Why I Left Christianity - Rhett McLaughlin

Rhett McLolin welcome to the show Thanks for having me man I can't believe you nearly made us change this tabletop to something cleaner We do have something that's more professional This is beautiful I mean you know welcome to our space Yeah thanks for thanks for hosting me here I I usually open the show by saying something like "Thanks for being here," or "Welcome to the show." And I've done that on a few occasions in Other people's sets and other people's houses and they kind of look at me a little bit blankly So I'm sure you

know what I mean But thanks for having me You got a lot of character on this table This is like a who's who of early decades ago Yeah You were pointing out like the fine bros he here and you I saw like I just seen over there It's like a it's like a real old school thing Why did it stop what what happened we kind of ran out of people to talk to It's honestly the guest based we we started our podcast as a guestbased show He thought that we would be like the the Mark

Marin for internet personalities Sure There's two issues Number one there's only so many especially back in the day only so many interesting uh internet personalities to talk to that were also willing to come into our studio out here And then there's some dynamic that happens when two people are Interviewing one person Yeah And we were like this is not Yeah I've seen that kind of thing before Like a lot of other shows have multiple hosts but there's like one main guy maybe but having two people it's it's it's kind of tricky There are podcasts that

Right Link and I are always both trying to be the main guy That's our problem Yeah Yeah We've made a career of it But on a podcast it's the same thing interviewing two people I've Done that a few times as well Like when I had Cliff and Stuart Connectly on and they work quite well as a pair but it's it's quite difficult to know like where to frame your question And we're on the other side of that quite a bit right i mean like I bet Yeah I 99% of any interviews that I'm a part

of links right always right here You know we have to sit as link We're very precise about Yeah Do you feel a bit naked sat on your own in a in a Situation no I enjoy it Yeah Well I I prefer it this way because it's I I also prefer being naked because especially with you because there's some there's something that gets lost in if you really start getting into the weeds of a conversation with somebody and you start thinking "Oh gosh I better ask the other guy that you can avoid or or sort of

not manage to really get into the weeds with a particular person." Now you have one of the biggest shows on YouTube with Good Mythical Morning And in my experience with any kind of YouTube followership you can't say anything without annoying somebody We've already offended somebody in the comment section You with one of the biggest shows on YouTube decided not too long ago a few years back to start talking about your spiritual deconstruction as you call it and your your move away from from Christianity That must have been quite the move for You And it's one

of the reasons I'm interested in speaking to you And hopefully I know you've spoken a bit about it on various shows and things but my audience is really interested in philosophy and theology I'm sure they're fascinated by some of the intricacies of of your thoughts on this kind of stuff But when you start thinking I want to say something about this like why you've got a good thing going man Why are you going to mess it Up with all this stuff yeah Yeah Tell me about it I started talking to Link about how I thought

we needed to share our story Um mostly because of how much we had disclosed about ourselves over the years We you know our podcast even starting with this when we were interviewing people we would ask all these really personal questions ask them about their background We would give a little bit of of our background But we would leave out this really foundational part of who we were And then even in all the interviews that we would do about our career we would basically the story would go so we went to engineering school We were engineers

for a while and then we became YouTubers It was a very simple easy to understand story when the reality was well all throughout that time we were involved in Christian ministry We were very involved with Campus Crusade for Christ And in between being engineers and being professional YouTubers we were professional Christians We worked full-time with Campus Crusade for Christ as you know campus missionaries for lack of a better word And our ministry was essentially using our comedy to help Christian students figure out how to talk about their faith Huh So we would literally we didn't

put on like big you know bait and switch Evangelistic shows that you were supposed to invite like non-Christians to We were like "Hey let's do something where we kind of come into their typical weekly meeting and we do something fun that it's got music and video and that's helping them kind of see differently the way that they approach evangelism And the only reason that I'm doing what I do today is because of my background because of all the experience that we had coming Up in that you know in that setting So it just felt disingenuous

to not talk about it Yeah Yeah it just be it was like it began to kind of press on me like this is such a and also in the the meantime I had been through this complete deconstruction and essentially a decon conversion and so it's like I kind of have to tell the story of the background while simultaneously tell the story of telling the story of why I no longer Believe it Yeah And so it did it wasn't like a oh we got to go out there and like get on this There was by the

way not really a deconstruction train to get on at the time It wasn't I mean there were some people who had talked about it but I wasn't paying attention to that I wasn't interested in that I didn't know who had deconstructed publicly I didn't know much about the word deconstruction So it wasn't a I want to be a part of a movement or I see myself As part of a movement or a spokesperson for that It was like we need to be honest with our audience Yeah Let's just tell the story Campus Crusade for Christ

What is that about uh well let's see if I can remember exactly because I used to have to get up at the weekly meeting and say this Campus Crusade for Christ is an interdenominational Christian organization founded in 1951 by Bill and Vonet Bright Wow Our philosophy is three-fold To win build and send Win Students to Christ build them up in their faith and send them out to continue the win build send process How's that working out for you hey it worked pretty well for a while man Yeah Well you were pretty pretty knowledgeable right like

you would be able to talk to people and convert people I mean presumably that doesn't go away Like you've still got the still got the knowledge right uh yeah you've still got it in inside of you that the the Evangelical Christian uh part of my brain will never go away is always there uh judging the deconstructed Los Angeles YouTuber you know I I I think so I I whenever I see somebody talk about me and I try I try not to do that very often Like I know just being on your podcast and talking about

it like we get you know you know this game very well You give the you you give the material You provide the material for all the Christian reaction Channels Oh sure This is what they feed off of right this is what they they want If you we're talking about this they want to talk about us talking about it Yeah Um and so I a lot of times I'm listening to myself say things and I'm like "Oh well that's what they're going to say about this." Yeah You know and I try not to calculate that too

much and think about you can drive yourself crazy like trying to like orchestrate all your words Yeah Yeah But it's something you're always aware of as a as a public figure Was most of the stuff that you were doing like was it was it biblical was it arguments for God's existence was it like what kind of approach were you were you taking what what's your like expertise when it comes to evangelism um so with Campus Crusade for Christ we would share something called the four spiritual laws and it was a little booklet essentially that Bill

Brightite The founder of Campus Crusade had put together and it was essentially essentially a gospel tract You know God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life All people have sinned and it's basically it's the gospel right And four laws for spiritual laws It was very like 1950s Christianity you know um but it was very effective because it what it did is it it had you had the ability and of course I wouldn't like Always break out the booklet I would just you know maybe do it in the context of a conversation but

you know you might uh go out on I mean this I mean it sounds crazy when you think about it but like we would go down to spring break at like Panama City Beach and you got all these kids just partying on the beach and we were like well we're going to go out on the beach and we're going to start spiritual conversations with people and we're going to plant seeds in The least and in the best case scenario we're going to get we're going bring someone to a point of decision That's what you want

to do You bring them to that point of decision right so a great question is you know if you were to die tonight how certain are you that you would go to heaven right i mean that's a great It's heavy and and usually if like you're in the middle of partying in Panama City Beach and you're like drunk and you're you're so many students are Sort of you know day three day four at spring break and they've just been pumping themselves full of alcohol and they're literally some of them some of them are still having

a boss but some of them are like actively realizing that there's no fulfillment in in the excesses right and they're like it's like the perfect time to approach No man It's quite an existential moment really Yeah Yeah Yeah Well I've seen a lot of interviews with like with drunk people On the street and it can go one of two ways There are like the funny ones when people are vulnerable in the sense that they might say something a bit stupid or whatever and it makes for a funny viral moment but also yeah the the the

Christian outreach I know people were doing that at my university too where they used to sort of stand outside the nightclubs and they weren't actually preaching or evangelizing They would just hand out like water and biscuits And things and I suppose it was like a you know it's a Christian route but but it is I mean all of the vices sort of come out in a nightclub Yeah In the in the in the party atmosphere everything everything about the the your your inhibitions and and I feel like that is probably the place where Christ enters

many people like when people tell their stories about coming to Christianity it's often that kind of situation but writ large across their life It's like I Was in the dumps I had nowhere to turn I And at the end of the night at the club you're sort of in a sort of microcosm of a moment like that for the for the day You know you're tired The lights have come on and everything is suddenly really ugly My I was in uh I was in Las Vegas I remember I've been there once and I was sort

of I showed up at night and I thought this is the most incredible thing I've ever seen It was it was it was glamorous It was Glittering It was beautiful And then the morning I woke up relatively early cuz I was on UK time and the whole thing was like baked in sunlight and suddenly it all looked really silly It looked silly and plastic And my friend said it was a bit like at the end of a nightclub where the lights come on and you realize everything's actually been ugly the whole time and you just

sort of see it and he's kind of what Jesus does He just like turns the light on and shows you That everything was was ugly all along cuz I mean Vegas is one of the most demonic places I've ever been to in my life Even had Right So I was there with there's a there's an emptiness there for sure I was there with the guy with um there's a there's a show called the Ice Coffee Hour which I was on and and one of the hosts of that he he was sort of driving me down

