Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1143 ｜ Wikipedia Co-Founder： Studying Hollywood Cults & Epstein Island Led Me to Christianity ｜ Guest： Larry Sanger

00:00:00.820 Larry Sanger is the co-founder of Wikipedia.

00:00:04.240 He is also a philosopher, a lifelong skeptic, and a longtime agnostic.

00:00:10.260 Recently, he announced that he has converted to Christianity.

00:00:14.400 I wanted to hear his testimony.

00:00:16.420 What led to him finally accepting that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life?

00:00:22.260 He has a really, really interesting story.

00:00:24.400 And it's amazing to look at how God used so many moments throughout his life to lead

00:00:31.800 him to the cross.

00:00:33.120 You're going to be really encouraged by this conversation.

00:00:36.080 It's brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.

00:00:38.500 Go to GoodRanchers.com.

00:00:40.020 Use code Allie at checkout. 1.00

00:00:41.460 That's GoodRanchers.com, code Allie.

00:00:43.400 Larry, thanks so much for taking the time to join me.

00:00:56.200 If you could tell everyone who you are and what you do.

00:01:00.480 Well, right now, I am president of the Knowledge Standards Foundation, and we collect all of

00:01:08.000 the free world, all free encyclopedias in the world.

00:01:11.420 We do a number of other things.

00:01:15.120 My claim to fame is I was co-founder of Wikipedia.

00:01:20.220 Now, I'm ex-founder, I like to call myself because, you know, how it is.

00:01:24.940 And this is another thing that the Knowledge Standards Foundation is doing.

00:01:28.740 This is 70,000 books on a 128 gigabyte hard drive.

00:01:34.080 Basically, the classics of Western civilization backed up in the palm of your hand.

00:01:39.600 And that's just something that I've been trying to get out there.

00:01:45.700 There needs to be many, many, many copies of all the public domain books, not just one

00:01:51.960 or two on archive.org.

00:01:53.860 This is one of my hobby horses.

00:01:58.080 Yeah, amazing.

00:01:59.120 Okay, before we even get into your Christian testimony, I want to go all the way back.

00:02:03.740 I want to hear your life story and how you got to the point of helping found Wikipedia

00:02:08.820 and how your interest was sparked in all of this.

00:02:12.340 So can you take me all the way back to your childhood and tell me what your upbringing was

00:02:16.180 like?

00:02:18.200 Sure.

00:02:18.800 Well, I mean, I was born and raised in the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod.

00:02:27.520 And that's my earliest church memories come from that.

00:02:32.860 My dad was an elder.

00:02:36.200 But I asked a lot of questions sort of constitutionally.

00:02:39.820 That's just how I am.

00:02:41.900 And I, for example, I would ask, you know, well, if God has created everything, then what

00:02:51.460 caused God?

00:02:52.880 And that kind of thing, you know, those sort of basic questions that thoughtful kids will

00:02:59.120 ask.

00:03:00.960 And I was confirmed at age 12.

00:03:04.700 And but around age 16, I had a class in philosophy at in high school.

00:03:14.420 They had such a thing.

00:03:16.860 And it was very interesting to me.

00:03:19.400 And I started thinking the following summer about the basic questions of philosophy.

00:03:28.400 And I decided because I knew all these people who had messed up their lives.

00:03:34.600 In fact, it seemed to me that practically everybody I knew had messed up their life in

00:03:39.600 one way or another.

00:03:40.680 Like, my parents were divorced, my, you know, like my, my siblings, friends were like, some

00:03:48.700 of them were seriously strung out on drugs, and all kinds of things like that.

00:03:53.380 And I had talked to these people, I knew certain things that they thought, and I thought they'd

00:03:58.080 made mistakes.

00:03:59.440 You know, they were wrong about things.

00:04:02.560 Um, so I, it, I developed the very deep conviction, totally independent of religion, that it was

00:04:12.560 very important to have the truth.

00:04:15.360 And, um, so, and I, uh, ever since then, I have thought of myself as a philosopher, even

00:04:27.000 before I went to college, I knew I wanted to be a philosophy professor, um, although I

00:04:32.520 changed my mind about that.

00:04:34.600 But, um, so I, I became a non-believer, um, in my teen years, uh, a, an agnostic.

00:04:43.560 I wasn't an atheist.

00:04:44.820 I was a skeptic.

00:04:45.900 But there's a difference, I think.

00:04:49.560 I won't go into that.

00:04:50.920 But the point is that, that, um, I, uh, I basically stopped caring very much about the

00:04:58.320 possibility that God might exist.

00:05:00.960 And then, um, what happened?

00:05:05.000 Uh, well, um, while I was finishing my dissertation, Jimmy Wales, um, gave me the job of starting an

00:05:15.720 encyclopedia for bombist.com, um, which was his website, um, and that became Newpedia, which

00:05:23.880 became Wikipedia.

00:05:25.500 Um, so I named Wikipedia, I, I set, uh, many of the original policies, or at least articulated

00:05:34.140 them, um, and, uh, sort of led the community in the, and, and got, it started on a lot of

00:05:42.700 its habits, not all of its bad habits, hopefully, but, uh, a lot of its good habits anyway, in

00:05:50.400 the first 14 months of that, first couple of years, if you include Newpedia.

00:05:56.420 And, um, so, oh, I'll just pause there.

00:06:01.540 Yeah, sure, sure.

00:06:03.360 Yeah, that's all super fascinating that you were interested in philosophy.

00:06:08.020 You, you describe yourself as kind of like a naturally inquisitive kid, and you brought

00:06:13.620 your philosophical questions to a pastor when you were a teenager, correct?

00:06:19.060 Right.

00:06:19.900 And how did that go?

00:06:22.360 I just called him up on the phone, um, one time.

00:06:26.900 I think probably, um, maybe my mom or dad told me that I should do that.

00:06:33.220 Um, and, uh, I don't think it was the, the Lutheran pastor that, I think it was another

00:06:42.500 one from a different church, um, so he didn't know me.

