David Wood the man it's me a legend and we've known each other I think we thought about it the
other day almost 20 years right yeah it's either it was either 2000 or 2001 I remember what what
year of school it was but I don't remember if it was the fall or spring yeah so it was that
year though that's pretty cool was really neat to see what's happened with you over the last
20 years but man things didn't start off that way No so you become a living legend a lot of
people know about you just getting started though that's right well more than 400,000 people know
about you on Facebook right now not YouTube right now because they've subscribed to the David wood
channel by the time people are watching this it's gonna be 500 or a million though mm-hmm that's
probably true all right I mean you got such a fascinating story here I couldn't believe it
when you were telling me about your past you tried to kill your dad I mean you're pretty big man yeah
and you tried to go in and smashed his head with a hammer yeah tell me about it uh well yeah walk hit
him in the head about seven or eight times with a hammer and left him for dead but he now why did
you do that well hate him no not at all though I hated most people but yeah it kind of uh tell you
something about mental illness Mike some people are born a little different you know what I mean
you know they're born a little different I was I tell people like because this is the first time I
it actually hit me that something was going on but I was five years old and my dog died and my mom
got the call that my dog had just been run over and I'd had this dog as long as I could remember
and my mom turned to me with tears in her eyes and she told me that my dog had been run over by
a bus and I just I remember sitting there looking at her thinking what why why she crying it's just
a dog so it's just a dog and so I thought there was actually something wrong with my mom there
but as time went on I noticed other people had that same kind of reaction and basically through
years you you start noticing that you you don't have the same emotional reactions as other people
but you uh you blend in you learn to mimic other people's emotional reactions and then you learn to
fit in but you know then once you start turning 16 17 18 you start thinking why am i trying to
fit in with the rest of these people by that time you're a complete narcissist and you think you're
superior to everyone else right yeah because everything you do everything you do in your
daily interactions is some form of manipulation you're manipulating people all the time and so
you start to think that you're in control over all these people and stuff and anyway that's how
people end up as narcissists but uh I I wasn't it wasn't until after that that I was put in a
psychiatric hospital and I was diagnosed with any social personality disorder which is what that's a
diagnosis shared by Psychopaths and sociopaths but you know you're growing up and you don't know this
you don't know this about yourself you notice you're different but your conclusion is that
you're somehow better not that you're defective I mean but me it was also combined with kinds of
delusions of you know my own importance and I didn't I didn't spot the contradiction between
that and my beliefs because I believe that you know there's this universe and we're just this
completely insignificant speck in this universe our planet is and we're just these little blobs
of cells human beings were kind of disgusting to me they're these little blobs going around
thinking that they're so important everything they do is so important so I had that but at the same
time I believed I believed I was superior to all these things right notice those things don't go
well together right if they're if if we're just if everything we do is meaningless and we're on this
little speck and nothing we really do ever matters we're all pointless so what what sense does it
make to say that I'm the you know the greatest most important meaningless lump of sales didn't
go together but I didn't spot that it's about that until later so uh yeah as basically starting
from I don't know 14 15 somewhere in there not sure exactly when but I just kept doing more and
more sort of extreme stuff and I felt like I was like I was shedding I don't know how to describe
it like basically I've been indoctrinated and manipulated by people all my life that other
people were putting their ideas into me and that's by doing the opposite of what I was told I was
sort of becoming what I was somehow meant to be even that make makes no sense to think of what I
was meant to be in that world view but each time I would come to do more and more extreme things and
each time I would have this sort of greater and greater sense of freedom that I had broken away
from what I'd been trained and brainwashed into doing and so that with with my dad was just the
the most extreme step like by the time I got to that I thought this is it there's nothing else
there's nothing else worse that I can do once I've done this I've completely broken away from
all the training all the indoctrination all the manipulation that people have foisted upon me all
my life and I will be like what I am truly meant to be yeah that's some sick thinking man is it
is it's messed up what what's creepy is you know back then I think I mean I'm the only one right
I'm the supreme I'm the supreme example well it's creepy is there are other people out there like
this right that's a diagnosis that other people share and so but I don't run into I'm glad you
I'm your friend that's the bad part of you every time you go to a football game or something like
that you're walking past a couple of them Wow yeah they're not at baseball games some more civilized
crowd yeah they let they like they like action too much so all right so you go in you smash take
a hammer master dad's head while he's sleeping five six seven times what happens next um yeah
I drove up to uh I I left him for dead and then he didn't die and so I ended up in a mental hospital
for a while my diagnosis was again antisocial personality disorder but that's not something
you keep someone in a mental hospital for oh yeah you don't you don't you know people who are out
