Ep. 18: Is Christianity Harmful? with Will Thorpe (Heretical Theology)
Show Notes
Episode Summary
How sure are you about what you believe? How do you know it’s true? Will Thorpe (aka Heretical Theology) has made it his mission to ask the difficult questions about faith and God in order to make Christianity less harmful. We sat down with the fundamentalist-turned-atheist to talk about his faith journey, why he believes Christianity is harmful, and why he continues to engage in biblical textual criticism long after he’s left the faith.
Bio
Will Thorpe fully drank the Kool-aid…until he didn’t. Growing up in mild evangelicalism, he eventually found his way into ardent fundamentalism, devoting his life to promoting what he believed was God’s truth. After quitting his job and moving to a new town simply because he believed God had called him to a specific church, his faith slowly began unraveling as he asked more questions and dove deeper into biblical textual criticism. He now calls himself an atheist and runs an Instagram account called Heretical Theology to ask the hard the questions and get people out of their certainty and comfort.
Follow Will on Instagram (@heretical_theology), Twitter (@heretictheology), and Facebook (if you must).
Quotables
“Once your belief in God causes you to believe that you’re better than the next person, then I’m going to have an issue with it.” (tweet this)
“My goal is to create doubt.” (tweet this)
“If you’re not doubting your faith, you don’t have faith—you have certainty.” (tweet this)
“The more fundamentalist someone is, the more likely they are to become an atheist later because of their passion to search for truth.” (tweet this)
“If you’re going to have a theological belief, it needs to be grounded in historical fact—or better yet, scientific fact.” (tweet this)
“The biblical texts and Scripture are not the same thing, and it’s very easy to idolize a text if you don’t have that perspective.” (tweet this)
Timestamps and References
[02:18]—Will’s faith background
[07:11]—What contributed to him choosing to identify as an atheist
[10:28]—How Heretical Theology came to be and what it was like for Will to tell the world he was no longer a Christian
[15:10]—Why Will’s goal isn’t to “convert” people to atheism, but to make Christianity less harmful
[19:30]—Why Will isn’t anti-theist
[23:27]—How Will views Jesus after his quest to discover more about Him
[28:53]—How Will envisions Christianity becoming less harmful
[36:02]—Will’s explanation of his idea that “theology without history is fantasy”
[45:29]—How biblical texts and Scripture may not be the same thing
[50:50]—Fun Rapid Fire questions
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Credits
This episode was produced by The Sophia Society. Music is by Faith in Foxholes, and sound engineering is by Joshua Mudge.
