Diary Of A CEO: w/ Mathematician John Lennox – June 4, 2026 (Transcript)

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, that is to what’s called narrow AGI, which most of the stuff that works is. And that is posing a threat to human beings at all kinds of levels. And I began to see that that was seriously important for everybody to take on board.

So I wrote two books, one in 2020 called 2084 is the title of my book, 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. That is not. That is work on the Book of Revelation with reference to AI. The other is directly going into AI, pointing out its values, which I think are immense, particularly in medicine, but pointing out its dangers, which I think are immense for bringing about a state in the world that none of us, I think, want.

Defining Narrow AI vs. AGI

STEVEN BARTLETT: So let me just give some definitions then.

JOHN LENNOX: Yes, sure.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You use the term narrow AI.

JOHN LENNOX: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: My definition of that is, and I’ll put something on the screen for those of you 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 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, which is a machine that could do any intellectual task a human can faster than any human and would be super intelligent. So maybe one way to think about it, it would have a PhD in everything.

JOHN LENNOX: That’s right. That’s a very fair summary. Narrow AI system does one and only one thing that normally requires human intelligence. AGI does a lot and more.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You wrote this book, 2084. You highlighted in there some of the concerns that you think are being overlooked in this race for AGI at the moment.

JOHN LENNOX: Well, they’re not overlooked by everybody. There is huge concern. There’s been a very interesting book published not long ago by Karen Howe.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, she was here. She’s fantastic.

JOHN LENNOX: Well, there you are. 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. And I found it very illuminating because she’s obviously got very close to the major operators in this.

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 the 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 and 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: I really— this question of what it means to be human in a world of AI, I think, 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 superintelligent systems will reach AGI, which means they’re more intelligent theoretically than any human on Earth.

But at the same time, you’ve got these other advancements in technology like humanoid robots, where these humanoid robots— there was a livestream I’ve talked about a few times, and I’ll just throw it up on the screen really quickly— that shows last week a humanoid robot working on a production line for 8 days straight. And they show it 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, superintelligence and the disruption— you can think of it like one is disrupting this thing here, the brain and the intelligence within the brain. And then the other technology that’s emerged at the same time is disrupting my muscles and my mechanics. And the two come together to make voilà.

JOHN LENNOX: Absolutely. So you face joblessness at all kinds of levels and people are only beginning to realize the implications of that. And 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. It’s that technology advances much faster than the ethics that’s 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.” You can be a bit skeptical about the motivation there. It’s a colossal power grab.

Power, Truth, and the Trial of Jesus

JOHN LENNOX: And I do feel that the Christian faith has a great deal to say to this arms race, if you like, the power that is being forced in to 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, and it’s the trial of Jesus.

And I used to wonder a lot, you know, why is there 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. Pilate, the governor at the time, put him on trial and conducted the trial himself, which was most unusual, and said, “Are you a king?”

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.” Pilate famously responded, “What is truth?” and went out and declared Jesus innocent of the charge. Then he said to him just a bit later, “Don’t you know I have power to crucify you?” Jesus quietly said, “You would have no power against me unless it’s been given to you from above.”

There’s one of the most famous confrontations between power and truth. 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.

Machines Do Not Think: The Danger of Anthropomorphizing AI

JOHN LENNOX: It’s a reductionist. We’re reducing people to machines. And you said to me a few moments ago that flagged up a thing in my mind that’s very important. 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 you see, I believe that the genius of God is that he’s made you and me and he’s 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. And 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?

AI, Religion, and the Search for Meaning

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’ve got a quote here that’s 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: It’s odd. Thank you for quoting that because I was going to quote it to you. Sam Altman’s point about making a religion. And that is what is happening. And people have pointed out the obvious. Here 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, et cetera, et cetera.

And therefore already there are worship groups to 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. And in the end, you are bowing down to something that in the end is idolatrous because it is less than God. But it’s very tempting to do that.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I mean, people are basically praying to it now. They’re confiding in it in a way that they might have—

JOHN LENNOX: They are absolutely doing it. And I’m fascinated by this. I’ve never seen one of these before, but I like it and I’ll tell you why I like it.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So for people that can’t see what we’re doing — it’s a brain.

