Latest / Crosswalk Talk: Celebrity Christian Interviews / A Filmmaker’s Journey from Atheism to Evidence-Based Faith: Michael Ray Lewis

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A Filmmaker’s Journey from Atheism to Evidence-Based Faith: Michael Ray Lewis · Crosswalk Talk: Celebrity Christian Interviews

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Speaker 1: Life Audio.
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Speaker 2: Hey Michael, thanks for joining me. Thank you Michael for
0:06
Speaker 2: having me. Michael ray lewis filmmaker who is the director
0:09
Speaker 2: of the new documentary film Universe Designed. I really enjoyed it.
0:13
Speaker 1: It releases December the thirteenth. Universe Designed dot Com is
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Speaker 1: the website. It explores the existence for God and it
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Speaker 1: also explores the validity of Christianity. Michael, I really enjoyed this,
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Speaker 1: the pace, the cinematography, all of it.
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Speaker 2: Really. You describe yourself as a former atheist. How did
0:32
Speaker 2: your personal journey lead to the vision for this film
0:36
Speaker 2: Universe Design.
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Speaker 3: Well, the evidence is really what persuaded me that Christianity
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Speaker 3: was true. You see, I grew up in a home
0:44
Speaker 3: where I'm pretty sure most of us would say that
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Speaker 3: they believed in God, had a Bible under their bed,
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Speaker 3: but we never talked about God, we never talked about Jesus.
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Speaker 3: Obviously didn't read the Bible, and so over time, as
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Speaker 3: I got older, I started really just seeing no good
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Speaker 3: reason to believe it. On top of that, I was
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Speaker 3: watching documentaries by Bill Maher and others making fun of Christians,
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Speaker 3: and the only real interactions I had with Christians were
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Speaker 3: the ones on the street corners that were yelling at
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Speaker 3: me that I'm going to Hell, and so, I mean
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Speaker 3: I just naturally adopted atheism. I said, well, there's no
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Speaker 3: good reason to believe it anyways, and so I'm going
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Speaker 3: to just kind of adopt this materialistic mindset. Well, a
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Speaker 3: little bit later in my life, my wife ended up
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Speaker 3: coming to me and she said that she felt like
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Speaker 3: Jesus is calling her back. And I remember thinking to myself,
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Speaker 3: oh no, now I got to start dealing with all
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Speaker 3: this again because I had been pretty against Christianity, But
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Speaker 3: I said, you know what, I love her, I'll see
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Speaker 3: what this is all about. And so she dragged me
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Speaker 3: into a church and I remember looking around. I'm like,
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Speaker 3: all right, these aren't like the ones on the street corners.
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Speaker 3: But I get it that gives them something to hope in.
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Speaker 3: I just don't think it's actually true. And during that
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Speaker 3: process I started hitting her with hard questions, but no
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Speaker 3: matter what, she was adamant that it was true. And
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Speaker 3: there was one peticular moment where a YouTube video popped
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Speaker 3: up on my feed by an astrophysicist by the name
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Speaker 3: of doctor Hugh Ross, and she was showing in the
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Speaker 3: video how like science isn't incompatible with Christianity. In fact,
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Speaker 3: there are lots of good scientific evidences for the existence
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Speaker 3: of God. And I remember that was the first video,
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Speaker 3: the first moment where it kind of peaked my curiosity,
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Speaker 3: and I said, maybe there's a little something to this.
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Speaker 3: And that started a three year journey of me just
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Speaker 3: diving into everything from the evidence from the origins of
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Speaker 3: the universe, the fine tuning, the evidence surrounding the resurrection.
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Speaker 3: And at the end of that three years, I was
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Speaker 3: still very skeptical, and I was still very hesitant, and
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Speaker 3: I started asking my wife questions about scripture and she said,
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Speaker 3: you know what, I don't know how to answer these questions,
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Speaker 3: but I do have a friend of the family that's
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Speaker 3: a theologian that may be able to help you answer them.
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Speaker 3: And so she directed me to one of the friends
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Speaker 3: of the families, and I remember I walked in at
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Speaker 3: five pages full of questions. I'm ready to hammer this
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Speaker 3: guy with And I notice, I remember that every question
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Speaker 3: I asked him, he answered it using scripture. And at
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Speaker 3: the end of the conversation he looked up at me
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Speaker 3: and he said, so do you think that it's true?
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Speaker 3: And at this point I had no more objections, and
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Speaker 3: I said, well, yeah, I think so. But it didn't
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Speaker 3: really hit me until the drive home. On the way home,
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Speaker 3: I remember thinking to myself, I actually think this is true.
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Speaker 3: And that's when I realized the evidence isn't what was
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Speaker 3: holding me back. It was the fact that I didn't
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Speaker 3: want it to be true. And when I realized that,
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Speaker 3: I said, well that's not a good reason. Threw my
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Speaker 3: hands up and I said, all right, Jesus, what's next,
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Speaker 3: gave my life to christ became extremely excited about learning
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Speaker 3: more and trying to understand because this is all actually real.
