Transcript
0:00 thank you very much ladies and gentlemen
0:03i believe in God
0:05i believe in the supernatural God who
0:09 created the heavens and the earth i
0:13 believe in a God who holds the heavens
0:15 and the earth in existence
i believe
0:18that on the basis
of rational evidence
0:20 similar to the beliefs held by the
0:23 founders of this house who gave this
0:25university the motto dominos Illuminatio
0:29 mea they saw no contradiction between
0:32 faith in God and the utmost excellence
0:35in rational inquiry
(It wasn't for God?
there could be no rational inquiry
as
intellect always comes from an intellect,
and
brains come from things
that already heave em.)
and if I dare
0:38 mention my alma matter of Cambridge in
0:41this holy place
0:43I would remind you that on the door of
0:45 the Caendish laboratory in Cambridge are
0:48 written the words "Great are the works
0:50 of the Lord studied by all who delight
0:52 in them."
And as we look at at the rise
0:55 of science in the 16th and 17th
0:57 centuries Alfred North Whitehead and
0:59 many others commented that men became
1:02 scientific because they expected law in
1:04 nature and they expected law in nature
1:07 because they believed in the lawgiver
so
1:10 ladies and gentlemen I'm not ashamed of
1:12 being both a scientist and a Christian
1:14 because arguably Christianity gave my
1:17 subject
what I am amazed at is that
1:20 serious thinkers today continue to ask
1:22 us to choose between God and science
1:26 that's like asking people to choose
1:28 between Henry Ford and engineering as an
1:30 explanation of the motorcar when
(Doing Satans work for him.)
1:32 Newton discovered his law of gravity he
1:34 didn't say "I've got a law i don't need
1:36 God." No he wrote the Pipia Mathematica
1:38 arguably the greatest work in the whole
1:41 history of science because he saw that
1:44 God is not the same kind of explanation
1:46 as a scientific explanation god doesn't
1:49 compete agency does not compete with
1:51 mechanism and law
1:54 why is there something rather than
1:56 nothing Allan Sandage the brilliant
1:58 cosmologist who became a Christian in
2:00 his 50s said God is the answer to that
2:02 question
but people are now so desperate
2:05 to show that the universe created itself
2:07 from nothing which seems to me to be an
2:09 immediate oxymoron
if I say X created Y
2:12 I'm assuming the existence of X to
2:14 to explain the existence of Y
if I say X 2:16 created X
I'm assuming the existence of
2:19 X to explain the existence of X which
2:21 simply shows that
nonsense remains
2:23nonsense
even if high-powered scientists
2:25 utter it
("Bad logic
will never result in good science.")
reminds me a little bit of GK
2:27 Chesteron who said
"It is absurd to
2:30 complain
that it is unthinkable for an
2:32 unthinkable God
to make everything out
2:34 of nothing
and then to pretend that it
2:37 is more thinkable that nothing should
2:38turn itself into everything."
(It's flat out ignorance
and stupidity
both rolled into one.)
2:41The heavens declare the glory of God
2:43 says the ancient psalm and we've
2:45 unraveled a bit of that seeing the
2:47 finetuning of the fundamental forces of
2:49 nature it's something that's so striking
2:52 to scientists that it demands
2:54 explanation and it seems to me that
2:56 Arnold Pensas hit it right he is the
3:00 Nobel Prize winner who discovered the
3:01microwave background on which a lot of
3:04 the evidence for the Big Bang is based
3:06 he said "Astronomy leads us to a unique
3:08 event, a universe which was created out
3:10 of nothing one with the very delicate
3:12 balance needed to provide exactly the
3:14 right conditions required to permit life
3:17 and one which has an underlying one
3:19 might say supernatural plan
but I want
3:23 to come to what I think is one of the
3:25 fundamental arguments for theism
3:30 i take it this house believes in reason
3:32 that's why we're all here and as a
3:34 scientist I believe that the universe is
3:36 rationally intelligible that is
3:39something that has struck some of the
3:41 geniuses of science as demanding an
3:43 explanation
Einstein said
"The only
3:46 incomprehensible thing about the
3:47 universe is that it's comprehensible."
3:49 And Vner talked about the unreasonable
3:52 effectiveness of mathematics how is it
3:54 that a mathematician thinking in her
3:56 head in here can come up with equations
3:58 that seem to fit the universe out there
4:01 well how is it indeed because the irony
4:03 of the atheist position here is evident
4:06 my atheist friends and I have many of
4:07 them tell me that the driving force of
4:09 evolution which eventually produced our
4:11 human cognitive faculties reason
4:14 included was not primarily concerned
4:15 with truth at all but with survival and
4:18 we all know ladies and gentlemen what
4:20 has often happened and still happens to
4:22 truth when individuals or commercial
4:24 enterprises or nations feel themselves
4:26 threatened and struggle for survival
(Kinda like us right now.)
