June 11, 2015 ISI Radio Show with Dr. David Wood on “Christian Responses to the Challenge of Atheism”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon. Cumberland County, Pennsylvania,.

And the rest of humanity on the entire planet earth. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Thursday and I'm so delighted that we have back on Iron Sharpens Iron David Wood who is one of the hosts of the Trinity Channel television network.

He hosts a program called Jesus or Muhammad but we're not talking about that today, we're not talking about Islam, today we're talking about atheism. In fact our guest David Wood is a former atheist who by God's grace and mercy converted to Christianity and he is a contributor to the book True Reason Confronting the Irrationality of the New Atheism and it's my honor and privilege to have you back, David Wood.

What the New Atheism Is and Why It Differs from Older Atheism

Hey how's it going Chris? It's going great, thanks to another wizard in the Ignacio family. Taylor Ignacio came to the rescue over the phone and helped me troubleshoot a problem that was preventing audio from going out over the airwaves so we thank you so much.

First it was Joe Ignacio that saved the day, now it's Taylor Ignacio so we thank the Ignacio brothers. They sound like a circus act, the Ignacio brothers. But anyway, David, what is the new atheism? I think pretty much most people know what an atheist is, somebody that does not believe.

In the existence of God and so what's a new atheist? If you thought of an atheist, I mean it could be someone you know like eventually American atheists came out with Madeline Murray O 'Hare and so on but apart from that which is kind of a search of the new atheism, a lot of the traditional people that would have been associated with atheists were these sort of gentlemanly scholars, people like Anthony Foucault, excellent writers, and these are the people that lots of people but more recently and this is you know it kind of built up after more popular but when we get to the new atheism, it's a much more internet mob mostly.

I mean they have conferences and they have speakers and so on but for the most part I kind of think of them as an internet mob and what you have is hypotheses that you just couldn't possibly defend at a scholarly level.

So Jesus mythicism is popular among the new atheists, that's the idea that Jesus never really existed, there was never a person named Jesus of Nazareth, it's all just a complete legend like Robin Hood.

Now no one at the scholarly level defends that, in fact there's an excellent clip of Bart Ehrman just blasting these guys at an atheist conference right where someone brings that up and says there's no evidence for the existence of Jesus and Bart Ehrman just goes off he says I understand that's popular sort of internet atheist crowd he goes but at my level there is no one in the entire world who defends that right and so you have that you have the idea that there's a perpetual conflict between science and religion.

The actual scholars, the people who deal with philosophy of science and the interaction between science and religion, they hold to a view which is usually called the complexity hypothesis which means that the complexity thesis is the idea that the relationship between science and religion is complicated.

Yes you can have you know you can have people in a religion who oppose new scientific views and so on but you also have you know that the scientific revolution came out of Christianity from a bunch of Christians who are convinced that since the universe was created by God and we're created in the image of God that we have the ability to figure it out to understand the universe and these guys went out started collecting data in order to in order to understand the universe.

So the idea there is the relationship is complicated sometimes a person's religious views might help you know advance some science and other times might cause a problem but you know for the new atheist science and religion is just one of endless hostility it's always science trying to push forward and religion trying to hold it back but again that this is this is like an internet popular view it's not it's not something that scholars would maintain because scholars would know too much about the history of science and religion to to say that there's this endless hostility.

So what you have with the new atheists is a bunch of people defend their views who can't defend their theories at a scholarly level because they get laughed out of the room like Jesus never you know there's endless hostility between science and religion people who these views but can't defend them at this at the scholarly level realize they could take them to a popular level they could spread them among people who don't know much about a topic frenzied mob that will shout down all opposition and that's what you have with the new atheists you have I mean they they they they rarely know anything about their topic what they're saying and they couldn't be but they're gaining a very wide following and it's a much more aggressive much more militant form of atheism.

I've I've I've had I've had one of them one of them said he can't he can't wait until atheists take over so he can start a bloodbath now that that guy's a minority but I am seeing more and more of these hostile views.

