John C. Lennox - Time for Science: What can we really know?

[Music] [Music] [Music] we we came to hear the lecture time for silence what can we really know it is actually a first lecture of twin lectures the other one is called time for truth who can we really trust and it will be delivered by dr. Erskine s on Monday at the philosophical faculty and these lectures are organized by the student movement university systems karate University Christian Association but also by philosophical faculty of Charles University and I would like to thank the Dean of the philosophical faculty of charge University dr. Miriam freedom ah who gave her full support to this event and it would be really fitting if I just quote some of her words regarding this evening for me as the Dean of the Faculty of Arts of Charles niversity it is not only monumental privilege but also a deep joy to invite you to listen to two amazing lectures by two amazing speakers these themes are surrounded by a lot of prejudice and unusual interpretations I therefore think that it is important to come back and revisit these themes and expose them to serious and well informed debate our guests is the best speaker because have today for tonight's theme professor Lenox lectures philosophy mathematics at Oxford University he studied maths and Cambridge University where he also attended some of the last lectures of CS Lewis he also complete a degree of my ethics and he is the author of many books including has science the world [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] linguistic abilities and Here I am in a famous Czech University you can all speak English and I can speak two and a half words of Czech so that's very disappointing but let me tell you I am massively impressed by the way in which students today in Europe have mastered the English language I'm sorry I can't speak in Czech but I haven't got the time to learn it before I give my next sentence the topic tonight is time for science what can we know I've always been interested in knowledge I grew up in a small country off the coast of Western Europe it's called Northern Ireland you've probably never heard of it and it is a country with a sad reputation for sectarian violence so I grew up as a boy when that violence was only just beginning allegedly religious tension but more complex than that but it's important that you know a little bit about my origins because to a large extent they determine my major interests my parents were Christian but they were not sectarian which was very unusual my father demonstrated that in that in the store that he ran he tried to employ equally across the Protestant Catholic divide that was not usual the result of that was bombing and in one of the bombings my brother nearly lost his life so sectarian violence came very close to our family the second thing about my parents that I value so much is that in a country that was I've afraid famous for narrow-mindedness in many directions they allowed me to think and they interested me very early on in alternative worldviews I could recall I was about 14 and my father gave me a book I said dad what is that but he was not an educated man although he would have loved have been he said it's the Communist Manifesto though I said really why should I read that he said because you need to know what other people think and that was a very important introduction for me to the topic that occupies a lot of my time and that is worldview the fundamental presuppositions against what we think and of course regarding our attitude to what we can know so let's dive straight into the topic as rapidly as we can if this thing would work and it's working up there but it's not working here unfortunately so let's try again we right now the philosopher Immanuel Kant had three famous questions what can I know what can I hope for and what must I do and to the first of those questions Franz Kafka gave a wonderful answer old knowledge the totality of all questions and all answers is contained in the dog if one could but realize that knowledge if one could but bring it into the light of day if we dogs would but own that we know infinitely more than we admit to ourselves and I think there's a strong element of truth in that we know more as Michael Polanyi put it we know more than we can tell we know so many different things the existence of material objects we know intangible truths like three times three equals nine the laws of logic and at other people of minds as we ourselves have we know historical things such as that Caesar Augustus was emperor in Rome and we instinctively know some moral truths such as it is wrong to torture infants and we know from experience that not everybody is honest and tells the truth and we even know hypothetical things such as what would happen if we were to drive a car at a hundred kilometers an hour and to the river just outside but we also know that the senses deceive us as Descartes pointed out the senses the save from time to time and it is prudent to trust holy those who have deceived us even once we know that the world is so that there are limitations to our sense perception some AZ examples will help for centuries the vast majority of people believed that the earth was stationary and that someone roamed the earth as far as their sense perceptions were concerned no one felt that the earth was moving and yet it turns out that it is and so develops the very important branch of philosophy that we call epistemology coming from the Greek words epistemic and logos the theory of knowledge especially with regard to its methods its validity and scope and there are key questions to be answered to what extent can we distinguish between justified belief and opinion and gain knowledge of the world but what is very important to realize that epistemology is what is called a second order discipline that is we do not need to know the solution to many of the complex problems of knowledge in order to know something it is amazing what some of my grandchildren at the age of four already know and not one of them has even learned the word epistemology there is a great deal that we can get to know and the moravian born philosopher Edmund Husserl said and it's a very important statement for scientists actually the right attitude to take is the pre philosophical and in a good sense dogmatic sphere of inquiry to which all empirical sciences but not these alone belong is in full consciousness to discard all skepticism together with all natural philosophy and theory of knowledge and find the data of knowledge where they actually face you whatever difficulties epistemological reflection may subsequently raised concerning the possibility of such data being there and that was one of the brilliant achievements of Johannes Kepler in