God: Fact or Fiction? John Lennox explores at UNC

welcome to the Veritas forum engaging University students and faculty in discussions about life's hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ to all of life well ladies and gentlemen thank you for that warm welcome I understand I have no stand on the sacred ground of the Tar Heels it is indeed a pleasure and an honor to be invited to this famous and distinguished University and I have enjoyed enormous lees over the past years getting to know many students and professors in North America and you encouraged me to see so many of you come to hear a talk on the question god fact or fiction and I presume you mean by the title the question as to whether there's any object of reality to God or whether the concept of God is just as was suggested in the film a construct of our human minds and I suppose that's probably the best place to start with Sigmund Freud who suggested that that God the idea of God is a wish fulfillment in order to compensate us for the miseries of this life pie-in-the-sky when you die it's very interesting when you analyze that kind of argument because it actually works both ways and there is a book called eine kleine ago she stood this crest in a brief history of the great one written by Germany's most distinguished psychiatrist manfred lutz and in that he says if there is no God then of course Freud gives you a brilliant argument why religion and God are a wish fulfillment if there is no god but then he goes on to point out that if there is a God Freud will give you a equally convincing argument why atheism is a wish fulfillment the desire not to meet God as me watch s worth me watch the Nobel prize-winning pol Prize winner for literature pointed out that atheism for him was the opium of the people satisfying the desire never had to have to face God and to give a count for our lives so Manfred lutz says the argument is equal in both directions at that level and that psychiatry neither Freud nor young nor Frankel can help you with the question whether there is a God or not and so what Richard Dawkins wrote the book The God Delusion I think it's important to realize that that we've got to look at the evidence and what I want to do is to present to you some of the evidence that has helped me on my pathway indeed you may regard me as a prize candidate for delusion because I come from northern island which hasn't always the best reputation for its brand of Christianity and when I arrived at Cambridge somewhere in the middle of last century one of the first students I met started up a little conversation with me and he said he said tell me do you believe in God and he said oh sorry that's the last question I should have asked you all you Irish believe in God and you fight about it now I'd heard that before but it struck me my parents were believers in God so were their parents so obviously it's something to do with Irish genetics and the Irish psyche so of course I believed in God so what I decided to do in that day many many years ago was to get to know people who did not share my worldview and I've been doing it ever since as a result of that quest that interest in truth I learned German I spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe during the Cold War mixing with people that had been system that exposed to atheism in their schools in universities and then having been a Russian translator most of my life with the Wall fell I went to Russia to Siberia on a two-way ticket buyed you but I got to Siberia and was involved in discussions in the Academy of Sciences with people who for 75 years had known nothing but the atheistic interpretation of the universe I did that ladies and gentlemen because I'm interested in truth the motto of your university is looks at libertas light and freedom and I was very fortunate when I was young in that my parents gave me light but they gave me something very important they gave me freedom to think it is an unusual thing to come as I do from a sectarian country and have parents your Christian without being sectarian it's even more unusual to have parents that allow you to think and stimulate your imagination and so those two words looks and libertas are very important to be indeed I go to University of which you may have heard somewhere away there in England and its motto is Dominus iluminage Co may r the Lord is my light now it's very interesting this you see because both of our mottos are very similar they come actually from the Christian tradition so the people that find it your University and the people that find it my university did not see any conflict between believing in God and being involved at the highest and deepest level in intellectual activity history is enormous ly important and of course as a scientist I find it highly ironic 'el that people picked God against science so much in the contemporary world because one of the first arguments I want advanced tonight is this that modern science as we know it arose in a Christian dena monotheistic context Merton or whiteheads thesis as it's known best stated in the form in which CS Lewis put it men became scientific why because they expected Lord nature why because they believed in a law giver and it is not an accident that Galileo and Newton and Kepler and Clark Maxwell and so on were all believers in God ladies and gentlemen we forget very easily that far from belief in God hindering science it was the very motor that drove it so the negative of that is important because there's Richard Dawkins said to me once in a debate that isn't a big deal because everybody believed in God in those days and so on science is going to rise at all that it's likely to arise in that kind of background but that stopped quite the whole story because Joseph Needham who was a chemist a brilliant chemist at Oxford and a psychologist an expert in China and sides-- wrote the definitive history of technology and science in China he was a Marxist that he tried for many years to fit the lack of rise of modern science in China there technology that printing that fireworks and all sorts of things but the notion of science is an abstract study mathematics investigating the universe didn't happen and he came to the following conclusion he ended up not being able to fit it into Marxist principles and he said the reason science did not rise in China in the way it did in the West is the fact that that Chinese lacked the unifying concept of a creator so far from being embarrassed by being a Christian believing that God is real and not a fiction and a scientist it's exactly the other way round of my case because it is the Christian faith that arguably gave me my subject now of course you will object to that and say but that doesn't really go to the question whether science has made Christianity obsolete surely science is the source or of all the really big answers look at the success say of the human genome project and so on well I'm passionate about science and science has given us many important answers to the questions that science can answer but I don't think you at this university believe that science answers every question otherwise you'd have to shut off your faculties history would go economics would go philosophy would go literature would go and I don't think you want that but it's important to realize that the success of science is partly because of the grid of its questions the mesh of the net that it applies to catch the kind of knowledge that it it shows gains science doesn't answer questions of ethics for instance Einstein once said you can speak about the ethical foundations of science but you cannot speak about the scientific foundations of ethics nor does science deal with the question of meaning and that's why some people who put all their money on science are confused about the meaning of life because science doesn't really go there indeed research recent research and psychiatry is absolutely fascinating I listened in London just recently - in McGilchrist describing the results of a lifetime's work on the two halves of the brain and his analysis goes like this that it's being picked up by philosophers all around the world at the moment you probably know the rudiments of it already the left side of the brain is analytical it's a scientific side it's reductionistic it analyzes it measures it kinds but there's a right-hand side to the brain and the right-hand side of the brain integrates it wants to see the big picture it's interested in persons rather than things and the good Chris faces is this he says since the Enlightenment we focused on the left side of the brain but because we've got a right side to our brain we've got utterly confused because the left side with its science ethic analysis is not giving us either transcendence or meaning now I find that fascinated because that's something that's actually flowing out of science and he's arguing as he takes us at a fascinating journey through the history of Western philosophy he's arguing that we need to get back to those bigger pictures the meta-narratives the worldviews that give meaning that integrate and all of us in this room tonight and did they overflow we all have