Instant Genius - Is religion compatible with science? - Professor John Lennox

Episode Date: February 20, 2019

This week, we delve into the complex relationship between science and religion. Why invoke a god to explain the world, the argument goes, when science does a perfectly good job? Professor John Lennox, however, begs to differ. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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delivering digital precision with analogue warmth, so you can experience exceptional sound at home. Music just as the artist intended. Visit name audio.com to learn more. The reaction that I have when I see Einstein's equations or Newton's laws or Maxwell's equations is, what a genius of a God who does it that way. You're listening to the Science Focus podcast

from the BBC Focus magazine team. With the UK's best-selling science and technology monthly, available in print and in several digital formats throughout the world. Find out more at sciencefocus.com or look out for us in your app store. Hello and welcome to the Science Focus podcast. I'm Alexander McNamara, the online editor at BBC Focus magazine. This week, we delve into the complex relationship between science and religion. With science providing more and more insights into the workings of the universe, many people have turned their backs on religion entirely. Why invoke God to explain the world the argument goes when science does a perfectly good job?

Professor John Lennox, however, begs to differ. Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, Lennox is both a question. scientist and the Christian. In his new book, Can Science Explain Everything? Lennox argues that the world views of religion and science are not incompatible. In fact, he goes one step further, arguing that science actually points towards the existence of God. Here is our staff writer James Lloyd speaking to John. John, could you tell me first of all a little bit about your background? For how long have science and religion both been a part of your life? For as long as I can remember, because my Christian parents wanted me to learn to think.

And one of the remarkable things about them was that their conviction led them to leave me very free to explore. And so although they hadn't a formal education themselves, they encouraged me really to go for it. And before I went to university, I was reading all kinds of things, way over my head actually. in philosophy and science. So when I went up to Cambridge, I was raring to go to get involved in the dialogue about big questions. And you've since had a successful career in mathematics, isn't it? That's your speciality. Well, success is for others to judge, but I've been a pure map petition virtually all of my life. Although at Cambridge, I did do a formal course in philosophy of science, and that proved to be very important, certainly,

in the latter years of my own intellectual development. Okay, so let's get into the nitty-gritty of some of the things you talk about in your book. I guess the central question at the heart of your book is, can science and religion mix? From my point of view, I've always seen science and religion as being two very different things. I've always seen science as being concerned with the facts and the hard evidence, things that we can test in the laboratory, things that we can look at with repeated experiments. I've always seen religion as being more about belief in things that can't be proven.

You know, we'll never be able to design an experiment that can tell us if there's a God or if there's such a thing as the soul. So don't science and religion require two completely different ways of looking at the world, two different worldviews? I don't think so. I think what you've put across just there is a slight caricature in both directions. First of all, science, if we're talking about natural science, doesn't simply work with repeated experimentation. The inductive side of it is extremely important. But we must remember that a lot of scientific work these days deals with unrepeatable things, particularly in the past, in cosmology and so on. And there the method that's used is inference to the best explanation, which is a perfectly valid way of thinking.

but it doesn't have the same kind of authority as inductive science. The second point is that science involves faith. Einstein pointed out that he couldn't imagine a scientist without that faith. Now, he didn't mean faith in God or religion. What he meant was faith in the rational intelligibility of the universe. And he pointed out that this was the absolute basis of all scientific work. So in science, there's a mixture of faith and there is a mixture of investigation and observation and all the rest of it. And I want to say that my Christianity, let's not speak about religion in general, but my Christianity involves all these procedures.

You say believe in things that can't be proved. Well, as a pure mathematician, of course, rigorous proof only exists in pure mathematics. it doesn't exist in physics, chemistry or anywhere else. But I presume what you mean by that is the kind of proof that we, where we say beyond all reasonable doubt, we can give pointers, we can give evidence that's strong enough to stick our life on it. Yeah, it feels like with religion, there's always a point where, you know, rational, maybe not rational, but logical argument breaks down and then you have to take that leap of faith

into the unknown. And that's where I think the differences. In science, I think again, that's a caricature. You have to take a step of faith in commitment, but every scientist has to do that. They have their evidence, and then the question is, do they believe the results? Now, when it comes to Christianity, I regard Christianity as an intensely rational thing. We're dealing in part with unrepeatable things, and I can qualify that at a moment. But when it comes to the historical side, because Christianity, as you know, is not a mere philosophy. It's geared into history. Then we use the kind of abductive inference that we use in historical science.

