Updated August 09, 2017 11:01:52

Justin Brierley knows a thing or two about miracles: each week, he manages to get atheists to listen to Christian radio.

But, as you probably guessed, it's not Christian radio as you'd imagine it. Already this year on his British program Unbelievable? he's given a microphone to a doctor arguing for the complete decriminalisation of abortion, a sexual freedom campaigner defending the use of pornography, and a neuroscientist who says the human quest for meaning can be explained by evolution.

Other past episodes include illusionist Derren Brown questioning the veracity of miracle accounts, given the susceptibility of the mind to be tricked, and perhaps the most famous atheist in the world Richard Dawkins laying into the "capriciously malevolent bully" God of the Old Testament.

There's no catch, either. Unbelievers aren't brought onto the show to be harangued or interrupted. They're given equal time to the Christians they're debating and Brierley acts as an impartial moderator.

If you were flicking through channels in the car, you might not guess you were listening to a station called Premier Christian Radio. So why does Brierley do it?

Well, he says his station does a "great job of talking to Christians about Christian things", but he wanted to burst the bubble.

"I'm confident that Christians have nothing to fear from hearing from sceptical people," he said.

That's why for the past 11 years, Brierley has been inviting people onto the air to hear why they don't believe, putting them into conversations with leading Christian thinkers like philosopher William Lane Craig, New Testament scholar NT Wright and Oxford mathematician John Lennox.

Originally, he had only British Christian listeners in mind, but since his show became a podcast, the audience has expanded to include nonbelievers from all over the world, including Australia.

"One of the most common emails I get is, 'You're the only Christian radio station I would ever think of listening to'," he said.

Brierley says many Christians appreciate having a show which deals with questions they themselves might have had and which helps them navigate their own interactions with nonbelievers.

But he frankly admits that not everyone liked the idea.

"I'll be honest with you, when the show first started, it got pushback from some Christian listeners who were very uncomfortable with having atheists on air," he said.

He could see their point you don't tend to tune into Christian radio to have your cherished beliefs challenged.

But he says it's not like you can avoid scepticism in a digital world.

"We might as well have that kind of a conversation in an environment where we at least know we've got a reasonable Christian on the other side," he said.

Brierley doesn't shy away from the fact that he'd love it if people converted after listening to his program. But he also says simply improving the tone of the faith debate is its own reward.

Unbelievable? was born when "new atheism" was at its peak, with Richard Dawkins and the late journalist Christopher Hitchens leading the charge against faith with their respective books The God Delusion (2006) and God Is Not Great (2007).

Brierley says he thinks the conversation has improved since then, with many atheists he encounters keen to disassociate themselves from the new atheism movement.

"I think it went through a pretty dire patch for a while," he said.

"The tone of the conversation, certainly from the new atheists side, was of a kind of condescending, dismissive attitude towards people who hold a faith."

Brierley says you have a much better chance of changing people's minds when you engage in a friendly, personable way.

He says we live in an age where "we tend to dehumanise people" who disagree with us, but just getting people of different beliefs into the same room for a chat makes them realise they're not talking to the enemy.

"The show I hope will give people who are sceptical an insight into why Christian faith is in my opinion a credible option," he said.

"And I hope it will also give Christians listening an insight into the fact that atheists by and large are nice, reasonable people they're not out to get you."

After more than a decade as the impartial moderator, Brierley decided to put his own cards on the table with his book Unbelievable? Why After 10 Years Of Talking With Atheists I'm Still A Christian.

The first point he makes is that while his show deals primarily with what objective evidence there is for Christianity, it was actually a subjective religious experience that led him to faith when he was a teenager. Simply put, he says he felt the presence and love of God.

But he was aware this subjective experience wasn't going to convince anyone else, which is why he looked towards apologetics basically, a wonky word for the rational defence of Christianity.

"What I discovered was some real, credible intellectual reasons for believing in God."

He points to the fine tuning of the universe, the existence of moral objectivity, the universal search for meaning, and the historical evidence for the life of Jesus as some of the reasons he thinks Christianity has the better case.

"In all of these arguments, I'm not trying to deride atheism. I'm just saying I don't see how that worldview makes sense of the world as I see it," he said.

Atheists have an answer for all of these arguments, of course, which is why his show will never be short of things to debate.

Topics: christianity, religion-and-beliefs, united-kingdom

First posted August 09, 2017 10:48:42

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Unbelievable?: Meet the man who puts atheists on Christian radio - ABC Online