The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God (ft. Justin Brierley)

Church attendance is down the percentage of the western population who identify religiously as nuns is growing and the percentage who identify as Christian is shrinking yet Our Guest today Justin brierley you know him argues in a new book that there's a surprising Rebirth of belief in God knowing how much Justin is spent having these conversations over the last decade plus when he releases a book telling us there's Rebirth of belief in God got my attention Justin it's great to have you on let's Dive Right In because I am so curious how you can say there's a rebirth of belief in God given the stats we just talked about yeah and I cover those stats myself in the book Sean and you're right I mean if you just look at the statistics you know certainly here in the UK and increasingly in the US as well there's been just a constant decline essentially uh for a number of years but the fact is what I noticed you know I was hosting the unbelievable show for 17 years or so was that while it got started in the Heyday of the new atheism you know back in 2005. I noticed that the conversations changed significantly over the decade and a half that I was hosting that show and to some extent what had begun as a real kind of antitheistic dogmatic kind of debate around God it eventually turned into something very different actually um the new Atheism in a way came and went uh and to some extent I was a bystander seeing the way that that actually fizzled out as a movement yeah obviously it still exists in various parts of the internet but it's not the social cultural phenomenon it once was and all of the key architects of that movement have either kind of faded from public Consciousness or they started talking about different things altogether they're not really talking about God and religion anymore but the people who are talking about God and religion in the secular space are actually having a very different kind of conversation they're taking religion the claims of Christianity a lot more seriously in my view and so I just thought this was the time to kind of maybe pick up on this cultural Trend that with new atheism kind of in the back window there's a new conversation about God happening and there are some really interesting secular thinkers taking god seriously again and when I started looking around I started to realize you know there's quite a lot of interesting stories I've been coming across of intellectual adult people coming to faith in Christ as well and I started to put the pieces of this puzzle together and I just wondered you know what if we might be standing on the edge of something new maybe that tide of faith that supposedly went out with the Enlightenment and you know scientism and everything else coming in to replace it maybe people actually have got tired of that story maybe that's not satisfying them anymore and we're ready to see The Rebirth of belief in God you know as you know about a year or so ago Dr Stephen Meyer had his book called Return of the god hypothesis so when folks like yourself and Dr Meyer another friend are making this claim it gets my attention and I do think you're on to something now before we come to some of these new conversations and some of these voices that are so interesting people like Jordan Peterson let's just briefly talk about you have a section in your book about why you think the new atheism faded both intellectually and culturally now I was aware of some of these disparate pieces but the way you put it together I was like oh now it makes sense why this faded so maybe outline some of the key points you make before we get to how the conversation is shifted well here in the UK Sean probably the high water mark of that new atheist movement was the atheist bus campaign back in 2008 2009 you probably remember this but I do um people like Richard Dawkins sponsored these London buses bearing the words there's probably no God now stop worrying and enjoy your life and that was probably the closest thing that atheism had to a marketing campaign at the time but what was interesting was that a lot of people at that moment started to say you know what this is starting to look a bit more religious than we realize and in fact increasingly the guests I had on the show often if they were atheists they would want to distinguish themselves from the kind of Richard dawkins-esque new atheism because they were aware that it was becoming increasingly shrill and dogmatic and kind of quasi-religious in its own way you know there were the sacred texts The God Delusion God Is Not Great they had their their High priests um they had their religious gatherings you know you had to subscribe to a particular Orthodox set of beliefs in this case scientific materialism and they had their Heretics as well you know if if any of their tribe went against that that Orthodoxy people like Thomas Nagel who started to talk about the idea there might be some kind of purpose within the universe they got swiftly rounded upon you know as Heretics of the movement so so I was just interested in the fact that that increasingly new atheism was taking on an almost religious characteristic and and actually a lot of people were starting to even within the The Atheist movement was starting to question that and then during this it also started to emerge that as the new atheists kind of essentially agreed that God didn't exist and religion was bad for you the problem was that they started to disagree on just about everything else and and what I noticed was that increasingly the movement started to fracture started to unravel um they started to argue internally an awful lot in fact there's one particular moment that I pinpoint in the book where I think really that the whole thing started to come apart it was in 2011 and there was a an incident that came to be known as elevator gate in The Atheist Community uh this was an atheist blogger called Rebecca Watson um who was concerned at the time about what she felt was certain amount of misogyny in the The Atheist Community um and and sexualization objectification of women and so on and she had made a speech at a particular atheist conference about this and that evening after sort of having drinks at the bar with some of the speakers who included Richard Dawkins at this conference she then got into an elevator to go back to her room and one of the delegates from the conference one of the people there propositioned her basically in this elevator and she wrote A Blog on the back of this saying well this is exactly the problem you know this guy heard my whole thing and yet here he is basically propositioning me in this elevator now that might have been the end of the story but what actually happened then was that Richard Dawkins himself responded to this blog by Rebecca Watson and he wrote a very sarcastic response called dear muslima in which he kind of parodied her concerns comparing it to you know uh a Muslim woman you know oppressed by her religious culture and sort of saying oh my poor American sisters having to put up with people propositioning them in elevators when we're just getting our hands cut off for things you know um anyway this response just ignited the whole debate uh and very quickly people were taking sides either on one side of the kind of you know those who are more concerned about the feminist kind of aspect of this whole movement others who were saying don't be Daft we just need to be free thinkers and you know it's just common sense what Richard Dawkins is saying anyway this was just one among what turned out to be many flashpoints in the new atheist movement as they started to fall out with each other over what their cause was really about in the end um was it this atheism plus the that some people wanted it to become where they would add not only non-belief in God but also a commitment to you know women's rights LGBT anti-racism and so on and others who just felt no this is just turning us into another ideological movement all we need to agree on is that God doesn't exist and and