Graceful Atheist Podcast

My guest today is Jennifer Michael Hecht. Jennifer is a poet, an author, an award winning academic and an intellectual historian. She has written numerous books from a secular perspective. I asked Jennifer to come on the show to discuss her book Doubt: A History and its profound effect on me post-deconversion. She is one of my intellectual heroes. It is hard to express how much this book has influenced other secular writers and thinkers. This book has strongly influenced my other two favorite books Greg Epstein's Good Without God and Katherine Ozment's Grace Without God. Both of which quote Doubt throughout. Jennifer proved to be as profound a thinker as her reputation makes her out to be. It was my privilege to attempt to keep up with her in this interview. I am indebted to Jennifer for coining the term "graceful life philosophy." My concept of Secular Grace is an attempt to live a graceful life philosophy. "Great believers and great doubters seem like opposites, but they are more similar to each other than to the mass of relatively disinterested or acquiescent men and women. This is because they are both awake to the fact that we live between two divergent realities: On one side, there is a world in our heads— and in our lives, so long as we are not contradicted by death and disaster— and that is a world of reason and plans, love, and purpose. On the other side, there is the world beyond our human life—an equally real world in which there is no sign of caring or value, planning or judgment, love, or joy. We live in a meaning-rupture because we are human and the universe is not." -- Jennifer Michael Hecht Links: Jennifer Michael Hecht's website: http://www.jennifermichaelhecht.com/ Books: Doubt: A History https://www.amazon.com/Doubt-Doubters-Innovation-Jefferson-Dickinson/dp/0060097957/ The Happiness Myth https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Myth-Expose-Jennifer-Hecht-ebook/dp/B000PDZFTS/ Stay: A history of suicide and the philosophies against it https://www.amazon.com/Stay-History-Suicide-Philosophies-Against/dp/0300186088/ Review: My review of Doubt: A History https://gracefulatheist.wordpress.com/2017/01/16/review-doubt-a-history/ Recommendation: My story on the Deconversion Therapy Podcast https://deconversiontherapypodcast.com/2019/05/09/15-remembering-the-humor-of-rachel-held-evans/ Attribution: "Waves" track written and produced by Makaih Beats http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Makaih_Beats Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

This week Arline guest hosts interviewing Bryan the Ex-Apologist. Bryan grew up in a deeply fundamentalist church. Not only did they believe they were the True Church, they were taught they they were the Only Church.
Bryan spent his teen and young adult years preaching, evangelizing and heatedly debating others. He was convinced he had all the right answers and other people needed those right answers. He sees his younger self as a “jerk for Jesus.”
Realizing he was wrong about a single theological issue, he began to wonder, How do I know what’s essential and what’s not? If there was absolute truth in the world, Bryan was determined to find it. He has come a long way from the fundamentalism of his youth, and you can find his current counter-apologetics research and writing at The Ex-Apologist blog.
Links
The Ex-Apologist blog
https://theexapologist.com/
Email
[email protected]
Interact
For quotes, recommendations and more see the full episode show notes
https://gracefulatheist.com/2023/01/29/bryan-ex-apologist/
Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/deconversion
Support the podcast on Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/gracefulatheist
Secular Grace
https://gracefulatheist.com/2016/10/21/secular-grace/
Deconversion
https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/
Deconstruction
https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/#deconstruction/
Attribution
"Waves" track written and produced by Makaih Beats
https://makaihbeats.net/

