You’re going to want to grab a cozy drink and pull up your favorite note-taking app because this episode is jam-packed!

Former guest, Daniel shared his deconversion story here, and now he returns with a lesson on the psychology of modern—and often, predatory—apologetics. He knows his stuff, so prepare to learn a few things. 

“The target audience of apologetics is actually believers, and the purpose of apologetics is to reduce cognitive dissonance.” 

Links

Daniel’s first episode https://gracefulatheist.com/2022/10/09/daniel-office-of-the-skeptic/

Quotes

“I was interested in the reasonable and logical end of faith, and as long as I identified as an evangelical Christian, I wanted to convince people it was true by use of reason and logic. I bought in 100% that the purpose of apologetics was to convince non-believers to become believers.”

“Intelligence and belief have absolutely nothing to do with one another. There are many fantastically brilliant geniuses out there who also hold to theistic beliefs.” 

“Holding an opinion requires very little effort [from your brain], but actually changing an opinion requires your brain to engage in difficult, sophisticated, and expensive processes.” 

“Our brains naturally tend toward rationalization over rationality. It’s a struggle to do otherwise.” 

“The dark side of psychology, as a field, is where people will take their awareness of these biases and use them to impact [others’] behavior in a negative way—casinos, gambling in general, a lot of games…they all use tricks of human psychology to get us to spend more time and money…”

“Predatory apologetics…exploit our tendency to have these cognitive biases in order to give more weight to the kind of evidence they present.”

“Another dangerous effect of belonging to an in-group…is when our personal beliefs or our personal experience of reality is at odds with the expected beliefs of the group. We may change our beliefs to match those of the in-group without even noticing.” 

“We have a strong tendency to equate the beliefs of a group with the group itself and to react strongly to protect that belief system…”

“Lee Strobel and The Case for Christ…that was the book that, I think, started my deconstruction because I read it and just had this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, like, Is this supposed to be a strong case for Christ??’” 

“The target audience of apologetics is actually believers, and the purpose of apologetics is to reduce cognitive dissonance.” 

“The appeal to authority that modern apologists rely on is an encouragement to the listeners, to the readers to outsource their doxastic labor, which is a fancy way of saying: They want you to outsource the working-through of your arguments for your beliefs to determine if they’re sound.” 

“[Apologists]…are not the only ones trying to reduce cognitive dissonance…Liberal or progressive believers do this by altering their beliefs to more closely conform with their experience of reality, to be more palatable, to be less of a source of dissonance.”

“…why I call it ‘predatory apologetics’: It sacrifices the honest doubter on the altar of rationalization so that the uncritical believer can feel more secure in their faith and continue contributing to the evangelical machine.” 

“[Apologists] are humans, too, and they’re not holding onto their beliefs because they’re trying to be bad people…They’re just as human as you and I, and I think what’s driving them to defend their faith so strongly is an existential feeling and experience that we all have deep down…”

“As meaning-making machines, we can’t give the same assurances as the apologists, but we can encourage people to look at the world as it truly is—frail and precious—but it’s ours, this time that we have.” 

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Deconversion
https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/

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https://gracefulatheist.com/2016/10/21/secular-grace/

Attribution

“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats

David Ames  0:11  
This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios podcast. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David, and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Thank you to all of our supporters. If you too would like to have an ad free experience of the podcast, please become a patron at patreon.com/graceful atheist. If you're in the middle of doubt, deconstruction, the dark night of the soul, you do not have to do it alone. Join our private Facebook group deconversion anonymous and become a part of the community. You can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion We now have merch thanks to Arlene for setting up the merchandise shop. If you want a t shirt or mug, a note pad that has graceful atheist podcast or secular Grace themed quotes on it. Go check out the shop links will be in the show notes. A quick note that there will be no episode next week. Don't panic. We will be back on July 30. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show. My returning guest today is Daniel. Daniel has a background in mental health addiction, the social sciences psychology and specifically around Applied Psychology. And today he wanted to talk about the psychology of apologetics. And we go deep here this was a lot of fun to talk with Daniel about our experience apologetics during our faith during the deconstruction phase and afterwards. I'll reiterate what we say multiple times throughout the episode. This is not to make fun of anyone to talk about someone's intelligence in any way. We were both convinced by apologetics back in our faith. But it is to recognize that in many ways apologetics can be manipulative. And the apologists tend to blame the victim when someone has honest doubt. Daniel is just an incredible guest to discuss this conversation. Here is Daniel sharing his expertise and knowledge. Daniel, welcome back to the graceful atheist podcast.

Daniel  2:32  
Thanks, David. It's good to be here again.

David Ames  2:34  
Daniel, what's more, I'd really like you to talk about your expertise, like what is the area that you are most educated in and the work that you do?

Daniel  2:43  
Sure thing, I've worked in the mental health and addictions field for about a decade and a half. Prior to that I was in Christian ministry youth ministry for about seven years. I have a I have a Bible college degree in social sciences. I have a Master's of Science in Psychology. And my focus in my both career and education has been in the area of Applied Psychology. essentially making sure that information data research can be translated into formats that can be used by frontline workers, social workers, counselors, people in the medical profession. That's been my that's been my professional practice and my, my passion. Sometimes I call it shortening the research to practice pipeline. So most of my most of my last decade and a half has been reading and consuming research and evidence based practices and trying to figure out how to make them viable for mental health professionals.

David Ames  3:48  
Awesome. Awesome. We know that we had your interview a handful of months ago, quite a few months ago at this point. And then you were also on our four year anniversary podcast. But I really have always appreciated your voice off Mike Daniel and I are becoming friends. I think I've just really appreciated your perspective on things. Today we're going to be talking about apologetics and specifically the psychology of apologetics. And I feel like this is the Venn diagram of what you and I do a bit. Maybe just, you know, introduce the topic for us and then we'll get rolling.

Daniel  4:26  
Sure thing. So I want to throw a disclaimer right up here at the front. I am not a philosopher. I have no formal training in philosophy. I took a couple of philosophy courses back in the day and everything else has been kind of self taught and I flatter myself saying maybe I might be the equivalent of a first semester first year philosophy student I don't even know all the terms. I kind of limp along at my best I might I might be reading week you know first year philosophy student Yeah, but yes I tend not to approach this stuff from the film, philosophy, end of things. I'm much more interested in people and how they work. But a lot of my interest in apologetics actually goes back to when I was an evangelical Christian. And as an evangelical Christian. Before I started deconstructing this many years before I started deconstructing, I read a book that a lot of people have read since the 17th century, which is called Paradise Lost. Have you ever read it? Yeah. A long time ago, but yes, I have. Yeah. Yeah, there is a lot of good things to be said about paradise loss, which is written by John Milton in 1667, a British author, it's an epic poem, it's 10 chapters, it is really one of the great pieces of English literature from that era. And, you know, when you look at the history of Europe, and, and how the Dark Ages was primarily named to the Dark Ages, because there wasn't a lot of good literature being written at the time. This is really like, as you're emerging from it, you get stuff like Paradise Lost, and it's just, it's gorgeous. It's gorgeous writing. And I still love it. But there is a passage at the beginning. In the very first pages of Paradise Lost, John Melton is writing a prayer. And his prayer is about his book, the stuff he's about to write, you know, essentially asking God to make it good and true and noble, and all this other stuff. And there's just one line where he says, What is dark Illume? What is low res and support that to the height of this great argument, I may assert eternal Providence justify the ways of God to men. And I read that just at the tail end of high school, I think, and I was so fascinated by that one statement justify the ways of God, to men, I was interested in the reasonable and logical end of faith. And as long as I identified as an evangelical Christian, I want to convince people it was true, by use of reason and logic, I bought in 100%, that the purpose of apologetics was to convince non believers to become believers. And I wanted to do this by justifying the ways of God demand by explaining, you know, God and showing the reason and the logic for God to people. I also want to acknowledge though, that I was also wanting assurance that it was true. Deep down, a lot of us did. And for a long time, the basic arguments convinced me, mostly because I was never really exposed to significant voices on the other side. So when I started deconstructing until 2010, and examine the aggregates for myself, I was dismayed by how poor they were relying on assumptions and unproven premises and bad logic. And even worse in my experience, and the experience of many others, when people express concerns of the quality of those arguments in favor of Christianity, they're often made into targets of abuse, they're told they're holding on to sin. They want to find excuses not to believe, or they're otherwise choosing to find these arguments unconvincing, they're told it's not a, this isn't a logic problem. This is a heart problem. And that really bothered me. And as I started leaving Christianity behind, passing that point, somewhere in that process between belief and unbelief, I became really curious about this process of apologetics and the industry of apologetics and how it was impacting the people who who were being targeted by it. So that's kind of what led to me digging into this a little bit. And, and well, I think we should probably start by defining apologetics I use the word like 18 times already.

