This week’s guest is Bob Barnes. Bob is a lifelong atheist and an organizer with BAHA, Bluewater Atheists, Humanists & Agnostics. BAHA “is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the image of Freethinkers and Atheists and to give back to our communities.”
BAHA is hosting its annual conference, BAHACon, with speakers and events you won’t want to miss! August 26 – 28th, 2022 in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada.
I believe in you. I believe in people. I believe in change, and if any change is going to happen, we have to do it. There is no savior coming to save us that responsibility is ours.
This week’s guest is Robert Peoples of Affinis Humanity. Robert grew up in a Black Baptist church in New Jersey. When he was young, he enjoyed church but was an inquisitive child with many questions and no satisfying answers. As a teenager, Robert looked for answers outside the church—from Thomas Paine to Allah to the Buddha.
“When I read The Age of Reason, that set my trajectory on a whole different path.”
By 18 years old, Robert could no longer believe in anything supernatural. His understanding of the world came from philosophy, history and science. This was incredibly difficult for his family, but they continued to faithfully love and support him.
“[My mom] said, ‘Why don’t you believe in something?…’ I said, ‘I can’t…this is based on critical thinking.’”
One frustration Robert has with the Black church community is that it works to change unjust systems but then uses phrases like, “We couldn’t have done this without God.”
“It makes us co-dependent on…benevolent white leaders in power, for God to somehow change their hearts and change their minds.”
In recent years, Robert has been working with a political non-profit to ensure the “separation of state and church” and to change unjust policies. Human suffering is caused less by individuals “in need of heart change,” and more by systemic racism, homophobia, classism and other inequities.
“You can’t think transcendental thoughts. You can’t think about leaving religion…when you can’t eat, when you’re about to evicted…when you have no support.”
In the midst of all the work to be done, Robert is hopeful. He is effecting change in the world and reminding others that “to be human is enough.” He stands in awe of the beauty of nature, his daughters and this short life. His story is one of world-changing secular grace.
“The Book of Life opens up each and every time I wake up in the morning. I write my own book.”
[Humanism] has increased my love for humanity exponentially. I no longer love people with conditions.
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced 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 a graceful atheist. Please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on the Apple podcast store, rate the podcast on Spotify, and subscribe to the podcast wherever you are listening. Do to poor planning on my part and not at all related to the Christian holiday next weekend, we will not have a new episode. I had an interview that fell through and I did not have a buffer. The team was fully ready to produce another podcast and yet I didn't have an interview ready to go. So for next weekend, which does happen to be Easter. I have a few recommendations for you one, after you've listened to this episode, Robert Peoples of Affinis Humanity. Listen to it again. Robert is absolutely amazing. I'm also going to recommend three episodes that capture a lot of what you hear in Robert story today about humanism that is alive and proactively loving. The first is Jennifer Michael Hecht from way back in 2019. She wrote the book doubt a history. I have quoted that 1000 times it's an amazing conversation, and she is absolutely amazing. Next up is Anthony pin of Rice University. Robert and I talk about Anthony in this episode that I believe is back in 2020. Anthony has written a number of books on humanism, as well as the perspective from the black community, a really significant voice within humanism. So go back and check out that episode. And finally Sasha Siggins episode where she talks about her book, small creatures such as we, these three and Roberts episodes today that you're listening to represent secular grace and the kind of humanism that I am trying to espouse. So during your Easter weekend, jump back into the back catalogue and hear some great interviews from the past. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's episode. onto today's episode. My guest today is Robert Peoples. Robert is the founder of affinest humanity which is an organization that is trying to promote secularism in Arizona. Their motto affinis is Latin for affinity a natural attraction to a person, thing or idea. Our mission is to alleviate religious discrimination for secular communities in education, business and government. Robert also participates with the Secular Coalition for Arizona. They recently had secular day Arizona, where they spoke and talk with legislative leaders in Arizona about secularism and the need for secularism. We discuss secularism as pluralism, the needs to recognize that even for believers, separation of church and state is good for the church as well as the state. Robert represents secular grace in so many ways, he is a humanist who is focused on loving people caring for people for representing a proactive love. And Roberts motto for finesse humanity is to be human is enough. I cannot tell you how deeply impacted I am by that simple phrase. I will be meditating on that for years to come. Robert is a quote machine. I will try to capture a handful of those quotes in the extended show notes on the blog. Listen carefully to what he has to say Robert is an amazing person. Here is Robert peoples to tell his story.
Robert Peoples Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.
Robert Peoples 4:20
Thank you. I appreciate being here. Thank you. Thank you for reaching out.
David Ames 4:24
So Robert, you are the leader of an organization called Affinis Humanity whose mission statement is to alleviate religious discrimination for secular communities and education, business and government. I understand you've just participated in the secular Day at the Capitol and Arizona. Is that correct? That is correct. Yeah. And so I'm really excited to hear about your work and in the secular community. I tell you what, man, your tagline. To be human is enough. Just gets me. That is you have spoken to me This atheist soul I can tell you with with that, with that statement, this podcast, we talk about secular Grace a lot. And I think that you and your work embodies that. And as I mentioned off, Mike, you have made me a fan of yours. So I'm just really excited to have you on.
Robert Peoples 5:16
I'm honored, I'm honored. Thank you for that.
David Ames 5:19
So we're going to spend the first half talking about your personal story. And then probably the second half, we'll we'll get into all the things that you're doing with your work in the secular community. Let's start where we often do, what was your faith tradition growing up? What was that like for you?
Robert Peoples 5:34
Ah, so I grew up. I'm originally from New Jersey, currently reside in Arizona right now. And I grew up in a Baptist household, I grew up in a Baptist church. Actually, it was called union Baptists. I can't even I can't believe I still remember the name of the church. And, you know, and unlike some other unlike a lot of other people that have experienced, you know, the RTS, the religious trauma syndrome connected with religion, I did not, I liked going to church. I liked the people, I like my friends. And I even sung in the choir. And however, I always had a lot of questions. I was always very inquisitive about things. And a lot of those questions couldn't be answered sufficiently. And when I was about about 13 years old, I started having a lot of questions. And my mother was saying, you know, you need to talk to the pastor, you need to talk to the deacon about this. And I said, I did, but it just doesn't sound right. It doesn't feel right, I need to do a little bit more digging. So my cousin, my first cousin, he said, You know what, Robert? I'm gonna give you a book, man. I want you to read the Age of Reason by Thomas Paine. Oh, wow, I was 13. When I wrote. I was 13. Right? My mother always instilled reading in me at a very early age. You know, she and so I was very thankful for that. And you know, in a classroom, she didn't want me to be the kind of kid where the teacher called on you to read a paragraph, I would shy away from it. So she really instilled heavy reading in me at an early age. And I have to tell you, David, when I read the age of reason, that set my trajectory on a whole different path. And so from there, I told my mother, you know, I want to study Islam for a little bit. She said, Okay. Well, I work with some doctors, and there is a mosque in Princeton University. And so if you want to learn Islam, you're going to learn true Islam, you're going to learn how to speak Arabic and the whole nine, and so I was doing a lot. And an Arabic went to the mosque for about two years. And I said to myself, Okay, I get it. Now, I want to learn Buddhism. She knew a doctor that went, there was a Buddhist, a couple, and there was a Buddhist temple in Princeton University. So I study Buddhism for a couple years. And so about that time, I was about 1718 years old, and I said, you know, I have a pretty good foundation of what all of these belief systems are, you know, not so much Buddhism, because actually, Buddhism is actually atheistic in nature, right. It doesn't have a central godhead, you know. There's a saying that goes, if you ever see the Buddha on the side of the road, kill it. Because that's not the Buddha. Right? You are. Right. Okay. Yeah. And about 1718 years old, I said, Okay. I'm an atheist. I'm an atheist. And my mother had a hard time with that. The rest of my family had a hard time with that. But I did not face any. I was not ostracized I was not treated any differently. So I don't have any you know, horror stories regarding that. She said, Why don't you believe in something even if I want you to be a Christian, but even if, if you stayed a Muslim, right, just just just believe in something? And then I said, I, I can't because this is based on critical thinking. It's not based on emotion. No one in the church hurt me. The pastor didn't hurt me. People weren't mean to me. This was based on critical thinking this was based on just academic research, history, science. And, you know, I made that declaration. And so I got out very early. You know, it wasn't I wasn't like in my, you know, because I'm, you know, I'm in my late 40s Now, and so I wasn't in my 30s These are 40s When I decided to deconstruct, I started deconstructing in my teens. So good for me, right? Because I didn't have to wrestle, you know, with the psychological trauma of that. And so yeah, that's that's how I was raised up, man, I was raised up as a as a hardcore Baptist. And, you know, my mother is still a Christian to this day, but her eyes have opened up to a lot of different issues that we've talked about throughout the years. And so yeah, you know, that's kind of like my journey started out early man.
David Ames 10:35
Yeah, that's awesome.
I always say that I think for precocious kids, somebody who can read the Age of Reason 13 is Christianity and just, you know, more fundamentalist religion in general is just a really hard place to be, you know, especially you're asking questions to the deacon, and you're just not getting the answers that you want. And so, man, proud of you to, you know, grow through that and not and not fold under the pressure. What I find now on this side of deconversion, is the recognition of just the social pressure of religion, even like your mom saying, just believe in something. There's that social pressure of that concern, that you believe in something?
Robert Peoples 11:29
Absolutely. And I didn't tell you during my teenage years, I was also reading Nietzsche. You know, Ludwig Feuerbach, serene Kierkegaard Oh, I was heavy into, I went down to philosophy matrix. And so, you know, I just wrestled with a lot of things very, very early. And then I would say to anyone, you know, that is deconstructing to start implementing philosophy in your life, because it teaches you how to think not what to think. Yeah, you know, and that really helped me out, David,
David Ames 12:06
that's awesome. You have a, it's either Instagram or tick tock, where you talk about the reverse engineering of theology by using the tool of philosophy, just like you say, how it teaches teaches you how to think, absolutely, oh, that is so much fun, I'm super jealous, I didn't come to philosophy until much later in life. And I really, really wish I would have been exposed to it earlier.
Robert Peoples 12:31
Hey, but better, but a better, you know, mean, better to grasp it, you know, now than later, you know, it's, it's something and I blame our, our educational system for that, you know, because in a lot of, you know, European schools, you know, they're teaching philosophy and grade school, and here in America, and we're not introduced into philosophy, and so we want to take it almost as an elective in college, they don't teach that in high school in this kind of America, you know, so, you know, so a lot of us just missed the boat with that, you know, if you don't seek it out, you're not going to learn it.
David Ames 13:08
And then just one more comment about your story, I think, how important it is the step back, and the look at comparative religions. So you did it the real way you went and actually studied each of those religions, but even just taking a class, just to be able to recognize the similarities and differences. There are cultural differences, you know, radical cultural differences, but there are so many similarities as well, that it is incredibly difficult when you look at it as a whole, all of humanity and all of the religious beliefs that humanity has added over time to say, Well, mine is correct. And all the rest of them are incorrect.
Robert Peoples 13:46
Absolutely. And, you know, and what comparative religions, the, you know, the lesson programs teaches us as well as that, you know, we are kind of restricted in this box of geography. You know, if I grew up in Iran, if I grew up in Iraq, I'd probably be a Muslim. Yeah, right. If I fought, you know, if I grew up, you know, in China, you know, China's predominantly an atheistic country. Right, I would have been born an atheist, right, my parents would probably be secular, inherently. Right. So basically, our belief systems are based on our geography. Really? Yeah. Yeah. You know, comparative religions teaches you that like, Okay, over here, over there, and it's like, Oh, okay. So it's just by happenstance that I was a Christian in my early years, based on you know, and also based on the fact that, you know, 80% of African Americans in America are Christian of some sort. Yeah. So that, you know, that leads to, you know, a whole other history, you know, dealing with the Atlantic slave trade and all that, you know, so there's like a lot of rich history. that so?
