Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Dec. 29, 2019 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin

01:44:23

Can Your Life Be Meaningful Without God? | Dave Rubin & John Lennox | SPIRITUALITY | Rubin Report

Participants

Main voices

dave rubin

44:40

john lennox

38:21

justin brierley

17:13

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Show episode speakers

Speaker	Time	Text
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Look what they're offering us now.
		Their answer is, okay, we've removed God from the equation, and what do we get?
		We get government.
		and they now pray basically to government.
unidentified		[Music]
		[Applause]
		Wow, thank you very much.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		That is a great welcome.
		Thank you so much.
		Well, welcome to tonight's Big Conversation, filmed live here in Costa Mesa, California.
		The Big Conversation is produced by Premier Christian Radio in partnership with the Templeton Religion Trust.
		And it's a series of video discussions between thinkers across the religious spectrum, looking at some of the biggest questions in life.
		Who are we?
		What's it all about?
		Looking at science, faith, philosophy, what it means to be human.
		I'm delighted to say that tonight we're going to be sitting down and hearing from two people that I've really been looking forward to bringing into conversation together.
		We're going to be looking at the question of, is God dead?
		It's a conversation on faith, John Lennox, who is here on my left, is Emeritus Professor.
		Where are the next generation turning to in an increasingly pro-post-Christian society?
		Is God dead, as Nietzsche once declared? Or is there space for a renaissance of religious belief
		in the modern world? John Lennox, who is here on my left, is Emeritus Professor. Yeah,
		give him a round of applause. Just to give a brief intro, John is Emeritus Professor of
		Mathematics and the Philosophy of Science at Oxford University.
		He's a leading Christian thinker and he's engaged many of the world's leading atheist voices as well.
		His latest book is called Can Science Explain Everything?
		and it is available as well after.
		Dave Rubin is my other guest.
		Let's have a round of applause for Dave.
unidentified		[Applause]
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		Now, Dave hosts the Rubin Report.
		It's an online talk show that reaches millions of people every week.
		Dave is going to be telling us about his religious background and where he's at now.
		So I won't sort of label him at this point, but he regularly hosts conversations with leading cultural and religious thinkers on his show.
		So I'm really looking forward to what he's going to be bringing to this conversation today.
		He has a new book out.
		It's available for pre-order.
		Don't Burn This Book is the title.
		Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreasons.
		So I do recommend you go and get that if you can on pre-order as well.
		So one more time, just please give a warm round of applause to my guests, John Levitz and David Winn.
unidentified		[Applause]
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		Well, welcome gentlemen both, to tonight's discussion.
		I'm really looking forward to what we're going to be covering tonight because I've had you on the show before, John, and very often I've put you in conversation with maybe a quite firm atheist, someone like a Dawkins or an Atkins or a Michael Ruse.
		But I think tonight's going to be a little bit different because I'm really looking forward to hearing your story, Dave.
		We haven't met before.
		In fact, tonight was the first time.
		But I've watched your stuff and I've seen some of the people that you've increasingly been talking to and been influenced yourself.
		And it'll be fascinating to hear where you're at now in terms of both the cultural and religious aspects of your worldview.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've never had anyone give me an intro and say, we'll label him later.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So I'm feeling really undue pressure right now, and I'm the only one here from SoCal, so let's see what happens.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		Well, whatever those labels may be, I'm really looking forward to what you're going to bring to us tonight.
		Perhaps we'll start with you first of all, Dave.
		Tell us a little bit about who you are growing up.
		I know that you came from a pretty religious family, so do you want to tell a little bit about that and where you found yourself as you grew up and as regards sort of Sure.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		First off, I just want to say what a pleasure it is to be here.
		You know, I'm usually on the other side of the interview, and the reason I'm particularly excited about tonight is that I don't talk about this sort of thing from a personal perspective that often.
		You know, I've sat down with tons of atheists, you know, Sam Harris and Michael Shermer and Peter Boghossian and that whole crew, and I've talked to plenty of people of faith like Bishop Aaron and Rabbi Wolpe and plenty of Other people that come from different political perspectives and personal perspectives.
		And I always find that I go into each interview with no agenda other than hearing their thoughts and seeing how that shakes out around my worldview.
		That being said, I'm excited to be here because I can sort of tell you a little bit more about where I come from and sort of where I'm at.
		So I grew up in a conservative Jewish household in New York.
		We kept kosher, we did Shabbat on Friday nights, all the big holidays.
		But there was a strong secular belief within that, and as I was telling you sort of backstage, you know, there's an interesting piece related to Judaism that I think is a little different than other religions in that the ethnic tie to it, at least in a modern way, is for most Jews more important than the religious nature of it specifically.
		Let's say belief specifically, because John, as we were talking about, there are Many, many Jews, especially in sciences and in mathematics, that aren't believers per se, but have a real cultural affinity.
		And I would say that's sort of where I'm at, or at least where I've been over the last couple of years.
		I actually am now, in the last few years, and this has to do a lot with being on tour with Jordan Peterson for a year.
		Jordan and I did about 110 stops in one calendar year in about 20 countries.
		It was pretty amazing.
		And when you spend That kind of time, listening to a true innovative thinker, I mean, truly the guy that I think is the world's most important public philosopher, let's say, you know, talking about his biblical lectures and talking about his perspective on life, and that there has to be a bedrock of something that is real and true outside of us.
		And then how he relates that through the biblical stories.
		It moved me.
		It moved me over the course of the year that we did this together.
		So, I would say I'm secular basically in my life, but I definitely in the last year have found that there has to be something outside of us.
		The rest of this makes no sense.
		I mean, the part, very briefly, the part that, you know, I'm really known for is the political part and that I was a lefty and the difference between leftism... You kind of had a political conversion.
		Right, so I'm usually much more comfortable talking about my political conversion than a religious one.
		But I would say this.
		That consistent with me talking about sort of what's happened with the postmodern left, with the progressives, and we see this now, where there's sort of nothing that's empirically true.
		And any given day you can feel anything about any particular topic.
		There's a reason for that, and the reason is they've disconnected everything.
		Their whole worldview is disconnected to anything that came before them.
		So that could be God, or a religious set of ideas, or something like that.
		So I'm really, really fascinated by that at the moment, and it's changing how I live my life.
		I just did, it was Yom Kippur, which is the holiest day in Judaism.
		I was at a service that was actually at a church in Pasadena, in Los Angeles, Hosted by Dennis Prager, that I'm sure many of you guys know about.
		Dennis Prager, who many of you know.
		So, I'm sort of... I would say I'm in it the way you guys are all in it.
		Trying to find some truth in the madness.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		I'll be interested to tease that out a little more in due course.
		I mean, one thing I did notice is, I've seen just watching some of your videos, that there's definitely been a progression in your...
		thinking on this and probably if you go back a few years I think you had said
		along the lines of you probably thought of yourself as an atheist but evidently
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		that's not quite the case anymore. Well I had a bunch of atheists, high-profile
		atheists on the show in a row starting with Sam Harris who I admire and he's a
		good friend of mine and Michael Shermer and Peter Boghossian And I really love the intellectual side of that.
		I really, really do love it.
		And that's not at the exclusion of anything else, actually.
		But what I found was that I had had a series of atheists on in a row, and then people online just kept saying that I was an atheist.
		And then I sort of just said it one day without It didn't mean anything to me one way or another.
		It just sort of came out of my mouth one day.
		And then, two years ago, I do this off-the-grid August thing where I literally lock my phone in a safe and I don't look at any news or television.
		I'm completely offline and I really disappear and I try to let my brain reset.
		And two years ago, when I did it, one of the thoughts that I kept having in my piece was that I'm not an atheist.
		And I came back and I said it in a very casual way.
		I just did this live stream where I just sort of said it very flippantly that I just don't like the word atheist.
		It doesn't fit what I believe.
		I do believe in something else, even if I can't completely articulate what it is.
		I think Jordan has gone a long way to articulate the type of thing that I believe in.
		And I got a lot of hate for that one.
		Because, you know, the atheists, they don't like a converted person either.
		You know, you gotta watch out for that, too.
		So, you know, we all have our own trappings, but what I'm most interested in is talking to people from all walks of life and figuring out what the common stuff is.
		And what I like to frame that around is a conversation about freedom and how do we limit government so we can all believe what we want to believe and think what we want to think and be part of a society that's pluralistic and decent for all of us.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		John, let's have a bit of an introduction to you for those who aren't familiar with you.
		Tell us about your own faith journey up to this point.
		You now obviously speak to many people all over the world about Christianity, but where did it all begin for you?
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		It began for me, and let me say as well how delighted I am to be back in Costa Mesa.
		And I've enjoyed in the past some marvellous shows with Justin, and I'm just fascinated by what's going to happen in the conversation tonight.
		But I grew up in Northern Ireland, which isn't always the best start.
		to discuss religion because it was a divided community and there was a lot of terrorism that was connected in a very complex way to Christianity of both versions, Protestant and Catholic.
		But the important thing was that my parents were very unusual for that kind of cultural context.
		They were Christian, convinced Christians, but they weren't sectarian.
		And that was very unusual.
		My father had a small business.
		We lived in a small town, 15,000 or so.
		And he tried to employ people from both sides of the community.
		Now, why did he do that?
		I once asked him, I said, Dad, it's so risky.
