Matthew Taylor: Why We Podcast

David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios podcast. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheists podcast. My name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Remember, we have a merchandise store on T public, you can get all of your graceful atheist and secular Grace themed items there, the link will be in the show notes. If you're in the middle of doubt, deconstruction, the dark night of the soul, you do not have to do it alone. Join our private Facebook group deconversion anonymous and become a part of the community. You can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion I want to take a moment to celebrate this is the 200th episode of the graceful atheist podcast. A huge shout out to Mike t for all the editing work over the years. And a huge shout out to Arline who's single handedly carried the podcast over the last couple of months. I'll talk a little bit more in the final thoughts section about where the podcast goes from here. But celebrate with me that we have gotten to this huge mile marker. onto today's show. My returning guest today is Matthew Taylor. Matthew was on the show in 2019. Matthew is the co host of the steal unbelievable podcast. He and his colleagues, Andrew and David originally wrote a book in response to Justin Brierley. He's unbelievable book. And both the book and the podcast are kind of a response to that. Matthew has been a good friend over the years, and I was really glad to have him back here for the 200th episode. And today we discuss why we podcast what it is that drives us to do what we do and what we hope that the community gets out of it. Here's my conversation with Matthew Taylor.

Matthew Taylor, welcome back to the graceful atheist podcast.

Matthew Taylor 2:22
Hello, David. Fabulous to chat again with you who really is it's been a while we've just been talking Off mic about that. It's it's great to actually to see each other again as well and not just hear the voice.

David Ames 2:33
Yeah, absolutely. Just to set some context for everyone else. You are the co host of still unbelievable podcast that is in many ways a response to Justin Brierley is unbelievable podcast. You've written a book on that same subject, you've done a bunch of things I'd like to hear just from your words. You know, some of the projects that you've been involved in? Yes,

Matthew Taylor 2:54
quite few. So the whole thing all started with still unbelievable the book which came out a year after Justin brollies, unbelievable book came out. And we that's not where my story starts. But that's where this story starts. And so that came in, I jumped on board with that project made some great friends as part of that project. And out of that project was born the podcast still unbelievable, which I know most of we've, in the last few months passed through 100 episodes, which is great, but such episodes about for almost five years. So we're not as regular as other podcasts which we could mention David. And but so that came out. And we we did try a couple of podcasts. Actually, I did also do the asking at centers podcast for a while. And we we merged into that, but It rapidly became very obvious that we're trying to juggle similar content on two different feeds. And it made no sense whatsoever. And so asking atheist, anything in the proscenium feed, which it merged into, just quietly got dropped, because it just made no sense to carry on with that. I'm very happy with the decision that we made. We weren't going to get there. Like we weren't going to let go of the still unbelievable name because we like we like the brand still unbelievable. We like that it's a throwback to just embroideries, unbelievable podcasts, which anybody who talks in this space knows about so we feel that it was a good thing to keep on to that brand. And that brand has got us onto the radar of a couple of publishing houses. So it means that we do occasionally get an email from a publishing house saying, here is a book that we think you guys might like, which is a wonderful place to be we've had this past year 2023, enter and I have featured three authors on still unbelievable. Each one of those was a fabulous conversation, that conversation which I appreciated. I learned lots from each of those conversations. I'm really glad to be able to feature those kinds of people. And I don't pay for a book which for me is a double When. So I'm putting a lot of effort into still unbelievable. But we're we're not really a network, but we're part of a community of podcasts. You obviously one of them. David, who was part of the still unbelievable book project everyone's skeptics and seekers, we feature him and we're very tightly involved with him because Andrew and David Andrew, my co host, still unbelievable for those who don't know. So we're all we we are talking regularly and featuring each other regularly. Then there's Clint Haycock and ex American pastor here in the UK. On the mind shift podcast, I really like, Clint, I really like the way he thinks I really like the way he produces his podcast. So I've been on that for a while. But you know, yours and his podcasts were both right at the early days when I was featured on them. Early Days of lockdown. In fact, when I was, we didn't even know what COVID was when I was on your podcast. So the world has changed, and it's changed. Yeah. And what I've liked about that interim period is there's been an explosion of really good community groups, lots of Facebook groups, all around the kinds of space that that we talk in, people helping each other some UK centric ones, which is beautiful to see, as well. Because if no one can tell from my accent, I am based in the UK. And it's really good to see those. So I've joined quite a few of those. I'm not very active on them, because I am literally so busy. But it is really nice to see the communities building there and people helping people. And it's great, great to see that. And I like to think that these voices, though to verbal on all these podcasts are helping to facilitate that. Because when I was deconstructing podcasts weren't a thing. It was blogs. And I found a small blogging community when I was doing my deconstruction. And those guys really helped me being able to blog through some of my thoughts, and to be able to read other people's thoughts and us comment on each other's posts and help each other and support each other. I love that community. And those people I know I've moved out of that community, I'm now into podcasting. But I still look back fondly on those time because I needed people I needed people who understood me, I needed people who understood my fears in a visceral way, which nobody I knew we skin could comprehend. And those people at the other end of that keyboard, those people at the other end of those monitor screens, I never, I didn't need to hear their voice, I didn't need to see their faces, I just needed to read their words and their words were full of compassion, their words are full of love, their words are full of understanding. And I needed those people while I was going through that process. And technology is allowed much more dynamic ways of providing that. And I love the podcasting community that is doing that, or the various podcasts that have sprung up talking about that. And I love all the various Facebook groups, which provides some really, really good support to people. And it's wonderful to see that happen.

David Ames 8:11
So both of us have gone back and listened to your, your first episode on this podcast. That was in 2019. And a couple things that that just struck me about it. One is, you know, you can hear, I think both of us, but me in particular, you know, trying to figure out what is it that we do here? And the other is just what you just said that, you know, we weren't interested in bashing Christians. What we were interested in is finding community for people who were having doubts, deconstructing de converting what have you, and you in particular, were expressing that compassion for people going through that process? Yes,

Matthew Taylor 8:50
I was quite surprised that see how much that came across in the episode that recorded because I do need to give a health warning still unbelievable, can be a difficult place to be for people who are still sympathetic towards Christianity. I make no excuses for that I self described as spiky. Yes, graceful doesn't apply to me. And I'm glad that you do what you do, because I couldn't right. And so we are very different in that way. But our end goal and our desires for those who are in the place that we were both in however many years ago, it was, is necessary. And I do occasionally get emails from people saying that still unbelievable has helped them because it's helped them to frame their thinking. And that's what I tried to offer we still unbelievable. I critique Christianity in very particular ways in some of our episodes. And I think that's helped to frame some people in terms of how they think about Christianity and how they think about their experiences and how to frame the doubts that they are experiencing. and how to put words and logic and even science to some of those doubts. So just to put a little bit of a caveat Yes, I am for supporting the Deconstructor but there will be some spiking us on still unbelievable. So be aware of that I don't try to be a friendly place for Christians

David Ames 10:22
understand, and I think I think you also expressed the support for truth. And I think you said it by saying you wanted to stand up against inaccuracy. Yes, wherever that was. So I think both of those themes came across in your your earlier. Yes.

Matthew Taylor 10:37
Although having said that, I do try to treat my Christian guests as well as I possibly can. And some of the authors that we featured are Christian guests. And I don't know when this episode is going to go live, David, but and I spoil it for you. And in case this comes out before January next year, I have gotten the ken an episode that which I'm partway through recording where Andrew and I have interviewed the pastor in the US who's written a book on help. And the book is called Holy hell a case against eternal damnation. And the pastor who's written this book is a Universalist. And he gives a very strong case for universalism, and for a loving God, not being a god of eternal damnation, a loving God not being a god of eternal torment, loving God's being a god where everybody is brought to himself. And he produces a very what I think is a very powerful case for that, and we have a delightful conversation. For the first time in my life, I've uttered the words, I enjoyed reading a book about how, and I never thought I would ever, ever say that. But that is how I feel about this book. And I do know from what I've read in some of the various forums, hell is a problem. Hell is a problem for people in our position, how creates significant issues for people who are deconstructing, and I genuinely recommend this book, I don't care where you are on the deconversion spectrum, whether you intend to D convert or not. Whether you just want to deconstruct something and retain a faith, faith, or whether you are completely anti Christianity completely. If you're at all interested in the subject of how like genuinely recommend this book is called Holy hell a case against eternal damnation. It will be coming out in February next year 2024 hour episode with the author will come out at some point in January, the tail end of January next year, highly recommend it. It's going to be a beautiful episode, we enjoyed the conversation. And there are Christians out there who are fighting for us. No fighting for a loving experience of that kind of conversation.

David Ames 12:56
I actually want to ask you about your experience going on to Justin Brierley, these podcasts so and all of those work that you've done, that was a bit of a response to his work. And then you were on his podcast, which for anybody who might not know, for the three people who don't, you know, this is probably the one of the biggest, definitely focused on apologetics Christian podcasts in the world. And and so this was kind of a big deal. Absolutely.

Matthew Taylor 13:24
If somebody like me is going to be on any Christian podcast, unbelievable is one again going to be although, I should point out that within a few weeks of Justin then being on my show, because he was on my show immediately after me being on his. He then announced that he was leaving unbelievable. I mean, maybe it's a coincidence, but I'm definitely gonna milk that as much as I possibly can. And so, but yes, so Justin been doing that over 17 years, he'd be doing that. So I've now got a target for still unbelievable. They that's, that's the target that I'm aiming for. For still unbelievable. Actually, I am not going anywhere. So hang around. So I genuinely didn't think I would ever get on to unbelievable. I had been a regular listener for a very long time. And I had written just in on numerous times. And then out of the blue, I got an email with a book, LinkedIn into it. And I was copied in with a couple of other people. And Justin said to these people, I've got an author here. Here's a book. We need the layperson to have a conversation with him. Is anybody up for it? Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. So, so I had to chat with Mike De Virgilio and his book. What was it called an invented his hypothesis is the stories in the Bible read in such a way that they couldn't possibly be invented. I don't know how to describe that premise without breaking any kind of swear filters.

David Ames 14:54
You're fine. You can express yourself. It's bullshit.

Matthew Taylor 14:57
Frankly, it really is. It's It's utter utter bullshit. And to, to quote David from skeptics and seekers who is an ex pastor, and he is a philosopher as reader, he said to me offline, afterwards, he says, is read a lot of Christian books. And that one was, by a long way, the worst one that he'd ever read. So that was quite something coming from David. So I read this book on. And I think chapter two, he talks about something in the Dead Sea Scrolls, he makes a very specific claim about the quality of the texts in the decks, Dead Sea Scrolls. Great. Something I can fact check, because that's one thing I like to do a fact check. And anybody who listens to steal unbelievable, you should know that my show notes are always full of links from anything that it's fact checkable. In any episode that goes out, there'll be a link to it, if I can find it in the show notes. So always check the show notes if you're listening to still unbelievable, because they will be jam packed full of notes, and links and references to things to mentioned in the episode. So anyway, so I went along, and I tried to fact check this claim that he made about the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the accuracy is, and it was rubbish, is claim was falsified. The first thing I found out about Dead Sea Scrolls is the book, I think he mentioned specifically the book of Isaiah, if it wasn't Isaiah, it was one of the Prophet books, and the information that I found out about this book and Dead Sea Scrolls, that most people think it actually has two authors, two different people who've written it, and there's evidence of copying between the two. And in the various copies that were found in those caves, there are differences. So this entire claim that he'd made was completely falsified by literally 10 minutes of Google search, I didn't need to go deep. It was there really quickly. And I brought brought this up on that episode, and it was just roundly ignored. And he didn't even try to defend it and moved on. And that was deeply frustrating. But and the book was like that all the way through there was any everything that I could fact check was difficult. They basically failed. And most of it was based on what he called verisimilitude, which was, it sounds like it's too good to be true. Therefore, it must be too good to be true. It's it's such a, it really is such a weak thing on which to base base, any kind of case on that. And so my concern going on to unbelievable was once I got to be able to keep my call. I was genuinely concerned that I would just lose it and go off on a rant. And if I'm going to go on to anything high profile, that is the last thing that I need to do. Yeah. But I managed it, I managed to get through and Justin did say to me afterwards, he thought I did fairly well. And I got some really positive feedback from people still unbelievable. Got to notice for jumping the listeners, following that, that going out. So thank you to anybody who's listening to this and listened to that and join. So unbelievable. I really did appreciate the positive comments. But yeah, I'd have liked to have had a better quality conversation if I'm really honest. But it was quite an experience doing that on Justin show. I'm doing something so big.

David Ames 18:27
This is actually a topic that I want to explore just for a minute. I think in the early days of this podcast, you know, I thought, oh, I want to talk to more Christians. And in my mind, I thought of apologists. And for those of my listeners who don't pay attention to apologetics, my apologies. But that's what we are going to look at here. And I found the same thing. It didn't matter really who it was, I've interviewed probably, I don't know, three or four apologists like professional apologists. And my experience was that you, you know, you bring up a point that, you know, is kind of a fact. And they just walk around it. Right? Yeah, that was never the direct addressing of the point that you were making. And the better the apologist, the less they actually address the point that you're making. So I'm wondering, you know, after so many years of doing the podcast and talking to various different Christian authors, apologists, that kind of thing. How has that changed for you at all? Like how you approach a conversation like that? Possibly,

Matthew Taylor 19:30
I'm less forgiving of bad arguments. And I've noticed that over the years, I've definitely, and because I've seen so many bad ones. And when I first started interacting, I definitely took the attitude of I don't want to sell the typical stereotype of the angry atheist. I want to be thoughtful and I want to be considerate and because I understand Christianity, I want to at least to show to the Christian, a Christian attitude. But I've had so many bad responses in that kind of space, that I lose patience for that. And I'm, I'm not so keen and not so quick to go for the softly approach now, because I've tried it so many times where I've tried to gently feed and say, No, that's not quite that you didn't answer my question. And just try and rephrase it, rephrase it in a nice way, etc. And like you've just said, there's just no appetite to actually address it directly. So I've given up playing nice around that, and just go straight forward and call it out. I I'm wasting everybody's time. If I if I do that, let's go back to Justin. Because after that, I was on unbelievable. And then Justin came on to us. And we talked a little bit around because one of Justin's narratives and he comes, I think it comes out in the new book that's been I've not read it yet. I will, it was on my project list for 2024 is the book. He tries to push the thing about Christianity, being a global good being the source of all the great things that we have in society. And Andrew and I pushed him back on that, and we pushed him back quite firmly, and he just wouldn't budge. It was really, that conversation was really frustrating for Andrew, myself. And we ended up just moving on. And I had feedback after the episode from several people saying that they really didn't appreciate how hard Justin pushed on the Christianity has been a global good in these areas. And that particular subject is probably the biggest single subject that Andrew and I have had direct feedback on to an episode, people really did not appreciate the way that he was pushing that narrative. Too many people saw straight through it didn't like it. And so because Justin was a big name, and he and I both wanted to be polite, we didn't push it as hard as we could have. And I think if I was to repeat it, I probably be rude or pure, purely because I think this point needs to be made very strongly. And I think there's a danger. It's a balance, David, it genuinely is a balance in how we respond to prominent Christians, because there's this Christian narrative of, oh, they're an atheist, they're going to be rude, and they're going to be rude and angry is because they're a bitter atheist. Now I can write off everything they say. So we're under pressure to be on good behavior. Because the second we let that slip, oh, it's just atheists are going through, you know, they now you see their true colors, whereas a Christian is actually granted space to lose it. They're actually given grace, if they lose it. And there's this disparity there in expectation and judgment, of behavior. And I'm getting a little bit tired of that. So some of the episodes I've done also unbelievable. They've been solo episodes, where I've reviewed a Christian podcast, and I just go for it on those episodes, I ramp up the sarcasm, I'll put in appropriate sound effects for things now now raise my voice. And I'll really hit it because I think people need to hear an emotional response. Sometimes these I don't think it works all the time, to have this kind of thing. So I think if I was to have thing, have that again, and if I ever managed to tempt Justin, don't listen to this. If I ever tend to just him back onto still unbelievable. Again, I think I'll be less calm. And I think I'll push back a lot harder, because I think I think these narratives need to be pushed back more. Maybe we're going to get a new dawn of the new atheist and that kind of polemic. That's me, does that give you the answer you're expecting?

David Ames 23:50
No, I think that's a good answer. I think where I landed was about consistency. Oh, I'm

Matthew Taylor 23:56
not consistent. You're you're consistently graceful. I couldn't hold it up. Other episodes too little.

David Ames 24:05
Ya know, what I mean is when I'm when I'm interacting with particularly an apologist, right, for example, your author makes the argument about verisimilitude. It sounds too good to be true. So it must be true that I would respond. So the, you know, the Muslim says that it's a miracle that the Quran exists, right. So that is the exact same arguments, and so you have to be consistent, both of those things would have to be true. So are they both true or using a bad argument? And, and I don't think that that changes their mind at all. I still think they just go around it but but for me, the way that I've communicated these days is to say, I need to be consistent. And so if you are going to lower the bar of evidence required for something that lowers it everywhere, not just for your particular religious claim. Yes.

So part of what we wanted to talk about here is why we podcast. Yeah. And so I'd like to hear first, we've talked about a little bit but what why you started why you and Andrew began this process. And then maybe a little bit about why you continue to do that. Yes,

Matthew Taylor 25:17
there's some some good points were made there. So as I mentioned, when I was first on, it wasn't on my radar to podcast. And then Andrew and David off the back of still unbelief for the book thought well, that this brand, this momentum needs to continue. And they were right. So and podcasting is taking off? No, there's a deconstruction space that needs voices. Let's do it. So we started a small number of podcasts asking atheists anything we've talked about which has gone by the wayside although the episodes I believe are still available, if you there are some interesting episodes. If people want to look that up and listen to them. I will be gradually going through the back catalogue of that and picking off some of the best ones and rebroadcasting them on to still unbelievable, because we've got new listeners who might appreciate them. Yeah, so but it was never on my my radar to do it. And then probably David bless him everything is David's fault over at skeptic. It seems like everybody I know called David is responsible for something happening in my life. So David said, David F. Skeptics and seekers, yes. David Johnson Oh, from skeptics and seekers. And his guy I respect immensely. He helped me find my writing voice is complimented me immensely on my own writing. And he said, Matthew, I think you'll have a good voice for podcasting. Plus English accent, you know, what's what, what's to lose? And I genuinely I've loved it. And when I started was a little bit of a shaky start. I don't listen to some of our first couple of episodes I'm sure I would shivering, embarrassment. But we got it going, we managed to capture a couple of interesting guests. So we pick Greczyn momentum carried on and then we start getting some really interesting guests, people I really enjoyed speaking to I think my first high profile on was John Stein guard, I, I stalked him after he was on unbelievable. It took me a couple of months to find him. I eventually managed to find him on Instagram, I think and sent her a message. And he responded very positively. We had a joyful conversation with John Stein guard, which who I believe you had a conversation with John, as well. Fabulous, fabulous individual. And now suddenly, you say I'm a podcast, suddenly starts to open doors. And I've managed to reach out and I reached out to Joshua sama Das, who's a Christian apologist has written a book on the called the genealogical Adam and Eve. Interesting scientifically, I'm not entirely sure some of the things he says are safe, in terms of the conclusions he's come to. But definitely, if you're that way inclined, it's potentially an interesting book. There's lots of references, very technical, enjoyed the conversation there. And I've really enjoyed those kinds of conversations. And conversations are where it sets really have having good quality conversations, because you can show to each other when you're doing it across the table, having a conversation which is productive, and friendly, which I've managed to have, despite what I've said about spikey, and all that helps to see the other person as a human. And that helps conversation, I think, humanizing the opponent having an actual conversation with them. Lotter not a text based conversation, but actual conversation, has done wonders for my attitude towards Christian individuals. And I hope has done the same the other direction, because those kinds of things I've enjoyed the most. And like say Earthman said, the publisher have contacted me twice now with a Christian author. And we've had that conversation. The second one is one I just told you about. About the Hell yeah, if people don't see value in some of those conversations, they're not going to reach out and say, here's a book I think you should read. Here's an author, I think you'd enjoy a conversation with no, that must surely be a risk for somebody to push a Christian author on to a podcast like still unbelievable and say, I think this is the conversation you're you're like, because the gamble that they're taking is engineers, atheists will a pan the book, and then be continued to pan the book, and they've seen the panic with extra venom, you know, and then D continue to talk about it for the rest of the year about how awful that bloody book was. That's the risk that they take. And both times that I've had that contact, I've had a fabulous experience reading the book and and the fabulous conversation so I think it pays dividends to actually reach out and So I've reached out I said, I reached out to Joshua sama Das, I've reached out to Steve Chalke, who's the big name in the UK people outside the UK might not be familiar with the name. But certainly Christian people who from the Christian tradition in the UK will know the name, Steve Chalke fabulous conversation, it's sometimes it's worth making that reach out to somebody you never know, who you'll catch. And I think humanizing other people and having those lovely, pleasant conversations, actually is better than being spiky. Really, honestly, when it gets down to the bottom of it. It's worth it. And also, I think the reason why it's worth having those conversations across the aisle like that is look as on regardless of where they are, whether they're transitioning from one side to the other, or whether they're just hovering in the murky ground in the middle, will probably appreciate those conversations as well. And it probably just helps them to focus some of the thinking that they have some spiky people as well, let's Let's aim for the pleasant conversations because I get so much more out of those pleasant conversations I mentioned earlier about, sometimes I do those really snarky episodes, I actually get more pleasure. I got a lot more pleasure out of that conversation that I've just told you about. With Derek about his holy hell book I got so much more pleasure out of that. I do out of three episodes where I rip apart a Christian podcast talking about stuff I don't like.

David Ames 31:32
What do you get out of it? So you basically have been saying that you know, that these conversations I think are meaningful for you? Is that part of why you continue to podcast?

Matthew Taylor 31:40
Yes, definitely. Definitely. It is. And one of the big question marks over the whole deconversion deconstruction experiences, purpose and meaning you I grew up in a Christian condition where I was taught from a very young age and went into adulthood, God has a purpose for you, God has a plan for you, you know, part of what you need to do is find out what God wants you to do in your life. And one of the things that I experienced as a young 20 year old was, you're going to chuckle at this, I promise you. I was at a big evangelical meeting. And there was also it was it was a weekend and there was teaching and seminars and stuff like that. And at one of these big meetings, somebody came in, says, I've got a prophet here with us. And he's going to look around the room. And then at one point, he's going to walk around the room, and he's going to see if God's telling him about any of the people that so he did this, and this guy did this, walk this round the room, and then they came back in the couple of words, etc, etc. And then next thing I know, me, I was literally I was in the back row of this meeting. Literally, I got singled out from the front. And he pointed me out. And I said what mean, I pointed the person next to me said no, no, no, no, no. You said that guy there. He's going to have an apostolic ministry. And of course, my knees buckled under me, I sat down, you know, this was an emotional thing that I simply struggled to cope with. And yeah, I that weighed on my mind for quite some time. You know, and I was given some words of wisdom and advice about that. Because being singled out to be an apostle is quite a big thing. This wasn't just somebody who had a good teaching ministry, or was somebody who was going to bless the people, you know, this is somebody who's going to have an apostolic ministry, you know, it was, it was a big, big thing. So that weighed on me for years. And so how do I fulfill this prophecy? You know, when you come from a Christian tradition, where, you know, part of what you're supposed to be doing is looking for what God wants for you literally looking for God's purpose in your life, that creates an awful lot of stress. And I've seen people struggle with that very idea. How do I know if this thing that I'm doing is part of God's purpose in life? How do I know if buying this house is part of God's purpose for my life? How do I know if marrying this person is part of God's purpose? For my life? I don't feel like I've got a purpose in my life. And here I am just merrily having a family and going to church, you know, shouldn't I be doing something really great. And the I've seen so many people hurts by this very idea. And then you of course, when you deconstruct and you leave Christianity, this question doesn't go away you go, okay. Now what do I do about purpose because it's now embedded into life after decades of teaching, that you need to find a purpose for your life, your life has a purpose. You just need to find it. You know, it's this this whole thing you know, for sit on a mat and look to the dawn and why not just do what you love. If some thing gives you pleasure, do it and enjoy it. And if you enjoy it, it will be purposeful. Yeah, it's and make it as simple as that. And that took someone learning for me. And podcasting, this conversation that having you is actually energizing me, David, I'm loving, I'm really enjoying. And when I have conversations like this on still unbelievable, it energizes me. And sometimes I can come away from the microphone, it can be half past 10 At night, there'll be buzzing. And I have to go grab a hot chocolate, do my old man thing sits in bed, what's on what's on the crime genre and watch something because I need an hour to wind down. And then I get up at six o'clock the next morning to go and do a day's work.

David Ames 35:48
I would definitely say that it's very similar for me. And I was more explicit about this in the early days that I was doing it selfishly, I needed to be able to talk to people about what I was going through, as well. And then this podcast fell into, you know, more of the deconversion stories as the main theme. And that in those early days was just still very important for me to be able to talk about what I was going through as well. And I felt like I got more out of it than the people I was interviewing.

Matthew Taylor 36:21
Yes, I like it when we have an episode. Like that. And I like getting feedback, you know, underneath No, sometimes we have a little ego there that needs a little scratch. So guys, send feedback, do reviews on Amazon, and Spotify and iTunes, do all that kind of thing, because it genuinely scratches us. And it helps us produce content content that you guys like listening to. So please, reviews, reviews, reviews that let's do. That's really great. I love having feedback. It's really good to have had feed feedback from people in various scenarios. And it's even more strange to occasionally get feedback from a Christian saying, Can I have a conversation with you guys? Having an email like that just kind of, does he listen to my back catalogue? Does he?

David Ames 37:12
Yes, yeah.

Matthew Taylor 37:14
So that's why I continue to do it because I find that it motivates me and yeah, I am a busy guy. I do work more than my contracted hours because I'm in a very busy job. And on top of doing this, I do community theater as well. And for anybody who knows what it's like to do amateur dramatics, you know, when it comes up to, to doing a show, you get end up with a very, very busy couple of weeks with rehearsals and technical recur called rehearsals into dress rehearsals and then show it comes along and you literally don't sleep the entire week. Yeah, it's, it's hard, and it wipes me out. Yeah, and I do two shows a year, sometimes three or four shows a year. And that can completely wipe me out. This year I was in wasn't quite in two shows, I was doing front of house for one show, which is a busy job in itself, you know, talking to the community, making sure everybody's got their seats, making sure everybody's got their tickets and all this kind of thing, sorting out any issues that that come up. And that kind of thing is a very different role. Very busy role, very stressful role. And then two weeks after that was in the show. So as you know, it's it can get very, very busy doing that kind of thing. And I'm doing that on while also trying to schedule guests for a podcast, while also doing a full time job. And then, as you've heard a couple of times, I'm still trying to recover from a code that I had when I was on playing when you get over that magical 50 sore throats hang around for a ridiculously long period of time. And it's really, really frustrating.

David Ames 38:57
We've talked a bit about how it affects us. I'm curious how you think our podcasting podcasting in general in the secular world affects the community. And just as a bit of context, when I started I was I was responding to there were lots of angry atheists. There were lots of mostly debates, mostly hostile interactions, and I was interested in having human conversations more more person to person, you know, again, as to use your words, respecting the other person's humanity. And that felt new at that moment. Yeah. And in between then and now. The whole deconstruction movement took place, right? We were kind of at the tail end of the atheist kind of movement and then became this deconstruction movement as it were. And so I'm just curious how you think your podcasts what you and Andrew were doing and are doing has had an impact on that that community?

Matthew Taylor 39:55
Well, let's start with you. I guess we've touched base twins. The 19 must was it was it was it was it 2018 We first exchanged emails, it was around about that period anyway.

David Ames 40:05
Yeah. 2019 Yeah.

Matthew Taylor 40:06
And I've loved listening to your podcast growing in popularity, and I wished if your podcast had existed, when I was deconstructing it would have been an enormous help for me. So I think what your podcast does what the rest of atheist podcast does, is immensely valuable. And I hope it never goes away. Yes, I've heard you say it as well. And yes, not everybody wants to listen to a new deconversion story every week, for some people is a period of time in which it's really helpful. And then then they move on. And I've seen this in the community, some people come, and then they go, No, they've now they've shed their burden. They don't want to dwell in it anymore. And they need to move on.

David Ames 40:56
Yeah, I describe it as either aging out or maturing out. Yeah, it's no longer necessary for that person.

Matthew Taylor 41:01
Let me make it personal for a bit. I'm the eldest of three brothers. We all grew up in the same environment. We all suffered the same traumatic divorce of our parents in Zambia, we're all very familiar with the Zambian missionary environment. Listeners, you're going to have to listen to my original episode where I give more context this, but my two brothers do not talk daily about their past Christian faith. It's not relevant to them. It's not important to them. Yeah, I even talked with my youngest brother, I'm actually going up to see him tomorrow morning to have spent a couple of days with and helping out with this house. I'm really looking forward to a long weekend weekend with him. Yeah. Brothers, we bond. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that time with him. But I did say to him one day, I said, you know, maybe you and I could do a good episode on some belief or talk about our experiences, I'm sure we appreciate it. And he said, you know, they're not interested do not do nothing. And for some people, that's fine. You know, I'm not going to raise the subject, again, is we know, we've had that conversation. Fine. You know, it's, it's pointless me pushing it. Yeah. And because all I do is force him to rethink things that he doesn't care to think about. We've got better brotherly things to talk about which we'll both appreciate. And that's perfectly fine. You know, let's just lay that out there. No, wait, once you come in, and you join this community, you're not bound to it, you know, there, there are no pointy fingers. If you decide that it's not for you anymore, you know, we're not going to continue on condemn you to atheist hell for your turn or torture. Because you, you feel that this isn't serving you anymore. So for some people, the service that our content provides is, is temporary. But for other people, they want to hang around. And for those that hang around, you know, there can be a new role. And the role is holding hands with the newcomers, because there's always people coming in. And that's the one thing I've noticed, is being part of these deconversion deconstruction groups, and watching your podcasts specifically, grow. I'm not going to hint about any kind of jealousy about your podcast becoming really, really popular. I'm not gonna say through any kind of gritted teeth, whatsoever, but I'm really glad that your stories and there are others as well. I can't remember the tales of deconversion. Is that what it's called, or something like

David Ames 43:39
voices of deconversion? Like, which Steve hilliker Like I give him a lot of credit for you know, I'm basically ripping him off and doing what he did.

Matthew Taylor 43:48
But yeah, and it's a necessary thing. And it's nice to see people getting something new out of every episode. And it's nice to see people hang around to help those. But yeah, can you imagine how busy the space would be if every single D converter hung around town to welcoming all the new ones, it will become crowded and it will become untenable. It's perfectly appropriate for those. They've sorted out their deconstruction, grief, they've got to a comfortable place with any trauma they carry. It's time for them to move on because it's no longer good for them. Move on, is there are plenty of people around I think that's why I hang around. Because I've seen a lot of pain. I've experienced a lot of pain. And even now I still learn about things which shocked me and surprised me. So I still want to be around to be a voice for others. And every now and then they'll see somebody will ask a question in one of the deconstruction posts and I'll see some of the replies here and now. Add on saying yes I wouldn't say it was right. That's really good advice or so. Like, you guys have just had the most religious holiday in the United States, your Thanksgiving, weekend. And

David Ames 45:13
tongue in cheek? Yeah.

Matthew Taylor 45:16
What what happens when I noticed it when Thanksgiving comes up, is the deconstruction groups always say, there will be somebody will say help. I've got a parent coming round for the weekend, there's going to be this, there's going to be that, how do I handle this I need, I need something, etc, that's going to happen every single year. And there'll be somebody new every single year with that trauma with that panic. And it needs people to hang around to go, Yeah, I've been there, or your home your rules, you know, you're perfectly entitled to say to the parent, this is my house, you're an adult now. Because some people have a complex relationship with their parents, I've, I've still got I mentioned in that discussion, I still got a complex relationship with my father, I came out to my dad fulcrums, eight years ago now, I think it was atheists in a conversation. I didn't intend to, but the conversation went went into a particular direction. I just went low. We're not going there. I'm atheist. Now that's not happening. And he's not spoken to me about that particular subject again. But I've heard from my brother that he wants to, that he wants to talk me out of my atheism. Right. My brother just said, don't just just don't do it, you know, that will not end well do not have that conversation with Matthew. And my brother was a barrier. But you see, he had that conversation with my brother because he couldn't have it with me. And so even me, and I'm a very confident atheist, I can stand my ground and I will stand my ground if I need to, even to the overbearing parent, I just won't hold back and I will do it. Not everybody has got that confidence. Not everybody is secure to be able to do that. And so they need these forums, they need these groups to say, Help. Has anyone been in this situation? And half a dozen people go? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And they'll give their experiences. So we need those people to hang around, and to pass on the advice. And for those who feel comfortable hanging around, post deconversion. To be to be as part of the hands holding crowd. God bless you people, you are wonderful. You are here to say God bless. unicon bless you wonderful people. You are an asset to this community. Yeah, I did do that on purpose, obviously, David.

David Ames 47:58
So another thing that we share, that's definitely not unique. But it is interesting is that we have believing wives.

Matthew Taylor 48:06
Yes. How did that happen? David, we couldn't invent that. It's, um, it was quite peculiar to find out that we had that in common. And I'm wondering what it is about the spouse of a believer the form that they end up in doing this, what we're doing, isn't that scenario motivation to not do this?

David Ames 48:30
Yeah, it's definitely interesting. Let me address that question in just a second. I want you to talk about your wife and whatever generics or specifics that you want to get into. But my wife is a deep believer, right? If she never put foot in a church again, for the rest of her life, she's probably still going to be a believer. Right. It's internal for her on a super deep level. And I respect her faith, even though I think she's mistaken. All right. Yeah. So like I want to convey like it is about as opposite as you could be. The one thing that we do have going for us is I think politically, we're more aligned. And the two of us really care about people. Yeah. And we both do and in our various different ways. Try to help people and I think it's that shared values that is enabled us to get through what was a pretty rocky period of time going through this transition. When I said I had no longer believed in regards to what makes somebody motivated for this. You know, I think it's, it's in spite of that, like, my biggest concern, when I started was, I didn't want to hurt my wife. I didn't want her to feel attacked or abused. And yet, I had to talk about this stuff I had to because it was killing me. And so, you know, we've come to an uneasy detente, right. I can't say that she's happy about it, but she accepts that this is something that I do, right. Yeah. So I'm curious what your experience has been like. My

Matthew Taylor 50:00
wife would probably echo exactly the same things that you've said about your own. So we are very much aligned. And yes, it would kill me not shut up, I am very much a dog with a bone kind of personality. I wouldn't say that I was necessarily intellectual, but I like intellectual challenge. I like I like consuming scientific content. And I like discourse. And I like challenge. And doing still unbelievable and doing it with Andrew fulfills so much of that. And I love it. And I love listening to the other various atheist and some Christian podcast as well. I really enjoy consuming that content as well as creative. But all the things here, yes, it's uncomfortable as well. And my deconstruction was marred with fear. I genuinely believed that my deconversion at the point where I got to the point where I was fairly sure it was inevitable. I genuinely believed that would spell the end to marriage that I didn't want to end. And that, despite everything else, ignoring everything else, that little snip it in on itself is traumatizing, and fear inducing, and even paralyzing. Yeah. And when you go and read blog, after blog after blog of somebody in the same situation, and every single one of them is the marriages have failed. The attrition rate of marriages in this space is frighteningly high. You and I have gone against the odds, let's be open and honest about that. And yes, part of it is my wife and I are politically aligned. Politics has shifted over the last 20 years, and it's shifted in the same direction. We are very much aligned on an awful lot of things. And my wife's job is for a charity here in this part of the UK, which coordinates mentoring. So adults mentoring, usually teenagers who are in a problematic scenario and helping those teenagers to develop and foster a mature relationship with an adult, somebody they can confide in, who they can trust, who can give them adult advice, who has got the backing of professionals, if there should be anything problematic. And she finds that immensely fulfilling. And we talk about that actually tells me about a job an awful lot. And I'm interested in the job. And I'm interested in the technicalities and the things that are achieved in that job and off the back of doing that job she's doing. She's done one degree in child psychology, she's just started a second. And, you know, that is massively for funding for end, we are both on the same page with regards to the need for that. And I'm quite happy with whatever way I can to support her in doing that, so there is much for us to celebrate together. We don't she might. She might disagree, but we don't inverted commas need Christianity to in order to create a successful marriage. And I think that's why we've managed, it's not been easy. It's not been smooth sailing. And in the past 10 years. I'm obviously not going to go detail on these specifics. I'm not going to say anything about my wife that might later regret. But the conversation of separation did come up at some point during there. And we did talk it through and discern it didn't go didn't progress very far. We decided it was really nothing that either of us particularly wanted to stomach. Neither of us was in a mindset where it was something we wanted to seriously progress. And so it just really didn't go anywhere. It was a very short conversation, not to be brought up again. So don't read so this this please don't read too much into I've probably talked more about this than we actually talked about it. Don't Don't read too much into that. But I would like to say that for the Christian spouse of somebody who leaves. Life can be hard life can be difficult. I remember as a 20 something or going to church and knowing women at church whose husbands weren't believers, and they would come to church and they will come to church events and the husband was never there. Now remember, pitying those women and there is no better description of the patronizing attitude we took to those women then to at them, you know, why couldn't we treat them as individuals are their own rights? You know, they they don't they don't exist for their husband to be there with them. They are a person, they're an individual in their own right. Why couldn't we have treated them as persons and individuals in their own right? Why did we look at them as if they were incomplete? Because her husband wasn't coming to church? Now? What a shocking way to look at it. But my experience my decision for lack of a better word, although,

you know, we could talk about that I, it wasn't a decision, but let's just call it a decision. For the time being,

my decision has forced my wife into that scenario. Right. And she doesn't enjoy it. Let's be honest about that. She has responsibilities and church, she occasionally preaches a church, but she is that woman at church without a spouse? Yeah. And if people in the church pair up in couples to go out and socialize, she suddenly finds that she's intentionally or otherwise excluded, possibly because she's overlooked. Or if there'll be a conversation with somebody, and it's happened on more than one occasion, she will be talking with somebody at church who's relatively new. And they'll have seen Sarah up at the front of the church, either preaching or doing some other parts of the service. And they'll say to her, they said Mr. Taylor, yeah. And then chesco Now what what answer do I give now, you know, how much detail is safe to give to this individual? Yeah. And it creates a hell in church, for for those spouses. It's not pleasant for them. And, but I can't set foot in a church on a weekly basis, it's, it's not something that's pleasant for me. I've got other things I'd rather be doing. I'm usually editing a podcast when she's at church on on Sunday morning. And, and so it creates this, this, this inner conflict within each of us, I know that I've condemned her to this. And she knows that sometimes she'll have a less than pleasant experience at church purely because there isn't a man by her side. And for many, many spouses of the converted person, this is the hell of going to church. And I don't have an answer to that particular, maybe it's not mine to solve, maybe it's churches need to find a way to solve that. So, you know, sometimes in the deconstruction space, we can talk about us, and our trauma of deconversion. And our fear of leaving. But there are casualties that we cause as part of that journey as well. It's not our fault, I want to be very quick on that. It isn't our fault, that there are casualties now, and those people are wrong to blame us for what's happened. But that is sometimes how they feel. And that is the side effect of that. And we need to have compassion for those Christians in our lives. And Sarah and I are still navigating that. Incidentally, I need to say this, I went on to the grateful atheist YouTube channel. And because I was on it in 2019, and then my wife in beginning of 2020, she's got more than three times the number of views of her YouTube is something this is not a good place to be. If you've got an ego, that's just putting

David Ames 58:38
you know, we are quite entangled. So I did interview your wife, I thought that was really good conversation. I thought that she was really courageous to come on to the podcast, that was a brave thing to do. And then my wife listened to your wife's episode is maybe the only episode she's listened to. And then I had my wife on in I think it was late 2020. I don't think she'll ever do it again. Yeah, but it was interesting, like that interact, interaction, her hearing, Sarah story was part of that.

Matthew Taylor 59:08
I would love to have a conversation with a spouse of a D converted, unbelieving spouse of a D converted person. It doesn't have to be your wife. But if you if you or any listener has any context to a believing partner, who would love to, I would love to flesh out the things that I've just been talking about, about the experience of the Christian. I think Sarah is very much have the same mindset as your wife. Yeah, it's, I'm too close. I'm, I'm too personal. It would be inappropriate for me to even ask Sarah, to have that conversation with me live on air. This is something that's personal between us. I would never ask and I wouldn't I probably wouldn't even want it if I'm honest. But if somebody does have believing spouse, gender is unimportant, to talk through this kind of experience to see where how They judge what I've just said, and how we navigate this kind of thing. But it's it's a difficult situation. And so many people come into these deconversion groups with a believing partner. And some of the stories have genuinely moved me to tears, you know, marriages disintegrating in deeply unpleasant tones. And it's horrific to read and watch. That pain that must happen. It just touches the fears that I had 10 years ago, 10 plus years ago. And yes, those those experiences are still very real for people and those people. We need to work out a way to love people through that particular trauma. Because it's got to be the worst part of this kind of experience.

David Ames 1:00:46
Yeah, I would be interested in talking to more spouses, as well, or partners of any kind. But to hear their perspective also.

Matthew Taylor 1:00:55
Maybe we could probably do it as a duo. Actually, David, I think that would probably work really well. You could be my Andrew for a day, and I'm sure. Very pleasant. So Jay, this is a genuine request to people listening to this. If you know somebody who could be there, please get in touch with David via all the contact details that he gives. On your show, I think it'd be a genuinely worthwhile conversation.

David Ames 1:01:18
Matthew, I think we could keep talking for a long time, but actually want to end on this note, because I think what we've just talked about was just really important. But I do want to give you a moment to again, plug your podcasts and how can people get in touch with you? Wow,

Matthew Taylor 1:01:31
okay. Yeah, so still unbelievable is where to find me any other podcasts associated with my name is, is probably unsafe to search for because they might not exist anymore. So search, still unbelievable or recent press dot there. Matthew Taylor is a depressingly common name. So try not to search Matthew Taylor on the internet, you'll find all sorts of other people. I had a very strange experience listening to to one podcast and it was a new evangelicals podcast, and introduced a guest Dr. Matthew Taylor talking about something to do with deconversion. I'm gonna say, Okay, it's not me from when I certainly don't have a doctorate. So that's the best place or recent press@gmail.com is the email address to use, or friendly mail or hate mail if necessary. You can contact me using that way. I love being in this space. I love having feedback. I love having the conversations with people. So but yeah, so I listened to a ridiculous number of various podcasts of all stripes and things to to create the content that I do for still unbelievable. Thank

David Ames 1:02:45
you, Matthew for being back on the podcast. It was amazing to get back in touch. Really appreciate it.

Matthew Taylor 1:02:50
Thank you, David always

David Ames 1:02:58
final thoughts on the episode. As Matthew points out, still unbelievable. And the work that he has done has really been an anti apologetics perspective. He calls himself spiky. But one of the things I loved about re listening to our conversation from 2018. And this conversation is just how much Matthew cares about people and that just comes out in in particular people who are in the middle of the deconstruction process, and the empathy that he has for that process having gone through it himself. One of the most important topics that we discussed is being married to believers, and how much we respect our spouses. I know that many of you are in unequally yoked relationships in one form or another. And that is a very, very difficult topic. A shout out again to Matthew's wife, Sarah, who did come on the podcast that was amazing. My wife who came on the podcast as well, even though I know that was incredibly difficult. I want to thank Matthew for being on the podcast on this 200th Podcast. I really appreciate Matthew's perspective. And he has been a fantastic friend. Thank you so much, Matthew. For the secular grace, thoughts of the podcast, it is about humanism. This podcast has been from day one about humanism, being human, embracing our own humanity, embracing the humanity of others. And part of that is recognizing my personal humanity. As I mentioned a few months back between work and family life, all of these are good things. I've had less and less time for the podcast. So it is time for a break. That break will be for an indeterminate amount of time, and not sure how long but I know that I'll come back For this, I know that this is not the end, this is not goodbye. This is until we hear each other next time. I have loved doing this podcast, we've done it for almost five years. Now, as we mentioned earlier, the 200th episode, could not have done it without Mike T, doing all the editing without Arline, doing interviews, managing the community, and 1000 other things. And most of all, has been amazing talking to you. As I said, in my conversation with Matthew, I started this for selfish reasons, I needed to talk about it myself. And I just hope that somebody else might be interested. And I cannot believe to this day, how many of you have listened over the years. And also, as we mentioned in the conversation, how many of you have grown out of it? That's fantastic. That's a best case scenario. And I'm really, really grateful for all of that. So I have some ideas about when I come back, I want to reset just a bit back to a focus on humanism. I'll talk about this more in the next episode, which again, indeterminate amount of time when that will be. I also believe that the podcast will go into seasons, rather than being year long, doing maybe three months sessions, spring and fall, something like that something that's maintainable and not quite as exhausting. But I have a number of ideas for future episodes already kind of planning those in my head. And when I feel invigorated again, to do them, you will hear them here. For those of you who are Patreon supporters, again, I 100% give you the freedom to cancel that support. I cannot promise how often episodes will come out going forward. And those were not the original terms in which you began supporting the podcast. If you do stick around if you do decide that you'd like to continue to support the podcast, that's fantastic. I will use that will continue to do the zoom for the community, as well as future production value for the podcast itself. As a year end to 2023 and the hiatus and break for the podcast I just want to say thank you to you the listeners for being here participating being a part of the community. That is why I podcast. Until next time, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human. The beat is called waves by MCI beats. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show. Email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com This graceful atheist podcast part of the atheists United studios Podcast Network

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Jeremy Schumacher: Wellness with Jer

Adverse Religious Experiences, Atheism, Deconstruction, Deconversion, Podcast, Podcasters, Religious Trauma, Secular Therapy

This week’s guest is Jeremy Schumacher. Jeremy’s story begins in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod and it was as culty as it sounds. He started questioning the beliefs when he was ten, but it took twenty more years before he was able to leave.

“Two things really kept me in [Christianity] longer than I needed to stay or wanted to stay: fear of hell…and everyone I knew and interacted with was Lutheran, just not having any sense of community outside of the church…”

Jeremy is currently a “licensed marriage & family therapist with additional specialties in religious trauma and sports performance.” See his complete bio here.

Links

Wellness With Jer
https://wellnesswithjer.com/

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/wellnesswithjer/

Recommendations

Your Therapist Needs Therapy podcast

The Influence Continuum podcast (Dr. Steven Hassan)

Friendly Atheist podcast

Leaving the Fold by Marlene Winell

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

The Wonder podcast (atheopaganism)

Quotes

“It was this weird space that I existed in, of ‘having a good scientific background in psychology and not necessarily being able to apply it to other areas of my own life…”

“[My wife and I] were both staying in it because we were supposed to, that’s how we were raised, and we had no knowledge of people who left successfully.”

“The Bible is not a valid source. [I] would not cite this source if [I was] writing a peer-reviewed paper…That for me was like, ‘Oh. I’m an atheist.’”

“I started deconstructing at ten, but it took twenty years longer than I needed to.”

“Deconstruction was really lonely.”

“Neurodivergent brains find each other.”

“It’s nice; Sundays are free. You can sleep in!”

“The Wheel of the Year is a big deal…That’s been really helpful, I think, to have a structure and framework to note the passage of time and still have some sense of holidays without needing to do Christian holidays…”

“The Church is hemorrhaging numbers.”

Interact

Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!

Graceful Atheist Podcast Merch!
https://www.teepublic.com/user/gracefulatheistpodcast

Support the podcast
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
Paypal: paypal.me/gracefulatheist

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

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

Attribution

“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats

Transcript

NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.

David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios podcast. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. If you are in the middle of doubt deconstruction the dark night of the soul, you do not need to do it alone. Join our private Facebook group deconversion anonymous and become a part of the community you can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion Remember, we have a merchandise shop to get all of your graceful atheist and secular Grace themed items, you will find the link in the show notes. Special thanks to make tea for editing today's show. On today's show, Arline interviews our guest today Jeremy Schumacher. Jeremy is a marriage and family therapist. He has an emphasis on deconstruction and religious trauma. You can find Jeremy at wellness with jeremy.com. We'll have that link in the show notes. Here is our Lean interviewing Jeremy

Arline 1:25
Jeremy Schumacher, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.

Jeremy Schumacher 1:28
Thanks for having me on. I'm excited.

Arline 1:30
Yes, you and I have recently connected on Instagram, where I have found all the great people who exists. I just love it so much. And I saw that you also are at least internet acquainted with Tony George, who has been on the podcast boundless and free. And then apostasy Stacy Gron, who's fabulous and so like, I'm really excited to hear your story and to hear about things that you're doing these days.

Jeremy Schumacher 1:56
Yeah, Stacy and I did a couple different YouTube shows together. And Tani and I have talked, but we haven't connected yet. I have a podcast too. We'll talk about that. Right. But it's it's one of those things where yeah, the the religious dramedy community, I think, kind of finds each other. So Instagram has been a great community for that and getting connected with people.

Arline 2:17
Yes, Instagram is the mostly happy ish place on the internet as far as social media goes. And 40 So I'm not on Tik Tok. I don't know what's happening on tick tock. I'm, what is it? I watched the TIC TOCs that were made last week on Instagram this week, whenever they're already old.

Jeremy Schumacher 2:35
Yes. Yes. As Elder elder Millennials gotta stick together on Instagram.

Arline 2:41
Okay, well, Jeremy, the way we usually start is just tell us about the spiritual or religious environment you grew up in?

Jeremy Schumacher 2:48
Yeah, for sure. So I was raised Wisconsin, Evangelical Lutheran Senate, which is wells for short. It's, I would say a really big deal in the Midwest. But I might have a skewed perspective because I grew up in like the capital of it, which is Milwaukee. That's where the seminary exists for the pastors who go through the well Senate. And at least when I was growing up, there were probably around 100 churches that's probably dipped to maybe like 80 or so. But just in the Milwaukee area, Milwaukee is a million ish people when you include all the suburbs, so it's not like a small city, but it's not, you know, Chicago, or LA or New York or anything like that. So like that not many number of churches, and a lot of those churches had schools attached to them in one area is is really kind of disproportionate. But that's that's what I grew up in. The Wells is Lutheran, it's the most conservative of the major Lutheran branches. So there's ELCA, which is Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, and that's the most progressive, they have women pastors and stuff like that, which is like very taboo when I was growing up. And then in between wells and ELCA is the Missouri Lutheran Synod, the LCMS, which I spent some time working at a LCMS college. So I've had experiences in both but I grew up wells, both my parents are wells, school teachers, they were high school in the area. So like, I was just deeply immersed in it, I went to a private school, which no way my parents could have afforded it if they didn't get discounts because they were teachers at the high school. So I'm the youngest of four siblings, all of us went through through in schools K through 12. parochial school, and we because we're in Milwaukee, we just interacted with other wells kids. So it was it was it was extra culty. I guess I'll say, just in the sense that like, the kids I played basketball against were other wells kids. Youth Group was all wells kids. The kids I went to high school with were all wells kids. So like even though we're drawing from different grade schools or elementary schools, we were all in that same bubble. And that in the church is how we refer to it like the Lutheran bubble, like with no sense of irony or awareness of how bad or unhealthy that was like, isn't this nice that we only ever have to interact with other wells people. So I had some friends in the neighborhood growing up who'd come over to our house because we have basketball hoop and like, but I didn't hang out with them. Like we play basketball in the backyard, I didn't go to their houses that didn't come inside our house, it was always like, this kind of, I don't know, disconnect. I was a talented athlete growing up. So I did have a little bit of exposure to other people in baseball, just because the Lutheran schools did not have a good baseball program. And I was I was quite talented. Not to toot my own horn. But like that was that was the only thing I was preparing for this episode. That was the only time I interacted with kids who weren't wells growing up was my baseball team. And there was a lot of like, I would say, say overt, like, my parents being like, Oh, they swear. So like, be careful around them, or like they're using language that we shouldn't use, or they might dress differently than you do. And so like, it was always kind of like, Hey, be aware that you're not around wells people. And so even when I had those opportunities to interact with people who weren't wells, like I was kind of shielded from it or kind of, I was taught to be biased against it. So it's hard for me to tell my deconstruction story without also talking about neurodiversity. So I have ADHD, I wasn't diagnosed till much later in life, and but around 10, I think is where it really started to like cause impairment for me, because a lot of stuff happened for me. Third, fourth grade, where I vividly remember coming home in third grade and telling my parents I didn't want to go to school anymore. So I think that's when the ADHD kind of kicked into high gear. And they kind of patted me on the head and said, like, you're gonna go to school, and I third grade, I also came home and said, I didn't want to go to heaven. Heaven sounded terrible. I'm not musically gifted, I can't sing. And so like an eternity of singing sounds awful to me. And like, my little 10 year old brain was like, I don't want to do that.

Arline 7:08
Did you understand like the alternative? Or was it just like, I just don't want to do that? Is there any other place I can go in the Scytale? Or you hadn't thought?

Jeremy Schumacher 7:17
I remember like getting a I said that pat on the head about you're gonna go to school kind of similar with heaven, like, oh, well, like, if you don't want to sing and have fun. You don't have to like you like baseball, there'll be baseball and heaven. And I was like, but everybody's perfect. So how are we going to compete and like that just kind of getting brushed over. So I like to say like, I spent deconversion, since I was 10 years old, although I didn't have space to really engage with that or do that. I can think of a couple things throughout my growing up years where I went in and talk to a pastor like one on one being like, hey, like, this doesn't make sense to me.

So in the wells, one of the things they teach is communion, the wafer is the literal Body of Christ, the wine is the literal Blood of Christ, and like, not in a Transubstantiation way, because it doesn't become that it is that whatever. So like, it doesn't make any sense. And I remember being like, hey, this doesn't make sense. Yeah. And I was a teenager and the pastor at the time, like gave me this, like, really hastily put together lesson on like, how the Greek is translated and like, what part of language it is, and like, why, and it was like, you know, enough for me to be like, that doesn't make sense, still. But all right, like at least there's a rationale. But I had a bunch of those I can think of some in high school I can think of, as I got older, switch churches, state in the wells. But like, when I was in grad school, some things popped up. And then when I started doing therapy, because I'm a licensed therapist, a lot more stuff of like, Hey, I went to a public university. I was at University Minnesota. So like a huge research institution where like, science is king, especially in the psychology world, which like has a bad reputation sometimes as a soft science. So like, evidence based practice research, Minnesota does so much research. It's one of the few D one institutions that makes as much off of the research happening in the school as the D one sports program makes, which is really unusual for D one. And so I had this experience of going from like, very conservative, like, I joke about my AP biology teacher using the word evolution, he would write out the word evil and then put a motion for our for our college level biology course while I was in high school, like so. So that's my high school and my grade school growing up years younger, Earth Creationism, all that stuff, like, and then I go to the school where it's like, no, here's science. Here's why we know what we know. Here's how we know it. We know here's how we do that well. And here's what it looks like when it goes portly and this is what it looks like when we're doing it well and so like, it opened up a whole new world for me and I think really made me like start to be I have problems doing like therapy with someone who's like Wives submit to your husbands or like looking at some of these these things. I was doing couples therapy and marriage therapist. So like looking at some of these things like, not only am I not sure that I believe this stuff, but like, I don't know how long I can keep working with people in this space. Yeah, so it was, that was a big step. For me. That's where I started moving to like, being more progressive and liberal Christian, but still trying to stay Christian, I think two things that I really looked at, like kept me in it for longer than maybe I needed to stay or wanted to stay, which was a fear of hell, which I was like a very imaginative kid. So like that, that held trauma stuck with me for a long time. And then just like everybody I knew everybody I interacted with was Lutheran. So just not having any sense of community outside of the church, and really having no concept of like, how to go about finding it. The only thing I'd ever really done outside of the church was sports. And so I was like, kind of involved in sports. I was coaching at the time, I played volleyball at the University of Minnesota. So I was coaching volleyball, and like, had people through it, but like, when you're religious, and you're raised in that religious setting, like you find other religious people, so it's like, I would have like, oh, well, like they're Catholics. So they believe something different, but at least they go to church. So like, even for my non wells people is like, everybody has some version of religious still. So I think that was really limiting for me, too. So I was working at a Christian counseling place, I went back, I remember arguing with my dad about it, got my license, got my degrees in counseling in graduate school, postgraduate school, all these licenses all these degrees to do couples therapy, and someone came like knocking on my door and said, like, here's a job if you want it. And I have ADHD, so like path of least resistance sounds great. I don't have to job hunt, you're just going to offer me one. So I took this job at this Christian counseling place, but I remember sitting outside at my parents house, on the back porch talking, my dad being like, I don't want to work with a bunch of wells people. And talking to him about it. He's a, he works at the high school. He's a guidance counselor. So like, he has a bit of frame of reference to talk about this stuff. So we kind of talked about it. And I was working at a Christian place, but not specifically Lutheran. And so it was like kind of fine, maybe not ideal, but like, hey, in this job market, I came out of college 2009. So right after like the big recession started and grad school 2011 was like, hey, if I can get a job without having a job hunt, that's great. So I was there. But I was like the liberal person on on the staff at the Christian counseling place, like, hey, we need to stop praying with our clients, that's unethical. And everybody else being like, no, it's fine. Like God will protect us, like, we won't get sued. Right, but like, that makes us bad therapists like we should be doing. So I was like, I don't know, there's this weird space that I kind of existed in of having a good scientific background in psychology, and not necessarily being able to, like apply it in other avenues of my life or being able to, like, apply what I knew in psychology, or I was teaching people in therapy to my own life, like just having that kind of mental block around like, you're not allowed to question this. So your brains just kind of gonna stay away from it. And I had other stuff. I had a really like unhealthy relationship in college because I stayed in a Christian and we had purity culture, like stuff and didn't know how to talk about sex and didn't know how to talk about consent. And like we're just making each other miserable, trying to have a normal college relationship while being good Christians. Like, there's there's a lot of stuff that like, is in there trying to do the cliffnotes because I know I can, I can chat a lot. My wife has also raised Lutheran, we did not go to high school together, we connected later in life. Our sisters actually roomed together in college. So my sister's a teacher, and my wife, sisters, teachers, so they went to the Lutheran teacher college and We're roommates and that's how my wife and I met.

