Honest doubts and Hard goodbyes: The Real Reason People Leave pt 2

In the final installment of this two part episode, we continue to delve into why people are leaving the church and discuss the trends of this great exodus. You won't believe your ears when these trends are discussed!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:31

So you're stuck with just me again. Today's episode, we're we're we're gonna wrap up what we started in um in the previous episode. We're going to dive more into the why. Why have people, why are people considering leaving the faith? Why are people asking the the unaskable question? So the one that we were told growing up we could never ask, and that's that's why. That's starting to put it through a logical filter. Uh that this is a huge thing, is it what's actually in line with me, with my identity, with with who and what I believe I am as a person. So we're gonna get more away from Nick's opinion on this one. We're gonna get much more into hard numbers, less opinion. However, my podcast, so there's still gonna be plenty of opinion in it, uh, as there always tends to be. Believe it or not, religious trends. Well, I mean, I guess it's it's no surprise to think that now in in today's day and age that religious trends are tracked. That's not not surprising at all. I mean, you could you could quite literally search online for the percentages of blank, and you can pick damn near anything, and you're gonna find numbers. We're a very data-driven uh trending type society. The trending is certainly something that is is uh is a huge strong suit of mine. Uh my my my job uh requires a lot of trending. So record the information, keep the information, track the information, compile trends, make decisions based on that, be them financial decisions, be them uh personnel decisions based on trending. So this really appealed to me from that aspect too. We know that I'm a fan of the Pew Research Center. I stated it in the previous episode, and I've stated it in multiple previous episodes. Religious trends in the U.S. have been tracked, like I was saying, pretty pretty darn closely. You'll find that the results really aren't uh in support of religion. So let's let's tear into it. Uh again, P Research Center, they dug up some really, really awesome information, and and so it's gonna give us some really hard to argue with numbers today. We're gonna start in the 1920s. Um and and before you before you hit stop or roll your eyes, we are not going year by year. We're gonna go decade by decade. Uh some of the decades are longer talking points than others, um, but but bear with me. I'm I'm going to give you two numbers on on each decade. The first number is always going to be the larger number, unfortunately, although we're seeing these two coming much closer together. The first number is going to be the percentage of those polled that identified as Christian. We're just going with Christian, we're not going with Catholic, we're not, we're not dividing Christianity up because that could be its own episode on what percentage of Christian faith represented what people. Uh there's there have been huge, huge evolutions and changes in that too, uh, and and some interesting theories in my mind around that, but for another day. So the first number is going to be the percentage of those identifying as Christian. The second number is those identifying or answering with no affiliation. That's their answer. So it's not, nope, I'm not Christian. It's just I do not affiliate with an organized Christian religion. So what I really love about these numbers is that they didn't just track the percentage of people that identified as Christians. They they answered, say we were just to say, yeah, 90% of people identify as Christian. Well, the curiosity, the curious mind is gonna say, well, what about the other 10% of people? So they they they give you that that number, and and it's it's a cool one because you get to track both numbers, the movement of those that identify as and the movement of those that identify no affiliations. So like I said, we're gonna start in the 1920s, uh, 1920 to 1930. When polled, 98% of those polled identified as Christians. 2% identified, no affiliation. Interestingly enough, if you do care, and we're not gonna do this with every one of them, the vast majority of those that identified as Christians identified as Protestant. Um we're not gonna pull the different the different religions of Christianity apart, but it's it's a neat, it's it's kind it's kind of a neat idea, you know, when when you're talking about immigration numbers in this country, that the just the times, the 1920s to 1930s, so much more recently, many citizens were were coming over from Europe and and bringing their faith with them. Keep in mind, if you will, going back a couple hundred years, the land that we now call the United States, there wasn't Christianity. And there's no argument, frankly, that that there was uh Christianity back then, much like unfortunately still today, people decide that they want to move to a certain place, regardless of whether or not there are indigenous people there. And it's not enough for them to just move and say, hey neighbor, we're we're here now too. And there's there's so much cool stuff that we can all enjoy. Uh, and and maybe we can even share some of our knowledge and our skills with each other. They can't stop there and they don't. We're here, we're gonna take this, and also you're taking this, and by this we mean our religion. Do it that way, you will. Back to the numbers there. 