[peaceful music]
>> Narrator: Light.
Little else has changed our world so much,
while also changing so much itself.
We're drawn to it, guided by it,
warmed by it, comforted by it.
Light is hope to a dark world.
But the world is still a dark place,
searching for the true light of the world.
Christ calls us to be that light,
a light to drive out the darkness,
a light to radiate His truth and love,
a light of hope in a broken world.
For 106 years, Biola has been
that light in Los Angeles.
And from this place, our graduates go out
to radiate that light to
every corner of the world,
to every industry and
workplace, to every relationship
and family, to everywhere
He's called them.
Biola University, thinking biblically
and spreading the light
of Christ since 1908.
[clapping and cheering]
>> Well, good evening, everyone.
Welcome to the beautiful
campus of Biola University.
Just another night in La Mirada, eh?
Glad you're here.
Thanks for carving out your Friday night
and coming and joining
us, very glad you're here.
And those of you who are
watching the live stream
around the world, we're
especially glad you're here.
You're here with us, but
I'm sorry you can't be
in the room where we can
feel the electricity,
and honestly, smell the gym socks.
[laughing]
I think the men's team was
practicing in here earlier,
you can smell it.
So you're missing out on that aspect,
but you're gonna catch everything else.
We're glad you tuned in.
For how many of you is this
your first time at Biola?
Raise your hand.
[cheering and clapping]
Hey, very nice.
Special welcome to you.
Welcome to campus.
For those of you who are on the internet,
please raise your hand as well.
[cheering]
Higher, higher, and hold it.
Hold it.
And we're done.
We took control of your
webcam for a few minutes
and scanned your room, so we did a count.
Don't worry, we didn't look.
My name is Craig Hazen.
If we haven't met before, I'm the Director
of the Christian
Apologetics Graduate Program
here at Biola.
Some of you might not
know what apologetics is.
Here's a quick and dirty definition.
It's simply offering reasons for faith,
offering reasons for faith.
We're gonna be doing
a lot of that tonight,
but this really calls upon
a great biblical tradition
which is highlighted in 1 Peter 3:15,
where the apostle Peter commands
us to be prepared always
to give an answer, a reason
for the hope that we have,
yet to do so with humility and respect.
I think that'll be on display
in a pretty big way tonight.
We've got some wonderful
Christian thinkers
who are gonna be wrestling
with some of the craziest
and biggest issues you could imagine,
and of course all this is
gonna be led by Hugh Hewitt
Who's not gonna waste much time.
He'll jump in and make it fly by.
So if you have seatbelts,
you're gonna wanna use them.
Oh, by the way, how many
of you saw Hugh Hewitt
On Meet the Press this last Sunday?
[cheering and clapping]
I did.
Didn't he look smashing?
[laughing]
I thought those dark, rimmed eyeglasses
and the ever-whitening hair,
now he said some pretty good things too,
but I just thought he looked dynamite
under those lights at NBC News.
It was wonderful, a little Cary Grant-ish.
So we're glad to have
you here, in every way.
You'll see some apologetics
on display tonight.
If this captures your imagination,
I want to invite you to
explore a little more.
We have a master of arts degree program
in Christian apologetics.
It's one of the few programs
of its kind in the world.
It's a top-ranked program
with a stimulating curriculum
and some of the finest faculty around,
and we have a distance-learning program.
It's tough enough to get here
from southern California,
but if you're in the snow
drifts of Boston right now,
we have a program that
you can actually do.
It's a first-ranked
distance learning program,
so check that out.
You can go to our website,
biola.edu and have a look
at our master of arts program
in Christian apologetics.
We have wonderful grads around the world
doing wonderful things
for the Kingdom of God.
And you can have a bachelors
degree in any field
to start that program,
whether you did accounting
or organic chemistry, it
really doesn't matter.
We'll give you everything
you need in terms
of biblical studies,
philosophy, and theology
to make a nuisance of yourself for Jesus
in all the right ways, all right?
[laughing]
All right.
There's a couple of people
I wanna introduce tonight
because they were instrumental
in putting all this together
and brainstorming this in the first place.
The first one is Dr. John Bloom.
He's sitting right here in front.
Dr. Bloom, would you mind standing?
[clapping]
Oh yeah.
A Biola favorite.
It's really Dr. Dr. John Bloom.
He's one of those guys
who has more degrees
than a thermometer.
[laughing]
Not only does he have a PhD
in physics from Cornell,
but he's got a degree in
Ancient Near Eastern Studies
as well, a strange combination.
But he brings them
together in wonderful ways
in a program that he developed.
It's a master of arts degree
in science and religion.
It's a first cousin to our master of arts
in Christian apologetics.
We work together constantly,
but it is a wonderful program.
If you love to offer reasons for faith
and you love the sciences,
you should check out the master of arts
in science and religion run by Dr. Bloom.
Plus, check out his new book.
It's coming out right
away, if not already.
You can probably find it on
Amazon or on the internet.
His new book called, The Natural Sciences:
A Student's Guide.
It is a wonderful little
book that'll really speak
to the kinds of issues
we're gonna be talking
about tonight.
The second faculty member
I'd like to introduce
is Dr. Paul Spears, sitting
in the front row here.
[cheering and clapping]
All right.
Yeah, they all know Dr. Spears.
He's the Director of the
Torrey Honors Institute,
this gem of a program we
have right here at Biola,
which attracts the best and the
brightest Christian students
from around the country, if
not from around the world,
and not only lets them major
in key things like biochemistry
or sociology or film
studies, but then gives them,
for their general
education, a wonderful read
through the great books
of western civilization.
It might be one of the
finest educational programs
I've ever bumped into, and Dr.
Spears is the chief of that.
We're just so grateful
for all his work on that.
He's also the author of
a wonderful book called,
Education for Human Flourishing,
which is one of the best
books on the philosophy of
education I've ever bumped into.
Something else you might
want to think about,
we are located in La
Mirada, but we've decided
to take Biola on the road.
We've been scouting
around the country holding
apologetics conferences in
churches and on campuses
just about everywhere,
and we have a lot of
them planned upcoming.
If you wanna check
biola.edu and go to OTR,
which stands for on the road,
you can see the kinds of
places we're going to.
Some of you might be watching
in one of these cities
and wanna attend one of
our events in Tucson,
Vancouver, British Columbia,
New York City, Pensacola,
Dallas, Shreveport,
Columbia, Missouri, Atlanta,
Singapore, Oslo, London, and more.
Check these out.
We're coming to your neighborhood.
And if we're not coming
to your neighborhood,
contact us and we'll
work with you to develop
a wonderful apologetics
conference right in your region.
We'd love to do that.
All right, three more quick announcements,
then I'm outta here.
Number one, restrooms.
You might need those
before the night's out.
Let me tell you where they are.
Go out the back door.
The way you came in, go back
out that way, up the stairs,
turn left, and you will
walk past the bookstore
and you'll find bathrooms there
or in the student union building,
or keep walking past the stairs
and you will find the cafeteria.
Restrooms galore outside the building.
Second, tweeting.
We'd love to hear your
comments and your questions,
either from the floor here
or from around the world.
Just tweet those in using
the hashtag #GODSCIENCE,
one word, #GODSCIENCE,
and we'll get those.
In fact, they're probably
coming to Hugh Hewitt
at this very moment.
And number three, we want
you to keep on learning
after this event, so
visit the resource tables
you'll see outside the foyer of the gym.
Buy a book by your
favorite speaker or author
and carry it into the
line and you will find
a line forming where you can
get your book signed tonight.
We have some wonderful offerings.
I'll highlight those at
the end of the program.
But be aware, you can buy a
book, have it signed tonight,
and be learning all weekend.
There's some other thing
going on on Sunday,
but pay no attention to that.
Read the book you buy tonight.
I think that'll be much more entertaining.
All right.
It's my great pleasure to
introduce the president
of Biola, the eighth president of Biola,
Dr. Barry H. Corey, to say a few words.
[cheering and clapping]
>> Thank you, Dr. Hazen.
First things first, I'm
Instagramming right here.
Got it.
Beautiful.
Welcome.
I join Dr. Craig Hazen
in saying how delighted
that I am, we are, this Biola
community of 6,348 students
who are learning in mind and character
to make a difference in this
world for the cause of Christ,
and we're so honored that you,
our guests, have joined us.
If you students are here,
let me hear from you
so I know where you are.
[cheering and clapping]
There we go.
Thank you.
All right.
I also join Dr. Hazen in
welcoming those of you
who are tuning in online.
I believe there are over
4,000 of you registered online
for this live streaming
broadcast from Kenya
to El Salvador, so welcome
to all of you as well.
We host this event because
we believe at Biola,
the core of who we are,
that Christians must engage
intellectually and winsomely
in the conversations
around the existence
of God, around science,
the big questions, questions
on the nature of consciousness,
the origins, the matter of
life and source of morality.
We believe it's important to
be conversant in the questions
that are being asked in the wider world,
and to do so in a way that's
anchored in the truth of God.
As a Christian, Christ-centered
liberal arts university,
we believe that God matters
for all areas of our life,
whether we're looking under
the microscope at cells
or through a movie camera
in a film that we're making,
whatever it might be, in
every major, every vocation,
every pursuit we undertake,
we believe God is the author
of all truth, all purpose,
all beauty, all goodness,
all reconciliation.
And as part of our commitment
to growing as an academic,
robust university, we're
also putting an accelerated
emphasis, even, on the sciences.
You'll sense some of that this evening.
And over the coming years,
you're gonna see Biola
raising the bar of excellence
in preparing students
for the science profession,
students who are extraordinarily
capable and deeply grounded in God's truth
and in moral reasoning,
and who will become leaders
in science and technology.
I believe
that we have a holy obligation,
grounded ethically and theologically
to have exemplary science
programs and faculty.
So more details are gonna
be announced about that
in the coming months, and
we also are looking forward
to the construction of a
93,000-square-foot center
for science, technology,
and health, as well
as an undergraduate honors
program in the sciences.
When it comes to conversations like these,
the increasingly shrill
sounds in the public square
from both sides are not
strengthening us, necessarily,
but often weakening us.
So bull horns and fish shaking
and mustering the armies
and war-waging rhetoric
aren't always the answer.
But as Craig Hazen reminded
us, the apostle Peter says,
"We need to lead with our firm center,"
and that is giving a reason
for the hope we believe,
and with our soft edges,
and that is doing so
with gentleness and respect.
We have a very distinguished panel tonight
to help us think critically
and compassionately
about that conversation.
I'm honored that my friends
Hugh Hewitt and John Lennox
and J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig,
I know it sounds like I'm name-dropping.
[laughing]
Yeah, Colin Powell once told
me never to be a name-dropper.
