I would have, I had a real problem with Christianity, and I was quite confident that my Harrison
! Cambridge undergraduate often is, and I even wrote a poem to express my contempt for Christianity.
! Now you need to understand that I was studying science, not English, and so my poem isn't very
good, but I can still remember it, and it went like this. Some folks seem to find it odd that
people grow from tiny cells. Pathetic, those who think of God, and still got coins in wishing
wells. There we are, that was my picture. But it just shows you something of my mindset,
and I guess lots of people's mindset today about Christianity. It must be that people
didn't understand about the basics of biology. You know, they still thought things were magic
or miraculous, but we just knew how they happened. They didn't understand about people growing
themselves. They were still superstitious in the way that people throw their money into
a well and make a wish. That's what I thought Christians must be like. I mean, sure, people
used to think that God made it rain with a big watering can in the sky. But then we understood
about evaporation and condensation of the water cycle. People used to think that people got
ill because of demons, and got better because of God. But then we came to understand about
viruses and antibodies, and we could explain it. And so surely nowadays, now that we've
put man on the moon, and we've sequenced the human DNA, surely it was time to forget about
these naive, superstitious ideas about God and angels and invisible things, and write them
off. So that was what I thought when I was 18, and I was quite constant about that, and went
around telling everyone my poem. I know I really did. It's quite sad, but yes. But then, just
a short time after that, I became a Christian. And it was a result, really, of meeting Christians
at university who just didn't conform to my stereotype. If you asked me what I thought about Christians,
I would have said, Christians are gullible hypocrites. They're gullible because they don't understand
science, and they're hypocrites because they don't live it out. Because I'd been to a church
when I was growing up, where people were kind of religious on Sunday, and then just did their
own thing, the same as everyone else, midweek. And as a 16-year-old, I find that really hard
to stomach. It just seemed very fake to me. And I think it is fake, even now. But then
when I was at university, I met some people who were neither of those things. They weren't
hypocrites, because for the first time I met people who actually lived the way that Jesus
taught, or tried to live that way. And it was just quite striking. Just noticed the
way that they were very different. Now, that didn't make it true, of course, just because
they're nice doesn't mean everything they think is true. But it did make me want to know
what's going on. You know, why do you live so differently? Why are you like this? And
I got talking to them, and then I discovered that they weren't naive or gullible. That they
had actual reasons for what they believed about Jesus. And that was a surprise to me, because
I'd never realised that there were any reasons for believing in Christianity before. Anyway,
to cut a long story short, I went on the run. I didn't want to become a Christian. I thought
it would ruin my life. I tried to hide from it all. That didn't work. I got converted.
I stopped writing poetry. And now I'm a believer. But I continued to do science, and as Paul said,
I went on for the years, and gave a little bit of my early 20s to that. But now a Christian,
but still a scientist, both and. And actually, it turns out there were lots of other people
in the same category. Lots of other scientists who, at the same time, were Christians. That's
certainly true of the history of science. So I'm going to give you some scientist names.
You've got to see if you know what they're famous for. Okay, so it's a bit interactive.
So we'll start with an easy one. Isaac Newton. What does Isaac Newton do? Anyone?
Gravity. Yeah, okay. Gravity. Lots of things. But gravity, one of his most famous. Also,
a firm believer in God. In fact, he thought that his book about the Bible book of Daniel
was more important than his book about gravity, because he really cared about knowing God properly.
Harder one, Johannes Kepler.
Astronomer. Astronomer. Very good. Interplanetary motion. He was looking at how the planets related
to each other, how they moved. He once said that he thought he was thinking God's thoughts
after him, as he investigated how God had made the universe work.
Another tricky one. Robert Boyle. Did anyone do Boyle's laws at school? Those gas laws?
Laws about gas. Committee of Christian. Michael Faraday.
Electricity. Yeah. Or Louis Pasteur.
Microbiology. In fact, discovered the bacteria.
Or another one. Charles Babbage.
Difficult one. First mechanical computer. Yeah.
Kind of pre-electronic computer. Very good.
So, of all those people, element scientists in their day, but also, at the same time, committed
Christians.
Now, that's all very well, but actually, according to one historian of science, Alfred North Whitehead,
there's actually a connection between those two things.
So, he wrote that man became scientific because he looked for law in nature.
He looked for order in the way the world worked.
But, he looked for law in nature because he believed in a law giver.
In other words, it was because of the belief that the world that we live in had been ordered
by an intelligent mind that made people start to investigate it intelligently.
They thought God has put this world together in a way that we should investigate.
So, it was because they believed in a God who made everything that they thought it was
worth investigating scientifically.
And that's how science got started.
I think it's doubtful that if people believed, as some people believe today, that the world
is essentially random, that people would have bothered trying to understand what they thought
was going to be essentially random.
