Richard Dawkins Admits THIS about Christianity? | Pastor Reacts

In Africa, especially, maybe Christianity is a better alternative, and it may be that it's no good trying to preach atheism in Africa. And Christianity might be a better alternative to that. G .K. Chesterton, who was a very religious man, said when people stop believing in God, they believe in anything.

As Christians, we knew this, and the patterns are only predictable if you're a Christian.

But they literally believe men can get pregnant.

Welcome back to another video here at Wise Disciple. My name is Nate, and I'm so glad that you're watching. As a former pastor and debate teacher, I react to cultural issues from a Christian perspective.

And, man, woke ideology is a humongous hot-button cultural issue right now. So what does it have to do with Richard Dawkins? Well, Peter Boghossian, who is an atheist professor, he sat with Dawkins, and they talked about the role that new atheism had to play in ushering in wokeism.

Let's take a look together, and then stick with me to the end of the video, because I'm going to tell you what I think is the cause of not only wokeism, but also conspiracy theories and just bad critical thinking in our society right now.

The substitution hypothesis.

Yes.

So do you think, and I honestly do not know the answer to this question, do you think that as one religion fades, like default is the belief state for humans, they just have to believe something. And as one, as the old religion fades, a new one has to come in?

Yeah. Gullibility expands to fill the vacuum.

Exactly.

Yeah. Precisely.

I suppose that's right. I hadn't really thought of it before, but it sounds plausible to me. I think G .K. Chesterton, who was a very religious man, said when people stop believing in God, they believe in anything.

Yeah.

And he was a very witty, clever man, although he was a devout Roman Catholic.

What's fascinating to me is that these atheists can recognize and identify that human beings are wired, as they call it, to be believers. As Christians, we knew this. 2 ,000 years ago, we knew this. It's funny, I typically say every now and then that social scientists have finally been catching up to what the Bible has been saying about people all along.

Romans 1 tracks this phenomenon. Claiming to be wise. Right here. They became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator.

Folks know that there is a God. Why? Because his power, his nature has been clearly perceived. This is up here, verse 20, his invisible attributes, his power and his nature has been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made.

But notice, they don't stop honoring God and then just become atheists. They just replace worship of God with worship of other things. In Isaiah 43, verse 21, it says that God has a chosen people that he has made and formed for himself that they might declare his praise.

This takes us right back to the original design in the Garden of Eden. We were created to be worshippers. And if we're not going to worship God, we're going to worship something. We're going to worship ourselves, we're going to worship celebrities, ideologies, you name it.

So good on Dawkins and Boghossian for seeing this. The question is, will they fully understand what they just said?

And the analogy goes pretty deep. I think John McWhirter pointed out that there's a strong relationship between original sin in the Christian religion.

Oh, that was me pointing that out. You pointed that out.

2014, yeah. Okay.

That was my article with James Lindsay. Privilege is the original sin, but yeah, go ahead.

So original sin being we're all born in sin. We all inherit the sin of Adam. We white people inherit the sin of slavery and colonialism. And because we're white, we have to feel guilty for what our, not necessarily our ancestors, but people of the same color as us in past centuries did.

So that's one analogy.

Interesting connection. Let's take a look at that for a split second. For many contemporary left situated activists, privilege occupies the same role in a religion of contemporary identity politics. There is no greater sin than having been born an able-bodied straight white male who identifies as a man, but isn't deeply sorry for this utterly unintentional state of affairs.

Everybody is a sinner. Everybody is privileged. And both are the fall of man. Both of a stain upon everyone who by virtue of existing fall short of moral perfection. Both are a kind of disease that threatens society.

Neither can be escaped. Both must be abhorred and demand redemption from the guilty. You know, this reminds me of something Votie Bauckham said in Fault Lines. Fault Lines is Bauckham's book on critical theory and the Christian response.

