I'll be Interviewed on Premier Christian Radio Saturday.

Justin Brierly will interview me on Premier Christian Radio at 2.30 PM Saturday, London time. His co-host is Dr. Peter May, whose writings can be found here. From what I can tell this is an influential British Christian talk show, billed as an "award-winning programme," and Justin is a decent bloke. If you can't hear it when it airs it'll be archived here.

25 comments:

Mike aka MonolithTMA said...

I look forward to hearing it.

Anonymous said...

John,
good luck,
I'll catch the recording.
Make us proud!

Steven Carr said...

Hi
I also have been on Premier Christian Radio.

Justin gives all of his guests a fair chance.

It will also appear on the Premier Christian Radio web site a week later, or possibly just a few days later.

Steven Carr said...

And Justin's show really did win an award, for a show where a non-biologist tried to defend creationism.....

HeIsSailing said...

For those of you interested, the show is now archived. The interview with John begins at the 13:30 mark.

Unknown said...

I enjoyed it, I hadn't realised how much you'd suffered at the hands of Christians before you "left the fold". The other guest was polite and the host was excellent. A shame there were so many adverts and that you couldn't go any deeper, but there's next week to look forward to.

I was surprised you didn't bring up the POE at all though, that's what you seem to write about 80% of the time on your blog. Grace.

Unknown said...

Welldone on the interview and I agree that Christians can sometimes forget that Jesus taught us to be loving and forgiving. It makes me sad to hear that your church were judgemental and this is a challenge for Christians to work on.

I think it is also clear from the interview that emotional reasons were why you left Christianity - you must have come across evolution and the relationship between science and the Bible when you were a Christian apologist and found no problem with it then and it seems hard to believe that this was the first time you came across the issue.

I was also confused as to why you said you were never a young earth creationist and then claimed that you couldn't reconcile the universe being billions of years old with Genesis. If the word 'day' in Genesis means period of time then does it matter how long that period is? Particularly as God is timeless and so doing things quickly makes no difference to Him.

Finally, I would have thought that you've set yourself up to fail next week by arguing that we are Christians because our parents are when the person you're debating didn't come from a Christian family. Won't you also be committing the genetic fallacy? Couldn't it be argued that if you'd grown up pre-Darwin you wouldn't believe in evolution etc and that very littler of our knowledge is stuff we've worked out for ourselves? In other words it doesn't matter how we found out about a belief, the question is 'is there any evidence for it?'

Steven Carr said...

It was interesting to hear how Peter May admit he never read one single sceptical argument when he was converting to Christianity.

Wow!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your comments.

James, the genetic fallacy occurs only if I claim your faith is false because of these social factors. I don't do this. Instead, I claim they present strong reasons to doubt what we affirm, and there is a huge difference, as I said, between that which we affirm and thay which we deny.

Cheers.

Evan said...

John, really great presentation of the case against Genesis. I wish the guy you were talking to had been a bit more willing to defend it. Time limitations kept any significant discussion from happening, but the fact that he singled out that land plants existed before beasts is interesting, as plants and animals are more closely related than animals are to amoebae.

It's also interesting that the scale of the universe argument was actually one that was quite compelling to you when you were deconverting, and I have to admit it seemed very compelling to me, even though I had never heard it articulated.

Anonymous said...

I've listened to it and I must say I cannot believe how bad my presentation was. While I think my thoughts were good ones, upon listening to it I can see that I was so apprehensive I can't believe that I sounded that bad. It was annoying to even me. Sorry.

The problem is that we recorded both programs, so next weeks program will be probably more of the same.

Funny thing is that when I hung up I thought I had done a really good job! Shit. I didn't. I can so do much better than that.

I'm trying to analyse why it is that I was so apprehensive and fix it, since there will be many more of them to come. One thing is that I truly am the sort of person who does not want to offend people. I know that I do from time to time. But I really don't want to. So here I am being interviewed by Christians, not wanting to offend them. But why should I care? Why should I care if I offend a holocaust denier, or a flat earth society member? I don't. They are deluded. And that's what I think of the Christian faith. I suppose for now if I just keep that in mind for the next time I'll do just fine. We'll see. Lesson hopefully learned.

Kyle Szklenski said...

That's something which is really difficult to control, John. But I still liked the interview.

The defender o' the faith seemed to be a typical back-peddler, or maybe even just another Alister McGrath - another person who speaks a whole lot of words without ever saying anything at all. Does that continue into the next one?

Anonymous said...

Next week we discuss the problem of religious diversity and various other tangents. I'm sure that I must've had the same type of presentation though, but at the time I didn't notice doing it.

Jim Holman said...

john w loftus writes: I've listened to it and I must say I cannot believe how bad my presentation was.

I listened to the whole program. I didn't think it was a bad presentation. But three points. First, I thought that the program really didn't play to your strengths. Much of the program was spent exploring your personal reasons for leaving Christianity. Second, the other two really weren't really making much of an argument for anything, so there wasn't much to argue against. Third, they were very friendly, sympathetic actually, which makes it difficult to "go for the jugular," so to speak.

I had the feeling that you went on the show expecting a knife fight, but the other two were more interested in where you bought the knife, and why you selected that particular model.

