Truth Unites - Dawkins vs. Ali: The Key Takeaway

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

Gavin Ortlund analyzes what was revealed in the recent dialogue between Richard Dawkins and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

Ayyani Horsi Ali made headlines in late 2023 when she announced her conversion from atheism to Christianity. A lot of us followed this closely. Very fascinating. And there was some discussion about whether this was more politically motivated. Richard Dawkins wrote an open letter to her claiming multiple times, you are no more of a Christian than I am. More recently, the two of them sat down together. The first question was, tell us about your conversion. And it became very clear this is not just political.

It's very personal. I lived for about a decade with intense depression and anxiety, self-loading. I hit rock bottom. I went to a place where I actually didn't want to live anymore, but wasn't brave enough to take my own life. And so I was self-medicating. I had over a long period of time seen psychiatrists, other doctors, I was trying to understand my condition and trying to treat it

with the help of pure evidence-based science. And in January, February of last year, I saw one therapist who said, perhaps it's something else that you have, and she described it as spiritual bankruptcy. And that resonated with me. And having reached a place where I had absolutely nothing to lose, I prayed. And I prayed desperately. And for me, that was a turning point.

And what happened after that is a miracle in its own right. I feel connected to something higher and greater than myself. My zest for life is back. That experience has filled me with humility, I have to say. And it is something that's very subjective. It's extremely difficult to explain. I'm trying to get into the details, the granular details of how I got there in a book. But that's, you know, the shortest story that I can tell.

And I can't even fully articulate how much I admire Ayan for her courage, her humility, just the gentle steadiness she displayed throughout that dialogue. Personal testimony is very powerful, especially when it's vulnerable and honest like that. Remember her words, it's extremely difficult to explain. We'll come back to those at the end. While Richard Dawkins is approaching this whole topic from a very different angle,

he kept on pressing her, basically saying, well, that's good for you, but is it true? That's a moving personal story, but to call herself a Christian is a bit different. I mean, a Christian, has to believe in something. And, I mean, any, well, you go to church now,

and you listen to the vicar. And do you kind of notice what a lot of nonsense he talks? At one point, he's referencing various Christian doctrines like belief in original sin, though I don't think he quite gets that right. Jesus' sinlessness, the immaculate conception of Mary, a Roman Catholic dogma, and he's belaboring this point.

This is all obvious nonsense. This is all theological bullshit. So a good portion of the dialogue as it's unfolding is Dawkins sort of pressing Ali on these particular miracles like the resurrection of Christ and saying, surely you don't believe this, it's obvious nonsense. Well, I must say, I've never met a vicar that I didn't like. I mean, they're always very, very nice people.

Yeah. But nevertheless, the stuff they believe is obvious nonsense. and you have to take the whole package because, I mean, you talked about Jesus rising from the dead. You don't believe Jesus rose from the dead, surely. Now, I'm going to argue that Dawkins is missing something here, but I don't think it's wrong to care about these questions of truth. I think it's fair to say personal testimony is one thing, but we do have to go beyond that, especially when we're sort of discoursing back and forth.

And in response to that, I think Christians should seek to commend the gospel as both true and good. I talk a lot about the three transcendentals, the good, the true, the beautiful. I think we need to situate Christianity in relation to all three, especially these days. And that includes truth. So I think we need to meet that challenge and so forth. Actually, by the way, my next video coming out in five days will be on the fine-tuning argument for theism. I think it's a great argument. And then one week after that, I'll have a video on various cosmological arguments.

And I cast those not as coercive proofs, but rather as abductive appeals, just trying to show the theism is plausible and rational. That's my own particular approach. In other words, it's not obvious nonsense, as Dawkins calls it. But leave all that aside for the sake of this video. Apart from that whole conversation, there's still something missing and something somewhat tone-deaf in Dawkins' reactions as this conversation is unfolding. And I think it's worth talking about because I think it reflects something a little broader in the atheist versus religion dialogue that happens. I'm probably not the only one who noticed this, where you're watching this dialogue and you're hearing Ayan, on the one hand, vulnerably and with sincerity, share these deeply personal experiences,

and it's very moving. In the other hand, you've got Richard Dawkins sort of leaning in and challenging her with, yeah, but it's all nonsense. And you feel this sense of disconnect, like these two people are approaching this deep question from very different angles at this point in their lives. And it sort of reminds me of the difference between the right brain and the left brain, and I know this is scientifically challenged, but let's just go with how it's commonly described for the sake of this video. So the left brain is more analytic, more logical, more orderly. The right brain is more creative, more emotional, more imaginative. And basically people point out that both of these are needed for human flourishing. And both of these, actually, they need to learn from each other. And they,

ideally, they work together. And the simple fact is, a lot of life happens in the right brain, the less analytical side of human psychology. So, for example, the way you fall in love, the way you seek happiness, the way you swing at a baseball, if it's a fastball, you know, a lot of sports will be in this area, a lot of the arts, the way you discover which kinds of music you like. There's a lot that you go through that's really important as a human being that the left brain is going to need some help with. I, for some reason, thought of this little line from the movie Top Gun Maverick, where Maverick says to Rooster, don't think, just do. Come on, Matt.

