There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
(ANALYSIS) My first book was entitled “The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going.” It was published — what feels like a lifetime ago — in 2021. I’m pretty proud of that little volume because it established my approach to thinking about non-religion in the United States.
One of the points I make, which I hope will live on in scholarly discourse, is that the nones are not a homogenous mass of people. There are clear subgroups within this label that need to be understood with much more granularity.
The three categories I used in that book were based on how the Pew Research Center asks about religious belonging. The survey gives people twelve options — the first eight are groups like Protestants, Catholics, LDS, Muslims, etc. Option 9 is atheist, option 10 is agnostic, and option 11 is “nothing in particular.” I have an entire chapter entitled “Not All Nones Are Created Equal,” where I go into detail about how those three groups differ.
One major bifurcation is between atheists/agnostics and the “nothing in particular” group. In their recent book, “Secular Surge,” Campbell, Layman and Green call the first two groups “secular” people, while those in the “nothing in particular” category are simply non-religious.
Today, I want to describe how these secular people have voted in the last five election cycles. But before I get there, let’s visualize the rise of atheists and agnostics since 2008.
In 2008, just about 8% of the sample identified as atheist or agnostic. I know you’re wondering about what happened in 2010 — the CES just left off the atheist option. I don’t really know why, but I did write an entire paper about it. Over time, however, the share of secular people slowly rose. It was clearly above 10% by 2015.
That said, the last couple of years have seen relative stability in the share of the country identifying as atheist or agnostic. It was 12.8% in 2019, but fell below 12% in both 2020 and 2023.
The most recent estimate is right at 13% — the highest we’ve seen so far, but not statistically different from the estimates in 2019 and 2022. I think it’s fair to say that these two groups have experienced stagnant growth over the last five or six years.
So then the question is: How do they vote on Election Day?
You can read the rest of Ryan Burge’s post at his Substack page.
Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the co-founder and frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a more general audience. His research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, especially in the U.S. Follow him on X at @ryanburge.
Lately, when I ask parents and church leaders how a person comes to Christ, the responses I get most often is that people need to be invited into a welcoming community first and foremost. To me, this is a very strange answer. When I think about Jesus working miracles so that people who didn’t believe in him would have reasons to trust him, I don’t see this emphasis on welcoming community.
Günter Bechly, PhD, is a German paleontologist, senior fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, and senior research scientist at Biologic Institute in Washington state. He has written about 160 scientific publications, described over 180 new species, and been advisor for 3 BBC nature documentaries.
Here is the captivating introduction to his faith story:
When atheists hear conversion stories that begin with, “I was a staunch atheist and then . . . ”, they tend to roll their eyes and doubt the claim. However, this is exactly what happened to me. I had been a 150-percent atheist and materialist for almost forty years before I embarked on a spiritual journey that ultimately, after many twists and turns, led me to belief in God and Christianity. I had no life crisis, no epiphany, and no spiritual experiences at all. It was the result of purely rational, scientific, philosophical, and historical arguments that gradually changed my mind as a scientist. Here is my story.
I grew up in a medium-sized town in southwestern Germany, where the Mercedes-Benz factory is located. My parents were both irreligious. My mother was simply not interested in religion, and my father was agnostic. We never talked about religion or God, and we never prayed or visited any church service. My parents pushed to opt me out of religion class in school, which was then still compulsory, resulting in my being ridiculed as the village atheist.
I first saw churches from the inside as a young adult, but it was only as a tourist taking photos.
He had a fabulous career and a dream job in paleontology, but he started looking for answers when he realized the problems with naturalism:
It all started in my late thirties when I became interested in modern physics. I read popular books by Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, Michio Kaku, John Barrow, David Deutsch, Brian Greene, and others. I was fascinated by the weirdness of quantum mechanics and relativity theory, as well as the mind-blowing implications of modern cosmology.
While I had started from a materialist, clockwork-universe perspective, I soon discovered certain implications of modern physics that did not fit well with such an obsolete, 19th-century worldview. I stumbled upon further problems, such as the questions of causality, the ontology of time and space, the status of mathematics, and the laws of nature. This brought me even deeper into metaphysics with issues like the problem of universals, the one and the many, the persistence of diachronic (personal) identity, free will, and the hard problem of consciousness.
I soon realized that materialism is untenable, and I searched for a new worldview that could explain these problems and make sense of the world we experience.
The first step in Dr. Bechly’s journey was investigating evidence for design in the universe, and finding it compelling:
Around this time, I also came into contact with intelligent design theory, though for totally different reasons. I was the project leader for a large special exhibition on evolution at our museum for Darwin Year 2009, which celebrated the double event of Darwin’s 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the first publication of his magnum opus On the Origin of Species. In preparing for this exhibit, I read some books by Darwin critics, because we wanted to refute and mock them.
This did not go as intended. I was surprised that the arguments of the ID theorists were nothing like the distorted picture painted by their opponents. The more I studied ID arguments, the more I became a critic of Neo-Darwinism and an ID proponent myself.
I was still into process philosophy when I embraced intelligent design theory, so my support for ID had nothing to do with religion, but only with scientific arguments. I had come to see that Neo-Darwinism simply fails to explain the diversity and complexity of life and that these are better explained by an infusion of information from outside the system. The information does not have to come from a divine, miraculous intervention, but of course that would be compatible with such a view.
So, he accepts design in the universe at this point, but still doesn’t accept theism, and even further away from Christianity.
But he’s not done exploring:
So I finally decided to check out the belief system that was the last thing I wanted to be true: Classical theism. I had previously read all the New Atheists’ books, but even then, as a non-theist and fan of the authors, I had found them quite shallow and unsatisfying.
He goes on to explain how he explored the arguments for classical theism, and then the specific evidences for Christianity, such as prophecy and the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. Eventually, he just went for the worldview that answered the questions raised by the progress of science, that also solved the metaphysical problems he had encountered.
You can read the whole thing, if you’re looking for a wonderful testimony filled with lots of apologetics. I wish that this testimony was seen as the “normal” testimony by Christian parents and pastors. Then we would be taking a completely different approach to parenting and church. We would put the emphasis on evidence.
(ANALYSIS) I have hunches about things, often based on vibes or anecdotes or my own created realities. We all do. It’s just part of being a human being.
We see two or three tweets or news headlines about something, and that makes us think in a very specific way about the world. But here’s what’s awesome about my job — I can actually test those hunches with real data.
That’s really the engine that drives this whole newsletter: me just trying to figure out how wrong I am about something happening in the world.
When I think about the 2024 election, the biggest sentiment that comes to my mind is a simple malaise. When Trump burst on to that scene about a decade ago, he immediately stirred up an opposition that was really excited to oppose him at every turn.
I remember reading news stories about how he managed to drive his casinos into bankruptcy, cheat vendors out of their negotiated payments and commit adultery against his wives. It’s like the media dug up every skeleton about Trump and plastered it all over our social media apps for years.
Then, two things happened. They ran out of dirt to dig up, and the public just couldn’t get outraged anymore.
That’s where we were in November of 2024. It’s like all the momentum went out of the room and it was impossible to get it back. And guess what? That’s exactly the story that emerges from the data.
Let me show you how much religious groups engaged in political activity in 2024. This is the standard battery employed by the Cooperative Election Study for years.
When it comes to attending a political meeting, like for the school board or city council, that was a rare occurrence in 2024. The most engaged group were Jews, but only 14% had gone to a meeting in the previous month.
Almost every Christian group was in the single digits: 8% of White evangelicals and 9% of white Catholics were attending a local meeting. And that was also the case with participating in a protest or march.
About 11% of Jews took part in one, and 19% of Muslims marched for a political cause (I am guessing that was something to do with Israel and Hamas but I can’t say for certain). But among most other groups it was incredibly rare: Less than 5% were protesting.
Now there were some activities that saw quite a bit more engagement. For instance, there were several groups where at least 20% of people had contacted a public official. That was also generally the case for donating money to a candidate or campaign during the presidential election.
On that metric only two groups had a donation rate that was above 30% — Jews and atheists.
But the bottom left graph really sealed it for me. It asked people if they had displayed a political yard sign or bumper sticker — something that takes almost no time at all.
Atheists scored the highest at a measly 20%. There were lots of groups around 15-18%, but that was about the extent of it. You get the point here, right? Engagement was just so incredibly low across the board.
To read the rest of Ryan Burge’s post, visit his Substack page.
Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the co-founder and frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a more general audience. His research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, especially in the U.S. Follow him on X at @ryanburge.
One of the basic principles that atheistic scientists live by is that science is based on evidence and religion is based on faith. I scarcely have to provide examples of atheistic scientists telling us that for something to be scientific, it must be evidence-based, and it must rely on the time-honored methods of scientific inquiry. Nor do I need to provide examples of them telling us there is no scientific evidence for the existence of God or miracles, and that all religious doctrine is faith-based. Theism, we are told, is based on faith with no objective or valid (which, of course, means scientific) evidence to support it. Even a cursory reading of the publications of the [relevant] atheists will yield example after example of both of these claims.
Science, we are told, has found no evidence for the existence of God. The conclusion atheists have drawn from this is that science has discredited theism. If we theists would think scientifically, we would acquiesce to this line of thinking and abandon our belief in God. That we do not do so supposedly proves we aren’t committed to evidence-based ideology, but that we are instead committed to accepting vacuous assertions on blind faith.
I am, however, constrained to point out the following:
There are numerous claims atheists make that are based on faith and faith alone.
Many of the claims of the atheists are not scientific at all, but are purely philosophical, even though they are presented as profound scientific conclusions.
The Origin of Life
The first example of faith-based claims from the atheists is their belief in spontaneous abiogenesis. The truth is, we have no scientific evidence that spontaneous abiogenesis ever occurred.
Naturalist Karl Popper:
“What makes the origin of life and of the genetic code a disturbing riddle is this: the genetic code is without any biological function, unless it is translated; that is, unless it leads to the synthesis of the proteins whose structure is laid down by the code. But . . . the machinery by which the cell (at least the non-primitive cell, which is the only one we know) translates the code consists of at least fifty macromolecular components which are themselves coded in the DNA. Thus the code cannot be translated except by using certain products of its translation. This constitutes a baffling circle; a really vicious circle, it seems, for any attempt to form a model or theory of the genesis of the genetic code.”[1]
John Horgan:
“[Stanley] Miller’s results seemed to provide stunning evidence that life could arise out of what the British chemist J.B.S. Haldane had called the ’primordial soup.’ Pundits speculated that scientists, like Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein, would shortly conjure up living organisms in their laboratories and thereby demonstrate in detail how genesis unfolded. It hasn’t worked out that way. In fact, almost 40 years after his original experiment, Miller told me that solving the riddle of the origin of life had turned out to be more difficult than he or anyone else had envisioned. He recalled one prediction, made shortly after his experiment, that within 25 years scientists would ‘surely’ know how life began. ‘Well, 25 years have come and gone,’ Miller said drily.”[2]
The tragically credulous among us who have become convinced that Stanley Miller solved the puzzle of how life began on this planet do not understand the reality of the situation.
When I studied paleontology at the University of Colorado, my professor stood up in front of the class one morning and declared the following: “We scientists believe in spontaneous abiogenesis by a leap of faith.” It is a working hypothesis atheists must subscribe to, or their entire ideology concerning the origin and evolution of life on this planet comes crashing down. There is an elephant in the room during every debate concerning evolution vs creation and atheism vs theism: without spontaneous abiogenesis, evolution occurring on its own in the natural world is meaningless and not worth talking about. It is the basis on which the subsequent process of gradual evolutionary transmutation through natural selection rests. If spontaneous abiogenesis never occurred, it’s all over for evolution. Yet atheistic evolutionists accept this bedrock proposition by blind faith without a shred of scientific evidence to support it. That means their entire evolutionary framework is built on a bedrock of faith.
Atheists have made numerous attempts to cope with this inescapable reality. They tell us that spontaneous abiogenesis occurred through natural processes guided by natural law. We just don’t know what those natural processes and laws are yet. But someday scientists will discover what they are, because that’s what science does.
It doesn’t take long to realize that this is nothing more than another article of faith being used in a desperate attempt to rescue the first article of faith from public humiliation. The idea that “science” often discovers what we were previously unaware of does not mean it will eventually discover principles that will explain everything we don’t currently know. Further, there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that science will someday discover these answers. This is a vast array of faith at work. It is faith in the gaps and nothing more.
Some atheists give us a principle they claim to follow and insists we must follow as well if we are to navigate the waters of reasons to invest in our beliefs about these matters, specifically about miracle claims: absence of evidence is evidence of absence. The idea is that there is supposedly no scientific evidence for the existence of God or miracles, therefore this should count as evidence that they don’t exist. If we accept that principle, the atheists should follow it as well, n’est-ce pas? So let’s apply it to both of the claims we examined above. There is no scientific evidence that spontaneous abiogenesis occurred. I’ve never heard an atheist scientist dispute this. If absence of evidence is evidence of absence, they should reject the entire idea of spontaneous abiogenesis on the grounds that there is no evidence that it ever occurred. But have they rejected it? Absolutely not.
What about the claim that science will eventually discover the natural laws that supposedly caused spontaneous abiogenesis to occur? There is no scientific evidence that science will ever uncover them either. If absence of evidence is evidence of absence, the atheists who believe this should reject it just like they should reject the idea that spontaneous abiogenesis ever occurred. Have they rejected this one? Not on your life. They still believe with steadfast optimism without a scrap of evidence that science will someday come through for them. I remind the reader that the mere fact that scientists have discovered the answers to numerous questions does not mean they will eventually discover all of them.
Beginning of the Universe
When theists broach the topic of the beginning of the universe, we point out with Leibniz that anything that has a beginning must have a cause. The universe has a beginning, and therefore has a cause. Since the universe is made up of space, time, matter, energy, and physical or natural laws, the cause of the beginning of the universe cannot be any of those things, and must therefore be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and beyond the scope of natural law, since none of those things, especially natural law, existed prior to the beginning of the universe. The cause of the beginning of the universe must therefore be supernatural. But atheists tell us there is another possibility: the multiverse. The multiverse (the existence of multiple universes) can allegedly explain the cause of the beginning of our universe, and the multiverse is considered eternal or infinite, with multiple universes all causing the “creation” of more universes in an endless cycle making up a kind of universe factory. (I’ll save the atheists who believe in this idea the embarrassment of asking them what the cause of the multiverse was. It can’t be infinite or eternal for the same reasons our universe can’t.) This is what Lawrence Krauss believes.
When we had a real-time discussion with him during a book club session in mid-2021, he told us our universe had a beginning: “The universe didn’t exist, and then it did exist.” He dismisses any discussion of God by telling us he is not necessary for the explanation of the beginning of “our” universe, since the other universes can fill in that blank without having to resort to supernatural explanations. When we asked him if he had any evidence for the existence of other universes, or that they could be the cause of ours, his answer was “not yet, but I’m working on it.” In other words, he refuses to believe in God based on rational evidence, and rather accepts the existence of the multiverse on the basis of raw faith, and is confident he will find evidence for it sooner or later—again, an unqualified expression of blind faith. I use the word “blind” here because he has no idea whether such evidence will actually materialize. He simply hopes it will . . . by faith.
It appears the principle of “the absence of evidence is evidence of absence” applies only to theism and miracles, and doesn’t apply to the ideology of the atheists who promote it. If it did, they would have to reject their own fundamental assumptions. But if they did that, their whole atheistic evolutionary framework would tank. Yet atheistic scientists continue to blast theists for our alleged faith-based beliefs. Breathtaking.
The irony is that faith plays no role in theistic or Christian epistemology whatsoever. In my debates with atheists, I would never offer any proposition and ask that it be accepted on blind faith with no empirical or analytic evidence to support it. We don’t say, “just have faith, my child,” or “we know God exists and he created the world because the Bible says so.”
Defining Faith
I don’t know how many atheists or even theists realize that there are always two definitions of faith involved in the dialogue. It is typical for this equivocation to undermine the clarity of these discussions, and to render them fruitless. The modern definition of faith is believing in something with no evidence to support it. The biblical definition of faith is altogether different: putting your trust and confidence in something that has proven itself to be trustworthy. We all have faith in airline pilots and mechanics because they have a track record of safety we can all live with. We don’t step on board that plane simply because someone told us to believe we will be safe when we have no reason to trust them. Biblical faith is not even remotely similar to modern faith. Modern faith is a putative basis for knowledge. Biblical faith is the basis for a relationship, not knowledge.