[laughing]
[clapping]
Dr. John Lennox is an
esteemed Oxford mathematician,
philosopher of science
and Christian apologist
who we are thrilled to
have as a visiting scholar
with us during this inner
term at Biola University.
With as many areas of expertise and knack
for compelling communication
to both scholarly
and popular audiences, Dr.
Lennox has been compared
to C.S. Lewis, who was
actually his professor
at Cambridge back in the early
1960's, believe it or not.
How many of us can say that?
Dr. Lennox, thank you for
your generosity in partnering
with Biola and blessing
our students with your deep
and wide-ranging wisdom.
Joining Dr. Lennox tonight
we have two Biola professors,
an influential, globally-impacting
Christian philosophers
whose careers have provided
models for exactly the sort
of winsome, engaged Christian
dialogue and thinking
that we need more of.
That would be Doctors William
Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland.
We are so grateful to have both of them
here tonight as well.
[cheering and clapping]
And to moderate our discussion tonight,
we have the inimitable
Hugh Hewitt, national radio
talk show host and professor
of law at Chapman University,
Harvard graduate, another
great model for winsome
cultural engagement and Christian thought.
So without further ado,
please join me in welcoming
our esteemed panelists for
this conversation tonight.
[cheering and clapping]
>> Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
It is so great to be back at
Biola, to be welcomed back
by President Corey and Craig Hazen.
I was here six years ago
moderating with my back turned
to you in debate, a memorable debate.
It's on YouTube, between
Dr. William Lane Craig
and the late Christopher Hitchens.
Hitch was a friend of mine.
I interviewed him more than 70 times,
but that was one of the
most memorable evenings
that I had ever spent with
him or had seen him debate.
He began it by saying, "Here
we are in the den of lambs."
I said, tonight, at a
gathering of supporters
of the university, that,
"Lambs sometimes have teeth and can bite."
And that was, in fact, what
happened six years ago.
Tonight's a little bit different.
I'm going to jump right
in 'cause we will not
have enough time with these
three wonderful individuals,
but one preparatory note.
I'm here tonight and doing this
event because J.P. Moreland
took one of those Biola
events to Mariners Church
25 years ago, and I
went and listened to it.
I'm a Christian, but I hadn't
been taught how to do this,
and that's what Biola
teaches you how to do.
The apologetics program here
is simply extraordinary.
If you're watching anywhere in the world,
take advantage of the resources online.
If you can get to this
wonderful campus, do so.
#GODSCIENCE if you're
part of the participants,
I'll be checking it.
I'm gonna start with a news
story that if you three
gentlemen had listened to the radio show
with Craig Hazen two nights ago,
you would know it was coming.
This is from The Guardian,
so I'm going to begin with you, Doctor.
The headline says, "Skull
discovery suggests location
"where humans first had
sex with neanderthals.
"Skull found in northern
Israeli cave in western Galilee
"thought to be female and
55,000 years old connects
"interbreeding and move
from Africa to Europe,"
Ian Sample, the Science Editor, says.
"An ancient skull found
in the cave has cast light
"on the migration of
modern humans out of Africa
"and the dawn of humanity's
colonization of the world."
Now, I am proving, of
course, Biola is not afraid
of the Guardian or of
science or of discovery,
but I am curious, Dr.
Lennox, what is your reaction
to not only the discovery,
but the way this presented
and what it says to your worldview?
>> Well, that's the
first I've heard of it.
[laughing]
And I'm sufficiently skeptical
to say they'll be saying
something different next week.
The whole question
of the antiquity of human beings
and the nature of human
beings is a question that,
for my mind, raises an in principle issue
that needs to be settled
first, because we don't settle
humanity from bone shapes,
all this kind of thing.
I am a bit of a radical skeptic here,
possibly because I'm a mathematician.
But it seems to me that
physicists are very content
to believe in a singularity at
the beginning of space-time.
That is something supernatural.
Christians like me
believe in a singularity
of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It is not explicable in
purely naturalistic terms.
I see no reason not to believe
that there are several other
singularities of this kind,
one of them at the origin of life
and the other at the origin of human life.
Now, in order to detail that,
we'd have to spend the whole evening
on that particular topic.
But I watch this.
I'm not an expert paleontologist at all,
and I'm interested in what they say,
but it seems to me that
the basic presupposition
that underlines so much is naturalism,
that there's a complete
uniformity of explanation
from the simple to the complex.
I do not think that is the case.
>> William Lane Craig,
your reaction to the story
of the discovery and the
worldview entailed in it.
>> I'm not an anthropologist or biologist.
Let me address it as a theologian.
I don't have any difficulty in thinking
that human beings interbred
with neanderthals.
Why not, as long as they were
biologically able to do so?
I remember talking to a Christian
geneticist some time ago
who said to me,
"You carry neanderthal
DNA in your own body."
So what's the problem
theologically with saying
that this may have happened?
Even if this is a case
of bestiality occurring,
we know that that occurs
among human beings.
So theologically, I guess
I don't see the problem.
My difficulty with the
story would be, as you say,
the way it was presented.
This is the first time
that human beings had sex
with neanderthals, it
sounds like a soap opera.
[laughing]
Obviously they're going
here for the headline value,
the sensationalism of it, and so forth.
It seems to me that that's typical
of the way the press handles science.
>> J.P., an atheist would sit
down and throw this at you
and say, "See!"
To which you would respond?
>> First of all, I'd respond
that these kinds of questions
are not the proper order
if you're gonna address
the question of is there a
God or is Christianity true?
These are questions that
are within the system,
and what you have to do is
really address the fundamental
questions about the system itself.
Any system is gonna have some difficulties
around the borders of that system.
That's true for any major paradigm
in any discipline in the university.
So I would take the question
back to the existence of God
and the facts about Jesus' life.
But now to go back to the question, again,
I'll admit that I'm not
a paleontologist, but
I think a lot of these claims are based
on a very slim amount
of data and information.
I don't think the data set is as large
as a lot of people think it,
if people knew how small it was they'd be,
I think, surprised.
I think the major question for us is,
preserving a real Adam and Eve.
I think that that can be
done, and it has been argued.
John Bloom has made a tremendous
case for that genetically.
So I'm inclined to agree with Bill,
but I would wanna say
that if someone was going
to make this a matter of this
proving that there wasn't
an Adam and Eve, I'd like to
see how that follows from this,
because I don't think that follows.
>> Three apologists,
three people unthreatened
by cultural discoveries or
antiquities or anthropology.
>> I am pondering Buddhism right now.
>> All right, but, William
Lane Craig, second question.
Among the Academy Award-nominated films
is one on the life of Stephen Hawking.
A lot of people think they
know what Hawking believes.
A lot of people believe
that Hawking has done away
with the need for Biola's
apologetics program
and has made science and
faith irreconcilable.
What is it that Hawking
believes, and what do you think
people ought to believe
what it is that he believes?
>> The most interesting
line in that film is
when his wife-to-be, Jane,
asks him, "What is cosmology?"
He told her he's a cosmologist.
He says,
"Cosmology is a religion
for intelligent atheists."
That's a terribly interesting definition.
Modern cosmology for the
atheistic scientist does provide
a kind of metaphysical alternative to God.
The multiverse becomes
a kind of God surrogate
that explains the
fine-tuning of the cosmos.
It explains the origin of the universe.
It really does fill a sort of religious
or metaphysical function
for some of these thinkers.
In the case of Hawking,
he has made statements
that suggest that he's either an agnostic,
that he doesn't believe God
exists, or even more strongly,
that he is an actual atheist,
that he thinks God does not exist.
But so far as I know, he's
not provided any argument
to support his atheism.
He simply said that he doesn't
see any need for a creator
of the universe, but that
obviously isn't a proof
that there is no such being.
>> Hugh: Dr. Lennox, you
wanna comment on this?
>> I do, yes.
[laughing]
Because Stephen Hawking was
just ahead of me at Cambridge.
I can remember him quite well,
though I didn't know him.
I was rather amused that when
The Times interviewed him
and asked him about religion, he said,
"Religion is a fairy story for
people afraid of the dark."
I was asked to comment, so I said,
"Atheism is a fairy story for
people afraid of the light."
[laughing]
[clapping]
Now,
it's very kind of you to
clap, but that proves nothing.
[laughing]
Because--
>> Hugh: That's a great line.
>> William: Fantastic line.
>> One of the things--
>> We're not anti-applause, don't worry.
>> No, one of the things
you learn in the world
that I work in, and it's very important,
is that a statement by a scientist
is not necessarily a statement of science.
>> William: Amen.
>> Now, what amazes me about
Hawking, who's a genius,
obviously, is the heart of his
book with Leonard Mlodinow,
The Grand Design, the
key statement is this:
Because there is a law of gravity,
the universe can and will
create itself from nothing.
What?
[laughing]
Because there is a law of gravity,
because there is something,
the universe can and will
create itself from nothing.
That's a flat contradiction.
Secondly, because there
is a law of gravity,
he doesn't even say that gravity exists,
but what would a law of gravity
mean if there's no gravity?
Worse still, the universe
can and will create itself.
If I say to you, X creates
Y, roughly speaking,
if you've got X, you'll get Y.
If I say, X creates X,
well, if you've got X,
you'll get X, and what does that mean?
It means that nonsense remains nonsense
even if scientists are writing it.
[laughing]
So I was staggered
that this is the key argument of his book.
I would suggest that nobody
with an undergraduate education
in philosophy read that
book before he published it,
because what he's reduced
the whole thing to,
and it's ironic, it's God or nothing now.
Either God creates the
universe or nothing does.
He gets into complications
of the definition of nothing.
But I was very fortunate
in having a debate
with Alan Guth, the
father of modern cosmology
at the MIT-Harvard Faculty Club.
I said to him, in this very
friendly debate, I said,
"Alan, people are very confused
about nothing out there."
[laughing]
So I said, "Look, you can help us.
"When you, as an astrophysicist
talk about nothing,
"you do not mean nothing
in the philosophical sense
"of absence of anything."
He said, "No, we don't."
I said, "Thank you very much."
>> William: That's exactly right.
>> So, the point is, that
these people are claiming
to get a universe from nothing,
but they're failing to do it.
The most amusing of all,
I must tell you this.
How would you like this if
it was submitted to you?
Lawrence Krauss, astrophysicist,
because something
is physical, nothing must be physical,
especially if you define it
as the absence of something.
[laughing]
I mean, that is utter absurdity,
and it's on about page four of his book.
Now, the point is, and Bill
is the world expert on this,
so I'll stop now, that
the standard model of
the universe leads you
with a start from nothing.
And they're having a great
problem to get a universe
from nothing, so they redefined nothing.
As a Christian,
I don't believe the
universe came from nothing.
I believe it came from God,
but God is not physical.
>> You're going awfully fast, Dr. Lennox,
for lawyers and Pittsburgh Steelers fans.
>> Shall I say it again?