this very City where he decided to abandon philosophical presuppositions of Aristotle the perfect notion motion was circular and have a look at the actual data and as you know he came up with his brilliant solution to the motion of the planets around the Sun in equally perfect ellipses now my title is time for science so what is science it of course the word comes from Latin from scary to know and so science defines usually any area of systemized knowledge that's carried across and the German word vision shaft in English we tend to reserve it for the Natural Sciences that is those branches of study related to the material of the universe and its laws physics chemistry biology and so on and scientists are of course the people who work in these areas but we tend to rather dangerously sometimes use a shortened science says for we really mean scientists say and then of course there is the very important question of scientific method it is a very difficult question it used to be thought that scientists were completely impartial they were completely objective and their conclusions were permanently and utterly and completely valid we now know of course that that is no longer true so we speak much more modestly about ideas associated with scientific work observation experimentation reasoning but also hunches then induction that is the study of repeatable phenomena such as Kepler did in this university and also abduction the study of unrepeatable phenomena like the origin of life for example where we cannot reproduce it in the laboratory so we have to make an inference to the best explanation we're most familiar with that process in forensic science if my dead body is lying on the floor with the knife sticking in it and Inspector Morse or Sherlock Holmes comes he doesn't say well let's rerun that again to see what actually happened because they cannot rerun it it's not repeatable but you have to then make inferences of a happened then B would happen and so Linux would be dead and so on and you choose the best explanation that is an increasingly important part of the Natural Sciences I'm passionate about science and as success is obvious both of the theoretical and the practical side on the theoretical side our understanding of the universe from its fundamental mathematical and physical laws to the structure of Stars earth and life it has been a spectacular journey especially from the time 1700 when Johannes Kepler was the Imperial math Edition in Prague and that has led to great spin-offs the marvels of technology from computers to the internet just a couple of weeks ago I was at the Mission Control Center in Houston and I was taken into this marvelous laboratory had given a pair of very expensive stereoscopic glasses and a pair of magic electronic gloves and as I put this on I discovered my outside the space station looking down on earth and I could grab the handrail with my glove and then move to the other hand and in that way I could walk around the space station in exactly the same way as a person who did a spacewalk it was utterly spectacular that is what technology has given to us from smartphones to spacecraft antibiotics to transplant surgery so there's no question of the value of science and technology but then looking at the question of what we can know and we feel as a result of this we know a great deal we need to investigate the assumptions that lie behind science and one of the most obvious ones is the one that's rarely mentioned you cannot do science without the belief let me stress that word some people think that only religious people have faith and belief that is not true everybody has beliefs and scientists have very special beliefs they believe they have faith that science can be done they also believe in the uniformity some in the absolute uniformity of nature that is if I do an experiment today and you do it tomorrow you'll get the same result and probing further it all depends on believing the rational intelligibility of nature and indeed coming back to my own special field the mathematical intelligibility of nature so those are the assumptions but we're going to probe even further because we use these assumptions as a background to doing science but even behind them there are worldview starting points I was taught quantum physics at Cambridge by John Polkinghorne and he wrote once if we're to understand the nature of reality we have only two possible starting points either the brute fact of the physical world or the brute fact of a divine will and purpose behind that physical world and you will say if you study the history of science and if you look at the academy for example in my own University of Oxford you will see leading scientists and other intellectuals of course with the different starting point so let's look at the materialistic starting point Richard Lewin turn a world-famous geneticist at Harvard says very honestly we take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just so stories because now notice this we have a prior commitment to materialism it is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world but on the contrary that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of Investigation and the set of concepts that produced material explanations no matter how counterintuitive no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated moreover that materialism is absolute for we cannot allow a divine foot-in-the-door that's massively honest and I respect that he's saying look science does not force me into a materialistic worldview but a materialistic worldview forces me to only accept certainly results has scientific now this is a very popular view here's a philosopher Massimo Pigliucci putting it his way the basic assumption of science is that the world can be explained entirely in physical terms without recourse to godlike entities notice he says the basic assumption of science not the basic assumption of my materialistic philosophy but this is not a basic assumption of science it's his basic assumption for his science so it reduces everything to physical terms that is we call it physicalism and it has consequences for our understanding of who we are Francis Crick Nobel Prize winner you he says your joys your memories and ambitions your sense of personal identity and free will are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules so now it's the human personal experience is reducible to biology and thence the physics this is physicalism now along with it often goes a view that we call scientism I prefer to call it scientific fundamentalism because that shocks people a little bit more and that is the idea that science is the only way to truth Peter Atkins whom I debated that you can see it on YouTube jeweling professors that the debate is called