Why John Lennox Believes in God AND Science
Inside This Episode
Is science really at odds with faith? Or does science actually point to God? In this compelling interview, world-renowned mathematician and Christian apologist John Lennox shares his insights on why he believes faith and science are not enemies but deeply connected.
Led by author/podcaster Justin Brierley, Lennox reflects on his greatest debates with leading atheists like Richard Dawkins, discussing why he believes atheism and science don’t align and how modern scientific discoveries provide evidence for God’s existence.
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Transcript
Eric Huffman: Why do so many people believe that science is at odds with God? Do we really have to make a choice between the two?
Dr. John Lennox is a mathematician, bioethicist, and Christian apologist who spent nearly 15 years debating leading atheists like Richard Dawkins about the relationship between science and faith. He's outspoken about his reasons for believing in the God of the Bible, and he argues that science is fundamentally a Christian endeavor.
Hey everybody. Welcome to Maybe God. I'm your host, Eric Huffman. Today we have a very special guest that I can't wait to share with you. After 13 years of questioning God and living as a functional atheist, I became a Christian at age 34, and I remember then how hungry I was for any resources that could help me find my way as a new believer. And that's how I found Dr. John Lennox.
The first thing that I remember about Dr. Lennox was how he said, atheists believe that religion is a fairy tale for people who are afraid of the dark. But then he said, but what if atheism is a fairy tale for those who are afraid of the light? And it really inspired me to begin seeking out more of Dr. Lennox's work.
So when our friend across the pond, author, speaker, and podcaster Justin Brierley asked if he could have a conversation with his friend John Lennox for the Maybe God podcast, of course we said yes.
Justin has moderated some of John Lennox's most important debates against leading atheists, and today they're talking about some of those greatest debates along with Dr. Lennox's personal faith testimony.
Before you watch, please make sure that you've subscribed to Maybe God, and be sure to leave us all your thoughts in the comments. Now enjoy this very special interview.
Justin Brierley: What an absolute pleasure to speak to you today, John.
Dr. John Lennox: Well, it's a pleasure as always to talk to you, Justin.
Justin Brierley: Well, before we dive into some of the interesting debates and people that you've interacted with over the years, let's take it back to your own life. You grew up in a Christian family. Did you have any sort of seasons of doubt along the way?
Dr. John Lennox: Well, that's two separate issues. I did grow up in a Christian family, and that's important to understand where I'm coming from, because in Northern Ireland at the time, there was a lot of religious bigotry and the beginnings of violence, as you know.
And my parents were unusual in two different ways. The first was they were Christian without being sectarian, which actually amounted to the fact that my father tried as best he could to employ Catholics and Protestants in his store. And that was risky. We had several bombs eventually. And I once asked him, why do you do that? It's so risky. And he said, "Look, Scripture teaches in Genesis that every man and woman, irrespective of their worldview, is created in the image of God and therefore of infinite value." And then he said, "And I intend to treat them like that." That was impressive to me because I could see it cost him.
So their Christianity was lived out in a morally credible sense. That for me growing up was a very impressive keystone, I suppose, in my own development.
Secondly, they loved me enough to allow me to think. And that was quite unusual in a fairly biased, often violent society where religion played a superficial but very real political kind of role. The fact that they opened my mind to the wonder of Scripture and the Christian faith without pushing it, I owe them an immense debt for that because I felt free to learn, to study.
They actually encouraged me to study other worldviews, telling me, although they didn't have a big education, they told me I needed to know what other people thought. And that was a tremendous thing that prepared me for life.
Now, you ask about doubts growing up. Well, doubts come in two kinds. Usually, when the word is mentioned in this kind of context, people think of the kind of sinking black hole feeling where everything is crashing down and it can be the age of a serious depression. I've never had that kind of doubt.
But doubt, well, the Latin word, as you know, dubitare, to be in two minds. And in the sense of questioning, I spend a lot of time doubting. That's why I'm talking to you. Because you, in your study of philosophy, and me as well, we've learned to be self-critical and critical of other people's views.
