eX-skeptic

Former skeptic Andrew Sawyer lost faith in religion as a child and lost faith in humanity as an adult. He quickly realized that he still didn’t have answers for the questions of life and death. His search eventually led him back to God. Resources by Andrew: https://andrewsawyer.substack.com Resources mentioned by Andrew C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (specifically referenced book two in Mere Christianity “What Christians Believe”) C.S. Lewis Doodles YouTube channel Andy Stanley, It Came From Within Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Stories Podcast, where we see how skeptics flip the record of their lives. Each podcast, we listen to someone who has once been a skeptic or atheist but who became a Christian against all odds. We all want our lives to matter, to mean something, to ourselves, to others, to someone. We’re all driven, at different points, to ask the question, “What is worth living for?” Is there more than just the daily grind or the pursuit of pleasure or power or stuff? Why this urge, this angst for meaning, to feel valued, worth something, going somewhere. Why do we feel that wasting time is meaningless, while investing time is meaningful. What is it in us that longs for something more? After all, if we are merely just physical beings determined to act and react, to think and respond according to mere impulses and environmental pressures and instincts, why even ask the larger questions, the ones that lurk beneath the surface of physical motion? Are we really just cogs in a mechanical wheel with no particular direction. Former skeptic Andrew Sawyer found himself in a place, physically and existentially, to ask these big questions about himself, about life itself. Come listen to him tell his story of searching for what matters most. I hope you’ll also stay to hear his advice to curious skeptics on searching, as well as his advice to Christians on how best to engage with those who don’t believe. Welcome to the Side B Stories Podcast, Andrew. It’s so great to have you with me today! It’s great to be here. As we’re getting started, why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are, where you live, maybe perhaps what you do? Sure. My name is Andrew Sawyer. I live in the Atlanta area. I’m an aerospace engineer. I work for a large operator of airplanes. I manage the reliability for the fleet. That’s great! So why don’t we start back at your story. I know you were, at one time an atheist, and I wondered how those atheistic inclinations began. Tell me a bit about your family, your story growing up. Was God a part of your family life? Your community life? Tell me about all of that. Okay. Yeah. So I grew up kind of moving all over the place. Every couple of years. My dad was really ambitious. He was always starting businesses and stuff like that, so I lived in a bunch of different states. I think I went to seven different schools before I finished high school. So we were always on the move. And as far as the family dynamics, my dad’s side of the family is really, really, really religious, so my grandfather went to Wheaton College, he was always very, very religious. So very moralistic, and there’s only one right way to do anything, and that sort of thing. And then on the other side, my mom’s side, the opposite. Basically a Wisconsin family, German/Jewish, always looking to have fun, party, out playing on boats and all that kind of stuff, not really interested in faith at all. But coincidentally, one of my mom’s older sisters had a conversion experience when she was just out of high school, and she decided to become a missionary, so she spent 35 years in Burkina Faso. So a little bit of influence on both sides. On the one side, very strict, moralistic grandparents, and then that influence from my dad, and then, on the other side, a much more permissive attitude, but then my aunt, who would visit us every few years and pester me about Jesus. So your mom and dad, obviously, grew up in very different traditions and understandings of God, but they married, and they had a family. So during the time when you were a child, your father was obviously very religious. You said rather moralistic. And your mom, did she come to believe in God because of her aunt or your father? Yeah. My dad actually rebelled against my grandparents, who were extremely strict. Okay. But they still dragged me to church. But we went to church with them sometimes, and it was the, you know, I’m wearing a suit when I’m 10 years old, that kind of thing. And my mom and dad, my mom was, in some ways, escaping from her family, so she went to a Bible college, and that’s where they met and so on. Oh, I see. Okay. So they took us to church and stuff like that, but the thing about it was, aside from the moral part of it, there wasn’t really any substance within our family, of, “This is what our faith is about.” It was more, “This is how you should behave,” Okay. All rig

From a non-religious home, former atheist Ian Giatti thought God was a character of fiction and fantasy like Santa Claus. His mind slowly changed as he began to realize the reality and truth of Jesus. Ian’s Website: https://iangiatti.com Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to Side B Stories where we see how skeptics flip the record of their lives. Each podcast, we listen to someone who has once been an atheist but who became a Christian. You can see these stories and more at our Side B Stories website, www.sidebstories.com. One of the most common objections you’ll hear for rejecting belief in God is a pervasive sense of brokenness and apparent evil in the world, that we wouldn’t see and experience so much pain around us and in our own lives if God was real. The world and our world would and should look much different. Although this objection is common, interestingly, in my research with former atheists, the problem of evil did not register as highly as I thought it would. While 26%, about a quarter, thought suffering in the lives of others was a reason to dismiss God, only 16% said that personal pain led to disbelief. However, pain, when it is felt, it is felt quite personally, and when it is present, it can play a significant role in forming perceptions and understanding of God. It can cause us to ask questions. Where is God? Why didn’t God show up? Why did God allow this to happen? Who is God? Our expectations, however shaped, crumble in disappointment, giving us no apparent option except to embrace a reality without God, or so it is thought. It has been said that beauty and pain run on parallel tracks throughout all of our lives. This is a stark reality we must all face. The question is how we must make sense of all that we see and experience in the world and in our lives, of both brokenness and beauty. As an atheist, Ian wrestled with these large intellectual and existential questions. I hope you’ll join me to hear him tell his journey from disbelief to belief in God and then stay to hear his advice to curious skeptics or even former Christians in rethinking their faith, as well as advice on how best to engage with who don’t believe. Welcome to Side B Stories, Ian. It’s so great to have you! Well, Jana, thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. Wonderful. As we’re getting started, so the listeners can know a little bit about who you are, why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself? Sure. My name’s Ian Giatti. I work in digital media. I have a family of about four kids. Sorry, I just lost count. Wife and four kids, including a newborn, so that makes us a little on the tired side. We’re out here living in Texas, enjoying life, and trying to just walk with the Lord every day. Wonderful, wonderful! Four kids, including a newborn. No doubt, you’ve got a very busy household! A very busy household. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I’m an empty nester, so I’m on the opposite end of that spectrum, but I do miss those days. There’s nothing better than a house full of kids to bring life to your life. Yeah. I can just say a big thank you to my wife, because she makes it all go, so I’m grateful for her. Wonderful. Well, you’re with us here today because you used to be an atheist, but you’re no longer. You actually are a Christian. So why don’t you start us back, so we have a better idea of how your atheism was formed. Just starting from the beginning. Tell me about the house in which you grew up. Tell me about your family. Was church a part of that picture? Was there any belief in God? What kind of heritage were you handed as a child? Yes. I always tell people I grew up in a loving secular home. Both my parents, who did the best they could, were great parents overall. Loved me. Did everything they could to support me. I had an above-average childhood. I was in the entertainment industry as a young boy, got to go travel places and see things and do stuff, and boy, it was a blast! My upbringing was awesome. And I think that that kind of throws people off. Because most people think of atheists, former atheists, as, “Oh, well something bad must have happened to you,” or, “You must have seen the dark side of things too early,” or what have you. And that wasn’t really the issue with me. We grew up in… It was a non-religious household, but we celebrated Christians, celebrated Hanukkah. We would pray from time to time, even though I don’t think any of us, parents included… we kind of really understood all of that, right? But we just kind of figured, “Well, that’s kind of what people do.” And I remember I have photos of my childhood where I would be on my knees praying. I don’t know why I was doing those things. I didn’t go to church with any regularity, rarely at all. But again, that wasn’t because my parents were against it or anything else. We just enjoyed being a family, and that was kind of our sanctuary, really. And I think it was… The journey through childhood. I

Psychology professor Dr. Rich Suplita believed science provided the best explanation for truth, and he promoted atheism on the university campus. Over time, he began to question his own beliefs, and it led him to find truth in Christ and become an advocate for the Christian worldview. askaformeratheist.com ratiochristi.org/chapter/university-of-georgia/ To hear more stories about former atheists and skeptics converting to Christianity, visit www.sidebstories.com Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to Side B Stories, where we see how skeptics flip the record of their lives. You can also hear today’s story and see other video testimonies on our Side B Stories website you can find at www.sidebstories.com. Each podcast, we listen to someone who has once been an atheist but who became a Christian against all odds. Each story is different. Each journey courses a different path. Everyone has their reasons for belief and for disbelief. There are the reasons that sound good and reasonable as supporting our beliefs, and then there are the real reasons underneath the surface, sometimes presumed and unexplored, sometimes not particularly rational. One of the most interesting findings in my research with former atheists was the difference between the reasons they gave for atheism, which they said were mostly based upon reason, science, and evidence, and in hindsight, the real reasons they said why they rejected God and belief in Christianity. It turns out, on self reflection, that one-fourth of them actually rejected God solely for more personal, rather than intellectual or rational reasons. For the remaining three-quarters, it was a mixture of both the personal and the intellectual. As humans, we are holistic beings. We are all susceptible to rationalizing what we want to be true. Of course, our desires and objective truth may line up, but sometimes it’s good to be skeptical of our own beliefs, to look more deeply at why we believe what we believe. In our story today, Rich was compelled to examine his own beliefs, first as a Christian, and he found his beliefs wanting. Then, as a militant atheist, he became skeptical of his own skepticism. As an academic and deeply introspective and contemplative thinker, he became willing to look at his intellectual reasons for atheism but also beneath the surface to the real reasons below. I hope you’ll come along to hear what he found along his journey from belief to disbelief and then back to a much stronger belief in God and Christianity than he once knew. Welcome to Side B Stories, Rich. It’s so great to have you with me today. Yeah. Good morning. Thank you. So the listeners know a little bit about you. Can you tell us a bit about who you are, where you live, your education perhaps? Sure, yeah. My name is Dr. Rich Suplita. My wife, Mary Kathryn, and I, we live in Athens, Georgia, and we do a lot of ministry at the University of Georgia, with Georgia students. My educational background: I did my underground at West Virginia University, which is my home state, and then came to the University of Georgia in 2000. From 2000 to 2005, I was a PhD student, earned my masters and then my PhD in psychology, with an emphasis on neuroscience and psychopharmacology, and I went on to teach as a lecturer at the University of Georgia for about 10 years after that. Wow. Okay. So you’re an academic by training and history, but it sounds like you’ve moved in a completely different direction from that, and I can’t wait to hear all about it. Now, let’s get into your story from childhood. I know that part of your story is that you were a militant atheist, but you didn’t start that way. Why don’t you bring us into your world as a child? Talk to us about your family, your community, friends, culture. Was God in any of that at all? Yeah, sure, absolutely. He was. Very much so. I was raised in a middle class, blue collar family in north central West Virginia, a little town there called Fairmont, West Virginia, and my family and I, we were members of a Church of Christ. And so it was a three-times-a-week thing. We were very much in the habit of going to church. I learned a lot of Bible growing up, Bible verses, Sunday school, all of that, so God was very much in the picture, although it never really resonated with me on a deeply personal level. So you went through the routine, and I guess the ritual of going to church three times a week, but it never took personally for you. Through that period of time, would you ever say that there was even an intellectual assent to belief in God? Was it something that you had accepted on that level, although you didn’t accept it personally, perhaps? Oh, yes. Absolutely. I did believe that it was true, and there was good and bad there. It wasn’t all a negative thing. There were certainly positives. I believed it factually, and I would say, and part of this was a product of the time. In American evangelicalism at the ti

Former atheist Leah Libresco rejected religious belief until she encountered intelligent Christians at Yale University. Her search to find the grounding of objective morality led her to God. Resources written by Leah: Website: www.leahlibresco.com Book: Arriving at Amen (the story of her conversion from atheist to Catholic) Book: Building the Benedict Option (a guide to building thicker Christian community) Resources/authors mentioned by Leah: CS Lewis GK Chesterton Allister McIntyre, After Virtue Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to Side B Stories, where we see how skeptics flip the record of their lives. Each podcast, we listen to someone who has once been an atheist who became a Christian against all odds. You can also hear today’s story, along with other short video testimonies from former atheists, on our Side B Stories website. Oftentimes, we think that atheists have nothing in common with those who believe in God, but that’s not necessarily true. Both points of view can equally acknowledge the existence of certain parts of reality, but they have different explanations about what something is and how it came to be. One of those hot topics of debates between atheists and Christians is something we all have a very deep intuition about, that there are certain things or actions in our world that are really right or really wrong, not merely for ourselves but for everyone. As C.S. Lewis says, if someone cuts in line, we automatically think that’s unfair according to some commonly understood rule or standard of fairness, and that’s certainly the case for much more serious points of injustice. It doesn’t take a lot of time to consider whether or not certain things are more like vices or virtues. In our own minds, we are constantly making judgments about whether or not something or another should or should not be the case, whether or not someone ought or ought not to do something. We simply can’t help ourselves in the way that we are constantly judging. The problem is not that we can’t or don’t know what’s right or wrong. The problem isn’t even that we aren’t capable of living good lives with or without God. The problem is, rather, where we ground those moral duties and obligations as true and real, not merely opinion or preference. From an atheist household, Leah Libresco learned to critically analyze ideas from a very early age, fostered into her Ivy League education and beyond. Her intellect drove her to deeply consider the seeming difficulties that lie with the problem of objective morality. It led her to reconsider God. Let’s listen to her story: Welcome to the Side B Stories Podcast, Leah. It’s so great to have you with me today. Thank you so much for having me. Leah, so the audience knows who you are, a little bit about you, your education, why don’t you give us an idea of where you live. Are you married? Do you have children? Any of that. Yeah. I grew up in New York. I went to Yale University, where I studied political science, and now I live in northern Virginia with my husband and our two daughters. Oh, wonderful! Wonderful. So let’s start back… You said that you were born or grew up in Long Island? Is that right? That’s right. All right! So you’re from the big city. So why don’t you walk us back to the early part of your life and growing up. Tell me about your family, about your culture. Was God any part of that picture at all? I’m from about 40 minutes by train outside the big city. So growing up, that was definitely a big part of my life. I’d go to the Museum of Natural History for my birthday almost every year. But my family wasn’t religious, and I grew up in a community that was mostly nonreligious. I think there probably were some people of faith in the surrounding community, but not in a way I noticed. I didn’t know anyone who believed in God personally that I knew of. So it just wasn’t part of your world at all. It was part of my world, in that I knew there were people who were Christians in the world, but not knowing any personally, that meant Christianity was mostly relevant to my life when it made the news, and that was usually in a bad way. Ah, ah. Yes. That seems to happen a lot, where Christianity gets a very uniquely distorted picture from the news and from the arts many times, and it sounds like you grew up in a very culturally enriched environment, but also heard, obviously, things from the news and that sort of thing about faith or Christians or Christianity. Did you say that you were raised a secular Jew? My family is Jewish in our background, but it’s long enough since anyone practiced that we don’t remember the last person to practice. So my family was Jewish by heritage but not particularly in practice in any way. Okay, so it was more of a cultural, like affiliation, but you didn’t practice the high holy days or any of that. No. The closest we got is that we watched the Shari Lewis Chanukah on TV, which I assumed everyone

Former atheist Stacy Gleiss traveled across the world and explored worldviews and philosophies until she finally found what was true, good, and beautiful in Christianity.   Stacy’s Philosophy Group: Philosophy in the Forest: http://philosophyintheforest.com   Authors and Books recommended by Stacy: Soren Kierkegaard Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Stories podcast, where we see how someone flips the record of their lives. Each podcast, we listen to a former skeptic or atheist who unexpectedly became a Christian. On the surface, in a world without God life seems so free. Someone can live without constraints of religion and morality without someone or someone telling you who you are or who you ought to be. You can dream and idealize. You can create and recreate yourself and your identity, your own meaning and your own purpose, pursuing it on your own terms. You can design yourself in your own life, free from criticism or control except for yourself. It’s called expressive individualism. But oftentimes the underbelly of this pursuit begins to show. The idealism begins to crumble, and the dreams begin to fade. Satisfaction fades to that which is elusive and fleeting. Temporary pleasure erodes into long-term pain. Poor choices result in deep pain and regret. Perhaps we are not the best judge after all. Perhaps our identity and our ideal cannot be found in what we want or what we think is best for ourselves. After all, identity is fragile if it’s based upon our own passing whims and desires. Meaning becomes meaningless if it’s only determined by what we create or deem important. Temporary pursuits gratify for the moment, but lasting satisfaction seems an ever-elusive dream. As one of the wisest men who ever lived said, it’s like chasing after the wind, and we know that when we sow the wind, we often reap a whirlwind. We cannot run from ourselves and our own brokenness. Our story today touches on these personal realities. Searching for identity and meaning and purpose on her own terms, yet finding herself in dark realities and desperate places. Is there something more than this, Someone who can provide a life that is true and good and beautiful? Let’s listen to Stacy tell her story of moving from darkness to light, from a kind of death to life that is truly life. Welcome to Side B Stories, Stacy, it’s so great to have you with me today. Well, thank you for the opportunity. I’m really happy to be talking to you today. Wonderful. It’s great to have you. So our listeners know a little bit about you, Stacy, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself. Well, my husband and I live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which is the northernmost part, so it’s very cold, and we enjoy a lot of outdoor sports, fishing, hunting, hiking, and so on, and a lot of my time is spent with a tiny house mission center called Philosophy in the Forest. Well, that sounds intriguing, and I would like to come back to that a little bit later and find out more about what Philosophy in the Forest is. So why don’t we get started with your story. Were you raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Has that upper Midwest region of the US been your home since you were a child? Where did you begin your life? And tell us a little bit about your family, whether or not there was any religious belief or anything associated with that? Yes. So I grew up in Michigan, in lower Michigan, the lower peninsula, the mitten part, as they say, and I lived on my grandfather’s farm for a good bit of the time. We lived in a rural area. We were not religious. My parents did not talk about God. I don’t even think we owned a Bible. So I didn’t have a religious upbringing, but when I was about 12, my family joined the Mormon church, so we went from 0 to 100, you know? Because that’s a very active, involved faith. There must have been a strong Mormon community around you, I’m guessing? Is that how your family got acclimated or involved with the Mormon church? No, actually it was pretty rare when I was a child. There weren’t that many Mormons around, but my aunts, my father’s sisters, had joined the church at a certain point, and they kind of brought missionaries around us. Oh, I see. So you had some influence of Mormonism in your life, and I’ll explore that in a moment, but did you have any historical or orthodox Christianity or any form of Christianity around you at all? You said you grew up without much reference to God in your family, but I wonder in your friendships, relationships, in your culture, was there much of Christianity around you? Not that I sensed really. I mean, there’s churches everywhere, and you kind of have an idea that a lot of people are Ch

Former atheist Guillaume Bignon set out on a quest to disprove Christianity and was surprised by what he found. Guillaume’s Book: Confessions of a French Atheist: How God Hijacked My Quest to Disprove the Christian Faith Guillaume’s Twitter: @theoloGUI Website featuring Guillaume’s work: https://www.associationaxiome.com To hear more stories about former skeptics and atheists who became Christians, visit www.sidebstories.com Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to, where we see how skeptics flip the record of their lives. Each podcast, we listen to someone who is a former atheist who, against all odds, became a Christian. Our beliefs, religious or not, are shaped within a context of place and people and events. We tend to believe the ideas of the people we like, that fit in with how people around us view the world. Most beliefs are not tested but rather assumed. Caught, not taught. And then shaped to fit into our individual understanding and experience of the world. According to many in Western culture, belief in God has nothing to do with their lives. More than that, to believe in God is not only irrelevant but embarrassing. It’s social or intellectual suicide. The scientifically minded don’t believe in God, in the supernatural, in the superstitious. Besides all of that, it constrains your lifestyle. For the happy atheist, there’s no felt need or desire for God. They’re just fine navigating life on their own. This begs the question: For someone like that, what would change their mind? Why switch course and change and turn in God’s direction? For the former atheist in our story today, life could not be going any better. As a sophisticated thinker, a successful businessman, an esteemed athlete and musician, Guillaume was also an avowed atheist. But he unexpectedly came to believe that God was not only deeply relevant to his life but was the source and center of life itself. In fact, he now holds a doctorate in theological philosophy, discussing issues of reality and of God. How in the world did that happen? I hope you’ll come along with me today to listen and to find out. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Guillaume. It’s so great to have you with me today! Thanks for having me, Jana. It’s a pleasure. Wonderful. Why don’t you give us a sense of who you are right now, where you live, a little bit about your life before we go back into your story? Yes. So as my accent really betrays, I am French, but I do live in the United States now. That was kind of part of my story of how I went from France to the US, but yes, I grew up in France, near Paris. Today, I am the US. I have lived for many years in New York, or in the New York area, and I have just now recently moved to Virginia with my wife and five young children, so the five young children explain the move away from New York. We are in a little bit more of a peaceful area in Virginia. I am an engineering manager. I work in information technology, and in my spare time, I am a philosopher and apologist, so I engage in topics around the Christian faith, philosophical theology, and all sorts of related matters. It sounds like you’ve got a very, very full life. For sure. Five children! My hat’s off to you, though. What a blessing that must be! But a busy life, no doubt. So you were telling me, through that self-introduction, that you grew up around the Paris area in France, and I want for you to take us back there to your childhood. Give us a sense of what that looked like growing up. Was there any sense of religious belief in that culture and in the culture of your home and even in your own life? Yes. So as a young child, I grew up in France near Paris, in the suburbs, in a very loving family. I have an older brother and a younger sister, and the three of us had a wonderful family with our parents, and as far as religious beliefs are concerned, we are at least nominally Roman Catholic. I mean I didn’t really get very invested personally in this. It was more of an inconvenience than anything else, something that we just did, maybe out of tradition and maybe a little bit of superstition, but not really a very strong life conviction, at least not for us children. So that was kind of my environment. But that’s not something that lasted for very long because, when we grew up and were given a bit more freedom, my parents didn’t force us to continue attending church, and we very soon decided that this was not really for us, and so we were able to—I mean I say we because my brother went a couple of years before me, but I followed along, and we simply stopped going to church, and at least my life as an atheist at that point didn’t really differ much from what I had always believed or done. It just that I no longer had to go to church on Sunday morning, so that was just an initial inoculation to religion a

