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THREE Arguments that are Moving the Needle on Faith in 2025 || SLP575 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_08: Hello, and thank you so much for downloading this episode of the Speak Life Podcast.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_08: My name is Thomas Thurrogood, Media Producer at Speak Life, and today we are talking about three arguments that are moving the needle on faith in 2025.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_08: This episode will be presented by Glenn Scrivener, as usual, and he examines how things have changed in the realm of Christian atheist debates.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_08: Looking back at some of the big debates from the time of the new atheists when they were in their ascendancy, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and the sort of tone of those debates, and contrasting that to what we're seeing now in Christian atheist debates.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_08: So I hope you enjoy this episode and find it interesting.
• 0:52
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• 0:58
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• 1:03
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• 1:11
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• 1:17
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• 1:19
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• 1:20
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• 1:23
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• 1:32
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• 1:33
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• 1:34
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• 1:39
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• 1:46
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• 1:53
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• 1:55
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• 2:00
  SPEAKER_08: That's all from me.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_08: I will hand over to Glenn.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Do we need a Christian revival?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Heck yes!
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_11: Christian versus atheist debates have changed.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_11: Do you remember when Richard Dawkins said this?
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_10: Religion makes specific claims about the universe which need to be substantiated and need to be challenged and, if necessary, need to be ridiculed with contempt.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_11: That was the tone and tenor of the new atheists as they engaged with faith, and in particular with Christianity.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_11: And of all the new atheists, it was Christopher Hitchens who had the greatest rhetorical flair.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: Some people I know who are atheists will say they wish they could believe it.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Some people I know who are former believers say they wish they could have their old faith back.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: They miss it.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't understand this at all.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: It is the wish to be a slave.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: It is the desire that there be an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thought crime while you are asleep.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: A celestial North Korea.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Who wants this to be true?
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_11: This was when the new atheists were in the ascendant, which is not to say that Christians didn't land some of their own punches, like this from John Lennox.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_10: We only need to use the word faith when there isn't any evidence.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_10: No, not at all.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_10: I presume you've got faith in your wife.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_10: Is there any evidence for that?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_10: On which you base it?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_10: Yes.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_10: Plenty of evidence.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_11: Or William Lane Craig versus Peter Atkins.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_05: Do you deny that science cannot account for everything?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, I do deny that science.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_05: So what can't it account for?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_06: Let me list five.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_06: Logical and mathematical truths cannot be proven by science.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_06: Science presupposes logic and math, so that to try to prove them by science would be arguing in a circle.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_06: Metaphysical truths, like there are other minds other than my own, or that the external world is real, or that the past was not created five minutes ago with an appearance of age, are rational beliefs that cannot be scientifically proven.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_06: Ethical beliefs about statements of value are not accessible by the scientific method.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_06: You can't show by science whether the Nazi scientists in the camps did anything evil as opposed to the scientists in Western democracies.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_06: Aesthetic judgments, number four, cannot be accessed by the scientific method because the beautiful, like the good, cannot be scientifically proven.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_06: And finally, most remarkably, would be science itself.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_06: Science cannot be justified by the scientific method.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_06: Science is permeated with unprovable assumptions.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_11: Occasionally, Christians put in some very strong performances and atheists were made to look foolish.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_11: But overall, the tone was of affable Christians who are not seen to be doing quite as well as their pugilistic atheist counterparts.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_11: I had an experience of this in 2019.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_11: I took on the anti-theist Matt Dillahunty, and when that came out over five years ago, it was generally considered that Matt Dillahunty destroyed Glenn Scrivener.