Unveiling the Playbook: The Threat of Religious Fundamentalism

When a fundamentalist Christian is preaching against abortion, don’t point out how many babies God killed in the Bible!

Sean’s Monologue: Book Banning in America

Our guest today is Mark Alsip, a computer scientist, freelance science writer, and the founder of Bad Science Debunked, a skeptical science blog. Mark is here with us today to talk about a personal history that is quite unexpected for a man of his profession - being raised in and indoctrinated into a fundamentalist Young Earth Creationist sect. He went through decades of trauma due to the conflicts between pseudo-scientific church teachings and the world of reality that was revealed to him through his love of science. After Mark left religion completely, he thought he’d be able to leave his past behind him and move on, but then fundamentalists insisted on forcing religious dogma into our government, our laws, our schools, and other secular places. Mark felt it was his duty to fight back, so he wrote the book Journey to Reason: Walking Away From Young Earth Creationism and Religious Fundamentalism.

In this episode, Mark and Sean discuss critical thinking vs. religious thinking as they swap amusing stories about growing up under the tutelage of Bible-thumping adults. They talk about how prayer is like “flipping a coin and calling it after it lands” and how religions quell logical questioning when they label disagreement with doctrine as a “sin.” Mark explains the beliefs of his childhood religion and how it sucked him in with scare tactics, such as a propaganda movie that made a whole audience of little kids cry.

Sean and Mark agree that religion is not abusive in general, and that there are many wonderful and compassionate believers in the world. They share Mark’s assertion that religion is fine, but “we just don’t need it” and people should not push it on one another. They talk about how the religious and non-religious could live together in peace and harmony if the fundamentalists weren’t such a fundamental threat to our democracy.

The conversation turns to impending legislation that supports narrow Christian viewpoints, and how such influence has come about. Mark and Sean wonder where religion is headed in America and speculate on what our future will look like if Trump wins the presidency. 

Mark talks about his professional history and how it taught him critical thinking skills, he explains the relationship between capitalism and religion, and bemoans the hypocrisy of Christians who claim to believe in love for mankind while exhibiting little actual compassion for their fellow human beings. His conclusion is that we should focus on the good parts of religious teachings and reject the parts that hurt and condemn others.

You can find Mark Alsip’s book Journey to Reason: Walking Away From Young Earth Creationism and Religious Fundamentalism on Amazon, and follow him on social media:

www.facebook.com/BadScienceDebunked

www.twitter.com/markaaronky

Coup Save America is a weekly talk show hosted by Sean St. Heart that plants the mental seeds of social change by inciting a politically progressive (peaceful) coup of knowledgeable citizens to challenge the status quo. Each episode focuses on a specific issue, featuring expert guests and interviews with the people who are most affected by the problems in our country. The show uses a sociological approach to raise awareness, ponder solutions, and consider the various perspectives. Coup Save America hopes to create an avenue for our nation to reach its potential for greatness! 

Coup Save America is a radically left-wing expose on America that uses facts, humor, and intellectual wit to expose the myths surrounding the great western democracy that exists only in the heavily propagandized lore of American history-i-fiction. Each show features in-depth analysis of America’s anti-democratic domestic and foreign policies, a breakdown of the week's news and events that are either ignored or misrepresented by western media, information on the latest crimes emerging from the district of corruption, coverage of the wars and global conflicts being waged unbeknownst to the America people, and a depressingly comedic rundown of the political insanity emanating from both the left and right-wing spectrum.