Why This Atheist Scientist Became a Believing Christian — Transcript

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1. 0:00[Music]
2. 0:15hey guys welcome to capturing
3. 0:17christianity i am cameron bertuzzi and i
4. 0:19am here today with dr sai gart welcome
5. 0:21to the show i mean you've been on the
6. 0:23channel before but i have yeah so here
7. 0:25you're today with us in person and i'm
8. 0:27so excited to meet you wish i could see
9. 0:29your wife but i'm sure that she's here
10. 0:31she's here in spirit isn't she i miss
11. 0:34her too yeah yeah well so today we're
12. 0:36talking about your journey from atheism
13. 0:39all the way to christianity right and
14. 0:41there's a whole lot that's happened in
15. 0:42between you know back when you were an
16. 0:45atheist and now that you're a christian
17. 0:46we'll talk about all the steps that kind
18. 0:48of led there some of the science that
19. 0:50that because you your background is in
20. 0:52what is it micro not microsoft
21. 0:54biochemistry and so your your yeah your
22. 0:56background as a scientist
23. 0:58but that's actually what led you
24. 1:00to
25. 1:01embrace god's existence and then
26. 1:03eventually to to become a christian
27. 1:05right so how let's start at the the very
28. 1:07beginning tell me about your upbringing
29. 1:09i know we've talked about this on the
30. 1:10channel before but let's uh kind of go
31. 1:12through it a little bit more in some
32. 1:14more detail sure well yeah i won't go
33. 1:17into too much because as you said we we
34. 1:18have covered it and
35. 1:20it's uh it's in my book so you know
36. 1:22people can find it
37. 1:23uh but i i grew up in a basically uh in
38. 1:27a family three generations of atheists
39. 1:30uh they were not only atheists they were
40. 1:32very left-wing my parents were members
41. 1:34of the american communist party in the
42. 1:361930s which is rare
43. 1:39and so uh
44. 1:41their atheism was very strong very
45. 1:43militant
46. 1:45and that's what i grew up with i i uh
47. 1:48assumed that there was could not be any
48. 1:51such thing as god or not possible for
49. 1:53them to be a god
50. 1:55totally materialistic my father was a
51. 1:57chemist scientist so you know i
52. 2:00that was the world view i grew up in
53. 2:03uh
54. 2:04and and also the same world view i had
55. 2:06when i went to college where i started
56. 2:08studying chemistry
57. 2:10chip off the old block and um
58. 2:13you know when you're a chemistry major
59. 2:15you also have to learn some physics so i
60. 2:17was learning things about quantum
61. 2:18mechanics and things in physics that
62. 2:21seemed a little strange to me but i
63. 2:23didn't really worry about it too much
64. 2:24and then eventually i decided i really
65. 2:26wanted to study life
66. 2:29and
67. 2:29rather than be a biologist i wanted to
68. 2:31study the chemistry of life so i went
69. 2:33into biochemistry where i got my phd
70. 2:36uh and
71. 2:38what happened was that
72. 2:40even even in college as a young man i
73. 2:43began to feel there was something
74. 2:45missing in my life so and i later
75. 2:47realized it was some sense of
76. 2:49spirituality
77. 2:50which i think is very important for all
78. 2:52people
79. 2:53but i found that whatever that you want
80. 2:56to call that in science at first i was
81. 2:58thinking
82. 2:59well you know the science is great
83. 3:01because it gives you a real sense of
84. 3:02purpose a real sense of
85. 3:05doing something good in the world and
86. 3:07it's true you know so it's great
87. 3:10but there was one catch which was that
88. 3:13what i was learning in science didn't
89. 3:16jive with the materialistic world view
90. 3:18and i i couldn't have said it that way i
91. 3:20just
92. 3:21i just felt it
93. 3:23for example uh
94. 3:25in graduate school i learned about the
95. 3:27process by which proteins are made in
96. 3:29cells and that's a very complex process
97. 3:32that
98. 3:34involves
99. 3:35a tremendous amount of
100. 3:36uh
101. 3:38biomolecules interacting with each other
102. 3:41and the complexity is just incredible
