AI as God, Deepfakes, and Consciousness | John Lennox

we need to be worried first of all about what the AI That's currently working about the ethical problems that leads to and they are very scary and the one that scares people most is deception we thought that when Christianity had been removed from the scene atheism would take over that's not true polytheism is taken over every person has their own God or is their own God and now we live in an age where there's a distinct danger of artificial Intelligence being treated as God remember that God in his wisdom has coupled intelligence with Consciousness now

people talk about creating a conscious machine but I I say what is consciousness nobody has the least [Music] idea professor John Lennox is a Meritus professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford he's debated and defended Christianity around the world against its critics including Richard Dawkins Peter Singer and the late Christopher Hitchens uh we've spoken before in fact uh one of our conversations with John about artificial intelligence the world in general and the place for Christian faith there been an extraordinarily pop popular uh recording that's now I think been viewed uh nearly two million times

so John it's a great pleasure to be able to talk to you again I'm a great admirer of yours and I'm enjoying very much being with you and having this opportunity to talk again no thank you very much John it's always a pleasure to chat to you because you come up with such intriguing questions that I am simp delighted to roll about in my mind so welcome to Oxford well it's it's great to be here I have to say and um so kick it off I noticed you've been talking to Jordan Peterson and uh uh

he's uh I think done us all the great service he's got us talking about things that matter again opened up subjects that were closed but having said that uh he's come to see a close connection between Christian ity and science rather than seeing the two as being uh hostile to each other uh it seems that he's suggesting that there's a change underway uh in terms of the old Christianity versus science debate I suspect you have a similar view I think that's true it's interesting the French have now got a word for it the great reversal

and they're talking about it which is quite remarkable for the French thinkers on the continent to be talking about a change in it well I think that what's happening to Jordan if I might put it this way is he's come into contact with history because anyone that looks at the history of the relationship between science and religion will be aware I would have thought that in the 16th and 17th centuries the Pioneers certainly in this part of the world of science start ing say with Galileo and then you've got Kepler Newton and so on were

all Christians essentially and I've been interested in this for years I came across this fact as a school boy it was drawn to my attention by someone who really led me into this whole field Red Clark of Cambridge and the best summary of the situation which I think Jordan Peterson has now grasped is by CS Lewis men became scientific because they expected law of Nature and they expected law of nature because they believed in lawgiver so there's a very close consilience between a true science and True Religion as I would put it and I'm delighted

to see a number of thinkers coming to that kind of conclusion like Peterson with science and religion and like people like Tom Holland with history and understanding the influence of the judeo uh Christian worldview on our entire culture our ethics our institutions and so on I think something is happening that I welcome I agree with you and in part this conversation I'd like to dedicate to to those good people who are noting that many intellectual and thought leaders who seemed so committed to an atheistic worldview only recently have now started to move something is happening

yes but I suspect there are a lot of good people out there who said well we thought all these bright people were saying Christianity's dead don't go there it's superstitious it's nonsense now they're saying we're revisiting our thinking where does that leave us I think there are a lot of people because it's we were talking this morning in a different context with Justin Bley about that slogan that was on the buses a few years ago a god he's probably not there so go and enjoy yourself which always seemed to be ridiculous for me you couldn't

they weren't able to say he's not be so that ought to immediately make you think perhaps he is I better investigate this yes but the second point is we've been living as though God doesn't exist and it's not working it's not playing out no it's not so we got a lot of people I always think who listening and thinking how do I work this through well I I think well you're in a position and so am I to a certain extent helping them to think it through but it's it's important to recognize it I think

one of the clearest examples of what's going on is I and hii Ali who started in Somalia as a girl grew up in a Muslim environment then they went to Holland she was very bright in the Dutch educational system ended up in mp and then joined the Richard Dawkins um new atheist Clan until we hear that last November or so she is declaring herself as a Christian now what was very interesting about that was the interview that was organized and has been broadcast between Dawkins and her and Dawkins approached and say you're not really a

Christian you haven't become Christian it's all baloney you see and by the time the interviews ended he said you are a Christian but it's still all baloney and I I thought the way she described her transition is something very interesting that I would like to pursue because what she said was I choose to believe that Christianity is true now she was against him piling in there's no evidence for these things and all this kind of thing she's feeling her way forward to a position of certainty but it was very interesting to put it that way

