Michael Ruse vs John Lennox • Science, faith, and the evidence for God

for more debates updates and bonus clips sign up at the big conversation dot show well thank you very much for joining us here at the institution for mechanical engineers in London for today's live audience edition of the big conversation with me Justin brierley the big conversation is a series from unbelievable exploring faith science philosophy and what it means to be human in association with the Templeton religion trust and today our conversation topic is science faith and the evidence for God and a big conversation partners that I'm sitting down with tonight are John Lennox and Michael ruse John Lennox is a professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford a well-known Christian thinker and speaker he's the author of books such as God's Undertaker has science buried God and gunning for God why the New Atheists are missing the target he argues that science and our increasing knowledge of cosmology and biology is consistent with the view that a divine mind is behind the ordered universe we live in Michael ruse is professor of philosophy of science at Florida State University he's published books including atheism what everyone needs to know and Darwinism and recently on purpose which is an exploration of purpose in philosophy science and religion as an atheist himself is nevertheless critical of the new atheist movement represented by figures such as Richard Dawkins and sam Harris believing that a better conversation between faith and science is possible so tonight we'll be asking questions like how science replaced God as an explanation for life and the universe and or has the rise of the New Atheism sold the evidence for God short I'm sure we're gonna have a really interesting evening so will you greet again my two guests John Lennox and Michael let's see if they're shaking hands by the now I'm really excited about this conversation both of you because this this series and what we're doing tonight I think it's a really good example of how to bring two different perspectives together and hopefully have a fruitful substantive discussion even though we come from very different viewpoints so perhaps we'll start just with a little bit of a sense of those viewpoints first of all John would you like to describe as briefly as you can what worldview you inhabit as a Christian I grew up in Northern Ireland as you can immediately guess which hasn't got the best reputation for the dissemination of Christianity but my parents were living examples of what I understand the Christian faith to be not so much formal religion but a personal relationship with God through Christ of death I learnt from them some utterly basic things we lived in a divided religious community my father believed the statement in Genesis that all people are made in the image of God and so he insisted on trying to employ people from both sides of the religious community and got bombed for it and I grew up with that sense that the way to have increased meaning in life was to treat everyone exactly the same way and that's why I've been privileged throughout life to make people like Michael and others so that we can discuss these things publicly and that's where I started but my parents did something else they encouraged me to think so that when I arrived at University I'd read a great deal of stuff and I immediately plunged in to investigating whether or not my Christian faith was credible against the background of other worldviews and so on virtually day one I decided that the best way to proceed was to befriend people they mean befriend people who didn't share my world view because arriving in Cambridge of course the first thing that was said to me was of course you believe in God all you Irish do they fight about it so I had to really get some answer to that Freudian viewpoint and so I've been doing this all of my life mmm fantastic thank you John sherry and Michael where do you come from in terms of your metaphysical outlook on life well first of all as you can tell from my accent I was born in England in fact I was born in Birmingham in 1940 my father was a conscientious objector and during the war they came in contact with the Quakers and after the war my father and my mother joined the Quakers and so I grew up very intensely very intensely as a Quaker to the extent that I was sent away to a Quaker boarding school when I was a teenager I'm still not quite sure but about the age twenty twenty-one my faith started to fade as I say it wasn't very simple or put us all on the road to Damascus experience in Reverse it was just as I like to say like collecting stamps and loving baked beans one day I did these things and loved these things in the next day they more or less gone and I I really thought back then 20:21 well I'm sure if I get to 70 I'll be getting back on side with the big chap in the sky but it just wasn't that sort of way however that said my non-existent God who's a Calvinist and so guides everything that we do made sure that I was going to work on Charles Darwin which meant that I was brought into contact with the science religion relationship and so this has been something which has been both a personal interest and a professional interest because I'm my daytime job is a professor of philosophy and so this has been a a constant what shall I say topic of great interest to me I've spent a lot of time fighting creationists in the forties but I've also come in more and more in contact with people like John who are genuinely trying to bridge the gap between science and religion as I say I'm 78 now and I don't have any more faith I I'm a theist about Christianity but I'm fairly agnostic about whether any of it means anything and I'm sure this will come out more in the discussion so I always like to say once a Quaker always a Quaker and I've certainly grown up with an intense sense that the only truly happy person is the person who's serving others and I'd be very very lucky I've been a professor all my life it's a wonderful job that way but also the Quakerism I grew up with was very mystical in