John Lennox calmly dismantles atheist Peter Atkins' arguments in a debate on science, God, and evidence
A debate between Christian mathematician John Lennox and atheist chemist Peter Atkins on whether science can explain everything, the resurrection of Jesus, and the basis for belief in God.
Summary
John Lennox, a mathematician and philosopher of science, debates Peter Atkins, a chemist and committed atheist, in a conversation hosted by Premier Unbelievable. The central dispute concerns whether science can explain everything that is worth explaining, with Atkins arguing that it can and Lennox drawing a careful distinction between natural science and broader questions of meaning, purpose, and historical evidence. Lennox argues that the resurrection of Jesus is historically supported by the same kind of evidence-based reasoning Atkins himself endorses, while Atkins dismisses it as physically impossible and says no evidence could ever change his mind — a position he acknowledges is unfalsifiable. The debate also covers the origin of the universe from nothing, the basis of morality, and why Lennox specifically holds to Christianity over other religions.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Opening Statements: Can Science Explain Everything?
Peter Atkins: Science deals with real questions. Science deals with questions for which there is evidence. A typical religious question might be: what is the purpose of the universe? Science can dismiss that as an irrelevant question. There is no evidence that there is any purpose in the universe. One major question is why is there something rather than nothing? It certainly seems as though there is something, and we presume that before there was something there was nothing. So it seems to be a real question, and science has as its objective an attempt to answer that kind of question. There is no reason other than pessimism to expect that science will grind to a halt and not answer all the real great questions of existence.
So, an emphatic yes to the idea that in principle science can explain everything that's worth explaining. John, the same question to you. Can science explain everything?
John Lennox: You're going to be surprised at how much I agree with Peter, because the definition of science he offered us — that is, collecting evidence, making observations — if that's what we mean by science, and it's the old meaning of science before the 19th century, then of course science can explain everything, because the very word explanation means making evidence-based observations and notes. So my short answer is: if we accept Peter's first definition, then I agree with him entirely. Science by definition explains everything.
But when people these days say science can explain everything, they're not referring simply to making observations and comparing notes at all. For instance, that would apply to any historical or forensic examination. And my faith as a Christian is based precisely on the kind of scientific reasoning that Peter has set forward to us. Let me just say, by the way, that from the Christian perspective, Luke, the writer of the third gospel, tells us that that is exactly what his method was. He consulted people, he made observations, and then he put them together. So we'll call that science one.
What is of course at stake today is the question: can the natural sciences answer every question? And there I think that is simply not the case. The Nobel Prize winner Peter Medawar said we do natural science a disservice if we think it can address any questions, and he referred to the basic questions of Karl Popper — the questions of a child. Where do I come from? Where am I going? What is the meaning of life? Natural science doesn't answer questions like that, and Medawar added it is to religion, philosophy, and so on that we must go to answer those questions.
I think science is immensely powerful. It is immensely exciting and it uncovers a vast amount about our universe. But I have a problem with going too far. I'm a mathematician and I'm rather interested in logic. If we say that science can explain everything — where science is the only way to truth, as it's often put — well, that is not a statement of science, it's a statement of belief. And so if it's true, it's false. Maybe it's too early in the evening for logic like that, but there's a huge logical problem.
To sum up my position: science is powerful, its methodologies are extremely important, also in the sphere of history, forensic science, and in the sphere of religion. But I'm going to be careful here because Peter is right very often in his critique of superstition, of mythology, and nonsense. And science has helped to clear away some of the nonsensical things that sometimes religious people profess. But what really makes me, in one sense, very much in favor of the Christian faith is that from the very start it claims to be evidence-based, and the central piece of evidence is, of course, as you probably know, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
So I believe in Peter's methodology. I use it all the time. But somehow he feels that a Christian like me doesn't use that methodology within my own Christian faith.
Final point — can science explain everything? We need to tease out what we mean by the word explanation. For example, the law of gravity doesn't explain gravity. It tells us wonderful mathematics that we can calculate the way in which heavy bodies move in relationship to one another. But even when we say science explains, often it doesn't explain comprehensively. I want to throw a very simple analogy into this which I find quite useful — about boiling water. How would you explain boiling water? Well, you can explain it by talking about heat conduction and agitation of molecules of water. You can also say the water's boiling because I'd like a cup of tea. Now those two explanations are very different. They don't conflict. They complement. One is a scientific explanation — natural scientific — but the other is an explanation in terms of the intention and purposes of an agent. And Peter said quite clearly, science doesn't go in for that kind of purpose. But that doesn't mean that kind of purpose doesn't exist. In fact, people have been enjoying tea for millennia before they knew anything about the theory of heat in physics.