And they didn't think it was essentially random.
They thought it was created by an intelligent God.
And they thought, so let's intelligently try to investigate.
That was, arguably, how modern science came about because people believed in a creator.
But you might say, well, okay, that was in the 16th, 17th century.
What about the 21st century?
Well, interestingly, although there are some famous atheist scientists like Richard Dawkins,
Stephen Hawking, you've maybe heard of.
And there were also some eminent scientists who are Christians.
So, I became a Christian in Cambridge.
I went to church the first Sunday after I became a Christian.
And I sat down next to a man with a big beard who, appropriately enough,
he had a professorial beard, appropriately enough, he was a professor.
And it turned out he was a professor of geophysics at Cambridge University,
Professor Bob White, in church with me.
Oh, that's odd.
Turns out he's one of the elders of the church.
Then I got talking to my next neighbor, Halls.
He was doing geology.
He was supervised by a guy called Professor Simon Conway-Morris,
a professor of paleontology, dinosaurs, that kind of thing.
Turned out he's also a Christian.
Isn't that strange?
Because people today tell you that you can't believe in the Bible because of the dinosaurs.
But Professor Conway-Morris knows more about dinosaurs than almost anyone else on the planet.
And somehow he's a Christian.
He believes the Bible.
Doesn't seem to be this kind of either or crass that you read about.
Okay, that's geology.
What about microbiology?
What about evolution and all that kind of stuff?
Well, you may know that the same year that Richard Dawkins published his book,
The God Delusion,
the same year, Francis Collins,
the director of the Human Genome Project,
that's the international group that was trying to work out the human DNA sequence,
he published his book,
The Language of God,
in which he explained his faith in Jesus Christ.
So I just want to say that in the past and in the present,
there were many scientists who were also Christians,
or Christians who were also scientists.
It seems to be possible to hold both together.
But all the time in the media,
we're reading that it's got to be an either or.
You've got to be a scientist or you've got to be a Christian.
And that kind of polarisation.
And I want to suggest today,
and this is maybe the most important thing I'm going to say,
I want to suggest there is an either or.
But the either or, the battle,
is not between Christianity on the one hand,
and science on the other.
Rather, the conflict is between two different philosophies.
Two different views of the world.
Two different religions,
if I can put it that way.
Now, Richard Dawkins would get very annoyed
if he heard me describing his position as a religion.
But in some ways, it's interesting just how quasi-religious it is.
If you read The God Delusion,
and underline the number of times he says,
I believe something,
without giving any scientific reason for it,
it's just quite illuminating.
Or the kind of,
I think there was a campaign recently to,
they wanted to book The God Delusion in hotel floors,
and they liked the Gibeon suit.
And then they wanted to have atheist summer camps,
the way that we had Christian summer camps,
that kind of thing.
It is kind of religious in its attitude.
So I want to suggest that on the one hand,
atheism or naturalism,
and on the other hand, Christianity,
they are opposed to each other.
But science is not arguably sense.
Science is just a kind of way of investigating the world.
And we're going to have to decide in this talk,
whether science fits better with atheism,
or whether science fits better with Christianity.
So firstly, what I'm going to do is outline these two views,
and then we're going to try and compare them
by looking at the evidence,
which is what any scientist ought to want to do.
So firstly, here's the view of naturalism,
or atheism.
This is the world view that says that matter,
and chance,
is all that there is.
So, for example,
in the words of Bertrand Russell,
the philosopher,
he said,
mankind is nothing but
a chance collocation of atoms
on a minus speck of interstellar dust.
That's all you are.
Or, I think that's quite depressing,
but you can go more depressing
if you cross the channel
and you ask the French existentialist philosopher,
Jean-Paul Sartre,
what he thinks.
He puts it this way.
I'm interested in French,
but this is the translation.
He says this,
every living creature
was born without reason,
prolongs itself out of weakness,
and dies by chance.
Thanks.
You know,
you can imagine
this could be a fun guy
to have back for dinner.
But everything is just random.
It just happened by accident,
without any purpose to it.
Or in my own field of neuroscience,
Francis Crick,
the Nobel Prize winner,
he once said this,
he said,
you,
he puts it in inverted commas,
because he doesn't really believe in
persons,
or personality,
you,
your joys and your sorrows,
your sense of personal ambition,
and free will,
your memories and your hopes,
are in fact,
no more than,
the behaviour of a vast assembly
of nerve cells,
and their associated molecules.
Now,
I was a neuroscientist,
I do believe that there are nerve cells
in your brain,
and that the movement of electrons
around those nerve cells
are involved with how you think.
I think that's fair.
But a quantifier,
Francis Crick,
the words are,
you are no more than.
That's the key word.
It's reductionism.
You are nothing but,
Bertrand Russell says,
a chance collocation of atoms.
