Is Atheism Dead? (October 29, 2021) Is Atheism Dead? That is the subject of a brand-new book by my friend, the New York Times best-selling author of Bonhoeffer, Amazing Grace, Luther, Miracles, and like 6000 other books, the great Eric Metaxas. He's with me, we're gonna jump right into it. Eric, how are you? Eric: I'm great. You know, I love talking to you, especially about this kind of subject. So, thank you for having me. Frank: Hey, Eric. I've been through this book and it is like all your books, really meaty. And you have so much great detail in how people have discovered certain archaeological discoveries or scientific discoveries that point to God. How on earth did you pull all this together in your normally witty writing style? How did this happen? How long were you working on it? Eric: Yeah, I got a lot of staff, you know what I'm saying? I just say, get it done and put my name on it, don't embarrass me. No, in all seriousness, when I write a book, I never have help. The only time I ever had any help was with my books, Seven Men and Seven Women. But every other book, every syllable, every piece of research, I have to do it myself. I don't know why. I wish I could get help. But on this book, I have to say, you know, and I know that you don't start writing something when you start writing something. I mean, I've been reading books on apologetics or biblical archaeology and science for years. But something happened in the last few years that made me realize I had to write this this book, that the evidence has come in on a level that nobody knows, unless you're an apologist like Frank Turek, or unless you're somebody who follows an apologist like Frank Turek, you haven't heard of any of this stuff. Most believers, certainly most non-believers, they do not have any idea that science is pointing to God, they can't even imagine that that's possible. Well, I'm here to tell you, get ready for a paradigm shift, God is alive in our time, he has a sense of humor, a sense of irony, and he's chosen to reveal some things when we were sure it wasn't even possible they could be revealed ever. Well, here they are. So, I said, I got to put in a book, and I have to write it in a way, as you're referencing, that people can read, that people who maybe aren't even that interested in apologetics, they will find it interesting. And I have to say, I

don't work to make it interesting, some of these stories are very funny, very weird and interesting stories. And I think that that's kind of just what I do instinctively. I like to tell these stories. And I think that you can't help but be fascinated when you read the characters involved. I mean, this is not just facts, these are people, you know, sinners, crazy people, brilliant people, and when you read about what they did, it makes the discovery much more interesting in and of itself. Frank: Well, there's so much covered in here, Eric, and you've done it remarkably well as usual. You're starting with the beginning. We might as well just start right there. In the Beginning There Was a Big Bang, that's chapter one. And that's a fascinating story in itself. Why don't you just get into: How did people discover that there really was a beginning to the universe? Because science for centuries thought that the universe was eternal, and then boom, in last century, everything turns around. Eric: Well, again, everything to me in this book is funny. Truth can be very funny how people are so sure of something and then, boom, it flips and everybody's embarrassed, running for cover. The first part of the book is science, so I deal with the Big Bang, with the fine-tuned universe, and then with the James Tour stuff, what's called abiogenesis, which is one of the reasons I wrote the book, which is staggering, insane stuff. Frank: We got to get into James Tour, we got to get into it. But let's start with the Big Bang. Eric: No, I do. And then, of course, I deal with archaeology and all this stuff. Frank: Yeah. Eric: The reason I wrote the book, really, is because we know that in 1966 there was a Time magazine article that said, Is God dead? And it was kind of like the paradigm of the culture enters America's living rooms on Time magazine and says, Is God Dead? And it's almost like all the evidence is pointing to the idea that there's no God, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, since then, the evidence has continued to shift dramatically, dramatically, dramatically, but because

