Episode 2 The Big Questions

Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to The Big

Questions from the Pyramid in Warrington. I'm Nicky Campbell. Now,

this is the Christian season of Epiphany, which is all about God

revealing himself to us, just as the Christ child was revealed to

the Three Wise Men. But, as the frontiers of science advance faster

and faster, less and less is regarded as the work of God. So,

this morning, we're asking just one very big question.

Is there any evidence for God? On our front rows, we have some

extremely distinguished scientists, Bible scholars, writers, men of the

cloth. People whose experiences have changed their own minds about

God. And they'll be cheered on and challenged by our very lively

Warrington audience. At CERN, they're closer to

confirming the existence of the Higgs Boson, the missing particle

that would confirm the Big Bang Theory of how the universe came

into being. Last month, the Kepler Space Mission discovered a planet

in another galaxy, far away, where life, but not as we know it, could

conceivably exist. It's a rather different story to the one in

Genesis. Is there any evidence for God?

Dr Andrew Pinsent, eminent physicist. A man of the cloth, as

well. Now, you accept the cosmology, you see the beauty in the cosmology.

You accept it, evolution, how we came to be. And you believe in God.

Yes, indeed. And, in fact, it's interesting you mention the Big

Bang Theory. Two of the most important theories of modern

science. One is the Big Bang, and the other is genetics. It's so

often a surprise to many people, they were both invented by men of

the cloth. George le Maitre, the inventor of the Big Bang Theory,

was a Catholic priest from Belgium. Gregor Mendel, the founder of

genetics, was a monk. So clearly, they didn't see any intrinsic

problem or a conflict between science and religion. There's one

other thing about this story most people don't know. Both theories

were rejected in the Soviet Union, the world's first atheist state.

They were banned for a number of decades. So, it's interesting

people think there's an intrinsic conflict. But the lesson of history

is often rather different. There is this God of the Gaps idea,

though, isn't there? We used to think lightning was caused by God,

and thunder and earthquakes. Now we know it's tectonic plates.

Evolution is a good example. We know about speciation, and all the

many species that we have. And also the plane of the spheres. Newton

put that down to God. We now know it was to do with gravity. And yet,

the problem is, if you ascribe anything to God, once science finds

out how, what did cause it, God is gone.

No, it depends how you think God interacts with the world, and your

image of God. So I think some people used to think God was like a

watchmaker and doing every fine detail. But the image in a lot of

mainstream Christianity is much more that God is like a gardener,

cultivating the world. And allowing the world to develop through its

own causation and changes. And that idea about how God interacts with

the world was a very important fact for the origins of modern science.

APPLAUSE. The eminent scientist, intelligent

people who believe in God. Peter Atkins. What are you missing? What

are you not getting, here? I think there's a huge amount of

evidence for God in the natural world.

APPLAUSE. The other, the second part of that

remark is that it's evidence for lazy minds. What we have to look at

is the surge that science has made in our understanding of the world.

For thousands of years, people lay back and said: "Oh, God must have

done it." in a sense, that was good, because they were questioning and

looking for answers. But they were going down the wrong path. 300

years ago, and it really is only 300 years. And think of the

progress we've made in that time. Mankind, to its great credit,

stumbled on the scientific method. And all the great questions of

existence, which were being answered or being probed by

religion, suddenly became open to the scientific method. It's quite

extraordinary what progress we're making. Not one iota of that

progress needs to call upon the concept of God. So God is driven

right back into virtually a point we don't need him anymore.

APPLAUSE. What, then, Dr Andrew Pinsent, can

only be explained by God? Well, certainly, I reject a God of

the Gaps. In that case, like Peter Atkins. But I think, nevertheless,

civilisations that have believed in God have often been very interested

in the big questions, and the search for ultimate causes. And

science owes them a debt. Yes. Can I just finish? But of

course, in civilisations which return to materialism, which have

turned to saying there is no God and there's nothing other than the

material world. They only measure goods by material things. So a lot

of universities now are under attack because they're regarded as

doing a lot of useless things. Why aren't they generating stuff for

industry, for business and so on? And, unless we keep alive an idea

that we're searching for things which are immaterial for the big

questions, then we won't actually also make progress in science, as

well. But, you mentioned The Big Bang?

And that's a very, that's a material happening.

You prefer a society in which people believe in God. You're not

actually suggesting there is any evidence for God. If you look at

the question in an anthropological way. In other words, you look at

the way in which human beings organise themselves. There is a

practically universal demand for a causal story, a foundation myth

which differs from place to place. And which are usually, actually,

mutually exclusive. They can't all be true, because they depend on

their components, which are exclusive to themselves. And then,

also, a religious dimension in order to create some form of

cultural practices which regulate society. Morality. Which is

morality, ethics and so on. A lot of which predates the organisations

of modern states to do that kind of thing for you. In other words, the

evidence is that man creates God, and continues to create God.

Charles Foster. APPLAUSE.

Morality comes from the fact, according to David and many people,

that it was advantageous to us, as a tribe. And so we formed rules

which stopped us killing each other. And then we survived and we bred.

