Derren Brown & Rev Richard Coles • Can we have meaning without God?

for updates bonus content and exclusive debate clips from the series sign up at the big conversation dot show welcome to the big conversation here on unbelievable with me Justin Braley the big conversation is a series of shows exploring faiths science philosophy and what it means to be human in association with the templeton religion trust today our conversation topic is the pursuit of happiness can we have meaning without God and the big conversation partners I'm sitting down with today are Darren brown and the Reverend Richard Coles Darren brown is an illusionist and Mentalist famous for his TV and stage shows he's also an author of books such as tricks of the mind which both reveal his love of stage craft and psychology but also tell the story of how he lost his faith in Christianity as a young adult his latest book happy why more or less everything is absolutely fine brings the wisdom of Greek stoic philosophy to bear on how to lead a Content fulfilled and meaningful life well the Reverend Richard Cole's is a priest in the Church of England and a well known media figure on radio and TV presenting radio for Saturday live and star turns in programs such as Strictly Come Dancing he's also had a highly successful and often wild pop career in the past as part of the communities and he he's also told his story of his Christian conversion in books such as fathomless riches and bringing in the sheaves both of which feature him on the cover with his beloved dashan's so welcome along to the program Darren and Richard great to have you here hello it's nice to have you and I know you two gentlemen do know each other a little bit yeah so it's not the first time you've spoken together and it said I was a guest on your radio show and I guess breakfast and you became over some really terrible scrambled eggs they were really hard I do them in a band Marie which was very excited about I just they they just kept people completely completely dazzle me with your babari work I thought that was the fist occasionally yeah well in any case flurry there's no breakfast items on this occasion but it's good to have you both here for this conversation which I'm not sure either of you have really had in this kind of in varam and talking about faith and your different worldviews and and the search for meaning and anyway it's it was really great that you were both available because you've got stories that in some ways are the the mirror of each other perhaps we could start with you Darren and just remind us of the fact that you were actually at one time a Christian yes when you were a young man a younger man I should say and young girl what kind of drew you towards Christianity to begin with I was six I think and I had a teacher at school that I really like called mrs. Whitaker and she asked me if I wanted to come to her Crusaders classes and I didn't have any religious friends my family weren't at all religious but I was six and I liked the teacher and I kind of assuming everybody does that everybody goes to Crusader classes so I went and by the time I was old enough to realize honor this is this is a sort of a belief now that I have this is a thing that's not everybody has and it was a bit too sort of late it was only when I say late but it was you know I believed it and that was that and it was certainly too late to rethink it from any kind of other viewpoints so I just sort of found myself in it and then I went a various churches still didn't really have any Christian friends particularly and then at university so sometime later I got into hypnosis and close-up magic and the sort of career that I'm now in and it started to drive a bit of a wedge between me and the Christians that I knew I was surprised at their reactions I could sort of understand it but I thought well I'm all I'm doing I'm fascinated by the mind and zoomy the mind is the pinnacle of God's creation if that's the story that you have so I couldn't quite understand the sort of immediate suspicion and hostility yeah at the same time I the other thing that magic tends to sort of teachers are skepticism towards things like psychic abilities and tarot cards and all that and I was going to churches where there's a huge amount again of a sort of fear of that sort of New Age thing that was creeping in lots of talks that the demons and so on but because I could see how they work just as a sort of psychological trick again it's a little sort of question mark went up I had a good friend who was a psychic Helium he had endless talks about how that was just a bit of a circular belief system that she was caught in and gradually I just started to think what I'm sure I'm just doing the same but I'm doing the same with something that's far more institutionalized and right harder to sort of poke fun at culturally acceptable exactly yes something like you know psychic ability so I went through appeared at university of really trying to question it and trying to one pick it I hope that if I I what I did know for sure was that me sitting in a pub and telling my friends why God must exist and why Christianity must be true with all the certainty of a 20 year old student I knew that must be nonsense because it's a question that has puzzled people for so yeah so I need to undo some of that certainty and maybe if I'm less certain that be an honesty in that and maybe from that I'll build a more rigorous faith but that second bit didn't happen it just sort of sort of fell apart as I understand it you did sort of try and see if there were some sort of objective evidences you you did look into sort of the case for the resurrection of things I never quite came together no so at the time I sort of feeling was well there are I sort of had this thing in my head which I think it's not uncommon that if the resurrection didn't happen it all falls apart and if it did it's all real you know I think perhaps perhaps they're rich ways of approaching it than that but at the time that was a sort of a binary thing so when I realized that it couldn't despite being told again and again as a Christian that there's you know ample evidence for it and realizing in the end all that sort of isn't that's not really what it's about I yeah that sort of I sort of had in order to be honest with myself I just had to to let it go you let it go did you adopt another label like atheist or anything like that is that a bad sure you're happy to where in a sense strange that you collect stem do you want a philatelist right nonstampcollector yes exactly it's an accurate label but if I would suggest that was a in itself some had some sort of agenda to it on your part or meant anything you might grow a bit tired of it you might want to put your hand up as it just doesn't mean anything that's defining something in terms of what it is in it so I suppose I am in the sense I don't believe in God but I don't for a second maybe maybe at first I think if you come from a position of strong belief your natural swing is going to be to a sort of a strong disbelief and a bit of a kind of you know sort of gathering yourself psychologically so for a while I think I really enjoyed that I enjoyed the kind of the the the attack on what I'd held to be true for a short while mmm now I think that's sort of irrelevant and kind of misses and misses the point so no I don't happen to believe but that that's sort of it that doesn't carry with it any any agenda beyond that okay and it's interesting though that it was something obviously was important too but once you let it go you found that it didn't particularly impact your life in terms of you know some existential crisis or something no there was no crisis I am apart from the bubbles in my throat that occasionally appear I had one moment waking up feeling down and had that moment again oh I don't have that sort of objective yardstick anymore of somebody going a little voice going doesn't matter if you feel down you are you are loved objectively and irrespective of how you feel at a moment of Oh so it's a it's sort of up to me now to make my sort of psychological robustness is going to be up up to me and I remember that moment and I sort of thought that's actually quite a good thing that's quite