Megachurch Pastor Turned Agnostic - Todd Phillips Pt. 2 | Ep. 2191

0:00Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host John Delin. It is August 2nd, 2026 and we're here in part two of the rise and fall of a evangelical Christian mega church pastor. We're here with Dr Todd Phillips. Hey Todd welcome back. Thanks John. Loved part one, part one we talked about Todd Phillips, you know, life of sin. I'm just teasing life of sin and debauchery before he converts to evangelical Christianity in Austin slash Denver back in the the 90s. He converts to Christianity around the age 24, 25. Eventually becomes a pastor and eventually becomes a mega church pastor and this culminates in him going to the Princeton theological seminary and getting a doctorate and starting and running a major non-profit that there's a multimillion dollar non-profit delivering water to Africans. It was an amazing part one.

1:00So if you haven't watched that yet, pause this episode, go back and watch part one, the rise of a evangelical Christian mega church pastor Dr Todd Phillips. That's what part one was and part two is going to be about the unraveling, the deconstruction of a evangelical Christian mega church pastor and what that was like for him to deconstruct why he deconstructed, how he deconstructed and then probably the most exciting part for him and for many of you, how did he reconstruct a new life after giving so much for so long to the cause and influencing so many people in the cause, how has he reconstructed his life, what made him decide to be a social media influencer in the reconstruction space after evangelical Christianity and what tips and tricks does he have for reconstruction after evangelical Christianity slash a high demand religion and what's the state

2:04of Christianity today including evangelical Christianity and or white Christian nationalism. That's what's in store. So we're just getting started but but welcome back to Mormon stories podcast Dr Todd Phillips. Thank you so much really really enjoyed part one excited about part two, we got a lot to cover. Let's start by you know going back to the story form, you're running this nonprofit, you had run you had been a mega church pastor, let's talk about how the deconstruction starts to emerge. I like to think of it as like the Truman Show metaphor where the light falls out of the sky and crashes on the street and Truman's looking around, go and wait a minute, what is this, what's going on here? The matrix moment, you know, what was your Truman show, how did your Truman show slash matrix moment begin? You know, I think I think with that metaphor, I would probably say that

3:04mine was back in 2005 at Princeton and it wasn't a it wasn't a big lamp, you know, light coming off the ceiling, it was a piece of plastic about this small that dropped in front of me and I didn't know where it came from but it was very tiny, right? It was just the seeds, just the beginnings of it, that's something was a little off. So I was in 2005, it wasn't till 2013 when I left mega church work being a pastor, going to nonprofit work, mission work with the last well full time in 2013 that I started being able to ask questions that I didn't have time or I think the emotional or spiritual bandwidth to address while I was a full time pastor. And there were many topics that ended up kind of dismantling my faith over a nine year period from 2013 to 2022 but I can speak to several of them early on. One of them was just the inerrancy of the Bible that I've been told, that God was perfect all knowing, all loving, all powerful, perfect in every way and he,

4:06he and his perfection gave us a perfect book that was also perfect in every way. And although I saw discrepancies in the Bible and contradictions, I was shown with great care how to harmonize a lack of a better term discrepancies in the Bible, that there were none and there could be none and therefore anything I thought was a discrepancy or a contradiction must be my shortcoming, my lack of information, my lack of knowledge, my lack of critical thinking to be able to reconcile those issues. When I left pastoral work, I actually went back to some of the theologians that I was introduced to at Princeton and went back to this habit of mine that I had been taught for three years at Princeton, went back to Douglas John Hall, a systematic theologian that I had been introduced to and began to ask questions and go to literature and moral liberal theological kind of frameworks that allowed me to see those questions differently. And one of the first things to

5:10fall was the inerrancy of scripture. I just, I said this to you before, but I joke a bit, it took about 12 minutes once I was just open to the idea that these contradictions existed to actually see them. What were some of the early things that started to occur to you as problematic? For me, I did it, I did it in a very systematic fashion. I was like, okay, what's the most important, I thought I could reconcile the issues because if there were some contradictions in unimportant areas, at least they weren't in the important areas. And then I said, well, you know what, what I'm going to do is take a look at the birth accounts of Jesus, the genealogy accounts of Jesus, et cetera. I'm going to look at the crucifixion of Jesus and the different accounts of that. I'm going to look at the accounts of the resurrection and the empty tomb between the four Gospels. Between the four Gospels. And compare Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, I'm going to compare how each of those major narratives, ultimately I argued at that point, the birth, death, and resurrection of

6:14Christ being the core narrative. I mean, at least that story should be correct. If there's a perfect god expressing the most important story, it's going to line up and we're not going to find contradictions there. At least that was my logic. How did that go? Not very well. Yeah, those were the 12 minutes I talked about that it didn't take me long to just do a Bart Irman style parallel account. Bart Irman does this in his classes where he just says, take the crucifixion account or the resurrection account or the birth narrative and just write it down in four columns, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And then just compare them. It's not hard. Can you give a couple examples? Yeah, I mean, when was Jesus crucified? And in one gospel, it says he's crucified at 9 a.m. and another one, he's before Pontius Pilate at noon. One is before the Passover, one is after the Passover. I mean, these are very basic. These are very like it's either before or after the Passover. It cannot be before and after the Passover. It cannot be at 9 a.m. These are the kinds of things that are I hesitate to say the word comical, but it was so

7:19emotionally disturbing to me that I had to laugh at that point. It was like, okay, why did I not allow the critical faculties that I would give to any other area of my life? Why did I put those on a shelf for 20 years and allow the indoctrinational kind of structure of my seminary at Southwestern really drive my perspective rather than just letting the texts say what it said. So let me take you through this. So I'll give you the other four. There's some additional ones in light of this. So it started with the core story, birth, death, resurrection. Once I saw that there were discrepancies there when he died, how he died, etc. That was very, very frustrating to me. Then another area, which is a larger New Testament issue, is the difference in Pauline theology, the theology of Paul and the theology of Jesus. I harmonize that for 20 years. It's not harmonizable. Jesus says very specifically, do not let a jodder tiddle of the

8:24law fade away. This law isn't effect until the end times, until all has come to pass. Then Paul says, you no longer under the law, you're under grace. You're either under the law or you're no longer under the law. They cannot both be true. It is a fundamental discrepancy and issue, theologically, at a foundational level between the theology of Jesus himself as it's shown in the gospels and the theology of Paul and the rest of the New Testament. Okay. The law. Are you under grace or are you under the law? Jesus says you're under the law and the greatest in heaven will be those that follow the law. That is the law on the prophets. It's all of the Torah. It's all of the prophets. Okay. So Jesus meant Judaism. Is that the only thing he could speak to you? Yes. Yeah. Okay. By definition. So he speaks. He says the law and the prophets, you are under that. Okay. So that's Torah and Talmud stuff. Absolutely. So Jesus is still saying follow the Torah and the Talmud. Yeah. In fact, those that will be greatest in heaven will be those that follow it and those that

9:24do not follow it will be the least in the kingdom of heaven. Like he is emphatic and Paul says, no, no, no, you're now under grace. The law was to show your sin and now you are under grace through Christ. That's not what Jesus preached. Okay. So I went from gospel narratives of the life and times of Jesus to the reality that Paul and Jesus were teaching two different theologies and they were fundamentally different. Okay. And it angered me. Okay. That that I allowed myself to harmonize or reconcile irreconcilable passages and that I just didn't see it for what it was. And then I started realizing that I was an apologist and not a critical scholar. What do you mean by that? An apologist is one who who who comes to the text with predetermined dogma. God is perfect. The Bible is perfect. And therefore if anything is imperfect in the Bible, you're actually seeing it wrong. That's apologetics. It comes with a result in mind and works back into the text. Biblical scholarship just takes the text as it is. One one passage says that he was crucified at 9 a.m.

10:25The one one says he's still alive and in front of pilot at noon. Those are irreconcilable. They're just different. No problem if you can have problems in the Bible. But if you can't have problems, you've got to do something about that. One says he died before the Passover. One says he dies after you can't have both. So what that's apologetics versus biblical scholarship. In fact, just in the last year or so, Dan McClellan who Mormon, who's a tremendous biblical scholar, he's had a lot to do along with Barterman to help give meat on the bones of my deconstructed theology. So those are kind of the beginnings. Were the contradictions in the Bible that became obviously so. And then the theological implications of Paul and Jesus basically preaching a different gospel. And that accelerated for me. So from 2013 when I started asking these questions,

11:26first I was just asking questions about an erity. And let me just say that 12 minutes really with several years. It didn't take long for me to see the contradictions. But I address those going, I'm still hanging on to Christianity. What I'm trying to do is deal with these things that have been in the back of my mind for a long time. And I'm going to come out the other side. It never was. I'm going to come out not a Christian. It wasn't that that didn't even cross my mind. Yeah. I was just going through my own existential theological kind of crisis. I was going to come out on the other side with some sort of version of Christianity that addressed these issues. Or I was going to ignore them. But I was always going to be a Christian. And one of the things that, so that happened the entire time I was doing the last well until we finished our project in Liberia in West Africa in 2020. From 2013 to 2020, asking lots of questions, reading lots of liberal scholars, trying to come to terms with what kind of a Christian I was or would be. But I was still a Christian. And I knew one thing for certain that regardless of these problems, I was still an evangelist at heart. I wanted people to get saved. And so my work in Liberia was really

12:30primarily to serve people with clean water to earn the right to share the gospel, the good news of Jesus. And that was the focus of our of our ministry all the way through 2020. And I was comfortable with that. So in the midst of all these questions still very focused on evangelism, very focused on Jesus. And what I will say that that it went from contradictions to the Paul and Jesus theology issue. And then because of those problems, I said, you know what, I'm going to go back into the Old Testament. I've always had problems with God's character. I've always had problems with some issues back there. Like what, what were some of the problems? Oh boy, it was a the amount of problems I had with God's character. Even before I began to read critically and just let the text say what it said, it was always a problem for me. But I was just wrong. I just didn't see God, like for example, with the Amalekites, God commands the Israel out of army to commit genocide

13:36against the Amalekites. He doesn't just say kill the men, the combatants, he says kill the women, the children and the babies, the livestock as well. So God is commanding Moses to send the Israelites to kill babies by the sword. And when you just scrape away all the theology that you're trying to, the Amalekites were horrible or they were sacrificing children so the genocide was necessary. It's absurd. It's absolutely absurd on its face that killing babies is an appropriate thing in any condition. In fact, I can safely say Christian or not that it is never okay to kill a baby in any way let alone by the sword. It's never okay to murder a baby. It's never okay. That is a universal. We can all agree to that. And yet God's commanding it. And the reason given for committing genocide against the Amalekites is because the Amalekites stood up and went to war