		And he was bombed for doing this.
		My brother nearly lost his life.
		And he said, look, he said, I believe that every person, whatever they believe, is of infinite value because they're made in the image of God, going back to the Hebrew Scriptures.
		And therefore, I will employ them across the community.
		And that has stuck with me.
		And it's been very important when you're discussing, as I often do, with people that do not share my worldview.
		That always comes to my mind.
		Here's a person in front of me, and it relates to what you were saying about freedom.
		I would connect with freedom, value.
		That here's something outside of my parents that gave every human being dignity and value.
		That was point number one.
		The second thing was that they allowed me to think.
		Now, Northern Ireland's often associated with religious bigotry, extreme fundamentalism, all this kind of thing.
		And my parents were not highly educated, but they really gave me space.
		So my first encounter with Christianity was not mind-closing, it was mind-expanding.
		And I remember when I was about 13, my father came along and he says, here's a book you need to read.
		It was Marx's Das Kapital.
		I said, Dad, have you read it?
		He said, no.
		So why should I read it?
		You need to know what other people think.
		I never forget that.
		It was set a compass bearing.
		The third point is their Christianity was credible, morally credible.
		They actually lived what they believed.
		So in that sense, I had a hugely privileged background that didn't Compress me into a narrow-minded, bigoted person.
		And it was noticeable when I went to Cambridge in 1962.
unidentified		Not 1862.
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		I know I look old.
		When I went to Cambridge in 1962, many of my contemporaries from Ireland, the moment they got out of the country, that was the end of any Christianity.
		Because they'd never made it their own.
		They'd never thought about it.
		But I'd been encouraged to think about it.
		And that sort of set the compass bearing.
		There's one further point that really shaped my life.
		I was challenged in Cambridge.
		Very early on, by a student at a table at night.
		And he said, asked, do you believe in God?
		And then he said, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.
		I shouldn't have asked you that.
		You're Irish.
		All you Irish believe in God and you fight about it.
		I'd heard that many times, but somehow it was different.
		And I thought, gosh, yes, you know, I've never really met atheists.
		You know, in Ireland, people divide into Protestant atheists and Catholic atheists.
		They're not really real atheists.
		So I thought, what I'm going to do is to start today And befriend people.
		Befriend them.
		That's important.
		But do not share my worldview.
		And I've spent my whole life doing it.
		So, that really sets the scene, I think.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		So, Nietzsche famously declared, God is dead.
		Now, he may have been a bit premature in that, but maybe he's finally, you know, his thoughts are coming true in 21st century West.
		Because we are living in an increasingly Post-Christian age, people say.
		Increasingly, the number of people who tick the census box that says none, no religious affiliation is going up and so on.
		I mean, you're engaging with this kind of demographic all the time on your show, Dave.
		What's your feeling?
		Do you feel like people are genuinely less religious now?
		To what extent are some of those friends that you made early on in your show, people like Sam Harris and another well-known atheist, responsible for people moving away from the religious bearings that they once had?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So obviously I don't want to speak for Sam or any of those guys.
		What I have found in the conversations that I've had with non-believers and with believers is that at a micro level, you can be a non-believer and be absolutely moral and decent and good and a productive member of society and all of those things.
		As I believe those couple people that I mentioned are.
		What I think is becoming the problem, and I think this is really where Jordan Peterson hit on something, is that societies can't organize around that.
		That it can sort of work for a while.
		And there's, you know, most of the things that I believe in, and I, you know, I talk about the individual all the time and why I believe that classical liberalism is the best sort of framework for a political system that we should have.
		They almost can't exist.
		Without that underlying bedrock.
		And so your question sort of gets to what I was saying earlier, which is that the reason that the secular world feels so out of control right now, I mean, just yesterday, I'm sure some of you guys saw the CNN did this equality town hall.
		Last night, and it was like, you know, everyone has to mention their gender pronouns, and you have to admit that there are more than two genders, and all of these things that we know these conversations are not being had.
		There are settled science debates that went on for a long time that we know what facts are, and yet we find, because this has now become untethered to anything other than how you feel, that now everything is up for grabs, and that's why it sort of feels like That there's something sort of godless happening here or something like that.
		Now trust me, that is a hard thing for someone like me to say.
		As someone that really, my beliefs really are rooted in the Enlightenment and Enlightenment thinkers.
		And this is a real debate amongst people who talk about the Enlightenment.
		Could they have done it?
		Could they have reformed religions and burst liberalism in a positive way forward without some religious belief behind it?
		I don't know the answer to that exactly.
		I don't know that we'll ever really know the answer to that.
		But I would say that the reason I first said that I'm happy to be here with you guys
		is that in the last year, where now I virtually only get invited to events
		by conservative groups or libertarian groups for sure, but groups on the right, let's say,
		but I often get invited to churches.
		I often get invited to places of faith.
		Now I know we can go through a litany of political disagreements that we may or may not have.
		And I absolutely know that everyone in this room would be happy to do that.
		And there would be nobody fighting, there would be nobody screaming, we could explore those ideas as far as we can, and then we would put it down and either agree to disagree, or maybe we'd move each other one way or another, and that would be wonderful.
		And I don't think that's a coincidence.
		I don't think it's a coincidence that you guys here, and that generally believers right now, are more tolerant.
		They are.
		It's just the reality.
		The people, yeah.
unidentified		Give yourselves a round of applause.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that really is true.
		Who are the most intolerant people in society right now?
		It's the people that are constantly telling you how tolerant they are.
		That's the irony.
		It's the people that tell you you're a bunch of racists and bigots and homophobes and the rest of it.
		And that's the real bizarre flip that we have happening in society.
		And I think that is linked to either, however you want to phrase it, either a post-Christian world or a post-Judeo-Christian world or a post-modern world, however you want to define that.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		I mean, to what extent do you agree with Dave's analysis there of what's going on?
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		Especially, I suppose, that that I think it's a pretty accurate analysis and that's what I experience out there.
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		I'm always interested in the phrase God's dead because it seems to assume he was alive once and of course I hear Richard Dawkins kind of saying, which God?
		And I think that's a question worth addressing.
		Because the God that I believe in, that is the God of the Bible, is eternal.
		And that raises problems for the deadness, doesn't it?
		There's a sense in which Nietzsche was a very accurate prophet.
		And what to my mind is very important with him was that he could see where many contemporary atheists cannot see that if you abolish God, you wipe the ground under any solidity On which you can base on morality, human dignity, freedom, all those values.
		He saw that connection.
		And he said, if you get rid of God, you've no right in the end to values.
		And you notice, where the values are real out in our society, they're mostly values that go back to the Judeo-Christian tradition.
		And I think, therefore, to bring that back into the discussion.
		I like the idea, and I think it's a very important start.
		Where there's something more.
		There's something outside of us.
		That's the start, it seems to me, of coming back to something around which society can be organized.
		Because otherwise, everything is subjective.
		And you mentioned post-modern.
		And it amuses me that so many... But it's sad that so many of these people will tell you as an absolute truth that there is no truth.
		And that's just sheer nonsense.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, because it's a contradiction in terms.
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you obviously spend quite a lot of time speaking, especially to actually a lot of young people.
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I do.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		At many of the events you do, John.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		Do you find that there's a kind of, people are looking again for a source of meaning, for something to hold on to?
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		I think that, well, it's country specific because there are parts of the world, of course, where, for example, Christianity is growing like wildfire.
		But in the UK and in the US, I find that young people find the world that is presented to them by people like the old new atheists or the naturalistic
		philosophy is too small to live in.
		It doesn't give them any kind of solid foundation so they're looking again.
		And just what last week I spoke to Central Hall Westminster, 1,500 young people
		starting at the age of 13 to 18.
		Absolutely fascinated spending a whole day thinking about these big ideas.
		That I find enormously encouraging, when young folks start asking these questions.
		And I find a huge response around the world, but it's self-selecting.
		You know it's very difficult for me to give a global and fair assessment.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		I mean it strikes me Dave that you did this 100 city tour with Jordan Peterson and it strikes me that the crowds that have flocked to hear him talk about meaning in a meaningful way have been quite young.
		The kind of crowd that you kind of might have expected more to be turning out to hear the Sam Harris's and the Christopher Hitchens and and Richard Dawkins and so on.
		What's changed?
		Why, in a sense, has the conversation moved on from, well, we all know God's dead to, well, what's going to happen next, I suppose?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's really interesting because if you were paying attention to the media around Jordan during the year, The implication somehow, or the condemnation, I should say, from the media was that somehow this was for young, straight, white men.
		That he's only talking to straight, white men, as if inherently that's somehow an evil thing, right?
		So that was the idea, that somehow these really broken, straight, white men are showing up To his events, and that's somehow inherently evil.
		Now, of course, that's absurd.
		Let's say he was talking to all straight, young, white men.
		If he happened to have been giving them something positive that could put a little order in their life away from the chaos, as he would put it, that would actually be a wonderful thing.
		Of course, the irony is that that actually wasn't even true at all, because the crowds were wonderfully diverse, and I usually thought they were about 60, 40 males to female, and age ranged all over the place and all that.
		But to answer your question specifically, I think that We got, as politics and the media and social media and the fact that we're all walking around with a phone in our pocket that has the world's knowledge and you can connect with somebody literally across the world in a split second, I think we have no idea how this information
		Orgy, basically.
