[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back to the Bridge Boys podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: Today I'm interviewing an atheist who also happens to love religion.
[SPEAKER_02]: Jared Smith is one of my favorite YouTube creators right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's a one man metal band and the mind behind the hit series atheist church audit.
[SPEAKER_04]: Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to another thrilling episode of Atheists!
[SPEAKER_02]: Mother dang church audit!
[SPEAKER_02]: Where you visit churches and religious communities, usually without any prior research or digging deep into the church itself, so we can experience it like a newcomer.
[SPEAKER_02]: On his channel, he's covered groups like... The Latter Day Saints, LBS, and the United House of Prayer for All People of the Church on the Rock of the Apostolic Faith.
[SPEAKER_02]: And even...
[SPEAKER_02]: The refreshing part is, his brand isn't the stereotypical, terminally online atheist, who's looking to win every single theological debate known to man, or making two and a half hour mega-rance online about reconfort being the banana man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Behold, the atheist's nightmare.
[SPEAKER_01]: You'll find a maker of the banana, or mighty goddess made it with a non-slip surface.
[SPEAKER_01]: The goddess placed a tab at the top.
[SPEAKER_01]: when you pull the tab, the contents don't screw it in your face.
[SPEAKER_02]: Although, if you did make a video like that, I would probably watch it because knowing him, it would be super entertaining.
[SPEAKER_02]: The reality is, is that Jared doesn't avoid using Starkey humor that's often hilarious when he's talking about some of these organizations.
[SPEAKER_04]: Is this the Summer Olympics in Moscow under the Soviet Union in the nineteen eighty?
[SPEAKER_04]: Because I sure do see a lot of f***ing white flags.
[SPEAKER_02]: But one of the things I really appreciate about this content is that he also tries to remind people that the individuals in the pew are human beings.
[SPEAKER_02]: Even when we disagree with them, even when they're part of an organization that's incredibly harmful or toxic, these are real people with real reasons for where they are in their life.
[SPEAKER_02]: In this conversation, we dive into the religious upbringing that Jared had, how religion still impacts us to this day,
[SPEAKER_02]: And we talk about the ethics of being a content creator in this space and what it looks like to bring empathy to the person in the pew while also not accidentally doing too much positive PR for the organization that might be quite harmful.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had a really good time with this conversation and I know you will as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: Before we get into it though, if you are someone who appreciates the work on the show and you will get early access to certain episodes, some exclusive behind the scenes content and a bunch more,
[SPEAKER_02]: Be sure to support the show over at patreon.com slash preachboys and get me just a little bit closer to that private jet.
[SPEAKER_02]: He made that airplane so cheap for me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I couldn't help but buy it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Alright, let's go ahead and get in my conversation with Jared Smith.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, Jared, welcome to the show.
[SPEAKER_02]: Eric, thanks so much for having me, man.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is not an exaggeration to say you're probably, you're in my top list of YouTube creators at the moment.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I'm really excited at this conversation, and I'm hoping it drives a lot of my audience over to your channel, because I think what you're doing is really refreshing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think first and foremost, if you were to elevator pitch your channel to someone who's listening, and you were to say, hey, I'm Jared, and this is what I do on my channel.
[SPEAKER_02]: What would that pitch be?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, my normal elevator pitch, as I say, hey, I'm Jared, and I'm an atheist, and I regularly go and investigate religious movements, sex, cults, and I do so usually trying to go in a little blind because I want to feel what it feels like to walk in as a novice rather than as an expert with a whole bunch of biases and preconceived notions.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I'm coming out of that angle and then I tend to normally not have quite as much, um, spite for religion as, uh, as a lot of my fellow atheists, um, and so I feel like it creates a funky angle at times.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's, it's interesting like how much atheist YouTube to put in quotes, it has changed.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think in the last couple of years, and I think you're seeing a lot more of that bridge building happening, whether it's someone like Alex O'Connor, who's also up there in the top list of people that I'm watching all the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Especially if I have a long drive like a three hour app, I'm like, let's go, let's listen to this.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's not this like, I think when you go back to like the four horsemen of like the new eighth, it's like,
[SPEAKER_02]: debate and fight and like almost it was off putting to me as a former fundamentalist because it was like oh just that but the opposite direction like there's not a lot of conversation happening here and I think now there's a swell of like let's discuss this and see if we have any common ground why do you think that shift has happened and oh maybe you'd know from your own perspective why but why do you think we're seeing that hit a couple different creators I think maybe the
[SPEAKER_06]: trajectory of society as the same as the individual, you know, you get really entrenched in a really stern and intense ideology and then people slingshot or the yo-yo, you know, the pendulum swings too far to the other side.
[SPEAKER_06]: And then it takes a while for people to kind of mellow out and come to a balance.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think that that's probably what happened with
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, kind of the Christian movement in America for many, many years, and it went unchecked, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: And so when the atheists came on the scene, it was sort of like, that was kind of a natural and maybe even a needed equal and equivalent reaction to, you know, fundamentalist Islam, the Catholic church abuse scandal.
[SPEAKER_06]: All of those things seemed like,
[SPEAKER_06]: It was going to be too difficult to have a soft spoken charitable response to it.
[SPEAKER_06]: It seemed like it was bound to explode and it exploded with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Hawkins.
[SPEAKER_03]: That is a logical progression that goes from believing in faith, having faith that your God tells you to do something and doing terrible deeds.
[SPEAKER_03]: like suicide bombing, like flying planes into into skyscrapers.
[SPEAKER_03]: The vast majority of people of faith don't do such terrible things.
[SPEAKER_03]: But those people who do terrible things do it believing that they are righteous and good, and they think that they're doing the will of their gods.
[SPEAKER_03]: So they are, they're not evil.
[SPEAKER_03]: People are actually good people by their own lights.
[SPEAKER_03]: They believe they're doing good things.
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's why religion is evil because it can make you do evil things, believing that they are good.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's funny because
[SPEAKER_06]: when I was younger, those guys were like the antichrists to me, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, they were just the absolute scum of the earth and they were the devils.
[SPEAKER_06]: And now, and even after I de-converted, I still held a lot of like vestidial spite for them.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it's kind of taken years to kind of re-contextualize them in their political movement that was happening at the time, like contextualize them in the the milieu of their day.
[SPEAKER_06]: And now looking back, it's like, no, I kind of get it.
[SPEAKER_06]: And that's still not my flavor, but I can appreciate it a lot more, kind of seeing the full scope of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, what's like any minority voice that gets a chance at a microphone kind of starts with this very what feels loud, but I think it also feels loud in contrast to the silence that preceded it, you know, it's like it's funny again growing up in a like a fundamentalist context where it's like you have this persecution narrative about your movement that we're constantly being pushed down with this and sure our movement in mind specifically was very small, but like if you just go theest versus atheist like
[SPEAKER_02]: Theus is the majority position up until very recently.
[SPEAKER_02]: Never had a president that's not one.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like when you see a Richard Hawkins get up and talk about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're hearing the exasperation of shouting into the void.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure at times.
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, any disagreements I might have about specifics, I understand that feeling.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've certainly felt it doing this show.
[SPEAKER_02]: going back to the beginning for you really quick, just to give some context, you grew up in the more charismatic kind of stripe of Christianity.
[SPEAKER_02]: Your dad was a psychiatrist.
[SPEAKER_02]: Did that lead to interesting dinner table conversations or were those two things kind of siloed?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think they were siloed.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's so funny because people, whenever I tell them that my dad's a psychiatrist,
[SPEAKER_06]: they're they're quick to ask like oh man like was he you know constantly psycho analyzing you you know was it like being at the dinner table with Freud and um I know he was just a really good dad like it was it was awesome um he's he's the salt of the earth man he's the best the best person around um I think that kind of his ethos is maybe per and parcel of a larger
[SPEAKER_06]: hype of Christian that I see.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I mean, you know, he, uh, not to drag him and all this too much, but, you know, he, he's a full blown doctor, you know, went through medical school, got a degree in in biology.
[SPEAKER_06]: Um, and in spite of that, he, he's still a young earth creationist as far as I know.
[SPEAKER_06]: And
[SPEAKER_06]: His temperament is not one that has really any patience for like the pseudoscience, B.S.
[SPEAKER_06]: of the Kent Hovens and Kent Hounds of the world.
[SPEAKER_06]: He kind of rolls his eyes at that.
[SPEAKER_06]: But for him, he's just kind of content with a little bit of cognitive dissonance there.
[SPEAKER_06]: It feels like, you know, like, well, you know, I understand how evolution works.
[SPEAKER_06]: I've written thesis papers on it, but you know, the Bible says that it's six thousand years old and I'm just gonna trust in the mystery of that.