a worldview we got our answers not many completely formed our answers to the big questions of life what is ultimate reality what happens after death what is the meaning of life what is the purpose of life and so on we've all got a worldview and it's important as we enter into this question god factor fiction that we put it within a big picture so that we can see where we're all coming from and it's simple really in a way you go back to the ancient Greeks you'll find as they looked at one of the fundamental worldview questions and it says what is ultimate reality and some people took the view that this universe is ultimate reality now they just changed universe to multiverse it is ultimate reality mass energy is all essentially that exists now see what follows from that if you believe that you are a materialist or a naturalist and therefore your notion of what it means to explain things is bottom-up because mass energy at all that exists so you have to explain everything the universe you your consciousness your life and you bottom-up now that worldview was popularized by Democritus and leucippus and comes up to us through the centuries but at the same time there was another worldview spy's by socrates my intellectual hero Plato and Aristotle and so on and they said no mass energy isn't all that exists there's something more there's transcendence there are the gods or there is God and so in the contemporary academy we've got these two worldviews that collide together they are of course diametrically opposed now the interesting thing is this when we ask the question God factor fiction what we're really asking is this if you attack that question what tools have you got to answer the questions and one of our tools is of course science and philosophy and our experience and what complicates the whole process these days is the fact that people like Stephen Hawking and Lorentz Christ more recently and Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens they tend to present to us a choice between science and God now when you think about that for a moment that raises in my mind two different things firstly it shows they're confused about God what do I mean by that well when you analyze what many of these people mean by God it's not what I mean by God or what most people mean by God they mean a God of the gaps that God is a fiction invented to fill gaps that science or other intellectual activity has not yet filled so as as knowledge increases God disappears if you believe in a God of the gaps by definition you have to choose between God and science because the more God the less science the more science the less God the God of the gaps philosophy is summed up in these words I can't explain it therefore God did it now that he's not the view of any of the three great monotheistic religions certainly not of the Christian faith because I believe that God is not a God of the gaps he's a God of the whole show he's the God of the bits we understand and he's the God of the bits we don't understand we can illustrate that historically when uten discovered his law of gravitation he didn't say look I've got a law I don't need God no he didn't he wrote the most brilliant book in the history of science principia mathematica arguing hoping that an intelligent person would see that it would lead them to believe in an intelligent God in other words the more he understood of the universe out there the more he admired the genius of the God that had done it that way and a moment's thought shows you that life is like that the more you understand about art the more you can see the genius of a Rembrandt or a Picasso the more you understand about engineering the more you can admire the genius of her roles or a ricer a Whittle it's not the other way round so this idea of pitching God against science comes from a totally inadequate view of God but it comes from somewhere else and it's this choose it between God and science is like choosing between Frank Whittle and science as an explanation for the jet engine you'd never dream of doing that because in order to explain a jet engine you need several things you need a scientific explanation in terms of law of turbojet compare the turbojet generation and also of mechanical engineering that's the science explanation but you also need an agent explanation in terms of the man who designed the jet engine you need both now it's as silly to say that because we've got scientific explanations of bits of the universe that rules out God as a fiction it's a silly to say AHA I understand how afford motorcar works I think Henry Ford is a fiction it's exactly the same argument and yet so many people fall for it this business of explanation is something that's worth doing a little bit of research into ladies and gentlemen because there's another thing I want to say do you think that when we get a law of gravity we know what gravity is we don't you know Vidkun Stein the famous philosopher pointed out the greatest deception of modernism is to think that the laws of nature are explanations Newton was clever enough see that his law of gravity didn't explain what gravity was nobody knows what it is and if you don't believe me read richard fineman one of the most distinguished American Nobel winning physicists that ever existed you see even science itself is limited what does it mean to explain the point I'm making is that God is not a fiction invented to explain where science cannot explain God is the one who created the universe and is the reason why science itself can be done and we've come to that in a little while so I want to make clear also that the big issue facing us is not science versus religion that ought to be clear to you I mentioned the human genome project a moment ago its first director was Jim Watson who won the Nobel Prize at second director was Francis Collins now the director of the National Institute of Health Watson's an atheist Collins is a Christian I've met both of them and discussed this with them what divides them is not their science they're both top level scientists what divides them is their worldview one is an atheist and the other is a theistic Wriston so what I'd like to get across tonight is this when we're facing the question on the table we're really asking what is the evidence for one worldview or the other now there's so much argument today from the side of the new atheists and as you heard of the introduction I've debated most of them and it's been a very interesting experience and the result of those debates has been that I concentrate as I've just done on some of the arguments that I think are very important in clearing the fog away so that we can see what it is we are really talking about now the next question is this how do we decide whether God is a fiction or not well the first thing to do is to realize that it is a matter of evidence well some people say is it really I thought science was facts and you religious people you believe in faith well that is totally wrong you see I wouldn't stand here for a moment ladies and gentlemen if I did not believe that there was evidence for my faith but because there has been a redefinition of faith in the last 10 years I better explain to you what is going on if you look up Webster's dictionary as distinct from the Oxford English Dictionary you'll find a new entry under faith faith non-believing where there's new evidence the oxford english dictionary hasn't got there yet but many people in england have got there that is not the definition of faith faith fides in Latin means trust belief and always has the idea of raising the question what is the evidence on which your trust rests if I ask you where the Tarheels go to win all their games as season I might then ask you what's the evidence of it and I think you'd be very quick to give me an awful lot wouldn't you of course you would because all if you understand what evidence-based trust means every one of us do the late the the financial crisis proves it we thought we could trust the bankers or at least some of them and they let us down on the whole market froze because there wasn't as you economists know and of grounds for trust so the evidence had to be built up there's not a person in the West these days that doesn't know what evidence-based Trust beans but unfortunately the New Atheists led by Richard Dawkins have come along and they've said look faith is a religious word and it means believing where there's no evidence so if you meet somebody like me faster Lennox he's a man of faith that's not a compliment that's an insult it means Lennox believes where there's no evidence so there's no point in talking to him now I cannot speak for other faiths tonight they must rightly speak for themselves but it must be something that we emphasize that the Christian faith is evidence-based that is seen in many places of the New Testament but one in particular there are four Gospels the fourth one the Gospel of John ends with these words many other things Jesus did in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book but these are written in order that you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah the son of God and that believing you might