Flawed Theology

In this episode, Phil and Suzie talk with Darante' Lamar in an incredible, wide-ranging, and passionate discussion about his faith background, his life in ministry, what lead to his deconversion, and the impact of faith and the journey away from faith on him as an Black man and the black community.   

Bio: Darante’ LaMar's journey from serving as a leader in both charismatic megachurches and hyper spiritual storefront churches, to ...

In this episode, Phil and Susie discuss the correlation between religious ideology and the ideologies of authoritarianism.  This was suggested to us as a It’s a Feature, not a Bug” idea, but we decided to expand it to a full episode topic, because there’s a lot of interesting things to talk about! Thanks to one of our listeners who suggested the topic.

• Data Nuggets Segment:  Is there intelligent lif...

In this episode, Phil and Suzie talk with Helen Greene, Ambassador and Fundraising Coordinator for Recovering from Religion.  In this wide-ranging conversation, Helen talks with us about her interesting journey away from faith from her Catholic upbringing, discovery of paganism, and eventual deconstruction to skepticism and atheism. 

Helen comes from a diverse background of beliefs. Raised Roman Catholic, then rejecting the church ...

 As deconstruction and deconversion are becoming more prevalent in our world, the institutions of Xtianity are flailing to craft a response that will attempt to stem the tide of people leaving the faith, the church, and god himself.  The “explanations” of why people are leaving, of course, they are not based in reality or facts, because most have never spoken with anyone who’s actually left to find out their real reasons.  In this ...

We are back for Season 3 and we are excited to be here! In this premiere episode, Phil and Susie catch on things since we took a break for the holidays and talk about what's to come in Season 3! We will introduce two new segments for this season, "Data Nuggets" and "It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature!" 

Data Nuggets Link:  https://www.npr.org/2024/01/24/1226371734/religious-nones-are-now-the-largest-single-group-in-the-u-s

It's not a ...

In this episode, Phil and Susie wrap up the season with another Ask Us Anything session.  We are excited to have a guest cohost, Arline from the Graceful Atheist Podcast!! We really had a blast with Arline and are so honored that she spent some time with us.  Her insights and answers to your questions are just fantastic!!

We received a lot of great questions, which are listed below with timestamps: 

In this episode, we will discuss the idea of “the soul” and how it relates to the afterlife. Is there evidence for the existence of the soul? If the soul doesn’t exist, then what does this mean for the idea of the “afterlife”.  Follow this thread further to make the point that basing one’s life on the potential eternality of our existence after death is flawed and how and why to make the most of this life, if it’s truly the only on...

In this episode, Phil and Susie attempt to tackle a really broad subject, the historical Jesus. We want to be clear that we are not biblical scholars and that there is no way in the course of this episode that we are going to provide definitive answers to the questions we will be asking today.  Biblical scholars have dedicated their whole lives to this topic and we hope to spark your interest in the topic, just as we have been fasc...

In this episode, Phil and Susie talk with Caitlin, owner of Atheist Aesthetic.  Caitlin is from Texas and she shares a lot of wisdom about her journey away from faith, her thoughts on being an "angry atheist" and how she moved forward from that stage to being happy, fulfilled, and confident in who she is and how she can live a good and moral life without the overwatch of a deity.  She is passionate about many non-profit organizatio...

In this episode, Phil and Susie talk with Todd "YoyoFox" Rollenhagen.  Phil met Todd through the yoyo community and discovered that he was an exBaptist agnostic with a big heart and some interesting life experiences.  Todd tells his story of how and why he left church, doesn't believe in a god, but still remains spiritual and open to other experiences.  He also has some thoughts about the church and how it's causing damage to human...

In this episode, Phil and Susie "dig" into the power of music.  Harlan Howard in the 50’s used the phrase “3 chords and the truth” to describe his genre of country music and many other artists have used this phrase and allowed it to be their philosophy of songwriting.  This phrase is funny because most worship songs are 3 chords and purports to be truth, but what is the truth that is actually being conveyed? How does music actually...

One of the most challenging aspects of deconversion for many of us was the decision to reveal our leaving the faith to our family and close friends and making it public, etc.  Since many of us come from Xtian households and have still believing parents, there can be some serious anxiety around the decision to tell our parents that we can’t believe what they brought us up to believe. 

We want to discuss the why and how of these dif...

CW/TW: This episode contains discussion about sexuality, child sexual abuse, and other topics related to human sexuality. 

In this week's episode, Phil and Susie talk with Janis.  Janis is a long time friend of Phil’s from his days at moderately progressive Baptist Church in VA, where we both lived.  Janis was married to someone who was affiliated with the worship team and went through a very difficult discovery in her marriage,...

In this episode, Phil and Susie discuss how the volume and intensity of animal suffering in the world serves as evidence to disprove theism, especially the version of theism that purports a loving, omniscient, and omnipotent deity.  Is animal suffering and the theory of evolution evidence against the existence of a loving God?  We expand on the problem of evil that extends beyond human suffering into the animal world.  

Show Notes ...

In this episode, Phil and Susie talk with Alex, who is is a recently deconverted Mormon and his story is truly fascinating!! We named this episode the way we did because Alex actually was a "high priest" in the Church of Mormon.  If you ever wanted to know anything about Mormonism, you will learn a lot in this episode. Alex shares about his life growing up in the LDS church, the "shelf" items that finally led to his deconversion, s...

In this episode, Phil and Susie discuss the concept “If god Were real”.  We will discuss all the ways that we would expect a truly true God to reveal itself and how they would act.  We will compare how it would be if God were real or if God were created by humans and then how God is presented in Christianity and see what lines up.  We will also discuss an epistemological question that could be useful when engaging believers—what co...

Prayer is a quintessential part of Xtian doctrine and is a mainstay of the life of the believer.  Phil and Susie will delve into what prayer is, if it actually works, why and how people use the concept of prayer to give their faith more value/ meaning/ reality.  Based a bit off of Susie’s blog post “Does Prayer Work?” which was the first post I ever read of hers.  https://www.flawedtheology.com/2021/11/does-prayer-work.html  We wil...