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With Lennox                                                                                     

John Lennox:

[00:00:00] You know, people love to say, “I’m a skeptic.” And my response to it is, “Oh, well, join the club. So am I. Tell me, what are you skeptical about?” Because I may be skeptical about different things, so you might know things that’ll help my skepticism, and I might know things that’ll help yours. Uh, so skepticism, it’s a nice Greek word, as you know, skeptine, to view from a distance.

[00:00:24] And I like to remind people that you have to give up your distance to get to know certain things, in particular, to get to know people and to get to know God. Mm-hmm. So I think there’s a lot of room for discussion in there.

Media – The Diary of a CEO

Steven Bartlett: [00:00:44] John, thank you. One of the, um, one of the most compelling arguments for, uh, God that you’ve presented, and your way of seeing the world and being, is not actually necessarily anything you’ve written in your books- No, no, no … or not necessarily anything you’ve said. It is, it is [00:01:00] actually you. And, uh, you, you, you have a certain peace and contentment that I rarely see in people that I interview, but I often see, and I’ve almost always seen, in the Christians that I’ve interviewed.

John Dickson (Studio)

[00:01:20] That’s Steven Bartlett, the British entrepreneur and host of the popular podcast, The Diary of a CEO. He was talking to Professor John Lennox, one of Christianity’s greatest undeceivers. The conversation was published just over a month ago, and they covered a lot of space. Science versus faith, uh, mathematics and God, artificial intelligence, the decline of atheism, and much more.

[00:01:48] But at the very end there, Steven, who’s not known for being into Christianity, commends John for something I’ve known about him for a long time. [00:02:00] It’s not just John’s words that have impacted a generation, beautiful though they are. It’s his demeanor, might be the right word. His Irish charm, his kindness, and his general approachability diffuse even the most intense debate.

[00:02:19] And John Lennox has had many intense debates in his lifetime. This is a man who has taken the stage to debate two of the most formidable opponents of the Christian faith of the last thirty or forty years, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Dawkins and Hitchens were two of the so-called Four Horsemen of the New Atheists, an early twenty-first century secular movement that not only rejected religion, but sought to present it as irrational, even dangerous.

[00:02:51] And they championed science as the pinnacle of truth. Its proponents were incredibly smart, but [00:03:00] militant in their rejection of religion of any kind, and particularly Christianity. But they hadn’t anticipated a distinguished, grandfatherly character to step up to the microphone and take them on with a warm, welcoming smile and a twinkle in his eye.

[00:03:20] Here’s a grab from the 2007 debate with Professor Dawkins.

Media –The God Delusion Debate, October 3, 2007

Now, you ask us to imagine with John Lennon a world without religion. Well, I’d like you to imagine with John Lennox, uh-

[00:03:37] A world without atheism, with no Stalin, with no Mao, with no Pol Pot, to name the heads of the three officially atheistic states. A world with no gulag, no cultural revolution, no killing fields. I think that would be a world worth imagining too.

John Dickson (Studio)

It’s always great to talk with John Lennox, and in this [00:04:00] episode, we’ll hear from him not just about his recent exploits, but also about the winding roads that have led him to become the closest thing to C.S.

[00:04:11] Lewis that the world has seen in 50 years. From mathematics to theology, from Northern Ireland to Eastern Europe, John has had one great aim, and it’s the aim of this podcast: to uncover the truth and the beauty of Christianity for a world that doesn’t quite know what to make of Christianity.

I’m John Dickson, and this is A Very Undeceptions.

[00:04:54] Each episode of Undeceptions, we explore some aspect of life, faith, history, [00:05:00] culture, science, or ethics that’s either much misunderstood or mostly forgotten. And with the help of people who know what they’re talking about, we’re trying to undeceive ourselves and let the truth out

John Lennox:
[00:05:42] The other thing that you may or may not know about that might interest you, I was interviewed for Diary of a CEO a couple of weeks ago

John Dickson:
Yes. I mean, the internet exploded about it, so And did, oh, you- Of course. I- So I know it’s [00:06:00] a comedown talking to, uh, little old Undeceptions, but, uh- maybe you can bear with us.

John Lennox:
Listen, I’m delighted [00:06:04] I’m always delighted to see you.

John Dickson:
Well, I guess we should probably have a proper interview now, if that’s okay with you.

John Lennox:
Okay, that’s absolutely fine.

John Dickson (Studio)

That, of course, is John Lennox, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and Fellow of Green Templeton College at the University of Oxford.

[00:06:23] He’s also the author of a bunch of books, including God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?, and God, AI, and the End of History. He’s several times a friend of the show, so check out the links in the show notes for his previous appearances, and I’m glad to be able to call him an actual friend. He was born in Belfast in 1943 and grew up in Armagh, sometimes called the ecclesiastical capital of all Ireland.

[00:06:53] The city is home to Protestant and Catholic cathedrals, and both of them are called St. [00:07:00] Patrick’s, named, of course, after the man who in the fifth century brought Christianity to Ireland. He deserves an episode one day. Don’t you think, Kaley? St. Patrick? We don’t know a whole lot about him, but I think we can just bring enough that would be interesting.

[00:07:18] Now, if you know anything about Northern Ireland, you would’ve heard of the Troubles, the 30-year violent conflict from 1968 to 1998 between the Unionists, who wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom, and the Nationalists, who wanted to join the Republic of Ireland. It’s often cited as one of the great religious wars of history, but virtually all historians understand it more as a political and territorial conflict.

[00:07:53] The indigenous Irish population was overwhelmingly Catholic, while the descendants of [00:08:00] British settlers in the north, planted there from the seventeenth century, were predominantly Protestant. All that to say Armagh was a tricky place to grow up in the mid-twentieth century. John, um, the cliché about Northern Ireland is either everyone’s religious anyway, or enough goes on in Northern Ireland to turn anyone off religion.

John Lennox:
[00:08:30] Which was it? I think both of those are true. I- Ireland is full of cliches with an element of truth i- in them. Mm-hmm. Uh, when I was growing up, the troubles hadn’t yet struck, and, uh, there was just the rumblings of trouble in the air when I was 17, 18, going off to university. But my parents were very unusual [00:09:00] Christians i- in that kind of context where there was a lot of religious bigotry because they were Christian without being sectarian.

[00:09:11] Mm. Simply explained, that meant, in practical terms, that my dad, who ran the kind of store that’s no longer viable, a store that sold almost everything- Mm-hmm … in the town, it was the largest store, so he employed 30 to 40 people, and he employed both Catholics and Protestants, and that caused trouble, of course, and antagonism.