[laughing]
>> But I wanna ask J.P. to help me.
>> Yup.
>> And by the way, J.P.,
it's a contradiction,
we're here at a university,
Christian university,
led by a president, President Corey,
who's a New England Patriots fan,
culture of corruption in New England.
>> J.P.: No question about it.
There's no question about it.
>> So how does Biola,
with a Christian mission,
reconcile the scientific
challenge, that's why we're here.
Let's get right to it.
How does Biola do that,
maintain the standards it does,
turning out great
scientists, doctors, nurses,
physical scientists, how does it do that
with what must confuse our
secular and perhaps atheist
friends, how it's possible to do both?
>> Well, Roderick Chisholm,
who is a philosopher
of the last century at Brown University,
one of my favorite philosophers,
distinguished two different
sense of the right to be sure.
In one sense, a person
has the right to be sure
if they have completely
foreclosed a question
and they're 100% sure they're right,
so they don't need to look
at any further arguments.
The second notion of a right to be sure
is that I take myself to
actually know this thing
in question, though I will
agree I could possibly be wrong,
and I'm willing to look at
further evidence against my view,
but I'm not gonna do it with
a mindset of being 50/50.
I take myself to know this,
but my knowledge is defeasible,
that is to say, it's
open to being defeated
or there could be evidence against it.
I think it's the second right to be sure
that is required in a Christian university
to explore things.
I take myself to have a body
of knowledge, not beliefs,
but a body of knowledge from scripture,
especially with regard
to the core commitments
of mere Christianity.
I don't take this to just be truths.
I take it to be truths
that I know to be true.
Then I take a look at the best literature
that's against what I believe.
I try to find arguments in
favor of it with my students.
If they can find something
that's been written
against a particular
view on my specialties,
neuroscience and the soul,
we'll read it and talk about it.
My assumption is that if
what I take myself to know
to be true, it's gonna
be okay in the long run.
I've been doing this a long time,
and I will tell you something, Hugh,
that's very, very ironic.
You will find that on this
campus we do more to read
and study and interact with
people who don't agree with us
than people in a lot of secular campuses
who read top-notch Christian literature
and interact with that.
So you're gonna get a much
more balanced education here
than UCLA or a lot of other places.
>> William Lane Craig, I've
had interaction, interviewed
Dawkins, Dr. Dawkins, Professor Dawkins.
You've debated Christopher Hitchens.
I'm pretty sure Hitch would have said,
and I think Dr. Dawkins would say,
the idea of a Christian
university is itself an oxymoron.
Is it, in fact, an oxymoron,
to have a Christian,
which presupposes belief, in university,
which is premised in inquiry?
>> Not if Christianity is true, obviously.
[laughing]
If Christianity is true,
then of course a person
can explore all of the
different facets of God's world
that are studied at the university,
and we're convinced that
Christianity is true,
that this is a view of life
and the world that makes sense
out of the data of human experience,
and we're certainly open-minded
to read and interact
with literature of
opposing points of view,
but at the end of the day,
we're convinced that Christianity is true.
And so, of course, a Christian university,
with that sort of perspective,
is possible and viable.
>> So Dr. Lennox, when I
add Dr. Dawkins on, he said,
"So you really believe Jesus
turned water into wine?"
That's what he went to.
I said, "Yes."
He said, "You really believe
"that Jesus turned water into wine?"
I said, "Yes."
"Really?"
I said, "Yes."
He said, "Oh my God."
I said, "No, my God."
[laughing]
>> Well.
>> But he was fundamentally
convinced it was not possible
to be logical and Christian.
I'm sure you ran into
that when you debated him.
Tell the audience about that occasion
and how you interact
with the New Atheists.
>> Oh, I did, but in your previous
question, it's very funny.
The idea of a Christian
university being an oxymoron,
that means that both Oxford
and Cambridge are oxymorons,
because Christianity
gave us the universities.
Our intellectual-
>> William: You can include
Harvard as well in that list.
>> Yes.
Yes, Harvard came from my
colleagues at Cambridge, actually.
[laughing]
>> Oh, big footing my alma mater, are we?
Okay.
[laughing]
>> But anyway, it was quite
amusing when I encountered
Richard Dawkins on a broadcast
that was never broadcast.
[laughing]
He plowed into me about
this water into wine.
I said, "Richard, look.
"If Jesus was the Son of
God, He invented water,
"so turning it into
wine wasn't a big deal."
[laughing]
But the point is that
what he's reacting against,
and I had this with Hitch in public,
Hitch was saying, "You
can't possibly believe
"in miracles as a scientist,
because David Hume has shown
"long ago that miracles
"are a violation of the laws of nature."
What I discover with people
like Dawkins and Cole,
they won't investigate
the Christian evidence.
Why?
Because they've decided in principle
that miracles are impossible.
In other words, they
bought into David Hume.
Now, I happen to believe
that David Hume is false
and demonstrably false.
But you have to overcome that first.
It is very sad to me that
Dawkins, who shouts loudest
for evidence, doesn't seem to
be remotely interested in it,
because when I put it to him, I said,
"How did you get on when
you studied the evidence
"for the resurrection of Jesus?"
He said, "I don't know how anybody
"could be remotely interested in it."
Well, that's not scholarly,
that's anti-intellectual.
But perhaps that's not
answering your question.
>> Hugh: No, it is.
>> What was the--
>> The question is, when
you confront a New Atheist
and they say it is impossible
to approach a university
from a Christian perspective
'cause it presupposes
the truth of the resurrection,
I think Bill answered it
in one respect, is we
believe it to be true
after investigation.
>> Oh, yes.
Oh, okay, let me say something about that.
The interesting thing these
days, I give a lot of lectures
on science and God.
One of the provocative
things I say is that
science has not buried
God, but science is doing
a very good job of burying atheism.
The reason for that is,
and I think it's extremely important,
is that C.S. Lewis saw it years ago,
that we do brilliant
science because we think.
But what we haven't done
is think about thinking.
The status of thought
in the atheist worldview
is very questionable.
I mean, sometimes I have fun
with my colleagues at Oxford
and I say, "What do you do science with?"
They say, "I've got a machine
worth a billion dollars."
I said, "I don't mean that, I mean this."
"Oh, you mean my," and
they nearly say mind,
and then they remember
that there's no mind,
there's just a brain.
[laughing]
So they say, "I do it with my brain."
I say, "Tell me about your brain."
"Do you want the long story?"
"No, the short story."
"Okay, then the short story
is my brain is the end product
"of a mindless, unguided process."
I say to them, "And you trust it?"
[laughing]
Now, that's the jokey way of putting it,
although it irritates a
lot of intelligent people.
But Thomas Nagel, who's a
world-class philosopher,
has come out with a fascinating book,
Mind and Cosmos: Why the
Neo-Darwinian View of the Universe
is Almost Certainly False.
And he's simply making
the point that if you take
the reductionist view of
thinking and reduce it
to physics and chemistry,
you empty rationality out
of all possible meaning.
In other words, I claim that science,
the very fact that I can do mathematics,
is one of the most powerful evidences
that there's a mind behind the universe.
In other words, science
is burying atheism.
So the shoe's on the other foot.
>> I wanna follow up on that.
The most widely-linked to
Wall Street Journal editorial,
probably since it went online,
was by our fried Eric Metaxas.
It occurred within the last 30 days
after the publication
of his book, Miracles,
in which he said the evidence
that science is producing
is pointing overwhelmingly to a creator
and a created order.
William Lane Craig, do
you agree that the march
of science is doing that?
>> I didn't read Metaxas' article.
I saw an interview with him on CNN.
I was a little distressed, frankly, Hugh,
at the superficiality of
the interview that I saw.
It didn't seem to me--
>> That's what journalists do, Bill.
[laughing]
>> I would prefer to be more careful,
or I think you open
yourself up to the charge
of God of the gaps, that is to say,
you're just using God to plug loopholes
in our scientific knowledge.
Here's how I would put it.
I think that science can provide evidence
for a premise in a philosophical
argument for a conclusion
having theological significance.
That is to say, you can have
a philosophical argument,
say, for a cosmic designer,
and science will provide
evidence for one of the key
premises in that argument.
So you're not using science to prove God
in the sense of the god of
the gaps kind of reasoning,
but you're appealing
to scientific evidence
to support one of the
premises in your argument.
For example, that the
universe began to exist,
or that the fine-tuning of the universe
is not due to chance
or physical necessity,
religiously neutral statements
that can be supported
by science, and then in
conjunction with other premises,
these will imply a
conclusion that will have
very great theological significance,
like there is a cosmic designer
or there is a personal
creator of the universe
or something of that sort.
>> So, J.P., was Eric wrong to
suggest this argument exists
and is finding an audience?
Was he putting forward a god of the gaps?
>> Well, I didn't hear
the interview either
or read the paper, but I
wouldn't say he was wrong.
I would say he was not careful
and he wasn't stating it the right way.
So I think that if you
would put it a little bit
more carefully, like how Bill has done,
that science can provide
evidence for a premise,
like that the universe began to exist,
that could be a part of an argument
with the conclusion there's a God.
I think that's the best
way to go about it.
By the way, I wanna go
back to the miracles thing
for a second.
You might wanna take a
look at Craig Keener's
hernia-inducing two volume set
[laughing]
that covers maybe 1400 pages, where he,
and he is one of the most
detailed researchers I know,
and he has documented evidence
that there are miracles
happening around the world and have been
in the name of Jesus.
It's pretty hard to take a
look at the work he's done
on that and to dismiss it all
as though none of this happened.
I think most people in an
average church have seen
or know of a miracle that
happened among their people.
An answer to prayer that's
very hard to be explained,
a healing of some kind.
So I think that miracles
continue to happen,
but I think atheists aren't
willing to come to church
and sit with folk and to say,
"Tell me about your story,
"and how did you know that was a miracle?"
Because some of the claims
that it was a miracle
are not solid, they're too quick.
But there is a residue of those out there,
there are people in this room
who've seen things happen
that I think are not explicable rationally
without postulating that God did it,
an answer to prayer, whatever it might be.
So I think these things didn't
just happen in Jesus' day,
and nobody up here is saying that.
But I think that they continue to happen,
and all you have to do is
go out and talk to people.
By the way, I'll tell you a
miracle that's happened tonight.
Twice John Lennox has
demonstrated by his humor
that the Brits don't have to
be stuffed shirts all the time.
[laughing]
I think that that's a miracle right there.
>> Not, 'cause he's Irish,
really, that doesn't count.
[laughing]
Go ahead, Dr. Lennox.
>> I think Bill has said
something very important.
Two things, actually.
I'd like to emphasize them.
The first is we use the
word proof too carelessly.
Proof, in its rigorous sense,
only occurs in my field of mathematics.
>> William: And logic.