we thought we answered the question, we ignored the evidence. But the one thing that nobody today really thinks of as controversial anymore, is the Big Bang. And as I looked into this, and into, how did we ever get to a place where everybody acts like science disproves God, that took me to the story of the Big Bang. And it really boils down to this. You could read Isaac Newton, okay. In the 17th century, he knew the universe had been created. Maybe the greatest scientist who ever lived knew this. How did he know it? He didn't have a telescope to look at it. He knew it because it's what the scripture said. He was a profound Christian. And what I find funny, it's only with the rise of modern science. And really, when the "God is dead" idea comes in, I think, it's roughly when Darwin says, in 1859, hey, we figured out a way that the all the creatures and all life, you know, emerged naturalistically through random mutation, so we don't need God. Okay. So, that kind of creates this theme so that now, the physicists and stuff buy into this that, oh yes, science stands against God and religion. So, to me, the story of the Big Bang, one of the reasons it's hilarious, is that maybe the first person who discovered the Big Bang is Albert Einstein. In 1911, his equations tell him that the universe is expanding. And of course, he goes, wait a minute, according to the science of the last 50 years, you know, there's no God, God didn't create the universe, the universe was always here. Everybody knows that. Everybody knows that. So, my equations are freaking me out. They're telling me the universe is expanding, which means it expanded from a point, which means it had a beginning, which means it was created. That smacks of religion. And even though we think of Albert Einstein as the most secure, great scientist in history, you find out, no, he was an insecure human being who bought in to the secular paradigm of his day, 1911 and 1915. So, he decides I'm going to hide this evidence. He creates this thing, the cosmological constant, this fudge factor. He says, I don't want anybody to notice that while I'm doing science, I bump into something that looks like the universe was created. That's just not done in these circles, so I'm going to hide it. So then, other scientists like the Russian Jew, Friedman, and the Belgian Catholic priest, Lemaître, and then the American Edwin Hubble, they all say, no, no, it's true. The universe is expanding. Einstein, your equations are very clear. Hubble observes it through the telescope. So, Einstein has to eat crow. In 1929 he says, this cosmological constant fudge factor that I created to hide this, it was the greatest blunder of my life. So that to me, is the first story in the whole book, really, that proves that people go with whatever everybody's saying, including Einstein. If everybody says there's no God, if everybody says science is at war with God, even Einstein is insecure enough that he goes with the flow. Does he look at the facts and the evidence? No, he's afraid to. So, the story of the Big Bang, it's

comedy, because it starts with Einstein. And then you still get people after these three people that I mentioned, and others say, oh yes, it certainly looks like the Big Bang happened, it looks like the universe was created out of nothing, you still get people like Fred Hoyle and others who are so bothered by this idea, which implies religion, implies God. They're so bothered by it, that they keep trying to prove the steady state universe. And then, of course, in 1964, it's a whole story, but it basically finally is proved. And then in 1990, the COBE [Cosmic Background Explorer] background radiation proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt. But the story, to me, is how you have people who are really smart, who have bought into a secular narrative, and they cannot face the actual science. That's called irony. Frank: And we're going to talk a lot more with my guest today, Eric Metaxas. His brand-new fabulous book is called, Is Atheism Dead? That's what we're talking about. You can read about these stories in this book, Is Atheism Dead? You're gonna want to pick it up. Much more with Eric right after the break. You're listening to I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist with Frank Turek on the American Family Radio Network. Back in two. Welcome back to I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist with Frank Turek on the American Family Radio Network. If you're low on the FM dial looking for National Public Radio go no further. We're actually going to tell you the truth here. That's our intent anyway. You will not hear the question: Is Atheism Dead? on NPR but you will hear it here. It's my friend, Eric Metaxas, with his brand-new book, Is Atheism Dead? And as Eric was telling us the story of the Big Bang, he quotes one of my favorite authors in his book, Is Atheism Dead? Robert Jastrow wrote a fabulous book called, God and the Astronomers. Here's how he ends the book. After going through all the evidence that suddenly the universe appears to have had a beginning, here's what Jastrow says. And he, by the way, he was an agnostic. He says, "for the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance. He's about to conquer the highest peak. As he pulls himself over the final rock, he's greeted by a band of theologians who've been sitting there for centuries." That's the end of chapter one of Eric's brand-new book, Is Atheism Dead? So, Eric, it's been discovered, at least it seems now, from a scientific perspective, and also a philosophical perspective, that the universe had a beginning, that space, time, and matter had a beginning. But how does this point to God? Couldn't there be some other cause for the universe? Eric: Well, first of all, we have to say, there's a lot of information in the book, and some things don't prove God, they just kind of point to God. Other things, the fine-tuned universe and

