Former Atheist David Wood And Sociopathy

Wood’s story is both a chilling portrait of nihilistic atheism and a profound testimony of the power of Christ to transform the human heart. This superbly produced video is long (about 30 minutes), but well worth every minute. (Caution: the video includes disturbing descriptions of evil and acts of violence.)

At about the 23-minute mark, Wood discusses a version of the moral argument and how it persuaded him of the existence of God. But long before then anyone listening to his testimony will have a hard time believing that, as he says, “right and wrong are just useful fictions.” The reaction we have to Wood’s story is itself evidence that we recognize both the need for the existence of the moral law and a Moral Law giver.

As I’ve often claimed in this series, denying the reality of God is more a matter of the will and passions than of reason and intellect. But as Wood’s story shows, there is one argument for the existence of God that appeals to the will, passions, reason, and intellect in a way that ontological or cosmological arguments are unable to do. Ironically, while those heady forms have been used since ancient times, the moral argument is a product of modernity.

The moral argument for the existence of God takes the simple form:

If objective moral values exist, then God exists.

Objective moral values exist.

Therefore, God exists.^[1]

I don’t remember ever not living with violence in the family. My mum was habitually with very abusive boyfriends. One of my earliest memories was hearing a lot of screaming and walking into the kitchen and seeing blood everywhere, and my mum saying: ‘It’s ketchup, go back to bed.’

Another of my earliest memories is of my dog dying and having no feelings about it, so there was probably something genetic going on that led to my mental health problems. But I thought: ‘There’s nothing wrong with me, it’s everyone else who has a problem. I’m the only smart, sane one.’

My atheist world view was: throughout the universe or through time, we’re collections of cells. Whatever we do we’re determined to do by natural cause and effect. You could kill 1,000 people; you could spend your entire life helping people – it doesn’t make any real difference. You might as well just do whatever you feel like doing with the time you’ve got. My view of ethics was affected by my not having normal emotional attachments to people. When someone died, it didn’t affect me.

I was angry at society for brainwashing me into thinking that I had to follow their rules when I really didn’t. By the time I was 18 years old, I thought, ‘I don’t have to do any of this. I can do whatever I feel like doing. Who are you to stop me? You are sacks of molecules, just like I am.’...

I thought I had to do something that would really get to the heart of the matter. That’s when I decided to kill my dad.

I wanted to make it look like someone else did it. I decided to use multiple weapons so it looked like many people had attacked him. I had a hammer and a knife. So I walked in, stood over him for a while and tried to get angry. At that time, I usually got angry very easily. I tried to think of something he’d done to me. Right now I can think of all kinds of things, but right there I couldn’t think of anything he’d done wrong to me. I thought: ‘This is good; this is how it has to be. I’m not killing him out of anger, I’m just doing it.’ I drew back the hammer and whacked him as hard as I could.

I hit him in the head, and I assumed that if a 230-pound guy whacks someone in the middle of the forehead with a ball-peen hammer, he would be dead. But he wasn’t, so I carried on hitting him. Blood spilt everywhere...

When I heard my dad was still alive, I thought, ‘Now they’re on to me...

I was in my cell one night reading the Gospel of John, and I couldn’t help but think that Jesus was better than me...

...I became a Christian...^[2]