Within Reason - #41 Justin Brierley - The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God

Episode Date: September 24, 2023

Justin Brierley was, for 17 years, the host of "Unbelievable?" on Premier Christian Radio. He is a broadcaster, author, and Christian apologist whose latest book is "The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God: Why new atheism grew old and secular thinkers are considering Christianity again". Get Justin's book here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Within Reason. My name is Alex O'Connor. Justin Briarly was for 17 and a half years, the host of Unbelievable, a popular show on premier Christian radio, bringing together Christian and non-Christian thinkers for discussion and debate. It's a show that I've been on a number of times and always had a great time doing so. He joins me today to talk about his upcoming book, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, why new atheism grew old and secular thinkers are considering Christianity again. Justin Briley, thanks for being here. Thank you for having me, Alex. It's great to have you back. You recently stopped. I mean, you've been hosting this absolutely classic. It's this classic of philosophy of religion and debate within sort of the Christian atheist debate sphere, the unbelievable show. For how long?

How long were you hosting this show? I was hosting it for 17 and a half years. 17 and a half years. And just recently, you decided to stop. I did. And I'm wondering, why? Why did you do this to us? Is it because of your newfound TikTok fame?

Did you think I don't need to do this anymore? I'm an online influencer now. TikTok is fun, but it doesn't really pay the bills. No. I, yeah, I'd been hosting the show for a long time. And, well, I guess the point came where I felt like I was ready for a new challenge. I'm so glad for everything that we were able to do through Unbeliever. bringing Christians and non-Christians together for dialogue and debate.

We, you know, and that wasn't just the podcast and video show. It was conferences, a book that I wrote on it. It was, you know, special series like The Big Conversation. So an amazing privilege to have hosted all of those conversations. But for me, there was just, yeah, a point came a couple of years ago where I thought, you know, I feel like maybe stretching my wings, doing some other stuff. And the best way for that to happen was actually for me to put down my, baby that I had grown from yeah from birth really to 17 and a half years and to yeah start some

fresh projects so that's where I'm at now and one of those projects is a new book it is which you have in your hand which you can wave up to the to the camera called the surprising rebirth of belief in god subtitle why new atheism grew old and secular thinkers are considering Christianity again so this is going to be published this September that's right and I'll make sure that the the links to pre-order in the description and the show notes. Surprising rebirth of belief in God. There's a lot packed into that title. Firstly, the idea of a rebirth implies a previous death.

Yes. And secondly, the fact that it's surprising to you. As somebody who thinks that Christianity is true to see what you're describing as a rebirth of belief in God as surprising, there's sort of, there's a big question mark hanging over a lot of that for me. There is. I think the rebirth is because, yes, I think we have in a sense seen the death of God either prophesied or, you know, apparent in some of the movements of the last few decades. The new atheism is really where I start the book. And to some extent, I think a lot of people saw that, the rise of that very almost dogmatic form of anti-theism as sort of putting a, you know, cherry on top of what has already been, you know, a couple of centuries of increasing secularism. the West and the decline of church going and everything else. So it is a rebirth, I think, and I'll explain why I think there is a rebirth of belief in God going on, because in a sense,

I think a lot of people in the secular West have assumed that God is dead, as the Time Magazine article once put in. Yeah, you said near the beginning of the book, encouraging people to ignore God in 21st century Britain is a bit like asking a teenager to consider having a lion on a Saturday morning. It hardly needs saying, do you think the situation is so dire for religious belief in UK? I think to some extent, yes. I mean, if you look at the statistics, by and large, people don't seem interested in going to church. There's been a fairly constant decline in church going at the last survey. I think it was over half of people said that they didn't claim any religion. That's a first for the UK, especially. And generally speaking, I think most people

are frankly either illiterate or uninterested, probably, in the question of God. or religion or think they are. And to that extent, the quote you read was from around the time when I, the new atheism was sort of, had launched this atheist bus campaign saying there's probably no God now. Stop worrying and enjoy your life. And it just struck me as funny that they would even kind of put the idea of God in people's eye line because, as I say, I was like, I mean, you're telling an already extremely secular society, there's probably no God. Well, you know, that was kind of taken for granted probably by most people. In a funny way, I think that bus campaign actually serves to make people more interested in God rather than less interested

in God. Yeah, you wrote in the book, and this is a bus campaign where, as you say, the slogan was, there's probably no God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life. And this was emblazoned upon buses that would go around central London. And you described it as thrilling when you first saw it, because people are putting God back on the agenda. But you even said that somebody, there was some kind of religious person or organization that had donated to the campaign, if I remember right there. Yeah, a guy called Paul Woolley, who at the time was heading up an organization called Theos, who still do great work in this area. And he put his own hand in his pocket to support it because he thought it was getting the conversation

going. This atheist campaign. That's quite funny. It sort of rings of how, you know, an atheist might want to help to fund putting Bibles in hotel rooms. Yeah. They think that, well, the best way to make an atheist is to make them read the Bible. Yes, I've heard that said. Yes, the best way of creating an atheist is make them read the Bible. I'm not sure how many atheist campaigns actually do fund Bible translation and publication, but there you go. I wonder why you think this would be allowed to obtain. That is to say, you know, it's fairly clear that religious belief, at least in the UK, is waning, a bit limp, a bit lukewarm.

the question that I'm struck with with all of this is if there is a god supervising all of this and he wants people to come to know him then why would we be allowed to see and why would it be likely that we would see such a dramatic decline in religious belief in this country well I'm not in position of God to give a definitive answer but it strikes me that it's not at all inconceivable that a god who is in the business of bringing people to know and love him, has ways in which that God can do that, which don't always involve any particular country at any particular time being dramatically interested in God. I mean, what's interesting is that, in a sense, the UK and the West in general, is a bit at odds with the rest of the world where actually belief in God is growing. Christianity is flourishing and growing at its fastest rate ever in many other parts of the world, you know, the global South, South America, China and so on. And so there are more people becoming Christians on a daily basis than there ever have been in the history of the world. But of course, that's not the picture at our moment in the West. Now, does that mean, you know, is this an argument against God? For me, it's not a very powerful one against God because it's perfectly possible that there are reasons why religious belief ebbs and flows in ways that you're only seeing part of a much bigger picture where actually there may be, who knows this may be just the, the before some much bigger revival of interest or awakening of belief in God, you know.