What I found actually building up my confidence in the truth of Christianity and my faith in God and Christ has been precisely that, that I've questioned not only my own faith, but I've interacted and engaged very deeply with the faith. And it is a faith, the belief system of other people, like the new atheists and others.
So yes, I still, at the age of 81, try to ask the questions in that sense of being fair to the challenges that are out there. For me, growing up from a very early teenage, the issue of truth was paramount. Even at school, I realized that this was a key thing.
In my mid-teenage, later teenage, I started reading a lot of books, not just Christian books. But two authors in particular helped me massively. One was C.S. Lewis, because I didn't know what it was like to be inside the shoes of an atheist. And he helped me to understand that. Also, he helped me to understand the rationale of Christianity and studied defense of Christianity.
The other was an author I came across, I think it was about 16, Robert E.D. Clark of Cambridge, a chemist. He wrote a book on science and Christian belief for The universe: plan or accident?. Those are two of his titles. And they introduced me to the science-religion debate, what we would now probably call the philosophy of religion.
I got very excited about that because this was the first scientist, in a sense, I had read who was passionate about science, but equally passionate about the fact that science and faith in God were very good bedfellows. They didn't contradict one another. That prepared me pretty well for going to Cambridge last century in 1962.
Justin Brierley: It's wonderful to hear about the way your faith blossomed over those years. You mentioned C.S. Lewis as an important influence as a writer. You're one of the few people I know who actually saw him in real life. Do you want to tell us what it was like to actually go to some of, I assume, his final years as a student in Cambridge?
Dr. John Lennox: Not his final years, his final course of lectures. He died in '63. This was '62, Michaelmas term. Very cold. And I realized he was in Cambridge at the time. I didn't know he was very ill. But he had agreed to give a final course of lectures on the poetry of John Donne, actually, in the Michaelmas term.
The lecture theater was just on the far side of the road from the Maths Institute building. And I'm afraid I escaped the mathematics occasionally and went to hear three or four of his final lectures. And I'm very glad I did that.
The memory, it's a sort of visual impact more than anything else, that he was a big burly chap. I think even more burly than I am. He came into the lecture theater with his coat on, hat and a long scarf, and started lecturing immediately as he picked his way through the serried masses of students, because he was already a legend in his own time.
He gradually divested himself of his outer garment, so that by the time he got to the lectern, he'd already given four or five minutes of a superbly crafted lecture. At the end of the lecture, he reversed that process. He kept lecturing while he put on his hat and his scarf and his coat, and then burst out through the double doors, still lecturing, so that those were the last words of the lecture that he didn't give any time for public Q&A, not at lectures.
And of course, it was powerful stuff to me as an undergraduate to hear the fabled Lewis. He would twinkle in his eye where he would say, "And now I have something to say to my weaker brethren," by which he meant the non-Christians in the audience. It was heady stuff and I'm so glad I experienced it.
Justin Brierley: I was going to say his example obviously mirrors your own life in some respects. Obviously, you grew up a Christian and didn't lose the faith. He became a Christian in his early adult life. But you've both been academics at Oxford University. You've both encountered, you know, skeptical naturalist materialism. Lewis, of course, famously wrote and debated in his time with some of the critics of his age. And you've done the same in your time.
I mean, what would you say the atmosphere was like as you started your academic career in Oxford in mathematics and philosophy of science? When it came to those around you, your colleagues, what was the sort of level of skepticism and attitude towards belief in God?
Dr. John Lennox: Well, you've forgotten the fact that Lewis and I are fellow Irishmen.
Justin Brierley: True, true. Another similarity. Very good.
Dr. John Lennox: But I think there's an immense gulf in terms of brain power. I came to Oxford pretty late on, you must recall. I've been there for 26, 27 years. And so I'd been an academic for my life up until that point and had encountered some other academics. But Oxford turned out to be a completely different situation.
I recall quite early on a very senior professor who became a very good friend. But he was an atheist. I had a chat with him one day, and he looked quite frightened. And I said, "What's wrong?" He said, "You know, if they find out what you believe here, you'll never survive." I just said, "Well, I'll take that risk." He was scared for me, so to speak.
