Oxford Mathematician CONFRONTS the Demonic...

The Challenge of Atheism and the Reliability of Christian Faith

But it seems to me that atheism here has no answer.

This is John Lennox, an Irish mathematician who has publicly debated famous atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. He gave an incredible speech at Oxford Union about God, Christianity, atheism, and science, and I can't wait to share some highlights with you and provide some comments on them.

Let's just get right into it. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. I believe in God. I believe in the supernatural God who created the heavens and the earth. I believe in a God who holds the heavens and the earth in existence.

I believe that on the basis of rational evidence, similar to the beliefs held by the founders of this house, who gave this university the motto Dominus Illuminatio Mea. They saw no contradiction between faith in God and the utmost excellence in rational inquiry.

It just blows my mind how many people, even Christians, believe that faith is, by its very nature, irrational and blind. But Luke himself said that he wrote the book of Luke so that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

Christian faith is simply trusting what God has revealed, and it has absolutely nothing to do with blind faith or not having any good reasons for believing what we believe.

The other thing that I want to say is, I'm not coming at this blind, right? I choose to believe the Bible because it's a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses.

They report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies, and they claim that their writings are divine rather than human in origin. So again, this is not just, you know, close your eyes and hope you feel something, you know, type stuff.

We do not have a God who calls upon us for blind faith. We have a God who speaks. We have a God who has revealed himself.

And as we look at the rise of science in the 16th and 17th centuries, Alfred North Whitehead and many others commented that men became scientific because they expected law in nature, and they expected law in nature because they believed in the lawgiver.

Something that atheists today like to ignore is that for many of the most brilliant scientists throughout history, belief in God was the very foundation of their science and the very civilization we enjoy living in today.

Popular atheist Lawrence Krauss makes this same mistake. Listen to Jeff Durbin respond to Lawrence's misunderstanding of history.

When Krauss makes these kind of ignorant, anti-historical claims, they need to be confronted. They just need to be confronted. You see these audacious, bold claims made by these popular atheists many, many times.

And if you just don't know history, then you just aren't thinking and considering how irrational that is. The institutions and the history that gave Krauss his degree and his perspective were developed by Christianity, by the Christian worldview.

And that is a fact of history. It cannot be ignored. So when he says like, it's counterproductive today, it's like, well, you mean the worldview that gave you the nation that you're in, that gave you the ideas that you hold to that are just very good ideas?

You mean the worldview that developed the world in the way that it is now because of the Christian worldview? Watch this. Here's the thing. It's not an accident of the Christian worldview. It's not just happenstance that the Christian worldview developed Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, Harvard, all the rest.

It's not an accident. Like, it just happens to be the case that those institutions were created by Christians on the basis of the Christian worldview as Christian institutions to spread the gospel. It's not an accident that science was given rise, modern science was given rise out of that.

It's because explicitly of the Christian worldview. When you look at Isaac Newton and all of the things that he was doing when he was appealing to the Christian worldview in terms of all the work that he was doing and pointing to Bible verses, that's what grounded his discovery.

And when you look at all the Christians in history, the famous Christian scientists, not the cult, but the real Christian scientists in history that gave us what we have today in terms of technology and modern medicine and all the rest, it's not an accident of the Christian worldview that we got all of that.

It was directly derived from it.

As we will continue to see, a lot of what Lennox says here is very similar to the kinds of things people like Jeff Durbin are saying today.

God, Science, and the Rationality of the Universe

So ladies and gentlemen, I'm not ashamed of being both a scientist and a Christian because arguably Christianity gave me my subject. What I am amazed at is that serious thinkers today continue to ask us to choose between God and science.

That's like asking people to choose between Henry Ford and engineering as an explanation of the motor car. When Newton discovered his law of gravity, he didn't say, I've got a law, I don't need God. No, he wrote the Principia Mathematica, arguably the greatest work in the whole history of science because he saw that God is not the same kind of explanation as a scientific explanation.

God doesn't compete. Agency does not compete with mechanism and law.

As an example, just listen to the way Richard Dawkins presents God and science as being contradictory.

The idea that something that you don't understand, you immediately say, oh, God did it, is not only logically flawed, but actually aesthetically offensive. I mean offensive in the sense that it's, it subtracts from the beauty and the elegance of science where we've got this wonderful theory for life to then have to jettison all that and throw it away.

Having explained the origin of complexity and the beauty of life to then say, oh God did it. Because things like God, things that are complicated and capable of designing anything have to come about by some explicable process.