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Speaker 3: And then I realized I was correct in my assumptions
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Speaker 3: as an atheist that Christians were not prepared to give
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Speaker 3: a good defense for why they believe that it's true.
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Speaker 3: And so I'd already kind of been in the film industry,
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Speaker 3: making horror films of all things, and I thought to myself, well,
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Speaker 3: I need to make something for the kingdom. I need
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Speaker 3: to do something for the kingdom. My mom my wife,
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Speaker 3: said well, why don't you do a documentary based on
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Speaker 3: the evidence that convinced you that it was true?
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Speaker 2: And so I said, you know what I'm going to do.
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Speaker 3: Just that, I send emails to some of the top
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Speaker 3: Christian apologists of books that I had read during my journey.
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Speaker 3: Bob Plane, tickets went out, got interviews, ended up with
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Speaker 3: thirty six hours of content that I had to try
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Speaker 3: to condense down to an hour and twenty five minute movie.
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Speaker 3: And what I tried to do in the movie is
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Speaker 3: to build a case strong enough to be convincing and
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Speaker 3: to show people the evidences. But I also don't want
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Speaker 3: to bore people with all the details and kind of
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Speaker 3: just do nothing but facts, and so I tried to
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Speaker 3: structure it in such a way that it flows, tells
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Speaker 3: a story, but also piques your curiosity, so that if
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Speaker 3: you're a non believer, you'll hopefully be prompted to take
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Speaker 3: a second look at all this, and if you are
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Speaker 3: a believer, you'll be encouraged and excited to know that
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Speaker 3: what we believe is actually true and we need to
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Speaker 3: be out there sharing that truth with others.
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Speaker 1: The included a views with some of the top ofogists
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Speaker 1: and thinkers in Christianity today. As you already edicated Frank Tierrich,
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Speaker 1: you ros So Lisa Jielder's season, There there's a goodness.
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Speaker 1: It seemed like a dozen or more people in this
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Speaker 1: I can't think of all of them. Tell me about
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Speaker 1: the structure of the film, because I really found it
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Speaker 1: fascinating how it begins with just the general questions about life,
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Speaker 1: Why are we here? Why is there something instead of nothing?
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Speaker 1: What's the purpose of life? And then it ends, of
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Speaker 1: course with Christianity. So what was your desire with the
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Speaker 1: structure of the film beginning with maybe the bigger questions
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Speaker 1: just design, and ending with the cross and the resurrection.
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Speaker 3: Well, I think one of the problems looking at Christianity
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Speaker 3: from my atheistic perspective was that I was told the
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Speaker 3: repent and believe language all day. But what happened was
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Speaker 3: I rejected all of that because I had roadblocks that
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Speaker 3: needed to be overcome during that three year period in
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Speaker 3: order for me to be able to fully grasp the
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Speaker 3: gospel right. And so when I decided I was going
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Speaker 3: to make this film, I said, you know what I'm not.
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Speaker 3: I need to come at it with a different approach.
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Speaker 3: I need to do it in such a way that
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Speaker 3: starts to peak people's curiosity, help them to realize there
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Speaker 3: are big questions that we all have, but we've all
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Speaker 3: stopped asking them because we get distracted, We get busy
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Speaker 3: with life, and so we need to start asking these
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Speaker 3: big questions. Then I shift gears into truth. Does objective
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Speaker 3: truth exist? Are there things we can know? If so,
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Speaker 3: what are those things? Then we shift gears into where
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Speaker 3: did the universe come from? Why does the universe seem
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Speaker 3: to have such a design to it? Why does life
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Speaker 3: seem to have such a design to it? I shift
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Speaker 3: into the topic of evolution, because that's a big objection
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Speaker 3: for non believers. Evolution has disproven Christianity, so we cover that.
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Speaker 3: Then I shift gears into well, if there is evidence
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Speaker 3: for the existence of a god, how do we know
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Speaker 3: that it's the Christian God? Well, that all comes down
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Speaker 3: to Jesus. Is Jesus who he claimed to be? And
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Speaker 3: so I cover the manuscript evidence. Why we should trust
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Speaker 3: the Bible? Why why do we deem it reliable source?
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Speaker 3: And then what kind of evidences do we have for
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Speaker 3: the historical figure of Jesus? Was he historical figure? What
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Speaker 3: do we know about the evidence surrounding the resurrection of Jesus.
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Speaker 3: I also address in the film the problem of evil
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Speaker 3: and suffering, ultimately delivering the gospel message in a way
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Speaker 3: that hopefully people will really be able to absorb it
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Speaker 3: for the first time because I've taken down those roadblocks
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Speaker 3: ahead of time, and then I just lay it on
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Speaker 3: the table and say, you know what, the evidence is there,
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Speaker 3: what are you going to do from here?
