Podcast: An Overlooked Problem of Atheism (Mitch Stokes)

December 13, 2021 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Examining Worldviews

In today's episode, Mitch Stokes talks about the many problems with an atheistic worldview—including logical holes that skeptics often prefer to ignore.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

00:53 - The Path to Apologetics

Matt Tully
Mitch, thank you so much for joining us today on The Crossway Podcast.

Mitch Stokes
Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Matt Tully
We’re going to dig into this issue of apologetics, generally, and in particular some lines of argumentation that can be used with atheists and trying to understand their worldview and unpack it a little bit. Before we dig into the weeds on that, I wonder if you could share a little bit about how you first got into apologetics.

Mitch Stokes
I’ve always been kind of a skeptical, questioning—probably sometimes too much so—kind of a person, just a little bit anti-authoritarian, and it wasn’t necessarily virtuous, but that’s kind of my temperament. When I went to college, I studied engineering, and became a Christian. I grew up in the church but I don’t know if I would have said I was a Christian before college, but certainly in college I understood the gospel. I had so many questions about how science fit in with Scripture, and even philosophical questions like, How can God pay attention to every single person? He’s watching you and cares about every single thing, and me and billions of others? I just had all kinds of questions and I didn’t have access to the answers. I didn’t even know that there was literature out there where people had thought about that. When I was doing my masters in engineering I had a real crisis of faith. I was so distracted by whether or not God existed that I couldn’t pray and I couldn’t read Scripture without saying, Is that really true? But I had friends at church who were going to seminary and they started handing me all kinds of resources—philosophy, apologetics, etc. I was like, Oh my gosh! People have actually thought about these questions before me and actually have really good answers. So, that was such a turning point. Eventually, as I studied at the seminary, my wife and I were praying quite a bit about what I should do. I was an engineer at the time and had graduated, but I wanted to teach. I didn’t want people to go through some of the same things that I had gone through unnecessarily. I wanted to teach this and say look what I found. I ended up going back to school and getting degrees in philosophy.

Matt Tully
That’s such an interesting comment about your own background and how you had all of these questions that you didn’t have answers for for a long time. It makes me think about how we live in an era today where this phenomenon of deconstruction, of exvangelicals, is such a hot topic issues right now. It seems like one of the common refrains you hear from people who leave the faith, especially leaving a more conservative evangelical version of Christianity, is that they weren’t allowed to ask questions. Their questions were pushed aside or ignored or they were even made to be ashamed of questions that they were raising as young people. Is that part of your story? Is that what you’re talking about here, or was it just you weren’t even aware of where you could find answers if you had questions?

Mitch Stokes
It was a little of both. There was a sense of Hey, I’ve got this question; can you answer this?, and I think I made people uncomfortable. I wasn’t combative or anything, it was just that the people I talked to had not asked those questions, didn’t know the answers, and it made them feel pretty awkward. So, that was part of it, but then I also just didn’t know that anything else existed.

Matt Tully
Is that a problem that you see in the church? You’re now in a spot where you have studied these things. You value, as you said, the virtue of skepticism, but is there something wrong when we aren’t embracing young people as they question things and helping them along?

Mitch Stokes
I think it’s probably two-fold. Every church is different and every community is different, but I think overall we could do a better job of saying, It’s okay to doubt. It’s okay to have questions. Come and ask them—feeling comfortable just asking. I do think that there’s some—the reason I’m pausing is that this speaks to a deeper problem I see in the church, particularly conservative churches, and that is a lack of transparency and vulnerability. Saying, I’m struggling with this or with that—not just when it comes to this topic, but whatever it is. Like, Everybody else’s kids are doing so well, or at least a lot better than mine. Mine are just like little demons. People can just feel so isolated and alone, and I think this is one aspect of that. No one is doing this on purpose (the sociology of it would be interesting to get into), but I think just having that vulnerability. And I don’t want to use vulnerability in the sense that it’s like, Hey, let me share everything that I’ve ever felt and all my feelings are right, but it’s still a *Yes, I totally get what you’re struggling with. Here’s how I’ve dealt with it in my life.

