Episode 128 - Not so Shiny Not so Happy People - with Clint Heacock

In this episode of Still Unbelievable, Matthew welcoms back friend of the podcast, Clint Heacock to talk about Clint's book, Not so Shiny not so Happy People and Apostate and the process of writing and publishing.

See the show notes for links to the books and to Clint's podcast, dismantling doctrine.

1) buy Not So Shiny Not So Happy People

https://amzn.eu/d/eKzA4se

2) Buy Apostate

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DPNBSCBG

3) buy Still Unbelievable!

https://amzn.eu/d/5zaoHzh

4) Dismantling Doctrine Podcast

https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=dismantling%20doctrine%20podcast

To contact us, email: [e-mail]

our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@reasonpress2901

Our Theme Music was written for us by Holly, to support her and to purchase her music use the links below:

https://hollykirstensongs.com/

https://hollykirsten.bandcamp.com/

Episode Transcript

(00:06):
Episode 128 Not so shiny, not sohappy people with Clint take on
this is Matthew and in this episode, the civil unbelievable
I'll be welcoming back friend ofthe podcast Clint take on.
We talk about Clint's book, Not So Shiny, Not So Happy People
and The Prostate, the book that I've contributed to in the
process of writing and publishing.

(00:28):
See the show notes for links to the books and clicks podcast.
Dismantling Doctrine to another episode of Still
Unbelievable if you wanted the lucky ones.

(00:49):
And if I feel so inclined, maybeyou can even see us as well as
hear us. So here I am welcoming on an old
friend, somebody who I've had ona couple of times.
I've even guested on his podcastand he remains to this day after
5, nearly six, what is it even seven years of podcasting, The
only person that I've sat face to face with and had a

(01:10):
conversation about podcasting and about Christianity, about
being an ex Christian and all that jazz.
Maybe we'll even get a chance todo it again.
But guys, welcome to the one theonly, the fantastic, my great
friends, Clint Haycock. Welcome Clint.
It's been way too long since I've had you on, but welcome
back again. It is.
Thank you, Matthew. I'm really looking forward to

(01:31):
getting into this conversation. And as you said before, we hit
record, we might be meeting up again sometime in December.
That would be cool if we can work it out.
Still sketchy, but let's try andwork that out.
Yeah, absolutely. That would be brilliant.
Now, the last time we spoke, we were also saying was when you
brought to David Haywood, the naked pastor.
On to That's my episode of StillUnbelievable.

(01:52):
And we're talking. We're doing a year on review and
it was a year that included thatnasty word, COVID.
So it must have been two years ago now, Clint, which is way,
way, way too long for us to go without talking like this.
So lots has happened. You've had major changes in your
podcast stream. So tell us all about that.

(02:13):
That's true. The first thing, as you
mentioned, one of the big changes was I changed the name
of my show. It used to be called the
Mindship Podcast for about, I don't know, four or five years,
but I realized there were way too many shows called the
Mindship Podcast. Everything from Education
Podcast. There were actually pastors of
churches who had the name of that show.

(02:34):
And I realized I've got to do something to sort of separate
myself from the Mindship Podcastcrowd.
So I changed the name of the show.
I think it was April or May, something like that of 2024 to
the Dismantling Doctrine podcast.
There's a far better name. It actually does exactly what it
says on the tin. You can look at the title and
go, yeah, I think I know what the show is about.

(02:54):
So yeah, I changed the name of the podcast.
I think that was a good change. I your, your justification with
doing so makes complete sense. And to my own embarrassment, so
laugh at me as much as I when I first came across you, I think
it was on Twitter. I, I first found that that
website that we don't talk aboutanymore and I found Sean there

(03:18):
and followed you for a bit. So then went and found a podcast
called Mind Shift and listened to a bit.
And there was a couple of episodes before I realised that,
hang on a minute, this isn't thepodcast that belongs to our
YouTube person that I follow. What have I done wrong?
So I had to go back on and find it again.
And I thought, how could I be sodim?
But, and it was, it was an educational podcast and it

(03:40):
genuinely, it took me a couple of listeners to work it out.
I can't believe why, because your social media feed at that
point, certainly on on let's call it Twitter, was, was very
much of the strain that that I talk about very much a religion
critique. And this podcast that I was
listening to wasn't of that samevein at all.

(04:01):
Where's the hard hitting expose of Christianity and culture I.
Know So this guy is nothing at all like his social media
personality. What's going on?
Yeah, this is crap, man. This is.
Yeah, I know. This guy is too nice.
He can't be a friend. Of mine.
So what's going on here? Yeah.
So yes, dismantling, dismantlingdoctrine is a much nice time

(04:22):
tonight. I remember you came up with
quite a few ideas and you put them out on your Facebook, I
think, and you talked around a few ideas and took a bit of
feedback and then a little bit about graphics as well.
And it was good that you included your audience in that
and fans of the show they all had for.
And I think the way that that works, what the positive aspect

(04:44):
of that is when everybody agreedon it and people said that it
means that as a listener, I feelactually have some ownership in
that title. And it makes me more invested in
your show. So well done.
But I have no plans to change. Still unbelievable because I
can't think of a better name. So I will not be pulling that
trick, but I wish I'd thought ofit.
Yours may have been the decidingvote, Matthew.

(05:05):
I don't know. I can't remember.
That. You're right, it was good to get
the listeners involved in that because I felt like, you know,
there's got to be some investment here, you know, so
the rather than just changing the name of the show
arbitrarily, I wanted to get people's input and advice.
You know, the main thing is there is no other show right now
that I know of that is called the Dismantling Dr. podcast.
It is the only one. So at least I've got that going

(05:27):
for me, which is good. Yeah, you need a book now to go
with it. And what a Segway it's.
As though I've been doing this for a few years really, isn't
it? Yes, so that was the other big
change. In September of this year, 2024,
I came out with a book. My really good friend Tim Sledge
helped me edit it and he I thinkhe did help me produce a better

(05:49):
book, but it's called Not So Shiny, Not So happy People.
How Bill Gothard Church and family taught me Christianity
doesn't work and it's it's been doing really well on Amazon.
It's exclusively available only on Amazon.
So we self published it. Well done.
And what gave you the idea to write the book?
Because you you did preview thatvery slightly one time when we

(06:10):
spoke that this book was coming up and now it's out.
So why did you feel that you needed to write the book?
It's a funny thing because the book was, it was already written
in a lot of ways. I wrote the whole kind of idea
for probably 7 or 8 years ago, and it was supposed to be just a
chapter in a book, a collaborative book of X
evangelicals. And I just kind of went on a

(06:31):
tear. Instead of a chapter, I wrote
about 50 pages. I thought, OK, well this is a
lot longer than a chapter, so there's something that needs to
come out, but I forgot about it for a long time.
It was just kind of on the back burner, sitting in a file
somewhere. And then I had a job a couple
years ago, weirdly enough, working at a prison.
I was teaching carpentry and joinery at a prison here in

(06:51):
North Wales. And during my lunch breaks, we
had these long breaks after lunch and I would just go in on
the computer and I'd pull up these documents and I just
started continuing to write. And it was a very cathartic
process because the book is about my upbringing and really I
I call it a cultic, sort of a fundamentalist Christian
environment. And then how I got out of that,

(07:11):
you know, so I would just spend probably 45 minutes a day for a
good six months and just write and write and write.
So that's how the book came about.
Excellent. You mentioned cathartic there.
So why, if cathartic in to me means that there was definitely
a lot of emotion involved in writing.
There was some pain involved in writing.