LA and we went past the what's the pyramid one called you know the one that's like Egypt I forget what The what the place is actually called I don't know the name of it This huge pyramid that shoots this massive beam of light up into the sky right and and he said "Oh that's really interesting actually cuz you know Las Vegas often gets these like swarms of locusts." I was like "Really they get swarms of locust?" He was like "Yeah." And you know the crazy thing is because this pyramid shoots up that massive beam of

light It's amazing when it happens they All like swarm onto and starts Yeah start going crazy And I was like "So you're telling me that that swarms of locusts descend on Egypt in Sin City." Yeah It was all getting a little bit biblical Yeah And I kind of feel like that is the perfect place to walk up to somebody and be like do you think there's something more yeah And I it's it's so interesting because I think that one of the uh one of the misconceptions about someone who Like me was a person of faith

of Christian faith and is no longer a person of Christian faith or you know I've got some faith in things but not really religious faith um is that somehow the the the two alternatives are that life of excess and selfishness and like pleasure or religious faith in Jesus Mhm And I think it can throw people off a lot of times when I'm like oh I Recognize the um you know I don't see it as necessarily like well one is right and one is wrong but it's just like yeah clearly like a human that is simply

focusing on pleasures like that that ultimately end up just being they they become empty pretty quickly Like that's just a universal truth That's not like you as a Christian don't have a universal hold on that truth That's not just because it was mentioned in the Bible doesn't mean that um that's the Only place that truth shows up Like that's it's just a human experience right so now as someone who doesn't really know what I think about God I still recognize like the the emptiness of a place like Las Vegas but I'm also like you know

what maybe every once in a while I want to go experience some excess pleasures Yeah Oh it was fun You know what I mean yeah And and not judge myself or judge others for it at the same time Yeah knowing that if I take The perspective into that that oh I recognize the emptiness of this you know eating at a buffet I mean how many times can you eat at a buffet right before you're like okay get me out of the buffets um but I feel like again this is kind of the perspective that I

had I think about the way that I thought about those students when I was there with the truth in my hand you know I was like there's two paths Here there's a path that you're on which is just self-sabotage or there's Jesus never considering that Well maybe there's another maybe there's a few more ways to think about these things Do you think there's pride in there i mean one of the worst sins a Christian can commit is the sin of pride And I think uh they're constantly sort of battling against it especially when you're in

a position I mean let alone some of the people I talk to have public platforms Constantly putting themselves in front of a a microphone and answering people's questions and being constantly praised Must be really difficult to not get prideful when it starts working But even in an outreach situation like this is there an element where it's sort of like not not even not not like I'm better than these people but like look at me doing this good thing walking into the to the to the depths of of hell and and paralleling it and and getting

everyone You know back to Christ Yes I mean I think that there is um there's an element of sort of taking pride in the work that you're doing for God Even though you can easily um give God the credit be like "The spirit was working through me." Because if you know the code you know the code of humility and you know how to talk about these things but secretly you're you're thinking about how you're doing in relation to other Christians and you're thinking About how they're doing in relation to you Yeah uh you can't it's

human nature you're going to that that you're going to do that but I think there's another type of pride that I think back on on those times um you know I remember a specific instance and this is actually after I was no longer on staff with with Campus Crusade but I was still very active in the church and I was leading a Bible Study and we had become friends with this couple that were Catholic and in my estimation Catholics weren't Christians I mean that was that I was that type of evangelical Really i was like

well maybe there's some that you know actually have a relationship with Jesus Yeah But they they believe you know they believe that it's works and faith It's not just faith alone And so they don't Have the grace thing figured out At the very least I need to introduce them to the real truth right and so I knew they were going to be there And so I was like well I'm going to do a Bible study I'm going to I'm going to go from Galatians right because Galatians talks about that you know uh basically how it's

about faith and it's and not about works And it was one of those things that in retrospect I was thinking about them and Everyone else in the Bible study the other regulars knew that I was kind of preaching to them from this perspective And I think back on that and I'm like I brought a lot of spiritual pride to that situation because I thought I had the correct perspective and just assumed they don't agree with me about this So and they're definitely wrong I'm bringing them in to give them the truth When when you think

that you've got the truth and it's a truth that impacts Everyone it applies to everyone you It's It's really difficult to not take pride in that and to begin to see yourself as better I mean I'm not saying that all Christians think that they're better than other people I'm just saying for me experience knowing I remember lying there when I was in college and thinking how grateful I was that I basically believe the right thing about everything Yeah Well I often parody Christian denominations with that Exact thought But it's like how what a man what

are the odds how lucky you are and with no irony at all I of course I was you know a 20-year-old kid but I was lying there in bed and I was like man like not only am I a Christian but I am the right kind of Christian Like I believe the right stuff I'm in the right denomination I'm in the right ministry Like even amongst the ministries here on campus I'm in the one that is the most serious about this Yeah And I was like This is I'm so God I'm so thankful that I'm

right about everything essentially is what I was saying Yeah those are my nightly affirmations too I'm just so grateful for being right about everything It's it's it's fascinating There is an interesting paradox there The the so-called preface paradox where um where people can be they can think that they're right about everything whilst also think thinking they're wrong about at least one thing It's called the Preface paradox because at the beginning of a book authors will often say if there are any mistakes in here like you know I'm sorry but they've gone through meticulously and checked

every single one So if I went through every single one of your beliefs individually and said do you think this is true yes Do you think this is true yes Cuz I'm going through your beliefs So definitionally every one of them would say yes But if at the end I then say but do you think At least one of those beliefs is actually false if you're a bit humble in any respect you go yeah of course one of them is false Yeah So you've got this paradox of thinking they're all true but at least one

of them is false It's got to do with like probabilistic certainty probably but but yeah there's that there's that feeling that you've got on your side as well and you sort of go to sleep slightly prideful slightly content slightly happy Where does that certainty Like come from was it was it the result of Bible study and consideration of different groups and denominations was it more sociological just sort of the way you were brought up did you were you cognizant of the factors which led you to be in the correct denomination and the correct student group

yeah So not at the time I I I I think that what I would have said is that um I had been taught the right stuff from my My parents and I had been in the right environment growing up Um I think that ultimately there's a couple there's a few factors that contribute to it I think number one there is certainty is a really important aspect of religious faith and especially Christianity and especially evangelical Christianity because I think that agreeing with a set of propositional Statements is actually what when if you ask somebody to describe

they might say well it's about a relationship with Jesus but if you're like well yeah but what does that mean it these propositional statements come up it's Well I believe this about Jesus If if any church worth its salt has a we believe place on their website right mhm That's what I thought right and so I think that being certain and being right about these things comes at a premium It Is really really important So I thought that being certain was very important And then I just think I had the type of personality came from

the type of family where we kind of thought we had it figured out right like I still this is a big problem for me now is to not settle on what I think I figured out to be really doubtful of my particular perception of the world to to to say well I again I know that I'm wrong about some stuff and there's a lot of stuff That I'm not sure about Um but I can struggle with wanting to latch on to certain ideas and be well I've got this figured out I've got this figured out

and you start trying to build this worldview So I think it's a combination of the environment where certainty was really important and in my personality the way that I gravitated towards that We'll get back to Rhett in just a moment but first do you trust the news i don't And a lot of that has got to do with the Bias that inevitably seeps into media reporting We can never get rid of media bias but wouldn't it be great if there were a way for us as consumers of news to navigate media bias objectively comparing the

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particular Denomination were there particular beliefs that you held that most Protestants would sort of disagree with you about what I would say is we would we called ourselves non-denominational But from a theological perspective we would have most aligned with just the Baptist church Sure So we were you know we were probably a little bit more reformed Baptist right so there was a strong not as strong as you would have in like a PCA church a Presbyterian Church in America about predestination Mhm But you know we were kind of soft Calvinist like fourpoint Calvinists you know

Um and so we definitely believe that God had predetermined essentially essentially who was g who was his child which was interesting to be to do in the context of evangelism to believe that ask like how how does that affect your when you go onto the beach and spring break and you're talking to people do you just Have this thought like well I hope I happen to bump into the people that God's already pre-ordained to to come to faith Yeah I think yes I think the the analogy that I would have used is that I'm planting

a bunch of seeds Yeah And some of them are sort of predetermined to grow and to flourish Yeah You know and I and that's not up to me I'm just the one that's planting the seeds But then if it's not up to you is it like if you don't plant those Seeds then they wouldn't get saved they wouldn't get saved I mean it kind of seems to this whole predestination idea seems to undermine the motivation for going Oh I I really this was probably my key like theological uh conundrum in college because we really I

was close with with with guys who uh were reformed in this way you know and and were were Calvinists and they would be like listen it's just very clear in the scriptures that he who he Predestines he predestines It's like you know and so I remember sitting on the porch one time with my friends as we were talking about that I said "Okay well all right If I want to believe the Bible," and again I of course I bought into univocality And I and I and I was able to reinterpret the passages that would question

this perspective in light of the ones that I had gravitated towards which is how you build you know a Systematic theology to begin with But I remember sitting with them and saying "Okay I can I can I can agree that God pre-ordained a certain number of people to be his children." Which definitely means that a certain number of people are not predestined to be his children In fact statistically speaking the majority of people who have ever lived and live right now and they're going to be in hell So I believe that Because the Bible says

it but and I like paused because I was a little bit nervous I was like "But doesn't that kind of make God an asshole?" And they were like "No no no He's just like you you don't you can't understand first of all we all deserve to be in hell The fact that he would save he's justified in not saving anyone." Yeah that's the line isn't it and so then I was like "Yeah but he decided to create a world in Which these beings would exist." Like he still made that choice Doesn't that still kind of

make him an [ __ ] so I was having thoughts like that at like 20 years old but was able to continue to carry like a cognitive dissonance that allowed me to still be a very strong Christian and just be like "Okay there are things that I don't understand God's got that figured out." That'll be the first question I ask him when I get to heaven Yeah And of course There's no Christian who doesn't have thoughts like that swimming around in their minds too It's for some people those are questions that they just retain and

like you say think "I'll ask God when I see him." For others it's like the first domino falling apart I'm interested in what your view of hell was at the time when you said that most people are probably going to hell What did you think hell was at the time when you were around 20 i had talked myself Into mostly as a result of that struggle I was having Um that it was probably some sort of I basically basically became without really reading too much about it an annihilation annihilationist Yeah And so just the idea

that people who don't know God who are not his children will probably go through some sort of torment but it won't be forever and then they will cease to exist Yeah Yeah And that that hell is I mean annihilationism is The view that people will be annihilated if they don't go to heaven They sort of cease to exist maybe after a period of suffering of of some sort I've always been quite attracted to that idea because of the like classical uh tomistic arguments for the existence of God which have God is like the ground of

being Mhm If God is the foundation of being itself and everything that is participates in him then if hell is something like separation from God and If God is the ground of all being then what does it mean to not be with God it means to to not be It means to not exist So I've always thought philosophically there's good grounding for for considering separation with God to be the same thing as not existing because to exist is to participate in God's existence as some of the classical philosophers philosophers would put it But that's not

as motivational as the fire and brimstone Yeah imagery And Presumably in your outreach you wouldn't push too heavy on the hell stuff especially considering that you thought most people were going there anyway and there's nothing about Right And I I think that uh it's interesting to see I'm still a fan of Christian apologetics It's fascinating to me to see the way that and especially now I I there wasn't nearly as much um just apologetics media as there is now when I was deconstructing because this mostly Happened to me in the late as you know 2010

