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Spiritual Hot Sauce
Dive into the profound and thought-provoking world of "Spiritual Hot Sauce," where Chris Jones offers his unique insights and perspectives into religion, spirituality, psychology, and philosophy. This podcast challenges societal norms and explores deep concepts such as social constructs, archetypes, monotheism, and the nature of good and evil. Perfect for those questioning religious norms, deconstructing their beliefs, or seeking a richer understanding of spirituality, "Spiritual Hot Sauce" serves up a unique blend of perspectives that will ignite your curiosity and inspire personal growth. Join us on this journey of exploration and discovery.
Spiritual Hot Sauce
E18 “A Conversation With Kyle Whitaker: God, Philosophy, and Bourbon”
In this thought-provoking conversation, Chris sits down with Dr. Kyle Whitaker, philosopher and co-host of “A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk Into a Bar,” to explore the intersection of faith, doubt, and intellectual honesty. Kyle opens up about his unique perspective as a Christian materialist who doesn’t believe in an immaterial soul yet has experienced genuine encounters with God. They dive deep into the deconstruction movement sweeping through evangelicalism, discussing why so many are leaving conservative Christianity, the role of LGBTQ issues in faith communities, and what it means to hold religious beliefs without certainty. Kyle shares his journey from potential Christian apologist to academic philosopher, his struggles with prayer in the face of suffering, and why he describes himself as “three days a week an atheist.” This conversation challenges easy answers while making space for the complexity and ambiguity inherent in authentic spiritual life. Whether you’re deconstructing, reconstructing, or simply questioning, this episode offers a refreshing model of faith that embraces doubt as part of the journey.
Links to episodes of A Pastor and Philosopher Walk Into a Bar are provided below.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-pastor-and-a-philosopher-walk-into-a-bar/id1512686327
https://open.spotify.com/show/1r8ms9udlxS4DYT2yIqsDy?si=PBN-r8zWRp-aMpDbDsrC6w
https://pastorandphilosopher.buzzsprout.com/967219/follow
Episode 18 of “Spiritual Hot Sauce” by Chris Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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In this episode, I talked to Kyle Whitaker, who holds a PhD in philosophy. He's also the co-host of a pastor and a philosopher walk into a bar. In this conversation, he shares his ideas on philosophy, religion, and bourbon. Welcome. I'm Chris Jones. This is where believers and skeptics alike are invited to embark on a journey of faith, philosophy, and life from a different perspective. Whether we are joined by an insightful guest, or we just jump into the deep end. This exploration promises to challenge us all. Are we getting it right? This is Spiritual Hot Sauce. Welcome, Kyle.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks, Chris. Glad to be here.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, man. I'm so glad to have you. And before we even get into this, I want to publicly thank you because Kyle was generous with his time and knowledge in helping spiritual hot sauce get off the ground. And I probably wouldn't be here right now doing this if it wasn't for Kyle. So I appreciate everything you've given. Thank you, sir.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that's that's very generous. I don't want to take full responsibility because I haven't listened to much of your podcast. But if it's good, I'll let you.
SPEAKER_01:Hinderburg, right? The Hindenburg. Oh gosh, my fingerprints are all over that. So let's talk about this backdrop because this goes along with a pastor and a philosopher walk into a bar.
SPEAKER_00:Can listeners see this? I don't know if the video is also made public, but Yeah, the book be made public.
SPEAKER_01:So I mean and this is kind of the fingerprints of a pastor and a philosopher walk into a bar, though, is it not? I mean, was it always this concept or did it evolve into it?
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell No, it was always this. So the my co-host Randy is a pastor. I went to his church for a long time, and we used to do these Q ⁇ A sessions on occasional Sundays, like he'd do a sermon series and then end it with a QA session. And I would help him with those, and we had a pretty good rapport, and people seemed to like it. And so COVID happened and we suddenly both had extra time on our hands, and we thought, eh, what the hell? Let's try this podcast thing. And we both had a very strong interest in bourbon. Also beer, but mostly bourbon. So he and I and our producer Elliot, who is still really into bourbon, kind of bonded around that and thought, you know what, let's make it a thing. Because we we asked our wives for podcast title ideas, and two of them independently suggested the actual title of our show. Wow. And so we thought, yeah, all right. Well and let's make it interesting by having, you know, regular tastings. So before at the beginning or middle or usually beginning of each episode, we would taste something, usually bourbon. And that we did that for probably four seasons or so, maybe longer, and then Randy quit drinking. Messed up the whole thing. We don't do that so much anymore. But I still do uh, you know, occasional things for our Patreon supporters that are bar themed. So that was part of it, but also another part of it was we wanted it to be a space, you know, a theoretical space anyway, not a physical space, but a space for the kinds of conversations that are more likely to happen in bars than in churches. Gotcha. We wanted them to be honest. In other words, pull no punches, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_01:Um what was your favorite pores?
SPEAKER_00:Oh Lord, too many to name. We have a whole back catalog of uh really excellent ones. Our friend Tim, who runs a YouTube channel specifically about bourbon and gets things sent to him all the time, would occasionally send us things and he sent us some exquisite things. So, like a 16-year-old, old Fitzgerald. I mean, so so many things that I have forgotten that are really great. Right now, if you care, I'm drinking E. H. Taylor, uh small bitch for the bourbon.
SPEAKER_01:That's a very robust bourbon. It is. It is. I'm a No Marty League guy, but I can't find it.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yes. It's impossible to find. We can nerd out about that for as long as you want, Chris. I that was my wedding bourbon.
unknown:Oh.
SPEAKER_00:Uh in the set in the sense that my wife acquired a bottle for me before our wedding, and we had it at the bar. I mean, we had uh special people in our lives who were given a token that they could exchange for a poor of that at the bar. It was really full, really fun. We also had a bottle of papy 23, but it was like$75 an ounce, so nobody did that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. Pappy's is expensive. I got poor man's papies. I got uh some 12 Weller, which is really good. But it's you know it's not papies. It's not the 23. It's not the special. It's not the unobtamian stuff. But yeah, I like M. Mortile. I still got a little bit left of a bottle in there. But I just really don't drink a whole lot. It's been a few years since I have. And I got some really nice bourbons in there in the closet. Well, we should next time I'm in uh Louisville. Yeah, next time you're in the ville, man, we'll do it. So five years, is that how long it's been that a pastor and a philosopher walk into a bar's been around?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, five years.
SPEAKER_01:We just started season six, so we're about four episodes into that, I think. Aaron Ross Powell So I think you alluded to it, but a pastor and a philosopher walk into a bar is about it it's a space for emergent ideology that typically doesn't happen in mainstream Christianity, but it gives it a place to talk about.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. So we obviously wanted to combine our interests, and his interests are pastoral interests. They're the sorts of things that he runs into in real people's lives all the time, and my interests are philosophical, but there's a great deal of overlap. And so we wanted to explore kind of the foundations of the major things that come up in the spiritual life of the average churchgoer that unfortunately most of them don't find a good outlet to discuss within their churches. There are obviously lots of exceptions to that, but we both came from evangelicalism and a particular kind of evangelicalism where that kind of discussion was either met with hostility or it was met with a kind of openness but a lack of understanding. And we wanted to see if we could do better.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell That was one of my questions I wanted to start with. Are you finding it that people are more receptive to have those conversations in mainstream Christianity than they were five years ago?