I found mixed reactions, but a great deal more sympathy than you might superficially think. And it's still true today. If you investigate carefully the science faculties at Oxford, there is quite a number of Christians there and some heads of department. You know, Christianity is pretty well represented.
I didn't get into the public confrontations that you spoke about at the beginning until 14, 15 years ago. So that was a period of my life which is relatively recent. I suppose looking back, and I'm writing my autobiography at the moment, I hope... I'm actually editing it, which is pretty painful. I'm editing it at this time.
I had a long preparation because I was thinking about what public intellectuals were saying about Christianity and speaking about it in the sense that in forums of students and churches and so on, trying to inform them of what was going on in the culture. But actual direct confrontation, the first major one was with Richard Dawkins in Birmingham, Alabama. And then the rest, as they say, is history.
The point about teaching children that faith is a virtue is that you're teaching them that you don't have to justify what you do. You can simply shelter behind the statement "that's my faith" and you're not to question that. In most cases, that's quite harmless.
But if you are the kind of person who takes your faith really literally and who believes that Allah has ordered you, or it would be the will of Allah that you go and blow somebody up, then it is the fact that you were educated as a child in a madrasa to believe implicitly in the faith that you were taught and not to question it, which leads to the sorts of terrible acts which are done in the name of religion.
Christ was actually put on trial for being a fanatical terrorist. That's very easy to forget. And He was publicly exonerated from the charge by the Roman procurator. Truth cannot be imposed by violence, particularly the truth that Christ had come into the world to bring a message of God's love and forgiveness. I would like you to write another book in which you differentiate between religions, because they are not all the same. Some support fanaticism, others don't.
That, quite unexpected by me, gave me an international public platform. The interactions with people, and the fact that I was always questioning and always prepared to question myself. You know, the Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman once gave some very good advice. He was a physicist. And he said that always bend over backwards to understand and criticize your own work because the easiest person to fool is yourself.
A second quote by him, and I love this one, is remember that outside their field, the scientist is just as dumb as anybody else. Those, of course, are warnings to me because in a sense I'm a scientist and we are talking about things outside my expertise in terms of academic field.
But that kind of advice from a scientist who really made it, winning the Nobel Prize, I find very encouraging. And the really great scientists, I discovered, were very open to questions and a surprising number of them believers in God. I was amazed quite long ago to discover that between 1900 and 2000, over 60% of Nobel Prize winners apparently believed in God. So that kind of thing I found enormously encouraging. I wasn't alone.
Justin Brierley: I found as well the books that you were publishing around that time as those new atheist books and leaders came to the fore were incredibly helpful in responding. I mean, I think the first book I bumped into of yours was Has Science Buried God?, which a new revised and updated version under the title Cosmic Chemistry came out a few years ago, but also the fact that you were there to sort of, as I say, stand toe-to-toe with some of these leading public intellectuals.
I remember so well that second debate you had with Richard Dawkins at Oxford University, both on your home turf, as it were. And the setting was remarkable as well, the Natural History Museum in Oxford. So you had this sort of towering skeleton of a T-Rex behind you as you went back and forth on the issues. And I remember just finding it a wonderful, exhilarating experience.
What was it like for you, John? I mean, obviously, we can talk about the arguments and ideas in a moment, but what was the sense of occasion like when you were sitting there having that conversation in that kind of environment?
Dr. John Lennox: In one word, terrified. I'd encountered Dawkins in Alabama and that debate came about in an odd way because I was invited by the person that organized the first debate, Larry Taunton, an American. And as we were coming towards the day of the lecture, I was to give there on Dawkins' book, The God Delusion, Larry suddenly said, why don't we give Dawkins the chance to go head-to-head with you once more? Because it's on his turf, why not? So I agreed to that quite readily.
Dawkins, on that particular evening, I think you'll remember, was quite angry and flew at me and started by saying, well, the issue of God raises the question, what God? And he said, I've met John Lennox before. And then he trailed his usual punchline of the miracles that Jesus did and said with great surprise on his face that I believed in these things, you see. And it's not scientific and all the rest of it.