00:06:47.060 And, and I might have sounded like a disrespectful, snot-nosed kid.

00:06:52.680 I'm not really sure, to be quite honest.

00:06:55.200 Um, but I had sincere questions, for sure, and he could have engaged me in conversation

00:07:02.680 about them.

00:07:04.340 And I, it's clear to me that he didn't want to talk.

00:07:10.600 The conversation was over within, I don't know, five or ten minutes.

00:07:16.520 And what kind of questions were you asking him?

00:07:18.560 Do you remember?

00:07:19.000 Uh, they were typical skeptical objections.

00:07:28.500 I can't remember exactly which ones, but, you know, like the very one that I, that I

00:07:34.020 mentioned before, right?

00:07:35.840 So if, if an explanation is needed for the universe, why isn't an explanation needed for

00:07:41.340 God?

00:07:42.200 I know the answer to that one now.

00:07:45.600 Yeah.

00:07:45.820 Um, but you, but you didn't then, and the people that you went to in authority weren't

00:07:51.740 really giving you an answer.

00:07:54.120 And how did that, how did that make you feel?

00:07:55.860 Because you describe in your article, that's your conversion.

00:07:59.580 Yes, you were brushed off by multiple people by, right?

00:08:03.640 Was it by your parents first that kind of made you believe that believing in God was irrational

00:08:09.960 and that you can't ask questions?

00:08:11.960 I wouldn't say they brushed me off.

00:08:13.980 I even had long conversations with my brother-in-law who, um, what is one of the other people in

00:08:22.400 my family other than my dad who had actually gone to college.

00:08:26.480 Um, and he helped a lot.

00:08:30.740 This is my, my sister's husband and, and, um, he passed away, I guess, eight years ago.

00:08:41.880 Uh, he tried, um, so you can't blame him.

00:08:46.700 Um, and I did have some conversations with him, but I, I had increasingly sort of deep,

00:08:55.480 thoughtful discussions, um, or questions rather that could not be answered except by somebody

00:09:04.440 with a requisite amount of philosophical or apologetic training.

00:09:11.200 I mean, even, even later, 10 years after that, I could have answered my own questions

00:09:15.460 from a Christian point of view.

00:09:16.840 So it was just the lack of knowledge that was the problem, I think.

00:09:22.040 You went to Reed College.

00:09:23.900 Their unofficial motto is communism, atheism, free love.

00:09:27.940 So you were surrounded by people, obviously, who also did not believe in God.

00:09:33.260 You went on to Ohio State for graduate school, also surrounded by unbelievers. 1.00

00:09:39.280 Um, but you were approached by a Christian student when you were in grad school that kind

00:09:43.880 of challenged your agnostic beliefs, right?

00:09:47.880 Yeah, he actually did.

00:09:50.220 Um, now that you mention it, that's not in my essay, but I remember having some long discussions

00:09:56.180 and I, I did like sort of, I was willing to talk about the possibility of all sorts of things.

00:10:04.020 And I remember talking about cosmology with him, you know, and what, what the universe must

00:10:09.820 be like if, if, um, you know, it has a creator that exists outside of time, for example.

00:10:17.420 Um, because there's some, it very quickly gets very deep when you start asking questions

00:10:21.820 like that.

00:10:22.320 And I remember talking about him about questions like that, but he, he wasn't really trying

00:10:27.680 to evangelize me very hard, but he made an impression simply due to the kind of guy

00:10:33.740 that he was, he was very nice, um, he's very kind, um, and, uh, so, yeah.

00:10:43.740 And, and then, well, um, he caught, he caught me, uh, uh, well, I won't say what it was, but

00:10:53.200 he caught me in a sin, um, and, and, um, I, I didn't see much of him after that, um, which

00:11:01.600 was disappointing, but, you know, um, I, I, I, I didn't feel guilty.

00:11:10.400 That's the thing.

00:11:11.120 I didn't seem like a sin to me at the time.

00:11:14.440 So, yeah, he challenged you with a fine tuning argument and that's the laws of the universe

00:11:19.200 are so precise that any small change would prevent it from supporting life.

00:11:23.080 And so that's the argument that there must be, uh, an intentional creator.

00:11:30.260 And that really left an impression on you.

00:11:33.820 Yes.

00:11:34.740 Um, so in this little story, basically what happened was a graduate student, um, who was,

00:11:47.700 sorry, no, it wasn't a graduate student.

00:11:49.860 He was a student in my class, actually, he was just a very smart undergraduate.

00:11:54.120 Um, he came into the, the, the student assistant room and, um, uh, basically wanted to engage

00:12:05.420 me in discussion about arguments for the existence of God, because that would be what we were studying

00:12:11.200 at that time.

00:12:12.040 And it was very, uh, interesting the way that he expressed, um, the, the fine tuning argument,

00:12:21.700 right?

00:12:22.300 So the universe has, um, got a certain constants, uh, scientific constants that such that if you

00:12:31.360 change them in, um, minute ways, um, then weird things happen or fail to happen.

00:12:40.580 Like, you know, atoms don't form or, or, you know, um, yes, uh, the universe is left in

00:12:48.200 a soup of, you know, material or whatever.

00:12:51.080 Um, and, uh, so everything is fine tuned for, uh, the existence of, of life.

00:13:01.920 And, um, it doesn't that suggest a designer.

00:13:05.940 Um, and I didn't have an answer to him except to say, well, you know, it might have some other

00:13:16.140 sort of explanation, which just seems kind of lame, still seems lame to me now.

00:13:21.380 And, uh, uh, I, I was, uh, although I was, uh, stymied a little, um, I didn't feel like

00:13:33.660 terribly embarrassed, but it left me emotional though.

00:13:38.760 And I don't think it was because I was unable to answer.

00:13:42.200 I mean, I'm unable to answer all sorts of problems in philosophy.

