The Sean McDowell Show - Atheism vs. Christianity: What is the State of the Debate? (ft. Jeff Lowder)

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

How would an atheist assess Christian apologetics today? How does he assess the New Atheist movement. And what do an atheist and a Christian have in common? These are just a few of the questions I explore with atheist Jeffrey Lowder. We also discuss how the God debate has changed since the 90s. Follow Jeff Lowder on Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/SecularOutpost Watch Jeffrey Lowder vs. Frank Turek (Naturalism vs. Theism): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENZYEPpR2Jc&t=6743s *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

What does an influential atheist think about the state of the debate about the existence of God? We're here with Jeff Lauder, who I have followed and known his work for probably about 30 years, come to think of it now. And we've engaged online. We had lunch together a few years ago. Today, just wanted to probe into and get his sense, what encourages him, maybe what discourages him about the state of the debate on God today. Jeff, thanks for coming on. Thanks, Sean, for having me. Good to see you. Likewise. You know, I've never asked you this, but just a moment ago before we went live, I said you prefer the term skeptic, atheist, naturalist. Tell us what label you prefer, if any, and why. I mean, any of those are fine. Atheist or naturalist is probably

a better fit just because I think at least within the community of non-theists and skeptics, the word skeptic tends to be associated with questions about paranormal, ESP, ghosts, that kind of thing, and that's not really my area of focus or interest. I mean, I do consider myself skeptical of claims, and I try to be equally skeptical of claims made by atheists as I do of theists, but I think atheist or naturalist would be probably a better fit. Fair enough. Now, I first came across your name in the mid-90s when we had this new tool called the internet. And I don't remember how I came across it, but I'm sitting

in a dorm in college and I come across this site called Internet Infidels. And that was that really rocked me at that point. I was like, holy cow, here's like some really smart, thoughtful skeptics and atheists that are pushing back on a lot of things, at least until that point in my life, I had somewhat taken for granted. I've always wanted to know the backstory to the internet infidels. Tell us the story. Yeah, so I was actually a student at Seattle Pacific University, which is a free Methodist university in, as the name implies, Seattle, Washington. And I entered as an agnostic.

I didn't hide it. They actually, on the application, asked me to describe my relationship with Jesus, and that was an interesting question to answer in a college application, but I'm not completely sure. I think they might be different than Biola. I think Biola, you need to be a Christian. Seattle Pacific, you don't. So there were obviously the vast majority of people there were Christian.

But I remember there was a, uh, a small but noticeable, um, uh, Muslim, uh, group of students, um, uh, there, and then, um, uh, there were a handful of people like me but anyway i went there um uh because i wanted to learn more about christianity from people who actually believed it and um uh i'm trying to remember what exactly motivated me to help found infidels.org. I remember on my personal homepage at the university hosting some content, but somehow I wound up connecting with a grad student at Texas A&M named Brett Lemoine. And we ended up hosting a lot of content on a server that he ran at Texas A&M. And we decided we needed a name. And so we were brainstorming back and forth.

And I don't remember whose idea it was. It's not important that I get the credit. It might have been his. It might have been somebody else. And I apologize to whoever deserves the credit. But we chose it because it was, we thought it was a catchy name. I mean, I tossed around the network naturalist, but there was concern that, you know, people might confuse naturalist with naturist,

if I'm saying that correctly, or they might think nudist or something, which is totally not what we were, not what we were going for. I remember I had an early communication with William Lane Craig, where he seemed to pack a lot more meaning into the name than anything we had ever intended. And it wasn't to signify mischievous or juvenile rebellion against god or god activity or anything like that it was just we uh you know we could have said internet atheists but internet infidels it's got the alliteration going for it and so i i thought it was sort of catchy um but um the goal of that was to actually raise the level of debate. I mean, even back then, and I didn't major in philosophy.

My degree is in computer science with a heavy emphasis in math. Even back then, I had the sense that a lot of what I was seeing from what I'll call my side of the debate was frankly bad quality uh from lack of a lack of a better more diplomatic way of putting it and I thought there's got to be there's got to be better material out there but then there's probably also better Christian material so initially So initially, the focus was on building out a library of content, some of which you could call it, atheist philosophy of religion. And sometimes people would get the two mixed up. So they would assume that just because we hosted content that we endorsed it. And certainly with the historical library, that wasn't clear at all. And despite all the disclaimers that we would put, nobody ever read them. We even tried putting

them right above. So there were a couple of authors where we just outright yanked their content because I got sick and tired of fielding the complaints. And it's like, dude, I'm just running a library. It doesn't mean I personally agree with every book on the shelf. But I eventually started soliciting Christian contributions. And I remember one of the earliest Christian philosophers to contribute is a guy in a neighboring state to where you live. He's over in Arizona. Victor Repper had collaborated a lot with one of our philosophers, Keith Parsons. And I think they were actually roommates in college or seminary. I'm not sure which, but they knew each other. Keith vouched for me. And so I was able to get a couple of Victor's professional essays, defending miracles up on our site. And people thought that that was, you know, shocking, like, whoa, why would you do