14:38against Israel 400 years prior. Now, I mean, it just gets more if it weren't so tragic, comical, right? So you're killing babies four centuries later in a generation of people who had nothing to do with the issue that you had a problem with and you're still doing it. These are the kind of absurdities that I started seeing from my perspective in the Bible when it came to the character of God. Like 20 generations later. 20 generations. They have nothing to do with anything and yet that's considered justice and not only justice but perfect justice, right? Because it's God's justice. Because it's God. Because he because might makes right and God can do anything and if he's doing it, he has a reason for it. And so even though it looks immoral and unconscionable and just it's it's the murdering of babies and even though it looks that way from all angles for 20 years, I said, I must be wrong. Yeah. And those are the kind of things that started to really really whittle away at my confidence in the Bible. The scripture I was taught was God's ways are

15:40higher than man's ways. Absolutely. As a 55. Any other thing for the Old Testament you want to highlight? Well, I did a whole video recently on the 10 Bible passages that I could no longer defend and the Amalekites are one of them. But there it the sad part is that the the Bible is replete with it. I mean, slavery, right? Yeah. I mean, yeah, Exodus 25, Deuteronomy 21, I believe, you know, it it actually what did they say? Yeah, they they the God of the Old Testament condones the owning of other human beings as property. It says very specifically, you can purchase slaves from the from the nations around you. You may own them as property and hand them to your children. Okay, so they are they are just they're just like cattle. They are they are defined as such. They are property. So owning another human being as property. It also says, I believe in Deuteronomy 21 that you can beat your slaves as long as they don't die within the first few days. If they die within the first few days, you can be punished. If they do not die within the first few days, you're

16:42not held responsible for anything that you've done. And these are the kind of things that you see. So slavery, rape, genocide, it is great. God's okay with rape. Yeah. When you look at David, David and Bashiba, if if listeners know that story, David and Bashiba, they commit sin by committing he commits adultery with Bashiba, sends off Bashiba's husband to go get killed at the front lines. And the the answer for David's actions of committing adultery is first to kill their baby. So any idea of justice again requires that the person that does the wrong thing is the person that deals with the consequences of the actions that they took. The idea that from God's perspective, it's okay to kill a baby for David's sin. Again, in my opinion, I think in every human's opinion ludicrous. And yet that's what he does. And it gets better though.

17:43Meaning worse. Meaning worse. He takes 10 of David's concubines and has David's son days later after God says, I will raise up trouble from among you. I will take your wives and give them to another to have sex with them basically on top of a building in front of all of Israel to see. Days later, David's son comes in, takes 10 wives, takes them up on a roof and raves them. For all the world to see in public, that is a command of God according to the Old Testament. There's no way around it. And what I find interesting is when I look at when I do videos on these, the apologist will come out of the woodworks and will say, no, you just don't understand the text. They'll use the term, you don't understand the context. It's always you don't know what's really going on. And yet these are just a few of literally dozens and dozens of passages that address the the horrific actions of the God supposedly in the Old Testament.

18:47Treatment of women. I want to do a little while. I mean, just start with the raping of David's David's wives. It's unconsensual. They are just chattel. They are property in the argument between God and David. That's it. That's how they're seeing. And it's or the what about the for a Mormon themed question? What about the polygamy of the ancient Old Testament prophets? Oh my gosh. Polygamy in the Old Testament is considered a norm. The idea that Christians today would say that one man, one woman for life is the only way that marriage is shown in the Bible is just you haven't read the Bible. That's a good way. It's just there's nothing. In fact, many men, many leaders have many wives at the same time and it's considered normal. It's not called out by God. In fact, it's just within the normal processes of being a child of God in the Old Testament. And then the New Testament, you know, also is in great with women, right? Oh, not at all.

19:49I mean, you know, women aren't aren't allowed to preach. They aren't allowed to hold leadership roles. It's a very misogynistic theology both in the Old and the New Testament. And the idea that Jesus came to do away with all that again, that's not what Jesus said. That's what Paul said. If you follow the life of Jesus and he's the one we're supposed to be following. We're not following polyanity. We're following Christianity. It's it's if you are a Jesus follower, you have to address the issue that Jesus didn't abolish the law. He came to fulfill the law. And he speaks very, very clearly to obey the law of the Torah and the prophets. He's very specific. And so it's the treatment of women in the Old Testament is validated by the words that are given to Jesus. You can't you can't discount the character of the Old Testament God and say, well, Jesus is different than you're talking about two different gods at that point. And you may believe that in your own theology. But I believe

20:50that Jesus was fully God and fully man. He was Yahweh in the flesh. One thing that Joseph Smith really seized on is this idea of the pure blood of Israel and how the Israelites were gods chosen people, which I think is what the Old Testament says. And then when when Mormons come of age, they think it was called a patriarchal blessing where they're told what what lineage of Israelite they're descendants of. So I'm from the tribe of Ephraim, you know, because of the patriarchal blessing that I got because Joseph Smith took all that release seriously and and believe the Old Testament is that God has a favorite lineage and he blesses that chosen favorite lineage. And I for a long time was caught up on kind of the curse of Cain, dark skin, slash book of Mormon, layman art racism that is in Mormonism

21:50to not see that just this idea of God has millions or billions of his children. But there's a certain race or a certain lineage that's his chosen one. That's a problem. Did you ever thought about that? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, look, the the the the God of the Old Testament is a tribal war God. I mean, straight up like against from a scholarly perspective, this is not some strange statement or some, you know, outland is thought by some random former pastor. He's a tribal war God. It's very clear. He chooses Israel. It's his tribe among all the other tribes. And it's it's clear from this that why he's to say this and I've had done videos on it recently. You know, if the Bible was really from God being perfect and outside of time, you would think it wouldn't look like a tribal war God wrote it. And that's exactly what you see. You see a tribal regional God thousands of years ago

22:52picking Israel over other nations and giving them war booty from from beating the other nations into submission and committing genocide. And it's completely fine, by the way, to do that. And then to own the captive brides from those other nations as war booty. These are the things that God supposedly says directly to his people. And then there's the blame reversal if they get beat by the other tribes. Well, it's because they were wicked, right? Absolutely. Well, there's always a reason around it, right? It's it just seems it and I don't I I'm careful to use these terms, but I'm going to use them. It is at least the God what what I started to do when I was going through my deconstruction still being a Christian is I was like, I'm going to have to let go of. I remember saying this 2018, 2019 around I said, I know I can't let go of the Old Testament God. But I don't know how I can continue to serve and say that I worship and endorse and condone

23:57the actions of the Old Testament God as it's expressed in the Old Testament. That's not a God I would want to serve. You know, I think it was Richard Dawkins said that he had this whole paragraph in the beginning of one of his books. Maybe the God delusion is that, you know, Yahweh is the most capricious, immoral, vindictive. And he goes on with all these words about describing the Old Testament God. I remember hearing that when I was a Christian going, that guy's going to hell. How can you speak out against God that way? I actually went back and critique that paragraph when I was going through my deconstruction. I said, asking myself, forget what I think I know, are any of these words not accurate? And I went through that entire paragraph and said everything, everything that Dawkins described the Old Testament God as being is accurate based on the text. I have to decide not to buy into the text to disagree with this passage. I mean, this paragraph from Dawkins. And that was, that was like a, appears to the heart for me. It was like, what do I do

25:02with this? How do I separate Jesus from this Old Testament God when Jesus validates everything that God said? How do I do that? And I just had to choose for three or four years to just be a Jesus-only Christian. I don't know how to reconcile it. I don't know how to reconcile the Pauline theology. I'm not going to be a Paulite. I'm going to be a Christian. And I can't bind to the Old Testament God any longer. He seems horrible. And so I'm just going to buy into Jesus. But Jesus validated this Old Testament God. So I'm just going to be a red letter Christian. And that lasted from about 2019, maybe 2020 to about 2022. Where all I did was just say, I'm a red letter Christian. I just follow Jesus. So all these things happen, right? So we've got the contradictions. We've got Paul and Jesus with a different theology. We've got the Old Testament God, which is a horrific God from my perspective. It looks like a tribal God, acts like a tribal God, speaks like a tribal God. And looks a lot like the other gods of the same time period from other religious ideologies. Then I started looking at how the gospels were written. And realized over months, maybe a year or so,

26:13that I couldn't honestly say that the gospels were eyewitness accounts. But because they're not, we have no idea the authors of the New Testament are. They were written somewhere between 60 and 110 years after the life of Christ. And we have no way of knowing. Dan McClellan famously will say this often. We have no way of knowing a single word that was said or a single action taken by this Jesus. We simply don't know. We just have to take it on face value that these are the things that happened. Yeah, and tell why because I, until I learned about Barterman, I didn't understand how the New Testament manuscripts were put together. Yeah, it's quite astonishing really that the New Testament manuscripts specifically were written by people we don't, we don't have the author church tradition. Catholic church tradition gives us the authors in the second and third century, which has happened in generations of years after the life of Jesus. So if something were to happen today, and someone would write something about us

27:16in 2226 and say that was the author of that thing that we just found. And it was passed down through oral tradition. It was passed down through oral tradition and for decades before it was written. And it was written in full form. We have Mark, Matthew and the synoptic gospels are Matthew, Mark and Luke. Okay. Mark and Matthew, Mark was the first gospel that was written. And Matthew and Luke take about 90, some would argue 95% of their message from Mark. So the fact, the idea that we have three separate accounts is in an accurate statement to begin with. They are synoptic. They are pulled from each other. Matthew and Luke from Mark. So we know they had Mark as a source, as a source document. They're fanfictioning an original source document. Exactly. Right. And then John is the most developed, theologically developmental gospel where Mark is first, you don't have any post resurrection's accountants in Mark. Matthew and Luke have post resurrection accounts and all sudden in John, he is the word in the flesh. He is eternal. John is the one that has the most

28:22theologically developed view of Christology. Which reminds me of like the fish story, right? You catch a fish and it starts out this big. And then by the end, it's this big. Yeah. And you see that theological development throughout the four gospels. And so the authors of the gospels definitely had an agenda, a theological agenda. In fact, it's John who says that Jesus did this in order to fulfill the scripture here. And then he misuses the scripture from the Old Testament. Like the crazy thing is the New Testament writers, the gospel writers clearly read from the Septuagint the Greek version of the Old Testament. They didn't know original Hebrew because they're misusing and misquoting the Old Testament. And again, if God's perfect, a perfect God is going to make sure that these kinds of mistakes, these very basic mistakes are not happening. At least that would be my logic. Right. So I could keep going on with the

29:24Bible. But what happened was just cumulative effect of all these challenges that I've been describing over time from the New to the Old Testament, the development of the of the gospels, the fact that we know who wrote them, the fact that they have theological developments that are very plain inside them over time. And time will tell. In other words, Marcus early, John is late, the theological developments in the later books. You can see the development. It's just there for all to see that are not seeing with predetermined lenses over their eyes. And I went through a very angry phase. Around 2019, 2020 was when I was starting to ask some of these questions and the beginnings of that kind of anger phase started to happen. But I was still in the final throws of the last well, bringing the gospel to the last 10, 15% of the so of Liberia. We were doing it during the pandemic. There was a lot going on. Right. So I was trying to finish December 31st was our end date

30:28of 2020. It was built into our mission to bring the gospel and clean water to all of Liberia by December 31st, 2020. It was in the mission. So those last two years, even though I was dealing with some of this anger, I didn't allow it to surface until after the last well was done. It wasn't until 2021 after the last well was completed in November of 2020 that the emotional side of this started to really carry some weight. So I had this intellectual exercise for seven years. I was still a Christian right when the last well was finishing. I started asking many of the questions I'm talking about now. I would have said probably around 2019, 2020. I was a red letter Christian, but that was a private decision on my part. I wouldn't have announced that to the world, but I would say that was probably accurate. Again, the timing gets a little fluid. But after the last well was completed in 2020, then I really, you know, my career, my passion for evangelism, nothing was tied, career-wise to this issue. And now it's a free for all.

