My guest this week is Joel Furches. Joel is a psychologist researching topics of religion. He has a BA in psychology an MA in education, and he is working on his PhD in Behavioral Analysis. He he has focused on conversions and deconversions and has written a well researched article entitled: Why Do Christians Become Atheists? A Case Study. Joel and I discuss his research and walk through his model of deconversion. We discuss the “Market place of ideas” and “The Christian Bubble.” We define the terms disaffiliation, deconstruction and deconversion. Joel’s advice for Christians who are seeing more deconversions: [What] I would say to Christians in general is that it is not their responsibility to re-covert [the deconvert].
They have not failed because this person deconverted and they will probably not succeed in re-converting them.
It is to respect the person who has deconverted, respect their experience. Give them the right that any other human being would have which is to defend their views. And interact or engage in those views as important.
Links Joel’s Website:
https://joelfurches.com/ Switching Sides
FB: https://www.facebook.com/groups/416964269222311
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SidesSwitchingWhy Do Christians Become Atheists? A Case Study
https://hubpages.com/politics/Why-do-Christians-Become-Atheists-A-Case-StudyPerez, S. and Vallières, F., 2019. How Do Religious People Become Atheists? Applying a Grounded Theory Approach to Propose a Model of Deconversion.Secularism and Nonreligion
http://doi.org/10.5334/snr.108 Interact Deconversion How To
https://gracefulatheist.wordpress.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/ Attribution "Waves" track written and produced by Makaih Beats
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Makaih_Beats  Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/