Q&A SHOW - Professor John Lennox - Against The Tide

[Music] [Music] hello good evening welcome to the q a show i'm speaking in a little somber tone at the moment because there is been an incident a shooting in vienna and we do want to ask our viewers to pray for those who have been injured and those who've been shot dead it happened sometime this evening and it seems that there's this incident took place near a synagogue whether or not it was directly directed at the synagogue or not remains to be seen but unfortunately people have lost their lives tonight again in what is deemed to be a terrorist incident so let me just start by saying that because the revelation tv is always going to be here for live situations and before we start this program which is going to be one that's going to be very informative for you as a as a believer in the lord but can't always give the defense of your faith in a you know a way which would other people would understand that the bible is historically and scientifically uh very plausible and will help you to help others to understand that there is a god i want to say welcome to ellie first of all ellie's the lady who actually uh introduced me to tonight's guest who's professor john lennox and we'll be meeting him in very short manner can i just say ellie well done for bringing this particular gentleman to our screens thank you a little bit about him he's so professor john lennox we interviewed him uh in lockdown and he's an author as well so he's written many books and one of the books we interviewed him about was where is god in a coronavirus world and so he's a very well respected man and we're very lucky to have him on tonight okay well we're going to start really with the trailer for the particular film that's going to be coming out against the tide let's have a look at this and then we'll be introducing professor john lennox why there is something rather than nothing is a huge question today belief in god does not really help us religion teaches us to be satisfied with not really understanding i believe the exact opposite god far from being a delusion is real religion is a fiction that just is never challenged i believe that the public need to hear that there is another side and that's why i'm here too to have you help me to understand and follow the evidence i do argue that there is evidence for the existence of an intelligent god behind the universe christianity answers the question who is this god how do we know that god came here in in basically human form how do we know that why don't we mate in the place where it all began [Music] what about the resurrection no i don't normally need five minutes to rebut the resurrection the resurrection possesses unrivaled explanatory power [Music] john i sense that you truly believe this i'm convinced of it not simply as a christian but as a believing scientist just to remind you q a is all about you asking the questions for tonight and i just want to remind you that you can do that by sending emails to live revelation tv.com and also sms texts as well ellie will be reading those out as we introduce the tonight special guest but before we do that i just want to show you this particular scripture and share it with you because it's something that stuck very much in my mind as i was starting to read the bible i needed i didn't have a problem with faith itself but i wanted to know how to share my faith and this particular scripture spells it all out makes it very clear it says always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have but to do this are reminded to do it with gentleness and respect now i'm going to introduce you tonight to professor john lennox who's live with us on our link and he's the emeritus professor of mathematics at oxford university uh good evening professor hello nice to be with you again yeah thank you john now that particular scripture always comes to mind when i have somebody like yourself on because you you are definitely the person that we can ask how do we deliver our particular faith in our god in a way which people would easily understand and not be able to take seriously because we don't have a problem with faith but we do have a problem sometimes in making defense of our faith well i sometimes think that we do have a problem with faith in in one sense that christianity is something that is to be shared and we run up against two barriers and they're very common barriers fear and shame and the background of this particular statement that you read is very interesting because it is the background of fear do not fear them says peter now peter himself was a man who who got afraid and therefore we listened to him carefully as he unpacks something that i have found throughout my life immensely encouraging and the first major point i'd make about this statement is that it is not talking about the ability to preach or preaching because the context of it is always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you now that's not a preaching context that is a one-to-one discussion or a small discussion and and so the issue is this how can we encourage people to ask us questions i was very bothered about this years ago as a student because i thought i was ready to answer the questions but nobody ever asked me and a younger student put me right on this and i've never forgotten what he said he said well have you ever thought of asking them i said well no he said why well i said they don't have a hope he said try asking them so the very next time i was traveling on a train down to london and i noticed the man beside me was reading a scientific textbook and i asked him was he a scientist and he said he was and he asked me what i was doing and i said i'm an undergraduate studying mathematics and then i took out a new testament and started reading it holding it so as he could see it and of course curiosity got the better of him after a while and he said excuse me he