00:13:47.040 Right.

00:13:48.260 So it's not that it, I think it had to do with, with my awareness that I was, uh, that

00:13:59.220 I had just closed the door on something that might be more valuable than I was then willing

00:14:06.620 to admit.

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00:15:18.240 And you write that your marriage and the subsequent birth of your first child really changed how

00:15:31.480 you saw the world.

00:15:33.260 It kind of disrupted a lot of the beliefs that you have.

00:15:36.320 Is that correct?

00:15:36.940 Yeah, well, because I had the relatively idiosyncratic commitment to Ayn Rand's ethics, sort of.

00:15:47.700 I wasn't totally committed to it.

00:15:49.900 But according to Ayn Rand, the author of The Fountainhead, our moral obligations all stem from

00:15:59.260 our self-interest.

00:16:00.520 So if we ought to do something, if it is right for us to do something, you can explain that

00:16:06.520 in terms of what is good for you in your enlightened, as it's called, your enlightened

00:16:11.480 self-interest, all right?

00:16:14.060 And I thought that that was probably right.

00:16:19.000 I remember defending that throughout graduate school.

00:16:21.460 And then, you know, I got married in 2001 after I got my PhD and had my first child in 2006.

00:16:32.160 And I just occasionally thought, isn't it interesting that I would die for these people?

00:16:41.760 I mean, of course I would die for these people, but father wouldn't.

00:16:45.420 He's not a good father if he wouldn't.

00:16:46.960 And I certainly felt like I would.

00:16:49.880 But then I thought, if I'm willing to die for them, then doesn't that mean that I would

00:16:56.300 be doing something not in my own self-interest?

00:17:00.840 Hmm.

00:17:01.660 Of course.

00:17:03.880 Right.

00:17:04.420 Yeah.

00:17:04.980 It's obvious to me now.

00:17:06.640 Yeah.

00:17:06.880 But at the time, because I myself had sort of accepted an error, the same sort of thing

00:17:14.320 that I was wanting to avoid earlier, it was hard for me to come to that realization.

00:17:23.360 You also talk about watching the atheistic movement, if you want to call it a movement,

00:17:29.720 become increasingly bombastic and radicalized.

00:17:36.960 I would say these are kind of like my words becoming like their own kind of dogmatic religion.

00:17:43.880 And you contrasted that to how you saw the behavior of Christians, even Christians on social 0.66

00:17:49.960 media.

00:17:51.480 That's right.

00:17:52.660 Well, I mean, I grew up talking to atheists.

00:17:57.800 I went to high school and college and graduate school, talking to people who didn't believe

00:18:07.340 in the existence of God.

00:18:09.000 And they used arguments.

00:18:12.020 They actually tried to engage in a reasonably respectful conversation.

00:18:18.760 And then the new atheists came along, and they started acting, as you say, quite dogmatic 1.00

00:18:26.860 in their declarations.

00:18:28.800 And by that time, I actually knew, I taught the arguments for the existence of God.

00:18:35.700 I knew at least what weight they carried from practically anybody's point of view.

00:18:41.920 I mean, most philosophers don't think that they entail that God exists.

00:18:48.720 They don't think they're that strong.

00:18:51.940 Some do.

00:18:54.580 But they're willing to concede that there's quite a bit to argue about there.

00:18:59.940 But people like Dawkins and Sam Harris were just unable to articulate the skeptical point

00:19:13.520 of view in any sophisticated way at all.

00:19:16.880 And yet, they were extremely dogmatic and insulting, off-putting.

00:19:23.420 And I compared that to the behavior of Christians. 1.00

00:19:28.240 Yeah.

00:19:28.800 And now, this has nothing to do with the merits of the arguments, but it does make one reflect

00:19:36.520 on the worldview that you're buying into if you are a skeptic yourself, right?

00:19:45.780 Right.

00:19:46.040 It's like, at the very least, if you're going to be a non-believer, don't be like them, 1.00

00:19:50.000 okay?

00:19:50.500 I mean, so.

00:19:51.740 Yeah.

00:19:52.680 I'm curious.

00:19:53.640 Had Dawkins had any impact on your thinking up to that point?

00:19:59.520 I mean, he had had, you know, he has influence on a lot of non-believers' worldview.

00:20:05.240 Not at all.

00:20:06.120 Not at all.

00:20:06.340 I didn't even, I never was acquainted with anything that he said or did.

00:20:12.700 If anybody had an influence in that direction, it would have been Ayn Rand, you know, and

00:20:19.720 things that she wrote in the 1960s and 70s, an essay by Mark Twain.

00:20:26.520 What was that essay?

00:20:28.020 What did it say?

00:20:30.940 I can't even remember.

00:20:32.620 I, I, the last time I saw it was when I was a teenager, but he wrote an essay.

00:20:37.860 He was, he was an atheist or at least an agnostic.

00:20:41.500 I can't remember, but Nietzsche and a few others.

00:20:47.820 And, and of course, the biggest influences were like personal influences, people that I

00:20:53.600 knew, my professors, you know, who could actually do a better job than any of those people at

00:21:00.700 articulating why they are not Christians.

00:21:04.540 Right.

00:21:04.820 Even, even better than, than another one that I remember reading, Bertrand Dressel.

00:21:08.960 It's like Bertrand Dressel when he, he was a lightweight when he's writing about this

00:21:12.240 stuff.

00:21:12.880 They're much, much better atheists.

00:21:15.700 So.

00:21:16.840 And even before you were a Christian, long before you were a Christian, you did expose your 0.93

00:21:23.080 two boys to the Bible simply because you knew that it was very influential, right?

00:21:28.880 That's also, I would say, pretty unique for an agnostic.

00:21:34.300 Is it?

00:21:35.060 I, I'm not sure about that, but maybe.

00:21:37.560 I don't know.

00:21:38.140 I, maybe it's because when I think of agnostics and atheists, most that I've had an interaction

00:21:43.020 with, and maybe this is not, maybe this is not a fair assessment.

