Theology in the Raw - #784 - Still a Christian: A Conversation with Justin Brierley

Episode Date: March 23, 2020

Justin Brierley is the host of the very popular radio show (and podcast) Unbelievable. He’s interviewed many scholars, theologians, apologists, and atheists. He’s also hosted many debates between Christians and non-Christians--and he’s still a Christian. In this show, Preston and Justin talk about Christianity, defending the fact, the best arguments against Christianity, the problem of evil, atheism, and many other things related to Justin’s very interesting space in Christianity. Justin Brierley presents Premier Christian Radio's flagship apologetics and theology debate programme Unbelievable? every Saturday at 2.30pm. The show brings Christians and non-Christians together for dialogue and is also a popular podcast which has produced an annual evangelism and apologetics conference. Justin's book Unbelievable? Why, after ten years of talking with atheists, I'm still a Christian (SPCK) is available now www.unbelievablebook.co.uk. Justin was the editor of Premier Christianity magazine from 2014 - 2018. Justin enjoys creating conversations that matter and tries to make programmes and write articles that bring theology and apologetics (defence of the faith) into the real world. While at school Justin once played the stepson of CS Lewis (one of his theological heroes) in a professional stage play. After school he went on to study PPE at Oxford University where he continued to be involved in amateur dramatics. Justin has a wonderful wife called Lucy who is the minister of a church in Surrey. They have four amazing children too. When he's not working Justin is usually either spending time with his family or helping out at the church where you'll sometimes find him playing guitar and singing (if you're unlucky). Follow Justin Brierley on Twitter @UnbelievableJB Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

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Okay, my guest on the show today is a friend from a distance, Justin Briarley. I have known Justin from a distance for quite some time, several years, because I've been a pretty avid listener to his podcast titled, well, it's called Unbelievable. It's a podcast where he often hosts really engaging, sometimes quite heated conversations between people on different sides of a particular issue. Typically, well, as he talks about in this podcast, the Unbelievable podcast started as a space where atheists and Christians could dialogue, but it's grown into much more than that. He has loads of different kinds of people dialoguing about all kinds of things related to the Christian faith, both atheists and Christians debating whether

Christianity is true. And also he'll have two Christians debating a particular topic within Christianity. And again, it's more than just a debate. It's a dialogue where people are making strong arguments for their position and the other person is able to respond and they have a conversation. It's loads of good fun. I was on the Unbelievable podcast a few years ago, but I don't like to talk about that because I thought I did an absolutely horrendous job. Anyway, Justin is also the author of the book titled Unbelievable, So, yeah, he's also the author of the book titled Unbelievable, Why After 10 Years of Talking with Atheists, I'm Still a Christian. This book came out a couple of years ago.

You can check it out on Amazon or where books are sold. And Justin is, I think he kind of sets the tone for how we should moderate these kind of discussions. I've just been such a huge fan of how he's able to have these conversations with such a diverse group of people. So I really wanted to get to know him more and figure out, how do you do it? How do you sit there and navigate these really volatile conversations and do so in such a gracious way? So without further ado, please welcome to the show, the one and only Justin Briarley. Okay, I'm here with my friend Justin Briarley from the UK. What city are you in right now?

Is it Surrey? Is that right? Well, I'm in a county called Surrey, and I live in a town called Woking in Surrey. And it's kind of commutersville for London, so a lot of people who work in the city commute in by train from here. So that's what I do because the radio studio I work at in London is there. So, yeah, it's pretty good, though. We have the best of both worlds.

You're not in the midst of all the crazy London-ness, but it's still just a short bus, train ride away if you want to go in and do some fun stuff. So you're still – Premier Christian Radio is still in the same place that I, when I visited four years ago. Yeah, yeah. Was it that long ago? I can't believe it was that long ago. I know, right? It was June 2016.

I just thought about that right before you popped on. Wow. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, about three and a half years ago. I mean, funnily enough, so you were on, I think, with Brandon Robertson. Yeah, that's right. If I remember correctly. I have to say, can I say something?

I think that was, I probably give an interview at least a couple of times a month, maybe more. I think that was the worst I've ever done. I woke up, I think I was supposed to meet you at 12. I woke up out of just the most deep jet lag at 1130 and this fog hovered in my mind for the next four hours all the way through the whole and I look I remember listening to part of it after it's like cringing like oh my gosh it was terrible anyway I just wanted to confess well it didn't

come across that way to me I thought you did a good job um I only mentioned it actually because as it happens the most recent show I just aired on Unbelievable had Brandon on again. Oh, right. And he hasn't been on it since. But that was in conversation with someone you've had on your podcast, David Bennett. Oh, yeah. Who's the author of A War of Loves and is himself a, you know,

