The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Episode Date: October 20, 2026

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.On today’s edition of The Briefing, Dr. Mohler discusses President Trump’s decision to cancel the planned livestream of the Fort Hood shooter’s execution, continued riots in France and the breakdown of the rule of law, the ideological questions surrounding Abdul El-Sayed’s candidacy, and Richard Dawkins’ defense of The God Delusion twenty years after its publication.Part I (00:14 – 03:10)Execution Livestream Canceled by President Trump: Government Must Enforce Justice with Solemnity When It Comes to the Death PenaltyTrump Cancels Plans to Livestream Execution of Fort Hood Shooter by The Wall Street Journal (Lara Seligman and Josh Dawsey)Part II (03:10 – 07:09)The Significance of a Burning City Hall: Continued Riots in France Reveal Political Uncertainty and the Breakdown of the Rule of LawPart III (07:09 – 15:27)Theological Challenges to Western Civilization: Abdul El-Sayed’s Candidacy Raises Questions About the Alliance Between Marxism and Islamism on the LeftThe stealth candidacy of Abdul El-Sayed by The Washington Post (Marc A. Thiessen)El-Sayed’s exchange over Muslim Brotherhood stirs inspiration, condemnation by The Washington Post (Erin Cox)Part IV (15:27 – 26:33)There is Now Nothing New About the New Atheist Movement: Twenty Years Later, Atheist Richard Dawkins Stands by His Arguments in The God DelusionTwenty years since I wrote the book, the God Delusion won’t die by The Telegraph (Richard Dawkins)Science is proving Richard Dawkins and the New Atheists wrong by The Telegraph (Stephen Meyer)The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (Bantam Press, 2006)Atheism Remix: A Christian Confronts the New Atheists by R. Albert Mohler Jr. (Crossway, 2008)Sign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

It's Tuesday, October 20, 2006. I'm Albert Mueller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. There are certain decisions that can only be made by a president of the United States. And sometimes there are certain announcements that can only be, say, clarified or reversed by a president of the United States. So the headline that ran in the Wall Street Journal was this, Trump cancels plans to live stream execution of Fort Hood shooter. Now, I think that's a big story. I discussed it back when this was a proposal when the announcement was made. Secretary of Defense or Secretary of War, Pete Hexeth had indicated not only that this would be an execution by firing squad, but that it would be live streamed. And he spoke of a deterrent effect. Of course, there's more to it than that. And that's why at the time I pointed out that one of the most severe issues of moral conscience when it comes to the death penalty, which I think is absolutely supportable. In other words, I think capital, It's absolutely right. I would go back to Genesis 9 saying that for premeditated murder, it's actually biblically mandated. And it needs to be effective. It also needs to be respectful. It needs to be formal. It is a very grave act. It is the ultimate human sanction when it comes to the death penalty. It needs to be taken with solemnity. And when you look at live streaming and you look at video and

modern social media and frankly, when you even look at what America's enemies would do with this, you come to understand this is a very mixed picture. So I want to express appreciation. I think President Trump did exactly the right thing and making very clear it's his decision and his decision is that the execution will go forward and it will go forward with the use of a firing squad, but it will not go forward live streamed. And I just want to say sometimes people, I think, get to the right place, but I also want to say on some big moral issues like this, it takes a while for people to think through the issues. And when it comes to something like this and the graphic nature of a public execution, and for that matter, not just public execution in terms of people physically present. It would be a

public execution broadcast by live streaming to the world. There is an understanding that the abuse is more likely to outweigh the use or the usefulness, the moral usefulness of such an event, of such a broadcast, so to speak. It's also just manifestly true that the enemies of the United States in the Muslim world, in the Arab world, they would use that in order to further the Islamist agenda. And in order to point out that the United States is the great Satan, right down to a man being executed by a firing squad with international broadcast, streaming broadcast in order to make the point. My point is this. I think Christians need to focus on the rightness of capital punishment when it comes to a justice system and understanding the gravity