We connected and we're both Lutheran, but like, we're both kind of outsiders. I think, for me my neuro divergence, I got diagnosed officially when I was in post grad. So it wasn't news to me. I knew I had ADHD at that point, but like getting the formal diagnosis was still meaningful to me. Having someone else like validate what I knew and I experienced was really helpful for me. But like, you know, I was a straight A student, I was an honors student, I graduated with all sorts of awards and stuff like, I'm not your, I'm not the stereotypical ADHD, or I'm like what I think is ADHD, but like people don't talk about enough. They only talk about people on one one end of the spectrum where they're struggling and can't get through school and I was much more of the like, significant overachiever but like depressed and bored because like nothing was stimulating to me. No idea how to self regulate. So I was kind of an outsider for that I think I very much grew up with like a middle finger to the law. Like, can I swear on this podcast? Absolutely, yes. Yeah. So like I had like a real fucked up police kind of attitude growing up, even though I'm white and privileged, and like all the like, boxes to check for like, hey, modern society, especially Christianity was made for you. But like, it didn't fit. And I think because of my neuro divergence, so that was like a thing. My wife is a feminist. She's very outspoken. She's very good at her job. She's a very talented teacher. And so she didn't fit in for those reasons. I mean, she didn't fit in because she's female. And she's outspoken. Like, that's enough and conservative Christianity to be a problem. So both of us, I think we're kind of like, stay in it, because we were supposed to. That's how we were raised that we didn't, we had no knowledge of people who like left successfully. I had a friend of mine who's gay, who I'm still very close with and like, but like, I saw how he was shunned like I saw, like, my, my cognitive dissonance around that was like, Well, I'm friends with him. Like, I'm an ally, like, I can keep like, I'm the only friend he still has from high school good for me without like, applying like, Yeah, but maybe, maybe you should leave the system that shunned him so strongly. But I think we're both kind of waiting. And I think having a kid was finally like, for me, it was like, I can't teach this kid Noah's Ark. Like, I don't want to have that in our nursery. I don't like, yeah, that was like a big break for me finally, and like, I wasn't comfortable with the term atheist yet, but I was like, out of the church, like, I don't want to do this stuff. I didn't feel comfortable on Sundays. When our son was very young, like I, I would take him to the play room, like that was like, I don't want to be involved. I don't want to sing like, I don't want to do these things. I'm not giving my offering to this church, like, we'll go but I'm not in it in any sense. But again, I think it was like neither of us had a model of what it looked like to not be in the church and raise a kid. So then COVID hit and like that was just our excuse to not go to church and never have to go back. But like it's one of those things where Yeah, suddenly people have said that I remember like saying to my wife like I was I got really into Richard carriers work. So he's a historian who works on early Roman and therefore Biblical stuff. And his like, he's so meticulous in the approach to history that he takes and I read some of his stuff that basically said, like, you know, like, we know these books are forgeries in the Bible. And that was news to me and like, again, I was raised on biblical literalism. So like, the gospels were written after Paul, like the Bible's published out of order, like I didn't even know that stuff yet. Neither. Yeah. So like those things, then it was like, Oh, all right. So like I already had, like, I feel like an ethic system and like morals and principles from how I do therapy and what I knew around mental health. I just needed that. Like, Hey, you don't believe this? Because you like it doesn't make it like, it's not historical, like the Bible isn't a valid source, you would not use this, you would not cite this source. If you were writing a peer reviewed paper, like, you can't use the Bible. And like that, for me, it was finally like, we weren't going to church already. Because it wasn't a good fit for either of us. But like that, for me, it was like, Oh, I'm an atheist. And like, just like this huge, kind of like, sigh of relief at finally, like, getting to that point, I was probably around 30 at the time. 31 Maybe, like, I started deconstructing at 10 Like, I feel like I stayed at 10 years longer than or 20 years longer than I needed to but but that's what it kind of took for me was like, these, I look back and see these like very explicit spaces where it's like, oh, that was like a big step away. Until finally that step of like, Oh, I'm an atheist and like, that's a good spot for me to be like I'm comfortable with that.

Arline 19:10
That's a huge step because a lot of people not that it's bad or wrong to feel like you need like, but there is something more there is gods or goddesses or whatever, those kinds of things. A lot of people can't just be like, Yeah, I think I'm an atheist. It's interesting thinking with the the ADHD, I know a few other people who made that link very easily. They are also ADHD, or Adi HD. One is and and for me, I was fine with there not being God. So I was like, Okay, well, this was all made up. Like once I started reading Bart Ehrman and different people and I was like, Yeah, I was just fine with it. It didn't. My husband was very emotionally affected by the idea that none of it was that it wasn't true, or possibly wasn't true. That was just like, Oh, wow. And of course, I get the things like, well, it must have just been head knowledge. I was like, no So I was like indeed

Jeremy Schumacher 20:10
Yeah, I worked at a Christian counseling place I spent time in working in higher ed where I did mental health for student athletes and coach volleyball. So I was coaching I was an instructor if you work at a Christian place like you were way too many hats because they underpaying everybody and want you to do so many things. So like, you know, all that stuff, too is thrown in there and my story but like, you know, I was like the LGBTQ plus ally, I was doing mental health for athletes, like some of the stereotypes about the women's lacrosse team exist for a reason like so like I was, I was, again like in that Christian space, but like, ethically, morally, I was not connected at all, like, the identity the culture of being a Christian was still a part of my life, but like, the belief was gone well, before I was out and out as an atheist. And then, you know, it's it's been a process like coming across this podcast was helpful for me. You mentioned Bart Ehrman. That was super helpful Richard carrier for me and like, he's, I don't wanna say fringe. Some people don't like him because he's a mythicist. So kind of saying, like, Jesus never existed at all. And it was just, it was a myth. But his his work and the way he does kind of the historical breakdown of things was was like I needed the science of it. And Bart Ehrman does some of that. But Bart Ehrman sometimes goes a little pop psych for my taste. So I just needed somebody who's like, let's get this past peer review, let's like do the process that I knew how to do from being a researcher from being at a research institution, like I needed that scholarly kind of level of like, oh, right, you know how to do all of this, you can apply all the same stuff, just apply it to your religion, too. But like, deconstruction was really lonely. I mean, I found a lot of this stuff after I deconstructed like, just that, that Steven Hudson's bite model, behavior control, information control, thought control, the motion control, like the information control, for me was really thing like growing up in that big of a bubble and what I would say as a call, like, just not like, all this stuff was out there while I was deconstructing, or before I deconstructed, I just didn't know about it, like I had no access to it. So it was just one of those things where like, finding community after I left was really helpful. And then I was like, then I wanted to go back and get my certification to work with religious trauma. So that was again, like, I think I was still doing some of my own work at that point. But like, that's how my brain operates. And you talked about ADHD like, that's definitely kept me in to because ADHD, one of the things with ADHD is black and white thinking and like, the religion gives you that religion says, like, here's right or wrong. So like, as much as I was, like, middle finger to the law, like I was going to judge those kids who went to the Lutheran school that I went to, but went and partied and drank like, how dare they? And so it was like, it didn't fit, but I could keep my foot I didn't fit, but I could keep my focus on other people and like, so again, like I think there's pros and pros and cons sounds weird. I think religion is harmful, but like it's one of those things where like, ADHD is a double edged sword, I guess I'm like, getting you out early or keeping you in. Because there are aspects of religion that like fit well, for some of the things my brain does naturally, in keeping me in with like, things like black and white thinking an all or nothing type thought patterns.

Arline 23:32
That's interesting, because that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about was, I, in my personal experience, there's a big overlap of people that I know know now who have deconstructed and are just no longer religious in some way. And ADHD or audio HD. However, I didn't know if it's just because since I have inattentive HD, all of our low ADHD brains are now friends. So we found each other. So have you seen that there seems to be a big overlap? Or is it what you were saying? Where it just really depends on the person? Some stay in some late? Yeah, I

Jeremy Schumacher 24:04
think I think there is an overlap, I should say, bias with you, because I am also ADHD, and I tell people all the time, like neurodivergent brains find each other. So I think I'm drawn to that a little bit. And I don't know, I find other people whose brains operate a little differently. But I think when you're neurodivergent, like your brain naturally doesn't fit the social norms. And these constructs that are being preached about on a regular basis often don't fit well for you. And so I think there's a natural kind of inclination for the neurodivergent brain to like, resist that. And I think some of the things that religion does for social control, take advantage of a neurodivergent brain and sometimes I think people like no, like, that doesn't fit at all and know that they're out. And again, like so we have these kind of major breaks around like having kids sometimes COVID was a big one. Trump the rise of Trump was a big one. But like, forever and ever or expand when people go off to college? Like, when do you get out of that bubble and experience the larger world? That's a time when a lot of people also deconstruct, so I think I have that opportunity. It was just I was dating a very conservative Christian girl, and we went to the college campus mission thing and like,

Arline 25:19
you were still in the bubble is a different bubble. Like,

Jeremy Schumacher 25:21
yeah, the bubble traveled with me to the University of Minnesota. No, seriously, I dated a girl who I went to high school with, like, we were not friends in high school, and we both went to University of Minnesota, we kind of like, glommed on to each other early on in the process.

Arline 25:35
I did not grow up in the church, and I'm so thankful I used to think, Oh, I wish I had grown up in this. And now I'm like, I'm so glad I didn't grow up in this. There's so many things I didn't have to deal with. Yeah, but I became a Christian in college, and it was a public university. But yeah, we became our own little culty. Bubble. I don't know if it was a cold. It depends on who you ask. Yeah, it just, if you have the people around you reinforcing the beliefs. Even if you start doubting, or have questions, you just kind of sit it on a shelf. And like, keep on going. And for us, at least similar to what you were saying about having kids. In our 20s. It all worked fine. When we started having kids. Like that was when things just for my husband things were. He was like, I shouldn't feel like I'm a better dad. Then I feel like God is to his children. He's like, this doesn't this is not good. And then slowly he d converted before I did. Yeah. So just having kids. That was a big thing for y'all.

Jeremy Schumacher 26:39
Yeah. And I think I look back on it. And like before we had kids, we talked about like, would we send them to a Lutheran School? And like, both of us, unequivocally, we're known for that answer. Like we did not want them. She had a bad experience. Her parents were divorced, she dealt with a lot of stigma for being from a family of divorce. She dealt with a lot of stigma, being like a talented female, smart, outspoken, articulate female. And I like I never I was, you know, I don't, I don't think I was clinically depressed. And I think for so many other people, because they spent so much time masking like, yeah, it didn't come out how unhappy I was. But like, grade school, like we had a and this this is across the board, like this is a soapbox, I'll get on a little bit like parochial schools, private religious schools have major bullying problems, because the church has has no concept of accountability. And that exists in the classroom then like, so like I was a bully growing up. And like, I don't look back fondly on that I was neurodivergent. I didn't understand any of the social dynamics. But I was a popular kid, because I was friends with the popular kid like, he and I transferred into our school the same year and like, hit it off, because we were both good at sports. And we were friends third grade through eighth grade. And like that made me popular. Like, I don't remember why I remember being like, this is weird. I'm poor, and everyone else in my private school has Nintendo 64 and a trampoline and a swimming pool like. So I think there was some of that, like, insecurity around it that people usually associate with bullying, but like also it was. It's such a like, in group out group dynamic in the church that like, these things are going on over and over and over again. And I didn't understand any of that I am a therapist, I don't understand social norms. Now. Just because I've neurodivergent and my brain doesn't do that stuff. But I look back and on some of those things, like I was not a happy, healthy person, like high school, I was pretty miserable. I stopped blaming other people. I wasn't mean to people, but like, I was mean to my instructors. Like I was that kid who was like, pushing every boundary I could up until getting a detention because my parents were teachers. So I like was not going to get attention but like, not like throwing stuff or making a scene but like intellectually trying to bully my professors around like, you want me to read Faulkner like I'm gonna go find a different fault there who's like the wrong Faulkner and write a paper on that and like, go ahead and try and fail me like, so I was like, always just trying to find stimulation, trying to find ways in which I could be like, a little more entertained. And like, so it wasn't depression, but it wasn't healthy. Like I was not a healthy kid. And so when we're gonna have kids was like, No, I was like, I was miserable in school. And I think people who knew me were like, You didn't seem miserable, because like that was so that was so much. That was my internal process, like the things I was doing to cope were not healthy. Luckily, I had sports as a huge outlet, and that helps regulate me a lot. Because I was in a lot of sports. I did a lot of sports with families, a big sports family, but like, I was not healthy in my interpersonal relationships. It's not healthy and my relationship with myself. So it's just like, yeah, having kids even before both of us deconstructed fully we were like, we're not sending our kids to a Lutheran School. But you know, we did we had them baptized like both our boys actually are baptized like we were still kind of going through the motion. Jensen's, it's, it's hard, even when you're at that point of deconstructing to like, Just finally, step out. Yes, there's a lot of sunken cost fallacy associated with that

Arline 30:21
my boys, one of them was baptized when he was little we were in a Reformed Church. So he was baptized as a baby and the other, we were at a Baptist church. So he was just not sprinkled, he was dedicated. The like, exact same thing, but without water, same thing. But now they're older. And I'm curious, like, with your kids, how do they feel about not being in church? Or do they remember being tricked? I don't know how old your kids are. But mine, like, they're not interested in going back to church. And it would take a whole lot of convincing. I don't know that someone could convince them that supernatural stuff is real anymore, because they're just like, I need you to show it to me kind of thing.

Jeremy Schumacher 30:57
Yeah, yeah, mine are both under five. So I don't think either of them have any cognitive memory on what was going on. So and our second one, we had drink COVID. We weren't going to church, but like the family. I have a couple of pastors in my family. So it was like we can do this over zoom. Like, I don't remember it being a thing my wife and I were asking for, I think it was just like, Oh, you're not going to church because of COVID. Here, let's like figure out how to do this over zoom.

Arline 31:27
So what's your Sunday's look like now? Now that you're all heathens and not going to church? What do you guys do?

Jeremy Schumacher 31:32
Sundays are free. It's nice to sleep in. I'm from Wisconsin, so we watch the Packers. But I identify as APO pagan, which is non theistic Earth revering science based paganism, so no gods no goddesses, we're not worshipping the moon. But but the Wheel of the Year is a big deal. So we follow the equinoxes, we follow the seasons. And that's been really helpful, I think, just to kind of have like a structure or a framework to like, note the passage of time and still have some sense of like holidays without needing to do Christian holidays with our boys. So like, celebrating you all and celebrating Halloween is a big one. Everyone likes the witchy aesthetic in it. But but for me, like finding that community was dream COVID So like lots of lockdowns, and that was kind of when that community online started blowing up. Because I think a lot of the people were looking for connection when you when you couldn't have it. And so I came to that a little late, but like, there's the Thursday night mixer that I go to on Zoom still. So it's people, Louisiana, California, Iowa, me and Wisconsin, like, so that's kind of been my community. And it's for me, that was really nice to not have like, sad people who weren't church people. But also people would be like, oh, man, global warming is like a real concern. Right. And like, they just naturally agree, like, so. It's nice. Some of them were raised pagan, a lot of them also left some sort of organized religion and found their way towards it. So with my ADHD, fire and water and nature in general, but specifically fire and water have always been like very calming for me, because they're stimulating there. Something's always moving. And so I think nature for me has always been a really big deal and finding something that kind of said, like, oh, we can we don't find something sacred and old religious texts like we find sacred in nature, we find nature we find what's important to us in our connection through nature. And so like that was really important to me something that was like, no gods and goddesses, and very science forward was really important to me, but that community for like, not not having non church friends was really important to start being like, Oh, here's other people. So I have one a Theo pagan friend who's in Milwaukee. We play d&d together. And like, you know, it's it's just, it's been nice. Hopefully, next year, I'll be able to go to the ATO pagan retreat I presented this year on religious trauma. It was the virtual conference, but there's an in person retreat every other year. So like that's been really meaningful. I'm a little bit more into it than my wife is. In the community sense because I do the mixers on Zoom and stuff and I went to the conference. My wife likes to celebrate for the holidays, equinox, the equinoxes of the year, equinoxes, I'm a bad pagan, I should know. I think it's eight. This is, yeah, that's what this is. And then like the halfway markers between so I think that's how it breaks down for eight of them. And it's just like, intellectually, it's been nice to learn something new again, like a lot of that stuff was very taboo for me growing up so seeing how people use Tarot like I was always so opposed to that and seeing how like people who don't believe in in magic or witchcraft or the supernatural can still do like tarot readings and it be meaningful to them. They're aware that it's psychology at work, they're aware, they're like kind of Wizard of Oz peering behind the curtain. They know how it works, but like it's still A way for them to Problem Solver or approach a problem creatively. And so like, that's been really fun for me to be like, Oh, I know nothing about this stuff. Like, let me learn something. So that's been like very safe and helpful. And it's nice to just, you know, complain about conservative Christians or the religious right, or global warming or whatever, like the people who I grew up with. And I'm like, oh, no, like what happened to you? I can have conversations with people who I didn't grow up with and are like, right, like, that's awful stuff, we should, we should definitely be concerned about these things. So that's been a really like, nice space for me after D converting to have a group kind of a community that already existed, that that matched a lot of my values and ethics that I've kind of built. And were very important for me leaving the church to then find a group that matches with that was really helpful for me.

Arline 35:46
Yes, yes. And online has been such a wonderful place to find community. I live in Georgia, and, um, homeschool mom. So Bible study, white ladies would be my only friend group, like, I had no idea. And so when I started deconstructing it, you know, and I didn't have that vocabulary, I did not know that word. But when I realized, I don't know that I believe this service as seriously as I used to, I didn't have anybody to talk to I could talk to my husband, but he, it was very emotional for him. So that would, I didn't want to make things worse for him. So I'd asked my friends and they were Bible study white ladies, white lady Bible studies, I don't know how you want to call them, but and they don't know how to explain it. There wasn't a lot of thought about it. They were just kind of like, you know, everyone has doubts, or these are good questions, but they wouldn't that wasn't super helpful or engaging. And so then by the time I was out, I was like, Where do I go? There aren't like, I don't know, people in my real geography, who have any of the same thoughts at all. And since then, I have found secular homeschool moms who are a lot of people, a lot of women who have D converted. A lot of women who have realized they're queer, a lot of women who have, like, just just a whole lot of us. Yeah, that I didn't know existed. But for years, let's see 2020 For the past three years. Yeah, it's a lonely, you usually become a Christian, either in your family or friends or something. But rarely do you d convert with other people? Yeah,

Jeremy Schumacher 37:24
yeah. And I think it's, it's a fascinating time as people, the churches, hemorrhaging numbers, you know, I, my experience was, was similarly I had my partner, which, like, I'm very thankful we were both deconstructing or deconstructed at the same time. But it's one of those things where like, I found all this stuff after I D converted, like, deconstructed, so it's like, this stuff's out there. But it's hard to find was one of the things that I was like, really passionate about getting my my training and religious trauma, and having kind of a formal knowledge and that helped to to build community like with like minded professionals. And there's always a bunch of us, there's a number of people who are training in it or getting trained currently. And so that's like a fun space. But it's been interesting, because as I'm more out, especially professionally, I'm out about it. Like I've had some family members who've reached out to me who are like, Yeah, we don't want to send our kids to Lutheran school either. And like, it's still I don't know, it's, it's secretive in my family. But like, it's been funny to kind of see people like find me still some people from high school and follow me on instagram who have deconstructed or left the church. So like, Yeah, I mean, I think neurodivergent you brought up people who, who are realizing they're queer once they can start investigating their sexuality. I think that's a huge thing. So having these these online spaces that are safe for people to explore having community because for so long, I think that's what people ascribe to the church like, well, if you move somewhere, can it get connected with your local church, or like I remember saying that when I was a Christian, so it was just one of those things where like, knowing there's community out there that isn't religious or isn't affiliated to a church is is so nice. And I think that makes leaving an unhealthy or toxic church environment so much easier for people to be like, Oh, you don't have to be alone in it. And you don't have to be lonely after you leave. Like, now I do religious trauma. So I'm working on the people who are deconstructing I'm working people who are working on leaving, and that's still such a fear for them of like, what happens when my family inevitably disowned me because I've got that conservative of a family. It's like, ah, yeah, there's community out there. Like, it's still that leap of faith to be at a point where you can leave and trust that there are people there who will be there for you with you when you're outside of the church,

Arline 39:51
because a lot of people will stay in it longer simply because they don't have anywhere else to go. And knowing that there are spaces to go is a huge thing.

So you talked about your therapy, tell us everything, wellness with Jer, everything you're doing your thing. Tell us about it.

Jeremy Schumacher 40:16
Yeah, so I own my own practice. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist. I've added my specialty and religious trauma. I also have a background in sports performance because I spent a lot of years coaching I coached NCAA level. I did, took a couple teams, the NCAA tournament for volleyball, super exciting. So I've been in as an athlete at a high level myself, I've coached high level athletes. So I have that. And again, like my neuro divergence runs through all of this, right, like sports performance, religious trauma and marriage therapy, you have no overlap at all, because that's just what my brain is interested in. So after I left higher ed, I was super burnt out, doing way too many wearing too many hats, getting underpaid, et cetera, et cetera. As one day, I was working at a Christian college. I went and I worked at it was a secular practice. But the guy who ran it was a Christian. And he was like the yucky kind of, I would say, the yucky kind of Christian like he had very fancy cars, he had a place up north. And like, said all the right stuff to get me to come work with him. But none of it was backed up. So it was it was just a really like yucky practice, felt very car salesman, he had taken advantage of people and like taking advantage of people who have mental health issues. So like doubly yucky in my book. And so like, I was not going to church at that point. But I wasn't out as an atheist at that point. And so it was just kind of like that break. Came in my professional life where I could be like, Oh, wellness with Jerry, like, my logo was the Agra sill tree, which is very a big deal in Norse mythology. It's a podcast, so people can't see me, but I got long hair and a big beard. Like I've got some of that Viking aesthetic going on. And so like that was very free and and it was so nice to be in a space of like congruence where like, I'm upfront, here's my fee. No, I don't take insurance. I'm not trying to get rich in this, but like, I have to pay my bills too. So like very ethical, LGBTQ, plus, affirming, queer, affirming all the spaces that I wanted to kind of Occupy as a therapist, but had never been able to advertise or kind of had to, like, people had to find me. And like, I have art that is some rainbow themes. in it. One of my my media person who's fantastic helped me with my website design and all that stuff. They're queer, and they made a really beautiful piece of art for me. So like when I had people in my office like they, they could pick up on it, but I wasn't like I wasn't selling myself as like a queer affirming therapist. So opened wellness with Jer, which is not an easy is not an easy title or a name for a thing. You'd be surprised how many mental health facilities have trademarks on their names and how little variety is left out there for naming your own practice. So a lot of people just name it after themselves. But I was coming out of this fear of athletics and coaching where everybody knew me as chair or coach. So wellness with Jared kind of fit for my personality. I'm a laid back guy, kind of what you see is what you get. So I opened my practice, got my certification and religious trauma. And once I kind of got like my feet under me, there's a learning curve to opening your own practice. I'm very comfortable doing a suicide assessment. I'm very comfortable doing the therapy things. I had no knowledge on how to run a business. Oh, yeah, I think I'm still learning things. When I talk to other therapists, it makes me feel better because they're like, yeah, like, No, we weren't taught any of that in grad school. It's just a huge gap in our knowledge. So once I kind of felt settled with with that, I started a podcast called The your therapist needs therapy, where I interviewed other therapists about their mental health and how they navigate mental health while working in the mental health field. And I've had a lot of religious trauma therapists or people with working in that space, which has been really great. And then like, it's just, it's my podcast, right? So I get to have on it, whoever I want. So it's a lot of religious trauma right now, because that's what my brain is fascinated with. But it's my other stuff, too. So I have some nutritionists on there. I have some athlete mental health people on there. Working, fingers crossed and getting some a professional athlete or two on there. Maybe in the near future. A famous comic book writer recorded an episode with so like talking about religious trauma and themes of mental health and comic books. So it's just like my stuff like, here's what I want to talk about. Here's the things that are interesting to me. I'm not trying to get internet famous, but I'm trying to put out good information around things like religious trauma and neuro diversity and healthy sleep. Hi uh Jean and all this other stuff. So like, it's, it's very much like it's silly in a way because I'm like another person with a podcast but it's been very like a nice creative outlet and a nice another way of like connecting with the community. So finding therapists and like minded people who are working in the religious trauma spaces. So yeah, that's kind of what I've got going now. And then I got a almost six year old and almost three year old at home. So when I'm not doing work, it's a lot of stuff going on at home.

Arline 45:32
Yes, that's a busy time with littles. Wonderful, I'm so glad our audience will become acquainted with with all of your work

one last thing before we wrap up recommendations, podcasts, books, YouTube channels, movies, anything that was helpful in your deconstruction or that you love now and you highly recommend anything?

Jeremy Schumacher 45:59
Yeah, I mean, I talk about probably on a daily basis, Steven Hudson's, Hudson's sounds I'm not sure how to pronounce his name. Where he did the bite model, which is I mentioned earlier behavior information and thought and motion control. I'm writing a blog series on it right now just because of how often I reference it. And he has a podcast on cults and authoritarian control. I'm drawing a blank on the name of it, I really should know. Someone tagged me on instagram in a in a like recommended podcasts that recommended his and mine. And I was like, Oh, that's so nice. I love his podcast, too. So that was that that one is fantastic. I listen to this podcast a lot. The other one I listen to a lot is Friendly Atheist podcast, which like for me was just, again, that community of someone else being like, what is like the religious right doing? Like, is anyone like, why are we not disturbed by these behaviors? So like that one, that one provided a lot of sanity for me being like, yuck, like, I had a problem with those people when I was Christian, but like, that's what everybody was lumping me in with? Oh, yeah. There's a lot of sanity there. For books, it's it's, you know, Harlene, when ELLs work, leaving the fold, I think is like a seminal work on religious trauma. She calls it religious trauma syndrome, which we've kind of moved away from a little bit. The other big book that I have in my office that I recommend a lot is the Body Keeps the Score by Bessel, Vander Kolk, who's maybe not a great human being but his work around trauma was fantastic and has been like super helpful for people understanding how trauma works, and how something like religious trauma stays in your system long after you've D converted and why that is work and how that work gets done. So I love that book. I was just talking earlier with somebody around all these documentaries that are coming out around Boy Scouts, the different church scandals. And a lot of that stuff is I chuck, I'm chuckling because I'm just thinking like, right, I remember like being fascinated by Waco. I was like five when it happened. So

Arline 48:10
I remember watching it until the news, just

Jeremy Schumacher 48:12
Yeah. But like, I got really into cults, I got into the occult, like, as a Christian, like, these were things that that were like, fascinating to me with just not the self awareness to be able to reflect on it. But it's one of those things where like, I think seeing some of that stuff normalizes the experience when you're like, Oh, I was in a cult and like for mainstream Christianity and a lot of people who raised evangelical like that maybe they don't think of it but like, all those markers are there, there's there's all those forms of control and there's all those ways to kind of limit you and cut you off. So I think as long as those things are safe and comfortable, I think for some people who are still deconstructing those can be really overwhelming or triggering. But um, I talked about deconstruction as like doctrinal deconstruction, you're leaving a belief system and then deconversion as like, the process of like, unpacking all that stuff that's still in your system, like purity culture, and like some of the ingrained stuff. So I think those documentaries if you're in more of the deconversion side of things, where you've deconstructed and you're comfortable in your belief system, or your ethics that you have now I think those documentaries can be really helpful to kind of see these patterns as like oh yeah, that's that's how religions take advantage of people or that's how control is exerted on people when when they're not aware of it. So there's so much of that stuff out. It's on my list to watch the Boy Scouts one I haven't watched it yet but there's like three or four different things on waco there's all these things on on cults and mind control around cults. And so it's definitely coming a little bit more to the forefront. I like the atheist pagan podcast, it's called the Wonder so That was That one's nice, you know. And it's weird. I spent a lot of time in the mental health spaces too, obviously, which is not maybe at an interest for everyone, at least not in the nerdy way that I do. But there's also a rise of like non science, or unscientific thinking in the wellness spaces. Like, there. There's weariness around the rise of kind of the self help guru, and even pagan spaces, like my hackles get raised around crystals and some of that magical thinking type stuff like I can complain because I experienced Christianity evangelical fundamental evangelicalism firsthand, like I can say how bad that is, but like, it's not that Christianity has a stranglehold on it, like these things exist in other spaces. And so doing work around stuff like that educating myself around some of those things, too, because it, it looks different, but like the tactics, and the behaviors are the same as far as control and some of the authoritarian hierarchies that exist. So my, my attention span is all over the place, I probably have eight or nine books on my desk in my office right now that I'm wanting to read, and my brains, like you can read all of these. So I try and balance it so that I have time that's recreation. And I have the podcasts, I have a YouTube channel where I talk about comic books, or movies and mental health stuff related to that. So I try and have space for like professional engagement around things. And they're trying to have space for just recreation, which I think is really important for me. That was a really long and winding answer. I think they only gave two recommendations or three recommendations in there. But

Arline 51:38
thanks. Okay, that was wonderful. No, it's part of understanding. Like, once people deconstruct it's like, there's a whole other world over there. So you're finding all wonder and fun and happiness, like all the things that we're told that we will find in religion, like, you find it outside of that. And so you were just telling us all the different ways you do it.

Jeremy Schumacher 51:56
Yeah. And I, you know, in my work, I'm reminded of this, I like, have to slow down sometimes, because I get caught up sometimes, and like how freeing it is to be outside of religion. And when you're deconstructing like, it does not feel that way. And like, I know that I experienced it. But the further out you get, the more like confident you get and like no, it's so much like I have so much more joy in such a healthier person outside of religion. And so it's like, it's hard to remind myself to like, slow down, like there's a process to get there, you don't just jump out at that spot. So it's good for me doing the work that I do to be reminded of like, there's a process to all of this, but like it is it's fascinating to talk to people to deconstruct it or hear other people's story on the podcast when I talk to other religious trauma therapists and see like, just like the joy around like, I posted that Instagram real me dancing, and like, I would have never done that as a Christian and like, now I can and I, I like felt a little guilty. But then I was like, I don't need to be guilty. And then I didn't feel guilty. And it's like, that's so cool. Like, that's so fun to see. Like, find ways to experience that joy in your own life and like, not be humble about everything or not like just yeah, there's so much stuff to unpack and reconvert. And when you do, it's just so, so much more free and unhealthy.

Arline 53:13
Yes, I love it. Well, Jeremy, thank you so much for being on the podcast. This was wonderful. Thank you for sharing your story and telling us all about what you're doing these days.

Jeremy Schumacher 53:22
Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me.

Arline 53:30
My final thoughts on this episode. I really enjoyed this episode, I learned a lot. I did not know anything about the wills Church, the Lutheran church that he talked about. And it's always amazing to me. I don't know if Amazings the right word I love whenever I hear about people who they've gone through some things. And they take that knowledge plus professional learning knowledge and then use it to change other people's lives. Like he's a therapist. Now, sports performance, religious trauma, couples counseling, like he said, None of these things overlap necessarily, but he has experience with all of them. And he has a desire to help people a desire to do things ethically and humbly and kindly. I don't know if kindly is a verb, an adverb, but he's doing all these things. And it's helping other people. And I just I love when, when humans do that, it's like it's beautiful secular grace, like David talks about. I also am very intrigued by the this whole atheopaganism Like I've learned a little bit about it last year, because personally, I like the, like the rituals, I like the the Wheel of the Year. I love nature, like all of those things. Speak to me for want of a better way to say that. They like do something inside my body. I love it too much. But I don't want to have to believe in gods or goddesses, I don't want to have to believe in ancient texts that some dead guy wrote down and it's supposed to be important. And I especially do not want another patriarchy to tell me what to do. So I don't know. I'm intrigued. It was it was interesting to hear Jeremy talk and it makes me want to learn a little bit more about it. So thank you so much, Jeremy for being on the podcast. I really enjoyed it. And I learned a lot.

David Ames 55:27
The secular Grace Thought of the Week is, don't take yourself too seriously. When we were in the bubble, everything seemed so serious. Sin was serious choices were serious. Salvation was on the line, whether you witnessed to somebody or didn't, whether someone was quote, unquote, saved or not. It was also serious. And that limited us on what we could do, what we could choose and who we could be. You don't have to take yourself that seriously. You can laugh at yourself. You can make mistakes, and you can learn from those mistakes, and there are no eternal consequences. Next week, I interview community member Chris, you're not gonna want to miss that episode. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and graceful. The beat is called waves by MCI beads. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show. Email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com. This graceful atheist podcast part of the atheists United studios Podcast Network

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Darrel Ray: Recovering From Religion

Adverse Religious Experiences, Atheism, Authors, Deconversion, LGBTQ+, Podcast, Podcasters, Purity Culture, Religious Trauma, Secular Therapy

Dr. Darrel Ray is the founder and President of the Board of Directors of Recovering from Religion and the founder and project leader of the Secular Therapy Project. See his full bio here.

Dr. Ray grew up in a Christian home but was already skeptical of certain claims at the age of twelve. He stayed in church—singing and teaching—but was relieved to finally leave the church as an adult.

He has decades of experience in psychology and has helped countless people who’ve been harmed by religion.

“I’m guessing there are more people throughout history that have been traumatized by religion than any other single thing. Religion has built-in abuse.”

Links

Recovering From Religion
https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/

Secular Therapy Project
https://www.seculartherapy.org/

Books

#AmazonPaidLinks

Quotes

“Religion is a sexually transmitted desease.”

“Twelve years old, you couldn’t slow me down! I get to the top and I find sharks’ teeth on top of the damn mesa. I think, ‘Wow! That’s really crazy…how’d they get up there?’ And my aunt says, ‘Well, God put them there in the flood,’ and I thought…I know better than that.”

“I was very curious. You couldn’t give me enough to read!”

“I wasn’t even a member of the damn church, and they’d let me teach Sunday school! That’s kinda dangerous, you know?”

“It wasn’t that I was an atheist; it was that I came out as an atheist…The society will accept you as an atheist. Just keep your mouth shut; don’t tell anybody.”

“It was an explosion of emotion in that room, and it hit me hard: This is no gimmick; this is important…That was the first meeting of Recovering from Religion.”

“Families: That’s the way you infect people with religion. You do it through children…”

“I’m guessing there are more people throughout history that have been traumatized by religion than any other single thing. Religion has built-in abuse.”

“When you separate from religion, you’re losing, losing, losing, losing. You’re losing a lot of things…Every one of those losses produces grief.”

“All ideologies have within them the elements of a religion.”

“The leader [of a cult] is never restricted by the rules like everybody else is.”

Interact

Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!

Graceful Atheist Podcast Merch!
https://www.teepublic.com/user/gracefulatheistpodcast

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

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

Support the podcast
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
Paypal: paypal.me/gracefulatheist

Attribution

“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats

Transcript

NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.

David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios podcast. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Thank you to all the supporters of the podcast if you too would like an ad free experience of the podcast you can become a supporter at patreon.com/graceful atheist. If you're in the middle of doubt, deconstruction and the dark night of the soul, you do not have to do it alone. Join our private Facebook community deconversion anonymous and become a part of the community you can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion There is a merch shop at T public that Arline has set up you can get your graceful atheist and secular Grace themed products links will be in the show notes. We are off next week. We will be back on August 20. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. My guest today is Dr. Darrel Ray. Dr. Ray is the founder of both the recovering from religion and the secular therapy project. He has been a psychologist, the brunt of his career was in Organizational Psychology. He started recovering from religion by using meetup.com By asking the simple question, how has religion hurt you? People poured out their souls and made a connection. Since then he's written two best sellers, the god virus and sex and God. As you're about to hear Dr. Ray is a fascinating person and has done an amazing amount to impact the deconstruction deconversion community. Here is Dr. Darrel Ray to tell his story. Dr. Darrel Ray, welcome to the graceful atheists podcast.

Darrel Ray 2:06
Thanks. Good. Good to be here. David. excited to talk to you.

David Ames 2:11
Yeah, glad that we could finally make this work. I have been a fan of recovering from religion. And we recommend the secular therapy project about every other week. So glad to have that from the horse's mouth. So let's start just briefly with a bit of your bone a few days, maybe a bit about your resume you've written obviously a number of books and you've been a psychologist for many years could just tell us a bit about that.

Darrel Ray 2:36
Yeah, I've been a psychologist, I guess and for 40 years, kind of dates dates me there, doesn't it? Or Or I don't know, you know, depends on how you start counting. But somewhere around that amount I started out in counseling and then clinical psychology and then moved into organizational psychology so I've kind of had two two and a half careers in areas psychology and then and then I got into what I'm doing now and that is Yeah, and retire I'm supposedly retired but I look at all the work I do and think damn and nobody's paying me now.

David Ames 3:12
Yeah, but yeah,

Darrel Ray 3:13
I read a written a couple books, the god virus, which was continues to sell really well and sex sex and God on on how religion distorts sexuality. And those all come out of my clinical work that I've practiced off and on six therapy and coaching and and you know, basic clinical psychology testing and all that and I just saw patterns of behavior that seemed to be related to religion throughout my career and right and, you know, retirement or coming close to retirement gave me the opportunity to start thinking about new things because I wasn't running my own business, my own practice. Anyway, I got started in, in a secular community in the mid mid 2006 2007, I guess you could say it when I was ramping down my my practice and that during that time, I saw Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris Dennett, all those folks writing books, and I had I had read quite a bit before that. And it just dawned on me nobody's written anything on the psychology religion. I mean, Dawkins is a biologist Harris is kind of a neuro scientist, but he's not a psychologist. So that gave me the notion that I loved all those books. I mean, The God Delusion was groundbreaking as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. But I thought there needed to be something more accessible to the layperson on how the brain works, how religion

influences us, and and gets us to do things we wouldn't normally do. I mean,

for example, being a celibate priest or celibate nun in the Catholic Church, that's pretty. That's pretty strange behavior. If you think about it, yeah. So that all those things kind of came together. And, and I just feel it's time to do a brain dump. And, and I did starting in 2009. I just started writing and working. And then that led to what else we'll talk about a little bit later. And that's recovering from religion. Now.

David Ames 5:29
Before we get into your personal story, I just want to acknowledge that we had Rachel hunts on the podcast.

Darrel Ray 5:36
She has she is an amazing, she's on the board of directors. She's our director of support groups. She's amazing. Yeah, just

David Ames 5:43
really appreciated her. And then I think that's how you and I got in touch with each other. So thank you to Rachel for doing what she does as well. Yeah.

Darryl, I know you probably tell the story often but I'd very much like to hear we'd like to ask our guests what religious tradition or or or not Did you grew up with? And then kind of what is the story of the trajectory of your loss of faith?

Darrel Ray 6:12
Well, I was I was born into a Christian family, pretty conservative, not fundamentalist. At least at the time. It got worse later. But going back before it was born, my my relatives, my my grandfather, my uncle, lots of lots of religious people, lots of elders in the family, my great grandfather on my dad's side, my answer, my grandfather on my dad's side was country church preacher for 45 years. Other grandfather was an elder in the church, Sunday school teacher, my parents actually founded, they were church planters at one point time and founded two different churches. When I was young, I was in my early teens when they were founding those churches. So as you can tell, I was surrounded by by religion, but I was raised in an independent Christian tradition, which is kind of a it's camera light. If anybody knows the history of religion in America, it was is a mutation of Christianity that happened in the 1830s or so. You know, it was one of those, you know, we got to go back to the basics, go back to the Bible that all that bullshit. So yeah, I was raised in the camera light. They weren't real strong. Kimberlite theology wasn't very, very good. I didn't think and it went, okay. Yeah. And so I, I went through adolescence, early on, like when I was like, 12 years old, I was visiting my aunt and uncle in New Mexico with my family. And they were they were teachers and the principal of Bureau of Indian Affairs school in Gallup, close to Gallup, New Mexico. So I love going down there because it was wide open. You're right in the middle of the Navajo Indian Reservation, and I'm 12 years old, you know, that's just that's just a kid's dream. And behind him is this Mesa that's 500 feet above the valley floor. And I love mountain climbing to this day. I mean, I've climbed 50 the highest mountains in the continental US. So I still I'm gonna go out and climb another one here. Probably this summer. But I you know, if it's there, I want to climb

David Ames 8:26
it. Yeah.

Darrel Ray 8:28
12 years old, you know, you couldn't slow me down. I got the top and I'm looking around and and I find shark's teeth on the top of the dam mesa. And think wow, that's really crazy. Yeah, I come down. I show it to my aunt Margie, and my my mother. And I say, hey, look, shark's teeth on the top of the mesa. How'd they get up there? And he says, Well, God put them there in the flood. And I thought to myself, you know, unkind words in my head. I know. I'm pretty sure so from time I was 12 years old, I thought evolution was cool. I never bought the creation story. My, my grandfather's weren't too happy that they had a grandkid that didn't believe that God created the earth in six days and in 6000 years ago, so but but they didn't, didn't disown me or anything. And I grew up to be who I wanted to be. But I always wanted to help. I was very socially active. As I went through adolescence, very active in high school and various groups and I sang I sang in the choir. I was in the United Nations Model United Nations. I just did lots of very curious and I couldn't give me enough to read I can read read constantly, which is kind of unusual for adolescent boy, although I was chasing girls too. I'm not saying I was distracted. Sometimes

went to college at Friends University fu for short. Some people say it's Friends University of central Kansas, you'll I'll let you figure that. Anyway, it was a good school then it's since become an evangelical nightmare as far as I'm concerned. There's a good school I got some good education. I majored in sociology and anthropology, I would have actually kind of minored in anthropology. I had enough to be a major, but they didn't offer major. So I basically got a double major, but I couldn't claim it because they didn't offer it. But anthropology was a real big love of mine. I thought just it just captured my attention. I liked sociology. But that wasn't my first love, even though that's what my maths major was. But the end of my college degree, the I had a college deferment for the draft. So I was, I was, it was right in the middle of Vietnam War. And if you didn't get a deferment, you were going to be cannon fodder in Vietnam. And I had been from from my freshman year, I did something. I look back and say, Man, I, my 18 year old self was braver than I am now. I'll tell you, I basically stood up and said, I ain't gonna fight that war mom, I was not gonna go they're dead. They can put me in jail if they want to, they can sit and go to Canada. But I am not fighting. I am not fighting the Vietnam War. And I'm gonna file as a conscientious objector. So I did. I was discouraged. Of course, everybody thought I was horrible, you're not patriotic and a true American for one to go kill people in another country that didn't do anything to us. And I I, they said I won't get it that I'll probably end up in jail. I mean, they did everything you know, to stop me but I was successful. I got I got a I got a for what they call a conscious objector status or whatever. And I was out there protesting the Vietnam War of protest and Richard Nixon of protest, and Linda Johnson and I was protesting, Bureau Agnew. All the people I was out there protesting. And, and even working a little bit at that time in civil rights, but main thing I got was a little part time job. I don't know where the money came from. But it was pitiful money, I got a part time job to get in my car and drive around to all the Kansas, all the little Kansas colleges and handout anti war information and material and organize, you know, try to get people to come to our I wouldn't organizing come to our organized meetings and protests. So it was pretty politically active. And then when I, when I got out of college, the war was starting to wind down but there's draft was still there. And I had this incredible desire, I've always had a desire to help people. It's just, it's just part of my nature i I've since learned to just accept it, you know, I'm going to help you with it. I'm not going to help you against their will. But I the only avenue I could see that to help somebody or help be a helping professional was to go in the ministry, I really didn't understand. I took one psychology class in college, they didn't even have a psychology department and Friends University. That's how that's how small university was. So it wasn't like I thought, oh, psychology would be a good way. I didn't even think of that. I went to seminary, and I looked around for a seminary, that would was so had a social justice component to it. Because I wanted to I wanted to, I didn't want to preach in the traditional sense. I wanted to get out and get my hands dirty and work with people and, you know, engage in civil rights work or political work within the church. And so I got it to I went to skaret college for Christian workers. It's not a it's not existence anymore. At the campuses, it's right across the street from Vanderbilt University and in Nashville. But I went to scared I got a two years degree in religion, with the goal of getting out and going and working and some kind of social justice or civil rights thing within the confines of the church. Which, after two years, I realized the whole religion things kind of bullshit. I didn't think much of it. I was still a liberal Christian, very liberal, Christian. Yeah. But I started realizing this isn't what I want to do. So what am I going to do? So I went to I went across the street to Vanderbilt University where they had the Counseling Center and I, I took some, some tests, you know, occupational tests and career tests. And they said I should be the test showed I should be the lawyer or a psychologist. So I said, I'm too honest to be a lawyer. You must be a psychologist, at least in my mind up to honest. Yeah. So I went to psychology route I accidentally. I didn't even intend to but I got a job through a mutual friend of mine at an institution for juvenile juvenile rehabilitation for juvenile delinquents. And I, I went there and I realized who I really really liked this and I'm pretty good at it to at least what at that level I was pretty good at it, I guess

so after about six months of that, I just said, Well, I'm gonna apply back at Vanderbilt Peabody College, people in the College of Vanderbilt University and for for doctoral doctoral program. And, and I did, and I got in, and, well, I had a lot of fun. I was working full time, my wife and I were about ready to have a baby and I was going to school full time in a doctoral program. I look back now and say, I couldn't do one of those three levels. But it was it was it it just, it just felt right. You know, I, the classes I was taking the professor's I was encountering the research that I was able to get involved with, it was just really cool. And that that gave me a nice boost into a career of lifelong career of psychology. But what I learned, one of the things I learned in my doctoral level studies is I get bored with one thing I've always got to be, you know, I like lots of variety. And Counseling Psychology wasn't really that interesting to me. So I didn't stay on that route long. I moved on into clinical psych, where I was doing a lot of testing and other things, getting some good training, and also getting the opportunity to train other people and and I learned at that time that I'm, I'm a good trainer, I can teach people. Yeah, and I really enjoyed teaching people. But I was a terrible psychologist. On Monday, I was the best psychologist on the planet. On Tuesday, I was a damn good one. But by Wednesday, I was average and you didn't want to get me on Thursday and Friday. So after a while I realized this is not for me, you know, it takes a special person to see patients five days a week I I just I never had the energy, not that kind of energy. And my mind was always going somewhere else. Well, if you're in an office with me, you don't want my mind somewhere else to be listened to. Yeah, so that led me into organizational psych because I'm good at organising, organizing, I'm good at helping structure organization. So they function well I understand the human human factor. And that's ultimately I ended up in or design org site. After about 10 years and clinical and I I loved org psych It was so fun. And I was interacting with VPs of fortune 500 companies I was flying all over the world I had a really good career. Very rewarding. But in the back of my mind the whole time I'm I'm looking at you know, I'm reading stuff I'm looking at religion. I'm watched what the Freedom From Religion Foundation is doing. And I'm looking at the abortion issue. I'm looking at the read the religious right, what they're doing with Jerry Falwell in their early 80s. And it's not sitting well with me. And I think you know, I'd really like it someday I need to do I want to do something like that, or about that. So that's kind of, I guess you could say the big picture into into where I ended up and why I ended up here.

David Ames 19:00
You mentioned that you were a liberal Christian for some time. Was there a moment when you decided that it was you weren't that either that you were done anytime you well?

Darrel Ray 19:07
Yeah, I'm starting. I graduated in 1974 from seminary and my I was married. My wife and I were living in Nashville and we kind of had an agreement she was raised in a fundamentalist her parents were even more fundamentalist, and they were in the same denomination but even more fundamentalist, and she and I had an agreement that we would just find the most liberal church we she wanted to always be in church always want to be going to church somewhere. So okay, I can deal with that. Although I'd rather sleep in on Sunday. But she I did that I was compromising. But I also liked teaching, you know this so this comes back to right make sense. I would go to church and no matter what church we went to, I would end up teaching Sunday school. Yeah, I wouldn't even remember the damn church.

But you know what they're desperate to find somebody to teach. And I taught. Well, when I was in, in college, I was teaching the senior high kids Sunday school. Can you imagine me teaching kids about evolution? I was, I was teaching evolution. When I was a sophomore, junior suborn junior in college. I was teaching evolution in Sunday School at my home church. Wow, okay, yeah. And I got away with it. I will tell you that, Oh, God could have created the world in 6 million years or 6000 years, you know, you take a mad angle, you know, and get away with it. So I experimented with that. And I really enjoyed it. And then when I've gotten married, and we moved to Nashville, I had the opportunity to teach Sunday school again there. And then when I moved back to Kansas, where I live now, my wife and I moved back here. We found the most liberal church we could find in Leavenworth, Kansas, which is hard to do, because it's pretty, it's a military, kinda. Okay. You know, the commander, General Staff College is here with the US Army. So it's pretty conservative area. We went to the Presbyterian church and they were desperate for somebody to teach the adult Sunday school class. So I volunteered to teach it i I'm, I'm not even not a Presbyterian. Right, exactly. I call myself a Quaker atheist. That's what I call myself today. Yeah, yeah. So I was, I started teaching the the adult class, they might get four or five people to show up for Sunday school. On any given Sunday, it was it was a dead class, basically. So I take over and within a month, I'm getting 30 and 40 people come to my class. Well, the room was too small to move me into a room that would hold 100 people. I never I never drew 100. But I was drawn 50 to 60. Because I was I was bringing interesting things in like mostly things like comparative religion. So let's compare Christianity Hinduism. Let's find out about Sikhism. Let's find out what the Baja behind religion is. And they were just eating this shit up. These are these are inquisitive adults, there had never learned a thing when they went to church. That's why they weren't coming. But when I started teaching, I was and I was having a blast because then I'd leave the Sunday school class and I'd go sing as a tenor soloist and the choir just let you know. And I was a, I was a good singer. I was even gonna major and in voice in college, but I was terrible at music theory. So I had to give up a career. I saying for years, so that the answer the question was, I was married, my wife wanted to go to church, I'm surrounded by religious family. We're going to a liberal church that I really only reason I was enjoying us because I'm teaching and then marital problems happen. And after almost 18 years of marriage, we get divorced. Well, to me, that was like a Declaration of Independence. I no longer have to compromise. I don't have to get up and Sunday morning. I can I can go and do things that my ex in laws would be terrified at. Go look campaign for, for Jimmy Carter, you know, or something like that.

David Ames 23:29
Yeah.

Darrel Ray 23:30
Which, which wouldn't have been Jimmy Carter at that time, it was Michael Dukakis. Anyway, yeah. I got to remember my president's here. That was the issue. It was it was that break from, from family break from her family specifically. Because my family always knew I was the weirdo. I'm the black sheep in the family. I'm the oldest child. And, you know, I know a lot of privilege comes with being the oldest kid, you know, there's other things, you know, like she had to do babysitting that I didn't like doing but beyond that, you know, the first kid got to get some privileged position. And I was able to leverage that to my advantage. And I really, I really enjoyed my childhood and I and what's back to back to why I got up. I really started reading more deeply once I got away from the marriage. And don't get me wrong. It was it was a miracle marriage. We we actually use the mediator we didn't we didn't go through divorce lawyers or anything. And we're still friends today. We've got two great kids and you know, there's no animosity or anything. They're just, you know, separating from her family. Was, was a really good step step for me. And it gave me the opportunity to read and interact and not go to church and, boy, I'll tell you It was like decompression it was fresh air i, I can interact with people I wouldn't have normally interacted with I could travel. My wife didn't like traveling. And I love traveling. And I've been I have literally been all over most of the world since then. Yeah, I'd never I'd never hardly been I'd never been on the I'd stage before I got divorced. So now I'm traveling, took my first trip to Europe in 1989. And then now the country almost every, every year at least once, except during COVID. Of course.

David Ames 25:34
Yeah, yeah.

Darrel Ray 25:44
Don't know that there was a single break. But I was. I was agnostic, I would call myself for a long time, until I started dating, my travel companion. And 2001 And we're on a plane to Ireland. We're going to go visit Ireland. And she says, I'm sorry, we're on a plane to to England. And she's reading my manuscript. The God bears. Yeah. And I have everything but I'm an atheist. Yeah, everything but name. But remember, I'm still a psychologist. I still have a practice, right? 2001 or 2000? And no, no, I'm sorry. She's reading an article. No, not this book is but Caitlin. And she recently, she's on the plane, she looks up at him and said, Darryl, you're an atheist. You need to sit or get off the pot. She had been an atheist her whole life, you know, so I said, you're absolutely right, Judy. So I'm gonna stop pretending I'm definitely an atheist. This is 2000 2001, somewhere in around that timeframe. And the fact was that I still couldn't say out loud, I'm an atheist, because I'm in a work environment. I'm a I'm a consultant. I'm interacting with religious people. And I just didn't couldn't take the risk. You know, I'm a, I'm an independent businessman. My whole business depends on and nobody asked me my religion. It wasn't a part of, of what I did. Until Until the god virus came out. In 2009, when when I was writing that I gave, I told my staff, I'm writing this book, I had five staff members. And my office manager turned white and said, Darryl, we're going to lose clients over this. Yeah. And I said, Well, you know, I need to do it. It's just, it's just in my blood, I can't, can't avoid it. And she was right. I lost all but two clients within six months. Wow, clients that I've worked with for 20 years, clients that have known me, trusted me, took my advice worked on me closely paid me lots of money. I mean, but just, it wasn't that I was an atheist, it was that I came out as an atheist.

David Ames 27:59
Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Darrel Ray 28:02
So it was it was crazy. I learned a big lesson then, that this society will tolerate you as an atheist, just keep your mouth shut, you know, don't don't tell anybody. And that's kind of the way I've heard from many people and talking about it's being it is one thing talking about another thing.

David Ames 28:21
I think there's a bunch of things there that people will relate to. And that's one of them is like, you know, the the fear of social ostracization in one form or another and particularly if your business is dependent upon it

so I want to hear about the the beginnings of recovering from religion, I understand that you basically did a meetup.com K come hang out. And that that kind of exploded into what we what we now have as recovering from religion.

Darrel Ray 28:55
Yeah, I announced this, I was just after the god virus came out, I was getting constantly inundated with people saying I love your book, but I need help. I couldn't possibly help all these people. And, and I wanted to obviously, that's why wouldn't written the book if I didn't. So I just decided, let me try something. My I will confess, though, that it was a bit selfish, the beginning of this. I had a publicist, he was pretty much worthless to cost a lot of money didn't do anything, except one thing. In the process of trying to publicize the god virus he, he says, why don't you start an organization called recovering from religion and use that to sell your book? I thought, well, that's an interesting idea. So I decided to do that I announced it on meetup.com was fairly new at that time, announced calm, had a had the meeting at Lowell back back room of an IHOP restaurant here in town and and 11 people showed up and I only knew one of those 11 people and after Two or three hours, the restaurant owner is kicking us out. He's closing the room. Yeah. During that time I had people weeping and crying and telling their stories and hugging each other. It was it was. I'm a good group facilitator, I know how to do group therapy. I mean, I got that training and way back in graduate school. And this was like group therapy. But I wasn't being a psychologist. I was just facilitating a meeting. And I only asked two questions. I said, How did religion hurt you? And how did how have you benefited from leaving? It's all I said. And the rest of it was just making sure everybody gets to tell their story. And I'll tell you, David, it was an explosion of emotion in that room. And it hit me hard. As I was walking out, this is no gimmick. This is this is important. It's something people need. And I had no idea that need was so great. And that was the first meeting of recovering from religion. We then had another meeting a couple of weeks later, same thing happened. And we're getting ex Moonies ex Scientologists, ex Mormons, ex Baptists, will get all sorts of people showing up. Ex Catholics was a second meeting. We had these two older gentlemen show up there. They're both in there. They're both in their 70s. Late one of them I know was almost 80 years old. And both of them are musicians. They're they're played the organ. And church. One plays in the Catholic for the Catholic Church, the other plays for some Protestant church. And they're both gay. Yeah, and they're sitting in the meeting. And I'm just assuming, because they sat, they sat next to each other to, I'm just assuming they know each other. Yeah. They didn't know each other. They had no clue. And they show up and they just accidentally sat next to each other probably because they're, you know, both older white guys. And it turns out, they're both gay. They're both musicians in church, and their church would throw them out in a heartbeat if they found out that Yeah, okay. And they're now atheists.

