Human Events Daily with Jack Posobiec - Sunday Special： IS ATHEISM DEAD？ WITH ERIC METAXAS

00:00:00.000 well ladies and gentlemen welcome aboard to the sunday edition human events sunday special today

00:00:15.840 we are joined with the great and you guys if you're not following this guy if you're not

00:00:20.200 reading his books if you're not following him on twitter you are absolutely missing out because

00:00:25.140 two of the best books that have come out really in the last two years are both penned by him folks

00:00:30.340 it's eric metaxas host of the eric metaxas show and these two great books number one is atheism dead

00:00:36.720 and then almost a companion book to that letter to the american church and i think it's sort of

00:00:42.740 it's uh it's asking the question and then providing the answer right and that's what you get with both

00:00:47.700 of those books eric thank you so much for joining us today it's great to be with you uh i have so

00:00:54.300 much i'm excited to talk about but i just want to say following you on social media has been a

00:00:59.460 tremendous blessing and encouragement to me and it's uh fun to get to talk to you in this longer

00:01:04.960 format no i appreciate it i absolutely do we should do more stuff together i know we did that one i

00:01:09.460 think we did an interview at uh at sass a couple years ago and i think that was yeah but you know

00:01:12.940 i was glad that we were able to uh make get our schedules to align even though i know it's thanksgiving

00:01:17.220 week and and everybody's trying to sneak out uh sneak out early and and uh get filled up with turkey

00:01:23.140 and all the good stuff do you guys do full thanksgiving do you do the whole nine yards

00:01:26.640 we don't believe in it i'm greek greeks don't have thanksgiving just kidding it's like we have greek

00:01:33.040 easter we have of course thanksgiving is uh it's as basic an american holiday uh and it's as wonderful

00:01:40.420 an american holiday as you could hope for so yeah we just uh wonderful family time and uh and i have to

00:01:48.700 say i don't know if you were planning to ask me about this but i've written about thanksgiving i

00:01:54.460 wrote a book called um if you can keep it about america about the american experiment and one of the

00:02:01.240 most undeniably extraordinary miracles in the history of the world as far as i'm concerned is

00:02:09.160 the story of squanto i wrote it as a children's book squanto and the miracle of thanksgiving but i tell

00:02:14.900 the story in my uh my book about america called if you can keep it the forgotten promise of american

00:02:21.600 liberty and it really is hard i mean i'm used to people who you know you present them with a clear

00:02:29.820 miracle and they go well that's weird coincidence or something but the story of thanksgiving and the

00:02:35.100 story of squanto when i finally discovered this as an adult i was so astonished i said i've got to

00:02:41.000 write a book about this i've got to tell the world about this and this happens to me often i discover

00:02:44.280 something i get so excited i think how could i possibly have not known this before i have to

00:02:49.640 tell everyone i know uh and the story of squanto is is one of those stories it seems to me to be

00:02:56.780 difficult not to see god's hand in the beginning uh of of what we now call america biggest and you

00:03:05.080 know we talked about we we kind of did a rush limbaugh tribute on on thursday and i i i recount recounted

00:03:11.780 you know sort of my telling of rushes as he always put it the true story of thanksgiving we got into

00:03:16.080 squanto and i think a lot of people don't realize that squanto himself was a christian convert they 0.95

00:03:20.700 have no idea about this it's completely glossed over it's you know these idiot pilgrims and these 1.00

00:03:26.420 stupid colonizer europeans come to the united states and they arrive in november that's stupid 1.00

00:03:31.720 and then new england that's even worse of all um and then they have no idea what they're doing and 1.00

00:03:36.840 the natives come and save the day and that's what thanksgiving's about right and that's what we're all

00:03:41.140 told in school and then you read the actual story and you find out that okay maybe there's a glimmer of

00:03:46.780 truth to it but actually the true story is not only far more expansive and more complex it's also a lot

00:03:52.880 more interesting and to your point it's fundamentally christian it just simply is well to me the crazy

00:04:00.980 part and it's always difficult to describe in in a short form but you have to understand in 1620

00:04:09.020 when the pilgrims landed it's somebody like it's sort of like landing on the moon like who's been here

00:04:14.380 no one no one ever comes here there are no ships back you know it was a really extraordinarily lonely

00:04:22.320 outpost the fact that they show up there they base half of them die and then as if on cue in a bad movie

00:04:32.600 out of the woods walks an indian from that air area who had lost his entire tribe that had been wiped

00:04:41.680 out he was the last of the patuxets and he speaks english right he's speaking their language somehow

00:04:49.460 in 1620 and he has nowhere to go and he offers himself to the pilgrims because he says i grew up

00:04:57.860 here where you have settled is where i grew up my people were here i grew up here as a child i know

00:05:02.100 everything there is to know about this area so they basically adopt him and he is in the words of

00:05:09.380 william bradford who wrote about it he says he was a special instrument sent of god and it seems

00:05:15.520 obvious i mean they were you talk about on their last legs they'd lost half of their number it's

00:05:20.800 inconceivable to us in the modern era to to lose half of of those you've come with to that that you

00:05:27.940 bury them you're dying you don't know how to do bradford's wife bradford's wife even died

00:05:32.540 and then out of the woods comes an indian from this area who happens to have been in london

00:05:40.180 more recently than they his story his backstory is insane it's just because they were and they had

00:05:46.200 come from from holland yeah point yeah so it the whole thing is just you if you don't see the hand

00:05:54.080 of god in it and again i'm only giving a few details it is absolutely crazy it's a miracle it's

00:06:00.180 the kind of a miracle that you know you pray you say god we need a miracle nothing but a miracle can

00:06:05.460 save us you know and out of the woods walks an indian speaking english kings who has nowhere to

