# The Rise and Fall of the New Atheism - Bishop Barron's Daily Sermon

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 30 Jun 2026, 29 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72733581/the_rise_and_fall_of_the_new_atheism.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Name one ancient culture that would believe in you know,
[0:05] Speaker 1: all you need is love. As John Lennon also said,
[0:07] Speaker 1: with the Beatles and the brotherhood of Man, those are
[0:10] Speaker 1: Christian ideas inescapably so. So you can't say, on the
[0:15] Speaker 1: one hand, imagine no religion. You know, no Hell, blow
[0:20] Speaker 1: us above us, only sky, No, no, no God. But boy,
[0:23] Speaker 1: oh boy, do we want the brotherhood of man. You
[0:25] Speaker 1: can't do that. That doesn't work. The brotherhood of man
[0:30] Speaker 1: follows from the fatherhood of God, and that's an old
[0:33] Speaker 1: Christian idea.
[0:43] Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Brandon Vat,
[0:46] Speaker 2: the host and the senior publishing director at Word on Fire.
[0:50] Speaker 2: How did the so called New atheism rise so quickly
[0:54] Speaker 2: in the early two thousands, What made people like Richard
[0:57] Speaker 2: Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens so popular and effective? And how
[1:01] Speaker 2: did this new atheist movement decline and end almost as
[1:05] Speaker 2: quickly over the past few years. Those are the topics
[1:09] Speaker 2: we'll be discussing today with Bishop Robert Baron, who joins
[1:12] Speaker 2: us from Rochester, Minnesota.
[1:13] Speaker 3: Biship, good to be with you, Hey.
[1:15] Speaker 1: Brandon, Good morning to you.
[1:18] Speaker 2: You recently rolled back in from Harvard of All Plays
[1:22] Speaker 2: one of the premier Ivy League institutions. What were you
[1:24] Speaker 2: doing there and how did it go?
[1:26] Speaker 3: They invited me.
[1:27] Speaker 1: To do the opening of the year mass, the Mass
[1:30] Speaker 1: and the Holy Spirit for the Catholic community of Harvard.
[1:33] Speaker 1: And there's a gorgeous church there called Saint Paul's, which
[1:36] Speaker 1: I'd heard about but never actually had seen. Beautifully decorated church.
[1:41] Speaker 1: And they have this kid's choir of kids I actually
[1:44] Speaker 1: be very sophisticated young people who sing at a very
[1:47] Speaker 1: high level.
[1:48] Speaker 3: So it was a beautiful place to see and to hear.
[1:51] Speaker 3: So I preached there.
[1:52] Speaker 1: I preached the Mass for the Holy Spirit, and then
[1:55] Speaker 1: that afternoon I went to it's called Memorial Church. It's
[1:58] Speaker 1: the main sort of classically Protestant church at the heart
[2:02] Speaker 1: of Harvard Yard, and about a thousand people they say,
[2:05] Speaker 1: gathered there jam that church, and I gave a talk
[2:08] Speaker 1: on the Catholic intellectual tradition.
[2:11] Speaker 3: So I was just a joy.
[2:12] Speaker 1: I love that day. It was a busy day, in
[2:14] Speaker 1: a very full day. You know, saw the dorm where
[2:19] Speaker 1: both FDR and JFK, where students, saw the room where
[2:22] Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg was when he was at Harvard. The chapel
[2:27] Speaker 1: still standing where the young John Adams would have worshiped.
[2:30] Speaker 3: So it's a beautiful place to go.
[2:31] Speaker 1: I've been to Harvard a couple times, but it was
[2:34] Speaker 1: my most thorough kind of immersion in it.
[2:37] Speaker 2: I'm just delighted to hear that there was such a
[2:39] Speaker 2: big Catholic response to a religious figure coming in. You
[2:43] Speaker 2: usually hear, especially at these Ivy League institutions. They've been secularized,
[2:47] Speaker 2: there's no place for religion, so the fact that they
[2:49] Speaker 2: welcomed you with such a big crowd is really encouraging.
[2:54] Speaker 3: It was, Yeah, it was to me.
