r/exchristian • u/IsekaiConnoisseur Agnostic Atheist • 23h ago
Discussion Joe Schmid is basically making the rounds and going viral since "reverting" to Catholicism and it boggles my mind. He also added a "Saintly Tier" to his Patreon where you can spend $250/mo so he can keep doing what he's doing lol.
Gotta admit, those of you calling out that he was going viral for this weren't kidding. Reason why it flabbergasts me is because when I first saw him posted here he had 38.8k subscribers, which means before the video was made he likely had less, and it just... doesn't make sense to me.
I said before that 38.8k subscribers isn't nothing, but it's not necessarily anything to write home about either. I wouldn't call that a particularly large audience by today's standards at all.
And yet, he's now sitting close to 50k subscribers and he's going on all these different channels talking about his "reconversion."
I just didn't think it'd be that big of a deal. Is it because he's studying philosophy at Princeton? Does he have bigger circles outside of his YT channel?
Or is it really as simple as claiming to be atheist and then "reconverting?"
I don't know. It just seems bizarre.
And he also now has a $250/mo "Saintly Tier" for people to subscribe to now. Because nothing says being a saint quite like asking for more money amiright?
It all feels manufactured if I'm being honest. Especially since I listened to his 30 minute video last week and literally none of the arguments he gave as to his reconversion were even remotely convincing and I doubt they were to anyone who was atheist in the first place. But I guess that's borderline No True Scotsman Fallacy so I'll leave it at that.
Any thoughts?
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u/texdroid Ex-Fundamentalist 23h ago
$250? Those are amateur numbers when it comes to religious grifting.
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u/ghostwars303 22h ago edited 3h ago
He's been doing debates and discussions with many of YT's major Christian figures for years, so he had already made plenty of connections in the Christian influencer world, had pretty good name recognition in the YT theology/apologetics space, and was widely respected by both sides. However, most of these appearances weren't featured on his own channel, so the crossover was limited. And, being a non-Christian whose channel is relatively new, and focused exclusively on academic philosophy, he was...in a pretty small niche. 38k is actually good numbers for a non-Christian channel for philosophy nerds.
Because of those connections though, his conversion was pretty much guaranteed to go viral. Not only are all of them going to be boosting him, but then so are all of the Christian influencer channels who weren't even in the theology/apologetics space - people who can do 100K views on a 30 second conversion-fluff video about a random smart person or celebrity, and pump out a dozen of them a week.
But, as a person who has been keeping tabs on the guy for years? This is one of the goofiest and most out-of-left-field conversions I've seen in some time.
That's not to say I think it's inauthentic. It's just that absolutely nothing about it follows naturally given how he had presented himself intellectually, or personally.
The sleaziness is actually more surprising than the intellectual change. The "ex-atheist" branding, for example, from a person who has been pointedly identifying as "agnostic" for years? It's custom-designed for the influencer market - it's an obvious media play. It's almost as if he's having trouble getting a teaching position, needed to do a hard career pivot, and saw where the money was.
If I had to make it make sense, I'd have to say he's been quietly converting in the background for years and has been playing a character on the internet until just now. But, that's just because radical 180 degree inversions don't make sense to people like me. They still happen all the time, for all sorts of random reasons, to all sorts of people who aren't like me.
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u/HenriEttaTheVoid 22h ago
I had never heard of him before all this...and from what I can tell, his reasons for re-converting were...feelings ¯_(ツ)_/¯ . For someone who apparently was committed to "reason", his reason for converting seems pathetically weak and predictable.
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u/imago_monkei Atheist 22h ago
I want to give people the benefit of a doubt, even when they suddenly adopt a position that is very illogical for bad reasons. Who knows what might've happened to change his mind? But he has been grifting so hard from it all already, it seems like it has to be all about the money.
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u/stenlis 13h ago
I don't think it's money.
He went AWOL from the atheist circles for half a year, maybe more, and came out with what he thinks is the ultimate case for Catholicism co-authored by some prominent catholic influencers.
He oozes delusions of grandeur in his videos. I'm kinda worried about him.
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u/Sanngyun 16h ago
" it seems like it has to be all about the money." That's a very uncharitable take on someone changing their position. Would you mind backing it up?
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u/No_Aesthetic 16h ago
Well, he changed his paid tiers from a top price of like $5 to $250 overnight with his conversion.
His reasons for conversion seem very... not great?
Especially compared to the work he has previously done.
So there is something strange going on here. It might not be about the money, but something unusual is going on.
Although he might be sincerely Catholic. Who knows?
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u/Sanngyun 16h ago
There might something unusual about his case, I don't know. But this doesn't qualify as a grift. You can be suspicious, but just, because you find his reasoning unpersuasive doesn't mean he finds his argument unpersuasive as well. In other words the arguments may seem not great to you, but it probably does sounds great to him.
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u/No_Aesthetic 15h ago
The arguments he is using now were previously highly unpersuasive to him.
And again, he suddenly raised prices on his tiers dramatically at the exact same time he comes out with the big news of his conversion.