very quickly that a lot of these you know leading figures fell out with each other quite dramatically actually I mean pz Myers really had some barnstorming uh you know uh debates and uh and real controversies in this whole whole movement and and in the end even the atheist conferences that had once been so well attended started to suffer because of it people wouldn't turn up on the same stages there were huge arguments on stage um and then you kind of as the culture was kind of progressed and you got the transgender issue and everything they just were continuing flashpoints and and in the end you know the the even those you know who had had a significant role in this movement people like pz Myers said that it was one of the greatest regrets of their life that they had ever been associated with this new atheist movement so I just found that all really interesting that the the movement which began with such a flurry of you know activity and PR and attention kind of suddenly imploded almost as quickly as it began and and in a way none of those key people of the new atheism really talking about God anymore they've kind of moved on to other things so so that's kind of my sort of yeah my my take on on the whole movement as it existed that's so interesting that there was kind of a a moral component so to speak the elevator gate and disunity and then there was clearly intellectually a lot of people realized like I think it was Planet who said I'm tempted to call The God Delusion sophomoric but I don't want to insult sophomores I mean I believe he said that yeah well another's very similar concerns you know um Michael Roose you know not long after The God Delusion was published was was essentially writing the forwards for for Christian responses to it because he he said itself he felt almost embarrassed to be an atheist with you know the level at which some of these books have been written now now you know in a sense that I think what what really the movement displayed as I say because it took on this almost quasi-religious aspect to it is that the the impetus to be religious doesn't go away if you just tell yourself there's no God we we're kind of naturally religious and we tend to look for something to replace that it is that kind of god-shaped hole in my opinion and people tend to end up treating something in the place of God and it's it's very often it's a cause it's some kind of particular issue uh it might be some sacred identity that they hold to in the case of a lot of the new atheists you know science was their their new God in a way the the thing that would lead to Salvation and a unified world and everything but of course as it turns out even though we live in this ever more technologically scientifically you know extraordinary world uh we're actually experiencing you know ever Rising rates of depression anxiety um and and and so you've got to ask yourself well that obviously hasn't been the the Panacea that the the new atheist has told us it would be so something is still missing and and I think that's as I say where some of the new thinkers come in do you have a sense of where kind of the debate amongst atheists has shifted so there's this Jordan Peterson larger spiritual conversation we're going to shift to about God and Douglas Murray and some of these thinkers but certain debates by atheists continue and one of the differences that I notice is even you know the Four Horsemen of the new atheism all had credentials now Hitchens didn't have like a PhD but he was a very established you know writer and thinker and public intellectual now in many ways these conversations if you're good on Tick Tock if you're good on Instagram if you're good on YouTube credentials aside you can build a platform and become a key voice that seems to be one of the shifts that's taken place from the new atheists to the way this is carrying out today do you agree with that do you have any other sense of how that atheist conversation continues I I do and I think as as social media as YouTube and everything has blossomed over the last decade or so I think it's given a new platforms for you know really interesting cogent voices to come out of the blue and start to build and so you don't need to be one of these as you say credential thinkers necessarily to draw a big audience these days and and I'm happy to say I'm I'm very friendly with with a number of those interesting people people that you've spoken to as well I'm sure at some point but um uh you know people like Alex O'Connor who has often gone online as Cosmic skeptic and uh he we first bumped into each other several years back when he responded to a kind of video I put out on the fine-tuning argument for God and he he he and he you know he won't mind me saying this because we're friends and he he's essentially said this himself in videos but he was kind of still in his kind of teenage atheist phase at that point he was growing you know he had a channel that was quickly gaining hundreds of thousands of followers but he was still only about 17 years old at the time wow and he was sort of modeling himself after essentially Christopher Hitchens that was his sort of atheist hero um and he now looks back at some of those videos he did and the way he responded to Christian arguments and he will say himself he feels embarrassed about the answers he gave and he now takes a far more nuanced approach to a lot of those arguments he's since done a theology degree himself he's had a lot more time to think and process and parse the arguments um and and what I find is that a lot of these thinkers especially the young thinkers um coming from a secular background uh on YouTube and everywhere else they're often kind of doing their their understanding in public they're kind of working out as they go along and um and you know Alex is an interesting case in point because he also drew a big following as a sort of real kind of vegan activist and spokesperson he's also changed his mind on that interestingly in recent um in the last year or so so so you know I I enjoy watching the sort of evolution of some of these folk and and the way that they're talking about these issues and um I love the fact that they're in a sense it does bring it down to the ordinary person's level and we could you know normal people can get involved in the conversation with them so I think there's something quite healthy about that but what what it does mean is that inevitably like anything with YouTube you're watching someone who's certainly hasn't necessarily had a lifetime's experience thinking about this at this point they're kind of somewhere on that journey and you'll you'll get wherever they are in their own sort of you know processing of it and that's true for Christians as well and people of other things working out their theology going to the left going to the right deconstructing all that kind of that that's such an interesting way to frame it it's rather than kind of top down the way it was in the past these thinkers using social media writing books it's a bottom up approach and the channel goes as it works along that's a really helpful distinction now again we're going to get to this new conversation but you said one thing that I've got to ask you about is you described that some of what the new atheism shows is our our inherent religious nature that if God goes out something is going to come in now one thing I focused on really the past six months more than I almost ever had before was certain occult and New Age type of uh beliefs so I've interviewed a couple ex-witches an ex psychic an ex new Ager done stuff on demons now some of my naturalist friends have sent me emails tell me I'm crazy and I've lost my mind and I get it where they're coming from but in my experience that seems to be growing and seems to have I'd like to see a lot more Paul just way into that conversation because as we push traditional view of belief in God out that's one big perspective that's coming in do you see that do you agree that what's your take on that phenomenon I I think I think you're absolutely right and you see it in all kinds