00:06:11.940 go he grew up where they were all of his people had died from smallpox or whatever brought by traitors 1.00

00:06:17.560 a few years earlier he had been away obviously uh because he'd been kidnapped uh um by uh some

00:06:25.960 traitors some years before taken to spain taken to england i mean the whole thing is just one of the

00:06:33.080 most miraculous stories so i wrote it as i said in a children's book and i talk about it every year on

00:06:37.360 my radio program but i also put it in my book if you can keep it because i said every american needs

00:06:42.980 to know that at our beginning is a story so undeniably miraculous and think about this the peace between

00:06:52.300 these native americans and the pilgrims you know that's not the story we always hear we always hear but

00:06:56.980 the enmity and the killing there was not just peace but it's beautiful the harmony between them that

00:07:04.020 began and then because of squanto they kind of broker this treaty that lasts for 50 years of peace

00:07:11.780 with the surrounding indians i mean the whole thing is amazing and beautiful and it's perfectly right that

00:07:16.880 we celebrate thanksgiving as we do but i thought that's at the heart of it and i would be bold enough

00:07:21.760 to say god is at the heart of it he made this happen and it's beautiful and we need to to see

00:07:27.680 it for what it is well and eric that's kind of what i wanted to get into over the course of this

00:07:32.280 is this question of if god has been there since the beginning of the united states and and we're both

00:07:39.220 christians but but you look that church attendance is down you look at uh the generations out there are

00:07:46.520 becoming less and less pious reverent shall we say that our our society and our culture has become

00:07:53.240 far far more secularized and clearly when this program of liberalism and social liberalism cultural

00:08:01.720 liberalism was enacted on the united states the very first target the very first pillar of society the

00:08:07.580 very first institution that was targeted wasn't the schools it wasn't the the government it wasn't

00:08:13.080 certainly wasn't the police they're on to police now right you know they kind of go back and forth on

00:08:16.440 that but the very first one was the church and not necessarily the church directly but the role of

00:08:21.500 the church in the public square and i think that and it does and i think people don't understand the

00:08:29.440 you know so the the title of your book is atheism dead um is a play off of the the nietzsche uh title

00:08:36.940 god is dead but i also don't think that people realize what nietzsche was describing when he actually

00:08:41.760 said that because the idea wasn't necessarily that he thought that god was dead it was that he could

00:08:47.320 he could kind of see down the down the road he could see on the horizon that because of the rise of

00:08:53.580 darwin because of the rise of uh originalism and social um uh uh natural selection theory as opposed

00:09:02.960 to creationism the role of the church the role of theology all of this was being eroded in his time

00:09:07.940 and so his he was looking forward to see okay well if we remove some of those underpinnings and some

00:09:13.280 of those moral guardrails from society what's to become of us well um there's a lot there first of

00:09:22.480 all um i want to say that the title of my book is atheism dead ostensibly i get it from time magazine's

00:09:31.840 1966 cover article that says is god dead and of course they're getting it from nietzsche right the

00:09:38.300 point is that the powers that be in america in the mid-60s felt now is the time to introduce this

00:09:47.480 unbelievable bummer of an idea that we're alone in the universe there is no god there's nothing special

00:09:53.500 about us we just evolved out of primordial suit by accident life has no meaning and let's just go on

00:09:59.280 let's go on with our lives you know we'll use alcohol and like sports events to distract us from

00:10:04.560 the bleakness right so in 1966 time magazine comes out with this article is god dead and there's real

00:10:11.920 temerity in them putting this in the middle of america's living rooms this incredibly bleak idea

00:10:18.180 which most people know is preposterous you know the idea that there's no god it really makes very

00:10:24.240 little sense but the elites you know based on some of the stuff you mentioned darwin freud number of

00:10:29.480 other things they kind of thought well we've sort of figured it out we figured it out and it's it's

00:10:33.500 time to introduce these ideas and the the subject of my book which is is atheism dead is basically

00:10:41.440 that science since about the 60s has done exactly the opposite of what they said was going to happen

00:10:51.440 in other words they kept saying the more science progresses the less we're going to need god the

00:10:56.980 more we're going to see how everything works uh without god well exactly the opposite happened

00:11:02.800 the more we learned from science this is in the last decade since we've been alive the more we see

00:11:08.660 that the universe uh and this planet and each of us and cells everything has the earmarks of

00:11:16.780 astonishing fine-tuning calibration that doesn't seem even conceivably possible through chance through

00:11:26.200 natural processes and so as i've done my reading on this over the years i finally said i have to put

00:11:31.160 this in a book because most christians don't even know that the evidence for god from science is

00:11:37.520 mind-blowing there's no way to overstate it jack it is mind-blowing evidence evidence for god

00:11:44.980 evidence for god from science folks we are coming up on our first break so we're going to hold you

00:11:50.440 right there what a teaser right the evidence from science of god as we come back i expect we might

00:11:56.340 be talking about dna just a little bit uh going into the next segment but folks stay right there

00:12:02.020 because we are going to be we are so blessed to be joined by eric metaxas today and he's breaking

00:12:06.780 all this down for us stay tuned as human events sunday special continues

00:12:10.360 and we're back here we are talking today with eric metaxas the author of pretty much everything

00:12:18.580 out there that you've read and seen lately he's also involved in a bunch of movies and

00:12:22.220 children's books we might talk about that a little bit right now we where we left you was

00:12:25.820 the evidence from science for god eric what are you talking about because we all know that that

00:12:31.980 science disproves god this is a primitive uh primordial upper paeolithic belief and really

00:12:38.500 all religions just kind of yeah evolved from the same the same false beliefs of our ancestors you

