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There are worship groups that worship AI because it's got some of the qualities we normally associate with God

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and some people welcome this and say this is the way we should go but the danger is we treat these

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human-eyed robots as if they're conscious beings. This is a seriously important thing and I do

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feel that the Christian faith is a great deal to say about this and it's fascinating to me that you

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are very religious you believe in God because typically I think that mathematicians lean more towards

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atheism. The great pioneers of modern science were all believes in God and I've interrogated

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myself about it's true for over 70 years. I've made myself totally vulnerable and I found that

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Christ offers me something nobody else offers me. Peace in my heart, the peace of knowing that I have

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real forgiveness, things like for example God has met people even in death row and I never forget

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looking through the door for Russian security death row. I went up to the door and a chap came over

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and looked at me he killed 12 women and he said I deserve to be here and then his face just

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worse than to what I can only describe as a ghastly smile and he said I met Jesus here and he

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forgave me. So on this point of forgiveness with the serial killer be forgiven and allowed into

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heaven and then how do you know that this thing you've committed yourself to is true? So they have had

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several experiences enough to tell me look this stuff is real. Okay so

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guys I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins the algorithm if you follow a show

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if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this one right now and hit that

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follow button thank you so so so much. John Lennox yes you've published over 70 peer-reviewed

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mathematical papers co-authored to research texts at the Oxford mathematical monograph series

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and you've really become a pioneer in many domains through your career but for anyone

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that doesn't know you what is the most important context they need to understand the reference

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points experience education that you're pulling on that that is going to inform all of the subjects

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we talk about today. I mean I've written a number of papers I got a certain amount of

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international recognition I chaired Oxford and all the rest of it but I think the real value of

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has been the training and logic really saying that mathematics works the fact that it works is for

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me one of the strongest evidences that this is what I call a word based universe we can use

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mathematics to describe things about how the universe works thinking God's thoughts after

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him kept his famous statement but also we've lived to see a biological revolution where we discover

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a biology's word based as well with the human genome and that to me resonates with the explanation

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given in both the Old Testament the new language of John's gospel in the beginning was the word

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I am I don't know a ton about the Bible I do come from a religious family so do you do with

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them right okay we grew up as Christians I think I lost my face faith at about 18 years old because

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you know me my my brothers are extremely good at maths they're very rational thinking maybe to

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a fault I think maybe I am a little bit too I am too you are this too I fall so fascinating because

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you know typically the scientific community lean more towards atheism and typically I think that

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mathematicians lean more towards atheism just a sense check if that's true or not well throw the

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numbers up on the screen so I find that to be a fascinating conversation which I'm looking forward

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to have with you today um interestingly you wrote this book and the word

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AI is on it it says God AI and the end of history why are you so concerned dare I say

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about artificial intelligence as a leading pioneer in Mathemat maths and sort of philosophical

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well because I met us in the bigger picture anything that raises questions about

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the nature of human identity and I was first struck by the drive for artificial general

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intelligence that's really become one of the it looks as if it's the prime motivation of people

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like Sam Altman and so on it's really hitting the headlines but within that there's the notion

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of transhumanism what does that mean the idea is that we go beyond the human one of our most famous

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astronomers royal he put it this way he says in the distant future it won't be organic brains it'll

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be machine brains and he seriously believes as do a number of scientists are not science fiction

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authors that there will be some kind of merger between humanity and machines to have a transhuman

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something that's beyond the human and something that is they hope super intelligent got all the human

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properties and much more now one of the people who is spreading that kind of transhumanist vision

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is the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari and he's written a book called Homo Deus the man God

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and that really made me prick up my ears because I know enough about this book here the Bible to

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realize that the drive for humans towards self-deification is yes making themselves gods and you see

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it all through history the ancient Babylonian emperors where regarded as gods the Roman emperors

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started calling themselves gods and all the rest of it and what Harari says is the 21st century

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has two big purposes number one to solve the problem of physical death as a technical problem

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to solve death yes solve death physical death is an issue technical problem and we'll solve it

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the second agenda item and he calls them agenda items so the 21st century is to increase

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human happiness by bioengineering cyborg engineering mechanical implants all this kind of thing

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and turning humans quote into gods with a small G in other words this is the drive for a super intelligent

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human we've only got started and his point is and from his atheist perspective one can understand

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it immediately evolution unguided natural processes have brought us to this point now we're going to

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take it into our hands and we're going to engineer humanity into the future very rapidly to approach

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this super human thing now I hear that and I see that but I see that as huge implications for

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one of the fundamental teachings that's behind I would argue western civilization and that is

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the notion that humans like us are made in the image of God as rational moral beings now I got into

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this because some Christian leaders wanted to have a conference on AI and they wanted it introduced

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from someone who knew something about the teaching of the image of God in Genesis and who had a

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scientific background and who perhaps began to lead them in to what was going on in the AI field

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around and once I got into it I realized this is a seriously important thing because we haven't

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got to artificial general intelligence yet that's still a pipe frame but it's improving all the time

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but we've got far enough that is to what's called narrow AGI which most of the stuff that works is

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and that is posing a threat to human beings at all kinds of levels and I began to say that that

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was seriously important for everybody to take it forward so I wrote two books one 2020

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called 2084 as the title of my book artificial intelligence in the future of humanity

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and then the publishers asked me to update it in 2024 so there's a second edition twice as big

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and it is my main work in AI that is not that is work on the book of Revelation with reference to AI

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the other is directly going into AI pointing out its values which I think are immense particularly

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immense but pointing out its dangers which I think are immense for bringing about a state in the

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world that none of us I think want so let me just give some definitions that yes sure use the term

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narrow AI yes and my definition of that is and I'll put something on the screen for those of you

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watching is AI that's focused on solving a very particular problem so AI is that might

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build a diagnose lung cancer or that do some sort of biometric data on your Apple watch very

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focused on solving a particular problem AGI is artificial general intelligence which is what's

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being built at the moment and all the big AI companies are in a race to accomplish which is a

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machine that could do any intellectual task a human can faster than any human and would be super

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intelligent so you know maybe one way to think about it it would have a PhD in everything

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that's a very fair summary narrow AI system does one and only one thing that normally requires human

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intelligence AGI does a lot and more you wrote this book 2084 you highlighted in there some of the

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concerns that you think are being overlooked in this race for AGI at the moment well they're not

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overlooked by everybody there is huge concern there's been a very interesting book published not

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long ago by Karen how she was here well there you are and she has got some very interesting

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metaphors the pursuit of the machine god which I think is a brilliant summary what's going on

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and I found it very illuminating because she's obviously got very close to the major operators

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but if I step back from it I look at AI like a knife a good knife you can use it for surgery or

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you can use it for murder and that leads us into it immediately AI narrow brilliant for picking out

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the terrorists in a football crowd also brilliant for suppressing a minority in China

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and bringing in a totalitarian state through social credit systems and all the rest of it

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and in a way we're sleep walking into a future where we are gradually

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sitting control and information and data all the time which could be used by bad actors

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against us and this is the problem I really this question of what it means to be human in a world

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I think it's been really fun to mind for a lot of people and like where do we live or exist

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or find our purpose in a world where theoretically these super intelligent systems will reach

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AGI which means they're more intelligent theoretically than any human on earth but at the same time

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you've got these other advancements and technology like humanoid robots where these humanoid

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robots there was a livestream I've talked about a few times I'll just throw it up on the screen

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really quickly that shows last week a humanoid robot working on a production line for eight days

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straight and they show up against a human being and it beats the human being on the production line

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because it doesn't need to sleep it just needs to be charged for a couple of hours to full power

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and so you combine these two forces super intelligence and the disruption you know you can think of it

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like one is disrupting this thing here the brain and the intelligence within the brain and then the

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other technology that's emerged at the same time is disrupting my muscles and my mechanics

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and the two come together to make voila absolutely so you face joblessness at all kinds of levels

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and people are only going beginning to realize the implications of that and not just low level

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repetitive jobs it's high level jobs like lawyers and there's a deep satan ethical problem running

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through all of this and it's a very simple one it's that technology advances much faster than

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the ethics is needed to underpin it and the difficulty is the people that have all the power

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will say well we need some ethical control of all of this but we need to get on with the research

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to make it safe for you so let us get on with it and you can be a bit skeptical about the motivation

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there it's a colossal power grab and I do feel that the Christian faith has a great

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title to say to this arms race if you like the power that is being forced in to having a technology

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that becomes the ultimate source of truth and those two concepts power and truth clashed

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centuries ago in a very famous trial and it's the trial of Jesus and I used to wonder a lot

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you know why is there such detail about the trial of Jesus until I realized what it was about

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Jesus was put on trial for political terrorism to put it in modern terminology he was a threat

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to the Roman power base and pilot the governor at the time put him on trial and conducted the

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trial himself which was most unusual and said are you a king and Jesus looked at him and said well

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not in this sense you mean to this end I was born and to this end I came into the world that I

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would bear witness to the truth and pilot famously responded what is truth and went out and declared

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Jesus innocent of the charge and then he said to him just a bit later don't you know I have

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power to crucify you and Jesus quietly said you would have no power against me unless it

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been given to you from above so there is one of the most famous confrontations between power

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and truth and that statement that Jesus made I have come to bear witness the truth I regard that

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as the main motivation for my life I'm trying to bear witness to truth as I see it at all kinds

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of levels in my own limited way and that's what bothers me about AI it's a reductionist we're

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reducing people to machines and you said to me a few moments ago that flagged up a thing in my

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mind that's very important we need to be very clear what AI is and what it isn't this is a machine

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machines do not think machines do not have qualia they do not understand the redness of red they do

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not experience emotion they have no consciousness and you see I believe that the genius of God is that

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he's made you and me and he's connected in us consciousness and intelligence the machines are

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not conscious but they simulate intelligence and the experts are very clear that they're not trying

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to construct intelligence for a very simple reason they have no idea what consciousness is from

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scientific point of view but they're trying to simulate intelligence and go as far as they

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can and therefore the danger is we anthropomorphize everything we treat them as if they're conscious

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beings and we need to step back and realize that we are conscious beings and that gives us a

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supreme dignity and value to reduce ourselves to merely machines or on the other hand merely