abiogenesis, he second and third parts of my science portion, are more pointing to God. But what I'm saying is that the atheists and the agnostics prove that the Big Bang very strongly implies a creator, because of how disturbed they were by it. I mean, they were freaked out. Because think about it, science, by pointing to a moment when the universe comes into being...basically the universe is matter, okay, matter and energy. So, matter is where you get the word material, right. So, they're saying, at some point, matter didn't exist? That's what science is telling us? Science, which tells us all about matter, is not telling us there was a moment where matter or energy didn't exist. That doesn't compute. That's very troublesome. It's pointing to a door that says science not permitted. That's freaking us out. Science is pointing to a door that says, no science allowed. There's a moment when the laws of physics didn't exist. It's such a conundrum. But that's just the opening strains of the symphony. You know, then you get to the fine-tuned universe. And I remember I was reading books by Hugh Ross, like in 1990-91, and he opened my eyes to the concept of the fine-tuned universe, that the more we know from [unintelligible]...think of the irony, scientists, who are atheists have said, science is pushing God out of the picture, God of the Gaps, before you know it he'll be gone because science learns more and more. But at some creepy point, the script gets flipped and science starts pointing to God. And the fine-tuned universe is the exact example that science got better and better and better at seeing things that it couldn't see before and that we saw, on the molecular level, on the macro level, that the way things are couldn't have just emerged randomly. The size of the Earth, if it was a tiny bit bigger, there's no life. If was a tiny bit smaller, no life. You think, well, that's a nice coincidence, isn't it? And then you find out that everywhere you look in the universe, on this planet, on the cellular level, everything seems to be so perfectly calibrated that if you believe in random occurrence, that that's how we all got here, you start getting a creepy feeling that it doesn't seem like...I mean, it's one thing to flip a coin three times and it comes up heads three times. If you do it 30 times, something is wrong. If it happens 300 times, you're heading for the exits, because there's a ghost and something is going on. When they use science to examine the natural universe, the more they found was pointing to God. The levels of calibration. I mean, I have a chapter it gets really crazy. I talk about water, the thing that we all take for granted. What's the big deal of water? Water, when you look at it with the eyes of a real chemist, is an outrageous creation. It's a confection. It doesn't make sense. It's like it was invented by a God who wanted to create something that would do all these things, and he did it. Water floats when it freezes. Most liquids, when they become a solid, they get more dense

and they sink. But not water. And this is even creepier, water, as it gets colder and colder, it does get denser and denser, as predicted. And then when it hits 39 degrees Fahrenheit, it flips and it starts getting, as it gets colder, less and less dense. When it hits 32 and freezes it is 9% less dense than the liquid, so it floats. Totally bizarre. But if it weren't for that, there's no life on Earth. Scientists will tell you that, you know, because of ice freezing at the top, rather than sinking to the bottom, you don't get this runaway freezing effect that would kill everything. I mean, it goes on and on and on. I talk about erosion. There's stuff that I discovered, I just like, I had to walk away from my computer and say, Lord, I cannot believe that science is leading us to greater and greater awe of you and what you've done. We knew you were amazing. We had no idea how amazing. So, the discovery of all these things has led even people like, you know, Christopher Hitchens to say that the number one argument for God is this fine-tuned universe. We can't take it lightly. Well, if you talk to most atheists about the fine-tuned universe, they say, oh, that's been disproved, it's stupid. Not according to Christopher Hitchens. And he said, most of my colleagues would agree. So, it's the biggest problem. And again, the irony is that the more science discovers, the worse the problem gets... Frank: That's right. Eric: ...for a person who says there's no God. So, I find it hilarious in a way. So, they come up with crazy things like the multiverse theory, whatever, which is so...it's just silly. Frank: You're listening to Frank Turek and Eric Metaxas, my guest. His new book, Is Atheism Dead? And I'm looking at page 65 of the book right now, Eric, where you use an illustration that Hugh Ross uses. So many of these constants about our universe are so fine-tuned, many of them one in 10 to the 45th precision, which is a one with 40 zeros following it. That's one chance in one with 40 zeros following it. And you use this illustration of dimes. Can you recall this illustration? Eric: Oh, this is so sick. This is like me being a comedy idiot in the middle of this important book. Hugh Ross says that, if you want to understand how rare one in 42 to the whatever power it is, if you want to know how rare that is, he's like, imagine covering the continent of North America

with dimes. Just try to imagine that for a second. Right. He says, well then keep doing it until the dimes rise to...what is it? Frank: 240,000 miles, which would be all the way to the moon. Eric: So, they're bumping up to the moon. Frank: Yeah. Eric: Okay. 240,000 miles high. I mean, this is lunacy. And then he says, yeah, and by the way, do it like, what, 1000 more times. Frank: A billion times. You need a billion of these continents. Eric: A billion contents. And he says, someplace in those billion continents...billion...covered with dimes to the height of the moon, there's one red dime. Find the dime. That's what we're talking about. Frank: By chance. Blindfolded, find the dime. Eric: But the thing is, again, we got to say this is what science is saying. This is not what Christians are saying. This is what science is talking about. Many agnostics, they acknowledge this. This is profoundly troubling. But we need to be familiar with these arguments. Some of them are complicated, some of them are very simple. We need to understand that the facts are dramatically on the side of God. And when I say dramatically, even that is a little bit, you know, shy. I mean, it's open and shut. You can no longer have this many facts, and this level of facts and evidence and say, well, we're not sure. We are sure. A creator created this. Now, if you want to argue about who that creator is, that's another conversation. But you can't be intellectually honest and say that based on everything we know we don't know if there's a

