Oxford mathematician John Lennox discusses AI, Christianity, and the nature of human consciousness with Steven Bartlett
Steven Bartlett interviews John Lennox, Oxford mathematician and Christian apologist, on The Diary of a CEO.
Summary
Steven Bartlett interviews John Lennox — Oxford mathematician, philosopher, and Christian apologist — across a wide-ranging conversation covering artificial intelligence, the nature of human consciousness, the evidence for Christianity, and the problem of suffering. Lennox argues that the race toward artificial general intelligence represents a modern form of the ancient human drive toward self-deification, and that the reduction of human beings to machines or animals strips away the dignity and meaning that he believes is grounded in the Christian concept of humans made in the image of God. He presents Christianity not as a merit-based religion but as a relationship founded on grace — on what Christ has done rather than what humans can earn — and argues that the resurrection of Jesus is the central piece of evidence on which his faith rests. Bartlett, who describes himself as agnostic, presses Lennox on the hard questions: the geographical lottery of religious belief, the problem of suffering, hell, and whether the psychological benefits of faith prove anything about its truth.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction and John Lennox's Background
Steven Bartlett: John Lennox, you've published over 70 peer-reviewed mathematical papers, co-authored two research texts in the Oxford Mathematical Monograph series, and you've really become a pioneer in many domains through your career. But for anyone that doesn't know you, what is the most important context they need to understand — the reference points, experience, and education that you're pulling on that will inform all of the subjects we talk about today?
John Lennox: I've written a number of papers. I got a certain amount of international recognition. I chaired at Oxford and all the rest of it. But I think the real value of that has been the training in logic — really establishing that mathematics works. The fact that it works is, for me, one of the strongest evidences that this is what I call a word-based universe. We can use mathematics to describe things about how the universe works — thinking God's thoughts after him, as Kepler famously said. But also we've lived to see a biological revolution where we discover biology is word-based as well, with the human genome. And that resonates with the explanation given in both the Old Testament and the language of John's Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word."
Steven Bartlett: I don't know a ton about the Bible. I do come from a religious family. We grew up as Christians. I think I lost my faith at about 18 years old because my brothers and I are extremely good at maths — very rational thinking, maybe to a fault, and I think I am a little bit too.
John Lennox: I am too.
Steven Bartlett: You are. This is why I find it so fascinating, because typically the scientific community lean more towards atheism, and typically I think mathematicians lean more towards atheism. We'll throw the numbers up on the screen. So I find that to be a fascinating conversation, which I'm looking forward to having with you today.
Interestingly, you wrote this book and the word AI is on it — God, AI, and the End of History. Why are you so concerned, dare I say, about artificial intelligence as a leading pioneer in maths and philosophical thinking?
John Lennox: Because I'm interested in the bigger picture — anything that raises questions about the nature of human identity. I was first struck by the drive for artificial general intelligence. It's really become one of the prime motivations of people like Sam Altman and others. It is really hitting the headlines. But within that there's the notion of transhumanism.
Steven Bartlett: What does that mean?
John Lennox: The idea is that we go beyond the human. One of our most famous Astronomers Royal put it this way: he says in the distant future, it won't be organic brains, it'll be machine brains. And he seriously believes, as do a number of scientists who are not science fiction authors, that there will be some kind of merger between humanity and machines to produce a transhuman — something that's beyond the human, something that is, they hope, super intelligent, with all the human properties and much more.
Transhumanism, Self-Deification, and Yuval Noah Harari
John Lennox: One of the people spreading that kind of transhumanist vision is the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari. He's written a book called Homo Deus — the man-god. And that really made me prick up my ears, because I know enough about this book here, the Bible, to realize that the drive for humans towards self-deification —
Steven Bartlett: Self-deification?
John Lennox: Yes — making themselves gods. And you see it all through history. The ancient Babylonian emperors were regarded as gods. The Roman emperors started calling themselves gods. And what Harari says is that the 21st century has two big purposes. Number one, to solve the problem of physical death as a technical problem.
Steven Bartlett: To solve death?
John Lennox: Yes. Solve death. Physical death is, in his view, a technical problem and we'll solve it. The second agenda item — and he calls them agenda items of the 21st century — is to increase human happiness by bioengineering, cyborg engineering, mechanical implants, all this kind of thing, and turning humans, quote, into gods with a small G. In other words, this is the drive for a super intelligent human. We've only got started. And his point is — and from his atheist perspective one can understand it immediately — evolution, unguided natural processes, have brought us to this point. Now we're going to take it into our own hands and engineer humanity into the future very rapidly to approach this superhuman thing.
Now I hear that and I see it, but I see it as having huge implications for one of the fundamental teachings behind what I would argue is western civilization — and that is the notion that humans like us are made in the image of God as rational moral beings.
I got into this because some Christian leaders wanted to have a conference on AI and they wanted it introduced by someone who knew something about the teaching of the image of God in Genesis, who had a scientific background, and who could begin to lead them into what was going on in the AI field. And once I got into it, I realized this is a seriously important thing, because we haven't got to artificial general intelligence yet — that's still a pipe dream, but it's improving all the time — but we've got far enough to what's called narrow AGI, which is most of the stuff that works, and that is posing a threat to human beings at all kinds of levels. And I began to see that was seriously important for everybody to take on board. So I wrote two books — one in 2020 called 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity — and then the publishers asked me to update it in 2024, so there's a second edition twice as big, and it is my main work on AI.
Steven Bartlett: So let me just give some definitions. You use the term narrow AI. My definition of that — and I'll put something on the screen for those watching — is AI that's focused on solving a very particular problem. So AIs that might be able to diagnose lung cancer, or that do some sort of biometric data analysis on your Apple Watch — very focused on solving a particular problem. AGI is artificial general intelligence, which is what's being built at the moment and all the big AI companies are in a race to accomplish — a machine that could do any intellectual task a human can, faster than any human, and would be super intelligent. One way to think about it: it would have a PhD in everything.
John Lennox: That's a very fair summary. A narrow AI system does one and only one thing that normally requires human intelligence. AGI does the lot and more.
You wrote 2084 and highlighted in there some of the concerns that you think are being overlooked in this race for AGI.
Well, they're not overlooked by everybody. There is huge concern. There's been a very interesting book published not long ago by Karen Hao. She's fantastic. And she has got some very interesting metaphors — the pursuit of the machine god — which I think is a brilliant summary of what's going on. I found it very illuminating because she's obviously got very close to the major operators in this field.
