Matthew Arnold 1867 the Sea of Faith was once at the full but now I only hear its Melancholy long withdrawing Roar Tom Holland a historian Steven Meyer a scientist Douglas Murray an author the god question on uncommon knowledge [Music] now welcome to un commmon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson educated at Cambridge Tom Holland is the author of many works of ancient history including Rubicon the last years of the Roman Republic and Herodotus the histories an original translation by a man who taught himself ancient Greek I repeat he taught himself ancient Greek Tom Holland's most recent work the 2019 volume Dominion the making of the western mind as the book is titled in Britain or as the book is titled in the United States Dominion how the Christian Revolution remade the world Steven Meyer holds a degree in geophysics and a degree from Cambridge in the philosophy of science now a fellow at The Discovery Institute Dr Meyer has published a number of books including just last year Return of the god hypothesis three scientific discoveries that review the Mind behind the universe a graduate of Oxford two Cambridge one Oxford actually two Oxford if you if you count me a graduate of Oxford the author Douglas Murray publishes regularly in The Spectator magazine he too has published a number of books including his 2017 besteller the strange death of Europe immigration identity and Islam Douglas Murray's most recent book published this very year the war on the west how to Prevail in the age of unreason H stepen and Douglas welcome all right in recent years each of you has published work that establishes what not necessarily the truthfulness of any particular religious claims but at least in our civilization the size of those claims the magnitude of those claims the importance of the influence so let's a discussion in two parts let me ask you in part one each of you to discuss your work briefly and then in part two you'll explain to me what it means Tom Holland from Dominion I was once more than ready to accept Edward Gibbon's interpretation of the Triumph of Christianity Gibbon the author of The Decline and fall of the Roman Empire Gibbon's interpretation that Christianity had ushered in an age quoting Gibbon an age of superstition and credulity but the more years I spent immersed in the study of classical Antiquity the more alien I found it explain that well when I was a child I was um I I was raised Christian I loved the Bible stories but the truth was that I actually preferred um the figures of the great Empire so I was on the side of pharaoh rather than the children of Israel I was on the side of Nebuchadnezzar rather than the judeans I was on the side of Pontius Pilate I'm ashamed to say rather than Jesus so I identified very strongly with the with with particularly the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome and so when I um uh I grew up and left behind childish things I nevertheless maintained my fascination with Greece and particularly with Rome and those were the subjects of the the first books that I wrote but um as I said in the passage that you just read uh any sense I had that I was the heir of Greece or of Rome came under enormous strain because while say the Romans were a very moral people it became increasingly clear to me that that morality was something very very unsettling um and the more I reflected on this the more I kind of started thinking what changed where do I where do my instincts where do my assumptions come from and um rather like someone you know you f you you you've got an itch on your back and you're kind of trying to scratch it and then finally I found it I I realized that essentially I my friends the country the civilization I live in is actually not really the air of Greece or Rome at all it's it's been profoundly and utterly shaped by Christianity to the degree that I would say I say in the book that that we all of us in the west whether we are believers or non-believers whether we are Jews Muslims Hindus living in the west we are all of us in a sense goldfish swimming in Christian Waters because Christianity has so radically affected our assumptions not just about ethics or morality but about the most basic cons way we we we contemplate Society the the idea of the secular the idea of there being something called religion all of this is so shaped by Christianity that that I think we remain in very very fundamental ways deeply Christian personal Believers or not it's still the water in which we swim I think I think there's a case for saying that um a logical Endo of Christianity is is a kind of atheism that has been very Evangelical over the past few decades in the west we'll come to that Douglas the war on the West in considering the great cathedrals of Europe you write you could wonder whether the money used to build these structures was honestly acquired or whether some portion was taken illegitimately rather a navish thought really but still you could do all these things and more or you could stand back and admire the St Chappelle in Paris the capella s SEO in Naples the duo in Florence just down the hill from where we're sitting now why should we not simply stand back and credit our Good Fortune to have inherited these things these are a gift to all humankind close quote so the war on the west is in at least in part a war on what do you want to say a Christian inheritance how well obviously the Christian inheritance is a huge part of it I mean as as Tom H already said what I regard as Tom's a historian IDE ancient world and if I was to give myself a self-appointed title I'd say I was a historian of the present I mean I'm trying to work out always in my books what's going on in our era and one of the things that seems to me undeniable of the last 20 years for instance has been actually an attempt to deny what Tom shows proves in his book we we have wanted to show that we didn't need the Christian inheritance even to say that it wasn't there that we could get there through ways that um the Ancients were enough or that the enlightenment was enough there was a there was a sort of wed effort to not need Christianity and I think there's an interesting question there of of why and uh there is a there is an answer to that uh which is which is something that's been posed is known as bck and for's dilemma which is can a culture continue to exist if it has cut itself off from the thing which gave it birth now the answer to that question may well be no could be yes and the analogy I tend to use is is maybe it's like soaring off the roots of a tree that you're sitting in um however it means that there is a a desire on the part of some people to say actually that's not the tree that we're on I think Tom's work proves of course it is of course we we are we dream Christian dreams we we we we swim in Christian Waters we're Christian whether we like it or not um but nevertheless this poses a big challenge uh because for the what we now are the moderns we have this this dilemma of our own does that mean in that case we have to go back to Faith for many people that's simply not possible myself included what happened in the 19th century happened what happened in the 20th century happened we are not where we were 300 years ago in terms of learning or philosophy or anything else and and what's more there is this fear and I'm sure this will come up at some point there is a fear that whenever you credit this Gap that exists today people will say well in that case believe and yet and and that's what by the way one of the assumptions that many people take away from Matthew Arnold's poem which you