2011 and nobody was making there were people writing books but nobody was making internet content about this stuff but I I I kind of dip in and dip out and to see the way the conversation around hell is evolving is fascinating because it is a really you It's like if you if you've got uh if you're selling a product it's like the one thing where we get all the bad reviews about this It's like ah [ __ ] People keep talking about this one thing and it's the hell thing So how do we rebrand hell

and the way that hell is being rebranded is smart You know a lot of people are moving into this you know annihilationism but also there are people who just frame it as separation from God It's just simply like you chose you rejected God's love Like that's not hateful for him to re to say well you now you just are going to be on your own and whatever that is to deal with your Own stuff And it sounds kind of it sounds a lot nicer It just sounds like you're just rejecting something And I think that's

become a big it's become a pretty big talking point Yeah What um I mean maybe this was one of them but when do the the dominoes start to fall over for you how old are you and what what starts to happen because right now you're speaking past tense So at some point you go from not just Christian but really involved professional Christian As you put it to now where you are Where where does this start so I in my early 20s uh you know the first couple years out of school I'm an engineer civil engineer

Um I'm still very involved in Campus Crusade at the time I'm not having that many you know existential questions about it If anything I'm thinking about how I'm gonna I'm moving towards being a professional Christian because my wife Was still in college at the time And so Link and I had kind of you know we've been best friends since first grade 1984 so we kind of knew what we were working towards and the idea that we were going to develop this ministry where we got to be funny and make our comedy videos and we were

really trying to find a way to do the thing that we loved for the cause that we loved So it sort of started as with God in the periphery here of like with all the video stuff and it it's all Sort of directed towards at least subtly to some degree evangelism Yeah definitely And I think it was a way to have my cake and eat it too because I really wanted like we we are entertainers at heart We wanted to be filmmakers We wanted to make things that you know had significance culturally We we wanted

to do that from the very beginning So we always had our minds of like on this idea that maybe we'll kind of you know we can have we Can use this ministry or we can have a ministry where we're doing these things that we love and then maybe something that we make will be impactful enough so that we could one day maybe we'll move to Hollywood and maybe we'll have a ministry there just through the things that we create That was sort of the the thought in the early days So shortly after the engineering stent

go on staff with campus crusade at that point you Know you're going to the staff training and you're taking the seminary classes and your initial and I was always a stu you know I was a not like a super deep student of theology but I would say moderately deep and there were certain ideas that I would gravitate towards and things that it would I kind of I like to think about and talk about at that same time I was given a book and I never really thought about The intersection of science and faith I think

the way that I would have described it is yeah I think that most scientists are not Christians Most scientists are atheists and they've come up with some pretty wacky ideas to try to explain the world and why people are the way that they are why the world is the way that it is And they're mostly just desperate attempts to explain the world without God's involvement So that whole thing about evolution and how long The world has been here that's probably all BS but I didn't think about it any more deeply than that Mhm I wasn't

like a staunch young earth creationist I didn't think about that issue in particular but I picked up a book from a astronomer uh Hugh Ross and I'm sure you know it's I've mentioned this before and it's you know he's like a he has a Christian ministry that is like very anti-evolution but very pro- old Universe huh from the standpoint of astronomy which uh you know obviously when you look at all the astronomical evidence and the speed of light and the size of the universe and all this stuff Yeah Okay The universe has been around for

probably as long as the scientists are saying And but then he went on to essentially say that you know but all God's truth all truth is God's truth And this is totally compatible with the Bible But just so you know evolution Didn't happen And he was a proponent of something called progressive creationism which essentially was yes the world has been around for as long as the scientists say and these fossils we find are legitimate fossils that are approximately the date that they're saying they are But God was creating new batches of creatures special creations at

different stages throughout the history of the world Whoa And then ultimately resulting in the creation of People So why great question Great question So I remember thinking as I'm reading this I'm like it's the first time I ever thought about there being some reconciliation between what we observe in science and my belief about the world And I just remember thinking this doesn't this doesn't feel like a good explanation I've never heard of somebody I mean I'm I'm sure I've met someone who probably Like believes that the earth is old and the universe is old but

maybe is suspicious of evolution but specifically like well I'm a scientist and I'm an astronomer and there's just no way I can look at the red shifting of the galaxies and deny that the universe is 13.8 billion years old but that evolution stuff from that other field of biology that I've probably never really seriously studied Yeah Know that's all that's all BS And instead I mean God is Just creating animals willy-nilly And and there's animals that are getting more and more like a person before the people Yeah It's like it's like God is just sort

of doing little trial runs or something right i mean what does that say about God is what I was thinking Yeah It gets there eventually That that is a little bit a little bit strange I suppose it's kind of biblical in the sense of like stretching out the story of Genesis over however long you needed And animals sort of popping in on on different days and stuff like this But but yeah I mean the the biggest problem for me that evolution poses to to the Christian and and a lot of Christians today just accept evolution

They're like "Yeah sure." You know humans all have a common ancestor with other animals The biggest problem that I think it poses is the seeming like arbitrariness with which you have to say that presuming that our apish ancestors don't Get to inherit eternal life At some point a mother gives birth to a child and the child is morally condemnable to hell but also potentially has the ability to inherit eternal life but his mother doesn't rape And what the difference is there and maybe it's just a brute fact Maybe maybe God just breathed life into that

particular organism But it just seems a bit arbitrary and unfair that that person's suffering will now be redeemed and it Now means something But their mothers who is the same organism same suffering same lifestyle same everything dies like an animal It just doesn't seem right to me Unless you want to say that personhood is something which develops as well but that gets you into a whole lot of trouble with and so that's where I ended up going right because when I was I I didn't really buy into the progressive creationism thing but I was so

sure that evolution didn't happen I Was like when you when you're raised in the Christian faith and the only exposure to the idea of evolution you've ever had has come through the filter of a Christian scientist telling you why it's not legitimate You know somebody comes into your church and they're like the evolution expert and they're like they make it seem so impossible that you walk out of that with a full affirmation of the idea that evolution definitely didn't happen and it's a horrible Explanation It will be debunked by the scientists themselves within our lifetime

Like that's the kind of stuff that we told ourselves Right Right And we firmly believed it But it because of this this proposal of this progressive creationist idea because the the age of the universe and the age of the earth from a from a geological I'm always been interested in geology but from a geological standpoint I was like oh well this is Inescapable like this isn't like the way that answers in Genesis has framed this issue is I mean I'm not going to say it's definitely disingenuous I think they really just believe that it's it

has to it has to you know be consistent with the Bible And so they're just willing to just completely reshape everything that they're seeing in light of that But I essentially was like well this doesn't make any sense So then the idea Of considering evolution which just felt I was like am I actually about to do this and I was like well I think CS Lewis believed in evolution you know you start saying these things like "Yeah but there's people there's a lot of Christians who are like theistic evolutionists and okay so maybe there's something

to this." So I read Francis Collins book The Language of God Language of God And the thing that I took away from that book was that Well evolution happened as well And you know he he he touches on it a little bit He talks about in that book I think he talks about the second chromosome the fusing of the second chromosome Mhm Uh I think he talks a little bit about uh retroviruses and essentially um you know we've got the the marks of the same retroviruses on our DNA that chimpanzees do right there are just

these again there's no other way to see it Just like inexplicable data right it's like if God If we're not related to every other animal on earth well God certainly try to make it seem like we are Yeah And um so then that was a huge moment for me I remember coming home still living in North Carolina Again a lot of people think that the story that is often told is that link and I were Christians We came to Los Angeles We were corrupted by this sinful city and we threw away our faith And the

reality and I've told it many times but you know It doesn't it's passed over is all this happened when I was in North Carolina right this happened when I was completely buckled into the Bible belt as as tightly as you can be surrounded by people who agree with me about all these things Um with no social pressure to deviate from that at all In fact a lot of social pressure to stay So I was struggling a lot because no one I didn't have anybody to talk to about this Yeah I remember talking to Link I

