Loosing His Religion: A Discussion With Former Pastor Mark Peralta's Journey of Deconstructing Faith: Episode 12

Former Pastor Mark Peralta and Jeramiah Giehl engage in a profound dialogue concerning their diverse religious upbringings and encounters with various churches and denominations. They openly share their personal journeys through theological studies and linguistic exploration, alongside their growing disenchantment with specific aspects of contemporary theological thought.

The discourse delves into the employment of manipulative strategies within religious contexts, notably within the realm of music, and the hurdles encountered in the quest for a compatible church community. Ultimately, Mark and his spouse opted to discontinue church attendance, adopting a more primitive home-based church model. Yet, their quest for spiritual fulfillment persisted, leading them to the realm of YouTube videos during the pandemic, catalyzing a journey of novel perspectives and ideas.

Shifting gears, the conversation navigates towards their process of deconstructing their Christian beliefs, centering on the concept of scriptural infallibility and the historical existence of Jesus. An in-depth examination of the reliability of the New Testament and the scarcity of contemporaneous witnesses to Jesus' resurrection and ascension is undertaken. The duo also explores the viewpoint of Jesus from a Jewish perspective as a probable historical interpretation, coupled with the potential for editing and insertion within the New Testament.

The dialogue culminates in an honest exchange regarding the ramifications of departing from Christianity on their interpersonal relationships. They dissect the societal pressure to adhere to conventional gender roles and the detrimental impact this exerted on their marital relationships. The performative nature of relationships within the religious framework is dissected, along with its role as a tool for evangelism. Both individuals articulate the transformative evolution of their outlook on relationships post-Christianity and the complexities inherent in cultivating a sense of community beyond religious boundaries.

Chapters & Topics Descriptions:

• 0:00 Mark Peralta's Religious Background and Education
• 4:03 Discussion of Church Backgrounds and Denominations
• 4:03 Differences in beliefs and practices between Covenant Church and Baptist churches
• 8:26 Discussing Theology and Language Studies
• 15:35 Mark's Experience in Ministry
• 23:43 Manipulation Tactics in Ministry
• 28:05 Discussion on Church Community and Small Groups
• 28:23 Finding a community in church
• 30:53 Discussion on the Historical Jesus and Inerrancy of Scripture
• 45:19 Discussion on the Origins of the New Testament and Gospel of John
• 56:43 The historical Jesus and the development of the New Testament
• 56:43 Mark's Journey and Passion for the Bible
• 59:22 Critical approach to the Bible and religion
• 59:54 Changes in Relationships Post-Christianity
• 1:06:05 Discussing personal experiences with leaving religion

Key Questions:

• 2:21 How did Mark Peralta's religious upbringing influence his decision to pursue higher education in theology?
• 2:21 What led Mark Peralta to pursue a degree in theology and become a professor?
• 21:30 Was the decision to let Mark Peralta go justified, and was the explanation given truthful?
• 1:13:30 How can access to information and resources help individuals on their journey out of Christianity?

Keywords: Covenant Church, Relationships, Gospel, Ministry, New Testament, Theology, Tradition, Christianity, Bible College, Manuscripts, Evangelism, Epistles, Marriage, Resurrection, The Gospel of Matthew

Episode Transcript

(00:09):
So yeah, this is the Pulling theThread podcast, and today I'm
interviewing former pastor Mark Peralta.
He is the cohost of the Prostateof Mind podcast, and we're going
to talk about his journey into and out of Christianity.

(00:29):
So yeah, I always like to start it off by asking about your
background. Was your religious upbringing
what brought you to Christianityin the first place?
Yeah, thanks, Jeremiah. And thank you for hosting me and
and inviting me. Honestly, I'm I'm honored.
Honored to be here and be able to get to share this with you
and with your audience. But yeah, I mean, Long story

(00:54):
short, in terms of my religious upbringing.
I was, you could say, born and raised Catholic up until I
became a teenager, where I went through the whole the the
different sacraments like baptism and communion and stuff.
And then as an adult, I sort of like got away from the church.

(01:18):
And this was back in, down in South America, where I grew up
in, in Columbia. But then once we migrated to the
States, Catholicism sort of became more a background thing
in my life. And then I started attending an
evangelical church, you know when I was like maybe in my late

(01:41):
teens, early 20s. So that by the time I I meet my
wife and she she's she's got more of an evangelical
background. We just we.
We were very quick to we were sold with the whole argument
like you need God for your relationship to work and you for

(02:02):
your marriage to last. So we pursued God heavily so we
went to the to the church. This is where we end up at
Covenant Church now in in Carrollton, TX where you know I
hear the gospel. We both heard the gospel pretty
clear and professed our faith. Publicly.

(02:25):
So we went through like a believer's baptism.
And then within a year's time, Iwas very, very passionate about
learning the Bible. Already.
Like, I felt like Sunday after after Sunday, I was being just
fed all this wisdom. But I needed more.

(02:46):
I felt like I needed to to really get to know and
understand because. You hear the preacher talk about
like, oh, the in the original language.
And he would quote the Greek andhe would say this and that.
And so I'm like, all right, so there's more to it, right.
So I joined the Bible college. I pursued an undergraduate

(03:06):
degree. I graduated at in Dallas Baptist
University with with an undergrad degree in Biblical
Studies. Along with a premedical degree,
which it's sort of kind of like what I've always done is I've
worked in healthcare mainly in dentistry and but I I just

(03:30):
really wanted to learn the Bibleand theology and all that stuff.
And by by graduation, I I changed my mind.
Because I was originally pursuing a dental degree, I
wanted to go to a dental school.I did all my prerequisites.
I mean everything that you got to go through and graduation,

(03:53):
this is December, December 2012.It was no, actually 2009.
I felt the calling. So I'm like, Oh no, I, I, I
you've got to go to seminary. I I feel like this is so good

(04:13):
and I want to be a professor so.My undergrad in in in a DBU
exposed me to from preachers to professors.
And that was like, wow, that's that's what I want to do.
So I sought a seminary degree and achieved it over at Dallas

(04:34):
Theological Seminary. So now I'm like another five
years into this pursuit and thenso I got, I got some questions.
So Covenant Church is not Baptist.
They believe in healing, laying on the hands and stuff like

(04:55):
that. How did you square that?
Because I guess you were, you were Catholic and then you guys
went to Covenant Church and thenyou're at a Baptist college.
Before we jump into that, I got a question.
So you guys got baptized at Covenant Church.
Did you guys get married at Covenant Church or go through

(05:17):
premarital counseling there or? No, we when we met we were both
unchurched and covenant. We I think we just kind of heard
the gospel there and we were there for maybe a couple of
years, but then we moved and then we stopped going to
covenant. We attended.
From then on it was mostly non denominational churches that we

(05:42):
attended to. That we're not necessarily
Baptists, No. And I didn't really care much
for the nomination and whatnot. I was very much.
I became a pretty serious fundamentalist, 5 point
Calvinist. So I just gravitated to Baptist

(06:02):
theology and then the church that I were actually worked for
because we served three years atin various churches.
But. This one that I worked for, even
though they're not branded as a Baptist Church, I understood
that the tradition and the church model that they were
following was pretty much Southern Baptist.

