads memoirs, a lot all sorts of memoirs, I feel like there's not a whole lot that I can find anyway, about memoir, authors talking about the complex journey of writing a memoir, specifically how it relates to your loved ones that may appear in the book, whether their names are changed or not. And I did change quite a few names in wayward. So later on in my book, without giving away too much, I definitely get into a more neuroscientific look at faith and the effect of faith on the human brain. And some feedback that I got from earlier drafts was that it kind of seemed a little out from left field, like, Oh, why, why are we in a science book all of a sudden, but for me, understanding the science of mystical experiences truly was crucial to my healing and making peace with my religious past. And so I felt like having something at the beginning of the book, that is sort of a nod to neuroscience, where I talk about, you know, memory is fallible, and it changes as we need it to changes as other people influence it, and share their stories of what happened. And I mean, we've seen this, we see this happen all the time. And, for example, when there's a crime and police interview, say nine witnesses to the crime, people tell different stories, not because they're making things up, but because that's how their brain internalized it maybe the person was wearing a red jacket, but someone said no, it was blue. No, I'm pretty sure it was orange. Right? Memory really is some objective and there's so much to be explored. But I wanted that disclaimer there at the beginning because A, as I'm sure, as I'm sure you can imagine any listener or other writer can imagine, writing a memoir has definitely dredged up a lot of family stuff. And it's not been easy. Negotiating this venture with the people that I love, I am still close to my family. Unlike a lot of other memoir writers in my genre, my family and I are not estranged, I'm still very much in touch with them very close to them. And that made it a lot harder, it'd be a lot easier. In some ways. If my family had disowned me. And I don't say that my life would be easier. I want to watch my words here. But the publishing of this memoir would be easier. I understand now why people wait until their parents die, or they've been disowned before they publish a memoir. But there's so much love between my family and I. And despite how difficult it's been at times, they've remained very supportive. And I do try to make that clear. But that disclaimer there at the beginning is for them, but also for myself, and also for anyone who reads memoir, because I think myself included, it's very tempting to take an author's perspective as the cold hard truth, forgetting that this is the cold, hard truth to this person. Some things are objectively verifiable, like, where did we live in this year. But some things are not like someone's tone of voice or how I interpreted they meant for me to feel when they said something to me. And I wanted to I wanted to make clear that I take responsibility for how I interpreted things, whether it was things pastor said, my family said, the music I listened to, you know, this is how this is my narrative of what happened. And if you ask anyone in the story, very narrative, what happened, it will be different. And I feel like stating that upfront. I hope that does a service to memoir as a genre, because we all know of famous memoir, authors who have gotten busted for making things up. And yeah, part of me wants to cover my own ass and be like, disclaimer, I'm not saying this is the truth for everyone. But yeah, I think I think that that's what's beautiful about memoir, too, is it does ride that line between fact and fiction, and storytelling, and that little tiny, it's only like one paragraph or two long, I think there on the on the first page, I just wanted to own this as my recollection. And that way, people can just take everything that I say with a subjective grain of salt.
David Ames 12:28
I just appreciate it like for me, I think we've talked about before, you know, the honesty is such a rock bottom and authenticity. And I just saw that throughout the book, as you were working to convey what you honestly felt and how you were honestly responding to the events around surrounding you. And as you say, you were still owning all of that you weren't, you weren't blaming other people. And I just really appreciated that. I try not to thank you. One more compliment. And then I want to talk about that neuroscience for a minute. Yeah, we got back in touch in discussion about Sasha Sagan. And actually your writing really reminded me of her book in one particular way. Very eloquent prose, you're wrapped up in the story. And then you'd have these moments where you would modern, Alice would break through. So you'd be describing, you know, the charismatic church worship event, and then you'd break through kind of modern? Well, neuroscience says that, that reminded me so much of Sasha. So very good compliment to you that I think your writing is great is a huge, all of that, including the storytelling and the kind of modern skeptic in you coming through, it was just amazing.
Alice Greczyn 13:41
Thank you, that is a huge compliment. I really appreciate that.
David Ames 13:46
So to talk about neuroscience, so it's kind of starting at the end a bit, the book kind of ends in, you know, semi triumphant, you're talking about taking control of your life back and we're gonna get to this in a minute, you know, handling the trauma after both your experience growing up in Christianity and then leaving that faith behind and and just you know, the physical problems that that you wound up having. But it ends triumphantly a view, discovering how you're going to seek meaning in your life, how you're going to have purpose and ultimately ends with a dare to doubt reference, which I just loved, I absolutely adored. Thank you. What are some of the things that you've learned from the study of neuroscience? I think you dropped the term neuro theology as well. What are those things? What have you learned from those things?
Alice Greczyn 14:34
Oh, man, I feel like if first of all if I if I went back to school and did life over again, I honestly feel like neuro theology would be a field that I would deeply explore as much as my non mathematically inclined brain could. But yeah, I love it. So for those who don't know, neuro theology is sometimes defined as the neuroscience of spirituality or faith, my working definition for in the book And how I how I use it. It's the neuroscience of what are collectively called mystical experiences. And the way that I grew up those mystical experiences were called the Holy Spirit. So my, my background for most of my childhood was in charismatic Christianity, which is very emotive, very falling to the floor, being slain in the Spirit rolling around shaking, praying in tongues, prophesying, massive outpouring of laughter and crying, like it's a very, very demonstrative expression of Christianity that, that people will say is, is Spirit let, and I faked it. I think I talked about this before on your podcast, I faked it because I would go up to receive prayer and people would put their hands on my forehead and you know, pray over me in tongues and in English, and nothing would happen. I was hurt when I was really little by a pastor finally just like pushed me over, and it really hurt my neck for for a while. And not to mention, like psychologically traumatized me, because it left me with this complex of what's so wrong with me that God won't touch me himself that this man had to literally push me down on a flight of stairs because I wasn't falling over in the Spirit. And so to prevent anything like that from happening again, I decided that I needed to fake it. But caveat, I don't think everyone was faking it. I think a good number of people were, but later on in my book, when I am learning about the neuroscience of it, I'm like, What the hell was that? Because if not everyone was faking it. And I don't really think they were like people like my parents. What, what was that? And I learned that, that what I grew up being called being slain in the Spirit, or the holy, the Holy Ghost, was called so many things by other cultures, other religions in various times and places. Kundalini Yoga might be one of the more widely known parallels to it, where there's similar symptoms of entering basically a trance state, feeling electricity in your body. Speaking in tongues, you know, or glossolalia I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. But yeah, and, you know, being touched on on the forehead, the third eye, like there's, there's so many others, like in Christianity, we would never say the third eye because that would be demonic. That's so Hindu derived. But you know, in other cultures there, there are these ecstatic trance states. And I call them soberly induced mystical experiences, because an acid trip is also a mystical experience, but obviously not soberly induced, you're ingesting a chemical substance or, or a plant derived substance. So I really needed to understand for my own well being and being able to move forward, what the Holy Spirit was what soberly induced mystical experiences were. And spoiler alert, we don't know, guys, we don't really know exactly, why is the human brain capable of doing this. But what I did learn was enough to put my mind at rest, that whatever this was, was not unique to Christianity, it did, it was not a testament to the power of God, it was not a testament to the truth being found only in Christianity, and furthermore, charismatic Christianity. And I think that, that that understanding, being able to see brain scan images of, say, Buddhist monks who are meditating or nuns who are chanting, and a lot of the research that I did outside of the book, because I only wanted to devote one chapter, but just in case it was too sciency. For some people, even though I know I know, a lot of others will really like it. It really brought me a level of peace, to be able to just see it. It's like, oh, no, this is not mystical at all. This is just chemicals firing off in our brain. These are just meetings of neurons. And what I learned is that oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine play a significant role in, in getting a person to an elevated opiate state. So there's there's several researchers that I quote in the book, and one of them is Dr. Michael pur singer, who has since passed away. But his work was really influential to me in understanding the the high of getting high on Jesus, which is totally possible. For some people. I don't think that everyone and I say this from my own experience, and also from talking to many other people who grew up like me, not everyone's capable of this. And we were taught that that meant that there was a sin in our life that was blocking us from feeling God or that we just didn't have enough faith. You are always the problem in Christianity. You are the center, it's up to you. And you know, God would have a miracle for you if you just had faith, but you have to be ready to receive it. And it's like, not everyone's wired for that, for whatever reason, whether it's genetic, I delved into a lot of the the genetic arguments for faith and also why some people genetically just aren't hardwired to be inclined that way that brought me a lot of peace to because, again, it alleviated the pressure of like, there was nothing wrong with me. God wasn't ignoring me. There was nothing wrong with me, I wasn't broken. And I wasn't this like chronic sinner who was just born defective, unable to feel the love of God, because I didn't have enough faith. It's simply to be a matter of science. And that's how most things are to me. And if not science that we can understand today, then then inspiration for the tools that we need to develop to understand them tomorrow. And in the future, I think that nothing can be I don't think that there's anything that needs to remain on. No, I think it's just a matter of time and tools. That is my opinion.
David Ames 20:31
You know, it's interesting, I think my experience fell somewhere in between, like, I had some real charismatic experiences, you know, feeling of warmth, you know, breaking down in tears, and just feeling a, you know, presence. I was also always kind of an outside observer to myself, and recognizing when I was kind of faking it, and when I wasn't, but the thing that I really related to, as you were describing, kind of the charismatic experience is that there is almost an addictive quality of chasing after that experience, so that your experience with the Toronto Blessing and your parents experience and the charismatic experience in general often can devolve into chasing that feeling chasing that experience. And you've just described quite eloquently the science behind why that might be the case, the hits
Alice Greczyn 21:19
of God or the Holy Spirit or whatever, whatever version of that you find and whatever your practice is, it is neuro chemistry, it is replicable. And it can become addictive, because it taps into the same part of the brain as drugs and sex like it can easily be it puts you in a new fork state. And there usually is a cutting down when you have a bunch of these neurons firing off just like when you when you might do a certain drugs say there can be a come down. And I remember seeing it a lot as a kid, like we go to these conferences or a revival, like, you know, a week long this or a weekend here. And I feel like my parents would just be on this high for like a week after when we got home. And then there could be a crash and who's to say what that crashes in my child mind. All I know is what I observed. Like I can't, I can't say for sure what my parents reasons were, but for the ups and downs of everything that I that I saw as a kid, but But it made a lot of sense to me learning about that, because I do think that a lot of people, like you said they keep chasing after that feeling because it supposedly it feels really good. I never felt it. Okay, all right. But it does seem like it feels really good. The closest that I came to feeling that and I wrote about this in the book was when I was 13. And I went to a friend's youth group meeting. And I cried there while my friend was praying over me. And I was crying because of the words that she was saying, and her prayer, the things she was saying made me feel so seen. And I was in such a lonely, depressed place. That it she saw me, not God she did. But in the language of God, and because I I grew up seeing people cry under the touch of God, I decided it must be God touching me through her and seeing me through her. And so because I was crying and so it made me feel like oh, God's really touching me because I'm crying. And it's like though I was just on an endorphin high and and my heart was just cracked open by confession and all of these other things and you're logically speaking, there's a lot mass hypnosis plays a large role in this too, and priming ourselves for those open, transformative mystical experiences. And I wouldn't go so far as to say that pastors and worship leaders are deliberately trying to hypnotize crowds to orchestrate mass cognitive experiences, as Dr. Peter Singer would say, but that is often the result. And I think I think music plays a very deep role in that because who hasn't been to even a secular concert and found themselves in sort of an almost like group hypnotic trance stay of just feeling good and everyone's swaying and raising their hands? And yeah, it's, it's a, I do think it can be addictive and easy to lose oneself.
