Is atheism dead? An interview with Eric Metaxas. - GotQuestions.org Podcast Episode 43

I got questions podcast on today's episode. I have with me, Eric Metaxas. He's the author of four New York times bestsellers. He also hosts the Eric Metaxas show and nationally syndicated radio show airing in 120 cities and Socrates in the cities, um, conversations on the exam and life.

And along with his colleague, John stone street, Metaxas is the voice of breakpoint, a radio commentary that is broadcast on 1400 radio outlets, but the audience of 8 million. So Eric, welcome to the show.

Well, it's a privilege to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Why Eric Metaxas Wrote *Is Atheism Dead?*

So you recently published a book. That is the question. And since we are administered to answer the questions, I really wanted to do this interview with you. So let's just lead off with the title of your book.

So Eric is atheism dead.

Well, the reason I titled the book is atheism. Dead is very simple. Uh, in 1966, some people will remember that, uh, you know, even if you weren't alive at the time, there was an iconic, uh, now I would say infamous time magazine cover story with the question, the simple question is God dead.

And it was really provocative at the time. And it suggested what I think many people believe then and have come to believe that science has pushed God out of the equation that we are now, you know, as human beings coming into our, the adulthood of our race and we are leaving behind the childish things of faith.

And that was kind of a high watermark in 1966 of this idea that, you know, all the intellectuals have figured it out. Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, we're alone in a world without God. And I think a lot of people, including, you know, mainline Protestants and stuff, they've kind of taken this in as though, you know, that's the reality.

And maybe I go to church, but it's about ethics or something like that. And the thesis of my book is atheism dead is that roughly since 1966, the evidence has been shifting and pointing to God more and more and more dramatically.

But because the reigning culture, the secular culture accepted that idea generally, they batted away or ignored a lot of the evidence that points to God. And since I became a believer, uh, I, I have been reading lots of books on faith and science and biblical archeology and, and over the years, it's become really clear to me that the contrary is true.

If anything, it is atheism that is laughable. Uh, you can say you're an atheist, but I can't take it seriously based on what I know from science, not from my own faith, but it got really dramatic for me because I met two people in the last few years, uh, who have two gigantic pieces of the puzzle in terms of evidence.

One of them is a guy named James Tour, who, uh, he's probably the leading nanoscientist on planet earth. Uh, an organic chemist of the, of the top, top level and a born again believer who says there is zero question, uh, about the idea that we in science pretend that we know how life came into being 4 billion years ago on planet earth, this random sloshing of the primordial soup produced cells, produced life.

Every scientist agrees. Yes, that's what happened 4 billion years ago. But then if you ask them how they don't have an idea, they have no clue and they have much less of a clue today than they did 70 years ago when they kind of came up with this thesis and he calls them out on it.

And he says, listen, I know nanoscience. I know the chemistry at this level, what it takes to create molecules or this or that there is zero chance, zero chance based on the scientific evidence that life emerged randomly 4 billion years ago.

And he goes into chapter and verse. And when I heard his story, I said, this is the kind of blockbuster information from a top, top scientist that should be in the headlines. And most believers don't even know who he is or anything.

I said, I've got to write about this. But then I met another guy named Dr. Stephen Collins. He's in Albuquerque. Uh, he's an archeologist. He discovered biblical Sodom. And I thought, I've never heard of that.

That sounds like one of those apocryphal stories. Like they discovered Noah's Ark or they discovered this, they discovered that I looked into it and I thought there is no question. I mean, there is no question.

If you look into the details that this man using Genesis as his guide figured out exactly where Sodom would be found a tell a mound that was a city upon a city, upon a city, upon a city excavated. And when you hear the details, which I won't go into now, but they're obviously in my book, there's just no question.

It is an astounding, maybe the most extraordinary discovery of biblical archeology. And it's from the very first pages of Genesis. You know, we're not talking about discovering, you know, something from the new Testament or something from the fifth century BC.

We're talking about something from 1700 BC. So those two things are so overwhelming. And I talked to a lot of believers and they didn't know that none of them had heard of this. And I thought, I need to write about these two things.

And then I thought to myself, you know what? There's all this other scientific evidence about fine-tuned universe and the big bang that keeps growing. There's all this evidence from biblical archeology.

That's tons of information that a lot of people aren't familiar with. I said, I need to put all this stuff in a book. And now the question is not, is God dead? The question is, is atheism dead? And at the end of the book, I talk about atheism.

I talk about the, the myth of atheism, the myth, the founding myth of atheism that, you know, Galileo was against the church and science and faith are at odds. And I get into that stuff and I get into the new atheists.

And so the question is atheism dead? It has two answers. Are atheists still promoting atheism? Yes. So in that sense, it's not dead. But realistically, based on what we know today, if we're intellectually honest, yes, atheism is dead.

If you want to say you're an agnostic, I can respect you and we can have a conversation. But if you say you're an atheist, I feel you are not up on the latest information, particularly with regard to the fine-tuned universe.

And it's time that we believers said, look, the evidence has shifted so dramatically until you're familiar with it. You're clinging to something. You're like a Japanese soldier in a cave on an Island in 1958, who still thinks the war is going.