00:12:44.260 know the creation story is passed down it's gilgamesh it's this rehashed over and over yeah that's all

00:12:49.460 that's all religion is right and kindu those incredible characters listen i want to tell you

00:12:56.300 it's only the reason i have hope and i when i say this this is not pollyanna hope this is not false

00:13:01.760 optimism i have genuine hope because part of the madness that has been unleashed on this nation in

00:13:09.520 the last few years whether it's a election fraud the confusion of covid the authoritarian lockdowns and

00:13:16.580 in other words the madness that has been unleashed really only underscores that we've all been operating

00:13:25.220 under a paradigm that's nonsense right we all kind of act like well we think there's no god and most

00:13:32.040 of the elites don't believe there's a god and we're going to try to soldier on without god and there's no

00:13:37.980 truth and there's no you know and you start don't don't bury the lead there because i think what you

00:13:42.980 just said is very insightful because i really do believe that all of this started when the first thing

00:13:49.400 started to seep in and i remember noticing this was there's not your truth there's excuse me there's

00:13:55.680 not the truth there's your truth and there's my truth that's your truth and that's my truth there's

00:14:00.320 no objective truth because if there's no objective truth and there's no objective reality if there's no

00:14:03.600 objective reality and there is no reality if there's no objective reality then there are no standards if

00:14:07.460 there are no standards then there's only relativism and this is this that totally blows all of that out of

00:14:14.760 the water because if you believe in objective truth if you believe in objective reality then

00:14:19.900 it's actually very hard to get away from an objective uh at either creator or at least a

00:14:25.840 singular point of origin which is kind of the same thing under under a different definition

00:14:31.440 no that's it that's exactly right and again there's a lot here but just to sum it up

00:14:35.660 let's put it this way um i realized that as things have become more and more unhinged

00:14:42.620 uh many many people are kind of waking up and they're looking around they're thinking

00:14:46.860 none of this makes any sense five minutes ago somebody decided there's like 57 genders and 0.88

00:14:52.560 i'm supposed to go along with that uh suddenly having a border is a controversial idea uh that's

00:15:01.880 weird everywhere i turn you know these kind of basic things are being challenged and i so i think

00:15:07.560 people are sort of waking up and saying you know what um i'm not buying this i i really uh you know

00:15:14.400 i'm a nice person i don't like to argue but this seems flat out crazy and it all stems it's essentially

00:15:22.440 the fruit of many decades of this idea that you know we can live apart from god and i think ironically

00:15:31.500 jack this is to me the huge irony is that the evidence for god just as everything seems insane

00:15:38.240 the evidence for god has become just unbelievably powerful there's no way i can underscore it and

00:15:45.240 when i ask the question the title of my book is is atheism dead i happen to have a copy right here

00:15:50.700 uh but the thing is the thing is that when i ask that question i don't have any doubt that if you are

00:15:58.320 intellectually honest you have to conclude you must conclude atheism is preposterous now you have

00:16:06.340 questions about the bible you have questions about christianity or you have questions about faith that's

00:16:11.200 great we can talk about your questions the thesis that there is no god the evidence from science in our

00:16:18.260 in the last few decades has become so overwhelming the only thing you can do is ignore it or look away

00:16:25.080 or just say leave me alone i don't want to there's a there's a good uh cartoon of that that i saw

00:16:29.280 recently by the way where it said uh they said well how come you aren't an atheist and they said well i

00:16:33.840 don't have enough faith for that oh no but i mean it's actually it it becomes i should say that the

00:16:40.980 book the book is atheism dead the first part is science and faith and i and i give evidence from

00:16:46.620 science and i know there are even people listening now thinking what evidence from science what evidence

00:16:50.460 could there be get into it let's get into that where i want to get into that now so i want to say the

00:16:54.220 first part is that the second part is evidence from archaeology that points to the bible as history

00:17:01.120 not as a bunch of folk myths uh but but as history that archaeology just like science keeps pointing

00:17:06.820 to a creator that it's inevitable archaeology continually points to the bible as history and

00:17:12.560 then the third part of the book i deal with atheism itself as a philosophy and basically say just as

00:17:18.580 enough time has passed that we can look at the science enough time has passed that we can look at

00:17:22.160 archaeology enough time has passed that we can look at atheism and say how's that going how was how's

00:17:28.580 that been going for people who have tried to live out this philosophy which was you know it was like

00:17:34.020 really sexy in 1920 but like how's that going 100 years later so i look at these different things

00:17:40.200 and i'm telling you when i say i myself was astonished at how open and shut it becomes it's like having a

00:17:47.720 discussion on so do we think the earth is flat can we discuss that i don't want to be controversial

00:17:52.540 what do you think you'd laugh you'd just say well we've kind of we don't we don't talk about that like

00:17:58.060 we know we don't think the earth is not flat we now know that it's not flat that's how i feel about

00:18:05.160 the existence of god so to to start with the science there's three things that i write about in

00:18:10.100 the science part number one is the evidence for the big bang which we forget how controversial that was

00:18:14.980 in the course of the 20th century most uh atheistic uh scientists were just outraged by the evidence

00:18:24.060 pointing to an expanding universe which obviously came from a single point at some point in the past

00:18:31.180 dramatically disturbing evidence and so you have these people that just said

00:18:35.980 we'll do anything uh to argue for a steady state universe because especially by the way

00:18:42.040 especially because of course the the belgian cosmologist who who really was is credited

00:18:48.200 with coming up with this theory turns out to be a priest you're you're a sharp cookie jack go to the

00:18:53.420 head of the class honestly that's one of the things i write about this in in the book obviously there's a

00:18:58.460 number of people in the 1920s and lemaitre was the was the belgian priest who along with a few others

