Why Are We Here? God, Life, and the Pursuit of Happiness | John Lennox at Brown

welcome to the Veritas forum engaging University students and faculty in discussions about life's hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ to all of life well good afternoon to all of you it's great to see everyone here and I want to add my warm welcome to Professor Lennox and I'm so looking forward to this quaint Irish accent here as soon as you speak and I understand you came from st. Louis it must been the only airplane they allowed out of the Midwest could get much debate but it's but you made it here I'm very delighted it's a privilege to have professor Lennox here today and it's not often perhaps that mathematicians the hobnob historians and certainly the same is true idol that hang out with mathematicians very often and I'm desperately hoping that you don't ask a difficult math question here on me suddenly because I won't be able to answer it so grad students have been braving the harsh weather in the storms and the snowfall over the past couple weeks trying to collect from their peers different kinds of questions to ask you about God my happiness and purpose and indeed there were hundreds of questions to sort through many of them very very good and difficult ones and we won't have time to address them all in this presentation at least not formally but we've selected out the most difficult of all the questions and we save them to ask you here this afternoon is a way of opening up a very honest and rich conversation about these topics here at hand so let me just reiterate that the questions I'm asking are not my own although I have my own questions as well that maybe we can get you later on but they indeed come from you the student body and people who responded to these surveys so to start off with I actually assigned from heaven to start off with I have a question that's enormous ly important that I knows when weighing on all of our minds heavily since Sunday evening the question is this why did Matthew probably have to die in Downton Abbey well I understand these things catch on in America those are goings on an English stately homes but it's interesting that you ask a question my god it's a bit like who shot junior isn't it so that it takes me a little bit but we bring death up in the context of a soap opera or something like this and somehow death is a fascination with people and often we treat it in that remote sense as part of a novel that's part of the excitement and so on but in reality what we can be doing sometimes is substituting that for really facing the significance of death which must of course inevitably come to all of us so I haven't seen that episode yet you see I don't like watching one episode of the time I like to see the whole lot because I were to do what happens next so I get to see you well now you don't have to watch it it doesn't know how it is sorry about that I apologize here we go spoiler there okay so one thing I wanted to sort of start off with as a sort of an opening question which is not an official question is to bring the question of why you do what you do here you are you've debated you said on the stage with people much more menacing and intellectually heavy that myself in many ways Richard Dawkins because for his skin Hitchens you've debated them publicly which not everyone would take on certainly and I wonder if you would just share a bit about why this has been something you've chosen to take on voluntarily well I suppose it all started when I got to Cambridge in the middle of last century the kate bridge on the other side of the problem as you will realize and I come from a Christian background and my parents are Christian and my grandparents as well and my first week is a student another student said to me do you believe in God and they said oh sorry I forgot you're Irish it should never about that question all you Irish believe in God did you fight about it and of course I heard that before but somehow it was a trigger for the whole of my life because I thought okay could it be that my faith in God is simply Irish genetic as for the sense it's just a Freudian projection everybody in Ireland believes and so on so on the day I deliberately decided to get to know people that did not share my worldview that had never been to church that didn't believe in God and I've been doing that all my life and that led me to the Eastern Europe during the Cold War and later when the Wall fell I spent a lot of time in Russia the Academy of Sciences still talking to people to the world's leading atheist side about what makes them tick and the real motivation is simply this I want to know what's true it's okay to say that your faith in God helps you and that's marvelous if it helps you but as a scientist I'm actually interested in truth and so I'm interested in exposing my worldview to serious questioning so I spent my life doing that and I've been very fortunate to be able to come up against some very tough questionnaires like Peter Singer Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and secondly I think this because I feel that Christianity has been downgraded intellectually in many people's minds the default position in the Academy in the Western world at least is naturalism and people assume that naturalism is true I challenge that therefore as an academic as a scientist as a professor of mathematics at Oxford I want to step into the arena and say just a moment there is a rational alternative to this naturalism and so I have sufficient confidence and people's ability to distinguish to judge let's have a public debate I've met the people judge and that is by the way why I'm greatly honored to be in this very famous University and delighted to see that you believed in having this kind of a dialogue it's so important to students particularly that we're exposed to different worldviews thank you I'm going to bank on the dialogue versus debate framing that you just gave so in that spirit the first question that does come from the students here is has to do with American history which is something that I love and know a bit about the question is this Declaration of Independence famously describes our inalienable rights as life liberty and the pursuit of happiness which by the way I saw is also in the rock lobby that's a john d rockefeller quotes that he also quotes us as wealth for all you who love the rock nobody a non-american then how do you think about happiness how much should we invest in the pursuit of happiness happiness is of course like many of these terms is difficult to define it is it's part of a whole spectrum of notions like joy like flourishing like fulfillment now from where I said every man and woman is a person made in the image of God and therefore having infinite dignity and Worth and great potential and I linked happiness true happiness flourishing joy satisfaction with the fulfillment of that potential now if we follow that idea two books lower level here you are what are the best universities of the world and there's a level of happiness and getting in I take it you remember when you heard you got it there was a joy and that soon settles down but then you begin to discover new ideas and there's another level of that sense of flourishing gosh I could get adjusted molecular biology or I'd love to do Chinese applied