The moderator didn't really say very much. So the terror came at the point where I realized that I've got to try both participate in this and to a certain extent guide it. And that's very difficult. It was a pretty hard-slinging match from side to side. I regretted... there's one thing that sticks out in my mind about that. When I walked in to start the debate, I recalled that the building we were in had a connection with Bibles, but I couldn't exactly remember it. And I had no signal.
And I asked some of the staff, "Wasn't this museum built in connection with OUP?" And they'd never heard of this, you see. And I mentioned this during the debate because Richard had had a room in that place. And he said, "Oh no, it's nothing to do with." And of course, immediately after the debate, I checked and realized that the actual funding came from the prophets of OUP imprinting Bibles. The museum itself was dedicated to show the glory of God in the natural world. So I missed that. And always these kinds of things, you feel, I missed that.
On the plus side, I can remember that I got a letter afterwards from a PhD student who essentially became a Christian because of that debate. And there've been many since. So that at least it served the purpose that I had stirred up a hornet's nest at the very least.
Justin Brierley: Well, I can say from where I was standing, I thought you did an amazing job. And I remember speaking to you at the sort of after party afterwards and getting the sense that you were a bit concerned about how it had come across, how you'd done. And I just felt actually you'd done a wonderful job. And it's not the kind of thing that anyone sort of could go into and necessarily know exactly how to play it. You just have to think on your feet. As you say, it's what happens in the moment.
Nonetheless, I think beyond sort of who won what point and so on, I think just for me, it was the importance of having Christianity represented in the public sphere. And that for me was the overriding importance of what I saw as your ministry in those days when this new atheism was riding high in the bestseller charts and in public circles and so on.
But turning to the specifics, one of the things you mentioned there is that, yes, this wonderful natural history museum was funded by the profits of Bibles being printed around the world and so on. And many people simply underestimate or simply are ignorant of the fact that the scientific enterprise itself is fundamentally a Christian endeavor.
I wonder if you could just speak to that briefly, because so much misinformation, particularly from people like Richard Dawkins, has gone around the world, that science is at odds with Christian faith, when in fact, modern science really owes a debt to Christianity.
Dr. John Lennox: It does indeed. Let me say first that retrospectively, your words to me after that debate have lived with me and been an immense encouragement. And your perception is right, that I was advised before the first debate with Dawkins by a very senior, not a Christian, British reporter for our leading press, that what I should do is make sure by the end of the debate that my message in that sense got through over and beyond the debate, my Christian message. I feel that was achieved to a certain extent. You encouraged me.
But you're absolutely right. You see, the dedication of the Natural History Museum in Oxford to the glory of God is totally consistent with what we understand of the origins of modern science. I'm not speaking of the medieval period, but modern science and its connection with, let's say, the biblical worldview, the Judeo-Christian tradition. And that's generally accepted.
I worked for some time with Professor John Hedley Brooke, Oxford's first professor of science and religion. And he's a cautious person. But he went generally along with what is accepted by most people. And that is... well, I might as well give Lewis' quote, because it's one of the most memorable. Lewis said about the rise of science in the 16th and 17th centuries, men became scientific because they expected law in nature. And they expected law in nature because they believed in the lawgiver. All you have to do is trace the history.
If you start with Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and so on, Clerk Maxwell, Faraday, all of these people were believers in God, not only that, it's quite clear that their biblical worldview didn't hinder their science. It was the motor that drove it. That is simply a largely accepted fact of history. And it's a very important one, because there is a sense in which the attitudes that have been developed and are used in scientific research sit very comfortably with the biblical worldview that talks about a contingent creation.
God, all-powerful, could have created it any way He wished. So if you want to know how things were done and how they worked, you need to go out there and study it. And the idea of a rationality of creation, that there are laws and so on, fitted perfectly with the notion of a lawgiver. Although, of course, some people took it to extremes. But nevertheless, that basic thesis, I think, is very important to get out into the public space today.