So what I want to say is this. The God explanation is different from the science explanation. God no more competes with science as an explanation of the universe than Henry Ford competes with physics as an explanation of the motor car.
The Resurrection: Evidence or Assertion?
Host: Let's go to what you called the core of your approach — the resurrection of Jesus. You say it never happened. That's an assertion, Peter. What about some evidence?
Peter Atkins: What about some evidence that it did happen? Other than people who are writing gospels 80 years later than the event that they purport to be talking about. No, of course it didn't happen. How could it happen? And science, I think, could even go so far as saying it simply could not happen. When you've got a dead body, it's decaying straight away. There's no way that it's going to reconstitute in some way. It's absurd. And I accept that it is the foundation of Christian faith. That doesn't mean to say that it's true. So let's dismiss that as something that simply has no evidence whatsoever of any credible kind.
Host: Before we dismiss it, let's hear a response from John, because obviously this is an important issue. What counts as evidence, and can science explain the resurrection?
John Lennox: I wouldn't quite argue that way. I would say that science cannot forbid a resurrection, because science proceeds on discovering the regularities to which nature works and has done a very impressive job. And the fact that we know that dead bodies don't normally rise — that is a law of nature in that sense — means that we recognize something very special happened, if it did happen.
CS Lewis long ago told a little analogy. If I stay in a hotel tonight, put £100 in a drawer, and do the same tomorrow night, there's £200 in it. One plus one equals two. If on the third morning I find fifty quid, what do I say? That the laws of arithmetic have been broken, or the laws of England? Clearly I say the laws of England have been broken. How do I know? Because the laws of arithmetic have not been broken. It's our recognizing of what normally happens that helps us to see an exception.
Now, if I were claiming that the body of Jesus rose from the dead by natural processes going on in the grave five minutes before we happened to look — yes, that would be wrong. But I'm not claiming that. What Christians claim is that the God who created the universe and built the regularities into it is capable —
Peter Atkins: Pure speculation.
Host: Let's listen and then you respond, Peter.
John Lennox: Peter, it's dead easy to say it's not worth listening to. You tempt me to say that about some of the things you say, but I'm not going to do that because it seems to me it's very important to listen to what Christianity claims before you judge it. And what is claimed is that God, who creates the universe and sustains it, is not subject to laws as if they were laws of a land. He set up the regularities and he can feed a new event into them. And the claim is — and with this I finish — that God raised Christ from the dead by an input of colossal power.
Peter Atkins: Oh, Jesus. Well, you've got it in one. I mean, that is the claim at the end of the day. But everyone here knows that's nonsense. What you're inventing is an agent who can do anything he — or she, I suppose you have to say these days — likes. And so it is the laziest way of accounting for observations.
John Lennox: But the point is, as I sit here and read your books explaining chemistry and all this kind of thing, I say this is wonderful. This is not contradicting the God explanation, because the God explanation is saying that you as a chemist only have a universe to study because God created it in the first place. He's not competing. In fact, interestingly, the very early chapters of Genesis, God commands human beings to name the animals — he starts off taxonomy, which is the basic intellectual discipline. In other words, he said, "You go and do science and you'll find it utterly fascinating." So I think you're arguing at a straw God rather than a straw man there.
Peter Atkins: You don't know whether God was starting off science. He might have got so bored with his creation that he wanted to amuse them.
John Lennox: Well, who's speculating now?
Peter Atkins: Yes, I am. I think any speculation that uses the word God is intellectually corrupt. There is no God. There is not one jot of evidence for God.
John Lennox: The fact that at the heart of biology is the longest word we've ever discovered — the genetic code — is again consistent with the idea that this universe is a word-based universe. "In the beginning was the Word, all things were made by him." So I see evidence of rational intelligence all over science. But I see that the alternative worldview, atheism, undermines that, although it perceives the very same rational intelligence. So it has explanatory power at that level.
But Christianity is not merely a philosophy. And if Jesus Christ really rose from the dead, then that opens up huge possibilities of personal encounter in my life now. And the major reason why I believe that Christianity is true is because Christianity is testable.
Peter Atkins: Nonsense. How can it be tested?