of ways the fact that for instance the Catholic church is inundated more than it's ever been with requests for exorcisms because of people dabbling in the occult Ouija boards and everything else uh that I I have a strong sense that the religious impulse if you sort of take away the Christian story that has you know been the sort of predominant story in the West for many years people will fill it with something else and there is a kind of a natural part of us that wants their the world to be enchanted in some way wants it to there to be a supernatural Dimension to life and people will go off in all kinds of interesting directions and they may say on the survey non-religious but frequently they are doing things that have some kind of spiritual aspect to them so a lot of people who take non-religious still pray at some point still have some kind of you know occasionally send prayers up um they may have some kind of meditative practice they may indulge in some kind of quasi-esoteric you know new age type stuff uh and so it's not as though the new atheism sort of converted a whole lot of people to some kind of strict materialist naturalism far from it I think that if again if you look at the actual surveys there are very few people who who actually have yeah that it hasn't moved that much in terms of those who Define themselves as strict atheists what you get is a lot of people saying well I'm spiritual but not religious essentially so it's organized religion that is out of favor but people still gravitate towards things that make them feel like there's some something more there's something you know that gives their life a sense of purpose or meaning and and that's why you know as far as I can see the occults and things like that are just as popular as they've ever been you still have a huge amounts of interest in um supernatural horror movies you still have that's true you know and and our imagination still gets captured by stories of witches and wizards in Harry Potter by stories of essentially magical things like superheroes in Marvel films and everything else it's so so it's it's it it none of that sort of got extinguished by the new atheism I think it's really hard to get rid of that sense within people you know now you're speaking my language bringing in Marvel but I won't go down that Rabbit Trail as tempting as it is so I do have I do have one last conversation for you this is one of my favorite lines in your book you said I thank God for Richard Dawkins tell us about that well I do because to some extent I own my broadcasting career somewhat to Richard Dawkins you know um the new atheism presented such a helpful distinctive sort of way of critiquing religion that was the perfect vehicle for me starting the unbelievable show because it gave something really solid to respond to and at the at the very least we agreed that there was a matter of Truth to be debated you know amen that's what I appreciated to some extent about the new atheism it was willing to say this matters okay um and and I kind of almost preferred that to sort of a very sort of soft agnosticism where people just weren't really interested in the question and to some extent you know in an odd way Richard Dawkins put God back into conversation you know when that atheist bus campaign was doing the rounds I mean at the time it I mean Britain had been sort of you know an increasingly secular culture for decades by that point already so they hardly needed reminding that God didn't exist that was just the natural state of most people in this country and yet by kind of putting it in their face in that way Richard Dawkins kind of started a conversation about it and so I do thank him for that and I thank him for the fact that it also forced the church to pick up its apologetics books again I mean Ministries like yours Sean you know and and so many others have really I think been galvanized by having the new atheism to respond to um and and I I think it was actually long overdue I think the church had for a season really become too focused probably on the more experiential aspect not that that's not important but but that kind of more experiential charismatic kind of focus on a sort of personal relationship and so on and had had not been doing enough of you know getting people back to the intellectual claims of Christianity and why it's important to remember what those are and how we can defend them and I think that that has actually been transformed uh over the last you know uh 15 years or so when you see so many you know Minister important Ministries like reasonable faith and you know Bishop Baron's word and fire and so many others that have just come to the fore essentially because they needed to step up and so that that for that I'm I'm glad and and if I could add one more thing what I love is actually hearing stories of people who have come to Faith because of Richard Dawkins ironically you know I I have a very good friend Peter who basically if it weren't for a friend putting Richard Dawkins book Into His Hands he wouldn't be a Christian today so that that you know it's it's funny the way God works sometimes through things that on the surface of it might appear to be a negative but but can be used in positive ways you know I think it was 2006 where the cover of Christianity Today was based on the early 1960s Time cover this said God is dead William Lane Craig writes this article and either it was like Is God dead or God is not dead and this Renaissance in philosophy that has taken place starting back in the 60s and he highlighted how in the 90s and in kind of the 2000s there's this push towards experiential Theology and this idea that we'd completely bought this post-modern turn and then in comes March in the new atheist with a total modern type critique there's such a thing as truth science reveals what's most important and the church was completely unprepared now it seems like both we have gone even further into this post-modern shift than we ever imagined but this modern critique remains so in many ways I agree with you a lot of my Ministry is people being concerned with what's happening in the culture trying to respond and the new atheist brought to the cultural Forefront some of the issues we care about most and in a sense helped way make up the church to a degree so I love the way you frame that we could talk about the new atheist forever but you talk about this shift towards kind of this new conversation about God tell me what you mean broadly speaking about this new conversation about God well as I say over the years I'd noticed that the conversations were changing that I was hosting and in in the last five years or so I was bringing on a lot more people who were still broadly secular in Outlook but who were a lot more open and sympathetic to Christianity they didn't see it as just a delusion that needed to be expelled they they saw that we are you know inherently religious uh with meaning seeking creatures and that religion was sometimes an important part you know of leading a flourishing life um so I you've already mentioned you know Jordan Peterson as a good example when he really Rose to Fame in 2018 um it was because I think he was drawing a similar kind of audience to the ones the new atheists have been drawing you know you know intelligent young adults looking for sort of you know meaning and and so on but he was explicitly saying you're not going to find it in in pure rationalism and science actually you need to go back to this book called The Bible and um and you read his best-selling book 12 rules for life it's just packed with Illusions and references to the Bible to the Deep psychological wisdom you'll find there he you know you know before he rose to fame he he kind of had this this kind of cult following just from doing these lectures on Genesis and sort of talking through the depths of Genesis so a fascinating character obviously you know he he himself you know is not universally loved he's he's a bit of a polarizing character himself but but what you can't deny is that um Legions hundreds of thousands especially if young