After an excessively long break, Phil and Suzie return for a little catch up chat. We talk about our summer breaks, where we both are now in our journeys away from faith and what the future might look like as we continue to move forward and what it means for the podcast and our lives in general. The episode concludes with some random podcast recomm…

In this episode, Phil and Susie talk with Laura, a nurse, originally from WV who now lives in CA with her husband, 3 cats and a special needs stepson. She has taken a circuitous journey from Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Southern Baptist to eventual agnostic, humanistic atheism. She has a Bachelor’s in Marketing from Johnson & Wales Univer…

In this episode, Phil and Susie explore the topic of prophecy. We discuss what prophecy is, what criteria something needs to meet in order to be considered "fulfilled" prophecy, examples of "fulfilled" prophecy from the bible and determining if they meet the criteria, modern false prophets, and how the gift of prophecy has changed over the centurie…

In this episode, airing on Mother's Day (which we didn't realize at the time of recording), Phil and Suzie chat with Diane, who is a long-time Virginia resident, a mom to a brilliant nearly-25-year-old, and completely owned by a big, goofy black lab and two cats – one perfect angel and one complete ass. She adores them all. She also loves to swim, …

In this episode, Phil and Suzie talk with Sarah Miller Mott, a former preacher/leader under the Foursquare Denomination. She is a published author of poetry and working on getting her novels that she has written over the years published. She tells us all about her very interesting story, growing up Lutheran in North Dakota, how she deconstructed, b…

In this episode, Phil and Suzie talk with Darante' Lamar in an incredible, wide-ranging, and passionate discussion about his faith background, his life in ministry, what lead to his deconversion, and the impact of faith and the journey away from faith on him as an Black man and the black community. Bio: Darante’ LaMar's journey from serving as a le…

In this episode, Phil and Susie discuss the correlation between religious ideology and the ideologies of authoritarianism. This was suggested to us as a It’s a Feature, not a Bug” idea, but we decided to expand it to a full episode topic, because there’s a lot of interesting things to talk about! Thanks to one of our listeners who suggested the top…

In this episode, Phil and Suzie talk with Helen Greene, Ambassador and Fundraising Coordinator for Recovering from Religion. In this wide-ranging conversation, Helen talks with us about her interesting journey away from faith from her Catholic upbringing, discovery of paganism, and eventual deconstruction to skepticism and atheism. Helen comes from…

In our first standalone Flawed Theology in Real Life segment, Phil and Susie analyze a clip where the concept of God creating evil is compared to the realities of cold and darkness. See if you think this theology is flawed and why? Source Material: https://www.facebook.com/reel/3477048449227507Af Flawed Theology

As deconstruction and deconversion are becoming more prevalent in our world, the institutions of Xtianity are flailing to craft a response that will attempt to stem the tide of people leaving the faith, the church, and god himself. The “explanations” of why people are leaving, of course, they are not based in reality or facts, because most have nev…

In this bonus segment from episode 1, Phil and Susie talk about her cat, a fatal illness, and how it all relates to flawed theology. Enjoy!Af Flawed Theology

We are back for Season 3 and we are excited to be here! In this premiere episode, Phil and Susie catch on things since we took a break for the holidays and talk about what's to come in Season 3! We will introduce two new segments for this season, "Data Nuggets" and "It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature!" Data Nuggets Link: https://www.npr.org/2024/01/24/…

In this episode, Phil and Susie wrap up the season with another Ask Us Anything session. We are excited to have a guest cohost, Arline from the Graceful Atheist Podcast!! We really had a blast with Arline and are so honored that she spent some time with us. Her insights and answers to your questions are just fantastic!! We received a lot of great q…

In this episode, we will discuss the idea of “the soul” and how it relates to the afterlife. Is there evidence for the existence of the soul? If the soul doesn’t exist, then what does this mean for the idea of the “afterlife”. Follow this thread further to make the point that basing one’s life on the potential eternality of our existence after deat…

In this episode, Phil and Susie attempt to tackle a really broad subject, the historical Jesus. We want to be clear that we are not biblical scholars and that there is no way in the course of this episode that we are going to provide definitive answers to the questions we will be asking today. Biblical scholars have dedicated their whole lives to t…

In this episode, Phil and Susie talk with Caitlin, owner of Atheist Aesthetic. Caitlin is from Texas and she shares a lot of wisdom about her journey away from faith, her thoughts on being an "angry atheist" and how she moved forward from that stage to being happy, fulfilled, and confident in who she is and how she can live a good and moral life wi…

