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

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

In today's episode, we sit down with Wikipedia co-founder, philosopher, and writer Larry Sanger to discuss his journey and testimony as he went from being an atheist to believing in God through reading the Bible. He tells us about his upbringing in the Lutheran Church and how his philosophical questioning led him to become an atheist. Larry also discusses how his own philosophical writings later in life led him to start questioning his beliefs and how he watched atheism become almost dogmatic in nature. We talk about how he read the Bible for the first time and how that led him to understand God and salvation through Jesus Christ. Larry's testimony shows us how even the hardest philosophical questions can lead someone to Christ. Buy Allie's new book, "Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion": https://a.co/d/4COtBxy --- Timecodes: (00:53) Larry Sanger introduction and background (17:26) Watching the atheistic movement change (22:35) Philosophical writings (28:15) Moral questions about atheism (39:39) Reading the Bible for the first time (48:14) Understanding salvation through Jesus (53:06) Skepticism and Christianity ---   Today's Sponsors: Seven Weeks - Experience the best coffee while supporting the pro-life movement with Seven Weeks Coffee; use code ALLIE at https://www.sevenweekscoffee.com to save up to 25% and help save lives. Good Ranchers — Go to GoodRanchers.com and use code ALLIE at checkout to claim $25 off, free express shipping, and your choice of FREE ground beef, chicken, or salmon in every order for an entire year. A’del — Try A'del's hand-crafted, artisan, small-batch cosmetics and use promo code ALLIE 25% off your first time purchase at AdelNaturalCosmetics.com Range Leather — highest quality leather, age-old techniques and all backed up with a “forever guarantee." Go to rangeleather.com and use coupon code "ALLIE" to receive 15% off your first order. --- Related Episodes: Ep 901 | Does the Age of the Earth Matter? | Guest: Dr. Sean McDowell (Part Two) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-901-does-the-age-of-the-earth-matter-guest/id1359249098?i=1000633508243 Ep 979 | Atheist Richard Dawkins Begs Christianity to Come Back https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-979-atheist-richard-dawkins-begs-christianity-to/id1359249098?i=1000651348581 Ep 679 | Busting Atheism’s Biggest Myths | Guest: Dr. Neil Shenvi https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-679-busting-atheisms-biggest-myths-guest-dr-neil-shenvi/id1359249098?i=1000579610722 ---   Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

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That's fellowship homelones.com slash alley, term supply, see site for details, fellowship home loans, mortgage lending by the book, nationwide mortgage bankers, DBA Fellowship Home Loans, equal housing lender, NMLS, number 819-39-382. Larry Sanger is the co-founder of Wikipedia. He is also a philosopher, a lifelong skeptic, and a long-time agnostic. Recently, he announced that he has converted to Christianity. I wanted to hear his testimony. What led to him finally accepting that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life? He has a really, really interesting story, and it's amazing to look at how God used so many moments throughout his life to lead him to the cross. You're going to be really encouraged by this conversation.

It's brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to Good Ranchers.com. Use Code Alley at checkout. That's good ranchers.com. Code Allie. Larry, thanks so much for taking the time to join me. If you could tell everyone who you are and what you do. Well, right now I am president to the Knowledge Standards Foundation. And we collect all of the free world free encyclopedias in the world. We do a number of other things. My claim to fame is I was co-founder of Wikipedia. Now I'm ex-founder.

I like to call myself because, you know, how it is. And this is another thing that the Knowledge Standards Foundation is doing. This is 70,000 books on a 128-gibite hard drive. Basically, the classics of Western civilization backed up in the palm of your hand. And that's just something that I've been I've been trying to get out there. Yeah. There needs to be many, many, many copies of all the public domain books, not just one or two on archive.org. This is one of my hobby horses. Yeah. Amazing. Okay. Before we even get into your Christian testimony, I want to go all the way back. I want to hear your life story and how you got to the

point of helping found Wikipedia and how your interest was sparked in all of this. So can you take me all the way back to your childhood and tell me what your upbringing was like? Sure. Well, I mean, I was born and raised in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. That's my earliest church memories come from that. My dad was an elder. But, I asked a lot of questions sort of constitutionally. That's just how I am. And I, for example, I would ask, you know, well, if God has created everything, then what caused God? And that kind of thing. You know, there are sort of basic questions that thoughtful kids will ask. And I was confirmed at age 12. but around age 16, I had a class in philosophy in high school.