I choose to believe and I think she'd probably be a Beacon Light for a lot of people because she is created quite a stir to say the least uh I agree I agree now now back to this question of um atheism and Christianity CS Lewis you mentioned him more recently Alvin platina they've said that the real tension is not between science and Christianity it's actually between science and Atheism that's sort of turning it on his head what's the idea behind the idea that science and Atheism are well I subcribe to that I think it's absolutely

right and that is the way I formulate it because it really gets to people they see that I'm saying something that there is a real conflict out there but actually it is between science and Atheism and one of the ways that I approach that is the way that actually was developed by Lewis and plantinga but it goes back a long way and that that is the notion that what do we do science with and I have fun with many colleagues or people I meet I ask them scientists what do you do science with and they

say well I do it with my and they're about to say mind when they realize that uh it's not politically correct to believe in the mind is distinct from the brain so they say I do it with my brain so I say tell me the brief history of the brain well the brain is the end product of a Mindless unguided process and I just look at them and smile and say and you trust it and that creates a problem yeah because I actually push it and I pushed it with quite a few scientists they've all

given me the same answer I said look let's face it in your lab tomorrow You' be using your computer if you knew it was the result of a Mindless unguided process would you trust it and the answer has always been no I would not well I said you have a problem your understanding of the Genesis of the brain is conflicting with your whole understanding of the way in which science works and I put it quite bluntly I say you know it's serious enough to shoot yourself in the foot that's painful but to shoot yourself in

the brain is f is fatal and I I think that is an argument that has been picked up H and Lewis uh he put it slightly different way he said you cannot have an argument that says that uh arguments are invalid and that's really what you're trying to say here you're undermining rationality so you're not only undermining science you're undermining any argument whatsoever and therefore it it seems to me that plantinga is right Lewis is right and people have a problem and it's a huge problem because it results from assuming that a naturalistic interpretation of

nature is the only possible one to allow God in or to allow something nonnatural in would be heresy so I commit heresy all the time but it seems to me that people are beginning to grasp the point because they're fed up with materialism for other reasons it's an interesting observation isn't it uh that um it isn't enough that's what aan her you said she needed more yes there must be something more and I I fasten on that with people and you can list a number of these people you've mentioned I youve Jordan Peterson is another

Tom Holland is another there must be something more and that to my mind is a very good start to build on in the conversation what is this something more that's the next question but the fact that there must be something more is a very big step out of the mess we've got ourselves in by simply submitting ourselves culturally academically to a purely materialistic worldview I find myself wondering why we ever thought we could put down the Quest for truth you see our young people now go through universities where they're basically told there is no truth

it's all relative it's all situational but instinctively I think we know that the pursuit of Truth is important and of course in the end from a Christian perspective we believe that truth turns out ultimately to be a person that's right well it's silly to tell people there's no such thing as Truth for the very obvious logical reason that you're stating that as a truth yes and and is just foolishness and there is I would want to maintain that there's nobody that believes that there's no such thing as truth we all recognize truth ask a bunch

of people that say there's no truth to come to a meeting at 7:00 and they'll all be there because they believe the truth that the meeting's at 7:00 this kind of foolishness I think needs to be called out for what it is now there are people who are relative IST in terms of Ethics which is a slightly different thing um a friend of mine once said and I think he's right uh people usually say that they're postmodern and posttruth in areas that they don't hold to be important but in any area they hold to be

important they believe in truth yeah accuse them of crime and you see what happens yes they'll believe in truth all right that they're innocent and and I think sometimes it needs to be called out in that simple way because it's just a nonsense and you're absolutely right ultimate truth is not a proposition it is a person and when Jesus said I am the truth he was not merely saying I say true things although that is true he was saying that if you keep questioning it doesn't go back forever it stops with him that's a huge

claim but I think we need to bring it back into the foreground because it's the only thing that makes sense and because nothing's making sense anymore we've ended up being an despite our material wellbeing so very unhappy so anxious Des unhappy the anxious generation yeah and you would see it you've had a lifetime of interacting with younger people so you've seen the generations go through University um do you see now a greater openness amongst young people to perhaps revisiting these things oh yes oh I think so do you I mean I I'm always a bit