What is or was new atheism and what do you think it gets or got wrong about religious belief? So I would define new atheism as a sort of movement that started in the wake of things like 9-11 and as a response to religious extremism particularly, but also concerns around things like the teaching of creation, in schools and the threat to evolutionary teaching and that kind of thing. And just generally the upsurge of a kind of community, an online community of atheist folks who found each other and was kind of expressed in the publishing boom of people like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and others with their sort of anti-god books and the conferences and everything else that went with it. So I would say, you know, it was kind of really getting going in around

2005, 2006 when I started The Unbelievable Show. And that was a very important. around that time that Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens were publishing their books. And for me, it was just a very popular form of atheism that was far more public in your face, dogmatic, that was good at generating headlines, getting opinion pieces published and that kind of thing. And it was just a very unashamed, quite sort of almost antagonistic form of atheism that really challenged religious believers to, you know, put their money where the mouth is, to show why their beliefs were true. or not that also took aim at those beliefs, not just in an intellectual way, but also through ridicule and sarcasm and mockery and that kind of thing. So for me, that was the flavor of

the new atheism. Seems like the central claims of things like religion has no scientific backing, that religion and science are at odds, perhaps, that religious belief is irrational and that religion is a force for evil in the world. These seem to be maybe the central claims. I would agree. I think you've outlined some of the central claims very well there. Essentially, God doesn't exist. Religion is bad for you. Science and faith are at odds with each other. Those would be central. I mean, there's an interesting debate about whether atheism is just a lack of belief in God, whether it's the belief there is no God. And I find it quite interesting that. Where do you sit on that one? In terms of what I believe or in terms of

what I think atheism is. Both? Who's interviewing who here? Sorry, sorry. I'm just quite right. It's an interesting question. I think in terms of the definition, it's such a triviality that it hardly bears thinking about. But my understanding is that a lot of people colloquially use the word atheist to describe a lack of belief in God. And that's fine. If that's what they mean, then I'm happy to run with that. But that in an academic setting, in academic philosophy, for example, if you sort of look up an actual dictionary definition tends to mean the belief that there is no God, which is a much more helpful way to use the term, I think, in terms of My own belief, I think that I'm, you know, it does sort of ebb and flow.

I'm more on the lack of belief team, but there are, that's because of the fact that there are arguments for strong A atheism that I find compelling that aren't enough in light of other arguments to sort of say that that's my opinion, but that the reason that I lack a belief in God is because there are good arguments that would conclude that there is no God if you see what I'm saying. And I think a lot of the new atheists, it feels like, although a number of them, one to say, well, I simply lack a belief in God, in practice, they were arguing that there is no God. So for me, it felt like the stronger form of that. It's what you have to do in a debate

format, unless you just want to spend the whole time picking at somebody else's views, which makes sense because it's easier to do. That's one of the reasons, I think, for the great success of the atheist position in a debate is because you can always resort to saying, well, look, I'm not the one making the claim here. As long as your position doesn't hold, then I win the debate. And so So it becomes a lot easier to. And that's why I'm much to win in a sense when I'm hosting or moderating debate or even debating someone to sort of have the other person give me a positive position, i.e. in favor of something like naturalism or something like that, then it feels like we're both at least in arguing for something. Yeah, I try to do that more now. If I'm doing a debate, it has to be for some kind.

There has to be something that I'm arguing now. Otherwise, I feel like it's almost a bit unfair to the person that I'm debating that I can. just poke one hole or identify one logical fallacy and look I win you know I don't think it should work like that but it's interesting that there's so many in the atheist community who want to say no atheism is just a lack of belief in God but a lot of the sort of new atheists that that really were at the forefront of this movement makes surprising indications to the contrary i mean Richard Dawkins has a chapter in the god delusion called why there almost certainly isn't a god Christopher Hitchens, when pressed by William Lane Craig in their famous debate, said, well, you know, I'm not making a claim.

Atheism is a kind of neutral position, but, you know, I've done so much thinking and arguing that I think at this point I would make the claim that it's not true. And so there does seem to be this position, this position lurking within the new atheist movement. So quite right, there is no God, perhaps, because people might pick up on that and say, well, it's a lack of belief in God. But okay, you know, God, no. And then we've got the stuff about religion being evil. We've got the stuff about religion and science being in conflict. Are these not reasonable critiques for the new atheists to make? Is it not a tangible position that God doesn't exist?

Is it not obviously true that religion is capable of and responsible for great deals of evil? Hasn't religion gotten in the way of scientific progress throughout history? Where are they going wrong? Well, I think it's easy to make those claims. and at a general level to support them, you know, when you're cherry picking your evidence for it, I think the problem is it just isn't a very nuanced or a case that's willing to look at both sides. So you tended to see just a very rhetorical argument when it came to people like Christopher Hitchens, you know, God is not great and so on. You very rarely heard

the other side. I was in the, you know, the happy position of being able to hear good arguments on both sides for many years on the unbelievable show. And what I came to realize is as much as there are, you know, cogent arguments against Christianity and for atheism. There are equally interesting cogent arguments against that and for Christianity. So to take just one example, science versus faith, yes, on a very specific reading of maybe Young Earth creation view of Genesis, it's easy, obviously, to shoot that down. But in my experience, that's not what most thinking Christians are defending when it comes to the relationship between science and faith. And in fact, I think there's a much more interesting conversation to be had about the way that

many advances in what we know of the universe and science seem to open up the gold question rather than close it down. So obviously, you'll be very familiar, Alex, having responded to at least one video I did on this, there's things like the fine-tuning of the universe, there's things like the Big Bang, cosmology, there's all kinds of aspects of the nature of our universe and the way it's written in the laws of mathematics that seem to, in my view, open up the God question, as I say, rather than close it down. And then you've got literally just the history of science, which actually if you go and actually do some research into it,

is not some kind of constant barrage of the church trying to close down scientific inquiry. It's actually been a very fruitful combination, obviously with some problems along the way, where, you know, people have been stopped from pursuing scientific inquiry because of religious concerns. But overall, that's really not the picture. The scientific revolution was led by Christians, that's just a historical fact, but one that's not very often sort of... Yeah. I mean, it seems, it seems, if we were going to defend the hypothesis that the scientific method has, you know, debunked and removed the viability of Christianity, then I think it makes perfect sense to say that the people who founded this movement were Christians, because the movement didn't exist yet to undermine the beliefs, right? Of course. I mean, it's like, you know, saying that the person, the people who invented, you know, weightlifting weren't jacked. Well, of course they weren't because I hadn't invented weightlifting yet, right? Of course the, the, the,

the inventors of the scientific method are not going to reach its atheistic conclusions because they were still they were still founding the method um i think there's a lot of talk about uh you know the the history of of scientists being religious and being christian and people like to point to modern examples of some quite serious uh scientists and important scientists who yet have religious beliefs but a lot of the time seems to me that you know if you've got somebody who their scientific expertise is in looking at, you know, dark matter or understanding the process of evolution or something like this, then of course they can still believe in God because the science that they're doing isn't necessarily going to be relevant to the

question of whether or not God exists. And I get the feeling that not that many scientists who are professed atheists or non-believers are such really on the basis of their science. I think there's probably a lot of other factors, including just the general fact that we live in a largely secular Western culture that are responsible for their beliefs or non-beliefs in God. I think that the new atheism did a good job of trying to very much tie that to a scientific account of reality. But I think the only kind of real hits that they landed were in the area of kind of debunking bad science, you know, propounded by some Christians. I don't think, I think it's very hard to actually make a case that good science contradicts the idea of God. I just don't think that the one follows from the other.