have life in his name many things he did not written these are written in order that you might believe that is that faith is a commitment based on evidence the next step that's very important is to realize that faith is an essential ingredient in science Albert Einstein said that I cannot imagine a scientist without that faith what faith well not faith in God but faith in the rational intelligibility of the universe you see I'm a scientist I believe I have faith I have confidence in the fact that science can be done that's part of my credo but what justifies that faith I mean is it not astonishing that a mathematician thinking with her head in here can come up with equations that describe the universe itthere that prompted eugene wigner who won the nobel prize for physics to say that bat maddox is unreasonably effective how does it work why do scientists trust in the rational intelligibility of the universe now this is something that has been put under quite a bit of scrutiny in recent days because you know Charles Darwin wrote very many interesting things but one of them was this with me the horrid dart always arises whether the convictions of man's mind which has been developed from the mind of lower animals are of any value or at all trustworthy would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind if there are any convictions in such a mind our topic is God fact or fiction but let's have a look is science fact or fiction when you say what do you mean well let me think it right with you I am a scientist who trust my mind to access the universe I thought on what basis well when I talk to my atheist friends in Oxford and I have many of them and I talk to them all the time I asked them tell me what is the mind well they say the mind is the brain they are reductionist and what's the brain well the brain is the end product of a mindless unguided process a natural process that gets us from primitive chemicals to consciousness so I say that's very interesting why do you trust it then this is Darwin's diet you see if you go to your desk tomorrow morning and you have a look at your computer and you knew it was the end product of a mindless unguided process would you use it of course you wouldn't you wouldn't trust it for a moment now this is what I'm saying ladies and gentlemen is science fact or fiction if it is generated by an instrument that is the end product of a mindless unguided process that sounds pretty like a big fiction to me except we wouldn't know what fiction or any words meant if that were true because rationality dissolves as is increasingly seen read for instance the book by Thomas Nagel that's just come out last week and Thomas Nagel is a leading American philosopher and an atheist it's called mind and cosmos and he's pointing out what has been pointed out over several years that there's a massive problem with the naturalistic interpretation of the universe because it reduces thought to the firing of synapses it's like you're saying this painting is nothing but molecules of paint and canvas that's the end of meaning so the title becomes a very interesting one we started with God factor fiction but now I'm saying this if you remove God you end up with science being a fiction one of Germany's leading philosophers is a Roberts Peyman and he said if you exit God you exit any concept of access to truth even via science so you see what I'm doing is what I did at the very beginning with the Freud argument I'm applying it in two directions now from where I sit as a Christian the rational intelligibility of the universe fits beautifully with what Christianity teaches because what it teaches is that the very same God is responsible for the universe out there as is ultimately responsible for the human mind in here that at least has the benefit of making some sense so we move on from there because many questions now flood in and people say but just a minute just a minute all this talk about science and God is ok but you know you Christians have another thing that you claim to believe in you claim to believe in Revelation you believe in holy books and surley there's an example if ever there was one of faith being opposed to rationality reason and science no it isn't not at all I do I confess to you without any embarrassment I do believe that the scripture of the Bible is a revelation from God but then it seems to me that that is fits with my other experience if there is a God ladies and gentlemen he's hardly likely to be less than we are he's likely to be a great deal more than we are and if there is a God who's a personal God then the notion that he has revealed himself is a notion that lies very readily to hand and you will be aware that the central claim of Christianity is that God became human he revealed himself in human form but revelation let's start at this level revelation is not opposed to reason if you want to get to know me and I remain silent you'll never get to know me even if you put me under a scanning tunneling microscope and a touch electroencephalographic equipment to my brain you'll never get to know me but you will get to know me if I reveal myself to you that is if I start speaking now tell me when I start speaking to reveal myself to you do you switch your brain off of course not you need your brain your mind to understand what I'm saying so what I clean ladies and gentlemen is this that there are different sources of information for us there is nature we study it with great fascination there is literature there is art there is music but there's also revelation at least something that claims to be revelation we use your mind on we use our minds on all of them I haven't yet met anybody that can read the Bible without using a mind so it is absurd to suggest that revelation and reason are opposed but I know because I can hear it what will come into this immediately it's the notion but look revelation means that there's a super nature and surely we realize have you been asleep for the last three centuries don't you realize that David Kuhn the Scottish enlightenment philosopher has proved that miracles are impossible so it's stupid talking to us in this distinguished University about the supernatural miracles who do you think we are well that's what I got in the Charlie Rose show two or three weeks ago you've probably heard of Charlie Rose have you well I was a flown over to New York to meet Richard Dawkins on the Charlie Rose show and Richard Dawkins started this a little discussion that lasted a whole hour by saying this he said of course I've met John Lennox and John Lennox believe it or not he actually believes that Jesus walked on water Wow in other words to say that he's an absolute idiot and should not be a professor at Oxford my response was Richard I said if Jesus was who he claimed to be the Word of God incarnate the one that created the universe and therefore invented water walking on it isn't a big deal your problem is this you have an a priori rejection of the supernatural that's what we need to talk about we don't start with the miracles of Jesus because if you reject the supernatural our priority of course you reject them and think I'm idiotic but there are in principle questions to ask before we get that far so I proceeded and it's interesting because this happened with Christopher Hitchens at one of my debates he brought up David Hume David him says miracles are violations of the laws of nature and therefore since we know the laws of nature people in the biblical times were crude and pre-scientific they could believe in miracles that is impossible to us well both wrong first of all why was it that when Jesus rose from the dead it was recognized as America because people knew the law that dead bodies they dead they weren't that primitive why was it the Joseph when Mary told him she was pregnant didn't believe her story about the Holy Spirit was that because he didn't know where babies come from daughters because he knew where they came from do you see the people then you those laws of nature because think about it for a second if you don't know the regularities you couldn't recognize something that appears to be an exception could you so that's the first question doubt but the second one is much more serious all miracles violations of the laws of nature I'm staying in a hotel tonight I'll not name it but I'm staying in hotel now imagine tonight I put a hundred dollars in the drawer by my bed and tomorrow night I put another hundred dollars so the 100 plus 100 is 200 even in Chapel Hill yes you're not you're not totally postmodern you believe in some truth okay so a hundred plus 100 equals 200 so I stay another night I go into the drawer and I find $50 so what do I say do I say a the laws of arithmetic have been broken or do I say B the laws of North Carolina have been broken well you know the answer don't you but it's not very interesting how do you know the laws of North Carolina haven't Roman how do you know a thief has put his hand in you know it because you know the laws of arithmetic that's why you laughed if somebody was sitting here didn't know arithmetic that it said well I wonder profounder it's 200 yesterday and today it's 50 well