103. 3:43and i remember
104. 3:45feeling like a chill going down my spine
105. 3:47i it was like
106. 3:48this is amazing
107. 3:51where did how did this get here and it
108. 3:53was something that i couldn't answer
109. 3:56uh
110. 3:58later of course like most biologists i
111. 4:02just came up with the answer which is
112. 4:04evolution evolution does everything
113. 4:09but
114. 4:10when i
115. 4:11at that time i kind of left things as it
116. 4:13was and as they were and i just
117. 4:20started wondering about really
118. 4:23whether science was really the only way
119. 4:25to find any truth and i pretty soon i
120. 4:28rejected that as many people have
121. 4:31i was not yet ready to believe in god
122. 4:34and that took a lot of other steps it
123. 4:36required
124. 4:38it required me to
125. 4:40kind of break down my resistance to the
126. 4:42idea which was which i was born with and
127. 4:45it's it's kind of hard to you know
128. 4:47reject all of that but eventually i did
129. 4:50and then uh were there any external
130. 4:52factors that were helping to open you up
131. 4:55yes to god absolutely uh
132. 4:58i was brought to a church by a friend
133. 5:01and this was still when you were an
134. 5:02atheist oh yeah and i was well maybe by
135. 5:05then i was a little agnostic i wasn't
136. 5:07really sure
137. 5:09so you got to the point of agnostic yeah
138. 5:11all on your own
139. 5:12that was all on my own and that was due
140. 5:14to the science i was learning because
141. 5:16the science i was learning did not
142. 5:17support a strict atheism it did not
143. 5:20support strict materialism okay
144. 5:22and and that comes from quantum theory
145. 5:24and it comes from you know the observer
146. 5:26effect and all sorts of things in
147. 5:27physics but it also came from what i was
148. 5:30learning in biochemistry and about how
149. 5:32life works right it just seemed
150. 5:35that saying evolution explains
151. 5:37everything in life was to glib
152. 5:39you know it was too easy it didn't seem
153. 5:42to me to be enough that's interesting
154. 5:44because i've heard a lot of scientists
155. 5:46even like peter atkins will say that god
156. 5:48is like a lazy explanation
157. 5:50and you're saying that evolution is kind
158. 5:52of like a lazy explanation well uh you
159. 5:54know
160. 5:56at that time i would have said god was a
161. 5:58lazy explanation too i had no idea what
162. 6:00the explanation was i didn't really know
163. 6:03what god was i didn't understand very
164. 6:05much about god
165. 6:07but yeah uh i think i think evolution
166. 6:10can explain a lot
167. 6:13but there are some key things that it
168. 6:15cannot explain and that includes the
169. 6:17origin of life and that's not my view
170. 6:19that's a very
171. 6:21darwin said the same thing richard
172. 6:22dawkins has said the same thing yeah the
173. 6:24the process of evolution that we call
174. 6:27darwinian evolution of biological
175. 6:28evolution
176. 6:30um
177. 6:31doesn't deal with the origin of life at
178. 6:33all
179. 6:34so
180. 6:35and i'll get into that a little more i
181. 6:37think uh but
182. 6:39the external factors that helped me were
183. 6:41as i said
184. 6:42going to a church for the first time and
185. 6:45seeing something that i
186. 6:46absolutely didn't expect i thought that
187. 6:48when you walked into a church the first
188. 6:50thing that would happen is
189. 6:51the priest or the pastor would start
190. 6:53yelling at you you know telling you that
191. 6:55you're sinful and you know you're going
192. 6:56to go to hell where did you get that an
193. 6:58impression from well that's the
194. 7:00impression i got growing up you know
195. 7:01that from who though who who did well i
196. 7:04mean maybe it's a different time but it
197. 7:06was it was a different time but it was
198. 7:07also
199. 7:08it was also
200. 7:10by the way it's not over yet i mean
201. 7:11there you still find atheists talking
202. 7:13about you know
203. 7:14uh the horrors of christianity and how
204. 7:17they