men have been drawn to his message and in a sense it's been quite um a one level the simple one it's it's been one of kind of helping people to find an identity again I think what Jordan Peterson realized is that new atheism had sort of um pulled you know by taking away belief in God hadn't really left people with anything to them base their life around and he was witnessing as I think I would agree a sort of a meaning and identity crisis in the west where especially young men don't know who they are what they're supposed to be any longer and he sort of represented a sort of Father Figure I think to a lot of them and he was dispensing kind of quite sort of Common Sense psychological advice you know you know stand up straight with your patrollers back clean up your room that kind of stuff but he was marrying it with this you know what he obviously believes is is the Deep insights of scripture the the interesting thing is you know he was very Coy and when I had him on my show you know when I was in well do you believe in God he was gave that classic answer well it depends what you mean by God he's hard to nail down on the specifics of of the metaphysics if you like but he sure believes that everything he holds dear as as a western intellectual comes essentially from the judeo-christian um history uh and and so those kinds of figures are very very different in in terms of what they're saying the conclusions they're coming to the questions they're asked asking to to the Dawkins and Hitchens and Heritage and so on and I've seen that shift happening in in all kinds of other characters as well I'll just reel off a few of them but the historian Tom Holland who have had on the show several times has this fascinating story of having kind of assumed that his Val you know the values of human dignity equality and so on in the west were just you know a result of Enlightenment thinking when he actually went and did his history though he discovered they all came from the judeo-christian story that sent him on a journey of asking well can we live without this story any longer Douglas Murray a well-known sort of journalist here and thinker in the UK describes himself now as a Christian atheist he's sort of really knows and was a great friend of the the new atheist at one time but but he says as far as he can see it's very hard to to answer any of the fundamental questions without some kind of religious framework behind it he's very unimpressed by the attempts to do it through you know secular humanism and that kind of thing um and there there are many more I could list you know people in The Sciences and elsewhere who who I think are basically making a turn away from that um materialist atheist kind of stance and asking well maybe we can start to open up our mind a little bit to the idea that there's some kind of purpose out there there's something we're meant to be um looking for in life and and so I I've just really enjoyed sort of tracing some of those stories as they've as those conversations have started to dominate in place of those kind of strict atheists you know who who ruled the roost one time do you sense a different background experience among these thinkers in part because I know Dawkins had a religious background and that seemed to as far as I understand fuel some of his just disdain for the church Hitchens has some of this in his background there was somewhat of an angry voice in the new atheist and it helped grow and people respond to that I get it I don't sense that same level of disdain and anger they don't many of these new thinkers fully don't buy the Chris historic Christian faith but there's not the baggage there's not the anger there's just a genuine curiosity about it and so I wonder if there's a different background experience that ties some of this together have you thought that through or made any connections or am I just speculating about this no I think you're probably right and and I think it's one of those things that I think though a lot of the the more dogmatic antitheistic voices in the new atheism were reacting to a period in the west when Christianity did have a sort of privileged place if you like and they they sort of didn't like that and and you know thought the time would come for that to stop I think in a sense as as that has simply increasingly diminished a lot of the thinkers who are kind of coming up behind them don't as you say have that kind of baggage they they they're not sort of responding to something that they feel has been you know detrimental or overbearing and that kind of thing I mean even you know I would say that the key sort of things that sparked the new atheist sort of movement were 9 11 and that was kind of an impetus for people to start being concerned about whether religion was the cause of violence and War and so on equally there were concerns from the scientific Community around the teaching you know whether we should be teaching intelligent design in the classroom those were kind of some of the cultural issues and of course the internet itself and the rise of the blogosphere and everything sign of all fueled the movement but I think a lot of those issues just seem to have kind of faded a bit into the background or we've we've come to learn that that actually um people are more complex than that and that some of those issues that seems to be so so big on the agenda seem to have Fade Into the background and I think it's partly because there are a new set of issues that to some of these intellectuals are far more worrying and troubling now than if they're kind of in the intelligent design thing ever was it's it's kind of um I mean I'll give you one example of of the way in which I saw this shift happen Sean but you you'll know who Peter burgosian is but for the sake of some of the audience um well-known um uh sort of he he was teaching philosophy at Portland State University for a number of years and was very much in the new atheist Camp um because he brought out a book several years ago called uh a manual for creating atheists right um and it was basically a sort of Evangelistic you know sort of strategy for stopping people from believing in God um and I had him on the show you know as I say years ago with Tim McGraw and they had a good debate um I love that show yeah it was good wasn't it so anyway fast forward to 2018 a few several years later and um I don't know you will remember this short but I came out to Portland and and you very kindly came out as well and we did a debate with hemant Mehta at the time uh and and and fantastic conversational stage but the person I'd actually approached before I went to hemant was Peter bagosian because he was his resident in Portland but when I emailed him to say Peter wondered if you'd like to come on and be the atheist in in a sort of onstage discussion he very politely sort of said well thank you for the invitation Justin but actually you'd be surprised at how differently I look at these issues now and and he basically said I'm no longer interested in critiquing religion in fact I think a lot of religious people are far more kind of in step with I mean more far more in step with them than I ever used to be he said I've turned my attention to a different kind of concern now and what that turned out to be was in his view as an academic the increasing amount of what he calls grievance literature in Academia and the way that it for him certain ideologies and sort of unquestionable sort of um politically correct sort of orthodoxies in in the academy were starting to stifle free thinking and free academic inquiry and so on and and what it turned out he had been up to uh that he hinted at this in this email to me was this sort of hoax at an academic hoax that he was involved in with some colleagues to put in these very fanciful papers to peer-reviewed journals um using all the right terminology and all the right ideologies but completely made up stuff and a lot of these got published and when it all came out there was there was a big controversy over over the fact yeah you know people were getting away with this stuff anyway