The Sean McDowell Show - 20 Years Engaging Skeptics: BIG Insights

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

What has podcaster Justin Brierley learned from conversing with skeptics, atheists, and agnostics for over two decades? He joins me to talk about the state of the God-debate and why he is more confident than ever that Christianity is true. As always, let us know what you think!READ: Why I’m Still a Christian: After Two Decades of Conversations with Skeptics and Atheists, by Justin Brierley (https://amzn.to/41xBUBs)*Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf)*USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for $100 off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM)*See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK)FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

Our guest today has been hosting dialogues with atheist skeptics and other non-Christians for about two decades. What does he learn from these interactions that can help us in our conversations? Is he more confident or less confident in his Christian faith? And how has the God conversation shifted in that time? Our guest today, of course, is the one and only Justin Briarley, who's here to talk about the release of his updated book, Why I Am Still A Christian. Justin, always good to have you on my friend.

Oh, thank you for having me back, Sean. We go back a long way now, don't we? You must have come on several unbelievable shows over the years and then we ended up doing stuff in person. So always a pleasure to be with you. Well, I've been looking forward to this conversation. Love the update to your book and given how many conversations you've had,

I'm always eager to see how you're thinking about stuff, how you kind of gauge where the conversation is gone. But one of the things you write in your book is this. You say, all these years on, I can honestly say, I'm more confident in my Christian faith than when I began. So two-part question, why is that the case? And do you still have doubts? I guess three-part question.

So why is that the case? Do you still have doubts? And what do you do when you have those questions two decades after having these dialogues? That's right. Well, the short answer is, the reason that I am more confident is because actually I discovered in the course of hosting innumerable debates and discussions

with skeptics and atheists that actually Christianity could stand on its own two feet. It wasn't that there weren't questions and things that I haven't worked out yet, but I discovered that what you're essentially doing very often when looking at the rational case for Christianity is asking, does it make sense? And does it make better sense

than the other options on offer? And what I discovered is that actually when you put it side by side with something like atheism or any other worldview, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity stands up really well. It's not that there are no questions and no mysteries, but actually it's more coherent overall than any other worldview I've been presented with.

And so in a sense, at that level, it makes sense to me to put my faith in this, to say yes to Christianity. Do I have doubts? Of course, you know, and that is just part and parcel of anybody, you know, whatever your background, you should have doubts about something because we're not superhuman. We don't know everything. But I would say that the doubts I have are of the kind that are arguably sort of secondary, they're things I can live with sort of being uncertain about. At the core of Christianity, the central claims it makes, I think you have an extraordinarily good historical record, philosophical witness,

theological record, and it makes sense at a personal emotional level as well. So for me, that's why, yeah, I do sense that despite the doubts that inevitably a part of life, Christianity kind of has always made sense over and against any other worldview. And I've forgotten the third thing. You answered it. By the way, I agree. I don't know how anybody, regardless of what their worldview is, doesn't have some doubts today with the just information that's available. You've got to siphon yourself off from reality and anyone who sees the world differently to not have some doubts for any worldview.

So I agree with that. Also, my take is very similar to yours. So I haven't been hosting dialogues in the way that you have. I've hosted some. I really am more confident that Christianity is true than 10 or 20 years ago. I was just talking to my wife about this saying, guy, the more I probe in,

like you said, historically and theologically and philosophically and existentially, it really does make sense. And so you and I are pretty similar there. Now, the title of your book is Why I am Still a Christian. Let me take a step back and just say, Justin, not why are you still a Christian? Why are you a Christian in the first place? Well, I suppose there are different ways of answering that question.

I mean, one one answer I could give you is is a kind of more of a historical answer about my life and the direction it took, the fact that I was raised in a Christian family. So that inevitably had an influence upon, you know, the things I was hearing and the course my life took. And there was a point in my life as a sort of around the age of 15, when that all came together and I had an experience of God that sort of made sense

and things came together where I, from that point on, didn't simply go to church because my parents took me. I went because I wanted to go. I really came to believe there was a God who loved me and who was interested in my prayers and that when I read scripture and prayed, he could speak to me. So it kind of faith basically came alive. What happened next was that I encountered all kinds of hard questions about Christianity, because I, you know, live in the UK, it's a very post Christian country. And I went to a university, Oxford University, where there were a

lots of skeptics on hand to kind of try and, you know, ask difficult questions about your faith. So I pretty soon discovered in my late teens and early twenties, this thing that I later realized was called apologetics. People like CS Lewis offering kind of intellectual defenses of the Christian faith, helping me think through some of those big questions around suffering and evidence for God, science and faith. And, um, and yeah, that, that's kind of what led me in the end to starting the Unbelievable show

and to kind of hosting these kinds of dialogues and debates over nearly 20 years. But the other way I would answer the question, why am I a Christian is sort of, you know, is actually because, as I said earlier, it makes sense. And that's something that has become more and more apparent to me because of hosting these these dialogues. It wasn't, if you like, the thing that persuaded me to become a Christian initially, that was more of an experience. But the thing that has helped me to kind of have the confidence to present this

