Disproving Christianity, Finding Belief – Robert Kunda’s Story

Disproving Christianity, Finding Belief – Robert Kunda’s Story
eX-skeptic
Disproving Christianity, Finding Belief – Robert Kunda’s Story

Sep 17 2021 | 00:47:05

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Episode September 17, 2021 00:47:05

Hosted By

Jana Harmon

Show Notes

We presume we are right and correct in our beliefs. But, sometimes we are challenged to consider why we believe what we do. In today’s podcast, former atheist Robert Kunda takes a closer look at his atheistic presumptions, opening him to new possibilities.
Robert mentioned the influence of these Christian thinkers:

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Episode Transcript

Hello, and thanks for joining in. I’m Jana Harmon, and you’re listening to the Side B Podcast, where we listen to the other side. Life is busy. Who has time to think about God when there’s so much else to do? To think about and consider? We simply presume we’re right no matter which side we’re on. Many atheists presume that science has made religion passe. We no longer need the God hypothesis to explain anything. Christianity is not plausible but rather mere superstition. Thinking people have no time or desire to deal with it. It’s simply off the radar.

In my research with over 50 former atheists, nearly two-thirds, 63%, thought that atheism was true and no evidence could convince them otherwise. But in light of the fact that I was interviewing former atheists who had become Christians, it begged the question: What made someone so closed off to God open up and become willing to change. That’s the million dollar question.

I hasten to add that, as a group, these were highly educated people. Nearly half held advanced degrees. These are thoughtful people who, for some reason, decided to take another look at the God question and found themselves strongly believing and advocating what they had once thought was not important or just plain nonsense. Sometimes looking more closely, beyond mere presumptions of belief, causes someone to become open to another perspective, especially if their own worldview doesn’t seem to be providing adequate answers to the questions they’re asking, whether it be science or other questions of life or even death.

That’s the case for the former atheist in our podcast today. Robert Kunda tells his journey from disbelief in God to belief. He was challenged to take a closer look at his atheistic presumptions, and that closer look made all the difference.

Welcome to the Side B Podcast, Robert. It’s so great to have you on today.

Awesome. Thank you for having me.

As we’re getting started, why don’t you tell me a little bit about who you are, perhaps where you live.

My name’s Robert Kunda. I live in southern Oregon, Grant’s Pass specifically, with my wife and our three dot dot dot kids. We have two girls and a boy, eleven, nine, and five, but we also have a fluctuating number of kids, as we are currently foster parents. We have one 1-1/2-year-old baby who, I guess she’s almost a toddler now, but we’re hoping to adopt. So hopefully she’ll be staying around. And then just the number of foster kids we have varies at any given moment. We just had a placement. A girl that was with us for four or five months left this last Friday, and so now we technically have only the baby as a foster kid. We do have a boy and a girl that we’re watching just for a week for someone else, but they’re not living with us permanently.

So you have six children in your home right now, eleven and younger?

Yes.

That’s a full house.

A busy life, it sounds like. Amazing!

It’s busy. It’s nice. My wife stays home. She homeschools our kids, which is something that she always wanted to do, which is something that we’d never have been able to afford when we were in southern California, so the lower cost of living up in Oregon is helpful. It’s nice.

I want to know about the kind of place you grew up that helped to inform and shape your views.  I wonder about your childhood experience. Your family, your community. Were there references to God at all? Or Christianity? Or religion? And what did that look like?

Kind of. In my house, not so much. For maybe three or four years, when we were really young, when we lived out near Pomona area, it was just my mom, my sister, and I, and we were in a private Christian school for some time, because, It was a rough area. So we had weekly chapel and references to God in that school, but other than that, we didn’t go to church. My mom wasn’t a believer. We moved a lot when I was younger, basically all through high school. And after that, there was no going to church. There was no other sort of Christian exposure, except for having friends that were believers.

So when you were a child growing up and you went to this Christian school, was it anything that you believed? Or was it just something that they talked about the school but it really had no personal impact on you in terms of… Did you pray to God or anything like that?

Probably not. At the time, if I could go back and ask myself, I would say at least for a period of time I probably believed it. What that really actually meant… Now I wouldn’t know. Kids can often just kind of repeat things by memorization and hold multiple conflicting ideas in their heads together, but I didn’t pray. I didn’t have any sort of experience with any of it. It was just almost like another class. You moved from English to science to chapel, and it’s just information that you can kind of repeat, but I didn’t have any sort of ownership of it. And whatever was there died off in my later elementary through high school age, anyway.

So you said you had some Christian friends. Would you say that they took their faith very seriously? Were they the type that were very active and intentional in their Christianity? Or was it just something that they, too, were perhaps… called themselves Christians, but it wasn’t much more than that.

It was kind of a mixed bag. And when I said Christian friends, I was mostly thinking of a few of the circles of friends that I had when I was in high school. Most of them, especially the closest ones, were not Christians, but I had another circle of friends that I used to hang out with. They were all part of the same church, and I used to go with them to Christian concerts because it was fun. One of those actually ended up being my wife who I’m married to now.

Oh, okay. Well, that worked out well for you.

But the whole group was kind of a mixed bag. You have some that didn’t stay in any sort of Christian community after high school. You had some that, later on, fell away. And you have a couple that are still there, my wife included. So it was kind of all over the board.

So as you were growing up and you saw this kind of social reference to God and Christianity and you had a few friends who called themselves that, but it’s just not something that evidently was attractive to you or meant anything to you or… How would you describe religion growing up?

That’s a good question. I probably would’ve thought of it as something… almost like a preference. Like, “Certain families do this. Some families watch football on Sundays, and some like to go to church,” and it’s just… almost like a relativistic approach. Different flavors for different people. I wouldn’t have the vocabulary, but it would’ve basically been like, “Well, that’s true for you, and what’s true for me is something different. It’s all just preference.”

So what was becoming true to you at that time? How old were you when you were moving towards atheism or identifying with that kind of thinking or way of looking at the world?

I want to say probably early middle school age. I don’t really remember thinking anything about it at all. I don’t think I really had much of an opinion. Through high school, I would say I strongly ventured towards the atheism side. I’m trying to think what the best way to describe it would be.

Was it school or education? Were you influenced by your science classes? What was it, do you think, that was influencing you towards atheism?

Yeah, I would say it’s probably all of those. Secular naturalism was definitely prevalent as far as the worldview that was presented in school, which I adopted without question. Predominantly, my family and closest friends, none of them were Christian, so I just kind of, basically from every end, that’s the way I adopted it. Also my home growing up wasn’t wonderful, so… Again, I wouldn’t have had the categories for it at the time, but the existential problem of evil was something that I felt tremendously without any sort of answer for, and I’m like, “The world’s too ugly for there to be a God.”

Right, right. So it was really a combination of a lot of different things in your world, your home, your experience, your observation of the world, your friends, school. Did your science classes kind of feed into that understanding, too? You mentioned secular naturalism. For those who may not be familiar with that, can you describe what that is? Or what that was that you believed?

