The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God - A Conversation with Justin Brierley
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.พ. 2024
- A little less than two decades ago, you might walk past a bookstore and see The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins featured among the bestsellers. The mid to late 2000’s were the heyday for the New Atheists, a small cohort of scientists and philosophers who were convinced religion was both untrue and a bad influence in the world. At the time, it was easy to see the rise of the New Atheists as the latest peak of secularism, a sign that public belief in religion was long gone, and there was no going back.
Where we sit now in 2024, we can see that the New Atheist movement fell apart due to internal disagreement and concern about its own influence on the world. According to our guest Justin Brierley, public opinions towards religion are complex and mixed, not nearly as negative as the New Atheist movement would have anticipated. In fact, there are many signs that a Christian renewal is underway. From notable conversions of high-profile individuals to the rise of secular thinkers defending Christianity to the increasing skepticism that science and atheist worldviews can answer our most important questions, Justin observes that the Christian story is far from dead.
Justin Brierley is a writer, speaker, and podcaster committed to building dialogue between Christians and non-Christians. His first book was titled Unbelievable? Why, after ten years of talking with atheists, I’m still a Christian and in September 2023 he published his second book, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God.
Zach interviews Justin in this episode, and the conversation ends with several fascinating questions: will there be a renewal of Christianity and belief in God? If so, are the churches prepared for it? How can the Christian world transcend tribalism and culture wars to welcome a new batch of seekers?
Love this guy so much 🙏🤗🌈🎊🌟
I was very excited to see Justin on the podcast. Well done, Zach & FM. The words of Chesterton about the consequences of marrying the spirit of the age caught my attention. Now, go get Thomas Sowell for the next interview.
Thank you for this meaningful interview. Excellent questions. Thoughtful responses. Will forward this to my friends looking for "meaning" in this age.
I had just heard Justin this morning on Frank Turek's show and was very intrigued. We truly need to stop focusing on the "losses" of the church and start seeing, noticing and reporting the positive changes and significant wins. As a lifelong marketing and business development professional (and Christian), nothing can turn things around faster than positive reporting! You don't see widgets or anything else being sold by the sales techniques pointing out the products failures, shortcomings or losses! Christianity is not a product, but is certainly being packaged in a negative light and often the church itself wants to focus on other believers wrongs instead of recognizing what they are doing right. I applaud this approach and suggest we all learn from this paradigm shift!
Justin appeared at Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie Minnesota in 2023. He was GREAT!
Justin's book and theme should be welcomed in Christian circles as a tool to start apologetic work and communicate with greater confidence among sceptics.
God bless. Greetings from Norway.
"If you don't like Christianity wait until you see what comes after"
We already saw that in the ideological struggles for the 20th century.
Would have liked to hear about the role of artists in this rebirth… maybe for the next conversation!
“ Christian worldview is about seeing yourself in a story, a story of making sense of who you are.
- Justin Brierley • 36:21
Only that which is real counts for God, who can see hearts, and knows where people are coming from. Be hopeful, and yes, welcome seekers, and pray for them, but don't depend on there being a mass movement toward God. As Americans, we have depended on being part of the popular, dominant belief system, but with the new believers of the Great Awakenings, there were many cults, and people who discovered the occult and spiritualism, the basis of today's New Age. So we need to be prepared for opposition, not just depend on numbers to tell us it is now safe and popular to be a Christian, "again". If we depend on something like a magic carpet ride, a "flowery bed of ease", we need to expect it to turn into a rug being yanked out from under our feet. When "nobody" believed in God, that wasn't really true, but when suddenly, "everyone" does, sadly, that won't be true, either. So if we believe in Jesus, we need to be in for the bad times, even when the reports are saying its all downhll from here. Satan has been playing the same inflating, then pulling the rug out from under Christian faith, ever since Constantine. We need to be faithful, whether it looks good for Christianity, or really bad, and get wisdom from what Jesus said, not from the polls. The reductionistic, amoral, materialistic view of life he is talking about, is real, too, and it is not so tolerant.
Either God is real or not. Jesus said that the Father hides the truth from the "wise and prudent" (obviously, worldly-wise, in their own eyes), and *reveals* His truth to the "babes", obviously those who are willing to believe in Him. We need to seek that revealing, and be always prepared to be foolish in the eyes of the world.
Thank you for this!
Great conversation. Thank you. I enjoyed it.
Anyone who is interested in modern science, and how it points to God, could take a look at the book: Return of the God Hypothesis, by Stephen C. Meyer. Or you could listen to Stephen Meyer, talking about this book on TH-cam and other platforms. Highly recommended.