that? And my response is, well, why wouldn't I? I thought we were interested in truth. And, you know, let the cards fall where they may. So anyway, that's kind of how the Internet infidels came to be. What did I hope to get out of it? I'm not sure how to answer that. I'm not sure I would have answered it back then. There really wasn't a grand strategy to it. It wasn't like my strategy was to win the hearts of the world for atheism. It was more just let's raise the level of debate. And that was pretty

much it. So if I were to try and speak in Christianese, I didn't view it as evangelism or apologetics, more as just, I don't want to say intellectual pursuit, although that's part of it, but more just a means to getting to the truth, I guess. Interesting. Yeah, that actually gives an amazing backstory. I would almost assume by the title that there's kind of an evangelistic motif behind it, but hearing the way you describe it and seeing a lot of your stuff now, that backstory makes sense. Now, were you surprised by the influence that it had? I mean, for years, if somebody searched Case for Christ or More Than a Carpenter, like some of your content would be in some of the top responses that people came across.

And it was, as far as I know, one of the leading atheist sites. Did that surprise you? No, not really, because, and let me explain why. It's not that I think I'm like the smartest guy in the room or anything, but there just weren't a lot of people on my side of the issue doing that. And I also was fairly well connected with some pretty prominent atheist scholars who I think gave me a boost. But at that time in my life, um, you know, I,

I wasn't married, didn't have kids. So I had lots of free time on my hands. I would, I would be, uh, I would be, you know, one of the first people from a skeptical point of view to take a look at these, uh, a look at these, you know, different books that you're referring to and provide my take. Later on, of course, I got married, started a family. I didn't have that kind of time. And also, my interest changed. I think when you came across my content, I would have described myself as one of know, one of my areas of focus being counter-apologetics, responding to more historical Christian apologetics. I don't really do that anymore. The last thing that I did related to that was back in 2005, and I've since really

focused more on meta-ethics and the existence of God, um, you know, I know that you mentioned the case for Christ. I know that Lee Strobel has a number of other books. I, I haven't even frankly read, uh, most of them, um, uh, uh, which I should probably do because I think, I think at least one or two of them are directly relevant to what my new focus is but um um uh i decided um i don't remember when um it was before you and i met in person and had lunch together but it was quite a while ago due to the influence of paul draper who um uh now identifies as an atheist but for most of the time I knew him, he was an agnostic. He really encourages the concept of philosophical inquiry. And he raises a provocative question about the relationship between philosophical inquiry and apologetics. And if he were on the show right now, he would say that just as there are Christian apologetics, there are atheist apologetics.

And I'm sure any atheist listening to this will bristle, so I'll defend him since he's not here to defend the words I just put in his mouth. But what he would say he means by that is just that he defines atheism as the proposition God does not exist. He defines apologetics, I think, as offering a defense. So there shouldn't be anything too provocative about the idea of defending a proposition, even if the proposition is God does not exist. A lot of self-identified atheists reject that definition of atheism, and that's fine. I concluded that I would rather try to get the Pope to become an Orthodox Jew than try to get self-identified atheists to change their definition of atheism. That's just the epitome of a futile

endeavor. So people can define the word however they want. I really don't care. But in the philosophy of religion, most philosophers of religion define the word atheism metaphysically, not psychologically. And so I don't think there's anything radical about the idea that if you do affirm a proposition, that you might have a defense for why you're affirming it. And so anyway, back to the point about Paul, he would say that as a philosopher, the focus should really be engaging in genuine inquiry and taking risks. And there is a sort of risk-taking involved in engaging in genuine philosophical inquiry because it means more than just, well, I'm going to read the best books or articles from the other side, but actively trying to mount the best case you can come up with for a position you disagree with, which might sound kind of weird. Like, why would I try to create a case for the view that the earth is flat?

I can tell you right now I have no intention of doing that in my lifetime, because I don't consider that a live option. Whereas I do think that, unlike many of my fellow self-identified atheists, I don't think that theism is a delusion. I don't think it's stupid. I don't think that it's crazy. I think it's a live option. I think it's false. But, you know, I think it's an intellectually respectable point of view. And so it does make sense for a view in that category, unlike the view that the earth is flat, to engage in what Paul calls genuine philosophical inquiry.

And so I've tried to follow his example and construct arguments for God's existence. And I actually, about, I think almost a decade ago wrote a blog post where I I defended an argument from consciousness for theism and that wasn't a going through the motions sort of thing where like you're a defense attorney that you're defending a client who's absolutely guilty and you know they're guilty but you're just kind of there to do a job i actually believe everything i wrote i do think that consciousness is um is evidence for god i might even go so far as to say it's strong evidence for god um and then as people are listening to me

they might wonder okay well so then why are you an atheist and the answer is because i think there's other evidence um that uh counts against god's existence and i happen to there's other evidence that counts against God's existence, and I happen to think the other evidence outweighs the evidence for God's existence. But when people say there's no evidence for one side or the other, I disagree. I think there is good evidence. And so that's why my focus has really been on engaging and trying to engage anyway in genuine philosophical inquiry. Since I wrote that, I've turned on to morale. I've really focused on metaethics, and I've been trying to steel man C.S. Lewis's moral argument for God's existence in his book, Mere Christianity.