John Lennox: Peter, let me face that head on. Christ said that if a person considered the evidence and came to believe that he was God incarnate, who was dying on a cross to give forgiveness and bring peace with God — well, we can test that. I've tested it and I've seen hundreds of people test it. Let me take an example. I was lecturing at Harvard a while ago to a couple of thousand people, and when I'd finished, a young Chinese student stood up and said, "Look at me." So we looked at him, and I said, "Why should we look at you?" He was absolutely beaming. He said, "You should look at me because six months ago I came to a lecture you gave at Penn State University. I was at the end. My life was in a complete mess and something you said triggered a search. I started to read the New Testament for myself and I became a Christian. And just look at me now."
Ladies and gentlemen, I've seen that happen not once, not twice, dozens of times. And when you see addiction to drugs transformed into food on the table, when you see broken relationships mended, and you ask people, "What happened to you?" and they say, "I became a Christian, I had an encounter with Christ" — you begin to put two and two together and make four. And I wouldn't sit here for a nanosecond if I didn't believe that these promises that Jesus made actually can be fulfilled in a person's life today. That's the testability of Christian relationship with God.
Peter Atkins: It's a kind of testability that you should leave to the psychologists and the psychiatrists, I think.
John Lennox: What do you mean, leave it to them?
Peter Atkins: Because they will understand why these people have found the comfort.
John Lennox: Let's accept that it may be comfort. But that doesn't prove it's wrong, Peter, to use your argument. The fact that Christianity brings comfort is not evidence against it. It may well be evidence for it.
Peter Atkins: It brings a great deal of discomfort. Ask Joan of Arc, for example.
John Lennox: You're raising another question, and I'm Irish — I'm very sensitive to that question and I can go into it if you want to.
The Origin of the Universe: Something from Nothing
Host: Peter, you've written about this — the idea that nothing rolled over into something. That was the way in which the universe, which is clearly something, came from nothing. John referenced this earlier. What do you mean by nothing in that context?
Peter Atkins: I mean the absence of spacetime. I mean the absence of anything.
John Lennox: Well, I'm very interested in nothing. In fact, I give lectures on nothing these days. I had the opportunity to enter a discussion like this and I was surrounded by experts — probably the world's most famous cosmologist. And I did something I never usually do. I said, "I'd like to ask the first question." So I said, "Alan, there's much ado about nothing. I want to ask you a question. When you as a cosmologist use the word nothing, do you mean what all the rest of us mean — the absence of anything?" He said, "No, we do not."
Peter Atkins: Well, he was wrong. He should, because presumably if there was a creation — let's try to talk in your kind of language — if there was a creation, then presumably the something that we now experience was preceded by the absence of something, and I presume we can call the absence of something nothing. So presumably at the creation, somehow or other, absolutely nothing changed into something. Is that right?
John Lennox: I wouldn't quite put it that way. I would say that the universe comes from nothing physical, but it doesn't come from nothing. God is not nothing. In fact, we get the whole thing upside down. We tend to think, partly because of the way we're educated in terms of science, that mass, energy, and material is the basic stuff of the universe. Of course, now we've come down to nothing being the basic stuff. I don't believe that. But secondly, God is not physical. God is spirit. And the fundamental stuff in the universe is mind and spirit. It's not material.
So the universe comes from nothing physical, but it doesn't come from nothing. It comes from God who created it. "Let there be light and there was light." And that is my position. And that's not a position which conflicts with the science we do know of — the Big Bang.
Not at all. The Big Bang is wonderful because it simply tells us there was a beginning. And science caught up with the Bible in the 1960s, because science was tied to Aristotle for centuries, believing that there was an eternal universe. Now we believe in a beginning. Whether you mean a beginning of the multiverse or the universe, it doesn't really matter, because the latest mathematical theorems by Guth, Vilenkin, and Borde say that there is an absolute beginning. So the Bible has said it for centuries.
Host: I think you're willing to grant this idea of an absolute beginning, Peter, but cautiously.
Peter Atkins: It could be that time is circular, and though we're just seeing a few billion years and it looks straight. But I'm prepared to accept that there might well have been a beginning. But your view is that prior to that — if you can speak of something being prior to that — there was nothing, and the something came from nothing.
John Lennox: Obviously many people will say that sounds like a contradiction in terms. Well, since we've got something and originally there was nothing, then I think it must be true that nothing turned into something. But what you've got to be very careful about is that it's not a question of nothing turning into something. What I would like to say is this: in my examination of what people believe nothing is — there's Stephen Hawking, there's Lawrence Krauss — having read all of their books, I discover that the way they get something from nothing is by redefining nothing, which is a very clever cop-out. Lawrence Krauss, at about page five of his book A Universe from Nothing, says this: "Because something is physical, nothing must be physical, even if — especially if — you define it as the absence of something."
