Transcription
Now, if Jesus really literally rose from the dead as a matter of history, that makes an enormous difference to our view of the world. Do you really think that the creator of this magnificent edifice of the universe, the expanding universe, the galaxies, he really couldn't think of a better way to get rid of the sins on this one little speck of dust than to have himself tortured? He's the one who's doing the forgiving after all. Couldn't he just have forgiven?
I don't believe in the resurrection just like that because faith is based on evidence. Changed your ground again. What you said before was that there is no hope without God. And it sounded—Well, that's true. That's absolutely true. And you just admitted it. That disturbs me for the following reason. Reading your book, The God Delusion, you say that it's under scholarly dispute among historians that Jesus actually existed. What I don't understand is this: why you would write something like that.
Richard Dawkins confronts John Lennox on the evidence of God and it's absolutely amazing. John Lennox is just one of my favorite people to watch and how he explains evidence for a creator and reasons behind it. So, let's get right into it. God is, by definition, more complex than the thing you're explaining. So, he's got to be explained. Well, that is a major point that I want to make. But let me go back to what you were saying before about guidance. Um, when you drop a stone, it falls to the ground, and you, as a scientist, will explain that by gravity. You wouldn't dream of saying, "Oh, there must be a god pushing it down." That's exactly what you're, in effect, saying with respect to evolution.
Oh no, because we understand evolution at just the same kind of level as we—actually, rather better level than—we understand gravity. No, I—and this is a very important point—because I detect in many of your writings that you oppose God and science's explanations. When Newton discovered the law of gravity, he didn't say, "Marvelous. Now I can know how it works. I don't need God." God is an explicator at the level of an agent, not a mechanism. So that we can study mechanisms and biology. The more sophisticated they are, the more that might well point towards an agent. You don't argue when it comes to Thor; they're like, "Oh my goodness, we know how lightning works. Therefore, Thor is not real." But that's not what we're saying for God. God is the creator of the entire world, of the universe. Totally different. Just because we know how things work, we know how things run, I think helps us to understand how brilliant and how amazing God is—the existence of an agent by showing that there is a mechanism. And I don't quite understand how you manage to get—if I understand you right—God and science as alternative explanations.
Well, I think you do get rid of an agent if the agent is superfluous to the explanation—that when you're studying something that's happening, there may well be an agent, and it may—if you're watching a car driving along and avoiding obstacles and turning left and turning right, you say there is an agent controlling that car, and certainly there is—there's a driver. Uh, but if you don't need an agent to explain what's going on, and we don't in the case of biology, and we don't in the case of gravity. Of course, I accept that Newton was a theist. He lived in the 17th century, and everybody was. But um, you don't need an agent. An agent is a superfluous explanation. It's a gratuitous grafting on of something that you don't need.
Well, I find that unconvincing because even if you accept the whole evolutionary paradigm, it depends. It depends on there being a fine-tuned universe. And that fine-tuned universe raises in itself very big questions as to the origin of the universe. Evolution doesn't deal with that. No, it does. Nor does it deal with the origin of life. No, those are separate points. Those are separate points, but they're vastly major points. They are. Yes. Uh, as long as we were dealing with evolution, I was talking about evolution. If you want to move on to talk about this, I'd be very happy to move on. But the notion of things in principle going from simple to complex, and they must go that way—that seems to me to be your belief, your faith.
Well, things must go from simple to complex. Yes. I mean, if things go from simple to complex, we need an explanation. Yeah, we do. Evolution is an explanation for that. It's the explanation in the case of biology.
Well, let's go back to the level of the origins of the universe and the origin of life. Now, life, as we both know, has got this digital database. Um, it's got a language all of its own. Now, the only thing we know of capable of producing language is mind. And yet you reject that by definition as an atheist. You must reject that. There's no mind behind this language.
I do reject it. Um, when you say the only thing we know that can produce language is mind, I mean we know that what produces human language is mind. Of course we do, because that's human language. But DNA is not human language. DNA is very sophisticated. It's given us very sophisticated—but it doesn't follow that it has to be generated by mind. But we know of no other conceivable way of it being generated. You see, because it—it seems to me from the mathematical point of view, I think you said this somewhere in a different context—junk in, junk out. Here we have this phenomenally sophisticated information processor, which is the cell. Am I really to believe that that information processing capacity simply came about by the laws of nature and random processes? How though? If everything else, every language is created by a mind, and the DNA language is not somehow. What if there was a designer, a creator behind it all who put into motion something super complex, a thousand times more complex than any computer—to say everything just happened by chance? It's—I feel like it's not as reliable, and I think that it's not as logical as well.
