"Is God Great?" - Christopher Hitchens vs John Lennox debate (preview)

thank you all for being here Oxford University's mathematician professor John Lennox and acclaimed journalist Christopher Hitchens and what I'm sure will be a memorable evening for all of us we are now pleased to be hosting a very high-profile event on a very important topic indeed what topic could be more important now I'm guessing that tonight I'm not speaking to largely your predominantly Muslim or Jewish audience if I was believe me I would find try and find a way of unsettling you I'm guessing that those of you who are believers are probably of the Christian kind as you know the Atheist position is the following that over the many hundreds if not thousands of gods and religions that humanity has invented in its time we have three roughly at only three not roughly only three alternatives in considering them one is that all of them are true one is that all of them are false and the other is that only one of them is true the first proposition is self-evidently absurd they can't all they can't conceivably all be true indeed there are mutually exclusive forms of Christianity as just to take only one religion that all our false seems at least possible that only one is true is the position say of my opponent dr. Lennox I think must be the hardest single position to take some people say the homo sapiens has been around for a hundred thousand years some for as long as a quarter of a million no one says less than a hundred thousand Francis Collins the great Christian believer who did the human genome project says certainly a hundred thousand I'll take a hundred Richard Dawkins thinks it's more I'll take a hundred what does it mean if we're divinely supervised and divinely created and what looked out for it means that 498 also thousand of those years humans Homo sapiens were being born dying half of them in childbirth I would think life expectancy maybe of twenty years maybe thirty people dying essentially of their teeth but of hideous disease is living in permanent fear where the earthquakes coming from where the lightning strikes coming from why is all this where what are these diseases that hit us we don't know about microbes have no idea that's to say nothing about the fights with neighboring tribes over women over land over meet over subsistence that the torture the the violence the cruelty that goes on I don't need to underline all of it I hope you can picture it for yourself ninety-eight thousand first ninety eight thousand years heaven watch is this going on with perfect insouciance at something like two or three thousand years ago decides right we have to intervene now we have to do something about this well what would be the best way of intervening to try and redeem this rather bleak picture what about having somebody tortured to death in an obscure part of the Middle East that ought to cure it I agree very much with Christopher Hitchens in his repudiation of many of the evils that he claims have been done in the name of God but I've learned to distinguish between the greatness of God and the inexcusable evil that has been done by those professing his name and so I do not deduce that God is not great and that religion poisons everything after all if I fail to distinguish between the genius of Einstein and the abuse of his science to create weapons of mass destruction I might be tempted to say science is not great and technology poisons everything what is more as I look back at the evils of atheist regimes of the 20th century I might also be tempted ladies and gentlemen to say atheism is not great it has poisoned everything as it is I hold that science shows some of the greatness of God now so often we hear the new atheist talk about faith and deprecating it but I want to tell you that scientists are all people of faith as Einsteins soul they believe that the universe is accessible to the human mind and physics cannot explain that for the simple reason that you can't do physics without believing that the universe is intelligible so scientists required faith and yet I read Christopher Hitchens saying if one must have faith to believe in something then the likelihood of that something having truth or value is considerably diminished pardon well one must have faith that the universe is intelligible to do science so I'm to deduce am i that the likelihood of science having truth or value is considerably diminished exit science then and I presume that Christopher Hitchens like most of the rest of us believes in his own existence yes am I to take it then that the likelihood he really does exist is considerably diminished his statement is a self refuting statement and I find it ironic all that the so-called new atheists are so passionate about ridding the world of faith that they appear to be blind to the fact that them themselves are driven by faith they believe that their minds can grasp truth they believe in science they believe that God is not great yet mr. Hitchens informs us at a classic oxymoron our principles are not a faith our beliefs are not a belief the mind boggles ladies and gentlemen on this question of who's boss and why I don't think the Eternal Father idea is a good one I'm sure I'm not the only father here three children my job as a father is to get out of their way is to do my best for them and then make room for them what if I was to say to them oh don't worry I'll always be here not as in I'll always be here for you as in I'm never going away you'll never see the back of me you'll never get to say goodbye daddy no no I'll always be here in fact I'll be here long after you've died in fact I'm rather looking forward to that because then I couldn't a sit in judgment on you this is not even a benevolent form of despotism is it when you allow yourself to think about it it's somewhat worse than I was saying before about the way the religion makes people first be terribly abject and then terribly solipsistic and arrogant and conceited if it were true that all these things are attributable to an eternal father who is unknowable except by those who claim as dr. Lennox those sources of information denied to me and many other people what would it mean that the minimum it would mean we were living under an unalterable unchallengeable dictatorship which might or might not be benign with no assurance it would be benign in my view benign dictatorships are the worst but that's another story it would mean we were subjected to everlasting round-the-clock surveillance waking and sleeping we would never have a private moment everything we did and thought would be known and supervise and invigilator are neither rewarded or punished I discussed up with Richard Dawkins in my debate in Oxford if you have to ask the question who created the Creator that means you believe in a created god and created gods are a delusion we've known that for centuries and we don't need to be told it if you say who created the creator of means also that you cannot conceive of anything that's eternal and I don't know what mr. Hitchens views of the universe are or a mass energy but the incapacity to believe in eternal is essentially the issue my final point on that would be this I said to Richard Dawkins I can ask you the same question because you believe that the universe created you so I would like to know who created your creator but he doesn't seem to have an answer to that now these things are sometimes hard to grasp because there are so many distortions of God around in the world and that's why again and again I come back to look at the person of Christ who reveals God to me to look at his love and his friendship and his care and if I ask myself the question would I like to be in the company of that person permanently my answer is a resounding yes I can think of nothing more liberating and nothing more utterly magnificent that expresses the greatness of God okay well the so they say comment may segue into the next question this one's for professor lennox one of our audience members wants to know if you're correct about there being a deity he wants to know where she wants to know why jehovah why not Osiris why not Buddha why in the words of one of our guests here why is one myth or folktale more true than another well first of all I don't think that old myths I think there are many myths around in the world and certainly the question is an important question because it makes the distinction between the kind of deism or even theism that responds to the design in the universe and so on and says why this one God my answer that ladies and gentlemen is very simple I have to decide that like I decide everything else on the basis of the evidence and the evidence in the case of the life death resurrection of Jesus Christ has convinced me that he is God incarnate so I base my faith on that evidence and of course each one of us must make up our own minds [Applause]

Channel: Fixed Point Foundation

Views: 257,248

Rating: 4.5295596 out of 5

Keywords: hitchens, christopher hitchens, john lennox, dawkins, richard dawkins, debate, atheism, christianity, faith, religion, samford

Id: sHiGsL4bzmM

Length: 10min 56sec (656 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 17 2009