00:19:06.740 they just said look there's no doubt like this is not our opinion the evidence we now know and this

00:19:14.580 is again einstein blew it when around 1911 12 he's coming up with his equations he sees an expanding

00:19:21.600 universe but einstein himself the greatest scientist you know apart from maybe newton was so insecure

00:19:27.860 that he said that this can't be right i can't admit this this looks like if the universe is expanding

00:19:34.800 that there was a point from which it expanded which means there was a point at which the universe

00:19:38.580 didn't exist that feels too religious i'm going to bury that so einstein buries it and then it's

00:19:44.420 lemaitre and uh their names are escaping me now but but they basically over the decades following say

00:19:51.420 sorry there is no doubt einstein you got it right the first time you shouldn't have buried it well and

00:19:56.860 everybody remembers the the astronomer who confirmed its name was hubble was hubble was the one that and

00:20:01.720 we named the telescope after him he's the one who confirms it and it he becomes the one that said

00:20:05.440 yeah lemaitre and the expanding universe a single point it's that all of the calculations that this

00:20:11.460 catholic priest was was back in belgium was making using the instruments available to him and at the

00:20:17.240 time and i want to say that was um you know really in like sort of the 1930s 40s 20s right um this all

00:20:23.980 comes up and what they call it the the hubble the hubble constant right and it and it just goes and

00:20:28.140 confirms everything what makes it funny to me though is how people were writhing away from this

00:20:33.700 idea because it clearly implies a creator a god maybe not the god of the bible exactly but it's it

00:20:39.580 was so disturbing that this controversy continues well into the 1960s and beyond where there were

00:20:46.480 people still saying no no no we don't like this idea this implies that there's a god now again that's

00:20:53.240 the most basic thing and i develop there are a number of chapters in the beginning of the book where i deal

00:20:57.200 with the big bang honestly it's a fascinating fascinating story which i hadn't been as familiar

00:21:02.580 with so i had to write about it but the second and probably most compelling argument for god

00:21:08.080 is what we call the fine-tuned universe and this is just there is no way to get out of this the more

00:21:16.620 science has learned i mean think how ironic this is the more science has looked at things the more we

00:21:22.900 have the ability now to say you know what um we have telescopes so powerful we can see things we

00:21:29.940 couldn't see a number of years ago we have microscopes so powerful we can see things we couldn't see and as

00:21:34.700 we examine things we see levels of fine tuning we could have before assumed oh it just happened

00:21:42.300 but now we look at it and it's kind of like finding a watch on the beach or finding a laptop in the sand

00:21:46.860 you you wouldn't say well look what the wind and the waves have created you'd say wow from a distance

00:21:53.360 it looked like a rock when i look up close there's a keyboard and oh my goodness what you know or maybe

00:21:59.880 like i don't know like a like a coronavirus that just happens to be perfectly adapted to infect humans

00:22:06.000 and jump from one to i'm you know just just i mentioned that at random completely around we're not

00:22:09.820 going to be controversial jack you and i we don't we don't get into controversy no that's so special we

00:22:15.160 never go there but the fact of the matter is logic sometimes tells you this is an open and shut case

00:22:21.480 this was created but the levels of fine tuning as science has progressed in since this you know uh

00:22:30.700 kind of cavalier arrogant statement time magazine is god dead since then science has progressed and

00:22:36.120 it's like a year doesn't go by a month doesn't go by that we don't discover more elements of fine

00:22:40.680 tuning and this is on every single level we're talking about from the laws of physics which were

00:22:46.820 uh you know created 13.8 billion years ago in the first moment of the big bang the laws of physics are

00:22:53.680 set in stone forever we know that if any of those laws of physics were even you know slightly different

00:23:00.920 by 0.00001 there would be no universe much less earth or people like nothing no us none of it when

00:23:09.060 you look at the the solar system um when you look at why certain planets are here and why the earth is

00:23:15.080 the the one that always kills me is that the size of the earth i mean growing up watching star trek you

00:23:20.040 think like any planet anywhere could have life you know it's going to have like blue people with horns or

00:23:25.000 it's going to have this or that and you start realizing well now that we know now that science

00:23:29.620 has progressed we now know without any doubt you don't need to be a christian to know this any

00:23:34.280 scientist knows that if this earth were ever so slightly bigger like a couple of percent bigger

00:23:40.440 there would be no possibility of us having an atmosphere to support life like two three percent 1.00

00:23:46.440 bigger if it was two or three percent smaller there is zero possibility of it holding an atmosphere

00:23:53.720 like that now this is science this is not some you know christian doctrine this is what science

00:23:58.520 says that the the size of the earth just happens to be perfect and that's just like one factor

00:24:06.440 everywhere you look the size of the moon the distance of the moon it goes on it the more you look the

00:24:12.120 more you just think this seems like it was designed and and the more i look the more it seems it was designed

00:24:18.360 so i said i've got to do a kind of like a a soup to nuts survey course of fine tuning in this book

00:24:25.080 you could read dozens of books on the subject but i said most people aren't really familiar with this

00:24:30.280 i'm not a scientist let me just give the basics but everywhere you look you see evidence of fine

00:24:36.840 tuning that's just insane though another one that i love is the um the planet jupiter okay the planet

00:24:43.400 jupiter is for our cosmic filtration system okay you know about this stuff so don't don't spoil it

00:24:50.600 for the people at home 400 million miles away there's this pinprick of light sometimes you can

00:24:57.240 see it in the night sky 400 million my son loves by the way almost every night when um when it's a

00:25:02.680 clear sky we'll go out there and he's four years old but we do we always do if the planets are visible

00:25:07.160 i'll say which one is that which one is that and we'll do jupiter venus uh mars if it's visible