4:30 a leading philosopher Alvin Planting of
4:32 Notre Dame says if atheists are right
4:34 that we are the product of mindless
4:36 unguided natural processes then they
4:38 have given us strong reason to doubt the
4:40 reliability of human cognitive faculties
4:43 and therefore inevitably to doubt the
4:44 validity of any belief that they produce
4:47 including their atheism their biology
4:49 and their belief in naturalism would
4:51 therefore appear to be at war with each
4:53 other in a conflict that is nothing at
4:55all to do with God
(When people tell me they are an atheist thats what I ask them.
"How did you reach that conclusion."
Because intellects dont evolve.
And the other species dont have em.
So just by saying:
"I am an atheist."
You proved:
1) Free will, as you made a choice.
2) You used a faculty (Intellect/reason)
that could not have been "the product of
mindless unguided natural processes".
Why were we the ones ones
to get Intellect/reason
if that was the case?)
yet my atheist
4:58 friends still insist that it is rational
5:01 for them to believe that the evolution
5:03 of human reason was not directed for the
5:06 purpose of discovering truth and yet it
5:08 is irrational for me to believe that
5:11 human reason was designed and created by
5:13 God to enable us to understand and
5:16 believe the truth curious logic
("Bad logic
will never result
in good science.")
by
5:19 contrast with that biblical theism
5:22 asserts that ultimate reality is
5:25 personal and intelligent and the reason
5:27 science works and this was the
5:29 motivating force that drove the great
5:30 pioneers of science is that the universe
5:33 out there and the human mind in here
5:35that does the science are ultimately the
5:38 product of the same intelligent divine
5:41mind, human beings are made we are told
5:44 in God's image and that means that
5:47 science can be done that makes
5:49 infinitely more sense to me as a
5:51scientist than atheism does
now let me
5:55 come briefly to ethics ethical behavior
5:57 like rational behavior of course does
5:59 not itself require religious belief this
6:02 is consistent with the fact that humans
6:04 are created in God's image as rational
6:07 moral persons
but just as I suggest that
6:10 rationality cannot be explained without
6:12 the existence of God so I dare to
6:15 suggest that the existence of morality
6:18 cannot be explained either as modern
6:21science sprang from Judeo-Christian
6:23 sources so did the concept of human
6:25 equality
listen to atheist Jorgen
6:27 Habermas arguably one of Germany's
6:29 leading intellectuals he said that
6:31 universalistic egalitarianism for which
6:34 sprang the ideals of freedom and a
6:36 collective life and solidarity the
6:38 individual morality of conscience human
6:40 rights and democracy is the direct
6:42 legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice
6:44 and the Christian ethic of love
this
6:47 legacy substantially unchanged has been
6:50 the object of continual critical
6:52 appropriation and reinterpretation to
6:54 this day there's no alternative to it
6:56 everything else is just idle post-modern
6:59 talk
and it seems to me he's hitting the
7:02 core of something important because the
7:04 value of a human being on which sits
7:06 egalitarianism
7:08 is based not on what the human being can
7:10 do but what she's made of or how she's
7:13 made in God's image
7:16 i never forget speaking when on one of
7:18 my many visits to Russia to a colleague
7:21in the Academy of Sciences and he said
7:24 you know John we thought we could
7:26 abolish God and retain a value for human
7:28 beings we found we couldn't and we
7:30 murdered millions of them and Alexander
7:33 Solzhenitsyn has said if I'm asked why is
7:36 it that 60 million of my fellow
7:38 countrymen were sacrificed he said the
7:40 answer is we have forgotten God
(He died 17 years ago.
I wonder what he would think about
this day and age.)