(07:33):
There was process of past memories, some of which would
potentially be extremely painful, some would have been
really difficult for you to recall in the well enough to be
able to write comfortably. Why would you put yourself
through something like that? Well, it's, it's a beneficial
process. I think it really is.

(07:54):
If it's cathartic, it's getting this stuff out for a reason.
It's helpful to your own psychological benefit, I think,
your own well-being. Because when I wrote the book,
it was, yes, it was a cathartic process, but I didn't know what
was going to happen with it. And then Tim, when I sent him
the sort of raw document, the manuscript, he said, OK, there's
really something here. I think a lot of people are

(08:16):
going to resonate with your story because one thing that
comes across the feedback that I've gotten, there's a
documentary on Amazon called Shiny Happy People.
I don't know if people have seenthat.
I've certainly heard of it, I'venot watched it.
I think here in the UK people are at least aware of it, or
some people in the exogenlical are aware of it even if they
haven't seen it. Feedback that I've heard from

(08:37):
people who've seen it is it's quite a watch and maybe people
with the kind of background thatwe've got that's heavily as a
young person in evangelical Christianity, that there might
be some uncomfortable moments watching it.
Absolutely. And that's why we, we titled the
book Not so Shiny, not so happy people.
Obviously it was a play on the title of that documentary

(08:57):
because there's an overlap. The documentary is it's a long
story, but it's about there's a,there was a really popular show
in America called 19 kids and Counting.
There was a particular family called the Duggars and this
show, you know, followed there and they had this huge family
and they were all wonderful Christians, loving and
everything seems so wonderful and amazing.
But there's a real dark back story.

(09:18):
They followed the teachings of aguy named Bill Gother who had a
a ministry called the Institute in basic life principles or
IBLP. And it comes out of this whole
what they call quiver full having a huge family, you know,
you're going to take dominion byjust purely out breathing.
Other people just have lots and lots of kids homeschooling in
this really kind of a controlling religious

(09:40):
environment. And there's a lot of stuff that
came out about the Duggars laterthat was really quite
disturbing. And that's what the the Amazon
documentary talks about. Well, I was raised in a kind of
a similar environment. My parents followed Bill
Gothard's teachings as well. They patterned their marriage
and their family on his sort of quote UN quote biblical
principles. And that was the environment I
was raised in. So it was very cult like I would

(10:02):
say. It's funny you mentioned that
word because that was exactly what was going through our mind.
As you were talking about that Iwas thinking Yikes, this sounds
like a cult. But of course, I would have
never, ever said that when I wasa kid.
And that's what came across fromthe book I talked about.
I was in a, what I call it the Christian bubble.

(10:22):
I went to church every Sunday, every Wednesday.
I was in Christian School. I went to Christian summer camp.
You know, I didn't even know anynon Christians.
The only non Christians I knew were my two cousins who lived
next door. And of course, I was busy trying
to save them and evangelize themall the time, you know, so the
only people that were non Christians were my projects, my
salvation project. And I felt so bad that I didn't

(10:44):
get them saved. And every opportunity I tried
everything I could do to think, everything I could think of to
get them saved. But that was the thing,
everything was normalized. And that's the key thing is that
I didn't know any different. And yet I came out of it with
rapture, anxiety, religious trauma syndrome, all these
things that I didn't know at thetime were traumatizing me.
But now of course, as an adult that walked away from it all, I

(11:07):
can see how damaging it it all was.
Yeah, it it really saddens me tothink not only did it happen to
us, but there are people out there it's happening to now that
as a child, there's people that you know, people that you play
with, people that you enjoy the company or people that you love
dearly. And in some cases, as you just
said, people who are own family members.

(11:27):
And as a child, your greatest priority is to get them to
believe the same things as you. And this whole concept of being
a child, being in that moment and literally just having fun in
the dirt is secondary. And I think that's so, so sad.
And I look back at my own childhood about moments that are
not too dissimilar to that. And it fills me with sadness

(11:48):
that that was a mentality that Iwas indoctrinated into that that
were still that adults thought it was a good thing to teach
that to a child. And I hold heavy amounts of
disdain and bitterness towards adults that teach that to
children. Absolutely.
And that's what I talk about in the book.

(12:09):
I say it is a form of abuse. Religious indoctrination of
children is a form of abuse. Now, the key thing is my
parents, my pastor, all the Christians around me, they
weren't intentionally lying to me.
They believed it with all their hearts.
And that's one of the things I've had to process through now
as an adult, as an X evangelical, is that I was
really angry, like you said, fora long time.

(12:31):
I was pissed off that I've been put through that, but one of the
things I realized is that they, they believed it.
They firmly believed they weren't intentionally thinking,
oh, I'm going to lie to this child and tell him something
that I know is not true. They believed it was 100 and
they thought they were going to heaven and all the rest of it.
And they wanted me to go too, you know, so it was, it was a

(12:53):
case of everyone was caught up in the, the spell, so to so to
speak, You know, we all believedit.
We all were in that bubble and Ihad to walk away from all that.
Yeah, and it's funny you mentioned that because one of my
experiences as a very young child growing up in the
missionary environment in Zambiais boarding school where all the
teachers were missionaries. Effectively, they were teachers,

(13:15):
but they were white. They weren't indigenous locals
to Zambia. They were imported either from
America or from the UK and they came over to know, to do their
mission work as trained teachersto come and teach us white
skins, children of missionary. It's about life and teachers,
our education. And I look back on that and some

(13:39):
of them, one particular teacher was, was brutal, physically
brutal and I hold no love for her at all, quite the opposite
effect. But some of the other teachers,
I had a good relationship with them.
You know, learning under them was lovely.
I always felt that I was safe inthe hands.

