My Journey from Atheist Radio Host to Christianity
My Journey from Atheist Radio Host to Christianity
By Mark McGee
My Journey from Atheist Radio Host to Christianity
by Mark McGee
Thousands of young people raised in Christian homes are leaving their churches, youth groups and belief in God. That’s a well-known statistic. However, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
What we often don’t hear is the pain and suffering experienced by both the young people and their families. Here’s an example of why I say that.
I was one of those statistics—one of thousands of young people raised in Christian homes who left church and belief in God as a teenager. I later learned it hurt my parents deeply. It also led me into some very dark times personally.
I was born soon after World War II and people in the United States were searching for a “new normal” after years of fighting on multiple fronts. Both of my parents had served in the U.S. Navy during the war and were committed Christians. They wanted to make sure I’d have that same commitment. I was active in children’s and youth group activities, but there was a problem. I wasn’t really a Christian. I wasn’t saved.
I did what kids in my church did when they reached a certain age and walked the aisle to join the church, but I didn’t do it to be saved. I did it because that’s what my parents and other adults in the church expected me to do. I was baptized, but I wasn’t saved. I didn’t think of myself as a sinner who needed to be saved. Whether God existed or not was of no concern to me.
Something happened two years later that would put me on a fast track toward leaving church. I attended my first church business meeting and witnessed the anger some people had toward church leaders and how those leaders responded. That was my early experience with Christian hypocrisy. I would later use hypocrisy as an argument for atheism and against Christianity.
I also started studying martial arts that same year and learned about other worldviews. I found Buddhism and Taoism attractive. I left the church and youth group a few years later.
The journey from an Eastern worldview like Buddhism or Taoism to atheism is a short one. It took an atheist professor only one semester in my first year at college to convince me that God did not exist and Christianity was wrong about everything. My path was set.
I finished school and became a full-time broadcast journalist. I had the opportunity to produce and later host radio talk shows. It was on the radio that I openly presented my atheism and called Christians ignorant and superstitious. Those words hurt my parents deeply.
I was a strong atheist and believed in following the worldview to its logical end. I found that end to be one of meaningless, purposeless, hopeless despair. As I read atheist writers (e.g. Nietzsche, Camus, Russell) I saw that they also experienced a similar despair because of living life with no purpose or meaning. They made of their lives what they could and I did the same. However, my made-up meaning did not satisfy something deep within my heart and mind. It led me to do whatever I wanted without caring how it hurt other people.
Being an atheist talk show host in the 1960s made for some interesting radio. Guests included daily newsmakers along with atheists, agnostics, communists, Marxists, socialists and other people who would fire up the audience to call.
Since I controlled the phone lines, I also controlled the conversation. When Christians called to argue about God’s existence with me, they often got angry and told me I was going to burn in hell. I cut them off the air and said things like, “Well, there’s another example of a loving Christian.”
I remember one time during a conversation with a Christian that I said I knew a way to settle the theism/atheism argument once and for all. I then said:
“If God exists, I dare him to sit down in front of me right now and be interviewed!” (Pause for several seconds . . . )
“Well, apparently God doesn’t exist or maybe he’s under the weather today (chuckle).”
I didn’t know it at the time, but God was going to show up on my talk show. However, He would do it in His own time and in His own way.
Within months of my saying that on air, the radio station owner changed the format of the station from news/talk to religion and country/western music. Even though I was known for being a strong atheist, the owner decided to continue my employment. I went from doing news and talk every day to running religious programming and country/western music. I also produced a two-hour local interview show once a week that featured people in religion. What a strange twist for an atheist, but that was just the beginning of God’s plan to respond to my dare from months before.
One of my guests was a Christian who was a science professor. Dr. Henry Morris believed God had created the heavens and the earth. I thought he must be ignorant and superstitious and it would be easy to show him how wrong he was, but that’s not how the interview went. He was friendly, intelligent and well-informed. We discussed everything from cosmology to teleology to causality and morality. It was the first time I remembered talking to a Christian who had answers to some of my tough questions about theism and Christianity.
One of my next guests was a Christian who presented the Gospel at a drive-in movie location. Evangelist Terry Lytle was friendly and also had good answers to my questions about Christianity. He invited me to visit him at his office where I met another Christian who was a theologian and apologist. Dr. Ed Hindson and I spent many hours talking about the existence of God, the credibility of the Bible, and the reliability of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
One day Terry asked me if I knew of any reason why I shouldn’t receive Jesus Christ as my Savior. I thought for a moment and told him no, I couldn’t think of any reason. Reason and logic based on evidence convinced me that I was a sinner and needed to be saved. God heard my dare and reached out to me in love to save me and give me the gift of eternal life through faith in His Son.
Thousands of young people are leaving churches every year, but are they leaving because Christianity is not true or because we aren’t answering their questions? Christianity is based on evidence. We have great answers to tough questions.
— Mark McGee spent decades as a professional journalist in radio, television, newspapers and online. He writes for several blogs and is active in apologetics groups such as Ratio Christi, the Christian Apologetics Alliance, and Engage 360. Learn more about Mark at his website Faith & Self Defense.
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