Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, has publicly declared himself to be a Christian after years as a sceptic.
Writing on his blog, Sanger said that Christians are called to “Go ye into all of the world, and preach the gospel to each creature,” and that his way of doing this was to inform his own conversion story.
Sanger was born right into a Christian household, with Lutheran parents. He recalls being told that he asked too many questions as a toddler. Sanger was confirmed into the Lutheran church on the age of 12, but shortly after stopped attending church, before losing his faith completely during his teenage years.
Sanger wrote that he spent 35 years as a non-believer, “a devotee of rationality, methodological skepticism, and a somewhat hard-nosed and no-nonsense (but at all times open-minded) rigor”. His social circle, which was determined to a major degree by his field of study, analytic philosophy and an interest in philosopher Ayn Rand, was heavily atheist.
Despite this Sanger denied being a Richard Dawkins style “enemy of the religion” but said he was “merely a skeptic” who was critical of each side of the talk on God.
Dawkins and philosopher Daniel Dennett were, in Sanger’s estimation “crass and obnoxious”, while Christian apologist William Lane Craig was “earnest, but ultimately intellectually dishonest”.
Sanger said his conversion towards Christianity began as his objections to the religion slowly began to fall away “one after the other”. He also cites the behaviour of Christians as something that impacted him.
“I observed Christians on social media often (though not at all times) behaving with maturity and style, while their critics often acted like obnoxious trolls,” he said.
Sanger began reading the Bible in 2019. He devoted time to praying and re-examining all of the old philosophical arguments for the existence of God, before coming back to God “quietly and uncomfortably” in 2020.
