The Sean McDowell Show - Breaking Down Walls: A Christian and an Atheist in Conversation

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

Can Christians and atheists find common ground on the importance of having civil discussions today? That's what Drew (YouTuber: "Genetically Modified Skeptic") and I aim for in this video. Rather than debating questions about the existence of God and the afterlife, as important as these issues are, I ask Drew a ton of questions about his deconversion from Christianity to atheism and how we can have better conversations today across the religious divide. For a synopsis of how we met, check out my blog: "Learning from a Young Atheist" (https://bit.ly/2U9vxFA) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for $100 off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org Timestamps 0:00 Intro 2:06 Why would an Atheist come onto a Christian Apologists Youtube Channel? 3:53 How did Genetically Modified Skeptic get started on Youtube? 6:13 How did Genetically Modified Skeptic become an Atheist? 9:20 How did fundamentalism in the Church affect GMS's life? 12:24 What was GMS's experience with Christianity in his early life? 18:15 What issues made GMS question his faith? 22:36 How did Christians respond to GMS questioning his faith? 25:50 How did GMS questioning his faith effect his life? 29:10 What experiences occurred after Drew "came out" as an Atheist? 34:50 How did it feel to come out as an Atheist? 41:50 GMS Role-plays as a Christian parent 45:43 How was Youtube an outlet for GMS? 52:05 What is the Atheist-Christian relationship like on Youtube? 57:26 What can both Christians and Atheists do to improve the relationship with the other side? 1:02:50 What can Christians do to better understand people with other belief systems?

Okay, friends, I think you're in store for a very unlikely conversation. My guest today, his name is Drew, and he is known online in the YouTube world as the genetically modified skeptic. There's a whole story behind how we met, and I posted a blog below in the description if you want those details. We're not going to go into that right now. I think the bottom line is Drew and I met over the past couple weeks, and both shared some things in common. We care about truth. We want to know what life is about, if about anything. We care about the big issues of life, but we also care about the kind of conversations we have across political, religious aisles. And I think we both feel like there's a lot of improvement all sides can make in this dialogue. So Drew, I really appreciate you coming on,

but I have to ask for starters, are you a little nervous coming on the YouTube channel of a Christian apologist? I'm not nervous to talk to you. I felt comfortable in our interactions. You've shown me a lot of grace and empathy. And so talking to you is a comfortable place for me to be. That said, I am admittedly putting a lot of pressure on myself to represent atheists and myself well in this dialogue I would hate to really be able to reach across the aisle in a way that I think is as effective as coming onto your channel and then just leave a bad taste in anybody's mouth uh so yeah there's there's some apprehension there but I think it'll be okay you know what that's totally fair and I was actually thinking about that ahead of time I thought you know what if this doesn't go exactly like you and I want it to, and we tried, like, that's okay. There's going to be mistakes two steps forward, one step back when we try to improve dialogue. The step is just having the right heart, stepping out and doing it.

And if we fall short, we fall short, we'll learn from it, and we'll keep moving forward. So I think we both share that sentiment to get this right. But tell me, why did you agree to come on and have this conversation and what do you hope to accomplish in this dialogue i mean like i said after we connected i i didn't get on with you you know know, like, I think it was like a week ago now on on zoom for us to connect and feel like you're trying to trap me with some with some question or do some gotcha or get something out of me that is to expose me or whatever. It's you were engaging in good faith, you know, and and those who are willing to do that. And there's plenty out there on all sides I'm willing to dialogue with. I think the reason I really wanted to come on is because,

like I've expressed to you privately, this may be the first and only time a lot of people that I know and love really pay much attention to anything that I have to say on this topic. And that's partially because they may think that we're coming on to have this discussion so that you can do kind of a bit of a gotcha and they can be like, yeah, I knew it. But it's, I just appreciate the opportunity to be able to come on and have a a little bit of support from from a christian friend for the sake of my other christian friends well i i appreciate that i think this is going to

be a win-win for both of us i'm impressed i i maybe i should apologize i didn't know who you were a couple weeks ago i'm somewhat newer to the youtube world and i saw your channel i've been watching a ton of videos this week and it's like, wow, this guy is young. And I mean that in a compliment, producing some quality, thoughtful stuff that made me think about a number of areas. So my hope is that this is a win-win for both sides. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, you started on YouTube around 2017. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. So four years plus, you've done a ton of response videos to other apologists. Some have responded to you. Have any other Christians or apologists reached out to you? And how did that go? And by the way, I'm not asking you to name names. I realize how these

things can go and actually be negative instead of positive. But I'm just curious, your experience having done this four years, how that dialogue's gone for you. I mean, the main thing that I've had people reach out to me for, apologists reach out to me for, is the debate, which that's fine. I mean, I do do responses. My content invites challenge. It's completely appropriate to want to debate. It's not a slight against me to ask one sometimes not usually from any any larger apologists but sometimes it's like we're going to debate and it's going to be on your channel which is a little not not optimal but that's that's a minority that said I I've had very very few invitations to do a dialogue rather than a debate. I'm more interested in dialogues because I think that where my skill set lies is more in building bridges. You know, that's what I think that I'm decent at.

And I'd like to be able to do that more. Someone you may know, Dean Meadows of the ministry, the Daily Apologist. He is a friend of mine. I actually met him in real life when he visited Austin one time. And he invited me onto his podcast. And it was just to have a dialogue, challenging dialogue, but a dialogue. And it was fantastic. I would totally do it again Dean is is awesome

and as I as I understand he was in he's in your class at Biola actually was yeah he's in at least my resurrection class graduated just told me that he's working on his PhD now which is exciting but Dean big shout out thanks for representing representing BioApologetics with truth and grace. That's what we want to aim for. Now, I'd love to jump into your story. And obviously people watch this and you want to share what's sensitive for those relationships. But as I watched your videos, the way you kind of described your background was very helpful for me to have an understanding of who you are, why you do your YouTube channel, why you responded to me the way that you did. But tell me a little bit about kind of your church and or family background when you grew up in as a Christian.