aware John a bit leery of generalizations uh because these are impan they're yes they're subjective Impressions but never thess I I think there is a greater openness and seeing the work of some of my younger friends around here who are excellent and thoughtful evangelists to young people the response level I feel is is really growing that young people want to hear something that's solid they they have no orientation in life they have no ultimate sense of meaning and purpose and that perhaps is a bigger question currently than questions of relationship between God and science Al

those those are still important and relevant the whole question of what does my life mean what what is my identity yes and that's exactly right yeah I think I I'm right in saying that you you yourself have said and I quote we can talk about the ethical foundations of science but we cannot talk about the scientific Foundation of Ethics that seems to me that a much greater brain than mine that was Albert Einstein oh really yes that was Einstein I didn't know that and the reason I quote that is simply to show that great scientists

realize that science is limited H and that's a hugely important thing um Richard feineman who also won the Nobel Prize in the states he said almost the same thing and it's it's hugely important I I think perhaps the best way of putting it is by uh someone who unusually is a hero of both Richard Dawkins and mine and that's sir Peter medir who who worked here and he said look it's very I'm paraphrasing it's very easy to see that the Natural Sciences are limited they cannot even answer the simple questions of a child where do

I come from where am I going and what is the meaning of my life and that's absolutely right they can't and it's relatively easy to illustrate that and there's a very interesting statement by a scientist uh EO Wilson brilliant enologist um that he made I think in 2009 where he said you know we have Paleolithic emotions medieval institutions and Godlike technology and it's very dangerous yes and then he goes on to say that until we answer the great questions that the philosophers used to deal with he's not quite right in this used to deal with

like where do I come from where am I going what's the meaning of life we're on very thin ground and he's saying something which I I found very interesting for someone who's been a confirmed atheist for a long time but that's absolutely right science is wonderful it's given us all kinds of brilliant technology but it's limited and it can't answer the existential questions that are the most important questions as you say I think there's something of a movement people are saying well empty materialism isn't enough and they may come to the point of saying well

perhaps there's a higher being uh yes I can accept the the idea of God's reasonable but there's more than that surely we need to know who he is oh yes of course and then the problem becomes people say well surely you don't believe that he personally reveals himself uh whereas I don't know that it's much use having a belief in God if you if you can't find out who he is absolutely and that comes out of the question of whether or not the Bible has a place yes it does but I I often go in

front of that to think about that unconscious assumption that Revelation and reason are opposed to one another and I I say and I use it to illustrate the previous thing I talk about Aunt Matilda's cake now Aunt Matilda's cake I think is something that is known by cricketers but not this version of it and that is I imagine that she's made this cake and baked it and she's very pleased with it and we submit it to all Nobel Prize winners for analysis and they give us physics chemistry biology all of this and we say thank

you very much for your 100 page treatises on this cake before you go tell us why she made it you physicist well I can't I can tell you what it's made of but not why she made it in fact none of them can tell us why she made it unless she reveals it now it's good to think about Revelation at the human level first because when when she reveals it by telling us that doesn't shut our reason off we use our reason to see if what she's talking about makes sense so she said I I've

made it for my uh cousin Jane and we know she has a cousin Jane that makes perfect sense and and therefore this argument that we get so much oh the Bible claims to be Revelation but we believe in reason that is a false opposition you use reason on both methods of Revelation that God has used to bring it back to that one is nature in the universe the heavens declare the glory of God you can read something off but not a great deal but that there is a God but now as to closer identification God

speaks and the Bible is a revelation but it's not opposed to reason we've got to use our reason even to read it and to understand it and I think that's really important because of this opposition that's been forced on so many people they think that once you use the Revelation word you have jumped over reason and you're negating it no you're not this a very uh formidable intellectually formidable uh Alex o Conor yes uh uh and he's an atheist of course he's pointed out that um some contemporary thinkers who've praised Christianity of late or at

least softened in their opposition to it so that would include even Richard Dawkins I think but certainly people but he softened in his opposition well he's calling himself a cultural Christian yeah but cultural Christianity enjoying singing Christmas carols at even song and so on well that's the point really and but denying and still forgive me still mocking the doctrines yeah and that's the serious bit he does not believe in the truth and rejects it so if he wants to soften people's reaction to I think it's it's cheating really because he is not a Believer uh