a way that God really wasn't somebody like me in a bedsheet I'm much more unknown and unknowable as I say I I no longer believe in a force for good or or a force for ill at least in that sort of way but certainly my religion then and now has always been one which you know is it Christian is it agnostic you know there are days when I'm I'm not quite sure no it's pretty much always agnostic but it's it's all a continuum it's not like Richard Dawkins where you go along and then suddenly you fall off the cliff well if God does have a bit I'm sure it'd be very like yours it's interesting to to hear you say that because in a sense you say you're probably more an agnostic than a hard fought atheist and I'm pretty atheistic about I don't think that Jesus was the son of God now I won't ask you to reveal exactly what age you are but do you feel that to looking back my wife's 56 a man that he's broken the cardinal rule of every husband I was gonna watch what I mean do you feel like you could still be persuaded but no I don't think so you don't think I don't think so I don't think first of all and I think this is where John and I are going to disagree very strongly is I'm not very keen on being persuaded in the sense of is there some evidence that would tip you over to whatever I could certainly see some experience might fill me with faith I don't expect it to happen but that's the only way that I could see it happening thank you for joining us both Michael and John fer I'm sure will be a fascinating discussion we've got lots of ground that we want to cover but we'll just see where we go in the conversation I mean I think it is a little bit significant that we're meeting here at the institution for mechanical engineers founded by Georgia Robert Stevenson in 1847 very much building on the fruits of the scientific revolution which in soap gave us so much of what we enjoy today I suppose my starting question is though when it comes to modern science do you both share a kind of view that it does owe something to the judeo-christian sort of foundations if you like of Britain and the West what's your view on that John I think very much so I remember as a teenager being subjected by a friend to reading Alfred North Whitehead and he's a difficult philosophers you know but I remember coming across the notion that the rise of modern science or was due to the rational insistence to sorry the medieval insistence and the rationality of God and then later reading CS Lewis who summed it up and slightly easier language he said men became scientific because they expected law in nature and they expected law in nature because they believed in the law Giver so in one sense I am delighted to be both the scientist if you lower mathematician to say he's a scientist which is another matter and a believer in God because arguably it was the Christian cradle that gave birth to my subject and I noticed of course subsequently many people who weren't necessarily Christian like Melvin Calvin who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry and he said as I look back to ask where this belief an order came from that's fundamental to all science in fact it's the fundamental faith of scientists we can't do science unless we look for order in nature he says that it came from an idea first mooted by the ancient Hebrews and then communicated later in the judeo-christian tradition and John Hadley Brook who was an expert historian of science is perhaps well he is more nuance that I would be and a little bit more cautious but nevertheless that tenor of the argument is that certainly there's a deep connection for a very obvious reason if you believe that behind the universe is a rational mind then you expect to be able to do science so that I would put the two together quite strongly well firstly do you agree that there is a sort of judeo-christian heritage that has informed the modern sciences but also how far do you go along John's line that an orderly Sciences presupposes a sort of orderly mind at some level behind it well I think it has done in the past yes first of all I agree with John I think that modern science owes great I mean you know we want to say we've got to be broad and we've got to bring in Buddhism and all of these but simple fact of the matter is modern science owes basically its being to Christianity I mean at least the science that we have and I'm sure we'll talk about Darwinism and I would say it owes its being to Anglican Christianity but certainly I think that you're quite right to say that modern science owes its being to Christianity now John and I were talking just before we both took me buddy you took courses with and I was very much by a woman called Mary Hesse who was a professor at Cambridge at philosophy and she made a great deal of metaphor and I've bought into this lot you know hook line & sinker that I don't think that science is just you know like dragnet just the facts ma'am just the facts science is interpretation science is the facts as you put them together and make sense of it and I think the key is metaphor now up until the Scientific Revolution the key metaphor that what what linguists call the root metaphor was that of an organism the world was seen as organic I mean Plato in the Timaeus comes right out with that but Aristotle do I think there was a change of metaphor no I'm not saying anything that John Hadley Brooke and others wouldn't say there was a change in metaphor to that of a machine now of course to a certain extent it was full fueled by the fact that we now had more and more sophisticated machines and particularly clocks that this was the big one so I think that more and more in the Scientific Revolution the world was being looked at as a machine made by the divine engineer and what happened was this became tremendously powerful by the end of the 16th and certainly into the 17th century you read people like Robert Boyle and all of these others they using the machine metaphor all the time the thing was though that more and more people found as budget doing science was concerned God wasn't very helpful that to use the language of today you