as an intellectual option for people beyond my own personal experience, if you like, is the fact that when I look at the evidence, it makes sense when I look at the evidence that's available to all of us, regardless of what our personal experience may or may not be, is the fact that when I look at the evidence, it makes sense. When I look at the evidence that's available to all of us, regardless of what our personal experience may or may not be, there's stuff that seems to point in the direction of God and specifically in the direction of Jesus and the Christian faith. So for me, it was that combination of personal experience,

but also putting the intellectual pieces together that is the kind of answer to why am I a Christian? So you had an experience and then apologetics became important to you. In my conversations and experience, that seems to be the case for more people than the opposite. Now my dad is an exception to that, set out to disprove it. Jay Warner Wallace is an exception to that. So I think it's false to just say apologetics is only for seekers or it's only for believers. But would you say that most people find it

after they become a believer and have experience of God's grace or a need for God? Or would it be hard to just kind of quantify that difference to you? I think inevitably a lot of people do discover it after they've had something or an upbringing in faith. And that they're just, they're looking for ways in which they can, they can help to make sense of that an intellectual level, I just

think that a lot of people's experience, or kind of what they receive often in church, sort of doesn't match kind of the level of, I suppose, teaching they get in all kinds of other walks of life, you know, and they suddenly make to feel like Christianity kind of is something I'm just supposed to treat in a different category altogether to the good teaching I have on math or economy or history or whatever it might be. And what I've realized is actually no, you know, Christians need to be educated in their faith in their, in the reasons for their belief, just as much as anyone needs to be educated in anything. And it would be, it's completely normal for Christians to go on this journey of experiencing something, but then needing to understand it more and go on that intellectual journey. So there's nothing wrong with that. And it's completely to be expected.

I do bump into more and more people though, for whom they've gone on that intellectual journey before arriving at the Christian conclusion, if you like. And so I think, you know, and that's obviously gonna be the case for people like CS Lewis, who I mentioned earlier, he is a classic example of someone who was an atheist as a young man, but through, you know, really engaging the philosophical questions, conversations with his friends who were believers at Oxford University, he sort of,

arguably kind of reasoned himself into believing in God, he saw that this was a logical conclusion. Even with Louis, there was eventually an emotional component to a personal component to it, where he kind of found that he needed to, to make sense of this kind of somewhat abstract belief in God, by actually meeting the real person of Jesus Christ. And, it's always gonna be at some point, you're gonna find that those two worlds collide, this kind of intellectual journey and the heart experience.

Sometimes one comes before the other or the other comes before the other. But in the end, at some point, those two things have to meet. The key is not to universalize. And I think if we have an experience and then apologetics comes afterwards, I see people saying,

look, this is only after you believe. Don't reason people into faith. And then people who follow the evidence are like every single evangelistic encounter needs to have apologetics. I'm like, I don't think we have to universalize here. So by the way, those of you watching, chances are if you're watching this, you follow Justin's

kind of ministry or mine. Let us know if you follow apologetics, if you're a believer. Was it before he came into faith? Was it after? I will read these comments. I would love to know in your experience. If you're an atheist, just tell us or not a believer why you're watching this and why apologetics interests you.

I'd love to know your thoughts. Now Justin, one thing I've been doing recently is I've been asking over 100 Christian apologists what they consider the best argument for the existence of God. And I mean just like morality, fine-tuning, consciousness, whatever. Now if you had to pick one,

what do you think is the best argument for the existence of God and why? So my favorite argument for the existence of God, the one that I find most intellectually compelling, is the moral argument for God. And that's again, funnily enough, I've already mentioned C.S. Lewis a couple of times now, but interestingly, arguably, that was the argument that led him to theism, to belief in God. There was another kind of separate journey that had to happen for him to become a full-blooded Christian. But I just, I think the reason that the moral argument is so compelling to me is because it's not just a sort of logical deductive argument. I mean, it is a one level that it's it's this argument that for objective values and duties to exist in the world, there has to be a sort of transcendent, moral lawgiver that to make sense of that idea, and it doesn't work

on a kind of atheistic worldview. But the reason that that it's a powerful argument for me is because it's not it kind of hits differently than other sort of arguments like maybe the fine tuning of the universe or a philosophical evidence for God, because it matters. It matters what we think about right and wrong. Most people, this isn't just a sort of intellectual game. It's, you know, they're invested in whether we act justly, what is right and wrong in the world, how we treat other people. And so at that level, I think the argument becomes most powerful when people are actually

confronted with real evil or blinding goodness because it's sometimes difficult, I think, for an atheist to make sense of those categories once they're actually presented with a real example, you know, a stop you in your tracks example of someone doing genuine evil. If you go to the Holocaust Museum or something like that, I think it's much harder to come out of that and just say, well, the universe just runs according to a blind process whereby, you know, survival of the fittest and whatever plays out plays out. I think it's much harder for you to come out of something like that and sustain a purely atheistic account of morality. So that's why I think it hits you in a different way.

And for me, yeah, I guess it's because of that existential aspect of the argument that I find it very powerful. And I rarely find atheists who want to just roll over and say, hey, morality is just whatever the happenstance, the zeitgeist is of any given time or place. Because as soon as they say that, then you say, okay, so slavery was fine when it was being practiced, rape was fine

when that was the way that senior Roman males treated their underlings. And they're like, well, no, no, I'm not saying it was fine. It's suddenly, when you give them a concrete example, that the whole kind of morality is just whatever, you know, comes out in the social zeitgeist doesn't feel so compelling anymore. And I just think there's something powerful about that because morality impresses itself upon you. That was a great answer.

