The Sean McDowell Show - The Scientific Evidence for God: A NEW Documentary

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

What would make a committed, aggressive atheist become a follower of Jesus and then personally fund a documentary laying out the evidence for God? In today’s conversation, Michael Ray Lewis shares his remarkable journey from rejecting Christianity, mocking believers and making horror films to encountering evidence he could no longer ignore. Since then he's now made a documentary about the evidence for Christianity. Documentary: https://universedesigned.com/ *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [smdcertdisc] for 25% 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://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Want to keep God's word with you wherever you go? The King James Bible Study KJV app by Salem Media makes it easier to read, study, share, and pray daily with a timeless KJV translation. Enjoy features like offline access, audio Bible listening, smart search, and tools to highlight bookmark and take notes, all designed to keep your Bible studies simple and organize. Best of all, it's free to download in the Google Play Store. Grow in your faith every day. Search for King James Bible Study, KJV, and download the app today. I gravitated towards atheism because I became interested in space. It became interested in science and all the things that kind of encompassed that.

Just from the slogans and things that I were hearing about Christianity, I thought there was no good reason to believe it. You said I didn't want it to be true. Tell me about that. I said, I can't believe in a God who could send me to an eternal punishment just because I have a little bit of trouble believing in him. Looking back at it, it came down to the fact that I just, I wanted to be. in control. And if it's actually true, then I'm not in control of anything. And I think in my mind,

I just, I wanted to keep that control over my life. That's where the gravity of the gospel started to sink in. That's when I understood, this isn't just about throwing my hands up and saying, Jesus, what's next? This is more, I need to fully commit myself. I need to turn, repent, and fully commit myself to Jesus. Why would a committed, aggressive atheist, become a follower of Jesus, and then personally make and fund a stunning documentary laying out the evidence for God. This is a question that I have, and I hope you do too now as well for our guest today, Michael Ray Lewis. Michael, good to see you again. Thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me, Sean. Yeah, so I want to talk about this documentary, which I think is remarkable, and I'm

humble to be a part of. One of the things I do in this channel is just try to bring resources to my audience to equip and motivate and challenge them. And you have done that 100% with this documentary. But let's start with your story. Tell us the backstory, I guess of how you became an atheist, and then down the road we'll get to what shifted. No, that sounds good. So in my home, when I grew up with my family, all of my family said that they believed in God. And they all had Bibles under their beds, but we never talked about God, definitely never talked about Jesus, never read the Bible. And so over time, as I got older, I was never given any good reason to believe it anyways. And so I gravitated towards atheism because I became interested in space.

I became interested in science and all the things that kind of encompassed that. And just from the slogans and things that I were hearing about Christianity, I thought there was no good reason to believe it. And then on top of that, the only real interactions I had with Christians or what I thought were Christians were the ones on the street corners yelling at me that I'm going to hell. And that was not something I wanted to be a part of. And so I think I started out. You don't, you don't mean be a part of hell. You mean be a part of a group that would yell at people in that fashion. Exactly. I didn't want anything to do with those Christians. And so naturally, I just adopted atheism. I mean, it was the best option out on and I, but over time, the more I kind of

became committed to it, the more aggressive I became towards Christians. The more I would almost enjoy hitting them with hard questions or poking fun at their belief systems. I would watch documentaries making fun of Christianity. There was one by Bill Maher. I can't remember the title of it. Religious, right? Yes, that was it. I watched that and I saw how he went around town and was just just the Christians weren't able to give him any good answers, and he was just poking holes in their belief systems. And then the other documentary I watched was zeitgeist, showing that Jesus wasn't an actual historical figure. He was just a myth that was copied by all these other ancient myths. And those were very persuasive to me.

And I think I just took things at face value. And so as I became an atheist, I adopted that worldview, and it wasn't until years, later. I ended up meeting my now wife and we got married and she came to me. And just to kind of put this in perspective, she did grow up in the church. She was a believer when she was younger, but she was pulled away by a lot of her friends. And of course, I pulled her away when we started dating as well. But she comes home to me one day and she says, I feel like Jesus is calling me back. And I'm like, that means I've got to deal with all this again. So I was like, all right, you know what? I'll give it a second chance. I'll go to a church with you. And I remember we walked into the church.

Okay. Hey, hey. Can I jump in right now? Sure. I feel like this is the part where you become a Christian. I want to know more about this atheism journey first. Oh yeah. Absolutely. So were you, how old were you when you would have kind of said, you know what? I think I'm an atheist. Like what stage were you in life? I would probably say early 20s. I would say early 20s. early 20s and it sounds like it was more of a default adoption than it was a thought reasoned entrance into here's why i'm an atheist and the evidence lines up with it at the time i thought i was putting a lot of thought into it but looking back at it today no i was not well thought out it was more of an adopted belief system that i just i thought looked more appealing than anything else very interesting okay so what did it look like when you said you got to look like when you said you got to

little bit more aggressive in your beliefs where you're going into chat rooms where you making videos were you looking for christians to do this what did that look like for you to be an evangelist for atheism i wouldn't necessarily call myself an evangelist for atheism because i wasn't going on social media and debating people but what i would do is that when i would have conversations with people anytime i heard the word christian that was my cue that was my cue to bring up something or like i'm going to have a conversation with this guy and that's when i would try to debate them and try to pull holes in their belief systems. And so while I wasn't out there doing it actively, I was doing it within conversations that

I was having. And I think that's part of when I say it wasn't completely well thought out. I mean, atheism in general wasn't like my main priority. I had other things in my life that were going on that were, I would consider my priority as far as filmmaking was a big part of it. Okay. Because around this time, this is when I started making. I grew up obsessed with horror films.

