Lennox vs Atkins - Can science explain everything? (Official debate video)

good evening and welcome it's great to see so many of you joining us here at Southampton University but also welcome to all who are joining us via the livestream my name's Bethany Squires I'm a member of the Christian Union here and I'm also a third-year natural sciences student we are really excited to be joined by Peter Atkins he is an emeritus professor in chemistry from the University of Oxford I know I'm not the only one in this room who has suffered at the hands of his physical chemistry textbooks I'm equally excited that we are joined by John Lennox who is also an emeritus professor in pure mathematics from the University of Oxford he had written many books and on many lectures discussing the topic of science and faith finally we are joined by Justin Riley who hosts a show on premier Christian radio which brings believers and unbelievers together to discuss topics and all that's left to do now is to hand over to Justin our chair so please join me in a round of applause for our guests well can I add my thanks as well to Beth and the Christian Union here for hosting us and what promises to be a really interesting conversation I am Justin Briley as Beth mentioned I run a radio show and podcast called unbelievable which every week brings Christians and non-christians together for dialogue and debate and I like to say that we we create conversations that matter and I think tonight's conversation really does matter I'm also very much looking forward to the fact that many people around the world will be joining us for this conversation we're being streamed to a nearby church but also all over the world via the YouTube channel so welcome if you're watching via any of those means after the time of discussion as Beth mentioned there will be some time for questions but all your questions are being taken by text this evening and I will as they come in if appropriate scatter some into the conversation as well so we look forward to reading those and answering them later on in the evening let me just again give a brief introduction to both of our guests tonight we're so fortunate to have John Lennox and Peter Atkins with us tonight John Lennox emeritus professor of mathematics and philosophy of science at the University of Oxford he's a well known Christian speaker and author his most recent book is also the title of our discussion tonight can science explain everything Peter Atkins is emeritus professor of physical chemistry at the University of Oxford he's well known as an atheist speaker and he's also authored many books including his most recent title which was conjuring the universe in which he argues that the universe and the sites behind it can be explained in purely naturalistic terms so we're going to have an interesting conversation tonight as we ask have the advances in science and our knowledge of the universe brought us to the point where we can say confidently yes science explains everything or is there something about ourselves in our place in the universe that needs different kinds of explanations about why we're here and what it means to be human so I'm really looking forward to tonight's conversation John and Peter thank you very much for joining me before we get into the question of the evening a little introduction to you both Peter you've been a scientist pretty much all your life do you find that that's gone hand-in-hand with your your atheism as it were throughout your life oh yes without doubt I mean science is so powerful that it shows that all the ancient traditional ideas derived from religion are views unnecessary and so science is a wonderful way of explaining the world and I think we humans should be delighted that we have brains sufficient to unravel the secrets of the universe and discover that the fabric of reality it adds joy to the beauty that we're surrounded by would you say you've always been a non-believer in that sense or was there ever a point at which you did have any glimmer of faith in your life Oh as a child I was sent to church by my parents because in those days parents wanted children out of the way for bits of someday but as soon as I got to university and started to think for myself I could see that religion was a fraud right well I'm looking forward to engaging with you on the subject tonight John a little bit of background to yourself you grew up in a faith environment but not one which was an unquestioning innocence I grew up as you can know tell in Northern Ireland and it was faith environment if you mean by that my parents were Christians I think by the way people all people are people of faith atheists have their beliefs I have my belief but I was encouraged to think and for me Christianity was in a sense one of the inspirations to do science so I'm very different from Peter in that respect I join him though in celebrating the the wonder of science and in fact Peters books have been amazing to help me understand lots of stuff I didn't understand before by the way he's written three times as many books as I have so listen to him three times more carefully if you listen to me but I've always had this strong relationship between belief in God as one kind of explanation of our universe and life and science as another kind which complements it well we have a question under discussion tonight and it seems appropriate to begin by asking you both the question can science explain everything perhaps we could start with you Peter yeah well I'm not a politician so I'll give you a straight answer is yes of course it hasn't yet explained everything but there are no signs that it's going to run up against a brick wall and stop explaining everything I think we should first of all be clear what we mean by science and science is basically basically a method of of discovery based on observation and taking evidence evidence that can be shared publicly and generally and that is really the the core of the scientific method but it's not the only component of the scientific method that's important because the ideas that science generates set sit in a network of ideas so ideas might emerge from biology am I to emerge from physics chemistry whatever psychology and where they overlap they are mutually supportive and this is extraordinary strong evidence for the appropriateness of science as a means of discovering the truth about the fabric of reality and indeed all there is the second part of this these introductory comments that I'd like to make is that we have to think about what we mean by the questions that science approaches and I think there are two classes of question one is stupid questions and the other is real questions and a lot of the stupid questions maybe that's too strong the term a lot a lot of class one let me call it questions have emerged as extrapolations of human angst worries about the nature of the world projections of of human ideas where they do not necessary by any evidence science deals with real questions science deals with questions for which there is evidence so whereas a typical religious question might be what is the purpose of the universe science can dismiss that as an irrelevant question there is no evidence that there is any purpose in the universe in fact I think it were the wonderful that this extraordinary collection of galaxies is giant just hanging there totally without any purpose whatsoever I think that's one other ground frankly and rather rather inspiring so when you ask questions for which there is no evidence such as that one you know what is the purpose of the universe what is the nature of the afterlife and all that sort of thing science need not trouble to try to answer them because their nonsense questions it sounds deals with real questions questions for which there is evidence and these some of these are very deep and that's not hide them under a bushel I think one major question is why is there something rather than nothing it certainly seems as though there is something and we presume that before there was something there was nothing so it seems to be a real question and science has as its objective an attempt to answer that kind of question another deep question of course is the nature of consciousness and all the attributes of consciousness we appear to have consciousness there is evidence that we do and so it is appropriate for science to tackle that and by consciousness I mean you know all the attributes of consciousness including morality and so those are real questions those are the those are the questions that science can answer and there is no doubt in my mind that over the past let's say 300 years that science has done its job seriously that is collecting evidence setting it in a network of concepts and seeing the way that they are mutually supportive I think there's no doubt that over 300 years we have made extraordinary progress and there is no reason other than pessimism to expect that science will grind to a halt and not answer all the real great questions of existence thank you very much so an emphatic yes to the idea that in principle science can explain everything that's worth explaining in that sense so John same question to you can science explain everything well obviously not black Supremes own home [Music] that's a a comical response but I have actually two more answers to the question you're going to be surprised at how much I agree with Peter because