basket weaving or underwater lithography or something like this and and your interest grow and then you begin to make friends and as you mature you've a sense of joy I've got these friends and they're great you can talk to them and so on so I think all of those things are wonderful so when the people fled from England to have a better life in America and funded this wonderful country they had a great sense of trying to create an environment where flourishing would be possible by very aware as I say this that the reason they fled England was partly the persecution of the church that's such a horrific tragedy we could come to that later but it is important to realize just going to take this a little step further because when you bring God into the equation sometimes people say well you ought to be gloomy about God because God's out there to spoil your fun to see if you're enjoying yourself and be happy and say stop it that's nonsense God invented all the colors in the rainbow we've never invented it you what God is the one who has given us a universe up twenty magnificent things looking up at the stars last night the Ryans nebula and Jupiter sailing past and just the sheer beauty in the vastness of space and just think of your giftedness as a human being you're the top point zero one percent of the ailee to the world by definition if you're here those magnificent gifts I cannot conceive how people feel that God as a killjoy but he's actually the author of these things so to sum this up I see joy and happiness at different levels you know when you're about five happiness is your face covered with ice cream some people older than that I know but there we are but as you grow up your joys come and go there are things that you didn't enjoy at seven you weren't probably reading Vidkun style but when you read 77 you might be enjoying cooking style and so on joys grow and what I like to say about this is we can put this in a much bigger context I notice the text coming in that was most interesting what is the most significant thing it was friendship and family that is relationship now hang on to that because my firm belief in its one of the reasons I am a Christian is that God is not a theory but a person with whom we can have a relationship now that's true and there is a God who invented and sustains the universe then by definition relationship with heaven will mean the highest degree of happiness and fulfillment so we have all these other levels that we gain through our friends and our family and they're actually communicating a message to us they're telling us that our highest Joy's are find in terms of relationship and they're pointers upwards to the biggest relationship of all which is the relationship with God you're mentioning of God as a killjoy potentially reminds me of HL Mencken's definition of Puritanism sorry I'm an early American s I can't help it which was Puritanism is the fear that someone somewhere is having fun which is not the definition Puritanism take my early American history class if you want a different one and not the definition of God I hear you're saying as well but the question is is within religious structures and systems there does seem to be this dower kind of killjoy mentality right so and as happiness is a core value of our society and indeed brown students consistently nationwide come in as the happiest students Oh Jimmy absolutely you can tell oh you should have told me that before because you see the obvious thing now is if you want to be happy good abroad so there's no chance for me well that was the question how do we find happiness but I guess your answer is already found in your here Brown okay but so the provides to know how do we find happiness if and I hear you saying is through relationships and ultimately through a relationship with the divine yes is a pinnacle that are there other ways that even non-believers could pursue happiness that would be equally as satisfying is the pursuit of happiness limited to the Christian journey no not at all let's get this clear and this is for part of the gloominess comments I said right at the beginning and this is my tattoo Murphy like that every man and woman whether they believe in God or not is made in the image of God and therefore open to them is the potentiality for all these levels of fulfilment and flourishing so an atheist like Francis Crick gets a tremendous balance out of decoding the DNA double helix of course those levels are open but by definition relationship that God is not open to someone who denies God and all I'd say is this there's more to it than the naturalistic are atheistic worldview kids now that's very different from the take I see Christianity is a much bigger picture giving me a bigger universe I mean it's pretty obvious isn't it because naturalism tells me that death is the end so be nearly 70 I'm nearly at the end on average and that's all the range what a tiny universe materialism our naturalism gives gives you for us the Christian faith teaches me that that isn't the end that Jesus rose from the dead that there's hope that spins off into the future and that adds an enormous dimension to that sense of happiness because as people get older they see the end coming the earth even if it's a Downton Abbey as they see the end coming nearer a friend of mine did ideological research of this and old people and he said it was very interesting he discovered quite by accident that he made it about objective reserves that people that had no faith in God their event horizon collapsed very rapidly towards there they were living for the day they are the month but he said what astonished him was by and large people who believed in God it was opening up they were looking forward not to the process of dying but to the fact that death was not the end and there was an eternity to be with with God that he found a very interesting thing just as a as an established fact so we can all Faraj at some level or other the atheist as much as the Christian can enjoy a NASCAR race especially with a woman driver probably now you don't follow mouse car obviously nor do I very crowded track so let me just step back a minute in terms of this this idea of the meaning of life so you were saying that actually a Christian worldview expands the possibility for meaning not only this life but also beyond which it leads into another question then people asked which gets the heart of this question of meaning so demographers tell us that human life expectancy is at an all-time high on this planet at around you know 80 years you said 70 I know you're saying we can thank you around 80 years the United States at least and it's slightly higher in the UK I'm not sure why that's the case perhaps you can address that in your response but living longer doesn't actually solve the basic problems that have haunted are the basic questions that have haunted human beings from the beginning of time and actually maybe exacerbate some because you've longer to think about these questions a questions like why are we here what is our purpose I'm curious what's your responses to some of these questions you've addressed a little bit but if you could slash some of that out be helpful I wonder if my children put that question to me why am I here dead I have often wondered what would I say to them well I know because I've had