David Ames 24:18
So I feel like we would be doing a disservice to the book if we just focused on the hard science because there's so much humanity in the book, I think a theme that just comes through very strongly is the loneliness you experience as your parents moved you about from place to place and you refer to many friends throughout the time and you there's just a sense of, and don't take this the wrong way, but its sense of desperation, like you need that connection to that friend comes through. And then you mentioned when a friend prays for you and you're breaking down crying because that is an expression of love or stranger or somebody you just met. A young person, your same age, prays for you and expresses actual care and you Do you are breaking down? Because that's what you need. And then all the way at the end with the hindsight of the human connection that you were longing for it was it was that what you needed? Was that intentional? Or is that just so hardwired into the story? I don't think
Alice Greczyn 25:22
that was intentional. But I'm glad that that translated, no. And I would not disagree with that I desperately needed human connection as as do we all and for those who don't know, like, in my book, yeah, my, my family moved around constantly, as I was growing up, and I was homeschooled my whole life. So I was always moving from one place to another, never really being able to have friends for very long. And I do think that ought to be all about sciences is explaining the how the what is is human connection, is love. Really, ultimately, I think, and it's, it's interesting, because today, especially working with dare to Tao, and in a lot of the secular spaces that I that I've that I've found years being one of them, humanism is such a recurring theme. And I remember somewhere in my book, towards the end, I like I write that people would say I'm anti humanist. And it's because I just don't think humans as a species are innately good. I just, we could all end tomorrow, and I'd be fine with that. Like, I could see us very much as we're just a virus on planet Earth taking up and not giving back a whole lot to Earth. But, you know, I that's like, there's so many ways to dive into that angle. And I do I, well, there's part of me, that very much sees it that way, I don't feel anti humanist because the other thing that I also write is, I think we I think most of us who are able have the choice to die, we always have the choice to kill ourselves. And when we don't, whether we consciously choose not to, or we just can't, it's never even crossed our minds, there's an act of choice to be here. And I think for me, I was very conscious of that choice. Because when I lost my faith, I lost my sense of meaning I lost my purpose, as many of us do. And I did not find comfort in in, in what I've come now to be known as humanism. At first I have now because I had to put a different lens on it in order for it to resonate deeper with me. But I think that in making that choice to stay alive, and in seeing ourselves objectively is just this, this primate animal that's just wired for connection, we just want to be loved. We want to be accepted. We want to be part of the clan, we want to cuddle, we want to have sex we want to eat, we want to feel good, we want to help each other. Those traits of humanism, I can totally get behind like those the love. And that is what keeps me wanting to live. Sorry if that sounds like Tanger does. In fact, I've
David Ames 27:45
written down two quotes, if I can, if it's okay, yeah, yeah. For me, the key to happiness lay and wonder, instead of sending my mind into an answer lists, spirals trying to find out the meaning of life, maybe I needed to rephrase my quest as that I'm looking for meaning in life. And a little later on, I was taught to deny the pleasures of the flesh, I came to realize that the physical and material world I was told to fear and abstain from was the very thing that made me want to live, I think, right, that leapt off the page to me, like, that's exactly what I find is kind of the problem with many religions, not all of them, but like it is that it is denying the humanity the things that make us human, are the pleasures of the flesh as it were, like, and so when you're denying yourself all of those things, you're missing out on the goodness of life.
Alice Greczyn 28:32
Yes, I 100% agree. I think it's, um, and I find this in non religious spiritual circles too. Like there's that that adage of we're a spiritual being having a human experience instead of we're human beings having a spiritual experience. I very much disagree with that. I don't, I don't believe in spirits. I don't believe in souls, I view that as a synonym for what I would call consciousness. And I'm inclined to suspect that consciousness is a product of the brain and that when our brains die, consciousness does, but I don't know, I'm open. You know, it's definitely a field that I that I like to explore. But again, I think, I think embracing my humanity and my flesh really was the antidote to my depression. Because there's so many years of hard wiring of us being taught to deny your flesh, you know, lean not on your own understanding, deprive yourself of pleasure, because pleasure is sinful. And it can lead to temptation of all sorts, whether it's the temptation to overindulge and drink or food or sex. And I spent so much of my young life living for the afterlife, as as did most of us, you know, that the afterlife, the spiritual plane is so much more important than this one. And that was, in my opinion, deeply, deeply, wrong, deeply harmful, and when I lost my faith I had to refine that in myself, I had to rediscover my flesh, I had to re reacquaint myself with myself with my body with my senses. I also right, right after I lost my faith and on wanting Lee became an atheist. I gave God a test. And he failed. That That same week, not even maybe a week or so later, I write that I, it was almost as though I lost my senses in a literal, in a literal way. My sense of smell was the only thing that I remember that I still had. But like I couldn't, I felt so numb. Of course, I could still hear things but like I didn't, I felt so removed. I was in like a dissociative out almost out of body state. And I had to relearn how to connect with myself. Because Christianity, for me, basically taught me how to be very disembodied how to not trust my gut, how to not follow my instincts and not use my mind and definitely not to indulge or gratify my flesh. And just because we don't believe in something anymore, as most of us know, does not mean that it leaves our body that doesn't leave our nervous system. And so, it was both exhilarating and terrifying to, to learn how to be in my body. Yes. Yeah. It's something that should be so basic. But it's, it's difficult. And I think I think a lot of it would be hard to explain to people who don't know otherwise. You know, it's like, how do we articulate that? That journey? Like what has it been like for you, I'm sure you've had moments where you've needed to reconnect with your body and learn how to listen to yourself and gratify yourself without pennants or guilt or shame. You know, it's such a, such an individual journey that I'm sure it's different for everyone. But I candidly share mine.
David Ames 31:49
Yes, there are definitely parts that made me blush. For anybody who's a believer who might be listening to this, it is deeply honest, it is not sensational, for sensational sake, it is expressing what it is like to grow up, you talk about hitting puberty, getting your period, masturbation, you were deeply influenced by kiss dating goodbye and trying to navigate relationships. You have this idea of your future husband and protecting that in some way. And the part that really made me want to scream was that you mentioned the scene, you're on a missions trip with YWAM. And your friends are accusing you of being flirtatious. And I thought, Oh, just the negative peer pressure. And and again, the denial of just being a person of regular human being. We've kind of avoided things so far. But like, let's talk about what were some of the things that you later recognized as religious trauma from Marlene, what else book? What were some of those experiences for you that that were traumatizing
Alice Greczyn 32:54
that that instance you just mentioned definitely was is one of them. So I was 15 when I went on a mission trip to India, through YWAM Youth With A Mission for those who don't know, they have like a teenage almost like teenage mission summer camp, sort of program called Mission adventures, or at least they used to this was in I believe it was the year 2001 Because 911 happened shortly after that. So 2001 I'm 15 We go to India and I'm a full on purity ring wearing like good little Christian girl never held a boy's hand never kissed a boy like totally saving myself and my future husband and write in letters, the whole the whole thing. I dressed very modestly and especially modestly in India, like we weren't allowed to show our shoulders, we all had to wear like baggy pants and long skirts. And three of the other kids who were in my youth group who were on the mission ship with me. One of them a guy basically confessed his feelings for me and wanted to get to know me better. And I was like, Oh, I don't date but thanks very awkwardly in my very inexperienced, blundering overly formal way. But then it came out that I was struggling with feelings for another guy in the youth group on this on the same mission trip. And I would have never acted on these feelings. Even if he liked me back. I wouldn't have dated him because I was I was waiting but I was I was wrestling with so much guilt over even having a crush on this guy.
David Ames 34:22
You're 15 Yeah. Yeah. Is that
Alice Greczyn 34:30
so normal? So number my hormones are raging and like I Yeah, you know, like I'm, I it's, it's totally normal. And I've been having crushes since I was like a little kid. But I in the in the book, I knew I focus on this one crush because he was probably the most significant crush that caused me the most. I caused myself the most guilt over it but but yeah, I so you know, I have feelings for this one guy, Zach. And but this other guy Luke likes me and I I don't want Luke to know that I like Zach, because I'm so mortified that even like him to begin with, and long story short, it all comes out. And then these three kids on the mission trip basically say that I've been flirting and sending mixed signals and distracting all the men in the whole team by by with my flirtatiousness. And I was so not a flirt guys, like I, I wasn't I was so and they they give instances like for example, on a bus ride from New Delhi up north to this other place, it was like an eight hour bus ride, the air conditioner broke. And it's so hot, it's like August in India. And I had these pants that would zip off into cargo shorts, like the long kind. These were not cute, sexy little convertible pants. These were like REI, like baggy, just you know, camping pants that were like long cargo shorts. I zipped off the lower half of my pants, guys. andalas scandalous. And furthermore, I put my feet up on the bus seat in front of me, which I was accused of doing it on purpose so that my legs will be right in front of my seatmate who happened to be a dude. And I was accused of trying to get him to notice me by like flaunting my legs in his face. And it could not have been further from the truth. I was so hot. I was just trying to stay conscious and cool off anyway. And like they were long cargo shorts. I was not like rolling them up all the way to my hips or anything like that. But and even if I had been so what right? But yeah, like thing instances like that. I just felt so I still to this day, like I'm flushing right now my body thinking about I don't think I've ever felt more ashamed than I did in that moment when those three kids were calling me out. And I don't think that they were consciously trying to come down on me and make me feel ashamed. I think that they were exercising what the Bible says to do, which is for Christians to call each other out on their sins and hold each other accountable. So that, you know, one black sheep doesn't ruin the whole flock at cetera. And I think, of course, it's ironic that this the shame conversation comes on the heels of one of the guys confessing his feelings for me. But it yeah, like I mean, there you go with like, victim blaming rape, culture, all of that stuff. It's always the girl's fault. She should have done more to guard her modesty.
