That tug in your heart may be there for a reason — the story of the Apologist Project
Have you ever felt a tug in your heart over something that seems ordinary in the world around you—that something wasn’t right? You know that it could be better, and you feel a desire to help but don’t yet know how to approach it?
Let’s zoom back 25 years ago, when we called the internet the “world wide web.” This world of infinite possibilities had its vices and virtues. That’s when Jake Carlson found out that most talk and content online was biased towards a secular viewpoint. And, that didn’t sit well with him because he saw a better way forward.
That’s when Jake made a promise that him and God would never forget.
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Today’s we explore the story behind the Apologist Project. Take it away, Jake!
The Apologist Project is a nonprofit on a mission to break down barriers to belief through a curated, AI-infused Christian apologetics knowledge community.
What is the story of Apologist?
The Apologist Project started as an idea of mine about 25 years ago. I grew up in the People's Republic of China, attending a private Christian school. There, we had worldview courses, and I furthered my self-study in Christian apologetics. Through this, I noticed a lot of online discourse biased toward a secular humanist worldview.
Back then, I promised myself and God that I would one day build a thriving Christian apologetics community to counterbalance that secular discourse online.
Life and career took over; I had a family and spent about 20-25 years in engineering, rising to roles like engineering manager and CTO for a few startups. About five or six years ago, I pivoted to product management.
In 2023, I left my last startup and took longer than usual to find my next gig. I believe God gave me that time to fulfill the promise I made to build this community.
With the AI craze taking off, I decided to explore it. Despite having plenty of engineering experience, I lacked specific knowledge in AI. The first challenge was to build a tool to help people understand topics about God, Christian apologetics, and good arguments for His existence and the reliability of Scripture. I needed to either find someone knowledgeable or learn it myself. After an unsuccessful search for a collaborator, I buckled down and learned it myself.
The chatbot, codenamed Aquinas, is available at apologist.ai. We started with a prototype at a hackathon last October and unveiled it then. It features retrieval-augmented generation, drawing from public domain theological and apologetics resources to derive its answers, providing plenty of scriptural references. This tool is useful for both believers and non-believers.
With Apologist being the first product, it’s only the beginning towards the original goal of creating a thriving community.
What's one challenge that you overcame when working on this project? Or, when it felt like quitting, what helped you stay the course?
In terms of challenges for this project, there have been many, but I've definitely seen God's hand working in it as well. So there's lots of encouragement, but this question's about the challenges, so I'll speak to that.
First and foremost, while I have deep experience in engineering, I did not have much experience using AI personally. It was challenging at first to learn the basics and understand enough to get me by. Even now, I rely heavily on third-party services, but my strength has been in cobbling together those things to create a product with substantial value for many people.
Another challenge is that I am currently employed full-time elsewhere. This project would have progressed much faster if it were my sole focus, but that's not the case right now.
Until we get funding and donations to sustain the nonprofit on its own, I don't think that will change anytime soon. Despite the lack of time, the amount of progress made in the last year is quite stunning.
I do want to talk about some of the blessings, though, not just the challenges. One of the things I'm extremely grateful for is getting in touch with FaithTech early on. It's an online community for Christians in tech who want to make a difference.
Through FaithTech, I met several folks interested in helping with the project. We have a weekly meeting, which has been really encouraging. A lot of it has to do with accountability. Not that I'm technically accountable to anybody, but I feel bad if I show up to our weekly meeting and haven't done anything. I enjoy sharing new things I've been working on. Some of the members have helped with guidance or even some of the code, which has been awesome to see.
In terms of challenges, I see God's hand in it, and I don't view them as major roadblocks. Right now, we're on the cusp of releasing the entire ecosystem. The primary challenges moving forward will be in areas that are not my strengths, such as marketing, getting the word out, and networking. I'm trying to get better at that, but I am a builder at heart and tend to focus on building awesome things.
A significant challenge for me moving forward will be promoting this endeavor because I believe it's going to be really valuable for people when it gets into their hands.
Anywhere you recognize God's hand throughout the journey of creating this app or tool?
There are so many ways that I've seen God's hand in this. Starting from the very beginning, I know it sounds a little odd, but as I mentioned, I left my previous role and that's not necessarily a positive thing, especially since that was right in early 2023 when all the tech layoffs were happening.
Previously, I really haven't had an issue finding a new job quickly, but this was different.
The environment for tech hiring was just something I'd never experienced before, and so it was a good six months before I found my next gig, which is way longer than I've ever experienced before.
But in a way, I think it's actually been a blessing because that gave me some time to get this project started, and it would have been very difficult for me to have done so had God not given me that time to focus on it. Of course, I was looking for a new job, but that was only part of my time.
Once I formed the nonprofit, I've also seen all kinds of things that have been a blessing.
For example, I was trying to look into forming the nonprofit itself and I was just talking with a couple of people. It just so happened that my mother-in-law had a still-in-good-standing but somewhat dormant nonprofit that also had to do with Christian education. She had been trying to pawn it off on her church for years and was unsuccessful in doing so. So, I was able to file paperwork and get everything in order to transfer the nonprofit for me to be leading it. That saved us lots of money and time. We were able to get up and running quickly.