there is no reason to expect that science cannot deal with any aspect of existence reductionist science is only competent and then he honestly says I long for immortality but I know that my only hope of achieving it is through science and medicine not through sentiment and its subsets art and theology so this is scientism and Alex Rosenberg with whom I had a debate a very interesting debate at Princeton he says being scientistic just means treating science as our exclusive guide to reality to nature both our own nature and everything else he's answering my title question what can we know only what science tells us Bertrand Russel put that idea although he didn't hold this strictly what science cannot tell us mankind cannot know now Russell was a very impressive philosopher and mathematician but unfortunately his logic disappeared when he made that statement because you see that statement is not a statement of science so if it's true it's false have you got that or is it too late in the evening for logic scientism is logically incoherent the statement science is the only way to knowledge is not a statement of science there forever it is true it is false now another corollary of scientism is a very dangerous one and that is that science is coextensive with rationality well if that were true this faculty would have to close tomorrow because this is a law faculty not a Natural Sciences faculty and there it is prava yeah law is I don't know what it is but it is you'd have to close history Faculty's linguistics faculties and all the rest it's very important ladies and gentlemen to realize that scientism doesn't work it's logically incoherent but more than that it can be seen to be false let's now move to the other side this is Sir Peter Medawar Nobel Prize winner that there is indeed a limit upon Sciences made very likely by the existence of questions as science cannot answer and that no conceivable advance of science would empower it to answer these are the questions that children ask the ultimate questions of Karl Popper how did everything begin what are we all here for what is the point of living and then he says it is not to science therefore it is not to science therefore but to metaphysics imaginative literature or religion that we must turn for answers to questions having to do with first and last things the most important questions we ask actually are not answered by Natural Science now let me unpack that briefly by talking about what I believe is one of the most important issues in what is often called the God science debate and that is that explanation comes at different levels why is the water boiling it's boiling because they heat from the flame is heating up the glass vessel in which the water is contained the heat is being conducted through its base and is agitating the molecules of water that's why it's boiling well actually it's boiling because I'm hoping to have a cup of tea now you smile at that because it's a silly statement but the importance of that cannot be overestimated there is a scientific explanation in terms of heat and its conduction and transmission but there's another kind of explanation in terms of personal agency volition and desire I want a cup of tea and both of these explanations are necessary one is not complete without the other the scientific one is complete so far as natural science is concerned but not as far as the whole picture is concerned please notice these explanations do not conflict or compete and actually people have been drinking tea for thousands of years before they knew anything about heat conduction the personal explanation is often more important than the scientific now that raise that up a level because there are leading scientists notably Stephen Hawking the physicist in the wheelchair genius who say to people you need to choose between God or science now that's a subject in itself the only point I want to make about it is that by thinking about my water boiling analogy and now putting it in another context let me say this Newton's law of gravitation no more competes with God as an explanation of the universe then the law of internal combustion competes with Henry Ford as an explanation of the motorcar they are different kinds of explanation and the difficulty was scientism is that once the statement is made science explains people think they've got a complete explanation that is almost never the case and it was Vidkun stein who saw it most clearly the great delusion of modernity he wrote is that the laws of nature explained the universe for us the laws of nature described the universe they described the regularities but they explained nothing and I remember the day that I learned that the law of gravitation does not explain gravity Newton realized that non finger hipot AZ I'm not pretending to give you an explanation of gravity what he got was a brilliant mathematical law that you could use to put people on the moon even but that doesn't take you any nearer knowing what gravity is nobody knows what gravity is even today so the words science explains have to be used with extreme caution now we've said a bit about what happens when you start with materialistic philosophy what happens when you start with God now you may never have heard of ETS Walton but you see he's our only Irish Nobel Prize winner for science so I introduced him to you ladies and gentlemen he worked with Rutherford and they split the atom in Cambridge so he's moderately famous Walton was a Christian believer and he wrote this one way to learn the mind of the creators the study is creation we must pay God the compliment of studying his work of art and this should apply to all realms of human thought a refusal to use our intelligence honestly is an act of contempt for him who gave us that intelligence so here's the exact opposite starting point so we've had a Nobel Prize winner who started with materialism his name Francis Crick we have a Nobel Prize winner who starts with God his name 80s Walton so where's the conflict is it between science and theology obviously not because both of these people won the highest physics prize there is the Nobel Prize and let me make it very clear that the issue in the debate is not science versus God at all it's a clash of worldviews theism on the one side belief in God and materialism or naturalism on the other and there are brilliant scientists on both sides the science doesn't decide it and as we've seen some of them confess to the fact that their worldview is a priori that's what they start with so we have basically two worldviews and the profound difference between them is that in the materialistic worldview matter is primary mass energy if you like and mind is derivative with Christian theism mind is primary and mater is derivative now let's