David Ames 15:08
Let's address that, you know, so I've heard other black atheists talk about being a minority of a minority, you know, how difficult is it to be a black atheist, you know, within your own community within the atheist community? You know, are there extra challenges, there
Robert Peoples 15:27
are huge challenges. I could say, emphatically that coming out to one's family in the black community, as gay is better than to come out that you're an atheist. Homosexuality is more embraced, than you coming out saying that you don't believe in a God in the black community. It is it is hard. You know, you know, years ago, even you know, when I was dating, I would have women say to me, you know, you're a great guy, you know, you're a great guy, but I'm just I'm looking for God fearing man. You know, you know, but good luck, you know, good luck on your dating journey. And, and I'm like, wow. So it doesn't matter how someone treats you doesn't matter how a man treats you, you know, you're more consumed with his theological background with his belief system, than just treating you like, a great human being. You know, that's, that's unfortunate. I've lost friends, friends that I've because I shoot poor, like, I love shooting pool. And, you know, you know, friends that I've met just at the pool hall. And you know, we talk about a lot of things. And one person in particular, I knew for two years, and all of a sudden, religion came up. And I said, Oh, yeah, I'm not religious. He was like, Oh, so you're just, you're just spiritual. Now, it's more than that. It's a little more than that. I'm an atheist, you know, I'm an atheist, and, and, and I'm a humanist, as well. And he said, What, well, how do you? How do you think you got here? I said, evolution. And slowly but surely, he distanced himself from me. And that happened several times. years, just, you know, just being friends. You know, and that one thing, one thing, it just, you know, had me shunned. You know, and, you know, that was, that was difficult, you know, but I gained so many more friends, so many more like minded individuals, you know, and so, it made up for that, but, yes, being a unicorn, yes, being, you know, a black male who's an atheist who was also a feminist who was also for human rights. Yeah. I am in like, the fraction of a percent in this country, you know, and so, yeah, it's, it's, it's difficult, you know, and I'm gonna just say this. By mine, by me being an atheist, by me being a humanist. For what it's worth, I've been embraced more David, by the white American community, then I have my own because of this, and, and I don't say that lightly. I, that took a lot for me to just say that. That took a lot for me to say that and, but it's true, but But now, especially being on social media now, especially Instagram, more and more black people, more and more people of color in general are coming forward and expressing their ordeals with societal religiosity, and it's given me hope, you know, it's really given me hope and so yeah, it's it's difficult, you know? It's very difficult. But But now, it's, I'm okay. You know, I'm okay. I'm okay with it because I have a huge support base. And I have people that love me, and I, I wouldn't change my decision for the world
David Ames 19:56
you have, you know, mentioned a few times I think in Instagram and tick tock to normalize black atheism and, and I think you and your voice, you know, it's more than just atheism, it's the humanism in it, it's the humanity, it's a loving people part that I think is what will reach religious communities, right? Like, that's what's gonna reach in and say, Hey, there's a way that you can live and be kind to person without having to have a religious faith.
Robert Peoples 20:25
And I definitely agree with that. That's why a lot of times when I, when I have conversations with people and people question, you know, my belief system, or even lack thereof, I always start out, I used to always start out with the whole, you know, atheist conjecture. But over the course of a few years, I lead off with humanism, because I, basically, I, I live my life, you know, I identify by what I do believe in, versus what I don't believe in. And I think, like you said, that opens up ears a little bit more when I say I believe in you. I believe in people. Right? I believe in change. And if any change is going to happen, we have to do it, there is no savior coming to save us, that responsibility is ours. And people tend to perk up their ears just a little bit more. When when when they hear that because let's be honest, you know, all atheists aren't humanists. Right? Right. You can't write you can't you can't be a racist and be a humanist. I know, I know, atheists that are races, right, you can't be a humanist, and be homophobic. I do know atheists that are homophobic. Right? And so, you know, so the two aren't, you know, mutually exclusive, you know what I'm saying? And so, I like to lead with humanism, because that kind of lays the foundation, when I have a conversation with individuals.
David Ames 22:03
Awesome. Let's expand on that, how did you discover humanism? Who are some of your humanist influences?
Robert Peoples 22:12
Oh, well see, I know, you know, I know a lot of people have, have issues with, with Nietzsche, you know, in his, you know, Neo holistic, you know, views on on life, you know, it could be a little dark. But for me, he was the ultimate humanist for me. He critiqued religion so much, but it wasn't just out of just critiquing it, just to create arguments. He cared about how it affected people. And I was put on to him by my cousin, who also put me on to Thomas Paine. And but for more kind of modern, I guess you could say, mentor that who I never met. Oh, hitch, Christopher hitscan. See, oh, man, for me, he was the epitome of of humanism, or if it was anyone that I could, that I could have met, you know, before his departure on this Earth, it would have been all hitch, you know, he and I, and I liked his, his his veracity, you know, he didn't mince words. And I think one of the reasons why, you know, humanism and secularism has not really created a foothold in the government and businesses in education is because we're still, we're still dancing around eggshells, because we don't want to offend the sensibilities of religious, right, we still kind of want to give this kind of soft answer. And, you know, you can't go for the jugular vein all the time, right, but you have to stand your ground, right? It's like something what Malcolm X once said, he says, I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he's wrong than one who comes like an angel and is nothing but a devil. Right? I don't care if I think that you're wrong or right. But stand on something. Right, make a decision make an executive decision. And I loved hitch for that hitch did not care and especially in this era of evangelicalism, this Christian nationalism that is basically warped into fascism. They're bold, they are bold. I mean, you we have legislators that are saying, hey, You know incest and rate they're you know no they're they're not exempt from from the abortion hey if your rate gas one it's a gift from God look at it as a gift from God they're they're saying what they want to say they're bold but us as humanists us as atheists assists secularist we're still kind of like No, no, you shouldn't say that. That's against the Constitution. The First Amendment says we have to be a little bit more aggressive and how we attack this evangelicalism that is arrested our government we have to be a little bit more even on the verge of being a little bit more militant about it, but militant with love. Right, right. Militant with love. And so yeah, oh, hitch. Yeah. Oh, hedge you know, old time Nietzsche, but modern Oh, hitch for me. Oh, hitch was the ultimate humanist for me.
David Ames 26:14
I want to hear your thoughts on how humanism can or cannot be, in your opinion, a benefit for the black community? Do you see that as something that the black community is missing? Or needs? Or is that just something that has been helpful to you personally?
Robert Peoples 26:34
I think it is essential. In my opinion, I think it is a mandate for black America to get out of the situation that it's in. Um, I believe that societal religiosity has hampered the progress of black people in this country. It has made us docile, and how we are treated, because, hey, don't worry about what happens to you here. You're going to be in the great bind by forever, just life is just temporary, don't worry about what people do to you. And that message has been destructive. Ah, as Bob Marley once said, you know, if you knew what life was worth, you would look for yours on Earth. And now you see the light, you stand up for your rights. And once we realize that heaven is what we create here. Heaven is what we create generationally. Once we understand that, and we break the chains of religion, we'll be able to see life differently. And we'll be able to move differently, other than just marching. Because David, let's be honest, marching hasn't helped, you know, for society to say, well, you know, what, just dress a certain way, you know, just dress professionally? Well, MLK was assassinated. So he wore suits, so that doesn't help. Protesting hasn't held, if anything, things have gotten worse. And a lot of it is because we're still arrested, mentally arrested. And this form of religiosity where we're just like, it's going to get better. God has it. It's in God's plan. If we you know, we may not understand it now, but we just have to just be be strong about it. Instead of doing the work ourselves and it pains me to, to see my people just dragged through the mud and not promote action because we're waiting on a savior to make everything okay. You know, there's something to say psychologically about when, as a child, no matter how much you studied, as an athlete, no matter how much blood sweat and tears you spent, and practicing, getting injured, studying the playbook, you then say all of this couldn't have been accomplished without the power of God. You have set your own abilities aside your own abilities aside, to give all of the glory to what and what that does to us is it makes us codependent on and I'm gonna be honest, it makes us codependent on but Neverland, white leaders in power for God to somehow change their hearts and change their minds. That is what religion has us doing, waiting on benevolent white leaders that don't really care about us, that God is going to change their heart, we have to not be so concerned about changing hearts, we need to be concerned about changing policy. I don't care what you think about me. But you're going to change this policy. And if something happens, you're going to be held lawful for that. And so that's why I believe humanism is an absolute necessity. And, and it has to be something else as well. I can't say, leave this religion alone. Come on to the side of humanism. But we're not offering anything. Let's be honest, the church has had a head start. Yeah, the church is communal, David, right. I mean, hey, if you need a job, so and so as a, as a VP at this bank, hey, they can get you a job. Oh, you want a mortgage? Oh, you know what? So and so was a loan officer. I mean, the church is a one stop David. And so for me, for us to say leave that communal, rest Haven, and then come to the side of humanism. Okay. What is there on that side? What's the benefit? I'm struggling? What do you have to offer? Do you have any outreach services? What do you have to offer? And so you know, when we're talking about, you know, like Maslow's hierarchy of basic needs, you can't think transcendental thoughts. You can't think about leaving religion and thinking about humanism, and the philosophical connotations of what that means when you can eat, when you're about to be evicted, when you're about to be foreclosed. When you have no support. But you can go to the local church and get support. We have to do better. We have to create organizations that help people. And that will make humanism very much attractive. Because where people, right, humans are communal creatures. Yeah. You see, we have to have something else besides philosophy in order to bring people in. And that's my that's my take on that man.
David Ames 32:33
Yeah, I had Anthony pin on Rice University. And he talked about he's great. Yeah, he's great. He's amazing. Yeah, it talks about something very similar of like, we need to have a soft place to land for for people coming out of religion in general. And then the black community in particular, you know, like you say, resources, the community that all of those things that that's what I'm driving, trying to build, you know, like, how can we build community that could meet the real world needs of people in the world that that the church has been doing for millennia, right, then? And that's when I think humanism becomes functional? As it were, right?
Robert Peoples 33:16
And you know, what I want to be I want to be a part of that. Hey, you know, let's, let's, let's brainstorm. You know, like, let's, let's brainstorm and create, you know, like, national organization with it. Like you said, you know, humanism has to be functional. Yeah. It can't just be in the head.
David Ames 33:35
Yeah, exactly. I sometimes talk about like, I want to humanism that bleed, sweats and cries, like, you know, that we've had it so much so that it's the philosophers talking and their white towers. And you know, I'm much more interested in what it's like to, you know, you're going to be evicted and you're hungry, and you've got four children. What do you do then? That's, that's what actually matters. That's what actually counts and how do we how do we apply the principles of humanism in that environment?
Robert Peoples 34:05
Oh, excellent. That that's you hit the hammer on the nail with that one.
David Ames 34:17
I want to talk more about secularism that isn't necessarily something that we talk a lot about on the podcast. So what is secularism to you? And then that'll be a springboard for you talk about Affinis Humanity and what you're doing with that work?
