Ep 1143 ｜ Wikipedia Co-Founder： Studying Hollywood Cults & Epstein Island Led Me to Christianity ｜ Guest： Larry Sanger
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 2 minutes
Words per Minute
134.44597
Summary
Larry Sanger is a philosopher, a lifelong skeptic, and a longtime agnostic. Recently, he announced that he has converted to Christianity. What led him finally accept that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life? He has a really interesting story about how God used so many moments throughout his life to lead him to the cross.
Transcript
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He is also a philosopher, a lifelong skeptic, and a longtime agnostic.
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Recently, he announced that he has converted to Christianity.
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What led to him finally accepting that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life?
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And it's amazing to look at how God used so many moments throughout his life to lead
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You're going to be really encouraged by this conversation.
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It's brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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Larry, thanks so much for taking the time to join me.
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If you could tell everyone who you are and what you do.
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Well, right now, I am president of the Knowledge Standards Foundation, and we collect all of
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the free world, all free encyclopedias in the world.
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My claim to fame is I was co-founder of Wikipedia.
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Now, I'm ex-founder, I like to call myself because, you know, how it is.
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And this is another thing that the Knowledge Standards Foundation is doing.
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This is 70,000 books on a 128 gigabyte hard drive.
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Basically, the classics of Western civilization backed up in the palm of your hand.
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And that's just something that I've been trying to get out there.
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There needs to be many, many, many copies of all the public domain books, not just one
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Okay, before we even get into your Christian testimony, I want to go all the way back.
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I want to hear your life story and how you got to the point of helping found Wikipedia
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and how your interest was sparked in all of this.
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So can you take me all the way back to your childhood and tell me what your upbringing was
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Well, I mean, I was born and raised in the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod.
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And that's my earliest church memories come from that.
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But I asked a lot of questions sort of constitutionally.
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And I, for example, I would ask, you know, well, if God has created everything, then what
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And that kind of thing, you know, those sort of basic questions that thoughtful kids will
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And but around age 16, I had a class in philosophy at in high school.
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And I started thinking the following summer about the basic questions of philosophy.
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And I decided because I knew all these people who had messed up their lives.
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In fact, it seemed to me that practically everybody I knew had messed up their life in
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Like, my parents were divorced, my, you know, like my, my siblings, friends were like, some
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of them were seriously strung out on drugs, and all kinds of things like that.
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And I had talked to these people, I knew certain things that they thought, and I thought they'd
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Um, so I, it, I developed the very deep conviction, totally independent of religion, that it was
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And, um, so, and I, uh, ever since then, I have thought of myself as a philosopher, even
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before I went to college, I knew I wanted to be a philosophy professor, um, although I
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But, um, so I, I became a non-believer, um, in my teen years, uh, a, an agnostic.
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But the point is that, that, um, I, uh, I basically stopped caring very much about the
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Uh, well, um, while I was finishing my dissertation, Jimmy Wales, um, gave me the job of starting an
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encyclopedia for bombist.com, um, which was his website, um, and that became Newpedia, which
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Um, so I named Wikipedia, I, I set, uh, many of the original policies, or at least articulated
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them, um, and, uh, sort of led the community in the, and, and got, it started on a lot of
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its habits, not all of its bad habits, hopefully, but, uh, a lot of its good habits anyway, in
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the first 14 months of that, first couple of years, if you include Newpedia.
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Yeah, that's all super fascinating that you were interested in philosophy.
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You, you describe yourself as kind of like a naturally inquisitive kid, and you brought
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your philosophical questions to a pastor when you were a teenager, correct?
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I just called him up on the phone, um, one time.
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I think probably, um, maybe my mom or dad told me that I should do that.
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Um, and, uh, I don't think it was the, the Lutheran pastor that, I think it was another
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one from a different church, um, so he didn't know me.
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And, and I might have sounded like a disrespectful, snot-nosed kid.
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Um, but I had sincere questions, for sure, and he could have engaged me in conversation
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And I, it's clear to me that he didn't want to talk.
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The conversation was over within, I don't know, five or ten minutes.
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And what kind of questions were you asking him?
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I can't remember exactly which ones, but, you know, like the very one that I, that I
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So if, if an explanation is needed for the universe, why isn't an explanation needed for
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Um, but you, but you didn't then, and the people that you went to in authority weren't
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Because you describe in your article, that's your conversion.
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Yes, you were brushed off by multiple people by, right?
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Was it by your parents first that kind of made you believe that believing in God was irrational
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I even had long conversations with my brother-in-law who, um, what is one of the other people in
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my family other than my dad who had actually gone to college.
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This is my, my sister's husband and, and, um, he passed away, I guess, eight years ago.
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Um, and I did have some conversations with him, but I, I had increasingly sort of deep,
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thoughtful discussions, um, or questions rather that could not be answered except by somebody
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with a requisite amount of philosophical or apologetic training.