Now,
that view of the world
is very different
to the Christian view of the world.
And I'm going to now,
outline the Christian view,
and I thought I would do it
by using some words,
actually from the Bible,
so that you know I'm giving you
kind of God's version,
rather than just kind of
my twisted version of Christianity.
And I'm going to read
from page 926.
If you've got a Bible
and you can find it,
that would be helpful,
just as a reference point.
So,
turn to page 926,
926.
Some of you will know
this passage well,
others won't know it at all.
So,
this is a speech that
one of Jesus' followers,
called Paul,
gave in Athens
in the first century
to a group of,
we're told,
Epicurean and Steric philosophers.
Verse 18.
Now,
I don't know much about that,
but I looked up
in a dictionary of philosophy
about Epicureanism,
and apparently the Epicureans
believed that the gods
were not involved
in human life.
They were remote,
distant.
But basically,
human life was due to chance,
randomly.
things.
And that when you died,
that was it.
There was no afterlife.
So,
in some ways,
Epicureans believed the same
as modern day atheists.
Not exactly,
but roughly the same.
And so,
here is Paul
trying to explain to them
what is different
about Christianity
compared with what they thought.
And I'm going to read
from verse 24,
so that little number 24,
at the bottom
of the right hand column
of page 96.
The gods who made the world,
and everything in it,
being Lord of heaven and earth,
doesn't dwell in temples
made by man,
nor is he served by human hands
as though he needed anything,
since he himself
gives to all mankind
life and breath
and everything.
And he made from one man
every nation of mankind
to live on all the face
of the earth,
having determined
their allotted periods
and the boundaries
of their dwelling place,
that they should seek God
and perhaps feel their way
towards him
and find him.
Yet he's actually not far
from each one of us,
for in him we live
and move
and have our being.
As some of your own parents
have said,
we are his offspring.
Being then God's offspring,
we ought not to think
that the divine being
is like gold
or silver
or stone,
an image formed
by the art
and imagination
of man.
The times of ignorance
God overlooked,
but now he commands
all people everywhere
to repent,
because he has fixed
the day on which
he will judge the world
in righteousness
by a man
whom he's appointed,
and of this
he's given assurance
to all
by raising him
from the dead.
Now when they heard
of the resurrection
of the dead,
some mocked,
but others said,
we will hear you again
about this.
And maybe those reactions
will be here
in this room as well.
Some of you will mock,
others will say,
we want to hear more
about this.
Now what if you can see,
just in that short
reading from the Bible,
that in some ways
Christianity
is actually the opposite
of atheism.
Let me explain
what I mean.
If you said
to Richard Dawkins,
does God exist,
he would say,
no,
or actually he'd say,
probably not.
That was his slogan,
wasn't it?
There's probably no God.
But if you said
to Richard Dawkins,
does Christianity exist?
He'd say,
well obviously it does.
Now of course
this is an international
phenomenon of religion,
which I'm doing my best
to stamp out,
but it's there,
it exists.
And then you'd say,
well,
where does that come from,
Richard Dawkins?
He would say,
humans invented it.
So human beings,
we came about by chance,
we got brains by chance,
and then we invented
the idea of a God
in our imagination.
That's what he would say.
But do you see
that is exactly
the opposite
of what Paul is saying.
It's not that
we invented God,
like the people in Athens
who made little gods
out of gold
and put them on
their manacophies,
look at the God
that I just made.
He said,
no,
it's not like that.
No,
God invented us.
He's the one
who decided,
imagined,
that it would be nice
to make people.
And he gives,
it's not that we
give God stuff.
He's his little statue,
I better feed it
because it's probably hungry.
God gives us stuff.
Here are these human beings,
I'd better give them
breath and life
and everything.
So,
these two things
are really the opposite view.
If we invent God,
because really
there's nothing
but random chance,
or actually
are we
made by,
creatures of,
an intelligent,
personal,
eternal being.
Now,
those of these
are pretty different
and I want to
spend the rest of our time
comparing them
and asking
the scientific question,
which one of these
makes most sense
of the evidence?
And that's what
we're going to do
for the rest of me
talking
before you ask questions.
So,
at this point,
I just need to warn you
against a bias
in your thinking
or in some people's thinking
because it's possible
to set up science
atheistically
so that the only
kind of explanations
that you accept
as scientific
are atheistic explanations.
Sometimes people do that.
Now,
I want to say
to that
and reply,
firstly,
that is not how science
was done in the beginning.
So,
lots and lots of people
who started science
who weren't atheists,
they were Christians.
They thought they were
investigating the world
that God had made.
But secondly,
if you set up
the experiment
so that the only answers
that are allowed
are atheistic
and then you get
atheistic answers out of it,
you've just cheated.