What can we tell about the past? And of course, we start at the absolute basic level of the ancient historians and what they have to tell us about the existence of Jesus and his life and death and so on. And I mentioned in the book that contrary to popular opinion, a lot of that evidence is very powerful. The ancient historians who are the experts of this are very sure of the basis of their own rational discipline about many, if not most of the basic facts of Jesus' life and so on. So that's one side of it. The other side of it is the logical side of it. Does it make sense? Does the God explanation, the Christ explanation, do they make sense of what we discover?

And for me, that is, in fact, interestingly, that is the basis of modern science. Because in the 16th, 17th centuries, there was this huge explosion of science under Galileo and Kepler and Newton and so on, all of whom believed in God. Yeah, there's a line of scientists who do believe in God. I suppose there are a lot of scientists. They still have a religious faith. There are more than you would think. Talking about people like Newton and Kepler, obviously this was hundreds of years ago now.

Hasn't science now, though, answered a lot of the big questions that religion originally set up to answer, things like how the universe began, how humans came into being, how the universe works. It feels like religion holds less and less power over people as science can explain more and more of the world around us. Yes, that's only if you conceive of the religious explanation

or the Christian explanation as a God of the Gaps type explanation, where we invoke God as a kind of holding a placeholder, an ex to say, well, I can't explain it, therefore God did it. But that's a mistake. Those kind of gods, science dissipates, and very thankfully, like the ancient Greek gods of thunder and lightning and so on. You see, let's take Newton as an example. Newton discovered, as you know, the law of gravitation.

And when he discovered it, he didn't say, right, now I've got a law that explains things. I don't need God. No, he saw mainly the God explanation as a different kind of explanation that far from being threatened by scientific explanation was enhanced by it. In other words, the reaction that I have when I see Einstein's equations or Newton's laws or Maxwell's equations is, what a genius of a God who does it that way. And the fact that we can understand the creative activity of God in terms of precise mathematics, that fits perfectly to my mind with the fundamental notion expressed in the Bible that... This is a word-based universe. In the beginning was the word. All things came to be through him. So what I'm saying is this, the God explanation and the science explanation, peace be to Richard Dawkins, don't compete any more than the explanation of a motor car in terms of Henry Ford.

That's the personal explanation. competes with an explanation in terms of automobile engineering and elementary physics. So you say the limitations of science then are that it can give us the hows and the whats, but it doesn't give us the wise. Is that the kind of basis of what you're saying? Well, I think it's just a little bit more subtle than that. Because if you speak to philosophers of science, they'll say that, yes, that's a fair distinction provided on the how side, you allow the why of function.

Why is this little bit, why is this gene here? Why is that little pipe connecting those things? The why of function. But certainly the why of purpose, the teleological explanation, is by many scientists, excluded by definition. And it's important to notice that because it therefore means that they themselves are deciding that science cannot deal with purpose. But the danger is that people then conclude that purpose is not meaningful. Well, I was going to say, do we have to have a purpose of things? Couldn't the Big Bang, for instance, does there have to be a reason for why it happens?

Couldn't it just have happened of its own accord? Do we have to look for a purpose in everything, do you think? Well, saying things happen of their own accord is not scientifically at all satisfactory. I think it was Paul Davis said that scientists constantly, probe and ask why, and they go back and back and back and back. And then he says, the remarkable thing is they come to the beginning and say, well, that's just a brute fact. Well, you can regard it. Is that if you like? But it's not a very scientific way of doing it. We are geared up to finding cause and effect. And the point is, brute fact is nowhere near to my mind as convincing an explanation as the idea that there's an

eternal intelligent God who created it and upholds it and has given evidence of his creative intelligence in the very way we study it. In fact, I was going to, sorry, John, I was going to ask you a bit more about the story of creation that's in the Bible. So as a scientist, I ask someone who kind of thinks rationally and logically about things, how do you square the biblical story of creation with the scientific? And I would say, like the accepted scientific concept of the big bang, same with the theory of evolution as well. How do you kind of marry the description in the Bible with what science has found in reality? Well, those are two big questions.

Let's take the big bang. For instance, what is the big bang? It is a remarkable jokey statement made by Sir Fred Hoyle, who was one of my examiners years ago, because he didn't accept the idea that there was a. beginning to space time. You and your Big Bang, he said, I think that was the kind of attitude. But I was alive in the 1960s, believe it or not, at university. And remember when the first evidence of a beginning to space time was coming in, the expansion of the universe, the redshift and all this kind of thing. Yeah, the cosmic microwave background obviously we found as well.

Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic stuff. But what I remember James is so interesting. that the editor of nature at the time resisted it and published it in an editorial saying we must resist this idea of a beginning to space time because it will give too much leverage to people who believe in creation. And the irony of that is that one of the greatest advances in science in the 20th century was being resisted by the scientific establishment because it corroborated what the Bible had been saying, not for centuries, but millennia. Now, the point is this.

The Bible is saying there was a beginning of the very same universe that science studies. The additional thing that the Bible tells us is that God was the intelligent cause of it. But if we call it the Big Bang, that's absolutely fine. We're simply saying that there was a beginning. Okay, how about the idea of Adam and Eve? Also, I was going to ask about it. It's obviously in the story of creation, Genesis, they're kind of arrive on the earth, fully formed.

Now we know that humans evolve through natural selection, through evolution over millions of years. How do you marry these two completely different stories? Do you take Adam and Eve stories as a metaphor, a metaphor of what's really happened? Well, some people do. And you say, now we know that. Well, certainly we know that natural selection and so on,

as Darwin brilliantly discovered does something. But I need to step back from this for a very simple reason, that the fundamental issue at stake in the discussion is, are there any supernatural singularities in history, natural history or human history. What do you mean that by a singularity? I mean what Stephen Hawking means when he talks about a singularity at the beginning of the universe with the laws of nature breakdown.

We can't get behind it because we don't have a natural cause. But a supernatural cause like God is something that science, if you define science to exclude purpose, science can't tell you about. But if you allow for a moment, and let me go backwards from the central claim of Christianity, which is that Jesus rose from the dead, that's clearly a claim for a supernatural event. And this is something that's actually, we're not talking about metaphors here, such as in Genesis. Genesis might talk about being metaphor, but obviously here, this is a real historical event that Christians believe actually happens in real life. That is exactly right, but just half a second, Genesis being a metaphor.

metaphor is far too wild a statement. There's metaphor in every book of the Bible. But when Genesis says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That is a statement about exactly the same physical heavens and earth that science studies. Now, the point I want to make is this. As a Christian, I believe the resurrection on the basis of evidence that's both historical and experiential, and we can go into that if you like. I also believe that scripture claims that at the time of creation, there was a sequence of inputs from outside the non-closed system that is the universe. And Genesis puts it this way, and God said, and God said, and God said, there aren't very many of those. So I regard the creation of the universe.

as an event caused by God. And therefore, when you mention Adam and Eve, which I don't want to aid at all, we can talk in terms of what evolution may or may not do. And from my perspective, God can do it any way he likes. But it seems to me that at the origin of life and at the origin of human life, God may well have done something special so that there's an input of God's creative of power from outside so that you cannot explain those events in terms of things that are going on today. That is, of course, disputed. But it seems to me that once you see that there's strong evidence for a supernatural dimension in creation and in the resurrection, then there's no a priori reason for discounting that at a few other places in history. Now, that's a huge topic.

But it seems to me science cannot exclude that because, of course, the laws of nature tell us what normally happens. They cannot, peace be to David Hume, exclude a God who created and upholds the universe feeding a new event in. So you talked about the resurrection there. So I'd like to go to miracles now, talk about miracles. Obviously, there's a lot of miracles mentioned in the Bible, especially a lot of miracles that Jesus did in the New Testament. I've always found miracles the hardest thing to get my head around from my kind of slightly rational, scientific will view.

If we believe that the universe behaves according to certain physical laws, you know, we have a pretty good idea of now the kind of the laws that are governing how the universe works. And they're pretty well understood. tested by scientists, how can we then believe that these laws can suddenly be suspended or violated? Isn't that going against everything we now know from science and our observations of how the world actually works around us? Well, it would be if that description was true. And that description is due to David Hume, the Enlightenment, Scottish Enlightenment philosopher who famously said that

miracles are violations of the laws of nature. But on investigation, one finds that, and this was sound awfully arrogant, that Hume was wrong. I had the opportunity before he died of speaking to Anthony Flew, who was the expert, the world expert on Hume. And he told me that he had been wrong on Hume in this particular. And the point is, I think, relatively easily explained. First of all, Hume was in really no position even to believe in the laws of nature because he didn't believe in cause and effect. But put that aside, when it comes the idea of violations of the laws of nature, I don't think miracles of the type in scripture violate laws of nature at all.