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I mean, even, even later, 10 years after that, I could have answered my own questions
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So it was just the lack of knowledge that was the problem, I think.
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Their unofficial motto is communism, atheism, free love.
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So you were surrounded by people, obviously, who also did not believe in God.
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You went on to Ohio State for graduate school, also surrounded by unbelievers.
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Um, but you were approached by a Christian student when you were in grad school that kind
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Um, now that you mention it, that's not in my essay, but I remember having some long discussions
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and I, I did like sort of, I was willing to talk about the possibility of all sorts of things.
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And I remember talking about cosmology with him, you know, and what, what the universe must
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be like if, if, um, you know, it has a creator that exists outside of time, for example.
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Um, because there's some, it very quickly gets very deep when you start asking questions
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And I remember talking about him about questions like that, but he, he wasn't really trying
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to evangelize me very hard, but he made an impression simply due to the kind of guy
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that he was, he was very nice, um, he's very kind, um, and, uh, so, yeah.
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And, and then, well, um, he caught, he caught me, uh, uh, well, I won't say what it was, but
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he caught me in a sin, um, and, and, um, I, I didn't see much of him after that, um, which
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was disappointing, but, you know, um, I, I, I, I didn't feel guilty.
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So, yeah, he challenged you with a fine tuning argument and that's the laws of the universe
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are so precise that any small change would prevent it from supporting life.
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And so that's the argument that there must be, uh, an intentional creator.
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Um, so in this little story, basically what happened was a graduate student, um, who was,
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He was a student in my class, actually, he was just a very smart undergraduate.
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Um, he came into the, the, the student assistant room and, um, uh, basically wanted to engage
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me in discussion about arguments for the existence of God, because that would be what we were studying
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And it was very, uh, interesting the way that he expressed, um, the, the fine tuning argument,
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So the universe has, um, got a certain constants, uh, scientific constants that such that if you
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change them in, um, minute ways, um, then weird things happen or fail to happen.
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Like, you know, atoms don't form or, or, you know, um, yes, uh, the universe is left in
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Um, and, uh, so everything is fine tuned for, uh, the existence of, of life.
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Um, and I didn't have an answer to him except to say, well, you know, it might have some other
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sort of explanation, which just seems kind of lame, still seems lame to me now.
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And, uh, uh, I, I was, uh, although I was, uh, stymied a little, um, I didn't feel like
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terribly embarrassed, but it left me emotional though.
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And I don't think it was because I was unable to answer.
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I mean, I'm unable to answer all sorts of problems in philosophy.
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So it's not that it, I think it had to do with, with my awareness that I was, uh, that
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I had just closed the door on something that might be more valuable than I was then willing
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And you write that your marriage and the subsequent birth of your first child really changed how
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It kind of disrupted a lot of the beliefs that you have.
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Yeah, well, because I had the relatively idiosyncratic commitment to Ayn Rand's ethics, sort of.
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But according to Ayn Rand, the author of The Fountainhead, our moral obligations all stem from
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So if we ought to do something, if it is right for us to do something, you can explain that
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in terms of what is good for you in your enlightened, as it's called, your enlightened
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I remember defending that throughout graduate school.
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And then, you know, I got married in 2001 after I got my PhD and had my first child in 2006.
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And I just occasionally thought, isn't it interesting that I would die for these people?
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I mean, of course I would die for these people, but father wouldn't.
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But then I thought, if I'm willing to die for them, then doesn't that mean that I would
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be doing something not in my own self-interest?
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But at the time, because I myself had sort of accepted an error, the same sort of thing
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that I was wanting to avoid earlier, it was hard for me to come to that realization.
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You also talk about watching the atheistic movement, if you want to call it a movement,
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I would say these are kind of like my words becoming like their own kind of dogmatic religion.
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And you contrasted that to how you saw the behavior of Christians, even Christians on social
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I went to high school and college and graduate school, talking to people who didn't believe
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They actually tried to engage in a reasonably respectful conversation.
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And then the new atheists came along, and they started acting, as you say, quite dogmatic
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And by that time, I actually knew, I taught the arguments for the existence of God.
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I knew at least what weight they carried from practically anybody's point of view.
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I mean, most philosophers don't think that they entail that God exists.
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But they're willing to concede that there's quite a bit to argue about there.
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But people like Dawkins and Sam Harris were just unable to articulate the skeptical point
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And yet, they were extremely dogmatic and insulting, off-putting.
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And I compared that to the behavior of Christians.
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And now, this has nothing to do with the merits of the arguments, but it does make one reflect
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on the worldview that you're buying into if you are a skeptic yourself, right?
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It's like, at the very least, if you're going to be a non-believer, don't be like them,
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Had Dawkins had any impact on your thinking up to that point?