And I've actually had an article reviewed by several Christian philosophers. And I said, the most important thing you can do for me is to let me know, am I being fair to Lewis? Have I accurately reconstructed his argument? And I don't know if I have permission to name the people I've had review it, but people who know the field can probably guess who I asked. And they've said, yeah, you're actually being very fair. So, you know, if nothing else, that people have had to review it, but people who know the field can probably guess who I asked, and they've said, yeah, you're actually being very fair. So if nothing else, hopefully people, when they read, especially my more recent work, I don't know, I'm not necessarily proud of everything I wrote back in the 90s, but hopefully people who've read my more recent work would at least say he knows what he's talking about and he tries to be fair.

So I'm not proud of all the things I wrote in the 90s, but I didn't have a blog then. I didn't have a website then. And I'm really glad there's no record of it. So I have a lot of charity for somebody looking back being like, yeah, I'm not sure I stand by that anymore. Yeah. Let me ask you this. There's people on my side and your side that, let's just say, carry themselves in a very different way. You are not angry. You're not defensive. And I'm not saying atheists are any more unique that way than Christians are.

You've always struck me as just very charitable and relational and trying to be fair as you see things. Is this a strategy? Is this what your family taught you? Is this your personality? Is this the way you're wired? Why do you engage in the God debate the way that you do? I'm going to make a self-deprecating remark. I think I'm a high-functioning jerk. So in high school, I was the captain of my debate team. And I helped resurrect the program. No pun on the word resurrect. I just realized I'm talking to who I'm talking to. But, you know, I helped uh, program back into some degree of

vitality. And, um, I, I think I was pretty good at it. The problem is, is that I couldn't turn it off. Uh, and so, um, I think in terms of the way I'm wired, I'm wired to be argumentative, not motivated by a desire to make people feel dumb or look dumb or anything like that. But I'm I'm hardwired to like it's not like I can visualize a syllogism floating in the air in front of someone's face as they're talking, but I just naturally, as naturally as I breathe, um, parse everything as if it's a formal argument laid out with premises and conclusion. And then, um, doing competitive debate, um, I couldn't turn it off. So I wasn't, um, I didn't have a lot of friends in high school because I was so argumentative. And I was actually, SPU tried to recruit me to their debate team.

And I went to one tournament just as a guest. And before I committed, I talked to the coach and I said, I don't think I should do it because this is going to bring out the worst in me. And I don't like the kind of person I'm becoming. Wow. So I didn't debate in college, and I'm very glad I made that decision for a couple of reasons. First, the longer I've spent away from competitive debate, I think the better person I am.

And secondly, it gave me an opportunity to do something that I never thought was possible. I was able to become a walk-on NCAA athlete and rode for SPU. And that's probably one of the best memories of my life, up there with pulling 60s and a T-38 jet going almost Mach 1 in the Air Force. So, you know, you ask, why do I carry myself this way? Part of it is I want to, I have a strong opinion about the Paul Draper, but the idea of engaging in philosophical inquiry, if our goal really is the pursuit of truth, then trying to farm engagement on social media for clicks, make people look stupid, ridicule, even memes,

I think that's counterproductive. You can do that stuff, but I think, and I have no training in psychology. This is just Jem's opinion, but I just think psychologically, it's very difficult to move back and forth between being snarky and trying to make people look stupid and maybe have a little bit of a chip on your shoulder and then say, okay, now I'm going to go into philosopher mode and try to be really open-minded and charitable and fair and pursue the truth.

I'm not saying it can't be done. I think I am saying I can't do it. So that's why I carry myself that way. Hey, what sport did you play at SPU? Crew. I was on the rowing team. Oh, you said crew. Okay, got it.

Got it. That's awesome. I played basketball at Biola, which was NAI, but now it's NCAA Division II, and absolutely loved it for so many reasons. Now, I can relate to the idea of being wired to argue. We got on. I'm like, hey, you're going to wear Seattle, and you started making your case that they have the best. And I'm like, no chargers. I think the same way. That's how I

think and process philosophically. So I love it. You mentioned the resurrection. And I remember I had you stream into my class on the resurrection. I remember how many years ago. And it was on the third day. And I couldn't resist making a pun about you appearing on the third day to talk about the resurrection. So I remember that well, which is great. Well, I do appreciate- We didn't have 500 witnesses in the class, so I'm not sure what that means, but you know. Fair enough. That is a debate and a discussion for another day. I love it. Yeah. Let me ask what you make about this. There's a recent book, not sure if you've read or not, but it's by Justin Brierley.