SPEAKER_00:We have certainly heard from a lot of people that are very happy that we exist, which tells me no.
SPEAKER_01:Is that in the Christianity, or is that kind of outside of it? Are you are you drawing people in that didn't have a home or is it coming from Christianity?
SPEAKER_00:It's both. It's it's a lot of people who have left evangelicalism, that version of Christianity, altogether. It's a lot of people who are still in it but struggling to stay. And it's a lot of people who have found a lot of life outside of conservative Christianity who have gone to mainstream denominations or who are Catholic or who have left the faith altogether. We have a lot of listeners like that as well, not just ex-evangelical, but ex-Christian. So there are lots and lots of spaces where that kind of conversation is flourishing. I have not seen any indications that conservative evangelicalism has improved. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Some of these emergent ideologies that you see happening, uh, do you see any of them gaining traction?
SPEAKER_00:Give me a give me an example of the kind of ideology you're thinking of.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell I'm not sure. That's what I was asking. I thought maybe in all these times you've heard some things that that you see coming from different parts and not just a group.
SPEAKER_00:Let me give you some examples of the sorts of topics we hit on a lot that do seem to have traction and seem to be growing. And these are not things we like set out to be the podcast that talks about that. It just kind of happened organically. A huge one is deconstruction. So lots and lots of people, particularly from conservative, what I would call fundamentalist denominations of American Christianity. We could define that more precisely if you want, but let's just call it fundamentalist for now. Lots and lots of those folks, particularly millennials and under, but also a lot of Gen Xers, are finding it impossible to stay in the church. Some of them impossible to stay in the faith. And not for lack of trying. Like they they'd really like to stay, and they'd really like to not incur the costs of leaving, but for various reasons, they can no longer do so, and so they'll find themselves listening to a podcast like ours in secret because they don't have anybody in their life to talk to about it. I gotcha. Some of them can talk to their spouses about it. We've heard from people who can't even do that. So deconstruction has been a huge theme, and that is not going away. If anything, it's it's still increasing. Part and parcel to that, one of the main reasons, if you ask people why they're deconstructing, one of the main reasons you'll get is the uh conservative church's relationship with LGBTQ people. And so that has been a huge theme of our show. We've done quite a few episodes and even series on that. Again, not intending to, it's just a thing that happened because of things we were going through and interest we had. And that has been a recurring thing that I think has picked up traction is a weird way to put it, but it's definitely, you know, huge. And including within evangelicalism, within fundamentalism, even in churches who don't like to admit that that's something they're dealing with, most of them are. Race is another big one, race and gender, and the many, many facets of how that impacts what it means to be a Christian in America, what it means to be a churchgoer. We also talk, though, a lot about a lot of doctrinal things. We we talk about the Bible quite a bit more than I would like to, to be honest with you. More than you would like to. Because Randy's a pastor, so I have to throw him a bone down and then talk about what he likes. So you have alternate ways to read the Bible that are different from what a lot of folks grew up with, you know, more expansive readings, more intentional hermeneutical systems. And so yeah, what you know, is inerrancy a real thing? Like that kind of stuff. And so we we we get a lot of people from that too. Those those conversations are alive and well, even if I wish they weren't. They still are.
SPEAKER_01:So in deconstruction, do you find that people are running from something that hopefully they find somebody like you or a podcast like that where they have a place to come to? Because a lot of times I think it's almost an emotional knee-jerk reaction from maybe trauma. So they're just running. They just take off. And I've met with some people and they're not really running to a place, and they seem almost nomadic. Are you through that?
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Yes. And and we've tried when we've talked about deconstruction, we don't want to be too simplistic about it, right? One of the one of the main themes of what we like how we like to order our conversations is whatever you think the simple answer is, you're probably wrong. Let's go further, right? It's whatever it is, it's always more complicated than you thought. And deconstruction is, of course, no exception to that. There are many, many reasons to deconstruct, some seemingly incommensurate with others. Like pe some people have just very, very different experiences. And a lot of Christians don't deconstruct at all. And there's healthy ways to not deconstruct and unhealthy ways to not deconstruct as well. If you grew up in a healthy expression of Christianity, you might not need to. And that's sometimes overlooked in these conversations. So we yeah, we see all sorts, and we don't want to over-define it, if that makes sense. I don't know how you've talked about it.
SPEAKER_01:It's like you said, it's this big bucket. And there's so many different reasons and ways you can get to that place. And I think sometimes we look at other people that also are under that banner of deconstruction. So we have that communion feel with them that it's they're like us. But the truth is they may be nothing like us. And for the reasons why they are, it has nothing to do with why I'm there, and we're going two different directions, heading in two different places.
SPEAKER_00:It is. It's partially true to say, you know, we've heard probably heard this in other contexts, but like if you've met one deconstructing person, you've met one deconstructing person, right? That's partially true, but there are obvious commonalities too that it would be equally irresponsible to ignore. So there are certain things, for example, the LGBTQ thing that is driving a lot of people out of certain kinds of churches, and that's just not a not a coincidence that that's just happening now, you know? Right. So there are specific things we can point to, specific kinds of abuses, specific doctrines that I think are causing directly these kind the flood that we're currently seeing people having some some version of this experience. That said, when we have talked about it, we've tried not to frame it as just deconstruction all the way down, because as you said, it could lead nowhere, right? You could be a nomad or you could just lead you right out of the faith. And we want to leave that open as a legitimate, reasonable possibility as well. But we try to think of it more in terms of sort of faith evolution, if that helps. That's the Randy's preferred vocabulary, which I like, which is just kind of a normal, healthy part of any faith experience, I think, is some kind of evolution to something different, greater and greater complexity, greater and greater awareness of different forms of experience and evidence.
SPEAKER_01:And I think it'd be very difficult for anybody to land on feeling like they had the absolute truth if they never challenged themselves and what they absolutely believed, if they just always followed the doctrine. So I think there's a lot of benefits to this for a lot of different reasons. Yeah. I would imagine five years of going through hearing people talk about deconstruction and or evolution, reconstruction, exvangelical, whatever the buzzwords are, that it would if it was me, it would probably force me into a place after a half a decade of that that I would probably be leaning towards deconstructing, or it would lean me the other way, where I would be firming up in my faith. But it would be very difficult, I think, to kind of be the same as I was before I started into it. Have you found that to be true for you?
