On today's episode of the Evangelist Podcast, we're continuing our series looking at atheism. The Evangelist Podcast from Revival. Find out what's new in telling people the good news about God, the world, and you. With Andy Brinkley and Glenn Scrivener.
SPEAKER_03Welcome back to the Evangelist Podcast. This is the show where we look at issues in sharing the gospel. I'm Andy Brinkley, and with me is Glenn Scrivener. Hello. If you like listening to the Evangelist Podcast each week, we'd really appreciate a rating and review on iTunes. It's very easy, just go to revivalmedia.org slash iTunes. That should take you directly to the podcast page where you can leave us a review and rating. We'd be very happy if you could do that for us. So Glenn, we're looking this time at uh atheists getting things right. Yeah. What? What? Atheists get things right. Yeah. Um so last time we were talking uh we were saying that we're all atheists with regard to sort of the vast number of deities and gods ever proposed.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I don't believe in Zeus. You don't believe in Osiris? I don't believe in Thor. Literally millions of gods out there that you and I are atheists with regards to. Um what's what's interesting for me is that I I think modern atheism, so much obviously in the West, is a reaction to a false gospel that's been preached by by the church and that's been gotten hold of of by people, and people have spewed it out of their mouth. And in so many senses, they've been right to spew it out of their mouth. They've gotten hold of a God who is this power in the sky who is just against us, and many have taken up arms to oppose God the way they feel that God is is opposed to them, and and so I I think atheism gets a lot of stuff right where it points out to the church nastiness in our own gospel, nastiness in our own understanding of who God is and what the world is really like. And and they point out things like the fact that, you know, everyone in the world disbelieves in gods. Uh everyone in the world is is a sceptic, in one sense, and and they say we are the thoroughgoing sceptics. And and in one sense you want to say that's that's fantastic. We we want to be sceptical, actually. Um the Bible does not encourage gullibility at all. You know, if you read through the Proverbs, not not in any sense are we are we implored to simply believe something. So absolutely, you know, we are we are all skeptics, but uh I what I'd say to the atheist at that point, when they s when they say, ah yes, you all disbelieve in in a million gods, I just go one god further, what I want to say to them is actually um what you've embraced is another belief. You've embraced the belief called materialism. And that's a belief of which I am a sceptic. Okay? You know, it's not like you are th you're a thoroughgoing sceptic and I'm the gullible one here. What you've put your finger on, Mr. Atheist, Mrs. Atheist, is that everyone is a sceptic, but everyone is also, I I want to say, is a believer, and even if you don't believe in all the gods in the world, you are still a believer in in materialism. You know, that is that the you know this world is all there is, was, and ever shall be. So at that point I'd push back on it, but I think they've done us a great service to to say that yes, uh all of us are sceptical.
SPEAKER_03Uh let me put another thing to you, Glenn. Uh Richard Dawkins said a universe with a god would look quite different from a universe without one.
SPEAKER_01Brilliant. And to that we say, yep, tick. You're you're right. You're right, you're absolutely right. Yeah. Five stars to you. Um because what he's what he's getting at is that there are too many people he's saying, who say, well, I'm just a scientist and I don't care if God exists or not, it's completely irrelevant to my field of uh my my my discipline. And and he's saying, no, as a as a zoologist, as a biologist, it matters. Actually, if God exists and he runs the whole show, this universe would look different to if, you know, there was a blind watchmaker, to if the just our selfish genes are the only immortals that there are. Um this world would look different. And and and your opinion about whether God exists or not is not just this hobby that you can take up with a you know, with your pipe and slippers and and open a good book every now and again and think about you know this irrelevance about who God is. I like the fact that Richard Dawkins thinks it matters whether God exists or not. Some people don't. In our last episode, we thought about um Alan de Bottan s basically saying, um, I don't think God exists, but I don't think it really matters. Let's move on, let's forget about it. I like the fact that Richard Dawkins says, you know, God is not this tr privatized truth that's sort of out there in the ether or in here in some mysterious way only. He says, look, if God exists, then he matters in every kind of way. So so full marks for saying that yes, the existence of God or not really matters. But I think where I'd want to push back on on that is that you'd then want Dawkins to acknowledge that science, therefore, done by Christians will necessarily look different to science done by atheists, won't it, Richard? You know, if if you've already granted that the universe will look very different, therefore surely the the tools and the apparatus by which you study it would be different, and then the results that you get from that science would be different. So Richard, if if if you really think that's the case, then you should respect a Christian who comes up with a science that looks a bit different to yours or even radically different to yours. Um the fact that he doesn't respect that that other kind of science, I think, is inconsistent on his part. But he's raised a good point.
