Is New Atheism Dead? Justin Brierly on the 'Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God'

- VIDEO NOTES

Justin Brierley was, for 17 years, the host of "Unbelievable?" on Premier Christian Radio. He is a broadcaster, author, and Christian apologist whose latest book is "The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God: Why new atheism grew old and secular thinkers are considering Christianity again".

- LINKS

- TIMESTAMPS

0:00 What is the book about?
5:30 Why would God allow religion to decline?
7:17 What is/was new atheism?
19:39 Are modern ethics based on Christianity?
39:06 Will religion always be replaced by something?
49:29 Secular thinkers don't think religion is bad anymore
1:02:52 Jordan Peterson and "belief" in God
1:09:52 C.S. Lewis and conversion to Christianity

- SPECIAL THANKS

As always, I would like to direct extra gratitude to my top-tier patrons:

John Early
Dmitry C.
Mouthy Buddha
Solaf

- CONNECT

SOCIAL LINKS:

Snapchat: cosmicskeptic

- CONTACT

Or send me something:

Alex O'Connor
Po Box 1610
OXFORD
OX4 9LL
ENGLAND

------------------------------------------

[bennetmoatshe]

I'm a South African athiest. It's interesting to listen to Justin talk about how religion/christianity is growing outside western culture. To some extent I think he's right. For a long time in SA there's been a stalemate between christianity and African spirituality, but over the last ten years or so, christianity has been growing and overpowering traditional African spirituality and beliefs. I don't know the statistics but if someone told me that christianity is the fastest growing religion in SA, I wouldn't be surprised. Christian churches are popping up like zits on a teenager's face in my community. However, if I were Justin I wouldn't be jumping for joy just yet, beacuse if I took Justin to the church my parents are attending and gave him a platform to preach his version of Christianity, they would lump him in with me!! . The christianity that is growing outside of western culture is not this new, philosophical, diluted version of Christianity that we see in the west, it's a fundamentalist religion that still asserts that Adam and Eve were real people in a real garden, that homosexuality is wrong and should be punished, that women should be subservient to their husbands and so forth. I also believe that the rise of Justin's new and philosophcal christianity is fueling the rise of fundamentalism outside the west. Preachers in my town point to someone like Justin and say to their congregation, "don't be like this guy. Look at how his faith has fallen. This is not what a Christian looks like. This is not how a Christian speaks". If you accused an African Christian of being anti-science, they would take it as a bedge of honor. Accuse Justin of the same and he gets offended. So Justin, before you start celebrating the rise of religion/christianity beyond the west, it would do you a great deal of good to first realise and acknowledge that it's not your version of Christianity.

[Philusteen]

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with Brierly here. On one hand sure, we could say that the conversation has shifted more into the social utility of religion, but it certainly hasn't changed anything about the problems religious practices have with their magical foundations. I'd also point out that we're only a couple of years out of a pandemic, and in the midst of that kind of full-scale psychological disruption it's pretty reasonable to see folks picking their rosaries back up for a while. No, I don't think the "new atheism" is dead at all; I just think that atheism offers little to wrap "community commonality" around. I also think Brierly is rather transparent in his soft-selling of Christianity; you know, that kind of "well, ignore all those problematic bits and just pick what feels good." I think there's a bit of a blind spot there about the fundamentals of actual Christian teaching, and I think you did a good job gently sussing that out.

[handitover.]

Alex man your channel and interviews are just the best. The vibes in this interview and even in the comments section is so drastically different than almost anywhere else on the internet (and even off the internet these days). To get to watch a calm interview between two people with such different opinions, form my own thoughts/opinions/questions throughout, then to scroll down and read others' well thought out responses to Justin's or your words it so fun. It's very inspiring, definitely helps me feel good on bad days and makes me want to dig into these kinds of topics forever :)

[TheFranchfry]

Alex! I just gotta say, your production quality is immaculate. The audio is well balanced and crisp. Thanks for the effort you put in behind the scenes!

[malirk]

The surprising thing about "rebirth of belief in God" is it is ironically explained by the way it is stated.

*BIRTH RATES*

Simply put, you see religious families having religious children. The birth rate among the non-religious is much lower and thus the propagating of lack of religion isn't happening. Religion hasn't become any more convincing with better arguments. Religious people know they can teach their kids religion at a young age and make it a core part of their worldview. From then on, it's more likely they'll remain religious.

[JakeStone-rc]

the big mistake in Justin’s arguments for Christianity and the majority of arguments I see from others defending Christianity is that they for some reason believe that “good values” or the “values of the west” belong to Christianity. It’s as if they think that being a “good person” never entered the mind of a human being until Christianity came onto the scene which is obviously and utterly ridiculous. Morality has been in development long before the birth of Christianity…

[joesouthwell]

This is such a beautiful example of 2 people of drastically different beliefs coming together in good faith.

[dorkchris]

Alex's channel is one of the few places on the internet, where people of opposing worldviews can be friendly and respectful. Even though I believe in Christ, I watch some content from atheists, to challenge my views, and most often going into a video I feel a lot of fear. Fear of being ridiculed, or labeled nasty things, or misrepresented. I'm never afraid to watch Alex's channel, because I know that all his discussions are on top of a firm layer of care and love for all living beings. Thank you, Alex, for constantly reminding me, that when I feel attacked or alone, people like you are out there in the world. I hope you reap great rewards and fruitful discussions for your hard work.