come back to our question what can we know how can we know which of either of these worldviews is true can science that is natural science even help us answer questions that are beyond its reach Einstein one of those brilliant scientists who's ever lived said something very interesting about the motivation behind science science can only be created he wrote by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding this source of failings notice this from Einstein Springs from the sphere of religion nor he wasn't a theist in the commonly accepted sense but he says to this there also belongs notice the word faith the faith of a scientist and the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational that is comprehensible to reason I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith the situation may be expressed by an image science without religion is lame religion without science is blind what I want to move on to is and I'm thinking of Kepler as you'll see in a moment the connection between the rise of modern science and biblical theism again on the theme starting with creation starting with God we've looked at starting with materialism but now as we move into the 16th and 17th centuries we observe the simple fact that the major pioneers of modern science were all believers in God Galileo and then of course Johannes Kepler and you'll not be surprised that I love this quote as about petition 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 just so Kepler started with a creator so did Newton it seems probable to me that God in the beginning form matter in solid mass II hard impenetrable movable particles don't doubt the creator because it is inconceivable that accidents alone could be the controller of this universe and then there was James Clark Maxwell and still on the door of the most famous laboratory in the world the Cavendish at Cambridge are inscribed the words great are the works of the Lord to be studied by all who take delight in them you see none of these men had any sense of conflict between an prior faith in God and a devotion to the scientific enterprise see as Lewis summed it up brilliantly men became scientific because they expected law of nature they expected Lord nature because they believed in a lawgiver that is far from faith in God hindering the rise of science it was faith in God that was the motor the drove it how odd that in so many parts of particularly the Western Academy we've abandoned it what can we really know well we need to do a little bit of thinking about thinking and here was a thinker par excellence and he saw there was a problem with the fact that mathematics works the only incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible and a famous article written by Oh Jane Vigna who won the Nobel Prize like Einstein did he talks about the enormous usefulness of mathematics is something bordering on a mysterious there is no rational explanation of it the miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither under nor deserve and John Polkinghorne is pointed out many times that physics is powerless to explain its fundamental belief in the mathematical intelligibility of the universe for the simple reason that you have to believe in that intelligibility to do any physics at all right how far we got here in order to get to know the universe we have to believe that it is rationally intelligible what do we do the work with up in here and sometimes I have fun with my colleagues in Oxford and I say what do you do your science width and they love to tell me about equipment that costs a million dollars no sir oh oh you mean my and they're about to say my mind when they realize that it's not politically correct to say mind so they say you mean my brain and I say all right that will do for me for the moment we'll say you do it with your brain tell me about your brain the short story plays oh well my brain and the end is the result of a mindless unguided process I said really and you trust it said tell me honestly if you knew that your computer was the end result of a mindless unguided process would you trust it I've never had the answer yes to that so why trust an instrument that you believe is simply the result of accident and the laws of nature though there's a big problem where they come from in an accidental universe and they look at me sometimes and they say you say that because you're a Christian I say not at all I said because I've read Darwin they say what yes I said Darwin confessed with me the heart of doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals are of any value or at all trustworthy that's known as Darwin's doubt and it has led to a lot of philosophical investigation moving more and more into mainstream first of all with the brilliant philosopher Alvin Plantinga he puts it this way 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 but the biggest Thur has been caused by Thomas Nagel who is a hard a theist what does that mean he publicly says he does not want there to be a god and yet he wrote a book with an explosive title just look at it mind and cosmos why the neo-darwinian world view of the world is almost certainly false and what's his reason it's Darwin's doubt if the men is not itself merely physical it cannot be fully explained by physical science evolutionary naturalism implies that we shouldn't take any of our convictions seriously including the scientific world picture in which evolutionary naturalism itself depends and years before that CS Lewis had seen the problem 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 only been forgotten it has been ruled out of court by many dismissed 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 that this it is obvious that one's own thinking cannot be merely a natural event and therefore something other than nature exist now I'm going to say something quite provocative in light of that science and God makes very well but science and atheism do not mix very well why because as I've argued atheism logically leads to doubt about the validity of the rational processes needed to do science in the first place and secondly which is a huge topic in itself reductionist materialism cannot deal with mathematics and language we live in the information age ladies and gentlemen and the one thing information is not it's not material the message on that placard up there cannot be explained or reduced to the atoms and molecules of the paper on which it has been printed so we come round in a circle and I find these considerations for me as a science test begin to make much more plausible the biblical worldview that the word is primary information is primary mind is primary in the beginning was the word all things came to be through him and without him nothing came to be that came to be