Evolution and the Atheist Worldview with Os Guinness

In this brief video, Os Guinness addresses the problem of holding a purely naturalistic worldview—one that does not coincide with many basic human concepts.

Video Transcription

Well, there are certain things very, very important to human beings: freedom, for some people, over his determinism; justice, purpose in the universe, all these various things; altruism, the current example a lot of people are talking about, which are very difficult to explain on purely naturalistic assumptions.

Now I’m sure they’re going to work hard at it, but you can see on Jewish and Christian Biblical assumptions, take, say, people made in the image of God. However physically handicapped or badly educated or economically impoverished, they have a precious dignity and God’s eyes on them, and so on. And the evolutionist, who’s a naturalistic believer, cannot say that.

You can see there’s a bleakness behind that world view. And actually if you look at the logical conclusions of Sam Harris or Dawkins or many of these people, there’s a bleakness down there because they cannot justify many of the things that are profoundly precious to humans, certainly those of us in the West like, things like human rights and justice and so on, altruism, and moral intuitions, and that’s why it’s so important.