They will probably tell you that modern science is indistinguishable from wishful thinking.
Justin Brierly has been involved with some podcasts and discussions effectively preaching against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its teachings and doctrines, sometimes in ignorant ways (the most difficult one to hear was when my hero N.T. Wright and Justin went off script grouping Islam and Restoration theology in the same basket as totally distinct from New Testament Christianity, making effectively no effort to take any religious claims seriously); has he ever acknowledged this or apologized?
Doubt is the beginning of wisdom.
Faith feeds ignorance.
Up is down, and down is up.
What is the name of Justin's book? I didn't catch that.
The surprising rebirth of belief in God.
@@helenec.9824 thank you.
For a podcast entitled "Faith Matters" on the subject of whether God exists I'm surprised that I didn't hear the word "faith" mentioned until 45 minutes into the discussion, and then only as it applies to.atheism! I appreciate the discussion about the role of science, but why wasn't the power and effectiveness and absolute necessity of faith brought up?
Was the point solely to theorize? Science will never prove God exists, so such will only be debatable in theory. But true faith, a sincere belief that leads to personal dedication that then allows God to reward you according to his promises is the only way to get PERSONAL proof of his love and care and knowledge of YOU. God is after YOUR heart. He wants to have a relationship with YOU! I don't think he has any interest in proving himself to society.
Science may convince the mind, but that never converts one to God. For example, people know what is good for them, but they often refuse to act, and people act all the time on things they know are bad for them. Knowledge doesn't convert. If the heart ain't convinced, then disobedience to something you know to be true just results in things like shame and guilt. God's not playing that game of trying to convince us.
The scientific method requires experimentation before forming a conclusion. The conditions for the experiment to know if God exists is found in James 1:5-6. (and many other places in scripture.) Sincere "science" must accept real evidence. Energies that move the heart and mind are real, so every feeling and thought arising from the experiment deserves thorough investigation. Will you try the experiment?
If you succeed, you will find the resulting personal revelation to be the most compelling reason for the existence of God. I know this because He has revealed himself to me. This is not theory. I have personal experience!
If you counter that God makes no such thing known to you, then you simply haven't met all the requirements in that passage in James. Read, ponder pray, and obey what the Bible claims about knowing God. Experiment with real integrity and prove God if he will not open the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing!
The knowledge of whether God exists is up to each of us to pursue with complete integrity of purpose. Nobody is exempt from the requirement to exercise faith and obedience, and nobody is beyond the reach of God's intimately personal revelation.
So what will be your.conclusion? Will you humble yourself and try the experiment? What if it IS true...
Science does in fact lead to prove God. “ the heavens declare the glory of God”
@@oahukiteboarder808"The heavens declare", but they aren't science. Scient-ism strips the heavens of meaning. That is its job. We have to believe on God's basis, or we won't believe. For those who are willing to believe, and probably for many who are not so willing, we often go outside at sundown, or sometimes on a night sky, and just gasp at the evidence for God that has been unexpectedly presented to us. Many non-theists probably have a similar reaction. In fact, many former atheists remember those moments, how they made them not so sure in their unbelief, until they got back around to the grind of everyday unbelieving. So the heavens do the work of declaring the glory of God, and people either heed it or seek refuge from it, until it goes away. But those who know that such moments couldn't be based on a lie, eventually put their faith in the existence of God, and then put their trust in Jesus to justify them before such impossible holiness, truth, righteousness and love that the heavens proclaim.
A Christian renewal? Well, maybe. The neat thing about faith is that you can believe whatever you _want,_ huh? You don't need good reasons, and you _certainly_ don't need good evidence. Wishful-thinking is all you need.
I don't know anything about the "new atheist" movement, though I _am_ an atheist. (And I know better than to get my information about atheists from Christian apologists!) But I'm less interested in some guy's prophecy of Christian renewal than I am in his reasons for believing this stuff in the first place.
_"Why I think the evidence, both if you like from the universe from science, from philosophy, but also historically, and also at a personal level..."_
Yeah, this is the key. Oh, I have no interest at all in that "personal level." If that's not wishful-thinking, it's at the very least _indistinguishable_ from wishful-thinking. If you don''t believe me, just ask Muslims about _their_ personal feelings.
And I'm not sure how you'd demonstrate magic "historically." But if you've actually _got_ something, let's hear it. How about one piece of good evidence, specific enough and in enough detail that I can judge it for myself, that your god is real, rather than just imaginary? Just *one,* please (for now, at least), but be specific.