		I think we have no idea how it's affecting our brains, our ability to think clearly about things.
		It's doing wondrous things, right?
		We're all here because of this.
		This is a podcast, right?
		We're disseminating this through the digital world.
		This is incredible.
		But it also has destabilized sort of basic beliefs.
		And I think then Jordan stepped in and said, we have to be able to get some meaning out of this.
		So that's why He wrote 12 rules.
		He thought these are 12 rules in a modern sense.
		He wasn't handing down the Ten Commandments again, but he was saying in a modern sense, these are 12 things you can do.
		Stand up straight with your shoulders back.
		Clean your room.
		Clean your room before you clean the world.
		These are basic things where now we have people that want to fix the world constantly that can't fix themselves.
		They're doing it backwards.
		But just very briefly on the underpinning of some sort of belief That can lead to freedom.
		And that's sort of what I was talking about, about the Enlightenment.
		Think about, you know, the founding documents of this country, I think, are the greatest man-written documents, let's say.
		Political documents, at least.
		And what did the founders say?
		They said these are God-given rights.
		They're self-evident.
		We did not give you these rights.
		That is so deeply important and in many ways very unique to America.
		can protect these things, but we didn't give them to you because they came from somewhere
		else.
		That is so deeply important and in many ways very unique to America.
		And that's why there's such a bizarre assault on freedom of speech right now and on actually
		almost everything in the Bill of Rights.
		And it comes mostly from the secular world.
		That is a really sad twist that truly I would not have expected a couple years ago.
		Even as someone that saw this coming, I mean, you know, five years ago I was waving the flag going, guys, there's something happening here on the left, this progressive thing, this is no good.
		But even, it's gotten so crazy that I'm still a little surprised myself.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		To some extent it's almost as though the meaning crisis has almost created this vacuum and people are finding all kinds of Oh yeah, they're looking anywhere.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You can play video games all day.
		You can do whatever it is to fill up that hole, if it's an existential hole or a hole in belief or whatever it is.
		But there's a lot of ways to fill that hole.
		I think Jordan, in my opinion, has given the best set of beliefs that take from a religious tradition and blend what I would say are enlightenment values, or basically secular values, Judeo-Christian values, and he's blended them in the most effective way.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		I mean, as we're on the subject, talking about Jordan Peterson, I know that you're somewhat familiar with some of what he's been doing as well, John.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		What's your take on what he's put his finger on, that obviously so many people are responding to, and how does it relate, in your view, to I think people are longing for sense.
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		And you mentioned connectedness.
		That has almost replaced meaning, but it's not real connectedness.
		And I was reading a book on artificial intelligence just recently, and it was warning that people will die if they're not connected to the internet because all the meaning is being placed there.
		And I think what Jordan Peterson is doing is putting a nuclear bomb in the middle of that and saying this is not good enough.
		You've got to get outside of that.
		And you're right.
		It is rewiring brains.
		The psychologists tell us it's messing people's brains up, especially if they try and use two machines at once.
		And Therefore, I just think that there's an underlying, and from where I sit, people are looking for this because, although they often don't believe it, or even have never heard of it, they are made in the image of God.
		They're beings who've got eternity in their hearts.
		And a kind of materialist universe without meaning just won't satisfy them because they're actually made for something bigger.
		And see, as Lewis put it years ago, if you find a longing in you that's not satisfied in this world, maybe there is another world in which it could be satisfied.
		And you can apply that to the world of ideas.
		So I really think he's hit a nerve.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		And interestingly, If you read his book, Twelve Rules for Life, and he's done a number of lectures, he's drawing a great deal on the Bible, especially the Old Testament.
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		Oh sure, he is, especially the Old Testament.
		And it has intrigued me that he has concentrated, in his lectures on the Bible, on the Old Testament.
		That, to me, resonates completely.
		I, as a Christian, have been for years trying to communicate to people that they've got to begin to take the Jewish Scriptures seriously.
		Because there you've got the foundation.
		The foundation story.
		And people are looking for a story that's big enough to fit their lives into.
		And there's the start of the big story.
		Creation.
		Human beings made in the image of God.
		And what that means for their dignity and their freedom and everything else, if we just get that one fact.
		I remember in Siberia, where I used to go quite a bit, and I gave the first lecture in 75 years on these issues in the University of Novosibirsk.
		And I made the point, I said, just think of the one statement human beings made in the image of God.
		And I said, if I believed that, I wouldn't murder one of you, let alone the hundred million that Stalin did.
		And it absolutely erupted the place.
		Of course, they'd never heard it before.
		It was totally new to them.
		And I think our society needs to hear these truths.
		And Jordan Peterson is moving into that area because he's actually going back to the book and not being ashamed of it.
		More power to him, I say.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and just very briefly, just from being on tour with Jordan, I've told you this backstage, but I never saw the guy break one of the 12 rules.
		I mean, try to imagine how chaotic his life was in the course of this, becoming a massive star, traveling all over the world, the book sales, the celebrity, the entire thing.
		And he never broke one of those 12 rules.
		Just in 20 seconds, we were at a dinner party at Douglas Murray's house with Majid Nawaz and Jordan.
		You may know those guys.
		And one of the rules is that if you see a cat in the street, you should pet it.
		And Douglas had a cat.
		And we're there for about three or four hours.
		We're having dinner.
		We're having a great time.
		And I'm looking at the cat the whole time.
		And I'm looking at Jordan.
		I'm going, the guy hasn't pet the cat.
		You know, what am I on tour with this guy for?
		Like, is the whole thing, is he a fraud?
		You know, what's going on here?
		I swear to God, I was thinking it the entire time.
		And then as we were walking out the door, Jordan literally, and you can sort of picture Jordan, he's very tall and he has long limbs and he's slender.
		And he basically sat down in the cat's bed with the cat and stroked the cat for a good five minutes.
		And I thought, all right, he's the real deal.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		We should probably talk about someone other than Jordan Peterson tonight.
		I'd love to key in a little bit more on your story, Dave, because it sounds like you have been on something of a journey of discovery over the last year or two, and obviously very much influenced by the way Jordan has brought that alive in his lectures and so on.
		So, I mean, you obviously now are seeing more and more the value of religion.
		What has that caused you personally to do in terms of maybe, is it causing you to rediscover your own Jewish roots a bit more and the religious aspect of that?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, I would say there's two things here, as I said at the beginning.
		There's sort of just the cultural affinity and the understanding of the history of the people that came before me, which, you know, unfortunately in the case of the Jews is a pretty brutal, often almost unimaginably horrific history.
		And I, you know, I grew up around Holocaust survivors, and I know that.
		That, though, the pain of your ancestors, or whatever the history of your people is, can't be the thing that defines you going forward.
		I would say, as I've sat down with believers and non-believers alike, I've genuinely found... Well, I guess sort of this would get to what you were saying, John.
		I've genuinely found the believers not only more welcoming, so like, in a situation like this, But more open, actually happier, less dependent on things outside of themselves, more self reliant, let's say.
		I don't think that means I'm going to be religious per se tomorrow.
		That being said, as I said, I went to this Yom Kippur service that Dennis Prager hosted, and I found it incredibly moving.
		And Dennis gave a sermon that he talked all about Judeo-Christian values and sort of what's happening.
		in our country right now and how it all seems to be becoming untethered.
		And he used some religious backing to give some value there.
		And I thought, well, this is value.
		This is something, a real world way that I could come somewhere once a week or build some community around or friends that would have value.
		So I can't say I'm, you know, it's like, if ultimately I can see in your eye, you want me to be like, yeah, yeah, Jesus, let's go.
		I can see it.
unidentified		There's a guy back there waving a Jesus sign at me.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Alright, I see you.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		Well, if you insist.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Let's put it this way, I have no problem with Jesus.
		I like the guy.
		You know what I mean?
		Like the message of Jesus, all of the things that we've talked about here on stage and backstage, I love these ideas.
		I think that if my life becomes a continuing conversation about these things, and I can incorporate the best parts of that to be a better person, well, I'll tell you this, I know for a fact I am a better person today than I was before I started this journey with Jordan.
		That those things, and that doesn't mean I prescribed to the church of Jordan Peterson, that is just that this guy who has communicated the bedrock ideas that we're talking about here, by me listening to that and hearing that and incorporating some of that in my life, I'm a better person.
		So that means something.
		You know what I mean?
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		Any comments on Dave's journey so far?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I feel like this is my life.
unidentified		You're on the psychiatrist's couch tonight.
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think what struck me just listening was your being moved by Yom Kippur.
		I'm not Jewish by background, but I owe everything to a Jew.
		And the history of the Jews has been enormously important to me.
		And when you mention the Holocaust, as you do, and I've been in Auschwitz many times, and I've wept every time, and I have many Jewish friends who lost everybody, and that raises huge, deep, existential questions.
		And therefore, just thinking of the big picture, the big biblical story, and I love it because although there are all sorts of twists and turns and difficulties, I see the Jewish history, the history of Israel, the law, the prophets, as pointing towards something big.
		Because at the heart of Judaism, and I have many Orthodox friends who still expect Hamashiach, the Messiah, to come.
		Now the difference is that I believe he has come.
		And Yom Kippur means a huge amount to me because in those Jewish festivals, and I've been at many of them, I see, I don't want to put it crudely, but a thought model that has been fulfilled.
		In what Jesus did.