Robert Peoples 34:34
Oh, okay. So yeah, so the so the terminology secularism, you know, it's there, there's duality that exists within the term, right? It has a dual meaning, right. So the political meaning is anyone who believes and upholds the separation of church and state. So actually, you could be a Christian. But if you believe in the separation of church and state by political definition, you are secular by nature. If you're a Muslim, and you believe in the separation of church and state, you are secular. Now, of course, just like any other words, words evolve over time throughout history. And so now secularism has become more attached to individuals that have no religious affiliation. Right? It has evolved into that. But I think people should always keep in mind that it has a dual meaning and I am willing to work with anyone that is for to separation of church and state, I don't have to agree with your theological base. But if you believe in the separation of church and state, we can work together. You know, and, and so and that, you know, brings me to, you know, how I got connected, actually, with the Secular Coalition for Arizona. lobbyists, extraordinaire, Tory ro Berg reached out to me on Facebook, I've been living in Arizona for about 13 years. And about a little over three years ago, she just messaged me and said, Hey, have you ever heard of the Secular Coalition for Arizona? Like, No, I've never heard that organization. So I started digging, and I'm like, wow, they're a 501 C four. They're a political nonprofit. Wow, with a lobbyist. Wow, that just blew my mind. And so I met with the chair, and I was a part of the organization for a few years, you know, and so that really started getting me and getting me aware of the politics that go on with trying to implement this at Woody in Handmaid's Tale society, within the government. And it just blew my mind. I performed the secular studies there where I would speak with a roomful of lawmakers, senators, House of Representatives, and we would just have a closed door session on what it means to keep Arizona secular. And sometimes emotions flared, right? Yes, you have people you got Christians in there, you got hardcore Christians in there. You You know, you have some senators, you know, Senators that are atheist. Right. And they're and, but at the end of the day, everyone was respectful. And I learned so much about that. And so that really kind of fueled my desire to really get into the government aspects of that, before that. I was into the schools, and I'm still into schools. I have to tell this story. So I have a friend and he's, he's a principal at a school here in Gilbert, Arizona. And if anyone knows about Gilbert, Arizona, it is very well, Mormon occupied heavily. And so a friend of mine, she has a daughter, and she was the class president. And so she said, Robert, I want you to come to my school and talk about what it is to be a humanist. I said, okay, so of course, I had to talk at a meeting with the principal and a meeting with the superintendent as well. And he said, Okay, Robert, I'm gonna tell you now, you know what territory you're in, you're in Mormon. You have a very small box to operate under a very small box to operate. There are going to be fires. I know that they're going to be fires. I just want them to be manageable. So you got a small box to move in? Got you. Yeah, went in there. I did about a two hour presentation. When I asked everyone, you know, what is their you know, if they would like to share what is their belief system or lack thereof? I would say about 75% Were like, I'm atheist. I'm agnostic. I'm bisexual and agnostic. I'm gay, and I'm a secularist. I'm a human. I'm like, Whoa. I'm sort of preaching to the choir, so to speak here, right. And of course, you had other ones that were Mormon. Right, sir. And q&a came up, they asked a lot of questions. And at the end of the day, I received about I don't know maybe about 3040 emails from parents saying, Thank you for your presentation and the name of that presentation. It's almost like self fulfilling prophecy almost ready, if I can say that right? The presentation was to be human is enough.
David Ames 40:07
Yeah.
Robert Peoples 40:09
And that was, you know, that was wow, maybe six years ago. Okay. Yeah, you know, and so, so I was in so I went to other several schools was very well received. And then of course COVID had to show its head. And so that kind of interrupted the flow of a lot of things. But from school, then I wanted to get into business and then government. And that's when the whole secularism bit came about and serving on the board with this wonderful organization really opened up my eyes really educated me on a lot of things. Got me connected with lawmakers, even though we might not see eye to eye. I made a lot of progress with him, and influenced a lot of policies that they created. There's still a lot of work to be done. But yes, I just want to let people know that are, you know, atheists humanists, that it's okay, if someone believes in a god or if they're religious, work with them if they uphold the separation of church and state, because in the grand scheme of things, we all need each other. I don't, we don't have to agree with one another. But the key thing is to understand I don't have to agree with you. But I want to understand your perspective. And to me, that's more important than agreement.
David Ames 41:35
I love it. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, quick story on that, you know, I think, even as a Christian, I was very much for the separation of church and state, because it's both good for the church, and good for the state. So when I, when I went through deconversion, and that was just an obvious, obvious thing that, you know, that's important to uphold. And, and I think within 2016, we had a real world example of that as kind of Christian nationalism came to the front stage. And I watched, my, my wife is still very much a believer. And when I watched her grieve, you know, how Christianity was being manipulated politically. And I think that's just a testament to why separation of church and state is important, even for believers, because it may not be your brand of Christianity that is being represented politically.
Robert Peoples 42:27
And that's something that we we consistently and perpetually brought up in the chambers of lawmakers is that, you know, what, like you said very eloquently, your brand of Christianity may be looked down upon. Yeah, you know, so a secular society is best for everyone, for everyone. And it's just, you know, I mean, you know, peer reviewed studies have shown that, you know, and the the Happiness Index report that comes out by the United Nations, the most happiest countries in the world happened to be the most secular.
David Ames 43:07
Yeah.
Robert Peoples 43:10
Right. You know, children who grow up in secular households exude higher levels of empathy than religious children.
David Ames 43:20
Yeah, interesting, which would shock a lot of people.
Robert Peoples 43:24
But if you think but if you really dig and being, you know, coming from an ex Christian background, you know, you know, both of us, you know, we can kind of understand why that is, right, because it's a level of accountability. If I do you wrong, if I commit a wrong to you, I can't go into my closet, and pray about and say, Well, you know what, God forgave me. I don't care if you don't forgive me, my Lord forgave me. So I'm gonna go on with my life. As a person who is a non believer, I have to rectify the wrongs that I committed to you. I can't go in my closet, and ask God for forgiveness. I have to come to you, man to man, woman, a woman and say, I'm sorry, how can I fix this? So it makes sense about the empathy being higher with children that have no religious affiliation? It makes sense.
And I have a question for you if I can ask you
David Ames 44:32
to. Yeah, please. Yeah. Go said Your wife
Robert Peoples 44:35
is still a Christian is still a believer. How? I'm curious, how do you how do you to navigate through through through this ordeal?
David Ames 44:45
That's a whole podcast in itself. You know, well, I'll tell you, it's your tagline. To be human is enough in that, you know, I recognize, first of all, how much I love my wife and I embrace all of her humanity, which includes her faith. But it's very hard, right? Like I don't want to pretend like it isn't difficult we we have a number of listeners to the podcast that are in what we call unequally yoked relationships. And it is challenging, it is hard. But we have recognized we've been able to communicate to one another that we we love each other for who we are, and that we're committed to the relationship and that we want to work through, we both want to work through it that that really helps. And so not every relationship, I think will survive through this unequally yoked thing. But one of the things that made me want to start the podcast was to differentiate from some of the atheist voices out there that were, you know, burn the bridge on your way out and go out in a blaze of glory, right? Yes, yeah. Yeah, there are some relationships you want to keep, obviously, not abusive ones, or psychologically or physically or anything like that, but once it you want to keep and so one of the messages that I wanted to have was, this secular Grace includes the believers in our lives to to not see believers as dumb or ignorant or what have you. But to remember what it was like to be convinced I was 100% convinced Robert 100%. And so I can't, you know, see that as lesser than or less intellectual or something like that. And so, again, my whole thing is about embracing humanity, embracing my humanity, embracing the humanity of others, that includes and entails other leaders.
Robert Peoples 46:38
I like the I like, you know, the whole you know, secular grace, you know, atheist grace, you know, because I do see that a lot. I see a lot of ad hominem attacks. Yeah, well, actually attacking people's character, because they, they're still a Christian, or they believe in some god of some sort. And, you know, we we've all been, I mean, at least for me, I think the majority of us the reason the number one reason we were Christians in the first place was because we were indoctrinated ever since we've had a rattle in our hand and a pacifier in our mouth. I mean, I mean, you know, our brains are, you know, that the human brain doesn't fully develop until about 25 years old. So imagine you're an infant, you know, and you're experiencing all this stuff. And it's like, no wonder, like, no wonder people are struggling, you know, and me knowing that, you know, I can't commit ad hominem attacks to believers, because I know why they believe I know why they're resistant to information because the indoctrination man, the tentacles of indoctrination, are deep, and they reach far. And that's why religious trauma syndrome is a thing. You know, and some people never, you know, some people will forever deconstruct, some people will never reach a conclusion. Right? They will always struggle with the residuals of their, you know,
you know, deconstruction of their religiosity, they will always I know, people that tell me, you know, Robert, I know,
hell doesn't exist. I know, it doesn't exist, but you know, what, every once in a while, I raise an eyebrow, and I get a little nervous. Isn't that something you know, that it doesn't exist, but because of the level of indoctrination that you've experienced as a child, the residuals are still there, even though you know, it's not real, you still have a physical reaction to it. Man, that's that's heavy I almost I've really not almost I'm gonna be a be hitch in this moment. Not almost, it is a form of psychological child abuse. It is a form of psychological child abuse. Children should be raised in a neutral setting and let them decide let them decide what they want to do. Yeah, you know so yeah, I I don't go for that when when people attack people's character for I don't I don't stand by that.
David Ames 49:14
I can tell from from the things I've read and listened to of yours. So yeah, yeah, back to the comparative religion you know, imagine if we did Middle School comparative religion class that you know, as children, the age of reason, they get, you know, exposure to more options and you know, would be able to make their own choices quite a bit better. So, absolutely.
Robert Peoples 49:45
What, because I talked about what kind of led me down that trajectory of, of embracing atheism and humanism humanism more importantly, what led you on that path is as as As a former Christian, what transition in your life that started you questioning your own belief system?
David Ames 50:08
Man, again, this could be an entire podcast. With 2020 hindsight, I recognize that I was a religious humanists, right, like I was all about grace, I came to Christianity in my teens. So I feel like I had a little bit of a sense of my own self without that childhood indoctrination, but I stayed in it for 27 some odd years. So it wasn't, it wasn't that I got out of it easy. But I always was focused on people. And I felt like the, the attractive part of Jesus was, I came for the sick and not the well, and, and, you know, and the attack on hypocrisy of the religious leaders. And that's what drew me to Jesus. And that was the thing that I thought it was supposed to be about. And it was, you know, years of watching other people not feel that same way or not think of Jesus the same way and be more focused on rules and not having sex and, you know, things that just didn't feel as important, right, like that, you know, was about caring for people. And so early, early on, you know, I had friends who were gay, where I recognized you, I can't, I can't hate this person. I love this person. That was one one part of it intellectually, for sure. You know, I deconstructed long before I knew what deconstruction was right? I had let go. literalist interpretation I had let go of even the authority of Scripture had really lost, lost all of it there near the end, I tell a story about reading through the Bible, in a year, a year or so before I D converted, and my wife would be like, you're angry? Why are you so angry? I, you know, that was that I, you know, I was I was reading it without the rose colored glasses on for the first time. And it was painful what I was seeing there. And so I talked about this in a, an article I wrote called, How to D convert in 10 Easy Steps as a joke. But you have this moment where you give yourself permission to doubt permission to go and seek information outside of the bubble. And I feel like that happened to me, roughly a year before a deconversion. For me, and I just started to allow myself to hear outside voices, you know, the occasional article would come up from an atheist perspective, and I'd find that I didn't disagree with them entirely. Things like the separation of church and state all of those things. But I always like to say it was 1000 things, not just one. Those are some of the mileposts along the way. But I had a oh shit moment. I was reading a Greta Kristina article that was talking about the lack of the existence of a soul. And I realized I agreed with that. And I was like, Oh, shit, I I don't believe and I was done. There was no progressive Christianity. For me, there was no anything else, I finally was able to just say, you know, kind of my skeptical personality, my need for answers that I think you have eloquently described for yourself as well. I was just going to embrace that. And let's go find, you know, the science and the philosophy that has, you know, evidence and argumentation and things that that felt like I could press on them really hard and be really skeptical, and they would still remain true, right? And how unlike that was for my faith where it felt like I was betraying God by testing him by asking questions and things like that. So that's the quick that's the quick version. Again, I could tell the a very long, long version of it, but
Robert Peoples 53:56
Oh, no, I appreciate that. David, man, like you said about doubt, man. You know, how does the quote go? All great truths start out as blasphemies. Yes. Right. It's it's that it's that doubt, doubt is the beginning of wisdom. Yes, you know, and that's something that the church really teaches against. And so yeah, man, thanks for Wow, thanks for sharing like when you said you were done done, and that was listening to what you were saying you were base you were deconstructing for years, you know, so that's when you came to that conclusion. Like kind of very easily like, Oh, I'm, I'm Dun dun dun. Because you had the years of not even knowing that you were really deconstructing
David Ames 54:39
I had no idea I was completely ignorant. That's what was happening, but that's exactly what was happening. Yeah.