the definition of science he offered us that is collecting evidence making observations in fact in his book on being he reduces that beautifully to making observations on comparing notes if that's what we mean by science and it's the old meaning of science before the 19th century then of course science can explain everything because the very word explanation means making evidence-based observations and notes so my short answer is if we accept Peters first definition then I agree with them entirely science by definition explains everything but of course the meaning of the word science has changed in England but not on the continent in German this in shaft covers the humanities and the Natural Sciences and when people these days say science can explain everything they're not referring simply to making observations on comparing notes at all for instance that would apply to any historical or forensic examination and my faith as a Christian is based precisely on the kind of scientific reasoning that Peter has set forward to us the main issue I think in discussion today is not whether that kind of evidence based thinking and observation can come to every conclusion let me just say by the way that from the Christian perspective Luke the writer of the third gospel tells us that that is exactly what his method was he consulted people he made observations and then he put them together so we'll call that science 1 what is a course at stake today is the question from the Natural Sciences answer every question and there I think that that is simply not the case they Nobel Prize winner Peter Medawar many many years ago he wrote a very interesting book with the limits of science and he said we do science a disservice natural science if we think it can address any questions and he refer every question and he referred to the basic questions of Karl Popper the questions of a child where do I come from where am I going what is the meaning of life natural science doesn't answer questions like that and Medawar added it is to religion philosophy and so on that we must go to answer those questions I think science is immensely powerful it is immensely exciting and it uncovers a vast amount about our universe but I have a problem by going too far I'm a petition and I'm rather interested in logic and you know if we say that science can explain everything or science is the only way to truth as it's often put well that is not a statement of science it's a statement of belief and so if it's true it's false maybe it's too early in the evening for logic like that but there's a huge logical problem so to sum up my position science is powerful it's methodologies are extremely important also in the sphere of history forensic science and in the sphere of religion but I'm going to be careful here because Peter is right very often in his critique of superstition of mythology and nonsense and science has helped to clear away some of the nonsensical things that sometimes religious people profess but what really makes me in one sense very much in favor of the Christian faith is that from the very start it claims to be evidence based the central piece of evidence is of course as you probably know the resurrection of Jesus Christ so I believe in Peters methodology I use it all the time but somehow he fails that a Christian like me doesn't use that methodology within my own Christian faith final point I think explanation can science explain everything we need to tease out what we mean by the word explanation for example the law of gravity doesn't explain gravity it tells us didn't realize that tells us wonderful mathematics that we can calculate the way in which heavy bodies move in relationship to one another but even when we say science explains often that doesn't explain comprehensively and I just want to throw a very simple analogy into this which I find quite useful about boiling water how would you explain boiling water well you can explain it by talking about heat conduction and agitation of molecules of water you can also say the water is boiling because I'd like a cup of tea now those two explanations are very different they don't conflict they complement one is a scientific explanation natural scientific but the other is an explanation in terms of the intention and purposes of an agent and Peter said quite clearly that science doesn't go in for that kind of purpose but that doesn't mean that kind of purpose doesn't exist in fact people have been enjoying tea for millennia before they knew anything about the theory of heat in physics so what I want to say is this that God explanation is different from the science explanation god no more competes with science as an explanation of the universe then Henry Ford competes with physics as an explanation of the motorcar okay thank you great great introductory statements from both of you I'm sure there's lots you want to respond to there Peter where do you want to begin well there's so much nonsense for hack of work this may be the phrase of the evening yeah let's go to what you call the core of your approach which is the resurrection of Jesus never happened I mean well that's an assertion Peter what about some evidence well what about some evidence that it did happen other than people who are ranching Gospels of 80 years later than the event that they purport to be talking about no of course it didn't happen how could it happen and science I think could even go so far as saying it simply could not happen when you've got a dead body it's decaying straight away there's no way that it's going to reconstitute in some way it's absurd and I accept that it is the foundation of Christian faith that doesn't mean to say that it's true and so I let's dismiss that as something that simply has no evidence whatsoever well of any credible we dismiss it let's hear a response from John because obviously this is an important issue whoa what counts as evidence and can I suppose you would argue that science can cannot explain the resurrection both I wouldn't quite argue that way I would say that science cannot forbid a resurrection because you see science proceeds on discovering the regularities to which nature works and has done a very impressive job and the fact that we know that dead bodies don't normally rise that is a law of nature in that sense means that we recognize something very special happened if it did happen now there are two issues here the first of all there's the in principle one which always ends up in talking about David Hume who said that miracles are violations of the laws of nature and I do not believe they are that's point number one and I can go into that if you like do you want me to do you want to believe were you might as well since yes well you better define a miracle I think a miracle was defined of something that is against the laws of nature ah but I don't define it like that at all a miracle miraculous Latin simply means something to be wondered at but we're talking about something super natural now it seems to be very clear that Hume said miracles violate the laws of nature he was really not understanding and the great interpreter unto the flew of David sorry I'm sorry what I think you were going to object to the raising of Antony's oh well I'm not raised that let's feel like to race he is died and hasn't risen I do I I do see that point but the point is this CS Lewis long ago told a little analogy if I stay in a hotel tonight put a hundred pounds in a drawer and do the same tomorrow night there two hundred pounds in it one plus one equals two if on the third morning I find fifty quid what do I say that the laws of arithmetic have been broken or the laws of England clearly I say the laws of England have been broken how do I know because the laws of an arithmetic have not been broken it's our recognizing of what normally happens that helps us to say an exception now if I were claiming that the body of Jesus rose from the dead by processes natural processes going on in the grave five minutes before we happened yes that would be wrong but I'm not claiming that what Christians claim is that the God that created the universe and built the regularities is really is capable pure speculation we don't know Peter is dead easy to say it's not worth listening to you tempt me to say that but some of the things you say but I'm not going to do that because it seems to me it's very important to listen to what Christianity claims before you judge it and what is claimed is that God who creates the universe and sustains it is not subject to laws as if they were laws of a land he set up the regularities and he can feed a new event into them and the claim is and with this I finish that God raised Christ from the dead an input of colossal power oh Jesus well you've got at Peter again I mean that is the claim at the end of the day but I mean this is everyone knows here that's nonsense you know what you're inventing is an agent who can do anything he likes he or she likes despots you have to say these days and and so your it is the laziest way of accounting for observations sometimes observations of they were never actually made religious explanations which resort to God did it intellectually lazy I won't use a stronger term than that but I do think that they are lazy because I mean what does it mean as an explanation you lie there saying oh god did it if everyone sin understand now religious explanations as easy to accept by