31:30Now I can go wherever I want with this and really spend as much time as I want. And that's when things started getting really dark. Also, I was kicking and screaming the whole way of my deconstruction. I never did not want to leave Christianity. Not for career reasons, for relationship reasons. This idea that I had a relationship with the God of the universe that I had been forgiven in my sins, that I was going to heaven to see my family. I woke up every day with a, with what I thought was a God-given, very specific directive for my life to evangelize the world. Last well was part of that. I woke up knowing that God had given me that and he was empowering me to do it. When the last well was over and I wasn't living day-to-day under God's mission for the first time really in my entire Christian experience, now I was untethered. Now I was angry. I did not have a mission any longer to get up in the

32:34morning for. The pandemic had just happened. It was still going on in 2021. I went through a divorce in 2020, separate from my religious beliefs. It was just the end of the marriage. Had gone through two or three years of Christian counseling to try to save the marriage. It ended in 2020. I was divorced. I had just finished the last well during the pandemic. Had moved from Dallas to Austin into an apartment. For the first time, I was living by myself. Did you consider, oh, I'll go back and be a mega-church pastor? Things were happy then. Never. Why? I had already wrestled with the fact that I couldn't preach any longer. Even if I was going to be some sort of version of Christianity, I just had too many problems with the text. A preacher is a preacher of the word. I'm not just a pastor. I'm a preacher. I have to be 100% confident in preaching.

33:37In 2020, when the last well was done, I was like, maybe I'll lead another non-profit. But what happened was I went through my divorce. I got long COVID. I had a late month problem with that. I lost my dad in 2020. Theological crisis, divorce, dad dies, eight months of COVID, and no career trajectory. You're going full-job on us. Man, I'm going full-job. It's exactly right. They'll give me a star on Joe. It was a horribly difficult time. That was the time where I finally had the chance also to ask the questions and really set with them. My life unraveled in short order, in 21 and 22. It really was the dark night of the soul for me. I would say that lasted until until 25. So I started to have...

34:41It started to have... It started to have... Yeah, it was a four, four and a half, very solid years of depression. I got to a point in 2024. I remember this very well. I called my mother. I had this career and security and my finances were in order and my family and I had nothing. I was a single man in Austin going through this theological crisis and career crisis and relational crisis. I remember saying to her on the phone, I was just weeping. I probably was not easily understood through those tears. I remember saying, I don't want to wake up tomorrow. You don't have to worry about me taking my life. But I'm exhausted. I would be fine not waking up. I remember for months on end, getting up in the morning and before I... You know when you're in that fog, when you first wake up

35:46and you're not capturing where you are in time, you're just waking up from a sleep. And there's seconds there, maybe 30. Where you're stretching and it's just another morning. And then the reality of your entire world hits you. And I remember going for months, maybe over a year, every morning going, man, I have to actually have to get up out of this bed and just exist for 14 more waking hours until I can go to bed again. That's how much I was hurting. It was a tremendous amount of depression. And those were the years of my theological dismantling. And I remember thinking, man, I just... It wouldn't be nice to be back in my useful fiction as the phrase I would use. The Christianity was a useful fiction. I mean, it almost brings me to tears right now because it was so painful. It was... You know, I think I'm past this sometimes and it's surprisingly.

37:00You know, it got so challenging for me. In January of 25, Elise was up at my apartment. And I put everything I had in storage. And I told a girl that I was actually seeing, it just been seeing for a few months. I said, look, I don't have the emotional bandwidth to be in a relationship. And I care about you a great deal. But I'm going to make a decision right now to get physically away from everything because things are not going well in my life. And so I put everything in storage and I took a one-way ticket to Vietnam. And I went on a solo backpacking trip. And I was gone from January, early February of 25. This was recent until July of 25. I was in Vietnam for many months. I was in Cambodia for a while. I went and visited a friend of mine who had a bungalow in Florida stayed there for a few months. And just got...

38:03I don't have any sure this publicly. I needed physical and emotional distance from everything. It was either going to be the worst decision of my life to kind of pack everything in storage and go to Vietnam or the best. It really wasn't going to be... There was no middle ground there. It turned out to be the best decision I could have made. It gave me enough physical distance from all my challenges to realize that letting go of my faith, going through this crisis, existing in a depressive time frame where I didn't want to wake up each morning. That I valued this life and had some incredible chapters in it. And many of those chapters were driven by belief in God. And I just didn't realize how devastating the loss of God would be. When I came back from that basically six months back packing, I came back to Austin.

39:09And this was in summer of last year, a year ago. My gosh. It's a recent. I came back. I was doing some AI consulting work at the time. And in Christmas, I sat down with my daughter, my youngest rainy, his her name. And I said, rainy, I got back from my trip. It was very helpful. I'm kind of buoyed by the process. I'm not kind of mired in that depression any longer, but I have lost my faith. It's in the River of Mirab by some time now. And I really think I'm agnostic. I may even be an atheist. And I'm spending so much time struggling with the fact that I was a mega church pastor and tens of thousands of people knew me in a certain way. I think I'm just going to spend the rest of my life in this horrible solitude because I don't feel comfortable telling anybody now where I am. And maybe I shouldn't. Maybe that's just the price I pay. I don't want to damage anybody else's faith.

40:15Certainly the people that I shared Jesus with. And she said, I remember this really well, she said, that she goes, you should download the TikTok app. This was at Christmas of last year. I said, why would I want to download the TikTok app? She goes, look, just download it. Trust me on this. She goes, you can't find anybody that'll talk to you for hours about theology and philosophy in Austin. You tell me your friends in Austin are great, but they're much more kind of football and everything else. And you're just stuck in this zone. And she goes, the algorithm will find a half a dozen Johns that you can get on Zoom calls with and talk theology and philosophy and kind of work through this stuff. She goes, right now you're stuck in your head. So I remember this January 12th of 2026, about three weeks later, I downloaded the TikTok app. And I pushed the little button. I said, it's the first video on my TikTok channel. And I just said, hey, I'm a former mega church pastor. Some of you might know me. I'm just looking for people to talk with and to kind of walk

41:15through this journey with. And if that's where you are, let me know. I'm going to be posting my daughter suggested I post for like the next month just to let the algorithm work. So I'm hoping to find some people I can talk with. And that was my first video. I wasn't trying to start a movement or get followers. I was trying to find half a dozen guys that would have a whiskey with me over Zoom. That was it. And now I'm a month later and it's a very different world. So what happened? Who reached out? How did they reach out? What videos did the algorithm feed back to you? And what types of relationships or friendships or following did you tap into? Yeah. So it was really quite amazing. And I didn't realize how much I needed to get out of my head. Until I was able to put it on camera and just talk for two or three minutes at a pop. What I didn't realize was how good the algorithm was. I really, two things was I had lost my sense

42:18of self-confidence, my sense of self-worth, my sense of self-esteem. And although I was kind of coming out of a very depressive episode, I just didn't have a lot of direction in that area. And the videos allowed me to start putting towards the things that I've been thinking. The videos allowed me to speak into the ether, some of my thoughts and share my journey and make it okay that if somebody who was a Christian who used to be at my church and they found out about it, which invariably probably would happen, I thought, that's okay. We're all on our own journey. And I'm just going to stop worrying about everybody else. And I'm going to live my life. And right now, the healthiest thing for me to do is to express myself. And so I did. And the algorithm very quickly connected me with Brit Hartley. Soon after that, Dan McClellan. Meaning it was feeding you their videos? Yeah, feeding me their videos. Yeah, sorry.

43:19No, no, no, no, no, don't bother. Yeah, the algorithm was feeding me videos from Brit and from Dan McClellan. So let's talk that a bit. So you see Brit. What message is the Brit? And then Dan were sharing. We're interesting to you. These are ex-mormons or liberal Mormons. How did they speak to an ex-Evangelical mega church pastor? Well, a couple of things, right? I had not been on social media since 2020 when the non-profit ended. So I've been off it for six years. And so in January, eight months ago, when I started this, Brit shows up, Dan shows up. And I'm just amazed at some level at the level of discourse that's happening on two and three minute videos. And how effective it, Dan was at, you know, I used to say a sermon was hard because you only had 30 minutes. I remember that because I could talk for an hour or two hours. The super power was getting it in 30 minutes. The super power is definitely getting it in two to

44:20three minutes. Right? And Dan and Brit were both very effective at that. And clearly they'd been doing it for a while for several years by the time I saw them. And we're certainly in their own zone. And each of them have like, you know, seven, eight hundred, nine hundred thousand followers on TikTok alone. And then they've got other channels, right? So more than a million people watching these two. But what they did was they gave a level of validity to my process. They allowed me to say, okay, there are other people that are out here speaking to this. What I had not seen up to that point was someone like myself who was a mega church pastor. And I knew a lot of them. And none of them I knew had gone through deconstruction. Most of them were still in their pastoral roles. So there was a uniqueness to the story that I thought I was bringing to the table at some level. But I was very impressed with the depth and the critical study necessary to produce the videos that Brit and Dan were producing.

45:28Let me ask you, I can get why Dan's would have resonated with you because you were, you know, went to Princeton and you were knee deep in biblical criticism. So I could see that as a natural fit, even though ironically he's still believing, attending Christian. But Brit Hartley, what was it about some of her videos or her messages? She's more of a secular person. She's ex-mormon. How did her stuff resonate with you as an ex-Evangelical? You know, it's really hard to put my finger on it, honestly. I just like her. I like, I like, I think I'm probably a student of oration. And I love people that can speak publicly. And again, the idea that you can stuff the amount of knowledge in a two or three minute video, I was taken by Brit's ability to do that. She speaks on a variety of subjects and does so with with seeming intellectual curiosity and and and in some level of, I would say, a great level of intellectual prowess that she brings to the table. And she just

46:32expresses it in such a way that it impressed me. So and I found her subjects to be certainly parallel to mine. So from from that perspective, I was very, I was, I was very engaged with her videos. And then also what started happening is, is other deconstruction voices were in contact with me. Like what was weird about the whole thing was I again, I didn't know if I'd have 10, you know, followers. I was trying to find five, right? And for the audience, this is not to to say anything, but just to understand like over eight months, like there's 150,000 or so followers on my social media channels, right? So it's great. It's it's it's what it's allowed me to do is I buried years ago, the pastor taught, never to be resurrected, so to speak. Right? And now I find myself using the skill sets that I have a passion to use again. And I thought they would never be used again.