98% of the population identifying as Christian, and only two uh identifying as non-affiliated. It doesn't really surprise me, again, that in the 1920s such a high percentage of people identified as Christian, if you want to consider the economic state of the United States in the 20s and 30s. Worth noting, and I have said this in the past, oftentimes the people who really, really gravitate towards faith, uh, one could say cling, let's just say gravitate, because that's much more fair. They're often facing hardships, sometimes extreme hardships, and they can't see a way out of them. So they grab on to the supernatural power that if they believe hard enough can fix everything, and really requires no work from them beyond one of God's greatest commands, is hand all things over to God. So another way of saying this, we're gonna bring opinion into it now. I get myself out of this really tough spot, this is gonna require a lot more work than I'm interested or willing to do. So I'll pray, which again I don't see as a productive endeavor, and everything's gonna be better. I don't have to do all the work because I believe in a God that will. Many people's loved ones in the 20s and 30s were overseas fighting wars with a very high probability of death, which means that American homes were largely filled with families who were just torn apart by their son's fate and whether or not they're going to come home. Now it's it's very fair to see this as these people, these mothers and these fathers, these siblings, grandparents, the list goes on and on. There was quite frankly nothing that they could do about the fear of their soldier returning or being safe. So they prayed. Because it made them feel like they were doing something. It made them feel like they were offering something to the fate of their loved one that they couldn't by themselves do. They couldn't protect their son. So they turned to this imaginary power that they believed could. I do need to mention that you're gonna hear me refer to how much an act of war will drive up religious devotion, uh, the numbers of it. It doesn't take a lot of research to see that a common thread here is the US's involvement in war. I've said it a thousand times, probably say it a thousand more. Here's one for today's episode. This isn't a political podcast. But numbers are numbers. We're gonna discuss these numbers all the way up to our current year, unfortunately, because we're not gonna find a decade from the 1920s and 1930s till now, where the US wasn't at some point in that span, in a war. Maybe I will start another podcast where I just say, fuck it, to go straight political. But again, this isn't the podcast for that. Supporting the wars that we are fighting or not, it doesn't change the fact that these numbers are the numbers. So where we stand on these wars really doesn't make you any more or less welcome in this podcast. Uh and I won't say really doesn't. I will say this absolutely doesn't make you any more or less welcome to this podcast. I told you I wasn't gonna linger all day on every decade. So now we're gonna go to the 40s and 50s. In the 40s and 50s, 95% of those polled identified as Christian. Five percent identified as no affiliation. The the post-World War II religious boom did lead to a very high church membership. Think about this. Like I'd stated in the previous decades, Johnny's off to war. We're terrified that he's not gonna come home. He's not gonna come home safely, and if he does come home, he's not gonna be who left. So we're seeing a slight drop, but it's it's still really high. If Johnny comes home, he's not going to be who he was when he when he left. Now the flip side of that, now Johnny's home. Well boy, God is good. He brought Johnny home. We can continue that a little further. If Johnny didn't return home, well, God works in mysterious ways. It's not for us to understand. We're going to hand all things over to God. So again, we're going to see a slight drop uh from 98 to 95, but this is still obviously extremely high. Again, we're in the wake of World War II, so with many, many men not coming home from war, yet in the 30s, as we discussed, many families were worried that their sons wouldn't return. By the 40s, they're now grieving the loss of those sons. And as is as is so common, not having the ability to accept that a potential cost of war is death. Many people refuse to accept that this happened. So instead, they turn to God to make sense of this loss. Like I had said, this is God's will. So since families in the US with loved ones overseas fighting war with a just an incredibly high mortality rate, all they could do is pray is pray. 40s and 50s, the Cold War. This this one's actually getting into a bit of a history lesson. By this one I mean this entire episode, not just not just this one. So again, the 40s and 50s, the US uh was was in the middle of of the Cold War. There was a huge Soviet fear, and of course there was the arms race. Again, the Soviet Union was the villain. Remember, we talked about how to keep