205. 7:18and how you know people are doing
206. 7:20nothing but casting you into hell all
207. 7:22the time and
208. 7:24lakes of fire and sin and
209. 7:26and i felt you know very nervous and
210. 7:30it was and your experience was nothing
211. 7:32like that no it was a catholic church
212. 7:34run by uh franciscans
213. 7:37and uh
214. 7:39the priest
215. 7:40gave a sermon about love
216. 7:43love period not you know love god but
217. 7:46just love each other love
218. 7:49and i thought boy this is very mild
219. 7:52you know
220. 7:53why you know
221. 7:55i think i've been lied to
222. 7:59so at that point i looked into this a
223. 8:01little more
224. 8:03i wasn't the theist yet but i started
225. 8:05looking at the bible for the first time
226. 8:09the old testament left me a little cold
227. 8:11i just couldn't really get into it
228. 8:12didn't understand it much
229. 8:15but i read the book of matthew and i
230. 8:17read the book of acts and
231. 8:20i found those
232. 8:22very moving
233. 8:24a book of acts struck me as actual
234. 8:27history i didn't have any i was sure
235. 8:30that this was not something anyone made
236. 8:31up it just didn't fit
237. 8:34so that got me thinking and and then i
238. 8:36you know i learn more and more and as i
239. 8:38talk about in my book i'm not going to
240. 8:39go into detail now i had
241. 8:41several experiences including some
242. 8:43dreams and a waking experience that
243. 8:46i had to attribute to the holy spirit
244. 8:48and at that point i after many years by
245. 8:51the way i'm talking i'm compressing two
246. 8:53decades
247. 8:54into this discussion
248. 8:56but at that point i realized that
249. 8:59christianity is true and christ was real
250. 9:03and
251. 9:04he lived and died and rose
252. 9:07and i became a christian yeah
253. 9:09i want to focus in on one part of your
254. 9:11story but i also want to make a kind of
255. 9:13general comment about
256. 9:15the so sometimes i see atheists say like
257. 9:17okay now it's just like this one that
258. 9:19that is the reason why he became a
259. 9:20christian and that usually they pinpoint
260. 9:22some like bad thing that happened or
261. 9:24you know this this is a bad reason to
262. 9:26become a christian but in your case and
263. 9:28i think in a lot of cases probably the
264. 9:30vast majority of cases that it's a
265. 9:32multiplicity of different things
266. 9:34that all together you know built up and
267. 9:36built up over many years you said you're
268. 9:38compressing in a story in you know five
269. 9:41minutes something that happened to you
270. 9:42over the course of 20 years right and so
271. 9:45obviously you're leaving things out and
272. 9:47you can't actually get the sense of like
273. 9:49all of these things building up and
274. 9:51leading to this huge paradigm shift in
275. 9:53your thinking and your worldview yeah
276. 9:55but that that's just the point that i
277. 9:56wanted to make is that there's a whole
278. 9:58lot of things going on oh yeah in your
279. 10:00story yeah and they all work together
280. 10:02like it started out you know from
281. 10:04atheism to agnosticism based purely on
282. 10:07the science and then you had these other
283. 10:09experiences and everything kind of
284. 10:10played together to lead you to christ so
285. 10:13that's one point i want to make and then
286. 10:15the second point was to bring us back to
287. 10:18uh focus on one area that really got you
288. 10:21considering leaving atheism right and i
289. 10:23understand is it a biogenesis that's a
290. 10:25biogenesis that's one of the main things
291. 10:28so tell me more about that how did that
292. 10:30looking into that really
293. 10:32bringing more toward christianity toward
294. 10:35theism
295. 10:36well
296. 10:37you know it's interesting because
297. 10:39abiogenesis is very active field of
298. 10:41research and people are looking at it
299. 10:44uh very intensely in various ways i've
300. 10:47done a little bit myself
301. 10:49but uh have you published yes i have
302. 10:52okay one paper published and one that's