liberating and that was it that was the only moment I remember of of a sort of hiccup and it was a sort of a good one I mean obviously you're now well known for your TV and stage shows and people enjoy the entertainment and everything else but you often do weave in a sort of a critique of superstition or religion generally yeah so in a sense do you do you sort feel that you you have a duty to kind of critique those sorts of ways of thinking from the standpoint you now have I don't know if I have a duty but I I magic of any sort and what I do is sort of rooted in in magic is a very childish pursuit you are it's the quickest route to impressing people as a fraudulent route to impressing people say you'd do it if you don't feel very confident or impressive as a kid and that's most people two routes into it if that remains your agenda then like most magicians I think you become a figure of thumb after a while so and it misses the actually the interesting and really rich stuff about magic which isn't really how you're doing the tricks it's the fact that we tell ourselves stories and that we get caught up in a story that we are being told and and all those things that an audience member does magic doesn't exist unless it happens in the mind of the spectator watching it unlike a play that can go over your head doesn't mean that plays fail but if you don't follow up a trick you know it certainly failed so I I what I've tried to do is hold on to what's interesting I find interesting about magic and bring that to an audience so because of that those areas of belief and belief systems and charlatans and confidence tricksters know that it very naturally falls into a kind of a world of going let's let's look at these sure and I don't think that debunking for its own sake is that interesting because it's a negative thing and ultimately it just sort of it strikes the wrong note to what I've tended to do is recreate things like a large how I recreated fate of a miracle healing so I find that I find that by doing something and if you do it yourself you can you can recreate the entertainment value which is important otherwise if you're just going no no no this is things nonsense then you're not hitting that note of right sort of emotion that the charlatans do have so you're losing that so that that's the closest and I do do a lot of that sort of thing and I suppose the feeling is - if you present people with the information at least they can see or this can be done without recourse at that explanation then that's that feels like a valuable a valuable thing thank you very much for joining me thank you your story and and this can we have meaning without God and to join us in this conversation day is the Reverend Richard Cole's Richard thank you for coming the your story in some ways as I say is quite different to Darren's in as much as you you went through a period of great Fame and success as a pop idol in your generation but in the communities you know you you you did have this extraordinary journey Oh quite a wild journey as you relate even in the books that you've written as well tell us sort of first of all what that life was like what was going on for you at that time and how you eventually actually came to faith well I don't really remember that much about it which I supposed to tell something about equality the experience and I thought I had this feeling inside bought a speedboat in Ibiza and apparently I did I checked this is somebody recently I did buy a speedboat in a visa which is rusting in some neglected and Lagoon at the moment maybe being used in drug running or something so it was all the things of you know sex and drugs and rock and roll on that kind of thing on sex and drugs and 80's synthpop and gender politics and all that at a particularly kind of exciting and dynamic time identity politics that was all sort of churning up when I had this period of great success which coincided with the best of times of the worst times because of who I was and when I wasn't where I was HIV and AIDS came along at the very sort of height of our success and we were completely out as a gay band and so the catastrophe of AIDS hits my circle of friends and that created more turbulence and it was kind of in that turbulence that I started getting I was a chorister when I was a kid so I grew up in the Anglican choral tradition loved the music adored the dressing up scratched and clawed my way to be head chorister and loved that too but was certain that it was a fairy tale and that nobody was their wits about them could seriously believe the stuff although I think I was impressed by people who did seem to seriously believe that stung and did so with some integrity and honesty and that sort of took up residence somewhere within but I do remember when I was young in spite of that feeling that churches chapels holy places sacred places were distinctive and you could take stuff there that somehow belonged there and belong nowhere else or not in the same way and then after that period of turbulence in my late twenties that's what I sort of I wanted to return to that - I think it was partly also this is very common I think for gay men of my age a desire to connect with a childhood that had felt rather abandoned and left behind because you needed to you know if discovering you a gay in Kettering in 1977 was not something that suggested a life rich in opportunity lay ahead so I wanted to reconnect to my past right and and this all sort of came together and then it was a sort of curiosity and then it became an appetite and then it was a hunger and I remember very reluctantly going to church at the suggestion of a friend and I mean I went into it as a sort of skeptical critical spectator and came out a participant and I had a moment of conversion in there which was decisive and powerful in retrospect of course things have been coming on forever but at the moment it did he really did feel like this utterly decisive and fundamental profound change and and and and I've not looked back as it were right it's obviously led you eventually to the path to ordination and and the ministry you have now as well as obviously your your career in the media and and and all that goes with it but did you did you sort of at some level find something that you had been looking for during your sort of days as a pop star and the life well I think preach you sort of pop so if you look at a video of me in the nineteen eighties it's obviously a vicar struggling to get out so don't think it really I remember I announced it to people you'll never guess what I'm doing now oh yeah right not such a surprise and I ran into my former school chaplain who I'd given hell to when I was at school and said well you won't believe this but and he said of course you are so I think and I think that they knew there was a sort of looking for something and a response to a certain kind of song if you like of liberation and inquiry that when I kind of tuned in to that particular frequency and tuned into that particular temperament I kind of recognized it it was not quite deja vu it was more than Taoiseach it was a sense in here was something that had been there all the time and I've just my circuits weren't firing and then all of a sudden they were it's it's great to have you tell that story and in a way that the search for meaning is obviously the topic that we're going to be talking about during the rest of today's program really it's like catnip I mean the book the book you've written is called happy yeah Darrin is is there a difference there between happiness and sort of meaning would you say or are they adding sound I think meaning Trump's happiness ultimately the book I wrote I sort of I was very interested in the Stoics and still am and spent about three years writing that book on on when I was on tour main landings shows in the evening was it lovely sort of rhythm to that and I think and stoicism is was the predominant school of philosophy for five hundred years before Christianity sort of took over really to the extent that it sort of had to win over the Stoics and lot of stoic ideas like being a dutiful citizen and so on can be traced up through Christianity now so I think it's still sort of sits perfectly well with it obviously it's a secular