Richard Dawkins is a "Christian?"

Non-rockabotas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it.

Are you going to bark all day, little doggie, or are you going to bite? We're being delusional.

Delusional?

Yeah, delusional is OK in your world view. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional. So you calling me delusional using your world view is perfectly OK.

It doesn't really hurt. She hung up on me.

What? What?

What?

Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives.

Right.

Don't go into the world and make homies.

Right.

Disciples.

I got a bit of a jiggle, Nick. That's a joke, pastor.

When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

The Wise and Foolish Builders

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock.

And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.

Matthew 7, 24 through 27, y 'all. Welcome back. This is the Gospel Heard Around the World, everybody. Welcome to Apologia Radio. Yet another exciting opportunity for us to engage the cultures and theological issues.

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What up?

I'm Jeff the Calm of the Ninja. That's Zachary Conover.

Yo.

Director of Communications for End Abortion Now. Welcome, everybody, to the show. We have a lot to talk about today. We are talking about Richard Dawkins, a Christian,.

A cultural Christian.

We're gonna talk about that. We're gonna engage a bit, going against my better judgment, just because we think the overall, it'd be beneficial for the body of Christ to hear a bit of the engagement. Leighton Flowers, we did a debate review of the Leighton Flowers, Dr. James White debate, and within less than 24 hours, I believe it was, yeah, I think it was less than 24 hours, maybe a little off on that.

It did not take long.

Within a day, he responded.

You think he has like a bat, sorry, like a bat signal? Now you said his name, it went off.

And someone's gonna message him, hey, they're talking about you now.

It's down the slide.

He's already got his show in pre-production. And what I said in the last show we did as a debate review is that one of the things that's unfortunate is that Professor Flowers, at times, in my experience in seeing him and some of the claims he makes, is he'll make a claim, it is patently false, he's wrong about it, and then when he's challenged on it, he'll just dig his heels in.

And he did exactly that. And we're gonna show that to you. And the reason why we're doing it, we thought like, well, what's the point? It's just, it's not gonna be received by him, and it doesn't seem like it would be, and he'll just keep digging his heels and making more mistakes.

He made even more mistakes when he talked about presuppositional

Did you say Mormons?

More mistakes when he talked about presuppositional apologetics. But overall, we think it's a good discussion because it really gets to what is important for us as Christians to think about God's word as a central reference point.

So that's, we're gonna engage with a couple things, not the entire episode, we're just not gonna spend that much time on it. And we're gonna talk hopefully a bit about Charlie Kirk. We respect and love Charlie Kirk.

He's a local guy. He knows us, loves us, we love him. But he's made some mistakes when he's talked about the issue of abolition. And so we're just gonna engage a bit with that, hoping that Charlie sees it, and do it in a respectful way, but also say, look, Charlie, you're wrong about this.

And Charlie doesn't like to be wrong about things and say things that are publicly that are wrong. So hopefully this will help with that as well. And so we're gonna kind of dive right in.

You all ready to go?

Let's do it. So Richard Dawkins, one of the four horsemen, that's what they used to be called. Who was it again? It was Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett, the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

It was, this is when like the new atheism was like all the rage, 2010, somewhere around there.

It lasted a minute.

Yeah, it did last a minute. And Dawkins, of course, well-known anti-theist, not just an atheist, an anti-theist, written tons of stuff against the Christian God. And everyone knows that he's been one of the most vocal atheists that shows an abject disdain and hatred for the Christian faith.

However, that he can't escape the image of God in him, and he can't escape the goodness of the Christian worldview. And so Richard Dawkins, this isn't the first time, by the way, that Dawkins has said things like this.

So this is not super like, wow, compelling, crazy news. He's said things like this before. But let me get this, I don't wanna do this.

For some reason, this one's blowing up, but you know, there's that.

It is, it is. Where's the, okay, how's this? Okay, I guess I do have it wide. No, I don't know, that's weird. I don't like Max, everyone in the chat's probably like you.

Top left corner.

Top left corner, thank you very much. Let's see, enter full screen, there you go. Oh, there you go, thank you very much. See, this is why we pay Gabe.

Just to tell you how to use a Mac.

To tell me how to use a Mac.

He's the child that you call, like, hey, how do you use this TV remote again?

So Richard Dawkins, again, vocal, vocal, very vocal critic against the 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 very quote, they've been waiting. When is Jeff gonna say that?

It's my favorite quote, because.

There you go, guys.

It best summarizes his perspective.

It best summarizes his perspective, because he's, this is, my point in bringing that quote up, 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 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 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. Okay, 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 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 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 sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos. I feel that we are a Christian country in that sense.