They come about late in the universe, not early. I've got to stop.

Thank you very much. But the key issue isn't whether you have a theory that might explain the origin of life. The key issue is actually whether science is a legitimate starting point at all. Richard Dawkins just assumes that everyone should view science as the default starting point, but as we'll soon see from John Lennox, that is one of the very points that we should be debating.

Why is there something rather than nothing? Alan Sandage, the brilliant cosmologist who became a Christian in his fifties, said God is the answer to that question. But people are now so desperate to show that the universe created itself from nothing, which seems to me to be an immediate oxymoron.

If I say X created Y, I'm assuming the existence of X to explain the existence of Y. If I say X created X, I'm assuming the existence of X to explain the existence of X, which simply shows that nonsense remains nonsense even if high-powered scientists utter it.

It reminds me a little bit of G .K. Chesterton who said, to make everything out of nothing, and then to pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.

Science is predicated upon the idea that science could exist in the first place, and if the universe has not existed eternally, which most scientists agree is the case, then the question of where the universe came from is basically a prerequisite for true rationality.

When atheists argue that it's legitimate to simply say, we don't know, then they are basically saying that all of their rationality has irrationality as a foundation. Atheists basically have no answer for the origin of the universe, or the origin of life.

Listen to what Grant Bonson says about this. What's the origin of life?

If they ask the atheist world, it'd be, where'd life come from? According to the atheist theory, the reigning dogma or prejudice in our day, as you know, life came from non-life. That ought to be enough right there to make any rational person snicker.

Excuse me? Life came from non-life? In fact, I thought it was one of the established principles of biology that spontaneous generation is not true. And you know what the atheist will say? I mean, he may have a more sophisticated way of doing it.

Basically, the atheist says, we want one exception. Just give us one exception to our universal rules. Well, if I give you one exception, it's not universal. And if we start giving out exceptions, then the Christian can just as easily say, I want an exception too.

At every point that you think that what I'm saying is not rational, not consistent, then I just want an exception from the demand of rationality. No, I cannot give you an exception to where life comes from.

The idea that there was a prebiotic phase of evolution where chemicals just somehow came together accidentally and life originated is a preposterous scientific theory. It's a preposterous philosophical notion too, because it assumes that something that doesn't have any of the characteristics of the final product came together with something else that had none of the characteristics of the final property.

But in bringing those two somethings together, you got the final product. It makes no difference how much you tinker with or work with a cake mix. You're not ever going to get a political constitution out of a cake mix.

And I don't mean a cake mix box having somehow a political constitution in it. You all know how to make it. Well, maybe you don't all know, but you have some general idea of how cakes are made. You also have some idea of the character of political constitutions.

They have no relationship to each other. They don't share, you know, attributes. And so for somebody to say, I think political constitutions arise from cake mixes, I say, well, that's preposterous. And some people say, give us time.

We're working on it. That's essentially what the evolutionist is doing. He says, well, that's right. Life and intelligence and morality have attributes which don't have anything to do with inert chemicals.

But give us time. We're working on it. Let us tinker with the cake mix, and eventually we'll get freedom. We'll get morality. We'll get intelligence. We'll get life itself. Inorganic things do not, by mechanical reconfiguration, give rise to the organic.

The heavens declare the glory of God, says the ancient psalm. And we've unraveled a bit of that, seeing the fine-tuning of the fundamental forces of nature. It's something that's so striking to scientists that it demands explanation.

And it seems to me that Arno Penzias hit it right. He is the Nobel Prize winner who discovered the microwave background on which a lot of the evidence for the Big Bang is based. He said astronomy leads us to a unique event.

A universe which was created out of nothing. One with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the right conditions required to permit life. And one which has an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan.

Again, let's re-emphasize that the very existence of the universe is a stumbling block that atheists have not yet been able to overcome.

And I would argue that they never will. But I want to come to what I think is one of the fundamental arguments for theism. I take it this house believes in reason. That's why we're all here. And as a scientist, I believe that the universe is rationally intelligible.

That is something that has struck some of the geniuses of science as demanding an explanation. Einstein said the only incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it's comprehensible.

Here, John gets to the question of intelligibility. How is human rationality possible in the first place? This is, again, a question that atheists oftentimes completely bypass and have absolutely no answer to.

According to Christian confession, God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. Scripture teaches us that God upholds the world and carries the universe along to its intended destination.