the question and I have answered it you know what I told them because I wanted you to be and one of the biggest things for me is this if you ask that question bluntly as that why are you here I can't get behind this that God wanted me to be now somebody wanting you is a wonderful thing in life as CS lewis wrote a brilliant article called the inner ring and we all feel this we come across a ring of people and we're near excite and we feel unwanted and all of us have had this Bader's terrible experience kids haven't grown up tablet and so on and when you come to the role question of existence and I've asked myself this question so many times until I came across this magnificent statement it's in the book of Revelation which is at the end of the Bible and it's full of the most magnificent descriptions of beauty and sound and music and vibrant with life and at one point the whole universe is praising God as creator and it goes like this we praise you our God because of your will they wear and we're created put that into contemporary English and saying this but ultimately I exist because God the God of the universe wanted me to be and that gives me implement significance and I see all purpose and all the other levels flowing for that now that might not be the kind of answer you were thinking of but it seems to me you can't you can't get behind that you see why would God want me to be well if you look at me you've wonder wouldn't you I mean I wasn't going to say anything yes of course you weren't but it is truth and it's so it's so encouraging look at me I'm not perfect have all kinds of hang-ups and so on what a terrific relief it is to discover that there's someone in the universe that wanted you to exist and accept you as you are if you find a friend like that at Brown University you've found a friend for life someone who accept you as you are I believe that occurs at a higher level it's only the start of the Christian faith it's not the end but to my mind is one of the most significantly meaningful things that I've got I'd rather that than anything else all the degrees they've got and all that kind of stuff I'd much rather have that a friendship at the highest level of a friend that actually wants me to exist which operations a lot of question so you're saying you just agree with Calvin and the cabinet hubs comic strip at the beginning there that cabin says I am here so everyone can do what I want this this notion of contemporary selfishness is not the point right the purpose as you're saying is beyond yourself beyond your own even in selected experience in terms of God desiring you to be here for specific purpose but what is that purpose well that's the core that works well it relates to the survey as well four people were asked objective subjective themselves Adam of course logically Calvin Holmes if you as possible it's a fairly desperate one and it leads to an enormous lot of narcissism and self-destruction and everything else but again what is the purpose well I don't think that is one purpose the great catechisms of the church you know man's chief end is to glorify God but they do you say well what on earth do you mean by that well what I mean by that is that part of the purpose for me is doing abstract pure mathematics now you may find that the most boring unhappy kind of concept you ever came across your life it's just shooting different but it seems to me that we get some clues let me step back from this a little bit if we want to ask ourselves what is the purpose for Humanity then one of the books the great books of literature that has influenced me more than any other is the book of Genesis that with which the Bible starts because it fascinatingly gives us a very compressed but extremely profound language ideas about what human beings are and therefore what the purpose is and let me go through it very quickly if I may it starts with the notion that human beings are made of the the drug that is there so much chemistry and physics now a reductionist atheist will tell you that's all you are you're just chemistry and physics little elementary particles fussing around and that's it that's what Francis Crick believed oh no the Bible says more what it says is now that we are adamant were alive where we know that next level up a little phrase that you might miss unless you're interested like me and literature because literature and indeed history are immensely important disciplines God made the trees good to look upon and good for food how very interesting human beings are so much chemistry and physics they're alive they've got an aesthetic sense now you begin to see well we can flourish the satisfaction of art aesthetic said some of your artists some of your musicians I like to think of myself as a little bit of an artist in doing pure mathematics there's another little hint then we discover that God puts human beings into a garden and the idea of taming the world because the garden is different from a desert as you know although if you look at my garden in Oxford you wouldn't be this your but the idea of a garden is imposing a discipline on our environment letting plants grow that gives an older satisfaction and a sense of purpose but there's more we're told that rivers went out of that garden and if you followed them along you would discover there's gold there various prices stones what stop talking about curiosity ladies and gentlemen when you say when I do a railway line where does it go the river where does it go follow it along then you will discover things as if God at the very beginning of this magnificent Brook is beginning to tell us what it means to be human in the sense of finding fulfillment and meaning follow the rivers that's what you're doing in Brian some of you are following the physics River some of you are following the history River some literature some languages but you're following the river and exploring and then you're doing something else God started science you know that's why I'm passionate scientist God is Nancy science not only is he not empty intellectually it's not anti science because do you remember one of the first things God told humans to do I know it's a simple story and some people trivialize it but it said take it seriously for a minute God told human beings to name the animals that's taxonomy every intellectual discipline involves names of things you could come out with technical terms in history couldn't you that I wouldn't know about and I could certainly come across come out with some technical terms in maths that you would never clear by a suspect that's what I'm afraid of you yes well don't worry I'm not going to do it but we're all like that we're naming things there is an immense satisfaction to be got a naming thing that's what science that's what literature that's what the humanities are all about do you see what's happening here instead of the Bible closing down and turning the world into a glue it's opening up the possibilities so what are we got an aesthetic sentence we've got the discipline of a garden and causing things to grow and plant life under Assurant and all that that means we've got the aesthetic sense we've got science and taxonomy is there anything else yes there's work work in the garden that's part of what it means to be human and the problem is ladies and gentlemen it's not it's very ironic to