(13:59):
Obviously, I'm ignoring the Christian indoctrination at this
point. But as a young, impressionable
child, those were the people whoany given year, I spent more
time with these teachers than I did with my own parents because
it was a boarding school. You know, I was only with my
parents for a few months of the year.
I was at boarding school for most of the year with these

(14:21):
parents. So for many of us in this
situation, these were these teachers were the people who
also saw us in the evenings. So they picked us up when we
were down. They as in when we fell down,
you know, if we had a cut on herknee, they bandaged that up.
If we were upset, they were the ones there that cuddled us.
They were the ones that made sure all their clothes were
clean, their clean clothes were out, you know, all the hygiene

(14:41):
was looked after, etcetera. They did, they parented us as
well as taught us. And so for some of for a great
number of those teachers, I actually feel a love for them
because of the way I was looked after.
But there is still this horribletoxic religion that harmed so

(15:02):
many of us. And there's AI have a difficulty
there. So it'll be interesting to see
what your perspective on this is.
How do I look back on those people with love when by
overriding feeling of coming outof that affirmative.
Sorry that that formative environment is actually 1 of

(15:25):
disgust. How do we balance that as as
people? Because if I was to meet one of
those teachers now, I genuinely am unsure how I would feel and
how I would react. I was thinking about that too
the other day, because when I was in Bible college and
seminary, I mean, I wasn't at a boarding school, but I had
several professors who were kindof in a similar mentoring role,

(15:47):
hugely impactful in my life on apersonal level.
They did a lot of really great things for me personally, you
know, and yet, as you say, you got to separate out, wait a
minute, they were still teachingme Bible theology, all this
stuff. And yet they were great people
on a lot of levels, loving, wonderful people, you know, So
you, I think that's, that's partof the process of coming out of

(16:10):
any religion or cult is you've got to separate out those
things. And it's very difficult to do.
It might require therapy actually to, for some people, I
think, to get through those things where you have to
separate out, OK, the actual person, what he or she did for
me as a person on a loving leveland all those things versus what
they were teaching me. Because that's the thing.

(16:30):
They firmly believed that it wastrue.
They weren't coming and lying toyou.
As I was saying before, they weren't going, I'm intentionally
going to lie to Matthew to mislead him.
They thought they were doing theright thing.
For all the right reasons, yes. And harm can come through good
intentions. And that, I think, for those of

(16:50):
us who leave. Was that a problem for you then?
Did you have to battle that specific emotion when you were
recovering from Christianity now?
Because let's not call it leaving Christianity, let's call
it recovering from Christianity.I think that's a really good
phrase to use. But that that kind of dichotomy
of people who you felt loved by and who were all in and thought

(17:17):
they were doing good but actively harmed you, is there a
process that you had to go through to recover through that?
Yes, I think that's, that's partof the recovery process that you
say. And I think it's, it's a, a
paradigm shift in a way, becausewhen I left Christianity at
first maybe 15 years ago, as yousay, you go through stages and
this is something that's really important I think for people to

(17:38):
understand. Anytime you leave a controlling
religion or cultural group or something like that, it's not a
monolithic response. We all react differently, but
there are sort of like the groupprocess, you know, you go
through anger and denial and different things like that and
acceptance maybe comes at the end.
And I went through all those phases and I, I can see that now
years later. I was very angry and I was angry

(17:59):
about the money I'd spend, the time I'd spent in Bible college
and seminary and as a pastor andall those things.
I mean, I wasted most of my adult life from a career
perspective just purely from, I could have been doing any number
of things if I hadn't had that upbringing and that background,
you know, but it's a difficult one.
I think you have to process through those things now,
though. I went through a phase where I

(18:21):
kind of thought, well, you know,Christianity is pretty benign.
I've left it. But you know, they can do their
own thing. But now I'm, I'm more with what
you're saying. I think it is, it is very
damaging and a harmful religion.And that that's, that's another
phase that I've come to. And I'm more like you.
I want to warn people about the potential dangers of this
religion. It's very interesting, you
should say that I went through exactly all those phases.

(18:42):
I carried anger and bitterness, visceral anger and bitterness,
for a very long time, and that was difficult for me.
I wasn't expecting that as an emotional reaction.
And I had to keep that under control for a lot of time
because I was in the scenario where I was surrounded by
Christians and I simply wasn't safe to be able to let that out.

(19:03):
It wasn't safe for me. It wasn't safe for them.
It would have been very damagingto all people, but keeping that
compressed in probably elongatedthe amount of time that I was
angry and bitter for. I'll be honest about that.
That's not healthy either. No, it probably wasn't.
I've got through it. And yeah, there was also heaps
of shame. How could I have believed all of

(19:24):
that? And I think the one piece of
advice that I give, sorry, I give lots of advice, I would,
whether it's asked for or not. But probably the first piece of
advice I'll give to anybody on this is be gentle with yourself.
You must be gentle with yourself, you know.
Don't give yourself an undue hard time over the
embarrassingness of the past, you know?

(19:44):
Be nice to yourself. You deserve it.
You are worthy of it. And something I had a recent
guest on, she's absolutely fantastic.
Her name's Karen Unruh. She lives actually down near
Oxford. She's a Brit, but she lived in
America for a long time. She was married to an American
serviceman and something she said recently on a on a call
that we had, she said, you know,people are like you just said,

(20:05):
people, we can be so hard on ourselves.
How could I have been so stupid?How could I have been so
gullible? I'm, I'm, I'm an idiot.
She said, no, hang on a minute. If you're traumatized and things
like that from your past. It's it's normal to react the
way we do. You are normal that anyone would
react that way to trauma. That's how people react when
they're traumatized. That's normal.

(20:26):
So the person that you become with religious trauma syndrome
or PTSD, whatever you want to call it, that is actually
normal. Don't be so hard on yourself.
That's the way anyone would react.
And you reacted typically to themost of the population.
So yeah, that I think that's a really good balanced
perspective. Right, I'd like to move back to
books because there's some very specific questions I want to ask

(20:49):
you about your writing process. But before you do that, I want
to do a plug. Oh, and by the way, listeners or
viewers, because I'll try and put this onto YouTube as a video
if I can. There will be links to Clint's
book, Clint's podcast in the show notes.
Just pop down there, find them, click them, go or just type
Clint's name into Google. You'll find all the juicy bits,

(21:13):
probably bits that I can't tell you, but you'll find it all
there. But I too have also been
involved in a book project. I got involved in a book project
six years ago which preceded thelaunch of Still Unbelievable.
Still Unbelievable. The book is available on Amazon,
small price of £0.99 or $0.99. Any money that we make of it
gets immediately donated to charity.

(21:34):
Please if you want to just buy it and let it sit there, you've
at least donated a small amount of money to charity.
So please do that. I have talked multiple times
about doing in addition to aboutthat.
It needs to re edit and possiblya couple of new chapters that
will eventually happen. Don't hold your breath for the
10 year, but maybe that's what I've got to realistically aim
for. But I've also been involved in a

(21:57):
book project which comes out in January.
If you've been a regular listener to this podcast, you
already will know about that. If this is the first time you're
hearing about it, there's a backcatalogue that you need to
listen to. So Apostate is a book that's
coming out on January the 6th. If this is before January the
6th, there'll be a link in the show notes to pre-order.
Hopefully that same link will take you to the available book

(22:19):
to order. So I've contributed the chapter
to that book. It's called Apostate because it
tells the story of I think it's 21 authors who have all told a
chapter of their life about their journey out of
Christianity, how and the to to some extent, their recovery from
Christianity. It's been put together by a
lovely lady, Sarah Bacalha. She's also featured on the

(22:42):
episode this Unbelievable. If you don't know who she is,
you've already the episode is literally one or two episodes
back. So back catalogue again.
So that book's coming out. And as I say, Clint, I've
written a chapter for that. So I've told my story in various
ways. And I promise you, if you've
heard me tell my story on this podcast a couple of times, on

(23:03):
David Graceful Atheist podcast, a couple of times, hints of it
on Clint's podcast at least onceand other places.
Then there's also the MissionaryKid podcast, whose name I can't
remember. I'm sorry, chaps, I'm sorry I
can't remember there. There's just way too many
podcasts. Anyway, there is stuff in that
chapter that you have not heard is what I'm trying to get to in

(23:26):
other places. So go and get the book.
Not just for me, but for the other wonderful people who have
all contributed a chapter to thebook.
Apostate. So Clint, this the what?
The what? I wanted to ask you about the
writing process is one of the things that was a new experience
for me because I blogged about my life story even before I came
on to Stun believe while I was blogging.