Yeah. I was taught macro evolution in school. You’re really not taught anything spiritual, for lack of a better world. The material world is all that exists. There’s nothing that’s immaterial. Yeah.

And it just made sense to you? It was just a pragmatic view of life?

Yeah. It wasn’t really a view that I was argued into. It was just sort of the underlying presupposition of everything, and that’s just how I viewed everything.

Yeah. So it was just kind of a presumed point of view.

Right.

If you had this kind of presumed perspective of life, naturalism. Did you consider any of the implications that might come along with that way of thinking? In terms of what it meant for your life or your own humanity, freedom, conscience, right and wrong, anything? Purpose, death?

Yeah, I would say it’s kind of a mixed bag. On one end, the morality idea was a big one. I mean, I was like, “There’s no bearded man in the sky that makes doing this or that wrong or right or obligatory.” So I wasn’t really persuaded by a theistic case for the necessity of morality at the time. By God’s grace, I’ve always had a fairly moralistic bent, as far as… I definitely made my share of mistakes, but I was nowhere near as bad as I could have been in a lot of areas. I would say the biggest impact that I had, thinking through the outworkings of atheism, was just the idea of death was terrifying. I mean, I remember I used to just agonize for hours on end… Not every day or all day, but there were periods of time where you just try to understand what the world is, what it means. I’m like, “Okay. I’m conscious. I can think about things that happen. And at some point, I’m just going to be dead, and nothing will matter. And I won’t know that it won’t matter. There’ll just be nothing. It’ll just be emptiness.” And just that thought was so terrifying.

So I presume you tried not to think about that so much.

Well, I don’t think it will in unconsciousness now, so it doesn’t bother me the same way it used to. But at the time it was just horrifying. You get in these kind of ruts, and you’re like, “Why does anything I do matter? Why does it mean anything?” “And in the end, I won’t know.” The idea of being able to know that you won’t know, looking forward, to me, was just so haunting.

So there were some things that really bothered you as an atheist, but then you didn’t know quite what to do with them. So how does your story then progress from there? You were in high school. What did you do after high school?

After high school, I went into the military. I was in the military for four years. When I came back, my mom and my stepdad had gotten divorced, and so I didn’t really have a home to go back to at the time. And so I went to go live with my former best friend from high school. He and his family were basically my second family through middle school and high school, and so I lived with them for a while. Through him, I actually got in touch with my wife, Asia. They ran into each other three, three and a half years after graduating high school, and she found out that I was coming back. She’s like, “Oh, have Robert give me a call when he gets home.”

So I got a hold of her when I came back because I almost had no friends locally, so I was trying to get in touch with people that I remembered, and I got in touch with her. She, from my perspective at the time, had unfortunately still continued going to church and do all that kind of stuff, which meant, for multiple nights a week, or days a week, she was sort of occupied doing church things. And then, as we started to get closer, I became quite aware if I wanted to spend time with her I had to suffer through some of those churchy things.

So she obviously took her Christian faith quite seriously if she was involved several days a week in her church.

She did. She was. I mean, she went to church on Sundays and then… it escapes me. It was one or two nights a week they would usually have some sort of young adult things in the evening or church services midweek, and so I went to those occasionally as well.

So was that odd, as an atheist, to go to church services? What was that like?

It was. Most of the people that I interacted with were all pretty nice. I mean, I’ve typically been able to get along with most people fairly well. The church that she was in at the time, they had not wonderful theology, and so, from the atheist side looking in, it seemed extra wacky to me, and so it was easy, for a long period of time, to sort of roll my eyes and deal with the medicine that I had to swallow in order to spend time with this girl that I liked.

Well, you must’ve really liked her.

I did. And we’d known each other, at that point, for more than ten years. We were good friends. We never dated in high school. I did ask her to prom my senior year, and she told me no.

it wasn’t a real ask. The person that she wanted to go with was unavailable, so I said, “Well, hey, I’ll go with you,” and she’s like, “No. I don’t want to go,” and so I just went with someone else. It didn’t mean much at the time, but it is funny to look back on and say that, “I asked her to prom, and she shot me down, but we ended up getting married, so in the end, I won.”

Yes, you did. You sure did. So how long were you going to church with her thinking this was extra wacky and trying to make sense of what was happening? I know you probably went in with a skeptical lens, obviously. Was there any genuine curiosity to you during this time?

I wouldn’t say genuine curiosity. I definitely went in with a skeptical lens. I didn’t really talk to her about it at the time. Nothing says romance like trying to beat your partner into submission by telling them how dumb they are.

But because I was becoming so much more immersed in a completely different worldview, I started reading a bunch of different books, both atheist and Christian sides, because I kind of wanted to be able to mentally state explicitly why Christianity was false. And so the books I started reading were really to sort of combat that, so when I got into a discussion with someone, instead of just being like, “You’re dumb. You’re wrong,” I could be like, “Here’s why.”

Right.

And so what I first started reading was in order to do that. Unfortunately, it seems to have backfired, and I went the opposite direction. Fortunately now but at the time I would have considered it unfortunate.

Ah. So what kinds of things were you reading? I presume, like you said, it was a fairly balanced reading on both sides? Atheism and Christianity?

So I wasn’t in any sort of research program, so I didn’t really pick a well versed catalog, but I did read a couple of Christian science books. Not Christian science, but… It’s been a long time. I can’t remember all the titles, but I think I read one or two books by Hugh Ross at the time, looking at creation arguments. I read at least one or two Richard Dawkins books. Let’s see, what else? I’ve read a number of C.S. Lewis books as well. Stuff that was recommended kind of by both sides.

Right. And during that time as well were you reading… Did you pick up the Bible? I’m curious, since it was the Christian text. Did you read the Bible?

Intermittently. At the time, not a whole lot, not in scope. There would be times where I would go reference something or read a section, but there was no systematic reading through. Again, at the time, I didn’t think it was something worth taking seriously, so I didn’t go to the original sources.

Okay, okay. But you were reading back and forth on these opposing worldviews, and you were finding, I presume, something surprising about what you were reading from Christian thinkers?

Yes.

Because obviously you were being persuaded towards that direction.

Yeah, I think that was what sort of surprised me is, as you look at different authors, which… It wasn’t like a formal debate where they’re interacting with each other directly, but you have guys that are interacting with similar ideas, and in doing that, they’re presenting the other side and then their own arguments as to the way the world actually works, and it became fairly evident to me early on that the Christian side was much more accurate in their representation of the opposing side than vice versa.