They had such a thing, and it was very interesting to me. And I started thinking the following summer about the basic questions of philosophy, and I decided, because I knew all these people who had messed up their lives. In fact, it seemed to me that practically everybody I knew had messed up their life in one way or another. Like, my parents were divorced. My, you know, like my, my siblings' friends were like, some of them were seriously strung out on drugs and all kinds of things like that. And I had talked to these people. I knew certain things that they thought, and I thought they'd made mistakes, you know, they were wrong about things.

So I developed the very deep conviction, totally independent of religion, that it was very important to have the truth. And so, and I ever since then, I have thought of myself as a philosopher. Even before I went to college, I knew I wanted to be a philosophy professor. Although I changed my mind about that. So I became a non-believer in my teen years, an agnostic. I wasn't an atheist. I was a skeptic. But there's a difference, I think.

I won't go into that. But the point is that I basically stopped caring very much about the possibility that God might exist. And then what happened? Well, while I was finishing my dissertation, Jimmy Wales gave me the job of starting an encyclopedia for bombist.com, which was his website. And that became Newpedia, which became Wikipedia. So I named Wikipedia. I set many of the original policies, or at least articulated them, and sort of led the community and got it started on a lot of its habits.

Not all of its bad habits, hopefully, but a lot of its good habits anyway in the first 14 months of that, first couple of years, if you include Newpedia. and so I'll just pause there. Yeah, sure. Sure. Yeah, that's all super fascinating, that you were interested in philosophy. You describe yourself as kind of like a naturally inquisitive kid, and you brought your philosophical questions to a pastor when you were a teenager, correct? Right.

And how did that go? I just called him up on the phone. one time, I think probably maybe my mom or dad told me that I should do that. And I don't think it was the Lutheran pastor that, I think it was another one from a different church. So he didn't know me. And I might have sounded like a disrespectful, snobnosed kid. I'm not really sure to be quite honest.

But I had sincere questions for sure, and he could have engaged me in conversation about them. And it's clear to me that he didn't want to talk. The conversation was over within, I don't know, five or ten minutes. And what kind of questions were you asking him? Do you remember? they were typical skeptical objections i can't remember exactly which ones but you know like the very one that i that i mentioned before right so if an explanation is needed for the universe why isn't an explanation needed for god i know the answer to that one now yeah um but she but she didn't then

and the people that you went to and authority weren't really giving you an answer. And how did that make you feel? Because you described in your article, that's your conversion. Yes, you were brushed off by multiple people, right? Was it by your parents first that kind of made you believe that believing in God was irrational and that you can't ask questions? I wouldn't say they brushed me off. I even had long conversations with my brother-in-law who, one of the other people in my family other than my dad who'd actually gone to college.

And he helped a lot. This is my sister's husband and he passed away, I guess, eight years ago. He tried, so you can't blame him. And I did have some conversations with him. but I had increasingly sort of deep, thoughtful discussions or questions, rather, that could not be answered except by somebody with a requisite amount of philosophical or apologetic training. I mean, even later, 10 years after that, I could have answered my own questions from a Christian point of view. So it was just the lack of knowledge that was the problem, I think.