David Ames  8:52  
Just before we do that, I just want to say as well, that, you know, in my story, listeners have heard me say multiple times, apologetics definitely played a role in my deconversion as well. And similar to you, you know, all through Bible college, and then the years after, when I would come across something that I didn't really love the explanation for. I thought, well, clearly there's there's someone smarter than me somewhere else who must know this. And I just never took the time to go track that down. Yeah. And as the the deconstruction was leading towards deconversion, and I was trying to track these things down, I was astonished just like you that, Oh, these are bad arguments. And I have said many times that I was, at the time, convinced of the conclusions by faith, but recognizing how poor the arguments were, how problematic they were, and be deeply uncomfortable about.

Daniel  9:51  
Oh, yeah, that is an incredibly common experience and what you're, what you're describing that sort of underlying belief of well, some He knows the real reasons for this. So I just need to trust that they know these apologists who are very convincing. That's actually by design in the apologetics industry. And I can I can, I'm gonna touch on that a little bit later.

David Ames  10:13  
Okay. Yeah, go ahead. And let's give the definition then. Sure thing.

Daniel  10:17  
So apologetics is a word with Greek origins, it means to speak in defense. In Greek days, it was a legal term you'd have at describing somebody who was speaking in defense of somebody at a trial. It's the practice of systematic argumentation, or to justify a set of religious beliefs. That's the modern definition. It's pretty common in Christianity, it's less common in Islam and Judaism, although it does exist, and it's even less common in other religions.

David Ames  10:54  
I was astonished the first time I listened to a Muslim apologist because of the similarities and differences. If you go on YouTube, and you actually search for Muslim or Islamic apologists, it's worth your time. And the reason is, it's lots of similar arguments for theism for wildly different conclusions, right. And I think that any Christian who is struggling with doubt and whether or not they should trust apologetics should go look at Islamic apologetics and make a comparison. So it may be rare, but it does exist. And I think it's super valuable just to see what that looks like.

Daniel  11:38  
That is a fantastic suggestion. And I think if you can try to compare it, or even watch Islam versus Christian debates, because you'll see the Islamic apologists bringing forward arguments that Christian apologists have also brought forward and the Christian apologists will be declared Well, that's clearly bananas like, you know, and and yet it's a different standards are applied all over the place. It's yeah, you're right. It's a it's a real treat to watch. I want to be a little bit cautious to and in how we talk about apologetics because we're talking about a this specific kind of apologetics. It's a widespread popular one. But we aren't talking about an individual's personal reasons for believing we're not attacking spirituality in general here, or even, you know, the, like systematic theology in general. We're talking about the specific phenomenon of modern apologetics, which I think we can probably zero in on or the next few minutes. And a really good overview of this was in a recent episode of the counter apologetics Podcast. I'm not sure if you listen to that one with Emerson green. Emerson, he challenged atheists to spend all their time defeating the weakest most easily dismantled arguments for theism and then acting like they won something. The online atheist community including several popular YouTubers and reactors can poke holes in evangelicalism and classical theism, and refute those positions with relatively minimal effort. The new atheist movement spends a great deal of time and energy on refuting them and beating them into the ground, and then acting as though this battle against religion has been won. You can look at any of Sam Harris's or Christopher Hitchens debates for examples. But what Emerson pointed out was that refuting the most easily dismantle versions of an argument doesn't really bring you any closer to determining if it's true or not. He also pointed out that if atheists can't tell the difference between going to use his words here, morons like Frank Turek Lee Strobel Ken Ham, or the Answers in Genesis group, and an analytical philosopher who comes from a theist perspective, like David Bentley, Hart, then we have no business even being involved in the conversation on a philosophical level to begin with. What I love about some of the those podcasts that Emerson and David are on, is that the people who are engaging at that level in the analytical philosophy level, from the theist and the atheist camps resemble each other far more than they do the people at the more ground level YouTube Debate, you kind of have some experience. There's a lot more respect between them. There's a lot more curiosity in the engagement. And they don't really engaging in the bad faith tactics that we're talking about today. And I do you know, there's a lot of apologists right now who are quite, quite popular and are the sort of the, the ideals in this modern apologetics or predatory apologetics world we're talking about, I think one of the most popular or at least the most record Nyeste would be William Lane Craig. And he's written so many books and on so many YouTube Debates and so many debates at university. And for those listeners, there's this look on David's face right now that I can only describe as like, just resignation. Yeah, I've been there. But say what you want about William Lane Craig, at least he fully admits that the facts were to show Christianity would false was not changed his mind, which he's admitted on multiple occasions. He admits that his faith isn't based on reason. He's, it's based on a personal attachment and experience with what he believes to be the Spirit of God. And then his reasons and facts are a secondary factor. He's come right out and said, I think we should listen to him.

David Ames  15:42  
I think one of my frustrations with apologetics is that, I believe, and obviously, this is conjecture, but I believe that that is true for everyone. For all apologists. And yeah. And my belief is that if you, you know you had a month to just spend time with that person and talk like human beings for an entire month, that at the end of that month, you would probably be able to get that person to say, Yeah, I believe it on faith, which is today ism, which is rejected. And so they're unwilling to say that out loud very often. So I do appreciate that Craig has said that out loud on camera on tape a number of times. And I wish more apologists would say that. I wish

Daniel  16:27  
more atheists would believe him. Yeah, yeah.

One last caveat, before we really dive in, I also want to point out that intelligence and belief have absolutely nothing to do with each other. There are many, like fantastically brilliant, like geniuses out there who also hold to theistic beliefs. David Bentley, Hart is a great example. He's such an amazing writer and, and analytical philosopher, and he dunks on Calvinists constantly, which I find personally amusing. But he's such a brilliant guy. And just because that he and I find the arguments to be different levels of convincing doesn't mean that I'm smarter than he is. You also look at someone like Francis Collins, who runs the Human Genome Project. Yeah, who is a theist is a Christian, and is far smarter than I'm ever going to be. Intelligence has nothing to do with it. And I just want to make sure that that's clear. We're not I know, you and I've talked about this beforehand. We're not here to like poopoo on people who believe in in spiritual things as being somehow less intelligent than us. It's just not true. The data doesn't support it.

