Episode 131 - Apostate - Phil from Flawed Theology - Still Unbelievable!

Episode Transcript
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(00:11):
Episode 131 apostate Phil from Flawed Theology.
This is Matthew and in this episode are still unbelievable.
I'm in conversation with Phil from the Flawed Theology
podcast. Phil is a fellow contributor of
the apostate book that is now available and tells the stories
of 21 people who have left Christianity.

(00:33):
Links in the show notes for the book and Phil's podcast.
Hello everybody, Welcome to another episode of a Still
unbelievable. This is Matthew.
You're probably familiar with myvoice.
Now. If you don't know who I am or
what my name is, why have you not listened to my entire back
catalogue? And I have with me somebody

(00:56):
who's also a podcaster, somebodywho I've actually wanted to have
a conversation with for quite some time.
Despite being an American, he has a fabulous listening voice.
Welcome, Phil. Where are you from, Phil, and
what do you do? Oh, hey everybody, this is Phil
Colarello. I am the Co host of the Flawed
Theology podcast here across thepond.
I'm in Virginia on the East Coast of the States.

(01:19):
And so yeah, I'm happy to be here.
I've been wanting to talk to youtoo.
So it's kind of a a fun coming together that we're able to pull
off today. So I'm excited about it.
Excellent virtual high fives to that.
I do enjoy your podcast for and I'll be, and I mean that
genuinely. I like the way that you and and

(01:39):
your Co host talk about elementsof Christianity in a very calm
and rational way. And for anybody who's listens to
any of the solo shows that I do,I am extraordinarily spiky about
elements of Christianity. I get I tend to get very, very
sweary and I tend to engage sarcasm probably to elements

(02:01):
that some people will consider unhelpful.
You managed to avoid all of that, yet still managed to put a
really focused laser on some of the shitty parts of
Christianity. How do you manage it so nicely?
Well, that's funny because if, if I thought about my, how I do
the podcast, I feel like I'm pretty sweary and I get fairly

(02:23):
animated. It's kind of funny because I, I
do the podcast, you know, from my basement, like, and a lot of
times my wife and kids are upstairs and then I'll come
upstairs and my wife like, man, you swore a lot during that.
And I'm like, I'm like, did I, you know, 'cause I kind of, I
kind of don't notice it. But yeah, I mean, there's a lot
of aspects of Christianity that really, you know, for lack of a
better term, just pissed me off,you know, And so I think it's

(02:46):
important at some point to kind of let show people that it's OK
to be angry, you know, but then also bring it back to, you know,
there's also a limit to the anger that is beneficial.
So I think Susie's actually better at kind of tempering the
emotions. I think that I am because she'll
she kind of brings things back to the rational level.

(03:07):
And I sometimes go off on the emotional tangents because we
have two very different stories too.
So that might be the biggest thing that helps keep it feeling
even keel is, you know, my Co host is a good balance, you
know, so. Yeah, it's often good to have a
coast. I miss Andrew when he isn't
available to do a show with me. And for those who who haven't

(03:30):
listened or haven't heard, Andrew is very busy setting up
his own business. And we're we do try to do a show
together, but he's not always available.
So when he's not available, I just run ahead and go and do my
own stuff. But I do find that when Andrew
is around, we do tend to temper each other and things do get a
little bit calmer. I do prefer it that way.

(03:50):
So in terms of podcasting then and in terms of getting this
book, now I know why you wanted to get involved with this book
because it's very probably the same reason.
Actually this book I'm talking as so everybody knows we got
involved in a book. This is about the 3rd or the 4th
episode that I've done regardingthe book I'm recording.
We're recording this on the 5th of January, the day before the

(04:13):
book Apostates Voices of Deconversion is going out
officially on Amazon, although it is or has been available on
pre-order this later this afternoon or probably around
about now. While we're talking my very
first interview about that book,which is with Sarah, who is the
the lovely Sarah who's arranged this book?
Who's got all of this band of authors together and has found a

(04:36):
publisher and has done the audiofor the book and has put a lot
of effort into it on behalf of the 21 people who are involved
in it. So that interview is going live
this afternoon while we're talking.
But listeners, this is several months later or a couple of
months later rather. So I hope you've already bought
the book, read the book, listened to the other four
interviews that are ahead of this one.

(04:56):
But Phil, so we are involved in various Facebook groups and
support groups around the conversion and talking about
that we've known of each other'spresence for some time, even if
we haven't spoken properly together.
So I pretty, I think I can guesswhy he jumped on board with this
book as soon as Sarah asked about it was because you have a

(05:16):
story to tell. You're familiar with telling
your story, and you wanted to bethere and be somebody who tells
other people that it's safe to tell a story of deconversion.
That's why I got involved with that.
But you've been a podcaster for a couple of years beforehand.
So fill those gaps in for us. How did you get involved in
podcasting? Why would you want to put your

(05:38):
story out and expose yourself tothe kind of criticism you know
that Christian is going to aim at you for daring to tell your
story? Yeah, it's, it's, they're kind
of related, I think. I mean, I've, I've been doing
the podcast now for, I think we're in, we're finishing up our
third season. So we've covered the span of
about three years and some change.
You know, the release schedule has been varied.

(05:58):
You know, we're almost into the fourth year of doing the
podcasts. At some point during that
podcast journey, I decided to start a blog too.
And I had written out my story anyway, which the reason for
writing the story out initially was actually to kind of help to
coalesce the story itself because for most of us, and I'm
sure yours is the same, and a lot of the stories that are in

(06:21):
the book, it's a very gradual progression.
You know, a lot of people asking, well, what made you
deconvert it? And I've never met a person yet
that says, well, it was this onething and I was off.
It's a gradual, a death by 1000 cuts type of thing.
So I had written my story out inkind of a much longer form for
my blog kind of to get my head around the story because it's a
little bit of a process to go from being, in my case, an

(06:44):
evangelical fundamental panelist, Christian Baptist, you
know, to, you know, an agnostic atheist, rationalist type
person. So I wrote my story out and I
had also come up with the podcast idea just because I had
heard several podcasts, including at yours was one of
them that I had come across several years ago along with

(07:04):
Born Again Again and xvangelicaland some other things.
And the thing that always grabbed me, Graceful Atheist was
another one that was filled withpeople's stories.
And so I was like, I really likethat format of those podcasts
cause stories tell. You can't argue with someone's
stories. You can't argue with someone's
experience and say, well, that experience isn't valid.

(07:25):
So that was a big part of even getting to the point of
deconverting for me was understanding that other people
had been through it. But I came up with the idea for
our podcast was more about the idea of dissecting aspects of
Christian theology and then pointing out the logical flaws
in them as someone that kind of was an apologist as a Christian,

(07:49):
I, I prided myself, I thought atthe time at having a sound
logical basis for my faith, eventhough everything was based on
faith. I was really into what I
considered evidentiary support for what I believed.
And I was into a lot of different apologists.
And one in particular who most people probably have never heard
of, his name is Phil Nelson. I met him at a college retreat.

(08:10):
I was a campus minister for out of college and we did a, a
retreat and he had workshops that were all about apologetics.
And so I got really like hooked on this apologetic thing.
Even later. As a Christian, I was always
looking for more data, you know,to support my faith because I
hadn't really had doubts per SE,but I was always looking for

(08:31):
ways to evangelize, to tell people and not just say, hey,
just believe it because it feelsgood or because it sounds good.
But here's the sound reasons of why you should believe.
So when I started deconstructingand eventually deconverting, I
realized that a lot of those rationale that I had was
completely flawed, you know, Andso that's kind of where the name

(08:51):
of the podcast Flawed Theology came from because I was like,
there's a lot of problems with theology in general.
And we focus mostly on, you know, kind of traditional
Christianity because both Susie and I come from a, you know, an
American Christianity version, her being Lutheran.
And I was Baptist, you know, forthe majority of my life and took
a few turns to other denominations and stuff.

(09:14):
That's kind of how the podcast came to be.
And then the, the book came to be because I was already telling
the story anyway. And I thought it's a really,
I've wanted to write my own bookbook too, but I'd never really
had the discipline or the resources or the time to kind of
do that whole thing. So when Sarah posted in one of
the groups that she was putting together a book, I was like,

(09:35):
this is my chance to, you know, put, put it down.
And I, and I tweaked the story abit from my, from the blog and
Sarah was really amazing with that editing process.
And so, yeah, that's, that's kind of how it all came to be.
So I'm, I've really enjoyed reading all the other stories.
You know, I, I know my own story, but the thing that really
jumps out at me in the book is like all these stories, no

(09:57):
matter how different they are, they all have a common thread
that runs between all the stories.
And I, I find that fascinating. So I think people will find that
fascinating when they read it aswell.
Yes, that's right. Because there's only some way,
there's only a limited number ofways which you can say
Christianity no longer worked for me.
Yeah. Right, yeah, it gets a little

(10:20):
repetitive when you're like, well, I just don't believe it
anymore. Well, OK, you know, that's not
going to make for, for one, it'snot very interesting to people.
And for two, it it also gets, you know, you get in this mode
of like, well, do I have to defend why I don't believe
anymore? And I personally think that you
don't have to, but I think it's good to be able to because there
are people that are some somewhat they may actually ask

(10:44):
in good faith, trying to understand how you went from
being a full-fledged believer and in your case, like a
missionary kid. And you know, I was a pastor's
kid and all that kind of stuff to going what what most people
would view as the whole other extreme of not believing in any
deity or deities of any kind. It's seemingly a very big jump.

(11:08):
Looking at it now, It's to me, it's not that big of a jump.
You know, I always like to say, you know, if you're an atheist,
a full on atheist, you only believe in one less God, you
know, than the other than the other people, you know, like
everyone else is an atheist about every other God.
I just added one more, you know,and, and that just happens to be
the God that most people believein, so.

