Guest: Dr. Marlene Winell , author of “Leaving the Fold,” and founder of journeyfree.org.  Marlene was the daughter of Christian missionaries in China with the Assemblies of God.  She left Christianity later in life due to the sexism, the notion of original sin, the dichotomy of saved and damned, and the broken promises within scripture.  She now counsels people and leads retreats for those damaged by religion.  She calls it Religious Trauma Syndrome or RTS.  
Leaving one's religion can be a difficult, painful and lonely pilgrimage, but the payoffs are great.  As Marlene writes in her book, “…there was no turning back. The mental and emotional doors to the future had been opened. The honesty and gut-level confrontation with my humanness - the good, the bad, and the ugly - was delicious.”  
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 This show was taped on February 28th, 2015. 
 Credits:

"Towering Mountain of Ignorance" introduction by Hank Green https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3v3S82TuxU
"Never Know" by Jack Johnson
“Fix You” by Coldplay
 
We discussed:
Religious Trauma Syndrome
Christian Fundementalism
The Jesus Movement
Calvary Chapel
The perpetual urgency of the return of Christ
(aka Bad Prom Date)
The pain of leaving religion is correlated to the degree in which one was invested in it
Shattered Assumption Theory
Walt Whitman – Song of Myself
Quote from Charles Eliot Norton: “One may sigh for all that one loses in giving up the old religion…but the new irreligion is the humaner, honester, and simpler thing, and a affords a better theory of life and a more solid basis for morality.” 
8 Logical Fallacies That Fuel Anti-Science Sentiments
exchristian.net
journeyfree.org
 
extra:
Marlene’s open letter to Sarah Palin 2008