Recovering Evangelicals

Is there a transition of power in play within the YEC movement? Think about Young Earth Creationism (YEC), and you probably immediately conjure up a mental image of Ken Ham: he’s been the figurehead of that movement for decades. One can critique his scientific credentials and his way of interpreting anything scientific through his dogmatic […]

Global warming, pollution, biodiversity loss, and humans. . It seems like every week there’s another record-breaking weather event: never-seen-before temperatures, rains, or winds. Weather-related devastation at scales or in places that were unprecedented. Floods, droughts, tornadoes, wild-fires. Earth is developing a fever. Even the ocean is getting warmer and more acidic. Dr. Adam Fenech (PhD, [...

How did inorganic chemicals eventually become you and me? For the past three weeks, we’ve been talking about “the cosmic egg” that exploded and produced the space-time continuum of our universe. Out of all that energy, quantum particles were formed, which eventually became the matter that coalesced into stars and planets. Earth itself seems to […]

. . . Dr. Robert Mann (PhD, Astronomy and Physics; U. Waterloo) shares with us his understanding of what evolved out of the “cosmic egg” that we’ve been talking about over the past couple of weeks … our universe. He has spent his career working on quantum physics and gravity and how they create Black […]

Once again, a re-release from the past in anticipation of new episodes starting next week. Here, we look at one idea of how the universe came into existence. This is how we summarized it when we released this over a year and a half ago … When we read a paper1 published a couple years […]

Are certain cosmological constants “too good to be random or coincidental”? . We’re repeating this episode in anticipation of a couple new ones that will be released in two weeks, after the holiday season has passed (we didn’t want those to be eclipsed by the distractions of the holidays). Those two new episodes in January […]

Some ethical/theological perspectives on public responses to the pandemic, and how to prepare for what’s in store . We begin with a look at the public backlash against the authorities who are simply trying to save humanity from this existential threat: Even if we can collectively get on board fully with the scientists and health-care […]

Myths, misconceptions, and conspiracy theories surrounding COVID-19 image from Pixabay, adapted . Last week, we focused on the science around COVID. Today, we’ve got pseudoscience in our cross-hairs. The misinformation, myths, science denial, and conspiracy theories that are put out by internet trolls and circulated through social media. Or which are simply a product of […]

Comparing the R&D programs of humans (vaccines; drugs) and of COVID (variants) . This is our third update on COVID (also see #28 and #36), pulled together right around the time that COVID rolled out its latest disguise: the omicron variant. Here, we look at some of the scientific advances, including the large number of […]

A new mutant of COVID-19 which is more transmissible than delta, and may evade our immune system Image from Pixabay . The W.H.O. tells us there’s a new COVID variant out there, one with numerous mutations on the spike protein which not only make it easier to spread, but it may also evade our diagnostic […]

The first in a series of episode exploring the strained relationship between the church and science . The church has long had a reputation for being anti-science, even though it was people of faith who built the foundations of the scientific enterprise for millennia. Even in the story of Galileo being tried by the church […]

Dr. Peter Enns gives us the first in this new “Origin and evolution of …” series of episodes. This week, we’re starting in a whole new direction.  Well, two different directions, actually. One theme that we’ll be pursuing we’ve entitled “The origin and evolution of …” series of episodes.  You’d probably expect that we’ll fill […]

Dissection of a deconstruction journey and a search for truth and meaning. Last week, Boyd and I introduced you to the Sunday Assembly. We talked to Colin and Matt, who each lead Sunday Assembly chapters in their respective local communities (Halifax, Canada and London, UK) (#55). We had also intended to include 5 or 10 […]

The Sunday Assembly build a community and celebrate life by rejigging a traditional church service …… but leaving out all the “God-stuff”. We’ve been hearing over the past few episodes how important community is in the faith journey … for devout believers returning to church (Ep. #51) … for those trying to now revitalize the […]

Last week, we talked about believers starting out with a simple but passionate Christian belief (stage 1) which crumbles as doubts and questions erode the pillars of their faith (stage 3).  This is such an unsettling experience for anyone going through that, but Brian McLaren showed that it is still possible to find Faith after […]

Last week, we heard about people returning to church after COVID had kept the doors closed for over a year.  This week, we hear about people returning to faith after doubts and too many questions kept them locked out for much longer. In his latest book … Faith after doubt: why your beliefs stopped working […]

Last week, we talked to people considering the possibility/opportunity of going back to church. We learned about the things they missed most about not being able to go for so long … whether that was over a year because COVID kept them locked out, or whether it was much longer than that because of a […]

COVID-19 is blamed for a lot of bad things, but there is one good thing it’s done for us: it forced us to stop everything and re-evaluate. Our healthcare system … government … business … schools … and even church.  Almost two years after slamming the church doors on us, we’ve had time to re-evaluate […]

We’re back!  Here’s a sneak peak of what we’ve been preparing for Season 3. We began with a simple question: “Why should we go back to church?”  Some people were forced out by COVID; others elected to drop out long before COVID because of a faith crisis.  And many in both camps are now wondering […]

In this season finale, we take a look back at our journey with you. Boyd and I had planned to take it in one direction, but as all great conversations go, this one went in a direction we completely did not expect! It really took on a life of its own. A couple episodes that […]

Over the last two weeks, we’ve looked at how the Gospel of Jesus was changed from being a message of love, forgiveness and liberation into one of fear, guilt, shame, and unworthiness. This distortion was reinforced in the home, the Sunday Schools, Youth groups, and from the pulpit. And in the eyes and minds of […]

In this second half of our look at religious trauma, we talk to Dr. Marlene Winell (PhD, Psychology), who literally wrote the book on this topic … Leaving the fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving Their Religion … and is now the director of a large counseling service for those dealing with […]

In the past few episodes, we’ve learned about the important role that other people play in one’s spiritual experience: we see, feel, and hear from God in part through our encounters with other people. This makes sense if the church is “the body of Christ.” Unfortunately, there’s a dark side to this fact: many people […]

The neurobiology of the spiritual relationship is such a big topic, we thought it would be good to hear from a second scholar who comes at this from a completely different angle. Dr. Sarah Lane Ritchie obtained her graduate degree in Theology and Science studying consciousness, neuroplasticity and religious belief … we couldn’t have found a […]

Having described the neurobiological mechanisms behind our relationships with other people, Dr. Smith then addressed our original question: “how do we humans relate to God?” Her answer: “in exactly the same way.” Some might be surprised that I even had to ask. They might shrug their shoulders or flip their hands and say: “Of course […]