SPEAKER_00:Not really. Yes, you've always been a heathen, is that what you're saying? Uh well, before we started the podcast, yes. I mean, a little bit. So I've done I've definitely learned a lot of important things from guests we've had and benefited greatly from conversations we've had amongst ourselves and also with guests. In some ways, my faith has probably been deepened by some of those conversations, especially if I've had occasion to revisit them at pivotal moments in my life. If nothing else, my relationships with Randy and Elliot have deepened, and that's that's benefited my Christianity, like literally, you know? Yeah. They're my main connection to the church at this point, probably. Because I'm not a regular church attender just due to life circumstances, even though I'd like to be. Yeah. But no, in the sense that I'm gonna paraphrase something one of my friends said, who was previously a guest on the podcast as well, which is that I no longer believe that I know any of this, and therefore it is difficult for me to ever come to a place where I feel like I was previously mistaken or overconfident. Like there is this faith evolution where you're constantly looking back and thinking, oh, why did I why was I so so certain about that? Why did I present in that way? You know, it just makes me feel icky. If you've been an evangelical for any length of time and then matured, you probably have an experience like that. But I think at a certain point, maybe this is philosophical training, but I don't think it's just it's just that. At a certain point you realize just how ambiguous and just how vague and tenuous all talk about God is. And it's not just God, but it definitely is that. All theology is I I don't want to say it's guesswork, because that's condescending and reductionist, but it is definitely the sort of thing I think that cannot be known. For sure. With with with any degree of certainty. I think you can be confident about certain things, right? And I I think you should be careful and how you present that confidence, but I do still think confidence about certain things is possible. But you reach a point, or at least I reached a point, where it just doesn't make sense to say that I know this anymore. I have opinions, I have things I hope are true, but I certainly don't know. And now that I'm there, it's difficult to say that my faith has been dramatically altered through these conversations. It's been enriched, it's been complexified, but it has not been fundamentally changed. I don't believe different things than I did five years ago. Now, Randy would say something different. He's not here to express his view, but I know he's changed his mind about some things in that time.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell So it's firm Tim up more, you think?
SPEAKER_00:I'll let I'll let him answer that if he if he wants to.
SPEAKER_01:No, I mean, just go ahead and let's just say he's been on it he's been on a trajectory.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So have you been through any process of what you would call deconstruction or a reconstruction or more softer language, evolution?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. Most of it took place before all this, you know. It took place through college and primarily grad school.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell And so you identify as a uh Christian materialist, is that correct?
SPEAKER_00:Yes. I'd want to define what that means, but yes.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell Please do, because that's what I want to get into. If you would please define it.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, for sure. Yeah, yeah. So that's funny, because I I can never quite predict which things I've said people will latch on to. Oh, no, man. I'm all inside of this. I want to see where you're gonna pull them off the most, you know. Randy seemed to have a hard time with this too. Uh not not saying you're having a hard time with it, just that that pings for people in a way that some other things are.
SPEAKER_01:No, I'm interested. I want to hear about it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I think that human beings are physical objects. Okay. And that there isn't anything immaterial about them. I don't believe in a soul. I don't believe depending on the day of the week, I don't may or may not believe in an afterlife. If there is an afterlife, I think it's a physical.
SPEAKER_01:You don't believe a human is a tripartite. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_00:I do I do not. Okay. I believe a human is a million part being. Okay. No, I I think the biologists and the neurologists and the psychologists and the you name it, you know, fill-in-the-blank collective consensus view of the human is accurate. I do not I don't think that in any way reduces what, you know, theology has to say about a human person. I just don't think there's anything over and beyond the physical thing. And I don't think that that is incompatible with Christianity. So Okay.
SPEAKER_01:So that's why I was going to ask how how does that play into how you see God? Or do you say God?
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I don't think it affects it. And this trips up people too. I s I see a range of options on what God could be like and what humans could be like, and I think though almost all of those options are compatible with each other. I think a sufficiently clever person could think up a paradigm in which God is just about anything you want God to be, and humans are just about anything you want humans to be, and the two can be compatible. There are some obvious logical exceptions to that, but for the most part, like the range of reasonable views of God and the range of reasonable views of human beings are, as far as I can tell, wholly compatible with each other. At least I've not heard a definition that I think is defensible of what a human being would be that would be obviously incompatible with some standard view of what God is. That's probably not a the kind of answer you wanted. But like I think, you know, God is at bottom whatever made the world.
SPEAKER_01:So you believe he's like the quantum, he is the energy, kind of Einstein's idea of God.
SPEAKER_00:Oh no, I hate all that kind of talk. You really Yes. So what one of the things that really gets under my skin is theological uses of physics that don't have anything to do with what physicists are doing or saying about what they're doing. No, I wouldn't use any of that language. But I do think that whatever the physical world is, and if God exists, then God is responsible for that thing. But I don't think that entails anything in particular about the phone.
SPEAKER_01:So you would reject like an atheist kind of view of God. That's not your strong.
SPEAKER_00:I would reject as strong. Remember, all this is opinions, Chris.
SPEAKER_01:So let's not ask you to adopt the burden of proof.
SPEAKER_00:I just want you to give me your opinion. To not like take a strong position on most of these questions entails that I don't reject anything either. I could be fairly classed as a kind of agnostic.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:But I am not a pantheist, if that makes sense. I do not think I don't see any reason that is compelling to me to think that the physical world itself is divine.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:So it's great in a lot of ways, but I feel no compulsion to worship it or to view it as a fundamentally different kind of thing than myself.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell So is it kind of like Dawkins like a communal Christian kind of thing? What do you mean? Where as cultural Christianity, it's part of the community being there. It's not necessarily about an experience with God in a spiritual.
SPEAKER_00:Oh no, not at all. I think experience with God is core to Christianity. Would not want to give that up. If that weren't a thing, I just wouldn't be a Christian.
SPEAKER_01:I guess that's why I'm curious about what your what your experience with God is like.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So the people that we know that we have in common are largely Pentecostal or have that background. So do I. You know, that's that's how I know those people. Um and I had real experiences, numerous ones. I don't want to overstate it, but you know, more than I could count on one hand, that I still think were as valid as anything I've ever experienced.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Do you think that was God or do you just think that was the collective consciousness of humanity?
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell I think collective consciousness of humanity is probably incoherent. I don't know that that exists or what it would mean. So I don't think it's that. Okay. No, I think it was God. Yeah, I experienced it as God, and I have no reason, and I have uncovered no reason, despite trying pretty hard to deny that that was God. But I also believe other things. Yeah. But also, you know, so here's what I mean by agnostic. I don't know any I don't know anything about God. Like I don't know that God exists. I don't know that Jesus is God. I don't know that the claims of Christianity are true. I have had these experiences. They seemed veridical to me. They seemed very much like many of the other perceptual experiences I've had, to the extent that if I discounted them, I'd be on shaky ground with some of my other experiences that I'd have no good reason to discount. Okay. On at the same time, though, I have to balance that with what seems to me to be true on the balance of the evidence. It's a very scientific approach.
SPEAKER_01:Domains almost it's your anecdotal evidence.
SPEAKER_00:I try, I try I try to defend what's scientific about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I believe on the basis of evidence and argumentation that human beings are physical objects. I also believe on the basis of my own experience and also bit different kinds of evidence and argumentation that God seems to exist to me. Could be wrong about that. But I don't see any reason that those things need to be incompatible. No, I I don't I don't think so at all.
SPEAKER_01:I don't think so at all. So and just curious, I just want to understand. So do you have like a prayer life? Is that existence or Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's fair.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's a fair question. The answer is no. Okay. Um Do you imagine that's a good idea? I would like to more than I do. But it's mostly just it's not I know how healthy and good that is. Neuroscience. Even just for purely neuroscientific reasons, right? And so I I wish that I had more time in my day to do that or could make the time. Having two young children and a busy life makes it hard.
SPEAKER_01:For sure.