But if I step back from it, I look at AI like a knife. A good knife. You can use it for surgery or you can use it for murder. And that leads us into it immediately. AI — narrow — brilliant for picking out a terrorist in a football crowd. Also brilliant for suppressing a minority in China and bringing in a totalitarian state through social credit systems and all the rest of it. And in a way, we're sleepwalking into a future where we are gradually ceding control, information, and data all the time, which could be used by bad actors against us. And this is the problem.
What It Means to Be Human in an Age of AI
Steven Bartlett: This question of what it means to be human in a world of AI has been really front of mind for a lot of people. Where do we live, or exist, or find our purpose in a world where theoretically these super intelligent systems will reach AGI — which means they're more intelligent than any human on Earth — but at the same time you've got these other advancements in technology like humanoid robots? There was a live stream I've talked about a few times — a humanoid robot working on a production line for eight days straight, shown up against a human being, and it beats the human being on the production line because it doesn't need to sleep. It just needs to be charged for a couple of hours to full power. And so you combine these two forces — super intelligence disrupting the brain and the intelligence within the brain, and the other technology disrupting muscles and mechanics — and the two come together.
John Lennox: Absolutely. So you face joblessness at all kinds of levels, and people are only beginning to realize the implications of that — and they're not just low-level repetitive jobs, but high-level jobs like lawyers. And there's a deep-seated ethical problem running through all of this, and it's a very simple one: technology advances much faster than the ethics needed to underpin it. And the difficulty is the people that have all the power will say, "Well, we need some ethical control of all of this, but we need to get on with the research to make it safe for you. So let us get on with it." And you can be a bit skeptical about the motivation there. It's a colossal power grab.
And I do feel that the Christian faith has a great deal to say to this arms race — to the power that is being forced into having a technology that becomes the ultimate source of truth. Now those two concepts, power and truth, clashed centuries ago in a very famous trial — the trial of Jesus. I used to wonder a lot why there is such detail about the trial of Jesus, until I realized what it was about. Jesus was put on trial for political terrorism, to put it in modern terminology. He was a threat to the Roman power base. And Pilate, the governor at the time, conducted the trial himself — which was most unusual — and said, "Are you a king?" And Jesus looked at him and said, "Well, not in the sense you mean. To this end I was born, and to this end I came into the world, that I would bear witness to the truth." And Pilate famously responded, "What is truth?" and went out and declared Jesus innocent of the charge. And then he said to him just a bit later, "Don't you know I have power to crucify you?" And Jesus quietly said, "You would have no power against me unless it had been given to you from above."
So there's one of the most famous confrontations between power and truth. And that statement that Jesus made — "I have come to bear witness to the truth" — I regard that as the main motivation for my life. I'm trying to bear witness to truth as I see it at all kinds of levels in my own limited way. And that's what bothers me about AI. It's reductionist. We're reducing people to machines.
We need to be very clear what AI is and what it isn't. This is a machine. Machines do not think. Machines do not have qualia. They do not understand the redness of red. They do not experience emotion. They have no consciousness. And I believe that the genius of God is that he's made you and me and connected in us consciousness and intelligence. The machines are not conscious, but they simulate intelligence. And the experts are very clear that they're not trying to construct intelligence, for a very simple reason — they have no idea what consciousness is from a scientific point of view. But they're trying to simulate intelligence and go as far as they can. And therefore the danger is we anthropomorphize everything. We treat them as if they're conscious beings. And we need to step back and realize that we are conscious beings. That gives us a supreme dignity and value. To reduce ourselves to merely machines, or on the other hand merely animals, is to demean our value. And then where are you going to get value from?
Steven Bartlett: I've got a quote here linked to what you just said. It's from Yuval Noah Harari, who you mentioned. He says: "Humans are now hackable animals. The whole idea that humans have this soul or spirit and they have free will and nobody knows what's happening inside them — that is over." And Sam Altman said: "The most successful founders do not set out to create companies. They are on a mission to create something closer to a religion. And at some point, it turns out that forming a company is the easiest way to do so." And lastly, a former Google engineer said: "What is going to be created will effectively be a god. It's not a god in the sense that it will make lightning or cause hurricanes, but if there is something a billion times smarter than the smartest human, what else can you call it?"
John Lennox: Thank you for quoting that, because I was going to quote it to you. The point about making a religion — that is what is happening. And people have pointed out the obvious: you have a system, even now, that has got some of the qualities we normally associate with God. It appears to be omniscient — you can ask it any question. It is omnipresent through the internet, and so on. And therefore already there are worship groups that worship AI. And some people welcome this and say, "Well, this is the way we should go." And other people say, "Just wait a moment. There's something very strange going on here." In the end, you are bowing down to something that is less than God. But it's very tempting to do that.
Steven Bartlett: People are basically praying to it now. They're confiding in it in a way that they might have —
John Lennox: Absolutely. And I'm fascinated by this. I've never seen one of these before, but I like it.
Steven Bartlett: For people that can't see what we're doing — it's a brain.
John Lennox: It's a brain, and it's got two halves. One of the people who've influenced my thinking about AI a lot is Dr. Iain McGilchrist, the author of a fascinating book called The Matter with Things. He has studied the fact that this brain has two hemispheres. Both halves are involved in almost every cognitive event. But the two different halves have different ways of paying attention to the world. One is narrow focus — the left side of the brain — and the other is the big picture. And he says what has happened historically in the West is that for the last five hundred years or so, we have concentrated on the narrow, rationalist, reductionist left side of the brain and we've forgotten the right side that contextualizes everything. So we now find ourselves in a world where we understand how almost everything works but we know the meaning of nothing.
And what he calls for is to open this sphere up — and of course that includes beauty, culture, art, music, and religion. Step by step, he appears to be creating more room for God, because God makes sense of the space he feels is very necessary to fulfill. And I find it absolutely fascinating — the number of intellectuals who are step by step taking the Christian faith more seriously as giving a rational account of what's going on that makes very big sense of the big picture.
The Return to Meaning and the Decline of Reductionism
Steven Bartlett: What is going on in society? It does feel like more and more people have these existential questions about meaning, and they might be turning to Christianity or Islam or other traditions. For younger generations it might be spirituality, however they define that. But there's certainly a macro picture here of something happening.
