Is There Truth Beyond Science? | John Lennox & Larry Shapiro

well good evening everyone it's great to see so many of you here sue thank you very much for that I think overly kind introduction as sue said I'm my name is Jeff Hardin I'm the chair of the department of integrative biology some of you may have known that as the department of zoology and when the name changed this summer and I want to reiterate my thanks to the organizers of this event including the Veritas forum the department's of philosophy my own Department of Biology and the Religious Studies Program and especially all of the many student groups who have made this event possible I also want to thank Melissa and the upper house folks for coordinating the logistics here making an event like this happen with all of you here it is a team effort and we're grateful we're also thankful for all of you here tonight thank you so much for coming because I believe you are in for something important an important conversation we're here to discuss the idea of truth beyond science a truth is something pretty important at the University of Wisconsin we take it very seriously and you may know one chair statement here at UW a statement by the Regents from 1894 it's been Memorial up memorialized in a plaque on the side of Bascom Hall the phrase goes like this whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere we believe that the great State University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth may be found I think it's safe to say that UW view is part of its mission as uncovering truth as wonderful as that sifting and winnowing statement is though it raises important questions where do we find truth are there sources of truth that are simply out of bounds that are no longer credible in the 21st century what are the limitations on the search for truth I thinking deeply about the answers to these questions is vital today give him a strong sense of uneasiness in our cultural moment but sue mentioned in 2005 that sage of American political analysis Stephen Colbert coined the word truthiness to describe the belief that a statement is true based on intuition or personal perception without regard to evidence logic or intellectual examination in 2016 Colbert's tongue-in-cheek idea was made official by the Oxford English Dictionary it's word of the year was post truth it's safe to say that we live in a moment of cultural confusion about truth as a scientist I place great value on Sciences ability to uncover deep insights into the natural world it's spectacular success is made possible by this empirical approach have unlocked amazing secrets about the universe this planet and its creatures but it's science the only legitimate locus for truth are their fundamental aspects of the world that are disclosed beyond empiricism is there truth beyond science now in one sense as my colleagues in one of our sponsoring departments Larry's department that Department of Philosophy will tell you there's an easy answer to that question of course there is I guess we could all go home at this point the brilliant professor and insightful commentator on American intellectual life Professor Henry Jones you may know him as Indiana Jones cut to the chase in a Curt reply to a student I'll wait it's okay you're doing great Indy said this in a Curt reply to a student who was looking for the wrong class one day when he was giving a lecture archaeology is the search for facts not truth if it's truth you're looking for dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall and in these points I think is one that we can take seriously there are likely many of us who resonate with 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein who wrote in his truck tattoos that we feel that even if all scientific questions have been answered the problems of life have still not been touched at all and what we want to explore tonight is not a yes-or-no answer to whether truth is found outside of science but whether the historic claims the theists particularly Christian feeis make are reasonable in an age in which the spectacular successes of empiricism are all around us and this is not intended to be a debate that we've asked our presenters to share personally to ask honest questions of each other and model a conversation that all of us could continue this evening and Beyond Veritas is the Latin word for truth and the Veritas forums committed to courageous conversations placing historic Christian faith and dialogue with other beliefs and inviting participants from all backgrounds to pursue truth together the organizers hope is that everyone in this room would be challenged whether you're a Christian and adherent of one of the other Abrahamic faiths count yourself as part of some other religious tradition or outside of any religious tradition we hope that tonight's conversation will challenge you to reflect on your beliefs with intellectual honesty and rigor in the tonight's conversation that will help you to see to what extent your own worldview adequately addresses summer lives the biggest questions all right now it's time to introduce our two guests for tonight professors John Lennox and Larry Shapiro please join me in giving them a warm welcome let me introduce each of them and then we'll get started dr. John Lennox is Professor of mathematics emeritus at the University of Oxford originally from Northern Ireland John pursued his undergraduate and graduate work at the University of Cambridge specializing the branch of mathematics then his group Theory an area in which he's published widely he's also a fellow in mathematics and the philosophy of science at Green Templeton College Oxford John is an internationally renowned speaker speaking at the interface between science philosophy and religion John's lectured extensively in North America Eastern and Western Europe and Australasia on mathematics philosophy of science and the intellectual defense of Christianity he's written a number of books on the interface between science philosophy and theology including God's Undertaker as science buried God God and Stephen Hawking a response to the grand design gunning for God a book about the New Atheism and seven days that divided the world on the early chapters of the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible in addition he's participated in public discussions with many academics on campuses across the planet including people such as Richard Dawkins Christopher Hitchens and Peter Singer my colleague Larry Shapiro is professor of philosophy at the University of wisconsin-madison having received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania his research spans philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology he has a growing interest in the philosophy of religion as well a recent result is of this interest is his book the miracle myth y belief in the resurrection and the supernatural is unjustified part of Larry's current research aims to examine how both scientists and Christians misuse science to answer the big questions his other published works include the mind incarnate the award-winning embodied cognition and the multiple realization book co-authored with Professor Thomas polgár thank you John and Larry for being with us and lending your insights to this conversation really looking forward to it so what I'd like to do to get us going is if you would each take a few minutes versed John and then Larry to tell us a little bit about your worldview and anything else you think is important about yourself as it relates to our topic tonight is there truth beyond science John let's start with you well good evening ladies and gentlemen is there nobody there the University of Wisconsin is deservedly famous and it reminds me of Oxford it's absolutely full of bicycles and I ought to start by doing something culturally appropriate and say hi Badgers [Applause] I'm also honored to be sitting here with Professor Shapiro and professor Harden it's always the delight to meet new colleagues and one of the objectives of an evening like this is to have a friendly discussion which is made interesting by the fact that we don't agree on