My guest today is Karen, the co-host and creator of the Deconversion Therapy Podcast. Karen is a comedian, a writer, and now a podcast host. She grew up attending Evangelical schools from grade school to Bible college. Everyone is good at something. I was good at being a Christian. Karen was so dedicated to Christianity she became a missionary with YWAM. After attending DTS, she and her husband moved to Thailand. With hindsight what I got called to was adventure, meaning, purpose, travel and helping people. Honest laughter from the Thai women she was working with shook Karen up enough to recognize maybe they were fine without her Western Jesus after all. Later after reading Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus, Karen further deconstructed when she discovered the premise of her missionary work, Mark 16:15 “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature,” was not in the original manuscripts. Karen’s best advice to Christians: Don’t research. It is bad for your faith. Along, with her co-host Bonnie, Karen uses humor, sarcasm, self-deprecation and occasional snark to eviscerate the silliness of Evangelicalism. Their podcast is Deconversion Therapy. We can laugh at this stuff. We are OK. You can laugh at this. You are going to be OK. Links Website: https://deconversiontherapypodcast.com/ Deconversion Therapy Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/deconversiontherapy Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deconversiontherapy/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Deconversion-Therapy-Podcast-378017629443177/ Facebook Community Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/302187740481879/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/The_DeConverted Book Recommendation Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000SEGJF8 Interact Deconversion How To Deconvert In 10ish Easy StepsSend in a voice message to the podcast: https://anchor.fm/gracefulatheist/message Attribution “Waves” track written and produced by Makaih Beats Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

My guest today is Dave Warnock. Dave was an Evangelical christian for almost 40 years. Many of those years were spent in ministry in one form or another. Dave decoverted around seven years ago. His deconstruction and deconversion cost him close family relationships. But he has found love, affection and support in the non-believing community. In early 2019 Dave was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), which is terminal. Rather than be overcome with grief, Dave began to talk honestly about dying as an atheist and living your best moments while you can. This became what is now known as “Dying Out Loud”. Dave is on a “world” podcast tour spreading his message of secular strength and hope even in the face of dire circumstances. Quotes: “Dying out loud is really living out loud.” In regards to the fear of punishment and hell: “It ain’t real let it go.” “Its gonna be OK, listener, it is gonna be OK.” “We don’t remember days we remember moments” “Life is a collection of moments” “Wait, goddammit, wait. This is a moment. Don’t miss it.” “Carpe the fucking diem!” “I am more interested in the quality of my life than the quantity of my days.” “The human connection is beautiful to me. It never ceases to amaze me how beautiful that is” Links: Dave on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DaveWarnock.DyingOutLoud/ Dave’s Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/dyingoutloud Dave’s Dying Out Loud at First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYLQu5A4h5Q Clergy Project: http://clergyproject.org/ Interact Send in a voice message to the podcast: https://anchor.fm/gracefulatheist/message Attribution: "Waves" track written and produced by Makaih Beats http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Makaih_Beats  Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

My guest today is Alice Greczyn. Alice runs the Dare to Doubt website dedicated to millennials who are detaching from harmful belief systems. Alice tells her story growing up with purity culture, Christian Courtship and Alice's nearly arranged marriage. She describes being an atheist while surrounded by LA spirituality. She tells the story of cult-like acting classes. As a Christian she felt she had to fake spiritual experiences because others around her seemed to be having them but she never seemed to hear from god. Her honesty stopped her from claiming spiritual experiences she knew were not real. While watching the Jesus camp documentary, she asked herself, "how many of them are faking it?" Alice recognized that other spiritual paths still required faith. She could not accept them because she could no longer lie to herself. She had grown to recognize when she was trying to lie to herself to "make things real." "I became not so great at lying to myself, I recognized when I was trying to make something real." Dare to Doubt walks the tricky line to be welcoming to atheist and those just beginning to dip a toe outside of the belief waters. "I built the site that I wanted and that I needed that I wished I could have found when I was deconverting" Alice is interested in studying why there are not more out women atheists and what causes non-believing women to hesitate to identify as atheists. "1% of women identify as atheist, I need to come out of the closet." Alice recommends the Secular Therapy Project to find a therapist who will not push spirituality on you while you recover from your religious trauma. "I feel so much more love and so much more peace as an atheist than I ever felt as a Christian." Links: Alice's Social Media: https://twitter.com/alicefood https://www.instagram.com/alicegreczyn/ Dare to Doubt: https://www.daretodoubt.org/ https://twitter.com/daretodoubt https://www.instagram.com/DaretoDoubt/ Recovering From Religion https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/ Secular Therapy Project https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/the-secular-therapy Alice's Book Recommendation: Dr. Marlene Winell Leaving the Fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving Their Religion https://www.amazon.com/Leaving-Fold-Former-Fundamentalists-Religion/dp/1933993235/ Interact: Send in a voice message to the podcast: https://anchor.fm/gracefulatheist/message Attribution: "Waves" track written and produced by Makaih Beats http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Makaih_Beats  Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike  https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