David's absolutely right. We all need a creation myth. The fact that

we want that, the fact that we need it is, itself, a tremendously

suggestive thing. You might want to ask yourself, more cogently than

you have, why that should be the case? The search for origins

suggests that there might be an origin beyond ourselves. In

relation to the quest for morality. The strangest and, for biologists,

most puzzling of all things about the natural world is the kindness

of strangers. The fact of altruism, which is everywhere in the world.

Now, there are lots... APPLAUSE.

There are lots of attempts by biologists to explain this curious

fact away. So, kin selection, for example. The notion that, if I'm

sufficiently closely related to you, I will die in order to save you, in

order to carry on in the gene pool. It might be in our interests.

Now, of course it's perfectly true ,that once you've got altruism and

cooperation seeded into a community, it confers a massive selective

advantage. The question which you need to address yourself to is, how

did natural selection allow that seed to be planted in the first

place? Natural selection is very effective in going around, stamping

on the seeds of altruism. Before they jump up.

No, it's not a seed. In the first place, it's a gradual growth of

usefulness. So there's no seed planted. But you suddenly discover,

you make a mistake. What you think is, perhaps, a mistake, and it

turns out to enhance your survival. And that gets welded into, into the

ethological system. Peter, I'm sure, I'm sure that you

know how dismal the existing biological explanations for

altruism are. Doesn't mean to say that they're

wrong. It implies, in the case of

reciprocal altruism, for example, the notion that I scratch my back

because you're scratching your back. A tremendously sophisticated

calculation of benefit and detriment.

Let me bring Diana in, here. You're an evolutionary biologist. And this

is just your area. This is my area. So there is a

great deal of evidence about kin selection, about reciprocal

altruism. But we're involved in very small scale societies in which

every interaction was face-to-face. And certainly, if you look at

biblical texts, if you look at other religions, it's perfectly

fine to kill out group members. But it's not OK to kill in group

members. And if you look at how people act towards one another, in

one-off interactions, people aren't very nice. There's a lot of

reinforcement in society. And punishment for people who aren't

nice to each other. Society, and the rules of society, have been

built around our evolved psychology which enables altruism to be

possible. For instance, in the military, brothers in arms. That is

a way of leveraging kin selection to make people altruistic. And the

whole idea that you were saying before, that biology, the fact that

we all have an origin story means that there must be something true

about it. Well, I think this chair is solid.

But now physics has shown that there's a tremendous amount of

space between, between atoms. The smartest species on this planet are

all social group species. And what happens is, you have to get smart

in order to be able to infer the mental states of other animals. Now,

if you take that and try to explain the world that way, you will think

that there's a universal consciousness that governs the

world. So what we're doing is we're using our mind, which is like a

hammer, to see the world like a nail. Our mind is good at inferring

consciousness. Therefore we're inferring consciousness in the

world. APPLAUSE.

Charles. You've given a very compelling account of how, once the

notion of altruism exists in a society or a community of any sort,

it can generate and proliferate. What you've failed to give is an

account of how it was seeded in the first place. And that's what I'm on

about. Everything was by mistake. Everyone

drifts into doing something. And sometimes that something turns out

to enhance survival. Everything in biology is a mistake.

How did we discover a cup of tea? How do you, how do we imagine that

the first cup of tea, as we now know it, came to exist? It came to

exist by a whole series of really absurd accidents. There's nothing

obvious about the tea plant that says: "take this, infuse it with

water, add some milk to it and, if you like, a little bit of sugar

from a completely different plant." let's just concentrate on this idea.

Consciousness, for example. The late, great Christopher Hitchens, a

great atheist thinker. He said, I remember it, I saw him in YouTube

saying that there's only something like half a chromosome difference

between us and the chimps. But that half chromosome is just a

fantastically significant, amazing difference.

It means chimps can go to war with one another. But within their own

in group, it's very rare that they kill each other. They kill monkeys

to eat. But they don't have our levels of

consciousness and art and morality. They don't have our level of

consciousness, but you could say: "why don't they all kill each

other?" They must have been endowed with God with an altruistic

motivation. Ants will sacrifice themselves for the greater good of

the colony. They must have been endowed by God with an altruistic

motivation. People didn't understand how you social insects

worked until very recently. Just because we don't understand how

altruism might have been seeded in our human species doesn't mean that

it has been endowed by anyone else. That is a great example of a God of

the Gaps argument, the altruism argument.

They don't talk about things that they can't see. Our consciousness

is extraordinary, isn't it? Yeah, but that's because it's grown

with time. And I think what you have to do is to look, also, at the,

the same question comes into the question of the origins of morals,

and I think, to understand the ethical system, you can either say

God set an example, or you can say, look back over our evolutionary

history to see what infrastructure has emerged, but then couple that

with our big brains and our ability to reflect, under certain

circumstances, on the consequences of our actions. So the, there's

nothing mysterious about it. It, it's really the emergence of

understanding that we're talking about.

Adam Deen, Muslim philosopher. think appealing to evolution to

answer this question, if God exists, is a red herring, because it

commits the genetic fallacy, which is to invalidate a view looking at,

analysing how it originates. It will not enlighten us on whether

God exists or not. And one could even argue that atheism can be

explained for psychological reasons. We can say that they have father

issues and they see God as the father figure and they want to deny

God's existence. Would be true some atheists. It wouldn't enlighten us

if God exists or not. What's what's the big, the greatest piece of

evidence that you can bring to the table, today? Well, for, for me,

personally, I, I think the origin of the universe. I think if we

probe the observable universe, we will find transcendent signposts.