same-sex attracted Christian, gay Christian, he would use the terminology. And they went on kind of to discuss the kind of side a versus side b kind of way of approaching things so so yeah it was an interesting kind of follow-up in a way to the show that i had you on you know three or four years ago well david's amazing so that's yeah yeah i'm sure he did a great job when did that uh it'll probably come out what in a couple weeks or so or um it's already out actually just released so yeah so you can get it on the podcast uh and yeah just look for unbelievable wherever you get your podcast from and it's also on our video channel over on youtube too great i'll check it out well why don't we start let's just go back

how did you get into doing um the unbelievable uh podcast i mean first of all how long has it been going and then how long yeah how did you get into it? And maybe you can describe just what it is for those of us, for those out there that don't know what it is. Sure, sure. Well, I think we probably share quite a lot of audience who may well have heard of Unbelievable, but the Unbelievable show has been going since the end of 2005, believe it or not.

So that's what, well, it'll be 15 years by the end of this year. It started really just as a radio show. I was kind of early on in my radio broadcasting career at that point with Premier Christian Radio, one of the UK's only Christian radio stations. And I went to the manager and said, I'd really like to start a show where we bring Christians and non-Christians together for dialogue and debate, because we do a lot of good stuff for Christians, you know, resourcing them, encouraging them, playing, you know,

worship music and all the rest of it. But they're spending most of their lives rubbing shoulders with people who don't agree with them. So could we do something that models how to have those kinds of conversations? And that was where Unbelievable was born, just once a week on a Saturday afternoon, where I would sit down with a Christian and a non-Christian. But what kind of really transformed the show after the first couple of years of us broadcasting was when it started podcasting. And we were kind of fairly early adopters on the whole podcasting thing. So I think around 2007, we started to do podcasting. And then we started to draw not just Christians in the UK listening by the radio station, but also a lot of Christians all over the

world who started listening, but not just Christians, also non-Christians who tuned in, you know, picked up the podcast because they wanted to hear from, you know, Richard Dawkins or whoever it was, you know, the latest atheist person that I had on the show. And so it's become this interesting what one person has described as a demilitarized zone between Christians and atheists, where we can have these frank and honest conversations, but hopefully ones that shed some light, not just heat and kind of, you know, in contrast to a lot of the way these things happen on social media these days, which can be very non-constructive. So that's been a great blessing the show has you know really grown over the years especially in podcast terms you know picking up lots of new

listeners um along the way and becoming fairly well recognized in christian and atheist circles as this place for dialogue and debate and then just recently we've we've been able to really um grow our youtube channel recently. So we didn't really have a YouTube channel until about nearly two years ago when we kind of started this special season of programs called The Big Conversation. And that was because we received some funding from the Templeton Foundation. And we were able to invite some big guests on to debate some really big issues. So we had in the first season people like Jordan Peterson debating the atheist psychologist Susan Blackmore on do we need God for meaning in life?

We had people like Daniel Dennett and Steven Pinker and folk like that with people like John Lennox and others debating these issues. And then just recently, we've had a second season with some really interesting conversations between people like William Lane Craig, and the cosmologist Sir Roger Penrose on God and the universe and that kind of thing. And yeah, we had a live one out in California, actually, which was between John Lennox and Dave Rubin, who hosts the Rubin Report, just looking at, you know, issues in culture and God and atheism and so on. So, yeah, we've had some really exciting shows. And that's all available from its own sort of kind of website called thebigconversation.show. But it's also gave us that impetus to kind of start filming a lot more of what we do. And so it's been really encouraging to see the way that's taken off on YouTube, a new audience developing for the show over there as well.

Well, the, you know, more light than heat, you made a comment about just the tone of the conversation. I just, you especially model that as a moderator in ways that I mean, I don't know anybody else that does it as well as you do. But sometimes it does, there are, there is some heated moments in the conversations that makes it fun. I'm a huge Dave Rubin fan. I love Dave Rubin.

So that was a fascinating conversation between him and Lennox. I just think he's such a genuine human being and just asks really good questions and is able to dialogue across lines in ways that few people can. So I just really admire that. But yeah, I enjoyed that one, especially it was very different to a lot of them, because inevitably, a lot of them, you've got two people who are essentially on different sides of an argument. And whether it's polite or adversarial, they're not in the end going to find that much common ground usually. But in that case, it was much more of a kind of gentle exploration of where Dave Rubin is at in terms of his sort of thoughts about religion and Christianity specifically. And well, we joked

several times, if you've heard it, that it was almost like a kind of, you know, a grill Dave Rubin on his journey of faith kind of a conversation. It wasn't meant to be that way. But but and he did it very in very good nature. But he was remarkably open, very kind of, you know, honest about where he's at, that he no longer kind of thinks of himself as an atheist. And he's definitely open to the idea of God and Christianity. He's kind of from a Jewish background himself. So he said that's where he's been sort of starting his journey of kind of rediscovering his Jewish roots.

