Who Created God? John Lennox at The Veritas Forum at UCLA

one of the most basic difficulties for those who hold the view of the materialistic universe is the question of a beginning and as you pointed out before Christianity has long claimed that the universe was created and now we have the BIGBANG BIGBANG theory that suggests at least that it started as at a certain time and and yet then there's always the issue yes but if there can't be an uncaused cause than what created god and yes and and I guess Christianity perhaps gives different answers to that as I understand it Augustine's answer was that God is outside time and in a way that's a good answer but it seems to me that that's a way of saying we don't know what the explanation is because none of us has the slightest idea of what it means to be outside time or Christianity says that the father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are three but they are one and from those statements many wonderful things follow and yet it seems to be a way of saying we don't know what it is because we have no idea of what it means to be three and to be one and how a God as powerful and as amazing let's say as the god of Jobe could appear in the form as a human being and be the holy spirit so so my point is this and as I say I think this may be a strength or a weakness but it does seem as if many of the difficult questions are just explained by mysteries which is a Christian word that that in a way are saying we don't know so I don't know that that's a whether that's a challenge or a suggestions or help but but it's a wonderful challenge but I'd be interested in your response to it yes yes I love this particular thing and I have to think about it a great deal because of course it is absolutely obvious that hmm replacing one mystery by another is not always a helpful way forward sometimes it might be yeah well let let well it's a more sensible mystery um let's let's unpack this because there are three or four questions which is why I wrote them down because with my dying brains I can't remember everything but let's come to that first question which is interested me because it's become a great focus recently um both in north america of britain and europe everybody's talking about it I thought I'd left it behind in Russia and that's the question who created God and Dawkins has made it the heart of his book The God Delusion I was staggered when I found that there what I mean about Russia ladies and gentlemen is I used to get this all the time in the Academy of Sciences when I was traveling out to Russia in the early in the late 1980s the early nineteen nineties you see that it was almost the first question if you believe that God created the universe that logically you've got to ask the question who created God and then you have to ask who created the God that who created the God who created the God that created God the Creator God and so on ad infinitum and that was the end of god of course and that's exactly what Dawkins says in The God Delusion well let's analyze it for a moment who created God if you asked that question it shows you've immediately categorized God has created so you're talking about a created God now you imagine if Richard Dawkins had written a book called the created God's delusion I don't think many people would have bought it because I don't need him to tell me that created gods are a delusion we usually call them idols incidentally but you see this question this this this question is extremely interesting because it's an illustration of a question that already rules out the explanation that's most likely to be true because the Christian claim is that God wasn't created so if God was uncreated in the beginning was the word and I'm coming to your three and one now and I'm bringing it in oblique ly in the beginning was the word the Word was with God and the Word was God he already was so the Central Christian claim is and in Judaism and Islam of course equally is that God is eternal so the question by definition doesn't even apply to him and that's immensely important the only way you can get anything out of it then and the negative sense is to assume that everything is in the category of the Creator but that's just begging the original question and the Greeks were interested in it and that's why John's Gospel starts with those words in the beginning the word already was and then it says all things came to be through him the Greeks were interested in the question of two categories the things that came to be the created things and the things that are already we're and the question resolves down to this is there a thing or a being that never came to be and that is the Christian claim and he's called God but there's a little console to this you see Richard Dawkins and I had a debate with him on this very topic in Oxford and I said to Richard you say that who created God is a legitimate question I don't think it is but let me assume now that it is you believe that the universe created you so I beg leave now to ask you using your own question who created your Creator I've waiting stove for the answer so that's the first point very briefly to the second point God is three and one is it a mystery yes it is and am I allowed to tell the story yeah I think we should we have no not yet okay but do tell the story yeah yeah yeah I was talking to about a thousand scientists and a man came up to me afterwards physicist he said it was very interesting all that talk about God but he said you know I detect you're a Christian and I said you're very astute gentleman yeah that's what I said I said you're a pretty sharp he said come off it he said I look as a Christian you're obliged to believe that God is a Trinity that Jesus was God and man and he said come on you're a mathematician at Oxford this is absurd can you explain it to me well I said can I ask you a question first said sure so I said tell me what is consciousness and he thought for a second and then he said I don't know I said that's okay let me try an easier one what is energy what said I'm a physicist I can measure energy I could use it I said you know that's not my question what is it he said I don't know oh I said that's very understate you don't know tell me I said do you believe in consciousness yes he said do you believe in energy yes he said so I said you believe in these two things you don't know what they are I said should I write you off as an intellectual and he said please don't and I said but that's exactly what you were going to do with me five minutes ago and I said if you don't know what energy is and nobody does and if you don't believe that you physicists read Richard Feynman if you don't know what energy is don't be surprised if energy light gravity and consciousness are a mystery don't be surprised if you're going to get an element of this in God you're bound to get it but now you push them a bit further you see and I said why do you believe in these things if you don't know what they are that was a bit difficult so being kind chap I try to help him out and I said dub you believe in these things because of their explanatory power as concepts and he said that's exactly right and I said look of course I can't explain to you how God became human but I said it's the only explanation of make sense of the evidence as I see it now I said I've got a simple analogy that might help you it's a very low-level analogy but at least is biblical I'm married I've been married for 42 and a half years to the same person and and my wife and I are in a sense one were two persons in one flesh the Bible would say but in one unit and it seems to me that at the very least don't misunderstand me when I say this that this mystery is telling us something magnificent about God God is not a monolith who to put it crudely was lonely so he made a few people so he could have somebody to talk to him God is himself a fellowship now that's under mentioned and we can't grasp it but there is a sense in which I feel it's 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Length: 10min 39sec (639 seconds)

Published: Tue May 10 2011