that's very interesting so what now let's look at that a bit more carefully what are these laws they're descriptions of what normally happens the laws of Newton will describe how a snooker ball moves than a table they won't cause it to move do you know the laws of Newton never caused a snooker ball to move in the whole history of the universe laws are not causes their descriptions of what normally happens now God who invented the universe with its regularities of course can feed a new event in the laws take over so when God encoded himself into humanity in Jesus Christ at that conception nine months later according to what you learn in med school here nine months later a baby was born the laws took over the miracle occurred at the beginning but you see and this is so important miracles don't violate any laws the laws describe what normally happens but the God that invented the universe and created its regularities can fade a new event in just as much as Newton's laws will describe the billiard ball going across the table but if I lead over the table and pick the ball up as it goes across I'm not breaking Newton's laws because I am entering into that system which isn't closed with a new energy do you see what's going on here and God does exactly the same thing you see Christians are not claiming that Christ rose from the dead by some natural process going on in the grave five minutes before he rose that would be breaking the laws the law that dead bodies remain dead what they are claiming is that God injected his power and raised him from the dead as powerful evidence that he is who he claimed to be so it seems to me that arguing that miracles violate the laws of nature is just false and incidentally one of the greatest supporters of David Hume was the late Anthony flew he in fact was the world's most famous atheist before Richard Dawkins and not long before he died I had opportunity to spend a couple of hours chatting to him and I took the liberty of asking him about his books on Hume and he said I was wrong about you my books would all have to be rewritten because Anthony flew came to believe in God he became a deist not a Christian he came to believe in God and the interesting thing is the springboard of his belief was the nature of the complexity of human DNA now this is very interesting he said to me explicitly but it's written elsewhere that he was simply wrong in thinking that Hume had actually given the final solution to the problem of miracles he had done no such thing this universe ladies and gentlemen according to the materialist is a closed system I think the evidence goes to show it's an open system and that there is a God who has left his fingerprints within space and time now often when I talk about this kind of thing all kinds of objections come and one of them is look isn't there an aspect of your faith that is well it's pretty weak stuff you know you talk about God being 3 and 1 and you talk about there being a creator but look if you're going to say that God created the universe will you go to logically ask who created the creator that question appeared twice of the board I decided none Richard Dawkins centers his whole book The God Delusion around that question so let's have a look at it for a minute because I find in universities around the world it creates a problem the first thing is the in comprehensibility of christianity and the second who created the creator but it's easier for me to look at them the other way round so that take the who created the creator first I hope it's not too late at night for logic I love logic and hope you love logic so who or what created X what are those words mean and what are they presuppose what created X presupposes that X was created yes this is what philosophers call a complex question because in the asking of the question there's a closing down on the possible answers often to make the real answer look absurd because you don't realize that the question limits the answer who created God assumes God's created now you'll have noticed that what the title of Richard Dawkins book is not it's not the created God's delusion because we don't need him to tell us that created gods are a delusion we usually call them idols you see he is assuming that God is created but what of God isn't created as Judaism Christianity and Islam all very strongly affirm that God is eternal the question bypasses it completely but there's a sting as I pointed out to Dawkins I said you think it's a valid question about my god of course it isn't because the God revealed in Scripture is eternal in the beginning the word or the word was God in the beginning was the word the Word was God that his already was he is eternal all things came to be through him and at that point John is pointing out to the great Greek question are there eternal things or did everything come to exist and the claim of John is this God is eternal he never came to be the rest of the universe came to be okay so I said to Richard let's turn the question round you believed the universe created you you also believed this is a valid question so let me put it to you who created your Creator I'm still waiting for the answer you see it works both ways so this question that he regards as a knock down question that ends God completely is no such thing the second one was about the in comprehensibility of God the idea of Father Son and Holy Spirit now I can't give you a lecture that I'll tell you a story I once addressed a room as full as this of physicists all engaged in research on atomic weapons and atomic physics and after I'd finished a professor from Oxford came up to me he said well he said dr. Lennox that was a very interesting talk you know about science and religion but I detect that you're a Christian he was pretty sharp you see um I detect you're a Christian and he said I come off it I mean to say Christianity's absurd all this wonderful philosophy recognizing God in the design of the universe I can say there's something about but I mean to say I'm surprised at you freely because you see aren't you obliged to believe that Jesus is both human and God at the same time I said absolutely he said can you explain that to me and I said well why not but I said before I do let me ask you something simpler he said that's fine that's fair I've asked you a question you asked me one so I said two what is consciousness he said I don't know Oh II said that's alright let's try something easier what is energy well we can measure it and we can use it I said what is it a longer pause I don't know oh sure that's very obviously tell me do you believe in consciousness yes he said I do and you believe in energy yes he said I do and you don't know what either of them are should I write you off as a physicist he said please don't but I said you were you were about to write me off as an intellectual because I couldn't explain to you how Jesus is simultaneously God and man I said look we don't even know what light is graphic energy is we realize that light sometimes looks like particles sometimes looked like waves we got models to cope with it but I said why is it you believe in these things when you don't know what they are being a kind Irishman I helped him out of it and I said I think you believe in them because of the explanatory power of the concepts he said that's right well I said that's exactly why I believe that Jesus's book called it human because it's the only explanation that makes sense of the data there is mystery but ladies and gentlemen the mystery is spread there is mystery in my Christian faith marvelous mystery and there's mystery in science and I'm trying to explore both we misson come off with the idea that the only incomprehensible things are in say the Christian faith if there is a God he's going to be a lot more complex than we might imagine toy cars aren't complex but they're boring you'd rather have a real Porsche a real NASCAR and that's much more complicated isn't it Oh says Richard Dodds but that's the next problem is he you Christians are hopeless because you bring in God as an explanation okay let's just talk about that matter of complexity isn't your God absolutely useless as an explanation because he's more complex than the thing you're explaining that's no explanation because explanation by definition runs from the simple to the complex does it so Richard Dawkins put that to me in a debate and I said to my said well that's a very interesting objection Richard you know I read a book not long ago called The God Delusion and it's about 400 pages now that's pretty complex so I thought I would ask myself the question what its origin was and then I discovered to my amazement that its origin was in a much more complex mind of Richard Dawkins so I completely dismissed that because it was no explanation because the mind of Richard Dawkins is more complex than the thing I'm trying to explain it's rather foolish argument isn't it and ladies and gentlemen where do we get the idea from that explanation always goes from the simple to the complex it's wonderful when we can explain complex things in terms of simple but there's one area where we never do it and that one area is in the field