Yes, yes. So there seemed to be more fairness by the Christian authors on their view of atheism, as compared to vice versa. But you mentioned that it seemed to also provide, I guess, a clearer or more cogent view of reality. What do you mean by that? That they were able to answer some of those bigger questions? Or did the pieces seem to fit together in terms of the universe, the cosmos? You said you read Hugh Ross. Did things seem to make sense in terms of cause and effect or fine tuning or-

Yeah. The two things that I think really sunk with me first was, on one hand… Lewis was very helpful to me early on, in getting me to think about certain ideas, but I want to say it was like the argument from desire. I mentioned before the idea of dying was terrifying because I don’t want to not exist anymore. And his argument was sort of that we long for fulfillment in certain areas, and Christianity can offer answers to those that are ultimately satisfying, whereas atheism cannot. Now that’s not, by itself, an argument in favor of Christianity’s truthfulness or not. Just because we want something doesn’t really make it so, but it did seem to me that many of the atheists weren’t necessarily taking the seriousness of their own implications seriously. I think this is one of the biggest issues that I’ve had with Richard Dawkins, is that he really maintains almost a Christian worldview from the perspective of being able to call things wrong, but if naturalism is true, why does he care? He’s just chemicals fizzing together in a different way than someone else. So why is he against injustices of the world?

Atheists of old used to understand this, and a lot of the current atheists just completely disregard it. They want to borrow the benefits of Christian thought while casting off the foundations. And so that seemed very inconsistent to me.

I would say the other side that was a big influence for me as well was I used to love listening to moderated debates with atheists and Christians on a whole variety of topics. I’ve probably listened to at least three dozen Bill Craig debates. But some of the most interesting debates were the ones for and against evolution and watching how the evolutionists conducted themselves in debates, both with their arguments and argumentativeness, was just so, frankly, embarrassing from someone at the time who was sympathetic to evolution as not only just a scientific theory but a whole worldview. Watching how poorly some of them performed and behaved themselves was just, to me, horrifying.

So it was content and manner?

Right. I mean, if you’re approaching it where you have the intellectual arguments in the bag and the other side is literally just making stuff up out of thin air, you should be able to present a solid argument explaining why your own view has merit, rather than just literally mocking the other side, and none of the debates that I watched did that.

So was that disappointing to you in a way? That the atheists weren’t able to rise to the occasion intellectually or pragmatically, I guess you could say?

Yeah. And at this point I was probably kind of mid trajectory in going some other direction, and I wasn’t sure. I wouldn’t say that it was disappointing at the time. It was illuminating, in that I was less confident in how true my outlook was at the world. I thought, “Maybe I don’t know everything that I think I do,” or, “Maybe the world isn’t the way that I have assumed it was.”

Hm. And as you were moving through this process of listening to pro and con and different debates and you were reading books, were you discussing your thinking, your findings, how you were being illuminated with Asia or with any Christians or any atheists? Or were you just kind of going on this journey by yourself?

It was largely by myself. At the time, I was not super eager to share some of the specifics with Asia.

Because you were just trying to figure this out on your own, I presume, before-

Yeah, I mean it really started off as a quest to argue against Christianity and then shifted into sort of trying to understand what I actually do believe, like what’s the proper way to understand the way world is and how it works.

So it was a process, really. How long were you in this journeying of finding clarity with regard to your own thinking, as well as these worldviews?

I want to say it was probably… anywhere between three to five years. I don’t know if it’s completely closed because I think I’m continuing to develop in my thinking, although at this point I think I’m much more just firming up weak points rather than a complete change in worldview, but it was a very slow, long process. I never had like a Blues Brothers moment of conversion, where all of a sudden I recognized that I believed God’s word, I believed the Gospels. It was a much more delayed, slow process, to where, at some point I understood what the material was, and eventually I crossed over into the, “Okay, I actually do believe this now,” but it was very slow, and it was not instant for me.

It reminds me of C.S. Lewis’s conversion, where he went through a very long journeying, too. Of moving from atheism to Christianity, and then n a sense it was all of a sudden, but it was really capped on a very long process of… He said it was almost as a sleeping man becoming awake, and, “All of a sudden, I believed,” and it made sense. It’s like the pieces fell into place. I think not every conversion is any kind of a sudden, like you called it, a Blues Brothers moment. I love that. For many people, it is a gradual… I mean, when you think of the weight of shifting your worldview, of thinking reality one way and then moving towards another way of considering reality, that is… or it seems like it would be, or should be, even, a prolonged process. And like you say, it seems like a process that is ongoing. It’s not something that you can grasp fully. It’s something we’re always becoming more and more acquainted with, I guess you could say. But there must have been a point, kind of a tipping point? Would you call it something like that?

And I know Christianity is not just believing evidence. That’s part of it, but it’s so much more than that, because, in Christianity, it’s not just believing certain propositions are true, it’s actually a relationship with a Person who you believe is Truth.

Right.

So there’s a lot more to it than that. So did that come into play? I know there’s the intellectual part, but then there’s so much more than that. So talk with me about that.

I haven’t put some of this into words before. But honestly, looking back, I don’t think I would consider myself a believer until actually well after we were married. I look back, and my wife shouldn’t have married me at the time. One of her few failings in life. She ended up lucking out, and I’m quite a catch now, but I wouldn’t have encouraged to have married me back at the time. But I remember I became much less hostile to Christianity after a period of thought and consideration, but I didn’t consider myself part of the group. I became content to sort of coexist in sort of a relativistic fashion, like, “Hey, I know you guys believe all the fancy Jesus stuff, and I don’t really believe that, but I have no problems sharing a meal together,” you know, doing life together.

So we dated for quite a while, and then, at some point, I actually asked her if we could leave the church that she was at because I didn’t think Christianity was true, but I knew that whatever the church that she was at the time believed wasn’t even really Christianity. And so we did. We left there and went to an EV Free church, and we were there for… Without doing the math, I want to say maybe eight or nine years. And it was over a period of years, being in that church, where I really became solidified in my conversion and confident in the faith that I had in Christ. And I think the point where that happened, that I can kind of point to, was I remember one of the pastors had called me one day and said, “Hey, it might be time for you to get baptized.” And, at first, I was like, “Well, that’s kind of a big step,” and as I was talking through it with him and I was thinking about it, I was like, “Actually, I don’t really have a problem. I think that is probably appropriate. Because I do believe these things now.” And I probably did before, but I hadn’t really codified it in my own thinking. But that was a number of years into us being married.

So you moved through what you consider a conversion process, and I’m curious as to all those bits and pieces that seemed to bother you as an atheist, like issues of death and grounding morality and those kinds of things… Once you became a Christian, did you find that those things that were somewhat missing in your atheistic worldview you were able to find within your Christianity?

Yeah. And I think that’s where a lot of the apologetic arguments and discussions have really helped me, much more as a believer than when I was an atheist. So that Christianity has an afterlife, to me, was never an argument in favor of Christianity. I mean, most of the religions have an afterlife, but that was not persuasive enough to say, “Oh, well therefore that worldview is right.” But now, believing that Christianity is true and recognizing that, in fact, it does have answers for those things that I thought atheism was, if not deficient on, gave answers that weren’t really fulfilling, and now, having a worldview that, in turn, does fulfill those desires is an incredible blessing, and so I found that with a lot of the apologetic arguments.

Everything from the typical bag that Bill Craig carries around, the cosmological argument. That wasn’t appealing to me at the time. I’m like, “Okay, whatever. The Christian sect used fancy words,” or whatever, but now that I’m a believer and I can hear these arguments, especially a philosophical defense of Christianity, I look, and I’m like, “Wow! These are really, really good arguments,” especially when you consider them with an open mind, so to me, apologetics has been much more of a useful tool for building and strengthening the confidence that believers have in their own faith, rather than necessarily just a straight tool to evangelize with.

