The Mighty Philbert Podcast

Send us Fan Mail God will help you find your car keys — but won’t stop a famine. He’ll bless your football team — but ignore war, cancer, and starving kids. So let’s ask the obvious: if prayer works, why does God only seem to care about the trivial stuff? And if the big prayers go unanswered, maybe the problem isn’t timing… maybe no one’s actually listening. In this Mighty Philbert Friday Rant, we...

Send us Fan Mail Church is supposed to be a place of sanctuary. But behind the robes and pulpits, some pastors and priests carried out the darkest of crimes. In this special episode, The Mighty Philbert takes a haunting look at: Pastor Arthur Burton Schirmer, who staged his wife’s death as a car crash. Father Gerald Robinson, convicted of the 1980 chapel murder of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl. Reveren...

Send us Fan Mail Teen Mania Ministries promised transformation. What it delivered was trauma. From Acquire the Fire rallies to the Honor Academy’s ESOAL “boot camp,” Ron Luce’s empire used cult-like tactics, unpaid labor, and financial mismanagement that left thousands of kids broken and betrayed. In this episode, I break down the history, scandals, lawsuits, and survivor stories that reveal the d...

Send us Fan Mail Jesus prayed for unity — “that they may all be one.” Two thousand years later, Christianity has thousands of denominations, endless fights, bloody wars, and church splits nastier than Thanksgiving dinner with your in-laws. So here’s the question: if God didn’t answer Jesus’ own prayer, why do Christians still believe prayer works? In this episode of The Mighty Philbert, we’ll brea...

Send us Fan Mail The Mighty Philbert is back, and this time we’re pulling the curtain on how fear has become America’s favorite religion. From the assassination of Charlie Kirk to Trump’s threats against Democrats and non-Christians, to the hypocrisy of “canceling” Jimmy Kimmel for daring to make jokes — we’re watching the same cult playbook that fueled the Satanic Panic and Hellfire preaching of...

Send us Fan Mail They told us purity rings would protect us. They told us pledge cards would keep us safe. They told us teen sexuality could be shut down with a contract and a youth pastor’s pep talk. Spoiler: they were wrong. In this episode of The Mighty Philbert, we dive deep into the world of 90s purity culture—the rings, the pledge cards, the awkward ceremonies, and the crushing shame it left...

Send us Fan Mail Tonight, Captive Desk will be joining us to talk about his week from Hell. Thanks, Dave for coming on to chat with us tonight and we know you're going to continue to kick the Reaper's ass for many years to come! Check Out Captive Desk's Channel Which Includes his special Saturday Night at the Atheists Segment:    / @captivedesk3168  Also Check Out The Grassman Chron...

Send us Fan Mail Two pastors claim “empathy” is a modern sin that erodes truth, wrecks marriages, and might usher in civil war. Cute theory. In this breakdown, we separate word games from reality: what empathy actually is (attune + understand + help—with boundaries), how real counseling works, and why “never apologize unless Heaven says so” is just stonewalling in a suit. If you’ve ever been told...

Send us Fan Mail The church loves Jesus — as long as they control the script. But when Broadway and Hollywood put their own spin on the story? Outrage. From Jesus Christ Superstar to Godspell to Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ , Christians have boycotted, protested, and even firebombed theaters in the name of “protecting” Jesus. Join The Mighty Philbert as we dive into the church’s wild r...

Send us Fan Mail So here’s the thing — if you hold up Jesus to modern cult psychology, he doesn’t look like your loving neighborhood carpenter. He looks like a guy running the first-century version of NXIVM with better robes. In this episode of The Mighty Philbert , I’m breaking down 10 Ways the Bible Proves Jesus Was a Cult Leader — using Steven Hassan’s B.I.T.E. model (Behavior, Information, Tho...

Send us Fan Mail I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in the Bible, and I don’t buy into heaven, hell, or “God’s standards.” But I do believe in compassion over cruelty—and on that front, I’ll give credit where it’s due. The United Methodist Church (UMC) has taken steps toward inclusion of women and LGBTQ people, and that’s worth celebrating. In this video, I dismantle a rant from the channel In Layman...

Send us Fan Mail In 1981, MTV changed everything. Suddenly music wasn’t just something you heard — it was something you saw . To parents, preachers, and pearl-clutchers everywhere, that meant only one thing: Satan had found a new cable channel. In this episode of The Mighty Philbert , we rewind to the golden age of music videos and the not-so-golden age of moral panic. We’ll cover: 🎸 MTV’s launch...