science
7:45 Of course marvelous as it is is limited
7:48 even a Nobel Prize winner by analyzing a
7:50 cake cannot tell why it was made but
7:54 Aunt Matilda who made it can tell you
7:56 she can reveal it to you but if she
7:59 doesn't reveal it to you you'll never
8:00 know
and that brings me to be my next
8:03 evidence it's the same
with the universe
8:05we can analyze it magnificently but
8:08ultimately if it has a maker and I
8:10 believe it has only he can tell us what
8:12 it's all about and he's done so in the
8:14 powerful narrative of the Bible
in 8:17 particular in its analysis of the
8:19 problem with humanity not simply in
8:21 terms of behavioral breakdown between
8:23 people but a vertical breakdown of trust
8:27 between us and the creator
the unique
8:30 solution to that problem is not simply
8:33 in terms of human ethical development
(There is a pretty good argument
to me made that ALL of
Western ethics derived from
8:35 although that's very important but in
8:36 terms of something far deeper altogether
8:39 the restoration of the fractured
8:41relationship with God through the
8:43 salvation he has brought through Jesus
8:44 Christ a radical relationship that
8:47empowers us to live ethically from God
8:51 and here we reach what for me is the
8:53 chief evidence not only for the
8:55 existence but the nature of God it is
8:57Jesus Christ he it was who not only
9:00 taught the golden rule but embodied it
9:02 fed the hungry healed the sick and
9:04 suffering and welcomed society's
9:05 outcasts brought honor and respect to
9:08 the marginalized and ashamed and he's
9:10 brought forgiveness and peace to
9:12multi-millions
9:13 uh around the world he's able to do this
9:16 of course because though he was a man he
9:19 uniquely never was only a man but God
9:23 become human
9:26 the central evidence for this startling
9:28 claim
9:30 is of course his historical resurrection
9:32 from the dead that launched Christianity
9:34 in the world this is of course ladies
9:37 and gentlemen a crunch issue if Jesus
9:39rose from the dead death is not the end
9:41 and atheism is false if Jesus did not
9:44 rise from the dead Christianity is false
(Then why is his Revelation
coming true right in front of our faces then?
)9:47 and I remember at Cambridge as a student
9:49 listening to the brilliant Sir Norman
9:51 Anderson a legal expert going through
9:54 forensically the evidence from his legal
9:56 perspective as a a brilliant lawyer and
9:59 he said at the end of it "The empty tomb
10:02 then of Jesus forms a veritable rock on
10:04 which all rationalistic theories of the
10:07 resurrection dash themselves in vain."
10:09 Just finally now as I read the Bible I
10:12 do not only find intellectual
10:14 satisfaction but I find a great deal of
10:16 that i sense the voice of God speaking
10:18 to me you see that's intensely personal
10:21 but ladies and gentlemen we've been
10:22 asked tonight about belief in God and I
10:25 want to strongly emphasize that God is
10:27 not a theory he's a person and if the
10:31 origination of me qua person is a
10:34 personal God then the most exciting
10:36 thing really is is there a possibility
10:39 of getting to know God
(Not enough to "believe" in God.
The demons do that and they shudder.
You have to know,
and to TRUST him.
Even in difficult, painful situations,
in fact, even more so,
in those type situations.)
and so I don't
10:42 simply believe there is a God i've come
10:44 to know him and trust him and I have
10:46 strong reasons for doing so because of
10:50 Christ dying and rising again for me and
10:53 that has generated in me a sense of
10:55 utterly unmmerited forgiveness
10:57 acceptance and peace that has enabled me
11:00 to face the ugly side of my own nature
11:02 and with God's help to do something
11:04 about it but it's enabled me to face
11:06 something else the hardest problem I
11:09 face as a Christian is the problem of
11:12 evil and pain
11:15 my niece getting a tumor at 22 that
11:18 kills her what do I say to my sister and
11:22 this is the hardest problem we face but
11:25 it seems to me that atheism here has no
11:28 answer because by definition atheism
11:31 believes that human death is the end so
11:34 there is no ultimate hope
11:37 but you see ladies and gentlemen we
11:39 could stay here till midnight and beyond
11:42 arguing as has been done in this
11:43 university for centuries what a good God
11:46 should might would could if not possibly
11:49might just could he not have done and
11:52 we'll get nowhere
so it seems to me
11:54 there's another question we can ask and
11:56 it's this granted that life is presents
11:59 us with a double picture we see some
12:02 beautiful things we see some ragged
12:04 edges we see hurt and pain and we see
12:07 joy how can we come to terms with that
12:11 and it seems to me here is no simplistic
12:13 answer but a window into an answer and
12:16 it's this if it is actually true that
12:19 Jesus is as I believe him to be the son
12:21 of God then we can ask the question what
12:23 is God doing on a cross and the answer
12:26 comes back at the very least God has not
12:29 remained distant from our human
12:31suffering but has become part of it and
12:34 the other side of that is this because
12:36 Jesus rose from the dead he is going to
12:39 be the ultimate judge
( I would add
everything
is solely his creation
Therefore:
he is the only
moral authority
and judge over it.)
now here's an
12:42 irony because atheism has no ultimate
12:46 hope of justice By definition the vast
12:49 majority of people in the history of the
12:51 world have died without justice and will
12:53 die without justice and if death is the
12:55 end then of course they have no hope of
12:58 ultimate justice
but the promise in the
13:01 New Testament guaranteed by the
13:03 resurrection of Jesus is that he is to
13:05 be the judge in the coming day
so ladies
13:09 and gentlemen those are some of the
13:12 reasons why I believe that God is real
13:15 and worthy to be trusted thank you.
No comments:
Post a Comment