(23:46):
And the so the blog goes back 12years or or more.
And so I've told huge chunks of my story on that.
But this was my very first experience of writing down a
part of my story. Sorry, excuse me, that's British
people. We can't cope with viruses.
I've got a runny nose. I am sorry you had to see that.

(24:09):
Viewers, if you're watching in audio, consider yourself lucky.
So. But this is the first time ever
I've written down a part of my story and then someone else has
edited it, and then it's come back to me and I've had to read
it. What was that experience like
for you? That was difficult.

(24:31):
Yeah. Tim said early on in the
process, it probably took about a year to edit the book.
And he said, there's going to betimes when you're going to hate
me. You really are going to hate me,
you know. And there were times, I will
confess, I was upset when I see an e-mail coming from Tim going,
oh, come on, are you kidding me?Another edit, another change.
But the thing about it is, is for for in the editing process.

(24:54):
Yes, you're exactly right. You're you're launching your
story out there and then someoneelse reads it and feeds back to
you what they think. And Tim's whole thing was, let's
make this better, let's make it more engaging, Let's make it
more make it more readable. We want a page Turner.
We want something that people aren't going to just turn, turn
aside after a few pages and go ahead.
I'm not interested, you know, sothat process was really good,

(25:17):
was really valuable for me because my, my I come out of
academics, so I tend to write more like an academic style at a
higher level. And something Tim said was that
the average New York Times bestseller is something like a
year 8, eighth grade level reading.
And so I had to tone it way, way, way down.
And that's not, you know, who what I wanted to how I would

(25:38):
agonize over word choices, you know, things like that.
And everything's, I wanted to say that I went to the plate and
I said, no, we're going to, we're leaving that into if it's
got to be in there, you know, soit's, it's like you say, it's a
difficult process, but in the end, the editor did make it a
better product, I would say as painful as it was at times.
Yeah, it was strange for me. Again, mine was only a chapter,

(26:00):
not a whole book, though. I am thinking maybe I'd like to
write my story as well. Maybe that's an offline story.
We can talk about claims, but it's something that I'm playing
with. Multiple people have told me
that that I should get given some of the stories that I've
told, but I imagine when it's a much bigger narrative, the the

(26:24):
edit process is is more painful.For me.
It was mostly weird than than painful.
And there was one specific bit that I read and it used a word
which I would never use and I got the intent and I understood
the meaning. It just everything about it read

(26:45):
wrong for me. And there was basically a final
edit stage. And I don't remember where that
word came from, whether it was arecent edition or whether I'd
literally just not clocked on inprevious edits about that word.
But the the final edit was this you.
This is not for fine tuning. This is if there is something

(27:06):
really seriously wrong, you knowwhere this is not a fine tuning
edit. You know, this is spelling
mistake kind of territory, this and I, I read it and I agonised.
I went and I read it again and Ithink I read the sentence about
four or five times. And then I, and I literally had

(27:27):
to say to myself, it's OK, Matthew, it is OK.
Nobody else who's reading this will have that reaction.
Nobody else who's reading this will ever say Matthew would not
say that word. Nobody else who's reading this
will pause like you have paused.They'll read it and they'll

(27:47):
carry on. And so the key question you need
to ask yourself, Matthew, is does it ruin the message?
Does it change this part of yourstory?
No. Then what's your problem?
Exactly why are we getting so hung up on this thing?
One word. But it's, it's funny how when,

(28:10):
yeah, I get it. It's deeply personal.
We've expun. We've poured out our heart and
our soul onto pages. And we've done it sometimes
through tears. I know I wrote my chapter
through tears. There were times when my eyes
were so blurried up, I literallycouldn't see the keys on the
keyboard and I had to step away.Go, Matthew, just take a moment.

(28:36):
Good return. But you're in that moment and
you cut you, you keep trying to type through the tears because
it's there. You, you don't want to endure it
for any longer, but it's there. So you need to get it out.
And so I wrote that. So the ownership you have of
those words is intense. And then someone else goes and
changes them. Yeah, that's why Tim says you're

(28:58):
going to hate me because there, there were times, I mean, I'm,
I'm a lover of vocabulary. I've always been, I've always
been a voracious reader. And I I collect words, you know,
it's like I'll hear a good word in the book that I'm reading.
I'm like, oh, I'm going to, I had a list of words.
I'm like, I got to get that wordin this book somehow because
it's so expressive and so emotive and everything.
And then Tim would say it's too technical.

(29:20):
We got to get rid of that word. I've agonized for hours or I've
searched thesaurus online. I've done everything to to just
fine tune that that word, that sentence, and you want to check
it out. But you know, one of the
interesting things I never thought about this was that he
was also looking at it from a marketing point of view, which I
never realized. And he said we're not just

(29:41):
quote, UN quote, dumbing it downto make it more for stupid
people. It's not anything like that.
It's if anyone stops and pauses and has to think, oh, wait a
minute, that doesn't make sense.I've got that's bad.
We've interrupted their flow from a marketing point of view.
We have to make it a more readable book.
And so I thought, you know, someof these hills are not worth
dying on when you look at it that way, that you don't want

(30:03):
the reader to stop and pause andgo, wait a minute.
That doesn't make sense. Because a lot of the things too,
it was the timeline. Cuz I just wrote, like you said,
emotively. I would write and write and
write and then Tim would say, now wait, when did that happen?
What year was that? What time?
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.
I'm telling you what happened. He said no because the reader is
gonna stop and go. Now wait a minute.