I've seen several who advocated book burning. We need to gather all religious books together and and burn them so it's not what you'd associate with you know the scholarly gentlemanly atheists of you know 30 40 years ago yeah in fact I have yet to hear any of these.

Nutjob atheists that you're speaking of but you're involved with them a lot more than I am. It's interesting what you said about the mythical or or fictional Jesus theory that he never existed uh even as a historical figure uh originally David Silverman of American Atheists the current president uh after he debated James White on is the New Testament evil and uh failed pretty clearly uh to uh prove his point and he lost pretty miserably.

But he uh challenged uh uh James uh to debate on that mythical Jesus issue and he and they had agreed to do that. And then later down the road when David could not participate in that because he was going to be in Scandinavia or traveling.

When I started calling other atheists that were among the cream of the crop available that involve themselves in apologetics and debates every one of them told me oh the uh scholarly atheists don't believe uh in that mythical Jesus theory.

We believe he was a actual.

Person who existed a historical figure so that's yeah that that's yeah is typically have different levels of skepticism right now. Now you and I we we believe in the scriptures we believe in the scriptures we believe in inspiration.

Uh. But even people who don't believe in inspiration will acknowledge that you know the gospels are first century greco-roman biographies they don't believe they're inspired by God. They don't believe they're inerrant.

But they believe that they're. I'm talking about atheist scholars agnostic scholars. Um you know those who reject God reject inspiration trying to write about Jesus. Um and even you know even though the reliability of the gospels will still say there is nevertheless very early material in the New Testament.

For instance uh the uh the creed that the apostle Paul quotes in first corinthians 15 that he Christ died according to the scriptures that he was raised and so on uh that you have all the appearances listed there as well.

You have appearances to Peter to James to uh to the 500 and so on. It's actually critical scholars of the bible who point out that this few years. And the reason is that Paul says a creed that he says that he received and he would have received this when he here in James in Jerusalem a little after his conversion.

You you have the the sort of the new atheists oh I don't believe in the bible. Just throw it all out. No one at a scholarly level approaches it like that right. If you reject the inspiration of the New Testament that's fine you're still dealing with early knowledge from that.

And and the point here is just think about how silly this is. Um I don't believe in uh you know the divine inspiration of the writings of Tacitus or Suetonius or uh any of these ancient writers. But I would still say you can get all kinds of information from those sources whereas the new atheist reject the inspiration of the bible therefore can't trust anything at all.

Nonsense. And once you adopt that methodology of course we know just out of curiosity I've heard agnostics like Bill Maher say that the reason why.

They're not atheists is because they know enough about themselves that they do not know everything. And so how do the typical atheists answer that claim or answer that challenge. How can you know there's not a god with certainty which which what atheism is if you don't know everything.

How do they answer that. Or do they well the the new atheist. One of the interesting things about is that they were actually redefining the meaning of the term atheist so the new agnosticism back in the day.

You know when I was an atheist I would say there is no god. I wouldn't have said um I wouldn't have said I'm I'm I'm positive of it. You know I definitely put myself in the atheist category rather than the in the agnostic category.

I wouldn't have said I'm positive about that. But I wouldn't have said I was positive about much of anything. They don't want to actually um carry any sort of um they usually don't affirm directly that there is.

Well they'll say it but as soon as you challenge them on that they'll just say um. I'm not saying definitely that there is no god. I'm saying I lack belief in god so I have nothing to uh defend. I mean you and I both lack belief in Thor.

It doesn't mean we have to defend it. We're just saying we we don't have that belief.

So you know what's the problem. Hey speak for yourself pal just kidding but continue.

Oh yeah. So it's uh and there's a reason for that. Once someone says hey here's my position my position is there is no god then you can start pressing them on. Uh you know on. Well how do you explain this.

How do you account for that. Um you know we've you know as you pointed out in order to to say you know with with some degree of confidence that there is no god you'd have to know a lot more than you as a as a human being.

