PODCAST · religion
Mystrikast
by Duncan McDonald
Discover Mystrikism: a rational, sensible, naturalistic alternative to religion. Each episode explores core principles, non-theism, and our reverence for the infinite unknown, while savouring secular moments of awe, our naturalised "spirituality". Learn to think like a scientist, live justly, and marvel at reality.
Episodes
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Mystrikast — A Synopsis
This episode offers a full synopsis of Mystrikism — a practical philosophical discipline for clearer thinking, fairer action, and natural wonder. Mystrikism begins in a small but powerful gap: the gap between what happens, what we notice, and the story we immediately build around it. A feeling…
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Mystrikast — Brute Facts: A Mystrikal Perspective
This episode takes on one of the strangest and most important questions in philosophy: could some facts simply have no further explanation? That is the idea of a brute fact. Not a mystery we have not solved yet. Not a gap in the textbook. Not a difficult question that makes everyone quietly stare...
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Mystrikast — Facts: A Mystrikal Perspective
This episode is a plain-language Mystrikal guide to facts: what they are, how we find them, how we confuse them with claims, and how we avoid fooling ourselves when the evidence is incomplete. The basic distinction matters. A fact is what is actually the case. A claim is what somebody says is the...
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Mystrikast — The Shared Burden of Justification
This episode takes on one of the most common questions in religious debate: “What evidence do atheists have that there is no God?” There is a fair question buried in there, but also a few hidden traps. It often treats “God” as one clearly defined thing, when the word can mean a personal creator…
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Mystrikast — Belief Must Be Earned
This episode is a deep dive into Belief Must Be Earned — a 20-part Mystrikal examination of contradiction, prediction, explanation, absence, and how we judge claims about reality. The central idea is simple: when a claim says something exists, it must answer to reality. Meaning, comfort…
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Mystrikast — So, What is Mystrikism?
This episode asks the simplest possible question: What is Mystrikism? The short answer is that Mystrikism is a way of trying to live honestly, justly, and with a real sense of wonder, without pretending the universe runs on magic. The longer answer is that it is trying to name a space many people...
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Mystrikast — The Unyielding Pillars of Mystrikism
This episode explores The Unyielding Pillars of Mystrikism: Justice and Honesty. For a Mystrik, justice is not just kindness in fancy clothes. Kindness matters deeply, and it is usually the first tool worth reaching for. But kindness is still only one tool. Justice is the wider discipline…
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Mystrikast — The Naturalism of Mystrikism
This episode takes a deeper look at The Naturalism of Mystrikism - not as a dry philosophical label, but as a full way of seeing, knowing, and living. Mystrikism is grounded in naturalism because natural explanations keep earning their place. They can be tested, challenged, corrected, and used....
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Mystrikast — The Trinity of the Unknown
This episode is a narrated Mystrikal meditation on the unknown, not as a problem to be solved, but as something to be respected: the open edge of reality that keeps us curious, humble, and awake. I walk through The Trinity of the Unknown: Facet one: Aweism. Those moments when reality stops…
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Mystrikast — What Are Gods?
A Mystrikal Take on One of Humanity’s Most Persistent Superstitions. This episode begins a 12-part Mystrikal analysis of the god concept, and the first move is deliberately unsexy: define the term. Because most “god debates” collapse not from a decisive victory, but from the fact that nobody…
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Mystrikast — Our Foundational Epistemic Standards
This episode is a guided tour of the Foundational Epistemic Standards of Mystrikism — the core methodological commitments Mystriks treat as non-negotiable if we want to call something “knowledge” at all. We break down R.O.V.R.R.T.E.L.F — reliability, objectivity, verification, reproducibility,...
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Mystrikast — Mindset Not Membership
The Union of Mystriks has been rethinking belonging — and the conclusion is surprisingly simple: Mystrikism works better as a mindset than a membership. This episode walks through the shift away from formal enrolments and toward an “open source” alternative to religion: no initiation, no...
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Mystrikast — The Beginnings of the Union
This is the messy beginnings of Mystrikism and the first sparks of what later became the Union of Mystriks. I grew up with religion as background noise: Bible stories in school, weddings and funerals, and the occasional childhood bargain-prayer (“help me now and I’ll be good forever”… yeah, nah)....
