Atheists have a lot of stereotypes about Christians and why they believe what they do. You were raised Christian. You're emotionally invested in an afterlife. You never really thought about your views. All sorts of genetic fallacies like that, Christians hear on a regular basis. For an apologist, it's not just that we're supposed to be ignorant, but that we supposedly know that we're supposed to be ignorant.
No one breaks that mould more than David Wood, the head apologist of Acts17Apologetics. Although a lot of Wood's material focuses on Islam, largely due to his friendship with Nabeel Qureshi, Wood himself began as an atheistic Evolutionist. But not just any atheistic Evolutionist. David Wood has the unfortunate disadvantage of quite literally being a certifiable sociopath.
At the end of 2014, Wood posted a 34 minute video on his YouTube channel, explaining exactly how and why he became a Christian. Aside from breaking the mould atheists have sculpted for Christian apologists, Wood's testimony exposes a lot of the flaws in the atheistic worldview.
It should be noted that, just as he is not a typical Christian, Wood was not a typical atheist either. As I said, he's a literal sociopath, a condition which did not disappear after becoming a Christian. To this day, David wood remains a sociopath. What's changed since becoming a Christian is how he responds to his condition. Whereas he now maintains the Christian morality we're all familiar with, he had some very unusual views in his atheistic past. Here is a quote from his video: "I realised why I was different. I had evolved to a higher stage of humanity. These sad little emotions the rest of you have, they're like vestigial tails leftover from more primitive life forms. But humanity 2.0 had arrived, and you earlier models were now obsolete."
This is a very interesting view. In moral discussions regarding Evolution, I often like to point out humanity's dominance over the animals. We enslave many of them, we put them in zoos for our entertainment, we keep them as pets, some of them we even chop up and eat. An animal domesticated by man is at the mercy of man, and even a wild animal may only be protected from man by man. We are the highest visible authority on earth simply because we are intellectually superior.
So what is there to protect "lower" men? Darwin, after all, predicted that higher races (conveniently his own) would eventually exterminate lower races, even comparing humans to animals saying "excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed." So what if, as Darwin believed, caucasians were superior to everyone else? Why wouldn't it be ok to kill everyone else? If Wood really was "humanity 2.0", what could possibly say he was wrong about everyone else being obsolete?
David followed through on his belief in some truly horrible ways. He would watch as his mom's boyfriend violently beat her, not caring at all. He was a man given to violence; he speaks about how he hit his friend with a shovel and choked him simply for disagreeing with him. Perhaps most shockingly is the fact that, for no cause other than to free himself from the restraints of society, he beat his own father, whom Wood personally considered at the time had never wronged him, over the head with a hammer until he was sure he was dead. He was wrong, as his father survived, but he believed he had killed his father, and he simply did not care. He felt nothing.
Ultimately, his dad wasn't his only intended victim, merely his first. He described how, in prison, he had a list of people going all the way back to Kindergarten whom he desired to kill. There was a lot going on in this disturbed man's head, a lot of which your average atheist will, thankfully, find very disturbing. But for those people, Wood has a challenge: "I understand that most of you atheists out there live perfectly normal lives, but I could never understand why you would want to." Wood goes on to explain his reasoning. You're a tiny glob of goo on a tiny spec of dust orbiting a tiny ball of burning gas, in amongst many other tiny burning balls of gas, surrounded by many other tiny clusters, occupying a tiny portion of space. The universe as a whole could not care less how you live your life. You're insignificant. So, although most atheists would agree that Wood was wrong, the question is why? Merely having a belief doesn't mean it's grounded in anything.
Of course, while Wood believed his actions were insignificant, the law did not, and so Wood was ultimately captured and incarcerated. While in prison, Wood met a Christian named Randy. Like most atheists, Wood felt the inexplicable need to destroy Randy's faith. I say inexplicable because Wood held a belief system that ultimately says humans are insignificant. Who cares what Randy believes? The ironic thing is, while atheists can't explain why they want to live "normal" lives, if there is even a standard of normality in atheism, Christians can. Why would a Christian want to live their lives as if they matter? Because in the Christian view, life does matter.
But while Wood couldn't explain why he had a thing for trying to destroy the faith of Christians, the fact remains that he did. And for Wood, like for many other Christians both before him and after, this is where his journey to faith really began. Wood expressed his surprise at Randy's response. Whereas a lot of Christians tend to curl into defensive balls when their faith is attacked, Randy seemed well equipped with answers to many of Wood's questions, and challenged him to question his own worldview.