said is that a new testament you're reading and i said yes and i kept on reading and after a few more minutes he said look he said i don't want to be rude but you said you're a mathematician why is a mathematician reading the new testament and i remembered what my friend that said to me so i just looked out of it and said tell me i said have you any hope and he went as white as she and then he said i guess we'll all muddle through and i said you know i didn't mean that my question was has you have you any personal hope and he said none whatsoever well i said that's why i'm reading the new testament and he asked well what hope does it give you so now i had been asked the question i could answer it and you know i find this so helpful because many people they think that we're called upon to be preachers we're not we're called upon to be witnesses and ambassadors for christ and we are we have the responsibility to stimulate people enough that they start asking us questions now i can unpack that a great deal more if and when you wish right well let me let me just put it uh into context of something a conversation i had literally just a couple of days ago um i play football with quite a few of the people down here expats and one of the guys right at the end of our sort of having a little beer afterwards um said to me how did i hear you uh a religious man i understood what he meant by the way and uh he said he said i'm a believer but he waited for everybody else to go and he said but my daughter who's in her twenties is not she can't come to terms in believing in god she said you know the the bible isn't historically correct uh etc etc and from a scientific point of view as well and i said well look i tell you what find out because i was trying to think very quickly how i can actually help to convince this man to convince his daughter that there is a god and the bible is credible and also historically uh correct in many ways and which we can actually talk about so i i put the question to him find out from your daughter what it is exactly and pose a if you like a question or two as to what it is that she has doubts about in specifics and so um that's how i opened it up and i was sort of shaking in my shoes a bit that i didn't have to give and a defense right there and then although i've been a believer since i was 21 which was a few weeks ago you know i'm in the joking but seriously what can we say to people today about looking at the scripture from say um you know just historically people would say christ was not a historical figure and some of the early accounts let's go back to the times of moses and abraham and situations like that or the kings of israel what is there there that can actually you could point out to us to help us as individuals to give a good account when we're asked to do so you're quite right and trying to find out what the specific difficulty is because these generic questions are very difficult to answer yeah i mean there are about 10 questions packed in there but i think to start with on the historicity of christ himself you see if people deny that then the denial comes and forgive me if i said bluntly because they've never read any ancient history it is the fact that if you consult the experts on history you find that by and large they are completely convinced not only that jesus existed but they're convinced that many of the things that are written off him in the new testament gospels are accurate now i say that because many of these historians are not christians they may even be agnostic or atheist but the point is they know how to assess history so someone who comes along to me and says well i think jesus never existed well that is pardon me sheer ignorance and that can be settled by reading something serious on the topic and there's a lot of material and you'd be aware of it as well as i am but i think one of the most useful recent books is the one by peter williams dr peter williams of tyndale house in in cambridge can we trust the gospels because you proceed from the historicity of jesus to discovering that the gospel writers and in particular luke who claims to be a historian and dates his gospel and tells you who was on the throne and all this kind of stuff you can check many checkable things in terms of parallel archaeological findings and luke has been shown to be correct on virtually everything that's checkable and many very leading and ancient historians have come to the conclusion that he is one of the most impressive historians from the ancient world so i think these things can be cleared up by reading but what i find often is the case and not necessarily with your friend but these questions are raised by people that do not necessarily want to engage with them because that's right if someone asked me that question i said have you read x y and z and they say no and i said will you read it and we'll discuss it very often they say oh that's not my problem well tell me what your problem is and there are people with genuine questions about history we need to answer those questions but questioners are much more complicated than their questions and we need to find out exactly where they're coming from that's why when i hear questions like this where a friend of a friend has asked a certain question i say look i don't know these people and everyone is different and i think one of the things that peter's telling us here is the subtext for me is that if you want to get people to ask you questions you need to ask them questions not questions necessarily about biblical things or spiritual things but the way to get to know people especially if you haven't met them before is to ask them questions about their interests about their families about their background about what makes them tick and that will mean when they eventually ask you a question and you might have to wait a while for that to happen then you can take that seriously and give an answer