47:33So now I get to teach again. I get to share my journey again. I get to have, I get to be on a podcast with you, John. This was not in the cards eight months ago. I have a sense of purpose again. I had lost a sense of purpose in 2020. When last well was done, I lost a sense of mission. When I let go of Christianity in 2022, 2023. And for the first time in over half a decade, I get up in the morning and I am very excited about the 14 hours. I get to live. Very excited about the next day beyond that and the weeks beyond that and the months beyond that. You know, I'm crazy enough, it's because of TikTok. I did not start this to to get following or to create a career. It is becoming that almost by

48:34necessity, but also by passion. It's I have a sense of responsibility for other people. I don't want people to go through the years of depression that I went through. I don't want them to wake up in the morning and feel like they don't want to live that day. I want to shorten, I say this quite often. My goal now through my videos and the community that I built and other projects that I'm working on now is to shorten the pain curve for those going through deconstruction. I have no agenda. If that if deconstructing and having a critical phase in their own Christian faith takes them back to Christianity, I'm very happy for them. If it takes them to a more liberal form of that Christianity, if they're evangelicals right now, I'm also happy. If it takes them where I am today, I'm equally as happy because they will have gone through the process of questioning the things that they've been handed to them. And I think that's a good thing. This is a thought that I haven't shared with an actually evangelical. You may end up doing this

49:37or liking the idea. But so I started doing workshops and retreats for Mormons and faith crisis in the 2000s, 2007s, 2008s. But I really went hard after finished my PhD, 2014, 2015. And I developed a whole weekend retreat concept on navigating a Mormon faith crisis, healing and growth and mental health and marriages and sexuality and all that, meaning and purpose. But one of the metaphors that I pulled out of it was to take Jesus's idea of being born again and applying it to what Richard Rohr calls the first half of life in the second half of life. And I've never described to an actually evangelical the idea or articulated to them the idea that, hey, brother, you've just been born again. Yeah, well, I was one Jesus met when he said born again. Well, there's no question. The, I mean, to come a bit full circle, the,

50:42the hilltop experience I had that we talked about in part one, when I came to faith, when I became a Christian, when I had that radical transformative experience in 1994. You know, in some ways, and certainly in slower fashion, but posting that video on January 12th of 2026 was a, the birth of a new, certainly a new chapter of my life was a, was a rebirth of a very, of a very exhausted and, and depressed and in many ways lonely person. And I have community again and building new relationships with people like yourself that, and I do mean this because we've just met. I hope continues. I much of what the church provided in community and connection and belonging

51:45was, was stripped away from my life. And I didn't understand how costly it would be. I just didn't know way of knowing. And some people go through it in a much more casual fashion. They just over time just decide they don't believe anymore. I think it was because I was so steeped in it. It really was every, it, it, it, it was everything to me. Yeah. Everything, everything. Yeah. So coming out of that's been difficult. Mormons get that. That's one thing Mormons get is the religion being everything. Yeah. And then nothing, you know. Yeah. And it's, and I think for me when I, when I, when I talk to people in this new community that I launched, you know, like, oh my gosh, you know, I've, I've had to brave the comment section on TikTok to say something. And then I get attacked, right? And now they've got this place where it's kind of, it's behind a wall and you've got to fill up the little questions. And we moderate the place. I don't know what it will become. It's brand new. It's like, it's weeks old.

52:47Oh, cool. Yeah. And, and platform. I'm using school.com. Oh, SKOL. Yeah. Okay. Uh, it's kind of like circle. Yeah. I guess same, same kind of deal, but I just found it first. But one of the things I'm finding is that I also didn't realize even on social media, this community is something different for me selfishly. You know, it allows me to, I don't have to navigate the shark infested waters of social media comments to get to people, right? These are people that have kind of self-selected into this. And that's been very encouraging for me as well. You know, I'm, I'm the, the idea that I was looking for four or five Johns to just have some discussions with at the beginning of this in January. Now there's this community of people that, you know, that I'm engaged with daily, you know, love it. It's, it's wonderful. Let me ask you to go back to you, put out that first TikTok video in January. How did,

53:50how did people start reaching out to you and how did you start connecting with, with viewers and commenters and followers and, and then how did that start coming into your real life if you're willing to share? Sure. Yeah. I mean, the last eight months has been really interesting to say the least. It's, what happened was I, again, and I mentioned this before, I just were looking for a few people. So very, very quickly, I think, and again, TikTok, I guess does this for lots of people, but, you know, I two or three thousand followers in a week or two, right? And, and, and I, and I started realizing that my videos were at least being partially watched by more people than I ever preached to and any of the largest churches out there. It's wild. It is. It's a strange deal, right? I'm like, wow, this is, this is unexpected. Yeah. I just didn't have anything to go by. Yeah. And so then I started getting emails and DMs. I guess more, more direct messages from people like yourself who were saying, hey, come on, my podcast or I haven't heard your story before. And, and I, and I said no to everything. Because that wasn't the goal. I was like, I'm, this is a crazy

54:52enough decision to get on social media to find some people to talk to. This isn't my career. Podcasts are not, I mean, you know, I'm still dealing with the fact that I'm going to eventually be found out by Christians who used to go to my church. I'm, it's a bit of a challenge. But I did get in touch with some people in the deconstruction space. John Cohen was one of them. He's a great guy. You should have him on. Of course, he won't fit this. He's, he's always been an atheist. So it doesn't work. But John's a great guy. He's always been an atheist. I had a atheist on the podcast. You did have always been atheist? Sure. Yeah. Okay. I thought you were mostly going through the, John, I think anyone who's got a good story to tell, I want to hear this. He's in the UK. Really, really good guy. He's got a debate channel. Basically he talks to Christians about their beliefs. It's a very, it can, it can, you very confrontational, but he does it very well. Yeah. And, uh, but anyway, John reached out to me and asked me to be on one of his TikTok lives. So it was just 10 minutes real quick. And it was my brave move into the live space. And this was like in late February. And then John and I became fast friends. So he and I,

55:52in fact, we just did a video that I posted yesterday as a matter of fact. And it's, it's, I, I haven't told you this. So John is the lifelong atheist. What's his name again? John Tom Cohen, COHEM. Oh, John Cohen. John Cohen. Okay. And, uh, you can find him on YouTube, TikTok, all that stuff. But, um, his YouTube channel is the main one. But anyway, John is the lifetime atheist. I have an evangelical Christian Jason, a friend of mine that I, that I was on his podcast in Florida a few weeks ago, a month ago. And then myself. And what we're doing is we're critiquing my old sermons. So the untodd is on the, on the screen. Because your sermons are still on YouTube. Yeah. Yeah. I have, I have, I have, I have, I have, I've, I've got a Todd Phillips archives channel now because I've had so many people asked for the old stuff. Yeah. So, so we took one of my favorite evangelistic messages and we critiqued it for two hours and 40 minutes. Oh my gosh. I would have seen. Yeah. I'll send you the link. But I just, I literally posted it yesterday before I got on the flight. We'll put it in the show. We'll put it in the show notes. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I've, all that to say is what's happened over the last eight months is I've, I, I get to write

56:57again, I get to teach again. I'm, I'm addressing all my fears by critiquing my old sermons. So a lot of it's come full circle. And what I found when I was on the video, just as a side note, I was on the video with John and Jason. I found, I, I also got, I don't know, maybe I'm, I'm just having an emotional few days, but I went through, I went through this whole process of looking at my sermon, you know, 10, 12, 15 years later, whatever it is. And really having compassion for the guy on the stage, really having a lot of compassion for young Todd or younger Todd. And it was a really healthy process for me to go through to just start putting words to, I still like what I said there. That story was still profound. This was still very helpful. This is what I disagree with. This is what I'm embarrassed by now. And really allow me, it's a bit of a catharsis to go through that process. So, so social media has,

57:58it's turned out to be the doorway into new relationships, new opportunities, new conversations, new places to share my story, new opportunities to write, new opportunities to build community. And all of that came from a video on January 12th. So how did it bleed over into personal relationships or has it yet? Like friendships or like lunches or dinners or like, have you done meetup yet? Any of that stuff? Yeah, I haven't done meetups in Austin from social media. You have or have not. Have not done that yet. But what I'm finding is in this community that I'm building on this Decon recon community, there's a map. And so as more people are joining, you know, you like, like it turns out three or four of these people are within like 45 minutes of Austin. Yeah. So eventually we're going to, we're going to meet up. But what I have found is like with John and yourself and others, I've got a lot of zoom friends. Yeah. Like people that I just get on the, you know, I've really have become fast friends, you know, that, that I'll text. I'm,

58:59they're available for me. They understand the challenges that I've been through. I've shared my story with them like I'm sharing with you. And they're just magnanimous and open and caring and, and I just cannot tell you how isolated I was. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. And, and, and how it was a very bad place. Well, and it's not anymore. Yeah. Yeah. I went through my faith crisis in 2001 before the social media. Yeah. You can, and in Mormonism, you can imagine what that felt like. I did that for three or four years. Went through the years of depression, hopelessness. Well, we have a very similar story then. Yeah. And then I left Microsoft in 2004, learned about blogs and podcasts before YouTube, before Facebook, before TikTok, Instagram. And so I started an audio only podcast in 2005.

1:00:00Just wondering, I don't know what's going to happen here, but let me just record something and put it out and see what happens. And so I'm just a 20 by, you know, whatever 20 years ahead of you. Yeah. No way. But I started in a very, very similar way. Well, I got to, I got to tell you, we'll say more of this offline. But I, you know, I'm, I mean, obviously intrigued by your story. And, and for someone that's down the path further. Yeah. Certainly in this kind of public setting, because this wasn't the plan. But it is the plan now. Yeah. And you just, it's fascinating because you just have no idea what's going to happen. And, um, yeah, you make friends and you have relationships and you make mistakes and you hurt people and, but you just keep, but, you know, doing your thing. I was curious. I don't, you know, years ago, I actually named my nonprofit. So I did, I did this for five years, an audio only podcast. And then in 2009, 2010, I started the nonprofit.