Mean talk I talked to Link about it a little bit Uh and he would just kind of be like "Oh shit." Like he it felt like you're learning a lot of things that seem problematic but uh I'm not going to think I don't want to think about this Yeah Yeah Jesse my wife who did come from like a young earth creationist background like that's you know that's what she was taught growing up When I came home and I was like "We need to talk about something." thing and I and I Said I am thoroughly convinced

that evolution is true and that we are related to every other animal I believe in common ancestry and I just think that it is not just I sort of think it's true It's just like my reading has led me to think that if this isn't true then I actually can't determine what any anything that's true It's so overwhelming because I'd read in additional additionally to that She just starts Crying because this represented she knew what this represented right this was this seismic shift And I think a lot of people that I tell this story to

are like "What do you mean what there's all these Christians that believe in evolution like I I can't believe that this was so significant for you." But I think the reason it was is because at that point I realized how wrong I could be about something so fundamental Yeah And I never ever Considered that I might be wrong about something so fundamental And then not only was I wrong but all of these Christian apologists who were so sure about their critiques of evolution they had missed the boat so significantly on this that suddenly I was

like can I can I trust anything else they've got to say about this so that was the first big Domino Yeah it's significant like you say I mean you might think well there are Christians who believe in evolution but depends which way you come at it I mean if you're somebody who's like a a scientifically minded person who comes to faith in Jesus you're not going to abandon evolution but you might think "Okay I can I can make this all work." But if you've come from the background you've come from it's like yeah it's like

going up to your wife and saying You know I just think maybe we should uh I just think maybe we should like live in separate houses or something and your wife starts balling and someone says I don't really know people some people do that some married couples they sort of they live apart and stuff like yeah but what it represents to move from where we are now and the way we were living to having this kind of question or this kind of desire indicates a direction of thought yeah which you don't really want To want

to entertain your your wife if I'm not mistaken was a student of Bartman at Chapel Hill she was right and was this around this kind of time was she already being fed the atheist lies through her through her professor when she this was undergrad you know at at UNCC and um she at that point this was before we even went on staff with Campus Crusade I mean there was no questioning of anything like we we both saw Bart as the Enemy right this guy is coming and he's just decimating the faith of Christian students and

with a with a laugh you know he comes in with that with that chuckle that he so disarming And it's funny I haven't met Bart I want to uh because I want to be able to tell him this story Well first thing that would happen is Jesse you know my my wife is uh she's very passionate and she's very smart And so she was a great defender of the faith When she was in it And she would challenge him right and she would like go up to him after class and be like what about this

or what about that and then she would like come and report back like this is what he said and you know and I'm sure that there are many students who have continued to attempt this strategy with him over the years at the same time uh there was somebody who was working with campus crusade at UNC who approached a Couple years later when link and I were already beginning to do our our ministry work who approached me and link and said we actually want to create some resources to counter what Bart is doing on campus because

we feel like we need to equip students better because they're going into this these classes of his and having these qu being confronted with these questions and what can we do like in terms of a multimedia project to address that So we were actually Beginning to have those conversations It never became anything I mean how ironic would it be if you I could dig up a video of me like criticizing Bart from 20 years ago I kind of wish we had done it just so I'd have it now That would be awesome Um but yeah

so there was never um I think that there was especially in those days in the college days there was zero curiosity right about whether or not I might be wrong Yeah You know that wasn't even up for debate There was no There was full confidence and no curiosity Um and I am in a very a very different place I think those two things have reversed at this point in my life Right Right Very low confidence in my perspective and high curiosity for all of this stuff Yeah I feel like that's been happening to me over

the past few years as well And I think it's for the better It's less entertaining and it's less fulfilling on a superficial level Because it's nice to be able to even when you're just talking to somebody it's nice to be able to at dinner when somebody asks you what and you think "Right here it is I'll lay it out Here's my beliefs and here's why I think this and let's have a discussion about it." It's less fulfilling to sort of go you know what man I've got I've got kind of no idea but but here

are some thoughts But I think it protects yourself against the kind of spiritual crisis which you Inevitably run up against when that first domino starts to fall And for you it was evolution You have you've said before that you used to kind of evangelize against evolution without having known very much about evolution I mean it sounds like the moment you started like reading into evolution of its own accord You became convinced by it How do you navigate arguing against evolution if you haven't Already engaged with that primary literature like I'm really intrigued when I heard

you say that on some other show or something It's like well you know I hadn't really learned about evolution but I used to go out and argue against it What arguments are you using like how do you do that great question First of all it was a different time Yeah anyone who's interested in these issues now can get uh I mean you can you could just ask Chad GBT to give you a Primer on evolution but all I had was I mean there was a few books but one I remember there was this I can't

remember the author's name but the title was Icons of Evolution and it kind of talks about the quote unquote best arguments for evolution and he talks about why they're all corrupt and so what I found is that first First of all 99% of the people that I engage with about this where I was from and at the Time knew nothing about evolution Even if they were like "Yeah I I I agree with that because that's what the scientists say." Yeah But then you're like "Describe the mechanism of evolution." It's like we come from monkeys right

well I I had I you know I had read enough to to say things like uh okay so you're saying that the primary raw material of evolution and through natural selection are genetic mutations So give me an example of a Beneficial mutation And at best your beneficial mutation just causes a change in color But give me an example of a new species Yeah that doesn't happen That stare is quite quite intimidating Suddenly I'm like I'm thinking is evolution true i don't know Right man I don't know man And so I just had those back pocket

and then I would say things like take for instance if we took all in you know you you have this this concept that you put organisms into Different environments and they suddenly become you know they adapt to different environments Mhm But what if we were to take all of the dogs in the world and put them out into the wild what would happen we would have a convergence to a type of canine that could survive in the wild And it wouldn't be my little poodle And it wouldn't be the Great Dane It wouldn't be these

extravagant dogs that we have created through artificial selection It would be the one that Adapts to the environment And that would probably look like a wolf Mhm End of story Evolution doesn't happen You know and most people who don't know anything about it are like "Oh okay I guess it doesn't happen." Yeah It's easy enough to do when somebody really really just just doesn't know Uh because I think mo most people are at that position where they they kind of know that evolution is this thing and it's got something to do with genetics and environment

selection But all you need is like one good counter example or question that can't be answered along with that confidence Yeah And those eyebrows Yeah The eyebrows are key the eyebrows and the confidence and and there's something about the fact that you're doing this kind of professionally as well Like if they know oh this is a guy who's part of this organization and whatnot they're probably thinking even if I had an answer he'll have heard it cuz he does This every day And so like there's just something about that confidence which is going to be

quite offputting for for people But presumably those questions start to get answered for you by the reading that you're doing And was it I mean you said it was Francis Collins book Is there a moment where you're reading it and like your mind goes to those apologetical arguments that you make and you're like oh that that doesn't work Yeah I'm like this you know there's not an explanation for this And of course you can do that You can every single one of these things you can there's a page on the Answers in Genesis website for

everything that we could talk about related to evolution So they've got their perspective on the the second chromosome and the the the fusing of that chromosome They've got their perspective on these retroviruses And I think I was getting to a place where I no longer I I would essentially I just I read their responses and I was just like this is not this can't be right Like they have to be wrong about this like this is not a good faith argument This is not a good faith answer you know And that's when it started dawning

on me that okay I began to notice a pattern And I think maybe I didn't even realize I was Noticing a pattern yet but this is the pattern that started then and then propagated itself throughout my entire deconstruction And that is um there's a type of answer that someone gives when their allegiance is to the truth that they need to be true And there's a type of answer that people who are actually interested in the truth give And what I kept finding is That Christian apologetics you know really consists of people who are like well

the truth cannot be questioned the truth We've predetermined that this is true and now we've got to find a way to buttress that truth And there's a there's a tenor to those arguments that they don't hold up very well under scrutiny When you get the answer to the answer to the answer to the answer you just keep finding like it Just seems like this these people seem to be interested in what actually happened and these people seem to be interested in the truth that they hope that happened Mhm And that was a huge flip for

me because what again as a Christian what I thought is we have the truth they have the desperate attempt to be anti- good right you know we were taught that these these evolutionists these professors who are teaching this kind of stuff like they they're sinful They're deceived they don't want they they desperately don't want God to exist so therefore they got to come up with these ideas in order to explain them Right M but when you're like actually first of all most of these ideas came from Christians you know the age of the earth these

geologists back in the day these are just every most people were Christians is just the fact of the matter and they were like oh this is but God must have done it in this way Yeah And then when they find evolution God must have done it in this way Um and so the scientific stuff there was there were plenty of people who taught me like it's okay You can believe you can yeah you can believe that You can be a theistic evolution evolutionist Uh you probably still need to believe in a literal Adam and Eve

because the atonement still needs to make sense You know original sin's got to make sense And I was like okay yeah that those arguments seem like we're just trying to marry two disperate ideas Yeah But I was like okay But I just think that that mentality of finding that the people because it got into biblical scholarship after that it got into okay well the primeval history okay so this is I guess this is allegory like this didn't happen these these were these are religious myths That were adapted from other myths that were around at the

same time Mhm The flood didn't happen Yeah the Tower of Babel is a weird explanation for language and I started seeing all that and so I was like okay now my entire view of the beginning of the Bible is different and again I would go to the apologetics answer and I would be like one person seems to be like the critical scholars actually seem to be like interested in what happened like why did These people write this where why is it like this where did this idea come from and then the Christian apologists seem to

be like "Well we know it's God's word so how do we prove it?" Mhm And it just kept creeping closer and closer to Jesus And I had this like this happened this was years right cuz I was like "Well I'm never I'm not going to stop believing in Jesus." You know you can have these weird ideas about the Old Testament but like Jesus is different I mean I have a Personal relationship with him and um you know and that stuff's true right you know the stuff about the resurrection my arguments for why the resurrection had

happened and it being the best explanation for the beginning of the church and all this I like had those arguments in my back pocket But long story short eventually those arguments fell victim to the same type of critique They're a little bit different because I do think that there Is a more interesting conversation around the resurrection because you can kind of know a little bit less about what happened and you can be somebody who believes all this stuff about that I might agree with related to evolution but then be like I have a faith position

that Jesus actually rose from the dead I recognize that I can't it's not a scientific thing I can't prove it It it is a little bit different category but it opened me up to Questioning these sacred ideas And it's just the most sacred idea of all that Jesus was the son of God who raised from the dead eventually was the last domino to fall Wow And how does that finally fall i mean because the evolution thing confronts and I think the reason why it was so scandalous in the 19th century is is kind of just

a vibe shift right because when you speak to philosophically minded Christians they will quite correctly say there is no Argumentative syllogism you can construct which shows that because animals have a common ancestor therefore God doesn't exist That just that doesn't follow There's no there's no argument you can make from that But it's hard to put into words just like the feeling Again it's like we were saying before about the indicating a direction of thought when a society is is based upon the idea that human beings are special and unique Yeah This idea if you're Smart

