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Losing My Religion

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by Joe Armstrong

5.0(2 reviews)

14 episodes

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Podcast Overview

Secular support, comfort and hope for people trapped within or leaving behind religious beliefs. A non-judgemental space for people born into a religion who are questioning their religious faith or who feel under pressure to ’keep the faith’ or remain within a religion or vocation they are losing their belief in. Encouraging people to think for themselves, trust themselves and respect their doubts. Life is short. Be you. Be free. Joe the Human Substack: https://joearmstrong.substack.com/ Joe Armstrong website: https://joearmstrong.ie Twitter @LosingMyRelig1 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbfcXAPkTT401BZuQgYSGCA Signature tune © www.louisebyrnemusic.com Photo of Joe Armstrong © Fran Veale

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Publishing Since

7/19/2020

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Recent Episodes

October 7, 2024

Journalists Should Demand Evidence Reporting Religious Stories

Journalists too often park their critical faculties when reporting on a religious story. They will report a 'miracle' as if it was a fact, whereas if even one actual miracle was verifiable, universities throughout the world would be studying such an alleged setting aside of the laws of physics. Nor should journalists give a free ride to priests, clerics or other religious leaders saying unverifiable nonsense like 'God says' or 'God told me'. Even milder versions like 'the Church teaches' must be challenged. The Church taught things in the past that it now knows are laughable and ridiculous. Journalists shouldn't be mouthpieces for the Big Lie of religion. They shouldn't collude in the Big Lie or allow professional religious people to speak nonsense without challenging them. Any school which claims to teach religious education but which then sees all or most of its pupils take first holy communion and confirmation has not engaged in religious education. It had indoctrinated children into a particular faith. People now realize that it was wrong of society in the past to allow priests, nuns and lay teachers to beat children in schools. They know that that it was wrong to turn a blind eye to the sexual abuse of children. But as a society or a species we have yet to awaken to the harm done to children's minds and thinking to indoctrinate them into a religion. It is child abuse to do so. We have awoke to abuse of the body through corporal punishment, abuse of the dignity of the child by child sexual abuse. But we have not yet awoken to the violation of the human rights of a child to learn to think for themselves by indoctrinating them into religions. Journalists must do far better than many currently do. They must interrogate the dogmas, myths and nonsense held as true without a shred of evidence that permeates society. They should not be intimidated by not having a degree in theology. As I mention in this interview, conducted by Gerard Conningham on the Freelance Forum Podcast, and reproduced in the Losing My Religion - Trust your Doubt podcast, theology is the only 'oly' about something that doesn't exist.

July 8, 2024

Joe Armstrong interviewed by Pat Byrne on Dundalk FM

Pat Byrne interviewed me last Thursday, 4 July, 2024. We discuss my dream of becoming a priest when I was an adolescent: ‘Doctor, teacher or priest? I decided to do the best of them all: become a priest!’ We chat about married priests, and coming to the realization that the Catholic Church would never allow its priests to marry. And my shock of realizing the Big Lie of all religions. And how losing religion and finding myself has been the story of my life. We also discussed the vow of obedience. ‘It was almost harder than celibacy. With the vow of obedience, you are expected to believe that the decision the Superior makes is the will of God.’ I decided that didn’t make any sense. They were fallible human beings. Yet their decisions could be detrimental for me or anyone. You know yourself better than anyone else. I know myself better than anyone else knows me. Yet you’re expected to believe that their decision is the will of God? I speak about the benefit of studying philosophy and theology. It gave me the intellectual basis for my non-belief. For instance, the first resurrection story in the earliest canonical Gospel, the Gospel of Mark, had no account of the ‘Risen Jesus’. It was added years later. I personally came to my honest judgement that religion is a Big Lie. I felt resentful that I had been indoctrinated into religious belief as a child. I never wanted to be a teacher and certainly not as a priest. I couldn’t see the point of being celibate, obedient and poor in order to teach! There were lots of excellent lay teachers out there. But after nine years in a seminary you’re not qualified to do anything. Ironically, I went into teaching and taught religious education. I loved that there was no attempt to inculcate faith in the London school where I taught. It was about teaching pupils to think for themselves. We discussed my move to England, meeting Ruth and falling in love. We’re married now more than 30 years. And I’ve written a song about losing religion and finding myself and the love of my life: So Glad I Married You. My documentary on RTE, From Belief to Unbelief, was 40 minutes. Afterwards, I realized I couldn’t tell my story in so few minutes. So I wrote two memoirs In My Gut I Don’t Believe and Saved By A Woman. Then I wondered if I could share my story in a more compact way, so I wrote a song about it. I wrote it with The Rayne and Andrea Patron. The first verse tells the story of my seminary years, which, in my first memoir, took over 80,000 words. The second verse, in one compact verse, tells the story of my next six years, that took me another 80,000-plus words in my second memoir. That one is about meeting Ruth. I found it very emotional when I first heard The Rayne singing it. ‘And,’ interjected Presenter Pat Byrne, ‘it will touch deep inside a lot of people, I’m sure, because it’s an absolutely beautiful song.’ Pat finished the interview by playing our new song. Hope you like it. Click here for Spotify Link to So Glad I Married You Click here for YouTube Link to So Glad I Married You Click here for iTunes, Apple Music and Deezer links to So Glad I Married You.

