Honest doubts and Hard goodbyes : The Real Reason People Leave

For decades, the dominant  cultural narrative has been that people leave the church because they "want to sin". For those of us that are deconstructing, the truth is much more complex, painful and very intentional. Leaving is not the easy way out - its often a heartbreaking last resort.

In this episode we unpack real, lived experiences behind the modern faith exodus. We move past the narrow minded assumptions and look at the genuine, moral and emotional turning points that cause people to say goodbye to the only community they've ever known.

I would love to hear from you! Please send questions and comments to:
Ode2nick@hotmail.com

Just added some podcast swag, let me know if you'd like something!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:24

The Man of the Boy podcast. Once again, I'm your host, Nick. Super happy to be back. For those of you that listen to me regularly, it's been a bit of a break, over a month and a half. We will get to that. Sounds like in the next episode, while I was done, I absolutely hammered out what I think is a really good episode, and I wanted to release it as soon as I was able to. Then I would have the time to kind of circle back around and really dedicate the time that I wanted to to the episode that's really going to kind of explain why there's a six-week break. So without further ado, again, very happy to have you back. We've kind of touched on some of what I'm going to discuss today, but I feel like after what we've discussed in the previous seven episodes, there are many cracks, reasons that support our curiosity. Remember, I sound like a broken record. I'm not looking to disprove anything, simply exposing a crack which allows the question why, and then we all get to discover. You're all very aware of why I've walked away from my faith between the indoctrination, the very, very strict and rigid and narrow-minded upbringing, the clergy abuse. The list kind of goes on from there. So you all know if if you've listened to my previous episodes, why I did. Why did you? Or why are you? Or why are you considering it? I I'm not 100% sure where you're at. Or maybe you're just listening to this uh to come up with fodder as to why I'm I'm an idiot and all atheists are evil or whatever it is. At the end of the day, I'm glad you're here. But why are you considering it? Why have you? Why are you maybe suggesting others are? Why in the hell am I a podcast that appeals to you? Today we're going to discuss why others leave the faith or have left the faith. And I've really found this to be a fun one to prepare for. So what do you think? Do you think that me having fun doing this is evidence that I've made the right decision for me? I certainly see it that way. Pulling hard numbers, real numbers, real information is relatively easy to do thanks to advancements in technology. Uniquely enough, hard facts, legitimate information. These aren't things that you would typically associate with organized religion. So one huge counterargument against this entire premise that I'm speaking of is that I'm comparing apples to oranges, when in reality I think I'm comparing apples to something that isn't even a fruit. I'm really comparing apples to fiction. Apples are real. We've seen them, we've touched them, we've tasted them, we love them or we hate them. But what I'm comparing it to is a campfire story. I'm a big fan of the Pew Research Center. According to the Pew Research Center, these are the five main stated reasons that the poll people gave for challenging or walking away from their faith. There are clearly so many reasons to leave your faith. For some it's the hypocrisy. Uh for some it's the logic test. For others, it's a singular event. Could be clergy abuse, could be the church's refusal to uh maybe have a funeral because of suicide. It could be due to a clergy member who frankly just sucks and and isn't right for you. I know a few people who've changed churches just because they didn't vibe with the pastor. So consider you live in a small one church town. And this is kind of a joke because there aren't many of them. I certainly feel like there could be, but there aren't any other places of worship. So if you want to go to church, you're either driving or you're just saying, you know what, here we are. This is what I'm gonna do. This isn't me now. That doesn't sound any more ridiculous to me than the thought that we were all just super fortunate to be born in one pocket of the world that knows the both basin marks through space, and because of that, we've got the path to heaven that the vast majority of the world doesn't have. This episode, there's gonna be a couple side quests. I don't have any sponsors, I don't get to run commercials. So I will say that this side quest is proudly brought to you by my uh relatively managed ADHD. In marriage, in my marriage, or really or really any relationship, uh they're a quirk. Kind of those things that that make the the relationship unique. Sometimes they're the things that maybe make you like it more. Uh those those intangibles that aren't necessarily on the checklist of things you could find in a friend, but they really make you appreciate the relationship more. As as noted, I live in Wisconsin. I don't live in a terribly rural town. Our population is floating between, say, twelve and fifteen thousand. Uh I'm only 45 minutes from Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. The Twin Cities, obviously a lot of people there. I'm not pulling over terribly often for tractors in the road, although admittedly it does happen. So in rural Wisconsin, which is kind of the area I would describe as between my home and our recreational land up north, very rural where we head up. Inside just about every gas station, right when you walk in the door, there is a vestibule, obviously. And in that vestibule is a rack. And that rack is filled with brochures and flyers where local businesses, uh, fun activities, chamber of commerce, all these things, they'll have their information so that you can grab it and check out the fun reasons to visit. On those racks, our favorite thing are the magazines at the bottom. Surrounding counties will put these up, and again, they're going to tell you all the fun things that they do in their county. But more interestingly, I never thought this could become interesting, but for my wife, who frankly is total fucking