303. 10:55just about to be approved both on the
304. 10:58same subject which is
305. 11:00i wish i'll get to in a second but
306. 11:03as i mentioned abiogenesis
307. 11:06nobody thinks that it has anything to do
308. 11:08with you know standard evolution
309. 11:11the the general idea among scientists
310. 11:14anyway and and the atheist ideas that
311. 11:16we're not scientists are not worth
312. 11:17discussing but
313. 11:19the general scientific idea is that
314. 11:22life began
315. 11:24through what's called chemical
316. 11:26evolution and chemical evolution is very
317. 11:29different from biological evolution
318. 11:30because there's no natural selection
319. 11:34and there's no replication or you see
320. 11:37there's no mutations
321. 11:39yeah
322. 11:40what chemical chemical evolution is when
323. 11:43you take chemicals
324. 11:45you put them together and they either
325. 11:47react or they
326. 11:49somehow are able to
327. 11:52do things only on the basis of chemistry
328. 11:55without any
329. 11:58mutation without any replication and
330. 12:00without any natural selection
331. 12:03and that's pretty hard to do uh
332. 12:07jim tour who's in this neighborhood
333. 12:10uh
334. 12:11has often said uh
335. 12:14quite strongly and correctly
336. 12:16that people who say that we're almost
337. 12:19we've solved so many problems in a
338. 12:20biogenesis we're almost there are just
339. 12:22wrong he says a little more strongly
340. 12:27i was listening to something with him
341. 12:29the other day but he's correct so
342. 12:31he's forceful yeah he's forceful and but
343. 12:34he's right and i know why he's
344. 12:36he he gets frustrated sometimes because
345. 12:38he is a chemist a very good chemist and
346. 12:41he knows more than anyone
347. 12:43that that's not how chemistry works
348. 12:45chemistry
349. 12:46you know
350. 12:47doesn't do things
351. 12:49for any reason by life does things
352. 12:51because of natural selection perhaps or
353. 12:53because of
354. 12:54you know the way life works
355. 12:57and you can get evolution but you can't
356. 12:59get it started
357. 13:00and i started thinking about this years
358. 13:03ago
359. 13:04uh especially
360. 13:07related to
361. 13:08one of my interests which is you know
362. 13:11how
363. 13:12how the dna works by coding the
364. 13:15existence of proteins which cause life
365. 13:18and
366. 13:19you know uh stephen meyer has written
367. 13:21about this and signature of the cell and
368. 13:23he has in his recent book the return of
369. 13:25the god hypothesis he talks a little bit
370. 13:27about it as well
371. 13:30but i was focusing on one specific
372. 13:33aspect which is
373. 13:35critical to the origin of life
374. 13:37to the origin of evolution
375. 13:40and that is the accuracy of
376. 13:42self-replication because nothing in the
377. 13:45universe self-replicates accurately
378. 13:47other than living cells
379. 13:49no chemical self-replicates
380. 13:51no machine self-replicates
381. 13:53crystals don't self-replicate
382. 13:56even dna doesn't self-replicate but a
383. 13:58living cell can self can make copies of
384. 14:02itself that are 99.9999
385. 14:05accurate
386. 14:07that's astonishing
387. 14:09how does that happen
388. 14:10it involves a tremendous number of
389. 14:12really complex things including the
390. 14:14genetic code including
391. 14:17ribosomes and dna
392. 14:19dna replication and protein synthesis
393. 14:22things that are just too complicated to
394. 14:23describe without slides
395. 14:26or without a semester of without a
396. 14:29semester of biology yeah or chemistry or
397. 14:32whatever
398. 14:33so
399. 14:35if you if you
400. 14:37if you have to have self-replication in
401. 14:39order to have evolution how how do you
402. 14:41get how do you get all this how did that
403. 14:43self-replication
404. 14:45get there yeah
405. 14:46it couldn't have evolved
406. 14:48because there's no evolution
407. 14:51and that's what i've been studying and
408. 14:53what i published on recently uh the fact
409. 14:56that in fact as i assumed