I'm sure you're familiar with him. Started The Unbelievable Show. And it's called The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God. And he's not making a case that there's a massive amount of people believing in God. It's not a numerical argument. It's a shift in the conversation that some leading thinkers like Jordan Peterson and Charles Murray and Dave Rubin and Tom Holland have an openness and an appreciation for the importance of God and its contribution to Western society. And there's kind of a renewed openness. Do you resonate with that? Do you agree with that?

What's your take on that basic premise? I'm not sure what to think of that. I mean, belief in God, like demographically, I don't think that atheism has never in the history of humankind, to my knowledge, been the dominant view of people living at any point in history, and certainly not in the history of the United States. And I'm aware that the percentage of Americans who are the nuns, I'm aware of all that. But I would say, first of all, they're still not the majority. And secondly, none doesn't equal atheist. It could be someone who would say they're

spiritual, but, you know, not religious, but spiritual, something like that. So I'm not really sure how to respond to that. Maybe I'm missing the point, though. Maybe his point isn't so much a demographic change, but more the openness on the part of people who aren't theists to entertaining theistic belief. I don't know. I don't really have a response to that. That's totally fair. I appreciate that. So part of his book at the beginning, he walks through what he considers kind of the failure of the new atheist movement. And he argues that this is for a couple of reasons. One of them, some of the infighting amongst many of the atheists in the community itself.

He cites a couple of scandals that emerged and just says this kind of fell apart. What do you make of where the New Atheist Movement is now looking back? What do you think they did well? What do you differ with them? And what's your sense on his take on that movement? Well, I don't really think they did a whole lot well at all. The only thing that I can say that they did well was they sold a lot of books, but that doesn't mean that the books are good. They never had good arguments going for them. I remember I was on a business trip. I don't remember why, but I was going through, I had a connection in the San Francisco airport and I'm walking from, you know, gate A to gate B, and I walked by the airport bookstore, and right out there, I mean, you could not have missed it, unless you were blind, but like right out at the edge of the bookstore was a whole display of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, and if you'll pardon

the expression, I said it in my breath, oh God, because I just had a feeling that it was going to make me cringe. And so I picked up the book and I went straight to the index and looked for cosmological argument, went to the page that the index told me to go to. And sure enough, I see, this isn't a word for word quote, obviously, I'm doing this for memory, but I see something that was the equivalent of everything that exists has a cause. The universe exists, therefore the universe has a cause. And then you can guess what the rebuttal was. So does God have a cause? And I closed the book and I thought, this is a piece of garbage. And now people like me who are atheists, but actually know what we're talking about, are going to have to distance ourselves from this guy. And I say this as someone who respects Richard Dawkins intellectually.

I think that, I mean, he's clearly an intellectual. He's a very gifted writer. I would endorse his book, The Blind Watchmaker, but what's the difference? That's actually related to his training in biology. He simply is not qualified to be writing a book on the philosophy of religion. And you've got, who are the other new atheists? You've got Daniel Dennett. I mean, he's a bona fide philosopher, but he's a philosopher of mind. He's not a philosopher of religion. And when I read,

you know, I picked up his book, Breaking the Spell. And again, I, you know, I go to the index and I go straight for, you know, the things that I feel qualified to assess. And I don't remember, you know, I don't remember the details anymore of what I read, but whatever I read, I thought, okay, so, you know, strike two. And then who else do we have? We have Christopher Hitchens, who was, his skill at rhetoric was inversely proportional to his, you know, lack of skill in philosophy. And then who's the other one that I'm reading? Yeah, thank you. Sam Harris. So I haven't read his books because of the reviews I've read. I actually use reviews as a way to filter or prioritize my reading. And you might be surprised that I actually included that reviews by certain Christian scholars.

So based on what I read, I thought I didn't need to read his work. I did watch his debate with William Lane Craig. And I mean, what can I say? He didn't do very well. So they, you know, the intellectual substance there was just lacking. That's me being charitable. If I were I don't know if I if I were feeling particularly feisty, I could be a lot more blunt about it. But it's not it's not it doesn't represent the best of atheistic scholarship. I mean, imagine if you had a group of Christians, you had four Christians, and three of the four were in the academy.

One of them was like a talk radio host with no academic background, relevant background. And then the other three had some connection to academia, but not philosophy of religion. You know, maybe one of them was a professor of music. Another one was a philosopher specializing in aesthetics. And then the third one was, I don't know, a mechanical engineer. They're scholars by virtue of what they're scholars in. But then they write a book on philosophy of religion and they sell millions of copies. But what they write is just,

frankly, you know, like college sophomore level. That's kind of how I feel with the new atheists. So, you know, a lot of atheists will say, yeah, but, you know, that's how I got introduced to atheism. And I'm like, well, then you got a bad introduction because you can do a lot better than that. So unfortunately, they dominate read enough. Um, and certainly among atheist philosophers of religion, um, you know, you've got even people who aren't philosophers of religion that are on the edge, like Michael Ruse has publicly distanced himself from their work. Um, uh, there's just a lot of fringe worthy argumentation, um, that, um, makes me embarrassed. So probably more info than you wanted, but I hope it was at least entertaining. That was great. You said something about being frank. I think that was sufficiently frank and clear exactly where you stand. That was fascinating.