Peter Atkins: Well, that's nonsense.
John Lennox: Yeah, I think that's nonsense.
Peter Atkins: Oh, that's great. We've got some agreement.
What Evidence Would Change Your Mind?
Host: I think this is a really interesting question. What new evidence would be sufficient to lead the speakers to adopt the opposite view? Peter, is there anything any kind of evidence that John could bring to bear that would actually make you change your mind and think, actually, maybe there is a God?
Peter Atkins: I have asked myself that question previously. Is there any evidence that would flip me into the belief camp? I simply can't think of any. I think if I told myself that if I agreed with some evidence then it showed that I'd simply gone mad. So it's a serious question, but I don't think there can be any evidence.
Host: Are you saying your position is unfalsifiable in that sense?
Peter Atkins: Yes. Because even if I was standing at the foot of a cross and saw the resurrection before my very eyes, I would put it down to hallucination. It's an extension of the David Hume argument.
Host: John, do you want to make a comment on the fact that for Peter there's literally nothing that could convince him?
John Lennox: I'm very interested in what he said at the end — that he would believe it was a hallucination. And he mentioned that the psychologist would work on what I say, but they'd work on what he said too. And one of the evidences for the resurrection of Jesus actually is the work psychologists have done in pointing out that it could not have been a hallucination. He was seen by over 500 people at once, at different times of day and night, and all this kind of thing.
But there are things that would reverse me. I joined Peter in that sense. If you could give me evidence that the gospel writers, like Luke, were not authentic. If you could give me evidence that there's a really convincing explanation that Jesus did not rise from the dead. If you could show me that all the experiences I've had in life with my family and with other people that I would definitively put down to the activity of God — then I'd be prepared to consider. But those cumulative evidences in my life are so large that I don't think it's likely to happen. But I have to be open to that.
Why? Because I come from a very religious country. I was accused — and I've been accused tonight of the same thing — of "of course you believe that stuff, you're Irish." That's the old Freudian explanation. So what have I done? I've spent my entire life opening up my Christian commitment to its opposite. It's exactly what I'm doing tonight. And I've spent my life doing it, a lot of it in Russia, incidentally, where you meet really hard atheism. And doing that, constantly questioning my own position, has confirmed my position.
Now, Peter, do you constantly question your own position, or do you see no reason to do that?
Peter Atkins: I see no reason to.
John Lennox: Well, I see great reason to do it because I don't want to be fooled. But I see in you a great example of the power of cultural conditioning that takes place during childhood.
Peter Atkins: Well, Peter, I could argue the same. The Freudian argument that says religion is wish fulfillment works brilliantly if there is no God. But I would want to argue that if there is a God, Peter's atheism can equally well be explained as wish fulfillment — the desire never to have to encounter God. The Freudian argument doesn't deal with the basic question: is there a God or not?
I simply want to understand the workings of the world on this side of the grave.
John Lennox: So do I. But why not both, Peter? It's a bigger universe than just this side of the grave.
Peter Atkins: Because there isn't anything on the other side.
John Lennox: But that's just an assertion.
Peter Atkins: No, it's the lack of evidence.
A Scientist Torn Between Evidence and Instinct
Host: Here's a very interesting question. "I'm a scientist and long-standing atheist. Taking the challenge as a scientist to follow the evidence where it leads, over many years I have become convinced that there is good evidence to point towards an all-powerful, transcendent, timeless creator. But I cannot square this with how I feel. My instincts, my emotions say it cannot be. It's impossible. Do either of you think it's possible to resolve such a dissonance? How, from each perspective, would you proceed?"
John Lennox: This is absolutely intriguing to me. Why? This morning I had a letter from a very highly educated person — with a doctorate, doing very advanced research — who asked me exactly the same question. Coming from Dawkins-type atheism and now feeling terribly pulled and wondering how to resolve it.
My attitude to that is: take time, talk to other people, other Christians, your friends, find out what makes them tick, and read as much as you can, full of questions — something like the Gospel of John. And I believe eventually one can resolve these questions. But it's clear that many people feel like this, and I think it's wonderful if you get that far.
In one sense these things can be resolved. But with many of these things, what the problem we have — especially in our contemporary culture — is the matter of commitment. The Greek word for skepticism means to check out from a distance. And some of you will be checking out partners at a distance. But you know as well as I do that in order to have a meaningful relationship you have to give up your distance. If you want to get to know me, sooner or later you'll have to give up your distance and I'll have to give up mine. But if we're sensible, we'll not do it without evidence. And so it's a question of that greatest commitment of all, as I believe it is, which is to Christ. Making that step of commitment is for some people difficult, but it's in the end the only way to test if the thing works.
