Unveiling Unbelief

Joe the Human Podcast

Unveiling Unbelief

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Unveiling Unbelief

Religion, Identity, and Freedom

Joe Armstrong

Apr 19, 2024

Transcript

From Pastors to Non-believers

Hi there,

Last month, I was interviewed by Scott R. Stahlecker for his excellent YouTube channel Atheist View: Life without Religion.

Scott is an author and superb musician.

We talked about U2. I sang Molly Malone! Both of us are former committed Christian ‘pastors’ who no longer believe in God.

Deconstructing Religious Indoctrination

We discuss the negative view of self that’s inculcated from childhood by Christianity, with its emphasis on sin and the supposed need to be saved. We chat about Catholicism and Protestantism in Ireland and the time of the Troubles in the North of Ireland.

Theatricality and Catholic Liturgy

We talk about the association between theatre and liturgy; and the Catholic liturgy’s appeal to the senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. The Catholic charismatic renewal of the 1970s is discussed, and its exploration in my first memoir In My Gut, I Don’t Believe.

Faith, Family, and Freedom

My Uncle Father John Armstrong’s ‘faith story’, his contracting TB and spending 11 years in hospital and then becoming a Catholic priest. The impact of his story on me as a young boy and adolescent and our mutual regard.

We discuss my difficult relationship with my mother and yet how well she took my decision to leave my priestly path after nine years.

Ireland is compared favourably to MAGA and bible-belt America, with today’s USA having much in common with a past, theocratic Ireland. Whereas Ireland is on an educated, compassionate secular trajectory, America seems to be regressing towards a theocracy.

20 of us joined the Marists Fathers in Dublin in 1980 but, one by one, 17 of us left, before or after ordination. I retain good relationships with former Marists, with two of them attending the recent launch of my second memoir, Saved by a Woman.

Celibacy and Religious Rules

We discuss the negative view of Catholicism towards sex, sexuality and the sexual impulse; and the continuum between heterosexuality and homosexuality and how relatively few people are 100 per cent heterosexual or 100 per cent homosexual.

The negative view of women within Catholicism is addressed, with the belief that the ‘first woman’ Eve brought sin into the world and the myth that Mary had herself to be conceived ‘immaculately’ and then she supposedly conceived Jesus without having intercourse with a man, retaining her virginity ‘before, during and after’ his birth. (How can a baby be born without the hymen being broken? Or conceived without human male semen? It’s ridiculous.)

Questioning Faith

I’m glad I spent 9 years studying for the priesthood. It gave me the intellectual basis for my atheism. My faith was always predicated by an ‘if’: ‘If’ God exists, it’s got to make a difference in your life. If it’s true, it’s got to make a radical difference to our lives. But it was always ‘if’.

There is no resurrection account in the earliest form of the earliest Gospel, the Gospel of Mark. What we read of supposed ‘resurrection appearances’ was added years after the supposed ‘events’ it ‘reports’ upon.

A crunch point for me was the theology is that a vocation comes from God. I was called to diaconate and they suddenly changed the rules in the Vatican about when ordination was to take place. Formally called by the congregation to diaconate but then that had to be put on hold for five months because of the new rules. I wondered if God had called me when the congregation originally called me or if God had changed His mind in light of the new Vatican rules!

The second thing that showed me that religious faith was a Big Lie was that the Church admitted that compulsory celibacy for priests was a manmade rule. Yet it elevates its manmade rule over what it claims to be God’s call to the priesthood. Once a priest, always a priest in Catholic theology. Paedophile priests, insane priests, murdering priests all remain priests to their dying day. Yet the Church stops good priests from exercising their priesthood merely because they fell in love and married someone.

Life Beyond Religion

Once you discard or outgrow your God belief, you realise this is your one and only life. I felt angry when I realised that I had been taught, believed and lived the Big Lie of religious faith.

I’ve sometimes asked priests or nuns what if, at the end of their lives, they realised it was all BS, and that they devoted their lives to a delusion. Many know or suspect that they have. But the longer the stay and the older they get, the harder it is for them to leave.

We discuss how religious belief can be stifling. I realised I couldn’t stay because I’m a writer. I couldn’t be a writer and be a priest, having to follow the party line, being unable to express my honest thoughts, judgements and creativity.

Writing my memoirs was primarily to help me to understand myself. I speak about the documentary, From Belief to Unbelief, that I made for RTE Radio One. Doing the documentary was cathartic. Afterwards, I knew there was so much more for me to explore that I needed to write a memoir. My first memoir explored Catholic Ireland from the 1960s to 1980s, including my experiences of nine years in the seminary.

Internal Conflict and External Pressure

I discuss my decision to leave after five years and how I was persuaded to stay. I wasn’t, at 23 years of age, strong enough to leave.

I share about my experience in counselling where I couldn’t get out of my head. I was stuck on a fence. My counsellor said, Get out of your head. This moment, in your gut, do you believe?

Despite my realisation that deep down I did not believe, when I finally left I wasn’t automatically an atheist.

But I was sure that leaving was my decision. And I built my life on that.

But, having left, my head was still full of religion.

Embracing Humanism

All notions of God are manmade. We praise the physicist Brian Cox. Scott has recently discovered him. We are conscious matter. We exist for a momentary second in relation to the age of the universe. It’s exhilarating and exciting. It’s far better than made up stuff about Gods.

And it’s devoid of all the negativity and mind-warping of religion.

Morality Beyond Religion

We discuss the peculiar belief that religion is the basis of morality. Would religious people go out and rape, murder and pillage if they didn’t believe in God? It’s pathetic if their fear of God is their only reason for being good.

We also note that there can be toxic religious people and toxic non-religious people and that Humanist organisations, just like religious organisations, can become autocratic. I suggest there’s an interesting historical comparison to be made in the origins of the priesthood within Christianity and the origin of celebrants in Humanist organisations.

Interview with Scott Stahlecker

Here is the link to Scott’s interview with me:

Scott Stahlecker is an author, musician, and host of the YouTube channel The Atheist View: Life without Religion. He is the author of three books: the memoir Picking Wings Off Butterflies, the novel Blind Guides, and a self-help guide, How to Escape Religion Guilt Free. An avid musician and multi-instrumentalist, he has recorded and produced two CDs: Rainforest Dance and a self-titled debut. He also serves on the board of the Clergy Project, a nonprofit organization based in the United States that provides peer support to current and former religious leaders who no longer believe in a god.