everything but you will discover very rapidly I think that Larry and I agree on quite a few things and it's important to emphasize those common convictions it is book Larry says I am dedicated to discovering the truth I must say my mind rejoiced when I read that because I have sat with many philosophers whose lives are dedicated to denying that there is such a thing as truth so we share that in common secondly he's a philosopher and I'm one of those scientists who has immense respect for philosophy that work of probing arguments for their strength and weakness and emphasizing as Larry does of this book the importance of evidence based reasoning and not being content with facile explanations and that's so important for helping us grasp the elusive concept of what science is the word steel I know from which science comes simply means knowledge I know and so we could use the word science for all kinds of knowledge hasn't done in some languages like German but I suspect tonight when we think of science we think of the so called Natural Sciences which are a set of intellectual disciplines like physics chemistry biology and so on used to explore the natural world and at the beginning of his book Larry helpfully outlines the role in science a very important techniques of reasoning like induction deduction and abduction or inference to the best explanation the question is the truth beyond science arises at least in part because there are strong voices in Western culture who say there is not and that view has come to be called scientism Alex Rosenberg a distinguished American philosopher says being scientistic just means treating science as our exclusive guide to reality to nature both our own nature and everything else Stephen Hawking caused an immense stir when it is book the grand design on about page 5 he's talking about all the big questions that we ask where do we come from where are we going is there meaning to life and when I read that I thought is there going to be interesting to listen to this world-class scientists deal with these questions and then suddenly he says philosophy is dead which is a very odd thing to say at the beginning of a book of the philosophy of science are the ads that scientists rather than philosophers have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge by Bertrand Russell although he didn't quite believe this once said and it's a brilliant formulation of scientism whatever knowledge is attainable must be attained by scientific methods and what science cannot discover mankind cannot know he was a famous philosopher mathematician and logician but I'm afraid his logic departed rather sadly when he made that statement because the statement that science is the only way to truth is not a statement of science so if it's true it's false hope it's not too early in the evening for logic but it's very important to see that it's actually self contradictory and that finishes it in a way but it's too serious for that and it's important to realize that really great scientists rarely ever say anything like Hawking Schrodinger won the Nobel Prize said I'm very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient and he says it cannot tell us a word about red and blue better in sweet physical pain physical delight it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly good or bad God and eternity sometimes pretends to answer questions of these domains but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously and another Nobel Prize winner Sir Peter Medawar said the existence of a limit of science has made clear by its inability to answer childlike elementary questions having to do with first and last things how did everything begin what are we all here for and then he adds it is too imaginative literature and religion that we must turned for answers to such questions and that's precisely what I do I hold the Christian biblical worldview which has both a subjective and an objective dimension I believe that the ultimate reality is God who created and who upholds the universe he has revealed certain aspects of his being and nature indeed there's considerable Accord among historians of science that the rise of modern science is traceable to the biblical worldview as CS Lewis put it men became scientific because they expected Lord nature and they expected Lord nature because they believed in the legislature and I love the words of Johannes Kepler the chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order which has been imposed on it by God and which he revealed to us in the language of mathematics so I see a very strong bond to such an extent that I am NOT mostly ashamed to be both a scientist and a Christian because arguably it was Christianity gave me my subject that's the objective side part of it at least but finally there is more I believe of God's fullest revelation comes in Jesus Christ whom I believe yes is God incarnate a fact that is demonstrated by his life teaching miracles death and supremely by his resurrection from the dead now of course at this point the biblical worldview clashes head-on with a materialistic or naturalistic worldview that typically holds that the universe is a closed system of cause and effect that however is not a result of science and I reject it not only as a Christian but a scientist but on the subjective side being a Christian means not only accepting these facts but following their implications and entering into a real and personal relationship with God through trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior whose death and resurrection provide a basis for sorting out the messy parts of life where I have wronged others and damaged myself and declaring me to be in a right relationship with God that is crucially and uniquely as far as religions go not based on my merit but of trusting him and accepting salvation as a free gift when it comes to truth my Christian worldview raises perhaps the most startling claim of all that Jesus made he said I am the truth he didn't simply say I speak true things although I believe that was true he said I am the truth so ultimately ladies and gentlemen for me there is of course truth beyond science because ultimately truth is a person who created the world in which is done and there's an inference to the best explanation I hold this worldview to be the most satisfying both intellectually and emotionally thanks John Larry first I want to thank Veritas and upper house and the people there Melissa and John who organized this they were terrific I've come to rely on Melissa for almost everything and expect I'll continue to do so in the years to come John mentioned inference to the best explanation which is a form of inference that scientists and scientifically minded philosophers use when trying to justify belief in unobservable things or events so if we want to know whether there are electrons well we can't see electrons so what we do is we set up experiments and we make predictions on the basis of hypotheses about what sort of observations we will make if electrons exist and we find that these observations occur or they don't if they do we infer that there must be these things electrons that are satisfying the predictions that are derived from our hypotheses I'm an atheist that and I'll come back to inference to the best explanation in a minute but as far as my worldview goes I'm an atheist that means I don't believe that God exists but I don't think I'm a bad person because I'm an atheist in fact I was I was just curious today I thought I wonder what the proportion of atheists in prison is and I looked it up and turns out you can't find atheists in prison much so the message I take from that is message I take from that is if you wanted to live in a very safe community you'd surround yourself at a sea [Laughter] but anyway I say that we're not bad people because I was watching Fox News the other day I must have felt I had to do penance for something and one of the commentators was trying to figure out what motivated the Las Vegas shooter and you know they had ruled out all the obvious reasons he wasn't a Muslim and he was an African American so what's left well maybe he's an