Since you're Christian, I'd also accept *one piece of good evidence* that _any_ of the magical/supernatural stories in the Bible actually happened. Your choice. And I will _give_ you a guy named Jesus who was crucified by the Romans.
_"There was just generally a sense that they were giving off, that if you were an intelligent, thinking adult, you shouldn't be a person of faith, because faith was delusional."_
Not exactly. The problem is that faith is _indistinguishable_ from delusion and wishful-thinking. There is nothing - literally *nothing* - so crazy, so harmful, or so wrong that it _can't_ be backed up by an appeal to faith. Just look at other religions, if you're not willing to look at your own.
It's not that you're _necessarily_ wrong. Heck, you might get the right answer just by accident. But if you care about the truth, if you _care_ about the _truth_ of your beliefs, you'll be evidence-based, not faith-based. Because evidence is how we distinguish reality from delusion and wishful-thinking.
At least, that's how I see it. (I don't know about that vague "they.") And when I ask for evidence, I get none. When I ask for just *one* piece of good evidence, Christians, Muslims, and other theists run for the hills. Even pastors immediately run away when I ask them for just *one* piece of good evidence that their claims are actually _true._
_"I think new atheism as a movement sort of ran out of steam"_
I don't know. "New atheism" wasn't something _atheists_ came up with, was it? Wasn't it mostly a creation of the media (and people who wanted to sell books, admittedly)? And it's hard to have a "movement" when you have no beliefs in common.
Seriously. We atheists have no pope, no priests, no dogma, no magic book, and _no required beliefs, whatsoever._ You can believe anything - literally _anything_ - and still be an atheist as long as you don't believe in a god or gods. It's a very narrow label.
So, how can you have a "movement" without beliefs? Atheism isn't even a worldview. It's just the lack of belief in a god or gods. It's no more a worldview than lacking belief in magic leprechauns is a worldview. Has the not-believing-in-magic-leprechauns movement also run out of steam? Maybe. But I don't see a lot more people believing in magic leprechauns, do you?
_"You can have a movement that initially can be quite strong on kind of what they disagree on, but once you try to then turn it sort of then into a movement that's got a sort of positive statement"_
Exactly! And atheism isn't a positive statement. Again, you can believe _anything_ and still be an atheist as long as you don't believe in a god or gods. (Note that humanism _is_ a positive statement, so don't confuse the American Humanist Association with atheists in general.)
All of this "movement" stuff means nothing to me, anyway. I was an atheist long before I'd ever heard of Richard Dawkins. I was never part of some "new atheist" movement. I agree/disagree with other atheists in the same way I agree/disagree with other _people._ We atheists share a lack of belief in a god or gods, because that's the definition of "atheist." Everything else just depends on the details.
Note that most atheists accept the findings of science. We tend to accept the worldwide scientific consensus, wherever there is one. But that's not required in order to be an atheist, and it has nothing to do with atheism. It's just that we don't have a religious reason to reject reality, that's all.
You can believe in a flat-Earth, you can believe in homeopathy, you can believe in magic leprechauns... none of that is incompatible with atheism, because *atheism is just the lack of belief in a god or gods.* Again, it's a very narrow label, not a belief system.
Atheism isn't a religion, so atheism didn't splinter into thousands of different sects the way Christianity did. We have no magic book to disagree about. We have no dogma. Theists often _want_ us to be a religion - and, of course, the media always want to ramp things up for views or clicks. But none of that matters to _me._ I just don't believe theist claims - _any_ religion's magical claims - because I have yet to see any good evidence backing them up, that's all.
_"They're far more open to the value of Christianity"_
So,... it's not _true,_ but it's useful?
That might attract some people, but not me. Because I care about the _truth_ of my beliefs.
_"Jordan Peterson"_
Heh, heh. Old Word-Salad, himself? You can _have_ him. I really don't give a crap _what_ he thinks about gods. Indeed, I'd prefer it if he were _not_ on my side in any argument at all!
_"Ayaan Hirsi Ali"_
Sure. But have you listened to her? Supposedly, she rejected atheism and converted to Christianity. But as far as I can tell, she's never said anything about actually _believing_ it. No, she just seems to think that Christianity is useful for combating Islam.
She's another right-winger who seems to think, as you stated previously, that Christianity is _useful,_ not that it's true. Well, I'm not even going to argue about that, because I care about the truth. I care whether or not it's actually _true_ - or whether or not we have good reasons for _thinking_ that it's the truth, at least. And so far, the answer to that seems to be a resounding "No."
