For ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid and Nathan Jacobson are releasing an inspiring two-part conversation with Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger. Why inspiring? He describes his intellectual and spiritual journey, from agnosticism to Christianity. It’s not easy to admit you were mistaken. It takes courage to try to consider ultimate questions objectively with the possibility that you might have had them wrong for decades.

As Sanger relates, he left church involvement at age 18 when a pastor failed to be able to answer the young man’s questions. Sanger now urges that clergy be trained not just in apologetics for their faith but in the philosophy of religion. 

Sanger went on to obtain a PhD in philosophy. He was content with his agnosticism until a student of his own posed a question about the fine-tuning of the universe and whether it pointed to a mind behind nature. Sanger hadn’t heard that argument before. He was startled by the power and cogency of the challenge. Later he would go on to read and listen to ID material from William Dembski, Stephen Meyer, and others.

The result from that and other study was Sanger’s religious conversion. In a second part of the interview, Jacobson and McDiarmid discuss with him his work with online encyclopedias, especially Wikipedia. Sanger came to our attention several years ago when he criticized the absurdly biased treatment of ID by Wikipedia’s anonymous editors. Yes, that treatment is as absurd as ever and, in the follow-up, Sanger promises to discuss why neutrality is so hard to achieve in that and other online contexts.

This, as I said, is Part 1. Download the podcast or listen to it here. Stayed tuned for Part 2, coming up.