Yes. Well, I find that impossible to believe. I know you do. Um, this is called the argument from personal incredulity. But I could just reverse that and say your position is the argument from personal credulity—that rationality comes from irrationality—that mind comes from matter. To me, the biblical explanation—in the beginning was the word, the logos—that makes perfect sense, and it makes sense of the fact that we can do science itself. But you haven't explained where the logos came from in the first place.
Well, of course not. Because the logos didn't come from anywhere. Well, then in what sense is it an explanation? Because the notion that you say you have to ask who created the logos—that says that you're thinking of a created God. The whole point about the God revealed in the Bible is that he was not created. He is eternal. He is the eternal logos. And I ask myself, as an inference to the best explanation, which makes more sense—that there's an eternal logos and that the universe, its laws, the capacity for mathematical description, and so on—that these things are derivative, including the human mind, from the logos. That makes very much more sense to me as a scientist than it's the other way round, when there is no explanation for the existence of the universe. Do you just believe the universe is a brute fact?
The universe is an easier brute fact to accept than a conscious creator. Well, who made it? Who made it? The inference to the best explanation is that there's a creator outside of space and time, and he put everything into motion. Why not? Instead of just saying you can't just be like, "I know 100% for sure that it's—there's no creator at all." It's you who insists on asking that question.
No, no, you ask me who made the creator. The universe created you, Richard. Who made it then? A god is a complicated entity which requires a much more sophisticated and difficult explanation than a universe which is, according to modern physics, a very simple entity. It's a very simple beginning. It's not a negligible beginning, but it's a very simple beginning that has got to be easier to explain than something as complicated as a god. Yeah, you can't explain the existence of God. But I think you may have missed my question. I'm drawing a parallel. You see, you say that it's—at least—Don't let me put words in your mouth, of course, because that would be unfair. But I'm getting the message that it's ridiculous for me to believe in a God who created the universe and me because they have to ask who created God. All I'm doing is turning that question around and saying the universe you admit created you because there's nothing else. Well, then who created it?
I understand you. Great point. Richard Dawkins is thinking about all the other gods in the world, because a lot of them—or like 99% of them—are like created gods—things that happened—they came out of the universe—but the God of the Bible created the universe—there's a big difference—you perfectly—I'm making the—we both of us are faced with the problem of saying how did things start. Yes. I'm saying it's a hell of a lot easier to start with something simple than to start with something complex. That's what complex means.
But I don't think so. If I pick up—But why would something simple be easier to explain how it created the universe versus something complex? Now that is confusing—called The God Delusion. It's a pretty sophisticated book. It's got lots of words in it. But actually, as I look at page one, I don't even need to go beyond page one. I conclude that it comes from something more complex than that book itself, namely you.
Yes. I mean, obviously complex things exist, and brains exist. Why can I not look at the universe, the whole show—which includes—I'll tell you why. Because my brain that produced a book has an explanation in its own right. That explanation is evolution. We go back and back and back to the origin of the universe. That provides an explanation for complex brains. And complex brains produce books and museums and cars and computers. Of course, we have complex things that produce other complex things. But science has an explanation for where complex brains come from.
No, you don't. You have an explanation of evolution and things evolving, but you don't have an explanation where exactly the origin of life began, though. You said that. You said you don't know. No one knows. So how far can you actually go back? I don't think you can talk with so much certainty there of simple beginnings. I don't think it has at all, at the level of the origin of life. Uh, reading the literature, even the recent literature, the word miracle comes up probably far too often for your liking anyway—that they're just going from, say, the self-organizational properties of low-level molecules that you got in some kind of primeval situation to the phenomenal self-organizational potentialities of macromolecules. There's just no way you can get there.
Well, you've—you're asserting that there's no way. We don't yet know what it is because there's a lot of work yet to be done. Science doesn't yet know everything. There are still gaps. Yeah. But I'm not ruling out the fact that there there's a physical side to it and so on. But it seems to me that the fact that the basic description of this ancient language, and it's a very ancient language of DNA, points much more—arguably—to the existence of a logos, a divine logos, who—amen—points to a creator than the notion that it's going to be exhaustively explained in purely naturalistic terms—because I would still go back to the point I made earlier, although I don't want to harp on it. This extreme reductionism removes from me the very rationality which we use to have the discussion—so that I'm not simply terribly tempted to believe it's all been designed. I believe it's all been designed, but that doesn't—and here's something else that I'd like to bring up in this—that doesn't stop science. I fear sometimes that your dichotomy, either God or science, might put some people off science because they'd prefer God, and that would be a pity.
Well, you're hopping around from one topic to another, but um, so we could do the origin of life. We could do the idea of miracles, the idea that um, somehow my approach to science puts people off. But true. Okay, let's do the last one then. Um, when you feel like it, you will smuggle in magic. You will smuggle in magic for miracles in the Bible. You'll smuggle in magic for the origin of life. I don't—I can't explain the origin of life at the moment. I mean, nobody can. People are working.