me there at every one of these points there's a philosophy in the world that cuts life off at that point and doesn't go further life is just physics and chemistry that's materialism or life is just pursuit of aesthetics that's hedonism or life is just work that's the old Marxist view or life is just and here's the interesting thing the Bible tells you more about like that any of these philosophies which is one of the reasons why I believe it and you creep off of that further it's not good for man to be alone there's a relationship with someone yet someone who's other and it's building up to the fact that the highest definition of life is a relationship of God which is morally defined and there's another big wealth of meaning coming in because we human beings made in the image of God are moral beings we've got a knowledge of right and wrong we can say yes or no and of course that capacity is the capacity that is that the back of the fact that we're capable of loving woman so sorry to all over that but it seems to me to be important because we got such a wealth of pressure from the other side saying that anything with God in it cuts you down in fact it does the exact opposite which is interesting because don't you think that there's a bit of a presumption from a Christian perspective in saying that only through a relationship with God can someone find ultimate purpose and ultimate satisfaction or to say it slightly differently do we really need religion or specifically Christianity to answer the questions about ultimate meaning and purpose I mean can't people be fulfilled and and good at what they do without God in that equation I mean here at Brown the majority from the polls that I saw would come in either as atheists or eggnog about the existence of God and and yet I'm sure everyone in the room here feels like they live a meaningful fulfilled life at some level in terms of relationships without that framework so how do you how do you make that kind of reconciliation oh very easily because I I said it already actually fulfillment as I see it occurs at different levels now for my atheist friends and I have many of them they reject God so that level is not there by definition so I mean you know they can't blame me for claiming that there's a level higher the question of whether that level exists that which I regard as the highest level is not matter of presumption provided you've got evidence to back it up it could be a matter of presumption of the other way I could take exactly the same view of atheism and say what presumption to believe there isn't a god where there's evidence of God all over the place so we can we can balance those two arguments out to zero so it's better to say right what is your evidence so let me make it clear I am NOT denying that my atheist or agnostic friends cannot experience life's fulfillment in fact I affirm it for the very reason that from where I said even if they don't believe if they're made of the image of God with all these potentialities that most of us agree about I mean the things I went through there's there's not an atheist but wouldn't agree with practically all of them except the relationship of God so your point about presumption is well taken in the sense that as a scientist it's not enough for me to simply assert it and say there is the Bible says it so it must be true I don't take that naive you you've got to step way back from this and say right what is actually the evidence that it's true and I think that's what happens in this kind of a dialogue we're forming worldviews we here the evidence for one worldview and the evidence for another worldview and we have to make up our minds on that so I hope I've answered that because the idea of presumption and arrogance tends to commend when you're making a dogmatic statement for which you have the slightest evidence but it's perfectly possible to do that and what concerns me today in the Academy is many leading scientists making the absolute dogmatic statement but naturalism is the definitive worldview science doesn't tell enough Stephen Hawking's just come out with that Dawkins says that I want to challenge that I won't actually be fairer and say there is no default worldview there is a family of worldviews around the place and each of us has to decide which worldview that we aspire it's helpful to think about dogmatism being present on both sides but I want to push you more on this evidence okay I'm a historian you're a scientist we both build our careers on the use and and sort of the presentation of evidence in our various different ways I would not necessarily give a student passing grade if he or she brought forward the kinds of evidence I've heard sometimes in terms of the existence of God or or something else and nor would I so what when you say evidence what do you mean and how do you come up with an agreeable solution to defining acceptable evidence that would actually please all parties involved so the result from the Veritas survey here on campus showed that approximately 40% of students of most of you out there believe in God 40% Illyrio so property guy 20% of students don't believe in God and 40% said they weren't sure or that we can't know and as one respondent candidly put it what's up with the lack of religion among our generation there were other responses as well but that was took out to me so people have their own reasons for believing or disbelieving in God but essentially push evidence so much in your opinion is there any strong evidence for the existence of God and how would you make that case of people who might disagree with the standards for evidence that you present ready you've just made my point for me in an indirect way you've said people have the reasons for believing in God and people of the reasons participant leaving the court that's what I mean by evidence it's not proof proof only occurs in my field pure mathematics and even there there are questions but normally speaking we talk about pointers evidence indications beyond reasonable doubt in other words the kind of thing that historians and lawyers and so on work with and we work with all of us know about evidence you know why you trust your friends you know why you don't trust some people etc etc right it seems to be that this is a perfectly legitimate question to ask all of us have our reasons what are these reasons and you asked me what are my reasons well let me give very briefly there of two kinds there are what I call the object of reasons that are out there independent of me and then there are the subject of reasons to do with my own experience and my own inner life and at the objective side as a scientist I would want to say that the nature is not neutral that it gives evidence of the existence of God I was having I was in the gob debate at Oxford Union the other week you've probably heard of Oxford you to see one of the most famous debating societies in the world the University we have a gob debate every couple of years and it was absolutely packed they had to turn hundreds away and we were debating this whole whole question of God and evidence and there was a professor philosophy there who was an atheist and he wrote to me before the debate he said you seem to be a reasonable kind of person it was a rational argument can you come to a dinner with 50 of my students and we're going