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_11: I talk about it here in my conversation with Roslan.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_11: We got into the debate and I thought I did okay.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_11: I thought I did quite well.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_11: Um but then the debate came out and all his audience sort of came into the comment section.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_09: Well, because at the time he was pretty high profile.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_09: He was higher profile than you were.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_09: And so yeah, you're you're gonna get just that that you know cage stage atheist that's just mad at Christianity flooding the comments.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_11: So it's very very interesting.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_11: And and so you read the comments, and you know, uh you know, Glenn Scrivener was destroyed and all that kind of thing.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_11: Last year I was in Australia giving a series of talks, and uh on the first night, this guy came, he said he was new to faith, and he said, I almost didn't come when I heard that it was you speaking, because I I heard the debate, you know, back in the day when it came out, and I wondered, Am I gonna waste an evening on the guy that Matt Dillahunty destroyed?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_11: And so I and he said I came and I really enjoyed you know what you what you said.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_11: I just wanted to encourage you that you've come a long way in the last four years.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_11: And so I like I just let that oh so tell me some more about your story.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_11: And and he, you know, it was it was a wonderful story about how in the last 12 months he's come to Christ.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_11: And and then just towards the end of the conversation, I just said, um, maybe have a look at the debate again and see what you think.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_11: Yeah and then later in later in the week, he came back to me.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_11: He said, I don't know what I saw, I don't know what I was watching in 2020, but you totally destroyed Matt Delahunty.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_11: And so the s the same person watching the same debate.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_11: I I guess he's not the same person, right?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_11: In one big sense.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_11: Yeah.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_11: Before COVID, when that debate first came out, uh, a lot of the online chat was about uh how well Matt Dillahunty did.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_11: What's fascinating to me is that in the last six months, YouTuber after YouTuber after YouTuber is surfacing that debate again and talking about how Glenn Scrivener did so well and Glenn destroyed Matt rather than Matt destroyed Glenn.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_11: Now, I don't want to get into uh the ins and outs of that particular debate, but I think there is a shift in the cultural moment.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_11: I think there is a shift in the atmosphere such that the very same debate is being seen in different ways, and part of that is a personal issue.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_11: Individuals are looking at the debate in different lights because they have changed, but I think also the culture has changed.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_11: Much more recently, I think Christian versus atheist debates have seen a bit of a vibe shift of their own, in which the Christians are a lot more ruthless and pugilistic.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_11: For instance, at the end of last year, Phil Halper and Alex O'Connor were the atheists versus the Christians, Stuart Connectly and his father Cliff Connectly, and it was the Connectleys that were very much uh the more ruthless, take no prisoner pugilists in that debate.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_11: And I don't think it went well for the Connectleys.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_11: Uh, here's some of how it went down.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_13: Which does the biblical god exist?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_13: I don't even know what biblical god we're talking about.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_13: Which one?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_14: Bro, are you kidding me?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_14: You keep misquoting me like throughout this debate.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_14: I did not give that in my opening.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_14: That was a response.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_13: How lucky Cliff and Stuart must feel to reside in a stronghold of the one true religion, given just how much variance there is out in the world.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, you have your hair on your face manicred very nicely.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: That is so dishonest it's scary.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: And you guys, if you're gonna be honest, you know you have no solution other than to despair.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_11: But modern day debates also hosted some in-person debates earlier this year, and again, the Christians were a lot more pugilistic than the atheists in these debates.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_11: And so you had Michael Jones saying this to Lawrence Krauss.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_04: I gave clear scientific studies.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_04: You said that you think they're debunked.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_04: I'd really love to see your research on that.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_04: I'm talking anyway.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_04: Uh you'll have your time later.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, you said that Christianity claims sex is bad.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_04: Uh if you read the Song of Solomon, Sir, I think you should read that.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_04: Um, might learn something there.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_04: Have you read Nathan Johnstone?