so where have we got well we've seen that science though powerful is limited there are questions it can't answer secondly I've argued the capacity to do science points to a rational mind behind the universe and makes plausible the information age makes plausible that the worldview that holds mind is primary and matter derivative is much more convincing than the opposite so if there is a mind behind the universe Kant's question becomes even more interesting doesn't it can we know the mind of God do you remember the way Stephen Hawking ended his book the brief history of time when he thought if we find a theory that encompassed all the laws of physics we would know the mind of God that Hawking as subsequently says he doesn't believe in God so there is no mind of God well can we know the mind of God well we can know other minds so let's just as I come to an end think of how we know other minds well I suppose if we are natural scientists we would think first of all of positron emission tomography as a way of getting to know other minds so you have a PET scan but just a moment you don't get to know my mind you get to know my brain and that begins to distinguish and it's a very interesting philosophical discussion between the mind story and the brain story but I tell you don't waste your time or your money you will never get to know me by doing MRI PET scans or any other scan that you can think of you may get to know something about the correlation between my thoughts and the firing of synapse as in my brain but that's it how would you get to know me well actually you've got to know me a little bit tonight haven't you why was that well because I revealed myself to you good night I told you a bit about my parents and where I come from I didn't tell you a lot more because that would be boring and uninteresting but the only way that you can get to know me is if I reveal myself now a lot of you in this audience are skeptics well join the club so am i you know whatever I meet a skeptic people say I'm a skeptic well so am i what are you skeptical or perhaps I can help you I may be skeptical of something different but skeptoid in Greek means to check from a distance if you want to get to know me you'll have to give up your distance won't you that's how friendship is generated you have to make a decision to give up distance and reveal that's just ordinary person-to-person relationships there's a big story behind that and I won't have time to develop it but the big story is the central claim of Christianity that God who is person has revealed himself now that's not an arbitrary an incredible idea we know that of ourselves as persons and the central statement we've already seen in the beginning was the word if that makes sense even from a scientific perspective then that prepares our minds for taking the next step and it's this colossal assertion and the word became flesh dwell among us and we have seen his glory glory as of the only son from the father full of grace and truth no one has ever seen God the only son who's at the father's side he's made him known and this is eternal life that they know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent what can we know this is the biggest knowledge of all ladies and gentlemen I know a few little things about mathematics and some things about German and some things about history and philosophy and those are wonderful exploring God's world is one thing and getting to know it getting to know God is an infinitely greater thing now let me emphasize that just as science should be evidence-based so is the Christian faith it is not an irrational existential leap into the dark by committing intellectual suicide John in his biography of Jesus says at the end what his purposes in writing now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book but these are written so that you may believe here is the evidence on which solid faith can be founded that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God and that by believing you may have life in his name now that's internal evidence but there is external evidence a great deal of it let's listen to an agnostic but an ancient historian world famous for his work there are no substantial doubts about the general course of Jesus life when and where he lived approximately when and where he died and the sort of thing that he did during his public activity Bertrand Russell has had such a negative influence by stating long go that there was no evidence that Jesus ever existed that is denied by the vast majority of ancient historians how do I know because I've read them and that all leads me to vats of havel am i right hero or mistaken that thinking that the crisis of much needed global responsibility is in principle due to the fact that we have lost the certainty that the universe nature existence and our lives are a work of creation guided by a definite intention that they have a definite meaning and follow a definite purpose and together with this certainty humility towards what reaches beyond us and surrounds us I have benefited greatly from reading how those letters particularly but I think he hits the exact point here and looking back over history there's something that connects our cities my city of Oxford your city of Prague John Wickliffe long before the Reformation which people have celebrated earlier this week John Wickliffe translated the Bible into English and wrote Holy Scriptures the highest authority for every believer the standard of faith and the foundation for reform and he influenced yunho's and I love these words of hers echoing again long before the Reformation of Luther seek the truth listen to the truth teach the truth love the truth abide by the truth and defend the truth even onto death what truth was it these were men who in England and in this part of the world made sure there were reliable translations of the most influential book in history to which Kafka's words apply we started with him so we'll finish with him if the book we are reading does not wake us as with a fist hammering on our skulls then why do we read it a book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us I like to make use of what I know and I would encourage you to do exactly the same ladies and gentlemen thank you so very much [Applause] before we go into Q&A let me remind you that this is only the Ord over at the beginning of the meal the main course will be served on Monday evening when my friend and colleague dr. oz Guinness will be here to talk to you about matters of truth who can we really trust and we've got to precisely that point which is why I finished where I did this two minutes which we can devote to your wishes the way we will deal with the question time is through text message some of you have already sent some