SPEAKER_03Okay, let me put another thing to you. Uh being good in order to get to heaven is hypocritical and ugly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, atheists are always saying that, and they're absolutely right. They're absolutely right. So I I was doing a I had a debate with a guy, he's the chief executive of the British Humanist Association last year, and um and he he ended his speech uh on the on the on the night saying, Let's all be good for goodness sakes. And I thought it sounded a bit cringeworthy and Twi at the time because it's it's it's a line from a Carol, isn't it? Um it's um you better watch out, you better not cry, you know I'm telling you why Santa Claus is is coming to town, you know, so be good for goodness sakes, right? Um what he's what he's saying is, okay, if you think you you religious people, you think God is a big Santa in the sky, don't you? And and you're just you just want your reward. You don't want coal in your stocking at the end of all things. You know, you want you want the presence, and that's the only reason why you're good. As against that, I'm a humanist and I just want to be good for the sake of being good. And I really like that. He's pointed out that there are religious people who are just worried about the carrot and the stick, who are just w you know, who are only good because God offers carrots to good boys and girls. And he you know, threatens them with sticks if they're if they're bad, you know, boys and girls. And what he wants to say is if the only reason why you Christians are good is because you want a heavenly reward or you want to avoid heaven, you know, hellish punishment. If that's the only reason why you're good, that's not good, is it? That's not good. I think that's a brilliant point to make. And I th I think we need to take that on board. Against that, we we then need to say, ah, you know what, let me tell you the gospel. The gospel is that Jesus Christ has taken the ultimate stick, you know, and and and he's the one who deserved the ultimate carrot, he got the ultimate stick, and and and he is my salvation. And actually, my standing with God doesn't depend on my good deeds or my bad deeds. And now, but now with Jesus, I'm free to be good. And it's not about my heavenly reward, and it's not about any hellish punishment. Now I'm free to be good. But you only get that with Jesus, you only get that with the gospel. But again, we can thank the atheists for raising a point that actually demolishes all Christless theism. Demolishes all Christless theism. But with Jesus we can come back and say, Ah, but with the gospel it's different, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03Okay, Glenn, here's another one. Um suffering is real.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and atheists are great at saying suffering is real. Um, you know, the debate that I that I just mentioned, the Andrew Copson got up and and his speech was basically just talking about parasites. He he spent his whole time just saying there's this kind of parasite that causes this kind of mutation and this kind of grotesque, you know. Um and it was horrible, it made all our stomachs turn to hear about all the parasites in the world that were causing all the great suffering and and and evil and and and I think he th he thought that was a you know just a killer blow against a creator god. It was and it was played for laughs, it was all like, oh, creator god, I think not. Ha ha ha. Um but before we come back at him, I I think it's important to to take on board that that kind of thing. Because if we if we just think of ourselves as theists in the abstract and we just believe in a creator god, then we're just gonna we we're gonna be blinkered to the suffering in the world, and we're just gonna sing all things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small. And we're gonna we're gonna be blind to what Monty Python wrote when they did a a parody of that song, and all things dull and ugly, all creatures short and squat, all things rude and nasty, the Lord God made the lot. Um each nasty little hornet, each beastly little squid, who made the spiky urchin, who made the sharks, he did. All things scabbed and ulcerous, all pox both great and small, putrid foul and gangrenous the Lord God made them all. And what they're doing, they're they're forcing us to do business with the real suffering of this world and a creator gods. How do we do that? Well at that point we need to come in with a doctrine of the fall. We absolutely need a doctrine of the fall. And this is this is what I said to Andrew Cobson in in the debate that actually parasites are a brilliant explanation of the gospel. Um because what do you have with a parasite? You have an original and ultimate good, life-giving good, that then gets perverted by a secondary parasite that clings onto it and and and turns it into something nasty. But that parasite depends on there being an ultimate good, and then the parasite comes along later and brings death. And once you understand that, you understand what Christians say about creation and fall. There is an original and ultimate good. The Lord God did make them all, but he didn't make them, you know, uh He didn't make them rude and nasty and short and squat and dull and ugly and poxes and gangrene. He didn't he didn't make that. Um there has been this fall, there's been this parasitic thing called evil that has turned us. Um But again, because the atheist brings up the real suffering in this world, they enable us to talk about gospel truths and not just theistic arguments for oh there's there's evidence for design in the universe. Of course there's evidence for the the design in the universe. But to pursue the evidence for design in the universe doesn't get you any further to explaining the gospel. To talk about creation and then fall, that starts you. And then to talk about how Jesus comes into this fallen world, into into all the pox and the gangrene, um, takes it on himself and rises up again you that that gets you into gospel gospel conversations. But I I think we can thank our atheist friends for bringing up these these issues of suffering.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. So here's another thing uh uh that uh the atheists have got right. Religion can be a terrible slavery.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. We agree. We agree. It totally it it can totally be, you know, religion slaves. Um there was a there's an atheist t-shirt I saw the other day, religion slaves. And um I mean that could have been straight out of the mouth of Jesus, couldn't it?