And one of the most common ones that I'm getting, Justin. I've heard from William Lane Craig and John Lennox and Oz Guinness and Paul Copan, Nancy Piercy, and I'm gonna make a short video on this. Some of the answers are completely expected. Others totally surprised me. But morality is definitely one of the most common ones because there's the intellectual case,

but it's existential like you described. So I'm with you. Now I want to know, I mean you've probably hosted hundreds of people in conversations. I'm really curious at a conversation that's gotten the right kind of feedback. And I don't just mean numbers. Sometimes numbers aren't necessarily our views,

the feedback we want. But maybe just take us, you've had so many guests, someone you felt like, you know what, they handle themselves well, they advance the conversation. And you could name this person or not, but I'm really looking for just some insights of people who you think do spiritual conversations well, and what they do that we could learn from? Well, you just named the person that immediately sprang to mind, and that's John Lennox, who is just a wonderful human being, and also a wonderful thinker and Christian apologist. John and I, you know, have known each other for a number of years now. And for those who aren't familiar with his ministry, he's an Oxford Don.

He's a professor of mathematics and the philosophy of science at Oxford University. And he had, you know, a really impressive academic career, even really before he started to really become a well-known Christian thinker, writing books, engaging Richard Dawkins, the new atheist and that kind of thing. But I think the reason why I just love having a John Lennox say in a conversation is because not only does he bring that intellectual side, but he also just brings the ability to have a really down to earth human kind of conversation with people. He's got that winsome kind of side to him

where he really takes the care and the time to understand someone, to listen to them, to engage them where they are, to be friendly. And it makes a huge difference to some kinds of arguments, well, some kinds of conversations, conversations that could have been arguments, but turned into really good quality conversations because John, you know, just showed people respect,

was engaged, interested. He wasn't just there to sort of ram home his point. He really was there to engage and understand and so on. And I just think he's a great model of respectful conversation and dialogue. I mean, that's not to say, you know, he's been in, I've put him in one or two conversations where I was putting him up against very kind of

quite dogmatic, set in their ways, new atheist types. He's done a couple that I moderated with Peter Atkins, who's almost at the extreme end of the kind of curmudgeonly atheist kind of character. I think he always plays up to it really, where he just won't accept any kind of evidence and he just dismisses everything as poppycock and delusional and everything else.

And bless him, John Lennox is incredibly gracious and patient and, you know, but you know, there's those kinds of conversations sometimes. A similar one I remember, where I put John Lennox in conversation with Lawrence Krause. And it may have been slightly to do with the fact Krause was on a line at midnight from a hotel somewhere. But it was, Krause was kind of cranky and dismissive.

But John, again, just very patient and gentle, but, you know, also assertive, you know, not letting Krauss get away with too much. But then other conversations, you know, where John's really come into his own have been where you've got someone who is a genuine seeker and someone who's perhaps in a mode where they're starting to question their own atheism. And again, John was just so respectful, but pushing in all the right ways when I sat him down for a kind of public conversation.

You might remember this, Sean, it was in Costa Mesa with Dave Rubin, the YouTube talk show host. And Dave Rubin had been on an interesting journey at that point in his life, where he had kind of gone from this very new atheist kind of way of seeing the world to increasingly being influenced by people like Jordan Peterson and others to sort of ask whether actually there might be some value in faith and so on. And John just had a really delightful conversation

with him on stage where he just listened, answered some of his questions, pushed in, kind of gently challenged him to consider Christ and also sort of, you know, drawing upon Dave Rubin's own sort of Jewish heritage along the way and saying some really helpful things. And again, it was, the audience just leaned in for that conversation. It was one of the best conversations I've ever hosted

because it felt like there was something really important was happening on the best conversations I've ever hosted because it felt like there was something really important was happening on the stage. And so that's... He's kind of one of my heroes when it comes to these kinds of dialogues. Lennox is someone I look to as well for a lot of reasons. Now, I can imagine someone right now going, okay, Justin, he's a professor at Oxford.

He has, what, three PhDs. He's brilliant. I could never do that. And honestly, I look at stuff he does and I'm happy to say I could never do that. I'm not gonna get a third PhD and teach at Oxford. He's smarter than I am. Like that is completely true. What would you say to other, just maybe more normal folks

without that level of expertise and education who are trying to have these conversations, what can they do to do it more successfully? Well, the first thing I'd say is you don't have to have a PhD to have the kind of conversations that John Lennox is having. It's obviously helpful to get yourself aware of the dynamics

and the shape of these conversations and arguments so that you're prepared to have a conversation. But the vast majority of people you and I engage with, Sean, are not sort of PhD level Oxford graduates. They're people who have the kinds of questions that most people have about life and faith and God. And so, yeah, it's important that we don't set this up as some kind of, you have to have this big shot education to be able to engage people.

There are certain situations where that's helpful, where, you know, but they're not the everyday situations. And so we should be looking for the expert in biblical studies or hermeneutics or whatever when we are engaging a bar M. And, you know, I don't don't I'm not you don't want to just put a lay person opposite someone who you know who's in that position but but for for most conversations honestly we're just asked you know we're just doing what we're we're asked to do in scripture which is to be ready to give a an answer to anyone who asks us about the reason for the hope that we have, but do it with gentleness and respect.

