Transcripts For CSPAN2 Hyrum Lewis There Is A God 20240713

I want to start with the last words, in the last days what are you referencing . Referencing a specific faith tradition. Theres a lot of work in apologetics coming out the new atheists have gotten very aggressive in the 21st century a. Where the new atheists . Usually talking about the four horsemen, Richard Dawkins, he wrote a book called the god delusion but he has some cold followers, sam harris, Christopher Hitchens passed on, and Daniel Bennett abthe column the four horsemen of the atheist apocalypse. They are aggressive and angry. The old atheism of the 20th century was much more live and let live. The idea was i cant believe but if you want to believe that to our business and is probably good for you and probably good for society. The new atheists will have none of this. They will say i dont believe and to make sure nobody else believes either and im going to crusade to try to destroy everybodys faith. Part of it is playing a little off the apocalypticism of the new atheist. Talk about last days the latter day saints, trying to broaden the scope of apologetics. You have a catholic tradition goes up back to saint thomas aquinas. They make a lot of philosophical arguments for the existence of god. Him a whole range of things at st. Thomas aquinas did. Then youve got a protestant tradition which focuses on the text. Martin luther, the idea of soul in scripture that the bible is the open authority. The protestant tradition wants to go back and wants to look at the text itself and find evidences for belief within the text of eyewitnesses to jesuss resurrection. There are some traditions being left out of the apologetic conversation no. For instance, society of france called quakers or latter day saints or strains of congregationalism which we focus on direct experience with god we focus on revelation. When i say revelation i dont necessarily need a man with a long white beard going up amount to receive 10 commandments or talking to a burning bush. Im talking about something more direct and every day. The vast majority of people you talk to if you say why do you believe in god . The probably not to say, i read st. Thomas aquinas and i was convinced. You will run across people like that but not frequent probably not even say i read the bible and the textual evidence was strong. They will probably say is, in moments of quiet contemplation or in moments of prayer or moments of ritual, or at a major life event like the birth of a child i felt the presence of the divine. With the new atheists will tell you, feel free to cut me off anytime you want, what the new atheist will tell you is these feelings dont count. Only empirical experience counts as knowledge. If you talk about feelings then it simply is illegitimate. The funny thing about this is that that in and of itself is a nonempirical statement. Its only empirical knowledge that comes to the senses. If only empirical knowledge counts, then saying only empirical knowledge counts is self refuting. Flexibly going to a webpage and the webpage saying dont be dont read believe anything you read on the internet. Selfcontradictory. One of the great articles of the 20th century he started to agree with atheist you cant believe anything thats not sense data related then later he said this is resting on document resting on faith assumption. If you believe that only empirical knowledge counts you are taking that as an act of faith you dont have reason to believe it. Then the second thing is, then the atheist might say, its hallucination. The feelings you are having is just your brain tricking you. They will use evolutionary psychology and say over the course of millions of years your brain has evolved not for truth but for survival. So feelings that there is a god has some kind of survival value way back when. But now we got beyond that. Now we know better. Now we can look back and say it may have had use thousands of years ago on the abbut now we can move beyond that and now we can simply recognize this for the evolutionary trick it is and stop believing in god. Thats selfdefeating too because of our brains evolved to trick us what should we do the atheist wants to invoke tricks to explain every religious experience away but if you can say your brain has been tricking deception machine that why is tricking us when we are doing something with science. They dont have an answer for that. The third thing they might say is that actually you say these feelings arent empirical but they are. What they mean by this. When i say revelation im taking about a lot besides just experience. Your experience of being a self of being a conscious human being, thats nonempirical you dont see that under a microscope. You dont look into a microscope and say, gee, theres my mind. The fact of your wife or children this is not empirical is subjective. As i see at the is our role of a tory experience theyre not amenable to science. We here at freedom fest the idea that you have free will free conscious being that in and of itself is irrelevant tory knowledge. Its not something you get to science. In fact, science doesnt believe in it. The most important things in life, love, freedom, ultimate values, morality, these are not amenable to science. What the atheist will say, when you feel joy or love for your children, if i look at your brain under some kind of Imaging Technology i will see certain parts of the brain light up with joy therefore, that lighting up is empirical and therefore its scientific. My response to that is, they are falling prey to what i call the vacuum tube fallacy. If he took somebody back in the 1970s, letting mr. Rogers is on tv. He brought somebody from a primitive part of world whod never seen electricity never seen a television and he showed that mr. Rogers on the tv, they might go to the back to the tv and look in to see the vacuum tubes were lighting up. Their conclusion would have been the vacuum tubes are causing the picture. This is a false assumption. The program on the tv is being broadcast from thousands of miles away on studio. The vacuum tubes are merely the receptors so thats the relationship between the brain and