Uh no. So you know. How are you going to say that. In other words you could try to plumping themselves together with agnostics and with anyone else who does not have a positive belief in god and saying you know that's our position.

So the burden is entirely on on the theist. The burden is entirely on the theist. To prove his case they're just saying hey we don't. We lack belief. If you want us to have the belief give us the evidence for the belief.

Until then we lack the belief. I'm gonna give our email address if anybody has a question for david wood on atheism or specifically on confronting the irrationality of the new atheism but could be any question on atheism or agnosticism.

Our email address is chris arnzen at gmail .com. That's c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com. And why is the uh the title uh of the book. Specifically confronting the irrationality of the new atheism.

What is irrational about it.

Naturalism, Reason, and the Argument from Evolution

Well uh i mean i'm convinced that atheism is don't mean you know hey i disagree with it and therefore i'm going to make fun of it. Um if we're talking about uh traditional atheism in the sense of naturalism right not you know some people will say you're just denying that there is an all-powerful all-knowing perfectly good being maybe there are other supernatural uh entities that did things but i'm just denying that one particular uh being um you know traditional atheism is uh you know more more accurately uh called naturalism.

Right the natural world is all that exists. Um if we're talking about atheism in the sense of naturalism there is no supernatural realm. It's just this world. It's just the physical world. You have all kinds you have all kinds of problem that i mean that there's there's really no escape from and and these i give a bunch of these but uh go through one example what's called the argument from reason.

Um you know we we generally trust our reasoning ability. We you know our reasoning ability is an infallible. But you know generally if we focus on something we can you know we can uh we trust ourselves to get to the nation about um and so we just you know just naturally we we tend to trust you know our if you ever adopt some additional belief that would undermine completely undermine uh the the reliability of your reasoning abilities.

Uh you've got a problem for instance if if you and i can if you and i decided that we are in the matrix right if we believe that we're you know in that matrix from the movie and that we're all in some sort of you know computer program and nothing is real that we see around us.

If we believe that well we couldn't really trust our senses anymore. Um we couldn't trust our senses anymore because you know what's around us is is not is not real. So if we adopted the belief that we're in the matrix that would undermine um our confidence in our own in our own senses and our own thinking.

Um so if you if you adopt a belief that really undermines your own reasoning ability you've got some problems now here's the idea naturalism does that. Right. If if if atheists would follow naturalism through to its logical conclusion they cannot trust their own reasoning ability.

And the the idea here is how did we get our reasoning ability. If naturalism is true. Well it's uh you know you have random you know you have random processes you eventually get life. Once you have life life develops through evolution.

But evolution natural selection only works on. You've got two you've got two basic things. You've got random mutations and when one of those mutations happens to be beneficial then the organism with that you're surviving and reproducing and so its offspring will do better than uh than others.

And so the idea here is uh natural selection will take beneficial mutations and then uh you know and then that will that that those trails that lack them won't be as good and so they'll die. Um so the idea here is how did how did human beings get our reasoning ability.

Well we got it through that process. Right. At some point you know lower down on the tree of life uh we're a little bit smarter. And that ability was selected. They had an advantage over other organisms in their generation.

They added a slight advantage and that helped them survive and reproduce more. Well here's the idea uh natural selection only selects features that help organisms survive and reproduce. It doesn't. It doesn't select anything beyond that helps you survive and helps you reproduce.

That's all it can select. Um so how to. Um apart from any concerns about finding a mate and finding food our reasoning ability was not selected for anything beyond that. Right. It was selected because it helped us find berries.

It helped us find a mate. Now the problem is that even false beliefs can sometimes help curse them. You know either way the fall. Um if uh if we're equally but i believe i'm much more attractive it then my false belief might give me the confidence to uh to pass on my you know pass on my genetic material with women because you know i'm more confident even though it's a false belief.

If we're equally attractive and i believe i'm more attractive that might make me more confident. My false belief can actually help me can even help this reasoning ability it's only adapted finding a mate.