could you just had to get on with being a method methodological naturalist and leave as it were metaphysical naturalism the question of God or no no God out as one of the great historians of the Scientific Revolution said eventually God became a retired engineer when they started with the machine of course it was looked at in terms of this is good who was the divine creator but as I say I think as the years went by wasn't because people were necessarily irreligious many of them like Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle were very but they found increasingly as scientists it wasn't necessary and it wasn't very helpful to bring God into the discussion Descartes says this now the fact is they wanted go on believing in God but it started to make the way possible for what Richard Dawkins has called you could be an intellectually justified atheist they were not atheists in the 17th century but it was it was with the thin end of a very big range do you agree with that assessment John to a certain extent I think we have to recognize as well that it depends what area of your science you're talking about I'm a pure mathematician and what I teach pure mathematics I don't mention God at all and if I was designing the rocket locomotive that George Stephenson designed we don't mention God at all God doesn't arise in the vast amount of the practicalities of science even biology where the deeper questions come or why can we do science at all what is it about this universe that allows us to do science and there I would begin to see the fingerprint of a divine mind so that it's not so much in the mechanisms now there are exceptions to that because when you raise questions of origins inevitably if you look at the history of ideas you'll see that the question of God comes up a great deal and God as the one who creates the universe and sustains it but you'll not find God at the bottom of the piston cylinder in an automobile engine and of course you won't and the danger is that because that kind of practical science was so successful in spinning off technology people then began to take what I regard as a completely illegitimate step and that is to do away with God altogether and the main reason for that is the notion that science cannot answer every question scientism is rampant today and I think it's dangerously for just explain what scientism is well it's the idea that science is the only way to truth and of course as a statement if I say science is the only way to truth that's logically self contradictory because that statement is not a statement of science so if it's true it's false perhaps is a bit too early but the point is this that many people like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking regard science as the only way to truth well that would shut down your Department of Philosophy and that would be absurd and Cambridge philosophy department reacted very severely to Hawking statement before before Michael comes back on this I'd just be interested you've teasing a bit openly the idea of we why can we do science at all that that big question because as a mathematician do you agree with I think it was Eugene Wigner who said the the universe is written in the language of mathematics he said the he talked about the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics it's a famous 1961 paper that all mathematicians love but he was wrong you see because the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics assumes the naturalist philosophy it is absolutely unreasonable that mathematics works if you assume an atheist or naturalistic philosophy but if you believe there's a God whose mind is behind this universe and behind our minds then the effectiveness of mathematics is something that I would expect and of course Newton being the genius that he was this was one of his evidences when he wrote principia mathematica he wrote at the beginning of the helped a thinking person would see that there was a deity from his descriptions of the universe Kepler said similar things what do you make of that idea that the the very order of the universe the fact that we do maths the way we discover the world is written in the language of mathematics six in the universe is is that in any way pointed beyond itself as John obviously thinks towards a some kind of divine mind well of course as a philosopher I'm going to say it depends what you mean by no I want to make three responses to the line that John's pushing the first is I feel I'm getting into one of these discussions like have you stopped beating your wife as soon as you say yes you say well why did you beat you in the first type place if you say no if then you say well maybe you should it's the fallacy of complex question and I'm a little worried that were already being driven into arguments about proofs for the existence of God I like to describe myself as a very conservative non-believer and I am NOT that keen on natural theology at that sort of way I think that religious belief certainly Christian belief should be based on faith I'm with Cardinal Newman on this he said I believe in design because I believe in God I do not believe in God because I believe in design so that's my first sort of statement I'd want to make about that the second one it is well if it is design then you've got some questions to ask about the nature of the designer I mean you know the Richard Dawkins type questions well who design God when and you're gonna have to say something like well no God is a necessary being and that's going to get you into I'm not saying insoluble questions to do with the nature of existence but at least some I mean take for instance Oliver Roose sitting on the front thing it is possibly conceivable conceivable that my wife and I had only two children we went we jumped from Emily down to Edward and Oliver was just you know a flash in the pan or wasn't even what not even what do they say in Glyndon a dirty glimpse in his father's eyes so in other words Oliver does exist but he doesn't have to exist whereas of course I think that John's God at some level has to exist the third point I'd