>> Proof in the more informal sense,
that is evidence, pointers,
occurs everywhere and
in the natural sciences.
So we're not talking about proof
in that logical sense,
axioms, logic, conclusion.
But the second thing
is, the god of the gaps.
You see, one of the things
Stephen Hawking has,
he's shaken many young people,
because of his status as a scientist,
arguably the most famous living scientist.
What he's essentially
saying to young people is,
"You must choose between science and God."
Now, I have a whole lot of
answers to why that results
from a confusion about
science, but not long ago,
it occurs to me that at the heart of it
is a profound confusion
about the nature of God.
What I mean by that is this.
Stephen Hawking thinks
that I believe in the god of the gaps.
That is, I can't explain
it, therefore God did it.
Now, follow this carefully,
because I feel this is very important.
If you define God to be a god of the gaps,
that is, a placeholder,
I can't explain it,
science will one day explain it,
then you've got to choose
between God and science
because that's the way you've defined God.
And when, in our conversation
and public discourses,
we don't make clear what
we're talking about,
we'll be shooting past each
other because Hawking's idea
of our God is a kind of
Greek god of lightning
who will disappear in a
first course of astrophysics.
So this is a crucial insight, I think,
to see that we must be clear what we mean
by the god we're talking about.
>> I wanna come back to this.
I also wanna go to our
first question from the web.
Again, if you're watching online,
you can follow the conversation online
at #GODSCIENCE.
Daniel Simpson tweets in J.P.,
"J.P. Moreland, is a
historical Adam and Eve
"compatible with evolution?
"I.e., maybe they weren't
the first humans."
>> Well, an historical
Adam and Eve is compatible
with the theory of evolution.
If you have evolution generating
a homo sapien
or a human, male and
female, at the same time.
If, on the other hand, you
have the standard story
that's going on now that Eve was generated
through evolution at one
time and Adam was generated
100,000 or 150,000 years later,
I don't think that's compatible
with the biblical account,
nor do I think it's required to believe it
based on the evidence.
Doug Axe has written some
things defending an alternative
to that view, and so when I
come across something like this,
what I do is to say, "Okay,
science or philosophers
"or someone who's making
a claim about this,
"that seems to cut
against what I understand
"the Bible to be teaching."
So I go back and I
rethink if I've understood
the Bible correctly, is this important?
Seems to be in this case.
And so I ask, "Are there thoughtful people
"that know these issues
that are well-educated
"defending a traditional side?"
And if there is, then I say, "Why, then,
"do we need to go to a side
that is contrary to Christianity
"when there are well-informed people,
"perhaps they're in the minority,
"but they're doing their homework,
"defending the traditional view?"
And so the fact that
they're in the minority,
I explain sociologically
because I think people
are socialized, and Thomas
Kuhn pointed this out
a long time ago, and not
everything about his was good,
but I think this was a legitimate point,
that when people are taught science,
they're sociologized
into a way of doing it
through their textbooks
and their professors,
and it's very difficult
sometimes to consider
an alternative way of viewing
a major theory or paradigm.
So it doesn't bother
me if it's a minority,
as long as it's credible.
That's how I approach that.
>> Bill, I wanna go back
to the god of the gaps,
because my friend Metaxas
is throwing something
at the internet right now,
because I may have misstated,
and I wanna make sure I
state his argument correctly.
In the Wall Street Journal it was that
there's significance in the silence,
that human beings have been
looking for extraterrestrials
to talk to us for a long time,
and we hear nothing and we see nothing.
And all the coefficients that
exist and all the variables
that must exist to make
this planet the way it is
are indicative of a creator.
What do you think of that argument?
>> I think it's extremely
interesting in the sense
that many have argued that
if there is intelligent
extraterrestrial life, they
ought to be here already.
We ought to have evidence of it.
And since we don't, that
suggests that there is
no such extraterrestrial intelligent life
anywhere else in the observable universe.
I'm more interested,
however, in the fine-tuning
of the universe that is
necessary for the evolution
and existence of intelligent
life anywhere in the cosmos,
not just on Earth.
That argument would be an
argument that the Earth
is specially created in such
a way to be life-sustaining.
>> Hugh: Do you find that persuasive?
>> I find it persuasive in the
sense that it simply layers
more improbability onto the fine-tuning
of the initial conditions
of the cosmos to being with.
If the initial conditions
of the universe are so
incomprehensibly improbable
that the universe ought
to be life-prohibiting,
then this additional
improbability that results
from the Earth's narrowly-defined
parameters for life
simply layers on more
and more improbability
and therefore, in that
sense, I think is persuasive.
>> Dr. Lennox, there are stupid questions.
I'm about to ask one.
You're a mathematician, an
accomplished mathematician.
>> By the way, do you know
what the biggest evidence
for extraterrestrial life is?
>> No.
>> That they haven't contacted us.
[laughing]
>> Charles Krauthammer
argues, it's evidence
that when you get to our
level you blow yourself up.
Always the New Atheists say,
"Infinity answers everything."
You're a mathematician.
Infinite possibilities answer everything.
What do you say to that?
>> I've never heard an atheist say that.
But what you probably
mean is that in the days
before they believed in
a finite time backwards,
so space-time or whatever,
that they thought
that given infinite time,
whatever that means,
plus chance, you'd get anything.
But that's gone now.
I don't find people making that argument,
but perhaps if you make it a
bit more precise in some area?
>> I'm a lawyer, I don't do that.
[laughing]
Never make anything--
>> Bill, let's bring Bill in.
>> One area that comes up
would be one I've alluded
to already, the appeal to the multiverse.
>> John: Yes.
>> Hugh: Yes, thank you, Bill.
>> The multiverse doesn't
need to be infinite in time.
>> John: No.
>> As long as you have an infinite number
of parallel worlds, universes
in this world ensemble.
And by multiplying your
probabilistic resources,
you increase the chances to
one, of having intelligent life
somewhere in that world ensemble.
If you have many roulette wheels
spinning at the same time,
you're much more likely
to get the winning number
than if it's just one wheel, so the--
>> That's what I understand
atheists to be arguing now.
>> Yes, I think that at least
with respect to the design
argument, honestly,
this is where the heart
of the controversy is today.
It is design versus the world ensemble
or multiverse hypothesis.
>> Versus infinity.
>> Which are two metaphysical hypotheses,
extraordinary metaphysical hypotheses
that are at the heart of
the debate over this today.
>> And so how does one
prefer one of those premises
over the other?
>> Well, I would say
two things about that.
First, I would say that whereas
we have independent evidence
for the existence of God, we
have no independent evidence
of the existence of a world
ensemble or multiverse,
much less that it's infinite
in number and randomly ordered.
>> George Ellis, who is
probably the world's most famous
cosmologist, University of
South Africa and Cape Town,
has said that we cannot and
do not have either direct
or indirect evidence of other worlds,
of multiverse scenarios,
that they are metaphysical in nature.
But secondly, there's
this tremendous objection
that faces multiverse
explanations that Roger Penrose
at Oxford University
has raised, namely this.
That a world in which just a
tiny patch of order exists,
enough for our existence, say,
the size of the solar system,
is incomprehensibly more probable
than a finely-tuned universe.
And therefore, in the world ensemble,
if we are just a random
member of that world ensemble,
we ought to be observing a
universe like that tiny patch
of order, because there are
simply vastly incomprehensibly
more universes that are
observable like that
than finely-tuned universes.
So the fact that we don't have
those sorts of observations
strongly disconfirms the
multiverse hypothesis.
>> Yeah, I'm fairly
certain that this audience
and the online audience wants
this explained in depth.
They want to understand
the multiverse response.
So J.P. and John, I want you
both to take a whack at it.
>> Okay, so the problem
for the atheist is,
that we've discovered
that there are a number
of constants of nature and other factors
that are fine-tuned.
What that means is that
their physical magnitude,
let's say the charge on an electron,
if it were slightly larger
or slightly smaller,
on the order of a very small
percentage change either way,
you can't get any kind
of life in the universe.
So that when you add these factors up,
there are several of them, it
becomes extremely improbable
in a mind-boggling kind
of way, that this universe
could have just happened by chance
and be a life-permitting universe.
It looks like, as one person put it,
the dice were rigged ahead of time
so that life could take place.
And by the way, we do explain
things like that all the time.
We find improbable things
that come together,
and we will often explain them as a result
of personal agency.
So the action of a
personal agent can explain
situations like that.
Now, if you wanna avoid that solution,
what you wanna postulate is
that there is an infinite number
of parallel universes.
You might wanna think about it like this.
Suppose that you went into a room
and it was a universe-generating room.
You knew that this room
generated universes,
and you noticed that there
were 30 dials in the room.
They were huge, and each dial
had 10,000 settings on it.
But on each dial, there
was just a hairline
where it was colored black.
In order for a universe to permit life,
the dial had to be, each
of those 30 dials had
to be set on its black place.
If it were set anywhere
else, there's no life.
And you came in and looked
at that room and you saw
all those dials with the
myriads of possibilities
for them to be set in different places,
and they were all set in
just the right place for life
to appear, you'd say
this was done on purpose.
But the multiverse allows us to say,
"Well, there's gonna be an
infinite number of worlds,
"and so we can vary the charge
of an electron from one world
"to the next, same with
the mass of a proton,
"and sooner or later
you're gonna get a world,
"just because of the probabilities,
"where there's gonna be life there."
It's not surprising
that we're in that world
because if we weren't in that world,
we'd be dead and wouldn't
be talking about it.
There are other problems
with the multiverse theory.
I think Bill's two are
really, really good ones,
but it's got additional problems.
>> I wanna make sure that you speak
to the multiverse problem, Dr. Lennox,
or the answer that has been provided.
>> Well, my instinct of reaction is,
it is the biggest
violation of the principle
of Occam's Razor that we've ever seen.
[laughing]
In other words, that
principle that we normally
use in science and in our investigation,
that we keep the number of
hypotheses as small as possible.
I was taught quantum physics at Cambridge
by John Polkinghorne,
who's been all his life
an extreme skeptic of this kind of thing.
I'm interested that even Sir Martin Rees,
our astronomer royal who's
written a book about this,
and he talks about some people
like Polkinghorne believe in a creator.
And then he says, "I prefer
to believe in a multiverse."
That's not a scientific statement.
The other thing is, we need to be careful
of a false alternative,
because Max Tegmark,
who is one of the early
proposes at Princeton
of the multiverse theory said,
"There's either a God or a multiverse."
But logically that's false, of course.
God can create as many
universes as He likes.
A book I know moderately
well seems to indicate
there's more than this one.
>> Speaking of books, I wanna
take the opportunity to ask
the question that I heard--
>> What was that last remark?
>> It's a book I know, the Bible,
seems to indicate there's
more than this one.
>> William: Oh.
>> Philosophers don't read the Bible.