Science will never be able to explain We have probed the universe

Science will never be able to, uh, explain how something can come from

nothing. Why, why not? Because science only works in a physical

realm. It can only explain to you how one physical process can happen

with, to, to another physical process, governed by natural law.

The Big Bang, if I may finish, is the literal origin of all space and

time. Now, suppose, whilst we are speaking, now, you hear a, a loud

bang. You're wrong. You hear a loud bang, and then we ask the question,

"what caused that bang?" and Peter says, "it happened by itself." No-

one is going to accept that. That would be an unintelligible response.

But the same reason applies to The You see, this is a typical

anthropomorphic argument. What you're doing is you're saying, we

understand, in this universe, that A causes B, B causes C, and so you,

you trace it back and you trace it back to a time, if you can use that

expression, before the laws of science actually existed. It is

improper to extrapolate your experience of causality in this

universe to before when the universe existed. It's so naive.

then, how can you then argue... Adam come back. So then, how can

you argue that science will come with, with an explanation of how

the universe comes into existence? If there are no laws, there's no

physical reality. Look how far science has come with understanding

the nature of the universe. Back to a trillionth of a second after the

Big Bang, in the past hundred years, compared with the progress that the

likes of you... Made, I speak kindly, over the past three

thousand years. But to suggest that, that science will explain something

from coming from nothing. That's worse than magic, Peter. You're

advocating magic. So this is the We, as rational beings, we know

that whatever begins to exist needs a cause, and the universe began to

David Aaronovitch. Well, I mean, it just, as straightforward, and on a

logical basis, if some, everything has to have a cause, then something

will have had to have created the thing that caused the cause. That's

the character understanding of the argument, actually. So actually, so

actually, you end up, you end up in exactly the same position as

anybody else does, with the fact that you don't actually know. The

difference between us is that you have a great kind of collection of

intuitions which people have come and caused arguments, a little bit

like my belief that if I listen to Tottenham Hotspur on the radio,

they will lose. This is my superstition, or my daughter's

belief that those, that those strange things on the pavement, if

you walk on them, it will cause you bad luck or any other kind of

superstitions. You require a causal link and you have attached to that

an incredible superstructure of religious and cultural thought

which you adduce to be true. Now, by and large, that is no great

problem to me, and so on, but it is a great problem to you. Francesca,

biblical scholar. Thank you. It illustrates, I think, this major

misunderstanding about what, the main western monotheistic faiths

and their creation stories are all about. What we're dealing with, it

seems to me, are Muslims, Jews and Christians in a modern,

contemporary, western, intellectualised mindset who want

to engage with science and want to engage with telescopes that look

deep, deep, deep into the universe past, but the fact is that their

religion and their, their faith commitments are based on ancient

texts from ancient societies... Which is supported by modern

Can I finish? Can I finish? You may. Thanks. These texts weren't

produced by societies that were ever interested in an original

question, where are we all from. Some of them. Not, no, not even in

the Koran. I mean, to be honest, a lot of these traditions that are

about creation... Sorry, what's in the Koran? A lot of these

traditions about creation don't image creation as a one off event

at the beginning of time. No, it does, actually. God speaks about...

It shows creation as happening over and over and over and over again.

Mohammed, what is your, the greatest, Mohammed Hatatit, what is

your greatest piece of evidence that, that you can adduce for God?

Yeah, before that, let's talk about the big... No, the Big Bang, can I

please, yes? The Big Bang, because to say that there, theories like

the Big Bang is in the Asian books, that's not true. The Big Bang is

not mentioned in either the Old or the New Testament it's only

mentioned in the Koran. The difference in the Koranic Big Bang

and the scientific Big Bang is as follows. The Big Bang, in science,

in modern day science, is a bang that happened to, when the whole

universe was a single entity that exploded. The Koran tell us that

the whole universe was a single entity and then God caused it to be,

it to explode but with controlled. It was controlled explosion. So

this controlled explosion leads to known results. What every other

explosion we know, every bang we know leads to destruction and no

known results. So when we bang the Hiroshima, no new... Dr Andrew

Pinsent, you're a physicist. Is he right? I can't comment, I'm, I'm

not a Koranic expert, so I can't comment on whether the big bang...

On the physics, though. I think, the key point, the, the key

battleground about evidence for God using reason is, is really nearer

philosophy more than science. Now, science shades off into philosophy

at some point, but that's where the real battleground is. So it's

slightly, people tend to argue past one another a little bit when it

comes to just science alone. isn't that idea of the cosmological

constant. This number, this tuning that has to be right within

something like a hundred and twenty decimal places. Is that not a real

problem for you, Peter? Oh yeah, absolutely. It's a real problem and

we think we understand the nature of it, as well. The point about

scientific approach to understanding the origin of the

universe is that it... The fine tuning of the universe. It

simplifies the kind of questions that one should ask in the

expectation of getting answers, and one of them is the fine tuning.