want to make is if if we do have a designer what is this designer John and I before we came in as to all men tend to do we were swapping stories about you know I'm more gravely ill than you I'm gonna collapse onstage before you do but I mean let's take something that neither of us brought up hemorrhoids my father huh I believe that any God who cared a bit about human beings would have invented a world which allows hemorrhoids so I think if you're going to get into design then you've got to take the rough with the smooth as it were and so I think there are all sorts of issues there's three issues together bring those sorts of examples up well if you're happy shall we start at least with one of those I'd like to start with all three so as memory serves there's the question of natural theology Michael doesn't like that he thinks if you're gonna believe believe on the basis of faith alone not not some speculation about the universe that there's this question of well where did God come from in the first place and then and then there's this question of why if it's a designer why hemorrhoids so yes right well to take the first one it's quite clear that Michael and I differ fundamentally on what we mean by faith because you see faith to me is part and parcel of my life as an intellectual and scientist scientists believe certain things I believe in the theory of gravitational attraction why is that because I have evidence for it I believe that my wife loves me why because I have evidence for it and my Christian faith consists not in faith as a leap into the unknown it's evidence based commitment otherwise I wouldn't be remotely interested in Christianity and I notice that Richard Dawkins faith is heavily evidence based that's why I writes a 400 page book called the God so I think we have a fundamental difference about faith and secondly I didn't use the word proof Michael I'm too much of a petition to use the word proof I think it's a question of evidence it's very interesting to me that when Paul talks about the impact of the universe he says that the existence of God and his power are perceived through the things that are made it's a perception and what intrigues me is that perception is admitted by so many people that you would think would not admit a dork and says it's terribly tempting to believe that a design Stephen Hawking co-authors a book called the grand design why because he sees design and then there comes all the arguments that I don't find convincing to say well it's not real design it's only apparent design so that's the first thing my faith is an evidence-based commitment secondly the question of who designed the designer and Richard Dawkins put that to me and it's the heart of The God Delusion argument if you say God created the universe then you have to ask who created God will do you because if you ask the question who or what created X then you're assuming that X was created but the biblical God wasn't created so the question doesn't even apply to him so it's one of these questions that you think is asking something seriously important but it misses the point and I actually put it to dolphins in the end I said your question makes no sense apart from about created things but I don't need you to tell me that created gods are a delusion most of us think they are we call them idols but I said let me try your question on you you believe the universe created you so if your question is valid let me ask you it who created your Creator I've waited 10 years and got a no answer to that but before you come to part 3 because that the hemorrhoids question is really a question of even I think I'm going to park that and perhaps we'll come back to it a bit later on but we've got plenty it's not no no no I I do want to address it but at least with these first two issues and John's responses there Michael what's your take well I particularly want to talk about the first one this whole question of evidence-based and what exactly does that mean if for instance somebody tells me fast as I was taught by my physics master when I was at school if I'm told that Galileo's laws work or something like that and then the physics master says well let's do some experiments to show you exactly how how this sort of thing does and we spring some pendulums back and forth and that sort of thing now I take it that that's an evidence based belief that I'm going to go away with that missiles go in parabolas rather than in in circles or regular circles or something like that now that I see is evidence based now let's go back to the whole question of of God as I said I don't want to take evidence out of the story but I'm worried about evidence being used to justify these beliefs in God I believe in design because I believe in God I do not believe in God because I believe in design whereas I think in the physics case I do believe in Galileo's laws because I believe that the physical evidence was there so it seems to me obvious that any Christian is going to look at the world and interpret the world in an evidence-based way I mean for instance we'll think about the difference between Heinrich Himmler and Sophie Sean who died on the guillotine because she was a member of the white rose group in Munich surely anybody who's a Christian is going to interpret these actions and it's it's going to be evidence based in that sort of sense that yes that I see here's a person a case of a person who is made in the image of God and that's what makes them evil if they were just a while done they would be dangerous but they wouldn't be evil well as I would as a Christian I would see Heinrich Himmler as deeply evil was I see sophie scholl transcendently good so it's evidence-based in that sense but it's not proving my beliefs my beliefs are something that I have through faith it really is a question folks a soul on the way to Damascus Seoul was not you know met by somebody who says by the way Seoul I'd like to introduce you to the ontological argument I think you know if we spend a couple of hours talking this one through or we talk about the argument from design and Seoul says you know you're right