(30:23):
I don't understand. Was he 12 then?
Or 10 or 7 or 15. The chronology is challenging,
isn't it? It's.
So, and I actually, yeah, we made a spreadsheet, we made an
Excel spreadsheet with and I tried to remember dates and
specific things when certain things happen because I
reference them in the book. And we plugged a lot of that
back in just to make it flow better, you know, so the editing

(30:45):
process is painful, but it it really is a helpful thing if you
have a good editor, it is. Excellent.
And then the other question thatI wanted to subject matter about
all this that I want to talk to you about is the lady who's put
the book together. She has she's involved in in
publishing, which obviously helps and she does, she does

(31:07):
audio books. So she's going to read the
entire book and the the entire audio book of all the stories.
Sorry, excuse me, I'm now enjoying one of the products of
my new employer. That's the other thing that we
need to talk about is since we last spoke, I've started a new
job, you may have noticed from my some of my enthusiastic

(31:28):
Facebook posts. So I've now done six months of
my new employer and my new employer produces a carbonated
product that is enjoyable in thehome.
And so my fridge is never without a bottle of that said
carbonated product. And the cost of that is the cost
of enjoying it while talking to you and having a cold has had an

(31:49):
unfortunate mix. But anyway, there we go.
You don't need that mental image, listeners.
You absolutely don't. She's.
Well, yeah. So anyway, so the lady who's put
apostate together, she's readingthe whole book.
She's. And we did have a bit of a chat
in the group about that, you know, because a couple of people
wanted to read their own stories.
And I kind of, I wanted to read my own story.

(32:11):
And, and I thought to myself, well, maybe another man reading
my story works there because I've typed it.
I'm a man. I've typed it as a man.
So kind of, I'm, I'd like, kind of like another man to read if
it's going to be, and the whole book is going to be read, read,
read by the lovely Sarah. And it was OK, right.

(32:34):
Well, I'm not going to be sexistabout this.
So OK, change the gender. I'm not going to fret about
that. But it's another voice reading
my words. OK, they've been native, but
they're my words. And the voices reading them is
not going to be my voice. And I know the bits that need
nuance, and I know the bits thatneed faster pace, and I know the

(32:57):
bits that need some emotion and some punch into the words.
Anybody reading it, whether maleor female, is not going to know
the nuances that I want to hear and I want to put into my words.
So I'm looking forward to listening to my chapter in
another voice and how somebody else is going to read it.
I am, but I'm also a little bit nervous.

(33:20):
But you, Clint, you went on better.
You didn't even get a human to read your voice.
That must have been really bizarre.
And have you listened to the whole book in the voice?
I have, we did it through AI actually virtual voice on
Amazon. We actually took advantage of
it. It's in the beta process right
now. I don't even know if it's, it's

(33:41):
officially launched, but this issomething Tim found out that
when you publish the book as a Kindle version, as an e-book
within about two weeks, Amazon will just, well, if you want
this, you click the the button and it will produce an AI red
version of your book. And you can go and you can edit
it to some extent. Because obviously, like you
said, a computer program won't know how to put the emphasis in

(34:03):
the it'll pronounce words, certain words wrong and things
like that. You can tweak it a little bit,
but it's surprisingly good. I'm shocked at you.
You, if you didn't know it was ahuman or wasn't a human, you
would never, I don't think you'dguess that it wasn't a person
reading the book. So I'm, I'm with you.
I want to read my own book and that's that's in the pipeline.
It just takes a lot of time because exactly right.

(34:25):
I, I listened to it on on in thecar when I was driving to work
and things. I thought this is good, but I
want to read my own story for the exact same reasons you just
expressed. Yeah, I, I, I get that.
So were there bits that hurt you, or was it just intrigue all
the way through? With the the.
AI Yeah, yeah, listening to the the AI reading couple.

(34:48):
Things, Yeah. I thought, you know, and Tim
said there were certain things he just couldn't get the AI to
do or to say, right. So he had to actually change the
the wording a little bit becauseit just wouldn't figure out how
to, how to say things, you know.So I thought, OK, it wasn't
terrible. I mean, there was.
It was really good, actually surprisingly good.
But so you'd want to give it 9 1/2 out of 10.

(35:08):
I'd probably give it about 8:00 or 8:00 or 8 1/2 out of 10.
Surprisingly, it is amazingly good.
I, I was really skeptical, but he sent me a couple of samples
early on in the process. And the main decision to do that
was was time. Because I wanted it released
along with the paperback and theKindle version all the same day.

(35:28):
And the only way to do that was to go for the AI option.
The only was not possible for meto record the whole book in
about two weeks. I mean, I just could do that
was. That way that would happen with
it. And that's, that was the
ultimate decision. And I'm, I'm glad we did did
that because the Audible versionthat's that's sold probably as
many as the Kindle version as itreally, yeah.
Because the option is if you buythe Kindle version just for a

(35:51):
little bit more, you can get theAI version.
So it's not even that much more.It's like $1.99 on Amazon.com.
But for like another $0.99 or £0.99, you can get the Audible
version. It's almost nothing.
That's a good deal. OK, no, that's that's good.
I think more and more people areconsuming books, audio.
I think audio books are taking off more than actually reading a

(36:14):
Kindle versus reading a real book.
Did I think so? Yeah.
And that's why we wanted to do that, just to have that option.
I mean, I almost exclusively listen to audio books, you know,
because I where I work, I work all over the place.
Like as I was saying, I was saying before we report tomorrow
morning, about an hour and a half drive to this job I'm
doing, but I've got an Audible book on my iPad.

(36:36):
So that hour and a half drive, I'm looking forward to spending
an hour and a half just on each way listening to this audio
audio book. It's time well spent or
listening to a podcast, something like that, you know,
So it's a, it's a good way to buy back some time, I think.
Yeah, that's why I do. I listen my I when my ipod's
plugged in here to my computer being resynced in my car.

(36:57):
And the downside of my new job is my commute is half the
distance it used to be. And so I have savaged my podcast
listening time. And six months ago when I
started the new job, my, my listen list was, I was
maintaining around about two 2 1/2 days of back catalogue that

(37:20):
I needed to catch up on. It's now at 22 days.
I have no idea how am I going tocancel.
So I'm going to just have to to right click.
Marcus listens. Well, I'm just I'm going to have
to be savage with my playlist, I'm afraid.
Yeah, I don't know who to cut. That's my problem.

(37:41):
I genuinely don't know who to cut.
And I'm in that that predictablesituation where.
But I will listen to that. And then a week later it's four
days back and I'm like, I'm not going.
To listen to that, yeah, new content already out.
Yeah. I know you mean it's.
It's a good decision, but the idea of thinning down my
playlist is too painful to do. I, I but I've, I've, I've

(38:05):
painted myself into it or drunk myself into a corner here and I
don't know how to get out of it.I, I really don't, you know, I'm
already listening it at 2 times speeds, you know, I listen at
two times speed. So naturally, that I hate it
when I listen to it at normal speed.
So if there's an iPod out there,there's three times speed.

(38:25):
Maybe that's what the answer is.There's got to be a solution.
Because I have to be jobs again.Find a job that's further away.
Maybe that's. Yeah, You know what?
I, I, I want to stay in this job.
I'm too old. You know, one of the problems
I'm past that particular age. So one of the big challenges
when applying for this job was do I really want to do it?

(38:50):
You know, you know, my, my retirement is actually as a
marker that I can see, you know,do I really want to be changing
job at this time of life? You know, when I was in the
stable job, I was in a job that I liked.
I was in a job I enjoyed, but some things that happened that
made me unhappy and then this opportunity came up.
You know, I work for a company now that's a household name.