		And I find Yom Kippur moving because I see in him the fulfillment of it.
		And here is a person who actually died the day of atonement.
		It's an atonement to deal with.
		Now here comes the point that what happens when you start with a creation story and people made in the image of God, that's wonderful.
		But we know that something has happened.
		A bomb has hit the human race.
unidentified		And there are huge problems.
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		And we long for a solution.
		We long for justice.
		We long for true freedom.
		We long for true values.
		And we've got to therefore face the problem of human rebellion against God.
		Now the sin word is not popular these days.
		But it seems to me that there's a fulfillment Within what Jesus did and taught are fulfillments of everything that Judaism stood for and stands for powerfully.
		And therefore I feel a close affinity here.
		The whole Judeo tradition is immensely important to me because there I find these fundamental values.
		But they raise a big question and it's the fulfillment of that The whole history of Israel, its sacrifices, the institutions, the prophets, looking forward to Messiah, who will deal with the basic problem of human rebellion.
		And so that's clearly a difference between me and Judaism, but I wouldn't underemphasize the huge contribution that it has made to the rock on which I believe I stand today.
		If that makes sense.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well it does make sense and if I could quickly, I actually do want to answer your question a little more specifically now that I had a moment to think it through.
		So this year I went, my parents live in New York still in the same family home that I grew up in, and I went to a temple on Rosh Hashanah and Rosh Hashanah is the beginning of the new year and it's about creation and then basically you have the week or so between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur where you're supposed to think about Your life, the things that you've done, the good things that you've done, the bad things that you've done.
		Apologize to people if you've done, you know, whoever you may have done harm.
		And I really did, so this is the real answer to your question, I really did that this year.
		I really did think about it.
		Probably didn't fully get there on Twitter throughout the week.
		I probably did drop the ball a couple of times on Twitter.
		But I really was very aware of that and I tried You know, just a few days ago at services, I really was trying to be cognizant of it doesn't necessarily matter if I believe in all of this, all of it.
		Fully.
		But there is value in this.
		This story that has been told by my parents and my grandparents and my great-grandparents going way back when.
		There must have been something that kept this thing alive and there must have been some reason behind it.
		And for me to pretend that I'm so enlightened, that I have figured out something that is so brilliant that I could just set all that aside, to me that strikes me as the worst sort of like, egomaniacal hubris that you could have.
		So I would be happy to do this again next year and we can continue the conversation.
		The Jesus guy's still waving at me back there.
unidentified		(audience laughing)
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		I'm finding this fascinating because obviously there has been something of a spiritual awakening.
		And I think, you know, it sounds like you're saying I'm not quite sure what that looks like exactly,
		but I want to start to investigate and live into this kind of tradition more
		that obviously your forebears have done so.
		I mean, there's a lot of people out there, you know, who would say, come on, wake up, it's the 21st century.
		We all know that these are just superstitions and everything else.
		And you need to get on the bandwagon of reason.
		You're about reason, Dave.
		And if we just...
		Think straight, work things out with science and logic, then that's the way forward.
		Religion is kind of the way we used to do things, not anymore.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, I think the counter to that would be everything that Jordan has talked about.
		Not to bring this back to Jordan, but the counter of that is that, well, look sort of where the secular world is at, where we can't figure out whether you're male or female anymore.
		We have to now debate that.
		I don't like using that one because it's so easy and it sounds sort of glib, and I don't mean it to be that way, but that is where this is all leading.
		If there is nothing outside of ourselves, then John, as you said, everything else is subjective, and we will debate every little thing, depending on how we feel about it on any given day, and that will lead.
		There is a reason why right now the idea of socialism is suddenly popping up in America, which is genuinely the worst set of collectivist ideas that you could possibly ever have, that hundreds of millions of people have died in history under.
		And it's popping up because if you listen to what's happening on the left right now, politically, because they've outsourced God.
		Imagine if one of those people on stage said that they were a real believer.
		Imagine if any of them.
		Maybe Biden could do it.
		But really, the rest of them can't.
		They would never really say that they're a believer.
		Now, I don't know what they are, and I wouldn't want them to say anything that's not true to themselves.
		But they would be mocked by everything mainstream.
		Everything mainstream would mock them.
		The way that everything mainstream mocks any Christian, that happens because they're usually on the right.
		They happen to be conservatives.
		But look what they're offering us now.
		Their answer is, okay, we've removed God from the equation and what do we get?
		We get government.
		And they now pray basically to government.
		They think that they can figure out somehow by sitting in a room with a bunch of other politicians and bureaucrats, the worst sort of people that exist, they...
		I didn't even mean that to be funny, but actually... I mean, but that's what they think.
		They think that they can rejigger all of humanity in a way that will be so much better than everything that came before them.
		And not only can't they, they are going to do the complete reverse.
		So...
		That, if for no other reason, if for no grand revelation or something like that, that would be a reason to be respectful of people that are believers.
		Because they can fight that in a way that secularists can't.
		The good liberals don't have enough juice in and of themselves.
		They don't have enough juice to fight that.
		That's why liberalism has collapsed in the name of progressivism.
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I approach this in two ways.
		The first one is your comment that secularism is collapsing.
		And one can analyze the defects of atheism and where it leads to and the millions of people that died in the last century.
		But coming over to the other side, what you're saying, Justin, you see, I am a scientist.
		And one of the fascinating things is that science is a direct legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
		You were saying we're all scientists now, and all this is... No, it is not.
		And let's start absolutely basic.
		In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
		Hebrew Bible, written millennia ago, knew there was a beginning.
		It was in the early 60s before scientists caught up with that.
		And the Bible was right.
		And Dawkins said, well, there was a 50-50 chance when I debated him.
		And I said, at least the Bible got it right.
		But more seriously than that, you see, the fact that I'm a mathematician and interested in science, just think about that.
		The fact that mathematics can describe what goes on in the universe is a matter of huge wonder.
		Einstein once said the only incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.
		And he saw the problem.
		Why does it work?
		Well, it's not an incomprehensible thing if you start from the idea that there's an intelligent God who made us in his image and therefore we can do science.
		And that's exactly what The early pioneers of modern science, starting with Galileo and Kepler and Newton and so on and so forth, they were all believers in God.
		And therefore, when I hear that kind of question, I'm not remotely ashamed of being a scientist and a Christian because I want to argue that it was Christianity gave me my subject.
		And C.S.
		I guess Lewis put it brilliantly.
unidentified		(audience applauding)
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		I'm glad you understood it in the end.
unidentified		(audience laughing)
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		C.S.
		Lewis said, men became scientific because they expected law and nature, and they expected law and nature because they believed in the lawgiver.
		And I think we're getting to the stage now where serious atheist thinkers are beginning to re-examine The kind of naturalism that reduces everything to physics and chemistry.
		And one of them lives in New York.
		His name is Thomas Nagel.
		And he's a brilliant philosopher.
		And he says something's going wrong because if everything is reducible to physics and chemistry, then so is your mind.
		But then, why would you trust your mind?
		In other words, atheism, taken to its logical conclusion, undermines the very rationality you need to trust to do science.
		And I'm not in for accepting a worldview that undermines the foundations of any kind of argument or discussion whatsoever.
		So I think that in the 21st century we can push back on that very naive notion that God's out.
		We do science now.
		No!
		Science actually brings God back in.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		It's very interesting. I mean...
unidentified		[Applause]
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		All of this leads me to want to ask you at this point, David.
		You're sitting down with John here tonight, obviously a Christian believer, someone who gives evidences for God.
		And I know that on your show you've had people like Bishop Barron and I think Ravi Zacharias is going to be featured shortly.
		Where does this leave you on, if you like, that God question?
		Because at one level I can absolutely see the way in which there's a kind of utility and a kind of sense in which we can gather meaning from doing the religious things, the rituals and so on.
		But at the end of the day, and I asked this of Jordan Peterson once, and it was an interesting answer, do you believe in God?
		Do you feel like that's where you've got to at this point in your life?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's funny, when we would do the Q&As at the shows with Jordan, for the first few we would let people come up to the microphone.
		And what usually happens is that people start telling their life story and they would want to get a therapy session in front of 3,000 strangers.
		And it started getting very weird, so we decided a better way.
		We used an app to do it, and when Jordan was on stage, basically, I would go through the best ones, and I'd find some funny ones, and some serious ones, and everything else.
		But what always came up, no matter how many times Jordan answered it, was, do you believe in God?
		And he, as I'm sure he said to you, he finds it to be sort of the most annoying question possible.
		I think I would answer it, I mean, I would answer it in a similar way that Jordan would.
		That, look, I think I've sort of laid out a set of beliefs here that show the utility of believing in something outside of myself, and I do believe in that.
		So if you want to call that God, That there is something outside of me, there is something that is connecting all of us, that has nothing to do with the material world.
		There is something that drives us, that is the driver of humanity, that is something good.
		I believe that.
		I can't... Yeah, I believe that.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		But could you put a name on that, something, at this point?
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		I told you I wanted to label you before the end of the evening.
unidentified		Jesus?
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		I guess, I mean, in a sense, I hear what you're saying.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Do I get a cookie at least?
unidentified		I mean, come on people, what are we doing here?
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		I guess it's kind of like, What are the particulars of what would that look like?
		How is that going to make a difference, I suppose, in your life?