well now that leads to the point that I think that that that Conor is making as a fellow atheist uh that um the core teachings of Christianity are highly implausible and therefore very hard to believe uh and it comes back to this question of uh why is it reasonable or how is it that reasonable people can believe that the gospel is the truth well let's take one example the first one that comes into my head that fits your context I think if you take Tom Holland starting off as an atheist brilliant historian reading the ancient

world and believing to start with that all our cultural values came from either Greece or Rome but he starts reading more carefully and now he comes to the conclusion that they're not from Greece or Rome they're from the judeo-christian tradition but he goes further than that he said at the heart of that tradition and it it's actually a very moving passage where he describes uh his discovery of the meaning of the Cross of Christ at the center of this and the basic gospel he said something so strange and and so against any concept either of

Greece or romeas anything that could possibly yield something positive nevertheless lies at the heart of the Gospel that Paul preached and the passage where he describes that I I found incredibly moving so I think there is an example where he's coming to discover that actually the message when you look at it seems to be weak and miserable and all the rest of it but it deals with the fundamental human problem of guilt and if I might call it sin which no Utopia deals with which is why they all fail and it seems to me that

Tom's discovery of this is is hugely important if we can grasp that that actually there's sense to it when you look at it carefully that this message that was condemned um from one side of the Mediterranean to the other nevertheless turned out to be and I quote Paul the power of God unto salvation because it offered people something that they'd never been offered before and that was a sense of forgiveness a sense of identity in relation to God who created them in his own image and all of that comes up all together and I think

that that is something well worth pursuing what are the the roots of our even our institutions our education here we sit in Oxford what's its um what's its logo Domino Illuminati the Lord is my light and it was very interesting listening to the psychiatrist who's another one of these people who's seems to be moving um Ian migil Christ yes yes I've uh had a conversation with him recently did you talking about the left and right hemispheres of the brain absolutely well that is fascinating stuff now Ian of course I've had a conversation with him but

I've read his book uh the big one yeah is utterly fascinating because it seems to be that what he's turned up with is a left-brained solution to the demolition of materialism but he understandably doesn't like anything that involves Doctrine because Doctrine smacks of the left brain and he wants to move to the right brain and I want to say you need actually you need both which he at other heges that what he acknowledges that oh yes he does at one level yeah at one level because he says the high points in human history have been

the times when left and right have been in appropriate balance yes that's that's that's a very good way of putting it but he's another of these thinkers absolutely remarkable thinker I wouldn't want to misunderstand what he was saying to me but my impression was he was saying that at the very least the search for truth the search for the sacred you know the attempt to find something greater is critical of you to make your way in life yes he said the hardest chapter of this book to write was the book about the sacred and he

said explicitly we must make room for God but it was in Oxford not long ago and he gave a lecture where he met mentioned the logo of the University just in his last few words and pointed out that this is what we need to get back to it was it was a stunning end to to to what he was saying I find him extremely interesting and here we are another person who is is finding hard evidence that there is something more and his quantification of it in terms of the left and right hemispheres and the

way they communicate of course is absolutely fascinating and his analysis of culture and history that for centuries recent centuries we have so allowed the left side of the brain to dominate that we've all ended up in materialism and we know the value of everything and the meaning of nothing yes now now back to something you were saying that I really want to pick up on the alternative belief systems who want have a better word including the enlightenment yes have not really given us the capacity to cope with guilt and the need for forgiveness no they

don't well the enlightenment you know I think the underlying assumption is that if we're sufficiently enlightened we enlightened will we won't have problems with guilt because we'll be good but that's not the way it is so we've stop doing an understanding of guilt we've decried the need for forgiveness now we find I think many people are looking for forgiveness conscious that there there are problems in their life but we live in a culture that's forgotten the importance of forgiveness and how to do it I think that's absolutely right except in certain extreme cases like genocide

and so on where we have the Truth and Reconciliation committees and all that kind of where there've been extreme violence and all this kind of thing but on the general level of people they have a sense of guilt and they don't know what to do with it and I think the the current confusion and lack of orientation there's no compass needle to point you anywhere has left a huge emptiness and I was very interested in Reading uh a quotation from an economist um Deepak Li I think is his name and he is saying yes I

now know where it was Douglas muray quoted them deac Li said we thought that when Christianity had been removed from the scene atheism would take over and he said that's not true polytheism has taken over yes every person has their own God or is their own God ah and now we live in an age where there's there's a distinct danger of artificial intelligence being treated as God and we're in such a mess uh just appr propo of nothing in particular but again Douglas Murray something really captured my attention that in a Schools Board in California

