Does God Exist? William Lane Craig, Rowan Williams, Sabine Hossenfelder & Slavoj Žižek on Reality

[00:00:00]What is ultimately real? And does God belong in our best account of reality?

[00:00:05]I'm John Nelson, and in this special edition of Unbelievable, philosopher Jack Symes hosts an extraordinary encounter between four major thinkers: Christian philosopher William Lane Craig, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, and philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who describes himself as a Christian atheist. Recorded at London's Royal Institution as part of the Mystery of Existence series, they debate the existence of God, the origins of the universe, the resurrection of Jesus, the problem of suffering, and whether science can ever answer reality's deepest questions. Here is Jack Symes with the Battle for Reality.

[00:00:46]>> Welcome, [music] everybody. So, our motion this evening: the existence of God. A very not small order of by any means.

[00:00:55]Slavoj and Sabine are going to begin with the case against God's existence.

[00:01:00]Slavoj, would you like to begin?

[00:01:02]>> Yeah, but >> [snorts] >> my position is so extreme and specific that okay, I will state it as briefly as possible. When I say Christian atheist, I don't mean Richard Dawkins' cultural Christians, you know, this of there is no God, but the Christian values are not so bad. I mean something much more radical. What absolutely fascinates me in Christianity is the death of God.

[00:01:29]And I read this in a Hegelian way.

[00:01:34]My closest philosopher is Hegel, where [snorts] he says, it's very problematic, what dies on the cross is not just a representative of God, like God sends Jesus, "Oh, my son, it didn't go well, so come back maybe in 100 years."

[00:01:53]No.

[00:01:54]What I quote Hegel, what dies on the cross is God himself."

[00:02:00]Now, I'm not saying I'm an atheist that before that God was somehow alive, but I think Chris- religion is not just as Marx would have put it, "Opium of the people." Today, I hope you all agree, we have two other opiums of the people, which are, you can guess, opium and the people.

[00:02:25]The people in populism opium for intellectuals or whoever and so on. So, my point is that the core of we are naturally or culturally, in so far as we speak, in some sense religious. Stalin was religious. I can explain how for me Einstein was religious, Spinoza. I think that in this sense God as a higher authority which guarantees harmony and so on has to die. So, the uniqueness of Christianity is for me what we get after is not return to God, whatever what get after is Holy Spirit.

[00:03:06]And Holy Spirit simply is, for me, as you can read in the Gospels, the community of believers. When I don't know in which Gospel somebody asked Jesus, "But how will we know that after your death you return?" The answer is, "When there will be love between two of you, I will be there." And my specificity is that first. That's why I say you can be truly a materialist only through Christianity because for me the death of God is this radical experience maybe only comparable in natural science to quantum mechanics where precisely this transcendent cosmic order disintegrates. And to find hope in this it's Holy Spirit. 3 minutes, I kept to it, no?

[00:03:55]>> Um, thank you.

[00:03:56]>> Okay.

[00:03:57]>> Um, Sabine, uh, same question to you. I understand you're an agnostic, but I wonder, um, you know, why the skepticism about God's existence?

[00:04:05]>> Right. So, I guess I was invited to represent the scientists on this panel.

[00:04:12]And, um, I can tell you that I think most the the big majority of my colleagues, uh, in science are actually atheists.

[00:04:21]>> Mhm.

[00:04:22]>> Um, many of them have grown up, um, attending some kind of church, one or the other, but once they started learning more about the science, um, they disconnected more and more from their faith. And then there are the next generation, basically. So, so, this is maybe like the baby boomer generation.

[00:04:42]Almost all of them have grown up with a religious background, you know, um, through their family.

[00:04:47]And then, um, you know, people maybe, uh, my age, um, many of them are actually no longer longer, uh, baptized.

[00:04:54]So, I'm technically a heathen.

[00:04:57]So, I've never belonged to any church.

[00:04:59]Um, so, I I I've I've thought a lot about the question, like, where does the sequence of whys bring us? Because I've been working in the foundations of physics, and there's always this question, like, okay, we have the standard model of particle physics, which, um, describes all the matter around us, and we have Einstein's theory of general relativity. Why? Right? So, we're looking for a for a deeper explanation, possibly a theory of everything, maybe string theory of whatever.

[00:05:28]Why? Like, why this theory, and so on.

[00:05:32]And, um, I think that this is just a sequence of whys that science can never answer. So, it's one of the ways that science, I think, is fundamentally limited. And there there are other examples where I think science just can't answer this question. A particularly obvious example is why does science work? Like you can't use science to answer this question. That that would be a circular argument. Um so I think science has limits. These are some examples and there are some other examples. Um and I think it's natural that people look for other ways to explain it.

[00:06:10]>> Mhm.

[00:06:10]>> And so turning turning to religion uh turning to God is one of the ways to do it. Now um I'm like I I'm quite open-minded about the idea that there is more than we can prove through experiments and logical interference and so on and so forth.

[00:06:29]The reason why I'm you know for all practical purposes an atheist so I don't attend church uh and so on is that if I look at the religions that are currently practiced like in this particular way with this particular book with these particular stories with this particular narrative >> Mhm.

[00:06:48]>> then um I find it impossible to actually believe it.

[00:06:53]>> Mhm.

[00:06:54]>> Um and and I would actually say like if you poke my colleagues in science a little bit and I I did this um for my my um second book a little bit, you know, I I asked them if they're religious or not. They'll usually say no, but you know, there's some things that I believe like there's more than uh you know, um our science can tell us um basically and uh I I understand what they mean. So there is a certain you know, a a certain disconnect between the um the overarching idea that there is more than science can tell us and the particular religions.

[00:07:33]>> Okay. Uh Rowan Williams, why should we believe in God?

[00:07:38]>> There are any number of reasons I think why people actually do believe in God, and it's very difficult to say why anyone person should, but I'll start by saying why I do.

[00:07:50]Or a bit of why I do. Obviously, part of it is upbringing, culture, environment.

[00:07:56]But more significant for me is that I suppose through my adult life it has been my belief in God that has enhanced, consolidated, and deepened my belief in humanity such as it is.

[00:08:15]That's to say for me, the language I use about God as a Christian is language that gives the maximal space for doing justice to human dignity, human possibility, and human tragedy, and human failure.

[00:08:29]It's within that context that I thought I make the best sense of my own humanity and the humanity of those around me.

[00:08:37]I say make the best sense, and that's the language I turn to rather than simply that of explanation.

[00:08:44]Because although Bill may have other things to say about this, I I'm a bit agnostic about the explanatory weight and coherence of some of the arguments there.

[00:08:56]But the sense of religious practice, by which I mean both public sacramental practice and the personal practice of silent attentiveness and contemplation, religious practice is what continues to nourish my sense of what it's like to be human.

[00:09:20]To be made in the image of God, in traditional Christian language, um to look at any other person, and indeed any other substance in the world, as something which is related to more than myself, which exists as a carrier of some kind of gift and challenge to me which has a side that I never see because it's it's connected with God.

[00:09:48]And that means that faith is moving through an environment in which that mysteriousness, that interiority, that madening illusiveness of the reality around is it made sense of for me.

[00:10:04]>> Okay, Bill, your your case for the existence of >> As a philosopher, I've interpreted the question this evening somewhat differently than our other panelists. I take it that the question tonight is about what rational justification or warrant exists for believing that God exists. And here I like to distinguish between what I call an interior way and an exterior way. The interior way would be to believe in God on the basis of a personal experience of God. God is real to many people who have no familiarity with arguments or evidence for God's existence. He's a living reality in their lives that as Rowan says has changed their lives and infused them with meaning, uh significance, and and purpose. And I think that that is a perfectly valid approach to uh justified belief in God and indeed warranted belief in God. I would say you can know that God exists on the basis of a personal encounter and experience with God.

[00:11:11]But then in addition, as Rowan alluded, I think that there is an exterior way in which there are good arguments that God exists. And in my work over the years, I've defended six of these which I'll simply list at this time. First, God is the best explanation of why anything at all exists instead of just nothing.

[00:11:36]Second, God is the best explanation of the absolute beginning of the universe at a point in the finite past. Third, God is the best explanation of the uncanny effectiveness of mathematics in describing physical phenomena. Fourth, God is the best explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe for embodied interactive life. Fifth, God is the best explanation of the objectivity of moral values and duties in the world. And finally, I think that the very possibility of God's existence entails that God exists. These arguments present a very powerful, very diverse range of reasons for thinking that a creator and designer of the universe who is the locus of absolute goodness exists. I know of no comparable case that can be offered on behalf of atheism. And therefore, I think that based on these arguments and evidences, God truly does make sense of the world in that he provides the best explanation for these listed phenomena.