Okay, so I have a couple of notes here because I just want to make sure that I don't leave anything out here. Let me see. So I think the place to start is that on one side of my family, missions work goes back three generations, you know, full time living on a mission field missions work goes back to my great grandfather and grandmother on one on one side of my family. And my my parents were living on the mission field before I was born, but decided that they wanted to raise their kids in the States, but that said, there's always been, I don't know, a spirit of ministry, or the idea that outreach for the gospel is important. Aside from that, I grew up until I was 10 in a Southern Baptist church, but then after that, from 10 to about 18, we were in an independent fundamental Baptist church, and we attended that church because that was the church that had been supporting my family

on the mission field since, I want to to say the 1950s. And so, I mean, when we went to this church for the first time, I met basically mission's family I didn't even know I had going there. But it was independent fundamental Baptist. The main thing was obviously having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That was not exactly a question in my family. It was just something that everyone did. My parents modeled that relationship extremely well, extremely thoroughly with grace. And so naturally taking that on,

wanting to have a relationship with Christ was just, yeah, that's what I always wanted to do. actually taking that on, wanting to have a relationship with Christ was just, yeah, it was, that's what I always wanted to do. The entire purpose of life was to have that relationship and to glorify God and live according to his will. So that's, you know, that's what I did. Growing up, I began to have a few theological disagreements and became in college was more of a more southern baptist i'd probably say than independent fundamental baptist but uh just very strong christian roots very strong christian family emphasis on a relationship with christ since the title fundamental is in it would it be fair to say a lot of the theology and background you had could be described as fundamentalist, either in attitude or in theology? Is that fair? Yeah, probably so, yeah. who are either atheists or progressive Christians who have deconverted, and they'll use that term,

is that there's kind of a reaction against a fundamentalist background. And I don't want to imply that's all it is. That's certainly not the spirit of my question. But what do you think when you hear that, given your experience, do you see that trend of a common reaction against a certain kind of fundamentalist background that would be a part of your story? I mean, I would say that I think there's, because I have heard that before, and I think there's a bit of sampling error going on there. I don't think that it is that fundamentalist backgrounds necessarily create deconversion or deconstruction. Fundamentalism doesn't necessarily create progressive Christians or atheists more than

other traditions. I simply think that the people who are more outspoken, who are maybe progressive Christians and more outspoken, who are atheists, especially in the U.S., tend to be from fundamentalist backgrounds a little bit more. So it's not that fundamentalism creates these people, these ideas, these journeys. It's that fundamentalism and leaving fundamentalism motivates people to speak out, to be much more outspoken about it. And I simply think that's because it's so different. It's a very different world than the rest of the world. It really feels like you're stepping into a completely different universe when you come out of fundamentalism. And I also think that in

fundamentalism, there tends to be some extremely rigid structure and dogmatism that can be harmful to people that are both in it and outside of it. That's fair. It'd be interesting to have some real objective data on this, but I think you're right. I will say that I actually think that there is some research suggesting that conservative religious traditions actually have higher rates of retention and growth than liberal traditions. There's a video by Dr. Andrew Henry who is a scholar of religious studies. He has a channel called Religion for Breakfast and let me see this channel or this video that I'm thinking of is called Why Strict Religion Succeed And yeah, it's basically discussing the data that seems to suggest that fundamentalist or just very conservative, strict backgrounds tend to

retain members more, especially when people are, as like I said, that my family was very actively involved, improving their dedication, their loyalty to the faith or tradition. That's interesting. I want to check out that data. Sometimes I found that some of the nuances in these studies between a more fundamentalist and evangelical are not taken into consideration. But as a whole, you're right. When families are very intentional about passing on a faith tradition, it tends to be adopted adopted let's shift to your story you tell you have a number of videos describing your deconversion out of the faith but I'm interested do you have an experience of coming into the faith was

it just you grew up and everybody believed it or was it there was there this camp moment where you believed in Jesus what was was that like for you, if you remember? And by the way, people ask me that sometimes I'm like, I actually don't remember. I just grew up and it made sense. I had different moments where I think my faith became much more real to me, but I don't remember that exact moment. So I'm curious what your experience was. No, I'm happy to hear you say that because the thing is, is that since I am now speaking in front of an audience of, I think, primarily Christians right now, it worries me that people will see this story and think that I am encapsulating everything that my Christian experience or background was with this answer and then be like, oh, that's why. That's why you're an atheist, when really it's much more complicated than anything I could say here. But that said, I relate

to you when you say that. My experiences were moments of growth in my faith, when it became much more real, became more personal, and it became more of a personal relationship with Christ than it had been previously. So I learned how to read when I was like three years old. And I sat down with a young family member one day, and they shared the gospel with me. And I was about three or four years old. And I think the first time I ever acknowledged that there was some kind of salvation plan or something was then. And I prayed that prayer to accept Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior then. That said, I grew in my faith and it became my own as I got older. So if you want to say, oh, I don't, you know, I don't view, I never viewed Christianity as you become a Christian

in this just one moment, necessarily. It's not a magic prayer. And I know that you don't, you don't believe that either. It really, you know, your Christianity is a relationship. If the relationship is there, you're Christian. But I remember really getting much more personal and serious, rededicating my life to Christ and actually specifically asking for wisdom in trying to model my life after the wisdom of King Solomon. I was about nine when I did that. I was one of those kids that was a very, very avid learner about the Bible, especially about Hebrew wisdom literature. I've loved that stuff since I was a kid. And so rededicating my life at nine, but then as a teenager, I started getting into more apologetics and my ability to defend my faith

became much more real. The personal experiences with God, the personal aspect of it became much more intense. And my faith really stepped into its own and became more independent of leaders or teachers or parents or anything as I got to be about 16 or 17. Because at that point, I was able to study more on my own. I graduated from high school when I was 16 and was an avid reader and just a learner in general. And so, yeah, me starting to have some theological disagreements with some people around me, I think really exemplified the fact that my faith was really becoming my own around that time. So like you, it's a series of deepening experiences, right? I think that's right.