to grill you which is very nice it's nice to be grilled for dinner I went and we were talking and it was most interesting because in the middle of it I said to Peter this is their agent professor philosophy if you were to make my case what would you say oh he said instantly what I'd say is you've got a strong case in the fine-tuning of the universe he said we've got to face the fact as intellectuals that the universe out there revealed to us by physics and cosmology has got this remarkable property of being fine-tuned the constants of nature and so on the precision is staggering and he said if I were you I'd start there so I said fine let's start there so it seems to me ladies and gentlemen that there's a start but it's bigger than that there's a fascinating book that's just come out by one of America's leading philosophers who's an atheist his name is Thomas Nagel and he's written a book with the astonishingly provocative title just listen to it mind and cosmos why the neo-darwinian account is almost certainly false now if ever there was calculated to be a title to get people thinking it's that now the very interesting thing is this that one of my major reasons evidences for believing in God is the fact that science can be done to make me know and I related together you see what do I do science with my mind what is my mind well my atheist friends tell me my mind is the brain so what's the brain well it's the end product of a mindless unguided process oh really if you thought that your Apple computer was the end product of a mindless unguided process would you use it of course not and this has commonly been known as Darwin's doubt and philosophers like album hunting and now Nagel are raising this in a big way if naturalism is true that is it reduces everything to physics and chemistry and laws of nature wherever they came from then what it does logically is to undermine the rationality you need to believe in a particular view let alone to do science so it seems to me that naturalism in its extreme form doesn't shoot itself in the foot shoots itself of the brain matter to confirm that historically you may want to comment on this but it has fascinated me that modern science exploded in the 16th 17th centuries with Kepler Galileo Newton and so on all believers in God and that's something that philosophers and historians of science had taken very seriously and CS Lewis summarizing Alfred North Whitehead won't put it this way men became scientific because they expected low in nature and they expected law in nature because they believed in a lawgiver in other words ladies gentle one of the reasons why I'm not ashamed of being a Christian of the scientists is that arguably was some nuances it was Christianity gave me my subject in other words far from belief in God hindering science it was the motor the drove it now that's what I mean by a kind of objective evidence now of course I would want to come on the other side because I'm sitting here not simply as a theist who believes in an intelligence out there I'm a Christian theist so part of the evidence now it comes straight back to your discipline because we're not now talking about the the rational structure of the universe we're talking about the intelligibility of history and things that happened within history Agathe is one of the obvious things about Christianity it claims to be geared into history Jesus is a person who existed he made various flavors and so then I would want to come in on a whole lot of evidence of which is why I'm delighted to be sitting with a historian because when I was at Cambridge you know one of the things help me enormous Lee was listening to a distinguished historian analyze the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus from a purely historical perspective I find that intellectually absolutely mind-blowing so I would want to come in there and then when I come in there I would want to say okay these are massive claims Jesus claims to be God incarnate he claims to bring forgiveness he claims to bring unite does it work and they're like become very subjective you can see inside me and all I would have to say there is over my entire life increasingly I find it works so all of those add together as what I would call cumulative evidence for the truth of the Christian faith and I could write there and other people put out their reasons and we decide the subjective turn is intriguing and we don't have time to go into us I'm just going to mention it and then run away but if you if that is one of the criteria then people would respond I'm sure judging from the responses from the survey that that is present in every world religious tradition that people would say that internally there's an effectiveness to ritual and aleshia practice so and I just again put it there and then move on that's why you because that is precisely why you need the objective side right I could have all kinds of feelings I can be sitting on the beaches or a around here somewhere probably I sit it on a page and the sun's shining and I'm feeling wonderful Europe on a cliff and you see that the sea surrounds me other thanks on the end my subjective feeling have no relationship to the real the danger my men there's an objective reality that is not remotely reflected by my subjective feelings so that's why it's both and you probably notice that an eagle needs two wings to fly so it's exactly that the objective confirms the subject and vice versa and so it's the two things running in parallel once you only have the one it's sterile intellectualism and the other it can be absolute subjectivism that has got no reference to any objective reality so another question this is shifting gears quite a bit but I want to make sure we get to this because I think it's a really critical one and in terms of thinking about the objections to religion and to Christianity on a global scale one thing that comes up time and time again is the question of suffering and the presence of evil and so I want to make sure we have time to address this so if you look around the world if you watch the news at all you know there's a lot of pain heartache and suffering and most of us here in this room likely really don't know what it means to truly suffer I'm not talking about having to suffer in Keaney Hall as a first-year brown student or to make the agonizing choice between an iPad and a Kindle Fire but something like for example the fact that every five seconds a child dies somewhere in the world from malnutrition or how every day thousands of young girls are forced into sex slavery and human trafficking or how many of the people are displaced in war-torn countries all around the world and sometimes Christians are a part of creation of historically intent in the president you mentioned from Northern Ireland's earlier and this is a place where where Christians have been part of this religious strife and violence and political strife environments and so the question is if there is a god how can we account for this kind of human suffering on this scale throughout human history how and why would a good God permit this kind of suffering well this is the hardest question an illustration by far the hardest I face and there are two questions there really one relates to Northern Ireland alas and the other is the general problem let me just make a comment