(11:29):
Yes, quite. All you're doing is you're
applying the same critical logicto every other God, to one more
God. Right.
Yeah, You know, that is the samething.
Yeah. Yes, quite.
What you've done is you've unlocked the blockage that was
stopping you from applying that same level of critically
criticality to your preferred pet belief.

(11:49):
You go, oh, really? OK, maybe it doesn't make sense
after all. Yeah, it's kind of funny because
when you're a Christian, you know, of any kind, you you
basically look at other religions and even versions of
Christianity and you have like pretty specific ways that you
can debunk those versions of Christianity, you know, if it's,

(12:12):
or other religions, if it's Islam, if it's, you know, in my
case, like we even viewed Catholics as non Christians.
You know, here's why. Here's why Catholics aren't
Christians or here's why Muslimsaren't Christians, or here's why
Buddhists aren't Christians, or here's why whoever, you know,
pick your flavor, why they're not a Christian.
But then when you come up against something that breaks

(12:33):
that cognitive dissonance that you have about your own version,
then it's like, it's a real big,you know, oh, shit moment,
'cause you're like, you know, ohman, I've been doing the same
thing that they're doing, just with a different focus.
And that can be disconcerting. You know, it can be, it'd be
painful, you know, for, for somepeople as well.

(12:55):
Yes. And I think for me that that
worst moment of cognitive dissonance came when I was
trying to educate myself so thatI could better challenge
evolution. Because I'd because I'd tell it
a little bit in my own story in the book.
And I've told it in blog form and I've told podcasts before
about a moment I had trying to defend creationism and basically

(13:16):
got my butt handed to me by people who are better at arguing
evolution. And it was, that was an
extremely humiliating and embarrassing experience.
So I thought, OK, I'm going to learn more about evolution.
And I studied more about evolution and I realised that
huge swathes of this not only makes sense, but they've got
vast amounts of data to support it.

(13:38):
And the process of leading up tothe conclusion of evolution
isn't just a God rejection, as some Christians like to say, or
the work of the devil, as other Christians like to say.
There is actually genuine, hard,empirically demonstrable
scientific data that goes behindit.
And that realisation for me, andI think for me it was probably

(14:00):
the age of human humans and the presence of Neanderthals and
Denisovans and all those others.Like sub subhuman is probably
not the right word to use, but you know, there's other proto
human species that existed alongside modern humans.
And realising that there was intimating between them all and

(14:22):
the different parts and they went on and coming to appreciate
that and the cognitive dissonance that I felt in that
and the way that conflicted my desire to believe the Genesis
narrative was really, really difficult.
And it was like your brain stalling.
It really was a very strange experience.
And it took me some while to work through that and get over

(14:45):
that. And I think it wasn't until I
was actually able to acknowledgethat it really was cognitive
dissonance that I was going through and to be able to put a
name to that experience. And I think it was actually that
realisation that helped me to breakthrough that wall and to
actually go, you know what, it is OK to accept this as true,
deal with the fallout afterwards.

(15:07):
But here, in this moment, it's OK to accept that is true,
because that is the indication. Now deal with the fallout.
Right. And like we've said, the, the
term cognitive dissonance a couple times.
And honestly, I had never heard that term at all.
And I was a psychology major, a clinical psychology major,
granted at a Christian university, you know, so I, I

(15:29):
feel like I had heard the term cognitive dissonance in some,
you know, academic realm or arena, but I had never heard it
in relation to faith or belief. And I think I want to say was on
the Born again Again podcast, one of the Co hosts said
something about cognitive distance and then explained what
it was. And I was like, oh shit,

(15:52):
exactly. Well, that's exactly what I have
going on with my belief system. And you know, that podcast was
huge for me at which actually a friend of mine told me about
because I had been having all this, you know, I would, I
wouldn't say like doubt per SE, but it's just like a lot of
things within my very active Christian life that I, I

(16:13):
couldn't quite reconcile, I couldn't quite come to terms
with. And when I started listening to
that podcast, I was like, Oh, this is exactly what I'm going
through. And I got some real kind of
comfort from that because there there were aspects of Christian,
I, I went through kind of a progression in my own faith.

(16:33):
And I tell a little bit about this in the story, But because
of brevity and being in a book with 21 other authors, I
couldn't tell the, you know, thewhole story.
But I started out like very rigid evangelical
fundamentalists. And then I moved to a
denomination here in the US called Calvary Chapel, which I
think I don't know if that's bigacross the pond there.

(16:55):
And I thought it was kind of a more progressive, I'm putting
this in quotes for the, you know, listeners progressive
because their music was a lot more progressive.
And but it turns out their theology was actually just as
conservative or if not more thanthe fundamentalist Baptist that
I had come from. But it, it taught me some
things. It was very exegetical in the

(17:15):
Bible. But it was also opened up the
idea of, you know, letting your faith have emotion because
that's not really allowed in theBaptist tradition.
And I was in that for like 8 to 10 years.
And then I landed in a back in aBaptist Church that was kind of
a little bit more progressive again on its face.
And then I landed in the Methodist tradition, which is

(17:37):
actually quite progressive. And I landed there because I
kept having these experiences inchurches where something didn't
quite click, where I was like, Idon't feel like this is what
Christianity is about. And it usually revolved around
like, social justice issues or the idea of like, turning

(17:58):
someone's faith discovery into like a program.
You know, churches are notoriousfor taking someone's experience
and then trying to monetize it. You know, like I don't, I don't
know if you're familiar with thebook, The Purpose Driven Life.
Yep. So you know, that was a huge,
that was a huge thing, like for a very long time.

(18:18):
And I hated it because I was like everyone and their brother
is preaching about the purpose driven life and blah, blah,
blah, blah. And I refuse to read the book.
And like I hated it because I was like, oh, it's it's a
program. You're trying to turn God into a
program. And the similar thing happened
at my second to last church witha kind of a more progressive
faith journey that people had been on.

(18:41):
And the church I was going to tried to turn it into a program
and I was like, it just pissed me off, right?
So I landed in this other churchand it was very progressive,
like to the point of they had a female pastor, which I had never
experienced before and used to think was a sin.
You know, they had gay people inthe church and they were
accepted and loved as human beings.

(19:01):
And they were all phenomenal people.
And I was like, wait, that doesn't jive right with what
I've been told. You know, I thought gays are all
going to hell, you know, and andhere were some of the most
dedicated and committed people I'd ever met, you know, and they
just happened to love someone ofthe same sex, like, who cares?
And so I was in this shifting, you know, that probably lasted,
you know, 10 or 15 years and notdidn't really realize it was

(19:24):
happening. And then the thing that kind of
got me out of it was all the motivation about doing good like
this church that I was in was doing.
I realized, well, why do I need God to motivate me to do these
things? Like I was very into a
organization called Love 146 that works against human

(19:45):
trafficking. And I started educating myself
about human trafficking and, andall that stuff and raised a
bunch of money and held fundraisers and I was like
really into that, right? And global hunger was another
thing I was involved in working against and.
I realized I don't need, I shouldn't need a deity to vote

(20:06):
motivate me to do this. I shouldn't have to do this
because of what I believe. I should be doing this because
it's the right thing to do. And then that kind of was the
slippery slope, as they say, youknow, that led me to the point
of like, well, if I don't need God to do these things, well,
then I started digging into well, how much of this is

(20:26):
actually true? And the more I dug, the more I
found things that they they justdidn't make sense.
And creation evolution was a bigproblem for me because I was a,
a staunch, you know, young earthsix day creationist.
You know, that's what they teachyou in the Baptist Church.
And that's what I taught was taught my whole life.
Evolution was always like almostimmediately dismissed without,

(20:49):
without even giving any evidencefor it.
You know, it's just like, well, the Bible doesn't support it.
And so there's no way it's true.So when I started learning about
the science behind it too, I waslike, oh, this actually makes a
lot more sense. But that program ring was so
embedded in my head that I was like, wait, but how?
You know, but wait, how? And there was always an answer

(21:10):
to that, but wait, how? Which I thought was really
fascinating. If I look back on my life, I the
most rotten part, the bit that Imakes the most rises, most anger
in me is when I think back in myvery early education, I was too
young to be able to question andeverything was taught to me at
school because I was away at boarding school from a very

(21:31):
young age by missionary teachersall telling me this is what is
and it's aligns with the Bible and denial of evolution and
support of creationism was absolutely a part of that.
I'm mostly over it now, but certainly in the early days
after my deconversion, I was very, very angry about that

(21:56):
stage of my life because this isthe losing faith is very much a
loss. You very definitely go through a
grieving process because it's anentire part of your identity
that has died and fallen away, and you have to deal with the
consequence of that. Part of the consequence of that
is looking back over your life and going could I have fixed

(22:18):
this sooner? Were there warning signs sooner?
And for me to It was especially problematic for me because of
those early years in my life where I was absolutely
indoctrinated, where I without question, accepted what was told
to me by adults who should have known better.
And it's really, really hard dealing with the anger that you

(22:38):
feel towards those people and the shame of you accepting all
of those beliefs. And I had to keep reminding
myself I was in single digit years of age.
I can't blame anybody. Yeah, I I can't take this on
myself. I need to be kinder to myself
and that was a lot of processingto go through.
Did you have anything similar tothat yourself?

(23:01):
Yeah. I mean, my level of
indoctrination was sounds like just as severe as yours.
Like I was a, you know, my, my parents got religion kind of
early. And I think it was partially as
a result of, you know, them getting pregnant with me before
they were married. And they were like, shit, this
is a sin. They were both raised Catholic.
And then. So I think there was some kind

(23:23):
of some guilt and shame right from the onset for them.
Yeah. I never had a chance to
critically think about any of these things because obviously
when you're, you know, Christians like to use the term
age of accountability related tothe idea of like when a kids old
enough to make a decision for themselves and they put that age
somewhere around, you know, 10 or 12 or something like that.