David Ames  17:51  
I agree. And the obvious way to see that is that for someone who does D convert, they have the exact same intelligence before and after that fact. I did not gain intelligence points. Yeah, after D converting, oh,

Daniel  18:06  
same here, I gained some, again, some anger that I had to work through. I think a lot of us do. But I didn't get I didn't get one IQ point smarter. And also, I am not free of ongoing delusions. They just didn't know what they are yet. Right. So Jeff, louder is the president of the secular web. And he had an interesting comment about apologetics. He said an apologetic may also be defined in terms of its aggressiveness. A soft apologetic is merely an attempt to defend the rationality of accepting a worldview. A hard apologetic is much more ambitious attempt to demonstrate the irrationality of rejecting that worldview. And modern apologetics is definitively hard it is. You look at anything from William Lane Craig or the rest of the bunch. You see that they're trying to demonstrate that it's completely irrational to reject what they're saying that it's foolish to reject what they're saying. They'll often speak very disparagingly of counter arguments. Like they'll say naturalism has been shot full of holes. Nobody can accept it on a reasonable level, and then just got to move on. I think we need to understand that their brand of apologetics, we're we're having a conversation about rationality versus rationalization. So rationality is a forward process that gathers evidence ways it outputs a conclusion we seek to obtain more accuracy for our beliefs, by changing those beliefs to conform more closely with reality. For rationalization, it's a backwards process, you have a conclusion, and you are moving into selected evidence. First, you write down the bottom line, which is known and fixed, like the resurrection of Jesus, that then the purpose of your processing is to find out which arguments you should write down on the lines above it. So we're seeking to fix our brains more securely. Lies.

David Ames  20:01  
Yeah. First of all, that's very human. Right we do we do that all the time in non religious contexts. Yeah. But that is this the core of the problem with apologetics is that they're beginning with the conclusion and then finding rationalizations for it. Yeah. And trying to point that out is is generally not received. Well, yeah.

Daniel  20:23  
And the reason why we do this, it's not because of laziness. It's not because of the like, they're just bad people. It's not because of money. For something, it's probably because of money. But it's because of how our brains work and how we've evolved to work and to process information. And this is where, you know, my area of interest comes in. You know, I'm not about to debate William Lane, Craig on philosophy, he's quite a good debater. But I am really interested in how William Lane Craig's Brainworks, which is the same as yours in mind. In the field of evolutionary psychology, which is seeing evolution through a psychological lens and think psychology through an evolutionary lens, researchers will study how our brains have adapted over many generations to become the cutting machines that they are, we're really fascinating creatures with exquisite minds that process information faster than we could ever believe, just like a computer, to those, those processes are occurring in the background, outside of our conscious awareness. One of my favorite things I learned about the brain is that it's often referred to as a cognitive miser. This means that the brain tends to conserve mental resources, by urging us to think, give attention to detail and solve problems in ways that require the least amount of calories possible, the least amount of effort, possible. Efficiency, that's what that's what the brain cares about. And sometimes that's that that's important. And that's good. And it's if when timeliness is more important than accuracy, this works just fine. Holding an opinion requires very little effort, but actually changing your opinion, requires your brains to gain gin, difficult, sophisticated and expensive processes. So expensive for our mental resources. And you know, calories is the most basic mental resource there is. You want to hear something really interesting. Before chess tournaments, a lot of people will eat a lot of carbs, because they know they're, they're going to be burning a lot of mental energy, they'll carb load just like they do before a marathon, which I think is fascinating.

David Ames  22:40  
And it's the difference, you know, again, viscerally you can feel this, like the difference between sitting down to watch your favorite Netflix show versus, you know, calculus, trying to calculate a complex equation, right like that takes effort and work. And it's similar to what you're describing here that when we are accurately evaluating our beliefs to reality, that takes mental energy and can be exhausting.

Daniel  23:05  
Oh, yeah. And I think anybody who's gone through any level of higher education knows, like the crash you experienced or reading along paper. It's it's not just almost said, it's not just all in your head, but it is on your head, your brain, your brain is just tired. And because our brains don't want to engage in those expensive processes unless it's absolutely necessary, we rely on heuristics. These are mental shortcuts that we use to arrive at judgments, bypassing the process of critical thinking. The result of using heuristics is a strong reluctance to change our minds. We don't naturally gravitate towards information that challenges our perspectives, makes us uncomfortable or requires us to grow we do naturally gravitate towards information that confirms our perspectives, and allows us to stay the same even with an information may go against the best data we have available. In other words, our brains naturally tend towards rationalization over rationality, it is a struggle to do otherwise. And you and I have had this conversation before. This is also referred to as our brains developing cognitive biases.

I got a few examples of cognitive biases that people are probably aware of there's confirmation bias. That's our tendency to favor information that supports what we already believe and discount information that disproves it does confirmation bias where we spend more time and energy denigrating contrary arguments, then we do supportive arguments, even when those supportive arguments are bad. And I you know, I think it would example what that Sean McDowell has. He's an apology Justin he's got a YouTube channel and I've someone to put together it might have been the YouTuber Paulo Jia. I think a side by side of, you know, Shawn, accepting an argument when it's constructed in his favor and then denigrating it when it's you know, for for Islam or something the same exact argument. There's anchoring bias, which is our tendency to give the first piece of information we hear in a subject the most weight. So for example, once we've heard an interesting theory on a subject, it might be more difficult for us to accept alternate theories, if those alternates are better supported by the evidence. You can see the entire flat Earth community for an example that

David Ames  25:41  
and the danger of misinformation and disinformation that like, oh, yeah, first.

Daniel  25:46  
And that leads nicely into another bias, which is the misinformation effect. It's our tendency to alter our own memories based on new information. Often in situations where memories of an important life event will change after he watched the news, so many people experiences after 911 they remember that they'd seen the second plane hit on live television when reality they only saw it later on the news. Yeah, you know, yeah. And then one that's actually quite important for artists Russian today as the authority bias, it's our tendency to be more influenced by the opinion of an authority figure, unrelated to the actual content of their argument. So cognitive biases help us to be more confident on our beliefs, and may also minimize experiences of cognitive dissonance, which is an unpleasant psychological state, resulting from an inconsistency between two or more components. In our belief system. Cognitive Dissonance is an incredibly common experience for many people who are deconstructing, and it's come up multiple times on your podcast from multiple people. And we're, I think we're gonna circle back to it in a bit. But I want to say about these biases, the dark side of psychology as a field is where people will take their awareness of these biases, and use them to impact our behavior in a negative way. Casinos, gambling, in general, a lot of a lot of games that have random elements that you are required to pay for. They all use tricks of human psychology to get us to spend more time and money on them. Yeah. And predatory apologetics actually uses these biases as well. They exploit our tendency to have these cognitive biases in order to give more weight to the kind of evidence that they present, often to the use of logical fallacies. So one example would be the argument of authority logical fallacy. It appeals to our authority bias, you know, so they construct their arguments in such a way to appeal to these cognitive biases and to, you know, to sort of short circuit our ability to use our reason to examine them.