Put it this way. No one has any reason to feel shame of being a Christian and being a scientist, because the two are amazingly good bedfellows. In fact, I developed a thesis that goes further, and it's much more provocative, of course. That is, atheism doesn't fit well with science. I've developed that, particularly in the recent book that you mentioned, Cosmic Chemistry: Do God and Science Mix? And I argue in that book that atheism and science don't mix very well.
Justin Brierley: And I've really benefited from that book. Some of the conversations that have led up to that book as well, one of the things that I've noticed, and you very kindly provided an endorsement for a book I wrote a couple of years ago called The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, is that this new atheist movement has essentially waned. The figures who led it are no longer the sort of rock star public intellectuals. And those who are still on the public stages don't tend to be bashing religion so much. They've sort of turned their attention in the direction of the culture wars and things. I think new atheism sort of overplayed its hand at one level.
Another debate that sticks in my memory that I had the privilege of hosting was between you and the Oxford chemist Peter Atkins, who's at the more extreme end, let's say, of the sort of curmudgeonly sort of version of atheism. Very dismissive of Christianity, you know, simply waves everything away as superstition and poppycock, you know. Why would God create atheists?
Dr. John Lennox: Well, He wouldn't create atheists. I mean, God creates human beings in that sense in His image. And Peter is as created in God's image as I am. God help God. And his rationality and his science and all the rest of it is just an example of the marvelous things that God builds into people. People choose to be atheists. You see, it's a worldview. It's a faith system.
I believe in God. Christianity is my worldview. Naturalism is Peter's worldview. He believes it. So the real issue is this: what worldview do we believe in?
Justin Brierley: But arguably, you know, in those debates, I think what you validly accused him of was scientism. Just perhaps explain what scientism is and perhaps why this is an overplay by the new atheists in terms of what science is for.
Dr. John Lennox: Well, I did accuse him of scientism because he's one of the clearest exponents of it. And essentially, it's the idea that science is our only way to truth. It's a very naive position philosophically and actually culturally. If science was the only way to truth, then half the subjects in universities and schools would be unnecessary. As someone interested in logic also, the idea that science or the statement that science is the only way to truth is self-contradictory because it is not a statement of science. So if it is true, it is false. It's one of those beautiful conundrums that gets people up all night worrying about.
But certainly, Peter Atkins, in several encounters I had with him, was absolutely firmly of the opinion that I was a complete nut, and thinking that there was any other source of truth. Therefore, logically, he would have to get rid of history, philosophy, language, literature, all the rest of it. It is a ridiculous position.
However, it is strongly represented in the camp of the new atheists. They don't let it go because it seems to be a pillar of their philosophy. And I suspect, Justin, that it may be one of the reasons that their influence has waned. People have seen that the emperor has no clothes. And if at the heart of a worldview, there's a patent self-contradiction running, then people begin to be skeptical.
Your comment on the public intellectuals, I think, is very important. Your book is very important, actually, The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God. It's very interesting to watch people come into contact with the historical legacy of Christianity and begin to move in the Christian direction.
Now, I mentioned the history of science, but there's the whole history of our culture and laws and so on. And the person to go for that is, of course, Tom Holland, whom you have interviewed. And his book Dominion, I believe every thinking person ought to read, because he was brought up, in a sense, to think. He thought, because of his studies in the ancient literature, that all the values we held in high regard came from Greece and Rome. And he discovered, no, they didn't. They came, essentially, from Christianity. And that's the thesis of the book Dominion.
That's important, because our law-giving, our legal system, and virtually all that's good about our society, actually has very strong biblical roots. I think that's something to be communicated, because it has been, to my mind, suppressed. Possibly because, probably because the other side, so to speak, has had far more opportunity in the media to communicate their scientism.
So I am implacably against scientism and have written about it. And I feel and find that people understand this when it's explained to them. Sometimes they get surprised, using your words, that they've given in to such a distortion for so long.