of semiotics and language the moment you saw the words is God real come up there you recognize them didn't you now let me tell you a little story to explain this we have lovely dinners in my college I'm sorry I can't invite you to one of them but there we are and one night I was having dinner with a biochemist brilliant biochemist and when he discovered I was a mathematician he was really upset and when he discovered further that I was interested in these big questions he was even more upset and he said we're going to a rotten evening because I'm an atheist I'm a reductionist and I'm not interested and we're going to have a horrible time which is not the best way to start a dinner so I've told this story many times because I find it illustrates this best of all so forgive me if you've heard it before so I said you're reductionist I take it you're an ontological reductionist you believe everything can be reduced to physics and chemistry said that's right so I picked up the menu from the table I said let's do an experiment he said what here I said yes let's have a look at this and it said roast are away as a chicken so he said what's the problem well I said you're most everything can be explained in terms of physics and chemistry said that's right so I said explained to me the semiotic of the letters ro AST the way they carry meaning in terms of the physics and chemistry of the paper in ink and his wife was sitting beside him and rather too loudly she said get out of that if you can but he didn't try his answer was stunning he said this John for 40 years I've gone into my laboratory thinking this could be done and many brilliant people still think it can be done there isn't you but he says it can't be done and I said half a minute I started to play devil's advocate physics and chemistry have only been going for five hundred years or so oh no he said they can't be done it needs the input of an intelligence and it's not an intelligence of the gaps either it's that the nature of the thing being studied demands an intelligent input and he was amazed that I could come up with such an idea he said where did you get that idea I said I confess I got it from a Nobel Prize winner oh he said that's a relief but this is very important ladies and gentlemen reductionism of the methodological kind and indeed an ontological kind is very important in the Natural Sciences but there's one area massive area where it doesn't work and that's where you've got semiotic Sande meaning you in fare upwards the moment you see a word you infer upwards to an intelligence no matter how many and how automatic and how pre-programmed are the processes that get that word before your eyes it only takes five letters of roast chicken now here's the rub you and I have lived to see the discovery of the longest word in existence it's the human genome 3.5 billion letters in exactly the right order in a four-letter chemical alphabet very same people I discover that immediately in fair intelligence from four or five letters of their own name or a word can look at the human genome and say when you asked of its origin chance and necessity what chance in the laws of nature something very strange is going on now I haven't time to argue with you why I think theoretical computer science supports my conclusion that you do not get word meaningful word by unguided natural processes in other words ladies and gentlemen it's not simply the miracles of Jesus that are evidence of the supernatural though they are and are very important it starts much earlier on as I said to Richard Dawkins your very rationality is evidence of the supernatural because if you provide a causal reason cause an effect for your rationality you empty it of meaning on the same basis that many people say to me you say that because you're an irishman that empty sort of meaning as you know you give a causal explanation you remove the meaning now I've chose with this and then we face the questions two worldviews that we face in Chapel Hill in Oxford and around the world one starts with mass energy and it ends up with consciousness and the human mind being derivative the other starts in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God the same was in the beginning with God all things came to be through him that is word is primary information is primary God is primary and mass-energy are derivative and your mind and mine are derivative so there are the two possibilities the first view regards God as a fiction because God is the end product of this series the you versus invented us and we have invented God the other view which starts with the word is that God invented the universe and he is the ultimate reality and all I can say ladies and gentlemen it is both as a scientist and a Christian that it's the word explanation makes infinitely more sense to me thank you very much okay if God is real why is there suffering in the world the second is how why do people use something as personal as religion to hurt others and finally aren't all religions equal well ladies and gentlemen what we're going to do I have noted these questions but he's removed them so I don't know what they are but before I look at them I want to get some idea of the questions you've got now this is a Q&A and you will rapidly discover my limitations because in the Q&A by definition you can only say a little bit of how you would approach a given question so what I would ask you to do is this I find it audiences that everybody is interested in other people's questions and so keep your questions short and on the topic I'm not here to answer questions about health care or anything else like that I'm here to try to address this topic so what I'm going to invite you to do is come up the microphone state your question I'm going to write down a number of questions alternately from the microphone taken with those three and then we'll see where we go from there so whoever has got a question just line up here and state your question briefly and I will write it down just remember the time you take for your question is time take it away from somebody else okay off we go don't all rush at once okay okay just start and slowly and clearly so as we all hear you okay I read a book about the god part of the brain stating the part of the mind he's dedicated to religion some people have a stronger part than others and an example of this would be somebody who is God believing Christian Phil and then after that was unable to believe would be response to that thank you okay over there um many theists believe that their sense of morality is derived from their religion and I've also I've also heard that you can't take the Bible literally so you have to pick and choose which part you take as your sense of right and wrong and my question is how do you do that like on what basis do you do that if the basis is subjective then that means you'd have to derive your sense of right and wrong from somewhere other than the Bible which means that the Bible really isn't your sense isn't really where you derive your sense of morality okay thank you right do you believe in a young or a old earth have you all understood the question I believe at a younger Old Earth not quite sure what that's got to do with the topic but I put it down next yes what do you say to many scholars who believe that certain Christian doctrines such as bodily resurrection and the Last Judgement were taken more or less wholesale from other religions like Osorio Astron ISM this relates back to the new old hang on a minute o to your comment about the new earth Old Earth question it was the same one but I guess point out like how at least I took is on topic you were talking about how science religion don't have to be diametrically opposed but I was wondering if you do take the new and Old Testament as literal do you believe that the earth is approximately six thousand years old and if so how do you reconcile that with all the evidence against that mm-hmm next why Christianity okay well that was short anything else how do you rationalize evolution within the context of your faith I do I Russian Eliza do you think I do okay this yes this one has to do with your field of mathematics as created beans in the likeness of God giving the ability to create also is mathematics just observable or do we have the opportunity to create new mathematics thank you well that will have to do ladies and gentlemen thank you very much how very interesting so we'll take the last one first since I'm a mathematician it's a very interesting question people are puzzled about it for centuries of course is mathematics discovered or is it created and probably because I'm an Irishman I think both actually because God himself has clearly the designer of the regularities in the universe we really are discovering something out there you'll notice that very few scientists are postmodern in their science they may be postmodern in the morality but they're not postmodern in their science they believe mostly in a kind of critical realism we're approximating to the truth but never getting quite to it and staggering things have been found out the Higgs boson and all the elementary particles and all of