SPEAKER_03Uh I mean it's terrible sometimes. You you see people doing all sorts of rituals and offering food to a god or dear it you you my heart goes out to them. Yeah. Because uh you know they they f desperately feel that they need to do some kind of sacrifice or ritual. Yeah. Unless, you know, if they don't they believe they're they're dead.
SPEAKER_01There'll be a thunderbolt and it's like um at this debate um last year, one one of the guys from the other side said that religion is like the ultimate Stockholm syndrome. You know, Stockholm syndrome is where in a hostage situation the hostages fall in love with the hostage takers. And it's this weird kind of perverse love. It's not really love, it's an ugly thing, it's a dependence that turns into feelings of love, but it's not really love. And that's what religion is. It's all these people who have been taken hostage by this nasty God, and and we kind of call it love, even though he's just enslaving us. And yeah, and you do see that. You do see that. In fact, you know, the Bible kind of says that's kind of what sin is. But they enslave us and then we're in bondage to them. I mean, Stockholm Syndrome is a brilliant description of sin, actually, and it's a and it's a br brilliant description of when when religion goes wrong. So I I was looking at um uh Dan Barker, he um founded the the Freedom from Religion Foundation, um, used to be an evangelical Christian, and uh he he gives this description of of his sort of deconversion. He says, For my whole life there had been this giant eyeball looking at me. This God, this Holy Spirit, this church history and this Bible. Not only everything I did, but everything I thought was being judged. Was God pleased? So that was kind of the slavery. And then, you know, one one day he's kind of out in a field and he sort of looks up into the heavens and he realizes there's no God. And it's this moment of liberation. You can understand, if that's his God, what a moment of liberation to realise that's not true. What a moment. And so he says, suddenly I realize that that wasn't there anymore. And it occurred to me, I own these thoughts. Nobody knows what I'm thinking right now. There's no fear of hell, no fear of judgment. I don't have to be right or wrong, I can just be me, you know, my chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth, and followed me. You know, and it is this conversion experience, and it's suddenly this judging God. What do I do with this judging God? I've got to I've got to cast him off. Um But actually, you know, the the way the way you can come through that feeling of condemnation is not by ignoring God out there. Um so fascinating that um his conversion experience when he was sort of out in the field and looking up and found this real relief, it really reminds me of John Bunyan's conversion experience. Because John John Bunyan was also, you know, a very religious guy, and he was passing in a field, and he writes in his uh autobiography, he said, Suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, thy righteousness is in heaven. And I thought that I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God's right hand. And there I say is my righteousness. And and suddenly one once he realizes that you know Jesus is his righteousness, not himself, he's not going to be condemned because Jesus isn't isn't condemned. He says, Now did my chains fall from my legs indeed, I was loosed from my afflictions and irons, my temptations also fled away. And and suddenly, through the grace of God, he is released from you know the big CCTV camera in the sky. Hallelujah. But and and that's what you pray for the people like Dan Barker. That you won't find relief by just following yourself into life. You'll just enslave yourself to something else. You will.
SPEAKER_03So, Glenn, and the last thing that we've got, which uh where atheists have have got it right, is God as commonly understood is a monster.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. The god against which so many of these guys rail is a monster and is rightly condemned. So um so we've we've got lined up a clip from uh Chris Hitchens. Let's just let's just listen because I mean his his rhetoric is just stunning and it's just a a joy to behold. Um here is the god that Christopher Hitchens does not want.