MIT graduate Chris Lee was raised to reject religious superstition and embrace science alone. His search beyond a purely naturalistic worldview led him to believe in God and Christianity.   To read Chris’ written story, you can read his article “My Christian Story” here   To read and listen to more stories of skeptics and atheists’ conversions to Christianity, visit www.sidebstories.com Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Stories Podcast, where we see how skeptics flip the record of their lives. Each podcast, we listen to someone who has once been an atheist who surprisingly became a Christian. Why do atheists become atheists? There are as many answers to that question as there are atheists. Every skeptic has a reason, or more likely, every skeptic has several reasons for rejecting God. Sometimes, it’s on the back of bad experiences with Christians, Christianity, and faith. People or institutions who are supposed to represent truth and grace, lives of integrity and generosity, genuine love for God and others, well, they don’t. They’re supposed to demonstrate lives that have been transformed into something other, something more, something different, something better than what is normally expected by those who don’t claim God as authority and guide, but they don’t. If they reflect God, then they are poor ambassadors for the one they supposedly represent, or so it goes. Once someone starts to distrust Christians, they can begin to doubt the whole endeavor of Christianity and God. Belief is no longer attractive or plausible. It is no longer an option. Today’s episode taps into this reality, the reality of human failure to embody God well. It can be very disorienting. It can lead to disbelief, and unfortunately, it often does. But the question in today’s episode is whether or not someone can find their way to belief in God despite all of this human failure. Let’s listen to Chris Lee’s story to find out. Welcome to the Side B Stories podcast, Chris. It’s so great to have you with me today! Thank you, Jana, for having me. Wonderful. Before we get into your story, why don’t you tell me a little bit about who you are, where you live, maybe a little bit about your education, what you do? Sure, absolutely. I live in the Boston area, in a little town called Braintree, about 10 miles south of the downtown. By day, I consider myself a software engineer in financial services, so fin tech, and by night, I jokingly say that I’m a cult fighter. I graduated from MIT in 1997, and also did my master’s degree in divinity at Gordon-Conwell Theological seminary. Oh, okay. So you’re pretty highly educated, and of course, in the Boston area, academics is prevalent there, so I’m sure we’ll find out more about what you mean by cult fighter? Something like that, yes. Something like that. I forgot the exact term. But anyway, so that sounds very intriguing. I’m sure we’ll get to that later in the podcast. So you’re in Boston now. Let’s go back to your childhood and where you were born and grew up. Tell me a little bit about your family, whether they had any belief in God or not, or how they directed you. Sure. I grew up in western Canada, in a city called Vancouver, a beautiful, amazing place to grow up. Very multicultural. And my parents, my dad was very much an atheist, a humanist, so did not have any beliefs, and in fact, had been very hurt by a number of Christians in his life, so he had very much turned against Christianity and was, as you might expect, anti Christian. My mother was very nominal. She might have gone to church a few times now and then in college, as well as afterwards, and certainly she had a belief in a higher power. She believed in God. She prayed, but it was not very evident in her life, and certainly if she mentioned that she was Christian, it was only in name. As I mentioned, the very nominal side. So that’s the background. So Vancouver. Is that—tell me, culturally speaking, is that much of a religious community? No! Not at all. Okay. I would say probably less than 20% even identify as Christians. Certainly, it’s very small. It’s maybe more than New England where I am, which is something like 5% or less evangelical and something like very nominally Roman Catholic, but certainly religion in western Canada was not a public thing and was not even a major factor in people’s lives. So did you have any exposure to what you would consider a more robust form of Christianity growing up? Any people that you knew? Or was that in your world at all? Sure. So there’s kind of two major influences. My grandmother was very devout, but we didn’t have a lot of exposure to her. And then my best friend in high school was able to answer a lot of my questions, and he was and continues to be a very devout Christian today. And so whenever I had weird questions, like, “I don’t understand the Bible,” or, “I don’t understand this Trinity

Kyle‘s childhood faith disappeared when he began questioning Christianity, finding no answers. His inquisitive mind led him on a long journey to find the truth. bkylekeltz.com Kyle‘s recommendation for apologetics reading for those who want to know more of the evidence for the Christian worldview: On Guard by William Lane Craig Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to where we see how skeptics flip the record of their lives. Each podcast, we listen to someone who was once an atheist or skeptic but who surprisingly became a Christian. It’s often believed by atheists that there is no evidence for God, that science is the sole source of knowledge, and that science points to a godless reality. There is no need to impose a God explanation any longer, they think. We are beyond that, more sophisticated than that. Science has or will have all of the answers eventually. It is acknowledged by both secular thinkers and Christians that science does provide knowledge of how and when the material universe acts and reacts, causes and effects, and that much can be known through the scientific method. That is not in dispute. But what happens when scientific observations actually point towards the need for an explanation outside of material universe in order to understand and explain what we see of the universe itself? What happens when investigating science causes someone to question their own secular understanding of reality? That which we observe and measure needs greater explanation than the material world itself. But within atheism, the closed universe of cause and effect is all there is, was, or ever will be. We are pieces in the clockwork of the universe, winding down to an inevitably encroaching end, with no real meaning or purpose in life. What happens when that sense of personal emptiness begins to take root? There are points of tension intellectually, personally. Competing explanatory worldviews are on the table. How does someone decide which one is true? These are but a couple of the issues faced by our guest, philosopher Kyle Keltz, in his journey from atheism to belief in God. I hope you’ll stay with us to hear his story. Welcome, Kyle. It’s so great to have you today! Hi, Jana. Thank you so much for having me on. Wonderful. So glad to have you. I am curious, as we’re getting started. Kyle, can you tell us a little bit about who you are, before we go back into your story. Tell me about your life now? Okay, yes. Well, my name’s Kyle Keltz. I live in Lubbock, Texas. I’m married to Laci. I have two sons, who are eight and six. Their names are Thomas and Jack. I have a PhD in philosophy of religion from Southern Evangelical Seminary. I also got a master’s degree in apologetics from the same seminary. Like I said, I live here in Lubbock, Texas. I work at South Plains College, where I teach Introduction to Philosophy, Intro to World Religions, and English Composition. Okay. Wow! You’ve got a full plate! Yes. And it sounds like you are a strong proponent of the Christian worldview at this point, but I know you were not always there in that place of a proponent of Christianity. So let’s go back. Let’s start at the beginning and your childhood. Tell me a little bit about where you were born and your family and whether or not God was anywhere to be found in your home environment or among your friends. Okay. Yeah. So I grew up in—well, they call it west Texas. It’s actually closer to the panhandle, around Lubbock. I was born in Lockney, Texas. I claim Lubbock. But I think I had a pretty typical middle-class upbringing in the Bible Belt. I loved playing video games from an early age. That’s mostly what I did. But as far as God—was there religion in our family? There definitely was. When I’ve thought back on this in the past, I’ve called this nominal Christians. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I realize I don’t really think that’s the case. I think I was just more hardheaded than anything. Both of my parents are Christians. They’ve usually served in the music side of ministry in churches. But they both talked to us about Christianity. They both tried to get us to go—I say “us.” I have a sister. They’d try to get us to go to church every Sunday, and the more I think about it, I think they had a huge influence on me eventually becoming a Christian. So I think it was around when I was—1989, when I was about eight years old, I do have a memory of my mom talking to us like she usually did about heaven and hell, and I remember thinking, “Well, I want to be with my family and go to heaven,” and I actually remember, when I was eight, that I prayed for Jesus to come into my heart. So that was kind of the extent of it. Growing up, we would go to church. I don’t know. Like I said, I think I was more hardh

Former skeptic Adrienne Johnson embraced anything but God in her life until her drive to discover truth led her to belief. Resources Prager U, Stories of Us, Adrienne Johnson: Why I’m No Longer an Atheist https://www.prageru.com/video/stories-of-us-adrienne-johnson Max McLean, Fellowship for Performing Arts, https://fpatheatre.com C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity Learn more about the C.S. Lewis Institute Fellows Program at https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/Fellows_Program Visit www.sidebstories.com to explore more resources and stories of atheist conversions to Christianity. Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we see how skeptics flip the record of their lives. Each podcast, we listen to someone who has once been an atheist but who, against all odds, became a Christian. Everyone is different. Every story is different. Everyone has and holds beliefs, yes, based upon intellectual reasons, but it’s usually more than that. We all have good and bad experiences, influences, emotions, desires, and disappointments. We have people in our lives that shape our expectations and thinking about what we should believe to be true or good or real. We are complex and complicated, but oh, so interesting. Every story of an atheist moving from disbelief to belief is nothing short of fascinating. This huge paradigm shift occurs not merely in the mind of someone in their expressed beliefs, but it also affects an enormous transformation of life and living. After all, what we believe dramatically effects how we behave, how we see and live life, or at least it should. If not, your beliefs are essentially meaningless. But when you see a remarkable shift in someone’s life, it causes us all to look more closely at what happened, to step in. One thing I can say from listening to story after story of conversion from atheism to belief in Jesus Christ is that an extraordinary change occurs, an exchange of life so undeniable that it captures the attention of all who’ve observed the before and after, so to speak. We stop in our tracks, and we want to know why and how it happened. What was so profound that turned someone from resolutely walking one way to changing course to a nearly opposite way of thinking and living? Today, we’re going to hear another one of those incredible stories. As an atheist, Adrienne Johnson couldn’t remotely conceive of God as a possible reality, much less anyone she wanted in her life. Now, she can’t imagine life without Him. I hope you’ll come and listen to her story and be encouraged by her courage, inspired by her change of belief and change of life. Welcome to the Side B, Adrienne. It’s so great to have you with me today! Thank you so much for having me. So, my name is Adrienne Johnson. I’m the chief of staff at PragerU. And we have a series called Stories of Us that features Americans from every walk of life and their amazing stories of transformation. We recently released an episode featuring me and my story, about how I was a lifelong atheist. In fact, I was a chain smoking, tattoo covered, sexually promiscuous, suicidally depressed atheist that was transformed by Jesus. Wow. You have set the stage for us, Adrienne! I’m so intrigued to find out your story. Obviously, you’ve come a long way. Transformation is probably the right word to use for your story. So let’s start at the beginning of your story. Tell me about your childhood, where you grew up, your culture. And was there God in the picture? Did your family have any beliefs? Just start us there. Sure. So I grew up in Santa Monica, California. I grew up with two very loving secular parents. We really didn’t have any religion in the home. We didn’t have a whole lot of moral structure or guidelines, and my dad was basically an atheist. My mom was sort of a New Age hippie, and any time that I was exposed to any kind of religion or spirituality, I rejected it, even at a very, very young age. I thought it was all make believe and fairy tales. It didn’t make sense to me. It wasn’t logical. I was a very rational, logical child. In fact, when I was about four years old, I came to my dad, and I was so earnest, and I said, “Dad, I just want you to tell me the truth. Okay? Just be honest with me. Is Santa Claus real?” And he was so taken aback by my directness that he said, “No, he’s not,” and I was relieved, because, to me, that whole thing didn’t make sense. How could one person fly all over the world in one night? So even as a little four year old, I wanted everything to be rational and make sense, and when I heard things about Adam and Eve and Noah’s Ark and the parting of the Red Sea, it just sounded like Santa Claus to me. It just sounded like fairy tales, and so I rejected it, and we really didn’t have any kind of religion or spirituality in the home? Did you ever talk about religion or belief with your father and his atheism? Did you have a

Raised in a secular country, Alex embraced an atheist identity into adulthood when a surprising encounter with Jesus Christ dramatically changed his life. Alex’s Website: Faith Thinkers https://faiththinkers.org/about-us Recommended Resources: The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, Habermas and Licona The Case for Christ, Strobel To learn more about the C.S. Lewis Institute Fellows Program, visit www.cslewisinstitute.org Hear more Side B Stories and learn more at www.sidebstories.com Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we see how skeptics flip the record of their lives. Each podcast, we listen to someone who once identified as an atheist who became a Christian. Oftentimes, they grew up in a world where there are no apparent traces of God, no reason to believe in God, no experiences of God in their lives. In my research with former atheists, the number one reason they gave for disbelief in God was that there was no subjective, no personal evidence for God in their lives. They didn’t see or feel God both in their lives and in the world. In many Western, secularized, European countries, there are traces, artifacts of Christianity, of its historical presence and the remaining relics of architecture and its rituals and holidays, but there seems to be little apparent belief in the lives of people. The vibrant faith or hope that once was has been replaced with a settled independence and autonomy, for some a felt isolation, emptiness, and darkness. Atheism then seems a natural response to what is seen, what is felt, or perhaps what is not seen and what is not felt. Although it may not be existentially or emotionally desirable, it must be true, or so it is thought. But what happens when someone is driven to press beyond their culture, beyond their circumstances, beyond their personal despair to look for something more? And in their journey encounter unexpected life and joy and a real God who they believed to not exist. Alex’s story is nothing short of fascinating. It is truly a story of moving from darkness to light, from depression to life. Alex moved from a world bereft of hope to someone who cannot help but tell almost everyone he meets about the God who saved his life. He wants others to experience the joy and love he now radiates. I hope you’ll come along to hear his amazing story of transformation and be inspired or challenged. I hope you’ll also stay to the end to hear him give advice to curious skeptics towards seriously considering the possibility of a real God, as well as advice to Christians on how they can best engage with those who don’t believe. Welcome to the podcast, Alex. It’s so great to have you! I’m so happy to be with you. Wonderful. Alex, as we’re getting started, so the listeners can know a little bit about you, why don’t you tell us about your life right now? Yes. First of all, like I said, I’m really happy to be with you. I always enjoy talking to you and seeing you at different events. I feel like I haven’t seen you in a while. But I live in southwest Florida, in a city called Fort Myers, and I love living here, and I’m a full-time financial advisor, and I have some Christian ministries on the side. But I feel like I’m a Christian minister 24/7 because we’re called to be ministers and sharing the gospel of life with everyone. Oh, that’s wonderful, Alex! I can tell that you’re not native to Fort Myers, Florida, though. I hear a very distinct accent, and so I’m very curious. Of course, I’m familiar with your story, but for all of us, take us back to where you were born and where you were raised. Talk us through that world. What did it look like in terms of religion, God, your family. How did you grow up? Yes. I was born in France in 1972, in Paris. My parents were immigrants from the former Yugoslavia, and they grew up—that was a Communist regime, and by the grace of God, even though they were not strong believers, they wanted freedom, and my dad was in his twenties, and so he was very fortunate to be able to leave the former Yugoslavia and go to France, which was—when I was born and before I was born, in the sixties, it was a wonderful country, very welcoming to immigrants, very loving. The neighborhoods, even in Paris, were big families, and so I grew up in that environment. And I had a fairly normal childhood, even though my parents were not wealthy. They always provided, and I had really nothing to complain about. The only thing is that I didn’t like school very much, and the reason was because politically I didn’t see eye to eye with my teachers. My teachers, a lot of them, were Marxists. They were actually promoting the ideology that my parents had fled from. So most of my friends were from a Muslim background and from north Africa. So I learned a lot about Islam with

We are excited to share with you some special news about the podcast and a new phase of ministry for the newly named Side B Stories. Website www.sidebstories.com

Former atheist Jim Warner Wallace embarked on a personal investigative journey and eventually became convinced of the reality of God and the truth of Christianity. J. Warner Wallace’s website: https://coldcasechristianity.com Books by J.Warner Wallace Person of Interest: Why Jesus Still Matters in a World that Rejects the Bible Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels God’s Crime Scene: A Cold-Case Detective Examines the Evidence for a Divinely Created Universe Forensic Faith: A Homicide Detective Makes the Case for a More Reasonable, Evidential Christian Faith Episode Transcript Well, welcome to the Side B Podcast, Jim. It’s so great to have you with me today. Well, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it. Before we get started into your story, why don’t we start with where you are now, so the listeners have an idea of who you are? I worked homicides, cold case murders mostly, in Los Angeles County for a number of years, and most of my work ended up on Dateline, so there are several episodes out there that will illustrate the kind of work we’re doing. They’re unsolved murders. There’s no statute of limitations on a murder. I was not a Christian most of my adult life. Now it’s been 25 years, I guess, I’ve been a Christian. I was 35 when I first walked into a church. And somebody described Jesus as really smart, and that’s what really started the journey for me. So today, I write books, I still have a couple of cold cases that are open that I need to tinker on a little bit, and for the most part, I get a chance to talk about Jesus a lot, which is what I love doing. That’s fantastic. Well, let’s get started back early in your story because, like you said, you were an atheist probably for most of your life, so I’m very interested in how those views towards atheism got started. What formed that kind of belief? What was the culture that that was fostered? Your family? Did they have any kind of religious belief? Start me in your childhood. I think my mom was raised definitely as kind of a cultural Catholic but not somebody who ever opened a Bible, really was familiar with scripture. If we had a Bible in the house, I wasn’t aware of it. I think she has one now, but it was not the kind of thing we had in our house. And I didn’t know any Christians. I really didn’t even know any Catholics as a kid growing up. But I think I would have identified my Boston Italian side of the family, her family, were definitely raised within kind of a Catholic ethos, but really uninformed kind of view, and it was the kind of thing that we might go, when I was younger, much younger, like elementary school age, I remember we would go to church on Christmas, for sure on Christmas. Easter not so much. But by the time I was maybe in junior high or maybe upper elementary, I just told my mom I was done with it. “I don’t want to go on Christmas. I’d rather not go.” And I had a very sarcastic view, largely because… You know, my parents divorced when I was pretty young, and my mom was not allowed… She talked about… I wasn’t even sure what the heck she was talking about, but there were certain privileges that the church offered that she was no longer going to be allowed to take advantage of. That’s how I saw it. That’s all I really knew. I didn’t know there was a sacrament issue or any of that, I just knew that, “Really? So now you’re in a different status because my dad left you?” So I just thought, “All of this is such a bunch of nonsense,” and I was growing in the ’60s and ’70s, when, you know, this is the Star Trek generation that lands on the moon and eventually thinks that science will have the answer for everything. And I was in southern California. I was in Los Angeles. So I was in a relatively secular environment. No one around us that was Christians. Never got invited to church by anybody. Just saw no place for it. So at first… I could be relatively patient with people who are believers, unless they try to aggressively assert what they believed. Then I’m going to call it out for the nonsense that it is. And that was pretty much my view. And as a detective, I often would encounter Christians… We had a couple in the department who were officers who were not really good at articulating what they believed or, more importantly, why they believed it to be true. They were just raised in the church or they had an experience that changed their minds, and I’m not a big believer in experiences, so… I mean, everyone has an experience, so I just didn’t think that that was worth considering. So, to me, it just seemed like a bunch of nonsense, but I would, for the most part, not say much about it until I encountered one of these Christians who would be outspoken, and then