Now, I just remembered one of the things that triggered Justin Brierley in his book, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, was he reached out to Peter Boghossian, who had written a manual for creating atheists. And Boghossian's response was kind of, I'm moving on from that debate and is more concerned with wokeness. Now, he might not have used that term, and I realize that's a loaded term. Sure. use that term, and I realize that's a loaded term. You have people like Peter and Bill Maher and even Sam Harris pushing back against some of these ideas, which make strange bedfellows with many people on the right. I think if you and I went back 10 or 20 years ago, we would not have seen that kind of dynamic developing. I'm curious what you make of that dynamic. How concerned are you about some of those elements at play in our culture? I don't know if I'd be quite as surprised as you might

think. I mean, remember, I went to a conservative Christian university, not as conservative as Biola, but pretty conservative. And I was an Air Force ROTC cadet, later an Air Force officer. And if people would have meet me on the street and talked to me, not about philosophy or atheism, the way I come across, the way I dress, people assume that I'm like a right-wing Republican evangelical Christian, maybe not MAGA, but so where I'm going with this is when I first started, I guess, getting established within the, the atheist movement, such as it is, to make sure that I was comfortable at a conference I attended because there was a lot of left-leaning stuff.

I couldn't even tell you what it was about. It was so long ago, I don't remember. But back then, I said, I'm not a Republican, but I'm pretty conservative socially. And it was very important to them to make a point of saying that, you know, you can be an atheist conservative or an atheist liberal. You can be on the right or the left. You could be Marxist or Republican and be an atheist or even a secular humanist. And so from that perspective, I'm not totally surprised. It's definitely true that at least among public atheist intellectuals, the majority of them are on the left side of the political spectrum, but there's a non-trivial number of those who are on the right

or in the middle. I would describe myself as center, maybe a little center-right, but I'm not totally surprised. The other thing is that, unlike theism, especially Christian theism, where you have a concept of salvation at play and that sort of thing, there isn't the intrinsic motivational structure in atheism to spend all of your time focused on that. So the idea that someone like Peter Boghossian would say, I'm moving on, that makes total sense. I wouldn't quite say that I've moved on, but really, the bulk of my time spent thinking about the philosophy of religion is really motivated by meta-ethics. I spend most of my time thinking about meta-ethics, and when I engage in philosophy

of religion, it's mainly at the intersection of metaethics and the philosophy of religion. So things like the moral argument, can you have objective moral values and duties with or without God? So I'm not totally surprised. a little bit of a rift because you've got people like, oh, I'm forgetting his name, PZ Phillips. Sorry, PZ Myers. Sorry, PZ Myers, if you're listening to this, who will say that, you know, I think he was one of the people involved with the atheism plus short lived movement.

And he would classify me as a dictionary atheist. And I plead guilty as charged. I think that, you know, words have meaning meanings. And to be an atheist metaphysically just means you're someone who affirms the proposition God does not exist. It does not carry with it any political platform whatsoever. So you can consistently be atheist and a leftist, or you could be an atheist and be part of MAGA or anywhere in the middle. And there are a number of people on the left who take issue with that. And I just sort of shrug my shoulders. I don't really spend any time at all arguing the issue. I frankly don't see the point, but that's how I come down on that. So that makes sense. Where are you in terms of your atheism in, say, the mid-90s or maybe agnosticism at that point? 30 years later, which is kind of amazing, you started Internet Infidels around the mid-90s, right? 94, 95? Okay, that sounds right. Are you as confident in your atheism? Are you more confident? Less so?

How would you assess where you're at and why? It's kind of weird because I went from thinking God exists to I'm not really sure to I'm not really sure because there's no good evidence either way to, OK, I think I'm an atheist because I think there's a couple of good arguments in defense of atheism, and theism has nothing going for it, to okay, now I think there's a bunch of good arguments, and I'm more than an atheist, I'm a metaphysical naturalist, to I'm a metaphysical naturalist, but now I think there are some good arguments for theism so I guess you could say that my my confidence in atheism or naturalism has decreased in direct proportion to the amount that my confidence and theism has increased I don't know what numbers to put beside it. It might have been, you know, 90% atheist, 10% theist, and now it's 70% atheist, 30%. I don't really know. Yeah, fair.

Yeah. So does that mean you ever have doubts about your atheism? Do you ever go, gosh, am I crazy for believing, you know, life from non-life or consciousness emerged from mad or whatever the issue is? Do you ever have doubts and does that bother you? Or is it just like, oh, these doubts make me drive and think more, but aren't really kind of an existential kind of doubt? I don't think of them existentially. I would describe it like this. I'm an avid hiker, and I don't like getting lost when I'm in the wilderness outside a cell phone range, which I've had happen and was after dark, which was a scary experience. But there is – it's kind of like having a map. So, and this goes back to the concept of genuine philosophical inquiry and taking risks.