started with is the Assumption because of course Arnold talks about the the long withdrawing raw but with but but many people have said since Arnold wrote that but of course the sea goes out and it can come back in again now of course Christian Believers hope that's going to happen and my uh my stance is we don't know we don't know what it is we're going towards maybe we are in the position that people in the ancient world were when in the end people lost faith in the old gods the temples were no longer visited something else took over if you visit many churches in Europe you can't help thinking that something like that must be underway at the moment what do you do with these buildings in the C of all of our Villages when nobody goes into them other than as items of archaeological interest so so give me the name of the Dilemma again Walken forward is dilemma is a a distinguished German jurist of the late having trouble catching the name because it has a in the middle all right so what do you make of that dilemma this this notion that Douglas The Emptiness of the churches we're shooting today I should say in f f Italy I mispronounce that name every single time I said it when we recorded here three years ago and it turns out we have Italian speaking listeners I've been corrected you got corrected here's what I discovered walking around Florence the place down the hill the place is mul but the churches are beautiful and they're cool and they're empty lovely place to go for a walk what do you make of that well I I I see the um the repudiation ation or the the decline of institutional Christianity the Paradox is my Paradox for what it's worth that is that in itself is an expression of the distinctive character of let's call it Western Christianity Latin Christianity um at the molten core of Christianity is the idea that you can be born again that um you can be washed in the baptismal Waters and emerge a new being and what happens very distinctively in the Latin West in the 11th century through the 12th century is that this Paradigm is applied to the whole fabric of society it becomes the ambition of of radicals who seize control of the Bishop Rick of Rome the greatest um sea in the Latin world that they will they will cleanse the whole of Christendom that they will uh Purge the the radiant white Robes of the church from The Grubby pouring hands of kings and Emperors who also claim a stake in the dimension of the Supernatural and over the course of the Middle Ages we see twin Dimensions emerge one of these Dimensions is what since the time of Augustine has been described as the cyclum which literally means the the Flux Of Time people born on the Flux Of Time heading towards Oblivion um that is the fate of Fallen mankind what can how can mankind be redeemed from that well it can be Redeemed by the religio the bond that can be jooin us to to The Eternity of heaven and that is what the church provides so for the reformers there are these twin dimensions of the culum and religio and over the course of the Middle Ages and then into the reformation and into the modern period this emerges to become idea of of the secular and then of there being something called religion but um what happens in the Middle Ages is that the the kind of the lava of that initial Rebellion that initial process of reformatio of reformation calcifies and the rebels of one age become the elites of of another and this generates the revulsion Luther's revoltion Calvin's revoltion that generates the reformation and um in the Reformation you see what early Christians had done towards the Roman world the the the tearing down of idolatry the banishing of superstition only now it is the the Roman Church that is seen as something to be torn down that is a kind of abiding Christian impulse moving into the the enlightenment into the French Revolution the Russian Revolution you see exactly these same instincts only now it is it's not just the Roman Church that is the target of this this uh this this repudiation it's the whole fabric of Christianity but the Instinct the Paradox say of the French Revolution is that when the revolutionaries are tearing down the the the Privileges and the the fabric of the churches renaming Notre Dame what was it the Temple of Justice Temple of Reon reason right yeah um they're doing it for deeply deeply Christian reasons and that's why I I mean I said at the beginning of this that there is I think a kind of inherent Trend within Christianity that moves towards atheism because you know even before Christianity the impulse of the Hebrew prophets is to condemn the gods of the Egyptians or the Babylonians as so much stock or stone um and tell people that there are you know there is no Divine manifest in Springs or on the top of Hills the reformers are doing that in the Reformation um materialist scientists now are doing that the the process of banishing the super desacralizing the world is an incredibly Christian one surely we have I think sure I say surely as if I'm sure of this I'm not uh Rene jard would draw the distinction between Christianity proper and Hyper Christianity which seizes upon and this was Gerard's the point you just made as far as I understand it was extremely close to if not exactly the same point that Renee Gerard was making which is the hyper Christianity is actually quite dangerous there's a notion of egalitarianism in Christianity the Communists take that and take that value and blow it up and lose the sense of proportion lose the lose the larger context secularized form of religion Douglas writes in the war of the West as Christianity has withdrawn so one new religion in particular has found its way into the cultural mainstream it is the new religion of anti-racism with other Grand narratives collapse the religion of anti-racism fills people with purpose and a sense of meaning to eliminate Christian belief how to put this we cannot go back to a pre-christian world that at a minimum is Tom's point is that at a at a very minimum we can though we've and we've tried it in in certainly in Europe with fascism fascism was on one level deeply you it was fascinated by the future it was fascinated by tanks and airplanes and shiny new equipment but it was also deeply backl looking there was a conscious effort to go back to the pre-christian world so musolini is identifying with with with Augustus and Hitler actually unlike himler Hitler was was was very much identified with both the Greek the classical Greeks and the Romans he saw them as as as Aryans Freud Freud that statement that that the Nazis were not were were some kind of hearkening back to the to the fork the p and pass yes yeah and and by the way I just add one other thing to that um which is what a point that David balinsky has made in a book that actually you know if you look back at the 20th century what what is the one thing that the the murderers uh gangs of Paul pot Hitler and Stalin and every other desport of the 20th century what's the one thing they all had in common none of them thought that God was watching but Douglas I I I would distinguish the Nazis from those inspired by communist ideology communist ideology Bears the DNA of Christianity because it's all about the last will be first the first will be last you know D and Lazarus it's all there it's a secularized form of Christianity that that denies that God is watching and therefore all things are with a deep strain of the apocalyptic this idea that the world can be born again that New Jerusalem can be born the thing about the Nazis is that unlike the French or the Russian revolutionaries or the Chinese Revolution well