You went to read college. Their unofficial motto is communism, atheism, free love. So you were surrounded by people, obviously, who also did not believe in God. You went on to Ohio State for graduate school, also surrounded by unbelievers. But you were approached by a Christian student when you were in grad school that kind of challenged your agnostic beliefs, right? Yeah, he actually did, now that you mention it. That's not in my essay, but I remember having some long discussions. And I did like sort of, I was willing to talk about the possibility of all sorts of things. And I remember talking about cosmology with him, you know, and what what the universe must be like if, you know, it has a creator that exists outside of time, for example. because it very quickly gets very deep when you start asking questions like that. And I remember talking about him about questions like that. But he wasn't really trying to evangelize me very hard,

but he made an impression simply due to the kind of guy that he was. He was very nice. It's very kind. And so, yeah, and then, well, he caught me well I won't say what it was but he caught me in a sin and and I didn't see much of him after that which was disappointing

but you know I didn't feel guilty that's the thing it didn't seem like a sin to me at the time so Yeah, he challenged you with a fine-tuning argument, and that's the laws of the universe are so precise that any small change would prevent it from supporting life. And so the argument that there must be an intentional creator, and that really left an impression on you. Yes. So in this little story, basically, what happened was a graduate student.

who was, sorry, no, it wasn't a graduate student. He was a student in my class, actually. He was just a very smart undergraduate. He came into the student assistant room and basically wanted to engage me in discussion about arguments for the existence of God because that would be what we were studying at that time. And it was very interesting the way that he expressed the fine-tuning argument.

So the universe has got a certain constants, scientific constants, such that if you change them in minute ways, then weird things happen or fail to happen, like, you know, atoms. don't form or, you know, yes, the universe is left in a soup of inner material or whatever. And so everything is fine-tuned for the existence of life. And it doesn't that suggest a designer. And I didn't have an answer to him except to say, well, you know, it might have some other sort of explanation, which just seems kind of lame. It still seems lame to me now. And I was, although I was stymied a little, I didn't feel like terribly embarrassed, but it left me emotional, though.

And I don't think it was because I was unable to answer. I mean, I'm unable to answer all sorts of problems in philosophy, right? So it's not that. I think it had to do with my awareness that I was, that I had just closed the door on something that might be more valuable than I was then willing to admit. Quick pause to tell you about our first sponsor for the day, and that is seven weeks coffee. I love seven weeks coffee. The quality of their coffee is incredible. It is mold-free, pesticide-free, truly clean, like better than organic. It also tastes really good. The best part about

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our moral obligations all stem from our self-interest. So if we ought to do something, if it is right for us to do something, you can explain that in terms of what is good for you in your enlightened, as it's called, your enlightened self-interest. All right. And I thought, that that was probably right. I remember defending that throughout graduate school. And then, you know, I got married in 2001 after I got my PhD and had my first child at 2006. And I just occasionally thought, isn't it interesting that I would die for these people? I mean, of course I would die for these people, but father wouldn't.

It's not a good father if he wouldn't. I certainly felt like I would. But then I thought, if I'm willing to die for them, then doesn't that mean that I would be doing something not in my own self-interest? Of course. Right. Yeah. It's obvious to me now. Yeah.

But at the time, because I myself had sort of accepted an error, the same sort of thing that I was wanting to avoid earlier. It was hard for me to come to that realization. You also talk about watching the atheistic movement, if you want to call it a movement, become increasingly bombastic and radicalized. I would say these are kind of like my words becoming their own kind of dogmatic religion. And you contrasted that to how you saw. the behavior of Christians, even Christians on social media? That's right.

Well, I mean, I grew up talking to atheists. I went to high school and college and graduate school, talking to people who didn't believe in the existence of God. And they used arguments. They actually tried to engage in a reasonably... respectful conversation. And then the new atheists came along and they started acting, as you say, quite dogmatic in their declarations. And by that time, I actually knew.

I taught the arguments for the existence of God. I knew at least what weight they carried from practically anybody's point of view. I mean, most philosophers don't think that they, that they, that they, entail that God exists. They don't think they're that strong. Some do. But they're willing to concede that there's quite a bit to argue about there. But people like Dawkins and Sam Harris were just unable to articulate the skeptical point of view in any sophisticated way at all. And yet, they were extremely dogmatic and insulting, off-putting. And I compare that to the behavior of Christians.

Yeah. And now, this has nothing to do with the merits of the arguments. But it does make one reflect on the worldview that you're buying into if you were skeptic yourself. Right? Right. At the very least, if you're going to be a non-believer, don't be like them. Okay?