David Ames  28:04  
Yeah, a couple of things. One, the other thing that I think both of us would agree is we don't want to teach people about these biases, so that they can go out and say, to the believers in their lives, look, you have this cognitive bias, it's much more to recognize these biases in ourselves, as you were going through the list. I was like, Yeah, and I, I don't even mean just prior to deconversion, even today, when I am reading, doesn't have to be religious, but something you know, something politically that I disagree with, or what have you, I'm looking in a very critical way at that. And, and when I'm reading something that I agree with, I'm not, and I, and the more I can recognize that about myself, you know, hopefully, the better I can be at not fooling myself not continuing to fool myself in any particular area. But the point is that just because you've gone through deconstruction, deconversion doesn't mean you're over these biases, that those biases are part of being human. And we should have a great deal of empathy for, let's say, the people in our lives, who are still believers, whose cognitive biases may be obvious to us, because those happen to be the ones we've overcome in some way or another, or that topic is one that we have overcome in some way.

Daniel  29:20  
I agree. And you mentioned reading the news recently. I actually, I did something. I think it's called eating the onion. Where you read a headline from a satirical website, and you assume it's true. Yeah. And I can't read what the headline was, but remember reading it, it was about some religious thing. And I read and I thought, well, of course, yeah. Then I I circled back later i i saw that it was sort of satirical website and had been all made up and it was about some church doing some, I think some Easter pageant that went awry, or I can't remember exactly was a few weeks ago. And I circled back to it and read and just thought, Oh, it's a god dammit. That was a satire website. Yeah. Yeah, I did it myself. We're not immune to cognitive biases. We all do them. And our brains are consistently pushing us to rely on heuristics and to not spend energy if we don't have to. That's why we have the scientific method. Yes.

David Ames  30:17  
Sorry, I want to circle back really quickly. We're recording right now in earlyish April. And on April 1, the internet is unreadable. And I tried not to look at it on April 1, for that exact reason, because those headlines stick in your head. And humans also have a thing called Source blindness that we forget and where we learn something. And and you can I recognize in myself that I will hold on to those untrue things, things I know are untrue. Forget their source three months from now and still think that they're true in some way. And so I try to avoid the internet for days after after April 1.

Daniel  31:00  
Very good advice. Yeah.

David Ames  31:11  
One of the ways that I've been trying to not summarize, but to generalize, an idea is that I feel that beliefs are tied to the communities that we're members of. Now, this is obvious when you have gone to, you know, maybe one church ever in your life, and you go and you visit a new church, and even though they're Christian, you immediately begin to see differences. But this expands out even from that, like the fact that we are Americans, right? In theory, we believe in freedom of speech, and the Constitution and things like that. So we are members of this community. And we have a set of beliefs that that come with that, that can have positive elements, and it can have negative elements. And I think that we implicitly learn as humans that in order to be a part of this community, I have to accept these sets of beliefs.

Daniel  32:06  
Yeah, I think you're, I think you're touching on something really interesting, which is an often overlooked part of discussions about things like apologetics like cognitive biases, people bring that up in the apologetics context all the time. But it's much more rare that they bring up the the social or the in group aspects of belief, and how it relates to apologetics. This is especially especially good timing. For me, as you know, I like I mentioned I'm interested in evolutionary psychology, but I also just finished reading Sapiens, which is a book that's really popular on our on our Facebook group. It's by Yuval Noah Harare, and I love that book. It's it's very interesting about human history and how we how we evolved as social creatures. I think what's especially interesting is, for most of our 200,000 year history, as a as a sub species, Homo sapiens lived in bands of about 150 people or less. So cooperation, altruism, and protection are all powerful benefits of belonging to a strongly bonded social group. You know, like 10, people can protect each other at night around a campfire much easier than two people can write. So natural selection has always favored those who are more naturally inclined to band together and form strong bonds. Having a strong in group allows you to protect yourself from other groups that might want to come take your resources or whatever. So there's two terms that are really important, I think, for understanding this part of the discussion. It's in group and out group. An in group is a social groups that we psychologically identify with, this could include race, religion, gender, political party, or even a sports fandom. Or like a Doctor Who fandom Yes, we usually belong to several different in groups, even several at the same time. And we kind of switch mental identities as we are focusing from one to the other. And one or the other will become the primary Association in different contexts. So when you're in church, you're in group is the is the religion when you're at a you know, at a comic book convention, you're in group is the the geek community and so on. And outgroup is the opposite. It's a group that we don't identify with or we don't belong to it's it's them, you know, there's us and them. When we identify with an in group, it makes us feel safer, more welcome. More at home, we tend to experience greater freedom of expression. We also look positively at the members of our in group, ignoring their faults, focusing on their positive features, and showing them favoritism this is what's called in group bias which has a tendency to believe and behave in certain ways, when it comes to dealing with our in group, giving them more benefit of the doubt, and bypassing our conscious thought entirely. And you can look at the many examples of, you know, clergy, abuse of children or church members on how people will just kind of not even, not without even thinking, say like, well, you know, he probably didn't do that he's a good Christian man or right or whatever, they're not sitting down and consciously examining the evidence that's just part of their in group bias, which can also produce some other negative effects, we're more likely to be suspicious or hostile towards people who aren't in our in group. This goes back to the days when you had to be because they might come in, you know, kill you at the campfire at night and steal your resources. We may also be more willing to compromise our morals making us more likely to be dishonest if it will benefit the group. Even if honesty is highly valued by the group. And this can in the apologetics field, you know, people will sometimes Reese restate or overemphasize the strength of a claim, because it's going to benefit the group, then you can see the many examples of people who have supposedly found, you know, using big air quotes here. Yeah, sounds like ancient manuscripts that confirm some detail from the Bible or, or ancient relics that confirm something. And it turns out to be a to be a fake, I think Hobby Lobby has been caught like a few times, but by that kind of scam. So another dangerous effects of belonging to an in group that that can happen is when our personal beliefs or our personal experience of reality is at odds with the expected beliefs of the end group, we may change our beliefs to match those of the in group without even noticing. And there's been countless studies on this. And it's really fascinating, as much as it is alarming. If you've ever noticed somebody like a loved one seemed to change after they join a group, or become more devoted a group, this may be what's going on. And it may not be even happening as a result of conscious decision, like I'm going to be more like these people, I'm going to believe, right, more like these people. So that's, I think, something that happened an awful lot during the pandemic. And with the advent of Q anon and things like that.

David Ames  37:25  
Yeah, and the obvious, you know, extreme example of what what we're describing here are more cults or I think that word is overloaded, but you know, high control groups that have very strict sets of beliefs to be a member of the community, and yet, and they they draw people in and then demand a very high level of conformity.

Daniel  37:47  
Yeah, I agree. And there's probably a lot of there's a lot of churches that crossed that line into kind of that that cult territory. You can even make a case for some of the European football clubs doing the same. Sure. Yeah. But I don't want to make any of your European fans upset.

David Ames  38:07  
Yeah, just here really quickly, you know, former guests, Alice Greczyn, talked about being a part of a acting group that became very culty, very, you know, a strong leader, a charismatic leader, that had basically all the markers of a cult, so it really has nothing to do with with religion, it is about high control. And that again, that conformity, that demand for conformity.

Daniel  38:30  
Yeah, yeah, let's like, let's say it again, for the people in the back, who may not have heard, this is not about you know, we're better than people who are religious or spiritual. This is about, we're trying to understand human behavior and how we work and how this type of you know, belief, conforming, or belief encouraging behavior can kind of hijack those processes. I, yeah, the last thing I want is for somebody who's on the fence to walk away from this and think, Well, if I don't de convert, I'm stupid. That's not the case at all. Yep.