And even then it doesn't need to be reliable. It just needs to help you. It just needs to help you find food find a mate even if your beliefs are false. Well the point here is this isn't the sort of determine the origin of the universe or this ability.

Our mutant berry finding ability is just what we need to discover. Whether theism or naturalism are true it's not made for that. Right. You're you're you're reasoning. You're supposed to find food. You're supposed to find.

You're supposed to find a mate. That's what it's meant for things that are right around you. It's not meant for anything beyond that. It wasn't made for that. And now you're taking it to you know the origin of the universe and into the eternities.

And you know metaphysics and all this it's not made for that. And so you can't trust it. If you're dealing with something with topics like naturalism uh things like that you're so far away from you're so far that would be reliable in those cases that you can't trust it.

But but atheists are saying yes we're naturalists. Yes the universe is all that exists. Wait you're taking your mutant berry finding ability. You're making these sorts of claims about the entire universe and ultimate reality the irrationality of the new atheism.

They they're not deep thinkers. They haven't really thought through the implications of their worldview and yet they're the ones running around saying you know we're the champions of reason no no you guys are no you guys are aggressive and towards christians in particular.

Um and uh but but you're you're not the champions of reason here. You guys haven't even thought now the the atheists that you.

Morality, Objective Good and Evil, and the Problem of Naturalism

Confront uh i'm sure. Just as within the those who are theists there there must be a a spectrum of difference among them. They're individual people. Um. But what seems to be the common response to how they could possibly have a concept of good and evil if we are mere evolved sacks of protopilism and you know evolved from pond scum and so on.

Well that that's actually.

That's actually another uh perfect example of the champion of the new atheist but you can open you know one of his books and it's all pointless and so on. And then we'll turn right around and start attacking the immorality of christianity or the church or something like that.

Um you know it's hey pick one right. Pick one. If if you're saying that certain things are really bad certain things are really good other things are really evil. If you're saying that then you better have a world view that makes sense of that because right now you don't.

Um on the other hand if you want to say you know at bottom there's there's no point to any of this it's all just meaningless. Uh well don't turn right around. And then you know criticize christianity as if contradictory views um within their world view and they don't even realize it.

Um but you know if you're talking about people will try to defend things in in different ways. Um i am a wet fordham university so i've been through the material uh not from these not from these you know silly new atheists but um actual people who specialize in ethics um i don't know of any i don't know of any plausible naturalism.

I know of no objective moral facts. And by objective we mean um you know regardless of your opinion if everyone in the world you know decided that raping children is okay it would still nevertheless be wrong.

It doesn't. The reason is that we're starting out with with atheism. Um how did we come to question we we view certain things as right and we view certain things as wrong. How do you explain that from an atheistic perspective.

Well you basically got to wrap that you know in the course in the course of evolution creatures organisms that had let's say a herd instinct um that had some basic level of altruism or caring for uh other injured um organisms and so it sort of became hardwired into a level of ethics because you could take that road society is good.

We think compassion is good. Uh we heard it when we were really young and and and we believed it. No but neither one of those would qualify as you know objective moral fact. Uh you know saying that this helped my ancestors survive does not make it good.

I mean bed bugs reproduced by violent rape right. The male just completely rapes the female and it's violent. Uh he pierces her abdomen instead of going through the vaginal canal. Um he just helped them survive.

They wouldn't survive if they if they didn't do that uh does that make it good. No it's a lion that moves into a new pride. The young lions and the other pride that lion pass on its offspring. Uh no it's just that.

That's the point here is saying hey this helps this species survive does not make something good. And so saying hey this trait helps human beings survive doesn't mean it has nothing to do with how we got here.

And of course society if you're going to say you know it's whatever society tells us. Well i mean you know society say different things. You know nazi society says some says some very different things.

Then it's right. Well if it's just whatever your society tells you there is no real right or wrong. You're back to a kind of relativism from a from a genuinely atheistic perspective there's no real right.

And there's no real wrong. It's all opinion or certain hardwired features. Uh but there's nothing where you can really say hey that is evil. Or that is good. And yet these guys are non-stop on the internet.