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_04: He's an atheist.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_04: I don't need to read people.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_04: I know I know you don't do a lot of reading.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_11: Oh, you had Andrew Wilson saying things like this.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_12: I need you to use the actual manifesto itself to tell me how it conflicts with that prescription.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_12: What you're doing is you're saying, I don't like that prescription because that's great.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_12: Nobody gives a sht what you like.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_12: Show me in the humanist manifesto where it is that it actually debunks this prescription or says this prescription's wrong, or says this prescription isn't humanist.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_12: What I'm claiming is that that is humanism.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_12: Okay.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_12: That is a humanist doctrine.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_12: You need to show me within the humanist manifesto how it's not.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_11: And this seems to me to be a little bit of a shift in which Christians are taking the ascendancy and at times not behaving very well because of it.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_11: I don't lump everybody into the same category there of those who you've just seen, but I do notice a vibe of Christians being a lot more plucky, let's say, um, and sometimes going too far with that.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_11: On the other hand, uh, the free press put on a debate a couple of weeks ago called Does the West Need a Religious Revival?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_11: On the Christian side of things was the incredibly softly spoken Ayan Hersey Ali, uh, Ross Douthitz, the columnist at the New York Times.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_11: And then opposite them, the atheists were Michael Schirmer, who's an incredibly affable atheist.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_11: I debated him uh last year, and you can see on our channel uh that debate and some of my reflections on it, and Adam Carroller.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_11: And uh he's a comedian.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_11: And he begins his five minutes like this.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_07: All right, so uh I'm an atheist, so that means I didn't really prepare.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_07: We don't think a whole lot about the future.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_07: We're in the here and the now, am I right, brother?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_11: See what I mean?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_11: Very, very different.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_11: And instead of the Christians being the like me, like me kind of people on one side saying, Oh, I'm not sure I've got much of an argument here, um, it's the atheist coming with the gags and uh and joking about not really having prepared.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_11: He prepared very well and gave uh an excellent speech there.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_11: But just in the vibe of how the Christians and the atheists are facing off against each other, I think there has been a shift.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_11: What do you think?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_11: Um also in the topics of what is debated.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_11: I think in the heyday of the new atheism, when the debates happened, Christians tended to camp out on arguments to do with fine-tuning and the design of the universe, arguments about the information in the genetic codes, and if there's information then there must be an intelligent source, those sorts of arguments.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_11: Also arguments around morality and trying to ground objective morality, those tended to be the mainstays of Christian arguments.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_11: Whereas in this debate held in 2025, the arguments that the theists give, the Christians give in this debate, uh are around uh mystical experiences.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_11: There are such things as religious experiences, um, the historical impact of Christianity on the West, um, and also some arguments that uh Ross Dauphit gives in the QA time, which I think are fascinating.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_11: And I didn't hear a lot of those three kinds of arguments back in the heyday of the new atheism.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_11: So, first of all, let's hear Ross Dauphit in his opening five minutes.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_11: Um, as he comes to the end of his opening five minutes, he actually opens the door to mystical experiences, experiences of the divine, miracles.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_11: These are the kinds of arguments that are being made in 2025.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_03: And finally, atheism, in its most confident form, especially, predicted the disappearance of all religious and mystical experiences, but in fact, those experiences have continued, increased, falling even on non-believers like my colleague here, the intrepid Michael Schirmer, who to his great credit has written eloquently about his own peculiar experience with a voice from beyond, which, of course, he would never attribute to God himself.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_03: The timer's going off, but I will go this far with him and say that none of the facts I've cited prove the particular truth of any single religious doctrine, but I think they suffice to indicate quite strongly that a renewal of the religious perspective on the world is not just useful, not just sociologically necessary.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_03: We should also welcome a religious revival because any society deserves to live in truth.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_03: And a religious perspective is just more likely than the alternatives to be true.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_11: Okay, I just found it very interesting that Ross Dappert would finish with uh there are such things as mystical experiences, and Michael Schirmer, you have experienced something like that, you've tried to explain it away.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_11: But if you are to be an intrepid seeker after truth, wouldn't you rather have a metaphysical worldview that allows for the truth of your experience rather than something that constantly has to exclude your genuine experience of the world?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_11: Um, miracles are more and more being cited as reasons to believe in ways that uh didn't really happen during the new atheism.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_11: But let me pass on to the second uh argument that is much more prominent now than it ever has been.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_11: And Ion Hersey Ali is kind of the poster girl for this uh argument, and the argument is that Christianity has built the West.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_11: There is uh an extraordinary fruit to Christianization, and perhaps if we have tasted some of the fruits, we can trace the origins back to the roots of uh Christian faith properly.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_11: And this is the journey that she's been on personally, and it's a journey that she wants many others to join her on.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_11: So here is Ayan's speech.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you everyone.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, do we need a religious revival?