The modern concept of faith is substantially grounded in existentialism. Science and reason led to despair, so if anyone wanted to believe in anything having meaning, they had to make a blind leap of faith into the upper story where love and hope had meaning but were devoid of reason. Francis Schaeffer showed us that Christianity offers a unified field of knowledge that encompasses both the lower story of science and reason, and the upper story of love and hope. It is not necessary to abandon reason, or to abandon hope. Both are upheld in a comprehensive worldview that tells us what we need to know in all areas of knowledge, and forms a solid basis for scientific inquiry as well as philosophy. Schaeffer’s booklet No Final Conflict is quite helpful in understanding that authentic faith and reason are not at odds with each other, but actually reinforce each other in a way that brings a refreshing optimism to intellectual pursuits. Christianity has nothing to fear from science, and vice versa.
Alvin Plantinga further underscores this point:
If my thesis is right, therefore—if there is deep concord between science and Christian or theistic belief, but deep conflict between science and naturalism—then there is a science/religion (or science/quasi-religion) conflict, all right, but it isn’t between science and theistic religion: it’s between science and naturalism. [3]
Even though serious theism and Christian ideology is evidence-based, unfortunately there are still many Christians who exercise blind faith that looks more like existentialism. And there are many atheistic scientists who rely on pure faith for some theories, but routinely rely on evidence for many of their scientific conclusions. So instead of saying science is purely evidence-based and religion is purely faith-based, the point needs to be revised to say the following: scientists embrace ideas that can be both evidence-based and faith-based, and the same can be said of pedestrian theism. Scholarly theism, however, does not rely on blind faith. But atheistic science relies on a foundation of faith, even though much of its study is also evidence-based. Embracing this more realistic assessment of the situation takes the extremism out of it and allows for a more fruitful dialogue.
We also need to recognize that scientists, and those who are atheists in particular, often make observations that are purely philosophical rather than scientific. The fundamental thesis that science is exclusively evidence-based is one of them. That is not a scientific statement, it’s a philosophical statement about science. It’s a second-order proposition rather than a first-order conclusion about their primary subject of study derived from scientific means and methods. There are more examples:
Science has disproved God.
The idea that the universe can come from and by nothing is a valid scientific idea.
If the non-material world existed, there would be scientific evidence for it.
Scientists are the new torch-bearers in the pursuit of knowledge.
Empirical science is the proper discipline to address questions of God’s existence.
There are numerous others. All of the above propositions are false. That atheistic scientists pretend they are speaking as scientists when they say these things should be strongly discouraged. Either that or they should make it clear to their readers and listeners that what they are saying is philosophical and not scientific. I have no objection to scientists speaking as philosophers. But I do object to doing so without admitting it, and worse, without realizing it.
Improbability: A Theistic Objection
There is a deeper issue here that we must address. The most common objection theists have against the occurrence of the evolutionary process in the absence of intelligence is that it is immensely improbable. This is a strong objection, to be sure. But it’s not the strongest. What do I mean?
If you demonstrate that something is possible, you haven’t demonstrated that it’s actual. But if you demonstrate that something is actual, you have automatically demonstrated that it’s possible. What atheists must show is not that evolution could have occurred. They must show that evolution did occur. Based on this principle, if you can show that evolution is possible, you haven’t provided a scrap of evidence that it happened. That’s a completely different matter. At the end of the day, who cares if evolution is possible? The only thing we should be interested in is whether or not it happened, not whether it could have.
So, there are two categories of evidence evolutionists are interested in: evidence that it might have occurred, and evidence that it did occur. The only evidence that matters is the evidence that it did occur. And the evidence we are given that it did occur is in the form of a series of predictions which evolutionary theory makes. That those predictions occur, however, is not evidence for evolution, unless they are unique to evolution, which they are not. Every prediction coming from evolutionary theory is also consistent with other theoretical models describing the origin of the life forms in question. Predictions that are shared by competing theories are of no value in deciding which theory is sound, and therefore must be discarded. Since these predictions are not evidence for evolution, but are all we are given, the uncomfortable truth is there is no empirical evidence for evolution.
This is why the problem of faith is so central to the discussion. Atheists not only have faith that macroevolution could have occurred, they have an even stronger faith that it actually did. The second case of blind faith is more problematic than the first. We hear from the four horsemen that evolution is a fact, not just a theory. In an article in the prestigious Scientific American, we are told the following: “In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution.”[4]
Richard Dawkins himself has this to say about the matter: “One thing all real scientists agree upon is the fact of evolution itself. It is a fact that we are cousins of gorillas, kangaroos, starfish, and bacteria. Evolution is as much a fact as the heat of the sun.” [5]
Apparently if a scientist doesn’t think evolution is a proven “fact,” they are not a “real” scientist.
I have a lot more sympathy for someone who believes in a possibility by faith than I do for someone who believes in a concrete actual occurrence by faith. If faith is not a valid basis on which to form a scientific theory, letting it be the basis for a fact is more of a disaster than it being the basis for a mere possibility. [6]
Atheists Are Dependent on Evolution
We also must address the uncomfortable reality that atheists are desperately dependent on evolution and an old universe for their worldview to survive. Without evolution and an old universe, atheism dies a billion deaths. That atheists need evolution and the old universe to be scientific facts does not mean they are false. But we must not forget that they are both based on articles of faith for the atheistic scientist. This means that their need for these theories does in fact play a role in their ideology, whether it’s comfortable to admit that or not. For evolution to occur, there must be enormous periods of time to accommodate it. If that kind of time isn’t available, evolution is rubble. I always urge serious caution when one dogma is absolutely necessary to support another one. If there is no God, evolution is the only option, whether it’s true or not. Therefore, it has to survive all intellectual scrutiny whether there is evidence for it or not, and whether other theories do a better job of accounting for all the data or not. Another way to put this is that atheistic naturalism demands and requires these dual ideas: evolution and the old universe. If either one or both are discredited, the dual ideologies of atheism and naturalism are nonsense.
So, if you adopt the worldview of atheism, you automatically sign up for naturalism, and you have no choice but to sign up for both evolution and an old universe. The reality is, committed atheists would believe in evolution and the old universe whether there was scientific evidence for them or not. Their worldview demands it. Those who are trained in philosophy see this as a gigantic red flag. Suddenly, evidence has actually become superfluous and irrelevant. If an atheist who wants to hang on to his worldview will believe in these things even if there is no apparent evidence for them, he may as well not even concern himself with the evidence at all.
As usual, I am not the only one who has marshaled this observation. In his book Darwin on Trial, Philip Johnson relates a similar point:
“Darwinists who do not simply ignore the problem resort to bad philosophy to evade it. For example, Mark Ridley asserts that ‘All that is needed to prove [macro]evolution is observed microevolution added to the philosophical doctrine of uniformitarianism which (in the form that is needed here) underlies all science.’ But what sort of proof is this? If our philosophydemands that small changes add up to big ones, then thescientific evidence isirrelevant. ”[7]
When Johnson comments on Stephen Jay Gould’s theological musings, he describes the vacuity of such speculations:
“Gould here merely repeats Darwin’s explanation for the existence of natural groups—the theory for which we are seeking confirmation—and gives it a theological twist. A proper Creator should have designed each kind of organism from scratch to achieve maximum efficiency. This speculation is no substitute for scientific evidence establishing the reality of the common ancestors. It also does nothing to confirm the natural process by which the transformation from ancestral to descendent forms supposedly occurred.”[8]
This posture where philosophical commitments eclipse empiricism is as disturbing to the philosopher as it is embarrassing to the atheist, whose ideology is grounded more in the philosophy of evolution than the science of evolution. As uncomfortable as this is, it cannot be ignored by anyone involved. Not only is there no respectable evidence for evolution, the atheist scientist who believes in it would do so mainly on the basis of these philosophical presuppositions. Philosophy is primary; science is secondary, and only serves to induce the illusion of credibility. This is one of the main reasons atheistic evolutionists remain faithful to the Darwinian dogma even when empirical evidence and natural law fail to confirm it. That they are willing to wait indefinitely for new discoveries they hope will finally support what they have until now held by stubborn iron-clad faith tells us all we need to know about the status of evolutionary “science.” The evidence truly is lacking, and the situation has not improved since the time of Darwin. It has only become worse. [9]
Someone in the atheism school might object by saying it was the scientific evidence for evolution—among other things—that inspired him to abandon theism and not the other way around. But that ignores the fact we observed before: there is no scientific evidence that evolution actually occurred; it is an article of faith and not a conclusion derived from scientific evidence. The best that the evidence could ever do is show us that evolution could have occurred. Even that “evidence,” if it exists at all, is flimsy. If the alleged lack of evidence for the existence of God is what turned the former theist over, this is a faith-based maneuver as well: no amount of scientific evidence can show that God does not exist. So, all that the former theist who has abandoned theism for atheism has done is exchange one set of what he thought were faith-based beliefs for another set that actually is. He hasn’t traded in superstition for science. He’s done the opposite.
As for the old universe, it is necessary for atheism. But even though it’s necessary, it’s not sufficient, so it’s not relevant to the issue of abandoning any particular worldview. Theism is comfortable with an old universe or a young one. But a young one is fatal to atheism, which is one of the reasons why it is unthinkable for the atheist. This again renders the evidence superfluous. The real reason the committed atheist believes in an old universe is that he has no choice. If there is apparent evidence for it, it is secondary. If the evidence is valid, this is a matter of mere convenience, but it is not central to the discourse. What counts is the antecedent predisposition against the supernatural, and that’s a matter of philosophy, not science. Yet these philosophical considerations are nevertheless presented as hard science to audiences who are hardly capable of differentiating between the two. The atheists know full well that this works beautifully to their advantage.
Questioning Gould
When he visited Denver in the early 90s, I asked Harvard paleontologist Stephen J. Gould the following question: “How do you respond to the observation that the only evidence for punctuated equilibrium is the lack of evidence for gradualism?” His response was quite revealing: “I would respond by saying that it’s the only alternative. Well, there is another alternative, but that one is unthinkable. Hell, let’s just say there is no other alternative and leave it at that.” The audience erupts with thunderous laughter and enthusiastic applause. They looked at me as though my knuckles were dragging on the floor. But they were missing the elephant in the room: Gould didn’t correct me by saying there is positive evidence for punctuationism. His answer assumed there wasn’t, and that I was correct in pointing that out.
This illustrates what Gould has actually stated in his book Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. Scientists are not completely objective in the sense that their worldview has a significant influence on their theories.
Consider the old universe ideology. That there is an enormous distance between celestial objects means it has to take untold millions of years for light to reach a potential observer far away from the source. This is considered scientific evidence for an old universe. But there are monstrous hidden assumptions beneath the surface here: that light has always traveled with the same velocity we observe today, and that the laws of physics (whether conventional or exotic) apply to the origin of the universe. In other words, there is an implicit adoption of uniformitarianism and naturalism involved. The idea that the origin of the universe could have been supernatural is verboten. That atheistic scientists rely on a naturalistic foundation scarcely needs to be questioned. But the old universe theory loses its footing if naturalism is abandoned. What we must understand here is that the ideology of an old universe is not ultimately grounded in science. Science may be involved, but it usually rests on naturalism, and naturalism is a philosophical disposition, not a scientific one. So, the old universe depends on philosophy at its core and not on science alone. The idea that there is scientific evidence for an old universe assumes the origin of the universe was naturalistic in nature and that naturalistic science has the last word on how it occurred. If naturalism is false, all bets are off. Strictly (and philosophically) speaking, natural law could not have caused the origin of the universe. As I state elsewhere, the origin of natural law cannot be natural law. This means the origin of the universe and natural law itself is by definition supernatural. If this is the case, we cannot necessarily trust our naturalistic assumptions in speculating on the age of the universe. Age is suddenly not even a coherent concept when it comes to measuring the nature and roots of the universe’s existence.
I want to avoid the confusion of thinking I’m talking about apparent age here. Even apparent age relies on some naturalistic assumptions, namely, that the speed of light is not subject to change as a result of the influence of supernatural forces. If naturalism is false, apparent age is extraneous. And the fact that the origin of natural law cannot be natural law proves that naturalism is false. What I am suggesting is not apparent age, but that the very concept of the “age” of the universe using conventional methods of measuring time may in fact be meaningless, especially as you approach the early stages of contingent existence. This does not mean the universe is ageless and had no beginning. But if God exists, and created the universe, we have no way of knowing when the supernatural forces ended and when the natural ones began, which means we may not be able to determine how long ago that beginning occurred. And there are no rules God would be obligated to obey in such a scenario—certainly none that we could invent.
That theism has nothing to fear from the outcome of the evolution debate or the old universe debate leaves the theist free to follow the evidence wherever it leads. It also leaves him free to follow evidence from a variety of intellectual disciplines without being confined to the physical sciences alone. This is made possible by the appropriate rejection of the self-contradictory sophistry of scientism. But the atheist has no such freedom if he is to remain an atheist. He is forced to accept evolution even if it’s false, and to reject some creation model even if it’s true. The same is true of the old universe.
Scientism
Once someone becomes an atheist, the most common sequel as far as I have seen is for him to adopt the ideology of scientism. Suddenly science becomes the only avenue through which to pursue truth. In fact, the adoption of scientism has sometimes even preceded the abandonment of theism and has led to it. It can occur in either order. But regardless, when you abandon theism, you seldom retain any confidence in theology or anything that would tend to support the possibility of miracles. So, the incipient atheist locks himself in a cage of truncated intellectual pursuits that render philosophy, certainly theology, and sometimes even history irrelevant. This dramatically decreases the chances the atheist will be swayed by the powerful philosophical arguments against atheism and thus bring him back from the abyss.
If there was a more serious consideration of the relevant and inescapable philosophical issues involved in this debate, more attention would be paid to the disparity between what we can observe in the present and what we can know of the past. The truth is, what has occurred in the past is more within the purview of history than science. I am not suggesting that science can’t address questions of what has occurred in the past. I’m saying only that theories about the remote past are a different kind of theory than theories about the present or the recent past. The former category has more to do with forensics than with experimentation or direct observation. Once you open the container marked forensics, you have broadened the scope of your investigation to include disciplines that are beyond conventional natural science.[10]
What is it that discourages this broader approach? The answer is simple: scientism. Another way of putting it is scientific arrogance, the kind that says science is the only source of truth, and that scientists are the torch-bearers of human knowledge—to the exclusion of historians, philosophers, and theologians. It used to be that the last two in the list enjoyed the respect of scientists. Historians still do to an extent, but even their discipline has been held in contempt in modern times for failing to be scientific enough.
An Engineering Problem for Atheism
To close, I want to briefly offer some insights on some scientific concepts for your consideration and to further illustrate the weight that philosophical considerations have on this discourse.
I would like to introduce an idea that we could properly call a cybernetic principle. The core ideas in this vein can be partly attributed to Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith, author of The Natural Sciences Know Nothing of Evolution. It goes something like this: the more intelligence and energy an engineer has at his disposal, the less time it will take for him to complete a complex mechanical project. The inverse is obvious: the less intelligence and available energy (or power) the engineer has at his disposal, the longer it will take him to complete a complex mechanical project. So, if the engineer wants to build a teleonomic (e.g. von Neumann) machine, intelligence—i.e., knowledge of the principles of engineering—and a substantial power source will be his best friends.
Now let’s perform a thought experiment. Suppose we reduce the intelligence factor to zero. That would increase the length of time to complete the engineering project to infinity. In other words, it would never be completed. This would also be true if we reduce the available energy or power source to zero as well. The lack of intelligence and/or available rectified energy means that no machinery will be constructed—ever. This is an exact representation of the universe in the absence of a powerful intelligent creator. This means that nothing like the complex machinery we observe in nature such as the DNA molecule will ever emerge. It should be noted that this is exactly where Dawkins and company begin: a universe completely devoid of intelligence. Do the math.
But what if we increase the intelligence and specific available rectified energy to infinity? We would have an unlimited reservoir of intelligence and an unlimited usable power supply. What happens to the time required to complete the teleonomic project now? It reduces to zero. In other words, the idea that a powerful intelligent infinite being can create complex teleonomic forms instantaneously is hardly unscientific nonsense or superstition.
This is a valid scientific principle and it is properly supervised by concepts in the philosophy of science. There is one thing and one thing alone that can render this ideology absurd: naturalism. That’s it, and that’s all. Notice that it is not rendered absurd by science, but by philosophy, and as we have seen, philosophy that is intrinsically faulty and incoherent. I would recommend pointing this out the next time someone tells you that creationism is nothing more than ignorant superstition.
The typical atheist scientists would object to the above by saying we are invoking metaphysics in the explanation of these origins. My reply would be, “you’re catching on.” And the truth is, whether they know it or not, and whether they will admit it or not, so are they.
References:
[1] Karl Popper, “Scientific Reduction and the Essential Incompleteness of All Science,” Studies in the Philosophy of Biology, Francisco Ayala and Theodosius Dobzhansky, eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 270.
[2] John Horgan, Stanley Miller and the Quest to Understand Life’s Beginning, Scientific American, July 29, 2012.
[3] Alvin Plantinga, Where the Real Conflict Lies, preface, emphasis in the original.
