Dialogue Between Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Richard Dawkins Part One

KEVIN HARRIS: We’ve talked a lot about them separately, now let’s discuss them together. Richard Dawkins and Ayaan Hirsi Ali got together on stage at the Dissident Dialogues Festival in New York a few days ago mostly to talk about her recent conversion to the Christian Faith. As many of our listeners know, Ayaan was a leading atheist speaker and an ex-Muslim who traveled the globe promoting atheism and secular humanism. Now she's singing a different tune. One thing that concerns me – I'm concerned about her being thrust into the spotlight to talk about her new faith so soon after her conversion. As she says in this dialogue, she's a new Christian, and while praying and going to church, she is still trying to figure some things out. She needs time to grow.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I think that's a very legitimate concern. Usually when someone comes to Christ there needs to occur a period of incubation where they begin to grow in their faith and begin to understand it better before they venture out in the public square and try to be a public spokesman for Christianity. I think that perhaps one redeeming feature in her case is that she was already in the spotlight in her pre-Christian days, and so this fame and notoriety and acclaim isn't anything new to her. It's not apt to go to her head because she already had the fame and acclaim before she became a Christian. So that at least provides some safeguard, I think.

KEVIN HARRIS: I don't think that we can overemphasize the importance (or the potential importance) of her conversion. We'll talk more about the potential impact in a moment. But first let's look at some clips from that public forum with Dawkins. She gives a brief overview of the change in her life in this first clip.

AYAAN HIRSI ALI: I had over a long period of time seen psychiatrists, other doctors. I was trying to understand my condition and trying to treat it with the help of pure evidence-based science. And in January-February of last year, I saw one therapist who said perhaps it's something else that you have, and she described it as spiritual bankruptcy. That resonated with me. And having reached a place where I had absolutely nothing to lose, I prayed, and I prayed desperately. And for me that was a turning point. What happened after that is a miracle in its own right. I feel connected to something higher and greater than myself. My zest for life is back.

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, as you're gathering your thoughts about that clip, there's one thing that I want to ask you about what she said. She decided to pray, and as she says later, humble herself. And it changed everything. I know it requires speculation on your part, but in spite of her possible mere acceptance of cultural Christianity, do you think this could be a case of God responding to her simple move towards him? As you often quote James 4:8, “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” And as we'll see in a moment, Dawkins thinks that she's fully a Christian.

DR. CRAIG: Oh, I do, too! As I listened to that testimony, it reminded me so much of my own conversion experience at the age of 16. She describes the despondency and emptiness she felt – a condition she describes as spiritual bankruptcy. And then at the end of her rope she turns to God and experiences a rebirth. I think she got saved! Now she feels connected with God in a way that has given her life now new zest, new meaning, purpose. I think it's a wonderful testimony.

KEVIN HARRIS: Let's watch the next clip. Dawkins is not exactly thrilled about all this. Watch this.

PROFESSOR DAWKINS: That's a moving personal story, but to call yourself a Christian is a bit different. I mean, a Christian has to believe in something. I mean, any . . . well, you go to church now and you listen to the vicar, and do you kind of notice what a lot of nonsense he talks? I mean, do you really take it seriously that Jesus is the Son of God, Jesus rose from the dead, Jesus was born of a virgin? And that's part of Christianity.

AYAAN HIRSI ALI: I think because you – and I know you very well, we've been friends for a long time, and in fact in some ways I think of you as a mentor – I would say you're coming at this from a place of “there is nothing.” And what has happened to me is I think I have accepted there is something. And when you accept that there is something and there is a powerful entity – for me, the God that turned me around – I think what the vicar is saying no longer sounds nonsensical. It makes a great deal of sense. And not only does it make a great deal of sense, it's also layered with the wisdom of millennia. So, like you, I did mock faith in general and probably Christianity in particular, but I don't do that anymore. And again that is where the humility comes into it. In 2024 after I went through that experience, it doesn't seem nonsensical to me, and I don’t mock it. I think I've come down to my knees to say perhaps those people who have always had faith have something that we who lost faith don't have. And people who have faith also – like the woman who told me, you've reached and you've tried everything and you've lost hope and you've lost faith. Try it. Pray. I think just in that one word there is so much wisdom, and that it's . . . I am stuttering; I’m stuttering to say . . . I'm just trying to say, no, it's not stupid.

KEVIN HARRIS: Well, she knows exactly where Dawkins is coming from. She used to preach the same thing. What do you think about her response there?

DR. CRAIG: I thought that she expresses in a popular language the difference between Dawkins’ naturalism and her theism. She characterized Dawkins as believing in nothing – that he has nothing. I think she's getting at the sort of nihilism that attends Dawkins’ atheism – no meaning, no purpose, no value ultimately. And we'll see later on in the interview that Dawkins himself says that a theistic worldview is so utterly different than his own because on theism there is a purpose, a being, a mind beneath the universe providing it structure and purpose and meaning. And so Dawkins himself, I think, recognizes this world of difference between an atheistic worldview and a theistic worldview. Ayaan’s point is that once you adopt a theistic worldview then these Christian beliefs that Dawkins mentioned are not stupid. They're not obviously absurd. Now, I do want to say that when I listen to Dawkins I feel a certain resonance with him. I agree with him absolutely that to be a Christian you've got to believe something, as he says. There is propositional content to Christianity. It's not just a warm fuzzy experience. You've got to believe things. So he's right about that. But I think that Ali is right that within the context of a theistic worldview and universe, these things that he mentioned (like Jesus’ incarnation and resurrection) are not stupid.