school of thought but it's no but I think mono means a sort of a clash and at the end of writing the book I sort of also realized what it was missing there was a big sort of gap and I'm sort of beginning to get my head around what an export would be to sort of continue that that thought into another era and I think the gap I think the bits that's missing is where religion sits very well I think it's a very nice compliment to it so stoicism is very much about sort of a personal robustness yes and it's great I mean it's a it's a very it's a phenomenal recipe for avoiding this anxiety and avoiding those feeling of disturbance which is how they saw happiness back in this is sort of a sort of a tranquility it's about only controlling what you're in control of which your thoughts and your actions and deciding that everything else what other people do what they think and so on is fine it's absolutely fine as it is not only is it fine but it's it's absolutely the best way things should be so you move in a much easier accordance with fate as they used to call it as opposed to nowadays we're told you know set your goals and believe in yourself and make everything exactly how you'd like it to be which of course creates a lot of anxiety and that was the reason for writing the book and I think that's a hugely valuable thing something we need to rediscover today I I think it is what it misses is things like what it's a quite a self-centered thing and it isn't really because when you look at the Stoics they were very interested in as I said being a good citizen and it's you do all that in order to give out but they don't really have a lot to say about things like kindness and community and and also the value of anxiety I think that's the big thing that's missing I think the value of disturbance the value of you know you only move forward you only you only find meaning you only your life only gets larger it moves fear if you pay attention to what makes you anxious I mean stoicism isn't the same thing though necessaries being sort of emotionless I think a lot of people think of it as a yeah it is it's got a bit of a back yeah exactly it's a bit of a bit of a bad rap like epicureanism has nothing to do with really what Epicurus was was saying either no it's it really is about differentiating and this is this really reducing it but first of all realizing the things your problems are not really created by events in the world they're created by the story you tell yourself about those events that's first of all I mean it sort of a bit glib to us because we've heard it but actually it's a really it's a big thought and the other big thought is there are those things you're in control of and the things you're not and so there's a certain amount of detachment I guess from things like wealth and all those kind of you know the things that things like that super Buddhists would say you would detach yourself from but they're not seen as bad they're sort of seen as sort of indifferent and they're not bad things to have but certainly not at the expense of this kind of robust virtually and even death ultimately there's a sort of a stoic attitude towards death as sort of not seeing it as something to be feared but as just well you you won't be here anymore and that's yeah well that was it was certainly a time and a lot of those things were being discussed and there were lots of some slightly unconvincing arguments as to why we shouldn't fear death like you're not going to be there when it happens well okay that's true or the idea that well you've already you know you've already been there you've already been in this sort of abyss of nothingness before you were born and that was fine so it'll be fine again and they're kind of interesting sort of thought experiments to go through and realize why they don't quite hold up right but they don't quite solve the I think was that actually it's I think well I think the thing that's that is missing and one of the reasons why death is frightening is much more to do with the lack of myth and meaning associated with it now which again is where something that religion would step in a lot more comfortably I love the stoic virtues I would sort of seek to cultivate them in myself multi little things that they are in me but because I think as a way of influencing your personal conduct how you make it through much to be admired in there yes and also much too I think one of the great things about death is that you'll never have to fill in a form again which is for the thing but I think what's different about it well one of the things that's divet about that strikes me is that it seeks to realize meaning and value and how we consider ourselves to how we conduct ourselves through reference to our own resources and thought action whereas I think what Christianity does and other religions do is suggest that there's an axis beyond ourselves the transcendent reality beyond ourselves in which we're implicated but has a bearing on all those things and because of that can make things which seem counterintuitive or contrary to our own benefit all goodness valuable suffering I suppose Stoics except suffering I think and do suffering but I think sometimes in Christianity that's given a positive evaluation to it as a means of transformation as a means of living a new life which exists because of the death of God on the cross and that's all the some some it's available to us to live in anticipation of that in this life and I think that changes that's one of the difference between between Athens and Jerusalem yes well I certainly agree and I was Aeschylus the probably the first great tragedy tragedian said that it's only from suffering comes wisdom I was or was of that effect which again I think the Stoics I think they sort of lack that thought and I think as we become psychologically sort of more aware as we certainly have you know recent years generally I think with that dialogue the dialogue with the self becomes you know that being aware of your own growth and moving forward and whether things in life make you smaller or larger for example you know whether whether that's this is this is this is the stuff of meaning and I I am I think it's tremendously important I think the role of suffering the fact that we that we used we used to say that if people were sort of at the bottom end of things they were unfortunates nowadays they can be called losers and the big difference is the idea of fortune that there is something life events that throw back at us and over and over again one of the things I was sort of found as I was researching for the the book that I wrote is this idea of of an x equals y line so one axis you haven't your aims your desires mmm-hmm at the only other actors of stuff that life throws back you and actually what life is and living well and flourishing seems to be about navigating an x equals y diagonal Freud when he you know created psychotherapy wasn't doing it to make people happy was doing it to restore what he called a natural unhappiness that life is basically sort of unhappy but you don't be unnaturally unhappy yeah there was a natural unhappiness Schopenhauer talks about you know when you start off a a game of chess you might have a apply you can't stick to that plan throughout the whole game that doesn't doesn't make any sense Joseph Conrad talks about climbing a you can spend your life climbing a ladder and get to the top and realize you had it against the wrong wall there's and even some of the work on unhappiness as a sociologist got Michael Csikszentmihalyi had this did this project on flow as he called it time and time again when people are in their best state they report whether it's chess or surfing on anything they report a sort of a balance between what you're trying to achieve the skills you have and the challenges that you face and when those things match up so if you have if your challenges are too much you become anxious if the skills are too much you become bored again and again this sort of feeling resonates that actually there's something in there x equals y line but to do that we have to re capture and rasmus respect again the idea of fortune but we don't we don't read the tragedy so we don't we sort of we've lost that and but we believe