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Religion is human beings trying to figure out the world in a communal way, that religion is a cultural aspect of human beings. And therefore one way of seeing that is it is secular. So I am not scared by religion.
And in fact, some of the criticism towards the atheist community from my perspective, is that humans need ritual, we need community, we need elements that are traditionally considered religious, whether we use that term or not. Those are human needs and we should seek to fulfill them. Thank you for discovering more with us.
My name is Benoit Kim, and together we will be exploring the depth of the human mind. When is the last time you had a non judgmental and in depth conversation with someone who you disagreed with? Fundamentally? If you can't remember, you are not alone. But I hope you take today's conversation to heart, because I speak with an atheist, thinker that I disagree on many, many things.
David Ames is a pioneer of the secular grace movements, the host of the Graceful Atheist podcast and the organizer of his Deconversion Anonymous group. In 2015, David departed from his Christian faith after 27 years of devoted practice. But let's not stop there, because he was also in the ministry which started his deconversion journey to find grace.
In secularism, you can expect to learn about what is secular grace, the deconversion process from one's faith, the rise of scientism, why we all need a third space, why believers and nonbelievers have more common ground than you think, how loneliness is a root of depression, and much, much more. I have had a pastor, Christian philosopher, exorcist and now a graceful atheist on the podcast, so I feel like the podcast roster is now officially complete. Welcome to discover more.
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And now please enjoy this insightful conversation with graceful atheist David Ames. Discover More discover More is a show for independent thinkers by independent thinkers. David, welcome to the show.
Benoit, thank you so much for having me. So let's get into the bread and butter of who you are in your mission statement. What is secular grace and how do you define it as originator of this term? Yeah, there's a question to whether or not I'm the original coiner.
There is an Israeli philosopher who wrote a book in 2017, also by the same title. I will claim that I coincidentally also coined the term simultaneously. I don't necessarily take full credit for that.
I have to go back a little bit and say that as a Christian, my focus was on grace. I became a Christian when I was approximately 17 because of a fairly dramatic change in my mom's life. All the books that I read at the time were about grace.
And the Jesus of the New Testament just blew me away. I have come for the sick and not the well. Just blew me away from the beginning of my Christian experience, all the way through into ministry, out of ministry as a Christian for those 27 years I saw the world with and I saw the Bible and God through grace colored glasses, as I'm sure we'll get into in more detail.
As I came to no longer be able to believe, I couldn't sustain that belief any longer. I realized that this concept of grace, of loving people, of allowing people to be vulnerable with you, being vulnerable with others, being a safe place for other people to be, that vulnerable, and kind of a radical acceptance. Acceptance is not condoning, but this radical acceptance.
I just came to understand that this was a human need. And with 2020 hindsight, I say I was a religious humanist. Didn't know it.
I didn't know that term. I wouldn't have used it at the time. But the transition from religious humanist to secular humanist is not that big a jump.
Obviously there's some major parts in there. But the point is that if you ask me what I believe in, I believe in people, I care about people. And that is a rough summary of what secular grace is.
The reason why I wanted to start with that question because I think in 2023, david context is more important than ever. And then you have to ask what is the context we're speaking of? And I'm going to make this through line, despite our deferring beliefs and the beliefs that we uphold, where for me, God is love and love manifests relationships. That's why with Holy Trinity, the reason why Trinity is mathematically doesn't make sense, right? How do you individually whole, but also if it's almighty, why do you need three? Of course a lot of Christians still battle and grapple with certain questions despite our faith.
But I believe that Trinity is a manifestations that allows humans to relate on this higher level through this communal element. And I sense the same ethos despite the religious aspect with you. So can you define with the context what humanist means to you and why do you think it has been a relatively seamless transition from your faith journey to this secular journey while holding the ingredients that still makes you gracious? So yeah, the topic of what is humanism is vast and we could probably spend a lot of time here.
I can say that I have been equally critical of the atheist community at times, of being hyper rationalists and ignoring the human experience in particular in the experience of going through a loss of faith process. And I'm going to probably interchange a few words here. I'll just mention deconversion.
Deconstruction. They're semi interchangeable if you ask me. I can give you some technical definitions that I have for those as well.
But for those people who have gone through that deconstruction process, it's pretty dramatic. A lot of grief, a lot of loss, community, a sense of closeness to God, a loneliness that is just deep and profound. So when I say humanist, I mean kind of humanism plus, this is why I use the term secular grace to add on to that.
The tradition of humanism goes back mostly in the 20th century, well, way back. It refers to the artistic movement that focused on human beings. But in the 20th century we get the Humanist Manifesto and it is an attempt to say that you can be an ethical person, you can have strong relationships, you can believe in human rights, you can have all of these things without a religious or.
And I'm going to be very specific here a theistic worldview. And so it tends to focus on a scientific worldview, evidence based, that kind of thing. But the point that I want to make is that I still with secular grace, want to take that just one step further.
And humanism has tended to be the philosophers in their white towers, which is beautiful. I love those philosophers, I love philosophy, but for the average person, that just doesn't speak to them at all. And one way that I try to frame it is with secular grace.
The humanism that I'm trying to describe is blood, sweat and tears humanism that I want a replacement for a theistic religious community in a secular context. Wow, there's a lot there. So the best way I've heard about philosophy is pretty much just possessing the faculty of wonders.
But I bring that up because I sense some interesting through lines with humanism postmodernism, how they define certain terms, and also with science, which is the root of your belief in certain degrees where now we're facing the rise of scientism. Because if you look at what science is, science is inherently fallible. It is until it is not.
That's a scientific method, but I think through institutions and through different forces at bay, a lot of scientists are, I think, less pure. It's a general blanket statement, of course, because you have to work, carry about funding, getting your publications, getting attached with these certain big pharmaceutical companies and so on. But a lot of atheists air quote, they still uphold scientism where they replaced religious or religious geosity of God with the science God.
Any thoughts there? Because I think we're going to have some pretty heavy waters for the remaining conversations. But yeah, I just want to start there. Yeah, several things to respond to.
The first one is that I agree science is an ever evolving process I often say 70 sixers basketball theme was trust the process. Right? It's trust the process when it comes to science. The underlying criticism there, I think, is about reductionism of reducing things to their component parts and therefore losing the sense of the whole.
And I think that's semi valid. Where I would defend science is that I think we tend to say, like, for example, there was the concept of the non overlapping magisterium, that the spiritual world was one thing and the scientific world was another and they didn't overlap. Well, it turns out that I think there's a great deal of overlapping and I think science is crafty in the way that it can infer information, even about things.