questions so we will start with what are these you are a very calm man and respectful man even when someone attacks your beliefs and tries to make you look like a fool you never lose your cool or get offended I wanted to ask you if you are always this calm and peaceful or if it came with a change oh it's you - serious personality deficiency it's a very deliberate attitude not that I pretend to be calm I am count now why is that it's because ladies and gentlemen I have learned over the years not to fear truth I have learned to love questions you see one of the things my parents taught me and the reason for their non sectarianism was the basic biblical statement on which most of our human rights and law are based in the West and that is the concept that human beings are of infinite value because they are made in the image of God I believe that and therefore I take the arguments of people who do not share my worldview very seriously indeed I have spent my entire life essentially examining what other people have to say why are they done that because for one I do not wish to be fooled and Richard Fineman the Nobel Prize winner for physics said be careful the easiest person to fool is yourself and I always think of that and therefore that they can't secondly I don't feel threatened by questions why because I can always say I don't know you see I learned years ago that it's important to be honest there are lots of things I don't know people come to me often they say I'm a diagnostic I said well so am i and then I add and they say what is it you don't know because there are things I don't know perhaps you can help me with what I don't know and I can help me with what you don't know lots of things we don't know and we can learn but the final thing is I notice in the New Testament the way in which Jesus Christ treated people especially people who were hurting he so impressed them that God was a God who loved them and had space for them and time for them he could penetrate into their inner feelings and talk to them about issues that people today get very prickly about like forgiveness and yet we all need forgiveness as we know and therefore when I do debates where people tell me to get angry I just laugh at that and I say look these people I'm debating with them they have a serious point of view I want to demonstrate that I take it seriously and I believe that by bringing the notions into the public space it gives people like yourselves a chance to judge so I hope you listen to people who take a very different perspective from mine that's what a university is about not keeping you safe from ideas but introducing you to ideas and finally and most importantly I've got a wife who would get mad if I got cross with anybody there is one that question that has an element of mathematics do you think that gödel's incompleteness Theory can be thought as a mathematical proof that science as a formal system is inherited yes why I think that that would take a long time girdle's incompleteness theorem and many of you may not know anything about it and I'm not going to bore you with it but is one of the most brilliant pieces of mathematical work ever done and he showed that if you have a formal system of it strong enough to contain arithmetic there are always true theorems that cannot be proved and they also showed that such systems cannot prove their own completeness so there's a there is a real problem and people like Sir Roger Penrose who've worked in the brain and there's been a lot of fascinating work I'm not competent to judge it but I read it that girdle's theorem because it was thought up by the human mind is one of the evidences that the human mind is more than a computer that you will never reduce the human mind to what someone has called computing meat me-80 there's more to it and if you want to know any more about that read Sir Roger Penrose arguably one of the brightest mathematicians do you think that you can get married with the heart only without using reason it's a confusion of ideas actually we use bits of the body like some of the ancient they do the heart meaning predominantly the feelings but it doesn't exclude reason there's no either/or it's like saying because a person is an empiricist they don't reason about their experiments of course they do reason and empiricism are on a spectrum and it's the same here but I think I know what's behind the question let me put my answer this way God to me is not a theory but a person and persons are infinitely more complex than theories God is not a mere force that Star Wars that isn't Christianity the idea of God as of forces immensely dangerous because you being a person feel yourself to be superior to a force we use forces but that's not the God of the Bible it's for him to use us not us to use him as some kind of spiritual electricity or magic so it's very important that it's both and you know I met a girl on day one at Cambridge I started to talk to her could I listen to what she said without using my reason of course not but could I see her beauty without using my reason that's a more difficult philosophical question isn't that because it's both and you process all of these things and so the question of approaching God it's both and God reveals himself in terms of a person and invites us to speak to him and it's not a crazy idea if there is a God whose personal and invented the universe the idea because he's created me as a speaking being and thinking being that he might be prepared to communicate that's not an absurd idea it's a totally consistent idea unless of course a priori you reject the whole thing so I want to argue for both and and of course emotionally it is overwhelming it can be when you look through a telescope as I sometimes do and see the Orion Nebula is wonderful it's also emotionally overwhelming when you fall in love I do hope there's a better reason behind it all or you might find things fall apart very quickly it's both and logical question it's logical because the kind of argument that took up most of my talk inevitably get you as far as I would hope a plausibility argument that there's a mind behind the universe but then I stepped into a hugely different area when I towards the end sighted and the word became flesh and dwelt among us now you'll notice that is not a claim of natural science it is a claim first of all of history and we beheld his glory that is a claim of personal testimony and if we want to move beyond say a deism there's some kind of God behind the universe because I can see evidence for it did the mathematical describe ability of the universe and so on most of these pioneers of science were not just Deus they were Christian believers Newton was or other curious and complex quasi exception to that but nevertheless how do you