07:52 - The Virtue of Skepticism

Matt Tully
In this apologetic book that you’ve written, you do say something in there that relates to this. You call skepticism a virtue, at least in some form. I wonder if you could unpack that. What do you mean by that, and how might that apply to what we’re talking about here?

Mitch Stokes
A certain kind of skepticism is a virtue. There’s a type of skepticism that says, I’m not going to believe anything and you pick and choose the things you’re going to be skeptical about. Because you’re skeptical, you think you have this intellectual capacity that other people don’t. The picking and choosing is one thing and the virtue of it—and this is so important for today. The way that we get our information and data, whether it’s about science or theology or the news, as a culture we don’t really understand how humans know things—what philosophers call the epistemology of it (the study of knowledge). It sounds like that’s an obscure kind of pie in the sky sort of topic, but it’s actually so fundamental that it affects every single area of our lives. This is something that I think we should be properly skeptical, in the sense that we know our intellectual limits, and each of us has different intellectual limits because we have different experiences, access to different kinds of information, different reasoning abilities, different experiences. There’s all of that, and then knowing yourself intellectually is a huge part of it, but then also knowing generally what kind of sources are reliable. One of the reasons I wrote this book isn’t just to show how to be skeptical, but it was really also how to think fundamentally about the two most important things that we deal with: facts (whether or not something is true) and our values (whether or not something is good or bad). Let’s say you have a painting. The painting is there, or it’s not. Now the question is, Is it a good painting? That judgement of good or bad aesthetics or an action that is right or wrong, those are two different things and we have to think about them properly. You can go to one side where you just believe everything because you’re this intellectual vacuum cleaner and you just suck everything up and believe it, or you go to the other side and say, We can’t know anything, or you think you’re in the middle because you trust some things and you don’t trust other things, but it’s really that the reason you do and don’t trust them have a lot to do with the kinds of things you love and value. It’s really much more of a subjective thing, and you need to know that too.

11:33 - On Taking Skepticism Seriously

Matt Tully
It seems like those two categories are so relevant. What is true? What are the facts? What is true news vs. fake news?—to put it in the language of today. And then the issues of morality and ethics: What is good? What is beautiful? Those two categories couldn’t be more relevant. It seems like those issues, and the epistemology of that, is so relevant today when so much is being questioned and challenged. One of the core arguments of your book is that atheists themselves—those who claim to not believe in God and are often, at least in terms of the broader culture, there is a certain power it seems like to atheism—they are not actually as skeptical as they think. You have this amazing quote: “One of atheism’s virtues is it’s avowed skepticism. Yet, many unbelievers, it seems to me, don’t take their skepticism seriously enough.” Unpack that a little bit more, because that gets to the core of what you’re doing. What do you mean that they don’t take their skepticism seriously enough?

Mitch Stokes
I totally appreciate and understand what kinds of questions people would have about religion and about Christianity in particular. I get that and I’m sympathetic to it, but the problem is the sort of skepticism that I see (and actually, everyone does this to some degree). It’s almost like an atheistic fundamentalism where you're so certain about things that you care about and like and want to believe and are so skeptical of anyone who differs from that, it obscures the subtleties and nuances that have to be acknowledged. When we’re talking about God and when we’re talking about philosophy, these aren’t simple answers. To say, Oh yeah, there’s no shred of evidence for God—if you say that to anybody who has studied evidence at all in philosophy whether they’re atheists or not, they’re going to be like, Well, you just totally discredited yourself by overstating your case. If you say, There’s not enough evidence to convince me, fine. We can start to talk about those; but the moment someone says there is not a shred of respectable evidence, you go, I don’t know if there’s a conversation to be had here because it doesn’t seem like you’re really intellectually aware of evidence and how to think about it.

Matt Tully
In your mind, is that a widespread problem, or is it that there’s some prominent atheistic thinkers who tend to overstate things a little bit? Do you think most atheists would be far more careful and nuanced in how they’re thinking about these things?

