Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Whenever I started to open this book up and started to read it, I just knew I was wrong about atheists and I knew I was wrong about faith and I knew that consciousness must predate the material world and I just knew what I was reading was true.
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This is Jana from Ex Skeptic. Do you have questions or doubts about God and faith? Maybe it's for you it's the pain of suffering. Maybe it's the hypocrisy you've seen in the church or by people who call themselves Christians.
Or maybe it's the lingering doubts that no one seems to be willing to address, much less answer.
Whatever your doubt, you're not alone. At X Skeptic, we feature the real stories of real people, each one different yet marked by an honest search for truth. We've grouped these stories into curated YouTube playlists so you can find the ones that connect with what you're facing and the questions you're asking.
Head on over to x skeptic on YouTube and find our different playlists there.
Be sure to subscribe and share it with someone you know who's asking the hard questions too.
What if everything you believe was true was wrong?
Caleb Ball was once a hardline atheist mocking Christianity, convinced that science had all the answers. Then one book, one idea flipped his worldview upside down.
Welcome to X Skeptic, where we share unlikely stories of belief, true accounts of those who once walked away from God but found command compelling reasons to believe. Again.
I'm your host Jana Harmon, and this podcast is for both the curious skeptic who wonders if there's more to life than naturalistic Explanations and the thoughtful Christian who wants to better understand and engage with those who doubt.
Today's guest, also known as Aspiring Christian, takes us on a winding road from an early faith to a passionate atheism, from ridicule of Christianity to reasoned conviction that Christianity is true.
Along the way, Caleb's story confronts the big questions about science, meaning and truth, and challenges us all to examine the foundations of what we believe.
I hope you'll come along.
Welcome to X Skeptic. Caleb, it's great to have you with me today.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: It is great to be with you here, Jana. Thanks for inviting me on.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: Oh, you're so welcome. I'm very excited about this conversation today. You and I know each other through your YouTube channel.
As we're getting started, why don't you tell me a little bit about who You Are, your YouTube channel, and the things that you're passionate about.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: My name is Caleb, and I have been doing a testimony series on atheist converts to Christianity. I think that these stories of atheists converting to Christianity is very important.
I work in a sales capacity and, you know, one thing that, you know, I've learned over time is that stories sell, so to speak. So stories have a deep impact on the human heart and the human mind. Graduated from college, got a degree in history, had had no idea, you know, what I was going to do. And so then I jumped into cells from there.
Recently applied, and am enrolled now to get a master's in Biblical Studies at Colorado Christian University.
And so I'm really looking forward to that and looking forward to the rest of this conversation.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: Yeah, so am I. I'm. I'm just really interested to hear your story because stories are impactful. They're. They're incredibly meaningful. And you and I have a similar heart about that.
But I'm really, really interested to hear your story because I know that you have gone on a long and winding road from Christianity to atheism and back again in a very passionate way. So let's start with your story, Caleb, and talk with us about the way that you were raised, where you were raised, and whether or not religion or anything like that had a place in your home.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: So I was raised in a Christian environment, a Christian atmosphere. I was raised in small town Pennsylvania. I was raised in a home where my dad was very zealous for God. My mom might have been less so.
Some of the things that impacted me the most, though, like through my childhood, I remember, you know, there was a time whenever my brothers and I, we were, you know, in church. Do we. There Are these youth leading this group of us? Or they're teaching us one Sunday, and we kind of were asking the question or thinking about why did God create Adam and Eve?
God being all knowing, knowing that they would sin, you know, why did he create them?
And I don't feel like we got answers from the teens there, although not necessarily that you would expect them to have a good answer for that or be ready, you know, for an apologetics answer with that. And, you know, then we asked our parents and they.
They seemed almost kind of put off that we would, you know, ask the question. They didn't really give a good response to that. I think there's plenty of good responses to that question. By the way, all parents know that their children are going to disobey them at one point or another. That doesn't change or prevent them from wanting to have a relationship with their children and to have children in the first place.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: Questions like that, did that start to plant some seeds of doubt in you with regard to your Christian faith?
[00:07:08] Speaker A: That did not necessarily plant too much doubt, except in that I didn't feel like it was like, okay to question things. And it did plan a huge doubt that my parents would have any ability to answer hard questions about faith.