The Two Hemispheres and the Loss of Meaning

JOHN LENNOX: It’s a brain and it’s got two halves. And one of the people who’ve influenced my thinking about AI a lot is Dr. Iain McGilchrist, the author of this fascinating book called The Matter with Things. And he has studied the fact that this brain has two hemispheres, two halves. 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 for the last 500 or so years, we have concentrated on the narrow rationalist reductionist left side of the brain, and we’ve forgotten the right side that contextualizes everything so that, “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 that absolutely fascinating. And you probably noticed it too, 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.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What is going on in society? Because it does feel like more and more people have these sort of existential questions about meaning, and they might be turning to Christianity or Islam or other. But what is, from a 30,000-foot perspective, happening to us, which is making us ask some of these questions? And 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 make sense of my life and give some meaning? Because if you reduce everything, it ends up 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, because it tells me that my brain, which does all the thinking — it’s not my mind, it’s connected, and those are two different things, and that’s another big story — but this 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 said, “And you trust it?” Tell me, if the computer that you use every day, if you knew it was the end product of a random process, would you trust it? Every single scientist, and some of them are very high-powered, that I’ve asked that question to have said, no, I 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. They’re fading. So here’s the irony. Atheism claiming rationality destroys it. Whereas I believe the Christian faith also claims rationality in the sense that evidence-based — we shout about that a lot in science and medicine, and rightly so. What we trust in ought to be evidence-based. I claim exactly the same thing for Christianity. And that’s why I’m a Christian, because I believe the evidence supports it. Otherwise I wouldn’t.

Agnosticism and the Question of Faith

STEVEN BARTLETT: So I guess, how do I identify? Maybe as someone that’s agnostic, like 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: I’m always open.

JOHN LENNOX: That’s wonderful to see. That seems to me to be exactly the right attitude. Jesus actually challenged someone in his day and says, “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. If anyone wants to do, he will know.

The difference between the two, and I’d be interested in your response to it, is that being prepared to do something when you know it is more than just knowing it and possibly just 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: Do you know what it is? I find all explanations as to the bigger picture to be fundamentally incomplete. Because there are many things you said about the nature of Christianity and religion that I go, “Amazing, yes, yes, yes.” And then there’s a couple of things I go, “Oh, well, mm.” And the same when I sit here with a physicist that’s telling me about the Big Bang.

JOHN LENNOX: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I have the same thing where I’m going, “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, “Oh, that’s not complete.” And so I find myself sat on the fence. I would love you to convince me. I mean, 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 kind of like what you said about the computers.” It’s like if you’re using something to justify the same thing is true.

JOHN LENNOX: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Then that circular reasoning I find to be incomplete. Because I could write on this piece of paper, “Stephen Bartlett is a lizard.”

JOHN LENNOX: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And “this piece of paper is true.” And then you use that same piece of paper to justify the validity of that same piece of paper.

JOHN LENNOX: Mm-hmm.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And I go, well, that’s not solid reasoning.

The Red Ferrari: Moving from Distance to Relationship

JOHN LENNOX: No, but you see, I could say, “Stephen Bartlett, look, 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 1,000 years. You would never know whether I was true or not unless you went and looked.

And it seems to me the word skeptic is a very interesting one. I regard myself as a skeptic, but in Greek, skeptikos 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 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 on the side — people come to me as they’ve done 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 and I say, “You’re too late.” And they say, “What? We haven’t got there yet.” I said, “You’re too late.” “What do you mean we’re too late?” Well, I said, the problem of physical death was solved when God raised Christ from the dead 20 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 watching people. And I say, 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 which is 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’ve failed. Now, all this talk of transhumanism, AI, and everything else — what it’s trying to do is 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 to me 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 all mumbo-jumbo at the moment, but 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, more or less.

The Search for a Secure Relationship

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think everybody, especially in a world that’s getting increasingly lonely and disconnected and isolated, for many reasons, is looking for that secure relationship. They are. They’re looking for their own — a home that can’t fall down.

JOHN LENNOX: Yes. Yes. And a peace that doesn’t fade and an inheritance that doesn’t—

STEVEN BARTLETT: Exactly.

JOHN LENNOX: You’re dead right.

STEVEN BARTLETT: 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.

JOHN LENNOX: Oh, it’s true.

The Nature of Faith and Evidence

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 New 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, but 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.