Another is to say, well, a lot of energy had to be made at the

inception of the universe how much energy was made? And science, what

science does and what religion does not, is to provide an answer to

that second question, and it says the amount of... No, no, wait, wait,

let Peter finish. The amount of energy that had to be created at

the beginning was absolutely zero. So if you extrapolate that to the

amount of work that God had to do at the time, you can see that he

didn't have to do anything at all. What science is doing is really

just getting to the core of what actually happened on day dot.

this is kind of a false dichotomy, here. If you're an atheist, you're,

you, you somehow support the progress of support. If you're a

theist, then you want to quash it. Nno, that's not the case. He's a

scientist. He understands science. They accept evolution. Absolutely.

So what we're saying here, as a theist, what we're saying is that,

as a theist, we hold that the universe has an origin and the

universe was, fine- tuned for the existence of intelligent life. And

anyone who holds that falls within mainstream science. Of course these,

achievements are tentative, and they're open to change, but at the

current moment, everything points to God. No, it doesn't, because

there are thousand, there are many explanations of why, life, it, I,

why the universe is fine tune for, for, for life. One point is that a

universe couldn't come into existence except with the

fundamental constants that we've now got and... Why were they fine-

tuned? And it has, it is just a happy accident. Did we just get

lucky, then? Another one, which is actually gaining ground, is the...

So we have chance of the gaps, rather than God of the Gaps. Please

be quiet while I'm answer, trying to, to put you right. But there are

trillions and trillions and trillions of universes, each with,

maybe, a different mix of fundamental constants... That's

just... And it is not in the least surprising that one of these turns

out to be appropriate for life. know, Diana, you're desperate to

get in, but, and you can, you can address this questions as well.

Let's move on to God in our everyday lives. I mean, that was

fascinating, but God in our... David, I'll get you to answer this

question. There are moments, and we all have them, when we look at

someone we love and we just feel elevated. We feel a sublime

transcendence. I saw it when Peter was looking across at Adam, there.

A sublime transcendent moment and, or we see something utterly

beautiful and we feel something incredible. Some people think that

is when we're close to God. Yeah, I don't, I've heard this a lot. I

mean, I was recently in hospital and I went bonkers for four days. I

had four days of delusions. Those delusions, to me, were utterly and

completely real. The mind is an absolutely extraordinary thing, and

it's hugely, varied. It's incredibly evolved, and it is far

more flexible than people believe. It is incredibly sociable. But that

feeling of sheer love and transcendent beauty, that's...

Sometimes, you know, you, sometimes you feel that. Sometimes you feel,

"My God, it's a horrible, bloody rainy day and I wish I wasn't going

out in it and that person is really getting on my nerves," and so on.

But the moments we don't talk about and so why should we ascribe God to

the moment when we feel that kind of moment of love and not God, also,

to that moment where we feel pretty crappy, for instance, which is also

quite a lot of the things that we feel. I don't feel the need, in a

sense, in other words, when I feel good, to think, "I feel really good,

somebody must have given that to me." "Oh, I feel really bad,

somebody must have given that to me." I'm not just talking about,

it's not just feeling good, is it? I think, in practise, for many of

us certainly for myself a sense of awe in studying the cosmos is often

the beginning of, uh, a movement towards, towards, a faith. And

certainly for myself, studying certain objects in mathematics and

science particularly particle physics um, gave me an

extraordinary sense of order. What's interesting to me is why you

need that. Now that's not enough to convert someone, but often it's

enough to start moving someone. For me, personally, it's not just the

sense of awe, but also the sense of the fruitfulness in the world and...

But what about death and the famine and the disease and, and the murder

and all those things? Well, I'm talking about the, the fruitfulness,

the fruitfulness of faith in so many areas in art, and in music,

and in particular, the lives of the saints coz every now and again, we

produce extraordinary individuals, who, I suppose, and then I'm

putting on my theologians hat, who sort of show, show the face of God

in some way or other. And that's amazing. But we produce

extraordinary individuals in a lot of places, don't we? We produce

lots and lots of, in fact, many, many more extraordinary individuals

who are not saints, don't we? Martin Luther King was no saint but

he was an extraordinary individual. He was certainly no saint. Well,

lots of people across the room have been talking about the idea that

The Big Bang and so, some of science, that God might be guiding

this and I just think, if God is somehow guiding evolution and the

development of the earth and all the planets, could he not have

guided it in a way that had a little bit less and that didn't

have motor-neurone disease and cancer and all these other things?

Why is that, pastor? You address this issue, don't you, don't you?

Why did God, God create, you know, E-coli and horrible diseases, the

parasites that burrow into the eyes of children in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Why did God create those things? Well, I believe that God exists,

but there's also, we need to look at, the argument from the idea of

the spiritual side. You don't just look at the physical side. If we

argue from just the physical side, we have a truncated, view of

reality and of the world, because there is a spiritual reality.

There's also a physical reality, OK? And so the evil that we see in

the world, according to what I, what I know from the biblical

record is that there is an evil. Evil is real. There is Satan, there

is a devil. Why do children get leukaemia, why do... Illness and

sicknesses and evil are coming to the world because of sin. Because

of sin? Because of sin. There is no sin is God. God is pure. So is God

punishing us for, for... You don't like this, Stephen, do you? No, I

don't, and, I'm, and I'm unhappy on two fronts. First of all, that,

those, if you like, who are opposed to God are trying to put my

understanding of God into a particular box where he's got

anthropomorphic caricature, character, where he's a, a guy in

the sky, almost. And I'm not interested in that, at all.