I mean. Yeah. I'm curious. Had Dawkins had any impact on your thinking up to that point? I mean, he had had, you know, he has influence on a lot of non-believers world view. Not at all. Not at all. I didn't even, I never was acquainted with anything that he said or did.

If anybody had an influence in that direction, it would have been Ein Rand, you know, and things that she wrote in the 1960s and 70s, an essay by Mark Twain. What was that essay? What did it say? I can't even remember. The last time I saw it was when I was a teenager. But he wrote an essay. He was an atheist, or at least an agnostic. I can't remember.

But Nietzsche and a few others. And of course, the biggest influences were like personal influences, people that I knew, my professors, you know, who could actually do a better job than any of those people at articulating why they are not Christians. Right. Even better than another one that I remember reading Bertrand Grasso. It's like Bertrand Dressel. He was a lightweight when he was writing about. this stuff. They're much, much better atheists. And even before you were a Christian, long before you were a Christian, you did expose your two boys to the Bible simply because you knew that it was very influential, right? That's also, I would say, pretty unique for an agnostic. Is it? I'm not sure about that, but maybe. I don't know. Maybe it's because when I think of

agnostics and atheists most that I've had an interaction with. And maybe this is not, maybe this is not a fair assessment. They seem pretty antagonistic towards scripture. You could be right. You could be right. It's, I do think that a lot of, like, people who are into classical homeschooling might want to assign readings from the Bible, even if they're non-believers. So it's kind of like that, I guess. And, you know, I had a Christian upbringing myself. And I, I, I said, no, they really would be totally ignorant of some culturally important things if they hadn't read at least like a couple of gospels and, you know, Genesis and the first, you know, first 25 chapters of Exodus and maybe a few other things, Psalms.

So we went over stuff like that. And you continue to write about philosophy. And you write that your own philosophical writings kind of left you unsettled. Like your own philosophical writing started challenging your beliefs. Can you explain that? Yeah, I wrote a series of essays that sort of dismantled some of the reasons that I had for disbelief. So to explain this, I have to explain When I was a graduate student,

I formulated what I called a no-concept view. That's not just me. I think other people call it that too. But the no-concept view is similar to the positivist view, which says, basically, we have no concept of God at all. There isn't any content to the concept. My take on it was what God is essentially is the creator of the universe.

universe and a spirit, and he created the universe essentially with a thought. But we have no experience of thoughts bringing things into existence directly. It's always through the medium of our bodies or whatever, at least our brains. And so we have no conception of that. Okay, so then I think it was 2017 or something. I wrote an essay. say, sort of riffing off of what had been in the air at the time. You know, imagine that there were sufficiently advanced AI that the singularity happened. Things just started exploding. Technology became wildly powerful beyond what we know now.

I mean, like, that our technology today looks like magic would look like magic to people of a thousand years ago. But imagine that there were supercharged development of technology over a period of millions of years, a billion years, right, from a continuous development. Well, isn't it possible that we would find the levers, as it were, that would bring. a moon into being, you know, once all the space equipment were made, et cetera, and eventually maybe, you know, galaxies and universes. And isn't it possible that their brain interfaces now, isn't it possible that such apparatus might be controlled with a thought? So, well, then I guess it would be, it's conceivable to bring, of course, there's a response to this argument. I'm not going to get into it.

But the point is that the bare idea of a thought bringing creation into existence, I thought, I thought of a way. I thought of a way to talk about that coherently. Yeah. And that was enough to, you know, I didn't conclude that the universe is therefore simulation, which is Elon Musk's conclusion, which he drew after that, actually. No, I think that is merely evidence that it's, possible that a creator exists. All right, let me tell you again about Good Ranchers.