So if, and I don't, this is not my analogy. This comes from a book called the scout mindset by Julia Galef. Yeah. The main thing is that you can either be a soldier or you can be a scout. And if you're a soldier, your goal is to go kill people. If you're a scout, you're interested in making a better map. And so I think of myself philosophically as a scout. And so when I come across these things that I think are better predicted by theism than by naturalism, that makes me question my map and think long and hard about, do I need to revise my map?

Which is a very different experience than what a soldier would have, which would be it's an existential threat. I mean, even the wording, right, the whole name existential threat suggests more of a soldier mindset um a scout mindset is oh that's interesting um i didn't have that route on my map i didn't know there was a trail over there or i didn't know there was a boulder blocking the trail how am i going to navigate around or whatever that that that's how it shows up for me so um you know know, I never affirmed materialism, but now I'm really, really confident that materialism is false, where materialism is defined as, what's that Carl Sagan quote, the universe is all that ever was, is, or will be? That's a very poetic description of materialism. It denies not only the supernatural, but abstract objects. There is no good argument for materialism. And I've looked. I never felt an intuitive pull towards materialism, but I was curious. There just isn't a good argument for it. So that's something where, you know, I've revised my map and I said, okay, whatever else is true, that clearly isn't one of the things that's true. So when I call myself a

naturalist, that makes a lot of people confused. They're like, but so how can you be a naturalist if you think there's more than the material? And the answer is, well, I'm open to the possibility that there are abstract objects. Even if i don't believe anything supernatural exists that tells me nothing about whether or not there's an abstract reality beyond the concrete world so i'm open to the idea that numbers sets propositions that sort of thing exists so existential existential threat, not so much. You know, way to revise my philosophical map. Absolutely. Fair enough. So if I got the trajectory right, you went from zero to 10 to 30. In 10 years, it'll be 50. In 20 years, you'll be 70, 30 theists like that's the trajectory i'm just kidding um yeah um yeah i mean the thing is is that um i'll say this um there is a tendency on on both sides to portray the debate as having you know certain pet issues like you might have a a scientist who is a christian and notice i didn't

say christian scientists yeah because there's a denomination known as Christian science, but a scientist who's a Christian who might point to certain scientific facts that they would argue point towards the reality of God. this concept of the fallacy of understated evidence, which says that for any given topic, you could point to some general fact about the topic and say it supports my position, while neglecting to mention other more specific facts within that same topic, which undercut the support that the general fact gives you. So let me give a plain English example. I've argued, I sincerely believe, that the fact that consciousness exists at all is better predicted by theism than by naturalism. And I would go so far to say that that is

rationally undeniable. And I'm totally expecting to get flamed by my fellow atheists, and I say bring it because I can refute you. But I'm pretty confident. You might say overconfident, but I don't care. But the fallacy of understated evidence says that works like this. If all you do is say consciousness, therefore God, you've committed the fallacy of understated evidence because you're mentioning the general fact that consciousness exists, but you're neglecting to mention related facts about consciousness that point the other direction. So if all we knew was that consciousness exists and there was no other evidence possible, then we should all be theists. But we know more about consciousness than the fact that it exists. We also know, thanks to the relatively new field of neuroscience,

that nothing mental happens without something physical happening, which strongly suggests that consciousness, at least in humans, is dependent upon a physical brain. Now, I chose my words very carefully. I said dependent. I didn't say that the mind is the brain, although for me, I'm open to the possibility that it could be, but it depends on that.

Given that consciousness exists, the fact that in humans it's dependent upon a physical brain is better predicted by naturalism than by theism. So if all you do is mention consciousness, you're committing the fallacy of understated evidence. But if you state both pieces of evidence, consciousness and mind-brain dependence, now you've fully stated the evidence, and it's not obvious which one, just in that category, which one comes out ahead. A lot of people that I respect would say, well, clearly consciousness outweighs the evidence of mind-brain dependence.

At least 20 years ago, Paul Draper would say that. I don't know where he stands today. Other people would say that mind-brain dependence outweighs the evidence of consciousness. And then there's people like me who have no idea how to weigh it. So somehow that I think needs to be factored into people's thinking as well. And I could give lots of other examples, all pretty much everything that there is in natural theology. I could show a pattern of a general fact and a more specific fact. And that would also apply to natural atheology as well. So, you know, like there's an argument

from the hostility of the universe to life. I think that that is better predicted by naturalism than by theism. But if that were the only fact I mentioned, that would be committing the fallacy of understated evidence because it would be ignoring the other fact that the life,

sorry, that the universe is life permitting. And not just life permitting, but more importantly, that the universe has, the history of the universe includes the evolution of conscious beings. And so, again, when you try to weigh these two pieces of evidence, I don't know how to do that. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. So I'm going to, you discussed this and made this case in your debate with Frank Turk. So if people want to see you make your case, Frank, push back.