people subservient, you have to present them with the problem, with the villain. You have to instill a lot of fear in them over this villain, and then you have to be the solution to this problem. So the Christians in this example were scared and not being able to comprehend that science and people were actually what was going to solve this perceived threat. They needed a solution that made them feel warm and fuzzy because everybody wants to feel comfortable. I mean, that's not that's not a bad thing. Everybody wants to be comfortable. Their warm and fuzzy solution, of course, is gossip something that I can't fail to mention because there's always so much hypocrisy with Christianity. Another issue that was facing the US was a little something that we called the civil rights movement. About the irony. So many Christian whites were fighting equal rights for non whites because the belief that blacks were less than was stronger than their desire to follow Christ's words when he instructed to treat all of his creatives equally. Quote, what you do to the least of my people, you do unto me. It's strange, unfortunately not surprising, but strange that the cherry picking of religious teachings was so pivotal in flowing down and resisting gender and racial equality. While we're in the irony vein, this opinion I do believe is based on historical fact or at least my personal experiences with many Christians. If Jesus showed up in America at any any time in our country's history, he would likely have been arrested, certainly hated, potentially killed, if not, definitely sent back to where he came. Because he isn't white. He wasn't from here. He didn't look like everybody else. It's that old saying that just lives rent-free in my head, and I will tell you might be the single most upsetting thing that I will ever utter in this podcast and have before and will again, upsetting to any Christian that would listen to this. And then that is that there is an unfortunate amount of evidence that there really is no hate that is quite like Christian love. And and I don't mean love like, you know, I love my wife, I love my daughters. I'm using their definition of love, what the Christians define as love. So there is no hate like that of a person who is living what they view to be a Christian love. I don't think you can make it up. And I'm sure that this is gonna come up again as we get closer to our current time and political climate in the United States. Let's keep moving forward. The 1960s and 1970s, 87% identified as Christian. 87%. This is this is actually a really big, a really big jump. It's still a very high number. However, with a higher percentage identifying as non-affiliated, we are seeing a pretty darn large shift, keeping in mind that as as recently as 30 years before this, only 2% identified as having no affiliations. Let's go back. What was the state of the U.S. in the 60s and 70s? Admittedly, I did have to do a bit of research on this one as I wasn't around yet. Well, we we do know that women, thankfully, really begin to assert themselves more in this period of time. They are what we would say leaving the ki leaving the kitchen. The the Cleaver family, right, to leave it to Beaver, the Cleaver family is now becoming much less of the norm. Women are working now, women are empowering themselves. The sexist men aren't coming home to a hot dinner and their favorite mixed drink anymore. Don't get me wrong, like with all things, there were many men in previous decades that were not intensively holding their wives back. But they simply didn't break the cycle from quote how I grew up. Now in this in this period of time, the young adults in the US are basically saying, Well, fuck off mom and dad, I don't want to hate anymore, and there's no reason to hate someone because they don't fall in line with your belief. You guys are all aware of the fact that I I I love music. Music is almost always playing in in my day at a at any given time. I didn't have to research this one a heck of a lot. There's an event that falls into this time frame that I would imagine every listener of this podcast is familiar with. That was called Woodstock. I did research the number of attendees at Woodstock and it it it blew my mind. Woodstock had between 400 and 500,000 people that came in and left at some point during this. The average age of the attendees at Woodstock was 22. So we'll go back, you know, a minute and a half ago when I said the youth in America, the young adults were saying cloud sand, mom and dad. So the younger generation that I've been talking about, again, they said, fuck it, I'm out. Why are we hating? Why do we have to hate? Now I imagine as well that those half a million-ish people were likely not part of any of these polls. Obviously, religion was not a huge theme at Woodstock, and this could possibly be why when I was growing up, all of the attendees from the mouths of my parents were painted as dirty hippies. Now maybe today we would call those people open minded, strong willed, perhaps. If nothing else, curious. Now this isn't to say that the crowds were all atheists, you know, sacrificing ghosts and drinking blood. In fact, it it was pretty opposite of that. Woodstock was considered largely by those present, and there are thankfully still plenty of Woodstock