Huxley-Wilberforce, round two

Last night’s BBC Radio Four show The Moral Maze, on which I am a panellist, was recorded at the Cheltenham Science Festival and consisted of a particularly fascinating debate about the relationship between science and religion. One of the witnesses was Dr John Lennox, an Oxford mathematician and author of the remarkable book God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? His answer is not only no, but he totally demolishes the Richard Dawkins position from the perspective of science. He shows not only that there is no inherent conflict between science and faith but that the argument for faith is now being bolstered enormously by the remarkable developments in science.

John Lennox took this argument to Dawkins himself at an equally remarkable debate in Alabama last year. You can watch it on this website and see for yourself how Dawkins, the ostensible apostle of reason, is out-reasoned on his own scientific ground by a man of both faith and science. Those who are fascinated by all this may also like to know that there will be another debate between Lennox and Christopher Hitchens at the Edinburgh Festival on August 9; the video of the Dawkins-Lennox debate will be screened at Oxford City Hall on 20 October; and on 21 October, Dawkins and Lennox will face one another again at the Natural History Museum in Oxford -- the site of the famed Huxley-Wilberforce evolution showdown in 1860.