Peter Atkins: My advice is like John's but has a slightly different thrust. It is to hang on to his commitment to rationality.
John Lennox: Oh, I would want him to hang on to his commitment to rationality too, of course.
Peter Atkins: You can't be rational and a Christian, right?
John Lennox: Yes, Peter. What do you say to a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who's a Christian?
Peter Atkins: Grow up.
John Lennox: Between 1900 and 2000, 65% of Nobel Prize winners were Christian.
Can you understand, Peter, how saying that might come across as incredibly arrogant?
Peter Atkins: No.
Why Would God Create Atheists?
Host: Let's go to another question. Why would God create atheists?
John Lennox: I feel quite strongly about this. The wonderful thing about the way in which we're made as human beings is that God loves us enough to give us real responsibility, so that our decisions and our moral choices are full of meaning. If you say God creates Christians or atheists, you end up with a kind of robotic situation where we're simply puppets on a string. And I don't think that accords in any way with the God who reveals himself in Christ.
Peter Atkins: I think it's talk of gods that creates atheists. Once people start to look into it, they become atheists. And when they see the evil that belief in God brings into the world — well, that opens up another interesting question.
Science, Facts, and Moral Values
Host: Here's one: do you agree that science gives facts and religion gives values? What do you say to that, Peter?
Peter Atkins: Well, I don't know what values are, frankly. I think we're talking about moral values — whether science can illuminate morality and questions of moral behavior. And I think it can, because we behave in ways that are governed by the infrastructure that has emerged through evolution. We who've been on this earth for say four billion years or so have evolved into us, and we found ways of behaving, and we call that our current moral precepts.
Host: Would you grant that religion could be a factor that helps people to develop those moral values, even if you think it ultimately has a scientific explanation?
Peter Atkins: It might be thinking backwards. I suspect that quite a lot of what Jesus said — or his purposes to have been said — were reverse-engineered to make him sound like a jolly nice chap. And he probably was quite a jolly nice chap, if in fact he ever existed. I think the Bible is a kind of handbook on getting through life.
Host: The same question then, John — can morality simply be accounted for by evolutionary cooperation?
John Lennox: I don't think so. I think you can base virtually any kind of morality on theories of evolution. If you take the nature red in tooth and claw view and survival of the fittest, you'll end up in Auschwitz.
Peter Atkins: But I didn't go beyond that. Darwin favored ants, and if you watch ants you can get a good argument for altruism and cooperation.
John Lennox: You can build any kind of morality on animal behavior you want. My view is that you cannot get morality from science. Science can comment on it. Science can tell you whether a fetus suffers pain, for example, but it cannot decide the morality of what you do with that fetus.
Peter Atkins: It can understand the roots of morality. I think it's much better to understand the roots of morality through scientific investigation, which includes anthropology, ethology, and so on, than it is simply to adhere to a collection of folk stories as written in various —
John Lennox: All of this is wild speculation. But if I come back to the question of morality and science — Einstein made the point once: you can speak of the ethical foundations of science, but you cannot speak of the scientific foundations of ethics. Richard Feynman, who won the Nobel Prize for physics, points out that the laws of nature don't come along with rules on what we ought to do.
Peter Atkins: Evolution does, and ethology does, and psychology does, and philosophy does.
John Lennox: But saying evolution does is no different from saying God does. It's just putting a label on a non-explanation.
But let me come to this, Peter. You slipped in one or two things which troubled me. One of them was "if Jesus ever existed." Now you're interested in science and evidence. I do not know — and I've read most of them — an ancient historian in the world who would question not only the existence of Jesus but the basic facts of his life. People who study these things. And it worries me when a person like you says "if he ever existed," because the evidence is there that he did exist. You should read more widely than you clearly have done.
Peter Atkins: There are plenty of scholars who've questioned the historical existence.
John Lennox: And if I might say so, Richard Dawkins quoted one of them. Dawkins does believe that Jesus existed, but he says, "A good case can be made out that Jesus never existed," and he mentions Professor Wells of London. He didn't tell anybody that this is a professor of German, not an ancient historian. So I'm afraid I have read both atheist ancient historians, Christians, agnostics, all the rest — they are agreed basically on this. So it seems to me that if you're interested in making observations and notes, and science in that general sense, then Jesus's existence is scientifically established. It's rationally established by historical science.