In this episode, Phil and Susie talk with Todd "YoyoFox" Rollenhagen. Phil met Todd through the yoyo community and discovered that he was an exBaptist agnostic with a big heart and some interesting life experiences. Todd tells his story of how and why he left church, doesn't believe in a god, but still remains spiritual and open to other experience…

In this episode, Phil and Susie "dig" into the power of music. Harlan Howard in the 50’s used the phrase “3 chords and the truth” to describe his genre of country music and many other artists have used this phrase and allowed it to be their philosophy of songwriting. This phrase is funny because most worship songs are 3 chords and purports to be tr…

One of the most challenging aspects of deconversion for many of us was the decision to reveal our leaving the faith to our family and close friends and making it public, etc. Since many of us come from Xtian households and have still believing parents, there can be some serious anxiety around the decision to tell our parents that we can’t believe w…

CW/TW: This episode contains discussion about sexuality, child sexual abuse, and other topics related to human sexuality. In this week's episode, Phil and Susie talk with Janis. Janis is a long time friend of Phil’s from his days at moderately progressive Baptist Church in VA, where we both lived. Janis was married to someone who was affiliated wit…

In this episode, Phil and Susie discuss how the volume and intensity of animal suffering in the world serves as evidence to disprove theism, especially the version of theism that purports a loving, omniscient, and omnipotent deity. Is animal suffering and the theory of evolution evidence against the existence of a loving God? We expand on the probl…

In this episode, Phil and Susie talk with Alex, who is is a recently deconverted Mormon and his story is truly fascinating!! We named this episode the way we did because Alex actually was a "high priest" in the Church of Mormon. If you ever wanted to know anything about Mormonism, you will learn a lot in this episode. Alex shares about his life gro…

In this episode, Phil and Susie discuss the concept “If god Were real”. We will discuss all the ways that we would expect a truly true God to reveal itself and how they would act. We will compare how it would be if God were real or if God were created by humans and then how God is presented in Christianity and see what lines up. We will also discus…

Prayer is a quintessential part of Xtian doctrine and is a mainstay of the life of the believer. Phil and Susie will delve into what prayer is, if it actually works, why and how people use the concept of prayer to give their faith more value/ meaning/ reality. Based a bit off of Susie’s blog post “Does Prayer Work?” which was the first post I ever …

In this extremely passionate episode, Phil and Susie talk with Robert Peoples, Founder and CEO of Affinis Humanity. Affinis Humanity is a non-profit organization strategizing to alleviate religious discrimination for secular communities in education, business, and government. Since establishing Affinis Humanity in 2016, Robert has highlighted the p…

In this week's episode, Phil and Susie talk about the concept of “magical thinking” and how it is used by believers to explain things that they just don’t understand or to explain away things that they can’t logically defend. The common explanation for explaining the unexplainable for the believer is the “providence” or “sovereignty” of God, meanin…

In this episode, we have our first international guest, Aaron from Australia. Phil and Susie talk with Aaron about a wide variety of topics, including his faith background, childhood, and significant life events, some differences between Xtianity in Australia vs. the US, music, Hillsong, and worship leading. We also dig into how deconversion happen…

TW/CW: discussion about abuse, general In this episode, Phil and Susie discuss that the idea that Xtianity is not a “religion, but a relationship” is flawed, but if believers want to maintain that it is a relationship, it’s certainly not a healthy one. We will discuss the ways the “relationship” that God has with his followers has numerous similari…

In this episode, Phil and Susie talk about the origins of morality and if it's possible to be "good without God". We dig into the definitions of morality and discuss if morality is objective or subjective. We have both of our new segments in this episode, Flawed Theology and a truly inspiring Good Human of the Week story. Show Notes and Links https…

TW/CW: This episode features audio recorded from a church service/ baby dedication. If you are sensitive or triggered by church language or church services, please skip this episode or continue with the proper mindset and self-care. In this episode, Phil and Susie discuss a baby dedication that Susie attended for her sister's child at a Seventh Day…

In this week's episode, Phil and Susie talk with Humanist Chaplain, Licensed Clinical Counselor, Coach, and our Good Human of the Week, Bart Campolo. Bart is the longtime host of the Humanize Me Podcast, author of "Why I Left, Why I Stayed" which he cowrote with his famous, evangelical father, Tony Campolo, following his deconversion from a life as…

Flawed Theology is back in Season 2! Phil and Susie chat about new happenings over the break, and we delve into the fascinating and telling topic of data, statistics and the inevitable rise of the religious “nones”. We also introduce two new feature segments “Flawed Theology in Real Life” and “Good Human of the Week” Good Human of the Week | How yo…