And also it made me really uncomfortable if I ever encountered somebody who was skeptical of Christianity. And I feel like most people were Christian, like where I grew up, or at least like that, that if somebody, if they were. If someone were to ask them, you know, you know, are you a Christian? I think most people would have said yes.
Doesn't mean that they were really devout followers of the Lord. It was just kind of in the atmosphere, was in the culture.
But I don't think that people. I don't think that I grew up necessarily with the ability to have a reason defense for my faith. And so I think that had a pretty big impact on things later on. Like I said, like, I remember the very few instances where I encountered somebody who, you know, said something negative about Christianity. I didn't really know what to say.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: Yeah, that's hard. And especially I imagine based upon some of your experience there, that there may not be answers or people are defensive about asking the questions. Perhaps you thought maybe the answers weren't there.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I think part of me. I think part of me did sense that there weren't necessarily answers to these questions. Not that I thought that that then meant that Christianity wasn't valid.
Just that there are some questions that we just don't have answers to with our faith and we're it's all blind faith. And so I think those were some sort seeds that were in me that sprouted then later on.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: So when did some of those seeds of doubt start to blossom into more fledged questioning of whether or not Christianity was for you?
[00:09:22] Speaker A: It was whenever I was about, or it was whenever I was 18 years old. I didn't have a plan for after high school, so I spent my first year after that not going to college. And so during that time, very early on within that year, I just had a sense that I wanted to know, like, be certain of whether or not God existed. And so then I hopped on YouTube, which was a very different place in 2008 and 2009 than it is today on the front of questions about God.
If someone were searching the questions that I was searching about God now on YouTube, I think they would likely see a lot of good videos by a lot of awesome Christian apologists.
They would see things, you know, with, with John Lennox or whoever else. Right. But back then, not so much a lot of amateur content. And so I was looking into these questions, you know, proof Gods exist, proof God doesn't exist. It's kind of basic things along those lines. And I came across several atheist videos.
I believe the ones that started to pull me away the most from my faith were a video by Thunderfoot, and he had a video that was replying to the design argument for God.
And I just thought that the way that he made the design argument seem absurd, that just kind of pulled me away quickly.
But I also think that there was a lot of worldly interests that I held at the time that made it easier, easy for my Christianity to be taken away quickly. And I also don't think I was well rooted in the faith.
I don't. I think there was opportunities earlier in my life. I blame myself a lot for why I stepped away from the faith because, like, while my parents didn't necessarily provide me a lot of good answers, there were plenty of apologetics books and the questions I had were answered in books.
I wasn't a diligent enough student.
And so I think for that reason I came away from that faith because I took these answers that atheists had and I didn't critically examine them. I don't know if I knew how to do that, but I didn't critically examine their answers or even think about the underpinning foundations of naturalist ideas.
And there is a lot of absurdity on that whenever you try to get deeper and deeper and find the ground floor.
But I didn't think about Any of that at the time. And I just kind of quickly then accepted atheism and I accepted naturalism as my view.
And then I started diving into a lot of videos, but you know, by Richard Dawkins and then looking at religious by Bill Maher.
Just a lot of that stuff was going around at the time. Even the, like, the videos depicting like Jesus mythicism, which, which of course is very absurd, which I know now but did not know then. And so that, you know, I kind of accepted this idea that, you know, maybe Jesus didn't even exist at all. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. We just don't really know which historians would of course laugh at. But that's. I was very easily influenced by a lot of ideas there at the time.
I don't think I was a good enough student, honestly.
[00:12:54] Speaker B: Well, I think at that time the new atheist rhetoric was very strong and very persuasive. You're young adult trying to make your way.
And that seemed, that particular rhetoric seemed very compelling and like you say, against.
There might have been apologetics there, but they may have been a little bit harder to find if you're not really, really looking for them.
But so you fell into this worldview that you called naturalism, for those who aren't familiar with that term. Can you explain what naturalism is and perhaps why the atheists would say that they believe in naturalism as a worldview?
[00:13:38] Speaker A: Yeah, so naturalism, I'm not a, I'm not a scholar, I got my bachelor's in history, so I don't know if I can explain it too well. So naturalism is just the idea that everything that exists has natural causes and not supernatural causes. There are no gods, there are no ghosts, there are no demons, there is no magic. There is nothing supernatural of any sort. Everything can or will eventually be explained by naturalistic natural methods, scientific tools of measurement, you know, that, you know, you know, people once, you know, said that thunder was because of the gods. And now we know that there is, you know, a scientific explanation. And so anything that doesn't yet have a scientific explanation likely one day will.