00:21:47.360 They seem pretty antagonistic towards scripture.

00:21:50.300 You could, you could be right.

00:21:51.220 You could be right.

00:21:51.800 Um, it's, I, I do think that a lot of, like, people who are into classical homeschooling

00:21:59.520 might want to assign readings from the Bible, even if they're non-believers.

00:22:04.700 Um, so it's kind of like that, I guess.

00:22:07.180 And, you know, I had a Christian upbringing myself and I, I said, no, they, they really 1.00

00:22:12.060 would be totally ignorant of some culturally important things if they hadn't read, like,

00:22:19.660 at least, like, a couple of gospels and, you know, Genesis and the first, you know,

00:22:25.260 first 25 chapters of Exodus and maybe a few other things, Psalms.

00:22:30.480 So we went over stuff like that.

00:22:32.280 Hmm.

00:22:33.400 And, um, you continue to write about philosophy and you write that your own philosophical writings

00:22:44.200 kind of left you unsettled, like your own philosophical writing started challenging your

00:22:50.020 beliefs.

00:22:50.540 Can you explain that?

00:22:51.500 Yeah, I, I wrote a series of essays that sort of dismantled some of the reasons that I had

00:23:04.700 for disbelief.

00:23:07.020 So to explain this, I have to explain, um, when I was a graduate student, I, I formulated

00:23:15.780 what I called a no concept view.

00:23:17.960 That's not just me.

00:23:18.900 I think other people call it that too.

00:23:20.480 Um, but the no concept view is similar to the positivist view, which says basically we

00:23:26.280 have no concept of God at all.

00:23:28.420 There isn't any content to the concept.

00:23:31.100 And my, my take on it was, uh, what God is essentially is the creator of the universe

00:23:36.640 and a spirit.

00:23:37.780 And he created the universe essentially with a thought, but we have no experience of thoughts

00:23:44.000 bringing things into existence directly.

00:23:46.200 It's always through the, you know, the medium of, you know, our, our bodies or whatever,

00:23:51.100 at least our brains.

00:23:52.000 Um, and, uh, so we have no conception of that.

00:23:58.940 Okay.

00:23:59.740 So then I think it was 2017 or something.

00:24:03.240 Um, I, I wrote an essay, uh, sort of riffing off of what, what had been in the air at the

00:24:12.460 time, you know, the, uh, uh, imagine that there were a sufficiently advanced, um, AI that the

00:24:23.540 singularity happened, things just started exploding.

00:24:27.460 Technology became wildly, um, uh, powerful beyond what, what we know now.

00:24:35.220 I mean, like that, uh, our technology today looks like magic would look like magic to people

00:24:40.840 of a thousand years ago.

00:24:41.920 But imagine that there were supercharged, um, development of technology over a period of

00:24:49.180 millions of years, you know, a billion years, right.

00:24:52.560 Um, from a, a continuous development, um, well, isn't it possible that, uh, we would find

00:25:02.020 the levers as it were, that would, that would bring a moon into being, you know, um, uh, once,

00:25:10.040 once all the, the space equipment were made, et cetera, and eventually maybe, you know, galaxies

00:25:16.800 and universes, um, and, uh, and, and isn't it possible that, that, you know, the brain

00:25:24.960 interfaces, um, now, um, isn't it possible that such apparatus might be, uh, controlled

00:25:33.620 with a thought?

00:25:34.680 So I thought, well, then I guess it would be, it's conceivable to bring, of course, there's

00:25:42.920 a, there's a response to this argument.

00:25:44.580 I'm not going to get into it, but, but the point is that the, the bare idea of a thought

00:25:51.040 bringing creation into existence, I thought of a way to, to, um, uh, to talk about that,

00:26:01.680 um, coherently.

00:26:04.400 Yeah.

00:26:04.780 And that was enough to, you know, I, I didn't conclude that the universe is therefore a simulation,

00:26:12.200 which was Elon Musk's conclusion, which he, he drew after that, actually.

00:26:18.260 Um, uh, no, I think, uh, that, um, that is merely evidence that it's possible that a creator

00:26:29.000 exists.

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00:27:43.480 You also dealt with the issue of why be moral and the problem of evil, which, of course,

00:27:55.320 these are things that have been debated for a long time.

00:27:57.460 And there are always questions that I have for my atheist friends that I haven't ever

00:28:01.820 gotten a good answer on.

00:28:02.940 That's not to say that no atheist has an answer for it.

00:28:06.600 But those that I've talked to of, you know, even the one that you that you articulated,

00:28:12.620 why sacrifice yourself for a child?

00:28:16.420 He can give you nothing in return.

00:28:19.160 Why sacrifice yourself for a loved one?

00:28:21.940 Why do things that are not in your direct self-interest just because they are the right

00:28:28.380 thing to do?

00:28:29.400 Most atheists I know would say that being kind or being charitable with expecting nothing

00:28:36.540 and returning is a good thing, that that is a sign of virtue, but they can't tell me

00:28:42.140 why or why beauty exists, why there are these like intangible realities that have nothing

00:28:49.520 to do with the perpetuation of the species or survival of the fittest.

00:28:56.940 And so tell me how how you articulated that before you were a Christian.

00:29:01.680 What conclusion did you come to about why it's important to be good or be moral?

00:29:08.540 Yeah, well, I'll tell you.

00:29:13.060 The the line that you just outlined there is not the one that I that I took in this essay

00:29:27.380 that I wrote.

00:29:27.940 I think it's called Why Be Moral on LarrySanger.org, if you want to look at.

00:29:32.160 It's a pretty long essay.

00:29:35.440 And and but it was important to to my to my conversion in a certain way.

00:29:43.880 I actually disagree with the notion that in order to make sense of our moral obligations,

00:29:51.700 we have to depend on an existent God.

00:29:56.040 I think that we natural we naturally have certain desires.