Mitch Stokes
That’s a great question. I do think that there are more of the loudmouth types, and I don’t know if they really believe those extreme statements that they make, but when they say things like that, you think, We’re not going to have much of a conversation because you really just don’t understand the issues. But I do think that there are lots of people who are not believers who are not as extreme but are still maybe overly confident and under aware of some of the subtleties. In saying that, I see this on the believer’s side too. This is one of the disconcerting things, particularly in the last few years, as you start to see people interact, by way of social media, and it’s really disturbing to see both sides polarized like this. They have disagreed way upstream; they have disagreed on things long before but they don’t realize it, so they talk about some of the details without talking about some of the fundamentals. For example, where do standards for morality come from? What is the nature of this kind of science and it’s evidence? What’s the nature of testimony? There are all kinds of things that go on, and I’m just surprised that people are as adamant as they are. That’s one of the things that’s disconcerting. Again, at the same time, I don’t mean that you can’t say anything at all. There’s a balance there and that’s the hard part. It’s easy to go into one of the two ditches where you’re confident about this or confident about that and you say, On the other sides they are just a bunch of idiots. Almost any view that you interact with has some evidential points on the scoreboard. It’s not like it’s your team—let’s say vaccination vs. non-vaccination—

Matt Tully
Just to pick a non-controversial topic.

Mitch Stokes
Exactly. There are arguments. There is evidence. You can say, I can understand where anti-vaccers are coming from. I can understand where people who are for vaccinations are coming from, but it’s when both sides say that the other side doesn’t have anything going for them and just ignores it completely and ignores any other arguments completely. That’s not to say that one side doesn’t have way more evidence than the other side, but there’s also a time where you say, Here are three words that you need to learn: I don’t know. I think about the whole COVID thing—and I would say that I chuckle, but it’s not funny—and it’s how many people have very strong opinions about it on either side and very little self-doubt. But where are you getting your information? First of all, let’s say you were a scientist and you were in the trenches and you had data, even then you wouldn’t have enough data to be absolutely sure. The data is still coming in, and not only that, data is still coming in and most of us who are getting our data are getting it from the Internet. So anyway, in the book a big part of it is just how we think carefully through these. How do we think about it with the subtleties and the complications that are necessary without over-complicating it. It’s not like you can’t say anything about something, but that’s hard to do. You have to stay on the road and not fall into either ditch.

Matt Tully
It seems like all of us, whether it comes to questions of the day or the questions of God (do we believe he exists or not), we all think that we’re using reason. We all view ourselves as being logical and feasible and rational, and yet you make a comment in the book that I think gets at your main point here. You write, “Belief and unbelief are each far more than a matter of reason.” What are you getting at there? What are some of those subtleties and nuances to how come to believe or not believe things that we need to understand better?

Mitch Stokes
When I talk about the epistemology of science and how science knows things that it’s this super technical topic—

Matt Tully
It sounds technical. Epistemology of science is an intimidating phrase.

Mitch Stokes
But really, all it is is this: How do we know stuff, and how does science know stuff? Most scientists are human too, so they have to believe the same way other humans do. When you look at how humans know things and what is the level of certainty they can have, and then look at science—it is so amazing and we know so much. I’m not an anti-science guy or it’s us vs. there. I think science is great. Looking at the way science knows things and comes to its information and its knowledge is so important because—and this is a long way of getting back to your question—there’s a type of inference that normally goes on in science that we do all the time. You look at the things that you can observe. That’s it! You smell, taste, and see them—most of the time it’s observation. Then you’ve got to come up with an explanation or story of why those observations look that way. One of the examples I use is this: I come outside my back door. I come out into the yard and I see the gate is open. That is my observation; the gate is open. The gate is not supposed to be open, so I think about the different explanations for why the gate is open. Do I need to talk to the kids again? Do I need to call the cops? What is the explanation behind that simple observation? There are multiple possible explanations for that. It could be that someone came in and stole my lawnmower, it could be the kids left it open, it could be I left it open, it could be something as improbable as my dog—even without opposable thumbs—opened it. In the way we weigh and judge which explanations are the most plausible given everything I know (plus my observations), that’s called inference because you’re inferring. You’re reasoning. It’s inference to the best explanation. You’re trying to come up with the best explanation. That’s how we come up with quantum theory. That’s how we know that there are electrons. That’s how we know that there are quarks. We don’t see them directly, but we see these other things, and so we say, Given the theory of special relativity and given the theory of quantum mechanics, what’s the most likely story or explanation for that? That’s how we all know things. So, a lot of the subtleties and nuances—first of all, you have to know that there’s this observation and then an explanation; or, observation theory. I tell this to my students all the time: You have to start thinking of the world in terms of those two categories when it comes to believing things. What exactly are you observing? Why do you explain it that way? Some of the things that go into judging whether or not something is a good explanation is what kinds of things you already think are more plausible. If I didn’t believe in aliens, that’s going to be a non-starter explanation for why the back gate is open.