the French and the Russian revolutionaries who were who were bred of the Matrix of a Christian Society unlike them the Nazis consciously repudiate not just institutional Christianity but the fundamental values of Christianity and they you know Paul says there is no Jew or Greek the the idea of a kind of universal human dignity is fundamental to Christian ideology they reject that s but not to the Nazis yeah but and also the other the other core one of course that they reject is and I said that the the the image of the Cross symbolizes the idea that the the tortured triumphs over the torturer that is not what the Nazis believe the naris believe that the strong should crush down the weak and they do it for for for the Nazis do it not because they want to be Wicked or evil they do it because they think that is what is morally Justified if if I make a couple of points quickly one thing is noticeable that we've devolved onto discussion of the Nazis but there's a reason which is that we also live still in the shadow of that we certainly do and and Europe where we're currently sitting lives under a previous Shadow as well when Pope Benedict visited England my friend Rabbi Jonathan Sachs uh gave an address to Pope Benedict in which he said something very important he said the peoples of Europe didn't lose faith in God just simply because they lost faith in God they lost faith in the idea of the people of God being able to get on with each other Europe as people know 16th century was a a hellish demonstration of the fact that religion brought War brought turmoil to Societies in the 20th century we have to work out how we have God after this and we're still working that out we're nowhere near a conclusion if we could ever get to one but it's it's it's it's interesting that everything must always be polluted by it because it's another one of the reasons why the peoples of Europe and the peoples of the Christian World moved away from God that's such an interesting observation Douglas because in essence he's saying that we we've lost faith in God because we've become disillusioned with ourselves MH and I think there was a interesting piece in the New York Times a couple summers ago by Ross D at the very uh thoughtful columnist there who is also U I think a Catholic uh believer and he was raising the question and it's the same question I'd like to to raise which is on given all that's happened in the past and given the human failures and the and the wars of the last century um is it yet still possible to rethink the god question because we didn't reject God because of a lack of evidence for the reality of God in creation or in our world there's an there is rather in instead an in there's an intellectual antecedent there's the the the enlightenment in the 18th and 19th century there's the 19th century scientific materialism but then there's also this background of of the human nature problem expressed in the religious wars but if we look at the evidence itself um historical or scientific I mean scientific evidence and I and I also think there's been a great shift in philosophy away from you know there were the these very fasile disproofs of the possibility of the miraculous by people like David hum and the enlightenment I think those are your most philosophers regard those as as very weak arguments indeed but um I think the scientific evidence to me I I had a long myself tort tortuous uh religious conversion it took about seven years it was anything but a Damascus Road experience you know I overthought everything but finally settled and um and it was soon after that that I began to encounter uh these scientists at Major meetings who were themselves having intellectual conversions to some form of theism and later even to to Christianity alen Sandage a notable figure a great uh longtime Jewish agnostic cosmologist whom I heard speak early in my scientific career and he shocked the Audience by explaining how he had come to a belief in God not in not in spite of the scientific work that he did but in large part because of it he was one of the scientists who was documenting the expansion of the universe and dowod in this piece in the New York Times two summers ago said you know look in light of some of these developments he was talking about what the one he he cited was the the fine tuning argument that the physicists are talking about that the Universe not only had a beginning but it's been finely tuned against All Odds and for no underlying physical reason to allow for the possibility of life and some of these developments intellectually I think ought to cause us perhaps to rethink that default materialism or atheism that we all inherited out of the 19th century now we have two modes of thought taking place here as far as I can tell you're you're talking about the evidence the scientific evidence I don't know what how you respond to that but the I'm not I'm a Layman that strike is very compelling that has to be taken into account that new evidence can no more be unknown or undiscovered than can mode of thought number two just a moment remember the trenches in the first world war those were Christian nations that was pre-nazi those were all Christian nations engaging in Slaughter of each other on an astonishing massive scale it's a huge question where were the Statesmen to stop that where was God where was God these are these are things that also the history cannot be unexperienced or un it was just the Second World War I mean Christian faith for many people died in the PSAL um but but I think that something has to be observed here which what Steph says which is that if if you're a person of Faith let Al a person of the Christian faith whenever a new discovery comes up you will want it to bolster the argument you have now the problem by I can say is that many atheists will take the same line or albeit the opposite way which was that they will hope that it will bolster their case my own view of course remains we just don't know and it seems to me that Christians will want the answers to be Christianity atheists will want it to be atheism but the the mode that our own age should try to be in should be to simply be open to these questions I I completely agree hold on hold on I'm going to reassert control and and give the first question no no it it'll get more interesting to to take this here's what I'd like to know what I'd like to pursue next is what do we need a and b what is intellectually tenable at this stage in the the scientific discoveries cannot be unknown and the horrifying experience of the 20th century cannot be unlived and should not be forgotten okay two quotations George Washington far and this is coming to you George Washington Farewell Address reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can Prevail in exclusion of religious principle National morality he's talking about an old-fashioned idea virtue Tom Holland and Dominion in the ancient world quote even Skeptics who scorned the possibility that a fellow mortal might truly become a god were happy to concede its Civic value close quote whether you believe in Christianity or not all three of you grant that that is our moral that is those are the moral Waters we swim in do we need to behave as if were true how do you sustain the kind of civic virtue that everybody senses a decent Society needs well so this is this is this is the question that um n who whose writings were taken were given by the German government to soldiers marching to the to the Western Front that he has posed most kind of challengingly I think and essentially he is he is saying can you have um Christian values