the unthinking science is difficult to accept because it involves a lot of thought you really have to tease out the processes by which an event occurs you can't simply say and God did it you've got to go through in biology you delve down into if you like the the chemistry of the of the organism in chemistry you delve down into the physics of the underlying processes and I except maybe in physics you have to delve down into the underlying mathematical fabric of whatever I mean by that it's jolly hard work and you've got to work on it but it's more satisfying when you get to the end of an explanation then that extraordinarily lazy way of pretending to explain by saying and abracadabra God did it I mean that that is intellectually corrupt okay but Peter that's confusing two different kinds of explanations indeed if you were to say about a motor car Henry Ford did it and that's all you have to say then I would agree with you but the point is as I sit here and read your books and explaining chemistry and all this kind of thing I say this is wonderful this is not contradicting the god explanation because the god explanation is saying that you as a chemist only have a universe to study because God created in the first place but he's not competing in fact interestingly and this has always been a bit of a mandate for me the very early chapters of Genesis God commands human beings to name the animals he starts off taxonomy which is the basic intellectual discipline in other words he said you go and do science and you'll find it utterly fascinating so I think you're arguing at a straw God another straw man you don't know whether God was starting off fun science he might have got so bored with his creation that he wanted to amuse them and so who's speculating now yeah I am yeah okay I think any speculation that uses the word God is intellectually corrupt I mean but this is absurd there is no God no no be quiet there is not one jot of evidence for God evidence for God okay so let me just to summarize me as maybe corrupt and and any any mention of God is simply going down that path what why for you is that not the kind of lazy corrupt explanations you'll well first of all take science itself why am i passionate about science why do I believe science can be done well because I believe that in some way the human mind in here has access to the natural world out there now why do I believe that and sometimes I ask my atheist friends I've never asked Peter this but so he's excused but I have asked many of them I I said what do you do science with and they say my and they're about to say mind for they realize it's not politically correct to say mind they say my brain and I say tell me about your brain and one man who's a rather faith as he said to me you want the really short answer I said sure my brains the end product of a mindless unguided process so I looked at him and smiled and said and you trust it and then I asked this question have asked many times suppose you knew your computer was the end product of a mindless unguided process would you trust it and I've always had the answer no and then I say I see you have a problem in other words you're a theist materialist stance undermines my trust in the rationality I need to do science now if you flip the coin modern science exploded in their 16th and 17th centuries and its pioneers Galileo Kepler Newton Clark Maxwell and so on we're all believers in God most of them Christian and the point is it was their belief in God that didn't hinder their science it was the motor that drove it so for two reasons one the legitimizing of doing science at all is one of the reasons I believe in God God as an explanation makes more sense it has explanatory power the Atheist explanation as even some atheists like Thomas Nagel these days are beginning to see undermines confidence in rationality John's argument essentially then Peter that the very fact we can do science points to a rational logic behind the universe and behind our ability to understand it that is I suppose fits better with with the idea of a god yeah that's what I'm rather than than the idea that if this all is by chance it's it's a random yeah lazy - that's certainly true trouble is that if philosophers are pessimists basically it does think it's then they get paid to doubt and they doubt the capacity of human understanding scientists are optimists they think that given time given collaboration hugely important they will arrive at explanations that do not require the insertion of words like God God is no more than a word frankly which is used to disguise the inability to comprehend something so theologians of a fast gauge we've heard that in good measure this evening if I may say so scientific well while theologians of the state scientists in human age and we are showing that somehow or other through evolution only through evolution we have developed brains which are capable of extraordinary understanding now let me take a moment just to rap a warning around that at the moment and do have brains that are big enough to understand absolutely everything it's a legitimate question you know are we you know like a dog in a room which a dog could not understand classical physics although we humans think we can understand classical physics but we have to confront the possibility that our brains are not strong enough to understand absolutely everything and I think we might even be moving towards an agreement there but there's different kinds of in understanding as John was saying but of a different kind from what John's were saying take quantum mechanics you can formulate equations in quantum mechanics and solve them to an extraordinary degree of precision but there are aspects of quantum mechanics like quantum entanglement and so on which we might never be able to understand because we humans have been brought up in a world of classical events on usually I mean as we drop from this trees we found that the world was largely classical it's in the 20th century 21st century that we've discovered the quantum behavior of this extraordinary kind you know it might well be that our brains simply are not equipped to understand the quantum phenomena that we are discovering but we can still do the equations we can still solve it to arbitrary precision I think that means that we in a sense have understood the fabric of reality is but it that way even though we can't Intuit the fabric of reality because our brains are constructed classically and not quantum mechanically so I agree that there are there may be limitations to our understanding but they are understanding of that kind I've no difficulty with that because the one thing I would never say is quantum mechanics is extremely difficult I I don't understand quantum entanglement therefore God did it I would never dream of reacting like that because trying to understand quantum entanglement that is the job of science that is the job of physics and you keep going as you suggest until you run out of brainpower you see God answers a different kind of question which Spurs science on it doesn't inhibit it deny Peter what I think this is very important point that science is a motivation God is a motivation for science a motivation for science and I think we ought to spend them okay I think it's what God is also a great motivation for art as well yes wonderful pictures wonderful music wonderful literature well induced by belief in God but it doesn't mean that the God actually exists it simply means that you believe that he exists so I was going to say that you're the very book you wrote the the statement you use at the beginning is I think from bacon and who was of course a believer well there were those days so is that what you're saying that in a sense whatever John says about the religious sort of faith of the pioneers of science it was just the nature to them it was real and indeed it did motivate their excellent work and the inspiring work in some cases and certainly in the humanities but it doesn't mean to say it's true of course not no so you don't you didn't but what's the point you're making then if you're not saying that shows that it's Jojo the point is it doesn't show it's false and you're a little comment there was they all believed in God in those days is also false because it's very interesting when you think of the rise of modern science at Western Europe I've mentioned that but it was Richard Dawkins put this to be years ago in one of our debates and I made the point which I now make everybody didn't believe in God in those days the Chinese didn't and there was very interesting research done by Joseph Needham and Cambridge use a brilliant sign ologist also a chemist I believe and he did research and wrote the huge volume many volumes of the dictionary of technological achievements in China and he was very puzzled why abstract science kind we know did not arise in China now he was a new Marxist and he tried to explain this on the basis of his atheistic Marxism but he couldn't and in the end he came to a fascinating conclusion he said in the end the difference that the only difference I can see between the East and the West they discovered technology but not science in that sense is that the East did not have the unifying concept of a single rational creator who created the universe to work in such doesn't mean to say that if you have that having the idea that there is one it's not the same as there being