now it may be nothing to do with christianity but you'll get to know them as a friend and you'll get to know what is going on in their lives and in their minds and it's when you know a bit more about that that you can answer these questions with much more accuracy yeah now the questions are starting to come in from our viewers but i just wanted to say in that particular trailer that we saw there was a mention there by was it christopher hitchens uh because obviously the late christopher historians yes because he actually was a little bit uh arrogant there and saying well you wouldn't he wouldn't need more than five minutes to talk about the resurrection or dispute the resurrection of christ you know so those sort of things i actually had christopher hitchings when we first launched revelation tv writing to us i didn't know who he was to be honest at that time but it didn't take him long actually to for that to come to the surface but i was uh at least privileged to be able to argue a few points with him uh we've got some emails coming in now we do indeed we've got one from tony saying good evening please professor lennox what is the best thing i could say to my friend who is a highly educated teacher and a science based person and demands scientific empirical proof of the lord he is a good man who i would love to witness effectively too thank you and that's from tony well it depends really on whether tony is himself a scientist or not and if he is then he probably will know what to say but if he isn't what i say to people like that is to and tony thanks for your question it's an important question if you're not a scientist and many people watching may not be what i say to them look and speaking personally but you can use other people's books if you like i have written a little book not long ago called can science explain everything now that covers a lot of the ground the questions that are normally asked and what i suggest is you give your friend that book but don't recommend it what i mean by that is if you say to someone look here's a book i think is terrific please read it well they they won't it's much better if you're not a scientist to be completely honest and say look i i've got this book and it seems to be heading in the direction of dealing with your questions but i'd like you to evaluate it for me and then we can perhaps discuss it and that opens the conversation up recommending books is oddly unwise i always encourage people to get others to evaluate them especially if they themselves are not qualified in the field so that's how i would start to do that and perhaps use one of the reasons that we made this film is precisely to get that conversation going because half of its time it spends on science and half of its time it spends on the evidence for the truth of the christian faith so that would be my first response to the question i i think it's such an exciting time for this film to come out because when i saw the trailer and i think as christians i think we can shy away from um facing questions about science because i think it's quite one of those subjects where i wouldn't feel confident answering that and it doesn't mean we necessarily have to answer it but we can as as professor lennox says we can give them um a book and kind of leave it to them to to look at it and decide and i think especially now where people are going through coronavirus and they are actually questioning their faith now and they're looking at it and going actually maybe there is something more and it's such a phenomenal time for the film to be to be airing i think your point your point ellie is is is very very important there we'll never lose face by saying look we don't know exactly and if you're not a scientist to say to somebody look i'd love to know more about science but i don't now i would like you to have a look at this if you will and tell me what you think the problems are with it but if you like i can share with you something um that science doesn't touch in the sense that it's it's my own experience if you'd like me to because it's very important for us who are believers to realize that nobody can take your experience of god away from you and also science as my book says doesn't explain everything it's not the only rational discipline around history is and so are many other things so there are all kinds of approaches and you will not lose face by saying look i don't know well let me come back to uh what christopher james was saying in his arrogant way um but let's take it seriously that because that could be a lot of people's um argument is that the the resurrection of jesus christ you know the death and resurrection um what proof do we have um we could actually say that josephus obviously was a historian at the time who was fairly independent although he was a jewish historian but he did write quite critically about some of the things that happened around that time of christ but he also did record the fact that this man did miracles and the land and also that his disciples were doing such work as well so there is some credible historical record there is there anything else that you would say to actually add to that well this is very important that you bring to bear the contemporary evidence from other writers josephus is one of them the roman historian tacit is another one and um then there's ben cerapion and we have enough evidence from contemporaries that scholars of this topic agree that something happened it's amazing that when it comes to resurrection peace be to the late christopher hitchens there's surprising agreement among historians think of some of those they agree that jesus was crucified that he was laid in the known tomb and they tend to agree that a few days later the tomb was found empty and once you get that far then you're faced with the question of how do we explain the empty tomb and then there are all kinds of arguments come in and we can examine them