Here in America, Christianity has become political. Right-wing Christians want political power. They don't seem to give a crap about any of the stuff Christians used to _claim_ they cared about. They just want power. It's politics, not religion. And even atheists can _use_ religion for political power. Indeed, it's probably easier if you _don't_ believe the crap you say - at least in the Republican Party here in America, these days.
But that doesn't affect atheism. Atheism is just the lack of belief in a god or gods. OK, removing our civil rights will definitely affect atheists. And giving Christians special rights that atheists don't have does affect us. But it doesn't make your god any more real. It's just authoritarianism.
OK, sorry for the book! Heh, heh. I'll stop now. This is far too long already, huh? But if any of you want to talk, I'm right here. It's rare to find a theist willing to talk to an atheist, but... I keep looking.
You accept only the evidence which just so happens to be, by God's design and permission, the kind of thing that He hasn't given us, something that you'd have to acknowledge against your will. I believe He wants to restrict belief to those who are willing to hear His spiritual voice, the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and leave those who insist that it doesn't exist or isnt real, in the dark. You automatically classify that kind of evidence as delusion, because you reject it in your own heart. The Pharisees and Saducees demanded a sign as evidence, and Jesus said the only sign that would be given them was the sign of Jonah, where Jonah was in the belly of the big fish for three days, then came forth from the dead, and preached to Nineveh, who believed him.
@@lindajohnson4204
_"You accept only the evidence which just so happens to be, by God's design and permission, the kind of thing that He hasn't given us"_
*Evidence?*
Claims are easy. Vague claims are _especially_ easy. But why should I _believe_ your claims? That sounds like just an _excuse_ to me.
_"I believe He wants to restrict belief to those who are willing to hear His spiritual voice"_
Oh, I'm willing. It's not _my_ fault that "his spiritual voice" is indistinguishable from wishful-thinking - and also indistinguishable from the spiritual voices of every _other_ god which has ever been worshiped on Earth.
_"You automatically classify that kind of evidence as delusion"_
No, I don't. But if it''s _indistinguishable_ from delusion and wishful-thinking, why should I believe it? After all, even _you_ dismiss all of "that kind of evidence" from every _other_ religion and every _other_ god.
Your claims are indistinguishable from the claims of other religious people that _you, yourself_ reject. Don't you see how silly your argument is?
_"The Pharisees and Saducees demanded a sign as evidence, and Jesus said"_
*Evidence?*
You have no idea what Jesus might have said, as Jesus left nothing in writing and neither did anyone who'd ever _met_ him, as far as we can tell.
_"Jonah was in the belly of the big fish for three days, then came forth from the dead, and preached to Nineveh"_
*Evidence?*
Do you have *one piece of good evidence* that actually happened? You know that stories aren't always true, don't you? After all, _you_ don't believe all of the stories of every _other_ religion. So why should I believe _yours,_ when you have *nothing* distinguishable from wishful-thinking backing them up.
I appreciate the reply, but why can't you see this? Why is this so hard for you? Even _you_ don't believe the random claims of people of _other_ religions.
@@Bill_Garthright I think I also said something to the effect that people don't believe in the conviction of the Holy Spirit in anyone else's life, because they reject the conviction of the Holy Spirit in their own hearts. What this is not about is winning a debate, or establishing the reality of God through undeniable empirical evidence. God has not given us much of that kind of evidence, and I believe that is probably on purpose, that our faith be based on the testimony to our souls by God, just like Jesus told Peter: flesh and blood wouldn't have revealed it to us, but the Father in heaven. If we testify to Jesus's reality, even though yiu may not think you have any experience of God convicting your heart, perhaps you will notice that it matches with something that you notice happening to your heart, and that will cause you to pay heed to it. Or maybe thstcwontbhsppen to you; you'll just rail on us for supposedly being stupid for rejecting your arguments, nut maybe some other persin will observe eho knows what we are talking about, and it will help them deeply. I do not think we are fools to believe in the existence of God, and I certainly understand that you do.