John Lennox: Oh, there is — I agree with you entirely. And I think it's because we've had pushed at us for too long a very reductionist view of the world. It's nothing but physics and chemistry. It's nothing but this or that. And people rightly feel it's too small a world to live in. They're looking to break out of this. Isn't there a bigger picture that can make sense of my world and give some meaning? Because if you reduce everything, it ends up in a black hole of meaninglessness.
And that's one of my top reasons for not being an atheist — because it destroys rationality almost by definition. It tells me that my brain, which does all the thinking, is the end product of a mindless, unguided process. And I have fun with scientists sometimes — I ask them about the brain and how it arose, and they tell me something like that, and I say, "And you trust it?" I tell them: if the computer you use every day — if you knew it was the end product of a random process, would you trust it? Every single scientist I've asked that question, some of them very high-powered, has said no, they would not. So I say, "You've got a problem, haven't you? Your atheism goes too far. It undermines the very rationality we need to do science, let alone to believe in atheism."
And that's my main beef with people like Richard Dawkins and the new atheists. But I see they're fading. The irony is that atheism, claiming rationality, destroys it. Whereas I believe the Christian faith also claims rationality — in the sense that evidence-based thinking, which we shout about a lot in science and medicine and rightly so, should apply to what we trust in. I claim exactly the same thing for Christianity. That's why I'm a Christian — because I believe the evidence supports it. Otherwise I wouldn't be.
Steven Bartlett: So I guess how do I identify? Maybe as someone that's agnostic. I don't really know.
John Lennox: Well, that's okay. But does that mean you're open to know? You'd like to know?
Steven Bartlett: Yes. I'm always open.
John Lennox: Well, that's wonderful. That seems to me to be exactly the right attitude. Jesus actually challenged someone in his day and said, "If anyone wants to do the will of God, he shall know of the teaching, whether I'm speaking from myself or whether it's from God." I notice what he doesn't say. He doesn't say, "If anyone wants to know, he will know." He says, "If anyone wants to do, he will know." And the difference between the two is that being prepared to do something when you know it is more than just knowing it and possibly leaving it on the table. In other words, Jesus is interested in people who are going to take the step of trust and following him. And that's the big deal.
Steven Bartlett's Agnosticism and the Question of Truth
Steven Bartlett: Do you know what it is? I find all explanations of the bigger picture to be fundamentally incomplete. Because there are many things you've said about the nature of Christianity and religion that I go, "Amazing, yes, yes, yes." And then there are a couple of things where I go, "Well..." And the same when I sit here with a physicist telling me about the Big Bang — "Yes, yes, of course, yes. Oh, we've got evidence that the universe is expanding." Okay. And then they'll say other things and I go, "Well, that's not complete." So I find myself sitting on the fence. I would love you to convince me — it's not your responsibility to do so — but where does that journey of believing begin for someone like me? Because people say the Bible, and I go, "Well, it's like what you said about the computers — if you're using something to justify the same thing, that's circular reasoning." I could write on this piece of paper, "Steven Butler is a lizard," and then use that same piece of paper to justify the validity of that same piece of paper. That's not solid reasoning.
John Lennox: No. But I could say, "Steven Bartlett, there's a red Ferrari parked in the street outside, and it's yours if you want to take it." We could sit and discuss it for a thousand years. You would never know whether I was telling the truth unless you went and looked.
And the word "skeptic" is a very interesting one. I regard myself as a skeptic. But in Greek, skept means to look at something from a distance. Now, if you are ever going to get to know a person, you've got to begin to give up your distance. You will know that from everyday life. And it seems to me one of the things to try to begin to grasp is that God is not a proposition or a philosophy or even a religion. God is a person. And as a person, he has entered our world — however incredible that may seem.
Although this is the irony of the Harari position, if I might just say it: people come to me with their transhumanist agenda and say, "We're going to solve the problem of death and we're going to increase human happiness." And I look at them and I smile. I say, "You're too late." And they say, "What? We haven't got there yet." I say, "You're too late." The problem of physical death was solved when God raised Christ from the dead twenty centuries ago. And as for human happiness and uploading us into eternity — I'm waiting for the biggest uploading that's ever going to happen in history, when Christ returns and raises me from the dead, because that is precisely what he promises.
And it's most interesting — I say to them, "Isn't it fascinating that your transhumanism consists in humans reaching out to become little gods? Whereas Christianity is the exact opposite. It talks about a God who became human so that he could give us life and give us a new relationship with him."
What really completes the circle for me is that my relationship with God is a relationship based on the solution to the really hard problem — and that is the problem that I, by nature, have not always done good, and by my own standards I have failed. All this talk of transhumanism and AI is trying to build paradise, utopia, without facing the problem of the damage that humans have caused to themselves and one another. They will not face the sin problem.
Christianity doesn't compete with anything else because Christ offers me something nobody else offers me. Nobody else offers me peace. The peace of knowing that I have real forgiveness. The peace of knowing that I have a friend and a companion to whom I can talk all the time — that's been so meaningful in my life, as I spell out in detail in my autobiography. And the peace of having been given a new life that will not end when I die.
I'm 82 now. I'm probably more than twice as old as you are. As I look towards the future, I have in my heart a certainty — not because I've merited it, the exact opposite. Because I couldn't merit it. But because Christ has done something for me through the cross and the resurrection. That may sound like mumbo jumbo at the moment, but it has done something that enables me to have a relationship that is secure, that floods over the whole of life, and has made my life what it is for the last 70 years or so. I think everybody — especially in a world that's getting increasingly lonely and disconnected and isolated — is looking for that secure relationship.
Steven Bartlett: They're looking for a home that can't fall down.
John Lennox: Yes. And a peace that doesn't fade, and an inheritance that doesn't —
Steven Bartlett: Exactly. If I could choose that, if I could press a button and have it, I would have it. But there's this other part of my brain which will naturally interrogate whether it's real or true.
John Lennox: You're absolutely right. Why am I sitting in front of you talking about this stuff? Because I've interrogated myself about it and its truth for over 70 years. I've made myself totally vulnerable. That's why I got into all the debates with atheists and all the rest of it — because I want to be sure. But it won't come about by pressing a button. It will come about if you're open enough to say, "God, I'm open. Reveal yourself to me, and I'm prepared to take the steps that I feel are leading me onto solid ground." I do not believe that this is a process of taking a leap into the dark. It's making a commitment on the basis of what you know already and taking a step further forward.
