The Death of Atheism? A Conversation with Eric Metaxas.
Is belief in God reasonable today? Where does the scientific and archaeological evidence point? In this interview, I talk with Eric Metaxas about his latest book, IS ATHEISM DEAD? We discuss the origin of the universe, fine-tuning, the origin of life, the biblical story of Sodom, and more.
READ: Is Atheism Dead? by Eric Metaxas (https://amzn.to/2YmFdyl)
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AMAZING, AMAZING, AMAZING.
GREAT. VIDEO, lots of good information.
Just show us the scientific data and the methods you're using that indicate a god to you so we can repeat your experiments and see if we get the same results. Oh, wait, you don't actually have anything to examine, do you? Well, we'll still be here when/if ever you do.
Anything for a click or a buck. No, atheism is not dead. Any other stupid questions I can answer for you?
Atheism can't die as long as people claim there is a god without sufficient evidence.
Sorry honey, you just can't seem to grasp Philosophy 101.
Metaxas is always fun to listen to .
This happened to me a few weeks ago while reading your book! God of miracles.
What is a single dime worth?
Recently I was getting ready to go on a trip. It was a trip I was looking forward to as it involved seeing my grandchildren.
It was grandparents day at our second graders school that weekend.
They live 750 miles from us which necessitates an airplane ride to visit for the weekend.
I was packed and rolling my suitcase towards the family room to have my husband put into our car before leaving for the airport.
As the suitcase rolled across the wood floor into the family room a dime suddenly fell from somewhere onto the floor. I picked it up and looked around me wondering from where it had fallen. There was nothing on the outside of the suitcase that had any signs of a place for it to come from but I picked it up and tossed it onto my desk nearby.
When I picked up the dime from the floor I remembered thinking for some strange reason how small and light it was, why I marveled at the size and weight of the small dime, I was unaware.
Off to the airport I went and eventually onto the airplane.
I had taken a book I wanted to continue reading as it has had so many amazing details about the story of our origin and very existence that I have found to be remarkable, you might even say, miraculous.
So after settling into my seat on the airplane, read a few chapters I did!
I continued to marvel at the revelations I was reading and the many details which were so curiously reflective of a purposeful design and thoughtful designer.
After arriving in Nashville and retrieving my luggage from the baggage claim I continued my journey to my daughter’s house where I was so looking forward to those faces I love as much as you can love anyone’s face.
They are reflections of the kind of love you can remember feeling when seeing your own children‘s little faces at that age and knowing you could never love anyone as much as you love them.
On arrival, there they were, my favorite little boy faces!
After greeting those beautiful faces, my precious 2nd grader offered to help me take my overpacked suitcase into the house.
I rolled it across their wood floors into the room I would be staying.
A little later that day, I decided to retrieve something from my suitcase that I had brought for my daughter.
So I removed the outside cover that protects the suitcase from damage when traveling. It’s a weatherproof material that slides over the suitcase and fits snugly with straps to tighten it.
In other words, the suitcase itself is underneath this protective jacket.
So I pulled it off and proceeded to unzip my suitcase. As I unzipped and flung open the case to reveal the contents a strange occurrence happened.
A dime flew onto the wooden floor of my daughter’s room in which I had parked the suitcase.
I went over and picked up the dime and marveled again at another dime apparently coming out of nowhere and landing beside me on the floor.
I examined the contents of my suitcase and decided it was a strange coincidence that two dimes had now fallen to the floor in different cities beside my suitcase.
There were no other signs of any loose change inside my suitcase and as I picked it off the floor, again, I had the thought of how small and light the dime was and wondering where had it come from, just as earlier that morning a dime appeared out of nowhere 750 miles from where I now was standing.
But as with any seemingly coincidental occurrence I tossed the dime on a desk in my daughters house and went about the rest of the day.
We enjoyed a beautiful and special time that weekend together. Seeing my growing grandsons and having time together was a special treat for me.
Sunday arrived and it was once again time to head back to the airport.
