The Sean McDowell Show - Hindu to Atheist to Christ: An Engineer's Fascinating Journey

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

Why would a brilliant Hindu engineer become an atheist and then choose to follow Christ? What evidence convinced him Christianity is true? What did it cost him to follow Jesus? Check out this recent interview with my new friend Ganesh about his fascinating story. READ: Let Me Into Heaven (https://amzn.to/42i2sXC) *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

Why would a former Hindu become a follower of Jesus? I'm from India, grew up in a Hindu family, reasonably religious Hindu family. What convinced him to make such a radical change in his life and what did it cost him? I found an anchor point on how to answer questions. I'm looking for absolute facts and truth, taking a more objective look to say who really is God. Our guest today, Ganesh, is here to tell us his story. Now, Ganesh, when we chatted before, I said,

you just go by Ganesh. Do you have a last name? And it's 14 letters. I couldn't begin to pronounce it. So before we jump into our story, tell us your last name. Venkata Ramanan. Wow. Does it mean anything that you're aware of?

It's kind of like Smith in India. So there's plenty of us around. It doesn't mean anything. It does actually. You know, the most Indian names, Hindu names, I should say, are probably a name of a god in Hindu religion. So it's one of the, I don't know, 30 million or 300 million gods. That is really interesting. I had no idea that many names were tied to gods. Well,

we will get into that in your story. And I suspect that means if your name is tied to a god, your identity and your family and so much about you is tied to it. So becoming a Christian could potentially cost you a lot, but we're going to get into that. For starters, tell us about your family, kind of where you grew up, what your family was like. Yeah. So I'm from India, the southern part of India, from a family of engineers, you know, which is very hard to believe among Indians. My dad was a nuclear engineer, worked in a nuclear power plant and, you know, everybody I knew was engineers. With that comes the fact that we were all very analytical,

right? We like to get deep into things. We like to understand why we are doing something, not just that we were doing something, you know. So that's how I grew up. I actually had a great childhood, a family of four, a sister who has a PhD in electrical engineering, you know so that's how i grew up i actually had a great childhood a family of four a sister who has a phd in electrical engineering you know going back to engineering yeah and i actually had a great family a great childhood i grew up in a hindu family reasonably religious Hindu family. So I remember going to temple many times with my mom usually, you know, and so, you know never thought too much about the fact that we were it was idols that we were worshipping, you know, and why would we worship a God we created to begin with, right?

So I didn't think that much about it at that time. It just happened to be a part of childhood and that's how i grew up you know uh yeah okay so this is you describe yourself as reasonably religious kind of indian family so you would go to a temple were there relics or gods or statutes or kinds of practices within your home itself that your family did? It's a great point. You know, the Hinduism itself tends to be divided into four sects, and we were the Brahmins or the priests, you know. I don't think anybody was still acting, kind of like the Levitical priesthood, I guess know but except none of us were priests we had all become engineers right but uh that's certainly how we were born so in in hindu religion it's only the priests which can conduct lots of religious ceremonies you know and so you will learn a different language like uh perhaps you know, we have Latin, you know, in Christian culture, we had Sanskrit, which was the

Indian version of that, I guess. And so I learned some of that, learned a lot of traditions, I guess. At that point in time, maybe by the time I was 12 or 13, I was already beginning to think, I don't understand the language. I don't understand why I am doing this, but as a matter of tradition, we did things. You know, so we'd had pujas at home, you know, you bought anything new, like a car, for example, people that actually do certain, what we, what we call pujas in a sense. I don't even know, like a prayer service, I guess you could say, you know? Um, and so that's how I was, uh, you know, I was, I was, I was, a sense, I don't even know, like a prayer service, I guess you could say, you know.

And so that's how I was. Most people around me, and I want to say 95% of the people around me were Hindus, right? Maybe I knew a few Christians, did not understand why Jesus hung on a cross. I don't think there was a church in the town we grew up in. I think there were a group of Christians who used to meet up together every Sunday morning. But they used our badminton courts to do it. So we lost use of it for Sunday morning. So that's what I remember of the church. That's really funny how those things stick in your mind your memory of christians in the church now how far back do you know does your family go in terms of its heritage and ties to hinduism um it must be hundreds of years so you

know the the way you become a brahmin is that you're born as a Brahmin. You cannot choose to become one. It's very much like the Levitical priesthood, you know. And so every generation up above me was Brahmin. So this must have gone on for hundreds, if not thousands of years. I personally didn't know beyond my grandfather you know okay um uh the usually documentation in in the in india is not the greatest so uh it was a british who brought some of perhaps some attention to detail and documentation to india but beyond that we don't