410. 14:59uh using various models or i'm not going
411. 15:01to get into
412. 15:03that
413. 15:04there are thresholds
414. 15:06and if you don't start out with a cell
415. 15:09that already is pretty good at accurate
416. 15:12self-replication
417. 15:14you can't do it
418. 15:16you'll never get living cells and you'll
419. 15:18never get evolution going
420. 15:21and as i say that's been published in a
421. 15:23theoretical journal okay
422. 15:25so
423. 15:26you've got to get the self first in
424. 15:28order to get it up and going together
425. 15:30and get any evolution but then to get to
426. 15:32that point to get to the first cell you
427. 15:34need just too many things is that kind
428. 15:36of the idea yeah you need you need too
429. 15:38many things that are too difficult
430. 15:41to explain through only chemical
431. 15:43evolution
432. 15:45so what what is the current like science
433. 15:48scienti uh consensus is that what's the
434. 15:51current scientific consensus about a
435. 15:52biogenesis it depends who you talk to if
436. 15:55you talk to people who are not working
437. 15:56in the field many of them will say oh
438. 15:58yeah we're getting there we've got a lot
439. 16:00made a lot of progress we know that
440. 16:02amino acids you know were in meteors so
441. 16:04they probably you know developed
442. 16:07or formed in the primeval earth
443. 16:09we know that uh nucleotides can make
444. 16:12long polymers with rna
445. 16:15that
446. 16:15yeah that's all true but the people who
447. 16:17are actually the leaders in these fields
448. 16:19in this field
449. 16:21uh know the details and the details are
450. 16:23exactly what jim tour says it doesn't
451. 16:25happen you don't get long polymers you
452. 16:28get short polymers you don't get
453. 16:30self-replication you get annealing you
454. 16:32get junk rather than good stuff
455. 16:37that's what they know and frankly uh i
456. 16:40think many of them are getting
457. 16:41discouraged
458. 16:43it looks like not a lot of progress has
459. 16:46been made
460. 16:47in fact very little
461. 16:49and the numbers of problems just keep
462. 16:50expanding
463. 16:52so uh
464. 16:53so the the
465. 16:55alternative that you arrived at was what
466. 16:58well so i don't know i didn't know uh
467. 17:00what i what i
468. 17:02i thought there was there's something
469. 17:04missing and
470. 17:06this was the how this affected my
471. 17:09journey to faith was that it it broke
472. 17:12and helped break down this absolute
473. 17:15certainty that everything is explainable
474. 17:17by materialistic science okay
475. 17:20but i didn't know what the answer was
476. 17:21right
477. 17:23once i became a believer
478. 17:25and i started thinking well
479. 17:27god is the creator of the universe but i
480. 17:30also
481. 17:31said
482. 17:32not just the universe he's also the
483. 17:34creator of life and the creator of human
484. 17:36beings all of which
485. 17:38are not explainable by any other means
486. 17:41so
487. 17:43but how see that's my question because
488. 17:46knowing that god did something to me is
489. 17:48not enough
490. 17:50i want to know a little more details
491. 17:52[Laughter]
492. 17:54i don't know if i can i don't know if
493. 17:55anyone can ever
494. 17:56learn that or understand that because we
495. 17:58don't know how god works you know
496. 18:01obviously
497. 18:02but i want to keep looking at it and i
498. 18:04want to keep you know investigating
499. 18:07various hypotheses i don't think we
500. 18:08should stop doing scientific research on
501. 18:11the issue
502. 18:12but i think we need to be open
503. 18:14and
504. 18:15it may be
505. 18:17that biology is at the same place that
506. 18:19physics was before einstein came up with
507. 18:21relativity
508. 18:22they were kind of stuck
509. 18:24they had solved everything except this
510. 18:26nasty thing called light which nobody
511. 18:28could understand
512. 18:30and when einstein solved light through
513. 18:32relativity
514. 18:34it changed physics forever and it
515. 18:37it turned out physics was nowhere near