And I know that's an obvious answer, but it does bear repeating because the way you say things is just as important as the things you say. And all the training in the world in apologetics doesn't go far if it's not delivered with the kind of compassion that we're asked to do. So in that verse, that gentleness and respect, I've been in so many conversations

where just what should have been a great argument never landed because of the way it was delivered. And so many conversations where a pretty poor argument landed way better than it should have, because the person was just kind. And that gave that skeptic the opportunity to come back. And they wanted to come back for another conversation and that kind of thing.

So I just think we shouldn't underestimate that it's just about nurturing a sense of common decency, a conversational approach, a curious approach to people around us, not constantly having to be able to demolish their arguments and answer back, being willing to say, I don't know, let me look into that and get back to you. Could we continue the conversation? That is a great answer sometimes. And sometimes a more fruitful answer actually, because it shows someone that you're genuinely interested. You want to have a genuine conversation with them.

You're not trying to, you know, kind of just win a, win a kind of intellectual game. So I think that's, those are some of the lessons you could draw out from that winsome approach of a John Lennox. I appreciate that you said saying, I don't know is not only a permissible answer, but sometimes the best answer, because it keeps the conversation going. And you also talked about curiosity. That's something I try to have motivate my channel.

I think of like charity, civility, curiosity are some of the principles that I hope are driving some of the conversations that I have. What would you consider? And you don't necessarily have to answer them right now because you have chosen this, I've chosen this. What do you think are the hardest questions for Christians to answer? I mean almost certainly the questions where again, it touches on a real existential issue, a nerve for the person that you're having the conversation with. Because you can have an abstract conversation about sexuality and ethics. But when you're having

it with someone for whom that is foundational to who they are, and their life, it's a different kind of conversation, inevitably. And so they tend to be the hardest conversations because you're not just approaching this, ideally, at least you're not just approaching this as a purely rational conversation, where we're just going to get the facts on the table and debate it. You know, to me at least, I would in that situation be in the position where I want to treat this person respectfully. I don't want to kind of come across as harsh or dismissive of their view,

because this matters so much to them. That doesn't mean I'm not going to, you know, try to represent and be biblically faithful as far as I can. But at the same time, I'm going to be really thinking really carefully about the way I'm addressing them, that I'm not creating unnecessary pitfalls or trip hazards along the way. And so I think those are the hardest conversations when it really matters to the individual in question. And that could be on all kinds of things equally,

you know, I could have answered, well, suffering is the hardest question, because in a sense it is just a hard question to answer. But in another sense, you know, I've got my stock set of kind of responses to the question of suffering. I could pull them out, you know, they're there in my back pocket. But the reality is, if it's someone who is, whose loved one, whose child has just died, it's going to sound kind of cold and harsh, a lot of that stuff, if I'm just sort of reaching for a sort of logical theodicy at that point. And, and so that's going to be a much harder kind of conversation, because you're actually what you're probably really needed to do is is is give some kind of

pastoral hope to that person more than just an intellectual answer. So it's whenever the personal is involved, that it's the hardest conversation. But they're also the most important conversations usually. So they're worth taking the time to really do well. That's an important distinction to not be issue driven, but person driven. Whenever I give a lecture and take questions from Christian or non-Christian audiences, the majority of questions have some personal element behind it. They're not just abstract. There's a reason this person is asking that question that's often personal, that hopefully shapes and influences the way I respond to them. Now, I've been saying something lately and I'm curious if you agree with me.

to respond to them. Now I've been saying something lately and I'm curious if you agree with me. I've said almost a direct quote that most people are open to spiritual conversations. Someone pressed me for my data recently and I said, you know, I don't have a study on this. I don't know how you'd really prove it because no one's gonna say in a study,

no, I'm not open to spiritual conversation. Like everyone's gonna say that they are. But from watching your conversations, from having my own, from family, from friends, I mean, it's the exception in my case for somebody who doesn't want to have a conversation, at least at the right time, in the right way, in the right place. Do you think most people are open

to authentic spiritual conversations? And what would you base that in if you agree or if you disagree, why do you disagree? I agree. But I'd say that, you know, the tide has shifted in that direction, quite recently. And I say that because if you go back 20 or so years to when I launched the Unbelievable Show in the mid 2000s in the heyday of the new atheism, there wasn't as much of an appetite, I think for those spiritual conversations. There might be been something of an appetite for kind of big set piece debates,

on intellectual questions, but sort of it was almost considered embarrassing to sort of talk, you know, to sort of have a genuinely spiritual conversation about the big questions and that sort of thing. And generally in the UK, very post-Christian culture, very secular, you know, it just, it wasn't the done thing. I do feel though, 20 years on, that things have shifted a lot and the types of conversations people on, that things have shifted a lot. And the types of conversations people are willing to have have changed a lot. I lay out a lot of this in the book, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, the way in which I sensed that because the new atheist moment and that very