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: We live in an age of moral confusion, and we're going through a period of identity crisis.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's therefore very important to be clear to end the confusion.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: What we need in America is a revival of Christianity because it's the foundational creed of our country.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_11: Notice the topic was do we need a religious revival?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_11: She's like, No, we need a Christian revival.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_11: She wants to be very particular, and she wants to be very particular because she grew up within a religion that she has now rejected, and she does not want a revival of the sort of Islam that she had to escape.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_11: She has come to see the particular worth and value and lordship of Jesus Christ.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_11: And I really appreciate that about Ayan, because that confusion really haunted the new atheism.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_11: I mean, coming out of a response to 9-11 in which Islamic terrorists flew planes into buildings, therefore all religion is wrong, therefore the Methodist minister must come down and the Amish are terrible.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_11: And like, really?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_11: Are we really gonna lump all religion into the same bucket, Ayan Hersia Lee, through her personal experience?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_11: And then as she draws attention to world history, she's like, no, one of these religions is not like the other ones, and its name is Christianity, and let's focus in on Christ.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: America's operating system is Christianity, and when we reject it, we run into trouble.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Ross made the point that we have run the experiment of playing clever with this system.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Still, a lot of people are confused about the place of Christianity in America and in American history.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: I suspect that is why tonight's motion is more general than specific, and perhaps why it carries a question mark.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: We need a Christian revival and a renewal because we've forgotten just how fundamental Christianity is to America's well-being.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_11: I think this is very true, but I think you can take this argument in different directions.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_11: If you want to make an argument for the Christianization of the West, you might do so in order to bolster a notion that West is best, okay?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_11: And Christianity is made to serve Western cultural civilizational advance.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_11: Um if that's what Ion Hersei Ali is doing, then I'm out, right?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_11: Um it's not that Christianity needs the West, and it's not that West is best, but if what she's saying is the West needs Christianity, then that is uh absolutely true and something that is so necessary to preach today.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_11: It's not that Christianity needs the West, it is that the West needs Christianity.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_11: And one of the reasons it needs Christianity is that Christianity built the West, and if you take the operating system out from under the West, what are you left with?
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_11: So here she's going to talk about the Christianization of, in particular, America.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville observed about America that religion should be considered as the first of their political institutions, for it does not give them the taste for freedom.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: It singularly facilitates their use of it.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: Americans so completely confuse Christianity and freedom in their minds that it's almost impossible to have them conceive of the one without the other.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: They establish missionary churches on the frontiers so that the next generation may be as free as the one from which it has issued.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: End quote.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_11: Freedom in a modern post-Enlightenment American sense?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_11: Or is it Christianity that delivers a peculiar form of freedom?