So as you became a Christian, I guess you could say that you found the philosophical, the intellectual aspects of Christianity to be solid in terms of your ability to make sense of the world and existentially, in terms of your life, it also was fulfilling those things, and so it gave you somewhat of a fully orbed worldview, in a sense. More than what you had in your atheism. Tell me, as you became a Christian, you said you’re rather a student. Did you pursue further education.

after I got out of the military, I went to just a local community college, and I was taking classes there, working towards an AA. After some period of time, I actually… I want to say maybe 2005, 2006 is when I actually enrolled in Biola. After I was firmly in the believer camp. I decided I wanted to have a more biblical education than what I was getting at a secular school, and so I enrolled in Biola. I went through my bachelor’s there, and then I ended up doing my Master’s in Apologetics there as well.

Okay. So you did take this very, very seriously, in terms of grounding your own worldview.

Yeah. Once they got me, they got me.

Yeah. I guess you could say that, for sure. As we’re listening to your story and really considering that you’ve come quite a distance and you understand what it feels like to live and think as an atheist and live and think as a Christian, in your story you had presumptions that atheism was true but perhaps, when you took a closer look, it unearthed, some real doubts for you as you were looking at it more closely. What would you like to say to the curious skeptic who might be listening today in terms of perhaps investigating their own atheism, much less Christianity?

I guess it would be twofold. On one hand, I mentioned that I really did find a lot of moderated debates very useful. I used to just Google debates and just find something that looked interesting and listen through that. And interactions between Christians and atheists on different topics was just fascinating to me, and I benefited greatly from listening to those and watching how both sides conducted their arguments, how they behaved themselves, the merits on each side, but what I would encourage is something that I didn’t do early on, and that would be to actually just expose yourself to reading the Bible, to what’s actually in scripture. I think it would’ve made my process a lot less long and less painful. It’s one of those things that, if it’s true, you’ll see, and I think it is, so I think you will, but… It’s hard to say you don’t believe something when you actually don’t look at what the thing is and you only look at it through second or third-hand sources.

Yeah. That’s some good counsel. I’ve heard a lot of stories of people who were very, very surprised by what they found in the Bible when they actually read it for themselves. And for the Christian, how would you encourage them in terms of understanding the atheist more or someone who’s a skeptic or a nonbeliever or perhaps engaging with someone who has a different worldview or even equipping themselves in order to engage?

Yeah. So every person, their story’s a little bit different. I mentioned my wife before. She grew up in the church. She’s always been in a Christian home. And she doesn’t remember a time when she didn’t believe. On the other hand, I was well into my twenties, my mid twenties, when I was converted. And in many ways I wish that I would have grown up a Christian, because there’s a lot of baggage that I carry around now that I wouldn’t have to deal with or think back on, but in other ways, it is kind of a blessing, in that I could see literally what I was saved from, not just to but from, and I can remember what it was like. And I think a lot of the times, Christians can forget who they once were, especially on the internet, which is maybe the worst place to argue about anything, let alone Christianity, but anything. But remember the grace that you have been shown and the position that you are now in. We didn’t just realize that something’s true and someone else is just too dumb to realize it. We’re literally given a grace by God in understanding. And those that don’t have it are in no better position than we ourselves were. So just to remember where we came from.

I think it was Greg Koukl who said, “The Gospel is offensive enough. Don’t add any offense to it.” Don’t take any of it away, but don’t be offensive in your delivery of it. Let God be the one that’s offensive, and let that be the mark that people remember and not your own manners and your presentation themselves.

I think that’s wise counsel. It makes me curious. When you were dating Asia for a period of time, did she allow you space? Was she pressuring you at all towards Christianity? Or did she allow you space for you to move at your own pace towards this journey that you were on to find truth?

Yeah. To be honest, we actually didn’t really talk about it. It wasn’t really front and center. Just by nature, she’s not a very argumentative person, which is why we typically never fight now.

It just was a topic that we did not discuss.

Okay. Yeah. So at least she wasn’t putting pressure on you in this regard.

No, it was probably the complete opposite.

The only pressure was, “Hey, I’m going to be at church on this day and this time. If you want to hang out with me, that’s where I’ll be.” That was the only pressure.

And so it was quite persuasive, apparently.

I guess you wanted to be with her, and that was a good thing. Thank you, Robert, for being a part of the Side B Podcast. It’s great to hear your story, and I truly appreciated hearing your journey and your honesty in all of it. So thank you for coming on.

Thank you.

Thanks for tuning into the Side B Podcast to hear Robert’s story. For questions and feedback about this episode, you can reach me by email at [email protected]. If you enjoyed it, subscribe and share this podcast with your friends and social network. In the meantime, I’ll be looking forward to seeing you next time, where we’ll be listening to the other side.

