Breaking Down Walls: A Christian and an Atheist in Conversation

okay friends i think you're in store for a very unlikely conversation my guest today his name is drew and he is known online in the youtube world as the genetically modified skeptic there's a whole story behind how we met and i posted a blog below in the description if you want those details we're not going to go into that right now i think the bottom line is drew and i met over the past couple weeks and both shared some things in common we care about truth we want to know what life is about if about anything we care about the big issues of life but we also care about the kind of conversations we have across political religious isles and i think we both feel like there's a lot of improvement all sides can make in this dialogue so drew i really appreciate you coming on but i have to ask for starters are you a little nervous coming on the youtube channel of a christian apologist i'm i'm not nervous to talk to you um i i felt comfortable in our interactions you've shown me a lot of grace and empathy um and so talking to you is a comfortable place for me to be that said i i am i am admittedly putting a lot of pressure on myself to represent atheists and and myself well in this dialogue i would hate to really be able to reach across the aisle in a way that i think is as effective as coming on your channel and then just leave a bad taste in anybody's mouth so yeah there's there's some apprehension there but i think it'll be okay you know what that's totally fair and i was actually thinking about that ahead of time i thought you know what if this doesn't go exactly like you and i wanted to and we tried like that's okay there's going to be mistakes two steps forward one step back when we try to improve dialogue the step is just having the right heart stepping out and doing it and if we fall short we fall short we'll learn from it and we'll keep moving forward so i think we both share that sentiment to get this right but tell me why did you agree to come on and have this conversation and what do you hope to accomplish in this dialogue i mean like i said after we connected i i didn't get on with you you know like i think it was like a week ago now on on zoom for us to connect and feel like you're trying to trap me with some with some question or do some gotcha or get something out of me that is to expose me or whatever it's you were engaging in good faith you know and and those who are willing to do that there's plenty out there on all sides i'm willing to dialogue with i think the reason i really wanted to come on is because like i've expressed to you privately this may be the first and only time a lot of people that i i know and love really pay much attention to anything that i have to say on this topic and that that's partially because they may think that we're coming on to have this discussion so that you can do kind of a bit of a gotcha and they can be like yeah i knew it um but it's i just appreciate the opportunity to be able to come on and uh have a little bit of support from from a christian friend for the sake of my other christian friends well i i appreciate that i think this is going to be a win-win for both of us i'm impressed maybe i should apologize i didn't know who you were a couple weeks ago i'm somewhat newer to the youtube world and i saw your channel i've been watching a ton of videos this week and it's like wow this guy is young and i mean that in a compliment producing some quality thoughtful stuff uh that made me think about a number of areas so my hope is that this is a win-win for both sides now correct me if i'm wrong you started on youtube around 2017 is that right yeah yeah that's right so four years plus you've done a ton of response videos to other apologists uh some have responded to you have any other christians or apologists reached out to you and how did that go and by the way i'm not asking you to name names i realize how these things can go and actually be negative instead of positive i'm just curious your experience having done this for years how that dialogue's gone for you i mean the main thing that i've had people reach out to me for apologists reach out to me for is the debate which that's that's fine i mean my i do i do do responses uh my content invites challenge uh it's completely appropriate to want to debate uh it's not a slight against me to ask one um sometimes not usually from any any larger apologists but sometimes it's like we're going to debate and it's going to be on your channel which is a little not not optimal um but that's that's the minority uh that said i i've had very very few invitations to do a dialogue rather than a debate um i'm more interested in dialogues because i think that where my skill set lies is more in building building bridges you know that's that's what i i think that i'm decent at and i'd like to be able to do that more uh someone you may know dean meadows of the ministry the daily apologist he is a friend of mine actually met him in real life when he visited austin one time and uh he invited me on to his podcast and it was just to have a dialogue challenging dialogue but but a dialogue and it was it was fantastic i would totally do it again dean is is awesome and as i as i understand he was in he was in your class at biola actually yes yeah he's in at least my resurrection class graduated just told me that he's working on his phd now which is exciting but uh dean big shout out thanks for representing biola apologetics with truth and grace that's what that's what we want to aim for now i'd love to jump into your story and obviously people watch this and you want to share what's sensitive for those relationships but as i watch your videos the way you kind of described your background was very helpful for me to have an understanding of who you are why you do your youtube channel why you responded to me the way that you did but tell me a little bit about kind of your church and or family background when you grew up in as a christian okay so i i have a couple of notes here because i just want to make sure that i don't leave anything uh out here let me see so i think the place to start is that on one side of my family missions work goes back three generations you know full time living on a mission field missions work goes back to my great grandfather and grandmother on one on one side of my family and uh my my parents were living on the mission field before i was born but decided that they wanted to raise their kids in the states uh and but but that said there's always been uh as i don't know a spirit of ministry or the the idea that outreach is uh for the gospel is important uh aside from that i grew up until i was 10 in a southern baptist church but then after that from 10 to about 18 we were in an independent fundamental baptist church and we attended that church because that was the church that had been supporting my family on the mission field since i want to say the 1950s uh and so i mean when we went to this church for the first time i met basically missions family i didn't even know i had going there but it was it was independent fundamental baptist uh the the main thing was obviously having a personal relationship with jesus christ that was not exactly a question in my family it was just something that everyone did my parents modeled that relationship extremely well extremely thoroughly with grace and so naturally taking that on wanting to have a relationship with christ was just yeah it was that's what i always wanted to do the entire purpose of life was to have that relationship and to glorify god and live according to his will so that's you know that's what i did um [Music] growing up i began to have a few theological disagreements and became in college was more of a more southern baptist