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Speaker 2: I love the pace of the film, Michael.
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Speaker 1: The footage of everyday life is in slow motion, if
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Speaker 1: it's if it's I don't know filmmaker language. This is
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Speaker 1: just me talking as a viewer, but it's almost as
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Speaker 1: if you're inviting the audience to slow down and think
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Speaker 1: about life and stop looking at your phone.
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Speaker 2: Tell me the.
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Speaker 1: Goals of that and how you would describe that as
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Speaker 1: a filmmaker.
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Speaker 3: I mean, visuals are something that I've always noticed will
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Speaker 3: and well, just the pacing of things in general will
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Speaker 3: lose people. If you pace things incorrectly, you can lose
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Speaker 3: people pretty quickly, and so you have to keep things moving.
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Speaker 3: You have to keep things flowing. And the way I
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Speaker 3: chose to do that was to do it by showing
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Speaker 3: these scholars who know what they're talking about, but showing
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Speaker 3: them kind of behind the scenes, showing them what they're
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Speaker 3: doing behind the scenes. In addition, I wanted to we're
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Speaker 3: talking about the reality of nature of what we see,
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Speaker 3: and so I wanted to be able to show the
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Speaker 3: beauty of the earth, show the beauty of space, the
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Speaker 3: beauty of what we see in nature, and while we're
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Speaker 3: talking about it, so that you can see that like
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Speaker 3: beauty itself is an argument for God, why things beautiful?
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Speaker 3: And so I wanted people you write what we tend
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Speaker 3: to do is we tend to stay in our home,
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Speaker 3: watch TV, stay on our phone. We don't get outside
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Speaker 3: of nature. And so if we're not exposed to God's creation,
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Speaker 3: how do we expect these people to see the evidence
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Speaker 3: for it? Because that's what scriptures say, look to the heavens.
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Speaker 3: The evidence is clear.
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Speaker 1: We're so busy in life that we don't ask the
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Speaker 1: questions that we were created to ask. And we live
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Speaker 1: in cities and we don't see the vastness of the
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Speaker 1: heavens that the writers of scriptures saw that led them
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Speaker 1: to write the verses that we quote. The film is
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Speaker 1: described as bridging science, philosophy, and Christian faith.
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Speaker 2: You've already kind of.
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Speaker 1: Touched on this, But was it challenging to present all
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Speaker 1: these discussions of academic topics but make it accessible.
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Speaker 2: Oh, it was very difficult.
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Speaker 3: This is partly why it took me three years to
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Speaker 3: edit it, because that's the key, right is we have
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Speaker 3: all of this information that we want people to understand,
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Speaker 3: but the hard thing is to is to get them
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Speaker 3: to be interested in it. Because this is a lot
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Speaker 3: of heavy thinking. When I was looking at Christianity as
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Speaker 3: an atheist, it's very easy to be skeptical and take
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Speaker 3: things at face value. So you hear slogans like, if
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Speaker 3: there is a good God, then there can't be evil
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Speaker 3: in the world. Evolution has disproven Christianity. Christianity is illogical.
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Speaker 3: It's this is religion, not science. Science tells us truth,
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Speaker 3: religious tells us a myth right. And so you hear
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Speaker 3: these slogans and you adopt these ideas, or you adopt
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Speaker 3: the first idea you see on Google, and you don't
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Speaker 3: dig deep enough. And so the challenge was to try
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Speaker 3: to create something that would get people to dig deeper.
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Speaker 3: And that's what I hope that I've done by the
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Speaker 3: structure of it, by the pacing of it, and by
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Speaker 3: delivering enough information to pique your curiosity, but not so
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Speaker 3: much that your eyes glaze over.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: It begins with just questions about life in general, and
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Speaker 1: then it does get into some heady topics, but then
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Speaker 1: it goes back into maybe some less heavy stuff. So
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Speaker 1: if you do, if someone's out there watching it and
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Speaker 1: they're like a boy, that's really tough to understand, just
11:10
Speaker 1: keep going.
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Speaker 2: It'll get better.
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Speaker 1: And you know, sometimes subjects are worth exploring, and sometimes
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Speaker 1: you do have to maybe think about it a little
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Speaker 1: deeper and rewind it and watch it again.
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Speaker 2: That's just life. Who is this made for? Let's begin
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Speaker 2: closing here. Who did you make this for? And what
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Speaker 2: do you hope the audience walks away thinking?
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Speaker 1: And I'm sure the answer to that is different for
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Speaker 1: who's watching it Christians and Christians.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely so.
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Speaker 3: Originally, when I went into making this film, my heart
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Speaker 3: was dedicated for this to be towards the non believers.