David Ames 37:17
And then here the religious layer is saying there's biblical precedent for saying this kind of thing. And totally and that's on that's laid on top of you your responsibility for the boys purity in some way or another, which is absurd and ridiculous.
Alice Greczyn 37:33
Totally. And I ended up going to each male on that team and apologizing to them with a pastor accompanying me because God forbid, I believe.
David Ames 37:42
Yeah, yeah, that also had me screaming. Yeah. Yeah, that just felt like again, I apologize for the paternalistic aspect of this but a sense of protectiveness for you. We're kind of friends we're internet friends, right? We don't really know each other. But we're, we're internet friends. And, you know, so I have a I've legitimately feeling like the pain that in the shame that you would feel and here's a female pastor, someone who should have known better, who is walking you around having you apologize to a set of boys and I just, I guess what I'm trying to say. Allah says, My heart was broken reading this book for you. And it just the downside, the negative side of purity culture isn't something that I personally experienced. And so when I read something so honest and forthright the way that you have written this, my heartbreaks, not just for you, but for many of the millennials that we see these days who are coming out of religion, Christianity, specifically down that purity culture, and of course they're traumatized. Of course they are.
Alice Greczyn 38:49
Your Empathy means a lot to me, I've noticed I'm getting like watery eyes. I'm, I appreciate that and No apology necessary for any sort of paternal looking out for instincts that you have or felt. No, I hope that it resonates with people who went through things that were similar because I know I've found so much catharsis in reading other people's stories like that, like Linda Kay Klein's book pure, all about purity culture, from an evangelical Christian perspective, I was just sobbing all throughout that book reading story after story like mine, and far worse. And the shame is so so. So scarring, and I know of course, boys and men struggle with with shame to you know, like, it's, there's more hard data on how it's affected women in the long run. Maybe because physically, we we manifest more physical symptoms of it, but it's, it is absolutely debilitating. And I do hope that it'll help someone else know that this didn't just happen to you. So so many people have their own story of how they were shamed, even if not on purpose, because the true mindfuck of it is, is it's not called shaming someone. It's called love. Have and the woman youth pastor who was escorting me as I was apologizing to these men and boys. She was so it was it remains a little bit confusing but she was so gracious and reassuring to me like oh, don't beat yourself up about this, you know, like I had way more to repent for when I was your age and you know like I'm so impressed by what a godly young woman you are, like all of that, like it's like, but yet she was escorting me with this and and I was still doing I wouldn't say she made me do I honestly and I write this in the book, I honestly can't remember whose idea it was, it could have even been my own because I felt so bad. But surely an apology was necessary. Because if I've been this, this whore of Babylon and everyone's seen it, but me, then surely I need to own up to it. And she was there as like a chaperone figure who was reassuring me and like, comforting me and handing me tissues and telling me not to beat myself up. But they're with me doing this. And that's I think the greatest mindfuck of Christianity as a whole is these these awful feelings are called love. They're done in the name of love and my wires of love and shame and fear and guilt and self hatred were so crossed and it took me years to even see that wiring and I probably could have written a lot more about it in the book too but you know, had I had to cut it down to a book sellable size but but yeah, there's there's there's so much about and I think that I think it's something that I know I've seen a lot of X religious people struggle with are those wires and I write about in the book later how how that wiring affected my whole views on marriage on child rearing, because when we're told God is Love, and Love feels like this horrible like self hating guilt complex, what is love? How can we recognize good love? That's not to say that I didn't know good love. I did. You know, my parents deeply loved me and I I've had friends who have deeply loved me, but I had to, I had to relearn love, in a secular sense. And it was my secular friends as I was still a Christian, that showed me that that made me feel what it's like to feel just accepted. I never felt accepted in Christianity, because you're never good enough. You can't be accepted because you're wrong or sinful. And my secular friends when I was like, in my late teens, and I was living in Los Angeles, like, it was so discombobulating because I felt what I thought could be actual love. But it was not coming from a god source at all. And that was confusing, but also eventually incredibly liberating, because it made it made love accessible to me. It made love real to me. I didn't have to feel God to to know love. And that was huge for me.
David Ames 42:59
One other aspect that comes out is you mentioned Luke already. But Luke, later in the book expresses a bit more than just some feelings. You want to tell a little bit of that story?
Alice Greczyn 43:10
Yes, so Luke was one of the guys in India on the mission trip who, like he just said, confessed his feelings for me. And ended up being part of the night of shame, I'll call it. And fast forward two years later, I moved out to Los Angeles to because I believe God's opened the door for me to pursue an acting career. And I turned 17 A month after I moved to LA, because I was homeschooled, I'd already graduated from high school. So I was basically a very young adult. And I was here on my own, after my mom and siblings went back to Colorado and love to be here. And Luke, from Colorado, ends up coincidentally, in Los Angeles at the same time as me, and he was three years older than me. So I'm 17. He's 20. And he moved out here for something else and had family here. And we because I didn't really know anyone else in LA, he didn't either. We just became really, really good friends. And I reiterated to him at some point that, you know, like, I did not date we were definitely not dating, I could not have been more clear. And I didn't really feel like he was trying to date me. I thought we were just hanging out as friends. But I always felt such a burden to like beat boys over the head, making it crystal clear that there would be no misunderstanding, I wouldn't have to have a night of shame. Again, this is nothing. I mean, nothing. This is just platonic as platonic guests.
David Ames 44:36
So I have teenage daughters. Yeah, they are objectively beautiful. And we have this conversation a lot, right? Like they want to have male friends. And, you know, I'm telling them from the boy perspective, you know, yeah, it's good that you are just as clear as you possibly can be. But it's a burden, right? It shouldn't be on them. It shouldn't be on you, but it is
Alice Greczyn 44:56
it is and the grace that I can extend toward that In a secular sense as well, is we're just animals we're hardwired to, to breed and may and and, you know, at teenagehood, like most of us are already in our reproductive years. And I think that it's pretty natural for especially societally speaking for boys to be the pursuance. And therefore girls to bear the burden of having to clarify like, Nah, I don't, I'm not leading you on, I just want to hang out, you know, or, like, Y'all go to prom with you, but just as friends, you know, whatever it is. So yeah, it's a sucky burden. But I could I could just be like, well, it could just be one of those things in life. I don't know. I had that. Maybe it's just what I tell myself. So it feels less awful. Totally be that. But yeah, I. So yeah, couldn't have been clearer that you know, still saving myself for my future husband. And long story short, one day out of the blue, he, he, he's just like, God's show me or my future wife. And I just, I, I believed him completely, because who would make up something like that? And we both know, the world we came from, we both went to the same church, we both know the purity culture. And it's just not uncommon in that world for God to reveal who spouses are. And I've come across one question that people always ask, especially if they did not grow up, like me was like, essentially, in a graceful way, like, how did you fall for it? Like, why would they like clearly this guy is projecting his own motives and using God as a way to get you? I disagree with that. I think that I think that there was genuinely a part of him that genuinely believed that we were supposed to be together and that it was God's plan. Like he was a very godly young man, a great guy, a great friend. I loved him dearly, just not in that way. I did not. I was not attracted to him. I didn't feel romantic feelings for him. And I would guess that he did for me, but I would not say that he used God to cover up his ulterior motives. Like, I would think that would be false.
David Ames 47:00
I think you're being kind but okay.
Alice Greczyn 47:03
Yeah, maybe it was next. Maybe it was next. But I think I think he did believe that. And he came out one day, and I just went along with it. Because I think another thing that's important for people who, who have not yet read the book, or heard me on your other podcast episode, like I, just to make it again, clear, God never spoke to me. God always led my life through what he told other people, God spoke to my parents. God spoke to my friends, God spoke to my youth pastor. And I just by the time I was 17, I just gotten used to that I just gotten used to God never touching me. Never slay me with the spirit, never giving me a word, you know, or really putting something on my heart like I, I just accepted that for whatever reason. God didn't talk to me directly. Maybe he might one day, but patriarchy is a big deal in evangelicalism. And so God led my life through my dad. And it made total sense to me that God would lead my life and talk to me through my future husband. So that that for anyone who's wondering is why I went along with it, because it just wasn't surprising to me that God hadn't told me anything about marrying this guy, because God just didn't tell me anything. Period. And again, this was a very dear friend of mine, and I knew the sincerity of his faith. And I, I just was like, okay, and I thought it was also a very, I was struggling so many feelings of betrayal, not just from him as a friend, but also just I felt like God betrayed me because the promise of purity culture, right is that you you do all the right things, you save yourself. And then when God does lead you to your future spouse, it's going to be this epic love story that's like far exceeds your own fleshly imagination when you when you let God write your love story as the purity culture book by Eric and Leslie ludie stated, you know, he's God's going to reward that faith, he's going to reward your obedience. And so I thought that God's revealing of Luke being my future husband, it was jarring for so many reasons, but one of the main reasons was, but I don't have feelings for him. How can this be the epic love story that I was promised? I did everything right, God, I held up my end of the bargain. How can this be? And I felt like the answer that I told myself was, oh, well, this must be the fact that I don't love him that way, but have to marry him It must be God teaching me not to be shallow you know, it's shallow to want to be sexually attracted to someone it's shallow to that I'm that I don't care from that way and you know, it's it's or it's because I'm I couldn't stop masturbating. And so God's punishing my sin by making me marry someone that I'm not sexually attracted to like, that's what I that's what I thought. Yeah. And so I there's a way to justify everything. But that was my line of thinking. And yeah, that's, that's that.
David Ames 49:54
So you know, stop me if I'm giving too much of the story away, but I also was cheering when your mom kind of sat you down and said he really challenged you. You know? Are you sure? Are you really, really sure. And you kept giving the answers you thought she might want to hear. And she kept pushing until you kind of told her the truth. So good for her man.