Religion vs. Christianity

I don’t regard myself as religious particularly. And the reason is this. And it’s an important reason. Most religions prescribe a moral way that you try to follow and you have teachers, gurus, imams, all the rest, priests to keep you on the way. And then you come to a judgment at the end. And I usually draw a scale of justice. And if your good deeds tip over the bad deeds, then you get into whatever it is, heaven, nirvana, all the rest of it. That’s religion. It’s not Christianity. Though many people think it is.

Because if you ask them, “Are you a Christian?” 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 you see, the irony of all this is that we would never — at least I don’t know, some people might — but in a human relationship, we don’t base our affection and relationship with someone on the basis of their 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. I’d been warned she might be there, and she was sitting in church. And I decided that I’d like to marry her. So I bought the most expensive cookery book I could and I came and I handed it to her and she said, “What’s that?”

“Well,” I said, “you know, we have an interesting tradition in our family, you see, and if anybody gets married, they give the potential bride a cookbook.”

“Why?”

“Well, look at page 152. Here’s the laws for making an apple cake and I like apple cake. So law 1, 2, 2, 2, take so much flour, sugar, sugar. Now,” I said, “it’s going to be like this. 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 as 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 that, they’re beginning to understand a basic concept, which is grace. That God does everything. And if we trust him, he it is that gives us the certainty. So it’s not arrogance to accept it from him. It’s arrogance actually to reject and say, “Oh no, no, I’ll go my own way and I’ll try my best and hope that you will accept me.”

And the heart of the Christian message, which I believe is there, 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 sort of central question that I need to find my way over.

JOHN LENNOX: Yeah, I agree with you.

How Do You Know It’s True?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Absolutely. And this is — I find myself often, I’ve sat with a few Christian apologists and asked them similar questions about how do I know if it’s true? And I guess so far I’ve got, if there’s a red Ferrari outside, you’d have to go outside and see for yourself. That’s the only way you’re going to know. But how do you know that this thing you’ve committed yourself to and you’ve believed 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 and so on.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I accept that he existed.

JOHN LENNOX: Yes. Yeah. Okay. Well, that’s a good start. You know, some of the disciples, when Jesus rose from the dead, they just didn’t believe the story. Ridiculous. And there’s a famous story of Thomas who said to the others, “Unless I see the marks in his hands and so on, I won’t believe.” And then Jesus stood among them and he 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. Isn’t that true?

STEVEN BARTLETT: It is true.

JOHN LENNOX: All I can say is that step by step, keep asking your questions. Absolutely. I don’t believe that God will ever ask us to take a step with which we should be uncomfortable. I just don’t believe that.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Could it be the case that Christianity was about a real guy called Jesus, based on a real guy called Jesus, but the stories told — there were decades passed between the things that happened and people —

JOHN LENNOX: Not so much as you’d think, actually.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think it was what, 4 decades for the first one?

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 that I have built up in my life. And I’d love you to ask me that question when you’ve read that autobiography.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Why would you think it would reach out?

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 into the water?

Stepping Into the Water

JOHN LENNOX: Well, I was very young. You see, 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 to me as I grew up, especially as I went to university in Cambridge, and 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 a big — 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 Birth Lottery of Religion

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’ve got some of the questions that really stumped me. So 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 and that little phase of my life. But one of the stats that used to get me when I went through that new atheist movement 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 then the argument — I think it came from Dawkins or someone else — was that 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: Yeah, well, I take that absolutely.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So God gave you an advantage in this context because he, in his all-knowing, all-understanding way, allowed you to be born in a place where you were likely to be Christian. That’s right.

The Problem of Suffering and the Question of Trust

JOHN LENNOX: It sounds to me as if he gave the same advantage to you. So the question is, what do we do with that privilege? Now, I know that there are hard problems around the edge here. There are really hard problems, not only where you’re born and what you believe. This was the argument that Peter Singer advanced to me in a debate. I don’t know whether you’ve heard about it. Peter Singer, the Princeton ethicist who really was one of the new atheists, but not quite, very famous for his views on dealing with the unborn, all the rest.

Well, we had a debate in Australia and I started, as I always do, by being upfront about my background. When he got the chance to speak, he said, “Well, there goes my best objection to religion. People always stay in the religion in which they’re brought up, you see.” 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 me, were your parents atheists?” He said, “They were.” “Oh,” I said, “then you remained in the faith in which you were brought up.” Oh, but he said it isn’t a faith. And I said, “Peter, I was convinced that you believed it.”

And it brought the house down, of course. Cyberspace went mad. And the point was made repeatedly all over the internet. Here’s one of the world’s top philosophers. 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 then 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.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because God could correct this.