It cannot directly, let's say, measure. For example, dark matter is just a possible example of we can't measure that directly, but we have a sense that that is something that exists. Now, a physicist might come on and say I'm wrong there, but my point is that we're able to infer things based on the models that we build and what have you.
And I think that in the religious world, there are many claims that are made that actually have measurable answers to them. And when science comes up with a different answer from a religious claim, I'm going to lean towards the science. One way that I describe my deconversion is you need to understand first, Benoit, that I was all in, right? This is not a case of a lukewarm Christian.
I witnessed to people constantly, I would go on runs and somebody would be running with me and I'd be telling them about Jesus. So, I mean, I was all in, right? I believed 100% until I didn't. So very similar to your science criticism.
The one way I described my deconversion was that the level of or the quality of evidence that I needed to believe in something rose. And I'll stand by that, right? That the claim of the resurrection is a really big claim. And I understand all the arguments about the existing evidence.
And all I'm saying is for me personally, the existing evidence, such as it is, and I've studied a lot of it, is insufficient for the enormity of that claim. Makes sense. And just to add some ad notes where if you look at historical contexts like Jesuit priests, which is a sub branch within the Catholicism, a lot of them are great scientists.
Absolutely. Yeah. And a lot of Jesuit priests are attributable for a lot of great scientific discoveries.
And forward, I'm naming that because I think there is more over layering areas between these branches that are seemingly unrelated. And I just wanted to start off with a stark contrast because I represent Christian faith and you do not. And I feel like that would be a fun place to start.
Sure. Can I respond to that really quickly? Of course. And I would just say that I'm not one of those atheists who denies the fact that many scientists in the past have been religious.
They've been theistic the thing that I would say is, again, when the data, the evidence, the testing stands against a particular religious doctrine, that's where I think the Church has failed. The Church has failed to go with the science as opposed to their doctrine. Right.
I mean, the Catholic Church used to sell tokens to enter, and there was something about a Reformation. Yeah. And then during the medieval times, of course, a lot of feminists were burnt on the stakes as witches.
So of course, it's a very complex and infinitely nuanced topics. But I think this is a good place to get to the next questions where you alluded to it about your deconstructing or deconversion process. And this is a vast question, so please go with whatever directions you feel called to.
You briefly talked about deconversion process. Can you just contextualize it very briefly? And I would love to hear more about what has your own deconversion journey taught you in the last eight years? I believe eight or nine years, I have a blog post called how to deconvert in Ten Easy Steps, which is completely a facetious title. It was kind of a joke when I wrote.
It was early on in me being kind of a public voice. If you can say that, if you want the details of a general process, that is one of them. But we are not hurting for people who have written about this process, about everyone and their uncle has, what the steps of deconversion are.
And the thing that I will say is that every person is unique. Every person's faith is unique. Every deconstruction process is unique.
And that's okay for many people. I have interviewed somewhere around the order of 150 people or so at this point. I've had people that from age six had moral arguments against Christianity.
I've had people who had intellectual arguments in their 50s. I've had people that were hurt by the Church. I've had people that in other words, my point is there isn't one thing, and even within one person's story, and I think I'll maybe convey that in a second, there isn't just one thing.
We often focus on the first thing, maybe the thing that began us to doubting, and we often focus on the last thing, the straw that broke the camel's back. But I often say there are a thousand things in between. So without knowing what the word deconstruction was, I had been deconstructing for years and years and years before I finally admitted to myself I no longer believe during every minute of that.
Have if you had talked to me then, Benoit, I would have said, I believe in God. I'm a Christian. I believe Jesus is the son of God.
He rose from the dead. I would know, said all the right things and meant every word of it, and yet it was a slow process of letting go of elements of fundamentalism, letting go of the inerrancy of the Bible, letting go of the Church's stance on Lbgbtq people. Just these slow things began to happen for me personally.
I want to tell more of the personal story really quick and just say part of my story is reading apologetics as a Christian, as a believer, and realizing as I was reading apologetics that I agreed with the conclusion by faith. I believe in the resurrection. I believe God was.
But I recognized the fallacies within the arguments. The arguments were poor. The evidence was poor.
And that bothered me deeply. And from the time I was in Bible college to the time I deconverted, I thought, clearly, there's someone out there smarter than me who has the right answers. And when I actually began to go look for those answers, I was amazed that it was a stack of assertions, right? It's assertion upon assertion upon assertion upon assertion.
And if you don't accept this bottom layer assertion, it all falls apart. And as soon as that you begin to question some of those assertions, it can, for some people, like me, unravel. And that's absolutely what happened.
I fought it. Many people that I interview talk about kicking and screaming on the way out. I think one perspective from Christians is that we choose to deconvert, that we want to go live in sin, that we are angry at God, that we don't want to be constrained by Christianity anymore.
And I can tell you that 90% of the people that I interview, that is not true, that 90%, maybe not quite 90, but like, a very large majority are fighting it to the bitter end. We talk often about doubling down. Okay, I'm going to read my Bible more.
Okay, I'm going to do ministry. Some people go into missions, work, biblical counseling with their partner because they're struggling in their marriage, trying to live up to purity, culture, and the expectations thereof. It is almost always a fight to admit to oneself that they no longer believe and to accept that they do not belong to that community anymore.
For me personally, about two years before, I admitted to myself, I did another read through the Bible. I've done that about four or five times. So not a Biblical scholar by any stretch of the imagination, but not every Christian has read through their Bible.
And I was going through the Bible again for a year, and my wife would comment that she was recognizing that I was angry. And I was like, I don't know why. I didn't recognize why.
And with a bit of hindsight, I realized that I was really reading, particularly the Old Testament, but even the New Testament without the grace colored glasses on. I was reading it for what it actually says. And we and I say we Christians in general.
And what I used to be a part of generally focus on the positive elements and ignore some of the wrath and anger and the capriciousness of God within the text. And I was really feeling that maybe for the first time and deeply, deeply uncomfortable with that for about those two years, I wasn't actively trying to find reasons not to believe. I was actually trying to find reasons to believe.
About the last year, I would talk about the Cartesian concept of the census divinity. I had this deep sense of God, that God was God existed. And I couldn't let that go.
But I had no proof. I had no evidence. And that bothered me deeply.