		Is there a sort of sense in which you feel now any new obligations given this kind of new sense that there is something beyond?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You know, I think we're all sort of wired differently, right?
		I think some people can really can really flourish just sort of on their own set of ideas that they create in the world, and I think that can really work for some people.
		I think some people need some order outside of that, some people need more of a community, some people are real loners, all of those things.
		I think perhaps, but I truly mean what I said before, I'd be happy to do this every year with you and continue these conversations, and I'll continue them on my show, obviously.
		I think for me, the adventure of discussing this and seeing what kind of people that I bring into my studio, that I interact with at events like this, what type of people I want to be around, that really is the proof.
		That is what That's what makes this, right?
		That's what makes this.
		So I don't know, so... Again, I get what you're... I get the question.
		I respect the question, truly.
		And it's THE question, right?
		I mean, it's like saying, what's the meaning of life, right?
		It's the big one.
		I would say I'm on the adventure to finding that out and I'm really okay with that.
		You know, I hope that doesn't sound dismissive of the question or like I'm trying to evade it.
		I'm really not.
		I like...
		And maybe this is just a function, also, of what I do for a living.
		I mean, I get to sit every week with people that, in most cases, are smarter than me, who have spent years working through all of these issues, as you have, John.
		And that is an incredible privilege that I have.
		So, I would like to see how far I can take that.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		It sounds like we're not going to convert him tonight, John.
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		You're doing your best.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we're working overtime over there, I'll tell you that much.
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		It's wonderful to hear an open description of a journey.
		And I try to think my way into this, that getting around these ideas is really big stuff.
		I mean, coming the way you've moved, from the little I've understood of it, just meeting you for the first time, it's most interesting to me the way that movement is going.
		From where I sit, there's another element comes into it.
		What I mean by that is this.
		There's the things that we can think about existentially as you're doing, and that's vastly important to me as well.
		The kind of people you like to be with, the evidence of that you like this, if you feel there's something outside yourself, and so on and so forth.
		But then, It comes to a couple of questions.
		One is, could it be that that something is actually personal?
		Now, your Jewish Hebrew scriptures would say exactly so.
		Because that's how Bereshit Genesis starts.
		With a God who sees, who blesses, who speaks.
		And one of the most interesting things to me, both as a scientist and a believer in God, is the simple description of creation.
		And God said, let there be light.
		And God said, and God said.
		There's a sequence, as you know.
		But the most exciting one is the one you never hear.
		It's the final one.
		And God said to them.
		And that opens up a whole world of possibility.
		That what is being claimed at least is that there's a God that speaks to me.
		And that means, that opens up the possibility of revelation.
		Where it's not simply me investigating the people I know, the things I hear, the arguments philosophically and so on.
		But there's another side to it.
		That if this is true, then God is interested in me and he's wanting me as a discussion partner.
		He's wanting to talk to me.
		And if one is open to that possibility, it seems to me to open a huge new dimension to this.
		And the more I think about that, this is a word-based universe.
		Scientifically, And religiously, in that sense.
		And therefore, the idea that there's something there, that's fantastic.
		There's more than the material world.
		But if that more is personal, and can speak to us, it's worth testing the claim at least, because it runs right through the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament.
		That's the fundamental thing.
		He's a speaking God.
		Not dead.
unidentified		[Applause]
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		We, I should say, I mean, we normally never on my show get to this point.
		Because most of the time, the person sitting opposite someone like John is a confirmed atheist.
		And it's really, God is always going to be debated in the abstract.
		John, you kind of come to the point where you're saying, well, let's look at whether God could be personal.
		Yes.
		Whether God could speak to us.
		Again, I feel like we're grilling you, really, tonight.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		No, it's fine.
		It's interesting.
		Genuinely, I love this.
		There's nothing you could ask me, I don't think, that would offend me.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		I'm grateful for you being an open book tonight, because I suppose my next question is simply, who could it be?
		Do you think that it's possible that there could be a God who is personally interested in you, who listens to your prayers, He's interested in the way you live your life.
		He wants the best for you.
		Is that something that's on the table as a possibility for where your journey might take you, I suppose?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		If he walks out on stage right now, I will get baptized tomorrow.
		If this is like, you know, Maury Povich.
		And here he is, everybody!
		Yes!
		Well, my basic answer would be yes.
		Why would I rule that out?
		Why would I rule that out?
		Why, as you said that so eloquently, would I be like, no?
		You know, that just doesn't stand to reason.
		And that, again, goes back to why I said I love having these conversations.
		And I don't, even though this is a little different for what you do usually, I don't take offense by it or anything like that.
		That's interesting to me.
		And by the way, I think that this is sort of where Jews maybe have done something a little bit differently, where it always has been about this sort of battle about what God is.
		You know, you talk about science and mathematics.
		You can go to most of the Jewish hospitals in New York City where they have the best doctors in the entire world.
		Many of them are Orthodox Jews who actually won't press the elevator on Shabbat because they don't want to use electricity on Shabbat.
		So they have the elevators that go to every floor on Saturdays.
		Now, from an outsider perspective, if you weren't really thinking about it, you'd go, well, that's completely crazy.
		How are these people of science and math, doctors, why would they possibly care in this crazy superstition if you come from that discipline?
		of science and math, and yet those people don't find it to be in conflict. So I don't see any of
		this in conflict, actually. If anything, I feel like this is really what it's about, this ability
		to play, because I know that there are plenty of you guys out there that are at some level of where
		I'm at with some of this stuff.
		It's not like everyone that walks in these doors is going, this is absolutely what I believe and we believe the same thing and I want to convert everybody to believing the same thing I do.
		I just, I don't believe that.
		I'm not going to poll you, don't worry.
		But I know that's true, and we're all on those journeys together.
		So of course I don't dismiss, could God be a personal, you know, do we all have that piece of us behind us that knows what's right?
		When you make a bad choice in life, you have those, I shouldn't have that drink, or I shouldn't do this, or whatever it is.
		I don't know, is that a personal relationship with God when you have that other thing?
		Or some would say, is that just the voice in your head?
		What is that thing?
		I mean, philosophers have been debating this forever.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		I think that's a really great place just to draw this part of the conversation to a close.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Thank God!
unidentified		Alright!
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		Okay, literally!
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I mean that.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		To Jon and Dave.
unidentified		[APPLAUSE]
		[MUSIC PLAYING]
		[APPLAUSE]
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		Oh, there's a lot for you, I'm afraid, Dave.
unidentified		[LAUGHTER]
unidentified		Can I text in a couple of questions myself right now?
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		I mean, there is one very obvious one which someone wants to ask, and this could be a whole evening for you, John, but someone simply asks, what for you would be the key evidences for God if you were in a conversation with someone about that?
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		Depends entirely whom I'm talking to.
		Because it seems to me there are two kinds of evidence.
		There's the objective kind of evidence.
		That is, from the scientific point of view, looking at the universe, the beginning, the fine-tuning of the universe, and all those pointers, the very doing of science, that point to an intelligence behind the universe.
		That would be one set.
		The second set would be the whole revelation through Christ and who he is and what he did and all that kind of thing.
		And central to it, of course, would be the fact that I believe the death problem has been solved in the sense that at the heart of Christianity there's not only a death but a resurrection.
		which validates the significance of the death.
		So I'd want to go into what I believe are the evidences for the resurrection historically and so on.
		And then finally, there's the existential side.
		Many people say to me, you can't be a Christian and a scientist because Christianity is not testable.
		And I say, of course it's testable.
		And to be blunt about that, Very briefly, Christ makes certain claims that if we trust Him, He'll give us peace with God, forgiveness, new life and new power.
		You can test that.
		And you know, in my life, which has been quite long, I've met many people and you meet them and they may be in the midst of a broken relationship, narcotic dependence, all kinds of stuff.
		And you meet them six months later and they're completely different.
		And you say, what's happened to you?
		Now, they may express it in different terms.
		They may say, well, I became a Christian, or I was born again, or I was converted.
		But when you see that, as I have done, again and again, not only in my own life and those around me, but in people around.
		You add two and two and you get four.
		And I wouldn't sit here for a nanosecond As a Christian, if I didn't believe it can be tested in real experience.
		If it doesn't work, then it's very suspect.
		So that's the fastest answer I can give to that.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much for the answer.
		That's a lot of thinking boiled down into a very brief answer.
		Question for you, Dave, has come in, and it's, what do you find unbelievable about Christianity?
		So I guess the question is, okay, you're on a journey, you're willing to be open to that potential answer, but what are the main objections at this point that you would have to kind of embracing that kind of a view?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, I suppose it's a good question because I don't have a particularly good answer for it, so...
		I think we could probably do this one pretty quickly.
		Well, other than what would be a generic answer about any religion, let's say some sort of true leap of faith to ultimately say this, whether it's Christianity or Judaism or whatever you want to say, whatever religion or set of ideas we're talking about, beyond that, Full jump.
		I don't have any... There's nothing that's been said up here, there's nothing that John has talked about, or that any of the religious thinkers that I've had on recently... The conversation that I had with Ravi Zacharias that's going up next week, I think, is one of the best interviews that I've ever been part of.
		There was nothing that he said there in the course of that hour and a half that I found objectionable, or I found...
		Completely incongruent with my set of beliefs, let's say.
		So I don't know that I have... There's no answer for that in that I'm willing to continue that conversation.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		A few people have asked a follow-up question, effectively, which is... I mean, do you... It's phrased in a few different ways, so I'll try and... Is it hot in here?