[SPEAKER_06]: And yeah, there's a part of that that I respect them and am okay with, you know, when when theologians appeal to mystery, it's usually a good thing.
[SPEAKER_06]: If I could make such a broad and sweeping statement.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, do you find you respect that more or less center in different ways than the people who
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, are the apologists who do try like I and I think there's some goofy examples and I'm not gonna do the typical like let me interview an atheist and then ask about like the Recome for banana man you know and now and it's like I'm not gonna go down that route but like you look at people like Wesley Huff who is just on Jorogan and he's making the rounds on all these different podcasts as a historian I do think it is historical question you have a guy who objectively lived
[SPEAKER_02]: he objectively died and then individuals close to his inner circle claimed that they see him not dead right again this is highly unusual activity highly unusual right and is a very smart guy like Alex O'Connor's kind of picked apart his videos and gone back and forth site I've watched probably more of West Huff on Alex O'Connor's channel than I have of West Huff on West Huff's channel but you see a guy like that and like he's clearly not doing the
[SPEAKER_02]: pure oh it's all mystery it's like no historically can go to this he can go to that and like he sounds very intelligent with a lot of his analysis and he's very well researched do you put him in a different category than someone who just goes like God's a big God there's a mystery there like do you have more or less respect for one type of viewing it than the other like how do you approach that yeah I mean I think at a certain point it comes down to the individual level
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, because it's all varying degrees of, like, how much expertise does this person actually have?
[SPEAKER_06]: And I mean, West Huff, you know, he's in the middle of getting his PhD, like, he's going to have things to contribute to that field, whether he's in a polyester not.
[SPEAKER_09]: So there's that.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_09]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_09]: I think,
[SPEAKER_09]: A lot of it comes down to me.
[SPEAKER_06]: Maybe it comes down to tone a lot of time.
[SPEAKER_06]: It comes down to tone.
[SPEAKER_06]: It comes down to vibe.
[SPEAKER_06]: It comes down to how assertive and confident they are, how often they are to over stretch their case.
[SPEAKER_06]: But to me at a certain point, so long as they're not being
[SPEAKER_06]: flagrantly dishonest.
[SPEAKER_06]: It almost seems like I'm willing to make a concession.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, yeah, you're allowed to have your belief and try to defend it rationally.
[SPEAKER_06]: Because to some extent, I see that it is kind of a psychological need.
[SPEAKER_06]: And when somebody is fabricating evidence, when somebody is lying, or when somebody is using it to bludgeon people over the head with a really crappy dogma or ideology,
[SPEAKER_06]: That's when I take issue with it, whether it's diving into kind of fringe territory of biblical scholarship.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, there's other players in that field as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to pull on that thread really quick.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm curious, like, as you're navigating, the things that you are in your content where you're visiting churches, which I want to dive deep into in a minute, or you're reading through religious texts or books, inspired by religious texts.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you, like, do you have criteria that you go through your mind to kind of weigh out whether or not someone believes what they're saying versus is just saying what they need to say?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because like I rest with is all the time where I look at like there's the guys where it's clear, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like a sex scandal where it's like the guy clearly a mass power to himself to have access to this clear is day.
[SPEAKER_02]: and then you have the guys that like went to those guys Bible colleges and kind of do the same stuff but you don't know if it's because they're a true believer in what they were taught or if they're doing the same thing and it can be hard to know like how much credibility to give them out of the gate versus like attack and pick apart on something they're saying.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's damn hard and that's probably the thing I lose the most sleepover is you know just toiling over that.
[SPEAKER_09]: Do you remember
[SPEAKER_09]: What's his name?
[SPEAKER_09]: Bob Tilton.
[SPEAKER_09]: No, Robert Tilton.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, he wrote, um, was he the other wrote the late great, or no, that's how that's how Lindsay.
[SPEAKER_06]: How Lindsay?
[SPEAKER_06]: Um, no, Robert Tilton was the farting preacher.
[SPEAKER_06]: If you've seen like those YouTube videos, um, okay, no, but I now have something to go down a rabbit hole about he was he was the most notorious, um, televangelist of the eighties I believe.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was the prosperity.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like sending this and I'll send you this and yeah, I've seen a lot of clips this guy.
[SPEAKER_02]: He never heard the last guy.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's the farting preacher.
[SPEAKER_06]: But there was a there was a famous viral YouTube video of him, you know, acting like, you know, he's super earnest and praying in tongues and then somebody just went in and added a whole bunch of like fart sound effects at the perfect moment and beautiful.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's classic YouTube poop learning how to release
[SPEAKER_06]: your faith.
[SPEAKER_06]: He got taken down brutally.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, like there was a, you know, NBC or dayline piece of all about him, just ripping him to shreds.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, it was so clear that this man was a grifter.
[SPEAKER_06]: He's still active.
[SPEAKER_06]: I watched his livestream the other day.
[SPEAKER_06]: He's got like five hundred subscribers and he is still begging for money on the internet.
[SPEAKER_06]: He is still begging people to send him checks for thousands of dollars.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm not ashamed of the prosperity gospel of Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_05]: Today I'm going to be talking to you from the Word of God about the rich life that's in Christ, the joy of the Lord.
[SPEAKER_06]: How is it possible that somebody who has been so thoroughly debunked is just on this hamster wheel incapable of doing anything else?
[SPEAKER_06]: And the thing that's so unnerving about it to me is
[SPEAKER_06]: the rapinist with which he reaches towards scripture and it doesn't seem like
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, if you were just the, you know, a God hating atheist and you wanted to like make a grift about this, you could memorize the top, you know, five relevant passages about prosperity and just repeat them over and over again.
[SPEAKER_06]: But it seems like he knows it.
[SPEAKER_06]: It seems like he's read the text a lot.
[SPEAKER_06]: And that's maybe one of the scarier things to me is not to imagine that he's a grifter, but to imagine that he actually believes it.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: That's terrifying to me.
[SPEAKER_06]: Right.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think the thing that's scariest to me with all of this.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's not our capacity to deceive, it's our capacity to deceive ourselves.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that conversation with somebody recently who was like, you know, being very critical of me not being a religious person like they claim to be, and I was pointing to some things that don't align with what they claim to believe.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, they kept saying certain things over and over again.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said, the scary thing to me about this conversation is I don't know if you're trying to convince me or convince yourself.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and and that was the thing that I just kept on was like, but do you really believe this because your life doesn't reflect it, maybe that's some fundamentalist bubbling up inside me or is it something where
[SPEAKER_02]: you just want me to believe that you are being consistent with what you think and it's like that trying to nail them down on that was like very disconcerting because it's like I don't know which of these things is true and I don't know how to have a conversation with you until I know that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like because I can address that, I just need to know what side of the field you're kind of playing from.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not a question.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like to leave a statement and then go, here's silence, fill that up with something.
[SPEAKER_02]: Can I get a MN?
[SPEAKER_02]: Please come in.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wait, I'm just going to cut you saying MN to everything I say and just cut all the rest of the responses.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just a super cut of gender.
[SPEAKER_02]: Agreed.
[SPEAKER_06]: If you chop up my vocal samples enough, you can probably get me speaking to tongues.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's fair enough.
[SPEAKER_06]: A little third of a second and command of every single one of my words in this.
[SPEAKER_02]: With how unintelligible I am in some of my points, it's already sounds like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you don't have to worry with it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You ever edit yourself and you're like, dear God, why did I take ten minutes to say?
[SPEAKER_02]: thirty seconds.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, story of my life.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do want to ask this and then I want to get into church audits but I keep having all these little threads and like let's pull on that.
[SPEAKER_02]: One thing that I wrestle with a lot and I've read all the, I haven't read all of them but I've read a good swath of cult books.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've read a lot of the programming stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've read a lot of things about theology and psychology and like I've
[SPEAKER_02]: more well-read than I think the average person on this topic because of the nature of what I do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yet, as much as I understand why people stay in high control groups and how people get swindled by con artists and cult leaders, I often find myself falting on the side of not being sympathetic to people who stay in some of these environments.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he said that's because I noticed as a teenager something was off.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I look at guys that are fifty and go, what the hell?
[SPEAKER_02]: You've had a lot more time to figure this out.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you look at someone who follows someone, you know, like a Kenneth Copeland still, where they follow people who've been exposed time and time again.
[SPEAKER_02]: At what point do you blame the congregant for still attending?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, is there a point at which we go?
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're going to give your mind to this guy, like, that's on you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I don't know how much more to show you here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, how do you rest with that in your mind?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because again, I know the right answer to the equation, but like, sometimes your heart doesn't follow the, like, the, oh, yeah, it makes sense logically why they're there.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I'm just struggling to go like, come on man, like, I can't show you anymore scandals.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't show you anymore evidence of why this is off.