[2:56] Speaker 2: Well, today I want to start by really recommend and
[3:00] Speaker 2: then discussing this brand new book. It's by a friend
[3:03] Speaker 2: of ours name Justin Brierley. He is the longtime host
[3:06] Speaker 2: of The Unbelievable radio show in the UK, which you've
[3:10] Speaker 2: been on before, I think a couple times. But he
[3:12] Speaker 2: wrote this excellent new book called This Surprising Rebirth of
[3:16] Speaker 2: Belief in God, Why New Atheism grew old and secular
[3:20] Speaker 2: thinkers are considering Christianity again. I know you've read a
[3:25] Speaker 2: big chunk of it, as have I, and I'm hoping
[3:27] Speaker 2: we can do a series of discussions on the podcast
[3:29] Speaker 2: using this as the leaping off point. But today I
[3:33] Speaker 2: just want to focus on the opening chapter, which details
[3:36] Speaker 2: the rise and fall of the New Atheism movement. This
[3:40] Speaker 2: movement has long been an adversary of War on fire
[3:44] Speaker 2: of your work, your videos, and writings over the years.
[3:47] Speaker 2: So let's just start with defining it. What is the
[3:50] Speaker 2: new atheism, what made it new? And how is it
[3:53] Speaker 2: different than your classical Enlightenment atheism.
[3:58] Speaker 1: I always see the New atheism, which immerder in the
[4:00] Speaker 1: early zeros right as a post nine to eleven phenomenon.
[4:05] Speaker 1: So nine to eleven happens two thousand and one, and
[4:09] Speaker 1: it revived this old Enlightenment trope that religion in the
[4:15] Speaker 1: measure that it's irrational, is violent. So because you can't
[4:20] Speaker 1: adjudicate your dispute through debate and argument, the only way
[4:23] Speaker 1: you can do it is through violence. And think of
[4:26] Speaker 1: Enlightenment figures, you know, from Voltaire to Thomas Jefferson, who
[4:30] Speaker 1: would say that about religion. It's the source of much
[4:32] Speaker 1: of our you know, the violence in the world. So
[4:35] Speaker 1: that was revived for obvious reasons after nine to eleven.
[4:38] Speaker 1: So here's these religious people who are crashing airplanes into
[4:41] Speaker 1: buildings and killing thousands of people that's the problem with religion,
[4:46] Speaker 1: and then that event was articulated by some I would
[4:51] Speaker 1: call them remarkably gifted rhetoricians. And here, you know, Christopher
[4:55] Speaker 1: Hitchins comes to mind, obviously one of the most rhetorically
[4:59] Speaker 1: gifted people the last twenty five years, Richard Dawkins. I
[5:04] Speaker 1: won't comment on them as a scientist I'm not qualified to,
[5:07] Speaker 1: but certainly as a kind of popular rhetorician, someone that
[5:11] Speaker 1: knew how to appeal to emotion and stir up.
[5:14] Speaker 3: People's, you know, feelings.
[5:15] Speaker 1: Sam Harris another good example, a bright man but basically
[5:19] Speaker 1: a rhetorician. Daniel Dennett. So that the four horsemen of
[5:24] Speaker 1: the New Atheism were people who I think, fueled by
[5:29] Speaker 1: their native anti religiosity and then encouraged deeply by September eleventh,
[5:35] Speaker 1: and then, using their extraordinary rhetorical gifts, stirred up in
[5:41] Speaker 1: a lot of people a visceral emotional reaction against religion.
[5:46] Speaker 1: Now they used arguments, to be sure, but to be
[5:49] Speaker 1: fair and honest, they're pretty bad arguments or rehearsals of
[5:54] Speaker 1: old atheist tropes from a long time ago. What was
[5:59] Speaker 1: new about them, it seems to me, was their nastiness
[6:03] Speaker 1: and the sort of naked appeal to emotion and stirring
[6:10] Speaker 1: up people's visceral anti religiosity. That was what was new
[6:15] Speaker 1: about it, seems to me, not the arguments as such,
[6:18] Speaker 1: which you're actually rather old and tired. I'll say this,
[6:23] Speaker 1: you know, our ministry, I think my word on fire
[6:26] Speaker 1: ministry really begins at the same time, right around the
[6:29] Speaker 1: year two thousand. I started doing internet work, you know,
[6:34] Speaker 1: two thousand and six, two thousand and seven, right at
[6:37] Speaker 1: the time when the New atheists were very much in vogue,
[6:41] Speaker 1: and so I confronted right away armies of young people
[6:46] Speaker 1: that had been evangelized by the new atheists. And you know,
[6:50] Speaker 1: I see it now maybe as an expression of the
[6:52] Speaker 1: divine providence that our work commenced right when there was
[6:56] Speaker 1: this enormous animosity toward religion. But to answer your question,
[7:02] Speaker 1: I think that's what was new about them was post
[7:04] Speaker 1: September eleventh, the kind of nasty, provocative rhetorical style of
[7:11] Speaker 1: these authors and the fact that they did influence large
[7:15] Speaker 1: swaths of young people.