Robert Peoples 54:44
Oh, that's good stuff, man. Good stuff.
David Ames 54:56
We've been talking about a lot of things, some of them negative one. I want to I hear a little bit about you have a, an Instagram where you talk about the benefits and the joy of being on this side of deconversion. Just like to hear you expound on that for a bit like, what is it like for you today that you've left kind of the religious bonds behind?
Robert Peoples 55:21
You know, I? Wow, I can I'll lead it with a with a quote from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
was a Douglas Adams right? You know, why is it that we can't look at a garden as beautiful without thinking that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? Yeah, that I'll open up with that. The benefits of walking away from religion and the benefits of humanism is it has increased my love for humanity exponentially. I no longer love people with conditions with conditions on their sexual orientation, their conditions on their ethnicity, their conditions on their gender, I can walk out of my house, and I look at the hummingbird differently. I'm in all, when I see a hummingbird, I'm in all when I when I see ants, when I'm walking on the street, I'm always looking down. Because when I look at ants, which are the strongest insects probably alive that can lift to 50 to 100 times its body weight. Can you imagine if we could do that as a human? I'm, I'm six, five about 225 Can you imagine me lifting 100 times my own bodyweight. You know, I'm, I just have such a reverence for nature around me. Um, I can wake up in the morning, and I don't have to, I don't have to go to a book. You know, I don't have to go to archaic scriptures to lead me. The Book of Life opens up each and every time I wake up in the morning, I write my own book, David. I can love people, regardless of their belief. You know, before when I was a Christian, I wasn't around people who didn't believe I looked at them like they were crazy. Now, even as a non believer, I can look at a Muslim as a Christian because I have a lot of Christian friends, I have a lot of Muslim friends. And I love them even still, I may not agree with them, but it doesn't impede upon the love, I exude for them. And it's such a bag of heavy bricks just to lay down knowing that I'm not going to be here forever, that I'm not going to be in this, you know, heavenly firmament, forever. There is there is peace and tranquility, knowing that my life is finite, because it allows me to love life more. I don't want to live forever. I want to do things where I know there is a limited capacity. I have an expiration date in this world. And so that allows me to try to make as much of an impact as I can, every day of my life. And I enjoy life more because it's finite. I want to say I love my daughters more man, I I love the fact that you know, you know what, I'm probably going to outlive you but I'm gonna make sure that I have the greatest impact I have in your life. Accountability, David, um, if I do it wrong, I'm going to remedy it. I'm going to bring rectification to the issue and to see someone look at me like, wow, that took a lot for you to come forward. I don't know. If I could have done that. I would probably have had to pray about it. Talk to my church leaders. The Accountability. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. That's it. You know, and so those are those are some of the benefits of of humanism matches of reverence and an appreciation for life and humanity. Man,
David Ames 1:00:07
I could not have said it any better. That was amazing. Well, Robert, I am just profoundly impacted by your work, to be human is enough is going to stick with me for four years, I'm going to be quoting you on that one. So I hope that you and I can become friends, I hope that we can do more work together, I'd love your work, I want to give you an opportunity to tell people, how they can reach out for you to you how they can contribute to your work, how they can find you.
Robert Peoples 1:00:38
Oh, absolutely. Everyone you can, you can go to my website to learn more, it's affinishumanity.org. It's a f f i n is just a little a little side note. So affinis is the Latin derivative of the word affinity, which means a natural attraction to a person thing or idea. And my attraction is to humanity. Thus, humanism, you can find me on Instagram affinis, humanity, and also Facebook, the same and Tik Tok as well. I finished humanity. And I like to I like to hear from everyone. And yes, David, we must, you know, when social media works, it works right and our connection to just to to extend past this podcast, you know, I mean, I want to really, you know, connect with you and just brainstorm about, you know, some of the things that you were speaking about, you know, bring bringing the functionality to humanism to society to real world issues. And I'm all for that man. And so, yes, let's, let's stay in touch.
David Ames 1:01:54
Absolutely. And Robert Peoples thank you so much for being on the podcast. Hey, I
Robert Peoples 1:01:58
appreciate you, man. Thank you.
David Ames 1:02:06
Final thoughts on the episode? To be human is enough. Robert has captured secular grace in that phrase, I literally will be thinking about that phrase for the rest of my life. It is such a simple way to capture it and it has deep meaning. For humanists, it has deep meaning for anti racism. It has deep meaning for being a human being, period. Like Robert said, when social media works, it really works. I really appreciate this connection. I do want to thank our Lean for prodding both Robert and I to connect with one another, our lean our community manager for the deconversion anonymous Facebook group. Roberts work touches so many of the things that I care about, as we mentioned the secular grace and beginning with humanism and loving people without conditions. I need to quote him here at least once he says I believe in you. I believe in people. I believe in change. And if any change is going to happen. We have to do it. There is no savior coming to save us that responsibility is ours. And Roberts work in secularism, if for any reason that word secularism is bothersome to you think of pluralism, really, that's all we're saying is that no one ideology, whether it's religious, economic, philosophical or cultural dominates in a political sense, such that all other ideas are shut down. And the example is, like I mentioned with my wife, who was very much a Christian, but watched as a version of Christian nationalism, and not the Christianity that she would endorse, gains political power. You cannot guarantee that even if you are a believer that the version of Christianity that gains political power will be your version. And even if it is your version, you cannot guarantee that it will maintain that power. And so secularism or pluralism, the marketplace of ideas and ideologies, where there is freedom of speech, there is no religious test for for political office is an ideal, and it is both good for the church and it is good for the state. I love the work that Robert is doing in Arizona promoting secularism that is boots on the ground doing the hard work. I truly loved the way that Robert talked about reverse engineering theology with philosophy and how important philosophy was to him, even as a young man Starting with Payne's Age of Reason, and going into Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard and the existentialists, I can sometimes be negative towards the philosophy bros. But I need you to understand how much I appreciate philosophy and how important it is. It forces us to think deeply and critically about what we think, and why what we believe and why. And to be able to articulate an argument for it. It is incredibly important. And like Robert, I encourage everyone to dig in and learn philosophy. I very much appreciated Roberts willingness to talk about race that can be such an uncomfortable subject. And I appreciated the level of honesty that he brought to the table talking about not being accepted by his own community, and how hard that is. I also appreciated how much he recognizes that humanism can add to the black community. And Robert is such a powerful voice to spread that message and to spread a message of loving people without conditions. I want to encourage you to check out Roberts website affinishumanity.org, the links will be in the show notes. He has t shirts available, I think you can support him financially and the work that he's doing. He's also participating in the Secular Coalition for Arizona, we'll have links in the show notes for that as well. Please reach out to Robert and support the work that he is doing. Robert is a quote machine, go back, listen to this. I've listened to it twice already. He is an amazing human being and has such wisdom to share. I'm very glad that I got to meet Robert, I hope that he and I will have an opportunity to work together again. I want to thank Robert for being on the podcast for sharing his wisdom for sharing his love for humanity for sharing his joy in humanism and the freedom that he experiences in that. Thank you, Robert for being on the show. The secular Grace Thought of the Week is just to expound upon, to be human is enough. I'm not sure that I can adequately expand on on this. It is so profound in its simplicity. So much of what I am trying to say with secular grace is about embracing our humanity. When I say humanity, I mean our foibles, our weaknesses as well as our strengths as well as our intellect and rationality. So much of religion tries to deny our humanity that our normal human desires and wants are evil and wrong. You know, who we love or what color our skin is, and what we think in our private thoughts get categorized and moralize so that we turn in on ourselves and begin to hate ourselves. So much of what I want with secular grace is for us to be able to embrace ourselves as human beings and embrace one another as human beings. And that does include the human beings who believe in a theistic God, it does include human beings of a different race. It includes human beings have different gender identities and sexual orientations. It includes and people of religions other than Christianity, it includes people of other cultures. It is so easy to other eyes, the people with whom we disagree or who are different from ourselves and to deny their humanity. So my challenge to you is to recognize the humanity even in the people who you find difficult to love. This is secular grace. As I mentioned, we're going to take a break next week for your Easter holiday. Please re listen to this episode four or five times. I mean, really, this Robert is an amazing person and has so much to say. And then if you want to go into the back catalogue, and the links will be in the show notes to Jennifer Michael hacked Anthony pin and Sasha seconds episodes I highly recommend those for a secular Grace holiday weekend. Until next time, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful
It's 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 for 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? 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 is the three year anniversary of the Graceful Atheist Podcast. Thank you to everyone who has listened and participated. Special thanks to Mike T and Arline for their work on the podcast over the past year.
This week’s guest is Ryan Mulkowsky. Ryan grew up Independent Fundamentalist Baptist. He made a “profession of faith” when he was nine years old and was reading Christian apologetics before he was twelve. By fourteen, Ryan was “licensed” by the church and started teaching the kids.
However, Ryan’s mental health suffered during adolescence. Whether at home, school or church, no place was safe for him to grow and change—strict dress codes, young-earth creationism, white-centered history books and virtually no sexual education.
“I constantly felt like anything that was happening to me was because I was a sinner or because I was depraved or something was wrong with me.”
Ryan went to one university that was even more conservative and strict than his high school, left and graduated from another with a degree in apologetics. But Ryan knew he wanted to be with people.
“I realized that the majority of the apologists have this disposition. They have zero interest in talking to people. They just like to debate, and they just like to lecture.”
Soon Ryan was introduced to healthcare chaplaincy, and for the first time, saw people up-close in great physical and emotional need. He was also introduced to other religious faiths—Buddhism Orthodox Judaism and progressive Christianity.
“That’s when a lot of my beliefs started disintegrating and dissolving and coming apart was when I was a chaplain and a resident.”
Ryan is a now a secular humanist, married with a family and working as a grief coordinator for Hospice. His life has both meaning and purpose without religion. He is living out secular grace by providing comfort and peace in some of humanity’s most vulnerable moments.
“That’s where the beautiful stuff is. That’s where the human, raw, real, unfiltered but so damn beautiful and sacred stuff is.”
This week’s guest is Jeffrey Caldwell. Jeffrey grew up in Lancaster county, PA in a liberal denomination set in a conservative area. As a child, church was “okay,” filled with the usual things—bible crafts in Sunday school and singing in the choir. His family was “quasi-religious,” so no one was ever pressured to believe anything.
Jeffrey doubted whether Christianity was real throughout middle school. Neither his parents nor his siblings took it very seriously, so he left church in high school but was still searching for meaning.
Music, books and movies filled the space that religion often does. Eventually, his interest expanded to include philosophy, politics, social justice, all influenced by the “oldies” his dad played in the car.
“I was fascinated by this idea of just ordinary, everyday people banding together to solve whatever problems they were facing…”
In his twenties, Jeffrey struggled with mental health issues and after a surprise encounter with a church youth group, he knew he was missing community.
“I recognized instantly that that’s what I was looking for in my life, some place where I felt like I belonged, some place where I felt like people valued me for who I was. But at the same time, I realized that I wasn’t a christian.”
