Alister McGrath & Bret Weinstein • Audience Q&A on religion and evolution PART 2

okay so hands in the air if you if you have a question and so what I'll do is I'll go to the temple now right right next to you there Mikayla first of all and I am actually Justin's father so there was some paternal bias yeah it might my choice of the the first person I have two questions Bret I listened with great interest to your debate with Dawkins in which you seem to be saying to him but you felt evolutionary science had stopped about 30 years ago and haven't made much progress I wonder if you could just expand on that and my other question is for you Alistair could you hold it nice in place right yeah you seen if I understand you correctly to accept Brett's materialistic concept of evolution my question is where do you feel that man is different from just an over evolved animal just another member of the animal kingdom okay so two questions there Bret maybe just to expand a little bit first of all on on why you said in that discussion with Richard Dawkins that you feel evolutionary theory hasn't really moved much further since his own book The Selfish Gene in the 1970s and how that ties in to what we've been talking about tonight so in some sense I think this is just strictly an empirical question if I ask my colleagues what scientific progress has been made on the study of evolution in in the period since 1976 what I get back is a long list of empirical studies and when I say what is the last theoretical breakthrough on which we all agree silence so I have the sense that we just simply know that progress has stopped and when I asked Dawkins why he thought that was his answer tells me that there's actually something deep down this right what he told me is that he thought that more or less his generation had gotten all of the big stuff right and so that one would expect a kind of cessation of progress and what I know from my own work is that that's not true because there are great many questions that we can't yet answer big questions like about the nature of sexual selection what we call lekking about speciation do these big questions have simply moved into another phase where we've stopped asking them and embarrassing ourselves because we can't answer the question why for example are there more species more densely packed as one moves from the poles to the equator that's a question we should be able to answer it's repeated on every continent in every ocean at every depth so why can't we answer it because we've lost the thread of the conversation not because we answered all the questions so in some sense progress seems to have stopped why it stopped we can argue about but that we should do something to jumpstart it I think is almost beyond beyond question okay and there's the second question was to what extent does your view mean that humanity is not simply a another over evolved animal because you go along with a great deal obviously of what brett-brett uses the evolutionary history of the earth yes and I've made very clear as part of the picture but I think there's more to it than that I wouldn't describe myself as a materialist or even and naturalist think I'd want to qualify both of those but I don't you have to realize is that in this fascinating conversation we cannot cover everything and certainly if I didn't register disagreement with Brett on that maybe it's because that didn't really emerge as a conversation item I think perhaps there are others which were higher up the food chain on that one and in a sense they I assume you you obviously do have a belief that within humanity there's something more than just the evolutionary process going on there I would say that it's very interesting comment you use the word supernatural well I I what do many of you all know this but I minced intellectual history the word supernatural was first used in the year 1170 so it wasn't used before then what does that say about the description we are using for example to refer to believe in God why why suddenly does this become supernatural and wasn't before them so I want to say we need to is almost me a new vocabulary to get this right and I don't think unnatural vs. supernatural does it very well what I would say is it seems to me there is something about human nature which makes it perceptive to or attentive to something that is so easily missed and if you want me to give you a lecture on this I talked about the idea of the image of God but maybe that's for another occasion kay I can try a one-word answer to your question about what makes human beings go ahead special and very different from every other animal language that's it everything follows from that the big brain everything else it follows from what we could convey with language that no other animal can okay thank you for the question let's go perhaps from this side this time Heather if you'd like to pass it to the gentlemen yep just just in front of you with his hand up there great discussion and really kind of respectful of each other's views which is great to hear and actually a lot of common ground I think you well laid out your understanding of how knowledge comes about and the complexity of it and how it moves forward and yet questions of both of you you both seem to have reached quite simple and come and perhaps more important completed conclusions right stats as I understand it that there is no deity and allister's that the ultimate revelation of of of reality and I stress the ultimate bit was completed in first century Palestine and you know and in some ways the complexity of what you laid and your simple conclusions seem to be a bit odd with each other and I wonder if you could comment on that so have we have we arrived at our conclusions prematurely perhaps given what the fact that we are obviously limited still