But yeah, it was just a really encouraging kind of conversation. And I think the live audience dynamic it was done, you know, as a live show in California kind of made it that bit more special as well. And interesting because you get a slightly different dynamic when you're doing something live with an audience, as opposed to doing it, you know, in studio. So do you have, in all your years of doing this, do you, can you remember like the most heated discussion you had to moderate? Does the movie stand out? I can, I can, because it's etched in my memory.

It was, it was a debate between a christian and a muslim and those can quite often be kind of you know quite full-on but this one will kind of overstep the boundary really of what was helpful in the end um you'd have to go way back in the archive i think to find this one but basically it was a contentious topic to begin with because um the guy coming on from the christian side was basically making the case that muhammad never really existed or not in any way that's recognizable with the quran which is always bound to you know um so maybe it was my fault for for setting this one up with with this guy but it very quickly descended into name calling on both sides frankly um and uh got very heated and at one point i kind of stopped the recording and said look guys

we can't continue like this you know this is just we if we don't kind of cool down and stop with the kind of the insults and everything i'll just have to you know put an end to this recording we got through it somehow but a lot of people after it went out were like said that was really painful to listen to because there's a there's a place for drama and kind of and there are some exchanges you know we had one recently on this latest big conversation series between ac grayling and tom holland where it gets quite feisty. But it's kind of, it's kind of done in a way where there's still, you're still learning, you're still kind of hearing a really kind of interesting, at the point where people just start breaking down into kind of,

you know, name calling and mudslinging, that that's where you realize, okay, no longer useful. So yeah, that was a very memorable one, but for all the wrong reasons, I'm afraid. I did listen to that one with Tom Holland, parts of it at least. And yeah, it did get pretty intense, but I spent some time in British academia and that's kind of how you guys do it though.

You'll go after each other really hard, then you'll hit the pub after and you're like, did you just remember that conversation you had an hour ago? Yeah, I guess it partly comes from, we have always had, the way our whole kind of political system has been set up is kind of adversarial. So it's set up as a debating chamber, essentially our parliament with both sides facing each other. And and in a way, that's always been the way that, you know, things have been talked about and gone through. And, you know, the big, you know, ancient universities will have their debating societies as well. Oxford Union, the Cambridge Union and so on, where it's very much that seen as part of the tradition of the British.

where it's very much that's seen as part of the tradition of the British. So I think you're right. There is a kind of a sense in which people are willing to kind of have the debate and kind of still be friends afterwards most of the time. They understand that there's, you know, when they're on the platform defending their case. I think that breaks down a bit in the age of social media, though. I think it's much harder to kind of, because you're not seeing someone, looking someone in the eye, I think people these days find it harder to debate topics because they're seen as somehow attacking the person rather than simply debating the ideas. certain people no longer wanting to, you know, on some university forums and so on, really champion free speech and debate because, you know, of safe spaces and the worry that people will be offended and so on. So I think it's important to still have these kind of programs

where you have that kind of thing going on. Yeah. Do you have, you've had several just really good atheist Christian dialogues, debates. Do you have, you've had several just really good atheist Christian dialogues, debates. Do you have like a favorite? And apologetics is kind of more your thing, right? Naturally, isn't that? Oh, yeah, yeah. Do you have a favorite Christian apologist or somebody that you really think just like, if I was going to have one Christian on stage with the best atheist, like who would you

want on the stage? Well, we've already mentioned his name but john lennox is amazing and i think the reason john john lennox is amazing is because he's both got the intellect but he's also got the personality where he can he's got a very winsome way of bringing across things he's he's very much a people person and so you get some apologists who are brilliant in terms of their arguments and their content but they're kind of like machine guns. You know, they kind of rattle it off and they do the debating thing, but they don't really, it's harder to warm to them personality wise. And that's just, you know, often a personality thing.

You know, some people are kind of those very left brain versus right brain people or whatever. And so for me, John Lennox has the best of both. He's a wonderfully brilliant sort of thinker, but he's a great communicator as well. And just incredibly personable and knows when to bring in a story or an anecdote, you know, just to kind of lighten the mood and get things moving along. So, so he's yeah, he's one of my favorite people to have on.

I'm a huge fan as well of, you know, he's one of the big stars in the apologetics world, but, but there are people I love to champion who I think are an amazing up and coming people. Um, Glenn Scrivener, I don't know if you've come across Glenn, but, um, Glenn was on a recent edition of the show. Again, it was one of our big conversation episodes um debating uh atheism with matt dillahunty who's you know well-known atheist kind of activist out there and i just think glenn has a just a huge very a lot of wisdom uh a lot of ability to speak um really i think he's really careful with the way he speaks and the kind of people he's and anticipating the subjects and so on but he's just very creative he's got a very quick mind and he's