atheist maybe his lack of belief in God was what caused him to to kill and wound so many people but I'm an atheist and John mensen mentioned the philosopher Alex Rosenberg who has written a book on what he takes the commitments of atheist to believe and I disagree with Alex about this Alex thinks that if you don't believe in God you should also not believe in right and wrong he thinks if you don't believe in God you shouldn't believe that there's free will he thinks that a life without God commits you to the belief that life is meaningless I on the other hand I'm an atheist who thinks that there is such thing as right and wrong objectively speaking there are certain actions that one ought not to do because they're wrong I also think that life is meaningful I regard my own life as meaningful I think meaning comes from pursuing a life in which you are actively involved and deeply committed to some sort of end that you try to bring about and moreover I think the end should be an important one so a life devoted to video games I regard is not a very meaningful life but a life regarded to to teaching I think it's a meaningful life I also believe that I have free will I believe that I have free will despite the fact that I don't believe that I have a soul philosophers have been working on problems trying to understand for for quite a long time making progress I believe that there's no life after death this is the life I have and I'm going to do my best to make the most of it now let's return to inference the best explanation for a moment I don't believe in God because I regard God is an unobservable I've never observed him I don't know anyone who has directly observed him and so belief in an unobservable requires evidence we can think of the claim that God exists as a hypothesis and then ask what predictions this hypothesis yields and then try to find observations that either confirm or disconfirm that hypothesis and I think the god hypothesis doesn't yield any predictions that we can empirically confirm so that's why I don't believe in God what is the relationship then between science and religion I don't think there's a conflict between religion and so far as religion is defined as simply believing in God I don't think there's a conflict because God presumably exists outside of space and outside of time but science is a discipline that's focused on understanding a world in space and in time so science is not going to disprove the existence of God and this is why there's no inconsistency among scientists who also are theists on the other hand there are claims that run contrary to religious doctrine and when these claims are about how the world works then we're going to find a problem if the claims based on religious doctrine about how the world works come into conflict with what scientists tell us about how the world works so if a theist believes that the earth stands still then this is a claim that comes into conflict with science where if a theist believes that the is only fifty thousand years old as young earth creationists believe and this again is a claim that's going to conflict with science so I have some other examples down I can't think of them Oh origins of species there are a number of intelligent design theorists who believe that the species that we see around ourselves are the product of a intelligent designer but this too then runs into conflict with Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection so there's one sense in which religion conflicts with science it does so when it makes particular claims about the empirical world that run counter to what science reveals but there's another sense in which there's no inconsistency between religion and science because God stands outside space and time and so is invisible to the methods of science I think that's about all I wanted to say thanks Larry it's great thanks to both of you so let's let's flush out some of what you guys work we're talking about here historically the I think it's verifiable that truth claims about science developed within a context of at least statistically speaking of religious belief and many of the early scientists were religious in fact most of them were Christian theists in the West and the common perception though is that science as science has advanced somehow religious belief retreats to smaller and smaller sectors of our lives and I'd like you to come in that do you think that the development of science is somehow you said they're compatible after a fashion and yet I couldn't help but think that your inkling is that the advance of science pushes religion off to the boundaries and makes it less significant and I just want you to comment on that first Larry and then and then we'll turn to Joan the answer to your question depends I think on as John would say significant for what we were having this little check before in wasn't really that funny but if if you look to God to give your life purpose to provide the comforting idea that there's life after death to make you feel fulfilled then I see no problem with holding on to those religious beliefs but you're right that particular claims that theists have made about how the world works can no longer be believed I think given what scientists tell us so I think if the theist requires belief that species were designed by an intelligent designer and if they think their belief at God entails that an evolution shows you that that's wrong well then by a very easy inference rule that shows that their belief in God has to be wrong too so you do see in the history of science in the history of religion certain religious claims being debunked they're shown to be inconsistent with how we understand the natural world but as I was saying there are other reasons not having to do with trying to understand the physical world to believe in God and there's no problem with that as far as I can tell great John I'd like first the regular comment on what you said earlier about atheists not being bad people now if you're not disagreement I hold the same view in fact I'll go further I can be put to shame but the moral behavior of my atheist friends did you know why that is it's because from where I sit every man and woman whether they believe in God or not is a moral being of infinite values now that's enormous ly important that I glad Larry mentioned at first because so often sadly Christians looked down on people that don't share their worldview and put them in a lower moral brackets that's point number one secondly I was delighted to hear Larry against his atheist colleague Alex Rosenberg assert the existence of right and wrong there's a famous moral philosopher Macke at Oxford who said that once you begin to discover that there are absolute baro values you're well on the way to God so perhaps you're near to God if you think the third thing is that not believing in God because he's unobservable would stop you believing in gravity information the origin of the universe and a whole lot of other things so I think we'd want a bit more evidence for that but coming to your question I do think there's been a sea change after all Isaac Newton who discovered gravitation believed in God and gravity was one of the reasons when he discovered his law he said what a marvelous God who did it that way he didn't say no we've got an explanation we don't need God and that's because he wasn't like Stephen Hawking one of the shifts I think Jeff is that the concept of God has changed in the mind of many scientists and people like Hawking and Dawkins and others I've encountered they do not conceive of God as a triune eternal God the Creator Bible they believe in a kind of Greek god of lightning that we know call a God of the gaps I can't explain that therefore God did it and you do a bit of science or atmospheric physics at the University of Wisconsin and that God disappears and so as science advances this space for God gets less and suddenly it occurred to me that Hawking's big problem because Stephen Hawking who's a brilliant scientist light-years better than me but he asks young people like yourself to choose between science and God and I find out very puzzling until I realized