(39:12):
It's well respected in the area.It's got great reputation in the
area and so I wasn't going to leave for anybody, but it was
still a major risk for me. But I, it appears to have paid
off. I, I love it.
And this time, this time, I promise, I am not moving on, you
say. That I'm.
Going to sit this one out so I need to find a solution.
You know what's funny, just thinking about going back to our

(39:34):
topics of religion and everything, changing jobs and
things like that, how much, how much we would have invested the
whole God thing in that whole conversation if we were
evangelical still, you would have been saying, you know, the
Lord led me into another opportunity.
You can hear the Christianese because I went through a similar
job change this year. It was massively stressful.

(39:54):
I quit a job, left the job. I'm working at the prison and
started another job. I kind of had to get another
job. I didn't, you know, I didn't
want to get another job. I wasn't looking to quit, but I
had to, you know, and I remembertelling my girlfriend, you know,
through that whole process, it was hugely stressful.
I would have been praying. I would have been seeking
advice. I would have been reading the
Bible. I've been talking to Christian,

(40:16):
you know, therapists, counselors, friends, pastors.
What is God doing? God's doing something.
He's up to something here. He's trying to teach me a lesson
of faith and the fact that I didn't obviously go there.
Shows something doesn't it? Reveals a lot about our own
personal growth, I think. It does.
And yes, I have used exactly that lines to the effect of God

(40:36):
made it so that I got this job or God fixed it so that I could
move house or or something. I've had those conversations.
I remember many, many years ago,I was only still in my 20s, so
crumbs decades ago. And a good friend of mine was
looking to move house and he found the house that he thought

(40:58):
was going to be his perfect house.
And I remember him saying to me with quite a pained expression,
do you think it's OK if I pray to God that I get this house?
And he was clearly battling internally, you know, trying to
fight the whole, you know, ask God for what he desires, but not
wanting to be selfish about it, though.

(41:21):
Is it frivolous to ask God for this?
And he was really, really struggling.
My answer to him was, yeah, it'sfine.
You know, if you want that house, go ask.
Ask God. But then just make sure that
you're humble in how you ask it.Yeah.
That was kind of the answer I gave.
You can probably imagine the kind of answer you would have
given Clint. But yeah.

(41:42):
And oh, the freedom to not have that worry is a blessing.
Those are the benefits we have to look at.
I think, you know, as I said, for when we leave religion,
there's a lot of trauma and things we have to work through.
But not having that, because I can remember as an evangelical,
everything had to have an answer.
Everything had to have a reason.Why is this happening to me?

(42:03):
What are you teaching me, God? What is the lesson here?
What am I supposed to be learning right now?
And there's always something God's doing.
He has a plan. He has a what?
What's, what's God's will, the most inscrutable thing to know
what God's will is for your life.
I mean, I remember when, when wemoved to the UKI was pursuing a
doctorate over here in the University of Chester in

(42:24):
England. And we it probably took us 2
years to get everything together.
And most of that was because we were praying and seeking the
will of God to, you know, shouldwe do it?
Should we move? Should we do this?
Should we, should we praying andpraying and talking to people.
Two years of wasted time when wecould have just we decided we
were going to move. If if, if we could make it work.

(42:45):
Let's just go. But doesn't like that everything
had to be in God's will. Yeah, it's really kind of
strange that, but the only way you know it's God will is if it
happens. And the only way it happens is
if you actually go and do something about it happening.
So what's God actually doing in this?

(43:08):
Well, he's. Opening a door, that's, that's
what I, and I used to kind of, Iwould teach people that kind of
concept and say, you know, you have to assume that God's answer
is always yes. That's what I would tell people.
So keep moving forward. And if he, if he doesn't want
you to do it, he'll stop you along the way.
You know, and that that's probably the best thing I could
do at the time. But if you take the God piece

(43:31):
out of it, all it is, is you making things happen for
yourself and, and thing, you know, I see that now.
I mean, I'm the house I have, I bought it, you know, I saved my
money, but certain things happened that, you know, I, I
got in touch with a guy who was a mortgage financer and he, he
put me on to some really good deals.
He made it happen, you know, butthat was my girlfriend who gave

(43:52):
me his number. Now, as an evangelical, I would
have said that was a God thing. He said I didn't have any chance
to buy this house. But no, God provided this guy
Mike, and he was amazed. But no, it was just my
girlfriend happened to know someone who was networking and
he helped me out and that's how it went and I was able to buy a
house. So there's no God involved in it
whatsoever. Yeah, it's weird.

(44:14):
And but the weird thing is when you actually try to break it
down is in order for God to do that, he'll have had to have
intercepted the thought processes of other people,
Christian or not, to make sure that the decisions they make are
the ones that benefit you. But at no point does he come to
you and say I want you to go anddo that, but he magically makes

(44:36):
them do things that benefit you.That's all it's all about
growing our faith. And that that was the other
aspect, wasn't it was that as westep out in faith, and this is
the evangelical Christianese, you know, you can hear the
language so easily. It comes so easily through the
and through the to the tongue. You know that it's, it's all
about growing our faith, you see, because if, if you made it

(44:56):
easy for everything, then there wouldn't be any growth involved.
That's a part of the really bad part about Christianity.
The toxic fit is when suffering comes into our lives.
And we would also have said, OK,what are you trying to teach us,
God, when someone dies or something horrible happens to us
or just some loved one or something like that, a terrible
tragedy. What's God trying to teach us?

(45:17):
What's the lesson of faith here?He can't just be that so and so
got cancer and, and got sick anddied.
Oh no, God's trying to teach us something.
So it's, it's, it's really a damaging, messed up sort of
theology, I think. Yeah.
And part of my Christian life was certainly towards the latter
time of my time in Christianity was being part of a prayer team

(45:40):
and praying for people, for their and the number of people
who expressed something along the lines of I'm struggling
here, I'm struggling with this, so I'm suffering with this,
etcetera. I wonder if it's because I'm not
good enough for God. And I that was must have been
subconsciously, must have been part of what triggered my exit.

(46:05):
Because I remember sitting therejust feeling so pained that
somebody would feel so low aboutthemselves that they would feel
this. And it wasn't until after I was
out that I realised that Christianity made them think
that way. Christianity is so infused with
this idea of we're wretched, we're not good enough.

(46:26):
And it enters people's psyche and they think that way and it's
terrible to see. And as a prayer team member, I
saw that more times than I care to admit.
And it was awful and it pained me every single time I saw it.
And I don't just be young people, I mean adults as well.

(46:46):
Sensitive, mature, intelligent adults with this just crippling
self doubt about themselves thatcome straight out of the
essential foundation of Christianity.
It's true. I've told this story before on
other shows, but I remember years and years and years ago
when I was an evangelical, my then brother-in-law and I, we
were supposed to go. We were supposed to speak at an

(47:08):
all night youth event in the Seattle, WA area and it was a
hyper charismatic church that weweren't part of.
We just got invited because we knew the guy who was doing this
thing. Anyway, Long story short, we
went to this event and there wasa group of kids, probably 1520
youth group kids. And they were all, when we got
there, they were all praying forthe gift of tongues.