>> Hugh: Okay.
>> I should also say, I
should also say that one
of Stephen Hawking's coworkers
is a Canadian Christian,
a distinguished professor
of physics called Don Page.
When I was writing my little
book about Stephen Hawking,
in which I talk a little
bit about the multiverse,
I wrote to him.
It was very interesting what he said.
He gave me permission to reproduce it,
but he's a believer, a Christian,
and he believes in the multiverse theory.
So it's not an alternative,
God or the multiverse.
So no matter what you believe about it,
you can't deduce the
nonexistence of God from it.
>> Actually, I think
theism is the best hope
for the existence of a multiverse,
because as you say, an omnipotent God
could create as many
universes as He wants.
But on naturalism, it is
highly, highly improbable
that we should be observing
a finely-tuned universe.
It is incomprehensibly more probable.
>> Would you define the term naturalism
for the benefit of, think
of the Steelers fans always.
>> No, atheism, atheism.
If there's no God, then
it is incomprehensibly
more probable, if we are a
random member of a multiverse,
that we ought to be observing
a world that is just
a tiny patch of order that
permits us to observe it,
rather than an entire
universe that's fine-tuned,
because those little
tiny patches are simply
incomprehensibly more probable
than finely-tuned universes.
So if you throw a dart at
the observable universes
in the multiverse, in all probability,
you're going to hit a
very tiny patch of order,
not a world like this.
>> Let me ask Dr. Lennox,
because many people know
your biography from
having read that you're
a mathematician, you're a linguist,
you're an accomplished
scholar, you're a fellow
at a graduate school at Oxford.
Why have you written a book on Daniel
that is about to appear?
First, what's the title of the new book?
>> It's called, Against the Flow.
Daniel,
now, what is it?
[laughing]
>> If that isn't professorial.
>> The Inspiration of Daniel
in an Age of Relativism.
>> So why would a
mathematician spend his time
in a book like Daniel?
You have to explain, again,
for the benefit of people
who do not know the Book of
Daniel, do not know the Bible,
why is an Oxford mathematician doing that?
>> Well, because I spent all my life
thinking about the Bible.
You see, when I went to Cambridge,
I wanted to know where mathematics fitted
in the big picture of science,
where science fitted in the
big picture of the universe.
And because I became
convinced very early on,
mainly by the wonderful
example of my parents,
who stimulated me thinking
about all kinds of worldviews,
that Christianity was
true, I therefore felt that
you can take the Bible as seriously
as you take your mathematics.
I was very fortunate to
have a brilliant mentor
who was a professor of classics,
who introduced me to the
classical world of thought
and philosophy, and who
mentored me for about 50 years.
And what he introduced me to was learning
to take the Bible philosophically
and intellectually seriously.
Now, the Book of Daniel,
Daniel is a prophet that lived,
I believe, in the 6th century B.C.
He was taken from Judah to Babylon.
Babylon was the great power.
It was intellectually very advanced.
You have on your arm evidence
of Babylonian mathematics,
60 seconds in a minute,
60 minutes in an hour.
Their engineering, their art, their music,
was absolutely brilliant.
And here is this young
believer in God found himself
in King's College Babylon.
Obviously he began to think
about the significance
of this vast culture.
What could be wrong with it?
Why hadn't his culture
produced something like this?
Over many years, I mean, I'm
interested not only in Daniel
but in the whole of the
Bible, but occurs at a point
where it appeared as if
faith in God had reached
a very low ebb.
There's a believer in a vast culture,
and yet he rises to run two empires.
Nobody in history has ever done that.
And he, as an old man, starts to write
about the big things he notices in life.
And as I begin to analyze those and look
at the thought flow of the
literature of the text,
I begin to realize that this
is extremely powerful stuff.
It is one of the most brilliant analyses
of the nature of values that you'll find
in any literature.
And what I have written
a book about is to try
to bring to a wider audience
the idea that actually
the Bible deals with the
big questions of our time.
Because I'm very concerned
about the kind of notion
that the Bible is a devotional
book, it's over there,
it's intellectually fairly trivial,
and the culture's over here.
And so when we've got a
problem in the culture,
as Christians, we run to the Bible,
we find a verse or two, and we run back.
I want to take the Bible
as literature and use it
as a powerful search light to
dig into the culture
and throw out the ideas
so that we can study what its answers are.
One of the reasons I
believe that scripture
is the word of God is not because
I have a technical belief,
but because of the sense it makes.
When I became convinced that
scripture had more to say
than all other philosophies,
that completely changed my life.
That's been the leading motive.
So for the first time, I've
had a chance to write about it,
and that's why I've done.
>> I look forward to reading this.
Wow.
[clapping]
A question, J.P.?
>> Yeah.
I had a chance to read
John's book and look at it
before it came out.
I wanna reinforce one of
the points in the book
that I want the people
online and hear to listen to.
John makes the point that
when Daniel was living
in a culture that was pluralistic
and increasingly hostile
to the religion of Israel,
he did not express his discipleship
to the God of the Bible by privatizing it
and being devotionally connected to God.
He had to be a publicly-engaged person
where he engaged the ideas and the art
and the other things of this culture
that he was capable of engaging,
or he would have been
derelict in his discipleship.
[clapping]
Thank you, but thank John.
But the point that grieves me so badly,
and I've given the last 40
years of my life to this,
and it really grieves me, is
when I see the body of Christ
overemphasizing that the personal piety
and the affective
aspects of the faith,
which I believe in deeply,
those are crucial, but at
the expense of helping people
become public, and to learn
how to dialogue and engage
with the issues of our time
from the biblical perspective
that makes sense to people.
We've gotta do that more,
or else we're not gonna win this thing.
>> Then to that end,
I wanna stay with you.
Mason Freeson, again #GODSCIENCE,
is intelligent design compatible
with evolutionary theory?
>> Depends on what you mean
by evolutionary theory.
Michael Behe
is an evolutionist in the sense that
he believes in common
descent, that organisms came,
changed into later organisms
by natural processes.
But where he parts
company and is an advocate
of intelligent design, is that he believes
that the organisms that were made that way
bear the stamp of intelligent
activity leading up to them.
So theistic evolution
can be defined in two
or three different ways.
One of them is a contradictory definition,
and that is to define it as
a guided-unguided process,
because evolution is considered
to be an unguided process,
and the theistic evolutionist says it's
a guided-unguided process.
That's a little tough to choke down.
Another way to define it is
that it's not a guided process,
and indeed God did not know
what the outcome would be.
The other view is, no,
God did guide evolution,
as long as His activity can't be detected.
Try that with answering
your prayer for a minute.
God's allowed to answer prayers as long
as you can't know He did it.
I don't know if that's a
good way to go about this.
But the point is, that Behe
thinks that there are clear
evidences of intelligent
causation at the back
of the process, so he would
not be a theistic evolutionist.
Now, there are others who
would say that God created
at different points in the
process because the natural
materials themselves
couldn't bridge that gap.
But what makes an
intelligent design person
an intelligent design person
is primarily the commitment
to the scientific detectability
of personal causation
of a divine sort in the
data of science itself.
And that, therefore,
God's action becomes a
positive explanatory,
has a positive explanatory power,
and it's not a god of the gaps argument
because there are positive
reasons for thinking
that divine agency was here.
We don't say God must have done this
because we have no other explanation.
No, there are positive criteria
that have been developed to detect it.
So whether they're compatible depends
on what you mean by theistic evolution.
I would say generally not,
except in a very nuanced way.
>> William Lane Craig, it
is a mark of good rigorous
argument that you know the
weakest part of your argument
and you know we're easy to
attack the New Atheists.
But if the best-trained
New Atheist was here,
what's the hardest question
to pose to this panel?
>> Oh my goodness.
I think it would be about
the historical Adam and Eve.
In my discussions with
population geneticists,
the evidence seems to
indicate that the pool
of early humans never got
below around 2,000 people,
and that therefore the person who believes
in an original human pair
has got some real explaining to do.
He's got to show why the
genetic models are mistaken
or at least that they're
not certain enough
to invalidate this.
And here I'd like to pick up
on something that J.P mentioned
that is very interesting.
J.P. mentioned that the
so-called mitochondrial Eve
from whom all living persons are descended
and the chromosomal Adam that
all humans are descended from
were hundreds of thousands of years apart.
Recently, these estimates
have been redone.
Yes, and so now they think they could
be roughly contemporaneous,
which would be exactly in line with having
an original mother and
father of the human race.
Now, that doesn't explain
the genetic evidence
that I just talked about,
but it would say something
very significant about
the mitochondrial Eve
and the chromosomal Adam
actually been contemporaneous.
>> Help me out with your
first objection now,
that the most talented
New Atheist would say,
not can he change water into wine,
but you don't really
believe in an Adam and Eve.
Am I understanding you correctly?
>> Right.
>> To which you respond what, Dr. Lennox?
>> Oh, I believe.
[laughing]
I believe that human beings
are a supernatural creation,
that there was an original two,
and that is a very
provocative thing to say.
But I believe it, you see, because I think
that there is strong
evidence for more than
the singularity at the Big Bang and so on.
If I could just throw some light on it
by referring back to what J.P. was saying,
you asked about evolution
and intelligent design.
But you see, there's a
presupposition behind evolution.
I'm not a biologist.
I'm a mathematician,
so I'm interested in the presupposition.
The presupposition, of course,
is the existence of life.
And Richard Dawkins
fudged the thing for years
in his book, The Blind
Watchmaker, by saying that
the Darwinian evolution
was the explanation
for the existence and variation of life.
It isn't.
And we need to get this absolutely clear.
Evolution, whatever it does,
and I've written a book
and I'm very skeptical
about a lot of things.
I'm not going to go into
them tonight because,
whatever evolution does or doesn't do,
it presumes the existence
of a mutating,
replicating DNA.
Now, if you look at DNA as a black box,
it's the longest word
we've ever discovered.
Computer science language
is used to describe it.
The biologists were reluctant
at the beginning to do this,
but now they all accept it.
Now, the very interesting thing is this,
that a lot of the debate
around the circles
and the nature of explanation,
what do we mean by scientific explanation?
And it is a very common
view that all explanation
proceeds from the simple to the complex.
And so you have all these
evolutionary scenarios,
which incidentally are
being questioned these days
by serious biologists,
but I leave it aside.
But you see, there's one
area where the simple
to the complex explanation does not work.
And that is the area where
language is involved.
If you see your name written
on Long Beach or something,
four or five letters of your name,
you infer immediately
upwards to intelligent input,
no matter what mechanism
put that there, you do that.
Now, the fascinating thing, and I often
suggest it to my follow professors, I say,
"Look, you go into your
laboratory and you see the DNA
"with 3.5 billion letters
in exactly the right order,
"and I ask you, what's
the origin of that?"