it doesn't need to undermine the idea that God exists but it shows this direction of thought like oh gosh we're not as special as we thought I as we thought we were Where's that going to lead i'm pretty sure that in the first edition of the origin of species in 1859 that beautiful ending um you know the there is grandeur in this view of life from many different species whatever it is having been breathed into many lives or into one have been and are being Evolved And there's that phrase like having been breathed into one

or too many you know primordial forms of life And presumably because of the backlash that this idea receives in the second edition of the origin of species having been breathed by the creator into one life or to many Darwin defaced the ending his moving ending to the origin of species And I think by addition three it was back out again So you can if you I've seen one in person an actual second Edition of like a rare bookshop If you happen to be in like a a fancy rare bookshop and see if they've got a

second edition it will say by the creator because there's just something so confronting about it that you need to you need to respond to But okay there's that and then there's the resurrection That's not just like a vibe shift That is this is the historical claim upon which Christianity is based And like you say it's less accessible to the Scientific method because it's a singular event Yeah It's not like a process a process that's still going on today that we can biologically observe And you can't scientifically or historically prove the resurrection but you can prove

like surrounding facts You can say that Jesus was crucified that his disciples claimed to see him all of this kind of stuff All of those arguments are are still there and still sat in your mind Presumably you're Pretty familiar with them as a as someone who specializes in outreach Why would that change like what what shifts the dial on on those kinds of arguments for you and this is where I you know I don't remember specifically like okay well it was this book it was it but you know it could be something as simple it

was one aspect of that argument of that case you know probably the most famous one is well why would The disciples die for a lie mhm And then when I really looked into that and then I found that well I don't think I can actually historically defend that anyone died for something that they knew to be a lie Like I think that this can be explained by them being deceived right they could just be wrong about what they saw or their perspective But I think the bigger picture was as I started looking at different Perspectives

on the historical Jesus I remember there's one book that was called the historical Jesus five views And I read that book and I think every one of them was some kind of Christian Yeah just different gradations of liberal or progressive Christian And everyone laid out their case with a lot of a lot of confidence and a lot more scholarship and knowledge than I Have about the subject But it was so gray and I just started just this feeling began to creep in which was like okay well maybe he did rise from the dead but what

I've learned about our the process of historical investigation and also just the nature of human psychology and the nature of religious movements and the the nature of people's willingness to believe things like it began to dawn on me that I don't Know exactly what happened with Jesus I don't know the nature of his specifically the nature of his death Like was he left on the cross was he thrown into a large you know like mass grave was he was he put into a a rich man's grave by Joseph of Arya was that invented i I

don't know But what seems to be pretty clear to me is that it's almost certain that there's some explanation for how it all Started that isn't that he actually raised from the dead And my in my compulsion to believe that he raised from the dead it is a religious position It is a faith position It's not an historically defensible position to the degree that these Christian apologists make it out to be We were talking last night about Dale Allison how I just think I love his book and this was all like you know this was

I read that like two years ago so This is all way after my deconstruction but I'm still interested in the subject But you know he's a Christian He believes that it happened but I think he's got one of the best books on the resurrection The thing is so refreshing about it is he's not he he's not coming at this from like a Gary Habermass standpoint where he's like this is the most reasonable thing and if you don't agree with that you're just you're being unreasonable It's like well no it's I mean that we're talking about

the pinnacle of an unreasonable idea an unreasonable event This is not if this happened this is something I have to accept on faith and I am completely fine with people who do that But my intuition is that it didn't happen And I have sort of lost my ability to have faith in things that are just conjecture and in things that I something that foundational I mean I still have what I would call some level Of religious faith We can talk about what that might look like but I think that my ability to have faith in

the idea of the resurrection it just was like you why would you be why would you choose for that to be the thing that you that you believed in when all these other things have sort of fallen apart To this process came across an interesting idea A friend told me I I wish I could remember exactly how this goes but I'm Pretty sure that there is a development as the gospels go on about the description of the tomb So like in in Mark's gospel presumably I think it just says that Jesus is put in a

tomb And in Matthew's gospel it becomes uh a new tomb And then I think by Luke it's a new tomb in which no one had been laid Or maybe that's John I I can't remember the details but there's things that you wouldn't notice that I I'd never come across this idea before If the empty Tomb is an important apologetic to Jesus's resurrection well we know that the tomb was empty In order to know that the tomb was empty you need to ensure that Jesus was probably the only person laid in it because otherwise it could

have been mixed up with someone else or something like this And so there is this hint at evidence of an early apologetical motive to make the tomb a new tomb which means there's no other bodies in there And then specifically a New tomb in which no one had been laid right so that when they say there's an empty tomb nobody can come along and say "Well are you sure it you know it wasn't somebody else or someone stole a body or it got lost or something?" No it has to be an empty tomb And so

you're right that when you those those little questions well are we sure that he was taken down from the cross and laid in the tomb in the way that it's described and if you start to notice apologetical Motivations potentially in those very stories starts to undermine the historicity a little bit Like how Matthew's gospel is the only one that mentions the gods at the tomb right and we're told why the gods like we're told by Matthew essentially why he's included the story of the guards because they are like Jesus is gone and the Jews pay

him pay the guards and say you're going to spread the rumor that the body got stolen That's what you're going to do And the guards are like sure thing you know we'll do that We'll take that money And this is a rumor that still persists to this day says Matthew And what's the best explanation for that is it like there were actually guards and Matthew is the only person who happened to report them or has Matthew invented the guards as an apologetical tool admitting that there is this rumor that the body was stolen and thereby

having to invent the guards at the tomb to protect Against that maybe there were guards Like we can't prove that there weren't But when you start to see how much potential apologetical motivation is underlying these these claims in these gospels which although broadly seeming to be attempts at historical biography are also just just just full with full of what is probably best thought of as mythical mythical storytelling becomes really difficult Dale Allison talks at length about the Raising of the graves in Matthew's gospel at the time of Jesus which is bonkers It's absolutely bonkers But

it's it's really strange how it's worded as well because it says that when Jesus dies it says at that moment when he dies there's a great earthquake and all the graves open and the holy ones of Jerusalem appear to people after the resurrection And it's a really weird clunky wording because it says that the graves opened when Jesus died Then it Said that the people appeared to many after the resurrection as if like they were just laying dead in the open tomb for 3 days or something Like it's a weirdly worded and you've got this

and Matthew's the only one who reports it and you've got this undertone of Jesus being the firstborn of the dead And it's like okay like Dale Allison is pretty convinced this didn't actually happen It's another question whether Matthew thought it happened right but the Problem is that if Matthew didn't if Okay Okay Well this is just a bit of myth that Matthew is obviously telling some kind of allegorical story What does that mean it means that Matthew is willing to make up stories about resurrecting people from the dead in order to serve a theological and

then the floodgates are open Especially because Matthew's gospel is the earliest gospel that has any post-resurrection appearance that's recorded in it Boom The doors are the doors are open Yeah Well the thing that's so fascinating to me about this is you know famously evangelical Christians especially when I was coming up in campus ministry like we had our anti- Mormon arguments Oh yeah Right Uh there was this there was this one summer that some Mormon missionaries like I was out I was out of the country doing some missionary work and Link was still in Raleigh and

there were Mormon missionaries that came to talk to him They ended up coming back like four or five times cuz Link that time especially at the time wasn't controversial It wasn't confrontational He was just like yeah you guys So he like they went through the whole spiel or whatever and then when I got back I was like you let them come like five times You didn't never challenge them And he's like "Well I was just kind of waiting." I ended up Writing this like pamphlet I would do this all the time I would write like

little papers or pamphlets or whatever And there was one that was like "This is what you need to say the next time the the Mormons come to your door right because you can you can take apart their theirology and their history really in a much it's so recent right?" So that was my perspective And I find it so interesting that the average Christian apologist the level of scrutiny they Apply to criticizing Mormonism if they would just for a moment turn that level of scrutiny on their own story you would be like "Guys come on Do

you see what you're doing?" Or like and if you if you had been born in a Muslim country and you were of the Muslim faith and you and you didn't believe that Jesus actually raised from the dead what would your what would your Muslim apologetic about the resurrection be like do you really think these Arguments are as strong or is it just you need them to be true yeah It's so foundational to who you are you need this to be true But the second aspect of it is it's like we're sitting here having this conversation

in the context of 2025 where we have access to all this scholarship and all this scholarship and all these discussions about these issues are such a re recent phenomenon that first of all the tiny minority of people who live today who call themselves Christians care about this stuff and actually take time to think about it Right you believe that Jesus rose from the dead if you're a Christian probably because your parents told you Like 90% because your parents told you and then you got into a movement where it's continually confirmed by people who come in

and they say some smart stuff about it and this is why you can trust it So even if it did happen it doesn't feel like a really penetrating investigation Into the historical circumstances is what's going to like oh make it click and be like oh it did happen I I looked under the last rock of history and I found the resurrection Like it doesn't seem like God intended for that to be the way If that's right it this is clearly some sort of this is a revelation This is a this is like you know this

is a secret This is like God's secret information that you can choose to believe and then this your life is Transformed Like I'm okay with people who frame it in that way I'm like well I still think that you're I think this is a psychological phenomenon I don't I don't believe it I'm a skeptic in that in that regard But I just find it so interesting the way that some of these apologists go so hard on trying to prove it It's like do you really think that that's going to be the That's going to be

the the thing that changes somebody's mind Yeah I mean it's Not like it's what Jesus was doing No Verily I say unto you premise one Yeah He wasn't doing apologetics It doesn't work like that It's it's clearly like not what it's all about And apologetics can only take you so far I mean there is this idea online in particular that to be a Christian or to be religious is to essentially do natural theology is what they call it which is like arguing for the existence of God like the whole religion discussion has become consumed With

