Today, we bring you two guests: One is a follow-up interview with former guest of the show on episode 108, Marie. But before that Dave Warnock and Cass Midgley talk with Mark Russell about his book, "God is Disappointed in You." Marie was a hard-core YWAMmer, an extremely devout Christian and her deconversion was long and difficult. It was around 10 years ago and she's still recovering. Her deconversion came about because she started asking why certain things were true. Well, if you keep asking why we do things, you're liable to unearth some social norms that are just not very grounded in logic, but rather tradition, or even fear, or just deeply ingrained social patterns. My talk with Marie is primarily about her and husband's exploration into what she calls Ethical Non-monogamy. also known as Polyamory. She is extremely honest and transparent and cusses like a sailor. This is good talk. But, before Marie, we're going to feature Mark Russell, author of the comedic slightly sardonic book about the Bible titled, God is Disappointed in You. He also writes the comic book series Prez and The Flintstones for DC Comics. I start with a presentation Mark gives at Comicon where he summarizes the entire Bible, alpha to omega, in 15 minutes. He's in front of a live audience and uses a Powerpoint presentation so some of the humor is lost on us, in this audio medium, but it's still a lot of fun. Then Dave Warnock and I interview Mark in Portland, OR via Skype for about 30 minutes. Then we get into Marie's open marriage. My beloved cohost Bob Pondillo was not involved in either of these interviews, but he's back for next week's episode in which we interview Corinna Nicolau, who's kind of the opposite of our typical guest. She was raised completely secular but wondered what she'd missed out on and set out to search for meaning the top 4 world religions. Her experience is expressed in her book,  "A None's Story: Searching for Meaning Inside Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam." That's next week's episode. I want to talk about compartmentalization and love. Compartmentalization is a subconscious psychological defense mechanism used for the purpose of avoiding cognitive dissonance, or the mental discomfort and anxiety caused by a person having conflicting values, cognitions, emotions, beliefs, etc. I'm going to borrowing some of the thoughts I found in an article called, "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly of a Man’s Ability to Compartmentalize," on a blog called SGM for Single Black Male. But I'm also talking about how people raised in Christianity have some highly developed compartmentalization skills. One of the purposes that religions serve is to help people not think about scary things--to compartmentalize such thoughts. Death being the most daunting thought known to humankind, Christianity creates a narrative that literally enables a person to say, "death, where is your sting?" Everlasting life. Immortality. Done. Christians also have to compartmentalize eternal torture of their fellow humans. Those who concede that they believe in a literal hell have to compartmentalize that entire concept in order to not spend every minute of every day running around warning people. After that's what a good, moral person would do if they were conscious of its reality. This is why hell-fire preachers on the street are good people--they're deceived, but at least they're acting on those deceptions. They are loving you. As our the Westboro Baptist people. They just aren't as good as compartmentalizing as Christians who aren't warning you about Hell. I think it was Penn Jillette who said, "How much do you have to hate someone to believe everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?” Eternal bliss and eternal torment hang in the balance. If compartmentalization requires some mental maneuvering, imagine how much mental contorting is going on in the brain of one of your loved ones who believe in eternal life, know you're going to the bad end of it, and ha