SPEAKER_00:But I will say we re recently released an episode all about prayer, and we're probably going to follow it up with a part two because we got more response to that than we usually do.
SPEAKER_01:I'd imagine a lot of people through deconstruction have a lot of questions about prayer.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell They do, understandably, as do I. And one of the things I say in there is that it prayer's weird for me now. It's not that I don't think that there's a being on the other end of it. Obviously I don't know, but it's it's definitely not like it used to be. I guess I'm more alive to the extent and the meaningfulness of suffering than I used to be. Not that I wasn't aware of it, but I've thought harder about it, I guess, and I've become more aware of it, and I've struggled with it, trying to make sense of it. Suffering at all. I mean, kind of in general, some specific to me, but mostly not. Mostly people that I know, things that I've read. I mean, my God, you could just read the headlines at any given point and find plenty of examples to be seriously faith-shaken about. It's not like those things have shaken my faith at all, because again, I had room in it, in its structure already for that kind of thing. But they have made it difficult to pray, frankly. So that when I try to enter that space, which I'll freely admit is not often, it just seems false. It seems false. And I'm sure there's a way to work through that. And I'm not trying hard to figure it out. So first to admit, I gotcha.
SPEAKER_01:So do you think hypocritical when you come to that space? Is that what you mean by false?
SPEAKER_00:That you just No, no, not so much hypocritical, just like this isn't really me right now, or like I don't really want to have this conversation with you.
SPEAKER_01:You know?
SPEAKER_00:A kind of estrangement, probably.
SPEAKER_01:I gotcha. You're just not in that space right now. But none of us are static. We're all involving. You may evolve away from the Trevor Burrus, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:And I mean I'm even I don't want to be in that space.
SPEAKER_01:You know? But you want to fully like to be able to do that. If you're going to be in that space, you honestly want to sincerely be there. You don't want to feel like it's contrived or you're just forcing it. I appreciate that, man. I do. That that speaks to your integrity of who you are in your relationship with God, of what you're saying.
SPEAKER_00:It reminds me of a conversation I had with my dad one time, who's now past, but it was actually in connection with HL, our mutual friend. Yeah. So H.L. and I used to kind of occasionally speak together various places, and at one of those my dad attended, and I think evolution came up. And I wasn't e I don't think either of uh HL or I were even like we probably wouldn't have described ourselves as pro-evolution at that point. I was probably further along than he was in that direction, but I was at least willing to question right creationism. And this really bothered my dad. And I remember on the way back, on the drive back, he was really pressing me on it. And I said something along the lines of, Well, would you prefer that I lied to you? And he was like, Well, I guess not. I g I guess I'm glad to have this conversation and that you'll, you know, be honest about where you're at. And that's the best I can do with this prayer thing. Like I don't necessarily want to be where I am, but I can't.
SPEAKER_01:Do you feel like that there's some pressure that's kind of residual left over from your father and your family, where you you feel a connection there with your faith, but it's more through family and connection of that?
SPEAKER_00:That's an interesting question. I haven't thought of it in those terms.
SPEAKER_01:That's almost family. It's culturally driven in this.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. But my faith was always quite distinct from my parents. I remember as even as a kid, I would go to a different church than they did. Oh, really? Yeah. Because the church that I grew up in I liked, and then they left, and I didn't want to leave. So I just went to both, or just the one I wanted to go to. It was. It was. It was the pastor and the friends that I had made there. And it was also just a more expansive theological vision of God. It was I didn't realize it at the time, but it was a denomination that was more liberal in its origins, and so put fewer restrictions on what one's experience of God could be like. And that must have appealed to me in some way I didn't realize.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Have you ever explored other religions and other viewpoints of God outside of Christianity?
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Ross Powell Only in the sense of reading about them. Never I've never tried to practice. That would feel inauthentic, too. You know, I'm a Christian. I've always been a Christian. I don't see any reason to not be a Christian. You know, I'm not going to convert to something else. If I was going to give up Christianity, I'd just be an atheist, which I am three days of the week anyway.
SPEAKER_01:So you know what I mean? Aaron Ross Powell, you know, I got a friend who's a Christian atheist, and he says this is my friend Scott. He says, I don't need the magic of the Bible, the message itself that Christ presented is the magic. And I thought, man, that's beautiful. So uh that's interesting.
SPEAKER_00:I wonder what he means by the mag I might I might want to defend the magic a little bit, but that's interesting. I would love to hear that. That depends on what he means. I mean, I think if you we've talked about this on the podcast too. Like I'm I seem weirdly conservative about some things that might surprise some people.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, for you to try to go the other side now and defend it. I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_00:You're like a utility player. You're just all over the field. Right. That was a sports metaphor, so I'm not going to pretend I understood it, but thank you. Yeah, like I without a resurrection, I don't really see the point of Christianity. Like if if there isn't something real happening after death that's making some real difference to all of this, then I'm honestly not interested.
SPEAKER_01:So you don't find value in the message of Christ, of love and healing.
SPEAKER_00:Of course I do. Of course I do. But I'm also familiar enough with enough other traditions to see equal value. That may be a hard thing for some listeners to hear, but equal value in all of those. I was very enamored of the.
SPEAKER_01:For sure.
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus, there is a beautiful, numerous, beautiful and complex and sophisticated and honestly straight up moving ethical traditions that are totally secular. I mean, there I've read things in Jeremy Bentham, in Immanuel Kant, in Aristotle, frankly, in Confucius, that are every bit as rich and profound and compelling and lovely as anything in Christianity. That's a fact. Buddhism, I mean, you name it. Like there's there's a lot out there. So there's a lot to replace it with if you needed to.
SPEAKER_01:We can get into the Upanishads. I'm I'm all about some different ideas. I love the idea of universal truths and universal lenses. So now I'm all about it. So I get it. I get it. And but I think that's what he was speaking to, that he doesn't need uh the magic stuff of it that is the story of love.
SPEAKER_00:At the ethical, maybe this is going to be like a Kierkegaard thing I'm about to say, but like at the ethical level, I'd fully agree. Yeah. But Christianity is more than an ethics. If it's not, then what are we why what are we doing? I don't know. That's what I'm trying to say. Is like if if Christianity is just an ethical system or a social system or whatever, then it's beautiful and it's wonderful, but it's one among many.
SPEAKER_01:Right. That's right.
SPEAKER_00:But I think the metaphysics matter. That resurrection means everything.
SPEAKER_01:And without that, you can't.
SPEAKER_00:I've hooked my cart to that horse, knowing full well that I could be wrong. And I think I have as equal a chance of being right as any of those other traditions. And some of those, honestly, their metaphysical systems are pretty beautiful too. I'm pretty intrigued by that boot that by that Buddhist thing. If that turned out to be true, I wouldn't be sad about it, you know? Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01:I give metaphors all the time that I I get from Buddhism, and people don't know I got it from Buddhism, but it relates to where they're at, and it just opens up.
SPEAKER_00:But like the things that like really speak to me and grab me in my heart, you know, are things that I think can only be rectified or made meaningful in the way that really matters to me if something like resurrection is real. And if it's not, then I d honestly don't see the point of Christianity outside of a really cool ethical and social system.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell Sounds like you're very communally attached, though. Am I wrong?