[7:18] Speaker 2: I know a lot of commentators look at the rise
[7:20] Speaker 2: of the New atheism and ask themselves why did it
[7:24] Speaker 2: arise when? And where it did, And you've hinted at
[7:27] Speaker 2: one of the major causes the nine to eleven attacks.
[7:30] Speaker 2: In his book, Justin Brierley looks at two other contributing causes.
[7:33] Speaker 2: One was the rising culture war dialogue around religion and science,
[7:38] Speaker 2: particularly debates about evolution curriculum in America. And then thirdly
[7:43] Speaker 2: the rise of the Internet and social media. Talk about
[7:46] Speaker 2: those latter two, the faith and science, internet, social media.
[7:49] Speaker 2: How did these fuel the new atheism?
[7:52] Speaker 1: Well, the social media thing, and we talked a lot
[7:54] Speaker 1: about this has a positive side and negative side negatively,
[7:58] Speaker 1: you know how views can sweep through entire populations, you know,
[8:01] Speaker 1: very quickly, and because of the nature of social media,
[8:06] Speaker 1: they tend to be rather superficial, so people making comments
[8:09] Speaker 1: and a quick reaction and largely emotional response. And I
[8:14] Speaker 1: came across that, Brandon early on when I do a
[8:16] Speaker 1: video talking about God, and then I met with these
[8:20] Speaker 1: things we call them trolls now, I suppose, but met
[8:23] Speaker 1: with this, you know, visceral, deeply emotional kind of reaction.
[8:26] Speaker 1: And I was frankly surprised by that. Naively, I see now,
[8:31] Speaker 1: but you know, I was expecting bertrand Russell level engagement.
[8:35] Speaker 1: You know, serious counter arguments, but I met with this
[8:39] Speaker 1: wave of largely emotionally driven superficiality that was a product
[8:44] Speaker 1: of social media, I think for sure, and that contributed
[8:47] Speaker 1: to the new atheist wave.
[8:49] Speaker 3: The science thing.
[8:50] Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I mean I've been talking about that for years.
[8:55] Speaker 1: We when I say we religious people, we dropped the
[8:59] Speaker 1: ball in that we allowed that conversation to be taken
[9:02] Speaker 1: over by evangelists for a scientism and a materialism, and
[9:09] Speaker 1: that was a huge problem. As I've said a million times,
[9:13] Speaker 1: we religious people have nothing, nothing against the sciences. What
[9:18] Speaker 1: we do stand against is the philosophical perspective of scientism
[9:23] Speaker 1: or materialism that says reality is simply co extensive with
[9:27] Speaker 1: what can be seen and measured, you know, empirically. Well,
[9:31] Speaker 1: that's a highly controversial philosophical.
[9:35] Speaker 3: Position to take and one that is very hard actually
[9:38] Speaker 3: to justify.
[9:40] Speaker 1: But we did allow the conversation, I think, to get
[9:43] Speaker 1: hijacked and co opted by those who are coming from
[9:46] Speaker 1: that perspective. And what they did is they made religion
[9:49] Speaker 1: seem then silly and primitive and pre scientific and mythological.
[9:55] Speaker 1: And that was of course used by all the new atheists.
[9:58] Speaker 1: You know, Dawkins with scientists to scientists. Sam Harris is
[10:01] Speaker 1: a like a neurologist, right, he's a brain. Hitchins was
[10:07] Speaker 1: is a journalist, but the other three were scientists, and
[10:10] Speaker 1: they they used that I'd call it deeply mistaken view.
[10:17] Speaker 1: You know that materialism is simply self evident because of
[10:21] Speaker 1: what the sciences have discovered.
[10:23] Speaker 2: So you uploaded your first YouTube video in two thousand
[10:27] Speaker 2: and seven, which, as you noted earlier, was right in
[10:29] Speaker 2: the sweet spot of when this new atheism was a rising.
[10:32] Speaker 2: In fact, from two thousand and six to two thousand
[10:34] Speaker 2: and eight, the bookend years, all four of these new
[10:37] Speaker 2: atheist horsemen released best selling books denouncing God so Richard
[10:42] Speaker 2: Dawkins The God Delusion, Christopher Hitchins, God is Not Great,
[10:46] Speaker 2: How Religion Poisons Everything, Sam Harris Letter to a Christian Nation,
[10:51] Speaker 2: and Daniel Dinnett Breaking the Spell Religion as natural Phenomenon.