00:30:03.840 They are built in desires.

00:30:05.700 All organisms do.

00:30:07.980 And what we ought to do, what is meant by normative language, evaluative and prescriptive language,

00:30:16.620 in other words, saying what is good or what we ought to do is is ultimately explainable in terms of life.

00:30:25.600 So basically, without going into the details, we ought to do.

00:30:35.900 And in fact, if we're well functioning, we want to do things that are good for our lives

00:30:43.800 and for the lives of things, you know, people and animals and living things around us.

00:30:50.760 I thought that this was a natural, a naturalistic theory of ethics, and I explained it in detail.

00:31:00.860 But it's philosophers who hear this will recognize that it's a version of natural law ethics.

00:31:11.000 And when I started thinking again about the arguments for the existence of God,

00:31:17.940 the way it worked in was this, if God is or if there is a creator who designed the universe

00:31:30.740 and designed our human nature, and if basically we are made happy by following certain moral rules

00:31:43.840 and making them more likely to make them more likely to be happy when we do, let's put it that way,

00:31:49.260 that actually is evidence of the goodness of God.

00:31:56.480 So I don't say that God is necessary in order to explain morality.

00:32:05.680 I say that the fact that human nature pushes us in the direction of goodness and that the designer

00:32:15.500 seems to require that of us if there is a designer, so given that assumption, right,

00:32:23.500 that would imply that the designer is good.

00:32:26.300 So it's the conclusion of the argument from morality in my hands is not that God exists,

00:32:35.940 it's that if there is a God, then God is purely good.

00:32:40.940 Mm-hmm.

00:32:42.180 Okay, I got it.

00:32:44.160 And so coming to that conclusion and writing that essay, you write in your most recent essay

00:32:49.620 that you started to move from this kind of, you know, coolness towards Christianity to a warmness

00:32:59.220 towards Christianity as you realized, okay, connecting these ideas about morality to Christianity

00:33:06.180 and what the Bible says actually makes sense.

00:33:08.840 Can you talk about how the Jeffrey Epstein scandal plays into your testimony, very interestingly?

00:33:16.680 Right.

00:33:17.320 So a friend of mine was opening my eyes to the existence of various, call them elite pedophile rings.

00:33:33.780 Epstein was not the only one.

00:33:36.220 You can look up the NXIVM case or Sir Jimmy Savile or Mark Bennewitt, I think is his name in Belgium, is it?

00:33:46.000 Anyway, I might have the names wrong there.

00:33:50.580 But the point is, and then there's like pedowood, which is what we call the prevalence of pedophilia in Hollywood.

00:33:59.500 It's very weird that a lot of the people who are involved or at least accused of being involved

00:34:07.060 in such activities have occult beliefs.

00:34:11.360 And my friend said it worked with such people, knew them personally, and he confirmed that.

00:34:23.040 He said that's why they use all of these symbols, you know, like the old one eye,

00:34:27.800 which people were obsessing about five years ago, remember?

00:34:30.800 And people still notice that.

00:34:33.900 But they used to do that all the time.

00:34:35.940 I think they avoid it now.

00:34:37.500 But generally speaking, a lot of movie posters would show up with this one.

00:34:41.040 That's an occult symbol.

00:34:42.880 So that's what he said.

00:34:43.900 I don't know if I totally believe it, but it was interesting.

00:34:47.900 It got me thinking.

00:34:48.860 Epstein, and at the very least, I said, due to this, you know, the fact that these people are able to get away with horrific crimes.

00:35:00.620 Just look at how Epstein has been dealt with.

00:35:03.420 It cannot be denied that justice has not been done.

00:35:08.020 There's a lot of guilty people walking around free right now.

00:35:11.620 Now, okay, how is that possible in our society?

00:35:16.520 I said, well, our society must be governed, like judges, for example, must be beholden somehow or other.

00:35:25.580 I don't know how exactly.

00:35:27.440 I have ideas, of course, by powerful people, right?

00:35:33.880 And are such powerful people occultists?

00:35:37.300 And this is what my friend was saying.

00:35:38.680 So he was pushing these books about the occult on me.

00:35:42.320 Not the actual, you know, Aleister Crowley or whatever on me, but he was, you know, things that were written about the occult.

00:35:52.660 And I, even that kind of weirded me out.

00:35:56.700 Because I said, look, if I actually thought there was a reason to investigate this stuff, because they, I don't know, it's like an important part of a culture, because our culture is like ruled by people who believe this.

00:36:17.020 Then doesn't that mean that if they're going to go to all these risks and these moral horrors as part of their beliefs, that's, you know, putting a lot on the line for something that you actually think is a lie.

00:36:35.840 So, if it were true, though, then that would at least mean that the spirit world is true, like demons exist, whatever, that they could appeal to, ascended masters and whatever.

00:36:49.320 Well, then, doesn't that mean that it's possible that God exists?

00:36:58.020 That's, that's one thought that I had.

00:37:01.620 But another is, I didn't want to read those books that my friend was pushing at me.

00:37:05.760 I looked at a few of them a little bit and looked at a few videos, and it's like, I just kept getting creeped out, essentially.

00:37:13.080 It's a little more to it than that.

00:37:14.540 But, yeah, I didn't want to get into it.

00:37:16.920 I didn't want to open any portals, you know, so to speak.

00:37:20.800 But one thing I learned is that, you know, like, if you look at Masonic symbology, it's based on a lot of Old Testament, like temple symbology.

00:37:39.440 It, and, and the notion is what, what occultists like to do is to invert biblical symbols.

00:37:52.760 So, in other words, pervert them, twist them.

00:37:58.120 And so, that led me to think, maybe I should read the Bible.

00:38:02.260 If I want to understand them, at least it would be safe to read that and actually try to understand it.

00:38:07.200 And then, maybe I would be, I don't know, in the clear to read some of the occult stuff if I wanted to.

00:38:15.360 Never wanted to after that, though.