Actually, check this out. The anti-racist movement has many of the hallmarks of a cult, including staying close enough to the Bible to avoid immediate detection, and hiding the fact that it has a new theology and a new glossary of terms that diverge ever so slightly from Christian orthodoxy.

At least at first. In classic cult fashion, they borrow from the familiar and accepted, then infuse it with new meaning. In the same manner, this new body of divinity comes complete with its own cosmology, right?

CRT. Original sin, right? Racism. Law. Anti-racism. Gospel. Racial reconciliation. Martyrs. Priests. Means of atonement. New birth. Liturgy. Canon. Theologians. And catechism. In case you're wondering about its soteriology, there isn't one.

Anti-racism offers no salvation, only perpetual penance in an effort to battle an incurable disease. Exactly. Woke ideology, believe it or not, tracks along predictable patterns of human behavior. And the patterns are only predictable if you're a Christian.

Why? Well, because we understand the plight of the human condition. It's actually one of the fundamental components of the gospel message.

The transubstantiation, which in the Catholic religion, you know, the wine literally turns to blood, where literally doesn't quite mean literally, it means what Aristotle called the accidentals stay wine, but the true substance of the wine becomes blood.

So when somebody stands up and says, I am a woman, although they've got a male body, that's transubstantiation. In the accidentals, they still have a penis and they still have Y chromosome. But in the true substance, they have become female.

So that's where the word transubstantiation comes from, the transubstance. And there's a very strong analogy to transubstantiation in transsexualism.

Tell me more. How so?

Well, the wine becomes blood and when the priest simply declares that it is, and a male person becomes female when he declares himself to be female. And in the Aristotelian terms, the substance has changed.

The substance of wine has changed to blood. The substance of maleness has changed to femaleness. But the accidentals, the incidentals, are regarded by Catholics as trivial and by trans people as trivial.

So they really believe that they have become the other sex.

Yeah. So two things here. One, I think Dawkins is pressing this religious illustration way too far. I think the starting points from somebody who is trans, which is much more relativistic and postmodern in nature, is completely different from the starting point of the Christian who is commanded by Christ to participate in the Eucharist.

And then, of course, Catholics have their view of transubstantiation. I'm not a Catholic. So having said that, as far as I know, these are just different things. As a matter of fact, again, not Catholic, so my Catholic audience can help me here.

Catholics are not taking the bread and wine and surgically altering them to physically resemble Jesus, right? Not sure about that, though. I'm kidding. Sorry. That's the first thing. Number two, notice, Boghossian asked Dawkins about the substitution hypothesis.

This was the beginning of the conversation. Substitution hypothesis is simply it just refers to people who leave organized religion and jump into other belief systems. When one religion fades, another one rises up to take its place.

But wait a second. Didn't Dawkins have a hand in that? Didn't the Four Horsemen of the New Atheism bring some of that on? Shouldn't Dawkins acknowledge his role in this? He's not saying anything right now to indicate his culpability, but will he at some point?

Let's find out.

Remarkable how obvious it is that those are delusions. I mean, it's crystal clear to anybody not caught in the orbit of the ideology that that is a delusion.

Yes. They get around it by this word gender, which is separate from sex. And there are some who I think even think their sex has changed.

Correct.

And others who think that they admit that their sex hasn't changed, but their gender has.

So, I guess I have two questions. One is, it seems to me that there are degrees of delusion that one can have. So, if we accept that, like there are certain things that are like if I told you everybody, you know, those books are really aliens from another planet and they've come down.

Okay, that's another level of delusion. And so, I often think this is the thing that's been causing me to think about this. I'm utterly incredulous at the sheer madness that people believe now. In a way that I was not incredulous, you know, in 2010 or 2001.

So, let's take a look at somebody walked on water. This guy named Jesus, he walked on water. You know, this is an intervention in the space-time continuum by a supernatural being and it caused this individual to walk on water.

Okay, that's clearly a delusion. If somebody believes in it, if someone accepts that as true.