[SPEAKER_06]: My hunch is that the two of you probably need to different things from religion.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so the reason why he hasn't snapped out of a yet is because whatever psychological need that keeps him in it hasn't been resolved somewhere else.
[SPEAKER_06]: He hasn't found it somewhere else.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so, you know, I've been meditating a lot recently on like,
[SPEAKER_06]: Why do people join a high control group?
[SPEAKER_06]: Why do people become spiritual to begin with?
[SPEAKER_06]: And it's not just one thing.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's not just, oh, I want my life to have meaning.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's not just, oh, I want there to be existential beauty in the universe.
[SPEAKER_06]: Sometimes it's that you want to feel important.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a powerful, you want reliability and consistency and structure.
[SPEAKER_06]: Um, sometimes it's just, you can't imagine things being otherwise.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so, I think a huge part of what I do is trying to figure out like, no, what is, you know, cut through the bullshit.
[SPEAKER_06]: What is really the reason why you're here to begin with, you know, if you were to,
[SPEAKER_06]: If you were to wake up tomorrow and realize it was all bullshit, what would you do in the wake of that?
[SPEAKER_06]: And people's answers are really telling.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think that's trying to better understand that.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think that that's my only hope and getting some of these people out of those cults, those denominations.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's not so much, you know, pointing out the flaws and like why it's bullshit because most people know that it's bullshit.
[SPEAKER_06]: Maybe not the people in it, but, you know, from the outside it's like, guys, guys, obviously this guy is not a prophet.
[SPEAKER_06]: Obviously, this woman didn't hear the voice of God.
[SPEAKER_06]: Obviously, the set of bullshit texts from, you know, the teen thirties is not scripture.
[SPEAKER_06]: Sorry, not picking on the Mormons.
[SPEAKER_06]: The from the the sixteenth twenties there are not scriptures.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it can be frustrating from the outside.
[SPEAKER_06]: But then you kind of scratch below the surface at the individual level and realize, oh,
[SPEAKER_06]: that this guy needs this to be real.
[SPEAKER_06]: And until you solve for that, you're not going to get anyone out of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: That really connects to something I've been working through myself a lot is, you know, and I already know people are going to comment and say quit talking Eric, this one of those episodes, but it's a conversation.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'll talk.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have my permission to talk.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you don't like it,
[SPEAKER_02]: leave.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't like there's my authoritarian.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, but it ties to somebody and I want to get your take on this, too.
[SPEAKER_02]: One of the things I've wrested with because you were born and raised in religion, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you don't remember a time before at least.
[SPEAKER_06]: I do remember a time before my conversion experience.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'll, you know, preface that and say like, I should have a very categorical night of conversion.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, I was kind of a little, little hellian little shit, twelve year old.
[SPEAKER_06]: And then as a thirteen year old, I was a very different human being.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, there's that, but religion was always in them.
[SPEAKER_02]: The context of it and believing like a theistic home and like that was there from the beginning.
[SPEAKER_02]: And and some curiosity that you take on this because one of the things that I've wrestled with lately is trying to figure out what's me.
[SPEAKER_02]: versus what was programmed into me from before a time I even remember.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so one of the things that you mentioned that's really interesting is what you needed out of religion.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's a different question for people that joined, because people joined for like, oh, I have kids and I want my kids to have a place to go.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so now I'm going to go church and like, it doesn't matter if I don't agree with all the Manisha, like my kid has somewhere to go every Sunday.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, okay, I understand that.
[SPEAKER_02]: For someone who grows up in it, you're told what things you need from religion and so like for myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: So much of it was preparing for battle.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was this very militant, preparing for battle, good versus evil, right versus wrong.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that moment where I got what I was told was going to be coming where it's like you're going to have this moment you have to take a stand for what's right, even if it's not popular.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like for me, I felt that
[SPEAKER_02]: thing when it was like okay the church isn't what it said it was there's a clear right and a clear wrong here like I guess I have to stand up for what's right here and I in a weird way credit the church for putting that type of whatever you want to call it character mindset in me but it was also the very thing that like the people and it weren't really living by so it's like a very weird thing mentally to go like
[SPEAKER_02]: how much of like the Eric that's rallying for justice for survivors comes from the people doing the abuse who were preaching something that was the message was more powerful than the person you know it's like that's the stuff where I go like who's Eric and what is the preaching I heard from the time I was born like do you find yourself going like okay is this Jared or is this like oh man I was raised
[SPEAKER_02]: I was raised in this way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I was raised to think a certain way into dissect things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like, where do you start?
[SPEAKER_02]: Where does religion end?
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, it's a interesting thing to grapple with.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I wanted to throw it out there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if there's nothing there, I'll just skip it and pretend it didn't know.
[SPEAKER_06]: No, no, no.
[SPEAKER_06]: I don't think I was a person before religion.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, like in a very real way, it was like,
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, how much personality do you have as a kid, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: Like what's your personality?
[SPEAKER_06]: Like my entire personality at the age of twelve was dance dance revolution.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, that's a sin.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me tell you something from the fundamentalist perspective.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, don't be doing a pop.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was your first step toward atheism.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll tell you that.
[SPEAKER_06]: This slippery slope.
[SPEAKER_06]: Listening to derude sandstorm and those slippery slope.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got in trouble for listening to weasers.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: So like it's a different different life.
[SPEAKER_06]: Hey man, this.
[SPEAKER_06]: Telling like that, yeah, it'll lead you away from Jesus.
[SPEAKER_09]: No, but it's weird because like, I am entirely, they religious creature.
[SPEAKER_06]: you know, I'm an atheist, but like my entire identity even wrapped up, you know, even as an atheist is still wrapped up in Christianity.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's still wrapped up in the story of, you know, in Christendome and the church and theology and heaven and hell, like that is who I am.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I'm okay with that.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, I think that like, oh, man, if you stripped away all that stuff, like,
[SPEAKER_06]: I don't know, I guess I like art and aesthetics and dark shit, but that kind of shapes the the raw clay of my, you know, my my religious core rather than like existing as its own thing.
[SPEAKER_06]: Right.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, do you like that dark shit because it's like interesting.
[SPEAKER_06]: That was neurological.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know well it but it's also the Bible's got some dark shit you know like like I look at myself and I go like they preach against horror movies but like they created a huge horror fan because all my favorite stories were these old testament like you know we're gonna slaughter hundreds of people maybe I shouldn't say that was my favorite stories
[SPEAKER_02]: But it was, it was like, oh man, it's got stabbed in the intestines and like this dudes, you know, they're taking hundreds of four scans and it's like that's so cool, you know, like he defeated an army with the job owner of an ass like let's go, you know, like I'd love to see a good solid, you know, we've got how many passion of the Christite movies.
[SPEAKER_02]: We need some of the testament, Tarantino style.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we don't have enough four skin movies.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're coming on.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's go ahead.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would be actually.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do what?
[SPEAKER_02]: Have you seen the meme where you say it's, uh, it's, I need my four skins.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the Brad Pitt and Glorious Bastards.
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's, there's a, someone made a meme of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're like if turned teeth out directed like the Old Testament movies.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd be there for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: We can talk more about kickstarting something.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, but anyway, this is a, this is a good segue, uh, not four skins, but being an atheist who loves religion, which is such a part of your brand.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um,
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's wander into the church on it side of things because I have so many feelings when I watch your videos, which is probably a good thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sitting there thinking on so many layers about your content in terms of
[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's well put together.
[SPEAKER_02]: Your editor's amazing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's really well constructed.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's super entertaining, bingeable.
[SPEAKER_02]: But then I also go like, I don't know about this angle to it or like, or I don't know if this part's beneficial.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know this part is, I wish I had thought of XYZ first, you know, like there's all those things that that you think about.
[SPEAKER_02]: First and foremost, like, what prompted you starting out?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you've done a lot of different content.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you go back to your oldest videos on YouTube, like, the church audit side is a little deep down the trail.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what made you go, like, okay, let's try this out.
[SPEAKER_02]: And was it for you or was it like, this is a great segment idea?
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's see what happens.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's really funny.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, the the history of it was like, you know, when I was still a young panic hostile, I started going to other religious places, places of worship because I wanted to like better understand other denominations and other religions so that I could better preach Jesus to them, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, listening is the platform that you you stand on when you want to speak.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so it felt really important to better genuinely listen to these people.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so I went to a mosque when I was nineteen, got invited by a nice Muslim from Damascus.
[SPEAKER_06]: I wasn't invited, but I tried to go to a nation of Islam mosque was politely stood up at the door for some reason.