that his definition of God was the problem he believes God is an explanatory X that holds the space until science comes up with a better explanation now if you believe in a God of gaps like that then of course you have to choose between science and God but because that's the way you've defined God the God of the Bible the god of hood I believe is not the God of the gaps Genesis does not begin just in case you didn't realize with the words in the beginning God created the bits of the universe I don't understand it's in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth which is a marriage of gramatically he created the whole show the bits we understand admits we don't so there's a huge problem with God that's driving this the second point of impact a second point lies in the nature of explanation you see science explains marvelously as Jeff pointed out but the problem is that explanation comes at different levels and people think that once they've got a scientific explanation this is Hawking's view he doesn't believe in God why I quote because there is a law of gravity the universe can and will create itself from nothing I'm not going to point out the three levels of contradiction in that statement but what he does is we got a scientific explanation for something therefore there's no but just a minute why is the water boiling well because the heat energy is agitating the molecules conducted through the cathode bottom and that's why the water is boiling no it isn't it's pointing because I'd like a cup of tea now you laugh why because you see that those two explanations don't actually conflict or contradict their different kinds of explanation one scientific the others in terms of my volition the volition of a personal agent now let me say this to you and this takes a lot of the steam out of the argument for me god no more conflicts with science as an explanation for the universe that Henry Ford conflicts with the law of internal combustion as an explanation for a motor car engine now that's how I would start to approach this I think there's a huge epistemological and intellectual confusion right there and Hawking Dawkins and others insist the scientific explanation is the only one and that's nonsense because the law of gravity even within science the one thing it does not explain is gravity I hope you realize that nobody knows what gravity is and you didn't realize that the law of gravity is a wonderful help to calculate how to put someone in the moon without even Einstein but it doesn't tell you what gravity is and there's a huge myth out there that if you've got a scientific explanation that's all you need no it is not and therefore I agree with your initial statement Larry that science cannot off its own methodology and of course that's difficult to define relight the existence of God I would want to go a lot further but that can remain I would want to show that science actually gives us evidence of God maybe we'll come back to that later I want to turn to Larry and so John you mentioned the word epistemology some people maybe or so that wasn't perhaps a risk that that kind of squirted out didn't it so so system ology is the study of how we know things and and Larry's thought a lot about this so in particular Larry you've written recently on whether it's credible to believe that miracles have occurred and part of your argument has to do with how we can know things reliably I just wonder if you can talk about that because your take is that belief in miracles the supernatural is unjustified so can you explain your reasoning please briefly and and perhaps well I only it'll be brief because I want people to buy the book excellent okay I guess in addition though could you could you talk about what's ultimately at stake based on what you're saying okay yes thanks when philosophers talk about a belief being justified for scientists for that matter as well think about justified belief as a belief that has sufficient evidence so that it's more probable than not that would be a one way of understanding what a justified belief is when you're looking for justification for different beliefs there are different ways you can go about finding justification I was interested in trying to understand why it is Christians believe in the resurrection it always struck me as it's got to be crazy right here you have this guy who reportedly dies and is put into a tomb and three days later he's he's out walking around again that's really unusual typical ways of justifying beliefs don't don't allow you to justify that one way to a justify a belief is just through inductive evidence if you had seen lots of people dying and coming back three days later then it could be justified and believing that that Jesus was resurrected we need some other way to figure out whether he was resurrected and one thing you have to do when you think about what would make this a miracle is to find a miracle and as I understand a miracle it's a violation of a law of nature which coming back from the dead is and it's a violation of the law of a law of nature in virtue of some kind of divine intervention that's that's what makes it a miracle I think so then you ask well what justifies my belief that Jesus did come back from the dead and his reason or the cause of his returning from the dead was the divine intervention and when you look at the evidence it's really slim it's based on gospel accounts written by unknown authors decades after the event occurred and it's written by people it was reported to these authors who lived in different places and spoke different languages by a very superstitious group of people these are people who who thought demons possessed each other these were people who thought that I once looked up I bought a book what these people believed and all sorts of stuff that today no four-year-old would believe so this is the evidence and it just doesn't suffice to warrant belief in something so incredibly unlikely here's another epistemological point that there's that word again another point about knowledge and justification thank you lyric which which actually has a kind of basis in mathematics which John is an expert on I'm thinking of bayes's theorem and well he was a good man he was a minister forever yeah but you know William Yule was also a reverend anyway here's the point the less probable an event and I think we should all agree that coming back from the dead is pretty improbable the less probable an event the strong the evidence needs to be to justify our belief in that event this is why if you come across a disease that has a frequency of something like only one and a million people will be infected if you have a test that goes wrong only one in a thousand times that's a terrible test it's going to tell you that a thousand people in this population of 1 million have the disease when in fact only one does so the rarer the disease the better your test needs to be if you're to believe that a positive test result actually tells you you have the disease and so think of a miracle as something really really improbable well that means we need a really really good test in order to justify our belief in it and the evidence we have it's not even as good as the evidence we have for things like Vesuvius destroying Pompeii or the Civil War we've really good evidence for those sorts of things and there are even not that that unlikely so that's my reason for not believing in miracles or in the resurrection in particular let me now turn to the second part of your question about what's at stake this depends on how you see your commitment to religion playing out in your everyday life so there are lots of very religious people in this country who are voting and organizing in order to impose their views on others now this puts I think a very special burden on religious people because it's one thing simply to believe something for which you don't have adequate evidence and keep it to yourself every fall I sit down and I think this is the year the Packers are going to win the Superbowl this is the year the Badgers are going to win the Rose Bowl but there's nothing really at stake here but suppose I then decided now