And then you have

How is that clearly a delusion? Because this phenomenon has it's just something that you don't see every day. So, therefore, because I don't see this phenomenon, because I've never seen this phenomenon, therefore, it can never have happened in history?

Not even one time? I've spoken about this in previous videos, but, you know, the so-called laws of physics are not violated by miracles. That's not my understanding of miracles. That's not how a lot of Christians understand miracles.

If we understand miracles to be a disruption of the regular process of physical laws, and this disruption is by an agent, then that disruption, what we would call a miracle, is not a violation of physical laws themselves.

In other words, if I I've used this illustration before if my iPhone begins to fall to the ground, and I decide at the very last second to catch it before it hits the ground, I've not somehow violated the physics of gravity.

I've simply disrupted the ultimate outcome of the effects of gravity on my iPhone with my own actions as a free agent. If God exists, and He is Spirit, as the Bible teaches, then His decision to engage with the physical world is not a violation of the laws of physics.

In other words, the universe is not a closed system. That's just an assumption that materialists have right at the outset. I don't know Boghossian very well. He has not articulated his view on that or why he objects to that.

It just seems like this is the starting point for a lot of folks, right? Dawkins, certainly. Boghossian, who knows? But it seems like the starting point is, well, number one, the universe is a closed system, and number two, you know, God does not exist, and so then therefore all these statements about the impossibility of miracles happens.

The belief that men can get pregnant. That, to me, seems like a significantly more profound delusion.

Yes.

Or am I wrong?

I think it doesn't it come from the postmodern belief that feelings are more important than facts?

Yeah, standpoint epistemology. And it comes I guess they could just say that it's the redefinition of the word, but they actually believe they literally believe men can get pregnant. And the thing that I've been thinking about is

Kind of goes back to Plato.

That's absolutely correct, by the way. Woke ideology is predicated on a relativistic framework, which is very postmodern in flavor. I mean, critical theory, right? And postmodernism are philosophical bedbuddies.

In other words, in order to say that language, for example, is power, which we hear very often in woke critical theory conversations, stuff like that, to say that is to stand on top of some assumptions.

One of them is the notion that reality is socially and linguistically constructed. That's why defining the word gender in a unique way is so important to the movement. And language is the tool for this kind of construction.

So that sounds like Derrida, that sounds like Foucault, that's Lyotard, that's Baudrillard. Baudrillard is the philosopher that The Matrix was based on. It was based on his ideas. I did a couple of videos on that.

You can check it out. You should check it out. I actually enjoyed The Matrix. But wait a sec. How does relativism and postmodernism play into the substitution hypothesis? I thought that the suggestion was that woke ideologues somehow rose up out of the ashes of religion, more specifically Christianity, right?

Well, Christianity has never been friendly to postmodernism. As a matter of fact, postmodern Christianity, if you try to squash these two categories together, leads to all these TikTok theologians that we've been reacting to lately.

Did you see that last video I did? I mean, yikes. I'm actually curious to see the actual connections there when it comes to substitution hypothesis. Is there data that shows woke ideologues were actually ex-Christians or something?

Or is the connection much more loose? If you believe in what God is doing here at this channel, I want you to join me. Wise Disciple is now live on Patreon accepting membership. So go ahead and go over to Patreon and look up Wise Disciple here.

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Is it better to let people believe benign delusions? I mean, in an ideal world, people would proportion their confidence in a belief to the evidence they have for the belief. But humanity is sloppy and messy.

And the thing that I've been thinking about recently is, if it's true that there are degrees of delusion, and if it's true, and I don't know if it's true, that there's a substitution hypothesis, then should rational people step out of the way or not encourage people to believe things that are false?

Because I would never do that. And I think that's grossly unethical. But there are certain delusions that are better for people to believe in mass than others.

Yeah.

So if you've got to believe in a delusion, if there's some law that says there's a certain quotient of deludedness that everybody's got to have, and some are more harmless than others.