forensically we can't revisit to see exactly what happens but we can use argument what's called inference the best explanation um about the resurrection and one of them for example is the fact that christianity suddenly exploded out of a non-evangelizing religion judaism and the rise of the christian church must be explained by something now what the early apostles claim is the resurrection of c.s lewis puts it if the resurrection hadn't happened there would have been no christianity and then people argue various things they say oh well maybe the disciples removed the body well think about that here were people that went out to preach that jesus rose from the dead lived lives of very impressive truthfulness honesty and integrity how could they have done that if they knew that they had simply perpetuated a lie and so it goes on and there are many different avenues of approach to this one of the very interesting things about the resurrection is some people who have seen that it is the central claim of the christian faith and have decided right they're going to prove the resurrection didn't happen and so destroy the christian faith they have ended up becoming christians themselves or finally there are many other things but people say oh well the appearance was a hallucination but experts in psychology point out that we tend to hallucinate about things that we are expecting and none of the disciples were expecting a resurrection and of course hallucination doesn't explain an empty tomb we're dealing here i believe that with factual reality and the reason i'm confident about this is i spent my life exposing my faith in christ to its opposite like christopher hitchens and richard dawkins and the more i encounter their kind of objections the more convinced i am that their arguments simply do not work and no naturalistic explanation works for the resurrection and so i stand firm by it but you need to do it for yourself you need to read the evidence for yourself right before we go to our next question let me just reiterate there what something you uh spoke about or mentioned is the fact that the apostles would not have laid down their lives willingly for a lie that's the whole thing and nearly every one of them by all accounts lost their life in a most uh horrendous way as well so they actually would not have done that as you say for a lie but lots of other things and questions coming in yes and we've got one from dave here and it says hi folk very interesting subject i have two questions for professor lennox a what does john think the reason would be why people like richard dawkins does not believe in god and b would disbelievers still have come about if god had not sent everyone from babylon allowing them to start other beliefs i'm not sure they understand the second but let me take the first question i cannot see inside the mind and heart of richard dawkins and therefore i can't second guess what the problem is what i would risk saying is his arguments seem to me to be increasingly incoherent particularly in his book the god delusion so the problem can't be reason and perhaps i do not know that he had a very negative experience with some christians earlier in his life or some version of of christianity i just do not know there are so many reasons that highly intelligent people reject the christian faith but it hasn't always to do with reason and logic so what was the second question um just going back to it it says would disbelievers still have come about if god had not sent everyone from babylon allowing them to start other beliefs i don't get that one either but i'm just wondering babylon the great or babylon i think i understand what they mean how how would we know an answer to that you see the development of all kinds of beliefs certainly may well have come about through a scattering of the nations as described in genesis 11 but we can't second guess remember that scattering came about because people were rebelling against god the the development of other religions had already started and ancient babel was at the heart of it so i i'm not sure where we're going with this question really you got other questions yes i do i have another one here from ian it says hello does mr lennox believe that dawkins will ever become a believer and that's an ian well how would i be able to answer that can i actually try nice of that john because i actually met the man and i after the interview which i did with him which was a terrible interview because of uh her death in the family had just occurred and i was trying to deal with that but when i spoke to him after the interview i saw a different side of the man and i've got to say i would like to believe that he would become a believer that's what i really feel in my heart and i'm not saying that without having done some due diligence and some of the things that i've actually seen and heard since i would like to say he will become a believer well i would like to believe that many of my atheist friends would become believers but as we know from history there's absolutely no guarantee but i recall that the famous soul of tarsus became a believer there you go and so i see hope for many other people yeah there's been many uh uh prestigious people even judges in america who uh studied the the bible from i can't remember the guy's name in particular but he studied the bible in order to disprove it and you sort of alluded to that earlier on john and i think that these sort of people unlike dr grady he was uh one who believed in evolution and after a year and a half of studying the scriptures came to believe that we were created and not something that evolved and and and that man has uh is a very clever man indeed like yourself professor john so let's uh believe that you know that you know the the power of god uh and through the written word is what uh actually changes the people's hearts and minds and next question i have is from duncan hi professor