(23:45):
But really, if you think about it like if you're living in your
parents house and you're relyingon them for food and shelter and
clothing and support, you can't really make a decision that is
about eternity outside of what they're teaching you without it
having grave consequences. You know, I know some kids, you

(24:05):
know, that rebelled against their parents in other ways, not
necessarily religion, and they got kicked out of their house.
You know, So I could easily see in my tradition, if I, at 10
years old, decided to start questioning my faith, it would
have been immediately shut down.There would have been punishment
and all the kind of stuff. And I could see it could have
led to something more drastic like, hey, get out, you know,

(24:27):
and go live somewhere else. So, but I, but I don't think,
you know, looking at how my parents are, I don't think they
would have done that, but they would have been very upset and
tried to figure out some way to bring me back in.
And, you know, with that mode ofparenting, it would have
probably been a more aggressive style of coercion back into, you

(24:47):
know, believing. So I, I never really challenged
it or, or thought about it. And then when I did look back at
it later, I realized that same thing like, oh man, I, I didn't
have the ability to even critically think at all.
I wasn't given that opportunity to to critically think outside
of the spectrum of what Christianity is.

(25:09):
There was plenty of times I heard the terms critical
thinking in church or in I went to Christian School and
Christian college. They're always talking about
critically thinking and being like a Berean, like Paul said,
digging into the Scriptures and understanding what it said.
But it was always from that circular support structure where
you're getting your support fromwithin the thing that's already

(25:30):
being supported. It was a very circular reasoning
process. There was never any, oh, we'll
look at the outside corroboration of such and such
story from the Bible or such andstuff idea that was never really
presented. And it wasn't until I started
looking at things externally that I realized, oh, there's not
really a lot of support for thisstuff.

(25:51):
And that that happened kind of way later.
Like even after I kind of D converted, I started digging
into the Bible itself with Bart Ehrman, who's a New Testament
scholar who D converted not because of the Bible, but he
continues to dig into the Bible and point out all these things.
And I found that really fascinating as a scholar type
person. I don't consider myself a

(26:12):
scholar because I'm not that smart.
But like, not at least not on Bart Ehrman's level.
You know, he's got multiple PhDsand stuff.
Yeah, yeah, he's a genius. But like when he started
pointing out these things, I would be like, oh, man, I
remember being taught that exactthing that you said.
And then how they would just skip over, oh, you know, why
these gospels don't harmonize orwhy there's two different

(26:33):
creation stories or why there's two different birth of Jesus
stories or, you know, all that kind of stuff.
And then when you started to seethe scholarly explanation for
it, you were like, oh, they justwanted you to accept it.
You know, they didn't want you to actually know what was behind
it. They just wanted you to believe
it. And once you get past that
point, then it starts to really 'cause some cracks, you know?

(26:57):
Yes, it does. It absolutely does.
One of the moments for me, although again this was a a
creeping realisation, was my questioning coincided with me
having a young child at home andagain to plug my back catalogue.
I had a fabulous conversation. Andrew and I had a fabulous

(27:17):
conversation with John Steingard, the ex lead singer of
the Hawk Nelson band. And just after he came out as no
longer believing, he did a roundof interviews on various
podcasts and I managed to blag him for still Unbelief or we had
a fabulous conversation. But he, he talks about the
problem of evil as part of beingvery instrumental in it.

(27:39):
And I know Christians have got answers to the problem of evil.
Christian, if you're listening to this, your answers to the
problem of evil don't go far enough.
They are not good enough to overcome it.
Please pay attention to that fact, right.
So he but he talks about that. He talks about his experience in
Africa and seeing all of these people in really difficult,

(28:00):
horrible situations. And then, as Christians do, best
to have a small but ultimately ineffectual effort to try to
make some lives a little bit less shitty.
And I think you will. God could just fix all of this.
And he says his experience of becoming a parent made him
realise that this God that wouldthat would doom some of his

(28:24):
creation who he allegedly loves like a parent loves their
children to an horrific end times torture.
But he could never do that to his own child.
And I went through a similar creeping realisation where as my
own parent, you know, you asked me the simple question, is there
anything that my child could do that would separate them from my
love? That would I Is there anything

(28:46):
my child could do that would cause me to lock my child in the
basement away me and not see me again?
No. Right.
No. There isn't.
And this realization that me as an imperfect human would not
reject my child. There is nothing my child could
do that would not want me to hugmy child and to do my best to

(29:08):
help make life better for my child.
I would absolutely do everythingI possibly could, and yet God
would simply reject and banish me for daring to say, Are you
there God? Right, Yeah.
And, and it's funny because whenyou hear it explained like that,
I, I, I can still hear the like Christian apologetic response to
that when it's just always like,well, he sent Jesus.

(29:31):
But. That doesn't it doesn't hold a
lot of water. Like that doesn't make any sense
because for one, the vast majority of the population
doesn't know anything about who Jesus was or whatever The
historical like data about Jesusis sketchy at best, as if he for
one even existed as a human being and for two was God.

(29:52):
I mean, they were arguing about if Jesus was God in the early
church like thousands of years ago, like and there was whole
sex and battles of between the different like realms of
Christianity about well, was Jesus God or was he half God?
Was he man and God? You know, and if they, if they
didn't have it figured it out, have it figured out 152 hundred,
300 years after Jesus supposedlywalked the planet, why in the

(30:15):
hell would you think you have itfigured out now 3000 years
later? Like, and so the, yeah, the
problem of evil caused me some problems too, because I was like
if. And on top of that was the the
Epicurean paradox. Like if God is all knowing and
all loving and all powerful, he can't be all three of those

(30:36):
things because if he knew that we were going to fall and did
nothing about it, well, he can'tbe all loving if he couldn't do
anything about it, He's not all powerful.
And if he did know and then chose to do nothing, well, then
he's just an asshole, you know, And so like people will say,
well, if you found out today that God was real, would you

(30:56):
believe? And I, I am like, I don't really
know that I could accept or, youknow, want to believe in a God
that that treats his creation the way he does, you know, and
that would be a different thing.Like you're accepting the fact
that there's a God. OK, I would probably accept the
fact that there's a God, but I would deal with the
consequences, you know, because that's not the kind of person I

(31:17):
would want to like, live my lifefor or, you know, I wouldn't
treat my own kids that way. And, you know, my own kids can
they drive me insane sometimes? But yeah, like you said, I
wouldn't lock them in the basement for all of eternity,
you know, like no matter what they did, you know, and and I'm
pretty damn flawed. Like, you know, I fuck up a lot,
you know, and I wouldn't do that.

(31:37):
Like, so how could someone who claims to be all loving as a
primary characteristic do that to to people simply because they
don't believe in them or worse, they haven't even heard of them,
You know, so that that doesn't seem very loving to me because
because certain people like won the geographical lottery and
were born in a place where, oh, I could hear about Jesus, but

(32:00):
there's millions of people that were born somewhere where
they're going to hear about Buddha, they're going to hear
about Allah or they're going to hear about some other or no God
at all. And there seem to be a lot of
them are doing just fine. You know, they still have a base
of morality. They're not they're not doing
things that are heinous and disgusting, you know, and

(32:21):
somehow are they able to do thatwithout God, Which is another
problem for me was the whole idea of having morality only be
based on your religion. And I'll we had Bart Campolo on
our podcast, I think, and season1, I think, and he's a famous
son of a preacher himself and then deconverted actually wrote
the foreword to our book. So that's a quick plus.

(32:41):
I am going to try and reach out to him to see if I can have a
conversation. Oh, he's he's fantastic.
But he he was talking about, no,I forgot where I was going with
this story. He was talking about the
geographical lottery and like, if you didn't luck out to be
born in a place where God of theBible was the one that you were

(33:02):
taught, well, then you're screwed, which that doesn't
make. It just doesn't make any sense,
you know? And Rachel Held Evans talks
about that a lot in her book too.
Like I happen to be born in the Bible Belt in the South, and
that's how I landed in the rightversion of Christianity.
Like that's just really lucky. Good for me, you know, But what
about the other people that weren't, you know?
Yes, yes, exactly. And on that subject of, you

(33:25):
know, if you you convinced so toGod existed, would you would you
turn back to Christianity? Would you still would you love
that God back or even worship that God?
I've got several answers to that.
You know, you've got to do more than just convince me that the
God is real. I mean, that's a pretty big
hurdle for you to get over for starters.
But you got to do more than justconvince me that that God exists

(33:47):
and that your preferred version of God exists.
You've got to convince me that God is a good God, because I
have a problem with that God being a good God.
And then on top of that, you've got to convince me that
worshipping a being is actually a moral thing to do, because I
actually think that worshipping anything is an immoral act
anyway. So you're going to get me back

(34:08):
over that hurdle at all. There's a reason why every part
of fiction that we've got the bad guy is the one that demands
absolute, unquestioning loyalty.There's a reason why it's Donald
Trump who is the one who is demanding of unparalleled,
unquestioned loyalty. It's always the shitty people.
There's a reason why Hitler demanded unparalleled loyalty.