nerd, he loves that they list the demographic information for that county. Example, the population, the average age, the median income, home value, etc. Where it gets really nerdy is that instead of simply reporting the data, reading it out loud, uh, providing us with these fun things, it makes me guess the answer. Like I just sit around in my free time researching one horse town and I'm intimately aware of these useless details. In her defense, I am made entirely of useless information. I never got into bar trivia. I have to imagine that I would be so good at it because the random crap that I can't seem to get out of my mind. There's likely some tie between that and my ADHD diagnosis, but it it really doesn't matter. So I've always been. This is something my wife loves to do, and it's become such a such a standard procedure that I just grab them and hand them over when we get back to the truck. I've even grabbed someone I've stopped at a gas station by myself and left them in the door so that when she was there, boom, there it is, and we can have fun learning stuff that nobody really cares about. Turns out some of the stuff really is interesting, like the location of the largest deer statue in Wisconsin, the state town that produces the most yellow seed turds instead of white in the state. This is really the stuff that changes a person to their core. I know I know these things now, and that increases my val my value. So we've got a very rural county between my house and our recreation land. This is the one that we most recently read through, and holy shit was it interesting, and sparked an incredible conversation in the truck. I don't need to say the details, uh city name, county name, because frankly that doesn't matter. Really, this is just your average town in your average county. A couple facts that really sparked a great conversation is when they listed the school district performance percentages and where they rank within the state. It generally goes without saying that like many school districts, the more rural ones tend to be some of the lower performing districts. I will say that if you attended a rural school district, please know that I'm not calling you stupid by any means. Every district does that. They give you a number. So congratulations, you good student. Uh maybe you can get something from this today. The demographic information provided the numbers uh regarding churches and the numbers of schools. And maybe you're already drawing a line in your head, is where I'm going with this. So check this out. In the county, there are 27 schools. Again, this is rural. So yes, 27 schools in the entire county. I've already said that the town I live in is not necessarily viewed, 16,000. We have a large percentage of that number just in our town. It is worth noting that the entire county population for the county we're talking about is under 47,000 people. That's the entire county folk. And it's actually relatively landmass-wise. It's a very large county, so rural. 27 schools. How many churches? How many churches do you imagine there are? You don't possibly know. And now I feel like my wife asking you guys a question you couldn't possibly know. So here's your answer. 37. There are 37 churches in a county that has 27 schools. Now that number will balloon if you consider the Amish and Mennonite population. And if you're not familiar with the Amish of the Mennonites, they're very popular in northern Wisconsin. They operate slightly differently. I recently found this out. I was having a conversation with somebody that lives uh just outside of an Amish community. Uh, interestingly enough, they don't have a church. They don't have a church building in their communities. They have basically a mobile church and they rotate throughout the community, and each month or week or however long their period of time is, individual families host their weekly services on their property. So while that may skew the numbers a bit, it's also a pretty reasonable chance that the Amish and Mennonite communities were not part of this poll. We'll just throw that out as interesting information, but understand that it it likely does not affect these numbers. Let's get into it. 27 schools, 47,000 residents, slightly less than half of those residents are school-aged children. So that would be an average of 777 school-aged residents per school. If we consider that there are also four private schools, that number is going to drop down to just about 750. Now let's check out the church's numbers here. With a county population of 47,000, and again, 37 churches, that's an average of 1,270 residents per church. So school-age residents of this county have a substantially higher level of access to church than they do to school. My experience with private school was very indoctrinating. I'm going to throw myself into this mix then a significantly higher chance that not only do I not only do I have more access to a church than a school, but a much higher probability of being indoctrinated, which of course I was. So how do you think that reflects the priorities of the of the residents of the county? I'm not going to blame this county for having more churches than schools. Power is with the population. If this population demanded more schools than churches, well, they may not necessarily get to build more schools, because that's frankly not how it works. They could control that maybe there aren't more churches than schools. Again, we've we've mentioned a previous episode, churches are shutting their doors because people are deciding that it's not for them. When we get a little further into the why people are leaving, those numbers are going to be laid out and they are extremely interesting. I was told that I didn't need one-on-one help from my school counselor. I didn't need to speak to a doctor. The teachers and counselors at my school, the public school that I was attending at the time, suggested that I go in for ADD screening, at which point they were told that I did not need medication and I didn't need, and this is a quote, Huxley Sealy help from a counselor, very ironic if you consider uh the unfortunate experience I had. They were told that I needed a stronger relationship with God. There is so much to impact there. This could be a five-part episode, but you're welcome that it's not. Now, unfortunately, more towns in this county that we're talking about are one school town. I was just speaking