Episode 297: Design in the Universe Helps Lead an Atheist to Christ - Filmmaker Michael Ray Lewis - Part Two

Summary

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Apologetics Profile Ep. 297

"Design in the Universe Helps Lead an Atheist to Christ – Filmmaker Michael Ray Lewis – Part Two"

Broadcast: July 14, 2025
Hosts: James Walker & Daniel Ray
Guest: Michael Ray Lewis, filmmaker (Universe Designed)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the intellectual and personal journey of Michael Ray Lewis, a former atheist who became a Christian after an in-depth investigation of apologetics arguments for God’s existence. The discussion centers on Lewis’s new documentary film, Universe Designed, which shares both scientific and philosophical arguments for the existence of God, especially through the lens of design in the universe. The hosts and Lewis discuss the creation and intent behind this film, the nuances between microevolution and macroevolution, the problem of evil, and the pivotal role of Jesus in the search for ultimate truth.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Intellectual Journey from Atheism to Christianity

• Initial Worldview:
  Dr. Fazale Rana (in a film clip) and Michael Ray Lewis both began with a naturalistic, evolutionary perspective. Lewis shares that prior to faith, he worked on indie horror films and had little interest in Christianity or apologetics (04:34, 16:12).

• The Role of Evidence:
  Lewis’s three-year investigation into apologetic arguments convinced him of the rationality and explanatory power of the Christian worldview over atheism and other religions (03:16, 14:41).

  "I was gonna go and ask them all the hard questions I had as an atheist."
  — Michael Ray Lewis (04:34, 16:44)

• Inspiration for the Film:
  Prompted by his wife, Lewis decided to document the evidences he found persuasive, leading him to interview prominent Christian thinkers and assemble the documentary (04:34–05:17, 14:41).

2. The Argument from Design

• Scientific Awe and Design:
  Dr. Rana details his shift from evolutionary naturalism to theism, citing the complexity and ingenuity of biochemical systems as pointing to an intelligent creator (00:32–03:16).

  "DNA is highly optimized as an information storage system... this speaks very powerfully that there is a mind that's ultimately behind biochemistry and biology."
  — Dr. Fazale Rana (02:15)

• Communication with Apologists:
  Lewis chose Christian apologists, rather than only scientists, as interview subjects for their ability to make complex scientific and philosophical arguments understandable and compelling to a broad audience (24:09, 25:57).

  "Apologists are able to communicate these truths in a way that the scientists probably can't."
  — Michael Ray Lewis (25:46–25:57)

• Analogy to Art & Curiosity:
  The hosts and Lewis stress that the argument from design is intended to awaken curiosity and point seekers toward God and Christ, not to overwhelm them with raw data (26:40, 27:08).

  "If I can get you there, then the hope is that... that'll bug you, it'll stick with you and challenge you to go and really dive into the scientific side of things."
  — Michael Ray Lewis (14:41, 27:08)

3. Jesus at the Center

• Uniqueness of Christ:
  J. Warner Wallace, in a film clip, emphasizes the unmatched influence of Jesus across cultures, religions, literature, and the arts, arguing that this impact cannot be explained by natural causes alone (08:49).

  "Why this guy, this nobody... This is the guy who changes everything in literature, art, music, education, science and world religions... the most reasonable inference seems to me to be that he’s the God of the universe."
  — J. Warner Wallace (09:23)

• Moving from Theism to Christ:
  The discussion covers how a seeker might transition from generic belief in "a god" to the specific truth claims about Jesus and the resurrection (28:21–30:17).

  "Ultimately it really does hinge on Jesus, doesn't it?... If the events surrounding Jesus happened in the way the Bible says... then Christianity is true."
  — Michael Ray Lewis (29:14)

4. Elegance and Limits of Science

• Completeness of Science & Naturalism:
  The hosts note that science, while powerful, is restricted to describing matter, motion, and energy, but cannot speak to purpose, morality, or ultimate meaning (25:57).

  "Science can tell us is motion and matter and energy...But when you look at it from a purely scientific perspective, you miss the bigger picture of what it all is."
  — Host (25:57)

• The Protein Folding and Language Problem:
  Drawing on Tom Wolfe's book The Kingdom of Speech, the hosts point out that key phenomena such as language and the origin of life still confound purely material explanations (10:25–13:58).

  "Linguists, biologists, anthropologists... discovered nothing about language."
  — Tom Wolfe (cited at 12:30)

5. Problem of Evil

• Intellectual and Pastoral Responses:
  Lewis describes two classical responses to evil:

  • Evil as evidence of objective morals (thus, God’s existence)
  • Suffering’s role under free will, and humility when answers are not forthcoming (31:34–34:40)

  "The real answer to that, why does God allow it? Is I have no idea... What if this is the best possible world that God could have created in light of the free will choices that he has given us?"
  — Michael Ray Lewis (32:09–33:00)

• Personal Experience and Growth:
  Lewis shares a moving story about missing the opportunity to share Christ with his dying grandmother, which becomes a catalyst for boldness in evangelism and embracing the uncertainties of faith (16:47–18:48).

6. Practical Application and Evangelism

• The Role of the Film:
  Lewis views his film as a tool to inspire curiosity and direct both Christians and seekers to greater investigation rather than providing exhaustive arguments (14:41, 27:08, 39:46).