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And there are always questions that I have for my atheist friends that I haven't ever gotten a good answer on. That's not to say that no atheist has an answer for it. But those that I've talked to of, you know, even the one that you articulated, why sacrifice yourself for a child? He can give you nothing in return. Why sacrifice yourself for a loved one? Why do things that are not in your direct self-interest just because they are the right thing to do? Most atheists I know would say that, be.

being kind or being charitable with expecting nothing in return is a good thing, that that is a sign of virtue, but they can't tell me why or why beauty exists, why there are these like intangible realities that have nothing to do with the perpetuation of the species or survival of the fittest. And so tell me how you articulated that. Before you were a Christian, what conclusion did you come to about why it's important to be good or be moral? Yeah. Well, I'll tell you. The line that you just outlines there is not the one that I took in this essay that I wrote. I think it's called why be moral on Larry Sanger.org. You want to look at it. It's It's a pretty long essay.

But it was important to my conversion in a certain way. I actually disagree with the notion that in order to make sense of our moral obligations, we have to depend on an existent God. I think that we naturally have certain desires. They are built-in desires all organisms do. And what we ought to do, what is meant by normative language, evaluative and prescriptive language, in other words, saying what is good or what we ought to do, is ultimately explainable in terms of life. So basically, without going into the details, we ought to do.

And in fact, if we're well-functioning, we want to do things that are good for our lives and for the lives of things, you know, people and animals and living things around us. I thought that this was a natural, a naturalistic theory of ethics, and I explained it in detail. But philosophers who hear this will recognize that it's a version of natural law ethics. And when I started thinking again about the arguments for the existence of God, The way it worked in was this. If God is, or if there is a creator who designed the universe and designed our human nature, and if basically we are made happy by following certain moral rules or making more likely to be happy when we do, let's put it that way,

that actually is evidence of the goodness of God. So I don't say that God is necessary in order to explain morality. I say that the fact that human nature pushes us in the direction of goodness and that the designer seems to require that of us if there is a designer. So given that assumption, right, that would imply that the designer is good. So the conclusion of the argument from morality in my hands is not that God exists. It's that if there is a God, then God is purely good. Okay, I got it.

And so coming to that conclusion and writing that essay, you write in your most recent essay that you started to move from this kind of, you know, coolness towards Christianity to a warmness towards Christianity as you realized, okay, connecting these ideas about morality to Christianity and what the Bible says actually makes sense. Can you talk about how the Jeffrey Epstein scandal plays into your testimony? very interestingly. Right. So a friend of mine was opening my eyes to the existence of various, called them elite pedophile rings. Epstein was not the only one. You can look up the nexium case or Sir Jimmy Saville or Mark Benewitt,

And I think is his name in Belgium, is it? Anyway, I might have the names wrong there. But the point is, and then there's like peddow wood, which is what we call the prevalence of pedophilia in Hollywood. It's very weird that a lot of the people who are involved, or at least accused of being involved in such activities, have occult beliefs. and my friend said it worked with such people, knew them personally, and he confirmed that. He said, that's why they use all of these symbols, you know, like the old one-eye, which people were obsessing about five years ago, remember, and people still notice that, but they used to do that all the time.

I think they avoid it, no. But generally speaking, a lot of movie posters would show up with this one. That's an occult simple. So that's what he said. I don't know if I totally believe it, but it was interesting. It got me thinking. And at the very least, I said, due to this, you know, the fact that these people are able to get away with horrific crimes. Just look at how Epstein has been dealt with.

It cannot be denied that justice has not been done. There's a lot of guilty people walking around first. right now. Okay. How is that possible in our society? I said, well, our society must be governed, like judges, for example, must be beholden somehow or other. I don't know how, exactly, have ideas, of course, by powerful people, right?

And are such powerful people occultists? And this is what my friend was saying. So he was pushing these books about the people. the occult on me. Not the actual, you know, Alistra Crowley or whatever on me, but he was, you know, things that were written about the occult. And I, even that kind of weirded me out because I said, look, if I actually thought there was a reason to investigate this stuff, because they, I don't know, it's like an important part of a culture because our culture is like ruled by people who believe this. Then doesn't that mean that if they're going to go to all these risks and these moral horrors as part of their beliefs,

that's a, you know, putting a lot on the line for something that you actually think is a lie. So if it were true, though, then that would at least mean that the spirit world is true, like demons exist, whatever, that they could appeal to, ascended masters and whatever. Well, then doesn't that mean that it's possible that God exists? That's one thought that I had, but another is I didn't want to read those books that my friend was pushing at me. I looked at a few of them a little bit and looked at a few videos, and it's like, I just kept getting creeped out, essentially. It's a little more to it than that. But, yeah, I didn't want to get into it. I didn't want to open any portals, you know, so to speak.