I mean,
if you set up
the experiment that way,
you're going to get
that answer.
Let me show you
what I mean.
Imagine I make
a visible light detector.
Here's a machine
for detecting
visible light.
So,
inside the machine
I have a prism
to break light
up into all the
different colours
from red
all the way
through to blue
of the rainbow
of the visible spectrum.
But because it's
a visible light detector,
I don't bother
putting any sensors in
for infrared light
or ultraviolet light.
Just the light
that you can see
with your eye.
OK?
So,
I make my machine
and then someone
comes along
and says,
I think I've discovered
this thing called
infrared light.
I think that's how
the remote control works
in my telly.
I say,
oh,
very interesting.
Let me test it
with my machine.
So,
they point their
remote control
at my machine
and it registers
nothing on the drive.
And I say,
ah,
infrared light
does not exist.
That's a stupid
conclusion.
If I set up
the experiment
to only be
sensitive to
visible light,
I can't use
the experiment
to tell you
about things
that it can't
measure.
If I set up
science so that
the only kind
of things I think
are scientific
or atheistic,
then I can't
use the experiment
to tell me
about anything
it wasn't
designed to
or capable
of measuring
in the first place.
So,
that's just to
warn us,
don't let's
pretend that
science is
automatically
atheism.
Never started
that way,
it needn't be
that.
In fact,
objectively,
what is science?
Science is really
just a methodology,
a way of
investigating the
world,
where you
observe what
you see,
you try and
describe what
you observe
in a hypothesis,
and then you
try and test
that hypothesis
by doing
further experiments
to accept
or reject it.
It's not
science,
it's just a
method of
approaching the
world.
And I
want to suggest
there's nothing
about that
method,
nor anything
that's been
discovered by
that method
that argues
against the
God of the
Bible.
I don't know
of anything.
People say
science disproves
God,
I want to
say,
oh,
how?
Tell me about
the experiment
that I don't
understand,
I haven't heard
of,
that disproves
something in the
Bible.
There isn't
one,
actually.
But there
is a conflict
between these
worldviews.
Atheism is
against Christianity,
yeah,
of course it is.
But is science
against it?
Well,
you need to
show me the
experiment or
the information
that proves it.
Well,
we're going to
compare these
two,
as I said,
in three ways.
Here are our
three tests.
Firstly,
which one makes
the most sense
of design?
Secondly,
which one makes
the most sense
of human life?
Thirdly,
which one makes
the most sense
of Jesus Christ?
And then we're
done.
Okay,
so here we are,
design.
Firstly,
which one makes
the most sense
of design?
Now,
even as I say
that word,
there's only
atheists in the
room,
you will be
getting twitchy
because people
hate the idea
of the word
design.
Because according
to atheists,
there wasn't
any design,
it's just
random.
But at least
everyone agrees
that there was
the appearance
of design.
It doesn't look
as though this
world is just
random.
In fact,
Sir Fred Hoyle,
the astronomer,
he once famously
said that the
idea of random
chance suddenly
coming up with
something like
all of us in
this room,
is a bit like
suggesting that
a whirlwind
passed through
a junkyard
and came up
by chance
with a fully
assembled
functioning
747 aircraft.
It doesn't seem
very likely to
have happened
just by accident.
But according
to atheists like
Richard Dawkins,
we have an
explanation.
This is what
he said.
This is what
he says.
He says,
design is
only accidental.
We have a
mechanism to
account for it.
Natural selection,
the blind,
unconscious,
automatic process,
which we now
know is the
reason for the
existence of
and apparently
purposeful form
of all life,
has no purpose
in mind.
It has no mind,
no vision,
no foresight,
no sight at all.
If it can be
said to play the
role of watchmaker
in nature,
it is that of
the blind
watchmaker.
And that was
the title of
his book that
we had to
read before we
went up to
university when
I was 18.
So it looks as
though it was
designed,
but it's just a
trick that
randomness and
evolution have
played on you.
Really it's just
random.
On the other
hand, the Bible
says, the God
who made the
world and
everything in it
gives to all
mankind life and
breath and
everything.
This world is the
way it is because
God decided it
would be that
way.
Which one,
no design to
this randomness
or a creative
God who made
it, which one
makes most sense
of the evidence?
Now I'm going to
just turn to the
question of how
this world could
have come about.
And rather than
getting into the
debates about
evolution, which
some people want
to talk about
all the time,
I want to say
actually even to
have evolution
or natural
selection, you
first have to
have a universe
in order for
evolution to
happen in, and
you have to
have DNA or
RNA, molecules
that can carry
information and
copy the
information down
through generations.
So even
whatever you
think about
evolution, and
I have my
particular view
about that,
whatever you
think about
evolution, even
to have evolution
at all, you
first have to
have very, very
complicated
molecules capable
of containing
information and
passing information
on.