There's no reason to believe that God created everything. Scientists efficiently answered the main and biggest questions, which is all a lie, but that's what I believed. So I believe that there was natural explanations for everything. I believe that there is no such thing as the soul.
That's important, by the way. So I believe that there is no such thing as the soul, spirits, none of that.
I was fully convinced of naturalists and I actually Found it pretty absurd when I was occasionally I would run into an atheist who yet believed in ghosts or something and it's. How do you line that up?
But yeah, I was, that was pretty convinced that the scientists, they had all the answers, all the important answers and there wasn't anything that wasn't sufficiently explained by them.
I don't think I knew the questions to ask to see why that was wrong, but that's what I believed.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: So did you consider yourself an atheist along with that new atheist movement?
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Absolutely, yeah, I was a pretty die hard atheist. Just to give you an example, whenever I was in college. So my first year of college I didn't really socially interact or anything. I was pretty much a recluse. But you know, like by my second year of college when I was starting to be more social, there was a time there was a campus preacher and so I went to the spot where he preached whenever he wasn't there once and I went up and talked about Pixie the Pony. I invented just this little script for a fake religion and Pixie the Pony would bring you salvation and you would forever live in the Amazon rainforest if you drank enough green tea. So I was actively mocking Christianity then at that point acting like, you know, it was the most silly, absurd thing even though just a few years prior I would have called myself a Christian. But yes, that's how convinced I was that atheism was true is that I was actively mocking God and inventing things or thinking I invented things to mock Christianity.
[00:16:48] Speaker B: Yeah, it seems like in many cases there's this sense in which you know what you don't believe and you mock it and you really ridicule it and you dismiss it and you don't take the arg, you know, don't take the argument seriously or whatever the Christian is trying to present.
That's one thing. It's another thing to actually live within a naturalistic, atheistic worldview and to really look at, well, what does it mean that nature is all that exists? What does that mean for me as a person?
Did you think deeply about any of that? How what was your life like as an atheist? Was it, did it? Oftentimes atheists will have this sense of liberation and freedom, you know, that I'm the captain of my own ship. What did your life look like as an atheist?
[00:17:42] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question.
So I wouldn't have characterized myself then this way, but now looking back, I would characterize the way I lived and what I was as hedonist.
So just pursuing pleasure and so just involved a lot of alcohol consumption, hanging out with girls, and it just.
I was not a good guy, but, you know, by any means.
I had a group of friends in college and, you know, you know, you drank with them a lot. But I also, it was pretty eccentric and, you know, I drank to blackout. Like whenever I was drinking was like, the purpose was to black out.
And yeah, there were times that I had fun, but I never thought, I never thought about the implications of naturalism. In fact, for several years in college, I was a political activist for a while for left wing causes and then eventually for libertarian causes.
But I never thought about the implications of naturalism and how absurd it was that I was so passionate about politics. Because whether one's working for the left or right, they're pursuing a sense of justice and they're, they are pursuing a way that the world should be.
And if you consider David Hume, and I say there are no moral odds, and that's pretty solid philosophy, no atheist can really provide good reasons for why things are to be one way rather than another. Why is David Hume wrong if there is no God, why is David Hume wrong when he says that there are no ways that things are to be? I never thought that deeply about any of this whenever I was an atheist.
But I did act passionately for a sense of justice, again, both as a left wing and then as a libertarian activist. But I acted for justice as if there is this transcendent truth that there is a way that things are to be and that I should pursue this ultimate justice, even though I had no foundational axiom for it, I had no way to rationalize it. No one ever pressed me on this question because of course, there's a lot of atheist professors, you know, pursuing justice in one way or another, who probably don't really think about their foundational axiom, you know, for, for why this matters or why is there a set reality that should exist? And how do I know that this set reality that I believe in, in my mind, is truly the right one, rather than the, you know, cultures overseas where they behead people based off of their religious beliefs or their, their sexuality or something like, like, why are they definitively wrong?
And why is that more than just my opinion?
Atheism provides no foundation for why that's more than anyone's opinion or a few people's opinions.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: So how long did you live as an atheist, thinking as an atheist, identifying as an atheist?