00:25:12.200 saturn i take it you don't live in manhattan like i do because i do not live in manhattan no

00:25:16.360 we can't see nothing we can't see nothing from here but you might think it's really just gunshots

00:25:21.400 going off this this one this one pinprick of light jupiter okay we now know and you already know

00:25:30.120 this but if it weren't there 400 million miles away we couldn't be here and you think that seems

00:25:36.680 ridiculous what does that pinprick of light in the sky have to do with it well it just so happens that

00:25:41.480 it's so massive and it has so much gravity that it pulls away all of the asteroids and the meteors 0.59

00:25:46.920 that would otherwise strike earth and make life impossible and again you think jupiter

00:25:53.800 saturn like they need to be there they need to be the size they are and they need to be there and

00:25:59.000 again this is the tip of the iceberg the more you look the more levels of fine tuning you you discover

00:26:03.800 and it is so open and shut it's so crazy that you realize that if you want to be an atheist

00:26:11.240 don't read this stuff because your atheist that's exactly right will evaporate in a millisecond you 1.00

00:26:16.440 cannot be we're we're up on our we're up on our break hold it right there because i gotta ask you in

00:26:22.040 the next segment about dna a language written into cells i thought only intelligent beings could come

00:26:29.480 up with language how does that make any sense hold it right there eric mitax will be right back human

00:26:33.320 events sunday special and we're back we're talking about the solar system we're talking about the

00:26:39.080 the cosmic filtration system that is jupiter why don't the asteroids hit us because they hit jupiter

00:26:43.800 first it's what it's there for the comet seem to hit jupiter they seem to be attracted to it

00:26:47.480 it seems like it doesn't make sense it's an awfully awful big coincidence and as steve bannon likes to

00:26:52.840 say there are no conspiracies but there are coincidences and so when when we look at the

00:26:57.960 system the solar system the way that it is we look at the laws of physics the way that they are that

00:27:01.720 literally if any of them were shifted in any such way if the earth were just a little bit further

00:27:07.080 from the sun or a little bit closer to the sun we need to be burning up or we'd be completely frozen

00:27:12.440 we're in what's called the goldilocks zone our bodies our cells wouldn't be able to function if

00:27:17.000 gravity on planet earth wasn't this way and so when we look at all of these things

00:27:23.160 and we're talking here with eric metaxas you know eric one of the things that just blows my mind the

00:27:28.200 more i think about it is dna and the fact that we have essentially what something that even when the

00:27:35.480 dna was originally discovered you wouldn't necessarily put it in these terms but we have a

00:27:39.400 computer code we have a computer code that's written into our cells that's written into the cells of all

00:27:44.760 living things on earth we all have it yet every computer code that's out there every programmer

00:27:50.360 you know we always say learn to code when somebody loses their job you know we talk about twitter and

00:27:54.280 elon musk is going to hire the best coders why would we have a code in our living cells why would we have

00:28:03.560 essentially a language in our living cells that randomly came up by itself i mean there's that whole

00:28:11.720 theory of the tornado hitting the junkyard but i don't quite think that darwin's theories or that

00:28:17.640 pure evolution can really explain this for us why is there a language in the cells of my body

00:28:22.600 why to be an atheism you know you said it requires too much faith you have to be utterly willful

00:28:28.760 to be an atheist you basically in in effect you cannot be an atheist what you can say is i hate god so

00:28:34.520 much that i won't admit that i believe he exists that's where you have to go because i mean look

00:28:41.880 there's so much evidence in my book from science that i didn't even go into the dna and i didn't

00:28:48.920 even get into the evolution stuff because there is so much other evidence that i thought other people

00:28:52.920 are unfamiliar with i said we need to know that the evidence for god from science is at this point

00:28:59.080 open and shut like we solved the case it's over we know there is no way conceivable it's not even

00:29:09.240 conceivable that everything emerged randomly when you talk about dna that's the most dramatic example

00:29:16.040 when you talk about a single cell that's what got me starting to to write the book actually i met a

00:29:21.240 a nanoscientist he's a dear friend james tour at rice university in houston he starts telling me about

00:29:27.720 the theory that we all grew up with it was on the test growing up that in in 1952 some scientists

00:29:34.200 at the university of chicago ran some electricity you know to simulate lightning through some

00:29:40.040 prebiotic soup so there's no life right a little yeah through it and they get amino acids and they

00:29:46.280 lose their minds like we're on our way amino acids and then next thing you know we're gonna have

00:29:50.920 proteins next thing you know like we're on our way to figure out how life evolved randomly right and what

00:29:56.360 this friend james tour says to me it's a couple years ago he says eric it's been 70 years they

00:30:03.400 haven't moved that ball forward one millimeter in fact the more we have learned from science the ball

00:30:11.000 has basically like zipped off to the other side of the universe there's no we now know that the idea

00:30:17.240 that this sequence that starts with amino acids but it's like forget it the more we know about what

00:30:22.680 constitutes a single cell the simplest form of life if you say to a scientist hey how did life

00:30:28.760 emerge they say oh four billion years ago on earth single-celled life emerged they say you'd say great

00:30:34.840 right great tell me tell me how did that happen they they have no idea they will blow smoke and james tour

00:30:41.480 is calling him on it he's done these youtube videos i just interviewed him for socrates in the city

00:30:45.720 uh on this subject because he hasn't written a book about it it is mind bending jack it is like it's the

00:30:52.200 greatest evidence for god that exists and no one ever talks about it so that's really what made me

00:30:56.600 write my book is atheism dead because i said this is the most dramatic example from science that you

00:31:04.040 you want to ask a scientist the most basic question life how did that begin they have no idea in fact