that kind of stuff seems to be out there so we're discovering things but human beings are made in the image of God and God invented a universe and so do we some of the most exciting bits of literature are human inventions indeed a lot of literature's like that and I had the good fortune when I was at Cambridge that the mathematics Institute was just across the road from the Institute of English language and there was a man called CS Lewis still lecturing there so I sneaked out where the mathematics got boring and went to listen to Lewis and I'm very thankful for that because he add you cated my imagination and I'm sure there are many people here interested in creative writing and the medians on this is a marvelous gift of God to be able to create now mathematics is interesting because some of it is directly geared to let find the mathematics that gears into the what we call the real world but people like me actually work in two kinds of worlds because we are trying to work out the consequences the theoretical consequences of a set of axioms whether or not they have any relevance in the real world so it is in a way highly creative but it has to be logically coherent and of course that's where it differs greatly from imaginative literature so I think one of the wonderful things indeed I would regard it as an evidence of God the existence is the fact that we can do science we can do arts we can do literature and that is one of the most exciting things and motivating things I find God is not dull and boring you know he invented all the colors and we find it very difficult to invent new ones so that'll have to be enough for that question now the god part of the brain dedicated to religion now this comes up again and again but it seems to me and I haven't recently investigated that that's dying a bit of a death because it is seen that many parts of the brain the brains interconnections are bewildering in their complexity and this notion that one bit of the brain deals with one thing is just not true in fact what I said to you at the beginning of my lecture needs serious qualification which I didn't give it and that is although there are differences between the left hand or the right hand side of the brain both sides of the brain can do almost anything and so this notion of identifying a god part with that particular part is a very questionable activity but the question who went on a bit and said that when parts of some people's brain get damaged their behavior can change and indeed their beliefs can change that is absolutely true sometimes sadly old people who've lived virtually blameless lives something happens the brain dries out or loses too many neurons and they start to behave like children now we need to be very careful here and this is where I think the Christian faith is utterly glorious some people might look at those old people say what a pity there used to be such nice people but now they seem to have lost everything be careful it just could be that there is damage physically affecting their neurophysiology you know if you give me a brand new Cadillac to drive and watch me going along the road you see who we must be a very good driver whereas I see you in your 50 year old VW Beetle and it's careering around across the road and I say rotten driver it may not be you it may be the car and one of the marvelous doctrines of Christianity is this that if we trust Christ and build up our character and our beliefs and our trust in him he promises not to lose it because death will occur anyway and will destroy us but before we get to death physically that is we may exhibit all kinds of bizarre trends that would lead other people to think gosh that was a terrific Christian or that was a tremendous atheist and they lost their faith in both directions but it may not be so easy it may simply be that now the degeneration of the body is causing neural physiological changes that are causing mental changes of course atheism has no hope for such people because by definition death is the end but the wonderful thing about the Christian faith is as Jesus said when he saw a brother and sister in a graveyard centuries ago and the sister was weeping and he said to her your brother will rise again you had a relationship that was special to you that will go on into the world to come atheism is nothing like that to offer us ladies and gentlemen and that brings me neatly to the question about the resurrection was it taken from other religions no and you can prove that from the Old Testament there are myths about gods and rising again but the special thing about resurrection is that's what it is in Greek and our stassi's standing up again when Paul the Christian apostle went to Athens he was invited to speak to the Philosopher's Court the areopagus and they listened to him very politely until he started talking about Jesus of the resurrection and a ripple of laughter went round the court which proves that they didn't accept resurrection what they did accept at least the platanus was survival of the soul but that laughter is evidence that what Paul was preaching was something that none of them believed was that a body put at the grave literally rose again now saying there are analogies between God's dying and rising and Christ rising from the dead doesn't at all affect the point that I come to next and that is I believe in the resurrection because I think there's historical evidence for it I don't see any historical evidence for those other claims which are largely and admittedly part of mythology but the resurrection of course is the central evidence for the deity of Christ now how do i rationalize evolution within my faith do I believe at a young or old earth is the Bible literal now we need to deal with some very simple things first ladies and gentlemen no one takes the Bible literally can I prove that to you jesus said I am the door what was he made of stone metal plastic that's a metaphor you see the word literal is something we need to investigate we use it without thinking people constantly ask me do you take the Bible literally I say what exactly do you mean in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth that's talking about the literal earth base level isn't it and of course we take the way we read language is first of all to take it at face value but the face value may not be literalistic let me explain that to you jesus said I am the door how do you know he's not a door made of steel actually it's because you know a better science you know something about the real world you know that's a metaphor but watch it that doesn't mean it isn't real and it doesn't mean it isn't literal Jesus is a real door literal if you like but of the next level up that is he is a real doorway into a real experience of God I'd stake my life on that do you see the point I'm making that this word literal is totally misleading you know sometimes when people say to me do you take the Bible literally I say to them Israel was a land flowing with milk and honey so when the Israelites came into the land they met a great sticky ball of milk and honey coming crashing down the main straight oh no you don't take it literally you take it spiritually don't you Israel is a land full of the milk of the word of the honey of the holy spirit you don't take it like that either Israel was a land literal the milk and honey were literal the metaphor is flowing but it's describing a real situation that this was a rich culture agriculture with lots of milk lots of honey lots of health you see the point ladies and gentlemen there is a great danger in treating the Bible as less than a book and imposing idiotic restraints on it that we'd never impose on any other piece of literature so that's the first point point number two is this I am NOT do I believe in a younger Old Earth what does it matter whether I do or not suppose I say I believe the young earth and you'll go away and say professor durricks believes in the young earth you do' and some of you think that's marvelous and some of you think he's a consummate idiot because ladies and gentlemen there is a sense in which what I believe Eve's not important why I believe it is very important now the question before us of course is based on interpretations of the Bible do you know where they came from the young earth view my hometown in Ireland I shouldn't have confessed that should I Archbishop Ussher well let me give just one little step in this direction and then I'll have to do a bit of shameless advertising in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth that's what scripture says I believe it ladies and gentlemen let me make it absolutely clear I am fully convinced of the inspiration authority of Scripture I take it very seriously that is why I read it very carefully you get then a sequence of days if you notice those days every one of them two three four five six begins with the phrase and God said you'd expect since it is a sequence that the first would begin with the phrase and God said and you notice that that phrase first comes at verse 3 the Bible does not start with the words and God said let there be a heavens and earth have you noticed that the Bible starts with