My guest today is Brady Hardin. Brady is the co-host and creator of the Life After Podcast. Brady’s story of deconstruction is a painful one. He dedicated his life to ministry at 14. He discovered he was gay, was honest about it and committed to never acting on it. He got married to a woman. He was doing everything “right” everything that was expected of him. My biggest “sin” was to believe that the Holy Spirit actually changes people from the inside out and makes them more like God. Then he got divorced (you have to listen to understand why), was kicked out of ministry, lost his best friend and had his son taken away. He described himself as “God’s only forgotten son.” This was where his deconstruction started. Why am I the only one trying to do the Holy Spirit’s work for the Holy Spirit? He needs to do something. The ball is in his court. Today Brady is an openly gay man, a humanist and a deconstruction super star. You can find him on the Life After podcast, on Twitter and Facebook helping others through the deconstruction and deconversion process. Brady is dedicated to raising awareness of Spiritual Abuse, Religious Trauma, and Indoctrination. I can gaslight myself to be even more indoctrinated or I can take a second, get my head above water and realize: my logic has been drowning this whole time because I have been putting conclusions before evidence and trying to shove these narratives into real life instead of observing what is actually there and working off of that. In the episode, Brady breaks down how narratives affect our lives. The Evangelical narrative is restrictive and repressive. But we can choose our narratives: a narrative of freedom, self-expression and inspiration. [Narratives are] what we are using now, with honesty, as atheists and with responsibility to tell our own stories. Links Twitter: https://twitter.com/BradyHardin Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thelifeafterorg/ Community group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thelifeafter/ The Life After Podcast https://www.thelifeafter.org/ Interact Send in a voice message to the podcast: https://anchor.fm/gracefulatheist/message Attribution "Waves" track written and produced by Makaih Beats http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Makaih_Beats Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

This week’s guest is Daniel. Daniel is a social scientist with a master’s degree in psychology. He grew up in the United Church of Canada, but church wasn’t a huge part of his life until high school. He then went to bible college and worked in ministry. He tried to experience God like others were, but it just wouldn’t happen. He took on the “Office of Skeptic,” for himself. He hoped it would both help his faith and the church. He could articulate questions and doubts that others couldn’t. Were these miraculous stories true? Was God really even there? If so, what the hell was he doing? Unfortunately, this only kept him in the church longer than he needed. By 2020, he’d been an agnostic theist for years and was finally seeing the harm done in North America by White Christianity. Now Daniel writes and speaks, sharing his knowledge with those struggling with addictions and other mental health needs. He no longer looks to the supernatural for miracles but knows how much human connection is the true healer. Links Here’s How Religion Imprints Us — Even When We Walk Away https://www.templeton.org/news/heres-how-religion-imprints-us-even-when-we-walk-away Religious Identity and Morality: Evidence for Religious Residue and Decay in Moral Foundations https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0146167220970814 Interact For quotes, recommendations and more see the full episode show notes https://gracefulatheist.com/2022/10/09/daniel-office-of-the-skeptic/ Join the Deconversion Anonymous Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/deconversionSecular Grace https://gracefulatheist.com/2016/10/21/secular-grace/Deconversion https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/Deconstruction https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/#deconstruction/ Attribution "Waves" track written and produced by Makaih Beats https://makaihbeats.net/

This week’s show is a Deconversion Anonymous episode. My guest this week is Sarah. Sarah is a co-author of the book “Still Unbelievable!” She is a regular poster on the Unbelievable? discussion boards. Sarah has a unique blend of down to earth perspective and an intellectual rigor. Sarah grew up a Christian. She was a part of the Shepherding Movement which is now considered a cult. She has moved from the Anglican church, to (British) Baptist, and then to Charismatic Vineyard churches. Until she began to research her own faith. What she found was an utter lack of evidence and a confusing morass of conflicting information. She describes her search for validation as “going forensic” as she studied apologetics, philosophy, cosmology and evolution. Ultimately, she could not keep god on “life support” and she is now an agnostic. Links Reason Press and the Still Unbelievable! book https://reasonpress.net/ “Sophie’s” Story https://reasonpress.net/SU1E/Sophie1 https://reasonpress.net/SU1E/Sophie2 Skeptics and Seekers https://skepticsandseekers.squarespace.com/blog/x-tians-part-one-what-christians-who-stay-need-to-know-about-the-christians-who-dont Justin Brierley’s Unbelievable? podcast https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable Interact Deconversion https://gracefulatheist.wordpress.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/Secular Grace https://gracefulatheist.wordpress.com/2016/10/21/secular-grace/Send in a voice message to the podcast: https://anchor.fm/gracefulatheist/message Support the podcast here. Attribution "Waves" track written and produced by Makaih Beats http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Makaih_Beats Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/