have that much documentation but so at least two generations i know but could be 50 generations you know that's more likely. It's really interesting to hear you talk about the documentation in India, because I did my dissertation on the apostles and studied Thomas. And there really wasn't a written record of Thomas prior to the British coming in the way you described it that I was able to find. But there were songs and poems and a historical sense recorded in a different way. So super interesting to hear you describe it that fashion. Okay, so nominal- If I can add on something there, Sean,

the Apostle Thomas has come to India, of course, and having done your dissertation, I'm sure you know more about this than I do, but he was martyred not far from where I grew up. Maybe five miles from where I grew up is where he was martyred. And in Chennai, southern India, one of the biggest streets is still called St. Thomas Mount, named after him from 2,000 years ago now. Well, I'm super tempted to sidetrack the conversation because after my dissertation, that was one of the places in the world I really want to go see because there's fascinating. There's a fascinating case that's made about Thomas, but maybe we'll come back to that in another time.

So you grew up in kind of a nominally religious home. Did you ever have any doubts? Did it just make sense? Was it just kind of this is the way the world was we're not going to quite get to your conversion yet but did you ever have any doubts about or just this was life as was presented to you you know so there was there were maybe a few muslims around us there were a few christians around us not a huge amount of people so 95 of us were hindus so i thought you know if anything

religion was cultural right this is how you're born this is how you grew up this is how you lived i didn't realize really think of saying we could analyze religion and we could analyze god in a sense you know i just said this is how you live you know and that's how it was at that point in time okay that makes sense. Now, when you say you were born into Brahman, is this a part of the caste system that people are born into? It is. Okay. It is.

It's the top of the pyramid, if I can use that word. So it's the priest. So there's four of them. There's a priest, there's a warrior, there's a businessman, and then there's the laborers, and we were the priests. So what was this like working along people of other castes? Give me just a picture of what that was like for you in your life, encountering and engaging them. Was there a sense of superiority or sense of luck that you were born into this family? How did you perceive that?

I mean, within our caste, there was a sense of kinship right and with other casts it wasn't outwardly spoken very much at that point but perhaps there was a level of stress right and tension certainly when it got into the university days and trying to get into school and so on there was a lot of the equivalent of affirmative action and so depending on which cast you were in made it easier or harder to get into colleges and we were the ones who found it the hardest to get into colleges you know so yeah so i have some strong opinions of affirmative action having gone through that. Oh, that's really, I would have expected the opposite of what you said.

Fascinating. Okay. So you grew up in this home, good relationship with parents. How many siblings did you have or do you have? One, one sister. Yeah. One sister. Okay.

Older sister. So tell me when you first started to either think about your faith and own it, or the first time you kind of paused and thought, I'm not sure if I identify this way as a Hindu. All right. Good question. And I've been thinking about it. It was actually, I didn't make the step from being a Hindu to being a Christian. I made a step without knowing it from being a Hindu to being an atheist. Oh. And as soon as I went to college, you know, it was an engineering college.

It was called the Indian Institute of Technology, probably the best college in India. And we would keep telling you how smart we are. And if you forgot, we'd be more than happy to remind you. Right. So it's kind of like the MIT or Harvard's of India, essentially. So what, so the thing was, what I saw was a very highly technical college, it's an engineering college. And so because of that, I found everybody around me was essentially atheist.

Right. So I didn't remember actively making a transition to being an atheist, but everybody around me was analytical and the thinkers and so the idea of God and science seemed to be two different worlds. And so I just naturally became an atheist without thinking about it. I did maybe evaluate Hinduism at that point to say, yeah, I don't know why I was doing it all those years. Maybe I was just a kid.

I was kind of going along with the faith of my fathers, right? And, but became an atheist. And maybe I enjoyed philosophy a little bit, asking some questions, but never really thought much beyond that and say, you know, really didn't have much time for religion once I was in college.

Is it fair to say it's probably more sociological than it was rational for you? And I'm not saying this is true for most people, but just kind of this is the way people think. This is the fold I'm moving into. This is how I should probably believe and just kind of absorbed it more than rationally thought through and became an atheist. Is that fair? For sure. Yeah. Yeah. It was not rational at all. It was definitely, if I can use the word tribal, right? This is what my tribe did. Hence, this is how what I will do as well, right? And or sociological, it was like, it was definitely not rational. I didn't think on why I became an atheist. I had to think when I got out of being an atheist, but I didn't think on why I became an atheist I had to think when I got out of being an atheist but I didn't think going into being an atheist oh interesting okay we'll get to that but uh did you go to your parents at any point or your grandparents or your family and say