they got the children praying to an Aztec god and the Aztec god they 20 prayers and these children it was mandatory that they repeat these prayers for their own benefit and they're to a god that demanded human sacrifice and that is documented and Murray is saying this is where this business is going just when you think you've heard it all along comes another story out of California yeah that that's absolutely right it is terrifying oh it is I I couldn't agree with you more now to come back that you just made the comment then you

know that in many ways young people have been encouraged to believe in themselves you're God over yourself you own your own body you own your own Destiny even to the extent it seems to me that there won't be some God out there who tells me whether I'm man or woman I'll decide the problem with being your own God I would have thought and I think it's producing a massive amount of misery I'm testing a theory of mine here with you is actually tied up with this idea that we're not up to the task of being

God because the the very way we're wired we're aware that we're not actually Godlike that we're flawed that there are failings but you can't pass judgment on yourself if you're your own God you see you have to be perfect so it must be somebody else's fault yes and I think this this leading to this problem this this deep it's in denial of the need to come to grips with your own failings your own sinfulness and seek forgiveness and R you haven't any Source what you've said remains me of Nature's famous statement if there were a

God I couldn't bear it not to be he yes and that's a that's a very profound statement people you know in the classical World it it goes back almost the tension if you could look at it that way between Socrates Plato and Aristotle that you had Plato and Aristotle Socrates sorry uh saying that all we need is education and that will sort us out we just need to get our heads in the right space and we'll be good and Aristotle very much like the Apostle Paul said no I I know all that but I don't

have any power to be good and we have this capacity for self analysis that leads us to be miserable but we've no power no solution and one of the dangers I think of the Contemporary world is we have this endless pallette of gurus giving us five or six laws or 10 or however many we need and that's all well and good but they don't give us the power and so that misinterpreted and taken the wrong way which is rarely the intention of the people that lay them down can make us more miserable still because we

can't keep these laws and for someone to come along and tell us no you can't keep these laws because there's a fundamental flaw and I want to give you the diagnosis of it that is too radical for many people but they're beginning to wonder whether there just might be something in that let's hope so and and and certainly you and I I know would want to encourage people to explore to think follow this through leads me to a question that's often troubled me uh and and it's this what do you say to somebody who says

I'd like to believe I want to believe what you believe but I just can't because that seems to me to be where Alex oconor is at yes well I I hesitate and trying to answer that because what do you say to someone is a generic question and it depends entirely as you know who that someone is where they're coming from and I want to ask a whole lot of questions before I would attempt any answer to that what what is it they can't believe let's start with some and spend time talking to them about what

it is that they cannot believe and often in that kind of situation it comes from well David hum taught us that the Miracles are impossible because we know the laws of nature well you can solve that kind of problem intellectually very easily I think Lewis solved it long ago but people don't listen to him but it may be something else they can't believe it because it would mean too radical a change in their lifestyle because it cuts at who they know they are and they don't want any change so they put up this barrier and

I feel I want to take everybody seriously and if they put up a question I take it seriously but the motiv ation behind the question can be wildly different and the statement so I'm at a loss as how don't know to answer that well I think what you said is actually very helpful um because it recognizes the reality that there could be any one of a number of reasons some of which the person might be owning and some of which they're in denial about yes that's right often the presentation will be I can't believe in

a God who allows suffering yes that's right I mean I think you hit of course on the hardest question yeah this is clearly the hardest question and it's the hardest question for any worldview yes and you know I some years ago I was in New Zealand and I got there two days after the earthquake and it was very interesting talking to people the range of ways in which they Tred to cope with it some people say saying bravely that even though the wind and the Sea rage I won't be moved quoting one of the Psalms

other people saying well it's their karma and hard luck on them but don't help even the survivors because you're making it more difficult for them in a life to come and other people say well there you go isn't it evident that there is no God at all suffering and pain are the hardest things I I think that certainly I find to deal with and I find it helpful though to observe that there are two perceptional standpoints on pain and suffering there's the person who's suffering their perception of it and there's a person that watches that