one so the people that's that's obvious the the thing is it doesn't make it false but it's part of the cumulative evidence for explanatory power because in most of these areas we're making inferences to the best explanation and an explanation that makes sense to me that is that the reason we can do science is the God who created the universe also stands behind the human mind that makes much more sense than a reason that says we're simply the random product of unguided processes talk about reasons because you've both brought this up and explanations different types of questions that we ask Peter you've said there are sort of nonsense questions that we simply shouldn't be asking because they're not the kind of questions we should be pursuing like well is there a purpose to the universe John from what I can tell you believe those are valid questions because they are even if they're of a different nature to the specific response to questions and intentioned questions are among the most important questions we can ask and I've had a question actually from the audience which asks a assume of you Peter is it isn't it a bit too convenient to label questions that science doesn't answer as stupid or not real well it seems very sensible to clear the way so that you can have a sensible conversation about real questions but why is the question of what what are we here for not a real question in your view because there's no evidence that there is any purpose in the universe you've got to look for evidence and I actually did say right at the beginning I think that the real questions are based on evidence the silly questions the fake questions if you like are based on extrapolations of human experience if you like you so we have purposes I have a purpose so coming here this evening though I must confess I forget what it was so you have an even purpose but not ultimate purposes at it well I believe that people have individual temporary ephemeral purposes now that's fine but for there to be a purpose in the universe is an extrapolation of that attitude there is no evidence that the universe has a purpose at all so it's inappropriate for science to do a series of experiments to discover the purpose John well where do you say there's no evidence I would go back to the fact and I lost in that sense come back to my Christian faith Christianity is not a mere philosophy it's geared into history and it seems to me that the whole initial explanation in the beginning God created the heavens of the earth that starts off a huge meta-narrative that gives human beings huge significance as made in the image of God no that may be true or it may be false but does it make sense it's not one of these nonsense things it certainly makes a great deal of sense and incidentally some of the brightest minds in history have spent years thinking about these things I've just read through Antony Kenner's modern history of Western yes great thousand-page ya know we have relative 900 of those pages show what a waste of time philosophy was when people were worrying about the nature of God and his or her the properties philosophy just famous gaussians Thomas Aquinas you name them completely wasted their lives by thinking about non questions it's only when but that's your belief yeah but you know there's no evidence for God it's the basis of the it's that's the core of my belief that's what we're talking about but is that there is no evidence for God that is the rock on which I built my system of explanations your rock is a kind of elaboration of that because this physiologically unlikely event of the resurrection it's physiologically immensely unlikely but the evidence of it doesn't stop at the little bit I gave you you have to think about the whole rise of Christianity from a non precising people greatly enjoy those explanations well that's allowed us to give any some explanation Oh we'll have you responded the rock in my life is I'm looking for a worldview a new of a worldview its atheism and I have a worldview of this Christian that makes sense of life and gives me a meta-narrative big enough to live for and live in now we've been talking tonight all up to this time about science and evidence that may come from the natural world I believe that the natural world with its laws that Peter writes about brilliantly and I am ability those very laws are indicators to my mind of a divine mind the fact that at the heart of biology is the longest word we've ever discovered the genetic code is again consistent that this universe is a word based universe in the beginning was the word all things were made by him so I see evidence of rational intelligence all over science but I see that the alternative worldview atheism undermines that although it perceives the very same rational intelligence and so as explanatory power at that level but you see I did say Christianity is not purely a philosophy and if Jesus Christ really rose from the dead then that opens up huge possibilities of personal encounter in my life now and the major reason why I believe that Christianity is true is because and here's come science again as a as a base because Christianity is testable on nonsense how could it be tested well Peter let me face that head-on Christ said when he wasn't earned but go ahead Christ said that if a person considered the evidence and came to believe that he was God incarnate who was dying on a cross to give forgiveness and bring peace with God well we can test that I've tested it and I've seen hundreds of people tested I mean take take an example I was lecturing at Harvard awhile ago to a couple of thousands of people and when I'd finished a young Chinese students stood up and he said look at me so we looked at him and I said why should we look at you he was absolutely beaming he said you should look at me because six months ago I came to lecture you gave a Penn State University I was at the end my life was in a complete mess and something you said triggered a search and I started to read the New Testament for myself and I became a Christian and just look at me now nine ladies and gentlemen I've seen that happen not once not twice dozens of times and when you see addiction to drugs transformed at the foot of the table when you see broken relationships mended and you ask people what happened to you and they say variously I became a Christian I have been kind of with Christ you begin to put two and two together and make four and I wouldn't sit here for a nanosecond if I didn't believe that these promises that Jesus made actually can be fulfilled in a person's life today and that's immensely important to me the testability of Christian relationship we're also a kind of testability that you should leave to the psychologists and the psychiatrist's I think but I don't mind a psychiatrist what do you believe it to them they will notice they will understand why these people have found the comfort that's let's accept that it may be comfort but that doesn't prove is wrong Peter to use your argument the fact that Christianity brings comfort is another is not evidence against it it may well be evidence for it if it brought discomfort and ruin people's like a great deal of discomfort ah strewn about for example you're raising another question and I'm Irish I'm very sensitive to that question and I could go into it if we want to when the point you made was that you were enthralled by the universe and the concept of God because you can see that it provides an explanation of the the rationality of that's right now in the book I just published last year which you alluded to where I talk about the origin of the laws of nature which i think is kinda behind your your your comfort as it were well I don't I I use four principles to argue to identify the laws of the origin of the laws of nature one principle is indolence another is anarchy and another is ignorance than three three principles and I can show and I do in that book that those three principles are enough to account for the laws of nature as we have identified them I don't need an agent behind it unless that agent is infinitely indolent is infinitely an anarchic or is infinitely ignorant which I don't think he would describe qualities those qualities to your God so I don't need a god to account for this world we we obviously don't have time to go into the fullness of of what you raised in that book but the phrase that really struck me from the book was this I you said it on a few occasions nothing rolled over into something that was the way in which the universe which is clearly something came from nothing now this was referenced by you earlier job sounds like nonsense to me and you know Peter what do you mean by nothing in that context I've been in the absence of space-time or do you mean what we most of us been the absence of anything that's what I mean what I said okay right well I'm very interested in nothing in fact I give lectures of nothing these days and I had the opportunity to enter a discussion like this in the Harvard MIT faculty club and I was surrounded by the experts the Lincoln and Alan Guth the probably the world's most famous cosmologist and I did something I never usually do I said I'd like to ask the first question of Alan Guth who's the father of the theory of inflation and all this kind of stuff like a very friendly discussion so I said Alan lookers out there there's much ado about nothing and I want to ask you a question when