[10:56] Speaker 2: Each of these books sold hundreds of thousands, in some
[10:59] Speaker 2: cases millions of copies, massively popular, especially among young people.
[11:05] Speaker 2: I remember I was in college at this time, seeing
[11:07] Speaker 2: so many college kids in the library on campus with
[11:10] Speaker 2: these books. Why do you think young people responded so
[11:14] Speaker 2: eagerly to these new atheist materials.
[11:18] Speaker 1: Because of the I'll be judgmental here, but the superficiality
[11:22] Speaker 1: and the very highly rhetorical style of these books, So
[11:25] Speaker 1: that will appeal to someone who doesn't have a real
[11:27] Speaker 1: critical edge, hasn't considered these questions deeply. You read, you know,
[11:33] Speaker 1: like Dawkins or Hitchens, for example, both I mean bright men,
[11:37] Speaker 1: to be sure, but their characterization of religion was just
[11:40] Speaker 1: absolutely a straw man. I mean, it betrayed zero sense
[11:46] Speaker 1: of a sophisticated approach to the Bible or to theological questions.
[11:51] Speaker 1: But they were so rhetorically gifted that a lot of
[11:54] Speaker 1: young people were.
[11:55] Speaker 3: Swept up in it.
[11:56] Speaker 1: Secondly, you know, and this is as old as Adam
[11:59] Speaker 1: and the What I mean is there's always a kind
[12:03] Speaker 1: of resentment against religion because religion speaks of God and
[12:07] Speaker 1: God's demand. Well, at some deep level, all of us sinners,
[12:11] Speaker 1: we don't want that. We don't want God making demands
[12:13] Speaker 1: on it. We don't want God telling us how we
[12:16] Speaker 1: should live. We don't want a very objective moral norm
[12:20] Speaker 1: hovering in front of us.
[12:22] Speaker 3: You know, I'd rather live my life on my own terms.
[12:25] Speaker 3: So someone comes.
[12:25] Speaker 1: Along and in a least rhetorically persuasive way says, you know,
[12:30] Speaker 1: there is no God. Religion's all nonsense, there is no God. Well,
[12:34] Speaker 1: there's a kind of permanently adolescent sight of me that
[12:37] Speaker 1: will always say, hey, great, great, Now I can live
[12:40] Speaker 1: the way I want to live. I think there was
[12:42] Speaker 1: a lot of that too in the popularity of these figures.
[12:48] Speaker 2: So the new atheist had a heyday for about a decade.
[12:51] Speaker 2: It wasn't until the early to mid twenty tens that
[12:55] Speaker 2: you begin to see the new atheism dwindle and then ultimately,
[12:59] Speaker 2: I think it's safe to say fall apart. Justin Brierley
[13:02] Speaker 2: traces a lot of this out in his book. There
[13:04] Speaker 2: were scandals and infighting among the many atheists and secular groups,
[13:09] Speaker 2: complaints about the leaders being all old white men. But
[13:14] Speaker 2: Briarley also points to this interesting tension that eventually broke.
[13:18] Speaker 2: He said, on the one hand, these new atheists like
[13:21] Speaker 2: to present themselves with tremendous bravado and arrogance. In fact,
[13:25] Speaker 2: some of them called themselves the brights, you know, in
[13:28] Speaker 2: contrast to the doles, the religious people. They were supremely confident.
[13:33] Speaker 2: But on the other side, they seemed to also be
[13:36] Speaker 2: supremely cowardly. I know that during these years, it was
[13:40] Speaker 2: one of your own gripes about the new atheists that
[13:42] Speaker 2: they refused to debate some of the leading religious lights,
[13:46] Speaker 2: people like William Lane Craig, and instead would pick on
[13:49] Speaker 2: the least sophisticated, the easiest religious people and arguments. Is
[13:53] Speaker 2: that the case, Yeah, you know, it's interesting.
[13:57] Speaker 1: I'll give Hitchins credit. He did debate Craig, and I
[13:59] Speaker 1: think Sam Harris did too. There's a famous debate at
[14:02] Speaker 1: Notre Dame, and you know, the watch the Hitchins Craig conversations,
[14:07] Speaker 1: because what I've noticed in them, I think Hitchens almost
[14:11] Speaker 1: despite himself, was impressed by William Lane Craig and knew
[14:15] Speaker 1: that he was dealing with a formidable opponent, and he realized, Okay,
[14:19] Speaker 1: my rhetorical games aren't going to work with this guy.