(06:25):
It just wasn't that really, you know, it was not like it didn't
really belong to the convention.But I'd say in terms of theology
and practice, they were pretty much that.
Yeah, we my when I was engaged, we started out at Covenant

(06:46):
Church doing premarital counseling.
They had very overhanded discipleship, very involved in
your personal life. I was uncomfortable with it.
I kind of wanted to have like a Jewish experience more for my
family and what not. And so we ended up going to
Barukashem. So intersection like you know we

(07:10):
both went to Covenant Church probably at different times.
I think I Covenant Church, I wasprobably, I don't know 2006,
2007, I don't know what time youguys were there.
But yeah, we had been involved with the with the ministry there
for a little bit. So that's why it's kind of
interesting your guys' story because like we kind of weaving

(07:31):
in out some same places and thendeconstructing deconstruction,
deconversion kind of thing. So so you were in more of a
Baptist kind of thing so and Calvinist.
So you didn't really see much ofA transition between that you

(07:51):
you did you really adhere to thekind of evangelical charismatic
as much or? That no, no.
So like DTS was a great fit for me because I I mean I I came to
the conclusion that I was very much a sensationist in that
sense. So I did not really care for the

(08:13):
preaching and tongues that was going on in covenant.
And so yeah, maybe that's why wekind of started kind of trying
out different different different places.
So you've got like the village church is another one that we
stuck in for quite a bit and they they were formerly known

(08:34):
as. The village Baptist Church or
the First Baptist Church, The village or something.
And then this gentleman, the main preacher there, he changed
the name and well, they changed preachers and then everything
was different. But I'd say that the theology
and the mindset was very much still kind of a Baptist Church.

(08:57):
So your experience when you wentto Bible college, So I went to
Southwestern and somebody's got university and they had this
thing like ring by spring or your money back.
It was very much get an education, find a wife, get in
the ministry kind of thing. What would OK, So what was your
experience like in, you know, getting your Bachelor and
Master's degree? Because you got an Mdiv in

(09:20):
theology or something, right? Not an Mdiv, but an MA in
Biblical studies? Yeah, OK.
So I originally had signed up for the Masters of Theology, and
in fact I've, I've got all the credits for it because I did all
the languages and did all my systematic theology classes.

(09:46):
I ended up with more credits than I really, you know, should
have because I kind of changed midway.
I felt like being the fundamentalist that I was.
When I'm now having to read likecontemporary theologians for
like in advance systematic theology classes, I was really

(10:06):
bored and and like I didn't carefor it.
You know, like for example one of those that I remember,
Carcainian forgot his first name.
He he's got one of those textbooks that I have you read
on the on the Trinity and he hismodel is weird.
And and so I just, I was really turned off by the contemporary

(10:27):
theology and the lack of demand for fundamentalist theologians
out there writing books. It just seemed like if I was
going to engage APHD on a P on the course with the Pi really
wanted to pursue the PhD becauseI wanted to teach.

(10:49):
I felt like I felt. I was more suitable for the
Biblical studies, so I changed my degree.
I changed my mind, and so I fellin love with the languages and
translation. So I'm a bit of a polyglot in
the sense that I'm fluent in Spanish, English, Italian.

(11:13):
I could understand Portuguese, and then of course Hebrew and
Greek and a little bit of Aramaic.
And so that that just gravitatedmore towards the languages and
felt more inspired by language professors than by my
theologians. So yeah, yeah, like you I'm
probably, I guess I'll probably,I mean you know, English,

(11:39):
Hebrew, Greek. I've studied various themetic
languages, Aramaic, Acadian, andthen other languages through
like martial arts and other things that I do.
But. Oh yeah, yeah, I saw that.
You do a Kraftmaga and other stuff, huh?
Yes, that's a whole another thing.
But yes, I teach martial arts asone of my other hats that I

(12:03):
wear. But, but yes.
So that's really cool. We we've done Kraftmaga
training, my wife and I, Yeah, yeah, that's cool.
So yeah, I mean, you know, one of those things, it's, you know,
I I've done martial arts since Iwas a little kid and something I
enjoy doing, but I have a YouTube channel for that that's

(12:26):
totally different than this one.So but anyways, so yeah, you
went to Bible college and then Imean we're there.
You didn't buy into the theologybecause I, you know, when I went
to Southwestern, you know, it was Assemblies of God.
So it's Pentecostal. But they preach their

(12:47):
theological statements and all theological treatise are ice of
Jesus through text, a bunch of verses, you got to believe this.
We're going to force it to fit. And I was, you know, in quite a
few conversations with professors where they're like
one of the final ones I rememberhaving.

(13:09):
And it was in the, I believe it was my Old Testament survey
class. But he was like you, you
probably should go your own way.Like you're not built for the
Assemblies of God kind of thing.But was there other than because
you mentioned the statement of faith?
Essentially, were there other things in your experience

(13:32):
whether it was like in Bible college you started to question?
A little bit, yeah. So when I learned of the
documentary hypotheses, I was, Iwas a little shocked.
And then later the synaptic problem of the Gospels also
shocked me up a little bit. So I mean I I just continued

(13:57):
beyond seminary to engage with the books and while I was there
I bought a lot of commentaries and in books in.
That you know, critic criticism,like textual criticism and books
on grammar and all that stuff that you get when you're

(14:17):
learning the languages. And I just kept on reading and
and like, what scholars were yougravitating towards at that
time? At that time, so I was reading
like my the local guys, so. But for me it was mostly like, I

(14:40):
mean I'm already forgetting likewho I was reading at the time,
but I was, you know, I was deep into Calvinism.
So I'm breathing institutes a lot And then and I would buy
just commentary. So I would go to the store and I
would find, I would research which you know where the kind of
the commentaries that I gravitated towards and I went
and try to bought. A mass you know a decent library

(15:04):
for me to to have you know like those textbooks but outside of
like what you know the DTS profs.
I engaged Erman a little bit because I took.
I took a class that was about. Yeah, it was.

(15:25):
It was like it was not an introduction to the Gospels, but
it was more like one of those socio cultural type of surveys.
And he, I forget the name of this guy, but I was they had me
read this, the the New Testamentintroduction by Bob Herman.