And so as I got older and more into the film industry, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to make films that could scare people. And so my priority in life in that moment wasn't necessarily the atheism. It was more of the filmmaking and trying to figure out a way to put together films that could be stylistic way of scaring people. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to create horror films. So there's such a different Christian take on horror films. Some have a more concerted position.

You can never watch them. You should never watch them. But there's people like Brian Gadaba, who's a philosopher and a filmmaker. He made a film to End All Wars with Kiefer Sutherland, an excellent filmmaker. And in his book, Hollywood World Views, he talks about how he really likes horror films in the sense that they're one of the genres that still has real right. and wrong built into it. There's justice and injustice. There's such a thing as evil. And it challenges kind of the relativistic notion of our age. Did that ever cross your mind that I'm like an atheist,

but I like horror films that imply justice, right and wrong and evil, that there might be good behind it, or did that just never really occur to you? It never occurred to me because so growing up when I was younger, I mean, we would do seances and we would do seances and we would go to haunted houses and we would do all the things that we love to scare each other. But I never actually believed any of them. I kind of kept my atheism. I thought it was all nonsense. There were no ghost. These were just things that scared people. And so when it came to the filmmaking aspect of it, I didn't have that mindset of right and wrong and the concept of all of that. I just was obsessed with trying to create something. And horror films were the easiest thing to do as well.

I mean, you could do a horror film on a super low budget. And that's what I kind of gravitated towards. But as I became, well, we'll wait until I get to a believer. And you can ask more questions about that. All right. So I just have more questions. An atheist doing seances. I mean, what, like, how did you do them?

When did you do them? Was it just fun? Like, tell me about that. Was there a part of you that just had a little bit of a fear? There might be a supernatural realm or you literally thought it was all fairy tale. Oh, no. When I was, this all started, I would probably say when I was about nine years old. So it was terrifying at first.

And there were some things that I saw and heard that scared the crap out of me. And this was just with friends and family that would come over. They all knew how to do it. And I was just kind of part of the group. And as I got older, though, and we started really kind of becoming obsessed with it. And we would do more, more seances. But it was more of like a family get-together thing. Like, this is what we do.

When our families get together, we hang out, we drink, and then at the end of the night, it's time to do a seance. And so this was, it was just one of the fun things that we do. Do that and then watch horror films. That was part of it as well. But yeah, I mean, towards the beginning, yeah, I was terrified. Looking back, I kind of came up with logical responses to what happened and what I saw. But at the beginning, I believed it all. I thought it was scary.

And then as I got older and became an atheist and kind of gravitated towards atheism, I was like, well, that was nonsense, but I liked scaring people anyway. So I'm going to continue to do it through film. Looking back now, do you think there were certain things within the seances that you're like, you know what? There was legitimate, supernatural or demonic activity taking place. And I should have seen that and should not have explained it away. Or do you view it differently? No, today, looking back at it, some of it, I could explain. away, but there are other instances and things that I saw that absolutely like something was there.

And even today as a Christian, I still don't understand how all of that works as far as like the demonic realm and how all that actually operates. But some of the things I saw, yeah, I think something was absolutely happening there. And today, looking back at it, it's, I can't believe it didn't go worse than it did. And so, yeah, it's, looking back, I think something was really happening. Okay, so you're lower 20s and you're an aggressive, committed atheist, but more committed to like making horror films and creating your career. You weren't evangelists, but when opportunities came up, you went after Christians.

Now, I just have one more question before we shift your transition. How did you go after Christian? I guess there's two questions. How did you go after Christian? like what things did you go after? And did you encounter any thoughtful Christians? What was the typical kind of response you would get from Christians when that happened? Well, I would hit them with the main big slogan question.

So I would hit you can't have a good God with the existence of evil. I would say evolution has disproven Christianity. I was saying you can't prove that God exists. You can't have, there's no scientific proof for God. And so I would say all the typical things that you would hear from an atheist. But as far as responses, I would either get people who would tell me, well, I'm not, I'm not going to push anything on you. So it's okay just to kind of believe what you want to believe. I would run into those.

Or I would just run into ones that were defensive and would try to just dispute what I was saying, not give reasons for it, but just saying, no, that's wrong. That's not how it is. God created the universe. Evolution is false. But I never ran into anyone who was able to give me a good reason. Looking back out of it, it's sad that no one was able to, no one was equipped to respond to me. And later on in my atheism, once, we'll continue that with my story in a minute. But yeah, I would say that there was not one person out there that was able to respond to any of the objections I had.

That's just heartbreaking to me. I don't want to harp on this too much, but I do want viewers and listeners to know this is the kind of stuff that motivates me day and night when I hear stories like this. And I don't turn around and chide the church. It's the bride of Christ. People are busy. They have other things to do. I found that oftentimes people start caring about apologetics when a loved one or themselves have questions. Maybe your questions and challenges in ways you don't know made people go. back and start studying apologetics. Who knows? But the heart of my ministry is to try to wake people up and go, no, you got to be ready before somebody like Michael when he's 22-year-old comes knocking. Then you can respond differently. All right. With that said, let's come back to your story. So you said you became an atheist or identified really lower 20s. How old are you now you're married when you say your wife brings you to church and how long had you been married at that stage? So she actually brought me to church just a little while before we got married. Okay.