[14:22] Speaker 1: And so they all relied on, you know, their usual tropes,
[14:26] Speaker 1: but they didn't work with some of as serious as Craig.
[14:30] Speaker 3: And so I think those are kind of instructive.
[14:33] Speaker 1: And I wonder too, And this is, you know, part
[14:36] Speaker 1: of Brierly's argument that as formally agnostic and atheist people
[14:40] Speaker 1: begin to take a deeper, closer look at religion.
[14:44] Speaker 3: Was it because the New Atheists, in.
[14:46] Speaker 1: Their bravado, as you say, summoned us again to pick
[14:52] Speaker 1: up our game. You know. Now this goes back to
[14:56] Speaker 1: one of my themes that makes some Catholics man. But
[14:58] Speaker 1: it's simply the case that we dumbed ourselves down for
[15:01] Speaker 1: so long.
[15:03] Speaker 3: We dropped all those tools, all.
[15:05] Speaker 1: Those weapons which I don't hesitate to call them, the
[15:08] Speaker 1: weapons that we can use to fight off those who
[15:10] Speaker 1: are trying to attack us. And in the measure that
[15:13] Speaker 1: we left all that to the side, we were defenseless
[15:17] Speaker 1: when these superficial attacks were coming at us. We weren't
[15:21] Speaker 1: able to defend ourselves. I think as the new Atheists
[15:26] Speaker 1: did engage serious religious people, you know, something began to
[15:32] Speaker 1: shift to them and they realized, wait a minute, maybe
[15:35] Speaker 1: we are being too abrupt here, or maybe we aren't
[15:39] Speaker 1: being sufficiently reflective. And that's I think an interesting part
[15:43] Speaker 1: of Briarley's story.
[15:45] Speaker 2: Brierley seems to agree with you. In fact, he provocatively
[15:48] Speaker 2: says at one point, I thank God for Richard Dawkins.
[15:51] Speaker 2: Our harshest critics are often the ones who help us
[15:54] Speaker 2: to grow the most. He says, New atheism has revitalized
[15:59] Speaker 2: the intellectual tradition of the Christian Church in the West.
[16:02] Speaker 2: Would you agree with that?
[16:03] Speaker 1: Yeah, right, certainly at the apologetic level. And I press
[16:07] Speaker 1: it to Brandon because I would say to theologians operating
[16:12] Speaker 1: at a very high level university theologians, that they lost
[16:16] Speaker 1: their connection to the living Church and the connection to apologetics.
[16:23] Speaker 1: Go back to Thomas Aquinas, who is a theologian at
[16:25] Speaker 1: the very highest level of speculative systematic theology at the
[16:30] Speaker 1: same time, and because of the first he's also a
[16:34] Speaker 1: great apologist. I think we drove a wedge between apologetics
[16:39] Speaker 1: and high speculative theology where our best university people didn't
[16:45] Speaker 1: engage these attacks on the church at all. It seems
[16:48] Speaker 1: to me Craig is the great counter example. So I
[16:53] Speaker 1: think that's a good development from it, that we need
[16:56] Speaker 1: to reintegrate our high university speculative theology and on the
[17:02] Speaker 1: ground apologetics. You know, I wan Jean Luke Marion and
[17:06] Speaker 1: David Tracy and those people in the front lines of
[17:09] Speaker 1: apologetics and not just entertaining the highest, most abstract questions.
[17:17] Speaker 1: So I think in all those ways it has awakened us.
[17:19] Speaker 2: Yeah, I can mention just one more reason that brier
[17:24] Speaker 2: Lee gives for the collapse of the New Atheism. He
[17:27] Speaker 2: notes that it's essentially parasitic, that it has nothing positive
[17:32] Speaker 2: to offer, that at the end of the day, it
[17:34] Speaker 2: failed to satisfy the longings of its adherents. Let me
[17:37] Speaker 2: review a couple paragraphs that he wrote. He said many
[17:40] Speaker 2: people had turned to the New Atheism for its promise
[17:43] Speaker 2: of a brighter, more rational, and more scientific future. They
[17:47] Speaker 2: believed it held the key to human flourishing. Just as
[17:50] Speaker 2: the secular anthem Imagine had envisioned a world without religion,
[17:53] Speaker 2: heaven or hell, it was only reasonable to suppose that
[17:57] Speaker 2: the Song's utopian brotherhood of man would naturally follow. Yet,
[18:02] Speaker 2: despite John Lennon claiming it was easy if you try,
[18:06] Speaker 2: it turned out to be quite complicated. What could a
[18:09] Speaker 2: movement that was built on tearing down God erect in
[18:12] Speaker 2: his place? Science was the obvious alternative. Surely that was
[18:17] Speaker 2: an objective truth to which all people could aspire. But
[18:20] Speaker 2: science turned out to be a poor substitute for a savior.