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 Oxford University was established as a Christian university, right?

Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, Brown University, you just go down a list of like Ivy League schools, and it's like all Christian schools started.

For the glory of Christ.

And Dawkins, this atheist, when he was working at Oxford, had to like travel through places with like scripture embedded in the walls all over. It was all around him. So yeah, like he feels comfortable in the Christian ethos because it gave him his job.

It gave him the science that he loves and the rigorous commitment to examination and evidences and reason. That's all from the Christian worldview. Yeah, he feels most comfortable in the Christian ethos because it gave him all the blessings of his life.

Well, I was gonna say, to my knowledge, I could be wrong, but I don't think he's done any public debate 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. To my knowledge, he's not debated publicly since that point.

What, oops.

All these Christian attachments.

He feels at home with his wife.

I don't really have a justification for it. So here we go.

Truth is that statistically, the number of people who actually believe in Christianity is going down and 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've

Why?

This is hilarious to me.

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.

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, what'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 sing Christmas hymns and these songs, and they celebrate life and beauty and goodness and love for neighbor.

He wants all that stuff, but 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 prodigal son. He just wants the inheritance of his father. He doesn't want his father. He doesn't want relationship with his father, but he wants all of the goodness and the blessing that comes with having the capital of his father.

That's a very good observation. And I think, and 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 an opposition to Christ and 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? That the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, 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.

Yeah, 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 gonna 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 in all these different things. 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 gonna hear that right now.

Can't myself a cultural Christian. I think it wouldn't 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 6 ,000 are under construction and there are many more, I mean, are being planned.

So do you think, do you regard that as a problem? Do you think that matters?

Yes, I do really. I mean, I 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, mocking God, rejecting God, but holding onto all these Christian vestiges, I want that culture that allows me to do that.

And that is very unlike the Islamic culture when I tolerate it.

Or any atheist culture in history. I mean, just look at Stalin.

A consistent one.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. He doesn't want that. He doesn't want the 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.

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. See, 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's image.

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 different, but the doctrines of Islam, the Hadith and the Quran, it's 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 means 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, pettiless 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 the bird nesting in the branch.

And two things, given his atheism, he can't ultimately condemn the subjugation of women or of homosexuals. There's no moral standard to do that. But then also there's the cultural implications of the Christian worldview that we witnessed 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 pater familius 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, absolutely. Interesting to conversation just in terms of an ethical system. The Christian worldview has given so much more value to a woman just as one example in terms of violations and victimization.

So cultures throughout history have treated the issue of rape in different ways. No punishment at all, or there's just a lot of ways people have addressed it. I was watching a documentary fairly recently, I think in the last week, and it was having to do with a rape situation that had happened in India, in an Indian village.

And their culture thinks about rape in a certain way. And so this interviewer was asking the village women about what's the right thing that should be done in this case of rape. This girl, she was like 13 years old, I think she was gang raped in her village.

And the women of the village were actually arguing, well, then she needs to just marry one of the rapists. Just marry one of the rapists. And it's just astonishing to see that culture, that way that culture would think about rape.

Whereas the Christian worldview would say, no, no, no.

The rapist deserves to die.

Places such a high value on the woman and the crime of rape, it says the rapist deserves to die for what he's done. 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 any other kind of religious system.

It doesn't exist.

It doesn't exist. So any words before I jump into the Layton Flowers thing?

No, let's go for it.

All right.

All right, guys. So look, let's start this conversation this way. Layton Flowers is a brother. He says he has faith in Jesus Christ. He's a Trinitarian. He believes the scriptures of the word of God. And so, yes, some of this is an in-house debate, but it's an in-house debate with a lot of consequences.

And so it's an important discussion. Layton would agree with that. We wanna show respect and love to him, towards him as a brother. But at the same time, we wanna make sure, because this is in the public realm and these are public conversations, that we respond properly to the claims that he's made.

And so we're not gonna go over his entire video and we're not gonna ultimately commit to a long-term back and forth with Layton, because we just don't have a lot of confidence, given his history, that he'll accept ultimately correction on these theological issues.

I made the claim during the episode that Layton will make claims, he'll display ignorance in an area, and when he's confronted on it, or when he's shown to be wrong, and even egregiously wrong, he'll just dig his heels in and just keep going headlong in.

He did exactly that within a day of our show on the issue of presuppositional apologetics. It is bad, bad, bad. And I wanna say this, with love towards Layton, you made some massive egregious mistakes when you try to talk about presuppositional apologetics the first time in the debate, and especially the second time.