[SPEAKER_06]: And yeah, then, you know, fast forward several years and I'm de-converted and I don't know, somebody said something to me the other day, like, you know, sometimes it's just fun to poke the ashes and see if anything still burns.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so that's kind of what it feels like and going to a lot of these churches is just like,
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, was it all a fever dream?
[SPEAKER_06]: Did I really believe this stuff?
[SPEAKER_06]: Was I really this passionate zealot?
[SPEAKER_06]: Did any of that actually happen?
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so there's kind of an armchair sociologist in me that like, going and like, you know, really trying to understand and analyze what the hell is going on with religion in America and at large.
[SPEAKER_06]: And just seeing and comparing and contrasting how people are doing it.
[SPEAKER_06]: So originally when I started the series, like I just did a couple of videos on Instagram, like, you know, took to, you know, made stories on Instagram stories and
[SPEAKER_06]: went to a couple of churches and did that.
[SPEAKER_06]: And then I made the first couple of atheist church audits.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I sent one to my best friend.
[SPEAKER_06]: And he's not the type to like, you know, gas me up or anything.
[SPEAKER_06]: But he was just like, oh, I'd watch this.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I just, I knew that it would catch on.
[SPEAKER_06]: It was just kind of like a done deal.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, now we're here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now I thought about when I first showed the show as I could be, and obviously covering scandals and I was like, it would be so great.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no way to do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it's logistically impossible.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I was like, it would be great to have like a kitchen nightmare style show, but for churches where like a Gordon Ramsay character goes, you know, what are you doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is one of these people?
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have a limp wrist.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's something play on the piano.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, really.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the court yet don't have on paint tires.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to go f****** ballistic.
[SPEAKER_04]: Get a grip!
[SPEAKER_00]: Paint tires, what I meant to say.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you have a very nuanced approach, and your goal is really to go into a church blind.
[SPEAKER_02]: You pick a church, you go and blind, and you just report back with what that service was like.
[SPEAKER_02]: First and foremost, let's address that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Why blind?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I'm sure there's plenty of people that send you stuff to go.
[SPEAKER_02]: Dude, you gotta go to XYZ Church because this is this and this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's kind of like the opposite of what you go for.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, how do you pick churches and why do you go and blind for that experience?
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, you know, if I hear through the grapevine that like, hey, something funky is happening at this church, you know, maybe that tips me off to like, hey, you know, good at this one rather than the generic Methodist Church down the street.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I think
[SPEAKER_06]: that it's just so much more interesting to in real time see the cognitive dissonance of somebody going through all the emotions that you feel when it's like
[SPEAKER_06]: I heard this and this and that about this church, but then I went in person and it's like, but these people are so nice.
[SPEAKER_06]: There's no way these people are abusers.
[SPEAKER_06]: There's no way that these people are embezzling funds and hurting children and having to actually grapple with that on the ground, I think is much more interesting.
[SPEAKER_06]: And because my goal isn't to do take downs per se.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I want to experience it as a novice experiences there, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: Because there are people who join cults and high control groups and sex and fringe movements every day.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I kind of want to be able to get into their heads and see like, yeah, what was the appeal?
[SPEAKER_06]: What was the law, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: Because
[SPEAKER_06]: I think that it's super easy for everyone on the internet to be like, we know the punchline.
[SPEAKER_06]: What are you doing?
[SPEAKER_06]: Why are you giving these people the time of day?
[SPEAKER_06]: But it's because the people who convert often, that's their experience.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I want to better understand that and then try to get a little bit more informed.
[SPEAKER_06]: on, you know, the X member stories and all of that and kind of hold them in tension and feel the cognitive dissonance of like, no, surely not these people, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: I think that's harder.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's a good way to get to the Y. Again, it's almost like the Scientology thing where people go, well, that's insane.
[SPEAKER_02]: And how could you do that?
[SPEAKER_02]: And look at this person.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I'm like, well, they're not even allowed to look up Scientology online.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a lot easier when you're reading the stuff that they will never see to go like, oh, I'm making informed decision.
[SPEAKER_02]: which like that's kind of the point, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like you can't really have the informed consent when all the details of the group are not laid out in front of you.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think on a much less serious level, I think when you go to like the local, you know, temple or you go to this local group, it's like, what are they getting on Sunday morning that they're carrying with them through the week?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's a really interesting way to go about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's something like, I personally, with my personality wouldn't have done.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would have gone to Gordon Ramsay and was like, what's going on in here, you know, which is why I never did it because I was like, I don't want to be that guy that just goes and disrupts the service and is a fool.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the part that where I, I sometimes I question what I'm watching or stuff where I'm like, there are, you do such a good job of creating empathy for the individual in the Pew.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes I go.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there a danger of unintentionally doing PR for a generally harmful group that like exactly the point, like you wouldn't notice this on a Sunday morning?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you would go and be like, well, worship was good and the sermons seem normal and but you don't know like, oh six months down the road when you're an intern and you're like, then it goes into whatever weird thing it gets into.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like do you ever panic about that or like think about that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like where does that play into the content side of it?
[SPEAKER_06]: I lose sleep over it.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: Kind of two separate things, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: There's what's happening at the individual congregation that's much harder to detect and get a feel for and then there's
[SPEAKER_06]: the bigger thing, the bigger question of like what's happening structurally with this denomination or this sector that's called that is consistently producing these bad outcomes.
[SPEAKER_06]: So
[SPEAKER_06]: almost certainly I will go to a church eventually.
[SPEAKER_06]: And review it and be like, no, no, middle of the road three out of five stars.
[SPEAKER_06]: And then find out, you know, two months later, like actually like there were several like really high profile abuse cases here by the pastor and I made the mistake of saying, oh, well, he was, you know, smiley and and a nice guy.
[SPEAKER_06]: And then, you know, find out that he wasn't.
[SPEAKER_09]: And
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, it's hard with stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it makes me anxious, but I think that that's kind of speaks to a broader question of like, yeah, how do you identify creditors and then.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, perpetrators of evil, just generally.
[SPEAKER_06]: And that's that's hard.
[SPEAKER_06]: So there's that thing.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I will a thousand percent miss some of those cases.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I will make the wrong judgment call.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I hope that people, you know, be gracious with me.
[SPEAKER_06]: There's that.
[SPEAKER_06]: then there's the other side of it, which is, okay, no, there's a system at play here, which is consistently producing bad results.
[SPEAKER_06]: And sometimes you have bad actors in good systems, and then you have good actors and bad systems.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I'm really interested in getting as granular as possible, because I want to, I want to understand the play by play.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, all right, there was a series of decisions that led up to
[SPEAKER_06]: this kid being abused or, you know, this pastor having an ego, this eyes have not rushed more and sleeping with, you know, twenty of his secretaries, like, how did that happen?
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, like, what were the individual decisions by the clergy, the elders, the deacons, the pastor himself, the parishioners, like, what happened?
[SPEAKER_06]: So there's that.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think I'm also
[SPEAKER_09]: in the instance of like some of these cults that I'm investigating.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's one thing to know on paper like what a cult believes.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's much more difficult to know how they believe it.
[SPEAKER_06]: you know, like with the Jehovah's Witnesses, they believe that the end of the world is going to happen like any day now, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: And there's a lot of Christians who said that same thing, but not in the same way that Jehovah's Witnesses do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like they have, they're the closest I've seen you come to beefing with a religious group.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I feel like the of a major, like what your content is very different, I would say, not different, but much more
[SPEAKER_02]: aggressive in contrast to your other content toward that group.
[SPEAKER_06]: Probably the biggest criticism of my channel and also the most valid criticism is that I'm too soft on some of these groups.
[SPEAKER_06]: But that's kind of the point that's the modus operandi that I'm willing to take is because I want to go through the process of, you know, being like, well, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like I've heard some crap, but I don't know.
[SPEAKER_06]: Is it overblown?
[SPEAKER_06]: Is it, you know, salty ex-members?
[SPEAKER_06]: And then slowly coming to realize, oh, no, there's a problem here.
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, no, this is really bad.
[SPEAKER_06]: And especially doing this across several different groups all at once, that process can take months, maybe years for me to kind of come around and feel like I've, you know, got a holistic understanding of this group.
[SPEAKER_06]: So when I go back and watch my like initial JW content,
[SPEAKER_06]: I cringe, I win, because I'm like, I'm such a pansy.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, I'm not calling it like I see it.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, I'm doing a good job of humanizing the people in the fuse, but like, it's an evil death cult, not the people, but like the system itself.
[SPEAKER_06]: It is so malicious and volatile, and I hate it.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I want people to see that journey
[SPEAKER_06]: I think it's important.