Alice Greczyn 50:14
Yes. Oh, gosh, I know, I know, I'm if it had not been for my mom says. So here's the thing, guys, listeners or people who haven't read it yet. It wasn't just Luke, who was saying that God showed him that we were supposed to get married. My dad and Luke's mom also said the same thing. So there's an external confirmation of God's will, which was crucial to the whole courtship of purity culture, the external confirmation, especially from godly elders, like parents, affirms that you're on course with God's plan and not your own flesh. So my mom, however, did not hear from God that I was supposed to marry Luke. And yeah, she sat me down. And she could tell I was deeply unhappy. This was about two months into arbitrable a month or two into arbitrary level. And I, she could just tell, I lied to her. And I was like, No, I'm happy. You know, like, this is what you know, of course, I'm happy. He's a great guy, you know? And she could she's like, Are you sure though, like, and and I just crumbled into tears. I couldn't hide it from her anymore. And I'm so grateful that she, that she essentially like disobeyed what appeared to be God's plan, and gave me that out. And I also would like to say here, and I say this in the book, my mom had stopped going to church. By that point, my, she had already begun her own deconstruction at that point, although she would not have used that term. But that was also why I didn't trust her right away. It was because like, well, she's off the wagon, totally using her to tell my flesh what it wants to hear that I don't have to marry this guy. And so I still struggled. But ultimately, and it's not spoiling anything like I'm I'm not married, never have been I didn't end up marrying him. I broke it off. And it was the most terrifying thing I've ever ever done to this day.
David Ames 52:00
Yeah, I think that's what what struck me is you write about it being the most disobedient, you would have ever been to God, that you felt so strongly that that confirmation from your dad, his mom, and he himself that you were disobeying God by, by not having feelings by deciding not to marry this person.
Alice Greczyn 52:23
Yes. So So I think for sure I had I was, I believed at the time that I was a sinner just by being born, but also because I did struggle with things like lust, like, I don't know, just micro sins, nothing over like stealing, but just, you know, pride, whatever, whatever it was. And so I disobeyed God, sort of, you know, in my own heart and in private, but never in such an overt way, where it affected someone else's life, at least not that I'm aware of. And I felt like, it was so scary, because I wasn't just disobeying God's plan for my life, but his plan for Luke's life. And so I just, I thought, for sure, like, really, really bad consequences were going to happen because I was told, I was taught that God never punished us for our sins, He just allowed consequences to happen, which is the same fucking thing. So it's just semantics. Bottom line, when you go against God, bad things happen. And so I felt like for the first time in my life, I was deliberately and consciously stepping outside the umbrella of God's protection through my mind knowing deliberate sin of not going through with this plan, therefore opening myself up to Satan and all the hell that he would wreak on my life. And I, I was just waiting for it. i There was about like, a year after I ended my betrothal, where it was just what I now know is like major symptoms of religious trauma. But at the time, I just thought I was just waiting for Satan to get me and I it was anxiety, it was self harm. It was like disordered eating. It was it was self violence, it was just true mindfuck I would just I would be driving somewhere and I would just forget where I'm driving and just be crying on the side of the road, I was just waiting for the road to open up and swallow me whole and an earthquake as punishment for my son. And it sounds so weird to say now, but I genuinely believe that, that the consequences of my son would come and get me and I would I was gonna have to, to accept it. And you know, nothing bad happens. Of course, nothing bad happened. I moved on with life and eventually, but that was the turning point of my faith. That was where my deconstruction began, I would say was when I ended my betrayal. I was still a Christian for three years afterwards. But I was a different type of Christian I was starting to explore more liberal Christianity and I wanted desperately to believe that there was still God and he was still a God of love, and forgiveness, and I started focusing on those Bible verses. Was that told me what I wanted to hear that God was real all of my faith hadn't been a total waste my life did still have meaning and purpose and God but it was just a different type of God not the must obey me type of God it was the live your life Ecclesiastes sort of God
David Ames 55:17
dearly love Ecclesiastes. Oh,
Alice Greczyn 55:19
I do too. I still do I think of it as a very interesting philosophical book on like, what is the meaning of life? Nothing. It's all just smoke it spit into the wind. Like, it's like an ode to hedonism that for some reason still did not manage to get edited out of the Bible. But yeah, I was more I very much wanted to believe in God, just the Ecclesiastes version. And then even that just I couldn't hold that up anymore eventually.
David Ames 55:57
You hinted at it earlier, you have kind of a moment of testing God. And one of the things I find fascinating about the vicious cycle of Christianity in particular here, but But faith in general, is by saying that you can't test God. You feel bad for doubting for wanting proof wanting something. So can you tell the story about the spice rack and kind of testing God a little bit?
Alice Greczyn 56:24
Yes. So okay. So I, I reached a point I was 20. And my boyfriend at the time had sort of like innocently asked me like, Oh, why do you still believe in God anymore? And I was just stumped. And horrified at my stump Ignis, just like I don't know, I felt like I attributed to like, Oh, I'm just flipping out, because I feel put on the spot. But his question just, I couldn't shake it for weeks afterward. And we were watching was trying to watch this documentary called Jesus Camp. And it was so triggering to me, I couldn't make it even 10 minutes into the film, I had to stop it. And it brought up all this anger of like being ignored by God, because I saw these little kids doing what I used to do as a kid like having their hands in the air and crying all these grown ups were praying for them. And maybe some of them are knocking them over. I don't know. But it just, it was really triggering to me. And I was like, I need to know if God's real I can't, like I just couldn't shake it. And so one day, and you'd think something like this would would require like a big elaborate plan of like, how am I going to, like, I would have thought that I would have put a lot more thought into
David Ames 57:34
it while being fleeces and things like that. Yeah.
Alice Greczyn 57:38
I feel like I would have made something ceremonious about it or just, I don't know, but I just couldn't shake it one day I was just washing dishes at my sink, just totally mundane. And it was like a hot sunny afternoon and, and I just couldn't wander anymore. I was like, I just I have to test God now. And I had all these Bible verses screaming through my head about do not test the Lord your God. And I was like, I God if God's there he he's gonna get it. If he's really this God of love. He's totally going to have compassionate understand this is not coming from a place of pride or arrogance. This is coming from the most humble place of desperation of God, I want so badly to believe in you. You please, please, please make yourself known. It was not coming from a hottie like oh, yeah, of God's real do this. It wasn't like that it was it. I could not have felt more vulnerable or broken or desperate. And, and I figured, you know, even though it was wrong to test God, if he was really the God of love that I had believed him to be, he would understand and His grace and mercy would cover over any disobedience that that I was committing. And there was a spice rack on my counter. And I just happened to look over it and I was like, oh, man, like I just knew what my test had to be because my test had to be God. If you're real you need to knock over that jar of cinnamon. Because I need I need I needed God to know that like, he couldn't prove himself to me in a way that he chose it needed to be a way that I chose because I knew how slippery My mind was into making anything proof of God like I didn't want to hear my neighbor's doves and think like oh yeah, that's God answered me I didn't want to all of a sudden have a breeze blow through the window and be like, Oh, that's God answering me he does exist I could not afford that type of self convincing faith anymore. So and like you know, it's just a jar of cinnamon you know, this is the this is the God who's done so much more than that, you know turn people into whole pillars of salt and part of Oceans and you know, like all of that so I was like, This just has to be it and I waited and waited just my eyes glued to that jar summit and of course nothing happened and then I bargained with God you know the stages of grief I was in the bargaining stage like okay, it can be it can be another spice you know, knock over cumin knock over nutmeg, like any Okay? doesn't just just any any of that. And eventually I just realized just accepted like, nothing's happening. And it's it was such a weird, disquieting feeling of this slow admission for me of just like, holy shit. Like, there's no one there like, I'm, I'm just talking out loud, like, like, I'm just no one's listening. I just felt like I'm like a little kid talking to an imaginary friend and just all sudden realizing, Oh, they don't exist. And I but I and I felt like strangely, nothing, right? And that there's that numbness that I was talking about earlier, it was just sort of this like, like, I shouldn't be feeling so many feelings, like God was my whole life. And all of a sudden, he doesn't. I know, he doesn't exist. Like, I should be feeling more about this. And I couldn't. And the feeling caught up with me later.
David Ames 1:00:51
Yeah, yeah, let's get to that. I just want to react to that really quickly. You've expressed something there that I've been trying to express about that those early stages. And I talked about the absence of a sense of absence, well said. And what I mean by that is, shouldn't it feel like something is gone. But the point is, it was never there to begin with. So you've just expressed something that I feel is really deep about the process of deconversion of recognizing, nothing has actually changed? Yes.
Alice Greczyn 1:01:23
i It's like, how do you grieve someone who didn't exist, you know, when when a loved one dies in front of you or not even in front of you like, there, there can be a certainly a delayed reaction, but like that, it's like they were here, and now they're not. And that is very tangible. That is very obvious. But when you never felt or heard from God to begin with, and all of a sudden, it switches your mind is like, Oh, well, then that just means he's not there. It's like, but I've for 20 years, like been, or 21. I think it was 21. At this point. It was just it was just confusing, sort of. And yeah, I think you actually articulated just now better than better than I could, you know, it's the what did you call the absence of, of a sense of absence? Yes. And it was just the area's thing that I didn't. I didn't reconnect to my feelings again, until a week or so later, when I caught myself praying out loud out of habit. And I just like, froze, like, what, what am I doing? There's no one listening. And that's when the grief hit me. And it was just a spiral from there, guys for the next couple of years.