(15:45):
And so I I was really interestedon like, why he was saying what
he was saying about the reliability and the historicity
issues about. Jesus and all that stuff.
So, but very little. I'm still like very much like,
you know a believer. I'm still like sold for Christ.
And I my last year, I took a jobas a minister.

(16:11):
And so that was, that was my next experience and that one.
Yeah. So yeah.
What was your experience like? All right.
So you got involved in ministry.What was What was your
experience? Like there.
So I was hired as an associate pastor, which made me

(16:34):
responsible for basically makingsure that there were people on
the on the pews on Sunday. So whatever I needed to do,
whether that was like evangelism, but mostly I'm like.
Helping out with like stage design and leading all of like

(16:55):
the volunteer teams for Sunday and coordinating with everybody
and stuff. Audio.
I would prepare slides for everySunday and then on occasion I
was preaching so he would put mein a rotation.
But I was not preaching every Sunday I was in charge of.

(17:16):
The Lord's Supper and kind of like the rituals during the
service for the most part. And overall it was it was a
decent experience, but there were a couple of things that
really bothered me a lot. One was the main audio guy once

(17:36):
got on my face because he didn'tlike that I had complained to
him about some choir risers, which was just a
misunderstanding. And he was, I don't know, maybe
he, he didn't really like me or I don't know, he was kind of
weird. And he's like on my face Sunday
morning, 10 minutes before the beginning of service.

(18:00):
And the outcome of that was me getting scolded by my supervisor
who is who is The Who is the themain pastor of the Hispanic
ministry? And then his supervisor, which
is the worship pastor because ofmy attitude, like they

(18:23):
completely turned that on me. I felt like it was not like a
deal breaker, like I'm believingor anything.
I was just very shocked as to how my supervisor reacted when I
was the ones to like sort of raise the flag because I came to
him. I was like, hey.
This happened to me and this dude did this and I felt like

(18:47):
that was very inappropriate. Like have an how?
Have a discussion with me, disagree with me, be angry at me
or feel angry but getting up on my face in a in a threatened way
with like making a fist like youknow, how dare you?
Kind of. I felt that was uncalled for in

(19:10):
in a church. And then, But then I'm the one
who's getting scolded for, for how I treated him According to
him, but no big deal. Ministry continued on.
At the end of that first year, we had like the church has, you

(19:31):
know, the meeting at the end of the year with the elders.
And we went on a retreat where we did all this brainstorming
for. The next year and what was
needed, what worked out, what didn't work out and one of the
things that I had that I had been sort of like a leading
voice of of of you know what we need to do for next year.

(19:52):
One of the things we must do is hire a full time worship pastor
for the Hispanic ministry because at the time we just had
a volunteer dude who's great butthe, you know, the ministry
really lacked quality and. As I was responsible for the
ultimate outcome and and all that stuff in terms of the

(20:14):
service, I felt like that was the right thing to do.
And I championed that idea and it came to be where like most
people agreed. So anyway, I will go out on a on
a vacation. We take a few days off and then
we come back and then it was like Tuesday or Wednesday of

(20:37):
that week back. He's like, hey, we need to sit
down and talk with with Daniel who's who's one of the elders
and something we want to talk toyou about.
Can you be there in like about 10 minutes?
I'm like okay. And it was really weird because
you know we ran pretty like tight schedules and we we, you
know, we coordinated things pretty well.
So impromptu meetings like that didn't take place often.

(21:00):
So I was really weird. And then coming to find out
they're letting me go because they're they're wanting to hire
a fulltime worship pastor. And they felt like, well, they
said that, you know, the budget couldn't really afford both and
that the greater need was the worship minister and that our

(21:21):
congregation was not, perhaps not ready to, you know, to do
all that and kind of in a way. And then they mentioned how, you
know, you even you yourself agree.
But even though I didn't agree to that, I just, I thought that
it was a good idea for us to hire a worship pastor but not,

(21:42):
not not letting me go in the process.
And so I'm kind of still processing the situation.
And then they handed me a piece of paper.
And then they were like, hey, bythe way, we would like to, we
want to like say goodbye, you know, give you a proper, a
proper goodbye on Sunday. And so could you, could you make

(22:05):
sure to be there and like, you know, bring your wife and kids,
you know, so we can give you a proper goodbye.
And by the way, here's, here's what we want you to talk about.
And so they had me a piece of paper that had a paragraph of my
explanation for why I was departing and coming to find out

(22:26):
it was not. It didn't spell the truth.
It said that I was leaving because I was pursuing other
interests that had other interests in ministry.
And being an associate pastor atthis church was not that.
And so that I was leaving and rather than putting my foot down

(22:48):
and saying, you know, screw you,I'm not going to lie, I went
along with it. And and we read that on Sunday,
that weekend, part of me said, well, what alternatives do I
have? If I don't show up on Sunday,
People could assume that something was wrong, that I had

(23:11):
something to do with or that my my, my leaving had something to
do with something about me when it very much indeed was not the
case. Or do I stand up and tell the
truth and then expose this and maybe create some sort of drama
or bring about drama or just go along with it and and we went

(23:37):
along with it. We left church that Sunday and I
felt like like a like a prisonerbeing let go from from jail as I
was walking away and I didn't leave church.
We didn't leave church saying toourselves this is the last time
we we step a foot inside a church, although we should have,

(23:59):
but we didn't. We kept an open mind and then
for a couple of years we we gaveourselves a couple of ourselves
a little bit of time to process everything and we tried going
back to church. At first it was very clear.
We were very burned out from this whole experience and it

(24:20):
made it very challenging for us to be at any service anywhere
and and then gradually became clear that we just didn't want
to be in church anymore. Like this is ridiculous.
So in that process, that was theextent of, yeah, go ahead.
In that process there had you become aware of manipulation

(24:46):
tactics within the Ministry? Whether it be through music, you
know, I've heard a few differentmusic leaders say that you you
got to basically get them into the spirit through worship to
make them more you know. I can't think of the way that it

(25:07):
was said right now, but more acceptable to the word or more
suggestible. Are you know?
Are you aware of, you know? Did you become aware of?
Manipulation tactics within the ministry in the church And can
you kind of give some illustrations of that?
So that's a good question, Jeremiah, for me.
Sure. So I'm not an expert on on music

(25:32):
per se, although I am, I am a musician.
It's just not my expertise. But there is something about
like wavelengths and sound wavesand frequencies that can make
people feel certain things. So for example in during the

(25:56):
Middle Ages, they figured out the church.
Figured out that the taller the ceiling of the church, the more
ominous and the more echo and the more a different experience
is generated just by the architecture of the church
ceiling. In that it creates sort of like
a reverb effect on on any sound wave and reverb can trick space

(26:24):
so how close a sound you experience it to you with
respect to where you are. And so there are certain
frequencies that you know. This is, I think this is where
I'm not sure if it's by design, but I think that worship
ministers that know what they'redoing.