Yeah, I mean, it seems to me more like a cultural force, especially in America where you have creationism being taught in schools, for example. It's a very specific thing to argue against, and you can begin to put this in a context of religion bad. Because look at all of these examples, and what do they have in common? while they're all driven by religious thinking. But do you think that's the only hit that the new atheists sort of landed? Is there anything else about their movement and campaign? I think they managed to work. I mean, I think at a popular level, it worked very well in the sense that I think we still feel the effect of it today,

even if the new atheists itself isn't in the ascendances it once was culturally. I think you still see a lot of that rhetoric, you know, essentially just religion is bad for you. you know, science builds planes, religion flies them into buildings, all that kind of stuff. And I think that to that extent, there's a sort of arguably a kind of surface level kind of approach to critiquing religion that is still very prevalent and that the new atheism helped to kind of, to found. I think though, by and large, I don't think their ideas have sort of are now being taken that seriously in the wider culture. I feel like their, that kind of thinking and that kind of way of understanding religion is seen as a bit

passe now or a bit shrill and dogmatic in itself. And I think that's partly why I think that movement did eventually come to an end, among other reasons. And I think it has, as I say in the book, been replaced by a more nuanced, I think more interesting conversation on the value of religion. So again, the thesis that religion is bad for you and bad for the world, again, you know, Hitchens did a great job doing a rhetorical case for that in God is not great. But I don't think his argument actually stands up in the long run

because I think there are too many counter examples of the way in which actually it's evident that the Judeo-Christian worldview is almost responsible for the fact that Christofichens can write that book. There's so much for me that points to the value of Christendom that so many atheists and secularists sort of took for granted. and I've only recently been started to be pointed out really obviously by, you know, historians like Tom Holland and others, that actually we do effectively stand on the shoulders of the Christians who built the West, from which you can be a secularist and an atheist and a Christopher Hitchens. So for me, it's, it's, yeah, and like when I see the new atheist kind of launching these critiques of the Bible and how awful the Old Testament is, fair enough, you know, there's some tough stuff in the Old Testament. Testament that I struggle to understand or explain. But at the same time, the irony for me is that

they are judging it on the basis of basically Christian values. That's the frame, that's the worldview from which they are judging the Bible. The Bible essentially gave them the morality by which they're then judging some of its, you know, weirder passages. It's the stealing from God concept of Frank Church. Yeah, I mean, not everyone likes the way Frank does that, but I think there's something to it. I think there's, I wouldn't call it, stealing from. from God. I'd just say it's a blind spot, you know, in many secularists that actually we are all a product of our cultures. I had a fascinating interview with a Christian convert the other day, a woman called June, who comes from China originally. So she came from a very

atheistic background, but quite a different one to the West, obviously, where the atheism and secularism that she grew up in was not a product of, as it were, of a long process of a Judeo-Christian history. But she said, now when I watched Richard Dawkins, you know, raging against Christian morality or the Old Testament, I think you would not, you would not be saying that. There would be no Richard Dawkins if you came from my version of atheism in China because you wouldn't, you wouldn't see these things as awful or oppressive or anything else. They're just the way the world is.

They're just sort of, that's the way power is. That's the way things. She said it's only specifically from a Judeo-Christian heritage of the West that Richard Dawkins makes his critique of the Bible. So I just find that quite interesting. I think there's some sense we made of the claim that there's such thing as a Catholic atheist and a Protestant atheist and a Muslim atheist and a pagan atheist. Because depending on sort of where you've come from, your perception of the thing that you're negating is going to change, which is why if you ask somebody, why don't you believe in God, they might say, well because I think there's too much evil in the world. Just assuming that we're talking about a traditionally sort of benevolent monotheistic god rather than some pantheon of battling gods

or forces of good and evil or some kind of Gnosticism or something like this is just this assumption that the question of like the existence of any kind of supernatural deity is going to be undermined by the problem of evil. Of course if you point that out, I think people will be quick to say, oh, yeah, no, of course, I'm talking about, you know, I'm an atheist about monotheism, we can talk about other gods separately, but it just sort of slips in, I think, quite a lot. And, you know, I mean to emphasize that people will readily say that when asked about it. If you ask Richard Dawkins, well, look, what about an evil God? He'd probably say, well, sure, I mean, I guess all I can argue against is the traditional Christian

God, with this argument, or the traditional monotheistic God. fine and even Dawkins has been almost prepared to say well look I don't you know I'm not like too fussed about the idea of a sort of general deistic god you know even though he still doesn't think that exists but but he he seems more concerned as you say with the Christian version yeah of God but it just kind of casually comes out as well the reason I don't believe in any God it might be because of the problem of evil and that clarification isn't made because that's the kind of atheists that you are. But I think the idea that you wouldn't be able to criticize the, you know, morally sort of smoky bits of the Old Testament without essentially a Christian world

view is probably the most controversial thing that you've said on this, on this podcast episode so far. And it's not, it's an idea that I'm sure won't be unfamiliar to my listeners, but they might want to press you on why you think that's the case? What kind of values are you talking about? Is that true, even in the most obvious cases of Old Testament criticism? A lot of people will accuse the Old Testament of having things like sexual slavery within it. Now, it's one thing to say, actually, I don't think that's what's going on there. I don't think it was slavery in the kind you're describing. But it's another thing to say, well, even if it were the most grotesque form of sexual slavery you can think of, in order to say that that's a bad thing,

you essentially have to rely on a Christian world view. That's a much stronger claim and one that I think people are going to have more of a problem with. Yeah, so without us sort of probably taking up the rest of the show talking about the specific Old Testament passages, I think my argument is simply that if you believe that there is a moral, sort of something morally bad about those instances in the Old Testament,

you're doing so on the basis of the Judeo-Christian values that have come down. Now, not specifically from those Old Testament passages, because really the basis on one which people believe in the idea of equality and dignity and freedom and so on is essentially because of the teachings and life of Jesus Christ in which I believe, you know, that equality and dignity was exemplified, the idea of compassion, the life of a slave being worth just as much as that of a master and so on, was exemplified in his own life in which he essentially died the death. of a rebel slave and and then that was carried on through the witness of the early church in the way it upheld the dignity of widows and orphans and women and for me this was all very countercultural in its day and age you know there's there's lots of books out there that you can read around that Tom Holland Rodney Stark and others and and for me that it's it's it was that Christian revolution that essentially we are now the inheritors of some 2,000 years later which

which essentially are the foundations for where we get things like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I don't think that document is a product of a purely enlightenment thinking or some kind of scientific analysis. I think it's very much contingent upon the Christian history of the West, basically. Even though it tries to avoid using religious language, the fact is you don't get to those conclusions, in my view, without having something like Christianity behind it. Does it have to be Christianity in particular? I mean, I can understand somebody saying that in order to have a moral, a moral worldview at all, you need some kind of God. I wouldn't say that I necessarily agree with that.

I don't know if introducing a God helps. But to say that we're talking about Christianity specifically, are you saying something like, well, because you grew up in a Judeo-Christian culture, the moral values you're using are Judeo-Christian? Or are you saying that the kind of values required to do this kind of thinking have to be Judeo-Christian? So to distinguish between those two, I think it's probably more the latter because obviously you can grow up in other types of religious cultures and you don't necessarily come out with these kinds of values. You can grow up in a largely Islamic background culture and you don't arrive at the same set of beliefs about intrinsic equality, dignity. human personhood and so on. And so there is something unique about the Christian story that has

birthed these kinds of values and beliefs in my opinion. And likewise, you know, if you go to other parts of the world where they don't have a history of Christianity, they may have societies that work that kind of are productive in various ways, but they haven't birthed what most people in the West find unique and helpful about the West, which is the kinds of values that, you know, value the intrinsic dignity of every individual. So I, I, I, do, as far as I can see, those are things that you do specifically find from societies that have a Christian heritage. Now, even to the extent that, you know, as Tom Holland said in a, in a debate I chaired between him and A.C. Grayling on this point, humanism itself, you know, secular

humanism, it only seems to have arisen, really, in predominantly Western Christian background societies. If you look at, you know, he had this interesting moment in his debate with Grayling when he pulled out a list he had prepared with him of the places where the last 50 kind of humanist conferences had taken place around the world. He said, with the exception of Mumbai in India, they were all in essentially Christian countries. And that's not a, you know, that's not just a coincidence. It's because it's those countries that produce the kinds of values that humanists cherish. So I think there is a strong argument here that it's, there is a historical fact about the way that those kinds of values develop. People want to say that some of the most important values of modern society, whether people agree with them or not, the ones that are sort of the most on the agenda, tend to be things like social justice and equality.