		It kind of goes to the heart of Christianity, though, which is...
		What do you think about the central claim that Jesus rose from the dead?
		Because that, at the end of the day, is at the heart of the faith John holds.
		Is that something you would be open to investigating, to kind of, you know, seeing whether there's anything in that claim?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, look, I think... I don't know how many of these types of questions there's going to be.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		I won't YouTube anymore.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		But yes, I can't... I wish I could think of a better way to say it, but I'm completely open to these discussions as they... Your answer, actually, John, was perfect.
		That if these things weren't testable, in that you did not see the evidence that people were living better lives, more fulfilled lives, happier lives, all those things, That you wouldn't, as a man of science, you could not sit up here.
		That's a really beautiful answer that feels to me to be complete as a person of faith and a person of science.
		Right?
		And I think that would be a worldview that I could prescribe to.
		And that actually is a worldview that I prescribe to.
		That doesn't exclude the fact that very early on, I said that at the micro level, some of my best friends are atheists, and they are deeply moral, good, decent people.
		And you've debated many of them.
		So, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's nothing that is so separate, I'd say.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I promise no more, no more grilling you on faith questions, but the, for John, Kind of the opposite question coming in is, have you ever questioned if there is a God?
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		And another person asks whether you've ever been presented with an objection that you found difficult.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, can I do that one?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Come on, man!
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		Of course I have.
		You see, this interests me because I spent my whole life Not only questioning myself, but exposing myself to some of the most powerful questioners in the world who are against my viewpoint.
		And the reason for doing that is partially the Freudian one.
		The accusation that was made against me in Cambridge, you believe because your parents believe, and your grandparents believe, and it's Irish genetics.
		End of story.
		So, I have questioned everything in that sense.
		And it's through that My certainty comes.
		You see, the word faith has flicked in and out of this conversation.
		And we need to be careful what we mean by that.
		By faith, I don't mean a leap into the dark.
		I mean a step into the light that's evidence-based.
		And it's exactly the same kind of commitment in science.
		We believe certain things about the universe because we've evidence.
		Now, in Christianity, it is exactly parallel.
		Real faith is a commitment, a step, based on evidence.
		And, of course, there's a personal dimension to Christianity that doesn't occur when you're believing Einstein's equations, for example.
		It's not quite the same as trusting a person.
		But still, It's got to be evidence-based or else it's blind and blind faith is extremely dangerous, particularly in the sphere of religion.
		So asking questions all the time is A process that I discover in the Bible itself, which is one of the things that makes it credible.
		Jesus was always asking questions and he didn't always answer them.
		And his disciples were asking questions.
		My great intellectual hero was Socrates, who was forced to commit suicide because he corrupted the youth of Athens, which meant that he taught kids to ask questions their parents couldn't answer.
		Which is usually what kids do.
		But it seems to me that it's very important.
		My whole process of relating to people, as Dave's is, is asking them questions and getting them to open themselves.
		So, yes, absolutely.
		This is the way the thing works.
		And that is where assurance comes.
		It's fear that stops us questioning.
		the propositions or the commitments of what we believe.
		And I want to break through that fear barrier and get into a proper public discourse.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		There's a question here, which relates to a story you told on your podcast
		of being, I think, at a Jordan Peterson lecture night.
		And you met a couple who had both been through a difficult time.
		Perhaps you can tell the story.
		I think a miscarriage was involved and there were difficulties in the family.
		And the way you responded was the interesting, perhaps, part of that story as well.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Do you want to tell the story and just maybe Yeah, it's so interesting that someone's asking this because I actually don't remember telling this story publicly, but I must have said it publicly at some point.
		We were in the UK, I don't remember what city we were in, but a couple came up to me before the show and they both looked very They were just sort of distraught.
		You know, sometimes people come up to you and you can just see it in their face.
		You can feel it in their body language.
		And they started talking to me and basically it turned out that he, it was a young couple.
		I mean, they were in their maybe late twenties, early thirties.
		And the guy had just found out that he had like stage four cancer and didn't have much time to live.
		And then, I mean, you can't believe this is actually real.
		The woman found out that, She was pregnant, she was a few months pregnant, and the fetus had died, and she was gonna have to have it removed, like, the next day or something like that.
		I mean, like, unimaginably horrific circumstances.
		And they said this to me and then said that, you know, Jordan's helped them get a little meaning over the last few weeks as they've been going to doctors and all of these things.
		And I think the reason that the person's mentioning that I bring it up is the only thing that I could say was, God bless you.
		God bless you guys.
		That's what I said.
		I had, there was nothing else.
		There was just nothing else I could say.
		What could I possibly say?
		I'm sorry to hear about what you're going through.
		I, you know, I hugged them.
		I, I tried to just kind of stand there and be with them.
		Um, but that happened to be what popped up in my brain.
		So if that in a weird way, if that is evidence of something, if that is that when faced with unimaginable, I mean, no one can possibly imagine the level of horror of that situation.
		I hope I'm getting it fully technically right.
		That's what I had left, I would say.
unidentified		It was the only words that you felt... Can I make a brief comment?
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		Because I didn't answer your question.
		And one of your questions to me was, do you meet objections that you find difficult to answer?
		And I do, and that's one.
		The problem of moral evil and pain Which is what you talked about, is the hardest question any of us face.
		And it has been a very important part of my life to try and think that through.
		I arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand two days after the earthquake.
		And I had to cancel all my talks and replace them with, earthquake why?
		Now that's not easy to deal with.
		The atheists say, well, it's just the way the world is.
		There is no God, and that's just what you'd expect.
		But you see, if you abolish God, and I'm not going to go into details on this, but it's hugely important.
		If you abolish God, actually you can make the problem worse, because there's now no hope.
		If you bring God into the equation, from the Christian perspective, there is the hope of the resurrection.
		And not going into it in detail, I want to say two big things to this problem.
		They're not answers.
		That would be simplistic and trivial.
		But they're a window into a possibility.
		And the window into the possibility is this.
		If it really is true that that's God incarnate on the cross, what does it mean?
		Well, at the very least, it means that God has not remained distant from human suffering.
		He has become part of it.
		And so your God bless you, I think, is a huge layers of meaning underlying it.
		That's the first thing.
		And the fact that Jesus rose from the dead means that ultimately there is real hope.
		Why?
		Because one of the things the early Christians preached was that the resurrection guaranteed a final judgment.
		And we don't like that idea, but think about it.
		If there's going to be an utterly fair assessment As I said, I've been to Auschwitz many times.
		If there's going to be a judgment that deals with these things, that gives me a window of hope.
		And so, therefore, I think this is the hardest problem for anybody and any philosophy in any worldview.
		Nobody escapes it.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		A question for you this time, John, and maybe you might want to comment on it as well, Dave.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		Someone asked, what does it take for a person to move from an abstract intellectual belief in God to this personal experiential faith which you've talked about?
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's assuming that they start with an abstract faith.
		Now, people come different ways.
		Our journeys, and that's why it's so interesting talking about journey.
		And I haven't finished my journey yet.
		There are lots of questions I've got and things unresolved.
		I started by the existential side, the personal side.
		I saw it was real.
		But then as a child, I was taught to ask the questions.
		So the intellectual side and the practical side walked hand in hand throughout my life.
		And some people come to faith in Christ because They've been befriended by somebody that shows them real friendship and it's existential.
		Others come because they've been challenged intellectually.
		I was speaking in Germany a week ago and speaking with a very intellectual person and what started him off in his journey was at school.
		He He grew up in a home where all his father said about everything was everything's lies.
		That was his everything's lies.
		Total skepticism.
		And he had a school friend.
		They sat together.
		And the school friend said to him one day, he said, Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
		And this chap thought, what?
		And he started to investigate it.
		And that led him to become an ancient historian.
		And now in Germany, he'll fill a hall with 5,000 people talking about how he became a Christian from skepticism.
		So the intellectual side got him first.
		So you can't generalize at all.
		But I think in that sense, if a person is just cerebral about it, they haven't understood it.
		Because Christ does make demands.
		There's a relational thing.
		There are moral dimensions to it.
		And so it needs to move.
		How shall I put it?
		I'm worried about the distinction.
		Because even when we're emotional about something, the emotions are precipitated by our thoughts.
		You can't separate thought and emotion.
		But I think the important thing is that Since, let me put it this way, God is not simply a philosophical theory.
		He's a person, and therefore our response to persons is different from our response to, say, a mathematical equation.
		And we need to take the various dimensions and aspects into account.
		So I'd simply want to encourage a person like that to think about, well, What does Christianity mean that you should be doing?
		But since it's an abstract question, I don't know the person.
		Everybody's different.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		I'm tossing it over to you, Dave.
		There's a sense in which, you know, we've talked a lot about Jordan Peterson this evening, but when I see him on stage, he's not afraid of getting emotional.
		In fact, he quite frequently is close to tears very often when he's talking about the search for meaning, when he's engaging with where people are at in their struggles and so on.
		And in that sense, he's quite the antidote to the kind of very coldly rational kind of approach that many sort of big thinkers often take to these issues.
		Is that something that's attracted you, I don't know, to the way in which he engages with that kind of aspect of reality and the very personal way, in a sense, in which he approaches these kinds of issues?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well I can answer that two ways.