get there well how did you make the first step on the basis of evidence I meant exactly what I said when I made the claim that Christianity is evidence-based I know no other way to decide these things than on the basis of evidence now what kind of evidence well it clusters into two may kind sirs what I would call the object of evidence that is the evidence that's outside of me the evidence of history like the example I cited of the ancient historian and there are others who will tell us basic facts of which we can be essentially sure because they're coming at it from a completely a theistic perspective there is the evidence of the Gospels themselves they hugely important evidence for the authenticity of the Christian documents it's something most people haven't a clue about because they don't realize that if they did Latin at school they often read and took for history books where the first evidence of them is nearly a thousand years after they were written but only in a few manuscripts I studied Caesar's Gallic Wars I had no idea as a young person that there are documents for the New Testament some of them go back essentially poking into the second in the first century and people say but they've been copied out thousands of times but that is to fail to understand if I'm holding in my hand a piece of John's Gospel dated in the first century it goes back to the first century how many times has been copied perhaps once no thousands of times through history but you know if that's a serious kind of question for you you will look at the evidence I find it very difficult to take people seriously who raise these questions but don't look at the evidence there's masses of it out there and you can find it so easily by using the Google search engine so history helps me enormous Lee because Christianity is not a mere philosophy I nearly said anybody if they're bright enough or even if they aren't they can invent a philosophy but you cannot invent predictions that say you're going to be born five hundred years before it happens you cannot invent predictions that you're going to die and rise again and it happens and what circles around for me I notice it's obvious historically there would be no Christianity without the resurrection of Jesus that was the central message and it was the central message because it was providing evidence that could be checked now the book that has been fortuitously advertised tonight coming for God I have a whole section at the end of it on precisely these things so if you would like to look at them in more detail there's a lot of my website which I should say as John Lennox dot org but in that book gunning for God you will see me tackle the evidence often through the eyes of atheist writers for the authenticity of the New Testament now why don't I belong to some of the religion well because I've examined evidence I've got friends and most religions I haven't looked at them all in the same kind of detail why is that because they don't all make the same level of claims but the sometimes make claims that can be compared for instance my Jewish friends like of many of those believe that Jesus died he did not rise my Muslim friends and I talked to them to believe that he didn't die I believe he died and rose and I think logic would tell you all three of those things cannot be simultaneously true and so how do you deal with them you look at the evidence and you look at it historically and you read you do what France cuffed her says have a look at this book you may at last have read it when you're at school you may never have read it as an adult I would ask you to read it but you say is that enough no it's not enough because that kind of intellectual evidence gives you a plausibility structure for the next step and the next step involves both the heart and the hand I used to constantly being accused of being very silly because I believed in Christianity as a scientist well and not petition anyway kind of scientist and they say but look in science the basic criterion is testability it's got to be testable and Christianity it's not testable and they say pardon who told you that I wouldn't be a Christian and I wouldn't be giving this lecture tonight if it wasn't testable how could you test it well you see suppose I make a philosophical claim well it's a simple claim there's a red Ferrari sitting 200 meters to the right of this building and you can have a drive in it if you want the keys are in the very unwise probably in this city but there they are the keys are in it you can sit and argue philosophically with me all night all tomorrow all the next date you'll never know whether that's true or not until you go and look isn't there right you cannot work it out by pure reason those count might have said but you can work it out by practical reason you can go and say now Christ made certain astonishing claims he claimed to be God in human form God encoded in humanity they called his name Jesus and they tell us what it means for he shall save his people from their sins what on earth does that mean well to make it more complex but then all reality as complex ladies and gentlemen he claimed that his death and his resurrection would open up a way for people could receive a number of things one of them is forgiveness I think we all understand what forgiveness is another is peace and I think there are many people in this room who'd love to have taste a restless Restless because you haven't found a source of meaning that's big enough for you to expand into and live but he says he will give us peace with God but not only that he says for people who will face the mess they've made of their own lives and of other people's lives the Bible calls that sin we don't like the word but we know exactly what it means he says that he will take upon himself that debt and free us up not by our own efforts but because of what he has done you can test that I have I've seen hundreds of people do it I I wouldn't be here for a moment I think immediately I say this this place is a balcony the last time I give a big lecture at Harvard and you can see it online I finished and up in the balcony there was a Chinese student and he stood up and he yelled in a loud voice he said look at me and of course we all did exactly what he said we all looked at him and he was clearly addressing me so I said why should we look at you he said just look at me and he was radiant with joy and then he said six months ago I was at a different University where you were speaking my life was in a complete mess I couldn't see any way out of my problems and he said you said something that started me on a journey and not long after that I open my heart and as a deliberate act of the will I receive Christ as my Lord and Savior and he said just look at me now