[00:12:57]>> Okay, let's open it up to the wider debate [clears throat] following them.

[00:13:00]Uh Bill, could we begin with you here on on responses to perhaps the opening statements from Sabine and Slavoj there regarding the death of God and maybe your comments on whether or not physics and the sciences give us reason perhaps to believe in God or not.

[00:13:15]>> I I think this is uh needs to be carefully stated.

[00:13:19]I would agree with those who say, "Well, you can't use you can't prove God by science. You're not postulating some sort of a god of the gaps to plug up gaps in scientific knowledge.

[00:13:32]>> [clears throat] >> Rather, the way I would articulate it is as follows.

[00:13:36]Science can provide evidence in support of a premise in a philosophical argument leading to a conclusion having theological significance.

[00:13:49]Science can provide evidence in support of a premise in a philosophical argument leading to a conclusion having theological significance. And I think that's evident in some of the arguments that I alluded to tonight, such as the origin of the universe, uh the second premise of which that the universe began to exist enjoys considerable scientific confirmation, or the argument from fine-tuning, which also enjoys considerable scientific evidence for some of its key premises.

[00:14:20]>> Okay, Sabine and then Slavoj. Sabine, what are your thoughts here on uh Bill's articulated well there, the idea the universe began to exist, so therefore requires a cause, and is fine-tuned for the existence of life as well. Do they not point to something um god-like at least?

[00:14:37]>> I don't think so. So, for me, the problem with all these arguments that you've just listed is the question, what do you mean by an explanation? Like, when you say it's the best explanation, what does it even mean? Like, as a scientist, when someone speaks of an explanation, I basically mean something that I can use to calculate a prediction for an observable. So, if you tell me, "Okay, the universe is described, let's say, by the theories that we currently use, because we know that they work quite well, but God made it," then that's just an unnecessary addition to the theories that work. So, I don't see what this explains.

[00:15:20]Um so, this is my problem generally with all these um explanations. I don't think that you can support them on on logical arguments. I understand the desire for a better explanation, and I understand why people turn to religion and think that there might be something more, but I don't think that you can make this argument based on logic and try to pull out God from scientific evidence and some philosophical um mumble jumbo.

[00:15:49]>> Do you want to build on this Slavoj?

[00:15:51]>> Yeah, maybe not directly, but I will use it as an excuse to say what in [laughter] any case I wanted to say.

[00:15:57]Okay, first I want in a very friendly way to provoke you Rowan. Very friendly because [laughter] I'm serious now. As an atheist, your last book, solidarity, I think it's a magic because in first half you What would be the verb? Out Marxist the Marx himself. You did such a wonderful analysis of all the traps of the notion of solidarity, why it isn't equality, what are false solidarities, all that stuff. Excellent. And [snorts] then, I'm not opposed to this to your final point that to make sense of this as a totality, you need something you need something like God.

[00:16:51]My point would be this one.

[00:16:54]Very provocative. Please, don't take it in a comical way, although I probably you know the story. I will refer to a wonderful People claim it's an Arab story, but you know that most of the Arab myths were usually invented by the Templars or whom and attributed to Arabs. Maybe some of you know this. It's a wonderful story joke. We don't know how a [snorts] rich Arab at that point in primitive times merchant died and he had 11 camels. So, and he had three sons. So, he gave a strict order.

[00:17:33]I have 11 camels. Distribute them in this way that my oldest son gets half of the camels, my middle son get 1/3 of the camels, and my youngest son get 1/6 of the camels.

[00:17:50]And then he says, "To resolve the problem, I will add another camel of my own." And it works. 12. Half of 12 is six, 1/4 is three, six and three is nine, and 1/6 is two. 11. One camel remains, and they ask him, "What with this one?" He says, "It's mine. I'll take it back."

[00:18:14]My point is that this works, and I mean this in the noble sense. I'm not saying God doesn't exist. It exists as a very strong material force, but not in the sense of our external ordinary reality.

[00:18:32]But you see here God is for me, sorry for the obscenity, I don't mean it, the 12th camel. You know, you can just imagine it together and you get a meaningful whole. You resolved the problem. It doesn't have to exist. In this basic sense for me, the business of Holy Spirit is to invent better and better 12th camels. Just a final, then I will stop. It may interest you. You know, we all the time talk about belief, but here I think I'm close to you, suddenly we should also ask, but what do we mean by believe? I know speaking with religious persons, you know, first thing I distrust is, you know, when people when people say, my God, in my Stalinist universe you get shot for that. When people say an enemy is somebody whose story you are not ready to hear. This is multiculturalist bull.

[00:19:35]Sorry, I read Hitler's Mein Kampf. I know his story and it's even worse. And this is not now what I will say against religion is much more even for a true Christianity teaches us that's how I read your external and your internal.

[00:19:53]No truth is not inside. The way we experience ourselves can often be an imagined lie to cover up the true evil that is in your social interactions and so on. Inner life is not the truth. Sorry, I stop. Yeah, yeah.

[00:20:09]>> Thank you. We've got Rowan, I think you've got the more difficult perhaps of the >> [laughter] >> the points to to sort of pull apart Slavoj Zizek's of theism and then we'll go to Bill for his reply to Slavoj.

[00:20:23]>> The problem with the camel I think is that if >> [laughter] >> There's two very different conversations.

[00:20:30]>> Some problems with camels.

[00:20:32]>> Some problems with camels, yeah.

[00:20:35]Is that if if at some level you know what you're engaged in is the the shared construction of an imaginary then it doesn't work.

[00:20:48]And that's my my problem. If if at some level we know what we're doing is creating God then the notion does not work for us.

[00:21:01]And this is I suspect not unconnected with what I heard a a bit of an echo of Anselm and one bit of what you said.

[00:21:10]The only way you can imagine God is as existing.

[00:21:13]>> Mhm.

[00:21:14]>> Now, that doesn't prove I think it's something about the grammar of what what we're doing here.

[00:21:20]And to say, "Well, you know, we we know there are only so many camels, but let's just suppose there's an extra one."

[00:21:28]Um the sun doesn't come out.

[00:21:33]So, because we're supposed to be debating the nature of reality, I think, aren't we?

[00:21:38]>> Mhm.

[00:21:39]Yeah, existence of God and in explaining reality.

[00:21:42]>> Reality. Um I would say that imagining God as other than real doesn't doesn't function in the way we want.

[00:21:54]>> Mhm.

[00:21:54]>> Which is why I am both with you and not quite with you on Hegel. I mean, Hegel is pretty important for me, too.

[00:22:05]But, I think what what he's talking about is is something other than just a projection, a convenience, a heuristic device.

[00:22:16]And I'm not sure how much more Hegel wants to say than that, but I want to say quite a bit more.

[00:22:20]>> Mhm.

[00:22:20]>> I want to turn from Hegel there to Aquinas.

[00:22:24]>> Bill, you would maybe disagree with Rowan here that something like the necessity of God by definition does prove God's existence. And then perhaps you'll comment on Sabina's um skepticism about best explanations.

[00:22:36]>> Well, I do think there is a sound ontological argument that Alvin Plantinga has formulated.

[00:22:41]>> Mhm.

[00:22:41]>> But, the more important point I think is in response to Sabina, I don't think [clears throat] you were sufficiently attentive to what I said uh when I denied that I'm inferring God's existence from science.

[00:22:56]What I said is that the scientific uh evidence can provide support for a premise in a philosophical argument leading to a conclusion having theological significance. So, I'm doing metaphysics, not physics.

[00:23:15]The physics can suffice to prove, for example, the proposition that the universe began to exist.

[00:23:22]Um and you didn't dispute that. So, if we uh take that proposition as more probable than not, then we ask, "Well, where did the universe come from?" And here, the metaphysical principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause logically implies, therefore, that the universe has a cause. Out of nothing, nothing comes. This is one of the oldest and most widely accepted principles of metaphysics. Um and therefore, I think it leads metaphysically to the idea of a transcendent, uncaused, beginningless, uh timeless, spaceless, changeless, enormously powerful creator of the universe. So, we need to understand the role of science in these is not to prove God, but to simply provide evidence for premises in a philosophical argument having significant theological conclusions.

[00:24:24]>> Mhm.

[00:24:24]>> So, that's for fun?