able to um make a point that needs to be made in just the right way and so and and again that's that that you know there are lots of good thinkers out there but not all of them can do that in a kind of the frankly quite um pressured situation of of a studio discussion debate you know and i think glenn is just a very very good at it so so for me when i discover someone like that i'm like yeah they're going in my little black book of contacts i'll be i'll be getting them back again um because you want people to find people you know on both sides who are good communicators like that and can can express ideas in helpful concise compelling ways so yeah that's that was good okay on the flip side who is the most

compelling atheist like when you listen to them you have to kind of like hold on to your seat a little bit you're like uh i don't want this guy's gonna convince me you know like both both like compelling atheists and maybe what are some of the top arguments against the existence of god that you find to be wrong obviously but um thoughtful and compelling yeah no no for sure i mean again um someone i've had on again recently on on this big conversation series from unbelievable um bart airman who's a well-known Bible scholar, but who famously lost his faith and has written a number of books kind of questioning the historicity of certain aspects of the Gospels and things like that. the reason I find him sort of, you know, one of the more compelling voices, I wouldn't say he described himself as an atheist. In fact, if anything, judging by a recent post he made quite an interesting one,

he seems to have veered even away from agnosticism towards something more like the possibility that there might be a God out there. But, but, but in any case that aside he's on, on the biblical stuff, he obviously knows his stuff. But he's also a very gifted communicator again. And that's that's often the difference. And he's kind of a debater as well. He's a natural debater. So he's he's the kind of person where it's not necessarily that there aren't good answers to his objections or his point of view. But he's very good at presenting them, defending them, making them sound very cogent. He's got a kind of personable style and everything else. So I think, you know, again, sort of on the opposite side, he's the kind of the agnostic, I suppose, version of a Christian apologist for the other side.

And in that sense, I know that if I bring him on, I want someone who can match him in that kind of way. So, yeah, that that would be one example um uh the thing is i'm not going to say like a richard dawkins because richard dawkins well he's a very well-known atheist but i actually when you get him in conversation i i don't think he's actually i don't think he comes off that well in all honesty he's he's not particularly um it's not particularly convincing i don't find when you've got him up against someone who's kind of knows their stuff um and and i would say people who are a little bit more you know media savvy uh in terms of the way they bring their their thoughts and arguments across would would be someone like matt de la hunter who i mentioned earlier um who kind of knows you know the way to use an interview and how to turn an argument to kind of his advantage

and that sort of thing so i think he's he's sort of um again he knows how to to do the the debate thing um to to kind of get his points across well bart erman i mean he's got this like very calm uh confidence you know when someone like in that dialogue with Pete Williams. I think Pete Williams is one of the smartest guys I've ever met. OK, so it's not like it was a mismatch at all. But man, the way that Pete Williams, you know, raises seem brilliant point. Right. And then Bart Ehrman's like, oh, yeah, of course, you know. Yeah. And just like very casually, calmly, confidently say, well, yeah, that's fine.

But what about, you know, or like the way he was able to turn it around or draw out something and almost, you know, raise that cornering question that, you know, sometimes I think Pete fell into it. Sometimes he said, well, let me, that question alone comes with premises that I don't agree with, whatever. But that, that was a, that was a really great, almost disturbing conversation. Cause I was like, man, he had some really good points. Um, I, it's funny. I heard, um, Richard Dawkins, which I've never read anything by him. I've read just bits and pieces, listen to him maybe for a few minutes. So I know hard, I just know the name, but I heard him on the Joe Rogan podcast and I was blown away at how uninformed his critiques

of Christianity were. It's like, it's almost like he was critiquing some kind of late 1970s fundamentalist, the American evangelical Christianity thinking that he's like, and it was so like really weak, I thought intellectually. Now, granted you have to, you know, Joe Rogan's an atheist. He's an atheist, you know, so, you know,

it's, it's thrown into this echo chamber, but I was like, really, is that, that's your argument? It's like, my faith is so much stronger now after hearing the world renowned Richard Dawkins voices,

complaints of the Christian. That might be, I mean, he would probably spank me in a debate. So I don't, you know, I don't want to, I know he's not listening to this,

but I was shocked at how, like, I mean, just what you said, how I was expecting much more intellectually from, from him. Yeah. I, I, I mean, I'm not saying there's nothing there. And obviously in his field, which, you know, is a biology, you know, he would spank both of us. I'm sure if, if we came to doing a debate on it, but he, you know, he would spank both of us, I'm sure, if we came to doing a debate on it. But because he's waded into the area of philosophy and theology and all of those kind of issues, and frankly, done a really bad job at all of them. You know, you read his book,

there'd be red marks all over it, if you put it through just a basic, you know, philosophy, basic you know philosophy sort of you know examiner's hands um it's it yeah it it it does mean that that he's kind of really speaking about things he really hasn't bothered to really investigate or thoroughly research and to that extent it suffers because of it so you don't you i don't think that many people i mean i think people who maybe have no, no grounding in Christian apologetics or theology might read something like the God delusion and have their faith challenged because, um, you know, that's, that's kind of what it's there for. But in all honesty, you don't have to do masses of research to see that he's, you know, putting up straw men all over the place and blowing them down and and to realize