Matt Tully
Right. Or if you didn’t have kids.

Mitch Stokes
Exactly. My kids aren’t doing it because I don’t have any kids, so that explanation is off the table. What you’ll find is values and those kinds of things determine what you believe to be true. It’s not just your own experiences, but values—how much do I want this to be true? We all do that. If I already believe that God exists, I might think that this argument is a little better than someone who doesn’t think that God exists—if I think that the best explanation for humans is that ultimately there is a designer behind it. That’s the key—just knowing that one bit: What are we observing? What are we not observing? So much of what we believe is not what we directly observe.

25:25 - The Fact vs. Value Divide

Matt Tully
Yes, and we have to understand how we come to those beliefs, that they’re more than simply the observation that we’re directly seeing. Related to this, you argue that science and morality—these two areas that kind of hit on belief and relate to these things—you say that they fall along the all-important fact vs. value divide. Unpack that concept for us.

Mitch Stokes
The fact/value divide—I was mentioning this before—there are things that are just the facts: whether or not there is a painting there, what it’s properties are, what color it’s made of, and then whether or not it’s a good or beautiful painting. Those are two different things. One is concerning facts that we all agree on, and the other is a judgement which we may not agree on. You’re giving it the thumbs up or thumbs down. Even if we all agreed on it and gave it a thumbs up, that’s still a value judgement. So, when it comes to science and morality, one of the reasons that science is such a big, important topic is because it’s a really good way to know facts. We know so much about the world, and we’re starting to find out how little we know, which is also fascinating. Knowing what you don’t know is a really wonderful thing too. A lot of times, science just deals with facts. Ethics, on the other side, is concerned with what is right and what is wrong—that’s on the value side. Both of these things we care strongly about. We care strongly about science because we care about the way the world is. That’s just how we’re hardwired. Paul talks about that. We look at creation. There’s something that seems to be hardwired in us that we just thank God or wonder or whatever, and then he says in the next chapter that everyone has the law written on their hearts. There’s something in us that cares about the good and the bad. That’s why these are really such big topics today when it comes to talking about God because we have very strong beliefs about what the world is like and what good and bad are.

28:00 - An Atheist’s Response

Matt Tully
It seems like Christians are quick to point out that their belief in morality is rooted in God and that he’s the one that gives us that meaning and understanding of right and wrong. Maybe we’re quick to point out and then ask questions of the atheist: How do you believe in right and wrong? How do you believe in a good or a beautiful? What would the typical response be from an atheistic perspective?

Mitch Stokes
There are different responses, but the main one is, Look, I don’t need to believe in God in order to know that murdering is wrong. I think that’s totally true. The Bible is clear about that. Yes, people who don’t believe in God are often just as appalled by evil in the world as we are. We’re hardwired that way. The question is not so much why do you like the good, why do you call it good, but rather how do you explain this objective standard of morality—if there is such a thing—that’s independent of your opinion and my opinion? Let’s say we both agree that there is this objective right or wrong. For example, torturing someone just for fun is wrong and we both agree that no matter what you think, that’s wrong. We have that fact, that observation, so to speak. What’s our theory behind that that explains how we can have this you and me independent standard? It’s basically that you hold up a ruler and say, Alright, we both agree that there’s this ruler or standard—let’s say your the Christian and I’m the atheist and you say, God gave us this standard. Where do you say this standard came from? What about this other standard? Maybe another person is walking by with their own ruler (moral standard) in their back pocket and you grab that and show me and say, Why isn’t this the right one? Now you have these competing rulers, or standards, so how do you get away from this relativism with respect to standards? The big thing is trying to explain how you can have an objective human independent ruler or standard. I know lots of atheists who are thinking about this and say, We can’t.