This was, I get my story wrong sometimes, but it's actually, it was actually a little bit before because it was in 2013 when she first came to me with that statement that she said, I feel like Jesus is calling me back. And I remember when she took me to the church, one of the things she wanted us to go to in the church was their marriage class because this was getting ready for marriage. And I went to the class and I was like, sure, I mean, I'll see. And I remember thinking, I was like, oh, there's some good principles here. Yeah, this stuff kind of makes sense.

But we got married and it wasn't really until after we were married when my journey officially started, though. Because when I was hitting her with the hard questions that I was hitting every other question with, she wasn't backing down. Even though she didn't know the answers, she still was adamant that it was true. And she even went to the extent of buying me a Bible, writing my name in it, and giving it to me. And I remember I opened the Bible. I looked through it on my six days in Genesis. This is nonsense. Close the Bible and pushed it away.

But there was one particular moment that really piqued my curiosity and got me to take a deeper look at all this Christian stuff. And it was a YouTube video that popped up on my feed by Hugh Ross going over his perspective of the creation day. days. And that one video, after I finished it, I said, you know, maybe there is something to this. And so I kind of went, and then I started looking through Genesis again in light of what he had covered from that interpretation or the older interpretation of scripture. And it all started to kind of line up. And I'm like, okay, well, then now I'm going to, I'm curious. So I kind of went from a state of like aggressiveness towards Christianity. I softened up, went to the church with my wife. Looking for a simple way to stay rooted in God's Word every day. The Daily Bible Devotion app by Salem Media gives you morning and evening devotionals designed to encourage, inspire, and keep you connected with scripture. Plus, you'll enjoy Daily Bible trivia and humor, a fun way to learn and share a smile while growing in your faith.

Get the Daily Bible Devotion app for free on both iOS and Android. Start and end your day with God's Word. Search for the Daily Bible Devotion app in the App Store or Google Play Store, and download it today. But then I kind of, I started to get really curious. Okay, let me jump in you. How old are you when this curious stage starts? I was 26, around 26.

Okay, so about four years after saying you're an atheist, leave that out. Now your attention has been gotten and you're curiously seeking more evidence and you're married at this stage. Exactly. Okay, keep going. Yeah. Okay.

And then once I really started to become curious, that's when I started buying books. Now you're investing money. Let's go. Right. And keep in mind, prior to this, I had never finished a book my entire life. I went through high school. I would watch the movies of the books that they were reading just to kind of slide by to pass the tests.

And I never, I just didn't like to read. I liked film. I like cinema. I like movies. Yeah. But I don't even know how many books I went through through this period. This was about a three-year journey. from the moment that she said that statement to the moment I gave my life to Christ,

and I read Timothy Keller's reasons for God. I went through Hugh Ross's book, Why the Universe is the way it is, a matter of days. I went through you guys' book, More Than a Carpenter. There were just one after another, and I realized that there are a lot of good arguments out there. There's a lot of evidence that shows that God exists. and it was at the end of the three-year journey after I had kind of been looking into all of this. Then I started asking my wife questions about angels and demons and stuff in Scripture. And she finally was like, you know, I don't know.

I don't know how to answer the questions you're trying to ask me. But my mom has a friend in the family that you can go and have a conversation with. He's a theologian. I said, okay, great. So I wrote down five pages full of questions. I'm just ready to handle this guy. I walked in. Okay.

I'm so sorry. I'm really trying. So at this stage, it sounds like you believe God exists. You're leaning towards the Christian God, but there's theological and biblical barriers before you'd make that commitment. Am I understanding where you're at? You're exactly right. Okay. Yeah. And I had looked through other religions and belief systems at this point, too. It was a lot of digging in during that three years. But once I walk in the door to talk with this theologian, I remember I just went down the list. And I was asking him a question. and a question. I remember specifically every question he went to the scriptures and he was answering it using the scriptures. And at the end of the conversation, I went through the last question and he looked up at me and he said, so do you believe it? Wow. I'm thinking to myself, well, I don't have any more objections at this point. And I said, yeah, I think so. But it didn't really sink in at that moment. It was actually the drive home on the way home.

is when I really thought to myself, I actually think that this is true. So why don't I just believe it? And that's when I realized it wasn't the evidence that was holding me back. It was the fact that I didn't want it to be true. And when I realized that, I thought to myself, well, that's not a good reason.

And so I said, all right, Jesus, what's next? And that was me giving my life to Christ. And I don't normally talk about this part of it because this is the experiential part, and I tend to lean more towards the evidential base for belief. However, I did have an experience in that moment as well. It was almost like I had a fog over my mind, my entire life, and it was like the fog finally left, and I could finally see reality for the way that it actually is, which is ironic because as an atheist, I always looked at Christians as being narrow-minded.

but I realized in that moment I was being narrow-minded as an atheist. And I went from a state of believing that it's true to knowing that it's true. And from then on, then my journey went to trying to help others see the evidence that convinced me that it was true. You know, if Christianity is true, then atheists are narrow-minded because they only believe in material things or things. that spawn out of or depend upon material things. So it seemed to me a Christian wouldn't be narrow mind and a Christian would be gollable and just believe in things that aren't evidenced. So you can make a critique on either side, but you're right.

The question is what is reality and where does the evidence point? Now, I've got to lean into a couple things you said. You said I didn't want it to be true. Tell me about that. So one of the biggest objections that I had, and I even expressed this to my wife, I said, I can't believe in a God

who could send me to an eternal punishment just because I have a little bit of trouble believing in him. So that was one of my main objections, but my other reason for not wanting it to be true is because I didn't want to be held accountable to anybody. I want to be in control of my own life. I want to do what I want to do. And there's a lot of rules and things in my mind

that you had to adopt when giving your life or becoming a Christian. And then even the title itself like revulsed me. I didn't like the title Christian just because I knew what kind of baggage came with that. But ultimately, I think looking back at it, it came down to the fact that I just, I wanted to be in control. And if it's actually true, then I'm not in control of anything. And I think in my mind, I just wanted to keep that control over my life. And so this isn't you just looking back at that moment you really realized, oh, I'm giving up control. Like that was, you had full awareness of that in the moment.