the mind. The brain is merely the receptor of the mind. It also violates in the argument the basic thing we go to statistics 101 class you learn correlation is not causation yet they see a correlation between brain state and mental state and say the brain state is causing mental state. Its funny because the first question youd always get from kids when you show up at events is the first thing they take, how did you get out . How did you get out of the tv . They were assuming like the atheist that you are caused your brain they were assuming the tv was causing mr. Rogers. The ac a atheist need to realize you are not your brain the mind is not your brain and the tv was not mr. Rogers vacuum tubes are not holding the program. Professor lewis you spent quite a bit of time with darwin and origin of the species in your book. I think Charles Darwins greatest intellect of all time a big believer in evolution would like to talk about scientific facts but evolution is as close as you can get to science fact and science i have no problems of evolution i think its been a terrible thing when religious apologists tether themselves to opposing. My god is great enough you can create however he wants. He wants to create the evolutionary process i have no problem with that im thrilled with it. To understand god by looking at the movement of the planets in the working of the quirks and comic particles, we can understand god to look at the process by which he created it. Darwinism is little more controversial than evolution evolution is well established. Whether or not variation and selection which is the darwinian mechanism with naturalist is claimed scientists claim evolution happened. Whether that can account for all biological complexity is another question and there are people who say it needs some kind of help and they call themselves intelligent design scientists. I dont call them intelligent design scientists but i do call them Intelligent Designs for officers and im okay with teaching that in school as a philosophy but i dont think it should be put in competition with darwin because science as defined in the 21st century is a search for material natural material causes. Once we jump out and say, therefore god did it seems like were jumping out at science itself and i think it should be reserved for a course on theology or philosophy. If they want to have a preparatory part of the class saying we will talk about a series of evolution will get this stuff later but is there a case to be made for intelligent design around this process . I think that would be fine i have no problem with setting it up as a competition is either or evolution or intelligent design i think its a huge intellectual and strategic mistake. It brings up with some justification the charge of being antiintellectual. [inaudible] i think in trying to fight the battle of darwinism or design to me thats just an error. Is darwinism or evolution a as opposed to man as is man naturally moral . Darwinism is amoral. Thats the way to put it. Some people say darwinism is immoral. He said my theory operates on the principle survival of the fittest. Your genes preserve themselves. Richard dawkins is the preservation that preservation happens on the level trying to get themselves. Therefore he says the selfish gene, being selfish is your natural state. I dont think thats true. Weve also evolved to cooperate. Dokken says i couldve called the book abbecause we both cooperate and we are selfish. You look at every single characteristic human beings have the capacity for selfishness, or makeup explained to say we can get our morals from evolution is just bizarre because every thing we do doctor shermer, michael a this article which most atheists disagree with. And hes an atheist . Correct that we can derive off from his you actually behave and conclude thats how we should behave. He says it is him him him him him him him him him tomorrow a a hyrum lewis, you talk about the physicist max planck. Why . Because he was one of the inventors of theory. One of the great theories of all time and he was a practicing christian. He was a very hardcore religious abtheres this bizarre idea i cant believe anyone believes that there is a war between science and religion. It simply process of putting a a if you go to the rollcall great scientists throughout history every single one was a disbeliever. There is no work, going to work and have people step outside the boundaries. When you have religious people trying to make scientific statements true. Trying to change the book of genesis into a biology. Or when you have scientists making religious claims. Science is the role of the empirical, the empirical and repeatable. Religion is the realm of the ultimate. Science is incapable of saying anything about ultimate matters. Religion, on the other hand, is not generally concerned with these. So i use max planck as an example of a practicing christian at believes theres a war between science and religion. There is a books written by atheist thats a long time science and displace religion. In the 18th century. Its preposterous. Religion and go anywhere they just dont know their history. As of the Founding Fathers were like the men of science not religion. Why is it an either or . You just see this preposterous either or being trumpeted about in our Current Society in these ridiculous false binaries. One of them is, are you left or right . Neither and both. Theres plenty of degree with on the left theres plenty to agree with on the right. Something people here at freedom fest will agree with me on, people say this is abthe history of science shows its a ridiculous correlation. In america, americans got more religious as its not more scientific. John butler at yale. Come all the great historians have shown that science has increased america, religion has increased with it. We are in a dip right now the past 20 years weve seen decline in the rise of religious. This is just a brief moment. a and thats part of a i think 9 11 did something to a lot of people. I think thats what made the new atheist and bold. They saw islamic terrorists perpetrating these attacks instead religion causes violence. They started