[00:24:25]>> [clears throat] >> Yeah, but in the end, you want to conclude that God exists, right? So, it doesn't really matter how you put it.

[00:24:31]So, you you take the scientific evidence for, you know, premise of a philosophical argument, whatever, but what you do is you take the observations and you take logical arguments, and in the end, you want to conclude God exists, and this is what I say I think it's just impossible. Let's just take this example of what you said.

[00:24:51]So, the universe had a beginning. So, first of all, uh like, we can have a long discussion about whether this was actually the case. There are a lot of physicists disagree with this. For example, Roger Penrose.

[00:25:04]But let's just go with it.

[00:25:06]So it must have come from something.

[00:25:08]Okay, and that something was timeless.

[00:25:11]It might also have been spaceless. I'm not sure exactly what that would mean.

[00:25:16]And physicists have theories for all of this. As I'm sure you know, you know, we have theories without space. We have theories without time. We have you know many different ideas of how time itself started at some point. So I understand that starting is kind of a weird way to talk about something. It's more that there's kind of a boundary before which there was no time. And then afterwards we have time. Actually, in some of those approaches we don't even have causality.

[00:25:48]Like causality itself is something which only comes into being somehow. And so we can describe all of this mathematically.

[00:25:57]I'm not saying that it's correct. Okay.

[00:25:59]I'm just saying theoretical physicists have a lot of ideas about how the universe might have begun and they don't need some kind of conscious mind or an omniscient being or something. It's just unnecessary.

[00:26:14]>> Okay. Bill.

[00:26:14]>> Well, I think that what you've said now is exactly the issue to be joined then that let the discussion proceed. But then one should not say things like this is impossible to do because you you just began to do it. The question will be uh does whatever begin to exist has a cause? That's surely not impossible to be true.

[00:26:39]Did the universe begin to exist? It's surely not impossible for science to establish that. So the argument is not impossible and what you've suggested is simply we need to discuss then these various models.

[00:26:53]And I would say that there are no models in contemporary cosmology that are um mathematically consistent and empirically adequate to to give a past eternal universe that is plausibly our universe. It's not enough just to have mathematical descriptions. These need to have physical interpretations that are realistic. Um and it seems to me that we don't have any good past eternal cosmological models.

[00:27:24]>> Okay.

[00:27:25]>> Um and that therefore we need to come to grips with how the universe began. There cannot be a scientific explanation about something came into being out of nothing because uh science explains things in terms of initial conditions and laws of nature. And for an initial physical state of the universe there isn't uh an initial state and laws of nature from which it can be derived.

[00:27:53]So it would need to be a personal explanation in terms of a personal agent and his volitions.

[00:27:59]>> Mhm. Some something timeless, spaceless would have to be a person, something conscious, outside of the things science can explain. Ask Slavoj on the same point.

[00:28:07]>> okay. I respect very nicely done your argumentation, but you know what's my problem?

[00:28:14]Aren't you moving when you talk about nature in a pre-quantum physics universe? The whole point of quantum physics is that that's as it were books are written about it is that yes, something precisely can uh emerge out of nothing because nothing is not simply a void. That's one of the And again, like you, I cannot say is it true or not. I'm just saying I have at least 10 books on the void and nothing like who who uh which sorry, the books argue precisely of this for this. My >> We are not talking here about pre-quantum physics. The material I'm talking about by people like Hawking and Hartle and Alex Vilenkin, Chris Isham.

[00:29:02]This is quantum cosmology and so takes full recognition of the revolution brought by quantum physics.

[00:29:11]>> Yeah, but do you see in Hawking, sorry, I don't. I know his work in detail.

[00:29:17]He was explicitly or did he change maybe some last minutes of life mysterious change? Did he ever turn into a believer? Not that I know of.

[00:29:32]Hawking, I mean. Then okay, but this is I agree, we cannot go to the end here.

[00:29:37]Just very briefly, another thing I would like to point out is you know where I have a problem with uh I go to you. You are the >> [laughter] >> Okay, gentlemen. We are now turning to basic topic of our debate. Some problems, some topic some problems of camels and other similar things. So, I take very seriously what you did, but I will give you an example because my point is not oh, let's play that that is God it will work better. I will give you an example, maybe it will convert you. I suspect not. Uh uh uh let's take and I'm not that, I'm very critical in a different sense condition.

[00:30:23]I'm a communist in Sabina's sense, but I don't want you kill me afterwards. Uh let's take a fanatical communist.

[00:30:32]He is ready to die for what he is doing, to be tortured and so on. There is no distance. But in some sense, if you were to ask him, he would say, "Of course communism doesn't exist anywhere there. It's a cause which exists only in so far as we believe in it." So here I think you had an example and just sorry, one more point. I also I will be brief I promise.

[00:31:03]I also don't want to want to complicate. This was for me the only maybe half intelligent of what I said.

[00:31:13]It's not just external reality where you speak about logic, proofs and your inner experience.

[00:31:21]I think and that's for me the whole point of Holy Spirit and Christianity.

[00:31:28]I This is already how I read, although I'm very properly Slovenian, but in religion Jewish religion is unbelievable.

[00:31:42]Sorry, I got lost. I must admit it.

[00:31:44]>> Can I Can I Can I throw this to Rowan cuz he I think he wanted to jump in on this point midway.

[00:31:49]>> I'll take I'll take your your communist as I took your camel.

[00:31:52]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:53]>> [laughter] >> And say, "Yes, of course the communist would say something like that."

[00:31:58]>> But they would really be ready You cannot say let's play a victim. They are ready [clears throat] to be tortured to >> The reply?

[00:32:04]>> The difference I I want to draw out I think is that the Christian martyr faced with that would say, "But I'm answerable to an an agency that is there.

[00:32:15]A presence that is there to which to which what I I have to make answer for my integrity.

[00:32:21]It's not that this is an aspiration, an ideal, um a common purpose.

[00:32:28]>> [snorts] >> It is a gift, a presence, a purpose, what whatever. But >> Very good point, but what I would say is that and this is what I mean when I said that Stalinism is in some sense religion, you find an exact equivalent to this in Stalinism is this most obscure notion of objective responsibility.

[00:32:52]You know, the whole point of Stalinism is that if Okay, it's Lenin and it's very ambiguous Lenin, Stalin and so on, but Lenin was obsessed with this. If we miss this moment, we will be forever condemned and so on. There is for them an an agency there, but maybe another point will convince you.

[00:33:21]But for me I learned this from your your British greatest philosopher of fictions Jeremiah Bentham. Don't underestimate him. For him, fictions are not always just fiction. You take away the fiction, reality itself disintegrates. That would be my point here. And just to conclude, later we can return to it. Please be careful about that point that I made.

[00:33:46]What do you mean really when you say people believe? Like I had a debate with Slovene people who pray Oh, we are Christian. Then half an hour later when they forgot, I asked them Do you really believe that approximately 2,000 years ago a guy was walking on the Palestinian soil who was God, a living God, a son of God. He said, No, this is not really important.

[00:34:16]It's just how I feel, blah blah blah.

[00:34:19]You know, I think that we have both extremes. On yeah, on one hand, this is the structure of what in psychoanalysis we call Verleugnung, disavowal. Mhm. You can know something, but you don't really believe in it.

[00:34:35]>> Mhm.

[00:34:35]>> You know, like today typical ecology.

[00:34:37]Yeah, yeah, we know nature is falling apart, but wait a minute. Look outside, there is sun and so on. Maybe >> Can Can I throw you a question to both of which is what does it mean to to believe? And I wonder also on top of that whether you've heard anything from this side which might uh challenge your atheism.

[00:34:53]>> I think there are two ways in which the word believe is used.

[00:34:58]>> One would be uh belief in the sense of personal trust. For example, you believe in your dentist. And that's why you allow him to do what he does in your >> You believe in your dentist or >> In your dentist, sorry.

[00:35:13]>> Yeah, you believe in someone or >> I do.

[00:35:15]>> uh say you believe that your climbing gear is going to hold your weight when you uh rappel down the cliff. There There's a kind of personal trust. But then there's also propositional belief where it is a kind of attitude toward a proposition. Now, we have many different sorts of propositional attitudes. For example, you might fear that something is true.

[00:35:41]You might be happy that something is true. You might doubt that something is true.

[00:35:47]Uh but belief would be a doxastic attitude. That is to say, there are three doxastic attitudes you can take to a a proposition. You can believe it, you can disbelieve it, that is think it's false, or you can have no belief in it. Um and so in that case, believing the proposition is true is essentially to think that it is true. I believe this proposition. I believe that's true. So, with respect to Jesus, I do believe that 2,000 years ago this Galilean uh peasant uh walked the hills of Galilee and that he was both divine and human.