Christian ethics Christian morality without Christian belief and his his take which has been very very influential on me is that Communists socialists um liberals nature was particularly contemptuous of the um the English-speaking brand of liberalism um are essentially um Christians mon they they they think that they have cast off Christianity but they haven't really and n's great Parable is that God is dead that his corpse lies in a great cave but that um the corpse is so enormous that it continues to cast shadows and these Flicker and change and and we continue to see them but that in the long run this will generate convulsive process of change and to to be honest that prophecy came true in in the Third Reich I came it it came through much faster than he thought and I think the shock of that was so great for us that in a way Nazism served to create a new mythology so if you like the shadow that is flickering on our current cave is actually the shadow of God that's flickering on the shadow of the C flickering on the cave is is um is is a Nazi one and rather than rather than the devil now we have Hitler rather than hell we have outfits and that is why we are ha so haunted by the Nazis Douglas said you know I can't believe we've got n already but I mean we're B to because because I think before the N before the third rag people even if they weren't Christian they would accept Christ as the kind of the the moral Exemplar and they would say what would Jesus do I think by and large people now say what would Hitler do and do the opposite yes and people people accuse you know the the joke you go on on you know you go on social media within 3 seconds people will accuse you of being an this is the kind of the great joke but it's it's it's similar to the Readiness that that people in earlier ages might have said you know to accuse people of being in Hawk with the devil or whatever um and but we we fear and dread and loath the Nazis for deeply deeply Christian reasons because the question that none of us ever really paused to think is well what was so wrong with what the naris said what was what's so wrong with being racist what's so wrong with trampling down the week by the way our friend David brinsky says the Holocaust was like the crucifixion it was an event that changed everything yes which is fair of course I mean um in San's most famous poem has that terrible line remember tot is D Meister of Dand death is a master from Germany all right so back to while I've got these two Englishmen while around this so Charles King now King Charles gives hisl is now an American I'm not an American I reside you reside in America you reside in America I pass engl in new pass you don't pass for one second pause you don't pass for one second Charles King Charles it is the year 2022 and the evening his mother dies the evening of the day on which he has become king he gives an address to the nation in which he speaks about the special relationship of the crown to the Church of England in which his own faith resides the role and the duties of monarchy also remain as does the sovereign's particular relationship and responsibility towards the church of England the church in which my own faith is so deeply rooted this is what a hopeless anachronism useful to the nation to continue some sense of continuity with the Christian with the English Christian inheritance what do you do with this if I can try to tie that up with what you said earlier but of course Thomas Jefferson took the the view that the Civic virtues of Christianity were such that you could pretend to do it effectively even if you didn't do the believing and there's an interesting I mean there people who believe in belief I might be one of them is it's something that uh people can do it's a good thing all all the data crazy position all the data shows that you're going to be happier if you're a Believer and and much more um in in in in Britain the established church has a very distinctive function which is to effectively um uh own the pra own reigin how would you put it um someh yes temper the enthusiasm of religion contain it within the state it it was a very important uh um statement that he made uh King Charles had in the 1990s toyed with this idea that he would rather than take the the title defender of the faith would somehow be defender of faith and this and this this is interesting because of of course our own age has got a lot of sort of syncretic religion running through it you know um hybrids of bits of Christianity a bit of Buddhism a bit of usually a bit of quite a large bit of Buddhism and um and there was a sort of idea maybe he's going to do that in which case several things including the established church would have actually been in serious trouble he resisted that he did a thing I think which is correct is to say no this is is the this is one of the titles I've inherited and I'm the defender of the faith and that's just what we've inherited in England in Britain so so I mean Ju Just Just spe specifically on um the mystery of uh royalty and Christianity I think that one of the problems for for institutional Christianity for the churches is that in a way they've been too successful that their teachings have in a sense been nationalized so particularly in in European countries perhaps more than the United States but still in the United States um Education Health all these kind of things that previously were uh the responsibility of churches have now you know they've been secularized and in a sense the church itself has been secularized it's it's it's the the Instinct I think of uh certainly in in a National Church like the Church of England of many of the priests is to um identify with the uh the the kind of the preponderant ideology of the of the age which is a secular one my own personal feeling is that that's a terrible mistake and that Christianity is nothing if it's not spectacularly odd if if if if the strangeness the weirdness the mystery is not given space to Bree and that comes across so beautifully in your writing to but so it the preface of your book really is J jarring because if you swim in Christian Waters and you forget just how how old it is how old it is but but it struck me very powerfully with the funeral of the queen that um people were being touched by the strangeness of it by the sense that you know the queen was anointed this is a ritual that goes back um a thousand years in England But ultimately goes back to ancient Israel to to David and to Solomon and people felt themselves touched and moved by something strange that they didn't understand and it was a rare moment where a sense of the weird was allowed to enter into the very heart of the State and and people were stirred by it and I think that it would be a terrible mistake for the new king if he you know look if presuming he wants the monarchy to survive and indeed the Church of England to survive if he was the stint on the element of the strangeness within the coronation I think he should absolutely agree I've got a very quick observation as well if I may um I completely agree with what Tom just said there's a specific difficulty for Christians which I I certain other religions doesn't exist and let me give an example is Judaism uh uh some years ago I said to a rabbi friend an orthodox Rabbi friend I said would you a rather rude question but I said would you agree that many people who come to your synagogue do not believe in God and he said almost I'd have thought and I said well what lesson do you draw from that and he said this year in the UK 98% of British Jews will be celebrating the holy days now now I say