i'd probably say an independent fundamental baptist but uh just very strong christian roots very strong christian family emphasis on a relationship with christ since the title fundamental is in it would it be fair to say a lot of the theology and background you had could be described as fundamentalist either in attitude or in theology is that fair uh yeah probably so yeah okay okay now one of the things that i hear frequently from some my friends who are either atheists or progressive christians who have deconverted and they'll use that term is that there's kind of a reaction against a fundamentalist background and i don't want to imply that's all it is that's certainly not the spirit of my question but what do you think when you hear that given your experience do you see that trend of a common reaction against a certain kind of fundamentalist background that would be a part of your story i mean i i would say that i think there's because i i have heard that before and i think there's a bit of sampling error going on there i don't think that it is that fundamentalist backgrounds necessarily create uh deconversion or deconstruction like the fundamentalism doesn't necessarily create progressive christians or or atheists more than other traditions i simply think that the people who are more outspoken who are maybe progressive christians or more outspoken who are atheists especially in the u.s tend to be from fundamentalist backgrounds a little bit more so it's not that fundamentalism creates these people these these ideas these journeys it's that fundamentalism and leaving fundamentalism motivates people to speak out to be much more outspoken about it and i i simply think that's because it's it's so different it's a it's a very different world than the rest of the world it really feels like you're stepping into a completely different universe when you come out of fundamentalism and and i also think that in fundamentalism there tends to be some extremely rigid structure um and dogmatism that can be harmful to people that are both in it and outside of it that's fair be interesting to have some real objective data on this um but i think you're right i will say that um i actually think that there is some research suggesting that conservative religious traditions actually have higher uh rates of retention and growth than uh there's a there's a video by dr andrew henry who is a scholar of religious studies he has a channel called religion for breakfast and uh let me see this channel or this video that i'm thinking of is called why strict religions succeeds and yeah it's basically discussing the data that seems to suggest that fundamentalist or just very conservative strict backgrounds tend to retain members more especially when people are as like i said that my family was very actively involved improving their dedication their loyalty to the to the faith or tradition that's interesting i want to check out that data sometimes i found that some of the nuances in these studies between a more fundamentalist and evangelical are not taken into consideration but as a whole you're right when families are very intentional about passing on a faith tradition it tends to be adopted let's shift to your story you tell you have a number of videos describing your deconversion out of the faith but i'm interested do you have an experience of coming into the faith was it just you grew up and everybody believed it or was it there was there this camp moment where you believed in jesus what was that like for you if you remember and by the way people ask me that sometimes i'm like i actually don't remember i just grew up and it made sense i had different moments where i think my faith became much more real to me but i don't remember that exact moment so i'm curious what your experience was no i'm i'm happy to hear you say that because uh the the thing is is that since i am now speaking in front of an audience of i think primarily christians right now it worries me that people will see this story and think that i am encapsulating everything that my christian experience or background was with this answer and then be like oh that's why that's why you're an atheist when really it's much more complicated than anything i could say here but that said i i relate to you when you when you say that my experiences were moments of growth in my faith when it became much more real became more personal and it became more of a personal relationship with christ than it had been previously okay so i i learned how to read when i was like three years old uh and i sat down with uh with a young family member one day and they shared the gospel with me uh and i was about three or four years old and i think the first time i ever acknowledged that there was some kind of salvation plan or something was was then and i prayed that prayer to accept jesus as my personal lord and savior then that said i grew in my faith and it became my own as i got older so if you want to say oh i i don't you know i don't view i never viewed christianity as you become a christian in this just one moment necessarily it's not a magic prayer and i know that you don't you don't believe that either it really you know your christianity is it's a relationship if the relationship is there you're christian but uh i i remember really getting much more personal and serious rededicating my life to christ and actually specifically asking for wisdom in in trying to model my life after the wisdom of king solomon i was about nine when i did that um i was i was one of those kids that was a very very avid learner about the bible um especially about hebrew wisdom literature i've loved that stuff since i was a kid and so rededicating my life at nine but then as a teenager i started getting into more apologetics and my ability to defend my faith became much more real uh the the personal experiences with god the personal aspect of it became much more intense and uh my my faith really stepped into its own and became more independent of leaders or teachers or parents or anything as i got to be about 16 or 17. because at that point i was able to study more on my own i i graduated from high school when i was 16 and was an avid reader and learner in general and so uh yeah me me starting to have some theological disagreements with some people around me i think really exemplified the fact that my faith was really becoming my own around that time so like you it's a series of deepening experiences right i think that's right did you have any did you have an experience where you felt like you know what i realized i need god's grace like that kind of experience i remember the moment it it really hit me was like holy cow i'm the way i describe it i'm much more like the older brother self-righteous finding pride that i don't do the big sins and really realize wow there is some deep pride here in trying to be the good kid and that was a defining kind of experience for me did you have that kind of experience as well yeah um and i i think that the way i would put it is as i got older and just realized how much more infinitely complex life is uh i felt the need to go through that hand in hand with god you know i i didn't see a way forward as a teenager aside from purposely pursuing this relationship so that i can walk in the in the way that god wants me to i mean i didn't really see much of a point in living my life in any particular way that was aside from from god's will that is the most perfect thing i could possibly strive for and i fall short of that all the time uh and yeah so i i definitely say so quickly when you studied apologetics as a teenager did anybody give you books by my dad or by me to read or study i i i probably studied a bit of josh mcdowell okay i don't know that i studied your stuff okay um but josh mcdowell a little bit