it was the most powerful evidence now that is one of the tests because you see let me put it this way very lovingly you come from different viewpoints different religions may be at different levels one of the main reasons I'm a Christian now answering your question directly is because these things that Christ offers me I don't find them anywhere else I don't find any other philosophy or religion that offers be peace with God known here on earth I make many philosophies and religions that tell me to follow this path and if I follow it then someday if God is kind to me he'll allow me into heaven a bit like Prague University exams you know the kind of thing do you even the professors of this university can't guarantee you a degree can they even if they're very nice people like me they count because your degree depends on your merit what you've achieved and because almost everything in life depends on merit people cannot get it out of their heads and they think that God's like that if I work hard if I try to be good then God might accept me that's tragic ladies and gentlemen shall I tell you why suppose all those years ago when I met the girl that became my wife and husband for 50 years suppose I said to her you know I'd like you to be my wife well that's a nice idea but you know don't think I can accept you now absolutely not so I hand her a lovely cookbook check cooking I know she said what's this for well I said it's full of laws and rules for making nice Czech dumplings and things like that no I said it's gonna be like this if you keep the rules in this book for the next 40 years then I'll think about accepting you will you be my wife well you can see what would happen and we laughs had yet many of you in this room think gods like that and that's why you will have nothing to do with God because religion has made you sick because to your mind religion is simply trying to accumulate a mass of Merit in the desperate hope that you will be accepted one day that is slavery ladies and gentlemen this message is totally different this is a message of our God who loves you so much he will accept you right now tonight unconditionally and that's the secret of my marriage isn't it because I didn't give my wife a cookery book with those conditions I did give her a cookery book but I didn't make it the basis of a relationship and because our relationship doesn't depend on merit points it sets her free to cook doesn't it out of love for me not out of a desire to be accepted so as you assess my final point an answer to this question it's the most important question that's coming tonight because there's such vast confusion in Europe particularly about this matter ask yourself a serious question what message is it that is being preached here by this religion or that religion and compare them and I done so many times and I come to the conclusion that Christianity doesn't compete with anything else because Christ offers me something that none of the others do and confess that they can't so that's why I'm a Christian sir to make life interesting it's an interesting question I haven't had that question in that forum before so thanks to the person who asked it it's slightly skewed of course we don't have the same level of questions and doubts all the time and the trouble is in English at least I can't speak for check sadly the word doubt tends to convey a black hole I'm falling at the dirt I don't know where to turn on all this kind of thing but do be tari and Latin simply means to be in two minds and often that is solved by simply getting more information but it's a good thing to end with because we're full of questions because we want to know that's a very good thing God doesn't just pre-program us with all knowledge how boring up a day isn't it wonderful having to learn things well perhaps if you're doing your final exams tomorrow you don't think that but the learning process think of a child I've got nine grandchildren I don't know where they came from but they came and I watch these little ones and what they know and what they learn and Grandpa what about this and question after question after question what a marvelous way of maturing rather than having it all pre-programmed and having an inbuilt Google in your ear and you just look it up and that's it we need to learn and we need to mature by making decisions and you see from the Christian perspective when a person receives Christ that is trusts in for their salvation they get a new life that begins to grow and of course they're full of questions and you see in the New Testament Jesus was constantly asking questions they're not always giving answers because he wanted to push people forwards and you and I know that the things we really remember our answers that come to questions we've struggled with it's part of life's process and I find that encouraging because it means that the idea that God wants to repress humanity is false that's an ancient lie that is recorded in the book of Genesis God doesn't want to repress us at all he wants us to grow up as his sons and daughters learning understanding relating to him being curious about all aspects of the world he created and of course principally being interested in our relationship with him know why God chose to do it that way well how could I possibly answer that but I can see sense in it just in watching it on a much smaller scale within my own family why do you have to spend years teaching a child when it could learn like that it is a machine built-in to cope with it well the day we reach that we shall cease being humans we shall be simply artifacts programmed to do what the computer says we should do and that would be the end of the human race of course [Applause] we thank you notes and with a minute smoke is for you but we also have a small gift for you who came with a smoke brochure for free as you walk out you will pick you can pick a copy it is is in check its gold has silenced buried guards and it is a couple of interviews done by two prominent newspapers three years ago with John based on the talk that he gave this subject has very good we also have a huge discount on getting for God's why didn't you eat ISM are missing the it is a missing the target we only have 50 copies it is actually the last fifty copies that you can get because they ran out of stock worldwide reprint is being arranged very much and normally is twice as expensive it is just for two hundred crowns will be serving you the books if you interested so thank you very much for coming the lecture has been recorded and we very much hope that it will be online in a couple of weeks time good evening [Applause] you

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Length: 86min 16sec (5176 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 09 2018