instead that you can just crank everything you know to your own desires we had to do a thing recently as the diocese didn't think we had to do a sort of strapline for our church hmm so at first I said preaching the gospel and celebrating the sacraments anyway nobody know you do that we need something that's kind of money so the end I came up with the church welcoming losers since naught but it do you think there is some serious you should have you should have made them take it well they didn't like the word losers unfortunately which is bad because you think if anyone should be kind of okay with the notion of losers it should be the church really it's in yeah I mean I think that's a very fundamental also one of the points where we have a real purchase in a world which so hugely values success prestige all that kind of thing wealth stuff that comes with that self realization is kind of the center of the Christian gospel is this notion that you have to face that step away from that says the vicar on strictly in order for something else to begin to be born anything yeah I mean that's very that's a very counterintuitive course what what what about the question that we began with which is can we have meaning without God I mean I'm guessing you're not gonna say no you absolutely can't have any kind of meaning without god I think India well no I remember of course you can have people that I've always sort of struck by how many people I mean Oh most of my friends are not believers in fact they would describe themselves as a philatelists I think often quasi philatelist or something all but they're not committed they're not people if they and I don't see anything in them which suggests to me that they live lifes of impoverished personal morality on the contrary I think not so they live their lives very much with a view to living decently I think there's a certain kind of life that you live that's consonant with Christian tradition and teaching and doctrine that's different and distinctive and as in my own life I think it introduces a richness to it to which wasn't which wasn't there before but the other interesting thing is of course most of my friends grew up as I grew up in Britain in the late 20th century and whether we like it or not that's a place a time and a culture that is hugely influenced by Christianity because christened and prevailed for so long our institutions were shaped by it and by extension what we think what we say what we do what's important to us is hugely shaped by the distinctiveness of Christianity and it takes a long time I think before you can consider yourself no longer shaped or influenced behind that I remember if I said a friend of mine he's a really good guy now a member sainty was having an awkward - the days when they used to argue such things and he said no I can live a decent moral life without any recourse to Christian tradition at all I said okay sum up your beliefs they're in exactly that way without having anything to show he said exactly do unto others as you would have a booty except except though I mean it's been said but if you if you were to look through any biblical content on width then you sort of moral message some of which clearly is going to be abhorrent to us nowadays the the the bits that you discard because they're sort of of their time or whatever and then you say which I think perfectly valid not pay attention to those bits and pay attention to these bits because they're more useful now but it the criteria that you use to separate those two has to there there's to be something outside yeah the religious teaching because that's the very thing that has to be its that which does suggest that ultimately our kind of moral sense lies outside of that otherwise how would you be able to look through the Bible and go well that's that's not relevant and that is well I wouldn't make a distinction of relevance really I mean I wouldn't edit the Bible in terms of its kind of immediate utility to me and how that it calls with my sense of myself in the world now Marcion did that in the second century one of our most prominent early heretics in fact because I think we need to have I think that the religious tradition needs to preserve something distinctive and enduring against which you measure precisely your own objective experience the extent to which you do that and how far you find that challenges your sense of where authority might lie is an interesting question but it's not I mean I wouldn't edit the Bible to suit the sensibility of someone who was born in the late 20th century in somewhere like Britain because it needs to be something that's bigger than that I think it needs to be a narrative which involves more than that yeah and a narrative which holds you to account yeah in ways that can sometimes be extremely uncomfortable the most persuasive thing about Christianity for me is not the niceness it's the nastiness it's the toughness if they're taking you to places you don't want to go it's the echo it sends back which makes you feel bad it's the realization of the very very narrow limits of your own competence and fitness and ability that kind of thing that's the stuff which we ultimately becomes persuasive I think yes and that's also where this sort of we're where we have to search for meaning isn't it it's on the the edges of yeah but when we when we infants we scream and the world provides you know our mother or caregiver comes and gives us what we want and part of growing up is realizing that that doesn't happen and can't happen part of a mother's job is to sort of you know let go and let us be disillusioned so we you know we grow up and tolerating then ambiguity and ambivalence and uncertainty and all those things become part of growing up and I think any sort of mature spirituality or belief or sense of connection with anything transcendent which i think is vital that we all find in some sense not in an overtly spiritual sense but just that connection with transcendence I think is what we both agree is when you say transcendence though and what's what sense do you mean it because when I think of transcendent I think of something that transcends you know the physical act the physicality of our world and sort of if all that really ultimately exists let's say is matter in motion and physical forces when we have a transcendent experiences it's almost something that takes us beyond that and says there's there's something more than this but and I think we're all looking for the transcendent that seems to be a universal search across human culture for you though Darren presumably you don't feel that that needs to find its end in in God or or or something beyond the physical world that that we do find ourselves in whereas I presume for for Richard it does I'm sure I'm sure we'd probably connect greatly on it I think the problem is maybe the word God the problem is the problem is any noun I think we I think what happens is we've actually live in a world of messy active verbs things are happening and but and they're they're they are complex so they are ambivalent and they're it's but to navigate all of that this sort of infinite data source we have to reduce and tell ourselves stories and make up clear narratives is there any way we can move forward and when you do that and you take like happiness for examples you know happiness is suddenly a word and all of us and it's a noun and actually the reality is it it isn't it's much more about searching for meaning it's much more about this and now all of it reverbs so I think the problem is maybe that words like the soul and words like God and so on can get on the one hand sentimentalized by the kind of New Age thinking that also becomes dogma ties into rigid by some religious thinking I suppose my feeling towards it is that at some point the at some point in history these ideas where they're connected around a purse or whatever made a society into a community whatever bonded them together had a certain sort of energy - that was a better word there was a it was a there was a feeling and a knowledge and a thing that did give you that yeah feeling of transcendence and then as time goes on the you know that becomes it sort of moves out of living memories so you know you the group tries to