Matt Tully
That’s what I was going to ask because it seems like there are more and more atheists, or maybe agnostics at times, who embrace the idea that life is fundamentally meaningless. Examples of this worldview would be things like nihilism, or a more recent term I’ve heard called absurdism. Would someone who admits that there isn’t ultimate meaning or ultimate right or wrong and that we just have to muddle through life and do the best we can do without those absolutes, does that kind of circumvent the argument that atheists aren’t really thinking carefully enough about why they believe what they believe?

Mitch Stokes
No, I actually think that’s an excellent position to hold in that situation. If I lost my faith and I became an unbeliever, that’s exactly what I would believe. Here’s the question though: I think people who think that, if they’ve really thought about it, it’s one thing to say that. I’ve met many people who say that it really is survival of the fittest and thankfully we all decide not to kill each other. Imagine though what that would entail about everything. If there is no right or wrong or good or bad—and it doesn’t mean that you can’t behave a certain way. You can behave any way that you want. It’s that you have to think differently about the world fundamentally, and you have to be able to say things like, Oh, I guess what the Taliban is doing isn’t right or wrong; it just happens to not be what I’m into. I just don’t like it.

Matt Tully
You don’t hear people saying that very often. When it comes down to real things and real life—and maybe this is your point—people don’t often act or even speak consistently on this point.

Mitch Stokes
Think about all of the political back and forth. Let’s make it really simple and say that conservatives and liberals are the two categories and those are the only two categories. If you just listen for thirty seconds, you realize that all of these debates are predicated on there being an absolute standard that’s in play. I haven’t heard someone say, There is no moral standard, but this is what I want to happen, and so this is what I’m going to campaign on.

Matt Tully
Right. And I hope you’ll agree with me.

Mitch Stokes
And if you don’t . . . You mentioned that things have changed a lot over the last few years, and all of the conflict depends on some objective moral standard.

Matt Tully
People are making strong objective moral claims. This is wrong or This is right. They’re not deferring to My opinion is that this is right (or wrong).

Mitch Stokes
Right. And let’s say that’s your opinion and you’re just acknowledging that you don’t know for sure, could you be right or wrong about a moral position? That’s the question, and if the answer is no, there is no right or wrong, that world—the way you see it—will look so different. This is where I think you have to go behind and underneath and through the reason for someone believing this. It’s easy for someone to say, There is no morality, but to feel it, to believe it, and to see it in every single thing. I’m not saying that people can’t do that, but I think people do that and some of them have the temperament of despair. They clock out of life.

36:17 - How Do I Practice Apologetics with Unbelievers?

Matt Tully
Taking a big step back, how would you actually use this kind of argumentation or talk with an atheist in conversation and help them to discuss these things? Are there examples even from your own life and conversations with unbelievers where you tried to help them understand this? Can you practically share tips to that end?