Therefore, we have a justification that satisfies the preconditions necessary for the intelligibility of the uniformity in nature. All human experience, let me say it again, all human experience depends upon the uniformity in nature, or the inductive principle, and that the future will be like the past.

Whether we're talking about the scientific method, the laws of logic, the laws of mathematics, or walking our dogs, all human experience is dependent upon the principle of induction. Our opponents will assume this all night.

They're doing it right now. They'll not, however, be able to justify their appeals to it, given their atheistic presuppositions, and will demonstrate their dependence upon the triune God.

Oftentimes, this very question itself about the origin of rationality is completely foreign to atheists. For example, Greg Bonson once debated Gordon Stein, who was utterly unprepared for the kinds of things Bonson talked about.

Do you believe there are laws of logic, then? Absolutely.

Are they universal? They're agreed upon by human beings. They aren't laws that exist out in nature.

Are they simply conventions, then?

They're conventions, but they're conventions that are self-verifying.

Are they sociological laws or laws of thought?

They are laws of thought, which are interpreted by men, and promulgated by men. Are they material in nature? How can a law be material?

That's the question I'm going to ask you. I would say no. That's a sign that you have an opportunity to cross-examine Dr. Bonson.

Dr. Bonson, would you call God material or immaterial? Immaterial. What is something that's immaterial? Something not extended in space. Can you give me an example of anything other than God that's immaterial?

Laws of logic.

And Wigner talked about the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics. How is it that a mathematician thinking in her head in here can come up with equations that seem to fit the universe out there? Well, how is it indeed?

Because the irony of the atheist position here is evident. My atheist friends, and I have many of them, tell me that the driving force of evolution, which eventually produced our human cognitive faculties, reason included, was not primarily concerned with truth at all, but with survival.

And we all know, ladies and gentlemen, what has often happened and still happens to truth when individuals or commercial enterprises or nations feel themselves threatened and struggle for survival. Leading philosopher Alvin Plantinga of Notre Dame says, if atheists are right that we are the product of mindless, unguided natural processes, then they have given us strong reason to doubt the reliability of human cognitive faculties and therefore inevitably to doubt the validity of any belief that they produce, including their atheism.

Their biology and their belief in naturalism would therefore appear to be at war with each other in a conflict that has nothing at all to do with God. Yet, my atheist friends still insist that it is rational for them to believe that the evolution of human reason was not directed for the purpose of discovering truth.

And yet, it is irrational for me to believe that human reason was designed and created by God to enable us to understand and believe the truth.

Curious logic. What John said earlier in the section about mathematics is very insightful. Usually, atheists will argue against universal, abstract, objective concepts, such as morality and mathematics, and say that these are concepts that are inventions developed by humans.

However, there are enormous problems with this claim.

So my point is, people did not create laws of math because math worked perfectly well before people were around to describe it. Did they come from the universe? That's a common belief, especially among secularists, is that, well, the universe behaves a certain way and we call that math.

But I think that is utterly indefensible because there are things in mathematics that have no analogy in the physical universe. For example, the number of dimensions. The physical universe has three dimensions of space, one of time.

In math, you can have any number of dimensions. You can have 16 dimensions, if you like. There's a thing called Hilbert space that has infinite number of dimensions. That has no correspondence to anything in the physical universe.

And yet, it makes sense. There's rationality to it. So my point is, math goes beyond the physical universe. The physical universe doesn't get infinitely small. You get down to the level of atoms and then in quarks, and then there's kind of a quantum fuzziness there.

But these shapes go on forever. So math, math didn't come from the universe.

The rational answer that Christians can give is that math, just like other abstract universal concepts, such as morality and the laws of logic, reflect and come from the mind of God. However, like with the origin of the universe, the origin of life, and the origin of human rationality, atheists simply don't have an answer for these kinds of universal abstract concepts.

By contrast with that, biblical theism asserts that ultimate reality is personal and intelligent. And the reason science works, and this was the motivating force that drove the great pioneers of science, is that the universe out there and the human mind in here that does the science are ultimately the product of the same intelligent divine mind.

Human beings are made, we are told, in God's image. And that means that science can be done. That makes infinitely more sense to me as a scientist.

Than atheism does. I love that line, and I completely agree. Christianity indeed makes infinitely more sense to me than atheism does. With atheism, I'm left with countless unanswered questions. But with Christianity, I have rational answers to all of these questions.