David Ames 1:02:32
Yeah, so you talk about the process of trying to find a maybe not overtly secular therapist, but someone who wasn't going to be, you know, either new agey or Christian. You know, somebody who was going to actually help and you eventually do find that, but do you want to just talk about, you know, what did help you through what was very difficult time? It wasn't all sunshine and roses after your deconversion Oh, no,
Alice Greczyn 1:02:58
I would have like Starbursts have fun and freedom and exhilaration sprinkled between like debilitating psychological trauma. I began having really bad panic attacks, that at the time, I didn't correlate to my loss of faith at all. I just thought I was going crazy out of nowhere, for some reason, because, and in large part in retrospect, I think, I didn't know about religious trauma, then I never talked to any other ex Christians. There, the internet wasn't what it is today, where you can just search a hashtag ex Christian and find a whole community. This was before, before Twitter and everything so and honestly, even if those things had existed, I would not have explored them. Because I think I would have been too afraid of people who were anywhere close to that world. I was so triggered by just the word God, it it like it wasn't even until a couple years ago that it wouldn't make me like flinch inside i since since doing dare to doubt I've, I've had to talk about God so much. And hear about God so much. So I feel pretty totally neutral about it now and good like I can, I can talk about this from a positive place. But for a long time, I just I just wanted to forget it. Honestly, I didn't, I didn't want to have any more power over my life. And so I think that was another reason I didn't attribute any of my post faith, depression, suicidal ideation or other struggles to my loss of faith, because that would be an admission that God still had power over me in some way, even though I no longer believed in him. So yeah, I it was really hard for me to find a therapist that I could that I felt I could trust. I've said before that I think I think that, at least in my experience that might be partly because I live in Los Angeles, which was a very woowoo spiritual kind of city. But I think therapy and ministry have a lot in common. I think the people who are drawn to pastor ship or minister professions, like therapists and counselors are people who genuinely want to help people. And so I think that there's a My experience a lot of overlap between the spiritual community and the psychological health community. And it was, if I felt spiritual vibes or saw spiritual books or a fucking crystal in the office of a therapist, I was like, no, no. Like, like no offense, but no, I because I in therapy you need if you're trying to get the most out of it, you need to be vulnerable, and you need to trust this person. And it's not to say that spiritual therapists are not trustworthy, they just weren't for me where I was at, or even Christian therapists, for that matter, you know, like, wherever, wherever you whatever is helping you grow. Like that's, that's your journey, you know, but for me and mine, I couldn't trust anyone that graduated from a Christian university, for instance, I would Google this shit, I would like look up, like, where did they go to school? You know, like, well, what is the Pepperdine stance? Oh, they went to Pepperdine? Nope. You know, like, it's like, I don't I don't care if it's because they have a good Psychology program. If their value system mentions God, nope. So I needed to know that I if I was going to go to therapy, it needed to feel very safe. And I did eventually find that with my therapist, it was very safe. And I was in therapy for three years, a little bit off and on, but mostly on following my deconversion, I probably would have still stayed in therapy, except I ended up booking a job that took me out of town for a long time. And then I was feeling a lot more level than and not to say that I haven't gone back to therapy at different points in my life. Since I have I am a big advocate of therapy, I totally understand why some people have an aversion to it. I think it's a because I've come across those therapists that I did not feel were a good fit for me. And if those were the only experiences with therapy I had, I probably be very anti it. But anyone who's wondering if therapy can help them. It's up to you. But I would advocate for just keep trying. And that's part of the reason I made dare to doubt is because I wanted to make it easier for people to find therapists, especially secular therapists who have who understand religious trauma, because I think, and again, you mentioned Marlene Brunel. And I certainly read about her work in my book, she wrote this book leaving the fold. And she is a therapist who is ex Pentecostal. And it's part of her mission now to help other therapists recognize signs of religious trauma and to be able to help them help their patients because I think it's natural for a lot of even secular therapists to recommend spiritual practices like meditation. I know many people who get a lot out of that, and I didn't it felt too much to me like prayer.
David Ames 1:07:33
Yeah, I I'm a huge skeptic, as well on that, on that front. And one of the things I think you capture in the book, and you said this on our, our first episode together, you said, you stopped being good at fooling yourself? Yes, I couldn't lie to myself anymore. God, that's so good. And I feel the same way. Like, it is the seeking after an altered state. Now, if you're gonna, you know, if you want to get high or go get drunk, or what have you, fine. But, but there's, there's still an element of that spirituality where you're seeking some altered state. And for me, my humanism is about experiencing the humanity right, and not trying to be something other than human. And yes,
Alice Greczyn 1:08:16
I just know, I just felt that in my body when you said it's like, yes, we don't need to try anymore. Right? We can just be yes. Yeah, no, because you're so right. I think that's part of that's the nail on the head of why spirituality doesn't really hold much of an appeal to me, like if the if there's a practice involved. Not only does it mildly, at this point, but it still does trigger me a little bit. And I'm like, Oh, this is my quiet time. I'm sitting down to meditate, you know, that it triggers me a little bit and like a prayer throwback. Not only that, but like it's not, I can, I can accept that. Some things aren't instantaneous. They do require a discipline and a practice before you start seeing the benefits of it. Anyone who's ever tried to work out regime knows that. But the difference between a mental exercise and a physical exercise, my muscles are sore when I work out, I know it's doing something. I don't know anything's happening. If I'm just sitting there, trying not to think and observe my thoughts of like, it's just a mindfuck. To me, I'm like, no, no, I don't I don't think this is for me. It's just not for me. But you know, Sam Harris is one of the most renowned atheists that we have. And he is a huge advocate of meditation. And I've done some of his guided meditations, thinking like, oh, maybe this one will, you know, feel safer to me and it definitely feels safer. It's just an i It's just still not something that I like to do on a regular basis. But I've just accepted that to me. Going for a beautiful hike, or cuddling with my cat and basking in the sun is so much more fulfilling. It's being in my body, it's being in my senses, because meditation is they say, you know, the number one thing, usually for a beginner in meditation is to focus on your breath. And in some ways that is very much like be in your body, but it doesn't work for me. Great for you. if that's helpful to you, but
David Ames 1:10:01
yeah, and it might sound like we're bashing on that, but I what I like to say is you're an experiment of one, what works for you is a part of this self discovery process. And you know, if meditation is meaningful and valuable to you, that's fantastic. I joke about all the time that running for me is very meditative. You know, that's my thing. You know. So whatever works for the person is really where they should totally totally.
I do want to end just on a bit of the the triumphal bits that I mentioned. So you, you began, dare to doubt. I wanted to read you one more quote from this, you're talking about the millennial experience and to contextualize that often is the people who grew up with the kiss dating, goodbye and a lot of that spiritual purity burden. You say, Yes, this demographic is also resilient. We are as brave as the martyrs we were raised to be. We are battling the spiritual war, we were trained to fight. We're just not on the side of religion. And believe us, no one is more surprised by this than ourselves. We are condemned, prayed for and loathed, as much as we are feared. But persecution was once our fuel. Our skin is thick, with the courage to fight for the truth as we see it, and where we want saw through dogma colored glasses, we now see through the lens of relativity, reason and the validity of our own experiences. It is easy to dismiss us as bitter, it is understandable to write off our deconversion as desperate attempts at individual individuation and rebellion. It is compassionate to ask us why we left instead of praying for us to rejoin just just it's amazing. Allison's just totally beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. So I've been talking to Alice Greczyn and her talking about her new book wayward, which should come out February 2, if I'm not mistaken. And this episode, if everything works out, right, we'll be out the day before. So I will have links in the show notes for your new book. That's exciting. How else can people reach you?
Alice Greczyn 1:12:11
You can follow me on Instagram at Alice Greczyn it's just my name. I'm assuming you'll have a link where people can see the the Polish spelling of my name. So Alice Greczyn and then you can also find me on Twitter at Alice food. And check out dare to doubt two, if you're someone who's been deconstructing David, the graceful atheist is on their dare to doubt.org is a resource site, just Yeah, featuring different resources for people from different backgrounds. Right now. There's there's several different religious backgrounds that I have resources for if you're in the middle of deconstructing from any of them. But yeah, check out the book. And David, thank you so much for having me on here. Again. Always a delight to chat.
David Ames 1:12:51
Absolutely.
Final thoughts on the episode? Well, my first thought is go buy this book. It is absolutely amazing. It is available on Amazon. I will have links in the show notes. And on my website. It is available on Alice's website, alicegreczyn.com/book. As well, from our conversation, I think you've got a really good feel for just how incredibly intelligent, passionate and articulate Alice is. And the book represents that as well. As I was trying to hint at the overwhelming feeling that I personally had while reading it was just a protection for Alice and feeling aggrieved and angry for her. But in the book, she does not come off as bitter in any way. This is a person's reflection back on an entire lifetime of the experience of growing up Evangelical, experiencing the negative sides of that environment. And then slowly but surely overcoming that. There are many difficulties along the way, including self harm and suicidal ideation. So this was not an easy process for Alice, which makes the book all that more poignant and powerful as she tears out her soul to tell you her story. I also want to encourage everyone to check out dare to doubt.org that is Alice's organization that is helping people go through faith transitions. She has a tremendous number of resources there. She has been much much better at that than I have. No matter which faith tradition you are coming from. She has resources for you, and that includes lots of non Christian religious backgrounds. I want to thank Alice for being on the podcast and for sharing. So powerfully her story and the book with us. As always, one of the main drivers for me is about honest V and self honesty and Alice represents that so, so well, I wish Alice all the best luck with the book, I hope that all of you listening will go out and buy it. And I hope to see more books from Alice in the future. Thank you, Alice. As I mentioned at the top of the show, I have just been amazed at some of the emails that I've gotten of late of the stories of people going through difficult deconversion processes. I just want to thank you for listening. I want to encourage all of the listeners as a community to have each other's backs. I am interested to hear from you if we need to provide some kind of online space for communication amongst the listeners, I have thus far been hesitant to do so based on the fact that virtually every podcast in this space has its own community, and I am not a particularly good community organizer. What I'd really be interested from hearing from you all is if there's someone who would be willing to admin, say a Facebook group or some other online group that would allow people to communicate with one another that would be able to do moderate and basically own that I'd be very interested in hearing that. Please get in touch with me graceful atheist@gmail.com We will continue to have some exciting episodes coming up, including my conversation with Mayor Simka and my conversation with Troy. Representing y'all means all as well as many others, so please look forward to those upcoming episodes. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist join me and be graceful human beings.
Time for the footnotes. The beat is called waves from MCI beats links will be in the show notes. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can promote it on your social media. You can subscribe to it in your favorite podcast application. And you can rate and review it on pod chaser.com. If you have audio engineering expertise and you'd be interested in participating in the graceful atheist podcast, get in touch with me. Have you gone through a faith transition? And do you need to tell your story? Reach out? If you are a creator, or work in the deconstruction deconversion or secular humanism spaces, and you'd like to be on the podcast? Just ask. If you'd like to financially support the podcast there's links in the show notes. To find me you can google graceful atheist. You can google secular grace, you can send me an email graceful atheist@gmail.com or you can check out the website graceful atheists.wordpress.com My name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist join me and be graceful human beings
this has been the graceful atheist podcast
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
My guest this week is Erin. Erin is working toward her chaplaincy and her Masters in Practical Theology. She describes herself as “religious, but not spiritual.”
If I had to encapsulate my religious outlook in one sentence, I would invert the oft-cited phrase ‘spiritual, but not religious’ and instead say I am ‘religious, but not spiritual’. I have always had a deep-seated interest in religion, and I love the traditions, community and way of life which Christianity provides. Yet I have always struggled with the supernatural aspects of the faith; I could never grasp the concept of communicating with a God ‘up there’ while humans were ‘down here’.
Erin grew up in Northern Ireland. She was raised to respect all people. But when she was accepted by an Evangelical Presbyterian church she became in her words “the worst kind of fundamentalist.” This included deriding Catholics.
At University she excelled and found herself attracted to more liberal theologies. She says she went from Evangelical to an Open Theist to a functional atheist (agnostic).
Erin also happens to be on the Autism spectrum. This had an impact on her inability to accept things on faith. She needed logical consistency.
But Erin still finds value in the Christian tradition. She plans to do good in the world as chaplain.
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Photo by Haida Draws
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.
Summary
0:11 Welcome to the show.
2:31 Growing up in the “Bible Belt of Europe”.
5:26 In Ireland, there is a long history of protestants and catholics.
