has science buried God?
Camilla Day reports on the exciting debate between Dawkins and Lennox
I
queued up outside Oxford’s Natural History Museum clutching a
coveted ticket to the sold-out event on 21 October. It was only the second time for Richard Dawkins and John Lennox to debate the existence of God, and the first on English soil.
Richard Dawkins is the well- known author of The God Delusion, 1
recently retired as
Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, and sponsor of the atheist bus campaign. 2 His opponent, John Lennox, is Professor in Mathematics at the University of Oxford and Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science at Green College, Oxford. He is a Christian who wrote God’s Undertaker: has science buried God? 3
in
response to The God Delusion. questions in my mind
Was I going to be persuaded by ‘the Dawkinator’? Had I been infected with a ‘religious mind virus’ for the past four years of
04
my life? Perhaps I was really nothing more than a complex product of the singularity from which the Big Bang originated. 4 Although I had heard in high- brow circles, Christian and secular, that Dawkins was too polemical to be taken seriously, I felt that his proposition of the ‘selfish gene’ was a real threat to my faith. But all too soon I found myself at the entrance to the museum and it was too late to turn back.
Dawkins began by asking how Lennox could claim to be a scientist and yet believe water can be turned into wine. 5
After
putting Jesus in the spotlight, he did not grant his opponent the same courtesy. Whenever Lennox spoke about Jesus, Dawkins accused him of fanciful digression from science and he was reluctant to engage. Lennox took that in his stride,
expressing concern over Dawkins’ denial of Jesus’ existence, not to mention his death and resurrection. Cornered, Dawkins was forced to concede that most historians did think he existed. But he attempted to dismiss the point by saying that the whole story of Jesus was petty.
nucleus christmas ‘08
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