that he he simply has frankly misunderstood a lot of the arguments he's critiquing and misunderstands the bible as well on top of it so so yeah you're right most of the time what i see him critiquing is a very kind of well i think it's you know it's very easy to poke holes and criticize a very wooden literalistic fundamentalist type version of christianity and of course in a way he'd like us all to believe that version of christianity because it's so easy to to knock over but when he actually meets someone who holds to a slightly more nuanced or uh defensible um then it's a bit of a different story can you name your number one argument for atheism or whatever

how we want to frame it i mean is there is there one major argument that you're like this is this is the best that atheism has yeah i i mean inevitably i think the the best and most common argument for atheism will will be some version of the problem of evil and suffering and um and that comes about in different ways but but inevitably that's the one that i think most frequently it comes back to in the end that that most people i meet if they are atheists it'll be some version of the problem of suffering or evil that has um made them doubt god or has you know um kept them as an atheist um and that can also be things like the hiddenness of god so which which is you know why doesn't god simply reveal himself to us or something like that

why why why is but to some extent that's that's another version of the problem of evil in my opinion um it's why isn't the world the way we think it should be if there is a God sort of thing. And so so I tend to find that kind of comes around in various guises and is always, I think, most difficult to answer is the most compelling. In a sense, in its form, when it's less a philosophical argument, a more kind of experiential argument where someone's asking you know where someone's holding up an example and saying how on earth can you believe in a god who allows this um so so i think yeah that's probably always has been and always will be one of the most powerful arguments obviously i'm not saying there aren't answers but they can it can be difficult to offer answers without them sounding trite or whatever when when you are

faced with genuine issues you know genuine experiences like that because inevitably trying to give a philosophical apologetic type answer isn't always what that situation requires yeah how do you how do you respond to the problem of evil i'm curious as an apologist what's your how do you lay your head on the pillow at night wrestling again the first thing i would say to anyone again is i want to know where they're coming from on it so so if they're coming from an emotional question i'm going to give a different kind of response to the person who's genuinely asking just a kind of more philosophical abstract question about it um but if but but sort of sort of having done that and knowing that we're not looking at a pastoral kind of response in this situation,

the first thing I might point out is simply that if evil exists at all, if we're going to have a problem of evil, then it's hard to understand how you have such a concept in a world without God. understand how you have such a concept in a world without God because as C.S. Lewis famously said you know my argument against God was that the world the universe was so full of injustice and evil but where had I got this concept of injustice and evil how does a man call a line straight unless he knows that it's what a crooked line is there's a sense in which we don't have the concept of good and evil in a world where there is ultimately no god where all that we're looking at is you know atoms swerving in the void that that that that's not a universe where we have you know a concept like that so if we're going to complain about it

it kind of brings us back to the very source of where this good and evil resides in the first place so that's kind of one last way of looking at but but then as to the the massive question of why if there is this god of love who's all powerful and so on the classic philosophical question why he does allow evil um i i would go to various kinds of theodicies that i've found helpful including the fact that simply um i don't think god has create i don't think god's job is to wrap us in cotton wool and keep us out of harm's way god's job is to bring us to the knowledge of himself and that can frequently happen through adverse conditions um i know many people for whom suffering has been part of their journey towards God. And

even though they would never wish it upon anyone, they've nevertheless seen the way that God can use circumstances to bring people closer to himself. So I think there's lots of different ways in which God's purposes can be worked out through suffering. I don't by that say that God therefore purposes or creates the conditions, but I think God in his sovereignty is able to nevertheless use the nature of the world we live in, in its fallenness to draw people to himself. And I think it would be important to recognize that. Sorry,

I know this is going on a long time. I mean, I would say 98% of people listening probably wrestle with that on some level. So I guess that works for me with some things like something where there's not a clear evil human agent involved. Cancer. I fell in a well and my kid fell in a well and died or something. or something. But when it comes to something like, like rape, um, yeah, those kinds of significant where there was a human agent that could have been stopped and it wasn't just simply life in a, in the world, the natural life in the world is going to have, you know, um, adverse situations. Um, but something like that, where you have a personal agent doing some, I mean, horrific thing to an innocent person, God has the ability to stop it, and for whatever reason chooses not to,

that's, I don't know if I have, I mean, I've got the textbook answers, the Job, you know, I could cite the book of Job and all this stuff. Yeah. I don't know, it's hard. I mean, to some extent, conversely to that, I think that those kinds of examples of evil

are in a way easier to answer than the natural type. So where there is a personal agent involved, you know, the obvious answer I would go to in that case, again, this is all with the proviso that this is on the basis of having a philosophical discussion rather than a pastoral one. But would be that, you know know when people do terrible things to each other it is because of this thing we have for free will yeah that we are free agents and and the logical point is if god were to step in at every moment where we might choose something that is wrong what kind of a world would that be well it would be a world in which we are effectively robots we are simply puppets on a string and that we would not have free will and god allows i think um the cost if you like of the good thing that free will brings which is the ability to love and to be loved to uh which which is frankly the greatest good that we can have in this world. And in my view, that only exists if there is freedom.