that because in Christian terms when there are reasons why Jews can be practicing without being believing and there was a debate about believing belonging well yes but what does it mean to be a Christian who wants Christian tradition to continue but cannot go to the church or thinks other people can go for them all right well this is what I appreciate about these two gentlemen so much is that they both have this deep appreciation ation of the importance of Christianity and and genuine belief in God and at least in Doug's case Douglas's case sorry can't quite get themelves over the line to belief I don't quite know where where Tom stands on that but I I'm used to engaging these uh very angry U atheists who hate Christianity and hate belief in God but um in a in a piece I did for the Jerusalem Post last summer um eulogizing the great physicist Steven Weinberg I talked about about this that there was the the old new atheists you know the Richard Dawkins and Weinberg was one of them Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens but there's a kind of new new atheist uh people who authentically lament the loss of Christian belief in the Christian or of a theistic foundation a judeo-christian foundation for our culture but authentically also can't themselves come to belief and I I have hoped that my own work might open up that discussion in a new way because we've inherited all this baggage from the Enlightenment and the rise of scientific materialism you know figures like Darwin marks and Freud from the late 19th century who so shaped the world de the 20th century and yet I think there's there is a very legitimate and genuine U intellectual opportunity to to reassess these deep questions apart from the baggage of the religious wars and U you know within Christianity I think there is there is a frame work for explaining even how Christians can end up resorting to violence against each other because there is this deep uh uh teaching about the fallenness of man and that that affects us all the human nature problem is not eliminated simply because you believe in Christianity but on the other hand I think the materialists lack the intellectual framework to account for the extraordinary evidence that we have of design in the universe and of the for the creation of the universe and these fundamental questions that we have assumed science has already uh adjudicated are I think being reopened by discoveries that have frankly shocked us and even Richard Dawkins has acknowledged this um last summer he talked about the the he was knocked sideways with Wonder at the discovery of the the digital signal or the digital processing of information inside cells it was not anything he expected from his blind pitiless processes Stephen let me hit you yeah and I do mean to hurl it at you excellent with a passage from St Paul this is 1 Corinthians 15 speaking of O I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures that he was seen of sephus then of the 12 after that he was seen of 500 Brethren at once of whom the greater part remain unto this present close quote so St Paul is right there ruling out the easy ethical option Christ is the great teacher we can take certain messages uh follow his ex example what would Jesus no that's not all he is insisting that Christians believe in the resurrection he's he's appealing to the testimony of eyewitnesses and he is appealing to the testim he is saying in effect if you don't believe me there's still sever several hundred people still alive he's appealing to the testimony with that had the greatest weight in Roman law and still has the greatest weight in our law which is iwitness Tes he's appealing to what we would call today an empirical basis for Faith okay and we have ruled that possibility out largely because of development and Enlightenment philosophy the secular Enlightenment philosophy people like Hume who said that Miracles were impossible and uh and because of developments in the 19th century in science which suggested that God did not exist the rise of materialism the the the miraculous accounts in the Bible are a great offense to the intellect of people who have been who you know been trained in schools like we've all been to because we've inherited a worldview that says Miracles are impossible and that world view is materialism the probability of a miracle given scientific materialism or scientific naturalism or scientific atheism is your worldview is zero because a miracle is an act of God if God does not exist there is no possibility of of of of a miracle and then when you read those docu the documents of the of the Tanakh the the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament you necessarily have to Simply deduce that the the the events that are recorded could not possibly have happened because there there because Miracles are impossible and there is no there is no God to exist but if there is now a case and I I don't think there's ever not been a case for the real the the reality of God but I think the case has gotten so strong and scientific atheism has become so itself so weird in opposing it we we now have the Multiverse hypothesis as an as an alternative to the evidence of design we have in the fine tuning when I my main work has been about the evidence of design at the foundation of life in biology the digital code that's in the DNA and to explain that this the the uh the chemical evolutionary theorists and secular evolutionary biologists are have not come up with an evolutionary account of the origin of information some of them are now talking about the the information coming from a space alien the so-called panspermia hypothesis and so you're getting this very strange way in which it's now scientific atheism that is engaging in the formulation of ever more yeah epicycles of of of strange hypothesis so your point is my point is the belief in theism is incredible let me frame it up your point is that big bang the discovery of fine-tuning the discovery of unbelievably complex code even in the simplest forms of life that makes a belief in Resurrection Orthodox Christianity intellectually respectable it makes a belief in theism very credible and if there is and that changes the prior probability as the philosophers would say of a miracle and that means you have to reassess those those those biblical texts on straight up historical grounds without having a presupposition that precludes the possibility that there is historical support for the events recorded therein do you buy any of this well what I what I would say I to slightly spin what's even saying in a different way right is that um it's not as though secular liberals whether they're atheist agnostic whatever aren't equally capable of believing weird mad things um and talking about about you know alien seedings I mean that's quite odd but I would say that also very odd is say a belief that human beings have rights the idea that human rights exist um most people in the west believe in human rights but human rights don't exist objectively I mean they're as Fantastical as believing in angels and they have a very specic you know their Origins very specifically rooted in Christian theology it's it's it's formulated by the lawyers who are in the wake of the great revolution of the 11th and 12th century are trying to construct a fabric of framework of law for the Christian people and they look to the scriptures and they see that Christ teaches that those who are rich should um you know give shelter and food and water and clothing to the poor and they deduce from that the Instinct that the poor therefore have rights to these things