Welcome to a special edition of Breakpoint, where we're looking at some of the most important

worldview stories of 2024. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. Well, among the top

worldview stories of 2024 was a series of unexpected admissions from prominent atheists about the

cultural good of Christianity. Even as hostility

toward Christianity and Christian morality has increased in recent years, both in the West and

outside of the West, a growing number of atheist, former atheist, and secularists have verbalized

the role that Christianity has played in shaping the Western world

and why it is a necessary factor in preserving civilization. Most notable, Richard Dawkins,

author of the God Delusion, one of the so-called Four Horsemen of New Atheism, and of course,

a longtime critic of Christianity. Dawkins made this fascinating

confession after seeing lights celebrating Ramadan on a street that once celebrated Easter.

Quote, I call myself a cultural Christian. I'm not a believer, but there's a distinction

between being a believing Christian and being a cultural Christian.

I love hymns and Christmas carols, and I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos.

We in the UK are a Christian country in that sense.

And if I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I choose Christianity every single time.

It seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion in a way that I think Islam is not, end quote.

Now, it was in 2023 that the world first learned that Ian Hersey Ali was considering Christianity.

But in 2024, it's become clear that what's happening with this former atheist is more than just

the cultural Christianity that Dawkins talked about.

Asked by Richard Dawkins on a panel how she could accept the, and I quote here,

nonsense idea that Jesus is the son of God and rose from the dead, she replied this way.

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