(34:32):
It's always the shitty people that demand worship and loyalty.
Right. Yeah, again, it goes back to
that character of God thing like, and it's funny because
again, I think back to my Christian days and you hear
about, you know, the wonder of what God is and how good he is
and how loving he is. And then but then the

(34:52):
explanations that they used to support that are usually the
most non loving things possible.You know, like God loved you so
much that for one, he sent his own kid to earth to die.
Yep. OK, that, that as a Christian,
that made perfect sense to me asthe ultimate sacrifice, right?
But now looking at it, I'm going, what, what kind of shitty

(35:14):
person does that? Like I would never do that to my
own kid. Now, if a person, you know, they
will say, well, he voluntarily did it, blah, blah, blah.
There's obviously no documentation to prove that
Jesus voluntarily, you know, left heaven to come down and
become a Jewish Carpenter and they get nailed to a cross 33
years later. There's there's no proof of
that. You know, there's plenty of

(35:36):
stories in human history where people have voluntarily
sacrificed for someone that theyloved or for their country or
for some ideal. And sometimes that ideal is
wrong. Those 9/11 hijackers sacrificed
their lives for what they believed in.
Does that make them loving and correct?
Probably not. It just means that they were

(35:57):
dedicated highly to something that they believed in.
It doesn't. Just because you're highly
dedicated to something doesn't mean that you're right or that
what you're or that what you're dedicated to is factually
correct. And I think that's something
that out being outside of Christianity, you start to learn

(36:17):
we had, I've never heard of the concept of epistemology, really
like the idea of like, how do weknow things are true?
And we had Anthony Mont Mont. I can't remember his last.
Name Monte Gusto Montegusto something.
That I want to say mono Leone, but that's another guy.
But Anthony Anthony, Anthony Magna Bosco, that's it.

(36:38):
And he has a YouTube channel called St.
Epistemology where he would justgo into streets, usually on
colleges and he would just engage people in conversation,
not with the idea of convincing them to not believe in God, but
to help them unpack the idea of,well, how and why do you believe
what you believe? And what would it take for you
not to believe that if there if there was anything.

(37:00):
And I find those interviews werefascinating.
I didn't find them till I was after, you know, you know, after
I had really deconverted. But I found them fascinating
because I was like, man, I wish I would have ran into this guy,
you know, when I was 12 or 13 years old somewhere in college.
Because I would have been like, I mean, I probably would have
argued with them just like a lotof the people on the show.

(37:20):
But maybe it would have planted something in there to say, oh,
because if you take that principle of how you know
anything is true and apply it tothings outside of religion, you
realize that the test for faith doesn't work for anything else
that like it. It takes something simple.
Yesterday I installed a a bidet on my toilet.

(37:44):
OK Yeah, it's great, Great fun. My in laws had one.
We were down there over the summer and I was like, oh, this
is fun. The kids liked it.
It's great. You know, whatever.
OK, there is a point to this. Story.
Yeah, Rule of one. Yes, get the temperature right,
But there's a point to this story that has to do with this.
But, you know, there's a clear set of instructions that I

(38:04):
followed to install this bidet. It was very simple.
Now, if I decided that do I believe these instructions and
or, you know, or am I going to install this thing based on
faith or am I going to do it based on what the actual
instructions say? There's no other area of a
person's life where they do things based on faith.
You do almost everything based on data and facts.

(38:29):
And you know something, You know, if you're buying a house,
you're going to do the research about the neighborhood where
you're going to the schools, youknow, then you're going to do
the financial research. Can I afford it?
What's the interest rate like? You do all of this factual
collection before you make a decision.
And if you don't do that, a lot of times that decision sometimes

(38:50):
goes wrong. Even if you do do it with all
the facts, sometimes it goes wrong.
So it makes it makes sense to make your decisions based on
data and based on research and based on evidence.
I think it was Anthony that was talking about the difference
between evidence and proof. A lot of people say there's no
proof for this, there's no prooffor that.

(39:11):
And they're right 'cause there'svery things that have actual
proof. There's a lot of things that
have a mountain of evidence to support it, like evolution.
A mountain of evidence, you know, they say, well, it doesn't
make it true. OK, but I've got a mountain of
evidence that would suggest thatthis is true.
And you have a mountain of nothing that you want me to
believe is true. And that's, I don't know which

(39:34):
one makes more sense. And I don't remember who told me
the idea of like applying that test of faith to other aspects
of life. You just wouldn't do it, you
know, and if if it doesn't work in every aspect of your life,
then why would you have it be the primary thing that you base
in this case, your soul and eternity on, if that even
exists, You know, which again, what's the evidence say about

(39:56):
that? Like, what is the evidence for
the afterlife? You know, what is the evidence
for the soul? Like apply this to every aspect
of your life. And then you start to realize,
oh, there is, there are ways to know things.
And then there's ways to understand and have having to be
OK with, I don't know this. And that is a real hard thing

(40:16):
for, you know, a lot of fundamentalists to do because
everything we did was black and white, you know, So the idea of
being OK with, you know, I don'tknow how that works, but it
does. And I'm sure there's someone
smarter than me that eventually is going to figure it out, you
know, and, and I'm OK with that,you know, and that maybe that
maybe somebody would consider that faith.

(40:37):
But to me, that's not faith. That's just saying we haven't
figured. We haven't got the evidence for
it yet, you know, and that's different.
Right. Do you ever get told you're just
as much a man of faith as a Christian is?
I, I haven't been directly told that, you know, I, I think some,
I have engaged some people who say, oh, well, atheism is just

(40:58):
as much of A religion as Christianity is.
And it's the same, it's the sameidea of like, well, you, you
have to have faith to believe inevolution or you have to have
faith to be an atheist. And obviously that's ridiculous
because you don't need to have faith.
You have to have no evidence. It's right there in the
definition. Faith is the evidence of things

(41:18):
hoped for. You know the evidence of things.
Not seen. The promise of things not seen,
like it's right there in the definition.
It's baked right in. It's it's a feature, not a bug,
you know, like, you know, it's. So I think by that very nature,
you know, there's a vast chasm between the idea of faith and
evidence and faith and reason because reason.

(41:40):
And it doesn't mean that every logical conclusion is is
correct, which is another thing,you know, people say, well,
science has flaws. Science is always finding out
things that are wrong. And I'm like, yes, science has
admitted that it's wrong many, many times.
How many times has Christianity admitted that it was wrong even
in the face of things that, you know, are really fucking wrong,
like the Southern Baptist Convention covering up sexual

(42:02):
abuse for the past 50 years and having a list of pastors who are
giving kids? Do they ever come out and say
all these people are wrong? All these people are fired?
No, they just covered it up and they moved them to another
church or, or we forgave them because he got, you know, he, he
was, he said sorry. He said sorry because he got
fucking caught. You know, now I'm getting, I'm

(42:23):
getting sweary because that, that pisses me off, you know?
It does. We've got, we've literally going
through that scandal here in theUK within the last six months.
The most senior Christian in theUK, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, resigned his posts because of his relationship with
somebody who was involved in theabuse of young children.

(42:44):
Yeah, it's and it happens. It happens so much.
It's like one of the, it's one of the few places that I put on
my personal social media about like, you know, Christianity
things. Because I, I think it's like we
have a duty on some level to expose people to the hypocrisy
that they, that they're living in.

(43:05):
Because like when you say that it's gay and trans people that
are, have an agenda and they're like trying to ruin the world
with their life. I, I've yet to post an article
about a trans person who has been abusing a kid, you know, or
that's it, not it. They're, they're always a
pastor, they're always a youth minister.
They're always got the Archbishop of Canterbury, for

(43:26):
fuck's sake. Like you're the biggest
religious figure in a country and you're just doing the worst
things possible. It's always these people that
are doing it. And I think there's there's a
point where you need to expose this because the more you expose
it, the more people. And sorry, I'm tangenting a
little, but every time I post one of those articles about

(43:47):
there was one in my own town. It was a pastor who is a youth
pastor here who is abusing kids in the youth group.
I didn't have one Christian and I'm friends with Christian still
on my social media. I didn't have one Christian
comment on those posts and say that's disgusting.
That dude should be fired. I hope he rots in hell.
I hope he goes to jail, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You don't you get crickets from these people.

(44:08):
They're not even willing to condemn things that are
obviously wrong. Like they're like, and that to
me, I don't understand. Like for me, if I see something
that's obviously wrong, I'm gonna say something about it.
You know, whether it's whether it's Christian or if it's an
atheist who says something that's obviously wrong.
I'm not gonna sweep it under therug just because they don't

(44:30):
believe in God. You could still be a shithead
and be an atheist, you know? And you can still be wrong about
things and you can still be a bad person, like, and do bad
things, you know? So I feel like there's a level
of accountability that just is not there.
No it's not. It's so and I do this all the
time here on Still Unbelievable.I put notes and links in the

(44:51):
show notes so below every podcast and I have said multiple
times during shows if what I have just said is wrong.
Here's e-mail address, recentpress@gmail.com.
Send me a note, tell me I'm wrong because being corrected is
a good thing. And on that, yeah.
And on that subject, that was one of the things, and I've

(45:11):
mentioned this multiple times, one of the things that was an
unexpected consequence of me extant Christianity was mentally
I found it easier. I should be able to admit that I
done something wrong while I wasa Christian.
Even things that were unrelated to Christianity, even things
that were inconsequential, even things that the worst that could

(45:34):
happen was people would just would laugh at me.
Admitting that I cocked up and done something wrong was a
genuinely painful thing that I avoided doing, and I even lied
to friends over petty things rather than admit that I'd been
wrong about something or just literally made a mistake.
Right And do you think do you think that comes from the idea

(45:56):
of like everything having moral value when you're a Christian,
even the smallest inconsequential things, you
can't admit you're wrong becauseit has eternal consequences.
Is that was that your experienceof?
Christianity. Yeah.
I think what it was was because admitting I was wrong about
something unrelated or inconsequential opened up the
door to admitting I might be wrong about Christianity.