April 19, 2024

Joe Armstrong interviewed on 'The Atheist View' YouTube Channel by Scott Stahlecker

Author Joe Armstrong is interviewed by Scott R. Stahlecker, host of the leading YouTube channel Atheist View: Life without Religion (<a href='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7mNYXFXuBg'>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7mNYXFXuBg</a>). We talked about Irish rock legends U2. Joe sings Molly Malone! Both Joe and Scott are former committed Christian ‘pastors’ who no longer believe in God. They 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. They chat about Catholicism and Protestantism in Ireland and the time of the Troubles in the North of Ireland. The association between theatre and liturgy is explored, 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 Joe Armstrong's first memoir In My Gut, I Don’t Believe. His 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 Joe as a young boy and adolescent and their mutual regard. Joe discusses his difficult relationship with his mother and yet how well she took his decision to leave the 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 young men joined the Marists Fathers in Dublin in 1980 but, one by one, 17 of them left, before or after ordination. Joe retain good relationships with some former Marists, with two of them attending the recent launch of his second memoir, Saved by a Woman. They 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?) Joe is glad he studied theology. It gave him the intellectual basis for his atheism. He says: '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 many years after the supposed ‘events’ it ‘reports’ upon. A crunch point for Joe was that the Church teaches 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, that then 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, murderer priests all remain priests to their dying day. Yet the Church stops good priests from exercising their priesthood merely because they fall in love and marry someone.' Once you discard or outgrow your God belief, you realise this is your one and only life. Joe says: '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.' Scott and Joe discuss how religious belief can be stifling. Joe: '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,' he says. He speaks about his finalist award-winning RTE documentary, From Belief to Unbelief. '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.' Joe discusses his decision to leave the seminary after five years but being persuaded to stay. 'I wasn’t, at 23 years of age, strong enough to leave.' He shares about his experience of counselling and being unable to get out of his head. 'I was stuck on a fence. My counsellor said, Get out of your head. This moment, in your gut, do you believe?' Despite his realisation that deep down he did not believe, when he finally left after nine years he wasn’t automatically an atheist. '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. All notions of God are manmade. Scott and Joe praise the physicist Brian Cox. Scott has recently discovered him. Says Joe: '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.' They discuss the peculiar belief that religion is the basis of morality. Joe asks: '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.' They also note that there can be toxic religious people and toxic non-religious people and that Humanist organizations, just like religious organizations, can become autocratic. Joe suggests there’s an interesting historical comparison to be made in the origins of the priesthood within Christianity and the origin of celebrants in Humanist organizations. Here is the link to Scott’s YouTube interview with me (if you'd prefer to watch it than listen to this podcast): <a href='https://youtu.be/n7mNYXFXuBg?si=6p-_QIZGgQdDnTrV'>https://youtu.be/n7mNYXFXuBg?si=6p-_QIZGgQdDnTrV</a> 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. Scott’s YouTube channel: Atheist View: Life without Religion <a href='https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwuBjzBcGguFdkdTGZjCQww'>https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwuBjzBcGguFdkdTGZjCQww</a> Scott Stahlecker Music: ITunes: <a href='https://music.apple.com/us/artist/scott-stahlecker/467447714'>https://music.apple.com/us/artist/scott-stahlecker/467447714</a> Amazon: <a href='https://music.amazon.com/artists/B005OXS8JI/scott-stahlecker'>https://music.amazon.com/artists/B005OXS8JI/scott-stahlecker</a> Spotify: <a href='https://open.spotify.com/artist/4uwIuu9t7u2TpNsq27N8SY'>https://open.spotify.com/artist/4uwIuu9t7u2TpNsq27N8SY</a> Joe Armstrong write the Joe the Human Substack: <a href='https://joearmstrong.substack.com/'>https://joearmstrong.substack.com/</a> Joe Armstrong’s Losing My Religion Podcast: <a href='https://losingmyreligion.podbean.com/'>https://losingmyreligion.podbean.com/</a> Joe Armstrong’s Losing My Religion You Tube channel: <a href='https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbfcXAPkTT401BZuQgYSGCA'>https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbfcXAPkTT401BZuQgYSGCA</a> Joe Armstrong’s Humanist Ceremonies YouTube channel: <a href='https://www.youtube.com/@joearmstrong9965'>https://www.youtube.com/@joearmstrong9965</a> Joe Armstrong's memoirs are available in Kindle, Paperback, Hardback and Audible editions on Amazon: <a href='https://www.amazon.de/-/en/dp/B0C71Q2XK7?binding=paperback&qid=1617184162&sr=8-1&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tpbk'>https://www.amazon.de/-/en/dp/B0C71Q2XK7?binding=paperback&qid=1617184162&sr=8-1&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tpbk</a> If your Amazon links says a particular edition isn't available in your region, simply change the Amazon URL to the territory in which you're based, e.g. Amazon.co.uk or .com or .ca or .de etc.

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What is Losing My Religion?: Secular support, comfort and hope for people trapped within or leaving behind religious beliefs. A non-judgemental space for people born into a religion who are questioning their religious faith or who feel under pressure to ’keep the faith’ or remain within a religion or vocation they are losing their belief in. Encouraging people to think for themselves, trust themselves and respect their doubts. Life is short. Be you. Be free. Joe the Human Substack: https://joearmstrong.substack.com/ Joe Armstrong website: https://joearmstrong.ie Twitter @LosingMyRelig1 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbfcXAPkTT401BZuQgYSGCA Signature tune © www.louisebyrnemusic.com Photo of Joe Armstrong © Fran Veale
How often does this podcast release new episodes?: This podcast updates monthly.
Where can I listen to this podcast?: This podcast is available on 10 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
Does this podcast accept guests?: Yes, this podcast regularly features guests.

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