all of that to say that it was just very instructive that someone as kind of who I would have said was an absolutely died in the world new atheist anti-religious person Peter it wasn't exactly that he'd become a Christian far from it but he had completely you know can change the way he thought about this what his concerns were he viewed Christians very differently so so those as those sorts of people have changed and developed and evolved I've Just Seen yeah there's some something's different there's something different in the air going on you know what I mean you know yesterday I got a email that was sent out to us at Talbot from jpmoreland great philosopher and thinker colleague of mine at Biola and it was said to it was something like a mass email to all the Talbot faculty and something the effect of uh I've just read an amazing book on critical theory it's called cynical theories by James Lindsay and Helen pluckrose both atheists who have partnered with Peter bagosian in different ways as far as I understand it we've actually had a Helen on our podcast and I paused and I thought wow I'm about to interview Justin you know you go back 10 years ago JP never would have said here's a new atheist book you've got to read it it's awesome now of course he always tells us to read both sides but in terms of like something I agree with that has captured this moment it's like it used to be the new atheists on this side and the Christians and religious folks over here now the lines have been totally blurred because there's different areas of concerns and almost strange bedfellows where Bill Maher is stepping out where he used to do religious and just attack Christians as being idiotic and adopt this mythicist view now he's pushing back on a certain kind of trans ideology so it's really shifted kind of the lines in this new conversation hasn't it it totally has and I think that's exactly the right phrase strange bedfellows you know um even to the point where you know the culture wars in a sense are are creating sort of strange anomalies like JK Rowling suddenly becoming you know considered a a hateful bigot because of her particular views on on the transgender movement and so on and and you and like you I've seen so many of those people as I say Peter pagosian was one example but um Dave Rubin um you're probably familiar with his yeah Joe um and everything uh I remember so vividly having him in a on stage discussion with John Lennox back in 2019 in California and um what was fascinating about him was he he very much you know was I think sort of swept up in the sort of the new atheist stuff when it was at at its height but he said in that conversation I've completely changed my mind now I don't call myself an atheist anymore it's just not a term that that describes me and and he had very much been influenced by um Peter um uh John Peterson and and so on and and he said in that conversation I I think I do believe there's something out there now I think and what he said was what I've come to realize is that a lot of my secular peers are far more in a sense intolerant than and he'd appointed at the Christians in the audience then you guys are um and and that was just an interesting kind of turn that that he again this is a secular person um uh who you know was but was saying basically I I see myself more sympathetic and in line with the Christians now than I do with a lot of people you know in the secular world so so it is interesting the way that a lot of those yeah relationships and the the ground has changed in that way you know it's interesting Dave went from the left to the right politically and philosophically from atheism to Christianity there's these stories of people that I am kind of following intrigued to where it goes even Jordan Peterson has like talked about the resurrection is he shifting anyways who knows so back to some of those atheists on YouTube working out their stuff publicly we're seeing these intellectuals in some ways work out their stuff publicly now your book again the title is I really want people to pick it up surprising Rebirth of belief in God there is some apologetics in this and there's some traditional apologetics people still care about fine-tuning the object theory of morality but one of the ways the conversation has shifted is that some of these public thinkers you've mentioned have suggested that when we lose God we lose certain uh what you might say roots of the West they're going to come at a cost they seem to have an appreciation of what we might be losing in the post-christian west and this separates them from the new atheists because I got the impression of the new atheist it was like let's get rid of God and life just continues as normal in fact it gets better and these new thinkers are like whoo slow down if you get rid of God a whole lot of stuff comes with this maybe we don't want to get rid of God what are some of those things that these intellectuals are saying we lose the goods that we take for granted if we totally abandon God in the west yeah yeah well again um coming back to Jordan Peterson you know he he he did I I had him on with Susan Blackmore talked about this very specifically Susan Blackmore is an atheist psychologist and and she held out the example of sort of the countries you know uh the Nordic countries you know Norway Denmark Sweden and so on essentially very secular but she says you know topping the world in terms of you know happiness and health and productivity and everything else and use that as example to say look um it just shows with better off without God aren't we you know um and and Jordan Peterson I think very helpfully pointed out that we're very early on in that experiment in those countries those are all countries that absolutely have a history that is judeo-christian and whose institutions Education Health Care everything was based in a Christian that was what where where all that stuff got started and to say well it's doing fine now he said as far as he was concerned he said we're living on the corpse of our Christian ancestors that's the problem and very soon as that starts to rot you're gonna find that the fruits are not going to match up and I think it is that thing of of whether you can keep the fruits once you cut off the roots of the tree because people like Tom Holland again have I think made a very compelling case that actually all of our moral instincts that so many people take for granted in the west around human dignity equality human rights rule of law democracy even to some extent scientific progress and everything else they have been founded in a Christian vision of reality that that is just sort of undeniable and and he's done the heavy lifting there when it comes to books like dominion and others yeah and and and and again he's asking well we're enjoying those fruits still to a large degree in the west but as we lose the story from which that sprang how much longer can we assume that they will continue because in the end of the day there are other stories out there you know and there are other big players in our world there's Vladimir Putin there's China there's other people where they have quote unquote arguably successful Empires and civilizations but they run on a very different set of principles and assumptions about the way life is of what human uh what matters and and so I think you know when Tom Holland says let's not forget that this is a rather unusual and quite fragile idea this the the rights that this Western belief in democracy human rights equality dignity and so on and it didn't it's not something that just comes naturally out of Science and evidence-based thinking it comes very specifically from the Christian story and and the question is yeah can we hold on to that and that's why I think thinkers like him like Douglas Murray and others who are basically recognizing that they're all seeing the same thing they're sort of very worried they're saying well in the absence of that story is there anything that can kind of continue to undergird that and they're looking at secular humanism and saying it feels weak anemic