516. 18:39complete
517. 18:40and now we're in a position where you
518. 18:42know we have a huge amount of more
519. 18:44knowledge which makes the physical
520. 18:46picture of the universe totally
521. 18:48different than we originally thought
522. 18:50and i think biology is in exactly the
523. 18:52same place right now we need to expand
524. 18:56our tools
525. 18:57we need to include new concepts into our
526. 19:01studies of biology
527. 19:03and i'm not only the only one saying
528. 19:05this there are even some non-theists who
529. 19:07are saying this and
530. 19:09uh one of those concepts may be
531. 19:11teleology purpose
532. 19:13perhaps we need to put purpose back into
533. 19:16scientific equations which has been
534. 19:19taken out of ever since darwin
535. 19:22the whole idea of evolution is it's
536. 19:24blind right the blind watchmaker it has
537. 19:26no direction
538. 19:28no purpose
539. 19:29well the direction we know is wrong
540. 19:31simon conway morris has shown that
541. 19:34there is a direction in evolution
542. 19:37through
543. 19:38through you know his amazing studies on
544. 19:40the burgess shale and other things he's
545. 19:43he has shown that there are constraints
546. 19:45evolution doesn't do just anything it
547. 19:47does only certain things and it does it
548. 19:49over and over and over again
549. 19:51so there's a direction there there are
550. 19:54laws that seem to govern what actually
551. 19:56can happen it's not all random chance
552. 20:00we need to find out what those laws are
553. 20:02and we need to find out what they're
554. 20:03about and here's where i think
555. 20:05philosophy becomes very important
556. 20:08because scientists are not good at
557. 20:09figuring out what
558. 20:11what you know is the basis of science
559. 20:15once they make a discovery and they find
560. 20:17the law fine they can then write an
561. 20:19equation and have it as a law
562. 20:21but oftentimes
563. 20:23it it takes some thought and some new
564. 20:26approaches i mean einstein had to use a
565. 20:28whole different mathematical approach to
566. 20:29get where he got
567. 20:31i think we're going to need to do the
568. 20:32same thing and i think that what we will
569. 20:35find
570. 20:37is that those new approaches including
571. 20:39something like teleology are going to
572. 20:41point even more than they do now
573. 20:44to a divine being
574. 20:46a divine designer so i want to kind of
575. 20:48get an overview of your your journey so
576. 20:51you
577. 20:52encountered these different things in
578. 20:54science and uh let's just get a quick
579. 20:56summary of those so a biogenesis
580. 20:58quantum mechanics was there anything
581. 21:00else that really stuck out well the
582. 21:02fine-tuning argument fine-tuning
583. 21:04argument okay really i i learned about
584. 21:06that later but yes that was definitely
585. 21:10so those were some of the signs was
586. 21:11there anything else scientifically that
587. 21:14well there's actually a lot of other
588. 21:16things that some of them are not very
589. 21:18well known but
590. 21:19uh just the idea that
591. 21:22there's a lot in physics that is not
592. 21:24known and is very surprising and
593. 21:27physicists themselves some of them are
594. 21:29getting a little nervous
595. 21:30because it looks like the cern for
596. 21:32example the cern
597. 21:34collider has not given the results that
598. 21:36people are hoping for a lot of theories
599. 21:38have been thrown out
600. 21:39i can't go into the details because i'm
601. 21:41not a physicist and uh you know uh
602. 21:45this is just from what i'm reading
603. 21:47so and and there are other parts of
604. 21:49biology that uh are
605. 21:52incredibly suggestive of something way
606. 21:55beyond anything we can understand
607. 21:57including
608. 21:58consciousness including human behavior i
609. 22:01mean
610. 22:02the idea that evolution that darwinian
611. 22:04evolution by natural selection explains
612. 22:07why
613. 22:08you know we are we have morality or
614. 22:10explains why