So where do
they come from?
How do you
explain why
you've got
RNA or
DNA out of
nothing randomly?
That's not a
question that
evolution can
answer.
Where do you
get the
information from
that these
molecules contain?
You've just
got a black
box and in
goes randomness,
you can't just
get information
magically turning
out of randomness
and coming out
the other side.
Where does that
come from?
And actually,
just to make it
even more
difficult, where
does the
universe come
from that these
molecules exist in?
And this is
where we really
have problems
for the
atheists, because
physicists will
tell us that in
order to have any
kind of universe of
the kind that we
live in, some of
the kind of fine
tuning of the
universe has got
to be exactly
right.
So if you just
make a few tiny
adjustments to
the kind of
physical consonants
underlying the
universe, you
can't have a
universe at all.
Do come and
grab a seat, I
think there's a
couple of extra
seats.
Oh, we've got
some more chairs,
can't we?
So, here's my
favourite one.
In the Big Bang
Theory, the
universe all
starts from
nothing and then
just explodes
out.
Well, firstly,
how did it go
bang?
Who made it go
bang?
There's a question.
But secondly,
even people who
believe in the
Big Bang Theory
acknowledge that
the expansion
rate of the
universe has
got to be
exactly right.
So out of
the beginning of
the Big Bang,
writes Alan
Goose, who came
up with a view
of inflation,
he's not a
Christian, he's a
physicist, he
comes up with
this theory.
He explains, if
the universe had
expanded too
quickly, then
you'd never get
any stars or
planets or
people, you'd
just have gas,
because it
would go kind
of bang so
fast that you
just had spread
out gas as
you were.
On the other
hand, if the
universe expanded
too slowly, then
gravity would get
the better of it
and it would go
kind of bang,
and then gravity
would pull it all
back together and
it would go
crash.
And you
have a universe
and nothing,
even before you
got to one
millisecond on
your stopwatch.
And then there
would be nothing
at all.
So in order to
have a universe
that goes bang
fast enough to
beat gravity,
and slow enough
to give a chance
for stars and
planets, you've
got to be very,
very accurate in
how fast you
go bang.
In fact, you'll
know how accurate
you've got to
be one in ten
to the fifty
four accurate.
So that's one
in ten with
fifty four zeros
on the end.
Accurate.
Otherwise you're
going to lose.
So to give you
an idea of what
that's like,
cover America
with five
penny pieces
and stack
them to a
height of the
distance between
here and the
moon, about
380,000
kilometres away,
and then do
the same for a
billion other
continents the
size of America.
Blindfold to
husband or your
wife or girlfriend,
get her to pick
one at random,
paint one of
them red with
lipstick and
hide it in the
pile, get
it around them,
she picks the
red one, that's
about the
chances.
So in other
words, very,
very, very,
very, very
unlikely to
have happened
by chance.
Why did it
work out just
right to have
a universe with
stars and
planets in it?
Why did it
work out just
right to have
human beings
and human
brains?
By chance,
in other words,
it's lucky,
says somebody.
Or, there's
a God who
designed this,
and who
ordered this.
This makes a
lot more
sense.
We've got an
explanation,
why it went
bang, why it
went bang at
the right speed,
why all these
other things
turned out right
to have
humanity.
Whereas just
the kids saying,
oh, lucky,
it's just lucky,
starts to look
unscientific and
problematic.
And in fact,
recently, atheists
have acknowledged
that the numbers
are just too
small to be
lucky.
I mean,
this is just
ridiculously lucky.
And instead,
they've got this
theory,
you might have
come across
this,
of the
multiverse.
The idea of
the multiverse
is that there's
infinitely many
universes.
And if you
have infinitely
many universes,
one of them's
going to get
lucky, right?
If you throw
the dice infinitely
many times,
then you're
going to get
the number
you want
eventually.
So they
prefer the
idea of a
multiverse.
Now, that's
okay to
believe in
that.
But when it
was reviewed
recently in
the scientific
journal Nature,
the reviewer
said this,
I thought this
was very
interesting.
He said,
the multiverse
may be the
most important
theory of our
time, but I
don't think it
can be called
a scientific
theory, because
it is not
observable, or
repeatable, or
testable.
you can
believe in
it, if you
want, by
blind faith,
but there's
no scientific
reasons for
it.
So you can
believe in
there's infinitely
many universes,
that's why this
turned out just
right, or you
can believe in
the God who
made it just
right.
But there's
nothing about
the science that
tells you to
believe in this.
And in fact,
I want to
suggest that
multiverses are
quite problematic
conceptually.
so everything
that's unlikely
isn't really
unlikely, because
there's infinitely
many universes.
So as well as
this talk, where I
get to this point
and I'm still
alive, there's
the talk at
which I drop
dead now.