John Dickson:
[00:09:38] And I- Real trouble one day

John Lennox:
Oh, yes, bombs. My brother was badly in- injured, but that was after I’d left Ireland. Mm-hmm. But I asked my dad once, “Why do you do it, Dad?” And his answer inspired me for the rest of my life. He just said, “Son, Scripture tells us [00:10:00] that every man and woman, irrespective of worldview, is made in the image of God, and I intend to treat them like that.”

[00:10:07] Yeah. So that was pretty profound.

John Dickson (Studio)

John credits his parents for demonstrating a type of credible Christianity that didn’t devolve into sectarianism. They also taught him to read widely.

John Lennox:
The other thing is in a situation where there was a lot of bigotry, parental pressure on kids to assimilate whatever it was their parents did or did not believe, my parents loved me enough to give me space to think- Mm-hmm

[00:10:39] and hence I’m talking to you today. So it was quite remarkable, and it, it laid foundations in my life that I look back and I’m very grateful for.

John Dickson:
And your dad let you read widely. I mean, he put books in front of you that, you know, aren’t the normal books.

John Lennox:
[00:11:00] Yes, which is very interesting for a man who was denied education, essentially.

[00:11:06] Mm. Mm-hmm. His father said, “Look, Jack, I’ve got a business to run. Your brother and yourself, you’ll have to do it.” And he really lived in a way what he would like to have done through me. Yeah. He was someone who was a self-taught scholar in as much as he could do it, so he, he read widely and made the Scriptures live because he used them to introduce me to ancient history, philosophy, all the rest of it.

[00:11:37] So it was a mind-expanding experience, and the incident you’re referring to is when he handed me The Communist Manifesto. Mm-hmm. And I said, “Dad, have you read it?” He said, “No, but you need to read it.” I said, “Why is that?” “You need to know what other people think.” And, and that again, that set a, a [00:12:00] trend in my mind.

[00:12:01] It was very unusual to, to get that in Northern Ireland.

Reading

What typically happened to contemporaries of mine was that they first came across critical thinking at university, where they were taught to question everything. If they had been brought up in a religious environment, God was simply part of their mental furniture, and it had never occurred to them to question his existence.

Then university teaching of critical thinking hit them, and they were faced with questions that they had no idea how to handle. As a result, uncertainties crept into their minds, and it was not long before any religious convictions disappeared and an equally unthought-through agnosticism or atheism took over.

This was the result of an artificial opposition being set up between Christianity and critical thinking, because the one and then the [00:13:00] other had been embraced in an unthinking way. What was missing was a basic understanding of the biblical worldview, namely that it encourages critical thinking. This is a key insight.

The Bible says, “Love the Lord your God with your mind.”

John Lennox, My Story.

John Dickson (Studio)

It’s easy to forget that first and foremost, John has spent his career as a mathematician. His first doctorate, a PhD in mathematics, was on the centrality and permutability of soluble groups. You know, the centrality and permutability of soluble groups.

[00:13:43] His first book was called Subnormal Subgroups of Groups, an advanced academic text. He’s published more than 70 mathematical papers, and co-authored two research level texts in algebra in the [00:14:00] Oxford Mathematical Monographs series.

John Dickson:
Why, uh, did you ended up focusing on maths? Were you just a left-brain nerd, or was there something else that drew you to that as a topic?

John Lennox:
[00:14:12] Why maths? Well, I was good at arithmetic, reputed to be the only one who ever asked for extra homework, and I found it easy in the first stages. But beyond that, I had a very good prize-winning teacher- Mm … who made it interesting. And the headmaster, who was-

John Dickson:
Are we talking about Monkey here?

John Lennox:
Oh, Monkey Jones, yes.

[00:14:37] Bless him. He was the first, and then the headmaster, who had been to Cambridge. Mm. He was a bit dour, but he was a pretty good pure mathematician, and he it was that encouraged me to go to Cambridge. And it’s just a question of good teaching, but I had brilliant languages teaching as well, and that played a very big role, uh, around the [00:15:00] edges of my life, and then eventually in the center when I started traveling.

John Dickson:
[00:15:04] And, um, unlike other teenagers, uh, you, you read the great mathematician Blaise Pascal, uh, when you were quite young. Am I, am I right? And, uh, this had-

John Lennox:
Oh, absolutely … this had quite an impact too I read Pascal in French when I was a, a young teenager, yes. Mm. Because I, I just liked getting into French, and I was very well taught French.

John Dickson:
[00:15:30] But Blaise Pascal himself, what, what compelled you? Uh, presumably it was partly that he was a famous mathematician. Um, but also, uh, you know, he, he had a remarkable conversion and, um-

John Lennox:
Oh, he did. And, and that impact- As a mathematician tried to explain that to people … that, that, that’s, that’s right. And that conversion impacted me, and also his Pensées, his, his thoughts- Mm-hmm

[00:15:58] I found quite [00:16:00] fascinating even though they’re … they appear sometimes to be fairly randomly distributed.

John Dickson (Studio)

Blaise Pascal was a 17th-century mathematician who converted to Christianity in a pretty dramatic fashion as a young adult after having a vision, he said, of God. And he wrote down his experience on a piece of parchment and then sewed it into his jacket, and that account of his conversion wasn’t discovered until several years after his death.

[00:16:29] And what he said is amazing. We’re gonna put it in the show notes so you can read it for yourself. After his conversion, Pascal devoted much of his life to writing about Christianity and philosophy. His famous wager, the Pascal’s Wager, goes something like this: If you believe Christianity and it turns out to be false, the downside is relatively small.

[00:16:54] You die, and that’s that. No big deal. But if you [00:17:00] reject Christianity and it turns out to be true, the downside is enormous because you’ll face God. Now, people often mock Pascal’s Wager. Uh, they point out that fear isn’t a good reason to believe anything, and I accept that criticism, but there is a genuinely interesting idea hidden in Pascal’s reasoning.

[00:17:24] If one option carries an enormous possible downside, that’s at least a reason to investigate something seriously and maybe even try it on for size, take it for a test run. In social policy, we call this the precautionary principle. Uh, think of climate change. Um, if the downside of dismissing the science of climate change is potentially catastrophic, then even a relatively small chance of the worst case scenario is a good enough reason to investigate it [00:18:00] thoroughly and even consider some sensible precautions.