The flip side of that, the cost of that, is that it also allows us to use that freedom for doing wrong. And why doesn't God constantly step in and avert it? It's because otherwise we would live in a world where such free will didn't exist. I'm not saying God never does step in but i don't think god steps in very often because of this issue of freedom and and in a sense we are part of god's solution you know it's when we use our freedom to freely build his kingdom and do his work and everything else. And that obviously we are the answer to that problem of suffering and evil. But for me, the harder question is, you know,

more the suffering and evil that results that doesn't appear to be from any human consequence, because then you can't use the so-called free will defense in that. And that's where I would go to the fact of the fallenness of this world that we, you know you we're living in that you know what paul describes in romans as the groaning of creation that we are uh living in a world that's out of kilter that's not the way it should be and um we're waiting for that day when god will put everything right again and restore everything but we are part of that process now we

we are you know part of that kingdom building process and and for me that inevitably that involves to the non-christian kind of having to give them a kind of an insight into what the christian worldview looks like um yeah and that's not just a philosophical thing that's the thing where we're going to be bringing the bible and what we believe about you know the fall of humans and the kind of even the fall of the cosmos in a bigger kind of way is all about. And so it's a huge question. And very often the place I'll go to for most people as well, certainly on the pastoral issue, is that ultimately we believe in a God

who knows what it is to suffer, who came and suffered with us and for us on the cross. And that may provide more actually for the grieving parents who's trying to make sense of all this than than any clever theological or philosophical answer. Just simply knowing that God knows what it is to suffer and is with you in your pain. in your pain. Because I think Christianity alone, out of all of the religions out there, and certainly more than atheism, gives you the hope that actually there is a God who knows what you're going through. Well, in your first point that, you know, the problem of evil is a problem for anybody's system, right? I mean, it's not like there's one system where it makes complete sense. I mean, if you have a godless system, then the very idea of evil seems a little bit arbitrary or, or I don't know,

I don't know how you wouldn't end up in some form of nihilism. Um, uh, well, yeah, I'm just thinking, I've got Sam Harris in the back of my mind thinking, you know, cause he does argue for some kind of like assumed moral basis that everybody can kind of like, just just intuitively knows that that um that rape is wrong and stuff and and i don't know i i think it's still a bit circular he he i mean so sam harris you know he wrote this book called the moral landscape in which he claimed to be answering the question you know why which he claimed essentially to be saying we can find a basis for morality in science

you know yeah but he completely begged the question in that whole book because basically his his baseline was the flourishing of human slash sentient creatures and the whole point was you were supposed to be giving us some kind of uh ontological basis for morality here sam and you've basically just assumed the thing you want from the outset. And the whole point is, why should anyone be subject to that moral law, that this is what we should desire for people. And, and, and this takes us into another kind of argument for God, the argument for morality, but, but I always felt that he, that was just one big exercise in question begging, because he had to assume from the outset that there was this kind of moral standard. And the whole point of the question is where do these moral standards come from?

You know, in a world of, you know, electrons and atoms, you know, that does not exist. There's, you know, why should we, you know, criticize the person who chooses to live their life in a completely different way to you, Sam, because that's just what their atoms are telling them to do. You know, that's, there's no, there's no right or wrong about it. It's just, just the way things are. So it starts, you know, and this was identified a long time ago by people like David Hume, that science will tell you what is, but it will not tell you what ought to be. That's, that's the bridge that he tried to cross in that book, and he absolutely failed to. I didn't realize. So I've often quoted that, you know, the is and the ought.

So Sam Harris challenged that very notion. Yeah. He basically said, you know, he was basically saying, we've always been told that science, you know, you can't get an ought from science. And he basically said, but here's how I do it. you can't get an ought from science and he said he basically said and but here's how i do it here's how i tell you what you or how we how we can know what we ought to be doing on purely scientific principles but he's completely begged the question because he's assumed from the outset that this flourishing of sentient human creatures is the is the kind of bedrock if you like and he's just and he you know and he comes out and blatantly says it in some of his debates afterwards he says yeah it's kind of uh he says if you're going to dispute that fact

then that's kind of he's had some quote about it's the um the spade of stupidities hitting the bedrock of dumbness or something i can't remember but but basically he was he was just basically trying to say it's just obvious isn't it that we're all going to want that? And I was like, well, no, I mean, you know, there are plenty of people who have had a very different conception of what human flourishing looks like. You know, Hitler had a very different conception of what human flourishing looks like to you, Sam. And he persuaded a lot of people into his cause. So what are you going to say to him? a lot of people into his cause. So what are you going to say to him? You know, it's, he was a very, he was a man of science, and he used science for the purposes that he, you know, thought were the best ones. But, you know, most people think he was wrong about that. So, so science is great,

