Dialogue Between Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Richard Dawkins Part Two

KEVIN HARRIS: Listening to this exchange, I can’t tell if the audience skews one way or the other. They seem to be right down the middle, 50/50. She gets alot of applause. He gets some applause, too. One does not seem to be louder than the other, but they really respond to her emotionally it seems. In this next clip, she contrasts the Christian message with competing options.

AYAAN HIRSI ALI: The teaching of Christ, as I see it – and, again, I'm a brand new Christian – but what I'm finding out (which is the opposite of growing up as a Muslim, the message of Islam) the message of Christianity I get is that it's a message of love. It's a message of redemption. It's a story of renewal and rebirth. And so Jesus dying and rising again for me symbolizes that story. In a small way I felt like I had died and I was reborn. And that story of redemption and rebirth, I think, makes Christianity actually a very, very powerful story for the human condition and human existence and the pain of suffering but also our internal recognition of what you’d call sin but perhaps the character defects that both good and evil are there but that both good and evil are in us. I think those teachings in Christianity are far more powerful and have led to, I think, the flourishing of Western civilization compared to, say, growing up as a Muslim when I was taught that really the only way for you to be faithful is to fear. Naked fear. And to have these sets of obligations which you basically obey. That was very much about power. It was centered around hellfire and all of these other things. So Christianity, as I experience . . . I'll give you an example. When I was an atheist and I was going all over both the United States and all over Europe mocking Christians, making fun of them, making fun of faith (as you're doing now, dear Richard), I was walking with six to seven men at any given time protecting me armed from things that I said that were offensive to Muslims – what Muslims thought were offensive to them. Christians were writing me letters saying, “We're going to pray for you. You're misguided.” I think that alone defines for me the distinction between Christianity in general. Mainstream Christianity and mainstream Islam.

KEVIN HARRIS: I was trying to shorten that clip but she just kept saying things that – we got to leave that in! One religion says, “I'll kill you;” one says, “I'll pray for you.” That's a powerful indictment against Islam. Bill?

DR. CRAIG: Yeah, it sure is. I was very struck by what she said about the predominant emotion as a Muslim woman was fear – fear of Allah and what would happen to her – compared to the love of God that she now experiences and the rebirth and redemption that she's come to know. It's such a wonderful message of hope that you can be reborn spiritually and become a new person and slough off the past and the sin and the bad things that you've done and begin anew. It really is a marvelous Gospel. As she described herself traveling about attacking Christianity, it reminded me of the apostle Paul in his pre-Christian days as Saul attacking Christians, assailing them. Then was just this dramatic change. It's just really wonderful to see.

KEVIN HARRIS: The resurrection comes up in this next clip. Here it is.

RICHARD DAWKINS: You have to take the whole package because when you talked about Jesus rising from the dead, you didn't believe Jesus rose from the dead surely.

AYAAN HIRSI ALI: I choose to believe that Jesus rose from the dead.

RICHARD DAWKINS: You choose to believe it.

AYAAN HIRSI ALI: Yes. And that is a matter of choice. I think it has to go back to: Is there something or is there nothing? I think you start with “There is nothing.” And, yes, for years I agreed with you – there's nothing. But if you come around to the idea that there might be something much more powerful than we are, something that caused everything else, then something like Jesus rising out of the dead or these other miracles (Jesus being born out of a virgin), for that higher power is not a big deal.

KEVIN HARRIS: Again she says she chooses to believe. Many skeptics – you could hear it in Dawkins there – says that one cannot merely choose to believe something against their will. Help us out with this, Bill. She's apparently taken a step of faith, as we call it, and while we want it to be an informed step, it is a step nonetheless.

DR. CRAIG: That's right. Those who say that we cannot choose to believe things typically pick examples of facts that are so overwhelmingly obvious that we cannot deny them. For example, I cannot deny that I have a head. No matter what you offer me as inducements to believe that I have no head, I could never believe such a thing. Or I could not believe that Joe Biden is currently the President of the United States or that China is threatening Taiwan. I couldn't choose not to believe those things. But when you have an existential situation in which the evidence is not decisive and could go one way or the other then I think it is possible to choose to believe. I think that with regard to belief in God or Christ people do make this willful choice all the time, and often it will be merely later as they begin to grow in their faith that they discover that there are actually good reasons and arguments in favor of that decision. But, initially at least, in situations of uncertainty and anguish I think a person can choose to believe. I think this is phenomenologically undeniable. We do that. So I think that she has made this sort of choice. Now, did you notice again this contrast she draws between Dawkins’ belief in nothing and her belief in something. At a surface level we see, well, of course Dawkins believes in something. He believes the universe exists. But what she means by that is that Dawkins is a nihilist. That he has no meaning, purpose, or value objectively in life and that there's nothing beyond the universe – a creator, a designer. Whereas for her, there is something that she identifies as the creator of the universe and the source of being that she's come to know. That's this contrast she wants to draw between believing in nothing and believing in something. I thought it was interesting that at least in these clips Dawkins never rebukes her for that by saying, “I do, too, believe in something.” He doesn't seem to protest her characterization of his worldview.