[00:36:30]>> An empirical one sentence. An empirical counter argument, but it's an empirical which could be tested. I claim from my experience that I would say not a scientific proof, 80% of actual Christians wouldn't be so clear. They would say, "Who knows? But some but there must be some higher dimension."

[00:36:50]>> got to understand that nominal Christianity in the West is all very superficial.

[00:36:56]>> Rowan's probably met more Christians than than anybody in this room being the former Archbishop. So, maybe you can speak to this whether 80% of Christians would say that they're sort of agnostic or they don't really believe in God.

[00:37:07]>> Agnostic. They say that who knows what it is. You know, this usual skepticism.

[00:37:12]Who knows what's true? I am at least sure that there is some higher dimension or whatever.

[00:37:17]>> The point Simon got. Let's hear your thoughts on thoughts on it, and then I want to get Simon back in on on this debate from earlier.

[00:37:24]>> I don't know about 80%. Um >> I invented the number.

[00:37:28]>> [laughter] >> I also don't. Yes.

[00:37:32]>> Of course, there there are people who profess belief in a general sense who, if you ask them about specifics, will get very >> But central specifics.

[00:37:43]>> Central specifics. And I rather agree with Bill. I I for me believing means believing, among other things, that 2,000 years ago the incarnation happened.

[00:37:53]And that's the foundation of my practice, as I mentioned earlier, and the practice of my community. Um Again, I can't imagine saying, "Well, the practice is very appealing, but I'm completely open to suggestions about whether anything really happened to to ground it." I I can't make sense of that. I wouldn't You know, I I wouldn't bother if that were the case.

[00:38:18]I mean, who on earth wants to be committed to the church if there's not something true in it somewhere.

[00:38:24]>> Can I add a word?

[00:38:26]So, Slava, are you familiar at all with the modern field of New Testament studies?

[00:38:33]>> Not ultra familiar, but let's say moderately.

[00:38:36]>> Because this is an area where Jesus of Nazareth is not just a figure on a stained glass window or a figure of mythology. This is a flesh and blood person and the investigation into the life of the historical Jesus is absolutely fascinating on what uh New Testament scholars have been able to recover and establish about this man is really quite remarkable so that there is this empirical aspect uh to believe in the historical Jesus that is uh far better grounded than just the sort of mythology or pretense.

[00:39:18]>> So, could you could you say briefly on evidence for the resurrection? I know you've worked a lot on this and how >> Well, I did my doctoral work under Wolfhart Pannenberg in Munich on the credibility of the resurrection of Jesus.

[00:39:32]And I was astonished by how widely accepted the fundamental facts are that I think undergird the inference to the resurrection of Jesus. By far and away, the wide majority of critics who have written on this subject agree number one that Jesus of Nazareth was executed by Roman crucifixion during the time of the Passover feast sometime around AD 30. Secondly, that his corpse was then interred in a tomb by a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin. And we even know this man's name, Joseph of Arimathea.

[00:40:15]Thirdly, that that tomb was then found to be empty on the first day of the week by a group of Jesus' female followers.

[00:40:26]Um fourth, thereafter of various individuals and groups of people on multiple occasions and under a variety of circumstances saw appearances of Jesus alive. And finally, uh the fifth would be that uh the original disciples suddenly and sincerely came to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead despite having every predisposition to the contrary.

[00:40:59]>> Okay, good.

[00:40:59]>> Now, those facts are not just the property of conservative or Bible-believing scholars. That represents the mainstream viewpoint of New Testament scholarship. So, the only question is then is what's the best explanation?

[00:41:17]And here I'm persuaded that when you assess the various competing historical hypotheses for explaining that fact, that the hypothesis that has the best explanatory power, explanatory scope, plausibility, least ad hocness, etc., etc., is the one that the original disciples gave.

[00:41:40]Namely, that God raised Jesus from the dead.

[00:41:42]>> I'm sorry.

[00:41:43]>> Would you like to the the best explanation is probably the explanation given the evidence that Bill's just laid out is resurrection rather than non-resurrection.

[00:41:50]>> Is is the best explanation for what? For those >> four or five facts.

[00:41:55]>> So, that >> True.

[00:42:01]>> Sorry, and we'll make sure we can reply.

[00:42:03]>> So, look, I I don't actually doubt that 2,000 years ago there was some guy called Jesus, which is a pretty common name actually, you know, and some of them were put on a cross and they died.

[00:42:13]And some of them maybe were not actually dead when people thought they were dead.

[00:42:17]And God knows what happens to them. So, it's quite possible to me that all of this happened. Does this mean that God was actually Jesus was actually God's son?

[00:42:28]You know, and he made him come back from the dead. I I don't I don't think you have the evidence for this. I'm sorry.

[00:42:34]>> Well, that's a >> So, if you want to believe it, then >> personal incredulity, would you resuscitate Sabina the old shine toad theory uh that Jesus wasn't really dead, was laid in the tomb alive? David Friedrich Strauss buried that theory in 1835. As Strauss said, a half-dead Jesus desperately in need of medical attention and bandaging who crept out of the tomb and showed himself to the disciples would hardly have inspired in them the belief that he was the conqueror of death and the risen son of God. And so, no historical scholar today accepts the apparent death theory. You've got to come up with better naturalistic explanations than that.

[00:43:16]>> Do you want to come back?

[00:43:18]On the on the same point? Do you want to reply to Bill? That was quite It's quite scathing reply. I don't want to >> So, you know, people get convinced about weird things all the time. Some of them take off, some of them don't. I I'm I'm sorry. Look, I I don't find any of this remotely convincing.

[00:43:34]>> That's That's merely an expression of your own personal psychological ability.

[00:43:39]>> If you want to believe it, it's it's fine with me, really. Um but maybe let me say something uh a little bit more general. Like, this discussion exactly what you said about the 80% who would be like, "Yeah, I'm not sure about this exact thing or maybe I read this part of the Bible as more of a metaphor for something." Like, I've I've heard this a lot. Uh and I think it's how a lot of people go about it. And I think it's one of the reasons why we're seeing, you know, a lot of people actually leaving churches kind of uh officially with signing something or just no longer going because there's this this kind of disconnect between these old stories that many people can no longer quite subscribe to, but still the prevailing conviction that there is more. So, I kind of feel like there is really a gap there at the moment, you know, for for where there should be some kind of religion that doesn't impose this this 2,000-year-old story on you with, you know, some I don't know, a burning bush and someone gave you the 10 Commandments or how the story goes.

[00:44:45]Um so, I'm a little bit surprised that this hasn't happened yet.

[00:44:49]>> Uh Rowan, your thoughts on on this on the resurrection, the need for reform perhaps in religious belief, and then I imagine Slavoj has got a communist or a camel that he wants to throw your way.

[00:44:58]>> I'm tired of camel, don't you know?

[00:44:59]>> [laughter] >> Yes, I mean, I I want to say I think that the belief in the resurrection with respect has to be a bit more than evidence for a resuscitation.

[00:45:15]And that's where, you know, it's not just an odd fact from 2,000 years ago.

[00:45:18]It's something which as I think you were you were going to actually does change people's perception of God and themselves in a way which continues as the foundation of a community's life, the assumptions people make about how they relate to one another, the spirit in Slavoj Zizekian sense, um which continues to question and reshape how we think about both God and ourselves.

[00:45:49]And I I go back here to something that Wittgenstein says in his um Vermischte Bemerkungen, the Culture and Value Meditations, where he says that he he sort of wishes he could believe in the resurrection, but knows that he would have to become a different kind of person in order to do so.

[00:46:08]>> Mhm.

[00:46:08]>> Now, I don't think he's just talking about being persuaded of what happened in Jerusalem in AD 30 or thereabouts.

[00:46:14]He's talking about what kind of a difference this ought to be making in a human life.

[00:46:21]And he's not ready for it.

[00:46:23]And I find that a a fascinating, tantalizing perspective, which to me suggests that Wittgenstein understood a great deal more about belief than we might give him credit for in some respects.

[00:46:36]>> Slavoj, your thoughts, especially with our facts of the resurrection >> probably agreeing with you. You know what's my problem? You almost played an empiricist. You said, "These are facts."

[00:46:45]Sorry, what do we mean by facts? Maybe in some document you find something where these documents, how they were tested and so on. I think it's very risky to talk as if these are positive facts, and then the problem is how we interpret it. I don't know enough of it.