Luggage bag checked at the airport, it was time to settle in for the trip back home.
I got out my book again and began to read….
“In his book, Why the Universe Is the Way It Is, Caltech astrophysicist Hugh Ross gives us the frightening details:
‘ at certain early epochs in cosmic history, (the universe’s) mass density must have been as finely tuned as one part in 10 to the 60th power to allow for the possible existence of physical life at any time or place with the entirety of the universe. This degree of fine-tuning is so great that it’s as if right after the universe beginning someone could have destroyed the possibility of life within it by subtracting a single dimes mass from the whole of the observable universe, or adding a single dime mass to it.”
What did I just read???
What was this scientific fact revealing to my curious mind and heart! I felt a lump in my throat beginning as I remembered the strange appearance of two dimes appearing out of nowhere that weekend and what my thought had been each time I picked them up from the floor, how I had marveled at the small lightweight of those two little, seemingly coincidental, coins that had garnered my attention.
On I began to continue reading….
“ A single dime’s mass. Everyone knows that the mass of a dime is almost nothing. Yet Hugh Ross declares that is the amount of mass that would have caused the universe not to come into being. Are we supposed to take this seriously? That the mass of a dime is what could have made the difference between our existence and non-existence? How can we rationally process something so outrageous? And yet science has progressed to the point where it can tell us this, as a fact. Still, the notion that the entire mass of the universe could not deviate by the mass of a single dime has to be among the most preposterous statements anyone has ever made in the history of language. But again, there is a monumental difficulty, because this is not the harebrained, conjecture of some madman, but the bloodless scientific consensus. It isn’t something that science can explain, of course, and it makes many scientist deeply uncomfortable. But there it is: an incomprehensibly outrageous scientific fact that stymies any thinking person into silence. What is there to say? “
As I continued to read Eric Metaxas’ book, titled, Is Atheism Dead?, the answer to his title question continues to persuade anyone reading it with a certainty of heart and mind…
My heart was moved to a silent awe of what I had previously been unaware, that a little dime could be worth so much! The world was indeed created in such a way to reveal all that was created to have great value, as seen on the faces we love and the gratitude we feel for their place in our lives. This purposefully created universe tells this story everywhere we look of intelligent design created for the purpose of love.
Tears filled my eyes as I sat still on the airplane watching the clouds roll past my window…the universe has a designer who loves us so much more than a single dime ❤️
For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16
A grumpy kid in a corner needs a caring adult or mature friend to help them realise that love isn't far away.
We all must open up!
Outside of synthetic chemistry, Dr. Tour is reduced to a hooting lunatic.
Isaiah 44:24 quotes G-d as saying he is stretching the heavens by himself. The Hebrew verb Netah is used in the participle form meaning that G-d alone is stretching the heavens. Seems like what Einstein discovered about the expansion of the universe confirms what the prophet Isaiah of blessed memory quoted G-d as saying
Hahaha! What a clown show. Literally nothing these two are saying in this entire episode offers an accurate representation of atheistic thought/perspective. Nothing but straw man.
New scientific discoveries raise new questions. What Metaxas refers to as evidence for God are questions which we have not yet answered. Theists like Metaxas, in an attempt to justify their faith in Iron Age superstitions, shove God into every temporary gap in our ever-increasing knowledge.
Metaxas is a completely deluded moron, he hasn't a brain in his head!!!!
"people dont ask the question of how did the first cell emerge"
the entire field of origin of life research would beg to differ. a lot of brilliant people who continue to ask that question every single day. and most days they get closer to having an actual answer. but just because we dont have an answer yet doesnt mean it must have been god. it could be, a god of some kind is impossible to rule out because of how vague the term is, but so far it has been neither confirmed nor disproven conclusively.
Atheism will die once theism disappears. If there is no concept of theism, voilà, no more atheists. A saying I connect with is:
Well. my take on being atheist is, it's not my idea, I'm only an atheist because of someone else's belief, it has nothing to do with me . I don't even want to be atheist. [Harry "Nic" Nicholas]
Let me know when god wakes up and is willing to give me a "road to damascus" proof. Until then, he is either hiding, or non-existent, since he still hasn't provided anything he knows will convince me of his existence…. what a weak case for an irrelevant version of their god.