creator. We do know. Maybe some people don't want to know, or they've got problems with it, but we need to know that science has taken us to this point. And that's just science, and we're just talking about one element in science, which is the fine-tuned universe. But I realize that I've grown up in a secular culture that acts like what we believe is sort of crazy, or you can't prove it. That has dramatically changed over the decades, and it's about time we put it out there and called the bet and said, folks I dare you to look at this, I dare you to be honest about this, because I think you're not going to be an atheist. You may say I'm an agnostic. That's fine. Let's have a conversation. But atheism, to me, becomes intellectually untenable unless you're just angry and you just don't want to let go of that term for some reason. But I don't know why you'd want to do that. Frank: So, Eric, you look in the book, Is Atheism Dead?, you look at the Big Bang, you look at the fine-tuning of the universe, you also look at the fact that our planet appears to be designed. I want to dive into a little bit of the idea of the fact that somehow life came from non-life. It had to happen somehow. Either by intelligence or not. Eric: Yeah, this is why I wrote the book, because of that, no one ever talks about that. When I when I met James Tour, he's the scientist that I write about, he's a solid believer, amazing man. Probably the top nano-scientist on planet Earth. I mean, this is like a guy who, he creates complex molecules in the lab. It's loony stuff, okay. Frank: Let me say something about him, because you write about him in here. And this is on page 99. Again, we're talking about to Eric Metaxas. His book, Is Atheism Dead? In 2013, James Tour, who teaches at Rice University, R&D Magazine named him top scientist of the year. He holds joint appointments in the departments of chemistry, computer science, material science, and nano-engineering. This is one guy [laughing] in one school, and you say he has more than 700 research publications, and over 140 patents. This is the guy that Eric, you introduced... Eric: He's scary.

Frank: Yeah, for the beginning of life, what did you find? And we're gonna carry this through the break but go ahead. Eric: It's not really that I interviewed him, it's first that I met him. I mean, this is what I'm saying. It's like, there's a guy I met in Albuquerque who got me into the archaeological side of this. I couldn't believe what I heard from this guy. Frank: Yeah. Eric: And then I meet Jim Tour, and he starts talking about the idea of life coming from non-life, and I thought, wait a minute, nobody ever talks about that. We always talk about evolution. Do we believe in evolution? How does life go from the simplest life to complex life? But nobody ever talks about the big question, the bigger question: How do you go from non-life? There's no life on Earth, there's not a cell, and then suddenly 4 billion years ago...Bing!...there's cellular life. How did that happen? And the answer is hilarious. Frank: Well, we're gonna get into the hilarious answer... Eric: It's very funny. Frank: ...right after this break. You're listening to I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be and Atheist with me, Frank Turek. My guest, Eric Metaxas, New York Times bestselling author. His brand-new book just came out October 19. It's called, Is Atheism Dead? It covers so much great information in a narrative format, story like. You're not gonna want to miss it. Don't go anywhere. We're back in two minutes. Frank: Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be up in Maryville, Missouri this coming Wednesday night, November third, at Northwest Missouri State University. We'll be doing I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. If you're anywhere near that area, it's just north of Kansas City about an hour. Hope to see you there. It's open to the public. Go to our website, CrossExamined.org, click on events, you'll see Frank Turek calendar. That's Northwest Missouri State University in

Maryville, Missouri. And then next week, on Sunday, I'll be at Mission City Church in Largo, Florida. Keep an eye on our website. Also going to Bangor, Maine the weekend after that. So, hope to see you there. Eric, by the way, you get out and speak quite a bit too. What have you got coming up? Eric: My goodness. I am in Carlsbad, California right now. I'm speaking up in Thousand Oaks this weekend. I'm really going everywhere. I'm very excited about this book and I'm going all across the country. I should say, please go to my website. It's just my name, EricMetaxas.com, and it lists all the places and we're adding dates almost daily. But I'm getting all over the country. I'm going to Montana, I'm going to Atlanta, I'm going to Wichita, Kansas. Frank: Now, how are you doing all this and doing a daily radio show? How's that happening? Eric: Radio Show? What are you talking about? Frank: Oh, you're doing radio man. C'mon, what's happening with that? Eric: Well, I can do radio on the road, and when I go home, I just do extra radio when I get back to New York. So yeah, it's a very busy time. But it's exciting, Frank, because you know that we live in a world that they don't know a lot of stuff. A lot of Christians don't know this stuff. And I said, I want to write a book that you could give to a non-believer. It's not trying to convince them very hard. It just says, hey, isn't this fascinating? And guess what? It's very fascinating. And it's more fascinating, because why haven't you read this? Why haven't you seen this in newspapers, magazines, and stuff? And I think that, you know, I'm quoting brilliant scientists, I'm quoting people that don't share our faith in many cases, and they're corroborating what I say. So, it's kind of time for a paradigm shift. So, I think instead of asking: Is God dead?, we're going to be asking: Is atheism dead? It doesn't seem intellectually tenable, at this point, once you know what's in this book. We were just talking about James Tour, right? Frank: Yeah, go ahead.