[elvaccio]

@15:25 "It's like saying that the people inventing weightlifting weren't jacked.. Well off course they weren't, they hadn't invented weightlifting yet!" -That made me laugh out loud and must be one of the more quote worthy things Alex has said in a little while. Thoroughly enjoyed this nuanced and civilized conversation ❤

[markmckeen]

Fantastic interview Alex. I'm a 67 yr old Male in US. I was born and raised a Christian and deconverted approx 20 yrs ago. It's funny but I see things in just the opposite way as Justin. To me, yes there is more constructive conversation about God these days than in the past. However, I see more people deconstructing and leaving Christianity rather than atheists starting to be interested in or actually becoming Christians. Love your you tube videos.
Carry on.
Mark in Michigan

[notavailable]

Great conversation. As a Christian I would love to press him on where these ideas of equality come from and what the overlap is between that and post enlightenment ideology. To me, that was his weakest point. If we value equality then why stop at just some equality? It seems there is a disjunct there between his faith and his values that he hasn't thought all the way through yet. I find this is true for probably most Christians. Ironically, they have internalized post enlightenment values just as thoroughly as they say the new atheists have internalized Christian values. And to me, it's just as big of a blind spot that demands its own reckoning.

[He.knows.nothing]

Im really glad that you challenged the Tom Holland rhetoric. As an atheist, I have no quarrel with admitting that a lot of our culture's understanding of morality was pioneered by Christianity, but to say that all of it was conceptualized by Christianity is a blatant ignorance of several other traditions and lineages of information. I think it's true that Christianity itself attempts to describe reality, including the very real realities of the human experiences of virtue and morality. However, I don't think that effectively describing virtue and morality makes those experiences in any way contingent upon Christianity itself. I also don't see any reason as to why they can't be reflected back on Christianity to support the atheist case. The internal contradictions of the Bible's moral theories were one of the reasons I deconstructed my faith to begin with. I could never bring myself to imagine that Jesus Christ himself would command us to stone, conquer, or enslave anyone and that Christ-like virtue was the very crack in the foundation that I needed to free myself through deconstruction.

I don't think that Christians realize that deconstruction isn't centered on Christianity, but rather our entire conceptualization of identities. Christianity is merely one of the most influential identities in a diverse list of sociocultural relations that people have and for most atheists, once the religion falls, so too do the rest of the dominos (political, national, ego, etc) that were entrenched in that Christian foundation. Learning our sociocultural history, the various influences of different ideas and how they've interacted with each other such that we could emerge as we are today is one of the most important things we can do to reconstruct ourselves in the wake of our atheism. Outside of the chains of dogma, we can be free to use different perspectives as they effectively apply and one of the reasons that we are so caught up in the Christian perspective on values is that we are often trying to demonstrate that very same internal moral inconsistency that severed our ties to begin with. We are trying to engage with you by speaking your own language.

At the end of the day, we are very aware that we use the same selfless love that you find in Jesus to challenge the hate and the violence and the bigotry that most of the rest of the religious frame is chained to, and if that weren't the case, we probably wouldn't have had a reason to deconvert to begin with.

There's also a case to be made about pre-existing cultures in general. Would Christianity not then owe its values to Zoroastrianism, Greek and Egyptian polytheism, even Canaanite polytheism, or other pagan religious traditions and philosophies? It's not like Jesus or Moses were the inventors of selflessness, but surely Christians don't then argue that their understanding wasn't also afforded to them by their predecessors. The potential for love isn't just Christian, it's human.

[SkinnyGreekGod]

My West African ancestors would turn in their grave if they were told that before the white man landed on their shores with the Bible, they knew nothing about human dignity and compassion.

[ramigilneas]

I am pretty sure that apologetics are also dying right now…
The war is over… Atheism won… last year alone a million people left the church in Germany.

[tomgreene]

The victory in this conversation is the civilized tone of the participants .

[gerhitchman]

As per usual Alex seems either unwilling or unable to push back on the absurd claims of these Christians

[Baron]

Justin's main blindspot is that he's analyzing these issues from too religious a lens. He credits all western moral development to Christianity because it's based on compassion, and surely compassion was invented by Christianity. He looks at the obsession with wokeism as a religious impulse, instead of a outflowing of manufactured political outrage bait. People are becoming more interested in Catholicism because they're finding legitimate truth value in it all of a sudden, nevermind that all the people "realigning" on this happen to be right wing political pundits hyping "return to tradition" aesthetics and political messaging.

[SchlimmShadySmash]

This guy... I'm sorry, but the claim that all compassion stems from Christian morals is so utterly ridiculous and Alex' attempts of gently communicating the lack of coherence Justin's claims have are frustratingly patient. At some point you have to just snap. He critisizes that atheists are "chery picking" evidence to show that religion has caused religion-specific evil, but when he is shown that Christian scripture dictates homocidal homophobia as a virtue, that needs to be looked over because the bible still teaches the "impetus to do good". Ridiculous. Also: So human dignity and compassion stem from Christian morals? So every human civilisation before Christianity had no shred of morals? Who is going to believe this nonsense? What about compassion just actually being a mechanism in our fucking DNA that is based on reciprocity, a survival strategy that is btw obvservable in certain species of primate's behvaiour. Seems more reasonable to me than to weirdly choose a specific religion that you happen to believe in by chance, because you happen to have been born in this century, and because you're british. This man very obviously is desperately clinging onto his world view with sheer dishonesty towards himself.

[cmhhansen]

The idea that something like compassion is rooted specifically in Christianity is wild. And attributing things to Christianity because they were developed by Christians in a time and place where everybody was Christian (at least publicly) is also wild. We don't know how the world would look now had Christianity not become the official religion of the Roman Empire, but it would take a brave person to insist that we wouldn't have arrived at a lot of the same social liberal values without it.

[cachinnation]

Former atheist here, saved by a stupendous intervention from what I now know to be God - it's all grace. I love Alex as the most honest atheist and Justin as a most honest Christian. Very good conversation.