You should have taken time to study the issue and to understand it before you talked again about it, because now you have left a longer record of public ignorance. And look, here's the thing, everybody who's listening to this discussion, I would just encourage you, listen, pick up a copy of, there's a number of works, Covenantal Apologetics, by our friend Scott Oliphant.

He's just got some fantastic work. Pick up Pushing the Antithesis, the Apologetic Methodology of Greg Bonson. Pick up Presuppositional Apologetics, Stated and Defended by Greg Bonson.

Is that an old copy?

I think it's a newer copy.

Oh, they redid it.

Pick up Against All Opposition by Greg Bonson. These books are readily available. They're not big, massive tomes. Some of this stuff is. Pick up Always Ready by Greg Bonson. That's a fantastic starter.

Or if you want to go hardcore and all the way, pick up Van Til's Apologetic Methodology by Greg Bonson. And see, I would encourage you, read any of these books, and then listen to Leighton's response and the way he talked about Presuppositional Apologetics, and you will see.

We're not being unkind or unfair to the man. He publicly misrepresented Presuppositional Apologetics in such an egregious way and demonstrated complete ignorance about the system that he is pretending to speak with authority on.

Leighton, you made an embarrassment of your show when you talked about it, and we're going to show that during this episode. And so, but before I start, just one quick note regarding one of the things I said.

Years ago, we were like, we're just not going to engage in this. And one of the reasons I said was that I had seen that Leighton had put up an episode where he just picked the goofiest looking picture of me.

And look, listen, people were like, oh, you just want like a nice like GQ picture of yourself. He didn't do that. You know, that's prideful. That's not what I was saying. I don't care about any of that.

It was a purposeful mocking thumbnail that I thought, well, if you're going to treat an opponent in that way, I'm not going to take you seriously. And so let me, I guess I'll start by giving you the example of what I was talking about in terms of like, well, why did I decide to not even bother engaging?

And I'm going to turn this, there you go. So this is a screenshot. I don't know. I can't zoom in on that, but this was the thing I had seen years ago. And I was like, I can't.

He was using Prince's Bride against you.

Yeah, I know. Seriously, no.

No wonder you're upset.

I can't take it seriously. You know, it's, you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. And then there's this picture from a sermon where somebody grabbed a shot where I'm making, it makes me look like the silliest, goofiest, most ridiculous thing.

And I just thought, you know, I can't take you seriously when you're going to do things like that. And so that's what I was pointing to. If you want an even a better picture of it, there's me. There's me in the thumbnail.

Okay.

And so that's what I was referring to. Okay. The obvious attempt to make me look as foolish and silly as possible. And so, okay. So that's what the conversation was about. I do not need you to make me look good in a photo.

That wasn't the point being made is that that is an obvious attempt to make someone look as silly as you can. Now, thankfully, Leighton has kind of taken responsibility for it here. And I'll at least let you hear him on that point.

He's even used at one time, and this is honestly where I just became just completely dismissive to even really trying to respond to anything Leighton says is he put up a thumbnail to one of his videos when he found the absolute worst picture of me to make me look silly in the thumbnail.

And that's where I lost all respect. And I said, I'm not interacting with a person who engages in that kind of childish behavior and needs to be clickbaity like that and use the worst possible picture he can use of me.

I just don't take you seriously after that. And I also don't take Leighton seriously.

Okay, so I had no idea honestly what he was even talking about because I've always thought of Jeff as being kind of this really good looking guy with a really cool beard. And if anything, whenever his picture was put next to mine, me thinking I look like an idiot next to that guy.

And so I had to go search my thumbnails because I don't make the thumbnails. Caleb makes the thumbnails. So yeah, I just threw Caleb under the bus. Sorry, Caleb. He said he's gonna go remake this thumbnail.

Because I think I figured out which one it was. I wasn't even sure, but I think I'll show you. Let's just add it to the stage here. So I scrolled through there. It can't be that one because he looks better than I do.

Caleb had me take a bunch of these pictures so that he could make my thumbnails. And I see these pictures pop up and I'm going, oh, I hate that. I hate most of my thumbnail pictures. I just don't like them.

The second one, the same thing. I look like an idiot and Jeff looks cool. So I don't know. Another one, I mean, he looks fine and I have this weird look on my face. This one, he looks really good. That's like a GQ picture for Jeff on that one.

That one looks decent, just a basic headshot. Another one, same kind of thing. And this is the one that must be the one he's referring to. And it's just, to me, I think it was just like, it's an intense look.

And I got pictures like that all over the internet with me like taking a bite out of a sandwich or doing something goofy or with a weird look on my face. And so it didn't even register to me that that would have been offensive to somebody.