I don't believe this stuff anymore don't identify as a Brahmin I'm an atheist and And if so, how did that go? I didn't. I think they were just happy I was in college. You know, I probably most people and this is true of the US as well. I think a lot of times when people go into college, they lose the faith of their fathers, right? And they know they may come back to it in five years. you know going into college just the where they are it's so easy to simply uh not go to church or not go to you know not be a part of those associations anymore so i had uh i don't i didn't have a conversation with them about being an atheist that conversation on transition would come much later on uh but at that point it just was a fact of life that's how i lived you know so is it fair to say

like if somebody becomes an atheist and they were formerly a christian their family's thinking whoa you've not only rejected the faith of our family you've put your salvation clearly in jeopardy but if you're a hindu you're gonna you're part of this reincarnation so you're rejecting your family heritage which is clearly painful on one level. But Ganesh isn't going to hell. Ganesh on this worldview still has another chance to get at it. So I'm less worried. Is that a fair way how it would be processed, do you think? Yeah. I mean, in one sense, you cannot leave being a Brahmin. You were born a Brahmin and you stay a Brahmin and it doesn't matter what you do

and you know when you did your official documentation and they said what caste are you I'm a Brahmin you know so there was no such concept of saying I'm not any caste you are something it's only a question of what are you right and so you know I had not thought about that point in time about reincarnation and what does it mean and so on. But I think it was a... Later on, I'd say I started getting some questions. There's a level of meaninglessness with reincarnation. But that was at a later stage.

At that point in time, it was just like, okay, it is what it is. I functionally am an atheist. They can call me whatever, but I just live my life. Okay, so when did you start to question atheism how old were you so i came here to the u.s to go to grad school and that was when the first seed was planted in my mind and the way it was was i i to be in New Haven Connecticut and visit at Yale University and met a professor there his name was Dr. Fred Sigworth and someone made the comment to me that you know he is the best in his field which was origin of life research and he's a Christian and it struck me as being very odd that he is a professor at Yale University the best in

his world and he is a Christian and so just two things which didn't seem to go together for me didn't think much of it just you know but it was the first seed that supposedly intelligent people can be, you know, but it was the first seed that supposedly intelligent people can be Christians, you know. About two years later, I graduated with my master's degree in engineering. I was in Houston. I had moved to Houston. I had a colleague who gave me a book to read. You may have heard of the book. It's called More Than a Carpenter. Oh, interesting. Okay, wow. you may have heard of the book it's called more than a carpenter oh interesting okay wow and i read the book a liar lunatic or lord right for the first time it occurred to me

that you could actually analyze these things as an engineer you know it still took me four more years before I actually chose Jesus as my Lord and Savior. But it was the first time I had read anything which said I could analyze this. Faith to me always seemed blind. It's like, this is what your fathers believe or this is what you believe. You just had to go with it. Right. But to be able to question it and ask questions, wow, that was different. You know. right but to be able to question it and ask questions wow that was different you know

so uh no i didn't think much of my colleague as a colleague in terms of his work ethic so it colored my view of what i was getting even though he was giving me a gift you know uh since he wasn't the hardest worker at work i didn't you know said okay i read the book but i didn't think much of it beyond that and then i met some people i met a gentleman named bill as an entrepreneur who was very successful and at that point in my life that's what i was looking at how do i become successful how do i make a lot of money right how do i grow in my career and i saw someone who i thought one day maybe i could be like and he was a Christian, and he made a very interesting comment saying, you know, you can tell that the Bible is the

inspired Word of God, right? You can prove that. That's what he said. He didn't say you can tell. He said you can prove that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. Now, I'm an engineer. Proof to me means evidence. It doesn't mean a claim right and so i said how do you prove

right how do you prove right so then uh he just said something in passing he said look at the prophecies you know and uh you start looking at the odds of prophecies coming together and you know there's lots of prophecies of course in the old testament the one which i was super interested in was the prophecies about jesus right so you know where was he born when was he born right so we knew he would be born in bethlehem for example right because that's where herod sent you know i found out that's where he was going to be born he would have to be born before the kingdom i mean mean the temple was destroyed, so before 70 AD, right? How he would live, how he would die, right? And especially the crucifixion account that Isaiah talks about and the Psalms talk about, I think it's 53.

And so, you know, they are talking about resurrection before the Romans had invented resurrection, right? So they're using the words the best they could to describe things which didn't exist. So it really intrigued me to say, there's something here, right? I don't know all of it, but there's something here. And then another friend of mine, his name is Paul. And I dedicated my book when I wrote it to Bill and Paul because they had such an impact on me. And Paul led me to the books of Lee Strobel. And I felt I had arrived.