And there's an argument to be made that this is essentially a Christian idea because Jesus is the first person to really emphasize that everybody has moral worth and it's not dependent upon status and that there should be a sort of equal consideration of. of the oppressed, of the downtrodden, which is the central theme of social justice movements. However, the actual subject matter of social justice movements often include things like LGBT rights, often include things like the emancipation of women from gender roles or this kind of thing. And a lot of the time, religious belief,

including Christianity, is painted as the reason why the oppression existed in the first place, not as the sort of philosophical foundation for its, for its, for the removal of this, of this oppressive force. So it seems much more difficult to me to say something like, well, if I point to the Old Testament and say that where it says that if a man lies with another man, then he should be stoned and that his blood is upon him. I think that that's, you know, I think that that's, you know, I think that that's at the very best, at the very least, uncomfortable. I don't like it. Yeah. If somebody would come along to me and

say, well, you're essentially assuming a Judeo-Christian world view to make that criticism. I'd say, what are you talking about? Yeah, sure. Surely I'm completely negating that Christian value. Well, I would say that our, so modern views on LGBT, for instance, and it's worth bearing in mind that we're living in a moment in history where perspective, views and values on that have changed immeasurably, even in just the spectrum. of less than a generation, really.

So there's a sense in which it's sometimes a bit hard to calibrate, I think, what's going on and where the energy flat has come from. I would say that by and large, the engine behind it, the motivation, which at bottom is about justice, equality, fairness, that all comes for me from that Christian worldview. Now, the specifics that this has been now applied not just to the dignity of all people, but to sexual identities, to gender identities, and so on. That's, in a sense, is the outworking in our day of how people want that idea of value, equality, justice

to be enshrined. And so to that extent, it's not that I can point you to a verse in the Bible that makes the case for one specific view of why same-sex marriage should exist, or anything like that, if anything, you know, a plain reading scripture would appear to, as you say, contradict that. But I would say the impetus, the kind of the fact that people feel the sense that there should be this equality in marriage and so on, does still come from that Christian framework. And I think, again, Tom Holland has shown that quite effectively that even, as I say, things like secularism and atheism in a sense go back to a kind of a Christian foundation. It was the engine which drove that, that change. Now, of course, where a Christian today,

may feel, well, I'm not on board with same-sex marriage, or I'm not on board with everything in the LGBT kind of movement. That will be because they conceive that as much as they are, believe in the foundational aspects of what Jesus established, that actually it's being applied in ways that are actually unhelpful or unfruitful for society today, and that there are other things that outweigh some of those things, like that perhaps the family, the importance of a specific form of family structure,

and the way that that encourages and flourishes society goes against certain new forms of family structure that are being brought in. Again, for me, I think the devil is in the detail, if you'll forgive the pun, but the point is the general movement towards wanting a society which is radically egalitarian and so on, it finds it was all birthed for me in that Christian revolution. if some Christians today might say, but I'm not actually that pleased with that particular manifestation of it. So it's something like a misfiring of a general moral principle that's taken from Christianity. And it's the idea to say I care about justice and equality and equal treatment of people. But I'm not going to judge it as a misfiring necessarily, just that we do happen to live in a culture which has been shaped by Christian ideals to the extent that we can have the conversation and the debate about where those, you know, values.

should lie and how we should treat each other in ways where we give hopefully maximum freedom to people to live lives the way they want to, but in ways that don't necessarily impinge on the rights and values of other people. And so for me, I'm kind of, I, the problem comes, I think, when, you know, Christians have historically sort of just, or been seen to read commandments straight out of the Bible. There are very few things we just literally take off the page of the scripture. There are some things, you know, love your neighbor as yourself and so on, that we could do. But by and large, what we receive from scripture is a tradition and that is also transmitted to us

through a church tradition, which has developed into a whole set of moral codes and laws that we now are the benefactors of, but which I would say a broadly Christian in character, which have come from that particular kind of world view. And for me, you know, I'm happy to have the debate about what that should look like in our culture now. I'm not saying we should have a specifically Christian culture in the sense of only laws that seem to cohere with a particular view of the New Testament should be allowed. I'm just saying the fact we're having that conversation is itself another factor of the fact we have this heritage. I mean, the reason I described it as a misfiring is because it seems to me that I, I, I, I guess the objection that I was making was that how can we be thinking of modern moral values

as based in the Christian tradition if so many of the modern moral values that are being promoted seem to contradicts the Christian message? And I understood what you were saying is something like, well, the thing that's taken from the Christian tradition is the fundamental motivation, is the care for justice, is the idea that there is a moral truth that, you know, people have worth. But I can't see it described as anything other than a misfiring if that is then being applied to conclusions that seemingly contradict things that not just the Old Testament that in some places Jesus himself said, you know, if somebody has a moral campaign to bring about the right to divorce, I mean, no fault divorce was only introduced in this country, I think like a few years ago. Before that, there had to be some kind of something going wrong. you couldn't just decide to get divorced.

And so just, you know, I mean, I can't remember exactly how recently, but it might have just been like a two, three years or something. So you can imagine five, ten years ago, somebody with this moral campaign, people deserve the right to, you know. But I would say where a campaign is, you know, coming about that, more often than not the people supporting such a campaign are doing it for compassionate reasons.

They really believe this is in the best interests of the men and women and the children involved. And to that extent, Again, I would say there is, in a sense, a Christian foundation just for that sense. Now, the question should no-fault divorce be something that Christians are behind, given what the Bible says about divorce, is a kind of a different question. I think there is a case for saying that there are arguments that actually it's not good for family life and for the well-being of children in the long run to make divorce really easy to happen.

And that you could say that as a Christian. You could say that just as someone who's interested in a flourishing culture. for me it's it's a kind of yeah there's there's going to there's bound to be as culture develops and as we become increasingly secular the direction in which some of those things that christianity has instituted they're going to be taken off in directions that don't necessarily line up with and that would have to be a misfiring well yeah you can call it a misfiring you know i'm not going to press you to no no i mean i mean i'd say it's just it's just the reality of the way culture works and the way it operates and diversify's over time um it's i guess i'm

I'm saying that I don't, yeah. Well, somebody using a Christian ethos to promote a quite explicitly non-Christian message like no-fault divorce. I think that's about as clear as it gets in terms of, you know, Jesus seemingly being against something that we could talk about in the modern day. It's difficult to see what Jesus himself might have said about homosexuality or something like that. But when it comes to divorce, I think the hardest time a Christian has is, and somebody says, well, what if there's an abusive partner? What if things are really falling apart? And then it becomes a difficult conversation.