Correct.

I mean, I sort of feel this a little bit about Islam and Christianity, that Islam is such an evil at the moment, or Islamism is such an evil at the moment, that in Africa especially, maybe Christianity is a better alternative.

Right.

It may be that it's no good trying to preach atheism in Africa.

Right.

And Christianity might be a better alternative. I think Ayaan Hirsi Ali has suggested something similar to that.

Let's just let that sit for a moment. This is probably the closest to a compliment that Dawkins will ever give Christianity, that we're ever going to see in our lifetime. He just said, Christianity is a better alternative to atheism in certain parts of the world.

Good night, everybody. I think I just want to end the video right here. I'm just joking. So I actually have a theory as to what has caused this phenomena that Boghossian is talking about, where so many people are caught up in, not just in LGBT ideologies, but critical theory, even conspiracy theory type stuff.

You know, we never landed on the moon. The earth is flat. 9 -11 was an inside job. Stuff like that. Have you noticed the proliferation of these kinds of beliefs? It's not a coincidence that this has exploded.

At least, that's how it seems to me, right? Right now, in this time right now, where the internet is available more easily than it's ever been, and when this one feature of society has been almost thoroughly destroyed.

So I'm going to talk about this more in a moment. I just want to see if they bring it up.

I think one of the last times I saw you, I did a talk in Kamloops, Canada.

Yes.

And it was about deprogramming jihadis.

Yes.

And one of the things that they do when they deprogram jihadis is they don't use atheism or Christianity. They use more benign interpretations of the Quran. And so I've just been wondering, in terms of the...

So I no longer think it's true. I used to think it's true. If people just stopped believing this silliness, all of a sudden we'd have a flourishing of rational human beings that engaged each other and proportioned their beliefs to the evidence.

But the last decade has shown that that's monstrously false. In fact, the last decade has shown that we now have wide-scale institutional capture of our institutions, particularly our academic institutions.

I'm specifically referring to the United States, but I'm also referring to here. We went to Goldsmiths and did some videos the other day and places where the ideology has seeped in. And I've been thinking about, like, how do you create a prophylactic to prevent an institution from succumbing to what's morally fashionable?

You know, to succumbing to the new religion. So you're on the board of the University of Austin. I'm a founding faculty at the University of Austin. Today, the issues are free speech and open inquiry, which are under attack.

But maybe tomorrow it's something that we can't even think about, right?

Maybe we... I mean, who knows what it's going to be?

So is there a way that you can, you know, subspecie eternitatis? Or is there a way that you can... I don't know what it would be like.

Write something into the mission statement?

Or what can you do to prevent an ideology from having a domino effect and just taking over whole scale institutions?

Well, if you're right about the substitution hypothesis, that's a very pessimistic conclusion.

I don't know that I am.

No, my whole life has been devoted to the idea that you simply argue in favor of evidence-based beliefs. And I suppose I'd take a rather sort of take it or leave it attitude. I mean, this is what the evidence shows.

Yeah.

Why don't you believe it? But if you're right about the substitution hypothesis, then I'm rather inclined to give up. I mean, I don't know how to cope with that. I used to think that the one thing that would make me want to die would be if I found myself in a world where I was surrounded by people who no longer believed in evidence and believed in something else other than...

Evidence is defined by who, though? Dawkins and, you know, empiricists? Or evidence more traditionally defined? What are we talking about here?

...somehow felt contempt for evidence. And I hope we're not approaching that now. I don't, I mean, none of my friends are like that.

Yeah, I was thinking about that, like, talking about death. But I wouldn't want someone to be kind to me on my deathbed because they thought that if they weren't kind to me, they were going to go to hell.

I would want someone to be kind to me because they wanted to be kind to me.

Yes.

Right?

Yes.

And so even this idea that there's this place where people burn or something, like, I want people to be motivated not by something external to themselves, like a reward for being nice.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah.

So...