I mean, Christianity is an engineer's dream. You can ask hard questions. You don't have to take bad answers. I could ask questions. I could dig into it right i and uh so then i i just devoured uh lee's books now about after i'd become a christian he had come up with a book called uh the case for the a creator right his first two books are the case for christ and the case for faith right so the case for a creator now in the case for a creator he

talks about a group of scientists who take a full page ad in the new york times saying we're skeptical of evolution and he mentioned only three or four scientists names one of them was dr fred sigworth whom i had met at yale university within a week of coming to the US, right? So it was like God was weaving a plan. Don't know why he chose me to be part of it, but he did. And it was all starting to come together, right? So, but, you know, these are people who led me to the fact of what later I realized was called apologetics, you know, and but to be able to scientifically ask questions analyze

it follow a process and uh it's and it wasn't just subjective right it wasn't just he's god because i feel he's god no i feel he's god because he's god right and so it turned around how i looked at religion so did you feel a need or desire or did you say, I'm also study evidence people put forth for Islam or since I have a Hindu heritage, there's got to be some people doing apologetics for Hinduism? Or was it just captivated by this Christian claim and you figured if Jesus was God, that just kind of settled the whole thing? What was your thinking going into that? That's a great question. And I hadn't thought about this in a while. But actually, when I was in college in the US, I had looked into Buddhism. And after a while, I realized Buddhism in the limited understanding I had was very similar to Hinduism, meaning it was in a different language it was mostly like japanese or so and it

was uh i didn't know why i was doing what i was doing and as an engineer i found it very hard to just continuously do stuff that i didn't understand you know so it became very ritualistic for me so i was really not interested in something ritualistic i wanted i the truth. I didn't want something to be true because I made it true. So I was looking for something beyond me, more objective than me. So then I'm, so I kind of gave up on Buddhism or just looking at it pretty quickly. And then, yeah, Christianity and the arguments for Jesus and even the arguments against him and how to answer him. And just at some point, just the person of Jesus just captivated me. Ganesh, I have a good friend who's a former Hindu, grew up in India. He's an apologist.

He's invited me to come speak there many times. It's just never worked with my young family. But when I ask him his story, he's got these incredibly like supernatural encounters just with demons. And the idea of atheism never seemed reasonable to him coming from a place like India that has such deep spiritual roots. Did you have supernatural encounters at any point given where you're from and the nature of Hinduism? Or is it more like your family's focus on reason and engineering and science kind of ruled some of that stuff out maybe?

Yeah. So I think it's the latter since i was in general more skeptical always needed evidence always needed to think through stuff uh i always struggled with supernatural um things and even if it had happened to me i would look for a natural explanation. That was my natural bend of mind. I still do. And having said that, I think there's a lot of people in India who are,

the idea of a personal God and all that resonates very much with them. So I think God uses people's personality to connect and reach them. In my case, it was science. So what was it like when you finally realized, okay, this is true? Was there a dramatic change? Was there a moment you became a believer? And by the way, I'm not expecting it had to be.

People ask me that all the time. I'm like, I grew up in a Christian home. I don't really remember that one moment. But given that you came out of Hinduismism to christianity obviously you didn't kind of fade into it not thinking the way you described fading into atheism what's your kind of point you realize wow i believe this is true and i've got to repent and choose to follow jesus yeah so i remember in my discovery process of christ, sitting at a service, and for some reason sensing,

you know, I've been exploring this for at least four years. And if I don't do something about it, you know, I'll be stuck with this paralysis of analysis. And I felt somehow I had to do something today or I would never do it. you know, and that's usually not my style. I don't make instant decisions, say boom, I'm going to change my life around in one instant, but I felt it that day. This was obviously after four years, so it wasn't in one instant,

but I did feel like calling to say, you explored this long enough, you should do something. Now, I didn't know enough of the holy spirit and theology and all that to know that the holy spirit was working on my heart all i knew was i need to do something today so i went forward um kind of like c.s lewis says that you know the most reluctant convert in christianity so i went forward saying okay i guess i got i can't deny it anymore i gotta got to do it. I realized that I guess the last step has to be a step of faith, no matter how much analysis I do up front. And didn't know what to expect. Back to your point, I didn't know if lightning was going to strike me. I didn't know if I would hear voices. I mean, I didn't know,

right? I'd never been a Christian, right? I was not close to anyone who was a Christian, so I didn't know what to expect. So, but I went forward in faith, accepted Christ. And as I look back, it was not that anything changed in a day, right? But if I look back, when I look back at the end of five years and the end of 10 years, and now it's been over 20 years, everything changed. Wow. So I think if I look at my ambitions, they change. If they look at my hungers, those change. If I look at my purpose, my calling, dramatically changed. So it's not that I didn't want to make money, I did. It's not that I didn't want to do better in my career, I did. But I realized there was not the end all, right?