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I mean, he had had, you know, he has influence on a lot of non-believers' worldview.
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I didn't even, I never was acquainted with anything that he said or did.
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If anybody had an influence in that direction, it would have been Ayn Rand, you know, and
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things that she wrote in the 1960s and 70s, an essay by Mark Twain.
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I, I, the last time I saw it was when I was a teenager, but he wrote an essay.
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He was, he was an atheist or at least an agnostic.
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I can't remember, but Nietzsche and a few others.
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And, and of course, the biggest influences were like personal influences, people that I
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knew, my professors, you know, who could actually do a better job than any of those people at
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Even, even better than, than another one that I remember reading, Bertrand Dressel.
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It's like Bertrand Dressel when he, he was a lightweight when he's writing about this
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And even before you were a Christian, long before you were a Christian, you did expose your
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two boys to the Bible simply because you knew that it was very influential, right?
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That's also, I would say, pretty unique for an agnostic.
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I, maybe it's because when I think of agnostics and atheists, most that I've had an interaction
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with, and maybe this is not, maybe this is not a fair assessment.
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They seem pretty antagonistic towards scripture.
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Um, it's, I, I do think that a lot of, like, people who are into classical homeschooling
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might want to assign readings from the Bible, even if they're non-believers.
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And, you know, I had a Christian upbringing myself and I, I said, no, they, they really
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would be totally ignorant of some culturally important things if they hadn't read, like,
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at least, like, a couple of gospels and, you know, Genesis and the first, you know,
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first 25 chapters of Exodus and maybe a few other things, Psalms.
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And, um, you continue to write about philosophy and you write that your own philosophical writings
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kind of left you unsettled, like your own philosophical writing started challenging your
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Yeah, I, I wrote a series of essays that sort of dismantled some of the reasons that I had
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So to explain this, I have to explain, um, when I was a graduate student, I, I formulated
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Um, but the no concept view is similar to the positivist view, which says basically we
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And my, my take on it was, uh, what God is essentially is the creator of the universe
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And he created the universe essentially with a thought, but we have no experience of thoughts
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It's always through the, you know, the medium of, you know, our, our bodies or whatever,
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Um, I, I wrote an essay, uh, sort of riffing off of what, what had been in the air at the
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time, you know, the, uh, uh, imagine that there were a sufficiently advanced, um, AI that the
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singularity happened, things just started exploding.
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Technology became wildly, um, uh, powerful beyond what, what we know now.
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I mean, like that, uh, our technology today looks like magic would look like magic to people
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But imagine that there were supercharged, um, development of technology over a period of
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millions of years, you know, a billion years, right.
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Um, from a, a continuous development, um, well, isn't it possible that, uh, we would find
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the levers as it were, that would, that would bring a moon into being, you know, um, uh, once,
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once all the, the space equipment were made, et cetera, and eventually maybe, you know, galaxies
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and universes, um, and, uh, and, and isn't it possible that, that, you know, the brain
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interfaces, um, now, um, isn't it possible that such apparatus might be, uh, controlled
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So I thought, well, then I guess it would be, it's conceivable to bring, of course, there's
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I'm not going to get into it, but, but the point is that the, the bare idea of a thought
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bringing creation into existence, I thought of a way to, to, um, uh, to talk about that,
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And that was enough to, you know, I, I didn't conclude that the universe is therefore a simulation,
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which was Elon Musk's conclusion, which he, he drew after that, actually.
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Um, uh, no, I think, uh, that, um, that is merely evidence that it's possible that a creator
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You also dealt with the issue of why be moral and the problem of evil, which, of course,
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these are things that have been debated for a long time.
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And there are always questions that I have for my atheist friends that I haven't ever
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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,
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Why do things that are not in your direct self-interest just because they are the right
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Most atheists I know would say that being kind or being charitable with expecting nothing
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and returning is a good thing, that that is a sign of virtue, but they can't tell me
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why or why beauty exists, why there are these like intangible realities that have nothing
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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.
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What conclusion did you come to about why it's important to be good or be moral?
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The the line that you just outlined there is not the one that I that I took in this essay
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I think it's called Why Be Moral on LarrySanger.org, if you want to look at.
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And and but it was important to to my to my conversion in a certain way.
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I actually disagree with the notion that in order to make sense of our moral obligations,
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I think that we natural we naturally have certain desires.
00:30:07.980
And what we ought to do, what is meant by normative language, evaluative and prescriptive language,
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in other words, saying what is good or what we ought to do is is ultimately explainable in terms of life.
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So basically, without going into the details, we ought to do.
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And in fact, if we're well functioning, we want to do things that are good for our lives
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and for the lives of things, you know, people and animals and living things around us.
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I thought that this was a natural, a naturalistic theory of ethics, and I explained it in detail.