  "My hope for the film is that it will have two purposes. One, it will excite the Christian... But I also hope that it'll give the non believer a different perspective or a different look at Christianity from the lens of a prior atheist."
  — Michael Ray Lewis (21:19)

• Central Resource Hub:
  The universedesigned.com website offers additional resources and ministries for seekers and believers to dig deeper (41:27).

  "This will be kind of a central resource... if you have questions... just start reading books, start watching videos, start really investigating this to see if it's true."
  — Michael Ray Lewis (41:27)

7. Final Wisdom: Question, Seek, and Doubt Well

• Embrace Doubt as a Path to Truth:
  Both Lewis and the hosts encourage listeners not to fear doubt, but to use it as a motivation for testing beliefs and pursuing what is ultimately true (42:23–44:48).

  "Doubt is not a bad thing. It's what gets us to really question what we believe. And if what we believe is actually true, then it should be able to hold up to the test."
  — Michael Ray Lewis (42:30)

  "If Christianity is true and if Jesus is who he claimed to be, this literally means everything."
  — Michael Ray Lewis (44:13)

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Memorable Quotes with Timestamps

• Dr. Fazale Rana, on Biochemistry & Divine Design:
  "DNA is highly optimized as an information storage system. In about two and a half pounds of DNA you could store all the digital information that exists in the world today... there is a mind that's ultimately behind biochemistry and biology." (02:15)

• Michael Ray Lewis, on Evangelism and Regret:
  "God... my heart was burning that entire time. I just knew I had to say something. I knew I had to say something, but I chose not to. And so I made a commitment that I will never do that again. I will never hesitate." (18:00)

• J. Warner Wallace, on the Uniqueness of Jesus:
  "There isn't anyone that's been written about as much as Jesus... The third option, that he's just the God of the universe who enters back into his creation and has this kind of expected result seems to me to be the most reasonable inference." (08:49–09:45)

• Michael Ray Lewis, on the Purpose of the Film:
  "I want the movie to plant a seed in someone who's seeking or even someone who's open to looking at it... and then challenge them by directing them to the right resources and hoping that they will go do the investigation themselves." (27:08)

• Michael Ray Lewis, on the Problem of Evil:
  "While my base answer is I have no idea why God allowed that particular thing in your life, the flip side to that is he knows what you're going through, understands what you're going through. It won't last forever. You will get to experience his presence. And we have to trust in that." (34:45)

• Final Wisdom:
  "Question everything, but hold fast to that which is good... If what we believe is actually true, then it should be able to hold up to the test." (42:30)

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Notable Segments & Timestamps

• 00:32–03:16 – Dr. Fazale Rana on evolution, design, and DNA
• 04:34–05:17 – Michael Ray Lewis recounts the early stages of producing the documentary
• 08:49–10:25 – J. Warner Wallace on the unmatched cultural impact of Jesus
• 14:41–15:52 – Lewis on the film’s purpose: piquing curiosity, inviting investigation
• 16:47–18:48 – Lewis shares the story of regret while missing the chance to evangelize his grandmother
• 29:14–30:17 – How to move from generic theism to specifically Christian faith
• 31:34–34:45 – Lewis articulates his approach to the problem of evil and suffering
• 39:46–41:27 – Film as evangelistic tool, universedesigned.com as resource hub
• 42:30–44:48 – Closing wisdom: embrace doubt, examine evidence, seek truth

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Concluding Thoughts

This episode artfully weaves together personal testimony, apologetics, theology, and film as a tool for evangelism. Michael Ray Lewis’s story is both intellectually substantial and emotionally resonant—demonstrating that the quest for truth involves both head and heart. The episode provides thoughtful responses to perennial objections (science, God, evil, doubt), all while encouraging listeners to carefully, humbly, and persistently seek what is true.

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Transcript

[Narrator/Host]

Pilate said to him, what is truth? And when he said this, he went out again to the Jews and said to them, I find no guilt in him helping the body of Christ proclaim the truth of Christ in a post Christian world. This is Apologetics profile.

[Dr. Fazale Rana]

When I was growing up, I didn't have any kind of Christian influence in my life. In fact, by the time I went to college, I was an agnostic. I wasn't sure if God existed or not and honestly didn't care. I was really very interested in doing everything I could to prepare myself to go to graduate school to pursue a PhD in biochemistry. As I was exposed to courses in biology and chemistry, I embrace the evolutionary paradigm as the explanation for the origin and the design in the history of life on Earth. I often hear the statement made evolution is a fact. Well, yes and no. The term evolution is ambiguous. It can mean a lot of things when we're using it to describe biological change over time. So, for example, microevolution, which would be variation happening within a species. The example that we would see in textbooks would be the Galapagos finches, where a finch species makes its way to the Galapagos Islands and diversifies into a number of different species of finches. But here, what we see evolution involved in is tweaking existing designs in response to the environment. Now, there's another category of evolution that we also need to consider, and that's macroevolution. And here the idea is that evolutionary mechanisms can innovate and, and produce new designs. This is in fact, where the evolutionary paradigm breaks down. As a graduate student, however, immersing myself in the study of biochemical systems, I became deeply impressed with the ingenuity and the elegance and the sophistication of those systems and asked the question, well, where do these systems come from? And it was at that point I was convinced that there must be a mind, there must be a creator that's behind life itself, that's responsible for the origin and at minimum, the basic design of life. One of the things that I marvel at as a biochemist is the eerie similarity that we see between the structure and operation of biochemical systems and human designs. DNA is highly optimized as an information storage system. It turns out that in about two and a half pounds of DNA you could store all the digital information that exists in the world today. And at the same time, the designs are so elegant that they're inspiring new technologies. To me, this speaks very powerfully that there is a mind that's ultimately behind biochemistry and biology.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