(46:18):
OK, That I think that was the way that my mind was working on
that one, consciously, subconsciously.
OK, yeah, I was going to say. Yeah, it's me post exit
psychoanalysing myself. I might be wrong, I might be
wrong. I'm not a psychologist, but I
know me and I know mostly how mybrain works, so I think that's

(46:38):
what was going on in my mind. Yeah, well, yeah.
And it's the, the whole idea of like every decision you make has
this huge weight into it. Like the fact one of my huge pet
peeves in Christianity is the idea of the Providence of God.
And that God has this overarching view and plan for

(46:58):
your life and that he cares about you down to the intimate,
you know, details of your life. Which when you're a Christian,
it sounds fantastic, but when you are looking at it from the
outside, it's disgusting becauseyou're like, if if God is
looking at the whole of the universe and he has a plan for
everyone's life and he cares about me getting a parking space

(47:23):
at Target, right? And he's intimately involved in
that. But at the same time, there's a
massive genocide going on in in Gaza.
To me, that's, that's Providencegone wrong.
Like I would rather circle the parking lot for all of eternity
and have God deal with the millions of people being killed

(47:45):
in Palestine and they get his priorities right.
So the idea of like this, his plan and his ways are higher
than our ways. It it has.
That is the thing that just getsme agitated to no end because
I'm like, how could he have a plan?
Like, what's the plan here? Like everything that goes wrong
in a Christian's life, Oh, well,God had a plan for it.

(48:08):
But everything that goes right, God gets the credit for it.
And everything that goes wrong, he doesn't ever get the blame
for it. They just like kind of go around
and say, well, he has some reason for why this happened,
which I understand is a psychological protection
mechanism. You don't want to accept that
shitty things happen and that, you know, maybe they were your
fault or maybe just shit happens.

(48:28):
You know, like that's perfectly fine to accept, you know, but
that that concept of Providence,you know, the overarching plan
for the universe and for humanity, it drives me insane.
I don't know how you feel about.That I, I do, I feel the same.
So I'm going to pose a hypothetical question at you,
Phil, obviously, because I'm God, I know this is a

(48:49):
hypothetical question that will never happen, but I'm going to
ask anyway. So a freak tornado blows through
the area, the residence, suburb,whatever it is in which you
live, and it destroys your houseand, and your neighbour's house
and a couple of other houses. And you come back and you
examine the damage of your house, and near where your front
door used to be, you find an undamaged Bible.

(49:13):
You're saying this is hypothetical?
I just saw an article of this just the other day about the
freaking hurricane that hit North Carolina.
North Carolina. And in towns that I've been in,
actually, I worked at a Christian camp in the place
where that hurricane went through, destroyed this entire
town, and the only thing left standing in this one area was

(49:33):
the cross that was attached to the church.
The cross was there, church completely gone, but the cross
was there. And people are posting, oh look,
look at this awesome sign from God that the cross will stand
forever. Even it's a tragedy, it's not.
Even through hurricane yeah, even through Hurricane Helene,
which people are still devastated from, you know,

(49:54):
entire towns were literally wiped off the map, but God left
a cross standing. Like I I'm sorry.
It's like, what the fuck? Like, like how can you think?
How can you look at a situation like that and then say, well,
here's this tiny, I understand glimmer of hope and all that
stuff. You need something to get
through hard times that all it makes sense psychologically.

(50:17):
But how could you really look atthat situation and say God was
in control of 20 foot crests of water washing away a town and
killing people and you know, like thousands of people died in
there. Like why?
Why would he save the cross and not the people you know, like to
be so like your I mean, your story was probably supposed to

(50:39):
be hypothetical, but I, I literally saw an article just
like that not not that long ago.And it's like the So what?
You're saying Phil is. You don't.
That doesn't convince you. That doesn't switch the needle
for you at all. No, no, If anything, it's
cements the idea that God doesn't isn't for me.
It it cements the idea that there's nobody at the at the

(51:01):
controls, you know, like which Iunderstand is very disconcerting
for me. Sometimes it would be nice to
think, Hey, it'd be nice to knowthat someone was at the
controls, you know, but things happen.
Nature is violent. There are tragedies.
There are people who do bad things.
Like there's so many things thatare happening in the world that

(51:23):
if there was an all powerful, all loving God, he could
instantly fix the first thing hecould do is he could instantly
show us that, hey, I'm real. Not not do it through a book
that's written over 1500 years by 40 different people and has
this full of historical errors. Why would you reveal yourself
that way if you were real? Why like this?

(51:44):
It doesn't make sense. Like it's like, I mean to me,
it's like the Wizard of Oz. You know, I, we just saw Wicked
not too long ago and I saw a lotof interesting theological
parallels in that movie that I was like, oh, man, this is a lot
like, a lot like Christianity. You know, the wizard was an
asshole. You know, he's lording his power
over all of Oz, you know, and hewas just trying to get the power

(52:06):
from a tiny little person that actually had some actual power,
and then he wanted to use it forhis own good.
You know, that to me seems like,what if God was real?
That's what he's doing. So for me, yeah, I don't find
the idea of Providence or sovereignty of God a convincing
argument at all. Like, if anything, it's it's
more damning than convincing like.

(52:28):
Yes, yes, quite to rewind the conversation a little bit, you
talked when we were talking about the the problem of evil.
There's an analogy that I find useful in all of this and this
whole bit about Jesus alleged sacrifice, because I don't know
how you can describe as a sacrifice something that you get

(52:49):
back three days later. But anyway that that's by sight.
But the only time if my child broke their leg, broke both
their legs, was in hospital, wasin genuine pain, was in genuine
agony, was crying out for me to do something about it.
And I had the power to fix thoselegs.

(53:10):
But instead what I did was I broke my own 2 legs and then lay
in bed next to her for the weekend and said here I am
darling, I'm suffering with you.That would not make my daughter
better. That would not make my daughter
feel better. No, I wouldn't think so.
And it might make your daughter think, oh, well, that's really

(53:30):
nice of dad to do that, but it doesn't help me any.
Now you're now you got two people with broken legs and
neither of us can go anywhere. Yeah, you know, And then if you
can magically fix it three days later, well, why don't you do it
three days earlier? Like, to me, that's, you know,
it's not a sacrifice. Like there's a funny meme.
I think it's like it says that God gave up his weekend for your

(53:51):
sins, you know? Yes.
It's like, OK, when you look at it that way, you're like, yeah,
it's not really that big again. He also knew if he was God, he
knew he was gonna resurrect. Yeah.
So you can go through a lot of pain and a lot of stuff if you
know what the outcome is on the other side.
This is true of human beings, too.

(54:14):
Put it in like an athletic context.
You could be really tired playing some giving sport.
But you know, well, this game isonly 60 minutes long or this
quarter is only 15 minutes long.I can push through this thing.
Or if you're running a race, I've only got to get to the
finish line. I can push, you know, So it.
It's not. Yeah, the the grandeur of the
sacrifice isn't really all that grand.

(54:35):
And if you think about it logically again, which isn't
allowed, you know. Yes, yes.
So, but on the subject of that and going through some of the
story that you've you've writtenfor, for this book, for you went
through some of your own trauma as an adult, if I dare say it,

(55:00):
the bit that jumped out on me, and I hope you don't mind
bringing it up with a bit that jumped on me is the failure of
your marriage. I found that quite, quite
emotional to, to read through. I'm a child of divorced parents,
so I know what it was like for my parents to go through a
particularly painful divorce. I know what it's like with the
child. So I can only imagine the how

(55:23):
difficult and shocking and painful that was.
And how did and you talk about the church you're at at the
time, there were people there who were supportive of you did.
What impact did that experience have on your Christianity at the
time? Well, it's interesting.
And I think I kind of tell the story because, I mean, I was

(55:43):
kind of blindsided by the divorce itself.
Like, like I tell them the story.
Like I tried to do marriage God's way, you know, I I was
brought up in purity culture. So I was saved myself for
marriage and so did my wife at the time.
We were together for 12 years and married for 10 or something
like that and came home one day and all her stuff was gone.

(56:03):
So I was like, oh, shit, you know.
And yeah, the faith community that I was part of at that time,
I think if I would have been part of any other faith
community community at that time, I'm not, I'm not really
sure how I would have gotten through it.
So it's a credit to those people.
And at the time, I don't think Iconnected my faith per SE to

(56:25):
what those people did to help me.
Like, to me, and this is kind ofthe nature of this particular
community, it was very much about meeting people's needs and
seeing people where they are andhelping them.
And so to me, it only solidifiedfor me the idea that if you are
a child of God, then this is howyou should treat people.

(56:48):
Now, I grew up in a tradition where if you got divorced, you
were basically shunned, you know, like divorce was preached
against from the pulpit. You know, my, my parents have
been married for, I don't know, 30-40, I think other coming up
on their 50th anniversary. And there's probably times where
I was like, why are you guys together?
Like I don't because divorce wasso anathema to them, you know,

(57:08):
And I think in the book I tell the story that Jerry Falwell,
who's a very famous, you know, preacher over here, where I went
to his college, you know, he used to say from the pulpit, you
know, divorce is never an option.
Murder maybe, but not divorce. And he would say that joking.
He would say that jokingly, ha ha, ha.
But like, I feel like there's probably more Christians that
would kill off their their spouse before they would divorce

(57:30):
because of the stigma of divorce, you know, So I, I was
kind of, you know, for lack of abetter term, I was blessed, you
know, to be in a faith communitythat did not view that as a
stigmatic thing. I did receive a lot of stigma
from my Christian family and I still feel that stigma today,
even though I'm now, you know, I'm remarried 8 years and have

(57:52):
kids and all that kind of stuff.But I still feel like on
somewhat level that divorce was the beginning of like the black
sheep status, you know, in the family.
But it it really, it's interesting because all the
things I tell a story in the book about several things that
happened through the course of my Christian journey that you
would think would have made me go, Hey, God, fuck you.