We are 501(c)(3) certified, and all donations are tax-deductible, which doesn't usually happen as fast as it did for us. It was a matter of a couple of months to get everything sorted out.
In addition to that, as I mentioned before, just meeting a bunch of like-minded people who have helped me stay accountable and focused has been a real blessing as well. There are probably dozens of other smaller things that I could cite, but I'm thankful for those who have donated either time or money to the project so far. I'm looking forward to God's hand continuing to be shown in this project moving forward.
If you could give advice to someone who's wanting to build an app or tool for Christians, what advice would you give?
So just a little bit about me before I answer this question, because I think it's important. Even though my career has largely been in engineering, I've always had a breadth of skill rather than depth. Ever since high school, I've been really interested in how a product comes together, particularly a digital product.
I went to school for design, mainly because I couldn't cut it in the engineering program. However, I learned how to program pretty well online because there are plenty of resources. Between my design skills and my self-taught engineering experiences, I was able to start a consulting role and eventually a company that focused on digital product development. This taught me a lot about the business side of things and project management. I view myself as a broad digital product development professional rather than having intimate knowledge of any one discipline.
One thing that I definitely view as a weakness is the marketing side. I just want to build rather than spend my time networking and promoting what I'm doing.
The dream of the builder is that you'll just build something, and everyone will be astonished and amazed and just come. But that's not how it works. One thing I've learned over my career is that you can build cool stuff, but you need to get it out there. You need a plan to make people realize the value you're providing.
Because of my broad skill set, I've pivoted my career into product management. The product manager in me will tell you: you can build anything that's really awesome, but if it's not for the right reasons or the value proposition isn't there, then as cool as the technology may be, it's not going to be useful to anybody.
You're looking to give value to other people.
I see this especially in the realm of AI or any new technology that comes along. People are desperate to incorporate AI or the new technology into their product. I chuckle at all the applications of blockchain that sprang up and made no sense in years prior. So, where's the value? Why is incorporating this particular technology beneficial for the value proposition you're giving to your prospective customers? If the use of that technology doesn't enhance the value, then you're just wasting your time and making it more complicated for no reason.
So, my two biggest points of advice:
Make sure you're not just a builder. (This is where I tend to fall flat.)
Make sure you understand the needs of your users and are solving an actual problem, not just playing around with cool technology.
It's time for a shameless plug!
What's something that's been on your mind lately that you'd recommend to the faith.tools community?
All right, so there are three main web properties that I want to make everyone aware of:
Apologist Agent
This is our fine-tuned LLM that answers questions regarding God, Jesus, or the Bible. It draws from sources across all of Christian orthodoxy, ensuring a broad and inclusive perspective. We adhere to the Nicene Creed, which is accepted by Protestantism, Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. While there may be differences on secondary doctrines, we celebrate that diversity as long as the core Christian beliefs are upheld. You can try it at apologist.ai. (People have been pleasantly surprised by its responses.)
Apologist Ignite
These resources mentioned in the Agent section are managed through Apologist Ignite, an administration interface for all the materials. It also allows you to prepare your materials to be available to Apologist Agent, the chatbot. (Additionally, we have Apologist Beacon, an embeddable version of Apologist Agent. It can be customized and white-labeled to fit your community's needs, including language support and specific source material customization.)
Apologist Social
Next, we have apologist.com, which is a directory of apologetics resources. Currently, it includes a plethora of books with summaries and author biographies. Soon, you'll also find web articles, podcasts, YouTube videos, and other media. While it's mainly a read-only directory now, we plan to include community engagement features like discussions, ratings, and reviews of materials, apologists, and their organizations. It's designed to be a global hub for everything in the Christian apologetics ecosystem.
If anybody wants to know at a high level what we're doing, all the products we make, why we're doing it, and just more information about the nonprofit, go to apologistproject.org. That will give you a good overview of our efforts.
There's plenty to be excited about as we aim to create a comprehensive Christian apologetics ecosystem. This ecosystem targets both non-believers for evangelism and believers who want to deepen their knowledge and discover new resources.
Please consider playing an active role in the Apologist Project by helping, whether that is financially, with skillsets, or with prayer.
Jake, thank you so much for your time, heart, and remembering the promise you made to God. What you’ve built is wildly impressive and can help many on their faith walks. You are fulfilling your promise with God. My prayer is that God would continue to exceed your expectations on the Apologist Project.
P.S. Shout out to Jason from un-dark.io for this interview with Jake!
P.P.S. Cam Pak, here. I’ll acknowledge the elephant in the room. The faith.tools blog has been rather quiet lately. And, for good reason. I’ll share more in early September. Until then, some cool news is that I started working for Techless to help create the smartest dumb phone. (Remember when I posted in May about a phone idea that only has non-distracting apps—but still has apps that you need, like your bank, Bible, home security, etc.? Instead of creating from scratch in a silo, I partnered with a company already doing that.)