JOHN LENNOX: Well, this is just the point. And 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. It’s this: 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 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? That’s a hard question.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And by that, you mean the situation of the sort of geographical distribution of beliefs?

JOHN LENNOX: Yes. We’ll never understand it or solve it.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But do we trust God?

JOHN LENNOX: 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. And 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 have been doing all my life. It doesn’t answer a question, but it gives you motivation. And the alternative to rule God out has so many negatives to it that—

Heaven, Belief, and the Question of Fairness

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think, yeah. So when I think about what I understand of the Bible, there’s a particular part of the Bible that talks about the only way into heaven is through Jesus. And from that, I inferred that the only way to get into this great place that everybody wants to go to is by believing. But does everybody want to go to it?

JOHN LENNOX: I’m not sure that they do. I have met many people who, when they hear what Christ offers, they reject it. But that’s another point.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So if we talk about this distribution, sort of birthright distribution of what you believe, and then those that believe this one particular thing are going to get into this heaven, it feels unfair. Or this 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. And I think there are aspects of this we don’t understand because, to give a crude example of this, I expect to meet Abraham and Moses, but they didn’t know about Jesus.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because they were before.

JOHN LENNOX: Yes. 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. Aginosko in Greek just means I don’t know. And once you take the other step in saying 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. You probably heard of Richard Feynman, who said, “Bend over backwards to criticize yourself because you are the easiest person for yourself to deceive.” Amen. 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 that you come to and the people that you’re interacting with.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, like I said, I have no— I don’t have perfect answers either way. So that’s why the word agnostic seems to be perfectly apt.

Omniscience, Determinism, and the Problem of Evil

The other real question that I had that really stumped me when I was 18 years old was this point about omniscience. I mean, it’s the oldest question in the sort of 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.

JOHN LENNOX: Yeah, that’s determinism.

STEVEN BARTLETT: 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 tells the story of the baby being born in, let’s say it’s Africa or somewhere else, or India, or wherever it might be, the UK, who is born with a parasite eating its eyeball out from the inside.

JOHN LENNOX: I know this.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. And I remember hearing that when I was 18.

JOHN LENNOX: Yeah, terrible.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And thinking, okay, so if God’s all-knowing, he knew that 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 or powerful, he could have intervened. So how do you— these questions, where is the flaw in that question? Is there a flaw? 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 there any evidence anywhere that God, 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, whom he claimed to be, this is God 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 you see, 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.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I suspect I have. I watched 3.

JOHN LENNOX: Last bit of it. We were suddenly told we’d only 2 minutes to wrap up instead of 9 each. I said something about the resurrection. I’ll never forget what Richard said. It was something like this. “We’ve had a great discussion about big ideas and so on, 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. You see, C.S. Lewis has helped me a lot. I used to listen to him. I’m that old. He has helped me a lot in this idea of a sense in which there’s more than one world. 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?

Trusting God With Suffering

JOHN LENNOX: Oh, yes. God is a God of love. He’ll do much better than— Look, 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’ve said goodbye to my wife, by the way, and they thought they weren’t going— 14 years ago. I said goodbye. It’s interesting when things like that hit you. Forgive the personal reference, but it’s very real. 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 and I was on a lecture tour and everything was scrapped. I was on television, radio, but only one topic, why earthquakes, you see. And I met people that had lost loved ones and all this kind of thing. And I talked about the God who has suffered and raised Jesus from the dead. And the interesting thing was it was that that gave the most hope to the people that were listening to me because they told me and wrote me little letters afterwards and so on.

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: Interesting. That’s an interesting idea. So I don’t know. So am I good? Am I going to get into heaven?

JOHN LENNOX: Well, no one is good but God.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But you see, is it important for me to—

JOHN LENNOX: You do know a great deal. That’s obvious to me. You do know a great deal. 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. And I mean, your life story is that you must write your autobiography sometime. But wait a few years.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, 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 on the thing.

STEVEN BARTLETT: That’s what I’m doing now.

JOHN LENNOX: Yes, I know, I know. It’s lovely to find someone who’s prepared to do that, quite frankly.

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?

The Psychology of Belief and the Question of Hell

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 will give us a new life and a power to live, a new power.

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. Again, that I find 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 people—

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’ve thought.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Simple psychology.