David Ames  39:15  
One more slightly, not quite secular, but adjacent. Example is the 30 for 30 podcast did a whole thing on Vikram hot yoga, okay, that basically became very, very cold. Like, I found that really interesting to listen to, again, not to criticize yoga or, or even that group of people, but rather to recognize myself in how you go from being an outsider and maybe being even skeptical to becoming a member and being totally committed and defending the leader.

Daniel  39:49  
Yeah. And isn't it interesting how we don't even really make a distinction between the members of the group and the beliefs of the group. We tend to react and this is then, something that neurologists have found, we have a strong tendency to equate the beliefs of the group with the group itself and to react strongly to protect that belief system. Because we so easily divide the world into us and them, you know, and the beliefs when they're when a group is built around beliefs are tied to the safety and security of the group, we react to threats to the to the group to the group's beliefs as we would a physical threat to the group. So there's been some fMRI studies, that when a belief is directly challenged by new information, parts of the brain that typically show activity for physical threats, expressed greater activity in people who tend to be more resistant to changing their minds. When we are feeling very, when we feel like a belief is a very integral part of our group, or personal, our personal belief system, we react to a threat to that belief, as if we're being physically attacked, the brain doesn't make a distinction is the same, you know, same fight or flight reaction, same sympathetic nervous system activation, it's, it's all the same. We also had some studies, and I'm kind of bouncing around here a bit, because the research is, it's extensive, but it's by no means, you know, collated neatly for people who are interested in drawing these connections. Social psychologists from the University of Waterloo found a connection between how strong your religious beliefs are, and your willingness to associate with former members of your religion. So the stronger your religious beliefs, the more willing you are to just like reject ostracized or even dehumanize people who leaves your religion. So our natural inclination to be altruistic to one another can actually be overridden by the strength of our in group bias, which can cause real harm to those who may have left religion for legitimate reasons.

David Ames  42:10  
Yeah, you know, the extreme again, examples are the ostracizing of people the shunning the, you know, we hear this in Scientology in Jehovah's Witnesses, but this happens in evangelicalism as well, where someone who leaves is immediately persona non grata. They don't exist anymore. Yeah. And even even interacting with them is frowned upon. And, and again, this could be very, maybe not explicit. It could just be implicit and no, you know, known. And I think that's the real danger, we see in what I do, right? And the damage that that does to people to families to friendships.

Daniel  42:51  
Oh, yeah, like, I, I've been ghosted, or had long, you know, messages sent to me or, you know, other other negative experiences from people I've known for years, decades, even after I D converted. And it was, it was, it was hurtful, it was, it was painful. But I'm like, I'm a cisgendered, white male, you know, middle class, I'm okay, over here. And I have resources, and I have, you know, relationships that aren't falling apart. And, you know, talking about not being better than people who are religious, the two best human beings I know, in the world are my parents, and they are both Christians. And they are the absolute best example of what you would want a Christian to be in this world putting their time and effort and energy and money, where their, their mouths and their beliefs are. You know, there's, I've got a lot of resources. I can't imagine somebody going through this, when losing their religion means losing their entire community, their entire family, you know, I still have a good relationship with my parents, I still have a good relationship with my family. I still have, you know, most of my friends are religious in one way or another. And there are people who, from people of color or people from the LGBTQ plus community, they lose everything when they lose their in group when they lose their religious beliefs. And, you know, as painful as it was, for me, I definitely kept more people than I lost. And that is not a common experience, especially for people from more marginalized communities.

David Ames  44:37  
Yeah, I think that's definitely true for myself. I'm a bit of an introvert. So my friendships tended to be deep view and deep and I kept most of those friendships through the process. A couple of people fell off and other people I would call acquaintances are the ones who bailed out entirely, you know, so yes, I am and family have been, you know, supportive as maybe He's strong word but like, you know, not threatening or not yet antagonistic at all. So yeah, so I agree that, you know, I think I've had it very easy through this process

one of the things that I've been struck by about apologetics on this side of deconversion, is that, ostensibly, it's, as you as you set up at the beginning, a defense of the faith in a rational, evidential way, and one assumes then the target audience is the skeptic. And yet, what I find is the vast majority of the consumers of apologetics are believers already, and that skeptics tend to either know the arguments against the refutations but in fact, they are not the target audience of apologetics. Why do you think that is? And what are the implications of that?

Daniel  46:06  
So I think you've, I think you've hit the nail on the head in terms of the the primary issue with this kind of apologetics is this bait and switch but the audience, like you said, they often claim that they're attempting to spread the gospel that apologetics is an evangelistic tool, right? They're defending rational claims for Christian belief. We're trying to win skeptics for Jesus when atheists for Jesus and you often will hear lots of stories about people who, you know, like Frank Turk has his he trotted out every once in a while he sees a young man at a conference and the guy says he doesn't believe in God. He says, Well, how long have you been sleeping with your girlfriend? And the guy goes pale, and everybody claps? Yeah, yeah, kind of thing. But so Lee Strobel, in the case, for Christ is sort of like the classic example. And that was the book. I think that started my deconstruction, because I read it and just had this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Like, is this supposed to be a strong case for Christ? Because I don't, I don't feel so good about it. So Robert J. Miller is a professor of religious studies and Christian thought at Juanita College in Pennsylvania. I hope I pronounced that right. He said we can determine the audience of apologetics, not by who it seems to be aimed at, but by who actually reads it. Like you said, David, and we can determine its purpose not by what the author seems to intend, but how by how it actually functions. If we proceed like this, we reach two important findings. One, the audience for an apology is insiders, to its function is to support what the audience already believes. So the target audience of apologetics is actually believers. And the purpose of apologetics is to reduce cognitive dissonance. It does this through a few a few methods we talked about like engaging cognitive biases. Another would be thought terminating cliches. So psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton coined that term. These are like brief, easily memorized phrases with the intent of shutting down questioning. So like, you know, it's this is a mystery like, you know, God's God's ways are above our ways. That's a thought terminating cliche, you say that, and it's intended to kind of stop the process of cognitive dissonance. They're definitive sounding phrases, that which trick people into believing that they're insightful, or that they actually answer a hard question, attempting to reduce the experience of cognitive dissonance without actually resolving the conflict. So the arguments that apologists use are often attempts to reduce cognitive dissonance through employing thought terminating cliches logical fallacies and other methods of engaging cognitive biases. Appeal to Authority is one of the most frequent one of the most common. And it is. You mentioned earlier, that you kind of have this belief that somebody out there knows the answers. I think I said that too, when you were interviewing me and there was a few other people I've listened to on your podcast is that the same? The appeal to authority that modern apologists rely on is an encouragement to the listeners to the readers to outsource their Doxastic labor, which is a fancy way of saying they want you to outsource the working through of your arguments for your beliefs to determine if their sound were given the arguments by apologists who urge us to trust them the arguments are sound, the opposing side is full of holes are easily disproved. And you know, look at any of the rhetoric used by William Lane Craig Frank trick, Gary Habermas and, and all the rest. And the reason why they're attempting to reduce people's cognitive dissonance is to keep them in the in the in group. Yeah, because losing P Apart from the N group is a threat. It's an existential threat. And maintaining your religious belief is so important for your belonging in the in group. Reducing your cognitive dissonance is of paramount importance for the apologist that's the apologist is attempting to do, they're attempting to reduce members of the religions cognitive dissonance by means of rationalization. But the funny thing is, they're not the only ones trying to reduce the cognitive dissonance in the religious group. But liberal or progressive Believers do this by altering their beliefs to more closely conform with their experience of reality, to be more palatable and to be less of a source of dissonance. So apologetics and progressive Christianity are actually both two sides of the same coin. Both are designed to protect the in group by keeping doubters in the in group. Religion scholar van Harvey talked with us back in 1976, about how accommodating Christian beliefs to become more humanistic, pragmatic and socially liberal was a more progressive way of keeping believers who are experiencing cognitive dissonance about their beliefs in the in group.