You say, "Chance and necessity."
[laughing]
When you see anything with language on it,
four or five letters,
and immediately you say intelligent input.
Now, what I want to argue,
and I do it on the basis
of theoretical computer science as well,
is that this isn't god of the gaps.
That language, at all levels,
demands intelligent input.
>> Hugh: Now the moderator has to step in.
>> And that is the key thing.
>> The atheist who's watching will say,
"That was beautifully put,
and it was not responsive,"
or a judge would say that.
The question is, posed by Bill,
Adam and Eve are a problem.
Your answer was, "I
believe in Adam and Eve.
"Let's talk about the
improbability of DNA."
It's nonresponsive.
Let's talk about Adam and Eve.
Are you saying
that you can't explain
Adam and Eve by science?
>> No, what I'm saying is this.
What I'm saying is the
origin of life seems to me
a clear singularity that
is indicated by science.
Now, if we're going to suggest
that evolutionary processes
produced human life, we've
got to have a mechanism
that increases complexity.
I simply don't see it.
>> Right, J.P.,
do you see why I'm saying
it's not responsive?
>> Well, I'm not gonna
answer that question.
>> And the point is, if
[laughing]
this is a huge topic, you see.
First of all, you have to map out exactly
what it is scripture claims.
Now, I could be even more
provocative in pointing out
it seems to me that what
scripture does is go as far
as it can to indicate
that humans don't come
from other animals.
Can I explain that for a minute?
>> Hugh: The floor is yours.
>> Number one, the story
goes like this, that
human beings, man is created.
This is the Genesis story.
Then it says it is not
good for man to be alone.
And it talks about the
animals that were brought
to the human being to be named.
After that taxonomy, which
is the beginning of science,
of course, and biology,
taxonomy, the fundamental
intellectual discipline, it
makes a curious statement,
"But for man, there was no
help found answering to him."
In other words, according to the Bible,
the very first lesson humans were taught
was that they were utterly
distinct from all other animals.
Point number two, when it
comes to the creation of women,
Hebrew could have told us.
[laughing and clapping]
Yes, and I've been married
for 46 years to one,
so that's okay.
Point number two, Hebrew
has many ways of stating
that God made the female
from an existent animal.
But the text doesn't say that.
It says that women was made from man.
Now, that's going in the
exact opposite direction
of suggesting that Adam
and Eve were products
of some kind of random, unguided process.
Point number three.
>> Well I'm gonna bite it,
but I've got to interrupt you,
because Bill, I'm not hearing
the answer to your objection,
because he answered it.
>> Okay, now, I wanna be clear, Hugh.
I didn't say this was my objection.
>> You said it was the best objection.
I want the best objection answered.
>> Right, you asked me
where I thought that the
skeptic would lodge his
most effective attack.
>> Hugh: Yes, I did ask that.
>> In terms of the reconciliation
of Christianity and science.
I think that this would
be one of those areas
where conflict still remains
and where there's still
difficult work to do.
>> And so, if an atheist
watching this says,
"That's what those doggone
Christians always do.
"They avoid the tough question.
"They don't answer it."
How do you answer it?
>> I'm not avoiding it.
I'm exposing myself to
extreme ridicule, actually,
[laughing]
because I'm actually postulating--
>> A nonscientific response.
>> That there's a physical
supernatural dimension.
In other words, God moves atoms.
What I'm very interested
in is, many of my friends,
who are theistic
evolutionists, have to say
that at some point God
intervenes to provide a soul.
I'm going further than that.
Now, science, in a sense,
can't comment on that,
because this is a singularity.
All we can do is look at bones
and all this kind of stuff.
>> You're gonna go back and say,
"Oh, those Yanks are
so doggone rude," but--
>> Yes, I'd like to address your question
about the atheist saying
that you're refusing
to answer the question.
In fact, Christian
anthropologists and geneticists
and exogedes are working
very hard on this.
There's an enormous
dialogue going on right now
about this very issue.
So it's not being ignored.
I, myself, in my
adult Sunday school
class called Defenders,
had several lectures on this problem,
and these are available on our
website reasonablefaith.org.
If you wanna look at what
I think about this problem,
look at the section on
creation and evolution
in the Defenders class.
But the third thing that
I would like to add, Hugh,
is that I find it
tremendously hypocritical
that these same New
Atheists and scientists
very frequently extol
the virtue of science
because scientists are not
afraid to say, "I don't know,"
and, "I have an open mind about this,"
and, "I don't have all the answers,"
whereas religious people
claim to have all the answers.
They've got it all tidy and sewed up.
Well, that's just hypocrisy.
>> So what John was getting close to,
Stephen J. Gold was a professor of mine
and often a guest.
Said, "There were just
different magesteriums."
I'm sure you've heard this.
There is science and there's faith.
And he said, "Don't argue it."
I thought you were
coming suspiciously close
to driving into that ditch, Dr.
>> Oh, no, I disagree
with Stephen J. Gold,
and I'm very interested in how you put it,
science and faith.
Faith in what?
Because you know, that
actually, that formulation
is an atheist formulation
because the New Atheists
have very cleverly redefined faith.
Faith is a religious term.
It means believing when
there's no evidence.
I can give you a talk on science and faith
that doesn't mention God, because faith is
an essential part of science.
And so that formulation is dangerous,
but Gold is even more dangerous,
because he said separate the two.
Never the twain shall meet.
But if you read the
subtext, religion deals
with the tooth fairy and Santa Claus
and science deals with reality.
All I'm saying is this,
that just as in physics
we're forced to a singularity and we need
to open our minds to that possibility,
I want to have my mind,
well, I read all the stuff,
I'm not a biologist, as I
say, but I read the stuff,
I want to open my mind to
sit back and take seriously
what scripture actually says and see,
does that make sense?
And since I found it makes
sense of so much else,
I am prepared to keep my mind open
on this particular question.
I don't think it's the hardest
question we face though.
>> Well, what is?
What is?
I want those.
>> John: Well, the problem
of evil and suffering.
>> William: Oh, but that's
not a scientific question.
>> It's not a scientific question.
>> Oh, I see, yes, okay.
[laughing]
>> Philosophical question.
>> Let me just add, I think
J.P. wants to get in here too,
but one of the assumptions
of the genetic models
that indicate that the
human race was never
below 2,000 individuals,
is that the mutation
rate has been constant.
That's not evident.
If the early mutation rates were variable,
then you could have the
population shrink down
to below 2,000 people,
because the mutation rate
hasn't been constant.
So that is an enormous assumption
for which there really isn't
compelling scientific evidence,
and that would be one of
the ways in which one might
explore how to achieve a reconciliation
of the biblical data that John talks about
and the current evidence
of population genetics.
>> Yeah, two points that may
help with this conversation.
The first one is fairly
easy to understand.
The second'll take a
little effort, but first,
you have to keep in mind
that the kinds of criticisms,
the problems we're having with science,
deal with the early chapters
of Genesis, by and large.
The main commitments of Christianity,
much science is providing support for.
So if we focus on evidence
for God's existence,
archeological discoveries
and other historical finds
that have helped undergird the reliability
of the New Testament,
then what we can say is,
those are becoming, in my view, stronger,
and they're bolted down.
But there are problems, and most of them
are really targeting the
first 10 chapters of Genesis,
interestingly enough,
which don't cut at the core
of the Christian religion.
Now, so, that's the first point.
The second point is this, and
this may help you understand
that what Bill is saying about
Christians working on this
is not distinctive to Christians
because they don't wanna
give up their views.
I did a study of how people
weigh and change theories.
One of the things I learned
is that a theory of any kind,
if it's an economic theory,
a scientific theory,
it could be a theological theory,
will have core commitments that are called
the paradigm carriers.
They're the key things to the theory.
For Christianity, it's God and Jesus.
And then there will be
less important commitments
that are around the
periphery of the theory.
Now, when does it become reasonable
to think that an anomaly on the periphery,
a problem, turns out to
really be a falsification
of the theory as opposed to
an anomaly that we can explain
or it's okay for us to
work on it over a while.
And here's what I think it is.
If the evidence of the
anomaly outweighs the evidence
you have for the paradigm carriers,
in other words, if the
evidence for the central part
of the theory is stronger
than the evidence
that falsifies the theory,
then you are within
your intellectual rights to say,
"I don't have an answer to this yet,
"but I can't bring myself to think
"it falsifies the theory,
not because I don't want to,
"'cause we've got a ton of
evidence for this theory."
I'll give you an example.
In the 1800's, there was an
organic chemical reaction
called dehalohydrogenation.
And the chemical reaction
went the same way
every time they used it,
except with one chemical
it went the wrong way.
And scientists for, I think
it was close to 80 years,
engaged in all kinds
of ad hoc explanations
to try to adjust the anomaly.
Maybe our instrumentation wasn't good.
They worked on it and they said,
"Frankly, we don't know
what to do with this because
"we have too much evidence that the theory
"of dehalohydrogenation is true."
So they would not allow
this to falsify the theory
'cause they had too much
evidence for the theory.
They were not engaging
in special pleading or,
"I don't wanna let go of my theory,"
or anything like that.
They were acting in an
intellectually responsible
kind of way.
Now, eventually they found out
that there was another factor
working in that particular
reaction that drove it
the other way, so it was not
a good example of the theory,
but that's not the point.
The point is, and I'm
talking a long time now,
but the point is that if
we have, as we all believe,
a very strong case for Christian theism,
and if we also believe that
the Bible has proven itself
to be reliable and true in so many cases,
then we come to something
like this and we're not just
burying our heads in the sand or saying,
"We don't wanna believe
the Bible's false."
We're doing the intellectually
responsible thing in saying,
"We have a few ideas
of how to explain this.
"Try this on, but we might not know yet,
"but we're working on it."
And that's a permissible thing to do.
>> Now, that would take me to
Luke, and I have believed for a long time
that he's the best of
the ancient historians,
that any kind of textual
group of proof was,
you would say Luke, did
his job better than anyone.
I've heard that explicated now
from a lot of very smart people.
What makes the gospel
account more reliable,
and I'm going to a question,
why Christianity and not
other nonsense religion?
Let me rephrase that.
Why Christianity and its claims
and not other sacred
scriptures, say the Qu'ran,
or any of the other claims?
Why Christianity?
>> Three reasons.
There are three reasons
for selecting Christianity,
and I could toss in a fourth.
Number one, you oughta pick
a religion whose depiction
of God harmonizes with
what we know about God
from the creation.
We have several arguments
about God's existence
that we've offered, and they
don't just give evidence
God exists, but monotheism is true.
So you oughta pick a
monotheistic religion,
not 'cause the Bible teaches
it, but because the creation
is best explained by monotheism.
So Buddhism and Hinduism are out.
Islam is still in the running, Judaism,
a vague deism, and so on.