And at the bitter end was an article by Greta Christina about the soul, or the lack thereof. And the argument she was making is that we are our bodies and our personalities. You're a social scientist, you know, like and a psychologist, that you give someone a particular drug and they have a physical experience that can change their mental states.
If somebody has an accident, that is a brain injury that can dramatically change their personalities. And in that moment, I knew that was true. My body is me.
And rapidly after that, I don't have a reason to believe that the resurrection occurred. And for me, I'm still an absolutist about Paul. Paul says, if Christ isn't risen, then we're of all people, most to be pitied.
And I think he's right. And I couldn't accept the resurrection anymore. And I admitted to myself that I was no longer a Christian.
You are alluding to the concept of epigenetics, right? Which is the change of DNA expressions based on environmental feedback or traumatic experiences. Since DNA is a genomes, that's what you're given, but the expressions can be changed. That's the field of epigenetics.
I do know of that book. Yeah. I would take it beyond just epigenetics and say just the physical world in general affects human beings.
If we are positing a soul that is independent of the physical world, one would expect that a physical damage to the brain wouldn't affect the person's personality, the core of their being. And yet we see that all the time. There's a lot there.
Because now I'm thinking about the pretty famous documentary on Netflix. I believe it's called after death. It documents NDEs near death experiences of individuals who under these medically declared coma or death, so to speak.
But medical induced death is the decaying of your cells and your body's no longer regenerating. That's the definitions. And there are a lot of these documented evidence or anecdotal evidence, whatever you want to describe them as, of people who are able to recall viscerally the experiences and chatters and conversations in surgical rooms where they were completely under or having open brain or open heart surgeries.
And of course, even within the Christian philosophy or not, the timeless debate philosophically is are we bodies with the soul or souls of the body in your belief or in your absolutist branch? It's more like neither. But yeah, there's a lot, and I think it's very heady, even with the references you alluded to quite a few times, versus some very intellectual and very heady books. If I can respond to that, I'll just say the other element of kind of post deconversion was realizing this entire intellectual movement of what I would call skepticism.
So you can be a humanist without being a skeptic, or you can be a skeptic without being a humanist. I would say that I am both. When I said earlier about the deconversion for me was kind of the raising of the bar of evidence.
I apply that across the board. Right. So NDEs, I think, are easily explained by brain chemistry, physical processes.
In other words, while a person is in a coma. I don't want to get into the details here and argue this, but my point is I put that in the same category of, yes, the person had an experience. Yes, they had a particular brain state that made them experience something that they believed was an afterlife experience.
But as far as the science says, the human being was still with us. Right. And there was enough life, sufficient amount of life that they were able to come back.
Last thing here I'll say is one other element of my deconversion was about consistency. Talking back again about apologetics, I realized that I spent a brief period of time looking into Mormonism because I have a branch of my family that are Mormon. I also have a branch that's Catholic.
But the Mormon part intrigued me, and I did some research. I thought, I'm interested to see what is it that they believe? And as I was looking into that, I realized, well, clearly I don't believe this. This seems a bit far fetched to me.
And it dawned on me that the Mormon thinks that my beliefs are far fetched, that the Muslim thinks my beliefs are far fetched, that the Jewish person believes my beliefs are far fetched. What I began to recognize is that the apologetics that I accepted, I was kind of giving a pass. And what I've grown to, the skepticism that I'm describing is trying to be consistent.
So if we're going to say that miracle X is confirmed, that that is a miracle, we have to use the exact same standard when it is a Hindu miracle or a Buddhist miracle or what have you. And I don't think that we are very consistent when we look at that. We generally accept the miracles of our faith and reject those of others.
Biases, confirmation bias, grimtic bias, and so on. This is a great conversation because I think everyone needs to have a hint of healthy skepticism not to contract for the sake of and of course, my podcast is called Discover More. That's why I'm having you on the show and having this very different conversation, because I think there's very limited downsides to healthily, stress testing your ideas and poking holes in your beliefs, scientific or otherwise.
That's how you reinforce and strengthen the beliefs. Because as you said earlier, context is predicated on pre context. So let's make sure pre context is as solid as they can be.
And I'm going towards more philosophical directions, which is not what I expected, but makes sense. And I definitely want to ask you about the realities of many atheists who depart from their faith and what that reality, since you hinted at that earlier as well. But my brain is going towards, like Nietzsche and the rise of nihilism.
And when he declared God is dead, which is a very fitting theme to our conversation, his fear when he proclaims God is dead, it was not in this excited manner, it was in a deep despair and fear of nihilism. Nihilism generally means hopelessness. He cautions against this phenomena that God is dead.
Because when God is dead, we're going to replace that God with egotism, that we are now gods. And for us, as this fragile ego, superego or otherwise, to burden the shoulder of the great unknown that we call life is very burdensome. And even if you look at stoic philosophy, many great stoics talk about you don't have to believe in God per se, but believe in something other than yourself.
So I want to share this because a any thoughts there? And this is very loaded. And B how do you personally safeguard against this phenomena or this goddess dead situation that we just talked about? Man talk about heady waters. I never claim to understand particularly Nietzsche and the postmodernist philosophers.
But what I would say is there's kind of a colloquial understanding of Nietzsche as annihilist. And I think you're absolutely right that really what he was saying was once we admit that God is dead is the way that I would frame it. We are staring into the void and how do we deal with that? And I would say that the Postmodernists, that is exactly what they were grappling with.
Camus nietzsche in particular, I think others. But the whole word postmodernism modernism was the acceptance of authorities for answers, both scientifically and religiously. And so we had answers to everything, right? Obviously, I'm exaggerating, but we had a sense of all these answers are good postmodernism was the recognition that those answers weren't good enough.
And then what do we do? Do we slip into deep nihilism and nothing matters? And do we have a reason to live? And in fact, if you study the Postmodernists, the number one question is why not commit suicide? And there's some validity to that question, right? I think each of us has to answer that question on some level. What I am trying to say with secular grace is that I am not a nihilist. I don't think the choice is between theism and nihilism.
I think that human beings and this is where you and I agree, Benoit, are meaning makers, and that as we embrace that role of making meaning in our lives, I think that is most often done by the relationships with other human beings rather than a vertical relationship with a God. As we embrace that meaning making aspect of our lives, that NUI, that deep sense of loneliness is subdued. And the one thing that I would push back on you is, I guess I would say another Christian myth about atheists is that we worship ourselves.