about the Northern Ireland thing because I was very fortunate my parents were Christian without being sectarian and they suffered for four of my how this business was bombed my brother lady lost his life and so on because my father insisted on employing equally Protestants and Catholics very difficult thing to do and so I didn't grow up with all this sectarian so but I understand the point I mean I've seen sectarian violence firsthand and so very briefly my reaction to it is I'm ashamed of it utterly ashamed as a Christian and I want to tell you why I'm ashamed of it that the name of Jesus has ever been associated with an ak-47 or a bomb because he told his disciples not to use violence to promote his kingdom and the utter irony of this story is historically that Jesus was put on trial accused of stirring up political in other words the very accusation that is made in the question and by people like Christopher Hitchens and i standed the thing perfectly and understand what's behind it it's exactly what christ was accused of and not going into the history of detail he was declared to be innocent of it and the important thing to realize is that he was declared to be innocent Pilate could see he was no threat Jesus said yes I'm a king but my kingdom is not of this world otherwise my servants would have been fighting and then he went on to say to this end was I born unto this end I came into the world that I might bear witness to the truth and the famous statement of Pilate of Alberta said what is truth perhaps not cynically but he certainly knew that Jesus was no threat to him she ladies and gentlemen you don't use violence because the message of Christ has to do with forgiveness peace with God you cannot impose that kind of truth in fact he can't impose any kind of truth by violence and if I may just put a little side comment in do you remember when the Christian disciples two of them took swords to defend Jesus and they slashed about it and Peter wasn't very good with a sword she tried to hack a chaps head off and cut his ear off remember well Jesus put the ear back on and one of the things I've observed is this that wherever in the world people take weapons to defend Christianity they'll cut the years or people of poison one and we've got a big job I feel of a big job to put the years back home but let me come to your question a hard question you know every time I get asked this question and it comes up all the time these days I see a door and over are the words Arbeit macht frei in german our work will set you free so they are in gate of oceans I've been there many during the Cold War and stood in a raising hold of the snow thinking of the thousands of people that died there I've wept every time I've been in there and you may very rightly the point that you know we suffer in Brian in the first year examination or decided between the Kindle Fire or an iPad suffering has two aspects hasn't it cancer looks very different to an oncologist than it looks to the young mother who's just been told you six months to live so there's the theoretical side now in an audience like this probably most of us as we think of this question this afternoon are thinking of it theoretically but I bet it's not all that some of you are really hurting inside and you've got this as a big existential problem if there is a God how can it possibly be that my mom has just been told she's got leukemia or that those kids die in Africa malnutrition that could have been avoided if we hadn't been so greedy and I want to be very sensitive to that because many of my friends don't believe in God I understand them so one reason I really do understand believe you me so the question is how do I approach it I've no simplistic answers but I believe there's a way that opens the door into a possibility of an answer that can be tailored to you and to me you see ladies and gentlemen many people tell me when they come across extreme suffering but they just give up on God with blows efuses too extreme forget it God doesn't exist many of my colleagues and officers will say John okay there might be some intelligence but don't talk to me about a personal god don't in some because they can't be a personal God just look at what I'm going through at all or and my heart goes out to so what do I said well the first thing is this on the intellectual side if you say okay there is no god that's it that's enough I can't take any of this anymore there is no God you have an essential remove the problem at the intellectual level you come to the conclusion that this world is just a brute fact the sufferings of Breed fact and you might even end up with Richard Dawkins who says this universe is just exactly what you'd expect to find it to be if at the bottom of there's no good no evil no justice DNA just is and we dance to its music that's bleak my point of outro book was bleak and he said to be yes it is late but that doesn't mean it's false I said no but it doesn't mean it's true either so he got a face up please notice by the way the Dawkins extreme materialist view removes the categories of good and evil so logically he cannot talk about a problem of evil where does he get the concept of evil from if there's no category of good and evil now of course he is a moral being whether he believes in God or not but that's what he's got the categories for so he has every right to apply them I do notice that what atheism does not do is sold the suffering it's thin there and it can make a 10,000 times worse because what atheism does and it may be true at the book at this point in the argument at least people were utterly without hope and what is more it leaves the vast majority of people who have ever lived with a justice we are so privileged here today the units of the children that will die during the course of our session the vast majority of people who have ever lived didn't get justice in this life that there's no other life if death is the end they will never get justice so what atheism dollars is to almost negate the whole concept and say that our conscience that screams art for justice is an illusion we live in a world where we get hungry there is food we live in a world where we get first aid there is drink we live in a world where we cry out for justice but there isn't any is that really true so I come back in the circle hard as it all is I now come back to bring God into it now they didn't gentlemen the next little step is this people say to me but look here we say this awful behavior and shooters just recently in this country couldn't God have made the world differently if he's a good garden an old powerful God why I mean could he not unity if I were God I would've and those arguments go on for centuries have you noticed nobody's ever solved them I got so so I asked a different question since I can't so her I say but of course God could have made a world in which there was no evil he could have made us all robots bourdieu's would that be because robots count enough I wouldn't like to be married to a robotic wife would you rather who was programmed to kiss you when you press the iPad on her from that said kiss meaningless God could have done it he didn't do the fact is well I brought three children into the world I took a rest at night I can remember so well holding the little girl and thinking that child could grow up to