University biology professor Dr. Dawn Simon dismissed belief in God until faced with convincing intellectual arguments from an informed Christian, Tim Stratton. Dawn‘s recommended resources: On Guard by William Lane Craig Tim’s resources: Website: https://freethinkingministries.com Contact: [email protected] Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we see how skeptics flip the record of their life, from atheism or skepticism to belief in God. It’s often thought that belief in science excludes belief in God, that somehow they are not reconcilable, that one cannot be a serious student of science and be a serious believer in God. After all, Richard Dawkins once said Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. Many atheist thinkers over the decades have touted the story of atheism as the courageous scientific progress of man, overcoming primitive superstitions and make-believe gods, that we no longer need a god of the gaps hypothesis to explain what we are now seeing in the world and through science. Has Darwin definitively ruled out the possibility of God, as Dawkins suggests. Or is it still possible to believe in God and evolution at the same time, as Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga and others contend. That evolution does not necessarily disprove the existence of God. Along with Dawn, we’ll also be talking today with Tim Stratton, someone who was quite influential in engaging Dawn on the issues of science and belief in a thoughtfully challenging, intelligent, and humble way. This should prove to be an intriguing story. I hope you’ll join in. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Dawn and Tim. It’s so great to have you both with me today. Dawn: Thanks for having me. Tim: It’s great to be here. Thank you for the invitation. Wonderful. As we’re getting started, I’d like our listeners to know just a little bit about you both. So we’re going to introduce both of you one at a time. Dawn, why don’t you tell me a little bit about who you are now, and then we’ll get back into your story after Tim introduces himself. Dawn: So my name is Dawn Simon. I am a professor of biology, and my specialty is actually molecular evolutionary biology, and I am at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. And Tim? Tim: Yeah. My name is Tim Stratton. I’m a professor at Trinity Theological Seminary and College of the Bible, teaching apologetics and theology. I run a ministry called Free Thinking Ministries. People can find me on YouTube under that name and also find my website, freethinkingministries.com, and yeah, I just have a passion for apologetics and theology and evangelism, and I think you’ll see some of that today. Fantastic! And for those of you who are listening, we’ll put those sites and links in our episode notes. So let’s get started with your story, Dawn. Take me back to where you’re from, where you grew up. Talk to me about your family. Was religion or God part of your world growing up? Dawn: So I grew up in a small town in eastern Iowa, so heavily Catholic. So we were a town of about 2,000 people, and we had two churches in town, both Catholic. And I come from a very large extended family, so my mom has a family of 12 and my dad has a family of 11. Everybody’s Catholic. My grandparents were definitely observant, and many of my relatives were as well. My parents were not particularly, though I did go to Catholic school and I went through all the sacraments associated with that. I would say, while I knew… I could win Bible trivia and I knew the rules. I don’t think I ever was a believer. Even though if you would have asked me as a third grader, “Do you believe in God?” I probably would’ve said yes because that was the right answer. That’s the answer I was supposed to give. My parents… we just didn’t talk about it. Ever. So, in general, my family left those kinds of ideas or beliefs about a higher being as personal. They’re not things to talk about. You believed or you didn’t, but you kept it to yourself. And so I can distinctly remember having some questions at a young age. I had this Children’s Bible that had a picture and then one story per page that my grandma gave me for my first communion. And I liked it. I mean, I liked the stories. I definitely had the distinct impression that you just don’t ask questions. Yeah. So you were growing up in a Catholic world, I guess, nominally Catholic, it sounds like. Dawn: Yes. You went through the motions. It was more ritual and perhaps rules. You were in a Catholic school. But you’re also telling me, even as a young child, you were inquisitive. You were what I would consider a critical thinker or even introspective or really thinking about the books and the beliefs that you were

A strong atheist until he was 51, Mark Meckler felt no need for God until the influence of his personal relationships paired with deep intellectual curiosity led him to consider something more. Recommended book: The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we see how skeptics flip the record of their lives. Each podcast, we listen to someone who has once been an atheist or skeptic but who unexpectedly became a Christian to learn from their perspectives, both as someone who once resisted belief in God and then as someone who changed their mind. What we think and believe is a complex phenomenon. We often come to our beliefs because they’re part of our world growing up, the fabric of our family, the views of our friends. We seem to be drawn to what is familiar, at least at first. Sometimes we actually reject what we know and become drawn to other views based upon what we desire, or towards the beliefs of those who we like and admire believe. We can also be swayed towards strong beliefs by dominant voices in our culture at university and beyond, when exposed to different ways of thinking about and viewing the world, towards or away from God and religion. In our story today, Mark Meckler’s nonreligious cultural Judaism grew into a militant atheism, as influenced by the dominating voices of the New Atheists. As a young adult, he became convinced of the poisonous, immoral nature of religious belief and wanted nothing to do with it. Religion was for weak people who needed a crutch. Highly driven and accomplished in his life and career, over the years, he didn’t feel the need for God. He was happy on his own. But against all odds, he became a Christian after three decades of atheism. This begs the question, what would it take for someone like Mark to become open to consider the possibility of God? Even more than that, to become an impassioned follower of Jesus Christ. I hope you’ll listen to find out the answers at least for Mark. Even more than that, I hope you’ll stay to the end to hear his advice to skeptics in considering becoming open to ideas that they may have readily dismissed and to Christians on how to live in a way that invites the skeptic to reconsider. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Mark. It’s so great to have you. It’s really great to be here. It’s an honor. Thanks for having me today. Wonderful. As we’re getting started, so the listeners can know more of who you are, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself? My name’s Mark Meckler, and I run a national political organization called Convention of States Action, about five million members. I’m trained as an attorney, but I am a political activist for a living and for my passion now. I married to Patty for 28 years. We live just north of Austin, Texas. I have two grown kids. My son is 26 years old, in his last year of law school in the Washington, DC, area. My daughter is 22, another political warrior, and she lives here in Austin, Texas, with us, and she runs the education reform project for the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Also, you might have seen my dog in the background back there. That’s Levi, and he is a 160-pound Great Dane. He’s a permanent fixture here in the office with me. Wow! You couldn’t have a greater companion. I’ve got two Golden Retrievers, so I know what that’s all about. Let’s step back and lay a context for your story, your story that brought you to place of atheism and then to God. Tell me about your childhood. Where did you grow up? Tell me about your family, your community, culture. Was God any part of that world? So I grew up in southern California, in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, and I grew up in a very what I would describe as Judeo-Christian family from a value set perspective. I’m Jewish from both sides of my family. The whole’s family from Ukraine, grandparents on one side, great grandparents on the other side. Jewish culture was very important in our family. I would say, in my high school, 50% of the kids were Jewish. A lot of folks went to temple. I would now, in hindsight, call it ritualistic Judaism. Not much God involved. Really wasn’t much about faith, more about family, community, tradition. Those things were strong in my family, but there was no God in my family, per se. There was no prayer, there was no worship, and we as a family never went to temple. So you didn’t go to temple, so did you practice Shabbat or high holy days? None of that. Once in a while, for Passover, for some of the high holidays, we might go to somebody else’s house, one of the older relatives who still practiced that kind of stuff, but we really didn’t participate in it, and I really frankly, as a kid, didn’t understand any of the meaning of it. We would read

A brilliant thinker, Dr. Peter Harris lost his childhood faith in God at university when intellectually challenged. After years of atheism, the problem of meaninglessness caused him to reconsider the reality and credibility of the belief he once left behind.   Podcast episode notes: Peter’s recommended books: For ‘The Rage Against the Light: Why Christopher Hitchens Was Wrong’: https://wipfandstock.com/9781532651977/the-rage-against-the-light/ For ‘Do You Believe It? A Guide to a Reasonable Christian Faith’: https://wipfandstock.com/9781725256163/do-you-believe-it/ Peter’s recent articles in defense of the Christian faith at apologetics.com: https://apologetics.com/blog/peterharris/an-unexpcted-ally/ https://apologetics.com/blog/peterharris/why-christianity-not-epicureanism-is-the-philosophy-we-need-now/ https://apologetics.com/blog/peterharris/who-wants-to-live-forever-christians-should/ Webpage on his church’s website: https://www.staidangravesend.org.uk/faith-and-spirituality/faith-and-spirituality-6541.php Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we see how someone flips the record of their life. Each podcast, we listen to someone who has one been an atheist but who unexpectedly became a Christian. There are those who have never had any belief in God and embraced atheism from their youth, and there are those who once believed in God and then changed their mind, becoming an atheist. It’s not uncommon to hear from skeptics that belief in God is nothing but blind faith, that there is no evidence for God’s existence, but sometimes that’s also the way religious people talk and believe as well. When difficult questions arise, we’re sometimes told to, “Just believe,” or, “Just have faith,” in the midst of our doubts. By these statements, we are led to presume that there isn’t much more than our willed faith, that there is no evidence to support our beliefs or perhaps we shouldn’t even try to have a reasoned faith. For someone who is a thinker, an intellectual, who wants solid reasons to support his or her beliefs, this approach doesn’t work very well. It may, in fact, cause many to leave their faith behind, along with with other perceived childhood fairy tales. In today’s episode, Dr. Peter Harris lost his childhood Christian faith when confronted with intellectual challenge at university. He was hard pressed to find any substantive answers for his questions, other than to just have faith in faith. The seeming lack of evidence for Christianity did not satisfy his brilliant mind, and so he left it behind to become an atheist. What was it that drew him back to Christianity to now become one of its strongest intellectual defenders? I hope you’ll come along to find out. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Peter. It’s so great to have you! Thank you very much for inviting me on. Thank you. As we’re getting started, Peter, why don’t you tell us a bit about who you are, where you live, perhaps your education? Okay. I live in Gravesend, which is in the southeast corner of England. At the tender age of 18, I went to University of Cambridge to study history. I’ve since acquired two master’s degrees and two doctorates, one of which concerns the anti-theism of Christopher Hitchens, and the other was a study of the military service tribunals of the first world war, which essentially were committees set up to decide whether men who wished not to fight in the war could actually be allowed not to fight and perhaps do something else or have nothing to do with the war at all. And that took about 6-1/2 years to do, that one, whereas the other one, on Hitchens, took me about 3 years, because I’d already read and listened and watched so much of what Hitchens had put out on the internet and in his books about his anti-theism. I’m married to Hasina, and we have two children. I work for Lucent University in Texas. I have created their online History of Christianity course, and I also work as a high school teacher as well. So yes, I’m very busy, but what I do, I really enjoy. It sounds really quite fascinating. It also speaks to your depth of intellect and thought. You obviously like to think deeply about certain issues. You are driven by ideas, it sounds like. Very interested in issues of theology and history and I guess truth, I would imagine. I understand you study apologetics and those kinds of things as well. So I’m terribly intrigued by the story that you’re going to tell us today because you are really quite an extraordinary person in terms of just liking to think about ideas and issues and history, especially Christianity in the context of history. I think that would come into play when we hear more about your story. Because I know you didn’t begin on this side of understanding Christ

After skeptic Rick Allan was presented with Christianity and its effects on his family, he began to investigate the evidence for God and Christianity.   Rick’s website: askepticsjourney.com Greg Koukl: Tactics – A Game plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions J. Warner Wallace: Cold Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels Unbelievable? podcast with Justin Brierley: https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable/Episodes Justin Brierley’s book: Unbelievable?: Why After Talking with Atheists for Ten Years I’m Still a Christian Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we see how someone flips the record of their life. There is a general presumption among atheists that there is no evidence for God, so they do not look, and they find what they do not seek, disbelief. But what happens when someone actually challenges that presumption and decides to investigate the evidence for themselves and that genuine search changes their minds? That is the story of Rick Allan. He was a self-professed skeptic and former atheist who turned Christian. He challenged himself, pursued the truth, and discovered that there was a substantial amount of evidence for both God and Christianity. Today, he’s here to talk about his journey from atheism to a strong belief in God. I hope you’ll come along and listen to what he found. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Rick! It’s so great to have you here today to tell your story. Well, thanks a lot. I’m really excited to be here and share it. Wonderful. As we’re getting started, so we’ll know a little bit about you, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure. I live in the US, Midwest US for all my life. I grew up in Milwaukee and then moved to Minneapolis about 25 years ago with my wife, and we’ve been married for 27 years now, and two kids. They’re twins, a boy and a girl, and they are 19 years old and just starting college. We’ll you’re from the cold country. I’ve spent some time in Minnesota and in Wisconsin myself in different jobs, but you are from Milwaukee. You said you grew up there. Tell me what your world was like growing up in Milwaukee from the sense of your culture, from your family. Was there any sensibility of God in that world? There was. But it didn’t really affect me very much, I would say. We attended a Methodist church, I remember, growing up. And at some point, I don’t know, I was probably 10, 12 years old, something like that, my mom and dad moved to a nondenominational church. I don’t really know why. I remember my brothers and sisters were really angry because they had to be confirmed in the Methodist church and I got out of that because now we’re nondenominational. Right. Really, though, we went to church occasionally. I don’t remember any sermon or message from that time. It was really just something I had to do because we went with my parents. So I didn’t really have a lot from that perspective. I would say when I became a teenager, I didn’t even go to church anymore, and I kind of became… I don’t know. When I went to high school anyways, they were called freaks and jocks. And I kind of went the freak way, which just meant I partied and did things in the culture that some people don’t think you should do, with alcohol and all that kind of fun stuff. So there was really no religion at that point or God or anything. It just wasn’t even in the cards. It wasn’t a thing. So did your family accept your unwillingness or your decision not to participate in any kind of a church activity? You know, we didn’t even talk about it, to be honest. There was a lot of things going on with my family. My brothers and sister both had some problems, and my mom had some problems, and we moved out to Utah temporarily and came back after a couple of months. It just wasn’t a good time for the family, so I was pretty much on my own as a teenager, and there just wasn’t anything about God or religion in the picture. So when you stopped going, did you just kind of release that part of your life without much thought? Or was it something that you decided to take on a nonreligious identity, like agnostic or atheistic? I’d have to say I was agnostic. There literally was not any thought put to it that I can remember. So did you even consider what belief in God was? What did you think that religion was, apart from something that you just left behind? Back then, I mean, it just was such a non-event. It just wasn’t there. It just was not on the radar? Not at all. Yeah. And so what happened next in your journey? You were a teenager, you were partying, you just were being an average, I guess, teenager, high schooler around that time, and you did

Former atheist Marie left her devoted childhood faith in the face of intellectual doubts but eventually found her way to an intellectually robust belief in God and Christianity.   Resources: Marie’s Non-Profit: MTM-CNM Family Connection http://www.mtm-cnm.org Books More Than a Carpenter, Josh McDowell The Case for Faith, Lee Strobel Works on the resurrection by Gary Habermas Icons of Evolution, Jonathan Wells Works by Nabeel Qureshi – http://www.nabeelqureshi.com (Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus and more) C.S. Lewis Institute Resources and Events: https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/ Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we see how skeptics flip the record of their lives. Each episode, we listen to someone who has once been an atheist but who became a Christian, to the great surprise of themselves and others. In most of the stories we’ve listened to so far, the former atheists had little to no Christian belief or faith or exposure to Christians or Christianity before they became atheists. But that isn’t always the case. Sometimes, someone is intimately connected with Christianity and then decides to leave it, decides to leave the faith and community they once loved, the beliefs they once held, not necessarily because they wanted to leave, but they felt like they had no choice. In their minds, they could not sustain intellectual belief in God or perhaps questionable moral platitudes in the face and pressures of what they may be finding or learning that opposes what they once thought was true. They find their faith crumbling against the weight of growing disbelief. They can no longer sustain their faith or intellectual integrity or even social acceptance and continue as a Christian. It becomes no longer true or real, good, or relevant. Deconversion seems inevitable. Atheism seemingly becomes their only choice. That is, until it isn’t. In today’s story, Marie, a brilliant thinker, left the Christian faith she loved for what she thought was the intellectual respectability and truth of atheism. But her once-settled atheistic presumptions were challenged, and she became open to reconsider what she once left behind. She found her way back, not to the childhood Christian faith she left behind, but to a substantive, intellectually grounded Christianity that has informed her adult thinking and sustained her life in powerful ways. I hope you’ll come along and listen to her story and that you’ll stay to the end to hear her give advice to curious skeptics or even former Christians towards rethinking their faith, as well as advice to Christians on how best to think about and engage with those who don’t believe. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Marie. It’s so great to have you! Oh, it’s great to be here! As we’re getting started, Marie, so the listeners can know a little bit about you, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself before we get into your story? Well, I’m Marie Wood. I’m married to David Wood. We’ve been married for 19 years. We have five boys, Lucien, Blaise, Reid, Paley, and Kepler, and I am very busy with the boys, and also I assist David with his work, and I also co-founded a nonprofit to support families affected by the rare disease that my sons Reid and Paley share, so that pretty much occupies my time. Okay, great, and maybe we can learn more about that as we move through your story, and for those who are listening, I’ll put a link to whatever that nonprofit is in the episode notes. So let’s get started with your story, Marie. So that we can know about where you grew up, the community and the context of your belief or disbelief as a child, why don’t you just step us into that world of your family, of your childhood, of your community. Was there any sense of religion? Religious belief? Was there any reference to God in that world? So I grew up in a Roman Catholic family, and we were practicing. We went to church every Sunday, and I always remember having a strong love of God at an early age. What was interesting was I ended up going to a Presbyterian church for preschool or for nursery and day care. So I actually heard the gospel at a very early age, and I really connected to it, and I used to just sing about Jesus all the time. And I had this little T-shirt that we made at that nursery/preschool that said, “Guess who’s my best friend?” and it was a picture of Jesus with the long hair. And it was my favorite shirt. I loved that shirt so much that I wore it all the way until probably first grade. But I loved God. I always had this… I used to fall asleep praying, and I just had this intense curiosity about God. I remember I was about five when I was trying to wrap my head around, “How did God begin?” And I remember I was talking to my dad. I said, “What wa

Former atheist Jon Noyes was driven to fully live out his life-long atheism, but his pursuit was challenged when he began to consider which worldview best fit with reality.   Recommended Resources A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions – Greg Koukl The Story of Reality: How the World Began, How It Ends, and Everything Important That Happens in Between – Greg Koukl The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus – Gary Habermas and Michael Licona   CSLI Events & Resources How to Pray for Others who are Suffering with Nancy Guthrie January 21, 2022 at 8:00 pm Eastern Registration Link   C.S. Lewis Institute Spiritual Checkup please go to www.cslewisinstitute.org/asc Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we see how someone flips the record of their life. Each podcast, we listen to someone who has once been an atheist but who unexpectedly became a Christian. Often, those who are resolute in their own worldview don’t seem to change, but sometimes they do, and we are generally curious as to how that happens. Today, we’ll be listening to Jon Noyes’ surprising journey from atheism to Christianity. As an atheist, Jon’s list for reasons for disbelief in God and Christianity was long. In my research survey, he listed twelve distinct reasons supporting his once-held atheism. They range from lack of intellectual evidence and rationality to negative experience with Christian hypocrisy, from social and moral disdain to a personal distaste for religious people and institutions. There was hardly an unchecked box on the survey. He even took extra time to type in his strongly atheistic view that Christians were deluded and superstitious people who needed to change their false presuppositions and false beliefs. For him, atheism was objective, known through science, logic, and experience. There was no doubt that God did not exist. He enjoyed the benefits of disbelief, not only intellectually but in social relationships it gave and the moral freedom it granted. He was quite happy as an atheist. Jon was a convinced atheist with no intention towards changing. Yet today Jon’s passion is helping others discover the truth of Christianity, having completed an advanced degree in the study of worldview, and has worked full time in Christian ministry. It’s clear that a dramatic transformation has taken place. I hope you join in to hear his whole story, not only what informed his atheism but what breached those stalwart walls and prompted him to reconsider what he once thought so ignorant. What would cause someone so resolute to change his view about God? To move from an anti-theist, atheist position to becoming a passionate follower of Jesus Christ? I can’t wait to hear, and I hope you’ll come along. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Jon. It’s great to have you on the podcast today. Thank you so much, Jana, it’s great to be with you. I love the work that you’re doing and how you’re doing it, and I’ve been looking forward to this for a few weeks now. Fantastic! Fantastic! As we’re getting started, Jon, why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself, so we’ll know who’s telling this story? Sure. So my story is probably typical, average. I grew up in a town south of Boston, Massachusetts, called Plymouth. The home of the pilgrims. To a pretty normal family. I grew up playing soccer and enjoying life in a suburb of Boston, and I just had a great childhood. I went to Plymouth North High School. When I graduated there, I moved to Washington, DC, and went to study criminal justice at American University. And I loved DC and living in our nation’s capital for, well the four years of college, but then after that, I got my first job, different than what I thought I was going to be doing. I ended up actually being a paralegal at a fairly prestigious law firm in DC, working on a lot of appellate work in front of the Supreme Court and having just a lot of fun in Washington, DC, and then I felt a pull to pull me out to California, so about 15 years ago now, I hopped on a plane and moved to sunny southern California, where I’ve been ever since, and I absolutely love where I live. I live in Newbury Park, California. It’s maybe about 45 miles north of Los Angeles and 8 miles from the coast, and this valley that I live in, it’s just the best place to raise a family. And I have a beautiful wife. Her name is Riana, and she’s my rock. I love her with all my heart. And then I have four amazing little girls, so I have Eva, who’s ten. Phoebe, who’s almost nine. I’ve got Joelle, who’s seven, and then I have little Annette, who is four. She just turned four last month. So, as with everybody right now, I’m just figuring out life and how to raise a family and le