maintain that by certain practices and certain things that will recreate that people like transcendence and then gradually that turns into an experience of sort of a belief which is quite different from what it originally was belief and images and dogma and signs and things that are pointing back but they're not the thing itself and then that is part of them what becomes sort of institutionalized and what becomes sort of defended and sort of becomes the modern image of that religion but it's some and you could even argue is a sort of idolatry because it's the the images that become paramount was actually it's the thing back there that was most important and so I just have finished but the the I think of the problem with lot of modern atheism is that it's very easy to knock down those things at this end to knock down some of those sort of claims or is actually what it's missing is if you go back to what it's trying to articulate that is something that's valid but the problem is even that they say the word God when Nietzsche said God is dead there was he was sort of making that point that it's by giving it that name it's sort of that the stuff of it the energy is sort of in two contained it's a summary of church history in fact which was always kind of conforms that I think this extraordinary transforming experience that the people around Jesus of Nazareth had but of course we don't know about that I mean the first writings in the New Testament is you know appalled and that's coming along quite some time after the events they describes the first gospel the earliest is probably around 75 a generation after the events they described because I think the first followers of Jesus thought it would be consistent with the messianic teaching of that period at the end of time was going to come within their life yeah they would see it and then of course they start trying a new so we better write this down by the time they're writing it down it's not reportage it's not an account of what happened it's a theological treatise they're already bringing to bear deep reflection on what those events might mean in a context of suddenly changing becoming larger and then you get Paul comes along and there are all sorts of again hugely reductive way of describing it gross generalization - but Paul I think represents the bringing together of the power of Greek thought and the power of Jewish monotheism and those two things come together and that's like an explosion and you still get that now reading Paul now this kind of extraordinary explosive force that remained in a sense such a potent thing though 2,000 years later two reasons I think one because the tradition has been curated so carefully preserved so carefully but partly also because I think people continue to encounter something in that that is absolutely vital and dynamic and now that experience of encountering the reality of the risen Christ as Paul had on the road to Damascus it's something we still continues to happen to people and is persuasive in a way I mean I would never have been persuaded by a sermon or by Christian doctrine as if I was ever gonna read it even by the Narnia books but that experience of an encounter with the reality of the resurrected Christ was life-changing is life-changing and I still continue to live in the kind of not quite the afterburn of that but the changed reality in your experience in that and I think that's something you encounter lots of religious traditions what do you think is going on though from your perspective Darren with Richards encounter that he says he had because presumably you don't believe there was an encounter where there is in Christ that Suzumiya something psychological or something that can be reduced ultimate matters I don't I don't I don't think it matters usually I don't think I think what matters is that it happened I think you know various school you know various people might go I think it was predominantly this experience or this or that or had roots in this psychological thing whatever I didn't that's interesting I think the I think the I think what's interesting is there is the richness and the the truth if you like of something that makes us connect with that thing that is outside of ourselves and I don't I don't I can't put a name on that I'll call it god I don't think it's I don't think it is a thing I think the trouble is is finding finding the very words right but it's an experience a sort of a and I sort of turn it back in on itself I think it's to do for me with a kind of how you live in a way that is coming to the edge of all the things you sort of comfortably accept I think that would also include a lot of religious teaching as well coming to the edge of those things and in that kind of way yin meets yang kind of is where you were that sort of dialogue with your with yourself and where the sort of individual meets the sort of the the infinite is is where is where meaning happens I just I resist the idea of you know sort of giving it a giving it a name I think it is a psychological experience but I think it's the most important and valuable one that we're that we have you sound fascinating Lee though not very like an atheist at this point because because you're talking about something that is beyond yourself that is in a sense the most important thing that there is well beyond myself but also entirely myself and although myself sensing that with means beyond your cognition Oh your unconscious it's not I mean I completely agree with you on that the my experience of the encounter with the resurrected Christ is like my experience with KFC it's just something that's there I mean it might perceive that with the the sense that are made available in order to do that but it's the it's the richness of that experience and the power of it I think can I talk about death because that is the the place you end the book talking about the fact that you know across time in a sense death has always been as its put by simple the last enemy and so on and and in a sense the story is obviously about God becoming incarnate and experiencing death but overcoming death ultimately in the resurrection is that for you an important thing in terms of where we get our meaning it a lot of people would say that that it's important to know that death is not the end that somehow our life has a purpose that goes beyond a short span of years yeah I mean lots of religions would argue the same thing that this is not all there is and there is something beyond our our physical death Christianity cause does it in a very particular way and I think one of the reasons why it was so explosive for those who were witnesses to the events of Easter is because it was a total abject failure then what happened was an absolute catastrophe everything went hideously wrong and the person upon whom all that you know had lain there expectation however we understand that to be ended up getting crucified and dying and it was spectacularly GAMEOVER everyone kind of scatters and runs off into the unknowability of history and then all of a sudden a dead man you see is alive again that's the kind of irreducible I would say fact at the heart of Christianity unlikely but then of course it would be wouldn't it and I think one of the in a post enlightenment world when a scientific I'll sort of Wayne what we consider to be reliable authority of evidence is about a method which deduces patterns and from that begins to make judgments about what's reliable what happens we're talking about a singularity and if christianity is right and that god did become human well he had to become a human in our place in our time so this unlikely completely significant dusty corner of the roman empire it could have been everywhere but it wasn't it was there and so the unlikelihood is absolutely built into that so the fact that it is extremely unlikely the fact that it does not accord with the kind of instruments that we'd bring to making judgments about the veracity of something now is for me actually again part of its persuasiveness rather than it's on persuasiveness I mean you obviously weren't persuaded when you looked into the resurrection and I don't know whether in all honesty what you've described Richard is it in as any sensor you know you're