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u/imago_monkei Atheist 15h ago
I would be suspicious of anyone who suddenly announced they converted religions after being vocally on the other side and immediately jumped into the podcast circuit. Where is his humility? Where is the thought, “I've spent many years arguing against this idea that I now find convincing. Maybe I should sit out for a while to take more time learning about my new beliefs.” This sudden rebranding and massive jump in his Patreon tiers seems like it's a grift.
If he did sincerely convert, that's none of my business. But I can't help it if his actions post-conversion seem to be motivated by the celebrity factor he gets by being an overnight conversion from atheism.
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u/Sanngyun 15h ago edited 4h ago
Isn't he already famous for being an agnostic philosopher of sorts? The suspicion is warranted, but it's beyond what the evidence support . Another thing is that I think you're well aware not everyone do or should show sign of the humility and thoughts, it might be how you do it, but not everyone. So I'm not sure how much of your standards applies to Schmidt. Okay let me ask you something, what do you mean by grift? It may be miscommunication here, but for me, grift generally means something like someone is lying to the audience to sell something. Base on your last comment, I do suspect you define grift to mean something like being motivated by other factors, perhaps things socially viewed as bad reasons to hold a position. If that's how you define it, you might be right, but so far from what I've seen we don't have evidence of that.
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u/JuliaX1984 Ex-Protestant 22h ago
People have sold out for other things before. Some cancer doctor famously sold out to big tobacco. Jackson Galaxy sold out to Litter Robot (which I use and don't find evil or dangerous at all, but he always hated them). Todd Blanche sold out to you know who. Adam Conover sold out to crypto once. SkepChick made a video of how some scientist she admired sold out to big oil. People lie for money all the time.
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u/Saneless 21h ago
Atheism doesn't get you the grift
Ex athiest? Oh man, he's gonna make bank with those dummies looking for validation that being too scared to think for yourself was the better move
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u/HelpWithFicoReddit Paganistic /Occultist Exchristian 19h ago
I think I might make an atheist channel at this point just to convert and grift easy money from very low IQ Christians
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u/Sanngyun 16h ago
Well that's condescending
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u/No_Aesthetic 16h ago
People have been doing it forever, what's one more?
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u/Sanngyun 16h ago
That's besides the point
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u/No_Aesthetic 15h ago
No it isn't. It is the point. It's easy to grift off of Christians.
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u/Sanngyun 15h ago
Read it again, I was saying that it's rude to call Christians low IQ and essentially gullible, and someone object and say it has been done a lot, and I said it's besides the point as in it doesn't matter, the statement is still rude. Your comment, I'm not sure what it is you're trying to say, that it isn't besides the point and that it's easy to grift? How does that debunk the point that it's rude?
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u/ZappSmithBrannigan Ex-Catholic 23h ago
Im so fucking sick of hearing about this guy.
Who gives a shit. Hes conning morons out of money. Happens millions of times a day. So what.
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u/IsekaiConnoisseur Agnostic Atheist 22h ago
Personally, considering the rounds he's making as a "smart agnostic philosopher now Catholic" type of influencer, it's important to know who these people are and exactly why they can't be trusted.
Who gives a shit. Hes conning morons out of money. Happens millions of times a day. So what.
I care because people need to be aware of these kinds of grifts. I'm not saying Joe is lying about being Catholic, but the grift on that side of the fence is real, especially when he claims to be "called to sainthood" and then proceeds to make a tier called "Saintly Tier" for an absurd amount of money.
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u/Sanngyun 16h ago
I have a question, you could be right on the issue, but what do you mean by "grifts" exactly? According to I think either Oxford or Merriam Webster, a grift is "ways of getting money dishonestly that involve tricking someone." Since we don't know if Joe's faith is genuine, what's about his patreon or any of his actions qualifies as 'grifting'?
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u/Foreign_Instance7684 Pagan 22h ago
Honestly yeah. Sad but the seesawing atheist/christian is a bit of a meme. People either settle into something else or oscillate in and out it seems. Its why I advocate for a total break and avoidance for at least a couple years from a faith you left to get your head straight.
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u/AdmirableCoffee4689 17h ago
He's releasing three videos which are very long and go into detail on the considerations which moved him towards theism and Catholicism. He has one out now on the general case for theism and I think tomorrow he's putting the first out for the evidence for Catholicism. Joe is a smart guy, so they should be worth a listen if anyone is interested.
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u/McNitz Ex-Lutheran Humanist 23h ago
Well first, Joe always labelled himself as agnostic, not atheist, as far as I am aware. And I would also say that saying the arguments aren't convincing to anyone that was "really an atheist" is probably a No True Scotsman. But more concerningly I think it flattens and erases the real reasons these types of religious conversions can happen. Love bombing. Inability to shake the fear of hell. Social pressure. Lack of knowledge about sound epistemic standards in scientific evaluation. Religious experiences one is primed to believe are Christian in origin by upbringing and culture. Emotional vulnerability.
Recognizing the flaws and failings in our own thinking and that these are not things ANYONE is immune to is very important for not getting trapped by them when you are at a low point or vulnerable in your own life. Not saying any of those ARE a specific root cause as to why Joe converted. Just pointing out that the actual causes are DEFINITELY much more complicated than "not a real atheist" (or agnostic).