And it was Lewis, I think, that gave a brilliant analogy to help understand the issue. He talks about going to put a thousand pounds in a drawer by his bed one night and another a thousand pounds the next night. So you've got two thousand pounds. And on the third morning he wakes up and finds only £500. Does he conclude that the laws of arithmetic have been broken or the laws of England? And exactly, we laugh at that because we say, of course, it's the laws of England. We laugh at that because we say, of course, it's the laws of England.

But we can break the laws of England. We can't break the laws of nature. That's right. Yes, but you see, how do we know that the laws of England have been broken? Because the laws of arithmetic have not been. It's our knowledge of the laws of arithmetic that tell us that we made a mistake in thinking that our bedroom and the drawer was a closed system of cause and effect. It turned out not to be. A thief was able to put his hand in and take the money. Now, I think this analogy is enormously helpful. You see, if Christians were claiming that Jesus rose from the dead by natural processes going on in the grave five minutes before it happened, then yes, I would say that is violating laws of nature. But they're not claiming that at all.

What they're claiming is that this universe is not a closed system of cause and effect. And God, who is in that sense above it, outside it, he raised Jesus from the dead by an input of tremendous energy and power, the like of which we don't understand. Now, that didn't violate any laws. I think what happens is the word violate is a forensic type word and tends to deal with the laws of a law. land. The laws of nature are not like the laws of a country. They're not constraints. So the argument then is that if God created the world, then basically you can do what he likes with it. You can do what he likes with the laws. You know, you can put, he can, he can do. Well, he's not doing anything with the laws. He's doing something with the universe. Let me put

it absolutely crudely. If Jesus turns water into wine and you drink too much of it, you'll get drunk according to the normal laws of nature. So it's distinguishing really. And I think that the constant harping back to Hume is just a very serious mistake. Science, in the sense of the laws of nature, do not forbid miracles. And in fact, we need to know those laws in order to recognize. a special action of God. If you didn't know the fact that people who were put in graves normally stayed there,

you wouldn't think anything special about a resurrection. My other question was going to be, if God can intervene in these laws of nature and cause miracles, then wouldn't we see more miracles in our day-to-day lives? Wouldn't he step in to help people? I don't know, this is getting into a whole other philosophical question here about suffering and things like that. But wouldn't, you know, if he could perform miracles, wouldn't he do more to help? suffering and reduce pain in the world? Well, you're very wise in saying we're getting into a hugely complex area.

The first thing I would want to say is that part of my evidence for the truth of Christianity and in particular the resurrection is not simply past history and a forensic examination of it. It is present experience because I do believe that Christ's claims can, be inductively tested. That may surprise you from the point of view of science. But I'm constantly told, you know, in science we test things in the laboratory. Christianity, we don't test things. Well, I think we do. And it's part of the reason I believe in the truth of Christianity. In what kind of way do you test things? Well, yes. Well, let's be absolutely blunt about it. Jesus made promises. He said that if we were,

and I'm going to use technical terms, and they need explanation. We haven't time to do that. But if we turned away from, let's say, the mess we've made of our own lives and those of others and trusted him as Savior and Lord who died to forgive us, then we would experience, one, forgiveness, two, peace with God, three, an inner harmony, four, a new power to deal with life. Now, just taking those things, again and again I've seen in my life and in the lives of others exactly that happen. You meet a student who's in absolute despair, and I'm thinking of an actual recent case,

absolute despair, problems with drugs may be and so on. And you talk to them, and then you maybe see them six months later, and they're radiant. And you say, what has happened to you? Now, they may describe it in different ways. They say, well, actually, I've become a Christian. or I've met Christ or I've been born again or various descriptors. But the point is they have experienced a personal transformation. And the science for me is very important.

The intellectual credibility of Christianity is important. But its testability is especially important because you need both the intellectual side and the experiential side and the one supports the other. But once you've got there, then, of course, the much deeper problems arise. How do you cope with pain and suffering and all that kind of thing? And of course, you're right, that is a huge problem. And to cut to the heart of it, because we haven't a lot of time, I would simply say this. Look, all of us, no matter what our worldview is, are presented with a mixed picture in the world.