I'm on the way to Damascus and now I believe in God didn't work that way doesn't work that way it's it's the gift of God that's what that's the basis of but you hang on Michael it hang on you see Paul was convinced what was the evidence an appearance of the risen Christ that's what started Christianity it was the appearance of the risen Christ and the fact that there was evidence of the other kind for his resurrection that launched Christianity in the world and I'm intrigued by your example the moral example you gave you see you mentioned what I would call testability if you don't test to test Newton's laws and all this kind of thing and I'm constantly up against the question how can use a scientist believe their stuff what it's not testable and I say who said it is in testable you see I why am I sitting here as a Christian because I tested the claims that Christ has made let me give you one simple example we might want to deal with this later on I don't know but Christ promises that those who trust him and receive him will receive peace with God and forgiveness and a new life and a new power I seen that happen to me and to people endless times and would you see to and to make for all the time you begin to believe the two and two make four I think it's eminently testable and so to come back on Michael side forever I think there are different levels of argument Michael you mentioned testing laws in the laboratory but there are many things in science as we know that are not testable you can't test the origin of life in the lab you have to make an inference to the best explanation and the past and that is true of many things so for me the evidence on which my faith is based is cumulative part of it is objective intellectual arguments and all this kind of thing but a great deal of it has to do with the evidence of does it actually work in life why doesn't that satisfy you this this well things I want to say I think that John and I probably have a very different take on the resurrection I have a feeling that vo John proving that it actually happened physically is very important to you and you're the sort of person who says well look at the fact that it was women who reported on this and women would not normally take and so this must be significant alors must be true well as a as a conservative non-believer I think the physical resurrection is totally unimportant I think that what is important is that those disciples on the third day who were downcast who felt that seen this man you know put to death in the most horrible way suddenly said our Creator lives and that that that was within them whether they were laws to prove this I think is irrelevant I'd say I take my religion much more at a spiritual a theist but I'm beginning to worry that you're not an evidence-based atheist you see to say that the resurrection is irrelevant I find utterly us not the physical resume I did not I find the relevant the resurrection Christian is the key we'll just a minute the word anastasi sin Greek means standing up again it is a physical resurrection and it's significance as vast here all of us are faced with physical death if the problem of physical death has actually been sold historically I want to know about it to say it's irrelevant I just don't understand especially from a philosopher but let's go back to some of the really important miracles like turning water into wine yeah now that one do you think that Jesus really was in the wine business and had you know if wouldn't mind it right now I'm a really nice glass of Bordeaux or do you think that Jesus's presence there so filled the the host with a sense of guilt and and love that you know he said to hell with it I've been hiding my good wines I'm going to bring these out that to me makes Jesus much more important David Copperfield is this also the the scientist in you speaking do you do you feel like miracles reported is literally true like water into wine physical resurrection somehow go against the scientific enterprise the the way he should be thinking about the world well they go against the scientific enterprise but I see inherently consistent for a Christian like say earning McMullen would say well but human salvation required direct intervention by God and so these are not scientific claims but this is the point I would want to make I would want to if somebody like John says to me I believe in a literal resurrection I know I hear arguments about it was women who first discovered the tomb was empty that sort of thing I want to say yes you believe this on faith and you know we we differ here but I understand where you're coming from but we're not going to argue about that one we can argue about other things but I think we probably are going to end up arguing about it you're amazed that your selectivity as a person that's interested in rationally sorting a thing out the thing you mentioned about the women has stuck in your mind because it actually is a very important piece of evidence from the point of view of Jewish totally No well that's that's your belief I would like some evidence that it's totally irrelevant that's not an evidence-based statement but what about the water to wine oh the will the water why'd we naturalistically assume that actually it was something to do with Jesus shaming the host into bringing out his best wine nothing miraculous happened well of course if you're a naturalist you've got to assume that you've no other option but if you're sitting where I'm sitting this is the very first sign that Jesus did semi on from which we get semiotic sits an indicator of something much deeper and what he said at the end of it in John chapter two is that this beginning of his signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee and manifested his glory and his disciples believed on him their faith initial faith was in part a response to what he did and I believe he did turn water into wine I don't believe it broke the laws of nature this is God feeding a new event in the laws of nature can't say anything to that but I do think it had a profound significance because that water was religious