[5] Richard Dawkins, The Illusion of Design, Natural History 114 (9), 35–37, emphasis mine.
[6] There are some scientists who reject this distinction between a fact and a theory. They will insist that a theory can be said to be as strong as a fact if there is enough support and consensus in favor of it. This is why we often hear an objection when someone points out that evolution is only a theory, and therefore does not need to be taken as seriously as it would if it was a more substantially grounded and reliable fact, and it therefore should not be the only explanation of origins taught in schools. The debate rages on. However, at the end of the day, we must be certain we recognize that the distinction between fact and theory is a philosophical debate, and not a scientific one. So the attitudes some scientists have concerning this issue are interesting, but they should be encouraged to make it clear that when they comment on this issue, they are speaking as philosophers, and therefore their credentials as scientists do not necessarily carry a great deal of weight on this question.
[7] Philip Johnson, Darwin on Trial, 92, emphasis mine.
[9] See Stephen Meyer, Darwin’s Doubt (2013), Michael Denton, Evolution: Still A Theory In Crisis (2016), and Michael Behe, Darwin Devolves (2019).
[10] [Editor’s Note: The author seems to be distinguishing experimental science from historical science. This division separates fields like biology, chemistry, and physics, on one hand from all forms of historical study such as archaeology, history [proper], anthropology, and forensics. Both experimental and historical science are conventionally recognized as facets of natural science [i.e., the study of what has/does/will happen in nature, given natural causes]. The experimental sciences, however, involved controlled experimentation, and can involve rigorous methods of testing including repeatability. Historical sciences are inherently limited this way, since no past event can ever be repeated, strictly speaking (January 17, 1919 only happened once in all of human history). In that way, experimental science tends to carry more clout in certain naturalistic and anti-theistic circles. Informally speaking, experimental sciences are sometimes called “science” whereas historical sciences are called “history.” That seems to be how Blair is using the terms here, even if, strictly speaking historical science is still a legitimate field of science.]
Phil Bair studied philosophy, technology, earth sciences, and music theory at the University of Iowa, the University of Colorado, the National Institute of Technology, and Simpson College in Indianola Iowa. He has been dedicated to independent study and research for over thirty years in a variety of subject matter pertaining to the Christian world view. He has written several monographs on the relationship between theology and hope, being true to the Word of God, the creation/evolution controversy, and critiques of alternative spiritual doctrine and practices. He has written multiple books (all available on Amazon by searching “Phil Bair”. He has delivered lectures, seminars, and workshops to churches and educational institutions on apologetics, textual criticism, creation science, ethics, critical thinking, the philosophy of science, understanding new age thought, and the defense of Christian theism, as well as current religious, philosophical, cultural, and political trends, with an emphasis on formulating a meaningful and coherent Christian response in those areas. His roles include author, speaker, Bible study leader and video editor. He has served as philosophy consultant and speaker for Rivendell, a cultural apologetics organization founded in Denver, Colorado and headquartered in Santa Barbara, California.
Richard Bradford, director of the Swiss branch of the L’Abri Fellowship, spoke at the annual L’Abri Conference in Rochester Minnesota on February 15 concerning the continuing crisis of meaning in the contemporary West. He began with a quote from Nieztsche: “He whose life has a why, can bear almost any how.”
Bradford referred to a Harvard study of young adults, ages 18-25. It showed that 36% of the respondents suffered from anxiety, while 29% suffered from depression. The most frequently cited cause for distress was “a lack of meaning and purpose.” The madhouse which is public consciousness today was cited as an additional reason, in such factors as “social media, rising tension in the world, political polarization, increased pressure on young people,” etc. But the “lack of meaning” was held by the report’s authors to be the reason that “a large proportion of the population” is “struggling.” Such a cause is more difficult to address than the other causes specific to our time.
Bradford quoted another source from the National Library of Medicine which said that “experiencing meaningfulness is based on a validation of one’s life as coherent, significant, directed, and belonging. A positive appraisal of these components occurs mostly unconsciously, while a perceived lack meaning in life occurs consciously, and is known as a crisis of meaning.” Bradford agreed that meaning in one’s life is noted mainly by its absence. “Depression, suicidal thoughts … heightened anxiety, negative affect, and pessimism … and decreased resilience, motivation, and life satisfaction, hope, self-regulation, and self-efficacy.” This all “results in questioning life’ purpose.”
While a lack of meaning is a problem, there also seems to be an unlimited number of meanings on offer in the contemporary world. This may be contributing to the lack of meaning. However, Bradford looked at some specific reasons for the lack of meaning. God and creation were the framework for meaning in the pre-modern world, but from the Enlightenment on, things began to change.
The Enlightenment and Disenchantment
Bradford referred to a book by the French Catholic author Chantel Delsol, Icarus Fallen: the Search for Meaning in an Uncertain World. The story of Icarus comes from Greco-Roman mythology and refers to a man who wanted to free himself from the labyrinth of Crete, and so he flew on a pair of wax wings toward the sun, which he had been warned not to do. The wings melted, and he crashed to earth. In Delsol’s book, Icarus survives the crash, although very badly injured. He then had the problem of returning to ordinary life after having failed to reach the sun. People today, she said, are “in a similar situation.” The attempt at “radically transforming ourselves and society” has failed, and we must return to ordinary life. The radical transformation was promised by modernity, with “war, disease, need, and perhaps even death” would be eliminated. But the horrors of the twentieth century (and indeed, continuing into the twenty-first) have disabused people of this prospect. The events humanity has experienced, Delsol maintains, make it analogous to a man with whom someone has “thrown him into the game without giving him the rules. When he asked for instructions, he is invariably told that they have been lost. He is amazed that everyone is content to live in a world without meaning, and without identity, where no one seems to know why he lives or why he dies.” Bradford said that she maintains that “the major discovery of modernity consists in affirming that man invented transcendence, morality, and politics.” This is “the disenchantment of the universe.”
He referred next to the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, who spoke of “horizons of significance.” These are “objective sources of meaning and morality that exist independent of one’s own will or the satisfaction of personal desires.” Taylor said that “we’re born into a cosmos which requires individuals to search out and understand their position in a broader order.” Taylor believes that “moral frameworks … are inescapable.” Even the claim to authenticity, if it has no external framework, “is left utterly unsupported.” Everyone needs direction in his or her life, and only a moral framework can provide this. To step outside this damages or destroys personal integrity. Without the moral framework, one cannot make judgments about oneself or one’s environment, as there is nothing to compare them to.
The Conflict Between Meaning and Freedom
To be absolute and thus reliable, the standards one uses must have a “transcendent source,” which modernity denies. Nevertheless, people are not willing to be bound by standards outside themselves. In particular, they do not want “to be structured by religious meaning.” The Enlightenment ideals of “reason, freedom, equality, and progress” are held to give value to life. But today, Bradford said, all values are “up for grabs,” and “open to interpretation.” Institutions (church, state, universities, etc.) are held to have failed people. Delsol maintains, however, “that to have meaning is to stand for something other than one’s self.” Bradford added that if our values are simply something we prefer, then “they lose any moral or existential weight.” Meaning must refer to “something outside ourselves.”
The search for meaning in the contemporary world is bounded by the need for an external basis for morality, Bradford maintained, but also by the insistence not to be bound by external constraints. Any public agreement on an external truth results in that truth being imposed on people who disagree, and this has “always has ended badly.” Truth, after all, is held to be simply created by people. Yet we must have standards for life. We need morality, but people have no agreement on “what it is based on.” Delsol holds that leaves people with two choices: 1) return to traditional religion, institutions, and beliefs, or 2) rethink anthropology. We then attempt to understand good and evil apart from the old institutions. Bradford does not believe that these are the only two choices. He importantly does not think that the true church is identical with the visible church. He also asked if we can build a new anthropology “without reference to God.” Morality simply cannot be maintained without reference to a transcendent reality.
Delsol says that there is a “further confusion” that results from rejecting truth “when we’re still faced with moral imperatives.” Moral imperatives, in the contemporary world result from the recognition of evil, which is held to be real, without any moral goods. Each person decides what is good for himself or herself, but evil is held to be objective. But objective evil necessitates an objective good. Delsol said that the rejection of doctrinal or ideological truth by intuition results in 1) “the fear of truth,” and 2) “the redeployment of a new imperative through the intuition of objective evil.” The “new morality, which is seen as an absolute morality, must prevent but not bind. So it must prevent evil, but allow for any subjective expression and understanding of good.” This is how people try to reconcile the objective reality of evil with a subjective doctrine of good, “by erecting barriers that protect us from the unacceptable, while still allowing us to choose our own good.”
But Delsol finds “a certain dishonesty in designating evil but not good. By saying that something is evil, we’re inferring that something else is good. So in saying that murder is evil, what we’re saying is life is good. But in acknowledging that something is good, then we’re also inferring an obligation, which places limits on my freedom. So to denounce evil is to identify a good under attack. So to identify an objective evil is to acknowledge an objective good, but to identify an objective good implies obligation, which again impinges on my freedom.” Bradford believes Delsol’s proposed new anthropology independent of Christianity is weak and does not resolve the problem of morality. What her dilemma shows, he believes, is an example of Charles Taylor’s point that the modern world’s “moral horizons” have disappeared, then re-appeared “without justification, and without content.” People have been left “unmoored” from the source of morality, and thus from the source of life.
The New Atheism and the Crisis of Meaning
Bradford then considered how Delsol’s dilemma worked out with the “New Atheism.” Bradford said that what made the New Atheism new was its claim that religion is evil and should be “eradicated … especially in the public arena.” This was, perhaps, new to the West, but it is hardly new. Communist dictatorships attempted the same thing in the twentieth century. Justin Brierly’s book (together with N.T. Wright), The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, traces the history of the New Atheism “from its inception to its demise.” Conflict among its followers contributed to its demise, but the main cause was the realization that the ideal the New Atheism was seeking to advance, which was Western liberalism, could not be supported by atheism. Values of merely human origin “lack any moral weight.”
Bradford then discussed a onetime supporter of the New Atheism, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. A Somali who emigrated to the Netherlands to escapes a forced marriage, she converted to Christianity in 2023, claiming “that secularism poses the greatest threats to the West,” Bradford said. Citing Ross Douthat, he said Ali had a “two-fold” reason for her conversion. First, atheistic materialism cannot support Western liberalism, where such things as “human rights, freedom, and equality before the law are taken for granted.” These values cannot be sustained on a non-transcendent basis. Secondly, while atheism dissolves the obligations of traditional religion, life without spiritual “solace” is “unendurable.”
Secular Advocates of Christianity
Bradford then turned to non-religious thinkers today who are nonetheless supportive of Christian faith because of its personal and social utility. Two of these are Jordan Peterson and Tom Holland. Peterson was a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. He gained public attention for his opposition to bill C-16 in the Canadian Parliament, which required the use of preferred (really false) pronouns for people identifying with the opposite sex. The New York Times referred to him as “the most influential thinker in the Western world.” He claims to have “a deep appreciation for the [Christian] faith, and for the Bible in particular.” His Twelve Rules for Life “helps people find meaning in the everyday” and “attempts to lead people back to … the true, the beautiful, and the good., i.e., God.” Bradford said that Clarke Scheibe of the Canadian branch of L’Abri has found that young men particularly are claiming interest in the Christian faith after having read Jordan Peterson.
British historian Tom Holland challenges the common belief that Western liberal values “are a product of the Enlightenment,” replacing Christianity. He says to the contrary that the values of freedom and human dignity are the result of Christianity. “We’ve cut these values off from their source.” Bradford quoted British Evangelist Glen Scrivner as saying “we’re all standing on the Bible hurling verses at each other, we’ve just forgotten the references.” But Holland is not sure that Christianity is at all true.
The Need for a Transcendent Basis for Morality
Thus we have values, but no adequate secular basis for them. Can we say that Western liberal values “are self-evident,” Bradford asked. Bradford quoted from the famous “madman” passage in Nietzche’s Gay Science, in which a madman tells his fellow atheists that all things have come unhinged without God, and they do not understand the implications of a world without God. Modern people “no longer see ourselves as part of some larger cosmic order.” This, then, made “possible the meaninglessness … described by Nietzsche. We come to see the world as an object which we the subject stand against and try to understand and control.” Bradford said that this nihilism “goes hand in hand with the scientific view of the world. We become disengaged from this wider world that surrounds us.”
People in this circumstance “are drawn to causes whether it’s the environment, social justice issues, poverty, women’s rights, political causes, identity politics … All of these things purport to offer us meaning.” In the commercial world, advertising does the same.
A major reason for the disorientation and disenchantment, Bradford believes, is “the inward turn.” We seek meaning within ourselves, rather than in external reality. This has led to “expressive individualism,” in which meaning is a “private matter.” He quoted the famous “mystery clause” from the (now overturned) Casey v. Planned Parenthood decision (1992), in which Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy said that “at the heart of liberty is the right to determine one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” While “we’re told to care about justice, love … there seems to be no strong ground narrative to support these things.” We have many more moral demands than any other time in history, but “what grounds these values?” Bradford noted that Charles Taylor has said that wherever “we believe these values come from, we necessarily treat them as though they are good, independent of ourselves.”
Bradford said that the crisis of meaning is not unique to unbelievers. Christians today also suffer “from a lack of meaning.” Nevertheless, “Christianity offers a very clear narrative about reality. Where we come from, and where we’re going.” This is the salvation history of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. Jesus “mysteriously bore the consequences of all our failures bringing salvation to the whole world … each person is now invited to step into a future that is defined by the hope of his resurrection and the new world to come.”
It was further observed that everyone has “an innate sense that something is wrong in our world, and that includes a sense that something is wrong with ourselves … Christianity tells us who we are in relation to each other, to creation, and God. And this world view provides us with meaning, and purpose, and hope that we will one day arrive” at the new creation. For many people today, however, the “world feels aimless, purposeless, and as Nietzsche said, unchained from its sun. There’s no moral center.”
Neither Tom Holland nor Jordan Peterson seem concerned about the truth of Christianity. Without Christianity being true, “doesn’t this leave us exactly where we were before? For many people, their renewed interest in Christianity seems to be about its utility, rather than about its truth … Something that is untrue can motivate us for a while but just treating it as true isn’t enough.”
Bradford said that he was not offering an argument or proof of Christianity but pointing to why there is renewed interest in Christianity. “We need to acknowledge that the church has failed in the past, it’s misused its truth claims, and people have very good reason to be suspicious. But in a cultural moment in which people are desperately longing for meaning, I think Christianity has a unique opportunity to speak up and be heard, but I also think we need to be speaking about its truth rather than simply its utility, and this needs to be done in love and humility.”
Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil(Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters)
Fifty years ago, just after Easter, the insurgent army known as the Khmer Rouge toppled the official government of Cambodia and initiated the devastating genocide that put Pol Pot on the list of history’s bloodiest rulers. What began with naïve hopes of peace and the end to the war that had spilled over from neighboring Vietnam soon turned into terror as the new regime pushed millions of residents out of the capital city. It soon hunted down anyone perceived as an ally of the government it had just toppled, including scientists, priests, and even anyone who wore glasses, which was interpreted as elitist. The goal was to create a Marxist-Leninist utopia, a classless agrarian society. What resulted, after four brutal years, was a campaign of brutality and torture leaving a quarter of the Cambodian population in fresh graves.
The evil perpetrated half a century ago belongs to but one of several ignominious periods in a century that began with the promise of human progress, enlightenment, and less violence. Finally, the thinking went, humanity would shed primitive ideas about the supernatural while reason and technology would lead the world into a new utopian future. In his essay “Why I Am Not a Christian,” philosopher Bertrand Russell promised, “Science can teach us, and I think our hearts can often teach us, what sort of social arrangements are likely to promote human happiness. That is all we mean when we speak of morality.”
Karl Marx, the godfather of the ideology that would motivate Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, and softer versions that crept into the West, famously blamed religion for holding humans back from their full potential: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” But, as the 20th century embraced those ideas and the body counts piled up around the world, it would be a Soviet dissident, who experienced the cruel torture of the Gulag, who would understand the perversity of this project:
I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s words were not merely a lament for his beloved Russia, but a warning for the West. And he could not have been more prescient. In the nearly four decades since he delivered his address, America and other leading nations have been pushing Christianity to the margins while living off the fumes of its benefits. It turns out that mere modernity, with its technological advancements, has left many people in a state of digitized misery, comforts at our fingertips but missing the guiding hand of God. It’s no secret that as church attendance has fallen, indexes of loneliness and despair have risen dramatically. The bonds of faith, family, and community have been broken in our atomized world. The ordered liberty envisioned by the American Founders, the twin spirits of liberty and religion described by Alexis de Tocqueville.