attendees in our daily lives. Feel free to ask them. It was considered by a lot of the people there to be very spiritual. You know, there were themes of Eastern mysticism, New Age philosophy, and just a huge rise in this new thing called human secularism. So these people viewed others as people, as human that were possibly just different, but certainly not less, just beautiful humans with potential and a capacity of love and acceptance that was not very present society and very absent in the lives of many of the attendees. It just wasn't just going to see cool rock and roll. There was so much more to it, just being there. The whole process it took, the rules that were broken to do it, the disappointed and appalled parents left in your rear view mirror as you drove out to this. So this is also a time frame where the Catholic Church held a council. It's called the Second Vatican Council. And and there were a lot of really big changes. We've talked in the past about uh you might want to be a little leery of somebody that's going to change the rules mid-game just to keep contestants. The Second Vatican Council took the Latin requirement out of church. You're no longer required that every mass be said in Latin. It gave women a much larger role in the church, though still and currently an insultingly small role. And it tried making things much softer and gentler. Now, for those of you that aren't aware, the Catholic Church holds a council when they start to notice that they need to change some shit, or they're going to lose the money in those Sunday baskets. They're going to lose the loyalty of the land donors if we're going way back in the in the church's history. So this was really a huge backpedal from the Catholic Church, if you know, if if I'm aware of one. Despite it being what I consider to be a backpedal, the more liberal-minded Catholics, they ate this shit up because they got to have a new role. If nothing else, they got to understand what the damn priest was saying without having to be bilingual. In high school, at my Catholic school, uh, we we didn't have many language options. We could take German, we could take Spanish, or we could take Latin. I took Latin. Again, I was whatever. So I took Latin. When I said that the laity were finally happy that they understood what the priest was saying, now that the mass isn't in Latin, it is worth noting that there are two types of Latin that are taught. There's classical Latin and there is liturgical Latin. Of course, a church that uses Latin is just going to use the same Latin that everybody else is going to use. They're going to change it. And and maybe just a theory. And this just popped in my head. Maybe something something interesting to think about is if you're creating a new form of language, maybe it's much easier to say when there's a question, uh, it doesn't like your Latin, there's translation differences. So you're misunderstanding what it says. Everybody's excited about their new role. And nobody's stopping to think about what such a huge change in the church teaching might mean. And now we'll just Jump forward again. We're going to go to the 1980s and the 1990s. 85% identified as Christian. 15% identified as no affiliation. We're really seeing the gradual erosion. Although these are really big jumps. We're going to go from 2% in the 1920s and 30s to 15% now. These are big shifts. So this is the second time frame in a row that we see a drop and a pretty significant one. Now, while the percentage of self-identifying Christians is obviously going up, the important thing to note here is that the percentage of people who responded, no affiliation, it it has it has doubled. So think about those people. Today I I would call them, period. Doesn't this show us why I'm getting resistance for encouraging curiosity? I mean, as the masses of people begin to think for themselves and question things, like I opened this episode up with, they're really going to begin to evaluate. Then they're going to start seeing the absurdity of some of these teachings. Some of these teachings that include hate, intolerance, judgment. Again, Christian love. I'm not going to spend a ton of time on the 80s and 90s. No, let's go to the 2000s and the 2000s and tens. Something that jumped out to me in the first two or three spans that I brought up was that our numbers all equal to 100. If you followed any polling in your adult life, there's always a plus or minus now. So some of these numbers are going to be a little more sliding and less concrete. Although I would suspect the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, there was also that plus or minus. It just wasn't really something that was built into polling then. So in the 2000s and the 2010, 70 to 80% identified as Christian, while 15 to 22 identified as non-affiliated. These numbers don't add up to 100. But we're going to start to see why the old school adults are getting nervous. The church is beginning to feel like they need to soften their stance on a lot of topics. We talked about the Vatican Council, the Second Vatican Council, which was 30 to 40 years before the decade that we're, or the period of time that we're now talking about. In a little over 40 years, the percentage of people who identified as Christians has dropped 25%. That's one out