it's it's not going to inspire anyone to continue in this tradition um and so they're kind of in a in an odd way even as people who sort of aren't you know typically Christian or religious they're sort of cheering us on from the sidelines they're saying we need the church even though I don't feel I can become a sign-up member myself I don't want it to go away I feel like we need a kind of a Revival of something like the church in this country in order for people to to for these for these ideals to flourish so it's a very interesting one you know where you've got non-christians saying I'm worried if the church actually stops being and doing and saying what it has for the last two Millennia because they're not certain that secular culture can actually you know can continue to to promote and live out these these ideals do you have a take on the success or lack thereof of some of these atheist churches because they started cropping up I don't know maybe a decade ago and our friend Bart campolo who we had a conversation on your show a few years ago wasn't so much an atheist church but at UCLA and USC kind of these similar to Christian Ministries but rooted on a secular campus and these kinds of churches as a whole really do mimic what a church does I mean I was at a secular event they passed around a hat to collect money they had announcements they had coffee and donuts they had service projects they would go do some would even sing songs and have a kind of sermon and yet to me I haven't seen any of them even come close to the success and I think it's because it's all horizontal if there's not the Transcendent purpose like sometimes you wake up it's like I don't want to go to church and there's this sense of like Duty and I'm a part of something and this is what God wants me to do can get you out of bed even given your money it's like one thing to a good cause but I could give it to any cause but if I'm a part of a church and God calls me to do that there's just that difference that's missing which makes me suspected that as a whole atheists or secular churches will never be able to come close to mirroring kind of a Christian Church do you agree what have you seen in those I do and we had a very similar sort of phenomenon that began here several years ago that people dubbed The Atheist church it's actually called the the um these um Sunday I want to say the Sunday Assembly that's it it's and it's a sort of essentially it's almost like going to church it's just they miss out all the God and religious stuff so instead of a sermon it's a kind of a a part kind of positive message you know like a TED Talk yeah exactly um it was founded actually by two stand-up comedians who kind of recognize the value of what church going did for people but couldn't believe it so they said well why don't we tried to start something that that's the same but but just doesn't have the god stuff in so they they will sing kind of you know popular anthems and songs you know uh instead of hymns they will kind of maybe do some kind of guided meditation instead of a prayer and and I think you know and it was initially quite popular and interestingly primarily though in my experience the people I heard from going along were basically ex-vangelicals deconstructed Christians who were looking for what they kind of missed but they didn't want to have the kind of the religious baggage with it so so and and for a while you know it had a sort of a certain amount of publicity and it got going what was interesting to me was that I think it did plateau as the sort of the headlines you know started to drop off and when they kind of grew the movement um it it suffered from exactly the same things that churches sadly suffer from it started to split and fracture because there were different people who thought it should go in different direction so so even an atheist Church you know gets denominations that split apart from each other and and then on top of all that I think I think exactly what you've said is I think certain things can kind of go under their own Steam for a while you know but in the end if there isn't something bigger than just the community and a kind of a shared ideals and those kinds of things it won't ever be much more than a social club you can get that by going to the golf course you can get that by going you know somewhere else you there are lots of things that where you can get a sense of community what for me is unique about the church is that we don't gather around some shared sort of Ideal or cause we gather around a living presence a person and that makes all the difference obviously I speak now with my Christian hat on and I I'm going to be speaking from my own experience here but when I look at the church our church other churches I'm I'm always amazed at actually the different people who are there who you would never have any reason really to be in church together under other circumstances but yet they do because there's something bigger than their differences that unites them and it's this faith in Jesus and and it is hard to see how anything other than that kind of a Transcendent kind of Ideal something like that could really Empower and and help people to kind of you know see see something that makes a real difference in the world so I I fear that you know while I'm sure there's some value to those kinds of gatherings I think they are a bit faddish and they do tend to come and go um uh you know the church has been here for two thousand years and um you know there's a reason for that basically I I agree one of the things you do in your book so well and you did in your last book unbelievables you really tell a big story so how has culture shifted from the early 2000s over the past couple decades uh in terms of thinking about God one piece of this you talk about is how there's a shift in the way that these new thinkers are approaching the Bible so if we go back to these new atheists the Bible was false it's immoral it's anti-scientific let's get rid of this thing and Christians had to place serious defense by saying no if you look at the context it doesn't really contradict here's why the science of intelligent design whatever it is those defenses but some of these new thinkers are approaching the Bible differently aren't they how is that conversation shifted again I'll come back to Douglas Murray one of the people I pick up in on this chapter about the Bible in the book but but one of the comments he made to me in a conversation with NT Wright was was so interesting where he talked about the fact that he he struggles to think of another kind of foundational text that could replace the Bible um uh here's how he um he said this people are struggling to maintain and hold on to this exceptionally important gift of the Christian inheritance without the idea of equality in the eyes of God and the value of every individual you're left with these attempts to assert that everyone is the same or can be and it's clear that we can't be and we aren't and so again his is Douglas Murray an atheist essentially saying this this foundational idea the of equality you can only really get that from the Bible it's it's from Genesis basically that we got that and it's very hard to see where else you would get that idea in a culture and likewise he goes on to talk about um Alan Bloom another philosopher who talked about the fact that um it's it's very hard to think of another book that that could furnish the sort of the intellectual mind in the way that the Bible has for millennia um he says you would need another book of equivalent seriousness and and it just doesn't exist basically so there's this sense that that thinkers like Mary and others have identified that even though the the eighth the new atheists had a great time sort of you know making fun of the Bible and calling God a vindictive monster and all the rest of it what they didn't take seriously was the way that this book whether you like it or not has had this extraordinary impact in the west it is foundational for civilization and again it's people like Jordan Peterson and others who