But perhaps there might be cracks in the secular ceiling, where the light of the supernatural is breaking through. Since 2019, the decline in the number of Americans who claim religious adherence has leveled off. And there are signs that church attendance, especially among Millennials and Gen Z, is on the rise. Anecdotally, reports of revival-like experiences have been reported across college campuses. In my conversations with pastors across the country, I’m hearing reports of overflowing church services on Sunday and dramatic conversions.
What’s more, something is happening in the intellectual class, once overtaken by New Atheism in the wake of 9/11. The most dramatic conversion story is that of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, once a bright light among the skeptics, now a forceful advocate for Christianity. She is joined by Niall Ferguson, Rosalind Picard, Paul Kingsnorth, and others. Even Richard Dawkins, a virulent critic of Christianity, has admitted he’d rather live in a society shaped by it.
The intellectual reversals are met by a new openness to faith among the nation’s top media outlets, particularly in the podcast genre, where hosts like Joe Rogan and Sean Ryan regularly feature long conversations with Christian apologists. And one cannot dismiss the growing boldness of Christian athletes in college and professional sports.
Of course, a vibe shift does not an awakening make. There are yet remnants of resistance to religion in many of our key institutions of public life. Hedonism, violence, and despair still plague many of our communities. Still, the myth that societies can flourish without faith is becoming less palatable to a new generation. Even less believable is the idea that humans can possibly not believe. Humans, by design, are worshiping beings. No matter what forces may align to crush faith in the supernatural, a yearning for God will endure, whether in the darkened underground caves of closed countries or in the rotting jails of totalitarian regimes or in the tight groupthink of a faculty lounge.
This doesn’t mean that Christianity’s adherents are always the best messengers. Much of what fueled the turn against religion in the 20th century were the religious wars of earlier eras. Part of what motivated New Atheism were the scandals of the institutional church and of religious fanaticism that manifests in violence. And what of the evil — such as Pol Pot — that a good God allows?
This is where the story at the heart of this season helps us make our way through the spiritual fog. Easter is not the story of humans perfecting themselves through moral improvement, but the rescue of morally deficient people from themselves. Failing, flawed Christians are part of the plot. The passion narrative is God coming in the flesh to defeat the sin and death that humans themselves brought on the world. It is wretched sinners, aware of their wretchedness, at the mercy of a holy God.
Easter, rather than paint pastels over the reality of evil, takes us into the heart of darkness on that dreadful night, where the innocent Son of God is beaten and disfigured, not for crimes he committed but for the sin that lurks in every human heart. Those who question the reality of God in a world of evil must not only recognize that the definition of evil comes from God but that the Christian story claims Christ defeated evil on that day. And that there is a God coming in judgment one day for the Pol Pots of this world who, rather than beg for mercy before a Savior, thumb their nose in opposition to their Creator. Easter matches the ugliness of the world with the ugliness of the cross and pares the feint and false hopes of moral improvement with the triumph of Jesus’s resurrection.
This is what utopian Marxism can’t ever provide. This is the longing that modernity and science and technology, for all their benefits, can’t satisfy. Societies, of course, can’t find the personal salvation the gospel offers. Faith can’t be forced, it must be an act of the conscience. Still, when people move away from themselves and toward God, it is good for the nation.
How do you spend 20 years talking to some of the world’s most well-known atheists and still remain a committed Christian? Is it possible that belief in God actually makes sense?
Popular radio host and podcaster Justin Brierly has been creating and facilitating constructive conversations about faith for more than two decades, and has had a ringside seat as believers and nonbelievers have debated Christianity. This week on the podcast, Justin joins Frank to discuss his upcoming book, ‘Why I’m Still a Christian: After Two Decades of Conversations with Skeptics and Atheists–The Reason I Believe‘ and shares how he kept his faith intact while engaging with skeptics from around the world. Together, he and Frank answer big questions like:
What led Justin to write this book, and what ultimately convinces him that Christianity is true?
Is Christianity intellectually defensible in a secular age?
What are the strongest arguments for (and against) the existence of God?
Why are some leading atheists reconsidering their skepticism?
Has science truly made belief in God obsolete?
How can Christians engage skeptics without losing their own faith?
What advice does Justin have for people who may be “deconstructing” their faith?
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The beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan was marked by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer — not known for his religious sensibilities, indeed, rather the reverse – but also the Vatican, and even King Charles. The Supreme Governor of the Church of England, although speaking on Ash Wednesday – one of the most important dates in the Christian calendar – neglected to mention Lent. Even Sainsbury’s is asking customers, “Are you Ramadan-ready?”
This sudden preference for Islam over Christianity seems like yet another example of double standards in public life. Christians have been prosecuted for publicly preaching; silent prayer outside abortion centres has been banned; in the last decade, thousands of British churches have closed, some converted into mosques.
The word “Christmas” is now controversial, and in TV dramas, a crucifix on a character’s wall is a sure sign of a crazed killer. Jesus Christ is mentioned chiefly as a profanity. F-words abound, but ‘Oh my God’ has been replaced by the Bertie Woosterish ‘Oh my goodness’, ‘Oh my golly’, ‘Oh my gosh’.
And judging by the Western media’s lack of interest in the 70 Christians – including women, children and the elderly – found beheaded in a Congolese church, “black lives” no longer “matter” if they are Christian.
The Starmer government’s mooted “Islamophobia” law may designate open discussion of public security, and even the obvious point that most Muslims are law-abiding, as “hate crime“.
However, a campaign to ban Parliamentary prayers has been opposed by a Muslim MP; could it be that the impetus for this campaign is not Islam, but atheism?
Although seemingly growing in popularity, the number of truly devout atheists may be lower than supposed, and it is certainly easier to define oneself as atheist than Christian. While the latter may be lectured on the historical crimes of Christianity, the chance of self-described atheists being interrogated about their non-beliefs, or indeed the human rights record of atheist regimes, is small to vanishing.
Replacement
Historian Tom Holland has shown that overall, Christianity has been “an historical force for good in the world”, but the anti-Christian campaign marches on under the supremely ironic banner of “diversity”.
This leaves the field open to other religions, prompting some to describe themselves as “cultural Christians” – even prominent atheist Richard Dawkins:
“I’m not a believer, but there’s a distinction between being a believing Christian and being a cultural Christian. … I love hymns and Christmas carols, and I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos. … We [in the UK] are a ‘Christian country’ in that sense.”
He was “horrified” to see Islamic holidays and mosques taking the place of Christian feasts and cathedrals in Europe, saying:
“If I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I’d choose Christianity every single time. It seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion in a way that I think Islam is not.”
And Christianity is far from irrational: in the thirteenth century, St Thomas Aquinas used reason to reach an understanding of God: in his “first three ways of proving God’s existence”, he established “that God is the unmoved mover, the first cause, and the necessary being whose necessity is uncaused.”
If nothing can come out of nothing, everything must come out of something – or someone. And science, which, it was once thought, would in time expose religion as mere superstition, now offers even more support for it. The sheer, mind-boggling complexity of our own biology throws doubt on the supposition that life somehow “evolved” out of far cruder elements, let alone inorganic matter – let alone nothing. Science also shows that much of the material world is invisible to the naked eye; just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Perhaps it is the dawning reality that science does not, after all, “rule out” God, which is re-energising the movement against Christianity. Indeed, science shows that it is possible to believe in God – and many scientists do believe in God, for not even scientists place all their faith in science.
Nonetheless, Marx saw religion as “the opium of the people“, with its promise of “Heaven tomorrow” rather than heaven on earth today, religion was an obstacle to socialism, jeopardising the “inevitable” revolution. Communist countries have tried to stamp out Christianity, but their (failed) attempts have inadvertently paid it the compliment of taking it seriously. However, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the old crimes of Communism have been quietly forgotten, along with its critics. It is always harder to fight a ghost.
The old Left’s explanation for the persistence of religion was that poor people clung to it out of ignorance and desperation, although they could be “educated out of” it, coming to rely on the State rather than God. The fact that this has not happened – that “the revolution” has, it seems, been indefinitely postponed – may explain why the Left has largely embraced “multiculturalism” and the open-door immigration that promises greater electoral support.
However, those who accuse Christianity of perpetuating inequality should read the Old and New Testaments, especially Jesus’ teaching that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God – while adding that for God, all things are possible. (Matthew 19:16-26) St Paul says that “there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female” – we are all “one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3: 28) And what better motivation for human behaviour than the prospect of Heaven or Hell?
Of course, under Christian rule, injustice was not conspicuous by its absence, but as G. K. Chesterton remarked, the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting but has been found difficult and left untried.
There is, however, hope, since our eternal fate is not inevitable: it depends on us, because we are not animals, plants, or even robots, but human beings with free will and the capacity to choose our own fate.
Death and Resurrection
It is materialistic politics that avoids the existence of death, preferring to stick with that other inevitability, taxes. However, most normal people know only too well that death is a fact of life. They also know that life consists of more than the material – of much that is unseen, and even unseeable.
Ironically, but tellingly, there has been a flurry of news reports about Pope Francis since his latest health crisis, in stark contrast to an almost complete lack of media interest in his pronouncements. This is despite his leftish thinking on issues like migration, but his rejection of the culture of death – while making a distinction between the sin and the sinner – has ensured that his declining health is treated as a metaphor for declining Christianity.
Perhaps the real reason for the left-liberal preference for more “muscular” religions is that they perceive Christianity as weak; the answer to that is simply, “Try it.” But a religion that bows down to a helpless baby must be viewed with disdain in an age in which killing the babe in the womb is portrayed not as a human wrong but as a human right.
Some atheists may have reached their philosophical position after much thought, albeit without any prayer. However, those who attack Christianity have simply made a god out of their unbelief in God – a religion out of no religion.
Still, it may be argued that since religion is the cause of all human woes, all religions should be banned. One might as well ban all human beings, since they are the cause of all human woes. But if humans are to live together – if we are to have societies, rather than billions of isolated, self-centred individuals – we need a moral framework, and much depends on the kind of moral framework we choose. Paradoxically, Christianity’s success can be seen in the failings of Christians, for our opponents find their ammunition in the very religion that they are attacking. We stand accused by our own standards – hoist by our own moral petard.
The point is not dress codes, diet, etc., for all these things are outward expressions of inward faith. The question is whether that faith should remain inward, or be turned outward, serving all people, for all time.
It is true that men make religions to suit themselves; but Christianity is not a man-made religion, for man-made religions tend to die with the men who made them. Religions of power and strength, even secular ones, seldom end well – but they do end; and throughout history, while the empires of this world have fallen by the wayside, “dying” Christianity continues to be reborn.
The death of Christianity has been long predicted, but as G. K. Chesterton observed in The Everlasting Man, “Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.”
The world today seems to operate under the presumption that science and religion are both combatants in an apocalyptic struggle for survival. In this conflict, science is presented as the rational and objective underdog pitted against the irrational oversized forces of religion. Atheist professor Jerry Coyne’s recent book title, Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible, is an example of this type of warfare scenario. Similarly, atheist Sam Harris charges that science is a completely factual enterprise, whereas “theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance.”
As ingrained as this narrative may be, it is simply false. In fact, the historical record is not one of hostility. Alistair McGrath, currently the Andreos Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford, has said that this “warfare view” is now “seen as a hopelessly outmoded historical stereotype which scholarship has totally discredited.” What has actually happened is that these scientists have hijacked the definition of science by insisting on a purely naturalistic (atheistic) understanding of the term. They are philosophically committed to naturalism. This philosophical commitment guides their means of scientific inquiry which gives rise to methodological naturalism, which in practical terms often amounts to nothing more than atheism masquerading as “science.” Inquiry should be free to follow the evidence wherever it leads, whether that is ultimately to a natural cause or an intelligent cause.
The Real Story
The reality is that science and Christianity have shared a long and fruitful relationship with each other. Nowhere is this more beautifully illustrated than on the grounds of Cambridge University. The prestigious Cavendish laboratory, where such discoveries as the DNA double helix and the Neutron and Electron were made. A place which has produced over 29 Nobel Laureates. To enter, you pass through two large heavy wooden doors. On top of these doors sits a beautiful ornate carving that reads Magna opera Domini exquisite in omnes voluntates eius. This is a Bible verse from the Latin Vulgate and it is a quote from Psalm 111:2: “Great are the works of the Lord; they are studied by all who delight in them.”
Why would one of the most prestigious scientific laboratories have such a quotation at its entrance if, as we are told, science and religion are incompatible? Even more amusing is the fact that it would have been these doors that atheist scientists Francis Crick and Jim Watson rushed through in 1953, after discovering the working of DNA; they were keen to get to the pub across the street, “to tell everyone within hearing that we had found the secret of life.”
As it is, this inscription stands as a testimony to the Christian heritage that was so important in the rise of modern science. The original inscription was put there at the behest of the Cavendish Laboratory’s first professor James Clerk Maxwell. The four mathematical equations of electricity and magnetism that Maxwell produced and his work in areas such as electromagnetic theory and thermodynamics are widely believed to have paved the way for other great discoveries of 20th-century physics. Maxwell was a believer who had extensive knowledge of the Bible and had served as an elder in the Church he helped plant in Scotland. He strongly believed that scientific research was to be conducted in light of the Bible and that such endeavors were a way to study the works of God. His biographers record a prayer, very reminiscent of Psalm 111:2, which they found amongst his papers after his death:
“Almighty God, who created man in Thine own image, and made him a living soul that he might seek after Thee and have dominion over Thy creatures, teach us to study the works of Thy hands, that we may subdue the earth to our use and strengthen the reason for Thy service; and so to receive Thy blessed Word, that we may believe on Him Whom Thou hast sent, to give us the knowledge of salvation and the remission of our sins. All of which we ask in the name of the same Jesus Christ, our Lord.”
Such a view gave rise to modern physics and is very different from the usual narrative that you hear from people today when they insist that religious believers are ignorant, keeping the world in a backward state and opposing the advancements of science at every turn.
Einstein’s Heroes
Perhaps another example will finally lay to rest this idea that science is opposed to the Bible. Most people will know the name of scientist Albert Einstein. His Theories of Relativity are fundamental to modern Physics. Of course, even the great Einstein would have had his own scientific heroes. You can learn a lot about a person by spending some time looking around their study! Einstein’s study had three pictures of his scientific heroes. They were Isaac Newton (1642–1727), perhaps the greatest scientist who ever lived, who among other things developed the theory of universal gravitation and the three laws of motion. Then there was Michael Faraday (1791–1867), who was known for his skill at experimentation. He discovered benzene, invented the transformer, and his work also involved demonstrating that magnetism could produce electricity. The third picture was of James Clerk Maxwell who we have already mentioned. Now there is one thing that all these great scientific minds had in common – a firm belief in the God of the Bible. All these men saw their scientific work as a way to further understand the God who created the universe. They expected the natural world to be orderly and discoverable, precisely because God is a God of order. They were all active in church life and even produced theological volumes along with their scientific works.
The Christian Roots Of Science
So much for the “warfare scenario!” In fact, the opposite appears to be true: The scientific revolution was birthed from within a Judeo-Christian framework. Why was this? Well in order to operate, science has to work with a number of assumptions about the world. These assumptions are best explained by the Christian worldview. It is the God described in the Bible that can account for the existence of a rational and orderly cosmos. The concepts required by the scientific method, such as testable and repeatable experimentation, all assume that there is uniformity to the universe. God upholds the universe in such a consistent way, we can fully expect the universe to function according to specific laws that we can study. The great philosopher of science Alfred North Whitehead credited the origin of science to Christianity’s “insistence on the rationality of God”.
If the secular view is true, that the universe originated from nothing by random chance processes, on what basis do we expect it to operate in a predictable and uniform manner? It is almost taken for granted today by those studying science that the universe operates according to laws that are comprehensible to humans. New atheist and physicist Steven Weinberg writes that “all my experience as a physicist leads me to believe that there is order to the universe … there is a simplicity, a beauty, that we are finding in the rules that govern matter that mirrors something that is built into the logical structure of the universe at a very deep level.” Many are struck by how strange this is and admit there is no real rational explanation for it within their atheistic worldview. Such a view is better understood as stemming from Christianity, which believes in a God who is rational, powerful and separate from His creation. This is why science blossomed in the fertile soil of the Christian west where God was envisioned as both the Creator and the Lawgiver. Christianity was long seen as the worldview that could logically account for the universe.
I. The moral argument seeks to infer God as the best explanation for the moral facts about the universe. One popular formulation is as follows:
If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
Objective moral values and duties do exist.
Therefore, God exists.
II. Terms:
Moral Values: are what matter to us (love, mercy, justice, etc). They are what motivate our behavior. They ground our judgments about what is good or bad, desirable or undesirable.
Moral Duties: indicates an oughtness of action; whether an act is obligatory. ‘’I shouldn’t do that, or you ought to do that.”
Objective: There is a standard of morality that transcends human opinions, judgments, biases. Example: It is objectively true that Dallas is North of Houston. Here’s a moral claim: Shoplifting is wrong. On moral objectivism, the claim that shoplifting is wrong is a fact about reality.