SPEAKER_04Some people I know who are atheists will say they wish they could believe it. Some people I know who are former believers say they wish they could have their old faith back. They miss it. I don't understand this at all. I think it's a it's it's an excellent thing that there's no reason to believe in the absurd propositions I just uh admittedly rather briefly rehearsed to you. Um the main reason for this, I think, is that it is a totalitarian belief. It is the wish to be a slave, it is the desire that there be an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thought crime while you are asleep, who can who can subject you, who must indeed subject you, to a total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life, I'd say, of your life before you're born, and even worse, than where the real fun begins after you're dead. A celestial North Korean. Who wants this to be true? Who but a slave designs such a ghastly fate? I've been to North Korea.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, who? Who could possibly who could possibly want them? And so that what do we say? Not me. Not me. No thanks. No thanks. And and absolutely it's the CCTV camera in the sky, the North Korea. Which uh obviously Christian Christians uh have a very different doctrine of God, you know, b because we believe in Jesus, the Son of the Father, full of the joy of the Spirit, you know, our understanding of God's interest in our life is that his interest is entirely shaped by love. You know, here it here is a father pouring love and life onto his son by the Spirit, who gives his son into the world that we might know him, that we might be drawn into the life of this God. Um this God does want to know you, and he and he and he does he does know our thoughts. He does hem us in before and behind, as the psalmist says in Psalm 139. But that knowledge is very different to the the the North Korean, you know, Starzi's, you know, knowledge of you. That knowledge is is the knowledge of someone who loves you more than his own life. Um you know, my my wife is there when I wake up in the morning. And she's there when I go to sleep at night, and she knows my thoughts, and she wants to ask about my day, and she interrogates me about you know, but because it's my wife, it's wonderful, you know. When somebody loves you, the fact they've got their eyes on you is a is a wonderful thing. You know. There's the the the the little girl who um explained to her her mother, who wasn't a believer, her she explained to her mother what she'd been learning in Sunday school, and she said, you know, God God sees everything that we do. And the mother mother said, That sounds horrible. And the little girl said, No, he just can't take his eyes off me. It's that. It's that. And you know, and but if God is the celestial North Korea, then absolutely reject him the way that that Christopher Hitchens does. But if we're talking about the the God of Jesus, then suddenly this this God is different. You know, I of I often think of um of love songs. It's it's interesting how love songs um can often sound totalitarian, can't they? You take good care of yourself, you belong to me. Like, as a love song, that's sweet. If that's the North Korean Health Service saying it to you, you know, watch out, you belong to me. And we've got all these, you know, in in France sort of chains, uh sort of uh symbols of love, and when you get married, there's all sorts of things about locks and keys, and locks and keys, that's enslavement, isn't it? Well it's either enslavement or it's love. And from the outside it might look like enslavement. From the inside, if you've got this this god, then it's love. And then if it's this god, if it's this god of love, who wouldn't want this god? Who wouldn't want this god in their lives every waking moment? Who wouldn't want an eternity of this? That even after we're dead, that we live in the presence of this God who is so self-giving, who is so loving. Christopher Hitchens pushes us in the right direction. He he pushes us to reject an eminently rejectable God. Um but as we think a little bit deeper about Jesus, he forces us to see a a far greater God and a and a God who is really worthy of our trust and faith.
SPEAKER_03Okay, Glenn, well we've we've covered that quite well. Uh what atheists get right, or at least some of the things. And uh we'll go on next time to look at things that atheists get wrong.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, why not? Yeah. Equal airtime.
SPEAKER_03If you have any comments about today's show, just go to revivalmedia.org slash TEP18. Just before we go, I want to tell you about our International Daily Prayer Bulletin. It's a small twenty-four-page booklet that tells thirty-one stories of what God is doing around the world. Did you know that persecution of Christians in China has led to dramatic church growth? Or did you know that God is working in North Korea? Interesting since we just had that uh comment from Christopher Hitchens. Well, you can hear more about it in our prayer bulletin. Uh you can get it free of charge by going to revivalmedia.org slash bulletin. So again, uh the web address for this episode where you can comment on this specific show along with the relevant links is simply revivalmedia.org slash tep eighteen.