of four people that are no longer practicing or identifying as Christian. But the 22% that say, eh meh, I don't know that I'm an atheist or an agnostic, but this organized Christian religion thing, it's got just too many holes. It doesn't hold water. If we're looking at these percentages nationally, this is millions of people. So say each of those people represent one less dollar every Sunday in that collection basket. We're talking an enormous amount of money lost. There really aren't many privately owned organizations or businesses that I feel could remain open with losses like this. There's certainly a few, but they certainly couldn't afford, you know, year after year after year of seeing this drop. But it's a really good thing that the church doesn't have to pay taxes on their money or even declare what they've made. It might not be a shocker to bring a little sarcasm into it, that in the 90s our country began to value, really value the importance of college educations. Remember an early talking point. Religion is seen more and more as the uh those that continue to become more educated. That was one of the five primary reasons people responded that they were were walking away while why they were leaving. Because they were exposed to different ideas. They became educated. Again, like I mentioned in the previous episode, an effective dictator, they keep the masses scared, they keep them ignorant, then they offer salvation to the problems that they have convinced their followers are facing. Remember, prisons are filled with devout believers. People in society feeling the most guilt, the most fear, the most shame, I would definitely say that. They've discovered God and handed their lives over to him. Again, no accountability requires no work from them. Percentage of believers in nursing homes is exponentially higher than the same aid group who's still living independently. Maybe not being imprisoned, you know, the incarcerated, again, I average, much less educated, or being much closer to the end of the end of life. Then maybe that has something to do with these numbers. I think that the educated and constantly challenged in real work issues, uh, like the people that have to perform at a high level in industry, uh, meetings, deadlines, etc., this is really evident in the next decade's data as well. So think about the last time you're given an assignment at work or school if you're younger. How would your boss or teacher react if your final product, when you were at that meeting and the deadline had come, your final product was, well, I was tasked with providing factual information and concrete numbers. I've decided that it was better for me if I just turned this over and accepted God's will. I thought and I prayed about it. You would be unemployed, you would be broke and in this country without insurance. We're not going political, so I'll leave it at that. So likely you would be so far up shit's creek that I mean you you wouldn't recover. All right, you know what? If if I can go on that thought though, and I can because it's my show, this would likely lead to you requiring, say, government assistance, help, even if it was just government in insurance and not necessarily in the form of finances. In my home growing up, the people that were on welfare or on government assistance, they they were seen as freeloaders and lazy people, and they didn't deserve any respect. That's how I was molded to see these people. Christian love, right? Now we're gonna go to the current, the 2020s. This is wild to me. Sixty-two percent of those polled identified as Christian. Sixty two percent, twenty-six to thirty-one percent, again, these numbers are you know, allowing the room for error, identified as non-affiliated. So now we take that group of 10 people, and three of them are now saying, nah, I'm not affiliated with anything. Percentage of this, and and you know, we're we're getting further and further in time, so we're starting to see a lot more, you know, they're tearing apart certain numbers and looking deeper into it. I I only mention this because remember in the 1920s and 30s, 98% of people identified as Christian, the vast majority of them as Protestants. Now, the Pew Research Center dug a little further into it. Of that 62% of U.S. adults that identified as Christian, 40% were Protestant. That's a huge stop for the Protestants, and I haven't even I haven't even spoken about the Protestants, again, because that's certainly not a religion that I know nearly as much about as Catholicism. 62% identified as Christian. Would you believe that only 19% of them identified as Catholic? So the percentage of the Christians that are Catholic, I mean, it it it really shocked me. This is great for me, though, to think about. You know, I, like many kids, perhaps like you, they were taught that my faith was the only true one. And not believing it, it's just a one-way ticket to hell, and there's really nowhere else you can go. So with that said, you you mean to tell me that eight out of every ten humans is going to hell? I mean, what what the hell is that? How frickin' lucky are the 20% of people that just happen to be born into the right country, the right state, the right house within the right cities, the right parents that gave them the right faith. No, this span of time, the 2020s, which of course is just barely half over, it's going to reality for the church. And by proxy, the concept of God, 30% of respondents are now saying no dice on the formal religion and its teaching. And 29% say, I'm really not sure about God, but I but I know religion is not for me. I did a little bit of Googling here because I could have possibly known these numbers, even though I am full of useless demographical numbers as noted in the previous episode by my wife's search for useless number knowledge. The U.S. population just over 340 million. If we're looking at the percentage drop, this is a drop of over 100 million people, and this is a very conservative number who have left organized religion. 