John Lennox: Against the Tide of Atheism
On this ID the Future from the archive, philosopher of science Dr. Stephen Meyer continues his conversation with Oxford mathematician and philosopher Dr. John Lennox about his recent documentary film Against the Tide: Finding God in an Age of Science.
In Part 2, Lennox talks about discovering the damage atheism does to people, by seeing it firsthand in communist Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and seeing what it does to rationality itself. He notes that if atheists like Richard Dawkins knew firsthand what hard atheism does to a society, they’d likely be a lot more careful to evaluate their position: “They are living on the basis of the Judeo-Christian legacy in culture,” says Lennox, “that founded the universities they worked in…and afforded them the luxury of the freedom to speak about these things.” Lennox learned that hard atheism in totalitarian regimes shuts down intellectual freedom of inquiry, a lesson that would prove useful to him in his later interactions with atheists in debate.
Lennox relates some of his experiences with famous religiously skeptical scientists, describing how he emphasized to these thinkers that the Judeo-Christian worldview did much to give us science. When skeptical scientists ask him how Christianity could have anything to say to science, Lennox is always ready with an answer.
This is the second part of a three-part conversation. Listen to Part 1. Part 2 coming next Friday!