615. 22:12we're creative or we love music
616. 22:15that's just nonsense that's not even
617. 22:17scientific
618. 22:18those are stories okay
619. 22:21uh so what makes us human what does it
620. 22:23mean to be in the image of god well we
621. 22:25have a sense right everybody has a sense
622. 22:28that human beings are
623. 22:31not just animals who are smart
624. 22:35some people deny that and i have never
625. 22:38even as an atheist i never went along
626. 22:40with that view i always knew
627. 22:43that human beings were somehow special
628. 22:45very special
629. 22:46i didn't know why i didn't know where it
630. 22:48came from but
631. 22:50now i think i do
632. 22:52so then
633. 22:53that was kind of a summary of the the
634. 22:55science that kind of led you toward
635. 22:56theism but then
636. 22:58what about what was like i know you
637. 23:00mentioned like there were several
638. 23:01different experiences that you had at
639. 23:02church and dreams and everything what
640. 23:04was one that really stuck out to you
641. 23:06that really contributed to your eventual
642. 23:08accepting christianity is true
643. 23:11well i can as uh i can talk i can tell
644. 23:14you about uh one of the dreams which
645. 23:18there were two main ones that
646. 23:20i believe involved
647. 23:22intercession from
648. 23:24the spirit were you at this time were
649. 23:26you like really investigating were you
650. 23:29reading scripture a lot were not praying
651. 23:31the first one the first one uh i wasn't
652. 23:34even thinking about
653. 23:36christianity or belief i was an agnostic
654. 23:39i didn't know what was going on okay
655. 23:42and i didn't understand the dream at all
656. 23:43when i had it and it was a very
657. 23:46frightening dream because i i don't like
658. 23:49heights and i was hanging from the edge
659. 23:52of a cliff
660. 23:54terrified
661. 23:56i didn't know what to do and i couldn't
662. 23:58climb up i was holding on with my hands
663. 24:02and i screamed out help help i didn't
664. 24:04know who i was calling to i just said
665. 24:05help help and i heard a voice say just
666. 24:08let go.
667. 24:10and i said what what
668. 24:13i fall down
669. 24:14and the voice said just let go.
670. 24:17so i finally said well okay so i let go
671. 24:21and the moment i let go the entire
672. 24:23landscape turned
673. 24:2590 degrees
674. 24:27and instead of hanging from a cliff i
675. 24:29was lying on the ground
676. 24:34and there was a man
677. 24:37whose voice voice i had heard standing
678. 24:39there
679. 24:40that was the man who said just let go
680. 24:44i woke up and i was like
681. 24:46whoa
682. 24:47what was that
683. 24:50i didn't know what he meant by just let
684. 24:52go
685. 24:53i didn't know who it was
686. 24:57and then eventually
687. 24:59of course
688. 25:01i found out that of course the man was
689. 25:03jesus christ and what i had to let go of
690. 25:07was all the baggage that was in my life
691. 25:09that was preventing me
692. 25:11absolutely blocking me from even
693. 25:13considering the idea of a god
694. 25:16and i eventually i did let go of all of
695. 25:18that
696. 25:18wow
697. 25:19that's crazy
698. 25:21was there another one you mentioned
699. 25:23the other one was later and the other
700. 25:25one
701. 25:26the other one was i was already thinking
702. 25:29about
703. 25:30maybe believing in something i don't
704. 25:33remember exactly where i was but what i
705. 25:35do know is i had never been to a church
706. 25:38yet
707. 25:39other than that one catholic church i
708. 25:40might have been there already but i had
709. 25:42never were they wearing the franciscans
710. 25:44was that were they like brown robes yeah
711. 25:46yeah yeah that freaked me out a little
712. 25:47wasn't that cool though it was kind of
713. 25:48it was cool it was cool they were very
714. 25:50cool people they were really nice uh
715. 25:53like a little rope yeah a little rope
716. 25:55yeah i thought that was weird did they
717. 25:57did they like shave their heads i don't
718. 25:58remember that they might have yeah i