because I believe that the package of the best team in the country I'm going to require that Vikings fans not use birth control and not be allowed to have abortions it just follows from my view about Packers or suppose I think that because of my commitment to the Badgers I want to make sure that there are no same fan team marriages I don't know why I would do that but if if my belief in the the sanctity of the Badgers and the Packers drives me to curtail the behavior of others then I think I have a special responsibility to be really well justified in what I'm believing since it's not just my own life now that is being guided by these beliefs but others too and that's why I think it's important to think about our justification for believes in miracles thanks Larry that's great John now I think it's safe to say that you hold a different view margit marginally you've actually often argued for how belief in the resurrection makes sense this wonder how you think about how a scientist can believe in the resurrection well first of all just thinking of what Larry says I do not believe that miracles are violations of the laws of nature I think that humans are wrong and his major interpreter on kidney flew before he died told me is wrong you see that's where the problem starts we have this idea that there's a law like the law of the land you know and I see these notices and car parks here violators will be told now we don't have notices like that but to cut a long story short I find CS Lewis's another she very helpful I'm staying in a lovely hotel here and the night before last I put a thousand dollars in the drawer and then last night I put two thousand dollars in the drawer one on one makes two three so they're three thousand but I woke up this morning and I found five hundred dollars in the drawer now what has been broken the laws of arithmetic or the laws of Wisconsin state that think about it it's the laws of the state have been broken because the laws of arithmetic have not been broken and that's where the confusion lies in this whole thing you see in order to recognize a miracle it's not a violation of laws it's an apparent exception to perceive regularities which have been set in the universe by the Creator if they weren't there you wouldn't be able to recognize any miracle because if you didn't know that the norm was the dead people stay dead you wouldn't think anything of someone popping up from the dead so you need two things you need regularities and where I think Larry and I differ profoundly is those regularities which we encapsulate in the laws of science are not laws in the sense that they constrain anything they're simply as Vivian Stein said they are descriptions of what normally happens now God who is the creator he can feed a new event into the system and the laws take over what I mean by that is this if I were claiming that Jesus rose from the dead by natural processes of course it would be violating laws of nature but I'm claiming no such thing I'm claiming that he rose from the dead he was raised from the dead by the power of God so I I simply do not recognize that description of laws the second point is this I was puzzled by your book I must say Larry because and you quoted it just now the records which are very slim written decades after the events but in your book you cope with approval evidence of Caesar crossing the Rubicon and I checked out your authorities and there are two hundred years after the actual date so if you accept two hundred what are a few decades but what bothered me more than anything was that having started by saying we need to check the best evidence your two major sources are Bart Airmen and Richard carrier now they are the absolute extreme carrier against all practically all distinguished ancient historians even denies the existence of Jesus and oddly enough Bart Ehrman doesn't hold your view on this countenance of the evidence he says that we can reconstruct the majority of the New Testament although probably an encoding not a hundred percent accuracy but the scholars are convinced urban says we can reconstruct the original words of the New Testament the historical evidence for the authenticity of the hue of the New Testament in particular is vastly better than the historical evidence for all classical works that are known so I don't recognize this slimness the next point was superstition in the ancient world yes it existed as it exists today but Luke opens his gospel dealing as a medical scientist with this problem because he tells the story of a priest who's praying and an angel says you're good of a child the priest is very old he says don't be ridiculous I'm far too old he wasn't a superstitious chapter believed every story he knew exactly as clearly as a modern gynecologist that you get mercifully I nearly said you get too old have children and he rejected it and it's very interesting that Luke starts his gospel by raising this quite turn off our antipathy towards the miraculous now I certainly find Bayes theorem very helpful and of course Bayes theorem makes the point that if you've got a very improbable thing if you bring background information in that background information can help either increase or decrease the probability now you see when it comes to the resurrection it is by definition highly improbable how do we get at it we don't get added by induction because by definition it's unique in history so you have to come at it by abduction inference to the best explanation and I spent most of my life thinking about this starting off at Cambridge when I heard one of the world's top lawyers making a forensic investigation of the historical evidence for the resurrection it's cumulative it's not absolute proof but as I look at it again and again it seems to be that ever-increasingly that this is based on absolutely solid evidence there it's a big deal and what's at stake I would like to bring in very briefly is this that if Jesus is raised from the dead there's another way of proving or establishing rather that the resurrection happened and that is it's logical if he's raised from the dead that he can be encountered I've lived long enough to see many people's lives transformed transformed from narcotic dependence to peace and a meaningful life and happiness food on the table where there was none before despair turning into joy I've seen that again and again particularly among students and we'd you ask them what has happened to you they say something like I met Christ they met there is in Christ I became a Christian whatever way they put it you end up by adding two and two and making four so I believe there is an inductive method of establishing it and that is making the experiment that Jesus himself suggested that if we trust him he will give us peace with God forgiveness and so on and when you've experienced that that is a very strong piece of experiential evidence that it is true so I'm sorry that I have to say I find the evidence that I read in your book very convincing of the truth of my Christian position no I'd be not quite so sorry this yeah yep Larry go ahead yeah when thinking about the resurrection there there's we need to make a distinction between a few things is the historical record or the Gospels we read today authentic copies of the original Gospels and you're right I'm citing people like Bart airman and Richard carrier so let's just forget about that if you don't like those authorities oh stop that I don't like them I read them what concerns me is if you're putting an argument you've got to take the opposition's best evidence and I was surprised that that was absent that's all I read urban and I read there were not so much carrier because he's written off by most scholars completely there's but certainly controversy about the authenticity of the Gospels but let's put that aside I give you everything you want that the Gospels were reading today are copies with perfect fidelity from now I didn't save that what do you have it take it but go ahead Larry we're more named John John next we have to ask let's suppose now that the authors of Matthew Mark Luke and John were provided with the news that they recorded 30 to 