Moral Realism: The meta-ethical view that there exist such things as moral facts that are independent of our perception of them or our beliefs, feelings, or other attitudes towards them (similar to when we say “objective”).
Subjective: Based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions. Example: “I prefer Donates Pizza over Little Caesars.”
III. What’s the key in conversations? Discuss the following:
A Standard – provides a measure of good/bad, right/wrong.
People show by their reactions that a moral standard is being violated when they say the following: 1) “That’s wrong” 2) “That’s evil” 3) “That’s unjust” 4) That’s immoral” 5) That’s not fair”
This assumes people know:
The difference between what is fair and unfair
The difference between what is just and unjust
The difference between what is morally right and morally wrong
The difference between what is evil and good
IV. Where does the standard come from?
Individual relativism: moral values and judgments are dependent on individual feelings, tastes, or opinions.
Cultural Relativism/Social Consensus: Our morality is shaped and changed by the culture around us.
God: God’s nature itself can serve as the standard of goodness, and God can base His declarations of goodness on Himself.
Moral Intuitionism: Says basic moral propositions are self-evident—that is, evident in and of themselves—and so can be known without the need of any argument. Knowledge concerning moral principles gained by intuition is not based on or inferred from perception, memory, prior conclusions, etc.
Is there an authority – someone/thing that has the right to impose the standard and enforce adherence?
V. The Lewis Argument (similar to saying there is an objective standard)
1. There is a universal moral law, which applies to everyone.
2. All of us are, have been, or will be breakers of this moral law.
3. Therefore, there is a moral lawgiver.
Objection #1
“There are no such thing as objective moral facts.”
Response: Really? Why do people generally think that some actions are “right”, and some actions are “wrong,” regardless of people’s subjective opinions? Why do most people believe that it is “evil” or “wicked” (1) for someone to walk into a random house, shoot everyone in it, and steal everything in sight? (2) for a man to beat and rape a kind, innocent woman? (3) for an adult to torture an innocent child simply for the fun of it? or (4) for parents to have children for the sole purpose of abusing them sexually every day of their lives.
Objection #2
Perhaps “right” and “wrong” are culture-specific; what is considered moral in one society may be considered immoral in another, and, since no universal standard of morality exists, no one has the right to judge another society’s customs.
Response: If objective morality doesn’t exist, then what about these issues?
Widow burning can be morally acceptable…
Cannibalism can be morally acceptable…
Murder can be morally acceptable…
Rape can be morally acceptable…
Gratuitously torturing innocent babies can be morally acceptable…
In order to argue that at least one of these cultures is wrong, one must appeal to an objective moral standard that is outside each culture.
Objection #3: “But I’m a moral person and I don’t believe in God. Are you saying that atheists can’t be moral?”
Response:
We should not confuse (knowledge) of morality with the basis for morality (ontology). Christians are not saying that the non-theist doesn’t have moral knowledge. After all, from the Christian perspective, since all humans are God’s image-bearers, it isn’t surprising that they are capable of recognizing or knowing the same sorts of moral values—whether theists or not.
The question is what justification do we have for knowing what is right? What is the justification for our moral knowledge?
Objection #4: “Is a thing good simply because God says it is? If so, then it seems that God could say anything was good and it would be?
Response:
We can ground moral obligations in the nature of God, rather than in the will of God.
God’s nature itself can serve as the standard of goodness, and God can base His declarations of goodness on Himself.
God’s nature is unchangeable and wholly good; thus, His will is not arbitrary, and His declarations are always true.
Objection #5: Evolution is what gives us morality?
Response:
Evolution is all about survival of species. We hold moral beliefs based on what confers a survival advantage and not on what corresponds to reality.
Rape may enhance the survival of the species, but does that make rape good? Should we rape?
Killing the weak and handicapped may help improve the species and its survival (Hitler’s plan). Does that mean the Holocaust was a good thing?
Natural science is a descriptive enterprise, only telling us what is the case, not what ought to be the case. For example, nature can describe what it is to be healthy, but it cannot prescribe a moral obligation to be healthy.
Evolution cannot adequately explain human value: On a naturalistic evolutionary scenario, human beings came to be through a blind process of chance and necessity. Thus, there is nothing intrinsically valuable about being human.
Which ethical theory makes the most sense?
1. Divine Command Theory: A thing (i.e., action, behavior, choice, etc.) is good because God commands it to be done or evil because God forbids it. What is good is not good simply because God commands it. It is good because it is reflective of His divine nature.
2.Natural law moral theory: Says the moral standards that govern human behavior are, in some sense, objectively derived from the nature of human beings and the nature of the world.
3.Virtue Ethics: To be virtuous, a person will develop specific characteristics, such as goodness, honesty, self-control, moral or practical wisdom that knows the right course to take in any circumstance.
4. Utilitarianism: It is a consequence-based ethic that looks at what will bring the greatest happiness — or “well-being” or “flourishing” — for the greatest number is “good.” Utilitarianism affirms that consequences matter more than means, motives, or character.
5.Emotivism: moral claims are not statements about truth but rather expressions of personal emotions.
A Christian ethic will most likely be able to utilize a combination of theories 1-3.
It’s childish, I know, but it is entertaining to watch one’s opponents squabbling amongst themselves. Particularly when we witness some of our most effective opponents emerging on the right side, even if only this once.
Progressives Are The Most Dangerous Fundamentalists There Are
Atheists often characterise Christians, especially evangelicals, in fundamentalist terms. Evangelicals are seen as religious bigots who pick up their Bibles and put down their brains. We are assumed to have an anti-science outlook and judgemental attitudes, and never listen to reason.
That progressive ideology has all the hallmarks of the worst kind of fundamentalism has long been obvious, demanding as it does a blind belief and refusal to listen to contrary arguments. Opponents of progressivism are judged not as mistaken but as morally bad people. It is interesting that a leading atheist organisation devoted to countering Christianity has been exposed as having cult-like tendencies.
Atheist Crusaders The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) is an American non-profit organisation founded in 1978 to support atheists and agnostics in their struggle against the dreaded Christians and to campaign for ‘the separation of church and state’.
The FFRF have been diligent in pursuing their aims and boast of a ‘robust legal department’. They go after what they see as any encroachment of religion into the functioning of the state. This includes such grave societal dangers as prayer at public events, the saying of the Lord’s Prayer in a kindergarten, the display of religious symbols on public property and overturning a law declaring Good Friday a public holiday.
Along the way they have gathered a number of high-profile atheists as members and supporters. Cracks, however, are beginning to show. Three leading scientists have recently resigned as honorary board members. They have run afoul of a cause which touches the heart of ideologically blinkered progressives.
The progressive movement is wildly unscientific and places ideology above science. Evolutionary biologists Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins and cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker all cited the ideological capture of the organisation by the transgender movement.
No-one Grovels Like a Progressive Last November LGBTQ+ activist lawyer and FFRF Fellow Kat Grant wrote a column for FFRF titled ‘What is a Woman?’ Grant concluded with scientific cluelessness but blind certainty: ‘A woman is whoever she says she is.’
As an evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne felt compelled to rebut this unscientific codswallop and on Boxing Day wrote on FFRF’s blog that, contrary to Grant’s claims, ‘the biological definition of “woman” [is] based on gamete type.’
The result was predictable. The trans activists immediately launched an attack on FFRF with a vengeance: how dare they publish such a hateful article? Like a good progressive organisation the FFRF caved in immediately. Coyne’s comments were pulled the next day.
FFRF’s grovelling apology reads like a Maoist ‘struggle session’ from China’s cultural revolution of the 60s and 70s. Strangely the apology for publishing an article by an atheist scientist began with an attack on Christianity: ‘We are acutely aware that Christian nationalists have cynically manipulated the LGBTQIA-plus issues.’ Somehow Christians have to be criticised; perhaps we are the unseen forces who work behind the scenes manipulating world events and Coyne, Pinker and Dawkins are our puppets.
The authors of the apology, co-presidents of FFRF, went on to detail the consistent LGBT activism of their organisation, condemned the enemies of the trans movement both foreign and domestic, and concluded by repudiating Coyne’s views and admitting that publishing the article ‘was an error of judgment’ and ‘does not reflect our values or principles’.
The Worst Kind of Fundamentalism Coyne immediately published an open letter in which, like a reasonable scientist, he said that he was ‘simply promoting a biological rather than a psychological definition of sex’, and couldn’t fathom why this should be controversial.
In a damning condemnation of how FFRF had acted Coyne concluded, ‘gender ideology which caused you to take down my article is itself quasi-religious, having many aspects of religions and cults, including dogma, blasphemy, belief in what is palpably untrue (“a woman is whoever she says she is”), apostasy, and a tendency to ignore science when it contradicts a preferred ideology.’
Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker agreed and submitted his own resignation, saying that FFRF has become ‘the imposer of a new religion, complete with dogma, blasphemy, and heretics’. According to Pinker the FFRF ‘has turned its back on reason’.
unborn children don’t possess any more morally significant traits ‘than mice’.
Richard Dawkins resigned shortly after, describing Grant’s original article as ‘silly and unscientific’. He went on to accuse the FFRF of acting in ‘unseemly panic when you caved in to hysterical squeals from predictable quarters and retrospectively censored that excellent rebuttal’.
Dawkins has form on this issue. He has been opposing trans activists for some time, and he doesn’t pull his punches. In January 2024, he vehemently responded to an article defending gender ideology, stating: ‘This ridiculous article (shame on the once-great Scientific American) ignorantly misunderstands the nature of the sex binary.’
He added: ‘You may argue about “gender” if you wish (biologists have better things to do) but sex is a true binary, one of rather few in biology.’ For this heresy Dawkins had his 1996 Humanist of the Year award rescinded.
They Are Not Allies Don’t be fooled into thinking that Dawkins, Coyne and Pinker have seen the light. They continue in the forefront of championing truly repulsive applications of practical atheism. Responding to a woman concerned about what to do if she learned during pregnancy that her baby had Down’s syndrome, Dawkins said it would be ‘immoral’ not to have an abortion.
Steven Pinker has gone further: he is of the opinion that laws against infanticide are difficult to defend. According to Pinker, unborn children don’t possess any more morally significant traits ‘than mice do’.
Jerry Coyne is no better. He has bemoaned that the vestigial Christianity remaining in the West has prevented the legalisation of ‘the euthanasia of newborns, who have no ability or faculties to decide whether to end their lives’.
Before welcoming Coyne, Pinker and Dawkins as co-belligerents, remember that they are long-time champions of the post-Christian society which has made the transgender social contagion possible. We can use them as examples of science rebutting progressivism, but they are not allies.
Nevertheless, their internal skirmish has given us some fun.
Last week, we started a series featuring an argument a week from philosopher Peter Kreeft classic article Twenty Arguments God’s Existence. The first argument we considered was The Argument from Change. This week, we consider Kreeft’s presentation of the Argument from Efficient Causality and the common objection to the argument.
Kreeft presents the argument as follows:
We notice that some things cause other things to be (to begin to be, to continue to be, or both). For example, a man playing the piano is causing the music that we hear. If he stops, so does the music. Now ask yourself: Are all things caused to exist by other things right now? Suppose they are. That is, suppose there is no Uncaused Being, no God. Then nothing could exist right now. For remember, on the no-God hypothesis, all things need a present cause outside of themselves in order to exist. So right now, all things, including all those things which are causing things to be, need a cause. They can give being only so long as they are given being. Everything that exists, therefore, on this hypothesis, stands in need of being caused to exist.
But caused by what? Beyond everything that is, there can only be nothing. But that is absurd: all of reality dependent—but dependent on nothing! The hypothesis that all being is caused, that there is no Uncaused Being, is absurd. So there must be something uncaused, something on which all things that need an efficient cause of being are dependent.
Existence is like a gift given from cause to effect. If there is no one who has the gift, the gift cannot be passed down the chain of receivers, however long or short the chain may be. If everyone has to borrow a certain book, but no one actually has it, then no one will ever get it. If there is no God who has existence by his own eternal nature, then the gift of existence cannot be passed down the chain of creatures and we can never get it. But we do get it; we exist. Therefore there must exist a God: an Uncaused Being who does not have to receive existence like us—and like every other link in the chain of receivers.1 Dr. Kreeft points out that one objection sometimes raised to this argument goes something like this – Why do we need an uncaused cause? Why could there not simply be an endless series of things mutually keeping each other in being?
Kreeft responds as follows:
This is an attractive hypothesis. Think of a single drunk. He could probably not stand up alone. But a group of drunks, all of them mutually supporting each other, might stand. They might even make their way along the street. But notice: Given so many drunks, and given the steady ground beneath them, we can understand how their stumblings might cancel each other out, and how the group of them could remain (relatively) upright. We could not understand their remaining upright if the ground did not support them—if, for example, they were all suspended several feet above it. And of course, if there were no actual drunks, there would be nothing to understand.
This brings us to our argument. Things have got to exist in order to be mutually dependent; they cannot depend upon each other for their entire being, for then they would have to be, simultaneously, cause and effect of each other. A causes B, B causes C, and C causes A. That is absurd. The argument is trying to show why a world of caused causes can be given—or can be there—at all. And it simply points out: If this thing can exist only because something else is giving it existence, then there must exist something whose being is not a gift. Otherwise everything would need at the same time to be given being, but nothing (in addition to “everything”) could exist to give it. And that means nothing would actually be.2
So what do you think of this argument? Please feel free to share in the comments below!
Lately, I’ve noticed that some of the most famous atheists are regretting their long war against Christianity. People like Richard Dawkins spent their lives warring against Christianity. And now that they’ve achieved their goal of diminishing Christian influence, they don’t like the results. They don’t like the Islam. They don’t like the wokeness. They don’t like the transgenderism. But they caused it.
Celebrated atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins stepped down from the board of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) on Saturday after the atheist group made clear its allegiance to transgenderism over biological reality.
Dawkins resigned after the foundation censored an article from a fellow scientist who pointed out that sex is, in fact, immutable and biological, and rejected the pseudo-spiritual claim that one can choose their “gender,” The Telegraph reported.
Dawkins accused the organization of caving to the “hysterical squeals” of cancel culture after FFRF pulled the article and called its publishing of it a “mistake.” Dawkins resigned after two other scientists, Jerry Coyne and Steven Pinker, left the organization over the ordeal. The pair accused the foundation of pushing an ideology with the “dogma, blasphemy, and heretics” of a religion, according to the report.
The resignations can be traced back to a piece published to FFRF’s Freethought Now! website and written by Kat Grant called “What is a Woman?” The piece argues against the biological reality of womanhood and instead claims that “a woman is whoever she says she is.”
After they pilled the article by the atheist scientist arguing for biological reality, we got this from the FFRF leaders:
“Despite our best efforts to champion reason and equality, mistakes can happen, and this incident is a reminder of the importance of constant reflection and growth,” co-presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote.
“Publishing this post was an error of judgment, and we have decided to remove it as it does not reflect our values and principles. We regret any distress caused by this post and are committed to ensuring it doesn’t happen again,” they added.
No one would say that people like Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Steve Pinker were stupid people. What they are is foolish. These are the most foolish people on the planet. They spend their entire lives embracing the lie of atheism. They denied all of the scientific evidence for theism, such as the origin of the universe, the cosmic fine-tuning, the origin of life, explosions of biological complexity in the fossil record, irreducible complexity, habitability, etc.
And what did this advocacy against scientific evidence and reason itself get them? It gets them the Islamic dominance, wokeness, and transgenderism that they now claim to dislike. It would be like someone talking and talking about how much they believe in early retirement, but they way they prepare for retirement is by spending all their money on lottery tickets. And then they act surprised when they get the failure that their actions virtually guaranteed.
I was born in the U.S., but grew up in Canada. My parents were socialists and political activists who thought British Columbia would be a better place for us to live, since it had the only socialist government in North America at the time. My parents were also atheists, though they eschewed that label in favor of “agnostic.” They were kind, loving, and moral, but religion played no part in my life. Instead, my childhood revolved around education, particularly science. I remember how important it was to my parents that my brother and I did well in school.
I just want to point out that I hope that all you Christian parents are taking seriously the obligation to make your kids do well in school, because even if they start out as atheists when they are young, they can still find their way back to God through study, as Sarah did.
She had a bad start, that’s for sure:
I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, a time when science fiction was enjoying a renaissance, thanks largely to the popularity of Star Wars. I remember how fascinated I was by the original Star Wars trilogy. It had almost nothing to do with science—it’s more properly characterized as space opera—but it got me thinking about space in a big way. I also loved the original Star Trek, which was more science fiction. The stoic and logical character of Mr. Spock was particularly appealing to me. Popular science was also experiencing a renaissance at that time, which had a lot to do with Carl Sagan’s television show, Cosmos, which I adored. The combination of these influences led to such an intense wonder about outer space and the universe, that by the time I was nine years old I knew I would be a space scientist someday.
