Episode Details
Back to Episodes#160 – Richard Dawkins v. Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Description
The scientist poster-boy for atheism and an ex-Muslim, ex-atheist Christian have a conversation (not a debate) about worldviews (not God).
One of our long-time listeners asked for our opinion on a ”debate” between Richard Dawkins and Ayaan Hirsi Ali: the conversation between the two of them raised many questions and points that resonated deeply with our listener. We brought in another long-time listener, Doug Traversa, one who has been on the podcast many times in the past (you can find his life story in Episode #124), and dissected this conversation.
Everyone knows Richard; however, not all listeners will know Ayaan. Briefly, she is a Somali refugee who fled to the Netherlands to escape a toxic radical Islamist world wedded to jihadist terrorism. She eventually renounced Islam and became a vocal and scathing critic of Islam and a vocal and persuasive proponent of atheism: some even labelled her the latest addition to “the four horsemen of the Atheist Apocalypse” (Richard Dawkins; Sam Harris; Christopher Hitchens; Daniel Dennett). But then she rocked the world with her announcement less than a year ago that she had since converted to Christianity.
This, then, was the rationale behind bringing Ayaan and Richard together to have a “God Debate.” Despite this headline billing, it was not a debate, nor was it specifically about God. Instead, it was a conversation, and it focused on worldviews (not God). We found it best to frame our dissection as a moral landscape with four different corners, each representing a different worldview:
(1) Christianity Richard and Ayaan dueled over two or three different expressions of Christianity. Ayaan was accused of being a “political Christian,” while Richard admitted to being a “cultural Christian” and both of them referenced “moral Christianity.” We talked about Christians cherry-picking or rejecting various specific tenets (e.g, Virgin Birth; miracles; eternal conscious torment in hell). Christianity is NOT monolithic, and “cherry-picking” is in part behind Christianit