Secondly, there is a desire, somehow or other, to make God into

somebody who directly intervenes in the world day by day and does

things to people. No, he doesn't. That's not the way in which my

understanding of ultimate reality... How on earth did atheists get the

impression that religious people believe that? Because some

religious people do believe that, and some other religious people

don't believe that. Does he answer prayers? He does. Does he answer

prayers? In the way I which I understand God acting, yes he does,

because he works within me to en, enable me to be, perhaps be a

better person than, actually, I am. He does answer prayers. He works

through the arrows, in a sense, of goodness, truth, beauty, love,

which are the way in which make up that ultimate reality which I

understand to be God. Lady, ladies and gentlemen, meet the Reverend

Kim Goh who was put in, he was in, a former triad gangster. He's now a

Methodist minister. He went to prison, 357 counts. Put your hands

together for him. He found Jesus. And Jesus changed your life. The

first time you were in prison... Amen to that. God, God spoke to you,

didn't he? Yes, he sure did. Literally? And I wasn't looking for

religion. The last thing I want to know is Christianity, God. Look

after number one. But guess what, I saw him and he spoke to me. It's

just like an atheist. What you believe in? Can I pose that

question to you, David? What does atheist believe in? Well, no, I

don't believe there's a God. It's an absence of a belief. Atheists

don't believe in anything, right? I didn't interrupt you when you speak,

please. You wanted to. Atheists believe in nothing. Is it still

something they believe in? Nothing. When you say God spoke to you, what

do you mean? Did he literally, did you hear his voice? Yes, just like

you and me talking, and I thought I was hallucinating. What does he

sound like? Like we're having a conversation. What language was he

speaking? English. He was speaking to me in English. No, it wasn't

loud. It's not thunder and lightning. It's like a normal

conversation. What, what did he say? Well, because I wa seff'ing at

him because of the vicar, or the chaplain and, then he said, "why

are you swearing at me?" And I thought for a moment, one of the

other convicts in the, over there was a ventriloquist. Which he might

have been. So I was about to arrange their face. And I looked

around and they were doing their own thing, smoking or, you know,

talking, so I had another go at him and, I believe he got up from the

wrong side of the bed that morning. He took offence to me swearing. Of

Let me explain the feeling. When I swear a second time, he say: "Look,

why are you swearing at me? Is it me or the chaplain who was

impatient with you?" Next thing I know, I was on my knees. I didn't

want to cry. Tears were running down, but I was feeling this

simultaneous emotion at the same time. A feeling of, you know,

sadness, and a feeling of joy. And this has revolutionised your

life. You're a different person? It has. And I could not explain,

until today, why I'm able to have a simultaneous emotional of feeling

of joy and sadness at the same time. You try it yourself. Any of you can

do that and prove it to me, that's fine.

Sorry, what a shame that God didn't show up before you committed all

those crimes. Wouldn't that have been a better time to have a word?

Well, listen. You've got them all going. Look at this. Peter Atkins.

How would you tell the difference between...

Oh, you try and smoke wacky in the prison. See if you can get it.

How would you tell the difference between your experience and a

hallucination? How am I going to hallucinate? Can

you hallucinate now, for me? I don't take no drugs then. In the

prison, I got no drinks, alcohol, nothing. And I was in a mood of

anger at the vicar. Yeah, it's called hallucinating in

the brain? But, as a result of it, though,

your life has been utterly transformed.

Amen to that. One thing I'd like to know is why are you so reluctant to

acknowledge the possibility of a hallucination? As I said, I had

four days of hallucination. Oh, I hallucinate before. Hell, I've take

LSD before. Because, I'll tell you this. I spent four days

hallucinating. I thought the nurses in the hospital were going to kill

me. Then I thought they were going to eat me. And I thought the people

who didn't exist in the next bed were plotting to have me taken away

and murdered, and so on. I absolutely believed this. It wasn't

until afterwards that I could understand that these were actually

hallucinations. In other words, all I'm saying is that the mind is an

extraordinary thing. That was post- operative psychosis that you had,

wasn't it? But Francesca, in the Bible, if we

read, you know. If any Christian, any believer read an account such

as Kim's in the Bible, they would say: "Oh yeah, fair go, God spoke

to him, yeah." But now, there's a sort of, a level of scepticism

about it. Because my story is mine. Who are

you to tell me my story's not true? None of you could do that.

Myriad examples in the Bible of God speaking directly to people as Kim

claims God spoke directly to him, aren't there?

And, given that they're in the Bible, these people and their

experiences. Which I'd think broadly are primarily fictitious.

But these people and their experiences are therefore special.

And they become special in tradition. And they become special

in the community, and I think, to a certain degree, modern day people's

experience of God speaking to them makes them feel special as well.

And that's not to judge it. It's simply to say that it sets you out.

It sets you apart from the rest. The way I arrived in atheism was I

took a course. It's called the psychoanalytic study of society.

And they told us the delusions of a man named Schreber, who is a German

judge. And he thought that God was going to make him a woman and

inseminate him. And he showed me the allegories between the

annunciation of the Virgin Mary and this man's account of how God was

going to inseminate him so he could bring forth a new race of human

beings. And the delusion, the schizophrenic delusion, and the

story of the annunciation were so similar, that I realised that the

human mind can fabricate. And I'm really glad it had such a wonderful

effect on your life. And I'm no David Koresh.