of touch with a react with reality you put them in a in a mental hospital sociopaths and Psychopaths
once they do something you lock him up so I went to jail and then to prison and as you know in
in jail I eventually became a Christian so yeah that's when things changed how long were you in
prison for total with with jail in prison it was a 10-year sentence but under the old law if you
didn't get in trouble you served half your time so actually served a little over five years okay so
you got out you kind of do I remember correctly you went around lecturing for the Department of
Corrections something like that um no no no it was it was for the the Criminal Justice Department
okay at ODU they would have me give talks on you know I talked about the prison system what the
prison system was like yeah yeah it was good good for them to have you know firsthand commentary on
me on the system is that rough living in prison um not for you because you were the king in there I
was in the king yeah but uh it's you know it kind of depends if you're if you if you're not mouth
at all because you know keep in mind you know I became a Christian probably I guess a little
under a year into into my sentence but you know if you're a Christian and you like to read and
you don't go around jumping in people's faces and stuff like that then you know if you if you like
to read then you get to sit around and read pretty much all day so so yeah for me it was an awesome
time of studying there were other there were other cool Christians in there who had life-changing
experiences and stuff so you know there there were church services and Bible studies every night of
the week because people come in from outside know to do Bible studies and church services and stuff
so yeah if you're actually focused and dedicated that is an awesome awesome time to to change your
life around so you get out of prison what year 2000 no and then you go right into ODU yeah and
then I meet you probably within a year less than a year after my first year Wow so you're doing a
triple major if I remember right I did a double my wife ah yeah marine a double major in biology
and philosophy she did psychology philosophy and biology yeah now remember your Pastor Mark Rhian
comes to me and he says hey Mike I got some really sharp students that are interested in Christian
apologetics would you be interested in disciple in them meeting with them and I said yeah I don't
know writing a book right now I'm kind of busy but I'll think about it I talked to Gary Habermas and
Gary said you know Mike once you go ahead and do it you never know what could come out of that and
you started your dream team meeting yep and ended up with me Nabil when he was still a Muslim that's
right and you in there well not not to mention the other people in there yeah sir Walter's ami
repot see it was Chris Kelly and Paul Richardson poverty had sin and he had Chris his girl he was
dating that he ended up marry marry her her name was Chris as well no yeah that was a cool
group yeah it was fun well all right so then you went off you finished and you got your he went
off to for them on scholarship I've got a PhD in philosophy yeah focused on what problem with Eagle
so my my doctoral dissertation was on what's called the Bayesian argument from evil which
is sort of the most recent development it's like the latest form of the arguments and what's cool
is the the people who are advocating the Bayesian argument from evil they acknowledge that earlier
forms of the argument fail so they so it's pretty widely accepted now that the logical version of
the argument from evil fails and but what's cool is the the Bayesian the Bayesian form guys they
acknowledge that even the the inductive form fails so the more popular evidential form that's put out
by William wrote William row before he before he before he died even acknowledged that that there
are problems with his original argument which is cool because Wow at a popular level they're always
behind the times right by the time people are going around using an argument the philosophers
who came up with that argument already saying ok I met it was I was wrong ok so I went out I went
for the Bayesian argument just because it's kind of that or nothing now with the with problem of
ego it's kind of that are just a sort of intuition or sense or something like that that no Lee come
on God can't exist but as far as actually laying out your premises and defending them people are
finding out it's kind of hard to do Wow so now what you do for a living you started several years
ago you started a YouTube channel I remember what got you interested in Islam of course was Nabil
because he was trying to convert us and we were trying to convert him but boy because he was your
best friend you started to really dig into Islam and studied the Islamic literature of the hadith
Sarat rasoolallah you turned me on to a bunch of different sources you started reading the Quran
you'd bring up all these things now you become an expert in Islam you do all these videos that's
pretty cool stuff no it's cool because I mean when the Beal became a Christian I actually thought
cool I'm done with Islam I can get back to I was more interested in philosophy and dealing with
the objections of atheists and so on I was only studying Islam because my best friend was a Muslim
but he wasn't Muslim anymore so there weren't my reason of it was kind of a watching the stand
that he took realized Wow Muslims make really cool Christians here and there there weren't a lot of
people dealing with Islam right I mean it's very natural if you want to go into apologetics to go
right after atheism yeah but you know there's about 1.6 billion Muslims in the world so I
realize it's just a good area to be in so stuck with it that's awesome so well that's cool well
what we'll do is I want to hear more about what you do and let's do that in our next video in our
next video we will be covering David's road to his current occupation making videos criticizing Islam
and it's amazing there are just tons of people Muslims who were viewing these videos all over
the world and coming to Christ and we'll hear about that next looking forward to it brother
you