secular atmosphere has waned significantly for all kinds of reasons, it feels like it's opened up the ground. It's softened the ground for people to ask those questions again. They don't feel embarrassed talking about God in public any longer because lots of people are doing it. You know, Jordan Peterson, Tom Holland, the historian and all those people who, you know, I've talked about in my book and podcast series, but now you've got Joe Rogan, you know, inviting on Wes Huff and having all kinds of interesting conversations with people you wouldn't have seen him having those conversations with five, Joe Rogan, you know, inviting on Wes Huff and having all kinds of interesting conversations with people he wouldn't, you wouldn't have seen him having those conversations with five, 10 years ago. So, and it's when those kind of gatekeepers, if you like, start to model

it, suddenly everyone, I think kind of follows suit, kind of gives permission for people to think, okay, yeah, I can talk about this because it turns out it's not cringe or embarrassing or whatever. And I think you're especially seeing that among the youngest generation. And this is where I do think we are seeing hard data come through now about the openness. You know, Gen Z have been labeled the open generation

and they are just way more open to spirituality, spiritual conversations than their parents or grandparents. Um, some recent data here in the UK showing that Gen Z are half as likely to be atheists as their parents and grandparents. Um, and now that... that can be kind of a wide openness to lots of types of spirituality,

you know, from crystals to manifesting to witch talk, you know, there's a lot of stuff that's out there. But interestingly, Christianity is also on the table, they're not dismissing it in the way that parents and grandparents did. And I've kind of got a theory for this, that basically, because certainly here in the UK, there was still a kind of cultural Christianity that pervaded the atmosphere for a long time in the era of the boomers and the Gen Xers and even the millennials to some extent. It kind of gave people permission to kind of assume that they knew what Christianity was and reject it. They were sort of had just enough to be inoculated against it if you like. Whereas Gen Z have not been to church.

They don't know the first thing about Christianity. They're genuinely unchurched. But in a funny way, that sometimes can be an advantage because they've got nothing to kick against and to reject because they didn't grow up with it around them. And so there's a genuine openness. There's a genuine curiosity when they meet a Christian who says, you know, whose life looks kind of different

to theirs and they seem to have a certain joy or peace about them. And suddenly there's a kind of, they're not immediately put off at the idea of church. So I was amazed to hear from, for instance, a student, a Christian student organization last year that I interviewed, talking about just the huge upturn in the number of young people interested in Christians, conversations about Christianity, open to accepting invitations to

church. They did a, they conducted a poll across all of the universities in the UK. to church, they conducted a poll across all of the universities in the UK. And they were staggered to find that 75% of non-Christian students said that if they were asked to church, they would go. They'd never seen a result like that before. And this person was telling me that we're just seeing something really different in the last few years. Likewise, you know, with I've seen other similar statistics around this kind of openness. And some of it, yeah, is translating, I think, into people having those conversations, being far more open to it, and even going to church. Lots of, at this point, still anecdotal, but kind of started to be backed up by hard evidence

of a lot of young people, especially young men, interestingly, walking into church, often with absolutely no Christian background whatsoever, but they're just interested. They've heard something, they've listened to a podcast, they've bought a Bible, they're willing to give it a try. And so I'm very excited, Sean,

that this openness seems to be suddenly manifesting among that generation. I haven't heard you float the theory quite like you did, but I've actually made somewhat of a similar point that the new atheist movement only makes sense if there's something to fight against, that there's an awareness of Christianity and there's a resonance in culture

that at least the critiques can land and be understood. It's like we have a new generation of thinkers like Jordan Peterson and Tom Holland and Jonathan Rauch kind of rediscovering in a sense some of these Christian stories. And I loved, and we who rest with God, Jordan Peterson, he's like, I recognize there's difficult Old Testament passages,

but let's not stop there, you know, as of course the New Atheist did. Let's go deeper and understand the story on its own terms. And what would it be about a God that would be in favor of just reacting so strongly to sin? Like it's the right questions are being asked, getting beyond these surface critiques to get to the heart of what maybe Jesus taught and the Bible is about. And then asking questions whether or not we needed for civilization in our age. So I agree with you. I think I give you huge credit for your book, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God for kind of seeing that trend ahead of time,

picking up on it and charting where that conversation was going. Yeah, and obviously a lot of this stuff has crystallized sort of since the publication of the book and kind of being able to track this surprising rebirth to some extent in real time through doing a podcast documentary series that picks up on a lot of these questions

and some of this new stuff that's emerging in terms of what I've called the meaning crisis and the spiritual hunger that seems to be there among Gen Z. And one of the really simple things I kind of realized in interviewing some of these young people is, whereas for you and I, the new atheism is something that kind of is a present reality, because we just lived through it, right?

For those people, it's a history thing. It's like, oh, yeah, I was still in nappies when that was happening. So, you know, it's kind of, it's literally, it completely passed them by because they weren't even born at the time. So there's a kind of, it just made me re-appreciate the way things do change quite quickly

and the kind of spiritual atmosphere can actually, it turns out change quite quickly. And I don't know exactly what that means, but I do feel like there's this opportunity. And what I'm excited about is that kind of you and I have been plugging away for decades now, you know, and your dad was the OG, you know, of apologetics, kind of doing our thing,