[18:24] Speaker 2: Science can tell you how the universe arose, but not
[18:27] Speaker 2: why it is there. It cannot purchase a meaningful existence.
[18:32] Speaker 2: I think he's getting on a really key insight that
[18:34] Speaker 2: the new atheism was really effective at causing people to
[18:38] Speaker 2: doubt God's existence and the goodness of religion, but very
[18:42] Speaker 2: bad at providing any satisfying alternative.
[18:45] Speaker 3: Would you agree, No, quite right, Go back to Tom
[18:48] Speaker 3: Holland here.
[18:49] Speaker 1: You know, his great work has been showing that the
[18:52] Speaker 1: great ethical values of the West that we say, oh
[18:56] Speaker 1: they're grounded in the Enlightenment, in fact are in a
[18:59] Speaker 1: scale will be Christian values. Now link that to John Lennon.
[19:03] Speaker 1: So you know, the brotherhood of Man? Did Julius Caesar
[19:07] Speaker 1: believe in the brotherhood of Man? Tom Holland, who knows
[19:10] Speaker 1: the Roman world as well of anybody, say absolutely not.
[19:14] Speaker 1: You know, would the ancient Greeks have believed in the
[19:17] Speaker 1: brotherhood of Man?
[19:18] Speaker 3: Absolutely not.
[19:19] Speaker 1: Name one ancient culture that would believe in You know,
[19:24] Speaker 1: all you need is love, as John Lennon also said,
[19:27] Speaker 1: with the Beatles and the Brotherhood of Man, those are
[19:30] Speaker 1: Christian ideas inescapably so. So you can't say, on the
[19:35] Speaker 1: one hand, imagine no religion, you know, all no hell
[19:39] Speaker 1: below us, above us, only sky, no no, no God.
[19:42] Speaker 1: But boy, oh boy, do we want the brotherhood of man?
[19:45] Speaker 1: You can't do that that doesn't work. The brotherhood of
[19:49] Speaker 1: man follows from the fatherhood of God, and that's a
[19:52] Speaker 1: that's an old Christian idea, howand I think is as
[19:58] Speaker 1: good as anyone today at showing that relationship. And so
[20:01] Speaker 1: the new atheists wanted the brotherhood of man business, but
[20:05] Speaker 1: they kicked they saw it off the branch they were
[20:08] Speaker 1: sitting on. Right. And then science right is a very
[20:13] Speaker 1: poor substitute. The physical sciences are great, we love them,
[20:17] Speaker 1: and they make our lives much more convenient because of technology,
[20:21] Speaker 1: and they give us insight into you know, the planets
[20:24] Speaker 1: and all that is great, but they won't tell you
[20:27] Speaker 1: one little thing about the meaning of your life, the
[20:30] Speaker 1: purpose of your life, what makes life beautiful, what makes
[20:33] Speaker 1: life morally upright? What's the ultimate purpose of my existence?
[20:38] Speaker 1: The sciences won't give you that. Finally, you're a new
[20:41] Speaker 1: atheans to say there's no God and young people are right,
[20:44] Speaker 1: you know, stick it to religion, and oh yeah, we
[20:47] Speaker 1: want to get rid of all that. And what am
[20:49] Speaker 1: I left with? I came from nothing, I'm going to nothing.
[20:55] Speaker 1: There's no objective value that determines the meaning of my life.
[21:00] Speaker 1: And I'm stuck in an existential desert.
[21:04] Speaker 3: That's where the new atheism, like the old atheism, has
[21:07] Speaker 3: left me.
[21:08] Speaker 1: And so once I get over the kind of my
[21:10] Speaker 1: adolescent you know, a sense of triumph, that's what I'm
[21:14] Speaker 1: left with.
[21:16] Speaker 3: Now.
[21:17] Speaker 1: Welcome into the picture the Jordan Peterson's and the Tom
[21:20] Speaker 1: Hollins and the Douglas Murray's and people who maybe would
[21:25] Speaker 1: have identified as agnostic or even atheist.
[21:29] Speaker 3: And are starting to say, oh, wait a minute, wait
[21:30] Speaker 3: a minute.