00:31:10.600 it's worse than they have no idea they know that they don't know and they're blowing smoke and they're

00:31:15.480 they're taking a lot of funding also um you'll you'll also find some well that you get you get

00:31:20.120 the uh you get the alien spore theory some people will throw the stuff out there and say well what

00:31:24.600 does that mean because they try to get away from from saying you know from discussing god or even

00:31:29.560 intelligent design right by itself they will say well uh aliens came and seeded life on earth and

00:31:37.960 that's where it came from they don't see where the aliens come from where the aliens come from

00:31:43.080 i actually write about this in the book i'm not kidding in the book it's atheism that i deal with

00:31:46.920 exactly what you said because it's actually like comedy it's like saying like who baked the cake who

00:31:51.800 baked the cake and they say well costello somebody brought it down the hill carrying it in a pan and

00:31:56.680 you're like well we don't care we want to know who baked it did someone bake it uh and like we can't

00:32:01.400 talk about that we just know that it probably was delivered by some stranger it's so it's so funny

00:32:06.680 actually anyway so the first part of the book is science the second part of the book is archaeology

00:32:11.960 and the evidence from archaeology is equally mind-blowing it seems like every day they

00:32:17.160 discover something in the sands of the middle east like they go oh we never thought that we'd find an

00:32:22.600 actual seal from king hezekiah here it is you know everywhere you look you find evidence and the

00:32:29.400 biggest one and i wrote about it in the book is the discovery of biblical sodom sodom and gomorrah i i

00:32:35.080 found me that is the one of the end-all be-all discoveries and it's really only been in in

00:32:42.120 recent times that you know and i think they discovered the site in the 70s and they've

00:32:45.800 been trying to debunk it ever since no this was this is a uh this was uh sorry it was around 2000 this

00:32:53.400 is a new we don't we don't have time to go into this but i'm telling you it was literally because of

00:32:59.080 james tour uh in houston on the science thing and because of dr stephen collins in albuquerque who

00:33:06.440 discovered biblical sodom in the early 2000s the level of detail of of what he can tell you in fact

00:33:14.600 an article was written in nature magazine about a year and a half ago peer-reviewed nature magazine

00:33:19.800 20 scientists wrote about it again it's open and shut it is mind i i posted that article everywhere when

00:33:27.800 it popped i posted again we just got back from uh the holy land and so listeners of the podcast will

00:33:32.520 remember that when we were there we we spoke about this at length because we we essentially drove right

00:33:36.440 past it and we did a we did an episode talking about uh this this very fact that you you've gotten

00:33:42.520 you've got a city that's exactly where the bible says it would be that shows the evidence of exactly

00:33:48.360 what the bible says happened to sodom right east of abraham's tent and the word exactly isn't even good

00:33:53.640 enough like it's so it's not even good enough that it's scary precise and it's so so precise

00:33:59.560 it's scary it's the first few pages of the bible we're not talking about something you know two

00:34:03.480 thousand years ago we're talking something about 1700 bc it seems mythic that we could never discover

00:34:09.480 it they have discovered every detail i mean it is that is one of the reasons i wrote the book

00:34:15.640 the book is atheism dead exists because of dr stephen collins whom i met in albuquerque and because

00:34:21.320 of dr james tour who i met in houston one gave me the science one gave me the archaeology and those

00:34:27.000 pieces of information are so huge i said i need to write about that and that and everything else

00:34:31.720 you know eric of course of course what by the way and and and if well if you follow me on twitter you

00:34:35.560 know you know my followers can be a little bit of a rambunctious bunch every once in a while and so

00:34:40.280 of course uh you know half the people that um you know when i shared about this oh my gosh this this

00:34:45.160 proves a you know one of the key stories of the bible this is something that we can obviously show that

00:34:49.160 can prove and then the other half of the of the uh of of the responses were all like lord it's time

00:34:54.520 again i have a list we have we have a list of cities that uh uh that we need you to take care of you

00:35:01.800 know but uh we'll put a few uh i was gonna say it's hard not to go there in this in this day and age

00:35:07.560 uh i i'm not going to mention san francisco by name but no i would never bring up san francisco like

00:35:12.680 that there it might slip out it might not publicly not on a program like this but probably

00:35:18.040 no absolutely not this is a christian show well this okay so the third by the way and and and i

00:35:23.400 want to put this out there for for for folks if you're out there and i know look i've got i've got

00:35:27.880 you know listeners and and people in the audience who uh you might be atheist you might be agnostic

00:35:32.200 you might be secular you might be someone who had a bad experience with uh with the church or uh with

00:35:36.680 your with organized religion writ large and you know we're we we pray for you we love you but what

00:35:43.640 we're doing is offering something other than sort of your your regular just angry nasty oh god is

00:35:49.720 terrible and those priests are just trying to take your money and uh you know force you to live in

00:35:54.840 a certain way to give them power that you know actually it seems that some of the stuff that these

00:35:58.920 guys were talking about might actually be based in reality and i think that if we are going to be

00:36:03.480 open-minded and discuss these things we should and we should take time on these programs here on

00:36:08.440 a sunday to actually delve into this because look even even myself as a believer as an adult and

00:36:13.240 someone who has kids i'm raising them to be believers that you know i hope i hope i'm teaching

00:36:18.360 the right thing you know i'm not not teaching them something that's going to make them nuts

00:36:22.760 well ultimately we're talking about reality i don't want to convert somebody to my way of thinking i

00:36:30.280 want to convert people to reality i myself want to be converted to reality if there's something i believe

00:36:34.840 that's not true i don't want to believe it and that's what amazes me is that if you posit the

00:36:40.040 idea that there's a god who created the universe the evidence of him and the evidence of his creation