What a horrifically reductionistic and incomplete view of the Judeo-Christian ethic. I mean, I suppose this is a critique that is not waged merely at Christians, but also the Jews, you know? The bottom line is, God teaches us to be a certain kind of person.

And it's not a nice person. It's a loving person. Jesus was asked, what is the greatest commandment? And he said, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

As a matter of fact, take a look at this. So, love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Verse 40, on these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

Okay? The law and the prophets is shorthand for the whole collection of the Old Testament teachings.

Alright?

And, in other words, the whole Old Testament really testifies to loving God and loving people. This is not an actor pretending to love because they're afraid they're going to burn. That's not love. It's genuine love by a transformed heart, and the transformation comes out of abiding in Christ.

So that, when someone is on their deathbed, which, look, I've stood next to the dying in hospitals as a pastor. I've stood there and prayed with their loved ones. I've prayed with them. We can do that.

We can love genuinely. That's what's really going on with the Christian. It's not act like you're a kind person or burn. That's not what we're doing.

So, I don't know. I mean, so this is what, okay, so this is one of the things that I've learned from thinking about this stuff for, I don't know, over a quarter century.

By the way, I'm waiting for the answer to the question. Like I said, I have a theory, and I'm going to give it to you in just a moment, so stick with me. I'm just waiting to see if they're going to say what I'm going to say.

To hear what you think about it. I think, so we go around the country.

We go around the world.

We now go around the world, and we set these lines up. They're lines of tape on sidewalks. I don't know if you've seen me do this or not. And strongly disagree, disagree, slightly disagree, neutral.

It's like this tablecloth here.

Slightly agree, agree, strongly agree. And then we'll ask people a question. Like, should there be, trans women should be in women's sports. Or whatever, whatever it is. And one of the things that I've learned.

And then we say, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go. And they walk to a line. And then I do street epistemology on them. I ask them why they believe it. What it would take them to change their mind. Sometimes people change, sometimes people don't.

But here's what I've learned about this. And here's what I've learned. A key lesson in my intellectual life. From the New Atheist Movement. And from speaking to literally tens of thousands of people. Prisons, everything.

Is that people will go to a line. Not based upon the evidence they have for the line. But they'll go to the line. Because they think that's the line that they should be standing on. That makes them a good person.

Yes.

And it may be the line that is compatible with their political tribe. Or religious tribe.

Right.

I think Steven Pinker in his latest book. Has evidence that when we make our political judgment. We, I mean humanity.

Yeah.

It tends to be not based on evidence. But tends to be based upon tribal loyalty. And that's a very depressing conclusion. And by the way.

Well, okay. Yeah. But wait. If earlier everyone acknowledged. That people are wired to be religious.

Right.

The way that I said it was. We're all created to be worshippers. Then what Pinker pointed out. Cannot come as a shock though.

Right.

I mean. Maybe it's depressing. But this can't be a surprise. To Dawkins.

Right.

It's been depressing me about my. My being sort of anti-woke. Yeah. Anti the militant trans lobby. Is that people think I must be right wing. And I'm never. I've never been right wing. I voted left all my life.

Yeah.

And I mean I detest Donald Trump. For example. But there are people out there on Twitter. Especially. Because I detest Donald Trump.

Therefore.

I must be an apologist for. Trans wokeism. Or vice versa.

Yeah.

So let's talk about that.

I think.

I think that that is. An intentional tactic. Of people. I think that that is what woke people.

Use.

People who are. Have fallen.

To the.

Have had their.

Cognitions hijacked to this ideology. And I think. It's very easy to write you off entirely. If they say.

Oh.

Richard Dawkins. He's just a right wing extremist. But you know.

Pinker.

He's a right wing extremist.

Although he's.

The second largest.

Donor.

To the Democrats.

And Hillary Clinton. And Harvard.

Or whoever it is. I've never voted for a Republican candidate.

My whole life. I'm constantly getting that I'm on the right.