[00:47:04]I'll just find it. Second thing >> Well, a fact is a true proposition.

[00:47:10]It's a fact that Starmer is the Prime Minister of the UK. It's a fact that Winston Churchill helped guide Britain through the Second World War. Lots of facts. Fact that we're here tonight.

[00:47:24]True proposition.

[00:47:24]>> see it on video and so on, but all we have from the year 0 to 33 are what?

[00:47:33]Some ancient manuscripts and so on. Who knows what happened with them? That's what the study of history is all about.

[00:47:41]I doubt that we can so simply, as you say, establish these are facts. Okay, but that's another story.

[00:47:49]We will not enter I want to say something else. What I believe, and here I wonder what you would say.

[00:47:56]Uh, I am uh following my other Christian atheists like Alain Badiou, I'm a mega partisan of Paul, Saint Paul. And after reading the Gospels and Paul and so on, I'm tended tempted to be convinced by the idea which I am now awaiting your brutal counterattack, as I like to put it, one-way ticket to gulag, I will that Paul really invented Christianity in the sense that correct me if I am wrong, in spite of all the stuff up and down, the first reaction to Christ's death was despair and confusion. And wasn't Paul the first one who absolutely clearly stated, "No, this was the luckiest event ever." You know what's here, my uh my uh other argument. I like these theological debates. I spoke with some of my Catholic and Protestant friends. And I'm on Protestant side, I'm sorry here, because the Catholics, you know, the wife of Pontius Pilatus, many Catholics, I'm not saying majority, I will not play not to appear idiot again with 80% they claim because she warned no Pontius, wait a minute, there is something more in this guy, sacred guy, don't put him to death and so on, they almost elevate her to some I don't know this hierarchy half saintly status. But what I love with some the names are in my books, uh uh uh Norwegian Protestants, they have the entire school which says, "For me, in your spirit." Logical, quite reasonable.

[00:49:55]They say, "No, the wife of Pontius Pilate Pilatus was the ultimate tool of the devil." Imagine Christ not being crucified. What would he been? Some kind of a minor sect leader and so on. The whole point of Christ is that he died.

[00:50:13]That was his mission. And so, in this sense, I I think there is, maybe I'm wrong, the two of you for sure know more about Christianity. But then, what if you make this deal? I go 2 minutes more and then I am off.

[00:50:30]>> you had a question.

[00:50:32]I don't I don't want 2 minutes and you're off cuz I want questions in the audience. Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, you have the the question original I think was for Rowan originally there, so maybe you can offer your reflection on uh as that voice could take >> I'll say a word about about Paul. Um Yeah.

[00:50:48]It's it's a common place.

[00:50:50]>> Yeah.

[00:50:51]>> A lot of people that Paul invents Christianity.

[00:50:53]>> And you disagree with me because >> Because I think Paul is quite clearly wrestling with a very complex legacy.

[00:51:02]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:51:03]>> Which he's he's not making it up out of whole cloth. Even when he talks about the resurrection, he talks about his own experience in the context of that. He tells the story about um a growing recognition by the a growing number of people. Um but I think the the fundamental uh energy of Paul's argument >> [snorts] >> comes to this, that in those events [clears throat] around the death of Jesus, people became able to think about God differently, to relate to God differently, pray differently, to use different words.

[00:51:37]Paul is I I used to say to my students quite often, "St. Paul didn't know he was writing the New Testament."

[00:51:43]He's, you know, he's working hard at making sense of what he's >> Yeah.

[00:51:46]>> inherited.

[00:51:47]>> Mhm. And not in that sense creating a system.

[00:51:50]He's responding to question after question, granular issue after granular issue.

[00:51:55]And that's why of course he continues to be a writer that we go back to to try and put it together in some sort of coherent shape.

[00:52:02]And the point of that is is again to come back to this issue, what do we mean by talking about say belief in the resurrection?

[00:52:11]Now, belief that the tomb was empty is a proposition which I'm happy to assent to.

[00:52:19]Belief that Jesus is risen from the dead is not quite the same.

[00:52:25]That is bound up with how the risen Jesus is is encountered, experienced, thought about, and so on.

[00:52:32]So, um I'd bridle a bit at the suggestion that Paul is just doing something different from what's going on right at the start.

[00:52:42]>> No, but he gave a specific spin to it nonetheless.

[00:52:45]>> A spin which is already if if we're to trust the the very earliest gospel traditions, a spin which is already there in those texts to do with the themes of ransom and redemption so forth.

[00:52:57]And incidentally, um on Mrs. Pontius Pilate in the medieval plays of the passion in certainly the English medieval plays of the passion, the devil specifically visits Pilate's wife to to get her to object to the crucifixion because the devil >> Goes back a Goes back a long way. Um it's been we've we've branched into resurrection, Christian faith, uh original proposition, existence of God, not specific to a particular religion.

[00:53:29]Uh should we or should we not uh believe in God's existence. I want to bring back to that before we open up to audience questions which will be in about 10 minutes time. So, if there's something if some argument you want to bring in in the proposition, I'd encourage you to do so. Now, but Sabine, you expressed some skepticism, especially of Bill's five six arguments for the existence of God, some skepticism about them, saying, you know, why should we think best explanation, why should we think that we can we can infer beyond the physical in in physics and think that there's some kind of non-physical mind that brings universe to existence. But is there a I guess a positive argument for atheism that we can offer?

[00:54:07]>> Sorry.

[00:54:07]>> A positive Is there a positive argument for atheism? I.e., the argument from divine hiddenness. If God was all loving, he'd want to make himself known to us. The problem of evil, why would God allow gratuitous suffering? Do you want to use any of those arguments against God's existence, or is it mere skepticism about the arguments offered from the other side?

[00:54:25]>> So, as I said, like I'm not arguing against the existence of God. So, I really have no particular position on it. I can maybe tell you like from a practical perspective why I think a lot of my colleagues describe themselves as atheists is because there's a certain stigma attached to it. Like if you say you believe in say the resurrection of Jesus or something like this, um it's it's like people are questioning your rationality. Like how can you believe in something like this? Are you even a good scientist? Um and so, I think that really among the people who I know, it is very rare to have someone who who openly says like I believe in God and even even more precisely this particular religion.

[00:55:16]Maybe a let me say something more general about this discussion. I'm a little bit bothered that you didn't invite anyone who belongs to different religion because it's all very been it's all been about Christianity. But the world is bigger than that. And one thing that I found particularly interesting is that if you look at those those different religions, they have a lot of things in common. Like they don't agree on the particular story about the people or the narrative or something, but they have clearly similarities that that you know connect cultures. And for me this is like one of the most interesting aspects of religion.

[00:55:54]>> And in defense of the debates usually hosted here like on Bill was debating Jessica Frazier representing Hinduism last time around and we have uh Sylvia Jonas representing Judaism.

[00:56:05]>> So we do have a good range, but I'm with you that we have a a clear division between atheistic Christian beliefs and and not here. But Bill there's a couple of things on the table. One from Slavoj earlier which was a criticism of Stephen Hawking's belief and him saying well he am I supposed to believe Yeah, he didn't Stephen Hawking obviously didn't believe and and Sabine's there saying well the people in the scientific community also think this is the stigma attached to it.

[00:56:30]Is that really the sort of thing a scientist should believe?

[00:56:32]>> I'm I'm shocked Sabine at your comments about the stigma that's attached to it and the kind of uh conformity to fit in that goes along with those comments. Uh And I think it was the early 1800s Friedrich Schleiermacher wrote a book on the cultured despisers of Christianity and urged Christians to stand up and be heard, to be brave, to be unafraid to be different. And I am not in the least intimidated by the sort of stigma that you describe in German secular academy. We we've got to be better than that about standing for for truth. We mustn't let our views be determined by those of our colleagues.

[00:57:24]Um as for the the the Hawking point, I'm not sure what the point was. I You're surely I'm suggesting that Hawking didn't believe in the scientific adequacy of his own model that he developed with James Hartle, the so-called no boundary proposal.

[00:57:40]>> suggestions in a book that I read by his who claims to be his secretary at the end very briefly that that at the end he kind of almost become a believer.

[00:57:52]>> Oh.

[00:57:52]>> Oh.

[00:57:53]>> So so he was close to believing towards the end of his life according to the account.

[00:57:56]>> But I'm not sure if this this is true.

[00:57:58]>> I'm not sure about his own personal religious beliefs, but in his 1996 book with Penrose, there's a sentence that I memorized because it struck me as so remarkable.