are doing that I mean he he talks about the Bible he talked about it Bible on a Joe Rogan podcast not long ago as being the book um the truth through which all other truths are seen he he sees it as that foundationally important to the way we even perceive truth he says you do it because you're looking through the filter of the Bible basically so I think there's been a real sea change in that way in some of those intellectual circles that the people are recognizing this book has made a profound difference I mean and and you and I both know that there are all kinds of ways in which the Bible is responsible for for all kinds of cultural aspects of life for art for literature you know Shakespeare is essentially you know the Bible in Shakespeare are probably the two you know key um influences on literature in the west uh along with Milton and Dante maybe others but all of them are essentially Downstream from the Bible you know the King James version of the Bible I mean it there are innumerable kind of just throwaway phrases that we use every day that simply come from scripture and what I find is is is people some of these thinkers they're willing to be at least seeing the value of the Bible in that way but more excitingly than that I'm also encountering more and more thinkers who are not just saying the Bible's got this immense cultural and psychological impact but they're actually starting to ask could the stuff it says actually be true as well could these stories actually have happened um so if you don't mind me taking a digression please yeah this is the story that's not in the book but just the other day I interviewed a fascinating woman you should get her on your show Sean uh Molly Worthen um Molly is an assistant professor of um the history of religion at University of North Carolina interestingly the the same University that Bart Airman yeah is his professor at and but Molly for the last we're a similar age I think and for the last 20 or so years she has basically been an academic looking at the history of religion in North America reporting on that uh writing for lots of um journals um The New York Times The Washington Post um uh the Atlantic as a sort of academic investigating in a very sort of you know analytical objective way the history of protestantism essentially in in the US um but last year she became a Christian and it's wow it's extraordinary to hear why and and it's basically because a pastor that she was doing a a kind of Bio piece on for a for a journal basically said started emailing her and talking and being Evangelistic essentially and a lot of questions that she had kind of skirted she started to decide you know what maybe it's time I actually did look at whether whether the Bible actually does have any kind of historical basis to it maybe it's time that I actually looked at the stories and what she will tell you is is that she after long conversations with this pastor being put in touch with anti-wright's work the resurrection of the Son of God wow starting an email correspondence with Tim Keller all kinds of things led her to a point where she actually got baptized last year and and this is not again this is why I call the book The surprising Reaper the believing God so many of the stories I've begun to encounter in the last few years are very surprising they're not the people you would think I mean if anyone has seen the kind of the inside story and the the the messy side of church it's it's a historian like Molly Wortham she she knows it inside out and yet she has come to appreciate something happened two thousand years ago and I wasn't able to deny it anymore once I started to look at some of these sources so so that's just one story there's others I tell in the book and I'm excited that not only I think are we seeing these intellectuals taking the Bible seriously as a sort of source of psychology and wisdom and cultural influence but actually there's been a bit a rebirth of people actually on starting to open up the historicity of the Bible this is obviously something you've been doing for a long time Sean but I just feel like it's now it's starting to Edge into the mainstream and and for me that's that's a really exciting moment that's amazing I want her contact information sounds like the very kind of person I'm about to interview after this uh a young Scientist by name of Tom rudelius who has a book coming out it's called Uh chasing proof finding faith and he went to Cornell and has done training at Princeton Harvard doing a post-doc at Berkeley leading young physicist and just started to read the Bible and consider the science and has come full circle to Faith now there's always been some stories of people C.S Lewis's conversion Lee Strobel my dad's story like there's always some stories like this but I think you're right that there's more and more surprising kinds of people we wouldn't expect and we need to get these stories out so send me your info I'll send you Toms I think you would enjoy connecting with him with him as well now let me ask you this got time for maybe just a a couple more I want to respect your time but you talk about towards the end you say here's kind of three big picture things that you would suggest moving forward and you talk about Community to counter cancel culture which I love my one question is the Christian Community has been rocked by Scandal whether it's the Ravi Zacharias Scandal uh what's come to light in some of the southern baptist churches Hillsong the Catholic Church On and On do you sense an openness to this like should we just be talking about Jesus to people and then once they're Christians invite them to church because the baggage the church has or is it more like hey come to the Christian Community experience what it means to be loved experience what it means to be a part of something Transcendent and then come to know Jesus here I guess I'm asking how much baggage is there that you sense in this larger conversation towards the church because of these scandals I think there is and and if I think we were outstanding an extraordinary opportunity where I'm seeing this this opening up if you like of people to to the potential of God and to the idea that that the Christian story isn't you know long gone forgotten but it's actually there and ready to to sort of find people again the question is will the church be ready to to receive these sort of refugees from the meaning crisis if you know what I mean and and my great fear is that that the church is not in a good place at the moment you know the the Evangelical Church in the US has had a real Reckoning hasn't it over the last few years Sean so many stories and and for me my hope my my prayer really is is that actually we will take away the lessons that we need to learn from that amen and that we will start to rethink what the church is here for I fear that too often the church has been a vehicle for certain types of celebrity pastors and Ministry and that they're we are starting to reap some of the the consequences of that um idolatry kind of is very hard to get away from we're kind of idle uh you know our hearts are idle manufacturing you know machines as I think Calvin said the and and and and there is no perfect Church um now there are great churches and the one thing I would want to say is that despite all of the headlines we've had there are wonderful churches wonderful mega churches as well but there are I think what we've been shown is that if if we allow if you like the the a certain culture to pronominate it can quickly go south it can quickly become about personalities and and that kind of thing so I think the church needs to learn those lessons it needs to take a long hard look at itself and ask are we are we ready to actually be the kind of place where people can find uh a different type of place you know a place that isn't simply repeating the same mistakes as the culture around it likewise I've got to fear when it comes to the rising arguably certain forms of Christian nationalism in um in in certain parts of the US and around the world again it's it's it's it's no good simply