By RICHARD DAWKINS, JOHN LENNOX
Added: Sun, 31 May 2009 23:00:00 UTC

This is the third of my encounters with John Lennox, all organized by the Fixed Point Foundation, which is an American Christian organization.

The first one, before a large audience in Birmingham, Alabama, had a rather odd format, which was set up in such a way that Lennox got the last word on every question. The second, in a private room in Trinity College, Oxford, was a quiet conversation with no audience. For me it was notable because Lennox belied the common claims of 'sophisticated theologians' by coming clean about his own beliefs. This sophisticated Oxford don, it turned out, believes in all the New Testament miracles including walking on water and turning water into wine. This extremely surprising revelation formed the premise of my opening remarks in our third debate, in the Oxford University Museum, on October 21st 2008. I contrasted his theistic beliefs in miracles with deistic beliefs, for which I said that a serious case could be made, although not a case that I would accept myself. Lennox did not pick up on this at the time but, astonishingly, he made it one of his central points in a speech that he made in Inverness a few days later:"

http://www.uhi.ac.uk/home/about-uhi/lectures/lectures/dr-john-lennox/

Here is the relevant part of Lennox's Inverness speech:

"But finally, and this is the grand irony, I was stunned last Tuesday night – completely stunned – by this. Richard Dawkins started off by saying that he had no difficulty with the concept of Einstein’s god . . . but now came the stunning revelation. And I missed it in one sense and when the lecture was over I realised what he had said. He said a good case could be made for the deistic god. That’s staggering."

If you listen now to the debate in Oxford of Tuesday 21st October, you can hear for yourself the remark that 'stunned' John Lennox, my alleged concession to deism.

-Richard Dawkins

TAGGED: FEATURED, RICHARD DAWKINS, SPEECHES

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