kind of trying to get people to take the case for Christianity seriously, sometimes having some good fruits, sometimes feeling like it was, you know, really barren, dry earth that we were trying to harvest from. But then something happens. It's like something shifts in the culture. And suddenly all that hard work starts to bear fruit. And you suddenly get Wes Huff on Joe Rogan, the most listened to podcast saying all the stuff that you and I have been talking about for years, but suddenly it's like people are ready to listen and it's like, oh wow, there's a kind of a hunger now for this and it feels like we're kind of entering a different way in which this stuff is going

to land with people compared to, I don't know if that makes sense to you, Sean. It totally does. I agree that there's a meaning crisis and an openness and an interest that there maybe wasn't in the past. Here's a few other ways I see kind of the God conversation shifting. And I'm curious your take on this. And you can comment on any or all these or none of them. One way is the conversation you mentioned, Wes Huff, a couple of times. He got nitpicked from critics

on every single thing that he said. And some objections were fair, of course. Let's nuance what we mean by the Dead Sea Scrolls and word for word, like these are fair. But it's also like we've hit a point where there's now full-time counter-apologists responding to even the slightest stuff that is said, which on one hand is like, okay, good.

If we say we care about truth, we need to be more careful than ever. I've gotten some pushback and I'm like, that's nitpicking ridiculous. Other times I'm like, you know what? I think you're right about that. I need to shift course and adjust. So I see that shift.

Another shift that I would argue is that we spend a lot of time talking about naturalism and materialism. And understandably, it has a huge influence in academia and you see it in other realms of influence. But the atheist public is maybe 4% roughly. Maybe you add agnostics, it's into the lower teens, but those who practice tarot cards

and believe in reincarnation, like new age beliefs are way bigger and more entrenched than atheist beliefs. So I was just watching Cobra Kai with my 12 year old son. He's like, dad, what are tarot cards? Cause it was kind of woven in there. I'm like, okay, let's have a conversation about this. So I see that shift taking place.

Agree or disagree on those two points. There's more that I see, but what do you think about those two? How does that strike you? Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I think there is a huge shift, lots of shifts taking place. And I think the new atheist thing was a bit of a diversion

because it was kind of trying to demolish Christianity per se, but it didn't really replace it with anything. All it did was open up a void where all of these things then flooded in. And so, you know, people, I think what the new atheists have discovered is people are intrinsically religious, actually, very few of them end up becoming card carrying scientific materialists. They will once you've kind of got rid of God, you're going to replace it with something quasi religious. And that's going to be very often as either some

esoteric new age spirituality, or it's going to be a God like either some esoteric New Age spirituality or it's going to be a God like the, you know, on the progressive left, some sort of sexuality or gender thing that becomes your God. It could be political mythology on the right that becomes your God. We're great at manufacturing idols to put in the place of God basically. And New Atheism had this very sort of naive idea that once we get rid of Christianity, we'll just go forward into this scientific utopia. And of course that didn't emerge. And so I think you're absolutely right that this is the landscape that we're dealing with

now. I think in a very ironic way, at least the thing that the new atheists and Christians broadly did have some common consensus on was the idea of objective truth, and, you know, the fairly modernist idea that there is a truth to be debated. And now that that's so under attack, even in biology and lots of other areas, it's funny that a lot of, you know, I talk about this in the book, there is a lot of unexpected bedfellows now, who kind of have a common cause, both Christians and atheists who maybe are pushing back against some of that stuff. So I was at, you know, just recently the Ark Conference in London, and this is a sort of about 4000 people all under one roof. A lot of them are Christians, but a lot of them are secular atheist agnostic people. But they're kind of common concern

in kind of the need to rebuild Western civilization has kind of brought them together for a common purpose. And, and it's just fascinating to see the way that the ground is shifting and changing. All I'm saying in all of this is to say that what we're really, as you say, facing now is a kind of what worldview is going to make sense. Is it going to be a sort of some kind of new age sort of thing? I think the thing I'm glad about is that a lot of young people, especially who are engaged in these different things, you don't have to kind of try to convince them that God exists or that there's genuine evil. They're sort of there. They know that that stuff exists, and they may even have come across it when they were messing around with a Ouija board or something like that. I think now, I think that the opportunity

it presents Christians is to say, you're looking, you know, like Paul said to the Athenians, you're, you're searching for God, but you're kind of looking in all the wrong places. Let me tell you about the person you've actually been looking for. And I'm quite excited at that opportunity, because it feels like, like I say, the spiritual hunger that's manifesting in all these different ways. We know that there's an answer to that. We know that there's a person we can point them to who will make sense of that search. And I

just wonder as they continue to be let down by, you know, whatever the ideologies are that they're chasing after or the spiritualities they're chasing after, as those just simply don't satisfy, I feel people kind of get to a point of desperation where they're chasing after or the spiritualities they're chasing after, as those just simply don't satisfy. I feel people kind of get to a point of desperation where they're ready to listen again to the Christian story and to Jesus. So when I look back on the New Atheist movement, you know, 10, 12 years, in some ways,

I think it made Christian and Christian apologists stronger because these guys came out with their guns blazing and attacked the scriptures, attacked the goodness of the faith. And it was like we had a cause to rally and respond to. And I think looking back, apologists have upped their game and learned a lot because of it. That's a positive. On the negative side, I've been thinking about, even in my own life, thinking, have I thought about atheists

through the lens of the new atheist? The atheists are all these aggressive, want to destroy you, kind of Dawkins and Daniel Dennett approach. And yet, as I speak to number atheists, they're like, they don't speak for me. They represent a small segment of atheists and maybe poison the well in terms of the kinds of conversations that you and I want to have.