the words in the beginning God created the heavens of the earth and then gives you a sequence of days and if you ask any Hebrew scholar he will tell you or she will tell you that the tense changes from verse 3 on to indicate that the opening statement is in a sense independent and prior to the sequence of days you see we read it and we jump to the assumption whatever we believe about the days that the beginning was and day one scripture doesn't say it it says in the beginning God created the heavens of the earth it gives you a sequence of days and as they say the tenses indicate that the beginning is before the sequence of days how long before I haven't a motion so if the Bible's not dogmatic I've not got to be so now I come back to your question do I think the earth is old well I think the evidence that as we have it is pretty overwhelmingly convincing that's old it doesn't affect a single thing in scripture as far as I could see that's how I'd start how would I finish well I've written a little book because I get asked this question endlessly it was advertised at the beginning so allow me to advertise it again if you want to follow this up and it is a really serious question for many people because they want to take the Bible seriously they want to take science seriously well my little book is called seven days that divided the world and you might like to look at it's on Amazon Kindle and everything else now how do i rationalize evolution within my faith well of course that assumes that I do I don't attempt to rationalize evolution I try to understand what it's claiming and decide whether the evidence favors it or not and what I say is two things I see the Darwin observed certain micro changes in the lengths of Finch speaks and the Galapagos Islands and he observed it it happens so I have no difficulty in believing that happens but you're asking a mathematician that's a very risky thing to do because mathematicians of a massive track record of skepticism when it comes to evolution in the sense of mutation and natural selection be a creative force that actually is capable of increasing complexity and rising up the chain against the basic laws of a theoretical computer science and so on now here again I'm afraid I have to do a bit more shameless advertising because my first book gods Undertaker of science berry God is about this precise thing so I only want to concentrate on the basic issue ladies and gentlemen if we understand the evolution to be not those minor microevolutionary variations but if we understand it to be increase in complexity by mutation natural selection genetic drift and one or two of of things and if even more we understand it to be the origin of life we need to make some serious distinctions evolution does not account for the origin of life by definition because evolution assumes the existence of life before it can get going it cannot therefore account for life this is a massive confusion that has been perpetuated by years four years by Richard Dawkins who says that the blind watchmaker is the explanation of the existence and variation of life I'm glad that he now doesn't say that anymore we've no idea from that perspective how life arose but even at the level of the increasing complexity I attend the systems biology seminar in Oxford because I very interested in these things where they spend a lot of time questioning the adequacy of the neo-darwinian synthesis to such an extent that you're getting voices some not many but I discussed them or tried to add organs in the Charlie Rose show some voices saying like Lynn Margulis presidential medal holder at the University of Massachusetts + professor at Oxford neo-darwinism is dead so I'm fascinated by what's going on but to come to the biblical side for a moment now let me go to those days and what is said about them and God said and God said and God said the corresponding statement is in the New Testament in the beginning was the word there is a series of inputs of information from outside the system that is a staggering claim because it's saying one the system isn't closed - you do not get from stage n to stage n plus one without and God said and you might notice there are two days in which God spoke more than once on day three it's the difference between the non living and the living on day six is the difference between animals and human beings it's almost as if the text anticipates a contemporary debate and God said I'm going to Ward myself very carefully in Scripture you do not get from the nonliving to the living without and God said nor do you get from animals two human beings now there's a basis for a discussion and ladies and gentlemen the words and God said are the exact opposite of a mindless unguided process if you want to read any more of what I think I'm afraid you'll have to look at my book now I'd have to go quick if you've got to catch a bus I won't disturb me but let's have a look at the rest of these questions briefly there's a question of suffering there's the question of suffering because of religious violence and there's the question of why Christianity aren't all religions equal well let's take the violence first I come from Northern Ireland I've seen religious violence my family was affected by it my brother was bombed they put 300 stitches in his face because of religious violence he nearly lost his life and it damaged him psychologically so I've seen religious violence and when people ask me this question they say what do you think there's your country Catholics and Protestants fighting it out well I say a number of things number one it's not just a religious thing but there's a religious element to it but let's suppose it is a religious thing what do I think about it I'm ashamed of it utterly and totally ashamed of it I'm ashamed that the name of Christ has ever been associated with an ak-47 or a bomb why because Christ Himself forbade it ladies and gentlemen it is on historical record that Jesus was put on trial at the highest level in the province of the Roman Empire in which he lived by the Roman governor Pilate what was the accusation terrorism to put it into modern language he was accused of being a politically violent activist so the accusation that Christopher Hitchens makes and Dawkins make against Christianity is the every same accusation that they made against Jesus and put him on trial and what does Jesus stance on all this when one of his disciples took a sword you remember to defend him in the garden he wasn't very well-trained and he tried to cut the head of a chap but he just cut his ear off and Jesus put the ear back on I believe that actually happened this is God incarnate but I can't help saying the lesson in it if you take weapons to defend Christ errs message you cut the years of people and many of my friends I understand them they can't even listen to the Christian message their ears have been cut off because they've gone round the world like hitchens seeing one religious war after another and I said two months I said Christopher if you understood what Jesus really stood for you'd be applauding him you'd be on his side instead of against them because he was the one that said to the Roman governor my kingdom is not of this world otherwise my servants would have been fighting and painted realized immediately he was no political threat Kingdom not of this world of course it isn't because ladies and gentlemen the one thing you cannot do well listen to what Jesus said next to this end I was born and to this end I came into the world that I should bear witness to the truth and Pilate not cynically perhaps said what's truth and he went out and said he's innocent truth the ladies and gentlemen truth cannot be imposed by violence especially if it's truth about forgiveness peace with God eternal life a knowledge of God it can't be imposed by violence so my reaction to this accusation is to say other religions must speak for themselves of this of course but as far as Christianity is concerned people who take up weapons to defend Chrysler's message are not following Christ through disobeying him it is simply not Christian and it cuts the ears of people as I say of course there's more to be said ladies and gentlemen because the people that are lightest in their reasonable Kandam sometimes of religious violence forget that atheism has been the cause of the biggest bloodletting that we've seen in the last 20 centuries you know Richard Dawkins loves quoting the hymn or a nurse not a hymn it's a song by John Lennon he didn't write any hymn so as I know you remember John Lennon imagine imagine a world without religion imagine a world without the Taliban and all that kind of thing well I'm not John Lennon I'm John Lennox and it makes a difference and I've written a song it's called imagine imagine a world without Pol Pot imagine a world without Stalin imagine a world without Mao what about that world the New Atheists are almost silent about it and that silence is embarrassing because ladies and gentlemen if he count up all the people that died or tried to in so-called religious wars in the name of Christendom not one of those deaths is justified but when you put them beside the