Second, pick a religion that does
the most profound job of diagnosing
and solving the human
condition cross culturally.
And you can identify things,
I've got a list of 10 to 12 of these,
that I think Christianity
does a far better job
of addressing them than
any other religion.
Third, pick a religion for which there is
evidence that it had supernatural backing
when it began and continued.
And with the New Testament,
we have the evidence
of fulfilled prophecy and
good historical evidence
that the gospels were early in some of the
little hymns in the New
Testament were very, very early
and had Jesus already
being worshiped and so on.
But Muhammad says, "I went
into a cave and came out
"with a good bit of the Qu'ran,
"not all of it, and trust me."
And I just, that's why.
Then the other one would
be, pick Christianity
because it's got Jesus.
Now, you might think, "I'd
expect that from a Christian."
But the fact is, He's the big enchilada,
and all the other religions
want a piece of His action.
So everybody
[laughing and clapping]
no,
everybody claims Him as one of theirs.
Well, I'm saying, why get a watered-down,
distorted piece of the deal.
If you say you like meat and
you're willing to chow down
on an old, three-day-old stale hot dog,
and I offer you steak,
you're not a meat-lover.
You're a stale hot dog-lover.
Well, if you're gonna
go with that religion
that's got this watered-down,
stale picture of Jesus,
and I give you steak,
which is the gospels,
and you say no to it,
you're not a God-seeker,
in my opinion, after you give people time
to get over their culture and stuff.
So that would be my--
>> This comes out of
that, from Brian O'Neill.
Again, the hashtag is #GODSCIENCE.
To what extent should the Bible be used
as a source of scientific truth?
So, Dr. Lennox.
>> If we mean the natural
sciences as distinct
from science in the continental
sense, old knowledge,
then
it's quite obvious that the Bible
is not a textbook of science.
I don't teach algebra from Leviticus.
[laughing]
What I would say is that
although Stephen J. Gold
is wrong, separating
the two completely out,
the hard and fast that
it needs modification,
but science, natural
sciences, tend to deal
with the how questions, and of course,
we need to realize in a
discussion like tonight
that 99.9% of the natural
sciences are not talking
about questions that raise the God issue.
>> William: Absolutely.
>> We can get a very skewed
idea of science if we think
it's always talking about
origins and God and so on.
It isn't.
They're asking the how questions
and the why questions of function,
whereas scripture addresses
the theological questions,
the big why questions.
I would modify that
slightly in saying this.
That although scripture
says relatively little
about the how of creation,
it does say something.
And what it says is highly significant.
People often say to me,
"The Bible's useless.
"It makes no scientific predictions."
Well, I have two things to say about that.
One is that if you believe scripture,
you could predict that
science could be done,
and indeed, that's what
happened in the 16th
and 17th centuries,
because the early pioneers
of science believed in God,
they believed in a rational universe,
and therefore they believed
it was worthy of study.
But secondly, as I pointed
out in a very famous
physics institute which must
be nameless, not long ago
I said, some physicist
who's well known said,
"Professor Lennox, you're
not suggesting, are you,
"please tell me you're not
suggesting that the Bible
"has anything relevant to say
to a 21st century scientist."
I said, "Well, here's one thing.
"For centuries, what goes
in the name in science
"was dominated by the
Aristotelian view of the universe,
"that there was no beginning."
Then I said, "The Bible has been saying
"there's been a beginning for centuries,
"in fact, for thousands of years.
"Let me just make the
gentle suggestion to you
"that if you had taken the
Bible more seriously earlier,
"you might have looked for evidence
"for a beginning much earlier."
The final point is this.
What fascinates me about the
statements about creation,
which are few in number,
is that they have a central emphasis.
In the beginning was the Word.
The Word was with God.
The Word was God.
All things came to be.
It's an existence
statement through the Word.
In other words, this idea
of word logos is primary.
Mass energy is derivative.
That is a colossal claim
because it bangs straight
in the face of materialism.
Secondly, the unpacking
of that in Genesis,
and God said, and God said, and God said,
is very simple language.
But it seems to me it's raising one
of the most profound issues of all,
and it's center to the debate.
Is this universe a closed
system of cause and effect?
And it's saying, no, it's an open system,
and it was created stepwise,
by God feeding in input
of energy and information from
the outside of the system.
That is phenomenally profound.
Sometimes when I mention
this to my atheist friends,
they say, and I remember
one famous astrophysicist,
when I mentioned it to him, he said,
"You're not telling me, are you,
"that the Bible has the
concept of information?"
And I say, "What does it look like?"
He said, "Does Sir Fred
Hoyle know about this?"
[laughing]
I said, "I don't know."
So he told him, and that's another story,
but the point is that
I would suggest that the
economy of the Bible,
but in its concentrating
that this universe
is word-based, is running convergent
with the increasing
insight of modern physics
and theoretical computer
science that information
is a fundamental quantity
that is not reduceable
to physics and chemistry.
I mean, the irony of our
materialistic age is information,
however we define it, and it's
difficult, is not material.
And if that's a fundamental quantity
that is not producible
by physics and chemistry,
which is Thomas Nagel's difficulty,
that's the end of materialism.
So what the Bible does
suggest on this score
is very important, but it
isn't a textbook of science.
>> Dan from, it's wonderful
all these things are timely.
It's because people are
watching and sending them in.
I'll send this to you, David Lane Craig,
can incompatibility, William Lane Craig,
incompatibility with Christianity serve
as a criterion of falsification
for scientific theory?
>> Hmm.
Well, you could say that it
would serve as a criterion
of falsification of
Christianity, with equal justice.
This is the point J.P.
was making about having
the central core beliefs in one's theory
and then these auxiliary
beliefs that could be given up,
and yet the core being maintained.
>> But there's nothing wrong
with the way David posed the question.
Can incompatibility
with Christianity serve
as a criterion of falsification
for scientific theories?
>> Well,
again, I'd go back to what J.P. said.
If you've got really good
grounds for believing
that a Christian world
and life view is true,
then if there is an
incompatibility with science,
that would give you
some reason for thinking
that there's a scientific error here
that will be uncovered, given enough time
and enough work on it.
So yes, in that sense.
>> Hugh: Do you agree with that?
>> Oh, absolutely.
And in fact, that's central.
Can you hear me?
>> Not very well.
>> All right.
John Lennox, did you
cut off my microphone?
[laughing]
Okay, all right.
This is central to my
own work, because look,
the Bible seems to me to be really clear
that animals and humans have souls.
Now, I've read all the people who think
that it doesn't say that,
but their arguments are weak in my view.
So let's grant that for
the sake of argument.
Well then, I approach
the philosophical field
of philosophy of mind and
neuroscience with a prior,
what I believe to be warranted,
commitment to the soul,
and I try to find
independent reasons for that
that don't depend on the Bible.
Because I assume if this is true,
I will be able to find
independent grounds for it,
and I see if I can find
answers against it.
So, for example, many of
the claims that are made
by neuroscientists today,
and I'm gonna be lecturing
on this to a group of
scientists coming up here
this spring in Pittsburgh,
that neuroscience has
almost nothing to do with
the mind-body problem,
almost nothing.
The central issues are
theological and philosophical.
Let me give you an example.
>> Would you explain
the mind-body problem?
>> Yeah, it's, am I one
thing, a physical thing,
say, my brain and body, or
am I more than one thing,
like a soul and a body?
Or is my consciousness real and different
than my brain states?
So there are three views.
One is that I'm totally physical.
The second is, my
consciousness is not physical,
but it's in the brain.
And the third view is that
my conscious is not physical
and it's in the soul.
Now, there are these things
called mirror neurons,
and Bill's heard me talk about this,
but they've discovered that
if a part of your brain
is damaged so that your
mirror neurons can't fire,
then you are not able to feel
empathy for other people.
Now, what follows from that?
The answer's nothing,
because the three theories
I gave you are empirically equivalent,
which means that they're consistent
with the very same neuroscientific fact.
Theory one, a feeling of
empathy just is the same thing
as the firing of neurons in the brain.
Number two, a feeling of
empathy is a irreducible
mental property that's not
physical, but it's caused
by firings of mirror neurons,
and they're both in the brain,
both the feeling of empathy
and the mirror neuron
firing, are in the brain.
Theory three, the feeling
of empathy, when it happens,
is in the soul.
The firing of mirror
neurons is in the brain,
but the soul won't work
if the brain doesn't work.
So if there's a problem with
the mirror neurons firing,
the soul can't have a feeling of empathy.
Now, those are three different views,
but they're consistent with
the same scientific data.
And so what troubles me,
and this needs to be said
before we quit here this
evening, many of the things
that scientists say are actually
philosophical assertions.
And when they come to report
on their view or make claims,
honest, this is the truth,
I'm not just saying this.
If you look at the substance,
they're not sticking with data
or trying to understand data.
They're making
philosophical extrapolations
for which they're not trained.
So when people in my field say,
"Neuroscience has pretty much shown
"there's no evidence that there's a soul,"
I either get really hacked
off or start laughing,
one of the two.
Depends on if I've had
a glass of wine or not.
[laughing]
But it absolutely makes no
sense because there's no
scientific evidence that
could count in favor
of one of those three theories.
So they're philosophically decidable.
>> We have 15 minutes left,
so I wanna make sure we get to
the core question, which is,
in the west, it appears
that faith is cratering
in at least the heart of the west, Europe.
I asked Dr. Lennox this earlier.
Is that because science is cratering it,
or because the cultural
assumptions about science
are cratering it?
Bill.
>> Wow.
I'm not a sociologist,
so that is a very difficult
question to answer.
I think that in Europe, ever
since the Enlightenment,
the association of the
church and the monarchy
has prejudiced people
against religious faith
because they belong to the old order,
the Ancient Regime that was
overthrown in the Enlightenment.
When you got rid of the
monarchy in favor of democracy
and human autonomy, you
threw off the church as well.
And ever since then,
there's been this advance
in secularism in Europe.
I think this has been
augmented by religious wars,
the Second World War, the First World War,
that has left that
country, or that nation,
or rather continent,
spiritually devastated.
By contrast, in North America,
especially in the United States,
I think we can be very
thankful for the separation
of church and state that exists here,
because the religious faith
of Christianity flourishes
and grows independently of the state,
and therefore is not associated
with it and the old regime.
So I see this, I guess, as
due mainly to these sorts
of sociological factors
and not due to the advance of science.
>> That's very reassuring.
It's not science, it's the
culture that thinks of science
as being anti-faith.
>> William: Yes.
>> You agree with that, John Lennox?
>> To a very large extent I do.
I think that the New Atheists
who are on the way already,
we've now got the new New Atheists.
[laughing]
The New Atheists were very
vocal and very aggressive.
The claim was, for example,
on the cover of Der Spiegel
a few years ago, God's
to blame for everything.