I realized really my calling was to remain in Him, right? I think it's John 15, 7 talks about it, remain in me, right? Without me, you can do nothing, right? So remain in me and if my words remain in you then you can do all things so I realized my first thing was to be remain in a relationship with Jesus so walk with him is to grow and then everything else in my life had to revolve around that so then what I did with my career why I did things how I did things everything had to change given my new identity at this point.

So people ask all the time, what is the identity? I only have one identity, which is I'm a follower of Christ. It is not a, I'm a citizen of this country or that country, or I live in Texas or whatever. I mean, those are all fine. Those are all true. They're true descriptions, but they're not a true identity you know and so looking back everything changed you know and um yeah so in that 20 years given that you're an analytical person have you had doubts have you ever second guessed this decision and thought ah maybe I overstepped my bounds here. And have you ever rethought your decision to follow Christ?

I didn't rethink my decision, but I certainly had doubts or I had questions. How does this work? How does that work? You know, do whales really swallow people and can they survive for three days? Right. I had questions, certainly. Right. I had questions, certainly. Eventually, I found an anchor point on how to answer questions.

I think of all the things I analyzed, the thing on day one which struck me the most was the fact that the universe had a beginning right and once I started with the fact that universe had a beginning and there was a Big Bang there had to be an explanation for the Big Bang and I don't mean a physical explanation saying here's what happened with electrons and everything else and E equals MC square and all this stuff but the why why was there a big bag right and so the only conclusion as someone who was beyond it actually tells us about the character of God right it says is beyond space is beyond time right super intelligent that's actually

the first thing that struck me about God that he's super intelligent because somebody who could design a process like this and create laws which which regulated how everything happened because the you know the the big bang was not just a random fireworks experiment right it it was a very well organized process started off with a super low entropy right I'm a chemical engineer so super low entropy, right? I'm a chemical engineer, so super low entropy, which means super high organization and for all of it to come through. And it's like, how does that happen, right? So I anchored my faith on the fact

that no matter what other question I may have, the fact is at least on this one thing beyond to me any kind of reasonable doubt, God created the universe. Now, if God existed existed then every other doubt then had to be addressed given that context that God exists and so every doubt didn't become a reason to question God right that's interesting that's how you address doubt when John the Baptist is in prison he goes through doubt which makes sense if you're in prison and your life is potentially in jeopardy and jesus sends a message through his disciples you know the deaf hear the blind see

the gospel is preached the dead are raised etc he gives him evidence confidence you're like i know this fact and this evidence helps hold some of my doubts at bay. I think there's a lot of wisdom and biblical support in broadly approaching it that fashion. Okay, so 20 years ago, you describe yourself as a Christian. Was there a point where you told your family? And obviously, when we're talking family, this is a public conversation. So just as much as you're comfortable with, I don't want to press beyond that, but would love to know how that was received, how that happened. Tell us a story that you're comfortable sharing.

Yeah, yeah. So I was struggling with it because obviously all my family is still Hindu, right? Or if not atheist. Maybe some of my family, like my mom, my dad, you know, maybe they felt being a Christian is one step better than being an atheist, you know. So from that perspective, there was not as much drama, but I did feel the social pressure of perhaps not saying much, right? I mean, I am a Christian, I was at church, I was growing, I was learning, but it's just not a conversation I necessarily brought up with the family around me.

And not until recently when I said, and pardon my use of these words, I decided in a sense to come out of the closet and say I'm a Christian. And here's the thing, because I looked around the closet and said, nobody else is in the closet. They've all left. They're all out there proclaiming whoever they are and here I am as a Christian not bringing it up just because I don't want unnecessary arguments right okay let me cut you off for just a second you became a believer 20 years ago you said recently you started coming out of the closet to use that reference? What do you mean by recently? Three years ago. Three years. Okay. Keep going on the story. Just need a context. Yeah. So then three years ago, I wrote my book. And even then I didn't use my, my full name. I

use my initials. A part of it is, of course, my last name, as you know, is super long and i figured nobody would ever find me on amazon if i put this in here right and uh uh but you know i was still unsure of how everyone would take it and i wanted to actually tackle and this is something i appreciate with your dad i appreciate it with lee is they never shied away from hard questions, you know, and they were, they may not have perfect answers, but they always chased answers. And so I was exploring some tawny topics, especially around, it's a fictional book, but somewhere along the way, we went off into gender dysphoria stuff. So as exploring these topics, I wanted to be able to... I wanted people to be able to focus on the