In general, that is Christian and biochemist from Reasons to Believe. Dr. Fuzz Rana, taken from a forthcoming film called Universe, scheduled to be released sometime this fall or winter. Universe Designed is the creative passion project of Michael Ray Lewis, a former atheist who became a Christian eight years ago through an intensive three year study of all the apologetic arguments for God's existence he could find. The film is a kind of apologetic story of Lewis own intellectual and spiritual journey to Christ. Set within the beauty, wonder and awesomeness of the cosmos. It is a visually stunning masterpiece of docudrama cinematography, something just as high quality as you might see from National Geographic sans the naturalism. Universe Designed is the film Michael wished he could have seen as a curious atheist.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

In talking with my wife she said well why don't you do a documentary on the evidences that you found? And I said I can do that. So I was like I'll go and interview some people who used to be atheists and maybe get some good testimonies and put together a film. Well, she's like why don't you try to email some of the people that you've read? And so I emailed Frank Turek. He was the first one that sent me an email back and said yes. I was excited. I was like oh, I got a big name in there. So then I tried to email Hugh Ross, he said yes. And then I was really excited because every email I sent everyone was agreeing to be interviewed. And I'm just this random guy that used to make horror films coming to try to interview them for a movie. I had no real plan or direction. I just knew that I was gonna go and ask them all the hard questions I had as an atheist.

[Interviewer/Host]

Sa.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

As the film title suggests, Lewis brings to the forefront of the story the concept of design in the universe. Through easy to understand and down to earth explanations from Christian apologists, scientists and philosophers, Lewis cinematically presents the argument for God's existence from design in the cosmos and in biological life within a compellingly crucial crafted narrative. It is not just a film of factoids and sound bites underneath Ken Burns stills. It is a film that is both visually riveting and narratively engrossing. In Dr. Rana's opening remarks, you heard him say that evolution by means of natural selection breaks down when it comes to explanations for the existence of and mind boggling diversification and variegated variety of life on earth. From the tuxedo clad toucan to the terrible Tyrannosaurus Rex, life on earth is a wonder. That last sound was actually a recreation of what paleontologists believe a T. Rex would have really sound. But where did all this life come from? As a technical paper published in August of last year titled Origins of Life, the Protein Folding Problem All Over Again says in their opening sentence, no one knows how life originated, presumably on Earth about 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago. Whatever the origin of life might be, it is allegedly responsible for all the life on Earth as we know it today. And this first life, whatever it may have been, supposedly came from non life, from inorganic matter of some kind. The origin of life, abiogenesis, as it is sometimes called, is essentially the naturalist's miracle story. Life from non life. With the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, at least Christianity had a body. But who is Jesus? Universe design answers that question in dramatic fashion. In fact, the entire film masterfully weaves the overarching theme of the glory of God revealed to us in Christ Jesus throughout the narrative. Here is a clip featuring apologist and author J. Warner Wallace talking about the uniqueness of Jes.

[J. Warner Wallace]

No one in the history of anyone has had the impact that Jesus of Nazareth has had. There isn't anyone that's been written about as much as Jesus. You can go to the Library of Congress, you can go to Google Books. There's no one who's affected the history of art. Every genre, every ism, from Impressionism, Expressionism, Dadaism, Popism. The top three masters have all imaged, sculpted, painted, etched Jesus of Nazareth. This can't be said of anyone else. He's on the pages of the Quran, on the pages of Bahaullah's sacred writings, on the pages of Buddhism, Hinduism, Krishna, New Age. Everyone loves Jesus, but Jesus says no. Actually, I'm glad. I appreciate that, but I'm the only way. This can't be said for Buddha. This can't be said for anybody else. It can only be said of Jesus. Just think about that for a second. Why this guy, this nobody, this guy who just born in some nowhere town, raised in another small nowhere, he didn't travel more than about 200 miles in the short three years he had, doesn't have an education he can really speak of. His family's not wealthy, never gets married, never has kids to extend his legacy, doesn't rule a nation. This is the guy who changes everything in literature, art, music, education, science and world religions. And because there's no other fictional character and there's no other living human who's ever had this impact. The third option, that he's just the God of the universe who enters back into his creation and has this kind of expected result seems to me to be the most reasonable inference.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