I think it's quite important to avoid labels like schizophrenia.

But Mohammed believed, clearly, when he went, if you believe that's

the word of God, you believe it's the word of God. But if you don't,

you've got to say that... Well, that's the key point.

Exactly. But that's the key point. It's about interpretation. But you

actually said it was fictitious. Are you actually saying that

people's stories within the Bible are fictitious? I'm not saying

they're eye witness accounts, no. think you've got to be very careful

about using that sort of language. Because those stories are people's

experience, for example, of Jesus and what he did, and the way he

lived. People's experience of God within the latter part of the New

Testament were real to them, and important to them, and you're

saying they're fictitious, they're rubbish, they're lies.

I said I think that they're fictitious, ie not factual.

But you've got to be very careful, I think, as a biblical scholar, of

saying that they are fictitious. But only a few minutes ago. Or we

shouldn't anthropomorphise God. And now you're talking about stories in

the Bible being literally true. Stories in the Bible about prophets,

about people meeting God. I mean, either these things are literally

true and we've got an interventionist God. Or we haven't.

I don't actually believe we have got an interventionist God.

So they are fictitious? I actually will allow people their

own experience and the right to have their own experience, and that

being true to them. And in my own life, there have been things that

may have happened to me which I feel are important to me. That are

pointed in a sense, I like to think of a whole load of arrows that have

helped get me to a disclosure situation where, actually, I

suddenly take the decision. I do believe in this God.

Scientists will tell us that we are pattern seeking mammals. We look

for reasons and we look for patterns. But it's interesting what

you said. There was some days you believe less than others. What

makes you not believe? I think, like any sort of person

who is searching for faith, and I hope I'm still searching for faith,

you constantly try to listen to those who disagree with you. You

try and grow in your faith. You try and learn more about your faith,.

Why do you search for it? Because I believe that I have a

spiritual dimension within me which needs to be fed, and that's one of

the important things. This is the thing. And lots of

people feel like there's a gap in their lives. If there happens to be

a gap that God happens to fit, well, that's evidence for God. But that's

not true. The existence, let me finish. The existence of a gap

doesn't mean that something exists to fill that gap. That's the

argument that says every colander is a bowl. It's not. Some gaps are

just gaps. And yes, we all feel emptiness sometimes. That doesn't

mean there's a God up there. I find this takes it back to the

human need for the thing, rather than the thing itself. You have

decided to search for it. Hardly surprisingly, quite often, you find

it because you are actively searching for it. And in a way,

that's what the distinction, here, in this discussion is about. You,

on this side, you're always searching for the thing. You lean

towards it. You want it, you want it to be. You conjure it into

existence. You will do everything that you can to do that. Quite

often, you do no harm in doing that. Sometimes you do, often that you

don't. Myself, I don't have that need, so I don't search for it.

Neither do I feel the need to search against it.

No, that's fine, David. That belongs to you. But I actually have

experienced, in my life, sometimes, transcendence. Some sense of the

other. Some sense of God. Something which is out beyond me. Something

which you might describe as ultimate reality. What is that

feeling? Sometimes, being taken out of

myself by beautiful music which has taken me way beyond any understand,

taken me to a different place. Elevated me in a way that's closer

to God. Sometimes, when I'm sat in a beautiful place in the country

and actually thought, "what is all this about?" Touched by God.

Do you think that we atheists do not feel the same sense of grandeur,

and wonder at the world? Of course we do. We're looking for truth.

Patsy's son was shot, Dory. Was it Jesus who found her or God? Well,

now we're into a theological issue. A theological issue between Islam

and Christianity. About the Holy Trinity and the single God, which

we're not actually debating this morning. But Mohammed, I appreciate

your contribution. Patsy. So, Dory was shot. And it would shake the

faith of many people. But your life was transformed. You believe it was

for a reason. Yeah. I do believe that my life was

transformed after the death of my son. But I believe I actually was

getting there before that. I had different experiences in my life

because I believe in God. I believe he exists, and I believe what the

Bible tells me. What other people... That's their way of living, OK? And

no-one can tell me what I believe isn't true. I'm not telling anyone

else what they believe isn't true because I think God is a personal.

It's a personal thing about God, for me. So when my son was shot and

killed, I was asking the God that I believed in, well, you know,

couldn't you save him? Couldn't you do something? Why is he dead? But

because I have faith and, one of the verses in the Bible that

actually got a hold of me, it said. I think it's in Romans. It said:

"All things are working together for the good of those who love

God." And I know I was a person who loved him, even though some people

don't think he exists, I know he exists because he speaks to me as

well. We have conversations on a daily basis.

What do you mean? Can I explore that a little bit with you? I talk

to him about my own personal life. And he talks to me about things and

he reveals things to me. Do you hear a voice, or is it something

more subtle than that? I think the odd times, it's more from within.

Not a feeling. It's a talk, it's like you're having a conversation

with someone, and you're hearing their voice, do you get my saying?