Oh, yeah. Because I realized like this is actually true. That means I need to give my life to Christ. And everything he claimed about himself is true. Everything he says about reality is true. And this whole time I was scared to relinquish that control. And I think afterwards, though, when I did give my life to Christ, it was like the freest feeling ever.

It was not as though like releasing that control in my life, it was a freeing feeling. And then I just became extremely excited, extremely curious, because now that I know all of this is true, I want to know more about it. I want to know more about him. And that's when I really started to just dive into the scriptures and read and study and become more involved with the church and learn as much as I can and study apologetics and try to be able to defend my faith and have conversations with people. And it was actually funny because when I gave my life to Christ, even though I had those conversations with Christians that couldn't give me good responses.

Yeah. In my mind, this was just kind of the process everybody took. people follow the evidence. They gave their life to Jesus and then they started their journey. But after giving my life to Christ and going to the church, I realized that 90% of believers, that wasn't the case. They had grown up in the church. This is just kind of what they believed their entire life. They never seemed to really question it. I'm sure they had objections, but they never had the kind of doubts that I had. And so because of that, they, had no idea what apologetics even was. They had no idea there was an entire ministry of defending the

faith. And so I went to the pastor and I said, what like what can we do to kind of help this? And he said, why don't you start an apologetic study? And so then I started equipping people in the church and helping them to defend their faith. So that's when he became a real evangelist, by the way, as opposed to when you were an atheist, not being intentional about it. And good for your pastor, by the way, we can talk about people not being able to defend the faith. But your pastor understood, here's someone with a passion, here's somebody with an ability. I want to set them free and set them up for success. That's exactly the right response.

So kudos to that pastor. If he hears this and sees this, way to go, keep it up. Good for you. Tell me a little bit. Oh, go ahead. I was going to say, what's funny about that interaction with my pastor, when I first, I was actually going to leave the church prior because our church didn't offer any kind of apologetic studies. And I wanted to go and try to figure out like, I wanted to join a class and

learn more about it and be a part of a church that offered that. He was actually the one who pulled me into his office and said, look, we don't have anyone that can do it, but why don't you do it? Oh, I love it. And so it was actually, he is the one who kind of started that whole process. So I just want to throw that in there. And by the way, you know, we have, you know, I teach in a master's an apologizes program and our graduates are always looking for ways to use apologetics. And one mistake people can make is they get so aggressive, they just move into a church like everything needs to stop and just do apologetics. And I'm like, I love your passion, but that's not going to help. The other mistake is just say, well, they don't do apologetics. I'm leaving.

And I go, okay, see if there's an openness where you can serve the church. maybe when the pastor does a message, you're able to do some research if it's on like the Exodus or some other issue. Maybe you can be available to counsel when people have questions, like this theologian answered your questions. Maybe you can sponsor a conference. Maybe you can set up a group. Like find a problem and meet it in a way that serves the church. I'm so glad your pastor responded that way. That's gold.

Now, with that said, I want to tell me a little bit more about when you said you looked into other religions, what did that entail? Because I can imagine a skeptic saying, Michael, you had at least a Bible under your bed, not under your pillow growing up, given that there were seances, but under your bed growing up. You're in a Christian society. You're married to someone who's a Christian. There's such built-in incentive to be a Christian as opposed to a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Jehovah's Witness, a Muslim, New Age, you name it. what did that look like to consider other religions for you? Well, honestly, I was kind of hoping that one of the other religions were the one that were true.

Really? Whenever I was looking at because as an atheist, when I was looking at it, like, I really did not like Christianity. I didn't like Christians. I didn't want to adopt that title. And so, but after watching that video, if you were off going over like just the reality, like there must be a God. that's when I was like, well, let's go see what everybody else says about it. But there's so many flaws in all of the other belief systems that it didn't take long for me to come back to Christianity. Because there were lots of things that just didn't make sense.

They didn't line up. There were lots of the people who started the belief systems, especially with like Jehovah Witnesses and the Latter-day Saints. Like, none of that seemed to be true. But there was something different about Jesus. Jesus was so much more impactful than any of the other belief systems. And so that's where I kind of lean more towards Christianity and the scriptures themselves as well, just how they really do line up with what we see in nature. And the compatibility of it, I think, is what really started to kind of gravitate me towards it.

So I didn't spend a whole lot of time on other belief systems because it was pretty quick that I could find errors or flaws in them. Do you still have that five pages of questions, or did you throw that out? I don't have it anymore. That'd be such a good show to just walk through. I imagine you could remember a lot of them. That would be a cool relic to have. Like, I don't think you mentioned more than Carpenter earlier.

I don't think my dad, I haven't been able to find. He wrote that over like a few hours on legal notepads in a McDonald's in Chicago. Never dreaming it'd be like 30 million in print worldwide. I wish he just had that legal pad. That would be incredible. But he doesn't. Nonetheless, so, okay, you don't have that. But I imagine you can remember what quite a few of those questions were. And I'm guessing one of them is about hell that you kind of referenced earlier. So how would you answer the idea that a loving God could send somebody to hell for just not believing in him? Yeah, that was honestly, I think that's probably the main one for a lot of people. I think a lot of people look at Christianity and people out there trying to tell them about Jesus and they say, look, I mean, if God loves me, he's not going to send me to an eternal punishment. I'm not a bad guy. I'm all right. And just because I have a little bit of trouble believing it, that's nonsense.