My guest today is the Counter Apologist AKA John Lopilato. John is active on Twitter as @CounterApologis. He has a YouTube channel called Counter Apologist. He is also one of the new co-hosts of the RealAtheology podcast. John has taught himself philosophy, apologetics and counter apologetics. In fact, he learned apologetics in a desperate attempt to keep his faith. Ultimately, he found the apologetics wanting. He became the Counter Apologist because he wanted there to be sophisticated answers to apologetic arguments that could not be easily dismissed. John can be found online interacting with apologists and discussing the relative merits and flaws of apologetic arguments. I appreciate John's approach. He is often more than fair to his interlocutors. In my conversation with him, he is very kind to my naive questioning. We discuss a wide range of topics including: debate culture, the burden of proof, lacktheism, the rationality of faith, values vs facts and how difficult it is to make a compelling argument when the two sides may have differing values and presuppositions. "I threw myself into apologetics to try and salvage my faith." Links: John's Blog: http://counterapologist.blogspot.com/ John on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CounterApologis John on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/CounterApologist RealAtheology Podcast https://twitter.com/RealAtheology/ https://www.facebook.com/RealAtheology/ For further study: Kalam Cosmological Argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalam_cosmological_argument Falsifiability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability A and B Theory of Time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_series_and_B_series Interact: Send in a voice message to the podcast: https://anchor.fm/gracefulatheist/message Attribution: "Waves" track written and produced by Makaih Beats http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Makaih_Beats  Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

My guest today is Andrew Knight. Andrew is the host of the Still Unbelievable podcast and co-host of the Ask an Atheist Anything podcast. He is a contributing author to the book Still Unbelievable. Andrew has been a Recovering From Religion peer support agent helping others through their questioning. He promotes the message: "Let's talk about human problems from a human perspective. Human problems have human solutions." Andrew states flatly the faith tradition he was raised in, Church of Christ, is a cult. After attending bible college and working for an apologetics publishing company he began to be disillusioned with apologetics. He came to recognize the foundational claims of Christianity were not true. Andrew takes it a step further, even if the miracles of the bible were true this would not be proof of the core claims of Christianity: an infinite, all knowing, all powerful god. My conversation with Andrew is wide ranging as we cover his deconversion story and the work he now does. He talks about his disfellowship from the Church of Christ. He describes the difficulty in telling a friend who turned out to be going through the same deconversion process. We talk about deconverts being the most dangerous counter-apologetic of all. "Truth is a process of successive approximations" "Changing the notion of truth to something that can be investigated and that we can get better at." Note: Both the Still Unbelievable book and podcast are responses to Justin Brierley's Unbelievable podcast and book. Justin's podcast brings atheists and theists together for debate. Justin is considered an honest moderator. His book's subtitle is Why After Ten Years of Talking with Atheists, I'm Still a Christian. Matthew's and his colleagues' responses take aim at those reasons. Links: Reason Press: https://reasonpress.net/ "Still Unbelievalbe" the book: https://reasonpress.net/SU1E Podcasts: Still Unbelievable https://anchor.fm/still-unbelievable Ask An Atheist Anything https://anchor.fm/reasonpress Recovering From Religion https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/ Interact: Send in a voice message to the podcast: https://anchor.fm/gracefulatheist/message Attribution: "Waves" track written and produced by Makaih Beats http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Makaih_Beats  Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

My guest today is Matthew Taylor. Matthew is the host of the Ask an Atheist Anything podcast and the co-host of the Still Unbelievable podcast. He is the primary editor and contributing author of the book Still Unbelievable. His blog is entitled Confessions of a Young Earth Creationist. Matthew's deconversion story includes growing up in the mission fields in Zambia, a young Earth creationist education, the divorce of his parents and dramatic spiritual experiences. Friends began to challenge his rejection of evolution and podcasts began to give him natural explanations for his spiritual experiences. He began to be disappointed in the apologetic arguments as compared to scientific explanations. Deconversion was challenging and Matthew took a long time to tell his wife of his loss of faith. Matthew wants to help others through the deconversion process. He recognizes that it is a lonely process and that what we need most is another human being who has been through it too. "Suddenly I realized I could no longer be a Christian. The suddenly doesn't describe my journey, the suddenly describes my awareness." "If I am there when you deconvert, my response is not 'hallelujah,' my response is 'how are you? Do you need a hug? Do you need a friend?'" Note: Both the Still Unbelievable book and podcast are responses to Justin Brierley's Unbelievable podcast and book. Justin's podcast brings atheists and theists together for debate. Justin is considered an honest moderator. His book's subtitle is Why After Ten Years of Talking with Atheists, I'm Still a Christian. Matthew's and his colleagues' responses take aim at those reasons. Links: Matthew on Twitter: https://twitter.com/vteclimey Confessions of a YEC blog: https://confessionsofayec.wordpress.com/ "God takes the good people early" post: https://confessionsofayec.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/god-takes-the-good-people-early/ Reason Press: https://reasonpress.net/ "Still Unbelievable" the book: https://reasonpress.net/SU1E Podcasts: Still Unbelievable https://anchor.fm/still-unbelievable Ask An Atheist Anything https://anchor.fm/reasonpress Interact: Send in a voice message to the podcast: https://anchor.fm/gracefulatheist/message Attribution: "Waves" track written and produced by Makaih Beats http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Makaih_Beats  Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