But without God, without Jesus, how might evolution explain the chirps of the toucan, or the guttural cries of the T. Rex, or the stunning varieties of the complex, nuanced speech of human being? Did it all just evolve from a few simple vocal cords of an unidentified primordial creature? The late author Tom Wolf certainly did not think so. Wolfe, you may recall, is the author of the popular 1979 book the Right Stuff. In Stuff, Wolf tells the story of the first brave souls who were selected to sit high atop some of the first rockets being designed and built for the burgeoning new space program of the 1960s. Wolf wondered why these fellows would even do such a thing, and called them combat warriors. Wolf published his last book, titled Kingdom of speech, in 2016, and it was this book in particular where I discovered, much to my surprise, that there was no current explanation for the evolutionary development of language. Wolf, of course, is no biologist, but as an author he likely knew as much about speech and language as anyone. Wolf opens the Kingdom of Speech by citing a scholarly article published in Frontiers in Psychology on May 7, 2014. Wolff describes that he was just surfing the web one night when he came across the title of the article, the Mystery of Language Evolution. It arrested his attention, so he clicked on it and started reading. He too was quite shocked by the conclusion of the study. The most fundamental questions about the origin and evolution of our linguistic capacity remain as mysterious as ever. Wolf was stunned as I was. He could not believe what he had just read. So here are his own thoughts on the matter. From the kingdom of speech 150 years since the theory of evolution was announced, and they had nothing. In that same century and a half, Einstein discovered the speed of lights and the relativity of speed, time and distance. Pasteur discovered that microorganisms, notably bacteria, cause an ungodly number of diseases from head colds to anthrax and oxygen tubed collapsed lung, final stage pneumonia. Watson and Crick discovered DNA, the so called building blocks genes are made of and 150 years worth of. Linguists, biologists, anthropologists and people from every other discipline discovered nothing about language. This study, however, was not just done in a corner by no name scholars and researchers. The study included experts in their field from the University of Texas, from mit, Cambridge and Harvard. Wolf's curiosity certainly had been stirred by the study, and it served as the inspiration for the writing of the kingdom of speech. Wolf concluded that Darwin had the wrong.

[Interviewer/Host]

Stuff when it came to trying to.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Explain how human speech came about. He believed Darwin was rather unsettled by the evolutionary question of man's linguistic prowess. He notes, quote, the inexplicable power of the word speech. Language was driving him crazy. In a sense, this is something of what Michael hopes to accomplish with Universe Designed, not necessarily to drive people crazy per se, but to plant a seed or two to grab the interest and attention of the seeking non believer as well as the believer and inspire them to examine the rigorous arguments for the existence of God for themselves.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

The film is meant to pique your curiosity and make you look at Christianity as something worth thinking about. And if I can get you there, then the hope is that you, that fire will, that, that will bug you, it'll stick with you and challenge you to go and really dive into the scientific side of things and really dive into looking at the evidences in sciences, the evidences in philosophy and really digging into it. But I have to pique your curiosity first because if I don't do that, you're not even going to take a second look at it and you're going to dismiss Christianity altogether.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Here on part two of our conversation with Christian filmmaker and former atheist Michael Ray Lewis, we'll hear more about the film Universe Design. Further discuss some of the arguments and issues surrounding the existence of God mentioned in the film, including the problem of evil. You can find out more about Universe Designed at Michael's website, universedesigned.com that's universedesigned.com as we pick up here in part two, Michael tells us the story of how the film idea turned into a reality. Here again is Michael Ray Lewis this.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

I've been making low budget indie films for a while. I've always been into film.

[Interviewer/Host]

Confirm for me and our audience what an indie film is.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Just an independent film. A film that's not a big budget. Low, really, really low budgets, sometimes no budgets.

[Interviewer/Host]

So some. So kind of what goes on at Sundance in a sense?

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Exactly.

[Interviewer/Host]

Okay.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

And I hadn't done any films as a director but I was always the dp, which is the guy behind the camera controlling the shots or I would be the editor for these films. And I, I, growing up I always had an obsession with horror films and I, I just, I loved the fact that I could use a camera to scare someone. Oh. And so I would utilize that and I would always. I'd started out making little horror films out of my, my home with friends and then eventually got into doing editing and DP work for other horror.

[Interviewer/Host]

Now, this is while you were an atheist, right?

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Yes, that's why I was an atheist.

[Interviewer/Host]