SPEAKER_00:What do you mean?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell Well, I mean it's very community-driven for you. That's what it sounds like historically, that early on it was community-driven, and now it's your community and how you're attached, and you want to be there with them, be your conviction, but it's community.
SPEAKER_00:Well, uh I guess I don't understand uh what non-communal Christianity would mean. I'm not sure that's a thing. That's true. So yes, I suppose. I suppose it is.
SPEAKER_01:So it's also about our path and our journey and how we grow and we evolved in our personal spiritual life, I think. And whether that be Christianity or whatever that is for you, that it's like in Buddhism, there's a story that Buddha tells about the bull elephant. Are you familiar with this story?
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. Tell it to me.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so he says that you can hear the bull elephant out in the jungle, and you know there's a bull elephant. But you can gather around with other people and you can talk about the bull elephant and you can go and even see kind of where it's been. But until you yourself go through the journey of the jungle and all that entails, and then you for yourself use experience and you see the bull elephant, right? Then up until that point, it's just all been kind of community. You you've never had the true experience, and and you're cheating yourself that experience.
SPEAKER_00:I see. Yeah, okay, that's good. So I think I see where you're coming from now. I fully agree with that. That is uh, I think a very Kierkegaard insight as well. I've I have described on our own show trying to trying to explain the significance of philosophy to non-philosophy people. Uh, one of the things I find myself coming back to is it teaches you to make your values your own values. This kind of pride and it doesn't have to happen within philosophical study. That just happens to be a very good way to do it.
SPEAKER_01:For sure.
SPEAKER_00:To own whatever your values are, to make them genuinely yours.
SPEAKER_01:To be able to speak to them and know why they're yours, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, not just derived or inherited from or absorbed from what you might call a community or a whatever, a social thing. And that was very I think Kierkegaard was extremely concerned with as well. I think he was right about that. So while it is it's simultaneously true that Christianity is a communal enterprise, there's no such thing as an individual Christian. I think I would defend that. On the other hand, every individual must meet Christ on their own. Right? Let's put it in Kierkegaard language. You have to be you have to have this kind of direct relationship with the divine such that you're forced to a kind of decision that is your decision alone to make. Nobody can make it for you. You can't punt it to the community, and being a member of a community doesn't make the decision for you.
SPEAKER_01:No. As long as the community is the table of encouragement like an emarathon that keeps you running on your journey for your own.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, but the the scary thing about Kierkegaard is that the community could equally well be, and maybe even more likely be a deterrent. If you find yourself in a community that understands itself to be, let's just say, Christian, then that probably makes it harder to be a Christian. Oh, for sure. Because it's harder to reach that decision point. Do you feel comfortable where you're at on your journey and in your process? I don't like journey language. I can't tell you why. It just rubs me the wrong way. Aaron Powell Really? It em Yeah, it implies some kind of path or destination or I don't look at it as a destination.
SPEAKER_01:I just think it's all about the journey. It's wherever you go and what you do with it.
SPEAKER_00:But isn't a journey like you're on the way to something?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. You are on the way to something, but it's not a specific thing.
SPEAKER_00:But I don't mean something specifically.
SPEAKER_01:I think it's your change.
SPEAKER_00:You didn't say how is your wandering around going, Kyle. You said how's your journey? Let me rephrase this, Kyle. How's your your nomadic lifestyle? How's that going? I come from a tradition of people who literally walked around to think about stuff and then made a school based on it. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:I guess I should say what I um what what my what I mean, but please do. Yeah. It's about your growth and what you're learning and where you're going. I don't necessarily think it's a journey. I I think where whatever path you take, whatever journey you take, I don't necessarily think there is a path. I think there's multiple paths. But I think that there's a lot of people that don't take any path and they just kind of become stagnant and they don't ever grow as a human. They don't ever challenge themselves. So when I say a journey and a path, I just mean almost like the hero's journey, where you're challenged and where you're growing and you're becoming and you're learning to become something else. And it's not predestined, it's you, but it's you taking the journey of whatever that is in your life.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I don't know how to answer that. Let me let me put put this to you. How would you feel if it turned out that there weren't some kind of destination implied, like of the sort of implied by the hero's journey thing?
SPEAKER_01:You mean a more nihilistic perspective, I would probably embrace it as well.
SPEAKER_00:Let me let me rephrase. So nihilism is one of those terms that's like universal universal bugaboo. Nobody wants to be a nihilist, you know. Nobody wants to be a big thing. You can do some cool stuff with it. No, it's ugly all the way down. Is it? Yeah. It's another one of those things I'm weirdly committed to. Well, I appreciate you're committed to it. There's a reason nobody wants to own that label, or almost nobody. That's fair. What if so I remember we talked to Brian McLaren one time. He we talked to him several times, but he wrote this interesting book where it's about doubt, living with faith after doubt. And the first half or so of it is really just kind of a primer on like personality psychology and life stages, or I should say developmental psychology and life stages. And he he can compiles all this research from various fields, most of them psychological, but some theological, some philosophical, and then like combines them into his own preferred life stage view. It's worthwhile. Go read it if you're interested.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Um, but he had this idea that when you reach the last one, which the word he used for it is failing me now, but it's like, you know, the most mature of the stages, stage four. The first, the first one being certainty, and then there's complexity, and then there's perplexity, and then there's I forget what he called the fourth one, where you kind of transcend all that. I asked him what happens next. Do you get to stage four and then you retire and then you die, or is there something else? And he said he thinks it's kind of cyclical. You take on a new, more sophisticated version of certainty and start over. He's entitled to that opinion. That has not been my experience. But I'm only in my late 30s. Maybe it'll change. I do think about this from time to time. And if I feel myself being weirdly confident about something, I ask, ooh, am I am I becoming am I seeing the value of certainty again? I don't think I am yet. I th I think I'm in what he fairly described as that stage four space. I'll let you go see his description of it. And I'm not convinced that there's anything else. I tend to I I tend to this my I I don't want this to sound condescending, but like there's a there's a a place at which and you can arrive at this place in various ways. Tons of study, tons of life experience, more than likely both. Tons of you know, interaction with different kinds of people. It probably takes a certain level of ingenuity to get to this place, a certain amount of privilege, frankly, to get to this place. You need to be in a social position that allows you to even undertake the activities that allow you to get to this place. There's a whole Maslow's hierarchy we gotta think about here, right? But if you get to the top of that, theoretically, I haven't seen any reason to think that there's anything beyond. So like if you're at the place, as I described earlier, where you know that there's no knowledge about this. Even no sounds weird there, doesn't it? But like you're aware of the multiple expert opinions. You know that the evidence is insufficient to align them, or there wouldn't be multiple ones, right? And you know that the likelihood of humans moving past that in your lifetime is about this big. Making a very you know what would it mean to continue a quote unquote journey or maturation process past that point? I genuinely don't know.
SPEAKER_01:I think you'd have to define why you're doing it, what's your motivation? If it's if if it's a selfish reason, then yeah, you're gonna run out of steam. But if it's for your children, if it's for those who's coming after you, if you know adversity sorts you out and makes you stronger and it makes you better, that you can leave it better than you found it for those who are gonna follow you, not just for your family, but for humanity.