suffering is very different a cancer doctor sees the young woman's cancer answer very differently from the way in which she sees it so there's the participant and there's the Observer and we need to separate them and then of course there are at least two potential sources of it there's the suffering that people do to one another yes and then there's the earthquakes tsunamis cancers all that kind of thing and we need to tease them apart but it interests me that those that go down the atheist wrote they claim to have solved the problem and saying

that there is no God but if you notice what's happening here they may have satisfied themselves that they solve the problem they've removed the problem but simultaneously as I pointed out to a number of people in New Zealand amongst other places that they've removed all hope by definition and therefore there's an unsatisfactory thing there because human nature cries out in all of this for justice and I want to ask the question where it comes from you see if there is no God why should we bother about suffering it's just like the world is and Doin

almost takes that position you know oh he does yes it's a very heartless position in the end it's utterly heartless because you said it means apart from anything else there's no explanation for it it's just random it's just accidental well why does it hurt so much the other problem with it is it seems to me we at least if we believe and I certainly do and you do have the knowledge that it's it wasn't meant to be no and that one day the wounds will be bound up there's a hope oh I I think that's

absolutely true but in between I I think there's something we can say and that is as I have put it to many people that at the heart of Christianity whether you accept it or not perhaps you should just listen to what it claims before you throw it out is a God who suffered yes and the central claim of Christianity is that the one on the cross was God and you can ask then what is God doing on a cross well at the very least I want to argue at the very least he's not remaining distant

from Human suffering but is becoming part of it and there I see the window because the cross the clay is is followed by the resurrection and that's what gives me hope that Beyond The Suffering there is resurrection so I can bring hope to the young woman who's been given 3 months to live because of cancer I can't take the cancer way or the suffering but I can bring hope and that's where the difference is that Christ offers us something I often say he doesn't compete with any other religion at all because none of the others

offer us this a forgiveness and a hope for the future that doesn't depend on our own attempts to keep a a given set of laws but rather depend on what he's done because we can't keep those laws amen um one of the things that I think I've taken a long time to appreciate it goes to the heart of this that you you've mentioned this that that God experiences suffering he's not distant from it but it's the extent of that suffering yes it's it eclipses anything we've known if you stop and think about it atly rejected

totally alone when he's been falsely accused and we all know how cutting it is to be falsely accused subjected to an absolute sham of a legal process knowing mental and spiritual Agony and physical pain that is beyond our comprehension crucifixion having been flogged within an inch of your life so he knew he's not distant from suffering it's taken me a long time to see I I think in my life my walk just or to even begin to try and comprehend how real his willingness to take that suffering on Wars we can't say he doesn't understand

no we can't say he doesn't understand and often in my experience pastorally talking to people when you get to that point there's a dawning of awareness that this could mean something to me and could lift my burden and that's the amazing thing and once you come to the fact that God raised him from the dead and that actually tells you that that suffering was Way Beyond mere human suffering it did something that enables God to receive me and forgive me that's big stuff when people begin to see it and it's often when conversion begins in

my experience so the hardest problem often becomes the Gateway into a lifelong solution where people find the Bedrock at which they can build their lives and not be afraid this is an important point it's a very profound thing that you say this as a mathematician you're saying to us as a scientist of enormous reach and standing that the resurrection is not only critically important we can be confident that it actually happened this really goes right back to the issue doesn't it that um science it's a very GLI thing to say that science disproves God know

when someone of your standing don't be embarrassed says yes I believe the resurrection actually happened and I want to stand by it in the sense that many people in my position are use the argument that they used I can't believe that and when you say why can't you well David hum centuries ago he he showed that Miracles violate the laws of nature and therefore end of story you can't come to me with a resurrection story and I say to them just a minute you're confusing categories which actually Hume confused very badly uh and I have

that from the greatest interpreter of Hume um the philosopher in Reading who wrote many books on human was really one of the great atheist of his day whose name I've forgotten just for the moment it'll probably come back um but in high old age he came to believe there was a God and wrote about it and the simple thing is leis pointed it out long ago and I think it's absolutely brilliant I wish it's one of those arguments I wish I'd thought of um that this notion of violating laws of nature is not what occurred

at the resurrection you see violating laws is legal language but you see the laws of nature are not legal things at all they're our descriptions of what normally happens let me give you an example if I have a ball here and drop it Newton's law of gravitation will say it falls towards the center of the earth that doesn't stop you reaching out and catching it because the circumstances have now changed something has intervened it doesn't break Newton's law it simply tells me that something else must have come in and Lewis has got this wonderful story