Okay.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Then I gave my life to Christ. Instantly felt a conviction that maybe I shouldn't be doing this. And I was thinking to myself, well, there's never been Christian horror films. I'm sure I could come up with a Christian horror film. And in my head, I was pondering it, trying to figure out something that might work, and nothing came to mind. And then something happened. Because one of the things. When I gave my life to Christ, because we talk about apologetics and defending the faith, I was terrible at this at first, as much as I learned on apologetics, and we all are. But, yeah, I. I was not a very sociable person. I don't like talking to people. And when I would try to have. I would. I was afraid. I had that same fear that if I were to talk to them, they would ask me a question that I don't know. Even though I had studied all this stuff, I still was afraid they were going to ask me something I didn't know or it would come out wrong. I would explain it the wrong way. And so I was really hesitant on sharing the gospel with people. But then something happened that completely changed my perspective on everything. I got a call from my dad telling me that my grandma was in the hospital, and he said that. I walked in and it was my dad and two of my aunts. And they said, well, Grandma's passing away. They're about to pull her off life support, but don't tell her that we're about to pull her off life support because we're afraid she might react. And she's already signed the Do Not Resuscitate. She understands all this, but we're afraid she might panic if we tell her that. And in my mind, I was like, how do you not tell someone they're about to die? Like, how can you. How can you go about that? And we went in and she was coherent. She was talking. I was talking with her. And I remember a chaplain walked by, and I was thinking to myself, my family don't know Jesus. This guy could talk to her about Jesus. And he walked by and he said, hey, can I pray? Pray for you. And he came in and it was him, my dad, my two aunts. And we all stood in a circle and cited the Lord's Prayer, kind of stumbling over it. And I'm thinking to myself, I've never heard any of these people talk about Jesus, yet here they are saying a prayer that they probably memorized when they were younger. And I kept hoping. I was like, well, the chaplain, he's going to talk to her about Jesus. I don't have to do anything because they don't want me to tell her she's dying. I just, I'm going to take a step back and let him take over. Well, he didn't. He didn't say anything about Jesus. And at the end of it, they ended up pulling her off life support. And last thing she said was, help me. And that was something that impacted me because I had an opportunity to share Jesus with her right there. I could have talked to her. I could have said anything to her. And I didn't. And it crushed me that I didn't take that opportunity. God. And my heart was burning that entire time. I just knew I had to say something. I knew I had to say something, but I chose not to. And so I made a commitment that I will never do that again. I will never hesitate. And so now I have conversations with literally everyone I have I come in contact with. If I'm at a coffee shop, if a guy's changing my oil, if there's a Jehovah Witness coming to the door, if there's the salesman trying to sell me solar panels, I will just jump right into it and say, hey, do you mind if I ask you a personal question? And I'll say, what do you believe about God? And you'll be surprised how many people are willing and open to talking about it. However, what I also learned is that most people have rejected their idea of Christianity not to. Rejected what Christianity really is. Yeah, most people don't understand the Gospel. They don't understand the gravity of just how much evidence there is for the existence of God. And so in talking with my wife, she said, well, why don't you do a documentary on the evidences that you found? And I said, I can do that. So I was like, I'll go and interview some people who used to be atheist and maybe get some good testimonies and put together a film. Well, she's like, well, why don't you try to email some of the people that you've read? And so I emailed Frank Turek. He was the first one that sent me an email back and said, yes. I was excited. I was like, oh, I got a big name in there. So then I tried to email Hugh Ross. He said yes. And then I was really excited because every email I sent, everyone was agreeing to be interviewed. And I'm just this random guy that used to make horror films, coming to try to interview them for a movie, that's great. I had no real plan or direction. I just knew that I was gonna go and ask them all the hard questions I had. As an agent atheist. I ended up with 30 hours of content that I had to condense and make into a cohesive hour and 30 minute long movie. It's taken me three years to work on it. It's been a lot of hard work. I've raised donations to do most of it. I've put others on credit cards trying to get plane tickets to go interview these people. And I, I'm extremely excited with what God's done with it. He's forced me to be patient. It's been hard on my family. This is a passion project so I still have to make money to support my family. So I've only been able to work on it little bits at a time. But now the film is finished and now what I'm trying to do is get it into theaters. I have a distribution company lined up and the goal as of now is trying to raise the marketing money so that I can get it into theaters and get it out to the world. But my hope for the film is that it will have two purposes. One, it will excite the Christian to realize just how much evidence there is for the, for the hope they have in Jesus and challenge them to go out and share the evidence with others using this film. Because you're out in a conversation, you get five minutes with someone, you may recommend a book. There's no way they're going to read a book. Yeah, it's really difficult to get, especially the younger generation today to read a book. And so if you have a film, maybe the film will pique their curiosity, then challenge them to go and read books and dig deeper into the evidence. And so my hope is that it will excite the Christian to go out and share the face faith. But I also hope that it'll give the non believer a different perspective or a different look at Christianity from the lens of a prior atheist. I don't interview myself in the film, but I lead the film in the direction that I would have probably needed to see as an atheist.

[Interviewer/Host]

That's awesome. So the, the, the film is done. You're waiting to, to raise more funds for the distribution.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Right.

[Interviewer/Host]

To go into theaters?

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Yes.

[Interviewer/Host]

Is there, is there plans to have it on? Will it eventually be available commercially on like YouTube or.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Absolutely, yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

Live streaming or something?

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Absolutely. Once it, once it leaves theaters, the hope is that the marketing will bring the awareness of the film up. That's, that's the whole purpose of going to theaters, is to get the awareness of the film. And then once the film people know about it and the marketing has, has really promoted it, then when it goes downstream, then you already have a large audience for it to be distributed to.

[Interviewer/Host]

Now, you had just mentioned that you have enlisted the help of. Hugh Ross is a cosmologist by trade, professionally, but you have enlisted the help of Christian apologists. Now you probably know from having been an atheist that atheists will go, well, you have Christian apologists talking about the universe, Michael, why didn't you go find real scientists? Right. This seems like it would be an objection, but you've explained to me off the mic here the reason behind that, and I thought it was really good. So why did you choose these folks instead of like a core of scientists?

[Michael Ray Lewis]

So my target audience is not the hard atheist. My target audience is the person who's genuinely curious about all this stuff, which most of us are.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

And there is a distinction.

[Interviewer/Host]

That's an excellent distinction because a lot of people just kind of lump atheists as all angry and vociferous and activists and all this kind of stuff. But there are plenty of non believers out there who are in, in some somewhat of a position. As you were exactly prior to your Christian faith.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Exactly.

[Interviewer/Host]

It's like, this is the stuff I needed to hear.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Right.