Don't think. Just do. I mean, tiny little episode that connects here somehow. There's something to that. Now, it's also true that the right brain needs the left brain, right? We don't want to overcorrect here. Nonetheless, the point for now is there's a real danger in evaluating right brain activities from a left brain framework. And this runs the risk of a kind of tone deafness and a lack of a lack of.

humility. Another metaphor could be imagine somebody who's never been in love and they're observing people who are in love and they're listening to the terms of endearment that they use and they're seeing what they spend on Valentine's Day and they're thinking this is just weird. This is just, you know, they might even say it's obvious nonsense. It reminds me of the scene in Le Miz. One of my favorite songs is when Marius has completely fallen head over heels in love and all of his friends are like, what are you doing? You know, we have bigger fish to fry here. We're in the middle of a revolution, your romance is not important. Who cares about your lonely soul? And Marius is singing this song, and it's like, you guys don't get it. You don't know what it feels

like to fall in love. I've had an experience you don't understand. I'll put up these lyrics on the screen. It's one of my favorite parts of Le Miz. But most of us can recognize that the inability to comprehend these right brain activities like falling in love is not actually a good thing. This is not maturity and enlightenment. This is actually short-sighted and in the worst forms, it's actually a form of prejudice. But I think something comparable happens in some, though not all, atheists critiques of religious faith. There's a similar kind of tone deafness. Here is Ayanne pouring out her heart, and Dawkins is coming back with, but it's all obvious nonsense, and he's missing something

that's just deeply human. Simple fact is that religion is profoundly interwoven with some deep-seated right brain human activities that just make life work societally and for most of us individually. Think of it like this. We are born into this world. We didn't decide to be created. We just find ourselves thrown into the world and we're not given any answers on the front end of these basic questions of life. The two that I often emphasize are meaning and death. What are we doing here? What happens when it's over? Those basic questions, people have to try to figure this out. and we're in this position of extreme vulnerability. For these basic questions, we have to answer, how do we know?

Most human beings have navigated the answers to these questions from a religious framework of some sort or another. And a lot of people in the modern world find secularism pretty bleak to answer those questions. Two other questions that's also true for are happiness and suffering. What are you living for and what do you do to make it through? when life gets really hard. Tim Keller talks about how, of all cultures that have ever been, modern secular culture is one of the least equipped to help people navigate profound cataclysmic suffering. Most people work through that from a kind of religious framework of some kind or another.

So even if religion were nonsense, then its removal would need more humility. You know, you'd need something more like a surgeon than a butcher. And just the deriding and contemptuous attitude that you see a lot of times, especially on the internet from atheists and Dawkins, I'm not trying to pick on Dawkins too much. I actually kind of like listening to Richard Dawkins. And he wasn't derisive or contemptuous toward it. You can tell they like each other.

They're friends. That was one of my favorite things. It's when they gave a hug at the end. I thought that's how this dialogue should go, actually, if it can. To whatever extent possible, this is what I would like to see the religious person and the atheist can actually posture themselves to try to help each other. I actually think in the best case scenarios

that can happen, I know I'm very naive, and I always try to hope for the best in dialogues, and a lot of times it won't. But sometimes it can. You can be friends. But at any rate, there's more humility that's needed, is the point. You've got to understand this deep-seated aspect of humanity. Now, the question that, of course, we come to is,

is it all nonsense? And here, I think, Ali's answers in their beautiful sincerity, were very effective in showing that the best way to get to the bottom of that, which is the ultimate question, is going to involve both the right brain

and the left brain with full sincerity and what you will need above all is humility. Humility is way more important than intelligence in getting to the bottom of the ultimate questions, I think. Just listen to this answer. It's beautiful. I mean, do you really take it seriously? that Jesus is the son of God,

Jesus rose from the dead, Jesus was born of a virgin, and that's part of Christianity. So I think because you, and I know you very well, we've been friends for a long time, and in fact in some ways, I think of you as a mentor. I would say you're coming at this

from a place of, there is nothing. And what has happened to me is I think I have accepted there is something. And when you accept that there is something, there is a powerful entity. For me, the God that turned me around, I think what the vicar is saying no longer sounds nonsensical. It makes a great deal of sense. And not only does it make a great deal of sense, it's also layered with the wisdom

of millennia. And so like you, I did mock faith in general, and probably Christianity in particular, but I don't do that anymore. And again, that's where the humility comes into it, is it doesn't seem, in 2024, after I went through that experience, it doesn't seem nonsensical to me,

and I don't mock it. So this gets at the heart, of these differing starting points that they have. Is there something or is there ultimately nothing? That's one way of kind of getting to the fundamental divide between religion and secularism. And again, I think we can put forward a plausible case through left brain analysis.

