Post Theism

Brian Peck: Room To Thrive

Adverse Religious Experiences, Deconstruction, Deconversion, Podcast, Post Theism, Religious Abuse, Religious Trauma
Click to play episode on anchor.fm

My guest today is Brian Peck. He is a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) who specializes in religious-based trauma in his private practice and who helps guide individuals through their deconversions with evidence-based practices online. His practice is called Room to thrive and Brian describes it as “secular therapy for human well being.” It is trauma-informed therapy and coaching.

Brian has had a huge impact on me and my thinking. It was a great pleasure to get to pick his brain. You can hear me learning in real-time during our discussion.

If you have survived trauma (of any sort), your nervous system did exactly what it needed to do to survive.

This episode is another in an ongoing series of mental health professionals who specialize in religious trauma, religious abuse and the emerging term Adverse Religious Experiences.

We humans need community to survive.

Links

Room To Thrive
https://www.roomtothrive.com/

Twitter
https://twitter.com/RoomToThrive

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

Viral “Trauma is not your fault (period)” post
https://www.facebook.com/RoomToThrive/posts/2496151297329417

How and Why We Believe
https://lifeaftergod.org/059-how-and-why-we-believe-part-1/

Interact

I quote Brian in my article on the Steps of Deconversion
https://gracefulatheist.wordpress.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/

Adverse Religious Experiences series
https://gracefulatheist.wordpress.com/category/adverse-religious-experiences/

Send in a voice message

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

Attribution

“Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats

Abusing the Term Post Theist

Atheism, Humanism, Post Theism

UPDATE

I have come to the realization that the term post theist was too loaded with connotation. I had mistakenly used a very technical philosophical term to mean simply after theism.

I have changed my handle and wordpress blog to Graceful Atheist which more accurately captures the connotations I am trying to convey.

Previous version of the blog post

Post Theism is a term that can be used to mean a post modern liberal religious view. Or all the religion but none of the supernatural.

I want to be clear that I am abusing this term for the name of the blog. I am very much an atheist in that I believe there is no evidence for a god or gods. I am agnostic in the sense that one cannot prove a negative. And I am a humanist that puts people before ideology.

What I want to convey with Post Theism is the sense of humanism after having had a theistic world view and subsequently having abandoned it. The much pithier Life After God was taken.

I have a much more nuanced perspective on religion itself. I am still working out how to express it. I have family and friends who are still very religious. I do not side with the hard line atheists who find no value in it whatsoever. And I think humanism has a ways to go to catch up to the ability of religions to meet the basic human need for connection.

Having said that I would describe myself as areligious. I think religion has had more downside than upside and its potential to go wrong may make it not worth salvaging. In particular, the use of the term “god” in a non-theist sense is misleading and confusing to most of the world who has not studied theology in some formal setting.

The question this blog will continue to attempt to answer is how can humanism match religion in delivering connection and community without devolving into dogmatic ideology.