David Ames 32:13
It's all it's all your fault, Darrell.

Darrel Ray 32:16
That was, that was a crazy meeting. Really crazy. But so that was the beginning. And it took off took three or four years for us to get our nonprofit status and really get the organizational structure the way it needed to be not like I said, I'm, I know how to organize I know how to create businesses. So I just took my skills in that area and applied them to this, this organization. And I got bylaws and incorporation and all that sort of stuff. And it started growing and ideas were starting to come in. And before you know it, the idea comes in, we should have a phone line. Not just have not just have meetings or meet up but have a phone line. So we gathered some money together and got got some GoFundMe to do that. And we got a phone line started. And then not long after that. Somebody said, why don't we start taking chances? Good. Not everybody can call in plus, we were getting inquiries from overseas from outside the continental United States. Yeah. So we, we started doing the chat thing. And these things just organically started growing. I cannot possibly do all this stuff. And I don't have the technical expertise, but I know how to facilitate it. And as we got volunteers with various skills, they would say, Yeah, I can do that. Or, you know, I know somebody can do that. And then the next thing was to really develop our training program and and start start trying to understand what, what what's possible for us to do and what, you know what, out of our reach that point in time. And in 2012 the issue of sex, I mean, the first printing of sex and God came out and that caused another tidal wave of need. People are calling me and you know, I need help. I appreciate your book. I'm gay. You know, I'm, quote, sex addict, which there's no such thing by the way, I just don't want to rant about that. And I'm trying to help all these people and I, they say I need a therapist, you know, every therapist to go to called me a sex addict. Every therapist I go to says that I need to go back to church or I need to pray about it or, you know, I violated God's law or some bullshit. I'm thinking therapists shouldn't be doing that. That's unethical as hell until I started trying to find a therapist for people. And I couldn't. I mean, I'm a damn psychologist. I should be able to know the signs but you can get on a therapist website, look at everything they've got, and still not know if they're going to send you back to Jesus or they'll have a cross around their neck or they have a Bible They're on their table. So that led me to start the secular therapy project and not any 2012. We started with 24. Therapists I personally vetted, I knew they were secular, I knew their evidence base, I knew they were licensed. And in 12 years since we started 11 years, since we started, I'm sorry, we've now got 734 registered therapists, and every therapist has been vetted, to make sure they meet those three criteria. And we turned down about 30 to 40% of all applicants, because they don't qualify. I mean, we take this shit seriously. The worst thing that could happen is one of their art therapists would practice woowoo on you or say, you know, you need more spiritual guidance, or, you know, some bullshit that comes out of their own religious worldview. So we pretty much that all of our therapists to make sure there's none of that going to happen. And we're very strict about it. So anyway, so that's the story of both recovering for religion and secular therapy project.

David Ames 36:11
Yeah, very cool. And again, we, you know, at the podcasts were recommended all the time, we're very pro therapy to begin with. And then we referenced people to psychotherapy project, as many, many people tell their stories, and they'll say just what you've described, they went to a therapist, maybe even their website was unclear, but then they get, you know, you have to read your Bible more. And that just isn't an answer to the real world problems they're experiencing.

Darrel Ray 36:35
Well, and that After that happened, I started getting more information about how these are various institutions. Universities, if you will, or training therapists. And I realized that there's been an explosion of universities that are training marriage and family counselors. And most of those institutions are religious institutions. And they're given people master's degrees in marriage and family counseling from Regents University, or George Fox University, or Liberty University, those are all fucking fundamentalist as hell. So what do you what do you really learning in those institutions? What you're really learning is a few techniques that might be psychologically sound, but mostly, how do you bring people back to Jesus? Or how do you Eddie, because families, that's the way you infect people with religion, you do it through children. So that's why the emphasis in so many institutions, religious institutions of higher learning, has been on marriage and family counseling. It's a lot easier set that up. And you know, a lot of people are wanting to come they want to help children and help families and they also believe in Jesus. So, I have been so shocked sometimes at for example, pH, you can get a PhD at you get a PhD at Regents University, which is Pat Robertson's University. Okay. And you will go, one of the requirements is you have to go through a year of pat robertson theology that says God sends hurricanes to Orlando because Okay, so you got a PhD from the University that teaches that shit. And what I mean, that's just, that's just so unethical. And yet, they got a PhD. They are licensed in the state of their residence maybe. So we're challenging that we're starting to try and challenge that and our, our current director, Dr. Travis force. McKee, bourse is actually making speeches around the show. He's done it once. He had to cancel yesterday, this weekend, but he's making talks about religious privilege in therapy. And that's crazy. Why would religion be privileged in therapy? And I did a you can go look this up. I did a talk at the last year at the conference on religious trauma on whiteness, professional psychology ignore religion, religious trauma, religious abuse, and there's a there's a lot of implied training within many adversities that you don't touch people's religion, even though that religion may have caused the abuse or the trauma that you're trying to treat. How the hell do you do that? How do you treat religious trauma without talking about religion? Anyway? So that's, that's where I'm at right now in my career. I'm really push on religious trauma

David Ames 39:58
that's a great segue. That's what I got. I want to talk about next just the a bit about the psychology of religion and, and, or the deconstruction process, the conversion process. But as a jumping off point, you're describing the god viruses, it's almost like a transmission vector. Religion is going through families, as you just mentioned, generally indoctrination and childhood. My experience, you know, I became a Christian, my late teens already had very much a sense of identity already. And what I've been shocked at as I've interviewed people is, how devastating it is for those of those people who grew up with it. Right? Like, yeah, right, five years old, you're, you know, you're right and center, you're going to hell if you don't do X, Y, and Z. And that stays with a person. Right? Maybe if you could talk about a little bit about your understanding from that perspective.

Darrel Ray 40:50
Yes, and I think this is, it's a lot of new information has just come out in, let's say, the last five or 10 years, about things like trauma. And I'm not talking to religious Trump, just Trump trauma in general, and how to treat it, how trauma affects the brain, that sort of stuff. And there's other information. I just, I think, what we're doing what I'm doing, and what my colleagues within regard for religion and the psychotherapy project are doing is we're, we're taking this research that's being applied to, you know, people who were abused by their childhood, or somebody who's, you know, think of a refugee coming from Syria right now, a 10 year old kid from Syria is probably experiencing trauma, or a soldier, or a family member in Ukraine, they're experiencing trauma. So those are all traumas that we can, we can put our finger on we understand much more lately, what that means and how to treat it and why it why it's so hard to treat in some cases. But nobody said, Okay, let's look at this. How many people have been traumatized by war? How many people have been traumatized by non religious child abuse? I mean, there's been a lot for sure. But I'm guessing there's more people throughout history been abused by religion than any other single thing. I mean, religion has built in abuse, look at the Catholic Church, pedophile problem, are the Jehovah's Witness, sexual abuse problem, there, there's just so much of it out there that's been covered up never been examined. until relatively recently. And that is, that's where we're at. We're saying, let's look at all this. And then there's, we see in recovering religion, we see this just just difficult emotional journey that people have. And their, their tendency to be drawn back into religion, or they leave religion and they still can't get over the fear of hell. Or they leave religion and they lose their whole family. So they lose the connection there. So there's a lot going on there. It's not a simple psychological formula. It's, it's a massive amount of emotional complexity. And it's, if you think about it, when you separate from religion, you're losing, losing, losing, losing, you're losing a lot of things you're losing, you might lose parents, you might lose your own kids, you might lose your marriage, you might lose your job. I mean, there's a lot of possibilities there. Every one of those losses evokes grief. So you've got a complex pattern of grief to have to deal with. It's hard enough to get over one thing that you're grieving over, let alone something as massive and big as this incredibly big worldview change you're going through. And then there's another piece that I think is interesting that we've been talking about lately. And that's attachment theory. You know, as we know, people, people, we have attachment systems in our brain. And they're, they're very important for our survival as a species. Because our infants are so immature. It takes years for human infant to become self sufficient. And I'm not talking now I'm talking about 10,000 years ago, we were still hunter gatherers. You still You can't let a five year old just go you'll get eaten by lions. Yeah. Yeah. So you have to be careful how you raise children. And those children better be bonded to you better better have a close attachment. Because the best guarantee of survival is attachment to the parent that can protect you and teach you how to survive in this dangerous world. Whether the dangerous world is Van is of Africa, or the jungles of New York City. I mean, it doesn't matter. There's danger out there. And that attachment is important. So we have very strong attachments as humans, to other humans. And we know this from a very, very old and unethical experiments, for example, the Harry Harlow experiments on monkeys back in the back in the 60s, which today are totally unethical, but, but they were done. And we know that that attachment is so important to the baby monkey, the baby monkeys will fail to thrive, they will literally die from lack of attention. And then there's other experiments like the Romanian orphanage crisis that happened after or late in the Ceausescu's dictatorship back in the 70s. And we have the same thing happening to human infants, they're getting plenty of food, they're getting nutrition, nutrients, they're not getting attention, they're not getting human contact, and they're dying, or growing up with incredibly bad, difficult mental health issues. Well, what we're seeing in religious deconversion, is they're having to deal with that detachment. Yeah, there's, that attachment is strong. And most of us stay attached to our family are appearance the rest of our lives. Most of us, not all of us by longshot but but then what if I have to tear that attachment off? My brain is going to go through some cycles, a lot of cycles, about how do I reconnect with appearance? How do I tell my parents, I'm an atheist? How do I do this or that, and all these things have consequences for the attachment. And what we understand better now is that this incredibly difficult time people have leaving religion is tied up with the grief and loss of all these things, but also tied up in attachment. And how to I mean, it's a big step to, to step totally away from your parents, because that's where the original attachment was, yeah, or to be rejected by your parents. And so it takes a huge amount of effort, psychological energy, emotional energy, to make that step. And it requires help, most people have a hard time doing it by themselves. Yeah. Especially they're raised in an environment where they were gaslighted say, are really abused as children. Because as we know, an abused child still has a very strong attachment. It may be an unhealthy attachment. But there's still attachments still there. So a lot of what we do at recovering from religion and secular therapy project is simply helping people deal with their, I call it detachment.

David Ames 48:05
Yeah, exactly. So I love that framing actually, and I again, I know that listeners are going to respond to that or see themselves in that.

Darrel Ray 48:15
Yep, yep. So let's just call it detachment syndrome. Yeah. And it's a part of religious trauma syndrome, of course, but it's deed. Yeah. Yeah.

David Ames 48:34
So it's interesting you say that, because I've heard you say in the past, that you agree that religious trauma exists, but you at one point in time, said you didn't think that religious trauma syndrome. Oh,

Darrel Ray 48:46
yeah. My my mistake. I don't usually word you add the word syndrome. Yeah. Yeah, I still don't it. Could

David Ames 48:54
you explain this? Yeah, for

Darrel Ray 48:58
a technicality. I don't think the layperson really cares. Okay. But it's, if you have a disease, there's there's a, there's a pattern of symptoms. I'm talking about physical disease, right? There's a pattern of symptoms that tell you what that disease is, you know, if you got measles, there's probably four or five things that are observable and testable. That will tell you it's measles. The same thing is true of psychological conditions as well mental mental conditions. So you need to you need to be able to determine what those symptoms are with some degree of accuracy and independent, objective observation in order to say okay, we have a cluster of symptoms here, and the cluster adds up to religious trauma syndrome. A syndrome is a cluster of symptoms, it's all okay, so, I don't think we're scientifically at the place where we can say we have a cluster a syndrome with We don't have a cluster of symptoms. Now, I do think and Dr. Merlin Waddell, and I kind of disagree a little bit on this, although I'm a great admirer of of her work back and she coined the term religious trauma. I think someday we may be there. But you know, it doesn't really matter. Doesn't really matter if we ever call it syndrome or not. Okay, because we have a, we have a set of criteria within the DSM that helps us understand and identify trauma, just trauma, without respect to religion. Right? Right. And if you have those symptoms, you have trauma, you have a trauma syndrome, you have a cluster of symptoms that fit the diagnosis of trauma. Now, where that trauma comes from, it could come from childhood abuse, gum from a bomb going off in a war, it could be being a refugee that, you know, has, has had periods of starvation. And all those things could cause trauma, or it could come from, from the terror that happens, you know, having people shooting guns around you in a war, or it could be the terror of being told you're going to hell every day. And that Satan is Satan is speaking to you when you touch your genitals and masturbate or whatever, you know. Yeah, yeah. So I don't care which one of those you choose, they all lead to trauma. So we don't need religious trauma syndrome, we just need to understand what trauma is. And then we might, if we really want to get help the person, we're going to have to understand where that trauma came from. And if it came from religion, then we need to label that as religious trauma. Whether it's, you know, you don't need to go any farther than that.

David Ames 51:57
Yeah. Okay. I appreciate that clarity there. So.

I've been kind of waiting to get here. So you know, your second book is sex and God. And you also did the sex and sexuality podcast, a massive theme. The people that get interviewed is the effect of purity culture, on their sexuality as adults, even as D converts, maybe talk a little bit about what effect that has on a person and the repression of normal human sexuality.

Darrel Ray 52:36
Yeah. Well, we can almost go right back to the attachment piece. Because if you think about it, the first human being you're attached to is probably your mother, the second one, maybe your father or another close caregiver. When you become an adult, those that attachment approach, you take into adulthood, because I mean, what is what is marriage, but some kind of attachment. But if you if you're going into if you're going into adulthood, with a messed up attachment system in your mind in your brain, then you don't know how to attach to other people? Well, what religion does is religion comes along in your early teens, and tells you your body is your enemy. normal sexual behavior, is the devil talking to you that you shouldn't have thoughts that, you know, you shouldn't have sexual thoughts. So we've got the religious thought police involved. Yeah. And all these things are, are oppressing you and confusing your mind about how to view your own body, and how to view other people's bodies. How to have a relationship with another human being with a body that and then what if you're gay? You know, what if you are LGBTQ? What if you're trans, you're getting incredibly mixed messages here. They're just incredibly confusing. So is it any wonder that that people have a hard time creating healthy attachments, sexual attachments, because they had such a terrible model in their teens? And if they're raised religious, their own parents also were infected with this purity idea. I mean, I my own family is a perfect example of this. My grandmother got married to Amanda main Thompson, and somewhere around 9029 She got pregnant. She had my father 1928 My father was then born in 1929. She was a flapper. She was a wild girl. She was out there dancing every every night. Yeah. Now, of course she never she would admit to it only only marginally. You couldn't get her to say too much there. Are she has My dad. And by by the time my dad was 10 months old, and the timeframe is as unclear because there was no documentation. Yeah, by the time that my dad is 10 months old, the census, the US Census 9030 shows my grandmother living with a guy named Ray.

David Ames 55:20
Okay, so she was

Darrel Ray 55:23
married to Thompson, there's no divorce records. And now and and oh, by the way, the US census in 1930 says, my grandmother Pearl Ray is living with a guy named Thompson. So the record shows she's living with Thompson and she's living with Ray It's okay if she wants to be polyamorous, I don't get the way she looked at it. And she was so ashamed of that little fact that we didn't find out. We didn't find out about this till much, much later after she was dead. She basically lied to us her whole life about about the fact that she may have had a baby quote out of wedlock. We're not sure. We're not sure about the timeline here. And then and then she is there's a divorce paper. The divorce papers show up in 1941. Now this is 11 years after she had moved out. Yeah, so she's been living with my grandfather and sin for 11. Okay, that's, that's purity culture. At at its best or worst. I don't know what you call it. Yeah. And then she she gets religion around 1941 or two Big time, big time. Religion. I don't know what caused it. But she be she goes, dives, takes a deep dive into Jesus. My grandfather becomes Ray, my grandfather raised the old grandfather knew him but he's not my genetic grandfather, he, he becomes a preacher and a Sunday school teacher and all this may really get into religion and my grandmother decides that my dad needs to get circumcised because it's okay. Because that's the Christian thing to do. Circumcision was never practiced in the United States until about 1890. It started. It had never been practice. I did not have that. Okay. Yeah, it's a it's a fundamentalist Kellogg, Kellogg cereal. Ah, Dr. Kellogg started the notion that boys shouldn't masturbate that masturbation leads to mental illness. And one way to reduce or eliminate masturbation is to circumcise boys. So in the 1890s 19, early 1900s, he started this campaign, forcing boys to get circumcised and shaming parents into it and saying, Look, Jesus, Jesus intended us all to be circumcised. And was it was a religious notion. He was a he was he may have never had sex his whole life. We're not sure he was married, but he never had kids. And he was too busy shaming everybody else. And he belonged to a sect of Christianity. That was pretty weird. I think Seventh Day Adventists are some derivative of that I forget. But anyway, remember Dr. Kellogg of Kellogg's cereals? The one that fucked a lot of men up? Yeah. A lot of us.

David Ames 58:23
Yeah. I have some words for him as well. Yeah. And so

Darrel Ray 58:29
my grandmother forces my dad at 12 year olds 12 year old to get circumcised without anesthesia. Oh my Wow, that that is purity culture. Yeah, as extreme if you think about it. Muslims do that now to boys and girls. Many many all Muslim culture, do it to boys that many several do it to girls with no anesthesia at 12 years old. You just read all these. Her book about Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book. You'll you'll hear the worst of it. But so my dad experienced this. And then I watch. You know, as his son, my parents son, I get access to information about them or know things and my mom always wanted to confide shipped to me, she probably shouldn't have. Like, I was like a psychologist in the family when I'm a good listener. And I find out I find this all out and my mom says this really messed up your dad. He has a hard time with sex. He loves sex. I know that but they did not have a good sex life for years. But, but partly because of this. And in fact, it took my grandmother dying. They their sex life did not really get good until after my grandmother died. I think something like that had a cathartic effect on him and he was able to move on. So I just look at my own family and look at what did purity culture do to my family and it And I've only got I've only gotten up to my father's generation. Yeah, the rest. I mean, I got so many more examples in my generation and then sub two more generations, I mean, old enough to have two generations now. And I'm watching the religious trauma still work its way out. I'll give you an example. A relative of mine had had a baby, quote, baby out of wedlock. I hate I hate that term. But that's the term they use back then. Sure. So she was shamed for having this baby before she got married. She did get married. But when the baby was born, it had a birth defect, a serious birth defect, okay. And it's she believed this purity culture at work, that God was punishing her and her baby for her having sex outside of marriage, man. Now, that was that would have been the next generation beyond me. Yeah. And that person has now grown up. Oh, and throughout this poor, poor person's early life, they were abused, because God was punishing him. Oh, man, you know, there's a lot of child abuse going on here. So much so that other relatives had to take the child because the mother was not capable or was abusive. Now that child has grown up, that child has had other children, and the same thing is being perpetuated by them. So this is you got Greta 1929 through to today. And you can see a pattern of religious sexual abuse and purity culture. Through what what how much is that? 8090? Yeah, well, that's that's a long time. It's 90 years of, of trauma in one in one family. And I'm sure my family is not unusual at all.

David Ames 1:01:55
Wow, I really appreciate giving us the personal perspective on that. That was that was really, really valuable.

Last topic, you hinted at it and talking about Catholic priests who are nuns who are celibate. But I've heard you talk about the connection too hard, right? Like the proud boys, for some reason, there's this purity element within what are not obviously religious ideologies. And maybe we could talk about how that happened and why maybe,

Darrel Ray 1:02:33
wow, okay, that's okay, wow, that's a whole nother two we got three more hours. I will just say that, to begin with all ideologies, have within them the elements of a religion. It doesn't matter. If you read my book, The God virus, I talked about communism as a religion. I mean, you look at Russia, Lenin is in a tomb, as if he's immortal. You know, the pharaohs were immortalized as gods. Well, same thing. They immortalized Lenin as a god you look at North Korea. Kim Jong Hoon, or Kim Jong Il Kim was one of those camps, yes. Now is now he's president for eternity. I mean, that's their word. Right? He'd been dead for, what 3040 years, and he's still president, there will never be another president as far as they're concerned. So those are religious ideas from what appears to be a secular ideology. And how many ideologies I mean, Nazism was an ideology, but it had incredible amounts of religious overtones to it. And wasn't Hitler really godlike in in the minds of the of those people. And if you look at things like the ideology that Putin is trying to espouse in Russia to justify the imperialistic Tsar czarist kind of expansion, it looks like the religion of nationalism, just like the religious right is looking at etiology of Christian nationalism. It these, these ideologies are remarkably similar because because the brain works the same whether you're a Russian, you're an Egyptian pharaoh, or you're, you know, you're a, Jerry Falwell, the human brain has these has these tendencies and there's openings in the brain for what it needs to absorb to survive, right? And in religions just come along, says, Oh, we could take advantage of that. Religion. To use the metaphor is a virus just like I said in the book. So etiologies are simply a virus, just like Any other any other biological virus the virus of Christianity wants to get from, from my brain to your brain. Now the most effective way to do that is to go through children is to brainwash indoctrinate children, that's the most effective. But you know, you got to Jehovah's Witnesses that knock on your door, when they're knocking on your door, they're trying to sneeze on you. Right? And the same thing for Mormons, they're trying to sneeze on you. They're trying to give you their god virus. Yeah, well, you so no matter whether you call it the proud boys, you know, or you call it, the Nazi you Hitler's youth, it doesn't matter. It's an etiology that's infected the brain. That gives a sense of longing, comfort and attachment. And I don't think I don't want to overemphasize it. But I also want to emphasize enough that we should, we should start acknowledging that attachment is a component of what what etiologies bring. They give me a sense of security. That's what that's what you're seeking as a child is what you're attaching to your caregiver is you want that security, so you can survive? Well, at all just come along, says we have the answer to surviving in this environment. And once you get infected with it, your rational brain is much weaker than this. I mean, it's so weak. Yeah, it takes a lot of effort to rationally work yourself out of these. So there's a lot of purity culture in, in things like the in cells or the proud boys. There's a lot of purity culture going on there because they've discovered the same thing that religions discovered. I don't quote Richard Nixon often, but this is one of the times I think he's, he's correct here. If you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. It's if you've got them by their genitals, if they've got if you've got them by their sexuality, they will follow and that's what all these ideologies are doing. If you look at Russian communism, it was incredibly sexually repressive. If you look at Chinese communism, from the very beginning, it has been incredibly sexually repressive, even though Nazi dung had many, many girlfriends concubines, wives, whatever he had. Of course, it never belongs to the leader of the cult. The cult is not restricted by these rules, but everybody else is Communist China. Etiology is sexually sexually negative Russian, communist ideologists, actually negative proud boys a sexually negative it's, it's because sexuality is so important to us. If you can control a person's sexuality, you got him, they cannot get away. And then if you if you create fear around that sexuality, and terror of my own body, or terror that I might, for example, if if whatever the ideology is says, gays are the enemy, and I'm gay, I'm gonna have to look extra macho, I'm probably gonna have to do things to show that I'm worthy of the cult leader. And so you get gay Republicans in Congress, you know, they're outright or gay fundamentalist ministers doing crazy shit, but it's just a psychological pattern. I've seen it time after time or time whether you call it religion or ideology, they use the same techniques.

David Ames 1:08:46
I think that's actually a profound insight that if you have their sexuality that you basically have their minds and hearts as well. So yeah,

Darrel Ray 1:08:54
yeah. And Richard Nixon of all people. If you look at there's a documentary things called Wild Wild West it's about a guru from India that comes to Portland, Oregon or Oregon, I think it was and I've watched the documentary yet. It's like a classic study and all this shit. Yeah, it was it was incredibly sexually there. His cult was sexually restrictive. Yeah, he's grown. A whole bunch of women. And it's a look or look at the Waco Texas, you know, the brand's videos. He he had 20 or 30 Look at the Mormons Joseph Smith. 38 wise Brigham Young 54 wives or 52 wives who knows they lost count. So the cult leader is not restricted by the rules. But they know that formula for for getting people infected is through through religion. Religion is a sexually transmitted disease. Interesting. Yeah. If you think about it, without sex religion could would not be transmitted, it would be very hard. And you've got to have purity culture or some mean that's Hinduism, Hinduism, an incredibly purity, culture oriented religion. And so it's Islam. I mean, they're incredibly sexually restrictive. So I rest my case there find, find me an example that that contradicts. And I'll be very interested in that example. But I haven't seen one yet.

David Ames 1:10:30
I think that is the Mic drop. I also appreciate that you bring out that this is not limited to Christianity in any way, it's not even limited to religion, that that right ideologies in general. I think that that's profound insight. Dr. Darrel Ray, thank you so much, I want to give you a moment just to talk about anything you want to promote the secular therapy project, well, if

Darrel Ray 1:10:53
people need help, if they're dealing with some of the issues you and I've talked about, go to recovering from religion.org, hit the chat button, or call our number 8184. I doubt it. And you can call us from anywhere. And we've got five phone numbers directly from English speaking countries, like South Africa, like Australia, you know, and so forth. But you can literally call us from anywhere on the planet, if you've just got an internet connection, because we have web call as well. And we can help you and we can help you in many ways we can get you resources that you probably can't find yourself, you just tell us your story. Tell us what you're struggling with. We will find resources, we have a very huge, vetted, very curated library, that that we can find stuff and help get get help for you. We can also connect you with local groups, if you want to face to face meet with people. We don't have groups in every city. But even if you don't have one in your city, we have virtual groups that meet by zoom just like you and I are doing right now. They're meeting all the time, and you can you can meet with other people are going through the same thing you are. Or if you want to get in and talk to other people, maybe you're an ex Mormon, you're an ex Joe's witness, maybe you're LGBTQ plus, and you want to talk to other people in your same say having same issues, you can talk to us and we can let you into our private Slack channel, you have to come through us you cannot find on the internet, come to us say I'd like to join the ex Mormon group or whatever we can connect you with with that as well. And then of course, if you need professional, we're just peer support. If you need psychological professional support, you go to the secular therapy project and register at the STP. And then you can just search close to your zip code. It's kind of like online dating, you can search for anybody close to you, and you email them through our system. So you maintain confidentiality, and privacy. And then once you've found a therapist that fits your needs, you make an appointment, then it's you step outside of our system. And you know, go go get the therapy you need. Excellent. Other than that, I'd say read my book, sex and God or read the god virus. I think almost any human on the planet would probably benefit from either of both of those books. If I do say so myself.

David Ames 1:13:22
I concur. I and we will have links in the show notes to all of those things. So Dr. Darrel Ray, you've been incredibly generous with your time. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Darrel Ray 1:13:31
Thank you, David.

David Ames 1:13:37
Final thoughts on the episode. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. What's important to me is that the deconstruction process and the move away from religious thought has scientific underpinnings and we get to hear that from someone like Dr. Darrel Ray. The quote of the episode has to be religion is a sexually transmitted disease. I think what Dr. Ray meant there is that religion propagates from parents to children. And it's in that indoctrination that allows religion to continue, I also thought was very insightful to make the connection to attachment theory. And that part of the grief process of deconstruction and deconversion is the loss of that attachment both to community and to a sense of God's presence. I think that's absolutely true and why it can be so traumatic and painful when we come out of religion. At the podcast here, we are trying to be as open as possible to as many people as possible, but it's also good to reflect at times that religion can be criticized the analogy that Dr. Ray uses a virus is valid and As Dr. Ray said, to quote, I'm guessing there are more people throughout history that have been traumatized by religion than any other single thing. Religion has built in abuse. It's okay to say that that is an abusive system, it is okay to want to leave and to get out. If you need to talk to somebody, the recovering from religion is a great place to start. They have, as Dr. Ray pointed out both telephone numbers and online, you can reach out to somebody and have a conversation. They also have a bunch of resources, including more liberal churches. So if you aren't ready to leave, they have those kinds of resources as well. No one there is trying to D convert anyone they are there to listen to you will also mention the secular therapy project. If you're looking for a therapist who is not going to ask you to read your Bible more and pray more. It's free to you to find the therapists you do need to pay the therapist once you engage with them. But the secular therapy project is a great database to find people who have gone through that rigorous vetting that Dr. Ray spoke of in the interview, we will obviously have links in the show notes. I want to thank Dr. Darrel Ray for being on the podcast for sharing with us his wisdom, His education, his expertise. And his personal story, I think it was really valuable to hear the personal side of the scientific aspect that Dr. Darrell brings to the table. Thank you so much, Dr. Ray for being on the podcast. The circular Grace Thought of the Week is about independence, I originally had the experience that many of you have had as well of being the atheist at church. While there I tried to think of it from an anthropological point of view. I was watching my former faith tradition with fresh eyes and how I might experience it had I been at a religious ceremony that was unfamiliar to me. And it was striking, like what would lead people to raise their hands and sing and be demonstrative about their faith. And it struck me that it was absolutely about culture, it's about being a part of the in group and conforming to be accepted by that group. And I want to encourage you that if you were one of the people who couldn't conform, you couldn't make it work. And you needed to be independent, that that's actually a good thing. beyond religion, we are products of our culture. If you're listening to this in the United States, you're an American, you have a set of cultural ideas that are built in. And some of those are great, and some of them may not be. So independence and the ability to be an independent thinker is critical. Maybe especially in the moment in time in which we are in politically and technologically that we have to be able to question what we are given question the expectations to conform. I don't mean here rejection of norms just for rejection sake, but rather critically taking a look at what we accept to be true and good and moral, really working through that individually to the best of our abilities. We are going to take another week break. So we were are back on August 20. Arline interviews our guests and Jay, that's going to be a great conversation. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful. The beat is called waves by MCI beads. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show. Email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com This graceful atheist podcast, a part of the atheist United studios Podcast Network

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Mary Burkhart: Religion In Remission

Adverse Religious Experiences, Atheism, Deconstruction, Deconversion, ExVangelical, Mental Health, Podcast, Podcasters, Religious Trauma, YouTubers

CW: sexual abuse; suicidal ideation

This week’s guest is Religious Trauma Life Coach, Mary Burkhart. See her full bio here.

Mary grew up in the Apostolic Pentecostal Church, and her family’s devotion goes back generations.

When she was little, unspeakable things happened to Mary, but their church self-righteously dismissed the situation, forcing her mom and her to move. They found different churches; Mary hoped these would be different.

Between working behind the scenes in another church and seeing the “same ugliness,” she’d seen before and a silly question asked by a college friend, Mary’s uncertainties started to pile up. She was still a believer but she needed sturdier answers than Christianity was giving her.

“It’s not about being hurt or about hurt feelings. You leave [the Church] because things keep compiling, things keep compounding. That’s why.”

After more than fifteen years out of religion, Mary coaches others through their own journeys of religious deconstruction with Religion In Remission. Her work is a grand example of secular grace.

Links

Site
https://religioninremission.com/

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/religion_in_remission/

Facebook
https://m.facebook.com/RiRLifeCoach
https://m.facebook.com/religioninremission

YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCE0BqfCB0iPQT2zmxbj66Rw

Religion In Remission Podcast
https://religioninremissionpodcast.buzzsprout.com/

Recommendations

Leaving the Fold by Dr. Marlene Winell
https://amzn.to/3YfOfIH

Matt Dillahunty
https://www.youtube.com/@SansDeity

Black Nonbelievers
https://blacknonbelievers.org/

Divorcing Religion podcast with Janice Shelbie
https://www.divorcing-religion.com/religious-trauma-podcast

Andrew Pledger
https://andrewpledger.mypixieset.com/links

Quotes

“We really have to take our experience and make it work for us. It’s fuel. We can either let it destroy us, or we can let it make us better.”

“At five and six years old, I was just so moved. In retrospect…I was so moved because I would see everyone else so moved, and I wanted to be part of that. I wanted to be part of the Spirit. I wanted to be part of the environment, and I took it very seriously.”

“When you get…behind the scenes, you start to see a lot more of the ins and outs of how a religion and a church function. You start to see things unravel. You start to see that people are not what they seem like they are.”

“It’s not about being hurt or about hurt feelings. You leave [the Church] because things keep compiling, things keep compounding. That’s why.”

“I never knew that my exit from religion would lead me to atheism. I never knew. I had no idea. When I left the church, I thought I was leaving that church. That was it.”

“It is just as difficult to leave a religion as it is to stay.”

“The compassion that religion is supposedly built on just doesn’t exist. It’s all a business.”

“Everyone has speculations. Even religions have speculations. They’re just going off what they’ve been told!”

“…a lot of people don’t like it when I say this, but religion is for people who are terrified of their own mortality. They have to have some kind of guarantee that there’s ‘something else out there.’”

“Is it really love if you can’t take your love away without consequences?”

“You have to own your own existence. You have to own your own life…You decide how to live your life. You decide what’s important to you…You have to find what you makes you happy, and you have to go after that.”

“If I can help people, steer them away from that ledge and say ‘What you’re feeling is normal. What you’re feeling will get better. What your feeling has a remedy.’ That makes me happy. That gives my life some purpose…”

Interact

Graceful Atheist Podcast Merch!
https://www.teepublic.com/user/gracefulatheistpodcast

Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!

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

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

Support the podcast
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
Paypal: paypal.me/gracefulatheist

Attribution

“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats

Transcript

NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.

David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios podcast. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David, and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Thank you to all my supporters on Patreon if you too would like an ad free experience of the podcast become a patron at patreon.com/graceful atheist. If you're in the middle of doubt, deconstruction, the dark night of the soul, you did not have to do it alone. Join our private Facebook group deconversion anonymous and become a part of the community. You can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion Remember, there is a merch shop you can get your T shirts and mugs with graceful atheists and secular Grace themed items on it. The links will be in the show notes. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show, Arline interviews this week's guest, Mary Burkhart. Mary is a life coach helping people through deconstruction with her company religion in remission. Mary grew up Apostolic Pentecostal, she had some very traumatic experiences in her young life. Later in life, she began to work in the tech part of the church and saw how the sausage was made behind the scenes. And eventually, her questions piled up beyond her ability to continue to her faith. Today, Mary is helping other people process there deconstructions you can find Mary on Instagram, at religion underscore in underscore revision. And there'll be many links for her work in the show notes. Here is our Lean interviewing Mary Burkhart.

Arline 2:08
Mary Burkhardt Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.

Mary Burkhart 2:12
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Arline 2:14
I'm sure it's the almighty algorithm of Instagram that said, you may like this account. And so I started following you. And I'm no longer a Christian, no longer believer and I have an okay. religious background. Like I didn't have a whole lot of crazy because I did not grow up in it. But I loved the resources that you were putting out there the the questions you ask you just like curious. And so anyway, I love what you're doing. And I want to hear all about religion in remission. But um, first, Mary, tell us about the religious environment that you grew up in?

Mary Burkhart 2:48
Sure. I grew up Apostolic Pentecostal. And what that is, yeah, that's usually the response that I get. Very, very churchy. Yeah, you know, church, many, many days out of the week. So when I was, I was born into it. My mom, she's been in it since she was 12. And I've been in it because she's still in it. And my dad was also very heavy into it as well. It is later years he's very religious, but he doesn't really go to church anymore. Just because of health reasons. But he's definitely very, very much a believer. But I grew up Apostolic Pentecostal and when you think about the connotations that come along with that, running around the church and Holy Ghost filled and, you know, all kinds of speaking in tongues and what they call crazy cult stuff. It kind of comes along with that, and being at church so much dedicating a lot of your time to the church. My mom was very, very devout and into, you know, us serving in whatever capacity we could. She was very close with the pastor, which was a woman and her daughter. Yeah, right. It was the pastor being a woman who was very rare, because they didn't you know, there was not very big on women pastors back then. And I'm an 80s baby so I mean, it wasn't terribly far away, but it was definitely still close enough to where they didn't think that women should be leaders over a flock. And so we were in church. I mean Monday for I try to remember the order of things but I know Monday was like cleaning the church after Sunday's you know, Tuesday's a prayer meeting. Wednesday's was Bible study. I think we had maybe Thursday was choir rehearsal, and then Fridays we had off and then Saturdays we go clean the church for Sunday. Sunday. We were in church all day. Yeah, it was it was just that deep. Um, And so my devotion to religion and to God to the Christian God, I'll say, came very early in my life. And but I, I don't? Well, it's hard, right? Because indoctrination is definitely it's a difficult being, it's a difficult beast to deal with. I've learned not to live my life with a ton of regrets or resentment towards towards it, because it really did shape me into who I am, you know, we have to take our experiences and make it work for us. It's, it's fuel, like, you know, we can either let it destroy us or we can let it make us better. As I got older, I mean, I, even though I didn't really understand fully the devotion and the things that were happening, the the vows that I was saying, and, you know, the commitments that I was making, I meant them, you know, I didn't know anything with them. But I was still very committed. And I was testifying in church at five and six years old. And I remember, I was just so moved, you know, because, and in retrospect, obviously, because at five years old, six years old, seven years old, well, you really know about this huge system of religion. But I was so moved, because I would see everyone else moved, you know, and I wanted to be a part of that. I wanted to be a part of the spirit, I wanted to be a part of the environment. And I take it very seriously, there was just a lot of mimicry. Because I wanted to make sure that I fit into that mold. And so it was around five years old that I started being sexually abused. And it was by my god, brother. His mom had died. And he was in his teens. And it was very, it was difficult, obviously, you know, for the obvious reasons, but it was confusing. And more so when everything came out, because my brother was the one I confided in. And I asked him not to say anything. But of course, he did. And I was very happy that he did, because it stopped everything in its tracks, and come to find out he was also abusing some of my cousins. But what happened with the church at that time was, I was called a liar. And I was completely demonized. And I was shamed. I was I was just talked about so badly as a child, not at all, and had no frame of reference, you know, for where this stuff would even come from. I'm just telling what happened. And yeah, my mom, she asked if we want it if I want it to take it to court. And I told her, yes.

Arline 8:11
So your so your family, your mom believed you? Oh, absolutely not. But not church.

Mary Burkhart 8:17
Yeah, no, my mom 100% believed me. And my it was kind of a split thing. My parents had split by the time everything came out. And my dad was he believed me, but he was of the mindset that he's just a kid. You know, he's a teenager, we don't want to ruin his life. And let's just, you know, do that. That typical church response, you know what I'm saying that typical? Yeah, let's sweep it under the rug, so that it can happen to someone else, essentially, you know. But I told my mom, I wanted to go to court. And we were pretty much excommunicated, and ostracized by our church. It was hard for me because I, because I still didn't understand the the depth and the scope of religion itself. All I knew was what they told me. And that was that God was love and that he was supposed to, you know, his people love us. You know, we were supposed to love each other and believe each other and trust each other. And when that happened, I was totally confused.

We won our case. And I just think that the scars were a little bit too deep for my mom at that point, because, like I said, she's been in it since she was 12. And she loved her church family. So for that to happen, you know? And it's funny because even now, saying it, I don't think I ever really took the time to think about how deeply that part hurt her. You know, she had Been in it way longer than we had? Would that was in New Jersey and we she took us and moved us to North Carolina for a fresh start. Oh, wow. Yeah, that was a few years later. And so I grew up the latter part of my years and for the next 20 years in North Carolina, and we continued going to church we found a church in North Carolina St. Apostolic, Pentecostal very, very traditional churchy running around the church, we couldn't dunk, you know, and she was home, you know, she, so I didn't go back immediately. But I started following her when I was about 16. And it was a few times off and on from like, 14 to 16. And then I committed completely. But even though we were away from the church in that time, we never stopped believing we always had those core beliefs of Jesus Christ is the Savior and, you know, death, burial resurrection, he's got in the flesh and all that. And when I started really committing myself to my religion, I don't do things half assed, so I'm like, I'm gonna commit, you know, and I'm reading and I'm searching, and I'm researching. And I was, I loved it, I found that that same kind of naive love that I had when I was about, you know, five and six again, and with the people that I felt like, we're family, you know, and, you know, spiritual brothers and sisters, and we were able to make friends and, you know, make connections. And then it wasn't, it was proud. I started shortly after I went back to church on the sound ministry. And I completely loved it. I'm very technical, so that that's something that always sticks with me, wherever I go. And, but when you start in the technical aspect of things, and you get behind the scenes, you start to see a lot more of the ins and outs of how a religion and a church functions. And you start to see things unravel, you start to see that people are not what they say they are. They don't believe as heavy as they say that they do. They have flaws and use, you don't think anyone's perfect, but they're not practicing what they preach. And yeah, for me, not, I guess, having that gap between, you know, the adolescent years and the teen years, you know, that those preteen to young teen years, I missed kind of that transition, you know, in church that you get, when you realize these things younger, and you just still go with the flow, you know, you're just like, Okay, well, you know, this is just kind of how it is, right? So I had a naivety as an as an older teenager, almost an adult into my young adult years. Thinking that, well, we're all the same. We're all serving God the way that he wants us to, we're all making the sacrifices, we're all doing the same things and reading our word and going to church. And we all love this, you know, the same God the same way. It was just not the case, you know, and that was a hard realization for me as well. But seeing those same kinds of the same kind of ugliness surface that I noticed when I was younger, and it was I think I was going to college, and I was just talking to this guy who he wasn't a believer at all. And he just asked a really silly question about Can God make up a boulder that's too heavy for him to lift? Yeah. And I was like, No. Yeah. You know, it was just it was a weird question. And I always say it's the dumbest question. But it really did throw a monkey wrench at me and it was it kind of started to chip away at what I now understand is critical thinking. Things are black and white. You know, things are things are not always easily answered. And I don't remember the guy's name, but I'll always be grateful to him for for that simple, little crazy question.

Things to do, once you start to employ certain strategies, critical thinking and, you know, you're, you don't look at things the same way. It's like, well, what if, what if this isn't or what if This is or, you know, how do I go about this in a different way? And so people always ask me, why did you leave the church? That's what they want to know. Why did you leave? Why do you think they just want some really simple answer, like, Oh, I was hurt, you know? No, that's people. Most people don't leave the church because they're hurt. They don't leave because it's like, hurt, okay? You deal with feelings and emotions, like an adult, the same way you do, whether you're in or out of, out of the church. It's not about being hurt. It's not about hurt feelings, you leave, because things keep compiling things keep compounding that's why, because they continue to be unresolved and they keep compiling. And you're trying to resolve inconsistencies. You're trying to resolve the the backbiting that you're seeing, you're trying to resolve the lack of love and compassion that you're seeing, you're trying to resolve these inconsistencies and contradictions in your holy text. And it's like, okay, so you know, if I can't get answers here about this, there's no answers for this. There's no answers for this. There's not you know, and things just really start piling up. You, you don't really have a choice at that point, but to, you know, serve your cognitive dissonance. And one way or the other, right? So you're either going to turn inwardly to your religion, and say, Okay, I'm just going to ignore all of this over here and just continue to trust and have faith. Or you're going to say, No, I need to know. And I feel like I deserve to know if there's more truth out there. So you turn outward, and you say, I'm going, I never knew that my exit from religion would lead me to atheism. I never knew I had no idea. When I left the church. I thought I was leaving that church. That was it. That was it. For me. I was like, Okay, I'm just done. When I left the church, I tried other churches. I didn't try other religions, but I did go non denominational, so that I could you know, I'm just like, Okay, let me see. But it was just more of the same. It was just more and so I left religion altogether. And I didn't even leave God, I was still a believer, you know, and it was just, it took time to really unravel and deconstruct my religious experiences. And the more research that I did, the more of my understanding that came through. That is when I made the decision, that I do not believe in a God in any God. And so it's people always want that simple answer. Why did you leave? Is that simple? You know, it's really not. And you can say, well, I joined the church. And you know, I didn't for this reason, you know, it's not, but it's usually not simple for why you join a church, either, you know, unless you were like, Okay, I was born into it. But why did you stay? Because there's, it's more complicated than that. So a lot of believers, they want to know why you left, right, they want to know, why did you leave? Because they're looking for some hole in why you left? Why did you, you know, you must have been hurt. Someone must have said something. So? No, it's It's, it's just as difficult to leave a religion as it is to stay. Yeah, it's totally difficult, you know, in the little cliched adage, about the road to atheism being littered with Bibles, which I always change to holy texts, because it's true. It doesn't matter where what religion you're coming from. Most people who have been indoctrinated into religion, or have been developed to a religion for a specific number of years, have tried to find answers within their religion first, before them. And it's just, it's not happening. And there's a reason for that, you know, so, in my own coaching, I never tell people you shouldn't believe you know, and I think a lot of people think that's what I do, I don't turn people away from their religion. And as a matter of fact, there have been several potential clients that I have told, you might need to go back to your religion, and see if you can get these answers because you're you seem to be confused about why you don't believe you know, and no one can give you that why you have to figure that out for yourself. So you know, telling people not to believe or to leave religion, that is not what I'm here for you. It's something that we all have to come to on our own.

Arline 19:38
I haven't had a lot of people ask, like, why did we leave? And sometimes I'm like, just ask me, I will talk to you just ask me. Like family family has asked a whole lot. But yeah, you're right. Like, I didn't leave because I wanted to sin or because I was hurt. Like I said earlier, like, our church life was pretty easy, which wasn't too bad. My husband he converted and so that sent me on a job He realized he couldn't believe so I was like, Oh my God, what? What do we do? So then I'm like, reading everybody I had not read yet who was a Christian. I was reading Catholic people I was reading like, these people that used to be off limits. And I was like, No, it's just the, the, the church is getting bigger to me, Holy Spirit's bigger, I was just learning, I had no idea it was going to lead me to be an atheist. And it was it was just a long trail of like, learning and learning and learning and then eventually going, you know, this doesn't, like I thought it did. And the things for me it was there was also a lot of mental health stuff. And so realizing that like, praying was stressing me out because I didn't know if God was going to help me or not, yes, like that anxiety, and finally, just being like, I don't, I'm just not gonna pray about stuff. It was like my brain cleared up a little bit like, it was so bizarre. So yeah, there's no easy answer. And it takes a long time. It's not an end for my husband. It was very emotional. For me. I was just like, I don't think this is true anymore. So then, of course, I get the thing Bush's head knowledge, No, baby, if you saw my journals, it was like the real deal. The whole Yes. Anyway, I've talked a lot but go ahead.

Mary Burkhart 21:10
So no, no, it's, I totally get what you're saying. And you know that that whole spiritual bypassing that they love to do when it comes to you know, your journey, the the No True Scotsman fallacy about you know, you were never really a believer. I'm like, Listen, I don't have anything to prove to anybody. And then that's not why I do what I do, you know, but it's always funny to me when I like, Well, you were just never really a believer. You're never you're never truly a Christian if you if you could leave so easily. I'm like, unfortunately for you, I was more Christian than you were. You know, I mean, I have, I have I've spent so many hours on on my knees praying, I have spent I have gone to so many prayer meetings, so many tears, waiting, just continue fasting, feet washing, okay, like I was, I was in it all the way. And I believed all the way journals thick, you know, notebooks full of knowledge and just studying studying material that I have, I cease to sit at the front, I remember when I was old enough to go to the Adult Bible study, I was so ready. I was like, Oh, my gosh, I can't wait. And I was just, and then the adult Sunday school, because my pastor taught it. And I was just, I'm like, I just want to know, you know, I want to know what's going on, I have to get this information. And I used to look at the Bible as something that was so dynamic. Like, how could you just read one scripture, and then it can be interpreted so many different ways. I thought I loved to read. And then I left religion and I started reading more philosophy and psychology. And I was like, oh, but you can do that with anything, you know.

Arline 23:04
I'm just about to be 40. And it just dawned on me a few months ago that I can highlight other books, and like, take away really great insightful things, right, fiction and nonfiction, with all my little highlighters, like I used to do in my Bible, like, I can learn from all these people. And it never it just, yeah, there's you can get it from so many different

Mary Burkhart 23:27
years. Just like music, right? And that's a big one.

The one thing, big thing that I really try to drive home with a lot of my, my clients, my, my friend, my family, whatever it is, whoever I'm talking to. Music is huge, but it's the psychological tactics of religion, right? They know what they're doing. That's why there's a song for everything music evokes emotion. And when you really start to understand how down to a science religion has it, it's it's really predatory. We are emotional beings. And religion understands that. Think about when you go to the store. We buy with emotions first, and then we rationalize later. Yes, that's, that's how religion is. We will join religion we will you know, we dive in headfirst, and then we rationalize it later. So when we're talking about giving, let's talk about tides, right? There's this music, a tone of music that's played. There's certain scriptures that are used to evoke emotion and say, you know You know, what a man rob God? And are you going to, you know, how are you going to bring in, you know, your, your 10%, or whatever into the storehouse, you know, give until God to God's people. And I remember my pastor used to say, don't give until it hurts, give until it stops hurting. And I always thought that was that was first of all, that was so brilliant. Because you're like, Wait, do I give more? Or do I give? Yeah, I'm like. So, you know, it's really up to your interpretation of what that means. But it was always meant for you to give more essentially, you know, take the sacrifice, take the leap, trust God, you know, and there was always, it never failed, there was always a search situation in the church where I, personally would see and experience people trying to decide between whether to pay their bills, or whether to pay their ties. And I always thought that was so hard. I was one of them. At one point, I was like, man, you know, what do I do? How am I? Because you're supposed to trust it's all about faith. Right? Yeah. And that is one of the most difficult things. It's easy for people who are wealthy, you know, it's okay. Okay, here's my whatever. It's just, but if you're working and trying to make your ends meet, it's tough. It's a tough decision to make. When I was more faithful and devout, it was an easy decision, but I would suffer because of it. And yes, like, I couldn't understand, like, I would see people who needed help from the church, and then they couldn't get it. And like, wait, but wasn't, isn't that what we're here for? To help people? Are we supposed to be, you know, and like I said, being in the background, and behind the scenes and seeing how things work? Then I also started hearing Oh, well, you know, you don't get your jobs, you can't get help. What about the community? What about the, you know, the, the Bible says that we're supposed to help, that's what we're here for. That's what the church is established for, to help the world to help the community. And it just really came out that there was agenda, you know, and then the more that I started going to other churches, the more that I started researching, and even helping people and talking to people, the more I find out, this is a thing. You know, it's not it wasn't just my church. Yeah, it wasn't just my religion. It's, it's a theme throughout religion. And the compassion that religion is supposedly built on just doesn't exist. It's all a business. Yeah. And that's where you know, it. It makes it easier for me, but it also made it more difficult in the beginning, you know, because, my, my soul, I was like, Yeah, my soul is just a business, my soul. What about that? What about that is okay, where I'm really trying to strive and get to, you know, this heaven place. And it doesn't seem like that really, is the goal of church anymore. You know, it just kind of seems like this is all a transaction. And yeah, it was, it was difficult, and it's hard. But I wouldn't change it honestly, just for me, the way that I went about everything, because I honestly, I went with all my heart. And that's one thing I tell my clients, like, your intention matters, because there's always a lot of regret, things that I wish I didn't do. I wish I didn't say places I wish I wouldn't have gone. But intention matters. And it's not your fault that you were exploited. That's not your fault. You have to understand that and it's a difficult time. But if you can push beyond that, that guilt and that shame, and that's what I deal with a lot with people. It gets better, you know, we have to learn to shed that because our intention was not to, you know, exploit others or bring others into a system that we thought was horrible. It was to help people and to really think that when we're bringing them into a system of salvation, that we're this is the only way that they're going to be able to get to, you know, to get to heaven and to save their soul to make their life better. That's that was that intention? And you know, it's, it falls on us because now we are the ones who are deconstructing, and we're the ones who've walked away but we understand better you know, better you do better. That's all you can do. That's all you can do.

Arline 30:02
Yeah, that's very true.

So how did you get from, to, let's say, Christian to not real sure about church to still believe in God, but then started reading, how'd you get into philosophy was that just you just started reading other stuff? Or

Mary Burkhart 30:24
I always loved the concept of philosophy, but I never really was like, Oh, let me just read Nietzsche, you know, let me just open this up, you know, me read a little bit of Aristotle, you know, but honestly, it really was just that. I wanted to understand different schools of thought. I just, I honestly, I've just picked up a book on philosophy one day. And it was the first philosophy book, oh, my gosh, I don't even remember it was it was some existential ism book. epicurean, I think that's actually what it was. But I I was still fascinated, because I was like, Wait, this makes so much sense, you know, and just how, how we view life. Under religion, it's search for the right word. It's so concrete, right? It's like, okay, we have a goal. We have to live like, we have to live every facet of our being around this goal. We are working towards heaven. We're working towards salvation, we're working towards saving souls. That is our goal. Then you start reading, different schools of thought, and philosophy. And it's like, what if life means nothing? Yeah. Well, wait a minute. What of all this actually means shit? What if this means nothing? What if I don't? What if I don't mean anything? You know, it's really mind blowing. And I always, I love that experience that I had, when it came to philosophy. What if none of this matters? What if I die, and there's nothing but void? You know? How does that work? And it's hard, right? It's hard realizations. We don't ever know what's after death. But we have speculations everyone has been even religion has speculation. They don't know for sure they just go on, they're going off of what they've been told. But even in the Bible, it says, like, your people can't come back to you and tell you, they can't warn you. So you know, don't expect that. So what kind of assurity Do you really have that, you know, an afterlife exists? But I think the existential is existential is a part of philosophy has always been the most fascinating part for me, because one of the biggest takeaways was that religion. And a lot of people don't like when I say this, but a religion is for people who are terrified of their own mortality. Hmm, they have to, they have to have some kind of guarantee that there's something else out there, we cannot stand the thought that all of this just ends. And part of part of understanding that all of this just ends is okay. begins with understanding that all of this isn't actually great in the first place. You know, it's like, you know, even if your life is good, that's awesome. But think about the state of the world. Everywhere else, you know, we get so much tunnel vision when we're in religion. And it's, you know, I always use the example of a like a 12 car pileup. Oh, God is so good. There was a 12 car pileup, but I walked away. Every other person involved is gone, but I'm good. So God is good. What?

Arline 34:17
I remember some lady at the library where library frequent tours, and she was talking about how would the storms came through recently, she was like a not a tree fail. Like God was so faithful. And I was like, this was what I was still a Christian. And I just said to trees fell in our yard. Like, what does that mean about our life? Like, and she didn't? Yeah. What did God just like? That sound? It sounds so presumptuous. Right. Like it sounds so presumptuous. It really,

Mary Burkhart 34:47
at its core. That's, that's what it is. I mean, you talk about I remember the Hurricane Katrina and you know, or any hurricane really, they're like, Oh, the cross is still saying anything,

Arline 35:00
or the Bible that survived the fire?

Mary Burkhart 35:03
The fire? Yes. Because if you actually look into it, the Bible is actually made of like flame retardant material and the thickness of it, it's going to take a lot longer to burn. But we don't think about that. We just think, Oh, well, you know, it's something that has God's name on it. So it had to be preserved. And but you know, it's like this hurricane came through this town and killed 1100 people, but the cross is still standing. So God is still good. And it's like, no, definitely not. No, but yeah, if you ever noticed, like a funeral, let's just say, and it happens a lot. That has a lot of funerals. But, you know, I noticed the pattern a lot for people is, when someone dies, we lost three people very close to our family, my uncle, my aunt and my brother. Every single time there was a funeral. Everyone's like, oh, yeah, family is so important. We got to stick together, we got to do more. And you know, this, God is so good. And I'm just like, now at this, at this point, when I, when we lost all three of them, I no longer was a believer. So for me, I'm trying not to be cold. And just tell everybody like you listen, this is going to pass, you're just afraid of your own mortality, this death has just brought your mortality closer to you. And so that's all that's happening is that you're once again, faced with the fact that life ends. That's really all it is, you know, and this is going to pass, you know, right now, you're just speaking from a place of fear. I wish it was, you know, real, I wish that you guys really wanted to stay in contact with family. But you know, this is just really, it's all fear based. And, you know, but these are the most religious people right there. Because they're responding in kind to the way that they serve religion. In fear. They're serving in fear, elaborate, what? Kind of, they're responding in kind to the death of a loved one, the same way that they serve religion, which is fear based. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. So it's consequence, right. So there are a lot of people they, you know, they say, Oh, well, you know, I love my I love God, I love this. I love that. So is it really love? If you can't take your love away without consequence? Mm hmm. You know, are you serving your god seriously, in full truth and love and devotion? Because there's consequences if you don't? Or, you know, it's hard. But that's a difficult question. Because it's hard for people to say, well, yes, I am. But how do you know? Because there are consequences. You know, it's not love. If there's consequences for removing your love away, for taking your side of the equation. Yeah, if we've taken your side of the equation, if you have to burn for, you know, leaving and saying, you know, I'm out of here. This is not for me. Is it really unconditional love? Is it really? You know, is it is it really unconditional love? And can you honestly say that you're serving fearlessly? I couldn't. I mean, some people might be able to say that they are. But I couldn't. I couldn't say that. It was It wasn't fear based for me. I was told it was totally fear based. I was like, Wait a minute. Yeah. This makes total sense to me now, you know, because especially being indoctrinated into it from a child. I had such irrational fears of hell. Such irrational. Yes, yes. And anybody who was brought up Baptist Baptists, any kind of, you know, really like deep Pentecostal roots. You at one point in your life, thought you were left behind. You went to the church, and no one was there, you came home and everybody was gone, or somebody with everybody was asleep or whatever. Nobody was answering your phone. You thought you missed the rapture. You know.

Arline 39:19
We weren't taught the rapture stuff. But I have heard so many people on the podcast talk about that, like, they, yeah, they turned around and target and couldn't find their mom and start panicking. And I'm like, I cannot imagine being the little kid and like, having this experience

Mary Burkhart 39:35
that that that's the first thing that comes to your mind as a child.

