A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending the third of UHI's lecture series with John Lennox of Oxford University (the first two lectures were delivered by Richard Dawkins on atheism and Andrew McGowan on the place of theology in a modern university). Lennox presented a response to Dawkins that was penetrating, thoughtful, and provocative - it was also cordial with no venemous remarks. He rejected Dawkins' dichotomy of "God" or "fairy tales" and exposed some of Dawkins' poor research (i.e. Dawkins cites a professor of German literature in the USA who believed that Jesus did not exist and thus ignored his more learned colleagues at Oxford like Geza Vermes). Lennox points out that Christians and Atheists have both headed the Human Genome project so being a good scientist and a person of faith are not incompatible. Central to the thesis of Lennox is that the universe is rationally intelligible though he does not go from there down an intelligent design route, but he is right to ask why this universe is intelligible to us? He thinks the real debate then is about worldviews not empirical science. He asks, which worldview can account for the raitonal intelligibility of the universe? While the religious answer is no doubt an element of faith, Lennox pointed out that the atheist also accepts certain things on faith or without evidence such as the existence of a multiverse so as to account for the anthropic principle (i.e the universe seems wired to produce life since life exists). I gave up apologetics for biblical studies a long time ago, but this was probably the most brilliant lecture that I've attended all year.
On a personal note, I had the pleasure of having dinner with John Lennox and found him to be one of the most engaging, mission minded, and jovial Christian personalities that I've ever met. His language skills are amazing too as he is fluent in English, German, French, Russian and was able to converse with our Hungarian waiter at the restaurant in Hungarian! He has been lecturing in parts of Eastern Europe and Russia since 1975 as well. In a nutshell, do go and see him lecture or debate if you ge the chance.
I should also point out that Justin Brierly of Premier Christian Radio inteviewed Dawkins after his debate with Lennox on his program Unbelievable. This part of the interview was interesting:
JB: When you make a value judgement don't you immediately step yourself outside of this evolutionary process and say that the reason this is good is that it's good. And you don't have any way to stand on that statement.
RD: My value judgement itself could come from my evolutionary past.
JB: So therefore it's just as random in a sense as any product of evolution.
RD: You could say that, it doesn't in any case, nothing about it makes it more probable that there is anything supernatural.
JB: Ultimately, your belief that rape is wrong is as arbitrary as the fact that we've evolved five fingers rather than six.
RD: You could say that, yeah.
This brings me back to Lennox's genuine fear of Dawkins' atheism, that it is not simply leading us to a secular society with tolerance and libertarian ethics without religion, but it is leading us to Nietzsche's madman where might makes right in the absence of God, where weakness and vulnerability are eradicated in the name of progress. It is an amorality that leads to churches being buldozed, freedom of speech and religion being destroyed, and reaches back to the insidious gulags of the Soviet Union. As Lennox said: "The atheist bus is taking us into a pitiless world where our sense of justice is an allusion" and "insignificance leads to indifference". Think ye on such things!