(26:45):
They are utilizing like the synthesizers and the bass when
they transition between songs and they're sort of like or
there's a moment when is specifically dedicated to like
praying or they making altar calls.
You notice the the the music changes and it feels like

(27:06):
something's filling the room, but it's not like there's a
spirit there is that that is being created by by the sound
frequencies, by the energy, by, you know, by the voice of who
whoever's on. And I was terrible at that.
I I admit to this, I was a terrible preacher because I

(27:26):
never preached. I got up there to teach and I
hated preaching and I hated the whole stuff.
But I did. I had did it anyway, to the best
of my ability. But all that is just put on and
and so you could, you could notice you, you can pick up the
differences. Like if you visit different
churches, you'll experience different feelings.

(27:49):
Not because the message is different.
Not because the people are different.
Not because the God is there or is not there.
But because they have a synthesizer and they've got like
multimillion dollar audio equipment and they've got
musicians that are professionalsthat are doing this in creating
these atmospheric experiences. Yeah, so a very performative

(28:16):
worship experience, something I mentioned to to your wife when I
was doing the the the podcast with her, like the pastor at the
church that I've worked at, we had to have the HC set at 72
degrees because that facilitatedthe filling of the Holy Spirit.
I didn't know the Holy Spirit needed the help of an air

(28:37):
conditioning unit, but apparently he did.
So in in this process that you started to question your belief
in God. You mentioned the document
hypothesis and a synoptic problem.
I mean, so you're on your way out.

(28:58):
You're noticing, you know, the ingredients that make the soup,
as I would say, like what makes up, you know?
The services, It's a contrived thing.
What? What's leading you in the
direction? Like how do you guys once you
went back the second time, how do you end up leaving the
church? And you know what set you on the

(29:20):
journey of where you're at now? So we tried a few times and it
just didn't feel right. Didn't feel like something we
wanted to plug in. We we we knew that the key to
living that Christian life was relationships and being part of

(29:41):
like small groups and living Christian with others right.
Living that with other people and and and that's really how
like we experienced church for the most part is we were always
that that couple hosting other families at our place and
organizing this and you know barbecues and all that and we

(30:02):
were always doing that kind of thing.
So we went back looking for thatcommunity again and we didn't
find it. It was.
There was always something that went wrong, like either the
group got cancelled or the the schedules were weird or or in
the case of the village church and many times there was no

(30:25):
room. There was like all the small
groups are maxed out and so we had that a few times and it just
didn't feel like things were working out.
Not only that but we then tried serving and we just felt like we
were amongst other hypocrites, like it's just people had
personal agendas and it just doesn't seem right.

(30:52):
And so that we never went back, we started kind of we, I felt
like, you know, OK, so maybe we're just pursuing the wrong
model. Maybe maybe we need to kind of
try more of a home church thing,more of a kind of, I don't know,
something more primitive. And maybe we could just do
church ourselves. And I, you know, we would just

(31:15):
get together sometimes and talk about I try to teach the, you
know, the Bible to my kids and do all that.
So we continued on living that life.
But but then right around the pandemic head, I got really into
into watching YouTube videos because I do woodworking.

(31:36):
And so I started. I got into that.
And then for some reason I started watching the Atheist
Experience. And then a lot of stuff started
making sense. Matt Delahunty started making a
lot of sense. Christopher Hitchens.
Oh my gosh, he was making so much sense because when I was in

(31:57):
DTSI had to. I took a few courses in in
philosophy as part of my degree and maybe a couple of electives.
So I studied, I did a semester in intro to philosophy and then
logic, and I took I did another semester in epistemology.

(32:19):
Logic for me was like maybe the most important one, because
there I was exposed to things like fallacies, understanding
the difference between inductiveand deductive reasoning, how
science is working, how religionis arguing.
And I was exposed to the arguments.
And even though while I was in seminary I was still believing

(32:42):
those those concepts of logic. Like, you know, the law of non
contradiction, the law of the excluded middle, like that kind
of stuff. Or in like exegetical fallacies.
And just all kinds of ways that language can be manipulated to
say something else or to convince you of something that

(33:04):
may not necessarily be true. And just so you know how people
debate and argue for, for thingslike the existence, existence of
God and Christianity and all that kind of stuff.
So when I'm hearing the other side speaking on the matter, I'm
like, you know, he's right. And so that's why I'm like, you

(33:25):
know, we started deconstruct. I started deconstructing from I
believe in God, along with just not trusting that this this book
that I had taught for years, that was the divinely inspired
word of a God and that it's a it's true and that it's an
errant and all that stuff that perhaps I, I I've been fooled

(33:50):
and and perhaps it's not. And so, yeah, that's when it
started going downhill for me. So the inerrancy of Scripture
became like a major, I guess a aturning point for you.
I mean, was there any specific passages or anything within?

(34:11):
Like you know I guess the the reliability of it where where
you presented with any of that in in Bible college.
You did in Bible college you mentioned the document
hypothesis they were they were talking about that at the time
right. Yeah, it was.
It was part of, you know, one ofthose Bible exposition courses

(34:31):
that about, yeah, it was a genesis through through
Deuteronomy course. I think in the, you know, the
Prof you know, he talked about it and he just sort of presented
it. He never like try to force us to
see it one way or another. Although DTS is has that in that
legacy of inerrancy like Norman Geisler and those guys that have

(34:56):
been kind of pushing that for a while.
Yeah, because. I was presented with the
document hypothesis when I was at Southwestern, you know, and
of course the the problem with the Synoptics and stuff.
You know, it's funny how they try to harmonize the New
Testament despite its many contradictions, you know.

(35:20):
But yeah, for a while I studied a lot of ancient Near East,
studied a bit of Acadian, Sumerian.
Yeah, I'm part of a Jewish tradition that more secular and
scholarly that we accept the document hypothesis and.
You know the cultural framework of what?

(35:41):
Where all this stuff came from. So you know it's but but the but
people who hold to an inherency of scripture?
There's a problem with that. With the New Testament.
Bard Airman estimates there's upto 500,000 textual variance
amongst 5000 eight 5800 manuscripts.