1:01:02And I literally didn't call it the Mormon Stories Foundation, even like, could have, I called it the Open Stories Foundation. And I did that because I, I really thought the model had viability. And I thought there should be a Catholic Mormon, there should be a Catholic stories and evangelical stories and a Jewish stories and a Scientology stories and a Jove Witnesses stories, not just in English, but there should be a John DeLin in every religious, actually religious tradition and in every major world language. Like, because this idea of just long form storytelling is clearly transformative. Like the Mormon Church is on its knees for a couple centuries worth of deceiving people, harming people, lying to people, in addition, all the good that it's done because I also think the church has done a lot of good. It's done a ton of lying, a ton of racism, a ton of misogyny, a ton of homophobia, a ton of anti-science and anti-nelectual

1:02:02rhetoric, lots of bad things, lots of good things. But it's, it's on its knees. It's why it's, in my opinion, it's why it's suing me because I'm part of this broader community, a Britheartles and Den, McClellans and Radio Free Mormons and Nemo, the Mormons and all these ex-mormon and liberal Mormon creators that have just blown open the lock that the Mormon Church had on people's brains, on their families, on their marriages, on their lives, on their souls, on their spirits. And so I've, I, what I'm trying to say, I'm being long-winded, but what I'm trying to say is like this model has worked. And it's why you encountered ex-mormons or liberal Mormons influenced by ex-mormonism, frankly. It's why you encountered them because we, Mormons, got so early to the social media game. We were there first in podcasting, first in Facebook, first in YouTube, first in

1:03:06TikTok. We were very early and very heavy. And so I'm proud of that as a community. You should be. But, well, I, and I mean it as a community, not personal, but I understand. But what I'm, what I was wondering is when you got into the ex-Evangelical scene, were there a ton of John Delins, Britheartles and Den, McClellans or not? And if not, why? Why hasn't, why aren't evangelicals, ex-Evangelicals, ex-Jews, ex-scientologists, ex-Shovs witnesses, more prevalent is kind of what creators, why aren't they more prevalent? Or are they? Yeah, I can't speak to the other religious perspective, other religions, but I can't say ex-Vangelicals is the term I see a lot on social media. It's quite prominent. Okay, it is pretty good. Yeah, and it's, I mean, it may not be as large as, and I don't know this for a fact, it may not be as large as the number of Mormon influencers out there, ex-Mormon influencers on social media.

1:04:08But it's quite large. I was, that's one of the things that was most impressive to me is, is just, is just seeing the numbers. I just thought there were none, right? Other than kind of the new atheist movement in the 2000s with dockens and kitchens and Sam Harris and Daniel Danett, those kind of guys, that's really where I got, where I started watching YouTube was with the, what they call the Four Horsemen, the, the Four Atheists of the New Atheist Movement back in the 2000s. Yeah, and yeah, you're really early, so you even haven't started really having the impersonal relationships that you're probably going to see. Yeah, I hope so. I mean, I'm starting to see the, the seeds of that, and that's something I'm very encouraged by. I just had my birthday last week and I, a couple of thanks, a couple of friends of mine that I've met since January. I actually invited to a birthday, one of them flew in from Florida, and another guy, all, all that I've met, basically connected to because of this whole deconstruction. Wait, when's your birthday? August 26th. You're born in 1969? Yeah. I was born August 20th, 1969. And we're six days apart. We're born

1:05:13to say, we look at that. That's awesome. That's fun. That's why we relate. We have our bolt-tactions. That's right. Okay, so really quickly, and I'm a nerd, during that 2020 to 2026 time period, what did you do for work? I did, I did coaching a lot. I had a, I had a, I had done a lot of coaching when I was still in the church, meaning just kind of executive coaching, life coaching, things like that. And I, for a couple of years, I did a, kind of a mindset mastery. I was trying to just try to still do coaching because I was interested in it, but really, I just really was trying to find myself. So that paid the bills. And then in the last year and a half, I've done, I kind of shifted my consulting work into AI. So I've been working because I've always been interested in the topic. So before January, when I started the social media channels, I was working mostly with solarpreneurs and small entrepreneurs, small businesses, and are like

1:06:1510 employees, because AI can be leveraged to a far greater degree in my opinion with smaller companies. And so they could see a much better return on investment. So I've been helping small companies do that because it's an interest of mine, but it's not a passion of mine. Is that like a company? Do you have a, yeah, it's just a consulting. Okay. Just just, oh, cool. It's just me. So you know, AI pretty, pretty well. I like to think so, but it changes very quickly. It's very difficult to keep up for anybody. But I have a good outsourced team that I, I used to kind of build out the contracts that I do. However, since it's funny, because I, and you'll appreciate this, I didn't know that TikTok paid for videos. I didn't know that YouTube paid for videos. I had, I had no idea there was a financial side to any of this, right? So when I started getting pretty good viewership and a certain number of followers on TikTok, they started paying, they just pay you as a creator for the volume of videos that are viewed. And then YouTube, I just launched a few months ago, and now it's starting to pay a little bit. So what I'm, what I'm doing right now is trying to

1:07:20build that because ultimately what I'd like to do for the next chapter of my life is I'd like to help people this way. I help people with AI, but it, and I don't want to say, but I help people with AI, period. And although I like doing that, I really, I don't like I love this. This is where I want to spend my time. And so if I can, if I can pay bills and develop a career from this so that I can spend more time helping people, this is what I'd like to be doing. So your goal is to do this full time and to try and find sustainable ways to support XE evangelicals in their deconstruction and reconstruction. Is that right? Yeah, I would say that's my newfound passion. Love it. Yeah, I didn't, again, didn't plan on it. Yeah, but I think what happened was in the comments section on TikTok and then Instagram when I launched Instagram a few about a month later. It wasn't dozens. And I'm sure you've seen this in your own situation, you know, thousands of comments. Yeah. Yeah. And, and a very good, you know,

1:08:25a good number of them, you know, I'm struggling. I feel lonely. I have nowhere to go. I can't talk to anybody. I'm in the Bible belt. So I, you know, everyone goes to church here and I can't be an insurance sales rep in Tennessee and not go to church. You know, so they just, these kind of crisis moments. Yeah. And I relate. Yeah. You know, and I, and I, I guess it's my pastor's hat. Yeah. Right? For lack of a better term. I, I did that for so long and I want to help people and I did it through Jesus for a while through that Christian lens, but now it's just through the lens of kind of humanity. Yeah. And, and I, I went, I just went through so much pain that when I see the comments, when I see the DMs, I feel, I feel at a deep level what they're going through. Yeah. And I'm just looking for ways again to shorten that pain curve and to give people a place where they don't feel alone and they don't struggle the way that I did. And at least if they are

1:09:27currently struggling the way that I was struggling, that we can, we can, we can lesson the duration of that sense of loss and isolation and, and, and emotional upheaval. Yeah. It was very damaging for me. And I don't, I, I, I, and I remember thinking this, I have said this recently, if, if I help one person, I, I think I'm like, I'm happy right now. If nothing yet, like, I'd be disappointed, but I would be happy right now just knowing the last eight months has helped me and helped lots of other people not feel alone. And that's just such a game changer for me. It really, really is. Preach, preach. I'm, but I'm, I'm serious. Like it gets me excited. It like puts a smile on my face. It, it, it livens me. Welcome to my past 20. Yeah. No, that's, I, I see it. And I

1:10:31told you that's why you're on my list of most influential people. No, no, no, I'm just saying, I'll be doing it for 22 years. Yeah. Not wild. Um, I love it. It's beautiful. And I'm saying preach because like I'm, I'm still a believer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 22 weeks in. I'm going to feel in the same way. So, um, let me ask you, you, you put a bunch of, um, I, I want to get to reconstruction. Yeah. And I, but I also want to talk about your personal deconstruction in a tiny bit. But first I want to talk about, let's do kind of a lightning round where I'm in a list some of the elements of deconstruction that we've touched on. But I want you to give a, you know, a 30 second spiel on each one. Is that okay? Yeah. So we don't need to go over, um, you know, contradictions, contradictions in the Bible. Uh, we've covered that plenty. Uh, I think in your story. And, um, we're also the Bible's not speaking with one voice. I think we've covered that plenty. But and we, we talked about apologetics and critical ownership enough. But I'm going to ask

1:11:34you about a couple others. So hell, do you riff on hell? Yeah. I think that one of the, the most difficult, um, concepts and Christianity is the concept of hell, regardless of how you view it, whether it's ultimate annihilation or it's just separation from God, I, I can't tell you the number of euphemisms and ways that hell has been explained away. But then you have to ignore more than a dozen passages speaking from supposedly the words of Jesus himself speaking about eternal hellfire, damnation and suffering. It goes on and on and on and never ends. And so, the concept of hell, when I originally understood it as a new Christian, um, I just didn't think too much about it. But that's really, to be honest with myself, I just didn't think too much about it. Yeah. And I just, I just hid behind the grandeur of God and the perfection of God and that, that in his, his ultimate plan, this makes sense. And the people that end up there deserve to be there. And yet when I started to ask the questions about hell, it wasn't as though hell existed and God,

1:12:36and God found a way through Jesus to get us out of it. He created it in the first place. He created the conditions by which our default destination as humans is hell. We're born defaulting to hell. Let me say that again. We're born with a default destination to hell, whatever horrible place that is and however you might describe it and whatever passages you choose to use, still a bad place. And it seems to go on forever. And um, ultimately that just, that just, it just made no sense to me that the idea that, that an all loving God would have to create that in the first place. And I find it also interesting when you, when you couple that with Adam and Eve, that if you actually buy into the Adam and Eve story, that, you know, these two, these two humans that could not know that being disobedient was evil because they didn't have the knowledge of good and evil. So just the story itself makes no sense in the beginning. But they eat this fruit that somehow is in,

1:13:40you know, embodies this fruit embodies the knowledge of good and evil and they eat it and they fall. And God literally could have done anything else. He could have said that the consequences for original sin is being tickled by a feather. Literally, he's an all pie. If he isn't all powerful God, he could just choose, for example, to forgive. And yet there's this convoluted story that comes out of the Adam and Eve in the original sin theology and the fall of man that somehow those two people's decision to eat a fruit has affected all of us. And it's just, I think it's absurd on its, on its face. But when I believed it, I didn't think too much about it. You know, this is the story God and His perfection has chosen to give us. He could have given us any other story. So there must be something valuable in it because he's a perfect God. And so ultimately hell is a, is an immoral act of a God if it in fact exists because you could just choose to not just the people that

1:14:42believe in God could go to heaven and then you could have another planet for people that don't believe in God. Or you could say, listen, if you go with me, it's going to be eternal bliss and you can worship me all the time or just go do your own thing. Like there's, he could do literally anything other than the worst possible eternal torture. Anything like of all the things he chose, he chose the worst possible thing he could possibly do to people and that doesn't seem like a loving God. And that's the whole the Odyssey thing. If God's all powerful, all loving, you know, he could have, he wouldn't do this. He wouldn't do it. Yeah. And there are liberal, there are liberal Christians that don't really, what they do is they just redefine words. So that they don't mean what they actually means. So that then they don't have, they can be Christian and not have a hell. Why not that option? Yeah. Well, there's a lot of people that think there's just annihilation and they go to, they go to pulse theology for that, which is just it's metaphor. Yeah, sure. And all those things, listen, all those things are ways to explain away the horrific reality of hell. That's what it