water the religious ceremony was over it's a seven day wedding and they ran out of wine which was a social catastrophe and what Jesus did was he brought the religious water into the middle which would have been an increased embarrassment don't bring religion back into this we were having fun and he turned the religious water into the best wine that they could drink it's a powerful miracle that becomes a preach sermon because wine symbolized to Jews and to many of us it's a symbol of joy why does the joy run out of many weddings as it's run out a million since it usually has to do with purification and Christ was beginning to indicate by what he did what he was going to do about it so I see it as an actual miracle he's demonstrating he's the son of God the creator of the universe but he's doing it in such a way as to commune Kait something about the way in which he's going to deal with this question coming back to John's point about the idea that as far as he's concerned miracles aren't a problem for science because if there is a God that God can feed new events into there are only a problem for naturalism now what's your take on that I don't know whether you would subscribe to naturalism it's yourself Michael whatever well I think I'd be I call myself a naturalist I'm not sure I call myself the material was I certainly would call myself a naturalist but I mean at one level I can accept miracles I mean when I grew up dunkirk was everybody I knew said that Dunkirk was a miracle why because the British Army despite everything was able to get away almost in tyre and what did that mean it meant that Britain had the makings of a professional army that they could then build up again from there and go back and fight Hitler now what would people say they said God did this in order that not that it it stopped Hitler but it made it possible for us to fight back against Hitler now if you'd asked anybody that you were talking to do you think that God actually intervened or do you think it was just the laws of nature came together fortuitously at that moment I think most people would have thought that you are joking and not really in very good taste because that's totally irrelevant it's the meaning of it that in some way God made it possible for us to pick up and go on fighting against this great evil which I do you don't believe that's what happened obviously free milk perspective it wasn't a miracle because in my perspective it was a miracle but it wasn't necessarily one which required God to say right I'm going to break the laws of meteorology at five o'clock tomorrow afternoon but but in a sense they you you then do take the view that it was that confluence of yes see if I were a Christian I would have absolutely no trouble with accepting would not have been it's interesting although I'm a very liberal non-believer do notice that John and I are about as far apart on these issue though it's important to point this out though we still are completely far apart on this so for me these things are not only didn't happen but they're not relevant I mean they're feeding the 4,000 or 5,000 depending on which gospel you read I want to say you know Jesus wasn't working for Fortnum and Mason or for Sainsbury's and you know getting sandwiches brought in no it was he filled people with love that so that the people who had brought food shared it with those who didn't have it that for me is is a real real encourage that's why the whole of life at some level is in a secular way for me is miraculous what I'm hearing though is is essentially that if you were a Christian Michael you'd be a very liberal Christian essentially one Christian I just said if I were a Christian I would be seeing God's actions in the world all the time why why do you I mean yeah I'm not a fundamentalist I'm not I mean you know I wasn't Agustin that you know so many of these tales are for people who were you know prescience preliterate and all of those sorts of things I don't think of myself as I hope let me rephrase it there's the kind of Christianity that you would find plausible and engaging is one which is evidently very different to the considerably more sophisticated than John but it's also it's also a very conservative position John do you want to respond the sophistry is a very interesting phenomenon but I think what you think Michaels engaging in when he knows easily not at all because you see I agree with them more than he thinks and the first thing is I see God every day in the normal things of life but I notice when we look at the different kinds of claims for Supernatural interaction the Bible they are graduated some of them are simply that working of the laws of nature as a Dunkirk I'm very happy with that but there are special events where the intervention level is higher and of course that is what I would expect I would expect it rarely because a God who constantly intervened in a special way well would intervene everything virtually out of existence in fact I do believe that the regularities of the universe are essential for us to perceive miracles and that is why I disagree very strongly with your notion that these beliefs grew up in a pre scientific time they did in terms of chronology but you see when the man who was born blind was healed by Jesus he said well since the beginning of the world this has never happened he recognized it as a miracle as a special event caused by God because he knew what normally happened and when me when Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant he didn't say Oh marvelous how very interesting God did that did he know he wanted to divorce her why because he knew as well as any modern gynecologist where babies come from and therefore we've got to realize David Hume was totally wrong about this talking about these things beliefs Rosen pre-scientific days because you can only recognize something as a supernatural intervention if you know the norm that's why Jesus resurrection was so impressive because dead bodies weren't popping out of the graves all over the place well I just feel John that you're reducing the Gospels to the level of Grimm's fairy