Tim Malone.id.au

Last night in Melbourne, Oxford mathematician John Lennox debated philosopher and bio-ethicist Peter Singer in a debate organised by the Fixed Point Foundation. One believes in God, one doesn’t. This is how the debate unfolded.

DISCLAIMER: This record of the debate was made through live tweeting. Concepts and quotes have been condensed into chunks of 140 characters or less. Naturally, this loses context. Please take this record as is and do your own research to fully understand each debater’s positions. Quotes are not verbatim and may have been paraphrased but all care was taken to replicate the intended meaning.

You can learn more about Lennox, Singer and the Fixed Point Foundation online. Due to the organisers and the media through which the debate was promoted I would assume this debate was conducted “on Christian soil” however I don’t think that necessarily gave it a Christian bias. Also, I saw at least one atheist group promoting the event. To provide further context, the event was aimed at the general public rather than particularly academics, although given the debaters it was certainly academic in nature.

The debate started with each speaker being given 15 to 17 minutes to state their case:

7:18pm – Lennox: I find Singer’s writings difficult. I agree with some of his sympathies & not with others. But I find him consistent.

7:24pm – [Tim]: Sadly I can’t understand a lot of what Lennox is saying… [due to his voice not being especially clear in a reverberating hall - took me a bit of time to attune to it!]

7:26pm – Lennox: Whether or not human beings believe they were created by God, I believe they were made in his image. …

7:27pm – Lennox: … So the alike compassion I see in my atheist friends – is no surprise!

7:28pm – Lennox: If you do away with God, you do away with human freedom. We’re then just here as part of a mindless lottery.

7:30pm – Lennox: I claim that God has spoken to this world. … The restoration of a fractured relationship with God through salvation.

7:32pm – Lennox: My conviction that Jesus is the Son of God is based on his resurrection. This is the crux of the matter.

7:32pm – Lennox: An essential part of my evidence is my personal experience of God. The forgiveness, acceptance and peace.

7:35pm – Singer: The universe is explainable without God – or at least belief in God doesn’t help explain any more. So why believe.

7:36pm – Singer: Medieval Christianity attempted to develop rational reasons for belief in God.

7:37pm – Singer: Scientists sow a great deal of confusion when they use the word “universe” in saying “it began x billion years ago”.

7:38pm – Singer: What they’re really talking about is the “known universe”. Ask the scientists “do we know it began from nothing?”

7:38pm – Singer: So the universe could have been collapsing and expanding for ever. We don’t need a God to explain the “beginning”.

7:41pm – Singer: If things fit together so well, how did it happen? Now we understand that things adapted because they had to.

7:42pm – Singer: I think evolution is one of the most firmly established scientific theories. … We share 98% of our genes with chimps.

7:45pm – Singer: I don’t think the arguments are good nor should we rely on faith to replace arguments.

7:47pm – Singer: People are likely to be the religion of where brought up. Is it co-incidence Lennox is Christian when his parents were?

7:48pm – Singer: If God existed, how could there be suffering in the world if he knew about it, had the power to prevent it, and didn’t.

7:49pm – Singer: Theres suffering not caused by “free will”: drought, earthquakes &so on. Or “sin”: animals & small children suffer too.

7:51pm – [Tim]: For those following the #isthereagod debate, both speakers have had 15 min opening statements. Now moving to 5-7 min rebuttals.

7:54pm – Lennox: Human genome is 3.5 billion letters long all in right order. Whatever mechanism is involved, it is powerful evidence.

7:56pm – Lennox: Christian faith isn’t blind faith, it’s a commitment based on evidence.

7:57pm – Lennox: Singer are your parents atheist? So you have the faith of your parents too.

7:57pm – Singer: It’s not a faith. Lennox: Of course it’s faith, don’t you believe it?

8:00pm – Singer: Evidence of the resurrection is slender. No contemporary documents. The gospels & sources written a generation after.

8:01pm – Singer: The resurrection violates our laws of nature. So we would need a lot of good evidence to believe it.

8:10pm – [Tim]: Questions from the moderator now at #isthereagod. Difficult to summarise quick enough… no promises.

8:19pm – Lennox: There is no evidence of a collective hallucination about resurrection. Christianity seemed hopeless when Jesus died.

8:20pm – Singer: Survival and growth doesn’t mean it is true.

8:21pm – Singer: Was the sermon of the mount preached on a mount or a plain? Each gospel has a different opinion.

8:22pm – Singer: I think at the foundation all religious belief is irrational. But Buddhism is interesting;it doesn’t presuppose a deity

8:23pm – Singer: It wasn’t necessarily irrational to believe in a god when we didn’t know. But with the kind of knowledge we have today?

8:27pm – Lennox: The question of suffering is the hardest one I face. There’s both moral evil & natural evil.

8:28pm – Lennox: Theres no simplistic answer to the q of suffering. But if u say there’s no God, u may have solved it intellectually…

8:29pm – Lennox: … but you’ve not removed the suffering. You have removed all sense of hope.

8:31pm – Lennox: If Jesus is God, then what was God doing on a cross? He was part of the suffering.

8:31pm – Lennox: I believe death is not the end, and that God is a God of justice & fairness.

8:33pm – Singer: Suffering is the biggest problem I have. So if God understands, then all the more, why isn’t he doing something?

8:33pm – Singer: Death is the end of each of us, but not the end of hope.We can hope that future humans will improve from what we learn.

8:37pm – Lennox: We’re both faced with this problem of suffering. If there’s a world without suffering…. well, that’s what we believe.

8:43pm – Singer: Don’t need belief in God to believe that something is right/wrong. eg you causing another to suffer, no justification.

8:45pm: If a child asks “who am I & why am I here?” Singer: you’re a homosapien, & there is no grand purpose other than what you give.

8:47pm: If a child asks “who am I & why am I here?” Lennox: you exist because God wanted you to be here & to have a rel’ship with him.

8:48pm – Singer: Lennox places a lot of weight on the Scriptures. That doesn’t stand up to critical examination. Lots clearly not true.

8:49pm – Singer: Jesus & Paul both believed the Second Coming would happen pretty soon – J: “none of you will taste death before I come”

8:51pm – Singer: If the New Test is accurate, it reports the beliefs of a false teacher. Also, Paul’s moral views weren’t enlightened.

8:52pm – Singer: If I were to be persuaded of a deity, I wouldn’t think the Scriptures were evidence that Jesus was a divine being.

8:52pm – Lennox: Christ was not mistaken about his 2nd coming as Singer suggests. I think Christ was referring to the transfiguration.

8:57pm – Lennox: Ethics is 2nd in X’tianity. I can’t meet my own ethical standards let alone God’s. Christ has something no1 can offer.

8:57pm – Lennox: Whatever ethics can develop, in the end there is no ultimate justice… without God.

8:59pm: THE END. http://fixed-point.org for more debate resources. Apologies to anyone whose tweet streams I overwhelmed tonight

Thanks to the people who took part by tweeting back – it was great to have the interaction!

While some of the arguments presented were well worn, I was delighted to hear new arguments – from both sides – that I hadn’t heard before, giving me a better idea of what this playing field encompasses. Of course, my position on this question isn’t a surprise to anyone who knows me or has read a couple of posts on this blog. And one of the biggest questions that keeps coming up – and in fact that I ask too – is why, if there is a God, is there is so much suffering in this world. Lennox had one of the best answers to this that I’ve heard – but of course the tweets just don’t do it justice.