Eric: When I bumped into this guy, I said, this guy is so smart it's freaky. It's a wonder he could talk. You know people that smart, right? But he's very normal. And he starts talking to me about the question of life out of non-life. And I thought to myself, I never hear anybody talk about this. What's the last time I talked about this? Maybe it was like an eighth grade, it was on a test, and somebody said, oh yeah, in 1952, Miller and Yuri at the University of Chicago, they did some experiment, they ran electricity through, what they thought was in the prebiotic soup, some whatever, a couple of elements or whatever, and shazam, they got amino acids. And they said, wow, we're on our way. Next thing you know, next stop, life itself, right. Well, you know, that's like figuring out how to create some plastic and saying, man, in a week we're gonna have a flat screen TV. That's just details. We'll get to it. What they discovered, amino acids, what they made, is so far from the simplest life, but they had confidence in 1952-53. So, they put in all the textbooks, like scientists are working on this. They're working on this, it's only a matter of time. Well, 70 years have passed, seven decades have passed, and James Tour says that, the more it's the same old story that I keep talking about, the more science discovers about this issue, the more they know that they know absolutely nothing. Life is so much more complex than they thought of in 1952. When you look at a cell, when you start talking about DNA coding, even when you just look at the membrane of a cell and what a cell does, the simplest form of life, you cannot get simpler, okay, life in single cell form, or a bacterium is the simplest life, and yet it is itself so complex that the idea that it could have just sloshed together somehow...because remember, this is even before you get to talk about evolution. You can't have evolution without natural selection in life. So, we are talking about total randomness, no mutations, no breeding, no self-selection genes. We are talking about stuff that's dead, that's non-life, coming together to make life. The more we know about life, the more we know about science, the more we've discovered, that ain't happening, but they keep fudging it. You know, Dawkins says, oh we're working on that one. Yeah, you're working on that. You know, the problem is, it's hard to be the one to raise your hand and to say, hey, by the way, we've worked on this for seven decades, and not only are we not closer to the answer, we are much, much, much, much farther away from the answer. In fact, we're on the other side of the universe. We know that we haven't made any progress, the target has gotten farther and farther away the more we work on it. And so, the question that you'd ask every scientist, the most basic question like, hey, you say life emerged in single cell form 4 billion years ago. Great. How did that happen? They have no idea. But who's going to admit it? Well, it's time that we talked about it, we call the bet. What have you got? James Tour is talking about it all day long. And he knows more about this stuff than

anybody because as I said, as you said, he's a multiple credentialed, super genius academic in these fields. And he says, we can't fool me. I know. I can explain to you what they're trying to do, and they can't even begin to begin to begin to get there, and it's been seven decades. Frank: Here's what he says in your book. Again, the book is called, Is Atheism Dead> You're quoting Tour here, you say, and he's speaking about life coming from non-life without intelligence. Here's what he says. Remember, this guy is unbelievably credentialed. He said, "it cannot ever happen. They're fudging it. But I know they're fudging it. And even most scientists don't know enough to argue with them, but I do and I'm calling them out on it. I'm fed up. We should defund all further research in this direction because we now know for sure that it's like looking for a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. It's demonstrably a fool's errand, and now it's a gigantic waste of money that shouldn't be put to better use." That's James Tour. Eric: Now, this is why I love him, because he's really funny... Frank: He doesn't pull any punches. Eric: ...even when he's unintentionally funny, because he knows. He's not saying like, hey, this is my opinion. He knows. He knows cold that this is exactly, they're fudging it, and he knows they're fudging it and he's had it, because millions of dollars are being spent on nothing. Frank: You've got a section in here; this is on page 105. Again, the book is called, Is Atheism Dead? The headline is titled, Time is the Enemy. Because you always hear people say, oh, give it enough time, give it enough time that life's gonna come from non-life without intelligence. Why is that demonstrably false according to Tour? Eric: Well, it is demonstrably false for two reasons, okay. If the universe had existed forever and ever and ever and ever, this still wouldn't have happened. But people can claim that well, it might have happened given enough time, given infinite time. But now we know there is no infinite time, okay. Number one. But number two, he says, alright, let's say you have infinite time. He says that the moment you get, like, two of these pieces to come together, if you're in a lab