[00:18:04] Anyway, back to John.

John Lennox:
Here’s an amusing side of that I had an interview recently with an up-and-coming, very bright 22, 23-year-old philosopher from Cambridge called Joe Foley. I don’t know whether you’ve come across him, but- No, no … he’s a very interesting atheist to interview. And Justin Brierley was interviewing the pair of us together, and suddenly in the midst of it, Joe said, “Of course, I pray.”

[00:18:36] And I said, “You what?” He said, “I pray.” “Why do you pray?” “Well,” he said, “you know, there might be a God, and if there is, I don’t want to miss out.” So there’s Pascal in the 21st century.

John Dickson:
That’s fantastic.

[00:18:59] [00:19:00] Can I ask you, who were your earliest challengers to the faith? Those you met who disliked your Christianity that, that maybe troubled you or even refined you

John Lennox:
Well, the, I suppose the first one was my religious instruction teacher at school who was a failed curate, and who actually threw me out of the class because he didn’t like me arguing for Christianity, which is not a very- Oh, your religious teacher was a liberal or something, was he?

[00:19:36] Oh, very, very much so. And he didn’t like me arguing the case- Mm-hmm … on the basis of, uh, what I’d read in Mere Christianity and things like that. He just, he, he didn’t understand the arguments, I think. Hmm. But that was not a serious problem. It excluded me from the class, which maybe wasn’t the best of what this [00:20:00] is from my point of view.

[00:20:02] But if you mean serious challenge, I, I think that the first kind of challenge, I think, was the genetic one, which you hinted at in your introduction. That is, you Irish all believe in God, and you fight about it, and that’s why you’re a Christian. It’s Irish genetics. And I was challenged r- with that very early on in Cambridge.

[00:20:28] And of course, I’d heard it before, but what, the way it struck me angularly at that time was, here I have a unique opportunity to really get to know and befriend people who don’t share my worldview. And I took that as an indicator that I should make a lot of effort to do that, and I’ve been doing it ever since.

[00:20:50] So that kind of challenge, uh, was very helpful because I entered the fray with an attitude, I’m here to learn. [00:21:00] I can learn from everybody, so let me try. Hmm. The second was a very major challenge, and I record that in my autobiography from a Nobel Prize winner that I met at dinner. Hmm. And I risked asking him if there was anything in his Nobel Prize-winning discovery that indicated to him that there might be a mind behind the universe.

[00:21:27] And he said no, but it was disingenuous, and it stopped the conversation dead in its tracks. And I thought that was the end of it. He turned to his neighbor and paid no attention to me during the rest of the dinner. But afterwards, he said, “Come to my room.” And it was a command, not an invitation. And he invited several other senior members of the university.

[00:21:54] And as I recall it, John, they stood around me, and he said, “Do you want a career in [00:22:00] mathematics, Lennox?” And I said, “Yes, sir.” “Well,” he said “Give up this naive faith in God because it’s gonna cripple you intellectually. You’ll never make it. So we’ve got witnesses here. So in front of witnesses, I want you to give it up.”

[00:22:18] Well, that was pressure. I was 19, and he’d won the Nobel Prize. And I remember gaining the courage from somewhere that I know. I said, “Tell me,” I said, “What have you got to offer me that’s better than what I’ve already got in Christ?” Mm-hmm. And, uh, he said, “The evolutionism of Henri Bergson And I chuckled inwardly because I knew about Bergson, uh, from C.S. Lewis. So it was a very bad choice actually, because Bergson, uh, [00:23:00] had been thinking o- of becoming a Christian later in his life. Uh, I didn’t bring that up, and I just looked at him and I said, “If that’s all you’ve got, I’ll take the risk. I’ll stick with Christianity and Christ.” Mm-hmm. “Good night, sir.” Got up and walked out.

[00:23:18] But that put steel into me and made me- Yes … make a number of resolutions that I’ve tried to keep. One, that I would never abuse a- an academic position if ever I got the kind of one I got now. And two, I would aim for open debate. Mm. Put the evidence out there. Let people hear both sides, and let them make up their own minds.

[00:23:42] Don’t try and browbeat them. Yeah. Because of course it was obvious if he’d been a Christian and I’d been an atheist, he would’ve lost his job over it. Indeed. Indeed. Yeah.

John Dickson:
So- John, you’ve already mentioned C.S. Lewis once or twice- … now, 15 minutes. Uh, and, um, [00:24:00] I remember you telling me, uh, that, that you got to hear him, see him, uh, in Cambridge.

[00:24:07] I guess this was after his move from Oxford to Cambridge, but, uh, correct my memory.

John Lennox:
Well, your memory’s, uh, slightly incorrect. He lived in Oxford and traveled by train. Mm. There used to be a railway line between Oxford and Cambridge, and they’re revamping it. It- Oh, good … it’ll be open in about 50 years time- Excellent

[00:24:30] at the rate of progress we get. But this was 1962- Mm-hmm … the year before he died, and, uh, he had– I knew he was there. I didn’t know he was very ill. He’d given some lectures, and the faculty of English had persuaded him to do a new series of lectures in the Michaelmas term in ’62 on the poet John Donne. And the lecture room was just [00:25:00] across the road in Mill Lane from where the old maths department was.

[00:25:04] Mill Lane, by the way, is where the Eagle Pub is that, uh- Mm … heard the announcement of the discovery of the structure of DNA in about 1953. Uh, so, uh, a very famous place, and I, I went and listened to- Three or four of Lewis’s very last lectures. Yes, that’s right.

John Dickson (Studio)

Some new listeners might not know that C.S.

[00:25:28] Lewis was a famous 20th century British author, literary scholar, and lay theologian. He was a don, a scholar, at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and is perhaps most widely celebrated as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, though his huge body of works commending and defending the Christian faith, including Mere Christianity, are also extraordinary and long-lasting.

[00:25:54] I have the audio of his collected essays on high rotation [00:26:00] on my phone, and, uh, it’s 32 hours of joy. I absolutely love it. Undeceptions, our podcast name, is also the name of an out-of-print collection of C.S. Lewis essays that I have on my bookshelf back in my office. John Lennox got to sit in a lecture with C.S. Lewis.

John Dickson:
What do you think, um, Lewis gave you? Uh, I don’t mean just those lectures. I mean … Yeah.

John Lennox:
Oh, no, no. It wasn’t those lectures. Hmm. Although those gave me an impression of the man, but the real impact was the intellectual from his writings, clarity of logic- Yeah … vision of where the heart of Christianity was, that it had a supernatural dimension, that its central claim was what he called the grand miracle, the incarnation of God.