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[00:00:01] Speaker A: I was less confident in the what my own how true my outlook was of the world. I thought maybe I don't know everything that I think I do, or maybe the world isn't the way that I have assumed it was. [00:00:22] Speaker B: Hello and thanks for joining in. [00:00:25] Speaker C: I'm Jana Harman, and you're listening to the side b podcast where we listen to the other side. Each podcast we listen to the story of someone who is a former atheist who is now a Christian, someone who has lived and thought on both sides of the story. Life is busy for all of us. Who has time to think about God when there's so much else to do, to think about and to consider. We simply presume we're right, no matter which side we're on. Many atheists presume science has made religion passe. We no longer need that God hypothesis to explain anything. Christianity is not plausible, but rather mere superstition, thinking people have no time or desire to deal with it. It's simply off the radar. In my research with over 50 former atheists, nearly two thirds, 63% thought that atheism was true and no evidence could convince them otherwise. But in light of the fact that I was interviewing former atheists who had become christians, it begs the what made someone so closed off to God become willing to change? That is the million dollar question. I hasten to add that as a group, these were highly educated people. Nearly half held advanced degrees. These are thoughtful people who for some reason decided to take another look at the God question and found themselves strongly believing and advocating what they once thought was sheer nonsense are just simply not important. Sometimes looking more closely beyond mere presumptions of belief causes someone to become open to another perspective, especially if their own worldview doesn't seem to provide adequate answers to the questions they are asking, whether it be science or other questions of life or even death. That's the case of the former atheist. In our podcast today, Robert Kunde tells his journey from disbelief to belief in God. He was challenged to take a closer look at his atheistic presumptions, and that closer look made all the difference. [00:03:00] Speaker B: Welcome to the Psybe podcast, Robert. It's so great to have you on today. [00:03:06] Speaker A: Awesome. Thank you. Thank you for having me. [00:03:09] Speaker B: As we're getting started, why don't you tell me a little bit about who you are, perhaps where you live. [00:03:15] Speaker A: My name is Robert Kunda. I live in southern Oregon grants pass, specifically with my wife and our three dod dot dog kids. We have two girls and a boy, eleven, nine, and five. But we also have a fluctuating number of kids as we are currently foster parents. We have one a year and a half year old baby who I guess she almost a toddler now that we're hoping to adopt, so hopefully she'll be staying around. And then just the, the number of foster kids we have varies at any given moment. We just had a placement. A girl that was with us for four or five months left this last Friday. And so now we, we technically have only the baby as a, as a foster kid. We, we do have another, a boy and a girl that we're watching just for a week for someone else, but they're not living with us permanently. [00:04:13] Speaker B: So you have six children in your home right now? Eleven and younger? [00:04:17] Speaker A: Yes. [00:04:18] Speaker B: That's a full house, a busy life. It sounds like it's nice. [00:04:23] Speaker A: My, my wife stays home. She homeschools our kids, which is something that she always wants, wanted to do, which is something that we never been able to afford when we were in southern California. So the lower cost of living up and up in Oregon is helpful. It's nice. So. [00:04:40] Speaker B: And I want to know about the kind of place you grew up that helped to inform and shape your views. I wonder about your childhood experience, your family, your community. Was there, were there references to God at all or Christianity or religion? And what did that look like? [00:05:08] Speaker A: You know, kind of in my house, not, not so much for a number. Maybe three or four years. When we were really young, when we lived in like out near Pomona area, it was just my mom, my sister and I, and we were in a private christian school for some time because the, it was a rough area. So, you know, we had weekly chapel and references to God in that school. But other than that, we didn't, we didn't go to church. My mom wasn't a believer. We moved a lot when I was, when I was younger, basically all through high school after that, there was no going to church. There was no other sort of christian exposure except for having friends that were believers. [00:06:06] Speaker B: So when you were a child growing up and you went to this christian school, was it anything that you believed or was it just something that they talked about at the school? But it really had no personal impact on you in terms of did you pray to God or anything like that? [00:06:28] Speaker A: Not, you know, probably not at the time. You know, if I could go back and ask myself, I would say at least for a period of time, I probably believed it. What that really actually meant now, I wouldn't know. You know, kids can often just kind of repeat things by memorization and hold multiple conflicting ideas in their heads together. But, I mean, I didn't pray. I didn't have any sort of experience with any of it. It was just almost like another class. You move from, you know, from english to science to chapel, and it's just. Just information that you can kind of repeat. But I didn't have any sort of ownership of it, and whatever. Whatever was there died off in my later elementary through high school age. [00:07:14] Speaker B: Anyway, so you said you had some christian friends. Would you say that they took their faith very seriously? Were they the type that were very active and intentional in their christianity, or was it just something that they, too, were perhaps called themselves christians? But it wasn't much more than that. [00:07:37] Speaker A: It was kind of a mixed bag. And when I said christian friends, I was mostly thinking of a few of the circles of friends that I had when I was in high school. Most of them, especially my closest ones, were not christians, but I had another circle of friends that I used to hang out with. They were all part of the same church. I used to go with them to, like, christian concerts because it was fun. One of those actually ended up being my wife, who I'm married to now. [00:08:04] Speaker B: Okay, well, that worked out well for. [00:08:06] Speaker A: You, but the whole group was kind of a mixed bag. You have some that didn't stay in any sort of christian community after high school. You had some that later on fell away, and you have a couple that are still there, my wife included. So it was kind of all over the board. [00:08:27] Speaker B: So as you were growing up and you saw this kind of social reference to God and Christianity, and you had a few friends who called themselves that, but that it's just not something that evidently was attractive to you or meant anything to you or. How would you describe religion growing up? [00:08:50] Speaker A: It's a good question. I probably would have thought of it as something like. Almost like a preference. Like, certain families do this. Like, some families watch football on Sundays and some like to go to church, and it's just almost like the relativistic approach, you know, different flavors for different people. I wouldn't have the vocabulary, but that it would have basically been like, well, that's true for you, and what's true for me is something different. It's all just preference. [00:09:19] Speaker B: So what was becoming true to you at that time? I mean, how old were you when you were moving towards atheism or identifying with that kind of thinking or way of looking at the world? [00:09:36] Speaker A: I'm trying to think, I want to say probably early middle school age I don't really remember thinking anything about it at all. I don't think I really had much of an opinion through high school, I would say I strongly ventured towards the atheist inside, trying to think of what the best way to describe it would be. [00:10:04] Speaker B: Was it school or education? Like, were you influenced by your science classes? What was it? Do you think that that was influencing you towards atheism? [00:10:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I would. I would say it's probably all, all of those. It was definitely like a, like secular naturalism was definitely prevalent as far as the worldview that was presented in school, which, you know, I adopted without, without question the, you know, predominantly my family and closest friends. None of. None of them were christian. So I just kind of basically, from every end, that's the way I adopted it. Also, my home growing up wasn't wonderful. So again, I wouldn't have had the categories for it at the time, but the existential problem of evil was something that I felt tremendously without any sort of answer for. And just, I'm like, the world's too ugly for there to be a goddess. [00:11:11] Speaker B: Right, right. So it was really a combination of a lot of different things in your world, your home, your experience, your observation of the world, your friends, school. Did your science classes kind of feed into that understanding, too? You mentioned secular naturalism. For those who may not be familiar with that, can you describe what that is or what that was that you believed? [00:11:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I was taught, you know, like macro