so much we don't know about the universe about you know the nature of reality ourselves for not sure I think this has the answer lies in the way complexity actually comes to exist and and the way emergence comes to exist so if you think about what Darwin went through in order to figure out the theory of natural selection it was a very long trajectory and if you look at his notes and his writings it's a very elaborate argument that we can now sum up in a couple of sentences are those sentences perfectly accurate they're accurate they're not precise but they're good enough to make progress up to some level at which point their lack of precision requires some new nuance that we don't have so what I think you're hearing from me at least is those very simple ideas that I'm expressing I'm not of the belief that they are precise I am of the belief that they are good enough for us to do the work that we have to do and at the point that they peter out I don't want us to forget that there was a lack of precision that then has to be picked up but for the moment I think they are good enough and the questions are right in front of us on the basis of what we do understand pretty well and in that sense when you look at the evolutionary paradigm yourself Rhett you don't think it's going to be overthrown by anything it's just going to be tweaked moderated complimented by other by other things is it but but what we've got at its core that that's going to still be with us forever not the 1976 version okay so you have to take you have to be more serious about Dawkins meme idea than Dawkins is once you realize what the implications are of memetic evolution and more importantly that mimetic evolution has a very specific relationship to gin evolution once you see that you begin to be able to understand how human beings function until you see it or if you're vague about it or agnostic about that relationship it doesn't work but once you see it suddenly human beings become a tractable evolutionary phenomenon and you see the rest of this puzzle with a great deal of clarity so I think that's where we are is that we need that next little update on Dawkins theory of memes and from there we have a very solid grounding to deal with human beings and then at some point it will not be good enough and we'll have to add to it just be interested in your response to that idea that you know where we need to adjust and take the focus off well I mean I I think this is a very interesting question but you know if you've read someone like Thomas Kuhn structure scientific revolutions you have this feeling look that there comes a point where a science reaches a point where either it's going to get it right or it realizes this isn't gonna work and the question is when does the scientific community say we need to do some rethinking now I I I'm not in any way qualified to comment on this but for me as a science that hasn't kinda way progressed much in the last 40 years and it makes me wonder you know is there a better paradigm waiting to be discovered but you're all thinking that anyway so you need to tell you that no I the the problem of us becoming conservative within a science and not making further progress is a dire problem that is exactly where we are and so this without wishing any thing on anyone are we waiting for an old God as it were to pass away before a new paradise I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember exactly who it was it may have been bore who said science progresses funeral by funeral that's where we are and you know I'm not wishing anybody dead but I am wishing that we could move past some of the the ideas that got us through the 70s and jumpstart the process of asking deep questions again okay thank you very much I haven't answers too oh yes so there's the question of yes I mean basically yes I mean I would say Jesus is great wonderful but there is this ongoing process of reflecting on who he is what he met my mind so much and how he impacts on us today in other words I can't just reach into the past and say looking 1600 said this that does it you know it's always an ongoing process of reflection how does this challenge me resource me motivate me today with these issues so if you like it's a constant process of reflection on Scripture and asking how do I respond to these issues so yes that's what the focus is but the application is always in terms of trying to engage the present in the light of this rich resource we have thank you really helpful question actually okay let's let's um go more towards the middle on over here if you could pass it along to yes the gentleman there with the beard and then we'll go okay great - all thanks guys so alistair at the beginning of your talk you mentioned that the history of philosophy of science elucidates the fact that scientific theories often change over time and this might give us reason to not want to hinge our worldview on the scientific method considering that and the fact that your worldview hinges on Christianity my question is are you not troubled with a God who is more constant more concerned about the mixed fabrics and consumption of shellfish than ears about humans owning other humans now I'm not particularly interested in the answer that Jesus brought the New Testament and this supersedes the old because to my understanding Christians believe in objective morality and if God changes his mind why should I have any confidence that he won't that what he's told me that is true today won't change in the near future okay so I don't if you call it I call that ahead well Christians read the Old Testament as you will know in the light of the idea there's a new dispensation there's not a question of God changing his mind a writer light.i rnas for example the second century would say that what we see in the Old Testament is