		First, not specifically with Jordan, but I think one of the reasons that the YouTube game and the podcast game and all of the digital stuff and all of this new set of personalities that you guys all watch and consume and listen to The reason it's working is because these people are being people.
		These are actual people.
		I mean, the person that you see when I'm doing something on YouTube, that's this guy that's right in front of you right now.
		I happen to be on stage with a mic, but I'm the same person when I step down there and talk to you guys.
		Jordan's the same person.
		As I said, he lived those 12 rules.
		He's the same exact guy, right?
		There's a little something when there's a camera there.
		I forget what the...
		There's a theory, you know, that when the camera's on, you turn it on like 5% or something.
		But I think what's happened over the last 20 or so years with cable news is that everyone on television
		became so incredibly fake and over-prepared and really ridiculously robotic
		that there's a breath of fresh air when people just actually are decent,
		when people just actually can look each other in the eye and not pretend that they have every answer
		to every question.
		I think that's a deeply powerful thing.
		So when Jordan would go on stage, and he, I kid you not, it's almost unimaginable, but the guy,
		110 some odd shows that we did together, he never gave the same lecture twice.
		He would give a different, some nights he would talk about all 12 rules,
		some nights he would talk about one rule, some nights four rules,
		some nights he would just talk about the media, some nights he would talk about YouTube.
		I mean, it was just whatever was in his mind.
		And, you know, the book... He was on a book tour.
		They wanted him to sell books.
		Sometimes the book never came up.
		I mean, he just did... But to answer your question specifically, he was being present as much as possible.
		That is something that I really try to do in my life.
		And when you're doing it right, you don't really have to try, because it just starts happening.
		And you just start being real.
		And that's why, actually, I've thoroughly, as I just said to you guys, at halftime, or whatever we're calling it, of the Dave Rubin grilling, I've really enjoyed this, because this is real.
		This is real.
		And the more that we can do that, the better we can understand each other.
		So there would be nights where he would be on stage, you know, telling the story that I'm sure many of you have heard, where he talks about Pinocchio and the reason that you have to wish upon a star and what that means, and then he would link it to a biblical story, and he would tear up and he would cry, and you could hear the crack in his voice, and it was real.
		We would be backstage right after the show, just sitting in the green room, and I would just kind of sit there and give him his moment to collect himself.
		So it was real, and I think all that really is, Being vulnerable, being open, being, he was, the best way I could describe it was what I saw the guy do was that every night that he went on stage, he tried to take as much of his intellect and his set of beliefs, he would take them as far as he could on any given night.
		And there were nights where I could see him stretch that a little bit further.
		That's a pretty incredible thing to be around.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		On a slightly lighter note, someone asks, Jordan Peterson versus Ben Shapiro wrestling match, Well, Jordan's tall and lanky, Ben is quick and short.
unidentified		So I feel like he'd take out the legs, you know?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Ben probably... Ben also, you know, Ben's about, you know, 20 years younger, so.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		So many of these questions actually are.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		He could use the yarmulke as some kind of boomerang or something, you know?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		There's things, there's things the guy could do.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		Here's a serious question.
unidentified		What am I doing here, exactly?
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		This is a tough one.
		I mean, and I've heard you put this position, but as much as you obviously have a great deal of respect for people like Ben Shapiro and other religious figures, you disagree with them on some pretty fundamental things, symmetrical issues, for instance.
		So, for instance, Ben Shapiro is very strongly opposed to abortion, and someone asks you on text here, What about you?
		What would it take to change your position on that particular ethical issue knowing that you are pro-choice?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So I describe myself as begrudgingly pro-choice, which I take no pleasure in even discussing abortion.
		I find this to be the issue beyond any other political issue.
		I find this to be the most polarizing and almost impossible to talk about because you're talking about the most existential questions there is, which is the beginning of life, right?
		And the way that it gets framed, unfortunately, through the media is That if you're on the right, you somehow hate women, and if you're on the left, you somehow hate babies.
		And that sort of ridiculous false choice that we're constantly basically playing ping-pong between is insane.
		My position basically is that, look, I believe in the individual.
		Now, I get why that can be messy in a conversation about abortion because I do believe that a fetus is life.
		I do.
		And it's up to ethicists and philosophers and all sorts of scientific-minded people and theologians actually as well to decide is that the moment the sperm meets the egg or is that two weeks later and there's different religious traditions that can teach you all sorts of different things.
		My belief is that the individual, we as a society, Cannot have a perfect system that is perfect for everyone all the time.
		What we can try to do is have some set of rules that can maximize human flourishing the most it can.
		What I believe is basically that you have a couple-week window.
		You know, a few years ago, and the first time I debated this with Ben Shapiro, who's obviously completely pro-life, so he's completely anti-abortion, I used to say 20 weeks because there was scientific evidence that at 20 weeks the fetus can actually feel pain.
		And what Ben said to me, which I think is a completely legitimate argument, he said, well, so you're saying, you're admitting it's a life, and you're acknowledging, well, if you're saying 20 weeks, well then 18 weeks is obviously still a life, why not 18 weeks?
		And I granted him that inconsistency in this view, because I'm not trying to come up with a perfect system, I'm trying to come up with some system that would allow the 350 million people that live in this country to have some guideline that we could most somewhat agree on, something like that.
		The problem right now, is that the 12 Democratic candidates have gone so off the deep end with this that they're talking about, I mean, they're literally talking about post-birth abortions.
		Like, we have heard some beyond hysterical, crazy stuff.
		Tulsi Gabbard, who I had on my show, she said that she would not want third-term abortions, which by any measure, even if it's not for you guys, let's say here, because I'm assuming you're mostly pro-life, that would have been considered a pretty moderate position for a Democrat 10 years ago.
		But for her now, in that field, that is a wildly out there position because they all believe, basically, you can have an abortion at any time.
		I mean, this is even where Biden, who's supposed to be the adult in the group, is now kind of... Right?
		He's supposed to... I mean, that's why they dragged him back into this.
		He didn't want to do it.
		They're... You know, but he was supposed to be the adult and go, guys, no, you're all bananas and, you know, settle down.
		But it's not working.
		So...
		Was your question what would get me to change on that?
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		Well, I suppose that that would be a really interesting thing to ask.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		Would this journey that you're going on of being open to potentially God and to religious answers to things cause you to reconsider your view on that?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, I would say these things don't have nothing to do with each other, right?
		So, if we find a speck of something on the moon that has some resemblance of life, a cell or something, we say it's life, so I'm not denying That from conception, I'm actually not denying that's life.
		What I'm trying to do, just as someone that talks about things in a public way, is to... You're not going to satisfy everybody all the time.
		And by the way, the most uncomfortable truth about this is that humans get left with all sorts of horrific choices that they don't want to have to deal with.
		And if abortion was completely illegal, that actually would not stop abortion.
		It would also make it much more dangerous.
		There would be access for people that had certain resources financially that other people wouldn't have.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		It's very complex.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		There's just a series of uncomfortable truths that we would have to deal with.
		To do that, but I would say I would say I'm begrudgingly pro-choice and and trust me This is this one more than a than a God question Because this is a sort of policy issue.
		I mean of here and now I find it to be The most difficult one to answer.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		I mean John I just be interested in your reflection on this not necessarily getting to the bottom of this issue which which could take us all evening but but to what extent for you does Being a believer in God and specifically Christianity mean that your views on that kind of thing have to take a certain direction in terms of the views of abortion and the sanctity of life and that kind of thing?
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		I think the important thing to realize, and we don't focus it sharply enough, is that in part ethics are worldview dependent.
		What I mean by that is this.
		If you think that a fetus is just simply at the early stage an undifferentiated block of cells, it's only matter.
		Why not deal with it?
		As has been put to me by a world-class gynecologist.
		And I pointed out to her, I said, but you come to that because of your atheism.
		Now, I said to her, what would you do That's not only life after conception, it's human life.
		From where I sit, it bears the image of God.
		What right have I to stop it?
		So that the ethics are worldview dependent.
		And this is one of the huge problems, way beyond that question.
		You know, if we teach kids in school, That they are purely animals, full stop.
		We'll see they start to behave like animals.
		And that's exactly what we see in our society.
		Knife crime in London has just gone off the map.
		But it's because people have been taught.
		And you were talking about abortion, these killing infants after birth.
		That's Peter Singer's view, and I've debated him.
		And the issue stems straight from his atheism.
		And so I think we ought to be more upfront about the connection between some of these issues and the worldview of the society around.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		If I could just add on that quickly, you know, I mentioned this equality forum that the Democrats had last night.
		And one of the things that, that it seems to me that they're always trying to outdo themselves and who can be the most left or the most progressive or the most collectivist.
		And you may have heard this last night, but Beto O'Rourke basically said that churches and places of worship, That's an absolutely absurd position, but this is why those of us, we can disagree on these sort of margin issues, but we have to come together around the freedom issue, number one, because what will come next
		is that they'll say, all right, well now if you're not completely pro-choice, you should lose your tax exemption.
		And they will just keep encroaching on every set of beliefs you have.
		So I may not share that exact belief with you, but I would 100% defend your ability
		to have that belief in the place that you worship, without question.
unidentified		Thank you.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		I've got one for you here, John, and it's keeping on a sort of pretty serious tack as
		well.
		This person asks, on the premise that we are created in the image of God and we each have value, how do you respond to the growing rate of suicide in the West?