And the interesting thing about this is the trust that's at the heart of everything. I trust my wife. I've been married to her for 58 years this year. It's evidence-based trust. I don't trust her for no reason. And the same is true of my friends, as would be the case with you. Evidence-based trust — in science and in Christian things.
I don't regard myself as religious particularly, and the reason is this. Most religions prescribe a moral way that you try to follow, with teachers, gurus, imams, priests to keep you on the way, and then you come to a judgment at the end. If your good deeds tip over the bad deeds, then you get into heaven, nirvana, whatever — that's religion. It's not Christianity, though many people think it is. Because if you ask them, "Are you a Christian?" and they say, "Well, I do my best and I hope that God will be kind" — that isn't Christianity. It's the exact opposite of Christianity. That's a merit-based religion.
And the irony of all this is that in a human relationship, we don't base our affection on the basis of merit. I have a little analogy I use that sometimes tickles people's minds. I say that I met a beautiful girl on my second day at Cambridge. She was sitting in church. And I decided I'd like to marry her. So I bought the most expensive cookery book I could, came and handed it to her, and she said, "What's that?" I said, "We have an interesting tradition in our family — if anybody gets married, they give the potential bride a cookbook. Look at page 152. Here are the laws for making an apple cake. And I like apple cake. Now, if you keep those rules for the next, let's be generous, 40 years or so, I will accept you. Otherwise you can go back to your mother."
Now when I say that to an audience, they rock about with laughter. But it's exactly the way many of them have been taught to think about God — keep the rules as best you can and hope that God is generous. When actually I did no such thing. I've given my wife several cookbooks, but they're not the basis of the relationship. And because the relationship is based on acceptance that comes at the start of the common journey, it sets her free to live and do other things that she wants to do.
And I have noticed often that once people begin to realize this, they're beginning to understand a basic concept which is grace — that God does everything, and if we trust him, it is that which gives us the certainty. So it's not arrogance to accept it from him. It's arrogance actually to reject it and say, "Oh no, I'll go my own way and try my best and hope that you will accept me." The heart of the Christian message is that the trust is based on what someone else has done — what Christ has done — not what I have done. And that's what's given me the power and, as I said earlier, completed the circle and enabled me to live.
Steven Bartlett: That was a really beautiful description and definition of what the Christian faith is about. It still leaves me with a question about whether it's true — and this is the central question that I need to find my way over.
John Lennox: I agree with you absolutely.
Evidence for Christianity and the Resurrection
Steven Bartlett: I've sat with a few Christian apologists and asked them similar questions about how do I know if it's true. So far I've got: if there's a red Ferrari outside, you'd have to go outside and see for yourself. But how do you know that this thing you've committed yourself to and believed in and talked about for 70 years of your life is true? And could it be the case that it's not true?
John Lennox: Okay, let's handle that. That's a hugely important question. I have two approaches to this, which I call roughly speaking objective and subjective. And it depends entirely where someone's coming from. They may start very far back and say, "Look, we read about this chap Jesus. How do we know he ever existed?" Well, then you go to the ancient historians and you find that most of them, whether they're atheists or not, believe that he existed.
Steven Bartlett: I accept that he existed.
John Lennox: Well, that's a good start. You know, some of the disciples, when Jesus rose from the dead, just didn't believe the story. And there's a famous story of Thomas who said to the others, "Unless I see the marks in his hands, I won't believe." And then Jesus stood among them and didn't make fun of Thomas's objection. He said, "Thomas, come and have a look." You never know what swimming is until you get into the water.
Steven Bartlett: That is true. And all I can say is that step by step, keep asking your questions. Could you be wrong? Could it be the case that Christianity was based on a real guy called Jesus, but the stories told — there were decades between the things that happened and people —
John Lennox: Not so much as you'd think, actually.
Steven Bartlett: What, four decades for the first time?
John Lennox: When you say to me, "Could you be wrong?" — my academic mind says theoretically, yes. But practically, no. Could I be wrong? It would be like asking me, "John, you've been married to Sally for 58 years. Could you be wrong that she loves you?" Well, theoretically, yes, but actually the evidence all points in the other direction. And that's what I would say I have built up in my life. And I'd love you to ask me that question when you've read my autobiography.
Steven Bartlett: Why would you think I'd read it?
John Lennox: Because I think what I relate there is enough evidence for someone outside who's skeptical to say there may well be something in that. But in the end, you won't know until you step into the water, and then you find that Christ is there to catch you.
Steven Bartlett: And what did you find in the water when you stepped in?
John Lennox: Well, I was very young. My parents taught me quite clearly that I wasn't born a Christian — you become a Christian by trusting Christ. To have somebody born or made a Christian by some ceremony is absurd to my mind. And so in my simple way, I responded as a child. I didn't have any great feelings or anything else. But what happened as I grew — especially when I went to university at Cambridge — I decided, look, I really believe this stuff is true, I'm going to stand for it. And it was when I began to stand and share with others that a great deal of the underpinning came in, and the certainty came cumulatively. Not all at once — I've never had these big flashes of anything. But I have had several experiences of what I can only put down to direct divine guidance, and I record them in the book.
The Geographical Lottery of Religious Belief
Steven Bartlett: I've got some of the questions that really stumped me when I was Christian up until the age of about 18, and then I went into the whole new atheist movement with Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. One of the stats that used to get me was that globally, 91% of adults simply adopt and keep the religion they were raised in. And if a person is born into a Hindu or Muslim household, there is a 99% statistical probability they will remain in that faith. Only 1% switch out. And the argument — I think it came from Dawkins or someone else — was: is it fair that there's this birth lottery determining who ends up believing what, or theoretically getting into hell or heaven? Because if I was born in, I don't know, Afghanistan, the probability says I'd probably be Muslim.
John Lennox: Well, I take that absolutely. It sounds to me as if God gave the same advantage to you as he gave to me. So the question is, what do we do with that privilege?
