Author Joe Armstrong is interviewed by Scott R. Stahlecker, host of the leading YouTube channel Atheist View: Life without Religion
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7mNYXFXuBg).
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): https://youtu.be/n7mNYXFXuBg?si=6p-_QIZGgQdDnTrV
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
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwuBjzBcGguFdkdTGZjCQww
Scott Stahlecker Music:
ITunes: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/scott-stahlecker/467447714
Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/artists/B005OXS8JI/scott-stahlecker
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4uwIuu9t7u2TpNsq27N8SY
Joe Armstrong write the Joe the Human Substack:
https://joearmstrong.substack.com/
Joe Armstrong’s Losing My Religion Podcast:
https://losingmyreligion.podbean.com/
Joe Armstrong’s Losing My Religion You Tube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbfcXAPkTT401BZuQgYSGCA
Joe Armstrong’s Humanist Ceremonies YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@joearmstrong9965
Joe Armstrong’s memoirs are available in Kindle, Paperback, Hardback and Audible editions on Amazon: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/dp/B0C71Q2XK7?binding=paperback&qid=1617184162&sr=8-1&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tpbk
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.