writing on this book. Saying god is not great. A lot of people bought into their argument and a lot of people sent them religion caused violence on 9 11, religion is bad. Its the association. This is bad reasoning. And they should know better and scientists. The atheist claim the mantle of science and become an seemingly unscientific when it comes to religion. If i were to say to you, the democrats are bad because i knew one bad democrat. Or if i said smoking doesnt kill people because my fatherinlaw smoked and lived to be 90. Thats ridiculous. When it comes to the value of religion, these atheists rely entirely on analytical evidence. abis all just telling stories about but what this religious person did. Look at this pedophile catholic priest. But they never want to do is engage Scientific Evidence is when you go to the Scientific Evidence is devastating to their case. Every time you have actual scientific poll or social scientists controlling for other variables in western society where we have great ab there are literally thousands of studies showing religious people live longer. Religious people give more to charity. Religious people are more educated than lesser. As people adopt more children. That there is higher social capital among the religious. At the crime rate is lower. Go down the list of things we are trying to promote in society that we can agree democrats, republicans, everybody it would be good and you find those things are the good things in society are better because of religion. And that religious believers are really abin jesus defense, the faults of themicha shermer says again and again, something is immoral if it hurts you and flourishing. Guess what promotes Human Flourishing . Religious beliefs make society better. Reduces crime, increases social capital, reduces depression, increases economic wellbeing. And hes out there to destroy. He is trying to destroy flourishing. Hes doing something immoral by his own terms. I like michael shermer, i like his debunking of ufos i like his debunking of the holocaust and dashed but is going after religion is doing something immoral even by his own criteria. Owen stalin a great example. If you want to go anecdotal theres the anecdotes to go to. Prior to the 20th century you have atheist all the time when they want to tell the anecdotes when i want to tell their stories they want to go to the middle ages. They want to talk about the inquisitions. They want to talk about religious wars. They want to talk about witchhunts and the salem witch hunts. They say, look at all these bad things religious people are doing clearly religion is bad. That doesnt rise to the level of anecdotal evidence because theres no control group. Erasers came up to you and said, black people are inherently more violent than white people even say what you evidence . They would say well in the year 1500 in africa people committed. They committed all the oppression on the assaults all the rates on the steps all about my black people i dont see white people committing those crimes. Your answer would be, ab theres no control group. Thats exactly what the atheist do they say look at all the terrible things religious leaders were doing in the middle ages. Look at all the terrible things religious people were doing. I dont see atheists doing that stuff. There were any atheists. Its a silly thing to say. We dont have a control group until the 20th century. Him when we can actually Say Something meaningful about atheists. And once you do that, the atheist violence and religious believer violence in the atheist win in a landslide. The biggest mass murder of all times was chairman astolen, probably the greatest second greatest mass murderer of all time. Also atheist. Doing so in the name of a material ideology. Atheist materials. The idea of this if you want to play the anecdotes game the atheist will lose that. I dont want to do an adult i like to look at social Scientific Data which shows ab but if you want to look at somebody like what Richard Dawkins does a chance to win out of it he translated the atheist. Really . They said they were atheists. They were really atheist because stalin believed a believed in a marxist ideology which was a kind of religion. But they cant have it both ways. You hear them say all the time atheist is not a religion. I even get people coming to me sometimes they say, youre right doctor lewis, you say everybody has faith is that even the atheist has faith. Their faith is being atheist. You are wrong, atheist is not nonbelief in god. Michael sherman says atheists do not believe in god. Atheism itself is not a religion. If you say, stalin wasnt atheist because he was a communist. Wrong. You just said that atheism is nonbelief and golf all stopped. All these terrible tyrants of the 20th century were atheist by the atheist definition and they cant wiggle out of it. When you want to look at the consequences of religious belief and the consequences of atheism. Atheist the wickedness, atheist is overwhelming. It doesnt mean atheists are bad people. Im not saying anything about anyone atheist. Doctor shermer is a good guy, Richard Dawkins as far as i know is probably compassionate and gives money to charitable causes. We are simply talking on average in the broad scam of history. Throughout your book there is a god you address the lds church. What is that and are you a member . Yes i am. Good question. I appreciate you use the word lds the church recently tried to get people to not use the colloquial term mormon. Where did that term come from . We have a sacred book of scripture called the book of mormon. They took the name and applied it to us as an epithet in the name stopped. The book of mormon itself says that this is the church of jesus christ. Its not the church of a prophet. If you calling the church by the name of profit, mormon was a prophet the book of mormon is a mistake to call the church a mormon church. It slightly insulting because it goes against the religious precepts. Why is the church at this moment question talk about the church of jesus christ latter day saints . I think because we live in a moment in World History certainly American History when things have