But no-fault divorce. Just somebody wanting to say, you know, I just don't fancy this anymore. Seems to be like, you know, quite explicitly anti-Christian. And so I think you have to be deeply confused, surely, to use a Christian ethos to promote a non-Christian cause. I think even with no-fault divorce, if you get into the weeds of it, I know Christians who do advocate for no-fault divorce, because they think it's actually in the best interests of some of the, it's often in the best interest of the parties. And there's a sense,

there's a Christian motivation that overrides a specific sort of Christian tradition that advocates against divorce. At a personal level, yeah, I think actually there is something to be said for the fact that Jesus, there was wisdom in Jesus and the New Testament generally in, you know, requiring a sort of commitment in marriage that tries to. is to stand the test of time. It's not that the New Testament actually forbids divorce. There are actually certain, you know, situations,

the type you've mentioned, where Paul specifically says, you know, there are occasions for divorce. But having said all that, yeah, I'd agree. There's a sense in which it can easily, as you say, be a misfiring in a sense that we develop into a culture based on Christianity, but where we come to sometimes non-Christian conclusions.

Do you know anything about, if I say the phrase, substitution hypothesis, I think is how it's been sometimes per. That's what Peter Bogosian told me, although we didn't talk about it on camera. The idea that getting rid of religion from society is either not possible in the sense that something that can be described as religious thinking will always replace it or that something like it will come up in its place. I was trying to find, I'm not sure about this, so I should check. And actually, if this isn't true, if I can't find, if I can't find it, I'll just cut this out.

But I think that Richard Dawkins tweeted at some point or that he was in an interview and he said something to the effect of being slightly pessimistic about the decline of Christianity because of the fact that maybe we hadn't thought about what's going to replace it once it disappears. For Peter Bogosian, the substitution hypothesis is the idea that once we get rid of the Christian ethos of society gets replaced by the social justice religion. and he's got a lot of problems with what that's doing to academia, for example. I wondered if you had any thoughts on that,

given that we just sort of were mentioning the idea of social justice, do you think that the popularity of this might have something to do with the fact that people are missing a unifying cause to bring them together? I think that's what they call in the industry a leading question, by the way. Very leading, because it's a central theme in the book. Essentially, I agree with Peter Bogosian on this, that in the absence of God, people don't simply stop. believing they something else takes the place of God we're we're no less religious in a sense

even if we get rid of you know formal religion um and I think yeah like like him I would say we are seeing the rise of that in certain you know progressive ideologies actually both things on the left but also even on conservative ideologies on the right kind of nationalistic type interpretations of life there's a sort of sacredness that people associate with particular gender identities or sexualities or even, you know, patriotic fervor or whatever it is. And all of these for me are quasi-religious

in nature because they and arguably even the new atheism itself developed a slightly religious tone as well once it was at its peak, you know, with sort of the high priests as it were and the sacred texts and the heretics who, you know, didn't subscribe to the materialist orthodoxy.

And I think the same is true. You probably want to respond to that, but the same is true, I think, of other things, They can all take on that quasi-religious nature where you get your heretics like J.K. Rowling, you know, is a well-known one on the issue of transgender. You get, you know, your witch hunts and everything else. Things that have, and people are so bound up with those identities. They do have a kind of sacred character for people. So there is a sort of, yeah, so I think we do get religious about something if it's not God or the Christian story.

And I think the reason, and this is maybe what Peter were talking about with the substitution hypothesis, the reason in the West we're currently in that place is because we have essentially lost the Christian story that once gave people the framework for their life. It gave an explanation of where we came from, what life is about now and what the future holds. That no longer exists for most people. But I don't think we can live without a story. We are kind of story-driven, story-making creatures, even most atheists. I think would acknowledge that. And so people are looking for stories to make sense of their life.

And so they're reaching out for these other stories. The problem, of course, is that a lot of these stories contradict each other. That's where you've got J.K. Rowling having Twitter spats with transgender activists. And because that once unifying story

that broadly most people were in agreement in the West has been replaced by a lot of competing stories about the nature of reality, such that even Richard Dawkins and Peter Bogosian and others, I think have sort of basically given up critiquing religion by and large and they're far more worried about these other stories.

Peter Begoshin is a perfect example. I give an example of him in my book. So I had him on The Unbeliefful Show years ago when he wrote that manual for creating atheists. And it was essentially his contribution to the new atheism, basically. It was sort of how to talk someone out of their religious beliefs. And quite strong terms as well. Yeah, absolutely. He more or less categorized it as a mental disorder.

Although he tells me that he wanted the book. book to be called street epistemology, and the publishers were like, no. No, it's too boring. No, it was a good title to be bad. I'm sure it shifted some copies for it. Atheist guy. Yeah, very atheist guy, very much, you know. And so I had him on the show.

He did a great debate with a Christian philosopher called Tim McGrew at the time. But then a few years later, this thing was about 2018, I got in touch with him. He was still at the time, you know, assistant professor of philosophy. for Portland State University. And I was doing an event out there looking for an atheist to be on stage with a Christian. And he very politely declined. And in so many words, said, Justin, you would hardly recognize me now. I'm really not concerned about religion.

That is not the thing I'm here for. I think there's a far more pernicious, dangerous enemy out there now that I need to turn my attention to. So I'm sorry, I won't be able to contribute. In fact, you'd be surprised that I'm more of a bedfellow with many of your Christians. friends now than against them. It's always fascinating by that. And of course, a few months later, so it emerged he, along with Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, were among these academics who had done this audacious hoax of these grievance

studies that they got in peer-reviewed journals using all the lingo of the sort of, you know, progressive ideologies and stuff. They wrote fake articles. I think one of them was a rewording of mine camp. Yeah. To be about feminism. Yeah. Or rape culture in dog walking.

Yeah. So all of this stuff, and it was all intended to be a big critique of what they perceived as a kind of politically correct sort of narrative that was infecting academia where only certain ideas were allowed to be confet. And if you had the right language and the right ideas, then more or less anything could be published. And they got some success in the project. There was some of the papers were published or approved for publishing, I think, and maybe didn't actually make it before the hoax was revealed. rumbled. And so again, whatever your thoughts are on the way they went about it, I think what they were concerned about was that this particular ideology, a kind of almost semi-religious kind of way of looking at life and that some things are unquestionable. They felt that this was a real danger to academia, to the free inquiry, academic freedom. So, and to the extent that Peter would say no to coming on your show because, you know, he's got. Because that wasn't, that he, he, more important things to worry about. He wasn't that concerned about religion. And it's worth noting, I mean, in the recent episode that I filmed with Peter, he says, we have a discussion

about God's existence. He says he thinks there's literally no evidence for God. He thinks that, like, he's very firmly still an atheist. It's not like he's sort of gone soft on his belief. No, he's not had a Damascus Road conversion. But the thing that's changed is his motivation for how much he cares about. Exactly. Believing God in wider society. Exactly. I think he just sees, I just, I think he probably has changed his view somewhat on the pernicious effects of Christianity. I think he's now probably with many other people recognizing, oh, we might have been throwing the baby out with the bathwater there. In fact, there are some things that are broadly Christian culture.

As you said, in that quote from Richard Dawkins, does enable, even if I don't subscribe to it myself. And to that extent, I think, you know, partly the surprising rebirth of belief in God is not necessarily everyone's now believing in God. It's that the conversation on God has changed quite a bit when you see people like Peter Bogosian no longer railing against belief, but sort of saying, I'll stand shoulder to shoulder with Christians who will join me in this new battle against these sort of other types of religious ideology. And whenever you see Richard Dawkins in the news these days, it's never because he said something about God. Exactly. It's because he said something about social justice.

