Emily Parker spoke with author and presenter Justin Brierley about his new book 'Unbelievable', and why he still believes in God after 10 years of conversations with atheists on Premier Christian Radio.

Off the back of that we've been having these conversations. You get people who are very anti-religious, who don't like the idea of God, and who don't want there to be a God, who will stand up and debate it. Equally you get people who are prepared to debate it on the other side. In the middle there's a lot of undecided people. I think a lot of them are the people listening to the show. They know that there is this debate, and they know that it really matters whether or not it's true, and so they want to hear the conversation.

Emily: What was it like for you getting to interview Richard Dawkins and particularly about the last book that he released?

Justin: It was obviously scary, because for a long time he's been seen as the big atheist character, the kind of person you wouldn't want to meet in debate, because he's seen as a high flying public intellectual. In reality, of course, people are never quite like that when you meet them in person. When I did eventually get to interview him a few years into the show, it was after a debate he had had with an Oxford professor who is a Christian and I managed to get hold of him during the after show party. So in the hub-bub of this busy room I whipped my microphone out and said could I have a quick word. I got my 10 minutes and we basically had a mini debate of our own.

I was very nervous because it's not every day you get to do that. I knew that this would be recorded and going out on the show. I didn't want to fluff it, but he was a nice guy. He obviously didn't pull his punches, he said exactly what he thought of Christianity, but I tried to answer back and debate him as well and there was some interesting stuff in there. Essentially during the course of that conversation he admitted that as someone who doesn't believe in God and believes in evolution alone, we are just here by the happenstance of biology and nothing else, that really there's nothing, there's no real right or wrong in the world. It's all just whatever we've been given by our past, our evolutionary history if you like. I said to him, I had to pick quite a grim example, "Is your belief that rape is wrong, just as random as the fact we've developed five fingers rather that six?" He said, "You could say that, yes." I found that interesting because I think he's right. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that there's no actual good or evil in the world, there's no right or wrong, there's no purpose, and there's no ultimate meaning. All of the stuff we experience is really an illusion of our evolutionary history, there's no actual purpose to it.

I think most people don't like that idea, because that doesn't feel like the way life feels to them. They feel there really are things that are right or wrong, and of course rape is wrong. It's not just because we happen to have developed that belief randomly through biology. That for me is one of the important things, to say what makes the most sense of the feelings you have. We can talk about the universe and where that came from, but what about if you look inside yourself? Is your belief that there really is such a thing as right or wrong, or is it just an illusion, which is what it has to be on an atheistic view; or could it actually come from something that is the source of all good, and that is God of course. My intuition is that Christianity makes better sense of that part of ourselves than atheism does.

Emily: For somebody that might define themselves as an atheist, why do you think apologetics is worth their time?

Justin: Because very often we want to investigate things. I could walk up to an atheist and say, "You need to believe in Jesus, that He died for your sins and He rose again. Put your trust in Him." And they might say, "Whoa. Hang on! Let's just get a few steps back here. That's a lot of stuff you're asking me to swallow whole. Before I move in that direction at all, I need you to explain a bit about this." That may be where apologetics begins. That's where you have to begin to say, "Let's look at the evidence together. Is it more likely that we are the result of a god-less universe, or a result of a universe where there is a God behind it?"

It's worth doing that because for Christians I think they're asked to do this in the Bible. 1 Peter 3:15 says always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you for the reason, for the hope that you have, but do it with gentleness and respect. So it's saying make sure you're ready when someone asks you to give them reasons, and do it with gentleness. But equally I think an atheist, they have to ask themselves, "Have I really thought through my position? Have I just assumed that there's no God? If I'm asking for evidence from a Christian to show me why there is a God, have I got any evidence that there isn't a God? Have I thought about that?" A lot of atheists maybe think, "I'm not required to do that, that's the Christian's job to convince me." Well, if you're an atheist, you also have a set of beliefs, but you may not realise it. For instance, you may believe that there isn't any ultimate purpose to life, there isn't any good or evil in the universe; that it came from nowhere and it's heading nowhere. Now those are all a set of beliefs and you would need to justify them just as much as I would need to justify my beliefs and so that's where we can have a conversation.

Emily: For somebody that's wanting to start asking questions, what would your advice be?

Justin: Well, of course I'm going to recommend my own show, which does this anyway. Every week we have Christians and non-Christians having these discussions. Some of them are more academic, some of them are more lay level, so you might want to pick and choose. You can do that with the podcast. That's a good place to start hearing some of these discussions, and the different arguments that are out there about the Christian faith.

There are some excellent websites out there as well, which help you to get an overview of some of the reasons for the Christian faith. The Be Thinking website is one place to go and has all kinds of articles about the evidence for God and that kind of thing. There's also a great Cold-case Detective out in the States who has a story himself of coming to faith through apologetics. With a detective's eye he goes through the evidence for God and the Gospels. That's a guy called J. Warner Wallace who heads up a website called Cold-case Christianity. There are heaps of websites out there and of course lots of books as well where you can begin to investigate the evidence for yourself.

Emily: For somebody that's looking in to these, but starting to have doubts, what advice would you give to them?

Justin: We all have doubts. That's completely normal in the Christian faith. I've had doubts over 10 years of doing this show. What I have found though is that if you are willing to put in the work and you are willing to think about these things, there are always answers. Sometimes we do have to live with some mystery because that is the way of things. We won't always get the answer to every question, of course we won't. But I think there is enough evidence for the truth of Christianity and if we can just get to the fact that there is a God and He raised Jesus from the dead, well a lot of the other stuff is secondary to that. If that is true, then it basically changes everything and it means whether you are a Christian or not you need to take this stuff seriously.

But for those who are having doubts, I say you need to be prepared to work with them, don't do anything rash. I know people who have jettisoned Christianity on the basis of some doctrine that they weren't sure was true. You have to say, at the end of the day, even if this particular interpretation you were given by your church of the book of Genesis, even if you doubt that, ok, if Jesus is raised from the dead, if that's still true then Christianity is still true. Whether or not some of the other ways we interpret it, you might want to reconsider or think about. It's really important to be willing to put in some work in really thinking things through and not just having a knee jerk response when doubts come.