1:15:45is. It's an explanation to, to, to, to, to hand wave away the reality of what scripture actually tends to teach in the New Testament about this horrible place. Yeah. Yeah. And then God's the one that created it in the first place. All right. Divine hiddenness. Yeah. That was a huge one for me. Um, what is it? Divine hiddenness is the idea that that God could reveal himself to everyone, every, every individual human in the perfect way. If he's an all perfect God, he knows exactly what John would need and what Todd would need to be able to understand that he actually exists. And then we could make a decision whether to follow him or not. But then it wouldn't be a test. But then it wouldn't be a test or it would somehow damage your free will. That's another one. So it gets in the way of free will. I hear free will hundreds of times in the comments. And that's, and I don't believe that, that argument holds up at any level. I just don't because, because the idea that in the New Testament, there are many places where, where God shows up in the Old Testament, reveals Himself pillars of fire by day, or smoke, fire, the parting of the Red Sea,

1:16:49turning staffs in the serpents, talking donkey, the, the, the burning bush. Jesus performs miracles all the time. Doubting Thomas. Yeah. Yeah. Doubting Thomas. Thomas comes in and says, look, I'm not going to buy until Jesus shows up and I get to touch his hands in his side. Well, that had nothing to do. It did nothing to, to push it against their free will. And Thomas is the perfect example. Jesus didn't seem to have any problem with the guy doubting and him going, look, it's me. Here's the holes. Here's the side. Are you good? And Thomas was like, yeah, sure, I'm all over that. God could do that with anybody at any time. And, and now that we have video cameras and phones and the ability to record everything at all times, there are no miracles. Nothing's happening. They're a little less frequent. They're a little smaller. They tend to be like, I had a headache and he took it from me and things like that, right? And I don't, I don't mean to make too much light of it. But I, I, I, I, divine hidden this divine hidden is the, the arguments for God staying

1:17:50hidden in my opinion or again, I use the word very liberally here absurd. More, more monism is the, the plan of salvation is a test. We're being tested. You don't like that. You don't like that. No, I don't. No, I don't, I don't, I don't like it at all. Again, if, if God is, if, if he actually is a triomni God, if he's all loving, all powerful and all knowing, if he, if he truly is an om, a triomni God, then it doesn't fit. If he's not all powerful, maybe, if he's not all loving, if he's less of one of those things than some of these things make sense, if he is this traditional view of this all powerful, all loving, all knowing God, then it doesn't make sense. Yeah. Yeah. And the basic explanation is that, I mean, in Mormonism, you're here to develop faith. And even Jesus would say, it's better to believe without seeing than to be compelled to believe through seeing. So what's wrong with et theology that somehow the development

1:18:53of faith is really valuable. Yeah. I don't, I don't see faith now that I've gone through deconstruction as a valuable thing. Faith is faith is believing something on insufficient evidence. And I mean this, right? I really thought a lot about this faith faith is believing things on insufficient evidence. And, and if, if even bind to the theology that faith is better, so it was better for those disciples that believed and didn't see Jesus and for us that believe and don't see Jesus, but still Thomas was there, there are still Thomas's. So it might be better, but if, if God desires it all should be saved and that nun should perish, what about the billions of Thomas's show up? Bring the holes on your side, the holes on your side and the hole in your hand and show it, because even though it might be better, you might think more highly of the person that believed without seeing, there are many of us that need to see. Yeah. In Mormonism, it's almost one level more pernicious because it's not God or Jesus show up. It's, oh well God spoke to

1:19:59Joseph Smith or God spoke to Brigham Young or God speaks to a Mormon prophet today. And that dude is telling us whether it's able to be gay or how much money we should give to the church or you know what a real family is or isn't or what we have to do to make it back to heaven or not. And so it's abstracted an extra layer. And I just concluded, man, if God wants to talk to me, come talk to me, but I'm not going to have some intermediary who's got his own bank account, that's secret and his own private behaviors that we can't see, then his own motivations, telling me what he says God wants for me. It's not that pride, it's not pride. It's just like, why Joseph Smith? He was freaking, I mean, you could argue as a sexual predator. I think I'm at least that worthy. So why would you go talk to Joseph and not me? That's how it is for me.

1:21:00Yeah. And I do think on the faith thing to you, one more thing about this is that is, you know, and I ask you in a form of a question, is there anything that you cannot believe on faith? In other words, because you can believe anything on faith, you can believe anything. You can believe there's dragons on faith. You can believe on anything on faith. So faith cannot be, by definition, a reliable pathway to truth. It cannot be. Neither can emotion. Yeah, it just cannot be. And so the faith and emotion tend to be the cornerstones of Christian belief systems, and they are not a reliable source for truth. So what sense do you make? What meaning do you now make of your theophany that spiritual experience you had in Denver that changed your life for the better? Yeah. So I've done a lot of study actually with on this is where Brit Hartley comes in. I've watched a lot and read a lot on the psychology of religious belief. Primarily, the starting point of that was videos from Brit. And so I understand more about the psychology of religious belief. I'm afraid of emotion. Yeah. I understand how the brain works in relation to

1:22:03those moments. I understand they've done tests and many, many studies on people who pray and experience the presence of God in the room. That is something that the brain does. I just understand it's almost, I don't want to call it boring, but I can't think of a better word. It's almost boring how obvious those kinds of experiences are and those ecstatic utterances and the ways that we experience and the way our brain works and those kinds of environments. And it's just been tested over and over and I understand it now. So although I don't discount the experience, so people have very powerful experiences like I did in the car that night. But I just, I was told who to point it toward. I was told by my Christian friend that that was the Christian God who made me feel that way. There's always an interpreter. There's an interpreter telling me what that experience means, right? So if I would have been told that day to go and talk to the Buddha, I would have been told by my Buddha's friend that that was the Buddha. Right? There's an interpreter for my experience. I just no longer interpret it the same way.

1:23:09So what about the idea that there are many ways up Mount Fuji and that it doesn't matter if it's Buddha or Allah or Jesus or Jehovah or freaking Wu. But the spirituality is beautiful and legitimate and real and just all those paths are pointing to some sort of divine something and humans are just imperfect at really describing or knowing what it ends up being. But it's still spirituality and divinity and it's all good and you shouldn't matter which way you follow it. Even if it's nature, it's all the same thing but it's not cheapened, reduced to chemicals, reduced into neurosenapses and reduced to secularism. All the paths of spirituality are spirituality and they all point you to something good. We just don't totally know what it is. Yeah, it could be.

1:24:12I'm sure you go there. I'm open to that conceptually. Okay. I would call it a problem right now. So I'm still very active in codifying and putting words to and expressing my own deconstruction. The reasons I knew the reasons I did believe and now I'm coming in terms of the reasons that I don't believe certain things. Right? So that deconstruction is an active ongoing part. The idea of something else replacing that. In other words, maybe, you know, I think what I'm in the middle of doing right now and I've done videos on this is I'm not trying to replace Christianity with another spirituality. I've already done that once. Right? And maybe I will do it again. Maybe there will be something that replaces it, but I'm actually okay and learning to celebrate my uncertainty. And so I am no longer emotionally attached to replacing Christianity with something else that must be true. I am fine no longer having Christianity or a belief system.

1:25:19Or a belief system for that matter. And I never thought I would get there, but I'm pretty comfortable right now. I'm pretty comfortable in my uncertainty. I'm pretty comfortable without a belief system to follow. I'm okay with that. Tell us, Advocate, what if somebody says you're trading down? You went from having this theophany that inspired you that organized your life, gave you meaning and purpose, and that was beautiful and felt eternal. And now Britt Hartley has made it so you viewed all his chemicals and synapses and it's all secular. And now instead of having certainty and confidence and meaning and purpose, you're just like a rudderless boat. Yeah. Being tossed about the ocean. What's your response to someone that says, brother, you've traded down in every aspect. Yeah, and I've been told that. Right. So you're not the first one. Right. This is this is this is certainly a common theme. I'm not telling you that. No, no, I understand. Yeah. But I mean that that positing that is an option, right. And what I would say to that, and this is a guy's a work in

1:26:24progress. And I often say this phrase, as of today, in this conversation, I will tell you that I value I value truth more than community or comfort. Not saying that I found that truth, but I value the pursuit of that truth more than I value community and comfort and tribal certainty. And I've determined that and warned buzzies. And I value it more than that. So my my pursuit of where they're at whatever that truth might be and living in that uncertainty is is more authentic for me as a human than for others who require the religious certainty and the community. There have been a lot of studies done on this that that there's an argument to be had and certainly I think a strong one that some people require religion. Yeah, I think they do not they do not live well with uncertainty. I think it's most people. And then I would argue it was me

1:27:27and maybe it still is me. Yeah. Maybe I'll find myself incapable of just living rudderless as one might say without a belief system. But for right now, I found I found a tremendous amount of solace and where I am. As of today. Yeah. So you don't feel like you traded down. No, I feel like I went through a tremendous crisis. I do miss the certainty. But I could never go back to that. Like and when let me be careful when I say that, like I could be I could be plausibly convinced Christianity is still real. Right. So maybe there's another denomination or another theological paradigm or maybe Orthodox Christianity might reach me and ultimately Jesus reenters my life. But it would not be it would not be the evangelical Christian version of that faith any longer. I am very confident of that. Yeah. I think Christianity certainly on the table. Right. I haven't thrown that baby out.

1:28:33What I am no longer convinced of is the evangelical Christian version. And I do question the existence of a God now. I'm not convinced there is a God. But I am very open to that. When I say I'm a non-resistant non-believer, I'm very open to the concept of a God. I've just not been shown the evidence that would cause me to be convinced that there is one. Yeah. And I actually am very happy to there for there to be one. I'm of the belief and I use that term intentionally that everyone's a agnostic. Even though they won't use the label. Yeah. Nobody knows. I've never met anyone who really knows. No, it doesn't. They say they know. They think they know. But I thought I knew. And I said I knew. And I've never met anyone who like if you scratch and ask and like, wait, how do you know? And they say, oh, I feel it. I'm like, oh, well, you don't know. And then if they say, oh, I saw God. I'm like, but how do you know that was a real versus a dream versus a vision versus mushrooms versus. I'm an impressed brain does. I am utterly impressed with testimony now. Yeah.