hundred million deaths in the 20th century as a result of an atheist inspired doctrine they pale into insignificance we need to treat both sides the next question and I rapidly go to the end is if God is real why is there suffering in the world if you want to see a fuller answer to this Google Veritas and Columbia University 911 because on September the 11th this year I did a several things I watched for several hours on the television as people read the names of their relatives who died in the Twin Towers and as I watched I became fascinated and you know what fascinated me what fascinated me was this there was no atheism secondly there were many affirmations of Christian faith in the teeth of 9/11 thirdly everybody spoke about the relatives as if they were still alive one of the most moving was a young girl who said happy birthday mom that tells us something doesn't that in the face of that devastating event the human spirit longs for hope and will not give up hope that night I stood at the steps of the library in Columbia University with an audience this size in front of me on the steps in the open air with a lights of the twin ground-zero going up into heaven and I tried answer the question the load silence where is God now you can see the whole talk if you want to in the Q&A that followed it I only want to make a couple of points this is the hardest question a few years ago I was within seconds of death because my heart one of the arteries had closed completely of the doctor saved my life and told me I should be dead and people say to me do you thank God for that I say yes but in that same year my niece of 22 at an earthquake in her brain that killed her easy for me to say thank you God for that what do I say to my sister who lost her lovely girl at the age of 22 this question affects us all ladies and gentlemen I've no simplistic answers to it and the only way I can approach it is to will open a window perhaps and leave it with you and it's this atheism claims to have an answer that's just the way the universe is Richard Dawkins says there's no good there's no evil that's just the way it is there's no justice so atheism by definition is hope less is that the way it is what Richard says to me because it's bleak and it is bleak that doesn't prove it's wrong nor does it prove it's right he thinks he solved the problem that's just the way the universe is so I have the problem because I still believe in God now we can argue philosophically should a good God could a good God not have done if he was all-powerful couldn't he have made a world in which there were no tragedies like this of course he could he could have made his old pre-programmed robot's couldn't he but then we wouldn't have been human because the thing that makes you special as a human being is the ability to say yes or no that's what makes relationships special I'd been married for 44 years to the same person what makes that special well she freely chose me believe it or not I don't know why but she did I chose her I know why I saw her in day one at university but that's another story um the relationship is special suppose I had a robotic wife I hope to see her in two days time so I arrived at the house and she comes out and there's all of the big screen that appears in front of her you say kiss press button for and I get a kiss what use would that be God could have made a world like that but then there would have been no such thing as love of course there would have been no hate but has it often been pointed out if you're going to have a world in which relationship is possible then you've got to have the capacity to say no and to say yes that's where I start you say God took a terrific risk doing that didn't he of course he didn't so will you when you have kids I remember the first child that was born holding this little girl my hands and realizing I brought this girl into the world she could grow up to reject me why did I have a little girl why I have children Oh aren't you glad you exist that your parents took the risk because they reckon well yes that is a theoretical possibility but we trust that by loving our child and caring for them that'll never happen it's a risk so granted that God took a risk the next question is if the thing goes wrong is there a solution big enough to deal with it I was asked why Christianity here's the short answer I'm a Christian ladies and gentlemen because at this level Jesus doesn't compete with any other religion because no other religion offers me what he does let me try to explain that to you we can argue to the end of time what a good God might showed would have done and we get nowhere why because in our hearts there's barbed wire there's jagged edges there are all parts that leave some of us weeping inside even though we're not weeping outside and the philosophy doesn't touch that it's important but it doesn't in the end touch that so I ask another question granted that it's so is there any evidence anywhere in the universe that would be big enough to allow me to trust God with the outcome with the ragged edges with the heartbreaks with the unanswered questions and I think there is ladies and gentlemen what's God doing in Christ on a cross see this is the heart of Christianity is utterly unique because the claim is that on that cross Jesus is giving himself in my place for my sin and he's creating a basis where I can no acceptance in this life nobody else offers me that generally speaking religions offer me a path to stay on as best I can and then there's a judgement and an assessment and it's just like well the University here at Chapel Hill give exams to get in you've exams to get out and even the dearest professors can guarantee that you're going to get out and pass it's your merit but the genius of what God has done is that salvation doesn't depend on merit and I say to you tonight and I'm not ashamed to you as a professor at Oxford even not that that's anything to do with it but I'm certain of my relationship with God precisely because it doesn't depend on what I've done but what Christ has done and that's suffering on the cross ladies and gentlemen shows me something more it shows me that God has not remained distant from the problem of human suffering but has himself become part of it and the more I live and the more I see the effect of people grasping that when they are suffering the more of confirms to me that here we get to the heart of it because the death was not the end he rose from the dead you see what is atheism to say the vast majority of people have ever lived have suffered since the beginning of this lecture tonight there are thousands of babies that have died in the most horrific conditions what's atheism got to say about that that's just the way it is it is no hope what have I to say about it or precisely because I believe in a God of love I firmly believe ladies and gentlemen that the character of God is such that if you saw what God did subsequently to children that have suffered as a result of other people's greed everything else your question would see said you'd bow down and worship that's a very big thing to say but it is the thing that gives me magnificent hope is God fact or fiction atheism is the fiction ladies and gentlemen it is a hopeless philosophy and I trust that during your time at this university you will search out deep answers to your questions and not remain satisfied with some trivia trivial explanation how many people on that screen said they couldn't fit God into their philosophy I could scarce believe it if there is a God it's us fitting into his philosophy and discovering the meaning of life by trusting him and living for him it's been lovely to be with you so I hope the Tar Heels do very well goodbye for more information about the veritas forum including additional recordings and a calendar of upcoming events please visit our website at Veritas org

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Length: 92min 22sec (5542 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 09 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/Temujin_123]

It's long, but packed with real valuable insights.

Some people think science is facts and you religious people believe in faith. That is totally wrong. I would not stand here if I did not believe that there was evidence for my faith. But because there has been a redefinition of faith in the last 10 years I'd better explain to you what is going on.

If you look up "faith" in the Websters dictionary, as distinct from the Oxford dictionary, you'll find a new entry. "Faith (n): believing where there's no evidence." The Oxford dictionary has not got there yet, but many people in England have.

That is NOT the definition of faith. Faith, fides in Latin, means trust or belief and always has the idea of raising the question, "What is the evidence on which your trust rests?"

Unfortunately, the new atheists, lead by Richard Dawkinds, have come along and have said: Look. Faith is a religious word and it means believing where there's no evidence. So if you meet somebody who is a person of faith that means they believe in things where there is no evidence so there's no point in talking to them.