a morality a cultic way of behaving which is appropriate to that dispensation but the reason irony is is so clear we have to move on is that we're in a New Testament and New Covenant and that means they're a new set of rules and although of course he carries over the and commandment is very clear that Old Testament Celtic laws don't apply anymore so that would be absolutely characteristic fris charity that in effect we do not regard for example Old Testament dietary laws or food regulations as being of any significance at all and indeed would see that as being validated by what Jesus himself said so in terms of my personal dietary and habits you know I you know all foods are declared clean so I can eat what I like but I then exercise additional judgments on what I personally think are appropriate given for example there is ecological environmental and economic issues which seem to me to be very important so that that's how I respond to that particular point do you want to add anything well I would say I think the dietary laws are a a perfect example of why or how it is that we know that we need to update because to the extent that these are good enough to protect you from something at some point in the distant past we also know that we have hazards now that we are incapable of protecting ourselves from so for example pesticide residue on food should be a primary concern to the extent that there was a new set of kosher laws they would involve how we treat food so that we don't end up ingesting these dangerous compounds for which we are not evolutionarily prepared and the absence of that wisdom and the absence of a mechanism to introduce that wisdom tells me that we are in a phase where unfortunately we're going to have to navigate this outside of the structures that would once have protected us from dangerous foods but would you say Alice did it there's the your fate still has something to say to those very modern incarnations of you know dietary issues and that that's that's sort of it there will you read something Mary Douglas I mean I mean Shane look a lot of sense on this it's just that the element of obligations been removed it's not something which I may do I may not do it the inflected like responsible has been shifted to me but it is this idea that you've moved away from these particular regulations of seniors specific to a particular period in Celtic history and we're now in a different period but nevertheless that does not mean that we just eat what we want it there are these ethical decisions we have to make so if you like there's nothing being ruled on but you and I have to make additional decisions about what we actually do ok let's have some more questions perhaps we'll try and go more tools than the middle header there's a gentleman you know there well you've all got your hands up but the if you keep it passing along yet to the gentleman the the waistcoat I guess a question for you Brett I wondered what the adaptive benefits of being a follower of Jesus was in first century Roman rule of Jerusalem it was a great question so and well put I think so given that in its cut in its time Christianity was in a sense a a minority very strange in a sense in that culture religion for which people got persecuted and killed what were the evolutionary benefits of becoming a Christian this is this is a really good question obviously it was a very it was a long shot that that worked out and the question is how many well that's what that's what they are and well if you want to know what these things look like I would recommend a book called the kingdom of Matthias about a contemporary and de facto competitor of Joseph Smith's at the point that Mormonism was founded this guy never had more than 30 followers and his sect died out completely but in some sense if you had been there for these two guys Gauss ting over acquiring followers you wouldn't necessarily have known who to bet on so the problem for us is that we have the story of the remarkable success the ideas that Jesus apparently was spreading have caught fire they've taken over a large part of the globe and so looking backwards we know that that one worked out and you think how could it possibly have but what you don't have due to what we would call survivor bias is all the stories of things that looked equally promising that left no imprint that we can detect from this place in history so anyway beware survivor bias it is a very powerful force so to toss it to you Alison what do you think of this idea that yeah Christianity survived because it kind of was the one that got lucky in and go on well I think the Christians thought this is right we have to do this this is something that we feel morally impelled to do and the survival survival rates weren't very encouraging and I think that we have to respect that actually it is a very important reminder that I have no doubt that one factor that might encourage somebody to adopt a particular worldview is the social benefits it brings it's actually quite difficult to identify social benefits for early Christianity apart from the sense of solidarity they felt with themselves and as you will know the sense of solidarity they felt with the suffering Christ if you're going to their catacombs you know what you will see is one of the dominant images is of Christ as the Good Shepherd who is carrying these lambs in other words the son who's with you while you suffer so I think that's that's a very important question to kind of weigh help us refocus on a very important discussion thank you very much okay more hands going up and that's perhaps come down to the front if that's all right Michaela and let's pass it along to the middle and this gentleman here in the in the dark sweater if you'd like to ask your question thanks so much for coming tonight both you it's been great