Recovering Evangelicals

Setting the stage for the next season of episodes, and how we want to move beyond merely “dancing in the ruins” of a deconstructed faith We’re back! After a 3-month hiatus to recalibrate and strategise, we’re now embarking on a season in which we’re emphasizing reconstruction of a new Christian worldview that works … for […]

A brief retrospective on Season 4, and a longer one on the journey that the podcast has taken us on through Christian belief. Well, we kept it going for over a year, and added 54 more episodes to our archive. But all good things must come to an end. And so this will be the […]

Biology is unique among the sciences in its apparently absolute dependence on language that implies a goal, direction, or intention. Does this mean that biology IS goal-oriented, or directed? If so, that has huge philosophical and theological implications!? Our deep-dive into Intelligent Design got us wondering why so many people embrace that worldview. Not just […]

The details behind the story of how bacteria mutated in order to grow bigger and better by eating oranges, instead of sugar. Last week, we talked to a member of the Long-Term Evolution Experiment, Dr. Zachary Blount. He and his colleagues followed 75,000 generations of bacteria competing for a limited food resource — sugar — […]

Two very different interpretations of the same set of data: one from Creationists and ID proponents, and the other from the scientists actually doing the work. Here, we talk to one of the latter. A frequent talking point for creationists and Intelligent Design proponents in their anti-evolution rhetoric is a ground-breaking scientific project referred to […]

Dr. Janet Kellogg Ray, a deeply Evangelical believer and state college professor, has long been speaking to and educating Evangelicals about their science denial Unfortunately, science denial and pseudoscience run rampant in Evangelical circles. In our previous episodes, we’ve learned about the exceptionally strong correlations between being Evangelical and: … being against COVID prote...

After a seven-episode deep-dive into Intelligent Design, we finally arrive at our better informed opinion of our position on this worldview. We started this 7-part mini-series introducing the Intelligent Design proposal that many creationists hold, and also shared our position at the outset on it: at that time, we were not convinced, feeling like we […]

After last week’s scientific experts cleared up much ID-rhetoric, we ask a rising star in the ID movement — Dr. Jonathan McLatchie — to respond to our reinvigorated questions, concern, and critiques of Intelligent Design After starting this mini-series with an interview with one leading ID proponent, and then hearing from a number of scientific […]

Three internationally-recognized, world experts on the bacterial flagellum connect the dots regarding the evolutionary origin of the flagellum, and draw some compelling comparisons to the evolutionary emergence of the Bible! Three episodes ago, Dr. Michael Behe used the bacterial flagellum as Exhibit A in his defense of the Intelligent Design proposal. Last week, we heard […]

A scientist who specifically studies the bacterial flagellum using some of the most cutting-edge research tools clears up a few myths and misconceptions. Much of Dr. Michael Behe’s defense of Intelligent Design rests on claims made about the bacterial flagellum. It certainly has become his signature, and one could even say it’s become the symbol […]

Most people don’t know: the genome is a formatted database with read/write memory systems which can reorganize itself to produce new species. This is a re-release of an episode we put out almost two years ago. In the episode that preceded this re-release, and which set the stage for this interview, we had given a […]

Dr. Michael Behe, a biochemist and Intelligent Design proponent, gives us his perspective of ID, and responses to several counterarguments against ID. To start off our deep-dive into Intelligent Design, we wanted to talk to a knowledgeable representative of that movement. Dr. Michael Behe, a biochemist who has been waving that flag for three decades […]

Before hearing from Intelligent Design advocates, we thought we’d give our listeners some useful background information about how cells work …. it turns out it’s all about making shapes out of string. Before we present our interviews with Drs. Michael Behe and Jonathan McLatchie (both leading proponents of Intelligent Design), we feel we should give […]

A short introduction to start a mini-series on this Christian apologetic idea, and some of the reasons why we have such difficulty with it. Intelligent Design” has attracted much criticism — certainly from the secular, scientific community, but even from Christians of all stripes … including ourselves. Over the next few weeks, we’re going to […]

“Why not just throw the worship service out the window, and re-think what it means to be a Christian community?” Most Christians today have nestled into, or hopped between, a very standard modern expression of Christian faith, one that involves meeting for an hour on Sunday and having an unchanging mixture of songs, scripture reading, […]

Four particularly toxic ingredients make it especially hard for some (many?) Evangelicals to maintain their belief system beyond a few decades. Christianity, in the West at least, is certainly experiencing a “great falling away”: churches closing, memberships dropping, people leaving the faith entirely. Some might conclude they’re leaving in order to better enjoy “sex, drug...

A traumatic experience while serving in a church led to a complete deconstruction of her Christian faith: she’s still “a hopeful Christian agnostic” who finds Jesus’ message “beautiful and life-giving” Another one of our listeners tells her story. Rachel Sanders also grew up in a conservative Evangelical home, and went to a Southern Baptist church, […]

Her spiritual journey was going perfectly well, until life circumstances blind-sided her and the “body of Christ” failed her, putting an end to her journey. This week, another long-standing member of the podcast discussion group drops into our “studio” and shares her spiritual journey. She was perfectly comfortable for the first few decades with her […]

Another listener tells his story of navigating a long and meandering path through Evangelicalism: many detours, but the same destination. This week, we talk to an old friend of both of ours: Paul Almas. Paul played a key role in Luke’s reconstruction journey, was someone that both Luke and Scott looked up to 20 or […]

Getting to know one of our listeners, and his very unique and thought-provoking path into and out of Evangelicalism. We talked to Doug, one of our listeners, to learn a bit about his very unique story through Evangelicalism: from Fundamentalism, through progressively more liberal churches, eventually going back to Bible Seminary as an atheist to […]

Science now makes the former no longer tenable, leaving three options for believers: ignore the problem, reject the Bible, or revise one’s theology. The story of “the Exodus” has traditionally been seen to involve millions of Israelites following Moses out of Egypt: this image is derived from a literal reading of the Old Testament, with […]

Although the origin story for Jews, and the foundation for much of Christian theology, many scholars will ask: did it really happen? Moses leading the newly-born nation of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, wandering through the desert for 40 years, and taking possession of Canaan is an iconic story. Not only is it the […]

We look back on the previous four episodes, evaluate what we learned, pull together some loose threads, and set some objectives for future episodes. This is our fifth and final episode in our mini-series on the Christian view of human sexuality and gender. After listening to four scholars give their various expert perspectives on this […]

A scholar’s perspective after decades of research: “we’re talking about a whole network of politicized ideals that has used the bodies of adolescents to gain political power … Purity Culture has become rape culture.” This movement seems to be anything but what it appears to be. Evangelical leaders compelling adolescents to be sexually pure (Purity […]

Too often, the Christian response to questions about human sexuality is to point to Leviticus, and similar Biblical passages. Like other religions, Christianity has a few laws, taboos, and prohibitions about a variety of life issues (diet; holidays; technology; money; dead bodies). But when it comes specifically to human sexuality and gender, Christians have come […]