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00:39:35.320 So you started reading the Bible, really digging into the Bible, December of 2019.

00:39:41.060 You said that you used a 90-day study plan on the YouVersion app,

00:39:45.640 and you really liked the ESV Study Bible.

00:39:48.100 We have that in common.

00:39:49.000 Then I started reading the ESV Study Bible when someone gave it to me as a gift when I

00:39:52.840 was in college.

00:39:53.700 And I've tried several other study Bibles since then, and that is my go-to. 0.55

00:39:58.920 But tell me about that experience.

00:40:03.960 So, yes.

00:40:06.500 Well, it wasn't the only Bible commentary that I used, but I used it quite a bit.

00:40:11.540 And, in fact, my current two-year plan, I'm just finishing up reading the entire thing.

00:40:22.020 So, at first I thought I was just going to read it a little bit at bedtime,

00:40:28.960 and then it became sort of an obsession for a hundred days.

00:40:35.500 I was reading everything carefully, sometimes twice.

00:40:41.180 I was looking up answers to all my questions to, you know, understand what it meant.

00:40:46.360 I actually was trying to understand what the things on the page meant.

00:40:50.940 And I'm, you know, I'm trained in reading old texts.

00:40:58.280 One of my areas of concentration is early modern philosophy, so I'm pretty good at it.

00:41:04.360 So, I knew, of course, when to look up concepts in an encyclopedia, when to look up definitions

00:41:13.220 in, like, a Bible dictionary, when to look at maps, when to just look at a general commentary,

00:41:22.940 because something, even though the words are good English, I just don't understand why

00:41:27.900 would they say that.

00:41:28.720 And in the process of doing this, I actually acquainted myself with theology, because you

00:41:39.000 can't understand the philosophy if you don't understand the concepts that it contains, and

00:41:47.380 you can't understand biblical concepts unless you understand theology, or at least you acquaint

00:41:53.780 yourself with theology as you come to understand them.

00:41:56.940 So, somebody who knows the Bible very, very, very well knows a lot of theology, for sure.

00:42:05.560 And the thing is, I, despite having a PhD in philosophy, which is sort of an adjacent field,

00:42:16.400 I had no idea that people who did theology and analyzed biblical concepts, etc., did anything

00:42:30.760 that was worth doing, that it was interesting, that it was coherent, had no idea of that at

00:42:38.460 all.

00:42:40.460 And it is, as it turns out, if you actually study that stuff, it makes sense.

00:42:48.200 There's a reason why very, very smart people, some of the smartest people in history, in

00:42:53.960 fact, have been Christians.

00:42:56.360 Newton, you know, Thomas Aquinas.

00:42:58.840 St. Augustine, these are very, very smart people, and a lot of other people, too.

00:43:04.880 A lot of scientists, even in this center, in, well, even today, sure, yeah.

00:43:09.660 But, so.

00:43:11.100 And when you read through the Bible for the first time, did it strike you immediately that

00:43:15.840 this seems true?

00:43:19.420 No.

00:43:20.380 No.

00:43:20.820 It didn't.

00:43:22.080 No.

00:43:23.240 It took time.

00:43:24.700 I mean, in other words, you know, I resisted the idea.

00:43:33.780 I mean, I was a fairly confirmed non-believer.

00:43:37.140 Again, I wasn't an atheist, but it wasn't a live proposition for me, you see.

00:43:42.320 So, it took a lot.

00:43:43.820 But, one thing that I did, though, even in, I think, the months before I started reading

00:43:49.760 the Bible, I started rethinking some of the traditional arguments for the existence of

00:43:54.260 God a little bit, which might have been one of the reasons why I picked up the Bible.

00:43:59.180 But the two processes went hand in hand.

00:44:02.380 So, in other words, I actually had to persuade myself that there were better versions of the

00:44:11.100 arguments for the existence of God, and that they worked together in a certain way, which

00:44:16.600 I simply hadn't understood before, which I'm writing about in a book now.

00:44:22.940 I had to sort of, like, teach myself these things, or be led to them one way or another,

00:44:30.720 and before I could really take what the Bible said seriously.

00:44:37.700 But I will say this, the Bible, one of the things, a good example of this, of how the

00:44:47.700 Bible sheds light on philosophical arguments, like, in a way that I hadn't really appreciated

00:44:55.360 before.

00:44:56.040 So, in Exodus chapter 3, God, he introduces his name.

00:45:03.000 Um, he says, I am that I am.

00:45:09.540 Um, what?

00:45:10.980 That's a name?

00:45:12.320 I, that isn't even good grammar, I said to myself.

00:45:18.220 Um, so I, but I looked up the Hebrew, not that I knew Hebrew, but, you know, there's interlinear

00:45:25.080 tools which are pretty easy to use, and everything is explained.

00:45:30.280 It's very nicely laid out on, uh, Biblehub.org, um, and I looked at commentaries, and, well,

00:45:37.900 it turns out that there are very good reasons why he would introduce himself that way.

00:45:45.180 Um, he, he was saying, as, as theologians generally say, that, um, he is that which exists.

00:45:55.460 His existence is part of his essence, as philosophers would say.

00:46:00.960 Um, and he is, in fact, that which must exist unlike everything else.

00:46:06.520 Um, the existence of everything else in the universe is conditioned upon his existence.

00:46:13.140 Um, that, that actually is all contained within his saying that this is his identity, because

00:46:19.080 the notion of, of a name in Hebrew, and I think the ancient world to a great extent, um, was,

00:46:27.240 uh, it, it, it said what you were, right?

00:46:30.360 And this is why kings renamed their, their vassals, right?

00:46:34.720 Gave them new names to say, this is what you're going to be to me, right?

00:46:38.800 This is why Abraham, uh, Abram was renamed the father of a nation, Abraham.

00:46:44.540 Right.

00:46:45.440 Right.

00:46:45.940 God named himself saying, I am that which exists necessarily, essentially.

