Last night's live debate from the UAB campus between Richard Dawkins, well-known atheist and author of The God Delusion, and Dr. John Lennox, Christian apologist and scientist, both from Oxford University, was a mind stretcher. Christians would do well to critically evaluate atheist/agnostic viewpoints in order to sharpen their own apologetics skills.
Among their many points of discussion, I'll mention two. First, Dr. Dawkins made the point that faith is blind and science is evidence-based. Dr. Lennox countered that faith is clearly evidence-based and stated "It is the very nature of science that leads me to belief in God." Efforts to clarify the meaning of "faith" as an evidence supported belief system should be made by the Christian community.
Dawkins conceded "The origin of the universe is a genuinely difficult problem. Cosmology is waiting for its Darwin." In contrast, Lennox pointed to the uncreated God, producing a created cosmos which he described as exquisitely fine tuned. Then Lennox characterized as errant the idea promoted by atheistic naturalists, that incoherent, chaotic movement of particle matter has somehow self-organized into our fine tuned universe of ordered and information-rich biosystems. Logical coherence cannot result from logical incoherence, whether in physical systems or in our process of thought.
When the respectful debate was complete, it was obvious that contrasting worldviews separated the participants, not science. Once again, I encourage all Christians to pay attention to such exchanges in order to overcome misconceptions that the Christian faith is irrational and unscientific.