Arline 39:38
Yes, rather than like, oh, I stepped away and she's on the toy aisle like, Yeah,

Mary Burkhart 39:44
but um, oh my gosh, God doesn't love me. I left behind

Arline 39:49
my head

so tell me Now that you are a flaming crazy atheist who has you can't you can't have meaning in life, you can't have hope you can't have any note, you're not a moral person. How do you find your hope and your meaning?

Mary Burkhart 40:14
These days? Oh, man, that's good. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I love philosophy. And I'm really, about, you have to own your own life, you have to own your own existence. I mean, I think nihilism to a great extent is blurring the lives of absurdity. Because, you know, you just, yeah, okay, some, a lot of things don't matter, you know, conceptually, but you give your life meaning. You decide what you're living for, you decide what's important to you. You know, I am, I'm married to a wonderful man. I have a daughter who's about to be six years old, and a couple of weeks, I'm pregnant with my second. And, you know, I work very hard to take care of my family, and I relish the time that I get to spend with them, the memories that we make, you know, that is what gives my life meaning, you know, helping people through my coaching is one of the things that gives my life meaning. I can't speak for everyone else, but you have to find what makes you happy. And you have to go after that, you know, it's, it's easy to sit back and say, Well, you know, life doesn't mean anything. So I'm just, I'm not going to do anything about it. But at that point, I mean, you're just resigned to, to just exist. And that's, I mean, if that's what you want, sure. But, you know, for me, I, I feel like, this is the only life that we get, you have to, you have to make it mean, what you want it to mean, you have to yes, there's a system, especially in the United States, this country is not set up for us to win, right. But there are ways to live a great life and to enjoy life, you know, if the homeless person on the street, can have a smile on their face, and be so loving, I know I can too. You know, I have a lot to be grateful for I work hard. And it's about finding your passion, serving in that. Like, my passion is the coaching, you know, I, I didn't have this when I started deconstructing. And I wish that there was something like this available. Because my journey through deconstruction was very dark. In the beginning, I didn't realize that I was lacking a whole lot after I left the church. And I almost took my life. It was it was a very hard time because I just the things that I work to help people recognize on their own journeys, are the things that I wish somebody would have told me, you know, and I've been deconstructing for over 15 years. And it's been, it's been, it's gotten a lot better, but having to do it on my own. And there are people who don't survive it, because religion is so much one of the heaviest pieces of the country here in the United States, and in a lot of other countries, too. So you'll have people who, unfortunately have taken it a step further and have ended their life. Because you get family rejection, you get friend, you get all kinds of self hate, and you don't understand emotions and things you don't understand because of the way that indoctrination and religion weaves itself into your life. It's hard, it's so difficult. So if I can help people, steer them away from that ledge, and say what you're feeling is normal. What you're feeling will get better. You know, what your feeling has a remedy. That's, that makes me happy that that gives my life some purpose, you know, on a certain level because I do enjoy helping people but man, being able to steer people away. That's invaluable, you know, and I I have a heart for that because, again, those psychological tactics, we don't know what's happening to us. When we're indoctrinated. You know, we think we're just serving in religion. We think we're just doing you know, what comes with it. We're being manipulated and it's hard. It's a hard it's a hard thing to unravel. So, you know, as far as, of course, morality I mean, Obviously, we're immoral havens, and there's no there's no basis for morality if you're an atheist. But I always think that's so funny because morality predates Christianity. Yeah. So it's just so funny that they're like, Oh, well, you know, it's you can't have morals if you're not a Christian because God is the ultimate authority of morality. No, not really, though.

Arline 45:26
Yeah. And let's open the Bible and pull out some morality from different aside.

Mary Burkhart 45:33
Yeah, it's like

Arline 45:35
it's perfectly and infanticide. Like all the sides, all the

Mary Burkhart 45:40
rape and yeah, yeah.

Arline 45:53
Well, you were talking about your coaching, so tell us all about religion in remission, tell us what you're doing.

Mary Burkhart 46:00
So, religion, our mission is my coaching program I've been, it's my coaching business, I've been coaching for over two years now. And I absolutely love it. You know, it's helping to see people, you know, helping people to see themselves in a better light. Because we come out of religion with so much darkness and heavy of heart, you know, and just hopelessness sometimes, and think anything from you talking about sexual identity, to, you know, your, your human identity, to family rejection, to, you know, unsure of how to just view the world, where do I fit in, in the world? Now? You know, what, what do I do now that I don't have religion, all of these things, they matter, and they're so downplayed in religion, we get into these little bubbles within our religions. And then when you hit the world, you're like, Shit, no one prepared me for this. I have no frame of reference, I don't know what to do. And so being able to help people understand that one, it's completely normal, it happens, it's fine. But to that, it's, there's another side to it, you know, it gets better. Because I was so heavy, I was just, man. It took a lot for me to get to a place where I wanted to end my life. And so to come from that, and know, like, boom, there's, there's so much better on the other side of it. This is It's okay, you can get through this and your life can be so much better than you think. Because there's endless possibilities. If you decide that you want more, you know, it's about that's what it's about, you know, so you have to make the decision. Like, you know, this is just not my end, you know, I'm not just someone who left religion, I'm actually a human, a whole human. And I can, I can make my life what I want it to be. So I coach people. And I basically the core of it is helping people to transition out of toxic religion environments, toxic religious environments, and toxic mindsets, because that's really, the mind work is what needs to happen before anything else. And one of the things that I definitely harp on is indoctrinate indoctrination. And I coached people who have been in religion few years to, you know, over 30 years or whatever, it doesn't matter. But indoctrination is so subtle, and in harsh, that I really love to help people unwind that. Because it and I, I've said it before, if anyone's heard me that they know I use a rope analogy, you know, it's it's it religion reinforces itself. And it's so that's why you know, people, there's a revolving door, a lot of people will leave religion, but they'll go right back into it, because it really does, it reinforces itself. You know, those the rope is made up of little strands that are woven into fibers that are woven, you know, they're just in there tightened around it, so you cannot just break that that's how indoctrination is in our life. You know, you have to carefully remove these little fibers and strands out from your life because if you try to do it by like chopping the rope in half or just pulling it strands, you can unravel your entire life. So that's why some people just don't make it and so it's important that you be careful. You know, when you're unraveling your religious experiences and unpacking them Um, but the mindset work is so important. And we have to make sure that we're taking the time to do that a lot of times you see people come out and it's just like, one extreme to the next. You know, but if you've been in religion for I usually say about, you know, 10 years or more in your life, especially if you're an adult and you've been indoctrinated, you have to consider that you've been indoctrinated longer than you've been away from religion. Yes. So you, you have to be patient with yourself. And that's, that's really the most important part. You can, you know, get frustrated if you want to, but it's not. You have to take your time. It's a process, you know, and it's a lifelong process that we have to commit to. So don't you know, don't be in a rush because I was indoctrinated. I didn't leave religion until I was 24. I didn't become an atheist until I was 26. Well, I'm 39. So I've still been indoctrinated longer than I've been away from religion. Yeah. So you know, it's, it's a lifelong journey. So you know, you have to be patient with yourself. But, um, yeah, I have a podcast called religion or mission podcast, it's on YouTube, it's on Buzzsprout. And I just, I interview guests, and talk about their own deconstruction and their own religious experiences, or even lack thereof. I am on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, you know, it's all over the place for me and I have been on several podcasts and, and it's always been a journey, I'm really grateful for the growth that religion and revision has had. And I, I, there's a big thing coming in the future. And we'll see, you know, I won't release it here. But right now, what's what's happening with religion, and my mission is I have a 12 week coaching program called destination deconstruction. And that is, it's so funny, because I always tell people like there is no destination to deconstruction, right? When you're on that path, there's no destination, don't ever think that you're going to get to a point your deconstruction, you're like, I'm finished, I'm done. I've completed these constructed. No, that's not that's never the case. But when you're leaving religion, the destination is to get healthy on that path to deconstruction. So it's about making your way to that Healthy Start of deconstruction. So in that 12 week, coaching program, it's about transform helping people transform their toxic mindsets, and dismantle them, so that they can start their deconstruction in a healthy way. And, you know, we go into even sexual identity, because it and I, it's funny, because I actually even posted about this today, where sexual identity is a huge part of our human identity. So much so that it colors, our experiences every day, we don't think about it on, you know, on that level every day. But, you know, you see someone you're attracted to. But if you see someone that you're attracted to, and you've spent years and religion, you're probably a year ashamed of that attraction, you're probably beating yourself down. You know, so it's about those nuances of sexual identity, as well as the big parts, you know, as well as, you know, what, I do think that I'm attracted to the same gender, or I do think that I want to explore this more, you know, so, in the 12 weeks, it's intense, but we go through, we go through a lot of what it takes to get a healthy start to, uh, to deconstruction, um, and it's even if you even if you've been away from religion for a while, you know, but you feel like, Man, I'm missing something. I need to figure out where I want to start and what which direction I want to go in, you know, everybody's welcome to to come. So

Arline 53:58
that's awesome. Do you have any recommendations books, podcast, YouTubers, anything that either was helpful on your deconstruction journey, which 10 or 15 years ago, that was long time ago? Or, or just now anything now that

Mary Burkhart 54:13
I'm that you're leaving the fool by Dr. Wintel Dr. Marlene widow, she's awesome. She you know, she coined the term religious trauma syndrome. And thanks to her and her work, it really is getting more attention that it deserves in the mental health space, because for the longest time, I mean, religion just didn't want to acknowledge that there were mental health issues, but neither did the mental health community. And so, you know, now that we're able to get things like religious trauma syndrome in the DSM, you know, it's, that's huge. It to acknowledge and religion may still not acknowledge it fully because it means that they have to acknowledge that there's a problem in the system. But that's, it is definitely worth read podcasts. I love Matt Dillahunty. He's, he's awesome. He and everybody knows him. Black nonbelievers has a podcast called in the cut. And I love black non believers allowed Mandisa Thomas. She's awesome. She's the founder of Black non believers. And I am a part of that. And basically, I mentioned black non believers a lot. Because when being a woman of color being a black woman coming out of religion, well, black people are the most religious denominations, denominations, excuse me. Demographic, not dominant demographic. And so, uh, you know, being a woman of color and not being religious 15 years ago,

Speaker 2 55:50
you know, yes, that's true. Yeah.

Mary Burkhart 55:53
So now it's a lot more it's because becoming more common, but it's, it's difficult to find support, it's difficult to find people who look like you. And it's just like, I don't know what to do. So when I found black non believers about eight years ago, I was very happy. I was very, because I was like, Oh, thank goodness. So I'm not alone in this. You know, it's hard. Because when you're growing up in a black household, that is extremely religious, everything surrounds that everything is about that, you know, whether you're going to church or not, you are a believer, and that's just kind of the end of it. And so, being a non believer in the people of color space, it's been, that helps a lot. It helps when you have that kind of representation and the support, you know, around you, so be black nonbelievers also has a Facebook group, and a podcast and you can always follow them in DC. They're on Instagram and Twitter as well. divorcing religion podcast with Janice Selby. She is. Yeah, she's awesome. I actually interviewed her on her. She's interviewed me as well on her podcast. She came from a very fundamentalist background as well. Very Mennonite. And oh, wow. So yeah, it was her trends. Her story is beautiful. Yeah, I mean, uh, speaking up with Andrew Pledger, who is also a great spin on the podcast. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, he's awesome. And he has I love his perspective, and how he's definitely, because he's a member of the LGBTQ community as well. And so you know, he definitely promotes that, that angle to help people who are struggling with it in that community. So yeah, some some really great ones out there. And I mean, if I think you have any more, I'll let you know. But yeah.

Arline 58:03
Well, Mary, thank you so much for being on the podcast. This was a lovely conversation. Of course,

Mary Burkhart 58:08
thank you so much for having me.

Arline 58:16
My final thoughts on the episode. That was a lovely conversation, I really enjoyed getting to know Mary, I've only been following her a little bit on Instagram. But she asks some of the just most curious questions. Like she really wants to know how people are doing what are the things that they've struggled with since leaving religion? What do they miss from religion? How are they finding meaning and hope? It's neat to watch and to see people respond on Instagram to her questions. And, and I know she really has, oh, I was about to I was about to say she really has a heart for people. But the Christianese runs deep. But yeah, she has a heart for people, she really wants to help others and not to make them into atheist or make them into anything, but to just empower them to become the people that they want to be coming out of toxic religious environment. And so it's wonderful to see the work she's doing and the people that she's helping and thank you again, Mary. It was a fabulous conversation.

David Ames 59:22
The singular Grace Thought of the Week is participation was interesting that we did not plan to have Daniel and Mary back to back both Daniel and Mary talk about the existential dread on this side of deconversion or even the existential dread that drives religion in the first place. But a very insightful thing that Mary mentioned, is giving back as a part of the process of healing as a part of the deconstruction process. Over the years we've tried to provide ways for people to participate, obviously you can join the deacon version anonymous Facebook group and become a part of the community there. We have people like Jimmy who writes for the blog, Arline writes for the blog Arline does interviews, Mike t does the audio editing. There are lots of other things that you could participate in with the podcast if you are interested. If you have any interest on doing website work, marketing, running a group for the community, any of these things can be a way that you could participate and give back. Beyond the podcast, obviously, there are ways in your community as well. Volunteer, do something that you love something that makes you feel like a full human being, and that can absolutely be a significant part of growing as a human being and healing from the deconstruction process. Next week, we have Dr. Darrel Ray of recovering from Religion Foundation, as well as the secular therapy project. Darrell is also written a number of books, including The God virus and sex and God. Darrell is a font of wisdom. I think you're absolutely going to love this conversation. Check it out next week. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human being. The beat is called waves by MCI beats. Do you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show? Email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com Four blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com. This graceful atheist podcast a part of the ABS United studios Podcast Network

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Benoit Kim: Discover More

20 Questions With a Believer, ExVangelical, Mental Health, Podcast, Podcasters, Purity Culture, Race

This week’s guest is Benoit Kim. He is a “Veteran, Penn-educated Policymaker turned Psychotherapist, & Podcaster at Discover More.” Benoit is a Christian, creating space for deep and meaningful conversations and stories. The Discover More podcast is a show for independent thinkers with an emphasis on mental health. Benoit is currently a forensic clinician at Project 180.

Links

Discover More Podcast
https://www.discovermorepodcast.com/

YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@DiscoverMorePodcast

LinkTree
https://kite.link/DiscoverMore133

Quotes

“People just want to be heard”

“This force of life…this container of life is larger than our will, larger than what we think our life should be versus what it actually is.”

“I was 24 at the time, and that was the first time I had to confront my limited mortality: Holy crap. I may die.”

“At the end of the day, humans are meaning-making machines…”

“There is no such thing as ‘useless emotions’…They all serve a purpose.”

“Self-discovery, curiosity, explorations, personal developments? Those are all products of privileges. If you don’t have privileges, then you’re surviving…”

“Passing a policy is not the same thing as implementing a policy.”

“The macro is comprised of the micro…Hurt people hurt people. Period.”

“Change takes time.”

“You may get hurt again, but if you don’t try, that’s the biggest regret.”

“I don’t have ‘bad or good’ in my paradigm of vocabulary. Does it serve you or not serve you?”

“Stress is the number one trigger that activates all mental illnesses.”

“Stories are not just content. Stories are these lived, visceral experiences that become embedded genetically into our minds…”

“…storytelling stays as this timeless avenue to really connect people…”

“There are a lot of contributing factors to why psychotherapy works, but I think the essence of all mental health is this feeling that you are not alone.”

Interact

Graceful Atheist Podcast Merch!
https://www.teepublic.com/user/gracefulatheistpodcast

Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!

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

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

Deconstruction
https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/#deconstruction

Support the podcast
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
Paypal: paypal.me/gracefulatheist

Attribution

“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats

Transcript

NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.

David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios Podcast Network. 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 writer and reviewer on the Apple podcast store S S. Thank you so much for leaving your review. 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. Thank you to all my supporters. If you too would like to have an ad free experience of the podcast please become a patron at patreon.com/graceful atheist. Are you in the middle of doubts deconstruction, the dark night of the soul. You do not have to do it alone. Please join our private Facebook group deconversion anonymous and become a part of the community. You can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion We now have merch if you'd like to have a secular Grace themed graceful atheist podcast theme t shirt mug and various other items. Arline has done the work to bring up a shop for us. The link will be in the show notes. Please check it out and get your merch today. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show, my guest today is Benoit Kim. Ben was the host of the Discover more podcast. It focuses on independent thinking and mental health. Benoit himself is a forensic clinician in psychology. And he brings to bear his wide ranging life experience including being French Canadian, having gained citizen in the United States by serving in the army. He was educated in and worked in policymaking for some time, until he decided that that wasn't what he wanted to do with his life. He wanted to help people. And so he went into psychology. Benoit is a believer, but he has shed the fundamentalism, we get into the how purity culture has affected his life. And finally, we touch on a subject that's important to Benoit and one that I need to be honest, I'm skeptical about and that is the use of psychedelics in a clinical format. I want to be clear here that then law presents the evidence in a compelling way. But the difference between using psychedelics within a clinical environment with a trained psychiatrist is significantly different than doing so on one's own. I'll leave it at that. Here is Ben walk in to tell his story. And walk him Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.

Benoit Kim 2:59
David, thank you for having me on on this rainy weather in Los Angeles at least.

David Ames 3:04
Yeah, yeah. So I'm up in the Pacific Northwest and I have sunshine. So we've we've traded weather. Yes, we did. Benoit, I'm gonna let you talk about your own CV. There's a lot to it. If you could introduce yourself, tell people like what you're doing. I'll say up front that you're a podcast host of the Discover more podcast, we're gonna get into some of the things where we are very similar, I think and maybe some of the differences. But go ahead and introduce yourself to the listeners.

Benoit Kim 3:30
So here's my 40,000 foot overview. So yeah, my name is French. I'm probably one of the few French Korean American you will meet. And for the longest time on Facebook for 10 plus years, I was the only Benoit Kim. So I spent the first half of my life in four different countries in three different continents. I was born in Paris, and then I moved to Korea, which is my ethnicity. And I lived in China for a while before I went to a boarding high school in California. And that was the induction of my faith into this Lutheran High School. Okay, and well, I'm sure we'll get into it where I think that was the first time I became allergic to these Lutheran indoctrinations of what is what what they deem as Greece for the team as faith what they deem as a good Christian air quotes versus the actual execution of that faith and this gracious lifestyle that I very much admire. And so now Currently, I work as a psychotherapist at USC, I accepted my new offer into the reentry populations working with just the populations who have mental illnesses. And I'll be working with them to hopefully to restore their sanity and for them to read, implementing the society because as we both know, recidivism extremely high, at least in Los Angeles is about 70%. And I'm a former policymaker I went to graduate school at University of Pennsylvania, which is a number one school at the program at the time. I went there and not to brag about the procedure of the school per se since I worked a lot to shed that layer of the false self of this prestige. But it's more about the fact that I went there for the sake of making impact because I believe in different vehicles for changes as a therapist, as a lawyer, as a physician, etc. But as a policymaker, you can impact 1000s and 1000s. Because I held this utilitarian philosophy for the longest time. But through a lot of the dirty politics compromising soul for the sake of impact, I took my hopefully my third and last career pivot in the last seven years into the clinical fields two and a half years ago. And my clinical interest in psychotherapy, in addition to psychedelic therapy, which speaks to my own healing journey, because psychedelics allow me to heal through my own sexual trauma, if you have opportunities to go down to because I'm very passionate about especially Men's Health and men's sexual health, which is not very often talked about. Okay.

David Ames 5:41
Excellent. Wow, there's a lot to unpack. And hopefully we can get to, I'll just say immediately that on the podcast, and a reoccurring theme has been the impact of purity culture, in particular on people as they, as they deconstruct that, that affects them. Even in the context of marriage, right, even after from a Christian perspective, sex is supposed to be a good thing, they can still find problems that follow them into marriage, from that purity culture, so as well as other people who have experienced sexual trauma events as well.

Man, you've hinted at a lot there, I want to focus just a little bit on the journey of faith for you. One of the questions we start with often is, what was your faith tradition growing up,

Benoit Kim 6:35
I appreciate you picking up what I'm putting down, which is an indication of a seasoned podcaster. But I have a lot to say because I feel like faith first and foremost ebbs and flows. Of course, spirituality ebbs and flows, which is a seasonality of life. However, as you talked about purity culture is like this very big box. And I think It confines a lot of those who really upholds not just faith per practice that religion, or practice organized religion versus just believing this higher entity. I was born into Christian Christianity. My parents are my mom's a Catholic, devoted, I don't like denominations. I don't like the label. Because as the Bible talked about, religion isn't flawed. But men is, therefore religion becomes flawed, just like Jesus spent a lot of his effort trying to dismantle and fight the temple, so to speak. So I was born into that faith. However, I think a lot of people fail air, quote, to convert from their childhood faith to adulthood. Whether that stress has by their life, reality says about life, the grief and the loss, or as tragedies, which is inherited to life by suffering is part of life. Christian faith aside, so I think that was my first taste into the perceived Christian faith versus the execution of Christian faith through the boarding High School just alluded to. It's like, it's a Lutheran High School, okay, I won't name the school, where they're a lot more conservative, a lot more orthodox, so to speak. And one thing that really, I think catalyzed is my whole conversations with myself and others about what it means to be a good Christian. Was I remember, I remember her name, her name was faith, very synchronistically. Yeah. And she was a senior, and she experienced pregnancy. In high school, and one thing that all crazy a lot of Christians, and especially Lutheran orthodox branches, talk about is pro life, pro life, pro life. And so through whatever conversations or faith, she chose to keep the baby, but then I found out a few months later that she was expelled two months before graduation. Wow. Okay. And I think that was the first time I really contemplated about what is this mean? That they're indoctrinating their teaching of all these biblical messages, all these truth, and all these important things by this Messiah who was a perfect human, and the perfect God that walked the earth, yet, in reality, they're expelling this 17 year old who made probably the one of the hardest decisions in our life, to keep that baby or her faith. Yeah, the rewards she gets his getting expelled two months before she bought a graduate, which obviously sparked a lot of other GED other processes, and I was very much disheartened by that. But to answer your question, I think that was the first catalyst about this just faith conversation. And I think for the first time, I realized it's bigger than just what people teach us on the schools.

David Ames 9:34
I definitely think this is one of the similarities that we have is a focus on Grace. I'm going to be on your podcast, I'll tell my story there. But just for context, you know, I came to Christianity late in my in my teenage years, and I call myself a grace junkie I was having read the New Testament, I thought that hey, this is what and when I got to church for the first time, like for real for the first time, I thought, hey, they seem to have missed this part of the message. They seem to have forgotten that he came from the poor and the sick and not the well, not not the perfect and holy. So I think that's a deep similarity in our journeys here.

Then while then I'd like to hear just a little bit more than as you get out of the boarding school and go on with the rest of your life, I understand you had a plan to do policymaking and a few other things. You've also been in the army. Tell me about some of those experiences.

Benoit Kim 10:33
Yeah, I tell a lot of people that I'm 30 now, but I feel like I lived 10,000 lifetime, and in the last decade, which is a deep privilege, because I'm alive here to tell the story. So as an Asian American, I think I was part of this statistics where I was raised by a tiger mom, I was raised under this belief, that achievement at all costs, mental health isn't real, doesn't matter. Just work hard, put your head down. And whatever will happen, will will succeed. So I had all these three year five year seven year and meticulous plan, I'm a very cognitive and very heavy, and I like to front load, and I like to organize everything. But ironically, contrary to my high school faith journey, I think through this, a lot of pain teachers, as I call them, I think God taught me to surrender, that this force of life that we call is this container of life is larger than we are, it's larger than our will larger than what we think life should be versus what it actually is. But I joined the Army, because that's how I became a naturalized citizenship. I became a reserve army just after the combat training in the summer, through this specialized language program, because I'm multilingual. So it's like a linguist program based on warfare needs. And then through that, at the time, it was relatively peaceful. When I joined, it was 2015, I believe. So there wasn't a lot of things going on. We're coming from the post Bush era, right things relatively calm during the Obama era as well. And then 2017. I don't know if you remember, but Mr. Trump and Kim Jong Un at the time, that had a excuse my French thick measuring contest? Yes, I have a red blood cell. And no, I have a red blood cell. No, mine's bigger, etc. So our unit was one of the 12 units to get someone to get deployed to North and South Korean border. And I was 24 at the time. And that was the first time I had to confirm my limited mortality, that holy crap, I may die, because he was perceived as extremely high tension. And the tension was escalating for like months, so a lot of speculation about is this war through etc. And that's, I think that's when I really questioned my faith as well, because I was like, God, why have though forsaken? That's a very common saying in the Bible, and otherwise, and that's how I really felt. And they also catalyzed my first major depression. Like I said, because of my tiger mom, I didn't believe in mental health. Somehow, whatever I wanted to do a Will my power through and I was able to achieve it. Sure. There's obstacles. There's the micro pains and sufferings and teachers, of course, but I've never experienced this dramatic shift of my internal landscape. Going from this, someone who feel I could do most things to Holy crap, I don't have my life in control, I may die in the next nine months, whatever the timeline is, but then through it, we can talk more about but through different ebbs and flows, I really realized that was God's way of instilling what Surrender means, because as you know, errorCode, high achievers, people who are very heavy, we have way of intellectualizing everything to our own benefits. And somehow, I think God found ways to humble me more because at the time, I was more prone to hubris, I really thought I'd had it all I could do whatever I set my mind to suppose through this faith, I'm God's child, I can do all things through Him. But of course, it's over spiritualization

David Ames 13:54
and just being a 20 something, man, but yes, I definitely remember thinking, Yeah, I know it all.

So definitely, I think one of the things that makes you interesting as a podcaster is having a couple of fairly dramatic life experiences that made you reevaluate the importance of life, the importance of mental health, the importance of being the self aware of the self achiever in you and recognises you needed a little self grace. Talk to me a bit about how that you get from the hubris and the gold, achievement oriented personality to a bit more humility and a bit more self grace.

Benoit Kim 14:45
I wish the answer is more it's a rosier don't I'm about to share, but in actuality, just when you're faced by the tidal waves of life, you just humble you learn to be humbled the life humbles you, because I truly believe whether you believe in synchronicity, spirituality, the source, oneness, God, whatever language you want to touch it as that I believe it as God, I think God or life tries to teach the same lesson. Until you learn that lesson. I think he hits you that with a seamless and over and over again. So for about three, four years, I didn't truly become humble. Like the humility wasn't ingrained in my essence. Until the third fourth year, I realize Holy crap, God, I see what you're trying to teach me. And through that shifts inevitably became more receptive to feedback, just to accept this truth that life is just unknowable. And I think CS Lewis, famous Christian philosopher, he's like a mystic and a lot of people's. I mean, the guy's phenomenal. I think he talks about one of the fundamental characteristics of God is the unknowability. The moment you can know and grasp what God is called, loses its essence. And I think you can make that same statement about the universe and the source. And I think it's unknowability that I really had difficulty with. Because why isn't pattern recognitions useful, because it allows you to feel a sense of delusions or illusions control about the future. But the past is not predicted, the past does not predict the future period. So I think that's how I was able to go from this mid 20 kid who I got it all to learning about the heart, the hierarchy of ignorance, the more you know, the more you know, nothing. And so through that, and just a lot of the tidal waves of life. And through a lot of introspection, which is my personality trait shout out to my parents, to how a journal, I'll meditate. And I'll really think about what just happened to me and sort of create a space in my life to review the archives of my behaviors, and actions. And is what I'm doing serving me is that allowing me to show up the way I'm proud of the way God is proud of, to my friends, to my partner, to my work, etc. But it was not this straightforward, linear journey, because I think a lot of people have this illusion that life is linear, as you know, they will life isn't a linear NatHERS feet journey. And I think I just accepted the non linearity, nonlinear idea of life. And I think God played a big role, the way I perceive it, as at the end of the day, humans are meaning making machines. And I think that's the meaning I'm I chose actively to equip my life with and the lane I walk. And that's why I'm very open with different type of conversations, I have a lot of atheist friends, because at the end of the day, you find a meeting that is fitting in your life, the continuum of life you walk in, and that can either serve you or it does not serve you.

David Ames 17:42
Yeah, it's interesting in in just that answer, you've went over a number of things where we disagree. And the one that we do agree on is, is that people are meaning makers. And we there's some this the other thing I think is interesting about your story, I do think that each of us must come to a point where we recognize that fact, and there's no way to share that with someone else. I recently had Jennifer Michael hex, it's a beautiful writer. She's written a number of books, one called doubt, once called the The Wonder paradox. But we talked about that a lot that almost every generation as a society, and each individual has to go through this process, a bit of self discovery, a bit of the humbling process, a bit of recognizing that we make meaning in this life and embracing that and moving forward. And maybe not everyone makes that pass that recognition and experiences that but it's a very significant human experience.

Benoit Kim 18:37
You know, if I may, I think a lot of people forget this truth, that self discovery process that you alluded to, requires a pause, and an inflection point, so to speak, like the pandemic, a lot of people call it a great pause. Of course, it's it's a lot of tragedies happen. A lot of people died. So I hate finding silver linings in such a tragedy. At the same time. Our brains are about 3 million years old, give or take. So it's been optimized, evolutionarily speaking. So it's like with emotions, there is no such thing as useless emotions. That's why I talk a lot about my my clients, anger, grief, sadness, they all serve a purpose, just like happiness, excitement and joy. They all serve a purpose. The positive negative dichotomy of emotions is what we actually then as but Delos of purpose. Likewise, our brains allowed us to create this autopilot modes, right? Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winning cognitive psychologist, he talks about system one thinking is an evolutionary optimize. So we can just go go go, he doesn't really require to think, but if you have to think about 12 times 15, you have to wait a minute, you have to pause and really think that and I want to, I'm quite a meta thinker. So I want to tie that into the question or this discussion we have. Were likewise without these Eriko sufferings there's so many humans are allergic to who we want to prevent suffering? Which is pretty laughable because we didn't choose our birthright. We're only here, David, because our parents grandparents made a certain decisions at a certain point in the timeline that allowed us to be born. So if if we didn't even choose to be born, what gives us any rights to have this? hubris, this belief that we can actually influence or exert power over life? And so to that point, I think, yes, self discovery. And yes, I think through this self discovery, many people go from converting charter faith to adults of faith. In my case, there are a lot of ups and downs are in your case, who choose to do convert, whilst upholding this grace or gracefulness essence that I think, is probably the reason why you're so open to talk to a lot of Christians and believers, because some people do have that, but I think requires a pause. And I think that pause often comes with pain.

David Ames 20:53
It's interesting, you mentioned the pandemic, if you just go back through the back catalogue. A huge number of guests will talk about that that was that was the moment they were out of the context. And they began to question what they had been taught. So again, I'm positive on on pauses.

I want to return back to your personal story a bit because you you I think, got the entire education to do policymaking as an extension of what you were doing in the army, I believe, and then subsequently decided that that wasn't the thing you wanted to do. So let's talk about about that, like what that was like, and then what the, what changed your mind.

Benoit Kim 21:37
That's another shining example, about the surrender piece I think God had me on for the last quite a few years. So I really believed in the avenue of policymaking, because I recognize the power of the privilege of education, not just in my life, but also my parents is life as well as immigrants, they only got to where they are because of the education they've been given. And self discovery, curiosity, explorations personal developments, those are all byproducts of privileges. If you don't have privileges, then you're surviving. And you don't have the ability to seek out podcast row yourself, this growth junkies as I am. So that's the privileges itself. But so I got into policymaking and you hear hear things, right? You're like, oh, a lot of people stray away from their intended path, they become part of the problem, because that's the only way. But once again, the hubris that means I know I'm different, I will be able to successfully overcome and conquer this monstrosity of policy grille locking system. Unlike the millions came before me who failed even Obama he talks about in his autobiography, The Promised lands. So I thought, no, I could do it. And I got into policymaking. And being a pen was a pretty conducive environment. And that's when I really realized the reason why Eric would prestige is important is not the name volume, but the environment that you're in. For the first time in my life. I was not the first in my class, like high school was pretty effortless for me. Things came pretty easily for me, just cognitively speaking. But then when I was at Penn, I realized I was not the lowest coefficients, but I was either the average or everyone else was above me. But I think that was my growth mindset. I heard work where I wasn't deterred by that. I wasn't envious. I saw that as amazing as holy crap. I could be esoteric. I could have these philosophical or whatever conversations and people get it. It's like us playing podcasting. Right. So you say tennis, you throw a ball, I catch it, and I give it back. It's like a give and take process. So and extend that into policymaking where at least at the NGO, non governmental organization, our work as a policymaker, a lot of people are paying graduates. So there is that this understanding that you'd have this air, quote, cognitive ability, the CV to be here, but I think that's when this policymaking became tricky, because I realized a lot of people who are in that field came from a very privileged background. And they had a theory, like they had a great grasp, in theory, but not in the pragmatic implementations or what that means, right? Because passing a policy is not the same thing as implementation of policy. It's a timeless gap that we still grapple with in 2023. And I saw some of that within the policymakers are quote, circle. But then the real difficulty for me was realized, I am not different from anyone else came before me. I'm just the same. And it's also a systematic issue because to implement any changes, you have to compromise, you have to make trade offs, you have to make deals, and it's not about what I want. It's about what you have to do. Like David, if I asked you if you can make a minor moral compromise minor, but you're not killing anyone. You're not stealing any Think you may lose a few hours of sleep. But in return as a product of that you can impact 4000 marginalize folks. Would you do that? You're probably see yes,

David Ames 25:11
yeah, no. And I understand that policymaking must be 1000 of those kinds of compromises a day. So yes, I understand.

Benoit Kim 25:18
Yeah. So that's what I saw. And I realized through iterations of that, if I have to make that compromise today, I'll be fine. But what about next week? What about a month? What about a year, just like cigarettes and addictions, nobody start with a pack of cigarettes. First time you start with the first, nobody started with six bottles of wine, you start with the first glass of wine. And I think I saw this iteration process. And I'm very good at system thinking. So I disability to sort of zoom out from the moments and momentum and this Go Go Go mode. And I really have to think for myself that can I resist this force of policy for the sake of air, quote, utilitarian impacts, and I realized I don't want to sacrifice my soul. I don't want to sacrifice my essence of who I am. The integrity and the moral compass outside of religion, that I uphold the early there to my conditioning, and my upholding is not all conditioning is bad, you can keep some conditioning in the program, some that's not serving you. And that's when I dealt with. And I turned 28, about two and a half years ago to really so with that, and I chose to depart from policy. But I was fortunately able to create a policy and truancy aspect in Philadelphia. And that was really cool working with a black and brown youth. So I still uphold the law of gratitude. And I still smile when I think about some of those experiences. But it is so difficult beyond what people even imagine and the complexity is infinite.

David Ames 26:43
Yeah, in particular, the just the system's inertia and your you know, one person trying to move a mountain. Yeah, I can really I can really appreciate that.

You went on to want to focus on psychology psychotherapy. Tell me why what was it about that that intrigued you?

Benoit Kim 27:10
There are a lot of confusing factors. And also to preface I didn't work in I wasn't a congressman's i Sure i spent a few years in policy Bose mainly to city level, I worked with some state folks for grants and funding sake. But I do want to preface by saying that I'm still very limited by the experiences, I'm just speaking about my own experiences. So please don't come find me after the fact. I think there's a lot of contributing factors to policy issues, socio economic, political, whatever language you want to add on to it. But from my experience, at least in Philadelphia, which is the poorest major cities, they contend with Chicago, back and forth, they have one of the highest crime rates, and they have the highest illiteracy rates in all of major cities. So through that container and experiences, I realized a lot of the political issues and the societal issues I was deeply passionate about, were simply the byproduct of lack of mental health intergenic intergenerational trauma, like their trauma genes, epigenetics, like people who go through a lot of hardships, like in the black communities, that trauma gets encoded epigenetically, which is a change of DNA expressions, genetics is that DNA genomes, and I saw that into poverty. But often it's the combinations of many of those factors. And I think mental health and emotional health became the through line, that I saw a lot of the political issues I was working with, at least in city of Philadelphia. So I realized, wow, I think myself included, and many folks forget that the macro is compressing them micro. And so you have to address the individual trauma component because hurt people hurt people, period. So I think I had to decide, do I want to stay in the macro realm? Or do I want to go to micro which is individual work, and there's so many opportunities, and there's so many directions you can take, but through my interest in psychology, emotionality, because I think how we behave, our behaviors are often the manifestations of how we feel internally, views internal reality it's manifests externally, right. So because of that, I did a lot of research and I chose the social work, which is a discipline I choose. But whether it's LMFT, sizes, whatever. Y'all do psychotherapy, you just different approaches and different modalities.

David Ames 29:34
If you're willing, I said I wasn't gonna push you in this direction. But let's, I'm going to if you're willing, how did therapy or psychotherapy apply to you personally? And was that a part of the decision to go down that road?

Benoit Kim 29:45
I think it's twofold. So I as I alluded to earlier, my first experience, and my first taste of mental health was through my major depressions catalyzed by my deployments, this looming deployment of potential Life and Death, which is a lot for a 27 year old to bear because there is not a lot of opportunities in life to confront your mortality unless you have like near death experiences, car accidents, etc. So that was a first right so I was recommended the army to see a counselor. But I only saw her once because I was very apprehensive. I didn't I was a skeptic, I didn't believe in mental health, right. But I did experiences otter consuming darkness, a imagery I can think about and I share on my podcast sometimes is like the bottomless pit and Dark Knight Rises three were were Wayne was stuck in this bottomless pit, and no one ever escaped beforehand. But with his big plot armor, he was the first human to escape. And now of course, he became this hero's journey became this Batman triumph, etc, right? I wasn't Batman, I didn't have this, I didn't have his fiscal policies, or his money or the plot armor. So I felt stuck in that bottomless pit. And this feeling of stuckness is where a lot of people attribute depression feeling like if it's major depression, so that was one. But I think the real change with psychotherapy and the potential of it and why I became to believe it. So I went from a Skeptic to Believer even after my major depression, because change takes time period, especially such a dramatic shift of internal psyche, from not believing to believing or believing to not believing in your case requires a lot of processes was my sexual trauma, where I feel comfortable sharing because I was healed through that through the power of psilocybin therapy, which is magic mushrooms, and I'm very well versed in psychedelic research. So I'm both practitioner, and I'm also researcher, and also consumer research, was in college, I had a sexual trauma with this individual. And without the gory details, it really contributed to my insistence that hookup culture became very vindictive, because I didn't always want to save my virginity for my wife, because who knows life is very long, but I wanted to at least save it for this special someone. And this person wasn't the special, someone got it. And yeah, I was roof feed, and I woke up on the other side with their trauma. So because of that I spent majority of my early 20s and mid 20s. Just on it wasn't I didn't want to commit sure the commitment issues collegially I couldn't commit. Because most people with commitment issues, it comes down to this feeling of lack of safety and relationships, why trauma. So that's how I was I was in superficial relationships, couple months at a time, a couple of weeks at a time never wanted to commit because of the fear of being hurt again. And into 2017. When I came across this healer, who facilitated me through this psilocybin therapy, of course, it is still illegal on a federal level. But there's some exciting research and we're making some significant headway. So under this Aerocool psychedelic Renaissance we're in and within a worth eight hours, David. So remember, I spent six years harboring resentments, anger, rage towards this individual. And that extended towards all female and all woman just internally because it's traumatic response into within seven to eight hours. I had this song after the guided psychedelic therapy where I literally thought to myself, I was like, Oh, I wonder how she's doing. Should I reach out and message her saying that I forgive her now forgiving her act of forgiving her by giving myself that permission to move on with my life. I think that's why forgiveness is hard because you feel stuck. I never reached out it was too much work. I forgot her last name. So I never did that. But going from this dramatic shift of unable to AERCO move on with my life relationally to this place of forgiveness and grace, by forgiving her and I forgive myself. And through that I was able to recommit to relationships, we accept the fact that you may get hurt again. But if you don't try that's the biggest regret. Because I tend to live my life minimizing regrets. I don't really believe in optimal decisions because there's constant opportunity costs being here. We're not outside what's raining outside for me, but it's sunny outside Yeah, into recently six months ago. I'm happily engaged to my fiance after three and half years. Congratulations and thank you thank you and that to me is what healing is where it allows me to recommit and have faith and relational container that we call romantic relationship once more into now being happily engaged with my future lifelong partner. So it's been quite a quite a journey with mental health and psychotherapy to say the

David Ames 34:49
least Yeah, wow.

Yeah, so let's let's chat brief About the psychedelic side of things, and I want to preface it by saying, everything we do at this podcast is about gathering evidence. And I understand there's some fairly compelling evidence that I'll give you in a moment to discuss that psychedelics within a clinical environment is quite effective for in particular things like PTSD and other traumatic events like such as yourself. I think the thing that that I caution is as an A not you, but other people. Other people, I think, are a bit too Cavalier. Because what is kind of wink wink, nudge nudge under the hood is yeah, you can, you can go, you know, take LSD or magic mushrooms on your own and have this experience on your own. So there's a vast gap between doing something on your own versus in a clinical environment with trained people who can walk you through, ultimately, the experiencing of that trauma and the letting go of that trauma. So a couple things I'd like you to address one. Let's talk about the research for a second from your perspective. And then do you share my my hesitancy to blanket recommend psychedelics?

Benoit Kim 36:13
100%, I think we live in this era of I call it Eriko motivation for analysts, incessant motivations, inspirations, all these advices. That's out of context. I don't give advices anymore, because you have to contextualize everything. And you have to ask what is the context? So yes, and a reference point that just came to my mind as you were sharing is alcohol. So I've been sober from alcohol for about three years, because he became a point of the service in my relationship, actually. So I've been sober from that since. Two, I have nothing against alcohol. It played a role in my life. I don't have bad or good in my paradigm of vocabulary. I just, there's a serve here. There's an officer if you are bringing that up, because alcohol is the only drug because it's a poison, chemically. That in America, if you tell people you don't drink, people ask you, why not? Not even? Why don't you mockery? Why? He told them, You don't smoke weed, or you don't smoke cigarettes? Oh, good for you. Yeah. I want to start with that. But I'm bringing this up. Because, like I said, I have the opportunity to spend mine first half my life in Europe, and Asia, and all causes a lot more nor not just the more normative, but people start drinking at an earlier age. But if you look at the incidence of blackout, drunk driving all of these tragedies associated with drinking is significantly less than America. And I think it comes down to not the substance, but the utilizations in education around it. Like in Europe and Asia, most family and households will introduce you to all kind of more subtle, incremental stage, you have a sip of wine, you have a couple of beer with your family, especially with your dad, which is a lot of containers I'm familiar with. And then over time, based on the education's and this in a controlled setting up in a home, you get to gradually increase your tolerance or your exposure, or your alcohol intake. And you do that across society, right? Whereas in the America, we don't have that. Yeah, people get fake IDs, people binge drink. People go go crazy when they're turned 21, public drunkenness. I was one of those. So I had a public drunkenness on my record for a while until it was explained a long time ago. So that's one thing I wanted to share. But yeah, I do agree that it has to be approached very, very cautiously because there are some red tapes. And now I'm sure we'll segue into the research aspect and the clinical implications and why it's so efficacious as a molecule, as a healing modality is if you have heart disease, if you have mental illness in your family, and mental illness and mental health are different mental health is the overarching umbrella. And that mental illness is within that umbrella, just like physical health is not cancer. But cancer falls into the umbrella of physical health likewise, so if you have schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, borderline personality, disorder, etc, in your family, because of research shows about 20 to 30%, of mental illness is genetics. What that means is 20 and 30% of people with Family Mental Illness history, that genes these Dormans until it gets triggered by stress. Stress is the number one trigger that activates all mental illnesses. And when one's mental illness is activated, it's irreversible. That means you have that for the rest of your life. Right. So if you have any of mental illness history in your family, it has to stay away because psychedelics has been documented to trigger psychosis or a psychotic episode. So that's one and two heart disease. People with heart issues or heart disease in your family, you also have to stay away because it's not conducive to So there are red tapes, and it has to be consulted with medical doctors. I'm not a medical doctor, this is not medical advice. But you have to seek, you have to safeguard against potential implication, because you can have too many ibuprofen, it will have adverse effect, but ibuprofen when taken appropriately, it has almost virtually zero setup. It's extremely safe, right. But if you take in too many, you could cause some serious heart issues and etc, heart failures. Likewise, with psychedelics, it's the same thing. When you approach it safely through education's the research, and I don't mean just Google browsing or asking, telling me everything about I don't mean that but I mean, actual research and actual consultation with professionals, he can have some amazing, amazing efficacy is and I'm sure we can talk more about.

David Ames 40:50
Again, I don't want to get into my story too much, but just context a lot of drug and alcohol addiction in my family. My rebellion was like, I'm not going to drink. So I'm actually, you know, sober by choice and have been since 16. And I completely relate to you like, when I tell people that, you know, they think, Oh, is it religious? And it's like, no. So it is you are the odd person out, I've had to work out the social graces of you know, occasionally buying around for people just to be, you know, be a part of the group, I enjoy being with friends, you know, even if they are drinking, that's fine. I don't hold it against people. But it was definitely not something for me.

The other aspect of growing up around drug and alcohol is, you know, I've talked to people on psychedelics, I've talked to people on various other drugs. And one of the things I joke about is I've never come away from one of those conversations thinking, wow, that was really deep. And I just want to contrast that with what might happen in a clinical scenario where someone is guiding you through the experience. And so I'm definitely open to the research and the data that suggests that that is, can be a positive experience. And the last thing I'll say is, for myself, I've got also a bunch of mental health issues, including several of the things that you mentioned. So my father, I, I believe had schizophrenia. My mother, I believe she had personality disorder of one kind or another undiagnosed. And so for me personally, that would never be an option. So just to have that out. So again, let's give you an a chance to talk about some of the research here as well.

Benoit Kim 42:42
Thanks for sharing. I appreciate you sharing. Some of those disorders and personalities that we talked about are some of the most stigmatized in America due to Hollywood portrayal. Big surprise what you're saying Hollywood does not portray these realistically. So I appreciate you sharing that nonetheless. So also, I want to preface by saying that most of our research is from with John Hopkins maps. These are not the research I conducted. But I'm consuming and these are the sources I usually go to. And of course, Rick Doblin the founder and the CO executive director at maps, which is a psychedelic research center under the John Hopkins Hospital is extremely credible resource, and they are the pioneer and a leading effort in the psychedelic Healing Center, or in the psychedelic healing effort around. So they just completed their third clinical trial, sponsored and funded by FDA. So it's extremely credible. Even our old, outdated government agency department, like FDA has recognized because to documented evidence, it's just, it's too compelling, as you said earlier, so they're a third trial finish, so that data is coming out. So I'll be speaking mainly about the second clinical trial that was completed about a year ago, give or take, so the data is out there and also I'm very well versed in most meta analyses. Meta analysis just means it's extremely credible has a lot of authority. And this cross references multiple different sorts of clinical settings and data points. So it's like a consolidations of most researches just for educational sake. So if you I want to start somewhere else with numbers because I think number stick it's very simple number is affects us. So effect size is the if you've taken statistics or whatever effect sizes like a generally speaking how effective the dosage or the study substance is. So more common substances that people are aware of SSRI or SSDI, which is an antidepressant. It's very common, it works for some does not work for many. The effect size of SSRI or antidepressants is about 0.3 which means it's minor reflectiveness because study shows that about 30 minutes to an hour of rigorous running or workout produces the same amount of serotonin. As SSRI serotonin is the happy molecule as we as we collectively say it is right. So as you can tell it works, and definitely now for all, and then about MCT. Magnetic conversion therapy is one of the most effective treatment for depressions, like chambering treatments, resistant depressions, or EMDR is about 0.8, which means it's very, very great moderate to very strong evidence. Psychedelic therapy, David is 1.2 effect size. Wow, yeah, which is four times the effectiveness of SSRIs. And about a third more significant and more efficacious than MCT, or other some of the more very strong evidence base therapy like CBT, and so on. So that's the effect size, I want to start there. And the study I'm about to quote is the second clinical trial with John Hopkins, the FDA approved, they recruited I think, 110 participants after parsing after bedding after eligibility, like the health cautionary that we just talked about. And these are the people with complex PTSD, treatment resistant depression, what that means is these people have been on medications like SSRIs, they have been seeking psychotherapy for a decade, 10 years. So these are not skeptics, these are full believers of mental health. But they continue to battle with ongoing complications and suffering by their symptoms, despite being treated for them. So these are the criteria. So the eligibility the bar is extremely high to enter this realm of control study clinically, and not to turn this into a neurobiology lecture. So I'll share some of the high bullet points where it's a two year longitudinal study. Because I ketamine, which is considered as Special K like the entry drug for psychedelics, it does not give you these crazy illusions. In fact, it's very mild. You just feel this deep relaxations. Now, just for people who are listening to us for the first time, it's the only approved psychedelic substance for clinical usage, but it's over applied. What I mean by that is, it works. But according to meta analysis, and the most cutting edge research, the sustained efficacy for ketamine is about one to two weeks. What that means is it does improve your emotional well being it does decrease your symptoms, etc. But after about one or two weeks, it diminishes and you have to reapply. And at least in LA ketamine is about $280 an hour. So it's extremely expensive. The entry point is very high economically, so it's not sustainable for many people. And so for a psychedelic, I'm alluding to psilocybin, MDMA, which are the main molecules for PTSD are some of the symptoms we talked about, or the diagnosis we talked about. It has at least two years of sustained efficacy. So two years after the completion of this study, 86% of the participants that are alluded to, they no longer exhibited any symptoms that eligible them for have this diagnosis. In other words, 86% of these participants who've been medicated for 10 plus years, who've been seeking therapy for 10 plus years, no longer have any depressive or PTSD symptoms, that when they got retested for diagnosing sake, like diagnostic assessment, they didn't even qualify for PTSD, or depression. And it's I'm not talking about symptom reduction. Here, I'm talking about a complete eradication of the root disease itself. And until now, EMDR is a very, very great trauma modality. But psychedelic therapy is the only known modality that has the ability to have this effect size, with this ability to eradicate some of these symptoms that have plagued so many people.

David Ames 48:48
Okay. All right. Well, I think you've done an excellent job of presenting presenting the evidence, I will let the audience you know, take that as as it is, and with a grain of salt and do some research on their own as well.

I do want to talk a bit about some of our similarities and differences. One of the things that I think so we already talked about. Grace we've talked about, we don't need your neither of us drink. Anything I thought was just really interesting as we both did, America, I'm curious what I although I'd never was in the military, I'm huge into national service. I think that the civic engagement of Americans is so low. I'm a big believer in America. I'm curious what your experience was, and maybe I'll share briefly what mine was as well.

Benoit Kim 49:39
That's why it's awesome. I don't think I've ever heard you. I did some research for your upcoming episode next week. But out of the I came across that information. So I was a part of Teach for America, which is part of the sub branches under AmeriCorps. I think there's so many categories within AmeriCorps itself, because it's sure Yeah, so Mine was a state AmeriCorps program under Teach for America. And so that was the entry point for me to go to nonprofit, which I didn't mention earlier. Like I said, I feel like I live so many lifetimes, I forget some of the experiences I've had, especially the under the current Busy, busy chapters in life that I'm currently in. But so that was my entry points to Philadelphia. That's how she got there. And another thing I didn't share, it's not on my CV is I used to be in private sector because I studied Economics and International Relations and undergraduates. And so I got into management consulting, but I left that race very soon. So it's not even on my CV, I often forget, I was in private sector for a very, very brief blip of my life. And so I knew I needed to get into nonprofit because proceeds does not transfer. And what's considered prestigious in one field. The other field has complete disregard, of course, because it's very contextualized. So I did all my research and I realized, what's a consistent threat. I sort of alluded to this earlier to allow me to be where I'm at in life, education. So that's the focus I'll it's the focal point I wanted to approach and tackle. And I did a lot of research and I realized Teach for America is one of the accelerator programs, it pays for a lot of your certificates. And it has a great reputation, like Michelle Obama used to talk a lot about it during her first lady days. So you know, Brenda effect, Oh, Michelle Obama, must be legit. I applied I got into and then I taught in inner city, Philadelphia, I taught middle school, I taught sixth, seventh and eighth graders. And it was a it was called around bay around the Institute of Science and Technology, not the gorilla around Bay, but around Bay in Swahili means brotherhood. So it was a first Afro centric charter school in all of Pennsylvania. What that means is, it's all Africans, and not just African Americans, but there are some Africans, we actually speak Swahili in school, we have all these principles that we practice, like morning circles to afternoon rituals for brotherhood, sisterhood, etc. So that was my experience. And to be honest, as a veteran, as someone who had some profoundly challenging experiences in my life, to say the least, because I've always had like three near death experiences in the last six, seven years. When I look back to my teaching time, teaching these kids who come from the most horrendous family backgrounds, addictions, domestic violence, sexual abuse, death, drive by shootings, the list goes on almost on a, like a daily basis. It's that rough of a neighborhood that come from Yeah. I thought I was going to be the Congress teacher with this accolades. This fancy CB going to teach them about the subjects I was teaching. Very stereotypically, I was teaching math and social studies. So I'm just going to embrace my stereotype. What the little that I know, in actuality, the expectation was me the subject experts teaching these kids who lack the opportunities. In reality, I learned more about life, and grit, humility, Grace from these 128 kids that I taught, I think, sure, I taught them some linear equations graph, a couple of subjects I, that I don't even know what purpose it serves in life anymore. But some of the lessons I learned from them, and just this ability to show up, despite these horrific challenges over and over again, and still show up to school, as good friends as whatever. And I was like, wow, I will never forget some of the moments I shared. And I get emotional thinking about this, because like they represents such this anti fragility, because there's resilience, and there's into fragility, which means the rebounds, you get back to even stronger threshold than where you started. And just this crazy, display day to day for how much hardships they go through. And you can never tell some of this reality they live under until they ask you or until they tell you. And yeah, I realized we don't all we don't always have to wear our pain and trauma on the sleeves. Which is not to go off the rails. But I feel like we're in this interesting culture. We're in oscillated too hard. 10 years ago, nobody ever talks about emotions. Now that's all they ever talk about. And emotions are important. But since that's not all, like you have to confront your trauma, you have to know work. And I think these kids who didn't know mental health from black and brown communities, who have the most significant hardships, they even now when I think about but they're just so gracious, so understanding, so forgiving, so loving. So some of the pillars I've learned I still care today, but I attribute a lot of my gratitude and just this profound, profound just thankfulness towards my americorps teach America experience

David Ames 55:00
Excellent. Again, I won't go into too much depth, but I was working not in an inner city, but small sized city with the probation department. So kids that had either been in juvenile hall for some time and were on probation, or were in probation schools, basically, after kind of continuation schools, you get to a little more intensity in a probation school, and saw everything from heroin addiction to parents on meth, and kids just trying to make it work. You know, same thing that I think these were just amazing individuals that were surviving incredible odds. And I've related a lot to it, because again, grew up with drug and alcohol, and my family, and it was a definitely a life defining job, if you will, for two years of my life. So I'm a huge proponent of America, regardless of where you serve, Peace Corps, the same thing, you know, just again, back to having a sense of civic obligation, something like you know, like to give back. Right, and I really part of your story that I love is the naturalization through military service, participating in AmeriCorps and you know, clearly you're you're also giving back. And I think that should be tied into university education, right, like baver, pay for some of the or all of the, you know, your university education, and then you serve for a couple of years in in one capacitor and others, I think, just as a no brainer for helping America to heal a bit.

Benoit Kim 56:38
Could I ask you a question, please? Yes. So when I think back to some of my white peers in the teacher America program, a lot of them had this not barrier, but this limited belief that their skin tone or doing the city will not allow them to build rapport and build relationships with some of these students they serve, at least in Philadelphia, even outside my school is predominantly black and brown. I don't know the predominant population, your work whether you serve, but do you feel like your personal lived experiences transcended your skin tone, your zip code, where you came from, and that allows you to sort of really work and build relationships with some of the youth that you're working with?

David Ames 57:19
Yes, and I think we could go into really deep waters, regarding race, because I'm mixed as well. So my dad's side is Spanish, Mexican with Native American. And that's and my mom's side is, is just very Caucasian. But I actually remembered a new word recently Mestizos, which is the mixed, you know, from Mexico's embracing of the Spanish heritage people within Mexico. And that's it, right, but that's me. So I am obviously very white passing, and I'm culturally Caucasian, as all get out. And so I've always had this weird experience of observing racism around me and not being the subject of that racism. But to answer your the heart of your question. Absolutely. The you know, in particular, the experience of being a child of an alcoholic and a drug addict, was one to one right, like, that applied directly. And as a general rule that, you know, try to get get through to kids at the same time, like myself, I think they were also very guarded and protective. And that didn't always work. But no, I didn't see that as a particular barrier. The population was white, Hispanic, very small, Asian community as well. So

Benoit Kim 58:37
yeah, I don't usually do leading questions, but I sort of can gauge what the answer could be. Because I think that's a pretty ubiquitous across these AmeriCorps programs where the lived experiences transcends these other perceived barriers, but it just did tie that into podcasting. I think that's why I love the art of long form podcast name, because stories outlive all of us. I think it's a deep, profound privilege that we have the opportunity to hold space and have these platforms, at least for me started as a passion project. Now it's a business to uphold these stories. And I think people underestimate with this tick tock cultures, everything's 15 seconds or less, highly scripted, highly rehearsed. I think people forget the power of stories, because stories are not just content. Stories are reflections of these lived visceral experiences that become embedded genetically into our minds. And we found them as very viscerally powerful, that we feel called to share these stories to other people. But I think you can go beyond podcasting America or whatever other containers but from my experience, my limited 30 years experiences, I think storytelling studies continuously as this timeless avenue to really connect people away from their skin color, race, zip codes, your socio economic statuses, and that's why I think stories are so powerful because As to my knowledge, almost Sapiens or humans are the only species that have the ability to retell our lived experiences to others.