reject me why take the risk well you know why because there are things like love and so on and so forth so granted that there's a risk I come neither to my question I'll stop at this point we look around and we see a mixed picture I'm often reminded of Coventry Cathedral beautiful kid Cathedral linger through the poem during war if you go to it now you see traces of beauty and you see traces of devastation that's exactly what you see is you look around your world today traces of beauty and human beings traces of utter devastation that's the way it is so now comes my question and it's simply this granted the bugs away are there any groans anywhere of believing that there is a God whose love and attitudes are big enough for me to trust him with those ragged edges that's a big question isn't and here's my answer too as I've said to many people around the world I said you know at the heart of what I believe is a Christian is that Christ was not never merely a human being he was God incarnate and we all know he was crucified so try and come with it you may believe it you may not believe it but think of what is being played and what is being claimed is that was God on the cross what's God doing one thing it tells me is this but it means that God has not remained distant from the problem of suffering but has himself become part a few years ago if you don't mind me being personal I nearly died I was within seconds of death and I was rescued by brilliant surgeons who threw me onto an operating table and managed to sort liaising and people say well do you thank God for that yes I do but about say the area my niece of 22 just married had an earthquake in her brain the colossal tumor gone it's all right for me saying thank God that I got better than medical intervention but what do I say to my sister but my this allows she died she didn't lose her faith in God it was her faith in God that enabled her to cope with that why because the death of Christ on the cross wasn't the end ladies and gentlemen I would have nothing to say it was there but now comes the really big thing because Christ rose from the dead I believe death is not the end and therefore if you think of those innocent children that will have died by the time we finish this lecture I firmly believe and it may be risky saying it ladies gentlemen but why not it's what I believe if you could see what God does with people like that we'd have no more questions I believe that God is ultimately a God of compensation and one of the central claims of Christianity is our moral senses not an illusion there will be a final judgment at which justice will be done the terrorists will not get away with it the man that destroyed your daughter by raping her or abusing her will not ultimately get away with me because this is a moral universe and it's that almost above all that is for me one of the most powerful evidences that the Christian faith makes sense I don't regard that as a simplistic answer because we're all there for those those are all edges but at least I have seen in my experience I haven't suffered like some of my friends protecting my Jewish friends I haven't suffered anything like that but I have seen how that worldview coming in does something that atheism by definition cannot do it brings hope but hope that is based on something substantive back to the evidences for Kristal well thank you we're going to incur the wrath and justice of the people who are in charge of this building if we go on too long here so I want to not ask the remaining questions and instead open it up officially into the Q&A which I know that Professor Lennox likes to orchestrate himself so I will turn it over to you well sorry if I went on too long but by that but you will ask big question sir this is the boy what we're going to do ladies and gentlemen just for a few minutes one of the things I discover at these sessions is that everybody is interested in everybody else's question so I'm going to give you a chance to hear the other people's questions so what we're going to do is collect four or five questions before I say anything about any of them so that the whole room is aware of the spectrum of questions that are going through your mind so it's a time we have much time as has been said get up go to the microphone I'll acknowledge you and and state one question not one question with 27 sensations one question briefly I'll write a dime and what I feel we've got enough we'll come to that so it's over to you so just come down to the microphone thank you very much number one off we go hi I enjoyed the talk very much thanks for being here in just about every religion that we see throughout the world that's arisen there is a practice that involves entering into what many people call the ecstatic experience it's meditation and yoga in the east and and then during the trance-like states and other cultures and other religions but it's there in all religions and essentially it's their means by which they communicate with God or what they're equivalent to God and even in early Judaism Christianity we see this we see the prophets entering and visionary States to receive information and we see with the CEO and his vision of the charity receive with John on the Isle of Patmos and some have even suggested that the Lord's Prayer is a mantra and of sorts anyway my question is what is the place of the ecstatic experience in today's Christianity is that something that's missing is that something that we've lost and how do we reconnect with it thank you okay okay yep pythons again things are so much for coming and talking to us here my question is that are you imagining at the end of your talk about this idea of justice and this idea that there will be that there is that death is not the end that there is something that comes after that in addition that whatever comes after that will somehow make up or justify some of the things that have happened some of the suffering that has been occurred in this world and so my question is is there an implication in that statement that that these the children that are going to die from malnutrition for example but they don't necessarily have to have known God or Jesus in order for there to be something good waiting for them afterwards thank you okay next all right thank you very much for very interesting set of answers to these questions my question it relates to your this goes back to what you were speaking about your your personal background about how you grew up in a non-sectarian background and I want I simply wanted to ask what place does organized institutional religion have within the framework of this generative positive general positive faith that you were you and happy to advocate out what place close the tab in my life or what place is a path with a stop in the place of a faith in general in God and how to best it's hot and in the experience of God does it have a positive or a negative place therein okay for so I'm gonna I feel like this is probably a question you get a lot but what you've described your view of God is kind of this ultimate friend and a line someone who gives your life meaning and wants you and thinks that you specifically on this beauty not you know necessarily yeah you know to yourself and that there is a justice and there's life pasta when you know but how that kind of sounds to me like a