Oh, no, I'm
not in that
universe, that's
okay.
If I had done,
that would have
just been the
explanation.
There's also
probably, I
guess, the
universe where I
suddenly turn to
a pink rabbit
now.
No, we're not
in that universe
either.
But there's
no point in
being surprised
by everything,
because it's
just the version
of the universe
in which that
unlikely thing
happens, right?
And everything
also didn't do
today in the
other version
of yourself,
in the other
copy of the
universe somewhere
else.
I mean, this
starts to require
quite a lot of
faith, I think.
Quite a lot of
irrational, blind
faith.
Whereas, why not
believe the really
very straightforward
idea that there
is a creative,
intelligent person
who decides to
make a world
and have the
power to do
so?
There we are.
Which one makes
the most sense of
design?
I'm going to be
more quick for the
other two.
Secondly, which
one makes the most
sense of,
human purpose
and existence.
Now, I want you
to understand me
rightly.
I'm not saying
here that
Christianity must
be true because
it's less depressing.
I'm about to show
you that atheism is
very, very depressing.
That doesn't make
Christianity true,
OK?
Because depressing
things can sometimes
be true.
But it does, I
think, give you
reasons not to be
very comfortable
with your atheism
if you're an
atheist.
See, one of the
things I've told you
already, one of the
things I hated about
Christianity was
hypocrites.
You know, people who
said one thing on a
Sunday and then did
something else in the
rest of their life.
I hated being too
fast.
And when I saw it in,
you know, churchy
people, I hated that.
And if you hate
hypocrisy, you're in
good company because
Jesus Christ hated it
too.
Many of his most
strong rebukes come
to religious people who
didn't actually trust
or follow God.
He hated that.
But what I never
noticed as an atheist
when I was giving up
my Christian friends a
really hard time, I
never noticed my own
hypocrisy.
I never noticed that I
wasn't living out the
thing that I said that I
believed.
So I was saying the
world is random.
I exist randomly,
without reason, and
that's why I'm here.
I did not live as though
that were true.
So, Professor John
Gray, he's a professor
at the London School
of Economics, a
professor of European
Thought, apparently
Tony Blair's favourite
philosopher.
So either you love him
or you hate him, because
of that, I don't know
what you think of Blair.
But he has, in his book
Straw Dogs, he's not a
Christian, he's got a
really weird view of a
kind of Mother Earth
kind of thing.
But he has a go at
atheists for their
hypocrisy.
He doesn't think that
they follow their ideas
through to their logical
conclusion.
So he writes this, he
says, mankind must
accept that his or her
life is entirely
accidental.
He must realise that
like a gypsy, he lives
on the boundary of an
alien world that is as
indifferent to his
hopes as it is for his
sufferings and his
crimes.
So John Gray's saying
if you really want to
believe that your life
is random, you've got
to believe that the
universe doesn't care
about what you hope
for, he doesn't care
about your suffering,
and it doesn't care
about your morality,
because it's just
random.
So try living that out,
he says, and see if
you really believe it.
So, for example, what
should an atheist say
to somebody, a mother,
whose teenage son has
been killed in a hit-and-run
car accident?
Motorist came round a
blind corner, driving
too fast in a country
lane, killed him, and
then drove off.
So that's what happened
to my mother, Jean's,
my mother, my mother,
his best friend,
and they wrote Jean.
What should my mum have
said to Jean if she was
an atheist?
Just, um, unlucky.
Unlucky.
That's it, isn't it?
Just the way in which
the atoms of the universe
bumped into one another
many million years after
they started purposely
that unlucky.
That's all you can say,
because the universe
doesn't care, it's just
random.
Now, I don't know any
atheist who would be
that kind of rude or
unthinking.
I'm not suggesting
atheists actually would
say that to a grieving
mother.
I'm just saying that if
they were honest and
consistent, that is what
they'd say.
Instead, my face, as I
know, would say something
like it being a terrible
tragedy and feeling for
you and your loss.
But what they mean is
unlucky.
Meaningless.
Unlucky.
Now, of course,
sophisticated atheists,
they might say something
like, no, I care about it
because I've evolved to
care.
We've evolved to be in a
society where we worry
about each other.
But the trouble with that
is it boils down to
something that doesn't
care.
So sociology, in atheism,
is reducible to
psychology.
It's just the behaviour
of lots of brains
together in a room.
So it's reducible to
explaining each particular
brain.
But psychology is
reducible to biology
because all your brain
is is a biological
thing.
And biology is
reducible to chemistry
because all the
biological things is
complicated chemicals.
And chemistry is
reducible to physics
and physics is
reducible to matter
and chance and
matter and chance
doesn't care.
So you're seeming to
care.
It's just an illusion
created by randomness,
says atheism.