you as a cosmologists use the word nothing do you mean what all the rest of us Mainers absence of anything he said no we do not well he was wrong he should because well if if there was a creation that's it's try to talk in your your kind of language if there was a creation then presumably the something between our experience was preceded by the absence of something and I presume that we can call the absence of something or the absence of anything nothing so presumably at the creation somehow or other absolutely nothing changed into I use the term rolled over changed into something is that our principles of indolence no ignorant sand no those come later oh I see I need to read this you see I'm sorry that's what I do but I think let me speak to them just finished so presumably you think if there was absolutely nothing and it turned into absolutely something that there was an agent involved in causing that is that the creation I wouldn't quite put it that way I would I would say that the universe comes from nothing physical but it doesn't come from nothing God is not nothing in fact we get the whole thing upside down we tend to think partly because of the way we're educated in terms of science that mass-energy and material is the basic stuff of the universe of course now we've come down to nothing being the basic stuff I would want to say about that is I don't believe it but secondly God is not physical God is spirit and the fundamental stuff in the universe is mind and spirit it's not material so then if I could finish the universe comes from nothing physical but it doesn't come from nothing it comes from God who created it let there be light and there was light and so that is my position that's not a position which you believe conflicts with the science we do know of the Big Bang not at all the Big Bang is wonderful because it simply tells us there was a beginning and science caught up from the Bible with the Bible in the 1960s because science was tied to Aristotle for centuries believing that there was an eternal universe now we believe in a beginning whether you mean a beginning of the multiverse or the universe it doesn't really matter because the latest mathematical theorems by Guth the man I just mentioned the Lincoln and Board say that there is an absolute beginning so the Bible has said it for centuries I think you're willing to grant this idea of an absolute beginning Peter but the Union cautiously caution I mean it it could be that time is circular and they're we're just seeing a few billion years and it looks straight but I I'm prepared to accept that that might well have been the beginning but your view is that prior well if you can speak of some being prior to that there there was nothing and the something came from nothing obviously many people will say that sounds like a contradiction in terms well since we've got something like originally there was nothing then I think it must be true right nothing turned into something but what you've got to be very careful about is it's not a person of nothing turning into something is a question of a creator you see what science does is to simplify questions till they get to the point that they stand open the to being answered and if you look at the universe as a whole you can see that it actually consists I think and to be accepted on this of equal amounts of opposites take for example electric charge we know that there is positive charge in the universe we know that there is negative charge in the universe we also know observational e because of the great strength of the electromagnetic interaction compared to gravity that if there had been any invalid if there were any imbalance of the positive and negative amounts of electrons being then the universe would blast be blasted apart and would not have survived until now so what we've got a positive and negative charges and what I think happened is that when you have got absolutely nothing of course you've got no charge but at the inception of the University that nothing separated into opposites which accounts for why we've got equal amounts of positive and negative charge and whatever ated well that's the second question I think you can go on looking at other aspects of the universe like the amount of energy that there is and see that when you actually add up all the energy in the University comes to zero so although it looks as though there's a lot of energy around in fact there are equal amounts of opposite kinds of energy so although I not claiming to know how the universe how nothing separated into opposites what I think it shows is that science has simplified the question so instead of having to say where did all the charges come from where did all the energy come from all it's got to do now and I admit that it has not yet done it but it seems to me to be a simpler task is to say how did that absolutely nothing separating two opposites well that's just separate let's go to a final comment and then we'll go to some question well I would say Peter forgive me for be very skeptical here I've come across this argument betty types it sounds to me that this is saying something like because my credits equal my debts there's nothing going on at all yes I am saying that no way so I think it's wonderful simplification prior to understanding the greatest question of all which is why the universe exists why what's your problem with with putting it in these terms there John well because these charges once they are around are certainly not adding up to nothing there's a whole system now in my starting up to zero childhood oh yes there's zero charge but that isn't the only thing around there's space-time around there's everything else around but what I would like to say is in my examination of what people believe nothing is there's Stephen Hawking there's Lawrence Christ and having read all of their books I discovered that the way they get something from nothing I'm not saying you're doing at Peter because I need to investigate your book but is by redefining nothing which is a very clever coppered Lawrence Christ sort about page five of his book a universe of nothing says this because something is physical nothing must be physical even if you specially if you define it as the absence of something well that's sheer nonsense yeah I think that's nonsense so that's growing on some agreements oh that's very good let's go to questions it's been it's such fun actually being in the middle of this conversation but but we've we've had a lot of questions texted in so we really must get to a few of them what I'll do is I'll give you both an opportunity to respond to each question and we'll never try to do as many as we can I think this is a really interesting one what new evidence would be sufficient to lead the speakers to adopt the opposite view so if I perhaps ask that first of you Peter is is there anything any kind of evidence that John could bring to bear that would actually make you change your mind I think actually maybe there is a God I I think that's very interesting I have asked myself that question previously yeah is there any evidence that would flip me into into the belief camp and so and I simply can't think of any I think if I tell myself that if I agreed with some evidence then it showed that my sin had gone mad right so it's a serious question but I don't think there can be any other light are you saying your position is unfalsifiable in that sense yes because even if there was if I was standing you know the foot of a cross and saw they the resurrection before my very eyes I would put it down to hallucination it's an extension of the David it's extension of the David Hume argument which you didn't quite complete because Hugh meant on to say that there is always more reason to disbelieve the reporter than what he is reporting do you want to make a comment firstly on on the fact that for for Peter there's literally nothing that could convince him that well very interested in what he said at the end that he would believe it was a hallucination and he mentioned to me before that the psychologist would work on what I say but they'd work on what he said and one of the evidences for the resurrection of Jesus actually is the work psychologists have done in pointing out that it could not have been a hallucination he was seen by over 500 people at once different times of day or night and all this kind of thing but there are things that would reverse they okay and I joined Peter if you could give me evidence that the Gospel writers for example like Luke were not authentic if you could give me evidence that there's a really convincing explanation that Jesus did not rise from the dead if you could show me that all the experiences I've had in life with my family and with other people that I would definitively put down to the activity of God then I'd be prepared to consider well those cumulative evidences in my life are so large that I don't think it's likely to happen but I have to be open to that why because you see ladies and gentlemen because I come from a very religious country I was accused and I've been accused the night of the same thing oh of course you believe that stuff you're Irish is the old Freudian explanation so what have I done I spent my entire life opening up my Christian commitment to its opposite is exactly what I'm doing tonight and I spent my life doing it a lot of it in Russia incidentally where you make really hard