70 years after the event and let's suppose that the news was transmitted faithfully to them now the next question we ask people are at the tomb what do they actually see were what these people reporting accurate reports sometimes as we all know people miss perceive things they don't understand the situation so that's something we have to think about next question let's suppose that what they're reporting was in fact accurate Jesus in fact died and in fact came walking out of the tomb three days later you'll have to choose which gospel account you want because the Gospels differ on this but let's just take them to say Jesus walked out of the tomb three days later now what's the best explanation for why Jesus died and came back to life here's where we have a hypothesis one hypothesis is that the best explanation is that God caused the resurrection of Jesus the problem with that hypothesis is it doesn't actually make any predictions without the addition of some assumptions assumptions about God's intentions assumptions about what God wanted people to see and we have no way to independently verify these additional assumptions and I can come up with other hypotheses like aliens raised Jesus from the dead or two gods raised Jesus from the dead all of these hypotheses do an equally good job explaining why Jesus came back three days after after his death and if inference to the best explanation requires that you choose the best explanation among the hypotheses but all the hypotheses are equally good in explaining why we see Jesus rise from the tomb three days later then you're not justified in believing your preferred explanation referred by the problem there of course there's lies of the fact that you've just said they're equally valid expert patience I reject that completely I don't think avians why is that worse than God because the criteria that you laid down two minutes ago are satisfied you see the event of the resurrection is not in isolation the resurrection was predicted during Jesus lifetime it also fits into the grand scheme and this is where we take it much I take a much bigger view of the prophets who had all through history developing from Abraham conveyed the idea that there was a special person coming into the world who would suffer and die and those prophets also indicated that the language became clearer as history went on that that person word after having borne the sins of people he would return to the heavenly world now when you get to the level of the New Testament you have John the Baptist announcing him you have him telling the disciples that he's going to rise from the dead you then have him dying they didn't understand either so they rejected him when he died because they didn't understand it but what he rose from the dead and they saw the evidence of it and met him then Christianity was unleashed on the world when Peter explained that the day of Pentecost that there was a very clear mapping out of what would happen because of course for the Christians and incidently the first stories of the resurrection weren't spread by Christians at all but the Jewish authorities who made sure they guarded the term and that means there was no mistake about it the Peter stood up and he said look he said you know what has happened here is that Christ has ascended and this is in fulfillment of the prophecies these credible statements made centuries before the Lord said unto my lord sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool of your faith so that there's a huge prophetic program into which it fits and therefore putting that against aliens seems to me to trivialize the whole thing it's not an equally good explanation that's the problem I'm gonna step in here yeah please do because we want time for people in the audience okay to pose some questions so what I'd like to do now is to first thank you guys for really wonderful exchange so far and as you know I've asked both of you to provide two or three minutes of of parting thoughts to our audience so Larry let's begin with you and then we'll move to John I'll return to the question that we're here to discuss today about truth beyond science there is truth beyond science and that's because science is a discipline that has a fairly narrow focus although what it's focusing on is pretty big it's focusing on understanding how nature works it's trying to give us explanations of natural phenomena so how is it chlorophyll turns light energy into chemical energy why do we have rainbows these are the sorts of questions that scientists are really good at answering but there are also questions that are just outside the purview of science and so insofar as these questions have answers that can be true or false science isn't delivering us all the truths science doesn't tell us why two plus three equals five science doesn't tell us why we have freewill science doesn't tell us what is right and what's wrong but I regard all these questions as questions that have definitive answers I will say that I think religion does not do a good job explaining let me give do I have time for a quick example hi did say quick I believe please go ahead taking up on John's point that there are different kinds of explanations we can explain why the water and the kettle is boiling by thinking about the energy and the molecules or where we can explain it in terms of the intention of the person who desires a cup of tea the problem with with trying to draw an analogy between that and between a theistic explanation of the universe is that we have we learn nothing we gain no knowledge at all we understand nothing in addition to what we already did when we're told the universe exists because God wanted it to that's an explanation that leaves me cold I want to know well why did he want that how did he make it happen I think that's a really good question because God is a temporal a spatial how does a being like that just cause something to come into existence why did he on the other hand I have no problem understanding why John might put a kettle of tea on in the morning he wants a cup of tea and he can reach the kettle and put it on the burner so I see science as a far superior way of understanding nature then what religion gives us although as I said at the beginning there's no conflict between belief in a God who exists outside the natural world with a discipline as sciences that studies how things work within the natural world ok thanks Larry John well I'd just like to say how much I've enjoyed the chat with Larry and Jeff but I'm going to say something now about is there truth in science why do we think there's truth in science and here I'm going to say something that may surprise some of you I believe there's truth in science because human reason is an outpost of the supernatural you don't have to go to the miracles of Jesus or the resurrection CS Lewis helped me when he wrote unless human reasoning is valid no science can be true if ultimate reality is not material not to take this into account in our context is to neglect the most important fact of all yet the supernatural dimension has not already been forgotten it has been ruled out of court by many The Naturalist have been engaged in thinking about nature they have not attended to the fact that they were thinking the moment one attends to this it is obvious that one's own thinking cannot be merely a natural event and therefore something other than nature exists you see I believe the bottom line for me is that the fact that we have discussed rationally about the concept of truth is actually evidence that there's something beyond Alvin Plantinga one of your most distinguished philosophers says if Dawkins is right that we are the product of mindless unguided natural processes then he has given a strong reason to doubt the reliability of human cognitive faculties and therefore inevitably to doubt the validity of any belief that they produce including Dawkins own atheism my big problem with atheism I'm sure Larry would have a lot to say about this is that it undermines the rationality we need to construct any argument whatsoever that's a topic for another time as I would have a lot to say that yes we