Did you have any experience where you felt like, you know what, I realize I need God's grace, like that kind of experience? I remember the moment it really hit me was like, holy cow. The way I describe it is I'm much more like the older brother, self-righteous, finding pride that I don't do the big sins and really realize, wow, there is some deep pride here in trying to be the good kid. And that was a defining kind of experience for me. Did you have that kind of experience as well? Yeah. me did you have that kind of experience as well yeah um and i i think that the way i would put it

is as i got older and just realized how much more infinitely complex life is uh i felt the need to go through that hand in hand with god you know i i didn't see a way forward as a teenager aside from purposely pursuing this relationship so that I can walk in the way that God wants me to. I mean, I didn't really see much of a point in living my life in any particular way that was aside from God's will. That is the most perfect thing I could possibly strive for, and I fall short of that all the time and yeah so I definitely say so quickly when you studied apologetics as a teenager did anybody give you books by my dad or by me to read or study I I probably studied a bit of Josh McDowell okay I don't know that I studied your stuff okay but Josh McDowell a little bit I'm studied a bit of Josh McDowell. I don't know that I studied your stuff, but Josh McDowell a little bit.

I'm not 100% on that. I know that I do specifically remember reading through Lee Strobel's Case for Christ several times and several essays from C.S. Lewis. And then Mere Christianity was just – that was like the best. That's still one of the best-selling ones. Very cool. I was just curious now you described starting to have questions and this could be an entire discussion in itself and i don't so much want to get into like let's debate the answers to these questions we could have that

conversation but what were some of the issues that started to bother you or cause you to question your faith like maybe two or three of the biggest ones that troubled you. So I guess I had questions about aspects of Christianity for a little while, but I don't think my faith was called into question as a whole. I don't think I ever questioned Christianity as a whole structure until I got near the end of my year-long statistics and research methods class during my psychology degree. This is at an evangelical Christian university, by the way. And that's where I came to the idea that personal experience is not a reliable source of information about the existence of God. I basically learned about confounding factors in experimental design, and I came to the idea that, well, you know, there are no controls on these experiences that allow us to isolate the causal factor behind our sensation or perception of God's presence or

involvement. We're not controlling for potentially natural factors that could contribute toward this, and in fact, there are natural factors that we know that contribute toward spiritual experiences, regardless of the religious tradition. And so I think upon that realization, I started questioning Christianity as a whole more, because when you start questioning your own experience, which was hugely meaningful, it can undermine your confidence in a lot of things. I mean, ultimately, yeah, like I knew apologetics. I, I thought I had historical and scientific and philosophical arguments for my faith, but when my experience was undermined and I realized that that was such a big part of it, it, it made it, uh, a little bit more difficult to, to shut down any doubts that said, uh, more That said, I'll put this more briefly,

learning about science and history, learning about the Exodus, I don't think that it's well-evidenced that the Exodus actually happened. And I grew up as a young earth creationist. So for me, learning about evolution and eventually accepting evolution cast doubt on that specific interpretation of Christianity.

It didn't make me throw out Christianity. It made me throw out that version of Christianity. And I think that many, even conservative Christians on YouTube have done the exact same thing. And I think the evolution thing ended up, and the Exodus thing ended up raising questions about what the proper interpretation of scripture is and how we can demonstrate that an interpretation is correct over another. It also brought up moral questions surrounding, like, why do we have so many people like all those i grew up around that you know love god with all of their heart and are so earnestly seeking to understand him who are still coming up with interpretations of scripture that completely fly in the face of the evidence that are are wrong. If this truly is God's word, there are millions, maybe even the majority of people who are trying to understand it in good faith with all of their effort they could possibly give,

and they're still coming to conclusions that could potentially put their soul in jeopardy. That's a big moral question that had me questioning my faith more as a whole. That's fair. For Christians listening, I hope you're paying attention to the kinds of questions we need to take seriously. Historical exodus is a big one. Questions of science and faith are huge moral questions about, say, those who haven't heard. These are big questions we need to take seriously and try to give honest answers for now as you started to doubt your faith this is kind of a two-part question but let's start with the positive ones what were some ways now looking back that you would say were helpful ways christians responded and what are some ways that are not unhelpful

or maybe you would even say harmful ways that some christians responded so to clarify when when i was questioning my faith if i would have told anyone i would have lost my job uh i probably would have i don't know that i would have lost my marriage, but I would have been close to it. And I would have so severely damaged my relationship with family that it would have completely destroyed my life. And so I did not tell anyone except for my wife when I was questioning. I knew what the responses would be like because I grew up treating atheists in a certain way and treating people who question the faith in a certain way, knowing that anything that I was taught to say would not actually be productive or helpful now that I'm actually in the situation of a questioning person. Wow. So that said, I kept it just between my wife and I for the first year of me being an atheist. And then I told my parents around the one year mark.