So do you look at them like I do as a mixture of positive and negative and maybe concerned that there's still a vestige among some Christians of like we're fighting the new atheists when everybody's going, you know what, the conversation shifted. We just want to sit down and have a dialogue. Yeah, do you share that? I do. I do. I think sometimes we end up answering yesterday's questions when the conversation has moved on, as you say, and there was an important place for that kind of approach to the new atheists when they were sort of the big

culture makers of the mid 2000s. But as you say, you know, I think that movement has waned. A lot of the people who were perhaps invested in that quickly grew tired of it. And one didn't want so keen to be associated with it. They didn't speak for all atheists, of course. And what I found is that even those who were part of that movement, of course. And what I found is that even those who were part of that movement, a lot of them have changed their tune. You know, again, I was at this arc conference, and I spoke to two or three people who basically all said the same thing to me. These were these were atheist agnostics who all said, Yeah, I was very much on board the Richard Dawkins thing. I was cheering them on in the mid 2000s 2010s. But I've completely changed my mind now. I think cheering them on in the mid 2000s, 2010s, but I've completely changed my mind now.

I think the Bible is probably the deepest, most profound book we've got. It has absolutely shaped our culture. I'm all for church and Christianity. I'm not quite sure I believe it yet, but I'm going to church. I'm sort of trying it out. And that is just a million miles from the conversation that I would have been having with these people 15 or 20 years ago. So it's interesting, even the new atheists themselves have grown up, you know, and they're kind of reconsidering things.

And not all of them have kind of made it across the line to Christianity, but this is really different openness I'm encountering among a lot of them. Yesterday I was having a conversation in a class, I have an undergrad class at Biola, and it's about 25 juniors and seniors, it's called Gospel Kingdom Culture.

So it's hot ethical issues, apologetic issues, and spiritual conversations. I was asking my students, I said, how well do you think most Christians do in just having a dialogue with others in an authentic civil fashion who see the world differently? And I think my students do this amazingly,

but let's just say they were very less than optimistic that most churches and Christians do this well. I'm gonna somewhat put you on the spot, but if I said, all right, Jess, on a scale of one to 10, one the lowest, 10 the best, if you were just from your experience, how would you rate Christians as a whole being willing to just lean in and meaningfully engage those

who see the world differently with curiosity non-defensively, how would you rate the church as a whole if such things even possible? I would say, I don't know, maybe a three or a four, but rising, I think is getting better. And it does depend a bit on the context as well. I think churches that have kind of been in a kind of very secular environment for a while,

are just a little bit more attuned to how to have the better conversations. I think it's the churches that have kind of been able to live to some extent in a Christian bubble. You know, I'm thinking maybe parts of the Bible Belt and that kind of thing, where it's a bit more of a culture shock to kind of navigate helpful conversations because, yeah, you haven't had to think outside of the parameters so much of your own sort of Christian culture. I think the reason Unbelievable kind of worked very well, you know, worked as a kind of UK show, but that was listened to all over the world, including, you know, a lot of people in America,

was because we were coming from that very secular culture. We were used to that being the environment into which we were speaking. And so a lot of Christians had just grown up, me included, sort of having to navigate those kinds of conversations, knowing that, you know, this is gonna be uncomfortable, but we're gonna do our best.

And we have to try and make the best of this situation we find ourselves in. There was no assumption that Christianity was the kind of the de facto assumption or anything in the culture anymore. And I think that helped because actually, I remember when I bumped into John Mark Comer some years later, who'd been doing ministry

out on the West coast in Portland. And he said, we're the, in terms of American cities, we are the most secular city in America. And he said, the reason I find so many people listening to the unbelievable show here is because you get it. You're so I think, you know, unbelievable turned out to be very popular on those kind of more coastal cities, which were much more on the edge, the leading edge of the kind of secular thing in America, less popular arguably in the Bible

because they weren't having to have so many of those conversations. So I just think, I sort of forgot what you asked me originally, but the point is, yeah, there's some churches are getting better, but they're kind of being forced to get better at having these conversations because of the encroaching secular culture. And some, and I think it's again, one of the because of the encroaching secular culture and some and I and I think is again one of the benefits of the new atheism was forcing Christians to think better, to dialogue better. I do see it as a kind of a bit of a God-given gift actually Richard Dawkins and everything because it did force us to step up our game apologetically, the unbelievable show, I'm sure, wouldn't have existed without the new atheism. But at the same time,

so all the things that we often think were terrible for Christianity, atheism, secularism, and so on, they've actually helped to improve our game, actually, at aunt's and aunt's in the wings. And I think there were just a number of churches that are still perhaps still trying to catch up with that, because they've just been a little bit behind that

kind of that wide secular culture that so many of us are now completely used to. I think that contextualization makes a lot of sense. There's a big difference, you're right, in Portland versus maybe in rural America and Central America where people have not faced some of those challenges as existentially and directly. But we're seeing that change as well. I'm curious, Justin, where does your just willingness and desire to have these kind of civil conversations come from? Is it your wiring? Is it an experience that you had? Is it just kind of assessing culture and figuring out what is needed at this moment?