of capital murder. But we also need to understand that government rightly conducting the rule of law has to also follow a certain solemnity and seriousness, even formality when it comes to something like this, precisely because it is a state operating by the rule of law. But next, thinking about and speaking about the rule of law, I want to cross the Atlantic and go to France, because what we're seeing right there, right in that country, is the breakdown of the rule of law. So if you're looking for the breakdown of the rule of law, what do you look for? Do you look for that to break down in the courtroom? No, in this case, it breaks down with the burning of a courthouse. In this case, the city hall of Limoge in France, very famous, of course, for its porcelain. But right now, infamous because the 19th century town hall was burned down by a mob. Now, here's where things also get very interesting when you see the mainstream media say who's in the mob. But this is also where we need to note that the mainstream media, the establishment media, that typically to the left, they are beginning to acknowledge that this is not just your run-of-the-mill student protests. This is not just a bunch of high school students upset about a failure of funding

for their academic programs and their hot classrooms and all the rest. This is now becoming something that threatens the disintegration of the entire society. So when I talked about this a few days ago, I went through the successive different constitutional regimes that have been in place in France ever since the French Revolution. This is now the fifth republic, that is to say, the fifth major constitutional order. And when you think of France, I think if we had just said, well, let's look at this four or five years ago. People would have said, well, that's a remarkable stability over time. But we've got to specify what we mean by over time, because you talk about the American constitutional order over time.

That's now over two centuries. You talk about the French fifth republic. We're talking about just over a half a century, just less than a century of age. And already it's very much under subversive attack. and you can see that. That's what this is. When you see riots, and by the way, we talked about the fact that in France, riots are a part of the political vocabulary, but not at this extent. Not when you're talking about burning city halls in major historic French cities. You're talking about a loss of control. And this also points to something else. In France, you have a separation of the head of state and the head of government. The head of state is by the Constitution of France, the president of France. But the chief of the government in terms, of the operation is actually the prime minister who operates, especially through the National Assembly. And you look at all this and you say, well, whatever you want to call it, this is a constitutional crisis. There are huge questions about why President Macron is not more active in this.

And one of the things it points out is that he's coming to the end of his second term and he's really coming to the end of his political tether. Frankly, just a matter of, say, four or five years ago, the entire nation would have been asking what's President Macron going to do? That is no longer the operative question. The entire political future of France is now very much in question, and it is not untrue that high school students have been very much a part of these protests. It is to say that now you're really talking about the French political left in the driver's seat and with a far more radical agenda. French national elections are coming up. And by the way, the French left is trying to do its best to destabilize the entire society, hoping this will be

to their political gain. I can simply say we hope not. Those who believe, in civic order and in the rule of law have to hope that the far left in terms of this kind of violent agitation is not going to gain the political initiative, much less the political authority there in France. But at this point, I think it's safe to say that the continuation and the stability of the current French constitutional order is in question. And thus we're looking at much of Europe, not to mention North America in some ways, but at least much of Europe, now being in a time of political and perhaps even constitutional term. oil. This is an unexpected development in the 21st century, pointing out that at least this much

is clear, human beings are not very good at predicting the future. We'll be tracking this with you, but it now becomes clear. This isn't becoming less a story every day, if anything, is becoming even more of a story, not only of national concern in France, but of international concern as well. All right, talking about big news stories, I want to come back to the United States. As you know, we have the midterm elections coming up in just a matter of days, just a little over two weeks now. And this is a big development because it's going to have a great deal to do with the political future of the United States. And it's going to have a great deal to do with what the United States Congress and both the House and the Senate is going to look like after the first of the year,

because the elections will determine that. And we are going to be off to the races with a new political equation. And yet at the same time, when you look at these elections, there are certain of these electoral contests that certainly stand out. We need to look back and say what in the world's going on here. So I want to point to something, and I'm going to look at one newspaper as kind of the evidence of what's going on here, that newspaper is the Washington Post. So that is the most influential newspaper in the nation's capital. It's a newspaper that really gained in political influence during the second half of the 20th century. And thus, when you say the Washington Post right now, you're talking about insider reporting inside the Beltway, as they say, in Washington, D.C.