[00:21:20] Speaker A: So it was a period of six years where I was, where someone asked me, are you, do you Believe in God? The answer to that question for me would have been no.
So there was a period, six years where I was definitely an atheist. The first few years of that, I was really passionate about it. Eventually I saw, like, all this kind of culture of personality, infighting, people accepting a lot of other views that don't relate to God, the atheist accepting a lot of other views that don't relate to God without much evidence.
So there's different things I just critically thought about, and I was like, oh, atheists aren't really the adults that they claim to be either. Like, they're. I don't know. So if I will watch a debate between John Lennox and Richard Dawkins, I don't think you need to be a Christian to say that the. The adult in the room there, the one who's more mature, is certainly John Lennox.
And so the behavior I saw by atheists online made me think, okay, well, maybe these guys aren't as smart as they tell everyone that they are.
And so I just kind of lost interest, I guess, eventually in the topic of faith.
However, I did have a gap year in college, so there was two years I was enrolled. But during the one year, during my one gap year while I was going through school, while I worked at this call center, I did start talking to a Christian there because, you know, I brought up at one point how I was an atheist, and he had a great demeanor, and he was thoughtful in his approach to faith, and he was clearly pretty intelligent, and he didn't lead me to Christianity.
But that it did plant a seed that this whole narrative that I accepted on faith. I accepted on faith that Christians hadn't thought considerably deeply about their worldview, that Christians weren't intelligent, they didn't use their mind. I had accepted all these things on faith, no foundation for those beliefs. So on faith, I had accepted that Christians hadn't critically examined their worldview.
But then I encountered a Christian who had critically examined his worldview, had thoughtful answers and responses to my questions.
Even though I was trying to pick apart all his answers, he planned to see that, hey, there's this friendly guy with a lot of charisma who has thought these questions through.
I've kind of been lied to by other atheists, and I've accepted on faith what they said.
[00:24:09] Speaker B: So that conversation and meeting that Christian broke down some, perhaps some negative stereotypes that you might have had of Christians or of Christianity, that really there really is something much more substantive behind the door, something to see.
There are actually some answers to be given.
So it it sounds like it piqued your curiosity. Did you start really looking behind the door? Did you take another look at Christianity and see what it had to offer based upon those conversations? What did that look like?
[00:24:46] Speaker A: You know, that's a great question.
And I, I wish I had taken our conversations in and really thought through them.
My focus then was on drinking bottles of liquor and vodka.
And I, I was just a heated, like I didn't really want to explore these ideas that deeply. I knew we had these conversations.
But what that did do is it did kind of break down, break down some of those walls. And I think that that allowed some things to open up later to, you know, make me entertain faith again.
But I just, I was no longer a passionate atheist.
Like I would have more. I would have still called myself an atheist, but I wasn't actively going out there to mock Christians anymore. And it's what just became one of those things where I thought reasonable people can disagree on the truth.
Reasonable people can be Christians and reasonable people can be atheists.
And that's where I found myself. I was much more interested not only in the bottle, but then also in politics. I was pretty obsessed with politics, which again, I don't think is consistent with naturalism whenever you really think about it. But that was where I was.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: So how long did you stay in that space and what might have piqued your curiosity to actually take another look at Christianity?
[00:26:12] Speaker A: That's where it gets interesting. So an organization which I led, a campus organization I had started, which was a political organization ultimately was my road back to faith.
So I started the chapter of Young Americans for Liberty, which was an offshoot of Ron Paul's Youth for Ron Paul campaign.
But anyway, started this chapter of that organization.
And the first year wasn't too successful, but the second year we had some, some good meetings. It was one of the more successful chapters in the state.
And the gentleman who motivated me to restart the organization and who I just kind of let be president of the organization because I didn't want to haul around all these promotional materials and books anymore that we would do a tabling event.
His father was a psychology professor and he gave him this book which he shared with me that was quantum physics.
Near death experiences, eternal consciousness, religion and the human soul.
And if you don't mind, I only want to read a brief description here of this text.
And so hopefully this is not, this is watchable, but this teaches the subject of quantum physics to the lay reader in math and terminology that is simple to understand, describes how and why Reality. This universe is interdependent with consciousness in order to exist as defined by the founders of quantum physics over a half a century ago. To describe this mechanism in detail, how we interact with, manipulate, and define this finite universe.