[SPEAKER_02]: The example you just gave of like, it's the perfect example of the good people in a bad system.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's the biggest struggle doing my show is like, I think some people go to like, in my context, the independent fundamental about this movement is a cult.
[SPEAKER_02]: And everybody in that movement is this, this, this, and this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And my gut response is just like, first of all, if you're listening to my show, you were likely in that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you were one of them, and you weren't those things, and you ultimately left.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the fact that you're calling it a cult implies that there are innocent people inside of it who have been manipulated brain loss course, controlled whatever word you want to use to describe that,
[SPEAKER_02]: So why are they catching strays for what the organization is doing?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like what's that accomplished?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think like when I watch you
[SPEAKER_02]: when I want you talk about, like, say, the joves witnesses, like, I walk away going, he's considering the person who is standing there next to a board with the Bible saying, I want to talk about the Bible with you, who are the sweetest, many times are some of the sweetest, most sincere people, the same way I bet so many more of the missionaries who are the sweetest, most sincere people who are attached to this denomination that's like, oh, like, I don't know what to do with this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think seeing
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't really matter how I even perceive it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I think if that person watched your content, they wouldn't go, hey, he hates me this nineteen year old missionary writing my bike around Utah, like he's really pissed at the things that I'm maybe not seeing or at something he perceives as a threat to me that maybe I don't agree with yet that is, you know, I don't think is bad.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like,
[SPEAKER_02]: To me, that's where I think you really beautifully are in this like you're faulty on the side of empathy and compassion versus the side of like fire bombing the entire region that you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's kind of how I look at it.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I mean, so much of my modus operandi is based in how, you know, I came out of Christianity.
[SPEAKER_06]: because I look at the new atheists who I used to have a lot of spite for.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I would say that they added several years to my Christianity because I could always point to them as the detractors and, you know, they were a straw man of what the belief looked like.
[SPEAKER_06]: And the persecution kind of reaffirmed you're on the right path.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so,
[SPEAKER_06]: I feel like when I'm able to see the good and people and maybe even flatter them a little too much at times, I have about habit of doing that admittedly.
[SPEAKER_06]: I feel like it gives me a little bit more rapport when I'm able to slowly come around to seeing the BS because if you come in with a heavy hand, you know, people turn it off.
[SPEAKER_06]: But when people see the, okay, he's he's not trying to just, you know, come in with the bulldozer.
[SPEAKER_06]: But then those questions start to
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, they start to bubble to the surface and they start to, you know, gain shape and that can take weeks or months in the same way that a person's deconstruction does, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, it's a lot of little questions that kind of gain traction over time.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I just think that's more interesting.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, it's more interesting and it's more difficult than being like, I read the Wikipedia page.
[SPEAKER_06]: I know there are a cult.
[SPEAKER_06]: I know that the bad guys
[SPEAKER_06]: as far as am I worried about it doing negative PR I think I'm worried more so about on the individual church level you know I could be like hey you know I went to the mega church down the road and had a decent enough time and they were smiling friendly go check it out and I think I'm
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm maybe worried about somebody doing that or that church, you know, feeling proud and excited, just for them to have a scandal that breaks and then everyone's disappointed and upset.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I don't think that the average person who's watching my channel is very at risk of joining a high control group.
[SPEAKER_06]: I could be wrong.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I'm sure that there's exceptions.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I get emails every day from former Johova's witnesses, former Mormons, former people, and all kinds of different cults.
[SPEAKER_06]: I haven't gotten any from people who, you know, said, hey, you were nice enough to the JWs in your first meeting that I, you know, went and joined in the kingdom home.
[SPEAKER_06]: Maybe they did, and they just didn't send me an email.
[SPEAKER_06]: But, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: This whole building bridges and having credibility to have conversations on both sides, like to the point that you have, like, a Ruslin who's going come to my conference for Christians in your odd bed fellow for that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, then you have like the atheist community or people who are critical of a lot of religion that also appreciate your channel.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'm curious, do you get more pushback from atheists who go, why are you interacting with the people who believe in the magical sky daddy?
[SPEAKER_02]: Or do you get more pushback from the Christians who go, you know, you're you're painting everybody in a bad light and you're propagating like
[SPEAKER_02]: this really negative view of religion potentially.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I'm assuming you get both of those.
[SPEAKER_02]: No matter how kind you try to be.
[SPEAKER_10]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: Um, it's interesting.
[SPEAKER_06]: I thought that I was going to get a lot more spite from the atheist community than I did.
[SPEAKER_06]: Um, maybe my channel just isn't big enough yet.
[SPEAKER_06]: Um, let's get you there.
[SPEAKER_06]: Let's get you some spite.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm, I'm as famous as I want to be a man.
[SPEAKER_06]: Uh, no, I think that, uh,
[SPEAKER_06]: I think as the channel grows, that's going to be a consistent criticism.
[SPEAKER_06]: We'll be, hey, you're too soft on religion and you're potentially emboldening religious folk.
[SPEAKER_06]: I would challenge that on average.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, I'm sure that some people are going to be, they're going to watch my content and they're going to become more religious.
[SPEAKER_06]: And for a lot of those people, I think that's okay.
[SPEAKER_06]: And maybe that's even a good thing in some specific cases.
[SPEAKER_06]: For me, it's a question of what kind of religion are they joining?
[SPEAKER_06]: What kind of religious person are they becoming?
[SPEAKER_06]: And I hope that I can be a useful critic from the outside, kind of inching them towards a direction that's not incredibly harmful.
[SPEAKER_06]: So there's that.
[SPEAKER_06]: But then a lot of other people, and maybe it's fifty-fifty, who will watch my content and realize, hey, you haven't talked about my cult yet.
[SPEAKER_06]: You haven't talked about the moonies or the Scientologists yet, but I heard about all of these other cult tactics that you mentioned in this other group, and it started to seem eerily familiar to my own.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I decided to leave.
[SPEAKER_06]: And that excites me as well.
[SPEAKER_06]: I mean, so you know, probably the bigger criticism that I get from from Christians is like It's not even a criticism.
[SPEAKER_06]: They just ask if I'm really an atheist and then I have to you know slowly let them down gently and be like, no, no, I really am
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I'm happy to spit on a Bible or something if that's, you know, we'll prove it to you, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do they accept that offer?
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just picture you walk on the conference just hawk and luggies, you know, it's probably not a good idea.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm one of the things that's coming up as you're talking about this and talking about the different religions.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like this example of like, oh, you haven't talked about the monies, but you know, hypothetically I've heard other groups and I see the same thing happen.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that might be the best benefit that comes from what you're doing is that, you know, we talked about before hit record.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's so many similarities.
[SPEAKER_02]: with your background being charismatic and mind being this very staggy fundamentalist background we're like couldn't even have a guitar on stage like very rigid environment we're like we would have looked at you as going like they're a false religion they're way too liberal they're going to hell at an extreme like all this sort of stuff you guys probably looked at us went like you're missing out on all the fruits of the spirit and all these things that you could be experiencing
[SPEAKER_02]: But we were really the same just in different fonts, like in the way that we approached the world and viewed our theology and view the importance of our faith.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think one of the biggest things I see people do is they leave one group and just like the person who leaves an X and then dates the same version of that person five or six times.
[SPEAKER_02]: they leave fundamentals Christianity and go, Richard Dawkins is the man and I'm gonna smash everybody and they're doing reverse apologetics and then they jump to the next person and they go, this person's the man and I'm going to join this group and we make fun of this group and it's like, you're just like fundamentalist and different fonts and I think like, the more you can see how similar all this is, maybe you can start living differently than just cycling through the same mentality over and over again in different political spiritual
[SPEAKER_02]: whatever group that looks like.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that could be a really huge benefit of just your type of documentation that you're doing.
[SPEAKER_06]: Their their absolutely is that it fascinating like to
[SPEAKER_06]: acknowledge the similarities between these movements and how illuminating that can be for people at the same time.
[SPEAKER_06]: There's also a huge lesson to be learned in the differences of these groups and you know the wild kaleidoscope that is religiosity in America and abroad.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I think that
[SPEAKER_06]: I've been so fascinated by the disposition of a lot of X cult members recently and specifically with regards to my investigation of the Christian scientists.
[SPEAKER_06]: Because I feel like I've heard a lot from
[SPEAKER_06]: other ex-cult members, especially like the ex-Johobas witnesses, that there seems to be like a sense of like, come on, get to the point already, go for the jugular.
[SPEAKER_06]: But the reason why I can't do that is quickly with the Christian scientists as I can, the Jehovah's Witnesses, is it's a very different religion.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's not a copy-paced of another high-control group.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's different.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's its own unique flavor with a very different kind of hierarchical structure.