so suppose I'm staying in London over night couple of nights stay and I place £100 in the drawer on a Friday night they do the same on Saturday night so 100 + 100 is 200 then uh on Sunday morning I wake up open the drawer and there's only 50s in it now what do I say do I say the laws of arithmetic have been broken or the laws of England and Lewis's point is I say the laws of England have been broken how do I know that because the laws of arithmetic have not been broken

it's very simple but it's very powerful and shrew in other words the fact that I know that the laws of arithmetic say 100 + 100 = 200 under normal circumstances unless somebody puts their hand into the drawer so my mistake was to think that the system of the bedroom the drawer was a closed system of cause and effect and what I've discovered to my pain is it wasn't I've lost 150 quid and Lewis then ramps that up onto the Scale of the Universe and says that when God feeds a new event into nature doesn't break

any laws when God turns water into wine it make you drunk if you drink too much of it according to the law of nature but it's the the resurrection is not the ordinary laws of nature working and pushing Christ out from the tomb no it's God feeding a new event in his power comes into what is not a closed system but an open system God designed the universe and here comes the irony of the whole thing if we didn't know how the universe normally worked we'd never recognize a miracle if we saw one yeah we

need to know the laws so a Christian like me doesn't deny the laws of nature I rejoice in them I used to enjoy teaching Newton's law and how you deduce uh the shape of the planetary orbits from it and all the rest of it I I loved it but the point is that God having created the universe to work that way is perfectly at Liberty to feed a new event in and that's what he did when he by his power raised Jesus from the dead we often talk about the resurrection of Jesus but actually what

scripture says he was raised from the dead there's the active ingredient of God's power coming in from outside and so I say to people you know science has nothing to say against that whatsoever so I can accept that uh provide did that now we've got over the ininal argument that Medicals cannot happen because science forbids them then you come to the next question which is the historical question is there any evidence that one did happen and that brings you of course the historical evidence of the resurrection of Jesus which uh most of us have investigated

many times in our lives and done the forensic type of analysis that brings you to the sense that it is by far the best explanation of what the facts about it are but that's a big discussion as you know important one but for now the last time you and I talked I think you made the point very powerfully I've never heard it put more eloquently I'll see if I can summarize it that instinctively we seek for immortality yes it's actually provided for because we can share in that Resurrection yes but we go looking for it

in all sorts of other ways including transhumanism right which you've described as yet another dangerous pursuit of um immortality in a way that's not likely to work as I understand it yes I'd just like to go back to that for a moment just recap transhumanism uh what is it well transhumanism is the view that that we are going to by our brain power engineering everything else move humans up a stage and really into what is better described as a posthuman stage and there are all kinds of scenarios either that we enhance human beings by implants

by adding to them various Mechanical Devices biological devices all the rest of it so that we actually in the end according to some scenarios merge with the machines and we become superhuman entities with vastly greater intelligence and potential and all this kind of thing than we do why with feelings of sadness or depression oh oh yes we we conquer well the first thing that Harari is one of the main people driving this youal do Harari he's not a scientist he's a historian but he has got a lot of Leverage because he's in influences the public

a lot in his book homad and quite frankly what he's trying to do or trying to suggest we do is turn humans from Beasts into gods and he thinks that can be done the search for immortality it's a search for immortality but when I meet people like that and they lay out this program for me I just say you're too late and that puzzles them they say we haven't got there yet how could we be too late I say but look the problem of physical death was solved 20 centuries ago when Jesus was raised from

the dead it was actually solved earlier than that when he raised someone from the dead and as for transhuman uploading and all the rest of it well the greatest uploading is going to come when Christ returns and speaks and all those who believe in him will be taken up from the grave and live permanently with him in a new world which will absolutely out chain any conceivable Utopia you've ever thought of because it would be on a moral basis so that it seems therefore to me that that transhumanism that desire for immortality is is pushing

back the pages of history back to you shall be as Gods knowing good and evil if you disobey God and the key answer to that is no the way to transcend if you like the all the problems of this life is to obey God in his word and you will discover there The Secret of eternal life so it's it's it's a parody of the Christian message and that's why it's so attractive it's so near the truth we'll turn you into the gods well people are attracted by that and you know some of these very wealthy

people have Frozen their brains and their bodies and the hope that we have solve this problem in a few years uh before the ice runs out on the freezing mechanism so that they can be uploaded into some um permanent Eternal State and they don't see that this is being offered to them and the big difference is that the Christian message is a message of two things not one it's repentance face the mess we've made of our own lives first and the mess sadly that we may have made of other people's lives and bring that to