Send us Fan Mail 🎉 Labor Day Special! 🎉 Welcome to a very special holiday edition of The Mighty Philbert ! Today, we’re taking a playful trip into childhood nostalgia with “Mr. Philbert and the Big Nasty Bully.” Think Mr. Rogers meets Blue’s Clues — with cartoons, sing-alongs, and a little parody twist. Only this time, the “bully” we’re talking about looks a whole lot like the God of the Old Tes...

Send us Fan Mail The Church loves to preach about sin, modesty, and “godly families” — but when women are abused, the victim is the one who gets blamed. From purity culture to pulpit cover-ups, it’s a system built to protect predators and shame survivors. In this episode of The Mighty Philbert , we’re pulling no punches. From the infamous Paige Patterson “pray harder” advice, to the global “What W...

Send us Fan Mail Step into the neon-soaked, Aquanet-fueled world of 1980s televangelism — where God’s “anointed” weren’t just preachers, they were TV stars, salespeople, and scandal magnets. In this episode of The Mighty Philbert , we dive into the golden age of Christian TV — the PTL Club, TBN, CBN — and the televangelists who turned religion into a billion-dollar business. From Jim Bakker’s frau...

Send us Fan Mail This week, we’re diving into The Great Hell Scare — when churches turned Hell into a horror franchise long before Netflix picked up the idea. From sweaty revival preachers describing worms eating your flesh, to Hell Houses scarier than any haunted house, to Jack Chick comics that made Dungeons & Dragons look like a Satanic initiation ceremony… we saw it all. And the baggage? Y...

Send us Fan Mail J. Warner Wallace, Lee Strobel, and Josh McDowell all claim they’ve got the “case” for the Bible locked down. Wallace waves around Acts like a detective’s notebook, Strobel plays cheerleader with leading questions, and McDowell buries us under a so-called “tsunami of evidence.”But when you dig deeper, what you actually find is silence treated like proof, manuscript quantity hype s...

Send us Fan Mail Today, we explore how the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and ’90s echoed the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. From spectral evidence to satanic daycares, it’s a tale of mass hysteria, moral crusades, and the lives ruined in the name of righteousness. Buckle up, GenXers — this one’s gonna hurt. 🔔 Subscribe for more counter-apologetics, GenX nostalgia, and the cold, sarcastic truth. #Satani...

Send us Fan Mail In this week’s episode of The Mighty Philbert, we dig up the greatest comeback story never told — the resurrection of Jesus — as told by Christian apologist and professional anecdote machine, Josh McDowell. Armed with Mel Gibson movies, mystery engineers, and a suspicious lack of sources, Josh makes his case for the resurrection… and I take it apart, one contradiction at a time.  ...

Send us Fan Mail Labubu dolls are not possessed. But the people making viral videos about them? Might be possessed by the spirit of the 1980s Satanic Panic. In this episode of The Mighty Philbert , we refute a wildly popular video claiming Labubu dolls are demonic, cause paranormal activity, and are gateways to witchcraft. We take a sarcastic, hard-hitting look at this ridiculous claim and trace i...

Send us Fan Mail Did Christianity really make the world a better place? Or is that just a holy-sounding remix of colonial history with a halo filter?  In this episode of The Mighty Philbert , I respond to Inspiring Philosophy ’s viral video, “How Christianity Changed the World,” and break down the myths, cherry-picked stats, and historical revisionism. From missionary myths to Protestant propagand...

Send us Fan Mail Is science actually a secret sermon? Or is someone just selling you theological snake oil in a lab coat? In this final episode of The Four Winds of Christian Apologetics series, The Mighty Philbert tackles John Lennox’s book Cosmic Chemistry — a bold attempt to argue that science not only supports Christianity, but outright proves it. We’ll dissect Lennox’s biggest arguments — the...

Send us Fan Mail This week on the Mighty Philbert, we take a look at Frank Turek's claims that morality can't exist with the Christian God. 

Send us Fan Mail Is the Kalam Cosmological Argument the ultimate proof for God... or just theological sleight-of-hand dressed in a lab coat? In this episode of The Mighty Philbert, we take a scalpel (and a sledgehammer) to William Lane Craig’s favorite apologetic argument — and expose just how far it leaps from “a cause” to “definitely the Christian God.” We’ll dig into the science, unpack the phi...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Mighty Philbert, we take a wrecking ball to Lee Strobel’s so-called “4 Proofs of the Resurrection” from The Case for Christ. From vague creeds to questionable tombs and recycled Bible verses dressed up as eyewitnesses — we pull back the curtain and expose the apologetic sleight of hand.