[00:26:59] [00:27:00] And he saw the nature of that, how it challenged the dominant naturalism of the academy. Secondly, in connection with that, his rebuttal of David Hume’s view of miracles as violations of the laws of nature. And what he opened for me was, although he was no scientist, he understood how science worked, uh, in terms of philosophy of science, and that helped me enormously and has done all of my life.

[00:27:35] C.S. Lewis refused to try and make Christianity palatable to his intellectual peers by getting rid of the miraculous stuff. That was very common in his period amongst Christian academics. He tackled things like miracles head-on. Back in 2020, John described for us Lewis’s response to those who say that [00:28:00] miracles defy the laws of nature.

[00:28:05] And I think Lewis has got it absolutely right to show that the problem lies in two concepts of law. One is the mathematical concept, the other is the legal concept. And he tells this lovely little analogy to illustrate it. He says, “If I’m in a hotel and I put £100 in the drawer on the first night and 100 on the second night, so 100 plus 100 is 200, and on the third morning I wake up and there’s £50 in the drawer.

[00:28:42] What do I conclude? That the laws of arithmetic have been broken or the laws of England?” Well, of course I conclude the laws of England have been broken, but why do I conclude that? Because the laws of mathematics have not been broken. And the reason I recognize, [00:29:00] and here you can extrapolate to a much bigger scene, my mistake was to think that the drawer was a closed system of cause and effect, and therefore there’s nothing outside it that could come in and feed something in or take something out.

[00:29:18] I was wrong. And mathematics cannot say to the thief, “Stop, stop, stop. You’re about to break the laws of arithmetic.” That’s absurd. It’s our knowledge of the laws of arithmetic, in a more general sense, it’s our knowledge of the laws of nature that enable us to recognize a claimant for miracle. If you didn’t know that dead bodies stayed in the ground, well, the resurrection of Jesus would be no big deal.

[00:29:47] But the point is, in the, the world of the New Testament twenty centuries ago, they knew the relevant laws of nature, and that’s why they’re recognized as a miracle. So [00:30:00] Hume is multiply wrong, I think. A-and therefore people say, uh, today that science and miracles clash. No. Science can tell you nothing. In a way, plus or minus, although you have to be careful with that.

[00:30:17] If there is a God who created the universe and has it running on certain recognizable laws, He’s not constrained by them. He’s not a prisoner of them. He can feed a new and a special event in, and our knowledge of the laws will help us recognize that. So you need both things. You need a universe that does run on laws in order to recognize the hand of God when He gets involved.

[00:30:46] So I don’t see a problem here. Go back and listen to the full episode. It’s called God Science, and I have no idea what number it is. This is where you come in, Al. Like, you’re holding up three. [00:31:00] What? Episode three? The third one we e- ever did. Episode three. The, the very third one. Oh, man. Anyway, uh, I’m not sure if Undeceptions is old enough to have a classic episode, but that one comes pretty close.

[00:31:15] I think he really understood the problem, which is why quite a large number of scientists don’t like him, because he saw that their philosophical emperor has no clothes, so to speak. And also his unpacking of difficult concepts in Christianity. And ironically, uh, he often used geometric illustrations, although he was no mathematician.

[00:31:42] In fact, we nearly didn’t have Lewis because of his failure in the mathematics exam to get into Oxford. And if he hadn’t got in, we’d never have heard of him. So my subject algebra was the thing that he hated most, which is [00:32:00] highly ironical. So although we’re both Northern Irish, we’re very different.

John Dickson (Studio)

After the break, we go back to before almost anyone in the West had heard of John Lennox.

[00:32:13] We go behind the Iron Curtain, where plenty of people were starting to pay attention to John Lennox’s words.

BREAK

MEDIA: Sir Winston Churchill’s Sinews of Peace speech, delivered on the 5th of March 1946,

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe.

[00:32:41] Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia. All these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the [00:33:00] Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high …

John Dickson (Studio)

That’s Sir Winston Churchill’s famous Sinews of Peace speech, delivered on the 5th of March 1946, in which he coined the term Iron Curtain, the political and ideological divide between the democratic West and the communist East.

[00:33:25] From the end of World War II until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, much of Eastern Europe was effectively closed off. Travel was tightly controlled and communist governments viewed Christianity as a threat, sometimes placing churches under heavy restrictions. It was in this unlikely setting that John Lennox found his voice as a Christian.

[00:33:52] He went as a mathematician. He discovered a calling as a public advocate for the Christian faith.

John Dickson:
John, [00:34:00] before, um, anyone really knew you as a public Christian in the West, or before you were very well known, you actually had a, a fruitful academic and Christian influence in Eastern Europe. Um, so can you give us a sense of how that came about and how that shaped who you have become?

John Lennox:
[00:34:28] I think one of the ways in which that came about was the fact that I have always been interested in languages other than English, and I was taught to speak French pretty well at school. I added to that for fun, learning German through the medium of amateur radio because I could speak to people in Germany from my home.

[00:34:49] It didn’t cost anything. Hmm. And when I finished my PhD in Cambridge, my doctoral supervisor said, “You know, [00:35:00] there’s a very good fellowship arrangement in West Germany, and if you felt up to it, it’s competitive, but you might have a chance, and it gives you a year, or two years indeed, uh, without administration or teaching, and it really is very useful to get research done to build up a basis, a foundation for your career.”

[00:35:26] And I applied for it, got it, went to Würzburg for a year, and three years later, I went to Freiburg, and I really learned to speak German. I saw it as an opportunity to do that. And at the end of that first year, I was invited to give some talks, some Christian talks in, uh, Hungary, and that began to open Eastern Europe because in Hungary I met believers from East Germany.

[00:35:58] And of course, since [00:36:00] I was by that time fluent, I could go there, no need for an interpreter as there was in Hungary. And, uh, that was the beginning of many visits behind the Iron Curtain that ran, roughly speaking, from 1977, I suppose, to maybe ’76, ’76 to 1989 when the wall fell. Hmm. Hmm. Most of those visits being Bible teaching visits to encourage Christians because in the main countries I went to, Hungary, Poland, and most of all East Germany, there were relatively few people with my training and education, so it was an encouragement to the believers to hear Bible teaching, uh, from someone like me.

John Dickson:
[00:36:45] But you also met, you know, good old hardened communist atheists who, uh, weren’t, uh, fans of your, of your Christianity. Can you tell us about that?