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animals is to demean our value and then where are you going to get value from I've got a quote here

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that's linked to what you just said it's from your vel Noah horari he mentioned he says humans are

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now hackable animals yes the whole idea that humans have this soul or spirit and they have free will

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and nobody knows what's happening inside them that is over and Sal Moltman said the most

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successful founders do not set out to create companies they're on a mission to create something

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closer to a religion and at some point it turns out that forming a company is the easiest way

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to do so and lastly a former Google engineer said what is going to be created will effectively be a

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God it's not a God in the sense that it will make lightning or cause hurricanes but if there is

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something a billion times smarter than the smartest human what else can you call it

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it's odd thank you for quoting that because I was going to quote it to you the Sal Moltman's point

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about about making a religion and that is what is happening and people have pointed out the obvious

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here you have a system even now that has got some of the qualities we normally associate with God

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it appears to be omniscient you can ask it any question it is only present through the internet

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etc etc and therefore already there are worship groups to worship AI and some people welcome this

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and say well this is the way we should go another people say just wait a moment there's something very

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strange going on here and in the end you are bowing down to something that in the end is a

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adulteress because it is less than God but it's very tempting to do that I mean people are basically

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praying to it now they're confiding in it in a way that they've lived absolutely doing it

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then you know I'm fascinated by this I've never seen one of these before but I like it in a

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way like it so for people that can't see what we're doing it's a brain it's a brain and it's got

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two halves and one of the people who've influenced my thinking about AI a lot is Dr Ian McGilchrist

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the author of this fascinating book called The Matter with Things and he has studied the fact that

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this brain has two hemispheres two halves both halves are involved in almost every cognitive event

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but the two different halves have different waves of paying attention to the world one is narrow

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focus the left side of the brain and the other is the big picture and he says what has happened

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historically in the West is for the last five or so hundred years we have concentrated on the narrow

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rationalist reductionist left side of the brain and we've forgotten the right side that contextualises

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everything so that quote we now find ourselves in a world where we understand how almost everything

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works but we know the meaning of nothing and what he calls for is to open this sphere up and of

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course that includes to beauty culture art music and religion step by step he appears to be

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creating more room for God because God makes sense of the space he feels is very necessary to

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fill and I find that absolutely fascinating and you probably noticed a two the number of intellectuals

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step by step taking the Christian faith more seriously as giving a rational account of what's

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going on that makes very big sense of the big picture what is going on in society because it

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does feel like more and more people have these sort of existential questions about meaning and they

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might be turning to Christianity or Islam or other but what is from a 30,000 foot perspective

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happening to us which is making us ask some of these questions and feel a younger generations

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it might be spirituality however they define that but there's certainly a macro picture here of

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something happening oh there is I agree with you entirely and I think it's because we've had pushed

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at us for too long a very reductionist view of the world it's nothing but physics and chemistry

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it's nothing but this is that and people rightly feel it's too small a world to live in they're

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looking to break out of this isn't there a bigger picture that can make sense of my world

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and make sense of my life and giving some meaning because if you reduce everything it ends up

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like coal of meaninglessness and that's one of my top reasons for not being an atheist because it

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destroys rationality by almost by definition because it tells me that my brain which does all the

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thinking it's not my mind it's connected and those are two different things and that's another

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big story but this is the end product of a mindless unguided process and I have fun with scientists

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you know sometimes I ask them about the brain and how it arose and they tell me something like

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that and I said and you trust it tell me if the computer that you use every day if you knew

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it was the end product of a random process would you trust it every single scientist and some

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of them are very high powered that I've asked that question to have said no I would not so I say

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you've got a problem haven't you your atheism goes too far it undermines the very rationality we need

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to do science let alone to believe in atheism and that's my main beef with people like Richard

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Dawkins and the new atheist but I see they're fading they're fading so here's the irony atheism

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claiming rationality destroys it whereas I believe the Christian faith also claims rationality

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in the sense that evidence based we shout out about that a lot in science and medicine and

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rightly so what we trust in ought to be evidence based I claim exactly the same thing for Christianity

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and that's why I'm a Christian because I believe the evidence supports it otherwise I wouldn't

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so I guess how do I identify maybe as someone that's agnostic like I'm I don't really know

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well that's okay but does that mean you're open to know you'd like to know yes well that's

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I'm always open that's that's wonderful to see that's that seems to me to be exactly the right

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attitude Jesus actually challenged someone in his day and says if anyone wants to do the will of

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God he shall know after teaching whether I'm speaking from myself or whether it's from God

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I noticed what he doesn't say he doesn't say if anyone wants to know he will know if anyone wants

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to do he will know and the difference between the two and I'd be interested in your response to it

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is that being prepared to do something when you know it is more than just knowing it and possibly

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just leaving it on the table in all the words Jesus is interested in people who are going to take

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the step of trust and following him and that's the big deal you know what it is I find all I find

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all explanations as to like the bigger picture yes to be like fundamentally incomplete yes because

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there's many things you said about the nature of Christianity and religion that I go amazing yes

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yes yes and then there's a couple of things I go oh well and the same one I sit here with a

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physicist that's telling me about the big bang yes I have the same thing where I'm going yes yes

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of course yes oh we've got evidence that the universe is expanding okay and then they'll say

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other things and I go well that's not complete and so I find myself sat on the fence I would love

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you to convince me I mean it's not your responsibility to do so but where does that journey of

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of believing begin for someone like me because you know people say the Bible and I go well it's kind

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of like what you said about the computers it's like if you're using something to justify

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the same thing is true yes then that circular reasoning I find to be incomplete because I could

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write on this piece of paper Stephen Bartlett is a lizard yes and this piece of paper is true and then

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you then use that same piece of paper to justify the validity of that same piece of paper

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and I got that that's not solid reasoning no but you see I could say Stephen Bartlett

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there's a red Ferrari part that's straight outside yeah and it's yours if you want to take it

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we could sit and discuss it for a thousand years you would never know whether I was true or not

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unless you wouldn't look and it seems to me the word skeptic is a very interesting one

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I regard myself as a skeptic but in Greek skeptine means to look at something from a distance

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now if you are ever going to get to know a person you've got to begin to give up your distance you

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will know that from everyday life and it seems to me one of the things to try to begin to grasp is

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God is not a proposition or a philosophy or even a religion God is a person and as a person

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he has entered our world however incredible up may say although this is the irony of the

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Ferrari position if I just said on the side people come to me as they've done with their

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transhumanist agenda and say you know we're going to solve the problem of death and we're going

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to increase human happiness and I look at the and I smile I say you're too late and they say what

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we haven't got there yet I said you're too late for you read we're too late well I said the problem

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of physical death was solved when God raised Christ from the dead 20 centuries ago and as for

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human happiness and uploading us into eternity you know I'm waiting for the biggest uploading

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that's ever going to happen in history when Christ returns and raises me from the dead because

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that is precisely what he promises and it's most interesting watching people and I say isn't it

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fascinating that your transhumanism consists in humans reaching out to become little gods

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whereas Christianity is the exact opposite it talks about a God who became human

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so that he could give us life and give us a new relationship with him what really completes

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the circle for me is that my relationship with God is a relationship which is based on the

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solution to the really hard problem and that is the problem that I by nature have not always done

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good and by my own standards I have failed now all this talk of transhumanism AI and everything

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else what is trying to do is to build paradise utopia without facing the problem of the damage

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that humans have caused to themselves and one another they will not face the sin problem

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Christianity to me doesn't compete with anything else because Christ offers me something nobody

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else offers me nobody else offers me peace the peace of knowing that I have real forgiveness

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the peace of knowing that I have a friend and a companion to him I can talk all the time that's

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been so meaningful in my life as I spell out in detail my autobiography and the peace of having

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been given a new life that will not end when I die I'm 82 now I'm probably more than twice as old

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as you are as I look towards the future I have in my heart a certainty not because I've merited it

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the exact opposite because I couldn't merit it but because Christ has done something for me

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through the cross and the resurrection that may sound old mumbo jumbo at the moment but has

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done something that enables me to have a relationship that is secure that floods over the

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whole of life and has made my life what it is for the last 70 years more or less I think everybody

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especially in a world that's getting increasingly lonely and disconnected and isolated

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for many reasons is looking for that secure relationship they are they're looking for their own

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you know a home that can't fall down yes yes and a piece that doesn't fade and an inheritance that

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doesn't exactly you're dead right if I could choose that if I could press a button and have it

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I would have it but there's this other part of my brain which

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will naturally interrogate whether it's real or it's true right why am I sitting in front of you

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talking about this stuff because I've interrogated myself about it and it's truth for over 70 years

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I've made myself totally vulnerable that's why I got into all the debates with New Atheist and

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all the rest of it because I want to be sure but it won't come about by pressing a button it will

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come about if you're open enough to say God I'm open reveal yourself to me and I'm prepared to take

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the steps that I feel are leading me on to solid ground I do not believe that this is a process of

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taking a leap into the dark but it's making a commitment on the basis of what you know already

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and taking a step further forward and the interesting thing about this is the trust that's at the

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heart of everything I trust my wife I've been married to her for 58 years this year it's evidence

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based trust I don't trust for no reason and the same is true of my friends as will be the case with

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you evidence based trust in science and in Christian things I don't regard myself as religious

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particularly and the reason is this and it's an important reason most religions prescribe a moral

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way that you try to follow and you've teachers gurus and moms all the rest priests to keep you on

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the way and then you come to a judgment at the end and I usually draw a scale of justice and if

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you're good deeds tip over the bad deeds then you get into whatever it is heaven or vana all the

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rest of that's religion it's not Christianity though many people think it is because if you ask

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them are you a Christian and say well I do my best and I hope that God will be kind that isn't

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Christianity it's the exact opposite of Christianity that's a merit based religion and you see

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the irony of all this it is that we would never at least I don't know some people might but in a

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human relationship we don't base our affection and relationship with someone on the basis of their

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merit I have a little analogy I use that sometimes tickles people's minds I say that I met a beautiful

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girl on my second day at Cambridge I'd been warned she might be there and she was sitting in church

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and I decided that I'd like to marry her so I bought the most expensive cookery book I could