On this episode, Phil and Susie wrap up the inaugural season of the podcast. This episode starts with a brief discussion about the recent comments made by William Lane Craig, a popular Christian apologist, who discussed his epistemic standards for believing in Christianity. The rest of the episode is filled with Phil and Susie answering questions f…

Get ready Flawed Theology fans, it's almost the end of Season 1! For the season finale, we are doing an "ask us anything" episode!! Send in your questions to us via email, Twitter, Instagram, or on our Facebook page. Ask us questions about deconstruction, your faith journey (or lack thereof), theology, or whatever you'd like to know that might be i…

In today's episode, Phil and Susie delve into the concept of fear and how integral a part it plays in the life of a Christian. We will talk about how fear is the basis of christianity (and many religions), but also teaches its followers to not be afraid. It’s a dichotomy that we’d like to dissect and talk about. The belief system is based on severa…

In today's episode, Susie and Phil talk with skeptic and atheist, Anthony Magnabosco. Anthony has taken the concept of Street Epistemology to another level with his YouTube conversations and has big plans to take SE to new heights and to new applications. We explore what SE is, how it can be useful beyond conversations about god belief and religion…

In today's episode, Phil and Susie will ask the question, if the god of Christianity is the one true god, why is he so damn hard to find? We will talk about the idea of “divine hiddenness” and why a real deity, if they were all powerful, all loving, and truly wanted to save their creations, probably wouldn’t be so hard to find, but would want to be…

Phil and Susie chat more in Part 2 with Lars Cade, self taught rage learning expert in the areas of evolutionary biology, young earth creationism, and all things scientific. In this episode, we continue the conversation and talk about young earth creationism and why it's not possible, common arguments for YEC and how to debunk them, intelligent des…

In today's episode, Susie and Phil talk with Lars Cade about some very interesting topics. We are both very interested in science and are always looking to find people who know more than we do about a given topic. Lars is essentially a self-taught guru on the topics of evolutionary biology, young earth creationism, and intelligent design. We are re…

In today's episode, Phil and Susie delve into some of the early childhood objections that Susie had to Christianity. We will discuss the objections, how Christians might respond to these objections, and how we view these objections now as adults who've left the faith. Asking these questions and exploring these objections would be viewed a heresy in…

Phil and Susie embark on a new journey with our first guests ever on the show! April Ajoy & Beecher Reuning are an amazing married duo who graciously agreed to join us today to talk about their marriage and how they navigated the discovery that Beecher was trans non-binary and how that made their marriage stronger, how purity culture affected their…

In this episode, Phil and Susie continue their conversation about the "inerrancy" of Scripture and look to expose the errors by pointing out scientific and historical inaccuracies in the text. UPDATE: Additional Notes and Clarifications for some topics that we discussed in this episode: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O_PI3FkZQPPakIlWdSllckM5bL…

Today Phil and Susie will be talking about the claim that the Bible is inerrant, and how we can use the Bible itself to disprove that claim. We are gonna split this up into a 2 part episode because there’s so much to cover so we want to be able to really dig into this topic because it’s a fun one! Today’s episode will focus on what inerrancy is, a …

In today’s episode, we wanted to tell a little more of our stories, but from a different angle. We come from very different faith backgrounds and so we wanted to compare and contrast the different time periods in our lives and what our mindsets were during these times and talk about how even though our journeys were very different, we both arrived …

TW/CW: Child indoctrination, child slavery, child abuse Phil and Susie discuss how exposing children to Christianity as a mandatory belief system is indoctrination and has lasting effects on child development, character development, personality development, and can lead to extreme behaviors and lifelong consequences. Follow us at flawedtheologypodc…

In this episode, Phil and Susie examine and discuss the idea of biases, logical fallacies, and the difference between science and pseudoscience. Show Notes: Avenue Q clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RovF1zsDoeM Ken Ham/ Bill Nye Debate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI Counterapologetics ep 88 video/blog post https://www.youtube.com…

In today's episode, Phil and Susie discuss the core doctrines of Christianity and how logically they just can't be true. We will discuss the Epicurean Paradox and how the character of god, the "sin nature of man, and the need for salvation, all have fundamental flaws that don't hold up under scrutiny. Show Notes: References mentioned in the show: h…

Meet Phil and Susie who will share a little about themselves, their deconversion journeys and what they hope to accomplish with this new podcast adventure. Susie's blog: https://www.flawedtheology.com Phil's blog: https://philqmusings.wordpress.com/ Music "The Beauty of Authenticity" by One Man BookAf Flawed Theology