00:36:45.480 it is increasingly astonishing in these last days as things are going loony we are seeing more and

00:36:52.360 more evidence for god making him more and more difficult to deny him and you know at the end of

00:36:57.640 the book i talk about the witness of beauty i really think that part of what makes god so amazing is that

00:37:07.240 when you take him out the idea of beauty of being moved by something of weeping at something beautiful

00:37:13.720 none of that makes sense no god is what gives everything beauty and meaning and to live a life

00:37:21.160 really believing that there is no god we're here alone we're just a concatenation of atoms and stuff

00:37:26.360 it doesn't make sense on any human level and again i make the case at the end of the book where we are eric

00:37:32.440 hold on a second hard break coming back final segment here human event sunday

00:37:39.320 and we're back we're talking with eric metaxas is atheism dead and so so eric you know this is great

00:37:44.440 right this is great for christians out there for uh for for churchgoers out there so if atheism is

00:37:49.240 dead then that means the church must must just be killing it right now pews full uh you know everybody's

00:37:55.080 believing again crosses up on every yard i mean that's what's going on right now in the u.s right i mean

00:38:00.040 this is just a it's it's it's a fait accompli right well that's what's so funny funny sad horrifying

00:38:07.000 i think part of the reason god gives us so much evidence you know and again the reason i wrote the

00:38:13.000 book is atheism dead as i said as things go crazy god is giving us more evidence to bolster us to

00:38:19.160 encourage us that believing in me is not crazy not believing in me is crazy the problem and i know we're

00:38:27.720 going to segue to the book that i just wrote my brand new book it's called letter to the american

00:38:32.120 church because effectively i wrote a book about dietrich bonhoeffer a german pastor who spoke out against

00:38:42.280 the nazis was killed by the nazis an amazing christian hero who spoke up for the jews um and

00:38:49.240 he was instrumental in my conversion experience because i remember thinking i if that's christianity

00:38:53.640 i could be interested in that that's a hero um my thesis in the new book letter to the american

00:39:00.200 church is that the silence of the church in germany because bonhoeffer tried to get the church to wake

00:39:05.640 up and to stand and to be heroic and to live out their faith speak up for the jews speak against the 0.99

00:39:10.680 nazis who were dramatically atheistic don't let anybody tell you anything different um he failed

00:39:17.560 the church in germany was silent in the face of evil and the silence of the german church and

00:39:22.920 their excuse like we don't want to be political we're just going to stick to theology that led

00:39:28.440 to satanic evil on a level that we can hardly dream of it's so sick we don't even want to think about

00:39:33.960 what happened well if you're if you i've always said this by the way that a pure atheist would always

00:39:38.600 be obsessed with with eugenics right because if you don't believe that there is any uh that that there

00:39:44.760 is only the here and now then you'd be obsessed with the here and now and that's why i say things

00:39:48.600 like the climate cult or woke ism that these these are essentially pagan religions uh because what

00:39:54.680 you've done is you've created your own religion your own theology uh equity diversity uh these these

00:40:00.520 you know climate gaia these which actually right is an old religion itself that you're you're erecting

00:40:05.560 new religions you're not actually focused on the fact that all there is a here and now but you

00:40:09.720 take a group like that that the national socialists of germany that yeah absolutely they were

00:40:14.200 focused on atheism because all they believed in was eugenics well the horror though of course is

00:40:19.400 that the church in germany had the ability to speak against what was going on they chose not to

00:40:25.560 effectively and the thesis of my book letter to the american church is that the american church today

00:40:32.920 the catholic church the evangelical church of which i am mostly a member um has been utterly silent in

00:40:41.400 the face of evil today and it is now leading to the triumph of evil just as it was in germany in the 0.69

00:40:51.480 30s and just as they were blind to it because let's not think that they they saw it coming they didn't

00:40:56.280 see it coming they never dreamt that their silence but eric shouldn't the church be inclusive shouldn't

00:41:02.600 the church just you know uh christ loves us as we are and and isn't one of the biggest christian values

00:41:09.640 that christ teaches us tolerance uh actually no i can detect i can detect your tremendous sarcasm

00:41:17.000 jack and it's why i love you i want to say that we are seeing the silence of christian leaders and

00:41:23.400 i'm speaking mostly about you know evangelical leaders but they they give exactly and again this

00:41:28.600 is the subject of the book letter to the american church they give exactly the same excuses for their

00:41:33.240 silence that the german leaders gave for their silence they had these theologically fussy excuses

00:41:41.720 for not speaking up for not standing up for not being heroic uh their excuses were things like well

00:41:48.840 romans 13 says we're not supposed to be political uh you know we're just going to stick to our theology

00:41:54.040 let me tell you the atheist chinese communist party loves those kind of christians keep your feet in 0.98

00:42:02.520 that building uh all over nazi germany romans 13 constantly well that's that's the point and and

00:42:08.840 basically it's not right romans 13 is not the whole bible it's it's been right exactly if you are any

00:42:15.240 kind of a person of faith you will speak against evil you'll speak against every kind of evil you'll speak

00:42:21.160 fearlessly because you're supposed to believe you claim to believe that god defeated death on the

00:42:27.960 cross and therefore you don't even fear death you fear god in in the sense that you you fear what he

00:42:34.200 thinks about what you're talking about and not talking about you don't kind of worry about what

00:42:38.120 your neighbors are going to think you're going to speak the truth knowing it's going to bless people

00:42:42.360 but christian leaders have been dramatically silent in our time exactly jack exactly uh you know which

00:42:50.200 example i love to use for this i say um john the baptist didn't speak up against herod because he

00:42:59.240 hated him he spoke up about herod's infidelity and his sin because he loved the truth that that's