evolution in school. You're. You're really not taught anything spiritual, I guess, for lack of a better word. The material world is all that exists. There's nothing that's immaterial. Yeah. [00:12:06] Speaker B: And it just. And it just made sense to you. [00:12:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:08] Speaker B: It was just a pragmatic view of life. [00:12:11] Speaker A: Yeah. It wasn't really a view that I was argued into. It was just sort of the underlying presupposition of everything, and that's just how I. How I viewed everything. [00:12:21] Speaker B: Yeah. So it was just kind of a presumed point of view. [00:12:24] Speaker A: Right. [00:12:25] Speaker B: Did you. So if you had this kind of presumed perspective of life, naturalism, did you consider any of the implications that that might come along with that way of thinking in terms of, you know, what it meant for your life, for your own humanity, freedom, conscience, right and wrong, anything, purpose, death? [00:12:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say it's kind of a mixed bag on one end. The morality idea was a big one. I mean, I was like, there's no bearded man in the sky that makes doing this or that wrong or right or obligatory. So I wasn't really persuaded by atheistic case for the necessity of morality at the time. I. How to phrase it by God's grace. I've always had a fairly moralistic bent as far as I definitely made my share of mistakes, but it was nowhere near as bad as I could have been in a lot of areas, I would say. But the biggest impact that I had is thinking through the outworkings of atheism was just. The idea of death was terrifying. I mean, I remember I used to just agonized, just for hours on end. I mean, not every day or all day, but there were periods of time where you just try to understand what the world is like, what it means. I'm like, okay, I'm conscious. I can think about things that happen, and at some point, I'm just gonna be dead, and nothing will matter. And I won't know that it won't matter. There'll just be nothing. It'll just be emptiness. And just that thought was so terrifying. [00:14:20] Speaker B: So I presume you try not to think about that so much. [00:14:26] Speaker A: Well, I don't think it will end in unconsciousness now, so it doesn't bother me the same way it used to, but at the time, it was just horrifying. You get in these kind of rusts, and, like, why does anything I do matter? Why does it mean anything? And in the end, I won't have. I won't know. And the idea of being able to know that you won't know, like, looking forward, it was just, to me, was just so haunting. [00:14:54] Speaker B: So there were some. Some things that really bothered you as an atheist, but then you didn't know quite what to do with them. So how does your story then progress from there? You were in high school, and what did you do after high school? [00:15:09] Speaker A: After high school, I went into the military. I was in the military for four years. When I came back, my parents, my mom and my stepdad had gotten divorced, and so I didn't really have a home to go back to at the time, and so I went to go live with my former best friend from high school. Him and his family were basically my second family through middle school and high school, and so I lived with him for a while. Through him, I actually got in touch with my wife, Asia. They ran into each other three and a half years after graduating high school, and she found out that I was coming back. She was like, oh, have Robert give me a call when he gets home. So I got ahold of her when I came back, because I almost had no friends locally. So I was trying to get in touch with, with people that I remembered, and I got in touch with her. She, from my perspective at the time, had, unfortunately still continued going to church and do all that kind of stuff, which meant for multiple nights a week or days a week, she was sort of occupied doing church things. And then as we started to get closer, I became quite aware if I wanted to spend time with her, I had to, you know, suffer through some of those churchy things. [00:16:36] Speaker B: So she obviously took her, her christian faith quite seriously. If she was involved several days a. [00:16:43] Speaker A: Week in a church, she did. She was. I mean, she went to church on Sundays, and then it escapes me. It was one or two nights a week. They would usually have some sort of, you know, young adult things in the evening or church services midweek. And so I, I went to those occasionally as well. [00:17:07] Speaker B: So was that odd as a, as an atheist to go to church services? What did, what was that like? [00:17:15] Speaker A: It was, most of the people that I interacted with were all, were all pretty nice. I mean, I've typically been able to get along with, with most people fairly well. It was a yde, the church that she was in at the time, they had not wonderful theology. And so from the atheist side looking in, it seemed extra wacky to me. And so it was easy for a long period of time to sort of roll my eyes and deal with the medicine that I had to swallow in order to spend time with, with this girl that I liked. [00:17:56] Speaker B: Well, you must have really liked her. [00:17:57] Speaker A: I did. And, you know, we'd known each other at that point for more than ten years, so, I mean, we were good friends. We never dated in high school. I did ask her to prom my senior year, and she told me, no, it wasn't a real ask. The person that she wanted to go with was unavailable. And so I said, well, hey, I'll go with you. And she's like, no, I don't want to go. And so I just went with someone else. It didn't mean much at the time, but it is funny to look back on and say that. I asked her a prom, and she shot me down, but we ended up getting married, so in the end, I won. [00:18:32] Speaker B: Yes, you did. You sure did. So how long were you going to church with her, thinking this was extra wacky and trying to make sense of what was happening? Were you? I know you probably went in with a skeptical lens, obviously. Was there any genuine curiosity to you during this time? [00:18:55] Speaker A: Um, you know, I wouldn't say genuine curiosity. Um, I definitely went in with a skeptical lens. I didn't really talk to her about that at the time. Um, you know, nothing says romance like trying to beat your, your, your partner into submission by telling them how dumb they are. Um, but because I was becoming so much more immersed in, in a completely different worldview, I actually wanted to, I started reading a bunch of different books, both atheists and christian sides, because I kind of wanted to be able to mentally like state explicitly why Christianity was false. And so I, the books I started reading were released to sort of kind of combat that. So when I got into discussion with someone, I could, instead of just being like, you're dumb, you're wrong. I could be like, here's why. [00:19:48] Speaker B: Right. [00:19:49] Speaker A: So that's the, when I first started reading was in order to do that. Unfortunately, it seems to have backfired and I went the opposite direction, fortunately now. But at the time I would have been considered unfortunate. [00:20:04] Speaker B: Ah. So what kinds of things were you reading? I presume, like you said, it was a fairly balanced reading on both sides, atheism and Christianity. [00:20:15] Speaker A: So I wasn't in any sort of research program. So I didn't, I didn't really pick a well versed catalog, but I did read a couple of, you know, christian science books. Not christian science, but I want to. It's been a long time. I can't, I can't remember all the titles, but I think I read one or two books by, by Hugh Ross at the time looking at creation arguments. I readdeze at least one or two Richard Dawkins books. Let's see what else I know. I've read a number of CS Lewis books as well. Stuff that was recommended kind of by both sides. [00:20:51] Speaker B: Right. And during that time as well, were you reading, did you pick up the Bible? I'm curious, since it was the text of the, you know, the christian text, did you read the Bible intermittently at the time? [00:21:06] Speaker A: Not a whole lot. Not in scope. There would be times where I would go, I would go reference something or read a section, but there was no sort of systematic reading through. Again, at the time I didn't think it was something worth taking seriously, so I didn't really, I didn't go, I didn't go to the original sources. [00:21:24] Speaker B: Okay. Okay. But you were reading back and forth on these different world, you know, different or opposing worldview. Opposing worldviews. And you were finding, I presume, something surprising about what you were, what you were reading from christian thinkers. [00:21:45] Speaker A: Yes. [00:21:46] Speaker B: Because obviously you were being persuaded towards that direction. [00:21:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's, that was what sort of surprised me is as you look at different authors, which, you know, wasn't like a formal debate where they're interacting with each other directly, but you have guys that are interacting with similar ideas, and in doing that, they're, you know, presenting like the other side of and then their own sort of arguments as to the way the world actually works. And it became fairly evident to me early on that the christian side was much more accurate in their representation of the opposing side than vice versa. [00:22:30] Speaker D: I wanted to take a quick break from our story and ask you a question. Have you ever wanted to talk about your faith in a more effective way, like CS Lewis? Who wouldn't? [00:22:41] Speaker C: If so, I'd like to tell you. [00:22:43] Speaker D: About a special livestream event coming up with Randy Newman, another CS Lewis Institute host of the podcast Questions that matter. You might be familiar not only with his podcast, but also his wonderful book called questioning Evangelism. Well, he's now written a new book called Mirror Evangelism, where he highlights the methods CS Lewis used for meaningful communication, such as storytelling, humor, imagery, and more. And he teaches us how we can use those methods in our own conversations. Randy will be talking about his new book in a live stream event on the evening of September 24. You will be equipped to talk about your faith, and I engage with unbelievers wisely, whatever their attitudes towards Christianity might be. You will also be given the opportunity to ask questions of him after a time of discussion with Joel Woodruff, the president of CS Lewis Institute. There's no doubt that Randy's winsome style and his deep commitment to sharing his faith will make for a very enjoyable learning experience. We hope you'll see. [00:23:54] Speaker C: Sign up. [00:23:55] Speaker D: There's no charge for this event, but you do need to register. For more information, please go to cs lewisinstitute.org mir. Evangelism now back to our story. [00:24:10] Speaker B: So there seemed to be more fairness by the christian authors on their view of atheism as compared to vice versa. But you mentioned that it seemed to also provide, I guess, a clearer or more cogent view of reality. And what do you mean by that? Is that they were able to answer some of those bigger questions, or did the pieces seem to fit together in terms of the universe, the cosmos? You said you read Hugh Ross. The things seem to make sense in terms of cause and effect or fine tuning or. [00:24:51] Speaker A: Yeah, the two things that I think really sunk with me first was on one hand, Lewis was very, was very helpful to me early on in getting me to think about certain ideas. But I want to say it was like the argument from desire. But you have, I mentioned before the idea of, you know, dying was terrifying because I don't want to not exist anymore. And his, his argument was sort of that we long for fulfillment in certain areas and, you know, Christianity can offer answers to those that are ultimately satisfying, whereas atheism cannot. Now that's not, that's not by itself an argument in favor of, of Christianity's truthfulness or not. Just because we want something doesn't really make it so. But it did seem to me that many of the atheists weren't necessarily taking the seriousness of their own implications seriously. I think this is one of the biggest issues that I've had with Richard Dawkins is that he really maintains almost a christian worldview from the perspective of being able to call things wrong. But if, if naturalism is true, like why, why does he care? I mean, he's just, he's just chemicals fizzing together in a different way than someone else. So like, why, why is he against injustices of the world? [00:26:32] Speaker B: I know, yeah. [00:26:36] Speaker A: Used to understand this and a lot of the current atheists just completely disregard it. They want to borrow the benefits of christian thought while casting off the foundations. So that seemed very inconsistent to me. I would say the other side, that was a big influence for me as well. Washington. But I used to love listening to moderated debates with atheists and christians on a whole variety of topics. I've probably listened to at least three dozen bill Craig debates. But some of the most interesting debates were the ones for and against evolution. And watching how the evolutionists conducted themselves in debates, both with their arguments and argumentativeness, was just so frankly embarrassing from someone at the time who was sympathetic to evolution as a, not only just a scientific theory, but a whole worldview. Watching how poorly some of them performed and behaved themselves was just, to me, horrifying. [00:27:48] Speaker B: So it was content and manner, right? [00:27:52] Speaker A: I mean, it's like if you're, if you're approaching it where you have the, the intellectual arguments in the bag and the other side is literally just, just making stuff up out of thin air, you should be able to present a solid argument explaining why your own view has merit rather than just literally walking the other side. And none of the debates that I, that I watched did that. [00:28:17] Speaker B: So was that disappointing to you in a way that the atheists weren't able to rise to the occasion intellectually and or pragmatically? I guess you could say, yeah. [00:28:28] Speaker A: And at this point I was probably kind of a mid, mid trajectory and going some other direction. And I wasn't sure. I wouldn't say that it was disappointing at the time. It was illuminating in that I was less confident in the what my own, how true my outlook was at the world. I thought maybe I don't know everything that I think I do, or maybe the world isn't the way that I, that I have assumed it was. [00:28:58] Speaker B: And as you were moving through this process of listening to pro and con and different debates and you were reading books, were you discussing your thinking, your finding, what you were being, how you were being eliminated with Asia or with any christians or any atheists or were you just kind of going on this journey by yourself? [00:29:24] Speaker A: It was largely by myself. I said at the time I was not super eager to share some of the specifics with Asia. [00:29:41] Speaker B: Because you were just trying to figure this out on your own, I presume, before. [00:29:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it really started off as a quest to argue against Christianity and then shifted into sort of trying to understand like what I actually do believe. Like what? Like what is the truth, like what's the proper way to understand the way the world is and how it works. [00:30:08] Speaker B: So it was a process really. How long were you in this journeying of finding clarity and with regard to your own thinking as well as these worldviews? [00:30:23] Speaker A: Oh, I want to say it was probably anywhere between three to five years. [00:30:29] Speaker B: Okay. [00:30:30] Speaker A: I don't know if it's completely closed because I think I'm continuing to develop in my, in my thinking, although I, at this point I think I'm much more just firming up weak points rather than a complete change in worldview. But it was a very slow, long process. I didn't have, I never had like a blues brothers moment of conversion where all of a sudden I just, I recognized that I believed God's word, I believed the gospels. It was a much more delayed, slow process to where at some point I understood what the material was. And then eventually I crossed over into the, okay, I actually do believe this now, but it was very slow and it was not instant for me. [00:31:17] Speaker B: It reminds me of CS Lewis's conversion where he went through a very long journeying too, of moving from atheism to Christianity. And then in a sense it was all of a sudden, but it was really capped on a very long process of, he said it was almost as if a sleeping man becoming awake. And all of a sudden I believed and it made sense. It's like the pieces fell into place. I think not every conversion is any kind of a sudden like you called it a blues brothers moment? I love that. You know, for many people it's a gradual. I mean, when you think of the weight of shifting your worldview, of thinking reality one way and then moving towards another way of considering reality, that is, or it seems like it would be or should be even prolonged process. And like you say, it seems like a process that is ongoing. It's not something that you can grasp fully. It's something we're always becoming more and more acquainted with, I guess you could say. But there must have been a point, kind of a tipping point, I guess you would you call it something like that where it's. And I know Christianity is not just believing evidence. Christianity is. That's part of it. But it's so much more than that, because in Christianity, it's not just believing certain propositions are true. You're actually. It's actually in a relationship with a person who you believe is truth. So there's a lot more to it than that. So did that come into play? I know there's the intellectual part, but then there's so much more than that. So talk with me about that. [00:33:15] Speaker A: Yeah. I haven't put some of this into words before, but it was. I honestly, looking back, I don't think I would consider myself a believer until actually. Well, after that we were married. I look back, my wife shouldn't have married me at the time with one of her. I. One of her few failings in life. She ended up lucking out and I'm quite a catch now, but I wouldn't encourage her to have married me back at the time. But I remember I became much less hostile to Christianity after a period of thought and consideration. But I didn't consider myself part of the group. I became content to sort of coexist in sort of like a relativistic fashion of like, hey, you know, I know you guys believe all the fancy Jesus stuff and I don't really believe that, but, you know, I have no problems, you know, you know, sharing a meal together and, you know, doing life together. So we. So we dated for. For quite a while. And then at some point I actually asked her if we could leave the church that she was at. Because I didn't think Christianity was true. But I knew that whatever the church that she was at at the time believed wasn't even really Christianity. And so we did. We left there and went to an Evie free church. And we were there for. Without doing the math, I want to say maybe. Maybe eight or