1:29:38I am. Yeah. I'm just it is. Whenever someone starts to tell me their story, I had one. I felt it. Right. And that's not to invalidate them. I could be wrong. Yeah. I could be misinterpreting things now. So I don't, but I don't find them convincing. Really quickly, geography of belief. What's that? Yeah. I heard this actually from probably Alex O'Connor. A couple of years back. I had a dealt with it, but he did. He certainly put it the words very well that, you know, that if you're if you're living in Iran, you're 90% chance you're a Muslim. If you live in the United States, 70% chance you're a Christian. If you live in Norway, 85% chance you're an atheist. If you know, our our religious beliefs, the single most determining factor of our religious beliefs or our geography, that's not suggesting that I'm I'm arguing for something to be true or not true because of geography. What I'm saying is that one would expect like, for example, from a Christian

1:30:40perspective, if God truly does desire that all should be saved and that none should perish, it would it is it is shocking to the senses at least from my perspective that that geography plays that significant of a role in our belief systems. Yeah. And I just really couldn't unsee it once I saw it. Believe it or not, I I did that math in high school. Yeah. Yeah. It didn't make sense. So geography, I believe divine hiddenness we've talked about resurrection. What's wrong with the resurrection with the resurrection? Yeah. It's remarkable to me when I look at just how readily I accepted such a claim. And the recording we have of that resurrection and the post the post resurrection accounts are in in my opinion dubious documents they cannot be relied upon to guide us into an accurate account of what actually happened. Not to mention all of our scientific understanding of how people die and that they don't come back

1:31:44has been billions of examples and not one example of a resurrection. And if if in fact resurrection were more commonplace and we had some sort of scientific understanding or if the account of Jesus' resurrection was a testitude by more reliable sources that would be different for me. I think it was Dale it's Dale Allison maybe his name on the resurrection probably the best book I've written I've read on it. He just has a very balanced approach. He happens to be a believer but his approach is you just can't determine one way or the other based on the information that's been provided period. And I just don't see that rising to the occasion of believability. And then that's a pretty major claim to just kind of accept on the accounts that we have. Can you have a sense of peace and meaning and purpose without certainty? I would say I would say an emphatic yes. I was worried that that was not the case

1:32:47because I had relied on my religious belief to to provide me purpose and meaning and and now I'm finding you know I would say almost almost ironically for me. The level of the level of meaning that my life has now that there's no afterlife. And I'm sure you've heard this a million times it's relatively new for me. But now that this is it that this this may very well be it. You know maybe it just goes dark at the age of 65 or 80 or 102 whatever it is it's a very short time in relative terms. That's that's made this life and being present in each moment of this life matter so much more. And so my sense of purpose and the sense of import I give to each moment is far greater than the evangelical Christian perspective where really what matters is the afterlife. This this this 80 years is about a vapor a puff of wind right against eternity. And so you're

1:33:52preparing yourself for what really matters after this life. Well now I realize this may be what all we get. Yeah. And it makes it matter more to me. Yeah I agree. And and being being able to be fully present like even in this moment I live so much of my life with an agenda as a pastor every person I sat down with had to get saved. They weren't saved the the conversation needed to turn toward getting them saved every sermon every conversation every leadership role I had was all driven around this eternal destiny issue. And it created a tremendous burden. And and I was always thinking about that instead of just being fully present in the moment. Soley for the purpose of the relational dynamic of that moment. Right. So yeah there may be a lot of people that see this down the road when you post it. But what's important to me now is is my engagement with you and and being fully present within that engagement and and really sucking the marrow out of every moment because it matters. And that's a different way of thinking than I used to have.

1:34:55Love it. Um. And what about like alcohol and sex and drugs and just integrity and a moral framework now? I'm a moral subjectivist now. And for those listening I don't think there's objective morals. I don't think there's a universe out there either from God or just the universe in any way that provides something out there that is good or bad. I think those are preferences or the ways that we build our society when we say good or bad evil or just or whatever those are choices that we make. And because of that, um, that was a hard thing for me to to to come to terms with. And I'm still open to there being objective morals without a God. I think there's a philosophical argument for that. I'm currently a moral subjectivist. And so meaning and purpose and the sense of right and wrong come from our own interactions with one another. And and that's sufficient for me. In fact, I would argue that we default to moral subjectivism because we all make laws and we

1:36:00govern our societies in a subjective way, subject to the minds of the humans that are engaged. And until someone can show me their subjective morals, we're stuck with subjective morality. And it's really all we have, whether we like, we can say, boo subjective morals, but it's all we have. It's it's the practical ramifications of our society in the way we relate to one another. Yeah. And Mormonism, their prior prophets, the contradict subsequent prophets and we can't even get it right, you know, within a closed system. More than 40,000 Christian denominations. Christianity can't get it right either. Yeah. Of any of any stripe. When somebody say, are you just angry, uh, angry God? What do you say about angry? Oh, I'm no more, I'm sure you've heard this too, but I'm no more angry at God than I am of Santa or of a non-existent Satan. I don't, I don't, I can't be angry. It's something I don't believe exists. I'm just it's, it's, there's nothing to be angry at. Are you angry that you and these are just air quotes wasted decades of your life or

1:37:02gave decades of your life to something that turned out to be untrue, made all these crucial life decisions, um, and, and, and invested and influenced so many people only to then learn in your 50s that it was all wrong, you know, and, and I, I was angry at that. Yeah. And I did, and I did feel for a time that I'd wasted decades of my life. I no longer feel that way. Really? Yeah. And, and I'm still working through those emotions and the ramifications of that, of thinking differently about it. But I can say as of today that, um, if this life is the only thing we get, and there is no divine guidance that we're receiving from above, we're just going with this the best we can. Then I as an individual within that framework have done the best I can with what I've been given. At the time I was on my Christian journey, I believe that was the right journey to be on, and I believe the things that I was sharing was the best thing to share with other people,

1:38:06and the best way in which they should live their life. So as a human being, I was doing the best I could with the information I had. And now I find myself being able to have conversations like this precisely because I live that life for a while. And so I'm helping people on the other side of that coin. I was going to say relationships got way better after I lost my orthodox. And they did. Deeper, more meaningful, more personal, more vulnerable. Yeah, my marriage is way better. Because there's no agenda attached to it. There's no expectation and no judgment. And I find that to be one of the most surprising things about this process is the depth in the genuine nature of the relationships that I possess now. Yeah. They meant you're so right about that. How did you have you raised your kids Christian over those conversations like? Yeah, that took a while. So in around, I would say around that 2019, 2020 time frame when I was still

1:39:10trying to be a Christian, I still felt responsible to tell my kids, hey, dad feels differently about some things. I'm no longer a pastor. I'm not going to go back to be a pastor. I'm doing mission work right now in Liberia, but that's going to be over in 2020. And I always felt, and my ex-wife was the same way that we should be very open with them about where we are on our journey. And so I had very, very, very healthy, meaningful, deep, honest conversations about with all three of my children about my eventual deconstruction to the point where I think they would say this, although I don't want to speak for them, I believe they would say something akin to, I'm glad my dad talked to me about these things when he was going through it, rather than just telling me after it was all done with. I think the process and allowing them to be involved with it was a very healthy thing for me to do. And I think they appreciated that. And I think because of it, they were able to process it over a longer period of time.

1:40:13And asked me difficult questions in the midst of my own moments of crisis. And they were allowed to be present for me in that crisis. And they were. Kind of turns the tables a little bit to a great degree. Yeah. The patriarchal kind of authority, the Christianity gives us, kind of gets subverted, and we get, we're kind of on the same level as our kids. Just fellow humans. And you know, Rainy was the one that told me to get on TikTok. Parker was one my oldest. He was the one that told me in Christmas last year to, to just find an outlet for the way that I that I needed to communicate and that I was harming myself for not allowing myself those relationships. My middle daughter was the one that was more liberally minded. So when I had discussed it with her, she was very matter of fact and appreciative and had her own perspectives about things. I am very proud of the three of them. And very thankful that they were not only open to having

1:41:14the conversations, but were engaged in those conversations. That's beautiful. Yeah. What have you said when people, and you've alluded to this in our interviews today, what have you said to people when they've come to you and said, my faith was based on you. You converted me. How far you fall? And I used to look up to you. How dare you? You betrayed me. You betrayed your faith. What do you say to people who are still believers? Who you influenced? Yeah. So the ones that have come to me, it depends on how they approach it. Right? There have been some times where I think it's been appropriate for me to say, your responsible is an adult for your own journey. I'm responsible for mine. And I'm responsible for the things that have come out of my mouth and the actions that I've taken. But at the time, I thought, as you still do, that I was speaking the truth. And now my decision to leave that faith is a decision I'm making for myself as an adult. And you can think that I'm betraying you or betraying God or

1:42:15betraying the church. And you have a right to think that I don't believe that to be the case. I appreciate that you have your opinion, but I don't take responsibility or own that opinion. That's yours. For those that are more distraught and saddened and will email me with tears or message me or try to communicate with me, I was trying to reach more of them, but now it's gotten to be impossible. I just, you know, there's just too many of them. And so I try to be more overt in some of my videos about just describing where I've come from, why I'm where I am right now, so that hopefully my videos will help them. But I do feel very, and maybe I'm wrong about this. I'm still in process, but I do feel very comfortable right now in the fact that every single human being is on their own journey. And they literally are truly doing hopefully the best with what information they have at the time. And right now, I no longer am convinced that Christianity is true, and therefore I can't pretend to believe something I don't believe. And I am, I therefore wake up

1:43:17unconvinced. And because I'm unconvinced of Christianity, I have to live another way until I become convinced of something else. And you've already addressed this, but if somebody says, yeah, believe or not believe whatever you want to believe or not believe, but why do you have to go spoil? Like Christianity pulled you out of the gutter. Why are you not going to spoil other people's Christianity and risk them falling into the gutter because you contributed to stealing their faith from them by speaking vocally about historical criticism or problems at the Bible or whatever. Yeah, I tell them that I'm not here to de-convert anybody. I'm not speaking out against anything. People may view that I'm speaking out against it in this video. I don't believe that's the case. I believe what I am doing is being critical of a version of Christianity that I no longer believe in that I espoused. And I feel as I was responsible for speaking those things from stage, I'm also equally responsible for saying what I believe now that I that I was wrong. And if I truly feel that I'm wrong, I think that's the responsible thing to do. Not to stay quiet, huh?

