Alister McGrath - from atheist scientist to Christian theologian // From The Archive

well Alistair thank you for joining me today many people will know you as the person behind the Dawkins delusion you've written many more books besides in fact I can hardly keep up with the number of books you seem to be able to write but many may not know your own background because you haven't always been a Christian in fact there was a period of your life when you were an atheist could you tell us about that yes yes I grew up in Northern Ireland back in the 1960s and I've lost my accent but you know it was a very very rough time there was real religious tension between Protestant and Catholic and also our studying Natural Sciences at school I wanted to go on and study Science University and I came to the conclusion look science says there's no God end of discussion and look at all this religious violence no religion no religious violence it's easy you go work it out and so I was an atheist when I was a younger man in fact I'll go further than that and so I was actually really a quite an aggressive atheist someone who thought that religion was for losers in fact I sometimes get a bit nostalgic when I read Richard Dawkins because I think you know I used to be like that so it's really quite sweet in the way but then everything changed and what happened was I went up to oxygen averse to study science in detail and I was forced to rethink everything I began to realize that you know the case for atheism wasn't as good as I thought and also Christianity a wasn't what I thought it was and be it turned out to be rather more exciting and interesting and I thought and so to cut a very long story short in my first term in university I said this is for me I want to be a Christian I think it was an intellectual conversion it was my mind suddenly saying this is right and as I've grown older I've discovered there's a lot more to Christianity than simply being right but actually that was what captivated me in those days and you know it still captivates me today many people might scratch their heads and wonder how could you as a biologist you know someone interested in science suddenly have this revelation which then led you to believe extraordinary things like a resurrection of a dead man something on the face of it quite unscientific well I think that's right I'd want to say that in many ways I think one of the scurries I made was that in the sciences there are many things that scientists believe but can't actually prove to be true naturally gave me permission to begin to think thoughts the lied thought were illicit like you know there might be a God there might be a deep meaning to life that the way the world is might reflect a deeper meaning beyond and so there's no way that kind of weight you know simply moving from science to Christianity involve me suddenly say oh the resurrection happened you know there's much more beginning to consider this in detail begin to realize you know this big picture makes an awful lot of sense so is gradually beginning to explore a different way of thinking if you'd like standing inside it looking out from inside and saying hey this works I'm beginning to realize this is something I could take very seriously indeed I think one of your theological heroes might be CS Lewis you quote him quite often and there's a particular phrase that I've seen crop up time and again in your writings which is where he talks about I believe in the Sun not because just because I see it but because by it I see everything else and that is a an analogy and so is that a sense in which the way Christianity appealed to you as as not just seeing it in itself but also seeing the whole world through its lens well that's right and obviously I've got a sort of affection for Lewis because like me he came from Belfast and actually like me he was an atheist to begin with then discovered faith although he discovered faith a lot later in life than I did but Lewis's quote I think is is very very good because he's saying look faith makes sense in itself but it makes sense of everything else as well and that's the way I feel about things and in many ways I keep quoting that bit of Lewis too to indicate the intellectual robustness and vitality of faith there's more to faith from that but for me that's what really matters and what about atheism then because atheism is the worldview that you're interacting most with it seems at the moment do is it as were by contrast a an illogical point of view or is it just as rational it's just they have other reasons which they would posit as being the reason they don't believe in God well I'd want to say her I would never dismiss atheists as irrational deluded when someone starts using that kind of language they've just lost the plot I can't imagine who you're referring to the point I'd want to make is that for me atheism makes rational sense if you think that we are limited to what human reason can prove to be true Christian faith is about being liberated from the prison-house of rational thought it says there is more to life than what reason can discover it's not irrational it goes beyond reason it's like leaping over a wall and discovering on the other side there is a beautiful landscape which you can't see from inside the prisoners it's difficult though isn't it because very often a Christian will want to help someone who is not a Christian to see it from their perspective but we're all essentially locked into our own perspective and so when you speak to an atheist how do you I don't know move them beyond what is their own worldview which is that reason is the only tool we have we can only we can't do this leap that you're talking about alistair beyond the bounds of reason and think that there's some I don't know transcendent realm we