Steve Baughman
My name is Steve Baughman. I recently retired from 30+ years of practicing law in the San Francisco Bay area. I spent six years, beginning in 2015, investigating a corrupt and abusive Christian evangelist named Ravi Zacharias. My book “Coverup in the Kingdom” extensively documented Mr. Zacharias‘s long history of credential fraud, as well as his sexual abuse. Mr. Zacharias‘s apologetics organization, the largest in the world, has since collapsed.
I am non-religious, but have a long-term interest in Christian philosophy. I am currently working on a masters degree (online) in Catholic philosophy at Saint Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry in Rochester, New York.
I value honest, well-informed, civil, debate between Christians and atheists. I believe people like Kim Young Hoon and Ravi Zacharias pervert that dialogue by deceiving the public about their qualifications by presenting bogus credentials. I hope that exposing deceivers like these will prompt some soul-searching in Christian ministry around their frequently lackadaisical ethical standards. (Yeah, I’m naive.)
My second reason for doing this work is to encourage the Christian media to take more seriously their job as journalists. Journalistic professionalism in the Christian media is abysmal. Its primary mission is to serve as propaganda mouthpieces for their co-religionists. (Exceptions exist, but are rare.) Zacharias and Kim are revealing and troubling cases in point. In both cases, all it took for me to spot significant deceptions was a computer, Internet access, and a willingness to follow the bad smells.
It appears to be no exaggeration that Christian media did zero fact-checking of Kim’s bogus world record claim. Instead, they took the easy way out, copied-and-pasted from Kim’s materials, and presented that to their customers as verification. Worse, when they later learned that they had been duped, not one of them issued a retraction. (As of the time of this website launch.)
Finally, before the inevitable mudslinging attacks on me start, let me note the following “THREE NO’s”:
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No, I do not hate God. I don’t even believe there is one to hate.
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No, I do not hate Christians. I have tremendous respect for the intelligence, dedication, and integrity of the many Christian scholars I have studied with and engaged with over the decades. I also have a great deal of affection for many of them. I wish more atheists modeled the graciousness and scholarly dedication of these fine Christians.
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No, there is no money in this for me. Zero. If that ever changes, I’ll be glad. But it won’t.
Steve Baughman
Asheville, NC
Adam Terry
Adam Terry is a Christian who runs the Curious Christianity channel at YouTube.
Curious Christianity is committed to pursuing the truth and asking good questions, and Adam does exactly that. Adam has been immensely helpful with me in uncovering the truth about Mr. Kim.
I encourage everyone interested in the Kim Young Hoon scandals to watch Adams’ video. It is packed with information that you are unlikely to hear anywhere else.
https://youtu.be/kBgkS6FOEqY?si=yN6b4jUhWkBMD86Z
Adam is working on another video directed toward Christians, which discusses Mr. Kim’s theological claims.