Now I know there are hard problems around the edge here. This was the argument that Peter Singer advanced when we had a debate. Peter Singer, the Princeton ethicist — very famous for his views on dealing with the unborn and all the rest. When we had a debate in Australia, I started as I always do by being upfront about my background. And when he got the chance to speak, he said, "Well, there goes my best objection to religion — people always stay in the religion they were brought up in." When I next got a chance to speak, I said, "Peter, I told the audience about my Christian background, but you said nothing about yours. Now tell us — were your parents atheists?" He said they were. "Oh," I said, "then you remained in the faith in which you were brought up." He said, "But it isn't a faith." And I said, "Peter, I was convinced that you believed it." And it brought the house down. The point was made repeatedly all over the internet: here's one of the world's top philosophers, and he doesn't understand that his atheism is a belief system.
And the irony was the very first person he met after that debate was a fellow Hungarian Jew who was a friend of mine, and my friend said, "And I became a Christian." So the very first person he met was someone who had transitioned from his background.
That doesn't answer your question. It's a question I ask often, because God could correct this. We have had these arguments and debates — a good God and an all-powerful God would, could, should, all this kind of stuff. And we never get a satisfactory answer to that. So I've come up with another problem — possibly because I'm a mathematician, and when we've hammered at one problem for centuries, we usually stop and try another one. My other problem is just as hard, but I think it gets me a bit further. Every worldview must face a mixed picture. I call it beauty and barbed wire, or beauty and bombs. That's the world — it's mixed. And if you don't accept that, you're not in touch with reality. Now here's my question: is there anywhere evidence enough to trust God with that situation?
Steven Bartlett: And by that you mean the situation of the geographical distribution of believers?
John Lennox: Yes. We'll never understand it or solve it. But do we trust God ultimately to be absolutely fair? Because if God isn't fair in the end — he knows what everybody thinks, I believe — we'll be surprised maybe at what he does, because he can measure how much people know. My responsibility is twofold: one, to respond to the evidence I've had, and then Christ tells me to go and share it. And that's what I do and I've been doing all my life. It doesn't answer the question, but it gives you motivation.
Steven Bartlett: When I think about what I understand of the Bible, there's a particular part that talks about the only way into heaven being through Jesus. From that I inferred that the only way to get into this great place is by believing.
John Lennox: But does everybody want to go to it? I'm not sure that they do. I have met many people who, when they hear what Christ offers, they reject it.
Steven Bartlett: So if we talk about this distribution — this birthright distribution of what you believe — and then those that believe this one particular thing are going to get into heaven, it feels unfair. Or the idea that only those that believe get in is wrong. Or God is not as nice as we thought and he's playing a bit of a cruel game.
John Lennox: There's a fair bit going for your logic there. I think there are aspects of this we don't understand. To give a crude example — I expect to meet Abraham and Moses, but they didn't know about Jesus, because they were before.
When I approach this — you said you're agnostic. I like that word. People rarely ask me if I'm agnostic, but what I'm telling you is I'm agnostic about masses of things. It's how I learn. Agnosco in Greek just means "I don't know." And once you take the other step and say "I don't know and you can't know," it then becomes illogical, because if you don't know, how can you know that I can't know? And I always remember the words of Richard Feynman, who was a brilliant Nobel Prize-winning physicist. He said, "Bend over backwards to criticize yourself, because you are the easiest person for yourself to deceive."
Steven Bartlett: Amen.
John Lennox: He was dead right. And that's why I love exploring these things. And I feel honored to talk to someone who's so refreshing. I think there's great hope for our culture in people like yourself exploring and sharing with the world the conclusions you've come to and the people you're interacting with.
Steven Bartlett: Like I said, I don't have perfect answers either way. So the word agnostic seems perfectly apt.
The Problem of Suffering and Omniscience
Steven Bartlett: The other real question that stumped me when I was 18 was this point about omniscience. It's the oldest question in the atheist-religious battle, which is: if God is all-knowing, he knew exactly which individuals would reject him and suffer and go to hell before he even created them. So how is creating a soul that you know is doomed an act of love?
John Lennox: Well, it isn't. I don't go for that determinism. In fact, I've written a book that thick about it.
Steven Bartlett: I think it was actually Ricky Gervais who told the story of a baby being born — let's say in Africa or India or the UK — who is born with a parasite eating its eyeball out from the inside. And I remember hearing that when I was 18 and thinking: if God's all-knowing, he knew that baby was going to have its eye eaten out by a parasite before the baby was born, but allowed the baby to be born anyway. And with my moral compass, I would have intervened. And if he's omnipotent, he could have intervened. So where is the flaw in that question? Is there a misunderstanding?
John Lennox: I think there can be a misunderstanding, but it's a very understandable one, because I feel exactly the weight of that as well. My question that I set out a few minutes ago is: is there any evidence anywhere that you can trust God with it? And the major piece of evidence to my mind is the cross of Christ. And if Christ really is God, as he claimed to be, this is God's suffering. And why is God suffering? Well, it certainly tells me that he hasn't remained distant from human suffering, but has himself become part of it. Now, that's not an answer. There are no simplistic answers here.
But once you remove God, that child — there's no hope for it. It's dead, gone, out, nothing. But suppose God can compensate that child, because he has the power to raise from the dead as he did with Jesus — that changes everything for me. The universe without a resurrection — I don't know whether you've ever watched my debate, the first one with Richard Dawkins. In the very last bit of it, we were suddenly told we'd only two minutes to wrap up instead of nine each, and I said something about the resurrection. And I never forget what Richard said. It was something like: "We've had a great discussion about big ideas, and now we come down to the resurrection of Jesus. How petty, how parochial, how unworthy of the universe."
I remember thinking: if Jesus rose from the dead, it's the biggest thing that's ever happened, because it may open the way to understanding that there is life after death. And CS Lewis has helped me a lot. I used to listen to him — I'm that old. He helped me in this idea of a sense in which there's more than one world. And we're so conditioned to thinking that this world is the only one there is. But if there is another world and there is a loving God, then I suspect — I can't prove this to you — but when we one day see and enter that world and see what God has done with the kind of child you mentioned, we'll have no more questions.
Steven Bartlett: So you think he's compensated that child?
John Lennox: Oh, yes. God is a God of love. He will do much better than compensate. The biggest gift that God has given you and me is our moral sense and the capacity to love. Now, we analyze problems like this with our God-given capacities, and we come — and I understand it perfectly well, because I've come to the same place as you — and say, "Well, God, if I had been you, I would have done this." Well, I suspect one day we're going to find out why God didn't.