[Interviewer/Host]

And this is the way I needed to hear it.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Exactly, yeah. And what I've. What I've noticed, because one of the things I first started to do when I was sharing the gospel and sharing my faith is I would tend to throw up a bunch of information on people. And so I would say, God exists, and here's why. Cosmological, teleological. And I would lay out all the arguments. Well, most people, I mean, they'll just glaze over. That's not the questions they're asking. The questions they're asking are the big questions, like, why am I here? Why is there something here? Why would God allow this evil and suffering? Like, they're not necessarily emotional question, but they're the philosophical, fundamental questions that they want to know. And so when I'm with my target audience, what I don't want to do is I don't want to throw so much information at them that they get overwhelmed, and so they dismiss it altogether. But I also don't want to put forth not enough information to where they think I'm not building a good case for the existence of God. And so one of the things I had to do with the edit. That was part of the reason why I chose the apologist. Because the apologists are able to communicate these truths in a way that the scientists probably can't. Because when we're talking with people we don't want to completely lose their information with all of the details. But it's good to know that those details are there.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah. And I think too when we had met a couple of weeks ago at the conference in Arlington, we were chatting about, or at least I remember we were chatting about the narrowness of science in terms of it can be very limiting. If you take a scientific view of the universe, you rule out almost, almost tacitly that just excludes everything else. You're just looking at the materiality of the cosmos. But the cosm is not just what it's made of. And, and that's all science really can tell us is motion and matter and energy and all that stuff. But when you look at it from a purely scientific perspective, you miss the bigger picture of what it all is.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

You do. And, and it's just, even just the idea of digging that deep into it with someone most people aren't like, especially today, our, our attention spans are so short and it's only going to be the moment that their curiosity gets piqued that they're really going to investigate it. The same thing I did with like when I was a non believer. Prior to becoming a believer, I had never read a book in my life. I made it through high school watching the movies of the books that they would read and barely passing the tests.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Wow.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Because I didn't have the patience to sit down and read an entire book. It wasn't until I was curious about it and really started to dive into it, that's when I looked into the Evidence is Closer. And that's what this film, the intention of this film is to do is not to make an entire case for the existence of God because you just can't do that in an hour and 20 minute movie. What I want the movie to do is I want the movie to plant a seed in someone who's seeking or even someone who's open to looking at it. Plant that seed and then challenge them by directing them to the right resources and hoping that they will go do the investigation themselves. And so the film is meant to pique your curiosity and make you look at Christianity as something worth thinking about. And if I can get you there, then the hope is that you, that fire will, that, that will bug you. It'll Stick with you and challenge you to go and, and really dive into the scientific side of things and really dive into looking at the evidences in sciences, the evidences in philosophy and really digging into it. But I have to pique your curiosity first because if I don't do that, you're not even going to take a second look at it and you're going to dismiss Christianity altogether.

[Interviewer/Host]

One of the questions that comes up when we talk about what we're talking about here, natural revelation, God revealing himself through what he has made. Be interested to know how did you guys go from and all the people that you talk to, if somebody's got a friend who's kind of where you were as an atheist exploring Christianity, one of the big questions seems to be how do you go from, okay, I'm convinced there might be some kind of God out there. It does seem at least mildly probable. But how do we go from that sort of broad non specificity of a deity to Jesus and God and the God of the Bible? What's the, what would be your, in terms of as your investigation unfolded, what would be your recommendation to, to help someone bridge that gap?

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Well, the first thing they would have to do is look at what all the world religions say about God and do they seem to be getting it right? And what we're finding and the evidence just in looking and what you would say, God's general revelation. If you look out in the cosmos and you see a belief system or worldview that lines up with the description of that God, well then you can lean more towards if that is the, the God of the universe, if that's talking about the God accurately. But ultimately it really does hinge on Jesus, doesn't it? Because if the events surrounding Jesus happened in the way the Bible says that they happened, well then Christianity is true. If they didn't happen, well then someone else has it right, or maybe no one has it right. But really it all hinges on that one particular question. And so then the question becomes, well, do we have evidence surrounding the resurrection of Jesus and what's the best explanation for the events surrounding what happened 2,000 years ago? And so I think that would be the main thing that you would need to spend your time on is trying to figure out did that happen?

[Interviewer/Host]

As Jesus asks his disciples, who do men say that I am?

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Exactly.

[Interviewer/Host]

So do what Jesus did and go examine what men say of Jesus.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Exactly.

[Interviewer/Host]

Start there. I mean, that's what I tell people too. I said there's nothing wrong with exploring this unique individual from Nazareth who Makes the COVID of Time magazine on Easter and Christmas every year. Who's this guy? I mean, why are we still paying attention to an itinerant rabbi who lived 2,000 years ago in a small Roman province?

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Exactly.

[Interviewer/Host]

It's worth investigating.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Exactly.

[Interviewer/Host]

And so that, I think, is a wise step. Now, I know one of the more common objections to. We'll get to these as we're wrapping up here. A couple of common objections when we're dealing with. Okay, Michael, you've convinced me that maybe, maybe, maybe this is all true. God is the God of the Bible, the universe is created. But you have some objections here where people are just saying, well, what about evil? I mean, where does that fit in? The universe is beautiful. The earth seems to be wonderful. The sun is shining today here in Texas, a beautiful spring day, and everything seems to be going fairly well, at least. But what about evil and suffering? And how do we figure that into a Christian cosmology? How did you guys, I know you guys talk about it in the film a little bit and give us a little synopsis about what the overall wisdom is about this.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

So there's two responses to the problem of evil. I actually chose to only go with one in the film. The, the first response is the logical problem, and that says that if there even is anything objectively evil, well, then God must exist. Because you can't have an objective moral thing called evil unless there is an objective moral thing called good. And there can't be a law giver or a law, so to speak, without a lawgiver. So therefore God must exist. But you try going up to someone who's just lost their child and tell.