Sam Harris as well, quite right. Sam Harris, when was the last time he wrote an article on religion? I mean, it's all about the culture wars. It's all about, you know. So it's like the whole thrust has changed. And it feels like those sort of, you know, great concerns that the new atheists had about the pernicious effects of religion. Now, they may still obviously be some aspects of that in their personal thinking. But it's not what they're talking about.

It's not what they're writing about anymore. And for me, a lot of them have actually kind of changed their whole tone of how they're talking about religion. religion anyway. They're not talking about it in those terms. And I think the conversations they're having now, those of them who are still kind of active, are much more actually open to the value of religion, you know, the kinds of things that religion does. I know Richard Dawkins has only very recently done some interviews where he's kind of said, yeah, actually, I can see the value that the Christian Christianity has. It's not all bad. Now he hasn't sort of walked back some of his previous statements, but it feels like it's not quite

the same further. I mean, he came on my show to have a really good discussion, good nature discussion with Francis Collins, a well-known Christian geneticist. And even that for me was a sign of the kind of mellowing of this whole new atheist phase, because there was a time when, you know, that would have been, well, don't make me laugh kind of thing. But it feels like in a way, as Richard Dawkins himself has been slightly stung by the council culture and everything else of that sort of quasi-religious sort of stuff going on. He's realized, oh, maybe better the devil you know, it turns out some of the Christians might be just as bad

as some of my secular peers, and maybe it's actually just human nature, and not all Christians are that bad. So I think there's been a kind of a softening that a lot of the ground has moved, and we're now in a position where it's actually enabling people to talk about God in a kind of intellectually defensible way, in those kinds of circles

that I don't think they could before. But it does seem to change the nature of the discussion in another way, which is that there seems to be this sort of solemn feeling amongst a lot of the people that you're talking about, people like Peter Bogosian, maybe even Richard Dawkins these days, certainly someone like Douglas Murray,

who don't think it's true, but maybe think that it's a worthwhile thing to keep around for various reasons or a beginning to think that actually maybe it's not such a sort of negative force in society, but it still would be untrue. And the idea of constructing this kind of thought of saying, like, yeah, but don't you recognize how useful this is for society, how it prevents against other kinds of religious thinking, seems to sort of subtly slip in this assumption that

actually, you know, it's not true. But we're all just going to pretend as though it is. We're going to treat religious belief like the gun is always loaded. You know, it's a, it's just a helpful metaphorical truth, as I think Brett Weinstein used to say. That's right. I think you were at the debate where we debated that with Alistair McGrath some years ago. And I think that's it. I think there is this growing kind of recognition that religious belief kind of has a certain value. Judeo-Christian values, you know, again, someone like Douglas Murray,

I think would absolutely be on side with saying, yeah, we are a product of that history. And he has told me explicitly that the new atheism just simply failed to account for those moral issues. instincts that we have. He said, I read, I can't remember where. It might have been, if you didn't quote him in your book, then it might have been an article recently written by Constantine Kissin, which I think you also saw, because I saw it, I saw on Twitter that you responded to him. Quite a popular article that Constantine wrote about, well, he called it the atheism delusion

in that genre of Richard Dawkins' parodies. And it might have been there that Douglas is quoted as saying something like, the new atheists, one of the things that they got wrong, was that the idea that ethics is obvious. Yes. Is obviously false. And you don't need a, you know, a PhD in philosophy to see this. You just need to travel. Yeah, exactly.

And, well, that may be quoted in Constantine's article. It's also quoted in my book because he said that in this conversation I hosted between him and NT Wright, a well-known biblical scholar. And it was just fascinating because in a way, Douglas Murray actually gave me the title for this book. I mean, not directly, but it was that conversation with him. that made me think of this, because he talked about the fact that he was and is friends with many of those architects of the new atheist movement. You know, he was going around, you know, having lunch with Christopher Hitchens on a regular basis.

It was Christopher Hitchens who kind of persuaded him out of his Christianity himself, Douglas. He was a kind of like chapel-going type of Christian, I think, up until his early 20s or something. But he became an atheist, partly on the basis of, I think, intellectual concerns with the reliability of the New Testament. But I think generally, generally he was kind of also swept along in that kind of that sort of atheism sort of that was developing around him at the time. But I think it's now on reflection. He looks back on that whole time when he was, you know, with those new atheists. He does now, I think, see that, no, I can't justify most of my beliefs on the basis of atheism. It is a kind of a Christian foundation. So he, you know, calls himself a Christian

atheist, you know, obviously very paradoxical phrase. But at the same time, I think he recognizes that none of us sort of can simply build our ethics from the ground up. There's always something behind it. And he recognizes that as his Judeo-Christian past. Now, going back to that thing about, yeah, the new atheism simply was not able to provide a grounding for those ethics. He said that. The other thing he said in this interview, which was fascinating to me, was how a number of his intellectual peers had been converting to Christianity, often to Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, drinking from the deepest wells, as he put it. They seemed to want to go back to the kind of, you know, the real bedrock,

if you like, of Christianity. And he was sort of interested and intrigued by that. And he said, you know, quoting that well-worn phrase from Matthew Arnold's poem about the melancholy long withdrawing roar of the sea of faith, well, the thing about tides is they do come back in. And he wondered whether we might be seeing among some of these stories he was seeing around him a kind of new appreciation for God for Christianity. A kind of surprising rebirth. Something like that. Yeah. So heads, I literally, you know, I quote this conversation in the introduction to the book. Yes. Because it was that that sort of inspired me to think, well, if Douglas is seeing this, I'm seeing this, I'm seeing all these other people, there's something going on in the culture. Now, and we might be literally just

at the very first moments of it. And certainly the statistics are still telling us, you know, decline, decline, decline. But I just wonder whether, you know, at a top level, things are happening, the conversation's changing. Some people seem to be converting. That's, you know, the other bit of the title you mentioned earlier was surprising. I think a lot of these conversions are quite surprising. It's, you know, wouldn't it be surprising to see Douglas Murray come to faith?

I don't think it's out and bounds at this point. Yeah, I don't think I'd be, you know, surprised. I mean, it would be like a sort of, I think some people would be surprised. Maybe people who have, you know, followed his journey closely might not be so surprised. But I look at a Tom Holland, who again is, you know, very popular, obviously, with the rest is history, best-selling popular historical author. And again, I see someone who was a perfectly happy secular person for most of his adult life until the point he really started to look into the ancient world and saw the way that Christianity had shaped all his own moral insults. And he, again, has gone on a really interesting intellectual journey, where I think he finds himself at an interesting point of kind of, do I leap into this? Because I can see the value of it. Is it really true? Is the kind of other question? I think he's actually further along that journey than Douglas Murray. I'm not saying Douglas Murray will get there necessarily, but it's a kind of, it's just interesting to see some of these people. And I would say Holland, I use a number of other examples of people who have definitively kind of crossed the line. It's just interesting that in what they should be prime examples of secular people who have kind of got past the God thing, but they're not.