i'm not 100 on that i i know that i do specifically remember reading through uh lee strobel's case for christ several times and uh several essays from c.s lewis and then mere christianity was just that was like that's that's still one of the best-selling ones very cool i was just curious now you describe starting to have questions and this could be an entire discussion in itself and i don't so much want to get into like let's debate the answers to these questions we could have that conversation but what were some of the issues that started to bother you or cause you to question your faith like maybe two or the three of the biggest ones that troubled you so i i guess i had questions about aspects of christianity for a little while but i don't think my faith was called into question as a whole i don't think i ever questioned christianity as a whole structure until i i got near the end of my my year-long statistics and research methods class during my psychology degree this is at a christian evangelical christian university by the way and and that's where i came to the idea that personal experience is not a reliable source of information about the existence of god i basically learned about uh confounding factors in experimental design and i came to the idea that well you know there there are no controls on these experiences that allow us to isolate the causal factor behind our sensation or perception of god's presence or involvement we're not controlling for potentially natural factors that could contribute toward this and in fact there are natural factors that we know that contribute toward uh spiritual experiences regardless of the of the religious tradition and so i think upon that realization i started questioning christianity as a whole more because when you start questioning your own experience which was hugely meaningful yeah it uh it can undermine your confidence in in a lot of things i mean ultimately yeah like i knew apologetics i i thought i had historical and scientific and philosophical arguments for my faith but when my experience was undermined and i realized that that was such a big part of it it it made it a little bit more difficult to to shut down any doubts that said uh more more i'll put this more briefly learning about science and history learning about like the exodus i i don't i don't think that it's well evidence that the exodus actually happened uh and i grew up as a young earth creationist so for me uh learning about evolution and eventually accepting evolution cast doubt on that specific interpretation of christianity it didn't make me throw out christianity yeah it made me throw out that version of christianity and i think that many even conservative christians on youtube have done you know the exact same thing and [Music] it i think the evolution thing ended up and the exodus thing ended up raising questions about the what the proper interpretation of scripture is and how we can demonstrate that an interpretation is correct over another it also brought up moral questions surrounding like why do we have so many people like all those i grew up around that you know love god with all of their heart and are so earnestly seeking to understand him who are still coming up with interpretations of scripture that completely fly in the face of the evidence that are are wrong if god if this truly is god's word there are millions maybe even the majority of people who are trying to understand it in good faith with all of their effort they could possibly give and they're still coming to conclusions that could potentially put their soul in jeopardy that that's a big moral question that had me questioning my faith more as a whole that's fair for christians listening i hope you're paying attention to the kinds of questions we need to take seriously historical exodus is a big one questions of science and faith are huge moral questions about so say those who haven't heard uh these are big questions we need to take seriously and try to give honest answers for now as you started to doubt your faith this is kind of a two-part question but let's start with the positive ones what were some ways now looking back that you would say were helpful ways christians responded what are some ways that are not unhelpful or maybe you would even say harmful ways that some christians responded so to clarify when when i was questioning my faith if i would have told anyone i would have lost my job uh i probably would have i don't know that i would have lost my marriage but i would have been close to it and i would have so severely damaged my my relationship with family that it would have completely destroyed my life um and so i did not tell anyone except for my wife when i was questioning the i i knew what the responses would would be like because i grew up treating atheists in a certain way and treating people who question the faith in a certain way knowing that anything that i was you know was taught to say would not actually be productive or helpful now that i'm actually in the situation of a questioning person wow so uh that said i kept it just between my wife and i for the first year of me being an atheist and then i told my parents around the one year mark and then i didn't tell anyone else until another year and then i didn't publicly talk about it for another six months after that so i've been i had been an atheist for at least two and a half years before i even said anything publicly about it in my christian community um the the helpful responses that i got which came came from plenty of people i was i was glad that they did and this doesn't mean they weren't accompanied by some unhelpful responses but helpful ones were just an expression of unconditional love the the absolute best response i got was actually from and i i'm not going to give identifying information with anybody else but i know that this friend specifically would be super hyped if i mentioned him but a friend of mine from from high school from the youth group um you know when i when i told him he just he was like he really goes that's it that's it that's all i'm like wow yeah he goes he's like drew i just got to tell you something i'm like oh here it goes and he goes i i love drew for being drew not for being christian like what he what wow that's he's like drew it's not a question whether i love you or not man it's it's hard to it's hard to talk about that but i mean that was the best experience i had with anyone coming out that was probably the only solely positive experience i ever had coming out to anyone okay i gotta have you say that again that was the only positive response is one friend in the youth group two and a half years plus like that that's painfully for me exclusively positive but they were accompanied by some negatives as well now you you said just so i understand that we'll come back to some of the negative ones in a minute you said if you came out questioning you would have lost your job potentially marriage etc is questioning in the experience you had the same as being an atheist because if my son comes to me and says hey i'm having some questions about things not sure what i believe versus saying i'm an atheist i still love my son no matter what but those are different kind of places that somebody is in was it just questioning what's essentially as bad in that perspective as being an atheist or clarify for me i wouldn't say that it's as bad uh for my job it didn't necessarily matter how severe it was exactly because i worked at a christian homeless shelter with children okay um you know i was basically the leader of a youth department at a christian homeless shelter and a big thing for being employed there i mean i had to sign a statement of faith to even apply uh and and so if they thought that i couldn't basically re lead the children down the