Just missed this debate on 567 Cape Talk yesterday but got the link from John Maytham
Professor John Lennoxsays we have science because of God. 
I found it interesting to listen to.
Of course: the fact that he got so much wrong during the creation proves s/he/it (sheit???) was a scientist; the problem is however that nobody could peer review his inventions and as he never published it except via 3rd, 4th and 5th parties, things went awry. Shows you that the scientific method must be rigorously adhered to and as he was accountable to nobody, he lost interest and disappeared into the ether never to be heard of again.
He is probably my least favourite apologist. Which is probably a compliment to him, I guess. This guy can wrap phoney arguments in baloney insidious enough that most (ie not us) would probably not pick up on the epic subversiveness being applied. His cleverness lies not in being right, but in obscuring the fact that heâs wrong. And boy can he come up with some choice Bullshit!
This is driven home within a minute or two of the sound clip starting (havenât listened to the rest). Not verbatim, but the implication:
âOh no, right now when I said science, I didnât mean science, youâre implying I said science. Now that youâve busted me on it, Iâm going to shift the goalposts to modern science. Which I shall now by implication define as being science since Christianity. And see! Christianity gave us modern science just as Iâve defined it just now! Iâm a GENIUS!â
Seems they updated the site the link is gone. if you downloaded it, maybe upload it here.
The link to the host is gone but the debate is still up on soundcloud if thatâs what you were looking for.
Related stuff here. Predictably, the comment avalanche is snowballing.
'Luthon64
Ok had a listen.
Nothing new there, same arguments weâve heard before. But Iâm glad John did a good job of interviewing him there.
Eusebius, who recently interviewed Jaques, will Thursday be interviewing Lennox
"[i]Iâm looking forward to holding a debate with Oxfordâs Professor John Lennox this Thursday. Weâre engaging the framing question: Morality and God â is there a connection?
John is a great thinker and popular international speaker, and an academic who specialises in, and teaches, mathematics, philosophy of science and Christian Apologetics at Oxford University.
Being agnostic, I obviously think heâs wrong. He believes morality doesnât make sense without God. [/i]"
Iâll be at Thursdayâs debate. Btw, Eusebiusâs column reminded me of an argument he and I had about labelling (atheist vs. agnostic) last year, so I opportunistically used it as a springboard to write about that, in case anyoneâs interested.
this agnostic / atheist thing is actually so damned simple.
If you believe in god(s), you are a theist.
If you do not have such a believe for whatever reason, you are not a theist. An atheist.
So if you donât know or you are not certain or you have hope or whatever the fuck, but you do not have a positive believe in god(s), you are an atheist. This does not immediately make you a baby eater, it simply means you are not a theist.
And the only way to be a theist, is to have a positive believe in (a) god.
⌠which is how I end up as an agnostic atheist.
In his book Atheism: The Case Agains God, a work with which youâre no doubt familiar, George H. Smith addresses at some length the question of what it means to be atheist. In essence, Smith argues that the wordâs etymology indicates that an atheist is anyone who does not positively assert a theistic belief. In his view, what we might label agnostic, is atheist because agnosticism doesnât entail theistic belief.
That said, thereâs also the aspect of language to consider whereby words acquire and/or shift meaning through common usage. We have come to associate atheism with certainty and agnosticism with appreciable uncertainty about the theistic question (where certainty must be read to include a residuum of doubt). It seems to me pointless to attempt arguing against such common usage since the primary function of language is to convey ideas, and pedantic insistence on preserving etymological derivations looks like mere obstructive pettifoggery.
In this vein, Smith also uses skeptic in a way with which everyone on this forum would roundly disagree. To Smith, a skeptic is someone who insists the no knowledge of any kind is possible, i.e., Pyrrhonism, which is a self-refuting position.
'Luthon64
Well now if we gonna start saying certainty includes doubt⌠>:D Ok, I get we are only ever 99% sure of anything and my own atheism is of the very strong variety. Even God himself appearing to me will quite likely lead me to doubt my sanity rather than accepting there is a God. But many many atheists express far less certainty than I do and still remain, not theists.