He didn’t fit in with the traditional religions, so he tried the UU church. Then he got involved in progressive politics and social justice, and eventually went to seminary and became a chaplain.
“Learning to be a chaplain was learning how to sit with people who are in pain and distress and not be overwhelmed by their pain and distress.”
Now, Jeffrey has a thriving online and in-person community, Connections Humanist Community. Each week, people share stories and conversations. The members belong to a community where they are valued and heard. Jeffrey is living out what it means to be a “graceful atheist.”
This week’s episode is Natalie. Natalie grew up in a traditional Christian household, one of six kids. Living in the South and attending a Southern Baptist church most of her childhood and adolescence, however, left a bad taste in her mouth.
“[At church, integration] was never talked about. It was a complete separation of community and religion, and yet the missionaries would come and show their slides about the brown people in South America and Africa that we were ‘saving.’”
One place she found solace? Books. Natalie was an avid reader from a young age and reading authors like Judy Blume opened her eyes to a whole good and happy world outside of her Christian bubble. Fictional, though it was, that world made her wonder, “How can [my family] be so unhappy and still have these beliefs about this religion?”
“Reading was really the gateway for me to questioning everything.”
Natalie escaped the South at seventeen for a few years and began seriously examining her childhood faith. Even as she was questioning her beliefs, she had to move back in with family. It wasn’t long amidst the chaos that she needed to escape again. After a quick and clandestine wedding, she and her husband moved.
“The further I got from my family, the easier [questioning] became until…I woke up one day and realized I hadn’t thought about a god for a long time.”
It’s been a while since Natalie deconverted, and she has lived a fulfilling life, with both happy and hard times. Today, seeing those who are deconstructing their faith, she empathizes deeply .
“You have to take everything you’ve been told most of your life and run it through a ringer to see what’s true…And a lot of it doesn’t survive.”
Will grew up in a Methodist church until high school, when he began attending youth group in what he now calls the, “cult church.” Years later, will he and his wife were still at that church, he would have a seemingly supernatural experience at his brother’s church in Florida. The decide to move, and not only was there a megachurch waiting for them, there was also Disney World!
Will and his wife dove right in! They served at the megachurch for about five years when his wife began to doubt her beliefs. Eventually, Will resigned himself to being alone in his faith.
“Just figured I’d be that church leader who has an unbelieving spouse.”
Slowly, however, Will’s fundamentalist beliefs shifted. He wanted to understand the Bible better, so he could understand his wife better. He decided to take off his “Jesus colored glasses,” and read the Bible differently. It wasn’t long before he had a number of issues with what he was reading.
Then enters the Republican nomination of Donald Trump. Will felt like he was in the “twilight zone,” not understanding how Christians were getting behind Trump.
“Plot twist: I was a follower of Christ; not a follower of Trump.”
He and his wife stopped going to the main services but were still in small group. The pastor met with Will to discuss “ministry,” but instead Will needed to pour out all his questions and concerns. The pastor dismissed them. It may not have been intentional, but it still hurt. A few months later, he knew he no longer believed.
“I was like, ‘God and I are done.’”
Today, Will uses Instagram to share what’s learned from the Bible.
“I know some shit about the Bible, and I would like to put that to some good use.”
He’s taking the “decades of useless Bible knowledge” he has to teach and challenge people, in hopes that his followers will outgrow him and move on to do amazing things.
Recommendations:
Sam Harris (books & podcast)
Bart Ehrman (books & classes on Wondrium)
Paulogia (YouTube)
Yuval Noah Harari (Books: Homo Deus, 21 lessons for the 21st century & Sapiens)
“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats
Transcript
NOTE: This transcript is AI produced 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. I want to thank my latest reviewer on the Apple podcast store. Thank you to Jay eight G I ll E. I appreciate the review on the Apple podcast store. You too can rate and review the podcast on the Apple podcast store or pod chaser.com. Thank you. For those of you who don't know yet, we do have the deconversion anonymous Facebook group that is a private Facebook group, there is a thriving community there, I really encourage you to participate. This will be the last episode for the 2021 calendar year, we'll have an episode that will drop on January 2. By doing every other week during the month of December, Mike and I have been able to have a bit of rest. So I hope you don't mind too much. Thanks to Mike t for all the editing in 2021. But he is off on this episode. On today's show. Today's episode is an Ask Me Anything episode. We did this kind of in a rush. I had asked for questions a couple of weeks ago, and people waited to about Wednesday of the week before I'm releasing this episode. So what you'll notice is I have some very long answers and some relatively short ones. And that it was to try to get everybody who asked the question in this is my first asked me anything. I am hoping to do more because I think this is an interesting format. So if you didn't get your question in this time around, please consider sending in a voicemail either recorded on your phone or you can use the anchored on FM app to send me your question. And I will just gather those together for the next round maybe several months from now. So today I'm going to respond to some direct questions, respond to some questions that I've had in interviews, and then a couple of other things that are just on my mind. I am going to have a bunch of links in the show notes. So when I make reference to something, I'll try to have a link for that in the show notes. So here we go.
Shiela 2:44
Hi, David, this is Sheila from Oklahoma. My question for you today concerns apologetics. When we were believers, we were taught to always be prepared to give a defense for the hope we have in Christ. Now that we are not believers, do you feel it is equally important to defend our unbelief in the same manner?
David Ames 3:04
That is an incredibly important question. And it's going to give me the springboard to talk about another topic that I think we need to discuss. But to answer you directly Sheila, the short answer is no. And I of course want you to learn as you go through this deconstruction process, or come out the other side of it. There are just many things you don't yet know and going and educating yourself is a vital part of that process. I'll probably be referring to this multiple times today. But I have an article called How to D convert in 10 steps. It's a joke title, unfortunately. But it does go through what I call the quest for answers stage where you are at a point where you're now free to go find out what things are true. And there are no topics which are off limits. So from that perspective, you should have an answer for yourself. But I really want to bring home that you don't owe anyone an answer or an explanation. And I want to be clear here, I'm not saying you should never take on criticism or have people question you, but that's important, like learning how to have those discussions is good. The point that I want to make, Sheila is that we're having this moment, particularly since 2016 and the advent of the ex banje articles as as just a whole exponential wave of people are leaving the church. We're now beginning to see a serious backlash, particularly from evangelicals and prominent pastors and apologists are constantly attacking deconstruction and they are using straw man tactics to minimize and rationalize why people are deconstructing, rather than looking at themselves looking at the theology Je the systems themselves, it is much easier to say you Sheila must never have believed, you must not have really known Jesus, you didn't have a relationship with God, you didn't have a born again, experience. You will have either believers in your life, pastors, leaders, and apologists who will come at you almost immediately and expect you to have an entire worldview on day one, that they will pick it that to try to undermine your deconstruction deconversion, because you don't yet have a complete meta ethical structure or an idea of where you get purpose and meaning. The Evangelical response to particularly X Vangel articles in the current wave, which I need to point out is only the current wave we've had, I think, multiple waves of people leaving the church, obviously, throughout all of history, but just in the last 20 years, you have the new atheists who, as much as I criticize him all the time, we're kind of a vanguard of saying, critique of religion is no longer taboo. You had late aughts, bloggers and early podcasts. The wave that we're in now is bigger than just intellectual issues. It's moral issues against the church. It is the embracing of the LGBTQ community, it is the denial of sexual abuse within the church, it is 1000 things that now lead a person to begin questioning. And as I say all the time, it is not one thing, it is 1000 things. And part of the difficulty is that from an apologetic point of view, they want to limit it to just a handful of things, a list of five or six items. Almost all of those will be blaming you for your own deconstruction. And it is a way for them to ignore the implication of these waves of people leaving. And to get a visceral feel for why. Imagine if the apologists and the leaders handled the death of a loved one in the same way they are handling deconstruction. When a person is in the middle of deconstruction, they have lost their best friend, they've lost the companion who knows them the best, the one who loves them unconditionally, they have lost in very real practical terms, a community, they may have lost family members and friends. It can be the loneliest and most grief inducing period of time in a person's life. And imagine if the apologists did that to someone who had lost a loved one. Well, you can't grieve because you don't have an accurate theology of the afterlife. You don't have an accurate theology of Heaven and Hell, or you don't have an accurate theology for salvation, whether or not your loved one was saved. Can you imagine? And that is the equivalent of what is actually happening. deconstruction is a grief process. So if by chance, there are any evangelical leaders who are hearing this, your response should be one of love, and not of trying to undermine the person's experience for why they are deconstructing. The analogy continues in the sense that when you are grieving the loss of a loved one, it is incredibly difficult to articulate that pain. When you're in the middle of deconstruction, you're probably the least capable of articulating what is happening and why. And my biggest problem with the apologists is that the few of them who have actually spoken to someone who has deconstructed at all often are talking to someone in the middle of it, and they are hearing grief. Not a complete meta ethical, philosophical grounding of why Christianity isn't true. I can't say it simpler than this early on in my deconstruction and deconversion. I wanted desperately for my Christian loved ones and friends to understand why. In fact, the first blog post that I ever did about my deconversion The first paragraph say, for my loved ones for so that you can understand why and how this happened over the last five to six years, having talked to apologists, I've talked to apologists who focus on deconstruction, I have talked to multiple friends of mine. And including my wife, I've come to the conclusion that it's virtually impossible for the believer to understand the real reasons why we do convert, because if they did, they would be in that process themselves. The real reason is that it's not true. If it were true, it wouldn't be D constructible. True things stand the test of scrutiny. Like I say, it's not one thing. It's 1000 things. They want to focus on. What we're able to articulate, you know, I had a moral problem with the church, not loving LGBTQ people. I was hurt by the church, and the leadership did me wrong and I left, or I could no longer accept the inerrancy of Scripture. They want to blame that right. It's not just one of those things, you question one thing and you begin to ask yourself, What else might not be true, and it is the domino effect of one thing after another, being shown to be untrue. At the end of the day, we deconstruct the Bible. We deconstruct theology, we deconstruct Christian morality, we deconstruct the church. And the last thing to fall for most people is deconstructing God. I no longer believe such an entity exists. And there's no way our believing loved ones, or the apologists can ever understand that, or they would be deconstructing themselves.
To tie this up in a bow, I want to refer to a number of podcasts and blogs of late that have addressed from the D converts point of view, the evangelical backlash. I was on Andrew and Matthew Taylor's podcast, still unbelievable A while back, and we did an episode called deconstructing deconstruction, where we looked at an apologists point of view on this and tore it apart. If you ever want to hear me be less than graceful, it's when I go on someone else's podcast and I can unload a bit. Still unbelievable. Just did a recent episode, actually two of them with Andrew, Matthew and guest David Johnson from the skeptics and seekers podcast, and that was really good as well going through that. Paula GIA from YouTube fame has just recently addressed this and he takes a look at a Babylon B video that was making fun of X angelical. And then finally, Blake Justine's podcast X angelical. He just recently addressed this as well as his is a bit more meaty it has got a lot of links and references to various evangelical leaders and apologists. And it's worth listening to as well. So clearly, we're having this moment where this topic is coming up. Sheila, I know I went way long on that question, but thank you for sending it in. And I hope that answered it for you.
