Is Belief In God Reasonable?

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Is belief in God reasonable?  This week on The Roys Report, we’re going to debate this question with Stephen Hicks, a leading critic of postmodernism. Stephen believes reason can save society from postmodern absurdity, but he argues that belief in God is not reasonable. Challenging his view will be my husband, Neal Roys, who argues that belief in God is both reasonable and necessary.

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Segment 1:

ANNOUNCER: In the midst of all of today’s noise and confusion, we need a voice that cuts through the chaos to bring wisdom and clarity. Welcome to The Roys Report with Julie Roys –an hour-long show exploring critical issues related to faith and culture from a uniquely Christian perspective. Now, here is your host, Julie Roys.

JULIE ROYS:  Well, is belief in God reasonable or is faith anti-reason, anti-science and part of the problem of society rather than the solution? Welcome to The Roys Report, brought to you in part by Judson University. I’m Julie Roys and today we’re going to be debating this important issue with two men who see things very differently. Joining me today is Stephen Hicks, a Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University in Rockford, Illinois. Hicks is also the director of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship and a senior scholar at the Atlas Society. But pertinent to our conversation today, Stephen does not believe that Christianity is reasonable. He sees traditional Western religions as the enemy of science and feels they’ve been rendered irrelevant by scientific discovery. So, Stephen, welcome. It’s a pleasure to have you join us.

DR. STEPHEN HICKS: Yeah, thanks for the invitation.

JULIE ROYS:  And challenging Steven’s position today is a math instructor who, for 20 years, ran a philosophy discussion group in the public schools, called the Truth Seekers club. He’s also publicly debated Intelligent Design versus evolution and taught comparative worldviews to high school students. And he’s someone very near and dear to me, because he’s my husband, Neal Roys. So, Neal, this is kind of fun. We’ve never been on radio before together.

NEAL ROYS:  Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. Thank you for inviting me to join you.

JULIE ROYS: Yeah, well, I think this is going to be a great discussion. But before we actually dive into our debate, I’d like to take a minute just to set the stage a little bit because Stephen has written really a brilliant book called Explaining Postmodernism. And Neal, you’re the one who brought this to my attention. You’ve read it like, what, three times?

NEAL ROYS:  And it’s going on four now.

JULIE ROYS:  It’s going on four. So, and it’s not that often my husband devours a book like this. But what this book does, really, really well, is expose the problem with the reigning worldview in our society, which is postmodernism. And I’m guessing most of you listening have at least some knowledge of what postmodernism is. But this is a problem. And I think, just understanding postmodernism, as problematic, is something that I think Neal and Stephen would agree on. But where you differ would be on sort of the solution to that problem. And that’s where our debate today is going to focus—on reason and Christianity—whether reason is just the solution to it, or whether Christianity is reasonable and Christianity can offer the solution. But Stephen, why don’t you set the stage of understanding kind of our postmodern culture, in the milieu in which we’re living, and why you think it’s problematic?

DR. STEPHEN HICKS:  Right. Well, it’s problematic. Postmodernism is a very vigorous, intellectual and cultural movement. Whether it’s the dominant movement of our time, I think that is an open question. It could just be that it’s a noisy minority or a significant number of people who are well entrenched in important institutions. But it is vigorous. And I do think it is threatening. So, if we take modern Western civilization, which is actually increasingly becoming Globa