JOHN LENNOX: But it doesn’t prove the truth of God.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It doesn’t prove the truth because what if I believe in the dragon at the bottom of the garden? I know. Spaghetti Monster.

JOHN LENNOX: Leprechauns if you’re Irish.

STEVEN BARTLETT: 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 post-starting to believe.

JOHN LENNOX: Well, I’m not convinced of that, you see, because I’m sitting here as a Christian and I’ve reason 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 that very carefully because one of the troubles in— and you will probably have realized this in talking about different religions— is that once you begin to criticize a religion, people rightly think you’re looking down at them. 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. In raising questions about what is taught by a particular religion, I’m not criticizing your moral stance.

And C.S. 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. And he points out that this is morally hardwired into your system. So that when I’m talking to people of other faiths and ask 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 believed 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 a devout Hindu get the exact same psychological meaning boost and sense of peace as a devout Christian.

JOHN LENNOX: Well, how do you measure that?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Well, they ask them, “Is your life more meaningful?” And sometimes I’ve got one particular friend who’s— part of his case evidence that what he believes is true is the feeling he got when he started believing it. Yeah, well. But the data suggests that.

JOHN LENNOX: That 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 guy 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. I can understand that perfectly.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Then there are also— I was thinking that there’s fiction movies I’ve watched that made me feel really good. Yes, you’re right. Afterwards. And they made me feel like more motivated and connected to the universe.

JOHN LENNOX: Yes, of course.

Hell, Forgiveness, and the Choices We Make

STEVEN BARTLETT: So 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, if you don’t believe, you go to hell, and hell is described as not a nice place. So I was thinking about the most kind person I know that’s 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, that 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 and all the rest. That’s point number one.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What are you implying there?

JOHN LENNOX: Well, what I’m implying there is that we paint hell as something ogre-like, God stuffing and demons stuffing bodies into hell, when actually, I think Lewis got it right here when he talks about this, that hell is 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 and all the rest of it. 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 and 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. I think this is a grim reality here. 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 that I grew up believing because of the Bible was that if you repented, which is to ask forgiveness, admit your sins, et cetera, 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?

I guess this kind of links to the question I just asked, which is 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: Yeah, 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’d both murdered, apparently. One of them railed against Jesus and shouted and all this kind of thing. The other simply said to him, “I deserve to be here. Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus turned to him on the cross and said, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” So he’s forgiven a murderer? Yes. In that sense, yes. The Apostle Paul was a murderer. There are deep mysteries here. It’s just amazing.

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. 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, and he was just awaiting execution. And what he said to me was this. He said, “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.

The Pursuit of Truth and the Challenge of AI

STEVEN BARTLETT: I don’t know, I feel like I’m wired to try and have to solve these f*ing problems, these big questions. I have to figure them out or they’ll just sit there causing increasingly more confusion, which pops me right on that agnostic fence.

JOHN LENNOX: Yes, I would encourage you to concentrate on the one that you think is most important, one at a time. And I don’t know because I’ve only met you. I think what you’re doing by talking to people from different backgrounds and so on— 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. But I don’t think you will.

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, deepfakes, all the rest of it. I’ve been subject to it myself in the last month.

STEVEN BARTLETT: When you think about the impact that AI is going to have on human purpose, we talk a lot about job losses and—

AI, Consciousness, and What Makes Us Human

JOHN LENNOX: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: White-collar workers, entry-level roles, and then really everything else. 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 — I think Spotify announced this month that you’re going to be able to generate your own podcasts with AI. What is the high-level sort of 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 that we’ve not experienced before?

JOHN LENNOX: I think we just have to. I mean, I have children, grandchildren, and 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, but 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?

The Creeping Threat of Totalitarianism

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.

I read a very interesting report by a Chinese 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 educationist, 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, as you know. 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. We are coming rapidly into it. How do we know what is true and what isn’t?

A few weeks ago, I was contacted. Could a publisher 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, and it was a picture of me, but it was deepfaked all the way through — AI-generated material that I would never have said, all politicized and everything else.

Technology, Isolation, and Our True Human Nature

STEVEN BARTLETT: Is it conceivable that maybe so much of this technology has promised that it would make us more human and so much of it failed — it made us more isolated and lonely?

JOHN LENNOX: Oh, yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: 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? As in, being with each other in the real world and relationships. And is it conceivable that maybe we were never meant to sit in front of screens tapping buttons?