tales that you know we've got miracles happening in Grimm's fairy tales and I think that the way that John's approaching the gospel is if let me be rather rude about this I think you're downgrading a tremendously important story to one of you know David Copperfield of that you know Jesus was a miracle doer and I just don't see Jesus in that sort of life maybe one final comment and we'll move on to well I just never get on to hemorrhoids exactly I find it difficult to say that it's a downgrading when through all of this to my mind comes an increasing sense of the sheer wonder and glory of God in Christ the Son of God and evidence that that's who he is I would put it the other way I think you're downgrading it to the level of Grimm's fairy tales because I believe in the story I'm an Irishman I'm a storyteller and I love the story it's not either/or Michael it's both and in my case I want the story but I want the story I understand the story it's not what I want the question is what is true or not and I believe the story is in enhanced and increased in its power because behind it there is a reality and the reality is in terms of what we're talking about the increasing revelation of Christ as to who he was and it was as a result of watching these signs that led people to believe that he was the son of God the Messiah and they took that extra step of trusting him and had life in his name we'll leave that one there I appreciate that there's 40 more responses from you Michael but I think I do you want to get to your third point the hemorrhoids point because I think this is we always want to get to the bottom right so John I think I mean joking aside this is this is an important question it's fundamentally boils down to if you do believe there's a designer behind the whole show why are there so many awful things in the world and and that's a question that's been asked since well time immemorial isn't it where do you want to begin with that one coming at it from I guess a scientist point of view well this is a huge question of course but the first point I would make is they're two separate questions there's the recognition that there's a mind behind the universe that's one question and I believe that science can tell us something about that but then there's a second question who is behind the universe and what is his character and what is his nature now when it comes to the question of evil moral evil and natural evil I think about this a lot because I find it's the hardest question for any of us there's no two ways about it and if you want a short response it'll have to be short my approach to it is first of all it seems to me atheism doesn't solve it it solves it in an intellectual sense that people say like Dawkins the universe is just like you'd expect it to be for the bottom there's no good no evil no justice and we just have to face it well if that is correct of course it means you solve the problem you've removed it in some sense but what you haven't removed is the suffering in the pain so I find that philosophically a disaster but now in order to respond to it as a Christian I have to come down to the heart of the Christian faith and this is the very short answer at the heart of the Christian faith there stands across and if that really is God there then it tells me that God hasn't remained distant from this problem but has himself become part of it and the cross and the resurrection together seemed to me to do what atheism solution to this problem doesn't do they give us grounds for hope and I face a universe as Michael does that presents a mixed picture it's like a ruined Cathedral Coventry Cathedral you can see traces of beauty and you can see the marks of bombs I call it beauty and barbed wire and whatever our philosophy is are a worldview we have to cope with that because that's the reality and the only way that I can see a window into it I can't solve it I wouldn't pretend to or insult anybody suffering by so doing I've been to Auschwitz many times and wept every time but I would say this we will never solve the problem philosophically of what a good God shared word might could etc have done so we've got a problem and there's a mathmetician if you can't solve one problem you ask a different one and the different question for me is granted that it's like that is there anywhere in the universe evidence that there's a god that we could trust with it and I believe there is as revealed in Jesus Christ that's my short answer Michael I suppose at this point John does turn to his Christian faith in in a rather direct way in the way that your were hoping he would are in it in a way the point is that yes ultimately this is a question which isn't going to be necessarily answered by science but it can be answered by a revelation of Jesus Christ what what's your response I'm okay with the revelation part first of all I think I I want to say that I agree with John that well I there's two things I think we agree about one is that these are genuine questions why is there something rather than nothing is there a purpose to the universe I think a lot of my fellow philosophers following vikins tyne would say that these are not genuine questions that you know that they can't be answered so any which can't be answered in principle can't be a genuine question in the first place I I think that's nonsense so of all people I'm with Heidegger on this I think why is there something rather than nothing is the fundamental question of metaphysics the second thing is that I think again I agree very much with John on this is that these are not questions to be to be answered by science sorry I talked about metaphor and as I say I think the metaphor that we've got at some level drains out questions like why is there something rather than nothing what is the nature of morality is there a purpose to universe I think the the whole metaphor that we've got of the Machine which is just following laws and just going round and round like a clock is is is one which excludes these questions it it doesn't mean that they can't be answered and I think it's perfectly legitimate for Christians