The winner of the Project Reason video contest (and $10,000) was Chris Redford, who made this video:
Redford is a member of the Society of Open Minded Atheists and Agnostics (SOMA) at the University of Kansas, an affiliate of the Secular Student Alliance.
There was a nice article about him and his deconversion today in the campus newspaper:
The biggest shift in Redford’s religious transformation came in March of 2004, when he read a New Mexico professor’s controversial review of the Bible on Amazon.
“I found it kind of offensive, but I thought I would try to reach out to him,” Redford said. “It turned out that he had more to teach me than I had to teach him.”
Redford communicated with the professor over e-mail for a week and the logic of the professor’s arguments began a dramatic change in his religious ideals. Redford began to see holes in the religion he had been committed to for his entire life.
“It was the most important thing in my life,” he said. “Basically any kind of higher criticism of the Bible, until then, I was completely unaware of as a Christian.”
Congratulations to Chris for the win and for showing that even a hard-core Christian can change his mind.
It’s easy to forget how often that actually happens.