But what I realized, looking back at my objection there, is that I didn't fully understand the gospel. I mean, I had heard the repent and believe language all the time, but it didn't really kind of, it didn't really sink in. I knew what the gospel was, but I didn't know, I didn't understand it properly. And the reality is that God isn't sending us anywhere. We are already destined for there, and Jesus is standing right in front of you with his hand wide open, and all you have to do is take his hand. and rather than us taking his hand, we push it away, turn her back, and go a different direction. And so it's not as though it has to do with just a little bit of trouble belief in him. It's the fact that the evidence is clear if you'll take a second look at it, if you'll dig deep enough, because I didn't dig deep enough before, I would base my entire worldview on slogans that I had heard.

but if you take a second look and you really dig into the evidence it really is evident it's evident that god exists and it's evident that there's there's this disconnect with us right where we're separated from him and he's built a bridge through jesus and he's standing right there and all you have to do is take his hand it's it's as simple as that and yet we don't want to we push it away and we want to go our own direction i'm glad that you you focused on this being such a big issue. I would encourage people as strongly as I can. There's an article by Clay Jones, who's written books on the problem of evil. He has a book coming out soon on suffering. Want to keep God's word with you wherever you go? The King James Bible study KJV app by Salem Media

makes it easy to read, study, share, and pray daily with a timeless KJV translation. Enjoy features like offline access, audio Bible listening, smart search, and tools to highlight bookmark and take notes, all designed to keep your Bible studies simple and organized. Best of all, it's free to download in the Google Play Store. Growing your faith every day. Search for King James Bible Study, KJV, and download the app today. And he talks about he did a deep dive on human nature in the 20th century. How flawed and broken and inclined all of us are towards evil.

It's not a few deranged individuals. But he walks through and says when people have the pressure and the opportunity, we do as a whole evil thing. courage and doing right is actually more the exception. It's an article called We Don't Take Human Evil Seriously Enough. I cannot more strongly recommend people to read that because we can't understand hell until we have an accurate understanding of the holiness of God and also human depravity.

If we think God senses to hell because we got the wrong answer on a test, we completely misunderstand God's character. and don't have an accurate understanding of our own sinfulness. So let me ask you this. You didn't want Christianity to be true. You recognized you didn't want to give over your life. You were intellectually convinced that it was true.

What did it take for you to be like, okay, I'm a sinner. I need to repent, invite Christ in. Like, what did it take? And was that just that same day? Or when did that happen as compared to the conversation with this theologian? You know, this is actually where I'm really curious about my conversion and the process of it. Because on that car ride, that realization, in that moment, it was realizing that I didn't want to give my life to Jesus because I, that it wasn't based on the evidence. It's that realization that was what made me kind of throw my hands up and said, all right, Jesus, what's next?

But when I came home that night, and my wife was sitting there and she's like kind of anticipating what's happening. And I basically was like, yeah, I'm a believer. I believe it's true. And it was immediately after that, I can't remember if it was her or someone else, but I think that's where the gravity of the gospel started to sink in. And that's when I understood this isn't just about throwing my hands up and saying, Jesus, what's next? this is more, I need to fully commit myself to to Jesus. I need to turn, repent, and fully commit myself to Jesus. And so it was a gradual kind of process.

And so I always wonder, like, was my conversion that day on the car ride home? Or was my conversion the day of the understanding and realizing and grasping the gospel? Because experientially, it was that car ride. but it was but maybe that's when he was doing something in my heart that really turned the light on for me and helped me to really start to be able to absorb the gospel and soften my heart in a way that it really sunk in for the first time you know the good news is we don't have to perfectly answer that question my story is obviously different than yours grown up in a Christian home with an apologist evangelist father learning this stuff you know

as early as it was. But having moments of like praying the prayer at camp, moments of God's grace. Like did I really become a believer in college when I really understood the depth of my own need for God and not a believer before? Like, I have a hard time believing that. I think it was in age-appropriate ways it made sense to me at different times. But whether or not I can solve that, I like the fact that you're saying, you know what, even though I'm a believer, I still have some questions.

I don't have it all figured out. that's totally okay to do. I want people to see that. That now it's not like, oh, I got it all figured out and I believe in God. No. Sometimes when I studied my work on the apostles, I walked away more confident, but also with more questions I didn't even know existed. But I'm okay living with those questions because I have a deeper confidence that it's true. And I know God is okay with my questions.

Do you have doubts now that you're a belief? Do you have questions and how, if so, how do you process them? Or do you just have the gift of faith, which some of my friends have? No, I still have doubts all the time. And what's amazing, though, is that's why I love Christianity because it's like no matter what doubt you come up with, all you got to do is just lay it all out. Because each individual doubt that you have, it all depends on what its impact is on the cumulative case of Christianity. because there are so many good reasons. There are so many good arguments.

There's so much evidence out there that those doubts that you have, most of them you'll be able to find answers to. Some of them we won't, like you were saying. Some of these questions that we have, we will just never know until we're with him. But it's to lean into the doubts and try to investigate them and then try to decide, is this particular doubt something that blows the case?

is this something that tears down all of those other arguments? And I would say absolutely not. There's just too much. There really is too much. And I always tell this when I'm talking to non-believers as well, because they'll start asking me about other belief systems and other worldviews. And I'm like, just search. Like, I'm confident that if you're genuinely seeking truth,

you're going to come to Christianity because it really is the best explanation. And so if you're open and honest with yourself and genuine with yourself, then I'm confident you're going to land where you need to land. Amen to that. And by the way, I encourage people all the time with this. When you hear an objection, ask how central is this? Is it first tier? Second, third, fourth. So something like contradictions in the Bible.