00:43:07.480 exactly right and that's what god expects his people to do when people claim to have faith right um

00:43:14.680 you you know there's a scripture my the title of the book letter to the american church the new book

00:43:19.640 which is a very short book i was going to title it faith without works is dead which is from the

00:43:26.760 gospel of jane we're from the epistle of james faith without works is dead if you claim to be a believer

00:43:33.960 let me tell you according to the scripture if you are not living out this faith you claim to have

00:43:40.600 perhaps you don't have any faith that should scare you you can't just say well i believe it's an

00:43:46.440 intellectual thing not according to the bible according to the bible if you do not live out

00:43:51.480 your faith self-sacrificially in a way that's obvious to every demon in the neighborhood that's

00:43:57.400 obvious to god that's obvious to your neighbors to your friends to your enemies if you're not living

00:44:02.280 out your faith maybe you don't have faith and i really think that that's what happened in germany

00:44:07.720 is that they basically said look we don't want any trouble we don't want to get political we're just

00:44:11.960 going to keep our mouths shut and god is saying through bonhoeffer i raised you up for this hour

00:44:20.440 to be a bulwark of truth and courage in the face of evil and you would be silent that is going to

00:44:27.320 bring hell on earth and it did but letter to the american church i'm basically saying that this warning

00:44:32.760 applies to us today american church leaders have been silent in the face of evil you name it okay 0.97

00:44:38.760 whatever whether we're talking about the transgender lunacy which is harming young people destroying 1.00

00:44:43.720 their lives whether we're talking about uh vaccines or we're talking about corruption in government i 0.98

00:44:50.120 mean it doesn't even matter what we're talking about when people say well that's political i don't

00:44:53.240 want to talk about that god requires us to speak against evil the slave trade was political and my hero

00:44:59.400 william wilberforce because of his christian faith spoke against the slave trade he said this is an 0.87

00:45:05.080 abomination and as a politician talk about being political he said we've got to go to war against

00:45:10.760 this evil and by god's grace they defeated the slave trade and by the way not to to step on it but 0.69

00:45:17.080 but i hope folks know that the william wilberforce movie uh came about because of your work it was based

00:45:22.600 on your work and telling this story this amazing story that it was the christian west that ended the

00:45:31.400 practice at least the formal legal practice of slavery with this practice that had existed since

00:45:36.360 the dawn of civilism the dawn of time that had always been around yet it's it's this christian

00:45:41.800 westerner who steps up and says look i know we're all making money off of it but we don't want to do

00:45:45.800 this anymore because it's wrong whenever but this is i guess the reason i wrote the book uh in in a way

00:45:51.240 this is the new book letter to the american church is because i said wherever i go if i speak about

00:45:55.560 bonhoeffer and how he spoke bravely against the nazis and this the evil that they did to the jews we all

00:46:00.920 cheer and we go like if i was there i would have been right there with him when when i talk about

00:46:04.600 william wilberforce and his heroism because of his christian faith speaking against slavery

00:46:10.040 we all cheer we say i would have been right there with him well the fact of the matter is no you

00:46:14.760 wouldn't if you're being silent now on every single one of these issues critical race theory you being

00:46:21.640 quiet about marxism about about cultural marxism and critical race theory are you being silent about

00:46:28.120 transgender are you being silent about corruption in government about people destroying the nation 1.00

00:46:34.600 about marxism uh cultural marxism infiltrating wokeism the highest levels of our government 0.95

00:46:41.960 you're being silent about that don't you understand human beings lives are going to be destroyed

00:46:46.360 because of your silence and if you claim to be a christian and you think that squares with your

00:46:52.200 keeping your mouth shut you don't know what it is to have faith and i wrote this book really uh in

00:46:57.960 the desperate hope that people who could be swayed um would be swayed to say to them listen folks i know

00:47:05.240 nobody wants to stick their neck out and get in trouble nobody wants to get cancelled but if the

00:47:08.680 church would rise as one if people who believe in these things would rise up first of all you'll see

00:47:13.000 the church grow dramatically because there's a hunger in this country for people to speak the truth

00:47:19.160 people just want moral leadership they want moral leadership and clarity that's the only thing they

00:47:24.520 want that is eric we're we're in our final minute where can people go to follow you gain access to

00:47:29.160 your work your writings folks in my audience if you don't know eric all right i hope you do but where

00:47:33.560 can they go i'm all over social media if you could just spell my name eric metaxas i'm on uh twitter

00:47:39.720 truth social uh every everywhere you want to look uh my website is eric metaxas.com i have a newsletter

00:47:46.440 where i send out all the interviews i do on my radio program we have a socrates in the city event

00:47:51.160 coming up december 6th right here in new york city so if you just can spell my name you can find me i

00:47:57.000 hope you do and jack i'm really grateful for you and for your voice and uh it's wonderful to be uh

00:48:04.040 with you on this program and i i'm already looking forward to seeing you uh in phoenix uh in the middle

00:48:09.080 of next month thank you that's right at america fest gotta throw the promo in for charlie out there

00:48:14.120 that's right eric and i will be there america fest go to amfest.com if you're listening to this

00:48:19.480 during uh your black friday slash thanksgiving weekend we have a sale that's going on right now

00:48:24.920 so make sure you get your tickets amfest.com come see myself jack posobiec eric metaxas charlie

00:48:30.440 steve bannon tucker carlson candace owens kaylee mcenny temple literally everyone's going to be there

00:48:35.560 so you better to amfest.com i'll see you there ladies and gentlemen as always you have my permission

00:48:41.320 leisure

Human Events Daily with Jack Posobiec - November 27, 2022

Sunday Special： IS ATHEISM DEAD？ WITH ERIC METAXAS

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