Look for these titles and bookstores this coming week, and watch for many of the authors in the near future on booktv on cspan2. Host booktv is on location in las vegas at the freedom fest libertarian convention. Were talking with authors here and noand i want to introduce yo one. This is hyrum lewis who teaches at byu in idaho and heres the cover of this book, there is a god how to respond t atheism in the last days. I want to start with those last words, in the last days. What are you referencing . Guest yes, im referencing at specific faith tradition. Theres a lot of work coming out, the new atheists have gotten aggressive and the 21st century, who are the new atheist [inaudiblatheist . Guest . Richard dawkins is most notable. Sam harris, Christopher Hitchens has passed on and daniel, a philosopher at tufts university, they call them the four horseman of the atheist apocalypse but their aggressive and angry. The old 80s and of the 20th century was much more live and let live. The idea i cant believe but if you want to believe that your business and is probably good for you and probably good for society. The new atheist will have none of this. They will say i dont believe that im going to make sure no one else believes either and i want a crusade to try to destroy effluence faith. Part of it is playing off that of the new atheists that im not talking at the last days, the latterday saints. Im trying to broaden the scope of apologetics. You have a catholic tradition the prospective st. Thomas aquinas in which to make philosophical argument for the existence of god. Im sure if a with these arguments, the argument for design, a whole range things st. Then you have a protestant tradition which focuses on the text to remember Martin Luther taught this idea, the bible is the ultimate authority so find evidence for belief within the text of eyewitnesses to jesus resurrection. What i think are some traditions being left out of the apologetic conversation though. For instance, the side friends called quakers or latterday saints or even congregationalism in which focus on correct express with god can focus on a revelation. One is a revelation i dont miss early meet a the long wait but going up amount to receive Ten Commandments or to talk to a burning bush. Talking about something more direct and every day. The basket or people you talk to if you say why do believe in god, they were probably not say i read st. Thomas aquinas enos convinced her you will run across people like that but not frequent. You probably dont say ive read the bible and texas instructor what they would probably say is in moments of quiet contemplation for moments of prayer or moments of ritual or at a major life events like the birth of a child, i just felt a presence of the divine. With the new atheist will tell you, and feel free to cut me off anytime you want, is these feelings dont count. Only empirically experience counts as knowledge. Talk about feelings, then it simply is illegitimate. The funny thing about this is that the internet itself is not an empirical study. Its only empirical, knowledge througto the senses. If only empirical knowledge counts then sync on empirical knowledge counts itself is selfdefeating. Sex only going to a webpage and webpage saying dont do anything to read on the internet. Its so contradictory. One of the great philosophers of 20th century, a professor at harvard put this out and argument called the two dogmas come one of the great articles of the 20th century. He started his life to agree with the atheist you can put anything thats not updated release. Delayed onset this is resting on a safe assumption. If you believe only empirical knowledge counts your take that as an act of faith, no reason to believe it. Something you want to believe as they dogma. The second thing is, the atheist might say its a hallucination. The ceilings are having is just your brain tricking you. They would use publisher psychology as a over the course of millions of years your brain has evolved not for truth but for survival. So feelings there is a god has some kind of survival value way back when. But now we gotten beyond that. Now we know better. Now we can look back and say it may have had some use thousands of years ago but now we can move the on that and now we can recognize this for evolutionary trick that it is an stop believing in god. If our brains evolved to trick us and why should we believe the finance the site . What are the stuff in the trick with the asus wants to invoke tricks to explain every religious expense the way. Its a brain has been tricky machine the wife that tricking us . I can still have an answer for that. The third thing you might say is actually you say the ceilings are not empirical. They are. What they mean by this is when i said revelation talking about a lot of scientific excret experi, your experience of being a self, a conscious human being. Thats not empirical. You dont see that under microscope. You dont say theres my mind. The fact you love your wife or children is not an empirical experience. Its a subjective experience. As i see it these are revelatory experiences. We are here at freedom fest, the idea jeffrey will come you are a free conscious being, that in and of itself is a revelatory knowledge. Its a something you get two sides. Scientists dont believe in free will. The most important things in life, love, freedom, open values, morality, whether asus essays when you feel joy or love for your children, if i look at your brain under some kind of an imaging technology, ill see certain parts of the brain light up with joy, therefore that is empirical and, therefore, it is scientific. My response is falling prey to what i call the vacuum tube fallacy. If you took someone back in the 1970s, mr. Rogers on tv and about somebody from primitive part of the world would never seen electricity, never seen a television before and you show them mr. Rogers on the tv, then you might go to the back and look and see that back into the light. Their conclusion within the vacuum tubes are causing the picture. This is a false assumption. The program is being broadcast thousands of miles away from studio. The vacuum tubes are the receptors and so thats the relationship between the brain and the mind. The brain is the receptor