romans road share the share the gospel wholeheartedly with them they wouldn't want me there regardless of how good my work was otherwise um i actually did express at one point that i believed in evolution um there and i was nearly fired for that wow um other otherwise it's just kind of when you're when you're questioning you need to it's okay if people engage it's not necessarily bad uh if someone engages with you or tries to influence your thinking necessarily but i don't think that there's really a a concept or at least there wasn't a concept in how i grew up of maintaining bound healthy boundaries with someone when it came to faith questions after all i mean if someone does not come to the right conclusion they're going to burn for all of eternity so people would be pretty motivated to try to influence someone's thinking if they think that they're questioning and and open to to new ideas so while it's not it's not awful to talk to someone to have these dialogues with someone that's questioning a lot of the time boundaries just aren't really respected it's just not cool for someone to constantly be breaking down your door to send you this verse or send you this devotional or make you a pet project to to lead you back toward the fold so i didn't feel comfortable talking to anybody about it when i was questioning because i knew that i'd become a project that's all i would be at that point um i knew i needed to do it on my own i i love that your friend was there for you i had kind of a questioning period and uh told my dad who obviously is this apologist that the tagline of his ministry is telling the world the truth and essentially he basically is like son i love you no matter what it's not going to change our relationship and i was just freeing for me and very powerful and i didn't reject my beliefs i just was going through questions so i just i can't imagine being in that position where you're just afraid naturally for so long to express this and just have the space to work stuff out um so thanks for sharing that let me ask some of the more so you gave a great example of something that was helpful what was the way that i was either not helpful or hurtful and again we don't want to call anybody out as an individual but just an experience that you had that was not helpful when you were questioning your faith so the unhelpful responses were almost always one of the following things or all of the following things um just in in me coming out to them immediately just engaging in apologetics with me even though i i specified i'm not trying to argue i'm not trying to make a case i'm not even trying to necessarily open this line of communication about like trying to convince each other of anything i'm just trying to tell you that's it that's all later on yeah yeah i'm open to talking about this stuff sure that's fine i even specified i'm completely fine with having discussions or even debates in a designated time and space that we both consent to and that that's not for the sake of maintaining my beliefs it's for the sake of maintaining healthy boundaries in our relationship so that this difference doesn't destroy our relationship i don't i i don't think it'd be appropriate for me to send my christian friends the the latest you know atheist philosophers work or something all the time because i want to convince them no i i think it's important for me to express that i love them regardless and i think it's important for them to express that too so immediately responding with apologetics and just trying to make an argument that was super common not helpful at all and uh it i think some of it was motivated by defensiveness uh okay oh sorry keep going yeah no and then there was the response of making the whole thing about the christian who i'm coming out to talking like going on about well this hurts me so much and and even it hurts me so much that you didn't tell me i just can't believe that you didn't tell me all this time and it's kind of like well i think it could easily be argued that given that now that i've said something i'm just having apologetics thrown at me immediately and like you are turning this into being about how much i'm hurting you almost like as if it's on purpose shows that i have valid reasons for not saying anything until i'm ready uh and yeah i mean it's it's also this often happened before i was able to really even explain my full situation and it's like if you stop and listen to what i'm saying you might realize that i i do understand this is hard for you that's completely valid but i i think that having your entire worldview something that gave you literally a hundred percent of your meaning and purpose and drive in life completely overturned that's a little harder than hearing that someone disagrees with you even profoundly i i while i acknowledge that it can be hard for christian loved ones to to hear that someone's an atheist i get it i can empathize i have been in the christian shoes for more time in my life than in atheist shoes still i do think that it's probably harder for atheists who are in especially christian dominated cultures and societies and communities to to become atheists and then to be open about it now the the last one here let me see i i made sure and wrote these down because i don't want to miss anything um uh i'm i'm missing in my notes maybe i'll it's okay be able to oh actually no i've got it this this was probably the most frustrating one it was just bringing in assumptions about atheists or about atheism that they had learned from christians and asserting that and believing that over anything and i mean anything that i could possibly say and this is one of the reasons why i i want to come on here and and i think it's something that you acknowledge that many many christians will value what you sean have to say about atheists about atheism more than they value or think about anything that an actual atheist says about themself it's more likely that plenty of my loved ones would listen to what you have to say about the way that i drew think than to listen to how i would describe how i think myself it's it's nearly impossible to really have much of a productive conversation when the person won't put down assumptions that come from other people who don't even know me versus listening to what i have to say and allowing me to inform them on who i actually am and what i actually think that's super helpful you know the atheist role play i've done which started our entire conversation i realized it's not the same in our role playing but one of the things i realized with the questions is that christian students and christians will ask these loaded questions with all these assumptions built in and half the time i say look you're making assumption i never said that i don't believe that and so you're right and my suspicion is that this happens on both sides but i can speak for the christian community we can do a lot better job listening asking questions try not bring those assumptions uh to the table now one thing you said to me i can't remember if it was in person or in one of the response videos that i've shared with a few people drew because it was pretty heartbreaking to hear you say this is that you described being bullied as a kid and how painful that was for different reasons and taking karate to not get bullied but then the way you said it to me correct me if i said this wrong is that the treatment by many christians was actually worse than the treatment of being bullied first off did i get that right and second off i know it's painful but would you be willing to talk about that yeah no absolutely um yeah you did you did represent that correctly that's that's what i said in that video and then also just in our private discussions so the the bullying when i was a kid was because i was small