719. 26:00don't remember
720. 26:02catholics man catholics yeah wow
721. 26:07so that's another story yeah so tell me
722. 26:09tell me about that so i had and i had
723. 26:11not read i had not yet read the gospel
724. 26:13that's definite
725. 26:15uh so i had the dream that i was walking
726. 26:18around the garden trying to get in a
727. 26:19walled garden
728. 26:21and i couldn't get in i i it was very
729. 26:23steep walls and i was kept trying to
730. 26:25climb up and i i found vines and little
731. 26:28things that but i couldn't get to the
732. 26:29top and i got really frustrated i kept
733. 26:31going around
734. 26:32and i and then i saw a man and and he
735. 26:34said what's good matter with you and i
736. 26:36said i want to get in and i can't climb
737. 26:38over he said well then use the door
738. 26:39there it is
739. 26:46so i walked in
740. 26:48opened the door and walked in and there
741. 26:50was the garden
742. 26:52and
743. 26:56later
744. 26:57when i was in church i think the first
745. 27:00time i went to the church i'm now a
746. 27:01member of
747. 27:03there was a picture of jesus knocking on
748. 27:06the door
749. 27:08but i had never heard that knock on the
750. 27:10door and you know if you knock it will
751. 27:12be open for you that was
752. 27:15i had yet to read that
753. 27:18but i dreamed it
754. 27:22so that that had a big effect on me as
755. 27:25you can see yeah i'm like about to start
756. 27:27turning up myself
757. 27:29um
758. 27:31yeah i mean i don't think there's a
759. 27:32there's a whole lot more for us to to
760. 27:34cover in this short interview but is it
761. 27:36yeah is there is there anything you'd
762. 27:38like to leave
763. 27:39with the audience before we close it out
764. 27:42yeah i i think i have one main message i
765. 27:44think i i think i was
766. 27:46called as so many of us are called
767. 27:50to give one message to
768. 27:53people who are
769. 27:56questioning their faith especially if
770. 27:58they're questioning it because of
771. 27:59science
772. 28:00and
773. 28:01that's the reason i wrote my book it's
774. 28:03the reason i'm writing excuse me
775. 28:05articles
776. 28:07science and christian faith are
777. 28:09absolutely not in conflict i understand
778. 28:12that people growing up in faith
779. 28:14occasionally
780. 28:16will uh will lose it for various reasons
781. 28:19but one of those reasons should never be
782. 28:21science okay because
783. 28:23science is not anti-christian
784. 28:26science is not atheistic
785. 28:28christianity uh
786. 28:31was instrumental in the foundation of
787. 28:33science in the beginning of science all
788. 28:34the original scientists were
789. 28:36christians
790. 28:38and that remains there are still many
791. 28:40many scientists who are christians
792. 28:41despite the current atmosphere which is
793. 28:44somewhat hostile to christianity
794. 28:47but uh
795. 28:48my prediction is what i see now
796. 28:51happening is that atheists are beginning
797. 28:53to deny the reality of science you find
798. 28:56atheists saying no no the universe
799. 28:58didn't have a beginning it's been there
800. 28:59forever
801. 29:01no
802. 29:02they say that dna is not a code there's
803. 29:04no genetic code it's not a real code
804. 29:07wrong
805. 29:09and the reason these are not scientists
806. 29:11necessarily but they're atheists who
807. 29:12think they they are seeing this from
808. 29:15various people
809. 29:17and the reason they're attacking
810. 29:19scientific facts
811. 29:20because they are
812. 29:22is because the scientific facts are
813. 29:24pointing more and more
814. 29:26to what they don't want to accept which
815. 29:28is that
816. 29:30this world
817. 29:31has a creator
818. 29:33and everything we see is is part of the
819. 29:36creation including ourselves
820. 29:39so
821. 29:41if you are being told
822. 29:44that you have to choose between science
823. 29:46and your christian faith
824. 29:48reject that whoever told you that is
825. 29:51wrong
826. 29:52it's not true
827. 29:55what's true is christianity