Like his father, Justo Amato was a resolved atheist well into middle age yet he unexpectedly came to believe in God. Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we see how someone flips the record of their life. Each podcast, we listen to someone who has once been an atheist but who unexpectedly became a Christian. It’s often thought that religious people are religious just because they grew up that way. They don’t know any different, so they just believe, and it is thought that, once they discover the truth about religion, they will no longer believe.But what happens when someone grows up in an atheist household, resolutely identifies as an atheist until middle age, and then comes to believe that religion, particularly Christianity, is true? When someone has been an atheist for most of their lives, later into middle age, the odds of such a dramatic life shift from nonbelief to belief is often surprising, both to the person who’s making such a tremendous paradigm shift, as well as those around them. Those who are resolute in their own worldview often don’t seem to change, but sometimes they do, and we are generally curious as to how that happens. Today, we’ll be listening to Justo Amato’s long journey from atheism to Christianity. Following in the footsteps of his own atheistic father, it wasn’t until his late 50s that Justo reconsidered his own beliefs. I hope that you join in to hear his story, not only to understand why he was an atheist for so long, but what changed to allow him to reconsider what he once thought impossible to believe. This should be interesting. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Justo, it’s so great to have you. Thank you, Jana. It’s great to be here. Wonderful, wonderful! As we’re getting started, Justo, why don’t you give us an idea of a little bit about who you are? Okay. First thing, I was a little 4-month-old immigrant from Spain, so as a little boy, I don’t think I spoke any English until I went to kindergarten. Neither of my parents spoke English. My father spoke a little bit. My mother spoke none. And so my brother and I grew up speaking Spanish and English back and forth, always speaking English to one another but Spanish to my parents, and- Your family. That’s fascinating. Your family moved over from Spain, so you were immigrants to the US. What part of the US did you grow up in? Well, we settled in Bound Brook, New Jersey, and that’s where I lived up until I was 44. Okay, so you grew up in the Northeast. I did. Yes. So what was that like, growing up in the Northeast in terms of both your family and your community? Was there a sense of religiosity? Was there a community of faith? Catholicism, I believe, is probably fairly strong in the Northeast. What was your world like growing up? Was there God in it? No. My father was an atheist. As a young man in Spain, he saw the priests living very well while the community was struggling, and so he just became totally anti-church. So I never heard even the mention of God or Jesus, never saw a Bible. Most of my friends in my neighborhood were Catholic. One of my good friends was an altar boy. Why he was an altar boy, I’ll never figure out, because he was the wildest kid. But anyway, nobody that I knew really went to church on a regular basis. They went Christmas, New Year’s, for communion, but there were really no strong religious people in the neighborhood at all, and so I had no religious training, background, nothing, and it was that way until I was 28 years old. And then I went to the beach, and I met Annabel. During that period of time, those 28 years, that’s a long time to really consider who you are and your beliefs and what you believe and what you don’t believe. I guess you considered yourself an atheist during that time? And if so, what did you think of Christians and Christianity and belief in God. What was that to you? Was that just something people did on Christmas, Easter, but there wasn’t much more to it than that? How did you consider or what did you think of religion and religious beliefs during that time? To be honest with you, I didn’t give it much thought because my friends, they never brought up religion at all. I mean I had friends, six or seven friends. Nobody ever talked about religion. So I never even gave it much thought, Jana. And now I meet this young lady. She was 20. I was 28. And it turns out she teaches Sunday school, and she was at the beach with her friend, who was also a Sunday school teacher, so for the first time, I’m hearing about God and Jesus. I went to church with Annabel a few times before we got married, and I didn’t have a problem with going to church, but I didn’t really give myself to anything. I just went and was an observer. So you weren’t antagonistic towards relig

Former skeptic Sue Warnke wanted nothing to do with religion. Although she achieved business and personal success, something was still missing from her life. Her quest for meaning led her to reconsider God. Episode Resources Sue Warnke’s blog – www.leanership.org Sue’s recommended article for skeptics – “Five Steps to God” (by Sue on her blog) Faithforce is the Interfaith employee resource group at Salesforce Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis Episode Transcript Hello and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast where we ‘see how skeptics flip the record of their lives’ Each podcast we listen to someone who has once been a skeptic but who unexpectedly became a Christian, to learn from their perspectives both as someone who resisted God and then as someone who not only found God but is also follower of Jesus.   Achievement and success often drive us. Unmoored to God, skeptics are often believe they can take life by storm and find its fullness and fulfillment on their own. There’s no need for God. As poet William Ernest Henley penned, I am ‘the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.” Sometimes after reaching the summit of personal or professional success, and the best of what the world has to offer, we’re often left with a sense of emptiness after the temporary glory recedes, wondering is this all there is? In my research with former atheists, While many reported a positive sense of satisfaction within atheism prior to conversion, slightly more than half (27/50; 54.0%) (Q15) ‘did not find Atheism to be generally satisfying but soberly accepted it as truth.’   This begs the question, are they willing to ask the deeper question – is this all that life has to offer? It is in this moment of existential reflection, a decision is made to keep on or to search for something different, something more. Someone may become open to that which was completely walled off before, or not. That is part of our story today. Sue found the height of success in Silicon Valley and a wonderful family life, but somehow it didn’t ultimately satisfy her soul. It set her on a journey of searching for something more. I hope you join in to hear her whole story – not only what informed her skepticism, but what allowed her to reconsider what he once thought so irrelevant. This should be interesting! Welcome to the podcast, Sue. it’s so great to have you here today. Thank you. It’s great to be here. As we’re getting started, so the listeners know a little bit about you, why don’t you tell me a bit about who you are, where you live, perhaps what you do? Yeah, so I live here in northern California, a little town called Pacifica, on the beach. I have a wonderful husband who surfs, which is why we’re out here by the beach, and three teenagers. One is a sophomore in college, the other is a senior in high school, and then the other is a sophomore in high school. I work at Sales Force. I’m a senior director of content experience, so basically documentation and videos. And I kind of grew up in Utah and Colorado. Wonderful. So you grew up, in, you said Utah and Colorado. Let’s start back there. Tell me a little bit about your childhood. Also, not only where you grew up, but your family, your community, your friends. Was there any sense of God or religion in your growing up years? So I grew up in a town called Layton, Utah, which at the time was 95% LDS, Latter Day Saints, or also known as Mormon. And we were not that. My parents were Christian, and at the time, I have this vague memory of going to a children’s church meeting, but we kind of walked away from that. They had a falling out with that church pretty early on, so I have a vague memory, but then we were pretty much agnostic. Tried a few different churches throughout that time, but the key was that we were not LDS in this very LDS environment. So the impact of that is two things: One is that I was an outsider. I really couldn’t do all of the events with all the other kids. They would talk about things like their Ward, and I just wasn’t part of that. And then also my family and myself in particular was the target of evangelism. Pretty hard core evangelism. Pretty interesting attempts at evangelism. It felt at times like the whole town wanted to convert my family. So I developed this huge wall against religion of all types and just decided that was not for me. I wanted nothing to do with it. If that was the impact of it, of making me feel like an outsider and making me feel pressured, then I didn’t want anything to do with it, and I kind of developed this… I was pretty much anti religious, I would say. I mean I was that friend in college that was sending articles disproving this and that to my friends of faith and having deep, long discussions about how illogical it was and irrational it was, and I really felt like I didn’t

Former atheist Jeff Dockman wanted nothing to do with religion. Over time, his presumptions about the world, and his place in it, ceased to make sense and he began to consider the possibility of God. The CS Lewis Institute: www.cslewisinstitute.org Jeff’s recommended authors and books: C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis, Miracles Alvin Plantinga   Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side to see how someone flips the record of their life. Each podcast, we listen to someone’s who’s been an atheist and became a Christian. Through listening to their story, we can appreciate both sides from someone who’s been there. If you believe in God, you can see how someone might dismiss the ideas of God, religion, and Christianity. If you don’t believe in God, perhaps you can see how someone who once resisted God moves towards belief. But as for all of us, what we believe in affects our understanding of who we are, our identity. In fact, our identity can be shaped by many things. How we see ourselves, how others see us, what we do, the group we’re a part of, who we want to be, or how we feel. Our identity can be shaped by our friends, our family, our life experiences, our desires. For atheists, there is a sense of freedom in creating your own identity without restraint. Free thinkers who form their own identity, their sense of self. Sometimes our identity can also be shaped by knowing who you don’t want to be, a soft anti-identity. We don’t want to be a part of a group of people that seems culturally irrelevant, judgmental, unscientific, hypocritical, uneducated, weak, narrow minded. Pick your adjective. These are terms often used for the religious. We want our identity to be as far from that as possible. That is where our story begins today but not where it ends. The sense of rejection of the religious identity. Jeff moved from an atheist identity to take on the identity of the group he once despised, Christians. How in the world did that dramatic shift happen? I hope you’ll listen in today to see how this story plays out. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Jeff. It’s wonderful to have you on today. Hi, Jana. It’s great to be here. You’re a familiar voice to me. We met several years ago. We both have a mutual affiliation with the C.S. Lewis Institute here in Atlanta, and so that’s where I got to know you a little bit and got to know a little bit about your story, so having you on the program today is truly exciting for me, because I know the dramatic changes that you have made in your life. In fact, you’re doing some pretty amazing things now in terms of even your current study of theology at the graduate level. Can you talk with me a little bit about just who you are now and what you do, so everyone gets a chance to know a little bit about who you are. Yeah, sure. So I work as a software manager at an engineering company here in the Atlanta area, I’m still in school, but I have switched my major from theology to Old Testament. I just had a lot of interest in looking deeper into the Old Testament, the history of the text transmission and things like that. So that’s my current focus in school, working on a Masters of Arts in Old Testament Studies right now. I know, in your story, you’ve come a long way from where you were, from your atheism. So why don’t we start at the beginning, in your childhood, and give me a sense of the home in which you grew up, your family, perhaps your friends and the culture. Was there God in that world at all before you had a sense of your atheism? Tell me about that. It’s a very interesting question because there was God in the sense that some members of my family would consider themselves Catholic from an upbringing perspective, but there was not God in the sense that we ever went to church or prayed or talked about God or anything like that. So we’d occasionally get together, and when my grandparents were in town, for example, my stepmother’s parents, they would pray, and they were pretty devout in their faith, so they would go to church. We would say grace for supper every night, even though that was about the only time we talked about God. Other than when my Dad would hit his hand with a hammer or something like that, and then I heard God’s name quite often. Okay, yeah. But growing up we didn’t really have much interaction with other Christian families. My friends, there were no Christians in my peer group, at least not that I knew of. If they were, they were closet Christians. Primarily I hung out with people that were pretty much humanists and a lot of interest in the occult and anti-Christian sentiment. So a lot of it was rooted in some of the punk rock culture and the New Wave/industrial music scene and things like that. So a lot of

A Christian for 15 years, Jim rejected his faith and identified as an humanist-atheist for nine years. Although he could not see a possible return to God, he found a more robust faith than he had once left. Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we hear how someone flips the record of their life from atheism to Christianity. Each podcast, we typically listen to the story of someone who was an atheist and became a Christian. Today’s story is a little bit different. Jim was a Christian who became an atheist, who then found a more robust form of Christianity and reconverted. A commited Christian for 15 years, he left Christianity in his mid 30s and passionately identified as a humanist atheist for nine years. During that time, he genuinely could not see how he could possibly go back to believing in God again, and yet he did, with his faith even stronger for the experience. I hope you’ll come and listen and explore Jim’s extraordinary story with me. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Jim. It’s so great to have you! It’s good to be talking with you. I love that English accent. Having gone to school there. I’m sure our listeners will really appreciate it, too. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are, Jim? Well, as you know, my name is Jim and I’m from the UK. I live in Swindon currently, which is about 80 miles west of London, actually not that far from Oxford. But I was brought up in London, in the east side of London, a place called Rainham, and now I live in Swindon. I am an IT audit manager. I’ve worked in IT for about 15 to 20 years. I’m married to Liz, and I have two kids, one Hannah, who’s just recently gotten married despite the COVID-19 situation and the various lockdowns that we’ve had.   And I have a son who’s just finished secondary school, and he’s started college now. So that’s us. Family of four. And I’m in my late 40s, and yeah. So that’s a brief introduction to me. That’s terrific. It certainly gives us an idea of who you are and where you are in the world, really. And congratulations on your daughter’s wedding. Thank you. That’s really wonderful. So let’s go back to your childhood, it sounds like in East London, where you grew up, to get your story started. Was God any part of the picture at all among your family and your friends and even around your local culture? Well, I wasn’t brought up a Christian, but I was fairly ambivalent towards faith and religion, I’d say, generally. I would probably describe my upbringing as a very typical British upbringing where, when it comes to faith, and in particular Christianity, my views about Christianity were formed mostly through the lens of popular cultural influences and references, like Christmas and I can remember Nativity plays. I think my idea of Jesus was formed mostly through a film called Jesus of Nazareth that starred an actor called Robert Powell, who is a classic blue eyed, dark haired European-looking man who kind of wandered the hills of Palestine sort of listfully floating around, making short sentence statements about different parables and perhaps not easily understood who was just a nice man who was mistreated by Roman soldiers, and I think that’s pretty much all I knew about Jesus. And my idea of religion was that it was just something that was there. I neither was against faith and religion or for it. You probably know that, in the UK, we have a long history when it comes to Christianity and the church. We have the Church of England, and we have a lot of pageantry and a lot of traditions, so I just saw Christianity as something that was very much tied to the Church of England, old churches, old parishes, and effectively just Christianity was a way of being nice and being good but wrapped up in religious ritual, I think is probably how I kind of saw it. And my parents, they didn’t go to church. And again, I think they had a similar view, that Christianity was something that was nice but not something that we particularly were invested in, and religion was okay, as long as it was on balance and that you kept your feet firmly on the ground, and I think probably that there was a sense of right and wrong that I had as a young person, but I didn’t really think about where that morality came from. I just kind of had that sense that, “Well, if there is a God, I haven’t robbed a supermarket, so I’ll probably be okay.” So that was kind of my view of Christianity. Didn’t really give it much thought and was quite happy to, as a young person, explore life and all of life’s opportunities. So it sounds like you had a pretty good childhood and a nice family, a nice life. You did good things. You were a moral person, just along with the culture. So did you explore w

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Former skeptic Jeremy Evans comfortably presumed his atheism was true until a sobering event caused him to ask life’s biggest questions. Dream Center Non-Profit: www.dreamcenterevansville.org Unbelievable Podcast Link Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. Each podcast, we listen to someone who has been an atheist and also been a Christian. Through listening to their story, we listen to both perspectives, from someone who has thought and lived on the other side. At different points in our lives, we all ask the big questions. Who am I? What am I doing with my life? What am I pursuing or not? What’s wrong with me? What, if anything, can make my life better? Where am I looking for answers? Am I looking in all the wrong places? Or am I on the right path? How can I know which way to go? Who’s telling the truth? Who can I trust? We ask the questions, but that doesn’t mean we really are looking for answers, but sometimes different circumstances force our hand and cause us to take a closer look. They prompt us to stop and ask the big questions, to actually search for answers. Suddenly, all the temporary noise and busyness and distractions are removed. We look more closely at ourselves and our lives to not only ask probing questions of ourselves, whether we’ve been pursuing the right path, but also to find answers in order to make sense of our lives. Life interruptions can also make us wonder whether or not there is a God. Is God the key that can help us answer our big questions? Is He real? Can He be found? Does He have anything to say that can help us make sense of our lives? Our podcast guest today, Jeremy Evans, had a devastating circumstance that caused him to take a closer look at his own life to see if atheism held the answers he needed or whether he should look for something else, something different, something more. Come along with me to listen to his story. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Jeremy. It’s wonderful to have you with us today! Good morning. Thank you for having me. As we’re getting started, Jeremy, why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself? Yeah. So I am from Pekin, Illinois, which is a little town outside of Peoria, and currently reside in Evansville, Indiana, with my wife and three kids. My kids are nine, seven, and six, and I work for a Christian nonprofit organization here in Evansville that does neighborhood revitalization and work with kids and families to try to connect them to God’s will for their life and help them be successful and self sufficient. Sounds wonderful. I’d love to hear more about that, perhaps later as we’re talking about what you’re doing now. But let’s get started back at the beginning of your story, because I know that you weren’t always interested in Christian ministry, for sure. You were a long way from that. So I know that you were a former atheist, and I want to know how that really birthed in you, what your beginnings were, how you grew up with your family, and their view of God and how that informed you. Yeah, so I’m the eldest of three sons in my family, and I remember at an early age not going to church, and I remember my dad’s father, my grandfather, taking me to church at a very young age separate from the rest of my family. And I remember it was the kind of church experience where they would give the kids something to doodle on, and then eventually, they would bring the kids up to the front, and the pastor would talk just to the kids for a little while, and then they’d send the kids off to Sunday School. And I remember kind of being a ham, which is kind of how I grew up. Then the next real experience I remember of church was a Baptist church in our hometown in Pekin that we got involved with primarily because of sports. So I remember my brothers playing in basketball tournaments. I remember—it’s a funny story. My dad actually coached me and my brothers in baseball growing up, and I remember the only time my dad got thrown out of a baseball game was actually by the pastor of that church. He was the umpire, and he threw my dad out, and I remember thinking, “That’s a substantial moment, when your pastor throws you out of a baseball game.” Yes, yes. But I would say, in childhood, only real experience of church was connected to sports. And then I grew up, was in high school and then college. And in college it was a really interesting mix because I attended a Christian music festival called Cornerstone in Illinois, and I had friends who were connected to faith, and I remember that vividly, but then kind of moved away from those friend circles and ended up in a circle of people who I wouldn’t say were hostile to faith but just really didn’t care. It just really wasn’t a significant part of that gr

Former skeptic Rachel embraced atheism until her intellectual curiosity regarding God’s existence led her to Jesus. Learn more about Rachel and her book at www.rachelgilson.com Recommended Resources: Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis Confronting Christianity by Rebecca McLaughlin Reason for God by Tim Keller Episode Transcript Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Rachel. It’s so great to have you with me today. It’s my pleasure to be here. Thanks. Wonderful. As we’re getting started, why don’t you tell me, and tell the listeners, a little bit about yourself before we get into your story? Yeah. Well, I’m a California sojourner in New England. I currently work for Cru, formerly Campus Crusade for Christ, on the national theological development and culture team. I write a little bit. I speak a little bit. I parent a 7-year-old a little bit, so that’s a little bit of where I am right now in life. And you’re pursuing a PhD at the moment as well? Yes. I’m working on my PhD in public theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Okay. Wonderful, wonderful. Well, maybe we’ll hear a little bit more about those bits and pieces as we go. As we’re starting with your story, as you know, this podcast is talking with former atheists who found their way from atheism to Christianity, and sometimes that’s quite a long journey, from one ideology to the other and one life to another, but it all starts somewhere, and I’d like to start with your childhood and your culture, your family, your community, just kind of how you grew up. Shape that for us. Tell us how your journey or your story started. Was God in that story at all as a child? Yeah. I love context. I was a history major in college, so these are my favorite. Yes, context means a lot. Context is a big one. Yeah. So the bigger context is my mother had grown up in a practicing Catholic household but not really serious. She ditched it at a young age, so by the time she was raising me, nothing of that was in her life. She had really gone far away from Catholic doctrinal teaching, moral teaching, all of that. My dad similarly didn’t have religion in his life when he was raising me. He had grown up not church going at all, like poor in the hills of Appalachia. He had met some Jesus people along the way, he says, but there was just no faith in his life, even as a young boy, so by the time my parents were bringing up my brother and I, we were just never in the church, not even Christmas or Easter. It just wasn’t a thing that was talked about. It wasn’t a part of our fabric. Now, the community I grew up in is north of Santa Barbara, California, and sometimes people here California and think really, really liberal, and obviously that’s true, but actually where I grew up was very rural, in a lot of ways conservative. My high school had a working farm on it and a place where you could tie up your horse, like that kind of rural. The town it was in literally had one stop light. And so I knew that a lot of people around me were churchgoers, but as a child, I didn’t really know what that meant. It was just sort of a fact in people’s lives, and I never really thought about it as a kid. So there was no childhood belief in God, no prayer, I mean- Nothing. … there was nothing in there to give you a context for that kind of belief at all. No. I did have some babysitters when I was a young girl who were Mormons, and I have a distinct memory of… they had a picture on their wall, you know, of that feather-haired 1970s white Jesus who’s staring softly into the middle distance? Yes, yes. And I remember sort of making fun of that picture and getting a timeout for making fun of Jesus. So that was my first real encounter with Jesus as a concept. Wow. All right. So that was your childhood, and so, as you were getting older and going to school, still no cultural or contextual references, even for Christmas or things like that? Well, Christmas I loved, but it was definitely that weird porridge of Santa and Rudolph and Baby Jesus and Frosty the Snowman. It’s a little unclear what Baby Jesus had to do with any of it. Right! It was just the full-on tree, presents, commercialism type of thing. And Easter, like I got an Easter basket, but to me, Easter was entirely a rabbit who laid eggs or a rabbit who carried eggs. It’s entirely unclear what exactly is going on there. Chocolate is heavily involved. The resurrection? Not even mentioned. So no religious references at all to those holidays? No, no. Okay. Take us forward a little bit. So you’re growing up in elementary school, and you know, middle school is a time where you start really looking around, questioning, and I imagine you would be a thoughtful, introspective kind of person, or you read that way. Why don’t you tell us about who you were and if you were asking big questions or thinking about thos