and this sets in train this incredibly fertile notion the human being have rights now people today very reluctant to face up to the idea that this is a very culturally contingent idea rooted in Christian theology medieval Catholic theology and so they say well you'll find uh the you know human rights it's in China or Greece or Rome or whatever but it isn't and I think that um what I have found meditating and reflecting on the inher incredible inheritance of Christian Theology and practice and liturgy and all kinds of things is that I want to believe in the things that I believe in as a secular humanist I want to believe in human rights and if I can believe in that there are times where I think well I might as well be hanged for a for a sheep as a lamb if I can believe in human rights then why can't I believe in angels can can we Stephen and I push you then on your belief well so as a historian there in the west you are the air to two different Traditions you're the heir to the Greek tradition of history in which to be honest the gods don't play much role certainly they're present in herodias they're they're virtually invisible in fuses but um you also have the uh the tradition of history that you get in in in the Bible where events are shaped by the hand of God and those are Traditions that feed through grew into the Western inheritance of of of History um I would absolutely identify myself as as a historian with the Greek tradition I don't think that it's my role to um to identify the hand of God I I try to explain um Christian history in human terms but having said that I have found the experience of of of immersing myself in the history of Christianity and the examples of Christian history often to be un settling you know it often is but I think why do I even when I'm unsettled by Christian history I realize that it's for Christian reasons if if I'm if I'm unsettled if I'm unsettled by the Inquisition it's because they are killing innocent you know it's it's powerful people killing innocent an innocent person and you know why do I why am I of the ancient world the Greco Romans would not have worried about those same types of events the way as doin you know in his great great story about The Inquisitor chrisis you know if if you as an atheist are enshrined the Inquisition as a model of something horrific it's for Christian reasons it's because you are you are you are shaped by a culture that has had an innocent person put to death by state apparatus at the heart can I can I so yes and and so therefore I feel that my the the the kind of the bundle of my instincts my beliefs my presumptions are generated by this incredibly mysterious Christian inheritance and I am very very I'm very open to accepting that there is a strangeness there that I don't want to deny all right you know what May thank you may I talk about two types of Strang at some point but Douglas is you get di on two two points of strangeness by the way when you quoted St Paul and you talking about that am I right Tom who's the the ancient um who sees St Paul and recorded it somebody there there there's a physical description of St Paul I think so there are there are medieval letters in which Sena and St Paul is supposed to have communicated but I don't think can so you would not uh a it is possible but you do not yourself it is possible for a with it intellectual of the Year 2022 to believe in a resurrection B it's not possible see it's none of my business and I shouldn't even be asking that question because somehow or other that violates I think all protocols possible I mean but you see what I'm saying I I I think this is a very claim being a philosopher um um and uh practicing believ in Christian has been uh attention for many years now I mean it's it's it's not as though they don't overlap or can't overlap but it's definitely suffers a tension that it wouldn't have done say 400 years ago um my main problem is that nobody wants to admit um what they don't know and there's a there's a tendency towards dogmatism on all sides uh in our age and one of those the consequences of that is for instance I mean Christianity is you if you use it as a basis and an explanation for for life you also have to explain why the religion Central tenant is the um the complete inverting of of the thing we know most of all which is death uh this is in itself a massive claim but it's fueled 2,000 years of Faith now that claiming that the whole Cosmos can be can rip as it were is is what has fueled the Christian faith it is that it is an unbelievable thing that has happened which millions and millions of people still on Earth of course believe but if I can say this is why this is why I I fav that um the argument that harm made some years ago this what he described as the awareness of what's missing because it's the other flip side of that the the unwillingness of the modern West to admit that there is this god-shaped hole in the culture we have songs where people talk about angels people talk about being reunited after death want say in what metaphysical system are you doing this like what's the game you're playing here I would just like people to at least consider seed that they need to use real they need to live in the questions in the hope that at some point they live their way into the answer you still have dibs I'm coming next to you Steph worries here's Roger scrutin Douglas and the question of course is going to be do you subscribe to this anybody who goes through life with an open mind and heart will encounter moments that are saturated with meaning but whose meaning cannot be put into words these moments are are precious to us when they occur it is as though on the winding ill lit stairway of our life we suddenly come across a window through which we catch sight of another and brighter world yes a world to which we belong but which we cannot enter there are many who would dismiss this world as an unscientific fiction I am not alone in thinking that it is real and important you could sign your name into that couldn't you I actually have the volume of essays that that appears in as a preface introduction by me and you know perfectly well that's exactly where um uh I think it's a beautiful expression of something that Roger inted and so do I um it it is that is deeply Christian isn't it well well I I I I I think it it it's somebody feeling that there is a nymph in a stream in Greece in the fifth century would probably say thought I had Holland Coral at last and now he's off on nymphs go ahead here's what I say about is is is there Roger is is referring to a very important instinct which is the thing that should always jolt a true atheist which is that everybody in their lives would experience moments of um awesome feeling of some kind Transcendence it might happen with seeing a person it might feel in in in iros it might be in human love it might be in a in a place in a building it might just be waking up in the morning um everybody at some point in their life has to contend with this question of what is this thing that I feel to be true and cannot reach Christians would obviously say it's a Christian God I think the rest of us have to say we live in the question Stephen you've got a speaking of questions well a couple things um the the arguments that first persuaded me of theism were actually philosophical arguments and there has been in the last 30 or 40 years a tremendous Renaissance in philosophy towards belief you have major figures Like Richard swiber at Oxford or Anan pla at not Dame in this whole Midwest School so there are plenty of philosophers who now are very uh convinced theists