Morality, Human Dignity, and the Christian Basis for Ethics

Now let me come briefly to ethics. Ethical behavior, like rational behavior, of course, does not itself require religious belief. This is consistent with the fact that humans are created in God's image as rational moral persons.

But just as I suggest that rationality cannot be explained without the existence of God, so I dare to suggest that the existence of morality cannot be explained either. As modern science sprang from Judeo-Christian sources, so did the concept of human equality.

Listen to atheist Jürgen Habermas, arguably one of Germany's leading intellectuals. He said that universalistic egalitarianism, for which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life and solidarity, the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love.

This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there's no alternative to it. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk.

And it seems to me he's hitting the core of something important. Because the value of a human being on which such egalitarianism rests is based not on what the human being can do, but what she's made of.

Or how she's made in God's image. I never forget speaking on one of my many visits to Russia to a colleague in the Academy of Sciences. And he said, you know, John, we thought we could abolish God and retain a value for human beings.

We found we couldn't. And we murdered millions of them. And Alexander Solzhenitsyn has said, if I'm asked, why is it that 60 million of my fellow countrymen were sacrificed? He said, the answer is, we have forgotten God.

Science, of course, marvelous that it is, is limited.

John moves on to the topic of morality, which again, atheists simply do not have good answers for. Atheists hate that Christians constantly bring up the issue of morality. But there is a very good reason why they do.

And it's because atheists are terribly inconsistent about their answers. And they really ultimately have no good answers.

And so they have very limited options. So what they're limited to is they can ultimately say, well, I feel like that's wrong. And so here's their ethical system. It's preference. So your preference is, you feel like you shouldn't murder another human being or you shouldn't steal from this person.

So your preference is, I don't like to do that. But here's the thing. You're not in charge of the guy who does like to kill people, who does like to rape, who does like to steal. You're not an authority in his life.

Your preference has no power and authority in his life. So you can't create an ethical system off of mere preferences. People have different preferences. Or the atheists can say, well, our ethical system is based upon societal convention.

So society determines what is right, what is wrong, what is immoral. So they're limited to society will determine. OK, so if we grant the unbeliever the presupposition that society determines what is moral, then that means that Hitler wasn't wrong, Germany wasn't wrong, because their society had determined by democratic vote that Hitler was in charge and that that's not a person.

I know it looks like a person. It's not a person. It's a Jew. And one more thing. When the unbeliever says, well, I have a basis for ethics. It's what works to keep us alive. We've determined that if you murder others, then we're not going to flourish.

We've determined if you steal from others, we're not going to flourish. We've determined if you rape others, we're not going to flourish. What's the hidden assumption there? The borrowed capital from Christianity.

Human value and dignity and that society should flourish, because we must ask the unbeliever. We must ask them, are we stardust? They say, oh, yes, yes, we're stardust. Like Carl Sagan said, we are stardust, right?

Neil deGrasse Tyson, he says, we're stardust. Well, let me ask you a question. What makes you think stardust must flourish? What if I want to kerosene the whole anthill? Who are you to argue with me? You're acting like stardust should flourish and should produce and should do well.

I think there's actually a lot of human suffering in the world, and if we just ended it all, we would end a lot of human suffering. And there are actually a lot of people who think just like that. And you have no argument with them, no objective basis for morality.

All you have is preference, societal convention.

That's all you have. And that brings me to be my next evidence. It's the same with the universe. We can analyze it magnificently, but ultimately, if it has a maker, and I believe it has, only he can tell us what it's all about.

And he's done so in the powerful narrative of the Bible. In particular, in its analysis of the problem with humanity, not simply in terms of behavioral breakdown between people, but a vertical breakdown of trust between us and the Creator.

The unique solution to that problem is not simply in terms of human ethical development, although that's very important, but in terms of something far deeper altogether, the restoration of the fractured relationship with God through the salvation he has brought through Jesus Christ, a radical relationship that empowers us to live ethically from God.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ and the Hope of Judgment

And here we reach what, for me, is the chief evidence, not only for the existence, but the nature of God. It is Jesus Christ. He, it was, who not only taught the golden rule, but embodied it, fed the hungry, healed the sick, and suffering, and welcomed society's outcasts, brought honor and respect to the marginalized and ashamed, and he's brought forgiveness and peace to multi-millions around the world.

He's able to do this, of course, because though he was a man, he uniquely never was only a man, but God become human. The central evidence for this startling claim is, of course, his historical resurrection from the dead that launched Christianity in the world.