Next up is Judah. Judah has just recently recorded an episode with me so his episode will be coming out in January. And Judah very helpfully was pushing me on the topic of grace and the dark side of grace. I've hinted about this often and generally just lightly touched the topic. But I liked the framing that Judah had. Judas question was particularly aimed at the way that grace is used within the Christian context. It is basically a Get Out of Jail Free card such that somebody can do atrocious, heinous acts against humanity, and just ask for forgiveness, and they are supposed to be entirely forgiven. Another context might be in the case of abuse where in the Christian context, one feels guilt or pressure to forgive the abuser. I'm thankful to Judah for asking those questions and for pushing me on this because I want to make that very clear. especially in the case of an abusive relationship or situation, you are under no obligation to forgive that person. And that is definitely not what I mean by secular grace. To say it succinctly secular grace is much more about being willing to accept the vulnerability of others. And likewise be vulnerable with one another. With people that we trust. I don't mean, the entire world on Facebook, or anyone who asked I mean, your best friend, I mean, your soulmate partner who's been with you forever, someone you trust with your life. Those are the kinds of people that it's important to be vulnerable with and to express your love for them. In the public sphere, it's about giving the benefit of doubt to people and not assuming that they are terrible human beings. I've already done a bit of that today, going after the apologists, but I actually work really hard at trying to see the humanity of people with whom I disagree vehemently. It's super easy to fall into the pattern of those people are bad, they are evil. Does that mean that I don't hold them accountable? Absolutely not. That's the point of Judas question. And the point that I want to make here. It is about love with justice, as I often tried to explain to some of my more conservative family members, if justice were truly blind, if the police officers who have shot and killed black men and women over the centuries, literally, but particularly of late, if they were held accountable, we wouldn't be having protests and the kind of civil unrest that we currently have. In my lifetime, since Rodney King, I've witnessed uncountable numbers of times where a person of color has been abused by the police and the police have gone either uncharged under charged, or acquitted, in cases where it seems fairly obvious that that should not have been the case. Of course, I believe in, you're innocent until proven guilty. That's a bedrock foundation. What I'm saying is, if there wasn't an obvious statistical disparity in justice, we wouldn't be having these kinds of conversations. So secular grace is not about letting people off the hook. In many ways, it is holding people to account. So particularly in the public sphere, secular grace is about Yes, give the benefit of the doubt, recognize the humanity of even those who you find atrocious, but hold them to account. Justice is important. In the private sphere, secular grace is amongst the consenting, you're not vulnerable with people who are a threat to you, you are only vulnerable to people you trust, literally with your life. The proactive part of secular grace is to be open to people who need some secular grace, who you don't already know or have a relationship with. I mean, this is just a restating of Be kind to one another. My guess is, there's nothing complicated there at all. I can tell you from watching the deconversion anonymous Facebook group that you all have figured this out, you are doing secular grace with one another in a way that I am just astounded by and I often have guests on who exemplify secular Grace better than I do, and I am blown away by this and love it. That's fantastic. So at the bottom of it all, it really is about loving people. And that does not mean letting them off the hook. Judah emailed me a second question that I'd like to address. He asks, Do you think there remains a place for the anti theists of the world? Do they serve a constructive purpose in any significant way? Or is it simply a stage of development? This is a really interesting question, because you could basically describe my work with the graceful atheists both the blog and the podcast and As trying to be the antithesis of anti theism. However, I have really good friends within the secular community who who believe very strongly that their work countering or doing counter apologetics is really important. And I think there is some small place for that. So let me explain. On the one hand, I'm diametrically opposed to the debate culture and the hostility. And in particular, I'm against treating believers as if they are stupid, because they believe my straightforward explanation for why I think that is that I am the same person I was when I was a believer as I am now. So to whatever extent I was intelligent, then I'm intelligent now or vice versa. And I was totally in 100%. And now I'm 100% out, I'm much more convinced that the community belonging happens first. And the beliefs come along afterwards. And that any one of any intelligence can fall into an organization or an ideology that from an objective point of view is untrue. And in fact, my understanding is that there's lots of research that would suggest that more intelligent people are better able to do so because they can rationalize and justify with more sophisticated reasoning than someone with slightly less intelligence. So it's actually the most dangerous thing you can do is say, I'm impervious to bad ideas, or cults or bad ideology. So my work is definitely not anti theism. And I have a blog post that says why I'm not an anti theist. And the primary reasons for that are I don't think people come to faith, nor do they leave faith purely for rational, intellectual reasons. That is a major factor that was a major factor in my deconversion. I generally speak about it primarily in intellectual terms. But it was a multifaceted process that included my intellect included, my intuition included, my emotions included my relationships and experiences. And it was a whole person who went through that process, not just a Vulcan rationalist. And so I think the pure focus on what I'll call hyper rationalism, or hyper rationalist, counter apologetics is noise in the vacuum. I ultimately think that apologetics itself is bad for believers. And so therefore, I also think counter apologetics is bad for all everyone involved. So the debate culture is the thing I was trying to be different from, because everybody in our uncle is doing that on YouTube and podcasts. At the end of the day, whether you think there's a role for anti theists or not, that area is definitely covered. And I don't think any more of us need to do that.
So if I were hard pressed, I would have to say that if it is done carefully, kindly and graciously, that some counter apologetics, which could be construed as anti theistic, are a good and okay, and probably necessary, but that for the vast majority of us just actually caring about people actually having a relationship with believers and showing them that we have morality and joy and gratitude and an ethical framework outside of Christianity, that's going to do more to break down their stereotypes and to make them think, then coming at them for why Pascal's wager is no good. In other words, I think love conquers over arguments. And secular grace is about loving people, including the believers in our lives. Judah, thank you for questioning me, and I want to make clear, explicitly stated on Mike, that I want constructive criticism, I want people to push on the ideas that I'm putting out there. There is nothing that cannot be criticized that I have to say, I imagine there will be large swathes of you who disagree with me on a number of points. And that's fantastic. I'm sliding into a slightly different topic here. But I want to point out that I am a pluralist. That's actually what secularism is it is about pluralism that no one ideology or person or group or organization has a law Knock on the truth, including me, and especially me. So that we are all working together to figure out a closer approximation to the truth. So please keep the constructive criticism coming. And to put my money where my mouth is, when I first started the podcast I explicitly had in mind that Christians could come on the program and criticize my humanism, or my atheism, not very many have truly taken that opportunity. But I'm saying it here. If you are a believer, and you have some constructive criticism, or want to actually dialogue, and again, I point out the difference between debate and what I call an honesty contest. But that door is open, you can reach me at graceful atheist@gmail.com.
Emily 26:06
Hi, David, this is Emily. Lately, I've been finding it a little hard to stay positive given that this pandemic is stretching into almost two years now. And the news from around the world can just be a bit depressing. And I was wondering, what gives you hope, when you're feeling down about the general state of the world? Thanks,
David Ames 26:25
Emily, thank you so much for the question. I wish I had a much better answer for this an answer that would make everyone have more hope in the world that we live in. But I want to be somewhat realistic as well. Also, I'm going to talk about gratitude in a another listeners question a little bit later. So gratitude is definitely a part of what keeps me grounded. So we'll talk about that in a different listener question. I think the main point I'd want to bring about is to think locally, we as human beings, we are super easily overwhelmed by things that we can't control. We have very little control over international politics, or even US politics, we have very little control over this pandemic. And when we feel out of control, we can start to lose hope. The truth is, we've never been in control of those things to begin with. And so we really haven't lost anything. But particularly as D converts, we can feel that loss of control, because we no longer have prayer to turn to. And that loss of a sense of something to do, can be really difficult to manage. This idea of thinking locally is about the things that you can change things you do have control over. I think one of the most insidious parts of the pandemic has been that the very thing that we need as human beings in the time of crisis, and the time of the pandemic, is to be with each other. And that's the very thing that causes the spread of the COVID 19 disease. And so we have to be very careful about selecting our pod of people that we are with. But I do encourage you to do that. Make sure that you have other human beings to be around that you know that they are vaccinated, and you're vaccinated, and it's a reasonable risk level for everyone involved to get together. I'd also say be proactive in connecting with people over zoom or any other digital communication mechanism. They are definitely a distant second to being physically in the room with somebody but it is better than nothing. So if you have a friend or loved one who lives far away, or where it would be an unreasonable risk to go visit that person, make sure that you're the one reaching out to say hi, hey, I need to talk I need to vent I need to connect with you because I love you and I miss you. Basically being proactive about our human connections, I think will help us to be hopeful as well. The pandemic in particular has been one of waves every time we think that things are getting better. In this case, we have a new variant. So we had delta and now we have Omicron. And that can be really challenging, but remembering that this too will pass. sounds trite. But you know, we know from the 1918 flu pandemic, we will get through this. It may take longer than all of us hoped for but it will eventually end and we will go back to some form of normalcy where we're able to connect with each other on a normal basis. In regards to the politics of the day, certainly within my lifetime, this feels like the most polarized and angry that we are at one another I for sure for myself feel more anger on political issues today and Since 2016, than I ever have in my life, I think the really important thing to try to remember and this is hard, and I'm speaking to myself more than, than the listeners here is to remember that these are human beings to that people that we are opposed to, even diametrically opposed to, it's super easy to fall into the trap of thinking that they are evil, that they're wrong. And they're terrible human beings. Rather than recognizing that they are human, they have had a set of experiences and a set of cultural influences that have led them to come to conclusions that I disagree with or that you disagree with. But recognizing their humanity, we might be able to build a bridge and have some communication. And you might be the person who changes their mind on something, rather than coming in hot and telling them you're wrong. You're stupid, you're evil, trying to understand why did you come to that conclusion? All of this to say that when we recognize these intractable problems, or really human problems, there's some hope there, right? People can change their minds, it is in fact possible. And you might have an influence on the people around you. I hate to be a broken record. But you know, why do I have hope? Because I believe in secular grace, I believe in people. If there's one thing that theistic religion and Christianity specifically do well, it is giving people a sense of hope. I think that hope is built on an untruth, that there is a divine entity who is in sovereign control of the universe. But there are some fictions that are helpful to human being. So having hope, in believing in people is what I do now. People can do atrocious things, I know that in reality, but to quote Joss Whedon against all evidence, I believe in people, and that gives me hope. We've seen how people can do the wrong thing. But people can also do beautiful loving and kind things. And let's be those people in the world. Let's seek out those people to be connected to. And let's try to influence others to do the same. I hope that was at least moderately hopeful, Emily, but thank you for the question.
Rick, and Mark asked a couple of questions in email. I thank Rick and mark for listening to the podcast and for emailing me this question. I did say ask me anything. So this is one I have had did not anticipate. They ask, Do I have a health care directive? And if I understand their email correctly, that's specifically about if I was unable to decide or speak for myself, would I object to prayers, religious ceremonies, or the reading of sacred texts and religious discussions? And I hate to disappoint you, Rick and mark, but no, I don't. And to be totally honest with you, I don't think I would. And I'll explain why. Constantly in my life, I don't know about yours. I have family and occasionally a friend who will say, I'm praying for you. And I could be mad at that I could bristle and be uncomfortable with that. But generally, what I say to that is Thank you. Because what I hear them saying is I care about you. And I'm thinking about you. Do I think prayer does anything? Absolutely not. But maybe it makes that person more concerned about me, maybe that person will take some action that would be helpful for me in the future. And so I just find that as an expression of their care for me. Likewise, both my previous pastoral experience and my being old and having lived through the loss of a number of loved ones, I found that funerals are for the living, they are not for the debt. So I have specifically said to my girls, that whatever makes them feel better. Whatever helps them to grieve is what they should do. I don't have any particular requests for my let's say, funeral. Just in case you also meant Do Not Resuscitate directive that I would consider that is something that I don't currently have. But it's something that I would consider in that if I truly were in a position where say my vital organs could be donated in a way and there was no hope of brain recovery. I would be willing to do that. But specifically in regards to denying the religious aspect of how Oh, my either hospital stay or funeral would be handled is really again, in my mind for the living or for the bereaved. And I don't care. Because it doesn't make any difference. It doesn't change anything. And it's just not a thing that I am terribly concerned with. So if you are concerned about that absolutely have that directive. And it sounds like maybe having those conversations with your family would be important as well. Rick and Mark, thank you so much for the question.