(36:03):
Scholars say there's. Between 5020 thousand textual
variants and you know, between the Tenac.
So I mean, these texts aren't exact.
I mean, it's not possible to be inerrant and have that many
errors, right? So when apologists and stuff
start saying that, I have a hardtime with Evangelicals and

(36:25):
Catholics and Christian theologians who will even like
acknowledge the textual variants.
Which is, which is funny, Okay. So I'm trying to think Nestle
Rand, they they said that essentially each page of their
text is a 40% error rate. They admit now they say it's a

(36:49):
60% that they don't say it in the negative.
They say it in the positive thatit's a 60% accuracy.
So that's supposed to be good. But then I've seen people who
parse the numbers if you take. 5800 texts by five, 500,000
errors. That's like an 80%, eighty 3%
error rate. And then I've seen people try to

(37:12):
fudge the numbers and flip it and say it's a 90% accuracy rate
and there's just these weird things like that they do to
explain away the historical evidence, the facts, you know,
anything that's not based in history, archaeology, it's very
questionable. And I and I asked your your wife

(37:34):
about this, you know do you believe in a historical Jesus or
the Christ miss theory Because like I've had people who are on
both sides of the fence. I've had Robert Price on.
I've had, you know a few other people who James, Steves and

(37:54):
Valiant who did creating Christ.You know, so where do you fall?
Is there historical Jesus Christmyth?
I mean what what is your perspective on that?
OK yeah that's that seems to be like the question now.
So I'm a little in between. I'm in in.

(38:18):
In one sense, I could. I find no problem conceding that
there was Jesus Yeshua of Nazareth that existed, and that
perhaps this dude was some teacher that said some stuff and

(38:42):
became somehow popularized. But then I don't accept, like
the claims of the New Testament about this guy, like the
resurrection, the ascension, thewhole divinity stuff.
So I think in that sense, you know, I do believe in a

(39:05):
historical Jesus. I just don't accept the claims.
I am a little concerned though about like when you look at the
socalled contemporary witnesses outside of the New Testament,
what they actually say like Suitonio, Suitonius and well,
Josephus is something else because there's even doubt that

(39:26):
whether or not. The the Flavian testimony of
Flavian or and Josephus is Eusebius put that in there
probably yeah. So that interpolation or
whatever, that seems to be like the the likely thing.
And it wouldn't surprise me thatsomething like that would be
done to, to help support this, that new religion.

(39:51):
Yeah. And so when you read the other
guys, what they actually do say about this Jesus is all very
negative. It's not like anything that
corroborates the resurrection, for example.
It's nothing that would corroborate even even
crucifixion. Maybe it's just a a thing where

(40:11):
like, you know they were this guy and then these people and
they were causing trouble and and and that sort of thing.
And then every everything else is just like post 2nd, 3rd
century AD. So you can't really trust that
for anything. But then the other thing is the
lack of other possible other contemporary historians that

(40:38):
should have or would have mentioned something if this was
actually a real thing that didn't say anything.
If you think. About it, if a God died and rose
from the dead. I think everybody be talking
about this. I mean, if that was what
happened, I mean, it would be hard to keep that a lid on that,

(40:58):
right. If that's what actually
happened, That's right. And yeah, and then especially if
that guy was walking around for 40 days and whatnot and then
that they actually do see him goup in the sky.
But yeah, you don't have. So what you do have is either

(41:18):
questionable or it doesn't really bring anything to the
table other than simply corroborate of Jesus, which in
some texts in some of those sources it doesn't even say
Jesus, it says like crestus. And it's not even spelled the
same. It's spelled with an E, not an

(41:40):
I, and and there was a Egyptian movement follower of Cresto's.
And his followers will call Christians with the E, not the
I. And Kelsos was probably talking
about Christos the Egyptian, notthe New Testament one.
But and there I've seen works that argue that you mentioned
something the Resurrection and Ascension, the oldest extant

(42:04):
manuscripts that we have of Mark.
There is no virgin birth and there is no resurrection.
And you know that a lot of that stuff was added 4th, 5th, 6th
century. Some of it even in the 8th
century like it. It wasn't until after the 4th
century there was some redactiongoing on early on.

(42:25):
But a lot of the big theologicalthings were like post.
Nice scene is when they start showing up Codec Codec's
Cyanidacus. They was like they they dated
from 3:25 to like 360. That you know that that version
of Mark doesn't have the virgin birth of the resurrection and

(42:47):
Acts doesn't have an ascension account.
So I mean, all of that wasn't even in there.
The the unique Son Son of God. A lot of those claims were
downplayed too. The Son of Man stuff does come
from a tradition. There was some of that Son of
Man stuff, but the stuff attaching him, you know, as
unique Son. The John first John one.

(43:12):
What what I'm trying to think ofthe verse where they at, they
put the Trinity. What that one wasn't put into
the 8th, 8th century. The the one that's in the King
James Bible, was it? Yeah.
And I think Tobiah Singer doesn't need to say that that
puts the nail in the coffin of Son of a Virgin.
Yeah, because it's like it's it's it's literally telling you

(43:36):
he's the son of a man. I just put out where I
interviewed him. He has to be a son of a man.
And I agree with him on many things as well.
I don't agree with and everything that he says, but
some of those things I do. Did you see the?
I no, I did not. But I'm going to look it up
because I'm going to watch it. I watch everything he puts out.

(43:56):
So yeah, almost everything, yeah, yeah.
So we talked about the historical Jesus and.
Yeah, there's some really interesting stuff you'll
probably find interesting in there.
So yeah, I've read both his Let's Get Biblical volumes.
So I I really enjoy his work. There is a.

(44:19):
Kind of a consensus within the historical Jesus community that
the Jewish view of Jesus is probably the historical view of
Jesus now the only thing that. Scholars in general, like most
historical Jesus scholars agree on is he was baptized by John
and he was crucified. There are some people who think

(44:41):
it was where he swooned and he was put in a cave, but then he
woke up because you know he wasn't fully dead when they took
him off the cross. It's called the Christ swoon
theory. Honestly, we weren't there, so I
don't know. But it's hard to, you know, to
judge sources. The interesting thing that Rabbi

(45:03):
Tovia Singer said is that there are some elements in the gospel
the, you know, embarrassing things.
It's hard to manufacture embarrassing things.
You know why? Why would they put it in, you
know, the New Testament if it was made-up?
Because you want to make your person look you know better
than. You know the the stories of

(45:25):
walking on water and and stuff like that.
That was added to make him soundlike a divine being or something
special. The pure perikopy adultery.
The the one, don't the the first.
You know I'm going to mess it upright now.
But he was in the that's at 20 different plus 20 different

(45:48):
places within the manuscripts and it's not in the earliest
manuscripts and from what I hear.
From my my research that's actually something that Marcy
and he and he invented that Perikopee and they were trying
to find a place to put it withinthe text.
But but yeah, I had a very interesting podcast that's going
to go live with Doctor Price about Marcy and his influence on

(46:12):
what became the New Testament. What?
What is your theory? I guess your working theory of
the historical Jesus, the New Testament.
Yeah, I think well, I mean I I do agree with that.