Justin Brierley: I was just turning to see if I could find a book by Peter Atkins that is somewhere on my shelves here. I may not be able to put my hands on it. But it demonstrated the irony of this, because it was a book that he wrote a few years ago, that was essentially trying to argue that we can get a universe from nothing.
Dr. John Lennox: Oh, yes. Yes.
Justin Brierley: But the irony of it was that it began on the cover page. He has a quote by Francis Bacon. And of course, Francis Bacon was the founder of the Scientific Method, an extremely committed Christian. I did point out this irony to him that he begins his book trying to get rid of God with a quote from one of the founders of the Scientific Method, who obviously saw God as absolutely essential to the whole thing. But anyway, that's a bit of a side note.
I'd love to talk a little bit about where we've come to now in the culture, because I do think things have changed a bit. One of the things I do talk about, and with your help have examined in my podcast series as well, is the way that actually there has been quite an interesting shift in science itself, away from this very materialist perspective.
And whereas Dawkins and Co could at once have said, Darwin allowed me to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist, I'm not sure that's quite so easy to say now, because all sorts of things have actually changed, even in essentially mainstream scientific circles, that make it far harder to just simply dismiss purpose, design, teleology, to use a fancy word, in the whole area. That's from cosmology, the fact that the kind of chemistry exists in our universe that could produce humans to the actual process that it took for life to begin on Earth, and much more besides.
Now, this is a huge area, and I'm not asking you to expound on all of it in the time we've got, John, but maybe could you give us a sketch of how you, as someone who's obviously followed these and been quite involved in these debates, have seen the tide turning essentially against that very naturalistic, materialist view of science and the universe?
Dr. John Lennox: I think there has been that kind of a shift where people have realized that the kind of closed world or closed universe materialism shuts you in and actually brings with it a number of serious self-contradictions, because here we are as scientists using our minds or our brains to study the universe.
If you probe and ask people, give me a brief history of the brain, they'll say, well, the brain came together by mindless, unguided processes. I have tested, and it's quite fun. I've spoken to many very distinguished scientists, and I've said, Look, tell me, if you knew that the computer you used in your laboratory was the end product of mindless, unguided processes, would you trust it? And 100% of the answers have been no. And yet that is the explanation you ultimately give me.
People, as you say, they have come round to opening their minds a little bit to the idea of teleology as such, and possibly of divine causation. Take the teleology further. Even in the case of hardened Darwinists and so on, they are beginning to reinterpret in terms of the fact that, look, there's something so strange about all of this, how we came to be, that there must be some kind of teleology deeply buried in it.
Justin Brierley: And just for the benefit of those who perhaps aren't familiar with that somewhat philosophical term teleology, it's essentially that there's a purpose-driven aspect to the way that nature unfolds or that the universe conducts itself.
Dr. John Lennox: That's exactly right. In my kind of area, mathematics and more particularly theoretical physics, one of the things that points in this direction from the universe, looking at the universe itself, is the almost universally agreed fine-tuning that is observable. In an elementary sense, of course, we can see on our earth if it rotated much faster, there'd be no people on it. And much slower, we'd boil to death in the day and freeze to death at night. If the Earth was near to the sun, similarly, and further away. It's got to be just right.
And when physicists start talking about, as Lord Rees, the astronomer royal, talks about in his book Just Six Numbers, there are certain fundamental constants of nature that have got to be right to such an astonishing accuracy in order for carbon-based life to be possible. They don't explain, of course, why it exists, but they have to be such that life is possible.
I remember I was invited by a very distinguished Oxford philosopher who's an atheist to address his students on God and science. And he said, look, he said, I hope you're going to use, and he's an atheist, hope you're going to use the very best argument there is for God. Oh, I said, now, if you tell me what it is, I'll use it. And he said, If ever I was to become a Christian," and these are his words, "I would lean on the fine-tuning of the universe." Because you see, that is not an idea thought up by a Christian minority or a fringe group. That's at the center of science.