Okay, so there were two major pieces that ran in the Washington Post within just a very close proximity. On October the 16th, columnist Mark Atheist and wrote a piece entitled The Stealth Candidacy of Abdul Al-Said. Then, just three days later, October the 18th, so we're talking about Sunday, the same paper ran a piece by Aaron Cox with the headline, Al-Said's Exchange over Muslim Brotherhood stirs inspiration, comma, condemnation. Okay, so let's go back to the first one. October the 16th, that's just a few days ago, the columnist is making a very clear point. It is a stealth candidacy. And Theeson writes this, quote, Abdul Al-Said is not who he says he is.

The U.S. Senate candidate wants Michigan voters to believe that he is a conventional progressive Democrat with no ties or sympathies for Islamic radicalism. The opposite is true. El-Said is a radical leftist whose campaign serves as a Trojan horse for a red-green alliance of Marxists and Islamist seeking power in Washington. Okay, just step back for a moment. that is a lead for this article of amazing candor. It's just astoundingly clear.

He's accusing the Senate candidate of running a stealth candidacy saying that in truth, he's not a conventional progressive Democrat. He instead is a radical leftist whose campaign serves. Here's his term as a Trojan horse. He is instead a radical leftist who's, again, red-green alliance as Marxist and Islamists is all about seeking power in Washington. Now, if you're going to make a statement like that, you're going to need to back it up.

And in this case, the columnist did. Quote, when an Islamist terrorist attacked Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, and what the FBI called a Hezbollah-inspired act of terrorism, purposely targeting the Jewish community in the largest Jewish temple in Michigan, El-Said rationalized the attack, pointing out that the perpetrator had lost family in an Israeli strike in Lebanon and that, here's that term that's coming back to haunt him, the phrase hurt people, hurt people.

El-Said later said, quote, to anyone who feels like my comments might have been hurtful, I'm really sorry, saying that there wasn't the time for context, as Thesson says, as if a terrorist attack on a synagogue could be justified by any context, much less one targeting American Jews and retaliation for Israeli actions, end quote. He also writes about the death of Ayatollah Aliq Hamenei, and that's the Iranian supreme leader who was killed in the joint effort undertaken earlier this year by the United States and Israel. And Teeson describes Khomeini as, quote, a man with the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands.

And Al-Said, well, he advised campaign staff that, quote, there are a lot of people in Dearborn who are sad today, sad over the death of the Iranian Supreme Leader, who was the avowed enemy of the United States of America. You know, a part of me looks at this and says, how in the world can we be in this predicament? How in the world can this be a reality? How in the world can the Washington Post run a piece like this

with documented statements from this Democratic candidate? And still you have mainstream Democrats campaigning with him and saying he is a model of the future of the Democratic. Party. Theason goes on mentioning his ties to Hassan Piker and others, quote, here's very crucial words. El-Sayed also has not condemned the Muslim Brotherhood, branches of which have been designated terror organizations by the United States. In 2011, he wrote an op-ed in the Huffington Post, dismissing fears that a Muslim Brotherhood takeover in Egypt would usher in a Hamas-style Islamist dictatorship as foolish. And then Thesan writes, quote, when Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt

leader Muhammad Morsi became president, he sideline the the judiciary, amassed authoritarian powers, cracked down on the press, cited up to Iran and Hamas, prompting a popular uprising against the regime. Okay, so the Muslim Brotherhood came up just a few days ago on an episode of Meet the Press, and here we are told he was asked twice. El-Said was asked twice whether he or his family has any ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. He said no twice. But then the Washington Post article says this, quote,