Canada was already post-Christian by the 1970s, so I grew up with no religion. In retrospect, it’s amazing that for the first 25 years of my life, I met only three people who identified as Christian. My view of Christianity was negative from an early age, and by the time I was in my twenties, I was actively hostile toward Christianity. Looking back, I realized a lot of this was the unconscious absorption of the general hostility toward Christianity that is common in places like Canada and Europe; my hostility certainly wasn’t based on actually knowing anything about Christianity. I had come to believe that Christianity made people weak and foolish; I thought it was philosophically trivial. I was ignorant not only of the Bible, but also of the deep philosophy of Christianity and the scientific discoveries that shed new light on the origins of the universe and life on Earth.
She documents a phase of following Ayn Rand and embracing “Objectivism”, but eventually she rejects it for failing to answer the big questions of life.
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I began to focus all of my energy on my studies, and became very dedicated to my physics and math courses. I joined campus clubs, started to make friends, and, for the first time in my life, I was meeting Christians. They weren’t like Objectivists—they were joyous and content. And, they were smart, too. I was astonished to find that my physics professors, whom I admired, were Christian. Their personal example began to have an influence on me, and I found myself growing less hostile to Christianity.
This is why I think it is so important for Christian parents to raise their children to get advanced degrees… either to become professors themselves, or to finance others (e.g. – our own children) to do advanced degrees. It is so important for university students to see Christian professors on campus. And failing that, it’s important that we bring Christian speakers in to debate non-Christian speakers on the important issues. This will not happen unless we recognize how important it is, and then make a plan to achieve it.
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I had joined a group in the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences (CASS) that was researching evidence for the big bang. The cosmic background radiation—the leftover radiation from the big bang—provides the strongest evidence for the theory, but cosmologists need other, independent lines of evidence to confirm it. My group was studying deuterium abundances in the early universe. Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen, and its abundance in the early universe is sensitive to the amount of ordinary mass contained in the entire universe. Believe it or not, this one measurement tells us whether the big bang model is correct.
If anyone is interested in how this works, I’ll describe it, but for now I’ll spare you the gruesome details. Suffice it to say that an amazing convergence of physical properties is necessary in order to study deuterium abundances in the early universe, and yet this convergence is exactly what we get. I remember being astounded by this, blown away, completely and utterly awed. It seemed incredible to me that there was a way to find the answer to this question we had about the universe. In fact, it seems that every question we have about the universe is answerable. There’s no reason it has to be this way, and it made me think of Einstein’s observation that the most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it’s comprehensible. I started to sense an underlying order to the universe. Without knowing it, I was awakening to what Psalm 19 tells us so clearly, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”
That summer, I’d picked up a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and was reading it in my off hours. Previous to this, I’d only known it as an exciting story of revenge, since that’s what the countless movie and TV adaptations always focused on. But it’s more than just a revenge story, it’s a philosophically deep examination of forgiveness and God’s role in giving justice. I was surprised by this, and was starting to realize that the concept of God and religion was not as philosophically trivial as I had thought.
All of this culminated one day, as I was walking across that beautiful La Jolla campus. I stopped in my tracks when it hit me—I believed in God! I was so happy; it was like a weight had been lifted from my heart. I realized that most of the pain I’d experienced in my life was of my own making, but that God had used it to make me wiser and more compassionate. It was a great relief to discover that there was a reason for suffering, and that it was because God was loving and just. God could not be perfectly just unless I—just like everyone else—was made to suffer for the bad things I’d done.
The Count of Monte Cristo is one of my favorite, favorite books as well, and had the same impact on me as it did on her.
OK, that’s enough for this post. Go read the rest, and please share it.
I spoke to her recently and she told me that she is working on several projects that are designed to get people more familiar with science and Bible issues. This woman is an expert Christian apologist and her life will have an influence. Are you going to be like her? Will you mentor others to be like her? Will you marry someone like her? Will you raise children who are like her? I think we should all have a plan to study the areas that are important and have an influence for God with what we learn.
Let’s review what you need in your worldview in order to have a rationally grounded system of morality.
You need 5 things:
1) Objective moral values
There needs to be a way to distinguish what is good from what is bad. For example, the moral standard might specify that being kind to children is good, but torturing them for fun is bad. If the standard is purely subjective, then people could believe anything and each person would be justified in doing right in their own eyes. Even a “social contract” is just based on people’s opinions. So we need a standard that applies regardless of what people’s individual and collective opinions are.
2) Objective moral duties
Moral duties (moral obligations) refer to the actions that are obligatory based on the moral values defined in 1). Suppose we spot you 1) as an atheist. Why are you obligated to do the good thing, rather than the bad thing? To whom is this obligation owed? Why is rational for you to limit your actions based upon this obligation when it is against your self-interest? Why let other people’s expectations decide what is good for you, especially if you can avoid the consequences of their disapproval?
3) Moral accountability
Suppose we spot you 1) and 2) as an atheist. What difference does it make to you if you just go ahead and disregard your moral obligations to whomever? Is there any reward or punishment for your choice to do right or do wrong? What’s in it for you?
4) Free will
In order for agents to make free moral choices, they must be able to act or abstain from acting by exercising their free will. If there is no free will, then moral choices are impossible. If there are no moral choices, then no one can be held responsible for anything they do. If there is no moral responsibility, then there can be no praise and blame. But then it becomes impossible to praise any action as good or evil.
5) Ultimate significance
Finally, beyond the concept of reward and punishment in 3), we can also ask the question “what does it matter?”. Suppose you do live a good life and you get a reward: 1000 chocolate sundaes. And when you’ve finished eating them, you die for real and that’s the end. In other words, the reward is satisfying, but not really meaningful, ultimately. It’s hard to see how moral actions can be meaningful, ultimately, unless their consequences last on into the future.
Theism rationally grounds all 5 of these. Atheism cannot ground any of them.
Let’s take a look at #4: free will and see how atheism deals with that.
And that’s what neurobiology is telling us: Our brains are simply meat computers that, like real computers, are programmed by our genes and experiences to convert an array of inputs into a predetermined output. Recent experiments involving brain scans show that when a subject “decides” to push a button on the left or right side of a computer, the choice can be predicted by brain activity at least seven seconds before the subject is consciously aware of having made it. (These studies use crude imaging techniques based on blood flow, and I suspect that future understanding of the brain will allow us to predict many of our decisions far earlier than seven seconds in advance.) “Decisions” made like that aren’t conscious ones. And if our choices are unconscious, with some determined well before the moment we think we’ve made them, then we don’t have free will in any meaningful sense.
If you don’t have free will, then you can’t make moral choices, and you can’t be held morally responsible. No free will means no morality.
Here are some more atheists to explain how atheists view morality.
William Provine says atheists have no free will, no moral accountability and no moral significance:
Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear — and these are basically Darwin’s views. There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either.
Richard Dawkins says atheists have no objective moral standards:
In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, or any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference… DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. (Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (1995))
When village atheists talk about how they can be moral without God, it’s important to ask them to justify the minimum requirements for rational morality. Atheists may act inconsistently with their worldview, believing in free will, expecting praise and blame for complying with the arbitrary standards of their peer group, etc. But there is nothing more to morality on atheism that imitating the herd – at least when the herd is around to watch them. And when the herd loses its Judeo-Christian foundation – watch out. That’s when the real atheism comes out – the atheism that we’ve seen before in countries that turned their backs on God, and the moral law. When God disappears from a society, anything is permissible.
“Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada.” A Clean, Well-Lighted Place by Hemingway.
Nothing, and then nothing, and then nothing. In Hemingway’s short story A Clean Well-Lighted Place, we get the contrast of a younger man busy with married life, a middle-aged man beginning to reflect on the meaning of it all, and an old man who just wants light. The old man is wealthy but drinks alone and recently tried to kill himself.
The narrative descends into meaninglessness. Why? Because all is nothing. All of our efforts come out the same in the end, leaving us contemplating suicide–or assisted suicide. The efforts of the young turn into the middle-aged melancholy, which turn into the last moments of life grasping onto whatever light is left. The older waiter lets the younger one go home to his wife while he stays so that the old man can have some more time in a clean, well-lighted place before the end.
Trying to Think Without Essences
What does this have to do with the Darkened Mind at the American University? Everything. It is the perfect short story to describe the youthful graduate student/early professor “I will change the world with the same philosophy that broke the world,” the middle-aged “at least I get a paycheck and am surrounded by people who all think the way I do,” and the final stage of despair as the professor retires and faces final meaninglessness. These are the kinds of literary works we can read to learn about the human condition and become wise rather than the fool who rejects God and thinks they nevertheless will find meaning in life.
In the previous installment of The Darkened Mind series, I examined the anatomy of the darkened mind—a mind that rejects fundamental distinctions in reality, such as the distinction between Creator and creature. This confusion is not merely an innocent philosophical error made by someone grappling with a complex subject. Rather, it reflects a willful rejection of God’s commands and the consequences tied to them (“the day you eat of it you will surely die” and “the wages of sin is death”). This willful sin arises out of unbelief and the failure to know God. God has been exchanged for a lie. Such a person not only rejects God but also embraces a life of moral corruption (sin), actively suppressing the truths of God by ensuring his commands are not taught.
Can we truly say this applies to the atheist? After all, aren’t there moral atheists? This question can be approached either sociologically or logically. A sociologist might indeed observe that some atheists are more honest or virtuous than their theistic neighbors. However, our inquiry here is not sociological but logical. The question is whether the atheist has any rational foundation for morality after rejecting God and His warning: “The day you eat of it, you will surely die.” Without anything transcendent, having rejected the nature of things, and given over only to the flow of experience, there can be no universal moral laws on which to build a life.
The Darkened Minds at the American University have provided a telling example here. Gone are the days of the mythical philosophical materialist who remained faithful to his wife of 40 years and lived a life of virtue. During what I term the Marxist Era of the American University (1960–2020), these minds have actively championed sexual licentiousness and increasingly depraved and immoral acts. In fact, there appears to be no boundary to what such professors will celebrate—so long as it is consensual. We as a culture have come to shrug our shoulders at the sexual licentiousness of our universities and say, “That’s just how they are,” but we shouldn’t. Education is supposed to make a person wise and virtuous, not a foolish libertine.
The Fool Says in His Heart There is No God: The loss of all distinctions
This demonstrates that the Darkened Minds we encounter today are affirming the truth of the Psalmist’s words. In Psalm 14, we are told that it is the fool who declares in his heart, “There is no God.” The Psalmist goes on to describe this person as entirely corrupt—one who neither seeks God nor understands nor does what is right. The evidence of this corruption lies in their inability to grasp basic distinctions that, in earlier generations, even a child could understand.
If you recall kindergarten, one of the most socially important things to figure out was who were the boys and who were the girls. This wasn’t exactly rocket science—each group was convinced the other had cooties! Yet, the professor with a Darkened Mind, by rejecting the clear distinction between Creator and creature, also can’t seem to keep up with the clarity of a kindergartener. It’s almost as if the kindergartners are thinking at light speed compared to them. Did these intellectuals skip kindergarten? No—but they certainly seem to harbor some deep resentment toward the clear thinking that took place there.
While the contemporary humanities professors might object to discussing God in a secular university classroom (though I am not suggesting they are correct in objecting), they are remarkably bold in promoting their own agenda. However, this agenda is deeply confused. For example, within their worldview, they are unable to make even the most basic distinction between a man and a woman. Having exchanged the truth about God for a lie and having blurred the distinction between Creator and creature, they now lose any and all other distinctions such as “man” and “woman” and “human” and “non-human.”
Sartre: Existence Precedes the, you know, the thing.
What happened to them is that they encountered Sartre—or, more likely, their graduate professors did. His name is mostly forgotten, having sprung up like grass, he has withered away. Sartre’s existentialism asserts that “existence precedes essence,” meaning we are born without any predetermined nature, and it is up to us to decide who or what we are. According to this view, cultural constructs like “male” and “female” are imposed on us, robbing us of our existential freedom to define ourselves. This philosophy has deeply influenced the confused thinking we see in today’s academia. This is a direct rebellion against the idea that God creates us with a nature, and thus, God is the one who knows and commands what is good for us.
Existentialism places a high value on authenticity. For thinkers like Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky, this meant living authentically before God, and recognizing one’s accountability to the Creator. However, for materialist existentialists like Sartre and his intellectual heirs in today’s academy, authenticity means expressing the essence you feel within yourself. This idea was further developed by figures like John Money, who taught that humans are born gender-neutral and that each person must choose their gender, religion, political ideology, and even their entire identity. According to this view, we are not given a nature; we construct a nature. For some, this construction might extend to identifying as non-humans, “Who are you to judge?”
Here is who you are to judge: a human being with a rational soul. Yet these professors, having been given over to a Darkened Mind, have fallen so far that they can no longer even reason about what it means to be human or distinguish between a man and a woman. You can test this yourself, ask a humanities professor to define “human” and watch what happens. This is not merely cultural relativism; it is a full-scale denial of creation itself. In rejecting God the Creator, they must also reject His work. They must deny that “He made them male and female” and that everything was created “each after its own kind.” Their rebellion against God extends to a refusal to acknowledge the most basic truths of His design.
I don’t doubt that many professors and students who believe that “existence precedes essence” cannot articulate that belief and may never have heard of Sartre. However, what happens when you educate children from K-12 without teaching them how to discern the nature of things? What kind of understanding has their education equipped them with? Many high school graduates I speak with express the same frustration—they wonder what, if anything, their education has truly prepared them to do or understand.
We cannot live with meaninglessness
The professors promoting this agenda, despite their objections, are still persons created in the image of God. As such, they possess rational souls and cannot live with the notion of complete meaninglessness. However, because the Darkened Mind has abandoned anything transcendent or absolute, they are left to seek meaning in the process of change itself. Yet without a goal or higher purpose, change is just that—change. It is neither good nor evil; it simply is. Accepting this would drain their lives of meaning entirely.
To avoid this emptiness, they inconsistently reject God while simultaneously claiming to work for “progress” and a “better future.” The only framework available to them is Marxism. To soothe their consciences and find some sense of purpose that allows them to sleep at night, they convince themselves they are helping others live better lives—defined primarily as reducing economic hardship. This becomes their justification, allowing them to feel they are contributing to something meaningful, even as their philosophical foundation crumbles.
The Social Philosophy of the American University: Help the marginalized, oppressed, disadvantaged
Yes, terms like marginalized,oppressed, and disadvantaged are all action verbs that suggest something is being done to the subject, portraying them as passive recipients of external forces. This language suggests that the individuals described are powerless and not in control of their own lives. It reduces them to objects acted upon by others, stripping them of agency and the ability to take initiative or improve their circumstances. This perspective fosters a dependency mindset, suggesting that their only hope lies in being “helped” or “rescued” by those who hold power, rather than empowering them to take control of their own lives. Such persons must look to benevolent professors who will teach them there is no God, there are no natures, and find them a job as a “advocate.”
Indeed, in this framework, personal responsibility and free will are entirely removed. Economic differences are no longer seen as the result of individual choices—whether mine or my family’s—but are instead attributed solely to external oppression. Conversely, if I am doing well and considered part of “whiteness,” my success is reduced to nothing more than the color of my skin.
This overly simplistic model offers a convenient narrative for those unwilling to grapple with the complexity of personal responsibility, cultural dynamics, or the interplay of effort and circumstance. It is enough, at least for a time, to sustain the ideological fervor of younger professors, providing them with a sense of purpose and moral superiority, even as the cracks in the foundation of this worldview inevitably begin to show.
Like the young married man in Hemingway’s story, such professors neglect to see the connection between the failures of those who pursued the same solution before them and their own inevitable disappointment. Just as the old man drinking alone was once a hopeful young husband, such professors are blind to the trajectory they are on. The retiring Marxist, who has made no lasting positive difference in the world, was once a bright-eyed idealist, convinced she could reject God and still find meaning. Yet the end is always the same: disillusionment and emptiness, the natural fruit of a worldview severed from the Creator and His moral law.
I wish you’d stop loving me so much
Would you want to be one of the objects of these professors’ care? To accept their help would mean conceding that you have no free will, no agency, and no ability to shape your own life. Your actions would carry no real consequences because, in their view, nothing you do matters—everything in your life is caused by someone else. Moreover, your suffering would be reduced solely to economic terms. They would suggest that if only you had more money, you would be a better person and live a better life. This shallow view of human flourishing strips away the richness of moral, spiritual, and personal growth, reducing you to little more than a passive recipient of their pity.
It is no surprise that the Darkened Mind can offer nothing better than this. Having rejected God, they attempt to construct meaning for human life out of their own subjective intuitions. Lacking a transcendent foundation, they inevitably fall short. Instead, they promote what is explicitly warned against, both in their own lives and in what they teach their students. This cycle of rebellion and misguidance perpetuates the confusion and emptiness inherent in their worldview.