KEVIN HARRIS: Yeah. He says it's a package deal. You can't just accept the warm fuzzies. You have to accept some facts about Jesus and his resurrection and so on. Here's the next clip featuring more of Dawkins’ response. Listen to this.

PROFESSOR DAWKINS: So you believe in some kind of higher power which is comforting you, and you're obviously reacting from an Islamic past, and I know that from what you've written that part of what you feel is that Christianity is a bulwark against Islam. Which is a quite separate thing from what you've been now saying. But you stand by that. I mean, that's part of what you're saying. And I accept that and I support that. That's why I've called you a political Christian. But from what you've just said, it sounds though you're more than just a political Christian. I mean, it sounds very much that you actually believe it.

KEVIN HARRIS: Dawkins is doing a little psychoanalysis of her here. She was spiritually bankrupt. She comes from an Islam past. A bulwark against Islam. But he also says he thinks she's not just a political Christian; that she has become a Christian. His only response throughout this exchange has been just to declare Christianity nonsense.

DR. CRAIG: I agree that she is not merely a political Christian. I think that she senses deeply the threat that militant Islam poses to the West and particularly to Western Europe. It is frightening to think about where countries like France will be in 100, 200 years if things continue as they are, or even Great Britain. So I think she is acutely aware of the threat that Islam poses to the West and its values which are based upon historic Christianity. But very clearly, as he recognizes, she does believe the doctrines of Christianity. And he's got to do more than just impugn them as nonsense. He's going to need to give some good arguments and evidence that would defeat Christian beliefs if he's to dismiss them.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's the next clip. The host of the event asks her for clarification.

MODERATOR: What is your response to those specific questions of Richard? When the vicar is saying that Jesus is the Son of God literally (not figuratively), how do you square that with your highly trained rational mind?

AYAAN HIRSI ALI: Again, it is different planes of perception. I choose to accept Jesus Christ, the teachings of Jesus Christ, the story of Jesus Christ. I choose to accept that. So on the personal level the rewards I get (very subjective again) but my free choice which is separate from where I think that, aside from my personal experience, the history of Western civilization is mainly Christian and that the external forces (for instance, the spread of Islam non-violently or violently, and the challenge of Islam, and the message of Islam to Western civilization) can be countered and should be countered with the message of Western civilization which is essentially Christian. And in that sense I think there are more people who agree with me but that is on the societal level. And then on the civilizational level, I think that every moral . . . you've used yourself, Richard, the phrase lately that there is moral Christianity and there is cultural Christianity. And when moral and cultural Christianity collides with moral and cultural Islam or moral and cultural Confucianism or cultural authoritarianism, I think then perhaps we're on the same page about that might be a way of countering it. But on the personal level, yes, I choose to believe in God. And I think there we might say let's agree to disagree.

KEVIN HARRIS: She chooses to believe. We'll return to that in a moment because she'll say it again. But I want to get clarification on what she's saying. Is she contrasting perspectives from a cultural standpoint and a personal standpoint? She says Dawkins agrees with her about the Christian faith culturally but not personally.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I think that does seem to be the distinction that she's drawing. She wants to say that culturally and sociologically Christianity is a superior system to Islam which now threatens the West. And we need to support Christianity against Islam. But on the personal level, here she just seems to say, “I choose to believe” and doesn't give any sort of rational defense of why she makes that choice. And that just leaves us with all sorts of questions. Is this a kind of fideism – a blind leap in the dark? Or does she conceive this as a response to the inner witness and drawing of the Holy Spirit which is perfectly rational to do in a properly basic way? Or does she have some evidence or arguments that would support that decision to believe. She is tantalizingly ambiguous when it comes to what lies behind the choice to believe.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's the next clip. Dawkins presses her further.

PROFESSOR DAWKINS: When you think about Christianity, Christianity is obsessed with sin. St. Augustine said that we all inherit the sin of Adam. Well, of course he didn't exist. But so we inherit original sin. Original sin came down in the semen. Jesus was not conceived with semen, that's why he's clear of sin. His mother Mary had to be clear of sin as well so she had to have an immaculate conception. This is all obvious nonsense. This is all theological bull***. And the idea that humanity is born in sin and has to be cured of sin by Jesus being crucified – Jesus being punished for all our sins – that is a morally very unpleasant idea. I'm sure you must agree about that.

AYAAN HIRSI ALI: I find that Christianity is actually obsessed with love, and that the figure – the teachings of . . .

KEVIN HARRIS: She got a big applause for that statement about love. Dawkins seems to only employ the argument from outrage. It seems his scientism will not allow him to even consider the claims of Christ.

DR. CRAIG: I noticed that Dawkins got a big applause, too, for calling these Christian beliefs BS. So clearly people in the audience were also sympathetic to his ridicule. But notice what he did here. He took Augustine's doctrine of original sin and made fun of that rather than adopting a biblical perspective on this. I think virtually all theologians today would disagree with Augustine that original sin is somehow propagated through sexual intercourse and passed on from generation to generation. No such doctrine is taught in the Bible. I myself don't hold to an Augustinian doctrine of original sin. And did you notice in passing his comment, “Well, Adam didn't exist so original sin can't come from him.” And I thought, well, wait a minute Professor Dawkins. That's a little too quick. You can't dismiss that easily – the idea that there may have been a historical Adam at the headwaters of the human race. In my book In Quest of the Historical Adam, I've examined this in some detail. So we mustn't allow Dawkins to get away with ridiculing biblical Christianity by appealing to later ecclesiastical doctrines like the immaculate conception of Mary and the passing on of original sin through sexual intercourse that are not part of the New Testament.

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