of how nice it would be if we had one church town or possibly no church towns, but one school town. Many, many, many of the towns in this county don't even have a school. But there are multiple three church towns in this county. Many towns that lack a school have more than one church. Just to throw a little laughter into this, I would be doing a disservice if I didn't remind you that living in Wisconsin, I am in the statistically drunkest state in the United States. So the county that we're speaking about has 27 schools, 37 churches, and 53 bars. 53 bars. That's not restaurants with a liquor license. That is a bar. You walk in, there's there's the bar of regulars, there's the pickled eggs and all that garbage behind the behind the bar. These are legitimate bars. So anyway, that's my ADHD rant on what we learned by reading a fun county catalog in the in the truck. I'm really not sorry that I went on that because I thought that was super, super interesting. And again, not one of you is required to listen to this podcast. I do know that my wife and one of my daughters listen to every episode, but even you two ladies are not required to listen to this because this is all recycling shit that you guys have heard at the dinner table or when I'm ranting in the car every time I pass a church. Alright, so we're gonna go back to why people admitted leaving their faith, or at a minimum, leaving their church. Now some of these are really interesting, and some of these will honestly just piss church going people off. Again, I'm not sure how large of a demographic of this podcast audience are uh loyal churchgoers. Regardless, here we go. The number one reason given was intellectual disagreement and or skepticism about his teaching. So for a lot of people, the departure really began with questions that their existing religious framework just didn't answer or didn't answer to their satisfaction. So the loss of belief in doctrine, again, according to your research, the single most common reason people cite for leaving their childhood religion, they simply stopped believing the core teachings, or they found them to be scientifically or historically inaccurate. We've dug into this quite a bit, the inaccuracies of the Bible, just one specific event in the Bible having four different sets of details from four different writers, go, of course. Remember, we're largely illiterate. Uh, we'll touch that a little bit too. Like I said, we we've beaten this one up in in prior episodes. So go ahead and flip back to the prior episodes if you're just joining us and and you want to hear more about it. Number two, this is one that I actually hammered in a two-part episode, the problem of suffering. If you're not familiar with it, travel back a little bit in my podcast. Uh, and it's the episode titled Omni Awkward. So you many find it difficult to reconcile the existence of a God, uh a benevolent God. They can't really reconcile that with the amount of evil, tragedy, and suffering in the world. When religious communities offer really simplistic answers to deep grief or tragedy, they're finding that it actually accelerates a person's exit. The old God works in mysterious ways, God was ready to have them join them in heaven. One of my favorites, the features that says heaven couldn't wait. They were too precious to this world. We can keep going. How about the man? God is good. He helped me find my keys, and I wasn't late to work. He is so good. But that same person, how about well, unfortunately the neighbor's four-year-old daughter passed away from cancer. Well, God works in mysterious ways. Not for us to understand. Number three, encounters with alternative perspectives. This is the one that's really going to upset the people that still fervently believe. When further pulled on ranking the encounters with alternative perspectives, the top one that was picked was the person who left the church's exposure to higher education, diversity in cultures, and different worldviews. This frequently introduces people to these alternate frameworks, making exclusive religious claims, very hard to maintain, very hard to believe. Now remember, cracks are really all we're looking to expose here. Because if you have that little crack, then you can start peeling back that curtain. Just a little bit of a handhold. The most common answer for why people walk away is intellectual disagreement and skepticism. Now it seems a bit odd to me that if we are created in God's perfect image, why are we even capable of doubting it? Like why are we even capable of questioning it? Remember, God expects line faced. This is covered in the Gospel of John, a super popular story. I was jokingly referred to when I would question anything in my household as doubting Thomas. So I'm sure most of you know where I'm going with this. I'm not super heavy in reading Bible verses. The Bible has been printed billions of times. The good God-fearing people do love throwing out the number that the Bible is the number one selling book of all time. That is a fact. However, keep in mind the second best selling book of all time is the big book from Alcoholics Anonymous. So maybe the top two are in like company, but not necessarily the greatest. And that is from somebody who has enjoyed years and years of sobriety from alcohol. Anyway, we'll get back to John. John 20, John chapter 20, verses 20 through 24. How about gaslighting? So check this out. Jesus appears to Thomas. Now Thomas, also known as Didemus, one of the twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, Quote, We have seen the Lord. But Thomas said to them, Unless I see the nail marks in his hands, and put my finger where those nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. So the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you. Don't miss the minor miracle there. Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here and see my hand. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting, Thomas, and believe. Thomas said to him, My Lord and my God. Then Jesus told him, Because you have seen me, you have believed. But blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. A lot there, we're not going to get into all of it. So Thomas does exactly what Nick is doing right now. Exactly what some of you that are listening to this are doing right now. Doubting. And why the hell shouldn't we? Now this is one of the twelve people that that were handpicked to carry on this this verbal history, and he's doubting. One of twelve, that's a really high percentage if you compare that to those of us that are listening to this. Now, assuming, and this is always the gives some sense, but assuming I believe that this book is not fiction. And that ignoring the enormous pile of wait, what? So I get past that somehow. I think this verse really highlights the church. The writers of this book of fables knew that people were just eventually not going to buy it. So they conveniently added a story about a person who's doing exactly what the doubters are doing, exactly what a what an open-minded human is going to do. But in an attempt to silence the masses, they put in a story that's going to say, hey, listen, you're not the first to think this. You're not special, you're not unique. This has happened, and this is how it happened. I think this verse really highlights that the writers of this book, I feel of fables, but the writers of this book, the best-selling book of all time, they knew that people weren't gonna buy this. So they added a story about a person doing exactly what they're doing. But an attempt to silence the masses, the plan was what every organization, or dare I say, cult has. So we can dig a bit more into this. Thomas says that he won't buy this crazy story unless he touches the hole. And this really does seem logical to me. We'll go back to Carl Sagan's Dragon in the Garage. I'm not gonna blindly believe it. Damn it, I want to see a dragon. The rest of the disciples who were there when they heard him doubt, they just move forward. They didn't slow down and say, ah, hey, listen, bro, this is this is not alright. Because it's as a week later Jesus pops in. Now this is the creator's son. Yet one of the twelve most popular characters in the story has this level of doubt, and dude doesn't pop in for a week. I mean, I don't know, it kind of seems like he doesn't really give a shit, or maybe he didn't know. But isn't he worried that mathematically eight percent of his followers think his entire story is BS? Or did he have no idea? Because he isn't real. I think that if I was attempting to create a new religion, which of course to me all of them are far-fetched, but say I was gonna start a far-fetched one, which at the time it certainly was, that the first group of suckers that I find. But I'm gonna do everything that I can to keep them in my pocket, to keep them in my camp. One of the holy things that God calls us to do is to spread the word. If I have one of my few followers doubting me, I'd be knocking on his door, maybe even just walking through it, I wouldn't need to knock the second those words came out of his mouth. Or again, because he's all knowing, he knew those words were gonna come out of his mouth before he even said them. He could have appeared to him then. But he decided to give Thomas an entire week to mill around living in doubt. And who knows, maybe Thomas talked to a few people hearing his doubt, much like I'm doing to you. And maybe Thomas had a few people going, yeah, dude, that yeah, that does seem a little odd. Anyway, so speaking of the cracks, uh, we're just talking about spreading the word real quick. Google search. Jerusalem is estimated at the time of the story to have a population of between 20 and 30,000, uh, which makes Jerusalem's population back then darn near as high as the county. What we were just talking about. But anyway, Jerusalem, very diverse makeup. In fact, it was so diverse that there were three major languages that were spoken and written. So again, we'll go back to these 12 people. He picked 12 uneducated, statistically illiterate fishermen who then became trilingual and spread the word to the masses. Now I I can't spend all day on this, but geez, I mean, do any believers have the ability to question? Imagine this. Imagine in this country we have presidential elections. Now, some of us realize that the majority of what is said on the campaign trails is pr pretty pretty much bullshit. They tell the crowd what they want to hear, and the crowd eats it up and votes for them. And I'm not saying this is exclusive to one party because frankly it is American politics. Last election of all of the things facing our country, gas prices were gas prices were the pillar that this uh that this politics stood on, which of course is cute. Uh last Thursday, before we headed up to our land, I put $165 worth of fuel in my truck. So thank goodness the uh election landed the way it did, and I didn't spend too much money on fuel. Anyway, once the best liar is I'm sorry, once the winning politician is elected, we move forward. But think of how many Americans do not vote based on party line. My daughter and I were just talking about this yesterday on our way home from our Fourth of July weekend. I tend to vote more in line with one party, yet I have never gotten my ballot and checked party line. Because I like to research it, I like to look into it. Maybe I like to do what we're doing right now, and I like to question. I like to vet things a little bit before I put my name on them. I think we could say that as most people don't vote solely on party line, that it shows discretion in the voters questioning, standing up for what they feel is right, or at least seeing if this person also shares their beliefs on it. Yet Jesus made sure to nip that in the bud. His church today has not dropped that tort. Keep them ignorant, keep them scared, keep them downtrodden. So now you're creating a threat. This is what they're afraid of, this is what they should be guarding against. And then, and here's the most important part, convince these masses of people that you are the only answer to solve their danger. You are the only hope they have to succeed. And we see examples of this throughout the world. Maybe some of you have already jumped through in your mind, and I do hate to say it, but typically this is really indicative of a good dictatorship. So ADHD being what it is, we're gonna run down that rabbit hole before we get back to a few researches results on why people have left. I have said in the past that my understanding of Catholicism is far greater than my understanding of any other religion. I would put Lutheranism as a close second, because of course, to understand the history of the Catholic Church, you have to understand all the schisms, you have to understand when the church split, and you certainly have to