whether they be Christians or Jews or something else um and I I think the the the one of the huge questions that we've inherited from the enlightenment is the question of knowledge how is that we know the world around us at all and it turns out that that secular materialist thought has been unable to uh provide a justification for belief belief in the reliability of the human mind uh and and that has led to this radical relativism that has expressed itself both philosophically and in the culture and one of the best reasons to believe in the reliability of the mind which was one of the reasons that led to the Scientific Revolution was that our minds are made in the image of God who is a rational Creator who is endowed the physical world with uh a a kind of order and rationality that we can perceive because there's a principle of Correspondence between the way he made our minds and our ability to perceive the the the reason and the and the order and the design that he put into nature that this was the key idea of intelligibility that inspired much of the Scientific Revolution um and so the problem of knowledge I think is solved elegantly by the by the presupposition of theism you know so there's a there's an argument the argument that persuaded me was sometimes called the argument from epistemological necessity uh sagin put it this way we believe in order to know if you believe First in the in the existence of a Creator who made our minds as a reliable instrument instrument to know the world that he made we also then have can have confidence in our ability to know things and this is the the basis of the Scientific Revolution um so I think philosophically there there just as there is scientifically I think movement back towards a theistic position I think that same thing is happening in science I think in philosophy in philosophy yes now I take very seriously what dougles said earlier about the the problem of confirmation bias that we all want to believe the thing that confirms the beliefs that we already have um there there is a way I think one of the benefits of philosophical training is that it allows the assessment of arguments irrespective of of the motives of the arguer and I accept that there is a motive on behalf of uh of Believers of Christian and other theistic believers to believe in God because it it it helps answer some of those existential questions and it allows it gives us a hope for the afterlife we all want that on the other hand there's also a motive that's been of pointed out for people who dis you who don't believe because not believing in uh in God also releases us from a sense of moral accountability to higher authority and we' all like to be autonomous at some points in our lives at least now I think ultimately uh those two things are a wash and should be treated as a wash we should set those motives aside and try to assess uh the case for or against a Transcendent deity based on the evidence and based on some very fundamental philosophical arguments that's what I attempt to do in the book Return of the god hypothesis I think there are a lot of people who are in the field of philosophy philosophy of science epistemology who are really wrestling with these deep questions at that level and trying to extricate them from both the cultural baggage and the intellectual baggage of the last few centuries and to reassess the god question uh aresh in light of evidence and apart from some of these things that are not strictly speaking uh evidential matters or matters of reason but rather of cultural baggage if if I was a militant aist I would want to push back against Steven and his colleagues by saying even if you find what you think you're looking for it doesn't necessarily mean the Christian God you might you and and and this would seem to me to quite but if I was in Steven's position a separate show if I was in Steven's position and leaning on the secular atheists I think the thing I would be asking them is there is a modern understanding of of of yourself that doesn't ring true with your feeling of yourself so for instance uh uh we don't like our sense of ourselves we and now Tom might argue this is because we've just inherited this from Christianity but I would Douglas I would would you would he's made that rather clear but but I would suggest that many of the modern materialist um understandings of oursel the sense that there's no particular purpose and so on doesn't ring true with the sense people have of themselves which is that they must be something in ourselves that is extraordinary and it must have meaning and purpose and either we're meaning seeking beings and there is no meaning or there is meaning but it it doesn't sit well with us when we're told you're just for instance a consumer you would go I'm what it just we feel ourselves to be something else and I would lean on well what is that well and this is why it's so much more interesting to to talk to to you than it is to talk to Richard Dawkins because they they they the the Ardent scientific atheist the new atheism which was just a repackaging of late 19th century scientific materialism um has written off all of these things it's it's blind and deaf to the things that are truly human about us we all sense that there's something more than blind pitiless indifference at work and U and I think wrestling with that is is where is is the the thing we all should be doing I think also a case can be made for the significance of Christianity that um enthusiasts for evolution would would accept that who would accept enthusiasts for the for theories of evolution would accept that Mater materialists who were in favor who believe in theories of evolution carefully who knows this ground go ahead okay but what I would what so what I would say is that um objectively speaking by whether measured in terms of adherence now or the influence that it's had on the course of global history Christianity is the most successful explanation for what human beings are doing what life is for why we were created why there is suffering all these things you know Christianity has offered human beings the most successful explanation for that you at the very least at the very least say yes and I think it may be true but you won't well well if if if you you know I mean on the matous level you might say well it's an Adaptive strategy and therefore based on the terms of how successful it's been it's certainly worth considering you could Frame It That Way Tom you could frame it that way it's certainly worth considering philosophical Triumph to get you there that was well said and you you could frame it as a a successful adaptive strategy or if you look at it philosophically you could say that that the Christian world and Life View has a comprehensive explanatory power both about human failing and about the evidence for the reality of God that is unique and I think that's a reason to believe it you get you get a word and then I want to close Us by going back to Matthew Arnold if I may is that fair just a very quick observation which I do think we need to we need to acknowledge which is we are talking of course about the west and Western Faith the and Tom certainly I know has traveled has seen the experience of the bate churches in the Middle East as I have and I have seen in our own Day Christian faith of a kind that our predecessors would have recognized and we don't remember is going on and if you travel to as I have Northern Nigeria and you see people praying The Lord's Prayer and saying Deliver Us from Evil and they were chased across the fields and they lost their brother the day before in a