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and I came in a hand at her and she said what's that well I said you know we have an interesting

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tradition in our family you see and if anybody gets married they give the potential bride a cookbook

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why well look at page 152 here's the the laws for making an apple cake and I like apple cake so

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law one two two two takes away what's flour sugar sugar now I said it's going to be like this

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if you keep those rules the next let's be generous 40 years or so I will accept you otherwise

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you can go back to your mother now when I say that to the audience they rock about well after

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but it's exactly the way many of them have been taught to think about God keep the rules as

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best as you can and hope that God is generous when actually I did no such thing I've given my

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wife several cookbooks but they're not the basis of the relationship and because the relationship

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is based on acceptance that comes at the start of the common journey it sets her free to live and do

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other things that she wants to do and I have noticed often the ones people begin to realize that they're

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beginning to understand a basic concept which is grace that God does everything and if we trust

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him he it is that gives us a certainty so it's not arrogance to accept it from him it's arrogance

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actually to reject and say oh no no I'll go my own way and I'll try my best and hope that you will

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accept me and the heart of the Christian message which I believe is there is that the trust is

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based on what someone else has done what Christ has done not what I have done and that's what's

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given me the power and as I said earlier completed the circle and enabled me to live that was a really

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beautiful description and definition of what the Christian faith is about

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it still leaves me with a question about whether it's true and this is the sort of central question

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that I need to find my way over yeah I agree with you absolutely and this is I find myself often

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I've sat with a few like Christian apologists and asked them similar questions about like how do I

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know if it's true and I guess so far I've got you know if there's a red friary outside you'd have to

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go outside and see for yourself as anywhere you're going to know but what how do you know that this

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thing you've committed yourself to and you've believed and you know I've talked about for 70 years

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of your life is true and could it be the case that it's not true okay let's handle that that's a

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hugely important question I have two approaches to this which I call roughly speaking objective and

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subjective and it depends entirely where someone's coming from they may start very far back and say look

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we read about this chapter Jesus how do we know we have ever existed well then you go to the ancient

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historians and you find that most of them whether they're atheists or not believe that he existed

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and so on I accept that he existed yes yeah okay well that's a good start you know some of the disciples

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when Jesus rose from the dead they just didn't believe the story ridiculous and there's a famous

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story of Thomas who said to the others he said unless I see the marks in his hands and so on I

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won't believe and then Jesus stood upon him and he didn't make fun of Thomas's objective he said

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Thomas coming over look you never know what swimming is until you get into the water

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isn't that true it is true and all I can say is that step by step keep asking your

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questions absolutely I don't believe that God will ever ask us to take a step with which we

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should be uncomfortable I just don't believe that could you be wrong that Christianity so could

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it be the case that Christianity was was about a real guy called Jesus based on a real guy called

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Jesus but the story's told you know there was decades passed between the things that happened

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and not so much as you'd think actually what for four decades with the first

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when you say to me could you be wrong my academic mind says theoretically yes but practically no

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could I be wrong it would be like asking me John you know you've been married to Sally for 58 years

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could you be wrong that she loves you well theoretically yes but actually the evidence

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all points in the other direction and that's what I would say that I have built up in my life

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and I'd love you to ask me that question when you've read that autobiography why would you think

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it would be because I think what I relate there is enough evidence for someone outside who's

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skeptical to say there may well be something in that but in the end you won't know until you step

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into the water and then you find the crisis there to catch you and what did you find in the water

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when you stepped into the water well I was very young you see my parents taught me quite clearly

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that I wasn't born a Christian you become a Christian by trusting Christ that's

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to have somebody born or made a Christian by some ceremony is absurd to my mind and so in my simple

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way I responded as a child I didn't have any great feelings or anything else but what happened to

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me as I grew up especially as I went to university and Cambridge and I decided look I really

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believe this stuff is true I'm going to stand for it and it was when I began to stand and share

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with others that a great deal of the underpinning came in and the certainty came

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cumulatively not all of the big I've never had these big flashes of anything but I have had

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several experiences of what I can only put down to direct divine guidance and I record them in the book

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where I talked to me founders they all carry the same belief but the biggest threat to their small

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business is having a bad product it's not the biggest threat they face is hiring the wrong person

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that really stumped me when i was so i was christian up until the age of about 18 and then i went

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into the whole like new atheist movement with Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and that little phase

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of life but one of the stats that used to get me when i went to that new atheist movement

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was that globally 91% of adults simply adopting keep the religion they were raised in and if a

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person is born into a hindi or muslim household there is a 99% statistical probability they will

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remain in that faith only 1% switch out and then the argument i think it came from Dawkins or

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someone else was that is it fair that there's this birth lottery determining who ends up believing

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what or theoretically getting into hell or heaven yes because if i was born in i don't know afghanistan

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the probability says i'd probably be muslim yeah well i take that absolutely so god gave you an

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advantage in this context because he he allowed you to be born his in his all knowing all all

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understanding way put you to be born in a place where you would like you to be christian sounds

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to me as if he gives the same advantage to you so the question is what do we do with that privilege

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now i know that there are hard problems around the edge here there are really hard problems

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not only where you're born and what you believe this was the argument that Peter singer advanced

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to be hit a debate i don't know whether you've heard about it Peter singer you know the

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Princeton ethicist who really was one of the new atheists but not quite very famous for his views

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on dealing with the unborn all the rest well we had a debate in Australia and i started as they

393
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always do by being upfront about my background and he when he got the chance this thing he said

394
00:44:29.600 --> 00:44:36.320
well there goes my best objection to religion people always stay in the religion which they're brought

395
00:44:36.320 --> 00:44:44.960
up you see when i next got a chance to speak i said Peter i told the audience about my christian

396
00:44:44.960 --> 00:44:51.360
background but you said nothing about yours now tell me where your parents atheists he said they

397
00:44:51.360 --> 00:44:58.880
were oh i said that you remained in the faith in which you were brought up nobody said it isn't a

398
00:44:58.880 --> 00:45:06.000
faith and i said Peter i was i was convinced that you believed it and i've brought the hostine of

399
00:45:06.000 --> 00:45:12.320
course the saver space went mad and the point was made repeatedly all over the internet here's

400
00:45:12.320 --> 00:45:17.200
one of the world's top philosophers he doesn't understand that his atheism is a belief system

401
00:45:18.000 --> 00:45:25.040
and the irony was the very first person he met after that debate was a fellow hungarian Jew

402
00:45:25.680 --> 00:45:31.520
who was a friend of mine and then my friend said and i became a christian so the very first

403
00:45:31.520 --> 00:45:37.840
firstly that was someone who had transition from his background that doesn't answer your question

404
00:45:37.840 --> 00:45:44.960
it's a question i ask often because God could correct this well this is just the point

405
00:45:45.520 --> 00:45:51.760
and we have had these arguments and debates a good god and an old powerful god would

406
00:45:51.840 --> 00:45:58.960
could shoot all this kind of stuff and we never get a satisfactory answer to that so i've come

407
00:45:58.960 --> 00:46:03.440
up with another problem possibly because of my mathematician and we when we've hammered a

408
00:46:03.440 --> 00:46:10.400
twin problem for centuries we usually stop and try it all the way my other problem is just as hard

409
00:46:10.400 --> 00:46:18.400
but i think it gets me a bit further and it's this every world you must face a mixed picture

410
00:46:19.200 --> 00:46:24.720
i call it beauty and barbed wire or beauty and bombs that that's the world it's mixed and if

411
00:46:24.720 --> 00:46:33.360
you don't accept that you're not in touch with reality now here's my question is there anywhere evidence

412
00:46:34.880 --> 00:46:43.840
enough to trust God with that situation that's a hard question and by that you mean the situation of

413
00:46:43.920 --> 00:46:49.120
this geographical distribution of believers yes we'll never understand it or solve it but do we trust

414
00:46:49.120 --> 00:46:56.160
God do we trust God ultimately to be absolutely fair because of God isn't fair in the end he knows

415
00:46:56.160 --> 00:47:03.360
what everybody thinks i believe and we'll be surprised maybe at what he does because he can measure

416
00:47:03.360 --> 00:47:11.360
how much people know my responsibility is twofold one to respond to the evidence i've had

417
00:47:12.080 --> 00:47:18.000
and then Christ tells me to go and share it and that's what i do i've been doing all my life

418
00:47:20.400 --> 00:47:29.280
doesn't answer a question but it gives you motivation and the alternative to rule God out

419
00:47:29.280 --> 00:47:36.160
has so many negatives to it that i think i think yes so when i think about what i understand

420
00:47:36.240 --> 00:47:41.520
of the Bible there's a particular part of the Bible that talks about the only way into heaven is

421
00:47:41.520 --> 00:47:46.800
through Jesus and from that i infer that the only way to get into this great place that everybody

422
00:47:46.800 --> 00:47:54.640
wants to go to is by believing in Christianity i'm not sure that they do i have met many people who

423
00:47:54.640 --> 00:48:01.040
when they hear what Christ offers they reject it but that's another point so if if we talk about

424
00:48:01.120 --> 00:48:07.680
this distribution sort of birthright distribution of what you believe and then those that believe

425
00:48:07.680 --> 00:48:16.000
this one particular thing are going to get into this heaven it feels unfair or this idea that only

426
00:48:16.000 --> 00:48:22.960
those that believe get in is wrong or God is not as nice as we thought and he's playing a bit of a

427
00:48:22.960 --> 00:48:29.680
cruel game there's a fair bit going for your logic there i i i think and i think the

428
00:48:29.680 --> 00:48:37.760
aspects of this we don't understand because to give a crude example of this i expect to meet Abraham

429
00:48:38.880 --> 00:48:46.160
and Moses but they didn't know about Jesus because they were before yes when i approach this you said

430
00:48:46.240 --> 00:48:53.120
you're agnostic i like that word people rarely ask me if i'm agnostic but what i'm telling you is

431
00:48:53.120 --> 00:49:00.240
i'm agnostic about masses of things it's how i learn agnosco in great just things i don't know

432
00:49:00.880 --> 00:49:06.080
yeah and once you take the other step and saying i don't know and you can't know and then

