"How much do you have to hate somebody NOT to proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that..." - Penn Jillette
The "I'm A Loser" episode happens once a month at the end of the month...You send me stuff, and we discuss it:
One of our ANONYMOUS Losers "Kyle" sent this Penn Jillette video to me:
Famous magician and infamous atheist Penn Jillette chats about a religious sharing their faith (proselytizing) to him. This video is fascinating to me!
I've been searching out the idea of love for a few years now. I used to be a person who aggressively looked forward to sharing with others my way of seeing and doing things, not only through religion but life. I believed it would help them; I defined it as "loving them."
I did this arrogantly...believing the way I did things was the best way and that it would help the world if they did it my way too. Wow, What an idiot.
I'm not sure I believe this anymore. I ran empty to the point of exhaustion hustling around telling people about my perceived truths that I believed if they accepted and lived my way, it would help them. I got tired of only seeing the world through my lens. Got sick of carrying the weight of OF MY WORLD on my shoulders. My greatest relief came through a realization that my way was simply that. My way.
I started feeling so much freer when I said to myself, "Fuck it, maybe this is all just for me. I'm gonna just live my life my way and stop trying to get others to join me."
This was a revelation to me! That I could stop trying to control the world and just love the world the way and was, and go to work on me! Live out my convictions without having to put them onto others. Not only did I become freer, but I also became more compassionate of others, a better listener, a better learner.
My struggle with defining love comes to these questions worded in different ways...
Is love defined by me when I give it to others? Or, is love to be defined by the recipient?
Is showing love what I perceive it to be? Or is how the receiver of my love the definer of love?
WHAT DO YOU THINK? LET US KNOW...
Greg is a straight edge, teetotaler, so I brought a peace offering of Bundaberg Root Beer. He is also is an award-winning champion speaker who makes people laugh while inviting them to think. He is a bit of a renaissance man to me because he is also the lead singer of the band Trial, Activist, Philanthropist, Entertainer, Keynote Speaker, Film Writer, and Producer. The list could go on because the guy is doing all sorts of amazing shit. The fact that I got to sit down with him and record two episodes was an absolute privilege.
We caught Greg right before his annual trips to Rwanda and Uganda. Among all the things he does, he makes time to travel around the world to places of human trauma to see and study how people and culture respond to trauma. Taking others along and asking, "Why do places once ruled by dictators become shining examples of a solid economy?" Taking note, to pay attention to the people's need of a dictator in the aftermath of trauma. Our human need to have people rule over us is a fascinating study.
Raised Reformed Jewish, he left the faith immediately after fulfilling the family obligations of bar-mitzvah. He's an atheist, and once again I get to sit and learn from not only his extensive life study of Ernest Becker, a Jewish-American cultural anthropologist, and writer. Who is noted for his 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial of Death. But also from his life experience and stories from traveling the world as an activist.
As a kid, Greg was kicked out of Jewish school and declared "a menace to education" by the Newtown Connecticut Jewish Board of Education.
Greg is also the Co-producer and Co-writer behind Flight From Death: The Quest For Immortality and The Philosopher Kings, two award-winning documentaries that look at how we see ourselves, the people around us, and ask how we are to live in an increasingly complex world. He offers presentations on each of these films for universities, theaters, and conferences worldwide.
We Chat with Greg About:
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"Whenever I see someone, and they're super detached from reality and their solution to their problems are to add to someone else's problems...I see Republican." - Taylor Nelson
"The way people view politics is changing. Ideas and what we find most important are fracturing." - Taylor Nelson
Warning! Anyone who listens to this will have their IQ drop but their life enhanced. You may thow-up...(But laugh historically). You should probably be drinking with us to enjoy it fully.
Seriously! Life happens in moments not plans. Taylor and I love each others company and sit down to more drinks, ridiculous drunk conversation, and random laughter at the stuff of the world. These feel good episodes, full of life, full of booze, full of fun.
We try to avoid any depth to the conversation, but in the end, we fail miserably.
We Chat with Taylor About:
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"I have all the defects of other people, yet everything they do seems to me inconceivable."
- Emil Cioran, Romanian philosopher, The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
This episode is the roots of the Losing Our Religion podcast. It's conversations like this that led to the idea of recording and sharing the beautiful coming together of humans with humans.
When Taylor and I first met, we had nothing in common. I had just resigned the pastorate, left everything I had known, and given up on the idea of Christianity as I knew it, and certainly institutional religion as a whole.
Taylor did a great job of skeptically welcoming me into his world and life. At first with a handshake, then with a smile, then one night with a philosophical barraging of the denial of God and how stupid I was for believing in it. (He probably doesn't remember this event, or want me sharing about it.) But it happened, and I knew that night, that we'd be long time friends.
Part Deux of the post-Live Podcast Recording from West Hollywood, Los Angeles. Jonathan, Taylor, and I spend time transparently talking about how much we loved the experience of the live show while ironically I was shitting bricks the whole time.
A wrap-up episode where the guests of the podcast sit down with and talk out our therapeutic process of losing our religion along with audience participating in the conversation. We discuss the experience and play some clips from the live show.
We get into some things here that we didn't address in the show. Do we regret our past ministry days? Do we feel it was a total waste of our lives?
You'll enjoy listening to this laughter, tears, and transparent honesty of three ex-pastors finding their way in this world after leaving the ministry, going back to childhood dreams, becoming stand up comics, selling underwear, and starting podcasts.
Therapeutic Hilarity will be released in its' full, transparent, unedited entirety as a bonus episode directly after this one.
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