And what about your
crimes?
I was talking to one
of the professors
doing my PhD, a lady
called Kate.
She's a very
intelligent lady, but
an atheist.
And I said to her,
Kate, I wanted to
eat a coffee.
I said, Kate, I
don't understand.
If you're right about
the world, why would
killing you be wrong?
In particular, why
would it be any
different to cutting a
grapefruit in half my
breakfast?
Kate's atoms,
grapefruit atoms.
Much the same kind of
thing.
All I'd be doing in
both cases would be
increasing the
entropy of the
universe by a
factor of two.
You know, I
have to say, Kate and
I were good friends.
This is a cheeky
question, rather than
I actually wanted to
kill that, just to
clarify.
She said, she
thought about it for
a moment, she said,
well, my mother would
be upset.
That's the answer.
But then I said to
her, but Kate, what's
upset?
What is upset?
Upset is just the
change in the
concentration of a
particular chemical in
the randomly assembled
collection of atoms,
which is your mother's
brain.
That's what she said
that she believed
about life.
She didn't believe
that.
She wasn't living
that.
But it's what she
said she believed
as an atheist.
It can't make sense
of our sense of
right and wrong,
hope and tragedy
and suffering.
It doesn't make any
sense of that.
Whereas the Bible
really does make
sense of those
things.
We matter as
people because we
are made by a
person of God.
Our suffering
matters because we
are made by a
loving God who
intended for things
to be good before
we mess things
up.
And our crimes
matter to God
because God is a
moral God who
loves good and
hates evil.
Makes sense of
those things.
But of course
the problem
with something
personal, a
relationship with
God that's
personal, is it's
out of the
boundaries of
where science
can get you.
Let me just
read to you
again from
Paul's speech.
He said this.
He said,
God made
from one man
every nation
of mankind
in order that
they should
seek God
and perhaps
feel their way
towards him
and find him.
He's not
far from each
one of us.
Now that for
me was an
extraordinary
thought when I
first came across
it.
Not just that
God is the
explanation for
a long, long
time ago
why it went
bang,
but that God
intends to
know me
personally.
He wants me
to relate to
him and him
to relate to
me on a
personal level.
Now that was
a mind-blowing
thought for me.
But the
trouble with
knowing people
personally is
science can't
really do that.
It's not that
science isn't
really good and
useful and
powerful, it's
just science
can't tell you
everything that's
important about
the world.
And in
particular it's
not very good
at telling you
about people.
Let's suppose
that you wanted
to get to
know me,
which maybe
as a result of
this talk you
really don't,
but I don't
know.
Let's suppose
you wanted to
get to know
me better,
but all you
were allowed
to go on
was things
that you could
work out by
scientific
experiments.
What could
you find out?
Well, you
could do
scanning electron
microscopy on
the fibres of
my genes,
and you could
tell me if I'm
wearing natural
fibres or
mixed fibres.
You could
see the dust
lights and
tell me whether
I've got an
above average
density of
them.
That kind of
thing.
You could
tell me if I
sat in
everything
nasty on
the tube
without
realizing.
That kind
of stuff.
Then you
could do
gas chromatography
under my
armpits,
and you
could tell me
what deodorant
I'm wearing
and whether
or not it's
coping with
this slightly
intimidating
situation.
You could
do DNA
fingerprinting,
you could
work out if
I'm related
to anyone on
the Interpol
database,
or whether
I'm likely
to die
young of
a known
genetic
illness.
And that
is about
all.
I think
that's about
all you
could tell.
So you
couldn't tell
my name,
you couldn't
tell what I
love,
what makes
me laugh,
what makes
me cry,
you couldn't
tell who
is important
to me,
you couldn't
tell me what
I would die
for.
In fact,
almost anything
that's important
about knowing
me as a
person would
be beyond
you.
And don't
get me
wrong,
it's not
that science
isn't really
powerful,
science is a
really,
really useful
thing,
but science
can't tell us
everything that's
important.
Which is why
I very much
doubt that
anyone here
who's in a
relationship
began on
their first
date by
saying,
excuse me,
can I take
a small DNA
sample and
I'll be
back with you
in a
position in
a couple
of weeks
time.
I doubt
that.
Because when
it comes to
knowing people,
science is out
of its depth.
You need them
to reproduce
themselves,
to speak to
them,
to relate
to them
like that.
And the
Bible's
claim is that
that is
exactly what
God has
done with
us.
And this
is our
closing
filter today.
Rather than
leaving us
to guess
about him,
or even
rather than
leaving us
to try and
do experiments
on him,
because that's
typical,
isn't it?
If God's
everywhere,
how are you
supposed to
get rid of
him from
the moment,
to take a
control,
no reading?
What would
the universe
without God
look like if
this is the
universe we've
got to
measure?