My guest today is Erik Carlson. Erik is a secular humanist and an atheist. His background in the sciences and biology led him to question his young Earth creationist and Calvinist faith tradition. Discovering his sexuality led him to question the morality of his John Piper inspired Christianity. All of which culminated in deconversion. Erik's humanism is evident in his focus on loving people over ideology. He is hopeful for his generation's ability to make positive change in the world from the secular, scientific and political perspectives. And he has good advice for those in the process of coming out: "Protect yourself, do it in your own timing." Erik's book recommendation: Velvet Rage by Alan Downs https://www.amazon.com/Velvet-Rage-Overcoming-Growing-Straight/dp/1611746450 Help for coming out: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/get-help-now/ https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/ Just for fun: Erik mentions Lady Gaga's song Born This Way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV1FrqwZyKw I mention Sam Smith's Lay Me Down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaMq2nn5ac0 Interact: Send in a voice message to the podcast: https://anchor.fm/gracefulatheist/message Deconversion Anonymous episodes: https://gracefulatheist.wordpress.com/category/podcast/deconversion-anonymous/ Attribution: "Waves" track written and produced by Makaih Beats http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Makaih_Beats  Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

Lisa: Secular Sobriety My guest today is Lisa. Lisa runs a YouTube channel where she shares from her life experience, recovery from substance abuse and humanistic values. Shortly after getting into recovery, Lisa also deconverted. We discuss what it was like to go through recovery and deconversion almost simultaneously. Lisa shares about secular alternatives to the 12 steps like SOS and SMART Recovery. We try to draw out the secular humanistic values that are embedded in the 12 steps while jettisoning the religious ones. In the final thoughts section at the end of the podcast, I share my personal story of being a family member in a drug and alcohol addicted family and how the 12 steps influenced both my Christianity and now my Secular Humanism. Links: Lisa on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HPNCAnonymous https://twitter.com/ionamoxie Youtube: How not to be an a**hole https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWEmS-qN-qkKgu3ifxzm7VA Video on Honesty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXynA-IAPeI Video on Secular perspective on 12 steps as they apply to life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmPdMDccMHw Secular Alternatives to 12 Steps: Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS) http://www.sossobriety.org/ SMART Recovery https://www.smartrecovery.org/ Interact: Leave a voice mail https://anchor.fm/gracefulatheist/message Attribution: "Waves" track written and produced by Makaih Beats http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Makaih_Beats  Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

My guest today is the producer and subject of the podcast, Hiding in Plain Sight. Tom is a non-believer living in the UK. He decided to explore the hidden things that surround him that he has so far left unexplored. He takes on the task of a search for meaning within the Christian framework. The Hiding In Plain Sight podcast is very well produced, it has its own original music and it takes an honest and sincere look at Christianity in its first series. Ultimately, the podcast is about the search for meaning and the examination of one's life. Tom does this with humility and sincerity. It is a riveting story that you must hear. Tom's reason for doing the podcast: "For most of my adult life, I have spent a few hours a day on one of London's busy commuter trains. It has given me time to think. I have often stared out of the window and felt like I was missing something, some meaning. This podcast is a search for that meaning and in each series, we will explore something new, I will try on new ways of living and thinking like a new pair of shoes, and let you know how it feels, the comfortable and uncomfortable parts." Links: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tomhipspodcast Hiding In Plain Sight https://hipspodcast.com/ Original Music: https://hipspodcast.com/the-soundtrack/ Recommendations: Henri Nouwen's Return of the Prodigal Son: https://www.amazon.com/Return-Prodigal-Son-Story-Homecoming/dp/0385473079/ Les Miserables in the US on PBS: https://www.pbs.org/show/les-miserables/episodes/season/2019/ Attribution: "Waves" track written and produced by Makaih Beats http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Makaih_Beats  Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

Today's show is a Deconversion Anonymous episode. Sassy Atheist is on the show. Sassy has a YouTube channel where she honestly describes her deconversion and her earnest desire to help others through the process. Hear her heart breaking story of a broken relationship with a loved one because of her deconversion. Sassy's search for truth included Episcopalianism, Catholicism, Evangelicalism and eventually atheism. She also was on a search for community which she is now finding in the atheist community. Sassy exemplifies the themes of the podcast: deconversion, Secular Grace and self honesty.  [To god] "Just do something to tell me that you are here and that you know that I am in pain." -- Sassy Atheist Links: Get in touch with Sassy Atheist: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SassyAtheist19 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf7XYBo2Lp54h4VU_lcfZXg Deconversion Anonymous episodes: https://gracefulatheist.wordpress.com/category/podcast/deconversion-anonymous/ Send in a voice message to the podcast: https://anchor.fm/gracefulatheist/message Attribution: "Waves" track written and produced by Makaih Beats http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Makaih_Beats Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/