John Lennox:
Oh, yes. Well, that happened much more [00:37:00] after ’89 when I started going to Russia and Ukraine and Belarus to a limited extent. Uh, in the, the former seventy-six to ’89, I was mostly visiting Christian believers and encouraging them by teaching scripture- Mm

[00:37:18] typically a week-long in a church, two or three hours speaking a night often, which was hard work because I did mathematics all day long to keep up my research. But once I started traveling to Russia and Ukraine, it was very different because the context was typically the Academy of Sciences, certainly to start with.

[00:37:40] And there, people were utterly intrigued to find a mathematician who believed in God. And there, of course, I met a, a lot of fairly hard-line atheism, but in the early days, very open people because they’d never heard arguments for God. They couldn’t even conceive [00:38:00] a rational defense of theism, let alone Christianity.

[00:38:04] So it was a marvelous opportunity to get to know the people, uh, make friends with them, and talk to them about, uh, my Christian faith. They were so open in those days that I’d get asked questions about God in mathematics seminars, which would- Mm … never happen in the West. In Romania, uh, y- y- you, uh, you got into a bit of trouble.

John Dickson:
[00:38:32] Y- y- you got pretty sick in Romania, and I wouldn’t mind my listeners hearing, uh, hearing about that.

John Lennox:
Oh, I was poisoned. Hmm. It was my only visit to Romania in those days. I’ve been back since. But, uh, that was very scary. We, two of us drove in from Vienna to encourage Christians w- with whom we had contact, and we [00:39:00] met these Christians, and actually meeting them was remarkable because, uh, the town we went to was in almost total darkness because of saving electricity.

[00:39:11] There was no lighting. We had n- no map. All we had was an address, and we couldn’t find the place, a home. And eventually I said, “We have to ask someone, although it’s risky.” And we had the address on a piece of paper, so we stopped and saw a man or a woman, can’t remember which, standing, and said, “Wh- where is this?”

[00:39:36] And they just pointed across the road to a block of flats. In a huge city, we’d stopped exactly where it was. So that was the start. And we had a lovely time with them. Went back to our hotel, and we were hungry and ordered a meal, and we should have suspected it. There was a, a dump [00:40:00] of red stuff on the meat.

[00:40:03] And we ate it. We were famished. And almost immediately, we began to feel very unwell. And we said, “What do we do?” Well, I said there’s only one thing we can do. In a few hours we will lose strength because we’ve been poisoned, and what we need to do is while we still have physical strength, even though we’re feeling very unwell, get into the car and drive like crazy back to Austria.

[00:40:31] When we got to the, uh, border of Romania, we were so gray that they thought we were high on drugs. And we got out by the skin of our teeth, raced across Poland at an ungodly speed, and got to Vienna and were very ill for three weeks. Seriously ill. Hmm. So th- that was the Securitate in those days. They didn’t like foreigners coming.

[00:40:59] Hmm. It was [00:41:00] very scary because there was a, a danger of life, actually.

John Dickson (Studio)

Romania under the communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu was among the most repressive regimes in Eastern Europe. Its secret police, the Securitate, were notorious for surveillance, intimidation, and even poisoning. John describes his visit to Romania in the early 1980s as his worst experience behind the Iron Curtain, and yes, he was poisoned.

[00:41:33] He didn’t return to Romania until 2019 when he spoke at a large Christian conference in Bucharest. It was a remarkable contrast to his underground visit nearly 40 years earlier. As the Soviet bloc crumbled, John quietly continued his ministry. Maths by day, Bible by night across Eastern Europe, eventually reaching Moscow.

[00:41:58] But after the break, [00:42:00] John returns to Oxford to confront a different kind of atheism, the so-called new atheism

BREAK

MEDIA: The God Delusion Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox, October 3, 2007

Um, first I’d like to respond a little bit to what John said in the, on the previous occasion. When you say faith is rational and evidence-based, I mean, if that were true, it wouldn’t need to be faith, would it?

[00:42:21] I mean, if there, if there were evidence for it, uh, why would you need to call it faith? You would say just evidence. And when, when you said that we, that, that faith in relativity, in, in Einstein’s theory of, of re- relativity is, is evidence-based, that of course it is. But, um, the, but the evidence is, is all-important.

[00:42:41] I mean, Einstein’s predictions fit in with, um, with, uh, uh, observed fact, and they, and with a whole body of theory. Whereas we only need to use the word faith when there isn’t any evidence. No, not at all. Uh, I presume you’ve got faith in your wife. Is there any evidence for [00:43:00] that- Yes, plenty … on which you base it?

[00:43:01] Yes. Plenty of evidence. Um- Hmm

[00:43:11] Let’s generalize it. Never mind about my wife. Let’s generalize it. It’s the same with mine, Richard. It’s the same with mine.

John Dickson (Studio)

In 2007, John Lennox was invited to Alabama in the US to debate Richard Dawkins, then the world’s most prominent atheist. The year before, Dawkins had published his The God Delusion, which went on to sell three and a half million copies in 30 languages.

[00:43:39] He galvanized the so-called New Atheist Movement.

John Dickson:
John, um, tu- let’s turn to the wild ride that you had when you started to be invited to debate people like Richard Dawkins, uh, Christopher Hitchens. [00:44:00] Um, do you recall how that came about? Uh, how- Oh, yes … you came to their attention?

John Lennox:
Oh, very, uh, clearly. I was in Wycliffe Hall in Oxford giving a talk on science and religion one very hot and dreary night in their miserable refectory, which is hopelessly, uh, set up for a lecture.

[00:44:26] And at the end of it, there was a long queue, and I just wanted to go home. And this very tall man, very polite, Deep South Alabama, said, “Would you ever think of coming to Alabama?” And I said, “It would have to be very serious.” So he said, “Thank you.” And a few weeks later, I received a letter, and he said, “I can organize,” and he gave a huge list of things he could organize.

[00:44:57] He was seeking for some way [00:45:00] into the areas that the churches didn’t reach, and I was impressed with that. He was a, a teacher of history at the time, but running a little apologetics group for young people. And I showed the list to Sally because at the end of it, he’d rather cheekily added, “Now I need to know if you’re serious,” you see.

[00:45:24] She said, “You need to do something about this.” So I went, and true to his word, he’d organized some absolutely fascinating sessions and lectures and so on. The following year, he came to Oxford and went to hear Dawkins do a reading or something, and shortly after it, I received an email copy to Dawkins, would we be prepared to come to Alabama and give them a taste of the Oxford debate on God, as if it was confined to that city.