[00:58:10]He said, "Today, almost everyone believes that time and the universe came into being at the Big Bang." And so I take it that he believes that.

[00:58:21]>> This is the view from from what I know.

[00:58:23]Be careful. This is today in a minority view. There is a theory there is no Big Bang. There is a theory that Big Bang repeats itself re- rhythmically.

[00:58:34]>> Oh, those cyclical models went out in the '70s and you know, there've been efforts to restore them.

[00:58:41]I'm familiar with these. We talk about these in the essay in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology that I co-authored with James Sinclair where he goes through a wide range of these various models, quantum physical models, string models, quantum loop models and there are trying to avoid the beginning predicted by the standard model. And although there certainly are non-singular models of the origin of the universe, as Vilenkin says, "Today, there there there are no acceptable models of a past eternal universe." So that doesn't prove God, but it does prove the second premise >> It's the beginning >> of the argument that the universe began to exist or at least it makes it more probable than not.

[00:59:27]>> Okay, so so maybe I can briefly say something. So first of all, for for the benefit of the audience, like Hawking and Hartle, they have this idea of the no-boundary proposal, which is an example of what I said earlier, where um the universe starts from a phase that doesn't have time. So originally, it only has space, and then at some boundary in this space is where time began. And this is, I think, why Hawking basically said we don't need God, right?

[00:59:55]Because we can have the beginning of the universe without actually needing any cause. I'm just, you know, trying to give you content I con- context. I'm not It's not that I actually believe this is the correct theory.

[01:00:07]Uh about the the past eternal things, uh you know, I I'm not sure what Vilenkin might have been talking about. Probably he was talking about inflationary theories, um which indeed there are certain kinds of proofs that says they uh they need to have a past singularity, they can't be past eternal. But it's not true that there are no theories that are past eternal. Like there's, for example, there's um string gas string gas cosmology, uh if you're familiar with that, is uh to my knowledge is is past eternal. And also uh Penrose's uh cyclic or cyclic, depending on which side of the ocean you're on, uh cosmology um has not been ruled out. So again, I'm not I'm not the biggest fan of any of these ideas, because honestly, to me, they they're very, very close to religion. There's a lot of things that you can do with mathematics um to make it look impressive, uh but that doesn't make it scientific. Uh in any case, so I think you're you're a little bit underestimating what how creative theoretical physicists can be.

[01:01:15]>> I I don't think so. I'm familiar with the models you mentioned. I think that all needs to be examined in detail, part of the discussion.

[01:01:23]I'm not trying to end debate, I'm trying to promote debate.

[01:01:26]>> Okay, I'm just uh Slavoj, if you want to come in here and then we're going to go to Rome before opening up to audience questions. On this point, would you like to come in?

[01:01:33]>> Okay, I'll try to be honestly as brief as I can. No, no, you're we're good we're we're actually we're good for time.

[01:01:39]Can we at least make some uh I hope a test, you know. I hope we will all agree independently of where we are, atheists, believers, that figures like Peter Thiel are are Antichrist. Who uses the term Antichrist today? They are nightmare.

[01:02:00]They they are an obscenity. Do you as a Christian accept For example, for me when Donald Trump and Vance talk about Christianity, I'm just I have big problems. But that's not the topic.

[01:02:16]>> I ask Bill to Bill you >> No, no, no, no, very brief.

[01:02:18]>> Cuz I think Bill's a fan of Trump and in in my perhaps And you think he would put it >> that someone would bring up Donald Trump earlier.

[01:02:26]>> you nearly managed three events in five minutes.

[01:02:28]>> one has done so and uh I'm glad they didn't cuz I'm not here to talk politics.

[01:02:34]I'm here to talk about the bigger issues of the existence of God, the meaning of life and that. I >> That's a good one to side step.

[01:02:40]>> Okay, can I say why I consider myself a Christian atheist? The most disgusting metaphor of religious view is And even if you don't find it in this way, it sounds like this. When you see evil, something horrible, they always have this comparison, it's like imagine a beautiful picture.

[01:03:08]But if you look too close at it, it's just a stain. But if you withdraw to a proper distance, you see that what appears to you as stain contributes to global harmony.

[01:03:22]The basic message of Christianity from you is, "No, you cannot. God, which is not the Christian God, would be a God who does this, who tells you, 'Sorry, guy, it's your small perspective there, but in reality, Holocaust, Gulag, colonization, they were just tools towards global harmony and so on and so on.'" What I mean as uh death of God and so on is the dis- ridiculous image of God where, you know, he's up there, "Don't worry too much when things are horrible. The old guy up there will take care of" Here I see a a difference. Christianity, the idea of death of God, is for me much more radical. It means it is absolutely attached, rooted to a concrete human suffering and horror. You cannot justify but uh let's look at it from a proper distance, because, you know, I agree with you and I would even go further when you said different religions. You know, like Buddhism. People tend to forget today that Buddha was explicitly an agnostic. He said, "I don't care. My problem is suffering, not is there God or or not." And Uh yes, I stop with this.

[01:04:50]>> Okay, Rowan, a final word on this. There's sort of like an epistemic problem of evil there, which Slavoj articulated.

[01:04:57]It's not the sort of thing that God would do, that he wouldn't give us the the access to the knowledge for what these things were for and ask us to to trust in the evils cashing out in some higher order goods. That's just not what a perfectly good being would do.

[01:05:09]>> No, and I I with Slavoj in finding that kind of language repugnant to me in many ways. I I I I I I made exactly the the point >> Don't go to when they take over. Here we are. Thank you.

[01:05:19]>> I I argued this with the late Marilyn McCord Adams quite a few years ago, where she advanced exactly that picture model. I said I I cannot accept that you can resolve this problem simply by pretending that it's a perspectival one.

[01:05:36]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[01:05:37]>> Because for me, one of the things that the that belief in God involves, as I said at the beginning, the notion that if you do believe in the God of, I would say, classical Christian and Jewish and every particular is of infinite importance and significance to the point. And nothing is just instrumental to anything else.

[01:05:59]You can't say, "Well, you can balance out the uh it's the it's the Dostoevsky argument.

[01:06:05]You can balance out the suffering of the child against the overall good of the universe." It doesn't work like that.

[01:06:10]And that means, of course, that there just is not a good theoretical answer to the problem of evil. And that's something which I, like others, have have to live with.

[01:06:18]But to me, the positive there is that it it is that sense of the sacred being inextricably bound up with the vulnerable, the suffering.

[01:06:32]That that is what the Christian gospel says to me. That is what the reality of God affirms about undergirds And if I were trying to look globally at the discussion we've been having this evening, I'd say we we somehow haven't quite got onto the the why does it matter and how does it matter is the issue for believers.

[01:06:54]And I I take Sabina's point that, you know, there's something about the way traditional religion, inherited religion, works that that has, certainly in Western Europe, so focused us on the set of things we have to subscribe to that why it matters or what the practices might be that would enhance and open doors for us in respect of more than more than the ordinary.

[01:07:22]Yeah, I agree that a lot of the practice of global religions can converge in some ways on that business of what a practice looks like that will affirm the deep significance of every particular the possibility of encountering in silence something more than the the routine and everyday which will therefore renew the ethical perspective and the ethical energy that is needed to to hold us together.

[01:07:57]But um that's that's another story.

[01:08:00]>> Right. Please join me in thanking our wonderful panelists for a brilliant discussion. Thank you all >> so much.

[01:08:05]>> [applause] >> Thank you all so much. Let's open up to questions. Just two notes from myself.

[01:08:11]Please direct your question at one of the panelists and I encourage you to keep your question brief and respect to your fellow audience members so we can fit in as many as possible. And we've got someone with a beanie just behind you there. We'll go for that person first and then we're going to take a second question from this side and we've got the front row just afterwards. Your question, please.

[01:08:29]>> Uh directed to Dr. Craig. I um previously we were discussing evidence for the resurrection and I was just wondering how that is reconciled on accounts of say Occam's razor to derive from these seemingly I'll say real-world events into more towards these transcending conclusions. How how that bridges together?

[01:08:58]>> Mhm.

[01:08:59]>> The question is it is it merely simpler to say that there's a naturalistic explanation >> Oh. for the resurrection rather than posit the existence of a supernatural being?