you know, at what it does, but it has not and never will be telling us the way we ought to live our lives. That, that's good. So you've had, I mean, lots of atheists and Christian dialogues on the show, and you're still a Christian. Again, the title of your book is Unbelievable. What's the subtitle again? So the title is Why After 10 Years of Talking with Atheists, I'm Still a Christian. So it's unbelievable. But Why After 10 Years of Talking with Atheists, I'm Still a Christian. But the funny thing is, I didn why after 10 years of talking with atheists, I'm still a Christian.

But the funny thing is I didn't realize this until people emailed me, but a couple of shows ago I rattled it off. And I actually said, why after 10 years of talking with atheists, I'm not a Christian. So, so I had, and then like people were emailing me saying, Justin, has something happened? It was just like, for some reason that there was a slip of the tongue uh but no that that is not the correct title for the book um but yeah it essentially the book was kind of my answer at about the 10 year mark of the show to the question that came

up quite frequently especially when i did a kind of ask me anything type episode of the show where people said having sat down with all these atheists and great communicators how come you still believe you know hasn't your faith been shaken and of course my faith has developed and changed and you know there's certainly been some big questions that i've had to grapple with over that time but my book was really a way of saying well look here's why actually at the end of all of this you know these questions uh and and objections i actually think christianity gives the most compelling explanation of the world but we have um and and i think a big a big thing for me in that was was

helping one of one of the things that kind of helped me to to kind of pull this together was the fact that we've all got a worldview. We've all got a way of understanding the world and there are implications to every worldview. And that stands, that is the case for atheism, just as much as it is for Christianity. And so because most of the shows have, you know, revolved around atheism and Christianity, that's where I've, I centered this book and I simply, what I do in most of,

certainly the early chapters of the book, is I compare atheism and Christianity in terms of which makes best sense of the evidence around us. Is the world best explained by naturalism, this idea that all that exists is matter in motion? Or does it look like there's some kind of purpose, some kind of design behind the universe,

behind our moral intuitions, behind our sense of purpose, some kind of design behind the universe, behind our moral intuitions, behind our sense of purpose. And I find in a lot of cases that the evidence seems to stack up for the Christian worldview against the atheist one. And then I obviously go into some of the historical aspects of Christianity, the case for Jesus, the case for the resurrection, obviously do a chapter on the problem of suffering and so on. And it's really me trying to bring together my case for Christianity, having sat down with brilliant minds on both sides of the aisle, and why, as the title says, I'm still a Christian after all that. So you're still a Christian, but in the last 15 years,

you've had lots of other different kinds of, you know, inner Christian debates and dialogues. What have you changed your mind on in the last 15 years as a result of doing what you do? Well, I think I've had a very similar journey to you on the issue of hell, actually. Yeah, right. In as much as you say, I remember reading and reviewing actually um your book with francis chan which came out quite a while ago um was it called erasing hell erasing hell yeah yeah i didn't choose the title no but in which you you at the time defended you know kind of fairly traditional eternal conscious torment view of hell and this was obviously a response book to rob bell's book um and by that time i myself had come over to a what is sometimes called an annihilationist or

conditional immortality view of hell which is the i've grown up in a church certainly where although it wasn't exactly rammed down your throat that the eternal conscious torment view of hell was was the prevailing view um and uh i think i kind of i didn't think too much about it but i never it never sat very comfortably with me both for ethical and theological reasons but um really during the course of doing some programs and looking at all the options you know eternal conscious torment annihilation universalism other ways of thinking about hell i i kind of came to the conviction that actually annihilation is both a better scriptural and ethical way of understanding um hell and um so so that would be one example of of a place where i've certainly my theology has changed over time um to be honest there are lots of questions I hadn't even really thought about but when I first started the show so you're like you're learning as

you go and you're realizing oh so I have to take a position on this particular issue do I um am I a amylinious preterist whatever you know um and and there were some things where I've gradually you know just well there are some things where I think I I'm more uh I do know where I've gradually, you know, just, well, there are some things where I think I'm more, I do know where I stand on certain things. And there are certain things where I don't know where I stand on them. And I'm kind of comfortable in not feeling like I have to have that all worked out necessarily. So yeah, that's, that's, that's kind of. How do you keep up on all the different hot button issues? Like every time I look at, you know, a new podcast release, I'm like, wow. So he's, you know, up to speed on the latest voices in Young Earth, Old Earth and then atheism and Christianity and then LGBT stuff and all this.