To present a working definition for consciousness that is suitable to the formal definitions of quantum physics as well as the philosophies and religions of man.
Those are excerpts from the description that's I believe also on the back of the book. I haven't had that book for a while. But whenever I started to open this book up and started to read it, I just knew I was wrong about atheism and I knew I was wrong about faith. And I knew that consciousness must predate the material world.
And I just knew what I was reading was true.
That's what drew me back. But if I hadn't started this political organization, I wouldn't have ran into the man who showed me this book. And so it's as if my interests were guided so that I would come back to God.
[00:29:01] Speaker B: It seems like once you read that book, that consciousness.
Consciousness or a conscious mind precedes matter. Was it this just this aha, moment that, that you thought, okay, I need to move back and take another look at God and Christianity.
Did you talk with people about it?
What, what was your path like? Was it sudden? Was it gradual?
[00:29:29] Speaker A: I was so eccentric at the time, and I was so excited about this passage. I was nearing the end of my college years. I didn't have a definitive plan for what I was going to do afterwards. But I was a very passionate advocate for this book and what was written in it. I would, like, show people the passages, actually. So we were going to a state chapter meeting, like a state chapter conference, so where all the university chapters were meeting.
And on that ride, like, I was talking to the other guys and reading the passages from this book because they knew me as an atheist. They knew I was pretty certain in my atheism. And now I'm like, guys, I believe in God now.
And so the text, it does place an emphasis on Jesus, but it also kind of leaves the door open that, you know, other philosophies and religions, you know, may contain truth.
And so I even like, read some of, like the Quran. And, you know, I looked into, like, some other religious things at the time. It took me a long time to really start studying the Bible again. And to say, you know, Christianity is exclusively the truth that, that Jesus Christ is Lord, that. That took a, A very long time.
But I.
Yeah, the. The road was windy and I Was still holding on to, like, a lot of my really bad habits that I formed as an atheist, like drinking way too much.
I, you know, I was, I was a little bit all over the place, to be honest. But I was just really excited that this God who I was certain did not exist, definitely does. And not only that, but, you know, that he knows me.
[00:31:37] Speaker B: So, yeah, that's, that's a, those, those two things that the God that God or the God of creation, God who made creation exists, but he's in, in all of its grandeur and his power. But yet he knows you, then those are two very different realities.
How did you come to that place where he's not only grand, but also incredibly intimate and personal to that extent?
[00:32:05] Speaker A: Through reading the Bible. If you're accepting that multiple religions may have a claim to truth and then you start studying the New Testament, it's pretty clear that Christianity is not leaving you the door open to say that other religions can be true.
So if you're saying that Islam is true and Christianity is true, well, Jesus either died on the cross and was resurrected as Christianity says, or he was only made to appear that he died on a cross like Islam says.
One of those things, those things both can't be true.
So I landed on Christianity because God pulled me there.
I don't know what else to say.
[00:32:53] Speaker B: No, that's beautiful because at the end of the day, your change of heart and mind, if God does exist, is a work of God.
God helps you see, he draws you to himself and, and so that you understand that he is truth, he is the way, he is the life. So, so you came to that understanding. It sounds like that book was a very powerful in your life.
And God used that in a way to, to really, I guess, illuminate your mind to what is true and what is real. And so once you accepted that and you embrace that, how did your move towards back, back to Christianity affect your life, your views?
Obviously moving from a place of staunch or militaristic atheism back to Christianity is quite a transformation.
So tell me about that.
[00:33:53] Speaker A: Well, I'm a slow learner here.
So while I had this incredible experience in college, then, you know, towards the end of college, I fell into a deep depressive spell due to feeling like all this, like, work I did, like through college, it was all for naught because I didn't have a plan for after I graduated.
And so I fell into a really depressive spell, dark depressive spell. The first job I had out of college, I was working at a Call center and in a job that I could have had just with. With a high school education alone.
And so there were. There. There was like, some backsliding. Eventually I got a job at a logistics company in Pittsburgh at a freight logistics company.
And then I was, you know, making enough money to just do my own thing. And I had a backsliding that lasted nearly two years.
Not backsliding in that, like, I don't think I would have said that God didn't exist. I just acted for, like, for two years, nearly that he didn't. And then I had a colleague who was very helpful, a young woman. Her name was Brittany. And she went on a kayaking trip close to the end of these two years. And I was starting to actually think about God again.