David Ames  51:06  
Yeah, I think it's, it's so clear to me that, like if you watch a, even a debate on YouTube with a an apologist and someone on the secular side counter apologist, or what have you, that they aren't engaging with the person they're speaking with, they are speaking to their own audience. And as long as you and I know, the statistical research about people leaving the church is dramatic. Yarn would be terrifying for those people who are still within the church. And apologetics is an attempt to stop the tide to stop the bleeding of the people who are leaving and deconstructing. And the way that even, you know, not just apologists but pastors will talk about deconstruction is another element of this. It is, you know, back to who went when did you start sleeping with your girlfriend, you know, it is a way to blame the victim to say you're deconstructing because your faith is weak. And if your faith was stronger, you wouldn't be doing this. And all of that is in a, you know, little boy with the finger in the dam and trying to stop the leaks from happening and it is futile.

Daniel  52:21  
Yeah, and now and now we come to it right now we come to the consequences of threatening the in group. What happens when a believer is not convinced by these apologetics arguments. It creates a profound sense of cognitive dissonance in us when we're trying to accurately and honestly examine the evidence, it imparts feelings of distress and anxiety because the message of this kind of predatory apologetics is very clear. The evidence is to be believed, and only pre prescribed answers are allowed. And doubting is okay. But successfully doubting is not. That was a quote from somewhere that I have not been able to find the person who said it. I believe it was a rabbi. But it was such an interesting moment for me to read that because of course, doubting is okay. You're told doubting is okay, but you got to finish your doubting on the right side of the equation.

David Ames  53:14  
Yeah, the long night of their soul is allowed as long as at the end of that your faith is strengthened and you're still apart.

Daniel  53:22  
Exactly. And you can't go into a more liberal progressive or, you know, God forbid, general generalist spirituality kind of camp because that's just as bad as apostasy. Yeah. So because apologetics claimed to be evangelistic in nature, but in reality, they're, they're an in group protecting measure, aimed at those who wish to remain in the faith, when the messages they examined critically fall apart. The blame is implied to be with the doubter, like you said, for not arriving at the correct answer. So here you see apologists big and small, rejecting the existence of non resistant non believers, somebody who wants to believe but is unconvinced? Or is open to believing but as unconvinced. They will often say that those who failed to be convinced are intellectually dishonest, trapped in sin that want to be their own god or whatever they maintain that apostasy is a failure of reason, rather than its natural conclusion. They may even maintain that atheists aren't really atheists that deep down we know God exists. And we're choosing acts of rebellion. I'm sure you've never heard that.

David Ames  54:36  
And maybe, maybe once or twice. Yeah.

Daniel  54:40  
And you can see it like there's an unfortunate amount of quotes from apologists about this, that really make it clear where they're putting the blame and if it's okay, I'm just gonna, just gonna read some of them right now to kind of illustrate what we're talking about here. So Mike Licona He was a pretty popular apologist on YouTube these days says, quote, sometimes it's moral issues. They don't want to be constrained by the traditional Jesus, who calls them to a life of holiness. One friend of mine finally acknowledged that Jesus rose from the dead, but still won't become a Christian because he said he wants to be the master of his own life. That's the exact way he put it. So in many cases, it's not all it's a heart issue, not a head issue, but a quote. Now, my sympathies go out to Michael Cohen, his imaginary friend that he's quoting here, but I don't. I don't think that's a typical experience for most people who stopped reading that they think it's factually true, but they just want to be masters of their own destiny.

David Ames  55:39  
I personally haven't met really anyone who would would fit in that category. Right? Yeah. I think there are definitely people who, who migrate to a more generalist spirituality to use your term. I think that happens, people who maybe say, God exists still, but certainly not people who call themselves atheists. Like, I don't know any atheists. So anybody who self identifies as an atheist and says, God exists, I just hate him that I have never seen ever not once.

Daniel  56:08  
Yeah, I, I would invite any listeners who know these people that Michael Okona or whoever else are talking about, by all means, David would love to interview you. If you know Jesus exists, and you just don't want to follow him. Call in the but not actually.

So William Lane Craig says it a few times. Here, I'll just quote him that two separate places, he says, quote, I firmly believe and I think that bizarro testimonies of those who have lost their faith and apostatized bears out that moral and spiritual lapses are the principal cause for failure to persevere, rather than intellectual doubts, but intellectual doubts become a convenient and self flattering excuse for spiritual failure, because we thereby portray ourselves as such intelligent persons, rather than as moral and spiritual failures.

David Ames  57:12  
I'm sorry, I'm laughing. I'm laughing here. But let me let me, let me respond actually, to that. So I do think that that is the prevailing view of apologists and pastors. I just happen to interview Bart Ehrman. That's the podcast episode is out as as you and I are speaking. And one of the things that we talked about is that the the seeds of leaving Christianity are within Christianity, and specifically for me, it was that desire for truth. I cared about truth, a deeply, deeply cared about truth. Yeah. And Bart pointed out that evangelicals believe in truth as well and evangelize. The reason that apologetics exist is evangelicals believe that there's a method to find that truth that this that apologetics that rational approach to Christianity leads someone to truth. For me that search for truth, lead, outside of it was the recognition of the weakness of those apologetic arguments and, and lead outside of that, I'll add to that really quickly, just to say, humility, and honesty, self honesty, in particular, were the other two that really comes to mind of the things that are part of what it means to be a Jesus follower that ultimately helped lead somebody out. And all of this to say that people leave Christianity, right, you know, having interviewed 150 plus people at this point, for many different reasons for moral reasons. There are people who were hurt by the church that does exist. But there's a significant contingent of people who leave for intellectual reasons. And I definitely put myself in that category. And so it's just funny to hear how much they reject that because, again, they are absolutely convinced by their own apologetic arguments.

Daniel  59:00  
Yeah. And let me just say two things. First, it's deeply unfair of you to interview me the day after Bart Ehrman came out. I listened to that, and I was just sitting here like, I gotta I gotta follow this. Well, here we go. The second is that I, I agree with you. And I don't read these quotes to try to like stir up anger towards these apologists. But we're just to illustrate, you can hear it baked into every every comment this is this is aimed at protecting the end group. It's aimed at punishing those who leave it's aimed at punishing those who arrive at that place of honest doubt. You know, and and for those who well, like you and I, we both D converted due to intellectual reasons. That is something that they just simply can't contend with. That it doesn't fit into the into the system, and also for people and I'll get back to the quotes here in a second but for people who do Leave fundamentalist or evangelical Christianity and still maintain some, you know, like a belief in God, either a deist God or a belief in you know, God is the collective humanity or like all these things that like are perfectly reasonable ways to exit Christianity and arrive at a more generalist spiritual belief or some people go into Wicca like that's fine too, like all these things that are just not the fundamentalist kind of perspective. They they get this too they get punished by this too is not just those of us who don't believe you know anything supernatural anymore. And you see, you brought up Bart Ehrman. I think it's so interesting that he says he's not actually trying to convince people to stop being Christians. He is trying to convince people to stop being fundamentalists. Yes, you know, and be like, so many of the people in my life are either Christians or spiritual in some way, and are still just, you know, in my life, and we're, we're in relationship and we love each other, and we hang out and we are, you know, we're in a mutually respectful relationship. It bothers me that they are also targets of this stuff.

