tbwp10, thought of you when I first listened to this.

I'll try to watch the rest later but protestations that the tension between religion and science has always been greatly exaggerated don't work - the officers of the Holy Inquisition really did show Galileo the instruments of torture in order to intimidate him.

Looking forward to your assessment, I have to admit some of the things I had to really ponder. It was like they were speaking a different language at times. 🤫

They do hit many different topics

You ever watch this yet?

It's the length of that video that's been putting me off (why are so many 90 minutes or more?) and I'm pretty busy on other things just now, so I'll see if I have spare time later on.....

I want to warn you too, that those two are extremely sharp listening to each of them they are very deep in their understanding so they are informative. Talking to each other they can get or at least they were to me speaking on a level I had to ponder and look up some of the terms they used as they were common to them.

I'll bear that in mind and have a dictionary ready 😄

I needed one LOL

Thanks. Haven't had a chance to watch yet but will try to get to it. Looks interesting. Best

YEAH, was worried about you.

The bearded wonder uses long words to impress but he's a bore. Lennox seems very much a Christian. He mentions C.S. Lewis etc. Neither are to my taste. I don't want to be bored to death or told what is obvious. I listened for 10 minutes, for Heaven's sake! If Lennox finds him interesting ....

Lennox even believes that Dawkins is an atheist.

10 whole minutes wow

I'm not a religious person and they seemed to be arguing from a Christian perspective. Not that there's anything wrong with that in particular. I just found them completely uninteresting and boring. One is a windbag and the other's complacent and a bit too sure of himself.

I got the picture and it didn't seem worth listening for much longer.

Yes, well 10 whole minutes, not much more needs to be said than that.

It was enough to get a fix on them. One is a windbag and the other's his straight man, who legitimises him. Neither seem very mentally sharp.

If you wish, you can raise a point they've been discussing with me and find out who's mentally sharp?

<<<<Just a few comments. First, note that Lloyd, the interviewer, does ask hard (and good) questions. Lennox wiggles and weasels but ultimately shows his hand. His schtick is to conflate science and religion by taking two familiar paths: changing the definition of “faith” so that scientists are said to have faith, and arguing that science and rationality also point to the existence of God. (That, of course, is the mission of the Templeton Foundation.)

As for the first bit, he notes that science deals with unrepeatable events, like cosmology, and so to investigate them—or to do any science—requires “faith in the rational intelligibility of the universe”. As he says, “In science there’s a mixture of faith and there’s a mixture of investigation and observation and all the rest of it.” In other words, he’s equating science with his Christianity, which, he says, also requires a mixture of faith and empirical evidence.

This is of course bogus. We don’t have faith in the rational intelligibility of the universe: we try to find out if the universe is intelligible, and if it obeys rules. It does, because we can make predictions based on the ubiquity of those rules. An intelligible universe, then, is not an article of faith but a conclusion based on observation of repeated patterns and fulfilled predictions. It’s like having “faith” that the sun will rise tomorrow. And that is very different from religious faith. (See here for more of my take on this issue.)

As far as “science” supporting Christianity, Lennox argues that the grounding principle of Christianity—the existence of a divine Jesus who was resurrected—is strongly supported by history. Here are some of my notes and transcribed quotes:

“Christianity is a rational faith, but when it comes to the historical side, then we use the kind of abductive inference we use in historical science.”

Ancient historians produce “very powerful evidence”; they are “very sure of . . . most of the basic facts of Jesus’s life and so on.”

And, says Lennox, Christianity also makes sense: The God and Christ explanations make sense of what we discover because an explosion of science occurred under Galileo, Kepler and Newton, “all of whom were religious”.
That’s also bogus. There were also Jews, Hindus, Muslims and atheists who made profound scientific discoveries, not to mention the “pagan” Greeks. The faith of someone who makes a discovery is not evidenced by the nature of that discovery. Kepler’s laws no more buttress Christianity than does the structure of DNA (determined by two atheists) show that there is no God. What science does show is that we make discoveries by assuming there is no God, and that adding the assumption of a God has never pushed science forward one iota—except to the limited extent that some religionists may be inspired to do science by their religious faith. But of course that doesn’t show there is a God. These days, of course, most accomplished scientists are atheists, and we don’t need God to make further progress.