so Brett this my question is for you how important do you think that specifically belief in God or God's deity is to the usefulness of religion so apart from say if you took God out the picture the belief in the deity if it was just the principles morals and values that have been passed down would we we have benefited just as much so what part does that the deity part yes a belief in God play as opposed to just the right moral framework and yeah benefited in spite of the belief in God you know so going forward can we come up with a framework that doesn't involve a deity of some kind will that be just as effective a very insightful question so the problem is that the deity I mean you're gonna have to accept my terminology here which is going to be sacrilegious and I apologize for that but the deity is a hack right it hacks a structure in a way that functions so if one let's just take a trivial example or a semi trivial example do you take the money out of the cash register if you're pretty sure nobody's gonna see you do it but you're not entitled to it right one could say well if there's a one in a hundred chance of my getting caught and the amount of money is sufficient in the cash register to change my state in the world for the next week maybe it's worth it right well if you make that decision each and every time the equivalent of a cash register is left open to you then you will eventually run afoul of the odds somebody will catch you and you will experience a spectacular catastrophe for your reputation which will cost you way more than you ever got out of any open cash registers so that's a bit of Statistics that you need to understand and you need to understand what economists would call expected return so the expected return is very low on the cash register because of the spectacular cost to one time you get caught in however many instances so how do you convey that efficiently so that people get the statistical lesson without having to take the statistics class well you say you can't get away with taking it out of the cash register because there's somebody who cares and he's watching you and as you take it he sees it and boy is that going to come back to haunt you so that metaphor correctly hacks your model for whether this is a good idea in a way that is actually in your interests now can you if you are aware and again this is my viewpoint if you are aware that there's nobody up there actually watching right a code that is equally effective at getting people not to behave in this way that's gonna be tough on the other hand I'm not sure we have a choice I think we have to figure out how to pass on this kind of insight in a way that does not depend on unfalsifiable belief structures I'm gonna toss it to Alistair as well anybody but the question that occurred to me on hearing that which is a fascinating way of putting it Brett is but is what you'll then say is that the reason we develop the belief that it's wrong to take money from someone else in that way is because it's ultimately not in our best interests in terms of our evolutionary future rather than it's it's actually wrong to do that stuff all right so those two things converge okay right so there is a absolute wrong about it and what one wants is for us to take on the responsibility for not doing it because it is wrong but how does it become wrong how do we learn that it is wrong these things are induced in us through a mechanism you know in Catholicism the fact that you do wrong and that wrong counts against you in a way that you can relieve yourself of the debt but you have to confess it to somebody who's then in a position to give guidance to you and others that that you know again it's a hack it correctly teaches you that this is wrong through some mechanism that has to be instantiated in the real world and it can be done through metaphor it must be done now through insight and enlightenment and that's not going to be easy what's your take on this this idea that God is a sort of that a hack to get us to the right sort of answer but one that's you know a useful fiction in that sense I think I would say God is creator and that kind of way moves us in a very different direction I think there are two things I'd want to say what one is that I think that one of the one of the significant things about believing in a righteous God is this deep it's that when society goes very very badly wrong there is something against which we are being judged and if you look at for example Germany during the late 1930s you see a resurgence of the kind of approach you now probably call natural law in other words look this we are the law is being rigged to in effect do all these things there has to be somebody above this who's able to say this is not right and so it's a very deep I think sense of that we need something which is able to say to us yes we created these models but actually they are flawed I think the the positive point I want to make is this I think that there's a lot of reason to think that we as human beings are trying to see how we fit into a bigger picture you might think of crystal Park and others in Chicago doing work on this but what is interesting is this if you articulate that in terms of God then in effect you are fitting into a bigger picture which actually gives you a sense of who you are what the whole point of things is and actually if you've read Salman Rushdie's and grant a lecture at Cambridge called is nothing sacred it's very short now if you read that he's he's not expressing total commitment to belief in God but he he figures out that there's something it's saying two things number one that God is the repository for a sense of amazement and wonder which makes us realize that there's something bigger and we are part of it and then secondly and really importantly says that there's