433
00:49:06.080 --> 00:49:10.960
becomes illogical because if you don't know how can you know that i can't know and i always remember

434
00:49:10.960 --> 00:49:15.920
the words of Richard Feynman who was a brilliant Nobel Prize winning physicist you probably heard

435
00:49:15.920 --> 00:49:24.080
of Richard Feynman who said bend over backwards to criticize yourself because you are the easiest

436
00:49:24.080 --> 00:49:32.080
person for yourself to deceive amen he was dead bright and that's why i love exploring these

437
00:49:32.080 --> 00:49:38.160
things and i feel honored to talk to someone who's still refreshing i think there's great hope for

438
00:49:38.160 --> 00:49:47.280
our culture and people like yourself exploring and sharing with the world the conclusions that

439
00:49:47.280 --> 00:49:52.240
you come to and the people that you're interacting with yeah like i said i have no i don't have

440
00:49:52.240 --> 00:49:58.560
perfect answers either way so that's why the way agnostic seems to be perfectly apt the other

441
00:49:58.560 --> 00:50:03.680
real question that i had that really stumped me when i was 18 years old was this point about

442
00:50:03.760 --> 00:50:08.080
omniscience yes i mean it's the oldest question in the sort of atheist

443
00:50:08.080 --> 00:50:12.560
religious battle which is if god is all knowing he knew exactly which individuals would reject him

444
00:50:12.560 --> 00:50:20.320
and suffer and go to hell before he even created them yeah that's determinism so how is creating a soul

445
00:50:20.320 --> 00:50:28.800
that you know is doomed an act of love well it doesn't i don't go for that determinism in fact

446
00:50:28.880 --> 00:50:33.920
everything the book that think about it i think it was actually really javice tell the story of the

447
00:50:34.880 --> 00:50:39.920
the baby being born in let's say it's africa or somewhere else or india or wherever it might be the

448
00:50:39.920 --> 00:50:46.640
uk who is born with a parasite eating its eyeball from the inside i know this yeah and i remember

449
00:50:46.640 --> 00:50:51.440
hearing that when i was 18 yeah terrible and thinking okay so if god's all knowing he knew that

450
00:50:51.440 --> 00:50:55.680
that baby was going to have its eye eaten out by a parasite before the baby was born but allowed

451
00:50:55.760 --> 00:51:00.640
the baby to be born anyway and with my moral compass i would have intervened and if he's

452
00:51:00.640 --> 00:51:05.840
what omnipotent or powerful he could have into so how do you these quite where is the flaw in that

453
00:51:06.560 --> 00:51:13.760
question is there a flaw is there a misunderstanding i i think there can be a misunderstanding but it's a

454
00:51:13.760 --> 00:51:20.720
very understandable one because i feel exactly the weight of that as well my question that i

455
00:51:20.800 --> 00:51:27.200
set out a few minutes ago is there any evidence anywhere that god you can trust god with it

456
00:51:27.200 --> 00:51:35.280
and the major piece of evidence to my mind is the cross of christ and if christ really is god

457
00:51:35.280 --> 00:51:40.720
who may claim to be this is god suffering and why is god suffering well it certainly tells me

458
00:51:40.720 --> 00:51:48.080
that he hasn't remained distant from human suffering but has himself become part of it now that's

459
00:51:48.160 --> 00:51:54.240
not an answer there are no simplistic answers here but you see once you remove god

460
00:51:55.680 --> 00:52:02.640
that child there's no hope for it the dead gone out nothing but suppose god can compensate that

461
00:52:02.640 --> 00:52:09.840
child because he is the power to raise from the dead as he did with Jesus that changes everything

462
00:52:09.840 --> 00:52:16.320
for me the universe without a resurrection i don't know whether you've ever watched my debate the

463
00:52:16.320 --> 00:52:23.440
first one were Richard Dawkins i suspect i have very last bit of it we were suddenly told we'd

464
00:52:23.440 --> 00:52:31.840
only two minutes to wrap up instead of nine each and i said something about the resurrection and

465
00:52:31.840 --> 00:52:36.080
i never forget what Richard said it was something like this we've had a great discussion of

466
00:52:36.080 --> 00:52:42.160
my big ideas and so on and now we come down to the resurrection of Jesus hope petty

467
00:52:43.120 --> 00:52:47.760
how perocryl how unworthy of the universe i remember thinking

468
00:52:50.320 --> 00:52:54.880
if Jesus rose from the dead it's the biggest thing that's ever happened because it may

469
00:52:55.680 --> 00:53:02.560
open the way to understanding that there is life after death and you see cs lyrs has helped me a

470
00:53:02.560 --> 00:53:09.040
lot i used to listen to him i'm that old he has helped me a lot in in this idea of

471
00:53:09.600 --> 00:53:16.480
a sense in which there's more than one world and we're so conditioned to thinking that this

472
00:53:16.480 --> 00:53:23.200
world is the only one there is but if there is another world and there is a loving god then i

473
00:53:23.200 --> 00:53:32.080
suspect i can't prove this to you but when we one day see and enter that world and see what god

474
00:53:32.080 --> 00:53:38.880
has done with the kind of child you mentioned we'll have no more questions so you think he's

475
00:53:38.880 --> 00:53:46.240
compensated that child oh yes god is a god of love he'll do much better than look the biggest

476
00:53:46.240 --> 00:53:56.800
gift that god has given you and me is our moral sense and the capacity to love now we analyse

477
00:53:56.800 --> 00:54:08.480
problems like this with our god-given capacities and we come and i understand that perfectly

478
00:54:08.480 --> 00:54:14.640
well because i've come to the same place as you and say well god of i had been you i would have done

479
00:54:14.640 --> 00:54:24.240
this well i suspect one day we're going to find out why god didn't he's going to let me die one day

480
00:54:24.240 --> 00:54:30.160
i've nearly died already i've said goodbye to my wife for the way and they thought they weren't

481
00:54:30.160 --> 00:54:36.880
14 years ago and i said goodbye and it's interesting when things like that hit you forgive the

482
00:54:36.880 --> 00:54:44.720
personal reference but it's very real total peace both of us had as i went into the operating theatre

483
00:54:45.600 --> 00:54:51.280
and the surgeons saved my life and this would take us down another rabbit hole but i got to New

484
00:54:51.280 --> 00:54:57.760
Zealand just a few days after the earthquake and i was on a lecture tour and everything was scrapped

485
00:54:57.760 --> 00:55:04.640
i was in television radio but only one topic why earthquakes you see and i met people that had lost

486
00:55:04.640 --> 00:55:12.240
loved ones and all this kind of thing and i talked about the god who has suffered and raised

487
00:55:12.240 --> 00:55:19.200
Jesus from the dead and the interesting thing was it was that that gave the most hope to the people

488
00:55:19.200 --> 00:55:23.760
that were listening to me because they told me and wrote me little letters afterwards and so on

489
00:55:23.760 --> 00:55:30.000
so i think there's something big here but that god allows these things to happen is something

490
00:55:30.560 --> 00:55:36.880
that in the end we have to take on board even when they happen to us what about all the

491
00:55:37.440 --> 00:55:44.000
the humans that lived before Jesus came well god will never judge anybody for not knowing but they

492
00:55:44.000 --> 00:55:53.120
didn't know interesting that's an interesting idea so i don't know yeah so am i good am i

493
00:55:53.120 --> 00:55:59.200
good again to heaven well no one is good but god but you see is it important for me to

494
00:55:59.200 --> 00:56:05.760
you do know a great deal that's obvious to me you do know a great deal you know what this is all

495
00:56:05.760 --> 00:56:13.840
about and in a sense you've been very near at the beginning and you're now doing an exploration

496
00:56:13.840 --> 00:56:18.720
and i mean your life story is that you must write your autobiography sometimes but wait wait a

497
00:56:18.720 --> 00:56:25.760
few years yeah i think i need a few more experiences yes but you will get them i really believe that

498
00:56:25.760 --> 00:56:32.880
the openness is the important thing yeah quiz people put your Christian friends on the day

499
00:56:32.880 --> 00:56:39.040
yes i know it's lovely to find someone who's prepared to do that quite frankly is it important

500
00:56:39.040 --> 00:56:44.080
that i believe in god like if i live a good life i'm kind people and i do my best but you see

501
00:56:44.160 --> 00:56:49.600
that's exactly the point i was making that people think that living a good life and being kind to

502
00:56:49.600 --> 00:56:57.680
people is what god is interested in when god is prepared for us a relationship with himself through

503
00:56:57.680 --> 00:57:06.320
Christ that deals with the forgiveness of sins that we all need forgive me using the acne phrase but

504
00:57:06.400 --> 00:57:15.760
that's it and will give us a new life and a power to live a new power you know it's all very well

505
00:57:15.760 --> 00:57:21.600
say i do good and i do this and do the other thing but we don't have the power to live as we should

506
00:57:22.480 --> 00:57:27.120
if we compare ourselves to the sermon on the mount for a week we'll soon realize that we're lacking

507
00:57:27.840 --> 00:57:34.160
and i i think one of the big changes comes in people as they realize just the depth

508
00:57:35.120 --> 00:57:42.160
of what they might be capable of and possibly the depths of some things are sadly they do

509
00:57:42.880 --> 00:57:49.520
and are facing a big need of forgiveness you meet many of them in prisons of course but

510
00:57:50.400 --> 00:57:57.200
i have seen such remarkable things happen both directly and indirectly with people who've made

511
00:57:57.200 --> 00:58:03.040
such a massive life and god has met them even in death row in russia and places like that

512
00:58:03.680 --> 00:58:10.720
where i was able to go because i speak the language to a certain extent again that i find tremendously

513
00:58:10.720 --> 00:58:17.200
powerful evidence that god is at work in these people's lives it is statistically the case that

514
00:58:17.200 --> 00:58:23.040
the more hopeless your life becomes the higher the probability you have of tining to a religion and

515
00:58:23.040 --> 00:58:26.560
also if you're having a crisis of meaning in your life whatever reason i looked at some of the

516
00:58:26.560 --> 00:58:31.600
data and it does show that that's absolutely right and that's what you'd expect of the efforts

517
00:58:31.680 --> 00:58:37.280
true at least for certain extent it gives that people something outside themselves that's

518
00:58:37.280 --> 00:58:41.920
the simple psychology i would have thought simple psychology it doesn't prove the truth is

519
00:58:41.920 --> 00:58:45.760
it doesn't prove the truth because what if i believe in yeah i'm dragging at the bottom of

520
00:58:45.760 --> 00:58:49.440
the garden i know of this spaghetti monster teper horns of your Irish and it seems to be the case

521
00:58:49.440 --> 00:58:54.400
that really irrespective of which religion that you know fills that you know place in your life

522
00:58:54.400 --> 00:58:59.360
you still get the same boost in meaning post starting to believe well i'm not convinced of that you see

523
00:58:59.360 --> 00:59:05.080
Because I'm sitting here as a Christian, and I've reasoned for being a Christian, because

524
00:59:05.080 --> 00:59:10.760
I don't find this need met in those practitioners of other religions.