[21:31] Speaker 1: There's something in this religious thing that's not just stupid
[21:36] Speaker 1: superstition and oppression and you know, religion poisons everything that
[21:40] Speaker 1: maybe there actually is something too what the great religions
[21:43] Speaker 1: have been saying. And that's the moment I think Brierley
[21:47] Speaker 1: identifies correctly as where we are right now.
[21:49] Speaker 3: We're at kind of a turning point moment.
[21:52] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's to me the most fascinating part
[21:55] Speaker 2: of Briarley's book is he's pinpointed this reality that the
[21:59] Speaker 2: new atheism has become tired and spent, and the Church
[22:02] Speaker 2: shouldn't spend its time wasting away by arguing with the
[22:06] Speaker 2: Dowkins and the Hitchens of the world and their accolytes today.
[22:10] Speaker 2: But we've got this new vanguard of interesting skeptics and
[22:14] Speaker 2: non believers. You've mentioned several names already, Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray,
[22:18] Speaker 2: Tom Holland, David Rubin. Dave Rubin, many of whom you've
[22:21] Speaker 2: fulmed conversations with Briarley has as well. And what Brierley
[22:25] Speaker 2: notes is that these guys are asking different questions, They're
[22:29] Speaker 2: interested in different things, posing different challenges than the new
[22:33] Speaker 2: atheists of before. In your own interaction with these figures,
[22:36] Speaker 2: have you noticed that shift as well, that there's a
[22:39] Speaker 2: new interest, a new type of question being asked.
[22:43] Speaker 1: You know, come back to Dave Rubin, because I've been
[22:45] Speaker 1: on with him a number of times, I think three
[22:47] Speaker 1: or four times. The very first time was out in
[22:49] Speaker 1: La and I was on his show, and at that
[22:51] Speaker 1: point he was an atheist and said so, and told
[22:54] Speaker 1: me he climbed to the top of Mount Sinai because
[22:58] Speaker 1: he was Jewish background, he's interested in doing that. And
[23:00] Speaker 1: he said, you know what happened right at the top?
[23:02] Speaker 3: Nothing? Nothing, I felt nothing.
[23:05] Speaker 1: And so he announced himself as an atheist to me,
[23:08] Speaker 1: you know, unapologetically.
[23:10] Speaker 3: Well, I think it was the second or third time
[23:12] Speaker 3: I was on with him.
[23:13] Speaker 1: I casually said I didn't mean it in any way
[23:16] Speaker 1: to be critical. I just said, we know, now, Dave,
[23:18] Speaker 1: for you, as an atheist to say that, that's rather interesting.
[23:21] Speaker 1: And he paused and he said, I don't think I'm
[23:24] Speaker 1: an atheist anymore, you know. And that's when I realized, Okay,
[23:29] Speaker 1: something is shifted around now. What was happening was he
[23:32] Speaker 1: was traveling at that time with Jordan Peterson, who was
[23:35] Speaker 1: talking a lot about I mean about God.
[23:38] Speaker 3: He's talking about the Bible, about the you know.
[23:40] Speaker 1: Spiritual dimension of life, and I think it had a
[23:42] Speaker 1: big impact on Dave Ruben and then Peterson himself, of course,
[23:47] Speaker 1: is a prime example of this, a guy with a
[23:51] Speaker 1: very scientific background but who started to read and think
[23:55] Speaker 1: his way toward what the great religions have been talking about.
[24:00] Speaker 2: Well, I'd like to encourage everybody again to pick up
[24:02] Speaker 2: Justin Brierly's new book, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God,
[24:06] Speaker 2: because what I'd like to do is, for future conversations
[24:09] Speaker 2: walk through some of the additional chapters in the book
[24:12] Speaker 2: where he notes the questions that skeptical seekers are asking
[24:15] Speaker 2: in regards to science, culture, history, and the Bible. So
[24:19] Speaker 2: maybe we can have a separate conversation about each one
[24:22] Speaker 2: of those topics. Well, it's time now for our listener question.
[24:34] Speaker 2: If you have a question that you'd like to ask
[24:36] Speaker 2: Bishop Baron on this show, you can send it into
[24:38] Speaker 2: us at the website Askbishop Baron dot com. A woman
[24:42] Speaker 2: named Mary from Minnesota has done just that. She submitted
[24:45] Speaker 2: a question for the bishop about the Holy Spirit. Here's
[24:48] Speaker 2: Mary's question.