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_11: The kind of freedom that is not just free from governmental constraints, but that is actually free from the principalities and powers, that is actually free from temptation, that is actually free from the powers of the flesh.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_11: Does Christianity serve a modern political conception of freedom, or does Christianity create a completely spiritual conception of freedom that has political ramifications?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_11: I think Ayan is saying the latter, but it's worth pointing out the danger of the former.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: The Tocqueville was right.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_11: And the people who want to diminish that truth are doing so for ideological reasons.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_11: Like to point out a couple of deists here and there in among the American founders, um, is not really to take away from Ayan's point here.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Even though it is true that Thomas Jefferson is generally remembered as a deist, the creator he was referring to in the Declaration of Independence when he wrote, All men are created equal, is not Greek or Roman, nor the God of the Quran or the gods of South and East Asia.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_11: Right.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: While taking issue with certain passages of the New Testament, Jefferson regarded the teachings of Jesus as having, quote, the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, the creator in the Declaration of Independence is the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_11: I mean, the least Christian founder of the American Republic was probably Thomas Paine, who was not a signatory of the Declaration of Independence, but he wrote The Age of Reason, and he was even less Christian, as it were, than Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_11: But still, when he was asked, you know, what is the meaning of life in the Age of Reason, he said it was to walk justly, to love mercy, and to endeavor to make our fellow creatures happy.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: It is that same creator that Abraham Lincoln invoked to end slavery, the same creator that the suffragettes raised to make their case, as did Martin Luther King in his quest to end racial segregation.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_11: So that is the sweep she's talking about from Jefferson through to MLK.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_11: There has been this Christian drumbeat.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_11: And very often the influence of Christianity has been kind of anonymized and secularized, and Jefferson will talk about creator rather than Jehovah, right?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_11: But it's been an incredibly Christian history.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_11: So does the West need a religious revival?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_11: It needs a Christian revival.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_11: It's if it's to get back to what it is that actually inspired the West in the first place.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_11: One of the issues with the Ion Herssielli argument is it might be heard as Christianity needs the West rather than the West needs Christianity.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_11: Another issue might be it's a little bit backward looking.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_11: Um hasn't the Christian revolution actually worked?
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_11: Because it has inspired the Martin Luther King Jr.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_11: of the world to say that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice and to be forward-looking in their vision of things.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_11: And so I think we do need to be careful about constantly harking back to former times.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_11: We just need to get back to former times.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_11: Well, if you want to get back, let's get back to 33 AD.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_11: Let's sit at the foot of the cross and understand who this Christ is, who has birthed this revolution into the world.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_11: But with him and in him, now can we look forward to what's the the next Quarter of the 21st century will look like with Jesus as Lord.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_11: It would be nice if we can develop the argument in more forward-looking ways rather than be backward looking the whole time.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_11: But to make this argument, you do need to look back and you do need to say the West has needed Christianity thus far.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_11: It would be foolish to jettison it in the future.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: In short, Christianity is our way of life.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's in our DNA.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: When we reject our faith wholesale, we turn on each other, we stagnate, and we decline, we become weak.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: We get so confused, we can't tell the difference between good and evil, between men and women.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Masculinity becomes at best ambiguous and at worst dysphoric.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: We get high as a kite.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: We odee, we serve harm, and we die in droves.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: In America, when we stay true to our foundational creed, we are unstoppable.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: We innovate and build, we emancipate and reach for the moon and beyond.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: We win wars and achieve peace.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: We trust each other and we flourish.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Do we need a religious revival?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: If by that we mean do we need a Christian revival?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Heck yes!