But one thing I learned is that, you know, like if you look at Masonic symbolry, symbology, it's based on a lot of, of, Old Testament, like temple symbology. And the notion is what occultists like to do is to invert biblical symbols. So, in other words, pervert them, twist them. And so that led me to think, maybe I should read the Bible. If I want to understand them, at least it would be safe to read that. actually try to understand it. And then maybe I would be, I don't know, in the clear to read some of the occult stuff if I wanted to. Never one or two after that, though.

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And that's what everyone wants in their skin. So go to adele natural cosmetics.com. Use code Ali for 25% off your first purchase. Adele Natural Cosmetics.com code Ali. So you started reading the Bible, really digging into the Bible, December of 2019, you said that you used a 90-day study plan on the U-V version app, and you really liked the ESV study Bible. We have that in common. I started reading the ESV study Bible when someone gave it to me as a gift when I was in college.

And I've tried several other study Bibles since then, and that is my go-to. But tell me about that experience. So, yes. Well, it wasn't the only. Bible commentary that I used, but I used it quite a bit. In fact, my current two-year plan, I'm just finishing up reading the entire thing. So, at first I thought I was just going to read it a little bit at bedtime, and then it became sort of an obsession for a hundred days. I was reading everything carefully, sometimes twice.

I was looking up answers to all my questions to understand what it meant. I actually was trying to understand what the things on the page meant. And I'm trained in reading old texts. One of my areas of concentration is early modern philosophy, So I'm pretty good at it. So I knew, of course, to like when to look up concepts in an encyclopedia, when to look up definitions in like a Bible dictionary, when to look at maps, when to just look at a general commentary because something,

even though the words are good English, I just understand why would they say that. And in the process of doing this, I actually acquainted myself with theology, because you can't understand the philosophy if you don't understand the concepts that it contains, and you can't understand biblical concepts unless you understand theology, or at least you acquaint yourself with theology as you come to understand them. So somebody who knows the Bible very, very, very well knows a lot of theology, for sure. And the thing is, I, despite having a PhD in philosophy, which is sort of an adjacent field, I had no idea that people who did theology and analyzed biblical concepts, etc., did anything that was worth doing, that it was interesting, that it was coherent, had no idea that at all. And it is, as it turns out, if you actually study that stuff, it makes sense. There's a reason why very, very smart people. Some of the smartest people in history, in fact, have been Christians, Newton, you know, Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine.

These are very, very smart people. And a lot of other people, too. A lot of scientists, even in this center, well, even today, sure. Sure, yeah. But so. And when you read through the Bible for the first time, did it strike you immediately that this seems true? No. No. It didn't. No. It took time.

I mean, in other words, you know, I resisted the idea. I mean, I was a fairly confirmed non-believer. Again, I wasn't an atheist, but it wasn't a live proposition for me, you see. So it took a lot. One thing that I did, though, even in I think the months before I started reading the Bible, I started rethinking some of the traditional arguments for the existence of God a little bit, which might have been one of the reasons why I picked up the Bible. But the two processes went hand in hand.

So, in other words, I actually had to persuade myself that there were better versions of the arguments for the existence. of God, and that they work together in a certain way, which I simply hadn't understood before, which I'm writing about in a book now. I had to sort of like teach myself these things, or be led to them one way or another, and before I could really take what the Bible said seriously, but I will say this. The Bible, one of the things, a good example of this,

of how the Bible sheds light on philosophical arguments in a way that I hadn't really appreciated before. So in Exodus chapter 3, God, he introduces his name.

He says, I am, that I am. What? That's a name? That isn't even good grammar, I said to myself. So I, but I looked up the Hebrew. Not that I knew Hebrew, but, you know, there's interlinear tools, which are pretty easy to use.