something about human nature which means that a purely hears the words secular needs passing but you see was getting up a purely secular worldview actually is not going to satisfy because there's something about us there's looking for something deeper so I think that that's how I'd want to begin to answer the question but you'll see there's a lot more needs to be said okay thank you very much for the question let's go up to the back Heather would you like to take take it up and there's someone right right at the back there let's let's go to the person yeah that being pointed to just here thank you thank you for a very interesting discussion obviously as a humanist I find myself agreeing a lot with what what Brett said but and to me the other thing that comes over from you is is in fact there's this vast area of common ground in terms of shared values but I suppose my question really is to Alastair which is is about this issue of Scripture and the difficulty I have with Scripture is it privileges the the writing of writings of thinkers 2,000 years ago over the right over the writings and thoughts of thinkers living today or at any time between now and then and the effect of that seems to be too often that what people feel obliged to do is to find ways past the mistakes no it seems and I would imagine for what you said you agree with us that you know that LGBT people should be treated with respect in the quality and and so on and but the scripture doesn't say that it says that they're you know that they're great sinners so people then have to read the scripture and put a lot of energy into finding out a way past it so rather than a repository of wisdom it seems from the outside as though it's a repository of problems when there may be other sources of information you know other writings which are more helpful so could you say in what way the scriptures actually will benefit the wider conversation and get past this problematic these problematic areas well thank you I think that's a good question of trial and so I think that at every text does reflect its cultural environment to some extent and that affects basically the questions of raises and also I suppose partly the answers are given that means we read Richard Dawkins God Delusion I mean it's only what now 10 15 years old but already it's very much showing its age is rather banal platitudes at the back you know really have not stood the test of time well so when we go back to Scripture I mean what I think we see there is this this is in effect about how God reveals himself in this way at this time and which Christians see is being in effect paradigmatic or normative or having some sort of authority for how we think about these things now and there's always this question we read this text how do we in effect bridge the gap between the text and where we are now and obviously it is a problematic process in some ways as you've suggested and the question really is how do we in effect determine some basic principles try and apply them in new situations very often situations that are changing very rapidly indeed and that's why I am what I'd want to say is you asked about what other texts are there I mean for Christians there would always be this question of there being Christian writers I mentioned CS Lewis we can give a long list right Christian history who are constantly saying here is the Bible here is where we are now let's try and ensure we are articulating this in a way that connects up with where we are today and that seems to me to be the beginnings of an answer to your question and obviously we are anyone who writes a textbook on Blair I'm not sure Harvard Balkans God's illusion will be received in a hundred years time because things going to have changed any further but I think it does give you this long tradition of wrestling with texts which actually enables you to bring them to bear on new translation new situations let me give you an example and it is certainly true the Christian theologians take the Bible very very seriously but take John Calvin in Geneva during the 16th century reading the Old Testament which forbids usury as you will know and saying well look I'm sorry that that really belonged to an early period in history we're now in 16th century Geneva and we can see what the problem of usery was and if we fix the rate of interest that actually addresses the concern that lay behind biblical texts so the methodology used by Tao there is to say I see what the underlying principle was therefore to maintain that I can actually apply it in a different way in this context so Hank it's very important to keep asking these questions and I think it's a very important to do that but we also need to bear in mind that actually human moral conventions change massively over time and there's always going to be this question of how we engage with a rapidly changing situation and Brett has made a point which I think is relevant to all of us which is that it takes time to reflect on these developments and work out how best to respond to them and very often the lag between reflection and where we are actually moving so quickly that sometimes it's difficult to actually quite keep catch it's obviously keys in what you've been talking about we need to update the the old text comm provide the wisdom we need now for our current situation but having said that the Bible has kind of been used and continues to inform people over 2000 year period and and is I suppose one of my questions to Brett is is there a little bit of hubris in in claiming oh well it's now is the time that we won't need it any longer and you know but when we look a hundred years in the future even a thousand years in the future I suppose I'm wondering well maybe the Bible will still be there and even if lots of other things have changed around it so I