He's going to let me die one day. I've nearly died already. I said goodbye to my wife 14 years ago — they thought I wasn't going to make it — and I said goodbye. And it's interesting when things like that hit you. Total peace, both of us had, as I went into the operating theater, and the surgeon saved my life.
And this would take us down another rabbit hole, but I got to New Zealand just a few days after the earthquake. I was on a lecture tour and everything was scrapped. I was in television and radio, but only one topic: why earthquakes. And I met people that had lost loved ones. And I talked about the God who has suffered and raised Jesus from the dead. And the interesting thing was it was that which gave the most hope to the people listening to me, because they told me and wrote me little letters afterwards. So I think there's something big here. But that God allows these things to happen is something that in the end we have to take on board, even when they happen to us.
Steven Bartlett: What about all the humans that lived before Jesus came?
John Lennox: Well, God will never judge anybody for not knowing what they didn't know.
Steven Bartlett: That's an interesting idea. So am I good? Am I going to get into heaven?
John Lennox: Well, no one is good but God. But you do know a great deal — that's obvious to me. You know what this is all about. And in a sense you've been very near at the beginning, and you're now doing an exploration. Your life stories — you must write your autobiography sometime, but wait a few years.
Steven Bartlett: I think I need a few more experiences.
John Lennox: Yes. But you will get them. I really believe that the openness is the important thing. Quiz people. Put your Christian friends under pressure.
Steven Bartlett: Is it important that I believe in God? Like, if I live a good life and I'm kind to people and I do my best —
John Lennox: But you see, that's exactly the point I was making — that people think that living a good life and being kind to people is what God is interested in. When God has prepared for us a relationship with himself through Christ that deals with the forgiveness of sins that we all need — forgive me using the hackneyed phrase, but that's it. And it will give us a new life and a new power to live. It's all very well saying, "I do good and I do this and do the other thing." But we don't have the power to live as we should. If we compare ourselves to the Sermon on the Mount for a week, we'll soon realize that we're lacking.
And I think one of the big changes comes in people as they realize just the depth of what they might be capable of, and possibly the depths of some things that sadly they do, and are facing a big need of forgiveness. You meet many of them in prisons, of course. But I have seen such remarkable things happen, both directly and indirectly, with people who've made such a mess of life, and God has met them even in death row — in Russia and places like that, where I was able to go because I speak the language to a certain extent. And I find that tremendously powerful evidence that God is at work in these people's lives.
Steven Bartlett: It is statistically the case that the more hopeless your life becomes, the higher the probability you have of turning to a religion. And also if you're having a crisis of meaning in your life for whatever reason. I looked at some of the data and it does show that.
John Lennox: That's absolutely right, and that's what you'd expect if it's true — at least to a certain extent. It gives people something outside themselves. That's simple psychology, I would have thought.
Steven Bartlett: Simple psychology. But it doesn't prove the truth.
John Lennox: It doesn't prove the truth. Because what if I believe in the dragon at the bottom of the garden, or the spaghetti monster —
Steven Bartlett: Leprechauns, if you're Irish. And it seems to be the case that really, irrespective of which religion fills that place in your life, you still get the same boost in meaning after starting to believe.
John Lennox: Well, I'm not convinced of that, because I'm sitting here as a Christian and I've reasoned for being a Christian because I don't find this need met in those practitioners of other religions. I don't find that sense of fulfillment and peace that comes through the forgiveness in Christ. Now when I say that, I need to guard it very carefully, because one of the troubles in talking about different religions is that once you begin to criticize a religion, people rightly think you're looking down at them. And so I clear the ground completely by saying that a pagan or a person in any religion could put me to shame by their moral behavior. I'm not criticizing your moral stance.
CS Lewis helped me greatly there. He wrote a book in the 1940s where he tackled, I think, 40 different religions and philosophies, and in every one of them he found the golden rule — do unto others what you would have done to you — and he points out that this is morally hardwired into your system. So when I'm talking to people of other faiths and asking these questions, I'm very careful to say that at the beginning. But we've got to face the fact that there are differences. My Jewish friends believe that Jesus died and did not rise. My Muslim friends believe he didn't die. I believe he both died and rose. Those three things cannot be simultaneously true.
Steven Bartlett: But when I look at the stats here, data shows that devout Muslims and devout Hindus get the exact same psychological meaning boost and sense of peace as devout Christians.
John Lennox: Well, how do you measure that? They ask them, "Does your life feel more meaningful?" And sometimes I've got one particular friend whose evidence that what he believes is true is the feeling he got when he started believing it.
Steven Bartlett: But the data suggests —
John Lennox: If it is true, a positive feeling would reinforce that, of course, but it doesn't prove it in the end. But then your criteria for yourself of what you accept will be different from that person. So you have to proceed on the basis — like Thomas of old. He wouldn't accept what the other guys said. He said, "I need the evidence for myself." And you need the evidence for yourself. Evidence of the kind that's going to give you a settled peace and confidence in what you believe.
Steven Bartlett: Then there were also — I was thinking — there's fiction movies I've watched that made me feel really good afterwards and made me feel more motivated and connected to the universe.
John Lennox: Yes, of course.
Hell, Forgiveness, and the Serial Killer
Steven Bartlett: Going back to this question I asked about good people living a good life — it seems to be the case that the Bible suggests that if you don't believe in God, even if you lived a good life, you go to hell. And hell is described as not a nice place. So I was thinking about the most kind person I know, who lived her life to be unbelievable, passed away. She didn't believe. Does that mean she's in hell?
John Lennox: Well, you can't answer that. Let me just say something here. What scripture reveals is a very interesting thing — the only people to whom Jesus talked about hell were religious bigots who were in danger of it. He didn't talk about it to ordinary folks who were struggling with believing and trusting God.
Steven Bartlett: What are you implying there?
John Lennox: What I'm implying is that we paint hell as something ogre-like — God stuffing and tormenting bodies into hell — when actually I think CS Lewis got it right. He talks about hell as the absence of God, and it's chosen. If a person doesn't want God in their life — and I've known people like that — and they choose it, God will give them what they chose. Otherwise, God is going to have to force his way into their lives and they don't want him.
And here is the amazing thing to my mind about Jesus and his attitude. He would go places. He would heal people. He would bring peace into their lives. But when folk saw what he did and said, "Go, leave us alone," he went. He didn't force his way into their lives.