525
00:59:10.760 --> 00:59:17.720
I don't find that sense of fulfillment and peace that comes through the forgiveness

526
00:59:17.720 --> 00:59:18.720
in Christ.

527
00:59:18.720 --> 00:59:26.080
Now, when I say that, I need to guard that very carefully, because one of the troubles

528
00:59:26.080 --> 00:59:31.600
and I do will probably realize this, and talking about different religions is that once

529
00:59:31.600 --> 00:59:38.920
you begin to criticize a religion, people rightly think you're looking down at them.

530
00:59:38.920 --> 00:59:46.920
And so I clear the ground completely by saying that a pagan or a person in any religion

531
00:59:46.920 --> 00:59:51.000
could put me to shame by their moral behavior.

532
00:59:51.000 --> 00:59:57.800
In raising questions about what is taught by a particular religion, I'm not criticizing

533
00:59:57.800 --> 00:59:59.400
your moral stance.

534
00:59:59.400 --> 01:00:01.560
And CS Lewis helped me greatly there.

535
01:00:01.560 --> 01:00:08.360
He wrote a book in the 1940s where he tackled, I think, 40 different religions and philosophies.

536
01:00:08.360 --> 01:00:11.360
And in every one of them, he found the golden rule.

537
01:00:11.360 --> 01:00:13.440
Do you want others what you would?

538
01:00:13.440 --> 01:00:19.760
And he points out that this is morally hardwired into your system.

539
01:00:19.760 --> 01:00:25.840
So that when I'm talking to people of other faiths and ask these questions, I'm very

540
01:00:25.840 --> 01:00:28.640
careful to say that at the beginning.

541
01:00:28.640 --> 01:00:32.800
But we've got to face the fact that there are differences.

542
01:00:32.800 --> 01:00:38.360
My Jewish friends believe that Jesus died and did not rise.

543
01:00:38.360 --> 01:00:41.360
My Muslim friends believed he didn't die.

544
01:00:41.360 --> 01:00:43.000
I believe he built died in a rose.

545
01:00:43.000 --> 01:00:45.840
Those three things cannot be simultaneously true.

546
01:00:45.840 --> 01:00:50.240
But when I look at the stats here, data shows that devout Muslims and a devout Hindu get

547
01:00:50.240 --> 01:00:54.960
the exact same psychological meaning boost and sense of peace as a devout Christian.

548
01:00:54.960 --> 01:00:57.200
Well, how do you measure that?

549
01:00:57.200 --> 01:01:00.600
Well, they ask them, they're your life more meaningful than sometimes I've got one

550
01:01:00.600 --> 01:01:07.320
particular friend who's part of his, you know, evidence that what he believes is true

551
01:01:07.320 --> 01:01:10.360
is the feeling he got when he started believing it.

552
01:01:10.360 --> 01:01:15.760
Yeah, well, the data suggests that if it is true, a possibility of feeling would

553
01:01:15.760 --> 01:01:19.240
reinforce that, of course, but it doesn't prove it in the end.

554
01:01:19.240 --> 01:01:25.880
But then your criteria for yourself of what you accept will be different from that person.

555
01:01:25.880 --> 01:01:30.680
So you have to proceed on the basis like Thomas of old.

556
01:01:30.680 --> 01:01:32.760
He wouldn't accept what the other guy said.

557
01:01:32.760 --> 01:01:35.320
He said, I need the evidence for myself.

558
01:01:35.320 --> 01:01:41.800
And you need the evidence for yourself, evidence of the kind that's going to give you a settled

559
01:01:41.800 --> 01:01:44.080
peace and confidence and what you believe.

560
01:01:44.080 --> 01:01:45.760
I can understand that perfectly.

561
01:01:45.760 --> 01:01:48.560
Then there were also I was thinking then I was thinking that there's fiction movies

562
01:01:48.560 --> 01:01:50.640
I've watched that made me feel really good.

563
01:01:50.640 --> 01:01:51.640
Yes, you're right.

564
01:01:51.640 --> 01:01:55.000
And they made me feel like more motivated and connected to the end of course.

565
01:01:58.000 --> 01:01:59.360
See what you do.

566
01:01:59.360 --> 01:02:03.960
Uh, just making myself a delicious coffee from the freezer from the freezer.

567
01:02:03.960 --> 01:02:05.040
You know, how about come to you?

568
01:02:05.040 --> 01:02:05.960
No.

569
01:02:05.960 --> 01:02:06.880
Oh my gosh.

570
01:02:06.880 --> 01:02:08.120
This is going to change your life.

571
01:02:08.120 --> 01:02:11.000
I invested in this company called Commitier last year.

572
01:02:11.000 --> 01:02:14.280
And then I wanted the sponsors of this podcast because they've taken a pretty revolutionary

573
01:02:14.280 --> 01:02:20.560
approach to making coffee every coffee is precision brewed at 10 times the strength.

574
01:02:20.560 --> 01:02:26.760
And then they flash freeze it with liquid nitrogen to lock in the flavor and freshness.

575
01:02:26.760 --> 01:02:31.920
And then it's delivered to you on dry ice in these recyclable aluminium capsules still

576
01:02:31.920 --> 01:02:33.800
frozen like a lice cube.

577
01:02:33.800 --> 01:02:39.800
All you have to do is pop the capsule out, add some hot water.

578
01:02:39.800 --> 01:02:43.000
And then you stir it and you are good to go.

579
01:02:43.000 --> 01:02:45.920
You can also make delicious ice coffee drinks as well.

580
01:02:45.920 --> 01:02:50.840
Just pour it in, stir it up.

581
01:02:50.840 --> 01:02:55.680
And for anyone that hasn't tried it, you can get $30 off your first order of Commitier

582
01:02:55.680 --> 01:03:00.320
Coffee if you go to Commitier.com slash Stephen.

583
01:03:00.360 --> 01:03:04.360
I've done almost 700 interviews with some of the most interesting people in the world.

584
01:03:04.360 --> 01:03:08.520
And one of the things you learn, which is unexpected, is that vulnerability is the

585
01:03:08.520 --> 01:03:09.840
doorway to connection.

586
01:03:09.840 --> 01:03:14.400
And after sitting here for two, three hours with a guest, I feel a deep sense of connection

587
01:03:14.400 --> 01:03:15.400
to them.

588
01:03:15.400 --> 01:03:21.240
And as they leave, what I get them to do is to write a question in the diary of a CEO.

589
01:03:21.240 --> 01:03:23.880
We've taken all of the questions from the diover CEO.

590
01:03:23.880 --> 01:03:29.800
We have put the question here on this card with the name of the person that wrote it.

591
01:03:29.800 --> 01:03:33.800
So you can sit at home as I do with my fiance and my colleagues at work and other people

592
01:03:33.800 --> 01:03:34.800
in my life.

593
01:03:34.800 --> 01:03:40.720
Whenever we get a minute, we play the diover CEO conversation cards and it is incredible

594
01:03:40.720 --> 01:03:41.720
what happens.

595
01:03:41.720 --> 01:03:44.720
These are great if you're in a romantic relationship and you want to connect your partner

596
01:03:44.720 --> 01:03:45.720
more.

597
01:03:45.720 --> 01:03:48.520
These are also great if you're in a team and you want to bond your team together.

598
01:03:48.520 --> 01:03:51.520
And I have to say they're also great for families that want to learn more about each

599
01:03:51.520 --> 01:03:56.920
other and that need a good excuse to spend some time in a digital world in the analog

600
01:03:56.920 --> 01:03:59.440
environment, connecting human to human.

601
01:03:59.440 --> 01:04:03.760
It is remarkable what the right question at the right time can do.

602
01:04:03.760 --> 01:04:09.440
Go to the diary.com and you can get these conversation cards right now.

603
01:04:09.440 --> 01:04:15.120
So going back to this question I asked about good people, living a good life, it seems

604
01:04:15.120 --> 01:04:19.200
to be the case that the Bible suggests that if you don't believe in God, even if you

605
01:04:19.200 --> 01:04:24.160
lived a good life, you go to hell and hell is described as not a nice place.

606
01:04:24.160 --> 01:04:28.800
So I think about the most kind person I know that's lived her life to be unbelievable

607
01:04:28.800 --> 01:04:31.280
passed away, she didn't believe.

608
01:04:31.280 --> 01:04:32.880
Does that mean she's in hell?

609
01:04:32.880 --> 01:04:35.520
Well, you can't answer that.

610
01:04:35.520 --> 01:04:43.520
Let me just say something here that what a scripture reveals is a very interesting thing

611
01:04:43.520 --> 01:04:49.320
that the only people to whom Jesus talked about hell were religious beings who were in

612
01:04:49.320 --> 01:04:51.560
danger of it.

613
01:04:51.560 --> 01:04:57.360
He didn't talk about it to ordinary folks who were struggling with believing and trusting

614
01:04:57.360 --> 01:04:58.560
God and all the rest.

615
01:04:58.560 --> 01:04:59.880
That's point number one.

616
01:04:59.880 --> 01:05:02.120
What is what is what I think what are you implying there?

617
01:05:02.120 --> 01:05:12.160
Well, what I've been playing there is that we paint hell as something ogre like God stuffing

618
01:05:12.160 --> 01:05:20.320
and demon stuffing bodies into hell when actually I think Lewis got it right here.