understand the 45 thesis and the door they were nailed to by our friend Martin Luther. While we're in the Vanish dictatorship, we're going to match the pedal here. I'm going to draw some similarities between the Catholic Church and a current dictatorship. So I don't really care about sharing my feelings on this. And this may piss some people off. This might cause a few people to stop listening. I do not aim to alienate anybody because that is really something that the church excels at and strives to do is to alienate. And that that is not what I'm doing here. And as this is not a political podcast, if you are curious about my political beliefs, just consider how hard I'm with being curiosity. Question question everything you take in. So do with that what you will. Anyway, there are some really solid examples, unfortunately, in the world of a working dictatorship. I apologize. I'm not going to be able to edit this out, but my neighbor just fired up his lawnmower. So unfortunately, you're going to listen to Mr. E on the zero turn. Hopefully he's not singing out loud today, because holy smokes. So let's uh let's highlight a couple of similarities between North Korea and the Catholic Church. Boy, how about just for some proof of God's existence? There would be a lightning bolt that just smoked me, but I digress. Here I am talking. Lightning's safe. So political scientists and historians, they point to a few really striking structural similarities between the Catholic Church and a political dictatorship. Now the end goal of each is very different, and that is absolutely worth pointing out. Religion's claim is spirits of salvation. Here are the rules, listen to this, this is how you're going to be saved. A dictatorship's goal is secular control. So keep serfdom healthy, keep them hungry, keep them scared. That's really where the differences stop. The striking similarities that both systems rely almost exclusively on a centralized top-down authority and the absolute central power that the dictator has. There are different names for different things, different names in different organizations. I think we're all going to be able to draw the line though. So in a dictatorship, the supreme power, your leader, we can substitute what we'd like for that supreme leader, like in North Korea, uh in the church, father, uh other religions, we have pastors, and some American politicians, even, perhaps the president. At any time, I'm not just saying this current one, regardless of who you'd like to identify that leader as. They share a very scary similarity. As we just said, it is the absolute concentrated power of a single leader, or a tiny ruling elite, which is not checked by any constitution because the masses don't have rights. So you're required to follow the direction of your leader. In Catholicism, we have the Pope. He is the supreme leader of the church on earth. So the church teaches that the Pope is the only human alive that has a direct line to God. It's important to spend a second with that. That doesn't mean he's the human that has the greatest knowledge of God's will. It's not to say that he's the one that has the tightest relationship with God. It is that he has a direct line to God, the only human alive that has that. Conveniently it passes from Pope to Pope. So it's not like God's playing favorites. Just whoever's sitting in that chair, he's got the red phone. So that's the church now in a dictatorship. You follow the supreme leader, or you die. Or at the very least, you're ostracized. Now, in the church, you believe in God. You believe in the Bible, the church and its teachings, or you go to hell. I don't even need to pick at this one. You guys get it. So we'll keep moving here. The power or structure of both systems is the biggest difference between a dictatorship and other non-democratic political systems. The structure is top-down, like I had said earlier, the top-down hierarchy. But the dictatorship and the church share the absence of that. Remember in episodes one and two where we attack the lazy bullfit response of quote, because we've always done it this way, this isn't even worse. This is arguing with a three-year-old. The church and dictatorships don't really have much in their arsenal to defend this guy. But the leader tells any of the subjects that don't like their directive, because I said so. That's basically just a shorter way of saying this is the way we've always done it, or at least this is the way I've always wanted it done. Do you work? Are you guys employed? I am. If my director laid out an expectation that I deeply disagreed with, I would tell her, and I have, that there may be a better, smarter, perhaps more efficient way of doing it. And if you were to tell me, nah, Nick, we're doing it this way because I said so. I imagine this would be one of those examples of offering someone one more chance to change their approach. You wouldn't make a really risky financial decision based solely on the fact that somebody told you that it's always been done that way, or because they said so. If they did, you'd likely tell them the fuck off. As you should, yet so many fall sort of that boundary when it comes to church, because the church has done such an incredible job selling fear. COVID changed a lot of things in our working world in the United States. So many people are now able to work remotely. There are people that are working, and and there always have been, but now to a much greater extent, there are people that are working uh for a company in the state that is a three days drive from their home office. So the fear of disobeying a directive from your boss, uh, that fear is really kind of diminished because, you know, this isn't the 50s. Losing your job does not mean you're going to lose your home all of the time. We I guess one of the things we we there's a little fear taken away from that because we're no longer limited to a job in the the town that we live in. So there are more options should we lose our job for replacing it. So religion really beats out the average employer in selling fear because they're so much more dependent on fear the average employer is. Remember, keep them dumb, hungry, scared, and your cult will forever have a following. Now, the second similarity between the church and the dictatorship, both systems utilize a rigid vertical chain of command where authority flows exclusively from the top. And obedience is required from the