And then I didn't tell anyone else until another year. And then I didn't publicly talk about it for another six months after that. So I had been an atheist for at least two and a half years before I even said anything publicly about it in my Christian community. The helpful responses that I got, which came from plenty of people, I was glad that they did. And this doesn't mean they weren't accompanied by some unhelpful responses, but helpful ones were just an expression of unconditional love. The absolute best response I got was actually from, and I'm not going to give identifying information with anybody else, but I know that this friend specifically would be super hyped if I mentioned him. but a friend of mine from from high school from the youth group uh you know when i when i told him he just he was like he literally goes that's it that's it that's all i'm like wow yeah he goes

he's like drew i just gotta tell you something i'm like oh here it goes. And he goes, I, I love Drew for being Drew, not for being Christian. Like what do you, what? Wow. That's he's like, Drew, it's not a question whether I love you or not. Oh man. It's, it's hard to, it's hard to talk about that. But I mean, that was the best experience I had with anyone coming out. That was probably the only solely positive experience i ever had coming out to anyone okay i gotta have you say that again that was the only positive response is one friend in a youth group two and a half years plus like that that's i was saying only for me exclusively positive okay there were other positive responses but they were accompanied by some negatives as well now you you said just so I understand that we'll come back to some of the

negative ones in a minute. You said, if you came out questioning, you would have lost your job, potentially a marriage, et cetera, is questioning in the experience you had the same as being an atheist. Because if my son comes to me and says hey I'm having some questions about things not sure what I believe versus saying I'm an atheist I still love my son no matter what but those are different kind of places that somebody is in was it just questioning was essentially as bad in that perspective as being an atheist or clarify for me? I wouldn't say that it's as bad for my job. It didn't necessarily matter how severe it was exactly because I worked at a Christian homeless shelter with children. Okay. You know, I was basically the leader of a youth department at a Christian

homeless shelter and a big thing for being employed there. I mean, I had to sign a statement of faith to even apply. And so if they thought that I couldn't basically lead the children down the Romans road, share the gospel wholeheartedly with them, they wouldn't want me there regardless of how good my work was otherwise. I actually did express at one point that I believed in evolution there, and I was nearly fired for that. Otherwise, it's just kind of, when you're questioning, you need to, it's okay if people engage. It's not necessarily bad if someone engages with you or tries to influence your thinking necessarily. But I don't think that there's really a concept, or at least there wasn't a concept in how I grew up, of maintaining healthy boundaries with someone when it came to faith questions. After all, I mean, if someone does not come to the right conclusion, they're going to burn for all of eternity. So people would be pretty motivated to try to influence someone's thinking if they think that they're questioning and open to new ideas. So while it's not awful to talk to someone, to have these dialogues with someone that's questioning, a lot of the time boundaries just aren't really respected. It's just not cool for someone to constantly be

breaking down your door to send you this verse or send you this devotional or make you a pet project to lead you back toward the fold. So I didn't feel comfortable talking to anybody about it when I was questioning because I knew that I'd become a project. That's all I would be at that point. I knew I needed to do it on my own. I love that your friend was there for you. I had kind of a questioning period and told my dad, who obviously is this apologist, that the tagline of his ministry is telling the world the truth and essentially he basically is like son i love you no matter what it's not going to change our relationship and that was just freeing for me and very powerful and i didn't reject my beliefs i just was going through questions so i just i can't imagine being in that position where you're just afraid naturally for so long to express this and just have the space to work stuff out.

So thanks for sharing that. Let me ask some of the more. So you gave a great example of something that was helpful. What was the way that I was either not helpful or hurtful? And again, we don't want to call anybody out as an individual, but just an experience that you had that was not helpful when you were questioning your faith? So the unhelpful responses were almost always one of the following things or all of the following things. Just in me coming out to them, immediately just engaging in apologetics with me, even though I specified I'm not trying to specified, I'm not trying to argue,

I'm not trying to make a case. I'm not even trying to necessarily open this line of communication about like, trying to convince each other of anything. I'm just trying to tell you, that's it. That's all. Later on. Yeah, yeah, I'm open to talking about this stuff. Sure. That's fine. I even specified, I'm completely fine with having discussions or even debates in a designated time and space that we both consent to. And that's not for the sake of maintaining my beliefs. It's for the sake of maintaining healthy boundaries in our relationship so that this difference doesn't destroy our relationship. I don't think it'd be appropriate for me to send my Christian friends the the latest, you know, atheist philosophers Work or something all the time because I want to convince them. No, I think it's important for me to express that

I love them regardless and I think it's important for them to express that too So immediately responding with apologetics and just trying to make an argument that was super common, not helpful at all. And I think some of it was motivated by defensiveness. Okay. Oh, sorry. Keep going.

Yeah, no. Then there was the response of making the whole thing about the Christian who I'm coming out to, talking like going on about, well, this hurts me so much. And, and even it hurts me so much that you didn't tell me, I just can't believe that you didn't tell me all this time. And it's kind of like, well, I think it could easily be argued that given that now that I've said something, I'm just having apologetics thrown at me immediately. And like you are turning this into being about how much I'm hurting you almost like as if

it's on purpose shows that I have valid reasons for not saying anything until I'm ready and yeah I mean it's it's also this often happened before I was able to really even explain my full situation and it's like if you stopped and listened to what I'm saying you might realize that I do understand this is hard for you that's completely valid but I think that having your entire worldview something that gave you literally 100% of your meaning and purpose and drive in life, completely overturned, that's a little harder than hearing that someone disagrees with you, even profoundly. While I acknowledge that it can be hard for Christian loved ones to hear that someone's an atheist, I get it. I can empathize. I have been in the