atheism and doing that constantly questioning my own position has confirmed my position now Peter do you constantly question your own position or do you see no reason to do that I see no reason to yes well I see great reason to do it because I don't want to be fooled that I see in you a great the an example of the power of cultural conditioning takes place during childhood well Peter I could argue the same you see there Freudian argument that says the religion is wish-fulfillment it works brilliantly if there is no god but you see I would want to argue that if there is a God Peters atheism can equally well be explained as wish-fulfillment the desire never to have to encounter God the Freudian argument doesn't deal with the basic question is there a god or not so I I simply think I've never you see I want to understand the workings of the world on this side of the grave so do I you seem to want to understand them on the others but why not have both Peter it's a bigger universe than just this side of the grave because there isn't anything on the other side but that's just an assertion no it's the lack of evidence well well let's go to another question this is a very interesting one I'm a scientist and long-standing atheist this person taking the challenge as a scientist to follow the evidence where it leads over many years I have become convinced that there is good evidence to point towards an all-powerful transcendent timeless creator but I cannot square this with how I feel my instincts my emotions say it cannot be it's impossible to either of you think it's possible to resolve such a dissonance how from each perspective would you proceed let's start with the I start with John this person certainly they feel pulled in most directly so is absolutely intriguing to me why this morning a letter from a very highly educated doctor'll a person with a doctorate doing very advanced research who asked me exactly the same question exactly the same question come from atheism Dawkins type atheism and now feels terribly pulled and wondering this feels so strange how can I resolve it my attitude to that is take time talk to other people other Christians your friends find out what makes them tick and read as much as you can full of questions something like the Gospel of John and so on and so forth I believe eventually one can resolve these questions but it's clear that many people feel like this and I think it's wonderful if you get that far and in one sense they can be resolved but the last will not necessarily the last step but with many of these things what the problem we have especially in our contemporary culture is the matter of commitment you see skepticism is a wonderful thing the Greek word means to check out from a distance and some of you will be checking out partners at a distance but you know as well as I do in order to have a meaningful relationship you have to give up your distance if you want to get to know me sooner or later you'll have to give up your distance and I'll have to give up my distance but if we're sensible will not do it without evidence and so it's a question of that greatest commitment of all as I believe it is which is is to Christ making that step of commitment is for some people difficult but it's in the end the only way to test if the thing works do you have any advice for this long-standing atheist who says he's feeling suddenly good it's it's like John's but has a slightly different thrust it might it is to hang on to his commitment but it's to hang on to his commitment to rationality oh I would want him to hang on to his commitment the rationality of course thing you can't be rational and a Christian right and it was his job yes sir ah yes the feeder feeder yes I have a response what do you say to a Nobel prize-winning physicist who's a Christian grow up now between 1900 and 2000 65 percent of Nobel Prize winners were Christian yes can you understand pizza how saying that might come across as incredibly arrogant no no let's go to another question conflict - here's one for you I think this is only if there is no purpose what motivates scientists to do what they do well you've got to get through life somehow and why and and I think getting through life by in increasing the depth of your understanding of this glorious world is to me as an academic a wonderful way of filling in those few decades of consciousness but Peter that only works for brilliant people like you I think of the masses of people who haven't got our privilege thank you a gentleman will not a factual actually the vast majority of people will never get within the light-years of your understanding of the universe with the Christmas with your Christian background would delude them into thinking that once they're dead they're gonna have to be jolly happy because you know its life as a trial it's a test it's a preparation for death and they're going to have a wonderful time once they're dead and I think that it's such a delusion they're at age it's it's it's inhumane but I can I agree that it might be sensible in some cases but if weather is an operator you're you're deluding people in a big way huh well you're telling them there is no god there's no life after death there's no resurrection there's no ultimate hope in your atheist yeah absolutely I I knew there but less ultimately I have I have no hope for life after death but I do have every hope for enjoying this life well I have the privilege of being alive yes but how many people don't and the vast majority of people for instance will never see justice in this life yeah and if death is the end as you say they'll never ever see justice no I can agree that if we know if we're no longer talking about the truth we're talking about helping people you believe in truth if we're no longer talking about truth or helping people get through often very difficult challenging lines then I can see that in some cases religion can be palliative it can be a great comfort to them it's a false comfort but yeah they don't know that and and it might just help them get through difficult times I have no objection to that kind of therapy but to confuse that with truth is to me intellectually inimical let's go to another question maybe you'll start this one off John why would God create atheist well he wouldn't create atheists I mean God creates human beings in that sense in His image and Peter's has created in God's image 'as I am God help God and his rationality and his science and all the rest of it is just an example of the marvelous things that God builds into people people choose to be atheist you see it's a worldview it's a faith system I believe in God Christianity is my worldview naturalism is Peter's worldview he believes it so the real issue is this what worldview do we believe in and that's why we have evenings like this to try to present the evidence on both sides which we have tried to do so that you can make up your mind but to say that God creates atheists is a deterministic belief that I reject and I feel quite strongly about this that the wonderful thing but the way in which were made as human beings is God loves us enough to give us real responsibility so that our decisions and our moral choices are full of meaning if you say God creates Christians or atheists you end up there with a kind of robotic situation where we're simply puppets on the string and I don't think that Accords in any way with a God who reveals himself in Christ Peter I think it's talk of gods creates atheists talking about God creates atheist as in as in once people start to look into it they become atheists yes where they should when they say that that evil that's belief in God brings into the world that's it that opens up another interesting question and here's one who asks do you agree that science gives facts and religion gives values what do you say to that Peter well I don't know what values are frankly they are I think we're talking about moral values I seen that sounds weird we're talking about the emergence of whether science and go back to again science explain everything we go back to the question of whether science can you illuminate morality and questions of moral behavior and so on and I think it can because we behave in ways that are governed by the infrastructure that has emerged through evolution I mean it's really we who have been on this earth for say four billion years or so they've evolved into us and we found ways of behaving and we call that our current moral precepts right but we're not just red in tooth and claw I mean we're also coated in the milk of human kindness in the sense that in quiet moments of contemplation we can consider the consequences or of our actions a tiger can't a man can and I think it's to understand the emergence of morality we have to think of the infrastructure emerging from if ethology and but would you would you evolution would you grant the the question of the fact that religion could be a factor that helps people to develop those moral values even if you think it's ultimately got it well as scientific it might be thinking backwards so I imagine that's good I suspect that quite a lot of what Jesus said well his purpose to have been said were reverse engineered to make him sound like a jolly nice chap and it probably was quite a jolly nice chap if in fact he ever existed so I I think you know the Bible it's a kind of collection of it's a handbook on getting through life more