David Ames  1:01:15  
Absolutely. And you mentioned earlier to just becoming more progressive and your Christianity is also punished as well. So yeah, and and just one more thing about Bart, the thing that I was struck by is how much he values, the New Testament, the the text of the New Testament for itself. So absolutely, he's I think, I think he does have the goal of making people less fundamental fundamentalist.

Daniel  1:01:40  
Oh, he's a, he's a really interesting guy. I would very much like to be a fly on the wall in one of his lectures. Yeah. So I'll just throw out a couple other quotes that I think illustrate the illustrate the in-group Protecting bias here. So William Lane, Craig again, says, quote, when a person refuses to come to Christ is never just because of a lack of evidence, or because of intellectual difficulties. At route, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God's Spirit on his heart. Unbelief is that route of spiritual, non intellectual problem, unquote. And then a little bit later, I think, in the same book, he says, no one in the final analysis, fails to become a Christian because of lack of arguments. He fails to become a Christian, because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with God. Yeah. So yeah, you can kind of see who's being who's being out grouped here. Catch it. Yeah. Who, who's being othered, who's one of them, suddenly, the person who doesn't find this argument convincing? It can't be because of an intellectual reason. It's got to be, you know, a spiritual failing. Bill Bright from Campus Crusade for Christ kind of doubles down on this in a really interesting way. He says, I personally, have never heard a single individual who has honestly consider the evidence, deny that Jesus Christ is the is the Son of God and the Savior of men. The evidence confirming the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ is overwhelmingly conclusive to any honest, objective seeker after truth. However, not all, not even the majority of those to whom I've spoken have accepted Him as their Savior and Lord, this is not because they were unable to believe they were simply finally willing to believe, unquote. And my, so you and I read this and you're chuckling and I, I kind of had a smile on my face when I was typing this out and thinking, you know, okay, all right, thanks, Bill. But my heart goes out to all the people who are honestly trying to find a reason to stay believing in God. Yeah. And read this. And just feel that rejection, that pain as the as the the reason for their struggles are placed on their own head. You can't ever let the category Let the curtain be drawn back. And you see, the Wizard of Oz is just a dude. Right? It's got to always be putting the blame on the person who's struggling. And I, having been in that position, and no longer there. I have an incredible amount of sympathy for those who are sitting in that seat and either move on to become, you know, progressive Christians, or just spiritual or agnostics or atheists. It is it is patently unfair, and completely false. But more than that, it is. It is completely connectable to these psychological processes to the, to the social grouping that we do to our evolutionary cycle. ology it all. You know, it all makes sense why they're behaving this way and why they're, they're saying these things. They're saying these things because they need them to be true. They need it to be true, that it's not an intellectual issue, because they're relying on their audience's cognitive biases to accept these arguments as valid. And they know that by doing so, it may trigger cognitive dissonance. And so they need to preempt that in their narrative. But this narrative imparts feelings of distress and anxiety, to the honest doubter. And this is what makes modern apologetics predatory and why I call it predatory apologetics. It sacrifices, the honest doubter on the altar of rationalization, so that the uncritical believer can feel more secure in their faith and continue contributing to the evangelical machine. Hmm.

David Ames  1:05:55  
Wow. I feel like we need to just stop there. That was a Mic drop. But yeah, I do have just a little bit of a little bit of wrap up that I wanted to do. But that was that's amazing.

Daniel  1:06:16  
I also, you know, as much as we're, you know, dunking on William Lane, Craig. And I don't even bother getting any quotes from Frank trek because because why bother? As much as we're, you know, calling these people out and saying, hey, they're victimizing people, and they're doing so in a way to protect their in group and the sanctity of their in group and all this stuff. I think it's important to still humanize those people, to still humanize them in their experiences. And I, you know, there's been the occasional time where I've watched some of these and I haven't watched debates in a long time, I'll occasionally watch a new video that comes up from one of these people. When I'm feeling especially like torturing myself, but I see the occasional glimmer from people like Sean McDowell have this this honesty that they're trying to hold up. And it just reminds me that these are, these are humans too. And they're not holding on to their beliefs, because they're trying to be bad people. They're not, you know, because a lot of people who believe the same things as they do, aren't going around harming people with these predatory methods and aren't. You know, like I said, the best people I know in the whole world are Christians. And, and I've got lots of friends who are believers in one thing or another. So when it comes to the William Lane Craig's, and the, you know, Sean McDowell, wills, and, and so on. They're just as human as you and I, and I think that deep down, what's driving them to defend their, their faith so strongly is, is an existential, you know, feeling and experience that we all have deep down. And this is the start of a much longer conversation that we we aren't going to finish today might take offline, but the dual nature that we have, of animal and human, the only being on planet Earth that we know of, that has both a strong survival drive, and simultaneously knows that we are one day going to die and cease to exist, creates this incredible tension. And there's a whole field in social psychology that studies this called Terror management theory, which you can you can read about, and there's some fascinating books, and videos out there about it. But it all goes back to a social scientist who wrote a book in the 60s, called Ernest Becker, the book was called The Denial of Death. And he said, he referred to this tension as the worm at the core, the simultaneous existence of us as these beings who have transcended the mud and muck of, you know, where we came from. And we can build these things. And we can reason and we can have these amazing cultures and relationships and all this stuff. And at the exact same time, we're going to die and we're going to become like dirt someday. And the fear of non existence, Becker said, was the source of so much drive in our societies and in our cultures, to leave something behind to transcend death in some way. And he pointed to religions that, that focus on a revolve around an afterlife, and not all of them do, but a lot of them Yeah. As one of those ways we use to deny the reality of death. Yeah. And you can, you know, you can say that without it being a judgment on any one. It's like the apologists, William Lane, Craig and I, we are both gonna die one day, and we both have some level of existential dread about that, how he deals with and how I deal with it. Our are different but we're both dealing with it. Like you, you can't live every day with this. Like, oh my god, I'm going to be dead someday I'm going to not exist someday that like because then you you get institutionalized is what happens and many people do. And there's a whole branch of therapy called existential therapy and Irvin Yalom is a major proponent of that very excellent psychotherapist who wrote several books on it. He, he and many others like them will spend time with people working through those issues without you know, resorting to believing in an afterlife that we have no proof for trying to help people understand that yes, we are going to die and we are gonna be gone someday. And that is that was all we have. We just we just have one one life. It reminds me a bit of the RFU sauce Sandman on Netflix. I didn't know okay, well, it's it's excellent. And I recommend it to everybody. But there's one episode where the personification of death is collecting souls at the at the end of their lives. And one soul she collects is, is very young, and they they kind of say like, Hey, this isn't fair. And she said, Well, you, you get what everybody gets, you get a lifetime. Yeah, you know, and we all we all get a lifetime. And we all know that it's going to end. And some of us deal with that dread, by believing in an afterlife. And you can, you can see the some level of I'm not going to call it desperation, but some level of that existential dread. In some of the things the apologists are saying, which is why I come back continually to these are humans. They deserve our, you know, if not our respect for what they're saying and doing. They at least deserve our compassion. In his book, reasonable faith, William Lane, Craig said, if there's no God, the man and the universe are doomed, like prisoners condemned to death we await are unavoidable execution, there is no God and there's no immortality. And what is the consequence of this, it means that life itself is absurd. It means the life we have is without ultimate significance, value or purpose. That's not an apologist making argument. That is a genuine fear that a lot of people have. And I think that there's a little bit of honesty in William Lane Craig's statement here that that is, you know, that's an argument for believing in anything, that is a genuine, existential experience, that when people jump up into this, what if there's no God, what if there's no heaven, you feel that you feel that? Well, then life has no purpose. And, you know, that's a that's a real experience. So transcending your in group and out group bias is transcending your cognitive biases, this is just a deep psychological experience, that, you know, from the first moment, you realize you're gonna die as a child, you know, you see your dog get hit by a car, or you, you turn over a rabbit's body in the woods, and you see the worms eating it, and you have this knowledge of death. And that that tension begins to happen between your survival drive and the knowledge that you are going to cease to exist, we all have to deal with that in some way. So I understand where they're coming from. But as much as I can say that and as much as I understand how Craig is saying, there's no purpose, there's no meeting, like who wants to live in a universe like that? My response is, or we have to work out our purpose, that as meaning making machines, we can't give the same assurances as the apologist. But we can encourage people to look at the world as it truly is, it is frail, and precious, but its powers this time that we have.

