The Christian Transhumanist Podcast

Ep 21: Science Mike—Losing & Finding God

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How to lose your religion, disrupt your life, and become a skeptic with faith! Science Mike describes his faith journey, and discusses brain science, space exploration, cryonics, and the oceanification of Miami.

  • Mike McHargue's new book: Finding God in the Waves: How I Lost My Faith and Found It Again Through Science, and the website, including more info about him, and his ongoing book tour
  • A photo of the moment when Micah and Science Mike unknowingly crossed paths years ago, as extras in the same scene of Blue Like Jazz
  • The weird and winding journey of Science Mike
    • as explored on the Pete Holmes show
    • Conservative evangelicalism. The great things about it, and its failure scenario: evangelicalism produces atheists.
    • The fallout of losing faith, personally and relationally
    • What it's like to be an atheist working to uphold other people's faith
    • How to navigate a relationship across a faith transition
    • Ending up as an Empirical Christian Mystic
    • God & the Brain
      • Why belief in God is beneficial to your brain
      • Brain science confirms the mystical idea that attempting to define God precisely is futile
      • How to start rebuilding faith in the presence of intense skepticism:
        • Science Mike's Axioms of faith
        • and Micah's Minimum Viable Theology
        • Richard Dawkins vs Science Mike: is religion beneficial or harmful?
          • Richard Dawkins assumes conservative authoritarian fundamentalism is the essence of religion, and progressive religion enables it
          • Mike McHargue argues that's not true. Authoritarianism is dangerous, but there is a strong move to remove it from religion.
          • "I don't know of any more ardent critics of Westboro Baptist Church than my Baptist friends." — Mike McHargue
          • Sam Harris on how skepticism often loses important elements of human well-being
          • When authoritarianism is eliminated from religion, the strong evidence is that religion becomes a force for good.
          • 3 proven nootropics: Exercise, Reading, Prayer
          • Reading the Bible in an age of science. Three different approaches:
            • NT Wright
            • Pete Enns
            • A human book about God
            • The future of faith
              • The world is not becoming more secular. But America and the West appear to be becoming non-institutional
              • The church will adapt to this new context. The history of our faith is the retelling of the story of Exodus, in new contexts.
              • The West is not becoming atheist, it's becoming less tolerant of boundaries.
              • Secular & Sacred:
                • Coloring Book by Chance the Rapper - "I'm a force to be reconciled"
                • Last Days in the Desert
                • Topics for the supernerds
                  • The (scary!) ramifications of self-improving AI
                  • Cryonics, ethics & the question of "Who's going to thaw you?"
                  • Space travel, and the newly-discovered exoplanet Proxima B
                  • Benefits of solar-system exploration: LIFE INSURANCE!
                  • Populating other planets in the solar system is a top ethical priority. Should be a top human priority.
                  • Why fixing climate change may have to wait until we're evacuating Miami
                  • Why we need to reorient our faith to universal human flourishing
                    • Why orthodox thinkers, and NT Wright and Richard Rohr offer a more progressive vision for the future of Christianity
                    • NT Wright's newest book, The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus's Crucifixion
                    • The book tour — see Science Mike live!
                      • ...more
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                      The Christian Transhumanist PodcastBy Micah Redding
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