But I think it's a tactic. Both because they don't have to do the intellectual work. To rebut the arguments. So they can just a priori. Say that's not true. And it's a tactic. Because the left wing media.

Won't have me on. For example. So the left wing media.

Won't.

It has a kind of allergy. To any self-criticism. So then I'll go on the. On the right. Right. Right wing media.

And.

The people on the left will say.

Well look.

Boghossian's a right winger.

Well no.

I'm.

I'm.

Only going on the right.

Because.

I'm more than happy. Rachel Maddow.

Has.

Nobody's ever invited me. I've actually invited myself. And they won't have me. So I think it's a kind of strategy. To not do the intellectual work. To rebut the position. Because it's hard. It's hard to rebut the position.

So you know. We've been talking about the. The trans thing. And the main. Problem. Well.

Yeah.

I think it is the main problem I have. Is I don't. Think. Children under 18. Can consent.

To.

You know. Luprin. Or surgery. Or it would. Abigail Schreier calls. Irreversible damage. And I just spoke to Helen Joyce. About this. There's an open antagonism. To reason and evidence.

And.

To borrow a Turner phrase. Their cognitions. Have been colonized.

Right.

They've been colonized. By.

By.

An exogenous.

Ideology.

And.

And this is.

I think a difference. Between.

Faith.

And.

The new religion.

So with. With.

One of the old religions. Ultimately. When you start asking people questions. And you've done this.

More than anybody.

You start asking people questions. About why they believe. Once you've cleared. Through all the nonsense. They're going to say faith.

That's just. Yeah. Once.

All.

Historical stuff.

Falls.

And the testimony.

Falls.

And the.

Whatever it is.

Falls. They're going to say faith. The problem is that. Anybody who is. A little knowledgeable.

About.

Wokeism. Or whatever term.

We want to use. They will do. One of.

A few things.

They'll refer to.

A.

A best-selling author.

Um.

Ta-Nehisi Coates. Ibram.

X.

Kendi. Robin DiAngelo.

Uh.

Uh.

Et cetera.

So they'll. They'll refer to that.

Or.

They'll.

If they're knowledgeable. And they're an academic. They'll talk about.

Literature.

The peer-reviewed literature. And that. Peer-reviewed literature. Has been. When I've written about before. It's been. Ideal laundered. So you get a bunch of people. Who are ideologues together.

Uh.

Who already. They start with their conclusion first. And they work. Backward from the conclusion. The exact opposite of science. So they start with their conclusion first. Trans women or women. For example.

Or whatever the conclusion is. They get together with other people who have the similar beliefs, they make a journal, it goes in

This is gold. I hope you're leaning in and paying close attention and taking notes.

There's a moral impulse, it gets idea laundered, and it comes out as a fact. So those people, they don't nobody who buys into the ideology will ever use the word faith. Because they have authors and they have kind of high priests of the ideology who have either written books about this, so they'll reference a book.

But the books themselves, they're predicated on nothing. They're just they're completely made up. The whole thing is made up. And so they don't need faith for that.

So I love this characterization. I think this is 100 spot on, and I didn't interrupt it because I want us all to really hear it and wrestle with it. This is how the game is played on the academic level when it comes to woke ideology.

I hope you all heard that. So good for Boghossian. The question that I have for both of these gentlemen is, how do you know that you're immune from this human predilection towards faith, right? From this human predilection towards worship.

How do you know that rational epistemology is not the god that you have faith in? If the attitude is, oh, you know, look at all these other superstitious-type people that are prone to this sort of thing, then please explain how you're the exception to the rule.

And if the answer is because science, okay, great, but science is not big enough to account for the belief system that materialists have. Materialism is a philosophical position, it is not a scientific one.

And so I'm curious, if we're all bemoaning the fact that people are prone to faith and belief, and, you know, substitution hypothesis is a real thing, how are Dawkins and Boghossian immune from this? I'm just curious.