And as Stephen Hawking, the late Stephen Hawking, said, it's there. And in a sense, it demands an explanation of some kind. I've actually written a book called God and Stephen Hawking, whose design is, anyway, which has been updated since his death, by the way. There's a new edition of it. And that fine-tuning is a pointer. It's not a proof in the mathematical sense. We don't get that. But we get pointers, evidence that are totally consistent with the idea that there is a cosmic mind behind everything.
I find it absolutely fascinating that people are now beginning to cautiously, but nevertheless, definitely give examples of fine-tuning in biology. And I've tried as best I can to understand them and incorporate them as well in my book, Cosmic Chemistry: Do God and Science Mix?.
Justin Brierley: It's a great book, highly recommend it. I do want to touch briefly as well before the end of today's conversation on your most recent book, Friend of God: The Inspiration of Abraham in an Age of Doubt. We've talked at some length here about some of these fantastic debates you've had with well-known atheists and some of the issues around science and faith and the way in which various aspects of our universe and life point in the direction of design and God.
But one of my most memorable conversations that I had you in was actually rather different to those sort of new atheist set pieces, if you like. It was when you joined me in California in 2019, and we were on stage at a church and I'd invited you to a dialogue with Dave Rubin, who's a very popular YouTube talk show host.
And that was such a different conversation to the ones I'd had you in before. It is the reason it stuck in my mind because Dave Rubin himself, I think, was very influenced by the new atheists at one time. He was an atheist at one time. But he said on stage in that encounter between you, I no longer think of myself as an atheist. And he talked about how his thinking had really changed in this area, partially under the influence of mentors like Jordan Peterson, interestingly.
But you ended up having such a warm, congenial conversation with this man who's gay, who's sort of a secular Jewish sort of by background, but in which you genuinely kind of had a meeting of minds. And there was such a warm reception in the audience to it as well. Because I think what came through in that, as well as your obvious sort of academic credentials, John, was your pastoral heart. You really wanted to engage Dave Rubin just to sort of persuade him that he really should take the person of Jesus seriously and that there was something here worth considering. And that just came across so strongly.
I remember laughing actually at one point because Dave Rubin was joking, do you guys want me to convert before the end of the evening? It was quite fun and jovial. But I don't know if you have any memories of that particular evening and, I don’t know, the tone, I suppose, which I think represents something of the vibe shift we've seen. That people are just more open to sort of taking spirituality, God, Christianity seriously in ways that they would have perhaps been embarrassed to in a public setting previously.
Dr. John Lennox: Yes, I have the happiest memories of that. And I look back with gratitude to you for inviting me to do it. Because from a distance, at the beginning, it seemed to me quite a formidable thing to take on. But I suppose it's one of those conversations that reflects what I have in my heart in all debates. Although some of them are more technical than others.
In other words, I want to, even publicly in the discussion, to befriend the person I'm discussing. Because it seems to me they're deeper issues than pure scientific factuality. There's a whole question of meaning and purpose in life and identity.
You mentioned a shift. There's a shift in culture as well, I think, where there is interest still, a lot of it, in science and God and so on. But where can I find meaning? Man's search for meaning, human search for meaning, and identity is very high on people's cultural agenda today. And that shift I've noticed. Of course, you set that conversation up ideally to represent that.
And if a worldview is worth believing in, indeed, if it's true, you would expect it to affect the heart as well as the mind. And quite frankly, I think that was a wonderful opportunity to show that people of very differing perspectives, like Dave Rubin and myself, that our minds can meet because our hearts are open for a meeting.
I think that is just hugely important because it communicates something other than, oh, well, he won these points and the other chap lost the debate kind of thing. Because my heart concern really is, and now at the age of 81 even more so, is trying to get across also at an intellectual level that Christianity is real. It affects one's life and it involves not a relationship with a set of propositions, but a relationship with a person. And Christianity is deeply personal.
And it seems to me that in a world that is reeling from many things that we're all painfully aware of, that search for meaning is out there. And it's necessary and very important that those of us who feel we have found something share it and allow other people to evaluate it. That's the key thing. That we don't come across as demagogues and forcing people, but we show in a winsome way that Christianity has something to offer. Relationship with Christ has something real to offer in answer to human deepest longings, our failures, our hopes, and all this kind of thing. That's why I feel that that particular conversation stands out in my mind as one of the most important I've done. And thanks to you for creating the possibility.