[01:09:08]>> You have to give a naturalistic explanation. For example, that Jesus was only apparently dead, that it was a conspiracy to steal the body and lie about the appearances, that Jesus was placed by Joseph in a tomb and the women went to the wrong tomb and thought they found it empty. And then you assess these various theories using the traditional criteria that historians use in determining the best historical explanation. And that will be things like explanatory power, explanatory scope, plausibility, uh simplicity could be one of those. For example, of that criterion at work, it is less simple to posit hallucinations to explain the resurrection appearances than to say these were veridical because the hallucin- hallucinatory hypothesis doesn't explain the empty tomb. And so you've got to conjoin an independent hypothesis to the hallucination hypothesis to explain the empty tomb and you have a less simple hypothesis there.

[01:10:24]So, explanatory scope will be one of the important criteria and that will help to uh or that will be a function of the simplicity of the explanation.

[01:10:35]>> up helping you. BK's perhaps uh question from this gentleman at the front and then we'll go over here after you.

[01:10:40]>> Archbishop Kurt Williams.

[01:10:41]What must organized religion do to stay relevant in this increasingly digital, artificial, secular world?

[01:10:49]>> Pray.

[01:10:52]No, seriously. Um >> [sighs] >> I'm always a bit stymied by questions about relevance.

[01:11:00]I understand why you're asking, but I don't think anything could be relevant unless it has integrity.

[01:11:09]And the integrity of the the community is how deeply and seriously it prays, how deeply and seriously it it seeks in the Christian case to embody what Jesus is about in terms of mercy, healing, and promise.

[01:11:25]Um and there's a bit of me, not the whole of me, but a bit of me that says look, wouldn't say just do that and let the strategy come a bit later.

[01:11:37]Um I I don't think anything much is gained by trying to be relevant because you'll have to do it all over again in 10 years' time.

[01:11:44]But something can be done by asking, well, how do we deepen our anchorage in this reality we believe we've been inducted into?

[01:11:52]>> Okay, questions preference towards those towards Slavoj and Sabina as well.

[01:11:57]There's a question just at the very front. I did point to you a moment ago.

[01:12:00]Um and we'll go center afterwards.

[01:12:03]>> Hi. Um two two two of you are actually on my A-level course, but out of politeness I won't mention which ones.

[01:12:09]>> [laughter] >> Um my my question I suppose to Slavoj then is how do you how do you think about I know I know you've commented before on on Philip Mainländer and his theory of the God death. I'm aware that your sort of talk of the God death is is different to that, but how how do you think that modern Christianity or Christianity in general seems to be based in a fundamentally positive view of life and how do you think a potentially pessimistic view of life might might challenge that?

[01:12:39]>> Again, to take this seriously it would have meant half an hour minimum talk. So, I will just provide my formula. Again, with a reference to Hegel, I you can refute me, but I passionately believe in this you taught me the term I always confuse it Felix culpa or what that I think I again believe Hegel when he says paradise is a retroactive uh construction through the fall spirituality emerges.

[01:13:15]There is nothing before the fall. The fall makes us aware what it is the fall [snorts] from. In this sense, I I am in contrast to this Marxist standard stupidities about we are only unhappy in our capitalist alienated world, but in communism we will be all happy. Well, we are approaching some kind of communism in the sense of emergency state because of environment and so on, but it doesn't have anything to do with happiness.

[01:13:51]>> We're going to question at the very front here and then there's someone at the back we're going to just >> It's just a quick question for Rowan. Um there's been lots of talk I think um about the um nature of reality from the perspective of human effort and human understanding. Um I wonder if there you might say something about the the theological idea of revelation and how that um might speak to the sense of how we experience reality or how we how we how we know in a sense what is what is real.

[01:14:27]>> Ooh.

[01:14:28]Um a another [snorts] 1 hour another 1 hour >> [laughter] >> The theological idea of revolution.

[01:14:36]>> Revolution.

[01:14:37]>> Revelation.

[01:14:37]>> Revelation.

[01:14:38]>> Sorry, yes.

[01:14:39]Revelation, yes. Um Theology [snorts] works with the idea of revelation I think not As as we can sometimes over simplify it to say not by saying information descends from heaven.

[01:14:56]But to say there are moments in our history our collective human history where something shifts in perception. We can't think like that any longer.

[01:15:10]Where something believers would say from beyond the immanent framework breaks through and it takes time to digest because it's not simple information coming uncoded and unmediated.

[01:15:26]But it's it's what gives what I would call the the critical energy to religious discourse.

[01:15:35]Something has dawned upon us which we have not yet got the language to contain or deal with.

[01:15:41]And that There's a wonderful phrase by um the Russian theologian Vladimir Lossky on whom I wrote a thesis back in the Middle Ages.

[01:15:48]And Lossky says that >> [snorts] >> the church is kept alive by its critical memory.

[01:15:56]>> Mhm.

[01:15:56]>> And I like that idea of critical memory.

[01:15:59]That it's not just memory of what's happened and the canon of the simple canonization of what's happened.

[01:16:06]It's the memory of what it's worth asking questions about if that's the world we've been projected into.

[01:16:14]>> Thank you.

[01:16:15]>> Thank you. We had a question just back a a preference for a question for Spina if possible.

[01:16:19]>> Thank you. Um yeah, I have a question for Spina mainly. Um and it's about I think that um what you guys would all agree on is kind of the the intersubjective reality of God um even though you might disagree on the ontological reality of it. Um and I wanted to ask about we already mentioned kind of Richard Dawkins' idea of the kind of cultural value of religion. Um but I'm also familiar with the uh Sedlacek's view, Tomas Sedlacek, who um sees God as or like the spirit as um the wealth guys, what what what Hegel mentions as the wealth guys.

[01:16:51]And he says um that it is very much real in the sense that um kind of similarly to let's say market sentiment, it um you know, influences our physical world and it influences how our societies function and without this uh our societies would not function.

[01:17:08]Um, now I I would say that the the scientists would say, well, even though God would be a functional myth, um you know, the truth is more important than that. Um, but when we look at let's say Wycliffe or Hus, they say that truth and God are one and the same thing I'm ending.

[01:17:25]>> And just a question, yeah?

[01:17:26]>> So, if if truth and God are the one and the same thing and the scientists say that we have to prefer truth over the functional myth, um if you prioritize truth over the social utility of religion and God, haven't you simply replaced God with an equally abstract and non-material idol?

[01:17:43]>> Just just say that last very bit again for me so so I understand as well.

[01:17:47]>> If you prioritize the truth over the social utility of God, >> Mhm.

[01:17:52]>> haven't you simply replaced God with an equally abstract and non-material idol?

[01:17:57]>> Right. If you replace truth with the social value, if you just Okay. No, I'm I'm I haven't followed, but maybe Sabina can can do so here. Sorry, I'm supposed to translate them, but I'm I'm cooked at this point.

[01:18:09]>> Well, I'll do my best. I think that in in science we use a particular notion of truth uh by which we basically try to assign probabilities to statements. I think that this doesn't easily match onto the the broader notion of truth that you might be talking about where you could uh you know, associate it with God. So, I think that the premise that we're trying to replace God um with some scientific truth just isn't true.

[01:18:43]>> Okay, thank you. Um >> Can I add one sentence?

[01:18:46]>> You can, Slavoj. Go on. And just as you're just as you're answering, we'll have a a question found. But perhaps this gentleman here, yeah. Is that what you want to comment on on this as as we're going or No, okay. Ques- question here.

[01:18:58]>> Uh yes, Dr. Craig. Uh I'm asking a question again from a Christian perspective here, so I'm looking for uh like ammunition to use against a non-believer. So, uh if belief in Christianity is grounded in the inner witness of the Holy Spirit, as you said earlier, personal experience is evidence of God, how do we distinguish that from equally strong spiritual experiences in other religions in a way that doesn't become self-confirming or circular?

[01:19:24]>> I talk about this in my book, Reasonable Faith, and I distinguish between showing your faith to be true and knowing your faith to be true. I think on the basis of an authentic experience of God, you can know your faith is true even if you cannot show someone else that your belief is veridical. Um if you have several bottles of clear liquid, all of them labeled H2O, but only one actually has water in it, the others have poison, the veracity of the correctly labeled bottle is not in any way undermined by the fact that the other labels are false. It just does nothing to show that that belief or that label is wrong. So, I think that you can know your faith is true because God has given you an authentic experience of himself, even if you can't show someone else.

[01:20:22]But when it comes to showing the advantage that you have as a Christian is you can bring out these wonderful arguments for the existence of God. The evidences for the historical Jesus, his empty tomb, postmortem appearances, the transformation of the disciples' lives, and in that way attempt to show your friend that you have good reasons to think that your experience is veridical.

