Veritate Podcast

Veritate - Christianity "Calvinism" and the Questions

John Calvin was the most systematic thinker of the Reformation. A lawyer by training, he built a complete theological framework covering predestination, total depravity, and irresistible grace that was tighter and more organized than anything Luther or Zwingli produced. But a system can be internally consistent and still be wrong. In this episode, Johnny Mack tests Calvin's answers against Scripture, against history, and against the Church Christ actually founded.
The question this episode forces is simple. If Christ built one Church with one authority to settle the question, and that authority was rejected in 1517, what fills the vacuum? The answer is individual interpretation. And individual interpretation, no matter how sincere or disciplined, always produces the same result. Division. This episode shows you why, and where it leads next.

Veritate - Christianity "Lutheranism" and the Questions

How did Christianity go from one Church to tens of thousands of denominations? In this episode of Veritate, we confront the question directly. If truth comes from God, then truth cannot contradict itself. Yet today Christianity appears fractured into thousands of groups, many of which disagree on core teachings. This episode examines how that happened by stepping back and asking the same four questions that guided the search for truth from the beginning. Who is God. Who is man. What went wrong. How is it fixed.
As the investigation moves into Lutheranism and the Reformation, the questions become unavoidable. If Christ founded a Church, what authority allowed a break from it. If Scripture is the authority, who decides its meaning. And if each person decides, how did that lead to thousands of denominations and even churches that claim no denomination at all. By tracing the history and applying the same four questions used to examine every other religion, a clearer picture begins to emerge.

Veritate - Christianity "Great Schism" and the Questions

When you step back and investigate Christianity honestly, the modern landscape raises serious questions. Thousands of denominations, thousands of interpretations, and everyone claiming to follow the same Christ and the same Bible. As a practical atheist forced to confront the historical reality of Jesus, the investigation begins by doing what every investigator does when things look chaotic. Build a timeline. Go backward until the noise disappears. That search leads to a critical moment in Christian history: the year 1054, known as the Great Schism, when the Christian world formally divided between East and West.
In this episode of Christianity and the Questions, we examine the first major fracture in Christianity and what it reveals about the early Church. For nearly one thousand years before this moment, Christianity existed as one structured communion with bishops, councils, apostolic succession, and shared Scripture. The Schism divided the Church into Catholic and Orthodox traditions, but it did not produce the chaos of denominations we see today. That realization pushes the investigation forward to the next major turning point in the timeline, 1517, and the challenge of Martin Luther.

Veritate - Christianity and the Questions

In this episode, I walk through the moment my atheism began to fracture. The Shroud of Turin. The Sudarium of Oviedo. Forensic details that refused to behave like myth. Once I applied the scientific method honestly, neutrality died. If you claim to follow truth wherever it leads, then you do not get to ignore evidence when it appears.
But the collision with history was only the beginning. Over 5,000 English Bible versions. Competing canons. “The Holy Spirit told me.” The Book of Mormon and restoration claims. If Christ founded a Church, where is it? If Scripture is authority, who defined it? We return to ground zero and apply four questions: Who is God? Who is man? What went wrong? How is it fixed? And we close by preparing to examine the fracture that reshaped Christianity.
Truth does not change because it is uncomfortable. Next episode, we confront the division.

Veritate - New Age and the Questions

I did not skip Christianity because it lacked evidence. I skipped it because I did not want Christ to be true.
In this episode, I come clean. I revisit childhood abuse, denominational division in the South, an alcoholic father who rejected Jesus, Iraq, and the years I carried an accusation against God. I explain why New Age spirituality felt safer. It offered a universe without judgment, without sin, without accountability. It preserved autonomy.
But evil is real. Abuse is real. War is real. Justice is real. And once you admit that, you must ground it. New Age could not carry that weight. The logic of moral reality forced me toward something I had deliberately avoided. The Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium of Oviedo made Jesus a historical problem I could no longer dismiss. And that realization did not comfort me. It frightened me.
Next week, we confront Christianity directly. If Christ is real, what did He actually establish?