um replacing one form of idolatry you know the the movement towards um all kinds of expression that essentially you know people are wanting to kind of build their own sense of who they are and their own identity and so on if you're just replacing it with another false identity which is some kind of uh nationalistic sort of thing uh there's nothing wrong with patriotism there's nothing wrong with loving your country but um in the end if that in any way gets in the way of loving Jesus and what he represents then something's gone wrong in our churches so for me I think I think this is a moment when the church needs to really take stock of of what it's here for who it's here for and whether it's ready to to welcome in people who are going to be kind of from as far as I can see the walking wounded of a generation who have been starved of meaning starved of purpose have been taken in all kinds of confusing directions by the culture around them and are just starting to wake up to the fact that it's not answering their deepest questions and this is the moment when we could present the Christian story to them again but I I do hope and pray that the churches are ready to to be that place of welcome with people in all their messiness um willing but willing to be a place of Grace and I think that's that's what people are desperate for you mentioned cancel culture uh we you know I'll say I've said it before I'll say it again we still are very religious kind of people we you know even in a non-religious age people are going on witch hunts on Twitter people are acting as though some beliefs are sacrosanct and must not be questioned okay and if you get it wrong you can you you will feel the the Wrath of the mob and you know the Witch Hunt and the trials and everything else that comes with it and it's religion but it's all the bad bits of religion it there's no Grace there's no salvation if you if you're a sinner and you will never be able to you know atone for your sins basically well obviously the church and Christianity says yes you're a sinner yes you failed but guess what the good news is we're all in the same boat and Jesus came to make the difference um so there is Grace there is forgiveness there's a new start and oh it's it's a simple message isn't it but my goodness people need to hear it in our um judgmental sort of puritanical age that we we actually live in in certain spheres of the internet and and I just think it's time you know the church has an amazing message uh an amazing ability and it can be that place of of people realizing I can come I can find Grace uh I don't have to live up to these ideals that everyone's forcing on me uh because Jesus has done that for me so so I I do I'm I'm a I guess I'm an optimist Sean and even though there's a lot of you know negative stuff circling around about the church cynical stuff I just trust that that whatever God needs to do to sort of purify and we know the church my my deep prayer is that we'll be ready for what could be the next great Revival in my in my opinion when it comes to seeing seeing these refugees from the meaning crisis maybe come back through the church doors as painful as it is I am somewhat encouraged by the attention to spiritual abuse some of the changes that have taken place some of the books that come out people have spoken out on it I see that as a positive sign now you're right the irony about cancer culture is that it lacks the very thing that Christianity has at its core which is Grace cancel culture if you sent this tweet 10 years ago if you said this you are out and you are done and we will shame you and the gospel offers Grace for all of us who have fallen short the questions will we live that out now the way you frame this I really like use the term Refugee so I think there's a lot of refugees of people who've been sold kind of this larger story alternatives to God that are not satisfying but I think there's an even larger batch of refugees there's some who just the mental health epidemic this week I saw a tweet it went out from I think Bradley Wilcox leading sociologist talking about how depression and loneliness are amongst teenage boys and girls is getting higher and higher and he said something effective this is just not sustainable there's questions of where in five to ten years you know some of the lies that have been told to people about transitioning their gender we're seeing some of the stories come out from people who were hurt by this and sold a bill of goods and de-transitioned will the church be a place that stays firm in terms of what it believes but has a posture of Grace and kindness and welcomes in people that perhaps is the most if not one of the most important questions we can ask today so I love that that's just kind of like a golden thread so to speak through your book and we're not just responding intellectually to the new Rebirth of God as important as that is but relationally and emotionally and with Community uh here is here to your new book I hope a ton of people get it and really wrestle with that question I think it's awesome so last question uh before I let you go I know people are thinking all right what is Justin up to and how can I follow him well um as you know Sean but others may not have realized I have recently moved on from The Unbelievable show after 17 and a half years of hosting it it's been an absolute privilege bringing Christians and non-christians together but that that is continuing under its own steam some fantastic stuff still going on but I'm I'm pursuing some new projects not least this book obviously um and um hoping uh to be launching a a podcast documentary series along the same lines because I think there's an interesting story to be told here so so look out for that as well um I'm I'm hosting some new podcasts um one called re-enchanting which is telling a lot of these stories uh so if you're interested in some of the people I've mentioned a number of them feature on this re-enchanting podcast where we we bring people both with and without faith but who are interested in re-enchanting secular culture with the Christian vision of reality um so so all there's links to all of those from my website and of course to the book as well if you want to pick it up and pre-order it or whatever so you can simply go there to justinbriley.com justinbriley.com Justin appreciate your friendship doing such good work I love your voice of just speaking truth but doing it with just kindness and generosity and openness towards people it's just such a model to me and a lot of times when I travel uh your name comes up of people who are appreciative of your work so we're rooting for you in this new season 17 years that's incredible thanks for probably the half a dozen times you had me on those are great memories we got plenty more we'll do together going forward in the future so the rest of you before you sign away make sure you hit subscribe we've got some other interviews coming up on all sorts of topics that Jess and I discussed culturally apologetics world view make sure you hit subscribe and we have the top rated apologetics Masters program from a distance we have some students from the UK interestingly enough who will come out others will do it fully distance if you've ever thought about studying apologetics we would absolutely love to have you you're not ready for a masters we have a certificate program where we'll kind of guide you through how to learn basic apologetics there's a very significant discount below Justin always fun my friend thanks for coming back and last time I want to make sure everybody picks up your book surprising Rebirth of belief in God thanks buddy uh thank you so much Sean an absolute pleasure to be with you

Channel: Sean McDowell

Views: 78,724

Keywords: secular, unbelievable, secularism, humanism, agnostic, atheism, new atheism, trend, change, failure, fall, decline, Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, apologetics, conversation, dialogue, book, resource

Id: SShRFcuCZsc

Length: 64min 58sec (3898 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 01 2023