but his half-sister, a University of Chicago professor, said on X in 2012 that their family has, quote, long been M.B. is in Muslim Brotherhood. And a year later noted that some relatives have been jailed in Egypt for activism in the group. Okay, so I said there are two articles. There's a second article. This is the one with the headline. Just three days later, El-Said's exchange over Muslim Brotherhood stirs inspiration and condemnation. Aaron Cox is the reporter. Listen to this. Quote, at a Senate campaign event in a red-leaning Michigan county this weekend, a young man asked Democrat Abdul al-Said if he would disavowel the Muslim Brotherhood. Yeah, sure, absolutely, he replied. Why are you asking the question? End quote. Well, what I just said before from an article that ran three days earlier in the

same newspaper explains why he's being asked the question and why, quite frankly, dismissing it as he did is another sign of huge, huge trouble. The Theeatist in peace also goes further pointing out that Al-Said's father-in-law, quote, serves on the Founders Committee of the Islamic Society of North America, a group that former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote in 2010 had been named by the Muslim Brotherhood as a partner in his grand jihad and had a joint bank account that was used to funnel money to Hamas. Again, I say, had a joint bank account that was used to funnel money to Hamas. That's just astounding. Thesson goes on, quote, in 2009, a federal judge ruled that there was ample evidence of an association between this group

and Hamas. And then you also have just further documentation here of what is called this Marxist and Islamist alliance. Quote, El-Said says he's not a socialist, but he campaigns with Senator Bernie Sanders and other prominent Democratic socialists and has been endorsed by every member of the socialist squad. So he says he's not identifying as a socialist, but the socialists are identifying him as one of them. Okay, I just want to point out again, theology matters. It always matters. and when you're talking about Islamic theology and you're talking about its concentration in what is known as Islamism, and you see these ties, let's just say there is something that can only be described as, shall we say, an understatement. I won't say a cover up, but let's just say there is a lack of adequate attention to where this candidate is on these issues. And I find this to be a very dangerous sign of things for the future.

And we just talked about the unrest in France. And quite frankly, you look at France and you look at other European countries with very significant Islamic population. and often concentrations of those populations in certain neighborhoods, things like this not only become politically plausible, they become rather politically normal or normative. But you would think the United States is not there, but we're talking about the U.S. Senate race for the state of Michigan. This is an astounding development. I think it is a reminder to us that in a secularizing age, theology doesn't disappear. No, it's not going to disappear. It appears in different forms. That's exactly what this is. It is a theological challenge to the very constitutional basis of Western civilization,

the U.S. Constitution, and more. I think you're going to discover that fewer and fewer people are willing to say that. It's important that we recognize when someone says it out loud. And I think this piece that ran on the 16th in the Washington Post, the fact that it ran on the 16th at the Washington Post, I think that's really significant. I hope an adequate number of Americans pay attention to it before and not after the election. Okay, now I'm going to talk about a piece that was recently written by Richard Dawkins, one of the famous four horsemen of the new atheism. And it's his book, The God Delusion, that's now marking something of a 20th anniversary.

So it's now 20 years ago since the book came out. And of course, it did make big splashes. It was a New York Times bestseller. And it was at that time, about 20 years ago, that the movement that was then dubbed the new atheism was coming out in a very big way. And Richard Dawkins was a big part of that. The Charles Simony professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford University at the time, author of some very interesting books, you know, offering his biological theories.

He came out and said, it's absolutely implausible. It's a delusion to believe in God. Now, he got a lot of attention because, after all, he was the Charles Simony professor or the public understanding of science at Oxford University. He was one of the most famous biologists of the time. but he also was really going outside his field in writing about atheism. The God Delusion nonetheless became a bestseller. Okay, so 20 years later, he's written a piece.

Here's his title, 20 years since I wrote the book, The God Delusion Won't Die. Ha, ha, we get the pun. All right. So in this article, he really comes out swinging and he's really arguing for the fact that his atheism should just be the standard fair, just the normal way of looking at the world. It's still in his mind religious believers who are just way out of line. And so he wrote this piece. It was published in the Telegraph.