SPEAKER_00:Right. So he just reminds me. Yeah, there's meant plurality of purposes. I have no problem with that.
SPEAKER_01:That's for me. That's the purpose. I I don't see uh that I am the hero, that I am carrying the mantle that is I'm going to have something bequeathed on me. To me, that's for selfish reasons. I I think there is a rudimentary thing that in not just humanity, but in you you take care of those who come behind you. Otherwise, your species doesn't make it. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Absolutely. And obviously, as we've agreed already, there are many, many ways to that realization and many ways to support it. I it reminds me of something Brian said in one of our conversations, which is he told a story of a, I think it was an environmental activist that he knew, who had been, had become something akin to a nihilist who was fully convinced that we were doomed, that there was nothing that we could do about this, that it was too late to turn it around, and that humanity was going to destroy itself more or less by by killing its own planet. But who nonetheless persevered in her environmental activism because it was the right thing to do.
SPEAKER_01:For sure.
SPEAKER_00:And I and you can find that kind of resource in many places, right? The the fortitude, which is really admirable, regardless of what your beliefs are, to continue in a situation like that.
SPEAKER_01:And your philosophy for that can come from a lot of places. Speak to you as a philosopher. Isn't that, though, that the evidence that life is happening, that it's adversity? It's in that moment where it's energy interacting with energy. That's what life, that's what brings life. And that if you don't have that adversity, you're you're not there's no signs of life. You're just there. It's static. Would you not see value in that where you would embrace the storm? No. No. That's not me. This comes into play. Did you ever play sports when you were growing up?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, a little bit. What did you play? I wasn't good or anything. I played soccer and base baseball. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Oh man. So I I think that, you know, it it's I think it's an emotional thing. And and I mean, to me, emotions are us in our evolution, and we're right now in between logic and emotions, and we're still, that's why our constant fight within ourselves. But our emotions do serve us when it comes to kicking in and helping us up and over that mountain through the adversity. I think for right now, anyway. So I don't know. Maybe you're you're just much more evolved than me.
SPEAKER_00:I don't think it's that, man. I think I've I've been trained to phrase questions differently and to question the phrasing of questions and the methods used to derive the current phrasing of questions. Which is so I know is super annoying. Well, yeah, I mean, occasionally you do. You land on what's probably not the case, right? I landed firmly on young earth creationism is false. That's an example of a thing that I landed on. You know, I could think of many others. I remember something H.L. said to me one time. If he's listening to this, he might cringe. I don't remember where we were, but he he gave it to me as like a piece of mentor-like advice. And I received it as such at the time.
SPEAKER_01:Which is that I sometimes be a good guy to get something like that from.
SPEAKER_00:Right? Yes. Yeah. He was my mentor in college. So, or the closest thing I had to a mentor, I guess. And the advice was you sometimes seem to take a contrary position for the sake of taking a contrary position. That is fair. That is a fair critique. And there's nothing wrong with that. I don't think I do sometimes.
SPEAKER_01:As long as it's constructive.
SPEAKER_00:But here's the thing, it always seems constructive to me. So like I'm not gonna bullshit you. If I think something is true, I'll say I think it's true. If I think it's false, I'll say I think it's false. But when you talk to me about the value and adversity, the first thing I think of is all the ways that things could have been less adverse and still just as good. But man. And so I can't I can't just like full full on the case.
SPEAKER_01:Have you ever seen Gibson's walk-off one run where he just walks out on the hurt or have I not conveyed to you how non-sportsy I am?
SPEAKER_00:Okay, well, let me see.
SPEAKER_01:Well, hey, I I get it. Well, let's say it like this. The man is hurt. He can't play. He's on the so he can't even get into it. It's the World Series. The bases are loaded. He the guy can swing a bat, and he can barely make it out to the plate. And I I don't even know how many pitches it goes, but you got strikes and balls. I mean, you're starting to get deep, and the guy pulls back and hits a grand slam home run, and it's can barely make it around, and it's a walk-off. It's so emotional. It's like without adversity, you can't achieve anything great. All you can do is just be average. So it takes those moments that elevates us, and I think it gives the rest of us hope. No?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. No. Man, man. Like obvious there's a version of that that is true, right? There's a a sense in which the kinds of greatness that humans are familiar with. Like if we think, you know, I used to prod my students like this, think of the best person you know. Immediately, probably somebody comes to your mind. The best human being, who is it? If for a lot of them, it was a family member, right? It was a grandparent or something like that, or it was a a pastor or an authority figure, or maybe somebody famous, Desmond Tutu, you know, somebody Dalai Long, somebody like that. Exactly. For for me, it might be a philosophical example, you know. But immediately somebody springs to mind, right? Sure. And this is I this was in the context of like setting up virtue theory for them, what what it what it means to have an ethical system based on moral exemplars. But the thing about moral exemplars is that in our common experience, there almost always, there are exceptions, but there are almost always people who have been through some adversity and who have figured out a way to live in it that is inspiring in some way to the rest of us that shows us what life seems to really be about. Fully grant that, okay? And I've definitely had experiences in my life where they were horrible as I was going through them. And then after the fact, I looked back and said, I'm glad that happened. I'm a better person for it. I wouldn't have learned XYZ if I hadn't gone through that, et cetera, et cetera. But we live in a shitty world, Chris. Am I allowed to curse on your podcast? Yeah, yeah, man. Okay. And I can imagine different worlds where that kind of adversity was not necessary for the kind of goodness that we value. Right. And because I can imagine it, I have to hold that it's possible. And so while I see the contingent value in certain kinds of adversity, I also see the devastating destruction of certain other kinds of adversity and the absolute unnecessary amount of it. And so I find it difficult to take solace or find wisdom in the kinds of exhortations to learn from your adversity.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. There's some kinds of adversity. There's no way you're going to find any hope or inspiration when a when a typhoon wipes out and just just destroys people and the ecosystem. There is nothing positive from that. You know? The only thing is how it brings humanity running to help humanity. That's the only thing. And there's n that's not redemption enough to reconcile that kind of suffering. I totally agree with that. And I when I say adversity, I'm not talking about tragedy. I'm just talking about life, what it offers us. And I've always said that you're either you're going to grow in adversity. You're either going to grow stronger further ahead and better prepared for the future, or you're going to grow weaker, further behind, and further frustrated with life, but you're going to grow. But when I use those terms, I'm talking about daily adversity, not the huge tragedies. I do think there are things that we have to hold on to as we go through those tragic moments. Are they going to make it all better? No. Are they going to help us where we at least get through it? Maybe. I don't know. And I it's subjective. I don't I and I don't know. I'm just being honest.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But that's what's always sorted out life. Adversity sorts us out. That's evolution. That's what it does. And it's not just us, it's every other living species. I mean, that's the universe. That's how it works. Energy hits energy. If if you have an asteroid hit and destroy a planet with no name, is it bad? Well, no, it's just that's part of life. If that planet's called Earth, is it bad? Yeah. Now we define it as bad. It's just how it impacts us in our in where we're at. You know, there's there's something very selfish in that where we don't realize in the grand scheme of things, it's part of it. That's just how it works. But I I totally get what you're saying, though. I I get it. There's there's some suffering that can't be reconciled. There's some suffering that totally breaks your heart and it will challenge your faith. And I get that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I think it's okay, just tangentially related to what you were just saying. I really value the impulse to rage at the kind of what you described as selfish motivation a moment a moment ago. Planet hits or asteroid hits Earth, that's bad. It's bad in a way that it's not bad if it hits Mars, you know? I think that's true. And I think you should get pissed off about it. And I'm I there's something in like the kind of stoic philosophy that always really rubbed me the wrong way. Like I'm much more akin to the philosopher.