100 million people. You know, that should come as no surprise now that we are seeing churches literally closing their doors because they are they're they're running out of money. Now that we've run through the numbers, the the percentage of the people that identify this way or that way, we're just going to circle back around super quickly to how this two-part episode started, and it was the why. The one reason data that I didn't touch in the first part uh was because it was logical to wrap up with this. The final reason that these polled people claimed to leave organized religions, the intersection of religion and politics. Now, especially in recent years, the close alignment of certain religious groups with specific political factions, it's left a lot of church members feeling alienated. They feel like this identity has replaced a lot of their spiritual belief, and that's not them. That's not what they want, that's not what they're comfortable with. The good news for everybody here that has something or more important to be, I'm gonna begin wrapping this up now. So look we'll we'll we'll wrap the data up. But let's consider that this huge and largest reason stated, the intersection of religion and politics. Now, our country, the United States, has always been divided to an extent over politics. However, I I feel the gap between the right and the left is growing so rapidly. One could say it's growing by the minute, one could say it's growing by the tweets. All right, fuck. I'm sorry. I shouldn't show my bias, but actually, this is my podcast. Again, like I always like to state, so I can technically say whatever the hell I want. When one party aligns more with hatred and ignoring many of God's teachings, ironically enough, and the other party's collective heart is raking over this hate and abuse of the compromise, the lack of tolerance for people who are less fortunate, then it really comes as no surprise to me, nor should it you, that this is the largest driver behind people walking away. We've we've earned as as as as humans, we have earned through pain and bloodshed and medication and therapy. We we have earned the right to say enough. A lot of people are doing it. I'm proud as hell of them, and I'm proud as hell to be part of those people. My daughters know how I feel about religion, and they know about my abuse, they know about my my story and the deeply rooted religious details surrounding it. However, my wife and I do take the approach that one of the one of the sources of pain in our upbringing, and and many unfortunately, was due to parents that just forced their beliefs on us the way we've always done it. We are committed to being that generational break. Familial trauma gets to stop here. It gets to stop with me, it gets to stop with my wife, it gets to stop with my wife and I. And I can't think of something that I am more proud of being able to play a part in. I don't have a lot of hard and fast rules, uh because again, I mean these the the black and white is so damn dangerous, so you can't have hard and fast and in gray. But I do have a few that I've really tried my best to hammer into my daughter's mind. And the most important one, do the next right thing. Just do the next right thing. Use that as your lens. Um let's let's let's think about that real quick. Do the next right thing. Which could also be summed up as a sticker that I used to have on my my guitar case that just said, don't be a dick. So do do the next right thing. Say I pull up to an intersection, the people crossing in front of me don't have the walk sign, and I just drive through it. Well, I suppose, I mean, I see somebody who wants to cross, and technically they shouldn't be, but I don't know. If I just motor past them, maybe throw them some some sign language, that's just me being a dick. So just ask yourself, is this me doing the next right thing? Is this me being a dick? Another thing that I try to teach my daughters through action really on this one, is be curious, question, question everything. I mean, question anything and everything. And that it'll make you pause and ask yourself, God, does this really align with me? Is is this really how I want to be perceived? Is this really the path that I want to continue down? Are these the the byproducts of this path that I want to continue seeing in the world? Just question it. Again, questioning authority, questioning the way we've done things is not a guarantee that you're going to change. I mean, question something and then go, God, I guess this process really is the best way to do it. Glad I