Now that you have been warned of the Darkened Mind, shown how it works, and considered the consequences of coming under its care, you have been sufficiently warned. Do you think it is wise to pay such an educational institution 60k to mentor you or shape your children into their image? You do have agency and choice. You can decide that it is time for a new American University that says goodbye to the Marxist era and demands professors who are accountable for teaching wisdom and virtue.
All of the education of a Darkened Mind ends in nada y pues nada y pues nada y pues nada . . . . We can do better and next time I will turn to how an education can make us wise and virtuous.
So, this is just an advice post for doing apologetics.
Here are three situations I’ve run into while doing apologetics in the last month.
First situation. I was talking with a lady who is an atheist. I had a copy of “God’s Crime Scene” in my hand, and she asked me about it. I told her that it was a book written by the guy who solved the homicide case that I asked her to watch on Dateline. She remembered – it was the two-hour special on the woman who was killed with a garrotte. She pointed at the book and said “what’s in it?” I said, it has 8 pieces of evidence that fit better with a theistic worldview than with an atheistic one, and some of them scientific. Her reply to me was – literally – “which denomination do you want me to join?”
Second situation. I was talking with a friend of mine who teaches in a Catholic school. She was telling that she got the opportunity to talk to her students about God, and found out that some of them were not even theists, and many of them had questions. So she asked them for questions and got a list. The list included many hard cases, like “what about the Bible and slavery” and “why do Christians oppose gay marriage?” and so on.
Third situation. Talking to a grad student about God’s existence. I’m laying out my scientific arguments for her, holding up the peer-reviewed papers for each discovery. I get to the Doug Axe paper on protein folding probabilities, and she holds up her hand. One question: “Am I going to Hell?”
So think about those three situations. In each case, the opponent is trying to reject Christianity by jumping way, way ahead to the very end of the process. When you do Christian apologetics, you do not take the bait and jump to the end of the process dealing with nitty gritty details until you have made your case for the core of the Christian worldview using your strongest evidence. Let me explain.
So, your strongest evidence as a Christian are the scientific arguments, along with the moral argument. Those would include (for starters) the following:
kalam cosmological argument
cosmic fine-tuning
galactic and stellar habitability
origin of life / DNA
molecular machines / irreducible complexity
the moral argument
The problem I am seeing today is that atheists are rejecting discussions about evidence because they think that all we are interested in is getting them to become Christians. Well, yes. I want you to become a Christian. But I know perfectly well what that entails – it entails a change of life priorities. Both of the women I spoke to are living with their boyfriends, and the kids in the Catholic school just want to have fun. None of them wants to believe in a God who will require self-denial, self-control, and self-sacrifice. Nobody wants God to be in that leader position in their lives. Christianity is 100% reversed from today’s me-first, fun-seeking, thrill-seeking, fear-of-missing-out travel spirit of the age.
So, how to answer all these late-game questions? The answer is simple. You don’t answer any late-game questions until the person you are talking with accounts for the widely-accepted data in your list. These are things that have got to be accepted before any discussion about minor issues like one angel vs two angels at the empty tomb can occur. When we discuss all the basic issues where the evidence is the strongest, then we can go on to discuss issues where the evidence is debatable, then finally, in the last bits before the end, we can discuss these other kinds of questions.
How to explain why this process must be followed to the person who asks specific questions about minor issues? Simple. You explain that your goal is not to get them to become a Christian right now. That you want to let them believe anything thing they want. That’s right. They can believe anything they want to believe. As long as what they believe is consistent with the evidence. And what I am going to do is give them the evidence, and then they can believe whatever they want – so long as it’s consistent with the evidence.
So, for example, I’m going to tell them 3 pieces of evidence for a cosmic beginning of the universe: the expanding universe (redshift), the cosmic microwave background radiation, and the light element abundances. That’s mainstream science that shows that the universe came into being out of nothing, a finite time in the past. And I will charge them not to believe in any religion that assumes that the universe has always been here. For example, Mormonism is ruled out, they believe in eternally existing matter. See how that works? Hey, Ms. Atheist. You can believe anything you want. As long as what you believe is consistent with the evidence.
I think this approach of not letting them rush you to the end at the beginning is important for two reasons. First, we can get our foot in the door to talk about things that are interesting to everyone, in a non-stressed environment. Everyone can talk about evidence comfortably. Second, we show that we hold our beliefs because we are simply letting evidence set boundaries for us on what we are allowed to believe. We can’t believe not-Christianity, because not-Christianity is not consistent with the evidence. And you start with the most well-supported evidence, and eliminate worldviews that are falsified by the most well-supported evidence. Atheism actually gets falsified pretty quickly, because of the scientific evidence.
So, that’s my advice. Had a friend of mine named William try this out about a week ago. It went down like this:
William to me:
This guy I know messaged me and bragged for a while about how easy he can dismantle Christianity. He said: “present the gospel to me as you understand it. I’ll simply ask questions to demonstrate it is not worth your belief.”
WK to William:
First of all, he isn’t allowed to just sit there and poke holes in your case, he has to present a positive case for atheism. Second, don’t discuss Christianity with him at all until you first discuss the evidence for theism – start with the good scientific evidence.
And William wrote this to his friend:
The way I’m wired is that I process all competing theories and go with the best one. By doing a comparative analysis of worldviews I find that Christian theology easily explains the most about the world I find myself living in.
I’m pretty sure that a God of some sort exists because of the scientific evidence for the origin of the universe and the fine tuning in physics. From there I find it quite intuitive that if a God went through the trouble of creating and tuning a universe for life that this God likely has some sort of interest in it and has revealed Himself to humanity in some way.
From there I can look at the major world religions and compare them to see which one explains the past and the present the best. Christianity easily comes out on top.
And then a few days later, I got this from William:
I finally got the agnostic to tell me what he thinks about origin and fine tuning. When I started pointing out that his views were unscientific, he blew a gasket, called me dishonest and told me he didn’t want to discuss anything further.
And that’s where you want to be. Cut off all discussions where the challenger tries to jump to the end and get you to debate the very last steps of your case. Present the strongest evidence for your core claims, and get him to account for this evidence within his own worldview. Lead the discussion with public, testable evidence. All warfare depends on picking the terrain, weapons and tactics that allow you to match your strength against your opponent’s weakness.
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My congregation lives within an 80 x 60 x 50 kilometre triangle, an area larger than the Principality of Liechtenstein. So I drive a lot. I don’t enjoy a view of the Swiss Alps, but I do get to listen to podcasts.
One word to describe Surprising Rebirth? Refreshing. Brierley is smart, informed, nuanced, and confident in the truth. He has a beautiful turn of phrase and oozes positivity. Listening to him I get the same kind of feeling as when I read C.S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy, or J.I. Packer’s Knowing God.
The thesis of the series is in the title.
In the mid-2000s the so-called “Four Horsemen” of the New Atheist movement—Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and their (somewhat) fearless leader Richard Dawkins—scooped up millions of sales with books like The End of Faith (2005), The God Delusion (2006), God is Not Great (2007), and other vaunted takedowns of mainstream religion.
As sarcastic as Voltaire, as certain as Senator McCarthy, as pompous as Sir Humphrey Appleby, and as populistic as Abba, they made a lot of God-suppressors feel more snug in their idolatry.
Dawkins even fronted a bus campaign: “There is Probably No God. Now Stop Worrying and Enjoy Your Life.” Despite the lame hedging of the word “Probably,” it went down well in the burbs of Oxford. Not sure what famine-wracked Somalians would have made of it. Or incarcerated Uighurs.
But the devil has been cursed to only ever kick own goals.
The Four Horsemen’s arguments earned C-minuses all round from real philosophers—theists and atheists alike. Their arguments had all been raised and answered countless times across the past two millennia. Moreover, they failed to offer even a postage stamp of terra firma on which to build a life of meaning and purpose, but instead revelled in a universe that has, “at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” Yet they failed, as Nietzsche and Camus did not fail, to follow through with their nihilist suppositions, persisting that basic human ethics—strangely reminiscent of the ethics of the Second Table—could still be derived from their god-free milieu.
People learned inductively that atheism was rather like an egg left too long in the sun—smooth on the outside, an agglomeration of stinky gas and nothingness within. Moreover, the Horsemen whipped up millions to begin talking again about the target of their attacks—God. Oscar Wilde said it: “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
Twenty years later it turns out that the New Atheists, rather like Pharaoh’s foremen but without their reasonableness, cause millions to lift up their heads to the possibility of something better—that there might in fact be real substance to the claims of Christian theism.
Justin Brierley tells the story in sixty-to-ninety-minute podcasts, thirty of which have appeared so far. I will engage with a few of the more remarkable of these and make some observations about the oeuvre as a whole.
In “The Rise and Fall of New Atheism” (Ep. 1), Brierley storms the beach with a bracing retelling of the rise of Dawkins et al. They flowed with Matthew Arnold’s “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” of the Sea of Faith. They had the wind in their sails. Yet how brittle it was. “Elevatorgate: How the Culture Wars Killed New Atheism” (Ep. 2) shows how the movement ripped itself apart over sexism, LGBT and trans rights, and other highly charged public debates. Yes, their impact lingered, but not in the way they hoped.
In “Thank God for Richard Dawkins” (Ep. 3), Brierley interviews a number of public intellectuals who turned to theism, and even to Christian faith, after the undergraduate naïveté of the Horsemen’s books opened their eyes to the better arguments of Christianity. An interview with prominent YouTube atheist Alex O’Connor (Ep. 4) is a case study of this.
“The Jordan Peterson Phenomenon” (Ep. 5) is one of the most exciting episodes, tracing the rise to popularity in 2018 of a gifted but unknown psychology professor at the University of Toronto. Peterson was the doctor’s hammer that tapped all kinds of reflexive tendons. First when he stood against state laws forcing people to use preferred pronouns as an attack on free speech, which Peterson argues is an attack on thought itself. Second for his 2018 Twelve Rules for Life, which has sold over ten million copies and urges people to take responsibility for their lives—young men in particular.
Then Peterson began to lecture on the Bible. Gifted pastor-preachers with half-empty churches were treated to the sight of thousands of predominantly young men paying up to a hundred dollars to pack out large lecture theatres to hear Peterson’s passionate, rambling, and often emotional reflections on Genesis. Reading the text through the prism of Jungian archetypes and symbols, he fails to understand it. Yet millions of people were now hearing from the weeping prophet of Canada all about God and the Bible and a God-given purpose and destiny for life.
In Episode 6, “The Meaning Crisis: Why we’re all religious deep down,” Brierley builds on the idea of the innate sense of meaning and purpose that Peterson was tapping into. He works backwards from the funeral for Elizabeth II, when “a latent spirituality surfaced.” Having been reared on a diet of “you can be whatever we want to be”—what Charles Taylor called “expressive individualism”—and having rejected theocentrism for anthropocentrism, young occidentals were unmoored. And terribly unhappy.
The great bonus of listening to Brierley is that you will discover, through his adroit choice of interlocutors, all manner of wonderful Christian communicators. In Episode 6 you will meet Graham Tomlin, a C of E bishop and author of the superbly titled Why Being Yourself is a Bad Idea (2020). Our anthropocentrism has meant that we are looking in the wrong place for meaning. Social media’s smashing of community has exacerbated this. Refusing to enter “the story of our society,” we have failed in our attempt to invent our own. Sociologist Max Weber described the “disenchantment” of the industrial West. But nature abhors a vacuum and we’ve learnt to worship other entities: ourselves primarily. This is not working well for anyone.
Interviews with Australian historian Sarah Irving-Stonebraker, who converted to Christianity from atheism, and social-psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who has catalogued the catastrophic increase in levels of anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide since 2010—when a new generation was being shaped by smartphones and social media—trace the modern mental health crisis to an existential crisis, which itself derives from an identity crisis which is, at its heart, a spiritual crisis. Brierley sums it all up: “If we are made to live in a story that is bigger than us, then I don’t think we can simply play-act a part in something we know is ultimately just a fiction.”
At the moment New Atheism imploded, new voices began to be heard.
“The New Thinkers: A new conversation on God” (Ep. 7) introduces four highly prominent and well-regarded public intellectuals who are all making positive noises about Christianity: Douglas Murray, Tom Holland, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Louise Perry. Of the four, the human rights campaigner Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the only one who has come to belief in Christian theism (Ep. 8). She is a friend of Richard Dawkins, who has publicly expressed his disappointment in Ali’s conversion; though even Dawkins has recently called himself “a cultural Christian.” We should ask: “From whence that culture, Prof. Dawkins?” Ex nihilo nihil fit.
In “Paul Kingsnorth & Martin Shaw: A poet and mythologist convert” (Ep. 9), Brierley introduces two recent converts. Shaw is an academic and mythologist who read the Gospels and “found Christ disturbing.” He takes the same kind of line as C.S. Lewis, who was also deeply conversant in pagan mythology, that the echoes of truth heard in the stories of the gods came to be fully realized in the history of Jesus. Shaw finds that the church does best when it is “outnumbered and outgunned,” and that after generations of hostility and marginalization it is beginning to find its feet again in a time of unexpected opportunity.
“History Maker: Why Tom Holland changed his mind about Christ” (Ep. 10) focuses on the extraordinarily popular classicist and historian Tom Holland, author of Rubicon (2003) and Dominion (2019). Holland has done for history what Jamie Oliver did for cooking. I find his books a little sensationalist, but he has done a remarkable service in showing that so many of the ethical principles that we hold dear, and especially that of caring for the weak and downtrodden, can only be traced to the Bible and Christian history. Holland contends that the West is saturated in the Christian worldview and ethics, even if we have distorted our inheritance in strange ways. Even our atheists are Christian atheists: it is the God of the Bible that they suppress. (Brierley follows up on Holland in Episode 17, “Live In London: Tom Holland & Justin Brierley in conversation.”)
“The Sexual Revolution: Why Louise Perry changed her mind” (Ep. 11) is one of the highlights of the series. Perry is a journalist, anti-pornography campaigner, and author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution (2022). She is a fiercely articulate thinker who had bought into the mores of the sexual revolution until she began working at a rape crisis centre. She is today a non-believer “emotionally and intellectually drawn to Christianity,” who argues that the message that “God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong” brought about hitherto unheard of emancipation, dignity, and protection to women and children: “To point out the vulnerability of women, children, the poor, the enslaved, and the disabled is to argue in favour of their protection, not their persecution.”
Perry draws on the work of classicist Kyle Harper, who describes a “first sexual revolution” in the fourth to seventh centuries with the irruption of a Christian sexual ethic that steadily de-sanctioned the rights of powerful Roman men to sexually penetrate all and sunder in their households: whether male or female, slaves or children. The evil of rape, which hitherto was only prosecuted against the violation of high-status male-protected women, now included the violation of any person. The first sexual revolution tamed men and was good for maintaining strong families and care for women and children. For it is women who get pregnant and who bear the greatest burden of childcare. They cannot, like men, simply walk away from their progeny to build new lives, careers, and romances in other places.
Fascinatingly, both Harper and Perry analyse our society’s antipathy toward Christian sexual mores as antipathy toward Christianity tout court. Harper writes, “In our secular age, just as in the early years of Christianity, differences in sexual morality are really about the clash between different pictures of the universe and the place of the individual within it,”[1] and Perry, “When pro-life and pro-choice advocates fight about the nitty-gritty of abortion policy, what they are really fighting about is whether our society ought to remain Christian.”[2]
This begins to answer a nagging question: Why do so many secular organizations, who have no inherent interest in homosexual practice, fly the rainbow flag? Is it not because LGBT rights have become the cause célèbre of secularism? That the rainbow flag has become the battle standard of godlessness?
The fact that Jordan Peterson, Tom Holland, Louise Perry, and Douglas Murray do not claim to be Christian believers has arguably given them a greater hearing and influence in contemporary intellectual discourse than they might otherwise have had. I will be fascinated to see where they and our culture land in the coming decade or two.
“The Christian Revolution: Why the cross changed the world” (Ep. 12) goes over very familiar ground for Christians. We have long understood that crucifixion was intended to inflict maximum protracted agony and public humiliation and degradation upon the victim. It was designed to terrorize the subjects of the Roman Empire into meek submission. The pax Romana was established, paradoxically, in large measure upon such placards of intemperate violence. Brierley does a very good job of showing how the Gospel of the Crucified Saviour fundamentally inverted human values. Human success must not be measured by the triumphs of the highborn and powerful over the lowborn and weak, the intellectual over the simple, the beautiful over the plain, the popular over the despised. The Cross teaches us to value the humiliation and subjugation of self for the benefit of the other, to prize the amelioration of the weak rather than their exploitation.
That is why Christians, when they are repentant and trusting and in tune with their Master, have given their time, talents, education, privileges, and wealth to the service of the most vulnerable—widows and orphans, the unborn and abandoned, the sick and enslaved—rather than to self-service.