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Mystrikast — Meta-Dogma
This episode is a walk through a Mystrikal paradox: we don’t do frozen certainty, but we do have a core practice that we treat seriously, ongoing inquiry as a kind of meta-dogma. I’m using “dogma” in the broad sense (shared doctrine / settled view), not the rigid “don’t question this” version.…
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Mystrikast — Science & Certainty
Sometimes the most scientific sentence in the room is still: “I don’t know yet.” This episode is a narrated run through my 4-part essay Science and Certainty — a Mystrikal call for intellectual humility, especially when we’re talking about the beginning of the universe. The hot Big Bang model has...
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Mystrikast — Agnosticism: A Mystrikal Perspective
Certainty is comforting… and also kind of a liar. This episode is a guided walk through agnosticism — not as a bland fence-sit, but as a whole landscape of distinct stances with different standards, attitudes, and “burdens of proof.” We touch the classics, the modern variants, and why the same...
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Mystrikast — Our Mantra
This episode walks through Mystrikism’s Mantra as a full journey: from reality, to nature, to life, to kindness, to justice, to freedom, to curiosity, to science, to truth, to awe, to mystery, and finally to purpose. Each link is treated as a real-world step, not a slogan. We talk about: Why...
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Mystrikast — Overpopulation: A Mystrikal Perspective
To be born today is to arrive onstage late, in a crowded theatre where the exits are already filling with smoke. This episode, Overpopulation – A Mystrikal Perspective, is a long-form dive into what it means to bring new life into a world already in ecological and ethical crisis. We begin on...
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Mystrikast — Free Will: A Mystrikal Perspective
This episode tackles one of the oldest headaches in philosophy: free will. Are we genuine choosers, or are we clever meat-robots running a script written by genetics, upbringing, and physics? Mystrikism offers a “yes-and-no” answer that actually makes sense of both the science and the experience....
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Mystrikast — Emergentism & Reductionism
This episode unpacks Mystrikism’s take on emergentism and reductionism: how “the whole” can feel greater than the sum of its parts, while still being entirely made of those parts obeying natural laws. From neurons to minds, molecules to life, individuals to societies, and particles to galaxies…
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Mystrikast — What Mystrikism Means by “Man” and “Woman”
What does it really mean when someone says “trans women are women” or “trans men are men” without throwing biology under the bus? This episode dives into how Mystrikism answers that question in a way that keeps both truth and compassion switched on at the same time. We unpack four different…
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Mystrikast — Principled Disgust
In this episode, we walk straight into a feeling most philosophies try to sweep under the rug: disgust. From a Mystrikal point of view, love and revulsion aren’t enemies – they’re siblings. Love pulls us toward kindness, honesty, and compassion. Disgust pulls us away from deliberate cruelty,...
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Mystrikast — "Right" & "Wrong": A Mystrikal Perspective
What does it actually mean to call something “right” or “wrong” if you do not believe in cosmic commandments, divine scorekeepers, or moral laws carved into the fabric of reality? In this episode, we walk through a Mystrikal answer: an ethic rooted in well-being across three intertwined domains —...
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Mystrikast — Meta-Ethics: A Mystrikal Perspective
What if morality did not fall from the sky, but still was not “anything goes”? In this episode, we dive into Meta-Ethics – A Mystrikal Perspective — a deep but down-to-earth tour of what morality actually is, how we justify “right” and “wrong,” and where Mystrikism plants its flag in the messy...
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Mystrikast — The Integrated Principles of Science
This is a six-part toolkit for earning beliefs, not inheriting them. It starts with the scientific method (from observation to replication), adds disciplined critical thinking, runs claims through ROVRRTELF evidence (reliable, objective, verified, reproducible, relevant, trustworthy, empirical,...
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Mystrikast — Absence of Evidence is Provisionally Evidence of Absence
In this episode, we tackle a deceptively simple idea with big consequences: when a claim is the kind that should leave a trail, and the trail never shows up despite serious, sustained searching, that missing trail starts to count. Not as final certainty, but as honest, provisional weight against...
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Mystrikast — A Rebuttal to the Christian Case for God.