Right? I definitely don't think that I am perfect in any way. I am a human being and I embrace my own humanity and I then try to embrace the humanity of others in the great diversity of humanity on the planet, which is acknowledging warts and all, right? Human beings are fallible. I am deeply fallible.
I've come to understand how well I can fool myself, and I try hard just not to do that as much anymore. Right. But a friend of mine named Cassidy, she writes for Open Sky, she talks about the conservation of worship.
There's this myth within Christianity that if you don't worship God, you're going to worship something drugs, sex, alcohol, yourself, what have you. And it just turns out to not be true that you can live a fulfilled life without a theistic worldview and not worship something. I can look up to people or ideas without worshipping them.
And I think that's just a really important distinction. Yeah, no, I think that's a great approach to dismantle the binary views. I think a lot of us have black and white, god or no god, god or the devil and things.
So, yeah, I agree with you there. And I think that's the perfect way. Since we're talking about some of the known realities or misconceptions some of the little known let's go with the table topic.
So could you share with us what is the reality of many atheists who depart from their faith that a lot of people just aren't aware of? Since deconversions some of your topics and conversation you tried to address on your show, I never heard about them and they didn't even pass the realm of my consciousness until I came across you and started doing some deep research. And I listened to quite a few of your podcasts recently as well, not just for research, but I do feel like we need more avenues to healthily, stress test our ideas, as I alluded to earlier. But yeah.
What is the reality of deconverted atheists that the public just doesn't really know about or even talk about? So many things I want to respond to there. Number one, I think the greatest irony is that, like myself, most people who are deconstructing have no idea what that word is, and everything kind of falls apart for them to one degree or another, and they begin to look for, is there anyone else out there? Am I. The only one.
So the number one part of the experience is loneliness. It must just be me. I've doubled down, I've tried praying, I've tried reading the Bible, I've gone to my pastor, I've done all the things, and yet the answers that they are giving me don't satisfy me.
It must be my fault, right? That's kind of the stage one. And then you discover, maybe you discover the word deconstruction or deconversion, and you find there's this entire community of podcasts, online communities of people who have gone through this before. And the first time you hear one of those podcasts and you hear somebody tell their story, it is incredibly relieving that I'm not alone.
I'm not the only one. About six months after I deconverted, I found the podcast Life After God, which was Ryan Bell, really important to me to know that I wasn't alone. I'd also like to give credit to Steve Hillacher, whose voices of deconversion, I've really kind of taken the torch.
And I do a lot of the same things that Steve does. They were amazing. Being able to hear other people tell their stories is so vitally important.
The other thing I want to say before I get into to answer the core of your question, is that not everyone will deconstruct and become an atheist. And in fact, that may not be the goal. As you said earlier, applying a bit of skepticism to your own beliefs is healthy, I think deconstruction is healthy, right.
I like to quote Derek Webb where's the downside? If you go and you look and you do the searching and you come out stronger in your faith, great. If you find that you can no longer believe that's something good too, you've learned something, right? So either outcome is good. So deconstruction doesn't necessarily lead to deconversion.
Deconstruction as the process, deconversion as one end state. But there are many, many people who are going to remain in their faith without the fundamentalism of their past and still be a believer on one level or another. So with all that, what do most Christians or other people not know? It's a grief process for those of you who are listening, who have a belief in God, particularly one that is focused on a relationship with God, that sense of closeness.
Imagine if that were gone tomorrow. If a human being that you had a relationship with gone tomorrow. That is the grief that you feel from this relationship with God that you had that just doesn't feel real anymore.
For many people, their community will reject them almost overnight. There's a level of acceptance of doubt. You can have the dark night of the soul.
You can ask a certain number of questions, but if you persist in those doubts, if you persist in those questions, you will get pushback and circling back to why people don't know the word deconstruction until maybe just the last two years. You would never have heard the word deconstruction in a church, and now pastors talk about deconstruction. But every time I hear, like, if I listen to a pastor talk about deconstruction, it's clear to me they have never spoken to someone who is actually deconstructed.
Right. It is a defense against deconstruction that they are giving rather than a representation of what deconstruction actually is. As I said before, most people kicking and screaming on the way down, doubling down, trying to make it work.
I talked about it being trying to spin the plates of faith. I was trying to make it work, man. I was trying to keep those plates spinning and it all came crashing down.
Playing Russian roulette with Faith. That's what it sounds like to me. And I want to zoom in on what you just said.
Many pastors or Christians get very defensive through a persistent skepticism. Not one off, not isolated, but persistence. I sense fear, and as we both know, fear is the primary emotions, and then that primary emotions get manifested through anger, which is often secondary emotions, whether when you're reading through a Bible for the fifth time, which is very impressive, by the way, just to give credit to your due diligence during your process.
But yeah, can you talk more about that? Why do you think that pastors and many Christians are so afraid of being pushed and challenged by this lingering skepticism that many people may have? Because I've talked to enough Christians and pastors to know that church hurt is often predicated on lack of resonance or lack of receptivity or understanding by the leadership when certain believer go to them with certain issues or questions, and their questions remain unanswered, and a lot of their responses are extremely hurtful for the lack of better words. But yeah. Anything coming up for you there? Yeah, a couple of things.
One, I think the fear is understandable. The statistics are bad, right? If the Pew research is to be believed, people are leaving. People are not leaving to become atheists.
The largest group is the none of the above none. That no particular religious affiliation of any kind. And that's my experience as well.
There are fewer deconverts than there are people who have deconstructed and just walked away from the church. So from a statistical point of view, the fear is warranted. People are leaving.
I often like to do advice for pastors. My advice for pastors is twofold. One, you have atheists in your pews right now.
You have people deconstructing in your pews right now. You have people who are beginning the process of doubt right now. You can choose to have a bright line and make them feel unwelcome and they will definitely leave.
Or you can embrace them and love them and maybe they'll stick around. And if you're following the gospel, as an outsider, I would say maybe you should do the latter. The other thing that I think is really powerful about the church is there are very few, if any, secular alternatives to the community that is kind of natural within a church, a synagogue, forgive me, I'm forgetting the Muslim term, but within those communities, those are naturally built.
And my advice to pastors is build more community, have more potlucks, get people together more often. Because honestly, from my perspective, and having again listened to 150 or so interviews and a fair amount of research is that is why people stay and it's the last thing that people give up. How do you think then, for a lot of folks who struggle to find their new community? Because I agree with you with what you talked about earlier, the underlying loneliness, the grieving process that deconversion represents as a loss in the grief, since I do fair amount of grief counseling with my clients and patients as well.