Former atheist Dr. Mike Bird tells his story of moving from a culturally-informed skepticism and caricatured Christianity to finding that perhaps his presumptions were mistaken. You can find out more about Mike here: Twitter: @mbird12 Blog: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/euangelion/ Books: The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians (2019) How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus’ Divine Nature – A Response to Bart D. Ehrman (2014) Evangelical Theology: A Biblical and Systematic Introduction (2013) Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining me today. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. Whether or not an atheist or a Christian or something else, you have a view of reality. For most of us, we’ve typically caught our view of the world, rather than taught it. Just like the coronavirus, we’re constantly exposed to different ideas, even when we don’t or even can’t recognize or escape them. We hear and see messages from movies and music and news media and social media. Sometimes obvious, sometimes much more subtle. We tend to absorb messages without questioning, without really thinking about it. Messages slip in the back door and tell us how to think, what is true, and we believe it. Unfortunately, in our polarized culture, we often believe the negative stereotypes of the other side without really listening to what that side really is or what that other person really thinks. Guarding our own position will do. Sitting down with another person is, well, too personal, too demanding, and perhaps too vulnerable. It’s easier to build a straw man and knock it down than to really engage with the ideas and the people who believe them. It’s easier to construct stereotypes and caricatures and dismiss without consideration. But what if we are dismissing something before we even give it a chance? What if we are missing something, something that actually answers life’s biggest questions in a way that is good and true and life giving? What if, just what if we actually listen without shutting down and turning off? We might be amazed at what we find. That’s why I love the story that we’ll be listening to today. It’s the story of someone who had listened to the messages of culture, readily stereotyped and dismissed Christians as totally irrelevant, and yet today finds himself on the other side, because he took the time to figure out what Christianity really was and who Jesus really is. Michael Bird was a former atheist that is now a Christian. He is a brilliant academic who writes and speaks in the areas of theology and apologetics. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Mike. Well, thank you for having me. So, as we’re getting started, Mike, why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself, where you’re from, your academic background, and what you do right now, and then we’ll start at the beginning of your story. Okay. Well, I am Michael Bird. I am the academic dean and lecturer in theology at Ridley College in Melbourne, Australia. I’ve lived pretty much most of my life in Australia, growing up mostly in Brisbane, although I’ve done a few stints in different places around Australia, and I also lived in Scotland for a number of years. I am also married to my wonderful wife, Naomi, and together, we have four children. I graduated from Malyon College in Brisbane and the University of Queensland, where I did my doctorate on Jesus and the Origins of the Gentile Mission. I’ve written and edited around about 30 or so books on the early church, Jesus, the New Testament, theology, Christian thought, probably am most well known for a book, The New Testament in its World, which I co-wrote with Tom Wright, and a textbook called Evangelical Theology. So that, in a nutshell, is where I am and who I am. That’s quite impressive, I must say. Set the context for us in terms of the world you grew up in and the way that they looked at religion and Christianity. Yeah. Australia is a very peculiar country on the religious front. We were founded, or settled—this is obviously after or beside the local indigenous population. We were settled largely as a penal colony for the British, largely after another colony decided they no longer wanted to be in league with Britain, which I think would be your own America. So for roughly 200 years, Australia’s been settled, and it’s never really been known for having strong or very big religious commitment. And when Australia became federated as its own country in 1900, it was created to be deliberately secular, but secular in the sense it wasn’t going to be sectarian. We did not want to import the debates and divisions from United Kingdom largely between Protestant and Catholic and the fragmentation of Protestantism, so the Aus

We presume we are right and correct in our beliefs. But, sometimes we are challenged to consider why we believe what we do. In today’s podcast, former atheist Robert Kunda takes a closer look at his atheistic presumptions, opening him to new possibilities. Robert mentioned the influence of these Christian thinkers: Hugh Ross (on science): https://reasons.org/about/hugh-ross C.S. Lewis (argument from desire): Mere Christianity William Lane Craig (debates): www.reasonablefaith.org James White (debates): https://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/bio/jwhite.html The Side B Podcast was recently listed as #16 on Top 35 Christian Women Podcasts. Check out the full list now! Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. Life is busy. Who has time to think about God when there’s so much else to do? To think about and consider? We simply presume we’re right no matter which side we’re on. Many atheists presume that science has made religion passe. We no longer need the God hypothesis to explain anything. Christianity is not plausible but rather mere superstition. Thinking people have no time or desire to deal with it. It’s simply off the radar. In my research with over 50 former atheists, nearly two-thirds, 63%, thought that atheism was true and no evidence could convince them otherwise. But in light of the fact that I was interviewing former atheists who had become Christians, it begged the question: What made someone so closed off to God open up and become willing to change. That’s the million dollar question. I hasten to add that, as a group, these were highly educated people. Nearly half held advanced degrees. These are thoughtful people who, for some reason, decided to take another look at the God question and found themselves strongly believing and advocating what they had once thought was not important or just plain nonsense. Sometimes looking more closely, beyond mere presumptions of belief, causes someone to become open to another perspective, especially if their own worldview doesn’t seem to be providing adequate answers to the questions they’re asking, whether it be science or other questions of life or even death. That’s the case for the former atheist in our podcast today. Robert Kunda tells his journey from disbelief in God to belief. He was challenged to take a closer look at his atheistic presumptions, and that closer look made all the difference. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Robert. It’s so great to have you on today. Awesome. Thank you for having me. As we’re getting started, why don’t you tell me a little bit about who you are, perhaps where you live. My name’s Robert Kunda. I live in southern Oregon, Grant’s Pass specifically, with my wife and our three dot dot dot kids. We have two girls and a boy, eleven, nine, and five, but we also have a fluctuating number of kids, as we are currently foster parents. We have one 1-1/2-year-old baby who, I guess she’s almost a toddler now, but we’re hoping to adopt. So hopefully she’ll be staying around. And then just the number of foster kids we have varies at any given moment. We just had a placement. A girl that was with us for four or five months left this last Friday, and so now we technically have only the baby as a foster kid. We do have a boy and a girl that we’re watching just for a week for someone else, but they’re not living with us permanently. So you have six children in your home right now, eleven and younger? Yes. That’s a full house. A busy life, it sounds like. Amazing! It’s busy. It’s nice. My wife stays home. She homeschools our kids, which is something that she always wanted to do, which is something that we’d never have been able to afford when we were in southern California, so the lower cost of living up in Oregon is helpful. It’s nice. I want to know about the kind of place you grew up that helped to inform and shape your views. I wonder about your childhood experience. Your family, your community. Were there references to God at all? Or Christianity? Or religion? And what did that look like? Kind of. In my house, not so much. For maybe three or four years, when we were really young, when we lived out near Pomona area, it was just my mom, my sister, and I, and we were in a private Christian school for some time, because, It was a rough area. So we had weekly chapel and references to God in that school, but other than that, we didn’t go to church. My mom wasn’t a believer. We moved a lot when I was younger, basically all through high school. And after that, there was no going to church. There was no other sort of Christian exposure, except for having friends that were believers. So when you were a child growing up and you went to this Christian school, was it anyth

Stunned by events of 9/11, financial trader Brian Causey finds his beliefs about life after death lacking and sets off in a search for answers. Brian’s book: Trading Gods – A Rationale for Faith Brian’s blog: www.briancausey.com Brian’s recommended resource: Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis Episode Transcript Hello and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast where we ‘see how skeptics flip the record of their lives.’ Each podcast we listen to someone who has once been an atheist or skeptic but who came to believe in God and Jesus to their own surprise. There are different reasons or catalysts that may stop someone in their tracks and reconsider their own skepticism towards God and faith, towards their own presumptions, their own way of looking at the world. One of these catalysts is an unexpected sudden or significant event in the world. Disruptive events or circumstances often demand our attention. They raise our awareness beyond the mundane normal day-to-day activities to potentially consider the larger, deeper big questions of life. Those grand moments can sober us to think about our own beliefs, our direction, our purpose and meaning, what we think about death and beyond. Some people take those interruptions seriously as an opportunity to look more closely at their own lives. Others merely move on without deep regard or consideration for what it might mean for themselves, pursuing business as usual. In today’s story, Brian Causey, a successful financial trader, was one of those experienced an event that rocked the world as an invitation to examine his own beliefs, his own life, to open the door to the possibility of belief beyond skepticism. It jump started his intellectual quest to look for a better explanation for his life, to possibly trade what he knew and experienced of reality. It compelled his search for the existence of God. I hope you’ll come along to meet Brian and hear him tell his journeying from disbelief to belief. And, I hope you’ll stay to the end to hear Brian’s advice to skeptics who may be considering the possibility of searching beyond their skepticism and his advice to Christians on engaging with those who don’t believe. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Brian. It’s so great to have you with me today. Thanks, Jana. It’s so great to be here. I look forward to it. Wonderful! Before we tell your story, which I can’t wait to hear, why don’t we learn more about who you are today, and tell me a little bit about yourself. Yeah, sure. My name is Brian Causey. My day job is in the investment world, where I have kind of a strange and unique opportunity to work with some of the biggest pools of money in the world, mostly teachers’ pension funds and things like that. My side hustle is as an armchair theologian and an author. I get to live in Seattle, Washington, with the most amazing woman I know, my wife Karlie, our 2-year-old son Blaise, and Brodie the Burnedoodle. Bernedoodle. That’s obviously a combination of Golden Retriever and Bernese Mountain Dog? He’s Bernese Mountain Dog Poodle mix. Yes. And he’s in dire need of a summer cut. It’s too hot over here now. So, as we’re getting started, Brian, in order to shape the fullness of the story, let’s go back to your childhood. Tell me about life growing up, your family, your friends, your culture, your community? Tell me what life was like. Was it with God? Was it without God referents? Were you from the Northwest all along? Talk to me about that. Yeah, sure. Well, I grew up in a very loving home. I mean, my family is all very close still. My parents are headed towards their, I think, 57th wedding anniversary. But growing up, religion just wasn’t much of a consideration for us. We didn’t really talk about God or things like that. I kind of joke around with others that we were kind of like the Scandinavian countries. We had a foundation of Christian faith, but it wasn’t really part of our daily life. In many senses, I was just a classic none, N-O-N-E, which, in the lingo of polling, just means that I would have answered “none of the above” if I was asked what religion I belonged to. I think I had probably a faint sense of the spiritual. I mean I wasn’t a materialist. I knew that much. I believe there was some kind of greater power out there, but I didn’t know what it was or if it wanted anything from me. At the same time, probably if you would have pressed me back then, I would have believed in almost anything, I suppose. UFOs, telepathy, reincarnation, that all religions were paths to God. I was spiritual but not religious. “You can’t pin me down. You can’t put me in a box.” And I think that’s one of the attractions, probably, of being a none, N-O-N-E again. None of the above. You can’t pin that person into a set of beliefs or doctrines or att

Can the thinking person believe in God? In today’s episode Bruce tells his story of moving from atheism as informed by science to a rational Christian faith that informs both science as well as the most profound questions of life. You can find out more about Bruce through his blog Philosophical Apologist at https://philosophicalapologist.com Episode Transcript Welcome to the podcast, Bruce. It’s so great to have you on the show! Thank you for having me. As we’re getting started, I’d like to get to know you a little bit. Why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself, your background. I know you have quite an impressive academic background. Why don’t we start there? Okay. Your listeners will probably think, “Wow! This is someone who’s just spent far too much time at university.” To start with, out of high school, one of I guess my first loves, as it were, was mathematics, so out of high school, I did a degree in mathematics and physics and became a high school teacher and taught in high school for a few years, mainly mathematics and physics. This is in Australia. After probably about four or five years of that, I got I guess a little bit bored of teaching the same thing, and I was always interested in computing, so part time, I went back to university and started a degree in computer science and eventually, after a year or so, I grew to like that quite a lot and quit my teaching job and spent a year full time finishing off that computing degree and then got a job in a research center at a university doing programming work. So that was, I guess, the start of my career in computing, which I’ve been doing for many, many years now. I worked for a few years in that, and I was working in another research group in a large private computer company in Brisbane, Australia, and I got the idea of doing a master’s degree by research, so I spent the next year and a half doing a master’s degree in computer science, kind of combining some of the research work I was doing for the company with research for the master’s, and so I did that for a couple of years. Finished that off. Had a long stretch of over a decade without any formal study. Got a bit, sort of itchy feet again, so, “What am I going to study?” And I was always interested, having been a Christian for quite a long time by that point, I was interested in Christian apologetics and had done a lot of reading in that area. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that, to be a good Christian apologist, to defend the faith as an apologist, I needed to understand philosophy better, and so, for me, that meant going back to university and doing a degree in philosophy. Which I did from the University of London. I was in Australia at the time, but University of London has a great international program, where you can do degrees by distance, and so I spent five years in total doing my bachelor of arts degree in philosophy through the University of London, Birkbeck, which I really enjoyed. And towards the end of that, I started thinking, “Well, what am I going to do with this?” and I’d met a friend who’s been interviewed on this podcast before, Daniel Rodger his name is, and we’d done a lot of talking about bioethics, and I think he and another friend convinced me that I should go on to do a PhD in bioethics. And that’s what I’m doing now. I’m probably in the last third of my PhD, and that’s at the University of Birmingham in the UK. Wonderful school. My alma mater. Oh is it? Really? Yes, yes. That’s where I received my PhD. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I’ve been on campus. I’m doing that by distance as well. I’m in Australia right now, but I actually started while I was living in London, and I have been to the university campus a number of times now, and it’s a great spot. I really like it there. Well, good, good. You’re in good company with William Lane Craig. Yeah. That’s right. He did his PhD there as well. Right. In philosophy. Or one of his PhDs. Exactly. You’re right about that. So you’re obviously extremely well studied and continue to have obviously an active mind and pursuing really rich and deep truths. Particularly, I’ve noticed that you have quite a resume of academic publications in the area of bioethics, so even though you’re actively in a PhD program, you have published prolifically in that area. I would say quite impressive. So it sounds like you have… You’re currently in Australia, right? That’s right. Yeah. I moved here in December last year from the United Kingdom, where I spent the previous six years. And that is your home, so why don’t we kind of take your life now back towards the beginning? Because we want to understand what your thinking was earlier in your life. Did you grow up in Australia? I did. I was born in Brisbane in Austral

Former skeptic Ashley declared herself an atheist as a young woman. Dissatisfied with atheistic nihilism, she turned to psychedelics and mysticism in her search for something more. Her longing eventually led her to reconsider God. Ashley Lande‘s blog: www.ashleylande.com Episode Transcript Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Ashley. It’s so great to have you! Thank you. I’m so very glad to be here. As we’re getting started, before you tell your story, I would love to know, and I would love the listeners to know, a bit about there. It seems like you have a lot going on in your life that you love and the things that you love to do, and I’d love to hear about that now. Okay, sure. I’m an artist and a writer. I live with my husband and two children, a boy and a girl, in a little town near the Flint Hills of Kansas, and I home-school my two children, and my husband works on a wind farm. And we have chickens. That’s something I really enjoy. And I have a website displaying my art and a blog on it as well at www.ashleylande.com. Yeah. And that’s what I do. It sounds like a really intriguing, almost idyllic, place to live these days, outside of the city in the rural country. Wow. Living somewhat of a simple existence. It sounds very wonderful in a way. That you have that space. And chickens! That’s very interesting. So I presume that you collect eggs, and you probably grow a lot of vegetables and do all that kind of thing with regard to sustainability and living. That’s terrific! We do love the chickens. I have yet to master gardening, but one day. Someday. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Me, too. I tried my hand a little bit at gardening, but just a few flowers here and there. Yeah. [1:55 But I understand, from your story, that it’s a little bit different than many of the stories that we’ve heard so far, that many start with… Okay. Ashley, I’m going to start that over again. Mark, X that out. Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. So, Ashley, as we’re getting to know you and your story, let’s start back at the beginning. Tell me about where you grew up. Did you grow up in Kansas? Is that where your home is? And what was that like? Your family, your friends, your community. Was God anywhere in the picture? Yes. So I actually grew up in a suburb of Kansas City, on the Missouri side. Us Missourians are very emphatic about that. The bulk of Kansas City is actually on the Missouri side, and I grew up in a suburb called Blue Springs that was about 20 miles from the city. I grew up kind of in a unique situation. We were in a suburb, and we were in the city limits, but my dad had… He was from southern California, and he met my mom, who lived in the Midwest, and decided to move back here with her because he could own land, whereas in southern California, near the coast, that’s an impossibility unless you’re a millionaire. So he bought the land and was actually grandfathered into the animal ordinance, so we had all kinds of animals. We had horses, and we had a cow at one point. We had a llama. Chickens and ducks and kind of tucked back in the woods, even though we were in a suburb, so my childhood was wonderful in many ways. I had a sister. She was about 2-1/2 years older than me. She passed away in 2017, but I grew up with her. And faith was—it was kind of a peripheral part of our lives in that season. We went to church—usually two or three times a month we’d go to church on Sundays, and I remember going to vacation Bible school and Sunday school, and my dad was very busy with his business. He was a commercial interior designer, and he built his own business, had a business in Kansas City, so he commuted every day. He was very busy with that, very consumed with that, and he was also very strong in his political identity, and so the church we went to was a Methodist Church, which was the tradition that my mother had grown up in, but for my dad, the Methodist Church was too quote-unquote liberal, and so he kind of phased in and out of going to church. Bible reading was not necessarily a big part of our lives. Faith just seemed like something that we participated in on Sundays. And I don’t say that to criticize my parents. They were doing the best they could. They both grew up in highly dysfunctional families. I do remember having conversations with my dad about infinity and the nature of God in a very abstract way, and I just remember trying to contemplate infinity, and it was so mystifying to me that I just could not wrap my head around the idea of infinity. But I remember Jesus was just kind of represented in my mind as kind of a gentle, passive figure, and I know I must’ve heard the gospel at some point. I remember singing Jesus Loves You in Sunday school, but somehow it never really sunk in. And around the time I was, just getting into trouble at school and with the police here and there, and so that was a, and church a

Believing that science provided better answers than religion, and faced with the problem of evil in the world, Erik viewed Christianity as just a pleasant myth. But after becoming dissatisfied with his conclusions, his search for meaning led him to affirm the truth and reliability of the Christian faith. If you’d like to know more about Erik or his apologetics work, you can follow him on: Instagram: @isjesusalive Twitter: @IsJesusAlive Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/isjesusalive Website: isjesusalive.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TestifyApologetics Erik mentioned these resources on the podcast: William Lane Craig and Reasonable Faith: https://www.reasonablefaith.org Gary Habermas on the Resurrection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay_Db4RwZ_M&ab_channel=TheVeritasForum Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining me today. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. We all want to make sense of the world around us, of the world within us. We want our lives to mean something, to be going somewhere. We want our lives to be valuable and satisfying. When life doesn’t seem to offer that and we don’t know where to find it, it can leave us feeling a bit confused and conflicted, wondering if there’s anything more to life than we know or experience. Is this all there is? This existential dissatisfaction can prompt a thinking person to reconsider where they are and who they are in life. It can cause them to take a closer look at their own beliefs, because ideas have consequences. They affect not only the way we think but also the way we live, and even whether life is worth living at all. Cognitive or emotional dissidence, while sometimes uncomfortable, can become unlivable. This tension can spark a desire to search for truth that brings real meaning and satisfaction to life, that helps us make sense of the world, of others, and of ourselves. That’s the story we’ll be listening to today, but it also rings true for many stories, perhaps for your story, for we all want to make sense of our lives to find out what, at times, seems so illusive. So I hope you’ll enjoy listening to Erik Manning. He’s a former atheist who’s been down this path but finally found what he had been looking for in the place he had been avoiding for a very long time. Hello, Erik, and welcome to the Side B Podcast. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Erik, as we’re getting started, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, where you’re from, what you do, where you live perhaps? Sure. My name is Erik Manning, and I am a freelance website designer. I also have a website, IsJesusAlive.com, which is like a blog dedicated to providing information about the Christian worldview and mostly historical apologetics, like reasons to believe that the New Testament is historically reliable. That sounds very interesting, and obviously you’ve come a long way from atheism, so I’ll be interested to hear more about that as we go, now that you have, it sounds like, kind of a public apologetics ministry. That’s really fascinating. So let’s go to the flip side of that, and I want to hear the beginning of your story. Because you weren’t always into a apologetics or Christianity. You were more along the atheistic understanding of life and worldview. So tell me how your story towards atheism started. Take me back to where you grew up, perhaps your family, and any view of God there. Sure. Well, I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church, actually, until I was about seven or eight years old. I went to catholic school. My father actually taught at a catholic school. My grandparents were very heavily into Catholicism and made sure that they took us to Mass every Sunday, and I even had my First Communion. And then we moved away. They lived in Michigan, and we ended up moving to St. Louis. My parents took jobs there. And my parents… Well, my grandparents were very religious. My parents weren’t really as religious at all, and my dad was kind of more agnostic, I would say, and even had some kind of hostility towards God. He’s not that way now. He has become a Christian since then. And then my mom was just very—oh, I don’t know. She just kind of thought that there was many ways to God and kind of relativistic as far as religion goes, and so, once we moved away to St. Louis, we barely kept up with our church attendance at all, and so it just wasn’t something that they were any longer interested in. As a child, I remember at times praying and talking to God. I wasn’t closed off to God. But things really changed as I became a teenager, and so what happened is I just started to observe the world around me a little bit. My parents were into alcohol, and that kind of made things rough growing up, and then a lot of my friends also came from pretty broken home