hope people will hear in what I'm saying that I don't think the path forward is clear I think it's very frightening I think we're damned if we do and damned if we don't the reason to prioritize a 2000 year old text is that it's lasted two thousand years which tells us there's something important in it the reason to credit it less now than ever is that the rate of change is now changing at a rate that is unprecedented right that is frightening now I would say for all of the things that we see in human culture there is an analogue in the genes that we can learn from genes are not all the same in terms of how quickly they change some of our genes are placed in a location in the genome that causes them to if all very slowly things on which much depends other things in the genome are placed in such a way that they evolve at an extremely rapid pace what I would say is that ability to shift things in the cultural context I would you may have to accept a strange definition here but I would say sacred are things that we have placed such that they are very slow to change that we are very reluctant to interfere with them I would call shamanistic the alternative so what we need to do is move towards the shamanistic where the mutation rate on the cultural traits that we are experimenting with goes up not because that's a safe idea it isn't but because staying as we are is absolutely going to be fatal we are simply playing with tools that are too powerful on a popular with the population that's far too big and in a global system that is far too networked for us to continue to gamble the way we are gambling which means we have to endure the risk of a high cultural mutation rate in order to have a chance of attaining the kind of wisdom that might get us through the next 200 years and are you hopeful or pessimistic that will achieve this what sounds almost like a miracle the way you're putting it I believe there is still time but I believe we will probably blow it what's your view alistair I think one of the great privileges of living at a particular moment in time is you look back and they say oh look that's how they go wrong and of course the difficulty is that someone might be looking back at us and saying that's where they got wrong and what I find so frightening and difficult is that quite often it's very difficult to know what our future judgments going to be because we're in the midst of the situation and I mean my military friends use the phrase the fog of war what they mean is there's simply so much information someone's confused it's very hard actually to get it right I just feel you know well overwhelmed would that be a good word that actually it is it is it is a very complex situation and do you feel like religion Christianity specifically he's going to have a place in answering that huge question ultimately I mean the threat obviously it needs to make way for something radically different the you I assume the person of Jesus still stands at the center and just I mean you know you you know for God who well cares about the lives of the field you know the sparrows that fall this world's a whole us so in effect I mean I mean the whole point of Christ's ethic is that we matter to God in this creation matters to God and we have the responsibility for this creation and that is a frightening thought although I hope it energizes rather than overwhelms us thank you very much I am anxious to have someone who's not a man asking a question and there is a lady here who's put her hand up thank you so this is a question for a break I'm interested in what your perspective is on free will and moral responsibility okay so what is your perspective on free will and moral responsibility I am in favor of both I mean it seems it's a huge area but but there is you know a number of people sam harris who you've obviously dialogue with don't believe there is free will and that does have implications for whether we can even speak of moral blame or praise worthiness to begin with yeah yeah I'll take well I should say that's a conversation I'm itching to have with Sam I think there's a lot to be said I am pretty sure that if evolution is a fact and I certainly believe that it is that it proves that there is at least the basis for free will to exist and I also think we all can demonstrate this in in our lives we can run relatively trivial experiments that demonstrate we must have free will and that when somebody like Sam says that we don't he's really talking about something else it's a Mis definition of free well so I do believe that it exists and then Sam and I would agree that we have an absolute obligation to pay very close attention to to moral decency and that we have to be vigilant about it now what decency is made up of is something that we have to discuss we have serious problems with an economic system that rewards rent-seeking and externalizing harm on to others and it results in us being in effect ruled by people who have become powerful through at least ignoring the destruction that they are they are doing so that's a question for us too morally confront together I don't think we're doing a good job of it but I do think it's among the most important things that we can do and the fact of our free will comes with a very healthy dose of responsibility that it places on our shoulders anything's about to that I'm not mistaken one question right another question okay let's have some more hands if we can as perhaps go to some of the gentlemen have we got someone yeah okay let's yes my question is for Brett I was wondering what's your main reason for believing that religion is fiction what are your main points so the main point for why religion is essentially a fiction yeah okay so again it's a kind of encapsulating a lot of what we've covered already but is it simply that you see I suppose