(58:15):
Like I don't believe if you if you're there, you're really not
doing a great job. But I never blamed it on God, I
never blamed it on the system. I always just was like, well,
that's people. Or in the case of the marriage,
it was like, well, you know, it happens that, you know.
And I, I think that being in that faith community, which I
credit my D conversion actually a lot to that faith community

(58:37):
because they gave me the permission to ask a lot of
questions. And those questions LED for me
to D conversion. But to other people, it leads to
a deepening of their faith. And kudos to them if that's what
it does, as long as they're not hurting people or whatever.
But to me, it, it the divorce and the how that all went, it
didn't cause me to question my faith.
If anything, it helped me see that like, OK, if someone says

(59:01):
that they're a believer, this ishow they should treat people.
So, yeah, the divorce didn't have any impact on me walking
away from Christianity, which I don't know if that's good or
bad. Like, I mean, I think I was.
So I mean, I was so deeply indoctrinated even as I
progressed out there was, it wasa pretty hard stop when I got to

(59:24):
the point where I was like, oh, I can't believe in God anymore
because I was really clinging tothat as long as I possibly
could, you know, so. Are there any children from that
marriage? No, we did not have any kids.
It was, it was honestly a very amicable divorce.
You know, it was painful, obviously, but you know, we
didn't have any kids. We kind of still remain

(59:46):
friendly. Like it's interesting because in
a divorce usually the people pick sides in this divorce, like
her whole family pic was on my side, which is kind of weird for
her, but you know, it's all comearound, but I'm still in
contact. So with some of her family, you
know, every once in a while they'll message me about
something or whatever. And actually she she herself

(01:00:06):
actually messaged me not too long about the podcast.
It was like, hey, I found the podcast, I've been listening to
it. It's really good.
I'm like, OK, cool, interesting,you know, so.
She's to the Christian. I, I don't think so.
I don't, I've never seen her. I mean, again, I don't
communicate with her regularly, but she lives in Germany now and
she's in some kind of relationship.

(01:00:26):
She may be remarried, I'm not sure.
But I don't know what her faith status was.
But I do know that she's commented on things that I've
commented on with things that are more in line with not being
a Christian anymore. Or if if she's some still some
kind of Christian, it's certainly not the type of
Christian that we were before when we were married.
So. I'm going to be a little bit

(01:00:48):
cheeky because this is a segue to the experience I had in
Christianity. You were both obviously sinning
because you didn't have any children.
Oh, correct. You know, of course, you know,
and that was actually, it's funny you say that because when
we first got married, there was two other couples that we were
really good friends with in the Calvary Chapel church that we
went to and none of us had kids.And we used to all hang out

(01:01:10):
together and talk about how we were the no kid club.
And we used to kind of make fun of all the other parents that
were our age that had kids and couldn't go out and do anything
and all that kind of stuff. And but for me, that was
actually a subjugation of what Iwanted.
And even when we got when we first got married, she said,
well, I don't know that I ever want to have kids.

(01:01:30):
And I was like, oh, OK, you know, I was, we were young and I
was like, OK, you know, whatever.
Thinking that at some point she's going to turn around this
idea of wanting to have a familybecause one, the Christian thing
of like, well, you can't be married and not have kids.
I mean, that's ridiculous. And for two, I just thought,
well, we're young and, you know,maybe we'll get there.
Well, she never did get there. She has no kids.
I don't think she literally knewherself well enough at that

(01:01:53):
time, you know, that she didn't want to have kids.
And I did not know myself well enough to say, oh, put on the
brakes. This is not a relationship that
you should pursue because this is not going to lead you to, you
know, because there's emotional stuff and infatuation and all
that kind of stuff. Plus, you know, when you are in
your 20s or whatever and you haven't had sex yet, you're

(01:02:15):
like, you know. I need to.
I need. To get married because I need to
get laid, you know? So there's that factor too.
And that tends to, you know, maybe blind your decision making
process. Yeah, purity culture is a lot to
answer for. Yeah, purity culture is probably
the, what I think one of the most destructive parts of
religion and Christianity and it.
Forces people to get married waytoo young.

(01:02:36):
Often people who shouldn't get married just because they want
some titties. Yeah, I mean, that's, it's a
very real thing and people don't, they don't know about it.
They they think, oh, we're doingit.
We're doing it God's way. Purity, the idea of staying pure
until marriage sounds good on some level, you know, but the
reality of how human biology works, it doesn't make sense.

(01:02:59):
You know, there's compatibility things that are, they're
physical, they're not spiritual like, you know, they're.
So that's a whole nother can of worms, you know, but and that's,
and that's another, that's another topic I get pretty fired
up about too, because when I think about like the amount of
experience, not just, Oh, I missed out on having sex as a

(01:03:20):
young person, that's not so muchabout, but amount the way I
viewed myself and the way I viewed women and the way I
viewed sexuality was so damaged by that concept that that's
something that really pisses me off when I think about it.
And it it's part of the reason that, and it's something that
still sticks in there when I seecertain things that purity

(01:03:41):
culture light clicks on. You know, I've got a 14 year old
daughter and she'll come downstairs wearing something and
I have to turn off the purity culture light even still, you
know, to say, OK, why am I reacting to that outfit or
whatever? And, and what does it say?
What message is it sending to her about herself?
You know, if I jump down her throat about what she's wearing

(01:04:03):
or whatever, you know, So yeah, there there's a whole another
can of worms that especially forguys in purity culture,
obviously purity culture extremely damaging to women, you
know, but there's aspects of purity culture for men that are
damaging as well. And I like that that's coming

(01:04:23):
out a little bit as well. There's men speaking out and
talk about it and, and it gives you a level of empathy to
understand what women were goingthrough and girls from from the
youngest of ages, like what they're being taught about
themselves and subsequently whatwe were being taught about
ourselves, you know, in relationto how we interact with them.

(01:04:46):
Some of which is the cause of a lot of this sexual abuse and
stuff. When you're taught as a guy that
women are sub to you that their property and that they're owed
when you're married, they owe you sex and all this kind of
stuff, that's going to fuck up your view about how you view
people, you know. So yeah, again, big sidebar

(01:05:06):
that's, you know, maybe a whole another.
That's another book, you know, but but yeah, it's very damaging
and something that, you know, it's still lingers with me like
even now it's a almost 50 year old guy like.
Yeah, I there were a few things more terrifying than for a man,
than having a daughter, frankly.I got three of them.

(01:05:30):
So yes, well my daughters were at university, she's 20, she has
a boyfriend. They've been dating for about a
year now. They see a lot of each other.
It is unhelpful for me to spend any time thinking about what
they might get up to. I know what it's like to be a a
red hot blooded 22 year old. It it helps nobody me spending

(01:05:56):
time thinking about that all I should all I should concentrate
on is having a productive, healthy relationship with my
daughter. Right.
Well, and it also goes back to that idea of science and data,
like educating your relationshipwith your daughter at that age
isn't what I mean. Obviously you want to protect
her so she doesn't make bad decisions about something.

(01:06:16):
But your role is to like make sure that she knew knows about
sexuality and health and taking care of herself physically and
emotionally because there's thatin a relationship, there's
emotion involved. So that's, it's where you can
have a, you can have a totally different relationship with an
adult child when you're not viewing them as like some little

(01:06:37):
flower that's gonna get broken, but as a fully functioning human
being, you know, or. Future property of a man.
Or for yeah, or future property of a man.
Yeah. I mean, it's a whole different
can of worms and that outlook. Moratoriums do not, do not
promote that kind of positive. Relationship.
No, of course not. Like, no, So the thing that I
wanted to segue on to, and it was while I was still a

(01:06:59):
Christian, my, my wife and I, orit was mainly me, I for a short
period of time, again, this is when bulletin boards and e-mail
lists were a thing because we didn't have social media at that
point. Facebook wasn't a thing and we
didn't have Internet forums where you could do this thing.
So things were bulletin boards and mail lists, if you're old
enough to know what I mean. Yeah.

(01:07:20):
And I was on 1/3 Culture Kids male list.
And we would chat around around things.
And for some reason the subject of having children came up and
my wife and I were heading towards or around about 10 years
of marriage. We're both involved in the youth
group. And I made some kind of comments

(01:07:41):
about we're childless. I'm OK being childless.
I like being childless. And what childless means is I am
more able to commit to things inthe church that I wouldn't
otherwise be able to be, including the church youth group
and being part of the church youth group and committing
multiple nights a week to the church youth group.
And I like having that freedom to be able to do that.

(01:08:05):
One person, one person on that board said what a lovely
attitude. Everybody else, you are a shitty
person for not having children. Right.
Yeah, that's well. And the pressure to have kids.
Like now I have 4 kids, 2 biological and two from my

(01:08:25):
wife's previous marriage. So I got 4 kids in the house
from ages 6 to 14. Yeah.
There's an aspect where now you have no life that is around your
kids. And for some reason in the
church, that's viewed as like some kind of sainthood, you
know, like it Like, that's your calling, you know, and
especially for the mother you like, that's what they're called

(01:08:46):
to do or whatever. And like, but it's not for
everybody. Like some days I feel like it's
not for me, to be honest. Like I'm like, oh, God, like
this is exhausting. You know, it's yeah.
Like. And so I feel like now there's
definitely a shift. And I don't know how it is in
the UK, but here there's definitely, you know, a shift of
like, people waiting a little bit longer to have kids.

(01:09:06):
And but you do see this more. But you see that more in the
secular world where they're not being pushed at from 18 to get
married and to have a kid by 20.And like, you know, you still
see that in a lot of places. And like, quite frankly, you're
not at 20 years old or 21 years old, you're not equipped to
handle a kid. Like if you have a kid and they

(01:09:27):
turn out good, that is pure luck.
You know, like and you are, you might have been just a very well
built person emotionally to be able to handle that.
But by and large, like you need a level of maturity and your own
and your own marriage and your own relationship before you're
ready to have kids. And there shouldn't be that
pressure to have kids again. It's one of those things.

(01:09:49):
It's a decision between those two people.
It shouldn't be mandated by anyone else.
You know, it'd be the same if the government started
mandating. Well, you better have a kid by
the time you're 25. You know, they're trying to
mandate everything else. I could see them.
You know, it's like going to be The Handmaid's Tale over here in
like, 20 something days, you know?
But. But yeah, like that's.