[Interviewer/Host]

Them that, yeah, that's not an appropriate time to.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

That's not, that's not the response that we want. Okay? While it is, it is literally the best explanation, if evil exists, God must exist. However, the real question is, why is God allowing evil? Why is he allowing all these things? If God is all powerful, why can't he stop? Or can he stop all these things? And if he can, why doesn't he? And I think that the real answer to that, why does God allow it? Is I have no idea. Because like I said before, we tend to limit God and put him in some kind of box. And in this box we say that God has the ability to not cause it, where no evil happens in this world. But then you start thinking about it, well, if God had that ability, would we have a free will choice to receive him? Or would we somehow be forced to receive him? Would we have the free will ability to do things against God. Would he in a sense have been forcing us into a relationship with him rather than giving us the free agency of choice to come into a relationship with Him? What if this is the best possible world that God could have created in light of the free will choices that he has given us? So God in His sovereignty has given, created a reality in which there's a set of laws of physics that limit the expression of evil that we have. But at the same breath, this reality is a reality in which that is, it's a temporal reality. So we, according to Scripture, are going to be with him for eternity. And if we look at reality in that light, like Paul says, all of this will be a momentary affliction in light of the eternal glory that we will be experiencing in the presence of God when He's wiped away every tear. So this isn't all that there is. So what if all of this has purpose? Everything, everything atom that moves, every experience that happens in your life was intentional in light of the free will choices that God's given humanity. And we also have to remember that God isn't distant in the way that we think of Him. He is also a personal God and a God that's come into this reality with us, experienced the suffering that we've experienced and suffered alongside with us, so that he can bring us to Himself. That's a God I want who enters.

[Interviewer/Host]

Into our exactly suffering. We don't get the full explanation.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Right. And so while my base answer is I have no idea why God allowed that particular thing in your life, the flip side to that is he knows what you're going through, understands what you're going through. It won't last forever. You will get to experience his presence. And we have to trust in that.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, I like to. It doesn't solve the problem, but it does address it in a different way. The idea that even, even the most vociferous critics who invoke the problem of evil will go through a litany of things that are terrible in this world.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Right.

[Interviewer/Host]

You know, the list, and we can all make up a list and we can all have lists in our own lives about all these things and why did this happen? Why did this happen? But what's interesting in all of that is that even the most ardent critics of God from this problem of evil would want to continue to live in the world. And maybe they have children. And so the question then becomes, well, if what you said is true, if this world is so bad, why do you want to Keep living in it? Why do you want to keep enjoying it? Why do you want to bring children into the world? And I think what that says, Michael, is that the goodness of this world far and away outweighs your worst. Your top 10 evil things in the world that you can. You can list all of these evil things, but in reality, that you want to continue to live in a world where such things exist attests to the fact that you're attesting to the fact that there's still an inordinate amount of goodness in the world worth experiencing. Right.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

And just like you said, and that it wouldn't be a problem if God didn't exist.

[Interviewer/Host]

Right. I mean, because naturalism is bereft of coming up with an ontology of evil.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Right?

[Interviewer/Host]

I mean, and I know atheists, some atheists have tried to get around it by saying, well, evil's just an adjective, but if you want to force that argument against God, then you need objective evil, and naturalism doesn't give that to you. That's an is ought fallacy.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Exactly.

[Interviewer/Host]

There's nothing evil in nature. It just is. And I thought about. As you were talking, I thought about Job, where God responds to him. Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, and I will ask you and you will instruct me. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Where were you when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? You know, can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion? Can you lead forth a constellation? You know, all these questions Job can't answer, right? And so God's answer to Job's suffering is a. Is a treatise on creation, you know, God goes through. It's an extended. What I like to call an extended commentary on creation. So the idea of when, at least for me, that the universe, the cosmos, the heavens, when I meditate on them, I think of God's faithfulness, right? And his. His long suffering and his kindness, that no matter how I feel, the heavens are going to function as they were designed to function, those fixed laws are there, right? Just like so, in other words, my emotional state, whatever I'm experiencing down here, do not affect the motions of the heavens.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Right?

[Interviewer/Host]

And so if that's the case, then my emotional state does not affect God's faithfulness either. Right. You know, and sometimes that's where we. We fail to consider our own situation in light of God's unchanging faithfulness toward us. We think circumstantially like God only loves me when I'm doing well. God only loves me when I'm obeying Him. God only loves me when I'm. When I'm happy and God only loves me when I'm happy with my family and God only. So it's a very circumstantial kind of concept that we have in our minds.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

I think it is. And I've even noticed in my own life, for example, when things are going really well, I hardly ever think about God. It's when things are going bad that I'm in. I constantly have to lean on Him. I constantly need him in those situations.