Somebody needs to tap you on the shoulder and say, Hey, hey, it's been over. It's decided you need to get with the program. We are no longer living back then. There's a, there's a new set of information.

So that's kind of, uh, that's the long answer. So I can give you the short answer if you have less time.

The Fine-Tuned Universe as Evidence for God

So to our listeners, um, I've read many of Eric's books over the years, seen them in different interviews and he's an excellent author. So I highly recommend his atheism dead. It discusses some topics that have been covered in other books, but some others that just open interesting avenues just for whether you're having a discussion with an atheist or whether you yourself are wondering how reliable is the evidence for God, et cetera, et cetera.

Does this point to God? Does that point to God? Um, Eric, you mentioned it briefly. Um, so I just wanted to ask you, so how does the fine tuning of the universe, um, argue for the existence of God? And obviously you're gonna have to give the condensed version of the answer because we could do entire episodes just on that topic.

But for you, um, what aspect of the fine tuning of the universe most argues for the existence?

Well, this is what's so bizarre. You know, again, you have to say we're living in, in an insane world that isn't facing these facts. I mean, it's kind of like if nobody believed in atomic structure and you and I knew that atoms are real and molecules are real, but we had to go along with people that just don't even want to hear about it.

We're kind of in that place with God. We live in a world that pretends to be secular, that pretends that you can have no God, but evidence from everywhere points to God. And in the last 50 years, the most dramatic evidence, Christopher Hitchens admitted it is the fine tuned universe.

You don't even know where to start because the more you start noticing this and the more you start examining it, the more you realize everything is fine tuned. It's not just, Oh, there's like nine parameters.

Wow. How incredible it just goes on and on and on. I mean the most simple one that most of us would never think of. We grew up in the Star Trek generation. We think like there's life everywhere on planets that are a million times bigger than earth and, and the size of a rock.

Well, according to recent science, any planet, any different size than earth cannot support life. If our earth were the tiniest bit smaller, like Mars, let's say, not even Mars, but let's just say like Mars, right?

The magnetosphere. Most people don't know what that is. I just learned what it is. But science now says that without the right power in a magnetosphere, you cannot retain an atmosphere. So if our earth just happened to be a little bit smaller, forget it.

There is no atmosphere. So you think, well, how convenient our earth is. Just the right size. Well, what if the earth were a little bit bigger? Science now tells us that also makes life impossible because if we're a little bit bigger, it has a little bit more mass.

It has more gravity and it pulls down, uh, ammonia or whatever it is, things that would make it impossible for us to breathe. Now, if anybody says, well, we could have evolved to breathe ammonia. I mean, that's sloppy.

No, that's not true. So the size of the earth, not too big, not too small. The size of the moon, the existence of the moon, who among us thinks that if the moon were not exactly the size that it is exactly the distance that it is doing exactly what it's doing, it stabilizes the wobble of the earth.

It contributed enough mass to the earth when it collided with the proto earth, which they call Thea to make us just the right size, uh, to blast off the thick atmosphere that was here and to make it, uh, exactly the atmosphere that we have.

I mean, the levels of complexity are just absolutely breathtaking. Um, one of the things that I love to talk about is the fact that the planet, Jupiter, whoever would think, if you look up in the night sky and you can identify Jupiter, it's this tiny pinprick a zillion miles away.

It's 400 million miles away. Science now tells us that if it were not there with its tremendous mass, we would not have life on earth. And you think that's crazy. Science tells us that it's mass pulls the gravity pulls away asteroids and comets and things that would hit earth.

And that if it weren't there, so many asteroids and comets and things would have hit earth. There's no chance life could exist on earth. I mean, those are a couple of simple things, but it goes on and on.

Anybody who reads the chapters on water and sunlight, it takes your breath away. I mean, it just is. But, but, but the, the interesting thing for me is that it goes on and on and on. The more we look with science, the more science we know, the less possible it is to even conceive that this all just happened.

And we need to know that science, that's not our Christian point of view. That's what science says.

The Origin of Life and the Case Against Abiogenesis

Another interesting thing that you brought up that I really enjoyed and learned a lot in your book was the existence of life, the existence of life itself, whether it's abiogenesis or whatever. So how unlikely is it that life itself could exist were it not for a creator God?

Yeah. I mean, that's kind of the point. It, the science is not like, you know, I say it's pointing in this direction. That's putting it way too mildly. It's like saying one plus what we, we believe one plus one equals two.

We're pretty sure. The evidence is so overwhelming at this point that it's why I would go to the level of saying atheism has to be counted out. If you want to say I'm an agnostic, there are a lot of things about the Bible that bother me that I think are ridiculous.

That's great. We can have a conversation, but based on the science to say that there is no God, there is no God that created life. Uh, the conditions for life in the universe on this planet, it becomes silly.

You're simply looking away from the evidence. It's like in my book, I write about Galileo trying to prove to people, you know, that the, the earth is not the center of the solar system. And he said to a lot of them, and these were Aristotelians forget about the church.

It was Aristotelians that were wedded to this idea. And they refused to look through the telescope. They knew that the evidence would just mess up their worldview. So they just refused to look at the evidence.