619
01:05:20.320 --> 01:05:29.360
You know when he talks about this, that hell is absence of God and it's chosen.

620
01:05:29.360 --> 01:05:34.560
If a person doesn't want God in their life and I've known people like that and they choose

621
01:05:34.560 --> 01:05:39.760
it, God will give them what they choose, otherwise God is going to have to force his way into

622
01:05:39.760 --> 01:05:41.840
their lives and they don't want him.

623
01:05:41.840 --> 01:05:46.600
And here is the amazing thing to my mind about Jesus and his attitude.

624
01:05:46.600 --> 01:05:53.040
He would go places, he would heal people, he would bring peace into their lives and all

625
01:05:53.040 --> 01:05:54.200
the rest of it.

626
01:05:54.200 --> 01:06:00.920
But when folk saw what he did and said go, leave us alone, he went.

627
01:06:00.920 --> 01:06:03.680
He didn't force his way into their lives.

628
01:06:03.680 --> 01:06:11.560
And it seems to me that the one example in the New Testament of a person who did not live

629
01:06:11.560 --> 01:06:19.640
a good life and neglected the poor around him and ended in that place.

630
01:06:19.640 --> 01:06:22.560
There is no evidence that he wanted out of it.

631
01:06:22.560 --> 01:06:29.840
What he said was, please send Abraham to my brothers that they don't come to this place.

632
01:06:29.840 --> 01:06:32.040
There's no indication that he wanted out of it.

633
01:06:32.040 --> 01:06:39.200
And I think this is a grim reality here that when we use these words, we need to be immensely

634
01:06:39.200 --> 01:06:40.760
careful.

635
01:06:40.760 --> 01:06:48.960
You can choose not to have God and God will honor that choice and that is hell.

636
01:06:48.960 --> 01:06:54.800
One of the things that I grew up believing because of the Bible was that if you repented,

637
01:06:54.800 --> 01:07:00.200
which is to ask forgiveness, admit your sins, etc., acknowledge God, believe, then your

638
01:07:00.200 --> 01:07:02.200
sins would be forgiven.

639
01:07:02.200 --> 01:07:06.680
So if someone was a serial killer for their whole life and then repented at the end of their

640
01:07:06.680 --> 01:07:09.480
life, would they be forgiven and allowed into heaven?

641
01:07:09.480 --> 01:07:12.960
I guess this is kind of links to the question I just asked, which is if someone was a doctor

642
01:07:12.960 --> 01:07:17.680
for the whole life, you're curing childhood cancer, but they didn't believe they would

643
01:07:17.680 --> 01:07:20.400
theoretically be going to this place described as hell.

644
01:07:20.400 --> 01:07:25.040
We can argue about cases like that all the time, neither of us is God.

645
01:07:25.040 --> 01:07:29.440
And the way God deals with these people, after all next to Christ and the cross were two

646
01:07:29.440 --> 01:07:34.720
thieves, whether we're terrorists, actually, they both murdered apparently.

647
01:07:34.720 --> 01:07:39.480
And one of them railed against Jesus and shouted and all this kind of thing.

648
01:07:39.480 --> 01:07:44.560
And the other somebody said to him, I deserve to be here.

649
01:07:44.560 --> 01:07:49.520
Remember me when you come into your kingdom, and Jesus turned to him on the cross and said,

650
01:07:49.520 --> 01:07:51.720
today you will be with me and paradise.

651
01:07:51.720 --> 01:07:53.520
So you speak of an murderer?

652
01:07:53.520 --> 01:07:54.520
Yes.

653
01:07:54.520 --> 01:07:56.440
In that sense, yes.

654
01:07:56.440 --> 01:07:59.680
And the apostle Paul was a murderer.

655
01:07:59.680 --> 01:08:03.040
Her deep mysteries here is just amazing.

656
01:08:03.040 --> 01:08:09.120
I never forget looking through the door of a Russian security death row.

657
01:08:09.120 --> 01:08:15.040
I'd never been in a death row before and the stink, it was just like a nightmare.

658
01:08:15.040 --> 01:08:18.880
And because I was the only one with the Brits who could speak Russian, I went up to the

659
01:08:18.880 --> 01:08:27.000
door and a chap came over and looked at me, gone and all this news, just awaiting execution.

660
01:08:27.000 --> 01:08:30.120
And what he said to me was this, he said, I deserve to be here.

661
01:08:30.120 --> 01:08:34.040
He killed 12 women or something, I can't remember which.

662
01:08:34.040 --> 01:08:42.520
And then his face just burst into what I can only describe as a ghastly smile.

663
01:08:42.520 --> 01:08:46.640
And he said, I met Jesus here and he forgave me.

664
01:08:46.640 --> 01:08:55.320
And you just, you go away with a very burdened heart, I think.

665
01:08:55.320 --> 01:08:58.960
And he said, my colleague lying over there is the same.

666
01:08:58.960 --> 01:08:59.960
What do you make of it?

667
01:08:59.960 --> 01:09:02.440
I don't think we're going to find out.

668
01:09:02.440 --> 01:09:06.480
I don't know, I feel like I'm wired to try and have to solve these back in problems.

669
01:09:06.480 --> 01:09:10.600
These big questions, I have to like figure them out or they'll just sit there causing

670
01:09:10.600 --> 01:09:15.120
increasingly more confusion, which pops me right on that agnostic fence.

671
01:09:15.120 --> 01:09:20.680
Yes, I would encourage you to concentrate on the one that you think is most important,

672
01:09:20.680 --> 01:09:22.320
one at a time.

673
01:09:22.320 --> 01:09:27.000
And I don't know because I fully met you.

674
01:09:27.000 --> 01:09:35.160
I think what you're doing by talking to people from different backgrounds and so on.

675
01:09:35.160 --> 01:09:41.360
I'd love to be able to say, here's where you must look, but each one of us is so complex.

676
01:09:41.360 --> 01:09:46.040
And what will answer the question for you might not answer it for the person sitting next

677
01:09:46.040 --> 01:09:47.560
to you.

678
01:09:47.560 --> 01:09:51.600
But don't stop exploring, I would say.

679
01:09:51.600 --> 01:09:53.280
But I don't think you will.

680
01:09:53.280 --> 01:09:54.280
No, I won't.

681
01:09:54.280 --> 01:09:55.280
That's for sure.

682
01:09:55.280 --> 01:10:00.520
Because I find the curious pursuit of truth in and of itself a rewarding pursuit, irrespective

683
01:10:00.520 --> 01:10:02.520
of whether I have to find the answers.

684
01:10:02.520 --> 01:10:03.520
That's the key.

685
01:10:03.520 --> 01:10:09.160
A speech that made a deep impression on me was given by Alexander Sojourn at some point

686
01:10:09.160 --> 01:10:12.080
he was pushed out of the Soviet Union.

687
01:10:12.080 --> 01:10:16.760
Do not compromise the least with lies, live not by lies.

688
01:10:16.760 --> 01:10:24.680
I think our generation needs to hear that because one of the great and tragic capacities

689
01:10:24.680 --> 01:10:29.520
of AI is the spread of lies, deep fakes, all the rest of it.

690
01:10:29.520 --> 01:10:33.320
I've been subject to it myself in the last month.

691
01:10:33.320 --> 01:10:37.160
When you think about the impact that AI is going to have on human purpose, we talk a lot

692
01:10:37.160 --> 01:10:41.960
about job losses and white color workers, entry-level roles, and then really like everything

693
01:10:41.960 --> 01:10:42.960
else.

694
01:10:42.960 --> 01:10:46.000
If you have a whole lot of time horizon, it's conceivable that many of the roles we all

695
01:10:46.000 --> 01:10:48.680
do today, including maybe even as a pollcaster.

696
01:10:48.680 --> 01:10:51.760
I think Spotify announced this month that you're going to be able to generate your own podcasts

697
01:10:51.760 --> 01:10:54.680
with AI.

698
01:10:54.680 --> 01:10:58.480
What is the high level sort of philosophical point we need to understand about meaning

699
01:10:58.480 --> 01:11:03.840
and how to live a good life in a world where some of us might lose our jobs and have

700
01:11:03.840 --> 01:11:08.000
to contend with change in a way that we've not experienced before?

701
01:11:08.000 --> 01:11:13.320
I think we just have to, I mean, I've children, grandchildren, all the rest of it.

702
01:11:13.320 --> 01:11:18.160
And one of my sons has begun to ask questions, Dad, AI looks as if it's going to replace my

703
01:11:18.160 --> 01:11:19.160
job.

704
01:11:19.160 --> 01:11:24.640
Well, he's tech savvy and he will rise to it, I suspect.

705
01:11:24.640 --> 01:11:30.120
But all industrial revolutions did this, but this is going to do it in a scale never before

706
01:11:30.120 --> 01:11:31.120
seen.

707
01:11:31.120 --> 01:11:36.240
And the tragedy is, I was talking about this in South Africa and they said it's all very

708
01:11:36.240 --> 01:11:38.960
well to tell us to reskill people.

709
01:11:38.960 --> 01:11:44.960
But if you don't have the educational infrastructure to do that, you'll just force a much bigger

710
01:11:44.960 --> 01:11:47.040
divide between the rich and the poor.

711
01:11:47.040 --> 01:11:49.560
They're really worried about it.

712
01:11:49.560 --> 01:11:55.000
I think the important thing, which is why I wrote my books, is to inform and get people

713
01:11:55.000 --> 01:11:57.720
thinking and get them talking.

714
01:11:57.720 --> 01:12:00.320
What is the conversation you want them to be talking about?

715
01:12:00.320 --> 01:12:04.840
I think it's a very wide-raging conversation.

716
01:12:04.840 --> 01:12:08.360
You know, there are existential things for people.

717
01:12:08.360 --> 01:12:10.160
They're afraid.

718
01:12:10.160 --> 01:12:11.360
Should they be?

719
01:12:11.360 --> 01:12:14.520
Well, they should be afraid of some things.

720
01:12:14.520 --> 01:12:21.960
I think the creeping advance of totalitarianism is something that couldn't go for all.