Veritate - Confucianism Shintoism and the Questions

After examining Zoroastrianism and its cosmic battle between light and darkness, I turn to two very different systems: Confucianism and Shintoism. Why combine them? Because both attempt to build civilization without centering salvation. Both prioritize harmony, order, ritual, and refinement. Both shaped entire cultures without insisting on a singular, personal saving God.
In this episode of Veritate, I apply the same four structural questions: Who is God? Who is man? What went wrong? And how is it fixed? From the viewpoint of the practical atheist I once was, these systems appeared disciplined, stable, even admirable. Confucian ethics and Shinto reverence seemed capable of preserving society without divine intervention. At one point, I even believed Christianity had borrowed its morality from Confucius.
But under pressure, harmony is not redemption. Refinement is not resurrection. And purification is not transformation.
This episode marks a turning point. Because when Christianity appeared fractured and chaotic from the outside, I skipped it entirely and moved into the New Age instead. The search for coherence continues.

Veritate - Zoroastrianism and the Questions

Zoroastrianism is one of the oldest moral systems in human history, and one of the most influential. Long before modern politics or psychology, it framed reality as a struggle between good and evil and placed responsibility for the future squarely on human choice.
In this episode of Veritate, Zoroastrianism is tested using the same four questions applied throughout the series. Who is God. Who is man. What went wrong. How is it fixed. When examined carefully, Zoroastrianism reveals why modern society still believes it can save itself, and why that belief inevitably leads to exhaustion, anxiety, and collapse. This episode shows that Zoroastrianism never truly disappeared. Its answers live on, and so does its ending.

Veritate - Buddhism and the Questions

In this episode of Veritate, I walk through Buddhism the same way I have examined every worldview in this series, by forcing it to answer four questions, who is God, who is man, what went wrong, and how is it fixed. I explain why Buddhism appealed to me as an atheist. It did not demand belief in a creator, it did not rest on revelation, and the Buddha did not claim to be God. It offered a disciplined diagnosis of suffering and a path of detachment that promised relief.
But I also show where that path comes up short when the questions turn from inner turmoil to moral evil. Buddhism can explain suffering through craving and ignorance. It can train the mind and reduce reactivity. What it struggles to do is weigh chosen cruelty with the force that conscience demands. By the end, the popular claim that all religions are the same collapses under honest examination. Next week we turn to Zoroastrianism, a system that names evil directly and forces the question of good and evil into the open.

Veritate - Hinduism and the Questions

Hinduism claims antiquity, depth, and permanence. Older than Christianity, older than Judaism, it presents itself not as a single religion but as an eternal way. In this episode of And the Questions, I examine Hinduism the way I was trained to examine anything that claims authority, under pressure. Beginning with the Bhagavad Gita and tracing backward through the Upanishads and the Vedas, the system reveals not one voice, but many. Many texts. Many gods. Many answers, none of which correct the others.
Rather than comparing text to text, this episode asks the only questions that matter. Who is God? Who is man? What went wrong? How is it fixed? Hinduism offers wisdom and discipline, but it refuses definition. God becomes undefined, man becomes divine yet unaccountable, evil is reduced to ignorance, and the solution to suffering is escape rather than restoration. This episode does not mock Hinduism. It tests whether it can carry the weight of reality.

Veritate - Taoism and the Questions

In this episode of Veritate, I begin where I began as an atheist.
Before belief, before revelation, before any claim that God speaks, I turned to Taoism. Not because it is the oldest religion, it is not. Hinduism predates it. I began with Taoism because it claims to describe reality before religion itself. No personal God. No commandments. No revelation. Only “the Tao.”
Using Taoism’s own writings, including the Tao Te Ching, I test that claim by asking the four questions every worldview must answer.
Who is God.Who is man.What went wrong.How is it fixed.
At the time, my goal was not to find truth, but to prove that all religions were false. Taoism was the first system I put under that pressure. What it offered was calm, balance, and detachment. What it could not explain was justice, evil, or why human actions truly matter.
This episode does not assume faith. It begins in skepticism. And it confronts the popular claim that all religions are simply different paths to the same destination.
Because before you can ask which faith is true, you have to ask whether they can all be true at the same time.