SPEAKER_01:Which one are we talking about? Are we talking Aurelius's are we cynica? Are we talking about it? Kind of all of them.
SPEAKER_00:Epictetus, like the the whole there's I mean, there's a lot of valuable wisdom there, but the idea that human happiness can be divorced from attachment always struck me as just weird and wrong-headed. And that that there's no value in extreme expressions of emotion at losing attachment. It's just obviously false to me. That's like as strong as I could put it. Like, of course there is, right? And so yeah, my my dad passed a couple years ago and had to speak at his funeral, and I read a portion of that passage from that Dylan Thomas. So you spoke at his funeral. I did, and I I read a little part of the Dylan Thomas poem. Yeah, the the very famous Rage Against the Dying of the Light poem. Because it it captures that for me. Like it's I think that is the appropriate human response to the kind of suffering that we've been gesturing at is to be pissed off. And like there are skills that you can learn to control that and they have value in them, but I don't think they should be taken to the point of pretending that there's nothing unjust or like deeply misshapen about the world if something like that happens. You know? And I I've I experienced that as like a fundamental Christian urge. I won't go so far as to say that other Christians who see it differently are mistaken, but like Jesus seemed really anguished about the state of the world and not stoical about it at all. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:So I'm yeah, absolutely not. Yeah, he would have made a terrible Buddhist for sure. Everybody tries to compare the two, and I'm like, no, no, no, man. They're not they're not the same. So no, I agree with you. That but if we don't have that, I mean the human species don't make it. You know? If we don't have that adrenaline rush kick in with our emotions and give us what we need, we don't save the children. We don't save those and we don't sacrifice ourselves going in and trying to help others. And I think that's where that comes from. I mean, we're we're a docile thing that just can't take care of itself.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So is that what you see in it? Do you think that is part of how we survive? Is that, like you said, that rage that comes from that?
SPEAKER_00:I'm sure how we define good as what hurts us. Yeah, I hadn't thought of it in those terms. I'm sure there is probably some kind of evolutionary explanation for that. Yeah. I'm less interested than I used to be in evolutionary explanations for things. But you're probably you've lost a lot of interest in a lot of stuff. When I it's it's just when I get to this point where I think, oh, okay, I see the lay of the land, I see what you people think over there and what you people think over there and these this arguments that you're having. I see where the evidence is, I see, you know, I get it. Then I kind of check out. I'm gonna go on to the next thing. Unless unless it's like really personally important to me and I think I can contribute to this conversation, which is right. Then I feel like, uh, no, that's fair.
SPEAKER_01:I'd rather somebody, if they didn't have something to say about it, just don't say anything at all.
SPEAKER_00:You're just muddying the waters. That's how I feel about all those pastors using quantum physics in their sermons.
SPEAKER_01:I'm totally on board with you there. Yeah. So what what do you think about some of the ideas? I mean, do you see the Bible? Well, I don't want to impose ideas on top, but I can't imagine from what you're saying, you see it as inerrant. I guess you see it as kind of metaphorical.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, it's no, not it's there are metaphorical parts of it. There are like clearly metaphorical parts of it. There are poetic parts of it. There are literal songs in there. There are some historical parts. There's there's tons of genres, as anybody who studied the Bible at all knows. I don't need it to be anything other than it is anymore. And one of the things it obviously is not is inerrant, defined in the way that the inerrantists define inerrancy. You can take their own word for that.
SPEAKER_01:So I I I think, do you feel like that's maybe one of the things that gets us in trouble is when we look at the Bible and science kind of of evolves. Every answer leads to a question. But in traditional literalist, we look at what people came up with hundreds and even thousands of years ago through traditional ideas, we hold on to those and we exclusively look at the Bible. Now we start to see this big, huge separation happening between the religion and science. Why is it that you feel like or do you think that we don't go outside of the Bible in mainstream Christianity to look at things? We we always want to use it exclusively and never through the lens of something else.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I can only speak to my experience and the experience of the people that I've talked to about this, almost all of whom came from some kind of evangelical fundamentalist background of one of one kind or another. You could have a mainline Christian childhood. You could be United Methodist, or what I grew up as initially, which was a disciples of Christ, which is similar to United Methodists. Or you could be, you know, a kind of liberal Catholic or Presbyterian and totally avoid what I'm about to describe. Okay. Okay. The Bible is a different thing for those kinds of people, especially Catholics. Lots of Catholics don't read the Bible at all. Like it's a stereotype, but it's it's rooted in some truth. For for us, for me, there wasn't freedom to do that. It was it was risky to do that, to go outside the Bible for much anything that had any impact on your life, but even really things that didn't have impact on your life, like facts about how the world started, right? You shouldn't even go outside the Bible for that. But you definitely shouldn't go outside it for anything value-related, anything about how you conceived of meaning or love or relationships or how you should vote or what you how you, you know, how you should view authority, any of that kind of stuff that really makes a difference in how you live. With some weird suggestive exceptions here and there. You shouldn't go outside the Bible for any of that because it's it's dangerous, it's risky because they had this very bifurcated view of the world where it's the Bible and us defending the Bible against everybody else, all the hordes out there, pagans who want to destroy what we've created. And that's just hard to sustain if you go out in the world and talk to people, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I don't think it's harder to sustain humanity when you're like that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you only interact with the other humans, it's almost like a social construct within a social construct. It's a weird thing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And you either you only interact with the humans in your circle, or your circle gives you the tools to immunize you against the kinds of interaction you'll encounter out in the world. And then you, you know, usually you come back to your circle. Or you become an evangelist out there in the world for for your view and never actually have an authentic experience with another human. So for us at the time, at least, it was the Bible is so obviously to us the end-all-be-all answer to everything. And we have our own set of experts that we can appeal to for answers to all of our questions that we're unsure about. And man, they seem confident, right? They have a quick, ready answer to every question I was possessed. Very well reversed in school. I used to help train people to come up with those answers, you know. I could have been that person. Like I was on a track to becoming that that member of that.
SPEAKER_01:There was a path, and then you chose to come off your path.
SPEAKER_00:In a kind of very literal way, actually, when I applied to grad school, I had two that I was finally choosing between. And I was I probably, I don't know if I would have described myself as fundamentalist at the time, but definitely still evangelical. And one path was grad school in philosophy at a reputable research institution. No it was Catholic school, but like no real religious commitments. And the other path was the primary evangelical institution of higher education at the time that was actively training apologists. Have you ever had a lot of people? So using philosophy to train to the case.
SPEAKER_01:Have you ever gone back and revisited that decision you made to take the path you did and say, did I make the right decision?