bottom up. So dictatorship, you've got the ruling party, the military, regional governors, and then at the very bottom you've got citizens, Catholic Church. Let's look at that one. At the very top, you've got the Pope. You then have the Cardinals. Below that, you have the archbishops, bishops, below that is the priest, and then at the very bottom, of course, is the laity. So in both structures, those at the bottom have virtually no mechanism to vote out or really penalize those at the top if they disagree with what's being said. Now, obviously, the church makes their political structure look much softer and nicer than, say, North Korea does. But the hate, the pain, the sexism, the war, greed, money, power, I could keep going. It's all there. If you want a fun exercise, take my Google searches further. I did one while prepping for this episode and it was really interesting. The estimated wealth of the Vatican City. What do you think it is? The Vatican City has never released card numbers on its finances. They're not as involved and created, should we say, or depended on globally as uh a formal country is, so there's absolutely no pressure for them to declare numbers like this or disclose any of that. But it is estimated that the Vatican City has a net worth of around 30 billion. This is a B 30 billion. Now look up the declared net worth of an established country. You can pick any. I pick uh neighbors of the South, Mexico. Mexico has a confirmed net worth of 2.7 trillion with a T. Obviously that's more, but the point is you'll never find the Christmas figure because they don't release it. And since they're a sovereign Apen, they're allowed to keep everything secret and behind closed doors. Cloak and dagger's uh really a theme. So this seems like such an appalling stance to take, doesn't it? Well, let's consider the IT. Military dictatorship. We're shown videos of thousands of people marching in perfect sync with their weapons of mass destruction, while some little cryptic, weak ass leader stands there with a boner watching his war machine walk by. That was a little crass, I apologize. The church, well, it's a happy looking old white dude dressed in all white, driving a bomb proof glass bubble in a custom Mercedes-ben. So that's called a quote mobile, if you're not familiar with it. The Vatican typically has three to four active quote mobiles in their fleet. Each of these is valued at roughly a half a million euro each. This is before they're made bullet and bomb proof. Educate guesses that they're all valued at just a hair over two million euro each. This is oozing with irony. Uh obviously, church leaders are always so eager to swear to avow poverty. So maybe while this person doesn't have a whole lot of net worth, riding around a two million dollar vehicle kind of screams boosy to me. The funny thing is when I've discussed this with the staunch Catholics, what they say is that all world leaders have protective equipment, right? People want to assassinate important people, and they're not wrong. But here's the thing the Pope isn't a damn world leader. Well, if you ask me, he's just a if you ask me he's just a creepy geriatric in a dress, but third similarity between the church and the dictatorship is the lack of democratic representation. In dictatorships, leaders are not chosen by the citizens through free and fair elections. They're typically appointed by a ruler. They inherit power or they seize it. Similarly, the Catholic Church is not a democracy. The laity, the everyday church members, do not vote on church doctrine, they don't vote on church law, and they do not vote on church leadership. Bishops are appointed by the Pope, and the Pope himself is elected exclusively by a group that's called the College of Cardinals. We'll get into it a bit. But this is a group of elites who were themselves appointed by, you guess it, a previous pope or the current one. So dictatorships don't have elections. I'm not going to get into the fair and democratic election process that the US has, because we'll cut the bolt it. Uh the church's leader is picked by a group of old men that all have the same game plan and motive. The church picks its leader by a process of interviews, obviously prayer, and discussion by, as I'd mentioned, this governing board called the College of Cardinals, the church hierarchy, again, from the top, Pope, down to Cardinals, down to Archbishop, Bishop, Monsieur, priest, deacon, mouse in the church, I love mouth cap in the corner of the church. Then of course the stays in the last episode, women. So the College of Cardinals is obviously all cardinals, which is the second highest rank in the church. They get to vote. But here's the thing 225 out of 230 popes elected through the College of Cardinals were on the College of Cardinals prior to their appointment. And that really sounds like a good old boy club to me. You might be wondering why I only explained 230 of the 267 popes. And that's a great question. Let me. The divinely picked process, the perfect process, done in ways that God wants. Well, that wasn't always the way it was done. There of course were times where there were multiple popes. Multiple people said, you know what? Screw it, I'm the Pope. If you believe in that one, uh, you're going to hell. There were multiple papacies. There have been anti-pope. There have been schisms in the church that resulted in more than one leadership structure, leading basically to a popularity contest for the leadership. Or which Pope scared you the most? If if you thought, God, this one, he brings up some great points, but I really don't want that. So this is the one I'm going to follow. Or this one seems a little more legit. I'm going to follow him. If you're going to research, say, I don't know, the concrete company for your house, say you're pouring a foundation, build a new house, and you saw an ounce of dysfunction like this, you wouldn't hire him for concrete. Yet billions of people who believe that a soul is real are picking, willingly picking to follow this. What the hell? Similarity four between the two. Appointment and promotion via loyalty. In an authoritarian regime, promotions to higher office levels are rarely based purely on merit. They are heavily dependent on the loyalty to the leader or the regime's or philosophy, I guess. Within the church, promotion into the hierarchy, so becoming a bishop or a cardinal, that requires strict adherence to