I’m always cautious about people who convert to Christianity, because I want to make sure that they are going about their investigation the right way. I watched the testimony and when he started to talk about watching tons and tons of William Lane Craig debates, I got very interested.

I’m very skeptical of people claiming to be Christians who are raised in the church and never encounter the evidence for theism and the resurrection, and have to lookup the philosophical debate about problems like evil, suffering, hiddenness. I think the church generally does a poor job of producing converts who understand what they believe and why they believe it. In my thinking, unless you are watching debates and hearing the back and forth, and then reading about these things later on your own, you’re probably not going to grasp the enormity of what Christianity is so that it will affect your priorities and decision-making.

Anyway, here is his testimony: (H/T Blake, JoeCoder, William)

I think that there is a lot of cultural Christianity and people think they can claim the label of “Christian” without re-reprioritizing, and taking some losses. All the Christians I know have things that they have had to give up, wounds that they have had to live with, problems that won’t go away, hurts that are not being cared for. And yet we continue, because God is not seen as our cosmic butler. Most of the atheists I know rejected God because he interfered with their pursuit of pleasure, made them unpopular, or refused to give them what they needed to be happy. This guy is beyond all of that. He is not afraid to re-prioritize his entire life in a way that complies with the truth yet goes against his self-interest. I was not raised in the church, so I don’t normally say “praise God” at every little thing, but when I finished this video, that was my first thought. We sure could use more Christians who have that understanding of Christianity.

If you grew up around Christians, and learned about what Christianity is from your parents, peers and pastors, then may I just recommend to you that you watch one or two William Lane Craig debates, then work your way through a book like “Is God Just a Human Invention?” or “God’s Crime Scene“. If you’re not a Christian now, and all you know about Chrisitanity was what you read in the Bible, and what other Christians told you, then you aren’t in a position to assess the value of what was presented to you. Every day people are giving up their pre-Christian lives because they evaluate and accept the truth of Christianity. If you haven’t looked into it at the level of reason and evidence, then you haven’t looked into it at all. It’s on you to puzzle out these things for yourself, and adjust.

By the way, Steve’s web site is Spirit Science and Metaphysics.

Positive arguments for Christian theism

• The kalam cosmological argument and the Big Bang theory
• The fine-tuning argument from cosmological constants and quantities
• The origin of life, part 1 of 2: the building blocks of life
• The origin of life, part 2 of 2: biological information
• The sudden origin of phyla in the Cambrian explosion
• Galactic habitable zones and circumstellar habitable zones
• Irreducible complexity in molecular machines
• The creative limits of natural selection and random mutation
• Angus Menuge’s ontological argument from reason
• Alvin Plantinga’s epistemological argument from reason
• William Lane Craig’s moral argument
• The unexpected applicability of mathematics to nature
• Six reasons why you should believe in non-physical minds
• William Lane Craig’s case for the resurrection of Jesus