God's existence biblical scholarship and we forget that it's actually an assumption and a controversial assumption that that is the approach to have to this conversation for for many people like natural theology is is just a a waste of time and an improper approach to to the question of God's existence And most people who have a religious experience will will report that Thomas Aquinusly famously didn't finish the summer Theologica the greatest Christian metaphysician of all time And he doesn't finish it because he's performing mass He's performing the Eucharist and he has a religious experience and his

like friend or colleague or whatever is like writing to him begging him you have to finish this Thomas Like this is you've got to finish And he says I can write no more It's all straw compared to what I've seen And you're right about the double standard as well I just had a a Mormon on my show uh Jacob Hansen who one of the key things that he likes to emphasize he doesn't usually speak to atheists This is quite funny I saw him recently and he says he doesn't usually speak to atheists because there are

so many like metaphysical assumptions you have to make If you want to talk about Mormonism you already sound absolutely menful If you're talking to someone who doesn't even already believe in like angels and God and stuff you're not Going to move an inch But he's like "I always talk to Christians because they do believe in angels and revelation and prophets and all this kind of stuff." And he can kind of like hold up a mirror to these Christians because they look at him and be like "Oh yeah So like you know God spoke to some

dude in upstate New York through some like golden plates that like no one's ever seen you know?" And he's and he's like "Yeah well how many witnesses do you have to the Resurrection that left any accounts?" We've got more eyewitness testimony to the golden plates than you've got to the resurrection you know and it's it's this like obly I can look at this and think both of them are you know not quite hitting the mark right but his big gripe is like I don't mind people saying that we don't have enough evidence or you're not

convinced or whatever But as a Christian you you can't switch that off when it comes to analyzing your own Faith And it does sound absurd to be like "Oh there was a prophet in New York Was there?" But we've only just got used to the idea that religion comes from you know that comes from the Middle East The whole reason why Jesus is born of of Nazareth is it's like a lowly origin They even say in the Gospels you know is he the guy from Nazareth you know what good comes from Nazareth we're just used

to it now but at the time that would have sounded about as crackpot as saying You know this guy in upstate New York yeah he's he's found some golden plates and and they're buried under the ground And and so I do find like I've talked about Mormonism a lot recently because I do find it holds up this interesting mirror to Christian apologetics It's like this is kind of how you sound guys a lot of the time Yeah I I certainly agree I it is this it's and to have been on that side of it and

to I mean I specifically I don't still have that Document that I wrote the guide to talking to your Mormon friends I was going to ask Um I mean it might be in some you know box somewhere but I can go I can tell you that it was incredibly dismissive And I think that I you know I was trying to be cute and funny at the same time And so I'm sure I I was like essentially saying can you believe that people believe this like if you only knew how crazy this set of beliefs was

you would you would basically deny it on That the fact of how crazy it was But it's like it's not hey it's not any crazier It's just less familiar You know it's just less familiar than these things that we believe so wholeheartedly Um Yeah But at the time you you just you can't see it when you're in it You can't see it Yeah Of course And you said at the time you you said you started believing in natural selection and your wife's in tears Does that like put you off do you think "Oh gosh maybe

I shouldn't dig any further Is it already an unstoppable force?" Like how does that go cuz presumably she's kind of okay with the evolution thing now So yeah she's more than okay with it at this point Yeah Like how how does that like begin to develop do you just kind of keep going and say like "Sorry darling but this is this is what I think and there's nothing I can do about it." Yeah I It moved very slow Because again I didn't have all these YouTubers talking about this stuff Mhm I had to make the

decision to be like I'm going to buy this book and take the time to read it And I'm still like living my life I'm not I'm not like a voracious reader I mean I read quite a bit but it's you know it's pretty slow And I'm Link and I are trying to build a career and we're trying to like make ends meet And this is early days of YouTube So I was a bit scared of where this might lead And I think I just had this idea because again you know where we come from everyone

else in our families are not just Christians but they're strong committed Christians this is the most important thing in their life You know we grew up looking down on cultural Christians We we we could spot them That person just goes to church because it's the thing to do But we go To church because this is the most important thing that we could do is having communion with other believers And you know and so I I think that it moved very slowly because of that I was getting into the historical Jesus stuff in like 2010 I

like looking back at some of my journal entries and that was when it was beginning to kind of fall apart Like the Jesus part was falling apart But we moved to LA in 2011 So one Of the things that that happened Link and I had a a series where we were making these local commercials Several of them had gone viral in like the late au and we ended up getting a TV show on IFC That's why we moved out here So we moved out here with our wives and kids all together in 2011 And I

kind of thought to myself this is maybe an opportunity to start over a little bit You know I went to we went to a church that we had some Friends at that we knew from out here and it was in Hollywood and it was like the music was awesome and everyone was so cool and they wore like the cool hats It was like it was like hipster church and it was so much different than what I came from And the way they talked about these issues was it was just more nuanced and gray And I

found myself thinking like I think I could I think I could do this I think I could do this because you know I guess ultimately if You backed this person into a corner he'd probably believe the pastor would probably believe all the stuff that I believe but holding it a little bit more loosely and maybe I can kind of have this thing like I love Jesus and I I I remember writing in my journal you know when when Peter talks about you know when Jesus is is asking him if he's going to leave and he's

like "Where else would I go?" Yeah I I thought the same Thing I was like "What am I what am I going to do become an atheist be become non-religious become a different religion?" It's just like even if I'm not sure about this I'm sure that Jesus is good for me I'm sure that these ideas are good for me and this idea of believing in resurrection and like this I can I I can kind of just maintain this That's where I was when I moved out here That lasted such a short period of time because

When I would stop and I would just think about it I would be like "Yeah but it's probably not it's probably not true." And I started finding people who had been through similar things I could talk to about these things Mhm And you start just finding there's people who have and and also I started finding people I can't remember exactly they weren't really talking about on YouTube but there were people writing about it Blogs and that kind of thing and you just start finding oh these people don't believe this anymore but they're still good people

who want the same thing out of life cuz we thought my wife and I thought our marriage would end We thought we wouldn't have anything useful to share with our children You know when you when you when you believe this that this this idea that you've got the truth and that this is the most essential truth and it isn't just about your Salvation It's about your life Like your marriage is based on this commitment to Christ first Yeah The your kids and every decision that you make about them is based on this biblical understanding and

this framework You're going to throw that out What are you gonna do what's going to happen to your marriage it's going to happen to your kids But then you start finding all these people who h don't know what they think about it anymore and they like still have solid Marriages and they're still their kids are still good kids who are just trying the best that they can And so I think that about one or two years into being out here when I I was kind of like okay I don't I just don't believe this at

all I'm not going to call myself a Christian Uh but maybe we'll keep going to church for a while while I try to figure out what we're going to do about the kids Yeah Did that have anything to do with Like LA and the demons of the city or do you think it was just like already if you'd have stayed in North Carolina the same thing would have happened i think that uh LA gave me the permission to basically be like if I was back home and I and my decision to not go to church

back home would have involved several discussions with family Yeah Whereas my decision to not go to church in LA was just my decision to not go to church Yeah So there is no doubt So that's what I'll give the the the Christian critics is that the role that LA played is it did give me the freedom Sure Cuz we're not in a culturally Christian environment out here in the same way It's like people believe all kinds of stuff Yeah Um and so my decision to be like okay well I'm just we're just not going to

be a part of this anymore Yeah Was made it was made easier Yeah And by that time is your wife still in tears about It like how does that progression by that time i I think the thing with her we were in basically exactly the same place now in terms of like what she would you know she believes essentially the same thing and it took her own path to that and has her own perspective and the things that are important or interesting to me are not necessarily important issues reverse Lee Stroel isn't it you know

the case the case against Christ the movie yeah and so She's basically in the same place doesn't consider herself a Christian but I think for her as a mom uh who was homeschooling you know uh I think there was this well what do we do like what do we do about our kids I feel like I need to continue to teach some of these ideas to them and there needs to be some kind of framework and this is something that a lot of people who are deconstructing deal with because you know religion Works it we

we I definitely believe that we created it but we created it because we needed it to some degree for the ritual the community the sense of awe these things that are essential to the human experience that I do think you can experience outside of a religious community But for most of history religious communities have done that best And when you have kids and you're raising a family and you're looking for purpose and meaning and uh Structure you can choose to like hodge podge create that on your own or you can plug into a community that

has a set of shared myths And that's a really difficult thing to to navigate But it's been a long process But we found people who were also navigating it found our own community And I think that that was a a big part of our sort of moving out of it Yeah So now what's your relationship to Christianity like i mean you said you Read read Dale Allison's book like 2 years ago That's no like you know easy bedtime reading You've got to you've got to still have some kind of interest in the resurrection to do

that Like are you still reading about it are you still in intrigued i mean what what do you see as your relationship with Christianity now there's a fascination with it that I just think is just a natural inclination Uh I think that part of it an analogy I've used before is you know if I had been raised in a religion that was based on the Lord of the Rings books Yeah Um I I think that I would have been shaped significantly by those books that worldview that even if I left it I think there is

this like it's such a part of who I am I think going back and reading them and experiencing them would be something that Was a little bit comfortable but also helps to kind of like it helps me understand the way that I am I am the way that I am I see the world the way that I see the world because of my background I may not completely agree with all of it anymore and disagree with most of it but uh I would be lying if it w if I didn't say it was an essential

part of who I am So I think that there's always going to be this fascination with Jesus And and I almost Feel this this uh compulsion to defend the person of Jesus from the way he is used especially in America Yeah Yeah In American politics especially Yeah Yeah Um that's been a fascinating the rise of Christian nationalism has been a fascinating thing for me to watch Yeah Because you know I don't know exactly what I would have done if I would have stayed in the faith But I'm pretty certain that I wouldn't have gotten on

the Trump train just from A Christian standpoint Do you know what I mean yeah Yeah And I think that um to see the way that the name of Jesus is used uh and the way and the ideas that he is being used to support that it's super fascinating But I also find this need to be like yeah but what was he what was he about like I don't know what the man who lived that I do believe lived I don't know what he Actually said I don't know like what what like what's the percentage of

the record that we have but whatever we have this movement that was started and they wrote these things and like some of these ideas are really beautiful you know like from a moral standpoint like the things that Jesus asked you to do being selfless being serviceoriented you know caring about the poor and the needy not just being about the your own accumulation of your possessions Recognizing the emptiness in the accumulation of possessions Like these are beautiful ideas that I subscribe to today So I think that I think part of my interest is this like I

want to I want to I want to rescue Jesus from the hands of the people are using him for evil Yeah Because they're pretty out of line I mean Jesus says this doesn't he you know there will be people who are who come to me saying LLord Lord and I'll say depart from me I never knew you And There is an idea that the path is narrow Uh and it it does just seem at times flatly contradictory the attitude that people have And yet I don't know if it's like a biblical literacy thing or or

what but when you see like prosperity preachers for example flying around in private jets and things and you think I I just I don't know how you can read the Gospels and not have this Yeah just jump off the page at you Have you seen the clip of Donald Trump asked what his favorite Bible verse is i think this is I'd rather not get into this specific It's sort of very personal And they're like "Really anything jump out?" She's like "No I think it's I think it's too personal." They say "Are you more of a

