Author, scholar and psychotherapist Mark Vernon traces the evolution of consciousness.

photo by: Skeptiko

Alex Tsakiris: Today, I’m delighted to welcome Mark Vernon back to Skeptiko. He’s got a new book coming out in a couple months, A Secret History of Christianity and he was nice enough to send me a review copy of the book. You can’t go and order it right now, but you can go and preorder it on Amazon, which is nice.

The great thing about Mark and the great thing about this book is, man, he just has a way of talking about these topics that are important to me in a way that I just enjoy having a conversation about.

He’s written a bunch of other books. He’s been on the show before and I thought this was a great opportunity to have him back and talk about some of the topics that we’re dealing with here on Skeptiko  and get his take, in particular his take relative to this research that he’s done on A Secret History of Christianity.

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Read Excerpts:

Alex Tsakiris: I should also mention that Mark has a PhD in ancient philosophy, and I was just asking him, who’s that over his shoulder and who did you tell me it is?

Mark Vernon: It is Socrates.

Alex Tsakiris: It is Socrates. So the Greek great thinkers will pop up again and again probably in this dialogue and in the book. Mark is also the co-host of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, which is just outstanding, which we’ve talked about before on this show with, of course featuring Rupert sheldrake.

He’s also a professional psychotherapist and along with working with individual clients there in London, he also serves his community with this great volunteer work in that area too. And that’s certainly, not only you’re to be commended for but I think it just rounds out the person that people will know you to be and find you to be, in terms of truly this person who’s engaged with the larger spiritual community and what that means.

So Mark, welcome back to Skeptiko. Thanks so much for joining me.

Mark Vernon: Well thanks Alex, it’s really nice to be back. I very much enjoy your show, so it’s great to contribute.

Alex Tsakiris: Well, it is a contribution. You know the last time you were on I titled this show, Is Christianity Worth Saving? So that will just give people a sense for how you’re willing to go there, and that’s one of the things I really appreciate, is that we can have these kinds of discussions, much needed discussions, even though they don’t necessarily jive with where we’re coming from. It’s just great to get intelligent people to contribute to this dialogue that I’m trying to have. So, awesome, awesome stuff.

Let’s see, where to start? You know where I thought we’d start is, I love this quote for you, and the larger question is, who is Mark Vernon, and then, why do you feel nervous when you’re called a Christian?

Mark Vernon: Yeah. It’s because the word Christian means so many different things and I’m not sure if I want to be labeled with the thing that I’m being labeled with when the word Christian pops up, but it’s also a big part of my own story.