the doctrine and loyalty to the capital, Holy See. Now the Holy See is what the Catholic Church refers to as their the higher structure. To publicly disagree with any fundamental church teachings typically halts the cleric's advancements or who knows, maybe even results in a disciplinary act, which of course the Catholic Church, their favorite one is just moving into different pairs. I I do feel like I'm being a little spicy today, and maybe this is the six weeks off. While I was off for six weeks, I was working on the outline of this podcast at least two times a day. So the spiciness is there. Uh, and I feel like I'm kind of on fire here. The last one that I'm going to point out, because this could go on forever, and there are much smarter people that could back this up for forever. Um, and maybe some of you guys are listening, which is really neat. So the single legal or ideological framework, the dictatorships often enforce a single state ideology and use a control system, like a really regimental legal system that will shush any of the opposition and maintain what they view to be ordered. The church operates under what's called canon law. It's its own internal sovereign, of course, legal system that that really governs everything from administrative duties to trials for ordained members' offenses. The church maintains a single, really codified framework. So in the Catholic Church, this is called the catechism. Basically, it's the constitution of the church, uh, the official teaching authority, known as the magisterium. I promise there's not going to be a test on this one. They have the final and indisputable word on what is considered truth versus what's considered heresy. Making the rules as they go. So it's kind of like, you know, when when I stayed home with my daughters before they went to school, it was like when I used to play made-up games with them. It was always a really fun exercise to let them pick the game. And and more often than not, it was one that didn't exist, which is showing awesome creativity. And it's it's really something that I tried encouraging. If for some reason I would win, and remember, I always tried letting them win. They people need wins, and and and kids in particular, boy, they they really benefit from beating daddy at a game, right? Dad is the authority figure, he's he's home, he's safety, and he's so smart. Dad knows everything. And I beat him at a game. But if for some reason I would win or I was winning, they would quickly, without even blinking, add a rule of the game that eliminated my win. So they could continue to win. Now the church making and enforcing and editing rules as they go is absolutely no different. Except my family, while doing well, it's worth as not an estimated thirty billion dollars. The real truth. To think then is that while the the mechanics of governance they really share similarities, the fundamental nature of compliance is is really different. So political dictatorship enforces its rule through physical coercion, state violence, uh and and the stripping of civil liberties. And not just liberties, I mean they're you you don't get to eat. I mean, they they won't give you food uh if if you oppose certain things in in uh in a dictatorship. Now, in contrast, the Catholic Church's authority over the laity is entirely voluntary. Uh you're not forced to be in it. I'm evidence of that. Although at at many, many times, there wasn't an option in my mind to not be in it. But it's power, the church's power relies on the shared faith and the willing compliance of its members. Uh, and I'm putting willing kind of in in in air quotes. Go back to that county we were talking about. You have more choices in church than schools, and if you're being put in that church in your school age, well, I wouldn't necessarily call that willing compliance. We've we've discussed in the past how this is what mom and dad tell us, uh, or this is what our trusted adult tells us, and this is what we're gonna do. Because, like I said, while playing the game with my daughter, uh, dad has all the answers. Dad is right, and at the very least, even if you're gonna question that, well, boy, it's terrifying to disappoint dad or mom or your uh parental figure. Disobedience in the church teachings does not result in jail, um, which of course is temporary. It results in your eternal soul burning in hell. And I frankly, I think those takes them seem a little higher. Let's let let's get back to the reason why people stated they left the church. The the whole reason this episode exists, because these are the really the meat and the potatoes of the episode. Um, well, realistically, part one of this topic. I'm sorry, I ranted so long that I'm not gonna ask you to sit through a two-hour episode. We'll cut this one. Another reason that people stated were that the cultural and value alignment, we'll call it cognitive dissonance. So a major driver of modern disaffiliation or or deconstruction is the ever-widening gap between a person's evolving ethics and the stances of their religious institutions. Remember, people evolve when they ask why. Religions tend not to evolve a whole lot. We will touch a little bit about how there's some evolution in the church, but that'll that'll likely be in part two. So the social and political issues, a lot of people stated that because their religious organizations hold very conservative or regressive stances on social issues, they conflict with their personal morals. This is really pronounced regarding most, but not all, church's treatment towards the LVBCQ, uh the marginalized, gender equality, uh, reproductive rights. So I really don't think that it's going to be overstated. As we age, it's necessary, I believe, necessary to reevaluate the who am I question. Not just the what is my identity, but what are my values? Who am I? Dark rooms, nobody else around, who's next? And I think something that I noticed is that often the adults that never challenge their faith or the validity of those teachings, the numbers support this. Now, as my generation and those younger than me are leaving the faith at breakneck speeds, our identity changes as we experience life. At least mine has and does, and boy, I hope continues to. So I would argue that nobody with kids has avoided value and ethics challenges. There was a really pivotal point in my life where I had evaluate what I was teaching my kids, or more importantly, what I was