One attack Wood launched on Randy's faith is the argument from geography that seems extremely common among atheists. I'm not sure if it originated with Richard Dawkins, but Dawkins himself seems fond of it. Simply, Wood argued that Randy is only a Christian because of where he was born. If he'd been born in India, he'd be a Hindu. If he'd been born in Pakistan, he'd be a Muslim. If he'd been born in Asia, he'd likely be a Buddhist. The argument, as Wood found out the hard way, is self defeating. Because Randy fought back, Wood was faced with a reality he'd never encountered before: He had the same problem. In his own words, "...I'm pointing the finger at the Christian. Why? Because it's much easier to make fun of someone else than to do the difficult work of putting together a coherent, well grounded belief set."
Just like Wood, many atheists don't sit down and reasonably think out their worldview. But because he was challenged by Randy, Wood ultimately did come to think about his worldview. He began to see that many of the beliefs he held that he had never questioned, and just taken for granted, sounded ridiculous when he started to seriously consider them. What's really interesting is that a lot of the arguments Christians use to try to convert atheists today, Wood came to on his own. For example, he tells us about how he looked at a wall and reasoned that he would slap someone who told him it wasn't designed (not a behaviour that is encouraged in Christianity), and yet life is considerably more specified and complex, and he believed no one designed it.
He also looked at the Apostles. Every single one of them, save for John, is said to have died a brutal death for confessing the faith. Now, when most people die for a belief, they're dying for what has been passed on to them. If I lie to you and you die for believing it, you would have sincerely died for a lie. But the Apostles didn't receive a story, they were first hand witnesses. The disciples were dying for something they saw. Maybe one witness could be crazy, but 12? Not to mention the heavy pressure on everyone else during the time. 12 people willing to die for a lie is one thing, but who would just take their word for it in a culture where doing so meant death? And Paul started out by being the very man who would kill such people. How do we explain him? Wood concluded that the only thing that consistently explains all of this is that Jesus really did rise.
But Jesus had one more weapon against Wood: His own pride. Wood concluded that Jesus was a better man than him. Now, to a normal atheist, that's pretty obvious, but we need to consider that David Wood is a certified sociopath. He didn't have any kind of clear understanding on morality.
We can pause here for a moment and challenge the atheist. David, in his confusion, downplayed his own sin. A mentally stable atheist sees what David doesn't, but is it possible that Jesus sees what an atheist doesn't? Is it not possible that every single human being on this planet, with our limited knowledge and our sinful tendencies, sees sin in a dimmer light than Jesus? Maybe you sincerely believe you're a good person, just like David, in all sincerity, originally believed morality was just a vestige of a more primitive life form. But on judgement day, we're all going to see how wrong we are. And when we read the Bible and test ourselves against God's law, we see this. We at least see that we've broken God's laws, and through His wrath, we see that we are to God what Wood was to the police, the courts and the criminal justice system. My atheist readers, you are David Wood.
All of this changed Wood's mind. He concluded that there are only two options. He was either bound to his own nature, or Jesus could help him in spite of his nature. So he resolved to take the latter option. He humbled himself, he confessed that he was a desperately wicked sinner, and he prayed. He prayed "God, I don't know if I'll believe in you tomorrow, but I believe in you today. If you can do anything with me, you're welcome to it." And indeed, there is much God was able, and willing to do with David Wood. He began to see the world in a brand new light, and through his faith, in spite of his condition, David actually glorifies God in ways that put many Christians to shame. Near the end of his testimony, David quotes C.S. Lewis, saying "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."
No one but Jesus could have changed David Wood from what he was to what he is. Had he remained as an atheist, he might still be in prison. He might be dead. He might have eventually got out of prison and done the horrible things he planned to do, still believing it made no ultimate difference. And how do we think Islam would have utilised a man with no natural conscience? Christ alone could have saved David, and praise be to God, He did.
The powerful testimony of David Wood puts the atheist world to shame. In spite of his mental instabilities, he was capable of putting together all the evidence and sincerely coming to the conclusion that Jesus saves even the worst of sinners. Meanwhile, perfectly normal people refuse to take the same journey. It's like a man with no legs running a 5 mile marathon while perfectly able-bodied athletes sit back in their sofas and mock him. Atheists need to really step up their game.