Peter Atkins: I don't know what percentage I'd put on that. Maybe 80% true, but not 100%.
Why Christianity and Not Another Religion?
Host: Someone asks: why does John specifically believe in the Christian God? What about other religions? And another person asks a similar question: how is one to decide between the thousands of faiths on offer without the use of a reliable method such as science?
John Lennox: This is quite a sensitive question. But the only way I can approach it is by Peter's method of rational inquiry. And at one level — let's take the three monotheistic religions — but before I say anything, this is important. You've heard me clearly say that I believe you, whatever you believe, are made in the image of God and therefore of infinite value. Secondly, you've heard me say that I believe there's a common element in morality. So when you raise with me the questions of other religions, please understand I'm not criticizing your morality. That is very important. Nor am I criticizing your value. I'm being asked a rational question: on what basis do you choose?
So here is one level. The three great monotheistic religions and their attitude to the resurrection — forgive me, Peter, if I raise it again. My Jewish friends believe that Jesus died and did not rise. My Muslim friends believe he didn't die. I believe he both died and rose. Those three things cannot be simultaneously historically correct. So we have to do investigations in exactly the same way as we investigate any event in history. We can't repeat it to see what happened, but we can make an inference to the best explanation. And all I can say in short answer is I've done that investigation many times and come to the conclusion that the Christian explanation is true.
But there's a second explanation, and it's this. I often ask myself, traveling around the world as I've done, what people of different religions mean by a religion. And they usually come up with something like a university in the following sense. You have an entrance exam into the university, you get in, and then you're on the way — on the path — and you're being taught by delightful professors, and then you face the final judgment, which is called finals. Now, on the way, on your path, the professors, however kind they are, cannot guarantee that you're going to get through at the end. Why? Because the basic principle of a university course is merit.
Now, many of my friends, when I ask them about religion including Christianity, say that's it. There's a ceremony at the beginning, perhaps performed at a child or an adult. Then you're on the way — the eightfold path, or whatever it is, the Tao, the teaching — and then you're faced with a final assessment. But the teachers, the gurus, the priests cannot guarantee your acceptance at that final judgment.
Christianity, if that's what religion is, Christianity is not a religion for a very simple reason. In Christianity, the acceptance comes at the beginning, not the end. As I sit here, I've not reached the final judgment, but I know that I'm accepted. Why? Not because I'm very good. Because of what Christ has done. And the absolute essence of what it is to be a Christian is that I have trusted him — trusted what he did on the cross. Now this may seem all mystique to you, but what he did there means that I can be accepted at the beginning of the journey. That makes a spectacular difference.
In fact, if it were a question of marriage — imagine I propose to a girl and say, "Look, here's a cookbook. There are rules in it. You keep them pretty well for the next 40 years and then I'll accept you." Well, she'd throw the book in my face. But that's what many of us think of God. No wonder people give up on religion in my view, because it becomes a slavish trying to merit acceptance, when Christ is prepared to give his salvation as a free gift. So I'm not doing this evening to gain brownie points with God. I'm doing it because God has accepted me. And that is the wonder of Christianity to me.
Peter Atkins: If I can give John a more succinct answer to why he is a Christian — it's simply that he was brought up in Ireland.
John Lennox: But Peter, that's absurd. That's saying that because you give a genetic origin for me, that explains everything I do.
Peter Atkins: Cultural conditioning.
John Lennox: But the point is, Peter, I've met many Northern Irish atheists as well. There are very many. And I have experienced again and again people changing their worldview, which shows it's not culturally dependent. That was one of the most important questions for me.
Peter Atkins: It shows that you are particularly contaminated by your upbringing.
John Lennox: Well, that's very nice of you to say so.
Closing Statements
Host: We are needing to draw things to a close. Are there any final things you'd like to say to round off the evening? Do you want to start, Peter?
Peter Atkins: Science is the way, the truth, and the light. We should be proud that somehow or other, through collaborative enterprise and open-mindedness and mathematization and observation, we are delving into the workings of the world — into, if you like, the fabric of reality — and answering all the great questions of being. We should be proud that we apes who have dropped from the trees have gone so far intellectually. And although I acknowledge that religious belief is a component of that journey, we are breaking out of that chrysalis and taking over the heath.
John Lennox: Science is wonderful, but the God who gave us a world in which science can be done is even more wonderful. And I'm very thankful that it's not an abstract set of intellectual disciplines, but a person who said, "I am the way and the truth and the life."