And the Dawkins analysis
was 9/11 radicalized me.
In other words, the
simplistic analysis was,
that's religion.
It's unacceptable.
We've gotta get rid of it.
If you say that's extreme
religion, well, yes,
but extreme religion
thrives in the periphery
of modern religion, so
the whole lot has to go.
And so you got, at the
conference at La Joya five
or six years ago, Steven
Weinberg who won the Nobel Prize
saying, "The best thing
that scientists can do
"for religion in this
generation is to get rid of it."
So there's certainly a
strong element of that.
We mustn't underestimate
the colossal influence
that books like The God Delusion
have had on young people.
I think this whole
sociological element is playing
in with it, but I'm in
encouraged to a certain extent
that many, many young people
are getting a bit fed up.
And indeed, many of my atheist
friends are getting fed up
with that kind of strident,
militant attitude.
And if you put extremists
as in the same category
as the Amish, you're not
actually doing intellectual
thinking a service.
So that it's on the way and
it's a very, very complex mix.
If you ask in the UK why
people leave the churches,
the main BBC conclusion is they
don't answer our questions.
So I think that's an enormous challenge
to the Christian church to get out there
and listen to what people have to say,
listen to their worldview,
and try to help answer their questions.
>> J.P., and then I have a last question
with two minutes for each of you.
>> Yeah, years ago I
went to a small gathering
of 20 people where I was gonna give
an evangelistic presentation in a home,
and a lot of non-Christians came.
I was at the hors d'oeuvres table.
I was warned about a physicist with a PhD
in physics from Hopkins.
And sure enough, he came
in and made a beeline over
to me at the hors d'oeuvres
table, and I shook his hand
and he said, "Well, say,"
first thing he said to me,
"I hear you're a philosopher
and a theologian."
I said, "Well, you know,
I give it my best shot."
He said, "You know, I used
to be interested in that
"when I was a teenager.
"But when I matured, I outgrew it,
"because I came to know that
if you can't quantify it
"and measure it in the lab
and test it empirically,
"it can't be known."
Now, what he was asserting
was scientism, not science,
and there are different
versions of scientism,
but the main danger we've got, again,
is scientists making
statements out of their field.
He was making an epistemological claim,
a claim about the nature of knowledge,
for which he had no training.
If he would just stick to the science,
I think we'd all be better off.
But, the trouble is, the
guys with the lab coats
are so, they're the
priests of the culture,
and they feel like they can
say anything about anything
and nobody stands up to them.
And a philosopher sure can't do it,
because philosophy is
psychology misspelled today
to most people.
[laughing]
>> But why, then, why did they win at all,
even if they're not presently winning?
Why wouldn't the truth
claims of a true system
have overwhelmed people who were simply
on a cultural jihad against
folks they don't like?
>> Well, I think the best
book on that question
is Julie Reuben's book,
she's a Harvard professor,
called, The Making of
the Modern University.
And she traces the American
university from 1880 to 1930
and shows how scientific
naturalism replaced
Christian theism in the university,
and it was largely for
sociological reasons.
>> My last question.
I wanna conclude by where
we were six years ago,
and I'll start with
you, William Lane Craig,
and then go back in with J.P.
Hitchens was arguing that the
evidence for the irrationality
of any religious belief was everywhere
because the violence of
religion was everywhere.
He would be pointing, today, to ISIS
and to the accumulating
evidence of a terrible crisis
in the world having to do
with religious fanaticism.
So how in the world does
the scientific truth
of the rise in fanaticism get repudiated
by an appeal to the Bible
when, in the eyes of the world,
that's the problem right now?
>> Yeah.
It seems to me, as I said then, Hugh,
that you cannot invalidate a worldview
based upon the failure of
adherence of that worldview
to live consistently with the
teachings of that worldview.
As John said earlier, Jesus
would not be implicated
in these kinds of acts.
He wouldn't have led the
Crusades or the Inquisition.
He wouldn't conduct jihad.
And the fact that religious
zealots of all different sorts
of stripes engage in
these sorts of activities
does absolutely nothing
to impune the truth
of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
He, Himself, could not be indicted
for these sorts of things.
So I think that while this
might be a great emotional
difficulty for people in
our culture to overcome,
philosophically, it's just insignificant.
It does not do anything
to show that God does not exist,
that He has not raised
Jesus from the dead,
and that salvation and eternal life
is not available through faith in Christ.
These abuses of religion don't do anything
to undercut those truths.
In fact, on a Christian view
of the falleness of man,
we ought rather to expect
such abuses of religion
because it's so symptomatic
of a fallen humanity,
that it would take the best
and most beautiful things
and twist them into ugly, misshapen forms.
>> Hugh: Dr. Lennox?
[clapping]
>> I come from northern Ireland,
and therefore am familiar
with religious violence.
I have very unusual
parents who were Christian
without being sectarian,
which meant that they employed
in their store both
protestants and Catholics,
and they were bombed for it.
My brother nearly lost his life.
So I'm familiar with it,
and when people ask me
how I respond to it, I say,
"I'm utterly ashamed of it."
I'm utterly ashamed
that the name of Christ
was ever associated
with an AK-47 or a bomb,
and the reason is what
Bill has just explained.
One of the central historical features
of the New Testament
is the trial of Jesus.
It is crucially important.
I discussed this, actually,
with the late Christopher Hitchens.
I said, "Christopher, I agree with you.
"This is the unacceptable
face of religion.
"But don't you realize it's the charge
"of fomenting political violence
"that put Jesus on trial
in the first place?
"He was accused of terrorism,"
to put it in modern language.
And the important thing
is that historically,
when Pilate investigated
him, he knew, of course,
that Jesus had not resisted arrest.
And when Simon Peter took
a sword to swipe the head
off the high priest's
servant, he wasn't very good
and he cut his ear off.
Now, by the way, if I might
say something about that.
I believe Jesus put the ear back on,
but you would be very poetically dim
not to see what's being said.
If you take up weapons to
defend Christ or his message,
you cut the ears off people in a big way.
That's why your question is coming.
[clapping]
So if you're a Christian here tonight,
I commend to you the ministry
of putting ears back on,
so that people can
actually hear the message.
Now, Pilate had heard that.
Then he asked the
question, "Are you a king?
"What kind of a king?"
"Well, my kingdom is not of this world,
"otherwise my servants
would have been fighting."
There was the answer.
And then He said something
highly significant.
He said, "To this end was I born,
"and to this end I came into the world,
"that I should bear witness to the truth."
And Pilate said, "What is truth?"
I don't think he was
cynical, but what he realized
as he went out to declare
Jesus innocent was this,
that the one thing you
cannot do by violence
is to impose truth,
especially if it's a truth
about forgiveness and peace with God.
So that's one side of it,
but there's another very
big side that is suppressed.
It's most interesting reading
atheist literature on this.
You see, Richard Dawkins loves to cite
the song Imagine by John
Lennon, remember that?
"Imagine a world without religion."
Well, I'm not John
Lennon, I'm John Lennox.
[laughing]
And I've written a song called Imagine.
I'm not gonna sing it,
but it's imagine a world
without Hitler, Pol Pot, or Mao.
What about that world?
We don't hear anything of
that from the New Atheists.
In fact, they airbrush out
the whole of 20th century history.
Now, there isn't any
excuse for a single murder
in the name of Christ, but
when you look at the bloodbath
in the 20th century that
is directly traceable
to atheist regimes and philosophies,
anything that happened
over those centuries
in the name of Christianity
is utterly tiny.
Atheism has consequences.
And you know, Richard
Dawkins tried to say,
"Well, Stalin was in seminary
and Hitler was a Christian,"
they've never been to eastern Europe.
You imagine Dawkins' ignorance
of history when he says,
"I can't imagine an
atheist who would blow up
"a cathedral like Chartes or Notre Dame."
A rather clever east
German journalist said,
"No, Ulbricht and Stalin
didn't use bulldozers.
"Cathedrals are too big for bulldozers.
"They used dynamite."
And I've stared into many
holes in the ground in Russia
where there were churches,
50,000 priests Stalin killed.
And Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
when he came to America,
that famous address.
He said, "If I were asked why 100,000,000
"of my fellow citizens had to perish,
"my short answer is,
we have forgotten God."
That's the unacceptable face of atheism.
[clapping]
>> The last question goes to you, J.P.
The speech he just referenced,
I was in the audience for, 35 years ago,
and it was my commencement speech.
Solzhenitsyn thought we had lost,
but in fact the Soviet Union had lost.
He wrote in The Oak and the
Calf, "All you have to do
"is push a stick through it."
Has the New Atheism lost, and
they just don't know it yet?
>> Yeah, I think it's, I
wouldn't want to put it
in those terms, because I think we know,
at the end of the day,
ultimately we're gonna win,
but there will be losses,
if my view of human freedom is correct.
Because I believe that the
net balance of good and evil,
at the end of the world,
when Christ comes back,
is contributed to by human action.
And so there can be genuine losses.
I think there's been huge losses
in Europe for a long time,
and I think that there
could be losses in America.
>> I wanna be more precise, then.
Have the atheists made
arguments from science
that defeat Christianity
thoroughly so that a young person
doesn't wanna go to Biola University,
'cause they don't wanna waste their time
with truth claims made by a
disproven and archaic religion.
>> Yeah, people in the academy don't take
the New Atheists seriously,
because their writings
aren't that sophisticated,
they're popularizers.
Dawkins' work, if it were
judged philosophically,
would be about a C plus.
Seriously.
So no, in fact I find their
work to be a reaction to the growth
of Christian philosophy and apologetics.
I actually think they're
reacting to the wave
of stuff that's been coming from our side.
So absolutely not.
I think there are good days ahead for us,
but we have to keep working at it.
>> For those who want that
wave, as our time is out,
you go to Biola University, biola.edu,
or simply go to the #GODSCIENCE
and follow your nose,
would you please join me
in thanking our distinguished panel?
[clapping and cheering]
You're losing your...
>> One more big round of
applause for the interrogator,
Hugh Hewitt.
[clapping]
I've a couple of things to explain to you.
There will be some book
purchases right out these doors.
Head up the stairs.
You'll find the book tables.
You can purchase a book and
get in line to have one signed.
And don't forget, the restrooms
are in that same direction.
I hope you enjoyed that.
That was kinda like a
mental monster truck rally.
[laughing]
Please do check out the masters degree
in Christian apologetics,
the masters in science and religion,
the Torrey program, and
all the wonderful programs
Biola has from biblical
studies to psychology.
Thank you so much for coming.
We enjoyed it tremendously.
You are dismissed.
>> Narrator: Biola
University offers a variety
of biblically-centered
degree programs ranging
from business to ministry
to the arts and sciences.
Visit biola.edu to find out how Biola
could make a difference in your life.
[upbeat music]