If you look at their cardinal personality traits, if you really dig deep into the root of depression is loneliness and social isolations. And that perceived isolation increases with advanced age group, which is why a lot of the elders and advanced age groups really struggle with loneliness because of this lack of not just loss of identity, but the lack of community they no longer feel a part of, especially with the pandemic and so on, I guess. So my question is, what have you seen that has been very effective for people in the deconverting process who haven't yet identified a new group to feel belonged to, that are sort of acting as a safe haven or allows them to stay afloat mentally, emotionally? The sad answer is that you're probably going to find community online first, and that is available, and it's widely available, and you can pick your poison, right? You can pick the group that seems to fit you where you're at.
There are some that are more Christian based, but a little deconstruction. There are some that are more atheist based, a little more towards deconversion. You can really pick what feels right for you.
The secular world really has, again, few if any, answers to community at this point in time. It's a problem that I think is deeply serious. I recently had the two people who are on the Beyond Atheism podcast, Nathan and Tod.
They talked a lot about this concept of third spaces. So they both had worked in South Korea for a while. And the third space concept is you have work, you have home, you have work.
And then third spaces, places where community gathers. Sometimes that's a bar, sometimes it's a coffee place, sometimes it's a community organization of some kind or another. And the Western world really has no third spaces.
Churches fulfill that. But other than churches, we really are lacking that. And I think that's a problem.
I think that's deeper than just the secular religious divide. I think Westerners, we have no way to come together to feel a sense of community for lack of a better term. Right.
I think we hinted at in our conversation, Benoit, that some of the political divides are that we don't actually talk to one another. And part of that is there's no chance to mix with people with whom I disagree in a casual setting without any pressure and just get to know people as human beings. Right.
So I'm going deeper than just for the secular community. I'm saying that I think that we need these third spaces for society in general and that we should be working very hard at finding good alternatives. What I say for the people that are deconstructing and deconverting, who find themselves outside of a religious community and are looking is it doesn't have to be explicitly secular.
Find a cycling group, find a book club, find a knitting circle, find something that isn't explicitly religious and that is going to fulfill a deep need to connect with other human beings. And there are lots of those. You can find those on Meetup.com,
anything you're into, go on a hiking group, anything you like. You can probably find a group in your area and that is the best first step. And you might run into somebody else who's gone through something similar.
I also encourage people to start their own. If you put up on meetup.com a deconstruction group, I promise you people will show up.
If you're just consistent, people will start showing up. So one of the things that I want to carry beyond the podcast is how we begin to build community in the real world, which I think is what people really need. I think the online communities are important, but they are only a very small portion of the answer, and they are not a replacement for in person community.
Speaking of beyond atheism, we're on the same wavelength. So in a recent interview with them on their show, you talked about grace of the gospel was missing from many modern church culture, from your experiences. Can you elaborate on that and why is it such a detriment? Because, as you said, gospel represents certain messages explicitly, but then there's also some implicit messages they're not conveying.
And I do agree with you that a lot of churches and I've experienced decent amount of church hurt growing up, as well as we briefly talked about on your podcast last week. But yeah, why is that such an issue? And just share more about your own experiences seeing the gospel without the grace. Sure.
I'm going to go back all the way to my teenage years before my mom's dramatic sobriety. My experience of Christianity were poor. I had a very severe great grandmother methodist lady, you're a sinner.
You're going to hell. I had one of my best friends, whom I love. To this day, we're still best friends, but I was sleeping with my girlfriend.
You're going to hell. So I didn't want anything to do with Christianity. I thought, why would I want anything about that.
And so I was shocked when I read the Gospels for myself that, again, Jesus was radically different. Particularly the Sermon on the Mount, particularly the four Gospels, were so compelling. I grant that Jesus is compelling, and that's what won me over.
And like I said, I read through the Bible then, too, by the way, before I really started to be in the church at all, I spent a year reading through the Bible and reading a few other books. So people like Brennan Manning's, Ragamuffin Gospel, Bob George's, Grace, a handful of other books of that concept of just so I came in with grace was so important. Grace was a part of my mom's dramatic sobriety that's I think what kept her sober for a while, it was why I was a Christian.
That was the only reason I was a Christian from the Christian perspective, that God loves people in spite of their sin, that the cross was in order to satisfy God for that sin. And as a Christian, there are ways to take that, right? God is beyond time. So, I mean, if the cross did it, it's done.
There's nothing more to add to that. What can you add to the cross, is what I would say as a Christian. And so when I got to the church about a year later, long hair, earring, this is the late 80s, people are looking at me as scants, and I saw a lot of judgmental aspects.
I saw a lack of understanding of it, particularly alcoholism, drug addiction in particular, because that was close to me at the time. I went on to a Bible college, which I say was the best of times and the worst of times. It was the best of times because I had professors who were amazing.
I think they did their job too well. They taught me critical thinking. They taught me a good exegesis, good at hermeneutics, and I can draw a direct line from what I was taught to why I am a deconvert.
The worst of times was it was very infantilizing. We were treated like high schoolers, right, when we were becoming adults, and again, long hair and an earring that wasn't going to fly, and again, saw a fair amount of judgmentalism. And what I would say was paper thin morality, a lot of morality at a Bible college.
You have to go to chapel multiple times a week and just sermon after sermon in chapel about a paper thin morality. That didn't feel real to me, that didn't begin with confession, right? I was all about this radical honesty. I was radically honest about my own.
What I thought was sin at the time, what I think are my own real faults today that I don't think is sin. But I was about being honest and then embracing grace, and I just didn't see that in the church. And then when I got into ministry, the same thing ministry was not a pleasant experience for me.
I felt like I was pushed to be more judgmental than I was. It ended poorly, I have to be honest. Again, I had a relationship with a mom in the youth group, consensual, entirely adult consensual.
Obviously that was not acceptable, and I resigned. So ended badly. But what you need to know is that 20 more years go by before I deconverted.
I was still a dedicated Christian. I was still focused on grace throughout that time, and I saw better and worse versions of Christianity. Again.
Back to Bible college. One of my beloved professors was my theology professor, and he was the most humble person I've ever met. He was an intellectual giant.
He had no reason to be humble, and he was just all about grace. And one of the reasons I think that I stayed a Christian for so long is that Jesus won my heart and theology won my mind. I had a intellectual framework for it to work, systematic theology.