might be able to come back to that thank you very much John let's let's thank both John and Larry all right so now as promised it's time to allow our speakers to field a few questions some of these are similar to one another some of these have been touched on by either John or Larry or both of them so if we don't get to your question I can attest looking at the list here on my iPad that these are all outstanding questions so the criteria for selection has nothing to do with the intelligence of the questioner I just want to point that out so John I think you mentioned earlier that when you're in a discussion with someone with whom you disagree you really want to take on the best that your opponent has to offer and take that seriously so in that spirit here's an here's an excellent question a pretty interesting one and this is for both of you so for John what arguments and approaches do theists use that you find least helpful and for Larry what arguments and approaches do atheists use that you find least helpful let's be a little bit self-critical here well I find arguments that are purely subjective not very helpful and here Larry your books great thank you I made a couple of negative comments and I would like to apologize if they seem too sharp because that's not fair but philosophers have very thick skin what you say well I've got one really I don't know about that we should talk about that but you make the point that wishing a thing to be true is not a good reason for believing it and I'm afraid sometimes I meet Christians and they're very like that and their concept of faith is closure eyes commit intellectual suicide don't ask for any reasons just commit yourself I think that is very dangerous in fact so those kind of arguments need to be trenchant ly cut down others who say sorry you do a very good job of it wishing a thing to be true of course doesn't mean it's false it would be very strange for instance as Lewis points out if we felt hunger and wanted food we lived in a world where food didn't exist but on the other hand wishing a thing would be true doesn't make it true we need better evidence than that that'll be one point anyway great Larry you mentioned Alex a while back we could go back to that but no no I've read a number of books by atheists so Sam Harris Dan Dennett Christopher Hitchens Richard Dawkins and I come away with with a sense of embarrassment sometimes that these people who are very bright and ILECs have to take such a mocking disdainful tone toward a leaf that is so significant to how majority of people live their lives and I think this strategy of defeating by ridicules an unfortunate one thank you you must have come across this and your book Gunung what's the title a coming for god yes I know but you know it's fair to say the same time that Christians can be very aggressive I mean sometimes they've been very aggressive with me because be because I debate atheists I mean it's ridiculous with the wrong crowd well I don't and let me say this as well I have the deepest sympathy with people who don't believe in God because of deep personal reasons particularly the problem of pain and suffering I think we cannot trivialize that that's a hard problem with the yearn a theist or or a Christian let's move to perhaps related topic we we've selected for an unfortunate group of people on up here and that is that we are all University professors and many of the students out there are used to encountering us on a daily basis in their classes and we tend to focus on the life of the mind here's a question for both of you how do you think about the accessibility of truths that lie outside of reason do you have room for that and if so what is the significance of those kinds of things because after all the concept or the topic tonight is truth beyond science but are there truths that are beyond reason that are nevertheless truths I find it very difficult to conceive of anything in that sense that is truth which is a rational concept that's beyond reason what concerns me much more than that is the facile equation of science with reason that of it's beyond science it must be beyond reason because if scientism which we mentioned at the beginning were true you'd have to close half the faculties in this university tomorrow sadly including philosophy because it's not science and to say that because philosophy is not natural science therefore beyond reason they're silly but there are people leading people like Christian to do who who ought to know better Nobel prize-winner she talked about that that it's if you're beyond science you're beyond reason that is just absurd that's what would concern me more so I'm not sure that they've understood your question I think that well I don't want to speak for the question though that I believe there their idea is that there are you know the Christian Pascal talked about truths that the heart knows that reason knows not of I think that's the intent of the question are there truths kind of heart level truths do you is there a place for that sort of thing Larry what's your take on that I'm skeptical I've the idea that you can know a truth because of a feeling you have rather than because of argument or evidence strikes me as the wrong method a method that is going to not be reliable that said there might be truth beyond reason and if what you're thinking of is is human reason and it could be that take a conjecture like Goldbach's conjecture it's mathematical conjecture no one knows whether it's true it is either true or false and it could be that we'll never know because we stand toward that the way my my my cat stands toward addition problems it just it's too dumb to know I've encountered some pretty savvy cats so I don't know no you know when the student falls in love their reason doesn't get shut out in fact it gets into heightened mode because their reasoning about every little movement of the other it's not true guys of course it is but this idea that there are non reason truths seems to me I am skeptic like you we've last got together Larry here we started together yes there's way too much agreement on that so let's know okay so John you've already touched on this so I'm gonna let Larry speak to this and and you can perhaps respond to Larry Larry where does your belief in the right and wrong come from I was really struck by your opening self disclosure about yourself and that you feel and I think those of us who know you would agree with you that you seek to be a moral person and you believe there are things that arrive in things that are wrong and yet I think some in our audience might be puzzled as to what the locus is for rightness and wrongness in your worldview I'm pretty certain where John will go with that but let's can we tease that out a little bit cuz I see an interesting question it's a great question I wish I had an answer I have colleagues actively searching for an answer right now I see some of them here in the audience philosophers have been ever since Plato trying to understand the grounding for the rightness or wrongness of certain claims I don't see any reason not to think that's can be the case we believe that mathematics is objective and yet trying to understand what makes it objective is is an equally hard question I think also say that I think appeals to God don't take you any distance at all and understanding the objectivity of morality I think a theist has the same problem an atheist has an understanding what makes an action right or wrong my problem is I I go over Dostoyevsky I'm afraid on this God does not exist everything is permissible he was not saying that atheists are bad he was saying that at the base level there appears to be no rational justification for morality if you reject God they'll be give you an example yet a very famous example of it and I'd love your take on this actually you'll get it I thought I work you see Richard Dawkins is conflicted very obviously because in a very famous statement he said you know this universe is just what you'd expect it to be if at the bottom I quote there is no good there is no evil there is no justice DNA just is that we dance to its music now if that's true