SPEAKER_00:Oh hell no. It's very obvious to me that I read the right decision. It was it was obvious almost as soon as I made it. Let me tell you how I made it. And that track, if I had done it, would have would have secured, I think, because I know myself and I know the people who did it, some of them, and I know the people who were teaching at the time. I could have been significantly. In the world of Christian apologetics and that kind of philosophy, if I wanted to be. But you know what did it for me? Yeah. They had a thing. I won't name the school, though you might be able to guess it, but I had to fill out like a statement of belief or whatever. And part of it was about evolution. Part of it was about creationism. And at the time I didn't have a really worked-out view. I was just skeptical of a few things that I had heard creationists say, and I wanted to keep an open mind. And I got a callback. I mean, my answers on that to me now would have been very innocuous from my current perspective. But I got a callback to like make sure that they vetted me well on that question.
SPEAKER_01:Really?
SPEAKER_00:And I had to like write a statement explaining it, which I did, and I was accepted. And I thought afterwards, that's just not that's not open inquiry. That's not what I understand philosophy to be, you know? So that's what I want to study. I'm not going to be really studying it there. So I made the choice that I did, which was small. It seemed small at the time. It didn't feel like I was choosing to do an entirely different thing with my life, but I was, you know.
SPEAKER_01:But that wasn't that was a journey and you took it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. So, like very concretely illustrates the the division.
SPEAKER_01:You knew what you were supposed to do. Back to what we were talking about. We were we were talking about literalist and apologist and everything like this. And it's like it's almost a social construct within a social construct. Do you think that's probably one of the biggest uh motivators for people to deconstruct? Is because it is such a literalism and it doesn't allow personality and personal beliefs that it so much requires you to join the organization one of us kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I know it is because I've heard from countless people that it is. Yeah. That that kind of strict adherence to we have the truth, we know what it is. It's defined very clearly in our documents. You can read them on our website. Any diversion from them is just a kind of foolishness or maybe even sinful. And here's the answers to all the questions that people might ask you about that. Yeah, that's suffocating. And I'm tempted to say smart people will find their way out of it. I I won't make it that reductive because some smart people don't. Well, and then smart people. Other reasons that keep them in, they balance. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:You get your emotions involved. You know, sometimes even smart people will have emotional.
SPEAKER_00:Or even just material costs. It's make it pure you can make it purely economic, right? Leaving a community that you all of your sustenance is bound up in your membership in that community. If you've had children, it could be it's your friend network, you know, because you've seen it happen to others in the network, that if you leave, it's all over. You know? So it it's a huge cost, and I get the choice to stay.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, I I get it. I totally get it. It's everything. So are you seeing other places, uh churches open up more and more that it's expanding and these ideas that's making a place for people like this, that however you say it, an evolution or reconstruction, so they have a place to land and they can express their faith how they're comfortable or learn it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. That's more of a question for a pastor, but I will say as a fly on the wall that yes, there are things doing that. So my co-host is a pastor, and he's involved in a an or an organization, I'll just call it called the Post-Evangelical Collective, and they are what they sound like. They're a consortium of lots of different churches nationally, maybe even some globally, actually, from all different faith backgrounds, some mainline, some not. Some I think there's probably some Catholics in there. There's definitely former evangelicals in there. There may be some who still would own the label evangelical. Probably not, though, because they're in something called the post-evangelical collective. But they would at least see the value in let's envision or revision what church is after all of that. Yeah. All that all that damage. And yeah, I was recently at one of their regional gatherings. Randy is the director of the sort of Midwest region, and I went to one of those, and we had a little live podcast airing with some people. We we spoke with the director who's named Carrie Lanniser, and also a scholar that we've talked to a few times called David named David Cushy. Highly recommended, by the way. And yeah, I witnessed some of that. And yes, there are spaces like that being created actively for that purpose. I don't have any hard data on what that's looking like in terms of how many people are actually moving to those spaces versus just being disillusioned and dropping out altogether, which is, I suspect, probably still more common, but I don't have data on that. But but yes, there's lots and lots of places that are now open to people who are questioning in that way and and but still want to hold on to something concrete, who still think God is important, who need a spirituality in their life, who think it's not just all ethics. You know, maybe it is that importantly or significantly.
SPEAKER_01:But I think we said before there's big buckets and everything. So there's all kinds of reasons you could have to go to something like that. Man, this has been great. I appreciate it. This has been a fun conversation. It's nice to get to pick your brain and all the the stuff that comes out of it, even with all with not having any ideas of that and moving beyond that. But I've had a blast with you, man. I love talking to you.
SPEAKER_00:I appreciate that. It's been fun for me too. I hope it wasn't too frustrating at any point.
SPEAKER_01:No, man, frustrating. Absolutely not. It was ideal. So yeah, frustrating would have been someone just takes off and wherever I say, but no, you definitely have formed opinions and ideas, which I love because that means I get to figure out what they are, especially someone that's not so overbearingly forward with this is what I believe, you know. That's cool. That means we get to dive into it. I'd love to have you on in the future so we could dive into it even more. And uh you can't.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I love I love sharing opinions, so happy to do it. So, but I do want to say one thing.
SPEAKER_01:And I don't know if this man, I don't know. My very first guest, of course, was HL, our our our mutual friend. Nice. And you know, one thing about evangelic evangelicals that always bother me. Before if you're gonna be a preacher or a speaker or whatever it is you're gonna be, man, you gotta write a book and you gotta have a second bus before you even speak the first. That's your calling card, you know, which I I uh whatever. But, you know, so my very first guest I have on is HL. HL had a couple of books and he destroyed them. He doesn't want anybody to have them, which I love.
SPEAKER_00:I've wrote them, I understand. I've read them, I understand.
SPEAKER_01:But so like you yourself, you're somebody that should write a book, but yet you yourself say, I'm stalled out. I'm not writing a book.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I mean, I I technically am, but with life circumstances, it's very difficult to find the time. I'm about probably a chapter or a chapter and a half into this book that I've been done with by now. It's it's kind of a primer, but also it probably fits in the genre of kind of I don't know, applied philosophy, applied epistemology is what I would probably call it, but applied to various social and political and economic spheres. But it's about expertise, really generally. It's kind of a primer on expertise and trust, and how to know who to trust and how expertise is formed and how to locate genuine experts versus others. You can imagine why this might have been on my mind in the last year. Absolutely. Absolutely.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I can't think of a better guy to vet than than you.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I don't know about that. I mean, there's lots of great people and there's lots of good work on expertise, but my goal is to write something accessible to a general audience that brings a lot of that theory down to a digestible, useful paradigm, you know?
SPEAKER_01:So I sincerely hope you find time to get that going again because I would love to read it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And it's fun to write. I love I love doing it. So hopefully.
SPEAKER_01:Well, listen, thanks a lot. And for any listeners have never had the opportunity to go listen to a pastor and a philosopher walk into a bar, please go listen to it. It's very entertaining and there's a lot of insight, like what you've heard. So thank you, Kyle. I appreciate it. And uh can't wait to get you back on here again. Appreciate it. Thanks, Chris. All right, buddy. Thanks for joining me here on Spiritual Hot Sauce. I'd love to hear from you. So please reach out with questions, comments, andor concerns. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and review us. You can follow us on Facebook for updates and information. And if you enjoy the flavor of the sauce, then please share it with others. I would appreciate that. We'll see you next time.