gotten too soundbite. We are too much in love with short soundbite instead of flushing things out we need more and more to stop. You see it all the time in cable news people shouting at each other, left ring, white wing, instead of saying tell me what you believe in giving longer answers. Calling the church the church of jesus christ of latter day saints courses that forces us to say, and i can use a soundbite, im going to explain. Jesus christ, thats the name of your church we worship jesus christ would consider him our lord and savior. Latter day saints means we believe in the last day and a restoration of the pure truth of jesus taught during his lifetime. Which is something incidentally that Thomas Jefferson Roger Williams another great defenders of religious freedom had champion. The idea of restoration of religious truth. My book was written to make apologetic case to include more religious traditions within the subordinate conversation and lds latter day saints tradition is primarily in that but i think religious blizzards of all stripes people doubting the existence of god whatever their tradition can profit from it because the arguments are not exclusive to latter day saints. Where you teach them how to get interested in this . Great question. I teach at byu idaho Brigham Young university, i teach there, its just south of Yellowstone National park. One of the most Beautiful Spots in the country i shouldnt say this because im trying to keep it small people are moving there and i dont want them to and we dont like it because its a small town. By digression i didnt mean to make this a major part of my study. Im an intellectualist by training and during graduate school, if you read intellectual history read atheist because they dominate the conversation. They were the big guns. What i would do is as im reading and discussing the somebodys thing, it was like an inch i had to scratch. Set the right you got the demons and you get rid of it i found it was to accurate on until i had written things down. I have these ideas these reputations what i thought was a bad argument for the new atheist just kept on file and eventually i started thinking in order to organize a sense of something bigger. Over the course of a few months i just started doing things around the brother sent him he ought to turn it into a book so i did the polished rewriting and the most important part of the writing process. I got into book form had a friend at cedar form and they published it and there it is. This is my math ea but when i teach at Brigham Young University Idaho is u. S. History of the american founding i teach a course on american civic system and its records on film history of taught asian history in the past him teach religious matters. So this is something important enough to be an important enough to me in my own Spiritual Development in the inclusions i came to so i thought they could be helpful for other people. Whats the same thing. Sorry it is simply the defense of the faith of apologetics of christianity talking about people speak out in favor of christianity in favor of christian religion in favor of belief in god against those people who would attack it since there are so many attacks of religion is so much more pronounced in the 20th 21stcentury minimum we have a atheyre not very good attempts we just dont have people standing up to them. The point of my book im not proud of is a little bit hostile. May be noticed if you read it a little bit to be. Its unintentional, as a christian that something i need to work on. Thats not the christlike way but the atheist behavior like intellectual bullies. Richard dawkins said my faith is frankly bonkers. This is insulting. Hes a bully hes rude. Hes arrogant. If i respond in kind sometimes, i dont think its the right thing to do but perhaps my readers can forgive a little bit, perhaps its understandable that i respond with a little bit of a strong tone at times because the atheists are so aggressive and bullying and rude. Maybe theres a place to stand up to the bully even if intellectual wants. Hyrum lewis the author of this book there is a god how to respond to atheism in the last days. Thank you for your time. Great to be with you. Heres a look at some books being published this week. In the war for american soil former Deputy Assistant to President Trump Sebastian Gorka are gaze that their president has we energize the country and the left is turned on her minds efforts. Susan rice reveals pivotal moments from her career in tough love. In he incorporated Rolling Stones matt ib contends that the Mainstream Media relies on people anger to garner ratings. Also being published this week author and biologist Richard Dawkins explains why he became an atheist. And challenges the worlds religions in outgrowing god. Fox news greg jarrett argues that the mueller is nice to her President Trump in witch hunt. abin antisocial the new yorkers and jewelry and argues that the right has exploited the internet to promote extremist views. Look for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for many of the authors in the near future on book tv on cspan2. Prime time starts now here on book tv. First we attend a taping of the chatter on books podcast. First wil haygood abfollowed by her Author Interview program after words well off the Washington Times National Security abstuff chinas efforts to become economic superpower. At 11 00 p. M. Eastern former National Security Agency Contractor Edward Snowden talks about exposing the u. S. Governments Mass Surveillance Program and having to going to exile as a result. That all starts now. Heres the chatter on books podcast with wil haygood. Welcome everybody. We are back with chatter on books and happily we already disclosed location one more page book in arlington where we took books wine and chocolate more seriously than ourselves. Thank you so much for letting us be here. Thank you so much for coming. Its great to be out in the open where people can find us. Im here with tina mcmanus and David Aldrich and a little bit later will be speaking with wil haygood who im honored to meet. We will talk about a lot of things tonight but we are going to talk