JOHN LENNOX: Oh, I think that’s absolutely true. It’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 guess — it’s a good point. I was thinking about this. I was thinking, is this the moment where we kind of regress back to how we used to live, our true maybe human nature? Is that what happens here? We spend more time with each other in the real world, because that’s very human. And my Maslovian needs of connection and touch and —

JOHN LENNOX: Yeah, yeah. Well, you can demonstrate that. Look at these groups of parents who have said to their kids, “Look, 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: 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. The machine? I think we do. 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.

STEVEN BARTLETT: We don’t understand it.

JOHN LENNOX: We can’t replicate it. Yes, you can’t replicate it.

Consciousness, Creativity, and the Limits of AI

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 go, “A mug.” Now the output is the same.

JOHN LENNOX: Yes, but the understanding is not there.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And why is that critical?

JOHN LENNOX: Well, because there’s a huge difference in being a machine and 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?

JOHN LENNOX: Yes, I know.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So here we have a picture done by a human.

JOHN LENNOX: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Which is a picture of a family and a dog. And then we have another picture here which is done by AI. And we have another picture here which is 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. You see, 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 is that?” it would say a child.

JOHN LENNOX: Yes, but it doesn’t know. Like we know.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And it goes back to the same question, which is, why does the process matter if the output is identical?

JOHN LENNOX: Well, 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 you see, the conscious side involves all that appreciation of life and nature and beauty and so on that we can see some meaning in. But also there’s another — there’s a consciousness of other people and there’s God consciousness. I don’t think AI is anywhere near that. Machines — there are certain things they 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 — that’s difficult mathematics and all the rest of it, and it’s highly controversial.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Why is it an important conversation to have — that it is conscious or not conscious — when the output is the same?

JOHN LENNOX: Yes, I can see the question. But 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. His stuff on AI is very strong. He thinks it’s really dangerous because it’s ruining all this side of the brain and the richness of human experience, and it’s in danger of destroying it. He actually invites people to come and fight with him.

What Makes Us Human

STEVEN BARTLETT: So in such a world, what is it that makes humans special? Is it those human things we talked about — relational?

JOHN LENNOX: Oh, I think so. Yes, absolutely. And the fact that you and I can have a conversation like this.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You can have this conversation with AI?

JOHN LENNOX: Not in the same way. AI is pretty thin still. You can have a conversation of sorts, but remember who’s responsible for its capacity?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Humans.

JOHN LENNOX: It’s something made in the image of humans. And that’s a dangerous thing. I’d prefer to remain with something made in the image of God.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s interesting because we’re getting to a point where there’s going to probably be some ethical questions around robotics.

JOHN LENNOX: Oh, they’re already here.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But I mean around robotics specifically. In the same way that many of us feel quite empathetic towards trees.

JOHN LENNOX: Yes, yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And we feel empathetic towards animals. Now trees haven’t got a brain. But just cutting down a tree needlessly, I think would annoy a lot of people.

JOHN LENNOX: It would annoy me.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah, it would annoy me too. And I think there’s almost going to get to a point where people are going to start asking similar questions around robots, which is an interesting question.

JOHN LENNOX: It is. It is.

Closing Reflections

STEVEN BARTLETT: Let me ask you a final question then — is there anything 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. And I’ve 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: 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.

STEVEN BARTLETT: John, thank you. One of the most compelling arguments for God that you’ve presented and your way of seeing the world and being is not actually necessarily anything you’ve written in your books or not necessarily anything you’ve said. It is actually you. And you have a certain peace and contentment that I rarely see in people that I interview, but I often see and 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.

JOHN LENNOX: Yeah. Wesley’s a bright cookie.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. He gave me the same feeling as you — just feels like a really happy person, very content, rounded, well-rounded.

JOHN LENNOX: There are many of us.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. But it seems to be a trend that a lot of the Christian apologists that I’ve interviewed have that anchoring that so many of us are looking for.

John Lennox: 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, I mean, you’ve written so many books, I don’t have all of them here, but I have a long list of them. But I highly recommend everybody goes and checks out your autobiography, which is your most recent works. It’s called John Lennox, and I’m going to 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. But also this wonderful— I mean, you wrote, if people are interested in the subject of AI, then I hope—

John Lennox: Then they should read 2084.

Steven Bartlett: I’ll link 2084 below as well. That’s 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity. And I highly recommend everybody goes and reads both books because 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.

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