Oh look at the evils of this. Look at the evils of that. Look at the evils of this. Um even you know even if they're saying something that we agree with right look how evil isis. Is right. We agree with them on that.

The difference is we have we have a worldview that makes sense of what we're saying about isis they don't. And they just uh they they don't recognize it. Yeah.

And of course they would attack isis just to give themselves a platform to attack christianity because they falsely slander christianity as being the same sort of violent religion in its in its origins.

And uh it's interesting you brought up the nazis obviously hitler. And the nazis believed that the master race would survive uh more uh strongly and and would continue to to dominate the earth uh more effectively if these other races like the jews were eliminated.

So this herd mentality or the survival of the fittest. If that is good uh in the minds of these warped evil people then evil is not evil. It's good you know if you follow.

What i'm saying yeah yeah absolutely. And and and by the way and you know we the jews of the holocaust are the most famous example but hitler actually um i mean he was cleaning out uh uh you know sort of children's hospitals and and hospitals for the mentally disabled he had portable gas chambers.

Right. They would they would uh i read some uh some uh some very sad stories where they would show up uh one of these uh places and they would say hey uh come we're going to take a trip and they're actually getting onto this portable gas chamber and they start driving away and uh and the the the people who worked there who knew were who knew where these kids were being taken.

Uh the kids would say where are we going. And they would say oh you're you're going on a trip to heaven. Right. Because they're you know they're taking them out to uh to to to gas them. Um but it was it was uh it was uh you know disabled people um it was the jews because hitler regarded them as uh parasitic on on the rest of society it was homosexuals because they have um you know they're not for you know reproducing the traditional family unit and so on uh but it's from an atheistic perspective one there's nothing really wrong you can't say there's anything wrong about that uh but two uh you know if if you don't have some underlying views about respecting the rights of persons and so on which you can't you can't defend on on naturalism um he's kind of right in some of those situations right.

It's it's hey if disabled you know you have disabled people you have to see you have these disabled people over there you don't want to give them a chance to to pass on there to get rid of them in a state of nature before society started taking care of them they would have died natural selection would have eliminated them and they wouldn't have they would have never passed on their defective genes.

But then we you know we protect them and we take care of them and so natural select and so you need it to operate again right. You need to we need to uh we need to use our intellects to do what nature would have originally done namely weed out people uh who are going to uh you know sort of hold us back from advancing if you bring this up to one of derive morality from from evolution you can't say that's what you should you can't have your k say oh you know hey we developed these you know this way in the course of evolution and so that's what we we ought to do and but then as soon as you using that to say well actually we should be doing you know we we should be just exterminating then it's no you can't get your ethics from you know the hesitancy after inconsistency.

We have to go to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for david wood email us at chris arnzen at gmail .com. That's c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com. Don't go away we'll be right back with david wood and confronting the irrationality of the.

Atheism, Religion, and the Reality of Evil in History

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Welcome back. This is chris arnes and if you've just tuned is into iron sharpens iron. Our guest today is david wood and we are discussing confronting the irrationality of the new atheism. And uh if you have a question for david wood give us an email at chris arnes and at gmail .com.

That's chris arnes and at gmail .com. It's interesting going back to that whole thing with the the nazis. Uh when david silverman who is actually an atheist and a jew when he was confronted in debate with the question because he basically conceded that what is good and what is bad what is morally wonderful and what is morally evil that is determined by whatever any given population every any given community believes at any certain period of time with the majority believes is what's good and and what they're against is what's bad.

And so basically he conceded. When when he was asked by dr james white in debate so you mean to tell me if you were being marched through the gates of a death camp the most you could possibly say is i find this personally offensive.

And he admitted that.

That was true. I've had a i've had similar uh i guess the end of last year i'm a former muslim woman who uh is now an atheist but we had a debate on the existence of god. And uh and you know over and over again in the in the debate she's saying you know it's wrong for god to do this god shouldn't do that god shouldn't do this.