They seem to be turning around and suddenly taking it quite seriously. What would it take for Douglas to actually go from just it's metaphorically helpful, you know, culturally good for us to, I really believe Jesus Christ is the son of God? I don't know. Maybe a sort of modicum of good evidence in favour of that proposition would be a good start. maybe, but I would say, as you know, I think there is quite a modicum of good evidence and that if I've encouraged Douglas to take the time to look, to kind of get past the sort of I think early 20th century people he was reading on the Bible and read some modern scholarship and he might just find that there's a different story to be told now about the reliability

of scripture and who Jesus is. Now that doesn't seal the deal because ultimately I don't believe becoming a Christian is just about getting enough intellectual evidence. But that can often be a good part of the journey, kind of it can open the door to then that Kirkagardian leap of faith that is always part of the Christian life. And for me, I see more and more people doing that. There's a kind of, the door's been opened. God is back on the table. And it's not just in the cultural, historical stuff. It's, I think, going back to the science, I think there's all kinds a ways in which we're seeing people opening up to the idea of some kind of force behind the universe because of scientific consciousness and materialism in the mind again i see a swing back

not to a kind of full-blooded Christianity but i see the rise of alternatives to hard determinism and materialism like panpsychism and others suddenly being taken very seriously and it's like i'm not saying that's you know equals everyone's going to become a christian but it feels like the pendulum is swinging towards something like supernatural or at least non-material conclusions. It seems quite optimistic to phrase it in terms of, you know, someone like Douglas Murray or Tom Holland's journey towards coming to believe that God actually exists. I totally understand the change in the conversation about the utility of religion and its importance and perhaps it's indispensability, if that's a word.

But I mean, I look at what I think is potentially the most obvious example of someone who seems to sort of struggle with this paradox of thinking that, well, there's something to all this God stuff, but there's also something deeply wrong with the way that people talk about it is Jordan Peterson. And to me, he strikes me as somebody who exemplifies the fact that, yes, what you're saying is true, that religious belief is beginning to be taken very seriously. he's one of the most listened to thinkers in the world, and he's always talking about religion and God, isn't he? Yeah. The bloody Bible. But famously, when pressed about his beliefs in God, does he think that Jesus, Throach and the dead, you know, he just can't answer.

And, you know, I don't doubt the sincerity of his inability to meaningfully answer that question without misleading people into what he actually thinks. You know, I can understand why he sees it's so complex. complicated. But this, I think, is more like the situation we're in. I don't think it's like we're going to get a Jordan Peterson suddenly saying, I accept Christ as my Lord and Savior. I don't think we're going to get a Douglas Murray saying, yeah, sure, God exists. I think we're just going to get people saying, I don't know about all this, but the new atheism thing has got it wrong. No, I think you're going to get a lot of people somewhere in the fuzzy middle. I think, I mean, it's interesting, Jordan Peterson, you know, he talks a lot about God as though God exists. But as you say, when you get under brass tax, like, So do you believe there is a literal supernatural mind governing the universe? You know, he'll kind of often go off on a Jungian direction, you know. So I'm not here to judge exactly where he lands in the end.

I mean, what's interesting is, especially after he had his sort of his health problems and was coming out of that, he's obviously good pals with Jonathan Pejo, who's an Eastern Orthodox Christian and they do a lot of stuff together. And I remember in one of the early interviews he had with him after his, his time, his illness, he got very emotional, specifically about the person of Jesus Christ, and said words to the effect that Jesus Christ seems to be the perfect meeting point between the kind of the metaphorical world that he's so invested in, the psychological world, the meaning world, and the real world of atoms and electrons and hard facts, if you like, and that somehow Jesus

brought this together in a way that no other individual has which I just find fascinating because in that sense if that is the direction that Peterson is going it very much mirrors like a C.S. Lewis type journey

where Lewis had a very similar kind of meeting of minds when he'd kind of been persuaded intellectually that there is in a deism in a god behind the universe essentially on the back of the moral argument but he was still convinced that Christianity was

just another dying and rising God kind of myth and which he knew very well as a you know he knew the myths very well as a sort of scholar of the ancient world but it was this famous walk he had with jr tulkin on the around the grounds of mordling college oxford where Tolkien helped him to see that could it be that there is a true myth that jesus is the one time that that that myth got instantiated in reality and from which all those other myths essentially are our mirrors, our duplicates, our kind of echoes, if you like. And for him, for Lewis, that was a turning point where he was able to, as he says, bring together the two halves of his mind, the meaning, imagination part that just fired him and his kind of rationalist sort of side. And he

said he was always miserable because he felt like those two could never connect. But in Jesus, suddenly they did. The myth becomes fact. Yeah, myth becomes fact, exactly. And, and And so I just wonder if that's the kind of journey we're seeing with some of those characters. I'm not saying they're going to become evangelical Christians. Wouldn't that be something? But then you do find, like, again, one person I tell the story I've interviewed him a couple of times is Paul Kingsnorth. Now, he was never a sort of hard-boiled materialist. I think he had a kind of teenage atheist phase, but celebrated author, writer.

But again, has an extraordinary account of his conversion as a thing. thinking intelligent 21st century person to full-blooded orthodox Christianity. It does happen. Surprising things do happen. He said he was the most surprised person of all that it happened to him. But I think, well, it's interesting when that's happening. Yeah. It reminds me of one of the things I think I got wrong. I made a video about Jordan Peterson trying to, well, in the title, deconstruct his religious views, but more sort of offer, I guess, an interpretation of them. And my conclusion was that he's an atheist. One of the things that thinking about it, I think I might have gotten wrong, is that at one point he describes God as the ultimate fictional character.

And I didn't want to be too crass, because it's easy to say, ah, see, he says God is fictional, therefore he's an atheist. That's not quite the argument I was making, but I did interpret this, I did take this as part of the case. And I realize afterwards, and maybe due to some of the things that people were saying in response, that he might have meant some of the something a bit more like this, this C.S. Lewis experience, that Jesus is the ultimate fictional character, not in the sense that he is one of them in the best version, but that anytime you have a fictional character, what they're doing is approximating something like this, this ultimate myth, because this is the fundamental foundational one. And so if that's more what Peterson

meant by that, and I think it's plausible that it was, then, you know, I would, I would be more inclined to not agree because I'm not sure that the Christian myth is the foundational myth but I'd be more open to the idea that he's not in fact an atheist. I still think there's a compelling case to make that that's true but you've got to you know it doesn't do well to tell people what they believe yeah but I think with someone like Peterson actually somebody tweeted my video at him and he retweeted it and said something like um you know something about telling telling me what I believe or I'm going to tell you are next you're going to tell me what I think about this.

And I remember thinking, I can understand why it seems that way. So I don't want to be like, you're an atheist in the sense of telling you what you believe, but rather if you've got somebody who's quite mystifying and people struggle to understand it, it's useful to offer an interpretation in the way that he might offer an interpretation of Nietzsche or Dostoevsky or someone. That's what I was trying to do with Peterson. I think in a sense, what Peterson has helpfully made clear is that we're often a mystery to ourselves at some level, that we can't, you know, I can see.

say i believe in god um but that alone it doesn't necessarily mean much and his his whole thing is don't tell me you believe in god show me that you believe in god um it's and for him it's like when i asked him that very question you know when i had him on my show he said what do you mean by god the classic answer obviously i said well what you have said is you live your life as though God exists. And he said, yes, I do. I live my life as though God exists. And he said, words again, to the effect, I think that's ultimately the best we can do. Because our inner beliefs, what we really believe is hidden almost to ourselves, actually. But it's the way we act that really tells you what you believe. And I think there's a certain truth to that. I think that in that sense,