You seem to think if you just drive it harder, that atheism can be driven into our stupid-to-you brains. But I have been hearing arguments like these since I was 5, and I'm going to be 72 the last week of this month. I didn't hear as much as we do online, and I didn't understand much of the issues, and I sure didnt have much to defend belief in God, but you better believe I got started searching for them, in my little 5-year-old way. Im not even sure thatI didnt hear some of thos whenIwas 3, becatse I was aware of people sayingthere is no God. Id I dnt yhink the reich people who put crosses on our sky scraper windiws at Chrustmas, probablyreally believed in God, or the griwniups who acted like God was a cute, folksy thing to believe in, but they didn't seem to believe, really. But that is definitely not an argument. Mostly I was scared of the angry atheists, because they were angry in the 50s, too. At 5, I definitely knew that their arguments were over my head, but their arrogance was what you would contend with. The image of a familiar type, an angry man, disgusted by those of us who didn't buy his explanations/demands. This was in a high tech and science area, and scientism was rife in the fifties, especially in our science and tech region and towns. There might have been a sliderule in a pocket or two, but I don't remember any pocket protectors. But imagine a man, say kind of Nordic, from Minnnesota, with the slide rule, an expensive sportscar, balding head, and that attitude of barely disguised (or undisguised) utter contempt for those of us who wouldnt just cave to his demands. This was the age of the all-wise nuclear bomb program, although it wasn't being emphasized as much as a few years later, and it was when they were talking about space aluens/flying saucers, and when the subject of brainwashing was in the news. Khruschev was in the news, visiting America, and pounding his shoe on the desk at the UN, threatening to "bury" us. We also heard a little about people being sent to the gulags for believing in God, and not giving up their faith, when the angry atheists there demanded it. I did not believe in flying saucers, and refised to be bamboozled into it. But the same with the angry atheists of our scientistic region in the late 50s. Which is all to say that I have heard these arguments a long time. I do not believe them. God is real to me, although I spent a few years kowtowing to atheists and allowing the hurt of people who felt injured and betrayed by God, to affect me very deeply. So when you accuse us of being these "simpletons" who can just believe anything we might want, that picture doesn't describe my life at all. I used to read philosophy, and the "liberal" theologians who accommodated atheists far beyond what they should have, because they were honestly far closer to atheism than belief in God, denying everything the Bible taught, but were still considered "Christian" theologians. I wasn't familiar with the phrase, the "Noble Lie", but that was obviously what that was about. I might have been called a "theology geek" as a teensger, but I got sicker and sicker of the world of theologians. Finally, after some world-class trouble, I chose belief in Jesus, the only part I thought was real, and I still believe God is real.
So I'm going on too long. Suppose you walked out on the streets early in the morning, before it was completely light, while the traffic lights were still blinking, and came to an intetsection. You looked all ways, and so no other people, much less cars. You quickly looked to your left and right once more, before you stepped off of the sidewalk onto the road. As you got clise to the middle lane of the road, you hear a loud honk to your right, and quickly jump back seemingly awsy from the honking, although you hsbe yet to see the source of the sound. A huge 18 wheeler races past, just inches away, then disappears quickly, behind the curve downhill. Your phone was in your pocket, but you wouldn't have had time to get the camera ready for use. The question is:
Did you have evidence to justify your jumping out of the way like you did?
I think you did; your actions were based on evidence. But it is not going to be evidence that you can convey to anyone else. Yiu have nothing left but your testumony, or claim, i . f you prefer. Say you fell when the horn shocked you, and the fall messed up your work clothes. It is possible that your boss wouldn't accept your excuse, especially if they were already biased against your "type". To the boss, your testimony sounds like a version of "the dog ate my homework", but he/she refuses to give your story (especially yours) the benefit of a doubt.
.
@@lindajohnson4204
_"God has not given us much of that kind of evidence, and I believe that is probably on purpose"_
Or else "God" is just imaginary.
Again, I don't care _what_ you believe as long as you have no good reason for believing it. You can make up all of the excuses you want, but if it's all just imaginary, why would I _care_ about your excuses. Seriously. Why can't you see that?
_"I do not think we are fools to believe in the existence of God, and I certainly understand that you do."_
No, not really. I don't know you, but most theists were simply indoctrinated into belief in their particular religion and their particular god or gods as a child. And when trusted adults tell children stuff, that's typically believed. Didn't you believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny as a child?
It can be hard to overcome that early childhood conditioning, especially when a religion claims you'll get eternal life in a magical place of perfect happiness if you just keep believing its leaders' claims. (And, often, that you'll be tortured for eternity if you _stop_ believing what they claim.)
Indeed, some people like those promises so much that they switch to a _different_ religion from the one they were born into (although those are a very small minority, of course, and converts happen in _every_ direction).
_"But I have been hearing arguments like these since I was 5, and I'm going to be 72 the last week of this month."_
Happy Birthday! But are you really telling the truth about that? And you grew up in Minnesota? Because that really does seem completely unbelievable to me. I don't know you, so maybe you're telling the truth here, but... that would be absolutely _astonishing_ if it were actually true.