Jimmy 35:41
Hey, David, Jimmy here. I have a question about gratitude. Why is it okay to be grateful without being grateful to someone? I know you've mentioned, we don't need to be grateful to someone or something. And I know that that's essentially how I practice anyway. But the question occasionally bugs me.
David Ames 36:01
Jimmy, thank you so much for this question. Knowing you, I don't know that my answer will be satisfying, because I'm certain that you have already spent hours thinking about this from every possible direction. I'm just going to say that I think gratitude and specifically a practice of gratitude is incredibly important. That was maybe given to us for free in a theistic religion and Christianity. But recognizing that we have people and things to be grateful for, just that alone can give us some hope to refer back to Emily's question. I'm sure I'm repeating myself here. But something from the 12 steps from when I was 16 years old, has always stuck with me. And that is being grateful for the small things. And what that means is, it can be difficult to be grateful for big conceptual ideas like world peace, or the economy or climate or something that it just is bigger than ourselves. And it is a focus on the small and local. And my favorite example of this is I love to have a bunch of pillows, I have multiple pillows on my bed. And every time I go to bed at night, I squeezed into those pillows, and I think I am so grateful for these pillows, and it is such an absurdly small thing. And yet, I derive a tremendous amount of gratitude from that small thing. So find the small things that generate huge amounts of gratitude in you and be conscious of them. To the heart of your question, and even the way you phrased it, is it okay? Not to be grateful to to someone, I will refer back to my conversation with bryce Bryce was my friend who was an atheist when I was deep in my Christianity, and I was having a conversation with him about how grateful I was for my children. But I was trying to explain to him at the time, I was grateful to God for that. And now here I am on the other side of the fence. And I've learned that gratitude is both an experience that happens to us. And, as I mentioned, a practice that we can work out in our lives and discipline that we can have in our lives. And I generally say it this way, that the objects of my gratitude are both, too, and for the people in my life. So my wife, my two daughters, my family, my friends, including you, Jimmy, that I'm both thankful for. And to those people. I think what's so difficult for us as the converts is we were ingrained with this idea that if anything good happens to us, it's to the glory of God, and we should be grateful. And if anything bad happens, it was probably our fault. And that is the vicious cycle that we need to get out of, and having a practice of gratitude for very practical, real things. And being grateful to and for the people in our lives is a way of overcoming that limitation. Again, Jimmy, knowing you I am sure you've already thought of these things. And it's probably wasn't a terribly satisfying answer. But I hope it gives you a sense of gratitude in your life as well. Thanks for the question.
How did you inform your kids if you're changing views out of there, take it. Lars, thank you for the question. I'm not sure this will be very satisfying answer because one of the first conversations I had with my wife after I told her she said she wanted to be the one to tell my girls and I let her do that. But almost immediately afterwards, I was just very matter of fact with them. I'm an atheist. The thing I really made explicitly clear to them was that I loved them no matter what they believed that I would encourage them to explore their spirituality that I would back them up to go to church, I would drive them to church, I would buy Bibles for them, I would do whatever I could to support their spiritual growth. And I made that super, super clear. And then I've said this on the podcast before, but as they got older, I was explicit with them as well that I didn't want to teach them what to think or believe, but how to think. And one of the practices of that was critical thinking in non religious areas. So we would be watching TV and an advertisement would come on. And we kind of jokingly deconstruct the advertisement for what was the real message, what was being sold, what lies were being told that kind of thing, and it kind of became a family game. And so we practice critical thinking in all of these other areas that are less emotionally fraught. And as my girls have gotten older, we've had much more direct conversations. And I think they have had their own faith transitions, not necessarily to atheism, but they're definitely not where they were when they were younger. I'm not going to speak for them. I'm not going to say more than that. So again, that's not a terribly interesting story. But that is how I tell my girls.
Another interview that I did was with Matt Oxley, that episode also will be coming out in January. And Matt has a really interesting place in the spectrum of the work of deconversion. And deconstruction, Matt is really on the side of being there for the Christian, the believer, in the middle of the process, or very, very early on in the process, he does a really good job of speaking that language so that he can be listened to at all in a way that I think even the title graceful atheists would push people away. I'm aware of that. And I find it fascinating the work that Matt is doing. If you just took a surface view of Matt's work, you could be confused into thinking that he's still a believer, and he is not. But again, he speaks that language so well, that that could be unclear. And in some ways, he's almost referring to himself as a Christian, or at least walking out the teachings of Jesus. So the question that we discussed and I'd like to expand upon here is, is Christianity redeemable? And I think this is important topic, because each of us has to ask the question, should we be a progressive Christian? I think most of my audience is done with fundamentalist Christianity. But why aren't we progressive Christians? Why aren't we able to just live in the metaphor and continue to enjoy the community and the ritual aspects of Christianity? In some ways, I'm probably the wrong person to ask this question, because I feel like I really skipped past any concept of spirituality here. I mean, the supernatural kind, almost instantaneously, I had deconstructed Christianity. And the moment I admitted to myself that I no longer believe that a God existed. It's like I came crashing down to earth. And my epistemology is science. What we can test and what we can validate with data and criticism and what stands up to scrutiny is true, and what doesn't, isn't. And of course, there's a ton of philosophical questions that don't fall into that category. And I love philosophy, and I love debating those things. But I understand the difference between a philosophical discussion and a scientific one. And I like to use the terms true for things that actually have stood this test of criticism over a long periods of time. I digress. The question is, is Christianity redeemable? I said to Matt, and I've said other times that the most dangerous word in the English language is God. And the reason for that is that let's say you are a progressive Christian, and you don't believe in a transcendent, a supernatural being. But you use God as a metaphor. You say that as a communicator, and everyone who hears the word God will enter Corporate that the way that they understand God. Ironically, I think the 12 steps has this nailed down that God as you understand him, or everyone has their own conception, and there is no way to refer to the metaphor without bringing in 1000s upon 1000s upon 1000s of interpretations of God, so that the progressive Christian can say, God is the ground of all being and God is love. But the evangelical fundamentalist, here's the theistic God who judges people and sends them to hell. And there's no way as a communicator to disambiguate that if using that term, my opinion is that Christianity is similar, that the word Christianity, I've had Christians on who asked me, Are you sure you're not a Christian? Because I'm trying to walk out secular grace? And obviously, that has roots in Christianity? My answer is definitively No. I am not trying to be a Christian, I'm not trying to redeem or change Christianity. And here's the thing, Christianity has been tried, in more ways than can be counted with just the major parts of the Christian tree, Catholicism, orthodoxy, and Protestantism, and then a myriad of particular sects of Christianity within, particularly Protestantism. Half of those have always wanted to go back and really implement what Jesus had to say, to really be the followers of Jesus in the modern world. The problem is that Jesus had some great things to say he had some wise things to say. But the Bible and the New Testament are just full of cultural specifics. Once you take all the time to separate the cultural specifics from the Supra cultural elements, you wind up with a very, very small, ethical framework, be good to one another. That's about it. My point is that trying to do Christianity is unlikely to succeed without becoming just one more of the 1000s of denominations of Christianity. I'm trying actually to say that grace is a human concept. All religions are human concepts. But But my point is that grace itself is a human concept. And loving people is a human concept. And the great wisdom literature throughout history includes that, because we're all human. And we all need to be loved, we have a need to be loved and accepted. And families, relationships, communities work better, when we explicitly try to love one another. So that is a universal concept that is embedded in virtually every world religion. And I'm not adding anything new here, calling it secular Grace, I'm just delineating that there is no need for a supernatural element to act out grace. So I call it secular grace. And that is to distinguish it from the Christian conception of grace, which, as we talked about earlier, has a very dark side, in that it can forgive atrocities, which is not the point of secular grace. I want to make clear that I love what Matt is doing. And for those of you who are still believers, those of you who maybe have de converted, but you're still able to speak that language and you're close to believers, please continue to do so. I'm a pluralist. I think it takes all of us to do the things that we can do. In some ways, the work that I'm doing is pulling the secular community towards the humanity. I'm trying to put the humanity into humanism. And so in some ways, I'm pulling from that direction. And if other people like Matt Oxley people like Derrick Webb, who are pulling from the other direction, pulling Christians towards a secular grace, that's fantastic. We're all doing the best that we can. And that is really, really important. Thank you to Matt Oxley for bringing up the subject at all for doing the work that he does and for challenging me on this particular area
our community manager Arlene wrote in a few questions. She asks, what do you do for fun? And what are you passionate about? You've already heard me talk about running. Running is an identity. For me, I have run about 1200 miles every year for the last five or six years and lots more before that. It is the most important thing to my mental and physical health I can think of I feel incredibly grateful that the thing I enjoy doing is also physically healthy for me and mentally healthy for me. I used to race marathons, half marathons, things like that, I tend not to these days, I just enjoy running. In fact, I often say that running supports my podcast addiction. So my next thing that I'm passionate about is podcasts. I've listened to a ton of podcasts, I tend to listen to science and philosophy and politics, when I'm not listening to deconversion specific things. I am passionate about doing the graceful atheist podcast obviously, or I wouldn't do it. So I really enjoy that as well. I enjoy indoor rock climbing with my daughters, both daughters at different times in their lives have been interested in that. I'm not great at it. I love doing it. I think it's fantastic. And then what will be abundantly obvious to everyone is I'm a super nerd. So I really love science fiction, particularly movies and books. I consume a lot of science fiction and various media. I think really good science fiction really tells us more about what it's like to be a human being than it does about lasers and spaceships. And so I really like thinkI nerdy sci fi, so I'm super passionate about that. And I enjoy that. And lastly, Arlene asks, is there anything that you used to do that you'd like to do again, and I'm not sure if you meant this for the Christian point of view, but I'm gonna use an example of that. So I used to do a lot of public speaking, and I generally don't do so anymore. Occasionally at work, I do demonstrations, things like that. I've done a few like workshops, training people on a particular technology. But I'd like to do some speaking again, when we had Amy Rath, on from nonlife. She really inspired me to do like the lightning talk kind of concept. And as soon as we're done with COVID, I'd really like to do that again, I think. Whereas on a podcast, I can ramble like I am right now, in a presentation in front of people, you have to be a little bit crisper in your writing. And that would give me the inspiration to do that. Thank you, Arlene, those were great questions. Thank you so much for asking.