It took me a while, but she went on a kayaking trip. And then she died. She went over a dam. This kind of wrecked me.
And it. I. In a little bit in advance of her dying, I had, like, a really dark dream, like, with her.
And so those two things lining up concurrently, the dream followed by her passing just had a pretty deep impact on me. And then I just really admired the way that she had.
Was living more adventurously than I was, quite frankly.
And so then I just started, like, hiking a lot and, like, started, like, sitting down with vagrants, young vagrants who were just going through Pittsburgh. And started sitting down with them and talking to them and other homeless people. And then I wanted to do what they did.
I spent six months then homeless, and then got back on my feet.
And then I. I blame God for this hole that I dug for myself and the instability and uncertainty in my life. Like, I blame God for that. And then, like, I didn't want to follow him for a while.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: No, no. Yeah. I was just thinking to myself that how often it is that we blame God for our poor decisions.
Yeah, it's an. It's an easy thing to do.
[00:36:55] Speaker A: You know, it's kind of. Kind of blaming God for, you know, some of these, you know, bad decisions. I wasn't thinking about God, like, at all.
Like, I wasn't thinking about faith. And, you know, I just felt like everything was really depressing and I was very depressed.
Like, dealt with deep depression and suicidal ideation and things of that nature.
But I met my wife back in 2019 and found. Found the job that I'm working at now in 2019.
So I got married to her then in October 23, her dad and mom were diagnosed with cancer months later.
So her dad was diagnosed with stage four cancer My wife and I flew out to him and I talked to him about Jesus because at our wedding, my dad and I, My dad and I, we're really into Jesus. And so we were talking about him, and her dad texted her at one point, you know, saying he was an atheist.
And he had a shirt that said, don't pray for me, sinners. Right. And so he.
Yeah, that's. That's where he was. And he was a nurse.
And I talked to him, and I talked to him about Ecclesiastes, talking about how life without God has no meaning, no purpose.
And so I talked to him about Ecclesiastes and I. And he subscribed to my YouTube channel, and he was watching all these testimony videos.
And so while I was out there, he downloaded a Bible app because I. I got him interested in looking into Ecclesiastes.
You know, I was away from the room he was in, and my wife mentioned at one point, he's like, hey, he keeps saying the word Ecclesiastes.
So he did. He did eventually read it.
Also on one of her trips there, I gave my wife a book to give to him by C.S. lewis grief observed the book that he wrote about his wife's passing.
Because I think there's a lot of quotes in that book that while they don't heal you, they help you think about some pretty dark times too.
But, I mean, since I've been turned back to Christ and really passionate about it in 21, I volunteer in tech now at church, you know, hitting the buttons while I go to church, you know, weekly. I enjoy, enjoy going to small groups. I have a better sense of community. I'm better grounded. I quit the alcohol. I also used to smoke pot. So I quit pot, and I just shut all those things out of my life.
And it took a long time. I'm a slow learner, but eventually did it, and I just live a much more fulfilling life now.
Again, married, have a mortgage. I'm not living in the miserable pool position that I was as an atheist, not a hedonist anymore.
I don't go to people who, Who I disagree with on matters of politics or religion and call them stupid for holding a different view. I might try to point out the absurdity of atheism and how it has no philosophical underpinnings and how atheists aren't acting in a way that's really consistent with naturalism.
I might point out those things, but I never say they're idiots, just say that it's not philosophically consistent.
So I think by every Measure. I'm a better person. Although no one is good but God.
[00:40:46] Speaker B: There's a lot of things within naturalism that are difficult not only to believe, but also to live. Now, when you. Just for clarification, before we kind of come to the end here, when you realized that God exists, he had. There has to be a transcendent source, a conscious mind outside of matter.
What did you do with all of the other arguments as an atheist?
Did all of those collapse kind of like a Jenga tower? Like, once you realized there had to be a God, did it just kind of undermine all of the other things that you were believing so that you, you could see that this transcendent source was not only a good explanation for consciousness or for the world, for creation, but for everything else that you had kind of dismissed? I mean, did the whole, did the whole house of cards fall at once?