But then when she's challenged on the foundations of you know morality that there is no real right and wrong she said it she said it all right and wrong. But if you're saying god did this wrong or god ought to do this you're saying you're saying two things.

One you're saying that there are objective moral values that even god needs to that even god is is is obligated to adhere to and two you're saying that you have access to them. Right. It's not just some you know it's not something out there where we don't have access to it.

Uh if there are objective moral values and duties and i know what they are so that i can even tell god uh that if god exists this is what he needs to do. And then you turn right around. Oh there are no more there are no objective moral values uh and and uh and obviously since there are none i have no access to them and it's just uh i mean it's it's it's shocking.

I mean you you would you would think i mean you would think that this would be an obvious problem to them. Right. You sit there huh sitting here uh you know calling down my curses on everyone around me for all the horrible bad things they're doing and yet my world view cannot even make sense of what i'm saying here.

Well in the in the ad that we uh just heard uh rome when romans 3 was mentioned it reminded me.

Of romans 1. Absolutely absolutely. That would be. That would be the uh key passage there.

Yeah in regard to the fact. Uh are there really any atheists. Because the scriptures teach that men know the truth i mean nature even reveals the existence of god but they suppress the truth.

Yeah and then uh you know and then they're and then they become vain or futile in their thinking and uh i mean i mean it's a perfect uh that that you know it's it's it's what once you once you suppress that truth you really end up with some some severely uh incoherent nonsense going around in your head and but you know you don't even have a foundation to to get out of it.

Yeah and uh the the atheists what is where does some of the the best arguments that they have that they throw at uh christians and theists in general that typically have the the average theist tongue-tied what are some of their their their the cream of the crop of their arguments.

The arguments against uh theism in general and then particular belief in the existence of god the only real the only argument you know that should even be taken seriously is the is the argument from evil.

Um and that's the conference we're having on saturday. Is that uh you know if god exists if you really believe this you know uh all-knowing all-powerful perfectly good being and thought what kind of world would that sort of being create.

Well you know you might think hey it's not the sort of world where you'd have the holocaust and god doesn't stop it. It's not you know the sort of world where you know babies are born with horrible uh birth defects with for a while and then die.

It's not the sort of starve to death on a regular basis. Uh so you might think hey you know what we what we see in our world is a problem for the claim that you know an all-powerful all-knowing perfectly good being uh exists.

Atheists use other arguments. Atheists use other arguments. There's an argument from uh what's called the argument from distelliology. That's uh the idea that god could have made certain things better.

Um but he didn't right like he could have he could have he could have made us better. He could have made us so that. You know we uh uh it's easier for to survive. Um and uh and there's an argument from divine hiddenness.

You know if god wants us to believe in him you just come down here and appear to us things like that. They only make sense if they're just versions of the argument from evil right. If you can say god could have made things better.

But that only make that only really make sense. If you're just talking about god could have made us better in some way. That would you know help us avoid pain and suffering or something like that. Uh it doesn't mean hey we you know we could run a thousand miles an hour just for you know for no reason whatsoever.

There has to be a reason that that you know helps us somehow. So really the only the office wise are so much. If you went into you know christianity in particular you know probably hell if you got if you got problem of evil and uh and uh for more information.

On this conference that uh that dr david wood just mentioned if god why evil which is a conference to be held this saturday june 13th and it is an all-day event. If you want for more information it's being held on long island new york and that is uh in franklin square i believe franklin square long island new york.

For more information go to the website of new york apologetics which is newyorkapologetics .com and write out the full words new york apologetics .com. And you could look up in upcoming events all the details that you need for this conference featuring dave dr david wood and other speakers.

I also want to quickly remind you uh when you hear books like uh true reason confronting the irrationality of the new atheism and other books when you ever you hear books mentioned on iron sharpens iron please go to one of two sources.

Or both sources go to the cumberland valley bible book service which is cvbbs .com cumberland valley bible book service cvbbs .com or go to solid ground christian books solid-ground-books .com solid-ground-books .com.

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