Christian shoes for more time in my life than in the atheist shoes. Still, I do think that it's probably harder for atheists who are in especially Christian-dominated cultures and societies and communities to become atheists and then to be open about it. Now the last one here, let me see, I made sure and wrote these down because I didn't want to miss anything. I'm missing it in my notes. Maybe I'll be able to... Oh, actually, no, I've got it. This was probably the most frustrating one. It was just bringing in assumptions about atheists or about atheism that they had learned from Christians and asserting that and believing that over anything, and I mean anything, that I could possibly say. And this is one of the reasons why I want to come on here, and I think it's something that you acknowledge that many,

many Christians will value what you, Sean, have to say about atheists, about atheism, more than they value or think about anything that an actual atheist says about themselves. It's more likely that plenty of my loved ones would listen to what you have to say about the way that I drew think, then to listen to how I would describe how I think myself. It's, it's nearly impossible to really have much of a productive conversation when the person won't put down assumptions that come from other people who don't even know me versus listening to what I have to say and allowing me to inform them on who I actually am and what I actually think. That's super helpful. You know, the atheist role play I've done, which started

our entire conversation, I realized it's not the same in our role playing. But one of the things I realized with the questions is that Christian students and Christians will ask these loaded questions with all these assumptions built in. And half the time I say, look, you're making an assumption. I never said that. I don't believe that. And so you're right. And my suspicion is that this happens on both sides, but I can speak for the Christian community. We can do a lot better job listening, asking questions, try not bring those assumptions to the table. Now, one thing you said to me, I can't remember if it was in person

or in one of the response videos that I've shared with a few people, Drew, because it was pretty heartbreaking to hear you say this, is that you described being bullied as a kid and how painful that was for different reasons and taking karate to not get bullied but then the way you said it to me correct me if i said this wrong is that the treatment by many christians was actually worse than the treatment of being bullied first off did i get that right and second off i know it's painful but would you be willing

to talk about that yeah no absolutely um yeah you. Yeah, you did. You did represent that correctly. That's that's what I said in that video. And then also just in our private discussions. So the bullying when I was a kid was because I was small. I mean, I went to in ninth grade, I had just hit five foot tall and 100 pounds. I'm not big. I'm not a big guy. And that's, and also I was, you know, just bookish and nerdy. And I was religiously homeschooled, you know. And so I don't know if I lacked the social graces, or if I was just different

than people. I wasn't interested in team sports. And that's kind of a sin in in Texas. I didn't really care about football. And that was a big deal. And and I, you know, I got bullied because of that. And I think that bullying usually stems from people feeling insecure about themselves or defensive about themselves. And so they pick on someone that's other, you know, that that happens, kids do that adults do that, and just in slightly different ways. But that said, the people that bullied me as a kid were usually just kind of acquaintances or strangers. Now, the mistreatment that I received when I came out as an atheist, one of the reasons why I say it's worse is because it was more impactful on me because I actually cared about the people who were treating me a certain way. It wasn't random

strangers. I mean, I get death threats from random strangers for what I do on my channel. I get horrible threats and horrible things. And I'm sure that you get the same thing being a public figure. It comes with the territory. You get treated really badly from anonymous people. But these are people that I love. I care about their opinion. I care about the way they view me and so it's really difficult to deal with that kind of thing um i i i don't i'll give very little specifics because i just don't want to i don't want to give any identifying information but one thing that was really painful was just gaslighting that i received uh you're doing this to get at me. You are creating this problem.

You are hurting me on purpose. This is about some vendetta even. Anything but what it's actually about, which was just an intellectual journey from one position to another. That's really difficult because even the people that did that, I know that they have, I know they unconditionally love me. I know that they can come to understand where I'm coming from. But I think being motivated out of defensiveness surrounding their own faith they have to project the issue on to me rather than realizing like oh if I'm having trouble with this maybe it's a good idea to make sure that I understand what I think and what I believe rather than getting super defensive and there's also gossip behind

my back which I was never supposed to know about. And I did find out about it. And it affected how people treat me in real life. Some of the treatment that I received in real life, I was later able to trace back to, oh, that's because this this rumor this gossip was spread about me I had I had people coming up to me and talking to me as if they had absolutely no idea that I was an atheist or what I was doing but their questions were kind of to get probing information because they wanted to add to the juicy gossip they'd already gotten behind my back and they're looking for that gotcha right and it it sucks it's I just want to be seen as a whole person that that gossip doesn't help especially when people naturally carry in assumptions and like you said it's on both sides this is what people do so that gossip it really isn't

helpful now that the most specific thing that I'll that I'll give here is that I have a highly accomplished and internationally respected Christian leader basically just directly tell me, unlike all of the missionaries in your family, you will not die in peace. You will die in agony. You'll die alone. And then you're going to go to hell and that was the first thing they ever said to me about it i mean in person in a tweet like this was this was a direct message uh and i i'm not talking about messages aside from this i'm not talking about like messages that I received on on social media I'm talking about real life but this thing because I don't live near this person they just have influence over my community I include this and and yeah I mean having the first thing that someone says to me that you know well your your great-grandfather you know died in peace

and any of the love of Christ but you you'll be alone it's a threat it's a threat right it's not a program I would never say that to that person that you know I don't I don't think that that that person like all that person's life's work is even like as respectable as i used to think it was but i would never come at them and tell them that like oh you're you're wasting your life you're going to be alone and no one's going to love you that's the opposite of what someone who is isolated from their christian community needs to hear the the unconditional love is the other side of

that. That's what I needed. And that is what opens the dialogue if someone wants to try to convince me of anything. First off, I'm so sorry you got treated that way, Drew. It pains me to hear that on a lot of levels. Obviously, those of you watching, we as Christians, myself included, there's a lot of ways we can do better to engage other Christians and non-Christians. I'm going to ask you to do something. We didn't talk about this. You could just pass, but I want you to role play with me for a second. I want you to imagine you're a Christian parent. The reason I'm asking this is I get messages almost daily, maybe because of my platform, because of who my dad is, my experience, where people are like,

my kids doubting my faith, what do I do? If you were a Christian parent and you believe Christianity was true and your son or daughter was like questioning things, how would you respond? How would you suggest that Christians respond when their kids come to them doubting or maybe having already rejected their faith? The number one thing that you can do, and this needs