And everything is explained. It's very nicely laid out on Biblehub.org. and I looked at commentaries and, well, it turns out that there are very good reasons why he would introduce himself that way. He was saying, as theologians generally say, that he is that which exists. Existence is part of his essence, as philosophers would say. He is, in fact, that which must exist unlike everything else. The existence of everything else in the universe is conditioned upon his existence. That actually is all contained within his saying that this is his identity,

because the notion of a name in Hebrew, and I think the ancient world to a great extent, was it said what you were, right? This is why kings renamed their vassals, right? Gave them new names to say, this is what you're going to be to me, right? This is why Abraham, Abram was renamed the father of a nation, Abraham. Right. Right. God named himself saying, I am that which exists necessarily, essentially.

And the experience of like coming to grips with that exegetical question, just made the whole argument from contingency much more alive. And I said, okay, well, I don't believe that it follows from the fact that the assertion that there is a necessarily existent being that that's God. It doesn't follow, not immediately. You have to say a lot of other things. But isn't it interesting, right? that the Bible says, God says that he is the necessary being, and that that's the conclusion

of like the most bedrock argument that natural theology offers, natural theology being the philosophy of religion and the study, the arguments for the existence of God. And can you tell me how you got to? Because after you read through the Bible, you continue still to this day to continue to read through the Bible. You concluded at some point after this that God does exist. You believed that Jesus is the son of God according to what you read in Scripture, but you didn't yet believe that Jesus died for your sins.

So can you take us from your philosophical journey, from understanding that God exists to understanding the Christian claim that Jesus is God and that He, died for our sins and is our way of salvation. So it's interesting. It's a very long and gradual process. And I mean, in the spring of 2020, I would have said I have a provisional Christian belief. It's like I'm inclined to believe it. It seems probably right.

that, that sort of thing. And I was able to articulate right around the time when I started, you know, when I was willing to admit to myself that God exists, that I was more inclined to believe that than not. The first time I prayed taking myself to be sincerely really praying to God. It was like the end of February. And right about the same time, I wrote an essay, which you can find on my blog, which is a theory of divine sacrifice or something like that, which is about the whole question, why did Jesus have to die on the cross? And how could that somehow save us? what does that have to do with like forgiving our sins and things like that?

I'm not going to get into like the theories about that, which are interesting. But I was able to articulate and understand the theories to a certain extent at that time. Could do a better job now, but I didn't feel it. You know, it's one thing to feel like you have a grasp on the concepts, and it's quite another to actually believe what it's saying. But I don't know when it was, but at some point, I, well, I guess you could just say I increasingly felt convictory. as the word is, of my sins by God, by the Holy Spirit.

And I increasingly felt the need of a Savior. See, this bothered me because I thought, isn't this kind of back, isn't it reversed? It is. Most people seem to come to the faith by first saying, as they say, they need a Savior, and therefore they surrender their will to God. I didn't feel like I needed a Savior precisely. It's only after I actually was better convinced that God exists that Jesus was a real person, really helped to read the case for Christ.

That's a great book. that I was able to like start taking that part really seriously and caring about it. And now I really care about it. Last sponsor for the day is range leather. If you are looking for quality leather goods from a family owned company, everything made in the U.S. Products that will last a lifetime, then you need to check out range leather. They've got awesome stuff.

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all that good stuff because he will love them. And again, this is a gift that'll last a lifetime. Go to rangeleather.com slash alley for 15% off. That's rangeleather.com slash alley. When do you say, do you remember like the moment that you decided to say and accept, okay, I am a Christian? No, I'm not sure that I can say that. I can say at the moment when I started believing in God and trusting in God. But to say that I am a Christian and entailed all kinds of other things that I had to sort of work through and most of it had to do with, you know, problems associated with my being a skeptic, a methodological skeptic is the word.