(47:29):
And some of them I guess had it,half of them didn't have it.
But what really struck me about it was even at the time, as an
evangelical, I thought these kids are, they're in agony.
They're crying, sobbing, weeping.
Oh, God, what's wrong with me that you haven't given me the
gift of tongues? Everybody else and these kids
were in just floods of tears andin ag.

(47:51):
And I thought this can't be healthy.
And it's that same dynamic. Even you can look at it in the
charismatic sense, but as an evangelical, we had that same
sort of thing where if somethingbad happens, what have I done?
Do I have unconfessed in my lifeor do I have not enough have
enough faith? What is wrong with me?
It always falls on me. It never always say God gets off
the hook. He never gets any blame for
anything. There's always a reason we're

(48:12):
going to find out someday in heaven.
You know what I mean? Again, you can hear the
platitudes. Yeah.
Yeah, it's it fills me with sadness to know that that is
still going on in churches. Absolutely.
It's it really is. I'm conscious of time, Clint.
You gave me a heads up before you came on that you had time.
But have are you good for time or do you need to start?

(48:34):
Few more minutes is a great conversation.
It is. I always enjoy chatting.
I'd forgotten how fun it was chatting with you, Clint.
And I also get follicle envy whenever we have a have a chat
because it's not just out here. It's it's up here as well.
I I just, I simply haven't got it.
And you're, you're obviously waycooler than me.

(48:56):
And, and yeah, there's, there's not much more I can say about it
than that. Really.
Never know. This is actually out of control
now. My girlfriend's got to trim it
down, but yeah, it's kind of exploding out sideways.
She's not going to do a Samsung on you.
Yeah, she's going to wait until you pass out.
You're going to wake up and you're going to look like this.

(49:17):
I'll be. Bald and I have no beard.
She likes it. She likes the ponytails.
She likes the tattoos and everything else.
So. But that's part of the
reconstruction, even that, you know, because I had tattoos when
I was a Christian, but they werealways kind of hidden, you know,
underneath everything. But part of coming out is part
of saying, hey, you know, I could.
This is who I am. If I want to get a tattoo, if I

(49:38):
want to get full sleeves and gettattoos on my hands, that's the
person that I am. That's my authentic self.
So that's who I am. OK, I'm I'm bare.
I don't even have tats you. Don't have any cats so.
No, no. I'm.
Talking about that. Yeah, I am.
I am that holy Clint that I don't even.
So, how many have you got there?Let's go a bit like that.

(49:59):
How many have you got and what'syour favorite?
Oh, well, I've got complete fullsleeves down both sides.
I mean, it's, it's hard to see, but you know, on the hands and
everything else. But I've got funny enough, this
one is one of my favorite ones. You can see it.
That's my old, it's a, it's a, akind of a, an adaptation.
My old U.S. Navy squadron, because when I

(50:20):
was, when I was teaching at a college, I taught military
veterans. And that's something I
reconnected a lot with is I'm a,I'm AUS Navy veteran and
teaching these men and women that were British, you know,
Army, Navy, Royal Air Force and all that.
It really kind of made me go, you know what I have a lot of
pride in? I served eight years in the US
Navy. I didn't always look like this.
I was clean cut, clean shaven, you know, but I went out and got

(50:42):
a tattoo on my hand. It was, it was indicative of the
time of that I served, you know,but I have a lot of my whole
left arm is a World War One tribute sleeve.
I'm a huge fan of World War One history.
Every year we go down to the battlefield.
We go to the Psalm and Passiondale and all that.
I should have been a history teacher.
That's why I should have been. So I went out and got it took a
long time to get it done, but I've been to a lot of the places

(51:04):
that are represented on my sleeve in France and Belgium and
different places. So, you know, it's just a
passion for me. Yeah, we should meet up next
time you're doing something likethat, because my World War One
connection is, I can't remember if I've even told you this.
My great grandfather was in India when World War One
started. And so the battalion, he was in

(51:27):
the Highland Light Infantry, which is a Scottish battalion.
And they, they set sail on ship from India, took them about 3,
maybe four months to get from India over to Europe.
And they, they landed to wherever it was in France or, or
wherever, and he went, marched on to where they were supposed

(51:48):
to be up in northern Belgium, I think Yupra, or in that sort of
area was where they ended up. And it was, it was this time of
year, actually, it was either late November, early December.
And he basically a week after he'd, it was either a week after
he'd landed or a week after theygot to where they were supposed
to be, he was blown up in the artillery explosion and that was

(52:14):
that. And it's such such a colossal
waste of a single individual. But you know, he wasn't the only
one who died that year. A colossal waste of many
individuals from that battalion and all the others.
I mean, it was a four year war. And that is just one story out

(52:34):
of many utter wasteful tragediesof something that is just
brought no greatness to the world at all.
Of what the world has lost in all the wars.
Yeah. The what we could be those
people that you know, And that's, that's the thing I love
about the World War One history,finding people who were there

(52:54):
soldiers, were war correspondents, things like
that. And going to the places where
they were. And I've got a lot of books on
my iPad that are out of print now.
Then I read that section from the book where they did what
they did there and it brings history to life.
And it's, it's kind of, you know, commemorating those people
that served and wrote about the war and things like that.

(53:14):
So I try to do my little thing. That's one of the things I'm
planning on doing. Hopefully in 2025.
I want to start a World War One podcast.
That's a real dream of mine. I just need to spend the time to
do it. So someday that will happen.
Yeah, somewhere. I don't know who, where it is
anymore and I hope it's not lost, but someone showed me that
they'd actually found the complete itinerary of my

(53:37):
grandfather's journey from Indiato Germany or Belgium rather.
And I know a little bit of his history, but it's really hard to
dig up the history of somebody who was serving in India, you
know, pre 1914. It's really quite, quite tough.
So I need to do visits to the Commonwealth Graves Commission
and other places to actually find that kind of information.

(53:59):
But yeah, somebody did show me that it was 2 pages I think the
complete itinerary of the ship and the name of the ship and who
they were travelling with, all that.
It was fascinating. And when my mother died that I
tried to looking for that information in her belongings
and it wasn't there. So I have no idea where it is or
where it went, and I have no idea how to get it back again.

(54:20):
Is he listed on the Menengate Memorial?
Do you think? You can You can look it up on
the Commonwealth War I. Know he's on he is listed on the
Commonwealth Graves Commission and I can't find the plot
number. I know he's on a plaque on a
wall because they they never as far as I'm aware they didn't
recover anybody parts because ofthe nature of the the explosion,
but they just know that he was one of the ones missing,

(54:42):
therefore dead. So I know there's a plaque on a
wall and so I've got on Commonwealth grades permission,
there is a reference number for where I need to go to be able to
find it, which obviously would want to do next time out there,
but beyond that I don't have very much.
That might be the next trip we take because I love going to EEP
and Passiondale and those placesaround there.
We've got a really good friend that we stay with every time

(55:04):
named Frank, and he runs AB and B like an Airbnb.
The last time we were there, we sat out in his back garden, had
a bunch of good Belgian beers. We had a great fire going.
We have music on. We talked about politics,
religion, you know, so you can make friends everywhere in the
world. That's part of travelling as
well, isn't it? You make friends and you have
really good, you know, community.