KEVIN HARRIS: In this next clip, Ayaan talks about the turmoil among today's students.

AYAAN HIRSI ALI: Let's at least talk about the value of Christianity for today. I look at these universities – the most illustrious universities of the West – and you've all shared with me images of young women draped in keffiyehs (the symbol of Hamas) performing the Muslim prayer, and tell me if those kids are not morally and utterly lost. And Queers for Palestine . . . While you and I and Stephen Pinker and all of those wonderful people who are locked up in our ivory towers, let's ask ourselves what was happening on the ground. Because in the last six decades, we pretty much demonized Christianity and the teachings of Christianity out of the public space, out of school, out of universities, and a vacuum occurred. And that vacuum is now being filled as G. K. Chesterton said not because people have come to reason but because now they'll believe in anything. There are very awful forces today out there that are claiming the hearts and minds and souls of these young students, and when you say there is nothing you offer them nothing.

KEVIN HARRIS: Well, she includes herself in the ivory tower group isolated from students. But she's changed her tune apparently. She thinks the demonization of Christianity on campuses the last six decades has had an extraordinarily negative effect.

DR. CRAIG: I think this goes back to the student revolution of the 1960s that began with the protests against the Vietnam War. Those campus radicals grew up and many of them became university professors. Even though in the hard sciences their way may have been blocked by standards of objective rationality and evidence, the soft sciences and social sciences were open to these radicals. So in sociology, anthropology, women's studies, religious studies, literature, and so forth these radicals took over university positions and administrative positions as well. And now we are seeing the bitter fruit of those many decades of the rejection of traditional Western culture and Christianity. It is indeed horrifying to see the anti-Semitism and the violence of leftists on our university campuses today.

KEVIN HARRIS: In this next clip we witness classic Dawkins. Here it is.

RICHARD DAWKINS: I came here prepared to persuade you, Ayaan, you're not a Christian. I think you are a Christian. And I think Christianity is nonsense. You have to be . . . I mean, you appear to be a theist. You appear to believe in some kind of higher power. Now, I think that the hypothesis of theism is the most exciting scientific hypothesis that could possibly hold. The idea that the universe was actually created by a supernatural intelligence is a dramatic, important idea.If it were true it would completely change everything we know. We'd be living in a totally different universe. Now that's a big thing. I'm sorry, but it's bigger than personal comfort and nice stories and things. The idea that the universe has lurking beneath it an intelligence, a supernatural intelligence that invented the laws of physics, invented mathematics. That is a stupendous idea if it's true. And to me that simply dwarfs all talk of nobility and morality and comfort and that sort of thing.

KEVIN HARRIS: A lot to comment there, Bill. Did I hear him say theism is a scientific hypothesis, or am I hearing things?

DR. CRAIG: No. You're right. This is what he says in The God Delusion, too. He, as a scientist, thinks that treating theism as a scientific hypothesis is a compliment to theists – that it needs to be taken seriously as a truth claim. Ironically, it puts him really in the same camp as proponents of intelligent design in thinking that theism is a scientific hypothesis. While I do not think that theism is a scientific hypothesis, I certainly resonate with what Richard Dawkins said in that last clip. To think that there is lurking beneath the universe, as he says, a cosmic intelligence who designed the laws of nature, invented mathematics, and I would say who is the basis for objective moral values and duties in the world is the most exciting hypothesis you can hold. So it is absolutely true that there is a world of difference between believing what Ayaan Ali believes and what Richard Dawkins believes. It is properly characterized by her as a difference between believing in nothing and believing in something.

KEVIN HARRIS: One more clip. Ayaan summarizes and gives a dire warning.