10:40 If God is all powerful, it either means he created evil and allows it because he’s awful, or he’s powerless.
15:34 The best of both worlds at university.
20:28 The transition from open atheism to agnosticism.
25:36 Another reason why autistic people are less likely to be conventionally religious is that they don’t tend to see an overarching meaning.
31:07 How do you interpret the good parts of Christianity without having supernaturalism?
35:32 What is Erin’s idea of what a chaplain does?
41:10 My final thoughts on the episode.
David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast. Welcome, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David, and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. I'm not going to make any comments about the news. I've had to record this intro a few days earlier and who knows the world could be upside down by the time you're hearing this. I do want to thank a new writer and reviewer par job P AR jop. Thank you for rating and reviewing the podcast on Apple podcasts. You can also rate and review the podcast on Apple podcasts or on pod chaser.com. Special thanks to Mike T for editing this episode. On today's show, my guest today is Erin. Erin is working towards her chaplaincy. She describes herself as religious but not spiritual. And she is on the autism spectrum. Erin also has a number of accomplishments already at a young age. She wrote a book during her high school years. She is working on a master's degree in practical theology. And she's working towards chaplaincy. Her joy at life, hers. Raviv is obvious as soon as you hear her. And I think her story is really important. I think her perspective coming from the autism spectrum is really significant. And she is ultimately doing good in the world. Here's my conversation with Eric.
Erin, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. Hello, thank you for having me. I'm very excited to have you, you reached out and mentioned that you have a really interesting story to tell. And it's in line with some of the previous guests that we've had where you kind of described yourself as religious but not spiritual, the inversion of the typical spiritual but not religious. You're also amazingly accomplished at very young age, you've written a book, you've got a theology degree, you're working on a master's, if I'm not mistaken. So you've done quite a bit already. But let's start with what was your religious experience growing up?
Erin 2:31
So as you can possibly tell from my accent, I was born and raised in Northern Ireland, which I like to describe it as the Bible Belt of Europe, because, okay, by demographics, I think it is the most evangelical part, certainly in Western Europe. Although my my parents, they were they were the good sorts of Christians, like, I don't think but good things to say about them in that, you know, we went to church every Sunday. They were decent people. But they didn't shove it down people's throats. So that was fine. Yeah. So in those early days, I have nothing but positive memories attached to the church. It wasn't until I got a bit older, that things started to change. So in Northern Ireland, this gives you an idea of how Evangelica is, whenever you start high school, everybody gets a Bible, you know, even though it's just you know, a government school, everyone gets a Bible Society. I mean, you can refuse it if you want. So we all got our Bibles. And it was also in secondary school, where my life started to go downhill. So I'm autistic, but I, I wasn't diagnosed until I was an adult. So school in general was just awful. Not because it was not because it was a bad school, just because I had no social ability whatsoever. So I was just dreadfully lonely. Oh, no. Okay. And, as I'm sure many people have told you, that is when you are a prime target for religious fundamentalism.
David Ames 4:05
Yes. Yes, it is. Yeah.
Erin 4:08
Yeah. Okay. So I have my Bible that would have been handed so I thought, you know, what? May as well read it. It's not like I've got anything else to do.
David Ames 4:15
Okay. Yeah.
Erin 4:18
And of course, you autistic. I took it all. Extremely literally. So then I decided, well, I guess I'm gonna have to find a church that takes it as literally as I do. Yes, guess. So. Whereas most teenagers would do. I don't know, sex and drugs or their rebellion. I decided to do fundamentalism. Is that Yes.
David Ames 4:41
I hear. Yeah. Okay.
Erin 4:42
So the church I joined. It's called the free Presbyterian Church. Its founder is Ian Paisley. Not sure if you've heard of him. I have not. Don't think he's particularly well known outside of Ireland, but he did have a degree from Bob Jones University. So he's that. Got it out sort of Chris.
David Ames 5:00
And that tells us listeners exactly what type of Yes, yeah. The church
Erin 5:05
itself. The people were fine. And they were mostly retirees, and I actually found that easier socially. Okay. So, in that regard, it was actually quite good for me. But unfortunately, as I got more into it, I think the negatives started to outweigh the positives. All right? Yes. I think I just turned into a rather unpleasant person. So, in Ireland, there's a very long, bloody history of Protestants and Catholics hating each other. And, you know, I was raised to not buy into that, until, of course, I started attending this church, where we're told that Catholics are awful, hellbound, false teaching antichrist, etcetera, etcetera. Oh, wow.
David Ames 5:52
At a distance, you know, I'm aware of some of the history there, but it's really interesting to hear, you describe that just, you know, beginning to go to a Presbyterian Church, which I don't particularly think of usually as super evangelical. So it's really interesting to hear.
Erin 6:09
I have been to a PCUSA church, and they, other than the fact that they share the same word and their title, they're just totally different. Okay. Yes, my poor parents, you know, they raised me to be a decent person, and then suddenly, what have I become? But at the same time, they were also happy that I finally had something. Okay. Yeah. In my life, that I'm not sure they quite knew what to make of it. There's quite a push in a lot of youth groups that, you know, you should use whatever talents God has given you, and give them back to God. So I was trying to think, well, what am I good art? I like writing. Okay, how can I give this back to God? So, because at school, I didn't have anything to do at break and lunch, because it's not like I was talking to anyone. I just decided to stay in the computer room. And I think, yeah, when I was 13, I wrote my novel.
David Ames 7:07
Wow. me look bad here, Erin. That's amazing.
Erin 7:15
Yes. So I voted when I was 13. And then it was published when I was 16. So it takes quite a while to turn a first draft into something that's yeah, readable. So because I loved CS Lewis, on the Chronicles of Narnia, I tried to do something similar. Okay, it's a fantasy story with a Christian message. And interestingly, my first draft was actually quite metaphorical with the religious stuff. It wasn't too heavy handed, but because my publisher was an American Evangelical company, you were very good to me. As part of the editing process, they basically made it much more explicitly Christian. of the American variety.
David Ames 7:59
This is way too subtle for Americans era. Yes,
Erin 8:05
yes. Which is why I, you know, obviously, I still advertise the book on my website. I kind of have a love hate relationship with it. Now.
David Ames 8:13
I can imagine. Yeah.
Erin 8:16
Same time, I don't want to cancel my former self. So it's still there. And of course, because there's practically no separation of church and state, I was able to go and sell it in primary schools across the country.
David Ames 8:29
Wow. Okay. You know, you talked about, in your words, becoming a kind of a terrible person. I think that for those of us who take the Bible seriously, just the fact that you read it. And taking it literally, those are the people who take it very seriously. And I find that many times the people who have some kind of deconstruction or deconversion experience later on in life, it's because they took it seriously. It's it wasn't a surface level thing for you. It was it was real. And so I wouldn't say that that makes you a terrible person. I would say that that makes you someone who cares, right. You cared about your religious experience, your and what you were reading?
Erin 9:14
Yes. And I think like a lot of people I was quite surprised that the Jesus of the New Testament is very different from the fluffy, Lovely Jesus of mainline Protestantism. Yes. Yeah. And I think towards the end of school doubt started creeping in for a few reasons. So Well, firstly, our minister changed. The one that they had when I joined, was relatively moderate for that denomination, okay, but the one who replaced him was very much fire and brimstone. And I just remember thinking every sermon was about what we are not. So we are absolutely not Catholics. We don't like the gays. basically don't like anyone. I just sort of sitting there feeling really frustrated, like, what are you for? We all know what you're against.
David Ames 10:07
Yeah. That's the exact thing that I'm doing on the other side of the fence, right? Atheism is so much about, wow, we're down with Christianity. But I'm like, well, actually, what's important is what are we? What are we for? We're for loving people actually connecting with one another.
Erin 10:24
So yes, that definitely frustrated me. Also, the their version of God was extremely Calvinist, I think I began to see some of the logical flaws in that. Okay, because, you know, it's the classic was it, Epicurus? Yes. The Triad. Yes. So if God is all powerful, knowing, as we were taught, It either means he created evil and allows it because he's awful. Or he's powerless to stop it, and therefore, not all powerful. So yeah, I couldn't quite square that circle. Yeah, classical theism.
David Ames 11:01
It amazed me. I think, as soon as I got my head above the surface, as it were, and began to look at the history of these deep questions. It amazed me that Epicurious had formalized that problem so long ago, and we're still having the same argument today. It just amazes me. Because I mean, you know, it's, it's over, right? I mean, there's logically impossible.
Erin 11:27
It's such a powerfully simple argument. Yes. And, of course, the standard responses, God's ways are higher than our ways. And we just have to trust the plan. If I actually remember being told that by one of the ministers because he knew I was reading a lot. I think he actually said to me, sometimes it's good, just to trust and stop looking into it.
David Ames 11:50
You're thinking too much, Erin.
Erin 11:53
Yeah, I ended up doing the opposite. So I knew my faith was going downhill. So I thought, You know what, I'll go to Theological College, and then I will be super Christian. All my questions will go away, and it will be fine.
David Ames 12:08
Oh, my God, I feel for you.
Erin 12:11
Did you go to seminary, or anything like that,
David Ames 12:14
I went to a very small, very Evangelical, Christian private college, which is to say, not a terribly good education. But I studied church leadership, quote, unquote, which is basically how to be a pastor. However, I really had very lovely professors. I often say that they did too good a job. They taught me critical thinking they taught me, you know, exegesis hermeneutics, you know, actually looking at what the text says, and what the original author and the original hearers understood it to mean. And anyway, a lot of that I still value greatly today, and yet also lead towards really seeking truth wherever it could be found, and ultimately to deconversion.
Erin 13:02
So it was also at this point, so when I was 18, that I got formally diagnosed as autistic, which was extremely positive for me. Okay, bad things make sense.
David Ames 13:13
Can you describe a little bit about how that happened? Like, did you go seek out testing? Or did someone suggested,
Erin 13:19
I mean, I'd been in therapy, basically all of school because we knew something was wrong, but never quite never quite got to the bottom of it. You know, I had various different levels, like anxiety, or obsessive compulsive disorder, which weren't necessarily incorrect. They just didn't get the full picture. And it wasn't until I saw a different psychiatrist. And really within about one session, she she suggested going for an autism assessment, which isn't something that actually crossed my mind before,
David Ames 13:52
right? Do you find that having the diagnosis was very helpful, or did you feel burdened by that label? I found it
Erin 14:00
immensely helpful. But unfortunately, in the UK, the waiting list for an autism diagnosis, particularly for an adult is approximately three years. Oh, wow. And if I hadn't waited three years, I would have been graduated by then. I had I'm extremely privileged in that I had relatives rich enough just to buy me a private assessment, which I don't think there's anywhere near as much as it would be in the US like it was about 1000 pounds. But still, that's a lot of money. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, that came back. Well, back then we called it high functioning autism. I don't think we use that term anymore. But I do find it hard to keep keep up with the language because it changes so much.