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_11: Another tap of the podium as she leaves, the tap of the pulpit, really.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_11: It was a the finale to her great sermon, as she looks to the future with Christianity.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_11: And what's fascinating to me is that Richard Dawkins could have said 95% of those words in Ayan Hersey Ali's finale.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_11: But instead of we need Christianity so that we can reach the moon, Richard Dawkins would say, We need to leave behind Christianity so that we we can reach the moon.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_11: And you know, circa 2006, Richard Dawkins saying, Let's just get rid of Christianity so that we can colonize Mars, I think he would have got exactly that same sort of rousing round of applause from everybody in 2006.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_11: Now, in 2025, Ion Hersey Ali says, We can move forwards if only we will go with Christianity.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_11: Isn't that different?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_11: That is so different.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_11: We live in very different times.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_11: And of course, Ion Hersey Ali used to be on Richard's side, and now she's on the Christian side.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_11: So there's the second argument that you did not hear back in the day.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_11: Back in the day, we did not hear the sort of things that Ross Dowfit brought in terms of there are miracles, there are mystical experiences, let's bring them to the fore.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_11: And those were more apologized for when the new atheism was riding high.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_11: Secondly, we didn't hear so much of the Ion Hersey Ali argument, which is kind of the historian Tom Holland argument that there's this Christianization of the West and we're not gonna be able to move forwards without it.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_11: But then thirdly, you can just close your eyes and through the process of thinking about the nature of reality, thinking about the very definition of God, you can come to some kind of conception of God.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_11: And what Ross does uh very succinctly and very eloquently is talk to the whole experience of consciousness as an experience that is not at all expected on atheism, but that is completely expected on Christian theism.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_11: Uh let's hear Ross talk about it.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: I think you you you can see the conflict between atheism and theism as fundamentally a conflict about what is the primary fact in the universe, mind or matter?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_03: Does mind come first or does matter come first?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: If mind comes first, you don't have to be a Christian, but you do have to be some sort of theist or at the very least, some kind of pantheist.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_03: If you say matter comes first, then you're gonna have a very hard time explaining why minds are actually meaningful agents in the world with the kind of rights and dignity and capacities that are ascribed to them by our debating partners.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_03: The points I made very briefly in my opening remarks were to suggest I think we have a lot of data from science, philosophy, and human experience, especially over the last 200 years, under conditions of increasing secularism, to make the case that mind has a primary role in the universe.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_03: This helps explain why the universe at this, the highest level, seems designed with human beings in mind.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_03: It explains why we coming up from below in our consciousness are capable of doing the things that Adam was talking about.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_03: How do you build the iPhone?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_03: How do you go to Mars or the Moon if you don't have confidence that the universe is regular and consistent and mathematically beautiful and made for us to discover?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_03: These two things connect and they also help explain the resilience and persistence of religious experience, which I, as a weirdo supernaturalist, think is an underrated argument for the truths of religion.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: So where does that get you?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_03: Again, it doesn't get you to dogmatic truths of any particular faith, but it gets you to the point where Ayan comes in and says, okay, if there probably is a God, then it's reasonable to look around the world.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there's a bunch of big religious traditions.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_03: It's entirely reasonable to say, okay, out of that range of religious traditions, I will throw in my lot with the one that seems to have played a nurturing role in the civilization that I love and that I value and cherish.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: That's not a mistake that somehow contradicts the deeper claims of religion.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's a rational response to a reality that should impel all of us towards some kind of religious belief.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I will just say again, I think the perspectives of our debating partners, the admirable moralism that they display, itself depends not per se on any specific religious teaching, but on a broader perspective on what human beings are, that only makes sense if you assert that mind is primary.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_03: Consciousness is actually the primary thing in the universe, and actually everyone in this room knows it because that is your immediate experience right now.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_03: Every single person in this room listening to me talk is having a supernatural experience, whether you realize it or not.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_14: Explain, uh, explain that.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_14: Because some of us, you've just you have not mentioned the word God in that entire beautiful soliloquy.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_03: Because God is the appropriate name to give to the primary No, not to that experience, no, to the primary form of mind and consciousness that we should reasonably hold responsible for our entire existence and for our personal existences.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: This is what what does being made in the image of God mean?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_03: It means, fundamentally, that your consciousness, in a more limited way, participates in the same rational and creative power that set the whole universe in motion.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_03: What do I mean by supernatural?
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_03: The claim that you exist and that you, as a self-identifying conscious agent, have power to make your hands move, to make decisions in the world is already a supernatural claim, which is why when you push down through atheism, through materialism, you get to like Robert Sapolski and people denying that free will even exists, right?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_03: But we know free will exists.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_03: We do.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_03: You have no choice.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_11: And there's Michael Schirmer making a joke as an affable atheist.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_11: And uh yeah, how how the sides have have switched around.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_11: Um it's uh it's the Christians who are much more forthright.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_11: It's Michael Shermer who makes the the joke about uh choice.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_11: Uh we have no choice but to believe in free will.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_11: But what Ross Doutit is doing is pointing to the things you already know.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_11: You already know that you are a person and that you have agency in the world, and that you have some measure of freedom in the choices that you make.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_11: You already know that you are knowing.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_11: You already know that you have a mind and consciousness and an experience of the world that is more real to you, more intimate to you, more close to you than this table is.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_11: I might I might say that this table is just matter, and what really matters in the world is matter.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_11: Um and yet, no, it's actually my experience of this table that is closer to me than the table is.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_11: Okay?