721
01:12:21.960 --> 01:12:26.440
If we're not very careful, it's creeping, creeping, creeping, and there's being rolled

722
01:12:26.440 --> 01:12:29.280
out in parts of the world, particularly China.

723
01:12:29.280 --> 01:12:36.880
But not only, I read a very interesting report by a Chinese watcher saying, beware you in

724
01:12:36.880 --> 01:12:41.720
the West, because the only difference between us and you is you've got all the technology,

725
01:12:41.720 --> 01:12:46.680
but not yet a central government imposing it.

726
01:12:46.680 --> 01:12:47.680
Not yet.

727
01:12:47.680 --> 01:12:48.680
Beware.

728
01:12:48.680 --> 01:12:53.760
And I think we have to beware, because we are sleepwalking into this.

729
01:12:53.760 --> 01:12:58.040
I certainly seldom, I don't know whether you come across him.

730
01:12:58.040 --> 01:13:03.560
He's an education that's very highly regarded by various governments, has written a book

731
01:13:03.560 --> 01:13:07.080
about AI as effect in education.

732
01:13:07.080 --> 01:13:13.880
And of course, it's having a devastating effect, as you know, what is an essay?

733
01:13:13.880 --> 01:13:20.960
Everybody's using AI, and it's hard to recognize whether it's AI or not now, so that we're

734
01:13:20.960 --> 01:13:26.160
into a whole new world or coming rapidly into it.

735
01:13:26.160 --> 01:13:28.920
How do we know what is true and what isn't?

736
01:13:28.920 --> 01:13:36.480
A few weeks ago, I was contacted, could a publisher produce a transcript of a recent lecture

737
01:13:36.480 --> 01:13:40.120
I'd given, because they liked it so much, never heard of it.

738
01:13:40.120 --> 01:13:46.760
I looked it up, discovered a website describing itself as Linux logic, and it was a picture

739
01:13:46.760 --> 01:13:53.720
of me, but it was deepfect all the way through, and AI generated material that I would never

740
01:13:53.720 --> 01:13:56.600
have said, or politicized, and everything else.

741
01:13:56.600 --> 01:14:01.840
Is it conceivable that maybe so much of this technology has promised that it would make

742
01:14:01.840 --> 01:14:04.880
us more human, and so much of it failed, it made us more isolated and lonely?

743
01:14:04.880 --> 01:14:05.880
Oh, yes.

744
01:14:05.880 --> 01:14:12.320
Is it conceivable that if a technology comes along like AI, it will render us useful, for

745
01:14:12.320 --> 01:14:18.920
the things that humans are uniquely positioned to do, as in being with each other in the

746
01:14:18.920 --> 01:14:23.160
real world and relationships, and is it conceivable that maybe we were never meant to

747
01:14:23.160 --> 01:14:25.160
see in front of screens tap tapping buttons, and...

748
01:14:25.160 --> 01:14:29.920
Oh, I think that's absolutely true, but it's already exercising many people's minds

749
01:14:29.920 --> 01:14:31.320
in that direction.

750
01:14:31.320 --> 01:14:33.160
And could that be a better life?

751
01:14:33.160 --> 01:14:35.920
Well, how would I judge that?

752
01:14:35.920 --> 01:14:39.960
I guess one way, yeah, it's a good point, and I was thinking about this, I was thinking,

753
01:14:39.960 --> 01:14:47.000
is this like the moment where we kind of regress back to how we used to live?

754
01:14:47.000 --> 01:14:51.560
Our true, maybe human nature, is that what happens here where, I don't know, we spend

755
01:14:51.560 --> 01:14:55.520
more time with each other in the real world, because that's what, you know, that's very

756
01:14:55.520 --> 01:14:59.320
human, and my mazlovia needs of connection and touch, and...

757
01:14:59.320 --> 01:15:00.320
Yeah, yeah.

758
01:15:00.320 --> 01:15:01.320
Well, you can...

759
01:15:01.320 --> 01:15:02.320
You're going to stay there.

760
01:15:02.320 --> 01:15:03.320
You can demonstrate that.

761
01:15:03.320 --> 01:15:08.400
Look at these groups of parents who have said to their kids, look, we're going away

762
01:15:08.400 --> 01:15:14.840
into the country for a week, and we're taking your smartphones away, and they grumble and

763
01:15:14.840 --> 01:15:19.120
say, no, no, no, they come back after the week, having rediscovered nature, they don't

764
01:15:19.120 --> 01:15:25.120
want to use their smartphones very much, totally transformed by touch and taste and feeling.

765
01:15:25.120 --> 01:15:30.000
You see, AI is a machine.

766
01:15:30.000 --> 01:15:35.800
It doesn't have any of our five senses, which are all connected with our consciousness.

767
01:15:35.800 --> 01:15:37.160
It doesn't see.

768
01:15:37.160 --> 01:15:38.560
It doesn't hear.

769
01:15:38.560 --> 01:15:39.560
It doesn't taste.

770
01:15:39.560 --> 01:15:41.960
When you say it doesn't touch, it doesn't smell.

771
01:15:41.960 --> 01:15:42.960
It doesn't see.

772
01:15:43.360 --> 01:15:48.480
It can be programmed to recognize patterns, but it is no awareness of what the process of

773
01:15:48.480 --> 01:15:49.480
seeing is.

774
01:15:49.480 --> 01:15:51.000
Does it need it?

775
01:15:51.000 --> 01:15:52.560
Well, that's not the point.

776
01:15:52.560 --> 01:15:58.240
What I'm saying is it's distinctively human that we understand what seeing is.

777
01:15:58.240 --> 01:16:00.200
We know what seeing red is.

778
01:16:00.200 --> 01:16:01.200
Do we?

779
01:16:01.200 --> 01:16:02.720
The machine, yes, I think we do.

780
01:16:02.720 --> 01:16:09.160
I mean, we can philosophize all around it, but it's a conscious experience, and consciousness

781
01:16:09.160 --> 01:16:12.480
from a scientific perspective is called a hard problem.

782
01:16:12.480 --> 01:16:14.240
No one knows what it is.

783
01:16:14.240 --> 01:16:15.240
We don't understand it.

784
01:16:15.240 --> 01:16:17.800
Yes, you can't replicate it.

785
01:16:17.800 --> 01:16:21.040
So how do we know AI is conscious?

786
01:16:21.040 --> 01:16:25.640
If the output is the same, I can point an AI at this and say, what is it?

787
01:16:25.640 --> 01:16:29.600
And the AI will say it's a mug, and I can get a human talking here and say, what is

788
01:16:29.600 --> 01:16:30.600
that?

789
01:16:30.600 --> 01:16:31.600
And they'll go a mug.

790
01:16:31.600 --> 01:16:33.280
Now, the output is the same.

791
01:16:33.280 --> 01:16:35.880
Yes, but the understanding is not there.

792
01:16:35.880 --> 01:16:38.480
And why does that part, why is that critical?

793
01:16:38.480 --> 01:16:45.040
Well, because there's a huge difference in being a machine and responding to a program

794
01:16:45.040 --> 01:16:51.400
created by others, and being aware of what you're doing consciously, that's a totally higher

795
01:16:51.400 --> 01:16:52.880
level of being.

796
01:16:52.880 --> 01:16:53.880
I agree.

797
01:16:53.880 --> 01:16:56.560
But why does that matter in this context?

798
01:16:56.560 --> 01:17:00.240
Well, one another we've asked in this question is actually visualized by what I have

799
01:17:00.240 --> 01:17:04.280
in front of me here, because one of the big debates around AI is, is it creative?

800
01:17:04.280 --> 01:17:05.760
Yes, I know.

801
01:17:05.760 --> 01:17:15.840
So here we have a picture done by a human, which is a picture of a family and a dog, and

802
01:17:15.840 --> 01:17:19.360
then we have another picture here, which is done by AI.

803
01:17:19.360 --> 01:17:20.360
Yes.

804
01:17:20.360 --> 01:17:22.600
And we have another picture here, which is done by a different AI.

805
01:17:22.600 --> 01:17:23.600
Yes.

806
01:17:23.600 --> 01:17:28.120
Now, there's a debate that AI can't be creative.

807
01:17:28.120 --> 01:17:30.880
Now, can AI be creative?

808
01:17:31.280 --> 01:17:36.760
Well, if you call what's in front of you as creative, then it can be.

809
01:17:36.760 --> 01:17:42.680
But it now comes down to the very big question of what you actually mean by creative.

810
01:17:42.680 --> 01:17:43.680
Yeah.

811
01:17:43.680 --> 01:17:45.440
You see, it can create things.

812
01:17:45.440 --> 01:17:52.400
It can put things together that haven't been in that form before, but it's not aware

813
01:17:52.400 --> 01:17:53.400
of doing it.

814
01:17:53.400 --> 01:17:58.520
It doesn't know that those are children, because it doesn't know.

815
01:17:58.520 --> 01:18:00.560
But if I ask it, what is that, it would say a child?

816
01:18:00.560 --> 01:18:05.160
Yes, but it doesn't know, like we know.

817
01:18:05.160 --> 01:18:11.800
And it goes back to the same question, which is, which is like what the process, why does

818
01:18:11.800 --> 01:18:16.800
the process matter if the output is identical?

819
01:18:16.800 --> 01:18:25.920
Well, let me just say that that view is exactly the view that Alan Turing took at the beginning.

820
01:18:25.920 --> 01:18:31.880
And if you look at what's often referred to as the AI Bible, Peter Norvig and his colleagues,

821
01:18:31.880 --> 01:18:37.600
he said, look, we are not trying to create a conscious machine.

822
01:18:37.600 --> 01:18:39.960
We wouldn't even know what that meant.

823
01:18:39.960 --> 01:18:45.320
We are happy with the imitation game, and that's good enough for us.

824
01:18:45.320 --> 01:18:46.800
We're not trying to do it.

825
01:18:46.800 --> 01:18:54.160
But you see, the conscious side involves all that appreciation of life and nature and beauty

826
01:18:54.160 --> 01:18:59.040
and so on, that we can see some meaning in, but also there's another thing.

827
01:18:59.040 --> 01:19:05.280
There's a consciousness of other people, and there's God consciousness.