nine years. And it was over a period of years being in that church where I really became solidified in my conversion and confident in the faith that I had in Christ. And I think the point where that happened that I can kind of point to is I remember one of the pastors had called me one day and had said, hey, it might be time for you to get baptized. And at first, I was like, well, that's kind of a big step. And as I was talking through it with him and I was thinking about it, I was like, actually, I don't really have a problem. I think that is probably appropriate, because I do believe these things now, and I probably did before, but I hadn't really codified it in my own thinking. But that was a number of years. [00:36:00] Speaker B: Into us being married, you moved through what you consider a conversion process. And I'm curious as to all those bits and pieces that seem to bother you as an atheist, like issues of death and grounding morality and those kinds of things. Once you became a Christian, did you find that those things that were somewhat missing in your atheistic worldview you were able to find within your Christianity? [00:36:37] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that's where a lot of the polygetic arguments and discussions have. Have really helped me much more as a believer than when I was an atheist. So that Christianity has an afterlife, to me, was never an argument in favor of Christianity. I mean, most of the religions have an afterlife, but that was not persuasive enough to say, oh, well, therefore, that worldview is right. But now believing that Christianity is true and recognizing that, in fact, it does have answers for those things that I thought atheism was, if not deficient on, gave answers that were not, that weren't really fulfilling. And now having a worldview that in turn does fulfill, like those empty desires, is an incredible blessing. And so I found that with a lot of the apologetic arguments, I mean, everything from, you know, the, the typical bag that Bill Craig carries around, you know, the cosmological argument, that wasn't appealing to me at the time, I'm like, okay, whatever. The christian sect used fancy words or whatever. But now, now that I'm a believer and I can hear these arguments in, especially a philosophical defense of Christianity, I look and I'm like, wow, these are really, really good arguments, especially when you consider them with an open mind. So to me, apologetics has been much more of a useful tool for building and strengthening the confidence that believers have in their own faith, rather than necessarily just a straight tool to evangelize with. [00:38:35] Speaker D: I'd like to pause for a moment and ask you a favor. If you're enjoying the side B podcast or find these stories helpful, would you please leave us a review and rating wherever you download these episodes? Your feedback helps other people find these stories, and we genuinely appreciate your support. Now back to our story. [00:38:58] Speaker B: So you have, as you became a Christian, I guess you could say that you found the philosophical, the intellectual aspects of Christianity to be solid in terms of your ability to make sense of the world and existentially in terms of your life. It also was fulfilling those things, and so it gave you somewhat of a more fully orbed worldview, in a sense, more than what you had in your atheism. Tell me, as you became a Christian, did you pursue, you said you're rather a student. Did you pursue further education? [00:39:44] Speaker A: After I got out of the military, I went to just a local community college, and I was taking classes there, working towards an Aaehen. After some period of time, I actually, I want to say maybe 2005, 2006 is when I actually enrolled in Biola. After I was, I was firmly in the, in the believer camp, I decided I wanted to have a more biblical education than what I was getting at a secular school. And so I enrolled in Biola. I went through my bachelor's there, and then I ended up doing my masters in apologetics there as well. [00:40:24] Speaker B: Okay, so you did take this very, very seriously in terms of grounding your own worldview. [00:40:31] Speaker A: Yeah, once they got me, they got me. [00:40:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess you could say that for sure. As we're listening to your story and really considering that you've come quite a distance and you understand what it feels like to live and think as an atheist and live and think as a Christian. In your story, you had presumptions that atheism was true, but perhaps when you took a closer look, it unearthed some real doubts for you as you were looking at it more closely, what would you like to say to the curious skeptic who might be listening today in terms of perhaps investigating their own atheism, much less Christianity? [00:41:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I guess it would be twofold. On one hand, I mentioned that I really did find a lot of moderated debates, very useful. Interactions between Christians and atheists on different topics was just fascinating to me, and I benefited greatly from listening to those and watching how both sides conducted their arguments, how they behaved themselves, the merits on each side. But what I would encourage is something that I didn't do early on, and that would be to actually just expose yourself to reading the Bible to what's actually in scripture. I think it would have made my process a lot less long and less painful. It's one of those things you, you know, you know, if it's true that you'll see it, and I think it is, I think you will. But, you know, it's hard. It's hard to say you don't believe something when you actually don't look at what the thing is and you only look at it through second or third hand sources. [00:42:33] Speaker B: Yeah, that's some good counsel. I've heard a lot of stories of people who were very, very surprised by what they found in the Bible when they actually read it for themselves and for the Christian. How would you encourage them in terms of understanding the atheist more or someone who's a skeptic or a non believer or perhaps engaging with someone who has a different worldview or even equipping themselves in order to engage? [00:43:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And so every, every person, their story is a little bit different. I mentioned my wife before. She grew up in the church. She's always been in a christian home, and she doesn't remember a time when she didn't believe. On the other hand, I was willing to my twenties, my mid twenties, when, when I was converted. And in many ways, I, I wish that I would have grown up a Christian because there's, there's a lot of baggage that I carry around now that I wouldn't have, have to deal with or think back on. But in other ways, it is kind of a blessing in that I could see literally what I was saved from, not just to, but from. And I can remember what it was like. And I think a lot of, a lot of times, christians can forget, you know, who they once were, especially on the Internet, which is maybe the worst place to argue about anything, let alone Christianity, but anything. But remember the grace that you have been shown in the position that you are now in. We didn't just realize that something's true and someone else is just too dumb to realize it. We're literally given a grace by God in understanding, and that those that don't have it are in no better position than we ourselves were. So just to remember where we came from. I think it was Greg Kokel who said, the gospel is offensive enough. Don't add any offense to it. Don't take any of it away, but don't be offensive in your delivery of it. Let God be the one that's offensive, and let that be the mark that people remember and not your own manners and your presentations themselves. [00:45:06] Speaker B: I think that's wise counsel. It makes me curious. When you were dating Asia for a period of time, and did she allow you space? Was she pressuring you at all towards Christianity, or did she allow you space for you to move at your own pace towards this journey that you were on to find truth? [00:45:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, to be honest, we actually didn't really talk about it. It wasn't really front and center, just by nature. She's not a very argumentative person, which is why we typically never fight now, because it just was a topic that we did not discuss. [00:45:50] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. So at least she wasn't putting pressure on you. [00:45:54] Speaker A: No, probably the complete opposite. The only pressure was, hey, I'm gonna be gonna be at church on this day, and this time, if you want to hang out with me, that's where I'll be. That was, like, really the only absolute, the only pressure. And so it was quite persuasive, apparently. [00:46:09] Speaker B: I guess you wanted to be with her, and that was a good thing. That was a good thing. Thank you, Robert, for being a part of the side Beak podcast. It's great to hear your story, and I truly appreciated hearing your journey and your honesty in all of it. So thank you you for coming on. [00:46:27] Speaker A: Thank you. [00:46:29] Speaker B: Thanks for tuning into the side B podcast to hear Robert's story. [00:46:34] Speaker D: For questions and feedback about this episode. [00:46:36] Speaker B: You can reach me by email at. [00:46:38] Speaker D: The side b podcastlewisinstitute.org. [00:46:43] Speaker B: If you enjoyed it, subscribe and share this podcast with your friends and social network. In the meantime, I'll be looking forward to seeing you next time where we'll be listening to the other side.

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