Do you believe that it will have a naturalistic solution? Uh, yes. Uh, like you said, you sprinkle in magic everywhere, but you need magic as well. The beginning of the universe. That's the greatest miracle of all. You have to admit that you—no one can explain it. It's—it's for now magic. It's a miracle how everything came to be. So what—who's believing in more magic here? That it is a cowardly copout to suggest that just because we don't yet understand something, therefore it—magic did it.
Oh, well, I would agree with that. I mean the god of the gaps idea. Well, but you—that's exactly what you're putting forward, the god of the gaps. You're saying—you're pointing to the origin of life. You're pointing to the origin of DNA and saying, "Oh, well, okay, Darwin's done everything after the origin of life, but he hasn't done the origin of life." No, that's a god of the gaps. I think what I'm saying here is that there may well be two kinds of gaps. That is there are bad gaps that science closes. But could it not be that science can open some gaps? Now what I mean by that is this: Your assumption, as I understand it, is that there's going to be an exhaustive reductionist naturalistic explanation of everything in scientific terms. I don't think so. Now, if there is a God, and if he created this universe, and if, as I believe, he is personal, then I would expect certain things to follow. One—that I would see evidence—not proof—but evidence in the universe that God existed. I feel I see that in the mathematical describability of the universe, in the fine-tuning of the universe and so on, and in the marvelous sophistication of the world. I'd expect to see God's traces there. I would also expect that there may be occasions when God speaks in special ways. And therefore, the more we try to analyze those things in terms of purely reductionist science, it'll get more and more difficult instead of more and more simple. I wouldn't expect there to be many of those places. I think the origin of light might be one of them. And certainly when it comes up into more recent history—uh, you mentioned miracles—the thing that is central for me is the fact that uh, what you call petty and I feel is vastly significant because it's touching on something that affects every human being—the question of death. Now, if Jesus really literally rose from the dead as a matter of history, that makes an enormous difference to our view of the world. And so, far from being petty, if this is God speaking to us, then I want to take it extremely seriously.
Why do you think it's so petty? Of course, it makes a huge difference if it's true. Yes. I'm interested to see what he says here because he literally just laid out the whole Christian value, the Christian theology of Jesus dying and rising again. But you've suddenly leapt from sophisticated discussions of the origin of the universe where one can have a proper discussion about whether some sort of cosmic intelligence could have set forth the laws of physics. And you'll suddenly jump to a man who lived 2,000 years ago, was born of a virgin, rose again from the dead. Uh, I only did that because you mentioned—at first—I think that's petty. I think that's petty by comparison with the grandeur of the universe. I mean, to put my point again, do you really think that the creator of this magnificent edifice of the universe, the expanding universe, the galaxies, he really couldn't think of a better way to get rid of the sins on this one little speck of dust than to have himself tortured? He's the one who's doing the forgiving after all. Couldn't he just have forgiven?
Because—great question, but who are we to judge God at the end of the day? And I think it's beautiful, as Jordan Peterson always puts it, there has to be sacrifice. In all of life, there's sacrifice, whether you like to admit it or not. And Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice. This is a moral universe, Richard. And just forgiving doesn't make sense. You mean he has to kill himself in order to—he doesn't kill himself—or get himself killed—tortured. God—God sends his son into the world to provide forgiveness and to provide a basis on which he can justly bring forgiveness to me. Now, he has to get himself killed in order to do that.
Well, half a minute. We need to step back from this a little bit because it's actually a highly relevant topic in your world. Where is justice to be found? Well, it's a—justice is a human construct of great importance in human affairs, and it's something that we have—most of us have—a sense of—which I think probably can be given some sort of Darwinian explanation. But I don't see where you're taking this. Well, my question is, is there any ultimate justice? You see, you say this is petty. I'm saying I find myself in a world which is a broken world. I find myself in a world where there's massive injustice, where many people won't get it. We are so privileged. We live in Oxford and so on. We've got enough money to live on, etc., etc. But if there is no God, then there's no ultimate justice. And one of the things that the resurrection transforms for me from pettiness right into center stage is—if this is true—then there's real hope that there be a rational evaluation and fair justice at the end of the world. But atheism doesn't give you that.
Okay. Suppose there is no hope. Suppose there is no—There isn't. If you're an atheist, I'm sorry. There is no hope. You're just fertilizer. That's—that's just how you have to think about it intellectually. I'm sorry, but that's why we're revealing this to you. So you can see maybe it's more logical to believe that there is a god because of justice. Justice. Suppose there is nothing but misery and darkness and bleakness. Suppose there is nothing that we would wish for, nothing that we would hope for. Too bad. That doesn't make it true. Just because God would make us feel good.