David Ames 1:00:09
And I think some of what I think we're both doing, but this podcast in particular is letting people tell their stories. And many of my guests, I didn't have that experience, I had a different experience. And it is the diversity. It's the literal diversity of the stories that someone else is out there going. Wow, you know, Jenny is telling my story, Bob is telling my story. You know, like, I think we sometimes don't know what we don't know. Because we haven't experienced that and letting listening to other people's stories, we get a peek into other people's experience.

Benoit Kim 1:00:42
Yeah, I tried to create connection with mental health, every opportunity, I get professional hazard. But to tie that into mental health, David, there's a lot of contributing factors to why psychotherapy worse, but I think the essence of all mental health is this feeling that you are not alone, that you already have this profound realization that you are now walking this path of life by yourself. Because this perceived solitude or perceived loneliness, is in a lot of senses, contributes to depression, feeling depressed, and I can't even tell you how many men clients of mine, who told me Oh, you're just gonna talk about feelings, you're not going to change me and you're not going to fix me. You're right. I'm not here to fix you. I'm just the navigation system, an avenue of explorations for thought content, your emotionality, etc. But just by creating space to hold these experiences in a clinical container, or like you on this podcast, because secrecy, there's a lot of stigma around your, your guests and the people you try to create space for, which is the reason why I reached out in September last year, that you're gracious enough to respond recently for connect here, officially. But people underestimate and I cannot emphasize this enough that I want to put this in a messaging board where just feeling hurt, feeling seen. Those two things alone can dramatically improve your emotional well being and mental health. And because none of us live on islands, even if you live in an actual Island, there's villages, there's tribes. And I really, really believe that healing and grounding takes a village. And if more of us can get our stories out there, even in this realm of stories overload content overload, just it's not it's not even about getting your stories heard by others more about knowing that your stories are being seen. And there are other people walking similar path with different contexts. But pain is ubiquitous. Doesn't matter who you are.

David Ames 1:02:50
Benoit, I want to give you a chance to talk about the Discover more podcast, maybe tell us the story leading up to starting it. What are you trying to accomplish there?

Benoit Kim 1:02:59
That's a vast question. I'm still figuring that out. In my year 3.5, but the genesis of was very simple, pun intended with the Bible. So in early 2019, I saw the early rise of podcasting through Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss, some of the greats are doing amazing podcasting for the right reasons, I believe, I've always been I've always felt this loneliness said going into Elijah's talks about this perceived loneliness. I've ever since I can remember I read the secret when I was 13. I've been reading I've been I've always been a ferocious readers. And I realized I don't just love one thing. I love a lot of different things. I love human psychology. I love politics. I love physics. I love all of these economics. But I always felt this loneliness where I feel like a lot of people couldn't relate to my esoteric or wide ranging interest. So if I tried to have these conversations, I could tell people tune out, or they're not as engaged or they're very straight up this interested at times. So I thought, Oh, am I am I weird? And of course, there's jack of all trades, master of none. I disagree. I think you could be Jack of all trades, and Master of some. I don't think it's mutually exclusive. But yeah, I thought I must be I must be the weird one. I overthink I have all these interests and nobody can relate until podcasting. were heard through podcasting and realize Holy crap, there is this people that have 4000 miles away from me, or riding the facility in my city or America, who have the exact same interest, who are actively holding spaces to have these immersively engaging conversations with other amazing people, like high caliber aside, just people from academic backgrounds, professors, psychologists, business owners, athletes, and I was like, Wow, I'm not alone. And I'm not the weird one. After all, maybe I just represents a smaller subset of populations, cognitively so that's one. But yeah, I started is just to capture some of these public conversations like every single one of us have had those Erico profound conversations to in the morning, maybe over a sip of wine or 20 sips of wine. But how often do we remember those conversation? I didn't. So I had a co founder of who we later departed about a year ago to create a differences. But yeah, he was somewhere just similar. We met in the gym five in the morning, and we could just talk about almost everything under the moon. It was almost like a podcasting sessions. Every time we will talk, we'll have hours on it. And so I thought, why don't we create a public catalogue and capture some of these conversations, it was a very self serving very pure, and simple reason and intentions. But then over time, I realized the once again, full circle, it's the beginning of this conversation, this hierarchy of elements were just 24 at the time, what do we know about this world? But what do we know? So we've shifted the format to more interview based, and we started having the people we deemed as interesting, because even now, like my show has amounted to a certain accolades. I've had a couple amazing milestones, which I'm very grateful for. But I still uphold this Northstar, so to speak, or this compass from my podcasting where I want to do this in perpetuity. I want to do this for at least 10 years, I have seven more six and a half years more to go. So to do that, I have to stay in the game for as long as I can. And to stay the course I have to do what I feel interesting, intrinsically first. Right, right. There's intrinsic motivation goes a far away. I share that because I still want to have the people that I find interesting, not just what the analytics or what the listenership says. And I try to ask a few personal selfish questions to fulfill my own selfish desires. Because I have to be engaged in these conversations. Like, I reached out to you because I was a I never heard about the deconversion process until I came across your podcast. I never heard about the term graceful atheist. It seems like a very oxymoron, right? Like intentional, societal propaganda. If you're an atheist, you can be graceful grace is exclusive rights by the religions, etc, etc. So I genuinely have a lot of questions to ask you, which you will experience next week? Yes. So I saw a poll, that same intention, even now, miles away from where I started, but at the end of day, I want to elevate the stories that I think need to be elevated the most. And I want to have conversations and learn from some of not just the best or smart, but really interesting people. Because I think through these collective Conversations, I'm hopefully imparting this message that we all share more similarities than not, yeah, because I think that is the key ingredient to hopefully one day, moving through and resolving this extremely polarized, these deep cosmic divide between the left and the right, whatever language you want to divide. And I think a lot of that comes down to this lack of conversations. We are no longer having conversations as human beings face to face. It's just not happening. Different political ideologies, your merger, your except for right. We just label them under his whatever boxes arbitrarily. And yeah, those are some of the intentions i saw pulled. But it's honestly like therapeutic for me. I live for these conversations, the SEO, the marketing, the other stuff. I hate those. It's just part of the process. But I love having these conversations. And it's almost like food for thought.

David Ames 1:08:30
Yeah. Wow. A couple things. I want to respond to that. One, again, to quote Jennifer Michael, heck, she talks about how doubters, and believers have more in common than the vast middle. The vast middle doesn't care. He hasn't thought about it, right, and the doubters, and then the true believers have thought about it a lot. And so I do appreciate this kind of conversation I talked a lot about after I left Bible college, still Christian for many years afterwards, but I missed immediately, the 2am conversations in the dining hall, where whoever random person happened to be in there, you get into these deep, meaningful conversations, and I completely missed that. And so similar to you, like part of this is selfishly for me, so that I get to have these conversations, because that is part of my mental health. That's something that I need is to have meaningful conversations, even with people with whom I disagree. And I think that I couldn't agree more that that is part of what is absolutely missing, that we don't talk to one another anymore and respect the humanity of each other and so on. So, so I appreciate appreciate you being on.

Benoit Kim 1:09:43
Yeah, you're 27 years of understanding. You've been a Christian for 27 years. deconversion and another set from dining hall 2am conversations. Some of the deepest conversations I've had is an aeroplane. We call that we call that the passenger seat confession right? Because I will never see you again. So I'll just Yes, exactly. You're radically honest with you because I have this perceived safety net of never having crossed paths again. And of course, that's true most, but I still remember some of the most interesting and deep, insightful conversations on the plane. And I think that speaks to once again to tie into full circle where we all have a lot to share. And I think as long as you can identify those people, because I do feel like on a societal level, I'm very deeply concerned about the rise of superficiality rise of superficial conversations. Right, this conversation with Dr. David Rudd, is a former president at University of Memphis, tenured psychologist, top psychologists in the world. And he does talk about that even with his distinguished academic career and as a president of a large university. He does see this correlation with the rise of superficiality along with the rise of mental health issues. And I think we have to actively combat that because it's only going to get worse and short from content, as you saw on YouTube, everything just pushing out with the rise of Tik Tok and I do really feel like deep, meaningful sociality or social relationships is often predicated and dependent on deep, meaningful, intentional conversations.

David Ames 1:11:26
Then walk him the podcast is discover more? How can everyone find you? How can they find the podcasts? How can they find out more about you?

Benoit Kim 1:11:34
I don't have any books to promote. So if you found any interest or any value in some of the conversations we have today with David, and yeah, this is just Hi, I'm in real life. And I love these conversations. And truly Nothing excites me more than when a listener reaches out. Or I can connect with you offline to ask more questions. Don't just follow me ask me difficult questions, heavier questions. That's how I keep my brain active because Alzheimer's, my biggest fear, a little quick disclosure, but if you find any interest, I invite you to join me on my discover more journey on the podcast, discover more. It's a play on words. Hopefully, you're discovering more value from the actual container of the episode that you tune in. But it's also more of a call to action that I invite you to and I challenge you to discover more about on your own accord that you found interested in. If your interest was piqued by anything we talked about today. Do more discovering, do more research on your own. That's critical thinking thinking about thinking. So it's two bits to full about my name, and you can find me Apple podcast, Spotify, etc, etc. And if you're more of a visual learner, my in person studio is recently completed with full fully stocked media setup. So I invite you to check us out some of the cinematic effort we tried to put into these videos more and more on YouTube at discover more podcasts. And if you want to connect with me on social media, it's also discovering more podcasts, or drew the line at tick tock so I don't have a presence.

David Ames 1:13:00
I respect that. I respect that. Mike Kim, thank you so much for being on the wrestling atheist podcast.

Benoit Kim 1:13:06
Thank you for having me on for your thoughtfulness and the thoughtful questions.

David Ames 1:13:16
Final thoughts on the episode. As Ben while said, it's as if he has lived 10 different lives. He has so much life experience at such a young age. It is quite impressive. Then whilst podcast discover more is wide ranging on all the various topics that he is interested in, and it has a particular focus on mental health. Because I'm me, and part of what this podcast is about is skepticism. I have to acknowledge here that both Benoit and his podcast veer into the areas that I would consider pseudoscience at times. At the same time, I think Benoit himself is dedicated to learning and discovering the truth. And I wouldn't have him on this podcast if I didn't believe that he has something important to say. Ben was discussion of being in the policymaking field and acknowledging the compromises that one would have to make nearly on a daily basis, I thought was profound. His move towards clinical psychology and the desire to help people as well as what he's doing with the podcast to normalize mental health and focusing on a growth mindset, I think are very, very important. And Benoit is uniquely qualified to speak on those issues. On the topic of psychedelics, if you're a longtime listener to this podcast, you'll know that I am super skeptical, and at best ambivalence, the point that I made in the conversation that I have spent a fair amount of time with people on these very psychedelic drugs as well as a number of other drugs. And the experience for the person subjectively is profound and deep and meaningful, and the experience for the sober person is not. Having said that we also at this podcast, believe in evidence, and there is very compelling evidence that in a clinical environment, with trained clinicians, psychedelics can have a positive impact in certain areas. The reason I haven't talked on this subject until now is that many of the voices out there, including people, like Sam Harris, I think are way too Cavalier. And they're not talking about the potential downsides and risks and limitations. And Benoit was able to articulate those downsides, risks and limitations, while also being a proponent. So I really appreciate the perspective that he brings and the research that he has done. But finally, I will say, be skeptical. Do some of your own research. If this is an area that you feel like would be helpful for you. Seek out professional help, don't do this on your own. Finally, it's obvious that Benoit is a Christian, but I really appreciate that he was willing to come on this podcast. I am actually going to be on the Discover more podcast in a few months. And both of those conversations were really fun and helpful. And it was good communication. And I hope that Benoit and I can be examples of what it is like to speak with people who don't necessarily agree. We were able to find our common ground, what I call secular grace, I think Benoit is describing in a different way, about caring for people. And that's really what matters. That's the core part that makes a difference. You can find the Discover more podcast wherever you find your podcasts, as well as on YouTube. Check out Benoit and the Discover more podcasts. I want to thank Benoit for being on the podcast for sharing his personal story, sharing his life philosophy, sharing his experience and expertise. Thank you so much Benoit for being on the podcast. The secular Grace Thought of the Week is listen to people. My favorite quote from this conversation with Benoit is people just want to be heard. And this is coming from a clinical psychologist, someone who someone who professionally has been in counseling sessions has done work with in sometimes very extreme mental health issues. And this is something that I believe very, very deeply. This is what I think this podcast is about. And Benoit said this as well, that people feel like they are alone, that they're the only one experiencing whatever the thing is. And this is what this podcast has been about to say you are not alone in your deconstruction in your questions in your doubts. So those of us who have gotten through deconstruction, some of us who have gone through deconversion, and we're on the other side, and we want to live a graceful life. We need to be willing to listen to sit down and hear people but more importantly for the person with whom we are speaking for them to feel heard. Not that we are just waiting to respond and correct but that that person feels like we understand them. My deep feeling is that the human experience is the need to be known. And in some ways we are trapped within our own minds subjectively. The more we communicate with other human beings and feel heard feel known, the more whole as a human being we become. Next week, our Arline interviews Stephanie Stalvey. Stephanie is the amazing artist on Instagram @stephanie.stalvey.artist. Her artwork is around family, being married, having children sacks, just the whole experience. It's absolutely beautiful. It's a long running series that tells us a long story. You're definitely not gonna want to miss this next week. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human beings. The beat is called waves by MCI beats. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show. Email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com This graceful atheist podcast part of the atheists United studio This podcast network

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Purity Culture Doesn’t Get the Last Word

Books, Deconstruction, Influencers, LGBTQ+, Musicians, Podcasters, Purity Culture, Uncategorized, YouTubers

Purity Culture says that monogamous married sex between two heterosexual people is the only good and moral way. Anything that “deviates” is evil and sinful, even an abomination to god.

But it’s all a lie.

When we leave religion—whether it’s Christianity or any other fundamentalist belief system—we don’t magically forget everything we believed. The homophobia, internalized or otherwise, runs deep. Be compassionate and patient with yourself and others.

Below are some resources from members of our private Facebook group. Perhaps they’ll be helpful to you, as well!

“Just getting to know human beings who do life differently cannot be replaced by all the reading and listening.” —Ursula Schneider

Books

Entertainment

Instagram

Podcasts

Coming Out with Lauren and Nicole

Youtube

The last resource is a simple quote from a community member and past guest, Ursula Schneider: “Just getting to know human beings who do life differently cannot be replaced by all the reading and listening.”

We don’t have to walk this path alone, and there is so much we learn from one another. If you’re in need of community, consider joining the Deconversion Anonymous private Facebook group.

Arline

Holly Laurent: The Rise and Fall of Twin Hills on the Mega Podcast

Artists, Comedy, Deconstruction, ExVangelical, High Demand Religious Group, Podcast, Podcasters, Religious Trauma, Secular Grace

This week’s guest is comedian and writer, Holly Laurent. See her full bio and work here.

Holly tells a bit of her story, growing up in a fundamentalist evangelical household. From the fear of demons to eternal conscious torment, Holly is still dismantling the indoctrination. In comedy, she’s found a way to express her “voice that always got [her] in trouble” as well as an accepting community, something she struggled to find in the church.

Her podcast Mega has a new five-part mini-series parodying the downfall of an infamous Mars Hill pastor. Episode 1 of “The Rise and Fall of Twin Hills” drops May 21. It’s going to be a crazy ride!

Links

Holly’s site
https://www.hollylaurent.com/

Mega the Podcast
https://www.megathepodcast.com/

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/hollylaurent/
https://www.instagram.com/megathepodcast/

Quotes

“Sometimes laughter helps during certain types of hurt, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

“I speak English and I speak Evangelical…”

“Nobody listens when you’re on a soapbox, but if you can make someone laugh, it can be really disarming…it opens up the possibility that there could be some reciprocity.”

“I may be in the messy part forever.”

“My healing, my path is not linear. I feel like it’s more shaped like the milky way…”

“I see a lot of similarities between ‘preaching and teaching’ and performing.”

“The word that, I think, really defined the first three decades of my life is…fear.”

“I think real love is a lot like truth, it liberates, so I’m trying to get better at recognizing cages.”

“If I can make you laugh, you’re in the palm of my hand a l little bit because at the very least, you’re listening…”

“Comics are supposed to be the truth-tellers.”

“I want comedy to be my higher power.”

“If having to be more intentional with our language and our content is what’s required at the moment, great! That’s a new challenge.”

“…the cognitive dissonance of trying to maintain and push a narrative of a god that’s both an authoritative, genocidal dictator and also have it be ‘the most loving, the most incredible love that you’ve ever had in your entire life!’”

“Everyone played their part perfectly so that I could play the game. The Church and my parents, everyone…they believed it so deeply that I did…”

“One of my biggest indictments of Middle American Christians is that they are theologically illiterate; they do not know what’s in their book and I do.”

“I think that’s what all these ‘Jesus and John Wayne’ dudes are…big man-children.”

“I don’t need and want love. I am love. I have love. I am this love.”

“What improv and comedy taught me is that deep, active, conscious listening is a posture and willingness to be changed.”

“Love yourself and be love, rather than need love…and we’re going to make things better!”

Interact

Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!

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

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

Support the podcast
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
Paypal: paypal.me/gracefulatheist

Attribution

“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats

Transcript

NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.

David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios Podcast Network. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast. My name is David, and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Thank you to all my Patrons for supporting the podcast. If you too would like an ad free experience of the podcast become a patron at patreon.com/graceful atheist. If you're in the middle of doubt, deconstruction, the dark night of the soul, you do not have to do it alone. Join our private Facebook group deconversion anonymous and become a part of the community. You can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion

This week's guest is Holly Laurent the mind behind mega the podcast mega is revealing a brand new series that is absolutely out of this world. Mega is an improvised satire in the world of a fictional mega church, and they are releasing a comedy investigative miniseries inside the world of their own show called The Rise and Fall of twin hills. The Rise and Fall of twin Hills is a hilarious riff on the self important truth seeking that happens around church scandals and the twisted psychology of those who are inside them. This mini series is chock full of ridiculous scandal put it this way. If you think that the real megachurch pastor improprieties we've seen over the last few years are bad. Get ready for the outlandish high jinks of Pastor Steve Judson. If you're a fan of parody and satire or a comedic take on what it's like to be in the middle of deconstruction, then go check out mega and their new mini series that comes out May 21. The first episode of the mini series The Rise and Fall of twin Hills is out now go check it out. You can find them on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show. My guest today is Holly Laurent. She is the comedic mind behind mega the podcast. Mega parodies the experience of the evangelical world with heart compassion, and satire at the same time, Holly's brand of comedy and her words is doing comedy at the height of her intelligence and connecting with the audience on a deep level. Holly is one of those amazing people who can use comedy to communicate to break down barriers to get past people's defenses because she's being honest and raw in that comedy. You're gonna hear that now in this interview, that Holly brings the self honesty to the table. That is what makes her such a great communicator. Here is Holly Laurent telling her story. Holly the rot Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.

Holly Laurent 3:16
Very happy to be here. This is my favorite stuff to talk about. And I don't even know what your questions are. Yeah.

David Ames 3:25
Well, for like the two people listening to my podcast who don't know about mega, can you give them the introduction to your podcast?

Holly Laurent 3:33
My podcast is a comedy and it's called mega and it is an improvised satire from the staff of a fictional megachurch, where we parody the power powerful systems and structures in place in terms of the what I consider kind of corny and cheesy mega world backdrop. Yeah, and and every single episode, we have a different comic who comes on and plays a different person who exists in that world. And we it's and we just improvise together and find a lot of really fun stuff. We laugh a lot. And one of the most interesting things that has come about from this podcast is it has brought me into a really delicious world of really wonderful people of you know, X van Jellicle 's and people who are deconstructing and like a really lovely supportive community that I was not even aware of before my podcast and which is really really lovely and it's sort of surprising to us at Mega that we have the audience we do because I think half of our audience is is kind of Christians who I don't know are probably like We're the cool Christians we can laugh at ourselves. We I'm not sure I'm not sure what they're thinking. But and and a lot of people who find themselves on the other side, people who have moved to being evidence based people and Have faith based people or however they describe themselves. So, um, I think, yeah, we have, the feedback I hear a lot is that so many people find it to be incredibly therapeutic to be able to laugh about some of this stuff. And you know what, sometimes I hear from people who are like, I go through periods where I can't listen to my gut because I don't find it funny. And if I'm hurting, sometimes it sometimes laughter helps during certain types of hurt, and sometimes it doesn't. And so we actually have our Patreon episode that comes out every week is called a mini. So we have the mega and we have the Mini and in the Mini, we just play ourselves, we are ourselves, we're not playing characters, and we kind of deconstruct all the ideas that our characters are we're wrestling with in terms of content that comes on the weekend episodes of purity culture, or scandal in the church and how people of faith navigate that, but the way we approach it is that we it's very Christopher Guest in its tone, I guess. It's very much like a mighty wind or Bastien show or a show like that. We're, we're playing to the top of our intelligence and sincerely playing characters, who are deep believers, and I believe we're playing them very lovingly, and we're really humanizing them. And we're exploring that point of view that me and my co host Greg grew up with, I really got it hammered. Hammered. It got hammered home, to say the least. And so I use my bilingual. I speak English and I speak evangelical. Yeah, I use my my by link quality. I think I made up a word to, to just create a specific backdrop that is really fun. comedically, you know, a lot of like, more specificity kind of creates, like a universality in terms of comedic language. So yeah, we have, we have a really good time with it. And I've enjoyed playing both sides of being the believer exploring that point of view, in a comedic way that, at the very least, makes people laugh, or hopefully even might help people. And it's really for us, I come from a tradition of improv and comedy where the, the way I believe the best way to make a statement about something or the best way to create a conversation is to be the thing that you have commentary about. And because nobody really listens when you're on a soapbox, but if if you can make someone laugh, a lot of times it can be really disarming. And then you're actually listening or opens up an opportunity for there to be some reciprocity or kind of a, an open, open dialogue. And I really don't have any interest in punching down at believers and taking swipes at individuals. I really, I really am kind of a I agree with. Oh, man, what's his name? I'm having a pothead moment. George Carlin. Yes, I really agree with George Carlin that like I love people, I don't like groups. And so I'm not I'm not punching down at any individuals in any way, shape, or form. I'm really intently, intentionally punching up at the power structures that really do kind of seek to control people and to oppress people. And that I really believe these systems cause deep harm, some harm that is becoming known to some and some harm that is not even detected at this point, which is really insidious. And so that might be placing a lot of responsibility on to a half hour comedy, but yeah, but seriously, that's where I am.

David Ames 8:52
Yeah, my drop, we're done thanks.

I want to circle back to a lot of things that you just said. But I really do first want to hear just a bit about your personal story. What was like for you, as a believer when you really were a believer and growing up and so and then maybe lead us through? When the doubts came and what that was like for you?

Holly Laurent 9:25
I really always struggled. It's hard to say because of revisionist history and memory being very, not trustworthy.

David Ames 9:38
But honest about that fact. Yeah. Yeah.

Holly Laurent 9:41
But you know, like, every time you revisit a memory, it's like you open up that folder, make some notes, cross out some old stuff, make some changes and put it back on the shelf and that memory keeps evolving through time. And I keep changing I mean, I'm, I'm always changing like if we had this conversation on a different weak, I'm positive, the conversation would be very, very different. Yeah. And I'm really in that messy. And I may be in the messy part forever. I never have felt like, ah, Hive, like, like a long jump you where you land in the sand and you're like, ah, that's where my feet are. Mark those two footprints that is me now it's all over. Yeah, I really, I really feel like my healing. And my path is not linear. I feel like it's more shaped like the shape of the Milky Way galaxy where it's just kind of a swirling thing with like, arms that shoot out, and then it comes back into the center and then shoot out again, and just a swirling kind of mass. That's what I feel like emotionally and intellectually. But the way I can describe to the best of my ability, my memory of having grown up with a very, I was in a high demand, religious environment in terms of sort of a fundamental evangelical culture. Both of my grandfather's were pastors, my so both my parents are preachers, kids, I'm a preacher's kid. My dad is currently the pastor of a mega church, but used to be an itinerant evangelist that was traveling around the country bringing the Good News of the Gospel to high school assemblies and mega churches and county fairs and you name it. And before that my parents had one of the first ever Christian rock bands. And so they in their day were considered very edgy and controversial. And, you know, should you be singing about Jesus? And it sounds like the Grateful Dead? Is that a problem? It was a problem for a lot of Christians. So my parents were kind of considered I think, yeah, some like for runners in the evangelical movement that has brought us well, Trump frankly, that that's all I do blame them emotionally. But yeah, they were kind of at the beginning of that like hold Jesus movement and you know this countercultural Geez long haired Jesus dude who loves you, like you've never been loved before. And a lot of their generation I think, really needed to feel some kind of that love. They came from parents who didn't talk didn't touch didn't affirmed in anything. And man were they just starved for love, at least my dad was. And he that that message really gripped him and transformed his life. And now it really feels almost like a love addiction or something. Really trying to know how to best navigate navigate this relationship now based on where I've come. And until a few years ago, maybe five years ago, I wasn't even like publicly speaking about what I believed because I was so afraid they would hear it.

David Ames 12:57
Right? Do I have this right that you actually traveled with your dad at one point when he was doing the itinerant preaching?

Holly Laurent 13:03
Yeah, like, as a kid, I would go on the road with him a lot. Because if I didn't, we would never see each other because he just that was his, like, kind of full time thing. So like, in summertime, like if he was going to be the chaplain at like a youth group, you know, summer camp, he would take me along for the week, and I would be wandering around the, you know, camp, looking at all these like Christian Church kids, you know, go to chapel every night and learning canoeing during the day. And I got a perspective of both sides of the curtain. You know, my father being a human being behind the curtain, and then being this really charismatic, storyteller, counselor, communicator. People really, really responded to him. And so I watched the power of that performance. I think it's probably it sounds crude for me to call it a performance but like, at its deepest essence, I just don't think it's, you know, an accident or it's a coincidence that I also became a performer because I see a lot of similarities in it in terms of preaching and teaching and, and performing.

If I had to really sum up, I am a, an extremely highly sensitive person, just very, very, very sensitive. So a lot of the messaging I was hearing there was all the love of like, it's a love like you've never known. It's a perfect love. It's an unconditional love. All of that I was getting that but it didn't matter as much as all the messaging of simultaneously demons and eternal torment of Hell, and what I grew up believing was reality, which was my entire reality was based on God and Satan, Heaven and Hell, angels and demons, and the stakes were fucking high. Because it is all eternity. I mean, I remember as a kid just wishing, like why couldn't? Why couldn't he just like, annihilate us? Like just pure annihilation would be compassionate, you know? Like, why do I have to be an eternal torment and gnashing my teeth for all in all eternity infinity, a sideways eight, that's forever of gnashing teeth for how will I have teeth left, you know, like a little kid mind was just so terrified. And the word that really defines, I'd say the first three decades of my life was fear, just just so. So afraid. So, so, so, so afraid. And all of that, you know, to this day has been stuck in my gut and my hips. And I'm having to do a lot of work now, like physically and in terms of embodiment, and realizing that I have completely dissociated from my body because it was so sinful, and dangerous and tempting and going to drag me straight to hell. And so I didn't enjoy. I didn't enjoy it. Yeah. Oh, my God. Pleasant. Yeah. No, I because I was so I'm creative, and imaginative and sensitive and emotional. So like, every time I had night of sleep paralysis, which was a lot like I had so many nightmares and stuff, but I would get sleep paralysis, and I really thought they were demonic attacks, right? I could feel like a huge, like, you know, demonic Talon coming out of the sky, the size of my body and putting its point into my mouth, like during a during a sleep paralysis episode, and I watched my dad cast out demons, as a kid with eyes rolled back and foaming at the mouth and guttural noises. And it took me well into my 20s. Before I was like, oh, people have seizures at music shows. And that is the sound of a grand mal seizure, not a demon that is responding to the powerful name of Jesus being spoken in its presence. So there was a lot of there was a lot of there is still a lot of dismantling of a lot of reactivity that I think I have to all of that. It's really hard sometimes to have a compassionate and understanding view of someone who is still in the church and experiencing it as a good thing. Because to me, it feels like, oh, that abusive relationship I used to be in where, you know, they seem to be beating the shit out of me all the time. What like, well, I guess they're being good to their new girlfriend. You know, like, yeah. Yeah, so there's a lot of cognitive dissonance, like all all of us who've kind of been through that stuff.

David Ames 18:01
You know, several things, you know, pop out of just that discussion. One is that I think, adults Christians, I say that it's not that they take Christianity too seriously, it's that they don't take it seriously enough. And what you're describing is, as a child, you are taking it literally and seriously. And experiencing the trauma from that. And I think adults are able to compartmentalize and, yeah, you know, like, we believe this, but, and a child is not right, the child's getting the main line of that and experiences the full brunt of it. And children suffer from that. And it sounds like, you know, unfortunately, that this was pretty painful for you.

Holly Laurent 18:42
It was and the hard thing about that, too, is that that's, that's just going to be an individual journey, because there's really no telling them or helping them understand that. I'm just a, I'm just a stark, raving liberal feminist who's pissed right at a, at a really lovely program, you know, in their mind, and that's okay. It's also like, same thing, you can't control the narrative after a breakup. Yeah, their friends are gonna think you're an asshole and your friends are gonna think they're an asset. You know, it's like,

David Ames 19:19
yeah, that's a good analogy. I like that, actually. Because that's, yeah, that's very close to the reality. Yeah.

Holly Laurent 19:25
Yeah. So I think yeah, there's so much work to be done and I'm always doing it

I had a friend recently tell me that she was talking about in her relationship, her partner is sort of ruminating and talking about her parents all the time, and the the abuse and the destruction and all of that, and as I was listening to my and describe that I was like, Oh, is that me? And then I, and then I was watching a rerun of succession recently. Do you watch succession?

David Ames 20:10
You know, I haven't yet yeah, no, I'm familiar with it. But oh, it's so good.

Holly Laurent 20:16
I really like it. It's but but there was a, it's basically like a parody of the Murdoch family, you know, controlling like conservative news and being like horrible, horrible people. And actually, that is like damaging the earth and like creating real, real problems. It's not just damaging humans is damaging the entire planet. But but there was a scene that stuck out to me when I was watching it recently to where the eldest son of Rupert Murdoch, of the Rupert Murdoch character was in a new relationship with a woman and she said to him, you talk about your data a lot. And I was like, Huh. And I've noticed that because my friend who, who I was discussing this with was like, I think that thing that you're ruminating about all day long, that is sort of like running your thoughts, and running the programming in your mind. That's your higher power. And I'm, like, interesting. Yeah, I really, I'm really working on changing my thoughts now being more intentional, trying to be more mindful, and looking for ways to continue to liberate myself. Because I do think the the message of the Gospel according to most Christians is love. But since I didn't experience that, then I want to do a breakdown of what love is. So what is love? Because if, if, if, if the story they gave me of what love is, really created some harm. Let me return to what love is, then because what is it and it might be a different definition for every single person who describes it. But there are certain things I believe to be true about love. And one is that I think real love is a lot like truth in that it, it liberates it, it liberates. And so I'm just trying to get better at recognizing cages. And, and, as a kid, I remember having real infinite thoughts, at least to me felt like bigger thoughts than the limitations of our own per sections in our in the language that we speak. Like, I remember, as a kid, when I learned the alphabet, I was like, Okay, that's interesting. Now I know, 26 of them, I can't wait to learn the rest, because I figured it went on into infinity, right? Like, like the way they say color does, like, but we, but our ability to see it stops at violet. So we essentially can see three colors and their variations. And we think that's it. But it goes on, and on and on and on and the spectrum. And I remember my brain being like that. I remember, I remember, our neighbors had kittens, and we were playing with the kittens. And they were like, this one's a girl. This one's a boy, this one's a girl. And I remember having the thought, that's weird that they're all only boys and girls. Yeah, because I figured that gender went on forever. Right? Right. And why would there only be two of all the you know, and, and, and then I remember those outside forces of socialization and education, coming in, and immediately limiting my ability to think and speak and everything became about limits. And I think the limiting nature of Bible based teaching. And I mean, if you really start, I think if you really start to break it down, it's it's everywhere, like I at one point, in terms of a high demand religion, discovered that the Cage had never been locked, and that I could push the door open. And I could come out. And I think for a long time, I pushed the door open. And I would come out in short, little stents and little experiments and then go back in Yeah, at least sleep in there at night. Until the day when I realized, like I, I can run, I can just run and be free and never go back to that cage. But I look around and I'm like, oh, man, if you start breaking it down, and this is kind of why I want to go get my PhD in linguistics, because I really think there's that that at its essence that so much of our human angst is because of the limitations of the language we speak and our ability to think and the the ways in which we believe lies and we stay trapped and caged. Because if you look everywhere, the cages are everywhere. It's like oh, late stage capitalism. Cage. Yeah, our education system can cage like, policing that is a cage. Like there's so many of us. I remember having that thought as a kid. I remember thinking about money and being like, I think money is the problem, like money because everything revolves around money, like money is the actual problem. And then I grow up into this day. I'm like, yeah, that is still the absolute problem. That's the problem. Anytime a good movie gets made, it's despite the money people not because of the money people. It's just, I know, I'm like, really? I don't hear a

David Ames 25:35
couple things. One, like, please go get your PhD in linguistics, I think I think you're on to several things there. You know, there's there are those theories about even just speaking multiple languages, that you have a different perspective on things, I think there's definitely something there about being a human being and being trapped in language.

I do want to hear though, about, you know, in your 20s, you're recognizing that it was about fear, or maybe in your 30s. And you're able to go out out of the cage for a little while, like, what was that experience? Like, you know, what were the things that let you be free that led you escape as it were?

Holly Laurent 26:18
Honestly, I owe a debt of gratitude to comedy, I would say comedy. Well, I found myself in a little improv theater in Chicago, where I started to feel community connection and acceptance, belonging, you know, I'm just going to every improv class I can take and getting jumping in every show I can. And I remember distinctly, in the beginning of my life in comedy, I remember thinking, I can't really be cast out from this. And that was a big fear that lived inside of me with imposter syndrome and all of this stuff within Christendom. Of, of I always was like, Oh, I'm a pervert. I'm disgusting, because I'm thinking things. I'm not supposed to think I'm longing for things I'm not supposed to long for oh, no, I'm a disgusting, wretched pervert. And, and I'm going to be found out I'm going to be cast out. I mean, think about it, the very first story, I mean, besides Eve, acting on her own will and then not just destroying everything for her but for all humankind forever. Not just that story of a beginning. But even predating that story is Lucifer who reading Paradise Lost recently, I was wondering if Lucifer is actually a sympathetic character, because yeah, to to question absolute authority is a good thing. And, and to demand absolute authority with annihilation as the only other option. Well, again, annihilation would be kind, compassionate. And again, why why a huge question I have is why why not destroy Lucifer, and all of the fallen angels. And what I also discovered for reading Paradise Lost recently is that most of our ideas of Satan and the devil are actually from Milton and not from the Bible, there's actually very little in the Bible. And, and I kind of, I kind of, I'm related to Lucifer in Paradise Lost when better to better to reign in Hell than to be a slave in heaven. Like, that idea is really interesting. And I think there's a cool conversation to have there. And honestly, it's always been my natural bent. I'm very anti authoritarian. People tell me it's because I'm Aquarius. I don't know enough about all that shit to speak to it. But, but I have I've always been very my mid and that's just, I don't know, I don't even know what personality is per se, but it's always been. My natural instinct is to if you're my boss, if you're a cop, if you're in charge, or whatever, my natural instinct was always to be like, fuck you. Yeah. Like, and, and so.

David Ames 29:09
I have not been terribly good with authority figures either. So yeah, right.

Holly Laurent 29:12
Yeah. I'm like, and not that I want to be one. I just don't want to live in your fucking cage. So I, yeah,

David Ames 29:24
couple things. I'm gonna jump in here and just say we recently had a guest, Audrey, I think it was who talked about for her the deconstruction was deconstructing the devil? It reminds me of your story, and not like, you know, demons were very real in our growing up faith tradition. And it wasn't until she said, Oh, the devil is not real, that it wasn't God that wasn't real. But it was the devil being not real that her deconstruction process began and in earnest at that point, and so I think that's interesting that that that parallel with people who grew up in a more charismatic environment that it's just recognizing that oh, wait, this is kind of a story. You know, this isn't actually All and then being able to yeah, go and move forward.

Holly Laurent 30:03
I relate to that. I think that was a big part that was a big Jenga piece that when removed helped the topple go down quicker. Same for me was Audrey I think it was I remember two things in college when I when I discovered that people in charismatic sects of all world religions speak in tongues. I was like, hold up. Hold the fuck up. Yeah. Wait, what? And even like in satanic, I even learned that in satanic rituals. They speak in tongues, and I was like, Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, like that was a huge moment for me where I was like, Oh, wait, is this from the inside out? And not from the outside in? Because otherwise, the Holy Spirit is working with Satanists? And, and also, yeah, I had a philosophy professor handed me a book called The Myth of Satan and asked me to write a paper on it. And I was like, offended by the very title. Yeah. And but yeah, that was a big one. That was a really, really, really big one.

David Ames 31:00
Yeah, interesting. Since I'm here thinking about I think it might have been Stacey and not Audrey, but credit to both of them. Interesting idea.

I do want to segue to comedy. And then first just introduce myself to you like I was the kid of my grandparents had HBO when I was way too young watching Richard Pryor and George Carlin you've already mentioned, and we're Robin Williams, and, you know, some of these early guys and you know, comedy was just built into my life all of my best friends from growing up is because we would just cap on each other the you know, like that we like we showed love by tearing each other apart incessantly. And so comedy has always been beloved to me. And I think that satire is such a deep way to communicate the subtleties of being a human being and, and so I find what the work that you're doing both as improv and satire, super fascinating and that you said it already earlier that it is a way to get beyond people's defenses. So I want you to just talk about what was comedy like for you? How did you get introduced to it? And like, when did you start to do improv?

Holly Laurent 32:18
I was forced into improv in college because of an acting class I was in where the, my, my teacher had just done a Paul Sills workshop over the summer and brought back improv to our college campus and was like, we're gonna be doing improv this semester. And I was like, oh, no, I hate that. And then I was so scared of it just because I had such crushing low self esteem. And everything in improv is you and so I did was so afraid of being judged for anything that came out of my mouth. And so of course, having to face that drag. So I moved to Chicago because I kind of thought of it as the sort of Mecca of improv at that time, definitely, like long form, was really having its kind of punk rock heyday, when I was in Chicago, so I signed up for every class I could and just was like, Okay, let's face this fucking dragon. And then, of course, in so doing, I discovered my little inner weirdo, my little comedic voice, that I had been telling to shut up for a really long time, because I thought it was the unacceptable side of me. It took me about 10 years, I remember, I was working at the second city, I improvised every single day and did every single show and class and tour and everything I could for a decade in Chicago, and finally got to the national touring company of the Second City. And then within three months of that got put on the mainstage cast, and then was able to write and run three different reviews for three years on the main stage where I was doing eight shows a week, six days a week, my absolute dream, like Please Don't pinch me, I never want to wake up. And it was inside of that, where I was improvising every single night and being paid for it and having equity insurance at the time was so and it was somewhere in an in an improv set. Where I was in a an, I was in a scene with one of my best friends in the whole world, Edgar Blackman, and we were improvising. And I felt this thing come from my deepest, deepest waters. And it came it was a sensation that came up inside my body. That happened simultaneously to a big laugh that I had just got from the room. And as I felt that really big laugh. I felt it affirm that deepest voice of like I realized that that laugh had come from me being in flow and unconscious. and allowing my little inner weirdo to speak. And that's when I stopped trying to improvise. And I just started allowing myself to drop into that flow better and not do it like him or her them. But me, and and that voice the voice inside of me that was always going to get me in trouble. And so I had to keep it under such lock and key speaking of cages, when I kind of started to let her out, I think that began the transformation inside of me that I guess I could call healing. I struggled to call it healing, but just changing, transforming, becoming, allowing myself to become the creature that I am. I guess that sounds sort of highfalutin, in a way, that's

David Ames 35:57
your word progress. Yeah. Why for more

Holly Laurent 36:00
progress, rather than the thing? I thought I was supposed to be all the shoulds which are should just equals suffering. Yeah. And so and so you know, there's lots of like, with comedy, I think. There's so many interesting things like the live comedy is my favorite, because it's a little bit like being on a surfboard waiting for the sets of waves to come in you. You're improvising, like in stillness, stillness, stillness, but you're watching, like, the waves. The waves that come to a surfer, are very similar, I think, to the waves of laughter that come to comic. And so you start to read those waves and figure out how to manage the plastic water at when do you want like little ripples? And then when do you want the big ones? And do you have the patience and guts to stay flat for a while to get a way bigger, more satisfying wave? Or do you want to? So all that stuff is really fun for me of like, tinkering around with like, what is funny? What is improv funny? What is sketch funny? What is film funny, what is live funny? What is funny, that works the next night. What is funny that only works in that one moment that I think that comedy The way it's interesting because I've I've done a lot of research into why a lot of men think women aren't funny, and so much of it is like a deep unconscious. A lot of people think that laughter is there's a primal thing that happens. When we are laughing together, we're showing each other our teeth, which is a very like primal animal thing, when you show your teeth to each other. And that there might be something that is happening intrinsically in. Because we've all been raised in such a misogynistic and patriarchal society, like there's something where men really don't like that, if I can make you laugh, essentially, in that moment, I have controlled your body in a way you're a little bit out of control that like, like, that was a like surprise and a physical response that was out of your control. So maybe you don't want a woman controlling you in that way. Or maybe you only want a female to be, I don't know, fucking sexy and alluring or whatever. And comedy feels like it's too much of a leadership role in the moment or whatever. But um, but I, I think what's happening is, if I can make you laugh, you, you're in my head in the palm of my hand a little bit, because at the very least, you're listening, which is the main thing that no one is doing now in our like, highly divided times. And I have learned through incredible failure, I have learned that as you're reading those waves of laughter and you're timing those out and figuring like what ones to ride and how to keep moving the room that a conversation starts to take place, this reciprocity of ideas, and it's a time where you can slip in, you know, comics are supposed to be the truth tellers, like just pointing things out shining a light in that dark place, shining a light in that dark place. How do we feel about this? Doesn't this seem kind of bizarre? And I think the the really interesting thing to me, is when the audience gives you the nose, the laughter a lot of times is yes. And the like, ooh, the grunts and groans and the hisses are our nose. And I'm, I've learned to now always look for those nose because I'm like, oh, okay, now we're getting to something like that. Okay, why don't you like that? And what I've learned is once you get those No, no, no, no, not they're not there. No, no, no, you back up, motherfucker. I I've learned I've learned that when they tell me to back off of something, that I've found an important thing. And so I don't often push past that point. But then I start to dance on that line and be like, well, then here's where let's then let's talk about this. What else is here? Yeah. Because yeah, I think the goal is that you leave a comedy show, feeling a little less alone and maybe a little less caged.

David Ames 40:38
Don't want to get into too deep of water skier, but I am interested in your opinion on you know, I think comics today talk about they kind of complain that they can't make certain jokes. And I think you're right, that there's an element of comedy, that is to say the thing that is uncomfortable for everyone to hear, and a bit of truth telling. And so how do you balance that for yourself? Like, like you say, maybe not crossing the line, but going up to it?

Holly Laurent 41:04
Yeah, it's a tricky time. It's a really tricky time. Because, you know, in the same way, the stock market has to reset itself. So does comedy, you know, like, and speaking of prior, like, some of that content is so harmful.

David Ames 41:19
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, yeah, I've served basically everyone I mentioned are super problematic and 2023 eyes. Absolutely.

Holly Laurent 41:26
Definitely. And I talk about this all the time with a lot of my friends in comedy have like, huh, like, you remember how I used to start this? That one set? Yeah, I wouldn't use that word anymore. You know, like, like, yikes. And I kind of follow Sarah Silverman's ideas in that regard of like, in certain ways, you know, holding someone's jokes from the 90s are, the odds are anytime holding that against them is like trying to show you know, Shaq a picture of him as an eighth grader and be like, You were only 510 You were only 510 You were only 510? Why are you trying to be 510? And he's like, I've grown. Yeah, yes, that was me then. But I've grown and I've, I, I really look for that in the artists that I listened to and promote and, and take in. Because as we know, looking at comedy right now, there's a lot of really, I'm looking at a lot of mostly white guys, but not all, but above a certain age that are there. So I'm so disgruntled. And I'm like, You know what? And I'm like, Come on, man. Grow, grow. Keep growing. And but you see it everywhere. Like it's the same problem with you know, Fox News, parents and liberal kids like what at whatever point you circle the wagons then I guess it's just that's all you're gonna get from them is is where they draw the line. But i really i i really like I just heard a friend of mine Mike yard do a set at the cellar in New York, where he told a joke about like, you know, all the school shootings is a real problem in this country, we have a real problem and it doesn't seem to be going away. And I feel like we need to get creative and look at what might be perpetuating this real problem. And he was like, and I just want everyone to think about I'm butchering this Forgive me, like, look, let's look at the candle industry. Because everyone goes and buys candles for these like vigils afterwards, and the candle companies are making out like crazy. And he and the audience kind of gave him a like, No, we're not allowed to laugh about school shootings. And he stopped in the moment I was watching him do this clip. He was he's talking about me. He's like, No, that's a good joke. Like that joke is okay, the target of that joke. Like, we're not laughing about dead kids. Right? You have to understand target. And I really don't have any good feelings right now about people who target marginalized groups that are suffering. It really hurts me because I guess, you know, I want comedy to be my higher power and um, you know, there's I guess there's cognitive dissonance to like, you know, when you ask a Christian like, how they feel about you know, the mass genocide of like Noah's Ark and like what why the two by two cute animal story and not like all the dead floating bodies of the entire world, even though I'm like I think that was probably a region that got flooded. Yeah, that to the writer was the whole world. But anyway,

David Ames 44:51
I do think it comes back to you talking about punching down and or, excuse me, punching down and you know, punching up towards power structures as opposed To the marginalized and the disaffected. And that seems like a pretty bright line, that's obvious to anyone who's listening for most of the time. But I agree with you that we are having a bit of a reset right now, particularly in comedy.

Holly Laurent 45:13
And it probably it needs to, you know, I mean, look at all the comics that we grew up on, using language and saying things and targeting groups that we really do need that reset. So even if that does make everyone in comedy, even the well meaning people, like get in trouble and get canceled and get all that like it, it's worth sticking with the conversation, wrestling and grappling with it, and trying to keep going and elevating comedy to the height of your intelligence with a sensitivity to that, because I mean, I even remember back in my training, like a lot of teachers being like, you know, going blue is, you know, sometimes if you get a dirty joke that hits really hard, it's great. It's worth it. But for the most part, just defaulting into going blue is it's just hack, it's lazy. And so if if having to be more intentional with our language, and our content, is what's required of the moment, like, great, that's a new challenge, give me the sandbox of like, sensitivity and transformation and evolution, over continuing to let something I believe in do harm, like, which is exactly my indictment of the church and people who, you know, remain part and parcel of a murderous, harmful commerce in the name of love, who really, I mean, if you look at all those individuals who are in church every week, and each individual deeply believes like, this is a good thing. Yeah. And, and every comic who is, you know, pushing their, their, their content, they deeply believe that thing, or it's deeply hitting a nerve in them that is, you know, making them obsess about it or whatever. But, like, it's funny, like, you mentioned, Robin Williams, like, when Robin Williams appeared in LA on the scene, like all the standups were like, fuck him that's not stand up. They were like, What is he doing? It's not it's not, you know, he's, he's not. And then he, but he's Robin Williams, you know, like we have to, we have to let each thing like, grow and transform and evolve and stay alive. And I think that's probably a lot of the suffering in and the angst inside Christendom right now is the the cognitive dissonance of trying to maintain trying to continue to push a narrative of a God that is both, like an authoritative, genocidal dictator, essentially, don't hold that. Also hold that and also have it be like the Most Loving, the most incredible love that you've ever had in your entire life. Yeah,

David Ames 47:56
I love the way you say, to do comedy at the height of your intelligence. That's the kind of comedy that I that I enjoy. And I imagine that improv must be that every second that you are on stage

as a segue here, I want to hear the the formation of mega the podcast. So how did this idea come about? How did you collect the various comedians that have participated and just tell us the story about mega?

Holly Laurent 48:29
Mega, um, kind of got forced on me? Okay, um, well, not really, I want to do a podcast and I pitched a whole bunch to this network, and they weren't going for anything. And then I had this in my back pocket. And I was like, I was kind of at a point where I was like, I don't want to, I don't want to think or look at or talk about that world anymore. Like, it was such a massive part of most of my life, and I'm really trying to move in a new direction. And but they were like, No, that's the one that's it, make that and so I kind of created a show Bible and like, named the church and the world and the ministries and sort of like, designed the format of it, and I recorded a pilot and and then it just kind of grew into itself on his own. And then during the pandemic, it kind of saved my ass because it allowed me to when the pandemic hit, I was used to performing multiple times a week and that had been for for 20 years, I'd been doing that and so then to not be performing anymore, was a real blow and so mega kind of continued to itch that scratch and then it also kind of introduced me to this new really kick ass community and the way we get guesses we just because of having come up in the improv scene, we just know so many incredibly funny people. And so we just started begging and borrowing from our friends. In the geniuses of their minds and having a guest on every single episode and, and yet it kind of became this thing that I'm glad I'm really glad and grateful to it, because I think it forced me to stay reckoning with that part of my history and continuing to try to have compassion for it and myself. And who knows, you know, sometimes if I get really metaphysical and get in, like, get stoned, I think like, you know what, maybe in the journey of my soul, I don't even know if I believe in any of the Buddha's stuff. But like it, let's say, for the sake of thought argument like that there is a journey of the soul. And let's say that you kind of do pick your thing. And let's, you know, I wish I hadn't picked the United States of America, I wish, I think there would have been cooler eras and places. But but let's say to put some agency in my soul, like, let's say, I picked this. And let's say I picked high demand mind control called to see if I could learn how to think and find and find it on my own No, no, and, and explore the gray and not stay cozy in the black and white. And so I guess, if I, it, let's say that to give myself some agency and not be a victim of it, let's say something like that happened metaphysically, then then then what? What does it mean? Because I guess I did. Do it. At least I got out of this cage. And so what's what does that mean? It doesn't mean keep uncovering cages? Does it mean? I don't know, I don't know. But I did have a high thought recently of like, well, I guess, if in that scenario, there's anything maybe productive from exploring it as a as a thought experiment is, maybe it can give me gratitude for where I came from, rather than angst and resentment. Because everyone played their part perfectly. So that I could play the game. You know, like, the church and my parents and everyone like the fundamentalism and all the like, because, like, they believed it so deeply that that I did, and, and so now, it's really tricky to be in loving relationships with people who fundamentally see reality differently than me. That's really tricky. And it's also a part of why I'm so interested in linguistics. And I should be spending the rest of my life learning as many languages as I can, because our ability to think is based on the language that we speak. So I think somebody who speaks 10 languages can think 10 times more than me. And that's really interesting to me, because a huge part of it is I'm like, is this semantics with me and my dad, I made a, I made a comedy short, I made a film that I wrote, directed, called brought to you by Satan, where I explore the idea of like, is it just semantics? You can can me and my dad look at the exact same thing and what I what he sees, he would describe as a powerful stronghold of Satan. And what I see as I stare at the exact same thing is addiction and abuse. Yeah, and who knows, when you're caught in the talents of addiction and abuse? Maybe it does feel like a powerful stronghold have an invisible monster. I just, I just don't know.

David Ames 53:41
I really, I really think that, you know, that internet meme a few years ago, the dress, you know, that just shocked people that their their perception was different, that one group of people were seeing a blue and one was seeing gold and just could not believe each other that there's no way you can't possibly be experiencing it that way. One of the things that I talk about a lot is that a deep human need is to be known to be understood. Yeah. So you were talking about love, I think a definition of love is my ability to be authentically me and your ability to be authentically you and to connect somewhere in the middle of that, that's kind of love for me. But it's that feeling of you're both having, like you just said the same experience. But your dad sees it as a powerful, lovely experience of love and then transcendence and connection with other believers and you see it as a trap, and pain and trauma and and nothing good there. And, you know, and it's like, how do you reconcile those two perspectives? And I don't know, I, I guess me waxing philosophically. I think it is more than that semantics. But one of the things that we gain being on this side of the bubble is what by previous guests, Alice Greczyn said it really well, I'm no longer good at fooling myself. I've gotten less good at fooling myself. It's not that I'm impervious to fooling myself, but I'm less good at it now, having been in the bubble, and now out of it, and like, there's something to be said for being aware or self aware enough to recognize I can feel myself I know what that felt like, felt very real for a long period of time. And now I don't want that anymore. And so I'm on the lookout to make sure that I don't do that again.

Holly Laurent 55:33
Yeah. And I recently heard someone say that attempting to change someone's mind is non consensual. And I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and, and maybe that brings us back to the power of comedy and storytelling, which is that it that is a place where it is a consensual connection. Yeah.

David Ames 56:04
So back to Vega for a second. You hinted at this, that, you know, first of all, it's spot on, right. Like, I mean, you know, again, I know everybody's listening has heard mega but if just in case you hadn't, right, you guys are playing full tilt. Christianese if evangelical that's at it kind of peak. What is almost difficult to satire, you know, you're doing it at this peak level. But there's a sincerity to it, there's a heart to it, that it doesn't feel cruel. It feels very honest. And more to my questions to you is like, how does this not hurt you? How are you able to do this on a weekly basis and not have that be? Re traumatizing for you yourself? Let alone maybe one or two listeners out there?

Holly Laurent 56:51
Oh, what a compassionate question. I really appreciate that. And the honest answer is that it does hurt me sometimes I hear things tumble out of the voice of my character that bother me and hurt me physically. And I'm really I'm doing really intentional work right now trying to get into into my body as a human being a lot of embodiment work. I'm in a class right now called embodiment and embodied sexuality. I'm taking a dance class, which is absolutely terrifying for me dances and most the most like never, not in a million years. It's it's I don't even like to go to weddings, because I'm like, Oh, is there going to be dancing? Because I'm so awkward and self conscious. And I don't know what to do. I don't know how to dance. I don't feel like I have rhythm. I'm so insecure, I'm all these things. And so I'm like doing all this work to try to safely come back down into my body. And sometimes when I hear my character, Halle say stuff, I feel pangs in my body. I'm like, Oh, I don't know, I and I've introduced other characters where I play Halley's Sunday, which is an adolescent male version of, it's basically me playing me as a teenage boy. And I really like those episodes. And I'm like, can I just change characters? Because, because his name is de and he comes in as the skeptic and he's really wrestling with it on an emotional level and stuff and Hallie, my main character is, is toxically positive and completely trapped in a cage. And I'm trying to, I have tried to play a really long game with her of like, of her slowly, kind of getting a little bit fucked up by her deep knowledge of the Bible, because one of my biggest indictments of most middle American Christians is that they are theologically illiterate, and that they do not know what is in their book. And I do. And I, you know, took Greek in college and used to be able to translate the New Testament and I have really dedicated myself to grappling with this. And I feel like a lot of believers have not and so so with my character, I'm trying to use her deep dedication to biblical truths as a, as a seed that is starting to grow inside of her, trying to play it as a really long game of slowly breaking her down, because this podcast won't go on forever. And we are going to end it at some point. And I'm like, How do I want to end it? And, and I'm feeling it in my body to comedically of like, oh, I, I used to, I used to chuckle at a lot of things, she said. And now if I'm feeling physical responses to those ideas, even though I'm perpetuating these ideas in a comedic way, again, it's it's that is your higher power, the thing you're focusing on, you know, and so how much do I want to give it and all of that and saying, like, when people tell me like, sometimes they go through periods where it's hard to listen to mega like, that hurts me to even though I completely understand. Yeah, I completely understand. And I'm like, it hurts me to say it sometimes, too. Yeah, so I don't know. I don't know. It's a dance. Real dance. We recorded it but and I'm trying to find new ways of playing that long game with her exploring other characters. And then yeah, we have a mini series that is a spin off that's coming out that we're gonna be able to play other characters too. And that's going to be really fun. It's it's a parody of the story of Mark Driscoll this toxic, authoritarian style white guy who started a church and then spectacularly exploded it with his own toxicity. There was a Christianity Today, podcast that came out last year, I guess it was massive. Yeah. Where they detail the it's called The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill about this spectacular explosion of a megachurch. And so we're gonna parody that because we got a so and, and so far, I think it's gonna be four or five episodes in total. And I've been working on editing the first episode, and it's really funny. And man, it is really, I think it's like, because it's a different format, we're able to take like, much stronger swings, and we're, we're being way more risky with it. And that, that excites the hell out of me. And I'm, and I'm really, really, really excited about it. So it's, it's all good, because it's helping me. You know, gestate whatever, whatever thing is next, you know, I feel like what you're doing with this podcast is going to lead you to the next thing you do. Sure. No, yeah. So yeah.