And that made that last much longer than it might have otherwise. So it sounds like people, because Jesus was about the people sermon on the mounts. A lot of Christians believe he was preaching to the leaders and the church leaders.
It was literally to the poor, to the lepers, to the abandoned and the marginalized or the ills of the society. Air quote. So it sounds like people won you over and also the people in your real life with these gracious, pun intended, amazing professors that kept you in this train of Christian faith for 20 more years.
Interesting. So I must ask because you talked about humility quite a few times throughout this conversation, and I talked about this on the show a while ago, where I think humility is a prerequisite to curiosity. For me to have you on this show and ask you any questions, that means I must internalize the fact that I have something to learn from you and about you, and that requires humility and vice versa.
This is another vast questions. I feel like I've been just asking a lot of vast questions. So my apologies, but it's a very just, deep, complicated, and intersecting conversation, I guess.
But could you come up with some of the criteria or list of qualifiers or qualities that you've seen that some of your atheist friends, Christian friends or otherwise? Since I know you still have a lot of those friends and you do enjoy these conversations even outside of the beliefs or not, what are some of the qualities you've seen that you think that attributes as a gracious, not just a secular but just gracious person? I'm sure humility is on that list. But my first kind of spiritual experiences were about around the Twelve Steps. A lot of the things that I talk about today are really drawn from the Twelve Steps, and one of them was about radical self honesty, right? Like you've been fooling everyone in your life and you've been fooling yourself.
Stop fooling yourself. That is step one, right? And so honesty was a core value for me, and humility comes along with that, right? If you're really being self honest about yourself, humility, it naturally falls out of that. It's hard to be arrogant when you are accurately assessing yourself.
So honesty, humility, a sense of integrity were core values for me beyond my religious beliefs. And I think I found them in the New Testament. I felt like those elements were there.
The thing that I'll just say is that the things that drew me to Christianity, those things about Jesus that drew me to Christianity, also drew me out. Right? It was 27 years later when I was being honest with myself again. I had to admit to myself I didn't have the evidence that was required for how big the claim was, right? And I had to just accept that and be honest with it.
To answer your real question, what does it look like for somebody who is being gracious? I think we've met these people in our lives. I think listeners, you can probably think of a person who you just know you can be authentically yourself, good, bad and ugly, and that person is going to be there again. It doesn't mean that they condone everything.
They're not saying that what you've done is right, but you just know you can be honest with them. I recently had the great pleasure of just a colleague, a work colleague, and we were at a work event and we got to chatting, had like a two or three hour conversation. That was one of the more profound conversations I've had in my life.
And he is absolutely a gracious person. And so I think the sign of grace is, is this somebody who, when you put your trust in them and you're vulnerable with that person, that you don't experience abuse, you don't experience being minimized rationalized or told that you're mistaken, but just listen to somebody has listened to you and you feel loved. To put it simply, I think, again, better than me giving you examples.
You can think of examples in your own life. I asked that because I'm trying to find universal threats, like we talked about earlier, loneliness is universal, aside of deconversions or otherwise, because is the root of all mental health issues, most mental health issues. And I'm also trying to find through line that connects atheists and believers, non believers and believers alike, where, as you said, amazingly, David, that we all can find these gracious people who embody grace and humility and kindness, which I do think is a dying art.
With the rise of capitalism, people are being more individualistic, which I didn't think it was possible in 2023, but here we are. Can I jump in, Benoit, and say to talk about the through line? I think in our interview I mentioned Jennifer Michael hext saying that doubters and believers have more in common than the vast middle. The vast majority of people haven't thought about this much at all.
They don't care. But for those of us who are either deeply committed believers or deeply committed doubters, we actually share more in common than you think. And one of the things that I often say, again, advice to pastors is rather than arguing about why I am unjustified in loving people, maybe we should work together, right? I don't necessarily agree with your justification either, but if you are a committed person to helping people, maybe something that Jesus talked about visiting the imprisoned, feeding the poor, if you're about that, I am too.
Let's work together. I have no problems with that. That we have different justifications for why we're doing it.
Just do the work and we should do the work together. We are so focused on why the other person is wrong that we are missing ways that we actually could work together. And I know there are a number of people within the secular community who have tried to build those, know, tried to do that work.
My podcast is part of something called the Atheist United Studios Network. And Evan Clark is the president of the Atheist United. And they are doing all kinds of interesting things within their community, both with religious people and with secular people.
And again, if you're willing to come together and go feed the homeless, go clean up trash, go do some community element, then you are welcome. And I think most people who call themselves humanists would agree with that. It does sadden me quite often alluding to the church hurt that I referenced quite a few times where actually Kanye West had a song lyric about this, where in his Christian gospel album a few years ago, he talks about my own people that judge me the most are Christians, right? And a lot of times he talked about the judgment where I still struggle that today.
And I'm very devoted Christians. I'm very involved in servant leadership, which I think that's what Jesus embodied, just servant leadership, getting on your knees, really working through a servant landscape. I'm very involved in high school ministry, I teach every Sunday, small groups, et cetera.
And it's not just about the religiosity aspect, but I just want to be involved in the community because community is huge in a Christian faith. If you really dissect and unpack what the Bible is about. At the same time, it does sadden me that so many of churches who subscribe to these larger than self ideals, they lack the practical applications or utilizations of certain principles.
And that's something I still grapple every single day, quite often, because especially in Los Angeles, homelessness, poverty, income inequalities even LGBTQI community, that's being attacked a lot of states. But shout out to Pope Francis. He just declared that they are allies with the church and the church needs to create more support system for Lgbtqpi identifying congregations and believers.
So I do feel like in some areas we are making some progress moving forward. At the same time, I do feel like there's a lot of church hurts and a lot of issues that must be addressed, even day to day in church or otherwise. For sure, one of the experiences of the deconstruction process and honestly, Ben, I'm not trying to change your mind anyway, is the experience of I wanted to love this group of people, but I was constrained by what I was told I needed to believe.
So LGBTQI is one definite example. The inherent racism within white evangelicalism coming out the other side of that and no longer being burdened by that, to just embrace people and love them is quite a freeing experience. And that is not an uncommon reaction as people come out of their deconstruction process.
If you do change my mind, that's more on me, not on you. Because like I said, I've been talking about stress testing your beliefs and the content of your thoughts because a lot of us navigate our day to day based on the internal realities, since they externalize outwardly. I want to go into the theme of love since that's what you're speaking about in the second half of our conversations.