[SPEAKER_06]: The mechanisms that keep people in the one faith are totally different than the other.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, like in the Jehovah's Witnesses, it's very hierarchical.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's very, it's also very patriarchal, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: And it's, it's just not in Christian science.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like with the Jehovah's Witnesses, you have an oligarchy.
[SPEAKER_06]: You have the governing body, these, you know,
[SPEAKER_06]: What is it like, eight to six teams are more around there, dudes who just like control everything.
[SPEAKER_06]: They are, you know, God's representatives period.
[SPEAKER_06]: In other cults, you have, you know, a cult of personality where it's not an oligarchy, it's just an authoritarian dictatorship.
[SPEAKER_06]: And then with Christian scientists, it's like this totally other thing where it feels like a milieu of bad ideas and nobody's at the top.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so it's like,
[SPEAKER_06]: the mechanisms that you use to get a person out of one cult isn't always the thing that you use to get them out of another.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think it's too easy to miss that.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so, you know, going in and kind of trying to see it with fresh eyes.
[SPEAKER_06]: gives you the ability to kind of like, no, I want to punch where it hurts eventually.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it'll take me a while to get there.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I can't go in thinking that every cult is, the Jehovah's Witnesses.
[SPEAKER_06]: I can't go in thinking that every cult is insane, charismatic Christianity, acknowledging these groups on their own terms and really listening for what makes them tick.
[SPEAKER_06]: That's the only
[SPEAKER_06]: the only way that you're going to really get to these people.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, especially when what they're about isn't what they necessarily say, that's what they're about.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, like, well, that's the funny thing is there are some groups and cults where the thing that makes them culty is sort of like tucked under the rug and, you know, not talking about very much.
[SPEAKER_06]: The thing that's so like bizarre about Jehovah's Witnesses is all of the things that make them culty are just, it's like, all they talk about,
[SPEAKER_06]: Like all of the worst parts of that religion are just the things they hammer on over and over and over again.
[SPEAKER_06]: Whereas like you go to some Pentecostal churches and it's like, oh, it makes a Pentecostal church, a Pentecostal church.
[SPEAKER_06]: Well, the gifts to the spirit, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: You have some Pentecostal churches where it's like, yeah, that's there, but you know, they'll have
[SPEAKER_06]: that they'll go through their entire years worth of sermons.
[SPEAKER_06]: And you know, maybe five, ten, twenty deal with the fruits of spirit, whereas like with the Jehovah's Witnesses, they just go through their Rolex of shitty awful ideas.
[SPEAKER_06]: Time after time.
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, today's sermon is on how to excommunicate your friends and family.
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, tomorrow's sermon is on how to not get blood transfusions.
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, the sermon after that is how to ignore
[SPEAKER_06]: information from the outside and further isolate yourself into this incredibly tight knit and a cloistered community.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it's like that's all they know is to just talk about the things that make them really culty.
[SPEAKER_06]: With other groups, it's like, you know, how many sermons in the IFB were actually about adult baptism?
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, like, so it's funny thinking about it.
[SPEAKER_06]: in terms like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like so many were about the distinctives that like actually made them what they are versus like you'd hear much more about like a thought like what's interesting is they were so vocal that like the patriarchal authoritarian kind of structure like that was such a big piece but like it is just so different
[SPEAKER_02]: I think there was like a baton switch.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is why I went, I go back to the going in blind versus knowing a little bit about it is like, you know, I look at ours and it was such a baton switch of like the gospel is a free gift for all.
[SPEAKER_02]: Come as you are, we're gonna throw a vacation Bible school, come in, walk the aisle, pray a prayer, you're in church and he's sure that's all good.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like God loves you and he wants you just admit belief, confess and like Jesus is Lord and here you are.
[SPEAKER_02]: and then you get baptized and then maybe your haircuts not quite right and then maybe your clothes aren't quite right actually and they were good to walk the altar but like if you're going to commit maybe join a ministry and maybe join two and three and maybe go to Bible College and maybe in it's like this moving goal post of holiness you know just kept keeps going going going where it's like
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there was some really good things in the beginning there that then led to like, okay, you've been in it twenty years and you don't feel any closer to the thing that you were supposed to get close to in this ministry.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like that's, it's a really, again, it's what they present versus what it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like in reality, it's like the whole IFB to me is like the Sun cost felt.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like I've put in twenty, thirty, forty years
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't stop now.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm so close to hitting, being the faithful man of God that I can be.
[SPEAKER_02]: But again, it's so hard.
[SPEAKER_02]: It looks so appealing when it's like, yeah, I am having a really hard life and then offering me unconditional love and acceptance.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're not going to realize they're not offering that until so far down the road.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: With all these in mind, I'm
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm curious to ask you this question because you've been to a lot of churches now.
[SPEAKER_02]: not talking conversion like you can still be the same person you are right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: But if you were, if you were forced to attend a service in a certain religious group or denomination, you have to go every single Sunday or Saturday if it's seven day of Venice, you have to go on their day and go to a service once a week, which one would you choose and why?
[SPEAKER_02]: Man, do you hope is witness?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's not that.
[SPEAKER_06]: If I ever just, you know, yeah, if I ever just feel like going absolutely insane, maybe I would do it like as an R piece like I will say orange with just your eyes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, just sitting in a, you know, I mean, that's kind of what it feels somewhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I will say though every time I go to a really boring church, it's when I feel the most inspired music like just something about the monotony of why I just slowly hear the, you know, eight string, you know, shugs in the background.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's like, and that's why in John, fifteen eleven.
[SPEAKER_06]: And that's what my brains do in the whole time.
[SPEAKER_06]: So it's kind of good for you to be that bored in a church service.
[SPEAKER_02]: So maybe I have to be church would be great for you.
[SPEAKER_06]: Maybe, maybe also we'll have to talk about this later.
[SPEAKER_06]: I have not audited and I have be church yet.
[SPEAKER_06]: I need to.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's high on my list now.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think you've expedited that to maybe talk too much because you're going to run out of churches to go and blind.
[SPEAKER_02]: So just pick one and we'll.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't through it.
[SPEAKER_06]: That's fair.
[SPEAKER_06]: Let's fair.
[SPEAKER_06]: Ah, man.
[SPEAKER_06]: It would probably be a hydrogen setting.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, I'm a sucker for aesthetics.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm a sucker for good art.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: And.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, it's kind of a noxious because like, you know, a huge part of my audience is like orthodox Christians because I've said some nice things about them.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I always have to be like, all right, calm down, calm down.
[SPEAKER_06]: We'll get to you.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, we'll get to you.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's, you know, they're not perfect.
[SPEAKER_06]: And there's, you know, beef to be had.
[SPEAKER_06]: But man, it was the, it was the wildest thing.
[SPEAKER_06]: I was coming home from visiting my grandma on Pennsylvania.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I was looking for McDonald's.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I took the wrong turn on the interstate, just bum-fuck middle and nowhere in Pennsylvania.
[SPEAKER_06]: Took a wrong turn and got off the exit and it was like, I should need to turn around.
[SPEAKER_06]: So the first parking lot that I turned into is this huge orthodox cathedral.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I was like, oh, all right.
[SPEAKER_06]: And, you know, I don't believe in Providence, but I was like, all right, fine.
[SPEAKER_06]: Let's see where this goes.
[SPEAKER_06]: I go inside and I like snuck around everyone because I get recognized most in Orthodox churches.
[SPEAKER_06]: So like, you know, it's careful to not say hello to anyone.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's snuck into the sanctuary.
[SPEAKER_06]: And they have like this dome at the top of the church, which is pretty common.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think it's called Christ Pentegrator.
[SPEAKER_06]: is the the name of the icon.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it's just, you know, everything that I love about religion is usually like the existential nature of it, you know, kind of this cosmic nature of it, and it was like, you know, just this breathtaking awe.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I've experienced it in other circles as well, Orthodox don't get too excited.
[SPEAKER_06]: There's a there's a mosque in
[SPEAKER_06]: in Morocco.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think it's called Al Hassan II.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's the largest mosque in Africa.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it was that same thing.
[SPEAKER_06]: We're like you walk in there and you feel so small.
[SPEAKER_06]: Like you were just so breathtakingly small and trivial by comparison.
[SPEAKER_06]: And that's the thing that I love.
[SPEAKER_06]: So it'd probably be a church or a mosque or cathedral like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I really to a lot of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I still am fascinated by like just religion, which way we're having conversation.