And it seems to me that the one example in the New Testament of a person who did not live a good life, who neglected the poor around him and ended in that place — there is no evidence that he wanted out of it. What he said was, "Please send Abraham to my brothers that they don't come to this place." There's no indication that he wanted out of it. And I think this is a grim reality — that when we use these words, we need to be immensely careful. You can choose not to have God, and God will honor that choice, and that is hell.
Steven Bartlett: One of the things I grew up believing because of the Bible was that if you repented — which is to ask forgiveness, admit your sins, acknowledge God, believe — then your sins would be forgiven. So if someone was a serial killer for their whole life and then repented at the end of their life, would they be forgiven and allowed into heaven? And I guess this links to the question I just asked — if someone was a doctor for their whole life, curing childhood cancer, but they didn't believe, they would theoretically be going to this place described as hell.
John Lennox: We can argue about cases like that all the time. Neither of us is God. And the way God deals with these people — after all, next to Christ on the cross were two thieves. Well, they were terrorists, actually. They both murdered, apparently. And one of them railed against Jesus and shouted. And the other simply said to him, "I deserve to be here. Remember me when you come into your kingdom." And Jesus turned to him on the cross and said, "Today you will be with me in paradise." And so yes, in that sense, yes. And the Apostle Paul was a murderer. There are deep mysteries here.
I never forget looking through the door of a Russian security death row. I'd never been in a death row before. And the stink — it was just like a nightmare. And because I was the only one of the Brits who could speak Russian, I went up to the door and a chap came over and looked at me — gaunt and all this. He was just awaiting execution. And what he said to me was this: "I deserve to be here." He killed 12 women or something — I can't remember which. And then his face just burst into what I can only describe as a ghastly smile. And he said, "I met Jesus here and he forgave me." And you just go away with a very burdened heart, I think. And he said, "My colleague lying over there is the same." What do you make of it? I don't think we're going to find out.
Steven Bartlett: I don't know. I feel like I'm wired to try and solve these problems, these big questions. I have to figure them out or they all just sit there causing increasingly more confusion, which pops me right on that agnostic fence.
John Lennox: I would encourage you to concentrate on the one that you think is most important, one at a time. I don't know, because I've only met you. I think what you're doing by talking to people from different backgrounds is valuable. I'd love to be able to say, "Here's where you must look," but each one of us is so complex, and what will answer the question for you might not answer it for the person sitting next to you. But don't stop exploring, I would say.
Steven Bartlett: No, I won't. That's for sure. Because I find the curious pursuit of truth in and of itself a rewarding pursuit, irrespective of whether I ever find the answers.
John Lennox: That's the key. A speech that made a deep impression on me was given by Alexander Solzhenitsyn when he was pushed out of the Soviet Union: "Do not compromise in the least with lies. Live not by lies." I think our generation needs to hear that, because one of the great and tragic capacities of AI is the spread of lies — deep fakes, all the rest of it. I've been subject to it myself in the last month. A publisher contacted me, could they produce a transcript of a recent lecture I'd given because they liked it so much. I'd never heard of it. I looked it up, discovered a website describing itself as "Lennox Logic" — it was a picture of me, but it was deep-faked all the way through, AI-generated material that I would never have said, all politicized and everything else.
AI, Human Purpose, and the Future of Meaning
Steven Bartlett: When you think about the impact that AI is going to have on human purpose — we talk a lot about job losses, white collar workers, entry-level roles, and then really, if you have a long enough time horizon, it's conceivable that many of the roles we all do today, including maybe even as a podcaster — Spotify announced this month that you're going to be able to generate your own podcasts with AI — what is the high-level philosophical point we need to understand about meaning and how to live a good life in a world where some of us might lose our jobs and have to contend with change in a way we've not experienced before?
John Lennox: I mean, I have children, grandchildren, all the rest of it. And one of my sons is beginning to ask questions — "Dad, AI looks as if it's going to replace my job." Well, he's tech-savvy and he will rise to it, I suspect. But all industrial revolutions did this. This is going to do it on a scale never before seen. And the tragedy is — I was talking about this in South Africa and they said, "It's all very well to tell us to reskill people, but if you don't have the educational infrastructure to do that, you'll just force a much bigger divide between the rich and the poor." And they're really worried about it.
I think the important thing — which is why I wrote my books — is to inform and get people thinking and get them talking.
Steven Bartlett: What is the conversation you want them to be talking about?
John Lennox: I think it's a very wide-ranging conversation. There are existential things for people. They're afraid.
Steven Bartlett: Should they be?
John Lennox: Well, they should be afraid of some things. I think the creeping advance of totalitarianism is something that could engulf us all if we're not very careful. It's creeping, creeping, creeping, and is being rolled out in parts of the world, particularly China. But not only there. I read a very interesting report by a China watcher saying, "Beware, you in the West, because the only difference between us and you is you've got all the technology but not yet a central government imposing it. Not yet. Beware." And I think we have to beware, because we are sleepwalking into this.
Sir Anthony Seldon — I don't know whether you've come across him, he's an educationalist very highly regarded by various governments — has written a book about AI and its effect in education. And of course it's having a devastating effect. What is an essay? Everybody's using AI and it's hard to recognize whether it's AI or not now. So we're into a whole new world, or coming rapidly into it. How do we know what is true and what isn't?
Steven Bartlett: Is it conceivable that so much of this technology has promised it would make us more human, and so much of it failed — it made us more isolated and lonely? Is it conceivable that if a technology comes along like AI, it will render us useful for the things that humans are uniquely positioned to do — being with each other in the real world, relationships? And is it conceivable that maybe we were never meant to sit in front of screens tapping buttons?
John Lennox: I think that's absolutely true, and it's what's already exercising many people's minds in that direction.
Steven Bartlett: And could that be a better life?
John Lennox: Well, how would I judge that?
Steven Bartlett: I was thinking — is this like the moment where we kind of regress back to how we used to live, our true human nature? Where I don't know, we spend more time with each other in the real world, because that's very human, and my Maslovian needs of connection and touch —
John Lennox: You can demonstrate that. Look at these groups of parents who have said to their kids, "We're going away into the country for a week and we're taking your smartphones away." And they grumble and say, "No, no, no." And they come back after the week having rediscovered nature. They don't want to use their smartphones very much. Totally transformed by touch and taste and feeling.