I think people who refuse to deal with the evidence in my book and the evidence that I, I, uh, I found in all these other books, if you want to live in that world, you're free to live in that world, but you have become the person, you know, you accuse a thoughtless, uh, Bible believer of being, you, you need to look at the evidence, the evidence, uh, it's, we're talking science.

We're not talking faith. Just, just look at the science and tell me what your conclusion is. I really think we're in the midst of a paradigm shift, honestly, that, that something is happening, uh, that it's going to lead to revival because a lot of people that are sitting on the fence are going to be stunned by what, what they find.

Yeah.

The Logical End of Atheism and the Reality of Atheist Regimes

So another interesting aspect of your book that I really enjoyed. And again, so many things we discussed, but the idea of following atheism to its logical end and how ultimately empty a philosophy it is.

So, um, talk briefly about that.

Yeah. I mean, that's another thing that I, I think sometimes Christians, uh, we, we have internalized this way of being that is not Christian. Uh, we're supposed to fight, we're supposed to believe in truth.

And I think a lot of times Christians have been too nice in a sense to the new atheists and treated them with great respect when they themselves have been deeply dishonest and intellectually sloppy.

Um,.

The atheists that I respect are people like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus and some others who wrestle honestly with the horror of a world without God. In other words, they may conclude that there's no God or they did conclude it, but they're not giddy over it.

They don't say, Hey, there's no God. So I can, you know, sleep with whoever I can do whatever I want. They were very sober minded about the idea that if there's no God, we're living in the bleakest of all possible universes where there is no meaning.

There's no good or evil. The love that I feel for someone, for my parents, for my child, for my spouse, that's just chemicals. It's meaningless. There's nothing transcendent. When I weep at the beauty of something, that's just chemicals.

And when I die, there's nothing. It's, it's kind of like, you know, uh, crushing a bug. It's meaningless. Human beings can't face that because first of all, it's not true. And we are creating the image of God to long for meaning.

But I think a lot of times the atheist movement is full of people that they haven't followed all the way to the bottom. They're afraid to, they don't want to, they just want to mock Christians and feel good about themselves.

And you know, I get that. But if you want to be intellectually honest, you've got to be like a Sartre or a Camus. And then at the end of the book, I talk about what atheist regimes have done. What happens to a worldview that says there's no God.

Well, the track record of atheist regimes is so satanic, so cruel, so wicked, so crushing to human beings. Atheists need to deal with that. Um, and I also talked about the fact that Camus and Sartre at the end of their lives, and this is like blockbuster stuff.

Both of them came to faith in God. I couldn't even believe it. When I discovered it, I said, this, this can't be right. I would have read about it. So we're really dealing with an information problem.

We live in a world where secular ideas get promoted. Ideas like the ones we're talking about tend to get ignored or avoided for various reasons. Sometimes for reasons that people are just confused and they want to go with the crowd, but it's time we dealt with the facts.

And I feel that, um, God has kind of left some of the best evidence for last, uh, in these last days, he's showing us things that are really wild and beautiful and will be encouraging to people.

Yeah. Excellent point. I really enjoyed that discussion. And we've got maybe time for one last quick question. It's something that we've written about a little bit with the idea, why are atheists so angry referring like mainly to the new atheist, the ones that are prominent, the Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and so forth.

And you've even I've heard the term hate theist thrown out there because they seem to more hate the idea of God more so than actually denying his existence. And, um, in your experience, um, why is that?

Well, I mean, I think that it sort of speaks for itself. You have to ask yourself, why would somebody be so nasty? Why would somebody be unable to do anything but mock? In other words, they don't seem to be really objective.

Uh, they seem to have an animus against people of faith. It's almost, I, I actually say in S in some cases that they seem to be working with, you know, the eternal creature who despises God, uh, with everything in him, there seems to be something very spiritually dark, which is a little scary.

And I think you see that in the bullying. Uh, so I'm looking for people, uh, you know, not who are of that ilk who cannot be persuaded. Those people need to be prayed for and loved, but people who really are open-minded and who do want to know what, why, why the immature mocking.

And there's a lot of that that we saw among, uh, the new atheists, which is why it's hard for me to take them seriously. Um, are, or do they really want to know the truth or do they just want to bully people that disagree with them?

So, um, I think people, when they read the book, they'll, they'll get a deeper sense of, uh, my thoughts on that.

Closing Remarks and Recommendation of the Book

So again, this has been the got questions podcast with Eric Metaxas, author of the new book is atheism dead. Highly recommended. Great read. Eric is a fantastic writer. He's a, he's a wordsmith. He has, to me, it's not so much that I learned a lot of new things in the book, but I learned much better ways of explaining ways of making good arguments.

So again, it's atheism dead will include links to it on the description and the YouTube channel at podcast .gotquestions .org and also at the show notes for this episode. So Eric, thank you for being on the show today.

It's my honor. And thanks for what you do. Very important stuff.

So again, this is the got questions podcast. Hope this episode has been encouraging and helpful to you. Got questions. The Bible has answers. We'll help you find them.