[Interviewer/Host]

Right.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

And not to say that's why, because like I said before, I don't know why God is allowing that particular suffering that your experiences. And who are we to try to come to the conclusion of why he's doing it? We, we can't possibly begin to grasp the, the plan that he has for your life or the ripple effect that that event may have later down the road. And then on top of that, like I said before, this isn't all there is.

[Interviewer/Host]

Right.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

And if you can keep that in light when you're going experiencing suffering, then you know that like, like, like I said, as Paul says, it's a momentary affliction. You will be in the presence of God and in light of that eternal glory, like I can't comprehend what it's going to be like, but you just have to trust in that. And it's hard, it's hard to do that. And it's the most difficult question to answer to non believer as well. To say that I don't know.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah. And not to recognize that everybody that's objecting to God on this problem, there is a deep emotional component to it. So you don't want to be just superficially arguing from an intellectual perspective. You want to recognize, recognize. And even if it's somebody that you've just met or whatever the case may be an atheist or a non believer, whatever the case, there's an emotional component and you should probably listen a lot more to where the person is coming from before you launch into a, an apologetic with, with syllogisms and conclusions and all that stuff.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Exactly.

[Interviewer/Host]

So Michael, thanks so much for taking some time to talk about what God's done in your life and what he's. He's doing in your life and let everybody know where they can go to either help out with future donations for your film Release or where they can get more information or see trailers. Tell us all about that.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

You can, you can find everything on universedesigned.com we also have a Facebook and Instagram. I think my wife even made a TikTok. So we're on all the social media platforms, but on the website there is a spot to donate if you feel like you would like to donate towards helping us get the film out there.

[Interviewer/Host]

Now, what's that exactly going toward? What are you in need of in terms of just film distribution, trying to get the film out there.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Exactly. So what the distribution company has told me that we need is we need P and A or marketing money. Because in order to get it to theaters, you have to have a certain amount of of marketing plan and marketing funds before they will accept it in the theaters. And so that's what we're working on right now, is trying to raise that marketing money.

[Interviewer/Host]

Okay.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

In addition, the website, I'm trying to create almost a central hub that you can use when you're out evangelizing, when you're out having conversations with people. Because once you watch the film, it'll direct you to the website. And on the website I've got a page up top that says resources and that will direct you to all of the ministries of the people that are in the film. And I plan on adding a whole bunch of other ministries on there as well. And this will be kind of a central resource that if you have questions and you're ready to really dive into this whole thing, that could be a way for you to go, go to the website, follow the resource page, and then just start reading books, start watching videos, start really investigating this to see if it's true. And so, yeah, universedesigns.com or any of the social media platforms, I plan on sending out emails if you subscribe to the newsletter, giving you updates on when the film will be released, where it'll released, and the same thing with the social media platforms. I'll be doing that as well.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Gotcha.

[Interviewer/Host]

Final. Some final wisdom for our atheists and Christians who are listening to us today.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Question everything, but hold fast to that which is good. I would say that doubt is not a bad thing. It's what gets us to really question what we believe. And if what we believe is actually true, then it should be able to hold up to the test.

[Interviewer/Host]

And if there is doubt, that only to me, that's another piece of evidence that you can't doubt something unless you're assuming that there is a standard of truth.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Exactly.

[Interviewer/Host]

You can't doubt for doubt's sake. Because that's just a spiral into something that is completely unsustainable. So if there is a doubt, you are at least affirming, maybe you don't know exactly where this is going to end up, but you're at least affirming that there is something that is true about the world. World.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Right.

[Interviewer/Host]

I doubt what I believe now, but at least I'm not the idea.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

The whole idea of doubt is that.

[Interviewer/Host]

There is something that is true.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Exactly.

[Interviewer/Host]

Because doubt doesn't make sense if there's not objective truth.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Right. Because you're you. And that's what we're all trying to do. We're trying to figure out what's going on with all this. Right. We're here, but why are we here? What's our purpose? And we are so easily distracted because our attention spans have gone down because of social media. We watch. We watch real videos that last maybe a minute long sometimes. If they last a minute, then we get tired of watching it and we scroll to the next thing. And on top of that, we're hit with so much information today that we tend to, rather than investigating a particular topic, we take the first thing that we see that sounds good and we stick with that.

[Interviewer/Host]

The first hit on Google.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Exactly.

[Interviewer/Host]

The first. Now Google is starting to use AI responses and, and to the subjection of everything else. It's like the first thing on Google does not necessarily mean it's true.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Exactly. Exactly. But it's easy for us to Google something, get the explanation and stick with that. All right. God doesn't exist because evil and suffering exist. I'm going to stick with that. So my challenge would be to take the time to slow down and really look at this. Because if Christianity is true and if Jesus is who he claimed to be, this literally means everything. This explains everything about reality that you have questions about.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Doesn't mean you're going to know everything.

[Interviewer/Host]

About reality, but it does give you the sufficient. It is a sufficient revelation. And it's not an exhaustive revelation.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

Exactly. And it's such an important question. And so I would challenge you to just do the research and really try to find the answer to that question.

[Narrator/Host]

Apologetics Profile is a production of Watchman Fellowship Incorporated, Arlington, Texas. For more information on apologetics, cults, world religions and other non Christian ideologies and practices, visit watchman.org today.

[Michael Ray Lewis]

That's watchman.org Sam.