David Ames 14:44
We mentioned off Mike the labels or the language sometimes can be complicated.
Erin 14:48
Yeah. So I am what they used to call Asperger's Syndrome. But we don't use Asperger's Syndrome anymore, because Asperger was a Nazi.
David Ames 14:56
Okay. That's See, I was even unaware of that fact. So I'm learning something here.
Erin 15:04
Yeah, I don't know an awful lot about it. But I know he has extremely questionable eugenics history and experimentation on children.
David Ames 15:12
Wow. Okay. Is there a terminology that you prefer for yourself?
Erin 15:18
I think just bog standard autism is the easiest thing. Yeah. And when it comes to, you know, is an autistic person or person with autism? I really don't mind. Like, as long as you say it nicely, I really don't mind. Okay.
David Ames 15:41
So I completely interrupted you. So you, you had your assessment, which it sounds like was a good thing. And then what happens next?
Erin 15:48
Yeah. So then I went off to university, the University I went to, it was only three miles from my house, but I moved I anyway, because I wanted to try and get that independence. Yeah, it was like the best of both worlds really? Right. So the theological college I went to, it was a funny setup in that it was a Presbyterian, Ron college and all the professors were Presbyterian ministers, but it was sponsored by, you know, the normal state university. Okay. Proper University. Okay. So I do have a proper degree. Yeah. So socially, it was excellent. Because well, I had the support in place. And I think just people are more mature when you get to university. You can find people who match your interests. And so yeah, so socially, it was a very good three years. Our degrees are only three years.
David Ames 16:40
Okay? That doesn't surprise me. You guys are smarter over there.
Erin 16:45
Although, in Northern Ireland anyway, we do 14 years at school, whereas I think in America, it's 12. Grades, we, we do four to 18. I think we just succeed anyway. So socially, it was excellent. And, you know, I came out of my shell, I learned more about myself. But I felt like, the more I became confident in myself as a person, the less competent I was, in my faith, as it were.
David Ames 17:13
Okay. Yeah. The
Erin 17:14
opposite reason why I went to college. And it was just the same problem I'd had before and that I couldn't just accept it. I had to think, which is the point of university. But yeah, I, I felt like, it's almost like we started with our conclusion, and then worked backwards to try and find the evidence for it. And surely, you're supposed to do the opposite. Yes.
David Ames 17:41
I think that is a deeply insightful observation. I think that's what you see from apologetics in particular, but yes, and Christian schools as well.
Erin 17:51
And I remember one thing in particular, that was said in a lecture, where was it? The professor said, the Bible is the Word of God, because it's self attesting, which means the Bible is the Word of God, because it says so. Right. It's just sitting there like, I am paying money for this. I got on a personal level with every professor Barwon because we fell out over disability adjustments, because he was very much of the opinion that pull yourself up by the bootstraps, you don't need any help. And then he said, If you don't come to my class, you won't do well. So I refused on to his class turned up to the final exam and got the highest score just to spite him.
David Ames 18:36
I love it. I love it. I think had we been at the same university at the same time, we would have been great friends.
Erin 18:44
Yeah, so yeah, part of it was, you know, the intellectual side, it wasn't quite holding up, there was also undeniably an emotional element. I remember at one point, I didn't know this person, personally, but they're quite well known within like Irish church circles. Okay. Their child had horrific brain tumor. And I remember, practically every church in the country was praying for them week on week. And whenever they showed improvement, it was praise God, whatever they didn't. We just had to pray harder. And the whole thing just made me profoundly uncomfortable. I can imagine. Yeah. And that it just drove me to the classic questions about prayer. You know, the New Testament is really clear. There's a lot of verses that say, Whatever you ask for my name, I will give it to you. And you can do the mental gymnastics to try and explain that away. But, you know, yeah, when there's a kid deteriorating, despite practically an entire country praying for him. Yeah, I just, it almost seemed the most logical explanation was that we were talking to thin hair.
David Ames 19:56
So again, you were taking it very seriously, huh? The reasonable expectation after reading the New Testament, and then the reality of the world don't match up.
Erin 20:08
Yeah. And also on a personal level. So I have arthritis as well as autism. I'm a disaster. There's a few rather embarrassing times where people tried to kill me of my arthritis. Guess what? It didn't work? Yeah. And again, that just, it causes you to question why. Yeah. So as often happens, my view of God got more and more liberal, until it practically wasn't there anymore. So I went from Calvinist, to have anyone to open theist to the point where it's like, I'm basically a functionally atheist. Alright, you know, God, for me had lost so many attributes that I eventually got to the point like, what am I even clinging on?
David Ames 20:56
Did you go through a more of an agnostic phase of just I don't know, or did you really go from open theism to? I don't think God exists?
Erin 21:05
Well, I think that's where I've landed agnosticism, I think that's just the most honest position, I think. So I don't know if there's a God. And I think the term functional atheist is probably quite fitting.
David Ames 21:19
That makes sense to me, than it seems honest. And I think that is a perfectly reasonable position to hold.
Erin 21:27
So then from my final year dissertation, I decided to do my research on autistic adults in the church, for obvious reasons, and also because everything that had been written was about children. So I thought, let's write something about adults, specifically. And how did that go? Yeah, it went really well. I really enjoyed the project. It sort of gave me a taste for independent research, which I quite liked. But my findings were particularly interesting. There's quite a few studies that prove that autistic people are way more likely on average to be atheist or agnostic. Again, probably because we do think so logically, and straightforward. God, I can't bring myself to do the mental gymnastics required. Sorry, that sounds terribly condescending.
David Ames 22:19
What is interesting, I think about D conversions like so in my case, I very much did believe I very much was doing those mental gymnastics until you have this moment of clarity where you recognize I'm doing math, mental gymnastics. And if I just stopped making those assumptions, what does it look like? Yes, it's the opposite of born again. But the scales fall from your eyes. And you realize, I have been taking things on given or taking things on somebody else's word, without really investigating and really questioning myself.
Erin 22:56
And you know, emotionally, it was very, very difficult. Because I did live in a Christian bubble. Yeah. And I, it's, I don't think it's overdramatic to say it did feel like my life was falling apart, because I just managed to build a nice social life for myself. Right? And then suddenly, I was worried that that was all gonna go away. So that yeah, it was a very unpleasant time in general. Okay. But the degree itself, it went, it went very well, I was the highest scoring student in the college, which probably annoyed some professors.
David Ames 23:37
That's awesome.
Erin 23:37
Because all our work had to be double marked by the proper University. So that's why yes. It also actually, while I was there, that state university decided to sever funding for the theological college, because for a variety of reasons, but I think, basically, their teaching wasn't good enough for them. So those of us who had started, were able to finish with our proper degrees, but I think from now onwards, I don't know what they'll do, but they're certainly not part of that university anymore.
David Ames 24:13
Okay. Can I ask you one more question about the research? And correct me if this is a simplistic understanding of autism, my observation of Christianity is you just mentioned the word bubble, is that it is kind of socially enforced. You learn what the group what the community believes is true. And you learn where the unwritten boundaries are. And when you cross them, you are corrected, right? You get a sense of, I can question this far, and then that's too much, or I can look at these resources, but outside this, you know, outside of Christianity, those don't quite work. So my question to you is, my simplistic understanding of autism is that it's sometimes Missing social cues or missing the implicit information within a community? And does that correlate to why maybe autistic people are more likely to be agnostic or atheist?
Erin 25:14
I think that's definitely part of it. I think that's also part of why I ended up doing so well, because I didn't realize this this doctrinal line you're not supposed to cross. I was drawing at all sorts of sources, you know, John Shelby Spong to all these heretics that would not normally be cited in such a college. Another reason that some research suggests is that we don't tend to think Tellier logically, which means we don't tend to see an overarching meaning. So say, for example, that kid with a brain tumor I mentioned, all those tele illogical explanations, like for the glory of God, Satan's doing it, something like that. None of them were satisfying, because I don't think that way, I just think, in the here and now, I was like, the kids cells are multiplying irregularly. He needs chemotherapy. That's it. I don't see any supernatural component to this. Right. Exactly. So yeah, that's another reason why I think autistic people are less likely to be conventionally religious. Which I suppose brings us to why I am still calling myself religious but not spiritual.
David Ames 26:34
Yeah, so that definitely begs that question. Yes.
Erin 26:37
Towards the end of college. And this was like the beginning of time, because I graduated online. I think that's when I started to, quote unquote, come out as agnostic slash, whatever I was, okay. In fact, the first time it was even by accident, because I remember, me and my friends, we were talking about existentialism, because good grief, we were nerds,
David Ames 27:03
as you do as you do.
Erin 27:07
And I think I was basically just saying how much I loved the idea of existential that things just are on that we just have to make the most of it. There is no meaning other than the meaning that we create for ourselves, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah. And then I think one of my friends was like, but where does God fit into that? I think at that point, I was just like, he doesn't. Yeah, I'm not sorry, to interesting conversation. But compared to what I hear from a lot of people, I'm extremely lucky. I didn't lose any friends over it. Because I think we were friends for the right reasons, not just because we thought the same way. Likewise with my parents. I mean, I think there was a little bit of abusement with them, because you know, I'd been fundamentalist before. Now I'm coming home saying I'm an agnostic. I think they were just like, right, you're being Muslim in two weeks? Yes.
David Ames 28:01
They sound like wonderful parents, I got it. That's good to hear. I'm really glad to hear that your friends stuck with you. Because I do feel like this process. You learn who your friends are? And who, maybe some people who are not your friends that you thought were
Erin 28:18
Yeah, and I think what a lot of people said very well meaning is that, you know, doubt is normal. But I think I beyond doubt, I don't think doubt is sufficient.
David Ames 28:30
Yeah. So I think we've covered the non spiritual part fairly well, what is it about the Christian tradition, then that you find useful or compelling,
Erin 28:41
I still think Christianity and church communities can still be a useful part of someone's life, they can be seen as part of our culture, or kind of like an art form, without necessarily having to take it. Absolutely, literally. An example I like to give is secular Judaism. So Jews are way ahead of us in this regard. Because I mean, particularly in Europe, quite a high proportion of Jews are functionally atheist, but they keep the rituals and the sense of community. So basically, they keep all the good bits of the religion and managed to dispense with the bad bits. Yeah. people accuse me of cherry picking, and I say, Yes, that is exactly what I am doing.