If there were a genuine contradiction, I would not chuck my faith. It'd make me have to rethink what I believe about inerrancy. and maybe canonicity. I mean, it would raise important questions. I'm not undermining that or what's meant by it being the word of God, but that would not overturn my faith. If I believed evolution in terms of common descent, not this purely materialistic story were true. I would not give up my faith. That would make me rethink, okay, did I understand Genesis correctly? And why did God set up the world this way? What do we do with the fall historical Adam? Like, those are all very important questions. What would make me give up my faith is something like finding a better explanation for

the resurrection of Jesus. And this is what Michael Conna has said many times is like if Jesus has risen from the grave, it's game set match. That is the root of my faith. And I keep it there. So when people hear questions, the first thought I always say is just realize you're not the first one who's had this question. I guarantee you somebody's thought about it and written at least a response you could investigate and see if it's reasonable or not. But second, ask how central is this question. Now, one last question before we shift. Oh, you know what? I have a couple for you. Is there any other big question from that five-page list that you went to theologian that you had answered that you want to put out there because you suspect maybe somebody else is wrestling

with that question or was hell really just the big one you want to focus on? Hell was the big one. The other ones were trying to understand what the scriptures actually said. So I had a lot of questions about the LGBT community and Jesus' response to all of that. I had questions about angels and demons and how does all that make sense. I had questions about the miracles in scripture and the crazy stuff that happened. in there that just seems impossible. And so those were the main ones that I would bring up. I can't remember because it was such a weird experience.

I remember asking the questions. And looking back at it today, it's almost like, if it makes any sense, it's crazy today thinking about it. But looking back at it today, it was almost like it was Jesus sitting there answer the questions for me. Like, I remember that the mind I was in, the mindset I was in was kind of like really curious. And I was just trying to listen to what he was saying when at the beginning of it, I was ready to go in more skeptical.

But something was moving in me while he was answering the questions. And so even looking back at it today, I can't remember exactly what all the questions were. I just remembered that it was all the questions that I had written down. And towards the end of it, that one moment is what I remember, and looking up at me and asking me if I believe that it's true. That was the one that really stuck out with me. That's amazing. I love that moment for you and that you're able to freely ask those questions. Again, good for that theologian and for the pastor responding the way that he did. Your conversion seems to match a larger shift in the conversation about God. So from the new atheists, which in many ways, you're an evangelist, but you seem to buy some of their arguments, advance their arguments in the attitude in which many of the new atheists seem to.

to propagate their ideas. And now not only are the new atheists dead, like that movement is long gone, it's like every few weeks we hear a new story of somebody discovering God. The latest book I got is taking religion seriously by Harvard-trained, intellectual, I think in his 80s, Charles Murray.

I'm not quite sure he's in the Christian faith or not. I couldn't totally tell, but he's awfully close to it. Do you think the God conversation is shifting? And how do you see your journey kind of in light of that? I think it is. And I think I'm kind of right in the middle of it since becoming a believer. Because when I first started having conversations with non-believers, it was a little bit more, felt more like a debate. But today, when I have conversations with people, 90% of the people I have conversations with are really open.

to telling me their worldviews, having conversations with you about it. They seem to be genuinely interested in hearing what you have to say. And so, yeah, I couldn't explain what's going on, but I do start to see some kind of shift with, and that's one of the reasons, honestly, why I wanted to release the movie is as quickly as I'm doing it, because something's happening right now. And I think it's a really good time when people are really starting to take. take a second look and starting to be curious about this, I think it's just a perfect time for something like that to be released.

Well, this is a perfect segue to talk about the documentary. And by the way, I think it was three years ago. You came to my house and interviewed me. And then maybe, I don't know, a year, 18 months ago, you came back to Southern California and we went to the beach to get a little bit of B-roll to kind of tell the story of the film. But I want people to know a couple things. Number one, you didn't pay me or any of the other contributions. contributors, anything for being in the film. I want to confirm. Is that right? You didn't pay anybody, anything. People volunteered their time.

Everyone volunteered. I actually, when I first decided I was going to make it, I didn't know what I was getting myself into because I was, my idea was like, I'm going to go find a bunch of people who used to be atheist and give their testimony of how they came to faith through the evidence. Sure. And, but I was like, you know, I'm going to, my wife said, why don't you just try to send emails out to people? And so I was like, okay, start grabbing the books off my shelf. sent one to Frank Turrick, sent one to Hugh Ross, sent one to you. And I would just send all these emails back. And then one after another, they would respond and say yes, yes. And so I put plane tickets on a credit card and I went and flew and got interviews. But yeah, no one charged me for anything. The only thing I had to pay for was the flights.

But it was really amazing, especially when I went to go interview Hugh Ross, because he was that main one that kind of transitioned everything for me. I bet. And so that was just an amazing. experience to be able to see him in person and interview him and all of you guys and and basically ask all the hard questions I had as an atheist. Because originally I had no script or story. Originally, I just knew that I was able to get the interviews. So I flew out and just made the list of all my hard questions, knew the apologist that would answer each one better. And then I

would just hit all the questions all down the list. Now, by the way, this is not a paid interview or advertisement at all. I recently had John Stone Street on to talk about the truth rising documentary that folks in the family and the Colson Center put together. One of the things I want to do in this channel is just bring resources to my audience, believer or not, that I think are good quality resources they should take advantage of. And this is one of them. Now, you said you put it on a credit card. Part of me goes, wow, what an act of faith. The other part of me goes, Are you crazy and losing your mind? And did your wife sign up with this?