to be first, the first thing, express your unconditional love for them. Don't express it with a, I, you know, I'm going to love you, but no, I love you. Period. That's not going to change. I want you to know that we can have a nice, healthy, positive, constructive relationship from here onward forever. We can. That's the very first thing that I think people need to hear. And then I would say, thank you for being willing to tell me. Like, I'm sure that this is not, especially if you're in a Christian community and that's a big part of your life, saying, I would want to say thank you to my child for being open to telling me. I know that that's not easy, especially when they're going to know that I'm going to want to influence what they think. From there, I'd probably say I'd want to take the responsibility of the parent, of the more mature one in that situation

and say, you know, going forward in making sure that we stay okay, even though we disagree with this stuff, it's probably good that we set up some boundaries so that we can have healthy dialogue about this. So I think at first, it's going to be a little difficult for us to kind of just spontaneously bring up arguments or points that would be against each other. So I tell my child, I know that you're going to want to tell me all the new things that you think or new things that you've learned, and that's completely okay. Like, I want to hear those things. And obviously, you know that I want you to hear a Christian perspective, and I would love for you to agree with me on this. I would love for you to have a

relationship with Christ that said, at least at the beginning, it may be good to just, if we want to dialogue about that stuff, let's sit down and be very intentional about that. Let's not just bicker back and forth randomly. You know, you come back from school and you start talking about something you learned in biology class and it devolves into this big argument. That's probably going to make it to where tensions flare up, emotions flare up when we say things that we don't mean and don't express love to each other. I think that what we should do is focus on the love that we have and keeping our relationship healthy. And then as that progresses, as we get more comfortable with that, let's sit, we can sit down if you feel comfortable with it and have conversations that we both consent to surrounding

this if you would influence what i think you know what have at it my faith should be able to take the challenge right and i think that your your ideas should be able to take the challenge too this is about us learning and growing together that's okay i think those three steps are great number one i love you number two thank you number three let's set up fair boundaries so we can have these conversations but keep the relationship going uh that that makes a ton of sense and i i think that's wise that respects concern for the truth but also value in in the relationship you've talked on your channel i watched a handful of your videos about why you started the YouTube channel,

and you also shared some things with me, but this story was not what I expected you were gonna say when you started the YouTube channel. I guess I had just stereotypes of anybody who starts a YouTube channel for certain reasons. So tell us why you started it in the first place. I think I started in the first place because I really had no outlet whatsoever for any of my thoughts. I've always been a pretty verbal person. And given that I really couldn't talk about anything that I was thinking or learning. I just needed a place to be able to

put that. Now, my wife was still a Christian by the time I had become an atheist, and I didn't think that it was right for me to try to influence her. I basically told her, I'm going to have a complete moratorium on any argument or persuasive efforts toward you. If you change your mind, which you do not have to for me to love you and want to be with you, then it needs to be completely 100% on your own accord, especially because I knew the Christian community would say, and they did say, that if she changed any of her ideas, that was because a man, her spiritual leader, told her what to believe, and she just copied it. And that's an awful position for her to be in. Her entire personhood is stripped away from her in that assumption. So I didn't talk to my wife about like the things that i was

thinking unless she specifically came and asked me about it and wanted me to tell her otherwise it'd be like i'm open to telling you anything but i'm not going to bring up cases for anything like that you have to figure it out on your own that's the only healthy way to go forward with this. Let me see. So I wanted an outlet. But after a while, after I made like several videos, I started getting messages from people expressing that, wow, I'm so alone and isolated because I'm going through exactly what you've gone through. And I need videos like this just to get by. And as I went on even more, I literally had people message me and tell me, this video that you put out, I just want to let you know, saved me from suicide.

Wow. And straight up used that word and said they were going to end their life and this video stopped them. That's powerful. And it's just because such severe existential anxiety can come from the level of isolation that many people who grew up in Christian communities and then like deconstruct, deconvert can, can face. So I was kind of trying to be a, a friend to people that couldn't talk about this stuff that, that had no one to, to lean on, but then also be a voice for people who couldn't speak up at all. I realized even though yeah I was mistreated when I came out there were people that had it just so much

worse than me I mean my at least I knew that my parents would unconditionally love me I was always sure of that I didn't always know that we'd get along, but I knew they would unconditionally love me, and that's important. A lot of people don't have that, and that's not uniquely some Christian thing, like Christians aren't loving or something. That's just a thing that people do when they disagree or they're kind of fearful of other ideas. So given that I frankly was very privileged in being able to come from the background I did, but then have the outcome that I did in coming out, I realized that I just think it's only right for me

to use that privilege to speak up for other people, to normalize this a little bit more, to give my perspective, give words to the thoughts that we already all have in our heads, just being a voice for the voiceless there. Now that my channel has grown, it's the loftiest goal I ever had for my channel was a hundred thousand subscribers, but that I didn't even think about that until I was, you know, nearly at 5,000 subscribers. It wasn't a subscribers or numbers thing in any way whatsoever when I was starting it.

And now that I have more reach than I ever anticipated, I think it's really about, even though I haven't always done this well, just trying to be a model for other people, trying to set an example to anyone who's watching, whether they're a Christian or an atheist. I know I'm going to have probably more of an impact on my atheist viewers. That's okay.