same question I suppose than John this morality firstly I suppose wanting to Peter can it simply be accounted for by a sort of evolutionary cooperation produces I don't think so I think you can base virtually any kind of morality on theories of evolution if you take the nature red in tooth and claw of you and survival of the fittest you'll end up in a schvitz but I just go beyond that I said it was loaded with the milk of human conversation I was just about to say Darwin favored ants and if you watch ants you can get a good argument for altruism cooperation you can build any kind of morality on animal behavior you want my view is that you cannot get morality from science science can comment on it science can tell you whether a fetus suffers pain for example but it cannot decide the morality of what you do with that finger but it can understand you can understand and I'm not saying that it can make predictions right okay but I think it can understand the roots of morality well I'm not sure that it can it's much better to understand the roots of morality through scientific investigation which includes anthropology ethology and so on then it is simply to adhere to a collection of folk stories as written in various well all of this is all of this as wild speculation but if I come back to the the question of morality and science Einstein made the point once you can speak of the ethical foundations of science but you cannot speak of the scientific foundations of ethics Richard Richard Feinman who won the Nobel Prize for Physics points out that the laws of nature don't come along with rules on what we ought to do what evolution does and ethology does psychology does philosophy does and over these but saying evolution does is no different from saying God does it's just putting a label on car non explanation but there become to this Peter you slipped in one or two things which trouble me and one of them was if Jesus ever existed now you're interested in science and evidence I do not know and I've read most of them an ancient historian in the world who would question not only the existence of Jesus but the basic facts of his life and so on people who study these things and it worries me when a person like you says if he ever existed well you should because the evidence is there that he did enjoy it more widely than you clearly have done I mean there was plenty of scholars who've questioned the historical essence and if I might say so Richard Dawkins quoted one of them and there Dawkins does believe that Jesus exists but he says a good case can be made out that Jesus never existed and he mentions Professor Wales of London he didn't tell anybody that this is a professor of German not a ancient historian so I'm afraid I have read both atheist ancient historians Christians agnostic all the rest they are agreed basically on this so it seems to me that if you're interested on making observations and notes and science in that general sense then Jesus existence is scientifically established this rationally established by historical science I don't know what percentage I put on that maybe 80% true but I don't think let's talk about a question that relates to this question in morality in science as someone's asking can science help us answer how we should use the technology it gives us Peter do you want to start us off on that one oh that's um that's a tricky question I mean that's that takes us into the realm of politics and and so on which in a sense then I suppose you have to level at me the accusation that here is something that science can't explain but then I say to myself well can I understand politics through scientific investigation and that's a interesting question I think you need to know the psychology of the of the politician if they have any some clearly don't you you have to look at their their general upbringing and attitudes in a scientific way maybe a statistical way I think there are you can bring to bear the scientific method on two questions about how political decision how they should act I suppose it's that that age you'll think that very often people say science can tell can build us an atomic bomb yeah but it won't tell us whether we should use it that's something that we we have to decide and that's the moral questions are different to the scientific aspect what do you want to a comment on that no I just think I would have used that analogy when scientists discovered they had this power they were faced with a huge moral question that's often been debated and at the simplest level science chemistry I believe can tell me that if I put arsenic in my granny's tea it will give her a pretty rough time but science chemistry cannot tell me whether I ought to do it or not to get my hands on our money so what does tell us I mean I have a feeling Peter you're gonna say but God's God's not the one to tell us what we shouldn't shouldn't be doing Oh clearly since there isn't a God he's not the one to do this question I I believe my reaction to it is that actually all humans are morally hardwired in some sense now my belief is that this is because they're made in the image of God as moral beings but if you leave that aside the fact is that the research has shown that all around the world if you put moral dilemmas to people they will come up with more or less the same answers there's a basic course morality you will find the so-called Golden Rule do unto others as you would they did to you in virtually every religion non religion philosophy and so want me to say that God breathed I haven't said that yet I said leave the other side yeah but what I'm saying is they're right through evolution we have reached that but common ground Peter I'm not arguing that all I'm saying is it's there and the fact is that therefore we make moral decisions were whether were atheists or not and often those moral decisions will be absolutely identical now my explanation of that is that this is a result of being made in the image of God but the important thing in the practical sense is that we do seem to have that common core all the ways society would completely collapse but my explanation is not that God did it no but evolution did it 9 my explanation is that we all went through a very similar evolutionary process which entailed survival not only of the self but of the group but that might be part of it but you know it's very interesting that even an atheist like the man that wrote though he's a he's a German very famous wrote the book against translations what's his name asking the wrong person Jurgen Habermas who's one of the leading atheists intellectuals when talking about this question he said when it comes to basic morality the source of human rights the base of our institutions in the West etc etc he says there so he's an atheist writing he says it comes down to the judeo-christian legacy and then he adds a very interesting codicil he said everything else is postmodern chatter so I would go along with that I think in this country we owe a huge amount to Christianity at this level as well yeah I think I prefer to live in a Christian country than one well at Sarah in Islam country Islamic country because on the whole I think you you lot treat a lot better would we be better off in an atheistic country though oh by far by far Peter I spend a lot of time in Russia yeah and I've talked to so many russian intellectuals I feel that it's just a wild statement you know many times I've set with people like Peter and the Academy of Sciences and they've said this to me we thought that we could get rid of God and retain a value for human beings and far too late we found out we couldn't so where do you stand on abortion what's that got to do with the topic of the same thing because it's a moral question well are we going to date well not always I I would say that's an interesting question but we should probably try and come back to who we could go on a wild goose chase we can infer that I think I think Peter I mean i i'm not i wouldn't dodge the question like that is that obviously there are always exceptional circumstances but once life has started if life ultimately comes from god it's not just a bunch of complex sales i asked the question what right have we to stop it but there you see you have the crux of what we're talking about this evening because you will base your decision on a non-existent god i will base my decision on you a natural argument let's call it as loosely as that and i will go in favor of abortion and you will go against the bush but not every atheist shares your view and abortion i don't care what they think i know what i think but anyway we're not going to solve that because that is a question of soo much it's a rather on someone who purports to leave a christian life that will say new to a woman you may not have an abortion despite the consequences well i think that we I think probably it's deeply deeply evil I think and I think it's one of the evils that belief in God inspires we'll leave that question to one side for the moment it would let's let's just try and squeeze in two more before our time runs out here's one and I'll just ask for brief statements on these would it be fair to suggest that scientific discovery is moving towards or away from the existence of God start with you Peter but the way okay I mean the more that science progresses the less it needs supernatural causes okay succinct what's your view on this John well I