(01:10:10):
A decision. That's between the family.
Yeah, I've seen the multiplications.
I'd have been a really shitty parent if I'd been a parent in
my 20s, right? I mean, I wasn't perfect.
I'm still not perfect, but I'd have been even less perfect if
I'd been a parent in my 20s. Yeah.
I'm better for it for having waited.
I still had to learn a heck of alot.
Yeah. How long have you been doing

(01:10:30):
Still Unbelievable and how did you get into podcasting?
You know, like. So 5 or 6 years now, I think
we're still unbelievable now. So still unbelievable started as
a book, OK, basically because for those who are familiar,
Justin Briley's unbelievable podcast and that's where the
unbelief war bit comes from. So Justin Briley, UK Christian,

(01:10:53):
he was doing the unbelievable podcast, which started as a
offers a radio show before becoming a podcast here in the
UK. And Justin pitched that as
conversations between Christiansand non Christians and just to
push things along and it became moderately successful.
But it really took off when it became a podcast only Justin

(01:11:14):
started picking up loads and loads of non Christian listeners
to their Asia. I became a very big fan of the
podcast and I have joked on morethan one occasion that it's the
only religious podcast I listened to religiously.
I feel that it has lost a littlebit of its shine in recent
years, but certainly some of theconversations that I had were of

(01:11:36):
good value. And for me, during my
deconstruction and my doubting and my questioning, I found it
extremely useful. And it helped me to formulate
some of my questions. And it really showed me that
thinkers who are atheists, who Ididn't really know how to reach
out to and how to access, it made them available to me.
And it gave me exposure to ideasand answers that I wouldn't have

(01:12:00):
otherwise been able to find. So I'm really thankful for the
service so that gave me. But what it did do was it just
helped cement my exit. It helped pave that road for me
getting out because I just simply didn't engage with the
Christian answers. I found them lacking,
insufficient. And I found that the atheistic
explanations of things, and certainly when scientists came

(01:12:21):
on and did things and they were able to explain and describe
things without need to posit a God, it made so much sense.
So that's where that came on. And then after he'd been doing
that show for 10 years, Justin wrote a book.
Unbelievable. You know why?
After 10 years of talking with atheists, I'm still a Christian.

(01:12:41):
And various people decided to get together.
Various atheists said we should do a counteract to this book.
And this was after Justin announced it, before the book
even came out. And so I jumped on board with
that, wrote a couple of chaptersfor the book and various people
got together. We wrote that book and we put it
out within a year of Justin's original book going out.

(01:13:02):
And you know, we did that self published.
It needs an edit, it needs to reedit, it probably needs an
addition to, there are a couple of mistakes and poor edits that
are in that book. I hold my hand up at being
partly responsible at very leastfor for some of those errors and
those certainly need correcting.And but I would love to get an
addition to pushed out with a few extra chapters and get the

(01:13:24):
edits put through on that. So that book came out and then
the year after that, David and to Andrew, who'd been
instrumental in that book, decided to kick up a podcast.
So still unbelievable. The podcast came out from that
and then a couple of others off the back of that Andrew and I
were involved in very briefly, asideshow called Ask an Atheist.

(01:13:47):
Anything but that. We tried that and we struggled
with that for about a year or soand decided that that really did
have any miles on it and we preferred doing the Still
unbelievable content. So Andrew and I have been and
David and Andrew originally started on Still Unbelief.
Well, I didn't join on doing episodes on Still Unbelief for
for about from till about a yearafter it had launched, I think.

(01:14:09):
And then Andrew and I've basically been running Still
Unbelievable for about the past five years now and I love it.
I didn't anticipate that I'll get involved with this.
It really wasn't on my radar to do.
I thought I enjoyed writing a couple of chapters for the book
and get involved in that and butone of them thought that this
would be a good outlook for me. I don't know why so, but I found

(01:14:36):
that I enjoyed it. I found that actually talking to
a microphone, believing that people who actually listened to
me was something that that stroked what little ego I had
left. But I also found that joking
apart, I have also found that it's exposed me to to other
voices, voices I didn't think I would, I would have.
I've been able, I've reached outto people and had really

(01:14:58):
interesting conversations. I reached out to Joshua Somedus,
for example, who wrote the book about the genealogical Adam and
Eve, and I had a really good conversation with him.
I've reached out to a couple of other Christians.
I reached out to to really SteveChalk, who's a very popular
Christian here in the UK and hada really pleasant conversation.
I reached out to John Steingard,who I mentioned earlier in this

(01:15:20):
conversation and had a really good conversation.
But I've also landed on the radar of a publisher and he's
fed me a couple of the interviews that I've had over
the last two years. And I've got another interesting
interview with a British academic and historian coming up
in a couple of months. So I'm really enjoying that
aspect of this. And then as part of all that,

(01:15:41):
I'm also experimenting with my own commentary on other
Christian content where I've gota bit spiky and a little bit
swearing. I'm wondering where to go with
that because I actually find I get much more out of the
conversations. I get much more out of talking
with people who've written the book who are intelligent and
having a really good conversation, asking them

(01:16:03):
questions about their book, about their content.
I really enjoy that aspect of Still Unbelievable.
I really enjoy those conversations that I have.
I'm really thankful for the publishers that have been in
touch with me to have those conversations.
And if you're having to be listening to this and you're an
author or a publisher, and do you think there's an atheist who
might want to talk to some of your the content that you put
out, get in touch. It will be great to have those

(01:16:25):
conversations, whether it's a Christian or, well, not a
Christian. I do enjoy because I haven't had
a conversation with any other Christians who's written
something where it's descended into anything even remotely
unpleasant. It's always been a really
useful, really interesting, you know, genuinely challenging
conversation. But then going back to the whole
spiky bit, one of the episodes that I've done was one

(01:16:47):
critiquing John Lennox interviewon and he's a, he's a Christian
apologist apologist who I reallydislike.
I'll be straight up and honest about that.
I probably don't even want to bother having a conversation
with him. I genuinely don't like him.
I consider him dishonest and I think he straw man's atheist
positions terribly in a lot of the commentary that he does.

(01:17:09):
But he did appear on a friend's podcast and I really didn't
enjoy listening to that interview.
They were very kind to him and they were very pleasant to him,
but he put out a lot of nonsenseand I felt that that particular
episode needed addressing. So with with my friend's
permission, I took that episode and I went through it and I went
and fact checked every comment of John A and I called the

(01:17:31):
episode When Belief Dies Kills John Lennox.
And I've had feedback on that episode from one particular
individual, but others as well. But one particular interview
said that he listened to that episode while he was going
through his deconversion deconstruction, and he found
that my critiquing all of those and pointing out where John
Lewis was making mistakes and misstating and misquoting, and

(01:17:53):
that helped him to rationalize his thoughts and helped him out
of Christianity. So I continue to do that kind of
Christian commentary in my spiky, sarcastic way because it
has actually borne some fruit. I am thinking about how I do it.
Some people appreciate a bit of spikiness.
My own journey out of Christianity was because of I

(01:18:14):
had to endure some really unpleasant spikiness.
So sometimes that works, but also sometimes we do need to be
a little bit rational and thoughtful.
So I try to do a balance of bothtypes on Still Unbelievable, but
Still unbelievable isn't going anywhere.
Even though Andrew has managed to have himself in the business
proposition where he's not as available as he used to be, I

(01:18:35):
will have him back there. He's a promise, but still
unbelievable. He's not going to go away.
It's still going to continue andit's going to continue into
2025. Awesome.
Yeah. And that's cool.
I think it's interesting like the I mean, because obviously
kind of the atheist content universe has like kind of
exploded I think over the last few years.
And I think most of us that are somewhat new, like I can still

(01:18:58):
consider myself kind of new 3 or4 years into it.
And I was just on Stacy Graughn's podcast last week or
two weeks ago and she's even newer to The thing is, she's
kind of gotten a lot quicker notoriety and a big, a big
following. And she said, I never knew this
content was out here, you know, and I think that's what what is

(01:19:19):
useful about is like, it's not so much about like, you know,
getting viewers and listeners and you know, all the like
getting famous or anything. It's more about like realizing
that there's people that are benefiting from the stuff that
we're talking about. And, and we're talking about
different stuff in different ways.
Like so you might have an interview with a Christian

(01:19:40):
person and you can have a reasoned or maybe a not so
reasoned conversation sometimes.And that's valuable that people
see, oh, these two can interact and you can still respect each
other. Yes, atheist, especially atheist
YouTube is is really, really popular.
So I've only in this part in thepast year started putting the

(01:20:03):
the episodes of the back catalogue of still unbelievable
up onto YouTube. There's obviously.
Little, no, no video there at all.
But I'm fine. It's getting listens.
I I just didn't realise. I'd have done it much sooner if
I'd realised that people consumethese things.
So on YouTube and maybe YouTube is a platform that everybody
goes through for this because the the listen rate on YouTube

(01:20:24):
is climbing faster than it ever did when I was doing just audio
podcasts. Yeah.
So YouTube is obviously a way togo.
So I've obviously got a new audience at YouTube and there's
people saying, oh, I've only just found this.
I've been going around for six years.
Yeah, I put I started putting our stuff on there I think about
a year ago because the platform that I used to record, they have

(01:20:46):
a way that like basically automatically will upload it.
So I I created a channel for flaw theology as well, just to
kind of put it up there again. It's it's just the audio.
I keep wanting to use some of the video content, but I don't
ever have time to edit and put stuff up there.
But it's something that I would like to do in the future because
it doesn't seem to be a good Ave. to to connect with people

(01:21:06):
so. Yeah, So it'll be interesting to
hear. So just talking technically then
about podcasts a little bit then, because I put a lot of
effort into editing the audio I don't like.
And ours repeats, stumbles and Igo through the audio and take on
out because out of two hours of audio, I can easily trim 10
minutes just by cutting unnecessary stuff.