And so, you know, like I was saying, when I was young, I thought, It was really important to have the truth, and therefore it was necessary to have really good reasons to believe whatever you believe. You have to understand your beliefs. And, well, Christianity involves all kinds of things I didn't understand and all kinds of things I couldn't justify. And you might say, well, you have to take a leap of faith. Well, that's not what faith is. Faith is not the acceptance of things for no good reasons. Faith is simply the loyalty to God.

I think I had that. But it took me time before I actually developed the conviction that the Bible is inerrant, which is what I think now. But it was probably some time in 2020 or 2021, maybe 2021, when I actually developed that I actually developed that. I was still struggling with the whole idea of inerrancy in the first few years. So if there's a lesson for people who are similarly situated, it would be that it's okay if it's a process, at least. Yeah. It's okay for me, I hope. Yeah.

And have you been able to find a church? because you write about this, still having a lot of questions and trying to find a place that can take your questions. Well, yeah. So I've read a lot of books about theology, basically, several dozen in the last five years. And so it isn't a lack of knowledge. It is the lack of certainty. that I don't want, there are certain things that I, like, I know I'm not going to be praying to marry. Got pretty good reasons not to do that, pretty sure. And there's a number of other things of that sort that are, that would point me down one path versus another denominationally. But I feel like I need to make up my mind about more of the basic principles.

and it takes a long time for me to make up my mind about things. Because like I say, I still have this sort of methodological skepticism. It's really not just a principle I accepted and can easily discard. It's sort of like part of who I am. And I know that for the same reason, you know, if I were to go to like I've thought of, you know, independent Baptist Church or maybe the Anglican Church of North America, maybe the orthodoxy, if I can put aside my, you know, my, well, resistance to praying to saints. And so forth.

I know that I would like ask questions, and I know myself, I'm very persistent, not necessarily that I would like annoy people with my questions, but if they're trying to engage me, I'm not going to be able to go along. So it's kind of hard, you know, one thing that some people, not everybody, by the way, but one thing that some people insist on

is that if you're going to join a church, then you have to submit yourself to an authority. Well, the only authority, at this point that I really want to submit myself to is that of scripture. God. And I think I'm getting closer to the point where I can submit myself to people without disrupting. See, that's what I don't want to do. I don't want to disrupt the proceedings. I don't want to be a bad influence, you know, because I easily could be.

So, but I'm prioritizing, you know, study of the distinctives, of the issues on which Christians divide. Well, I'm confident that God is going to use you to be one of those people that can answer people's questions. And I just love hearing people's testimonies and all of the different parts of the constellation of someone's story that in retrospect they can see, but in the moment, it's hard to see how God is piecing things together, but I believe that he's going to use this testimony for his glory, which is always what he does. But also, there are a lot of very smart questioning young people who want a place to go to ask good questions. And you are someone who has asked questions over and over and over again. And rather than just like sit in your questions, you have sought the answer to

them. And I just, I really believe that that, that discipline and that curiosity that you've had your entire life is going to affect the lives of other skeptics and questioners and new believers. And so I'm just very grateful for that. Well, I hope God uses me that way, I guess, if that's what I'm good for. Yeah, me too, me too. Where can people find you and support you, follow you all that good stuff? Well, my blog is larrysanger.org. That's where the essay that we've been talking about, we've been asking questions based off of its latest thing.

A skeptic, what is it called? A skeptic turns to Christianity. Yes. Anyway, something like that. And there's also, I'm on X.com, but I don't actually. do much there except share my stuff. I'm one of the advisors of BitShute now. And so I'm putting my videos there.

My latest video is a video version of the same testimony. And yeah, there's a Bible study that has started. A lot of Bible geeks are gathering. I mean, it's gone from like 30 people to like 120 in the last couple of days. So you're welcome to join us if you're in a like brainy Bible study. Awesome. And where's that? That is on telegram and there is a link down at the bottom of the testimony. There is a, I've talked about moving to.

a signal group. You can join both if you like, but for now we're sticking to Telegram. Okay, very good. Well, Larry, I really appreciate you taking the time to share, and I do encourage people to follow you and to read your stuff. So thank you so much. For sure. Thanks. Thanks for having me on.