(46:32):
First there was Mark and that then Matthew and Luke came
later, perhaps Luke 1st and thenMatthew comes in.
As I noticed, Matthew seems to be addressing Luke at times, or
correcting him, or saying less or more.

(46:53):
So there seems to be a little bit of an interaction which kind
of tells me that Matthew may have come after Luke, but I'm
not sure and John is just something else.
So the first community to widelydistribute the Gospel of John
was Marcian's community and it was after the the the first New

(47:17):
Testament that we have. Well, I would say.
That that has a gospel and epistles was produced by Marcie.
The first one we have a record of is Marcian's version of Luke
and his collection of the Pauline Epistles.
Before that we don't have a whole like gospel, epistle,
tradition, his community. Out of that they were the first

(47:41):
to widely distribute the Gospel of John and I, I.
There are different theories on who.
It invented the Gospel of John. I believe it was some say the
Johannian community. I think it was Marcian's
community because it really elevated him to that apotheosis,

(48:01):
to that divine status. I mean that's kind of like my
working theory of, you know, theand I, you know, I I would go
with what Robert Price was saying.
Is that Marcian's gospel? Was before Mark and inspired

(48:22):
Mark and the proto orthodox harmonize that more Catholic or
orthodox views and then so you have Mark and then Luke and
Matthew and then John. But I mean that's kind of a
working theory I have on how those came to be because we have
an earlier gospel sayings tradition whether that's the cue

(48:45):
hypothesis I've. Seen some references to
potentially an early version of Thomas being an early cue
source, but of course there's differences there.
So the the gnostic Thomas we have is not what would have been
the early like Thomas it might have been, but there was a
diversity of gospels and officials early on.

(49:07):
There wasn't a unified belief. But I mean what do you think
about that? Kind of, yeah.
I can see that. I don't think that there's any
evidence though for like a Marcian text or acute text, but
but there seems to be enough. No, we actually have Marcians,

(49:28):
gospel and epistles, but it's a version of Luke and it's a
collection of us. I think it's ten of Paul's
epistles. Yeah.
Is that in Greek or in? Is that in Latin?
It's in Greek. It's in Greek, OK, but we that's
the first actual. Gospels and epistles that we

(49:49):
have copies of are his version. Now of course everybody says
there's earlier traditions, we just don't have the copies.
So yes, it's possible he just changed them.
And there are earlier versions of, you know, Luke and and the
Epistles of Paul, but that's ourfirst collection that we have

(50:10):
is, is Marcy. But then, of course, there's a,
you know, the proto Orthodox then had their versions.
And that became the main view because they, you know, the
editing and redaction of the text they had, they had to
harmonize it with their view because Marcian's view was very

(50:32):
like, he rejected, you know, theOld Testament and his view was
not their view. But, but yeah, So some of the
things that concern me the most are things like when they're
citing the Hebrew text, the Hebrew Bible, and then you see,
like, differences in like the wording or an awful lot of

(50:57):
dependency on the Greek text. Whenever that was written down.
No one really knows for sure, I think, but it's possible.
That. Like how?
Because you have like the the first five that were the the the

(51:17):
original Septuageant, but then the rest of them like the
prophets, you know, where a lot of the Gospels are quoting from.
They're not necessarily quoting Genesis or they're they're
quoting a lot of prophets like Daniel or Isaiah and stuff like
that. When were those things, really?
They they also referenced the apocryphal text of the Tanaka,

(51:41):
the book of Enoch in So Paul Rely some of the New Testament
relies on and I'm actually it's posting next week but I have one
where I'm going down. There's a list of texts that
it's essentially what they call the Inocian literature.

(52:01):
Gabriel Boccaccini calls it a Nokian Judaism.
It's kind of a term he made-up just to describe Judaism that
was Hellenistic, gnostic, mystical.
And it played on that the apocryphal text, you know, Philo
and his very Hellenistic kind ofblend of the Roman ideas and

(52:24):
Judaism, which kind of was the the stuff that made-up the soup
for Paul's theology. His cosmic Christ that he
made-up. It was kind of based in that, I
think, yeah. So I see that history as being a
little dubious. You know, I this is from the

(52:45):
introduction to the Septuagin, Ralph's Septuagin.
There's a part that it says it may well be that several kinds
of alterations have taken place.For the LXX went through an
eventful history from the time of its origin up to the 4th

(53:06):
century AD, when our most ancient complete manuscripts
were produced. So it's they even admit the
issue that there's there's a bitof a there's a bit of a problem
there. And so I talk about this in my
podcast and we get into how likewhat is it that it would take to

(53:30):
what does it take to like acceptChristianity as true in terms of
like when you're reading the Bible, you have to accept that
the translators did did a did a good job translating whatever
they translated. But then you also have to trust

(53:52):
blindly that the people that puttogether the text that they're
using to translate, namely the Greek New Testament, the NA,
SB28 or whatever, and the Stud Gartensia or the Masteratic
text, that those editions are actually correct.
Because when you read the books on like the textual apparatus,

(54:15):
like Bruce Metzger has a like a Critical commentary on all of
the New Testament and he kind ofgoes like foot footnote by
footnote as to like why? What are the other options with
respect to manuscript and and all the stuff that we talked
about earlier about variance. So you have to then trust that

(54:35):
the people who put together the translating texts, because
they're not reading from manuscripts, I mean Bible
translators for like the NIV or the NASV etcetera, they're not
reading from manuscripts, They're not in museums.
They're reading from the what they refer to as the, the
primary sources and those will be these texts.

(54:57):
But then how do you know that the people who who made the
addition of the of the of the subtuition have made the correct
decisions? You don't know.
So you have to trust that as well.
And then not only that, but thenyou have to trust the that
everything was preserved rights and and transmitted right.

(55:18):
So it just, it just gets worse the more you look into it, the
less reliable it comes across, Yeah.
So, so interesting piece of information like at least
there's all the text have variance.
So yes, there's that. There one thing that they found
with the oldest copies of the Dead Sea Scrolls including

(55:42):
they've actually found Greek versions of various books of the
Tanak. Yeah, most of them in the Dead
Sea Scrolls were Hebrew. But they've had Greek versions
of like Isaiah and they found because the Dead Sea Scrolls,
they dated from three BC to 1C Esomeone maybe put it 2B C to 2C

(56:06):
E somewhere in there. But the the you know and the
various scrolls are different datings within there because
they're not all done at the sametime, but the the they've found
very close similarities. Between the Greek Satuagent and
at least the book of Isaiah. But I mean it's it's by far not

(56:28):
perfect. So I mean there's textual
variance there. So you know that's, you know it
exists. And on key passages like the
virgin birth, I would agree withwith Tobiah Singer that there's
something wrong there. Well, in the in the.
Original Hebrew. It's Alma, which is, you know,

(56:51):
young woman, you know, young, yeah, child of childbearing age.
It's not the word for virgin. So, yeah, Well, and that's part
of the thing, and you brought this up, is that the New
Testament bases itself on misunderstandings of the Greek
subtugent. Yet the primary language, the
language franca of Judaism, was Hebrew.