The last two questions are questions that I asked myself as I am doing the podcast. The first question is, is this religious? Or another way of asking it is, is humanism a religion. And for many of you, you may be screaming no at the top of your lungs, as you listen to this. And for many of us, leaving our religious traditions meant that we'd never wanted to have anything to do with the term religion ever, ever again. And there certainly within the secular community, a very, very strong, anti religious attitude. My perspective on this is a bit nuanced. So please do listen to the whole context of what I have to say here. I certainly think I would have fallen into that category of running away from religion in the early days of my deconversion. What I think I have learned since then, is the human needs to connect with one another. And to have a shared sense of meaning and purpose. I had Anthony pin on which was a great episode, I encourage you to go check that out. And he makes a very strong distinction between theism, which is a belief in a supernatural deity and religion, which he defines as the collective search for truth. I love that definition of religion. And here's another important point. James Croft recently said this on Twitter, but it's, I think, a common concept. Everything is secular. All religions are secular. All of it comes from humans. yanks, it is mundane it is religion may be the most human cultural artifact of anything. It is our drive to connect with each other and try to figure out how do we live in a chaotic universe? How do we live with each other, without killing each other? And how do we avoid falling into a nihilistic dark, deep pit of despair. All of those are human needs. And the scary word religion is a good way of accomplishing those. We've talked about secular Grace quite a bit in this episode, and I will refer you to my original blog post on the topic. I said there that the ABCs of secular quote, unquote, spirituality are all something that is a deeply human experience that has nothing to do with a supernatural realm. We can experience all in nature, we can experience all at one another, we can experience all at a talented athlete we experience or day in and day out. It is the context of our Christian indoctrination, or training or discipleship or what have you, that we interpret or to be a supernatural, theistic God. And as soon as you let go of that, you can not only enjoy awesome experiences, you can seek them out. I happen to like indoor rock climbing, and part of it is that I'm scared of heights. And I enjoy the experience of overcoming my fear of heights. It is an awesome experience. So the first ABC is is all. The second is belonging. And here, I mean, the collective belonging. This seems so obvious, in that the cultural context of the day, we have identities in our belonging, the most obvious one in the secular world is political identity. We are more polarized now than it feels like in my lifetime, although people like Ezra Klein point out that maybe earlier in my lifetime was the exception to the rule, and the polarization we're experiencing now as probably the norm or the reversion to the mean. But even within the secular community, there are divisions that you may not be aware of. But what I see as the basic humanism, of caring for people and fighting for human rights, and the freedoms and rights of people who have been historically disparaged in one way or another, and held down systemically, that seems like basic humanism, one on one to me, but there's a division within the secular community that is anti social justice warrior or anti woke, or any number of ways of describing that, that I'm on one side of that polarization, and I can't help it that is important to me. We belong to and have identity within groups. We are the D converted, we are the deconstructed, or the deconstructing, and that is an identity. Some of us identify as acts of angelical. If you're in the LGBT community, that is probably a major part of your identity. People even obsessively identify with a sports team, I have a few teams that I follow, and it cracks me up at how intensely I can identify with that group. The point is, we need to belong to one another. The thing that is important is finding healthy groups to belong to, I think what we're doing with deconversion anonymous, as a community is a healthy way of belonging to a group. And we should seek those out. The big thing that we lost as we left, our original faith tradition, is community having a sense of these are my people. And we need to go find who are your people? Who are my people? The obvious answer is that you are my people. The people listening to this now are my people. But it can be more than that. You can go be a part of a book club or a cycling group or a running club or the knitting circle or what have you something anything that you can be among other people who have a shared common goal with you And the final ABCs, of secular spirituality is connection. And this is the one on one human connection, this is your best friend, this is your significant other with whom you have spent significant amounts of time building trust. Again, as, as we talked about earlier, this is not just some random stranger off the street. This is someone that mutual trust and respect has built up over time. That connection of being vulnerable with another human being is profound. When you were going through puberty, probably talking about what was happening to you to your best friend was really cathartic. Admitting to your first crush, to a best friend was probably really, really cathartic. When you first told someone that you were having doubts, and if they handled it, well, that was probably really, really cathartic. The first time you say, I no longer believe to someone is incredibly cathartic. This is connection, that human connection. And we are hard wired to need this, to want it to seek it out. And we should, we should do so with eyes wide, open and critically and carefully. And we should proactively attempt to connect with one another. All of this is what I'm attempting to describe as secular grace, these ABCs of secular spirituality. Back to the question, is this religious? And I'm going to say yes, given the context of defining religion as the collective search for meaning, and what I've learned from people like Sasha Sagan, who wrote for small creatures, such as we, and much of what is in Carl Sagan is writings as well. And Catherine cosmonauts, Grace without God, not only do we need the community, the belonging, the connection, we also need ritual, like we talked about in the holiday episode about establishing new traditions, we are hardwired to need to call out major moments in our lives and physically enact a ritual to commemorate those moments in our lives. Sasha seconds book talks about birth, the Age of Reason, marriage, death, graduations, all of these things are moments in our life, where they are significant events, and we want and need to share those with each other. So given that as a definition of religion, yes, I think humanism is a religion. And yes, I think what we're doing with the community is religious. And that's okay.
If you find yourself screaming and running away as fast as you can right now, I hope to keep you I hope you understand the full context of what I'm saying. I am not saying something transcendent, supernatural, beyond nature, is occurring in any way. I am saying that all religions are human. And this is just another expression of that. I'm also not saying that everyone should be a humanist. Again, I'm a pluralist, I think we as a society, need to allow differing points of views, including points of views that we are diametrically opposed to. They should all be open to criticism, public criticism, and we should work out what is the most effective for us, as a society. I think that secular Grace has a role in the market of ideas and market of ethical frameworks. And I want to express that in the public forum. But I am open to criticism. And I understand that not everyone will find this meaningful or useful. And in fact, when I had Bart Campolo on the podcast, he basically was saying, not everyone cares about what I call the ABCs of spirituality that they don't care about spirituality at all. And some of you might find even me saying that this is religious to be offensive. And again, just ignore me on that topic, and I hope you'll continue to listen the The second question that I asked myself that I think is really important, is related to the first. And this is more personal. I'm going to ask the question, and please don't stop listening. I'll set the context. I asked myself, am I creating a cult? The obvious answer is no. But I think it's important for me to worry about that question. If you have ever been in pastoral work, or leadership in a church, if you've been a worship leader, or if you have your own podcast, or a YouTube channel, the experience of this modicum of fame and I am very realistic about how small how small this fame is, but is intoxicating. There's just no getting around it as a pastor, and when I was younger, in my 20s, and now as a podcaster, and someone who is attempting to express humanism, express secular grace, I am acutely aware of the intoxicating nature of having fans. Here's the thing. I rarely hear criticism, I mostly hear the very good things about the podcast, I get so many emails of people who say, I found your podcasts, I'm in the middle of deconstruction. It's a lifesaver. And of course, that's hyperbolic they, they'd be okay with that without the podcast. But that's why I do what I do is, I want people to know that they are not alone, that all of us have gone through this before them. And we can hold their hand through the process. But again, that has a pretty profound impact on a person and they can start to hear my voice as being authoritative. And that terrifies me. I want to have people challenge me constructive criticism, asking for clarity for me. In other words, I don't want it to be like it was as a pastor in the Christian church where a pastor often can get away with being unaccountable. I don't mean this in the Christian accountability sense, either. But what I mean is that I expect to be wrong, I expect to get it wrong. Often, I expect to say the wrong thing to do the wrong thing to maybe even hurt people, which would, would be the thing that would hurt me the most. And I need to know when I'm doing that, because I wouldn't do it if I were aware, aware of it. So this is just an open invitation for you to reach out to me, you can do so via email, graceful atheist@gmail.com You can DM me if you need to. But anything where you think I could learn from something, and I could grow as someone who is attempting to lead in this area of secular grace, feel free to do so. And I will take it with as much humility and self criticism as I can muster. So am I starting a cult? definitively not. I am acutely aware of the ability to fall into a cult of personality. In my discussions with our lane, about the community deconversion anonymous, I was very explicit about this is not about me, this is about people coming together and connecting with one another and practicing secular grace, caring for one another. I would just be a bottleneck. So not only do I not want it to be a cult of personality, I don't want to be the block for people to connect with each other. So all of this to say not only do I not want this to be a cult or a cult of personality, I want you to actively participate in making sure that it is not. Well this wraps it up for the first ask me anything and wraps this up for 2021. I definitely want to do more asked me any things in the future. So in the meantime, If you think of a question you want to have me pontificate upon. Or if you have a criticism that you'd like to hear me respond to, please send a recorded version of your question. You can do so on an app on your phone, or you could use anchor.fm to create a voice message for me. As 2021 wraps up, I definitely want to thank everybody who has participated in the deconversion anonymous community, I'm amazed at how that has exploded. I feel bad that I took so long to try to start it. I should have started it in 2020. But I want to also thank our lien so much for managing the community, as well as doing copy editing and just generally being incredibly helpful. I want to thank Mike T for editing we did 40 some odd episodes and 2021. That was a lot of work that Mike did. All of that was volunteer. Thank you so much, Mike, for all the work that you did. Thank you to Logan Thomas for redoing our graphic design, the logo and various images that we're using. And I'll do this as a plug again, I'm so much more interested in people participating in the podcast and the community in one way or another rather than, say giving money. So if there's a way in which you can participate, you have experience with PR, social media editing, Production Music, if you want to help Arlene with community management, all those things, we are looking for people to jump in. And in reality, as I've already admitted the religiosity, the Church provided a place for people to use their talents. I want a secular version of that to find where people can exercise the things they enjoy doing, the hobbies, their talents, and things of that nature. So we'd love to be the place where you can use your talents and gifts. So please reach out with that, and until January. 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 for 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 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 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
My guest this week is Mark Landes, a former Army officer working toward becoming a humanist chaplain. Mark grew up in the United Methodist tradition. He went to West Point, became an officer in the Army and hoped to become a chaplain.
It is surprisingly easy to not act on your hormones with a person of the opposite sex as a gay male when you are publicly declaring that you are not having sex before you are married due to your Evangelical Christian faith.
Mark’s army career is a fascinating tale in itself. He was stationed in West Berlin shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Then during the Gulf War, he volunteered to go to Kuwait and experienced the first air raid of the Gulf War. Mark was also a gay man in the military, before the time of “don’t ask don’t tell,” when there were witch hunts to remove gay military members. He was investigated and removed with an “other than honorable” discharge.
I felt like I was letting down god, my family, my school. Everything was being taken away from me. It just seemed like my world was coming to an end.
Understandably, Mark went through time of deep depression. To make matters worse, when he returned to the states, he joined a 12 step group that was in effect group conversion-therapy. It is during this dark time that Mark began to question the reality of god. Through a years-long process, Mark deconverted, eventually admitting to himself he no longer believed.
I was holding on to the promise that god could help me, god could be there for me, and when I tried to speak to him, I didn’t get anything back, and that is is actually when I realized that what I had been doing this entire time is just talking to myself.
Mark has since become a humanist celebrant and has tried to get a Masters in Divinity to become a humanist chaplain. During the process, he began his “theological anthropology” which led him to tell his story. He now wants to get a Masters in Pastoral care and is hoping to create an “institutional chaplaincy” in the business world. This humanist journey began with him asking the question, “how can I make the world a better place?”
Eventually, I saw everything I did to go to West Point, become an Army officer, get a master’s degree in computer science, and rebuild my life was not supernatural, but the result of my hard work.
When I lost my faith, it felt like I lost my voice, too. I am a musician from a home of musicians.
My guest this week is Sara. Sara is “a musician from a home of musicians.” She grew up in an Assemblies of God church in a “vibrantly faithful home.” She spent her teen years in a “cool” Southern Baptist Church. She then spent some time in Acts 29 churches and Reformed theology. To round things out she attended a Presbyterian (PCA) church.
Sara started having doubts in college, but she was able to ignore them for some time. They eventually wore her down. Parenthood was the last straw. She realized she loved her son more than God loved anyone. God’s “hiddenness” was neglect that any parent could recognize.
They needed my free labor and I needed to be needed. … I was used to being needed.
Sara had been a worship leader. This usefulness kept her in the church longer than she would have otherwise. It also contributed to her deconversion as she saw what church was like “back stage.”
They said my voice was “clearly anointed by the Holy Spirit.” I went away thinking “no, I just spent four years and $60,000 learning how to manipulate you with it.”
Now Sara writes on her blog, Former Protagonist, about her deconversion experience. She is also exploring Humanism and loving her family.
My guest this week is Jason, the son of a pastor. He grew up in the independent Christian Churches, an offshoot of Church of Christ that allows music. He grew up doing “sword drills” and was a devout teenage believer. He participated in Bible memorization contests. He became a musician and participated in worship bands for years.
In Jason’s young adulthood he began to question his own interpretation of the Bible. Why was bad language bad? Why the limited role of women in the church? How could a loving god send people to Hell? Eventually, the disparity between the idea of a loving god and the reality of the world and the suffering of innocent children led to his deconversion.
Anything you do with the bible is interpretation.
Jason’s wife is still a believer though they both deconstructed from Evangelicalism and started participating in an Episcopal church. They are making an “unequally yoked” relationship work based on love, equality and mutual respect.