i mean i i went to in ninth grade i had just hit five foot tall and a hundred pounds i'm i'm not big i'm not a big guy and uh that's and also i was you know just bookish and and nerdy and i was i was religiously homeschooled you know and so i i don't know if i lack the social graces or if i was just different than people uh i wasn't interested in team sports and that's kind of a sin in in texas i didn't really care about football and that was a big deal and and i you know i got bullied because of that and i think that bullying usually stems from people feeling insecure about themselves or defensive about themself and so they pick on someone that's other you know that that happens kids do that adults do that and just in slightly different ways but that said the people that bullied me as a kid were usually just kind of acquaintances or strangers now the the mistreatment that i received when i came out as an atheist the one of the reasons why i say it's worse is because it was more impactful on me because i actually cared about the people who were treating me a certain way it wasn't it wasn't random strangers i mean i i get death threats from random strangers for what i do on my channel uh i get i get horrible threats and horrible things and i'm sure that you get the same thing being a public figure you know it comes with the territory you get treated really badly from anonymous people uh but these are these are people that i i love i care about their their opinion i care about the way they view me and so it's really difficult to deal with that kind of thing um i i don't i'll give very little specifics because i just don't want to i don't want to give any identifying information but one thing that was really painful was just gaslighting that i received you're doing this to to get at me you are you are creating this problem you are hurting me on purpose this is about some vendetta even uh anything but what it's actually about which was just an intellectual journey from one position to another uh that that's really difficult because even the people that did that i know that they have i know they unconditionally love me i know that they can come to understand where i'm coming from but i think being motivated out of defensiveness surrounding their own faith they have to project the issue onto me rather than realizing like oh if i'm having trouble with this maybe it's a good idea to make sure that i understand what i think and what i believe rather than getting super defensive and there's also gossip behind my back um which i was never supposed to know about and i did find out about it and it affected how people treat me in real life some some of the treatment that i received in real life i was later able to trace back to oh that's because this rumor this gossip was spread about me i had i had people coming up to me and talking to me as if they had absolutely no idea that i was an atheist or what i was doing but their questions were kind of to get probing information because they wanted to add to the juicy gossip they'd already gotten behind my back and they're they're looking for that gotcha right and it it sucks it's i just want to be seen as a whole person that that gossip doesn't help especially when people naturally carry in assumptions and like you said it's on both sides this is what people do so that gossip really isn't helpful now the the most specific thing that i'll that i'll give here is that i had a a highly accomplished and and internationally respected christian leader um basically just directly tell me unlike all of the the mission like the missionaries in your family you will not die in peace you will die in agony you'll die alone and then you're going to go to hell and that was the first thing they ever said to me about it i mean one person in a tweet like that this was this was a direct message uh and i i'm not talking about messages aside from this i'm not talking about like messages that i received on on social media um i'm talking about real life but this thing because i don't live near this person they just have influence over my community i i include this and and yeah i mean having the first thing that someone says to me that you know well your your great grandfather you know died in peace and and he had the love of christ but you you'll be alone it's a threat it's a threat right it's not appropriate i would never say that to that person that you know i don't i don't think that that that person like all that person's life's work is even like as respectable as i used to think it was but i would never come at them and tell them that like oh you're you're wasting your life you're going to be alone and no one's going to love you that's the opposite of what someone who is isolated from their christian community needs to hear the the unconditional love is the other side of that that's what i needed and that is what opens the dialogue if someone wants to try to convince me of anything first off i i'm so sorry you got treated that way drew it it it pains me to hear that on a lot of levels obviously those of you watching we as christians myself included there's a lot ways we can do better to engage other christians and non-christians i'm going to ask you to do something we didn't talk about this you could just pass but i want you to role play with me for a second i would imagine you're a christian parent okay and the reason i'm asking this is i get messages almost daily maybe because of my platform because of who my dad is my experience where people are like my kids doubting my faith what do i do if you were a christian parent and you believe christine was true and your son or daughter was like questioning things how would you respond how would you suggest that christians respond when their kids come to them doubting or maybe having already rejected their faith the number one thing that you can do and this needs to be first the first thing express your unconditional love for them don't express it with a i you know i'm gonna love you but no i love you period that's not going to change i want you to know that we can have a nice healthy positive constructive relationship from here onward forever we can that's that's the very first thing that i think people need to hear and then i would say thank you for being willing to tell me like i'm sure that this is not especially if you're in a christian community and that's a big part of your life saying i i would want to say thank you to my child for for being open to telling me i know that that's not easy especially when they're going to know that i'm going to want to influence what they think from there i'd probably say i want to take the responsibility of of the parent of the more mature one in that situation and say you know going forward in in making sure that we stay okay even though we disagree with this stuff it's probably good that we set up some some boundaries so that we can have healthy dialogue about this so i think at first it's going to be a little difficult for us to kind of just spontaneously bring up arguments or points that would be against each other so you know i'd tell my child i know that you're going to want to tell me all the new things that you that you think or new things that you've learned and that's completely okay like i want to hear those things and obviously you know that i want you to hear a christian perspective and i would love for you to agree with me on this i would love for you to have a relationship with christ that said at least at the beginning it may be good to just if we want to dialogue about that stuff let's sit down and be very intentional about that let's not just baker back and forth randomly you know you come back from school and you start talking about something you learn in biology class and it evolves into this big argument