feeling about their journeys through life, their identities, their values. Who are they now? What are they going to become? What could they become? Exciting. I mean, there's really exciting stuff. It really is. It's not the it's not the muck that a parent has to tread through. It's so damn exciting. My deconstruction, I feel, is a really natural thing. And frankly, I feel a very important process towards identifying who I am, my values, what I stand for. The Catholic Church is trying to evolve. And I think if you look at the churches as the tax shelter businesses they are, then you begin to see these fundamental changes as nothing more than basically a marketing campaign. Again, if the views are empty, the collection baskets are lighter, and the free money from the scared, desperate, and guilty begins to become more and more scarce. Now, looking at the evolving stance of the LGBTQ community, I mean, let's be real, that's to the church, free money is free money. While there's slight shifts in very nonspecific terms may appeal to some of the more liberal leaning Catholics, these sets are clearly not an attempt to get the LGBTQ into the pews. If we're being honest, these slight shifts aren't for the victims of the bigotry. They're not. But but for the others, this is obviously a very half-assed approach to a real issue that does nothing to address the issue or to help those suffering because of the stances. I grew up with God's love being extremely conditional, as I'm sure many of you did as well. Salvation being a quickly and constantly moving target and hope being something that was really just a fleeting dream. So if people are leaving the face because they've grown up, started thinking for themselves, or bringing curiosity and open mindedness to their lives, then I think the core teachings, which of course can and conveniently do change, those teachings cause the hierarchy to reconsider things that once we're taught to be one-way ticket sell, well then we need to step back and ask ourselves if we're backing the right horse or deciding if we are the ones that are going to break this generational cycle of trauma, uh, narrow mindedness, and refusal, or or really even the inability to ask those difficult questions. I'm really happy to report that more and more folks are doing just that and they're shaking out the shame, the guilt, and the naive hope in something that I believe just doesn't exist. And apparently they believe that as well, or they at least doubt it. So here's the thing vomiting my beliefs in the microphone is met with opinions aren't facts, Nick. And forcing these opinions on others is not right, Nick. And in fact, very dangerous, Nick. And I think that's fair. Though I'm not forcing a single person to listen to the podcast, nor am I telling anyone that they're required to agree with me. I am a total movie buff. I love, love, love movies, love movies. Pick a genre. I I I just I love movies, love comedy, especially love horror movies. One of the most popular comedy movies of all time. I've watched multiple times, hoping to like it because everybody seems to love it. And I just hate the movie. I cannot get myself to like it. That movie, the big Lebowski. Again, I oh god, I just don't like the movie. But it's got an outstanding quote that pops into my mind really often when I'm thinking about uh these drifty things when somebody says, Oh no, Nick, you can't be saying this. This is dangerous. You could be misleading somebody, you could be turning somebody away from salvation. So the Lebowski, the dude, says, Yeah, well, you know, that's just like uh your opinion, man. And this is a really real argument. So to be fair, I just as quickly tell apologists the same thing. I told you guys that I had six weeks to come up with this podcast, and I'll be damned if I didn't just go absolutely nuts on it. So this is actually a really good and logical place to break. Uh the episode once I'm done editing may not be a typical, you know, 40 to 50 minute runtime. Although my wife has requested that I make them in that 36 to 40 minutes so she can listen to it on her commute uh and not have to two-part it. I likely think it's because she's sick and tired of listening me talk, but I'm sure she probably wouldn't uh admit to that. We're gonna wrap up this topic in our in in part two in in my next episode. And it's it's really where it gets interesting. Uh I mean I personally think this whole thing's been interesting, which is why I'm saying it. But the next episode, we're gonna get into the hard poll results. We're gonna we're gonna go all the way back to the 1920s and we'll move by decade to see what old Americans identified as. What percentage of them identified as Christians or religious? And what percentage of them responded with no affiliation. I thought this was just so, so encouraging and so cool. Uh I I'm not great at at Caesars. I'm I'm not. You know, I I really hope you come back to listen to the numbers. Uh if if not, then that's all right, I guess. Uh didn't do the the podcast to to make friends. Because quite frankly, I've you know, I only know a few people that listen to this. They're luckily my download numbers show that there are quite a few, uh, which is super exciting. Nine different countries. Isn't that crazy? I just looked up nine different countries somebody's downloaded one of these episodes. Um let's hope one of them is not North Korea. Uh, or I don't think I need to worry about a lightning bolt. I think I need to worry about something else. So anyway, uh, thank you all so so much for for joining me for this episode. I cannot tell you how much I have missed uh recording and releasing these, and I cannot tell you how much I struggled with feeling like I was disappointing somebody. Maybe somebody just woke up one day and said, hmm, I'm gonna listen to that asshole talk for a while. And for six weeks they didn't have anything. And if there's one of you out there that feel that way, then I really am sorry. I I promise you I'm I'm more disappointed in in this podcast host than you are uh regarding that. So anyway, again, thank you so much for joining me. Please come back and check out part two. I think I think we're gonna have a lot of fun with that. It's gonna be much less Nick opinion based, more factually based, uh, which is which is really how you win an argument. That's just uh not just understanding how I feel about something. So until next time. Uh,