suspect it's very difficult to look at this statistically because you know they did they asked this question about 80 or 90 years ago and it was discovered that about 40% of working scientists believed in God and it shifted by two percent in 70 or 80 years I think it just varies who you speak to and at the moment I sense a greatly increased interest in the whole God question visa V science because people are increasingly not satisfied with implausible materialistic explanations of life they are also searching for meaning particularly University students and they're certainly not finding much meaning in atheism apart from the limited kind that Peter has talked about but trends come and go and I'm not able to predict it may be that we have to go through a large cycle of going away from God in the West there are other parts of the world for a belief in God is growing rapidly like China and so on so speaking globally we still have a vast preponderance of people who believe in God over atheists I think you have to distinguish different types of just and I think it's well known that biologists are more in favor of atheism than physicists because in I think the answer is the reason for that is that in biology you've got a single rule you know natural selection which really does account for just about everything whereas they in in physics you've got much deeper questions you know like you know where it all comes from the nature of the fundamental forces the fundamental particles and so on not recorder questions but so whereas I think biologists are quite content to feel they've got the answer the physicists a little bit more I've heard that biologists tend to look down at the ground and physicists look up at the sky and perhaps that's the reason why they they they have a different view on reality well I think night was a moron well I think also there's a differentiation between within physics the idea of law where you can say that something must happen as of necessity whereas in biology you're dating a lot with Natural History and so you're making inferences to the best explanation rather than being able to demonstrate that everything happens and I think often biologists recognize that but you see Peter here again assertion evolution does everything it doesn't it doesn't explain the origin of life and it was taken some biologists a very long time to realize that evolution whatever does can only get going when life is started with scientists are not short of ideas about the origin of life when the inorganic rollover into being I get the impression they're very short of ideas and many of them analyse what they are short of is an understanding of the conditions when life emerged and so you need to understand you need to know what the conditions were to do which of your many theories were viable if any well let's let's move on to the final question and actually there's to that more or less ask the same question and I think probably it's best for you to begin on this one John someone asked why does John specifically believe in the Christian God what about other religions and another person asked a similar question how is one to decide between the thousands of faiths on offer without the use of a reliable method such as science so why your God and not another one John and how do you come to that conclusion in this is quite a sensitive question but the only way I can approach it is by Peters method of rational inquiry and you see at one level let's take the three monotheistic religions and the but before I say anything this is important you've heard me clearly say that I believe you whatever you believe are made in the image of God and therefore if infinite value secondly you've heard me say that I believe that there's a common element and morality so when you raise with me the questions of other religions please understand I'm not criticizing your morality that is very important nor am i criticizing your value I'm being asked a rational question on what basis do you choose so I'll tell you here is one level the three great monotheistic religions their attitude to the resurrection forgive me Peter if I raise it again is forgive the pun it wasn't intended a and my Jewish friends believe that Jesus died and did not rise my Muslim friends believe he didn't die I believe he both died and rose those three things cannot be simultaneously historically correct so we have to do investigations in exactly the same way as we investigate any event in history we can't repeat it to see what happened but we can make an inference to the best explanation and all I can say in the short answer is I've done that investigation many times and come to the conclusion that the Christian explanation is true but there's a second explanation and it's this I often ask myself travelling around the world as I've done asked people of different religions what they mean by a religion and they usually come up with something like Southampton University in the following sense you have an entrance exam into the university and you get in and then you're on the way or the path and you're being taught by delightful professors and then you face the final judgement which is called finals do you recognize that okay now on the way on your path the professors have ever kind they are cannot guarantee that you're going to get through at the end why because the basic principle of a university course is merit now many of my friends what I asked them about religion including Christianity they say that's it there's a ceremony at the beginning perhaps performed as a child or an adult then you're on the way or the Eightfold Path or whatever it is the Tao the teaching and then you're faced with a final assessment but the teachers the Guru's and all the rest of them the priests cannot guarantee your acceptance of that final judgment I think I can provide just a bit know Oh John John hasn't quite hit the punch line the punchline Christianity if that's what religion is Christianity is not a religion for a very simple reason and Christianity the acceptance comes to the beginning not the end now I mentioned that briefly on the way through tonight and this is the spectacular difference that I as I sit here I've not reached the final judgment but I know that I'm accepted why because I'm very good no no no no because of what Christ has done and the absolute essence of what it is to be a Christian is that I have trusted him that what he did on the cross no this may seem all mistake to you but let me say what it is that what he did there means that I can be accepted that the beginning of the journey that makes a spectacular difference in fact you wouldn't if it was a question of marriage imagine I proposed to a girl and say look here's a cookbook there are rules in it you keep them pretty well for the next forty years and then I'll accept you well she'd throw the book in my face but that's what many of us think of god no wonder people give up on religion in my view because it comes it becomes a slavish trying to merit acceptance when Christ is prepared to give his salvation is a free gift so I'm not doing this evening for example to gain brownie points with God I'm doing it because God has accepted me and that is the wonder of Christianity to me well if I can give help John with a more succinct answer to why he is a Christian it's simply that he was brought up in Ireland but Peter that's absurd that's saying that because you give a genetic origin for me that explains everything you're doing cultural cândido but the point is Peter and I've met many Northern Irish atheist as well there are very many are always exceptions but Peter I have experienced again and again people changing their worldview which shows it's not culturally dependent there was most important questions for me in terms that you are particularly contaminated by your upbringing well it's very nice of you to say so it's been an interesting evening we are sort of needing to draw things to close are there any final things we'd like to say that we want to sort of round off the evening with before we before we go our separate ways you want to start well science is the the way the truth and the life I think I've heard that somewhere before and if I can just enlargements nightly we should be proud as I said right at the beginning that somehow or other through collaborative enterprise and open-mindedness and communication and mathematize ation and observation we are delving into the workings of the world into if you like the fabric of reality and answering all the great questions of being we should be proud the we apes who have dropped from the trees have gone so far intellectually and although I acknowledge that religious belief was a component of that journey we are breaking out of that chrysalis and taking over the heath John final thoughts science is wonderful but the God who give us a world in which science can be done is even more wonderful and I'm very thankful that it's not an abstract set of intellectual disciplines but a person who said I am the way and the truth and the life we have a round of applause to buy you

Channel: Unbelievable?

Views: 184,127

Rating: 4.847126 out of 5

Keywords: unbelievable, justin brierley, premier christian radio, christianity, atheism, philosophy, faith, theology, science, john lennox, peter atkins, God

Id: fSYwCaFkYno

Length: 98min 59sec (5939 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 17 2019