trying to create a molecule or trying to do something, if you don't grab that thing that just happened, and like you know, put it in a freezer or do something to it, it deteriorates in no time. So, the idea that you're going to get this one piece to come together...you only need a billion of them, by the way...but you get one piece to come together, by the time you get to the second piece, the first piece is gone. And he gives it, you know, in detail, but he knows the specifics of why this doesn't work. And, you know, I asked him, I said, Jim, you haven't written a book about this. No. I said, for crying out loud, this is so exciting, I'm going to put in my book. And it's because of him that I wrote this book. I said, this is going to be front and center, along with the discovery of biblical Sodom, another crazy story that nobody's heard about. And then I said, I'm going to write about all this other stuff, too, because it is about time we understood where the facts are. It's not 1966, it's not 1911, we've come to a place where we know that science and the facts point to God. You want to argue the details, fine. But let's no longer pretend science is the enemy of faith. Frank: You know, our mutual friend, John Lennox...and I know you quote John in here...puts it this way, a lot of people were saying, oh, science is going to close the gaps. Lennox says the gaps are getting wider. What are you talking about? The more we investigate this stuff, the more we realize there's no natural way to get from A to B, there's no natural way to get from non-living chemicals to living chemicals without intelligence. There's got to be an intelligence out there that did this. Now, there's so much science in the book, but I want to talk a little bit about archaeology because you have some real fun archaeological discoveries in here. And let me just start with the Hittites. Why are they such a big deal? Eric: Because I'm telling you, the one thing I know I can do is I can tell stories. And what I find is, I've read a lot of books in apologetics and they give you facts... Frank: Right. Eric: ...but they don't tell you the stories. I discovered these stories, I said, I gotta tell the stories. The stories are hilarious. I mean, you have skeptics, Bible skeptics, you know, in the 19th century, saying, we don't think the Bible is true. And look, here's an example, the Hittites. You got the Amalekites, you got the Jebusites, you got all...and we found them in the writers of antiquity, they've mentioned them, or we found some archaeological evidence of the Amalekites. But

there's no evidence of the Hittites. Not one ancient writer ever wrote about them. It's total bologna and it's all over the Bible. We know the Bible is just making this up. Frank: Yeah. And Uriah the Hittite, he was Bathsheba's husband. Eric: So, the most famous Hittite, who was Uriah the Hittite. But the Hittites go all the way back to Abraham. They're all through the Old Testament. It's amazing. And over the course of a very convoluted, crazy story you see the pieces come together. Different people traveling across the holy land before anybody's doing any archaeology. This is like comedy. They're just wandering around finding things, hieroglyphics that don't make any sense. And by the end of the 19th century, they put all the pieces together and they go, holy guacamole, we've discovered the Empire of the Hittites. It was one of the greatest empires in history. No one knew about it. And how do we know about it? How did we find it? The Bible. The Bible led us on the journey to discover this people that, all of antiquity and it's all been destroyed, nobody knows. So, we put these pieces together and the Bible, once again, is vindicated. But it happens over and over and over that archaeology, just like science, it does the opposite of what you'd expect if you have a secular worldview. It points over and over to the Bible as history. Again, I find it deliciously funny. It's ironic. People need to know this. I try to write in a way for the layman. You know, you don't need to be a brainiac. If you're a reader and you're interested in stuff, you know, I hope I presented it that way. Because this is fun but it's also true. Frank: By the way, Eric, did you do an audio version of this book? Eric: Yes, I did. Frank: You did. Okay, good. Cuz we've got your audio version for Luther, which we love. We're talking to Eric Metaxas. His new book is, Is Atheism Dead? You can get the hardcopy, you can get the Kindle, you can also get the audio book. And Eric tells a great story about all these discoveries, both discoveries in science, discoveries in archaeology. We're gonna talk more archaeology when we come back with our final segment with Eric Metaxas. Don't go anywhere. I'm Frank Turek. You're listening to I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist on the American Family Radio Network. Back in two.