of the mind. The basic thing you learned it good class, you learn correlation is not causation and yet they see a correlation between brain state and a mental state and they say the brain state is causing the mental state. This is a bad assumption. Its funny because the first question youd always get from kids when h you which open defee he was doing, is the first it would say is how did you get out how did you get out of the tv . They were assuming like the atheists that you are caused by your brain, assuming the tv was causing mr. Rogers. The atheists need to realize you are not your brain. Your mind is not your brain and tv was not mr. Rogers, the vacuum tubes are not the television program. Host you spend quite a bit of time with darwin in origin of the species in your book. Guest share. I think charles drunk was on the great religions of all time. I am a big believe in evolution. We dont talk about scientific facts. Evolution is as close as you and get to scientific fact insights so ive no problem with evolution. I think it is been a terrible thing when religious apologist tethered themselves to opposing evolution. My god is great enough you can create our view wants to if you want to great the evolution process, i have no problem with that. That same way we understand god by looking at the movement of planets, the workings, atomic particles. We can understand god darwinism is more controversial than evolution. Evolution is wellestablished. Whether or not variation and selection through which naturalists claim, scientists claim that evolution happens, whether that can account for all biological complexity is another question and our people who say no, it needs some help in the call themselves intelligent design scientist. I dont call them intelligent design scientist but i called him philosophers 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 was the fine is a for material causes. Once we jump out and say and, therefore, god did it, since it were jumping out of signs and to think that should be reserved for a course on theology or on philosophy. If we want to have prefatory part of the classing will talk but three of evolution, due to all the stuff later, but is there a case to be made for intelligent design behind this whole process . I think that would be fine and no probably the period setting it up as a competition either or of evolution or intelligent design, its a huge intellectual and strategic stage and brings up with some just because these charges of being at the intellectual. I see what David Alinsky has done. Its their interests. It may or may not be persuasive but in trying to fight the battle of darwinism or design to me that is an error. Host is darwinism or evolution amoral as opposed to man and is man naturally moral . Guest darwinism is a moral, thats exactly right way to put. Some people say darwinism is him over darwin himself sent the spirit he said look, my three operates on the principle of survival of the fittest. Your jeans preserved themselves. Richard dawkins one of the great philosophers has been arguing for preservation, the preservation happened on the gene level. Because of that you have these selfish genes trying to replicate themselves. And, therefore, the selfish gene being selfish is your natural state. I dont think thats true because weve evolved to cooperate. With cooperative genes. We both cooperate and where selfish. You look at every single characteristic human beings have, the capacity for love, for hate, the capacity for selfishness, the capacity for selflessness, the capacity for kindness and cruelty. The inclination to destroy, the inclination to create, all natural inclinations and you can find evidence in darwinism, or make up stories come to explain how these traits came about. To say we can get our morals from evolution strikes me as bizarre. Everything we do come from evolution. Michael shermer, just written an article which most atheists disagree with by the way, he makes argument says we can derive an odd moment is. You can look at the way the world is, the way humans behave and conclude thats how we should behave. He says it is the case that we humans strive to survive and florist. Therefore, something is more effort promotes surviving and flourishing. My answer to that is it is the case we can commit genocide, we commit wars, rate, kill. So to say we do the sink is preposterous. Evolution is a more. We have to edit is orality from outside the Natural World and thats a great argument for god. That was cs lewis main argument for god and of a chapter called the good delusion Richard Dawkins said that the delusion of god. I see of the argument you make, you can make the same argument against the existence of good. He says they still count. You cant believe in god because you feel god. Its the moral intuition. If i get intuition about what is moral, why cant have intuitions about the creator of the universe . I never offer an answer for that. Host hyrum lewis, you talk about the physicist max planck in your book. Why . Guest well because he was one of the inventors of quantum theory, one of the great series of all time and use a practicing christian. He was the religious leader picky was theres this bizarre idea that there was a war between science and religion. It is simply preposterous. If you look at every great scientist including darwin when he quit his three of evolution, theyve all been religious believers. Albert einstein, isaac newton, galileo, copernicus, mental, you go through the roll call of great scientist the refugee camp every single one has been a religious believer. There is no war. Its ridiculous. The only time they were comes up is when you have people step outside of the boundaries. When you have religious people trying to make scientific statement from trying to trim the book of genesis in topology book. Thats what you run into problems or when you scientists making religious claims. So science is the realm of the empirical, empirical and repeatable. What you can find in a laboratory. Religion is realm of the ultimate. Science is not capable of saying anything about ultimate matters. Religion on the other hand, is not generally concerned with these more proximate matters. Max planck is an example of a practicing christian who belies this