It seems to me pointless to attempt arguing against such common usage since the primary function of language is to convey ideas, and pedantic insistence on preserving etymological derivations looks like mere obstructive pettifoggery.On all the boards I had (and are) participated, atheists themselves describe themselves as I have above. The odd person (atheist or theist) who disagrees really ends up with no counter argument except that of emotional, atheists who don't want to be called atheists and theists mostly want to call atheism irrational or faith based.
Well, your âweâ differs from mine, then. I clearly regard these as âliveâ issues - especially in terms of rhetoric and politics - but am perhaps in the minority in this respect!
Perhaps I wasnât clear enough. If someone says to me they are atheist, I understand them to be saying that they strongly doubt the existence of a (theistic) deity. If someone says to me they are agnostic, I understand them to be saying that they are sufficiently uncertain not to make a call regarding the existence or non-existence of such a deity. George H. Smith would label the latter as an atheist, which seems to me an unnecessary confusion of two distinct positions.
'Luthon64
Aghh jeesh, yeah this confusion and conflation over these two terms are certainly tiresome, I understand that meaning of certain words can change over time, look at the word âgayâ for example, still anyone who has taken at least an introductory philosophy class or picked up a dictionary or any laymanâs book on philosophy would know and understand the differences, seriously, not even being on the same branches of philosophy, itâs like conflating cats and lions when talking about pets, or how not believing in gods gets conflated with all of science into âatheism is a religion tooâ
That definition of skepticism sounds more or less what I was taught about agnosticsm in my philosophy class back in the seminary school.
Soon âkindsâ will replace âspeciesâ or what about âtypes of evolutionâ and âobservable and historical scienceâ
I should state, I donât take that âfence sitterâ mentality seriously and I donât think agnosticism in such a puritanical manner, whether you know something exists and whether you believe some exist or true or whatever, are two separate questions in my view, so Iâm always unsatisfied when someone thinks they can sit sit on the fence, whether a thing can be known or not, doesnât answer the question of whether you believe in the thing being claimed or not.
are two separate questions in my view
Thatâs my entire understanding of this topic. I also donât think thereâs much of a debate as much as ill-informed people conflating two completely different things. (Knowledge and Belief)
Iâm probably an old fuddy duddy for pointing it out whenever it is raised, but I think the distinction makes all the difference. For example: When telling someone youâre an athiest and they start asserting that you cannot âknowâ that thereâs no god. Explaining the difference between agnosticism and athiesm, and why I am both at once, goes a long way to clearing up any confusion.
But agnostic normally carries another little tail, that is it is unknown and unknowable.This fits me to a t.
I donât know that *god(s) do not exist. I think such knowledge, either way, is currently beyond our remit. Any may be never attainable. But at the same time I seriously donât believe they do exist.
the agnostic in your example is still either a theist or an atheist 
in other words, fine, we dealt with knowledge and you are uncertain but what do you believe!? >:D
This illustrates my position on this:
*not man made bullshit gods like zeus and yahwe and allah, they I know donât exist. But some deity kind of thing that kick started the universe or somethingâŚ
The God and morality debate is cleverly argued in Platoâs Euthyphro Dilemma. Euthyphro defines âpiety, then, is that which is dear to the gods, and impiety is that which is not dear to them.â The first half of the debate deals with diffences of opinion among the gods and is of less relevance in a monotheistic environment.
Things get interesting when Socrates asks: âThe point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.â
If the first option is selected, it would imply that the gods are morally irrelevant. Morality would not have a divine origin. Religion then becomes impotent as a moral compass.
If the second option is the correct one, the implication would be that the gods arbitrarily decide what is morally just and what not. This would render the gods and morality fickle. (Ironically, the accusation of arbitrary morals is often directed against secular moral philosophies.)
The Euthyphro Dilemma (about 40 pages) is a worthwhile read.
There is a type of statement known as a necessary truth or a logically necessary truth. A statement is a necessary truth of its negation gives rise to a contradiction. Such statements are true âin all possible worldsâ.
It may be argued that the absence of an almighty being is a necessary truth, because omnipotence gives rise to contradictions. âCan an almighty god draw a triangular circle?â The existence of gods may then be regarded as a contingent, evidence based question whereas the absence of an almighty god would be a necessary truth.