How do you then, David, love someone for truly who they are without holding them against and hostage against their certain beliefs? So this is very hard. First of all, and again, I never want to make it sound like I'm doing this well. This is very difficult.
When I went through my deconversion process and the first things that I saw online were grim debate, culture, very hostile, very believers are stupid. And first of all, I want to say explicitly that I don't think this has anything to do with intellect. I was the same intellectual person as a believer or as I am as an atheist.
So it seems to me like that's illogical. That doesn't make sense. I know some incredibly smart people who are deeply committed believers, many of the theology professors that I mentioned, as well as family members.
And then more importantly, I'm married to a deeply committed believer, and I knew I did not want to burn that bridge and walk away and that I love my wife for who she is as a person and not just for her beliefs. And this is, I think, is another myth that Christians tell themselves is that marriages are built on their faith. This is a bit of proof, right? Like, it's not easy.
I don't want to make it sound like it's easy. It's very difficult. But we realize that we cared for each other, for who we are as people and that, yes, we deeply disagree.
I don't want to minimize that. We deeply disagree. That comes up.
We argue on a regular basis that issue bubbles up and we have to tackle it. But we are committed to one another. We commit and I think this is one definition of love, is committing to someone that you accept them for who they are, their faults and what's great about them, what's bad about them and you choose to love.
I'm big on volition that love in general is a volitional act. Obviously we have infatuation and warm fuzzies and you have an emotional element of love. But I think long term love, what maybe the Bible would refer to as the Greek word agape, love is a volitional act.
I choose to love this person and to accept them for who they are. And again, I think that is also grace. That reminds me about the book called The Course of Love by a British French philosopher, ellen de Botsen.
He talks about the biggest fallacy of modern America is that marriage is predicated on this idea that this warm and fuzzy chemical feeling of love will last forever. After being with someone for decades or 40, 50 years, you're going to lose that lustful sexual attraction towards each other. That's just the innate nature of iterations, a lot of time.
And he talks about the idea of soulmates, predestined ones, those are all fallacies because if you do believe in destined soulmates, it takes away the ownership and the responsibility for you to choose up and make that decision. And I believe that love is an active decision just like every single day. You must choose to be a good person.
You choose to be gracious, you choose to be loving every single day. And I think a lot of us forget that. I definitely agree.
And again, there are some Christian traditions that really focus on God's will. And I watched people, particularly in Bible college and then throughout my life and now I've interviewed so many people that just really struggled with they wanted to make some major life decision like I'm going to marry this person and struggling with is this God's will? Is this not God's will? And I think your attitude is much better that they take personal responsibility and ownership of that decision that they are committing to that person. Another thing that you and I could agree is that happy wife, happy life.
Since I'm engaged with the wedding coming up soon. Congratulations. Thank you.
Thank you. But I just want to highlight that because your openness to these potentially diverging and contentious conversations and your openness to talk about your ongoing challenges with your wife that you're very protective about since you do have a public presence. You do have a public voice through your platform that's ever growing and expansive because you're doing a lot of good work for people that need it.
At the same time, I do feel like myself included, all of us can learn from your interplay of dynamic with your wife extrapolate that on a larger context. As you briefly talked about last week, where we're facing. This deep chasmic divide between the left and the Right, the liberal and the Republican, the leftist and the rightist, whatever language you want to slap onto that.
And it is such a detrimental to everyone involved because America is so big on identity politics, racial identities or whatever other boxes and labels they want to put you under. But then we often forget the biggest umbrella identity of being American and deeper than that is being a human, which is what you're about. And I just want to put down a messaging board is that at least for me, I see some hope through your interplay of your dynamic with your wife.
Of course, both of you are very loving, very committed because commitment is the key. At the same time, I'm also saying this in part for myself, but I really feel like or I hope that one day we can move past this chasmic divide and find some more common ground because all of us have more common than not, as you talked about many times. I think the other again, more advice for pastors.
I think what we've just watched of tying the church to a particular political platform is bad for everyone involved. As a Christian, I used to say separation of church and state is good for the church and good for the state. And I still think that's true.
To be explicit, like, I am not trying to make more atheists. That is not my goal at all. I am a pluralist.
And even the word secularism really means kind of a level platform that every voice has an equal say. It isn't saying that my way is right, it's saying that allow me the space for my way. And I think that more pluralism, more secularism within the United States will help.
And I think a consequence of that will be that the church can thrive as well. Reciprocity when you create more good deeds in the world. I do feel like they do come back tenfold, religious or otherwise, which is yeah, I just mean as well.
Like imagine if your particular flavor of Christianity, let's say you are Presbyterian, right? And a political figure comes along, that is 7th day Adventist, right? And that figure gains power and begins to implement 7th day Adventist doctrine. And maybe you as did I say Episcopalian? I forget what I saw. Presbyterian.
Presbyterian. Maybe you don't agree with that. Right.
So my point is that pluralism and secularism says you each have equal footing and no one should use their political power to enforce 7th Day Adventism or Evangelicalism or Presbyterianism. And that allows then each version of Christianity to thrive as well. Yeah.
And that comes down to we need to be very hyper cautious and aware of attaching anything with an agenda. Right. And I think that's through agenda things get very muddy and very corrupted since humans are biased.
And if there's any agenda, it's predicated on someone and the someone has to be the leader of that branch. And also another joke is always get Presbyterian and pescatarian always confused because I was a pescatarian for quite a few years and I just want to create a space to honor other important messages and or impactful stories that you feel called to share before I roll out the red carpet. And I usually don't create this level of space.
I usually like to end with the questions like I had a questions about why is truth seeking so important to you in the current era of misinformations? But I don't want to put any blinders on artificially because I think you're the experts of your own life and I really do respect a lot of the great work you're doing. Our religious disagreements aside, because I do feel like anything we can do to improve the collective well beings of humans, I think it's a very needed and oftentimes all worthy things are effortful, and most effortful things are worthy, which is how I view your work from afar. But with that, I just want to create this space again.
Is there any other things that you feel we haven't touched upon in the last hour or so that you feel called to wrap up today's conversation before the metaphorical red carpet moment for you? First of all, I love that you're saying feel called. I no longer use that terminology. Two things.
One, I absolutely agree. Going back to the things that led me to Christianity led me out. The truth will set you free.