I call it beauty and barbed wire or beauty and bombs. We see the glory of the stars and we see the awfulness of the newspaper headlines. And we argue constantly, surely a good God would this and that and the other. We never satisfactorily come to a conclusion in those arguments. And I've thought about this for years, of course, because this is the hard question that I face. And I come to the conclusion that perhaps we're asking the wrong question. The right question may be this, granted that we all face the same situation, beauty and barbed wire, is there any evidence anywhere in the universe that there is a God whom we could trust with the answer,

even if we don't see it completely? And that brings me to not to the resurrection of Jesus, but to the resurrection plus the cross of Christ, because I see a God who at the very least has not stayed, distant from the problem of human suffering, but has become part of it. And it's the resurrection then that gives me hope that there be a grand sorting out and that ultimately justice will be done. But that's a huge story, as you know. Yeah, that's a big, we don't have time to get into the philosophy of all that now. But I was going to ask you on a personal note, what kind of reaction do you get when you tell people you're a Christian and a scientist? Have you faced any obstacles, for example, in your career because of your religious faith? Well, not as many as one

might think, but there was a huge attempt to pull me away from my Christian faith when I was 19 at Cambridge for a Nobel Prize winner after a conversation at dinner called me into his room and said, do you want a career in science? Yes, sir. Well, he said, if you want to be credible and intellectually respectable you tonight in the front of witnesses, because he'd asked some other senior members of the university to join him, give up your faith in the presence of witnesses. I mean, it was striking that a Nobel Prize winner would do that. I couldn't help thinking, of course, that if he had been a Christian and I'd been an atheist and he'd tried that tactic, he'd probably have lost his job the next day. But that's the biggest pressure I've ever

had from anyone. It contrasts massively with the most recent Nobel Prize winner that I met who shall be nameless, who listened to a talk I gave and he said, why have I never heard these arguments before? They are entirely new to me and I need to get to know them. So there are very open-minded people out there and there are closed-minded people. I suppose that day in Cambridge, I learned that there is. a side of academia that is very sadly, simply blindly opposed to the big questions.

But in general, James, I must be honest, I find my colleagues in Oxford, many of them disagree with me. But often they will at dinners mention my faith in God not to ridicule it, but they get a good discussion going. And I was wondering have there been any times, you know, during your life when you've been studying science, you've been studying religion. Have there been any times when a conflict between the two have given you, giving you doubts in your faith or vice versa, giving you doubts in your scientific career? Have there been times when that's happened? Oh, I've spent my whole life doubting my faith. You see, coming from Northern Ireland, as every listener now knows from my accent, you know, constantly people throw at me, of course you believe in God, you're Irish,

they all believe in God may fight about it. And so when I went to Cambridge, it happened in the first week. I decided this is now my unique opportunity to put all this to the test. Let me befriend people that do not share my worldview. And I spent my entire life facing the arguments of those that disagree with me, including on the world stage with Dawkins and Hitchens and Peter, singer and people like that. And all of it has been motivated by the fact I want to be certain. You see, when you use the word doubt, a dubitari in Latin means to be in two minds,

we're not thinking of the sinking feeling, oh, the whole thing is wrong and I'm going into a black hole. It's the questioning, the being vulnerable, the being prepared to consider the other person's point of view, the being prepared to try to walk in their shoes. And my Christian convictions have been massively advanced by interactions, like the one I had this week with Peter Atkins in a public forum and the University of Southampton, that has strengthened me because I feel, look, I'm trying to be as open and honest as I can be

and reading and facing the evidence that other people present to me for their worldview. That was John Lennox talking about science and faith. His book, Can Science Explain? everything is out now. In the latest issue of BBC Focus magazine, we look into China's Changi 4 Lunar Mission and ask whether this is the start of a new space race. We're also examining a bizarre condition called Afantasia, in which sufferers can't imagine things with their mind's eye, and investigate whether accents are dying out. As always, there's much, much more inside.

And remember, if you like what you hear, then please rate, review and share with anybody you think might enjoy our podcast. You can also subscribe and leave us a review on your favourite podcast apps. Also, if there's anybody you'd like us to speak to or a topic you want us to cover, then let us know on Twitter at ScienceFocus. Thank you for listening to the Science Focus podcast from the BBC Focus magazine team. We're the UK's best-selling science and technology monthly, available in print and in several digital formats throughout the world. Find out more at ScienceFocus.com or look out for us in your app store. This podcast is sponsored by name, audio and focal. The texture and emotional depth of music.

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