That's for me, anyway. So when I looked at what has happened after

that, obviously I was in pain. I really believe everything Where was

he when Dory was shot? Where was God? Where was he? I think I was

asked that question once before by a television person. And I said,

"Right, where he was when his son was being crucified for the sins of

the world?" APPLAUSE. Exactly the same place. What I'm

saying is that that's where he is. I personally believe that the earth

actually belongs to us, ok? And, we have dominion and authority. But

not only that. We are like God. That's what I believe.

Why do tsunamis happen? Well, I really believe, again, it

has to do with us because, according to the word, and that's

what I believe, we are in charge of down here. We have a choice, you

know. Psalm 82 said: "Ye are Gods, but you will die like men." So it's

really important, for me, that we recognise that everything we speak

and everything we say, we are creating all the time. Some people

don't believe that. But I believe we are creating. We create with our

lips and with our words, just like the Genesis says. "And God spoke

and it was so." Do you see what I mean?

Did Dory have to die for this to happen?

I don't say he had to die. Everyone's going to die anyway. And

there's nobody here, when we came into the world, that said, "well,

you've got two years to live," or four years to live. We don't know

that. We know everyone's going to die. That's where we're going. And

for the Christians, we say death is the best thing. So, what I mean,

when we die, we are going back to where we came from. If that is so,

and that's what I believe, then I really believe everything is

working. It's working. There is a plan and a purpose in everything.

And, of course, one day you believe that you'll be reunited with your

son. Oh, I do believe that. Because,

soon after he died, I remember I was in the back garden, doing

something. All of a sudden, I heard his voice and he says: "Mummy, why

are you so sad?" And I looked round, first of all. He's just, you know,

died maybe a couple of weeks ago. Then I said, "Because I miss you."

And he said, "I'm fine. I'm all right." that actually gave me

another kind of a peace within me, to go forward. To do the things

that I need to do. And I'm here, today, because my son died. I

really wouldn't be here. I really wouldn't be doing the things that

I'm doing, you know? I would be sat in church, doing what we normally

do. Go to church, read the Bible, pray. And you're helping guys

reform And now, yes. So, I really believe there is a God. There's no

doubt about it. She has inferred that there is a

reason. I think that is a beautiful story, and it has improved alive,

it is fine. I do not have a problem with people being villages unless

it gives them from understanding the world rationally. -- religious.

Religion, in a certain way, really encourages a certain kind of good

behaviour but not other kinds. Religious morality is very

circumscribed. Religious people are often good to other villages people

within their fate but not good to other people, not good do animals.

These are the things that are important to me. I do not believe

in religion, I believe in God. I do not believe in region. Religion has

caused to many problems. I believe Jesus died for me, that is what I

believe. We will find out sooner or later, when we die. I believe that.

You can believe in something that is not true and it can be a source

of great strength. This is not evidence of the existence of God.

am not giving evidence, I am telling you my personal experience

and what I believe. I am not here to prove anything. Everyone on the

front bench there is believing in something that is not true and

taking strength from it. Hands up, what would you like to say? Good

morning. I was just going to say two points. About this evidence, if

there is a God, iOS just going to ask, some things exist outside the

realms of science and understanding, because we have not found out about

it yet. You know, the planet that was recently found... A Kepler-22b.

It did not suddenly magically appear, it has always existed, but

it took a time for us to find it. I think God is the same thing. It

does not need our belief. I think he is real, we just have to find

him. Do you think God created...? The gentleman there has raised a

fascinating point. If there were to be life elsewhere, Kepler-22b or

wherever, did God create that life as well? Is he there God, too?

Lewis wrote a very good essay about this. In terms of us, whether there

is life at there that is intelligent and suffers from the

original sin, then we have got problems our hands, if they are

more technologically advanced than we are. They are coming to get as!

People naively think if we make more technical progress, they

automatically become better, and that is not necessarily the case.

That is where moral issues come back in. I was just going to say,

on the point of the Bible and whether it is fictitious or not,

whether or not it is fictitious it is irrelevant, because it has been

edited and translated. I know how important that is to the meaning of

text. Meaning can be twisted and convoluted, it is a form of control,

and that is what I believe organised religion is. It is not to

say you cannot be spiritual, but you can be spiritual without God. I

think the universe is an amazing place, but why do I need to believe

it was created by something? I know your eyes are twinkling, you are

going to say that the Bible is edited, but the Koran is unaltered.

Absolutely right. The word of God was not the word of God, and it is

there to prove it is not... It is easy to prove that the Bible is not

the word of God. There are multiple Bibles that his beat each other.

But the Koran, what it says many times, this is the word of God,

proved it is not. It has no contradictions. Kate wants to

undergo an the Koran, and I wish her good luck! Initial point was

not the Koran is the only book in the world which says, this is the

word of God. Had it not been from God, it would have at discrepancies

and contradictions. That is what it says. It would have had

discrepancies. And it does have loads of discrepancies. Only God

can say this, no human can claim this. Once you find a mistake, then

you have broken the link. We have the book of God, and he describes

himself, it tells a lot of things, and so far we have found nothing

wrong with this book. Sorry, let me... And two mistakes in the Koran.

The Trinity does not include the Virgin Mary. No. Two, Mary the

mother of Jesus is not the same person as Miriam the sister of

error. That is just two mistakes, there are loads and loads. Let me

jump in. You are saying if we cannot find a contradiction in the

Koran, it is true. I cannot find any contradictions in Harry Potter

or the Lord Of The Rings, but it does not mean they are not true.