Jordan Peterson issues the the title atheist because it doesn't fit how he conceives of himself even if it doesn't even if you could technically say he's an atheist if you drill down into kind of or do you specifically intellectually assent to these five things I think that's perfectly legitimate

perhaps a walk around Mordland College with the right person might help him to and there's a kind of a there's a surrendering label on, I think, with help people. With faith, there is always a surrender element to it. And it's about, I mean, I hate to say this as an apologist as my background, but there is a kind of, there's some point at which you have to lay down the intellectual questions and sort of surrender to something that transcends that. There's a sound bite. Justin Briley says one must lay down

the intellect in order to believe in God. That's not quite right I said. But the point is, there's always a point at which you run into a kind of you could constantly be trying to get to the next intellectual question or whatever. There's a point at which you just have to say, I've got enough here and I'm going to trust it and I'm not

going to sort of second guess it at every single moment. Now is Jordan Peterson there? I don't know. It appears that his wife and his daughter Michaela have got to that place. They've been quite open about the fact that they describe themselves as Christians now. They don't have all the answers to everything, but there's just something about

this story that makes sense of reality for them and I think that's the way most Christians it works there's a small subset of Christians who constantly question every thought and doctrine and whatever and that's just the way some people are wired but I think for most Christians you get to a kind of settled

conviction and then you just live your life as though it's true. You don't constantly ask well but is it really true we kind of had an entire conversation about this with Lucas from deflate in an episode of unbelief Lucas Ruger and we talked about this, this question of like, well, what if you just act as though it's true?

And my position was that, of course, acting like something's true is going to make it feel more true to you. There's a whole conversation to be had around that. But I think it's definitely true that we shouldn't expect Christianity in particular, I think, to be at the end of some long intellectual, analytical inquiry. Because if you read the Bible, it doesn't have syllogism. in it. It's narrative. It's poetry. It's biography. It's, it's, you know, epistles. And so I think the way you say, well, at some point you've got to stop asking the next question, the next question and digging down and sort of surrender to it. I don't think that that's, people would be able to make a criticism out of that. But I think that that's basically what you would expect to be the

case of Christianity were true, because that's what you find in scripture. And most famous conversions that you can name, perhaps with the exception of Anthony Flew, are not really at the end of an intellectual inquiry per se, but rather some kind of emotional or, you know, I think it's always a combination, you know. So I would say absolutely, Lewis was in a sense the archetypal intellectual convert to Christianity. But it was also, it was the, it was the imagination. It was the way that it brought that sense of meaning and purpose and, you know, everything else, suddenly kind of it made a holistic sense of it that absolutely was part of it. So, yeah, I mean, there's an old adage that you don't argue anyone into the kingdom of God.

I think that's true. I think it's, there's always a journey of the head for many people where you have to remove some roadblocks, like problem of suffering, can I trust the Bible? Those might be things that kind of have to at some level be resolved. But people have to want to walk down that road and want what's on offer. There's a personal, experiential, emotional element to it. There's always going to be. And the actual moment of C.S. Lewis's conversion is described in terms of it just sort of hitting him.

Yeah. And it doesn't seem to be an argument that he sort of finally, you know, finished the sum on the blackboard and goes, ah, there's God. It sort of, it was a moment of realization that he writes about in the end of his biography. I remember the, I think one of the first times I was walking around the same place where C.S. Lewis and Tolkien used to walk and talk about Christianity a good a good friend of mine was giving me a tour

and he's a bit of a C.S. Lewis fanatic and I remember quite a few of those. Yeah, especially in Mordling College, Oxford. And we got to the we got to the like basically this place where C.S. Lewis had converted and he quotes from memory. Wow. The end of surprised by joy. You must picture me

alone in my room at Mordland blah blah blah blah. Tells the story of the The most reluctant convert in all of England. The most reluctant convert in all of England. And then he pointed at me and went, yet. I love it. But I think he, like perhaps you, Justin, are a little bit too optimistic on that front about these people converting Christians. Sometimes about Christians and about God, Alex.

It gives us hope, you know. I'm just flursing with God. It's the best job I can do as an interview. It's funny, you know, like I interview Bart Ehrman and I talk about Jesus maybe not claiming to be God. on Twitter it caused a storm and there's like so many Christians on Twitter just just really coming at me with all kinds of things yeah yeah and then they thought you were nearly converted and then you seem to stumble at the last post I have a conversation with you I have a conversation with William Lane Craig and and people say that I'm about to become a Christian

and I kind of take it as a compliment that depending on the kind of conversation I'm having I'm I'm able to play the right role but I'm afraid to say that's happen on record that for the record I am still an atheist indeed. So I understood. And I saw as well, you've recently posted a kind of short summary of your reasons for being an atheist on Twitter and elsewhere. And I think what I love about you, Alex, you know, make you embarrassed here, is that you are so genuinely open to being proved wrong that you genuinely want to know if your current position is right or wrong. But I think sometimes people misinterpret that openness to, I'm seriously considering, you know, crossing the line. Yeah.

But I mean, in a way that I am, and thank you for saying, but in a way, I am always seriously considering it. I remember answering a question in a Q&A once where somebody said, have you ever considered converting into Christianity? And I said, well, that's kind of my job. And if I wasn't seriously considering it, then what am I doing here? What's the point in having a debate or a conversation with a Christian that I'm going to sort of put out to the world and say, look at this interaction where we're all trying to get to the truth. If I don't genuinely go into a debate or a conversation thinking, it's plausible that I could change my mind.

Maybe not on the spot, but off the back of the conversation. Then what am I doing, you know? Well, all I'm saying is, I have to have that. Second edition of the book will feature, if it happens, the surprising rebirth of belief in God in Alex O'Connor. Gosh, well, we'll see. That would be a best seller. We'll maybe do it.

If you could bring Dawkins over as well, that would also be. Yeah, you know, you know, they talk about, like, yeah, it's one thing, you know, being someone who talks about atheism all the time, it's one thing for me to show up to the pearly gates and have gotten it wrong, and say, oh, you know, my bad. It's another thing to show up with all of the people that I've, you know, made into atheists with my atheist content stood behind me, like, okay, I can, I can explain. It would be, it would be quite something to have the opposite image of showing up with, you know, all the new atheists and being like, hey, we brought them to Christ.

Well, so here's the thing, I mean, wouldn't we love it if you became a Christian, Alex? It would be fantastic. But at the same time, even as an atheist, and I would apply the same logic to Richard Orkins and the new atheism in a funny way, I think just getting people thinking about it is a massive service for Christianity. I'm so glad that your channel exists. I'm so glad that we got to know each other after you responded to a video on fine tuning that I did. And we've all grown, you know, in various ways. in the years, you know, as we go back and forth on these. But I actually think part of the surprising rebirth of belief in God is the fact that we're having intelligent, thoughtful, open-ended conversations on these things. And it feels like we're doing better than we were about 15 years ago when new atheism was kind of in the ascendancy. So I feel like that's progress. I'm not saying that everyone's going to become a Christian.

But I feel like we are seeing some surprising things happen. There's some surprising conversions. I would wager in the next three to four to five years, we're going to see some more unexpected people coming out and saying, you know what, either I'm not an atheist anymore or saying I've become a Christian. I mean, maybe we should put some money down on the table, but some of these names. But I just feel like we're just starting to see something interesting happening in the culture.

And I'm just wondering whether that sea of faith could, be coming back in again or be about to come back in that tide um the quote with which you you open the book i think um interesting the thing about tides is that they is that they come back in well justin bryly uh i'm glad to know you too and thank you so much for coming back on the podcast it's been an absolute delight