Transcription
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Have to say something. Take all the Christian atrocities you want to and dump them together, and I'm going to admit Christians fail. Christians can be jerks. Christians can ignore Jesus, and they should have followed him. They didn't, and if they were more ethical, they would have done this and that. I admit that.
But I will say this and that: I just saw the statistic the other day: over 120 million deaths in the 20th century alone by atheistic regimes. Over 120. That doesn't solve anything. I'm just saying you can't say because Christians do these dastardly things, hey let's look over the fence, let's say what's going on over here.
Okay, but the question itself is a great question. I would love to chat about it. I mean, I'd like to spend the rest of my career talking about it. So what I'd like to spend the rest of my career saying is, what do the resurrection mean? I'm down here in this end of things because you can see tonight there's a lot of healthy questions about it, and this is where I do my work.
I think the resurrection speaks about a lot of things today. Let me just say one thing. In First Thessalonians, Paul, one of those authentic Epistles, says Christians grieve when they lose a loved one. He says they grieve, but not as those without hope. If the resurrection occurred, if—and that says something about an afterlife—if that or anything says something about an afterlife, I think grieving with hope is a tremendous difference and progress over grieving without hope.
Now, Ken, I'm sure, is going to say, well doesn't this depend on whether the resurrection occurred or not? If that's where he would go, that's what I would say if I were down there, and that's correct.
But I think there are some good reasons for it, and so I would say, yeah, I think at the end of the day it makes sense. Paul says, for example, if Christ has not been raised from the dead, we don’t have any ethics. Christians don’t. You cannot base an objective ethical system on atheism. Do you have an ethical system? But you can't have one.
Do we want to live with illusions just because they make us feel good? Right? But here's what we're debating tonight: is it an illusion? Again, what we have in our universities...
Let's have one final question please. Um, and we will have... um, let's have the gentleman at the back there. There we go. Yes, in the blue top. Yeah, that's you. Yep, thank you both very much.
Uh, it's been very, very interesting. Professor, I just I really felt the need to pick up on something you said just there. Um, I was going to ask a different question, but now you've given me what I think is a more interesting one to ask. I mean, you just said 120 million people were killed in atheist regimes in the 20th century. You've used the word atheist there, but I think what you mean is communist.
Now, communism is only one atheistic doctrine. It's not even the most popular one. In fact, my understanding is that there was significant collaboration by religious believers with communist regimes.
And communism, to me, is no more rational, and I think what Kenneth has been defending tonight is rationalism above all. Communism, to me, is no more rational than any form of theism. I just wondered if you had any comment on that.
[Applause]
I’m sorry; the question was, uh, communism is no more rational than any form of theism, and that, um, essentially, that communism wasn't necessarily an atheistic belief. It was actually supported by Christians, according to the questioner. It was supported by Christians or those holding some sort of Christian conviction.
Okay, and what are you asking me? It's an argument that is used very regularly. As soon as the atrocities of religions are raised by the secular and what I would call the rational side, religious believers naturally fire back with, but communism...