Also, does it not say there should be no compulsion in religion, but

later it says kill all people who are guilty of a apostasy. No. The

Koran does not say that. It does not say people who are apostate.

Yes, it does. No, that... Let's be civilised and the academic here. It

does not say kill people who are apostate. The verses talking about

fighting are to do with what we call a justified war theory. It is

when you are under attack, you are allowed to defend yourself and

invade countries where people are being depressed. Those

contradictions that you mention, name me one spell of Islamic

studies that says that is the case. I have not heard anyone. David

Aaronovitch. Do you accept that if you had been born in Kerala, you

would probably be in two? Yes. Exactly. So you could be having the

same argument about the Hindu texts and so on. One of the big problem

is that religions have is their mutual exclusivity, and we are seen

some aspects of that. If your book is literally true, his book cannot

be. His belief cannot be. The Hindu belief and the brothers are talking

nonsense. That is a false argument. What it shows is how we create

different religions that suit us at different times. What about the

Book of Mormon? It has no internal contradictions. Joseph Smith at the

same kind of visitation, except even more so. He could discern the

golden writing of the golden plate wearing a special pair of

spectacles which, from behind a screen, he would then dictate to

somebody else. Mormonism is one of the fastest-growing religions in

the world. So a diversity of views... Better written than the

Koran? The Koran says it is a miraculous book. Harry Potter, you

say! You will go viral with that. The gentleman at the back. Good

morning. The majority of the debate has been based around the fact that

the front row here is looking at arguments why, you know, God might

not exist. What is your evidence? The way I see it, we assume that we

need empirical evidence for God. The empirical evidence does not

suggest that, you know, we can have God that empirical evidence. That

would assume that, you know, you can definitely believe in God or

you cannot. Peter says that is an and duration of intellect. It is a

caricature of this old fashion sense that science is rational, and

over here on the front row we have a group of irrational people.

is a rational scientist who believes in God. He also nodded

when I said that. There is an attempt, in a sense, too

caricatured the belief as irrational. Now, there is a

difference between saying that something is irrational and non-

rational. You opened the show with a reference to the Higgs boson

particle. There is no evidence for that. And yet there is a great deal

of belief within the scientific community that it exists. And I am

happy with that, science enriches my life, as does religion, and

there is a sense of harmony in these things. Actually, it worries

me greatly that the question, is there evidence that God exists, is

using a piece of terminology, evidence, from the realm of science

in a debate which also includes God. It is a bit like trying to ask a

cricket umpire to apply the rules of cricket to a game of football.

Why it is the alternative? The alternative is simply a discussion

of assertion. You simply say, I believe it, my belief is equally

valid to anybody else's, end of discussion, we all go home. Is that

the way we will settle the big intellectual questions? But there

is not a richness in actually sitting and shouting very loudly.

We are not shouting, let's discuss. It is all very civilised, you

should have seen last week show! This is very civilised. I think

you're right there is a danger of just being subjective, I say, you

say. There is the account are Peter Hitchens, the brother of

Christopher Hitchens, describing his conversion back to Christianity.

He went to the Soviet Union, and it was very interesting, he noticed a

lack of empathy in everyday life. There was a lack of care, and he

began to realise what a belief in God can do for a society of the

centuries. Communism was a form of religion. I was brought up by Colin

has pounds, and Marxism was equally structured as a system of beliefs.

-- Communist parents. It claims to be scientific socialism, explaining

the world. The Soviet Union had millions of people who, in a sense,

were religious. You had polio when you were a boy, you lost your hand

in a motorcycle accident, you tried to find God, you went to Lourdes,

he was not there. I have seen no evidence in my life, no evidence

today, but we have seen something of the Higgs boson last week, by

the way. I could flip a coin... had a serious motorcycle accident

in 1969, and previous to that I had polio. I have been to learn and I

have seen all the creatures hanging up. I went with a trainload of

disabled people. It did not do much for me, obviously. What astounded

me was, nobody was cured, and nobody subsequently, since I have

been there, has had a cure. I doubt anyone ever had a cure. It is just

a sham, the whole idea of it, it is just about money. Religion is a lot

about money. I have only once prayed for God. I had an accident

at 9:10am on a Monday morning. The ambulance crews swore blind that I

was dead. They took me to hospital. I was on the table for nine hours.

On Wednesday, if you like, I rose again, on the third day. On

Thursday, I was in severe agony. So much pain that I did once as for

God, only once. Was he there? only ever asked for anything once

in my lives, and he didn't do anything for me. This is the thing,

what about those people who ask for God and he is not there? This is

part of the problem. If there is an expectation that God is good is

that somebody and say, you are going to have lots of pain, you are

going to be healed, then we have got back to the notion of God as an

old man in the sky with superpowers. What we have been talking about

today, as far as I am concerned, is about a God who is more to do with

the ultimate reality, the sense of transcendence, the sense of truth

and beauty and goodness and love which is sometimes missing in

people's lives. People on this side maybe have found that and what to

identify as God. Do those people not recognise it? They choose to

say, rubbish! But even they would acknowledge there is something

about wonder in their lives, too, they do not identify it as God.

afraid we are at the very end. Can you all applaud each other for a

pretty civilised discussion? As ever, the debate will continue on