Well, of course it doesn't. Well, then why do you bring that argument up? Because I believe that there is evidence that it is true. I don't believe in the resurrection just like that because faith is based on evidence. I've changed your ground again. What you said before was that there is no hope without God, and it's—Well, that's true. That's absolutely true. And you just admitted it. I haven't admitted it. I said if that's true, so what? No, it is true. There is no hope without God. And you have to admit that. He—and he said, "You just admitted it. It was true." But anyway, but therefore the question to be decided then is—is there a God, and has he revealed himself? And that's where again I think this pettiness needs to be pushed aside because I can't get to know you as a person. You're not just a scientific object. I could look at you through a telescope or a magnifying glass. I could even dissect you and so on so forth. But because you are a person, I cannot get to know you unless you're prepared to reveal yourself to me. So the fact that the claim of Christ to be the truth, to be God incarnate, that makes perfect sense to me because if there is a God who invented this wonderful, marvelous universe with all its science and all the rest, then he has taken the initiative in getting to know us and revealing himself to us. And he's revealed himself to us at the level we can understand. We're persons. He is a person. That at least makes sense. So, one of the very important questions to ask is, is that really true or is this simply myth and fantasy?
Well, myth and fantasy for me. Yeah. Well, do you know that disturbs me for the following reason? Reading your book, The God Delusion, you say that it's under scholarly dispute among historians that Jesus actually existed, right? Like, who in the world will say it's—there's no dispute anymore. Like, the majority is overwhelming that Jesus obviously lived and died by the Romans. Come on. Checked with the ancient historians. That is not so. And it disturbed me. History is not natural science. But what I don't understand is this: Why you would write something like that?
Yeah. I don't think it's a very important question. It is—whether Jesus existed. There are some historians—most historians think he did. Some—They certainly do. I couldn't find an ancient historian that didn't. Well, there are one or two, but I don't really find—correctly—because it precisely—Then why write that in your book? He just got called out for being the greatest clickbaiter of all time. Oh my goodness. Because that completely sways people who are like big fans of you to believe that—well, we don't even know if Jesus ever existed in the first place. Of course we wouldn't believe in him then. That's wild. Shout out to John Lennox for calling that out.
It's petty. I mean, I cannot—I mean, if you could possibly persuade me that there was some kind of creative force in the universe, there was some kind of physical mathematical genius who created everything—the expanding universe—devised quantum theory, relativity and all that. You could possibly persuade me of that. But that is radically and fundamentally incompatible with the sort of God who cares about sin. The sort of God who cares about what you do with your genitals, the sort of God who who is interested, who has the slightest interest in your private thoughts and wickednesses and things like that—surely you can see that a God who's grand enough to make the universe is not going to give a toughy cuss about what you're thinking about and your sins and things like that. Wow. So his whole problem is not even about the creator of the universe, but it's a problem with the Christian God essentially. I mean, yeah, he has lots of problems with Islam and other ones, but he just doesn't like that humans are responsible for the things that they do.
So you think that morality is not important? Of course, I don't think morality is not important. I'm a human being. Sounds like you're saying it doesn't—I'm a human being, and I live in a society of human beings, and within a society of human beings morality is of course important—but we are one of billions of planets on a huge scale, and a cosmic god who bothers about this kind of human scale is not the kind of god that is—is that is compatible with a scientific view of the universe—saying that was absolutely amazing John Lennox said. So morality isn't important to you. Brilliant answer. Brilliant. Wow. A medieval view. But do you think that size is the measure of importance? Incidentally, on a logarithmic scale, you're about halfway between the atom and the universe. So if God thinks in terms of logarithms, your points, I think. I mean, this is, in a sense, an emotional argument we've come into now. And I don't think so.
Oh, I want to—maybe to Richard Dawkins it is. If—if I were going to respect a god, it would be the kind of god—the sort of god that Carl Sagan might have worshiped. Not the sort of medieval god who fusses about sin. The obsession with sin and righteousness and—and the sort of—I keep coming back to this word petty, and I stand by it. Wow. Well, it's an image of God that I find strange in a way. I gather from the BBC today that you're promoting some advert on London buses uh which is going to say something like, "There probably is no God. Um, so don't worry and enjoy your life." Now I was very interested in that. Why don't worry? Do you associate the idea of God with worrying? I
I fought for a better slogan than that. This was this was this was something that was that was devised by uh, that's funny.
I recently have seen those ads, and people were crazy, going crazy about it, like seven or 10 years ago, whenever they did this. It seems like he has some just agenda, thinking that God is associated with worry and fear, and that's not reality. God is love, and he's longing to have a relationship with you.
And I think we're going to end it right there. Super interesting. The entire debate will be in the description below.
So guys, if you've never decided to follow Jesus and you want to make him your Lord and Savior, do that today. He's longing to have a a relationship with you. In the in the description below, you will be able to click a link to help you to decide to follow Jesus for the first time. Do that today.