I'll point towards that debate, which I think maybe in two hours covered more broad ground in any debate that I think I've ever seen just for the record. But people can check that out. You know, interestingly enough, I interviewed an atheist, Coleman Hughes, who's a libertarian, young guy, Ivy League trained. And I asked him, is there anything about the universe that gives you pause about your atheism? And he mentioned consciousness enough so i've heard that on a few occasions let let's shift gears what would you do jeff if your son or daughter came up to you and said you know i was watching this william lane craig debate it makes a lot of sense i'm a christian

okay sense i'm a christian okay that's it just okay yeah i mean um i'd be uh i mean uh again um i think for the benefit of your predominantly christian audience um it's different i think psychologically being an atheist than a Christian. If you're a Christian who believes in the exclusivity of salvation through Christ, if someone's not a Christian, then you're worried about their salvation. And so I would just imagine if you're a Christian father or mother and your child comes to you and says, I listen to whoever and now I'm not a Christian father or mother and your child comes to you and says, you know, I listened to whoever, and now I'm not a Christian anymore. I would imagine that would create a sense

of dread and probably horror. Um, whereas if you're an atheist, uh, when you die, it's lights out. So, um, if you find out that your child became a Christian, um, I don't, I don't have a sense of dread or disgust that they're going to burn for eternity. So it's different. I obviously would disagree and I'd be interested, but I wouldn't try to argue them out of it. I'm more interested in how they got to their belief or lack of belief than what their belief or lack of belief is. So if they made a, pardon the expression, good faith attempt to, you know, investigate both sides, and then they're ready to say, you know, this is my conclusion, I can't really ask for more than that. That's fair enough. I think you're right that there's a different result as a stake of that belief.

But there are a number of atheists, such as the New Atheist Movement and others that feel like Christian beliefs are damaging society and harming people, etc. Seems like you wouldn't land in that camp as a whole. No, I mean, not necessarily. There's a lot of caveats. I mean, there's being a Christian and there's being a Christian. So merely right. So, you know, saying I agree. It's like if someone were to say, you know, I think that I think Jesus did rise from the dead and I got baptized. Okay. That tells me nothing about what kind of citizen you're going to be. That tells me nothing about what you're going to do for the environment, what you're going to do about crime, civil liberties. If someone said, I think Jesus rose from the dead, I got baptized, I joined a church, and I'm going to espouse a set of political beliefs that I personally disagree with.

Well, then my concern is not the fact that they became a Christian. My concern is with their politics. And, you know, I imagine that a fair number of my fellow atheists will say, you know, louder being naive. I don't think so. I mean, there are, at least from what I can tell, the majority of people who are outspoken about their faith and politics are on the right, but not all of them are. There are a number of people who are Christian, outspoken about their politics, and are on the left. So that's what I go back to. Okay, the fact that they're a Christian, I mean, that tells me something philosophically, but I don't make assumptions about them politically.

And in terms of what would make me worried about is it damaging to society? I'm more worried about their politics than their religion. Yeah, that's totally fair. Do you think you and I share common ground? And if so, what do you think it might be? I'm sure we do. First of all, we both agree that the best NFL fan merchandise has a shade of the color blue. We've established that you you are under the delusion that it's San Diego Chargers light blue.

Whereas I, you know, bask in righteousness with the dark blue of the Seattle Seahawks and my sweatshirt that I'm wearing. To be more serious, we both believe that truth is objective, not relative, which some people might roll their eyes at, but it's pretty foundational. I have a hard time even making sense of the idea that truth is relative, because I think it's a, at the very least, a self-defeating, if not a self-refuting claim, is the proposition, all truth is relative, is that statement true? And if so, is it true relatively or objectively? So I think we agree on that. We agree that Jesus existed as a real person. I think that we, I trust, I haven't asked you this directly, but I think we agree that, you know, you should follow the evidence where it leads. We might. Well, we do disagree on where the evidence leads.

But I don't I don't have any reason to believe that you think that someone should believe in spite of the evidence. So I think those are some pretty important things that we agree on. That was a really good answer, by the way. And just so people know, I didn't prep you with any of these questions. I just told you we're not having a debate this time, and I just want to know what you think about a raise. So that was a range of issues. So I think that was really, really thoughtful in terms of your response. So you mentioned earlier, you said as an atheist, it's lights out. Obviously,

life does not continue after the grave. A colleague of mine, Clay Jones, has written a book called Immortality. And he makes the argument that it's really the fact that we are mortal that is one of the driving forces of all the philosophy throughout history. And Aguirre and I, he goes back and just kind of makes this case. That point aside, how much do you think about that as an atheist with lights out? Does that bother you? This is more of an existential, personal question. And actually, I should correct myself. Atheism doesn't say that it's lights out. Naturalism does. Atheism by itself, if I want to get pedantic, simply is a position about God's existence. It's possible that God with a capital

G doesn't exist, that there is some sort of an afterlife. I think that's a weird view, but it's at least a logical possibility. So what I should say is that as an atheist and naturalist, it's lights out. And does that bother me? Yeah. There are atheists who say that it doesn't bother them. And, you know, I'm not in their head. I'm not a mind reader. So I'm going to take them at their word. But for me, yeah, I would like to live more than the whatever I'm going to get, 60 to 100 years. And so, yeah, that does bother me. Yeah. Yeah, that's totally fair. And just for my audience watching, thinking, how could atheism have an afterlife? I presume you mean maybe if you're an atheist, you're not committed to materialism.