looking at the historical facts and making a deduction from I think obviously you've had an experience which is yeah which you see in the light of that experience that people claimed that then as well but for you the is the resurrection in that sense a a sort of an important thing in which we find that meaning that allows us to to hope to have purpose to have I suppose for many people who don't have any kind of opportunity as the three of us have to lead meaningful lives in you know a westernized country with all the opportunities that affords it the idea of a day of judgment and justice in in a in a world to come is the only hope they may have of meaning eventually well to just say that it is for me lots of people seem to manage their lives live their lives quite successfully and hopefully without having that but it but it is for me in a way which is kind of unlike anything else I think and lots of people unknown I'm not alone lots of people would share that experience and one of the kind of odd things about that is when you kind of read people come across people who've had that experience and different either in different moments in history or in different places there's often a sort of consonant about the continents about there that's kind of interesting I think what do you make of people who do find their their meaning in that particular way of seeing and the resurrection in particular I sort of don't really consider it my business person as much as we're talking about it I think it's I think all that sort of I think the only thing that's in a sort of value judgment anywhere in the mix is that there'd be a difference between sort of taking on board a religious belief because it's sort of comfortable and as I've heard from friends and mine similar he said I don't have to think about that there's kind of a nice you don't have to think you spend the rest of your life sweating and thinking of other things and that is just nice and comfy which of course is fine too again none of my business if that is what someone wants to do and a sort of religious belief in which a person can grow again spiritually you know you know wider sense of the word and confront those you know the edges and the doubts and the things that make us bigger and grow larger there's Rilke has a poem about and they come home exactly but he there wasn't even a perm no it was one of his letters the idea of living in a large room or a small room some people live in a larger room some people live in a small room some people just pace up and down by the window so I saw those thinkers that of me I'm probably in that bit but I though it's hard for me cuz I'm quite introverted and a little bit shy and I kind of I have to really summon up something to do things that I know will actually make life larger rather than just comfortable and smaller and avoid stress which is what a good stoic I think that's the thing that's important and I think that's that's and if it's just the sort of religious belief that's sort of one of comfort which again is fine and none of my business but then it's not much different from any number of other sort of uncomfortable things which ultimately don't really feed the soul to userland soul and that's I think that's that's sort of the difference to me I don't think it really matters too much where you find it it's just the quality of it where is it and is it giving you a sort of energized connection to some sort of other and I'm using words like that which sounds like I'm talking about God I'm talking that a purely psychological relationship with with your self and with the idea of the transcendence I'm not I know I remember when I was I was a Christian listening to a thesis that remotely used that kind of language and going I want his obviously yeah you know you can tell there's a lot to take home and you can tell yeah he believes in all that it's I'm talking from trying to articulate a kind of a psychological right relationship to meaning but but ultimately if you find your meaning in religious expression or in the resurrection whatever it might be that that is great if it works for you giving you that that sense of meaning but other people can find just the same meaning in a sense in in the activities they piss your the family life or whatever it might be that gives them that sense of comfort sort of want to find the thing that's bigger than you you know and and find the thing you love and you can throw yourself into that thing that's sort of ultimately how if I'm meaning and then from that in terms of how it makes you grow then I think it depends on your relationship with that I was kind of different about Christianity for me is it's not comforting or consoling yes can be but actually much more than that is that is its challenge I think and it's what it returns to you is so not we think you're gonna get I guess this is something that happens in prayer an awful lot I spent two years in a monastery kind of praying in a very organized sort of way I'm fascinated by that and what often struck me about that was the returns of it are just not what I thought they would be and not in any and and I sometimes think people think that spirituality I'm again a gross generalization I don't mean you by the way think of it as sort of accomplishment things you master that in order to achieve a kind of greatest serenity or something like that and I don't think that's what Christianity is at all actually it should be uncomfortable shouldn't all this thing should be ultimately uncomfortable and and challenging was being in church on Good Friday and there was a particularly gory crucifix standing on the altar and a choir singing a leg room is a very heart-wrenching stuff about the absolute desolation of the God abandoned to death on the cross and I remember at the end of it saying to my neighbors saying that was amazing wasn't it she said yeah it's very relaxing that's interesting is that what have we done as a chair I mean I think another thing that the stoic vouchers appealed to me very much as they do seem to give you a very good defense against lapsing into complacency about the awfulness of institutions and the church is perhaps the most awful of institutions because the stakes are so high and it's been doing it for so long I remember a bishop I might say which one when I was particularly act by something in the church said you must remember all institutions at demonic which i think is probably true and to cultivate a bit of stoic detachment and a critical angle to that and very so what you were saying also about aspects of the smoke and mirrors stuff it io they spend all time in Lincoln Sidra which as you know in the Middle Ages was a great place of pilgrimage still is now it's a spectacularly beautiful building I remember walking around it and this is thing called the pulpit um which is this incredibly beautiful carved 14th century screened through which pilgrims would go on the way to the shrine of sand hue kind of journey's end and you go through it and it's this wonderful Eve ocation in stone the absolute summit of the art of carving of entering into a place of holiness and judgment then you look behind you and it's just a blank wall and it's so showbiz it's so and I'm very struck how religion once it systematizes and organizes and seeks to mobilize people begins to behave in that sort of way because that's what institutions do and in order to do so specially if your offer is supernatural then it's good if you've got some smoke and mirrors to go with that yeah I I ended up at a very happy clappy Church in Croydon for a while it's at a peak of my and some religious experience it's sort of happy to sing Croydon and there was I remember we were all told to stand up and talk in tongues which rubbish is only a small percentage of the congregation would have been used to talking in tongues so he said just start making into the pastor just start making a noise and a sound and if you think oh this is just silly I'm just making a sound that's the devil telling you that well of course there's general babbles going on think you've all it's can't just be me that thing's this is just this is just creating a sort of sensation you know this is this this all become reduced to a kind of a a show sort of you know