As an atheist, Rob Oram presumed God didn’t exist until unexpected circumstances caused him to reconsider. Trained as an investigator, he began to look at the question of God more closely. Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. Side B is that side of the story that you don’t usually hear. Growing up, I used to buy vinyl records and listen to side A, the popular song that everyone knew and loved, but oftentimes, side B would just get ignored. It just wasn’t as well known, perhaps not worth listening to. Occasionally, I’d turn the record over and give it a chance. Every once in a while, I’d find a song that I rather liked and began listening to it even more than the song that I’d bought the record for in the first place. In the same way, we’re naturally driven towards the songs of people that we like, the ideas that we believe, side A, and we don’t often give the other side, side B, a chance, and when we do, we sometimes find ourselves a bit surprised by what we hear. We might even come to like it. We become more open to a different idea, a different way to think about the world and our lives. At the very least, listening to other perspectives helps us understand and relate to each other better than to distance and to stereotype and ignore. That’s the purpose of the Side B Podcast, to hopefully interest you in listening to ideas and perspectives you may not have heard. For Christians, it’s to help you understand the lives and perspectives of skeptics and the various reasons they may push away from God, and for skeptics, it’s to help you see how and why intelligent, thinking people may actually turn from disbelief to belief in God. Welcome to the podcast, Rob. It’s so great to have you on the show! It’s lovely to be with you, Jana. As we’re getting started, why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself. Obviously, I hear something very English in your speech. Where are you from? Yes. So I’m in Hereford, England. You might detect a Cockney twang. Some people sometimes accuse me of being from Australia, but no, I’m from London, England. Yeah, so I moved out to Hereford four years ago, which is in the west part of England. I’m 46 years old. A former policeman. I was a policeman for nearly five years, and then I basically left to become a legal advisor in criminal defense, so in a sense, I went from arresting people to defending them, and then you could say, or someone said to me a few years ago, which I quite liked, “So you’ve gone from arresting people to defending them to now trying to save them,” because I’m now in the ministry with the Church of England. I’m a vicar, or in America you might say a pastor, with the Church of England, which I’ve been doing for the last six years, I suppose, if you include the training. Well, since this show is about talking with former atheists, now that you are a reverend, you really have gone full circle. I’m eager to get into your story. That’s quite a change over a lifetime. So why don’t we, at the beginning, just set the context for where your beliefs in atheism arose? Tell me about your understanding of God and religion and faith growing up. What kind of community were you in? What kind of family were you in? Did anyone believe in God? Or not? Why don’t you talk with me about that? Yeah, sure. I came from a loving but very secular household. So I grew up with… I’ve got two brothers, a foster brother, a sister, so we lived in a large house, a large household. But we never went to church or anything like that. I had loving parents, but certainly God was never part of things, really. We grew up interested in various sports and all the rest of it, and I certainly grew up very much as a practical atheist, I suppose. I never really thought about matters of God, and I very much lived… Certainly, as I grew up, as I got older, I lived for myself, so now I would look back and I can look back, and you’re probably, if I go into different parts of my story, you’ll hear why, I lived very much in rebellion towards God and very self centered, and it never occurred to me that there’d be a reason to do otherwise. Well, no, it’s not that it didn’t… It seemed to me the only way to logically live was for yourself, but actually the strange hypocrisy of that, if you like, as I grew up and got to my late teenage years, and especially at university, it became even more abundant, “What’s the point?” So I never took the trouble of investigating God until later on, and I’ll explain when and why that happened, but to me, it was just a given that… It just seemed natural, it just seemed innate that you’d live for yourself. What&#821

Former skeptic Craig thought he was too intelligent to believe in God, but after a series of sobering events, he was shocked to find himself affirming the truth of Christ. Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we see how someone flips the record of their life, more specifically where an atheist unexpected becomes a Christian. There’s something fascinating about dramatic life change, when someone becomes entirely different than they were before, in the way they think and act, in the way they see and live life, their perspectives and purposes completely changed. This kind of life transformation not only surprises the people around them, but it often stuns even the one who was changed, for they never saw it coming. Most atheists never consider even a remote possibility of believing in God, much less becoming a passionate follower of Jesus Christ, and yet, it actually can and does happen. But that kind of radical change takes everyone off guard and raises a sense of curiosity. It causes everyone to wonder how someone could shift their understanding of themselves and the world in such a striking and powerful way. What happened? More importantly, why did it happen? In our story today, Craig Northwood found himself on the other side of a tremendous paradigm shift ten years ago, moving from a self-described atheist, alcoholic, drug user, and fairly unpleasant character, to someone who now passionately proclaims his Christian faith as both real and true. In fact, he has made this his life’s mission as a Christian pastor and apologist, now running an apologetics organization, and we’ll let him tell us about all of that. But that’s quite a change. Let’s take a listen to see what prompted this startling transformation, why it happened, and how his life has changed? Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Craig. It’s so great to have you. It’s wonderful to be here. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Yes, absolutely! Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, where we can locate that wonderful dialect of yours? My Welsh accent, which I try to cover up. Yes. My name’s Craig, as you know, Craig Northwood. I live in South Wales. I live in a little town at the moment called Ystrad Mynach, which almost sounds like you’re trying to clear your throat or something. I didn’t grow up here. I grew up in a slightly larger town in South Wales. I’ve been a Christian for… I actually realized this today. I’ve been a Christian for… I was actually saved ten years ago this week, but I only realized that earlier today, which was a nice way to spend my anniversary, I suppose. Yes, it is! I’m looking forward to really unraveling that story and what happened prior to your conversion because obviously I think there’s a lot to it, and I’m just excited to know your story. So why don’t we start back in your childhood, really. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about where you grew up, your family, and whether or not religion was on the radar or in the picture at all in your culture and in your family? Okay. I did grow up in South Wales. I’m from a fairly large family. I have two brothers and two sisters. And religion wasn’t really a large part of when I was growing up. My parents did occasionally take us to church when I was quite young. I’ve got a vague recollection that my mother was hurt by somebody in the church, but I think I was about ten when we stopped going, if that, so it’s all quite a distant memory, really. My mother continued to believe. My father kind of continued to believe, I think, in some sense, but they were never active in the church. They never really went on a regular basis. We certainly never went on a regular basis, and as I was growing up, I didn’t really have anything to do with Christianity. My elder brother and sister did for a short time. They went to Christian youth groups, but they kind of drifted away, and I didn’t really have any interest in Christianity, and then, as I was growing up, I kind of got to my teenage years, and I was sort of cursed with this idea that I was very clever, and I now know that I wasn’t particularly clever. I was just interested in things that clever people do and clever people write about, but I thought I was very clever, so that kind of made me extremely arrogant, unfortunately, so as far as I was concerned, I was very much thinking along the same sort of lines as New Atheism, where if you can’t prove it scientifically to me, then it’s obviously rubbish, so I didn’t have any time for Christianity, and as I got older, that became more and more pronounced, so I wasn’t very pleasant towards anyone with any sort of religious belief, really. Okay. Would you consider South Wales and where you grew up… Was it

Former skeptic Julie Hannah takes an intellectual, scientific journey to discover answers to life’s biggest questions and finds Christ. Julie’s autobiographical book, A Skeptic’s Investigation into Jesus (2020), is available on Amazon and Kindle Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we see how someone flips the record of their life. Each podcast, we listen to someone who once did not believe in God but who, against all odds, became a Christian. Today, we’ll be talking with Julie Hanna. She was once a skeptical agnostic with a passionate interest in the human condition who spent many years exploring a very fundamental question: Do our lives have any meaning? Or are they just random events that end with death? She searched for answers in a wide range of sciences, philosophies, and faiths and was prepared to reach any reasonable conclusion from the evidence. No philosophy or faith system seemed ultimately convincing, at least at first. Her desire to ignore Christianity as implausible was challenged in her attempt to disprove it, but she ultimately became convinced by it. She has written about her journey towards Christianity in her book entitled A Skeptic’s Investigation into Jesus, where she methodically looks at the facts regarding science, the biblical texts, the historical person of Jesus, the issue of suffering, and many others. I hope you’ll come and listen to her story today, as she tells how she moved from agnostic skepticism to ardent Christian. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Julie. It’s great to have you. Thanks so much, Jana, for the opportunity to share my thoughts with your listeners. Thank you. We’re so glad to have you on today. As we’re getting started, so the listeners know a little bit about you, can you tell us a bit about yourself? I live in South Africa, in Johannesburg, although I was born in Zambia, but I’ve lived here most of my adult life, and I’m a mathematics lecturer. That’s what I’ve done all of my life, really, is taught at high schools and then at university, so I have a passion for mathematics and The Bush. I have a passion for the African Bush. And I’m a mother of two grown-up boys, and I’m recently retired, so I had time to put down my thoughts and actually get my thoughts published, which is part of what our discussion is about. Yes. So tell me about your book? What is the name of it? And where can it be found? It’s called A Skeptic’s Investigation into Jesus, because that’s literally what it was. It was my exploration as an agnostic, almost atheist skeptic, and it is available on Amazon. It’s published by Wipf and Stock. That’s good, and I will include that information also in the episode notes of the podcast for anybody who wants to look into that. So as we’re getting started with your story, I love what you say about that you love the African Bush. I had a brief experience in The Bush about three years ago. It was the most amazing place I think I have ever seen, to be honest. Really one of the highlights of my life. I presume that you have — when you say you grew up in Zambia and you have a love for the African Bush, what does that look like growing up in that area of the world. And we never saw wild animals there, apart from baboon, but it was a very natural way. We never wore shoes unless we went to school, and it was a very free and kind of open to exploration. That’s what we loved. It was a very privileged upbringing. Well, that sounds pretty wonderful, really idyllic for any child to have that sense of freedom and exploration. I can’t imagine. That really sounds wonderful. What was the religious climate in that area? I know probably in South Africa, from my very, very limited experience, there are all kinds of thoughts about religion and God. Why don’t you tell us about that? Yeah. I had minimal religious influence in my upbringing. None of my family or friends were religious. We were nominally Anglican, so we went to Sunday school because that’s just what good parents were supposed to do with their children, but my mother admitted she didn’t believe in God, and yeah, there was really — I can’t speak for Zambia for a whole or even South Africa as a whole, but by the time I was a teenager, I rejected belief in God and the afterlife, based, unfortunately, on really minimal exposure to Christian thinking. So the nominal experience that you did have as a child — did you have any even basic childlike believe in God? Did you ever pray? Or was it just going through the motions of an Anglican service or that sort of thing? Yeah. There was never really a sense that it was anything more than a societal thing that people did. And really, as I say, as a teenager, I decided that Christians probably didn’t think much about their beliefs. Based on r

Raised in a godless communistic world, former KGB agent and undercover spy Jack Barsky found God when he was least expecting it. To learn more about Jack and his story, visit: www.jackbarsky.com Or read Jack’s book Deep Undercover: My Secret Life and Tangled Allegiances as a KGB Spy in America Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. No matter who you are, if there’s something common to all of us, it’s that we want to be fully known and fully loved. We long for meaningful relationships. We want our life to have significance and deep meaning, but sometimes what we long for seems quite elusive. Despite outward appearances and even worldly success, we can find ourselves deeply lonely and empty. What happens then? What do you do? Where do you go? Our podcast guest today had a life with all the thrill and adventure of a spy novel. That’s because he was a spy, a genuine spy. Raised in Communist Germany, he worked for the KGB as an undercover agent literally. Yet with all of the trappings of worldly excitement and success, something was desperately missing. He didn’t know how or where to find it. As a Communist, religion and God were not an option. That was only for the undereducated masses. Jack Barsky’s story is one filled with dramatic twists and turns and transparency as he confronts his own dark night of the soul. He knew he was looking for something more than his own seemingly exciting yet shallow, empty life. Even though he may not have been looking for God, God was looking for him. Jack came not only to know about God, he came to know and be known, love and be loved by God himself. He came to find a life of satisfaction, fullness, and peace that had eluded him for so long. Come join me as Jack tells his journey from atheism to belief. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Jack. It’s wonderful to have you today. I’m delighted to be here. As we’re getting started, just so the listeners can get to know a little bit about who you are, even just right now, can you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about who you are? Well, my name is Jack Barsky. I currently reside in the beautiful state of Georgia, in the suburbs, southeastern suburbs of Atlanta, with my wife, Shawna, and my soon-to-be 10-year-old daughter, Trinity. I retired from corporate life about 4 years ago, I spent some 35 years having a career in information technology, including executive-type management. But four years ago, I became a public figure, and at that point, it was time to say goodbye to corporate because my life story does not sit very well with a lot of companies. I did some things that are a little bit out of the ordinary. And I described all of this in my memoir, Deep Undercover, which was released three years ago. And so what I’m doing now, I’m engaged in public speaking. I do interviews such as this one. I write blogs, and I’m working on some other things that are not very much related to my career in corporate but are more in the creative sector. Wonderful. Wow. That sounds exciting. And for anyone who’s listening, I will definitely put the name of your book and your blog and where we can follow you in the episode notes, so you can find out more information about Jack there. So I’m so excited to get into your life. You obviously, like you said, have become a public figure because of the extraordinary life that you’ve lived. Let’s take it back to set the context for this extraordinary by talking about where you grew up, your understanding of God, your family, your culture. What was that world like? Well, it started very ordinary, to put it mildly. I was born in 1949 in the easternmost part of what was, at the time, the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany. That place became eventually the German Democratic Republic, a strong ally and pretty much dominated ally to the Soviet Union and very much dominated by Soviet influence. I was born into a small village. My parents were both teachers. And my first home was on the third floor of an elementary school building. That was pretty good because this was—World War II, particularly in the east, did a lot of damage to the country. Massive destruction—apartment buildings, cities, factories. I mean it was a wasteland, and probably the best thing was to be able to grow up in the country because we had the ability to scrounge up some food here and there that was outside of the assigned ration. The assigned ration for an adult for about ten years, still ten years after the end of the war, was about 1500 calories. That’s below a subsistence level. But it was like a place where you cannot imagine to get out of there and go out in the world and make a way and have an interesting life. What did it for me was God gave me a pretty decent intellect, so I did well in elementary and middle schoo

University professor Dr. Mary Poplin was “spiritual, not religious” and sampled many ideologies until a vivid dream made the Jesus of Christianity undeniable to her. Listen as Mary tells her story. Mary is author of the book Is Reality Secular?: Testing the Assumptions of Four Global Worldviews (2014) Mary‘s reflection on her time spent with Mother Teresa is written in Finding Calcutta: What Mother Teresa Taught Me about Meaningful Work and Service (2008) And, her academic writing on teaching in challenging environments is Highly Effective Teachers of Vulnerable Students: Practice Transcending Theory Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. Each episode, we listen to the story of someone who has lived as a nonbeliever and then became a Christian, someone who understands from the inside what each of those worlds are like. One of the most fascinating discoveries in my research with over 50 former atheists was the role that some kind of religious or mystical experience played in their conversion to Christianity. Dreams, visions, encounters with Jesus Christ, encounters with Satan and dark spirituality, extraordinary providential circumstances—these all reshaped their understanding of the possible reality that there was something more, something real, beyond this universe. Some of these experiences were invited in a way, after someone had opened themselves up, had prayed or challenged God or even Satan to show up. Some of these otherworldly experiences were not invited but palpably encountered nonetheless. So sobering were they that it caused them to change their minds and even their lives, dramatically reorienting themselves to a new understanding of reality as something more than they once thought possible. That is the story that we will hear today from our guest. As a rational intellectual university professor, she didn’t know what she was looking for. As someone who was spiritual but not religious, she definitely wasn’t looking for the Judeo-Christian God. But she experienced an unexpected, powerful, and vivid dream and suddenly found herself profoundly believing in Jesus Christ. She came to see that reality was much more than she realized, much more than merely grounded in this world. Forgiveness and peace were found in the real person of Jesus Christ. It changed everything for her. Dr. Mary Poplin is now a university professor and strong advocate of the Christian worldview. I hope you’ll listen in to hear her compelling journey from nonbelief to belief. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Mary. It’s so great to have you. It’s great to be here. Thank you for inviting me. As we’re getting started, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself? Maybe your academic background and perhaps where you live? Okay. Well, I started as a schoolteacher, and I taught for a few years, and then I went to the University of Texas to graduate school and then I became a professor. I spent three years at the University of Kansas a long time ago, but I’ve been at Claremont Graduate University as a professor since 1981, I think. A long time. I’m old. Oh, no! And that’s in Claremont, California. It’s in the Los Angeles area, where I live. And then I occasionally come back to my hometown, where my sisters live, and that’s where I am right now because of the virus, so we’re all teaching online anyway, and so I’m teaching from here in Texas. What is your focus of study or your specialty? I started out in special education, and then I went to teacher education largely, and now I would say my research is on teacher. Actually, I love to study highly effective teachers in the most troubled schools, so that’s what I study, and I’ve worked with my students. We’ve done a piece of research and a book on that. And my second thing is that I love to study Judeo-Christian thought and how it impacts different fields, and so I did a book on the four major worldviews, trying to explain what secular humanism and materialism and pantheism were as related to Christianity. And what is the name of that book? Oh. That’s a good question. I believe it is Is Reality Secular? Is Reality Secular? Yes. I took that line from a Dallas Willard book, actually. Okay. He let me steal it. He said I could have anything. Oh! Wonderful, wonderful. Yeah, Dallas Willard was a pretty extraordinary man. A very amazing man. Yeah. So you’re someone who obviously is a thinker, someone who’s thought deeply about issues of worldview, of life, of perspective, but the Christian worldview and thinking about your life in those terms certainly wasn’t where you started. So let’s back up now and let’s go early in your life. Tell me about where you grew up. Was there any concept of God in your home, your family, yo

Many people presume there is no God because that’s all they’ve known. The question of God seemed irrelevant. In today’s episode Daniel Rodger tells his story of moving from a culturally-informed atheism to an unwavering belief in God who completely transformed his life. Learn more about Daniel and Critical Witness: Critical Witness link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QksajfJj_o Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. We try to understand why and how people either move away from or move towards God and Christianity. We want to listen to the lesser-heard B side of either nonbelief or belief, depending on what side you’re coming from. Each podcast, we’ll listen to a story from a former atheist who changed their mind and came to belief in God. They know both sides of the story. These stories might look a bit different from different parts of the world, from different parts of western culture. Today, we’ll be talking with Daniel Rodger, who lives in London, England. He’s a former atheist who came to the Christian faith against the grain of his culture. Welcome to the podcast, Daniel, it’s great to have you on the show. Thank you very much for inviting me on. Oh, good, good. As we’re getting started, can you tell me a little bit about who you are? What you do? Your life? Yeah, sure. So I have a background as a registered healthcare professional that specialized in working in the operating theatres, and for the last nearly four years, I’ve been working as an academic at a university in London, where I teach, and it also gives me the time and flexibility to research and do research into areas I’m interested in, usually related to things in bioethics, so abortion, artificial womb technology, and then some other areas kind of related to my more professional area. That sounds really quite interesting, and with the nature of culture these days, probably quite exciting at times. And that makes me think about just the context of where you are. I know, in the US, we’ve been sensing a push back against Christianity in the last few years, but in England, it’s been going on for quite a long time. Just to give me a context to your story, can you tell me a little bit about what it feels like in England in terms of Christianity and religion and those kinds of things? Sure. Yeah. I’d say, in England, it varies in different parts of the UK, I guess a little bit like the US. I’m in London, so it’s the southern part of England. And that’s kind of known—I mean, it’s not really the Bible belt, but it’d be a much smaller equivalent, more like just the buckle, and that’s sort of in the south/southeast of England. There’s more Christians than there is probably in the midlands and the north, so in my own context, there are more Christians than there are probably in other parts of the country. You wouldn’t necessarily know that, and that’s for a number of reasons. One is, I think, we learn from quite a young age that there are certain things you sort of keep to yourself, and I think people who have religious beliefs kind of know that it’s something they can talk about at home and pray and read their Bibles, but they kind of leave it at home, and they bring it with them to work or to school or wherever they find themselves. And I’d say generally the culture is apathetic, really, to religious belief. I think probably if we go back 10 years ago, a sort of high point of new atheism, it was a lot easier to have discussions about religious belief, often hostile, but it was at least easier to have those, whereas now I find, at least in my own circles, that it’s very difficult to have fruitful discussion about religion, God, Christianity more specifically. And if you do, often it doesn’t last very long because people are very uncomfortable talking about those things, really. I think that’s it, the general summary. So when you were growing up as a child, was it different than it is now? Did you have much exposure to Christianity as a child? Was your family Christian? Did you go to church? Were you exposed to it in school? What’s that like as a child? Yeah. I’d say, in terms of a sort of demographic, I come from a sort of white working class/benefits class, and the think about white working class culture is that religion plays a very, very minute part of life. You tend to find very few churches, or at least very few active churches, and where you find the most active Christian faith is in the middle class. So in my own sort of context growing up, I remember having very, very, very few discussions probably in the first 16 years of my life in regards to religion. I don’t remember ever really having any very long, serious conversations about God a