You can't
even do the
experiment.
define that
kind of
thing out.
But rather than
leaving us in
the dark,
God has
made himself
known,
and he's
done that
through the
man Jesus
Christ,
who was
really born
in history,
and really
lived and
really died,
and he's
given us
evidence,
Paul says.
And this
is the last
verse of
this speech,
verse 31.
God
commands us to
change our
minds about
him,
because he's
fixed the
day on which
he will judge
the world in
righteousness,
by a man
he's
appointed,
and of
this he's
given assurance
or proof by
raising him
from the
dead.
When they
heard about
the resurrection,
some mocked,
others said,
we'll hear more
about this.
God has given
assurance or
proof by
raising him
from the
dead.
And that
was a real
surprise to
me as an
18 year old.
See, because
I bought into
the idea that
as Richard
Dawkins puts
it, science
is about
facts and
it gets
results.
And
Christianity
is about
myths and
fairy tales
and it
doesn't.
So he
divides the
world up
into actual
thinking and
fact stuff,
which is over
on my side,
and flaky
imagination
stuff, if you
like that kind
of thing,
which is on
Jesus' side.
And here
was something
about Jesus
that was in
the facts
category,
in the
evidence
category,
in the
what actually
happened in
history category.
I started to
realise that
the Bible
wasn't just
a kind of
religious book
that someone
had written
to express
their imagination,
a bit like
someone paints
a religious
painting or
a stain
on Sunday.
That's what
I thought it
was.
I realised
that the
New Testament
contained
eyewitness
documents about
what people
had seen
about Jesus.
And that the
people who
wrote them
were sometimes
martyred and
lost their
life for
defending the
things that
they said.
That was
pretty striking.
I started to
ask questions
like what
actually
happened?
Who was
this man
in history?
Jesus Christ.
Was he just
a religious
lunatic that
convinced people?
Or was he
actually the
creator of
the universe
coming to
the universe?
I started
reading about
these miracles.
It's interesting
isn't it?
People go
both ways of
miracles.
Some people
say, oh
miracles aren't
possible
scientifically.
If you did
miracles it
must be a
fairy tale.
I think
that's a bit
unfair really
because if
you think for
a moment,
if someone
came into
the world
and they
were actually
God who
created the
worlds,
I think you
would be
more suspicious
if nothing
unusual happened.
If I said,
I'm God,
and they
go, oh
really,
prove it
then.
Oh no,
I can't
actually do
anything other
human beings
can't do.
Yeah,
like get out
of here.
If I say I'm
God,
you'd expect
some kind of
things that
only someone
who was God
could do.
Things that
involved adjusting
the laws of
physics or
biology.
That would
impress you.
And Paul
says Jesus
has done
this by
raising,
or God
has done
this by
raising Jesus
from the
dead.
If you're
a scientific
person,
I urge you
to look at
the evidence
of Jesus.
His life,
his death,
and his
resurrection.
And ask
yourself,
is this
what happened?
Now in
the God
Elysium,
Richard
talked to
speak about
the resurrection
only once,
and similarly
I've heard
him on
debates on
this.
And that
is to say
that it
cannot have
happened,
no matter
what the
evidence is,
it can't
have happened,
because it
contradicts the
laws of
science.
That's
true.
Because
I'm just
not the
gods who
designed the
laws of
science,
and he
keeps them
the same,
day after
day,
from changing
them one
day,
to make
the central
point in
history.
What Mr.
Dawkins
really means
is it's
not consistent
with my
atheism.
See,
if the
world is
just
random,
then there
can't be
a resurrection.
If the
world is
in personal
forces,
then the
laws of
physics can
never be
changed.
But if
there is a
God who
made the
world and
everything in
it,
who gives
all men
life and
death and
everything,
then he
can give
assurance to
all,
if he
wants to,
by raising
him from
the dead.
So will
you be
scientifically
open-minded
when you
hold on to
your blind
faith in
atheism?
I don't
need to
look at the
evidence,
I've made
my mind
up,
says the
atheist.
Or will
you be
more
scientifically
honest and
say,
here is this
man,
Jesus.
Is it
possible,
am I
open to the
possibility that
he is the
God who
made me?
Does this
make sense
of my
human life
that he's
given me?
Does it
make sense
of the
universe that
I live in?
And what
if he
actually wants
to know
me,
for me to
turn back
to him,
to say,
I've got it
wrong about
you,
I want to
trust in
you.
That's the
decision I
made about
18 years
ago,
and about
which I
had no
poetry of
my own
to share.
Thank you
so much for
listening.
I think we're
going to take
questions,
shall we just
take a two
minute break,
if anyone
needs to
dash to the
loo,
or just
compose your
thoughts,
and then you
can go on
with it.
Thanks for
being such a
good audience.