Old Testament guy or a New Testament guy?" And he goes "I would say probably equal." Equal Yeah You And by the way I think by the next time he's asked you know what Your favorite Bible verse is he's like "Oh it's you know 2 Corinthians 1." like he's got the Well this is the interesting thing about that Uh I I because I I want to give like first of all there are many Christians who are just like buying this idea that like he's actually a like Trump's actually a Christian right that that is happening But

I will give there's a lot of Christians I'll give them credit they don't for a second they they don't for a Second buy that he's a Christian They know that he's using the Christians for his ends But and I know I know many people like this but they believe that the things that he you know he's a crude tool Yes To basically accomplish things that are more consistent with the Christian worldview Yes And so it's a little more nuanced And so I I understand that that's what they think but but then I'm like "Yeah but

okay let's talk about Let's talk about the things that that platform wants to establish that are still very inconsistent with the things the bulk of the things that Jesus talked about Then one wonders how much that is Christian nationalism as a whole how much of it is really Christian outside of just being nominally Christian in the way that Trump might be nominally Christian." I mean the one thing that gives me pause for thought is like when he was nearly assassinated he Did sort of quite convincingly portray a feeling of of of sort of spiritual awakening

after that I mean he he put it in quite uncomfortable terms about like you know well if you if you look at that if you look at how close it was I saw the graphic of how it went just past my head If you look at that and you're an atheist you know you got to you got to start rethinking it And there is this forgetting of Cory Comporator who's the Firefighter that the bullet eventually went into and killed But I did think if you were nearly assassinated especially if you've already got this sort of

ego mania around you president of the United States type thing to have your head turn at the right moment and avoid assassination I I do wonder if maybe that did make him at the very least like seriously consider the possibility of of divine watching But I don't know even then Although I want to grant him that That possible space for spiritual growth I don't know if that develops into like you know it's easier for a rich man to for the all of that kind of stuff But and and so yeah it's like a it's a

crude a crude tool as as you put it And if you just look at the way that I I one does wonder I always thought of doing like skits where you sort of put Jesus in the modern day and see how he would actually react like the sort of this strange juxosition of of the Christian attitude You're supposed to have and and what Jesus was actually all about because some of his teachings I do think are difficult and maybe inapplicable I I had this idea of him like walking through central London or something and somebody

like comes up to him says sorry have you got any change and the disciples would go sorry mate we haven't got any change and he goes you know brethren when one is in need you know if you do this to the least of these you do it to me so He's like you know Matthew grab your grab your grab the purse and listen to some men anyway as I was saying and then another person comes up have you got any change mate and they're like oh we just go and he's like because one person is

in need because you've helped one does that lessen the need to help another No no Peter grab your grab your tunic We're going to give it to him you know And then and people just keep sort of coming up and at the end someone comes up you Got any change and Jesus is like sorry mate you know I haven't haven't got any change Because I I do wonder yeah how directly applicable some of these teachings are to the modern world And so it's it's kind of easy to say you know Christian nationalism isn't Christian You

know Jesus would never abide by Trump But it's difficult to imagine what Jesus would say about the presidency of a of a transcontinental republic in general anyway right so I I always find It very difficult to make those kinds of claims Well and I think that's one of the reasons that um I think this is you know back to the idea of like why is it so fascinating because when you start when you really appreciate the context for what this person was operating in Yeah Um you know and you think about that for every scripture

The idea that like oh this makes so much more sense not as Some prophecy for current times but for it was a rhetorical exercise for what they were dealing with And it's just it's to me it becomes the Bible actually becomes more meaningful in one sense Maybe not in like a ultimate ultimate meaning way but in a the way that we actually find and build meaning as humans based on how we interact with our circumstances and our how our values interact with our circumstances Like That's what these biblical writers were doing all along And suddenly

it just it kind of comes alive to me Like I always I always thought I don't understand these biblical scholars who aren't Christians Like that it was fascinating Like you study this for a living and you don't believe it Mhm But now I get it Yeah I get it You know not only because it was so personal to me and foundational to who I am but because it really is this story of the human Struggle to figure out what the hell is going on Yeah Yeah Context is always key with any kind of art In

a way the gospels can be considered um like a they're not art per se but the sort of artistic elements the beauty the truth the poetry the the meaning that jumps out a lot of that has got to do with contextualizing a piece a piece of art but so much of it is right has has got to do with that Um that's something I clocked when I you Know the book Ways of Seeing by John Burgger or is it Burger i don't know how to I haven't read it but he um he's got this TV

show as well that he did and um one of the things he does is he shows this picture He says "Just look at this picture and and you know see what you think about it." And then turn the page and you turn over the page and it's the same picture but it's got a caption now It says "This is the last painting Van Go made before he killed himself." It's Like how has that changed the way that you interact with this painting and some people want to say it kind of shouldn't No the art should

stand for itself but it clearly does Context plays a massive massive part And when you consider the first century Jewish context in which Jesus is is working so many of his claims are transformed And this is something Christians always want to do when it comes to things like uh his claims to divinity and stuff It's like No you have to understand to a Jew at the time this would have been a really significant thing to say You know claiming to be the Lord of the Sabbath would have been huge Invoking the I am statement would

have been absolutely massive But I think we do need to do that that sort of writ large and maybe some of the the good stuff needs to be contextualized as well as the bad stuff cuz they're willing to jump on like if you say what about what the Bible said What about when Paul's talking about women or you know slavery in the Old Testament it's like oh it's context context context like that doesn't apply today it's like totally different you got to understand there's the cult of Artemus and women were getting power that they shouldn't

have and they were bond servants okay but with a lot of the rest of the It's just quite flatly like "Yeah the Bible gives us the guidance how to live today It's eternal truth." Like "What do you mean you need to reinterpret it What are you talking about?" And just kind of think we should look for a bit more consistency on that front maybe Yeah Well I just it's it's that starting point right you know I I think um you you know you talk about the and I know you've you've debated people on this just

the idea of um just slavery in general in the in the Old Testament right and like just like the or the Conquest and It's so easy when you're like well my starting point is that this is true And so any answer that helps me explain this I mean I remember my son the first time he ever heard about Joshua's uh conquest essentially coming home from church and being very upset like God got people to destroy this these other communities And of course I had the I didn't have the answer that I've heard in in most

Recent uh apologetics that it was hyperbole which I don't know if my son would have understood that but I essentially was like this is you know God basically God is God God makes this decision and he can use his people to carry it out But also you need to know that these people that were killed were so sinful and even the kids that were born into that like they that the level of sinfulness was so high that it was ultimately an act of Mercy Like there's ways that you can you can talk about that I

think about that now I'm like what did I tell my very impressionable son i basically said there is a there is a time in which genocide is justifiable Right That's that's essentially what I said And you're saying it to your son as well I was like well you have to understand that like those little children you know with were just sort of so so corrupt Oh and by the way remember last week when We were talking about how all human beings are sort of necessarily corrupt and we all deserve hell It's just for God's grace

that we what's what's that kid going to think wait so if you're sinful enough then we should be genocided Okay And then next week you're telling me that we're all born in sin and I don't know It's it's quite funny though if you had that I mean the the idea of like hyperbole you know Oh it's okay son It was just exaggerating They're exaggerating Well the teachers were exaggerating It doesn't say that in the Bible No no no it does God was exaggerating That's what I mean He was he just sort of you know he

just realized that we' we'd worked that out all these years later that he was just that he was just right And but then when you like your Okay well what was the context what actually was happening it's like okay well this is probably some sort of retroactive history to kind of Explain how did we get here like we were probably just some tribe that sort of broke off of the Canaanites or whatever and you know and now we have to explain why we're not them and like let's create this story and um but I just

think that if your starting point is this has to be true this is God's word and that is of utmost importance you know it's we were talking about this last night too this the the analogy that I use of the the magic show This is how I kind of explain my faith at this point right so if we're at a magic show and the magician is there doing all this amazing stuff that to me a non- magician is just I'm like "This is crazy How does he do that?" But I've got a professional magician next

to me that after every trick he explains what happened He takes the magic out of it Something about my personality loves both of those things I love to be wowed and to believe that Something is magic and then I love to have this guy explain why it wasn't magic Um and I think that at this point in my life the explaining why this actual how this actually happened how the Bible ended up the way that it was it was like well I believed that it was magic and now I've got the guy sitting next to

me like a Dan Mlelen explaining why this is what it is and I'm sort of equally into those two ideas Mhm But to contextualize My like personal religious faith I just can't help but hope that at least one of those tricks is magic is real magic And that the tricks that this guy can't explain yet like why we're here at all whatever you some of these foundational things Yeah free will these things can't you know no one's giving any great explanations for those things And maybe they never will And you know I think it was