(57:12):
So you're going off a secondary,not a primary text.
So the New Testament is based off secondary understanding, not
primary understanding. So that's where it gets the to
knock wrong. But I mean, you know, these are
all like textual critical things.
I kind of want to circle back toour story and like your story
because I the main thing, I wanted to kind of get your story

(57:34):
and your journey. You had said something earlier,
a couple things. So you said you felt the calling
to ministry like God called you to ministry, but you don't
believe that. Now would you say that you don't
believe God called you to ministry?
And how would you explain that? No, not to ministry calling, to

(57:56):
seminary. Because I want.
I wanted to be a professor. I wanted to teach, not not to be
a pastor. How do you explain?
Feeling called of God to do something though now that you
don't believe that oh, how do I explain it?
I was. I mean, I I I'm the kind of

(58:19):
person that when I get into something, I I, I I really want
to get into. I really want to do it right.
So I've done that with all my hobbies and with regards to the
Bible. I just felt like I was very
passionate about that and it felt like, and I still do feel
like it is an important book. I don't this, I don't agree with

(58:45):
much of it, but it it is an important book.
It's important to at least understand it correctly and and
know it well enough to be cautious of the the bad that
comes out of that does come out of it.
And so if I think of it that way, I was just being myself and

(59:09):
maybe I was attracted a little bit to like, I don't know, just
maybe the charm and the the style of academic.
You know, I I think those were my heroes, so I wanted to be
like them. I.
Mean you seem to still have thatdesire.

(59:32):
You know, I would say that the the Bible is culturally
significant. So whether you believe in the
what it says or not, it impacts the way people behave.
And so because of it impacting people and their behavior, you
know, having been a former Christian, I feel like trying to

(59:53):
help people see truth that is not bound by dogmas, that
mislead people is a beneficial thing to do.
That that's something you guys are kind of trying to do with
your podcast there? Yeah, basically.
Yeah. For me is you know I'm I'm
trying to somehow bring you know, just I, I I like the

(01:00:22):
taking a critical approach to toto the Bible and religion.
But the trying to put it into like ways that people can
understand and maybe show more examples than than most people
care to show for those that are like really into that and want
to know some of the deeper reasons.
Or sometimes I've said I can provide people biblical reasons

(01:00:44):
for rejecting Christianity because you know, through the
text I'm able to show others that, hey, you know, you
shouldn't really think of the Bible the way you were taught to
mainly the fundamentalist types.So but yeah, it's it's, I think
it's an evolving channel and we're we're trying different

(01:01:05):
things and we're still learning.We have a lot to learn and and
we'll see. We'll see how this goes, trying
to take it one step at a time. So you mentioned something early
on that you got baptized and gotinvolved in Christianity because
you were led to feel that you needed Jesus to have a good

(01:01:26):
relationship with your wife. How is your relationship
improved or gotten worse? Has not having Christ as the
center of your relationship madeit better, made it worse?
Now that you don't believe Christ is the center of your
marriage, how's that affect you?Is your relationship better or
it is it is far better, It is far better.

(01:01:47):
We, I think we, I struggled a bit with perhaps, I don't know
some of those biblical principles like you got to be
like the, the spiritual leader of the house and the priest of
the home. And you know, I'm the guy, you
know, I went to seminary. So I know better, right.

(01:02:10):
And and just kind of like that pressure of having to be the
leader. And then we struggled quite a
bit in terms of like you know how that dynamic is.
That dynamic plays out in our marriage because, you know, my
wife's very, I'm old school, I was raised old school.

(01:02:34):
She was raised very much like modern day Americans, a little
more openminded, a little less macho.
And so I think a lot of that wasfueled by the by some of these
Christian principles of of how the homes got to run namely the
wife submits to the husbands leadership and and and all that

(01:02:57):
stuff. So having overcome that I feel
like it's helped us quite a bit.In fact, I remember struggling
the most when in in our marriagewhen doing a Bible study about
a, you know, a book that was teaching us how to how to live,

(01:03:17):
how to how to how to do marriagethe biblical way.
And yeah, that was we learned the hard way.
That was just, that was a bad idea.
Yeah. I would have to say I agree with
that. I mean, I'm divorced now, but I

(01:03:38):
have a more democratic value of relationships.
You know, I think it's two people having equal say equal
giving equal effort, because I believed in that.
Patriarchal model. I think you know, coming from
Latin America, you're probably more familiar with the
patriarchal society. You know, power imbalances in

(01:04:01):
any relationship is not good forthe relationship when somebody's
got a higher position than the other.
So you know my, you know, like you, you know my view of
relationships have changed on the relationship topic.
You know, within Christianity itfeels like there's a lot of.
Performative relationships Relationship evangelism Did you

(01:04:26):
feel like there was performativerelationships when you were?
You know they? They may be they served a.
Ministry purpose. They served an evangelism
purpose, a Kingdom purpose. But have you found your
relationships different now in your like, I guess postchristian
era or like phase that you're in?

(01:04:47):
I guess I don't know how to describe it, but yeah, Are you
referring between my wife and I,or with other people?
Other people. Because I had already.
I'm in general, like so in in Christianity, there's
fellowship, evangelism, relationships based on
discipleship, evangelism, weekly, getting together.

(01:05:11):
You know that there's a level ofperformative relationships that
is part of the evangelism of Christianity.
It's one of their. You know, tools.
Have your relationships change from performative to more
experiential. Is there?
Is there a difference in your relationships in general?
Oh, I see. So I mean we pretty much lost

(01:05:37):
all our friends and most people nowadays just I don't know they
don't seem to to care enough to,I don't know to do the whole
visiting and hanging out. I mean we do have some people
that we see from time to time, but I don't.
I never felt like I was approaching others with like

(01:06:01):
this mindset so to speak. I just I I've always enjoyed
hosting people at the house and cooking and and kind of be in
the center of attention sometimes and giving and so that
that was my my, my concept of it.
Yeah, well, creating. Community is something you can

(01:06:23):
always do. I mean, it's something I
actively do. And but yeah, I mean it, it is
challenging. You know, part of my story is I
was raised Jova's witness, so mymom and sister is still Jova's
witness. So I don't have access to them.
Because I'm an apostate. I've been this fellowshipped.