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But it's philosophers who hear this will recognize that it's a version of natural law ethics.
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And when I started thinking again about the arguments for the existence of God,
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the way it worked in was this, if God is or if there is a creator who designed the universe
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and designed our human nature, and if basically we are made happy by following certain moral rules
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and making them more likely to make them more likely to be happy when we do, let's put it that way,
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that actually is evidence of the goodness of God.
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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,
00:32:26.300
So it's the conclusion of the argument from morality in my hands is not that God exists,
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it's that if there is a God, then God is purely good.
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
00:33:08.840
Can you talk about how the Jeffrey Epstein scandal plays into your testimony, very interestingly?
00:33:17.320
So a friend of mine was opening my eyes to the existence of various, call them elite pedophile rings.
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You can look up the NXIVM case or Sir Jimmy Savile or Mark Bennewitt, I think is his name in Belgium, is it?
00:33:50.580
But the point is, and then there's like pedowood, which is what we call the prevalence of pedophilia in Hollywood.
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It's very weird that a lot of the people who are involved or at least accused of being involved
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And my friend said it worked with such people, knew them personally, and he confirmed that.
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He said that's why they use all of these symbols, you know, like the old one eye,
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which people were obsessing about five years ago, remember?
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But generally speaking, a lot of movie posters would show up with this one.
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I don't know if I totally believe it, but it was interesting.
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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.
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It cannot be denied that justice has not been done.
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There's a lot of guilty people walking around free right now.
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Now, okay, how is that possible in our society?
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I said, well, our society must be governed, like judges, for example, must be beholden somehow or other.
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I have ideas, of course, by powerful people, right?
00:35:38.680
So he was pushing these books about the occult on me.
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Not the actual, you know, Aleister Crowley or whatever on me, but he was, you know, things that were written about the occult.
00:35:56.700
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?
00:37:01.620
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.
00:37:16.920
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.
00:37:58.120
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.
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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,
00:39:49.000
Then I started reading the ESV Study Bible when someone gave it to me as a gift when I
00:39:53.700
And I've tried several other study Bibles since then, and that is my go-to.
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
00:41:28.720
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
00:42:40.460
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
00:42:58.840
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.
00:43:11.100
And when you read through the Bible for the first time, did it strike you immediately that
00:43:24.700
I mean, in other words, you know, I resisted the idea.
00:43:37.140
Again, I wasn't an atheist, but it wasn't a live proposition for me, you see.
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.
00:44:02.380
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
00:44:56.040
So, in Exodus chapter 3, God, he introduces his 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,
00:46:30.360
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.
00:46:45.940
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.
00:47:24.020
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.
00:47:48.540
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
00:48:01.700
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
00:48:37.200
Um, and, uh, I mean, in the spring of 2020, um, I, I would have said I have a provisional
00:48:51.060
It's like, I'm inclined to believe it seems probably right.
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
00:49:17.680
Um, the first time I prayed, taking myself to be sincerely, really praying to God was
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.
00:50:57.920
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
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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,
00:53:09.700
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
00:53:32.300
And most of it had to do with, you know, problems associated with my being a skeptic, a methodological
00:53:40.960
And so, you know, like I was saying, when I was young, I thought it was really important
00:53:47.080
And therefore, it was necessary to have really good reasons to believe whatever you believe.
00:53:54.360
And well, Christianity involves all kinds of things I didn't understand and all kinds
00:54:02.840
Um, and, uh, you might say, well, you have to take a leap of faith.
00:54:10.800
Faith is not the acceptance of things for no good reasons.
00:54:21.580
But, but I, it took me time before I actually developed the conviction that the Bible is
00:54:33.940
Um, but it was probably sometime in 2020 or 2021, maybe 2021, when I actually developed that.
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.
00:55:09.360
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?
00:55:27.740
So I've read a lot of books about theology, basically, um, several dozen, uh, in the last,
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.
00:56:34.760
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.
00:57:07.760
And I know myself, I'm very persistent, um, not necessarily that I would, like, uh, annoy
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
00:57:47.300
And I think I'm getting closer to the point where I can, I can submit myself to, to people
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
00:58:22.400
Well, I'm confident that God is going to use you to be one of those people that can answer
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
00:58:43.700
But I believe that he's going to use this testimony for his glory, which is always what
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
00:59:25.920
Well, um, I hope God uses me that way, I guess, if that's what I'm good for.
00:59:34.480
Where can people find you and support you, follow you, all that good stuff?
00:59:44.160
That's where the essay that we've been talking about, um, we've been asking questions based
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
01:00:13.980
Um, and, uh, so I'm, I'm putting my videos, uh, there, my latest video is a, is a video
01:00:24.880
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.
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.
01:00:55.880
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.
01:01:15.300
Well, Larry, I really appreciate you taking the time, uh, to share and I do encourage people