a sort of an experience that may not even be that convincing for the individuals but somehow when you put it all together you sort of tell yourself the story that's something something amazing has happened so yes it's a it's sort of that's a bit of a shame isn't it a worldly thing that you I don't know you go now you totally avoid that either/or who to appeal to the emotions to which religions always been so good at and then I mean even that one of the kind of interesting things about kidding deigned is that you are ordained to serve this life-changing mystery that you've encountered and you end up handing out him books and using green china a lot that kind of again it's in the nature of institutionalizing and systematizing something elusive wonder this do you when once once you become a vicar and you're asked these sorts of questions do you feel like a politician being asked Christ you feel like there's a sort of party line that you have to sort of toe and that actually expressing or pursue me all the really interesting stuff doubts and it's sort of not no longer really appropriately nice when I was dutiful and diligent I think I would say well the church says and then say as best as I could I counted that note still do that if people want to ask but people don't ask that sort of question normally or something what have I to say about the agony that they they're experiencing or the joy that is kind of out of reach or perhaps overwhelming and so I try to talk to that I try to avoid talking to propositional II about it all so nobody could have said pretty ropey theologian and also I find that people relate more readily it's an interesting one I think and again it's because of where we are in our post enlightenment cycle putting it crudely broad brushstrokes people relate they don't relate to doctrine they don't really do sermons they sing hymns without connecting the strangeness of the language or the distinction of the language they relate to people who make a commitment to it that's even I mean that just seems to people are very curious about their and interested about that and they relate to personal stories yeah it's a sort of symptomatic of our time I think and so I try to if people ask me stuff then I try to responding in that kind that currently present with them as a human being so I think try to through your actions live a life which is consonant with the gospel you free I mean so Francis said always preach sometimes use words and for someone like me who's garrulous and self-absorbed shutting up could be a surprisingly powerful sort of thing rare I mean it is it's probably worth saying that the meaning I'm sure is often band up with with purpose and with hope and those sorts of things and I would imagine that in your sort of worldview Richard those are provided in a sense in some ultimate way by Jesus Christ and and the resurrection and the things that Christianity says life is ultimately about and where'd we're in in an 18 or atheistic sort of worldview would you say hope and purpose is found I think it's neat you said something like he who has a why to live for can bear almost anyhow there's that sense that purpose is a prerequisite to being able to have a fulfilling life obviously as I say Richard perspective sort of grants that at some ultimate level it does does an atheistic perspective have that is it just a case of finding purpose with let's say a small P rather than a capital transcendent P well I think you first of all you have to realize if it's not being given to you on a plate I suppose that that meaning is important that that is actually an important part of life because that isn't necessarily obvious it isn't obvious and the culture that we live in as Heidegger said the old gods have vanished and the new ones yet to arrive and we're in this at a mythologically quite sort of empty point at the moment so yeah you you have to find that for yourself and it's that's a different different situation than having a belief in a life in something that is ultimately providing that sort of framework and of course it's it is usually important and where I differ probably from a lot of the sort of what gets called in the New Atheists is there as as important as truth is and as important as holding up claims you know to some kind of rigor is I think that meaning actually is sort of more important which is of a psychological truth there's a collective truth it's probably more important is the people that don't have meaning that throw themselves off of buildings so yes you have to find that you'd have to find it on your own and but I think some people will find that in their children others will find it in their projects others will find it like me more through sort of reading and through and through growing up and being aware of those sorts of issues we're both in our forties and you know what you those issues that age are different than when you're in your twenties you know you the best you can do is be aware of yourself as a growing creature and then wasn't for human there is really no purpose who who lives perhaps a you know a miserable life I don't know the I don't know what you made for instance of the the atheist bus campaign slogan there's probably no God no it's not worrying and enjoy your life mmm that may not be possible for the the war Widow in Darfur is facing you know at the very bottom of life's heap let's say it can sound rather trite in fact you know that point and it may be that for that person it is only the only consolation they have is that there will one day be a day of justice where where as it were they the world is put to rights and there's a sort of a a sense in which they will see ultimate meaning and ultimate purpose because they were never had the opportunity that we had to I mean I guess you could argue that there are other other forms of finding meaning and but you'd have to work with them to find them so that I'll give you the one that's handed to you isn't necessarily doing its job as well as the one that you suffer to find you know and suffering obviously is entirely tied up with the Christian storage is one of the reasons why I think it is so resonant and has a value out outside of that there's no problematic - I think problematic yeah there are you think you have a positive value to suffering of course is extremely problematic and I think lots of people have kind of heaped upon themselves suffering unnecessarily the other thing I mean some great thing about an absence of meaning is what makes people throw themselves off buildings sometimes I would think a surfeit of meaning in what ways what makes people throw other people off buildings and I would that's a caveat that I'm sort of constantly trying to kind of keep in front of me is it would be misleading in the very least to suggest that somehow religious affiliation and meaning that comes with that necessarily produces something benign because it doesn't mmm one of the reason for that is I think precisely because of death I think if you do if you're signed out to a system in which there is an author of something beyond your own existence that can sometimes make your own existence something easy to parlay into something else so I'm really conscious I don't want to seem like a kind of someone who's not aware that there are lots of ways in which belief goes bad yeah I mean in the end you often talk about in your books and in just a shows as well there and the idea that we're all storytelling creatures is the way you put it we have to live within some sort of a narrative a story to make sense of life in a sense that's the way we get through life in that sense is is what Richard is describing what Christians claim and other religions just doing that just sort of telling a story obviously doesn't necessarily make it true but it works in a sense yes Schopenhauer had this idea that actually all religion is a sort of folk mythology that everybody has to buy and to pretend that it's true no one can say it is no one can say it's just mythology and the whole thing the whole thing falls apart everyone has to play that play the game Vickers included of pretending that it is it is true in order for it to work in a sense do you feel though that we're coming into an age where that is no longer