This is, of course, ladies and gentlemen, a crunch issue. If Jesus rose from the dead, death is not the end, and atheism is false. If Jesus did rise, did, did not rise from the dead, Christianity is false.

I love that John gets to Jesus Christ and the gospel here. I do agree with John that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is very powerful evidence that points towards the truth of the Bible. At the same time, it's not technically accurate to say that if Jesus rose from the dead, then the Bible must be true, because there could technically be other reasons for Jesus rising from the dead other than the Bible.

Technically, it would be more accurate to say that we know for certain that Jesus rose from the dead because the Bible must be true in order for life to have meaning, because only the Bible can successfully answer all the questions about the universe, life, and rationality that we've talked about so far.

Trying to prove the resurrection scientifically and historically should be something that helps us demonstrate the reliability of the Bible, not something that we absolutely depend upon for believing the Bible is true.

I remember at Cambridge as a student listening to the brilliant Sir Norman Anderson, a legal expert, going through forensically the evidence from his legal perspective as a brilliant lawyer, and he said at the end of it, the empty tomb then of Jesus forms a veritable rock on which all rationalistic theories of the resurrection dash themselves in vain.

Just finally now, as I read the Bible, I do not only find intellectual satisfaction, but I find a great deal of that. I sense the voice of God speaking to me. You see, that's intensely personal. But ladies and gentlemen, we've been asked tonight about belief in God, and I want to strongly emphasize that God is not a theory, He's a person.

And if the origination of me qua person is a personal God, then the most exciting thing really is, is there a possibility of getting to know God? And so I don't simply believe there is a God. I've come to know Him and trust Him, and I have strong reasons for doing so because of Christ dying and rising again from me.

And that has generated in me a sense of utterly unmerited forgiveness, acceptance, and peace that has enabled me to face the ugly side of my own nature and with God's help to do something about it.

I really like all that John has said about God not being a theory, but a person who deeply cares about his people. Of course, atheists won't accept the argument that Christians have had a personal experience with God and has transformed their lives.

But as Christians, we don't just believe in God and the Bible because they are rationally true. We also believe because we love God for all that He has done for us, and we recognize His powerful work in our lives.

But it's enabled me to face something else. The hardest problem I face as a Christian is the problem of evil and pain. My niece getting a tumor at 22 that kills her. What do I say to my sister? And this is the hardest problem we face.

But it seems to me that atheism here has no answer because by definition, atheism believes that human death is the end, so there is no ultimate hope. But you see, ladies and gentlemen, we could stay here till midnight and beyond arguing as has been done in this university for centuries.

What a good God should, might, would, could, if not, possibly might, just could He not have done and we'll get nowhere. So it seems to me there's another question we can ask and it's this. Granted that life presents us with a double picture.

We see some beautiful things. We see some ragged edges. We see hurt and pain and we see joy. How can we come to terms with that? And it seems to me here is no simplistic answer, but a window into an answer and it's this.

If it is actually true that Jesus is, as I believe Him to be, the Son of God, then we can ask the question, what is God doing on a cross? And the answer comes back at the very least. God has not remained distant from our human suffering, but has become part of it.

And the other side of that is this. Because Jesus rose from the dead, He is going to be the ultimate judge. Now here's an irony, because atheism has no ultimate hope of justice by definition. The vast majority of people in the history of the world have died without justice and will die without justice.

And if death is the end, then, of course, they have no hope of ultimate justice. But the promise in the New Testament, guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus, is that He is to be the judge in the coming day.

So, ladies and gentlemen, those are some of the reasons why I believe that God is real and worthy to be trusted. Thank you.

John ends his powerful speech by talking about the problem of evil and suffering, and how the Christian God is really the only answer to this problem. Atheism can't provide any purpose or comfort for anyone regarding the issue of evil and suffering, because to atheists, the universe is just a cold, uncaring place.

However, as Christians, we believe in a God who is working all things for His glory, and the evil and suffering in this world points us all towards our desperate need of a Savior who can wipe away every tear and give us eternal joy in heaven with God.

But there's also a warning here, too. The same God who gave us a path towards relationship and eternal joy with Him will also surely punish all who refuse to worship the One who created them to worship Him.

So, the message to all is this. Repent and believe before it's too late. And if you do, you will experience the fullness of joy as you live life the way God created you to live it. Thank you so much for watching.

If you like these videos and want to help support this channel, the best way to do it is to just watch these videos until the end and click the subscribe button. Thank you so much for your support and encouragement.