[SPEAKER_02]: I watch your channel, obviously.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I find myself so, since I've left
[SPEAKER_02]: fundamentalism like I've been to a couple different churches like a handful like a you know I've watched a lot online from people and I like I don't feel like I just I got that and then left and then never like why don't you retry Catholic church whatever you know it's like but I
[SPEAKER_02]: Interestingly, the churches that turned me off the most are the kind of mega church contemporary Christian churches now.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been to one within the last year or so, and I just was like, like, it feels so performed for those who are listening on the podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just made a, I'm about to throw up a symbol.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I look at some of those.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just like, it's so obviously manipulative.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so obviously you're right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we were standing that I left and I told my wife and I was very frustrated.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was just like,
[SPEAKER_02]: what they're singing and the way that the team comes up when the pastor gets done preaching and the guitar starts to strum and the lady who just did her shift to Chick-fil-A yesterday is up there and she's crying and her hands I'm just like this is doing nothing for me because I can't give myself over to this and what I can tend to like give myself over to is
[SPEAKER_02]: when I'm in, like I've been to the Serbia and been around these orthodox churches that you talk about where they're thousands, like we're not talking fundamentals and like, oh, this is like the faithful men from the fifties and sixties, you know, their influence is still felt or the mega church that goes back to it's like we're talking thousands of years of faith.
[SPEAKER_02]: that has become this.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's something so beautiful in that, even if it's not theological, it's just historical.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like this building.
[SPEAKER_06]: It feels like that scene from the avatar, like the last airbender, where he's looking at all of the line of like avatars that came before him, just like this never ending succession.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's cool.
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, even out believing in any of it, and it's like, yeah, you know, having a lineage like that taps into something deep in the human psyche.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think for me, if I were to be religious, if I were to attend religious services, it would probably be Orthodox or Catholic.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Catholic has a lot of baggage to it, connected to what I talk about.
[SPEAKER_02]: What's about to say?
[SPEAKER_02]: I would be a Catholic, and that's the sound bite people will run with.
[SPEAKER_02]: But just in terms of like,
[SPEAKER_02]: the history associated with it is interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like from a purely archaeological perspective, you know, with the Catholics it's funny though because like I went to St.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thomas Cathedral in India where he, I looked down into where he's buried.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what's interesting with Catholic Church is you realize how much they just make up.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like this is where this happened and then you find out like there's like a lot of contested accounts.
[SPEAKER_02]: But like just standing in buildings that are as old as they are and going like, okay,
[SPEAKER_02]: Even if I don't agree with why this is here or what's happened here since or what it's like this is an interesting pinpoint on the map of like okay something matter to somebody here and why that you just don't get in a warehouse full of people in skinny jeans playing music or a fundamentalist church where it's like go back to the old paths of Billy Sunday not that long ago you know it's just a different perspective but
[SPEAKER_02]: On the Catholics have a lot of bad abuse though.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to say that just as a disclaimer, we've not encouraged anyone to go join your local Catholic Church or to leave your children unattended within the Catholic Church.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just going to put a little disclaimer down.
[SPEAKER_06]: They're real.
[SPEAKER_06]: Good art though.
[SPEAKER_06]: Really good art.
[SPEAKER_06]: Great.
[SPEAKER_06]: Got to rack it on some of that stuff, man.
[SPEAKER_06]: Regarding the cathedral of St.
[SPEAKER_06]: Thomas, this is one of my favorite things that most Christians don't know about.
[SPEAKER_06]: A lot of Christians have heard this story, the legend, that the apostle Thomas, you know, after saying my Lord, my God, was sent to India to preach to the gospel.
[SPEAKER_06]: Do you know where that story comes from?
[SPEAKER_06]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_06]: Do you know the history of this?
[SPEAKER_06]: That comes from a third or fourth century document called the Acts of Thomas, and it's totally nasty.
[SPEAKER_06]: But the story is that Jesus sells Thomas into slavery to go and work in the palace of King Gungafora.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think I'm saying his name right.
[SPEAKER_06]: Nobody ends up not so just say it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's not how you say it.
[SPEAKER_06]: But it's the most like outlandish wild story.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it's funny because apologists will sometimes point to the martyrdom of the disciples as a proof for the resurrection.
[SPEAKER_06]: And it's like, man, you really don't want to go down that line of argumentation because you have to rely on Nostix sources to do it.
[SPEAKER_06]: To say that any of the, not any, but that the majority of the disciples were martyred, a lot of those come from
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, sketchy texts.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's like the people that go, uh, not to wrap it up or trail, but as I want to ask somebody I knew shared a poster today, and it was like, um, I think it was a chart, maybe a Charlie Kirk video.
[SPEAKER_02]: I, I was, it was something or no, it was a Bryce.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we have that one kid is that's really rising in the Christian.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, Rob, the fluffy hair and talks about
[SPEAKER_02]: of politics.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think his name is Bryce.
[SPEAKER_02]: But anyway, he says a lot of things with confidence very quickly.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he, someone's like, why do you believe he's like, because five hundred people saw the risen savior bubble and like fires off all this up.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I, I started typing out responding to their story, like,
[SPEAKER_02]: five hundred people saw him or one person wrote that five hundred people saw him because there's a big difference in that I deleted it because I didn't want to deal with it but I was like there's a lot of things like that that just the slam dunk is in his slam dunk he is people would say anyway all that save for future conversation I want to I want to ask about two things here
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, well, you know, let me ask this first and then just kind of want to get it out of the way.
[SPEAKER_02]: With all of this, like we've talked about like which one would you attend, which obviously comes down to preference of style really like what kind of music can I deal with?
[SPEAKER_02]: What kind of art would I like to look at?
[SPEAKER_02]: When it comes to just
[SPEAKER_02]: Theism in general, is there a certain apologetic or maybe a specific teaching or argument from a particular sect of religion that honestly does break your atheist brain where you're like, I don't, like, this actually really does make me question things.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, do you have something like that or you're like, or this is really compelling and I could, like, I don't know how to even address that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like that could, you know, there's a, yeah, that's really interesting.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I'll say two things, probably the last straw that broke the camel's back for me, you know, the last bowlwork of my faith was the argument from morality, right?
[SPEAKER_06]: The moral argument for the existence of God.
[SPEAKER_06]: And
[SPEAKER_06]: You know, now as an atheist, I still agree with the structure of that argument.
[SPEAKER_06]: I just reject the conclusion.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so that's why I'm a nihilist.
[SPEAKER_06]: So yeah, I mean, I think that's
[SPEAKER_06]: And that'll also be eventually one of the things that atheists crucify me for is being a nihilist in an atheist space where that's not the default.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I like to respect that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a nihilist thing and we'll just leave that there and people.
[SPEAKER_06]: But yeah, no, I don't really know how to talk about about it more than that.
[SPEAKER_06]: I reject.
[SPEAKER_02]: Objective morality and rejected an evil and all that jazz but I am only laughing because like I I don't know when I would call myself but I I kicked around like three years ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was talking to her two years ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was talking to a friend and I said
[SPEAKER_02]: I am like an optimistic nihilist.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if that's a real thing, but I just said.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the last pillar for me was also objective.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the strongest apologetic comes from morality.
[SPEAKER_02]: I still think that's where Christian apologistic of the more ideas.
[SPEAKER_02]: That should be where they anchor their arguments because I think that's a lot more.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a big answer question that I think they can offer a structured logical argument for.
[SPEAKER_02]: but I also reject that claim and it was until reading Dr. Brian Klaus's book where he talks about the evolutionary development of morality that I was like, oh, okay, there is another answer for this.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not just like, no, that's dumb.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, sorry, no one.
[SPEAKER_06]: Well, so two things with the moral argument, it's not necessarily to give an account for
[SPEAKER_06]: how morality came to be, the proper argument is to give an account for why it has weight.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so the correct response within the moral argument within theology is to ground it within the nature of God.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I think the argument kind of holds TBH.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I think that unfortunately, it's just not true.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so, Ergo, I'm an analyst.
[SPEAKER_06]: But yeah, that's kind of neither here nor there.
[SPEAKER_06]: Just a fun tidbit.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just curious.
[SPEAKER_06]: Sorry, the thing that sucks about encouraging apologists to go down that rabbit hole is that the moral argument is probably one of the most emotionally charged
[SPEAKER_06]: Apologetics that Christians can get into because then you, you know, Christians have to argue like, hey, atheist, you're being inconsistent if you're not an analyst.
[SPEAKER_06]: And then, you know, I'd look at them and say, well, that's why I'm an analyst.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I don't like the idea of a swarm of Christians telling a swarm of atheists, hey, your morality has no objective basis.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's like, oh, that feels kind of itky.
[SPEAKER_06]: Just not because it's like philosophically itky, but just like, that's going to be really bad for discussion.
[SPEAKER_02]: So.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, and ultimately, we're all doing the same thing is that
[SPEAKER_02]: There are you that you do or don't.