God who is prepared to forgive us if we face it and trust him and why should we trust him well the evidence is there now since you and I last spoke was H about it's probably been moved on a long way by the extraordinary developments in AI mhm and what looks like on the one hand an almost Limitless possibility for developing artificial intelligence Way Beyond the simple if multifactored sort of intelligence that we were talking about a couple of years ago to perhaps even genuine artificial intelligence but more than that I think we're truly frightened

too by where this might end up where do you see since we last talked over the last couple of years the whole AI thing has gone and is going yes well because of that uh extremely rapid accelerated Development I've actually written a new book which in a sense replaces 2084 it's twice as long which rather indicates in the past four years things have changed and there are really scary things about it I I think this would be the beginning of another conversation really but one of the the main issues I think is to realize what

someone said recently was we need to be worried first of all about what the AI That's currently working about the ethical problems it leads to and they are very scary and the one that scares people most is deception now this is what I'm talking about here are deep fakes yes and you as a former politician will know how risky that is and here we are in 2024 when roughly half the world is going to the vote in elections of one kind or another the potential of that is so scary that the five eyes that is

Australia New Zealand Canada UK and USA they're top security people have been discussing this and it's very interesting that the thing that worries them most is deep fake impersonation and quoting one of them people will billions of people will have no idea what the truth is now that is serious stuff and that concerns me because that's the world that my grandchildren are going to grow up in and yours too and it it is really scary and that is not the Sci-Fi stuff of creating a super intelligence whether that ever happens or not there's no sign

of it yet that's the stuff that we are already deploying and I I just I'm amazed reading uh the Douglas Murray's book War on the west that here in the west we're decrying ourselves and doing ourselves down and we're told to do that you must respect every culture other than your own there's no other culture in the world that's doing that no and that leads to a very dangerous situation that where we criticize the human rights in China among the Wagers and the the Society of surveillance there is just terrifying what's happening they just say

well look what about your own record you yourselves are saying that you're rotten to the core historically that is a very worrying development to my mind and it's the stuff that's already working let alone anything that could happen in the future uh which I think is of less concern because it has a huge amount of speculation attached to it remember that God in his wisdom has coupled intelligence with Consciousness now people talk about creating a conscious machine but I I say what is consciousness nobody has the least idea and who Consciousness yes they I mean

they're talking hot air quite frankly we don't know what it is which is an amazing thing we all know that we're conscious but what is consciousness well if you don't know what it is you're certainly not going to be able to build it and there are lots of reasons for thinking that that is likely to be logically impossible but that's again another development what has really I think alarmed me in the in the last four years is first of all the intrusion of surveillance technology and its sophistication it is very sophisticated now and the danger

of the argument you want peace and safety will you give up your freedom which is being used frequently all over the place and all the ethical problems created by narrow AI uh in that area of surveillance but also in the quality of the impersonation stuff I it a deep fake made of and they showed it to me it was so convincing it was scary that is terrifying and it just costs a few dollars you know to to to make and what are our children being led into with many educational establishments full of all kinds of

very strange relativistic woke everything else Notions where truth is getting pushed to the edge and you can believe what you like one aspect of this that is even adds to my concern is um I think it was one of the leading five eyes observers of this you mentioned the five eyes I said one of the great problems is that we might want to put some sensible limitations ourselves on AI yes but if bad State actors don't and have they developed technology which we've were not able to match yeah so we've got to keep on developing

it yeah so we become Bad actors potentially ourselves the concept of a bad actor is a very interesting one we used to call them evil people but now they're bad actors well as you say it's a whole new area of conversation and a very concerning one so um I would say this I hope uh this conversation for those who hear it becomes a teaser if you like for your book when's it you out it's youw out in November well we'll look forward to it John you've been very generous with your time your insights are invaluable

uh and I salute you well thank you so much for such an interesting conversation as always John thank you keep well and you [Music]