AYAAN HIRSI ALI: There is something that is going on. There is the mind virus of wokeism. There is the mind virus of radical Islam. And atheism is not the answer. I cannot go with all conscience to these young people and say there is nothing to believe in. Because the more we say there is nothing to believe in, there is nothing, then someone else comes and fills that nothing with something. And I don't like what I'm seeing. I'm just saying let's stand for what we have. Let's embrace it, and let's defend it. And to defend it, you have to have a counter-message. There is a great deal of activism knocking on young people's doors telling them, “Do you want to know the difference between right and wrong?” “Do you want to know the difference between truth and false?” I don't see any counter-activism coming from humanists or coming from atheists. I see you and my fellow friends just as bewildered as anyone else when you look at this. So the people who are in charge of universities, people who are in charge of educating and developing young minds, are looking on and thinking, “What the heck is going on here?” And that is not the right attitude, and it never has been the right attitude. There's a great deal of denial. Yes, there's a clash of civilizations, and this clash of civilizations has been going on at least since 1989. The attitude of Western leaders, political leaders, academic leaders, media leaders has been to hide in denial. It's been to deny it. And the more you deny it, the more those adversaries who are clashing with us benefit from it. Right now I don't think atheist-humanism is offering any answers. I challenge you to come up with an elaborate message to fight these people. We have allowed a cult of power, Islamism, a political totalitarian ideology to seed itself here, deepen and broaden and grow. And we have nothing in return to say. And it's a cult that wants to destroy the very freedoms that it uses to advance its agenda.

KEVIN HARRIS: She's certainly not shy about her views. I know you have a lot to say about that, but I want to point out that she confirms at the end of that clip something I've pondered. And that is: groups like radical Islam and others who want to eliminate Western civilization are using the very freedoms they wish to destroy to promote their agendas. In other words, when freedoms are destroyed, it backfires. I think the woke need to realize this, too.

DR. CRAIG: They are sawing off the branch on which they are sitting using the very freedoms that Western society provides them to undermine Western society. I fully agree with what she says about the clash of civilizations that is occurring in the world today. Our political leaders sometimes have been blind to this and refuse to acknowledge it. I remember after the attacks of 9/11 you heard political leaders like Colin Powell and others go on television saying, “Islam means peace” and “Our conflict is not with Islam” and I thought anyone who could say something so ignorant as that has no understanding of the religion of Islam much less the political movement that Islam is. The goal of Islam is to bring the world into submission to the teachings of Muhammad. Whether this is done by persuasion or by force, this is the goal. It is a worldwide domination of Islam. I mentioned earlier that the situation in France, where the native birth rate is declining so significantly, whereas the Muslim birth rate is growing all the time, that in another 100, 200 years France will become a Muslim country. The difficulty is that French secularism, which is very atheistic, does not have the spiritual resources to counter Islam because, as she often says, it's empty. It does not have the spiritual fortitude to resist a spiritual intruder like Islam. That requires something that is even more spiritually powerful as a counterbalance and bulwark against Islam. I saw the same thing in China where Chinese philosophers that we met with are searching for some way to find a moral fabric for the new emerging post-Communist China, and how atheism and traditional Confucianism cannot provide this sort of moral fabric. They were turning to Christian belief in order to find that spiritual substance. Unfortunately, Xi came to power in China and everything shut down. China now has regressed into those earlier dark days where these freedoms are suppressed and the church goes underground. But it is so true what she's saying that if you are to resist the threats of tyranny in the world, you have to have a strong spiritual countermeasure in order to do that.

KEVIN HARRIS: As we conclude today, we'll tie some thoughts together and get your thoughts. I'd like to say for some reason this has really moved me. I've been very moved by Ayaan, and her testimony – what she's saying. And she can't be ignored. The woke can't ignore her because she represents their pet projects of seeing victimhood and racism and everything, but she's been a victim and she's a person of color and she's been an oppressed female and so forth. Atheists and Muslims can't ignore her because she was once one of them. In fact, it's as if she was the poster child for all of these groups, and now she's a follower of Jesus. It's as if God is using one of their biggest weapons against them. But I'd like your thoughts.

DR. CRAIG: She ticks all the boxes, doesn't she? All the right ones. She is like a modern apostle Paul in that sense. So if any of our listeners feel constrained to pray for her, I would encourage them to do so. Her life could still be under threat from radical Muslims, if not others. She needs, as you say, to grow in her newfound Christian faith so that it will be informed. So we need to remember her, I think, in that way.^[1]