coping mechanism and I feel like how do you see that is anything more than that a coping mechanism yeah just to deserve a sense sort of a Freudian coping mechanism avail yeah like wish fulfillment projection that sort of stuff yeah it's open okay I've got it five high so you said that you wish to pursue truth but then you also said that a reason to believe in God is the prospect of the afterlife because it provides hope so I just want to know is hope relevant to truth at all and shouldn't the basis for believing just be the surcharge I can't hear what you're saying can you come closer yeah yeah okay I just wanted to know do you think that hope is relevant to truth or should the basis for us believing just be the search for truth okay I'll take one more one more where's closely done right now oh right okay no more this I guess it had not these let's stop it right there let's stop right there okay then these are going to be very brief answers indeed and three minutes yes at a GQ date a gentleman I can only suggest the beginnings of answers here the first question was the place of ecstatic experiences and so on whatever that should mean and it's quite clear through history that many people claim and that did you get it in the Bible itself claim very special experiences of nearness to God and obviously that's an extremely positive thing and the more we pray and get involved with God clearly the more we will get to know them just as it is with our friends there is another side to it because of course it is well known and psychology shows in anyway but it's very possible for us to induce experiences and the Bible talks about those as well and Paul for instant warns because there were many extremely pagan religions like the Bakke and the world that got themselves worked up into a colossal frenzy of produced visions and Paul made a very big distinction between visions and experiences that actually proceeded from God that is God is out there and visions and experiences that we dream up within our own heads and Paul points out the danger is that if we haven't a strong theological base and are holding on to what he calls the head that is God all kinds of things can flow up into our head some of them which can be very dangerous indeed no that's something that I cannot explore here the take-home message of course is none of us who's a believer in God knows God as well as he or she could do or should do and we ought to strive to improve that now the question of the place of organized institutional religion well if I am a Christian if I believe in God God believes it's good for me to mix with other people because if I already mixed with myself I'll come away thinking what a wonderful good boy am I and I need other people to knock the rough corners of me secondly God has designed that there's this wonderfully interesting thing and I discovered as I go around the world I go to a city where I've never met anybody I made a fellow Christian and instantly I sense I'll at home my mathematical colleagues have often remarked on it I remember going to one obscure place and they said to me we don't understand you at all and I said what's the problem when they said you coming here you've got all these friends we've never met anybody before who's come out of the blue and as all these friends and I was able to explain to them this is what Christianity does people share a common life now here's a wonderful thing we've all got different gifts and abilities and I need what you can contribute to me so there is a place for the institutions of organized church but Church in the Bible is not a building it's ecclesia it's a congregation it's a group of people and one of the problems with the institution's is the oppression that gives that God's in a box and you could visit God every week or if you're very keen twice a week but God's in the box and that is a totally false idea the relationship the personal relationship of God is primary its expression within the institution is secondary if we make the institutional thing primary we need to beware of the impression we are given up deeds a lot of qualified now is my attitude a coping mechanism yes and no a thing is not false if it enables you to cope neither is it true of it enables you to color and I think one of the best analyses of this has been done by Manfred loops in his book eine qaeda he shifted this Crescent a brief history of the great one which is still only in Germany Germany's leading psychiatrists and he makes this point if there is no God then Freud can explain brilliantly by belief in God and the resurrection and so on is a coping mechanism if there is no god but if there is a God it says Freud will give you an equally brilliant Express explanation why eight years of as a coping a coping mechanism to enable you to cope with the fact that you never want to be gone and he said on the substantive issue whether there's a God or not neither Freud Jung Frankel or anybody else can help you from elsewhere and so it's very important to ask your question that's the question I started off with remember in Ireland was it simply Irish genetics coping mechanisms but don't kid yourself if a thing is true it'll probably help you to cope but it's not true because it helps you to cope you've got of stronger reasons than that for believing in its in its in its truth now at justice is there an implication of what I said that children and infants don't have to know God or Jesus that's another of these big questioners I just I go to some very dogmatic here but it's very clear from Scripture that God will never judge a person for not knowing something they come on Abram didn't know Jesus than me he trusted God oh that was accounted to him for righteousness in other words he responded to the level of revelation of God that he had God would be utterly fair and God is more interested if you don't mind me putting it crudely he loves those children much more than I do but we can be utterly sure that the judge of all the earth will do right they will be saved because of Jesus but they may never have known off him in order to theologically teach that I'd have to take you on a lengthy excursus which I finally is hope relevant to truth well it is of the hope is true and it comes back to the other question Christianity gives me enormous hope that that isn't enough I want to know if that hope is based on evidence if it's true and I just come round in a circle the fact that it gives hope is not evidence that it's false but it doesn't prove that it's true we've got to decide whether it's true on other islands but if it is true then it's not surprising since one of its central words itself and perhaps that's a good place to stop because I believe that you have a motto we'll issue diversity what is the bottle sorry well we should all say it loudly and together perhaps but there is there on earth do you know what that means in godly home well it is clear to be ladies and gentlemen that if that is true and brown there is great hope for you please for more information about the veritas forum including additional recordings and a calendar of upcoming events please visit our website at Veritas org

Channel: The Veritas Forum

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Id: FdEuuQY8JEQ

Length: 71min 20sec (4280 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 01 2013