that's probably going to make it to where tensions flare up emotions flare up when we say things that we don't mean and don't express love to each other i think that what we should do is focus on the love that we have and keeping our relationship healthy and then as that progresses as we get more comfortable with that let's sit we can sit down if you feel comfortable with it and have conversations that we both consent to surrounding this if you would influence what i think you know what have at it my faith should be able to take the challenge right and i think that your your ideas should be able to take the challenge too this is about us learning and growing together that's okay i think those three steps are great number one i love you number two thank you number three let's set up fair boundaries so we can have these conversations but keep the relationship going that that makes a ton of sense and i i think that's wise that respects concern for the truth but also value in in the relationship you've talked on your channel i watched a handful of your videos about why you started the youtube channel and you also shared some things with me but this story was not what i expected you were going to say when you started the youtube channel i guess i had just stereotypes of anybody who starts youtube channel for certain reasons so tell us why you started it in the first place i think i started in the first place because i really had no outlet whatsoever for any of my thoughts i've always been a pretty verbal person and given that i really couldn't talk about anything that i was thinking or learning i just needed a place to be able to put that now my my wife was still a christian by the time i had i'd become an atheist and i didn't think that it was right for me to try to influence her uh i basically told her i'm gonna have a complete moratorium on any argument or persua persuasive effort toward you if you change your mind which you do not have to for me to love you and want to be with you then it needs to be completely 100 on your own accord especially because i knew the christian community would say and they did say that if she changed any of her ideas that was because a man her spiritual leader told her what to believe and she just copied it and that's that's an awful position for her to be in it her entire personhood is stripped away from her in in that assumption uh so i didn't talk to my wife about like the things that i was thinking unless she specifically came and asked me about it and wanted me to tell her otherwise i'd be like i'm open to telling you anything but i'm not going to bring up cases for anything like that you have to figure it out on your own that's the only healthy way to go forward with this um let me see so i i wanted an outlet but after a while after i made like several videos i started getting messages from people expressing that wow i'm i'm so alone and isolated because i'm going through exactly what you've gone through and i i need videos like this just to get by and as i as i went on even more i literally had people message me and tell me this video that you put out i just want to let you know save me from suicide wow and straight up used that word and said they were going to end their life and this video stopped him that's that's powerful and and it's just because such severe existential anxiety can come from the level of isolation that that many people who grow up in christian communities and then like deconstruct the convert can can face uh so i i was kind of trying to be a a friend to people that couldn't talk about this stuff that that had no one to to lean on but then also be a voice for people who couldn't speak up at all i i realized even though yeah i was mistreated when i came out there were people that had it just so much worse than me i mean my at least i knew that my parents would unconditionally love me i was always sure of that i didn't always know that we'd get along but i knew they would unconditionally love me and that's important a lot of people don't have that and it that's not uniquely some christian thing like christians aren't loving or something that's just a thing that people do when they disagree or they're kind of fearful of other ideas uh so given that i frankly was very privileged in being able to come from the background i did but then have the outcome that i did uh in coming out i realize i i just think it's only right for me to use that privilege to speak up for other people to normalize this a little bit more to give my perspective give give words to the thoughts that we already all have in our heads just being a voice for the voiceless there now that my channel has grown it's the loftiest goal i ever had for my channel was a hundred thousand subscribers but that i didn't even even think about that until i was you know nearly at five thousand subscribers it wasn't a subscribers or numbers thing in any way whatsoever when i was starting it um but and now that i have more reach than i ever anticipated sure uh i think it's really about even though i haven't always done this well try just trying to be a model for for other people trying to set an example to anyone who's watching whether they're a christian or an atheist i know i'm gonna have probably more of an impact on my atheist viewers that's okay but as i've continued i've started to get a lot more christians coming in and expressing gratitude for the example that i that i'm trying to set and that's that's been incredible i again i like i said i haven't always done it well but now i'm just trying to set a good example for others who are also skeptical of things who value critical thinking who value constructive dialogue with their christian peers it's pretty obvious to anybody that you and i are going to differ on big questions of life but i think that's an area when i saw your first response video and you watched my atheist role play was like you know what i have some issues with this but i think there's a common bigger goal to treat each other respectfully kindly heal some broken wounds and i think that's why you and i connected so quickly so i'm i'm really curious to hear your take i've i've been posting videos just like once a week or short videos on youtube for years but it was until about a year ago that i thought you know what this is a platform i want to be more intentional about so i still kind of feel like i'm a rookie to this youtube community you've been doing it for years if you had to assess just the state of christian atheist or christian skeptic dialogue as a whole what observations would you make i'll start on a positive note and say that i think that on all sides it's gotten it's gotten better in places because there is a niche that is available there's a space on youtube that is available and well populated now for people on either side who want to engage primarily academically who are not interested in just smearing their detractors i think that 10 or more years ago well there were of course productive and respectful creators on all sides still then those who rose to the top a lot more and could actually do it sustainably like even make it a career a lot of the time were those who are more willing to just engage in tribalistic displays one of the reasons i do what i do on youtube now is because i'm just trying to break the stereotype of the atheist youtuber as being a jerk i look back and while again there's plenty of videos that i think are are great a lot of the people who are very influential on youtube in the atheist sphere and in christian sphere uh a while back did not set a good example for anyone um now i think there are christian and atheist creators who set good examples for their audiences that said we do talk past each other quite a bit the commenters on either side they still suck they just