[00:41:44] Speaker A: You, you say a house of cards? I think my atheism was like a Jenga tower. And I think God had been pulling out these pieces one by one over time, and to my lack of knowledge, that he was doing so.
Like the idea that reasonable people and rational people can't be Christians, and Christians haven't critically examined their faith. And intelligent Christians, they put their mind in a box whenever it comes to faith. And so they might be intelligent in some areas, but they haven't used their intellect on their faith.
So God had pulled out all these little pieces and, and the foundation that atheists were reasonable people, that was a foundation that had, had already been pulled. I already thought, well, atheists can be just as absurd as Christians. And so all these little pieces had, had already been pulled out. And, and then I think, opening that book, well, one, I think that, you know, the miracle that God worked in my heart, you know, God gave me the ability to, you know, recognize that, you know, he exists, that I'm a sinner, all of that, because as an atheist, even though I was a hedonist, if someone asked me, wow, the atheist, I'd be like, yeah, I'm a good person, as all atheists might say. But then, you know, there's a lot of evidence that I wasn't.
So, yeah, I think with the Jenga Tower, and, yeah, it was pretty instantaneous once I was, like, reviewing this book, it was an overnight thing for me, honestly. And knowing God exists now and knowing that Christianity is true, that just took, you know, a lot of reading, thinking. And then, of course, there's just a plethora of YouTube videos I watched by a wide range of apologists.
And I think by that time, 14, 15, I mean, there. There were some better traffic apologetics videos, and there are even some even better traffic videos now.
I think Daily Dose of Wisdom is doing an incredible job, you know, along with some others, in getting some really good apologetics content out there. But it was. Yeah, you know, my move to God was. Was pretty quick, but I think it was either a house of cards, a Jenga tower, or, you know, however you want to look at it. It was just. It started to collapse before all that.
[00:44:02] Speaker B: Usually is a process over time, a realization and changing your mind about things. And then all of a sudden, there's an aha moment.
And you can't deny what you're. What you're. What you're seeing.
So if. If there's somebody out there kind of like you who's going, well, I don't know that what I've been told within atheism is as solid or as strong as I thought it was. And then over here, maybe Christianity is not as bad or thoughtless or irrational as I thought it would was.
What would be a good place to go? Should they go to, like, the YouTube channel that you've been mentioning? Should they open the Bible? Should they read the book that you mentioned?
What would be a good next step for someone like that?
[00:44:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I would first have them, you know, critically examine their own life and. And really take into consideration.
I mean, do they really live as a naturalist? You know, are they in some way fighting for truth, human dignity and justice? Which, you know, from a Christian worldview makes sense, that's put on our hearts, but from a naturalist worldview.
Stephen Hawking wrote in the Grand Design that it is hard to imagine how free will can exist if our thoughts are just a result of a chemical process. So it's all atheism and naturalism just leads to determinism. Necessarily. It does.
But where I would recommend them to go, I would recommend, I don't know, your. Your interview and with Dr. Yoland. I honestly love that man's work. Now, his book Believing is Seeing.
So for those who don't know, he has his PhDs in Physics, Mathematics, and astronomy. He was a physics professor at Harvard for a time. Was this science editor for abc?
Your conversation with him was great. I'd recommend them just typing in that name, G, U, I, L, L, E, N, you know, into your channel or YouTube and looking him up. I mean, yeah, daily Dose of Wisdom or looking at.
I have a collection of 61 atheist converts to Christianity feature on my channel. And a playlist.
You know, a lot of them were scientists and they have a lot of very interesting things to say about how science doesn't have proper answers or doesn't have any sufficient answers for the origin of life. It's a pretty good question, how did life start?
Or the origin of the universe and people have faith actually isms. I think there's a lot of content to get into, you know, if you want, you know, looking up anything by John Lennox L E N N O X You know, I would recommend that.
I think there's sufficient answers. Christians have given sufficient answers. Sean and Josh McDowell, just type those names, you know, into the YouTube search. You know, they're going to provide you a lot of good answers.
But I think Christians have given sufficient answers to objections that atheist race to faith and atheists haven't provided sufficient reasoning that accounts for their axioms and their axioms are faith based. So at the end of the day, even as an atheist, you have to understand that you're using faith in a lot of areas already.
Why not extend it to an arena that will ultimately provide you answers to a wider range of questions and you know, you don't have to check your brain and at the door to be a Christian. And I think Christians have sufficiently revealed this in plenty of ways.