the Las Vegas government was just dancing to the music of his DNA and there's no blame attaching there's no good no evil so Dawkins is claiming that the categories don't exist which is very odd for a man who rails against the Bible and talks about an evil God when he doesn't even have the concept but then he discovers that he's a moral being and something inside him reacts against that and he writes much to the laughter of serious philosophers he writes we are the only creatures who could rebel against our selfish genes and there's one of the pointed out if we are simply our selfish deeds what a material principle can help us rebel against them so I see out there the Atheist world no Larry believe me I don't put all the atheists in the same category as Richard Dawkins that would be unfair very unfair as you pointed out the aggression so on but this analysis that if you take atheism to its logical conclusion you end up with no morality I notice that is being believed all over Europe and I would dare to that's why there's such moral confusion around the place so it's a big issue so I love your take on me well as I said surround yourself with atheist if you want a safe community there well that's view Dostoyevsky is committing a fallacy I think so there's no connection between the existence of God and right or wrong that I can see there's no connection between belief in the existence of God and right and wrong that I can see you didn't say how it is that God does guarantee that certain things are writers certain things are wrong we've we've known since Plato a fatal objection to this view think about it this way suppose you want to learn piano and you're interviewing piano teachers and the first piano teacher comes in and and you say play for me because you want to know whether this piano teachers capable of play good music and and she bangs on the keys and jumps up done down on the piano and says that is good music I think wow I'm not gonna hire this teacher and she insists that's good music and then you bring in the next piano teacher and and she plays beautifully and she says that is good music and you agree that is good music now both teachers have said that is good music the fact that they say it makes no difference to whether the music is good the music is good or it's not and likewise when God says thou shot thou thou shalt not kill either you shouldn't and God recognizes that and tells you so or you should and God is wrong but it doesn't make a difference what God says it's right or wrong independently of what he says and so it is a problem the Euthyphro yes exactly well first of all music in its relative goodness is not raising a moral issue so I think the analogy is slightly suspicious secondly I think the Euthyphro problem falls down on the fact that it confuses God's will with his character and again you see we're dealing with things that are incredibly difficult to define but where God comes into it for me is that at the scientific level I believe the fact that we can do science points to an intelligence behind the universe I believe that the fact that we discover ourselves to be moral beings points to a moral being behind the universe now that works as far as I'm concerned as of inference to the best explanation especially when I discover a document the Bible covering many centuries which has at its heart the whole question of relationship with God and morality is hugely important issues and I can't prove that to you mathematically any more than I can prove that my wife loves me mathematically but I'd risked my life on it because it seems to me there's sufficient evidence to buy into it because for me it's a better explanation than the reductionist one I have we haven't used that word tonight I'm sorry honest no I suspected you weren't which is why I kept back from it but Dawkins is and many people influencing the culture are and that nothing but we are nothing but atoms and molecules and so on that really destroys morality so if you find a place for morality I think that's marvelous from where I sit that's because you're recognizing that you're a being made in the image of God and I find that if maybe we better stop back there I'd like to think I am well so wonderful we'll talk later so we've hit on something fairly important and I want to conclude with one final question what I think is very interesting one which hasn't come up so far it's hard we have a sense of rightness and wrongness both of you do I do too we it may be hard for us to understand where it comes from or how it is an objective sense we talked about gravity I think string theorists are hoping they'll be able to understand gravity one day John so just because we don't understand it maybe they will maybe they won't we all admit though that that gravity acts so we don't need to know how it works to affirm that it works and so we're kind of agnostic relative to the mechanism now you're a theist you're an atheist but there is this middle position of agnosticism how do you both think about that let's who would like to tackle that one first the philosopher clearly go ahead Larry I can understand why some people are agnostics agnostic is someone who just doesn't offer judgment on God's existence maybe an agnostic is someone who hasn't thought carefully enough one way or the other to come to a conclusion maybe an agnostic has a very high standard of justification such that they never believe that they're in a position to make a conclusion about God's existence as an atheist I think that the evidence is simply not there for God's existence and it's simply no better for God's existence than for the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or that's a richer god that's construct by the way I don't think it's a Dawkins construct but he likes it along I've never Getty I've got a picture of it in my office I do too do you have a crucifix in your office I don't I don't either but I I think there's we're getting conflicted oh yeah yeah we are there's there's simply not enough evidence available to me to discriminate between hypotheses like this there's one god there's a Christian God there are three gods there's a Flying Spaghetti Monster and given that I can't discriminate between those hypotheses I don't feel justified and accepting any of them and so I'm just gonna I think God doesn't do anything for me I don't need to believe in him I don't see that that our understanding of the world is improved by believing in him and so I just reject it so that's a bit different from categorically denying the possibility of God's existence or something like I can't prove God doesn't okay yeah that's which is where a lot of feeis would go with no one can be an atheist because they would have to have knowledge equal to that of what Christians claim God to have yeah and it's kind of self stultifying so I was kind of thinking that's that's how you're thinking about these terms John you wanna wrap things up agnosticism well it's Cubs of the Greek board are ddos Cove which means I don't know and boy am i an agnostic there's so much stuff I just don't know I know so very little about mathematics I know so little very little about the world I don't know as much about the Bible that I would like to know so I'm an agnostic you see but some people define agnosticism as I don't know and you can't know that's a very interesting position to be in because if they don't know how can they know that I don't know you know what I'm a day people and they say I'm an agnostic I say so am i what is it you don't know perhaps I can help you with what you don't know and you let me with what I don't know but it does tend often to be a stated position of I don't know and you cannot know which is logically absurd to my mind well I think actually the two of you are in fair amount of agreement on that particular point and that's a great place for us to end this discussion let's thank these two

Channel: The Veritas Forum

Views: 40,560

Rating: 4.7870216 out of 5

Keywords: john lennox, science, truth, oxford, university, wisconsin, dialogue

Id: DVBrBqMbopY

Length: 86min 0sec (5160 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 21 2017