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_11: My consciousness comes first.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_11: Mind comes first.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_11: It's mind over matter.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_11: And Ross Daltet is just saying, guys, can we just wake up to what is most intimately true for you in every experience of this world?
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_11: And every experience of this world is not actually molecules in motion.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_11: Every experience of this world is thrumming with the supernatural, because it is not natural.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_11: It is mind and not matter.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_11: And in the new atheist heyday, these arguments sort of got poo-pooed or shot down or sidelined or considered incredible in ways that nowadays I think people are far more open to just being told, you know what?
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_11: Of course mind is over matter.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_11: Of course you know you're free, of course there's such a thing as as morality, of course these things exist that are not natural and that are supernatural.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_11: And I think just being able to say what has always been the same thing to say, suddenly the same thing is being seen as the same thing, and tends to have a lot more plausibility to it.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_11: So those are the three arguments that I want to point to from this debate that I think weren't being made as much in former times during the heyday of the new atheism, but are being made much more now.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_11: Talking about miracles, the historical impact of Christianity, and consciousness in this less philosophical but more practical, pragmatic account of how you and I live day to day.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_11: I think it's much easier nowadays to simply say to people, you are having supernatural experiences all the time.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_11: Whether you've had the Michael Shermer voice from beyond experience, or even just in your conscious experience of the world, or your experience of freely choosing things, or the morals that you take for granted, you are taking for granted supernatural things in all these circumstances, and I think people are waking up to that truth.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_11: That that's always been the case.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_11: But during the new atheism, I think I think well that was the blip.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_11: And we might be returning to a little bit of sanity, and uh I I think that would be for the good.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_11: So things for Christians to learn, well well, there are three areas to press into as you're conversing with your friends.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_11: But at the same time, let's watch the tone, right?
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_11: When the new atheists were in the ascendancy, there was a harshness at times that was not particularly fitting.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_11: Um I think there's a danger for Christians of uh bringing to debates a kind of a harshness that's that's not always fitting.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_11: We need to watch ourselves on that.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_11: Um my goal in debates is less to win, more to witness and never forget that the Greek word for witness is martyr, okay?
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_11: Um to go with only the truth and to lay that bare and lay yourself bare a little bit.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_11: And uh you might have the experience that I had of uh back in 2020 when the debate came out with Matt Dillahunty, um people thinking, oh, I was destroyed.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_11: And then at least one person turned around and five years later said, Oh, I'm not sure I was seeing things quite correctly back then.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_11: Uh I think the posture needs to remain the same.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_11: Let's not go in with swagger, let's go in less to win and more to witness.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_11: And I think we'll still see these arguments uh having a great effect on people and turning them to Christ.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_11: Well, that'll do for me.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_11: I I wonder if you've seen any of the same things that I've seen in terms of the changing nature of debates.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_11: Let me know down in the comments.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_11: And if you haven't done 321, why don't you go and do 321 right now?
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_11: It's our free evangelistic course.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_11: It takes you through the basics of Christianity that are rich basics.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_11: The threeness of God, the two-ness of the world, the oneness of you.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_11: What do the numbers mean?
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_11: You need to go to 321cour.com and find out.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_11: Start an account, it's entirely free.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_11: We won't spam you, but get into it and uh use it as something that you can share with other people if they want to know about the faith too.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_11: That'll do us for now.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_11: Please do give the video a like and a share and a subscribe, and we'll see you on the next one.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_11: Bye bye.