How silly this man is.
Edwin Hubble used the 100" telescope, not a 200" telescope.
Atheism IS dead, for the time being, in that there is no proof that God does NOT exist. Here's a question – just how much of the universe is compatible with life? Only the tiniest sliver of volume of the surface and atmosphere on our planet.
Eric, the early solar system was a gravity induced shooting gallery. Collisions going on like crazy.
You are a fool, sir.
It never ceases to amaze me that so many people are angered by someone they dont believe exists, but will still spend their time arguing about it.
Why does Sean believe in old earth? This means he doesn't believe what Genesis says that God created earth in 6 days.
This video is one iteration of a stump speech that Mr. Metaxas has been delivering to various churches, religious lay groups, on webcasts and the like in support of his book, Is Atheism Dead? The thesis of the book and of the talks is that contrary to the narrative to be found in mainstream media and academia, modern science proves the truth of Christian theism as set forth in the Bible. Mr. Metaxas, who likes to sneer at academic elites despite being a Yale alumnus, says that the initial impetus for writing the book came when he met Dr. Steven Collins, an archaeologist affiliated with Trinity Southwest University, who is a Young Earth Creationist and who according to Mr. Metaxas has actually and unequivocally found the biblical city of Sodom. Mr. Metaxas then tends to wonder aloud why the New York Times and other similar media sources haven’t reported on this monumentally important find, which clearly demonstrates the historicity of Genesis.
What Mr. Metaxas tends to fail to mention in his talks is that Trinity Southwest University is an unaccredited school located in a storefront in a strip mall in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He also omits that Dr. Collins, who is the Executive Dean of the school, has two PhDs on his resume, one from Trinity Theological Seminary, also an unaccredited institution, located in Evansville, Indiana, which offers “100% Online Degrees,” and another from Trinity Southwest University, the school of which he has been the head since it’s present iteration in 1990. As an aside, legitimate scientists tend not to collect degrees from unaccredited institutions.
The archaeological site in question is Tall-el-Hammam in Jordan, near the mouth of the Jordan River at the north end of the Dead Sea. It has in fact been examined by archaeologists for nearly a century, so there’s no particular mystery about the place. And was extensively examined by a team from the British Museum in 1975-76. Since 2005 there has been a dig supervised by Dr. Collins at the site. A September 2021 article in Nature details how a Bronze Age city, one the many layers in the site, was destroyed by what they believe was an airburst caused by a meteor in approximately 1660 BCE, a date which is problematic for Young Earth Creationists, who place the destruction of Sodom several hundred years earlier.
Despite Mr. Metaxas’s certainty of the validity of Dr. Collins claim to have discovered the real biblical Sodom, in the September 24, 2021, edition of Christianity Today it was reported that “a number of archaeologists with varying degrees of familiarity with the Tall-el-Hammam excavation were highly skeptical. As Christianity Today reported seven years ago, few archaeologists outside of those working on the excavation team believe that Tall-el-Hammam is Sodom.” To reiterate, Dr. Collins’ claim is widely rejected by the professional archaeological community as well as biblical historians. I gather that both groups tend to think that Sodom and Gomorrah, if they existed at all, were located in the southern half of the Dead Sea region.
Nonetheless, as to whether Dr. Collins has satisfactorily demonstrated that Tall-el-Hammam is biblical Sodom, Mr. Metaxas says that, “there is zero question whether he [Dr. Collins] proved it. He proved it.”
Is there any wonder why the New York Times and similar publications haven’t jumped on Dr. Collins’ discovery?
This book does sound interesting but there's absolutely no evidence of Camus and Sartre finding God.
I never knew it was a thing.. The whole assertion of Atheism is built on assumptions.
I think the only reason it existed. It gave people cover to use, Science as cover to be bigots..Something I caught on to years ago….