Mitch Stokes
This is a question that I get all the time from students and readers: It’s one thing to know this stuff—there’s a lot of information here—how do I talk to people about it? There’s no recipe. I think reality fundamentally comes down to relationships between persons. I think that’s the most valuable thing. We see that in the Trinity. Ultimate reality is this relationship between three Persons, and the reason the cross is so horrific is partly because there was some sort of upset of that closeness of relationship. All that to say, when you’re talking with another person, it’s one thing for me to talk to you because we’re kind of talking about these ideas. But let’s say I’m talking to you and you’re an unbeliever, I make it sound like it’s a lot easier and simpler in this conversation. In the book I’m not having to deal with a human being. I can just state it and I can say all these facts. It’s kind of like giving a lecture. But then when you’re dealing with a person, it’s going to depend on that person. Generally, I would like to avoid being a jerk as much as possible. I want to love my neighbor. That’s going to look different in different situations. It depends on their questions. Where are they coming from? How are they hurting? What are they feeling and why? You’re not trying to sell people on something. You have to know this stuff in your being, and then when you interact with people, you love them in various ways and some of this will come out in your conversations. It could be, Hey, let’s have coffee and talk about God. That can happen, and when that does, you still want to love that other person. It depends on where they’re coming from. If they’ve just had someone die that was close to them, or they’re suffering from cancer and they’re about to die, talking about rational explanations for why God allows evil might not be the best tactic to take. It might be that they ask, How could a good God allow this? You can say, I don’t know. I don’t know why he does. Here’s how I rationally explain it to myself. Here’s what the Christian story says. Here’s why Jesus’s life and death and God’s love is so compelling. Again, you’re not looking for a formula or a recipe. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t general rules like being kind or asking questions.

Matt Tully
I think that goes to even the ways we think about apologetics in general. We do sometimes view it as I’ve got to learn my arguments, learn my proofs, and once I get them locked down and if I deploy them correctly, it will prove—and prove in a way that an unbeliever can’t do anything but accept that God is real, he exists, and that we should follow him. Do you have personal examples from your own life where you had to learn that lesson the hard way?

Mitch Stokes
Yeah, my whole life, particularly the first ten years after I started studying philosophy and apologetics. I’ve had to learn the hard way. When you’re doing apologetics, it’s more like planting seeds. If you expect it to grow right there, you’re going to be really disappointed. Humans are not usually that simple. It may be that seeds have been planted before, the soil is just right, and you do see someone go, Yeah, I never thought of that. Almost no one changes their mind that quickly about these most important things in life. It just takes a long time.

Matt Tully
That’s such a helpful metaphor, that of planting seeds. Elaborate on that a little bit because I think that somebody could hear you say that, and maybe they’ve even experienced this themselves, and just wonder if intellectual apologetics like this is of any value. Does it really all just come down to relationships, like you said before, and praying and hoping that God saves them, but there’s really not a lot of value in trying to intellectually engage with somebody on this stuff?

Mitch Stokes
That’s a great question, and a question like that is predicated on there being this distinction in a human between reason and their values and what the person is. Whenever you talk to someone, you’re using reason. You’re always reasoning, so it’s not like there’s this separate compartment. We often talk like that and that just makes it easy for us. I don’t think there’s anything terribly wrong in talking like that. When you present the gospel, that’s basically an argument. Here’s a problem and here are some facts: your relationship with God is broken because you’re a sinner. You have to reason, so all of that should be organic. The difference between apologetics and evangelism or preaching or just ministry to someone (even if it’s yourself)—that’s a distinction that gets lost and is just not there when you get down to it. So, arguments are important, but if you think that the sterile premise-conclusion kinds of things are the way to go and that’s how people live and think, that’s going to go poorly for you. You need to be ready, as Paul said, to be able to answer people’s questions. There’s an unbeliever in everybody’s heart. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t need anybody else to trip me up in my faith. I’m sufficient enough to do that on my own. I’m really good at it. So, this is knowing about God’s world, how he’s made humans, his relationship with us and the world, and it’s all one big coherent story. I tell my students this: the best apologetic is learning more and more and more and fitting it all together so that your education and your lifelong education (not just your formal education) are integrated. You could be talking about Shakespeare over here and then maybe an hour later you’re talking about quantum mechanics, and you haven’t changed the subject because it’s all interrelated. If God is all in that big coherent picture and all of it makes the best sense because there’s a God and Christianity is true and you know how to relate it to almost everything, that is strong. That is much stronger than, Hey, I’ve got this argument—the cosmological argument. If that’s all you have, that’s weak. But when your whole life is integrated into one thing and it all makes best sense because Christianity is true, that’s a lot stronger.

Matt Tully
Mitch, thank you so much for taking some time today to talk with us about how to talk to an atheist—how to understand what they’re thinking and how to hopefully ask some good questions.

Mitch Stokes
I appreciate you having me. This has been fun.

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