Is Atheism Dead? Well, if you read Eric Metaxas' new book by the same name, Is Atheism Dead?, I think you'll probably come to the conclusion, yep, there's more out there than just nothing. That's for sure. And some of the evidence we've been talking about is evidence from science. We've talked a little bit about the Big Bang, the creation of the universe from nothing, we've also talked a little bit about the fine-tuning of the universe. And now we've gotten into a little bit of archaeology, which Eric has several archaeological discoveries in here. Let's talk about the Black Obelisk. I thought that was fascinating, Eric. I've seen this thing in the British Museum, by the way. The Black Obelisk discovered in Iraq: How long ago and what's the significance of this thing? Eric: Well, now this is one of these things where you write a book and I'm not gonna remember all the details. The bottom line is that it's discovered before archaeology really exists. This is just, you know, the colonial empires, the Germans, the Dutch, the English, the French. They've all kind of discovered, like, hey, we can roam across the Holy Land, we can roam across the Middle East, we can discover all this cool stuff. Wow! And while they're there, they discover an obelisk, which is just like a military steel, a granite thing. I don't know how tall this one is, maybe six feet tall or something. And it's in the shape of a ziggurat, meaning its kind of stepped down. It's not smooth. It's very dark. And they see, I guess this was 1848 or 49 that they discovered, or maybe 1846, Sir Henry Austin Layard. But they don't know what it is, but it seems very interesting. I even write about how hard it was to get stuff. You know, there was no FedEx. Frank: Yeah, no, it was amazing. You said they put it on, like, the Tigris River. It went 300 miles down into the Persian Gulf. Eric: Try to imagine, they find this thing, right. Frank: Yeah. Eric: And you think well, how do you get it? Oh, you put it on a plane, you fly to London. No, no. You now have to take it by oxcarts to the bank of the river, then you get it on a barge, then you got to go...if you ever look on a map of the Tigris and Euphrates River, I mean, they are the most winding things you've ever seen. And its hundreds of miles along this river, and then finally, it

gets to the Persian Gulf, and now they got to go in the wrong direction. They got to go east toward India, right or to Baghdad, or wherever it is. Frank: India, yeah. Eric: That's where it goes first. And there's a guy that happens to be there, who's kind of an expert on reading this...I don't know if it was cuneiform or whatever it was, but even that was in its infancy. Nobody had deciphered cuneiform, Assyrian cuneiform, whatever. So, he takes his best crack at it and sends a report to the British Museum. The report gets to the British Museum way before this obelisk ever gets there. The obelisk now has to travel down around Africa and up. I mean, it's crazy takes years. So, they put it in the British Museum... Frank: It's still there. Eric: ...and whatever King is [unintelligible] on there, the guy who looked at it when it was, I think it was in Baghdad, he says, the king it mentions is not significant. I never heard of this king, whatever. So, it's sitting in the British Museum and Victorian crowds are goggling at this thing. It's like a moonstone that comes from the other side of the universe. And an Irish clergyman, who happens to be studying this language, wanders into the museum by himself amidst the crowds and starts looking at this thing. And this is like 1850 or 1851, so it's been there for a couple years. And he comes on a line...you can imagine the moment when he realizes, nobody has figured this out but I'm standing here now, and I know what it says. And it's referring to a king of Israel. It's referring to whatever...nobody has picked up on this until now. And so suddenly, once this information gets disseminated, they discover this is the first example in history of something discovered in the sands of the holy land, in the middle of nowhere, that corroborates something mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures. This is like electricity. This is unbelievable. The world of the scriptures, which they thought was hermetically sealed unto itself...the skeptic said, it has no bearing on reality, right...suddenly, this thing that they find in the desert sands, mentions something specifically from the scriptures. Well, it changes the game. Suddenly the race is on, everybody knows that what it says in the Bible can be corroborated outside the Bible, and since then until now, people have been discovering things that more and more and more dramatically point to the Bible as