But as I've continued, I've started to get a lot more Christians coming in and expressing gratitude for the example that I'm trying to set. And that's been incredible. Again, like I said, I haven't always done it well, but now I'm just trying to set a good example for others who are also skeptical of things, who value critical thinking, who value constructive dialogue with their Christian peers. It's pretty obvious to anybody that you and I are going to differ on big questions of life. But I think that's an area when I saw your first response video and you watched my atheist roleplay,

it was like, you know what? I have some issues with this, but I think there's a common, bigger goal to treat each other respectfully, kindly heal some broken wounds, and I think that's why you and I connected so quickly So I'm really curious to hear your take I've I've been posting videos just like once a week or short videos on YouTube for Years, but it wasn't about a year ago that I thought you know what this is a platform I want to be more intentional about so I still kind of feel like I'm a rookie to this YouTube community. You've been doing it four years. If you had to assess just the state of Christian atheists or Christian skeptic dialogue as a whole, what observations would you make? I'll start on a positive note and say that I think that on all sides, it's gotten better in places because there is a niche that is available. There's a space on YouTube that is available and well populated now for people on either side who want to engage primarily academically, who are not interested in just

smearing their detractors. I think that 10 or more years ago, while there were, of course, productive and respectful creators on all sides still then, those who rose to the top a lot more and could actually do it sustainably, like even make it a career, a lot of the time were those who are more willing to just engage in tribalistic displays. One of the reasons I do what I do on YouTube now is because I'm just trying to break the stereotype of the atheist YouTuber as being a jerk. I look back and while again, there's plenty of videos that I think are great, a lot of the people who are very influential on YouTube in the atheist sphere and in the Christian sphere a while back did not set a good example for anyone. Now, I think there

are Christian and atheist creators who set good examples for their audiences. That said, we do talk past each other quite a bit. The commenters on either side, they still suck. They just still suck. I've gotten horrible comments, you know, and I have gone. And one of the reasons why the vast majority of my stuff is not response videos is because you know even my own audience who i i want to respect and value and have gratitude for some some in my own audience will go over to the people that like i'm sure that on your video that i was responding to you got people who probably saw my video first, who treated you like garbage.

That's not okay. Made awful assumptions and said horrible things about you. I've seen people, they're Christian creators that I haven't necessarily gotten along with, but I've seen people go into their comment section, maybe even in defense of me, and called out mental health issues that the person has complained about or has shared, has been willing to share with their audience. And they've been used as a weapon against them. It's it's horrible. And it happens on on all sides. been a serious problem. We have used what our commenters, what the hate commenters say in order to kind of represent what we think the actual creators, the content creators think. But I do think that a lot of us on all sides are starting to get better at realizing, you know, commenters don't represent the creators. I've seen Christians and

atheists talk about how they've made that mistake in the past, and they're doing better. And I seriously applaud that. That said, if you want really terrible dialogue, you it's going to be so easy to find from from any any side. But there is good quality stuff out there. I've seen some very productive dialogues between atheists and Christians on YouTube in the past couple of years that have really given me a lot of hope. I just think that the fewer assumptions that we're able to make about each other, the more we're able to listen, the better. I think we'd be, I think we do very well to maybe not focus so much just on debate and focus purposely on having dialogues that humanize each other, like dialogues like this, dialogues I've had with, with Dean. And I think that there

are some Christian YouTubers, even who have made multiple responses to me that are completely willing to to do that uh just hasn't necessarily happened yet yes i did get a lot of comments in fact when your video posted i found out of it i got dozens and dozens of emails into my website all over the place um some brutal ones that you mentioned but what amazes me is very few people actually think through if i want to change somebody's mind what's the smart way to do it and i had a few atheists who emailed me and said hey you're doing your best i understand your heart is to create better dialogue even in this role play let me give you a suggestion or two to think about well anybody who's human receives that so much better than you fraud you fill in the blank so on both sides we don't comment well and i can only speak for christians because jesus said love the lord

god with your heart and soul and love your neighbor even comments is a way of loving or not loving our neighbor so you've kind of already answered this but i'd be curious to hear what do you think christians and atheists can do better and you could just point out i think christians can do this better atheists can do this better or just general thoughts of how you think we could have substantive uh meaningful dialogue and by the way when i started doing youtube i had a number of people saying they're like Sean you've got to be Provocative you've got to say these certain things to grow a channel and part of me is like I'm not willing to sell my soul so to speak to do that although I want to get people's attention

I'm not willing to sell my soul for that and second I actually think there's probably a lot of people that are tired of the cancel culture anger and actually want substantive dialogue so this is kind of an experiment for me so with that said you tell me what do you think christians and atheists can do better at least on youtube and or beyond i think the first step is going to be just a willingness to put away assumptions when you're dealing with individuals. or or theist or or really anyone more seriously than and yeah i guess just more seriously than what a christian has to say about what they themselves think i mean if if i i you know i worry about this all the time even i i will have people say you know i stopped i stopped listening to such and such like apologist or something,

because you didn't address them necessarily, but you address something that had me realizing, oh, that applied to them or whatever. And while I guess I do want to influence people, sure. I also don't want to make it to where anyone takes what I have to say about something or about someone more seriously than how that person would describe themselves and describe their own views. If you say, you know, you, Sean, say that atheists are atheists because they suppress the truth and unrighteousness, they really do, you know, somewhere believe in God, but they're just disbelieving because they want to sin, then there's going to be plenty of Christians who, even ones that I know in real life, who will take that on and believe that no matter how many times I explain my actual thought process of my

story, because they already heard a Christian that they trust say that I'm a liar. So I must be a liar even if I don't seem like one. So if we can on all sides try to put away the boxes that we want to force people and put away the stereotypes that we've heard from our own communities, the stereotypes inevitably come up. It's just really what we do with them at that point that matters if we can do that we'll we'll create a lot more understanding also it just practically speaking as far as you know youtube goes and and maybe in real life if it would be good to understand that humanizing dialogues where people are just sharing, I know they're not as marketable as debates, but they may be just as important or in some cases more important than debates. I wish that we could have more of those humanizing dialogues. I wish

that I could get up in front of a crowd of people in the same way that an apologist and an atheist activist can't for debate and just have a conversation like you and I are having. There's plenty of people that I would love to have conversations like this with. Well, we take our students, as I mentioned in one of the videos, to places like Berkeley regularly. And we've brought in some atheists like Richard Carrier, David Fitzgerald. We've actually tried to find the most articulate atheists we could find and they've both been gracious and it's been awesome dialogue but the next time we go on trips for training i'll bring you in and we'll have a conversation maybe we can't do it in in person but now we can do stuff over zoom and over like these are conversations we need to have and so i love that that's your heart i