checked. Let's continue doing it that way. But the word questioning was just it was like a four-letter word in my house. If we're going to be questioning, questioning everything. But this is a podcast about, you know, faith. And this is an episode about leaving that. So we'll stay in that vein. Questioning. When the history of one of the oldest concepts in history makes you wonder if its teachings are the next right thing. For me, I saw that as you know, this ship is sinking and it's it's not going to be repaired. They can start new campaigns. I've seen Christian churches that have ally flags in front of them now, and I love that. I love to see that. And that's really a dividing line for me because I'm not going to say that every single faith, every single Christian faith, every single Christian, every single church, I'm not going to say that they're all wrong, that they're all bad. I'm not saying that you can just say fuck every one of those. I'm I'm not. It makes me so happy to see that that there are churches that aren't just viewing hate, that aren't just spewing narrow-mindedness. Again, if if this is something that you can identify as part of your identity, if going to church on a Sunday or Saturday or Tuesday or whenever you do it, if this is a building that that supports love and open-mindedness and helping people and selflessness, then damn it, keep going. I mean, if this is making you a better person, if this is falling in in line with your identity and who you feel you are and how you want to be portrayed and interpreted, then keep doing it. And and good for you for doing it. Going back to my my daughters, if they do decide that despite listening to this podcast that they want to believe in God or that they do believe in God, they do want to follow their understanding of its teachings, then dammit, good on them. Like so long as my daughters are doing the next right thing and they're staying true to who they are and they're not hating other humans, then good on them, honestly and seriously. I don't have any fear of attending a mass or a church for my daughter's wedding if that's what he wants and he can do that and not be a dick, then yeah, good good on her. As a dad, or or maybe just as parents, is isn't like one of our top priorities just producing good humans for the world, for society? Good humans. Not to say we need to program them to be what's gonna fit, and not even to say that that you know, if if they're not successful or productive, because those are those are really floating words, and those those words are are very open for interpretation. But good loving, selfless, questioning humans. We're talking about percentages. This whole episode, it's a scary little percentage of people that I think would fall into that category. I don't think I would. I'm trying, I'm trying so hard to. I'm asking questions, I'm challenging the norm, I'm challenging everything I was taught. But I don't know, do I fall into that category of, well, he's not being a dick, and and we need more of that. I don't know. I don't know if I do or not. And and that's that's okay too. We're gonna start the quick wrap up now. I do hope that my rambling today, maybe it did add a little something for you to chew on. You remember this is not a podcast where I'm trying to recruit people to my side. Hell, I don't even necessarily know if there's a side. You know, maybe this is just a spectrum. Maybe this is linear. I was told by somebody who I I trust greatly that progress is linear. Progress isn't step up to step up to step up, or maybe even a step down. It is linear, it's it's sliding. I'm simply sticking with my original mission, pointing out cracks, allowing myself to ask questions. And if you guys are doing it too, then you're allowing yourselves to ask questions without feeling like we're stamping our passport to hell. We question when we shop for a new car, when we look for new communities to move to, we check out the school data, home values, comparable home sales, we look at why a vehicle's longevity averages this many years at this many years, the cost of ownership of it, the overall reliability of it, and why is questioning ninety-nine point nine percent of things in our lives okay, but we just can't question our faith. That doesn't hold water for me. I urge you at the end of every episode to do one thing, and that's to stay curious. Not that you have to land in deconstruction camp, but to have you consider your rights, your happiness, joy, confidence, and those hopefully of your kids. Thank you very much for joining me today. I've really missed releasing episodes again. It's only my second and a bit of a long break. The next episode, we're gonna break from religion, believe it or not. And no, we're not doing a political episode. The recent pause in my episodes is for a very real and frankly extremely serious reason. So I'm gonna pause the religion topic and I'm going to focus entirely on mental health for our next episode. Uh, I hope you join me for that. And maybe if you have somebody that you think could benefit from hearing an episode from me that has nothing to do with religion, I don't know. Maybe maybe shoot them a link to just the next episode. If not, that's that's okay too. I'm just grateful that you joined me for this one. So be good and be fair.