arguments and the topics and not on the person and who wrote it and whatever else they may go off on, you know. So I ended up doing that. Then I realized, you know, we are called to preach the gospel to the whole world and we are trying our best to hide, you know, who knows that we are Christian and this makes zero sense. This is not my calling, right? So then I decided, no, I have to figure a way to build that bridge with my family, with people who may be atheists, people who may be Hindu, but really I think people who are analytical and then make the case for it, right? And be a resource potentially for them,

be a friend for them if they would choose to walk that walk. But it cannot be one where I say, you know, let me minimize the angst and let me be a closet Christian, right? So in your kind of circle however you define this this would presumably be other people who are brahmins family aunts uncles are you the only christian that you know of only one i'm aware of yeah the first one i'll say i'm optimistic there'll be more but i'm the first one Great, great way to frame that. I love that. What would you say, what are the biggest barriers for somebody with a Hindu background? And feel free to just correct me and say something like Hinduism is so big and so broad and so diverse

that you can't even lump it all together? Or maybe there's a few that seem to transcend that are common objections. What would those be? I mean, it is true that Hinduism is so wide and so large and so on. And probably as a Hindu, if you had asked me 25, 30 years ago, what do I believe in? I would have had a tough time defining what I believed in. You know, as a Christian, it's a lot easier to say, here's what I believe in exactly, right? That Jesus died for my sins, you know, and he rose again, and so on. And if I believe in him, that I will be saved, right? But in Hinduism, there is no direct thing like that. It's a super complex mix of rituals and philosophies and lots of other things so it's hard to know I didn't know what I believed it

yeah it's also a little bit synchronistic they tend to even if there's new ideas everything tends to get out at all you know I think the thing is there is a deep desire within Hinduism for a personal God, right? Maybe the one belief that holds most people back, right? Going back to your real question, is the fact that most people do believe that I am this religion because I was born in this family. So religion is cultural right and so they don't quite understand why somebody should change it's like

turning your back on your family and so on and I feel it is more of you know I believe in the law of gravity it doesn't matter if a Hindu or a Christian or whoever whoever came up with it right and so i'm looking for absolute facts and truth and not simply uh what we believe as a culture right so uh you know richard dawkins wrote the book the god delusion you know and well it wasn't the greatest of books and you know i did enjoy the conversation he had with John Lennox on that because John Lennox is just absolutely phenomenal but Richard Dawkins is right in this one thing and this may be the only thing he's right on it's not that God is a delusion

but in my opinion cultural gods may be a delusion and here is why right because God preceded culture so the culture cannot create him right he created the cultures but a lot of people do believe it's this is my culture hence i should believe in this god and then it holds them back i think from taking a more objective look to say who who really is god right did we make him did we create god or did god create us so i interviewed another former former Hindu recently and there were similarities in your story but also some big differences. He was born in the States but one of the questions that he said when he's gone back and talked with some of his family

members is they've asked him point blank, so are you saying that I'm going to hell? And he said that was one of the hardest questions because there's an emotional piece to it that's contrary to what you have in Hinduism. It's his family. Have you been asked that? If not, that's okay. How would you address that,

especially as a former Hindu who would have to have come to grips with that in some fashion with your your family and Heritage right so I've been asked that question am I going to hell and I think the answer is yes everyone knows right so the default path is a path to hell it doesn't matter where we come from right and we could be born in a Christian family and the default path is still a path to hell because it's a choice each one has to make individually, right? And so, but we are given a detour of the pathway to hell so that you don't have to go to hell.

I don't have to go to hell, right? We just have to reflect and say, have I lived up to what it takes to get into heaven and we're all born with sinful nature so there's no even chance to live up to anything right our nature itself is sinful being born and so i think uh the gospel the good news is a way to say we don't have to go to hell right and so i think it's an opportunity to tell people look i was on the same path as you we were all going to hell and but we don't have to and that is where a an exploration and a discovery it's not as much what i can tell someone i will

tell someone i'll help them but it's the discovery that they make and at some point in my case it was a it was to say I am not perfect maybe I feel I'm more perfect than the guy next to me but if the grading is on a hundred and not relative to the next person then I'm not close to it right I know right other people may not know but I know you know and this rings true there is evidence for it and Jesus says you know it starts with repentance a child and they starts with faith you know and that ring that rang true to me and I think it's an opportunity then to share

the gospel tell us what you're doing professionally now are you moving in towards some what some might call full-time professional ministry are you still as an engineer and kind of doing this on the side? Tell us a little about your professional ministry life. So background in chemical engineering. I worked for many years in actually a lot of simulation and modeling and so on which is why I like a lot of this apologetics. When they talk about a lot of these details it appeals to me this is the world I lived in you know. I am vice president of technical sales for a software company which is a publicly listed company, large company I won't name them but just to say that my background is professional. I'm not looking to be a full-time minister, but I'm looking that everything in my life revolves around my core calling, which is to glorify God.