(01:21:27):
And I consider that a service tothe listeners.
You know, they're getting, they're getting the same
quality, just in the shorter chunk.
Perfect. Yeah, we try to do the same
thing, but I'm notorious for saying so a lot.
So you'll be editing a bunch of So's out of mine probably.
And as Susie actually was doing a lot of our editing and we
discovered there's some featuresin the editing software where it

(01:21:50):
would actually take out the blank space.
Like so if there's a pause, it would just take out the silence
automatically. I'm like, wish we'd have found
this a couple years ago, but yeah, it's pretty cool.
The thought of doing that on video editing is a little bit
painful, and it would also make watching it quite difficult I
imagine, so I haven't got in my headspace what I can do with

(01:22:12):
that. Yeah, that's part of our issue
too. I'd be like, I thought about
doing like a, you know, a Patreon type thing where here
you get the raw unedited, you know, video or something like
that. But maybe people don't want that
too, because then it's like who wants to hear someone say I'm an
odds? So $50.
Yes, yes, quite. I'm certainly not going to pay
for it. No right.
And sometimes it can be difficult.
Sometimes I can literally spend 8 hours editing 15 minutes out

(01:22:36):
of two hour, 3 hour audio and all I'm doing is deleting UNS
AHS and, and and repeat some maybe I'm doing a little bit of
clean up where where somebody isthat started saying something,
change their mind, say that again.
So I spend a little time cleaning it all up.
So it comes. And I think that doing that to
the audio helps your guests as well as it does your audience.
So I think it's, it's worth doing, but it is a lot of

(01:22:59):
effort. It is a lot of commitment, but
it means that I can't put the audio out straight away, which
I'm fine with. I schedule it up and I schedule
it up for approximately every two to three weeks, although I I
central on a Sunday, but so it'seither two to three weeks on the
Sunday afternoon the audio will go up and there we go.
And it doesn't matter when I record it, I'll just add it to

(01:23:21):
the back of the schedule. Yeah.
That's kind of what we were trying to do because our first
year we had difficulty like kindof getting into a routine of
when we were going to record. And so then we decided for the
second year, OK, we're gonna, we're gonna release every two
weeks, then we're gonna record on this night.
And we actually held through it all the way all the way through
the year. So that was good.
So it does help to do that. But you know, it's hard with

(01:23:42):
with life and kids and activities.
And so the unsung hurt, you know, work that it takes to do a
podcast, it, it sounds easy, I guess when it comes on the air,
but there's a lot of behind the scenes stuff that has to happen,
so. Yeah, some, some people I know
they record and they just Chuck it straight up and they don't do
anything with it. I'd rather do a pass through

(01:24:04):
Internet. I think it is a it is a service.
My my audience does not owe me anything.
And if I want them, I have to dosomething for them.
Yeah, agreed. I mean, I have an appreciation
for the I've, I haven't done actually, I did my first live
show a couple weeks ago and it was a little nerve racking

(01:24:25):
because I'm like, oh, I'm used to being able to edit out if I
say something stupid, I'm like, well, this is just going to be
live. Or if you have, I had a
technical issue. So, you know, on a on a live 1,
you can't really work around that.
But, you know, so yeah, Well, well.
Absolutely. So anything else that you want
to talk about or ask about the the book or our stories or

(01:24:46):
anything, because we are here toplug the book.
Apostates, Voices of Deconversion, available on
Amazon and other online resellers.
You can buy it as an e-book, as an audio book, and I believe
it's a print book as well. I'm told we're going to receive
our own copies of print books. I'm I'm looking forward to that
actually. Yeah, me too.
I actually, I asked Sarah about that.

(01:25:08):
I was like, are we going to be able to get a copy of the book
or should we just buy it? And she's like, oh, let me reach
out to the publisher. So she, she, she got us all
copies of it, which is pretty cool.
So looking forward to getting seeing it in print.
That'll be cool. Yeah, excellent.
So. But so anything else you wanted
to bring up about the whole experience of the writing or
putting our stories down or anything?

(01:25:30):
No, I would just say, I mean, I hope people will go out and get
the book like you mentioned all the formats that it's in.
I think the audio book comes outFebruary the 25th, I think.
I know Sarah has posted some some clips of her recording some
of the stories. I think people will really be be
shocked. I guess shocked is not really
weird, but they'll really be challenged by the stories.

(01:25:52):
Because I think if you read the stories with an open mind and
you realize that every one of usand all the thousands and
millions of people who have gotten to this point of
deconversion have done it not glibly.
We have like agonized. I mean, some of us have gone to
our Bibles, we've gone to God, we've prayed, we've done all
these things to try to get answers.

(01:26:14):
And this is where we've landed. And if you really want to
understand how people get to this point and not look for a
reason to argue with them and try to convince them that they
made a wrong decision or to try to reconvert them, then it the
book will be useful in that course.
It doesn't mean you have to deconvert yourself.
That's not the point of the book, you know?
Read the book so you can understand your fellow person

(01:26:36):
that maybe you have been friendswith for 25 years and you
thought that the only thing you had in common was your faith.
And you can realize that this person's still a person, you
know, they're not any different just because they believe
something different as a person.So I, I, I hope people will
enjoy that aspect of the book. And so I appreciate you having
me on here. And we're going to kind of put

(01:26:57):
this on the flaw theology podcast as well.
So if you're a flaw theology podcast listener, this will be
this will be coming out in the next few weeks or so from when
we recorded it. And since we're on kind of a
limbo schedule ourselves, we'll,we'll get it out whenever we can
get it out and get it edited up and out to you guys.
And so I just want to thank you,Matt, for having me on and

(01:27:19):
giving me so much time. And it's been fun, No?
Problem always a pleasure. We should do this again.
Phil, if you're listening to this, it's not still
unbelievable links to Phil's content over at the Flawed
theology, flawed Theology podcasts and the link to his his
website, which will have links to all of the social media so
you can find floor theology on are down in the show notes.

(01:27:41):
I don't know how much time you've got, Phil, but I usually
like to end with a question about favorite Bible characters.
Have you got capacity for that, or do I need to wave goodbye to
you? Yeah, let me do it real quick
because my wife is waiting with the kids upstairs and we got
four or five hockey games today.We got to get ready for her.
So. But yeah, it's a, it's a funny
question because I don't think now, I don't think I have a
favorite Bible character becauseI don't really give the Bible

(01:28:03):
too much thought except for likeas a work of fiction or a work
of literature. So I don't know that I have a
favorite character. But I, I do know, like, even as
a believer, the characters that I appreciated the most were the
violent ones. They were always the ones that
were kind of challenging the status quo, which I guess maybe

(01:28:24):
should have been something that I should have keened in on
earlier, you know, But like in the Old Testament, like the
female judges that were doing things or the, the, I think
there was one named Deborah, youknow, that like nailed a guy's
head to the ground. You know, that's a pretty
aggressive move, you know, but she was making a statement
about, you know, the God that she served.

(01:28:44):
And there's several other peoplekind of throughout the Bible
that like we're speaking truth to power.
And I think that's something that always resonated with me,
even as a Christian. And then as a, as a post
Christian or an ex Christian, I realized that there's a
responsibility, I think I have to speak truth to power, not
only in the religious realm, youknow, because that's kind of why

(01:29:09):
I do the accountability posts about sexual abuse in the
church, but also to other structures of that are
systemically oppressing people, like structures around racism
and poverty and and human trafficking and things like
that. So I think those type of
characters are something that has always resonated with me.

(01:29:29):
And now I kind of, I don't know,I don't view the Bible
characters as anything other than fictional characters, but I
think some of them are interesting still on some level,
but I don't give them any like eternal weight.
Now it's like, OK, well, let's look at this guy.
And and also I find it interesting to look at the
characters like David, who is viewed as such a, you know, a

(01:29:51):
deified person in the Bible and realize like how much of A
slimeball he was or Paul, you know, like this guy's like,
here's the he's the basis of allof Christianity.
But really he was just a misogynist, like asshole kind
of. So.
So, yeah, I don't know if that really answers like what what
people would normally answer in that situation, but you know,

(01:30:13):
yeah, that's probably what I would say.
It's funny to say because I was trying to think about the same
for myself and I don't know if I've got a character who is who
are classed as my favorite. I know who I would probably draw
a spotlight on if I was forced into a cord, but I wouldn't call
that person my favorite character by any stretch.

(01:30:34):
But going back to what you just said, as a Christian, I think
Joshua was probably the one I admired the most.
Again, we're talking violent OldTestament character.
What is it about little boys andviolence?
Yeah, well, you're brought up inthat, you know, thing too, where
like you're serving a God who has the power to destroy

(01:30:54):
everybody. So that's kind of like what your
ultimate goal is like. And people who destroy, well,
those are the people you idolize.
I guess so. OK, excellent.
Thank you again so much for all the best for your podcast.
I do listen to your podcast. So listeners, if you've not
heard of Phil's podcast, not listen to it, head over there
give for listener. I enjoy the contents that he

(01:31:15):
puts out. I enjoy listening to, I enjoy
intellectually engaging with it while I listen to it.
Thank you, Phil, for the work that you and Susie do.
I do appreciate it. All right, well, thanks again.
Yeah. And for flawed theology
listeners, same same goes if youhaven't listened to still
unbelievable. There's a a nice big catalog
there that you can go back and go back into history and catch

(01:31:36):
up on and and keep following Matt's work.
So appreciate it for letting me have him come on with you Matt
and and talk with you so. Or the best see you at the most
party for the book. Cheers.
All right. See ya.
Bye. You have been listening to a
podcast from Reason Press. Do you have any thoughts on what

(01:31:59):
you've just heard? Do you have a topic that you
would like us to cover? Please send all feedback to
reasonpress@gmail.com. You might even appear on an
episode. Our theme music was written for
us by Holly. To hear more of her music, see
the links in our show notes.

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Episode 131 - Apostate - Phil from Flawed Theology

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 131 - Apostate - Phil from Flawed Theology