idea that the war between science and religion. Theres these books written by atheist who say along came science and displaced religion in 18th century within lightman. This is just posture. They just dont know their history. They say look at the Founding Fathers were enlightened men of science, not men of religion. Why is it an either or . You see these preposterous either or, falls by one of them is are you left or are you right . Neither, and both fictive point to agreement on the left, the right. How do we have to step everything into these categories . People say theres this binder, you believe in capitalism you want to help the poor . Its a false binder. Cystitis that the most help for the poor and most wellbeing for the poor are the most capitalist or unfortunately the atheist body into a false binary. The history of science shows that is a ridiculous formulation. America has gotten more religious as it got more scientific. John butler at yale, all the great historians of religion have shown that as sciences increase in america religion has increased right along with her were in a dip right now, the past 20 youre switching a decline in religiosity and the rise of the nonreligious but this is a brief moment, why do you think that is . Guest a couple reasons. One, i think 9 11 did something to a lot of people. Thats what made the new atheists emboldened the basalt islamic terrorists perpetrating these attacks and they said religion cause of violence and so this are writing all these books like Christopher Hitchens saying god is not great. A lot of people bought into their argument and a lot of people said yeah, religion cause violence, religion is better. Its that association. This is bad raising they should know better and scientist. These pages claim the mantle of science and get they become unscientific when it comes to religion. If i were to say to you democrats are bad because i knew one that democrat, or if i was to say to you smoking people because my father in law smoke and give it to be 90. You said thats ridiculous. Thats what we call anecdotal evidence. When it comes to the value of religion these atheists rely on anecdotal evidence. Christopher hitchens book god is not great is all telling stories about what this religious person that is bad. What they never want to do is give Scientific Evidence. If you go to the Scientific Evidence it is devastating to the case. Every time you social science controlling for other variables in western societies, the religious score higher on every agreedupon measure of morality and wellbeing than you could imagine. Study after study there are thousands of them showing religious people live longer, religious people give more to charity, religious people are more educated, believe it or not unless religious people, that religious people adopt or children. Theres higher social capital among the religious, that the crime rate is lower, just go down the list of things were trying to promote in society that we can agree democrats, republicans from everybody, that would be good. You find those things, the good things are better because of religion and of religious believers are really in a quite literal sense, in jesus sends the salt of the earth. They are making our society better. Its immoral by their own criteria. Michael shermer says something is immoral if it hurts human flourishing. Something is more if it promotes human flourishing. Religious belief makes society better. It reduces crime and increases social capital, reduces depression. It increases economic wellbeing and get his appetite destroyed. Hes doing something immoral by his own terms. I like michael shermer. I like his debunking of ufos and Holocaust Denial that i like all that stuff but what is going after religion hes doing something that immoral, even by his own criterion. Host mao and stalin. Guest yes, great examples. If you want to go anecdotal, theres the anecdotes to go to. So prior to the 20th century europe atheist all the time, when you want to tell the anecdotes come with you want to tell their stories they want to go to the middle ages. The 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 were doing. Clearly religion is bad. That doesnt rise to the level of anecdotal evidence because theres no control group. If the races came up and said black people are inherently more violent than white people, you would say what you evidence . Before the year 1500 in africa, black people committed all the crimes. They committed all the oppression, all of the assaults, all of the rates come all of the thefts, all done by black people. People. I dont see why people to make those kinds. Your aunt would be theres no white people. Thats exactly what the atheist do. Look at all the terrible things that religious people were doing. I do see atheist doing that. The answer is there were no atheist. We dont have a control group and tell the 20th century when there are sufficient numbers of atheist and there specifically openly atheistic regimes when we can actually Say Something meaningful about atheists. Once you do that if you want to compare the atheist violence and religious believer violence, the atheist went at a landslide. The biggest mass murder of all times was chairman powell, and atheist. Stalin, probably the second greatest basketball times also an atheist of all times was mao. Doing so in the name of a materialist ideology. This idea come if you want to play the anecdote came, the atheist lose that one. I look at social data. If you want to look at Something Like chairman mao, dawkins says not really atheists. They said they were. They were not because stalin believed, mao believed in a marxist ideology which was a kind of religion. But his atheists try to have it both ways. You hear them say all the time that atheism is not a religion. I have two griffin. They say youre right, dr. Lewis, you say that everybody has a face. Atheists have faith. Their faith is just atheism. Atheism is not a face. Its nonbelief in god. Michael shermer says all the time if you is nonbelief in god, full stop. I dont live in the flying spaghetti monster, full stop. I just dont believe in it. Im not a high priest and a flying spaghetti monster religion. Atheism is not a religion. If you say stalin was an atheist because he was a