And specifically for me, I believe it is to reach out to people who are analytical and who are thinkers and who have questions and to be able to have those conversations. So again, as a part of it, my book came out a couple of months ago, let me to have any consider actually right behind me over here. And it was an attempt to say, a lot of the apologetics and a lot of these questions tend to be handled as a science. And what happens is the people who read this tend to be super

analytical, but not everybody reads apologetics books. So I wanted to make it a fictional book and a conversation between three friends who are asking questions of each other and trying to make sense of the world. And I was actually on a journey to understand what heaven is like, because, you know, we talk about it as being the eternal reward. And yet if you ask most Christians what is heaven like, they'll tell you it's like a really long church service, right? And, you know, 20 minutes of music is great. An eternity of music will bore me to tears for sure, right?

So, but what is it really like? So I was on that journey and the journey to understand tribulation and the millennium and all these end times stuff, and realized every time I was trying to study this, I said, I'm just going to take notes. And at some point, I ended up writing a book. So one of my characters during the tribulation is observing the tribulation from heaven,

while two of them are observing it from earth i was trying to envision what does someone who is on the earth during tribulation how will they explain things as it unfolds right and but use that as a way to share apologetics essentially but as a story in the hope that it will you know people will remember stories better than they will you know abstract arguments well Jesus asked a lot of questions and he told a lot of stories so I commend you on doing that did I miss anything in your story that you wanted to focus on any important pieces or experiences that you had that you wanted to share? I want to share one thing, if I may, Sean. It's, you know, most of my apologetics has been learning, you know, from people and the

arguments. I have one super minor thing that I hope I can contribute to apologetics. And it is this idea that, you know, Bill Gates, studying the DNA, had this to say. He said it's eerily like software code, right? Now, software code is something I'm familiar with working for a software company. And one of the things then that intrigued me is you can actually do a test to see, is it possible for something super simple like the first cell to evolve into something super complex like a human being right so if you take some

super simple software code and all it does is add two numbers a plus B equals C with just random changes to software code can we get more complex software code right the changes have to be random because we are mimicking evolution and we have an automatic test built in during any change you should be able to run your software code again all right so the functionality of life it should be alive the code should be alive and it shouldn't die right my experience with software code is it takes lots of effort to get anything working you make random changes much more likely to kill the code so it doesn't work than to get anything more complex out of it so i'm adding two numbers maybe i make random changes maybe i'll subtract them maybe i can multiply them but that's

all i can do as soon as i start dividing it i can do a divide by zero for example so i need more code to make sure that my my code is functional right can i even get to a full-blown calculator from just having a code which adds two numbers i don't think it can so even my thought experiment tells me there is no way to add on more complex information by randomness. But it's something somebody can actually try out. They can write code and say, how many changes do I have to make randomly to get to another piece of code, which is even functional? I think they'll make billions of changes and most of all of them will actually fail. So it's actually a hypothesis which can be tested out if somebody

wants to test it out. This is a really interesting approach. And I wrote a book years ago, gosh, I think it came out in 2008. So if I'm doing the math, what is that? 16 years ago with Bill Dembski. So really, I just popularized the stuff that he really came up with. He's the expert behind that. And we kind of probed into some of the evidence for intelligent design, looked at the cell and DNA. And I think there's some compelling cases that are there. Now, with your scientific engineering background, you've pointed towards the beginning of the universe

as being compelling towards a cause outside of the universe. You pointed towards kind of DNA and maybe the information that's embedded into the cell and what it takes to get a complex being seems to require intelligence. Are there other things in nature or in the world that just give you pause thinking they can be explained naturalistically and point towards intelligence? are there any other examples you find compelling given your training and background the top one is origin of life itself okay right forget the evolution of it I mean tell Charles Darwin never explained where the first cell came from he may have attempted to explain what happens once you had a

self replicating living cell, but he didn't say where the first cell came from. He just said, if and oh, what a big if. He had a whole bunch of chemicals and he threw a bunch of energy into it. Boom, the first cell comes about, right? The problem is to have these cells, you need DNA, which has all this information we are talking about. It requires proteins. It requires a lot of information and no one has been able to we are talking about. It requires proteins. It requires a lot of information.