		I think we're seeing this especially among men, that suicide is increasing at an alarming rate.
		Where do you see that coming from?
		How do you speak to it as someone who does believe people are made in the image of God?
		What does suicide have to, what's the response, I suppose, to someone who goes that route?
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		This is a very complicated question because suicides are all different.
		I have a colleague who's one of the world's experts on suicide.
		And just talking to him makes me realize that this is a very complex thing.
		But just thinking about it simplistically, People tend to commit suicide when they've nothing to live for.
		They've got no future that they can see.
		And I do believe that the Christian message addresses that head on by giving people that.
		And I have personally seen people come from the edge of suicide And become settled, balanced, everything else, because they've come to faith in Christ and they've got that meaning that has answered that need to destroy themselves.
		And the difficulty is, I'm too old now to really understand the vicious effect that Facebook, for example, likes and dislikes have on young people.
		Where they get bullied in cyberspace, and they feel completely awful, and they lose all their self-worth.
		I mean, the cruelty that people exhibit to one another is unbelievable.
		And what's the answer to that?
		Well, the answer to... I've got to start with me.
		I love Jordan's thing, clean up your own room before you clean up the world.
		And it needs to start with me, the people I know, looking for the signs of depression, of feeling down, of feeling lonely, of feeling meaningless.
		We can all do a little something.
		It may not be much, it may not hit the headlines, but it could take someone back from the brink.
		There's no universal answer to it.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		There is a follow-up question.
		This has sparked and has been coming in.
		Which is, what about the case of believing Christians who perhaps commit suicide?
		And I think there has been quite a significant case here in Southern California recently.
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		Well, I know of one or two very significant cases of people I actually knew.
		And I'm not a doctor.
		I'm not a psychologist.
		But we've got to realize that our minds can actually break down There used to be a time, fortunately it's past, where psychiatrists and psychologists were looked upon by many in the Christian community with a lot of suspicion.
		If you broke your leg, you went to a doctor and that was fine.
		Everybody thought that was fine.
		But if your mind broke, that wasn't fine.
		And I think we've got to realize that even to believing Christians, they're still human.
		They still have got flaws and difficulties.
		Your temperament doesn't change overnight, you may have noticed when you become a Christian.
		And if you haven't noticed it, you ought to wake up and notice it.
		And therefore, we can break down.
		The chemical imbalance in our brain can go.
		And people jump off a cliff or shoot themselves.
		We need to be very careful how we judge such people, because we don't see inside their mind.
		And I want to say, okay, this has happened, it's tragic, but don't judge what was going on in their mind.
		You've got to leave it to God ultimately.
unidentified		[Applause]
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I would just add one thing to that quickly, which is there's a strange paradox right now
		because we're more connected than we've ever been, right?
		We're all on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and all these things and we can connect with people, we can send pictures to people and do all this stuff, right?
		And it feels very connected.
		And then on the other hand, the number one type of email that I get is people that are afraid to say what they think.
		And they say they watch my show because they're afraid to say what they think.
		And I happen to be having some of the conversations That are the things that they're thinking about.
		And I suspect that if you're walking around, as most of us do, probably every day, not really saying the things that you're thinking, the end result of that will be such a disconnect from reality, because all you've got then left is your own mind.
		And if you do that over and over and over and over again, you got nothing left.
		And I suspect that would be the type of place where there would be You could see yourself having to make that horrific choice.
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		Connectedness is not friendship.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		We've gone over some pretty big issues tonight, and we've had many, many more questions in than we can answer.
		There's just one, maybe, which kind of sums up the evening to some extent that we've had, which is a question for John, referring to Dave, which is, John, do you want Dave to become a Christian?
unidentified		[laughter]
		[applause]
		[laughter]
		[laughter]
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I really have to ask my agent what the original pitch was.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		[laughter]
		I don't choose, well, the questions kind of choose themselves here.
		So many people are basically asking, hey, can you ask Dave this question about Christianity?
		So I had very little choice in the matter.
		But yeah, I mean, I'm guessing the answer is yes, John.
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		You're not guessing.
		Because I've experienced a life which I don't deserve, Which has been full of profound joy, a journey that has been deeply meaningful to me and it's connected with my relationship with Christ.
		Of course, not only Dave, but everybody here, because there may be many skeptics here and people watching online, of course my desire is That they can share that experience that I share and become Christians.
		But, but, I'm not in the business of browbeating people and forcing them beyond where they are.
		I feel very strongly, and that's why I believe in public discussion.
		Let's have the discussion on the table from different points of view.
		But trust the people to make up their own mind.
		And so my motivation is to get the message out and leave the results with God.
		But my desire is that.
		Of course it's that.
		But don't specify Dave alone.
		Poor chap!
unidentified		Thank you, John.
john lennox ▲ ● ▼		Just think of our neighbors and our friends.
		Is it our desire?
		I think when I'm asked a question like this, I get very slightly nervous because I want to relate to people as whole persons, not just as evangelism fodder.
		and that's very important.
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		Dave, you have been a tremendous sport tonight and I can only say you've been so gracious
		and willing to engage with you know... Exactly.
		Occasionally being browbeaten, actually, on this, but... I guess, you know, if we come to just some final thoughts at the end of our conversation now...
		What, for you, has been the value of having a conversation like this?
		What, for you, why do you sit down week in and week out with people that you may not necessarily agree with on everything, but you're interested in finding stuff out from?
		What's the value of these kind of big conversations around culture, faith, and God, in the end?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, first off, it never struck me as so obvious.
		You know, Jews don't try to convert people.
		That's made this doubly funny for me, I think.
		No, first off, just joking aside, this has been an absolute pleasure.
		You know, I have found that when I am having an interview with someone that is really real, when we're suddenly hitting some uncharted territory where I can really see somebody exploring a new idea or not giving me the package to answer.
		And we've really connected in that deep way that I can actually feel something.
		And I really mean that.
		I can feel a physical reaction to that.
		That's sort of warm.
		I can't really fully describe it, but it's not just something physical.
		It's almost like, truly, it's almost like I can see almost like an aura around somebody.
		And so this is sort of a religious something, I guess, I'm giving to you.
		But I can feel something when something is truly real.
		And I think we all know those moments when you've sort of let all of the other stuff go and you're just having something that's real.
		There's something there, however you want to describe that.
		I love Being on this type of adventure, this type of conversation, this is exactly why I do what I do.
		Because we desperately need it.
		I think the theme throughout all of this, beyond the personal stuff to me, but I think the theme really was that there is a crisis of meaning and we're all sort of realizing That the world is in complete flux right now.
		The future feels like it's in flux.
		I'm 43 years old.
		I was born in 76.
		At no point in my life, until the last, say, two years, Or three years.
		Did the world feel like it was in flux, like the future is actually confused?
		Will America continue to exist the way it exists?
		Will the West continue to exist the way it exists?
		The UK, I mean, you guys have all sorts of crazy things going on.
		It's an interesting adventure for us too.
		Yeah, I mean, I could do an hour on Brexit, we'll let that be.
		That's more difficult than God.
unidentified		True.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So, So many people are feeling that, though, that sense of uncertainty.
		And for the final Jordan reference that I'll make tonight, I mean, he has been trying to hand people a little bit of, not a little bit, some of the tools To make the world a little less uncertain, because if you can hold yourself first, then you can deal with the rest of it, right?
		So this is an absolute, absolute pleasure, and I will gladly have you both on my show.
		We can do this together, or we can do it separately, and we can continue these conversations.
		And more than anything else, what I would say is, you know, for you guys here, I think there's a feeling out there that, you know, if you listen to the way the mainstream frames everything, it's like somehow you guys are the bad guys, Or Christians are the bad guys, or conservatives are the bad guys.
		And this is just sort of factory-setting, boring dribble.
		I know it's not true because I'm in this room with you, right?
		and I'm not going to get lynched on the way out.
unidentified		(audience laughing)
unidentified		(audience laughing)
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Right?
		Like, we know that.
		Yeah, no, I got it.
		I got a few people answered that.
		He's not getting lynched!
		Okay.
		We know that, right?
		And I think take confidence in that and, you know, Start saying what you think.
		That's all that I'm doing, truly.
		I'm talking to people and interviewing people, but really, all I'm really doing is saying what I think.
		And for some reason, in 2019, in the freest country in the history of the world, that's a special thing.
		I have no idea why.
		Well, I know why, but I don't know why I don't fear it.
		I just don't.
		But I think if all of you started saying what you think a little bit more, you might find out that the people that are your neighbors and your friends and even your co-workers and even your family members who you disagree with politically, You might actually start changing them, but you'll never change them if you don't say what you think.
		So that would be my main message more than anything else.
unidentified		Well done.
		[Applause]
		[Applause]
justin brierley ▲ ● ▼		I think that's a great place to draw it to a close.
		So let me first of all say thank you to John, thank you to Dave for a really amazing, very open, very honest conversation tonight.
		Thank you all for all of your interactions, the questions that came in.
		Sorry we couldn't get to all of them tonight.
		I just want to say a big thank you as well to Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa who have hosted us.
		Can we give a big round of applause?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful conversations about spirituality instead of nonstop yelling, check out our spirituality playlist.
		And if you want to watch full interviews on a variety of topics, check out our full episode playlist.
		They're all right over here.

▲