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Speaker 3: I was going to market it towards the non believers,
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Speaker 3: and that was what my audience source was going to be.
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Speaker 3: That's why if you watch the film, it takes you
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Speaker 3: a good twenty minutes before you realize you're even watching
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Speaker 3: a Christian film right now. I did that intentionally because
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Speaker 3: I want people to not reject it on the basis
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Speaker 3: of it being a Christian film. And so my primary
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Speaker 3: audience is those non believers who are open to hearing
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Speaker 3: the arguments, who are open to taking a second look
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Speaker 3: at Christianity and hopefully pique their curiosity and challenge them.
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Speaker 3: But after giving my life to Christ and realizing that
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Speaker 3: so many believers out there are not equipped, I realize
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Speaker 3: this is also a film for believers. This is a
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Speaker 3: film that if you've grown up in the church and
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Speaker 3: you've always been told that it's true, but maybe not
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Speaker 3: necessarily why it's true, this is the film for you
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Speaker 3: because this will encourage you to know that, like everything
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Speaker 3: we believe about Jesus is actually real. There are good
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Speaker 3: arguments for it, there's good evidence for it. It's not
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Speaker 3: just this emotional reaction that we have, like there are
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Speaker 3: facts like this is the reality. Christianity is true because
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Speaker 3: it's the best explanation for the reality we find ourselves in.
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Speaker 3: Whether I like it or not, it's true. And so
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Speaker 3: my hope is that this will encourage believers as well,
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Speaker 3: to excite them to take a second look at all
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Speaker 3: of the evidence and to learn that there's something called apologetics.
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Speaker 3: There's an entire field of study that can equip you
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Speaker 3: to be out there having conversations about Jesus and you
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Speaker 3: don't have to be scared to have those conversations because
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Speaker 3: we have the best explanation and if what we believe
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Speaker 3: is true, we shouldn't be scared to share that truth.
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Speaker 1: It always breaks my heart when I hear somebody be
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Speaker 1: constructed and not reading a story about them and the
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Speaker 1: question that kind of made them stumble was one that's
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Speaker 1: you know, in the.
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Speaker 2: First chapter of any basic apologetics book. I do have
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Speaker 2: one more question for you.
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Speaker 1: It seems like this this is a good time for
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Speaker 1: this film to be released. It seems like we have
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Speaker 1: an entire generation. You have young people asking questions and
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Speaker 1: searching for truth.
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Speaker 2: Right now, some.
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Speaker 1: People think gen Z is in the midst of a
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Speaker 1: revival on college campuses. What do you think about the
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Speaker 1: timing of this film's release.
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Speaker 3: It's really interesting because when I first started making the film,
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Speaker 3: I was like, oh, it'll take me a year. Well,
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Speaker 3: that year went by, the second year came and I'm like, Okay,
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Speaker 3: this is the year it's going to come out. And
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Speaker 3: then I kept making changes to it, and things kept happening,
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Speaker 3: and life happened, and because this is a passion project
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Speaker 3: for me, I start to make money to pay bills
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Speaker 3: and support my family, and so then it kept getting
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Speaker 3: pushed back and pushed back, and then I was like,
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Speaker 3: you know what, I'm going to take the time and
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Speaker 3: I'm going to raise money. I'm going to try to
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Speaker 3: get it into theaters. And I attempted that and then
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Speaker 3: everything happened, like the world started to shift and I
14:17
Speaker 3: started to see things changing, and I don't know. I
14:21
Speaker 3: got to the point where I said, you know what,
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Speaker 3: it's time. It's time to go ahead and release it.
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Speaker 3: And that's when I got with my distributor and I said,
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Speaker 3: let's just go straight to streaming. As much as I
14:31
Speaker 3: would love for it to go to theaters and people
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Speaker 3: to be able to see it in a theater, my
14:35
Speaker 3: goal is for it to just reach people. However that's
14:37
Speaker 3: going to happen, and I just need to finally let
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Speaker 3: go of it and let God do with it what
14:41
Speaker 3: he's going to do. And so the timing is all God,
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Speaker 3: not me, everything, every obstacle that He put in front
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Speaker 3: of me, and then just prompting it on my heart
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Speaker 3: to go ahead and release it. And so, yeah, you're right,
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Speaker 3: something's changing. I don't know what's going on, but I'm
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Speaker 3: just long for the ride. So, and it'll be released.
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Speaker 1: On all major streaming platforms in terms of renting and
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Speaker 1: buying correct correct Okay, December the thirteenth, Universe Design dot Com.
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Speaker 1: It's one of the best apologetics films I've ever seen,
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Speaker 1: so I just encourage people who have questions or.
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Speaker 2: Who want to build their faith to check it out. Michael,
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Speaker 2: thanks so much, Thank you for having me.
15:21
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Speaker 4: five star review. That's how we help more people just
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Speaker 2: See you next time.