Here’s the episode where we take the shiny armour off the “Christian case for God” and see what’s actually underneath. We walk through the popular moves one by one — “necessary being” claims, God-of-the-gaps dress-ups, the BGV theorem waved around like a wand, the “DNA is a code so there must be…
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Mystrikast — Floating Freethinkers
The Pitfalls of Indecision and the Illusion of Intellectual Freedom. “Freethinking” is often seen as the mark of an open mind—questioning tradition, rejecting dogma, and following reason wherever it leads. But what happens when the pursuit of truth gets tangled in ego, pride, or the fear of ever...
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Mystrikast — Supernatural Belief: Pathology, Contagion, or Collective Delusion?
Is religion a mental illness, a memetic “mind-virus,” or a society-wide delusion we’ve normalised? In this episode, we unpack three competing frameworks — clinical pathology, social contagion, and mass delusion — then lay out the Mystrikal response: compassionate, naturalistic, and relentlessly...
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Mystrikast — Science, Dignity & the Dawkins Debate
Science, Dignity, and the Dawkins Debate — the Mystrikal way. This episode tackles the hot zone where biology, identity, and public policy collide. We keep two lights on at once: scientific honesty and justice with compassion. We draw a clean line between sex (biological, tied to...
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Mystrikast — Pausing to Be More Human
Here’s the episode where we slow down — on purpose. We will dig into a simple, radical move at the core of Mystrikism: the deliberate pause. Not a vague mindfulness platitude, but a real, practical gap between the itch and the scratch where you can choose better. We talk about training that tiny...
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Mystrikast — A Guide to Mental Illness
Mental health isn’t a simple “healthy or sick” switch - it’s a spectrum we all move along. In Mystrikism’s Guide to Mental Illness, we explore how science, critical thinking, and self-compassion can help us navigate anxiety, depression, paranoia, and other challenges without losing our...
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Mystrikast — "Spirituality": A Mystrikal Perspective
This series is Mystrikism’s straight-up, naturalised take on “spirituality” — the kind rooted in reality, earned by evidence, and animated by awe. We keep the word in quotes because we’re reclaiming it: not angels and afterlives, but the real rush of standing under a ruthless night sky, the hush…
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Mystrikast — Belief: A Mystrikal Perspective
Belief: A Mystrikal Perspective is a 15-part deep dive into how minds hold, doubt, and update ideas — not just “yes” or “no,” but the full spectrum of doxastic stances. Across the series we map belief as a working dial, from acceptance and disbelief to uncertainty and suspension of judgment, and…
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Mystrikast — About Us & Our Core Principles
Mystrikism is a sensible, syncretic philosophical discipline for people who love evidence, ethics, and wonder — without the supernatural. This show explores a naturalistic identity that blends the best ideas from philosophy, science, culture, and any rational insight that holds up under scrutiny....
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Mystrikast — Why Are We Conditional Non-Believers?
“Why Are We Conditional Non-Believers?” lays out, in plain language, why Mystriks hold a sceptical line until claims clear real evidence. It walks through the usual reasons people give for belief — personal experiences, miracles, visions, “meaningful” coincidences — and shows how psychology,...
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Mystrikast — Embracing Mystrikism: A Life of Wonder and Integrity
Mystrikism is a life stance that pairs scientific honesty with compassionate justice — head and heart working together. This episode walks through what that actually looks like day to day: aligning beliefs with evidence, rejecting superstition without losing wonder, and making ethics practical,...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Discover Mystrikism: a rational, sensible, naturalistic alternative to religion. Each episode explores core principles, non-theism, and our reverence for the infinite unknown, while savouring secular moments of awe, our naturalised "spirituality". Learn to think like a scientist, live justly, and marvel at reality.
HOSTED BY
Duncan McDonald
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Mystrikast have?
Mystrikast currently has 37 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Mystrikast about?
Discover Mystrikism: a rational, sensible, naturalistic alternative to religion. Each episode explores core principles, non-theism, and our reverence for the infinite unknown, while savouring secular moments of awe, our naturalised "spirituality". Learn to think like a scientist, live justly, and...
How often does Mystrikast release new episodes?
Mystrikast has 37 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Mystrikast?
You can listen to Mystrikast on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Mystrikast?
Mystrikast is created and hosted by Duncan McDonald.
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