Because there's a balance between faith and between foolishness, right? Oh, yeah. So tell me a little bit about making that decision. Like the first time you're like, okay, I'm actually putting this on my credit card. And I don't even know how I'm going to pay for this. What was that process like? I mean, it was, I think it was more excitement, the fact that I actually got the interviews. To be honest, it was like, all right, this is going to happen.

this is going to make the move even better than it was going to be so i'm going to go ahead and make the trip um but i think honestly i think it was just it was not the smartest decision but um but it definitely did did pan out shortly after that um i i had created the donation page and tried to ask for donations to kind of help me fund this movie and there was one particular a couple of particular donors that actually knew me as an atheist before and they ended up investing like $70,000, which helped me pay that back, helped me continue to do the rest of the interviews. And so it was it was it was kind of crazy and amazing how everything kind of fell together.

I even noticed too as I hired people out of state to kind of help come and film on set. I didn't plan this out at all, but virtually all of them ended up being Christians. And it was not expected. There was only one atheist in the entire production crew, and he was one of the VFX artist on the film. Still working on him. That's a cool film for him to work on, by the way, and have to see this stuff and wrestle with it. So let's stop for a second. I want people to see the trailer because I want to see the quality.

behind this. I'm not going to promote something here that I don't think it's not only good substance, but also good quality. And this trailer captures it. Any person. Looking for a simple way to stay rooted in God's word every day. The Daily Bible Devotion app by Salem Media gives you morning and evening devotionals designed to encourage, inspire, and keep you connected with scripture. Plus, you'll enjoy daily Bible trivia and humor. a fun way to learn and share a smile while growing in your faith. Get the Daily Bible Devotion app for free on both iOS and Android. Start and end your day with God's Word.

Search for the Daily Bible Devotion app in the App Store or Google Play Store and download it today. Who is truly a thinking person needs to ask themselves the question, why is there something rather than nothing? Scientists believe there's an intelligible answer to that. meaning there is a reason for the way things are. What's that reason? Why do I exist? Why do you exist? Why does the universe exist?

Physicists have discovered fundamental constants and parameters and characteristics that define the universe. Have to assume exacting precise values. If you were to change any one of them, there would either be no universe or no universe that could support life. Our galaxy, our star, our planet. system, the Earth, the Moon. Whatever size scale you choose to look at, you see an overwhelming experimental and observational case that there is of being out there, fine-tuning, intervening. Emmercing myself in the study of biochemical systems, I became deeply impressed with the ingenuity and the elegance and the sophistication of those systems. The living cell is chalkful

of miniature machines that doesn't just rival, but it vastly exceeds our own high-tech digital technology. There must be a creator that's behind life itself. If some kind of a god existed, he would want to reveal himself, at least in some way. We would have to look at all of the different ways people have understood him to do that. I want to know, is there any evidence backing any one of them up as uniquely being true? This guy shows up on the scene and does something remarkable. Whatever it is he did, split history. He's on the pages of the Quran, on the pages of the Howalah Law's sacred writings on the pages of Buddhism, Hinduism, Krishna, New Age. These Romans were skilled in crucifixion.

They knew how to make sure that someone was completely dead. Many of Jesus' disciples had experiences that Jesus had risen from the death. What did they gain? Well, they were beaten, tortured, persecuted, beheaded, stone quipped, and willing for their lives. We really have to put our beliefs to the fire. The reason we believe God is true is because he's the best explanation. for the way things are.

There are truths that can be known, and I want to know what they are. All right, Michael, this comes out December 13th. And in a minute, I'm going to tell people how to find it. But honestly, I hope it's okay if I push you here. How much did it cost to make a film like this? And did you personally lose money on this, if so, how much? We raised and spent about 150,000 on the production. And that is extremely low for films.

Of this quality. The only reason I was able to do it is because all of that budget went to the visual effects, so the 3D effects. It went to the music composition. And it went to all the travel costs and expenses for getting flights and places to stay. and then I was edited most of it myself when we went to film I would be the main guy behind the camera but also asking the interview questions as well and then I hire like a friend or someone on the side to operate the other cameras and out of that about 30,000 of it came out of my pocket in making it which is crazy if you look at any other film production

it's extremely low for the budget that we had but I was able to to make it work and something wonderful came out of it. Okay, so December 13th, this comes out. If people want to look at the website, it's universedesigned.com, not the universe design.com, but we'll link below, universe design.com, and it's going to come out on Apple, Fandango, that's Apple TV, Amazon, Google, kind of the main carriers online, not theaters. but you sent me a link to watch it. I'm going to go buy it myself, or at least rent it,

because I'm assuming that some of the funds will go back to you for your expenses here. If your expenses are covered from this, and I hope people will watch it to at least cover your expenses, but if you get money beyond that, what would you do with it? Oh, I'm all in at this point. I plan to continue to make films that will direct people to apologetics. And so my hope is that it will make enough to make another film, maybe a bigger film, maybe a bigger budget. I have so many ideas.