the case where more and more people obviously tick the non-religious box or whatever it might be that that they're struggling to find a story to live in that maybe previous generations did yes there was you know there was a time when we got up we woke up one morning and what we woke up every morning and our meanings and our role in things were defined for us by the village or the tribe or our family or whatever stories were sort of in place and we don't know that now and we struggle to first we may not even know we're supposed to struggle to find that we you know since can't I suppose we see ourselves as these sort of isolated atoms these units that the self is something that that is it isn't what it actually is which is extended into other people and into situations that we find ourself in and that creates a sort of them I think a sort of a hole where by everything else advertising everything that comes at us sort of tells no you are you are this person and you need this creates this sort of fabricated fantasy of and demand and messes us up and how do you begin to step out of that and and realize that those those things aren't aren't actually what it's all about a complete at your point though about the lack of narratives toward some people recently my parish at university and I said how did you talk about politics I said how did you vote in the last election and they said Jeremy Corbyn kind I said why and they said well the obvious reasons why no that's just outrageous how did you say how did you vote the election before and they said you kept I thought you went from you kept a Corbin in one move tells you something about the sort of context or perhaps the lack of context that people have in which they make important decisions about who they are in their place in the world and maybe that's symptomatic of that broader decline of the kind of grand narratives that they did give us some sort of sense of where we where we were and how we were in relation darrid Darren has talked about the idea of the living in a story and in a sense it is the Christian story that has given you that that sense of who you are and who God is and what it means to live a fulfilled and meaningful life Richard but is it just a story I suppose I mean many people I think will say well that's fine that's your story I've got my story yeah because that's what I don't really have a fulfilled or meaningful life I'm not interested in a fulfilled or meaningful life I'm interested in trying to be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ and that might not produce something which looks either fulfilled or meaningful in fact I'm that's much more important I think he's trying to be faithful to this the fathomless riches are some poor but it well it's not a self-help philosophy that we're invited to in the Gospels no it's nice more self harm than self help but actually what's owed in trouble I think what's again what's valuable there from in terms of its psychological development is the idea of serving I think one of the things that we probably learn in our 40 if were attended for those sorts of things is the and again it's part of death and resurrection as a mythological idea that that thing you have in your 20s and 30s when it's all about you and you want to know who you are and what the real you is and you're setting all these things up there comes a point in life when you have to realize that the sort of ego has to just step down a bit and serve something hmm and it's again it's hugely important and I don't think it's particularly that it's a religious idea but I think again if we if we sit in if we sit in terms of myths I things that are there to psychologically resonate with us and show us where we are in terms of a journey or in terms of what it is to live well and flourish it's it's very very with people loving somebody else yeah beyond wisdom or beyond what's good for them or even despairingly but nonetheless still loving them because it's important more important to love them and to be faithful to that then the rewards or the returns that might appear to bring again that's a something which is not always attractive to see or even advisable but it is often surprisingly the case I think hmm just as we started to round up the program maybe starting with you Richard and then Darren if you come gosh come back gonna have the yes this conversation I mean can you sum up in some sense Richard why for you in the search for meaning God is the answer in in the sense of when when you come to the end of the searching in all the different places God makes the most sense if you like of that final search for meaning because at the edge of sight all of a sudden the miracle of the lit Bush appeared and there was a bush on fire that was not consumed well that's about but that's that was there it happened and and that's in a sense of an intensely personal perspective you it's it something happened for you and but that happens within a wider context a bigger narrative a set of relationships a historical framework but essentially it's turning a sign to the miracle of the lip Bush I'm paraphrasing RS yes and what about yourself Darin the why for you is well and maybe it's not for many people but but for you the finding meaning in in God ultimately is something beyond ourselves in that sense isn't is a dead end as far as you're concerned in terms of the the search for meaning and purpose and so on I don't think it is a dead end at all I think it's your relationship to the search that matters I think it one of the things that seems to come out of this for me is that actually the the stuff that makes the stuff that makes the the search and the experience worth of are actually quite sort of human things the actual belief it's not the starting point if you like sort of forgive you saying it seems to matter less than the actual that the human in that experience of it and the honesty and the openness and the tolerance of ambiguity and uncertainty and different and different yeah yeah sometimes people's conversation if you say I'm really sorry but I'm not a believer and I think part of that thing that you've sort of intimated earlier on about whether atheism is just another story and it you know it isn't it is by its nature it isn't a belief or anything it's sort of meaningless as a label but what it can often do is narrow into a sort of rigid form in the same way that religious fundamentalism say narrows into a rigid form and then what happens is there's no there's no dialog there's no attendance to to mystery and that's I think hugely important they're always important I agree with you I think you see symptoms of malaise when people live without nourishment I think you so you're not a fan of a sort of very reductive form of atheism where you know we can we can boil everything down to that the chemicals and neurons going on in in your brain in that sense it just means you don't believe in God that's all it means nothing beyond that as to what people do with it after that that's you know that's up to them right over there coming from and of course that can be unpleasant and reductive as can a religious life - yes indeed it's been fantastic having you both for this conversation I've really appreciated just the the generosity on display it from both of you in engaging with each other and and thank you very much for joining me on this edition of the program yeah but updates bonus content and exclusive debate clips from the series sign up at the big conversation dot show you

Channel: Unbelievable?

Views: 68,957

Rating: 4.8345399 out of 5

Keywords: unbelievable, justin brierley, premier christian radio, christianity, atheism, philosophy, faith, theology, derren brown, richard coles, God, jesus christ, resurrection, debate, miracle, christian, christian faith, atheist, conversion

Id: IxMLwQToAKo

Length: 66min 41sec (4001 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 06 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Mex5150]

I'm always fascinated by the 'Can we have meaning without God/Religion?' question, as an Atheist who was brought up as a Christian, I think 'Can we have meaning with Religion?' is a far better question as the whole point of religion seems to be the removal of reason and meaning.