history, not just a book of stuff that might be true...some of its true. It goes on and on and on. But that was the first one, and that electrified Victorian society, and it really made a mad dash. All the colonial powers said, we want to get some of this treasure. So, it really kicked things off. Frank: Keep in mind, this Black Obelisk was put together by the Assyrians, and it pictures the Assyrian King Shalmaneser III, who reigned from 858-824 BC. This is from Eric's book, Is Atheism Dead?, my guest, Eric Metaxas. And it shows King Jehu of Israel bowing down and paying tribute to him. So, keep in mind friends, this is discovered near Mosul, Iraq. This isn't something the Israelis put in the dirt. This is something the Assyrians put in the dirt, and it was discovered, and it shows that Jehu certainly existed, and it shows also that he was paying tribute to the Assyrian king, because he didn't want to have his little tushy kicked by the Syrian King. Eric: Can you imagine being this Irish clergyman alone, staring at this thing, and you realize like, uh-oh, that's King Jehu? Wait a minute, I got to tell somebody, this is like... Honestly, these stories go on and on, example after example. But yeah, can you imagine when he discovered that? Frank: Oh yeah. And you can still see that thing in the British Museum. Last time I was over there it was sitting right out on display. Jehu kneeling down in front of this Assyrian king. Now Eric, you got so many other archaeological discoveries in here. I want to talk a little bit about the New Testament though. We've been talking about the Old Testament here. What were some of the archaeological discoveries that you discovered that you put in this book, because they're in here...Is Atheism Dead?...from the New Testament that you found very intriguing? Eric: Okay, there's one that I always hesitate to mention, because it sounds like crazy town. But it's true. I mean, it's like if somebody said, hey, we discovered Santa's workshop at the North Pole. No, no, really. Now that the key to all this, remember, is that nobody knows this stuff. Even when they discover this stuff, nobody reports on it. The secular narrative has just taken over. But it's a long story, I won't tell it here. But obviously I tell it in detail in the book, because if you don't know the details, you're going to kind of think, I don't know about this. But in Nazareth: Have you heard of Nazareth? Nazareth is Nowheresville. Nothing happens in Nazareth. Frank: What good can come from Nazareth?

Eric: One thing happened in Nazareth. Yeah, there was like a teenager named Mary, an angel spoke to her, stuff happened. But other than that, nothing. Okay? Well, bottom line is, in 1880, some nuns from Belgium decide to go to Nazareth to build a convent to serve Jesus in the town where he's supposed to have been born. They start excavating for their convent and they find the remains of an ancient church. They go: What's this? Well, long story short, like about 100 and something years pass. In 2006, a British archaeologist goes there and says, hey, this is the Nazareth convent, they found some stuff underneath it, let's see what's here. They find the remains of a Byzantine era church. And then on top of that, they find the remains of a huge Crusader era church, but it was wiped out by the Muslims who came in the eighth century. They came to area and, just like, wiped out these churches. So, for 1200 years, nobody finds anything, then the nuns come there in 1880. So now in 2006, this is being excavated. And you think, why would they build these gigantic churches in a place like, Nazareth? It's because, if you were alive when Jesus rose from the dead, and whatever, every one of these places associated with him instantly becomes holy ground, okay. So, I found out there's a church over the place where Mary lived in Nazareth, the Catholics are onto this stuff, okay. But there's nothing else there. Well, at the base of these two gigantic churches, they find a first century dwelling. Well, why would Christians build gigantic churches, one on top of another, over a first century dwelling? Well, we get a clue from the fact that it was in Nazareth. We get another clue from a monk who traveled there before the Muslims destroyed these churches and explained that the home of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph was between these two tombs down below in the crypt of these church. I mean, it's the sort of thing, your hair stands on end. And you realize that the book about what we're talking about, guess when it was published. It was published one year ago. While I was finishing this book, I came upon this stuff. And the guy who discovered this stuff, it's almost like he's such an archaeological genius that he's embarrassed to have discovered anything about Jesus, so he barely mentions that in the book. Like, he sort of says, well, yeah, I guess so. But he's afraid to broadcast it. Frank: Is he Jewish, Eric? Eric: No, no. This is a British guy.

Frank: Really? Eric: But the point is that the academic world is so hostile to this stuff that it's like, well, we'll just write about the facts, but we don't want to talk about the implications. It is open and shut. It is holy. It's hilarious to me. Who could dream they would find the home of Jesus, Mary and Joseph? I'm telling you folks, there's stuff like that, it's still hidden. God is revealing these things in the last days because as things get darker, the Lord says, I will raise up a standard in the midst of when the enemy comes in like a flood through, you know, cultural Marxism, critical race theory, all the madness in the middle of it, more and more good news. Is Atheism Dead? is my version of what's interesting though. Frank: Well, there's a lot of good news in Is Atheism Dead by Eric Metaxas. Eric, thanks so much for being on and writing this great book, sir. Eric: Always a pleasure. Thanks for what you do. Frank. Frank: That's Eric Metaxas. Check out his website, EricMetaxas.com. You can see where he will be speaking. Pick up the book as well. Don't forget, I'll be at Northwest Missouri State University north of Kansas City this week this Wednesday. See you then. God bless.