machete attack these people are burning with a faith that our predecessors would have recognized well absolutely but I would say on top of that that what's been happening in Africa is a process of conversion akin to the conversion of uh Western Europe and Northern Europe in the Early Middle Ages um it is you know we living in one of the great ages of Christian evangelism and I would say also that um we're living through so there are two great I I think future historians of religion will look back at this age and say there are two great kind of Ive currents one of which is radical Islam which is in everybody's faces it's part of the headlines the other is Pentecostalism which is below the surface but is Blaze you know it's a great spirit rush I mean that's what it is it's the it's the blaze of the spirit and that is transforming uh you know it's it's not only uh converting people to Christianity but it's also say transforming the balance between Catholicism and protestantism in in Latin America um so this is an age of very vital Christian faith back for purp for for purposes of reigning in this program to some something we can deal with here back to Western Europe at least and the United States Matthew Arnold 1867 on do Beach Arnold feels the appeal of Christianity but isn't a Believer he writes later in life after writing this poem he writes never let us deny the story of Jesus its power and paos but it never really happened close quote okay so here we are let's just take a moment and go through the poem a bit 1867 is the poem he writes of the sea at night the sea is calm tonight the tide is full the moon lies Fair he can see the White Cliffs of England he can see the lights glimmering on the French Coast he can roar hear the Roar of the Waves the Sea of Faith was once too at the full but now I only hear its Melancholy long withdrawing Roar Faith ebbing away now listen to this closing passage I think it speaks to a great deal that we've discussed here our love let us be true to one another so there's some hope of dignity and nobility and human love even in this world from which faith is withdrawn but then he continues for the world which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams so various so beautiful so new hath really neither Joy nor love nor light nor certitude nor peace nor help for pain and here we are as on a darkling plane swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight have you ever heard a better description of social media swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight where ignorant armies Clash by night okay so what do you make of this is that a fair description of where you where we stand now where you think we stand now that we're forced to look no no not at all um I mean we Remain the Airs of of of the the Christian way of understanding social fabric our social responsibilities um they may be without the um without the Frameworks of of overt Christian belief without the familiarity with the scriptures without church practice that had structured these of belief in earlier ages they may be going off in sling off in all kinds of strange directions and ways and mutating but they Remain the West remains a civilization with deeply held moral principles and so we we I do not I would not C categorize us as ignorant armies clashing By Night the tide of faith is coming back in or or he was wrong and it never really went out we still have faith we still have faith that that that that human being I think we have faith that human beings have an inherent dignity we have faith that the rich have responsibility to the poor we have faith in an ideal of universal Brotherhood you know they come under strain but the animating principles that govern liberal Society in both Western Europe and North America seem to me profoundly Christian still that doesn't necessarily depend on believing that the Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead but they remain deeply held beliefs I think I come to you last I wonder if I so that Douglas could go last but I I I I agree with Tom about the inheritance of the of of Christian principles and sensibilities but I I think there's something inherently unstable and even dangerous about merely affirming the ethical uh and in in endowments of Christianity without underlying belief because what we have as you mentioned is this hyper form of Christ of a secularized hyper form of Christianity which we now call wokeness that I think is eating our culture from the inside out and it does not have within it the kind of inherent moral constraints that Christianity also no capacity for forgiveness no no capacity for forgiveness a very different doctrine of original sin it's selective it assigns original it assigns original sin by group rather than uh forcing us all to acknowledge that were were fallen and come short and so um I think there is and it has a revolutionary impulse which cannot be fully satisfied much as in in the French Revolution so I think these hyper Christian these secularized hyper Christian forms of expression actually can be a bit dangerous to culture and that it's much better to ground Christian belief in an affirmation of the real that it really happened in other words the real belief is then comes with real belief comes some of the the constraints upon the the expression of this revolutionary impulse we are all Fallen there is no utopian future possible we have to adopt limited forms of government and more modest names in this world and I think that U more that form of of religious belief whether it be Christian or Jewish is entirely possible intellectually it's possible is to be an intellectually fulfilled Christian or theist today in in a way that maybe it didn't seem possible at the end of the 19th century last word on the Sea on the tide of Faith Douglas um a couple of things the F the first is is this um I agree with almost everything that Tom said but I would change one word Tom kept on saying we have faith in these things I would say we have hope in these things the metaphysical underpinnings of Society unites everything I've written in recent years are much shakier Than People realize we are on exceptionally Shaky Ground the whole structure that has fallen out from underneath us has not yet been realized by the people standing on top of it but but so and but but I think that what Tom described is is we have faith in these things i' say we have hope in these things the the British novelist Julian Barnes wrote a slightly uh sacring but touching in a way phrase some years ago he said he said I don't believe in God but I miss him and and I think that the certainly the West we miss God and there is this remaining not Faith but hope hope it might not be that the Christian faith is true but a hope that there is some meaning some purpose that we're not just here to eek out of living and have some fun but that there is something Beyond ourselves something we see we want to reach and that that's the The Hope in our age the consequences of of Christian belief that Tom they are can persist without the metaphysical foundation and and the question is whether that's a a real hope a false hope or one that is like currently we are sitting on the tree it has been very nearly successfully it is very nearly successfully being swn off and we will see if we can remain sitting Douglas Murray author of War on the west Tom Holland author of dominion and Steve Meyer author of The Return of the god hypothesis thank you for uncommon knowledge the Hoover institution and Fox Nation I'm Peter Robinson shooting today from F I think I pronounced it correctly F Italy [Music]