still suck um i've gotten horrible comments you know and i have gone and one of the reasons why i i'm the vast majority of my stuff is not response videos is because you know even my own audience who i i want to respect and value and have gratitude for some some in my own audience will go over to the people that like i'm sure that on your video that i was responding to you got people who probably saw my video first who treated you like garbage and that's not okay made awful assumptions and said horrible things about you i've seen people there they're christian creators that i haven't necessarily gotten along with but i've seen people go into their comment section maybe even in defense of me and called out mental mental health issues that the person has complained about or has has shared has been willing to share with their audience and they've been used as a weapon against them it's it's horrible and it happens on on all sides it does um i i think that it's been a serious problem we have used what our commenters what like the what the hate commenters say in order to kind of represent what we think the actual creators the content creators think um but i i do think that a lot of us on all sides are starting to get better at realizing you know commenters don't represent the creators um i i've seen christians and atheists talk about how they've made that mistake in the past and they're doing better and i seriously applaud that that said if you want really terrible dialogue you it's going to be so easy to find from from any any side but there is good quality stuff out there i've seen some very productive dialogues um between atheists and christians on youtube in the past couple of years that have really given me uh a lot of hope i just think that the fewer assumptions that we're able to make about each other the more we're able to listen the better i think we'd be i think we do very well to maybe not focus so much just on debate yeah and focus purposely on having dialogues that humanize each other like dialogues like this dialogues i've had with with dean and i think that there are some christian youtubers even who have made multiple responses to me that are completely willing to to do that uh just hasn't necessarily happened yet yes i did get a lot of comments in fact when your video posted i found out about it i got dozens and dozens of emails into my website all over the place some brutal ones that you mentioned but what amazes me is very few people actually think through if i want to change somebody's mind what's the smart way to do it and i had a few atheists who emailed me and said hey you're doing your best i understand your heart is to create better dialogue even in this role play let me give you a suggestion or two to think about well anybody who's human receives that so much better than you fraud you fill on the blank so on both sides we don't comment well and i can only speak for christians because jesus said love the lord god with your heart and soul and love your neighbor even comments is a way of loving or not loving our neighbor so you've kind of already answered this but i'd be curious to hear what do you think christians and atheists can do better and you could just point out i think christians could do this better atheists can do this better or just general thoughts of how you think we could have substantive uh meaningful dialogue and by the way when i started doing youtube i had a number of people saying to me they're like sean you've got to be provocative you've got to say these certain things to grow a channel and part of me is like i'm not willing to sell my soul so to speak to do that although i want to get people's attention i'm not willing to sell my soul for that and second i actually think there's probably a lot of people that are tired of the cancer culture anger and actually wants substantive dialogue so this is kind of an experiment for me so with that said you tell me what do you think christians and atheists can do better at least on youtube and or beyond i think the first step is going to be just a willingness to put away assumptions when you're dealing with individuals uh don't like if you're an atheist don't take what an atheist has to say about a specific christian or or theist or or really anyone more seriously than and yeah i guess just more seriously than what a christian has to say about what they themself think i mean if if i i you know i worry about this all the time even i i will have people say you know i stopped i stopped listening to such and such like apologist or something because you didn't address them necessarily but you addressed something that had me realizing oh that applied to them or whatever and while i guess i do want to influence people sure i also don't want to in make it to where anyone takes what i have to say about something or about someone more seriously than how that person would describe themself and describe their own views um if if you say you know you sean say that atheists are are atheists because they suppress the truth unrighteousness they really do you know somewhere believe in god that they're they're just disbelieving because they want to sin then there's going to be plenty of christians who even ones that i know in real life who will take that on and believe that no matter how many times i explain my actual thought process of my story because they already heard a christian that they trust say that i'm a liar so i must be a liar even if i don't seem like one uh so if we can on all sides try to put away the boxes that we want to force people and put away the stereotypes that we've heard from our own communities the stereotypes and that but if we come up it's just really what we do with them at that point that matters if we can do that we'll we'll create a lot more understanding also it just practically speaking as far as you know youtube goes and and maybe in real life it would be good to understand that humanizing dialogues where people are just sharing i know they're not as marketable as debates but they they may be just as important or in some cases more important than debates i wish that we could have more of those humanizing dialogues i wish that i could get up in front of a crowd of people in the same way that an apologist and an atheist activist can for debate and just have a conversation like you and i are having there's plenty of people that i would love to have conversations like this with well we take our students as i mentioned one of the videos to places like berkeley regularly and we've brought in we brought in some atheists like richard carrier david fitzgerald we've actually tried to find the most articulate atheist we could find and they've both been gracious and it's been awesome dialogue but the next time we go on trips for training i'll bring you in and we'll have a conversation maybe we can't do it in in person but now we can do stuff over zoom and over like these are conversations we need to have and so i love that that's your heart i think we see things in common a comment i do want to make about what you said is being on youtube i've learned a lot of things i've thought about making video like five things i've learned being on youtube for a year and one of them is just how quickly people watch one of my videos and completely make up their mind about somebody else some people watch one of your videos about me and completely made up their mind about me didn't even bother to watch the response now somebody watches your video watches my response and says you know what i still think sean misrepresented atheism okay at least they've listened to both sides and tried to be charitable but it's a huge reminder to me i mean there's a i think it's proverbs 18 17 that says the first to speaking court sounds right until the cross-examination begins