00:46:52.860 And the experience of like coming to grips with that exegetical question just made the

00:47:01.360 whole argument from contingency much more alive.

00:47:05.640 And I said, okay, well, I, I don't believe that it follows from the fact that there, there,

00:47:14.820 or the assertion that there is a, an unnecessarily existent being that that's God.

00:47:21.880 It doesn't follow, not immediately.

00:47:24.020 You have to say a lot of other things, but isn't it interesting, right?

00:47:27.700 That the Bible says, God says that he is the necessary being and that that's the conclusion

00:47:34.940 of like the most bedrock argument that, that, uh, natural theology offers natural theology

00:47:41.660 being the philosophy of religion and the study of the arguments for the existence of God.

00:47:46.420 Hmm.

00:47:48.020 So.

00:47:48.540 And can you tell me how you got to, because after you read through the Bible, you continue

00:47:52.300 still to this day to continue to read through the Bible, um, you concluded at some point

00:47:58.420 after this, that God does exist.

00:48:01.700 You believed that Jesus is the son of God, according to what you read in scripture, but

00:48:07.800 you didn't yet believe that Jesus died for your sins.

00:48:12.000 So can you take us from your, your philosophical journey from understanding that God exists to

00:48:20.180 understanding the Christian claim that Jesus is God and that he died for our sins and is

00:48:27.620 our way of salvation?

00:48:30.300 So it's interesting.

00:48:33.220 It is a very long and gradual process.

00:48:37.200 Um, and, uh, I mean, in the spring of 2020, um, I, I would have said I have a provisional

00:48:50.080 Christian belief.

00:48:51.060 It's like, I'm inclined to believe it seems probably right.

00:48:54.860 Um, that, that sort of thing.

00:48:57.120 Um, and I, I was able to articulate right around the time when I started, you know, when

00:49:06.460 I was willing to admit to myself that God exists, um, that I was more inclined to believe

00:49:15.420 that than, that than not.

00:49:17.680 Um, the first time I prayed, taking myself to be sincerely, really praying to God was

00:49:24.340 like the end of February.

00:49:26.280 And right about the same time, I wrote an essay, uh, which you can find on, on my blog, which

00:49:32.680 is a, a, a theory of divine sacrifice or something like that, which is about the whole question,

00:49:40.000 um, why did Jesus have to die on the cross and how could that somehow save us?

00:49:49.200 You know, um, what does that have to do with like forgiving our sins and things like that?

00:49:55.140 Um, I'm not going to get into like theories about that, which are interesting.

00:49:59.240 Um, and, but, uh, I was able to articulate and understand the theories to a certain extent

00:50:06.740 at that time, could do a better job now, but, but I didn't feel it.

00:50:14.740 Um, you know, I, uh, it's one thing to, it's one thing to feel like you have a, uh, a grasp

00:50:26.040 on the concepts and it's quite another to actually believe what it's saying, but I don't know when

00:50:35.620 it was, but at some point, um, I, well, I guess you could just say I increasingly felt convicted

00:50:43.940 as the word is of my sins by God, by the Holy Spirit.

00:50:49.900 And I increasingly felt the need of a savior.

00:50:57.920 See, this bothered me because I thought, isn't this kind of back, uh, isn't it reversed?

00:51:06.160 Um, I, it is, uh, most people seem to come to the faith by first saying, as they say, they

00:51:13.200 need a savior, um, and therefore they, they surrender their will to God.

00:51:20.780 I didn't feel like I needed a savior precisely.

00:51:25.700 It was only after I actually, um, was better convinced that God exists, that Jesus was a

00:51:32.640 real person, really helped to read The Case for Christ.

00:51:35.520 That's a great book, um, that I was able to like, start taking that part really seriously

00:51:45.620 and caring about it.

00:51:47.740 And now I really care about it.

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00:52:54.540 When do you say, do you remember like the moment that you decided to say and accept,

00:53:00.640 okay, I am a Christian?

00:53:07.320 No, I'm not sure that I can say that.

00:53:09.700 I can say the moment when I started believing in God and like trusting in God, but to say

00:53:23.040 that I am a Christian and entailed all kinds of other things that I had to sort of work

00:53:30.740 through.

00:53:32.300 And most of it had to do with, you know, problems associated with my being a skeptic, a methodological

00:53:39.780 skeptic is the word.

00:53:40.960 And so, you know, like I was saying, when I was young, I thought it was really important

00:53:45.960 to have the truth.

00:53:47.080 And therefore, it was necessary to have really good reasons to believe whatever you believe.

00:53:52.720 And you have to understand your beliefs.

00:53:54.360 And well, Christianity involves all kinds of things I didn't understand and all kinds

00:54:01.620 of things I couldn't justify.

00:54:02.840 Um, and, uh, you might say, well, you have to take a leap of faith.

00:54:08.640 Well, that's not what faith is.

00:54:10.800 Faith is not the acceptance of things for no good reasons.

00:54:15.360 Faith is simply the, uh, loyalty to God.

00:54:20.280 I think I had that.

00:54:21.580 But, but I, it took me time before I actually developed the conviction that the Bible is

00:54:30.940 inerrant, which is what I think now.

00:54:33.360 Mm-hmm.

00:54:33.940 Um, but it was probably sometime in 2020 or 2021, maybe 2021, when I actually developed that.

00:54:45.680 Yeah.

00:54:45.860 I was still struggling with the whole idea of inerrancy in the first few years.

00:54:52.500 So if there's a, if there's a lesson for people who are similarly, similarly situated,

00:54:59.020 it would be that it's okay if it's a process, uh, at least.

00:55:05.080 Yeah.

00:55:06.360 It's okay for me, I hope.

00:55:08.840 Yeah.

00:55:09.360 And have you, um, been able to find a church, because you write about this, still having

00:55:16.960 a lot of questions and trying to find a place that can take your questions?

00:55:24.240 Well, um, yeah.