[00:47:58] Speaker B: There are some amazing thinkers and people who have really given good reason to believe in that God exists and Christianity is true, like you say. And we'll put all of those resources in our show notes for anybody who's listening. And when I think of your story, of course there's the, the young man that you worked with before you were really ready to believe in God again. But he, he, he really again just broke down negative stereotypes and, and made you rethink what you thought about Christians and Christianity as, as just an embodied example, someone who's thoughtful and you said he was just a good guy, kind, you know, someone you could befriend and actually normal. I'm, I'm pretty sure she wouldn't been having those kind of conversations with him. And I'm thinking of you and even though as someone who really wasn't interested in Christianity at the time, but yet you were willing to engage in some kind of meaningful conversation there. I don't know how or necessarily that started.
But how can we be more like that young man, you know, this, this or like you even now, just as a, a thoughtful ambassador, somebody who, who portrays Christianity in a positive and winsome way, in a thoughtful way, you know, someone who's actually a Good representative. A good representative for. For what we believe that it was so much so that it would cause someone to stop and think, well, maybe there's more to this than I think that there is.
What would you recommend for the Christian.
[00:49:42] Speaker A: As far as, like, what I do for witnessing? I have a copy of a lot of copies. I've been doing this for about two years of More Than a Carpenter by Sean and Josh McDowell. And so fairly succinct, like, it's only that thick apologetics work.
So I like to lay copies of this because it has a pretty appealing backside as far as pulling people in. So I like to lay copies of this, like, on benches, like parks, along with church invitations, by the way. That's why, that's what I do for witnessing. But I guess what we should try to do and what I should try to do more is like, get out of the holy huddles, you know, and try to, you know, be open to speaking to people who disagree with us more and try to be friendly a little bit about it.
[00:50:36] Speaker B: It's an interesting journey, isn't it?
In your story, you find yourself in very different places of belief, starting in Christianity, rejecting it altogether, being a very strong atheist. And then, and then I'm sitting across from you now and you're very passionate about your belief, so much so that you've. You moved From a, a YouTube atheist, atheist, YouTuber to now you're. You use your channel to, to show how atheists are coming to Christ.
And you have a huge platform to do that. So you have definitely gotten out of your holy huddle in a very virtual way to demonstrate that, that this is worth, worth believing, you know, that, that, that God does exist and, and Jesus is real and he's very. And he knows, you know, like you said, and it's very personal.
And so I appreciate so much your story and I do hope that if anybody's listening, that they can be encouraged on both sides. You know that it's always good to question your own worldview, no matter where, what, what part of the spectrum you find yourself on, whether Christianity or, or atheism. It's always good to be questioning and to searching for truth. And I think that's what you've brought to the table today, is that we need to be honest enough with ourselves and our beliefs to actually look at them and ask ourselves if there's a good reason for why we believe what we believe, because it really, really does make a difference.
So thanks so much. Changes everything for coming on today and for telling your story.
[00:52:15] Speaker A: Thanks again for having me. That was. That was a fun conversation.
[00:52:19] Speaker B: If you want to stay in the loop on our new episodes, events or updates from the Ex Skeptic community, take a moment to sign up for our email list. Just visit exkeptic.org and click on the Join the Exskeptic Email Community button. It's a great way to stay connected, and we'll promise to only send things worth reading.
Caleb's journey reminds us that our worldview shapes how we see everything and that it's worth the courage to question it.
For him, the certainty of atheism gave way to a deeper, more satisfying reality in Jesus Christ.
His transformation didn't come from checking his brain at the door, but from opening his mind to evidence, reason, and the God who knows him personally.
If you're wrestling with doubt or curious about faith, keep searching.
Ask the hard questions, explore the best answers, and don't settle until you've come considered the whole story.
And if you're a Christian, I hope that Caleb's story encourages you to be ready to be thoughtful and winsome in your conversations with those who don't believe.
Thank you for listening to Ex Skeptic. It's part of the C.S. lewis Institute podcast Network, and it's produced through the help of our amazing producer Ashley Kilfer.
For more stories like Caleb's, visit xcheptic.org and explore our curated playlists. Subscribe on your favorite platform.
If this encouraged you, please rate, review and share it so that others can join the conversation. And we hope to see you next time for another unlikely story of belief.