(55:24):
You're making building community, which again, going
back to the religion thing, that's something that's vitally
important. When you get out, you've got to
have a new tribe, you've got to have a community, wherever it
may be. OK, so the last little thing,
bit of a, so excuse me, that's that gassy drink again.
So anybody who's listening to this or even somebody who's

(55:46):
talking with you on this podcast, what advice would you
give to somebody who says I've got a story to tell or I've got
a story that I think might be interesting?
What advice would you give them about embarking on that kind of
project? Yeah, tell your story.
I mean, you might get a hold of you or me.
Find me on Facebook or X, the dreaded X, you know, whatever

(56:08):
you want to call it before must this destroys it, you know, and
tell your story. You could be on my show.
You could be on your show, you could be on other shows or I've.
I've talked to people. I just had a call the other day
from someone who got a hold of me and said I listened to one of
your episodes from about four orfive years ago called Is
Evangelicalism a Cult? And there was something that
absolutely changed my life. She said, I need to talk to you

(56:29):
about it. Do you mind if we have a
Facebook call? So we talked about 45 minutes
just the other night, you know, and I'm like, yeah, let's give
me a call, let's talk. And we had a really good
conversation. You know, so it's, it's funny to
know that you did something 5-6 years ago on a podcast and
someone's stumbled across it andit's changed your life.
Yeah, that's, that's quite something.

(56:50):
Yeah. I've had one or two bits of
feedback along similar people have pointed out particular
episodes and said they really enjoyed that episode or or that
changed up and talk of episode. I'd like to do a quick plug for
one of my episodes because I didn't call it, but I've gone
and checked. And my most popular episode from
this year, 2024 is an interview I did with a current pastor who

(57:12):
wrote a book called Holy Hell the The Case Against Eternal
Damnation. And so this guy believes that
everybody will be united with God.
He's a universalist and he thinks that that eternal torment
is not biblical, is not what is intended by any of the the Bible
authors, and it's completely unbiblical interpretation.

(57:34):
And that is by a long way, by anunassailable margin by most
listened to episode this year for 2024.
So that is a topic that is clearly a topic that needs
talking about. Absolutely.
I remember when Rob Bell came out with this book.
Love wins. Did you ever read that?
I don't blind. I am making familiar with some
of the controversy that came outthere.

(57:55):
People, how dare we say that God's a loving God?
It was it was the, the interesting.
I actually wrote an article about.
I read some of the book reviews and I, I wrote an article about
the book reviews of his book, you know, and the same kind of
thing. People were just excoriating
him, calling him a heretic and worse and everything else.
Hell is a foundational principleof Christianity.

(58:16):
You know they're going out and defending this doctor of hell.
And that plugs into exactly whatwe were saying half an hour ago
about the whole thing about poormental health is just baked into
the entirety of Christianity. And if people are going to fight
to keep eternal damnation for their loving God, it just shows

(58:38):
you that it's there. That is what is baked into
Christianity. It's crazy.
I mean, if people are following the news now, I mean, in the
American political scene, DonaldTrump's obviously just won the
election. But what's interesting now is
that his cabinet selection, someof them are just insane.
But the amazing thing is Republicans are going out and
defending those choices. And it's exactly that same

(59:00):
dynamic that it's that cult likeand you go, you're defending the
indefensible, but it just shows how brainwashed you actually are
in in deep in this thing, you know, and it's that same exact
dynamic. Yeah, yes, I think that's really
quite shocking. But one thing that on that very
note, one thing that has occurred to me and they'll be
interesting to hear what your more informed opinion is.

(59:23):
But I do wonder if some of thoseRepublicans that are supporting
these choices are doing so out of preservation rather than
sycophancy, because if they if they critique Trump now and
they're going to have a tough ride from the people that vote
for them or against them. Yeah, absolutely.

(59:43):
But it just, again, shows the total control that Trump has
over the Republican Party. My argument is it is a political
cult of personality, just like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, any
number of dictators. That's what he wants to be.
And like you say, whether it doesn't matter if it's sick of
fancy or, you know, out of a desire to preserve yourself, the
bottom line is he is in total control of the Republican Party.

(01:00:05):
So they have to do whatever theyfeel.
Like they have to do to and you,you've seen the ones who bought
the system. This is going back to lifting
categories of cult markers is the last one is the dispensing
of existence. If you no longer toe the line,
if you, you know, question the leaders doctrines or dogmas or
whatever, you will be dispensed with.
This is what happened to Liz Cheney and some Adam Kinzinger

(01:00:27):
and some others who stood up against Trump.
They're gone. And that's how the cult works.
Yeah. Thank you for ending on a
positive note there, Clint. But you know, I think we need to
be aware of it and be serious. We do need to be aware of that
and we need to look out for those sides.
And, you know, rather than do itto depress ourselves, we need to

(01:00:48):
take positive action to look after ourselves in this time.
I mentioned that you're probablyin regular contact with your
friends over in America and you're keeping up to date on
what's going on. It is depressing what's going on
in the politics. And I wish all our American
listeners good health and happiness.
And I don't really know what I can do from this end to ease the

(01:01:10):
next four years. I don't know, but I think, you
know, going back to our earlier point about what can you do to
recover from religion, I think one of the biggest things, one
of the most beneficial things has been education.
And we, we kind of touched around that.
One of the things when I learned, when I read, you know,
like I said, Robert J Lifton's thought reform, the Psychology
of Totalism, books on cult psychology, cult tactics, that's

(01:01:33):
really when the penny dropped for me.
I realized that my upbringing had been in fact cultic and that
when I started looking at the markers of cult, I could name
every single one and point to Christianity and say that was
done to me. And then that's when it was
like, OK, not only did that happen to me, this is what the
psychological effect of it was on my, you know, trauma and my

(01:01:54):
psyche and my, my sort of natureand who I am.
That's where the recovery can sort of help, I think when you
can name those things and say, yeah, that's what happened to
me. How do I get recovery?
How do I help, you know, get help on the back end?
So it's a huge thing, isn't it? It is.
It is. Thank you very much for that
clip. We will talk again.
I always love having a chat withyou.

(01:02:16):
This has been a wonderful arranged this at very short
notice and it's reminded me why I need to make it an annual
thing at bare minimum to talk toyou.
So let's try and sort that out. 2025 is literally only a short
step away. In fact, by the time listeners
are listening to this, it will be 2025.
So I hope you all had a lovely Christmas and a spiffing New

(01:02:39):
Year and until 2025. Read well, write well and enjoy
life. And until next time, be
reasonable. You have been listening to a
podcast from Reason Press. Do you have any thoughts on what

(01:03:00):
you've just heard? Do you have a topic that you
would like us to cover? Please send all feedback to
[e-mail]. You might even appear on an
episode. Our theme music was written for
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the links in our show notes.