And no one has been able to synthetically create it. Now, the theory has always been this, that if you had enough time, like billions and billions of years, then anything could happen, right? So you could have the first cell. But Dr. James Stewart of Rice University, which is not far from me, has actually made the point that time is your enemy, not your friend.

And I'm a chemical engineer. I relate to this. If you take a small piece of a compound, and then it has to be billions of years before you can add the third piece, or even millions or hundreds of years. Usually within minutes, it becomes something else. It goes off into other reactions that you cannot control right so you end up losing all the progress you made

today if it takes a long time to add on pieces so time is actually not a friend for evolution it's an enemy yeah i mean they have minutes or seconds to do stuff otherwise they're off doing something you know you really have a problem. And I think he's really punched a hole in this whole idea that he can create this. James Torr is amazing. I had him on, I don't know, maybe six or eight months ago to talk about the origin of life.

And he is thoughtful and entertaining and research and just, he's pretty remarkable. So last question for you, if you're going to tell somebody who's a Christian who wants to reach out to tell somebody who's a Christian who wants to reach out to a friend who's a Hindu, I'm curious what you would say. And while I set this up, I'm wondering if you would separate the engineering part from you and say, well, if somebody is an engineer, talk to him this way. If somebody is a Hindu, talk to him this way.

How would you relate some of those? because if i'm thinking about your story some of the things people did is there was a smart christian got your attention somebody gave you a more than a carpenter case for christ gave you time to really process this uh that's kind of how your story seemed to unfold as you described it. How would you invite others to talk or have conversations with their friends who are Hindus based on your experience and maybe your relationships today? Right. So I would, one, not argue, right? Because that will not get us anywhere. And two, maybe instead of telling them the answer ask them some questions where do they stand what do they believe right why do they believe what they believe

right and if you have some context to where they're coming from and it may open up some opportunity to say what questions do they have in their mind right and then start from there i think excuse me i don't think there's a single answer to how you address everyone, but listening to them and being intentional about having that conversation and realizing it may take four years like it did me and it's not a 30-minute coffee conversation. I think that that would make a difference. I love it. That's great advice.

We're going to put a link below, but where can people find your book? It's on Amazon. It's called Let Me Into Heaven. It's under my pseudonym, which is GVs. So, you know, look it up there or you can visit my website, letmeintoheaven.com and, you know, feel free to connect and we'll have conversations i'm not looking to sell anything except perhaps the book right my goal is to be able to be a resource

for people and connect and have conversations so on your website people can submit conversations or you have public dialogue and you engage people individually yes good yes and they'll find my twitter handles and other things you know they prefer social media instagram all of those things and so uh but instead of giving everything you know my website is a good starting point well that's amazing i get i get flooded and i literally just only have the resources to respond and just kind of do as i can so i love that that's important to you i love you on engageage People. So Let Me Into Heaven is the book. LetMeIntoHeaven.com is where you engage people. If you

have follow-up questions for Ganesh about his beliefs about Jesus and prophecy, about intelligent design, about his story, I know he'll do his best to get back to you. Thank you for coming on. This is so interesting. I've been looking forward to this since you reached out to me sometime in the past. I did not know that More Than a Carpenter was a piece of it. This is so interesting. I've been looking forward to this since you reached out to me sometime in the past. I did not know that More Than A Carpenter was a piece of it. That's really encouraging. I'm going to see my dad in a few days. I will share that with him.

That's just humbling. Please thank him for me and the evidence that demands a verdict. What beautiful words, right? Because it forces you to think of saying, it's not just evidence, but I got to do something with this. And he was a brilliant man as you are. So, you know, to me, today is a dream come true to be able to be here with someone who helped me on this journey.

So thank you, Sean. And thank you to your dad as well. Well, you're way too kind. Those of you watching, make sure you hit subscribe. One of the things we're doing here is I want to find people with just interesting stories to faith from different backgrounds. And you just heard one today. Make sure you check out his book, but make sure you hit subscribe so you can have

notifications of other similar stories that we have coming up. We've got some exciting ones happening here in 2024. And if you thought about studying apologetics, I teach at Biola University. It is the top rated distance apologetics program in the world. I'm not sure if we have students in India, Ganesh, but we have students in Africa, in Asia, in Europe, all around the world. And you can do it fully by distance. I teach classes on the resurrection,

the problem of evil. We have classes on intelligent design. Information is below. If you have an undergrad degree, you could potentially qualify to be in the program. Check it out. Think about joining me here at Biola.

Thank you, Ganesh. May God bless your work, your family, and this book. Thank you.