That's a major, basically conservative British newspaper. He says, quote, the delusion of God will not lie down. Partly because it serves as a comfort blanket for those whose idea of logic takes the form, life will be intolerable without X, therefore X must exist. Then there's the great Stalin syllogism. Stalin was an atheist. Stalin was a horrible man. Therefore, God exists.

The variant that begins Hitler was an atheist is equally illogical and therefore untouched by the fact that he wasn't. I just want to point out, this is an absolute evasion of a serious argument. He's saying, okay, they're bad arguments against atheism, but he takes the worst arguments against atheism. He completely ignores the best arguments against atheism. The test of your theory, the test of your thesis is not your test against the weak forms of the opposing worldview, but rather the strong forms of the opposing worldview.

But anyway, he says that the new atheism was something he was glad. to join with his book, The God Delusion. He points to Darwin 1859, and he calls that, you know, of course, the release of Darwin's major work. He says, quote, to Darwin's sword, I can only add pinpricks such as the following. If God designed cheetahs to be beautifully effective killers of gazelles, and if God designed gazelles to be beautifully effective escapers from cheetahs, whose side has God on? And, you know, that's an interesting question, but only as an illustration of a ridiculous kind of question, or at least as posed. And that's because he doesn't take seriously the Christian understanding of the existence of God

and God is the creator of all things for his glory. He doesn't take that seriously at all. And he certainly doesn't take seriously the fact that the Christian worldview moves from that to the reality of human sin such that there are distortions and corruptions of creation order all around us. And as a matter of fact, we're looking forward to a time in the kingdom of Christ, well, when the lion and the lamb will be able to be together and one's not going to eat the other. And that's a sign of the perfect peace that is going to come.

In the meantime, what you see is the 20th anniversary of the new atheism, and in particular, Richard Dawkins' book, bringing out the really kind of irritating, assertive character of his atheism all over again. You know, he also just comes right out and says, evolutionary science and the Christian faith, or the Christian understanding of God, Christian Theism, they're absolutely incompatible. And you know, that's the only point with which I basically am in agreement with him. But he takes the theory of evolution and just basically makes that the most basic orthodoxy that tests everything else. And so he just posits evolutionary development as the one real thing against which everything else has to be judged.

Well, you know, if you begin there, guess what? You're going to end there. And thus, you see his atheism really taking this very strident form. He says there never was a let there be light moment. He says, what of the cosmology version today? Our universe began in a singularity some 13.8 billion years ago. The let there be light moment, when conditions cooled enough for electrons to bond with nuclei forming the first neutral atoms, came about a quarter of a million years later.

He says there was a further delay of about nine billion years before the sun and earth came into existence. In a triumph of wishful thinking, he writes, this sequence of events has seen by some as vindication of the book of Genesis. seriously. Yeah, seriously. I just want Christians to understand that what he lampoons is exactly what we believe. And he says that what we believe is intellectually preposterous. I'm going to turn the tables and say, I think it's what he believes, that's intellectually preposterous. He has to say that something comes out of nothing. And what we see now as even the human being is just a biological accident over a sufficient amount of time. I don't think even the average atheist can look in the mirror and truly believe that. The article, by the way, just goes on and on.

He tries to take on just a bunch of stuff. Later in the article, he says that he's something of a cultural Christian. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, just a minute. You're supposed to be the vociferous opponent of God, belief in God, and all forms of organized Christianity. But you know what? He has gotten himself in trouble with some secularists and with some on the left and in particular some feminist and the whole transgender movement. about this on the briefing because Richard Dawkins is such a Darwinist fundamentalist. I use that term