Is it being British? Is it a combination of all these things? Because people ask me that question often say, you know, you and Justin have a similar way of dialoguing with people and I have my answer to it. But I love to know where that comes from for you. And just for the record, I couldn't say it when you asked me, but who are my favorite Christian apologists?

If I hadn't been talking to you, I would have mentioned you because I've always rated you. I know I'm making you blush now, but the point is, I think the reason I invited you on to Spec Ops, the unbelievable show so often, because you were absolutely brilliant. We did think very, the same lines about what makes conversation, the intellectual side of it. And yeah, I guess that comes out of the same place for both of us, I imagine, which is we, we really want

people to come to know and love Jesus. But we don't see people just as necessarily, you know, a project to be argued into something, but as a person, hopefully to be loved. And so the best kinds of dialogues are the kinds which are, yes, are intellectually stretching, but are also kind of loving. You take that person seriously. You don't dismiss them.

You don't just treat them as a project or whatever. And that's the thing I've loved, you know, in a way, one of the things I didn't anticipate when I launched, you know, a dialogue show like I believe was just how many relationships it would end up in, how many friendships I would have with people across the aisle. And the way in which that actually,

in all kinds of interesting ways, makes a big difference. It really is, it turns it, as I say, from being this moving intellectual counters around to something that's really real, because you get to know people and you get to know the things that are sometimes behind the intellectual questions and you kind of go on a journey. You know, I had the privilege of going on a journey for over 17 years with some people who just checked in, you know, once a month or once a week even. And you just got to see the way that they progress, you know, their change of mind,

sometimes years in the making. And that's what fires me, you know, I just feel like God's given me this burden to have these kinds of conversations. I'm doing it in a slightly different way now since I moved on from the Unbelievable show. But yeah, I'm'm doing it in a slightly different way now that since I moved on from the Unbelievable show, but yeah, I'm feeling that it's a space

I actually wanna move back into, because I kind of miss it. It's, there's something really real about having conversations rather than debates. And that's what I think God's asked me to do. And that's what I love doing. Well, you and Gavin Ortland are my two go-to apologists that I think just engage people graciously and thoughtfully

and just winsomely in the best sense and authentically. So I hope you get back to hosting those conversations. I know you'll get a quick audience. There's always a need for that. So any big or small way I can help, certainly let me know. Gotta let you go, but tell us maybe just those watching who are like, you know, and I've been wondering what Justin is doing and not been maybe track and tell us your podcasting. Tell us a little bit about why I'm still Christian, if you will.

Oh, thank you. Well, I'm really enjoying, you know, since moving on from hosting the Unbelievable show nearly two years ago, believe it or not, I've been loving kind of some new projects. The surprising rebirth of belief in God podcast is one of those where I kind of do a dive, a kind of narrative story of what's happened over the last 20 years and this new awareness and openness to God that I believe we're seeing in our culture. So that kind of tracks with the book that I wrote about that. Yeah, there are some plans afoot to begin a new dialogue show later in the year, so you heard it here first.

Watch out for that. More to be announced in due course. But that will be very exciting. You know, that's kind of always been my first love, and I'm looking forward to getting in in due course. But that will be very exciting. That's kind of always been my first love and I'm looking forward to getting in that seat again. But yeah, really excited about the new book as well, Why I'm Still a Christian. It's a sort of, it's a revised and updated edition

first book that I wrote in some way. It feels more relevant than ever to be putting it out there now because kind of like we saw as we said with that Wes Huff Jogger moment, there's a kind of, there's people who are kind of open now. It's like there's an open door. And I feel like this is the kind of book I hope a Christian would feel quite comfortable giving to their non-Christian friends

who suddenly just started asking the questions, you know, and wondering about church. Because my hope is it's a kind of it's pitched at a level where it deals with some of the fundamental questions. It gives people an idea of the shape of Christianity. And, but it doesn't just leave it there. It doesn't just leave it at an intellectual level. It kind of challenges them by the end to step in to try this on and see what happens. And yeah, and I'm excited to see more and more people doing that. It's kind of a case for the Christian faith 101,

but what makes it unique is of course the case for Christ. Strobel is a journalist investigating this. You have story after story of people you talk with, Christian, atheist, agnostic, and you just fill the book with evidences, but it's really driven by the stories, which I think gives you unique insight, but also makes it more interesting

than just a list of evidences, as is often the case. So it's a great book. I think people who are veterans in apologetics will get points out of it, the way you explain things and how you respond and the stories you tell, but certainly skeptics on the outside and new believers would have a sense of the case for Christianity.

So why I'm still a Christian is excellent. Pick it up. Folks, before you click away, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got some other conversations and dialogues. I've reached out to a few very influential atheists. I don't know if they'll engage me in this kind of conversation or not, but hopefully that's coming.

Regardless, we have conversations coming up on a host of apologetic and cultural related topics. If you thought about studying apologetics, we would love to have you at Biola, at Talbot School of Theology. Distance program, we have students in Australia, Africa, the UK, Singapore, New Zealand, across the United States. We'd love to have you information is below.

Justin, great to catch up. Looking forward to our next conversation. Blessings on the launch of the new podcast dialogue. I'll be looking for that and let my folks know as soon as it's out. Bless you. Thank you so much, Sean. Great to catch up with you.