Justin Brierley: Well, it's interesting that you talk about the desire to create friendships and, of course, the central importance of bringing it back to relationship with God, because that's very much the theme of one of your most recent books, Friend of God: The Inspiration of Abraham in an Age of Doubt. Do you want to just quickly give us a sense of what led you to write this particular book, not the first book you've written about some of the Old Testament characters, but why you wanted to focus on Abraham's story?
Dr. John Lennox: Well, from very early days, I have seen, or I was enabled to see — I had a very good mentor — the relevance not only of the New Testament but of the Old Testament to the contemporary world. Abraham was brought up... came from ancient Babylon, which had a polytheistic worldview. But when you scratch the surface of that, you find that their gods were deifications of the forces of nature, and therefore were their ultimate controllers.
I know many physicists who believe exactly the same thing today, that ultimately the four fundamental forces of nature are the controllers because there is no God. And so being brought up in that atmosphere and having to come to terms with the existence of a creator, that was a big deal.
Of course, Abraham is regarded as the father of three major world religions and has billions, so to speak, of followers. Therefore, I felt that before my life here on earth ends, that it would be good to tackle a character of this size, also because he's a very complicated character. And in that, he shows us how faith in God is, in a way, a simple matter. In another way, it leads you in life to a journey which has many ups and downs and ins and outs. And because he didn't always get it right, in fact, sometimes spectacularly wrong, he can become a guide for us.
The other reason I wrote is because the New Testament holds Abraham out as the prime example of what it means to trust God. And that's hugely important because people today are very confused. They say to me, are you religious? And I say, well, what do you mean by a religion? If you mean a sort of system, a merit-based system where you try to keep certain rules helped by gurus and imams and priests and so on in the hope that God will accept you one day at the Day of Judgment, if that's a religion, which most people think it is, then I'm not religious at all. Because my faith is in a personal God and my relationship is personal. And personal relationships are not merit-based in that way.
It would be absurd to propose to a girl and say, well, if you keep the rules in this cookbook I'm giving you for 40 years, I'll accept you. And yet I find so many people think of God that way. This idea that God is personal and the basic issue is not working for Him, although that's important in its own space, it's trusting Him as a person.
The biblical position is that God came into the world in Jesus Christ and offered people a relationship of trust and love and so on. This is the area we're working in. And once people begin to realize they're not being asked to join a religion and perform certain duties that may or may not be painful in the vague hope of one day being accepted, the wonderful thing, and it's the main reason I am a Christian, is that what Christ offers nobody else offers.
He doesn't compete with anybody else because nowhere else are we offered forgiveness and acceptance now in this life through repentance and trust in Christ. Now, those are technical words that need to be explained, but at its heart, and I've lived with this for 70 years, probably, give or take, and it just grows more exciting as I get near to the end of my life on this earth because I know it isn't the end. I've got a hope. And that hope has got both subjective elements in it and objective elements in it, which I tried to talk to Richard Dawkins about. Namely, I believe as a scientist, as a Christian, as a person, that Jesus rose from the dead and therefore He is who he claimed to be. But that's a big topic.
Justin Brierley: Well, one we could perhaps explore another time, but thank you so much. That is a perfect place to leave the conversation, John. The sense that actually it's ultimately about this hope. Beyond all the arguments and the evidence, it's about this relationship that we're offered through Christ's death and resurrection.
And I'm really looking forward. You mentioned you're working on autobiography. I'm really looking forward to that being released. I'm sure it's triggering all kinds of interesting memories and thoughts about what your own legacy will be. But thank you so much for spending some time with me today on the Maybe God podcast. It's been a delight to talk to you.
Dr. John Lennox: Well, you're very kind, Justin. I thank you for the work you're doing and getting out into the public space and raising these issues. It's simply wonderful. And I look forward to the next time. Bye.
Justin Brierley: God bless, John. Thank you.