[00:45:56] And that’s how it started. Dawkins had [00:46:00] never heard of me, and he said, “I’d rather really debate somebody who’s known, like the Archbishop of Canterbury,” and all this kind of thing. But in the end, that’s how it came about. Mm. So it was organized by Larry Taunton, who organized all the rest of the major debates, including the one in your home country of Australia- Yes

[00:46:22] in Melbourne with Peter Singer. So that’s how it started.

John Dickson (Studio)

The 2007 Dawkins-Lennox debate catapulted John into the public sphere. Shortly afterwards, they had a return match, this time on radio, and focused on science and the question of miracles. Interestingly, John reckons it’s one of the most important debates he’s ever done, but it’s hardly known.

[00:46:47] We’re gonna link to it in the show notes. Then came Christopher Hitchens. That’s when I would be truly terrified

MEDIA: Can Atheism Save Europe? Edinburgh Festival, August 2008

Leaving aside, uh, [00:47:00] the, the, um, assault on the, uh, motion setter for, um, some kind of syllogism in there, two splendid opening statements. You’ve each got five minutes to rebut. Just keep it on the good side of five, Christopher, if you can.

[00:47:14] Now, I don’t normally need five minutes to, uh, rebut the resurrection. Um- And I don’t know what I’d do with the remainder of my time

John Dickson:
Not only Dawkins, but Hitc- Hitchens. Um, I’m fascinated by Christopher Hitchens, and the famous debate you had with him was, uh, at the Edinburgh Festival.

John Lennox:
Yes, that’s right. Uh, should the new Europe prefer the new atheism?

[00:47:42] Now, I know the new atheism is quite old, old now. Uh, but, but give me your recollections of that, uh, quite amazing privilege to debate Christopher Hitchens. Well, it was remarkable because I went to meet him in a hotel where he [00:48:00] was not, eh, typically propping up the bar. And, um, he looked at me very quizzically, and, uh, I just greeted him in a friendly fashion and I said, “I see you’re a contrarian.”

[00:48:16] “Oh,” he said, “how do you know that?” “Well,” I said, “I read your book.” And he nearly dropped his whiskey or whatever he was drinking. He said, “You read my book?” I said, “Of course I did.” “Well,” he said. And I said, “I have a question about it now that we’re talking about it. Why do most of your arguments come from only one source?”

[00:48:41] And he said, “Do they?” I said, “Well, it looks like it.” “What’s the source?” he said. I said, “Tom Paine.” He said, “You know, you’re right. You’re right.” And he said, “You actually read my book.” Well, he said, “I haven’t read yours.” I said, “It doesn’t matter.” [00:49:00] But because I’d read his book, he just became open and friendly, and, uh, we got on very well.

[00:49:08] Of course, in public he went for the jugular. Yeah. He was very much a showman. Yes. And I had the good fortune to meet one of the UK’s top reporters, and I asked him his advice, a secular reporter. And he said, “Look, don’t try to outwit Christopher because you won’t make it.” “But,” he said, “make sure that whatever he says, you get your message across.

[00:49:40] Don’t allow him to set the agenda all the way through.” It was very good advice. It was very good advice. But of course, the motion was ridiculous i- in the sense that it was so obviously biased in my favor. Mm-hmm. The new Europe should prefer the new [00:50:00] atheism. Well, of course, the new Europe was being created by the destruction of the Berlin Wall, which was really an exemplar of atheism at its height.

[00:50:11] And, uh, I ended, I can remember very well, I ended that by my contribution to the debate by saying, “Do we want to rebuild the wall?” And, uh, poor old Christopher, he wanted a vote at the beginning, and so did James Naughtie, one of our leading radio and TV anchors. I, I wasn’t, uh, it didn’t matter to me. And the vote at the end went in my favor.

[00:50:40] And Naughtie, to his surprise, he said to Christopher on stage, “Do you want a recount?” And Christopher said, “No, Lennox has it.” So I got up and shook his hand, and he whispered in my ear. He said, “I want a, I want a rematch in America.” And then he said, “No voting, please.” [00:51:00] So it, it was an am- a remarkable experience.

[00:51:06] I- Yes … I did have a rematch with him. Mm-hmm. And that was interesting.

John Dickson:
I’m interested, John, in, um, the way, I mean, Dawkins represents the scientific critique of Christianity, and Hitchens represents the, well, you might say, the aesthetic critique of Christianity. Yes, and the moral critique. Yeah. W- which do you think is more formidable?

[00:51:38] I don’t mean Dawkins or Hitchens, I mean the scientific critique or the aesthetic moral critique.

John Lennox:
I see relatively little difference between the two. Hmm. In a sense, I think on reflection now, have- having been involved for all these years, that [00:52:00] the rebuttal of the so-called scientific argument for atheism is quite a lot simpler.

[00:52:10] And more instantly recognizable as formidable compared with the critique on the aesthetic side of meaning, truth, morality because, of course, in that area, there’s much more space for opinion, uh, and different viewpoints. Science, from the point of view of the atheist conception of it, is more or less settled, so a lot of the argument has to be on the basis of what is common knowledge, uh, uh, for scientists.

[00:52:44] And I think that today there has been a shift, and I’m sure you’ve observed it as well from where you sit, that people are much more interested in questions of meaning. Where can I get purpose for my life? Um, what is [00:53:00] the meaning of human life? What is a good life? What is a life well-lived? And all that kind of thing.

[00:53:06] Mm. And of course, the, one of the pressures behind that is the vast advance in technology replacing a lot of human skills, and indeed human companionship and this kind of thing. So i- it’s very complex, complex. But my short answer to your question would be, I think now the critique coming, roughly speaking, from the humanities is the more difficult to deal with, but it’s the more important at the moment.

John Dickson:
[00:53:37] So what do you think is skepticism’s strongest argument against Christianity?

John Lennox:
Well, I don’t think that’s changed much. It usually lies in the realm of suffering connected with meaninglessness, purposelessness, and all that kind of thing. It’s, it’s the [00:54:00] very big old problem of evil and pain, the two aspects of that.

[00:54:06] And again, Lewis I find very helpful on this. But that’s the hard problem, because every worldview faces it, and we need to have something to say, and I believe we do within Christianity. It’s not a solution, quotes, um, but it’s a window that opens into possibilities that bring healing and can provide a real dimension of comfort because they’re based on what I believe to be true.