Lennox also sees, beyond the copious “historical evidence for Jesus” (is he aware that it’s limited to what’s in the Bible?), further evidence for God and Jesus based on his “experience.” He regards this “experiential evidence” as quasi-scientific. For instance, Lennox asserts that “Christ’s claims can be inductively tested”. Jesus said, argues Lennox, that He would return, and “if we trusted Him as Saviour and Lord then we would experience forgiveness, peace and inner harmony and power to deal with life.” And, says Lennox, he’s seen that happen over and over again in people who have accepted Jesus. Ergo, PROOF! (Of course, you can cite examples of people who have said they gained inner harmony and forgiveness from accepting the tenets of Islam, Hinduism, or Judaism, or even atheism, but somehow Lennox forgets that.)

Finally, Lennox claims that miracles do occur, and that there are at least three times God intervened in nature beyond reviving Jesus: the Big Bang (he doesn’t think it could happen naturalistically), the origin of life, and the evolution of humans. He seems to accept the rest of evolutionary biology, but argues, like a true Intelligent Design proponent, that the origin of life and the evolution of humans either couldn’t happen naturalistically and thus involved the hand of God. This kind of human exceptionalism is a trademark of the ID/creationist Discovery Institute.

Why did the BBC put this on? And if they did, why don’t they have ME on to argue that science and religion are incompatible? I’m here, Mr. Lloyd!

Altogether, for a smart professor, Lennox makes some remarkably weak and almost humorously stupid arguments. But this is how religion distorts the rationality of wish-thinkers. Lennox is a serious wish thinker. You can get a precis of his ideas in this three-minute video:>>>>

I've reproduced the above from one of the many criticisms of Lennox. Undoubtedly, the religious apologist movement, in its various forms, takes advantage of the fact that many people with high academic qualifications do believe in religions, which is fair enough. But Lennox isn't qualified to discuss this subject any more than I am and I don't think he could possibly win a debate with me either, on this subject. He'd lose every time because his arguments are false and he could never make them stand.

I do take issue on some points with the critic himself. For instance, I think it fair enough that science ultimately depends on faith: in the ability of rational analysis of evidence to uncover some of the truths about existence and how the universe works. I've made clear elsewhere that some issues seen as "scientific", such as the Big Bang, rest totally on faith. In that case, on faith in the limited abilities of the scientists who support it, based on evidence that's totally insufficient for a firm conclusion to be made, who claim to think that the BBT offers the best explanation of the origin of the universe and therefore expect others to agree with them. It's nothing but an argument from authority, based on insufficient evidence, on faulty logical ability and upon a complete misunderstanding of aspects of philosophy of science related to hypothesis formation. Because, of course, the Big Bang gives its name to an hypothesis that's wrongly claimed as a theory. (My qualification's in philosophy and I have a background in sciences and engineering.)

Even so, although all human endeavour rests on some kind of faith, the faith we have in most practical aspects of science is justified. We put a man on the moon based on what was ultimately speculative engineering. Lennox's beliefs are unjustified and he wouldn't live long in a debate with, well, with me or with people of similar ability. He is by no means sharp or when he's sharp, he's also inaccurate and his inaccuracies would be pounced on by people with more ability than professional pundits like Richard Dawkins & co.

Essentially, Lennox is a mathematician who doesn't actually use his mathematical ability but who prefers to teach others. That leads him to be seen as having intellectual authority, whereas all he is, is a teacher who, for whatever reason, hasn't used his ability directly. Speculation concerning religion isn't his subject but the religious apology movement hesitates not to use his influence. Also, he believes that mathematics itself is a demonstration of the existence of God. I mean, this is getting childish. He must see mathematics as a miracle when, in fact, it's merely abstract logic. He's widely regarded as a fool. Incidentally, I consider religions like Christianity to be rational belief systems, as does Lennox. That doesn't mean that I think of them as grounded in fact. Lennox is like a child regarding his leaps of belief.