Atheists Need Christianity | Apologia Radio Highlight

So Richard Dawkins, again, vocal, vocal, very vocal critic against Christian faith.

He's the one who wrote River Out of Eden. One of my favorite quotes from that book is there is no good.

There is no evil, only blind, pitiless indifference. It's been in the chat. They've been waiting for you to say that. Yeah, that part.

That that very quote, they've been like, when is Jeff going to say that? It's my favorite quote because it best summarizes his perspective.

It best summarizes his perspective because he's that this is my point in bringing that quote of why I think it's so fantastic is because it's a moment where Dawkins is trying to be very consistent, right, with his atheism.

And, you know, you can read atheist ethicists across the board and even atheist biologists who try to talk about human life and value and meaning and all those different things.

And they're just honest with it and and brutally honest at times where it's like, whew, that's a dark and scary world you guys are painting there.

But Dawkins says that in River Out of Eden, there is no good. There is no evil, only blind and pitiless indifference.

OK, so get that at the start as you listen to Dawkins and then watch the image of God pour out of this guy.

Contrary to his claims in his writings about, you know, there's no ultimate meaning, no ultimate purpose, no good, no evil, only blind and pitiless indifference.

But he can't live that way. He won't live that way. And here is an example of that right here.

Well, I must say, I was slightly horrified to hear that Ramadan is being promoted instead. I do think that we we are culturally a

Christian country. I call myself a cultural Christian. I'm not a believer. But there's a distinction between being a believing

Christian and being a cultural Christian. And so, you know, I love hymns and Christmas carols. And I I sort of feel at home in the

Christian ethos. I feel that we are a Christian country in that sense. Well, he feels at home in the

Christian ethos because it gave him all the gifts and benefits and blessings of his entire life. I mean, when when

Oxford University was established as a Christian university, right, Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, Brown University, you just got on a list of like Ivy League schools.

And it's like this all, you know, all Christian schools started, you know, for the glory of Christ. And Dawkins, this atheist professor, when he was working in Oxford, had to like, you know, like travel through places with like scripture embedded in the walls, you know, all over his all around him.

So, yeah, like he feels comfortable in the Christian ethos because it gave him his his job, it gave him the science that he loves and the the rigorous commitment to examination and evidences and reason.

That's all from the Christian worldview. And so, yeah, he feels most comfortable in the Christian ethos because it gave him all the blessings of his of his life.

Well, I was going to say, I don't to my knowledge, I could be wrong, but I don't think he's done any public debates since Lennox, correct? I don't think so.

The point I'm getting to is that he lost the debate when Lennox pressed him on why he loves his wife.

Mm hmm. And to my knowledge, he's not he's not debated publicly since that point. What? Oops. Yeah. All these all these

Christian attachments. And he's like, I don't really have a justification for it. So here we go. Truth that statistically the number of people who actually believe in Christianity is going down.

And I I'm happy with that. But I would not be happy if, for example, we lost all our cathedrals and our beautiful parish churches.

So I why this is hilarious. Here's the problem. Here's the problem. If you get rid of the

Christians, they start building the churches and cathedrals. Right. And this is the guy that wants the fruit of something without the root of that something.

That's that's that's what you're it doesn't make any sense. He's too bright and too intelligent of a man to be making these mistakes.

But he's an atheist who's at war with his creator. And so he wants the fruit of a world that God makes and human value and human dignity.

He wants all that stuff. He wants an ethical system that is meaningful. He wants beauty, truth and goodness and art and all the things that the

Christian worldview gives. But he doesn't want the root of it. He wants Christianity to kind of go away.

You know, it's amazing here is that what he's really asking for is he's asking for a nation of Christian hypocrisy.

Right. People who don't actually believe something, but they pretend to believe that something like they seem they sing

Christmas hymns and these songs and they they celebrate life and beauty and goodness and love for neighbor.

He wants all that stuff. But he wants he wants him to be he hypocrites about it.

No, don't really believe that stuff, but give us the fruit of it. Yeah. There's also something to be said for the you can't separate religion and culture.

Culture is just the public manifestation of the worship of a people. Right. And so I want this gospel goodness, but I don't want

Christ. That's kind of the argument. It reminds me of the the prodigal son. He just wants the inheritance of his father.

He doesn't want his father. He doesn't want he doesn't want relationship with his father. That's very wants all of the goodness and the blessing that comes with having the capital of his father.

That's a very, very good observation. And I think one thing I pray for for Richard Dawkins is that he would be brought to a place where he is in bed with the mud and the pigs and come to his senses and come back home to his father, who will gladly slaughter the fattened calf and throw a party to receive a repentant sinner.

And there will be chorus among the angels in heaven for someone that has dedicated their lives to the opposition of everything that he stands on.

Right. I mean, everything he stands on is is an opposition to Christ and in Christianity.

And, you know, all of these things come home to roost in the fact that he is a bird nesting in the tree of the kingdom that has grown.

Right. Like the parables talk about, right. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed grows, starts small, grows into a large tree.

And then even the birds come to nest in its branches. And so whatever picture you want to use, he is sawing off the branch that he's sitting on.

He's biting the hand that feeds him. All of those get across the idea that he wants all of this goodness without the one who is good.

Now I'm picturing him as a bird. Yeah. But that was good. That's very good. So, yeah.