In short, the format and content of the program made it difficult to raise any substantive issues. It really became more of a program about the psychological or emotional factors that might lead one away from Christianity. A couple of times you tried to take the discussion in a different direction, in effect saying "but wait, I had real, objective, intellectual reasons too!" But it never really went that way.

People rarely get out of (or into) Christianity for purely intellectual reasons. In fundamentalist or evangelical Christianity there is a strong sense of how life is "supposed" to be. And frankly, as long as things go as planned, there isn't any real reason why one would actively investigate the other side of the issue.

But in some cases "real life" intervenes, the normal expectations are violated, and all of a sudden the religion doesn't "work as advertised" any more. At that point some people may decide to look at alternatives or to investigate why it doesn't work.

Thus psychological and emotional factors may be the impetus for a deep intellectual examination of the religion, but they are not the reason why the person departs from the religion. The person does not depart because the religion is no longer emotionally satisfying, but because he or she finds upon examination that the major tenets are simply not true.

I think this is the point you tried a couple of times to make, but the format of the program made it difficult for that issue to get much traction.

Making a verbal presentation is very different from writing. It's like the difference between a face-to-face job interview vs. writing a resume. So I wouldn't say it was a bad presentation, just that you need more experience in verbal presentations, especially in how to bring the discussion back to the things that you really want to talk about. I suspect your next verbal presentation in another venue will be very different from this one.

Unknown said...

Yeah, I listened to the whole interview, and I was largely surprised by the demeanor of the Christians on there. So much, that I went on to listen to more of the archived stuff.

The attitude of the host is pretty outstanding. He just absorbs all attacks on the Christian faith with a "yeah" or "understandable" like he doesn't subscribe to the religion at all! He was so flaccid I was half expecting him to give you tips on what to debunk next. I sympathize with you, it would have been like debating with my sweet Aunt Carol for me.

Looking forward to the next installment.

Steven Carr said...

Justin Brierley is an interesting character.

He really is a Christian, but he makes sure that everybody on his show gets a fair chance to speak.

Excellent moderation, which gives Christian talk radio a good name.

Anonymous said...

Hi John,
my 2 cents.
I don't think it was a bad presentation. I think you were very cordial and endearing.

I do think that it is possible, especially when you have the strength of sound reasoning and principles behind you to state your case and defend it without the need to 'go for the jugular'.

For example, when the doc was summing up craigs argument and he said that 'at some point the decision was made to create' begs the question of god. If creation out of nothing did happen, it does not follow that it was done by a sentient being.

Also, your summation of Genesis creation story, the various types, creation by conflict for example are paralleled in near eastern mythology (religions) and are a kind of summary of them. I never realized they were summed up like that in genesis. Your polytheistic comment was on the money and your Doc showed his lack of "serious bible study" by not being familiar with the background of the culture the scripture was written in.

I think you can be charming, witty and compelling without the need to be aggressive or defensive. Put on your teacher hat (so to speak) and teach them. No need to go for the jugular, just run rings around them logically. ;-)

Oh yea, and a liberal use of critical questions and Socratic method helps to back them into a corner when they can't manage to coherently state what it is they believe.

Anonymous said...

oh yea, I forgot.
I noticed the liberal use of absolutes and dichotomies.

As you do more interviews, those things are easy targets so don't use them but watch for them to use them.

Mike aka MonolithTMA said...

I finally got a chance to listen to it and enjoyed it. I think you did well, John, though I think you and I are alike in that I also don't want to offend people, so I end up pulling my punches and not being as effective as I'd like to be.

I think Justin and Peter were very nice and respectful, though their questions and conclusions were not surprising.

The problem that you ran into is the problem we all run into. It is impossible for them to believe that the world could be different than the way their religion describes it. Even though we came from that world view and know what it was like to believe that way, it's still frustrating to see someone trapped in that world view.

Good job. I look forward to the 2nd half.

I also pre-ordered your book.

goprairie said...

and when IS the darn book coming out? amazon cancelled my order because some time limit expired. I guess I should reorder.

Anonymous said...

The damn book will be out in about three months. ;-) And...worth the wait, I promise you!

Mike aka MonolithTMA said...

Ok, I have three months to clear my reading list. ;)

norm hansen said...

John
I was on "Unbelievable" a few weeks ago and if you think you were ineffective you should hear me. Though one of my friends who listened to me all the way through was reassuring. I have sent a comment on the Kalam argument Peter put forward to the show and you should get that from Justin even if it does not get aired on the next show's intro. I think you are being too hard on yourself. You presented a clear point and stuck to it. Being too agressive is counter-productive in this context. One of the nails in the coffin of my christianity was stuff like the Kalam argument and thinking "This is the best argument for the existence of god? Why am I still believing?"

I must clear my reading list for the book too.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Norm, I think I get nervous talking about my personal life since I get attacked so much by Christians, and maybe I was expecting that here too. You'll notice that in the second hour I did much better because it was about the ideas I dispute. I'll have to keep this in mind when interviewed in the future, and I will.

Have you seen my critique of the Kalam argument?

norm hansen said...

John I read your critique with interest and agree with it. I think it is one of those philosophical attempts to prove the existence of god that begs so many questions there are many ways to refute it. Peter's particular decriprion of god as not existing in time or space and without matter are usually attributes of something that does not exist. Which is what I found ammusing. Of course non-existence is better than existance according to Ecclesiastes so maybe god is smart.