I absolutely believe in the truth. So we could definitely do a whole nother podcast about why the truth is important and particularly in this moment in time. I often say that, again, skepticism, or healthy skepticism, in your words, is the quality of our time to deal with misinformation and disinformation.
That is just going to be an onslaught as the AI world goes into hyperdrive. It's going to get exponentially worse. As for things that we haven't talked about, I'll just say that for me, post deconversion, the world flipped upside down in that we often think of things as secular or religious.
And for me, I've begun to understand that from my perspective, and I don't mean this as a criticism, but from my perspective, religion is human beings trying to figure out the world in a communal way, that religion is a cultural aspect of human beings. And therefore one way of seeing that is it is secular. So I am not scared by religion.
And in fact, some of the criticism towards the atheist community, from my perspective, is that humans need ritual, we need community, we need elements that are traditionally considered religious, whether we use that term or not. Those are human needs and we should seek to fulfill them. The main thing that I'm trying to get across is, again, not trying to change people's minds or cause people to doubt their own faith is to say that being able to embrace your own humanity, I think this fits in more with your audience.
Accept yourself, accept the areas that you wish could change, accept the person who you are and accept your role as a meaning maker. And I think that you're going to be more fulfilled in your life. Two things where the best definition I've heard about tradition is peer pressure from dead people.
Well said. Well said. I think that's quite fitting given our conversation, the container we're in.
The second thing is a lot of clients and patients ask me, benoit, how do you view psychotherapy? What is it? On my first initial assessments, which is a first intake, I always spend ten to 15 minutes try to recontextualize what psychotherapy means to me and the avenue they could view it through, since it means differently to everyone. But what I want to say is general blanket theme. And to me, as a psychotherapist, I think it's just a place of exploring and reviewing the archives of your behaviors and patterns.
Are you showing up to your life in a way that you're proud of? Are you showing up to your work and your loved ones in a way that you're happy and you're proud of? If you're not, let's take a pause and reflect what is going on. Can we identify some of the reasons or contributing factors, whether that's stress, whether that's the deconversion process or the increasing or blossoming doubts, et cetera? And I really see that as another through line between both of our processes and both of what we talk about on the show, where let's just take a pause button and just try to unlearn and decondition some of the things that's not no longer serving you. Christians aside, if a certain belief like purity, culture.
It was really hard for me to not go into that topic in today's conversation because it's so deep and I'm still grappling with it because I shared I withdrew from sex with my fiance for about two and a half years and we recently recommitted since we're getting married soon and we're engaged. But I still wrestle with this guilt and the certain conditioning aspects of Christian faith that I'm not too happy about and I'm trying to think more and ponder more about. But it's a process, and I know that no empire is built overnight and no empire will be destroyed overnight, and it takes time and I'm just being intentional and mindful throughout this process that unfolds.
But yeah, I would love to do like a round to talk about purity, truth seeking and other things I think even a lot of Christians and pastors are really scared to talk about because it is such a complex topic for the lack of better words. But yeah, all that said, I really appreciate your thoughtfulness, the gracious, authentic version that you're proud to present on and off the show. And I really do respect independent thinkers, which is the premise of my show, like you who are doing great work in the lanes in the context that you see fit.
But I really enjoy today's conversations and this is something I'm going to be pondering more about because I do see a lot of areas in my life that I wanted to discover more about, to see how else I can stress test and to poke some holes, whatever that means, I appreciate it. Thank you, Benwa. I do think that this has been valuable to conversations that again, hopefully we can act out what we've been talking about, actually talking with one another and seeing each other as full human beings and with all the respect that's due.
Walking the walk and talking the talk is simple but not easy. I'll just leave it at that. But here is the metaphorical red carpet moment.
David, where can people check you out? Further, since my listeners comprise of both believers and unbelievers and anywhere in the spectrum in between and for them to check you out, some of the good work you're doing, your blogs, your podcasts and anything else you feel called to share again, yeah, the podcast is called Graceful Atheist podcast. It is mostly people's stories of their deconstruction process. There is a wide range of people from people who became atheists, people who remained Christians and everything in between.
So even if you're a believer, I do encourage you, just take a peek, listen, it might be worth your while, especially like again, if you're in leadership, if you're in church leadership and you've heard this term deconstruction, but it's only ever been in a defensive point of view, actually hear what people have to say. It shouldn't be dangerous for you to do so if you find that you are not able to believe any longer. We do have an online community called Deconversion Anonymous.
You can find that@facebook.com groups deconversion and again, fairly wide range of people in there from just beginning to doubt to deconverted. But the atmosphere that we've been trying to build in that environment is gracious, is accepting nobody's going to come in and hit you with counterapologetics or what have you as long as you don't come in with apologetics.
So it is not a debate forum, it is people recognizing that they can be there for one another. Awesome. As far as online, I am on Twitter at Graceful Atheists and Instagram is probably the place to go these days.
Also at Graceful Atheists we have a community member who's doing memes for us quotes from the episodes and you can get kind of a feel for people's experiences by just reading through some of those. Awesome. Awesome.
Yeah, like I said, I appreciate your time and just your thoughtfulness and just what you shared with me. I definitely learned a lot from today's conversations, which was very encompassing, very heady in the beginning and I think towards the second half we talked about more personal stuff, which I really enjoy. Being a psychotherapist and just being intrinsically interested in these things could be a professional hazard at times, but on podcasting it serves me well.
But yeah, I thank you for today's, your time and thank you for being on the show. Well, thank you so much. I really do appreciate it.
I know it was somewhat of a risk to bring me on and I appreciate the opportunity. If I get canceled, that's all me. So as I said the last time I brought a pastor on for the first time, it actually turned out pretty well.
So I'm sure independent thinkers appreciate what you have to bring. And to all the listeners, I ask you to share this episode with one friend. It has proven to be the most effective growth strategies for free.
That would allow me in turn to continue to seek out fascinating yet gracious humans who are doing cool work like David and other people as the show grows. And also, I just want to take a moment to really appreciate everyone for tuning in through everyone's gracious support. The past three weeks, our podcast is officially Apple Podcast Top Hundred in the United States in our social science category.
And that would not have been possible without your continued support because as David and I know all too well, in 2023, attention is the rarest and the hardest commodity for us. So immense gratitude and thank you for tuning in week after week. As always, I will include David's information, the show notes linked below, I will create transcripts and everything else you can seek out.
Find us on Google, anywhere you search your podcast. And as always, I hope to see you again in the next week's train of Discover More. Thank you for tuning in.