After all, I'm only a year older than you, and I grew up not that far away. But atheists from the time you were five? Heh, heh. I didn't know a single other person who wasn't a _Christian_ all the time I grew up - not as far as I knew, at least. And _no one_ talked about atheism back then, as far as I can remember. Sure, the "Godless Commies" were the boogeymen of the time, but those people weren't in _America._ I mean, no one I knew would ever identify with Russia (not until Republicans now, huh?).
I never heard about atheists back then - and _certainly_ not positively! Christianity was just the default - not just in my community, but in all the news media, too. Even more than it is today. And that was before the Muslim panic, of course, so we never heard about Islam, either.
Indeed, I didn't know a single other atheist even through college. Even _today,_ I'm surrounded by Christians. It's only online that I encounter other atheists (although there are a lot more of them today than when we were children).
So,... your story just sounds unbelievable to me. Sorry. I'm not saying you're lying, but I suspect that your memory isn't as reliable as you might think it is. But who knows? It doesn't matter, one way or another. Your *evidence* - or lack thereof - is what matters.
_"Did you have evidence to justify your jumping out of the way like you did?"_
In your imaginary story, where I was on a road where vehicles are typically driven, and I heard the noise of a horn I also know exist and which I know are used by drivers for giving warnings, would that be enough evidence - _in your story_ - to justify jumping out of the way? Yes, of course.
Here's a story for you: Suppose you were walking along a country lane and you were really scared of fire-breathing dragons. Suddenly, you saw the huge shadow of a winged beast flying towards you, you heard the flapping of giant wings, and there was a rush of fire which closely missed you? You looked up and, amazingly, there was a giant dragon opening its mouth to swallow you whole, so you jumped into the underbrush to hide.
Did you have evidence to justify your jumping into the underbrush to hide, like you did?
_"I think you did; your actions were based on evidence. But it is not going to be evidence that you can convey to anyone else."_
I agree. In both cases - in both imaginary stories - your actions were based on evidence. And there was no one around to witness any of that. In _both_ of those imaginary stories.
_"Say you fell when the horn shocked you, and the fall messed up your work clothes. It is possible that your boss wouldn't accept your excuse"_
Maybe not. Who knows? After all, this is just an imaginary boss, too. But _should_ he?
In the first story, vehicles are known - even common. They are especially common on roads. We are specifically told to look both ways before crossing a road, because the danger is very real. We _all_ know that, including your boss.
If you fell and "messed up your work clothes," your boss might not be too happy about that. Your boss is a jerk, apparently. But would he be enough of a jerk to think that... what, you just _deliberately messed up your work clothes_ or something? Maybe. Who knows? In this story, your boss is just imaginary, too. So you can imagine whatever you want, huh?
But how about if you told that _second_ story to your boss. As far as he - or anyone else - knows, fire-breathing dragons don't actually exist outside of fantasy stories. And it's the kind of thing people would likely hear about, if there were a fire-breathing dragon rampaging around the countryside, huh?
So, should be believe your story _then?_ Even if he _wasn't_ a jerk? Should he even take your unsupported claims _seriously?_ You tell me. What do _you_ think about that?
If fire-breathing dragons were real, we'd probably have evidence of that, don't you think? Wouldn't there be consequences? Dragons likely couldn't eat _everyone_ who spotted them. And even if they did, there were be signs (like human remains in dragon poop, for example). At the very least, there would be a whole lot of missing people. But we don't have any of that, *which is why we don't believe in dragons,* right?
If a _god_ existed, a god who actually did something, a god who actually gave a crap about human beings, wouldn't there be evidence of _that,_ too? Well, maybe not. Maybe your god is just as sneaky as your dragon, huh? But the time to believe in gods _or_ dragons is _after_ there's good evidence that they actually exist.
We _have_ evidence of cars and trucks. We _have_ evidence that cars and trucks drive on the roads specifically constructed for them, that most have working horns, and that having one of them hit a pedestrian can be catastrophic.
We might have no good evidence that your specific story is true - and, in fact, your specific story _wasn't_ true, huh? It was just something you invented in your own imagination. But we do have good evidence of the parts you used to make your story. Trucks on a road designed for trucks aren't an extraordinary claim.
We don't, however, have any good evidence of fire-breathing dragons or gods. Not that I've seen so far, at least. And _you_ clearly have none.
@@Bill_Garthright God is not imaginary. A testimony, with no force accompanying it.