A Jewish atheist, Nikki wanted nothing to do with Jesus until an unexpected spiritual experience caused her to question all she believed as real and true. Follow The Side B Instagram: @thesidebpodcast Twitter: @thesidebpodcast Facebook: www.facebook.com/thesidebpodcast Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to understand how someone flips the record of their life from atheism to Christianity. Each podcast, we listen to the story of someone who was an atheist and became a Christian. Each journey is unique, filled with unusual twists and turns. The story we’re going to listen to today certainly does not disappoint. It is as fascinating as anything you might imagine seeing, reading, or hearing about. Nikki contacted me after hearing my interview on Justin Brierley’s Unbelievable? Podcast and told me her incredible story. I thought it was too good not to share. As a Jew who didn’t believe in God, who lived and immersed herself in an anti-God, very intellectual culture, Nikki was highly resistant to religious belief, particularly to Jesus, someone whom she adamantly did not believe in, nor anyone she ever wanted to believe in. But she experienced an unexpected profound spiritual encounter with Jesus, that she immediately became open to the possibility that perhaps God existed after all, and that His name was Jesus. As someone who valued reason, Nikki set out on a diligent intellectual search to find out what was actually true, whether or not a reality outside of the natural world actually exists and that the person she met, Jesus, actually had good reason to exist based upon more than just her personal experience. I hope you’ll come and listen to her extraordinary story with me. Well, thanks for joining us at the Side B Podcast, Nikki. It’s so great to have you here today. Thank you. Thank you. Well, as we’re getting started, so the listeners know a little bit about who you are, why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself? So my name is Nikki, and I live in Portland, Oregon. I work as a pastor’s assistant at a local church, and I’ve lived in Portland since 2005, but I’m originally from the South. Originally from the South? Oh, okay. Yeah, I don’t hear a real strong Southern dialect. As someone from Atlanta, I can tell you’ve not lived here for a while. So, why don’t you take us back to the beginning, your childhood, and let us know kind of where you grew up. What was it like there? Did you live in the Bible Belt? Did you live in southern America. Tell us what that world was like. Was there any sense of God in it in your world? So yeah, I grew up in Houston. We moved there when I was four years old. And I knew that we were… I’m Jewish by birth, so we were the only Jewish family in the whole neighborhood. I was often the only Jewish kid at school, but we were unique in that my parents did not believe in God. They were atheists, and that’s how they raised me. But we would still go to synagogue. But my first encounter with Jesus was when I was seven years old. We were on the school bus, and I was about to get off the school bus, and I was going down the stairs, and this little girl came up to me, and she had this angry look on her face. She was actually a friend of mine, and she just yelled in my face, “You killed Jesus!” and she shoved me down the bus stairs. So I laid there stunned. I went home with tears, and I had to ask my parents. “Who’s Jesus? And why did I kill him? I don’t remember killing anyone.” So it was at that point that I heard about Jesus and was told that He was a rabbi and that he’s not the Messiah but most of the people that we live around believe that he’s, like, a savior. “But that’s not for us. Jesus is for the Christians, and we have nothing to do with them. Yeah. So that was your introduction to Jesus? Yeah. So I would imagine… Did that make you feel like an outsider with regard to your culture? Was that girl… unfortunately, was she representative of most of the people around you? Did you live around a lot of Christians? Did you ever experience any kind of Christianity apart from the girl who shoved you down the bus stairs? They were just my neighbors, so I didn’t know any different, but I knew that we were different, that the teachings about Jesus were that… That was for the goy. That was for everyone else. I didn’t understand because I was told there wasn’t a God. And we were going to synagogue, and my dad acted like he was God but he hated God. So there wasn’t any God. We still went to synagogue. It was all very confusing. And then, every year, my brother and I would do a Hanukkah presentation, and my mom would make latkes, the potato pancakes, and bring them to school, and I’d have to do this presentation and educate all the Christians about Hanukkah. So it was kind of weird growing up in the Bible Belt as just, like, the one Jew, but apparently actually Houston has a large Jewish population, but we

Former atheist Stuart moved from a world without God to one where God changed his whole world. Stuart’s new book, Faith that Lasts: A Father and Son on Cultivating Lifelong Belief, is co-authored with his son, Cameron. They reconsider each myth in the light of the Christian faith and their own experiences. When our confidence is rooted in the good news of Jesus, our homes can be places of honest conversation, open-handed exploration, and lasting faith. For more information on events and resources, visit www.cslewisinstitute.org Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. Sometimes we look at others, and we think, “They will never change their views, their lives, their decisions, what they believe.” Sometimes we think to ourselves we will never change our views, our lives, our decisions, our beliefs. That certainly was the case for the majority of the 52 former atheists that I’ve interviewed. Two-thirds of them thought they would never change from being an atheist, much less become a Christian. That begs the million dollar question: What would it take for someone to change their lives so dramatically? More than that, what did it take? What was the catalyst that turned someone so resolute against God to a place of openness towards God? More specifically, towards Jesus Christ. In my research, the catalyst was different for different people. There’s certainly not one size fits all. For some, it was sudden. For others, quite gradual. For some, it was a crisis moment. For others, it was along the process of their life. It may have been prompted by existential dissatisfaction, looking for something more in life. For others, it may have been a quest to disprove religion or even to quest for truth itself. Still others, it was an unlikely spiritual experience. It may have been meeting a Christian for the first time who completely broke down their negative stereotypes of Christianity, someone who was intelligent and kind, and well, normal. Someone who makes Christianity look attractive, even plausible. Each person’s story is different. If you’ve been listening to these stories of change through this podcast, I would encourage you to begin actively searching for and identifying the catalyst, that thing or combination of things that moved someone towards considering another life-changing perspective. Today’s story is of a former atheist, someone, if you looked on from the outside, you would never in a million years think they would ever change, but change he certainly did. Not only did his own life dramatically change, but since his conversion to Christianity, he has spent his life helping many others see things differently as well. I hope you’ll listen closely to his surprising journey to see if you can identify the catalyst that opened him towards another direction. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Stuart. It’s so great to have you! My privilege to be here. I look forward to talking with you. Well, we’re looking forward to hearing your story, but before we get into the story, Stuart, why don’t you tell me a little bit about who you are, where you live, perhaps what you do? Well, I am originally from Glasgow in Scotland and was raised in a non-Christian home. I became a Christian when I was just turning 21 in Glasgow in Scotland and then pretty much got involved in a call to mission right from the beginning of my Christian life, so I moved to Vienna, Austria, where I was working as a part of a team taking Bibles and literature into the Communist world at that time. I operated there for a number of years, and I actually met my wife, who was from America, Mary, on the team, was married in Chattanooga, then went back to Vienna, and both my kids, Cameron, my daughter Catherine, who works here in Atlanta, were born in Austria, where we lived for, in total, 20 years, so brought me to sunny Atlanta from Glasgow through Vienna, Austria, to this beautiful city of Atlanta. It sounds like you’ve journeyed quite a long way in your life since atheism. Why don’t we go back to the beginning and I guess this would be in Scotland. And why don’t you talk with me a bit about what life is like in Scotland in terms of, I guess, worldview or view of God or those kinds of things that were in your world as you were growing up. Yes, well the Scotland I grew up in—of course Scotland has a rich Christian heritage, but that’s a long way off now. Many people would see Scotland today, and particularly as I was growing up, as very much a secular country. My dad was a product of the second world war in a sense. He’d been a young man in the Royal Air Force, and the home that I grew up in—my mother had actually fled Christianity. She had been raised in a very devout Nazarene home in a Holiness-type church, and she had chafed against the re

We’re all searching for something to satisfy us and sometimes that’s hard to find. In today’s episode, Dr. Ted Cabal‘s wandering journey led him the long way home to a Person who had been waiting for him all along. You can follow Ted on Twitter: @CabalTed Recommended resources from this podcast include: St. Augustine: The Confessions of Saint Augustine Ted Cabal, general editor: The Apologetics Study Bible: Understand Why You Believe (2007) Ted Cabal: Controversy of the Ages: Why Christians Should Not Divide Over the Age of the Earth (2018) Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. This is a podcast where we listen to the stories of former atheists who are now Christians, so that we can listen to really both sides of their story. I hope you’ll come along today as we listen to a very interesting one. There’s something inside all of us that longs for freedom, to find our own way, to create our own destiny. Along with that, there’s also something in us that doesn’t like to be told what to do, how to live, where to go, what to think. We want to decide for ourselves, create ourselves, live in our own way, unfettered, without judgment except for our own. There’s a certain freedom in that, in losing authorities in our lives, especially those who dictate some form of morality. There’s something very appealing in casting off institutional or traditional authorities, especially of the cosmic sort. We can find what we’re looking for without God. God is simply an interference to our lives. We would rather pursue life on our own terms, for our own pleasures. After all, we’re rational and intelligent, able to make our own wise choices. But what happens when we take God off the table? A lot of things go with it, including our grounds for human dignity, value, meaning, and purpose. We create sand castles with our lives, only to have the tide wash them away. Nothing lasts. We become like Plato’s Greek hero, Sisyphus, who was condemned to push a boulder up a mountain every day, only to watch it roll back down each night. What happens when our choices don’t lead to the satisfaction we thought we would get? When we find ourselves more alone and lost than ever? The nagging futility and emptiness without God reminds us that perhaps we were made for something more, for someone more than ourselves. That’s Ted’s story, our podcast guest today. And I’m excited to hear him tell it. Ted Cabal is a former atheist, now university professor of philosophy and a strong advocate of the Christian worldview. Welcome to The Side B Podcast, Ted. It’s so great to have you. Thank you so much for having me, Jana. As we’re getting started, Ted, why don’t you tell me a bit about who you are, your life now, where you live, a little bit about your academic work, and your books? Well, thank you again for having me. I pronounce my name Cabal, so I go by Ted Cabal, and I’m married to Cheri, 43 years now. It is truly one of the things that I’ve said through the years, in debates with atheist philosophy professor friends and others that, when I look her in the eyes, she is my greatest evidence that God exists. The kind of incredible person she is and that she would love me the way she has all these years, I just cannot believe there’s this cosmic accident that brought us together, so she, I wish, could be part of this story, but we’ll move on from there. So we have three wonderful sons, adult sons, and eight grandchildren, and truly I never believed that I would live to be 67 and to see my grandchildren. I was diagnosed with a terminal cancer when I was 48 called multiple myeloma, and I’d always been very healthy, and I was given three years to live. It’s like lymphoma or leukemia, in that it’s part of the blood, bone marrow, lymph system lifecycle, and it’s considered incurable. I was told, “Three years, you’re gone,” and after about ten years of really hard core treatments, the disease just kind of went to sleep, and so about 12 years since I’ve had any treatment, and my specialists really don’t think that I need to worry that it’s gonna come back. It’s really remarkable. So I’ve seen a kind of dark night of the soul, and I’ve seen good things, and I don’t feel sorry for myself, but I do believe in the incredible mercy of God, that I’ve lived a life that has seen a lot for just a Texas kid that wanted to be a hippie rock and roll guitar player and ended up teaching philosophy of religion in a Christian seminary. So yeah, here I am at 67. Just moved back to the great state of Texas. I’m teaching apologetics, Christian apologetics, and philosophy of religion at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Semina

There is often a presumption that religion is irrational, far from truth and reason. In today’s episode, Philip Vander Elst describes his “journey of discovery” from atheism to an intellectually-grounded Christian belief. Find out more about Philip and his writings at www.bethinking.org/author/philip-vander-elst Recommended resources from this podcast include: C.S. Lewis’s books: Mere Christianity, Miracles C.S. Lewis essay “On Obstinacy in Belief” N. Geisler and F. Turek: I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist J. Lenox: God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? L. Strobel: The Case for Christ (book and film); The Case for a Creator Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. Each podcast, we listen to both sides of a story, from atheism to Christianity. It’s commonly said that people are religious merely because the people around them are, but what happens when the people you love believe in God and you don’t? You won’t believe in God because you don’t believe it’s true, no matter what they say. At the end of the day, truth and reason are more important than the potential of lost relationships. There were several in my research with former atheists who chose truth over social gain or loss. Today’s story with Philip wrestles with this difficult conundrum. If he remained an atheist, true to his belief in truth and reason, he would lose the one he loved. If he became a Christian, he would compromise his intellectual integrity. Conversion for social or emotional reasons alone was unthinkable. As an intellectual, a thinker, it would be immoral and dishonest. He would be denying his highest value, holding fast to truth. How could this situation be resolved? There is often a presumption that religion is irrational, far from objective truth and reason. For many, the assertion that scientific, philosophical, or historical truth can be found within the Christian worldview is simply nonsensical. Today, through Philip’s story, we’ll explore whether or not rationality and truth can be found, can be grounded in a religious worldview, specifically Christianity, or whether or not religion merely serves a social or emotional purpose. We’ll consider whether or not Christianity is worth believing, especially for the intellectual. Today, we’ll be talking with a true English gentleman and former atheist. Philip Vander Elst is a prolific writer and esteemed lecturer, working in and among forums discussing deep philosophical issues. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Philip. It’s wonderful to have you. Well, it’s lovely to be with you, Jana, and I’m looking forward to our discussion. Terrific! Me too. Before we get to your story, Philip, I’d love to know more about, and for our listeners to know more about, where you live and your academic study and work. Okay. Well, I live with my lovely wife Rachael. I live in a little village in West Oxfordshire in England, about 22 miles northwest of Oxford, and that was my old university, where I studied politics, philosophy, and economics in the early 1970s. I’m a freelance writer and lecturer, and so I spend my time writing stuff and getting it posted on the internet. I wrote a book on C.S. Lewis some years ago, amongst other things. I give occasional lectures on C.S. Lewis and indeed on Tolkien as well. And most of my professional life has been, since leaving Oxford, has been actually in politics and journalism. So really my world has been the world of ideas, and that’s what I’ve always been most concerned about, which is the battle for truth, the battle of ideas, the battle for hearts and minds, and that’s what makes me get up in the morning and gives purpose to my life. So, yeah. So that’s by way of some intellectual background and what I do, in terms of my work. And I write about politics and political philosophy, and I also write in the area of Christian apologetics. So that more or less sums up what I do. Fascinating. And so you live, actually, physically close to Oxford? Is that right? Yes. Yes, that’s right. I’m a life member of the Oxford Union Debating Society, a famous debating society which was set up in 1823, and I’m a former officer of that debating society, and so I have access to their wonderful library. It’s one of the finest private libraries in the world. So yes, I have access to Oxford libraries, which is always a great blessing to a writer and researcher like myself. Right. Yeah. That’s wonderful. I can’t imagine just being constantly inspired by being in that type of intellectual environment, constantly thinking and discussing. I remember visiting there in Oxford and the lovely bookstore, and I didn’t have access to the library, but it was just such a wonderful, wonderful place just to be. I can’t imagine being an academic there in that environment. What a privilege! It was lovely being there. So I know that you were

Former atheist Warren Prehmus thought he had all that life had to offer until a turn of events sparked reconsideration of what might be missing. But, the answers were not coming from a place or position that he wanted to believe. Warren found himself in a dilemma of need and belief. Someone who had no need for God realizes perhaps, well, that he does. Not merely because of his own need, but because it was true and provided the most satisfying answers for his questions and his life. Email Us: [email protected] www.cslewisinstitute.org Episode Transcript JH: Hello and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon and you’re listening to the Side B podcast where we listen to the other side. In my research with 52 former atheists, one-third of them simply felt that they had no need for God. They enjoyed making their own decisions, living like freely without moral constraint. They appreciated atheism’s intellectual standing within science and the university. Their lives were generally full and happy. They didn’t see themselves as people who needed religion as a social or emotional crutch to get them by in life. Rather, they were strong, independent, courageous in answering life’s biggest questions. When life is going well, life without God works well. When life throws a curveball – which inevitably happens to everyone – it can cause you to step back and reconsider your options your perspectives to see if they hold up, to see if they adequately address your questions. When solid answers come, you learn to accept and deal with the issues at hand. When answers seem dissatisfying, it can open you to other ways of thinking about the world, about your life, to become willing to see another point of view. Answers can start to become clear but they may not be coming from a place or position that you want to believe. What happens then? In our story today – that’s the dilemma our former atheist faced. Someone who had no need for God realizes perhaps, well, that he does. Not merely because of his own need, but because it was true and provided the most satisfying answers for his questions and his life. Warren Prehmus was a former atheist but is now a Christian. He is a successful business owner, father, and family man. I’ve had the privilege of getting to know his daughters Courtney and Sarah, both brilliant and beautiful. And, if they are any reflection of him, which I believe they are, it is an indication that he has done something very right in his life. JH: Welcome to The Side B Podcast, Warren! WP: thanks glad to be here. JH: As we’re getting started Warren, Why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself ? WP: Sure. I live in Atlanta and have a small business that’s a wealth management company with four partners including my son. So I have three children. My son is about to get married. The other two are married and each have 3 children and I have six grandchildren. I have all my life been an athlete and I still play basketball in my 60s and tennis and golf and I’m a fisherman so those are the things I spend my time doing when I’m not working at the company or playing with grandkids. JH: Fantastic! I guess the beautiful thing about all of those sports is that you can still be outside and still enjoy them. I know for my husband, his golf game has gotten a lot better during the coronavirus for some reason because it’s an outdoor activities or something he’s been able to do. So I guess you’ve been able to still enjoy your sports. WP: Yes. Golf and tennis from particular have been very popular. Basketball, however, is kind of on the outs. No one’s playing basketball but I tell people that if we start and you’ve got to do social distancing and stay 6 feet away from me. I’m going to score a lot of points. Yeah, that would be a good way to play basketball certainly, for sure. JH: Well, let’s get started with your story. I’m so excited that you’re here today and I want to hear all about it but we want to start really at the beginning. I want to really understand where your atheism was formed, the context in which you grew up. So why don’t we just start there at the beginning and your childhood. Tell me a little bit about kind of the community and culture where you grew up. Was it religious at all? Was it urban? Was it rural? Tell me a little bit about that. WP: Sure. I grew up in upstate New York out in the country about 5 miles outside of a small town of Scotia, NY and my dad was an engineer at GE. So as I was growing up, you know, my dad taught me good there is no God. God is for weak people that need a crutch and we’re strong we don’t we don’t need crutches. I loved my dad and my dad was actually was a very good dad, a very good father and so I bought into that fully. And it kind of gives you a prideful thing knowing that you’re strong while others are weak. For instance

Apatheism is a word to describe someone who doesn’t believe in God and thinks religion is irrelevant to life. In today’s episode Mary Jo Sharp tells her story of moving from apatheism to a strong belief in God that informs all of her life. Learn more about Mary Jo Sharp at www.maryjosharp.com. There’s a wealth of information to explore – debates, a blog, books and much more! Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, a podcast of the C.S. Lewis Institute, where we will be listening to the other side of the story. In my research, I heard the stories of over fifty former atheists to better understand their journey from nonbelief to belief in God. The Side B Podcast is a show where I’ll be talking with former atheists who, against all odds, changed their minds about God and became Christians. Each time, we’ll listen to someone’s story and have a conversation about why they were atheists and what opened them to the possibility of God. We’ll talk about why they became Christians and their thoughts and experiences along the way. In this cultural moment, where the other side, side B, is often dismissed without a hearing, this is the podcast where you are encouraged to listen to the other side, whether it is the unheard side of nonbelief or belief, and then draw your own conclusions. You might just be surprised by what you hear. I know I was. Today, we’ll be talking with someone who inherited her atheism from her surrounding culture. It was the air she breathed. God was essentially a nonissue, not worth considering, off the radar. Religion just simply wasn’t relevant to her life. Her name is Mary Jo Sharp. She is a former atheist who came to Christian faith. She now serves as an assistant professor of apologetics at Houston Baptist University and is the founder of Confident Christianity apologetics ministry. She is the author of several books, including Why I Still Believe: A Former Atheist’s Reckoning with the Bad Reputation Christians Give a Good God, released this past November. She’s also the author of several Bible studies, including a best seller, Why Do You Believe That? A Faith Conversation, from Lifeway. She lives with her husband and family in Portland, Oregon. you can find out more about Mary Jo at maryjosharp.com. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Mary Jo. It’s so great to have you. Thank you so much for having me on. Wonderful! It’s great to have you here and to hear you and your story, as a former atheist come to be a Christian, and we’re all very interested to hear how that happened. So let’s start with side A, your life as an atheist. Why don’t you tell me about your influences growing up? Your family, your culture. What generally formed your identity as an atheist? Yeah. This is always an interesting question for me because I grew up in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, and as you noted, in the Portland area, which… I’m back there again. But this area was sort of a post-Christian culture that I grew up in. It wasn’t a place where I would say was heavily influenced in cultural Christianity. And I’m saying this, as opposed to where I lived for twenty years in the South. It was very different from the southern United States, which was more steeped in a culture of Christianity. So the area that I grew up in, and I’ll give an example of what I mean by this cultural Christianity type thing is that, in the area I grew up in, there weren’t a lot of people who I would encounter who would say, like, “Oh yeah. I’ve gone to church my whole life.” They wouldn’t just openly say, “I’m a Christian,” or, “Oh, yeah. My Daddy was a preacher,” or, “My uncle was a preacher,” which is something that I encountered almost all the time, like noticeably different, in the southern United States. Right. So just a very different atmosphere, post Christian, more similar to a European style, a European culture of postmodernity and relativism and things like that. Did you have any exposure to Christianity growing up at all? Or was it anywhere on the radar? Well, sure. Because I live in a Judeo-Christian-influenced society, so there’s Christmas and Easter and things like that and television shows that show Christian pastors, so those things were present in my line of sight. Those movies and things. But what I was exposed to more so was a lot of nature and science shows, because my dad was a huge Carl Sagan fan. He was a chemical engineer. He just loved the sciences. He loved outer space, and that was something… We watched a lot of shows about space. So what was going on was he had exposed me to a bunch of this materialized worldview that was through these television shows. It was a thread. It was the under-girding philosophy of these sh