I'll put out these videos five days from now on the fine-tuning argument and so forth. I think theism is a pretty good worldview. I think it can stand up. I think it reduces brute facts. I think it explains a lot. I think it's a kind of elegant way of looking at reality, to believe in an ultimate simple person. That's the ultimate thing that explains

everything else. And so, you know, in the left brain analysis, let the arguments play forth for and against that idea. But in the meantime, life still needs to be lived. People need meaning. People need happiness. People need hope. And for a lot of us, what makes religion start to sound less like nonsense is going to be in this area. Stuff swirling around in the right brain. brain. And you see that in the wonderful sincerity of Ayan's comments. To conclude, as I listen to my sister Ayan's struggle to find words to articulate. Remember at the beginning, I said, you know, I drew attention to how she's not, she doesn't have the exact words. Well, who does? If you're falling in love or if you're in the right brain, how do you articulate it, you know? I can relate to

that personally, but beyond that, it makes me think of one of my favorite books, Contact by Carl Sagan. I picked up this book many years ago to try to understand secular and or scientific ways of looking at the world better. I find that reading literature helps you understand other points of view better if you read their literature and their fiction. So I picked up this book by Carl Sagan because he's sort of a father figure in many secular circles, and I was astonished by what I discovered. This book is not tone deaf. This book doesn't have this total lack of humility. it's amazing. The basic plot shows the need for some kind of transcendent creator. I talk a lot about this in my review of this. I'll put up a picture of this. You can read it if you're interested. Basically,

the whole book ends in a fine-tuning argument. It's amazing. If you don't believe me, just read the last paragraph of the book. The other dynamic, though, is there's this character, Ellie Arroway, and I thought of her. So for most of the book, she's a total skeptic, and then she has this profound experience. And it's a kind of religious experience. And she discovers the need for faith. And she's unable to fully articulate. And what Ellie Arrowway is saying toward the end of the story is kind of similar to what Marius is saying to his friends. It's like, you don't know what I've experienced, you know.

And this is something a little bit like what I hear, Ayan, saying to Richard Dawkins as well. And many of us who have had these kind of deep-seated experiences in this place deep within, it's probably closer to the right brain, but it's not necessarily contrary to the left brain, but it leads to this deep conviction that there's something rather than nothing at the bottom of reality. And it's so compelling and it's so beautiful that it leads to this sense of existential commitment. Maybe that's what we use the word faith for. I don't know. But for atheists watching this video, I would just kind of put out the question. I know there's a lot of good faith atheists who watch my videos, and I really appreciate that. The question to sort of wrestle with, I think,

watching a dialogue like this is what if Ayan is right? What if it's a lot? What if it's a question, It's true that there's an infinite person who made the world. What if love is the ultimate explanation? What if the way you feel at the happy ending of your favorite movie at the very end is not your brain tricking you because of evolutionary psychology, which is the alternative in secularism? That's pretty dismal. But it's actually a picture of what's going to happen one day. Happy endings are pointing ahead. Whatever you think about that, that's really in the right brain area, what is needed on all sides is humility before these questions and a sense of respect for the subject matter we're dealing with. And again, in the best cases, I think, the religious

person and the irreligious person can kind of lean toward one another and have good conversation. That's what I want to be about on my YouTube channel. At any rate, watch the rest of the dialogue. Fascinating. If you're newer to my channel and you're interested more in my thoughts about contact. I also put a video about it, but it's really old. This is one of those videos you look back on years later and you feel kind of embarrassed at the video quality and how slow you're talking and so forth. Maybe I'll feel that way years from now about this video. Who knows? I also have an older video, similar time frame about my own process of spiritual deconstruction, how I ultimately landed back in faith. So those might be of interest. And then check out the next few videos I'm going to put out

fine-tuning, cosmological. These arguments are really fun. What I love about them is not just as a bear proof, but they actually touch your heart if you think about them carefully, and they actually tell you a little bit about something about the nature of God. That's a little bit more my interest than just the mere fact of God. So anyway, keep a lookout for those. And if you're interested in learning more about Truth Unites, maybe joining the community supporting, I really appreciate that. You can check out Truthenites.org. All right, let me know what you think in the comments, and thanks for watching, everybody.