think we see things in common a comment i do want to make about what you said is being on youtube i've learned a lot of things i've thought about making video like five things i've learned being on youtube for a year and one of them is just how quickly people watch one of my videos and completely make up their mind about somebody else some people watch one of my videos and completely make up their mind about somebody else some people watch one of your videos about me and completely made up their mind about me didn't even bother to watch the response now somebody watches your video watches my response and says you know what i still think sean misrepresented atheism okay at least they've listened to both sides and tried to be charitable,

but it's a huge reminder to me. I mean, there's a, I think it's Proverbs 18, 17. It says the first to speak in court sounds right until the cross-examination begins. And that was one of your big pushbacks. You're like, bring in a real atheist so we can defend ourselves and we can have this dialogue and straw men are not set up. So I wanna do that better. I've got a long ways to go. I appreciate you encouraging kind of your side and your folks to do that.

I think you and I got one last question for you cause I wanna respect your time. I think one of the big common grounds that you and I have, although we didn't get into the substance of our disagreement, I think we agree that we can have substantive conversations about issues that matter without one-upmanship, without a debate that is competitive, but conversations for clarity so people understand what's at stake. When I look at my channel,

that's one of the biggest hearts that I have, even on issues like I've engaged critical race theory or the Enneagram or other topics. There's something powerful just about clarity. And it sounds like that's a part of your heart on your channel as well. Is that fair? Would you add anything to that? Yeah. Yeah. I would say that's fair completely. I mean, like I said, I wanted to talk to you here because I think that we do have that common ground. And I said this to you privately. I think that conversation, it's really like a win-win because the atheists will probably listen to me. The Christians will probably listen to you and there's so much overlap with what we're saying as far as how to treat others with love that hopefully just about everybody can take something away from this i i'm happy with how the conversation's gone and i i think hopefully it will have that effect good so one last question for you but as i think about this maybe there's things we can do in the future like a live q a and we go all right we just get one minute you answer i answer next question

or like there's a million ways we could do that and maybe we could we could brainstorm if that's helpful but last thing i would say is in closing is there anything else you want to say to christians and i know that might feel awkward to preach to another group you're not a part of, but I brought you on my platform because this is primarily for Christians. I'm modern. I see a number of atheists who've watched this. I hope you feel welcome here. But I want to push back on Christians and help us, myself included, just get better at engaging people with different worldviews, atheist, skeptic, Muslim, whatever, fill in the blank.

So are there any final encouragements or tips that you would give for Christians to do this better? I would say that even if your goal is primarily to influence the thinking of atheists, to win people for Christ. The best thing that you can possibly do, and I've said this, it's kind of a thesis statement of my entire channel, to be honest. I have several videos that equal the total up to millions of views where I talk about this subject specifically.

Listen to what we have to say first, and then address that while putting yourself in our shoes and i say this exact same thing to atheists you know most of the time christians are not trying to convert you because of ill will they're they're doing it because they love they love you they care about you and that's not always expressed the best way. And when it comes to atheists, many atheists will express their ideas to Christians for the same reasons. If you want to have this productive dialogue, lead with empathy, lead with curiosity, lead with understanding. And if you do that, you won't have to convince anyone to listen to you. You know, Sean, with the grace and compassion that you've shown me, the openness that you've shown me, I'm infinitely more likely to listen to what you have to say in your theological perspectives, your philosophical arguments, because I know that

you're taking all the factors into consideration because you've actually put in the work, put in the time to understand where I'm coming from. And you yourself now, I'm sure would acknowledge that you still don't know everything about me that's relevant to this conversation, but you'd be willing to figure that out if we're going to have that conversation. That that's necessary and so i would say uh you're you're setting a good example i'm i'm glad i'm happy to have an uh christian ally in this uh well thank thanks for saying i'm sure you'll take some criticism for coming on my channel i can't imagine what that is like but i think it goes it goes both ways you know one thing my dad said me that's really stuck with me he said it's more important to understand than to be understood it's not brilliant like we always start by understand me but instead it's like if i can understand somebody else first then we can have

real dialogue and frankly it's it's biblical the bible talks about you somebody who's a fool who talks before they listen and understand. I mean, it's a biblical idea. So I want to give one quick plug. The timing for this was not planned, but next Wednesday, the person who has influenced me more than anybody on how to have civil conversations is a friend and colleague of mine at biola his name's tim muhoff he did a phd in communications at unc and one of the things he talks about i think you'd find this true is called perspective taking that in conversation you try to understand but really enter into somebody else's perspective as best you can then when you understand or at least made an effort to you can have substantive agreement and he's really the one who's taught me how to

ask good questions how to engage people differently not be threatened by this and so those of you watching want to kind of get some nuts and bolts about how to do this from somebody who I consider kind of the civil conversation ninja, so to speak, make sure you hit subscribe and join us next Wednesday, because we're going to do that. Drew, hang on just one minute when we're done. I want to just connect with you, but I want to thank you again for coming on. Thanks for your initial response. You obviously weren't super happy with some things I said, but I knew right away that you had a heart for proper understanding, increasing the dialogue and some of the brokenness. And I appreciate you responding and just being willing to come on. I hope we can do this, something like it, other things

a lot more in the future. I responded because I thought that you would take criticism, and you did. And I'm happy about that. Thank you for having me on. Thank you for this opportunity to humanize myself in the eyes of Christians. In fact, that's what I said the most important thing was in that video, and you allowed me that opportunity. So keep doing that, Sean. I really appreciate it. We have 303 likes and one thumb down, which just reminds me you can't please everybody, which is not our goal,

but just to advance the conversation. And there's no doubt in my mind that we did that. So thanks again for coming on Drew.