Many people think the stories in the bible are mere myth and legend. As a historian, so did Frank. In today’s episode he talks about moving from a skeptical view of Christianity to one which changed the whole of history as well as his own life. Episode Transcript JH: Podcast will listen to the story of a former atheist to change their mind and came to believe in God the culture today it’s hard to find places and spaces where you can listen to two sides of a story but for the guests who come on this show they have not only listened to both sides they have thought and lived as atheists and they have thought and lived as Christians so this puts them in a unique position to give us insight as to what motivated them to become atheist but also what changed their mind we can listen and learn from both sides of their story. Today we’ll be listening to Frank Federico who lives in Sydney Australia is a former atheist who came to Christian faith something he thought he would never do. Welcome to the podcast Frank. It’s great to have you on the show. As we’re getting started, tell me a little bit about yourself. FF: Thanks for having me on. My name is Frank Federico. I’m a high school history teacher in Sydney, Australia. JH: Tell me about the religious or secular culture there in in Australia. FF: It’s really a highly secular society. It’s not common for people to openly talk about their faith if they have one. There are a lot of people in Australia that do have a faith. In the census that we had a couple of years ago, over half the population said that they were Christian of some sort and then there are other faiths as well. We’re quite a multicultural nation. But generally speaking, we’re not at a culture that is open in terms of religious belief. People are tolerant and people are welcome to have different faiths but it’s not one where we overtly talk with one another about what we believe JH: So backing up then as you were a child, what was your sensibility about religion and Christianity or God or any of that? Were you raised in a family that had any religious beliefs at all? FF: I was raised a Catholic. I went to Catholic schools all my schooling. I also regularly went to church until the age of 14 or 15 when I didn’t want to go anymore. So I had an understanding or limited understanding of Catholicism and certainly had experience in that. Both my parents were strong believers and regular churchgoers. JH: I know you went to church. Did you have a belief in God? Did you believe that God was real or true or was it something that you went through the motions? FF: I definitely believed it as a little kid. I remember going to church sometimes on my own and praying. I had some rosary beads that I would pray through. I remember having my confirmation and believing that. I was ten when I had my confirmation. But it was around the age of 14 or 15 where I started to drift away from that and refused to go to church with my parents. I was a bit too old for them to force me to go and if I did go and the back of the church and listen to the radio through an earpiece rather than pay attention what was happening. That may have embarrassed them a bit. In the end ,they gave in and let me stay home while they went. So, it was around that age 14, 15 when I really started to rebel against it and dislike it. 4:36. JH: That rebellion – did it come from a place of doubt like you didn’t believe what they were saying or you didn’t like it? What was it that made you push back against what your parents were trying to show you or teach you? 4:55 FF: It was a long time ago. When back upon it, it was a combination of frustration at school because we had religious education at school. I was reaching an age where I was starting to question what I was hearing. So, my experience of Christianity as a child and a young young teen was that I learned what we were meant to believe and I learned what we had to do but I was never taught why these things were true. And, I remember particularly when I was in year 10 around the age of 14-15 where I had a particular religious education teacher that year. He was very passionate and I found his passion interesting but also a bit grating. And, I wanted to ask him questions about why he held the beliefs that he had. I didn’t find the answers that I got from him particularly satisfactory and that became my experience also when I started asking my parents. 6:12 My parents didn’t have much of an education and they had a simple faith. They couldn’t answer the kinds of questions I was asking. But also it was coinciding with a time in my life where I was becoming more and more influenced by my peers and most of them had no interest in religion. We were interested in aspects of culture, music, TV, film that was very far removed from the kinds of things that Christianity wanted from us. it was a combination of those things.

We hold beliefs for many different reasons. In today’s episode Peter talks highlights the combination of motivations he had for disbelief as well as belief in God. Episode Transcript Hello and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. Each podcast, we listen to the story of a former atheist who changed their mind and came to believe in God. There are lots of reasons why we believe what we do. We don’t hold our beliefs in a vacuum. We’re not purely rational beings. Our beliefs are wrapped up in a story. A story of how we got here and why we believe the way we do. Sometimes we believe things because we think it’s the rational intellectual thing to do. Sometimes we believe things because it’s what our friends and family and culture believe. And other times we’ve decided on what we believe because of what we’ve experienced or perhaps what we feel. Still other times, we believe things just because we want them to be true. Most of the time, it’s a combination of a lot of different things, a lot of different motivations, memories, experiences, and desires, and you have to look in a lot of different directions to tease them all out, and oftentimes, you hear them when you hear someone’s story, when you hear them tell their story. Today, we’ll be talking with Peter Byrom, he’s a former atheist who came to Christian faith a few years ago. Welcome to the podcast, Peter. It’s great to have you on the show. As we’re getting started, why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself? Certainly, yes. And thank you. It’s really great to be on the show with you. So tell you about myself, where to begin with that? Well, I think, given what we’re going to be talking about today, it might be worth starting from university years, really. I graduated from the University of Kent, and that’s in Canterbury in England, United Kingdom, doing drama and theatre, of all things, and so that was things like sound design, performing classical texts, Shakespearean stuff, and multimedia theatre. And then, after that, after a fairly windy journey that I’m sure we’ll get to talking about, then went on to do things like video editing, graphic design, editing, including for a number of Christian ministries, and now I work for SPCK and IVP, who are Christian publishers, doing digital production and workflow and those sort of things, and I live with my wife in our children in the rural southeast of England. So that’s a quick summary of where I’ve come from over the last decade or so, let’s say. So, Peter, in setting the context for your story, I always like to understand about the place where you grew up and the people who surrounded you. Were there any religious references in your world? Well, I was raised in a Christian home, and I have and did have Christian parents, and so, yes, you could say that I started with those influences, and even around teenage years, I thought that I had a religious conversion experience and would’ve called myself a Christian then. I even went to the point of getting confirmed in the Church of England, I think, round about the time I was probably about 17 years old. So started with Christian influences, but they didn’t really last beyond leaving home. That was the key turning point there. It’s one thing to grow up with them, but when you leave the home and start doing your own thing, that’s when the real test begins of whether you really own those beliefs or not. So what happened when you left home? What was it that made you start to doubt your own Christian upbringing, your Christian faith and belief? I think, at the time, there was just… I think it was quite gradual. I think there was a sense of gradually thinking it didn’t make sense or that it didn’t fit my particular experiences or that it wasn’t particularly relevant. It just seemed to gradually be falling away into the background, and I think also the people I was associating with and the kind of experiences I wanted to have at the time had an effect. I mean, let’s be honest, if you’ve been brought up under your parents’ authority and then leave that authority, the idea of having a continuing authority over your life isn’t particularly attractive a lot of the time, and I think that’s how I saw it, which was, “This is my chance to do my own thing.” I think, more specifically, during my gap year and at university, the friends and the people that I mixed with, I think I very much became part of a culture that liked to think of itself as being quite expressive and sophisticated, because remember this is the arts and the drama, acting crowd, you know, and students in general, anyway, right? And it’s easy to get into conversations, and it’s easy to j

In today’s episode author and scholar Dr. Carolyn Weber tells her story of moving from a busy place of survival to a place of contemplation at Oxford University. There she met authentic Christians and was able to investigate Christianity on its own merits for the first time. You can find out more about Carolyn’s work and writing by visiting her website at www.carolynweber.com. If you’d like to read more about her story, Carolyn’s award-winning memoir describing her journeying from atheism to Christianity is Surprised by Oxford (2011) https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Surprised+by+Oxford&ref=nb_sb_noss. And, her newly released book Sex and the City of God (2020) explores what life looks like when we choose to love God first. https://www.amazon.com/Sex-City-God-Memoir-Longing/dp/0830845852/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Sex+and+the+City+of+God&qid=1607450263&sr=8-1 Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. We talk with people who have believed and embraced atheism as the best explanation for reality but then changed their minds and came to believe in Christianity. From childhood, our beliefs about God, whether or not he is real and what God might be like or not like, are often shaped by our family experience. It works both ways. Some families teach their children to believe in God. Some teach their children not to believe. And some just don’t talk about it at all. For others, their childhood experience of their family or perhaps with their father may shape the way they may or may not believe in God. Whatever the case may be, there are several different theories about if and whether a child’s relationship with their parents affects whether or not they’re drawn towards or away from God. In my research of over fifty former atheists, about one in every five rejected a God imaged as a heavenly father because of a negative or even a positive experience with their own earthly fathers. That wasn’t the only reason for their disbelief, but it was generally part of their narrative. Again, that was true for some but certainly not for all. Here, I believe it’s important to recognize that, although theories are out there regarding the nature of atheism and the reason for disbelief, it’s important not to broad brush an assumption about anyone before you actually listen to their story, and that’s what we’re going to do in our time together today. I’m so pleased to have on the podcast today Dr. Carolyn Weber. She’s a bestselling, award-winning author, speaker, Oxford University scholar, and literature professor. She’s also a former atheist who came to belief in God. Her book, Surprised by Oxford, talks about her journey from atheism to Christianity. It has won several literary distinctions, including the Grace Irwin Award, the largest award for Christian writing in Canada, and I must say, on a personal note, that Surprised by Oxford is truly an excellent piece of writing, beautifully crafted, a compelling story that’s just hard to put down, and I couldn’t recommend it more highly. She also has another book, her fourth, just being released called Sex and the City of God, and we will hear more about that today on the podcast as well. Welcome to the podcast, Carolyn. It’s great to have you on the show. Thank you so much, Jana, for having me here and for the very gracious introduction. As we’re getting started, Carolyn, why don’t you tell me a little bit about your new book that’s just being released. In a way, the title’s really quite serious, so it pokes fun at our culture, and many of us have heard of Sex and the City in terms of that notion of how we see sex in the media, but I wanted to contrast that with Augustine’s idea of the two cities, the City of God and the City of Man, and how that really is the ultimate line in the sand of our citizenship. Which city do we belong to? Do we choose to belong to the City of Man and the temporal or do we choose to belong to the City of God and the eternal, and those cities are called to live in peace, as Augustine identifies in his famous work City of God, but they also have very different ends, and that kind of teleological difference makes all the difference, really, in the world. And so I wanted to set those two side by side and explore that concept in terms of how I’m trying to live that out and use personal story to look at relationships but also looking at how, when we choose to be citizens of the City of God and we’re extended grace and we receive that grace, we’re also married to Christ first, regardless of our relationship status. So it doesn’t matter if we’re single or married or whatnot according to the world, we’re married first to Christ and how are we ordering our love, as Augus

Many people reject God because of a heartbreaking event in their lives. In today’s episode Brandon talks about not only what pushed him away from God, but also what drew him towards belief in God. You can follow Brandon on his Facebook page called Crooked Sticks at https://www.facebook.com/watch/Crooked-Sticks-110454164069538 If you’re looking for the Cold Case Christianity book investigating evidence on Christianity by cold case detective J Warner Wallace, you can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Cold-Case-Christianity-Homicide-Detective-Investigates/dp/1434704696/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1KK9XLRDQFBVD&dchild=1&keywords=cold+case+christianity+by+j.+warner+wallace&qid=1598019213&sprefix=Cold+Case+Christianity%2Caps%2C224&sr=8-2 Episode Transcript Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining me today. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. Each podcast, we listen to the story of a former atheist who changed their mind and came to believe in God. We explore both sides of their life, their life and views as atheists, what made them become open to another perspective, why they decided to become Christians, and how their lives have changed. There are seemingly many reasons to reject God. One of them is disappointment with God. God doesn’t really seem to be there to answer prayers. He seems to be missing in action, and He doesn’t see or hear us when we ask for Him to intervene, to do something. In my doctoral research, I asked more than 50 atheists why they didn’t believe that God existed. On the survey, they could select all kinds of answers, including a lack of all kinds of objective evidence, but one of the most surprising findings was that the number one answer to this question was a lack of subjective evidence for God. That is, they doubted His existence because He didn’t show up in some personal way in their lives. If there was expectation, it was followed by disappointment. If God exists, He’s not good, or perhaps God just isn’t there. But no matter the reason for disbelief, it always begged the question for me what made them change their mind about God and become a Christian? What made them look to the other side, to Side B, another perspective? There must have been something that outweighed their prior doubt, disappointment, and belief. Today, we’ll be talking with Brandon McConnell. That’s his story. He was a former atheist who came to Christian faith against all odds. Welcome to the podcast, Brandon. It’s so great to have you on the show! Hey, thank you so much for having me. I’m happy to be here. As we’re getting started, Brandon, why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself? Yeah, my name is Brandon McConnell. I’m 39 years old. I actually turn 40 in October. I live right outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. I’m married. I have four kids and a golden doodle. A golden doodle. I love dogs! I love dogs. I have two goldens myself. They keep you busy, sometimes even more than the children, I must say. Yeah. I’m actually not a dog person, but my wife and kids love dogs, and we needed something hypoallergenic, and I actually him better than any dog I’ve ever had. Well, it’s hard not to like dogs, especially anything with a golden mix. Yeah. Yeah. So, Brandon, let’s start your story. You are a former atheist, so that started somewhere. So why don’t you give me a little bit of framework for where you grew up. What was the culture in which you grew up? Was it religious? Was it not religious? Was it nominally religious? Why don’t you tell me about the community and the culture in which you were raised? I grew up in a very small town in western Pennsylvania, and it was almost entirely Catholic, Roman Catholic, and I was kind of like an outsider because I wasn’t Italian, I wasn’t Catholic, and I wasn’t religious, Christian, whatever at all. And everybody just did the Catholicism thing. What do you mean by that? Did the Catholicism thing? There was a sense in a community that it was just part of the furniture there? The rituals and the rhymes of Catholic faith were around? Yeah. Like when I was in late elementary school and junior high and high school, they had these classes that they went to after school to learn more about Catholicism and the Catholic Church, like CDC, I think, was one of the acronyms I always heard, and it just seemed like everybody was part of something that I had no idea what was going on. And I grew up out in the country outside this town. Not a lot of people around. My parents were super duper poor, and I had a very isolated upbringing. It was just me and my brother, for the most part, and me and my brother weren’t interested in the same stuff. So in your family, Brandon, did they have any kind of religious reference at all? Or even if they didn’t h

Raised to think critically, Jordan Monge began to question her own atheism at Harvard University when she was intellectually challenged to investigate the grounding of her worldview. Resources recommended from this episode: C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Liar, Lunatic, Lord argument) (https://www.amazon.com/Christianity-Lewis-Signature-Classic-2016-04-07/dp/B0161T0VVQ/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=C.S.+Lewis%2C+Mere+Christianity&qid=1605194057&sr=8-4)   Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. Each podcast, we listen to someone who’s been an atheist and has also been a Christian. Through listening to their story, we listen to both perspectives from someone who has thought and lived on the other side. There’s something inside of us that we all seem to know, that is undeniable, and more than that, unavoidable. There’s that something that reminds us that our thoughts and our actions are sometimes good and sometimes not so good. If we take God off the table to find our moral freedom to determine what is good for ourselves, that comes with a cost. With atheism, there is no real good or bad, no real right or wrong. Those are merely feelings we socially construct to survive in life. The moral choice, then, becomes an oxymoron. There is no real choice. There is no real chooser. According to Richard Dawkins, we are just DNA dancing to its music. Nothing done or said is inherently bad, so there is no moral culpability. If we can’t even control our own thoughts or actions and they’re determined for us, there is no moral responsibility, but it begs the question, why are we constantly judging ourselves and others if good and bad are not real moral issues, but rather it just is the way that it is? Why do we complain about something we think is bad in the world, in others, and in ourselves, if things just are the way they are? If we accept a godless reality, we also deny the reality of our own dignity, our free choices, the things that make us human. We give up any real standards of good or evil. That was the dilemma confronting today’s podcast guest. A very intelligent, thoughtful atheist, Jordan Monge also held to a strong moral understanding of herself and the world. The problem was she didn’t have a way to make sense of her own moral judgments within her own atheistic worldview. How did she resolve this problem? I hope you’ll come along with me to see. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Jordan. It’s great to have you today. Thanks for hosting me. I’m excited to be chatting with you. As we’re getting started, so the listener can have a sense of who you are, Jordan, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and maybe where you live. A little bit about your family. Yeah. So I’m originally from Irvine, California, and I graduated and went to Harvard University, where I studied philosophy, and after that, I worked for a couple of years, and then I pursued my Master’s in Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, which I completed a couple of years ago, and I finished it right before I became a mom, so I’m married now, and I have a 2-year-old daughter and I have a little 3-week-old here with me right now, so if you hear any noises in the background, you might hear him chime in just a little bit, and my husband and I, now we live in northern California, so that’s where we’re currently based, and I split my time between taking care of our two small children, and I do some tutoring on the side as well. Wonderful, wonderful. Well thank you that you’re here with us and that your new little baby is, too. Wow. Just appreciate you taking time out as a new mom. I know that’s not easy. It’s a nice mental break. Ah, yes, yes. Yes. As a mom, although I’m long past that season, I’m now an empty nester. I’m in a very different season, but I appreciate those days a long time ago and welcome those little noises if they do occur. So let’s get started with your story. you said you’re from Irvine, California. Why don’t you take us back to when you were a little girl and the context in which you grew up, perhaps your family and your community. Where did you grow up and was there any sense of God or religion or faith in your world? So my grandparents were Christian and Catholic, but my parents themselves didn’t hold any faith, so my mom just didn’t believe in God or in the Bible, but she’s not quite as adamant about it. My dad is actually a philosophy professor. He teaches at a couple of the community colleges in Orange County, California, and he has a very strong sense of what he believes and why, and his joke is that his parents sent him to 14 years of Catholic school and it was so good that he realized it was all false. That the

Former atheist Mike Arnold suffered an unspeakable childhood tragedy which suddenly catapulted him into atheism. After twenty years, he was given cause to reconsider not only God’s existence, but God’s goodness as well. Episode Transcript Hello, and thanks for being with me today. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. What happens to your view of God when bad, especially traumatic things happen in your life? You may have had expectations of a good, loving, and powerful God who’s supposed to protect you at every turn. The bad things aren’t supposed to happen. But they do. You begin to wonder, “Where was God? Who is this God that I thought existed? Maybe He doesn’t exist after all. How could He, in light of such horrible circumstances?” Belief in a good God often crumbles under the weight of pain. If that’s true of an adult, it’s especially true of a child. When a child suffers sudden, unspeakable loss, it’s not surprising when they also suddenly lose whatever faith they must have had in a God who seemed to go missing. Pushing God away is the only viable option left on the table. The only problem is life without God doesn’t seem to have any existentially satisfying answers, either. That’s the tension faced by the former atheist in our story today. Someone who hated God for nearly 20 years, a God, in his view, who didn’t exist, but comes to experience God in an unexpected way. Mike Arnold was a former atheist but is now a Christian and serves his community as a Christian pastor. Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Mike. It’s so great to have you! It’s great to be on as well and to join you on this cast. Thank you, thank you. As we’re getting started, why don’t we start by you telling me a little bit about yourself, where you’re from, and perhaps where you live now, what you do now? Yeah, well, my name is Michael Arnold. Everybody calls me Mike, and I prefer it that way. I’m a bit laid back, but if you’re thinking, “This man sounds really strange,” it’s because I’m from Wales. I’m a Welshman, but I’m actually living in a small town in the East Midlands of England called Long Eaton, where I’m a Baptist minister. And you’ve been in England for how long? I moved here 12 years ago, into a different pastorate. I recently left there and moved here, but yeah, 12 years ago, I moved from Wales into England, where I can honestly say that I’m a missionary. Yes, yes. That’s great. All right. So at least we know where you are now. And let’s now kind of start back at the beginning of your story. I presume, if you’re from Wales, you had a childhood in Wales? And your ideas of God and faith and religion developed there. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about that your childhood, your understanding of if there was a God, those kinds of things. Well, I grew up… My parents, like so many parents, didn’t actually attend church and had no faith at all. They wanted, I think, a quiet afternoon on a Sunday, and so they used to send me and my brothers and sister to Sunday school at the local Pentecostal church, and that’s where I went for about 18 months, up until the age of seven. The one morning I stopped going because the one morning I was woke up by my brother, Tony. He was 11 years old. I was 7 at the time. But he woke me up to say that the house was on fire, and yeah, sure enough, it was. We went to get Mom because she was sleeping in her bedroom. We went to wake her up, and then she raised the alarm by smashing out the bedroom windows, and I jumped out of the bedroom window, and my brother Tony, at the time, realized that my youngest brother, David, who was 3 years old, was still somewhere upstairs in bed, so he went looking for him. I jumped out of the bedroom window, and I have 47 stitches across my backside because I fell onto a piece of glass on the pavement, and I was taken into my neighbor’s house. When they were ready for me to go to the ambulance, as I was going to the ambulance, my brother Tony walked out of the front door of the house, and he was a ball of fire. He suffered third-degree burns over 90% of his body. Oh, my. Oh. Well, it is what it is, isn’t it? You know. He survived for five days in absolute agony. I was put in the ambulance at his feet, and for the next ten minutes, while they raced us off to the hospital, that’s all I could hear was him screaming in agony. And that was the last I saw of him. They found my younger brother, David, who was 3 years old, as I said. They found him curled up dead in my mother’s bedroom, near my mother’s bed. He never got out of the house alive. The following Sunday, Mom sent me to church, where the minister said, “Come and give praise to God,” and I thought,