(01:06:47):
I don't, you know, so yeah, I I understand what it is to lose
people. Has this affected out like your,
I guess your broader family, your parents and and stuff like
that, or have they went with youon this?
Because it has, because I've been pretty vocal about none,

(01:07:08):
very vocal. Like I've been preaching this or
anything. But you know my family, they
know what's going on. And just a couple of days ago, a
few days ago, I talked to my dadand he got on to me pretty.
He was pretty harsh with me towards the end of our
conversation, which seemed to begoing well up until I felt like

(01:07:30):
he was, he felt a little corner.Then he started, like, attacking
me personally, like you ought tobe teaching people how to live a
better life and how to do thingsbetter, and instead you're
preaching atheism and other stuff, he said.
So part of me wanting to be like, what are you talking

(01:07:51):
about? Like, are you, Do you actually
watch my videos? Like, do you know what I'm
actually saying? Or are you just criticizing me
because you have nothing better,better else to say?
So it's been a little hard. Mom, Mom kind of keeps an open
mind, but sometimes she's a little closedminded.
And so I don't know, Sometimes like, I feel like she gets it.

(01:08:15):
Sometimes I feel like she still wants to hold on to the belief
in a God. And I have a brother who's
Muslim. And so we've been.
We've been apart for quite a while now because as I was
entering seminary, he was, you know, being indoctrinated in the

(01:08:40):
Islam. And they're still kind of, yeah,
they're still pretty much Muslims.
So yeah, it's it's a very familyhas been.
It's a little weird, especially since I was the person who
evangelized most, most of my family members.
Because, see, I we grew up. Catholic like you're the one
evangelizing them and now you don't believe.

(01:09:02):
Like what happened? Yeah, that's exactly what they
said, What happened? And I don't know if I
disappointed them in in not having some sort of story that I
don't know what they want to seein me.
But it's most people just assumethat something's not right.

(01:09:25):
And that's the part I hate, because people will assume
things about you and not really ask you.
Like are you? And be sincere in wanting to
know why because they just. I don't know.
We've had people that have claimed that, oh, maybe it's
because, you know, he's, he's anatheist because preaching didn't

(01:09:51):
work for him or you know, all that kind of stuff.
Anything other than, hey, maybe we just don't have enough
evidence to to believe this to be true.
And there are all these problems.
It's got to be something else and it was never something else.
So that's why I started the podcast, because I I want to
make sure that people know or atleast I have something to point

(01:10:14):
towards to say, hey, I I do havereasons.
And none of that has anything todo with me being angry at God.
None of that has anything to do with me wanting to pursue sin.
None of that has anything to do with me wanting to do whatever I
want to do in life. In fact, I maybe live a life
that's a little more controlled because now I'm like, you know,

(01:10:37):
this isn't about me pleasing a God, Forget about forgiveness.
All that is a lie. I've got to do good now, and I
got to live by the day because tomorrow's not guaranteed.
And if I don't, if I don't, if Idon't like appreciate what I've
got now, I will lose it in the near future and that'll be the

(01:10:59):
end of Mark. So it's it's really giving me a
better outlook on life. I think you're an.
Ethical atheist and it's made you happier and have a better
outlook on life is what I'm getting.
I mean, you know my my journey out of Christianity.
I'm not an atheist. I believe in God.

(01:11:22):
You know, I chose Judaism as a cultural traditions for me and
my family, but I I'm an academic, so I, you know, accept
the historical and academic truth.
But when it comes to religious denominations, I'm definitely
agnostic or I don't believe, youknow, I believe there's a God,

(01:11:45):
but I don't believe any single religion has it nailed down.
Despite, you know, like my choice for myself and my family.
You know, the morality that I'm going to give my family is 1
scientific and evidence based, but it's also the cultural
tradition, you know, of the Jewish people.

(01:12:06):
But I mean, that's different forme.
You know, on your journey, you guys, you know you've embraced
atheism, but you're also ethicaland moral and you're, you know,
raising your children to be goodpeople.
And never should be afraid of having differences of beliefs or
values. You know, it seems like you're

(01:12:29):
doing a good job with your children and happy with your
life. So I mean that's that's good to
see. I really wanted to, you know,
kind of talk about our journeys because it was interesting that,
you know, we both went to Covenant Church, we both were in
ministry, we both went to Bible college and it's just
interesting, you know, these these very journeys.

(01:12:51):
And so, yeah, I mean it's been good to kind of get to to talk
about things and hear your perspective and stuff like that.
Yeah. Yeah, I know.
I appreciate it and I can, I cancertainly, I respect your
position. I definitely respect it and I
appreciate it because the the, the one view that I I cannot

(01:13:13):
tolerate is the view where, you know, the fundamentalist view
where it's my God, it's, it's even my baptism, you know, like
the Church of Christ. They'll say that it's like you
could have come from a Baptist background or even any
evangelical, doesn't matter unless you're baptized in the by

(01:13:36):
by a Church of Christ. You know, it's like, really,
come on. You know.
So, yeah, Thank you for having me.
And thank you for the opportunity to talk about this.
I really appreciate it. We're all on a different journey
and I you know hope at the end of the day, you know we're all
trying to be better people. You know try.

(01:13:59):
You know. Sounds like your effort is to to
make the world a better place. You know, and and we're all
doing it by different means and I'm no way threatened by you
know, anyone you know, I I find value in.
Not having a faith tradition andfaith traditions, but good

(01:14:21):
people on a journey. So, and this is, for me, like a
lot of this is like people on their way out of Christianity is
just providing them access to information, hopefully to find a
more grounded view of things, things that we've kind of
touched on. Things I care about is, you
know, emotional relationships. You know, healthy relationships,

(01:14:45):
quality lifestyle. And sometimes dogma and dogmatic
communities and people have tactics in which they prevent
healthy lifestyles. You know, free thinking for
people. So you know, I hope to provide,
you know, resources and stuff for people.
So I've definitely enjoyed interviewing you and your wife,

(01:15:05):
and I'll be posting the episodesthe next couple weeks and.
Is there any like final things that you wanted to say here what
where we wrap up? I mean, I don't really have
anything in general for your audience to say other than
simply an open invitation. If you want to check out my
podcast Apostate of Mind, we also host another another

(01:15:32):
channel called Belief Battles where we give folks an
opportunity to call and argue and present evidence and engage
sort of like one-on-one that waytoo.
And so that's that's your thing.You guys are welcome to to come
visit us Believe battles. We usually do them Tuesday
nights at 7 all. Right.

(01:15:53):
So yeah, Thank you all. Right.
Well, it it's been good talking to you and you have a good
evening and thank you. Thanks, Jeremiah.
Yeah, have a good one.