can you give me an example of good maths in the bible that would help in evangelism i tutor in maths so any formulae would be interesting good question well i'm thankful that the bible is not a textbook of mathematics uh me too i'd be useless what about daniel 9 well i would not i'm a pure mathematician i study algebra that's the arithmetic of dates isn't what i would call mathematics i think that there's nothing really that i would cite from the bible in that way that gives evidence for god i i feel the evidence for god that comes from mathematics is very powerful but it doesn't come in that way in other words if people ask me does mathematics help me uh to believe in god i say it does absolutely because the amazing thing about mathematics is that we can use it to describe what's going on out there in the universe and it was that belief that actually is behind the rise of modern science many people do not realize until i tell them or someone else tells them that modern science is really a gift of the judeo-christian heritage c.s lewis put it beautifully when he said men became scientific because they expected law and nature and they expected law and nature because they believed in the legislator so for me the evidence that we can understand at least something about the say the motion of the planets or what's going on inside the sun is evidence that this is a rationally intelligible universe in fact all scientists have to start by believing that it's a rationally intelligible universe and here it seems to me that if you reject god you don't have many reasonable grounds for believing that whereas what christianity tells me is the reason that i can understand the universe a little bit using mathematics inside my head is because the universe and my mind are both created by the same intelligent god so that's where i would go i don't think that the the bible intends to give us various mathematical equations that give evidence for god in that way absolutely great great answer and moving on mike says do you think that atheists are in rebellion well that's a generic question which atheists who are we talking about you you'll find i'm very elusive when i'm asked about general things like that some atheists may well be in rebellion because if you think of the atheism of the enlightenment of the french revolution and all this kind of thing they were certainly in rebellion and some people tell us that they are anti-god and certainly that is rebellion against god and therefore how many are i don't know but that some are there are other people you see that aren't hardline atheists nor are they militant or aggressive and they would respect me and say well i'm entitled to believe what i believe and we can discuss it and their atheism is of a milder sort and they try to argue reasonably about it and you don't sense that they're in rebellion but then you don't know because christianity involves more than one dimension what i mean by that is this it's not simply a matter of x plus y equals zed therefore god exists it's got a strong intellectual dimension christian faith is evidence-based faith as is explained to us in the new testament there's evidence if we want to really get a hold of that we all we have to do is read john 20 where we read this many other signs jesus did in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book but these are written in order that you might believe that jesus is the messiah the son of god and that believing you might have life in his name in other words john says i've collected these signs the miracles jesus did they are pointers to who he is and they are evidence upon which faith can be based so christianity involves a rational evidence-based faith in god and that's very important for us to get across absolutely yes yeah what about archaeological uh evidence that's always emerging um because a lot of the people that would actually go and do the digs particularly in israel itself and then use the bible accounts to actually find the tells that's the mounds where all these things are hidden and uh you know find the uh the ancient uh if you like uh pottery or the buildings or the architectural work that was there and it seems that they want to use the bible to find these places of interest but don't give any uh credence to the bible itself well i'm not an expert archaeologist but i do read some of the stuff and there's quite a lot of it out there one person i found helpful to read is professor alan millard and professor kenneth kitchen and the evidence from archaeology for many things is is very strong in fact just yesterday i came across an article i think in the biblical archaeology magazine saying that 53 names from the bible 53 persons that are mentioned have been independently verified by archaeological findings and that kind of thing is enormously important it seems to me because it corroborates uh what the bible says one example that i remember from years back is that for a long time people said that the book of daniel was inaccurate historically because it mentioned king and so it was dismissed until an inscription turned up with his name on i think i've got the right one there and again and again there has been confirmation but then i'm not an expert you need to turn to ancient historians uh on this kind of question yeah um you remind me actually there john of when i went to visit the british museum i was fascinated with all the archaeological findings that they've brought into that particular museum and particularly when it talks about uh in the bible nineveh because that wasn't something that was discovered for maybe like until about 200 years ago bible critics always used to say well where's this great city that's talked about uh the nineveh that jonah went to visit and we've now got many cuneiform tablets and a lot of the things that uh were found in nineveh themselves gave credence again to some of the characters uh and also the events