1:44:22Yeah, and people certainly vehemently disagree with me on that. There's the, you know, I've been using this metaphor of like Truman show, the Matrix, the village, Tangled, the Wizard of Oz, there's so many instances. It's Plato's cave, this metaphor that there are these wise elders that realize that humans won't be good without myth and a fake God and morals tied to eternal punishment and, you know, the idea of prophets that talk to God and you do what the prophets say and by the way, pay 10% and don't masturbate. You know, that's that's like how civilization has come to where it is. And there are some who may not even be believers, but they're like shh, this is the best way. This is how society people need this and don't, you know, don't mess it up. It's the way we have order and laws and family and raised kids and don't mess with that because it's,

1:45:28it's yeah, yeah, there's always going to be a Thomas Jefferson or a deist or a whoever can't believe it anymore, but like don't spoil it for the rest of us and or for the better of society because overall the contribution of religion is more positive than negative. And if the world of the sudden became secular, it might not be a better place than is flawed as the world is with religion. There could be more loneliness, more murder, more chaos, less civil order without that organizing structure. So shh, don't don't spoil it for humanity. What would you say to that? Well, that could be correct. I don't think it is. Why not? For a couple of reasons. Look at how good it was for you. No question. Listen, I think I think any individual story could speak to that,

1:46:29but you're you're moving from Todd's individual story to to cultural dynamics. Those, I don't think those two necessarily meet. I think a useful fiction can be helpful for a person and not be good for society. I think those are two different, those are two different questions or different things to ponder. I would also say that that I would argue and again, this is where I'm going to, this is new for me, but I'm going to, I'm going to throw it out there just for the comments or whatever, just to, for the dialogue. I think when you look at the Nordic countries, I don't think we have to look very far. We don't have to look to another planet to wonder what it would be like without religion. I think we, we, we seem to have functioning, very healthy functioning societies, entire nations of people that are a majority non-religious and, and, and there have been quite a number of studies done on Nordic countries, for example, how healthy they are and now

1:47:32happy they are and how, how their societies function and how altruistic they are and giving and caring and selfless. So I don't, I don't think it's, for those that think that it may be a foregone conclusion that without religion, we would fall into chaos. I don't believe, I don't believe they have very strong standing for that only because we have examples of something different. Yeah. I'm still trying to weigh through that because I do think there's a, there's a non-trivial percentage of brains that are just going to be healthier and happier on religion. And I don't know whether that's 20% or 40% or 60% or 80%. But I'm, I'm, if there's one thing I can just share with you, not as truth, but just as something that keeps me up at night, is I've spent enough time with the secular world and the post religious world

1:48:34to know that there's mind-beels everywhere, just like in, in the religious world. And a lot of people lose their way. And while people lose their way and enough people end up, um, lonely or with challenges. And that's not everyone, but enough do where I'm like, man, some of you would have been better off staying in the church. I think that's absolutely, sorry, I interrupt. Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. So again, back to individuals. Yeah. I think I think there's numerous examples of people that have left religion and, and for their personalities, their own proclivities would have been better inside that religious construct or what I now call a useful fiction, but a useful, helpful, healthy fiction to live under. I, I, I do wonder what society would be like without it. I'm not willing to certainly fall on that sword. I tend to see other countries that are majority, non-religious functioning very well. And I tend to see currently

1:49:36on the global stage, those countries that are most religious are the most problematic. You know, when you look at Southern states that are the most religious Bible belt, they're the ones of the most pre, the most divorced, the most premarital sex, the most violence. They're tied directly to high control religious environments. And the more secular states, northeast, west, they have less of those statistical issues. So it's a, it's a quagmire. It really is. And you can, you can find a documentation that supports either perspective. A lot of the countries are very white. They're not very diverse. And they, um, they rely a lot on, weirdly, the national defense of like the United States to protect them. Yeah. So they don't spend a lot on their military budgets. So they could afford social, socialized medicine and social programs. And they keep immigrants out. Or the weather keeps them out. And they're small. Yeah. Easier to manage. So I, I know about all that

1:50:42and I see it. And I don't want to overinterpret what, what they might mean. Listen, I take that. Yeah. I received that. That's what I was saying at the beginning is this is a new, a new, a new discussion for me. But I do, I do find it, it's an interesting intellectual exercise to walk through, right? And I, and I also do think the last thing I'll say on that, who could possibly know because we've never had it, right? Never had a non-religious society. So it does seem that from an evolutionary perspective or societal perspective, it's, it's just kind of baked into our system. And there could ultimately be a God that orchestrated this. Right? It could be in, it could be the version of a, could be the version of a God that's, not like the God that we understand of our current religions. It could be, we could be sitting in a simulation, you know, and I, I do believe that's, well, God could be a jerk. And that's just the way God is. God could be evil. You know, one of the things I found, a question, I'm sure you've heard this before, but it, it's not been new to me, but I've been pondering it. How could, when I was a Christian, how could I have ever known if God wasn't good? How can you know of God's,

1:51:45he, how can you, it's axiomatic? It's axiomatic. He must be good. If God did it, it's good. Yeah. And if he's not good, genocide of God did it. God had his reasons, but if he's not good, how could you know? Yeah, you could, you can't. No, it's definitional. It's just, it's, it's quite, yeah, quite problematic. Yeah. Right. So I worshiped what I called a good God and I would have, I would have and could have never known if he was not good. Yeah. And that, that was another one of the, you know, dominos to fall for me. Well, Dr. Todd Phillips, you got to get to the airport. We bumped up on our second two hours. Okay. I do want to give you a chance to close for evangelicals or others out there going through their dark night of the soul. What are some final tips or suggestions? Do's and don'ts. You have for them. Yeah. So I, I mentioned this all and it'll sound a little too simple, probably for some people, but you know, time does heal wounds. At least some of them, it does take time to walk through the process of deconstruction, regardless of where you end up. The second thing is if you're going through it right now, don't go through it alone.

1:52:45Whether it's coming to the Decon recon community or finding online connection through a Facebook page or something like that, regardless of where that is, find a place to connect. They don't have a website right now. It's just it, you just go to, do you just go to the, the, the, the link is it. Say it, SKOL. I don't even know, I don't even know the address. I'm sorry. It's cool. Okay. You can just go to school.com and look up Decon recon. Okay. We'll provide a link. Yeah. I have the link for you. Sorry. Thank you. No, that's fine. I'm, there's all new to me. No, it's good. But, but the community is just a few weeks old. And, and I would say find that community. We have a scholarship available for people. If it's the, if the portability, $29 a month. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And then you just stay as long as you want. And don't have to. 65 70 something like that. Man, love it. I hope you can make six figures in a short amount of time. Well, no. I mean, I, you know, holy work. You say you work. There you go. Yeah. I, I don't, you know, it, it may be less in a week or two. Like I don't, like I'm just, there's a paywall there to try to keep because I already have a free channel. You can go hang out with another 150,000 people on

1:53:50social media and leave the comments. This is something different, right? You're meeting your TikTok channel or yeah, TikTok Instagram. Yeah. Stuff like that. See, there's plenty of free places to go. This is, this does cost money, but it provides something that's very different. Yeah. And so that was number two. Number three, I would, I would strongly tell people counseling is a good thing. I wish I would have gone to counseling and gotten help earlier. It would have saved me probably months, if not multiple years of, of, of pain and suffering. And I really, a lot of creators have also been an important part of your journey, right? Big time. Like you mentioned Damocle and Britheartly. Yeah. Damocle and Britheartly. You, John Cohen, Jason it, I mean, I'm sorry, Justin at Deconstruction zone. Alex O'Connor. Alex O'Connor. Richard Dawkins. Sam Harris. Christopher Hitchens. Daniel Danett. Um, okay. Alex O'Connor is a major player too. Yeah, he's great.

1:54:50Yeah. I'd love to meet him someday. Yeah. But yeah, so yeah, if anybody needs community, we're one way to do that to the Decon recon. You can give them the link in the description. I'd love to see them there. You can come in, hang out for a week, just see what you like about it. But that's really where my focus is right now is that community. Beautiful. Yeah. So can I mention one more thing? Yeah. Yeah. So I've, I've got a, I wrote recently a, a deconstruction guide. It's basically just 20 questions. Yeah. And it's for sale. Uh, good. And then also, but, but I'll, what I'd like to do for your audience. So that, that's something I offer out in the marketplace. There's also a, you don't need to fear hell anymore. There's another PDF that I wrote. Oh, nice. And what I'd like to do for your audience, if you'll let me is, um, I'll provide both those for free. And so I'll just give you a link for just warm and stories. And you can put it in the description or whatever. And for anybody listening right now, if you want to get those for free, it's $30, $40, but for free, um, I'd love to do that for your audience. So I'll put that together and make sure that you guys have a link. I'll accept that. If you'll also provide a, a, a paid version, because I, I think we should pay

1:55:55for things that we get value from. And I, I would like you to give people the option of buying your stuff so that they can support you. Yeah. Fair enough. And do you have a Venmo or a Zell or a Patreon? Because brother, you need one. Yeah. I don't have any of that right now. So by the time, by the time this airs, Dr. Todd Phillips, I would challenge you to have a PayPal and a Venmo and a Zell. And if you'll provide us with those links, I'm asking everybody that wants to support someone like me or pick your favorite, you know, X Religious or Secular or Transitional Creator, I think Dr. Todd Phillips deserves your support. So if you value him, go to the show notes, find his Venmo PayPal or Zell link or whatever Patreon, whatever he ends up doing, throw his money. And let's get this guy financially self-sustaining so he can make a bigger difference in his world. That means the world to me, thank you. Did not expect that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, you know,

1:56:58I do have a few things I feel passionately about. And one is that the laborer is worthy. What is it? Of his is this laborer is worthy of his wages? Yeah. Like if we can't be sustained, then the work dies. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out a way to sustain this. So don't have any. I would say it's a little bit of wisdom. Don't quit. That's my superpower is not quitting, but also make it sustainable and don't be embarrassed to ask for money and to find a way to make it financially sustainable because to help the you, I helped the financially supported Dr. Todd Phillips is someone that can help a lot more people than a Dr. Todd Phillips that's licking the bowl as we just said. So true. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Okay. So it's at Dr. Todd Phillips on TikTok and Instagram. It's the deconstructed pastor on Facebook and YouTube.

1:57:59And there's also a stand.store slash Dr. Todd Phillips. What can people get there? Yeah. You know what that'll be? Well, what we'll do with that? That'll be the link where they can, they can get the deconstruction guide, et cetera. It'll be that link and then I'll add a Patreon or something by the time this posts. All right. So that'll be the one we'll use. Well, Todd Phillips, what a pleasure. I love your entire story. You're going to do great things. And please reach out. And I and we want to support you in your ministry and your new ministry. Thanks, John. I mean, thank you very much for inviting me out. This was an incredible pleasure for me and to be able to come out and join you in person instead of over Zoom or something like that was really an encouragement to me. So thanks again, our pleasure. All right. Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories, support Todd Phillips and thank you. If you're a donor to Mormon Stories and the Obestories Foundation, we couldn't do without your support. If you do value this content and you want to see continue, you can like and subscribe, you can comment, you can share it

1:59:02with others. And you can donate at Mormon Stories.org slash donate. If you want to support our legal fund because we're being sued by the Mormon Church, we believe because we're so effective at helping people figure out their lives and find truth and heal and grow. You can support us at Mormon Stories.org slash legal as well. Most importantly, we just want you to find value in this content and we hope it's been helpful. So thanks for joining us today. Be good to each other, be kind to each other. You can email us at Mormon Stories at gmail.com. If you have a good story, if you're a good storyteller or you have a good story or both, all you can do is apply Mormon Stories.org slash apply and you can apply to be on the show where every week we're evaluating new storytellers. So please apply to be on the show and we'd love to have you. That's it for today. Thanks for joining us. Be good to each other, be kind to each other. We'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care.