David Ames 1:01:48
So Holly, this is how dedicated I am. I went and listened to the rise and fall of Mars Hill in preparation for this conversation. Wow, what did you think of everything super painful? Yes,

Holly Laurent 1:02:01
it's painful, right?

David Ames 1:02:02
There's just a couple of things I wanted to bounce off of you. So one is to give a little bit of credit, you know, the Christianity today, you know, does try they make the attempt to be self aware and to self criticize their movement. So and that's about as much praise as I'm going to give them because they also show throughout this, including the host, Mike Cosper. I just complete blindness to the larger factors right? It's not just that Mark Driscoll is an asshole it's that the structures are dangerous and and hurting people. And then the other thing that I just found deeply painful was the the advertising in between. So in this podcast that is about criticizing celebrity pastors, it'll this pop on this celebrity pastor podcast come join me doing it. It's just Oh my God, it was painful. It was.

Holly Laurent 1:02:55
That's bananas.

David Ames 1:02:57
Yeah, just the whole talk about read the room. Oh, totally. Yeah. So you know fascinating project all the way around and I really look forward to listening to how you guys parody it so

Holly Laurent 1:03:08
Oh, well, you sweetheart. I mean, I really hope that when our our version The Rise and Fall of twin Hills comes out yeah, that you will I pray that it will graft over it will skin graft over all the burns for the Mars Hill one. I it's it's so interesting. I full disclosure, David, I think I only got through two or three episodes because I can imagine because my brain started leaking out of my ears when I got to hear his voice from the pulpit. I I was so filled with rage again that I was like, this isn't good for my body. I'm getting filled with cortisol.

David Ames 1:03:49
Yeah. Yeah, I think a few times, you know, I'd be listening to it with earphones. And I, you know, be walking around the house doing chores or something. I'd be like, Oh, come on. Family members would be like, what I'm like nothing. I'm just just listening to a podcast.

Holly Laurent 1:04:06
I know. So I think you'll really like I don't want to give it away. But it's my favorite thing is that we give in our in our party, we give the Mark Driscoll character who is the lead pastor, the fictional lead pastor of twin hills, our church, Steve Johnson. We we really give him a home man. It's so funny. We come up with a pretty great way to expose to expose him as both an absolute degenerate and also a big fucking baby. Yeah, yeah, I think that's what all of these Jesus and John Wayne dudes are. I think they're big man children and I have over the course of mega I have dedicated myself so deeply to continuing to stay in scholarship like this Listening to Bart Ehrman all the time trying to educate myself about New Testament knowledge, context, understanding of the Scripture understanding like original manuscripts understanding how text has changed understanding, you know, the act, what does it actually say? What does the Bible actually say about homosexuality, about Satan about all these things, like I've dedicated myself so deeply to it. And lately, I've found myself at a point where I'm like, this could change, but I'm like, I don't care anymore. I don't care what's in the Bible. I don't care what it says about homosexuality, I could give a fuck, like, I am looking for love. I'm looking for, again, liberation. And excavating that isn't really doing it for me. And I'm afraid it can keep me kind of angry and in resentment rather than gratitude. And I'm really looking for ways to change my thinking and my higher power or whatever you want to call it. And it's interesting even the word atheist day. God damn it, it's centers Christianity, it still has them centered. It's on our it's on our dollar bills is on in our Constitution. It's in all it's just so centered all the time anyway, that I'm like, how do I move away from that as center and continue to feed myself with things that remind me that that system made me want love, and need love and look for love and feel like I needed it so desperately. And that made me a vibration on this planet of need and scarcity. And that's also what I was experiencing. And outside of it, I'm like, Oh, I don't need and want love. I am love. I have love. I am this love. Like, I have it. Okay, I feel it. I'm trying to send out vibrations of like, there's love here. If someone was flying over and they were wearing like, like, love, like goggles, like green light goggles or whatever, they would see a little beacon like, down where I where my body is right now on this earth. It's like being warm. Like, there's love here like, I'm love. And so what I want to draw is, is I want to draw love to me by being love. Not by being a desperate sad, fearful, angsty, lonely, frightened kid who who is grasping for God, or a community that is promising that if you if you play your cards, right, I want to be like, You know what, fuck these cards. Yeah, I'm not playing this game. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go play another game. And again, I'm in the messy part of that. I haven't like, I haven't arrived anywhere. And maybe you and I should talk in a year and see if we're both completely different people. Yeah.

Do you have any better words that you use? Like, uh, not better words than atheism? But like, more words?

David Ames 1:08:31
Yeah, this whole podcast is what I call about secular grace. Right? And then yeah, this is this is the idea that the, you know, the horizontal, I recognize that. What we love about grace, the agave, when the love in the Bible is, is actually people connecting with each other. And when you start to look at even miracle stories, right, even miracle stories, often it's like, oh, well, this first responder showed up out of nowhere and saved me or you know, or this nurse took the time to help me out or this person gave me $10 When I was hungry, there's always another person involved. Right? And it's this is just the recognition that it is human beings being good to one another. That is the is the thing that we crave is the love that we've that we've been trying to describe and, and go after. Yeah, I agree with you. The language is hard. I call myself a humanist, but that can be misconstrued as well. You know it I don't think there are good words for it. So I use a whole bunch and I you know, I say yes, I am an atheist, but that is kind of boring. It's that what I believe in is people right? Like I believe in people and that's the thing that you need to know and so I'm constantly on the lookout for better words as well. So if you find any let me know.

Holly Laurent 1:09:51
Because we are really limited we're not only limited to like the our perceptions and our senses, like we're, you know, we're living in three dimensions and And we have five senses. So that's all pretty. That's a pretty tight sandbox. Yeah, yeah. So like, there's a, I don't know, there's part of me that's like, there might be something. I don't know. I don't know what the, you know, the Hadron Collider in CERN, you know talks about the God particle. And you know, I wish they wouldn't call it the God particle. But there is something that is binding everything and I agree with you that it's connection. And I think that's actually at the heart of your, the thing you're scratching out with comedy is like, comedy is just connection. It's, it's, it's human connection. Yeah, and, and surprise, it's basically like you're connecting with me for a few moments. And then I'm gonna make you breathe differently by little elements of surprise, as we're connected. And yeah, and I think that's what improv is. And I used to always tell my improv students back when we still had improv theaters and training centers, before the pandemic like that improv is just about connection. It's about you. I tell everyone on my first and the first class all the time, and they never believed me. But I'm like, I'm going to tell you the secret to improv, and you won't believe me. But if you do this every day for 10 years, it something will kick in and you'll be like, oh, yeah, that's that's true, is that the secret of improv is listening. That's it. It's just listening. And people's biggest difficulty is getting over that hurdle. Because your inner monologue is so loud, because you're so self conscious when you're being observed. And when then when you're putting pressure on yourself to be funny, and low, literally on stage. And on stage, which is, you know, obviously, it's the Seinfeld joke of people would rather be in a casket than giving the eulogy. But like, so it's you're overcoming all these like great fears, or you're not overcoming your you're working inside, have great fears, and doing it anyway. And, but it is about listening. It's just about listening, if you just breathe and listen to what your partner's saying and respond to it. And then it just becomes a multi layered, like listening exercise where you start to have to listen to yourself, listen to that inner weirdo. Listen to that, like that, that whatever that little deepest, authentic spark of you is like listening to that, listening to the audience and listening to your scene partner. And if you can combine those levels of active conscious listening, because most of us, I think, we we confuse we think listening is the way we the way we listen is actually waiting, we're waiting for our turn to talk. Yeah. And waiting for your turn to speak is not listening, like deep. What improv and comedy taught me is that like deep active conscious listening is a posture and a willingness to be changed. Interesting, and, and that is listening. And when two people are are doing that, they are connected. And then that connection is the spark that makes magic and makes us laugh.

David Ames 1:12:59
Well, I think I think we have to wrap there because I think you've just described describing comedy in the same way that I talked about. What we're trying to do here on the podcast is like, you know, in these interviews, as people are telling their story, there are moments that you've talked about the wave, right, I can feel the moment of oh, that was that was good, that's going to connect with the audience. Right? And it's, it's generally about being honest and vulnerable. And, again, authentically yourself. So I'm going to take that from you and, and run with it. So thank you. Thank you for that. We're not certain about the release date for the for the parody. So I will hear from your publicist when that is and we'll publish you know, we'll make that abundantly clear. Intro and outros. But how can people reach you? How can people find mega how can they connect with you?

Holly Laurent 1:13:50
My website is Holly lauren.com. And same on Instagram, but Mega podcast.com and mega podcast on the socials. And yeah, I have all my I have that brought to you by Satan shortfilm on my website and all that. So yeah, listen, rate and review mega it helps us so much. And move love yourself and start to be love rather than need love, and we're gonna transform this place. We're gonna we're gonna make things better. Yeah, at least we'll have a little bit better of a human experience for we're not exactly sure why we're here. But here we are. And if we can help each other and help ourselves suffer a little less, then I say hell yeah to that and thank you David for such a thoughtful, lovely conversation. I really really dig you and I really have enjoyed this and the pleasure has been mine and anything that you take from this I feel like that's a gift And I'm so happy to give give it to you. So all the best.

David Ames 1:15:04
That's awesome. And I might take you up on a year from now let's check in with this dude again.

Holly Laurent 1:15:08
Okay, I would love it. This is my favorite shit to talk about. I can, I could go on and on and on and on and on. And maybe I'll be like starting my, my linguistic program by then yeah, I'll be writing a dissertation on the nature of reality as defined by language.

David Ames 1:15:30
Final thoughts on the episode. My all time favorite interviews are with comedians. I've had. Karen Alia, from the deconversion therapy podcast. I've had Leon Lord who's a stand up comedian. And now Holly Laurent from Mega the podcast. These are always my favorite interviews because I think comedians have insight into human nature that is at least significantly better than the average pastor. What I think makes Holly in particular very good at satire and comedy, is the honesty that she brings to the table. Her story is gut wrenching, growing up traveling with her dad in evangelical circles, recognizing it as performance. Her seeing herself because she was a woman as threatening and bad. She talked about as a child, demons were real. And the trauma of that is evident, even today, but it's that realness. It's that honesty that makes her improv so powerful and so good. I think that's why mega the podcast is so ultimately successful. Although it's absolutely critique and satire. There's also heart and compassion and recognition in the characters. The first episode of the new mini series, The Rise and Fall of twin Hills has just dropped. I'm going to be checking that out shortly. But the the subject matter, the rise and fall of Mars Hill about Mark Driscoll is very target rich. So I expect that it's going to be absolutely amazing. And you should check it out. I want to thank Holly for being on the podcast for being rigorously self honest, for sharing with us her story and her comedy and her incredible mind. I love the way she said she does comedy at the height of her intelligence. We're going to talk about the human connection part in the secular Grace section of this podcast. But thank you so much, Holly, for being on and sharing your story. The secular Grace Thought of the Week is human connection. How could it not be? As I've said, Now, repeatedly, I'm a huge comedy fan. And it is so powerful to hear Holly talk about comedy and improv in particular is about that connection that improv is about listening, active listening, instead of just waiting for your turn to speak with a in her words, a posture of being willing to change. That's brilliant. Holly said, connection is The Spark. And she talks about anticipating and riding the waves of laughter and being willing to sit in the quiet time before that happens to get the better laugh. I just love everything about that conversation and her perspective there. What this podcast the graceful atheist podcast is about is human connection. So many things that we call spiritual, are just about human connection. When you think back on your church experience, what were the good things? Was it the sermons? Was it going to the building? Or was it the potluck? afterwards? The coffee breaks, going to IHOP with friends? Was it somebody who cared about you when you were sick, and they came to your house and brought you food? The entire point of secular grace of my brand of humanism is that it is human beings being good to one another. That is this spark, that is this thing that we are searching for. It's what we are referring to when we say connection in the transcendent sense. I don't mean to imply that it is mundane. But I do mean to be explicit that it is not transcendent. It is just people. And that's fantastic. You don't have to believe anything. You don't have to force yourself to accept unwarranted truths. You can just love people and be loved by them and experience that sense of transcendence, that sense of spark, and connection. Next week, Arline interviews Shifra that's going to be an amazing conversation. Until then, my name is David, and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful. The beat is called waves by MCI beats. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show, email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com. For blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com. This graceful atheist podcast, a part of the atheists United studios Podcast Network

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Bart D. Ehrman: Armageddon

Authors, Bloggers, Book Review, Deconstruction, End Times, Hell Anxiety, Podcast, Podcasters, Rapture Anxiety, Scholarship

This week’s guest is Bart D. Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His new book is Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End.

Is the book of Revelation a prophecy of future catastrophe? Is it a book of hope? Or is it a book of violence and wrath?

In Armageddon, Bart delves into the most misunderstood—and possibly the most dangerous—book of the Bible, exploring the horrifying social and political consequences of expecting an imminent apocalypse and offering a fascinating tour through three millennia of Judeo-Christian thinking about how our world will end.

Bart’s work has been a part of many of our deconstructions. In my interview with Bart, we get to hear his faith transition. We learn from his New Testament expertise. But most surprising of all, we learn what a nice guy he is.

Quotes

Even if you think the Bible is inspired. Even if you think this is a book written by God in some way…it means God inspired a book; he didn’t inspire a jigsaw puzzle—which means, you read it like a book, and if you read a book, you don’t cherry-pick it.

The argument may seem far-fetched, but it is the kind of reasoning meant to appeal to people who are ready to be persuaded,
not to skeptics.

Apocalypses are first-person narratives of highly symbolic visionary experiences that reveal heavenly secrets to ex-
plain earthly realities.

Far more people revere the Bible than read it

Parts of our Western cultural heritage that are driven by traditional apocalyptic thinking have encouraged
fatalism and inaction in the face of our crises.

The overwhelming emphasis of Revelation is not about hope but about the wrath and vengeance of God against those who
have incurred his displeasure.

I just got to a point … it wasn’t a big thing like John had a different christology from mark
it wasn’t that kind of major thing.
it was more like, “this little detail, if I am just being honest with myself and surely god wants me to be honest with myself
and if it turns out that I am right about this if it is true then god wants me to know the truth, this little detail is wrong.
I don’t want it to be but it is a contradiction.

Once I came to that little chink in my armor then I started realizing that the bible might not be inerrant.
It opened my eyes. It took a long time. It was a very painful process for me to move away from that.
Because I was afraid of going to hell, I was afraid of losing my community, I was having arguments with my mother,
This is not good.

Within Evangelical tradition truth is really important.
There is also a sense within the evangelical tradition that there are ways to find the truth.
It is not just believing something.
When you have students studying it at a serious Evangelical school they are taught you have to look for the evidence
but once you open up the door to evidence you also open up the door to people disagreeing.

This is not a book of hope it is a book of violence

“The thing about fundamentalism is that nobody calls themself a fundamentalist. The fundamentalist is always the guy to the right of you.”

“I started thinking [in college] that the world’s a bigger place than I had imagined as a fundamentalist Christian.”

“If you want to understand the Gospels, you have to understand how ‘ancient biographies’ work. They don’t work like our biographies…”

“The deal is: Jesus died and his disciples started convincing people that he was raised from the dead, and the people they convinced, convinced other people who convinced other people who convinced other people and this goes on for forty or fifty years.”

“Most people don’t read the Book of Revelation; it’s just too bizarre and weird. They can’t make heads or tails of it, so they give up. The only people who really delve into it, tend to be fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals who are using it to show what’s going to happen in our near future.”

“When you get to the Book of Revelation, there’s nothing about ‘giving and service.’ It’s about destroying the enemy. Forget ‘Turn the other cheek.’ Forget ‘Love your enemies.’ You hate your enemies and you hate what they do and you punish them.”

“God tortures people in the Book of Revelation and everyone gets thrown into a lake of burning sulfur, [and then] brought back to life so that they can be destroyed in a lake of fire.”

“[Apocalyptic literature] is its own genre…When you’re reading a science fiction novel, you know you’re not reading a front-page article in the New York Times. It’s a different genre…An apocalypse is an apocalypse, which means you have to know how apocalypses work if you’re going to understand any one of them, including the Book of Revelation.”

Links

Website
https://www.bartehrman.com/

Blog
https://ehrmanblog.org/

Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman Podcast
https://www.bartehrman.com/podcast/

#AmazonPaidLinks

Interact

Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!

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

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

Support the podcast
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
Paypal: paypal.me/gracefulatheist

Attribution

“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats

Transcript

NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.

David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast United studios 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 Patron on patreon.com. Susan, thank you so much for supporting the podcast. I also want to thank our ongoing supporters, Joseph John Ruby, Sharon Joel, Lars Ray, Rob, Peter Tracy, Jimmy and Jason, thank you so much for your support. We're doing interesting things with the support money. We're using the Zoom account for the Tuesday night Hangouts. We had to change to a new recording software as a number of the COVID era are locked down era tools that were free are no longer free. We're putting that support money to good use. If you find yourself in the middle of doubt and deconstruction, you do not need to do it alone. Please join our private Facebook group deconversion anonymous. You can find us at facebook.com/groups/deconversion. On today's show, my guest today is Bart D. Ehrman, the UNC Chapel Hill New Testament scholar who has written a number of popular books. Many of my guests have talked about how books by Bart Ehrman started their deconstruction process. Bart's new book is Armageddon. What the Bible really says about the end. This was a fantastic conversation I really enjoyed having Bart on, he turns out to be just a very nice person, as well as being a challenge to the evangelical perspective of Christianity. Even as a non believer, what Bart pulls out of the New Testament is an interesting perspective on the Jesus of the Gospels versus, in this specific case, the Jesus of Revelation, which is a God of wrath and violence. Either way, it is a challenge to modern evangelicalism. Here is my conversation with Bart D. Ehrman.

Welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.

Bart D. Ehrman 2:31
Well, thanks for having me.

David Ames 2:33
Bart. I know I'm not going to do you service here on your CV, but you are the best selling author of a number of books, including Misquoting Jesus, Jesus before the Gospels, the triumph of Christianity. Your new book is Armageddon, what the Bible really says about the end. I'd like you to maybe just mention your work at the University of North Carolina and what your academic credentials are.

Bart D. Ehrman 2:55
Yeah, sure. So after high school, I went straight to Moody Bible Institute and had a three year degree there. And then I went to Wheaton College, where I majored in English, actually. But I took Greek there and decided to go to Princeton Theological Seminary, where the expert in Greek manuscripts taught Bruce Metzger. He was a world expert in this and I wanted to do that as an evangelical to study Greek manuscripts. Yeah, I did my master's degree there with him. I wrote a master's thesis under him. And then I stayed and did my PhD there and wrote my PhD dissertation with him. And so my credentials are I have a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary, in New Testament studies, with a dissertation in the field of analyzing Greek manuscripts. So while I was finishing my PhD, I got a position teaching position at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and I taught there for four years. Then in 1988, I came to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. So now I teach at UNC Chapel Hill. I've been here since 1988. And I teach both undergraduate students usually introductory stuff dealing with the New Testament or the historical Jesus or the Gospels, and I teach PhD students, usually, some New Testament stuff, but a lot more on Christianity after the New Testament period, with mainly the second and third centuries of Christianity with the PhD students.

David Ames 4:19
Is that all Bard? Is that all? That's that's quite quite the quite the bone a few days. Very, very well done. I was saying to you off, Mike, that a number of listeners, I think have been impacted by your work. Many of the listeners are evangelicals or former evangelicals, and in particular, the doctrine of inerrancy of Scripture is a rough one to get over and reading your work has helped a lot of people to just seek the truth in a different way, in many ways has led to various degrees of deconstruction. I think what they would be interested in and what I'm interested in hearing is a bit about your own personal story of faith. What was it like for you as a young person in Faith and then what that trajectory that leads you to now?

Bart D. Ehrman 5:03
Yeah, well, so I was raised in a Christian home, we were not Evan Jellicle, we went to the Episcopal Church, and I was an altar boy and the Episcopal Church. Soon as I could be up till through high school, when I was in high school, when I was 15, I started attending a Youth for Christ group. And after a period I ended up becoming a born again, Christian. I asked Jesus into my heart and committed my life to Christ as his as my Lord and Savior. And I became very serious of angelical. And that's why I went off to Moody Bible Institute, you know, as an Evangelical, I mean, basically, I was a fundamentalist. I mean, the thing about fundamentalism is that nobody calls themself a fundamentalist. Fundamentalist is always the guy to the right of you. When I was a moody, we actually didn't mind calling ourselves fundamentalists, we thought we subscribe to the fundamentals, you know, literal virgin birth, little resurrection for the dead six day creation. I mean, these are the fundamentals of the faith. And so we subscribe to them. We were kind of proud of it. At moody, of course, they taught that the Bible is completely inerrant. There is no one set view of why it's inerrant. It wasn't, most did not think that God had dictated to the authors, because, you know, there were some there are smart people, there were smart people out there, they, they knew that when you read this stuff in Greek, there are different writing styles and different. And, you know, they knew that math was different from John, they certainly knew all that. But the words were from God, ultimately, in some way. And they were inerrant. There were no mistakes of any kind in the Bible, not just in what it taught about theology, or belief, or salvation or Christ. But what it taught about science, you know, or what to talk about history. I mean, it's just historic, this is all really happened, the way it's described. So that was my view. And I maintain that, through Wheaton, although I started, started moving a bit away from that my two years of Wheaton, just because I was taking all sorts of classes in other things. I was majoring in English literature and reading a lot of literature, reading philosophy, studying intellectual history, how thought developed over the years. And, and so I, you know, I started thinking that the world's a bigger place than I had imagined, as a fundamentalist Christian. I went to Princeton seminary, as I said, to study Greek manuscripts. And I had no plan at all of changing my beliefs. I was not going to be a non become a non of angelical. These are all bunch of liberals, what did they take? I would take a Bible class, you know, I'm talking about a contradiction between Luke and Mark. And I say, this case, you see, I don't know why so blind. He seems like he's obviously blind, what does he know? And so went on for that like that for a while. But I ended up, you know, I was reading the gospels in the New Testament in Greek. And I was reading the Old Testament in Hebrew. I learned Hebrew too, and, and I was studying it intensively. And at one point, I just got to a point where it wasn't a big thing. It wasn't like, you know, John has a different Christology. For mark, it wasn't that kind of major thing. It was more like, this little detail, you know, if I'm just being honest with myself, and surely God wants me to be honest with myself, and, and if it turns out that I'm right about this, then you know, if it's true, then God wants me to know the truth. This little details wrong. This is just a contract into that I just, I don't want it to be but you know, I it is a contradiction. Once I came to that little like little chink in my armor, that I started realizing that the Bible might not be inerrant. And it opened my eyes. And it took a long time. And it was a very painful process for me to move away from that. Because I was afraid of going to hell, I was afraid of, you know, losing my community, I was afraid I was having arguments with with my mother. I mean, it's like this is not good. It's painful.

David Ames 8:56
It's really interesting to hear you say the same words that I hear from many of the people that we interview of just that it's difficult, even when you have admitted to yourself to then begin to take steps to remove yourself because you're losing so much and that there's so much cost at hand.

And for you, you're slightly more public figure. I think you've also had the added burden of the vitriol of Evangelicals over time. What has that been like for you like as you write these popular books that are on some level or another textual criticism?

Bart D. Ehrman 9:50
So what really gets my of angelical opponents upset, especially among the scholars, evangelical scholars, is that the scholars know that the kinds of things I'm writing about our things that are just widely known in the academy. They just they take a different view of it, but the material I teach you know about how there are so you know, 1000s and 1000s of mistakes among the copies of the New Testament, or that Matthew and Mark really do contradict each other in places where the John really does have a different understanding of Jesus, just act as not historically reliable, Paul did not write some of the letters described to him. These things sound radical to people who are of angelical, who just have never heard of any such thing. And they think this crazy guy, Chapel Hills making stuff up. And I gotta tell you, this is stuff that anybody who goes to a major seminary or divinity school in the country, that's not an Evan Jellicle school, but if they go to Princeton, or Duke, or Harvard, or Yale, or Chicago or Vanderbilt, they'll hear this is what they learn. And they may go off to take a church and their congregation, they don't tell anybody this, but they know it. Yeah. And so when I get the vitriol, I just say, Well, okay, I mean, you know, you're not, you're not really just attacking me, you're attacking the whole establishment of biblical scholarship in the modern world.

David Ames 11:09
Right, exactly. reading your book reminds me of my time at Bible college, I was actually at a Evangelical, very small, actually, Assemblies of God, a school that no longer exists Bethany college at the time, which was Bethany college. So very, very conservative. But I always say that my professors did too good a job, I actually, I really do feel like I learned good critical thinking I learned about good exegesis, I learned about good hermeneutics. Something that you repeat multiple times is that we have to understand what the original author intended to say to the original readers. And that always informed the way that I handled the Bible. But I think it's something that's important that you've just described. And it's true, in my case, too, is that you talked about God would want you to be honest. And I always say that the seeds of leaving Christianity are within Christianity, the need for truth, trying to be humble, trying to be honest, all of those things tend to lead away as as truth is found outside.

Bart D. Ehrman 12:12
Yeah, it's an interesting point. Because the of course, within, within the evangelical tradition, truth is really important. And there's also a sense within the evangelical tradition, that there there are ways to find the truth. And that they are, it's not just, it's not just believing something within in Scotland, when you have students, you know, her studying at a serious of angelical school, you know, they're taught, you've got to look for the evidence. But once you open up the door to evidence, you also open up the door to people disagreeing. I always took comfort in the idea that the St. Augustine was, was a strong advocate of the idea that all truth comes from God. You know, all truth is God's truth. And so that if you, if you change your mind, and you realize, you know, just what I believed was not true, then you're not opposed to God, you're on God's side. That for me, that was very comforting when I was moving away from my Evan Jellicle faith.

David Ames 13:29
I wanted to mention that about two years ago, probably I interviewed a student of yours, or you were on his dissertation board, at least in mills. Yes, that if you remember in

Bart D. Ehrman 13:40
norm, well, I've been corresponding with him. Oh, very good. Yeah.

David Ames 13:44
great person to talk to. I loved my conversation with him very, very smart. And one of the conversations we talked about was the Gospels and whether or not it's kind of fair to say that they are hagiographies. He made the argument that as a genre is somewhat equivalent to biographies or biopics that we think of today. And I wonder if you think that that's, is that fair, or unfair to say? And what are kind of the implications of that?

Bart D. Ehrman 14:11
For a long time, scholars thought that the gospels were a genre unto themselves, scholars wouldn't put it like that, they'd say they were souI generous, and that they were their own thing. And probably about 40 years ago, some scholars started looking around and thinking, you know, it's really rare for a genre just to kind of sprang up out of nowhere. And, and they started looking at broader themes. And there was their debates about what what kind of genre were the Gospels like, and the majority of you now is pretty much what you just said that the Gospels are a kind of ancient biography. But the but the important point is and Ian would completely agree with this is that we're saying ancient biographies. And if you want to understand the Gospels, you have to understand and how ancient biographies work because they don't work like our biographies. And so but they was a it was a common genre. There were biographies of religious people. We had biographies of people who were their biography, their allegedly accounts of their lives, where they have incredible supernatural births. And they're fantastic teachers, and they can do all sorts of amazing deeds, and they're taken up to heaven when they die. And so you know, that that kind of biography is not prevalent, but that kind of biography does exist, as do biographies of, you know, normal people in the ancient world.

David Ames 15:38
sounds very familiar. Yeah. I guess where I'm driving out, and I didn't mean necessarily to put you on the spot. But when you have a New Testament scholar, it's you got to ask these questions. Is it fair to say that the Gospels are anonymous? And if they are, is it unfair to say that they are effectively hearsay?

Bart D. Ehrman 15:56
In my mind, there is no, it's not a debate whether they're anonymous, they are anonymous. The authors do not tell us what their names are. We have titles on our gospels, but the authors didn't put the titles on their gospels, the Gospels, the oldest manuscripts we have they have titles on them. Matthew's Gospel is called, according to Matthew. That's the title. That's a title, an author gives a book. According to me, the book, I mean, when I wrote my book, Armageddon, that's that just came out. I didn't call it according to BART. It's called Armageddon, you give it a title. Yeah. So if you say, according to somebody, what you're saying is, this is the version according to this person they went, they would think about this. Yeah. And so the deal with our Gospels is that they are all written in Greek, by Greek speaking Christians. They're almost always dated to after 70, of the Common Era. So 7080 90, and they're by Greek speaking Christians who did not live in Israel. And so the question two questions are well, could they have been Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? And I doubt it? I don't think so. But also, then, if they weren't disciples of Jesus, where'd they get their information? Right. And so I don't think I usually call it hearsay. But it's, it's that the deal is Jesus died and his disciples started convincing people that he was raised from the dead. And the people that convinced convinced other people who convinced other people convinced other people, and this goes on for 40 or 50 years. And that entire time, the only way to convince somebody to believe in Jesus is to tell stories about him. Right. And so by the time somebody in Ephesus has heard a story about Jesus, it's probably gone through, you know, even if it's like in the year 50, probably gone through 10 or 20, or 100. People before he gets it. Right. Historians would would agree, most historians agree, look, the Gospels do have historically reliable information in them. And they have material that's been exaggerated, and some material that is not historical at all. And the trick is finding which is which.

David Ames 17:56
And by the way, I 100% agree with that. I know that the other side of the spectrum that you deal with is the mythicism side that would want to suggest that there was no historical Jesus and that I think, is equally invalid if you if you want

Bart D. Ehrman 18:11
to Oh, you think you think you have angelical tax can be vitriolic Christ what?

David Ames 18:40
Well, let's let's talk about the book, then the new book is Armageddon, what the Bible really says about the end, I've got a quibble with you. I feel like the heart of the book, from my reading is, you're really doing this compare and contrast of the Jesus that John of Patmos is describing in Revelation versus the Jesus of the Gospels in many ways, and you're really asking the reader to come to a conclusion on that, to do these things line up. And it really isn't about the end at all. And in fact, you start with that futuristic interpretations of revelation or not really what it's about.

Bart D. Ehrman 19:18
Okay, so yeah, it's absolutely true that that's where I end the book I end the book with comparing Jesus and and the author of the apocalypse genre Patmos, the idea of the book is that I want to show how revelation has been interpreted. And what I point out is that most people don't read the book Revelation is just too bizarre and weird. And they, they might start but they just can't make heads or tails of it. And so they give up. The only people who really delve into it tend to be fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals, who are using it to show what's going to happen in our near future, that the signs are now being fulfilled. So liberal, historic Local scholars like it, you know, where I went Princeton Theological Seminary scholars there or any of the major divinity, any major Christian, biblical scholar who's not an very conservative Evangelical, doesn't accept that interpretation. Instead, the traditional liberal interpretation that's been around for a long time. It's not a liberal interpretation. It's a historical interpretation. But liberal Christian scholars look at it and say, Look, this is a historical account. It's not a futuristic account. But the theological take of these people is that the book Revelation is a message of hope. And that it's not literally predicting what's going to happen in 10 years from now. It's, it's, it's a metaphorical description of God being in control of this world, and ultimately, God's going to prevail, so that those who suffer now will will be rewarded for their suffering. And so if they just hold on, there'll be fine. And so it's a message of hope. So for years, of course, you know, when I was a fundamentalist, and even when after, you know, when I was an Evan Jellicle, I thought it was predicting the end of the world. And I realized I was wrong. And for many, many years, I held this other view, that it's a book of hope, that it's God's showing that he's going to help those who are suffering. Now, I taught it that way. I started, I came to Chapel Hill in 1988. I taught at that way until about four years ago, I always thought that and and so in my book, the first part of the book takes apart the idea that a futuristic interpretation, and I tried to show why that's not just a bad interpretation, or a wrong interpretation. But it's, it's caused huge damage in our world, right and affected things you wouldn't expect. But I did, it had does. But then the second half of the book is taking on this idea that it's a book of hope. Because that's where the Jesus, John John of Patmos comes in, because I tried to show this is not a book of hope. This is a book of violence. It is revenge, and vengeance and blood and violence. And Jesus is getting Jesus died as an innocent victim, but now he's coming back for blood. And so the reason for doing that is because if it's not a futuristic interpretation, then the other the default is, well, it's a message vote. I tried to that's not right, either. That's why I tried to show

David Ames 22:21
you also talk about the book, The Late Great Planet Earth. And the reason I want to talk about this is that I actually became a Christian in around roughly around 1988, in that in that neighborhood. And I had no idea how much influence that book had I never read it. I've never happened to read it. But now reading your book, I realized, oh, that's what people were. That's what people referring to, and no one ever mentioned it. Maybe we'll get to it specifically, but like the the idea of helicopters and nuclear weapons being represented in Revelation, I heard those kinds of rumors, and then I would read it and not see that. And I wondered who thought of that? Can you talk about how much influence that book had on fundamentalism?

Bart D. Ehrman 23:08
It's hard to calculate how much influence it had in the 1970s. As I pointed out, in my book, the entire decade of the 1970s, the best selling work of nonfiction, apart from the Bible, in the English speaking world, was the Late Great Planet Earth for the entire decade. The best sun, we're have not I'm talking about talked, not talking about Christian fiction. I'm not talking a religious book, I mean, the best selling. And so this thing was massively important. And everybody in my time, I was at Moody in the mid 70s. And we all you know, we just bought it, we literally bought it, but we actually we agreed. This is what's going to happen. And the Bible says so. And so. Yeah, so it was hugely influential. And it paved the way for other things, including, for example, in the 1990s, the Left Behind series, which, when the author Timothy Delahaye, died. So a few years ago, there had been 80 million copies of that thing. So and again, people just read and say, Oh, that's what the Bible says.

David Ames 24:11
Right? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. What a very common theme of people's deconstruction stories is not only hella anxiety, but also rapture anxiety. You know, they'll talk about being a little kid and coming home to an empty house for a moment and panicking, like Yep, pretty cool thing to do to children. But yeah, it sounds like you'd like those books. That way of interpreting revelation had a really deep impact on people particularly, again, children who were raised.

Bart D. Ehrman 24:42
Well, it also crept into popular Christian culture outside of that book when I think it was 1972 This movie came out. This is a very low budget movie night to it's called thief in the night. Everybody my generate everybody who was a teenager Evan Jellicle saw it about 20 times. And it was about, you know, the rapture having happened, and the people who were left behind, and it just scared the daylights out of all of us. And all of my friends who saw that just about every one of them tells the story of thinking that it had happened, you know, they come home after school in the mom's not there's Oh my god. And yeah, it's really damaging for some of you.

David Ames 25:24
The one of the things that leapt out at me, in your book, you point out that the idea of, of the rapture kind of has things backwards, that in the gospels, when Jesus is talking about one will be taken and one will be left, that it's more in reference to something like the last plague, where the ones who are left are the ones who are saved, the ones who are taken or the ones who are destroyed. And that really kind of blew my mind.

Bart D. Ehrman 25:49
Yeah, ya know, the play the COVID thing is a good example of it. I wish I had thought of that. But But it's, you know, people we have, you know, when I was in heaven, Jellicle we have all of these passages, right, that we refer to as clearly talking about, about the Rapture. And there's a passage in First Thessalonians four that everybody leaps on, but also this one in Matthew that you're mentioning where it says there'll be, you know, two people in the field will be taken, one will be left to women grinding grain, one will be taken one will be left there, yeah, okay. That's the rapture, the Son of Man comes, and they can take some out of the world. You know, after I gave up on a view, I actually started reading these passages carefully. And all you have to do is just read a few verses before this. Because right before this, he says that it's gonna be like, in the days of Noah, everybody in the world was taken, except for Noah died in the flood. So being taken is not good. You want to be left behind?

David Ames 26:51
Yeah, I love I love that. Because I think you know, particularly any evangelicalism, you know, that has always interpreted the opposite direction. I think that's what I still appreciate about actual scholarship and actual good exegesis of biblical text is, there's actually more there than we even give credit to it at times, just as a piece of literature.

Bart D. Ehrman 27:14
My book got published last week, and I, I've been getting emails from people saying, but you know, what about, you know, Matthew 24? You know, what about, you know, have you thought about these? Actually, if you've read my book, you will have seen that.

David Ames 27:31
Yeah, you may have spent a little time thinking about this.

You also talk about the consequences. So we we often say beliefs have consequences. And sometimes we say that eschatological beliefs have long range, deep consequences. And you go into a bit of that of, of the political, and just world health implications of people having this futuristic interpretation of Revelation.

Bart D. Ehrman 28:14
Yeah, I talk about several things because I want I want people to realize that this isn't just an issue for evangelicalism who get massively disappointed when it doesn't come when they think it will. That is, that is a problem. But there are there are issues that affect everybody in the world, actually. Because because of this view that that revelation is predicting the imminent future that the rapture is coming soon. A couple a couple of things, I will want to mention one thing, in particular, that isn't necessarily a problem, but it's something you wouldn't expect. This belief that the rapture is coming soon, is what has guided us foreign policy toward Israel. Right. And it's, you wouldn't you wouldn't imagine that. But the reality is that the Evan Jellicle support and for for Israel in America has always been very, very strong as it was in England when the Evan Jellicle movement was strong there in the 19th and early 20th centuries. And it's because of angelical. I've always interpreted interpreted biblical passages in Ezekiel and Jeremiah and other places, where the prophet talks about the people of Israel coming back to the land. They've always interpreted since the early 19th century, they've interpreted that as referring to Israel becoming a sovereign state again, Israel was destroyed as a nation in the second century. And it wasn't until 1948 that it became a sovereign state again, and in my book, I show that in fact, Christian Zionism, where Christians were supporting Israel, Jews going back to Israel, predated what we think of as Zionism for a long time. Before Jews were doing it, but the evangelicalism may not know this, but know the the leaders do and the historians do. One of the reasons for really supporting Israel now isn't just because of the issue of of oil or stability in the Middle East or needing a democracy there. It's those things are big, of course. But the real reason evangelicalism are ultimately in support of Israel is for eschatological reasons having to do with when Jesus can come back. This isn't a connected with a book of Revelation, it's connected with the book of Second Thessalonians. In Second Thessalonians, two, we're told that the end isn't coming right away. The author is saying Don't you know, don't don't panic, it's not going to can't happen yet. There's something that has to happen first, the man of lawlessness is being held back. And once once the restraint is lifted, he's going to take over and he's going to enter into the temple of God, and he's going to declare himself God. And so this is this is the antichrist figure. You're not called the Antichrist there, but that's who the Antichrist figure. Well, evangelicalism looked at that verse and said, Wait a second, the Antichrist can't go into the temple of God, there isn't a temple of God. That's the it's on the Temple Mount. And that's where the, the Islamic Dome of the Rock is, to rank for the temple for the temple for the Antichrist going to the temple, the temple has to be rebuilt. But that means that Israel has to control the Temple Mount, and for them to control the Temple Mount. And they've got to take out the Dome of the Rock. Whoa, well, they can't do that on their own. They need any support. We need to help them and so we have to support Israel. So I mean, it's a very, it's a very troubling idea that, that Israel has to destroy the dome on the rock. I mean, you talk about World War Three. Of course, that's what they want. World war three, but I mean, it's not good. And, and so that's, that is behind the idea of supporting Israel in the F angelical. Cap. And it's not an accident that Trump moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. I'm not taking a stand on this. I'm not taking a stand on that. Or on the Israeli Palestinian issue. I'm not saying anything political at all. I'm saying the reason evangelicalism wanted Trump to do that, is because Israel has to take over all of Jerusalem, and it has to take off all Israel, including the occupied territories.

David Ames 32:29
Right, so very deep implications. I was also struck by the beginning of this idea, you tell a little story, about 19th century English person where a woman had bequeath to these oak trees, and she says, These oaks shall remain standing, and the hand of a man shall not be raised against them until Israel returns and is restored to the land of promise. And that kind of escalates out from that small little thing to what you've just described.

Bart D. Ehrman 32:59
It's a I described this whole scenario in the early 19th century with a man named Louis Wei, W, a y that nobody's heard of, but oh, man, if it hadn't been for him, you wouldn't have had this strong support for the return of Israel. He converted, converted to this idea that the Bible's prophesying that Israel will return, you wouldn't have had Christian support for Zionism. And I show in my book that actually you wouldn't have fundamentalism, which, which arose in the 1890s, what we think of as fundamentalism rose in 1890s, as a direct offshoot of this early Christian Zionism that Lewis way started.

David Ames 33:47
I mean, I think that's what makes history fascinating is you can kind of trace things back to some seminal seed that has vast implications. Just

Bart D. Ehrman 33:55
you just have no idea just the smallest thing can lead to something else to something else. And then whammo, oh, my God, I mean, so it ended up affecting the world. It's quite astonishing.

David Ames 34:25
As you mentioned the second half of the book, you talk about why revelation really isn't the hopeful a book that some people take it as well. I can't tell you the times I've heard you know, I've read to the back of the book and we win, you know, talk a little bit about why that isn't the the the right interpretation as well.

Bart D. Ehrman 34:44
Well, it's certainly hopeful for a very slim group of Christians, not all Christians. In the book Revelation, a lot of the Christians end up in the lake of fire like everyone else. It's interesting. I hadn't really noticed this, but I started when I started really deeply studying revelation. You know, I've studied it since I was 17. I've studied it for 50 years, but I decided to really go all out about five years ago. And I never realized the word hope does not occur in the book Revelation. The term love of God never occurs in the book of Revelation. God is never said to love anyone. The followers of Jesus are not just the faithful, they're called the slaves. They're slaves. And so you start doing word studies of Revelation. And you don't get you know, mercy and, and forgiveness and hope and love, you don't get words like that. Vengeance and wrath and blood and, and the book itself says it's about the wrath of God and His lamb. When John writes his book, John of Patmos, whoever he is, he doesn't identify himself as John the son of Zebedee, he doesn't say he's One of Jesus disciples, he's, he's somebody named John is a common name. And he's on the island of Patmos off of the west coast of what's now Turkey. And he says that he's writing he tells us, he's writing to Christians in seven churches, in Western Asia Minor. So basically long, near the coast of western Turkey. He names the churches, and he threatens them, that Christ is going to take away their salvation because they're not acting well. And he details what it is that their problems are. And he issues some horrifying threats against Christian teachers. These aren't not not outsiders, who are, you know, teaching apostasy or teaching. But insiders, teachers in the church who God Christ is going to go in to destroy. And so anybody who agrees with John's understanding of Christianity, who has precisely his theology, and precisely his practices, they will be given the future kingdom of God. Everybody else, every pagan who's ever lived, every Jews ever lived, every non Christian has ever lived, everyone, every Christian, who doesn't believe like John, who's ever lived, is going to be sent into the lake of fire. So not very helpful, not helpful. And it's not, I have to say that on the liberal end of the spectrum, I mentioned that, you know, liberal Christian scholars tend to see this as a book of hope. And they, and there are entire scholarly books written claiming that the book of Revelation is not violent. And I think that's crazy. I don't know what version they're reading. At. But they say that Christ is introduced in the book, as they say, they say, which is, they say something wrong to begin with, which is, they say the first image of Christ is the Lamb that was slain. I say that's wrong, because it's not the first image of Christ in the book. But they say, since the guiding image of the book is Christ as the one who is the innocent victim, then, in fact, what the book is teaching is, is non violence, and that it's teaching that, that God isn't violent, and that people shouldn't be violent, because it's the innocent victim of Christ, that is the leading image. And oh, boy, is that wrong? This this lamb that was slain, shed his blood, innocently. And now he's out for revenge. And it explicitly talks about him coming out for revenge. And it says that he's the one who, who unleashes all of the catastrophes that hit the Earth, the lambdas. Right? It's not a pretty picture.

David Ames 38:31
Now, you also point out that many Christians will say, they're uncomfortable with the Old Testament, because God appears to be a God of wrath and the Old Testament, but he is the God of love in the New Testament, and you challenge that a bit, in particular with Revelation.

Bart D. Ehrman 38:45
Well, you know, the thing is, the God of love is in the Old Testament, too. So I kind of cut it both ways, because it's true. There are I detail some rather wrathful stories in the Old Testament that most people don't know. Most people would know about the battle of Jericho and how they read it, they'll see how horrible it is because the troops of Israel go in and are told to kill every man, woman and child in the city of Jericho. The children, yep, slaughter them. But that's not even the most violent one. And so the story in that part of the Old Testament, but I do talk about the God of wrath and the Old Testament, but it's also important to recognize that the God of love is in the old testament to the idea that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength. That's Deuteronomy, the idea you should love your neighbors yourself. That's Leviticus. God is both a God of wrath and a God of love and the Old Testament, when people say that the God of the New Testament is very different because he's the God of love. Whenever anybody asked me that, I just tells me that I just asked them whether they've read Revelation lately. Are you kidding me? There's no love of God here at all. It's all about his wrath, and it says it is. So yeah, it's a false dichotomy. And I think it's it's really common anti Jewish thing, it's a way of saying, well as Jews, I live by God, we have a God of love, you know, so we're superior to those Jews. And yeah, okay. Your last book isn't so loving.

David Ames 40:10
Yeah. When I tell my story I talked about a couple of years before my deconversion, I did another read through the Bible. My wife would comment that I seemed angry. And, and I realized with hindsight that I was reading it for the first time with, without their grace colored glasses on without the rose colored glasses and really reading the text for when it said, again, the whole thing from from from beginning to end. Yeah. And seeing that there is a fair amount of wrath throughout throughout the scriptures, and even, you know, analyze and Sapphira being destroyed, you know, on the spot feels a bit capricious. The line in your book that just I absolutely love, I'm going to steal this and use this all the time is, far more people revere the Bible than read it. Yeah. Why do you think that is? Why is it that that people say they're committed fundamentalist believers don't actually read the texts themselves?

Bart D. Ehrman 41:07
Well, you know, I used to so I teach, you know, I teach in the south UNC Chapel Hill. And Chapel Hill is not known as a bastion of conservative thought, it's my part of the world is but the faculty at UNC tend to be politically liberal. And, and my students come from a range of places, but mainly around North Carolina, and most of them have been raised in Christian households. And one of the reasons they're taking a New Testament class is because they're thinking, you know, how hard can it be? was a barrel. Right? So, so I begin the class, first day of class, I haven't done this for a while I used to do it. I did about 350 students in the class, I'd say, all right. So you know, this isn't a class on religion, I'm not going to be trying to convince you of theology, I'm not going to try and convert you to something or D convert you but I am interested in your background. How many of you would agree that the Bible is the inspired Word of God? VO everybody would everybody would just about everybody would raise their hand and say, Okay, great. So I said, Now, how many of you in here have read the Harry Potter books? Oh, my God, okay. How many of you read all of the Bible? Scattered hands? few hands. Okay, look. So, you know, JK Rowling's great. And, you know, I can see why you'd want to read a book fire. But if God wrote a book, we just want to see what he had to say. You're telling me that you think God wrote the Bible, and you're not interested in reading it, tell you if I thought the creator of the universe wrote a book, I'd want to read it.

David Ames 42:41
Exactly.

One other thing I want to pull out as well is near the end of your book, you talk about Jesus talking about how he would judge and he would judge based on those who have done to the least of these good things, and that the many people will come and say, Lord, Lord, I did miracles in your name, but they didn't. They weren't kind they didn't feed the poor that didn't visit the prisoner. And you are contrasting that to just the needs to believe a certain set of ideas. Another intellectual hero of mine is Jennifer Michael Hecht. She has written the book doubts, wonder paradox, a bunch of others. She talks a lot about how Christianity became about belief. And therefore the other side of the coin was always about doubt that those two things are inseparable, then I'm just interested in you know, as your interpretation of the New Testament, is it about belief, or is it about practice?

Bart D. Ehrman 43:51
My sense is that early Christians did not differentiate those two, the way we do, I think that it was understood that believing Jesus and worshipping Jesus went hand in hand. And it was understood that if you didn't believe correctly, then you weren't worshipping correctly. And if you didn't worship correctly, you weren't believing correctly. Okay? Also, it was understood that if you are a true follower of Jesus, you will live according to how God wants you to. And that if you if you if you have bad belief in Jesus, you're going to be behaving inappropriately. And so, but where the connection falls apart is the early Christians didn't think that necessarily that being good, was going to be good enough. Because they didn't think anybody was was good enough. What I argue in my book is that when Jesus talks about something like say, The Good Samaritan, you know, he doesn't praise the Samaritan for his religion or his beliefs. He praises him because he helps somebody in need. And when he separates the sheep In the goats in Matthew 25, the sheep are welcomed into the kingdom of the Father. Because they've fed the hungry and they gave, gave drink to those who are thirsty, and they visited those who are lonely and they, they took care of people in need. And the sheep are surprised they're going to be entering this kingdom, I said, Lord, because Jesus says, if you've done it, to me, you've done to the least of these others, and they said, Lord, we've been around seen you. That's it, people who don't even know who Jesus is, and they get into the kingdom. Whereas, you know, the goats don't help the poor, the needy or, and so they get cast out. And so it's not based on believing in Jesus. These people didn't know Jesus is how you live. But a lot of people think, you know, of course, I mean, Christianity became the thing about became a thing of belief, you had to believe the right things. And you had to acknowledge Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and you had to agree to X, Y, and Z. And then you get that parable that you mentioned, that story that Jesus says, he says, you know, at the end, Many will say to me, Lord, Lord, and which means, you know, they're gonna say, Look, Lord, we, you know, we've confessed you, we've worshipped you, and Jesus, you haven't done the will of my Father, out of here. Whoa, for Jesus has all being a person who cares for those in need, and does something to help those who are poor and hungry and homeless. That's what that's what matters to to Jesus himself. But in Revelation, it's not that at all. It's not, it's that has nothing to do with it. It has, it means being a member of the church, being a believer in Jesus, a follower of Jesus who worships Him in the way John dictates otherwise.

David Ames 46:46
You also talk about the theme of dominance in in Revelation, and that that has direct implications to our current times as well.

Bart D. Ehrman 46:55
Boy, does it. So, you know, it's one of the contrasts, I think, between Jesus and John of Patmos, Jesus, Jesus insisted that his followers not lorded over others, that they, that they serve others, Jesus said that He himself came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for others. He tells his followers that they should sell everything and give to the poor, he praises his disciples for leaving everything for the sake of the kingdom. So this is a this is a message of giving a message of service, you get to the book, Revelation, there's nothing about giving and service. It's about destroying the enemy. I mean, forget turn the other cheek, or forget Love your enemies. You know, I mean, you you hate your enemies, and you you hate what they do, and you punish them and God, God, of course, destroys all of them. After torturing them. I mean, there's torture, God tortures people in the book, Revelation. And everybody gets thrown into a lake of burning sulfur while they're they're brought back to life so that they can be destroyed in the lake of fire. This is so this this vision of what it means to be a true follower of God or even a true follower of Jesus is completely different. In one you're not supposed to dominate and the other is all about domination. I, I don't think it's consistent at all with what Jesus said. I mean, John, John, of course, John of Patmos understood himself to be a very, very committed Christian, a very avidly committed Christian, I'm not sure Jesus would have recognized him as a follower.

David Ames 48:56
I would be remiss if we didn't at least talk about what is a proper way to tackle revelation, whether you're a believer or you're a non believer, but you're interested in actually finding out what it actually says,

Bart D. Ehrman 49:09
well, a lot of people are afraid of the book because of the symbolism and how just strange it is. Most people who use revelation use it as a kind of a way to, to, to mine for gold nuggets. You know, you don't, you don't take the whole thing. You kind of find a piece here a piece therapy's there. And actually, it's more like a jigsaw puzzles, how I talk about it in my book, you know, you think that the Bible is filled with pieces of a puzzle that will describe what's going to happen at the end. So you take a verse from Zechariah, then a book from verse from Revelation, Then something from Daniel then so Informatica and some from Revelation, and you're taking this little saying, or this verse, And you stick them all together, and you end up with how Lindsey like great plan. And so what I what I argue in the book is that even if you think the Bible is inspired, you know, even if you think that this is a book written by God Odd in some way, whether God has inspired the authors, it means that God inspired a book. He didn't inspire a jigsaw puzzle he could have, but he didn't. And so it means you read it like a book. And if you read a book, for one thing, you don't cherry pick it, you don't you don't open a book and read, you know, a line on page 222. And then another Line and Page 13, and another line of 58. And you put them together to say, that's what the author meant. You start at the beginning, and you start reading, and you go to the end, and you try to understand what the themes are, what the motifs are, what the topics are with the arc of the narrative is, and you do that, if you do that, actually, Revelation is not complicated to understand in terms of the narrative, the basic narrative is fairly easy. And I laid out in my book so people can see, you know, actually, yeah, okay, this is happening here, then this than this, the difficulty comes with the symbolism. Because it's not a normal narrative, like a gospel where you can pretty much see what Jesus is saying and doing. It's, it's very, very symbolic. The deal with reading a book is, if you're reading a book that was written in the 1600s, you've got to understand what was happening in the 1600s. To understand the book. If you're reading a Jane Austen novel, you need to know need to know what was going on in the early 19th century. If you're reading Charles Dickens novel, you need to know what's going on in Victorian England, you need to understand their context, or you're just going to, you're going to misunderstand it. And what I what I show in the book is that historical scholars have long known that the book of Revelation is a kind of book that was being written at its time, it seems like a weird one off Ross, it's like the only thing like we've ever, oh, my God, this is so weird, this must have been inspired by God, because who could come up with this, you know, that kind of thing. And, in fact, we have lots of books like that, in Jewish and Christian circles from the time that are not in the Bible, that help us understand how this genre worked at the time. And one of the things in this genre is that they're always about some prophet who has a vision, either has a vision of heaven, or has a vision of the future. And the vision is weird and bizarre with these wild beasts, and these catastrophes, and this cosmic disasters, and all this stuff's going on, and your head spinning. And the prophets head is spinning, too. And what almost always happens is, there's a angel standing by to explain it to him. Yeah, gotta pay attention to this angel. So when you're interpreting the Book of Revelation, you read it like a book, you put it into historical context, and you look for the clues the author himself has left. And the clues, once they get explained to you, you'll see Oh, my God, that's what it is. And so it is not difficult to figure out who the beast from the sea is, the Antichrist figure in the book, Revelation is not hard, the angel gives it away. But people who just read a verse here or there, and they don't see the whole package. So in my book, I tried to explain how historians have understood the book, and and how they put it in its own context, to try and understand what John was trying to communicate it to his own readers. One big mistake is to think he was writing for 21st century America. He was not he was writing for Christians and seven churches of Asia Minor. And presumably, he wanted them to understand what he had to say.

David Ames 53:27
Last question, you mentioned in the book, how people have interpreted the beast since you mentioned it to be whoever their political foe is, at the moment. And it strikes me that the history of biblical interpretation kind of is that we each come to the text with our own context. And it's hard not to read our context into what we think the original author meant, if you were interested in trying to figure out what the original author meant, and what the original hearers heard, what is kind of a method? How would you go about that?

Bart D. Ehrman 53:57
Yeah. Well, you know, so the beast is an interesting thing, because, you know, it's not the beast number is 666. In chapter 13, it's interesting. We have some manuscripts, by the way that say that the beast number is 616. And we don't have the original copy of Revelation, we have these copies from hundreds of years later, and most say 666, but some of the early ones say 616. That's interesting. But then the B shows up again in chapter 17, that's the great whore of Babylon is sitting on this beast. And in both cases, he has seven heads and 10 horns and you think, what in the world how do I, how am I supposed to understand this? But when you get when you get to chapter 17, John says the same thing. He sees this horror of Babylon, so she's got she got a name written on her head Babylon, the Great Mother of horrors. She's bedecked in fancy clothes, very expensive, rich clothes. She's sitting on this beast with seven heads and 10 horns and, and she's got jewelry and gold and silver and she's filthy rich, and she's here. holding in her hand a golden cup that's filled with the abominations of her fornication. And she's drunk with the blood of martyrs. And, and John saying, What is this, and the and the angel explains it to him. And it's so easy to unpack it in the ancient world. They've done it like that. He says, The angel says that the the beasts that has seven heads, the seven heads represent the seven hills, that the woman is seated on to woman seated on seven hills. The woman's named after a city, it's a city in Babylon the Great when the Old Testament Babylon was the city that destroyed Jerusalem and burn the temple, in John's de Rome was the city that burned that destroyed Jerusalem and burned the temple. This woman is seated on seven hills. Rome was the city built on seven hills, that's what it was called in the ancient world. And people still call it today, the city built on seven hills. And in case you still don't get it at the end of the chapter, the angel says, The woman is the city that is dominating the entire Earth. That's wrong. This is like it's a no brainer, she's dropped for the blood of the martyrs because Rome had started persecuting Christians, especially under the Caesar Nero, who executed Christians and shed their blood. She's filthy rich, because Rome has taken all the money from the provinces. And it's enriched itself. And so you go back to chapter 13, where this beast first occurs, and he's called 666. And it's the number of a man and we're told that one of the heads had suffered a mortal wound, but recovered one of the heads of the beast. So what is his man and mortal wounds 666? Well, from 17, you know, this is Rome, it's the beast is Rome. The head 666, the head of Rome, that first persecuted Christians was Nero, the Emperor Nero in the year 64. When the angel says that the number of the beast is six, six exits the number of man what he's referring to, might seem, it's going people today, don't do it this way. Because people like to say, you know, in early 20th centuries, Kaiser Wilhelm, or later was Hitler or Mussolini. When I was in college. No, there was a book written saying there was the Pope, another book wrote, and then saying it was Henry Kissinger. Lately, it has been Saddam Hussein. Now it's Putin. You know, you pick your person, and you figure out how it's 666. But you read it in John's context, where the enemy is Rome, and the Beast is identified as Rome later. And Kaiser Nero, okay, what's going on the number of the beasts he says the number of man in the Greek and Hebrew languages like other ancient languages, they didn't have separate alphabetic and numerical systems. So we have we use roman letters ABCD, but we use Arabic numerals, they use their letters of their alphabet for the numbers. So in Hebrew, all F is the first letter, so that's one, beta is two gimel, three goes up till you get to 10, then the next one is 20, then 30 than 40, then you get up to 100. And that's 100 200 300. So every letter has a numerical value. And so when it says the number is the number of a man, it means that the letters in this man's name, add up to six, xx, okay? Just what are you saying? Well, if you spell Caesar Nero in Hebrew letters, it adds up to 6x, six. But there's an interesting variant on that. Because in Hebrew, you could say Kaiser named Ron with a noon at the end our n, or you could say Kaiser Nero, without the N, without the noon, the noon is worth 50. So that with it, it's 666. And without it, it's 616, as in some of the manuscripts. This is, so this is talking about Caesar Nero. So you say how do you interpret it, you look at the clues in the text, and you put them in their historical context. And if you have any trouble, then you read a historical scholar.