that happened as mentioned in the bible uh as it being you know valid and uh the and i was looking up about the rosetta stone tonight as well that was something uh where this particular french man actually was able to work out the what the highla hieroglyphics were actually meaning what the the different signs like the bird and etc what they all stood for and he was the one who was able to bring the encoding or to to give a if you like a a modern-day language and terms to use for those particular findings again all of this and some of them have direct bearing uh to scripture as well well this is a very good argument for encouraging intelligent young christians to get into some of these fields and make a contribution to them yeah by the way the title of the film is against the tide i've written a book called against the flow and it is actually about daniel and in order to write that book i spent a lot of time studying the ancient near east particularly babylom and it was just utterly fascinating and i tried to increase the interest of my book by referring to a lot of these things and demonstrating that the issues that daniel and his friends faced are in the university of babylon were exactly the same as what students face and if there are young people watching me i wrote this book against the flow for people like yourself who may be up against a secular world view that's challenging your christian faith left right and center yeah do you know um i i like the book of daniel that there are many things in there which are prophetic i'm not sure where you stand on prophecy but i found it extremely uh helpful and also the the experiences which daniel had and how he was if you like used of god uh to actually appeal to the kings and actually be able to if you like minister to them at the same time also profoundly speak about the coming of the messiah as well well daniel is a brilliant old testament example of the fulfillment of one peter 3 16. there you go that he witnessed to the emperor and i believe that the first half of the book every chapter of it mentions nebuchadnezzar and it is the book of daniel but his witness to the king is one of the most important things and you mention prophecy which is very interesting because some christians shy away from it because it has a strongly supernatural dimension but so is christianity as c.s lewis never tired of pointing out but i think one of the central things that brings daniel and christ together is the fact that when he was put on trial and asked whether he was the messiah he said yes and you will see the son of man um coming on the throne of heaven on the clouds of heaven and everybody who was listening to him knew that he was quoting the prophecy of daniel chapter 7 where daniel had a vision of a brilliant figure coming on the clouds of heaven and that's why they crucified him and i'm not remotely ashamed therefore of staking my claim that i believe that daniel was looking down through the tunnel of the centuries and seeing an event that is yet to happen and i have dealt with all that in my book so it answered your question if you want to know where i stand in prophecy read my book right but it was prophecy for me that actually uh was the most appealing i read the scriptures as a book on my own and it took me two and a quarter years um to read it and i when i came across daniel i just was i was gonna say i freaked out but chat chapter 12 the very first verse there talks about a time of great trouble and again this is reiterated by christ in matthew 24 and luke 21 that this time that the world would experience which had never happened before or nor would it happen again to the same extent actually points to the time as you know uh when christ will actually come again and take up his rightful place in the kingdom of god which is mentioned in daniel 2 chapter 44. so you know prophecy is so important i'm so pleased that you've actually born witness to that as well because that's something that might appeal to other people because me as a man maybe not as a woman in the sense that females might look at christ and go and be in awe of him whereas for me it was the prophetic uh from genesis chapter 3 verse 16 all the way through to revelation that really interested me anyway yes well if you think of one peter go back to the statement you read give a reason for the hope that is within us what is the christian hope from the very first days it was the ultimate hope was that jesus would return and publicly he said to his judges that he would return and privately to his disciples he said i go away but i will come again to receive you to myself so this is the christian hope and it seems to me to be very important to spell it out it is of course manifest the supernatural but so is the incarnation and the resurrection and the miracles jesus did brilliant i just want to read some more emails because we've got loads coming in and howard began the program tonight with the news of the tragic killings that happened this evening in vienna how would professor lennox say to people who asked the question why does god allow such tragic tragedy to happen that's the hard question and it's the reason why i wrote my book why where is god in a coronavirus world all of us whatever our worldview find pain and suffering very difficult to cope with and what i say to people is this before we judge the biblical view of this we we need to listen to it and what the bible tells us is there's a fatal flaw at the heart of human beings now we haven't timed tonight to go into the details but if you have a look at my little book where is god in the coronavirus world you learn what what i think about that and the amazing thing about god's dealing with humans is that he doesn't turn us into robots people often say look why couldn't god have made a universe in which events like the one tonight never happened and why couldn't he have made creatures that never do things like