So one of the biggest critiques I have with Christian films is that a lot of them are trying to be a little bit more gentle in the approach on on the film. So for example, a lot of them may not mention the deity of Jesus or a lot of them may not mention the gospel message. And so those were the one of the two things I wanted to be very explicit about in this particular film because while those films have a purpose and serve a purpose, that's right. There need to also be the films out there that are very explicit so that when people are genuinely open to hearing it, they're getting delivered the gospel message. And so I want continue but on top of that like i said before 90% of the christians i interacted with had no idea what apologetics even was and so i want to try to bring that awareness to look there's there's

good arguments for the existence of god there's good evidence out there there's a ton of great resources out there um this film in particular my hope is that it'll become more of like an evangelistic tool so that when you're out on on the streets having conversations with people maybe you only have five minutes with them, but you could direct them to watch a film. And the film will hopefully direct you to the website. And the website, I've created a resource tab that has all of the scholars in the film,

their ministries, and the hope is to direct people to apologetics and challenge them to do the research themselves and dig deeper into all of this. But yeah, whatever funds the film makes, that's going to go towards another project. I've got lots of ideas.

I don't know if I want to cover exactly what they are yet because I haven't decided on the one. But that's the hope is that it'll make enough money that I can continue to make these films. Well, you don't have to release that here as much as I love to make breaking news. The most important thing now is that we get this film out. We get your expenses covered. And maybe we get some more of a budget, maybe even a significant one, to set you up to make more films like this. And we need it, by the way. So kudos to you for taking a risk, an act of faith to build this.

I can imagine people use it. Like, I'm going to watch it with my 13-year-old son. I want him to see it. I can imagine youth groups using it. I used to teach a Bible class high school for years. I would have used it in my high school class. I can imagine church groups using it. How do you think people can best use this film the way that you made it?

I think watching it. with friends and family that are not believers is a great idea. I think watching it with friends and family that are believers but don't know anything about apologetics. I think it would be a great opportunity to go to your pastor and say, hey, can we do a movie night and screen this movie? I'll even have an option on the website shortly to where we can do church screenings. I think anything you can do to get this in front of people that you've been wanting to have

conversations with and you need something to start the conversation, I think this is a great resource to do that. Good for you. And it's not the kind of thing Christians can be embarrassed about the quality is top-notch. And you interview. Tell us just quickly the full cast of people that you interview. So you're on there, believe it or not. Yeah, that's right.

We have Hugh Ross. I got Stephen Meyer, Mike, Mike LaCona, Alisa Childers. Alan Parr Fuzz, Rana, also from reasons to believe. Let's see here. Who am I missing? Tons of other great people. The top of my head has gone blank

as many times as I've edited this film. No worries. So Hugh Ross. Oh, Frank Turrick is in there as well. Oh, of course. He's the one who contacted some of us early on. I have him in there. And so it's just, it's crazy

the people that I was able to get in. And these were all the people that impacted me. I mean, all of you guys impacted me. The books that you guys wrote are what really started to, I was able to absorb and sink in and answer all the questions that I had. And it's just, it's mind-blowing to me when I talk to someone and they don't know about this ministry. They don't know about apologetics. I can't comprehend it. And so that's why when I was trying, because once I gave my life to Christ, and like I said before,

I was making horror films before this, and then I was struggle, well, can you make a Christian horror film? And then I was trying to figure out what kind of film could I make. And that's when my wife came to me. She's like, you need to do a documentary on the evidence that convinced you it was true. And so that's what I'm doing. I want to help people to become aware of that fact, become aware of apologetics and the resources that are out there. Well, Michael, I haven't met your wife. I'm not even sure I've seen a picture of her.

but she sounds like an iron in your life, bringing you to think about Jesus, encouraging you to take a risk with your resources and hers to build the kingdom. Keep going, my friend. I can't make movies like this. I don't know how, but I can write books. I can do interviews. I can do speaking, some of the other stuff, teaching that I do. But that's why, I would argue, in the kingdom of God, we have different gifts that we can bring the table.

And so, folks, if you're watching this, rent the video, buy the video, go to your universe design.com and just support what Michael is doing. What a great opportunity to reach folks for the kingdom and equip believers. And while you're at it, make sure you hit subscribe. Quite a few of you who watch this video are not even subscribed and you haven't hit those notification button. So make sure you hit that. And if you're like, you know what, I really do want to go deeper. I'm motivated. We would love to have you in our apologetics program and our master's program, top rated online and in person. I teach a handful of those classes myself.

Information is below. We actually have a master's in science and religion alongside our apologetics program, which fits this theme. A lot of people don't know about that. And one more thing is we also have a certificate program. We made it 20 years ago and just updated it, Michael, with some of the top scholars in the world giving lectures. We have assignments where we can just work through

and learn apologetics if you're not ready for masters. But then when it's done, we can funnel that into the Masters is I think maybe one or two credits, something like that got. So with that said, great stuff, Michael. Thanks for coming on. Really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks for having me, Sean. Hey, friends, if you enjoyed this show,

please hit that follow button on your podcast app. Most of you tuning in haven't done this yet. And it makes a huge difference in helping us reach and equip more people and build community. And please consider leaving a podcast, review. Every review helps. Thanks for listening to the Sean McDowell Show, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, where we have on campus and online programs in apologetic, spiritual information, marriage and family, Bible, and so much more. We would love to train you

to more effectively live, teach, and defend the Christian faith today. And we will see you when the next episode drops. Dedicating time each day to spend feeding our minds and our hearts, the truth of God's Word is immensely helpful in our growth as followers of Christ. I'm John Stongy, and each day I host a show called Daily Devotions with Pastor John. On the show, I spend just a few minutes taking an applicational look at one or two verses of Scripture before coming to the Lord in prayer. If you'd like to make a habit of spending more time meditating on the truth of God's Word, you can listen to Daily Devotions with Pastor John at lifea audio.com or on your favorite podcasting app. Thank you.