[24:53] Speaker 4: Hi, Bishop Baron, this is Mary from Minnesota. Thank you
[24:56] Speaker 4: for your good work. I am calling to ask does
[25:00] Speaker 4: the Catholic Church teach that the Holy Spirit has a gender?
[25:05] Speaker 4: Thank you and God.
[25:07] Speaker 1: Bless Yeah, thanks for that question. The answer, obviously is no.
[25:10] Speaker 1: God is a spirit. God's not material and genders associated
[25:14] Speaker 1: with our bodies, and so God doesn't have a gender.
[25:16] Speaker 1: God is not male or female. Now that begs the question,
[25:19] Speaker 1: how come we use you know pronouns, We use the
[25:23] Speaker 1: he him pronoun.
[25:24] Speaker 3: We're talking about God.
[25:25] Speaker 1: The classical answer is that God, who's octus, purest right,
[25:29] Speaker 1: pure act. God who's the creator. God's the one who
[25:32] Speaker 1: generates and gives rise to the world. God is that
[25:36] Speaker 1: reality which can never be receptive.
[25:39] Speaker 3: Right.
[25:39] Speaker 1: A creature can't affect God as though God is moved
[25:43] Speaker 1: by a creature. So Classically speaking, we associate the male
[25:48] Speaker 1: with the generative side of a sexual act, the female
[25:50] Speaker 1: with a receptive side. I think that's why in the
[25:54] Speaker 1: Bible and the Great Tradition we associate the masculine pronoun
[25:59] Speaker 1: with God. Now to say that is by no means
[26:02] Speaker 1: to imply that we can't use metaphors for God that
[26:06] Speaker 1: are more feminine. So the Bible indeed talks about God
[26:09] Speaker 1: in a more maternal way, as a hen and so on,
[26:11] Speaker 1: and nursing with delighted her breasts and this sort of thing. Fine, fine,
[26:16] Speaker 1: I think we can say God is like a woman.
[26:18] Speaker 1: God is like a mother, you know, because God is
[26:22] Speaker 1: beyond anything creaturely, so we reach for all sorts of
[26:25] Speaker 1: metaphors to describe God. And so it's to use the
[26:29] Speaker 1: masculine pronouns about God is by no means to be
[26:32] Speaker 1: anti woman or to say that, you know, men were
[26:34] Speaker 1: deifying the male gender and all that stuff.
[26:38] Speaker 3: That's not the case at all.
[26:40] Speaker 1: But I would say, strictly speaking, no person of the
[26:43] Speaker 1: Trinity has a gender, because God is beyond the physical.
[26:49] Speaker 2: Well, thanks Mary for that question. Today we are launching
[26:52] Speaker 2: a new book at Word on Fire. It is called
[26:54] Speaker 2: Know Thyself, Catholic Classical Education and the Discovery of Self.
[27:00] Speaker 2: It's written by Andrew Youngblood. If you're a parent, a teacher,
[27:03] Speaker 2: a Catechist, and you've heard about the classical education movement,
[27:07] Speaker 2: you've been wondering what it's all about. This is the
[27:09] Speaker 2: book for you. There has been an ongoing resurgence in
[27:12] Speaker 2: classical education, especially among Catholics, and this classical model, which
[27:17] Speaker 2: is rooted in the Socratic method, is flourishing. Classical Catholic
[27:20] Speaker 2: schools are sprouting up everywhere, but it also has its detractors.
[27:24] Speaker 2: Some parents and teachers worry that it's impractical, outdated, or worse, judgmental.
[27:30] Speaker 2: In this book, Andrew Youngblood, who is an educator with
[27:33] Speaker 2: decades of experience in classical learning as both a student
[27:36] Speaker 2: and a teacher, introduces readers to this exciting educational alternative
[27:41] Speaker 2: and its intellectual and spiritual benefits through brief vignettes, personal
[27:45] Speaker 2: anecdotes from students and teachers, and examples from the classroom,
[27:50] Speaker 2: Know Thyself makes a positive case for an education journey
[27:54] Speaker 2: that teaches students to see themselves through God's eyes and
[27:57] Speaker 2: truly know themselves as they are called to be again.
[28:00] Speaker 2: The book is called Know Thyself, Catholic, Classical education and
[28:05] Speaker 2: the Discovery of Self by Andrew Youngblood. I'll include a
[28:08] Speaker 2: link in the show notes. Well, thanks so much for
[28:11] Speaker 2: watching and listening. We'll see you next time on the
[28:13] Speaker 2: Word on Fire Show

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