[01:20:50]>> Question on the front row here. Reminds me we've only got about 10 minutes, so we're going to fit in as many as we can.

[01:20:55]So, please keep your questions brief.

[01:20:56]We'll go to the second question up there, third one over there.

[01:20:58]>> Um hi, this has been fascinating. So, I've got a question for Archbishop Williams. Um I just wanted to know what faith feels like for you, and what it felt like leading so many Christians.

[01:21:09]>> Mm, great question.

[01:21:11]>> It is a great question. What does faith feel like?

[01:21:16]I pick up from Bill's phraseology that the primary thing here for me is is trust.

[01:21:25]And that is the sense that whatever my state of mind, whatever my um ups and downs of kind of mental conviction and even my different states of feeling peace with myself or otherwise, has nothing to do with the fact that there is something I can trust which is not the sum total of what's going on inside me.

[01:21:51]And that something is the grace of God. That something is the fact that I'm created with no reason except that God desires that to be an object for God's love.

[01:22:03]That's the bottom line. Now, moving that into the specifically Christian context, that is what I hear and read the Gospels as texts to be saying and what the practice, to come back to that word again, of my church tells me.

[01:22:21]I go at least once a week to Holy Communion and I'm reminded that this is a ceremony which began as the liturgy says the night that Jesus was betrayed.

[01:22:35]That's to say it's a ceremony, it's a ritual which reaches out into and through the reality of human betrayal, human failure and says that doesn't destroy what God is giving.

[01:22:49]That's why the sacrament renews my faith.

[01:22:52]>> Final question. Just uh here, yeah.

[01:22:55]>> This gentleman >> Yeah, thank you.

[01:22:57]>> Thank you very much. Um This is for Sabin, if I'm saying it right. Um as a scientist, of course, with the amount of evidence presented by people like Dr. Craig on the [snorts] resurrection and things that seem to be proof of some sort of you know, divinity beyond science can explain. How are you approaching objectively um the evidence that is being presented, you know, and not just possibly, you know, sorry to say if this is not the case, but just possibly dismissing it because there is already an existing worldview of yours that's sort of, you know, in quotes, possibly negates the evidence being presented.

[01:23:41]And then um um for for um Slavoj, thank you very much.

[01:23:45]More in in your approach with the death of God, I think if you as a Christian, of course, with engaging with the doctrine of doctrine of the Trinity Yeah. Um I think that it would be sort of provide sufficient explanation toward the I my understanding of the death of God question. So, just how would you tackle that if you have a perspective on on the Trinity. And then, of course, for Dr. Sabin how are you honestly, objectively engaging the evidence as a scientist presented for, you know, something beyond science >> We'll go to Sabin.

[01:24:20]>> resurrection as well.

[01:24:21]>> We'll go to Sabin. Um um well, I'll make sure the final question aimed at Slavoj so perhaps he can answer in in the same reply there to make sure Sabine's got enough uh time for a reply. The question was whether or not you're able to assess the evidence that Dr. Craig's laid out objectively and whether you're influenced by perhaps your priors which might be anti-supernaturalistic given your allegiance to the sciences, let's say.

[01:24:43]>> So, my work is in the foundations of physics and this is what I deal with professionally. I do not, you know, in my daily life investigate the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. It's just not something that I'm particularly interested in. I think on a fundamental level I I agree with what you said. I think it's just impossible to prove on a scientific level that Jesus actually died and was actually resurrected. It doesn't doesn't really matter how many historical documents you you get together, you you'll never be able to figure out what actually went on in Jesus' brain or you know, what whatever you want to make your argument.

[01:25:27]So, in the end it'll all come down to what we started from. What do we actually mean by a good explanation or what do we mean by explanatory power?

[01:25:38]And this and at this point, you know, I always come back to this issue that if you say therefore we need to introduce an omniscient being, you know, that made the entire universe or something, I would say well, that is not a satisfactory explanation.

[01:25:56]>> Oh, sorry. I just want to make sure that the people are just for a final question on this side. Is it directed at Slavoj by chance?

[01:26:02]>> Uh yes.

[01:26:03]>> Fantastic. Okay. You the floor is yours.

[01:26:05]>> I paid you enough to do this.

[01:26:07]>> [laughter] >> Uh Slavoj, um there's this extensive literature on religiosity and well-being. So, essentially um religiosity predicts a whole host of well-being benefits ranging >> Sorry, can you religion has a host of well-being uh benefits. Is this the start of opening your question?

[01:26:27]>> Yes. Yes.

[01:26:27]>> Good for the soul.

[01:26:28]>> across basically every domain of well-being, uh mental health, physical health, uh social health, crime and delinquency, and so forth. To give, if you'll indulge me, an example of this uh is a meta-analysis entitled impact of spirituality, religiosity on mortality.

[01:26:45]It found that, in comparison to other health interventions, church service attendance decreased mortality by 25% in comparison, tobacco smoking cessation decreased mortality by 29%.

[01:26:59]And airbag use decreased mortality by 17%.

[01:27:05]So, my question is this, does this impact or influence your thinking in given these uh tremendous health benefits associated with religiosity?

[01:27:16]>> Uh first, I'm take spirituality very seriously, and I don't want to mix it with, you know, oh, look, look, if you believe in this, you will live on average 5% 5 years longer, and so on and so on. [snorts] This is indifferent. I believe in pain. I don't believe in happiness.

[01:27:37]I think pain is there is no authentic truth without pain. Where is this pain located? You, Rowan, when you said so beautifully, revelation, the whole world changes. But this is not a happy event. This is for individuals, or can be a very traumatic event. My God, the whole world falls apart the way you knew it before. Not only falls apart, but even is I'm going to imagine philosophy now, retroactively changed. You know, I respect conservative. like I always quote this T.S. Eliot who says that uh any really new work of art doesn't just introduce a break in some structural, not magical, sense. It changes the meaning of the entire past. This is the event. And here I totally accept revelation. But as you know, I'm so sorry we don't have time to go on.

[01:28:38]You know that I'm in love with uh Gilbert Keith Chesterton. And I love his point of how all other religions >> [snorts] >> like Veda, Upanishad, maybe and all others uh approach you want unity with God.

[01:28:59]Christianity does something different.

[01:29:01]Christianity and uh how to put it uh trans First, we feel separated from God. God is up there, we are here.

[01:29:12]But that in my Protestant Oh, no, my God, Chesterton was a Catholic. Reading he says that no, the message is that our separation from God through the figure of Christ is a sign that God is radically separated from himself. He even says that for a brief moment on the cross, God becomes an atheist. And that would be my point of the death of God.

[01:29:40]To re- to have real revelation, you have to go through this, let's call it, zero point. Not just in religion, but in in everyday in everyday experience existence. The whole world changes. How you perceive reality, everything and so on and so on. And I agree with you, today it's fashionable to say our world is falling apart, The end of the world. Leftists are saying this, conservatives are saying this. But uh it's not enough to say this, you know.

[01:30:17]From this, Holy Spirit has to enter. We need a new notion of community. And I think that Christianity, for me as an atheist, is in a radically privileged position. Or as Chesterton says wonderfully, in all other religions, people [snorts] pray to God.

[01:30:42]Only in Christianity, I don't know to what he refers, God himself, Christ, is praying to God and so on and so on.

[01:30:50]There is something for me, in this sense, unique in Christianity. And I am not asserting the entire history of Christianity. I would even say that that quite a lot of history of empirical Christianity is traumatized by its own truth and try to somehow cover it up.

[01:31:15]>> Uh Werner, a final general reply to this is as we >> I think I'll let that stand.

[01:31:19]>> [laughter] >> Please join me in thanking our wonderful panelists. That's William Lane Craig, Rowan Williams, Sabine Hossenfelder, and Slavoj Žižek. Thank you all so much.

[01:31:28]>> [applause] >> That was the battle for reality, and what a battle it was. Hosted by Jack Szostak and featuring [music] William Lane Craig, Rowan Williams, Sabine Hossenfelder, and Slavoj Žižek. From the beginning of the universe and the historical case for the resurrection to religious experience, suffering, and the limits [music] of scientific explanation, their conversation revealed just how differently even our most distinguished thinkers understand reality.

[01:31:56]Where did you find the arguments most convincing? Does God offer the best explanation for existence, or does invoking God simply raise further questions? You can always email me at [email protected] and subscribe to Premier Unbelievable for more thoughtful debates. I'm John Nelson, and you've been listening to Unbelievable.