have no physical evidence for it I mean what do you say to them well I think what I want to say first of all to people who listen to me now is since I used to be an atheist myself you know I've been there I understand it I think I can say something helpful to people in that situation but I was talking to Nathan now here's the thing I'd want to say maybe we need to trust our intuitions as much as our reason this deep intuition so many people have that there must be more than what we see around us there's something deeper something more significant maybe just round the next corner over the next hill there's something there and we haven't found it yet that's a very good starting point for discussion because one of the big issues is going to be will reason take us there well reason tell us at two and two make four but that isn't going to get me excited in the mornings but supposing reason points hesitant Flint says there might be a god I know it's like but there might be one and there I will say actually I can go further than that not against reason but further than reason say there is a God a loving God going beyond reason but continuing the trajectory that reason has begun faith brings reason to fulfillment the problem is atheism simply says reason that's it no no reason starts the journey atheism stops faith says no we can go follow on that and when we go further we discover the most wonderful country one further stop along the line we do a show here on unbelievable that engaged with apologetics a lot the defense of the Christian faith I often think that's as much to challenge a non-christian as much as it is to in a sense help Christians to make sense of the the beliefs they have in a way I mean part of that is in a sense doubt I think every Christian experiences doubt about just literally the existence of God or maybe about certain doctrines within Christianity I'm guessing you've probably experienced moments of doubt in your life how have you dealt with those and what advice would you give to someone whose experience look out right and certainly I think as a young Christian I did experience well I call quite severe moments of Dart how can I prove this what's the reason for this and sometimes we'll make a distinction between cognitive dad I'm not sure that's true an existential dad what's the point of it all and I've been down both those roads I think I want to say to people is this number one if we get worried about dad's very office because we haven't actually explored our faith properly apologetics is basically about realizing there are profoundly good reasons for faith we need to know what those are because it's good for us to know what the foundations of faith are what its ramifications are that's part of our discipleship of the mind which is a normal part of the Christian life and of course you can see where I'm going from here if you sort these things out for yourself when your friends start saying to you hey it's faith a delusion hey you Krista say about this you can say I'm so glad you've asked that question let me tell you it's good for you but it's good for your witness as well ultimately is is it a sort of an intellectual argument though because I think lots of us feel that we're kind of cornered as it were by what the secularists and the if you like the rationalist tell us you know that you have to have a certain type of evidence and it has to match these criteria for me to take your beliefs seriously the vast majority of Christians haven't done that don't have that background and perhaps it would be impossible to produce evidence of the kind that they're asking for when it comes to justifying our beliefs what is the answer to those who are if you like so skeptical as to one feels well could anything I tell them or any miracle I could even show them actually convince them that their senses aren't just deceiving them or something well I'm a very rational person and so for me it's just very natural to engage in rational argument but you know it's not the only form of argument and I go further and say it's not even the best you think of Jesus meeting the disciples by the shores of Lake Galilee did he say follow me for the following six very good rational reasons no you just said follow me there is something intrinsically compelling about the person of Christ every Christian can tell the story of how they met Christ or Christ has given a new direction to their life telling that story in our postmodern age is a wonderful way of witness it's also a wonderful way of saying this is not just true this is real because in our culture these days the big question people are asking is not so much is this true but simply will this work and you know anyone who's got a living faith can say it certainly works for me let me tell you how I discovered it and how it makes sense of things let me encourage people to feel empowered there are lots of ways of bearing witness to your faith rational arguments one of them maybe that's where the new atheism is because it's so rationalist but most ordinary people aren't there at all they know reason has its limits they're looking for something that's going to change their lives all of us can tell of how the gospel gives our election our lives direction purpose and excitement well thank you very much and I hope you continue to tell your story as well as to make sense of the world around you through it and thank you for being with me today alistair justin our pleasure you

Channel: Unbelievable?

Views: 120,009

Rating: 4.8542361 out of 5

Keywords: unbelievable, justin brierley, premier christian radio, christianity, atheism, philosophy, faith, theology, Alister McGrath, conversion, testimony, science, dawkins

Id: Hp6SuVaxuJ0

Length: 11min 35sec (695 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 29 2018