to offer their answers that the universe exists because it was made by a good god morality in some sense is following the will of God the purpose is eternal salvation with our Creator so I think these are legitimate answers but I think they're open to theological and philosophical criticism and John's mentioned the problem we're both mentioning the problem of evil you see this is where I have trouble here the usual answer about the problem of moral evil I'm not talking about the Lisbon earthquake now I'm talking about Auschwitz the reason usual answer is that God gave us free will and the implication of that was that some people would misuse this all I can say is I just don't see how you could possibly say we've got a good God who gave Heinrich Himmler freewill and thought it was more important to give Heinrich Himmler free will than to let Anne Frank die of colic the Colorado typhoid rather in bergen-belsen if that's the cost of getting a universe going I don't want any part of it I just everybody who says to me at least in any evidential way that yes I think we can they progress to belief in a good god I want to say I just I I just don't know how you can balance the free will of Heinrich Himmler against the death of Anne Frank or Sophie Scholl or any of these others I don't want a god of that kind of tall now if you want to say to me but by revelation I believe in a God who will make it possible I think that's a legitimate position to take it's not it's not mine because I've not had the revelation but this again goes right back to where I think John and I have got a very fundamental disagreement about the evidential basis of Christianity and response I don't think John's position is is stupid I think it's wrong right sure well well I would reciprocate with great affection I think that I would set for you said Michael if I didn't believe in the final judgment I don't think Hamra is going to get away with it that's the one side and secondly however strange it may seem to you I think that God is a God who knows how to compensate and it's because of that and the resurrection of Christ and the promise of the future that I sometimes dare to think that when we see what God eventually does were the Anne Frank's of this world we might not have such severe questions but you know Michael the thing that weighs most with me is not whether my beliefs help me it's whether they're true or not I've had ever since a child I've had a passion about truth and at Cambridge a Nobel Prize winner and this was the turning point in my life having spoken of a dinner he took me up to his room and three other professors around he said that next you want a career in science I said yes sir well he said in front of witnesses tonight give up this childish belief in God it'll you it will completely throw you out of the running and he offered me some solution I said what have you got to offer me that's better than what I've already got and that puts stealing to me somehow I thought if ever I get the chance to go before the public as a scientist I want to try to do what we've done tonight and that is to put out into the public space two sides of the argument and let people make up their own minds but that moved me deeply and I couldn't help thinking if he'd been a Christian I've been an atheist either been out of the University the next day but that was my first experience of the pressure coming from that particular person well I think you're a better Christian than you let on John because it does seem to me that by Lord the evidence is not swaying I don't know how you could get better evidence of the iffy nature of God's personality to say the free will of Heinrich Himmler is more important than the suffering and death of Anne Frank now if you come at it from a faith based thing and say I'm trying to put it in perspective with my already given conviction my knowledge as if you like that God exists and is loving and then I've got to interpret I think that's one thing but to say oh no oh no I'm working on the evidential basis I'm I believe in God because of the design rather than designed because of God that's where I I was not going I don't think you're doing that anymore let's have one final comment and we must go to some questions yes I take the argument for design in both directions not only in in one direction I think of the alternatives and the main alternative God could solve that very easily by making us all robots who were entirely deterministic but what that would do is empty the world of human beings you and I wouldn't be in that world for the simple reason that having given to some extent freedom of choice we are capable of love now when I have children and grandchildren and I remember bringing my first child into the world and holding this little girl and saying you know you could grow up to disown me rebellious me why would anybody have children and I think that God faced a similar problem we have children because of the potential for love but we know it can go wrong but it can only go wrong because the potential for love is there now I admit that problems like Himmler and Anne Frank are terrible problems but if you sold them by saying God ought to have made us a robot so there was no love in the universe well that would make me think very hard in the opposite direction perhaps we'll get a chance to chase that up during the Q&A for the moment what did you give a round of applause for both okay so where's the audience Q&A don't worry sign up at the big conversation dot show and we'll send you the link to over half an hour of bonus content as John and Michael interact with audience questions plus you'll get access to more debates updates and extra bonus content sign up now

Channel: Unbelievable?

Views: 253,165

Rating: 4.8315892 out of 5

Keywords: unbelievable, justin brierley, premier christian radio, christianity, atheism, philosophy, faith, theology, michael ruse, john lennox, florida state university, oxford university, science, evidence for God, God, debate

Id: yrnXdzQRISM

Length: 58min 18sec (3498 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 07 2018