the evolutionary framework as being fully explanatory for why religion exists and I suppose my question that I'd add to to that one is what would could anything conceivably change your mind on that that actually there is a an actual reality and ultimate truth in the god question or even in oh sure and I think every scientist is obligated is morally obligated to carry a list of things that would tell them that they were wrong if they saw it so I do maintain such a list one thing for example if creatures stepped off the spaceship and were recognizably human spoken earth language were we to find biblical texts encoded into a genome somewhere where there was no way somebody could have introduced it as a prank those kinds of things would tell me I was wrong and I would be actually I'd be thrilled to accept that I was wrong because that would mean that the situation might not be as dire as I think it so there's that but I'm not I'm not claiming that religion is a fiction and I think this is part of the problem this is the problem I have with the new atheist is that by caricature and religion as a fiction they prevent us from having the dialogue we have to have about what its strengths are likely to be and what its weaknesses are and because I know that that conversation is not going to be an easy one I would like us to get there quickly I would like us to get there with generosity in our hearts so that we can get to the other side of it and get to work just be interested in the some of those examples Brett gave of what might persuade him that there's a truth objective truth in the god clay yes I think for me I like that quote from Einstein you know the eternal mystery of the world is its expert ability you know that these are meta questions that they are really big questions about why our world works in certain ways why we asked certain questions and at him for me the reason why I believe in God's not so much in the fine details in fact I understand back and there is a bigger picture which helps me to explain why we can explain and so that that's what I would look like white but obviously for breath I take a picture is the evolutionary paradigm why for you is that not satisfactorily that is that if I would like that is is a picture but I remember of you kind of using witness very famous essay they're unreasonable effective methods and says look why does mathematics work so well here here here here that was module there has to be some bigger picture explains that mystery that that's something that's helpful but I mean you know I'm very very clear we have if you like pictures or narratives help us understand this aspect of life of that aspect of life they're all to be welcomed so she olds like Christian Smith are saying we need multiple narratives to make sense of our world and the evolutionary narrative helps us I'm sure in many ways but we need other narratives for other purposes and so for me the question is how do we weave these narratives together and that that's that to me is a very important question to explore I agree with you that we have to weave these narratives together and in fact the evolutionary explanation is you could attempt to explain everything in terms of particle interactions right it's all made of particles they interact by rules we sort of understand we could just come at it that way it's gonna be a long time before you figure out how a brain thinks of thought by coming at it as particles though you've got to step up to a higher level of emergence before you can make any progress so we we do have to integrate it but there is a principle that I think we have to adhere to and this one is going to be a problem especially between religions and materialist worldviews and between religions themselves which is all true stories must reconcile everything exists together in the universe if you have two stories that don't reconcile there's something wrong with at least one of them so I'm up for seeing the narratives reconciled and you know leaning on this one because it's more helpful than some other one but if they don't reconcile in the end that's a problem and you're right but let me give you an example which I think complexify this um we've just been at mine george stephenson that way up there and you know this is this is back in the Victorian age if we'd asked George Stephenson when did the universe begin and being a gentleman scientist who said well it's always been yeah because that's the scientific consensus of our day and I say you know I don't think that anymore and so so your point you make is a good one now just may not reconcile but what's of the narrative that we have is historically conditioned and a later generation realize that's wrong just one one of these awkward questions which I think I mean it doesn't say we give this up I just says we've got to read be very alert to provisionality in some of these narratives so somehow you I call it the agnostic box there are certain things that you have to place in the agnostic box so that you can go backwards if you over instantiate your belief such that you believe that it is a fact and it is therefore the equivalent of sacred then you become condemned to whatever errors in your model existed so you have to be able to go backwards in case you've got it wrong no it's been a fantastic conversation can we give a round of applause to Erica for more debates updates and bonus content sign up at the big conversation dot show

Channel: Unbelievable?

Views: 36,055

Rating: 4.8666668 out of 5

Keywords: unbelievable, justin brierley, premier christian radio, christianity, atheism, philosophy, faith, theology, Alister McGrath, Bret Weinstein, apologetics, Jesus, evolution, science, richard dawkins

Id: Bbw1xjxfL38

Length: 44min 51sec (2691 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 13 2019