I believe it was a member of the band AC/DC who talked about God is the The blanket we throw over the mystery I think was his line And so I just think that there's this magic and this mystery that I sort of want to that's my faith that there's some magic and mystery in the universe that I don't want to explain away and that I'm willing to throw the blanket over that and call that God But I understand that that's not a there's no dogma in that that's we can organize a movement around Yeah We

don't go to some house of worship and And say "Okay today we are going to worship the blanket over the mystery." Yeah And so that's a that's something I'm trying to figure out like what is it and it's compatible with evolution even better Yeah And it's like okay is that like is that universal you know unitarianism or you know is is that is there some tradition that I can find a home in that like acknowledges the mystery and so far yeah I'm kind of like I don't think so I don't I'm not Super motivated to

figure that out but yeah very very LA sort of I don't know man Let's not let's not put a label on it man And this is a I think it's you know uh Britt Hartley who I I'm a fan of who wrote Nonsense Spirituality she's she's quick to point out that this is a this is certainly a position of privilege right I'm I am a successful entertainer who lives in Los Angeles and has all my basic needs taken care of and I can approach these things with just a Passive intellectual curiosity I'm not fighting for

my life I'm not at risk because of the things that I believe These statements may cause people to not like me but I'm not you know I'm not being persecuted in any way And also I'm not living the kind of life where I need desperately to have hope that there is some sort of ultimate resurrection that there is some sort everything will be made right in the end because my life is so bad My life is great you know Comparatively Mhm And so I recognized that the just dabbling in this like what if I would

go to this church or I could go to this church or I could join this community Yeah There's an incredible privilege that comes with that Uh but it's my circumstance It's like I you know I'm I'm doing the best I can Yeah Given the circumstances Yeah Well I appreciate it and I appreciate you taking the time to to spell out some of some of your beliefs I mean like like I Say it's it's perhaps an uncomfortable thing 5 years ago or whenever it was that you decide you want to do this because yeah it's not

it's not the most user friendly topic in the world for a lot of people but at the same time you want to you want to be open with people and it feels a bit weird to if you're going to let people into any degree this is such a big important part of your life you kind of have to have to let it be let it be known and hopefully in Those 5 years you felt like that was worth worth doing Yeah I think so I think the real struggle at this point I I have no

regrets about having told the story and being honest about it I think that the struggle is you know what good what's the net good of me talking about these things yeah Right Um because I think that and this is only this is something I've been thinking about more recently because I there are some people I think that I just don't I don't want to disrupt if their faith is working for them I'm not interested in disrupting that just because I might believe that it's not true and that there's some sort of delusion Um because I

think there's a certain personality that can kind of go through this process and actually come out on the other side and still feel like They're living a really meaningful life And for me I don't regret the deconstruction one bit And I don't regret the uh you know being public about it one bit But I do ask you know myself sometimes I'm like and I think this is what keeps me from talking about it more It's just okay well if I'm just uh taking something apart but I'm not giving any tools like what like what is

my Role in this um and also it's just entering into the fray which actually is a question I had for you right because [Music] you're you are in the fray and talking about this stuff on a regular basis and like 95% of the time what I do is like the silliest most unserious content on the internet Right Right And that you couldn't offend somebody with it if you try Yeah Um but when I choose to in the small Minority of time that I choose to talk about this I make enemies You know I people are

like "What are you doing you're this is bad example You're bringing people away from the faith." And you know even though I'm like "Well actually I think I'm just causing people to question things that should be questioned." It's still like I don't I don't like getting that kind of negative attention Yeah I just I don't like I don't want to debate I don't want to get Into it with somebody online really right i'm like I'd rather just make you laugh be a distraction from all the stuff that's going on in the world but you obviously

step right you step right into it Yeah it's my it's my breakfast Um so like how do you uh you know how do you approach that knowing that this is like I know you you were just talking about being at this conference where you're basically the only atheist at this conference Yeah That's right It's great fun actually and I've got quite a good working relationship with the people I debate with and the communities that I sort of step into as a bit of an outsider And so it feels all right Like I I don't I

don't have any serious trouble in that regard But also it's always been the way it's been for me It's not like I've got this show and I'm about to like potentially nuke it with all of this talk about like religion and stuff like That's what it's been from the start Like in fact when I sort of move in the opposite direction like you know when when I've spoken to you today you've been sort of telling your story I've been asking questions It's been interesting I've done the same thing with Christians where it's been a similar

vibe of like you're just telling me your story and I'm not going to sit there and go well I think you're wrong about this and start debating And people In the comments kind of get annoyed about that sometimes Or maybe annoyed is the wrong word but they sort of say like oh you know I wish you would have pushed back more And I'm like this person's just like telling me their story you know i'm not here to do that today And so if anything I kind of have the opposite problem which is that I need

to be like opinionated fiery If I'm if I'm on the fence too much then people start to lose interest in what they've signed Up for which is somebody to look to for a viewpoint for an opinion It'd be interesting to hear what that guy's got to say And it's all context dependent And honestly I say that but then as I've been a bit more willing to have those exploratory conversations and non-committal uh discussions the channel has grown exponentially And so I think that is resonating with people more But I still it means that when I

do decide to Come out and do the debate and remind people that actually I am still somebody who enjoys debating and and defending an opinion and all of this kind of stuff it's not like jarring for anybody you know and so yeah I mean I get a lot of that kind of commentary but it depends how you feel about it right because if if you after this conversation goes live if somebody says that thing that he said about the empty tomb that's just like wrong man Look at This verse or look at this thing you're

going to look at that and you might go like that's kind of annoying Oh man like maybe I shouldn't have said that or whereas I'm going to be like if it's significant enough I'll just make a video about it I'll just respond I'll be like okay here's here's five arguments against the empty tomb you know because that's like my thing So there's a sense to which also when those comments or or when that attitude is coming towards me I think well if if it really comes to it I'll just respond Whereas you're not going to

want to sit there making Yeah Do I want to go back do I want to get into it back and forth cuz that's a you know I I don't speak uh super precisely about these things and I know a fair amount but I'm not I'm not an expert on any of this stuff and I'm not necessarily in the deep end I'm usually just sort of like talking to people who are in the deep end Sure Uh and so you you know like I know I've said things today that'll be like "Oh I put that that

way and this guy is talking about it in this way and I kind of regret that I said that." Even though I've gotten much better about just not watching that stuff or caring too much Just I know that's you know that's the business that those guys are in Yeah Um but yeah that's interesting because you you started with this in mind versus this being some for a lot of people For Me it was a big like what we we thought you guys were Christians We we feel betrayed because we would actually let our youth group

watch your videos Yeah Because we kind of knew that you were Christians right and it's like well yeah we were We're not anymore So it felt like the ultimate betrayal for a lot of people Yeah I mean I do sometimes get like you know um teachers often say that they use my videos in in class for example and a lot of school children Watch and I do then think you know I really I I do need to be be careful because debating is a sport talked about this last night as well and I've always been

quite open about the fact that I think that debates are a bit sort of silly if you think that they're a way to get to the truth I mean they they bring up interesting arguments and stuff but everybody knows that they're not the most productive way to have a conversation It's a jousting match There's nothing wrong with that Like it's fun It is sport but as I often say to people it's like a boxing match You will find out who's the better boxer but you won't find out who's the better fighter Yeah And there's nothing

wrong with wanting to be a good boxer You know debating is fun And so I'll I'll do that But people do watch it thinking that this is like I don't know that that might be the only conversation they ever see on that topic At least some of those viewers Yeah And it is a bit of a consideration I remember like I look back at some of my older videos and a lot of them I was just I just had no idea what I was talking about In particular there's this whole video of me talking about

the ontological argument for when I was like I don't know 17 or something And I watch it back today and I'm I'm just cringing with embarrassment I I won't take it down because like I I like seeing the Progression part of the historical record at this point But I remember like you know my friends were making fun of me for it and and looking at the comments on this video and somebody says you know Alex thanks so much I'm I'm studying for my like Alevel exams at the moment and this video has been really helpful

and I thought this poor kid has just failed his exams cuz he's been watching my videos Yeah So there is a level of responsibility that comes along With it too But that's why I'm I'm also sort of trying to embody this this spirit of uh of of conversational approach Even like in a debate I'll debate people but then we're like we're cool afterwards you know yeah We'll hang out We'll shake And I really appreciate that about your about your approach too because I um yeah I I don't think there's ever really a reason to yell

about this stuff No you know debates can bring that out Of you Uh and it's a shame when that when that happens but it it also like it's better just because it protects yourself as well Even if you're just self-interested like forget the sort of I want to you know foster positive community and all this kind of stuff Even if you're just fully self-interested if you walk in with this bravado and confidence and somebody like proves you wrong it's embarrassing You're on stage and you're flustered and You're and people are clipping it up and it's

it's terrible Whereas if you've gone in from the outset like "I'm doing this debate I'm here but I'm here to explore this Yeah I'm here to have a conversation." Then when somebody says "What about this?" and you go "Huh good point." It's it's not the end of the world because your pride isn't on the line in the same way I always thought that if I did convert to Christianity the way that I would Announce it would be I would accept a debate about Christianity and I would let the opening speaker give their 20inut opening statement

and then they'd call on me and I'd stand up and I'd go you know what yeah fair enough Yeah good point All right Yeah you win Well done And that would be how I would do it Yeah You Yeah Yeah You can make a moment out of that like the and many many people are praying for that conversion Yeah And when I finally Become a Mormon it's going to really Yeah rugpool man Really really shake them up Yeah Hey Rat thanks so much for taking the time man Yeah Thanks for having me If you enjoyed

that conversation you might like my previous episode with Rain Wilson which you can watch by clicking the link on your screen For early adree access to videos and to support the channel subscribe to my Substack at alexoconor.com Thanks for watching