that well the answer to that is of course he could but you wouldn't be in a world like that animals cannot sin and robots cannot sin they simply do what they're programmed to do but the magnificent gift that god has given us as human beings made in his image is he hasn't programmed us as robots he's given us a genuine dimension of responsibility and freedom and in order to have that you've got to be able to choose yes or no and what we see in the world is the evil that has come about because people choose to to use your phrase rebel against god now the big question that raises is has god done anything about that to rescue people that have got into the mess and that's where the cross and resurrection uh come into their own but let me just say that this is not a simple question there are no simplistic answers but i have made an effort in my little book to give you the beginnings of an answer but if you want to listen to something may i just suggest you google my name and new zealand and you'll find my response to the earthquake that happened in 2011 meeting people who had suffered loss of their loved ones in that um catastrophe when there was an earthquake and there i also deal with the problem of moral evil which is evident on the streets of vienna tonight but the christian message has got hope to offer to all of us because it believes in the resurrection not only of jesus but of those that trust christ and therefore we've got something that transcends death atheism has nothing to put alongside that it is a hopeless worldview a hopeless faith can i just add that really you know one of the things that for me is that the scriptures give clarity on this because it says that the unrighteous will do the things and act more wickedly particularly in the latter days christ said because of the increase in lawlessness uh though the love of many will cool off because we become afraid to uh if you like to go out there uh into the into the crowds but you know jesus talks also about a time the future of this new heaven and new earth uh when matthew in revelation chapter 21 no more pain no more suffering all the things which this world goes through right now will be gone forever uh when this day arrives which is when christ's return so it's not something that god wants and in fact he gave us the freedom will free will and choice and we're reaping what we've sown over thousands of years and i just know that uh our days are numbered in that sense for those who believe great hope for the future for those who act wickedly they will be cut off as psalms 37 talks about yeah i think i just want to say to professor lennox if he can just say a couple of things to perhaps younger people because for me as soon as i saw this trailer i was so excited i was sending it to absolutely everyone because that is something i really struggle with you know when it comes to science i'm a bit you know iffy but there is a lot of young people out there at the moment that do believe in you know the scientists who are atheists and i don't think professor lennox's side is heard enough and you know the christianity side so i think it would be great if you could just speak to the perhaps all generations but especially the younger generations and as you mentioned the young scientists to really encourage them to watch this film well one of the key questions i think is this and it's where many people get hung up they listen to an atheist scientist like dawkins saying science can explain everything and that is simply not true and i give a very simple analogy to help them understand that suppose i ask the question why is the water boiling well it's boiling because heat energy is being conducted through the base of a kettle and is agitating the molecules of water and so it's boiling i could also equally well say it's boiling because i would very much like a cup of tea now those are two explanations of the same phenomenon one is a scientific explanation in terms of heat physics the other is a personal explanation in terms of my desire the desire of an agent the two explanations do not conflict they do not compete they complement and if we raise that to the level of the universe i often put it this way the god explanation no more competes with a true science explanation then henry ford competes with physics as an explanation for a motor car we need both and the confusion that is in the mind of richard dawkins and the late stephen hawking and others is that only the science explanation is valid which is is complete nonsense and equally they think the science explanation is the same kind of explanation as the god explanation well to quote richard swinburne one of my philosopher colleagues at oxford he said science explains but god explains why science explains and i think the important thing is that we live in a universe created by god in which science can be done scientists didn't put the universe there god did we try to understand it and study it and i think a great deal of confusion lies as i try to explain my little book in confusion over the nature of explanation now there are many other things i could say shall i say one more thing yes please do we got a minute left okay well the other thing is there's very great confusion about the nature of faith because the new atheists led by dawkins have redefined faith to be a religious term which means believing where there's no evidence now that is dangerously wrong the english word faith comes from the latin fides from which we get fidelity it has ideas of trust and so on now i've explained earlier that the faith that christianity tells us to develop is evidence-based we trust in christ for reasons but men

Channel: Revelation TV

Views: 8,006

Rating: 4.9344263 out of 5

Keywords: Q&A Show, Professor John Lennox, Mathematics, Oxford University, Against The Tide, New, Film

Id: GU2JEMk7UdY

Length: 54min 5sec (3245 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 13 2020