Interview with Oxford Professor John Lennox
This spring Dr. John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, presented at Veritas Forums on four West Coast campuses: Stanford, UCLA, UC Berkeleyand the University of Southern California. We caught up with him to ask just what he found most compelling about his time with Veritas.
Your talk at Berkeley was entitled, “Is Anything Worth Believing In?” Why is this such a relevant question to today’s university student?
I think many students have gotten fed up with the materialism of their parents. They feel the previous generation has not offered them anything solid in which to believe and when they hear something that makes sense to them they get interested in it. I find there is a tremendous appetite for listening to scientists talk about this because they think science is the great guru of their age. Some make the mistake of thinking science is the only way to truth and because of that scientists have great cultural authority. Of course there are things worth believing in and that is why students are at university. Yet is there transcendence beyond the material? Just as in science we look to an evidence base, so Christianity is an evidence-based religion. We make a faith commitment based on evidence.
Please share about your involvement with The Veritas Forum. Why Veritas?
I’ve known of Veritas for some time and have witnessed several of the events Veritas has staged at major Ivy League universities and have been impressed by the format. When they approached me I felt it was worth doing because they would be likely to put on the event very well. It also appealed to me that it would be a united effort among student groups because I am busy and do not like to reinvent the wheel with each group. Veritas transcends the divide between various groups on campus.
You remarked on stage that the discussion event with Daniel Lowenstein at UCLA was the best event of that kind of which you’ve ever been a part. What made it so special?
This was a marvelous event because Daniel Lowenstein, a self-described agnostic Jew, did not come to debate but to facilitate a discussion. I was not trying to score points over him or he over me. Rather he teased out of me what he felt the public ought to hear. When I met him for tea before the forum he said, “We are not going to discuss the specific questions to be asked tonight but only what the big issue is going to be.” I thought that made it real, as he did not want to stage an interview but a discussion about real issues that was not contrived or artificial. It was a sheer delight to engage someone of that intellectual capacity who was so honest and open.
What was your most memorable experience at the four Veritas Forums in which you participated this year?
Undoubtedly it was the public discussion with Lowenstein because I felt that Veritas was prepared to take a real risk. When Veritas suggested the format to me, they told me they did not want a debate. I welcome that because I have done several major debates with Richard Dawkins and others, and debates can be artificially confrontational. A discussion, on the other hand, brings the best part of an argument out. It is civil and it is public square; there is no default position. We let the people judge. I feel that The Veritas Forum is offering that from a Christian perspective.