[SPEAKER_02]: None of us fully know what happens when we die.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's what you do at the time that you're here.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think whether you're saying that like that's kind of a nihilistic approach to life is like we're going to be gone.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like so it's what happens now.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're a fundamentalist it's like to me the biggest issue I have with
[SPEAKER_02]: like the sec that I grew up in is like so much was punted to once I die like where you can neglect the planet your personal well-being the well-being of others because it will all be made right in the end and so we're not going to do that's why I kind of love post millennials because it's like you know at least the logic of it not
[SPEAKER_02]: people like Doug Wilson and like kind of the post millennial crowd.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's like the idea of like let's bring God's kingdom here and serve the orphan and widow like hell yeah, like follow that theology a lot more than we're gonna run this thing till it burns to the ground and then we get a kingdom, you know, like that to me is a lot more toxic and has worse ramifications.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Joe, this witnesses.
[SPEAKER_02]: You want to throw anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, the way more punches over there.
[SPEAKER_06]: the amount of psychological damage that that group has inflicted on people is unspeakable.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I've never really talked much about like their apocalyptic side.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I'm sure that I will eventually, might take me a year or two to like really get to it.
[SPEAKER_06]: Eschatology's just never by my thing.
[SPEAKER_06]: But I do remember being in the Netherlands when I was in
[SPEAKER_06]: I don't talk about it a whole lot, but I was in a cult for a little while.
[SPEAKER_06]: I was there for a few months in Rotterdam.
[SPEAKER_06]: What stage of your life?
[SPEAKER_06]: It would have been when I was twenty and twenty-one.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I was doing an internship there and only after I got there, I realized, oh, this is a fringe sect.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I'm kind of increasingly reluctant to call it a cult.
[SPEAKER_06]: It just because now I've been more
[SPEAKER_06]: associated with the job as witnesses.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I know how deep and awful and terrible this can go.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so it feels almost like belittling to claim that my stupid little sect and the Netherlands was a cult by comparison.
[SPEAKER_06]: But it was a moderately high control group.
[SPEAKER_06]: And during that time, we had a little bit of an apocalyptic scare.
[SPEAKER_06]: This would have been outside of your orbit.
[SPEAKER_06]: But there is this
[SPEAKER_06]: I really don't know how to not call him a grifter.
[SPEAKER_06]: I want to be gracious, but I'm still bitter.
[SPEAKER_06]: His name was Jonathan Khan and Khan is literally in his name.
[SPEAKER_06]: I just immediately thought Star Trek, I didn't even go that far.
[SPEAKER_06]: Well, so this guy had a book.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think it was his book about the four blood moons and how I don't think that he was predicting the end per se, but he was predicting one of the first great rumblings of the end.
[SPEAKER_06]: And so he was imagining that
[SPEAKER_06]: in the fall of twenty twenty twenty fifteen there was going to be some great economic collapse and he was gently urging people to like whole money out of there's out of their retirement accounts and a lot with Jim Baker and that and times he yeah
[SPEAKER_06]: I went to seminary with some people who like worked on his program.
[SPEAKER_06]: We're dead enough.
[SPEAKER_06]: Very bizarre.
[SPEAKER_06]: But yeah, so like, you know, this guy was imploring people to take money out of their Roth IRAs, their four or one case.
[SPEAKER_06]: And my parents got caught up in that.
[SPEAKER_06]: And my mom almost pulled out, I mean, she would have lost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars had she had done that.
[SPEAKER_06]: And then nothing happens.
[SPEAKER_06]: And then, you know, he's because of how he framed it was like, well, we don't know for sure, but we're trusting in God.
[SPEAKER_06]: And we're, you know, the profits are, you know, have inklings from the Lord.
[SPEAKER_06]: And sometimes those can be wrong, but, you know, better safe than sorry.
[SPEAKER_06]: And stuff about hedgehogs.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, just hedge bets and, you know, hedge yourself and, you know,
[SPEAKER_06]: hundreds or thousands of people made really stupid decisions and there's no ramifications for it.
[SPEAKER_06]: You just get to pivot and life goes on for you and you still have millions of books sold but
[SPEAKER_06]: It kills me and so that at the scale of the Jehovah's Witnesses who have been told in perpetuity since like nineteen twenties like the nineteen twenties that they ought not to have children because like or either they're not explicitly told that but they're often you know kind of like you really want to bring a child into something like this they're told don't go to college
[SPEAKER_06]: Because, well, the end's going to be around the corner any day now and like, what are you going to do with an astrophysics degree when, you know, the heavens are brought down to earth and, you know, it just it kills me.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, let me ask you this as we, as we kind of get near the end here.
[SPEAKER_02]: You said you're as famous as you want to be, you know, is there a next step here?
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you have any plans to expand what you're doing?
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you have a certain route you want to take?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there a certain group you want to go, you know, go into next?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like what's on the horizon for your channel and for you?
[SPEAKER_06]: There are a few groups that I really want to investigate.
[SPEAKER_06]: True story, I'm probably going to start looking at like legal protection for some of these groups because they, you know, have a bad habit of being litigious.
[SPEAKER_06]: So if you're a lawyer who wants to represent me pro bono, hit me up.
[SPEAKER_06]: Nothing's like, you know, I'm not being sued currently, but maybe, maybe eventually, who knows, someone listening just heard an opportunity.
[SPEAKER_06]: So there's that.
[SPEAKER_06]: There are, yeah, several new cults and denominations and not all of them are big scary cults.
[SPEAKER_06]: Some of them are just like, you know, very chill.
[SPEAKER_06]: religious communities that I want to like explore and investigate because I'm curious.
[SPEAKER_06]: I hope to eventually branch out a little bit more past the Abrahamic faiths though.
[SPEAKER_06]: Very, very, very tenuously because I don't know shit about any of the Eastern religions and like I'm already a bumbling idiot when it comes to the faiths that I have, you know, two degrees in.
[SPEAKER_06]: trying to figure out like the basics of Hinduism or Buddhism or Shintoism scares me endlessly.
[SPEAKER_02]: But maybe that'll be just tied to culture where like if you take a wrong step you're stepping on not just the doctrine but also a way of life and like in a way that's so different than I think yeah evangelical Christianity it's like when race like there's racism you have to worry about stepping into that ties into like it's a very
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: It scares me for that same reason.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, how much of this is?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so intertwined.
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you go to India and talk about Hinduism?
[SPEAKER_02]: When you look around, it's like, that is literally in the veins of everything you're looking at in every direction.
[SPEAKER_06]: So there's all that coming up later this year, I have my first international trip.
[SPEAKER_06]: Actually, my first couple of international trips.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm wildly excited about it.
[SPEAKER_06]: Can't talk about it yet, but those are kind of on the horizon.
[SPEAKER_06]: Let's see what else.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, and I think that with a lot of what I do, I'm trying to learn more and explore more on some of
[SPEAKER_06]: these like theological systems.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's really interesting for me to just go and visit like the average Methodist Church down the street.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I think that's really healthy for people to see that, hey, not every church is a cult, not every religion is a high control movement.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I kind of keep it in the back of my mind.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's like, OK, I don't want to spend three months in a row just talking about the United House of Prayer for all people.
[SPEAKER_06]: And the Jovos witnesses and all the monies and whoever else.
[SPEAKER_06]: I do need to pepper in some like Joe Schmo church down the street just to kind of give people that refresher like, hey, these are sometimes the exception to the rule, or maybe not the exception to the rule, but like these are the ones that stand out as anomalies.
[SPEAKER_06]: But still your average church is filled with average people.
[SPEAKER_06]: And that needs to be kept in mind.
[SPEAKER_06]: So there's that.
[SPEAKER_06]: But yeah, there are some very wacky religious communities that I want to dig deeper into.
[SPEAKER_06]: And even some of the ones that I've covered already, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Christian scientists, the Mormons, I want to dig deeper because those are very deep rapid trails.
[SPEAKER_06]: And I want to understand those people better.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll be watching whatever you do next.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to see you dip your toe into the IFB bias there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to see you dip into the new IFB with kind of the Steven Anderson type crowns.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd love to see that stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, but I'll be there for the right.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll watch, I'll watch you read the book of Mormon.
[SPEAKER_02]: I will watch you talk, shit on the, the toughest witness of the theology any day of the week.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for doing this for your work.
[SPEAKER_02]: And seriously, if you're listening to this episode and you're not watching that channel like,
[SPEAKER_02]: It's one of the best, most interesting channels in this niche that I could recommend.
[SPEAKER_02]: So be sure to check it out.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you have to choose between my show and that one, this one, but if you have room for one more, you know, dive in.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much, Jared, for doing this.
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope it's not the last time and really enjoyed the conversation.