00:55:27.740 So I've read a lot of books about theology, basically, um, several dozen, uh, in the last,

00:55:34.280 uh, five years.

00:55:35.740 And, um, so it isn't a lack of knowledge.

00:55:41.780 Uh, it is the lack of, of certainty, um, that, uh, I don't want, there's certain things

00:55:50.660 that I, like, I know I'm not going to be praying to Mary.

00:55:53.380 Got pretty good reasons not to do that, pretty sure.

00:55:56.100 And there's a number of other things, um, of that sort that are, that would point me

00:56:03.720 down one path versus another, denominationally.

00:56:08.060 Um, but I feel like I need to make up my mind about more of the basic principles.

00:56:15.200 And it takes a long time for me to make up my mind about things.

00:56:19.560 Because, like I say, I, I still have this sort of methodological skepticism.

00:56:26.000 Um, it's really not just a, not just a principle I accepted and can easily discard.

00:56:32.380 It's sort of like part of who I am.

00:56:34.760 Um, and, uh, I know that for the same reason, you know, if I were to, to go to, like, I've

00:56:42.580 thought of, you know, independent Baptist church, or, or maybe, um, the, uh, Anglican

00:56:48.860 church of North America, the, maybe the, uh, orthodoxy, if I can put aside my, um, you

00:56:54.720 know, my, uh, well, resistance to praying to saints, um, and so forth.

00:57:03.360 Um, I know that I would, like, ask questions.

00:57:07.760 And I know myself, I'm very persistent, um, not necessarily that I would, like, uh, annoy

00:57:16.160 people with my questions.

00:57:17.260 But if they're trying to engage me, I'm not going to be able to go along.

00:57:21.160 So it's kind of hard, you know, one, one thing that some people, not everybody, by the

00:57:27.420 way, but one thing that some people insist on is that if you're going to join a church,

00:57:34.540 then you have to submit yourself to an authority.

00:57:38.080 Well, the only authority at this point that I really want to, um, submit myself to is that

00:57:45.040 of scripture, God.

00:57:47.300 And I think I'm getting closer to the point where I can, I can submit myself to, to people

00:57:54.420 without disrupting.

00:57:56.680 See, that's what I don't want to do.

00:57:57.940 I don't want to disrupt the proceedings.

00:57:59.940 I don't want to be a bad influence, um, you know, um, cause I easily could be.

00:58:08.180 So, but I'm, I'm prioritizing, um, you know, study of the distinctives of the, of the issues

00:58:19.320 on which Christians divide.

00:58:22.400 Well, I'm confident that God is going to use you to be one of those people that can answer

00:58:28.640 people's questions.

00:58:30.440 Um, and I, I just love hearing people's testimonies and all of the different parts of the constellation

00:58:36.420 of someone's story that in retrospect, they can see, but in the moment, it's hard to see

00:58:41.980 how God is piecing things together.

00:58:43.700 But I believe that he's going to use this testimony for his glory, which is always what

00:58:48.640 he does.

00:58:49.180 But also there are a lot of very smart questioning young people who want a place to go to ask good

00:58:56.640 questions and you are someone who has asked questions over and over and over again.

00:59:02.100 And rather than just like sit in your questions, you have sought the answer to them.

00:59:07.100 And I just, I really believe that that, that that discipline and that curiosity that you've

00:59:13.320 had your entire life is going to affect the lives of other skeptics and questioners and

00:59:20.220 new believers.

00:59:21.140 And so, um, I'm just very grateful for that.

00:59:25.920 Well, um, I hope God uses me that way, I guess, if that's what I'm good for.

00:59:32.540 Yeah, me too.

00:59:33.800 Me too.

00:59:34.480 Where can people find you and support you, follow you, all that good stuff?

00:59:40.500 Um, well, uh, my blog is LarrySanger.org.

00:59:44.160 That's where the essay that we've been talking about, um, we've been asking questions based

00:59:49.460 off of, it's, it's the latest thing.

00:59:52.820 Um, a, a skeptic, what is it called?

00:59:56.720 A skeptic turns to Christianity.

01:00:00.660 Yes.

01:00:00.980 Anyway, something like that.

01:00:01.860 And, and, um, there's also, uh, I'm on x.com, but I don't actually do much there except

01:00:09.300 share my stuff.

01:00:10.760 Uh, I'm one of the advisors of BitChute now. 1.00

01:00:13.980 Um, and, uh, so I'm, I'm putting my videos, uh, there, my latest video is a, is a video

01:00:21.680 version of the same testimony.

01:00:24.880 Um, and, uh, yeah, uh, there's a, oh, there's a Bible study that has started.

01:00:33.940 A lot of, uh, a lot of Bible geeks, um, are, are, uh, gathering. 0.91

01:00:39.240 And we, I mean, it's gone from like 30 people to like 120 in the last couple of days.

01:00:45.460 Um, so you're welcome to join us if you're into like brainy Bible study.

01:00:52.220 Um.

01:00:52.880 Awesome.

01:00:53.820 And where's that?

01:00:55.880 That is on Telegram and there is a link, uh, down at the bottom of, uh, of the testimony.

01:01:03.300 Uh, there is a, um, I've talked about moving to a signal group.

01:01:09.500 You can join both if you like, but we're, for now we're, we're sticking to Telegram.

01:01:13.940 Okay.

01:01:14.500 Very good.

01:01:15.300 Well, Larry, I really appreciate you taking the time, uh, to share and I do encourage people

01:01:20.760 to follow you and to read your stuff.

01:01:23.460 So thank you so much.

01:01:25.360 For sure.

01:01:26.280 Thanks.

01:01:26.740 Thanks for having me on.

01:01:33.300 Thanks for having me on.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - February 19, 2025

Ep 1143 ｜ Wikipedia Co-Founder： Studying Hollywood Cults & Epstein Island Led Me to Christianity ｜ Guest： Larry Sanger

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