“Did The Resurrection Really Happen? A classicist discovers the living Christ” (Ep. 16) presents a fresh recapitulation of the arguments for why the resurrection of Jesus is an historical event that truly has been proven beyond reasonable doubt. It focuses on the remarkable conversion story of twenty-first century Oxford scholar James Orr. But Brierley’s interview with John Dickson is one of the highlights of this episode; there are in fact numerous synergies between Brierley’s Surprising Rebirth and Dickson’s own really excellent Undeceptions podcast. It is no surprise that these two public Christian intellectuals have found each other.
In episodes 18 to 20 Brierley moves away from the historical evidence for the truth of Christianity to engage with natural theology, to how the natural sciences support belief in the God of the Bible. The desperately lazy idea that science and faith are opposed, or are at best mutually exclusive, is quickly swept away. Biblical faith—notwithstanding Kierkegaard’s false re-casting of the idea—is never described as believing in the illogical, unproven, or otherwise unbelievable (which is credulity), but as entrusting ourselves to God on the grounds of Spirit-awakened convictions in statements of truth.
Scientia is knowledge. Christians and scientists face in the same direction, wanting to know the truth about things. It is entirely natural that the modern scientific enterprise of discovering truth by rigorous observation and experimentation, the results of which are critically tested and systematized into general principles, arose (most notably) in the seventeenth century among European Christians who hungered for the truth and who believed that a God-created universe was of such a complexity, design, and rational order that truth could be discovered.
“A Goldilocks Universe: The surprising science pointing to God” (Ep. 19) is a very enjoyable exploration of the concept of fine tuning. It is a myth to suppose that scientists are drawing ever closer to fundamental explanations of things, as though the world is like a complicated watch that may be pulled apart into simple components that can be simply explained—end of story. On the contrary, every newly discovered component proves to be in itself a bewilderingly complex entity that must itself be disassembled into its constituent components, and so on, “world without end.” Thus, whereas nineteenth-century biologists saw single cells as quite simple inchoate blobs, molecular biology shows us that every single cell is like a city, teaming with complex machines and processes. Each part of the machine is itself a Tardis of extraordinary order and complexity, within which are untold other Tardis-like components. Furthermore, the matter of the universe exists within scores of physical constructs and forces that must function within extraordinarily miniscule tolerances. Adjust even one of these constructs by an infinitesimal degree and the cosmos as we know it ceases to exist. It looks a little bit like the universe might have been designed.
“The Logos Behind Life: The dissident scientists discovering a mind beyond matter” (Ep. 20) shows that scientists are discovering more and more that living cells exist and replicate according to vast banks of inbuilt information. Information, of course, can derive only from a mind. And although scientists have been able to describe in part how life replicates, they have not even begun to explain how life itself got going in the first place (or indeed why anything exists.) Every new discovery only adds to the complexity and only makes it more difficult to find such explanations. The trajectory of science is toward a mind, a Great Intelligence, lying behind the universe and its elements.
Brierley’s podcast is a brilliant exposé of evidence. But there is never a suggestion that conversion is merely an intellectual affair. His accounts of “surprising conversions” invariably describe people coming to faith within the context of community. Human beings are not just brains on legs. Our thinking develops, for better or for worse, within a communal environment. Many new converts describe how they learned about Christianity within the context of seeing others live out what they were learning, and of experiencing the love of the Christian community. We preach and teach the truth within community: and the richer and more loving that community is the better.
The series reminds us of the importance of other subjective factors too. No amount of evidence will budge an idolater, whose heart is “dead in sin and transgression.” A supernatural intervention is necessary. It is true that the Spirit enlivens the hearts of the spiritually dead by the true and powerful Gospel, by “demolishing strongholds” of lies, by persuading people of the truth with as much reason as we can master, and by loving Christian fellowship. But we must never forget that it is the Spirit who enlivens. A well-equipped smithy with hammer and tongs and bellows is a good thing. But not a single horseshoe will be made without the Blacksmith himself.
Surprising Rebirth is beautifully produced. Each episode is a journey: an important question about the truth of Christianity is posed, then various expert witnesses are heard both for and against. Brierley holds to the “steel man” principle of hearing only the best forms of opposing arguments put by its brightest and best proponents. Then conclusions are drawn, gentle but strong, and always with the sense that “this matter deserves serious consideration.” The production quality echoes the quality of the content: everything is beautifully clear and the whole is adorned with original music inspired by the Baroque, Southern Blues, and, I jest not, the Spaghetti Western.
Justin Brierley has produced a remarkable work and recently finished his first season of thirty episodes. I have been freely and confidently sharing episodes with both Christian and non-Christian friends, knowing that the material is of the highest intellectual and aesthetic quality.
What should we make, finally, of Brierley’s idée fixe, that there seems to be a change in the air, that there is a new wave of serious interest in Christian belief among public intellectuals and opinion-shapers?
We must always take the long view. Movements come and go. The New Atheism has waned, and so will any surprising rebirth of interest. I have been encouraged and even energized by Brierley’s work. He has equipped us with fresh evidence of the Christian faith, with a vigorous recasting of old evidence, and a renewed confidence in the intellectual and logical rigor of Christianity. He has given us a fund of podcasts to share with others on their journey. But we must always remember that Jesus has conquered sin and the curse at its root—“It is finished!”—and that he made a promise: “I will build my church.” Truth is like the great granite monoliths standing sentinel in Greens Pool and other southern beaches of West Australia. Winds, waves, and tides may obscure these mighty monuments for a moment, but they are solid and immoveable and must reappear to sight before too long.
If waves of opposition and enthusiasm come and go, the truth of Christ’s death and resurrection remains untouched. Our greatest need, and our greatest gift to others, is every day to plant our feet upon that Rock, and there to stand.
This article is adapted from “The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God,” which was originally published at AP, the National Journal of the Presbyterian Church of Australia (PCA).
An old post of mine appeared in a recent Mid-Week Apologetics Booster over at Christian Worldview Blog, so I decided to re-post it below. I am still trying to adjust to the fact that I am not going to be ruled by the secular left for the next 4 years. It’s a happy surprise, but I need some time to adjust. This post was originally published in March 2016, but I added a new image.
I’m summarizing a recent episode of the Unbelievable show.
Details:
Atheist philosopher Michael Ruse joins Justin as we spend a second week looking at Andy Bannister’s new book ‘The atheist who didn’t exist’.
Its amusingly titled chapters include ‘The Peculiar Case of the Postmodern Penguin (or: Why Life without God is Meaningless). Michael and Andy debate whether it’s a problem that atheists can’t have meaning with a ‘capital M’.
Here is a summary of the discussion between Ruse and Bannister, and my comments below the summary.
Ruse: ultimate questions are serious questions, and some religions are attempting to provide serious answers to those questions
Ruse: there is a psychological element to belief in God but it’s not a complete explanation, but it can apply to non-belief as well
Bannister: there are psychological reasons why people would prefer unbelief (quotes Thomas Nagel and Aldous Huxley)
Bannister: (to Ruse) what do you think would follow next if you got new information that caused you to believe in God?
Ruse: I’d feel scared, I’d think of all the reasons that God would dislike me, rather than any reasons why God would save me
Bannister: according to the Bible, God is not so much interested in mere belief, but in active trust in him
Ruse: without being smug, I just completed 50 years as a college professor of philosophy, and I have a sense of worth from that
Ruse: if God turns up, and says that 50 years of being a professor is not good enough, well, I don’t know God, I’m sorry, I did my best
Brierley: Andy, explain to us this story of how a penguin explained to you how he invented a subjective meaning in life for himself?
Brierley: (reads the story)
Bannister: when it comes to reading a book, the real meaning is the meaning the author intended the book to have
Bannister: readers can inject their own meaning into the book that has nothing to do with it, but the author gives the real meaning
Bannister: meaning in life is like reading a book – you can make up your own meaning, but the author’s meaning is the real meaning
Brierley: (to Ruse) on atheism, is there any objective meaning?
Ruse: “obviously, someone like myself cannot have meaning with a capital M in that sense”
Ruse: the real question is and atheist can find a sense of self-worth, “I find that I’m happier within myself, I can find meaning”
Bannister: what would you say to someone who drinks away the family inheritance and gets the same sense of happiness you have?
Bannister: what would you say to all the people who are unable to get “a sense of self-worth” from their career, because of where they are born, sickness, etc.
Ruse: I have nothing to offer them, some people are born into such awful situations that they are bound to be bad people
Ruse: these unfair accidents of birth, etc., fits with atheism better
Ruse: what we should do is change society so that more people can build a sense of self-worth through achievements
Ruse: that way, they can say to God “I used my talents” so they can create feelings of self-worth and happiness (apart from God)
Bannister: meaning in life cannot be answered without answering questions related to identity, value, which are rooted in the overall worldview
Bannister: on the Christian worldview, you have an infinite worth, your value isn’t determined by circumstances, earnings, friends, etc.
Bannister: your value comes from what Jesus was willing to pay to save you, namely, giving his own life for you
Bannister: when I travel to meet other Christians in other parts of the world, they have a happiness that should not be there if they are getting happiness from wealth, fame, achievements, etc.
Bannister: but when you come to the West, many people who have wealth, fame, achievement, etc. are unhappy
Ruse: well maybe who look after a flock of sheep every day may get a sense of self-worth from that, or from other jobs
Ruse: I do take Christianity very seriously, it is a grown-up proposal to answer grown-up questions – it works if it is true
Ruse: we don’t have to follow Nietzche’s statement that if there is no God, there is no meaning in life – we can find a middle way, we can achieve meaning in life by using our talents to achieve things
Bannister: I disagree with Michael, I don’t think that the meaning you invent for yourself is authentic meaning
Bannister: distracting yourself with amusing things and happiness is not an answer to the problem
Brierley: (to Ruse) are you saying that you have searched for ultimate meaning, and you are settling for subjective meaning?
Ruse: my subjective meaning is not second class to objective meaning, “I feel a real deep sense of achievement, of meaning, of self-worth, of having used my talents properly, and I don’t feel in any sense a sense of regret” (what matters to him is how he feels)
Bannister: notice how Michael keeps bringing in value judgments. e.g. – “use my talents well”, that implies that there is a right way and a wrong to use your talents, which assumes an objective scale of right and wrong, which makes no sense in atheism
Bannister: an atheist can sit in a sun room and enjoy the feelings of happiness generated by the light and heat of the Sun, without asking whether there is a Sun out there
Bannister: ultimately, at the end of the day, my concern is not whether something makes me happy or makes me feel fulfilled
Bannister: ultimately, at the end of the day, I think there is only one real reason to wrestle with these questions of meaning, and that is to find truth
Ruse: sometimes we reach a point where we cannot get to true answers to some questions, sometimes we look for truth, but then give up and confess “I cannot find it” and then move on from there
Is it possible to dispense with God’s advice on your decision-making and achieve something that affects a lot of people, or makes people like you, or makes you famous, etc., and then have that please God? “Look, God, I did something I liked that affected a lot of people, and made them feel happy as they were on their way to Hell because they rejected you”. I think a lot of celebrities, athletes and musicians have feelings that they have achieved something, but having feelings of achievement because you entertain people doesn’t mean anything to God.
So what is the standard? How you imitate Jesus – self-control, self-denial and self-sacrifice to honor God – that is the standard. If I had to choose between giving up two hours of my life to summarize this discussion for my readers, and all the fame and fortune that people who make godless TV shows, movies and music have, I would choose to make this debate summary. My goal in life is not to have fun, thrills, travel and feel happy in this world. I have a Boss. Performing actions that respect the Boss is objectively meaningful. It’s may not seem like much compared to what James Bond does in million-dollar movies, but at least I am wearing the right uniform, and playing for the right team.
I’m starting to notice that a lot of younger Christians are more interested in feeling good, having fun, being liked by others than they are in being able to know what’s true or show what’s true. Christians are no exception to this problem of finding meaning in life. A lot of us are just taking in entertainment and trying hard not to think at all.
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Many atheists and skeptics pit faith and reason against each other as if a person who has faith does not use his reason and a person who uses his reason will not need faith. When the New Atheists were all the rage, they made a cottage industry out of pitting the two against each other.
Richard Dawkins, this generation’s most famous atheist, repeatedly made such assertions. Faith, he asserts, is “blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence” (The Selfish Gene, p. 212). Elsewhere he writes, “[F]aith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument” (The God Delusion, p. 308). In an article in The Humanist, he states, “Faith, being belief that isn’t based on evidence, is the principal vice of any religion” (“Is Science a Religion?”). In a 1992 speech, he said, “Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence” (From a speech at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, April 15, 1992). Finally, “[Faith] is a state of mind that leads people to believe something—it doesn’t matter what—in the total absence of supporting evidence. If there were good supporting evidence, then faith would be superfluous, for the evidence would compel us to believe it anyway” (The Selfish Gene, p. 330).
Dawkins is not alone. Sam Harris, another of the New Atheists, put it this way, “It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail” (Letter to a Christian Nation, p. 67). The late Christopher Hitchens, who among the New Atheists at least had the advantage of knowing how to write well, added his two cents, saying:
Faith is the surrender of the mind, it’s the surrender of reason, it’s the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other animals. It’s our need to believe and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me…. Out of all the virtues, all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.” (comments made on Penn and Teller television show)
Note that faith is contrasted with evidence, with reason, with the mind. The implication is clear. If you have a brain and know how to use it, you won’t surrender it to faith. All of this is rhetorically powerful, and it appeals to people who want to be considered rational and intelligent. No one wants to be thought a fool, or worse, to be a fool. So, is our only choice the choice between being reasonable and having faith?
No. There is another option, namely, not allowing others to define these terms for us.
If you look at the history of the church, especially during the medieval and Reformation era, you will notice that they speak of faith and reason in a way that is strikingly different from the way our contemporary neighbors speak of these concepts. Reason could be used to speak of a number of things. It could be used to refer to something that humans use: arguments, axioms, laws of logic, etc. It could also be used to refer to something that humans have: their rational faculty that enables them to use the laws of logic. It was thus used to distinguish between kinds of creatures. Angels and men are rational creatures. Trees and tortoises are not.
“Because faith involves assent, it requires the use of reason. A non-rational creature cannot have faith because it cannot give rational assent to testimony.”
These earlier Christian authors argued that rational human beings can have knowledge of things in different ways. I can know that the law of non-contradiction is true, for example, simply by virtue of knowing the meaning of the terms involved. It cannot not be true. One would have to assume it in any attempt to disprove it. It is a self-evident truth. Similarly, I can know that “2+2=4” simply by virtue of knowing the meaning of “2,” “4,” “+,” and “=”.
I can know other things by means of direct experience. I can know that my dog is in my house because I can see him there with my own two eyes. I can know other things by demonstration. I can know that Socrates is mortal if I know that all men are mortal and also know that Socrates is a man. My mind, then, can assent to the truth of a proposition because it is self-evident in itself, because of my own direct experience of it, or because it has been demonstrated to me.
But what about faith? Traditionally, understood, faith had to do with assent based upon testimony. I can use my rational faculties to assent to the truth of a proposition based upon my evaluation of someone else’s testimony to the truthfulness of that proposition. That is how earlier generations of Christians used the word “faith” or “belief.” Given this understanding of the word, is faith opposed to reason or to evidence? Certainly not. In fact, because faith involves assent, it requires the use of reason. A non-rational creature cannot have faith because it cannot give rational assent to testimony. Furthermore, evidence is involved because we have reasons for either accepting or rejecting the testimony of another.
“If we have good reasons for accepting the testimony of someone, it is perfectly rational to believe what he or she says or writes.”
Everybody, including atheists, has faith because everybody, including atheists, assents to the truth of many things based solely on testimony from others. We know the time and place of our birth because we assent to the testimony of our parents and/or the person(s) who filled out our birth certificate. We know what we know about historical people and events because we assent to the testimony of the historians who write the history books. We know what we know about parts of the world we haven’t directly experienced because we assent to the testimony of those who have lived in or visited those places. We know most of what we know about science because we assent to the testimony of the scientists who write the science textbooks. There’s not a scientist alive who has personally carried out and personally verified every scientific experiment ever done to confirm every theory and law that he knows is true. They and we know these things because we believe the testimony of the science textbooks we read or the science professors who told us these things.
If we have good reasons for accepting the testimony of someone, it is perfectly rational to believe what he or she says or writes. Dawkins and other atheists know a lot of things based on the testimony of others. In this, they are no different from any other human beings. They have faith too. There is no conflict between faith and reason. There is conflict about whether we have good reasons for accepting the testimony of the Prophets and Apostles.
This article was originally featured at Beautiful Christian Life on October 6, 2020. To read more content by Dr. Mathison, please visit keithmathison.org where this article was originally published.
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