You see, AI is a machine. It doesn't have any of our five senses, which are all connected with our consciousness. It doesn't see, it doesn't hear, it doesn't taste, it doesn't touch, it doesn't smell.
Steven Bartlett: When you say it doesn't see —
John Lennox: Oh, it can be programmed to recognize patterns, but it has no awareness of what the process of seeing is.
Steven Bartlett: Does it need it?
John Lennox: Well, that's not the point. What I'm saying is it's distinctively human that we understand what seeing is. We know what seeing red is.
Steven Bartlett: I mean, we can philosophize all around it, but it's a conscious experience. And consciousness from a scientific perspective is called the hard problem. No one knows what it is.
John Lennox: We don't understand it. You can't replicate it.
Steven Bartlett: So how do we know if AI is conscious? If the output is the same — I can point an AI at this and say, "What is it?" and the AI will say, "It's a mug." And I can get a human to walk in here and say, "What is that?" and they'll say, "A mug." The output is the same.
John Lennox: Yes. But the understanding is not there.
Steven Bartlett: And why is that critical?
John Lennox: Because there's a huge difference between being a machine responding to a program created by others and being aware of what you're doing consciously. That's a totally higher level of being.
Steven Bartlett: I agree. But why does that matter in this context? Another way of asking this question is actually visualized by what I have in front of me here, because one of the big debates around AI is: is it creative? So here we have a picture done by a human — a picture of a family and a dog. And then we have another picture here done by AI. And another picture here done by a different AI. Now there's a debate that AI can't be creative. Can AI be creative?
John Lennox: Well, if you call what's in front of you creative, then it can be. But it now comes down to the very big question of what you actually mean by creative. It can create things. It can put things together that haven't been in that form before. But it's not aware of doing it. It doesn't know that those are children, because it doesn't know.
Steven Bartlett: But if I ask it what that is, it would say "a child."
John Lennox: Yes. But it doesn't know like we know. And this goes back to the same question — does the process matter if the output is identical?
Let me just say that that view is exactly the view that Alan Turing took at the beginning. And if you look at what's often referred to as the AI bible — Peter Norvig and his colleagues — he said, "Look, we are not trying to create a conscious machine. We wouldn't even know what that meant. We are happy with the imitation game, and that's good enough for us. We're not trying to do it."
But the conscious side involves all that appreciation of life and nature and beauty and meaning that we can see. And there's also a consciousness of other people, and there's God-consciousness. I don't think AI is anywhere near that. There are certain things machines cannot do even potentially that the human mind can do. So there's no way a machine is ever going to be able to simulate a human mind completely. But that's difficult mathematics and highly controversial.
Steven Bartlett: Why is it an important conversation to have — whether it is conscious or not conscious — when the output is the same?
John Lennox: If you want to live in a reductive universe which ends up being meaningless, well then you can go that way. There's nothing to stop you. But it seems to me there are enough indicators within nature, within science, within our human experience that tell us there's a bigger world. And this is the right and left brain stuff — we're back to McGilchrist again. He thinks AI is really dangerous because it's ruining all this side of the brain and the richness of human experience and is in danger of destroying it. He actually invites people to come and fight with him.
Steven Bartlett: So in such a world, what is it that makes humans special?
John Lennox: Oh, I think the relational. Yes, absolutely. And the fact that you and I can have a conversation like this.
Steven Bartlett: You could have this conversation with AI.
John Lennox: AI is pretty thin still. You can have a conversation of sorts. But remember, who's responsible for its capacity? Humans. It's something made in the image of humans. And that's a dangerous thing. I'd prefer something made in the image of God.
It's interesting because we're getting to a point where there are going to be ethical questions around robotics. In the same way that many of us feel quite empathetic towards trees — cutting down a tree needlessly I think would annoy a lot of people — I think there's almost going to be a point where people start asking similar questions around robots.
Steven Bartlett: Which is an interesting question.
Closing Reflections
Steven Bartlett: Let me ask you a final question then — what is the most important thing we haven't talked about that we should have talked about, as it relates to all of the work in these tangential subjects?
John Lennox: Oh, I can't answer that. Perhaps the most important thing is finding the trigger that will help you to take a step forward into faith, into the Christian faith. And I would just encourage you to keep asking your questions in the open way you've done. I have regarded it an honor to have this discussion. And I hope very much it won't be the last one, but age may prevent that. But thank you very much.
Steven Bartlett: We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question that's left for you is: in a world with so many challenges, what can we do to restore hope and trigger engagement?
John Lennox: Give people a real basis for hope that transcends this world. And the only place I know where to find that is in Christ and in Christianity.
John, thank you. One of the most compelling arguments for God that you've presented — your way of seeing the world and being in it — is not actually necessarily anything you've written in your books or anything you've said. It is actually you. You have a certain peace and contentment that I rarely see in people that I interview, but I've almost always seen in the Christians that I've interviewed. And this is an interesting phenomenon for me. I interviewed Wesley Huff recently. Do you know Wesley Huff?
John Lennox: Yes. Yes.
Steven Bartlett: He was the same — Canadian. Wesley's a bright cookie.
John Lennox: Yeah. He was very much — he gave me the same feeling as you. Just feels like a really happy person, very content, rounded, well —
Steven Bartlett: There are many of us.
John Lennox: But it seems to be a trend — a lot of the Christian apologists I've interviewed have that anchoring that so many of us are looking for. There's a real sense of that. I sit in front of many people, and of course they often ask me questions I don't even understand. But in life, that peace is very important to me. And also what we started with — when I look at you, I see someone who's of infinite value, made in the image of God. And so what I say to you or think about you is hugely important to me. And I wish you well.
Steven Bartlett: Thank you. I highly recommend — you've written so many books, I don't have all of them here, but I have a long list of them — I highly recommend everybody goes and checks out your autobiography, which is your most recent work. It's called John Lennox and I'll link it below. It's a spiritual and intellectual autobiography that I think is highly fascinating to read because of how diverse your thinking and skill sets are. And also, if people are interested in the subject of AI, then they should read 2084.
John Lennox: I'll link 2084 below as well — 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity. And I highly recommend everybody goes and reads both books. You are a truly fascinating person with a very unique skill stack and experience stack and perspective. Fascinating. Thank you so much, John.
John Lennox: Oh, thank you.