I mean, do you do you have a routine of just reading widely, just keeping up on who are the best voices out there? I guess I try to keep abreast of kind of what's going on. I mean, by and large, often the shows, the shows come out in a variety of ways. Firstly, I get a lot of books across my desk, you know, from Christian or atheist authors. And a lot of that will drive the shows and the kind of topics. And so there's always new ideas and interesting people to have on because of that. A lot of listeners will send in topics or guest suggestions they'd like to see on the show so i'm often learning actually the interesting things going on and the arguments that are being put out there from listeners who are who are telling me you know hey justin you've got to get this guy on

you've got to talk about this subject and so on um and then yeah i just kind of keep my ear to the ground a little bit in the the circles that i'm sort of linked into um when it comes to you know issues that are cropping up and uh the way that cultural issues move on in various ways so you know if you go back in the archive you know some of the conversations we had back then on certain issues kind of have moved on a bit you know in 10 years and we're going to be talking about them in different ways now um i mean a good example is you know that dave rubin kind of conversation we had where um i think the conversation on atheism has has moved on a bit from when dawkins and harris and hitchens and co were kind of ruling the roost with the new atheism it's it's become a little passe to some degree in popular culture to the degree that you're seeing

a lot more of these interesting secular characters like jordan peterson and dave rubin and others who are kind of saying actually no we we do need god we're gonna need to work out what we believe about you know religion because it's not going away and even though the new atheist tried to tear it down it turns out people need something to believe in you know people can't live without some kind of a narrative in life and and we're now seeing the fallout from that because everyone's claiming that you know well i can just be what i want to be and think what i want to think and and actually society doesn't really function very well when that happens so i think there's all kinds of interesting cultural conversations going on with you know know, identity politics and critical theory

and all of that stuff going on in the mix. And we've been keying into some of that with some of these conversations we've been having with some of these secular thinkers, but who are actually finding themselves sometimes more on the side of Christians and some of their fellow secularists who are very progressive or left-wing or kind of extreme on some issue or another, because they, they say, hang on, the parts of the secular world have seemed to have gone off the rails, you know?

Um, and, and so, so there's been some interesting conversations on that front, quite, quite friendly conversations between Christians and non-Christians who have actually more in common than they realize sometimes. Well, I've noticed that. So my, I'm releasing a book on transgender identities and Christianity. And it's interesting that when it comes to something like, you know, the same sex marriage debates, it was largely a conservative versus liberal kind of thing. But when it comes to the gender conversation, it's, it's, you have like a kind of an extreme kind of far left kind of trans activists. And then you have you have like a kind of a an extreme kind of a far left kind of trans activist and

then you have loads of very liberal very pro-lgbt voices that are challenging that so there's a lot of kind of like i don't say in-house fighting but just it seems it's opened up some kind of interesting rifts in a way i think i think i think the kind of there are some people who just haven't been willing to pursue it in the direction that a lot of the activists have thought this would naturally go and suddenly people are realizing that they're not exactly on the same page when it comes to um whether we can fundamentally sort of choose our identity in any way we like and uh and obviously the major you know fault line has been between you know your your

the feminists and the transgender activists and we've seen a lot of that in the uk i mean even most recently stunningly really um jk rowling you know the author of the harry potter books you know kind of basically being uh labeled a bigot and everything else um because of her support for this woman who lost a sort of tribunal um uh employment case that centered on transgender issues so um it's a really interesting time because um i think it is interestingly causing certain people in the secular world to question okay well what what are we standing on here what's you know is is there a kind of a truth about who we are and what we're made for or or is it all up for grabs basically and and is there no truth out there kind of about about and and i just think that that's a a place where the church needs to be speaking into

graciously yeah confidently um and helping people to realize that that identity ultimately is always you know finding your identity anywhere other than Christ is always going to be, you know, slippery sand. So I hope that in gentle ways, you know, depending on who we're talking to, the show can help to do that, you know. Yeah. Well, Justin, thanks so much for your time, for your book, and for your podcast. I mean, I talk to people all the time that listen to your show and it sparks so many great conversations. So I hope you keep at it for another 20, 30 years, maybe. As long as people are listening, I suspect I'll be doing this.

I mean, as I say, I often sometimes say the joy of what I do is that i produce a show that i would listen to yeah so as long as i'm interested in it i'll keep doing it because actually you know that's a pretty good job to have um producing a show that you enjoy actually listening to so so yeah um i'll be around for for a while um as i say sometimes we we kind of do topics we've done before but anytime you get a new person on you get a new angle on, you get a new angle on it, you get, you know, and,

and I think as we, as culture progresses, um, there's always going to be interesting ways in which we can start to engage with it. So, yeah. And I appreciate all you've been doing Preston with,

with, you know, all of your stuff and the podcast. I, I frequently listen in. So it's been, been a real pleasure. Awesome.

Thank you. That makes me nervous that a real pleasure cool awesome thank you that makes me nervous that you're listening but thank you for listening in all right well thanks for on the show hopefully we'll do this again sometime yeah great good to see you take care take care Thank you.