[00:54:37] But that’s where the main, uh, thing lies. Uh, just hearing your use of the word skeptic, I, I’ve been confronted with this a lot recently. You know, people love to say, “I’m a skeptic.” And my response to it is, “Oh, well, join the club. So am I. Tell me, what are you skeptical about? Because [00:55:00] I may be skeptical about different things, so you might know things that’ll help my skepticism, and I might know things that’ll help yours.”

[00:55:08] Uh, so skepticism, it’s a nice Greek word, as you know, skeptine, to view from a distance. And I like to remind people that You have to give up your distance to get to know certain things. Mm. In particular, to get to know people and to get to know God. Mm. So I think there’s a lot of room for discussion in there.

John Dickson:
[00:55:32] What do you think is skepticism’s weakest point when it confronts robust Christianity? Where is it vulnerable?

John Lennox:
Well, I think it’s vulnerable often in connection with a kind of post-modern relativism, this kind of thing, and people start to back off and say there’s no such thing as truth, and most of them don’t realize that they’re contradicting [00:56:00] themselves by that statement.

[00:56:01] They’re expecting- Mm … you to believe that what they say is true, that there’s no such thing as truth. So I, I, I think there’s a deep vulnerability in that kind of relativism. There’s also a very deep intellectual vulnerability in taking atheism to its logical consequences as Dawkins does is, in his writings if not in his life.

[00:56:24] A- and that is the undermining of rationality, which Lewis pointed out in the 1940s very clearly. Yeah, I want to, um, press in on this because, um, this is the, the famous argument about, uh, w- whether naturalism actually undoes our ability to trust our own intellect.

John Dickson:
Can you give us your, you know, your version of, of that argument?

John Lennox:
[00:56:55] Well, I can give a version of it in, in, in the [00:57:00] sense that in discussion with scientists, let’s bring it down to the practical level. I’m often confronted with people who, uh, are highly reductionist, and, uh, several conversations have been with leading scientists, and, um, I do a little experiment with them.

[00:57:22] Even at a dinner table, when they tell me they’re reductionist, they’re atheists, everything can be explained in terms of physics and chemistry, I just get them to read the menu. Uh, roast chicken say, and I say, “Look, you’re a reductionist.” “Yes.” “Everything in terms of physics and chemistry. Well, have a look at this R-O-A-S-T.”

[00:57:43] And they’ll immediately say, “Roast.” I say, “How do you know it’s roast?” “Well, I’ve learned English in- independently.” “Well, right,” I said. “Look at the shapes of those marks in the paper, R-O-A-S-T. Tell me in terms of physics and [00:58:00] chemistry, since you’re a reductionist, how they carry the meaning roast.” And very often they get completely stuck, and, uh, they say, “Well- I can’t.

[00:58:15] And I remember one famous conversation like that with a very leading biologist in Oxford, and he was very upset at this argument. And, uh, he said, “Where did you get that argument?” And I said, “Don’t worry, it came from a Nobel Prize winner, actually an Australian, just for your comfort.” And we carried on, and I said, “What do you study?”

[00:58:44] He said, “DNA, uh, human DNA.” “Well,” I said, “tell me about it. What is the origin of it?” “Well, roughly speaking,” he said, “I believe in the usual synthesis that [00:59:00] it’s really the end product of a, a blind, unconscious process.” I said, “Look, you use a computer in your lab?” “Yes.” “Well, imagine you now know that it was the result of a blind unconscious process, would you trust it?

[00:59:22] Absolutely not. Now, I’ve asked dozens of scientists that question. Always got the same answer, absolutely not. Well, why do you trust your brain then? You think it’s the mind. I don’t think so. I think it’s the mind and the brain are connected. I said, “You’ve got a problem-” Hmm … because if you shoot yourself in the foot, it’s painful, but to shoot yourself in the head is fatal.

[00:59:53] And, uh, Lewis saw this so clearly that any argument [01:00:00] that reduces the thoughts to motions of atoms or elementary particles in the brain i- is its own undoing. A- and I think it’s interesting that atheist philosophers like Thomas Nagel in New York have begun to see the thrust of that argument. I think it’s a very important argument.

John Dickson (Studio)
Five Minute Jesus

[01:00:24] Let’s press pause. I’ve got a five-minute Jesus for you. The other day, I came across an interesting historical tidbit about arguing on behalf of Christianity. I must have read it before, but never really noticed it, and it really whacked me between the eyes. The towering intellect of third-century Christianity was a bloke called Origen of Alexandria, 185 to 253.

Historians regard him as the equal of any Greek or Roman scholar of his day, [01:01:00] except Origen was a Christian. He was from a really deeply Christian family. In fact, his father had been executed by Roman officials during a brief persecution. And instead of turning him away from the faith, uh, his father’s martyrdom gave him this extraordinary resolve.

[01:01:20] He already had a massive intellect, but this put a fire underneath him. He read, analyzed memorized texts and ideas in multiple languages with a whole team of assistant scribes, and then turned all of his learning toward the promotion of the Christian faith. He wrote an enormous amount, but his celebrated rebuttal of Greek arguments against Christianity is called Contra Celsum, Against Celsus.

[01:01:53] Celsus had been a staunch critic of Christianity, and he wrote a stinging attack on the church. Uh, it was kinda like The God Delusion of the ancient world. And Origen’s benefactor begged him to write a rebuttal of what Celsus had written, to defend Christianity from the cultured despisers, and to strengthen the resolve of the faithful, who’d been rattled by the volume Celsus had put out.

[01:02:23] Origen obliged, uh, with a line-by-line rebuttal. I mean, it was literally line by line. It is smart, funny, cultured, surprising, and I’ve set it as one of the readings for an upcoming doctoral class at Wheaton College. Fun times. Anyway, here’s the thing that struck me as I reread Contra Celsum. Origen hated writing it, partly because he thought many of Celsus’ criticisms were dumb, and Origen hated getting down into the intellectual mud to answer them.

[01:03:03] And partly because, as he tells his benefactor in the preface to the work, these sorts of mental and rhetorical contests are not the most important part of Christian persuasion. The best defense of Jesus Christ, Origen says, is not a series of counterarguments from an educated elite like himself, but simply Jesus himself and the authentic life of Christians.

[01:03:38] As someone who’s pretty devoted to creating content that showcases Christianity’s best ideas, I found this, uh, confronting and beautiful. I can do no better than just read you what Origen says in the preface to the work Our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ was [01:04:00] silent when false witnesses spoke against him, and answered nothing when he was accused.