There's some kind of soul or mind that emerged in some fashion, and maybe we upload it in a transhumanist kind of fashion, and there's a life that continues. That's one logical possibility. So that nuance, would you agree with that? Or are you thinking of something else? Yeah, it could be transhumanism, or it could just be old-fashioned dualism. Dualism actually is compatible with atheism.

It could be that there's no god but um there is immaterial mental substances that persist after death um i don't think that um i don't think that those fit well together but they're not such a misfit that they're a logical contradiction um but i do think that one basically counts as evidence against the other. So yeah, it's a possibility. There might be some people watching or listening to this who fall into that camp, but I think it's an unconventional minority viewpoint. Fair enough. Two more questions for you. And you can choose to not answer this for a range of reasons. What advice opinion, don't do this. It actually goes back to high school debate. So one of the first things I learned in debate is the concept of clash.

If your opponent says X, your goal as a debater is to argue that not X is true or that they haven't shown X to be true. So that's what it means to clash. How do you clash? Well, if they talk about X, you don't talk about Y or Z. You focus on X. How do you make sure you do that? Well, put their argument in standard logical form.

I would pay a compliment to Christians. I think Christians as a whole do a better job than, than, uh, atheists, certainly the new atheists do at putting their arguments in standard form. Um, so atheists, uh, should be doing a better job of putting their arguments in standard form with numbered premises and conclusions. Um, uh, but then when someone has taken the trouble of doing that, then you actually respond to the argument that's given, not the make-believe strawman argument that you'd like to tear down. So, for example, Daniel Dennett, when he tries to dismiss all cosmological arguments,

is claiming that everything has a cause, so then God must have a cause. You can't get away with that if you put the Kalam cosmological arguments or the Leibnizian cosmological arguments or any of the others in their standard form, because as soon as you do that, lay out the premises and conclusions, it completely blows up. You can't get away with strawmanning it. Same thing with Christian. So if you're representing the work of whoever, start with, this is their argument in standard form. And if they don't give it to you, then your task is, as charitably as possible, is to reconstruct their argument to put it into that't put it in standard form. And so a large part of that project is just figuring out what's the most charitable steel man way of representing his moral argument for God's existence. Good word. Last question. Is there anything I should have asked you that you wanted to share in terms of the God debate, your story, kind of the way this conversation is taking place? Anything I should have asked you?

No, but I would like to use the opportunity to ask you a question. Can I infer from your background that you are in support of renaming Biola's mascot to the Batman or the Bat? Well, interestingly enough, my favorite superhero is actually Spider-Man. I wrote a new one. Oh, you know that. I wrote a whole blog on it. This was a gift to me from a friend. I was speaking in the Philippines, and it perfectly mirrored that.

And I do kind of love Batman. Yeah. So I would probably encourage less confidence in drawing that conclusion about by elizabeth yeah i mean that's kind of kind of a big uh heresy for you because you're you're going outside of the uh the marvel comics universe into the dc universe so um yeah you might have to check your loyalty on that my friend fair enough so i've never argued that marvel's better than dc just for the record i couldn't name that case yeah i love superman love batman but probably have more love for spider-man for ranger reasons but here we go again i mean not only debating seattle we could

debate dc versus marvel you know i both think this way now i'll end with this i asked you what we have in common ground and i think you possibly might have missed way. Now I'll end with this. I asked you what we have in common ground. And I think you possibly might've missed one. I think you'll agree with me on, which is the importance of just having civil, thoughtful conversation across worldviews. I've always appreciated that about you. And I sensed it when you were the one who reached out to me and we had lunch at that place. I distinctly remember not far from Seattle. And we talked about kids. We talked about hobbies. We talked about movies. And we shared a critique of a superhero movie at the time for common reasons, interestingly enough. I remember that well. So always appreciate the way you've carried yourself. Folks watching, how can they, outside of Twitter, or feel free to mention Twitter, but how can they follow you and your work now on metaethics?

You could go to my blog at naturalisticatheism, all one word, dot blogspot.com. And you can also look me up on academia.edu where you can find my essays. Good stuff. Well, Jeff, I got a ton more questions for you, but I really appreciate you taking out time in the middle of your workday just to have this conversation. So let's do it again. Sounds good. I enjoyed it. Thanks a lot, Sean.