intentionally. He's such a Darwinist fundamentalist that he believes that transgender identity is not compatible with the Darwinian process, let's just say based upon reproduction. And of course, he's right about that. But, you know, he's willing to be an intellectual outlaw on the LGBTQ array, but he also wants to identify as a cultural Christian because guess what? As came out in one Christmas celebration just a few years ago, he likes the Christmas music. Listen, this is one of the paragraphs he writes later in this article, quote, to be a cultural Christian in the way that I am as leagues away from being a Christian. I just want to say he's absolutely right about that. Quote, Christians don't just know some hymns or think it would be rather nice if people love their

neighbors a bit more. Christians believe. They believe that a man called Jesus died to redeem our sins and walked three days later. If like me, you reject such Tosh, you are not a Christian. Well, again, I actually agree with him. If you believe those things, you are a believer, a Christian. If you do not believe those things, I don't care what church you go to, and I don't care what music you like. You are not a Christian. He says, quote, I pay God the compliment of taking the hypothesis of his existence seriously.

If verified, God would be the most exciting hypothesis in the entire history of science. I'll just say that's a very weird sentence. Let's just say, if God exists and he does, it is the most significant foundational truth about everything. I think it's rather astounding that his scientism shows up by saying that if God exists, then guess what, that's going to be scientifically relevant. He then goes on and writes, quote, a universe conceived and designed by a superhuman intelligence would be a totally different kind of universe from the one in which my opinion we actually inhabit.

In quote, well, that's also astounding for the fact that he's so honest to say. It would be a different kind of universe from the one which in his opinion we actually inhabit. it very interesting in his opinion. He concludes the article by saying, 20 years on, I stand by what I wrote in the God illusion. It's very, very interesting. I think it's good for us to look at this and see the clash of worldviews all over again. I wrote a book on the new atheism entitled Atheism Remix back when all of this was current. And you know, here's the thing. Here's an astounding realization to me. That means it's about 20 years since I wrote that book because it came out just after the Dawkins book.

You know, at the time back then, Richard Dawkins was absolutely certain his worldview, his atheist presuppositions, were in assent. In other words, they were about to shape the entire culture. But actually, the headlines, a few years later, are not about the disappearance of Christianity, but about the persistence of theism and about of all things,

not Christians going to atheist services, but this most famous atheist showing up at Christian services. It's also, I think, relevant to note, Just a few days earlier, the same newspaper, just about basically a week earlier from the Dawkins piece, it run a piece by Stephen Meyer with the headline, Science is Proving Richard Dawkins and the new atheist wrong. Okay, so why the timing is because the 20th anniversary of the God delusion. And the point that Stephen Meyer is making is that over time, the argument made by Richard Dawkins is really not gaining ground. It isn't adding intellectual credibility.

it is not now a New York Times bestseller. Of course it was, and I'm not taking away from the fact that he has exerted a lot of influence on the people who are well open to the influence of Richard Dawkins. I just want to say that the argument that he thought he and his new atheist colleagues settled 20 years ago, of course, isn't settled. And that is because God is not going to allow that argument to settle. At the end of this article, Stephen Meyer, by the way, points out that the proponent of so many of these atheistic ideas, quote, are reaching for increasingly exotic ideas to explain

evidence that seems otherwise to point straightforwardly to a transcendent and intelligent creator. In other words, God, end the quote. I think that's an extremely apt point. What we see around us is a very energetic, very orchestrated conspiracy of those who want God not to exist to argue that he obviously doesn't exist. And they have to keep making this argument again and again, in this case 20 years later, because of the obvious truth apparent in creation and in the internal witness of our spiritual nature, the very fact is that all around us, the world, the cosmos is crying out God does exist. And it turns out that with Richard Dawkins and the God delusion, you can write a New York Times bestseller. And 20 years later, you still haven't convinced people of the point.

Oh, and I guess it, at the bottom line, is just really interesting. This is also further evidence of the fact that Richard Dawkins is not giving up, even if he does, for his own cultural Christian reasons, show up at Christmas services. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmoler.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter by going to X.com forward slash Albert Mola. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbtsdust.U. For information on Boyce College, just go to Boiscollege.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing. Thank you.