828
01:19:05.280 --> 01:19:09.840
I don't think AI anywhere near that machines.

829
01:19:09.840 --> 01:19:14.600
There are certain things they cannot do, even potentially, that the human mind can do.

830
01:19:14.600 --> 01:19:19.520
So there's no way a machine is ever going to be able to simulate a human mind completely.

831
01:19:19.520 --> 01:19:25.040
But that's difficult, that's difficult, mathematics and all the rest of it, and it's highly controversial.

832
01:19:25.040 --> 01:19:30.680
Why is an important conversation to have that it is conscious or not conscious when the

833
01:19:30.680 --> 01:19:32.680
output is the same?

834
01:19:32.680 --> 01:19:39.200
I can see the question, but if you want to live in a reductive universe, which ends up

835
01:19:39.200 --> 01:19:43.640
being meaningless, well, let you can go that way, there's nothing to stop you.

836
01:19:43.640 --> 01:19:49.320
Because it seems to me there are enough indicators within nature, within science, within our human

837
01:19:49.320 --> 01:19:57.320
experience that tell us there's a bigger world, and this is the right and left brain stuff

838
01:19:57.320 --> 01:20:03.480
for back to the Giltra skin, his stuff in AI is very strong.

839
01:20:03.480 --> 01:20:09.320
He thinks it's really dangerous because it's ruining all this side of the brain and the

840
01:20:09.320 --> 01:20:14.920
richness of human experience, and it's in danger of destroying it.

841
01:20:14.920 --> 01:20:18.880
He actually invites people to come and fight with him.

842
01:20:18.880 --> 01:20:24.440
So in such a world, what is it that makes humans, what is it that makes us special?

843
01:20:24.440 --> 01:20:26.920
Is it that those human things we talked about relational?

844
01:20:26.920 --> 01:20:29.400
Oh, I think so, yes, absolutely.

845
01:20:29.400 --> 01:20:33.080
And the fact that you and I can have a conversation like this.

846
01:20:33.080 --> 01:20:35.000
You could have this conversation with AI.

847
01:20:35.000 --> 01:20:36.600
I'm the same way.

848
01:20:36.600 --> 01:20:39.000
AI is pretty thin still.

849
01:20:39.000 --> 01:20:41.600
You can have a conversation of sorts.

850
01:20:41.600 --> 01:20:46.160
But remember, who's responsible for its capacity, humans?

851
01:20:46.160 --> 01:20:50.440
It's something made in the image of humans, and that's a dangerous thing.

852
01:20:50.440 --> 01:20:54.640
I'd prefer to obey it was something made in the image of God.

853
01:20:54.640 --> 01:20:57.520
It's interesting because we're getting to a point where there's going to probably be

854
01:20:57.520 --> 01:21:00.040
some like ethical questions around robotics.

855
01:21:00.040 --> 01:21:01.040
Oh, they're already here.

856
01:21:01.040 --> 01:21:02.040
They're already here.

857
01:21:02.040 --> 01:21:03.040
But only around robotics.

858
01:21:03.040 --> 01:21:04.040
Oh, everywhere.

859
01:21:04.040 --> 01:21:07.560
You know, in the same way that many of us feel quite empathetic towards like trees.

860
01:21:07.560 --> 01:21:08.560
Yes, yes.

861
01:21:08.600 --> 01:21:10.120
I feel empathetic towards animals.

862
01:21:10.120 --> 01:21:11.120
Yes.

863
01:21:11.120 --> 01:21:15.520
Now trees haven't got a brain, but just cutting down a tree needlessly.

864
01:21:15.520 --> 01:21:16.520
Yes.

865
01:21:16.520 --> 01:21:18.040
I think we're annoying a lot of people because it's...

866
01:21:18.040 --> 01:21:19.040
Everyone annoying me.

867
01:21:19.040 --> 01:21:20.600
Yeah, we're annoying me too.

868
01:21:20.600 --> 01:21:25.160
And I think there's almost going to get to a point where like, you know, people are going

869
01:21:25.160 --> 01:21:32.640
to start asking similar questions around robots, which is an interesting question.

870
01:21:32.640 --> 01:21:33.640
It is.

871
01:21:33.640 --> 01:21:34.640
It is.

872
01:21:34.640 --> 01:21:38.480
Let me ask you a final question then, which is, what is the most important thing?

873
01:21:38.480 --> 01:21:43.040
We haven't talked about that we should have talked about as it relates to all of the

874
01:21:43.040 --> 01:21:45.000
work in these tangential subjects.

875
01:21:45.000 --> 01:21:47.840
Oh, I can't answer that.

876
01:21:47.840 --> 01:21:54.360
That perhaps the most important thing is finding the trigger that will help you to take

877
01:21:54.360 --> 01:22:02.360
a step forward into faith, into the Christian faith.

878
01:22:02.360 --> 01:22:08.440
And I would just encourage you to keep asking your questions in the open way you've done.

879
01:22:08.920 --> 01:22:14.200
And I have regarded it an honour to have this discussion.

880
01:22:14.200 --> 01:22:18.200
And I hope very much it will be the last one, but age may prevent that.

881
01:22:18.200 --> 01:22:20.200
But thank you very much.

882
01:22:20.200 --> 01:22:24.440
We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next, not knowing

883
01:22:24.440 --> 01:22:29.160
who they're leaving it for.

884
01:22:29.160 --> 01:22:33.480
And the question that's left for you.

885
01:22:33.480 --> 01:22:42.720
In a world with so many challenges, what can we do to restore hope and trigger engagement?

886
01:22:42.720 --> 01:22:49.000
Give people a real basis for hope that transcends this world.

887
01:22:49.000 --> 01:22:57.080
And the only place I know where to find that is in Christ and in Christianity.

888
01:22:57.080 --> 01:22:58.080
John, thank you.

889
01:22:58.080 --> 01:23:05.960
One of the most compelling arguments for God that you've presented and your way of seeing

890
01:23:05.960 --> 01:23:10.080
the world and being is not actually necessarily anything you've written in your books or not

891
01:23:10.080 --> 01:23:11.880
necessarily anything you've said.

892
01:23:11.880 --> 01:23:25.200
It is actually you and you have a certain peace and contentment that I rarely see in people

893
01:23:25.200 --> 01:23:31.200
that I interview, but I often see and I've almost always seen in the Christians that I've

894
01:23:31.200 --> 01:23:32.200
interviewed.

895
01:23:32.200 --> 01:23:34.200
And this is a interesting phenomenon for me.

896
01:23:34.200 --> 01:23:35.200
I interviewed Wesley Huff recently.

897
01:23:35.200 --> 01:23:36.200
Do you know Wesley Huff?

898
01:23:36.200 --> 01:23:37.200
Yes.

899
01:23:37.200 --> 01:23:38.200
He was the same.

900
01:23:38.200 --> 01:23:39.200
Canadian.

901
01:23:39.200 --> 01:23:40.200
You can Wesley, so bright cookie.

902
01:23:40.200 --> 01:23:41.200
Yeah.

903
01:23:41.200 --> 01:23:42.200
He was very much, he gave me the same feeling as you.

904
01:23:42.200 --> 01:23:44.200
Just like, feels like a really happy person.

905
01:23:44.200 --> 01:23:45.200
Very sort of content rounded well.

906
01:23:45.200 --> 01:23:46.200
There are many of us.

907
01:23:46.200 --> 01:23:47.200
Yeah.

908
01:23:47.200 --> 01:23:50.880
But it seems to be a trend that, you know, a lot of the Christian apologists that I've interviewed

909
01:23:50.880 --> 01:23:52.880
have that, but anchoring that.

910
01:23:52.880 --> 01:23:53.880
Yeah.

911
01:23:53.880 --> 01:23:54.880
So many of us are looking for.

912
01:23:54.880 --> 01:23:57.720
There's a real sense of that.

913
01:23:57.720 --> 01:24:03.800
You know, I sit in front of many people and of course they often ask me questions.

914
01:24:03.800 --> 01:24:12.400
I don't even understand, but in life, that peace is very important to me.

915
01:24:12.400 --> 01:24:15.800
And also what we started with.

916
01:24:15.800 --> 01:24:21.880
When I look at you, I see someone who's of infinite value made in the image of God.

917
01:24:21.880 --> 01:24:28.400
And so what I say to you, or think about you, is hugely important to me.

918
01:24:28.400 --> 01:24:30.000
And I wish you well.

919
01:24:30.000 --> 01:24:31.000
Thank you.

920
01:24:31.000 --> 01:24:33.800
I highly recommend, I mean, you've written so many books.

921
01:24:33.800 --> 01:24:36.280
I don't have all of them here, but I have a long list of them.

922
01:24:36.280 --> 01:24:40.040
But I highly recommend everybody goes and checks out your autobiography, which is your

923
01:24:40.040 --> 01:24:41.040
most recent works.

924
01:24:41.040 --> 01:24:42.040
Yeah.

925
01:24:42.040 --> 01:24:43.040
It's called John Lannex.

926
01:24:43.040 --> 01:24:45.040
I'm going to link it below.

927
01:24:45.040 --> 01:24:49.760
It's a spiritual and intellectual autobiography that I think is highly fascinating to read because

928
01:24:49.760 --> 01:24:52.760
of how diverse your thinking and skill sets are.

929
01:24:52.760 --> 01:24:56.440
But also this wonderful, I mean, you wrote, if people are interested in the subject of AI,

930
01:24:56.440 --> 01:24:57.440
then I highly recommend it.

931
01:24:57.440 --> 01:24:58.440
Then they should read 2084.

932
01:24:58.440 --> 01:25:03.720
I'll link 2084 below as well, that's 2084, artificial intelligence in the future of

933
01:25:03.720 --> 01:25:04.720
humanity.

934
01:25:04.720 --> 01:25:11.560
And I highly recommend everybody goes and reads both books because you are a truly fascinating

935
01:25:11.560 --> 01:25:15.680
person with a very unique skill stack and experience stack and perspective.

936
01:25:15.680 --> 01:25:16.680
Fascinating.

937
01:25:16.680 --> 01:25:17.680
Thank you so much, John.

938
01:25:17.680 --> 01:25:18.680
Oh, thank you.