[01:04:05] He was convinced that all his life and actions among the Jews were better than any speech in refutation of the false witnesses, and superior to any words that he might say in reply to the accusations. He is still silent in face of this, and does not answer with his voice; but he makes his defense in the lives of his genuine disciples.

[01:04:31] For their lives cry out the real facts, and defeat all false charges, refuting and overthrowing the slanders and accusations. Contra Celsum preface one to three. I can’t improve on that. If you’re not sure what to make of the Christian faith, if you have doubts and critiques, your best bet for finding clarity isn’t this podcast.

[01:04:59] It’s not even a [01:05:00] John Lennox book. It’s looking at the life of Jesus himself in the Gospels, and spending a little time with Christians who sort of look like what Jesus intended. You can press play now

John Dickson:
[01:05:23] Are you optimistic, John, about, uh, a Christian renaissance in the West? I mean, the story that keeps getting told is Christianity’s on the way out. Um, I know there are some Christians who are claiming that the numbers are increasing, you know, young people going to church and so on, but I’m interested in your long decades, uh, perspective, whether you are optimistic about a Christian renaissance.

John Lennox:
[01:05:54] Well, statistics are notoriously diabolical. Mm-hmm. Let me put [01:06:00] it that way. I do see some real evidence. First of all, the negative evidence, that is in the fading of the aggressive atheism associated with the so-called old/new atheists. Yep. That’s the first thing. And the skepticism on the part of atheists that it’s adequate, and an increase in the number of public intellectuals who at the very least are saying there must be something more.

[01:06:34] Hmm. Now, that interests me greatly. So for example, you get someone like Tom Holland, the brilliant ancient historian who, like yourself, we need our ancient historians, by the way, John. I’m glad you still are one. But Tom Holland thinking from his earlier studies that all that we count good in Western civilization in terms of [01:07:00] morality, human rights, and so on, comes from the Greeks and Romans, and then discovering to his absolute amazement that it really comes from the gospel, from Christianity, and writes a book that everybody should read called Dominion, and then himself becomes a Christian.

[01:07:18] I think that is more than a trivial indicator of something. Then I mentioned earlier the question of the two halves of the brain. Well, the man who’s making real waves about that is Dr. Iain McGilchrist, and he, fascinatingly to my mind, in his amazing book, The Matter With Things, he studies the two hemispheres of the brain and he has come to the conclusion that although they’re involved in every cognitive act, they pay attention to the world in different ways.

[01:07:55] Uh, the left side of the brain, as you pointed out, is the so-called [01:08:00] nerdish side. It pays attention to detail, logic, science, all that kind of thing, while the right side pays attention to the big picture. And there- way of paying attention to the world is so different that McGilchrist, now applying this to the history of Western thought, says what has happened is we have paid so much attention Under pressure from public intellectuals and thinkers to the left side of the brain for the past 500 years, that we’re now left in a world where we understand how almost everything works and the meaning of nothing.

[01:08:40] And that’s a very strong statement. Uh, Rabbi, our late chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, picked that up, and he reformulated it in a, in an interesting way. He said that, that science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts them together to see what they mean. [01:09:00] Hmm. And what McGilchrist was appealing for is let’s let the meaning in, but we’ve got to develop the other side of the brain.

[01:09:09] We’ve got to open our minds up to science, and we’ve got to have… And this is the most interesting chapter in his book for me. We’ve got to have space for God. Well, Iain McGilchrist has, now declares himself to be a Christian. So that is a very big move forward, and, uh, these are men with considerable intellectual power and influence.

[01:09:33] But then you have a number of younger people who are very open to being influenced, and they are influencers. We’ve got our local Alex O’Connell here- Hmm … in Oxford, a very brilliant young man, and I’ve been interviewed by him several times. And he’s just so remarkably open, as is [01:10:00] Joe Foley that I mentioned earlier, and as is, um, uh, my most recent, uh, public interview with, uh, the diary of a CEO, which is very, uh, well-known.

[01:10:15] And, uh, the, the person running that, uh, is a member of our famous Dragons’ Den in the UK, Shark Tank in the US. He’s a very brilliant and wealthy en- entrepreneur. And, um, the openness that I find there is very encouraging. So my impression is, and it’s only an impression, uh, as I say, I have only a limited experience of the world.

[01:10:47] I don’t travel anymore, apart from in my mind and on Zoom like this, is that there is something to be hopeful about. And I suppose another phenomenon [01:11:00] is, come to think of it, the proliferation of university courses on what it means to live a good life. Hmm. You think of, of Miroslav Volf is at, in, in Yale, uh- Yeah

[01:11:13] and, and so on. Hmm. There is growing interest, and I just get the impression that many young people, although the church statistics may have been overblown, and I think there may be some evidence that they have been, this feeling there must be something more, this dissatisfaction with a purely materialistic philosophical interpretation of the universe or even practical interpretation of the universe is not satisfying people.

[01:11:44] They’re looking for some kind of depth. And so I-I’m encouraged that there is a potential of speaking into that realm. The final point I’d make [01:12:00] is a left-field comment really that I discovered by accident by writing a book on artificial intelligence and daring to introduce into it some of the futuristic scenario that seems to be painted in the Book of Revelation and comparing it to public intellectual atheist scenarios of this kind.

[01:12:24] And because people are now questioning more and more what is a human being, because the challenge is the human being’s only a machine and we’re going to reconstruct it, that is opening very big doors to introduce aspects, I believe, of Christian thinking that up until recently no one would have paid attention to.

John Dickson:
[01:12:51] John, you’ve been generous with your time. You’ve been generous to me over, uh, many years, and, uh, we are very grateful, [01:13:00] uh, to you. So thank you so much for joining us.

John Lennox:
It’s my pleasure as always, John. Bye-bye.

John Dickson (Studio)

[01:13:28] Undeceptions is hosted by me, John Dickson, produced by Kaley Payne, and directed and edited by Mark Celsus-Hadley.

Alisdair Belling is writer and researcher.

Siobhan McGinnis, our online librarian.

Lyndie Leviston remains my wonderful assistant.

Santino Dimarco is chief finance and operations consultant.

Peter Kozuschko is our North American representative.

Our voice actor today was Yannick Lawry.

Undeceptions is the flagship podcast of undeceptions.com, letting the truth out.[01:14:00]

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