So the atheist, according to scripture, if you take the scriptures as true, if you take the scriptures as the resting point for certainty and knowledge, then you'll see that this is the obvious condition of the atheist is that he'll be at war with his creator.

But the image of God is inescapable. He knows God. He knows the true God. He's not confused about that.

God himself has shown it to him. Romans chapter one. And so the atheist will always live in this complicated existence where you've got one foot on the creator and the other foot in the denial of the divine, and they can't live that way.

So there's moments in their lives where you're just going to see the image of God gloriously pour through. And this demand for, again, human value, dignity, beauty, truth, goodness, all those things.

And then at the next stage, you'll see the rebellion pour out, right? God is not great. And in all these different things.

And that's the life you expect him to live. So this isn't shocking and surprising that he's calling himself a cultural

Christian, but it's a complicated world he has to live in, right? There is no good.

There is no evil. But I sure like the goodness of the Christian worldview. And you're going to hear that right now. Count myself a cultural

Christian. I think it would matter if we certainly if we substituted any alternative religion, that would be truly dreadful.

Well, which brings me to my supplementary point, which is that, as we know, church attendance is plummeting.

But the building, the erection of mosques across Europe, I think 6000 are under construction and there are many more.

I mean, are being planned. So do you think you regard that as a problem?

Do you think that matters? Yes, I do, really. I mean, I, I, I, I, I might choose my words carefully.

I mean, I have to choose Christianity and Islam. I choose Christianity every single time.

I mean, it seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion. He sees the problem with what he just said.

I mean, maybe he doesn't in the moment. But this whole idea about separating religion from culture. Well, why not

Islam? Well, because that religion produces a particular kind of culture. And that culture is not friendly to unbelief, because there is such a thing as forced belief at the hands of a sword.

And that is intrinsic to the Islamic worldview. And in order to continue going on in peace and harmony and having the freedom of religious expression and the freedom of sitting down on a bench, listening to the church bells ring while I enjoy a cup of coffee and a good book, you know, mocking

God, rejecting God, but holding on to all these Christian vestiges, I want that culture that allows me to do that. And that is very unlike the

Islamic culture or when I tolerate it or any atheist culture in history. I mean, just look at, you know, look at Stalin, look at that one.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. He doesn't want that. He doesn't want the a consistent atheist culture either. He knows it deep down.

And we talked about things that are dreadful. I'm sorry, Professor Dawkins. There's nothing dreadful in your worldview.

There's just what is where we are stardust. We are just moving across a meaningless cosmos.

And we don't matter. There is no meaning. Nothing is dreadful. Nothing is true.

Nothing is good. Nothing is evil. It's just blind, pitiless indifference.

Isn't that what you said? But you can't live that way. It's the atheists. The atheists will say those things, but they can't live that way because this is

God's world and they're made in God. They don't want God, but they can't live without him. That's exactly right. In a way that I think

Islam is not. I think you're going to have to explain why you say that, Professor Dawkins.

Why is Islam fundamentally not decent like Christianity?

Yes, I mean, the way women are treated. I mean, Christianity is not great about that. It's had its problems with female vicars and female bishops and things.

But there's an active hostility to women, which is promoted, I think, by the holy books of Islam.

I'm not talking about individual Muslims, who, of course, are quite, quite different. But the but the doctrines of Islam, the

Hadith and the Koran is fundamentally hostile to women, hostile to gays.

So, yeah, so what? So literally the T -shirt, right? So what? So what,

Professor Dawkins? You're acting like human beings matter, like they have value, like women have value.

Now, I'm wondering, where could you get a system that says women are valuable, that they have dignity, that you must respect and honor and love them?

Where would you get a system that says, I don't know, they're made in the image of God at the beginning of creation? Where would you get a system like that that says that men and women are equal before God, different roles, of course, but there's an equality in terms of their nature and who they are as image bearers of God.

I wonder where you get a system like that. It was there's nothing dreadful about anything and nothing is wrong in terms of treating any particular person any particular way you want.

I mean, why not just use women for pleasure? Why not? Why not put women in the boot of men? Why not?

Who says you can't do that? There's no good. There's no evil. There's just blind, pitiless indifference. Richard Dawkins can't help but acting like a

Christian. Why? Because he is the beneficiary of the Christian gospel and the kingdom of Christ.

He's he's the bird nesting in the branch. And two things, given his atheism, he can't ultimately condemn the subjugation of women or homosexuals.

There's no moral standard to do that. But then also there's the cultural implications of the Christian worldview that we witness in history, in which that's the only worldview that gives rise to the equality of the sexes, because it's the only worldview that puts out in practice what the scriptures say in that men and women bear the image of God equally.

That's the basis of grounding the dignity and the worth of men and women. So, I mean, without Christianity, you still have women existing at the whim of a man who is the paterfamilias in the household able to take her life at will.

Like that was the culture that Christianity came into and ultimately uprooted, right? It overturned that debased moral order that saw women as objects or at the very least as inferior vessels in terms of their value.

It was Christianity that overturned that. That's right. It's the only worldview that's done that. That's right. And so look at the elevation of women in the

Christian culture and the Christian worldview and a Christian ethical system. And you don't get that in an atheist system or, you know, any other kind of religious system doesn't exist.