This week I’m joined by co-hosts of the excellent fatherhood-focused Milkless Podcast, Max Valverde and Matt Naylor for another listener-favorite “I Don’t Believe in That God” episode. Max leans towards atheism, finding a personal God unlikely, while Matt feels a pull towards spirituality but questions specific religious claims.

This is actually an episode swap -- so today there is both a new Milkless episode featuring yours truly (in which we discuss the benefits and costs of religion/spirituality in raising kids) AND a You Have Permission episode with the two of them.

A major theme that emerged was the difference between specific truth claims about the nature of reality and God vs. poetic or "theopoetic" framings that resonate as meaningful and promote human flourishing, even if not literally true. We didn't see perfectly eye-to-eye on this, with Matt expressing reservations about believing things for the sake of comfort or convenience rather than evidence. (Of course, I pushed back on what counts as evidence, etc.)