David Ames 58:55
Yeah. Yeah, I think the lesson from this is the it's so confusing to us, because we're out of context. But in context, it's not subtle at all.

Bart D. Ehrman 59:05
It's not subtle at all. And you know, a lot of people thought, well, you know, John's doing this, because he doesn't want to get arrested, the authorities will find out, he's written this book, and then there'll be in big trouble. And that's why it's all so secretive. And I don't think that's the reason at all, actually, because anybody in the Roman world who heard that this horror, Babylon was sitting on a beast with seven heads that has said, the seven hills of the city, so this is not hard to figure out, anybody would write it out. But the reason he's writing such secret of language is because it's an apocalypse. Apocalypse is a divine revelation of the secrets that makes sense of this world. And so it's got to be secretive. So it's got to be mystical and weird. And so all of these apocalypses are like that. They're mystical and weird.

David Ames 59:47
And that's its own genre.

Bart D. Ehrman 59:49
It's a genre. It's a genre. It's just like we have short stories and novels and limericks and epic poems, and it's, every genre has a way of doing it. And so when you Reading in a science fiction novel, you know, you're not reading a, you know, front page article in The New York Times. It's a different kind of genre. And a short story isn't a limerick. And so, an apocalypse is an apocalypse, which means you have to know how apocalypses work, if you're going to understand any one of them, including the book Revelation.

David Ames 1:00:20
Bart Ehrman, you've been incredibly generous with your time, the new book is Armageddon, what the Bible really says about the end. I want to give you a couple of minutes just to promote the other work that you do understand that your blog the proceeds is for that go to a nonprofit. You also have your podcast. tell people how they can find your work.

Bart D. Ehrman 1:00:38
Yeah, well, let me I'll enter the blog because it's the one that's really important to me. But so I do have a podcast, a weekly podcast that's called Misquoting Jesus, Bart Ehrman, and it's not meant to mean you can misquote Jesus along with Bart Ehrman. The podcast is misquoting it with Viagra. And so every week, we talk about half an hour 45 minute interview. Great, great interviewer, Megan Lewis, and we talk about important things related to the New Testament and early Christianity every week. It's part of a larger business that I've started called the part urban professional services. If people go to Bart ervin.com, I've done I do courses, I do lectures and courses for purchase. I've got one coming up on April 15, that even if people don't come to it, they can purchase it. This will be a lecture, a 50 minute lecture on will you be left behind a history of the rapture and with q&a and with additional reading if you if you purchase it, but then courses on you know everything from the book of Genesis to the Gospels and and some of these rate lecture courses that people can hear me talk about this stuff. So let me just say about the blog, though, because the blog is near and dear to my heart. I've done it for nearly 11 years now. I post five times a week, or six times five or six times a week, between 12 114 100 words a day. Wow, on everything having to do with the New Testament, Jesus gospels, Paul, early Christianity, persecution martyrdom, women are up to Constantine and beyond. And people can comment on my posts. And I answer every question I get. And I've done this for 11 years. There's a fee to join a small membership fee to join. But as you said, David, I, I don't keep any of this money myself. I give all of it to charities, mainly dealing with hunger and homelessness. And so last year, last year, the blog raised over $500,000 Wow. So for me, it's kind of a service to the community and to the world because we give money to international relief agencies. So people should check it out. Because you know, it's not a large fee, and it contributes to a really good cause. And you get to hear about biblical scholarship or New Testament early Christianity scholarship.

David Ames 1:02:55
It's a win win and you're heaping burning coals on the heads. Bart Ehrman, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Bart D. Ehrman 1:03:04
Thanks for having me.

David Ames 1:03:11
Final thoughts on the episode. The thing that strikes you upon meeting Bart Ehrman is how nice a person he is. He was incredibly gracious with his time, he was incredibly gracious with my naive questions. I'm incredibly jealous of the people who get to have him as a professor, he reminded me so much of the best parts of Bible College and actually digging into the text of the New Testament in a way that is respectful and also critical. And I think Bart handles that really, really well. I think Bart struck something very important when he talked about truth and evidence. I'll quote him here. He says, within the evangelical tradition, truth is really important. And there is also a sense within the evangelical tradition that there are ways to find the truth. It isn't just believing something. When you have students studying it at a serious evangelical school, they are taught you have to look for evidence. But once you open up the door to evidence, you also open up the door to people disagreeing. I think that's incredibly insightful. I think all of apologetics is the attempt to bring evidence to the table. But once you have evidence as your guiding light as your standard, it will inexorably inevitably lead you away from the claims of Christianity. This goes back to what we talked about last week in that the truth will set you free. I know that for many of you Bart's books were the beginning of the deconstruction process, the beginning of letting go of inerrancy of Scripture, the beginning of letting go of the authority of Scripture. And now having the opportunity to interview Bart, I understand why he's so respectful, that even while he is tearing down the dogma or the stringent fundamentalism. He's also doing it with care, compassion and love of the text that is deeply attractive, deeply, deeply attractive. Which brings us to his current book, Armageddon, what the Bible really says about the end. It's a striking difference in that he is pulling out the violence and the wrath of the New Testament, which we don't often think of the dominion theology comes out of Revelation. Bart is tying all of our modern issues with Christian nationalism and evangelicalism to the book of Revelation. And it's skewed view, relative to the Gospels of who Jesus is. I was also just absolutely amazed to discover my ignorance about how Lindsay's book The Late Great Planet Earth. Probably many of you have read that it just so happens that I didn't. But as I said, so much of the interpretation of revelation by evangelicals comes from that book. And it was enlightening and intriguing to read, Bart, show us what the book actually says, about the time of John of Patmos and early Christianity. And ultimately, he compares and contrasts that Jesus of John of Patmos writes about in Revelation versus the Jesus who is in the Gospels and that is a stark contrast. The book is out now it is amazing. Go check it out. Read it. Do check out Bart's podcast Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman Bart's blog, which is at Urban blog.org. The proceeds for that basically do what Jesus talked about in Matthew 24, to feed the hungry to house the poor. So please support Bart and become a member on his blog today. You can also find the courses that he mentioned at bought at BART ehrman.com. If you'd like to dig into the study of the New Testament, I want to thank Bart for being on the podcast for giving us his time for being so gracious with my naive questions. Thank you so much, Bart, for all the work that you do. It is incredibly appreciated by me and the community of these listeners. The secular Grace Thought of the Week is obviously inspired by Bart. Last week we talked about the truth will set you free. This week, I want to talk about doing good in the world. What I'm talking about with secular grace is often very practical, what we do for one another, how we connect with each other. I actually want to read a sliver of the Matthew 24 reference that we made a few times. Then the King will say to those on his right come you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you welcomed me. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me. Then the righteous will answer him saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick and in prison and visit you? And the King will answer them truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me. Interviewing Bart reading Bart's book, I was struck again about what attracted me to Jesus to begin with. And this is it, that it was ruthlessly practical that what Jesus had to say was about doing Christianity, not believing things, and historical Christianity. And evangelical Christianity specifically has warped that into a set of dogma and beliefs. And the point I want to make is that from a secular Grace point of view, we can do these things. If you want to say that you are a follower of Jesus, this is the way you would do it. By feeding the hungry, housing the house less and generally caring for people and their practical needs. The great irony that many of us who have deconstructed and D converted is that we find we can be better Christians as non believers than we were as believers. And I think this is another one of those opportunities to do good in the world without having the baggage that comes along with the dogma and historical tradition. So many good interviews coming up including A number of community members, Holly Laurent from the mega Podcast coming up. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human being. The beat is called waves by MCI beats. Do you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show? Email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com. This graceful atheist podcast part of the atheists United studios Podcast Network

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Troy and Brian: I Was A Teenage Fundamentalist

Atheism, Deconversion, ExVangelical, Podcast, Podcasters

This week’s guests are Brian and Troy of the podcast, I was a Teenage Fundamentalist. They interviewed David at the end of 2022, and now it’s our turn to hear from them.

Brian and Troy “used to be loyal Christians megachurch leaders. They’re not anymore.” Their parallel stories are fascinating, as we are given a glimpse into their past lives and the Pentecostal movement in Australia.

Today, Brian and Troy’s “honest and often hilarious podcast peeks behind the curtain at the weird, the worrying and the sometimes traumatic world of Evangelicals and Pentecostals.” This is a great episode that you won’t want to miss!

Links

Website
https://www.iwasateenagefundamentalist.com/

I Was A Teenage Fundamentalist podcast
https://pod.link/1558606464

Twitter
https://twitter.com/WasTeenage

Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/TeenageFundamentalist

Facebook Group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/3188989997871128

Link Tree
https://linktr.ee/iwatf

YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs0jrFsxPsg7rGNfgqzAGug

IWATF interviews David from the Graceful Atheist Podcast
https://pod.link/1558606464/episode/f8067a71cf74f38205420663954fceaf

Quotes

“I say, ‘I started to deconvert,’ but I think I had started to deconvert the day I joined…because as you’re studying, as you’re looking into it all, you come across these issues, these contradictions…”
Troy

“I would say I felt accepted [in the church]. I would say it was absolutely conditional…on me behaving and conforming. But I was happy to do that at the time as long as that meant connection.”
Brian

“Bit by bit, I just started to think, This just isn’t actually true. But I didn’t want to come out and say it.”
Brian

“When you’ve been in Christianity for so long. When you’ve operated in such a confined environment…[and then] you open the floodgates and start to use some of your brainpower, sometimes it can become a scary place for people.”
Brian

“Anyone can tell their story. There’s such a power in human connection. There’s such a power in sense-making and story-making in our lives.”
Brian

“Pentecostalism is a very small slice in Australia, but it’s a very influential slice of Christianity.”
Brian

“I would bet there are more ex-Pentecostals than there are Pentecostals.”
Troy

“[In] most of the progressive groups, most of these progressive denotations, there are very few converts. It’s mostly refugees from conservative theology who…end up there.”
Troy

Interact

Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!

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

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

Support the podcast
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
Paypal: paypal.me/gracefulatheist

Attribution

“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats

Transcript

NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (otter.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.

David Ames 0:11
This is the graceful atheist podcast. It's part of the atheist United studios 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 patron Ruby, thank you so much for supporting the podcast. You too can have an ad free experience of the podcast by becoming a patron at any level at patreon.com/graceful atheist. You don't have to go through the deconstruction and deconversion process alone, please consider joining the deconversion anonymous Facebook group, which includes various Hangouts, book clubs, discussion groups, you can find that at facebook.com/groups/deconversion. A quick shout out to my sibling podcasts on the atheist United studios Podcast Network, amusing Jews beyond atheism, and the humanist experience. Please check out those podcasts you can find them on the atheist United website at atheist united.org. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. My guests today are Troy and Brian of the I was a teenage fundamentalist podcast. Troy and Brian have done some amazing work, you can hear the experience of having had faith and having experienced the downside and coming through on the other side. They both deconstructed at different times. But they've remained friends. And after they found each other after deconversion they decided to make a podcast and talk about it. They are from Australia as you will immediately recognize and the Assemblies of God was the faith tradition that they were both a part of at one time or another. Try and Brian have created a community much like our own the deconversion anonymous group for this podcast. They have the I was a teenage fundamentalist group on Facebook as well. Please check out their podcast, I was a teenage fundamentalist. There will be links in the show notes. Here are Troy and Brian to tell their stories. Brian, Troy, welcome to the graceful atheist podcast.

Brian 2:31
Thank you. It's awesome to awesome to be here with her chat that we have with you late last year. So it's great to reciprocate and come on your podcast. So thank you.

Troy 2:41
Yeah, it's fun.

David Ames 2:43
Yeah, you guys are part of a really popular podcast called I was a teenage fundamentalist. And I think you're very authentic, the the fundamentalist experience that you guys had, I think really comes through, then your experience. On the other side. We're kind of a sister cousin podcast to one another. And I think this is a really great crossover.

Troy 3:03
We've watched your podcast for a little while. And when I say watch, I mean watching what you've been doing, but also, you know, listening and stuff. So yeah, it's really cool to be to be connecting with you because I just feel there's such a synergy. And what you're trying to achieve is very much with what in line with what we're trying to achieve to so thanks for having us on, David.

David Ames 3:21
Yeah, absolutely. And I love to give the opportunity to, you know, cross pollinate our communities, because I think our communities can benefit from listening to each other's podcasts. Yeah, absolutely.

Brian 3:32
Well, quite often cities have like sister cities don't those. So that's right, let's let's have a sister podcast. There you go. Graceful? Yeah, here we go. With forging new ground, this is what we do.

David Ames 3:43
That's right. What is very typical on my podcast is to begin with people's stories of their faith experience. So if we can, we're going to do like 10 or 15 minutes each on your personal stories of what your religious faith is like, and maybe a bit about your deconversion story. And just because of the ordering that's on my screen, I'm gonna have Troy go first.

Troy 4:04
Yeah, cool. Well, I was converted to Christianity through school. I was brought up in a family where we were told that we were Christians, but we didn't even go to church on you know, Easter and Christmas. And that kind of thing. I know that my mother had bought us all a Children's Bible. But Australia is very, it's a very secular nation and a lot of ways or at least post Christian in a lot of ways. And so whilst we wore the label, it didn't really matter. Even at Christmas time, Christmas was more about Santa than it was about anything else. But my mother had a friend that had been involved in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement. And I used to listen to my mother and her friend tell stories about being involved in this and not so much my mother's stories but her reaction to her friend being involved in this so I'd heard about speaking in tongues and healing and these kinds into things. And so I was quite open to the idea of this. And when a Christian band came through my school telling us all about Jesus made a bit of a kerfuffle in, do you say that in the US kerfuffle? Is that a word that you use? Do you? Okay, cool. So yeah, made a bit of a kerfuffle in my school and some kids got converted. And then through a Fallout, I also, you know, ended up giving my life to Christ, as we say, and then I joined a Pentecostal group, which turned out to be quite an extreme cult, very similar to what's called the United Pentecostal church in the US. So we had to speak in tongues to be saved, we didn't fellowship with any other churches. And I was involved with them quite heavily, till about 17. And at that age, I'd started to realize that this was not how I wanted to live, because my family had never joined. And so I still had this, this measuring stick at home that I could say, This is what acceptance looks like, this is what love looks like. And so I ended up having myself kicked out and please go back and have a listen to my, my podcast stories about that. I don't want to bore you too much. But I had myself kicked out, I worked out how to how to do that. And then, as I was leaving, they were like, Oh, by the way, you probably damned to hell. And I was like, ah, and that didn't quite sit so well with me. So I went started doing, you know, clubbing and partying and all the things that you would do at sort of 17 until I came to a point in my life where I didn't like where I was, where I'd landed, I didn't like where this lifestyle had sort of taken me even though I was still quite young. And I had a friend of mine who had by this stage joined in Assemblies of God church, which is where this original group that I was a part of, had had come from. And so I went along with him and, you know, got a good dose of guilt and also saw the idea of, you know, the things that I've done over the last few years could be forgiven. And as I said, I wasn't really happy with the way I'd sort of journeyed and the way I sort of become. And so I recommended my life to Christ and, you know, join the ARG basically. And long story short, ended up Bible college, finishing Bible college, involved in church plants, involved in a series of different churches left the EOG became involved in in Baptist, the Australian Baptist union, later in the Australian Churches of Christ. And then my, my marriage really hit the rocks. And I started to D convert. It's funny, because it's even saying that now I say, I started to D convert. No, I think I started to do convert the day I joined. Really, yeah. And because as you're studying, as you're looking into it all, you come across these, these issues, you come across these contradictions. But the other thing was what Josie MC skimming, who was one of the guests on our podcast, I don't know if you've heard from her yet, but she She's wonderful. She's a clinical clinical social worker who specializes in religious trauma. And she said to us, there's these sites of injury. You know, there's these incidents that happen that just build up over time. And I think that's what happened to me, David, I think the sites of injury built up the inconsistencies of the religion. My study was probably the worst thing I could have done for my for my faith, because I took it seriously and studied the Bible and studied theology and looked at the contradictions and yeah, long story short, I d converted in about 2004 Stop church in about 1999 D converted in about 2004. Back in the day, where it was, there was no such thing as deconstruction. I mean, that was, you know, that was Jacques Derrida talking about art and things, you know, let alone religion. But yeah, then found my way into the hole. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, that that kind of stuff and the infidels website and there was a back in the day, there was a bulletin board online called walk away, which was for ex fundamentalist. I don't know if it still exists anymore. But it was a very isolating experience. And I'd headed overseas just to sort of leave everything behind. And yeah, you know, here I am. Now, I, as I said, I really came to a point of deconversion 2004. So we're nearly coming up on 20 years, but I'm still unpacking it. David, still, to this day, I'm unpacking things and, you know, stepping into in and out of therapy at times to talk about some of this stuff. But yeah, that's my story.

David Ames 9:40
I really liked that idea of sites of injury, that that's really evocative. We say sometimes that it's, it's not one thing, it's 1000 things so that's an interesting way to express that. Yeah. So I mean, I relate to so much of that and I will recommend to my listeners when Troy says go listen to his his story. He literally did get him stuff kicked out intentionally. So you gotta go listen to that story. It's really good

all right, Brian, let's hear it. Let's hear about your story.

Brian 10:16
Well, my story was I grew up in a home where spirituality was there, but certainly not church, certainly not Jesus or God. And I tell this in my story on the podcast as well around. We grew up having seances as a family that yeah, that would that was, we'd like to we'd like to connect with the dead cousins. So that was, I guess, my experience spirituality in it would also we'd speak about the afterlife would speak about reincarnation, I was always fascinated by those sorts of things growing up, and I had this book called unexplained mysteries, and it was all of those sort of things about, you know, portals and, or it was rubbish. But it was it was fascinating. And that was probably the thing that primed me for my Christian experience, which didn't start till I was 17. I hadn't really been involved in a church at all, or well, not really, I haven't hadn't at all, most of my siblings, I've got a, I've got seven siblings, and most of them grew up with some sort of, you know, nominal Catholics sort of connection to the church, they'd be pulled along on the occasional Sunday. But the next sister, my next sister up in me in the level, she was never exposed to it either. And neither was I. But when I was probably, I reckon 14 or 15, one of my brothers became a Christian. And it was one of those conversion stories, you know, he was a, he was a fan of drugs. And, you know, everyone saw him convert, and the drug use stopped, and very much like you spoke to us about your mom's conversion story. It was a very similar thing so bad. He used to evangelize the hell out of us. And he lived in another state in Australia, and he would ring and we would have to hang up on him. Like he was just so fearful. We're all going to die and go to hell. Yeah. So I just I thought it was bullshit. I thought that there's, you know, it's all rubbish. But anyway, when I was 17, I decided to go and visit him he lived in, in Queensland in Australia, and he was a surfer. So it didn't serve community. It's the sort of place you you'd go for a holiday. So I went up there and I got converted to this bullshit. I went up actually, with all these providers that if I stayed with them, they weren't allowed to speak about God or Jesus. They weren't allowed to have a Bible around. And if they had a Bible, it could be in their bedroom only. I was just a prat. But they stuck to that, you know, to their own credit. And it was me through seeing the contrast on of how that brother had been. And by this time, another brother had become a Christian and another sister had become a Christian. It was just like, it was spreading this revival in our family brother. So I gave it a shot, I became a Christian, and I was 17, you know, did the thing. Then I came back to to Melbourne, where I live in Australia. And back back then. I didn't have any connection with church. So I had to seek something out. It was pre internet. This is 1991. I was having no wasn't it was 1989, actually. And so I was just basically going around and seeing where these churches were. It was a church called Christian city, which was a large Pentecostal church. I found one connected with it just kept dropping in and out till I was about 19 and then connected with Pentecostalism through an independent church, and really felt part of it. I think it was, it was the connection that was the community. It was the ability to be able to, I would say I felt accepted, it was absolutely conditional. There was no doubt. It was conditional on me. Behaving and conforming a bit. I was happy to do that at the time, as long as that meant connection. But then I ended up at nao G church where Troy and I met and when I was I don't know, I was maybe 19 By that time, and that was my Pentecostal experience was very, very short really it was three and a half four years. I had a devolution very similar to Troy's be then left that that experience. You know I was the same I went to Bible college was on that trajectory to become a pastor. saw that as a career path, you can be a career Christian, why not? Why not get paid for it? So I tried all that. But then I ended up halfway through Bible college thinking, I just can't survive on this money, like, I'd become engaged around that time. And I thought, I'm just gonna go back to work. I'll come back to Bible college later. But I've just got to go work a while, and I never went back to Bible college. But I did stay connected with the church. The Toronto Blessing started to happen around that time. And for me, I just that repulsed me, I just I call bullshit on it. So that actually caused me to have a bit of a fallout with at that time, I was in leadership in youth leadership in the ARG church. And the pastor there, I just said to him, I can't stay, I think it's rubbish. And I left went to a Baptist church, so a bit more moderate. You know, obviously, they weren't Christians, because there was no Toronto Blessing happening there. So I felt I felt again, connected, but drifted and then ended up at a church of Christ. So Troy and I, even though at this time, we were hanging out a little bit, we it was just the same journey out. And it was more moderate, more moderate, more moderate. I was involved in churches of Christ, I lived into state for about 11 years. And that's where I ended up connecting with church of Christ, and then came back to Melbourne, where I then went to the church of Christ here. And really, it was quite progressive. And there was a lot of experimenting with church, there was a lot of there was meditation sessions. There was, hey, let's not have any preaching this week, let's all just hang out in groups and talk about shit that happened this week. And you know, how we can connect as community.

Troy 17:10
No wonder you fell away. They stopped what was what worked? Brother?

Brian 17:17
That's, that's exactly right. And, you know, and my, my university training as a social worker. So, you know, social justice is incredibly important to me. And so at this time, you know, it's it was really connecting with the Social Justice Mission of the churches of Christ, I was involved in a few different offshoots of social justice groups. And I think it was just bit by bit, things started to fall away in literal resurrection. Look, seriously, that she didn't happen, you know, personal relationship with God, really? How does he have a personal relationship with 7 billion people if everyone converted? That doesn't work. I'm just putting, when I'm praying, it's just going out in the ether. So bit by bit, I just started to think, I don't think that this is actually true, but I didn't want to come out and say it, there's a lot of fear sitting behind it. So I was married. At that time, I'd met my now ex wife, in church in the Pentecostal church. So but we'd both sort of journeyed out and probably started to Deacon for to some degree, we'd had children. The kids were involved in church, but probably not at the degree where others thought that they should be. So things were falling away, but then, probably 12, B 12, ish, maybe even 13 years ago, my marriage broke down. And it was at the point where my marriage broke down, that I walked away, because it gave me an out. There was your habit, we were habitually going to church. I hadn't had really, I don't think any real belief for quite a while. And so it gave me the ability to cut that but I was still very afraid at the time to go. I actually don't think I believe the Jesus story. I don't I really don't think that there's a literal heaven or hell, I don't and that took me a while on it's probably even a 10 year deconversion journey. Post that 13 years of completely leaving the church and and I'm still deconstructing and still trying to work it out. And so you know, what do you do when you do that, will you and and when you're close mates, you start a podcast. That's right.

David Ames 20:01
So I think it's fascinating that both of you, it seems like an inflection point was the end of a relationship. And, you know, kind of a theory that I kick around a lot is the the idea that faith is very much a community sustained thing. And that, for example, during 2020, when we were doing lock downs, I theorized that, you know, I bet a lot of people are going to deconstruct during this time, because they're out of the context of church. So Brian, you said you, you were habitually going to church. And so the second, you're not doing that, that that kind of sustaining force of that faith goes away? And I think for many people, that gives them a little bit of space to then think, you know, is this something I really believe or not? And without someone right over their shoulder saying, of course you believe, of course you do.

Brian 20:50
Yeah, absolutely. And particularly in Australia, we're not a Christian nation. You know, we weren't found, it's not like the states where, you know, God is everywhere. So he there, you don't walk out the front door and bump into something or someone else that's going to keep you in that bubble. And I definitely the bubble sustained me for a long time. And it was just the fact that my social connections, my community connections, were all within that church bubble. And you're right, as soon as I left that, I didn't, I didn't fear not believing necessarily, anymore, I might not have come out and said it. But I didn't have that fear. Whereas a lot of even though I was at a very progressive Churches of Christ, it was still fear based. It was still if you stopped believing if you had that formula that was there was there for a reason. And that kept you within the salvation bubble. And if you leave it, well, you know, your risky, so

David Ames 21:49
yeah, and it also sounds like that having a brother who really believed it, who if you take health seriously, that's actually the correct response. Right? If this is real, you had better be on everybody's cased, to convert, because they're going to hell. And so I think I sometimes say that it's not that Christians take things too seriously. It's that they don't take them seriously enough, like, what it actually says what the actual core of Christianity is, is deadly. And, you know, if you take that seriously, there's a certain reaction that would be appropriate to that.

Brian 22:24
So it was a strange time to live. And we, we often talk about this on the podcast, Troy and I have very different responses to our Christian and Christianity. I wasn't into evangelizing, I wasn't even into sharing my faith with people. And in hindsight, I'm not quite sure that I had a depth of belief. Even back then, I was just going through the steps, I was connecting with community, I was feeling like I belonged, that I was accepted. So I kept, I kept taking that stuff along. I mean, don't get me wrong, I was very sincere, in my belief, but I'm not sure about the depth of it. And I think that's why it was probably easy for me to walk away in the end, because I don't think I'd ever truly, because I always struggled with this, you know, that attitude of the other. You know, that other person out there, they're not saved, or someone so you know, we should treat them differently, because they're not a Christian, that they haven't said these 15 words that make them a Christian, you know, it, I just always struggled with that I struggled with that sense of the other and that you had to rescue them because I didn't necessarily see what they were involved with, is dangerous, or need rescuing from so I was bad Christian, really trying to say,

David Ames 23:47
when you see the humanity of out atheists, or out LGBTQ people, and you just realize actually, they're really good parents. They're really good people. Like, you know, I'd kind of like to be like, it's hard to hate that that person.

Troy, what I want to hear is, you guys were friends at one point in time, and you've kind of gone on your journeys in parallel tracks, how aware of each other were you as you were going through this moderation and deconstruction process?

Troy 24:23
Well, when we were in the Assemblies of God, towards the end of my time, Brian had sort of grown up in the ranks or grown up into the ranks of the youth group and I had gone away to be a youth pastor of another church. So when I came back, because that didn't quite work out when I came back, you know, talk about this, you know, away from the, from the supporting community. When I came back, I felt like they had changed. The whole church had changed, but actually it was probably more me that you know, that my experience had changed me and I disconnected from from that community. median, and that communities norms. And so I started to challenge what was going on in that church, but from a Christian perspective, and that didn't land that didn't land at all. And so I, you know, ended up out of my ass, as we say, in Australia and really looking for, you know, a better version of Christianity, and Brian was was still quite embedded in that still quite enmeshed in that. And then, uh, only a few months later, I think he started to sort of go, you know, which we heard in his story started to say, Oh, this doesn't quite add up for me. And so we connected again, quite quickly, because we had grown up in a similar part of town, we had very similar socio economic backgrounds, we enjoyed the same music, you know, this is before church. And then I think we we connected on that, because we hadn't been raised in the church, we had a genuine friendship, I think is a good way to put it. And so when I, when I had journeyed away, when as often happens, as you know, with people that leave, you know, the religion, they reconnect with people who have also left and you know, reforge relationships, and that's when you find out who your real friends were, and who were just who were just church acquaintances. So yeah, I think as soon as that happened, we reconnected in the, what we call the Baptist hostel space, because it was still Pentecostal ish, but it was also not. And but but then I think when I finally walked away from religion, Brian was still in it. And I think we, we stayed in touch, we sent emails to each other, I was living overseas. But then when I eventually came back from overseas, which was about 12 years later, by that stage, Brian's marriage had broken down, and we were in a place where we could reconnect his friends and his religion. I don't think you quite walked away yet, Brian, I think you were still holding on to it in name only. But I was happy that he's saying I'm an atheist, I think this is all bullshit. And that wasn't an issue. And so we, you know, continued on as friends and then we, we maintained our friendship, as unchurched as non believers, we both, you know, re partnered with non-believing women and had kids and all the things that you do. And during the COVID, lockdown, because Melbourne, where we live is one of the most lockdown cities in the world, least one of the most, one of the biggest cities. Although now with what's going on with China, that may not be true, but at least up to that point, it was. And I was listening to a lot of deconstruction podcasts and listening to a lot of these and I say, young people, because compared to me, they were and they were beginning this journey. And they were sort of moving into sort of this progressive space and, and I realized that some of the fear was still there. So I reached out to Brian, I said, Hey, I want to join this conversation, and no one's going to have me on the liturgist podcast or any other kind of things. So let's do our own with it with a uniquely Australian voice. And so and so we did, and you know, here we are, as you as you heard, in our in our episode, nearly two years later. And and we're still going and like you were never going to run out of content, I think the only time will probably stop this is when we've had enough because exactly where he is going to continue to be told and and as you said to us in the episode, when you came on our podcast was this is not new. And people have walked this road hold denominations have walked this road, you know, where they have become liberal and, and then become, you know, secular humanists. And we look at them and go, how could we ever become like that? And yet, here we are, in that exact space, you know, so yeah, so that was our journey.

David Ames 28:39
And then we also talked a bit off, I think Off mic about how doing this work benefits us as well, that there's a, you know, an aspect of this is our outlet, that kind of thing.

So Brian, I want to hear what the focus of the podcast was like what you Troy mentioned, uniquely Australian voice, what were you guys trying to accomplish? And what is the background to the podcast?

Brian 29:12
I think we set out to tell our stories and tell you know, you know, our podcast starts with and we sort of cringe when we look back at our first couple of episodes, just to you know, obviously your craft you grow into it. But we start out telling our stories and how we actually became involved. So it's a bit of a deeper dive into that than the the blurb that we just gave at the start here. But you get the sense of who we are, where we came from. But then we started talking about our experience and some of calling out some of the absurdities, calling out most definitely our experience of cognitive dissonance, you know, there's a lot of things that we toed the line I knew that, you know, it just didn't make sense. But you did it because you did it for Jesus. So it notes that sort of rubbish, but we just started to dive into, you know, talking a lot about our experiences. But then, very, very quickly, I think like you You described in the episode with us, you start to think about, well, this could be others, who do we start to have a conversation with about their experience? So we'd bring people in, and we'd start to talk about, hey, what was your experience? How did you go through this, this space? How did you navigate it. And then people started connecting, we started an online community, where people come together to process and to talk about the stuff that is happening for them in their lives. And quite often, it's pegged to an episode. So we'll drop an episode and, and people will go Oh, when, you know, so and so said that, you know, I really connected with it, but I just don't know how to work through this. And you'll have a bunch of people who will jump in, really help each other, try and navigate what they're going through, try and make sense of it. As you know, when you've been in Christianity for so long, you've operated within such a confined environment, that where you can process things that when the floodgates are open, and you can actually start to use some of your your brain power. Sometimes it can become a scary place for people. So we've we've done that with the podcast, it's been storytelling, it's been a lot of our storytelling of our experiences, it's been guests coming in. Sometimes it's been a therapeutic bent, where we bring someone in who's an expert in a particular area, but Josie mix gaming that we spoke about. And, you know, that religious trauma, we're recovering from religion. With Darrel Ray, you know, we've we've had all of those sorts of people come in as well to talk about their experience. But I think the story connection is a big thing. The stents making is a big thing for people being able to know that they're, they're not alone. And we want to continue that. And it's become far more popular than we thought it would become. A lot more people have connected with it than we ever thought. And I think it's it's the beauty of the current environment where you can anyone can have a voice, and it's something in the church where unless you're actually anointed to have a voice, then you don't get one. But yeah, yeah. So now anyone can tell this story. And I think there's such a power in human connection as a power and sense making and, and story making of our lives. And that's, I think that's where we are.

David Ames 32:57
It definitely that what comes across is the honesty and the vulnerability. And, you know, as we've said a few times, you know, I think that is really a powerful thing, people come along, and they can say, I'm not alone, these people have experienced this as well. And it comes from that willingness to kind of, for lack of a better term, bear your soul a bit. And I think that's that human connection. That's super powerful.

I want to ask a question, and I want to give you the opportunity to tell me to eff off if this is too personal, but I noticed that you guys began with a level of anonymity of just your first initials. And at some point, you began to use your first names. Talk me through that, what were you trying to accomplish there? And why are you a little more open these days?

Troy 33:47
Yeah, when we first started, I was afraid because we were going to be bagging out Hillsong and bagging out Australian Assemblies of God now called the Australian Christian churches. I was a bit worried about us getting sued. years before I was involved in a group called the revival centers and years before in the 90s. When I was what we called, you know, deprogramming isn't it funny the way it's gone from deprogramming to deconversion to deconstruct Yeah. But I was involved in, in, I guess, bringing down this revival centers movement, and we were threatened with legal action a number of times. So I wasn't sure how far this was going to go. I didn't think we were going to go quite as as blatant as I did in the sort of counter revival center days. But nevertheless, let's set up for that. The other thing too, is we both have professional lives, and we didn't know how this was going to be received in that space as well. And both of those have proven to be not true. Both of them have proven to be positive. So we have just recently started well, not just recently at the end of last year, we started using our first names, and then recently when we have been promoted We've even used our last names in some of the things that we've done as well. So it was it was sort of an opening up, it was a testing of the waters and to see what's going to happen, because you know, Hillsong, for example, is quite litigious. And they do try and shut people down. But we've sort of made the decision as well that we won't come out with any sort of accusations, etc, that aren't firsthand, or that aren't already on the public record. And in that sense, I don't think we're going to be sued anytime soon. But yeah, that that was where we were coming from, and that has come at a cost. Like I've had my ex wife contact me and being very concerned about what I've got to say, podcasts, things like that. So you know, that does come at a cost. But I think we've pretty much weathered that storm, I don't think anything's going to happen anytime soon.

David Ames 35:50
I definitely went through a similar process, I wanted to protect my family, you know, you're doing this on the internet, then, you know, who knows, and growing a bit more comfortable, maybe even naively. So we'll see. We'll see if that ever turns out to have been a bad decision. But I understand that impetus delight. I want to have my voice out there, but I'm not quite ready to be fully known.

The next topic I want to get to is, you know, we clearly have similar backgrounds, both in kind of Pentecostalism, charismatic, and the general and specifically Assemblies of God. What I don't know as as clear to us listeners is how big a deal Hillsong is in Australia. So I'd like to talk about the experience of you guys call it the great big A OG for samples of God, but Pentecostalism in general, and Hillsong, specifically within Australia.

Brian 36:49
Yeah, look, I think Pentecostalism within Australia is quite a small thing. Like it's a Yeah, it's a fairly small slice. However, it's a very influential slice of Christianity. And some of that has been through Hillsong. And its success, particularly with its music, you know, hit the the Australian area, the area charts, it's hit billboard, over in the stage, you know, I mean, it's been hugely, hugely successful. So I think that has been part of his exposure and influence here. But we also recently, until about a year ago, had a Pentecostal Prime Minister, who was part of the Australian Christian churches, and he very much bought his his beliefs into the way that he governed Australia, he connected and you know, he had been to Hillsong. He denied he'd been to Hillsong. But someone shared photos of him with Brian Houston, the then senior global pastor at Hillsong. That was a very strange denial. He, you know, he tried to get Brian Houston into a meeting with Trump when Trump was your president. So you know, he definitely tried to leverage it. So I think Pentecostalism got an exposure through that. But Hillsong it's been a huge thing. I mean, we had a Royal Commission into Institutional sexual abuse. So it looked at a different institution such as churches, homes, you know, the the environment that people had been in, in foster environments or whatever. And Hillsong came to the fore through that as well because Brian Houston, the the global senior pastor, as he likes to call himself of Hillsong, his father had sexually abused children in New Zealand, which is the country that Houstons came from, and that had been covered up covered up by Brian Houston. Of so it was, he's actually been charged with covering that up is looking at a prison term. And he also has been thrown out as pastor of appeal sung in Hillsong, I know has gone crazy over in the states to in New York, and, and also LA and, you know, it's been the Church of the stars with Justin Bieber and, and many other artists becoming involved with them. And with the practice involved as well. Christopher proud of something like that. And there's quite a few Hollywood stars involved. And

David Ames 39:35
the music too, I think, I mean, I think non Pentecostal churches that are evangelical like will do lots of Hillsong music as well. So it's been it's had a huge, huge influence from that perspective.

Brian 39:45
Yeah, it has. It's been massive. And I think that was the watershed moment when they first started hitting the charts here. And you know, it's a massive church. I mean, it meets in a stadium. It's your typical type of mega church, and it's in the media Like we actually have journalists here who their focus is Hillsong. So, someone in Hillsong farts and they report on it, you know, it's quite nuts. But I don't know what you'd say Troy about any further about that. I mean, we weren't necessarily connected with Hillsong it's it hills, some came out of the Australian Christian churches or that ARG. And we were, I guess the church were involved with at the time was definitely fit the bill of a mega church, it was probably bigger than Hillsong at the time, before Hillsong really broke. But Hillsong was sort of an offshoot, it was something to solve we've been involved with. Okay.

Troy 40:41
I think I think the thing to note, though, is that there's a, there's a revolving door with Australian Pentecostal churches, even though they may be small numbers, there's a lot of people go through them. And come out the other side, I would dare say that there's more X Pentecostals than there are Pentecostal. So our story is not unique. So in that sense, I think there is also an influence. Most people in Australia would know someone who's been involved in a in a mega church or in a Pentecostal church, even though they don't have the numbers they don't have the political clout that you see in the US.

David Ames 41:17
Yeah, I think in the US, probably someone will correct me the minute I say this, but I would say the Southern Baptist Convention has kind of as a single entity has the kind of the biggest influence in the US. But you know, Assemblies of God is still widespread throughout the US as well. I've had people ask me this question, I'm gonna ask you guys this question. Had you been a part of a more progressive tradition a more? And actually, I want to get to this concept of the difference between liberalism and progressive, but I just mean, less theologically conservative, do you think you would have had the same deconstruction experience?

Troy 41:52
I think the answer to that, for me is, the question is really moved to because I was recruited via a Pentecostal cult, I had no experience of, of Christianity in any sort of meaningful way. I journeyed out of Pentecostalism into more moderate eventually to becoming a sort of progressive, but it was always a journey out. So I think the the attraction of community, the attraction of forgiveness, the attraction of it, a meaning and a purpose. I remember in Bible college once a pastor said to us, he said that the problem with liberal churches is he said, they don't convert anyone that don't bring anybody in. And he said, as a matter of fact, they are what did he call them a a parasite on the true church. And and I think there's some truth to that without the vitriol. I think there's some truth to that, that most of these progressive groups, most of these progressive denominations, there's very few converts. It's mostly refugees from conservative theology that sort of ended up there. So, so no, I don't think I don't think that I would have even possibly been recruited into that sort of church. But ultimately, when I did journey out of Pentecostalism, or out of fundamentalism out of evangelicalism into something more progressive, I made a conscious decision. It's like, well, what, what's here, nothing. There's nothing here that I need, I can be a good person I can be, you know, a humanist, I can be a giver of my time and energy and effort and money to charities, etc. If I want to do good, I don't need fairytales. I don't need, you know, mythology. So, so I don't think I would have ever been drawn into that kind of church in the first place. David,

David Ames 43:42
that would probably be similar to my answer. But I still want to hear Brian's as well.

Brian 43:46
Now very similar. I came into the bright lights and the band of a Pentecostal church and, you know, the really cool acceptance and, you know, I got a, I became a Christian in a surf community. So it was very cool. You know, it's a bunch of very cool people, their ex hippies, you know, I think that connected me into it, there was a bit of a reality in what they were doing. End up, it was a performance. And I connected to that performance, I journeyed out, as we heard before the same route as Troy through the Baptist hostel through the more progressive Churches of Christ. So even when I tried to make sense of what I will try to make sense of what I believed, it still didn't work, like I was always going, I was on a trajectory to journey out and the day that I do need in,

David Ames 44:36
you've said that a couple of times, it reminds me of a quote from BART Campolo that somebody asked him, you know, when did you start to doubt? And he said, about 15 minutes after I started to believe, and, and I think there's some deep honesty there, right. Like lots of people would jump on that and say, See, you didn't really have any faith, but I think there's just honesty in that statement and the way that you're expressing it as well.

Troy 44:56
David, can I just footnote I think that's exactly where I got that. Comment from I think it came from BART Campolo that the day I joined was the day I started to leave. So yeah, footnote there.

David Ames 45:06
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Trash I heard you working through and we're gonna get to the source of this, but in a minute but a difference between liberal versus progressive Christian, I wonder if you would expound on that. And what you were trying to capture in describing that difference?

Troy 45:33
Yeah, I look, it could just be semantics, it could just be a matter of terminology. But back in the day, to be a liberal Christian was worse than being a non Christian. You know, because you didn't believe in the basic tenants of the Christian faith. You didn't believe in the basic Creed's? Why are you even calling yourself a Christian? You know, it's a wolf in sheep's clothing would have been the way that we would have used it. And I think that term became for most conservatives. For most evangelicals. It was a term that you never wanted to wear. And you never wanted to believe that you were ever going to become a liberal, or a liberal Christian. And so I think what happened is that as that term became more and more pejorative, people just came up with new terms, you know, and we see that all the time, we see that in political correctness, we see that in the even we talked about it before from deprogram to deconversion. to deconstruct, it all seems to become a little less offensive, and then it'll come full circle, and people will start using it again, I think it's the same kind of thing with that term. So people adopted this word progressive. And I think, you know, you know, John Shelby Spong, Marcus Borg, all these poster boys for liberalism would be quite happy to wear the modern label of progressives. And I think a lot of progressive Christians would be wearing that label. It's very happy to read those books, if they really got in and had a look at what those people were saying, because as you said before, Nothing is new. Right? This is this is all the same. And so the journey into liberalism, the journey into progressivism, it's the same thing. So ultimately, that was the long way of saying I think it's basically the same, but there are cultural reasons why we've abandoned that term.

David Ames 47:15
And then I think what led to that discussion is you had a couple of people on and we're going to talk about one of them in depth here. But yeah, Brian McLaren on and Philip Yancey. Brian McLaren, I think would give himself the moniker of progressive Christian. Yancey might not, Yancey might still think of himself as a evangelical. The reason I bring up Philip Yancey in particular is that he had a profound impact on me during my Christianity that Jesus I never knew hit me right at that time, when I was a youth pastor, feeling very isolated and alone. It expanded Christianity for me in a way that probably made it drag on a little bit longer for me. But he was kind of the intellectual outlet for a Christian who is a bit of a skeptic, a little bit of doubts, that kind of thing. And so I have a soft spot in my heart for him. Well, you guys got the opportunity to interview him on this side of deconstruction. deconversion. And it was quite an experience for you. So I'd like you to talk about why you had him on what what it was like having him on. And then you guys had to process it after it was done as well.

Brian 48:18
Yeah. I think it was the same for us. And Troy even spoke to Philip in the episode, and saying the the profound influence that he had on him was to a point where he actually got a tattoo of the word grace in Chinese. So it was, you know, I think that what's so amazing about grace, that book that he wrote, for me, was one of the most impactful books that I ever read as a Christian. And I think it was because I read at that time, where I was just going, I was bought in through this whole forgiveness and grace story. I'm not feeling it. Like I'm actually feeling judgment. And I'm feeling an incredibly constrained environment. So I was questioning that. The book was, yeah, it was powerful. And but he also dropped another book, which is his memoirs where the light fell. And it was reading, reading that, that I actually felt a deeper connection to him because he was incredibly vulnerable in that book. He told the stories of growing up he tall, he told the warts and all of the church. So having him on was, we were fanboying. Both of us were absolutely fanboying. And the conversation was, it was great. It was deep. It was authentic. But he very much still does identify as an evangelical. He's disappointed with where evangelicalism has gone in the States. And you know, he's vocal about that. But he's still deeply evangelical and believes in the roots of it, and he's still very much a Christian. He still believes in The tenants of Christianity we were really clear before we got him on. And we were having conversations with him saying, we are not Christians, we do not believe anymore. And he said, Great. These are the sorts of people I want to connect with you guys. These are the you know, I would his words he said to us with I would hope that the Expand Jellicle community would connect with my new book. That's that's who I want to reach there to I want to read my story. So it was a it was an interesting episode because you can't dislike Philip Yancey, he's the one he might be touting beliefs that we don't any longer believe but He's genuinely doing that and genuinely engaging. However, cognitive dissonance all the way through the conversation. But you couldn't not like him. But then when we dropped that episode, it was a real polarization I think with with our listener community, which is their Facebook community of people going oh my god, I loved Philip, what a great conversation and others going What the fuck? Why did you talk to him? You know, he's still deeply in it. And and people really wrestled with the content there because we we also you know, we did connect with him I think during the interview and for us that was a real unsettling after it like we spoke after him when our goal wasn't that amazing. And then listen back to the episode and went, What the fuck? What what happened there? We're, we're under a spell. But we had to so we dropped that episode. And then next week, the next week, we dropped a debriefing episode and a deconstruction of that episode and what was happening for us. It was full on but like, if you haven't listened to the episodes, which it sounds like you have like, we really tried to process it and we're going what went on here. Troy, what are your thoughts around it?

Troy 51:55
Well, yeah, it's, it's, it's even hard. Now thinking about it and thinking how much we did fanboy him. We were just all over him. You know, we just it was like, Oh, we got Philip Yancey. Because there was a part of us that was you know, all of a sudden we were 20 something again, and we were interviewing Philip Yancey. For God's sake. It was it was really, really cool. But that said I was afraid he was going to see us as a mission field. I'm sure he did on some level, but I was afraid he was gonna come on and, and you know, high and mighty but he didn't and his book is really, really good. I mean, his book, you could read that as a as a non believer and just think this is, this is amazing. As I've said before, it's a combination of To Kill a Mockingbird, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It's, it's just wonderful. It's a really, really good book. I think he it still comes through that at the end. There is crazy religious mother, there's crazy atheist brother and there's middle road Evangelical, Philip Yancey kind of thing. And I think that that implicit that this is the right path. And I don't know necessarily that that's that's the case, even for his own family. But yeah, it it challenged us to say what do you do with evangelicals who aren't Trump supporters who aren't politically motivated to, you know, tear democracy down, and yet are good people and are doing good things and, you know, intellectually addressing the inconsistencies of their faith. And that's when I thought, I think it comes down to labels again, and this is what I said. I think he's a liberal. I think he's a progressive, maybe not theologically, but socially. And even politically, he's quite progressive. And I think that's where the rubber hits the road. It's what people are doing, not what they, you know, sort of believe in, in their own private world.

Brian 53:56
I think that I think that's the cognitive dissonance bit like he's, he's definitely is talking the words of Christianity and evangelicalism, but he seems to be living the life of the progressive. And I can't remember in the episode if we put it to him, of where he he sees himself out. I can't remember any of that. But we'll have to go back and have a listen to

Troy 54:22
you. I think he did. Because we asked him, you know, what about the term evangelical? And he said, Well, maybe one day I'll have to stop using that term if it continues to go the way that it's going. So you know, he's aware, but but it is its labels, its its badges.

David Ames 54:39
If I could be so bold as to talk about a way to process that. There's a leader whose name is escaping me other than his first name James of the St. Louis Ethical Society. He made a statement once on on Twitter that he probably has already forgotten but it's stuck with me. Basically, that everything is secular. Everything is a human endeavor, and And that religion is included in that. And so what we do when we're religious is still secular still humans trying to figure out the world to connect with each other. And, you know, I think Yancey is well within within that in the sense that, you know, he has a religious humanist and he cares about people and he's expressing that. And so just the same way that you know, meeting atheists or or LGBTQ people, when we were within our faith shook that you meet Nancy and it's kind of the opposite of it. It's just because it's, this is a good human being you're talking to and so that's what you're connecting with is it would be my interpretation of the of the experience.

Troy 55:38
I think so. And I think also, you know, hearing what you were saying about your experience of Philip Yancey and also our experience of Philip Yancey is he's doing a good thing. He's actually helping fundamentalists be less fundamentalist. And as I said, if we hadn't gotten his book from the Christian bookshop, we probably would have said, This is too liberal, but they did a bait and switch. You know, we went into the fundamentalist bookshop bought a fundamentalist book, and we're impacted with humanist ideas. Oh, my God. And and it did push. both Brian and I, and from what I'm hearing from you as well, it did push us in the in a good direction. So. So kudos to him, you know, kudos to him. Yeah.

David Ames 56:21
And I think you guys said that he probably wouldn't like to hear that, but that he was a part of your deconstruction. Quick, I don't want this to turn into a fanboy session about Philip Yancey. But quick sidenote, when I went to buy the Jesus, I never knew, very, very conservative Christian bookstore, and I got just glaring looks. As I was buying the book from the bookseller, it was understood that, you know, he was definitely more liberal. And there's something different about him, even at the time.

Troy 56:54
One of the things that I wanted to ask him, which I didn't get to ask him was that Marcus Borg wrote a book called meeting Jesus again for the first time, which sounds a lot like the Jesus I never knew. And I wondered if Philip Yancey hadn't read that book, and thought, I want to bring an evangelical version, because it comes back to the person of Jesus, you know, aside of, aside from all the religious stuff that we've gone through, and all the doctrines, etc, let's come back and look at this, this person of Jesus and and meet him again for the first time or the Jesus that I never knew. And and I would really like to know if Marcus Borg had actually impacted Philip Yancey, or if he would even admit that because Marcus Boggs book was first, I haven't actually

David Ames 57:37
read that. So you know, maybe someday, if I'm interested. I'll do that.

As we wrap up, guys, I want to focus back on your podcast and the community that you're building, how can people find the community and maybe just talk a little bit about what is going on in the community that you guys are building?

Troy 58:02
Sure, well, the podcast is available on all the good platforms. And as Brian likes to say, some of the bad ones too. Yes. We have, obviously where, you know, we're on social media, we're on Instagram, we had to be pushed onto Instagram, because we're both in our 50s. We didn't, didn't know about the Instagram. We are now on Instagram, we're on Twitter, we'll see how long that lasts. We're on Facebook as well, we have that Facebook community. You know, and look, we have communities of people that are you know, volunteering behind the scenes to help us out. People can connect with us in the in the different social media platforms, because we do tend to respond, we read pretty much everything. Matter of fact, there's time to have to say I've got to I've got to put this down for a while it could become an obsession. But we try to make it meaningful, and we try to make ourselves available to people. I think the fact that we have this uniquely Australian voice makes us different. And I think some of our American audience, sometimes grab their pearls, you know what I mean by that they're like, they just say that. And that's that's very Australian. And I think that's unique. And some people have actually said to us from from foreign audiences, it's nice to hear you guys saying stuff that we would never dare dare say in our own accent. And that makes it kind of distant yet the same in the same moment. So, you know, we welcome people from around the world, but it's uniquely Australian in our experiences. But as you've said, David, and we've said to you, it's still the same shit different bucket. Yeah.

Brian 59:37
And I think it's the great thing about living in a nation that was founded for convicts is that we were just a reverent, it's in our DNA. We, we definitely dwell in that irreverent place. But I look, I think that the Facebook community is definitely a place where people connect most. As I think I said before, it's about 800 people within that community as we speak, the podcast has gone mental, in compared to our expectations, you know, nominated for an Australian best podcast award for current affairs. By the time this goes to air, we'll know whether we got the gong. But it's, you know, it's just amazing to, to actually think that people are connecting with two ordinary blokes living in Australia.

Troy 1:00:27
And if we do when I think we need to stand up the front and say, we just want to thank God for his podcast, because if it wasn't for God, the podcast wouldn't exist.

Brian 1:00:40
If it wasn't for a God that doesn't exist, wouldn't exist.

David Ames 1:00:45
I think that is the ultimate Mic drop. And Troy and Brian, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thanks. Thank you.

Final thoughts on the episode. You might notice I'm a little subdued, my voice is a bit subdued. I have not been feeling very well. I'm feeling a little better now. But if my voice is different than that is why I really love what Troy and Brian are doing with our podcast and particularly with their community. It is so much like this podcast, it's a it's amazing. You can hear in the interview, the realness that comes through in their stories. They both had experience in the Assemblies of God, and we're around the influence of Hillsong, if not directly at Hillsong. And then I thought it was interesting that during their deconstruction they called themselves Baptist hostels that they were going to a theologically Baptist church, but that had charismatic leanings. Troy's story of getting himself kicked out so that he can have sex is well worth it. You've gotta go listen to that episode, for sure. I've really appreciated Brian's discussion in this interview about the influence of his brother, his brother becoming a evangelical Christian and him going to visit assuring them that he was not going to be converted, and he got converted. So there is the acknowledgement of the power of religion and the message and love bombing and all of those things. I really appreciated Troy and Brian's humor, they're Australian humor. They're distinctly Australian voices, they say. I think that humor is a fantastic way to overcome what can be seen as tragedy. And they are doing that. Well. I've obviously related to both Troy and Brian, because of reading many of Philippians C's books, it was really interesting to dive in and talk about their experience interviewing him and the misgivings that they had after interviewing Philippians. See, that is a fine line that I walk constantly of who should be on the podcast, who should we platform, it is not always obvious what is going to work and what isn't. You can find I was a teenage fundamentalist on all the podcast platforms. They also have a YouTube channel called I was a teenage fundamentalist. They also have a Facebook group that is associated with their Facebook page. So check that out. I will have links in the show notes, I will also have their link tree that has links to all kinds of their content. I want to thank Troy and Brian for being on the podcast for being so honest. As we said, This really feels like a sister podcast, so many similarities. Definitely check them out. Thank you for sharing your stories. The secular Grace Thought of the Week is about acceptance, accepting yourself accepting others. I keep finding people in my life who when they finally realize that I accept them for who they are entirely without reservations without misgivings completely open up and and I get to see that person for who they really are and they stop hiding. Then that lesson is definitely true for myself, when I have had the opportunity to really tell my story to someone to really tell where I'm at where my heart aches are. That has been a profound and cathartic experience. And actually mean this in many areas beyond just religion. But what we're doing here on the podcast is giving a platform for people to tell their story. And telling your story is profound is cathartic. And becoming a part of a community where people express their acceptance of you is life changing. I want to encourage you all to do three things. One and to accept yourself for who you are. And not to beat yourself up and brace your humanity. You don't need to be something else or someone else you can be yourself. And that is not only enough, that is fantastic to try to show secular grace for other people that they need that much acceptance as well, and be the person who is safe for others to come to and tell their story and be vulnerable. And three, if you haven't yet told your story on this podcast and you have had a faith transition of one kind or another, I'd love to have you on. And I'd also love you to become a part of the deconversion anonymous Facebook community to experience that acceptance in the group reached out to me at graceful atheist@gmail.com the Facebook group is at facebook.com/groups/deconversion Next week, I have Rachel hunt from recovering from religion. That was an amazing conversation. I can't wait to share that with you. I've got a number of community members lined up and a couple of interviews done. I still have Jennifer Michael help coming up. The interview will be later this month, and that episode will come out in early March. Her new book is The Wonder paradox and it is fantastic. Go check that out. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human beings. The beat is called waves by MCI beads. If you want to get in touch with me to be a guest on the show. Email me at graceful atheist@gmail.com for blog posts, quotes, recommendations and full episode transcripts head over to graceful atheists.com This graceful atheist podcast be part of the atheists United studios Podcast Network

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Ask Me Anything 2022

Atheism, Deconversion, Humanism, Naturalism, Podcast, Podcasters, Secular Grace

Arline guest hosts to ask David anything. David tells his deconversion story. He talks about the beginning of the Deconversion Anonymous FB group. David goes deep on what Secular Grace is and what it means to him.