and that was one of your big pushbacks you're like bring in a real atheist so we can defend ourselves and we can have this dialogue and straw men are not set up so i want to do that better i've got a long ways to go i appreciate you encouraging kind of your side and your folks to do that um i think you i got one last question for you because i want to respect your time i think one of the big common grounds that you and i have though we didn't get into the substance of our disagreement i think we agree that we can have substantive conversations about issues that matter without one-upmanship without a debate that is competitive but conversations for clarity so people understand what's at stake when i look at my channel that's one of the biggest hearts that i have even on issues like i've engaged critical race theory or the enneagram or other topics there's something powerful just about clarity and it sounds like that's a part of your heart on your channel as well is that fair would you add anything to that yeah yeah i would say that's that's fair uh completely i mean like i said i i wanted to talk to you here because i think that we do have that that common ground and i said this to you privately um i i think that conversation it's really like a win-win because the atheists will probably listen to me the christians will probably listen to you and there's so much overlap with what we're saying as far as how to treat others with love that hopefully just about everybody can take something away from this i i'm happy with how the conversation's gone and i i think hopefully it will have that effect good so one last question for you but as i think about this maybe there's things we can do in the future like a live q a and we go all right we just get one minute you answer i answer next question or like there's a million ways we could do that and maybe we could we could brainstorm if that's helpful but last thing i would say is in closing is there anything else you want to say to christians and i know that might feel awkward to preach to another group you're not a part of but i brought you on my platform because this is primarily for christians i'm modern i see another a number of atheists who've watched this i hope you feel welcome here but i want to push back on christians and help us myself included just get better at engaging people with different worldviews atheists skeptic muslim whatever fill in the blank so are there any final encouragements or tips that you would give for christians to do this better i would say that even if your goal is primarily to influence the thinking of atheists to to win people for christ the best thing that you can possibly do and i've said this is kind of a thesis statement of my entire channel to be honest i have several videos that equal would total up to millions of views where i talk about this subject specifically listen to what we have to say first and then address that while putting yourself in our shoes and i say this exact same thing to atheists you know most of the time christians are not trying to convert you because of ill will they're they're doing it because they love they love you they care about you and that's not always expressed the best way and when it comes to atheists many atheists will express their ideas to christians for the same reasons if if you want to have this productive dialogue lead with empathy lead with curiosity lead with with understanding if you do that you won't have to convince anyone to to listen to you you know sean with with the the grace and compassion that you've shown me the openness that you've shown me i'm infinitely more likely to listen to what you have to say in your theological perspectives your philosophical arguments because i know that you're taking all the factors into consideration because you've actually put in the work put in the time to understand where i'm coming from and you yourself now i'm sure would acknowledge that you still don't know everything about me that's relevant to this conversation but you'd be willing to figure that out if we're going to have that conversation that's that's necessary and so i would say uh you're you're setting a good example i'm i'm glad i'm happy to have an uh christian ally in this uh well thank thanks for saying i'm sure you'll take some criticism for coming on my channel i can't imagine what that is like but i think it goes it goes both ways you know one thing my dad said me that's really stuck with me said it's more important to understand than to be understood it's not brilliant like we always start by understand me but instead it's like if i can understand somebody else first then we can have real dialogue and frankly it's it's biblical the bible talks about you know somebody's a fool who talks before they listen and understand i mean it's a it's a biblical idea so i want to give one quick plug is the timing for this was not planned but next wednesday the person who has influenced me more than anybody on how to have civil conversations is a friend and colleague of mine at biola his name's tim muhoff he did a phd in communications at unc and one of the things he talks about i think you'd find this true is called perspective taking that in conversation you try to understand but really enter into somebody else's perspective as best you can then when you understand or at least made an effort to you can have substantive agreement and he's really the one who's taught me how to ask good questions how to engage people differently not be threatened by this and so those of you watching want to kind of get some nuts and bolts about how to do this from somebody who i consider kind of the civil conversation ninja so to speak make sure you hit subscribe and join us next wednesday because we're going to do that do hang on just one minute when when we're done want to just connect with you but i want to thank you again for coming on thanks for your initial response you obviously weren't super happy with something as i said but i knew right away that you had a heart for proper understanding increasing the dialogue and some of the brokenness and uh appreciate you responding and just being willing to come on i hope we can do this something like that other things a lot more in the future i responded because i thought that you would take criticism and you did and i'm i'm happy about that thank you for having me on thank you for this opportunity to humanize myself in the in the eyes of christians in fact that you know that's what i said the most important thing was in that video and you allowed me that opportunity so keep doing that sean i i really appreciate it we have 303 likes and one thumb down which just reminds me you can't please everybody which is not our goal but just to advance the conversation and there's no doubt in my mind that we did that so thanks for again for coming on drew

Channel: Dr. Sean McDowell

Views: 147,024

Rating: 4.940413 out of 5

Keywords: Christian, Christianity, atheist, atheism, skeptic, discussion, conversation, dialogue, common ground, understanding, story, testimony, listen

Id: VJX28l54YxE

Length: 70min 6sec (4206 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 18 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/TrevAnonWWP]

Nevermo here.
The past weeks I have been mostly lurking here to learn, and one thing I notice there are lots of posts and questions about how people on the way out (or totally out) of the LDS can try and communicate with family, relatives, friends still in about their journey.
Recently Sean McDowell (a christian apologist) did a YT conversation with atheist Youtuber 'Genetically modified sceptic" about how to have just a good and civil conversation. In light of the above I think this is a video worth watching.
Over one hour, so be sure to have some time