By Dean Smith

Wikipedia is among the top ten visited websites in the world, placing sixth behind Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and X.

Recently, Larry Sanger, one of Wikipedia’s co-founders, announced on his blog that he is a Christian. He had grown up in a nominally Christian home (Lutheran), by his early teens Sanger had rejected any notion of God.

Though he did not classify himself as a full-blown atheist, he was definitely skeptical about the existence of God. He summed up his beliefs explaining that “only dogmatic people, who lack curiosity and are unable to answer hard questions, believe in God.”

He posed an even more basic question, what does God mean? How do you define God?

After high school, Sanger turned to philosophy where he earned a graduate degree. Over the next few years (2000 t0 2005), he taught philosophy at several universities

But 2001, proved to be an instrumental year. Not only did he get married, but this was the year that he and Jimmy Wales launched the Wikipedia website.

By 2006, Sanger had left teaching and was involved full time in the Wikipedia. That same year, he also witnessed the birth of their first child which was the catalyst that led him to rethink his views on God.

It led him to question some of atheism’s basic beliefs which presumed an existence based on self-interest.

“If I am willing to die for my wife and children, would I be acting in my own self-interest at all?”, Sanger asked.

By 2010, Sanger had left Wikipedia. That same year, that he wrote a letter to the FBI expressing his concerns that Wikipedia Commons was hosting images of child pornography and other pornographic images that could be accessed by children.

He had also started reading Bible bedtime stories to his children. This was done with the caveat these were just stories that had no deeper spiritual meaning.

But as he witnessed the cultural decay taking place in society, Sanger questioned if the loss of religion was behind what was happening.

“As a serious cultural force, inspiring us to live well, religion is a pale shadow of its former self,” Sanger wrote. “Even as a nonbeliever, this strikes me as a truly profound loss.”

This led him to write a series of philosophical essays in 2017 on God and the nature of good and evil where he framed God as ‘positively likeable.’

It all came to a head as revelations emerged of the sexual abuse of children taking place with Epstein and his island.

“What kind of world do we live in if our institutions allow this to happen with impunity?”, he asked. The answer to that question came through books recommended to him by his friends, that showed the connection between the occult and sexual abuse.

Not only did God exist, but the Bible’s portrayal of an evil demonic realm explained what was happening in the world.

“When I really sought to understand it, I found the Bible far more interesting and—to my shock and consternation—coherent than I was expecting”, Sanger noted.

In 2020 blog post entitled, God Exists: A Philosophical Case for the Christian God, Sanger announced that he now believed in God.

He also stated that though he had not officially joined a church he was attending Bible studies. He added that his conversion was not dramatic, but rather he “approached faith in God slowly and reluctantly—with great interest, yes, but filled with confusion and consternation.”

“I know I am called to worship with my brothers and sisters in Christ, but I keep asking too many questions”, he said explaining why he hasn’t officially joined a church. “If I am going to continue doing theological blogs and videos (and, in time, books). I wouldn’t want to start publicly contradicting my own denomination.”