Recommendations

Books

Support the podcast by purchasing books with these paid Amazon links:

YouTube

Sabine Hossenfelder
https://www.youtube.com/@SabineHossenfelder

Matt Baker’s Useful Charts
https://www.youtube.com/@UsefulCharts

Link and Rhett’s Ear Biscuits
https://www.youtube.com/@earbiscuits

Interact

Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group!

Support the podcast
Patreon https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
Paypal: paypal.me/gracefulatheist

Attribution

“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats

Transcript

NOTE: This transcript is AI produced (deciphr.ai) and likely has many mistakes. It is provided as rough guide to the audio conversation.

0:00:11 David Ames: This is the Graceful Atheist podcast. Welcome. Welcome to the Graceful Atheist Podcast. My name is David and I am trying to be the Graceful Atheist. I want to thank all the patrons, many of whom have moved over from the Anchor and stripe support which is now shut down onto Patreon. Thank you to Joel, Lars, Ray, Rob, Peter, Tracy, Jimmy and Jason. Thank you so much for being patrons. You all will have access to Ad Free for the podcast forever.

0:00:47 David Ames: As we move into 2023 and become a part of the Atheist United Podcast Network. There will be ads if you too would like to have an ad free experience, you can become a patron for any amount. There aren't any tiers, any amount and you'll have access to that RSS feed. As a part of the move to Atheist United, we are moving the podcast from Anchor to Spreaker. The podcast will be on hiatus for the Christmas and New Year holidays anyway.

0:01:14 David Ames: From the 18 December to the 8 January we are off. You may notice that the podcast may show up in a different way in the podcast application that you use to listen to this. So definitely by January 8 be checking to make sure that you have up to date episodes as of January 8, 2023. I'll try to minimize all the technical hiccups, but there might be one or two. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any problems.

0:01:44 David Ames: This hiatus will be right during the holidays, which I know can be a difficult time when you are in the middle of deconstruction and family can be challenging. First of all, my apologies, but I want to give all of our volunteers a break in this episode. I do a number of recommendations for this episode and really all episodes. If in the show notes you'll see a link that will say for quotes, recommendations and more, follow this.

0:02:12 David Ames: It goes to my blog. Truly, there are a number of book recommendations, podcasts, blog posts, all kinds of information that can hopefully get you through this holiday season. Please hang on to the Final Thoughts section as I want to thank a number of people. Special thanks to Mike T for editing today's show. On today's show, Arline guests, hosts and asks me anything. You all gave us some questions you wanted me asked in the Facebook group and Arline is here to ask the questions and I am here to give you some answers.

0:02:55 David Ames: As I say upfront. For those of you who have been listening to the podcast from the beginning, some of this will be a bit repetitive. For those of you who've just joined in the last year or year and a half, it might be new information, so I hope you enjoy this. Here is Arline asking me anything.

0:03:16 Arline: David. Welcome to the Graceful Atheist podcast.

0:03:19 David Ames: I'm so glad to be here. Thank you.

0:03:21 Arline: Yes, I'm excited to get to interview you we've had a lot of people in the Deconversion anonymous Facebook group ask them questions, and listeners ask them questions. And so today we get to hear all about the host. David, this is great.

0:03:37 David Ames: Very cool. Yeah. You and I were talking earlier that I'm sometimes concerned that I repeat the same stories, but we have such a brand new set of people that for the die hard people sorry, you're going to hear the same thing again.

0:03:51 Arline: That's okay. We love it. It's good for us. One thing that I do want you to start with is, can you tell us a shortened version of your Deconversion story? And then we have tons of questions after that.

0:04:03 David Ames: Yeah, so the quick version is that my family is very much a soap opera, so it's hard to tell my story without talking about my mom. So I'll just lay down on the couch here and tell you lots of drug and alcohol abuse on and off. Again, being, you know, an adult and then not. And when I was about 17 years old and again, this is after years already of back and forth, she came to me and said, Jesus spoke to me, and it was life or death, you choose.

0:04:45 David Ames: And I'm going to try to choose life. And I was like, yeah, sure, whatever.

0:04:50 Arline: I understand.

0:04:51 David Ames: Again, I'd heard I'll be sober tomorrow stories a thousand times. The next day she was sober, and the day after that and the day after that. And she was great, right? Like, she handed me a Bible and said, if you care, if you want, take a look at this. And, you know, I was an inquisitive kid, so I did something that was very weird. I really, you know, our family was really kind of nominally Christian, so I really hadn't I'd been to a friend's churches here and there. I really didn't have any church exposure, so I read through the entire Bible on my own before I really went to church, right, to have the experience of church.

0:05:30 David Ames: So I fell in love with Jesus, man, this guy. I came for the sick and not the well. And you cleaned the outside of the cup, but the inside is filthy. It's like that stuff spoke to me, and I was just all in. And it's hard to overstate as well the apparent miracle of my mom getting clean and sober. She went for yet another round of impatience for a few weeks and came out but clean and sober. She got a job.

0:06:04 David Ames: Things really did change. Really did, in fact, change, but I really took this on for myself. That was definitely the impetus. But my reading of particularly the New Testament, I thought this Jesus person was amazing. Like, I loved everything about it. It it spoke to the modern hypocrisy of of Christianity in a way that I was already critical of. And so I was convinced by this concept of grace before I even really had the theological underpinnings to explain it.

0:06:43 David Ames: I'll try to speed up the story here. We were also in poverty. I had grandparents that saved me from the most dire consequences of poverty. But I had very little hopes. I was dropping out of high school, no particular prospects of what I was going to do with my life.

0:07:00 Arline: Oh, wow.

0:07:01 David Ames: Then we did get to church. Had a youth pastor. At that time, I was probably late 18, almost 19. They really didn't know what to do with me. They threw me in the youth group as a leader. That kind of moving people up to leadership way too fast. I was good at it. Youth pastor basically said, you could do this, you should go to Bible college. And I will definitely credit him for that's. What I needed to hear, I needed to have someone other than my family say, you could go to college, you could do something with your life.

0:07:36 David Ames: And in that, with hindsight, I now see it was just somebody believing in me. That was like the huge power of all this. And of course, I saw it in spiritual terms that God was the father of the Fatherless because my dad had passed away when I was very young, and I saw this as divine intervention and so on and so forth. Still, to speed up the story, it went through Bible college. I absolutely adored it.

0:08:04 David Ames: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. There was an element of infantilizing students who are 18, 1920 years old. But at the same time, I had incredibly good professors who were critical thinkers. They taught critical thinking, they taught real biblical research, and the technical term is exegesis and herbaneutics. And I ate it up, man. And then I learned the theology of grace, and I was off to the races.

0:08:35 David Ames: And it was like, what the church is missing is grace. They just don't understand this. And I literally felt like God called me to do this thing. Speeding up the story again. I did ministry for a while. I burnt out. I left on bad terms. I had a relationship with it was fully consenting. It had a relationship with a woman. That was frowned upon. As you can imagine, that did not end things. I went on to marry my college sweetheart, who I'm still married to and adore.

0:09:10 David Ames: She is also still a believer, which I'm sure we may get into, but 20 years really like 20 some odd years after that, I remained a Christian and taught Bible studies, but didn't jump into ministry ever again. I went off on my tech career, and that has done really well, and so on and so forth. Having children was a big deal. Trying to convey this to children was kind of putting the mirror in front of me of what like, what am I saying?

0:09:51 David Ames: And in particular, what's something that stands out is when they were old enough to be baptized and really they weren't old enough to be baptized, right? The expectation was they were old enough, but really it just hit me like they don't understand the decision this means, what this means. And I started to feel really uncomfortable with it. That's about the time that I really started to be deeply uncomfortable praying, especially out loud, and expectations in a Christian family to pray for your children and that kind of thing.

0:10:24 David Ames: And I just got more and more uncomfortable and did it less and less. And near the end I had like a year or so, a year and a half before the end. I did a read through the Bible for a year, which is probably my 4th, 5th time through something like that. I wasn't like an exceptionally good biblical reader, but I read through it several times and my wife pointed out to me that I was angry, I was expressing anger and I thought, why is that?

0:10:59 David Ames: And I think it was the first time that I was reading it without kind of a grace rose colored glasses filter. I was kind of reading it for what it says and the judgment and the capriciousness of God was leaping off the page for me at that point in time. And that was, I think, a major milestone for me as I started to I was always a kind of pop science nerd and again, grace focus. So I wouldn't necessarily have called myself a liberal Christian, but on the liberal side of evangelicalism of trying to be open minded for people.

0:11:44 David Ames: And in the very last stretch, I didn't know it at the time, but I was deconstructing without knowing what the term was. I was doing it alone without any outside input. I think what Christians often believe is that, oh, we read atheists and then we deconstruct. But I did all of this on my own. But it was a much more liberal interpretation of the Bible, really understanding. And the thing that I was hanging on to, the last pearl of great prides, to use the term, was the resurrection.

0:12:18 David Ames: For me, if the resurrection happened literally, as it states on the Ten, I was a Christian. And if that wasn't the case, it was super binary for me, then I am out in the bitter end. Like I was just hanging on to my sense of God's presence alone and nothing else. And I found myself being exposed to secular and atheist writers just by accident, right, just in the Twitter feed, you know, and just like not being afraid of it and oh, let me see what this says.

0:12:52 David Ames: And in particular a blog by Greta Christina about why are atheists so angry was probably a list of like 20 things. And I realized I agreed with all 20 of the things. There was like no notes, right? It was just like, she's right. And I think in that moment. And I love the way friend of the podcast been on the podcast. Matthew Taylor says this, I suddenly realized I no longer believed, but the suddenly refers to my awareness, not the process.

0:13:26 David Ames: So that process was those years in the making, but it was this sudden moment of, I don't believe this anymore. And immediately part of it was the idea of a soul. Like, I really viscerally got. I am my body and my body is me. My mind is a part of my body and there is no soul. And then immediately afterwards was, there is no resurrection, and I'm out. I tried to make it quick. That's the quick version.

0:13:57 David Ames: And we'll get into what happens next, I'm sure, in more questions.

0:14:02 Arline: I can empathize with the doing it alone. My husband had deconverted, but it just looked very different for both of us. And so when I was going through what at the time called deconstruction, I didn't know any of these terms either. It's so lonely.

0:14:18 David Ames: It is. Yeah, I know. This is going to air later. I do an episode with the guys from beyond Atheism, and we talk about the juxtaposition of deconstruction, deconversion versus conversion. When you convert, you do it as a part of a community. In my case, it was my mom, right? You do it with people. Deconstruction deconstruction tends to be really isolating and alone. And I thought that was a really insightful thing we kind of came together and described.

0:14:51 David Ames: And so I think that's super common.

0:14:53 Arline: Yeah, I look forward to listening to that episode. And yes, that's very true. Like I said, I had my husband, but in real life, I had nobody from real life.

0:15:02 David Ames: Yeah, he doesn't tell. Johnny's amazing, by the way, listeners.

0:15:08 Arline: He's fantastic. One day, we're going to get him on here.

0:15:11 David Ames: One day.

0:15:12 Arline: But I didn't know podcasts existed. I knew the Four Horsemen, I knew some authors, but that was about it. And so that's one reason. And multiple listeners have said this. Like, when they found your podcast, when they found the Graceful Atheist podcast, it became a staple. It was like, I get to hear other people's stories. I'm not alone, and yet getting to hear the similarities and the differences.

0:15:37 Arline: And now with the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group, we're finding community. We're finding community.

0:15:43 David Ames: Yeah, definitely.

0:15:52 Arline: The first thing I do want to ask you is how would you define graceful atheist? You as a graceful atheist, how would you define that?

0:16:00 David Ames: So again, I'll circle back to mom. My my real first kind of spiritual introduction was the Twelve Steps, going to therapy and a couple of different aspects, going to the inpatient thing that I mentioned. And what attracted to me there and what attracted me to Jesus in the New Testament was brutal honesty, brutal self honesty and honesty with each other. And there was something incredibly intimate in the AANA context when somebody would get up and say, Hi, I'm so and so, and I'm alcoholic, or I'm a drug addict, and go on to describe horrific things and have a group of people love them, embrace them, and care for them.

0:17:01 David Ames: So that's really what I think my concept of grace comes from is like kind of the worst possible circumstances, real, quote unquote sin, right? These people really hurt people and finding that acceptance. And then as I became a Christian, I then had this theological foundation to describe this in this vertical way that God loves people, theoretically unconditionally, of course there's more to the story there, but I realized that that's kind of what I had been looking for.

0:17:38 David Ames: I was not a terrible sinner. Like, I had slept with my girlfriend and things like that, but it wasn't sex, drugs, and rock and roll for me. And in fact, in many ways, I was rebelling against my family by being a pretty good kid, right? But I had this visceral sense of the concept of sin, this visceral sense of, yeah, I could do better, you know, I'm not perfect the honesty. That honesty was a part of it. So over the time of being a Christian, that it changed for me between God accepting me or God accepting the people and then actually witnessing it in other people watching person to person.

0:18:21 David Ames: That that acceptance. That love. And one way I try to describe this is the first time you tell, like, your best friend about your first crush, right, and they don't run away screaming. Or to use a more purity culture example, the first time you tell somebody that you masturbate and they don't run away screaming, right. They're exhibiting grace, or what I would call secular grace, right? And what I've come to learn and what I think is just true about humans is that we need acceptance and love wherever we're at, right?

0:19:07 David Ames: We may have made mistakes, we may have actually hurt people, and yet we still need people to love us and accept us. And so there's some extreme examples like that, but then the regular average person hasn't gone around with a trail of tears behind them. They also need to experience love and acceptance. And for our LGBTQ friends who have been isolated from society in one way or another or felt different than they need love and acceptance, right? And so it just drove home for me over time how much we need this as human beings. And so what I'm trying to express is that there need not be a spiritual or.

0:19:52 David Ames: And here, I mean, like nonnatural I struggle for words, non transcendent aspect to grace. It can just be people loving people.

0:20:02 Arline: I love that. Yes, I am thankful for the atmosphere of this podcast because the Deconversion Anonymous group, like, the audience that we have attracted, want to be those kinds of people, people loving people, and compassion and empathy and grace. What are some things that you have learned through doing the podcast, or how have you changed over the years having done this?

0:20:34 David Ames: I want to tackle the first part of that question first. The number one thing that leaps out to me when I think about what did I learn, is that I had it super easy for a couple of reasons. One, I came to this, as I mentioned, in my late teens, and I was mostly an adult already. I had a sense of identity. I did. I grew up in a nominally Christian house. We talked about God, we talked about Jesus, but there was no pressure at all.

0:21:02 David Ames: There was no purity culture. None of that existed. Right. I had sex before I became a Christian. I knew what that was like. I liked it. I enjoyed it. I felt like that was a part of the grace that the church was missing, was, hey, human beings like sex. That's a thing. So the number one thing that I learned, and just one other aspect that I think was true for me, is there were lots of emotional elements, but it was ultimately a relatively intellectual process for me of like, this cannot be true, and this cannot be true, and this cannot be true, and what else might not be true?

0:21:44 David Ames: And it really was kind of an intellectual exercise over time. It took a long time, but, like, at the end of it all, it was it was breaking down my own cognitive dissonance, my own non critical acceptance of what the church had fed me. Right? So the thing that I've learned is that that is not the case for many, many people. I I think our our main target audience is millennials who grew up during the 90s with I've kissed, dating to goodbye.

0:22:19 David Ames: Purity culture has done an anomaly on these people, hurt them deeply. Whether they're LGBTQ, whether they're CIS, het, it doesn't matter. Like, they were deeply, deeply affected by purity culture. And then on top of that, I never had the hell drilled into me again. Coming to Christianity as an adult and being grace focused, I always thought that hell was not the focus of Jesus's teaching, and that was overemphasized. So I was trying to be a corrective.

0:22:56 David Ames: So again, I never had the sense of existential dreads that our target audience has. So thing I've learned, man, Christianity can be much more damaging, and I would want to expand this to traditional religious teaching. On the fundamental side, I want to be expansive here. Not just christianity can be deeply, deeply damaging to human beings. And that is the biggest thing that I've learned. How have I changed?

0:23:34 David Ames: I think you helped me arlene to be more open. I don't know if we have time to get into it, but, like, when I started the podcast, it was because I saw the atheist environment, particularly the kind of YouTube environment, was very reactionary. Literally half of the YouTube channels were response channels to something some apologists said, and I just felt like, that's fine, and I wanted that for like, a week, but then I was done with it, and I thought, what is next?

0:24:08 David Ames: What's the next thing? That's why I started it. But I still was relatively narrow and that I was still focused on very secular. I struggle for a better word than atheist, but non believer, non theist, non supernaturalist. Right. And I think some of the people you've brought in to have the interviewed, some of the people you have interviewed has helped me to kind of expand, hey, we want to be open, an open space for people questioning in the middle of the process.

0:24:42 David Ames: And the only way to do that is to actually do what I'm saying, really be graceful and love people where they're currently at, which is going to include things that I don't necessarily agree with. Right. And and so I think that has changed me of just loving people spiritually is where they are spiritually, where they are in the deconstruction process and not having to try to define hard barriers for that.

0:25:11 Arline: Some of that was taught to us as Christians.

0:25:14 David Ames: Yeah.

0:25:14 Arline: There are certain goals that people should reach, and so we should help them reach that goal rather than just letting them be wherever it is that they are.

0:25:21 David Ames: Yeah.

0:25:30 Arline: Speaking of a past guest who you interviewed, and she and I met through Instagram, who was in a similar place, in a place of still maybe kind of believing, not really sure, was Marla Taviano, and her question jumped out at me. So I'll jump here. How do you say, Stay so damn graceful?

0:25:52 David Ames: That's exactly how she wrote it.

0:25:55 Arline: And yes, how do you do it?

0:25:57 David Ames: How do you do it, David?

0:25:59 Arline: How did she say become the annoyed atheist or the bitter atheist?

0:26:02 David Ames: Yeah. So one of the things I want to just step back for a second and put context here. One of the things I didn't like about Christian thought leaders, let's call them, but authors, speakers, what have you, is that they would often be very judgmental without the honesty that would be required to make that actually powerful or useful. And so I want to make it clear here that I actually think I'm a fairly judgmental person.

0:26:35 David Ames: I have pretty strong opinions, right. And I'm holding those back 95% of the time. And the part of the podcast is you're hearing restraint from me. Right. I'm not doing the response video the way that I saw my peers do. I'm choosing Volitionally not to do that. And it's a close thing. And if you follow me on Twitter, which I know is dying every once in a while, man, I'll get sucked in and I have to respond to an apologist. It just drives me crazy.

0:27:16 David Ames: So the first thing is the honesty to say that I don't think I'm a graceful person, the graceful atheist moniker is Aspirational. That's why I literally start every episode by saying I am trying to be the graceful atheist. I do not think I am good at this at all. It is hard to have your arms wide open and accept lots of people from different diverse backgrounds. That's a difficult thing to do. And I never, ever want to suggest that I am doing that well.

0:27:49 David Ames: So there can always be we can do this better. It's kind of my constant mantra, I can do this better. And then further honesty is to say, I do get angry, right? Like, I get angry at the Christian thought leaders of today. I get angry at the Christian nationalism, at the politics. I am angry. I don't think that putting more anger out into the world will be helpful. So let me give you a dumb example.

0:28:22 David Ames: Like I see constantly, especially on Twitter, but elsewhere as well, a conservative Christian says some stupid thing and then a bunch of people in my timeline retweet that and have some comment about it. And it's like if we have learned nothing from 2016 to 2020, it's that you cannot feed the trolls or the trolls win. And so, again, it's restraint. It's not that I don't have passionate feelings about these things.

0:28:55 David Ames: It's that I think my end goal of a more pluralistic, more secular, and I mean secular here in the freedom of religion and freedom from religion, not more atheists necessarily, is to not put more hate into the cycle, right into the feedback loop. And I hope that answers Marla's question. But I just fall back on I'm trying and I'm trying to do that every day.

0:29:31 Arline: I'm going to tuck that away. Don't feed the trolls or the trolls win. Because yes, tuck that away inside my mind because I do get pulled into the retweeting and the memes because it is so angry. Why do you think the podcast is so successful? Like, what do people love about it?

0:29:58 David Ames: Yeah, it's hard to separate my own cognitive biases here. So, again, if I take you back to ID converts, I'm looking around online, trying to find a place for me and not finding it. On the one hand, there's kind of a hyper rationality. It's all about debate, it's all about aggressive. Even the good guys. I follow a number of philosopher people who do a bit of counter apologetics and they do it well, right? They do it with kindness.

0:30:36 David Ames: But even them, right, it's still pure rationality. It doesn't acknowledge the human being. Right? And I was feeling all this emotional response. And one other thing I'll say is it was all men, too. It was just men, right? And I thought, there has got to be other people out there who this is hitting the whole person and they want to express that in some way. And I also was cognizant of not like the flip side of this, the other side of the equation is there are 1001 three X pastors and a beer podcast.

0:31:21 David Ames: So the flip side of the hard atheist is the really open minded progressive Christian, right? And I knew that wasn't what I wanted to say either. I think, and I may lose people here, that Christianity is not redeemable. I think we should take things from it and learn from that. I think grace is one of those things, but I think history has taught us that every attempt to redo Christianity, to go back to the basics.

0:31:57 David Ames: Again, I hate to lose people here, but reconstruct Christianity in some way is doomed to failure. So those are kind of the polls and I was trying to hit the middle of people who are asking legitimate questions, but also are experiencing this range of emotions as a human being does. And again, one of the things I learned is that there's real trauma, literal trauma that people are experiencing. And I didn't know that at the time when I was starting and providing a place for that.

0:32:29 David Ames: So I went in with my own cognitive bias that there must be at least some people like me out there. And I did so with the podcast knowing that I could double quadruple the audience by being an asshole, being the hard atheist, doing the response stuff, and I chose not to. Again, restraint, as much restraint as I could have, right? And it has been slow but steady growth and I could not be more grateful for that.

0:33:01 David Ames: Right. I did not need the overnight success. I feel like now we're reaping the benefits of doing it the right way. And I hope that, again, maybe my cognitive bias, but I hope that that's what people are responding to, that the core message is if you find that you can no longer believe, there is still hope, there's still awe, there's still wonder, there is still community, there's still grace. And that's the core message of the podcast.

0:33:33 Arline: Yeah, I think you're right. Those are themes that I see when I talk to different people about listening to the podcast. Those are things that I've heard. Speaking of community, how do you find community? Who do you have in your real life or online life?

0:33:50 David Ames: Yeah, this is a tough one. My best friend lives in the area, so we see each other on a pretty regular basis, so I don't feel like I'm hurting. He's a believer, but we are real honest with each other. I would say that he's in a place where I was five years before my vegan. Whether he will or not, who knows? I've also built some friendships. I'm not going to name drop here, but a couple of people we meet almost once a month and they are kind of a, for lack of a better term, spiritual outlet for me where I don't filter myself.

0:34:36 David Ames: I can just say what I'm feeling and I don't have to edit it. And make it sound pretty or graceful and I really appreciate them. I don't want to call it an accountability group, but it's kind of an accountability group. It's not, but you know what I mean, I get that from those people. And then the other thing, and I think this will be an answer to another question I'm anticipating you asking is that I'm an introverts and that might surprise people, but I build very strong, few very strong relationships and I feel pretty satisfied.

0:35:18 David Ames: I know 2020 was brutal on people and the lockdowns and things, but I thrive. My wife's very similar, we are homebodies, we literally enjoy each other's company and at times to be on our own and we provide a tremendous amount of what we need in other human beings for each other. And so it's kind of a boring answer, but I am not hurting for friendships and I have work colleagues online as well and I meet with a handful of people on a relative regular basis as well.

0:36:00 David Ames: I do want at some point in time to have some in person real world in the same room, breathing the same air experiences. Whether or not I've had time for that in reality is a question, and again, that may be a question that comes up here in a second.

0:36:14 Arline: Yeah, that was one of the questions is you are largely absent from the Deconversion Anonymous group and people were curious why you're not able to be part of it more.

0:36:25 David Ames: Yeah, that is a super honest question and I'm really glad that that got asked. So again, Arline, I'm so grateful that you are here that you've taken on the community management. The reality is that when I started the podcast, first of all, we started every other week. I was doing the editing, the interviews, I was doing all of it and I knew that there just wasn't much more that I could do. Mike came on and made a huge impact. So we went to once a week, he's doing all the editing and we could not do once a week without Mike.

0:37:09 David Ames: I had seen online communities explode just like overnight sensations and then implode and self destruct probably three or four times in the time of being kind of online after deconversion for me. And I did not want to repeat that. I knew that I didn't have the time to start a community and shepherd that for lack of a better term, but like be a leader there. And so I didn't, we didn't for a long time. We started the podcast in 2019 and particularly over the pandemic and the lockdown, I could viscerally feel the need for it and I put out the call like, is anybody interested?

0:38:01 David Ames: And you responded. And again, I'm incredibly grateful. And the point I want to make is that for listeners who are part of the Deconversion Anonymous community, it would not exist if not for Arline. Because I have two things that are competing for my time that is a very robust work demand and family with a partner who is a believer and does not understand what I'm trying to do here. So I have a very limited window of time to do the things that I do, and I try to make what I do in that limited time as high impact as I can.

0:38:39 David Ames: And so that is doing the interviews and trying to provide some high level leadership. And that's about all I can do.

0:38:48 Arline: And I am thankful for that because I can do the group stuff.

0:38:54 David Ames: And I've heard fantastic feedback, by the way. You are a National Treasurer.

0:39:01 Arline: Yes. And I've said this I know I said this whenever I was interviewed and said, again, the atmosphere of the podcast has brought in such wonderful people into the group.

0:39:12 David Ames: Yeah. Let's take a quick second to thank the moderators. So there's a team of people that are moderators and they take that very seriously to try to protect the atmosphere and the environment for people. So thank you to everyone who participates in that way. The last thing I just want to say to wrap this up is that I'll refer back to I'm also an introvert. I'm a part of I don't know how many deconstruction deconstruction Facebook groups. And I think I can count on one hand the number of times I posted.

0:39:51 David Ames: It just isn't my personality. Right? Yeah, I can do this. I do one on one really well. I am terrible in a group. If we ever do a big get together party, I will be the guy in the corner by myself. That is just my personality. I know that about myself and I'm fine with it.

0:40:14 Arline: No, that's good. In the church, extroverted personalities and evangelism and get out and do all the things. Those are very much valued. I read the book, I was still a Christian. Read the book Quiet by Susan Cain.

0:40:27 David Ames: Very good.

0:40:28 Arline: And I was like, I am valuable because yes, similarly, Donnie and I would stay home and be happy. The pandemic, we were like, sweet. We just will work out at home now. Our whole family was perfectly content being at home. And I do love the small groups that we have during the week for the deconversion group. But that fills me up and then I'm good. I don't want to socialize in real life.

0:40:52 David Ames: Yes.

0:40:53 Arline: You told us earlier about some of the things that make you angry. You were very honest about that. What are some things that give you hope?

0:41:01 David Ames: So I'm tempted to grab the Joss Whedon quote, and I know he's kind of not super popular these days, but it expresses what I want to say. I'm actually going to look at my concussion. Joss Whedon said, the enemy of humanism is not faith. The enemy of humanism is hate. It is fear. It is ignorance. It is the darker part of ban that is in every humanness, every person in the world. That is what we have to fight.

0:41:25 David Ames: Faith is something we have to embrace. Faith in God means believing absolutely in something with no proof whatsoever. Faith in humanity this is the point I'm quoting. Faith in humanity means believing absolutely in something with a huge amount of proof to the contrary. We are true believers. I believe in people, and I know that sounds insane. We're recording this on the day of the election. We don't know what the outcome is going to be.

0:41:55 David Ames: It looks grim. I know it looks bad. But I believe in people coming together and connecting with each other and being honest with each other and yes, showing grace with each other. That that is something powerful. And again, I want to be super clear here. I don't mean in some supernatural sense. I mean in a literal physical sense. It is powerful. It changes people's lives. It makes an impact on society.

0:42:26 David Ames: I think that if we can get beyond the just christianity is bad and actually start to collectively come together and see ourselves as even a political voice, as a civic voice, as a good actor in society, as a group, that that will have a positive impact on the world. And I'm sorry if that sounds sappy sweet, but I honestly believe that that honestly gives me hope. And again, we witness it in the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group.

0:43:04 David Ames: I'm amazed on a weekly basis. I may not post there, but I'd read a fair amount of it. Someone comes in and says, man, I'm having trouble. I got to talk to my mom, I got to talk to my partner, I got to talk to my son. And 20 people come along and go, wow, I had to do the same thing. This is what I learned and I it that gives me hope, right? Like that is super, super powerful.

0:43:40 Arline: One thing that has come up often in the group are unequally yoked marriages. People who have deconverted their spouse is still a Christian or religious in some way. We have some who in the group who are Christians and their spouses deconverted and they're trying to figure out what is happening. What advice do you have? You and your wife are making it work. What advice do you have, if any, for people living in that?

0:44:10 David Ames: Yeah, I definitely want to refer back to I think last year my conversation with Michelle that we recorded or two years ago. I can't remember now what it was, but I first have to say this would not have worked if we both were committed to the relationship. And I know there are times when maybe the relationship won't work and if only one partner is committed and the other isn't, it might be terribly sad, but it may also be necessary for that relationship to end. So I want to preface it with here that I don't want to burden anyone here with more guilt.

0:44:56 David Ames: Having said that, another reason for the podcast was I saw lots of deconverts go out in blaze of gory and burn the bridge on the way out and f you to everyone around them that was still a believer. And I thought, that can't be right either. And I love my wife and I want this to continue. The core advice is this find the mutual values. And that can be challenging when one partner is a believer and one partner is not.

0:45:32 David Ames: But in our case, we have a lot of values. What drew us together, our impetus toward ministry, was about caring about people, right? We shared that. And so when I could put it in secular and again here, I mean, just nonreligious terms, right? Not atheistic, but nonreligious terms. We share these values and how that doesn't change. I think that's step one and then step two is making it abundantly clear to the other partner that you love that person for who they are, including if they are believers for the rest of their lives.

0:46:15 David Ames: The truth is that we as the deconvert may need to be the bigger person. That sounds arrogant, but but there's some truth to that in my How To deconvert in Ten Easy Steps, which is a joke title, which I wish I wouldn't have done, but here we are. Is you have to realize that all that process that we talked about, that took years, and then the realization is sudden. Your partner has done none of that.

0:46:43 David Ames: They have none of that context. They've read none of the books, they've listened to none of the podcasts. And when you come to that person, it's going to hit them like a ton of bricks from out of left field with no context. And that is a brutal thing to do. So you have to be the graceful person in that scenario because you have all the information and they don't. Beyond that, again, I'll refer back to my wife.

0:47:13 David Ames: She has a psychology degree. She brilliantly brought up this idea of in a long term monogamous relationship. And I know there are people out there exploring other options, but if that's you, if you want to be in a long term monogamous relationship, people grow and they grow in different ways and they can grow apart. And you have to kind of reevaluate, do we want to remain a monogamous partnership?

0:47:40 David Ames: And if you do, then you have to accept that person where they're at. Michelle had this idea of a second marriage to the same person, right? Like recognizing, yes, you changed and maybe she changed too. But we were agreeing volitionally, we love each other, we want to remain partnered. I'm big on volition. Right. I think marriage in general or partnerships in general are about will and not warm fuzzies necessarily.

0:48:13 David Ames: And it was just a restatement to one another. We're committed to each other and really trying to listen, really trying to hear where the other person was coming from. It may surprise you that I never correct or try to counter apologetics Michelle, ever. I never do that. There are times when I will carefully bring up a subject and it's clear that it's not going to go, it's not going to fly. So I don't I stop because I respect the boundaries she's telling me she has.

0:48:52 David Ames: Right. And that is hard, man. That's hard. Not everybody is going to be able to do that. These are restraints I've put on myself. Again, by volition, by choice, you out there may not be willing to do that. And that's okay. That's fine. Bottom line is it takes two to tango. You need both partners to be committed and you can't fix that for someone else.

0:49:20 Arline: I saw a meme that said the only time you can change somebody is when they're in diapers.

0:49:25 David Ames: Yes. For real. With teenagers. I agree. Yes.

0:49:33 Arline: Someone did ask. Speaking of teenagers, someone did ask, how have you guys, you and Michelle navigated parenting being in different faith or beliefs?

0:49:43 David Ames: Yeah. Again, both about the marriage partnership and about parenting. I don't want to make this sound like this has been smooth sailing. Again, we have tensions flare up and when we have an argument, 25% of the time, I think it's related to we, we are we have different world views, we come from different perspectives and there's this underlying tension that just never goes away equally with our kids.

0:50:12 David Ames: Again, fortunately, unfortunately, depending on your perspective, they were into their early teens when I deconverted. They had that exposure, a graceful exposure, but they had that exposure to Christianity prior to that. Both of them are definitely not traditional Christians. I don't like to speak for them, but more, very much more on the agnostic side of things than anything, that's tension in the family, that hurts Michelle and I know it.

0:50:42 David Ames: And I've tried to spin the plates of making sure my kids feel free and unburdened by purity culture and are free to make their own choices about spirituality and at the same time to try to any of you who have teenagers, you know, it is them against the parents. And so I have to back up Michelle too. There are times there are times where I put a boundary not quite where I would have and vice versa. I push at times to move that boundary and it is a give and take and it's tension and it hurts.

0:51:16 David Ames: And I wish I had a silver bullet and I don't. And again, for me, it's all about making sure that my kids know I love them and accept them. And no matter if they wanted to be hardcore evangelical Christians, I would love them and accept them for that. If they are agnostic, I love them and accept them for that. And I try to communicate the same thing to Michelle.

0:51:45 Arline: Something I meant to ask earlier when you were talking about the podcast, where do you want the podcast to go? What do you see for the future of the podcast and the deconversion group?

0:51:54 David Ames: Do you have places or how you.

0:51:56 Arline: Want that to go?

0:51:57 David Ames: Yeah, let's do the group first. Again, I'm really interested in now that it seems as though the pandemic is winding down. There doesn't seem as much personal health threat out there. I'm sure there are some of you who have family members who might be ill and that's not true for you, and I acknowledge that and I think that's true. But eventually maybe we want to meet together. And again, I don't know that I'm going to be the best person for that, both from a time point of view and a personality point of view.

0:52:27 David Ames: So I'd be interested to hear people who are interested in making this happen. I know that some North Carolina people and you in the south, there like a few other places have met one another in real life, and I think that's super valuable. So I'd love to see us try to build the infrastructure such that people can do that organically and then maybe also do something a little more structured once in a great while.

0:52:55 David Ames: I'd like to see more people step up, and that's happening just today even. I think there's more push towards an unequally Yoked group thing happening, like for people who are willing to lead, you know, a get together to step up. I know how much this sounds like the small group thing in church, and that's because it is. We're human beings. That's just the way we work. And I'm sorry, but we need people who are willing to just be there, be present, say, I'm going to be here at Wednesday at 07:00 every week, right? Like that's, that's all it takes.

0:53:29 David Ames: And then people will follow, you know, so more more niche needs in the group. So secular parenting, we've already talked about unequally yoked. We've talked about you're doing the sex and sexuality. I think that's an amazing thing. Maybe we need an LGBTQ, maybe we need a black corner, a Hispanic corner, whatever the people need, let's do that and provide that space for people. So as for the podcast, I feel like we go through waves and I'll talk about I'm going to go back to the beginning again.

0:54:10 David Ames: The other thing I noticed about my peers is they would go after all the famous people, of which there is really a very small number of secular people out there, and they'd get four or five of them and they would peer out. And I knew from day one. First of all, again, my personality, I'm not going to go ask all those people, like day in and day out to let me interview them. And I also was interested in real life stories.

0:54:36 David Ames: What is this actually like? I don't want to hear, like, even I at this point, what you hear here is pretty packaged. Like, I've told this story a bunch of times. I know the points I need to hit, that kind of thing. I want to hear regular people, what are they going through? And I've been honest with you. I wanted that to be open to women in particular as well, and not just be a male dominated thing, not just be a white dominated thing.

0:55:02 David Ames: We've tried really hard to accomplish that. I'll let listeners and community members be the judge of it. So I knew I wanted to do just people telling their stories. And here's the beautiful thing. And you and I talked about this, how intimate it is to just be the receiver of someone's story. And I could feel the magic of it right while I was interviewing somebody. This is it. This is the thing that people will want to hear.

0:55:34 David Ames: And again, maybe my cognitive bias, but I believe that sincerely, that that was the thing that was not out there or rarely out there. Yeah. And then I have interviewed I've interviewed authors, some people that I adore. Jennifer Michael, hex jumps to mind. Alice gretchen recently. Tom Cristofiak I love that book. I really like author. We just had Heather Wells, just someone who takes the time to really lay out that story in detail and has much better eloquence than I do to put that down on paper. So I really enjoy that.

0:56:12 David Ames: So we have an opportunity to be and I'm not going to name drop yet because I don't know if it's going to happen. Part of a podcast network that is atheist focused but very humanist in its approach. Basically what we're doing here, and I'm fairly certain that's what we're going to do and we're going to cut this part if we don't. And that would open up the door to a few more famous people, right? So a few more authors, a few more speakers.

0:56:49 David Ames: So I want to lace that in. I do not want to lose the heart of what we're doing, which is the people. And so my promise to you is that will always be the core. That's going to be the core. But if you have a few more podcasters, a few more authors, a few more speakers, that's what's happening. And we're also getting noticed. So even apart from the network thing, I'm starting to get people reaching out to us back to the it's starting to pay dividends, doing it the right way from the beginning and not just taking the easy, quick way.

0:57:25 David Ames: I'm getting solicitations from slightly more, wellknown, people and things like that. So I think you're going to see a bit more of that on the podcast. And again, I want to keep our feet on the ground and it's still going to be about people. The core driving thing for me is about honesty and vulnerability. I think you get those two things, and you have an amazing conversation, and that's what people relate to, and so I'm not going to lose sight of that.

0:57:55 Arline: And that's exciting. That sounds exciting. The last couple of questions, some of your favorites. Do you have any favorite interviews that you've done, favorite blog posts that we can link in the show notes?

0:58:16 David Ames: Sure. Some of my original stuff was before the podcast. It was me just figuring this stuff out. If you read it, you hear me trying to work out what this has become. Right. I already mentioned how to deconvert into any steps. Again, I hate that title, but it has a bunch of Google SEO. I can't leave it. Yeah, trust me, this is not just an intellectual exercise. I was trying to get to what does it feel like to deconvert?

0:58:47 David Ames: What does it feel like? And I feel like I hope that I captured some of that. I've gotten some positive feedback from it. So I would say that my early doc on secular grace and humanism. So those two different blog posts are really kind of my pouring out my soul. I did my deconversion, but it was a bit intellectual. I've had feedback on that, that it was more counter apologetic than most people care about.

0:59:22 David Ames: But if you're into that thing, you'll enjoy that if you're into that counter apologetic things. I also have a set of what I call thought experiments for believers where it kind of addresses some underlying apologetic without just to let the reader come to their own conclusion. Right. I'm not trying to tell them what the answer is. Just like, what do you feel the answer is when you get to ask this question? So I love all of those blog posts for interviews. I've already mentioned Jennifer Michael hecht her book.

0:59:56 David Ames: And let's do recommendations, too, if you don't mind, here.

0:59:59 Arline: Yes, go for it.

1:00:00 David Ames: So her book, Doubt a History, one of the early books I read, actually not the earliest. So, again, I read all the people that atheists read. I read The Four Horsemen. I read a few humanists early on, and it was all very cold and philosophical, and I still was looking for if I was going to describe secular grace. It's humanism with boots on the ground, blood, sweat, and tears, loving people. Right.

1:00:28 David Ames: That's what was missing. And what I found in Jennifer's book was, yes, it was intellectual, but it connected me to history. Deconstruction is not new. Atheism is not new. These questions, I mean, the exact questions now, I'm not talking about just generalities here, but the exact questions you are likely to have gone through. There is a trail of historical references of people going through the same thing, feeling just as isolated, feeling just as societally, left out and apart from the mainstream.

1:01:09 David Ames: And her book connected me to that. It also was humbling. I say this every time I talk about the book, not only are my ideas not original for today, they are not original for 2500 years ago. This is not new. And there's something profoundly comforting about that for me. I love her spirit. She also comes from a secular Jewish perspective, which I adore. Christians who say that humanism is stealing from Christianity. I want to just laugh in their faces.

1:01:45 David Ames: It is all secular Judaism. Like, we owe everything to secular Judaism. That's best. So a follow along to that is Sasha Sagan, that interview with her in it. First of all, I think Carl Sagan is one. You know, I often say I'm a Sagan like atheist, not a Dawkins like atheist. And what I mean is there is still wonder and awe and joy and connection and people. I love people. And I feel like Carl captured that and Dawkins doesn't.

1:02:21 David Ames: Well, man his wife Annie and his daughter Sasa Sagan have extended that legacy, and I love everything they do. Her book, Small Creatures Such as we, captures the need for us as human beings to have ritual again. There need not be a spiritual, non physical, non natural element to the need to connect with each other and mark time, mark birthdays, mark weddings, mark mark deaths, and collectively grieve and celebrate.

1:03:01 David Ames: Right? So in that conversation with Sasha, we talked about, man, how can we capture this and put it in a bottle and give it away? If I could give away to you the feeling that I have the satisfaction and I'm not a nihilist at all, right? 95% of what they accuse atheists of, I feel like that just doesn't apply to me. Right. I have more than what I felt as a Christian because I feel freer. Right? And if I could give away this project is trying to give that away.

1:03:41 David Ames: And I feel like people like Sasha have that. Alice Gretchen, I think I already mentioned she wrote the book, wayward I'll mention it's, in the same tone. Heather Wells, who was just on both of them are memoirs. I think there's a deep place for that. You mentioned Marla taliano hers'book of poetry. The three of them speak in a way that I could never right. That's not my experience. They are expressing an experience that's deeply important in a way that I don't have access to.

1:04:17 David Ames: And so I love those three. Amy rath came on. She has a podcast about nuns. N-O-N-E-S. Love her work. I think she's on to something deep and meaningful and important there. Just in the recent past, ryan Mukowski, Robert Peoples gosh, there's so much. I feel like I leave people out by trying to acknowledge these people. But you can hear in my voice when I'm super excited, right. And it tends to be humanist, skepticism, loving people, right? That combination, some combination of that is going to fire me up and I'm going to be excited.

1:04:58 David Ames: Can I give you more recommendations? I don't know you have more questions. Okay. More recommendations really quick, because this question was asked of me. I think it was via you. And I was unprepared. I came prepared today. All right?

1:05:13 Arline: That's right.

1:05:13 David Ames: Yeah. Often people ask me, what podcasts do you listen to? And the truth is, I don't really listen to the conversion deconstruction podcasts. And the reason is, like, I know that people will age out, for lack of a better term, of the graceful atheist, right? People come to us at a time of need, either during the process or they need a booster shot, so to speak, after deconversion, and they need to feel like I'm not alone.

1:05:46 David Ames: And they probably get satisfied right. Within, let's say, a year or so, right? Like, okay, I have enough. I can move on. And they will age out. And that is a good thing, not a bad thing. I feel like that for me, too, just in the same way that I was just 15 minutes of rationalist atheist and I was done in the deconversion space. Like, you know, I've listened to the podcast. Of course. I still do. I do a ton of research, right? Like, just for the podcast, I do a ton of research.

1:06:15 David Ames: So I still am listening to it. But for myself, that's not what I listen to. So a couple of recommendations. One is. Sabina hasenfelder. Dr. Sabina hasenfelder. She is a science communicator, and she is a skeptics skeptic. I love this person. She has both a YouTube channel, she's written the book Lost in Math. Where she is critical of the Tlcr is the concept of the beauty of mathematics and physics.

1:06:51 David Ames: And she says that led us astray. We're too focused on this aesthetic value and not looking at the data. She is critical of the foundations of quantum field theory, which, as you know, can spill out into things like the multiverse concepts and things like that. She is a skeptics skeptic. I love her. Even if I disagree with her, I respect her beyond anything else. For that reason, she's willing to just stand.

1:07:25 David Ames: And I want to be really super clear here. There is a movement, the wrong word, an intellectual trajectory sometimes called the heterodox sphere. And that's actually my next recommendation I'll talk about in a second that I don't agree with. Okay? So this is the people who are heterodox just for the sake of being heterodox. These are the people who were pushing ivoryctum during the antivaccine, during the pandemic, which I think was it makes me angry.

1:08:07 David Ames: Misinformation, disinformation, makes me angry. That was to build a podcast audience, and it pisses me off. So I do not mean heterodox. I mean willing to stand for the truth based on the data we have, right? And stand in the unknown. We don't know. The other message of this podcast is that the Christian apologetics will say, you have to have this answer. You have to have an answer. And it's okay to just not know.

1:08:37 David Ames: And I would much rather not know something than to speculate and get entrenched into my speculative answer. And that is the description of all of apologetics, but also sometimes philosophy and sometimes even science in some science, anyway. Sabina the second one is a podcast similar in that it is of skepticism. It is decoding the gurus. Two guys, Chris Kavanaugh and Matt Brown, they are both academics, but they are looking at all the famous people that I have avoided talking about so far, people like Sam Harris and Brett and Eric Weinstein.

1:09:22 David Ames: And that heterodoxphere. They are looking at it from an academic point of view, and they are looking at how it feels. Whenever you use the term cult, it gets negative immediately. But how they are abusing their personality, their charismatic personalities for monetary gain. And so it is critical of the critics, right? And so I think it's a super valuable perspective. Another YouTube channel that I really like, that I just found literally within the last month is Matt Baker's Useful Charts.

1:10:01 David Ames: Matt is a theistic Jew. He came, from, what he calls his words a cult. The British Judaism. I don't probably not even calling it right. Anyway, long story short, he's a history buff. He is a religious studies. That's his actual degree, his education, and his business is building, drawing out these charts. So he does things like monarchic lines, successions and so forth. But he has applied that to his religious studies knowledge.

1:10:45 David Ames: And so he has a ton of really well documented, really well resourced researched biblical history from a critical point of view. So he'll be like, here's the Bible's timeline and here's the archeological timeline. It's super valuable, right? Like, was Moses a real person? He tackles that with real honesty, right? And he separates mythology, legends, and history. And there's a bright line there. And I've learned things from him, I think.

1:11:20 David Ames: Man where were you 20 years ago? So I love that one from that podcast is of the book by Neil Silberman, the Bible unearthed similar. This is actually I'm way late to the game here. This has been out for a while. I believe he's at least Israeli, if not Jewish. But again, looking at the actual archeological evidence, is there evidence of 700,000 to 202 million people going through this tiny little space in the Middle East? And spoiler alert, no, there is not.

1:11:56 David Ames: And it's just an honest look at what does the data actually say, right? And I'm just beginning that book, but I think it's great so far. Again, I'm late to the party. Christian Demez is Jesus and John Wayne. One thing I learned what did I learn? I learned that I have been super privileged and ignorant and I have had the privilege of nivete. Right. I was a white ish male in an evangelical patriarchal environment.

1:12:36 David Ames: And similar to Jennifer Michael Heck's book about deconstruction is Not New the Christian Nationalist Patriarchal Elements of the Christian Right and Is Not New And something I would talk about from the Watched it Happen from the 80s, but she's taking it all the way back before the 50s even and just tracing the line of we should not have been surprised by Trump. So the fact that I was surprised is a revelation of my own naivete and privilege. Right.

1:13:19 David Ames: I highly recommend that book. I know you have as well. In my interview of you we talked about Tyler Merit. The name of it is I take my coffee black. He references the school I went to. He is definitely a Christian. But the experience of being a Black Man in 2020. And not only that, a Christian Black Man and his Christian friends and family not understanding, not getting it. And the pain that he'll just what he's so good at is the visceral experience of being a Black Man in America during that time period. And prior to that, too. So I highly recommend his book.

1:14:10 David Ames: Just to rattle off more podcasts that I listen to. You don't have to. Ezra Klein on politics I think is amazing. Yes. Sean Carroll on all things science, particularly physics, particularly cosmology, but also the philosophical background. He kind of blends those two. His his is called Mindscape 538 on politics, political Gabfest on politics. You're seeing sensing a theme here, very bad wizards, philosophy and psychology kind of related to the gurus, but without that critical aspect.

1:14:48 David Ames: So those are the kinds of things that I listen to. And then last recommendation is I wouldn't have known these guys but my teenagers. But Lincoln Rhett are the famous guys from what is it? Mythical Morning. Mythical morning. Yeah. Now. Ear biscuits. They were youth for Christ. Minister they did all kinds of stuff. They didn't talk about that through Mythical Morning. They deconverted and they came out publicly.

1:15:19 David Ames: And the series of podcasts in ear biscuits, both on YouTube and on their podcasts are just amazing. Very, very good. They did like a year after retrospective. All of that is fantastic. Go listen to it. It is great.

1:15:37 Arline: Yes. And Good Mythical Morning is just hilarious and funny and it's just think of a family friend, their kid was like, can we watch Good Mythical, Mythical Morning? Like eating the hot cheetos stuff. I mean, just the most bizarre, random stuff and it was so much fun. And then somehow I found out that they had deconverted and listened their story and so similar to so many people's stories that we've heard.

1:15:59 David Ames: Totally. Yeah.

1:16:01 Arline: Any more recommendations?

1:16:03 David Ames: I'm done. I'm finally done. That was wonderful.

1:16:06 Arline: I wrote a lot down podcast, although I do not need to keep adding to my podcast.

1:16:11 David Ames: Yeah, I hear you. And I'll definitely send you these names. I had to write it down. I would not have remembered.

1:16:18 Arline: Is there anything I did not ask that you wanted to talk about?

1:16:22 David Ames: I talked briefly about kind of having this packaged, trying to have the elevator pitch. So I want to wrap with secular grace is I sometimes talk about this ABCs of a secular, quote unquote, spirituality that's all belonging in connection. So again, I appreciate that this is a little too three points in a sermon kind of thing, but to try to simplify it for people. Again, thing I learned is how much cultural context feeds into our interpretation of the experience of awe.

1:17:05 David Ames: We know that you can use high powered magnet over a person's brain and they will experience God. And if you're in the west, you're going to see Jesus, right? And if you're in Asia, you're going to see the Buddha maybe, or Shiva or Vishnu or what have you, right? And if you're in the Mideast, you might see Allah, right? Your cultural context gives you the interpretation of what awe means to you. And what I'm trying to say is awe is a human experience and we should embrace it.

1:17:39 David Ames: It is a wonderful thing. I experienced that for sure, in nature and in friendship and sometimes in these interviews, right. That literal physical feeling of man. This is amazing, right. I feel that and I no longer have to say that's a god, right? No, it's just two people connecting and that's a great thing.

1:18:00 Arline: Yes.

1:18:01 David Ames: The belonging is what we've been talking about with the deconversion anonymous group. It's to know that you are not alone. You are a part of a people. It's part of what I talked about with Jennifer Michael Heck, that we are in a historical line of doubters. We are not alone, not only for this time period, but for all of human history. As long as there has been belief, there have been doubters, and we are a part of that. And so having a sense of I'm a part of something, I'm a part of this group is a hardwired need.

1:18:36 David Ames: We are social creatures. It's okay to embrace that. It's also okay to be very critical about which groups you are willing to make yourself be a part of. We are not particularly joiners secular people and that's okay too, but it is kind of a human need. And then the connection is back to what I was talking about earlier, about that almost confessional level, one on one human talking to your best friend in the world, the human being who holds your secrets, whoever just came to your mind.

1:19:13 David Ames: That's what I mean by connection. It's about trusting that person with implicitly. You know they are going to hold your secrets. You know that you can tell them anything. You can be angry and you can be an asshole. You can be yourself unedited to that person, find that person, love them, hug them, be the same back for them. That connection is so valuable, so necessary, such a deep part of being a human being.

1:19:40 David Ames: And the whole thing I'm trying to say is if you find yourself no longer able to believe in spirituality of any kind, you get to keep all those things. Those things still come with being a human being. You do not lose them. You do not need to be a fatalist nihilist who succumbs to despair. That is not necessary. And that is the message of the podcast.

1:20:06 Arline: All right, mic drop.

1:20:07 David Ames: I don't have a microphone.

1:20:09 Arline: David, this was wonderful. This was so much fun. I learned a lot and I know our audience is going to really enjoy this episode. This is great.

1:20:16 David Ames: I appreciate it. Thank you so much for doing the interview. I think this is valuable.

1:20:20 Arline: Thanks for being on.

1:20:27 David Ames: Final thoughts on the episode.

1:20:31 Arline: My final thoughts on the interview I really enjoyed getting to interview David. I learned a little bit more about his story, where he's come from, and it reminded me again how much he has a heart for people, how much he has a heart for helping people who used to find community. In the church, but now know that's not something they can believe in or are journeying away from the church and can figure out ways to give them space to tell their stories, to find empathy and compassion from friends through whether it's the podcast or the Facebook group.

1:21:14 Arline: He is putting good things out into the world and it's wonderful and I love it. And it reminds me of how thankful I am that I get to be part of this. I get to be part of his vision, I get to be part of whatever comes in the future. And it makes me excited about the future of the podcast, to see where things are headed and to get to see what the future holds for David and the graceful atheist podcast.

1:21:46 Arline: I love it. It's wonderful and I'm so thankful to get to be a part of it.

1:21:51 David Ames: For the secular Grace Thought of the. Week, it's just my gratitude for everyone involved with the podcast. I'm terrified I'm going to leave some names out here. So please, if I forget you specifically, you are included in all of this gratitude. I obviously have to begin with Arline and all of the work that she's been doing as the community manager of the Deacon Version Anonymous Facebook Group, guest hosting, recruiting people to be on the show, copy editing, just a number of things.

1:22:22 David Ames: The podcast could not happen without her. Equally, Mike T doing the editing, we do about 48 50 shows a year. That is a lot of editing to do and I could not do it without Mike. He is an integral part of what you get to hear. Both Arline and Mike are in the deconversion anonymous Facebook group. So if you appreciate the podcast, please thank them. Let them know how much their work means to you. I also want to thank the moderators in the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group.

1:22:53 David Ames: Thank you to Arline again, lars, Mike, T. Again, Stephanie, Ian and Vanessa, thank. You so much for the work that. You do to help make the group graceful and provide a safe place to land for people doubting, deconstructing and deconverting. Thank you guys. I want to thank everyone who has been a financial supporter of the podcast in the past through Anchor and Stripe. Thank you so much for really years worth of giving there.

1:23:22 David Ames: I really appreciate that. And I want to thank the new Patreon patrons, some of whom have moved over from the Anchor stripe scenario. Joel, Lars, Ray, Rob, Peter, Tracy, Jimmy and Jason. Thank you so very much. I want to thank Ray from the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group for doing the memes. These beautiful memes that you see of quotes from the guests on the episodes are just absolutely beautiful and it's a great way to promote the podcast and for people to connect and recognize there's something there that they want to see.

1:23:54 David Ames: In this episode, I mentioned there's a couple of people who I hang out with about once a month. You all know who you are and I thank you guys so much for keeping me sane, letting me be myself, and giving me a place to just vent sometimes. That is incredibly appreciated. Again, I'm terrified that I have left someone out. I need you to know that if you have participated in any way with the podcast as a guest, as a member of the community, if you've promoted the podcast on your social media, if you've told a friend, thank you, thank you, thank you.

1:24:26 David Ames: All of that is just so important. For 2023, as I've been talking about, we will be moving to the Atheist United Podcast Network. What that will do will give us. Some more exposure to the wider secular community, hopefully more guests on the show and me as a guest on other podcasts. But also we will be supporting the. Work that Atheist United does and they do a lot of work in the Los Angeles area for the homeless and various other community efforts.

1:24:58 David Ames: And the ad revenue from the podcast will go to Atheist United and will be helping a good cause. A reminder of one more programming. Note that after the 18 December to the 8 January, we are off. We're going to be migrating the podcast from Anchor to Spreaker. Definitely before the 8th, double check to make sure that you still have the podcast in your podcast application. And after the 8th, you definitely have a new episode.

1:25:27 David Ames: And if you don't, I might have made a mistake and you might need to refresh your connection to the podcast. I'm excited about 2023 and everything that we're going to do together. Until then, my name is David and I am trying to be the graceful atheist. Join me and be graceful human beings. Time for the footnotes. The beat is called waves from Mackay. Beats links will be in the show. Notes if you'd like to support the podcast, you can promote it on your social media.

1:26:04 David Ames: You can subscribe to it in your favorite podcast application, and you can rate and review it on podcasters.com. You can also support the podcast by. Clicking on the affiliate links for books on gracefullaytheus.com. If you have podcast production experience and you would like to participate with the podcast, please get in touch with me. Have you gone through a faith transition and do you need to tell your story?

1:26:29 David Ames: 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 Atheist.com.

1:27:01 David Ames: 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.

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