David Ames  1:13:56  
I have a feeling I'm going to talk a lot about this in the secular Grace Thought of the Week, I don't want to stomp on what you just said, I do want to wrap us up and say that having interviewed so many people, number one, this problem of facing our finite human life doesn't end when you deconstruct that actually kicks into high gear then I also want to add that I've been surprised by discovering the existentialist philosophers that they are so denigrated by the church. But the whole point of Nietzsche a, saying God is dead is not to celebrate. You will recognize the grief of deconstruction. In that statement, you know, that is, what do we do when we recognize that meaning doesn't come from outside of us that meaning isn't external, and objective, but we need to discover in ourselves or created ourselves, and so there's a wealth of hope, even in the darkness of existentialist philosophy. And then to wrap As up entirely back to the idea of non resistant non believers, the vast majority of people that I interview, are kicking and screaming on the way out, they are trying desperately to find a reason to believe and to remain a believer. And apologetics does them harm rather than good. And I want to completely finalize on a quote from a previous guest, Jenna, Jenna was at a retreat, they were talking about the loss of another retreat members, family member, and they were celebrating that she was in another place. And Jenna was asking real hard questions. And she says, I realized they are not ready to answer these questions, the answers they have satisfy them, and they don't satisfy me. And I don't know what to do with that. And so to wrap on a moment of hope, if you find that the answer is no longer satisfy you, you are not alone. You are not the problem. The pat answers are the problem. And hopefully, this podcast and some of the people that we've interviewed, also have a message of hope that on the other side of belief, there is meaning and purpose and love and joy and all the things that you're told you cannot have without God. They do exist, I promise you. Well, Daniel, as always, you have brought a level of rigor and education to a conversation that can often devolve into finger pointing and name calling. I really appreciate the humility that you brought to this conversation. And you were incredibly gentle and kind to the apologists more so probably than I would be. I thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thank you for

final thoughts on the episode? That conversation with Daniel was so much fun. Daniel brings so much intelligence, expertise, knowledge, the background on psychology and the social sciences, mental health and addiction is just amazing. And he is so graceful. In talking about the apologists and recognizing again, this is not about intelligence. It's not about trying to make fun of anyone here. It is the recognition of ourselves what we used to believe, and the manipulation of the apologetic in Daniel's word, the predatory nature of apologetics. I want to call out just one funny moment. Hopefully you laughed at me at the same time. Right as we're talking about kind of blind spots and an in group thinking I refer to both of us as Americans. I'll point out here that Daniel is Canadian. He was in fact very gracious not to correct me at that point. But hopefully you laugh along with me myself at that point. Daniel, thank you for being so gracious in that moment. And thank you to all the Canadian listeners. I could quote Daniel all day long, but two quotes jumped out at me that say so much. Talking again about apologetics. He says they are saying these things because they need them to be true. And that is in reference to the way that people who are going through deconstruction are denigrated. The doubter is mocked. The apologist or the pastor is trying to hold back the floodgates and, of course they attack the doubter, they attack the deconstructionist? The second quote from Daniel is why he calls it predatory apologetics is that it it sacrifices, the honest doubter on the altar of rationalization, so that the uncritical believer can feel more sure in their faith and continue contributing to the evangelical machine. That was when I said this was a mic drop moment, he really captured the whole conversation in that one quote, If you have been that doubter, like I have, you know, how painful it is to recognize the moment that you no longer accept the answers that you are being given. And the main message of this podcast and what Daniel and I were trying to accomplish here is that you are not alone. If you are in that doubt or position, that in fact, there's very good reasons to doubt and the exact opposite of what the apologetic class and the pastoral class would be telling you. I want to thank Daniel for being on the podcast for sharing with us his expertise, his wisdom, his graciousness, Daniel, you are much appreciated in the community and for what you bring to the podcast and to the friendship with me. Thank you so much, Daniel, for being on the podcast. The secular great start of the week is about grappling with our own death. As I hinted in the conversation with Daniel about the existential dread that apologists feel, I knew I would want to talk about that, in this section on this side of deconversion, on this side of of looking at philosophy, having been waved off of postmodern philosophy, which tends to be the existentialist and coming back to it, I realized that the existentialist philosophers have the most to say to us who have deconstructed the whole point of postmodern is that the modern age had all the answers, the modern age trusted the authorities, the modern age, didn't question what those authority figures said. And postmodernism is all about the fallout once you no longer accept the answers that your authority figures are giving you. Once the truth is less clear, what do you do? And I think this speaks so much to the process of deconstruction. I lead off by talking about the existential dread about the finiteness of our lives and our eventual death. Much of the existentialist philosophy is about the absurdity of life the absurdity that we are only here for 80 some odd years. And what difference do we make in the world. And yet, the point of it all is to see the meaning that we make, Daniel said, we are meaning makers. It is perfectly natural to fear death, to fear, our finite nests, to have existential dread that is the human experience. What I think came out of our conversation today is the recognition that apologetics is a response to that the need for an afterlife is so deep, so hardwired in humanity, that we are willing to accept poor arguments for bad arguments. And less we make this out to be just an issue for religious people. I've talked a lot about the secular angst about death. That is in modern culture, much of sci fi, movies and television are about trying to get back to a lost loved one. So this it has less to do with religion and more to do with what it means to be human, and to lose someone you love. And to know that someday, you will be the one last. Each of us has to come to grips with this and grapple with it and learn to live with it. And the secular Grace concept is that we embrace our humanity we embrace its finitude and we make meaning while we are here we relish in the relationships that we have in the love that we have for one another. And we accept the meaning that we can make and the time that we have. We are taking next week off so there will be no episode next week. Do not panic. We will return on July 30 With Mary Burkhardt who has the online presence, religion in remission. She's absolutely amazing. I can't wait to hear that episode myself. Until then, my name is David. And I am trying to be the graceful atheists. Join me and be graceful. The beat is called waves by MCI beads. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show. Email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com This graceful atheist podcast a part of the atheists United studios Podcast Network

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