David Ames 29:27
Exactly. I'm going to have Matt from two Christians in a Jew, which is their title, not mine. And he's an Orthodox Jewish person, and we're going to chat and one of the questions I'll ask him is about secular Judaism, right? And the secular humanism that I think is very influenced by Judaism. And the reason I bring this up is, I often hear from Christian apologists that humanism gets all of its ideas from Christianity. And I want to say first Well, I think these ideas long predates Christianity. But beyond that, if anything, modern secular humanism is mostly influenced by secular Judaism. Right? Yes. Yeah, this idea of, hey, we're a community, we still need to have rituals in which we connect with one another and find purpose and meaning. And we don't need anything else beyond that.
Erin 30:20
Yes, so the Bible has some truly horrendous bits. It also has some bits that are quite decent. And it really is just, you know, trying to apply a utilitarian lens. So anything which we can use to create more happiness for the greatest among people should be kept anything else? We can appreciate it in a literary sense or historical sense, without needing to take it. So literally, right. And I think to a lot of Americans in particular, I don't think this form of Christianity is quite as popular as it is in Europe. To give you an idea in, in the Protestant Church of the Netherlands, one in six of their pastors are open atheists. Oh, wow. Okay. Because Europe, in Scotland, where I live now, my theological hero is a bishop called Richard Holloway, and he was an agnostic. Okay. So yeah, I'm certainly not the only one who is attempting to keep the traditions and the community of Christianity without the harmful doctrine,
David Ames 31:31
right. I do want to just say here that I do think the community aspect, that connection between human beings is the good part of Christianity. And if you can salvage that, then wonderful, that's fantastic. I have one question for you. I've often said that the most dangerous word in English is God. Oh, yes. And what I mean by that is that you could ask 1000 Different people what or who God is, and you would get 1000 different answers. Exactly. So how do you interpret the good parts of Christianity that community parts, the ritual parts, without having supernaturalism kind of sneak in accidentally?
Erin 32:15
Yeah, that there was an Anglican bishop called John Robinson. Last century, he argued that because of what you said that God has been redefined into oblivion, that we should just dispense with the word altogether. Obviously, that's not going to happen. I quite liked his idea. So looking at it from a purely psychological or anthropological point of view. I quite like what Don Cupid says that God is essentially just an anthropomorphize version of our highest ideals. Yeah. So you can tell a lot about a person based on the God they worship. Yeah. So when I talk about God, if I must, yes, it is basically just an anthropomorphized form of my highest ideals, which is things like love to be cliche, kindness, cooperation, beauty, progress, et cetera, et cetera, all of these things. That is what I am thinking of, whenever I say prayers, God, I am well aware that the person sitting next to me in the Pew has a completely different interpretation. And I think that is fine, as long as we both respect each other. And that's actually something I really like about the Scottish church. It's a very broad church in that, you know, you've got everything from evangelicals, to agnostic atheists, all using the same liturgy, but interpreting it very differently. Right. But we're all sharing cups of tea together. Yeah. For the pandemic.
David Ames 33:51
Yes. Back when we can be fully human. Yeah, yes.
Erin 33:57
I don't think I could ever go back to an evangelical church. I mean, well, who knows? But certainly at the minute, I don't think I could, but I'm quite happy in the tradition I'm in at the minute because there was room for a very wide variety of opinions.
David Ames 34:17
And what do you see your role in the church as you see it?
Erin 34:21
So right now I'm studying a master's degree in chaplaincy, because I really liked chaplaincy. I did a bit art just in a voluntary basis when I was at college, and I feel like a lot of the people who are to theologically left field to be priests end up as chaplains. Okay. I don't know if they'd appreciate me saying that. I think it's a much more practical form of having fear. So it takes the best bits of what Jesus was doing. So he hung out with people who were ostracized from normal society, and that is quite often what a chaplain does, whether they're in a home hospital or prison or wherever. It's almost like a combination between a priest and a social worker. And in terms of the spirituality of it, it's very much driven by the person. So if they have a very strong faith and a supernatural God, then that's what we go with. Because it's all about helping them not imposing my views. Likewise, quite a lot of our clients end up being atheists, and they don't want to talk about God, they just want to talk about I'd know their children. Yeah, yeah, we're here for that.
David Ames 35:32
I think you've just described, the thing that I found, as a teenager, so compelling about Jesus is that in his time, he was calling out the hypocrisy of the religious leaders. And he was spending time with the people who were rejected, who were isolated. He was actually caring for people, literally, you know, if you take the story, literally feeding people. And it sounds like that is your idea of what a chaplain does, right? Did you do the gospel?
Erin 36:04
Yeah. So my full degree title is a master of practical theology. It's that practical focus that I really like. Yeah, the way of Christ can still have potential in the modern world. If we can somehow detach it from this idea of Jesus being the second person of the Trinity hypostatic union pre existing eminent the father, blah, blah, blah.
David Ames 36:30
You got to throw it in hypostatic. Union. Yeah. I love it.
Erin 36:36
So I would very much love to be a chaplain, but I'm also realistic in that I am well aware of that I might have a chance with, particularly the Scottish church, they may well turn around and say you're a bit too Orthodox, which would be fair enough. Okay. So I think my plan B would probably be just going into secular counseling, because I think you can achieve some of the same aims. But right now, I'm still on the chaplaincy path, and we'll see where it goes.
David Ames 37:06
I don't want to oversimplify what you do or what you see as kind of mission for you. But have you worked with other people on the autism spectrum?
Erin 37:15
Not directly, actually. But my most favorite form of chaplaincy ever was maritime chaplaincy? So that is working with, like the crews of cargo ships. Okay. And I found that immensely interesting. Because these people, they live on a confined ship for months of the year, very little company. It's like living in their own world within a world. And that's how I felt like I was prior to my diagnosis, you know, interested trapped in my own world. I know how meaningful it can be if someone breaks into that world, and just makes you feel seen, like an actual person. Yeah. And I feel like that's, that's what we were doing when we visited ships. Okay, it could be something simple, like just bringing phone cards or tacky Irish souvenirs? Yes, you know, it just meant an awful lot to the people that we visited. And I thought this is the gospel, like, yes, I would happily do this for the rest of my life. If I could.
David Ames 38:15
Yeah, that's awesome. So Erin, let me ask you, what are some resources that you suggest, let's say somebody who is either questioning their faith or someone who has discovered they're on the spectrum? What are some resources that you found useful?
Erin 38:32
My most favorite theology book is doubts and loves by Richard Holloway. He's an agnostic Bishop I mentioned. Okay, because I just think that it's not a very long book. But I think it does a fantastic job of laying out how some of the tenants of Judaism and Christianity can still be carried forward into a secular world. So I like that a lot. And as for someone who's newly diagnosed, I think one of the great things of the internet years is that there's so many resources out there. And the autism faith network, I will always recommend, I love them. Okay, I interviewed the lady who founded founded it for my dissertation. So yeah, if you're still attending church, and you have got a diagnosis, I definitely recommend getting in touch with them. There's also a guy called Lamar Hardwick. I am probably mispronouncing his name, but he calls himself the autism pastor, because, as the name suggests, he is a pastor with autism. His books are very good.
David Ames 39:38
Excellent. So we're doing this episode as more of a deconversion anonymous episode, so I'm not going to ask you to give information about how to contact you but if people are interested, is it okay if I forward like emails that come to me to you?
Erin 39:53
Yes, yes. Okay. I mean, I'm sure if people are able to put the pieces together they could probably find me but yeah,
David Ames 40:00
Honestly, that's how I am to right. It's like I just yeah, it's 95% Anonymous. Yeah, a dedicated person can figure this out. It's not going yeah.
Erin 40:10
But no, I love talking to people. And in fact, I've found quite often that people say to me that I'm saying out loud what their voice thought, or too scared to say
David Ames 40:19
yes. So Erin, I really appreciate what you are about what you are doing in the world, I think, you know, to use my terminology that you are expressing secular Grace within this religious but not spiritual framework. And I wish you all the best, I hope that you become a chaplain and get to do everything that you've described here.
Erin 40:44
Thank you. And thank you so much for this podcast. I think I've listened to it for a long time. And I think if we had more atheists like you, maybe Christians would realize that they're not the scary monsters that we think.
David Ames 40:58
Well, thank you for being a listener. I appreciate it. Erin, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thank you.
Final thoughts on the episode. Like I said, she has an infectious joy about her. Erin is so accomplished at such a young age. She's making us all look bad. But I just love her desire to do good in the world to reach people where they're at regardless of their metaphysical beliefs. Erin has gone the gamut of speaking and publicizing her book within the Christian world, to seminary and exploring liberal theologies, and ultimately to religious but not spiritual, still maintaining the traditions of Christianity without the supernatural beliefs. I was particularly affected by her research into adults with autism, and how that affects matters of faith. What we discussed in the episode, I think, was really important that so much of faith is the community expressing what to believe. And for someone who is less prone to receive those implicit signals, it's harder for them to take that leap. I just found that really interesting to hear from Erin's perspective. Beyond just the autism spectrum, is Erin's obvious intelligence and as a young person in school, not being able to accept pat answers. I think that is a challenge that many bright young people face when they're confronted with things they must accept by faith. When they are looking for evidence or looking for logical reasons, and can't find them. That is a hard place to be. I expect to hear great things about the impact that Erin makes on the world. I want to thank Erin for being on the podcast for sharing her story sharing her joy for life. I wish her all the best in her endeavors. And I hope that someday she can be a chaplain. You may have noticed that we have been doing an episode per week lately. As I have reflected on in previous episodes, I had a number of interviews in the can. Mike T has joined the team and is helping out with editing so we are able to go a little faster. I don't know that this is maintainable for the long run. But for as many weeks as we can do. We'll do one episode per week until either Mike or I runs out of energy or we run out of content one or the other. I have upcoming episodes with Logan, who calls himself beyond belief on Twitter and social media. I have Troy with y'all means all. I have mer Simka who is from the two Christians in a Jew podcast as well as several others. So keep coming back to hear these and other stories. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human.
Time for the footnotes. The beat is called waves from Akai beats links will be in the show notes. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can promote it on your social media. You can subscribe to it in your favorite podcast application and you can rate and review it on pod chaser.com. If you have audio engineering expertise and you'd be interested in participating in the graceful atheist podcast, get in touch with me. Have you gone through a faith transition? And do you need to tell your story? Reach out? If you are a creator or work in the deconstruction deconversion or secular human minimum spaces, and you'd like to be on the podcast. Just ask. If you'd like to financially support the podcast, there's links in the show notes. To find me you can google graceful atheist. You can google secular grace. You can send me an email graceful atheist@gmail.com or you can check out the website graceful abs.wordpress.com My name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human beings
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